Freedom of speech is absolutely crucial," says Chris Huhne on the Today Programme. Yet he supports the government decision to ban Diutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country. How very liberal of him. He believes that Wilders is guilty of incitement to violence and hatred. He has watched the film Wilders has made. I haven't, so he may say he is in a better position to judge than I am. Huhne believes "in freedom up to the potential to harm." Who is to define harm? As John Humphrys pointed out, what about extremist Imams in this country who incite hatred of Jews or homosexuals? If Wilders is to be banned from the country, what about them?
I am very nervous about banning this man from entering this country, especially as he is an elected parliamentarian from a friendly, neighbouring country. It also gives the Fascist left (ie the BNP) to create a martyr like figures.
Having said all that, I would also like an opportunity to critique this film, as I suspect my reaction might be similar to Chris Huhne's.
127 comments:
We used to have free speech in this country and that is one of the freedoms my fathers generation went to war about.
Labour have sliced away at our freedoms bit by bit and like the banking problems the press just stand by with their hands in their pockets and do nothing till it to late.
"He believes that Wilders is guilty of incitement to violence and hatred."
Only Wilders...?
"Having said all that, I would also like an opportunity to critique this film..."
It's widely available on the Internet. What's stopping you?
This whole episode is completely farcical. ls there any commonsense at all in the current government? All they have achieved is giving Wilders (and his film) more media coverage that he could have ever wished for ... and start a diplomaic row with Holland!
lf anyones promoting Wilders it's the British Goverment!
What happens now? Does Wilders get into UK via Ireland and the ferries sometime soon? He'll make sure everyone knows when he's in ... then he'll get arrested so headlines will be 'Dutch MP arrested in UK'.
As l say, it's a bloody farce!
The government welcomes into the country at entertains at No. 10 men, and the odd woman, who advocate and provide excuses for mass murder, land appropriation, torture and all manner of human rights abuses. Many of them personally have blood on their hands. The idea that a democratically elected European politician should be banned from the UK because a load of fundamentalist nutters don't like a film is utterly ludicrous.
All this shows us is that Jackie Smith is weak and pathetic and willing to submit to blackmail.
"All this shows us is that Jackie Smith is weak and pathetic and willing to submit to blackmail."
----------------------
Nope, Madame Smith is to busy fiddling expenses. Full time job, that, you know!
Just saw David Miliband on BBC News declaring that Fitna was a "vile" and "hate-filled" film. He subsequently admitted that he had not actually seen it, but asserted that he could nonetheless comment on it "because we all know what's in it". (Holborn)
This man beggars belief! Does he actually know what he's saying! FFS
Wilders has been banned because of the Muslim lobby (see Cranmer passim)
If you want a projection of life in the UK in 50 years time, given the population figures and the exponential growth of the Muslim population, this is it.
If I were a poof, I would be very afraid. You think it was bad in the 1950's and 60's? You ain't seen nothing.
These maniacs want nothing short of a public stoning. And if you tolerate this....
The Government would not put up a speaker to justify this course of action and instead Chris Huhn ( e deliberately dropped) jumped up and did their work for them-
...your adopted children will be next
Iain, i have not seen the film either, but i have given the subject some considered analysis here - http://musingsonliberty.blogspot.com/2009/02/freedom-to-speak.html
As I understand it rap singers who incite violence against homosexuals are allowed into the country because gay people are unlikely to errupt into violent response.
Geert Wilders is not allowed in, not because of his views on Islam,or his film per se, but rather because of the threatened violent response from the Islamic community.
If so, then violent Islamofascism appears to be dictating the Home Secretary's decisions.
Has David Davis left the country? Strangely quiet but so are the rest of the Opposition MP's.
The "Fascist left"? What a dim thing to say Iain. It's just trollery. As is critting someones holy book as a fascist book. And if you're leaning on that demotic right-wing tome "Liberal Fascism", or reviews of it, you need to think again.
The BNP share more clothes with the right than with the left but they don't really do left and right. They just do us and them. They are anti-socialist, anti-liberal AND anti-conservative. But historically the fash are less anti the last. They rope in rather than roll over the existing elites.
There is nothing inconsistent in Huhne's position. LDs tend to be too soft on free speech "rights" actually and it's good to see at least one Lib Dem recognising that each right gets balanced with other rights.
As for these anti-semitic and homophobic imams - why do you not mention anti-semitic, islamophobic, racist, homophobic etc people of any other kind or category? Well anyway, they, these people get dealt with as and when they are subject of a complaint, evidence is gathered and convictions (or other sanctions) are obtained.
One casual racist-lite has been taken off the BBC's approved supplier list. Did you hear about that at all?
Has anybody made any Goldmember jokes yet?
Seriously though, why is nobody condemning those who threatened violence should he enter the country?
Iain, the film is on wikileaks if you wish to make an informed decision..
Miliband says Fitna is a "vile" and "hate-filled" film.
Of course it is - it's a film about a vile, hate-filled religion.
The next thing you know:
public officials will be confiscating children and having them adopted for no just reason,
MI6 officers will be feeding questions to and taking information from foreign torturers,
Cabinet ministers will be submitting fraudulent expense claims and leaning on the Parliamentary Commssioner for Standards,
Cabinet ministers will be taking back handers from Russian oligarchs and buying bih houses with their unexplained wealth.
It would all make good reading in a New Little Book of New Labour Sleaze.
It may or may not be right to ban Geert Wilders from this country; he is in the Pim Fortuyn tradition of opposing Islam so that the Netherlands can remain a drug-addled, whore-mongering country where the age of consent is 12, contrary to the wishes of its general public either in the staunchly Protestant north or in the devoutly Catholic south.
That is not any West that I for one wish to defend. But then, it is not in fact the West at all. It is only the most extreme, and in that sense logically consistent, manifestation of the pseudo-West proclaimed by the neoconservative movement (or what's left of it these days).
But this ban does at least show that such a ban is possible, even against an EU citizen, never mind against anyone else. So, yes, by all means ban Islamists. Ban Avigdor Lieberman and the members of his revolting party, just as we banned Meir Kahane when he was alive.
And since we rightly ban David Duke, who has never really mattered but whom it is still right to keep out, so we should ban the signatories to the Project for the New American Century, and the Patrons of the Henry Jackson Society. So we should ban those American and other ecclesiastics who have expressed racist views about Africans and others who do not share their liberal sexual morality. And so we should ban Hans Küng, whose disparagement of the late Pope John Paul II’s Polishness made and make them the authentic voice of the age-old Teutonic racism against the Slavs; Küng only gets away with it because he is Swiss.
Neither the neocons, nor the liberal-racists, nor Küng really matter any more. But that is not the point. They could still do damage, and we do not want them here. Like the Islamists and like Yisrael Beitenu, let them be excluded from the United Kingdom. Their presence would most certainly not be, and periodically is not, conducive to the public good.
@Iain Dale
"Freedom of speech is absolutely crucial," says Chris Huhne on the Today Programme. Yet he supports the government decision to ban Diutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country. How very liberal of him."
I agree entirelly. I am a Liberal Democrat myself, and hold the view that "although I might disagree, i'll fight for your right to say it".
As such, the SOLE constraint that i'm willing to tolerate to free speech is an outright call to murder or cause harm. An example would be the likes of Abu Hamza on the streets openly calling on muslims to murder the police and others around them. I don't see why anyone should have the right to do that. So if you want to exercise free speech to encourage others to kill or harm others, then you should absolutely not be able to
However, from what i've read (I haven't seen it), this film doesn't do that. So in my book I see no problem with this at all.
If anyone wants to see it, then here it is: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410
After all, it's freely available, it's not illegal, make up your own minds, and ignore the likes of Jackie Smith and Chris Hulne who want to control what you are able to see and hear.
I can honestly see Britain, like Australia and China, seek to try out one of those "great internet firewalls" before long, so that they can filter out information and content they don't want us to see. If they do go down that route i'm gathering as many people as I can and marching on Westminister.
One size fits all.. ban Geert Wilders and you would have to ban everyone that preaches hate and we have an awful lot of Muslims who do that.
The British Government are not only happy to let those people stay but sometimes give them asylum!
I do hope those caught yelling holy jihad now get the same treatment or are deported or the British Government could be said to being racist!
Geert Wilders' haircut alone is enough to exclude him from polite company. He seems to share a barber with Michael Fabricant.
I don't think excluding him is lawful - I think he has a good chance of getting in after appeal.
The Britain in which I was born and raised is now a sorry shadow crushing the populace with the tyranny of "PC" and its endless appeasement of the oh-so-easily "outraged".
Today's Britain coddles terrorists like Al Qaeda's "Ambassador" al Qatada by letting him live in the UK and even paying him benefits but refuses to hear another's opinion because a Muslim Labour peer threatened to raise a mob of 10,000 to block entrance to the Lords. How utterly pathetic is this apology for a gov't.
Trouble is, I'm not sure DC's lot would be any different.
P.S. Fitna is here.
Few will believe that the Home Office wishes to ban Geert Wilders or his film because they fear it will incite a violent reaction from the right.
What they fear is violent reaction from militant Islam.
The net result will be more support for the BNP as people reach the obvious conclusion. Extremists get listened to, moderates don't.
If anyone wants to see the video, just visit YouTube and type in "Fitna". The first few links are of the uploaded movie. I will comment more about it when I have watched it shortly.
This decision to ban Wilders from coming to the UK was made by the Home Secretary because she knew it would distract the media from looking into her criminally high expenses claims. That's what much of this is about - nothing to do with free speech, everything to do with Piglet Smith saving her own bacon.
Watching Ahmed preach his own hate makes me puke.
Llama Head Wilders was a lunch guest at the House of Lords back in December, so why NOW the ban?
I'm disgusted
Today is a very dark day indeed. For anyone who holds a view of any kind.
Having watched the film, I would say it didn't seem as extreme as billed. Although you'll need a strong stomach for the execution scene. ( All of which has been reported in the mainstream media, including descriptions of beheadings etc ).
But far more worrying I've been to one of these Islamist meetings, before 9/11 at university. Afterwards I tried to tell people that there was going to be trouble - but no one wanted to hear it.
Mr Wilders may be wrong, and even insulting about the majority of the followers of Mohammed, however theres a big enough body about whom he's right.
They do things like threaten violence if films are shown in the UK - you know who you are.
The basic premise is that Islam plans on conquering the world, just as the nazi's did. Before hand a German officer came over to the UK and tried to warn the Foreign office, who ignored him and reported him back to his own government.
These days he wouldn't even have been allowed in the country in case he damaged Community Cohesion.
All the likes of Chris Huhne and Jacqui Smith are interested in is their seats and the votes to keep them. If the price for that is the freedom of the English people, then they'll be happy to pay. ( After all they get twenty pieces of silver back cash back.)
and even insulting about the majority of the followers of Mohammed,
I'm still waiting for the moderate(?) muslims to march in protest against the jihadis' actions on 9/11 or 7/7 or ...
Wilders would contend that the Koran itself incites hatred. The film isn't very subtle or imaginative.
20 years after the Satanic Verses (in a time when we valued freedom of expression) we now prefer to abandon the principle rather than anger the Muslim community.
The bookburners finally have the upper hand in Britain.
It's on my blog if anyone wants to actually watch it.
Including you Milliband, you arrogant oaf.
Chis Huhne (LibDum):
"Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it.
But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred against someone or some group."
Translation:
1)A private screening of Fitna to members of the House of Lords will inevitably result in our noble friends running amok on the streets of Britain.
2)Mr Wilders mere presence in this country will so incite non-muslims to rush out and attack muslims that it is a risk too far.
What utter cobblers!
Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox:
"Geert Wilder's Fitna film, available on the web, is not a threat to anyone.
It merely suggests how the Koran has been used by militant Islamists to promote and justify their violence.
They react in fury and menace to our intention to show the film and have boasted that their threats of aggressive demonstrations prevented its previous showing in the Mother of Parliaments.
This was not the case - the event was postponed to clarify issues of freedom of speech.
The threat of intimidation in fact increases the justification for the film to be shown and discussed in Parliament and by the British and international press."
Spot on!
New Labour is more of a threat to our civil liberties than the terrorists.
Ok, update to my previous comment in this thread. Have now seen "Fitna", and can't see any reason to ban it whatsoever.
Ok, it's biased, and portrays Islam as an evil dangerous religion, and it's followers equally evil and dangerous.
That goes for the fringe element, the terrorists, but anyone with a brain can see that it's not even remotely representitive of the majority of muslims.
Do I disagree with the films message? You bet your arse I do! Do I want the film banned, and do I support Geert Wilders banned from the UK? Absolutely not!
I disagree with Geert Wilders on this quite strongly, but this clearly falls under "freedom of expression" and i'll fight for his right to say it.
Further to my comment that I thought DC's crowd wouldn't do it differently.
Who would know ?
A spokesman for the Conservative Party said it did not wish to comment.
"in freedom up to the potential to harm." Who is to define harm?
Even moreso who is to define potential & judge it? What is there anywhere which could not be defined as having that potential? This is a blank cheque for totalitarian control of everything. Once again the Lib Dems prove unfit to use their name.
Same racist LDs who were the most enthusiastic supporters of bombing Belgrade to help the KLA in genocide & worse.
Perhaps Britain is now a de facto Islamic state? What do Tory Islamists like Warsi have to say about this disgraceful fiasco?
Nah, bang out of order banning it. Thin end of the wedge and considering that Lord Ahmed is a murderer I question any authority, moral or otherwise of that odious little man.
so, a spokesmamn for the Conservatives said they did not wish to comment?
What is it with them? Many a time Labour leave themselves wide open and Cons do sweet FA.
'Appeasement' seems to be infectious!
Some pigs are more equal than others, as the Thought Police sanctioned
Dear Mr? Gardner,
Twice in one day I agree entirely with what you say. This is very worrying.
Are you on some sort of medication?
Iain could you kindly visit my blog and display the website button and read a little about my campaign. Whether you support Israel or Palestine i think everybody wants peace. Therfore to get this off the ground i think it is very important that us bloggers stick together and bring about a revolution. Cheers!
thespeakeronline.blogspot.com
I am similarly appalled by the illiberal attitude of Chris Huhne. This ban on an EU parliamentarian is dreadful.
I have just heard Keith Vaz spout approvingly that ‘we don’t have Freedom of Speech in this country’. (Too right, we don’t.) Lots of nonsense spoken by various MPs about ‘you have to have limits’.
So much simpler in the USA where there is an absolute Freedom of Speech and because of that, it also exists on much of the net.
I have no truck with the barking UKIP but don’t say they should be banned from speaking or inviting foreign speakers here.
What the hell does Huhne* think he’s playing at? Also heard a Lib Dem peer who clearly disagrees with him.
*Not only an an MP but a former journo to boot. Disgraceful.
Happy Darwin Day.
Iain,
That's really not the point. You cannot ban someone from entering the country on the basis of their showing a film at a private venue and to invitees only. You or I might be offended by the content of this film - but so bleeding what? I have no intention of viewing it, and it's not mandatory for anyone else to do so. All these do-gooders are really just interfering busybodies. In fact they are extremists themselves. Next they'll be wanting to censor what you do in your own home.
As to 'incitement' - the only people it will 'incite' are those who are predisposed to violence anyway. And they need little or no excuse to inflict their extremism on us all.
Brown requests a one party state
No joke.
Vulpus_rex said... “Islamofascism”
Nice to see that word getting an outing again.
John said... ...the SOLE constraint that i'm willing to tolerate to free speech is an outright call to murder or cause harm...
cf just about any Islamicist.
An ex-apprentice said... “Twice in one day I agree entirely with what you say. This is very worrying.”
It is entirely possible to be left-wing and a libertarian, you know. In fact we used to be quite common. Indeed Chris Huhne’s Liberal Democrats used to be very libertarian once. I wonder what happened?
Happy Darwin Day.
They'll be banning copies and showings of 1984 soon!
Appeasement, plain and simple!!!
The issue, which is long standing and woefully ignored, is not actually about freedom of speech. It is about whether Sharia is being imposed, knowingly or otherwise, upon us.
Criticism of Islam is forbidden by the Koran and by its spawn, Sharia.
Accusations by Lord Ahmed, and his co-religionists, of hate-crimes and incitement to violence are merely their exercise of the codewords for criticism by which they seek to justify their attempts to prevent it.
By his action in denying Mr Wilders entry, Jack Straw follows his usual policy of cowardly and abject appeasement and delivers our subjugation to Sharia by stealth.
To be fair the Tories have now commented but it is rather a damp squid.
Chris Grayling "We have consistently called on the Government to tackle extremists. If Geert Wilders has expressed views that represent a threat to public security, then we support the ban. But people like Ibrahim Moussawi, a spokesman for the terrorist organisation Hizbollah, have not been banned. The Government must apply the criteria governing entry into the UK consistently."
The first words out of his mouth should be "The Conservatives unreservedly uphold the right to freedom of speech"
Lord Ahmed on PM implied Wilders had been banned as he was a national security threat. Why? Because Ahmed had complained about him coming over, and all sorts of shit had, as a result, gone off
So had he been left to come over and do what he did without the oxygen of Lord Ahmed having a very public hissy fit, would there have been a threat to national security?
According to Ahmed, we have a tradition of turning away people like Wilders. And yet have a country with an internal threat from muslim terrorists.
I don't get it. One the one had, we are told again and again that the greatest threat to the world (apart from Brown destroying the banking system) is Islamic Terrorism. On the other hand, one cannot make any criticism of muslims or Islam without being hauled before the beak for thought crimes.
When did we turn into East Germany?
Would seem to me Ahmed is the threat. A
Elby the Beserk - And Lord Ahmed himself invited an al Qaeda terrorist suspect to the UK. Clearly a national security risk.
Well done Iain - please keep up the point about the fascist left. As history reads, all fascism comes from the left - repeat, ALL. A reasonably below average film recently (V for Vengeance) was spoiled badly by having its fascist leader coming from the Conservative party - an unlikely event, unless you wish it so - like film makers? television producers? Labour and Liberal politicians? And look at the neo-fascist way that ZanuLab are treating us; surveillance, ID, powers of councils; the list is worrying.
Always remember, despite his original early background as a Tory and Independent - Moseley of the Brown Shirt strain, came out of the Labour party - not from the Tories.
And our they are worried about a minor Dutch politician? Yes, ban him but let in the fascist preachers.
How broad is real fascism now in this country?
"As I understand it rap singers who incite violence against homosexuals are allowed into the country because gay people are unlikely to errupt into violent response."
A number of reggae and rap singers with anti-gay lyrics have been disallowed entry to the UK, as have some of the more extreme Islamic loons (eg al-Qaradawi last year).
It can be a bit hit and miss who gets in and who doesn't though - seems that if there's any controversy in the media beforehand, generally they get barred.
Chris Grayling "We have consistently called on the Government to tackle extremists. If Geert Wilders has expressed views that represent a threat to public security, then we support the ban. But people like Ibrahim Moussawi, a spokesman for the terrorist organisation Hizbollah, have not been banned. The Government must apply the criteria governing entry into the UK consistently."
Wow ... Labour Gov savaged by a sheep! lt's pathetic, it really is.
Why don't you just watch the film, Iain? Personally, I thought it was a nasty, crude little exercise - the dimmer descendent of those Nazi films that showed Orthodox Jews, then rats, more Jews and then more rats, in the hope of associating the two in viewers' minds - based on one booming non sequitor. For why not read out those lines from the Koran, and the show Christians doing unpleasant things - because Christians do, occasionally, do unpleasant things? Or why not read out lines from the Koran, and show Muslims doing lovely things, like cuddling babies and being kind to stray cats - because Muslims do, quite often, do kind and decent things? In other words, this plodding attempts to dig a big ditch between Us and Them is really better off ignored. The tragedy (not without a degree of farce) of Wilders' deportation is that it's given a low-grade demagogue far more attention than he deserves, as well as glamorous martyr status. He deserves neither.
Perhaps just as bad, though, is the successive resorts to silence, confusion and equivocation on the part of Dave's 'modern, liberal' Conservative Party, which seems as vague, opportunistic and reactive with respect to civil liberties and national security as it is in respect to the economy.
The only bright note, uncharacteristically, has been provided by the BBC, which has spent the entire day pronouncing Geert Wilders' name with a German accent, evidently because no one there can figure out how to pronounce it the Dutch way. I hope this will eventually annoy Wilders (who, incidentally, has called for the Netherlands to restrict television broadcasting to a single, parastatal channel - no, really!) as much as it's amused me.
Wilders has just described Brown as "the biggest coward in Europe" so he can't be all bad.
A survey published in Austria yesterday showed that 1 in 4 of the immigrant Muslim community reject democracy. It begs the question as to why they are here if it is so against their personal beliefs!
"One size fits all.. ban Geert Wilders and you would have to ban everyone that preaches hate."
I have never heard him "preach hate"; he sounds most reasonable to me - and always courteous, however hostile the interviewer.
Apart from his dodgy barnet I have no problem with Geert Wilders. And you can see his film here
It lasts about 15 minutes.
O/T Is the 'Lord' Ahmed much troubled by this, the same 'Lord' Ahmed awaiting sentencing for causing death by dangerous driving?
One thing is certain: the Liberal Democrats are no Liberals. I thought we lived in a country where the courts determined who was guilty of incitement to violence. Not in Lib Dem land. In Lib Dem land, elected politicians pronounce on this. God help us if they ever actually got anywhere near power. Presumably they, and not the courts, would determine if I was guilty of crimes against their state.
The Guardian is currently running a "let him in for free speech reasons/ban him" poll. It's currently showing 84% in favour of entry - which is presumably why they've buried it - you can find it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2009/feb/12/netherlands-islam
Yet the Conservative party is still too scared of being labelled nasty to openly lend its support to freedom of speech. Sad really.
The Guardian is currently running a "let him in for free speech reasons/ban him" poll. It's currently showing 84% in favour of entry - which is presumably why they've buried it - you can find it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2009/feb/12/netherlands-islam
Yet the Conservative party is still too scared of being labelled nasty to openly lend its support to freedom of speech. Sad really.
While we’re at it. I’d just like to say that I’d very much like to promote religious hatred (contrary to the The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006) as often as I possibly can. I recommend the amusing products from The Darwin Fish store? Unfortunately not so much in the anti-Islamic stuff, but plenty of anti-christian products to amuse all the family.
Happy Darwin Day.
Atheist bus Canadian Atheist bus Atheist buses in Barcelona & Madrid
Why do I detect a great desire amongst atheist and atheistic organisations (like the BBC) to promote Darwin and use his anniversary to degrade Christianity.
Or is it me?
And - if I want to tell the truth and if that might be considered (by some official body) a danger to public order - should I be banned??
And the word verification ... is 'pologie', which as everyone will know is the closest Gordon Brown will ever get to giving us an apology.
Thanks for that link. Pressing the button has for some reason reduced my level of apoplexy slightly. Vote at the Grauniad.
Happy Darwin Day.
Fugitive Ink is being deliberately thick (or worse) in his comments on 'Fitna'. Yes, you can intercut Jews and rats all you like but only the most easily led retards will accept such a false comparison.
Fitna does not impose such false linkage. It presents verses from the Koran and Hadith (holy law deriving from Mohammed) and then shows examples of violent actions directly inspired by basic Koranic injunctions. Those responsible for such atrocities don't deny the linkage to Islam, they revel in it!
Maybe Fugitive Ink thinks it's just a coincidence that people who saw the heads off other human beings, or fly passenger jets into office buildings shout 'Allahu Akbar!' as they're doing it?
What Muslims object to about Fitna isn't that it shows good Muslims doing good (bad only if you're an infidel) things, it's that Wilders is letting the cat out of the bag.
trevorsden said... “Why do I detect a great desire amongst atheist and atheistic organisations (like the BBC) to promote Darwin and use his anniversary to degrade Christianity.”
Well isn’t that really the point, dear boy? Darwin and Copernicus shot christianity very effectively [cheers, cheers.] Evolution versus the old testament - no contest.
And your claims about the BBC are (unfortunately) inaccurate. It is a veritable nest of god-botherers and a far too large part of its output is overtly religious - partly thanks to its founder. It just happens to be Darwin Day - a good time to commemorate science and reason. Goodness knows unreason gets enough of an airing.
When did you last hear an atheist on Thought for the Day? Once. What about the ghastly Songs of Praise? Good grief. You are deluded. There’s buckets of god-bothery on the beeb.
Happy Darwin Day.
The timing is of this ban is interesting....... This man has been here many times; and as recently as two weeks ago.
He is banned the day that Brown has to defend himself in the commons - and another embarrassing bank resignation this evening too!!
The plan must be to take the heat out of the Brown's banking crisis story....
fugative ink,tell me who started this ditch?and who are those digging faster and deeper...muslims.
They just will not mix.
'Having said all that, I would also like an opportunity to critique this film, as I suspect my reaction might be similar to Chris Huhne's'.
Oh FFS Iain, this film has done the rounds for months, freely available and downloadable from xsquaredblogs.
And you have never looked at it?
Really?
REALLY?
STB.
CamakiUK, perhaps I'm as thick (or worse) as you assume, but I'm a good enough historian to remember what was done by the Stern Gang, the Red Brigade, the Provisional IRA, Eta, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum (literally) - the point being that Wahhabi Islam, while obviously contemptible and repugnant in equal measure, has absolutely no monopoly on making people do horrible things to each other. It takes a lot of factors to lead someone to crash an aeroplane into a building on purpose in the name of an ideology. How else do you explain the many millions of Muslims who actually aren't suicide bombers and so forth? Lack of opportunity, maybe? 'Coincidence'?
My own view of Fitna is that it's a crude attempt to smear a complex and diverse set of beliefs and practices grouped together as 'Islam' - because really, there's an awful lot more to Islam than Wahhabism - with a culpably reductivist and pejorative set of images. I think it's shoddy, nasty, ultimately unconvincing agitprop. But clearly, that's not your view, so, well, not a lot of common ground there.
And by the way, before you make any other inaccurate assumptions about me, I'm female, a Conservative Party member of long standing, and a reasonably devout communicant of the Church of England.
I have just watched Mr Wilders' film.
I believe he deliberately confuses Islam with islamism, that is to say a peaceful religion with a violent political movement.
Mr Wilders is just as selective as the islamists in the Koranic quotations he chooses to further his cause.
But it goes too far to say that he incites violence and hatred. He does not. He merely takes a hard anti-muslim line, which is something he is entitled to do.
Happily, the worst thing about Mr Wilders continues to be his uncompromising hairdo.
By the way, left wing (as opposed to left-of-centre) thought calls for the abolition of private property and taking the means of production into common ownership.
The BNP do not want this. Any preference they express for for state-owned, as opposed to publicly owned, companies is a right-wing trait, as is their trademark extreme nationalism.
Our lilly livered government continues to suck up to Islam.
What do they think the radical Islamists will do to them if they ever take over?
fugitiveink, my apologies for referring to you as male. I hope recovery will be swift.
I'm a good enough historian to remember what was done by the Stern Gang, the Red Brigade, the Provisional IRA, Eta, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum
The difference, of course, is that these groups were using violence to pursue a limited political ambition: overthrow of a capitalist govt, achieve independence etc. Islam, whether Sunni or Shia, had no such limitations. It is an expansionist, supermacist ideology which sees itself as a nation unto itself (the Ummah), and whose adherents are equal opportunity killers around the world. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ lists well over 12,000 lethal attacks by muslim groups since 9/11. What other belief system in the modern world has a comparable score? The Tamil Tigers (Hindu) don't even come close and they're a local problem anyway. Like one of the secretly recorded imams in Fitna says, 'Islam is a religion out to rule the world.' Maybe you missed that bit?
Fitna is a short film about a grave and growing problem across Europe at the present time. It is relevent today, particularly for those of us with children and grandchildren to worry about. You can't dismiss it for not mentioning every other violent group in history in its 17 minute running time.
Iain
I don't suppose you fancy shaving your head, buying two standard poodles and calling yourself Pym do you?
Then start to speak out against anti-liberal forces?
Make sure you wear a bullet-proof vest though because the self-appointed forces of "extream tolerance" will stop at nothing to make sure we all agree with them.
The film is only disturbing because we have been programmed by 30 years of "extream tolerance" propoganda to find questioning of their "wisdom" disturbing.
Watch the Film.
"What about the ghastly Songs of Praise?"
You are aware, are you not, Simple Simon, that there's a button that changes the channel if you decide you just can't watch something. I even here there's one that turns the wretched thing off!
Like it our not, this is a Christian country. And Christians pay the telly tax too.
If you support freedom of speech then, by implication, you support the idea that people who hear 'free speech' can be trusted to respond (positively or negatively) within the law.
You can only draw the conclusion that NuLabour and it's media mafia don't trust the ordinary people of Britain.
I would rather let extremists of any view enter Britain and speak their opinions - and if they incited violence against any section of the community, deal with their unlawful acts quickly and comprehensively.
Had to comment because the word verification is "pubeout"
I voted on the Guardian poll and it felt good to do it. Vive la resistancé!
fugitiveink: "It takes a lot of factors to lead someone to crash an aeroplane into a building on purpose in the name of an ideology."
So far, it's only taken one.
Or have there been other airplane-building interfaces in recent history that we are unaware of...?
As to the judgment of the British Home Office, they have no problem admitting to the United Kingdom the likes of Dr Ijaz Mian, who preached as follows at the Ahl-e-Hadith mosque in Derby:
You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir. We have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others... King, Queen, House of Commons: if you accept it, you are a part of it. If you don't accept it, you have to dismantle it. So you being a Muslim, you have to fix a target. From that White House to this Black House, we know we have to dismantle it. Muslims must grow in strength, then take over... You are in a situation in which you have to live like a state-within-a-state - until you take over.
'kaffir' = dirty infidels
(via Mark Steyn)
Ethelread the unhiged said
"I believe he deliberately confuses Islam with islamism, that is to say a peaceful religion with a violent political movement."
Jesus Christ was a pacifist, advocating only punishment for sins in the next life: - "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" when presented with an adultorous women.
Mohamed was a warrior leader of an army. On one occasion on being presented with a pregnant adulator
he tells his followers to wait untill the women gives birth THEN to stone her to death.
It is you Ethelred, who is confused - not all religions have pacifism and "love thy neighbour" at their heart.
Look it up on Wikipedia. The scales will fall from your eyes like they did for me. You have been taken in by the MSM, a large part of which seems to believe its only job now is to be appologists for Islam and its followers.
If Geert Wilders' film provokes "incitement to violence and hatred" why wasn't he arrested and charged when he tried to gain entry? Desperate Dan's spot on regarding the quality of pond life that Downing Street tends to entertain/suck up to/enoble.
Whatever else, I can't believe the whole thing's a cynical attempt at distraction. New Labour? Say it ain't so, Mistah Draper.
Just for the record here are a few of the other leftist nationalist political parties in the world
Baathist
* Socialist Arab Rebirth Party (Sudan)
* Socialist Arab Resurrection Party (Syria)
Nasserite Parties
* Ahwazi Arab Renaissance Party (Iran)
* Democratic National Regroupment in Iraq (Iraq)
* Movement of Independent Nasserites - The Sentinels (Lebanon)
* Democratic Arab Socialist Union Party (Syria)
* Party of Socialists Unionists (Syria)
* Nasserite Unionist Popular Organization (Yemen)
Others
* Authentic Peronist Movement (Argentina)
* Party of the National Left (Argentina)
* Republican Initiative (France)
* Motherland - People's Patriotic Union (Russia)
* Party for Peace and Unity (Russia)
* Socialist Party of Serbia (Serbia)
* Socialist People's Party (Serbia and Montenegro)
* People's Liberation Front (Sri Lanka)
* Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Lebanon/Syria)
* Democratic Left Party (Turkey)
* Turkish Left (Turkey)
* Workers Party (Turkey)
* Slavic Party (Ukraine)
Dear Mr Tone etc etc,
I am sure there must be a thoroughly illiterate tribe somewhere with a religion of pure ignorance and embarrassingly poor spelling that is quite unaware of, say, the unimproveable religion of the Crusaders.
Up the wurkers and longe liv the Fatherland, as they probably say 'round your way.
Or have there been other airplane-building interfaces in recent history that we are unaware of...?
The point I'm trying, however ineffectually, to make is that there have been plenty of Muslims over the years who, despite being Muslim, haven't felt the least inclination to crash planes into buildings. So, well, it takes more than just being a Muslim to drive someone to do this, yes?
Anyway, if you think 'Fitna' is a clever and sensitive exegesis of its subject, um, we're just going to have to agree to disagree about that.
For those wondering why minority parties have been climbing in the polls lately, here's a reason.
The ghastly Labour government banned this elected politician, and the Conservatives have failed to utter a word about it.
So that's another few thousand BNP voters then. And, I'm tempted to ask, who can blame them?
Geert Wilders uses divisive and inflammatory rhetoric. But that does not mean the government should cave in to violent extremists. Freedom of expression is becoming dangerously selective and politicised. The Rushdie fatwa case has no doubt set a lasting precedent.
On the whole 'fascist left BNP' business, don't you think that's rather immature, Iain? The left-right axis is no doubt flawed but if you decide to use it you shouldn't exploit it for infantile tactical gain. The BNP may espouse collective solutions. But their philosophy is one of exclusion on account of race and nationality - traditionally the preserve of the right. As much as many on the right repudiate nationalism, xenophobia, tradition and militarism- you can't simply pin it on the left. The left has its own bogeymen after all.
There is nothing inciteful about Fitna.
It is simply the truth.
Huhne: "But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech."
Who is to draw the line? If a line is drawn then speech is no longer free. I didn't realize it before I heard him on the radio this morning, but the man is an authoritarian; and in that respect indistinguishable from the rest of the Righteous.
ALL speech should be allowed. That includes rebuttals, however vehement or offensive, which demonstrate why and where the speaker is wrong.
If a speech is deemed to incite hatred or violence, once again some busybody or policeman has done the deeming on our behalf. As a grown-up, I refuse to accept such interference.
If violence ensues, there are laws to deal with it and penalties to be paid. Speech itself breaks nobody's skull.
My God, even to be articulating such basic stuff brings home to me the nightmare we have, through cowardice and moral equivocation, created for ourselves in this country.
lf the BNP ever get overcome the national media blackout on advertising etc they'll become a real force ... and blame will fall onto the current political parties that ignore the citizens of this country who believe they have no representation.
Dont think it possible? ... Russians buying a media company?
I have just watched Fitna. It is pretty hard to argue with what he is saying in the film - nothing that is shown is a lie and it is chilling. Interesting nowhere is he is saying all Muslims are murderous jihadists and no right minded person would believe that they are but if you are not frightened by the sizeable minority who are - you should be.
Only today we learned that a Domino's pizza place in Birmingham has replaced the meat with halal meat and will not serve a pizza with ham or any pork. Where the hell are we living? Saudi? Sure, there are kosher restaurants that don't serve pork or mix meat and dairy but you don't see Dominos in Golder Green not serve pork because they are afraid of offending the Jews.
God, this Government and their spineless appeasement makes me sick.
Elthlred the blah blah
-Thanks for addressing my issues.
What on earth are you talking about?
As your so ignorant about Islam, I'm sure you live in a far more rural area than me.
"So up the discos, and thank goodness we don't live next door to any" as I'm sure they say round YOUR way.
It is a shame that Mr Cameron did not come out more strongly on this. It's odd, isn't it, that the so-called liberal left is being beaten into a cocked-hat over all this by the liberal right!
While I rather suspect the motives of UKIP and the Daily Malice, Ken Livingstone and his ilk (those who invite self-confessed homophobes) should be shouting loudly and clearly their support for Wilders.
Blair and Brown are still welcome to Holland with their friend GW Bush.
Come to Den Haag!
I don't understand why the Today show used Muslim loons as an analogy because it falls down. Louis Farrakhan is banned from entering the UK. Abu Hamza was/is jailed for spreading hate. Abdullah el-Faisal was also jailed and recommended for deportation. There are other examples. If people feel that free speech is an absolute let us do anyway with slander and libel.
The story people seem to miss here is that of Learco Chindamo the man who killed Philip Lawrence. He was not deported from the UK back to Italy because in part due to the right to free travel in the EU. If we can restrict an MEPs travel why not a murderer?
But Mostly Ordinary, don't you get it it? Chindamo has yuman rites!
Chris Paul
Evil is, what evil does.
If you define all that is bad in the world as RIGHT WING then no wonder you clearly do not have the brains or common humanity, you surly must have been born with.
Who's government got us into Iraq and Afghanistan for gods sake. Or was that Thatchers fault, as well as everything else.
If you cant see a FASCIST government when you have been governed by one for 12 years, just because you voted for them, then please go to speck savers ASAP.
If you want to understand the relationship between Fascism and Marxism
http://www.la-articles.org.uk/fascism.htm
is an informative article.
Question Time
Interesting
Liam Byrne just taken to the cleaners
QT tonight just shows how out of touch they are ... virtual total appeasement by the guests even though most of them hadn't seen the film. Justine was so bloody weak. Liam didn't know his job, Monty should have stayed in the garden, Salma predictable ...and Mackenzie? .. can't abide the idiot.
Polls are running on the web at an average of 85% saying that Wilders shouldn't have been banned.
You can watch the film online. It isn't very long. Why don't you, Iain?
It isn't very offensive. It certainly doesn't incite and "racial hatred" or violence.
Keith Vaz says if we want freedom of speech we have to go to Holland.
Thank you Wild.
I got the link and read some of the article. Very interesting.
Chris... who, did you say? Chris Hoon, was that?
JuliaM said... “Like it our not, this is a Christian country.”
Like it or not, it bloody well isn’t. Fortunately.
It hasn’t been for some time.
Atheist bus Canadian Atheist bus Atheist buses in Barcelona & Madrid
"Like it or not, it bloody well isn’t. "
Heh! Keep stamping your feet and insisting on that. Surely if you screw up your little face and wish really, really hard, you'll be able to change reality.
Won't you...? ;)
Toodles!
I mean, I'm not even a believer in anything myself, and I can see that!
Don't even get me started on that supercilious little creep Keith Vaz - he hadn't even seen the film yet he of course condemned it. He then tells the other guest on Newsnight - a Muslim gentleman from Quillam - that he could go to Holland if he wants to debate the film. I want to punch his smug little face. Oh, and him crying like a girl and telling teacher because Boris said the f-word to him. Boo hoo!
I expect that alone will generate a few thousand more votes for Boris, if he stands for re-election!
JuliaM
We can only hope so!
Thank God for John Humphryd
Tone made me do it - he's a bad influence said... “...not all religions have pacifism and "love thy neighbour" at their heart.”
Quite so. In fact very few ever have. And in fact even the ones that profess it honour it more in the breach than the observance. Christianity has been pretty damn bloodthirsty - not least towards Islam.
Atheist bus Canadian Atheist bus Atheist buses in Barcelona & Madrid
Lady Finchley said... “Don't even get me started on that supercilious little creep Keith Vaz... ...I want to punch his smug little face.”
Quite so. I don’t know which is more annoying: The supposed “Liberal” Chris Huhne or the insufferable Keith Vaz.
And where exactly have the Tories been in all this?
Atheist bus Canadian Atheist bus Atheist buses in Barcelona & Madrid
The present government has thrown caution to the wind. In banning the free speech and rights to travel of another European - and an elected MP at that, they really have blown it.
I expect Wilders to take the cowardly Brown and co to the Human Rights court. Perhaps 'Shame of Chakrabrti' will hold his hand and help him through the ordeal!
Why, btw, do so many people say they have not watched the Fitna video? They even link to it, and yet can't spare the 16 minutes it takes to watch it.
Talking about "shame" - Keith Vaz was pitiful on Newsnight last night. Insisting repeatedly that the Quilliam Foundation man could get a plane to go to the Netherlands to debate with Wilders just highlighted how fallacious were his and the government's actions, and how wrong they were in banning free speech here.
Meanwhile, as far as I know Anjem Choudary still encourages his flock to breed like rabbits in order that they won't have to use violence to take over this country. His words, not mine.
And meanwhile where is David Cameron on this? Are he and David Davis (the freedom lover) trying to work out what to say, what to do, now that Brown is over a barrel?
They are as useless as Huhne, the silly man who wouldn't recognise true freedom if it smacked him in the face.
Oh for a political class that thinks in terms longer than 5 year slots.
What a crowd of political leaders we have running this country right now. Afraid of their own shadows.
The fitna video is here, btw, as well as a poll if anyone here is interested in protecting FREE SPEECH:
http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/poll-to-reverse-geert-wilders-ban-to-protect-free-speech/
I can't help thinking that the Government have done themselves no favours by banning Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country and showing off his film titled Fitna in the House of Lords.
In actual fact it just proves how left wing and political correct Labour are getting.
Fitna shows selected excerpts from Suras of the Qur'an, interspersed with media clips and newspaper clippings showing or describing acts of violence or hatred by Muslims.
The film wishes to demonstrate that the Qur'an, and Islamic culture in general, motivates its followers to hate all who violate the Islamic teachings.
Consequently, the film argues, Islam encourages, among others, acts of terrorism, antisemitism, violence against women, and Islamic universalism.
A large part of the film deals with the influence of Islam on the Netherlands.
On March 27 2008, Fitna was released to the Internet on the video sharing website Liveleak in Dutch and English versions.
The following day, Liveleak removed the film from their servers, citing serious threats to their staff.
On March 30, Fitna was restored on Liveleak following a security upgrade, only to be removed again shortly afterwards by Wilders himself because of copyright violations.
A second edition was released later.
In all this kind of political correctness makes me sick.
On one hand the government ignores objections from christians when you have buses going all around London and Southampton attacking christianity yet when it comes to someone attacking another faith with evidence all hell breaks loose.
Indeed, only recently a survey by Christian Research showed that by 2025 Mosque attendance will outstrip Church attendance and predicted that by 2050, there will be three times more Moslems attending Mosques than Christians going to Church.
That means that right now Britain is on the verge of becoming a Moslem country, and seen as France, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany are heading the same way, part of the wider Islamic Caliphate.
We cannot allow this to happen.
As my fellow bloggers at Neo Conservative Lincs explain and as the the film shows, Islam is a wicked and warped faith of monstrous proportions, and its spread must be resisted with the utmost urgency.
It is a faith that openly calls for the killing, converting or enslaving of non-Moslems, the oppression of women, the rejection of freedom, and it authorises this through expansion, conquest and violence.
So the projection that it will be prevalent here in under 20 year's time is truly abhorrent.
Yet this is just the scientific evidence.
As the blog states, anyone who doubts this, should take a look around some of our towns and cities that are under siege from Islam and open your eyes.
Drive around the Moslem ghettos and see the horrors of an Islamic society in England's green and pleasant land.
Tune into local Islamic radio stations and listen to their terrorist bile and broadcasts of hate.
Sensible people ask why these people are dressed like this and conclude that they are not doing it for means of comfort, but merely to demonstrate anti-Westernism.
It may not be my blog but like Neo Conservative Lincs I am sickened to the core by what I have seen our once great nation become.
I watch in disbelief as the land of Churchill and Thatcher turns into a launchpad for extremism.
Our courts let terrorists out of jail and punish those who speak the truth but we the people must remember that this is our country, and we must not give it away.
It may already be too late, be we must not give up without a fight.
Be proud to be British but most of all, be proud to be Christian for in the words of John 3;16 "For God So LOved the World that he gave his only Begotton Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not Perish but have Everlasting Life.
Well I've watched it now. There's a quarter of an hour of my life I'll never get back. Those who haven't are missing nothing. It's really quite a nasty exercise in pornography. I'm sure the families of those whose murders are exploited are delighted. Hopefully Swiss Toni's 15 minutes are literally up.
Simon Gardner said...
Tone made me do it - he's a bad influence said... “...not all religions have pacifism and "love thy neighbour" at their heart.”
"Quite so. In fact very few ever have. And in fact even the ones that profess it honour it more in the breach than the observance. Christianity has been pretty damn bloodthirsty - not least towards Islam."
Before Islam, most of the middle East was Christian. The Christians there were converted by the sword. Look at the history of the Copts in Egypt. So don't lecture about how "beastly" Christianity has been to Islam.
It always makes me laugh how atheists seem to despise Christianity so much, that by selectively looking at history, they hold Islam as a civilising force above it.
Listen very carefully:
Extreme Christians (Quakers, Jehovah's' Witnesses and many, many more) are nearly always pacifist. There are NO pacifist sects in Islam whatsoever.
QED
I was wondering about the deafening silence from Liberty, allegedly the defenders of free speech, So I phone them up, them having not answered any emails. The reason I called was that I heard someone on The World At One saying how terrible it was that we were all being so nasty to poor Abu Qatada. As this story was only from this morning and they were so quick off the mark, I thought "Hmmm, I must have missed something here regarding Wilders".
I have just been told on the phone by a New Zealand sounding lady that they are "really busy this week and there won't be any statement coming as the whole Geert Wilders thing has been and gone now". When I asked "Why wasn't a statement issued at the time, and would you be prepared to let me know Liberty's stand on this?" I was told "Sorry, I really have to go now". The whole call took under a minute.
PLEASE call, write or email Liberty and keep the pressure on, and politely but firmly re-assure them that the story has not "been and gone"!
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/contact/index.shtml
This is really really important - a strong test of what Liberty really means and where their allegiance lies.
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