AMSTERDAM – Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is facing criminal charges in Amsterdam for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims.

On Wednesday, he nodded as prosecutors read aloud a hundred remarks he has made condemning Islam, Muslims, and immigrants — notably one comparing the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Wilders is one of a dozen European politicians who are testing the limits of freedom of speech while voicing voters’ concerns at the growth of Islam.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Wilders told the judges he has nothing against Muslims, but opposes the “Islamization” of the Netherlands because he believes “Islam is diametrically opposed to freedom.”

Muslims make up about six percent of the Dutch population of 16 million.

by Geert Wilders

Why I am in America Fighting for Free Speech?

Freedom of expression is under attack. This is a theme I am addressing here in America this week as part of the Free Speech Summit being held in Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Security Council. And it is clear that a serious discussion of the threats to our freedoms in the West cannot come too soon.

For example, my friend Rep. Adam Hasner, the majority leader of the Florida House of Representatives was attacked in a press release issued by the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday for daring to appear at a private event with me this past weekend. Because of that appearance, CAIR is demanding that Rep. Hasner step down or be removed from his position.

This attack on a friend and fellow legislator is of grave concern to me. CAIR’s assault on Rep. Hasner strikes at the very heart of our most basic freedoms. In fact, it is but the latest episode in that organization’s long-running and determined effort to silence its critics. Indeed, CAIR seeks to suppress all those who dare to challenge the theo-political-legal program that authoritative Islam calls “Shariah.” In so doing, they are seeking to impose what amount to Shariah blasphemy codes.

It is especially important to note that Adam Hasner is not only being attacked for comments he made that are deemed offensive by those who seek to impose Shariah in America. His career is now being threatened for comments made by others in his presence – in this case, by me. Thus the Islamists are infringing not only on this country’s constitutionally protected freedom of expression but also freedom of association.

If a high-ranking public official – elected by the people and appointed to his leadership position by his peers – cannot speak honestly and openly about his concerns, and do so in places and the company of his choosing, without fear of suppression or other retribution, who among us is safe?

I know these threats firsthand. Even before the international release last year of my short documentary film, Fitna, I have faced constant death threats and protests. My name has appeared on assassination lists. I have been subject of an Al-Qaeda death fatwa. I will be charged with blasphemy and contempt of Muslims by Jordanian prosecutors. I face prosecutions in my own country and elsewhere. I was recently banned from the United Kingdom because the Home Secretary believed my mere presence in the country constituted a national security threat.

In this trying time let us recall that in the darkest hours of World War II, when the world faced a global threat from German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese Imperialism, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill challenged his people to rise to the occasion and fight. He told them, “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

This is why I am in America this week talking about the fight we now must wage in the West to defend our liberties. Freedom of association is one of the basic liberties guaranteed not only by the US Constitution but by the European Convention of Human Rights. And yet CAIR wants to silence and punish Rep. Hasner for associating with me. If America needs a poster child for the threat to our freedoms from Islamic extremism, no better example than CAIR could be found.

This episode underscores that the threat to freedom posed by creeping Shariah imposed by CAIR’s type of stealthy jihad is not just a problem in the Middle East, or Europe. It is also a problem in America.

I will not be bullied by Islamic thugs who want to use our freedoms to destroy those very same freedoms. And I will not stand by as they seek to do it to others.

Founded and directed by members of the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR has an explicit agenda to subvert our freedoms and impose Islamic Shariah law on non-Muslims. This is not speculation on my part. This is the testimony of one of CAIR’s founders and chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmed, who told a California audience in 1998 that this was their agenda. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” he said. “The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” When CAIR officials say that this is their ultimate objective, we should believe them.

In just the past few weeks, the Council on American Islamic Relations has sought to silence another courageous lawmaker, Rep. Peter King, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives. His “offense”? Rep. King correctly observed that CAIR and other Muslims were not providing enough assistance to the law enforcement authorities in combating terrorism-related activities in American mosques.

CAIR has attempted to silence other critics, as well. They have sued bloggers; they have defamed journalists who have asked too many questions about their terrorist ties; and they have tried to intimidate publications that have published articles challenging their putative “civil rights mission.” If they get away with it, CAIR will seek to threaten the careers of more politicians with the courage to say things and associate with those of challenge Shariah and the effort to impose it in this country.

It is utterly hypocritical that, on the one hand, CAIR claims to be defending freedom of religion in attacking Rep. Hasner when, on the other, they actively seek support from Islamic regimes that are among the worst of the worst human rights abusers on the planet – and notorious for suppressing religious freedoms.

I have been told that in an Arabic News article that CAIR officials have solicited and received financial support from Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal, whose country outlaws any religious expression except its own Wahhabi strain of Islam. You can’t even own a Bible or wear a cross in the country run by their patrons, and yet CAIR wants to lecture us about religious freedom?

The land for CAIR’s Capitol Hill office in Washington D.C. was purchased with a $250,000 donation from the Saudi-backed Islamic Development Bank and the deed to their headquarters is held by the foundation of United Arab Emirates Defense Minister Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. Sheik al-Maktoum’s country prohibits any non-Islamic religious proselytizing and threatens anyone caught with distribution of non-Muslim religious literature with imprisonment.

In September 2006, CAIR hosted an exclusive dinner with former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami. Under Khatami’s regime religious minorities were severely persecuted, non-Muslims were regularly harassed, and hundreds of student protestors murdered. The fact that CAIR chose to honor this dictator who is still a senior member of the Islamic theocracy in Iran tells us much.

Whether it is in America or back home in my own country, we are under attack by groups like CAIR who aim to silence their critics. This is why I am here in America. I aim to continue to fight regardless of the threats and intimidation and I am asking Americans to join with us. And when they attack good men like Rep. Adam Hasner, we must realize that they are attacking each and every one of us and the freedoms that we hold dear.

JEDDAH – A 50-year old Saudi man has agreed to divorce his 9-year-old bride, media reported on Thursday, after the marriage drew international criticism.

The decision, reported by newspapers Alwatan and Al-Riyadh, came after months of court hearings, criticism from the United Nations and an international media frenzy about Saudi Arabia’s human rights practices.

“This is a good step and I think the man did it because he was in a lot of pressure from everyone,” Wajeha Al-Huaider, founder of the Group for Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia, told Reuters by telephone.

Al-Huaider, who campaigned for the child, said she hoped the pressure generated by the case would eventually lead to a law banning child marriages.

The child’s mother, who opposed the marriage which took place when the girl was 8 years old, took the case to court last year. The court in the small town of Onaiza upheld the marriage on condition that the husband did not consummate it until the girl reached puberty.

In Saudi Arabia’s patriarchal society, which applies an austere version of Sunni Islam, fathers have the right to decide whom their daughters marry.

Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps

Note: A little-known $385 million contract for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build detention facilities for “an emergency influx of immigrants” is another step down the Bush administration’s road toward martial law, the writer says.

Also see: FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders – Friends of Liberty (undated) 3sep04

BERKELEY, CA — A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide “temporary detention and processing capabilities.”

The contract — announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR — calls for preparing for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies, such as “a natural disaster.” The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when.

To date, some newspapers have worried that open-ended provisions in the contract could lead to cost overruns, such as have occurred with KBR in Iraq. A Homeland Security spokesperson has responded that this is a “contingency contract” and that conceivably no centers might be built. But almost no paper so far has discussed the possibility that detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.

For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States. North’s activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.

“Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters,” says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military’s account of its activities in Vietnam. “They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ’special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

Plans for detention facilities or camps have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for “suspension of the Constitution” and “declaration of martial law.” The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.

In 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one of a series of directives that authorized continued planning for COG by a private parallel government.

Two books, James Mann’s “Rise of the Vulcans” and James Bamford’s “A Pretext for War,” have revealed that in the 1980s this parallel structure, operating outside normal government channels, included the then-head of G. D. Searle and Co., Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney.

After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security.

Then in April 2002, Defense Dept. officials implemented a plan for domestic U.S. military operations by creating a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called this “the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946.”

The NORTHCOM commander, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced, is responsible for “homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)…. He will command U.S. forces that operate within the United States in support of civil authorities. The command will provide civil support not only in response to attacks, but for natural disasters.”

John Brinkerhoff later commented on PBS that, “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”

Then in response to Hurricane Katrina in Sept. 2005, according to the Washington Post, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, that she should explore legal options to impose martial law “or as close as we can get.” The White House tried vigorously, but ultimately failed, to compel Gov. Blanco to yield control of the state National Guard.

Also in September, NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. As William Arkin reported in the Washington Post, “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”

It is clear that the Bush administration is thinking seriously about martial law. Many critics have alleged that FEMA’s spectacular failure to respond to Katrina followed from a deliberate White House policy: of paring back FEMA, and instead strengthening the military for responses to disasters.

A multimillion program for detention facilities will greatly increase NORTHCOM’s ability to respond to any domestic disorders.

Index Journal | Greenwood, SC | News
Huckabee first in Lakelands, McCain second
Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:50 PM EST
Voters in the Lakelands closely mirrored their counterparts throughout the Palmetto State in Saturday’s Republican presidential primary.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Arizona Sen. John McCain ran neck and neck in the region, with McCain holding a slight edge.

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson was a distant third. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the fourth-leading vote-getter, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul rounding out the top five. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who largely ignored South Carolina to focus on the upcoming Florida primary, finished sixth in the Lakelands.

Across the Lakelands, Huckabee edged McCain in Greenwood County.

*
In a hotly contested race, Huckabee garnered 2,295 votes in Greenwood, while McCain picked up 2,262 votes. Connie Moody, director of elections and voter registration, said Huckabee slipped past McCain toward the end of the vote tallying.

“McCain looked like he had it the whole time,” Moody said. “Then, at the end, Huckabee slipped right on in there.”

A total of 6,807 votes were cast on a cold and rainy Saturday in Greenwood.

Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson placed third in the county, netting 1,057 votes. Moody said the results will be certified at 10 a.m. Thursday at Park Plaza.

Others receiving votes included Thompson 1,057, Romney 847, Paul 220, Giuliani 97, Duncan Hunter 25, John Cox 2 and Tom Tancredo 2.

IN SALUDA COUNTY, McCain beat Huckabee 778-589. Thompson was a distant third with 279 votes. Romney garnered 200 votes, and Paul rounded out the top five with 73 votes.

Other vote-getters included Giuliani 19, Cox two and Hunter one. Tancredo was on the ballot, but didn’t receive any votes.

IN ABBEVILLE COUNTY, which is considered the birthplace of the Confederacy, Huckabee placed first with 905 votes. The former Baptist minister was the only Republican front-runner not to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds – an issue that has drawn national attention, as well as an NAACP boycott, for years here.

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Huckabee told supporters Thursday in Myrtle Beach. “In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ’em what to do with the pole, that’s what we’d do.”

McCain earned 540 votes. Thompson had 355, Romney 207, Paul 102 and Giuliani 11.

IN McCORMICK COUNTY, McCain won with 411 votes. Huckabee finished second with 237 [ only six votes more than Romney. Thompson was fourth with 181. Guiliani received 33 votes and Paul 21.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life.”

My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life.

Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it.

She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

There is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.

J. Bradford DeLong
professor of economics, Berkeley
clinton Administration veteran

HILLARY LIE: I spent a year after graduation working on a children’s rights project for poor kids.

THE FACTS: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Black Panthers, on trial for torturing and killing a federal agent. She traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

HILLARY LIE: I could have written my own job ticket, but I turned down all the lucrative job offers.

THE FACTS: Hillary flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected governor.

Arkansas schools ranked 49th when they entered Little Rock and 49th when they exited. For power and treasure, they sold everything from tainted blood of prisoners to mineral rights of The People. Little Rock was an obvious dry run for DC.

HILLARY LIE: I helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance.

THE FACTS: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between her husband and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals’ tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with
either source of funds.

HILLARY LIE: I was the face of America all over the world.

THE FACTS: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.

MISSUS CLINTON RODE CAMELS, NOT HERD.

HILLARY LIE: Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children’s and women’s issues.

THE FACTS: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives. And two were routine bills to aid 9-11 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation.

Hillary’s ’serious plan’ in 2000 became hillary’s serious failure in 2006. The 200,000 new jobs she pledged to create in depressed Upstate became under her tenure a 75,000-job LOSS.

HILLARY CLINTON is inept. She is an abuser of power.

SHE HAS ROUTINELY, REFLEXIVELY, ABUSED-EXPLOITED-THE WEAK AND THE VULNERABLE-WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND BLACKS-FOR HER ENTIRE 35-YEAR PURSUIT OF POWER AND TREASURE.

“There’s not a sex act mentioned in the book. What is important is Hillary savaging the women….

Carl Bernstein, FROM CARL BERNSTEIN TO THE BROADDRICK RAPE: CONNECTING THE DOTS-’YouTube

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HUMAN EVENTS
President Quietly Creating ‘NAFTA Plus’
by Jerome R. Corsi (More by this author)
Posted: 05/24/2006

Without announcing his intentions to do so, President Bush has decided to support the creation of a North American Union through a process of governmental regulations, never having to bring the issue before the American people for a clear referendum or vote.

The Bush Administration has decided to “back-door” the creation of a North American Union political entity that would effectively erase our borders with Mexico and Canada and create several super-regional governing bodies that would have jurisdiction over the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

November 25, 2007 — I’ve often been left fascinated – and disturbed – by what makes TV news.

What makes big news? What makes less news? And what makes almost no news at all?

For example, if three local, young white men were charged in the racially motivated, beating death of an illegal African immigrant – the father of eight, no less – what kind of news would that make?

That would make huge news. It not only would lead all local newscasts, it likely would make national newscasts – at or near the top. As well it should.

But last week, after three young black men were arrested in Plainfield, NJ, charged in the robbery and beating murder of an illegal immigrant from Guatemala and police said the married father of eight was targeted because he was Hispanic, the story scarcely made a sound.

In fact, I knew nothing about it until last Sunday, when I read an AP report in a New Jersey newspaper, albeit just six paragraphs on Page 6. Another, larger NJ newspaper carried 15 paragraphs about the arrests in the murder, on Page 36.

Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population.

Mike Cutler, a former senior special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (the former INS), is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to Family Security Matters (FSM). He says the high number of Americans being killed by illegal aliens is just part of the collateral damage that comes with tolerating illegal immigration.

“The military actually called for the BORTAC team, … the elite unit of the Border Patrol, to be detailed to Iraq to help to secure the Iraqi border,” Cutler notes. “Now, if our military can understand that Iraq’s security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn’t our country similarly protecting our own borders?” he asks.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary » Beyond belief
True to its ever-more astounding and sickening form, (including this grovelling apology for calling Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, its capital) the BBC has been blaming the carnage in Gaza upon…Israel. According to its ineffable Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, the barbarism meted out by the Palestinians of Gaza upon each other is All Israel’s Fault:

The institutions, and the hopes behind them, have already taken a severe battering from Israel’s military actions over the last seven years and, more recently, by the punishing financial sanctions imposed by Israel and other countries after Hamas won a free election at the beginning of last year… What has happened also shows the failure of the decision of the world’s big powers to isolate Hamas. The financial sanctions they imposed, which caused severe hardship and helped fuel the violence in Gaza by making people even more desperate, were designed to either force Hamas to recognise Israel or to push it out of power. The policy has achieved neither objective.

No mention that aid to Gaza has at the very least doubled since these ‘punishing financial sanctions’ were imposed. No acknowledgement that it was Hamas’s genocidal attacks on Israel that caused these sanctions to be imposed. No awareness of the absurdity of blaming the violence on the ‘desperation’ caused by sanctions when a) it is plainly a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, b) the Palestinians were given the opportunity to turn Gaza into a flourishing society two years ago, but within hours showed how ‘desperate’ they were not to achieve this by destroying millions of dollars’ worth of greenhouses that the Israelis had left for them to make money from, and c) Hamas is demonstrably not despairing at all but exultant that it can now tyrannise the inhabitants of Gaza all the way back to the 7th century.