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Illegal observation in the Netherlands

Abdul Alhazred

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The absurd trial of Geert Wilders
Mark Steyn in Macleans

At a certain level, the trial of Geert Wilders for the crime of “group insult” of Islam is déjà vu all over again. For as the spokesperson for the Openbaar Ministerie put it, “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct. What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”

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It’s remarkable how speedily “the most tolerant country in Europe,” in a peculiarly repellent strain of coercive appeasement, has adopted “shoot the messenger” as an all-purpose cure-all for “Islamophobia.” To some of us, the Netherlands means tulips, clogs, windmills, fingers in the dike. To others, it means marijuana cafés, long-haired soldiers, legalized hookers, fingers in the dike. But the contemporary reality is an increasingly incoherent polity where gays are bashed, uncovered women get jeered at, and you can’t do The Diary of Anne Frank as your school play lest the Gestapo walk-ons are greeted by audience cries of “She’s in the attic!” Speaking as a bona fide far-right nutcase, I rather resent the label’s export to Holland: Pim Fortuyn wasn’t “right-wing,” he was a gay hedonist; Theo van Gogh was an anti-monarchist coke-snorting nihilist; Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a secular liberal feminist; Geert Wilders says he’s opposed to Islam because of its hostility to gay equality, whereas the usual rap against us far-right extremists is that we want the godless sodomites to roast in hell.

It’s not “ironic” that the most liberal country in western Europe should be the most advanced in its descent into a profoundly illiberal hell. It was entirely foreseeable. Geert Wilders is stating the obvious: a society that becomes more Muslim will have fewer gays. Last year, the Rainbow Palace, formerly Amsterdam’s most popular homo-hotel (relax, that’s the Dutch word for it), announced it was renaming itself the Sharm and reorienting itself to Islamic tourism. Or as the website allah.eu put it: “Gay Hotel Turns Muslim.” As a headline in the impeccably non-far-right Spiegel wondered: “How much Allah can the Old Continent bear?” It’s an interesting question, albeit if an increasingly verboten one. The Wilders show trial is important because it will determine whether the subject can be discussed openly by mainstream politicians and public figures, or whether it will be forced underground and manifest itself in more violent ways.

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As i didn't get an answer in the other thread about this case i just have to ask: what are the 'extreme' and 'hateful' things Wildners have said about Islam and Muslims?
 
To some of us, the Netherlands means tulips, clogs, windmills, fingers in the dike. To others, it means marijuana cafés, long-haired soldiers, legalized hookers, fingers in the dike
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He should have used the alternate spelling "dyke". That would make it funnier, though I suppose it's intentional anyway.
 
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Last year, the Rainbow Palace, formerly Amsterdam’s most popular homo-hotel (relax, that’s the Dutch word for it), announced it was renaming itself the Sharm and reorienting itself to Islamic tourism.
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Why is this particularly important? Hotels make decisions to reorient themselves to a new clientele all the time. If the hotel closed and re-opened, not as oriented towards Muslims but towards, say, middle-aged couples, would Steyn care? Of course there are going to be more hotels oriented towards Muslims when there are more Muslims. What did he expect?
 
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Oooh, yes, fingering the dyke. I see what he's doing there, juxtaposing lesbianism with drug abuse, anti-conformism and prostitution, thereby evoking a sense of degeneracy in the reader's mind. Very clever, especially with it then mirroring the structure of previous sentence, highlighting the opposition between them and the peaceful, proper, fairy-tale image of the Netherlands.

Sorry if I don't join you in finding Steyn's casual homophobia funny.
 
OK. So Steyn is still a bitchy theater critic.

Anybody got an answer besides Steyn is a stinker or the USA is evil too?

You do know that there is already one Netherlands member of parliament who fled for her life to the USA? Think of that. A political refugee fleeing religious murderers in the Netherlands.

Not Iran. Not Sudan. Not Saudi Arabia. The Netherlands.

This is a trend.
 
I personally think the idea that "group insult" can become a criminal charge is very worrisome.
 
Skeptic said:
Why is this particularly important? Hotels make decisions to reorient themselves to a new clientele all the time. If the hotel closed and re-opened, not as oriented towards Muslims but towards, say, middle-aged couples, would Steyn care? Of course there are going to be more hotels oriented towards Muslims when there are more Muslims. What did he expect?
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Actually, it's even more mundane. The article at allah.eu, which is Steyn's source, says that the owners, Bram and Cor, sold the place. I bet their first priority in whom to sell to has been the price, not whether the new owner would keep up the same orientation of the hotel.
 
Well, after reading the court order i must say that i am amused.

‘The borders are closed to all non-Western immigrants the same day.’ and ‘We want enough. Close the borders, no more Islamics in the Netherlands,
many Muslims deported from the Netherlands, denaturalisation of Islamic criminals.’ is apparently 'incitement of hatred'.

188094b2d519eb5ec4.gif
How exactly is this 'incitement of hatred'?

I also saw this: ‘Those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation. I
have never used violence.’ which i assume is true. Can we thus assume that they have banned the truth in the Netherlands?
 
Reminds me of a recent bruhahaha in the local news in Haifa. A building owned in the past by some Yeshiva was sold to a Christian group. Big B.S. headline in the local paper about the "Christian Mission taking over Jewish institutions".
 
MaGZ said:
Like charging people with a crime for denying the Holocaust.
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Indeed so. Totally stupid law. Quite apart from freedom of speech issues, it only makes martyrs of these morons.

Not that holocaust deniers care much for freedom of speech themselves: by far the biggest trial about holocaust denying, Irving vs. Lipstadt, was a case where he sued her in the attempt to stop her from calling him a "holocaust denier".

The result was a glorious self-immolation of what was left of Irving's already-tarnished reputation. But it wasn't her doing. She didn't sue him; he sued her.

(Which didn't stop him from whining that her defense team dared to actually defend her effectively in court. The nerve those Jews have!)
 
Abdul Alhazred said:
You do know that there is already one Netherlands member of parliament who fled for her life to the USA? Think of that.
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You do know that she fled from the USA to the Netherlands when the Dutch government didn't want to continue paying for her security while in the USA, and the US government didn't want to pick up the tab? Think of that.

It is also ironic that you mention Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a thread about Geert Wilders. If Wilders proposals were implemented when she sought asylum in the Netherlands, she wouldn't even have been allowed in. She would have now have been in a forced marriage, and quite possibly active in a terrorist organisation.
 
TX50 said:
You can read an English translation of his "dagvaarding" (court summons)
at the link below. It includes a detailed list of what they are charging him with:

http://www.wildersontrial.com/images/stories/dagvaarding_ENG.pdf
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At least a quarter of the people on this forum would be guilty if there was a crime of "intentionally offend[ing] a group of people...based on their religion".

That's why freedom of speech is so important, because if it lost, the laws against certain types of speech are always selectively enforced.
 
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