Dreams Into Lightning 2

Geert Wilders: Speech at Gatestone Institute, New York

Geert Wilders:

It is great to be in America, the beacon of liberty, the land of the free, the land where people are still allowed to speak freely. I know what I am talking about. I was acquitted after a legal ordeal that lasted almost 3 years. I had been brought to court for criticizing Islam.

Though at the end of the day I was acquitted, the court case had been a disgrace. It was a time-, money- and energy-consuming nightmare. This charade that happened in the Netherlands for the last few years could not have happened in your great country, where the First Amendment guarantees people the freedom to express their opinions.

The first Amendment is what we need in the Netherlands and Europe.

I am in New York for the release of my book "Marked for Death". It explains why Islam is the largest threat to freedom which the world is currently facing. It argues why Islam is a totalitarian ideology rather than a religion. It reveals how Islam has already profoundly changed Europe in the last decades. It exposes the cultural relativism which has affected Europe so deeply that many in Europe refuse to stand for liberty and prefer to appease Islam.As you know, people who speak out like myself and I pay a steep price for speaking these truths. Apart from legal attempts to silence me, there are also the threats by radical Muslims to kill me. I have been living under permanent police protection for almost eight years now. People like me pay this price for speaking the truth about Islam. But I do not regret one word. I see it as my duty to warn the West. ...

Ben-Zion Netanyahu

Benzion Netanyahu, father of Prime Minister Binyamin Netnayahu, was laid to rest at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, at a plot for bereaved parents at the Har Hamenuhot cemetery in Jerusalem. The late Netanyahu died early Monday morning at the age of 102. ...

"Men have used dubious means to promote every cause in human history ..."

" ... was every cause thus unjust?"

Nigeria Church Attack Kills 21

Gunmen attacked worship services at a university campus and a church Sunday in northern Nigeria, killing at least 21 people in coordinated assaults that saw panicked Christians gunned down as they tried to flee, witnesses and officials said. ...

Raymond Ibrahim has some background on Islamist persecution of Christians. Walter Russell Mead:

Nigeria is a major flashpoint for the religious conflict seen across Africa as a surging Christian presence shakes the confidence of traditional Islamic communities and as radical currents in global Islam make themselves felt in sub-Saharan Africa. Since independence, Nigeria’s Christian community has doubled as a proportion of the population (from roughly a fourth of the population to roughly one half) as animists and believers in traditional African religions converted to Christianity. Additionally, some Muslims have converted. The surge in Christian numbers comes at the same time that the Christian population and the predominantly Christian regions of the country are becoming more prosperous than the mostly Muslim north. Political power is also flowing to the south. ...

Go read the rest.

India Border Cops Shoot, Kill Intruder on Pakistan Border

Hindustan Times:

A suspected Pakistani intruder was on Sunday shot dead by women constables of BSF [Border Security Force] near Dera Baba Nanak Sector of Punjab, while he was trying to sneak into the Indian territory.
"Two women BSF personnel of 74 Battalion noticed the movement nearby barbed wire on the border and they challenged the intruder to surrender as he was illegally trying to sneak into the Indian territory from the Pakistan side," DIG, BSF, P S Bains said. ...

Erbil Essence

Al-Monitor: Is Erbil the next Dubai?
'Beymen, one of Turkey’s leading apparel producers and retailers, opened its second outlet abroad in the rapidly developing city of Erbil, in northern Iraq. Beymen CEO Elif Capci said that Erbil Beymen was opened through a partnership with a well-known local businessman, owner of Elegan Construction, Sarp Turanligil. ...'
Go read it all. Note that the article, originally published in Turkish at Taraf, refers only to "northern Iraq" and avoids mentioning the Iraqi Kurdistan region by name.

Totten: Fake Terrorism in Syria

'No one who follows Middle East conflicts should be shocked to discover that the Syrian government is staging terrorist attacks against itself. ...'

Post-Post-Zionism

Caroline Glick:

To understand the distance Israel has traveled since [the 1990s], consider Tuesday night's Memorial Day ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. None of the performers attacked their fellow Israelis. And the best-received artist and song was Mosh Ben-Ari and his rendition of Psalm 121 - A Song of Ascent.

The psalm, which praises God as the eternal guardian of Israel, became the unofficial anthem of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009. And Ben-Ari's rendition of the song propelled the dreadlock bedecked, hoop earring wearing world music artist into super-stardom in Israel. ...

Go read it all. This contrast between the Israel of the 1990s and the world of today's Israel was also remarked on by Jonathan Spyer in The Transforming Fire, which I highly recommend.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, via Arutz Sheva:

Anger is mounting against singer Achinoam Nini – whose stage name abroad is Noa – for taking part in an "alternative" Remembrance Day ceremony that honored Arabs who were killed by Israelis, as well as Jews who were killed by Arabs. One of the Arabs honored in the ceremony was Ziad Jilani – an Arab who was shot dead after he rammed into a group of Border Policemen with his car, wounding several of them. His widow was one of the speakers. ...

Infidels!

Muslim fundamentalists show up at an atheist convention in Australia. Battle of slogans ensues.

More here.

Connecticut Repeals Death Penalty

'Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a bill into law Wednesday that abolishes the death penalty, making his state the 17th in the nation to abandon capital punishment and the fifth in five years to usher in a repeal. ...'

The Courant has the text of Governor Malloy's statement.

My position on the appropriateness of the death penalty in our criminal justice system evolved over a long period of time. As a young man, I was a death penalty supporter. Then I spent years as a prosecutor and pursued dangerous felons in court, including murderers. In the trenches of a criminal courtroom, I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect. While it’s a good system designed with the highest ideals of our democratic society in mind, like most of human experience, it is subject to the fallibility of those who participate in it. I saw people who were poorly served by their counsel. I saw people wrongly accused or mistakenly identified. I saw discrimination. In bearing witness to those things, I came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to ensure it would not be unfairly imposed. ...

This despite the recent, horrific Cheshire home invasion murders.

The Washington Post has a story on the role played by the families of murder victims in the campaign against the death penalty. However,

On the other side of the debate, death penalty supporters had perhaps the state’s most compelling advocate in Dr. William Petit Jr., the only survivor of a 2007 home invasion in which two paroled burglars [Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky] killed his wife and two daughters. Last year, Petit successfully lobbied state senators to hold off on legislation for repeal while one of the two killers was still facing a death penalty trial.

Read the full article at the link.