Category Archives: Diana West

Dear Mayor of Monschau

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I would like to add a short preface to what Diana has to say here. Geert Wilders would have been considered a commie by many in the US during the 1960s, but his voice would not have been an unusual one. His fierce defence of homosexual rights, Jewish people’s rights and minority and mostly individual rights in general are the signs of classical liberalism and one of the main ideologies being trumped by the rebelious youth of that time.

To see him branded and demonized as ‘far right wing’ by the majority of the mass media and the totality of state run media in Europe and elsewhere, shows how far left the broadcast media has moved since then. Left and dhimmified. That views which would have been considered subversively leftist for its calls for individual rights regardless of sexual orientation or race or religious belief like Wilders would be called right wing, merely because he opposes fascist ideologies like Islam.

Eeyore for Vlad

An open letter from Diana West. This taken from the Brussels Journal

From the desk of Diana West on Tue, 2010-03-16 15:42

Dear Mayor Margareta Ritter (ma**************@************au.de),

CDU-Bürgermeisterin Margareta Ritter: 'Wilders ist in Monschau nicht willkommen!'

I have had the pleasure of visiting your exquisitely beautiful German town, the second member of my family to do so. The first was my dad, who, as a member of the 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron in Gen. Bradley’s Army, had, with time out to recuperate from wounds incurred at the Battle of St Lo, fought across nothern Europe from D-Day plus 2 until reaching Monschau by the end of 1944.

I only bring this up because I read this morning that you have declared Geert Wilders, who recently weekended in your town, “not welcome” in Monschau. “People who, just like Mr Wilders, encumber the Dutch integration debate with right-wing populism and who want to ban the Qur’an, comparing it to Mein Kampf, are not welcome in Monschau,” you are quoted as having said.

I protest. First of all, it is not “right-wing populism” with which Wilders “encumbers” the integration debate. It is with facts about sharia (Islamic law), a totalitarian and supremacist legal and religious system. He takes these facts to the public arena, a place where fears of Islamic retribution have to date silenced this essential, civilizational conversation. Another fact he brings, however discomforting to multicultists such as you appear to be, is the similarity between Mein Kampf and the Koran. You may declare Wilders — and all of his thousands of Dutch supporters — persona non grata in Monschau; that won’t make sharia or those Koran-Kampf similarities go away.

But maybe you don’t care. Maybe you have now found a new totalitarianism to submit to. But I protest your decision to make Monschau off limits to Wilders, a defender of liberty against totalitarianism — the same liberty my dad was in and around Monschau to defend long ago against a similarly supremacist totalitarianism. I have a strong hunch he would say that, so long as you are in office, liberation wasn’t worth the effort.

Sincerely,

Diana West, USA

Brush Up Your Sharia (Apologies to Cole Porter)

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From Diana West.net.

Written by: Diana West
Saturday, January 09, 2010 5:08 AM 

Tragically, but darkly comically also, this counts as news: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten printed Kurt Westergaard’s Motoon yesterday along with five other 12 Danish Motoons. As the Telegraph recaps (without running the cartoon as an illustration):

On Jan 2, an axe-wielding 28-year-old man broke into Westergaard’s home screaming for “revenge” and “blood”. Police – alerted by the cartoonist who had hidden in a panic room – shot and arrested him.

Aftenposten’s editor, Hilde Haugsgjerd, said it seemed “natural and justified to republish the artistic and journalistic body of work that is likely the cause of this violence”.

Aftenposten first published copies of the cartoons in 2005 …

Natural and justified, to be sure. But rare as a hot cross bun in Mecca. If you take a look at the Google News queue on the story here, you will see hundreds of stories reporting that Aftenposten published the cartoon, but no further illustrations of the cartoon itself, at least not that I could find. Instead, you will see photos like this generic shot of the Norwegian paper:

or photos like this one of Kurt with some of his non-Mohammed cartoons:

Here is a shot from Aftenposten:

Kurt’s Mohammed is the little head on right on the broadsheet above.

When I posted on January 2 about the near-miss assassination attempt by a Somali Muslim with Danish residency on Kurt’s life, I wrote:

News reports tells us Kurt is safe.

Safe. Kurt isn’t safe. Nor will he be, nor any of us be, “safe” until Islamic law is stopped in the West, its deeply advanced tentacles eradicated. Because don’t think it isn’t here. Sharia is here and in force.

To measure the extent, just watch the “free press” cover Kurt’s latest (and closest) brush with sharia-sanctioned death, and count how many times that coverage is accompanied by a picture of Kurt’s cartoon. Any media outlet that runs the cartoon is not under Islamic law. Any media outlet that doesn’t is under Islamic law.

Bully for Aftenposten and everything, but the cartoon tally to date reveals the extent to which Islamic law continues to be observed to the letter in the “free” press of the West.

Few seem to understand the Westergaard story in these crucially important legal terms. In a recent FT column, Christopher Caldwell ponders the Westergaard attack, calling it “an act of political violence.”

The aim, as best we can tell, was not to take Mr Westergaard’s money but to enforce “justice” in a way that would alter society’s rules and people’s behaviour.

“As best we can tell“? (“Blood,” “Revenge,” the jihadist yelled as he chopped at Kurt’s reinforced steel door with an axe ….) No matter. At this point, with Caldwell noting the attack’s purpose to “alter society’s rules and people’s behavior,” it sounds as if he is about to discuss Islamic law (sharia) from which the “justice” of killing Kurt for cartooning Islam’s prophet is derived.

But no.

He goes on:

A state’s authority rests, as Max Weber said, on a monopoly of violence. In matters of free speech about religion in Denmark, the government monopoly on violence has been broken. There is another player in the market, declaring that cartoons perceived as anti-Islamic are punishable by death.

And that player is named … Islam? Sharia?

But no again. Mid-paragraph, Caldwell changes course:

A pattern of political violence against ordinary citizens is something western Europe has not experienced in more than half a century. Some people describe radical Islam as a kind of totalitarianism, or “Islamofascism”. That is an oversimplification.

“Radical” Islam is just padding, while “Islamofascism” is a senseless word, but “totalitarianism” is absolutely dead right and let me count the ways beginning with the words of G.H. Bosquet, one of the 20th century’s leading scholars of Islamic law, who described Islam as being “doubly totalitarian.” This is no oversimplification, it’s just simple. Islam is simple. It’s just our elites that are … complicated. So why does Caldwell tangle himself up?

Even if he had contact with al-Qaeda, Mr Westergaard’s would-be assassin was probably working as an individual.

Does the assailant own a Koran? Is he a soldier of Allah? Was he carrying out jihad? Then this Islamic axe-murderer (attempted) deserves his official al Qaeda membership card and jihadi secret decoder ring. Whether he had them, though, his actions served to advance jihad terror and, as we see, further entrenched submission to Islamic law in what was once known as Christendom. Caldwell continues:

But this power to intimidate, though informal, is potentially decisive. It is the same power exercised by those who threaten journalists in Russia, those who kill policemen in Mexico, or the Ku Klux Klan in the US south of a century ago. Such acts make law.

Wow. A few paragraphs ago it almost looked as if Caldwell were going to inform his readers about the traditional, mainstream, centuries-old Islamic laws that sanction, indeed, demand the Islamic faithful to kill the likes of Westergaard. Now Caldwell tells them the furor is all generic, a matter of the “power to intimidate,” a la drug cartels or the KKK, through “acts” that “make law” along the way.

I suggest that he and everyone else brush up on their sharia. This esteemed Islamic legal source, Reliance of the Traveller, is  widely available.

Of course, at this rate, soon every home will have one.

Caldwell never gets more specific than discussing “a real taboo, backed by violence.” This, he says, is a “terrible problem.” Namely:

If a country cannot stop the violence directly, then the public will demand that it stop the violence indirectly, by thwarting the cause the violence serves. The rise of Geert Wilders’s party in the Netherlands, the referendum to ban minarets in Switzerland, the proposed burka ban in France – these are all desperate measures to declare that Islam is not the first religion of Europe.

“Desparate” measures?

I call them signs of life.

Diana West: Kurt Westergaard cannot stop sharia alone

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When Kurt Westergaard came to the United States for a speaking tour on September 30, the fourth anniversary of the publication in Jyllands Posten of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, a number of reporters contacted me for information because Kurt’s trip was sponsored by the International Free Press Society. (Related stories here.)

Boiler plate, stuff, mainly — where’s he going, to whom is he speaking, a few basics about free speech. But I had a question for these reporters, too. Will you run the Westergaard Mohammed? Will you print the cartoon Kurt Westergaard drew, all in a day’s work, when Jyllands Posten editor Flemming Rose asked him for a Mohammed cartoon as part of a newspaper feature showcasing 12  Mohammed cartoons from 12 Danish artists commissioned to demonstrate that Denmark, free Denmark, was not under, beholden or intimidated by Islamic law?

First response from the ladies and gennemen of the Fourth Estate: nervous laughter.

Then: Oh, I’ll have to ask my editor about that….

Surprise, surprise, the Westergaard cartoon didn’t see media light of day during Kurt’s entire trip. American media disgraced themselves by covering Westergaard, his cartoon, the threats to his life, the barbarous Islamic reaction from the highest reaches of the Islamic diplomatic world to the Islamic street protests that resulted in loss of life, Kurt’s principles, free speech — all without ever showing readers and viewers the cartoon itself. (One exception — the Chicago Sun Times, which ran a photo of Kurt holding a laptop displaying the cartoon.)

Kurt Westergaard, 75, was almost murdered last night by an axe- knife- or hammer-wielding 27-year-old Muslim from Somalia who broke into his home. Kurt managed to get to his safe room and police arrived very quickly, shooting the would-be assassin in the course of a struggle.  News reports tells us Kurt is safe.

Safe. Kurt isn’t safe. Nor will he be, nor any of us be, “safe” until Islamic law is stopped in the West, its deeply advanced tentacles eradicated. Because don’t think it isn’t here. Sharia is here and in force.

To measure the extent, just watch the “free press” cover Kurt’s latest (and closest) brush with sharia-sanctioned death, and count how many times that coverage is accompanied by a picture of Kurt’s cartoon. Any media outlet that runs the cartoon is not under Islamic law. Any media outlet that doesn’t is under Islamic law.

One old Dane, however courageous, however strong, can’t stop sharia alone.

Ft Hood Update: Purple Hearts for the Fallen After All?

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This is an issue that I feel quite strongly about for a variety of reasons. So I was very glad to see Diana West writing on it. It is important at so many levels that people, especially military personnel who are killed by jihadis whether it is on US soil or not, but perhaps especially if it is on US soil, receive the Purple Heart medal. To not do so, victimizes these brave men and women a second time. People who already were willing to risk their lives for the defence of their nation, are buried or injured without even acknowledgement of their circumstance. And why? Is it to avoid offending the enemy? Perhaps much worse than that, is to avoid actually even naming the enemy for fear both of some kind of backlash against Islam and its never ending demands for the transformation of Western civilization to accommodate their choice of beliefs, and perhaps to avoid empowering them in some way. Once we admit who they are, we have to pay attention to them.

Taxonomy, I have always felt, has potential for tremendous evil. It would appear much of the current US and Western nations policy concerning a very real and multilateral threat from Islam is taxonomic in nature. Simply categorize it the way you want and hey presto, it isn’t a problem. Except when they kill everyone all over the place and change all your laws, customs, and freedoms.

Eeyore for Vlad

Purple Heart for Private Long please.

Written by: Diana West

A positive development in the quest for recognition that Hasan’s jihad on Ft. Hood was an act of war: US Rep. John Carter, the Republican who represents the Texas district that includes Ft. Hood, is introducing a bill to grant combatant status to those killed and wounded by Hasan (“allegedly”) on Nov. 5.

Pvt. William Long, killed by an avowed jihadist outside a Little Rock Army-Navy recruiting station, and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, wounded,  deserve to be on that list as well.

But Carter’s bill is the correct first step. Whether the bill passes in a Democrat-controlled Congress is the question. And whether it is debated fully to take in a free-speaking discussion of jihad, Islamic ideology and, Exhibit A, Hasan’s Islamically correct slide show, is the question, too.

From today’s Austin American-Statesman:

U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, will introduce a bill today that would grant combatant status for victims of the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood.

“The attack on Fort Hood was a planned terrorist attack, the same as the attacks against our forces overseas,” Carter said in a news release Monday. “Our wounded and the families of those who lost their lives should receive the same treatment, recognition and benefits as if the attack occurred on a U.S. military installation in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Carter’s district includes Fort Hood.

If granted this distinction, victims’ families would be eligible for greater compensation. The families of soldiers killed in the shooting would receive the maximum life insurance benefit, and permanently disabled victims would receive more disability payments. Currently, families of the soldiers killed are to receive a $100,000 tax-free death gratuity, according to an Army spokesman at Fort Hood.

In addition, military victims would be eligible for the Purple Heart under the bill, and civilians injured or killed could receive its civilian equivalent, the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom, which was established by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 to honor the victims of the attacks on the Pentagon. The medal is usually given to Department of Defense employees, but the secretary of defense has the authority to bestow it upon any civilian killed or injured defending the country.

Carter spokesman John Stone said the congressman hopes the measure passes quickly.

“We anticipate this will be a noncontroversial bill, and we may be able to convince the committee chairmen to expedite the process,” Stone said.

Non-controversial? I hope he’s right.

Diana West speaks to IFPS-Canada

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The post below ripped word for word from IFPS.org

I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Diana West at a conference on freedom of speech and religion in Washington D.C. last week. To make the conversation short enough for the youtube limit, I removed most of my end of it. I opened by asking Diana about what she thought of the fellow from Harvard un-inviting the founder of the Minute Men to a debate at the last moment. The Fox video interview of that student is here.

Hopefully that makes her answer a tad less cryptic.

The rest of my chat, I replaced with single line questions in text.

Comments welcomed.

James

Muslims Threaten Breslin Owner After He Laughs Off Bar Demand

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H/T Diana West:

102809breslin.jpg
Katie Sokoler/Gothamist

The lovely-looking restaurant and bar The Breslin begins lunch service tomorrow, and co-owner Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) is planning on serving alcohol despite objections from the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street. Earlier this month the mosque’s leaders called a meeting with Friedman at The Ace Hotel, where The Breslin is located, and asked, “Can you move the bar?” Friedman’s response makes us want to hurry over to The Breslin right now for a dram of Laphroaig to show our support (and drown out the voices):

I laughed. And the guy said, “Oh, you think that’s funny?” And I said, “Yeah, that is funny, that is really funny, because we’re not going to move the bar just because you discovered we’re serving booze.” Can you name one restaurant in New York that doesn’t serve booze? I said, “This is the United States of America and we’ll do whatever the fuck we want.” He said the mosque had suggested it couldn’t control the behavior of “a few bad eggs”; i.e., we could get a brick through our window.

Friedman notified police of the threat, but just to show he’s not a hard-hearted man, that it’s not all dollars and cents, he agreed to put a curtain over the windows so devout Muslims wouldn’t be corrupted by the sight of infidel inebriation. But the curtain hasn’t arrived yet, so over the weekend he actually taped paper over the windows to hide a gay wedding. A volunteer at the mosque says city law forbids serving liquor within 200 feet of a place of worship and that “not more than 200 feet is between the mosque and the bar.”

But Ace Hotel developer Andrew Zobler tells The Observer, “The law is clear that in order for that to apply it has to be an exclusively dedicated house of worship, and at their space they have both residences and a restaurant, so basically, because of those uses the law allowed there to be a bar within 200 feet. Everyone was aware of that when the liquor license was granted.” And Friedman adds, “They can threaten, but they can’t really stop us.” Yeah, heh, what are these devout, pissed-off Muslims gonna do?

Another article on the same story below the fold. I believe this is a much more important story than perhaps even terrorism as we are more familiar with it, as this type of extortion and intimidation wide spread can collapse a culture and civilization such as ours much much faster than occasional attack.

Eeyore for Vlad

Mosque ‘unhappy’ with booze served at New York resto-bar, threatened brick toss

By Grace | October 30, 2009

From The New York Observer

Spotted Piglet Hiccups: Boozy Breslin Clashes With Mosque

October 27, 2009 | 8:00 p.m
Ken Friedman.

The much-hyped, soon-to-open Breslin restaurant, situated in the 12-story Ace Hotel on Broadway and 29th, is giving members of the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street some agita. “Five times a day, there’s a hundred cabs on the street—the good news is you can always get a cab,” co-owner Ken Friedman told the Transom the other evening. He said some mosque visitors “object to seeing people drink alcohol.” Continue Reading →

Cartoon Convergence at Yale

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Written by: Diana West

Friday, October 02, 2009 8:53 AM

Somehow, and I do not know how, both Kurt Westergaard and Jytte Klausen ended up speaking at separate appearances at Yale yesterday, also the same day the alumni group, the Yale Committe for a Free Press, sent off a second letter to Yale protesting the censorship of all Mohammed imagery, including Westergaard’s cartoon, in Klausen’s Yale University Press book The Cartoons That Shook the World.

Not exactly a harmonic covergence, but a convergence nonetheless.

What follows are highights from some of the reports tracking these criss-crossing events.

I’m going to start with the good news — the excellent letter from Yale alumni that I did not write but happily signed:

Simply stated, Yale must not be the arbiter of what is “safe” to publish. Such censorship corrodes the intellectual freedom that is the foundation of the entire university community. It also violates Yale’s own explicit policy: “Above all, every member of the university has an obligation to permit free expression in the university. . . . Every official of the university . . . has a special obligation to foster free expression and to ensure that it is not obstructed.”

The core American value of a free press transcends political viewpoints. Indeed, Yale’s surrender to unknown potential belligerents drew strong objection from many quarters, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the PEN American Center. Also protesting Yale’s action was the National Coalition Against Censorship on behalf of many constituent groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Middle East Studies Association.

Even closer to home, Sarah Ruden, whose translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was published by Yale, announced that she will no longer allow Yale to bid on her future works. In her own words, “Yale Press, after breaking a crucial relationship of trust with an author’s mind and work, should be called a lickspittle of fanatics and forfeit any respect or consideration from other authors.”

In a world where light and truth are under siege, the entire Yale community has a vital stake in preserving a free press. Fortunately, it is not too late, and not too difficult, to reverse the mistake that was made here.

We formally request that the Yale Corporation direct the Press to reprint Professor Klausen’s book with the censored material restored. This will bring a fitting end to this controversy. Lest it be said that the Corporation has never before exercised such direct authority over the Press, we must recall that never before has the Press censored an author’s work prior to publication. Restoring the censored material will also allow Professor Klausen’s book work to serve as a tangible reminder that freedom of the press cannot be taken for granted.

Alack, no such stirring stuff coming from the current crop of Yalies.

Indeed, the opinions that dominate the public space at Yale on the related matter of Westergaard’s visit to Yale to speak and answer questions are either Islamic voices, which believe Westergaard should not have been invited, or dhimmi voices, which pay lip service to free speech and take a stand on not exercising it. The following  op-ed by senior Matthew Ellison, which ran in yesterday’s Yale Daily News, sums the latter mindset up:

Yale and its students have thus far stood as a paragon of restraint amid the chaos. Unfortunately, through this international brouhaha, restraint has been the exception, not the rule.

This begins with the cartoonists.

Tsk, tsk — no self-restraint, those political cartoonists. Don’t they know better than to, in Westergaard’s case, take note of and actually illustrate the repeatedly, openly, brazenly made connections between violence and Islam, as expressed by Islamic terrorists and Islamic authorities alike? (It’s not just Abu Qatada time again, it’s also Imam Qaradawi time, because he is a world- famous Islamic authority who preaches about Mohammed the jihad model — which Kurt’s cartoon, by the way, perfectly and accurately captures.) Back to the op-ed by the Yale senior. Continue Reading →