The Weekly Wilders Round-Up

7 02 2010

Alright, here goes.

Public Secrets – Free speech on trial in The Netherlands

Fjordman, for Gates of Vienna – Eppur Si Muove!

The Telegraph – Geert Wilders to test British free speech with anti-Muslim film screening

[ Translated, so the English doesn’t do it justice ] Dutch Politics – Process Against Geert Wilders – Open letter to Geert Wilders – PVV New Right Radical – and Wilders rightly addressed

ADF Alliance Alert – Video: Geert Wilders opening words in court

Gates of Vienna – Condemning Geert Wilders:

We’ve posted a couple of recent articles on the pre-cooked report by the IVA Research and Consultancy on the “radical right” nature of the PVV and Geert Wilders. The Dutch government commissioned the “scientific” study, obtained exactly the result it desired, and released the report just in time for the second phase of the Wilders trial.Het Vrije Volk about the now-notorious report. A caveat to our readers: this is very thick stuff. Editing it into something that approaches normal English was an immense challenge, and was impossible to achieve completely.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from

Most of the text below consists of excerpts from the official report. I have no idea whether the original Dutch version was written in the same sort of dense bureau-speak that VH’s translation and my editing produced, but there is no doubt that the raw material justifying a conviction of Geert Wilders may be readily found in the turgid prose of this document.

Read the rest here.

Vlad Tepes – Fjordman: Galileo and Geert Wilders.

Free Canuckistan – Steynicle 405nd

Jihad Watch – Jihad: The Political Third Rail — Inaugural event of the Freedom Defense Initiative!

Atlas Shrugs – Teaching Hate aka “Pure Islam” – and The Organization of the Islamic Conference Daily Round-Up of World Bullying

The International Free Press Society – Diana West: Fort Hood Vs. Geert – The Wilders trial: Torquemada would be proud – Geert Wilders delivers in opening statement for his freedom – The Wilders Trial: Voices from Europe – and Charges against Geert Wilders (English)

The Brussels Journal – Geert Wilders vs. The Multicultural Inquisition

Gates of Vienna – …And No More PvdA Lawyers! – and The Demonic Nature of Politically Correct “Science”

Barrel Strength – The trial of Geert Wilders

EuropeNews – Condemning Geert Wilders

Arutz Sheva – Geert Wilders: Israel Protecting West:

IsraelNN.com) In a recent speech in New York City, Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, who became famous for a film on radical Islam, credited Israel with protecting the West. “The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.”

Read the rest here.

The International Civil Liberties Alliance – Eppur Si Muove: Fjordman Compares The Trial Of Geert Wilders With The Trial Of Galileo

The International Civil Liberties Alliance – The Death Knell of Freedom of Expression in Austria

New Testament News – Geert Wilders’s Brilliant Defense Speech In Court

Take Our Country Back – Geert Wilders: Free Speech on Trial

PVV website – Major Victory for Geert Wilders in European Elections

Pajamas Media – ‘I Have No Regrets’: An Interview with Geert Wilders

EuropeNews – Geert Wilders vs. The Multicultural Inquisit – and Geert Wilders: Israel Protecting West

Vlad Tepes – Wilders’ Trial and Europe’s New Dark Age

Radio Netherlands Worldwide – Curiosity, anger and the need to be heard

Israel Matzav – Geert Wilders on Israel

Radio Netherlands Worldwide – Party furious over spoof Wilders murder film:

The Freedom Party of Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has reacted furiously to the trailer of an online movie spoofing a murder attempt on Mr Wilders.

The trailer is available on the website of publicly-funded radio station FunX, which targets a young urban audience. Freedom Party MP Martin Bosma has said his party will ask Media Minister Ronald Plasterk whether “an over-subsidised multi-culti radio station” should be receiving government money if it is putting out “suggestive” movies. A government spokesperson explained to reporters that there is no preventive censorship in the Netherlands. Only after a broadcaster commits an offence can legal action be taken, according to the spokesperson.

Read the rest here.

From the comments – An open letter

EuropeNews – The Death Knell of Freedom of Expression in Austria

Hudson New York – Geert Wilders: No Fair Trial

The International Free Press Society – Court Rejects Wilders’ Witnesses – and How Do You Say “Kangaroo Court” in Dutch?

Islamization Watch – Anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders says he’s being denied a fair trial; Court would not be out of place in a dictatorship

Kelowna.com – ‘It would be an utter calamity if his ideas were to be embraced’

Saber Point – Geert Wilders is Western Civilization on Trial

Islam In Europe – Commentary By Snouck – The Wilders trial will not commence until July:

At VFR Lawrence Auster wrote:

Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any news on any proceedings in the Geert Wilders trial for today, February 4, neither at Gates of Vienna, nor at the Wilders on Trial website. Stunning development: the Wilders trial has been adjourned for four months–correction: for up to nine months.

Snouck: I mailed Mr. Auster as follows:

The court has requested Mr. Geert Wilders to provide verhinderdata (can’t-make-it-dates) from the three witnesses whom he’s been permitted to call. The trial will resume in June if I am not mistaken. My notes say three to four months from now.

See how considerate and reasonable those who-have-been-appointed-over-us are, you cowboys?

LA replies:

Thanks for this information, which is entirely unexpected. I had no idea that the trial, which began less than two days ago, was about to adjourn for four months. I thought that the January 20 session had been a preliminary, procedural session, and that the trial proper had begun on February 3, as various sites including VFR reported on February 3. Everyone was geared up for the big event, which now we learn won’t take place until the summer, if then. I can’t imagine why this basic information was not reported or mentioned at any of the interested websites. And, by the way, what basis do we have for criticizing the American media’s non-coverage of the trial, when the trial won’t begin until June?

If there had to be a delay of four months in order to schedule the testimony of three witnesses, then it would not be unreasonable to suppose that if all of Wilders’s eighteen proposed witnesses had been accepted, there would have been a delay of twenty-four months. A distant observer may be forgiven for thinking that the Wilders trial is shaping up to be the Dutch equivalent of the interminable case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House.

LA continues:

I’ve asked Snouck where he got the information that the trial had been adjourned until June, since I see no hint of that at any of the sites that are linked here.

Snouck writes:

This information was provided in the hearing. The full hearing in Dutch was put on the internet by the NOS (Dutch State Broadcasting) here at the end. I have not seen a full transcript in Dutch or English.

However, I made a mistake. Apologies. I listened to the last part of the hearing again and the trial will take place between 1st of June and 31 October. Not in June. The exact date will depend on the availability of the witnesses.

LA replies:

Unbelievable. So it will take place in June at the earliest.

Did the court give a reason for this enormous delay? Since when does it take up to nine months (from February 3 to October 31) to schedule the appearance of a a couple of witnesses at a trial? And if it takes this long to find a time when three witnesses can appear together, then a trial with 20 or 30 witnesses would take years.

And were the parties to the trial surprised by this announcement of the judges? Didn’t they think that the trial had begun and was not about to be adjourned for between four and nine months?

And why do you think that neither the news services nor the Wilders website reported this information?

Also, when did the judges make this announcement? On Wednesday the third, or on Thursday the fourth?

Snouck replies:

The announcement was made in the hearing on Wednesday the third. It was published on TV by the NOS and on the NOS website.

Snouck continues:

I am embarrassing myself. It is NOT in June the earliest. It is between 1st of July and 31 October.

The reason given is that one of the scientists (Wafa Sultan) has to come from a foreign country.

Mr. Wilders was angry about something. I do not think it is the delay though. He mentioned to the press his anger over the turning down of his requests for witnesses and experts. He said the Court does not want to hear the truth.

Other facts. The court says the trial will take five days when it will be held. Mr. Wilders may request more time. The Court might grant the request. Some part of it will be heard by a Rechter-Commissaris, a Court functionary. I do not fully grasp why or what that implies. Also the Court has yet to take decision on the status of the experts Mrs. Sultan, Mr. Jansen and Mr. Admiraal. Right now they call the experts “scientists.”

I do not know why the website of Mr. Wilders did not post the information. They seem to be posting mostly video. The PVV (Freedom Party) organisation is quite small and underfunded. I can speculate they are hard pressed to provide transcripts and translations.

LA replies:

Today is the fifth. The trial began on the third. I am dumbfounded that none of the reports about the first day of the trial–which were posted on the third–mentioned the adjournment.

In any case, now we now why, as I pointed out in an earlier entry, there was no news about the second day of the trial. There WAS no second day of the trial. But, notwithstanding all the attention that was focused on the trial, no one had told us that.

Paul Belien writes:

As I said in my previous email: court cases being adjourned for several months (sometimes years) is not unusual in Europe.

Europeans have waiting lists when they want to see the doctor, and they have to wait when they want to see a judge.

My guess is that in order to avoid Wilders electorally benefiting from a conviction, the Dutch establishment will try to delay the verdict until after the next general elections. The elections are due in June 2011 at the latest, but the general expectation is that they will take place this Fall.

LA replies:

Ok, but this still doesn’t explain why this information was not reported anywhere. Not at Wilders’s site. Not at GoV. Not in any news media source. It’s surreal.

And then the news only comes from a Dutch blogger who saw the Dutch TV broadcast of the trial and wrote to me about it, a day and a half after the various reports on the first day of the trial had been posted.

We were all treating with great importance, and got into a pitch of intensity about, this historic and fateful trial that was starting. And now it turns out that it’s not starting at all, and may not start for another nine months.

Paul Belien replies:

It was not reported because Europeans consider this to be normal. That is how courts work over here: as soon as it suits the court, they will send Wilders a message telling him when to come to court again. It may be next June, It may be next October, who knows.

(And GoV did not report it because they translate info which they get from Europe.)

You get annoyed and frustrated, but that is what the authorities hope to achieve: they want to get you so annoyed and frustrated that you just give up.

LA replies:

Yes, your explanation of the authorities’ modus operandi makes sense.

But that still doesn’t explain why Wilders’s site did not report this. Wilders’s supporters in America and England and elsewhere were closely following the trial. Didn’t Wilders’s staff think that this was slightly important information to tell us?

Paul Belien writes:

You say this is surreal. Of course it is surreal. The whole Wilders trial is surreal.

Want to live the surreal? Come and live in Europe.

Seen this?

“German homeschoolers get political asylum in the U.S.”

Wilders, too, will have to apply for asylum in the U.S. one day.

Paul Belien writes:

One more thing: the court also said that the witnesses will be heard behind closed doors.

LA replies:

Did they give a reason for this?

Paul Belien replies:

No.

Snouck adds:

Something I noticed watching and listening to the judge is that he appears scared or intimidated. He pays attention to the non-verbal reactions of Geert Wilders. I think he is part intimidated by Mr. Wilders and perhaps partly does not agree with some decisions he reads out.

And I agree with Mr. Paul Belien. Europeans see nothing unusual in the long wait, because we are used to them. That is one of the reasons why the wait was not reported.