Wilders – Out of Coalition Talks as a Threat to Democracy

Dutch media has been reporting that Wilders will not be a part of any government coalition, mostly due to the simple fact that Wilders is a threat to democracy and is unwilling to “change his ways”.

According to the Volkskrant, during a parliamentary debate on progress made towards creating a new cabinet after the June 9 general election on Tuesday night, Rutte asked Wilders seven times to join him. Wilders was asked by several party leaders during the debate to answer the point about democracy made by CDA leader Maxime Verhagen but he declined to comment the Financieele Dagblad explained and quoted Verhagen as saying that they will not join the VVD and PVV because of the potential threat to democracy.

Labour leader Job Cohen said during the debate that Wilders’ refusal to talk means the door has now been firmly closed on a right-wing cabinet.

Quoting David Kilcullen’s calling the decision to invade Iraq “stupid”

David Kilcullen is a modern professional military strategist recognized by many.  A former Australian Army officer, he was later as a civilian one of the Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser’s of General Patraeus that resulted formed actual results in Iraq.  He has worked for the US State Department, is a major contributor to programs in counter-terrorism and is an advisor to a number of western governments and NATO.

What I like is he speaks his mind regardless of the politics and is in a position to do so.  He battles radicalism in the form of terrorism and stupid political input in the most serious of situations – war.  

My partial quote from Kilcullen early last year (6 March 2009) is about his view about deciding to invade Iraq.  He has all but admitted that in a private conversation (that had gone public) was that he called it “f*cking stupid”.   He chose, to clarify the reasons for his opinion in a better format.  I suggest this in the Small Wars Journal and I suggest for context purposes that you read the entire item by him called “Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning”.  Full acknowledgement to the author and Small Wars Journal. 

Spencer Ackerman, in yesterday’s Washington Independent, claims I told him the Iraq war was “f*cking stupid”. He did not seek to clear that quote with me, and I would not have approved it if he had. If he HAD sought a formal comment, I would have told him what I have said publicly before: in my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. But the task of the moment is not to cry over spilt milk, rather to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach, and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.

Anyone who knows me has been well aware of my position on Iraq for years. When I went to Iraq in 2007 (and on both previous occasions) it was to end the war, by suppressing the violence and defeating the insurgency. (Note: I said END the war, not abandon it half-way through, leaving the Iraqis to be slaughtered. When we invaded Iraq, we took on a moral and legal responsibility for its people’s wellbeing. Regardless of anyone’s position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient)…The question of whether we were right to invade Iraq is a fascinating debate for historians and politicians, and a valid issue for the American people to consider in an election year. As it happens, I think it was a mistake. But that is not my key concern. The issue for practitioners in the field is not to second-guess a decision from six years ago, but to get on with the job at hand which, I believe, is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, and which relied for their effectiveness on the extra troop numbers of the Surge, ARE succeeding and need to be supported.

 

The Forbidden Love/Lie Saga Revisited

The Best Seller that proved to be a fraud....

If you do not know the story, there is this author called Norma Khouri which is the pen name for Norma Bagain Toliopoulos nee Bagain, born in Jordan.  She is famous or should we say infamous for her book called Forbidden Love (called Honor Lost in the United States of America).

Forbidden Love/Honor Lost is a novel that Khouri said is based on the real-life and death story of a Jordanian Muslim girl murdered in so-called honor-killing by her father because she fell in love with a Christian soldier.  In the story the authorities let the case go because it was “honor related”.    It was a best-seller, Khouri was acclaimed as a fearless feminist exposer of the horrors of life in Arab Muslim countries and the anti-Islam community started shouting louder than ever.  This was 2003, “presenting herself as a 34-year-old Catholic Jordanian virgin with a price on her head, Khouri moved to Australia and whooped it up on the literary and media circuits for a year before Sydney Morning Herald journalist Malcolm Knox exposed the work as little more than a pack of lies. (Variety Magazine)  Khouri actually comes from Chicago, where she is known to the FBI as a married mother under different aliases.

Her book and scam was identified by Malcolm Knox and subject of a very well presented documentary film called “Forbidden Lie$” that exposes the entire process.  The LA Times review of the film says some interesting things:

As exposed by an Australian journalist, “Forbidden Love” looks to be what one authority calls “a complete fabrication from top to bottom.” Not only are many factual details about Amman wrong, but Jordanian human rights advocates and activists who have spent their lives fighting honor killings convincingly claim that Dalia’s death never even happened.

More than that, far from being a “married to the cause” zealot, Khouri turns out to be a woman with a husband and two children and a complicated past: She’s been on the FBI’s radar as a suspect in real-estate fraud in Chicago, her home before she moved to Australia.

I have brought up this saga, though already convincingly condemned as a fraud and fabrication for multiple reasons, because of the unrealistic vision it gives of the reality of life of women in Jordan and the Arab/Muslim world as a whole.  How such “rubbish” has played into the hands of the agenda-based hate-crowd, the self-proclaimed anti-jihad movement and is still being quoted and assumed as accurate, when it is not.   Additionally it hurts, gives no support nor recognition to the real battles faced by women in these countries.  Honor-Killing, which really should be called Cultural-Based-Killings certainly exists, globally and the majority of it is not actually from the Arab-Turkic world but the Sub-Continent and because that does not help these agenda scum, the ugly reality is neither shown nor given the respect and concern deserved.  It is done for profit and fame by Khouri and the ugly agenda crowd.   As Wiki states in its summary of the film Forbidden Lie$:

Ironically, Khouri’s first critics are Jordanian women, feminists who, when interviewed for the documentary, take issue with western perspectives of Muslim women as victims with no control over their lives. One of the critics visits an office for assisting victims of abuse. The director of the facility remarks that they have received no donations from royalties on Khouri’s book.

Many details of the story are contrasted against demonstrated fact. Khouri’s description of geographic and other details of Jordan are wrong (hotels, a gym and various businesses mentioned in the story did not exist during the period in which the events of the book occur).

Khouri’s claims of restrictions requiring women to wear the hijab when traveling outside the home, and that women can never leave without a male escort are contrasted with street scenes showing women traveling unescorted and uncovered. Nobody living on the street where Dalia was murdered remembers such a crime occurring. Dalia’s father could not remain out on bail pending his prosecution because murderers in Jordan are not given bail, nor are they tried in Shariah court. The documentary crew visits the Palestine Hospital where Khouri claims Dalia’s body had been taken. Some details of the hospital are consistent with those of the book, but many are clearly wrong – including Khouri’s description of the morgue.

Honor-Killings (Cultural-Based-Killings) is a global issue of which half the number of incidents occur in South Asia alone, not that some want you to know that....

The above photo, of a 2008 Indian village killings, will get almost no recognition in the global press but in fact is more common than all the Middle-East and West Asia put together, possibly half of global figures.  If anything, the shameful political, moral and other hate agendas that target Islam as the only source of such horrors results in the deliberate down-playing, lack of recognition and denial of the total problem and in particular those victims in South Asia.   Like the hate-monger and hypocrit Phillis Chesler, a mental-health professional who willingly fabricates and abuses context to produce so-called “reports” that tells us it is mostly and almost only Muslims that do it – on memory of the thousands of victims world-wide, we must not only reject them – we must condemn and expose them!

Dedicated to the real brave pioneers in equality and human rights....

...... and those who stand-up and remember the victims.