Islam - Current Day > 13 Muslim Migrants arrested for setting fires in Greece; Houthis killing kids in Yemen; Dutch demand 12 years for cricketer; 11 workers killed by IED in Pakistan

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Greece: 13 Muslim migrants charged with arson as deadly wildfires erupt

AUG 29, 2023 8:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The Leftist elites insist that the wildfires are a result of “climate change” and use them to push their agenda to cripple Western economies and impoverish the people of Europe and North America. They simultaneously maintain that Europe needs ever more Muslim migrants. See how neatly it all works together? The migrants come in, they start the fires, the Left uses the fires to advance its agenda, and calls for more migrants.

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Fires in Greece: 13 Pakistani and Syrian migrants charged with attempted arson in Evros

Greek City Times, August 24, 2023:

Read below for the translation

The businessman of Albanian origin from Alexandroupoli gave his version of the incident with the 13 immigrants, identified as nationals of Pakistan and Syria, he kept illegally in a trailer….

“The place I was at is 200 meters from my business. Several improvised incendiary structures were found in the area. In the previous days, the suburbs and settlements of Alexandroupolis had been evacuated, as well as the University General Hospital. Naturally, all the residents had lost sleep and were on the alert for the fire to find us during the night.

“At the specific point between Alexandroupoli and S. Chile, behind a supermarket chain, I spotted a group of 13 people who were around an object and were trying to set it on fire while holding a balloon that smelled of gasoline, and they also brought a knife with them….

“I didn’t care if they were immigrants if they came from Albania, Syria, Greece or Australia. I am neither a fascist nor a racist, and I am sure that my fellow citizens of Alexandroupoli with whom I have been doing business all these years know that,” he concluded….

The 13 illegal immigrants, who were illegally kept in a trailer by three citizens in Alexandroupolis, are accused of attempted arson….

Yemen: Shi’ite Houthis murder three civilians, including

two children, in artillery shelling targeting Sunni village

AUG 29, 2023 3:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The Houthis once stormed the U.S. embassy and took hostages. But it isn’t a terror group, says Old Joe Biden’s regime.

Houthi shelling kills three civilians in southwestern Yemen

Yeni Safak, August 26, 2023

Three civilians were killed, including two children, in artillery shelling by Houthi rebels in Yemen’s southwestern Taiz province on Saturday, according to local sources.

Twelve people – eight women and four children – were also injured in the attack that targeted Al-Ghousha village, west of Taiz, the sources said.

There was no comment yet from the Houthi group on the report.

Government forces and Houthi rebels share control of Taiz, one of Yemen’s most populated provinces….

Dutch prosecutors demand 12-year sentence for Pakistani

cricketer who called for murder of Geert Wilders

AUG 31, 2023 8:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

Violence and murder are the prescribed consequences for anyone who insults Islam (cf. Qur’an 6:93, Abu Dawud Book 38 no 4348).

Pakistani ex-cricketer Khalid Latif offered $23,000(USD) to anybody who killed Geert Wilders, and now Dutch prosecutors are demanding a 12-year prison sentence for it.

The now-famous Qur’an burnings are precisely a protest against Islamic violence in the face of so-called “blasphemy” and other insults to Muslim sensibilities, as well as against the ongoing bullying of Westerners to comply with Islamic blasphemy laws.

Khalid Latif’s offer to pay to have Wilders murdered is yet another illustration of why under no circumstances should the West bow to such barbarism, but must stand firmly against it. Islamic encroachment into free societies happens through fear and intimidation, and only escalates with appeasement.

Time Magazine recently condemned the “wilting” of free speech in Denmark and Sweden amid new laws to appease Muslims (hysteria) in the face of Qur’an burnings.

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Dutch prosecutors demand 12-year sentence for Pakistani cricketer for call

to kill lawmaker Wilders

Associated Press, August 28, 2023:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch prosecutors demanded a 12-year prison sentence Tuesday for a former Pakistani cricketer accused of incitement to murder firebrand anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders.

The suspect, identified by Wilders as Khalid Latif, is accused of offering a bounty of some 21,000 euros ($23,000) to anybody who killed Wilders.

Latif did not appear in the high-security courtroom near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the trial. He is believed to be in Pakistan.

Prosecutors did not name Latif, but said in a statement that a video posted online in 2018 showed a famous Pakistan cricketer offering the money for killing Wilders. The lawmaker has lived under round-the-clock protection for years because of repeated threats to his life sparked by his fierce criticism of Islam.

The threat came after Wilders said he would organize a competition of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims consider any depictions of Muhammad to be blasphemous. Ultimately, the contest did not go ahead, but the plan sparked outrage (read: hysteria) in the Muslim world.

“The video message was extra toxic because it was issued during a period in which there was a lot of hatred and anger towards Geert Wilders,” the Public Prosecution Service in The Hague said in its written statement.

The prosecution office said that killing Wilders would not just have “caused unbearable pain to his loved ones. It would also have been an attack on the rule of law itself.”

Wilders said in court that a conviction would send a “powerful signal to all other others who issue threats: we won’t accept it.”…..

They should go to Denmark where they are more acceptable.

Pakistan: Jihadis murder eleven laborers riding in truck to construction project

AUG 30, 2023 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Ever wonder why countries that are hotbeds of jihad are generally economic basket cases? Here’s one reason.

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Militant attack kills 11 labourers in North Waziristan: PM Kakar

Reuters, August 20, 2023

PESHAWAR: Eleven labourers were killed in a militant attack in northwestern Pakistan…

Security and police officials in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said a suspected improvised explosive device detonated, tearing through a truck carrying the workers to a construction project in Waziristan, near the Afghan border….

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

Pakistan has seen a resurgence of attacks by militants since last year when a ceasefire between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the government broke down….

‘Serious Breach’ or ‘Blackmail’: What's EU Article 7 & Why has it been Used Against Orban's Hungary?

Viktor Orban before the MEP vote on Wednesday / European Union

What has Hungary done to deserve the European Union’s “nuclear option”, and will it suffer any consequences beyond a harsh rebuke?

What is the sinister-sounding Article 7?

The article – one of eight - is part of the Treaty on European Union, which serves as its equivalent of a constitution, and has existed in various forms since 1992. It is a mechanism for internally punishing any of the 28 states that pose “clear risk of a serious breach” of the “values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.”

While it cannot be used to expel an EU member, a country can be stripped of its voting rights, and turned into a humiliated outcast at every European meeting. More likely, any specific proposed sanctions would incentivize changes to avoid that fate.

Who can invoke it?

This procedure serves as a perfect illustration of the European Union’s convoluted and slow decision-making style. There are at least nine distinct steps between a supposed breach being identified, and a country being actually sanctioned, with seven separate votes needed from the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament, requiring thresholds from one-third, to two-thirds, to four-fifths, to a unanimous agreement, to something known as a qualified majority.

Ok, let’s make it simpler - what are the key steps taken against Hungary?

Proceedings were initiated against Budapest in May 2017, and next substantive findings were collected by Dutch Green MEP Judith Sargentini.

A Green Party MEP? Gosh, I can't imagine any ideological conflict there!

Judith Sargentini / Genevieve Engel/European Union

Her report, published in April, just after Viktor Orban won his third consecutive election, accused his government of 12 separate types of violations. These range from strong-arming the constitution, the judiciary, and the media, to restricting academic freedom by trying to force out George Soros’s European University, to mistreating minorities, both internal such as the Roma, and the incoming migrants.

On Wednesday, 448 MEPs  voted for (and 197 against) the findings of the report, with the Strasbourg chamber declaring that Budapest is in “serious and persistent breach” of the EU principles.

What does Hungary have to say for itself?

Viktor Orban’s government has framed the process as an ideological attack on its nationalist, conservative values, and an act of revenge for its refusal to accept migration policies dictated by Brussels. Hungarians say the specific alleged violations are a pretext.

/ Genevieve Engel/European Union

Orban had one last futile attempt to sway MEPs on Tuesday, and used the platform to accuse parliamentarians of “insulting” and “blackmailing” Hungary, as well as trying to deny it its hard-won democratic rights to decide how to run their own country.

He also reiterated that Hungary is a Christian country that retains the right to preserve its own culture in the face of mass migration, and will continue to defend its borders.

In the aftermath of the vote, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto called the decision “fraudulent.”

What about the EU majority?

Leading Brussels figures are doing little to hide a general distaste for Orban’s politics, as much as his specific attempts to concentrate his power domestically.

Mina Andreeva✔

@Mina_Andreeva

 .@JunckerEU on #Hungary: “If I was a member of the @Europarl_EN, I would have voted in favour of #Article7. @EU_Commission is using the tools we have, launching infringement procedures against countries that don’t respect #EUlaw. Am in harmony with today’s decision.”

The most powerful EU official, Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker, spent a good part of his final state of the union speech on Wednesday taking barely-concealed potshots at Orban, when he talked of “overrated nationalism that hates others” and called for his Fidesz party to be expelled from its center-right faction in the Europarliament.

Guy Verhovstadt on Wednesday. / Genevieve Engel/European Union

Well-known Brussels politician Guy Verhofstadt has also made no secret that many in Europe consider Orban part of an existential populist threat.

“Orbán and [Polish politician Jaroslaw] Kaczyński are trying to do what Trump did with the Republican Party. The alt-right is trying to take over the EU from within. All pro-Europeans must unite to prevent this,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Any prominent Orban sympathisers abroad?

Perhaps peeved by its own battle with Eurocrats, the UK’s Conservative Party was the most prominent mainstream force to back Orban during the vote.

Mark Stone✔
@Stone_SkyNews
Replying to @Stone_SkyNews
All British @Conservatives MEPs (who are members of the @ecrgroup) voted ‘with’ Orban - and against disciplinary action but importantly - not, says @ddalton40, because they approve of Orban behaviour. They don’t. They believe the motion is ‘misguided & counter-productive’.👇


Otherwise, Orban has plenty of admirers among Euroskeptics.


Geert Wilders✔
@geertwilderspvv
 A bloody shame.
Hungary is the example for all EU countries and Orban is a hero and deserves the Nobel Prize. 
He closed the borders for Islamic fortune seekers. He protects his citizens against terror and defends the identity of his country. 
The EU is fraud.   #NEXIT


Bloomberg✔
@business
BREAKING: EU lawmakers vote in favor of action against Hungary for undermining the bloc's values https://bloom.bg/2Nbz1mM 


Nigel Farage✔
@Nigel_Farage
 European Parliament votes to remove Hungary’s voting rights, the authoritarian grip of the EU gets even tighter.

What now?

Here is the deal: for all the bluster, the EU has never gone through with Article 7. And the one time it legally had the option – against Austria’s populists back in 2000 – it quickly inserted extra necessary steps into the process to make an actual invocation less likely.

While Article 7 proceedings have never got as far as the MEP vote before Hungary, it is the next step that looks impassible. The European Council, which represents the heads of all the 28 states, would have to agree with the MEPs, and do so unanimously.

A float satirizing the alliance between Poland and Hungary during the political carnival in Dusseldorf in November last year. / Reuters

Several countries are almost guaranteed to veto this step. Poland, undergoing a near-identical EU investigation, which Hungary has said it will veto, is certain to disagree, as are Hungary’s other Visegrad Four allies - Czechia and Slovakia - and more EU states opposed to multiculturalism, migration and potential Brussels meddling in internal affairs.

In fact, in view of today’s proceedings, even the Conservative-controlled UK will likely vote against the Article 7 invocation.

So, what we are actually seeing is not the “show trial” spoken of by Farage, but more a public shaming. And since it won’t be able to effectively make Hungary change course, it will likely only harden its opposition to EU, and boost Orban’s popularity as a protector of his nation's sovereignty at home.

Netherlands Chooses 4 more Years on the Road to Cultural Suicide

ANALYSIS - Europe's mainstream sighs in relief

over Dutch election

Famously laid-back citizens not yet so disenchanted with

politics that they would turn right

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, right, of the VVD Liberal party and Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders of the PVV Party take part in a meeting at the Dutch Parliament Thursday after the general election. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Margaret Evans
Europe correspondent, CBC

You could almost hear the mass exhaling across European capitals when the Dutch election exit polls were announced on Wednesday evening.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had managed to win more seats than the maverick politician Geert Wilders, who made his name by promising to ban Islam and march the Netherlands out of the European Union in a "Nexit."

Never mind that Rutte actually won fewer seats than his last win and that Wilders gained five, making his PVV the second-largest bloc in the Dutch Parliament. 

And never-mind that Rutte made a secret deal with Merkel and Turkey to accept hundreds of thousands of the least educated and least healthy Syrian refugees as chosen by Turkey.

This was an election that came to be about beating Wilders.

"It is an evening in which the Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said, 'Halt' against the wrong sort of populism," Rutte told his supporters at a victory party.

Populism is bad; Islam is good!??!

You could just picture mainstream politicians in Paris and Berlin uncurling their toes and unclenching hands that must have been covering their eyes for weeks as Wilders led the polls. Now it was safe to look. Their worst fears had not come to pass.

Demonstrators outside the Dutch House of Representatives celebrate the election results on Thursday. (Michael Kooren/Reuters)

They celebrate with good reason. Even though Wilders would likely not have been able to form a government given his lack of political allies, it would have been a huge blow for one of the EU's founding member states to have anointed an anti-EU party.

The 28-nation bloc is still reeling from Britain's decision to leave the EU and U.S. President Donald Trump's apparent intense dislike of Brussels and its Eurocrats.

Merkel faces her own challenge

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the first to call Rutte to congratulate him, faces her own challenge from the right in elections this spring.

Most of the white-collar workers and students I spoke to as they cycled or walked along Amsterdam canals the morning after the vote professed relief at the result, even though Rutte's Freedom and Democracy Party wasn't everyone's first choice.

"The most important thing is the PVV didn't get the most votes, so that's positive," said Joost Antonis.

"I'm glad that I live in a city that thinks that way."

It was a reaffirmation for many of Holland's famously laid-back citizens that their fellow citizens have not become so disenchanted with the political system that they would vote overwhelmingly for a man who has no problems calling Moroccans "scum" and equating the Koran with Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Members of the VVD party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte celebrate after the first exit poll results of the Dutch parliamentary elections were announced in The Hague on Wednesday. (Patrick Post/Associated Press)

But on some levels Rutte's win is a hollow victory, say analysts. Because his strategy for beating the right-wing populist in the last weeks of the campaign was to adopt some of Wilders' own aggressive language on immigration and outsiders.

"It helped him, clearly," says Floris Vermeulen, who chairs the department of political science at the University of Amsterdam. "Very important is the open letter [Rutte] published in newspapers before the elections," he said.

"It's the same message for everyone," said the full-page newspaper ad in January.  "If you don't like it here, leave the country. Go away."

Part of Wilders' appeal to some Dutch voters has been his insistence that immigrants threaten Dutch traditions such as gay rights, legalized prostitution and an emphasis on equality.

A smokescreen for racism?

His critics call it a smokescreen for racism.

"I think Islam and freedom are not compatible, but we are a free country," Wilders told reporters on election day. "You are free to go and leave whenever you want.  So that's my message to [Muslims]."

Wilders also said the "genie" of what he describes as patriotism was out of the bottle, whatever the results of the election would be.

Vermeulen says Wilders is likely bitterly disappointed.

"I mean, what does he need to really win? There was the refugee crisis, there was Trump in the United States, there was many signs that populism could indeed succeed in the Netherlands.  And he did very weird in the campaign.  Almost completely silent."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Berlin on Wednesday. She too faces a challenge from the right in elections this spring. (Markus Schreiber/Associated Press)

Some Dutch voters have always relegated Wilders to the margins.

"I think Wilders has no importance because Wilders has no party, really," said Sander Brouwer, a retired teacher in his 70s.

"He is only himself. If he discriminated against Catholics the same way as Islam I should perhaps agree with him," he added with a glint in his eye.

Wilders has been a fixture on the political scene in the Netherlands for several years and there is no indication that he plans to withdraw.   

Vermeulen says the election result, when taken with one of the little-reported developments of the campaign, sets the stage for divisive times ahead.

A new immigrant party arises

 A new immigrant party called Denk ("Think" in Dutch) advocating tolerance and a register of hate speech, has entered the parliament for the first time, winning three seats.

"Traditional parties were unable to capture or represent those immigrant voters. And so they decided to do it for themselves. 

This should be of great concern to the Dutch. Immigrants rejecting all traditional parties in the Dutch parliament, which is a rejection of the Dutch way of life, start their own party which will grow in size and influence very rapidly over the next few parliaments and it will be they who influence the ruling parties rather than the Wilders. Their influence will look a lot like Sharia. But, if that's what the people want...

In the long run it shows that polarization has increased immensely in the Netherlands."

Many voters frustrated with larger mainstream parties turned to smaller new parties on the scene, a development that could make unity more difficult to achieve.

One thing the Dutch are not is disengaged.  Voter turnout was apparently 80 per cent.