The Danes, Gelded
by Mark Steyn
Mark's Monday Notebook
August 28, 2023
Many years ago, my compatriot Ezra Levant observed that one day the Danish Mohammed cartoons would come to be seen as a more consequential event than 9/11. Not in the overall death toll, obviously - although the corpse count of the Motoons continues to rise (Charlie Hebdo et al) - but in its lessons for a free society's enemies. 9/11 led to two decades of ineffectual warmongering in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the goatherds with fertilizer soon had the measure of that. But the cartoons and the west's reaction to them told the world that we would not defend core liberties such as freedom of speech. You don't need to blow up our skyscrapers; we're happy to surrender to subtler pressures.
And here we are eighteen years later, with the Danish Government proposing to criminalize the burning of the Koran and make it an offense punishable by fines and/or imprisonment.
So:
~In 2005 Jyllands-Posten, one of the biggest-selling newspapers in Denmark, as part of an exploration of the state of free speech, was willing to publish a dozen cartoons of Mohammed by prominent cartoonists.
~In 2010, on the fifth anniversary, I was given an award by the Danish Free Press Society and appeared on stage with the society's founder Lars Hedegaard and fellow freespeechers from across the Continent: the Norwegian comedienne Shabana Rehman, the Dutch cartoonist Nekschot, the Swedish artist Lars Vilks and the Danish-Iranian actor Farshad Kholghi.
If those names don't ring a lot of bells for you, here's the scorecard so far:
*Shabana Rehman's family restaurant was firebombed, and she was forced to live under 24/7 police protection, which is not terribly conducive to a career in observational comedy. She died of cancer last year at the age of forty-six;
*Nekschot was already under so many death threats that he could only appear at public engagements with his face obscured and unidentifiable. So in Copenhagen that day he chose to wear a burqa. Funny, but not quite secure enough. He had already been arrested for "hate speech" with the Dutch authorities openly taunting him about the impending loss of his anonymity. The year after our appearance in Denmark, he gave up cartooning and went into hiding. I assume he is still alive;
*Lars Vilks was speaking at an event on art and blasphemy when a Muslim opened fire with a semi-automatic. A Danish film director was killed and three police officers. The jihad boy then went to a nearby synagogue and killed a second man. Lars retired from public life, and died in 2021 with two of his security detail when their unmarked police car crashed;
*oh, and our host Lars Hedegaard was shot at point blank range, but fortunately by an incompetent. So Lars survived, but his opponent managed to flee to Turkey.
Most of the above did not impinge on the media in a big way: There were no celebrities wearing #JeSuisLars buttons. Nevertheless, of the six who were on stage that day in 2010, there would be only two of us today: me and Farshad Kholghi, last men standing in an Agatha Christie for the jihad set - And Then There Were None. Come to think of it, that might make a blackly comic play, or novel, or film... But good luck finding a publisher or producer.
~In 2015, on the tenth anniversary, I was back in Copenhagen, this time with Douglas Murray:
Like Mark Steyn I've been doing these 'defend free speech' gigs for some years now and as Mark recently mordantly observed, I also sometimes wonder why I keep ascending up the running order only to realise that it's because everybody who used to be ahead of me is either in hiding or dead.
As Douglas also remarked:
The event will be in the Danish Parliament apparently because it's the only place in Denmark sufficiently secure enough that – we hope – the now traditional gunmen won't be able to get in and shoot everyone.
As Marie said, the walls of Christiansborg are "thick and massive". However, I woke up on the morning of the event to find that both the US State Department and the British Foreign Office had issued travel advisories warning their nationals to steer clear of both Copenhagen in general and Christiansborg Palace in particular.
Indeed. You don't want to be caught in the shootout at a free-speech event, do you? I doubt either the US Congress or the British Parliament would have agreed (under any circumstances) to permit a conference to be held under a giant portrait of Mohammed [top right] at the heart of the Capitol or the Palace of Westminster. Katrine, Marie and a small but determined group fought hard against the remorseless, suffocating urge to appease. And to be sitting in the heart of the Danish establishment with the Big Mo scowling above me was itself a modestly encouraging sign.
But it was on a day without many others. As Katrine alludes to above, Jyllands-Posten marked the tenth anniversary by re-publishing a perfect facsmile of the newspaper page as it had appeared in 2005 - except with white space where the cartoons had been.
"So sad," said Katrine. "Violence works."
That day, I was protected, as I have been on all post-cartoon visits to Copenhagen, by men from the PET - the Danish Security and Intelligence Service. Marie had booked a post-conference dinner at a fashionable restaurant, but they figured out why we needed security and declined to honor our booking.
So by the tenth anniversary it was not just that once publishable cartoons are now unpublishable, but that figures even tangentially associated with them can't get a table in a restaurant.
We wound up in a pub called the Mouse and Elephant in what Douglas characterized as feeling like "a party at the end of the world". Indeed. Post-Christian Europe is a mouse that decided to get into bed with the elephant of Islam; eventually, the elephant will roll over - and crush the mouse.
~In 2020, on the fifteenth anniversary, there was no conference, not because Douglas and I were dead, but because it was Covid Year One and there was no nothing, anywhere. With hindsight, I think one can see that as a convergence of interests on the part of the jihad and progressive wisdom: You can come to your assault on free speech because you won't hear a word against Mohammed ...or because you won't permit "disinformation" on Covid, climate change, whatever. The men who shoot up Lars Vilks events and those who try to get doctors struck off for disagreeing with the official propaganda are merely at different points on the same continuum. "Free speech" is a fringe cause now, for the "alt-right" and such like. Which would surprise Lars Vilks and Nekschot and Charlie Hebdo, because, until they fell out with Mohammed, they were all more or less conventional Euro-lefties.
~And so in 2023 the Danish Government plans to re-introduce blasphemy laws - but for the incoming state religion. And it barely makes the papers.
Frustrated Danes burn Korans because what else can you do? The gradual but remorseless Islamization of European societies would seem unlikely to end well. But what options do you have if you're minded to disagree? You can't talk about it, honestly, on British or Continental TV or radio. You can vote for anti-immigration parties, but, even if they win, nothing significant ever seems to happen. So a couple of blokes burn Korans - and the establishment reacts by further insulating Islam from the rough-and-tumble of free societies.
I have profound admiration for all those who have resisted the grim retreat into darkness these last two decades: Flemming Rose, the commissioning editor at Jyllands-Posten; the late Kurt Westergaard and the other cartoonists; Lars and Katrine and Marie; and all the dead and vanished across the Continent. But it is a lonely business: as I said way back in 2005, when the cartoon controversy was front-page news but the cartoons themselves weren't, if Le Monde and The New York Times and Der Spiegel had simply reported this as they would any other story, that would have been an effective response: they can't kill us all. But, because the only other publications to re-print the Motoons were Charlie Hebdo and my own magazine in Canada The Western Standard, they were able instead to silence us one by one.
To the point where, less than two decades later, a European country introducing an Islamic blasphemy law isn't even a story at all.
Will that be the end of it? In the comments to Laura's Links this week, Denyse writes:
Laura, your 'This is awful stuff' link gives us London mayor Sadiq Khan informing the world that a white family pictured in a guide his office had put out 'doesn't represent real Londoners'.
Where do people think this stuff will end? Hint: Where does it usually end?
The Danish state is doing this in hopes of getting furious governments in the Middle East and restive Muslims at home off its back. After his cameo role in Out of Time, a little bit of Kipling is floating around in the back of my head - although in one of those historical jests this time it is the Danes paying the Danegeld:
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
Ah, but who reads Kipling?
Why don't the Danes go totally ironic and make the punishment for burning the Koran burning at the stake? Seriously though, every time I read one of your posts about Europe I am happy about the fact that I visited and was able to experience many countries there prior to the insanity of the new millenium. I'm sad too because I had hoped to return now that I'm older, wiser and have a greater appreciation for the culture. Alas, so many things are changing so fast all over the continent. When I visited London in late November/early December 2019 I was actually on the London Underground passing under London Bridge when the knife attack was happening. The conductor announced that they were skipping the stop due to police activity. I think that was the time when London Mayor Khan declared that stabbings are part and parcel of living in a big city like London. How nice. And I never got to see London Bridge again either because it was closed for the rest of my visit. I could go on but it's depressing. They've ruined Europe. Western Europe at least. And who knows how long it is before Eastern Europe is up in flames should NATO decide to get involved in Ukraine. And so it goes.
Well if you weren't feeling sick before reading this... Anyone else feeling like they need a new planet to live on? Will it ever be true with human civilizations that the good guys win in the end? About ready to give up my Homo sapiens membership. Maybe I can identify as a small nebula somewhere outside of this galaxy. smh.
It is actually shocking that so many people who have done nothing more than publish a book, a drawing, or had an opinion aren't free from a constant threat of murder by jihadists. The 24/7 security has to be expensive, there is no "me time" when one has constant security or has to look continuously over one's shoulder.
"Fatwas Are Forever: Mind Your Ps and Qs," does that fit on a t-shirt? Celebrities should have made those shirts.
My brain's racing with a million thoughts after reading this. What was written here is so IMPORTANT, yet the news media are too COWARDLY to write about it. So, here's my own thoughts and opinions and they'll never change. I REFUSE to bow down to appease to these Jihadists!
Islam will go down in history to be the most dangerous, barbaric, cruel, murderous death cult in world history. Trump obliterated ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But now they've creeped up in Africa and have tortured, raped and murdered 1000s of Christians. And they're in other places too including sleeper cells in Europe, U.S. Canada, Australia & New Zealand.
Youtube has banned almost all of the videos posted regarding the destruction caused by the illegal Muslim invasion in Europe and U.S. Muslims hate us but love the FREE housing and benefits. Since their arrival to Europe along with Africans still arriving by the 1000's 24/7, rapes in Sweden are up 1000%. They're raping white young Christian girls because " Allah" told them to. Acid, knife, attacks are up. And if the news media in Europe *dares* to report their ethnicity or immigration status, they're labeled a "racist", or jailed and prosecuted for "hate " crimes.
Now because of THEM, London (now white minority) and their multiple birth rates, (birth control is a sin) says Mohammed, from their many child and adult wives they call "extended family members" to get more FREE social service benefits from us white, Christian, taxpayer "hell bound INFIDELS", for their MANY *Mohammed* newborns (now the #1 birth name of all babies born in Europe) btw, streets are shut down for their daily "CALL TO PRAYER" now happening in U.S. too, there are no go zones police too scared to enter and, don't bother to find it on youtube, those videos are now banned. Muslims are out breeding the white Christian race and in due time Europe, Canada and the U.S. will become the new "Americanistan, Eurostan, Australia-stan" ISLAMIC STATE.
But no one is talking about it as an important factor in our elections. REASON: too scared, too cowardly that they might be murdered by Muslims along with death threats.
90% of the 250,000 Afghans brought to U.S. surveyed agree to Sharia law REPLACING our Constitution. And this means beheadings, stoning's, raping's and taxing us Christian infidels unless we convert.
And if you don't think that's scary and important, you're in MAJOR denial so *WAKE UP* before it's too late! And sadly, it's probably ALREADY too late.
This isn't about burning a holy book, it is merely the first step. Once this is codified in law, it will be move on to the next step. A friend of mine said about the UK (but it can be applied to many other counrties in Europe) "The trouble is that we in Britain have had the disobedience beaten out of us over a period of 400 years or so" and therein lies the problem.
To paraphrase someone else who said it better, free speech is like a street car. Once you reach where you want to arrive, you get off. Our elites reached their preferred destination some time ago.
Perhaps an Agatha Christie story. How about a story like the film "Munich"? The Israelis sent out a team to take out the people who planned the attack at the Munich Olympics. (I have yet to read George Jonas' book "Vengeance" which is on my reading list). The initial crime of drawing cartoons doesn't seem quite as horrific, but the story would sell well to the Muslim audience.
My hometown weekly newspaper in its recent issue included an editorial about the drama in Marion, Kansas involving the local newspaper there and an overzealous police raid on its office and the home of the paper's publisher and his 98-year-old mother. It was such a horrific event the New York Times picked up the story. Now everyone is defending this little newspaper on free speech grounds. It is horrific. But perhaps if institutions like the New York Times had done likewise when Jyllands-Posten was (literally) attacked, then maybe more contemporary episodes like this would not have happened. It's easier to go to bat for the little guy when the antagonist is a piddly-arsed, small town police department in a dusty Kansas town rather than a billion+ strong army of suicidal maniacs just waiting to leap into action.
Robert Fox • Aug 28, 2023 at 13:18That's a very interesting situation there in Kansas. At least people are going to bat for him. The mayor planned on the owner of the paper not having enough millions of dollars to his name to fight back. Good for him to fight back. Good for him! It's a start. Here in our town we woke up to news that one of four flags flying outside city hall was shredded across in nearly as many stripes as the flag. Guess which one. Okay we had some wind recently but all the other flags flying were perfect. Nobody going into the building that day reported it. This happens simultaneously with one of the city councilwomen posting on instagram that our conservative action group is promoting violence and asking for her resignation. Nothing could be further from the truth. She's a democrat but our group is made of democrats, republicans and independents because the Marxist ideology push of these politicians is against all citizens of all party stripes. The head of the committee couldn't be a more unflappable, gentlemanly, soft-spoken man at the city council, county and schoolboard meetings. His forcefulness is in the words he chooses, brute honestly and a lot of facts to back up his words. I believe there is a concentrated effort to create events that spark anger among the citizens. There is no need to stir the pot, though, the citizens are already angry about nothing being done to improve the situations on the ground: the rising crime, the lack of will to fix it, the increase in the homeless population roaming the streets, the grooming of our schoolchildren with the teaching of porn and flagrant transgender propaganda and the nfestation of drugs through the Mexican drug cartels here.
Fran Lavery • Aug 28, 2023 at 17:33Nice summation Fran - but is our electorate angry enough to turn this brain dead moron out of office? I admit to being cynical to a fault but totalitarian regimes do not step aside simply due to the will of the people. I struggle even to imagine this happening next year. If we had a few million more Fran Lavery types out there then I could buy this rosy scenario. I was surprised in '16 so maybe history will repeat once again. Nice post as always Fran. I sure hope you're right here.
Robert Fox • Aug 28, 2023 at 18:00Marion isn't especially dusty. Otherwise, you're right on target.
Hi, Mark. Get better. We need you. The trouble with an Islamic blasphemy law is that it only makes sense if we assume that Islam is the ultimate truth.
Denmark doesn't (or shouldn't) have laws against profaning Christian doctrines because Denmark does not assume that all citizens must be Christians. There is/should be no law against insults to Krishna either in a modern liberal state because such a state does not involve itself in ultimate truth claims. That's the modern liberal state's genius, actually. But it is a fragile genius.
Now, re Islam: Making insults to Mohammed, Islam, the Koran, etc., a crime means weighing in on one side of an ultimate truth claim. That is an action with grave consequences. The secular government will always be defending the alleged ultimate truth, even if the interpretation of that truth violates widely accepted principles.
As you say, the Danegeld does not get rid of the Dane. Nor can it, because his basic premise has been accepted, not rejected.
Of course, Denmark could, in theory, make insulting any religion, including space alien gods and fruitarian mysticism, a crime - but surely, even in Denmark, police time could be more wisely used. In the real world, police time will always be used to appease the religious complainants of whom Denmark is most afraid, whatever the other consequences for anyone else.
It's a high price to pay for... for what? The right to live in freedom? But wait... Yes, the Danegeld again.
Like most of us here in the US, most people in western civilization generally are too stupid, ignorant, and undeserving of the freedoms and culture they've inherited. Freedoms that so many before them faught and died for. There's some small, albeit dark comfort in knowing they'll lose these freedoms, have already lost them really. Like a sinking boat, yes it's pretty bad that I'm on the boat that these morons drove into the shoals, but at least they'll have to go down with the ship as well. The obedient sheep that comprise the majority of western civilization don't deserve a better fate than the one they've brought on themselves.
Jamie Marsh • Aug 28, 2023 at 17:09Such a harsh viewpoint Jamie, but it mirrors what I've grown weary trying to convince members of over the past three years+. I would add too distracted - too gullible to endless media propaganda- too addicted to toxic social media - and of course too stupid, ignorant and undeserving of the freedoms they take for granted. Ground zero for the fall and eventual destruction of this wonderous 250 year experiment in self governance took place on election day 2008 when a slick talking con artist - the long awaited Messiah - was handed the reins of this great country without so much as a second thought or concern about his promise to "transform" America. More and more the miracle of 2016 looks like an anomaly, not to be repeated. Those who wish to challenge our dark view of the future need to explain how in '20 Biden drew many more millions of votes over the great man who almost saved America. Reagan wasn't cynical enough - it turns out a country can be lost not over a generation but in just 3 years. Mark's brilliant piece today about Denmark resonates big time. I recall his thought experiment about a bus full of timid Spanish citizens cowering in fear when a lone Muslim boards displaying an angry scowl. Nothing much has changed over the years.
RAC • Aug 28, 2023 at 17:45RAC - thank God I'm not the only one that feels that way about Obama. You're right about Reagan, he wasn't cynical. I wish I wasn't in fairness. But the darkness of the past few years hovers over me like an albatross. Would Reagan still be as optimistic now as he was then? Something tells me he would be. But he'd be more hardened for sure.
I would accuse Big Mo of not being able to take a joke, but remember Mansour, the schoolboy who appreciated the evident humor of trampling a Pride display underfoot while his teacher did not. Who/whom restated as Mohammedan/kafir.
I don't think anyone était vraiment Charlie any more than anyone was truly Salman Rushdie. Both had their defenders, yet both got what was coming to them (not an endorsement), with no defenders in sight, as did Theo van Gogh, Father Hamel, 86 beachgoers in Nice, and Notre Dame Cathedral to name but a few. I've always been wary of interfaith outreach, lest it really be a Trojan horse for intra-faith assimilation. Palestinian Arabs are notorious for handing out candy after a terrorist attack spills Jewish blood. Did French Muslims distribute madeleines after Charlie? British Muslims Cadbury after Salman lost an eye and a lot of blood?
But there I go, sounding like Mansour's teacher. It is a joke. On us. And it gets funnier every telling.
Of course I remember the Charlie Hebdo massacre and its quasi-"I am Spartacus" response of protesters proclaiming "Je Suis Charlie". Well, I am for free speech because the alternative is unlivable — but I am NOT Charlie and nobody better expect me to be. I have nothing but contempt for people who choose to flex their free speech muscles by pissing all over somebody else's religion (and yes, I'm talking about the disgusting "Piss Christ" too). It is a mortifying necessity to ally one's self with such folk, whose instincts, I suspect, actually leant toward making the world more rotten than in making it more free. The hill I'm prepared to die on is the infinitely more honorable one of proclaiming the truth about the Covid "vaccines".
Christine Page • Aug 28, 2023 at 11:46You can have contempt for whomever you want. I reserve that right for myself as well. But the point of all of this isn't about pissing over somebody else's religion. It's about having the ability to enter the town square as it were and having a debate about whatever. Because if you squelch the ability for those in society to verbalize whatever is on their mind, even if it would offend you and me, then the only alternative is violence to get one's point across. I find lots of points of view expressed everywhere as offensive. But I would rather have the promoters use speech and not Molotov cocktails to get their point across. In addition, I want people to freely express themselves because then I know what is in their hearts and I can stay away from them if their values are repulsive to me. Openness and honesty are infinitely more valuable and desirable than coyness and deception, even if the result of it is that I'm offended. At least I can get the measure of others. Go on Youtube and look up the video clips of the Canadian "human rights" commission's interrogation of Ezra Levant. They state the case better than I can. I don't like piss Christ either. It infuriates me. But that doesn't grant me the power to tell others not to do it. I'm a grown up. I can get over it without taking someone's head off.
Public opinion has always been directed, and to an extent controlled, by whatever the dominant media of the day happens to be but when real freedom of speech was let loose (for a while) on the internet then the countries of the so-called 'free world' had to crack down on it... for the good of our sacred democracy you know. It can't survive too much contact with free speech, especially in societies that are 'multicultural' and dedicated to 'diversity' such as Denmark.
The jihad boys tend not to like their Prophet being made fun of in cartoon form and/or their holy book being barbecued, and whatever else one may say about them they are a serious people, with a serious purpose, unlike most native Europeans (and other Westerners).
The observation from MS's friend Katrine that "violence works," sums up the Islamists very well, and the Danes of long ago understood the power of violence too - the Danegeld itself was a direct result of Viking violence against the terrorized Anglo-Saxons.
"We invaded you last night, we are quite prepared to fight, unless you pay us cash to go away," - Rudyard Kipling. Trying to pay off a ruthless horde of bloodthirsty pagans who've turned up on your doorstep is an understandable response to an act of foreign aggression, if an ultimately self-defeating one but what the Danish ruling class, and the Western elite as a whole, has done to its own peoples in our own time is far less easy to comprehend. They invited the alien horde, largely welcomed them and now seek for ways to placate them as their numbers begin to reach a critical mass. All done by design, unlike the sudden horror that the Anglo-Saxons had to face. Tragic.
PS. Sad to hear of your continuing troubles Mark, agree that brooding is not good:)
PPS. I know this is maybe a 'niche' issue, but I still demand justice for the 17 million minks massacred on the (illegal) orders of the Danish Govt for the sake of Big Pharma and the Covid vax(!) Butch when they want to be aren't they? Despicable.
Veronica L • Aug 28, 2023 at 08:09"Violence works." Yes, and if there's even a grain of truth to rumor making the rounds during the lead-up to January 6 (the counting of the electoral votes, not the Pelosi-Fedsurrection/Reichstag Fire Event that followed) -- a couple of SCOTUS justices expressed those very same sentiments about Antifa/BLM "torching" either the entire city of Washington, or even their personal homes, should the court have the audacity to consider any of the Trump Campaign's legal appeals regarding the late-night mail-in ballot dumps that went, "shockingly," (sarc on/sarc off) about 90% for his opponent in the days following Election Tuesday in November 2020.
Of course, the one time violence does not work, apparently, is when low-paid store clerks or security officers decide to defend their employer's inventories from looters in the Big Blue Cities. Those poor saps go to jail; the looters walk, usually without bail (if anyone even bothers to go through the motions and actually arrest them, that is).
I'll never forget, in one of his final broadcasts when he knew the end was near, our dear, departed Rush saying over and over that he remained an optimist. "I have the optimist gene inside me," he said. He likely wasn't referring to his own health, but who knows? The main point was that he believed America would overcome its current problems and become that "shining city on the hill" again (to paraphrase him, and not well). Two-plus years on, with Heinrich Garland's, Soros-elected minions now arresting lawyers for committing the crime of representing Donald Trump, I wonder what El Rushbo would say. Would the "Optimist Gene" still be functioning at high capacity, or would it poke its head up, look around, and say, "Nope. I'm outta here. I hear Poland still understands a bit about freedom and the evils of left-wing policies. Let's go there, Rush."
These are extremely dangerous, and sad times.
Anthony Cocco • Aug 28, 2023 at 12:30Of course, the one time violence does not work"..... consistency counts. Back in the days... in Roman times mess with a Roman citizen and watch the town/village disappear... consistently. Then we had the Mongols. Even the good old British Empire consistently didn't put up with things. Once, long ago, the USA was the same... not only carrying but using that Big Stick. Why is Islam so feared? Centuries of consistency..... maybe not so much sack and pillage (for now) but the promise is still there.
The Left is playing well with the modern dictatorship mode handing out brutal sentences and incarceration for trivial Capitol Walking directed by the Coppers themselves. It works and they are getting away with it. Getting away with it begets getting away with more of it... as we all get gelded.
As Denmark goes, so goes Northamptonshire. In a Brit-Wanker-Copper-of-the-week episode highlighted in The Telegraph:
"A Conservative councillor was arrested for an alleged hate crime after re-tweeting a video criticising how the police treated a Christian street preacher.
"Cllr Anthony Stevens, 50, from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, told The Telegraph he was arrested at his home this month and escorted to a police station for questioning about tweets from his personal account, which has 76 followers."
CitizenFreePress has a link burrowing under any paywall. Reading it, it's almost like the Mark Steyn Show never left GB TV. I half expected Dan Wooten to butt in and tell me there's no reason to go to bed.
Hey, Wankerena!
Mark, as you wrote back in about 2005 over (if memory serves) the worldwide failure to republish the Mo cartoons - 'what is the difference between this and de facto sharia law?'
Here's a related story from Englandistan: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/27/tory-councillor-arrested-racial-hate-crime-anthony-stevens/
TLDR version: a Tory councillor has been arrested on the complaint of a Labour activist for a crime that does not (yet de jure) exist, viz. retweeting a video critical of an arrest by police for which that arrestee was later compensated by police for their wrongful arrest of him.
And what was the original arrestee arrested for? Why, Islamophobia of course. Which is also, as far as I know, also not (yet de jure) a crime.
Do stay as well as the enveloping gloom will allow ...
(Dec 2022)GB News presenter Mark Steyn has revealed that he suffered two heart attacks earlier this month.
ReplyDeleteThe 63-year-old, who hosts an 8pm show on the network, had a first heart attack without recognising the symptoms just before he went live on air.
Steyn then suffered a second, more serious heart attack while in France, where he will now remain until he is well enough to travel back to the US in the new year.
Explaining his absence from GB News of late, he said on his website: "I'm too medicated to manage artful evasions.
"I had two heart attacks. Because I didn't recognise the first one, as such, the second one was rather more severe."
He continued: "The good news is that the first one occurred when I was in London. If you get a chance to see that day's Mark Steyn Show, with hindsight, I don't look quite right in close-ups.
"By not recognising it as a heart attack, I deftly avoided being one of those stories we feature on the show every couple of nights about people in the UK calling emergency and being left in the street for 15 hours before an ambulance shows up.
"I had a second heart attack in France. With Audrey helping me in the ambulance, she told me I was 15 minutes from death."
GRA:Nothing on the net about new heart problems.Haven't seen him since I cancelled Fox news years ago.
--GRA
I don't think it ought to be criminalized, but burning a koran, a holy book of a religion, seems a rather dumb and pointless sort of provocation. Mindlessly dumb. Picture the apes dancing around the obelisk in "2001, A Space Odyssey".
ReplyDeleteI can see why authorities would get tired of dealing with the controversy and problems.
But soon there will probably be AI generated virtual koran burnings. A koran will be burned virtually millions of times a day. YouTube will probably refuse to host virtual koran burnings.
The Danes have been gelded. When you pay the Dane geld . . .
ReplyDeleteDane in on context understand is gold. In the other context having your nuts cut off.
Very funny.
That free speech and press idea too is an American import that was never going to last in Europe anyhow.
The Muslim too does become the head and the Dane becomes the tail.
Congratulations.