The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated.
Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis sparked by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper two years ago, have held a series of crisis meetings and ordered counter-terrorist services to draw up security plans. Dutch nationals overseas have been asked to register with their embassies and local mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.
Geert Wilders, one of nine members of the extremist PVV (Freedom) party in the 150-seat Dutch lower house, has promised that his film will be broadcast – on television or on the internet – whatever the pressure may be. It will, he claims, reveal the Koran as ‘source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror’.
Dutch diplomats are already trying to pre-empt international reaction. ‘It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend,’ said Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister, who was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between the Islamic world and the West.
Also known as The Capitulation Squad!
Friends and allies with UN Man
(sorry, I’m not sure why the thumb isn’t working right now, but if you don’t remember UN Man, hit it)
Link found at JammieWearingFool via the recently returned and redesigned Poor Schmuck
Freedom of expression IS freedom to offend. If it didn’t offend someone they wouldn’t bother to try and stop you from expressing it.
I stand in utter horror at this. It’s an abomination of any kind of intellectual honesty and a sure road to surfdom.
I can only promise this; if any .gov thug ever attempts such an action with me, he simply will not be breathing for very much longer.
We must all steel ourselves to the idea of having to forcibly resist armed tyranny.
You know we live in a messed up world when a crucifix, the symbol of salvation for millions the world over, is placed in a jar of urine and called “art”.
I have half a mind to make a big poster with nothing but offensive words, like “Cracker nigger kike gwaelo gaijin honkey spic redneck halfbreed injun hillary obama yomama whore donkycock loving Democrat” and call it “pooetry”.
Of course it would have to be read in a coffee shop to the beat of poorly played bongos.
That would be freedom of expression.