Daily Archives: February 2, 2013

02/2/13

Oom Shmoom

Arlene from Israel

Motzei Shabbat (After Shabbat)

I believe I’ve explained this term before: Oom refers to the UN, in Hebrew. “Oom Shmoom” was the contemptuous way that David Ben Gurion referred to the UN.

But the United Nations was benign then, compared to what it has become today. What would he call it now?

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In my last posting, I alluded to a ridiculous statement made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and said I’d be dealing further with the UN next time I wrote.

Well, no sooner had that posting gone out, then I saw news about another Ban statement. This one was not simply ridiculous, it angered me.

Ban said that he was “greatly concerned” about the fact that Israel allegedly breached Syrian air space, He was referring to the sorties by Israel late Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, in which a convoy carrying weapons to Hezbollah and a Syrian chemical factory were apparently hit (I’ll come back to this).

Please understand. Assad has murdered more than 60,000 of his own people. He has a huge cache of weapons of mass destruction that are a threat to the world and continues to manufacture them, and he supplies weapons to the terrorist Hezbollah. But what is Ban “concerned” about? An Israel action that was pre-emptive, and thus defensive. Because we violated Syrian air space.

Such is the insanity of the world today.

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And this is merely preface to what I wanted to write:

There is no agency of the UN more blatantly anti-Jewish/anti-Israel then the UN Human Right Council (UNHCR). Israel, in fact, is the only country out all the UN’s member-states to be the target of a dedicated permanent item on the UNHRC agenda. One other item on the permanent agenda — “Human rights situations that require the council’s attention” — refers to all of the other 192 countries in the UN. There have been more special sessions devoted to Israel than any other country.

For some time now, Israel has refused to cooperate with this severely biased Council. For one important instance of Israel not going along, see this by Anne Bayefsky:

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=301408

And note, please, the pressure on Israel by the US to play the game.

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The most recent issue involving Israel to be visited by the UNHRC has to do with the “settlements” in Judea and Samaria. Here, too, anticipating all too well what the outcome would be, the Israeli government declined to cooperate.

Now the “findings” — referred to as the “Report of the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” –have been released.

We should not be surprised that it says:

“Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits an occupying Power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory that it occupies. This prohibition has attained the status of customary international law. The Mission notes that the Israeli settlements in the OPT, including East Jerusalem, violate this provision and are, thus, illegal under international law…

“Israel must, in compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, cease all settlement activities without preconditions. In addition it must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT…”

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I cite this here in order to refute it, because that refutation remains important. While the findings are in no way legally binding, they will be used against Israel in a host of situations.

First, there is constant reference to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” but there is absolutely no basis in law for assuming that everything past the Green Line belongs to the Palestinian Arabs.

On the contrary. The Mandate for Palestine, going back to 1922, and based upon the earlier legal decisions of the San Remo Conference, determined that all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea was to be established as a Jewish Homeland and close Jewish settlement was to be encouraged.

This was a matter of international law, and has never been superseded.

The Mandate explicitly recognized the prior presence of the Jews on the land. And in point of fact, Judea and Samaria are the sites of ancient Jewish heritage: the Temple Mount, Hevron and the Machpela, Shilo where the Tabernacle rested, etc. etc. were all past what is known today as the Green Line.

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In 1948, when Israel declared independence, the State was established on less than all of Palestine. This was in accordance with the non-binding recommendation of the UN General Assembly the year prior, that Palestinian be partitioned. Had the Arabs agreed to establish a state in the other part of Palestine, and had Israel and that Arab state signed a treaty agreeing to a mutual border, then the part of Palestine on which Israel was not established would have belonged legally to the Arabs.

But the Arabs refused to cooperate. They have no claim to the land now. That land remained unclaimed Mandate land.

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Not only did the Arabs refuse to cooperate, they attacked Israel immediately after independence was declared. The Green Line was no more than an armistice line — a ceasefire line, not a border. When Jordan signed the armistice agreement with Israel, it included a clarification that the current armistice line would in no way prejudice determination of a final border, which would be determined via negotiations.

The UNHRC has simply adopted the PLO line in its entirety, with regard to Judea and Samaria being “Palestinian.” But this is without historical foundation.

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Additionally, in 1967, when Israel took all of Judea and Samaria, it was in the course of a defensive war. There is solid legal precedent for saying that land acquired in defensive wars may be retained.

After the war, the Security Council passed Resolution 242, which declared that Israel, as all states, had a right to secure borders. Recognizing that the Green Line would not provide a secure border, it did not demand that Israel return behind that line. What it said was negotiations would determine the final border. To this day, this has not happened.

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The Levy Committee, mandated last year by Prime Minister Netanyahu to consider the status of the “settlements,” determined in its final Report that the situation is sui generis — that is, a unique, one-time situation. Because of the legal and historical precedents here, Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria cannot be considered to be a “belligerent occupation.” And the settlements are not illegal.

It is the fact, as well, that “occupation” occurs when one nation moves into the land of another nation. But there was no legal sovereign in Judea and Samaria before Israel took control. This was still unclaimed Mandate land that Jordan had seized illegally in the course of a offensive war.

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As to the Fourth Geneva Convention, it does not apply to Israel’s situation. What was intended was that a belligerent occupying government not move its people into the land of another sovereign nation. But there was no sovereign state, and there is no belligerent occupation. Besides which, the Israeli government does not move parts of its population. Individual Israelis voluntarily choose to live in these areas. And it’s time we began to look at Jewish rights.

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Referring very briefly to the action in Syria this past week: I reported that an arms convoy and a chemical weapons factory were both hit, because that is the information that came to me. And, indeed that may be the case. Some sources continue to say this.

But there are other sources that say that it was only the convoy that was hit, or only the chemical factory. Maddening, because in each instance there are intelligence sources cited as verifying what is being said. Which does lead one to believe it may well have been both that were hit, does it not?

And so, I am not withdrawing or amending my original report, so much as informing you, my readers, that information coming out of Syria — with the Israeli government of course not talking — is less than a certainty. I can only say that this is reportedly what has happened, this appears to be the case.

02/2/13

Opening Pandora’s Box on Immigration

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Until the other day I thought I had a clear understanding of how I felt on immigration; that is until reading two articles. The first was Alan Caruba’s, Migration is as old as mankind and the other by Judge Napalitano, Immigration is a Natural Right. I respect both of these individuals for their ability to express reasoned thoughts; life experiences coupled with years of self examination.

One important responsibility of being a member of society is to continually assess long held beliefs and weigh them against any and all challenges to those beliefs. It’s difficult to make adjustments because in so doing there is the risk of admitting long held beliefs may have been in error.

Alan Caruba correctly recorded:

“With or without immigration reform, history demonstrates that people will migrate, so our response to the current population of illegals and some kind of reform is now a priority.”

Judge Napolitano wrote, and I agree:

“The issue the politicians and bureaucrats would rather avoid is the natural law. The natural law is a term used to refer to human rights that all persons possess by virtue of our humanity. These rights encompass areas of human behavior where individuals are sovereign and thus need no permission from the government before making choices in those areas. Truly, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, only God is sovereign—meaning He is the source of His own power.”

These articles triggered an internal assessment mechanism; not saying I have thrown in with the idea that immigration and citizenship are one in the same; only that the factors which I once held as inviolate may have been based on a false premise.

I awoke into conscious thought to find myself going over the basic concepts of civilized society, natural rights and how they apply to a self governed people as opposed to rule by force as so often is the case in nature. In other words I was playing the “what if” game to a level requiring my being alert and willing to open my mind.

If immigration or migration is a natural right as suggested in the aforementioned articles, then does that immigration or migration automatically qualify individual(s) for membership in the society which exists in the area and has already established rules for membership? Now that’s a deep question because it involves so many levels of response.

Before answering that broad sweeping question, my mind immediately recalled a study performed and recorded by Farley Mowats via his autobiography, Never Cry Wolf, which was made into a movie under the same title. Wikipedia has a brief summary:

“A young, naive biologist named Tyler (Smith) is assigned by the government to travel to the isolated Canadian arctic wilderness and study why the area’s caribou population is declining, believed due to indiscriminate wolf-pack attacks. Tyler receives a baptism of fire into bush life with a trip by bush plane piloted by an odd, adventurous bush pilot named Rosie (Dennehy). After landing at the destination, Rosie leaves Tyler and his gear in the middle of a subzero Arctic nowhere. Unsure of where to start, Tyler’s indecision quickly imperils him until he’s rescued by a traveling Inuit named Ootek (Ittimangnaq), who builds a shelter for him.

Alone, Tyler’s days are divided between research and mere personal survival, while nights are fraught with anxiety-born nightmares of wolf attacks upon him. He soon encounters two wolves–which he names George and Angeline, who have pups–and discovers they seem as curious of him as he is of them, slowly dispelling their mutual fears. He and the wolves both begin social exchanges, even urine-marking their territories, producing trust and respect between them.”

That last line introduces the idea of immigration and migration, the extended consideration of societal acceptance along with the higher level of social membership; there is a difference between acceptance or the right to exist and membership which implies other social amenities, to include voting privileges. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are natural rights; but citizenship must be obtained, there is a difference.

Some insist that social acceptance and social membership are one and the same; however, as the movie brought out, the wolves acceptance of the human, permitting him a space to exist within their area of domination, that acceptance did not make the human a wolf with all the rights and privileges of the wolf pack. The human was always a separate cast within a working society, a society which he had only a limited understanding of at best.

Social acceptance and social membership are not one and the same; other factors must also be reconciled. Those entering a society which already exists have limited options.

Individuals can be assimilated into that society; accept the customs and laws and request membership by virtue of becoming indistinguishable, for the most part, from any other member of that society. The voluntary act of assimilation adds strength to society in general and permits the greatest range of movement within that society for its newest members.

“Cultural assimilation is the process by which a subaltern group’s native language and culture are lost under pressure to assimilate to those of a dominant cultural group. The term is used both to refer to colonized peoples when dominant colonial states expand into new territories or alternately, when diasporas of immigrants settle into a dominant state society. Colonized peoples or minority immigrant groups acquire new customs, language, and ideologies through contact and education in the dominant society. Assimilation may involve either a quick or gradual change depending on circumstances. Full assimilation occurs when new members of a society become indistinguishable from older members.”

Another option would be for the newest individual to have the existing society alter its customs and laws in such a way as to include the customs and or laws of its newest member. There is a term for this, cultural diversity; but in reality that diversity eventually destroys a healthy working society by eroding the culture which held it together in the first place.

“Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture, as in the global monoculture, or a homogenization of cultures, akin to cultural decay. For example, before Hawaii was conquered, the culturally diverse Hawaiian culture existed in the world, and contributed to the world’s cultural diversity. Now Hawaii has been westernized; the vast majority of its culture has been replaced with Western or American culture. The phrase cultural diversity can also refer to having different cultures respect each others differences. The phrase cultural diversity is also sometimes used to mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole. The culturally destructive action of globalization is often said to have a negative effect on the world’s cultural diversity.”

Lastly, and is often the case, there is the option to conquer an existing society and implement an entirely new society and set of laws. This can be accomplished by destroying, eliminating members who represented unwanted portions of society or by marginalizing the old guard to such a point as to make them irrelevant.

History is replete with examples of warfare; but I’ll use for example only the Third Reich, or NAZI Germany as it was also called. These folks took on their neighbors and placed them into complete subjugation in its quest for total world control. There was no attempt at diversity, these nations were conquered and at the mercy of Germany. They eliminated unwanted portions within society; the extermination of the Jews as well as those who opposed the Third Reich.

“The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.”

How does this fit in with immigration and citizenship?

We have to look at property rights, yet another natural right. Many have defined property rights; but none better than Frederick Bastiat. Consider the ramifications of these three thoughts as they build toward a natural conclusion, that governments are instituted by men in order to protect the natural rights of those who instituted their government.

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

{…}

“Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but and extension of our faculties?”

{…}

“If every person has the right to defend – even by force – his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -–its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. (The Law, p.6)

With citizenship comes the acceptance of the rule of law as established through our founding documents; our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our society has given government the power to defend our lives, liberty and property from all who would attempt to subjugate us; our enemies abroad or from within. In the most simple of terms, sovereignty was established.

With sovereignty comes the ability to define the extent of our geographic borders, a means of identifying where our social order is in force. This isn’t much different than a pack of wolves urinating on stones to mark their territory, a crude analogy, perhaps; but easily understood throughout the world.

Those who wish to enter our borders must adapt to our social and cultural ways, try to become a part of our culture and expand what that social culture represents by convincing us to accept their social differences or conquer us and put us into subjugation; it’s that simple. (I’m not a big fan of the last option.)

Immigration laws were written to protect the social culture shared by those who respect our constitutional republic and serve no other purpose. By extension, our immigration laws are the first step towards gaining citizenship and full assimilation into our culture.

It is not logical to expect our society to accept those who wish to modify, replace or destroy our existing culture with values of an alien culture all in the name of diversity. Those who would have us accept migration as a natural law, must also accept all other natural laws, laws which have been in existence from before the world was created.

We as a nation of individuals have a natural right to protect our social order by establishing geographic boundaries and enforcing criteria for entry; in other words, immigration laws. Those who would become a part of our culture should respect our laws. Those who don’t respect our laws or who have an ulterior motive for gaining entrance into our borders, should be dealt with accordingly, without concern for violating their natural right to migrate.

While it is true, each individual on the planet has the natural right to migrate; in doing so he/she must acknowledge the natural rights of those who inhabit those areas along that path, to include the right to deny entrance or limit freedom of movement within the sovereignty of established borders.

This article has been cross-posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government & The American Constitution.”

02/2/13

Big Deal! So Barack Hussein Obama shoots a shotgun. So did Nikita Khrushchev and every other dictator.

By: Nelson Abdullah
Conscience of a Conservative

Some people don’t know how to avoid a trap especially after they blindly jump at the bait laid out before them. Take for instance our wanna-be king Barack Hussein Obama, champion of gun owners everywhere, who has bragged about how often he shoots clay pigeons at Camp David. He made that remark as part of his make-believe support for the Second Amendment. Republicans jumped on the claim and started asking a lot of foolish questions and then reported that unnamed sources in the White House said Barack Hussein Obama hardly ever went shooting at Camp David or anywhere. Some said they never saw Obama shoot a gun at all. So instead of getting curious and asking real questions about Obama’s other claims to fame such as his admission that he did drugs in college and had a childhood mentor, later identified as Communist Frank Marshal Davis, they tried to make this shotgun issue one of Obama’s newest lies.

So today the White House releases a photo of Obama shooting a shotgun. Big deal. A few bloggers and Republicans and some conservatives now have egg all over their faces for nothing and they have all lost a little bit more of their credibility.

Barack Hussein Obama is no different from any other dictator in recent history. In spite of his grandstand gestures to the leftist news media, Obama opposes gun ownership by American citizens and for the same reasons every tyrant does. Its the only way they can stay in power. In the old Soviet Union, in Cuba, in China and in Nazi Germany, the tyrants all registered and then confiscated privately owned guns in their countries. But that doesn’t mean that the dictators themselves and their rich and powerful and elite supporters who oppose gun ownership for everyone else – do not oppose gun ownership by themselves.

I recall a story in an old conservative news magazine many years ago that reported that the Chairman of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, was spotted getting fitted for a custom made Purdey shotgun (cost about $50,000 US) at their posh business location in the Mayfair district of London, England. The story was mention in 1993 on the web site of the British newspaper, The Independent, and is still available online.

In a recent history of the gunmaker, the Field magazine said Purdey customers had included Nikita Khrushchev, the one-time Communist Party boss of the Soviet Union. When I asked Mr Beaumont if this were true, he reluctantly admitted it. Someone in the firm had ‘blabbed’. This was unfortunate, he said, and made quite clear he did not want to talk about Mr Khrushchev or any other customer. Although you needed only to look around the Long Room at the scores of photographs, silhouettes, paintings and engravings to see virtually every crowned and uncrowned king, emperor, kaiser and tsar in Europe and every viceroy, nawab and district commissioner of India is on the firm’s books. Most of the household regiments and large chunks of the aristocracy are there too.

Of course the elite and powerful and everyone of influence manages to get personal exemptions to the rules that apply to ordinary people. Just like the unions who supported Obama got exemptions from his socialized healthcare plan did. Even California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a new gun control plan had her own permit to carry a concealed weapon, issued in a state that has the strictest gun laws. That is how hypocrites are defined. People who say, “Do what I say and not what I do.” The Second Amendment wasn’t written to protect hunting or target shooting, it was written to give the citizens the power to resist tyranny.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.

02/2/13

Help KeyWiki Help Keep America Free!

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

Obama CPUSA

Information is power.

America is undergoing a socialist takeover under President Barack Obama and the complicit “mainstream media” is cheering him on.

With over 60,000 pages, our sister site KeyWiki is the best source on the web for exposing America’s enemies within.

Did you know that president Barack Obama has long term connections to the Communist Party USA?

Did you know that Hillary Clinton worked for a Communist led law firm while in college?

Did you know that Obama’s chief adviser Valerie Jarrett‘s late father-in-law Vernon Jarrett, worked with Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, in Chicago and that Davis would later go onto mentor teenage Obama?

Did you know Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod was mentored by Chicago communist David Canter – once formally required to register as an agent of the Soviet Union?

Did you know that Obama’s Chicago mentor Alice Palmer was active in two major Soviet front organizations?

Did you know that Obama’s Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, has ties to the Communist Party?

Did you know that several Democratic Party Congress members, including Rosa DeLauro, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky, Kyrsten Sinema and Raul Grijalva have close ties to the Communist Party?

Help keep KeyWiki growing. Help KeyWiki wake up America to the enemies within!

Contribute to KeyWiki today! Go here and use PayPal to contribute today – found on the right side of the blog.

Trevor Loudon

Editor: KeyWiki
Editor: trevorloudon.com
Author: Barack Obama and the Enemies Within

02/2/13

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Stands Up For Freedom Of Expression In Bonn, Germany

By: Aeneas Lavinium
ICLA

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff with ICLA’s Chris Knowles, Warsaw 2009

Freedom of expression is the basis of all freedom and as such is an important part of the Mission of the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA). Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has been a stalwart defender of this freedom for many years. She has also been a victim of those who want to destroy meaningful freedom of speech. The following is the speech that Elisabeth delivered at today’s event in Bonn that was organised by Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE).

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Dear Geert, Dear Friends:

Yet again our meeting today makes an unmistakable statement : We will go on, we will meet with whom we wish and we will not allow ourselves to be told which opinion is the “morally correct” one. It is just fantastic how many have traveled to meet our friend, Geert Wilders, despite the agitation of the press and the threats of the so-called “anti-fascists.”

But, as so often, there is a bitter aftertaste. As became known several days ago, Geert’s book,Marked for Death, will unfortunately not appear in German. Freedom of the press and of opinion — protected by the constitution — must give way once more to the so-called “blasphemy and hate speech paragraphs”.

An absurdity in the 21st century!

The organization, Reporters Without Borders, has just released its annual report on press freedom. Germany comes in at a pathetic 17th place!

And instead of honoring freedom as the highest value a nation of laws can serve, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting on the 80th anniversary of the coup d’état by National Socialism with — of all people — the Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood leader, Muhammad Morsi.

May the voters pay her back for that in September!

What connects Geert and me is that we both have faced a court trial for speaking the truth, for our statements on the so-called Prophet Mohammed and Islam.

What distinguishes us from one another is that Geert was found not guilty and I was found guilty. Small wonder that my country Austria has fallen a full seven places in the Reporters Without Borders ranking of press freedom, to 12th place!

Dear Geert, I will not let this get me down any more than it has you. I will continue to say that 2+ 2 = 4, and not 5, as the enemies of freedom would have us believe. Geert, you were my great example during my trial: calm, realistic, wedded to the truth. I will always be grateful to you for that!

And while you have been battling on the political plain for freedom and truth, my work in the international arena is intensifying. Together with an alliance of NGOs which is growing yearly, I am taking a stand as the representative of the human rights organization BPE [Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa] on behalf of the freedoms for which we have been fighting for generations.

Our most important field of endeavor is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — the OSCE. During the Cold War, its mission was diplomatic mediation between East and West. Today it is supposed to be monitoring the institutional implementation of human rights in the participating states.

But for several years we have witnessed the exact opposite. The Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is sending its lobbyists to the meetings of the OSCE. Under cover of “religious freedom,” they are demanding the abolition of all other freedoms: of the press, of expression, of science and research.

And all that just because they might feel insulted?

What the submission lobbyists did not reckon with is that they are encountering powerful headwinds. At the OSCE conference in October of last year, we repeatedly exposed the Islamic propaganda, showed up its representatives and unmasked their true agenda.

And our work is having success. Our positions are documented and discussed in detail in the reports of the OSCE.

More and more, and even publicly, representatives of European countries are agreeing with us. For instance, that fighting words like “Islamophobia” should be juridically defined before they are used.

Here in Germany, the politically motivated trial of Prof. Armin Geus for hate speech had to be halted. This, after I had spoken about the case in the OSCE this Fall in the name of BPE.

Likewise here in Germany and also in Great Britain, we are defending every centimeter of the right to assemble — a Michael Stürzenberger must be just as free to speak his mind as EDL head Tommy Robinson.

In the middle of this month, with several friends, I will again participate in a human rights conference in Geneva, which will be attended by very prominent people. And again I will insist that it finally be made clear how much the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” has in common with universal human rights and the UN charter of human rights — NOTHING, dear friends, absolutely nothing at all!

I thank the BPE and all its members for their generous support. For you, Geert — and I am sure I can speak for all assembled here — I wish that you may in future be spared any more trials. We all have better uses for out time!

For me, dear friends, there are no more compromises and there is no more hiding. I will remain committed to the truth!

And — to speak in concert with our much-valued Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Let us stand more firmly together and share the risk. The next time a book, a cartoon or a film provokes a fatwa, we must send a single worldwide message to the Islamic enemies of freedom: Killing one of us will not be enough. Take out a big loan at the Bank of Jihad. Because you will have to kill all of us!

Thank you!

—

With thanks to Gates of Vienna for the text of the speech.