Turning in their graves

This week on BBC Radio 4 a reporter was interviewing some of the people of Woolwich where there was a high profile murder of a serving soldier - allegedly by two young Muslim men.

The news story is far from funny, but one of the interviewees said something that made me hoot with laughter.

They claimed that our grandfathers fought for this country, and if they were alive now they would be turning in their graves.

Humour gets everywhere!

As free as the wind

In the news this week, I saw an item about the world's largest offshore wind farm having produced its first power. The London Array Offshore Wind Farm is a 630MW scheme, located in the Thames Estuary.

This has got to be good news hasn't it?  Well . . .  OK . . .  I know that not everyone will agree with that statement, but when the lights start to go out (which seems not to be wholly unlikely over the next few years) I think even the most ardent critic of wind farms might start to see the advantage of diversity.

But this brings me to another point.  Diversity is only achieved by . . . yes . . . diversifying!  One other new and promising source of power is nuclear fusion, and the international ITER project is now under construction.

Critics in Europe continue to question the cost of the project.  People always object to anything new, and the fusion seems to be a little pricey compared with most people's personal expenditure.  But in the context of energy expenditure, are the numbers really all that high?

Rumours are beginning to emerge that the sheer cost of offshore wind might be a threat to the UK's renewables commitment.  A budget of £30 billion had been earmarked for the construction phase, up to 2020.  But now it is clear that this has been a serious underestimate because the price of concrete is rising.  In a kind of spiral, the cost of concrete depends mainly on the cost of the energy needed to produce it, and that energy needs to be made by the machines that consume the concrete.  The net result is that the offshore wind costs for the UK alone might reach £90 billion by 2020.

Now tell me again that ITER is expensive!  I suggest that you can't do that with any degree of intellectual honesty.  Even if ITER reaches a cost of £20 billion (which is way over the current expectation) this £20 billion is spread between most of the richest countries in the world, whereas the £90 billion for wind is from one small country alone.

Let's be reasonable.  Context is key.

Fusion is not all that expensive.

Hamza's Innocence!

Hamza Al-Masri, otherwise known as Abu Hamza, is now innocent again - at least temporarily!

At least that is, he is formally innocent but I can't imagine him remaining in that state for very long.  It seems rather likely that he will soon be proven guilty in a court in USA.  America knows how to administer justice in a more swift and permanent way than wishy-washy Europe.

Hamza off to America - from The Mirror

. . . and the British tax payer is rid of Abu Hamza once and for all!  Smiles all round then!

The Osama bin Laden case last year showed the difference between the New and Old World's justice systems last year.   Bin Laden's swift dispatch might not have been universally popular, but at least it was more effective than the way that Europe is currently entertaining Mladic, as I wrote in this post last year - Mladic - worse than bin Laden!

Will Europe ever get this right?

To finish on a lighter note, I came across this parody news article this week.  Hamza lands Panto role. 

Satire must do everything it can

There is a German saying which translates roughly as "Satire must do everything it can", and today as France closes 20 embassies around the world because of a cartoon, that saying ought to be our motto.  Standing up for freedom of speech is THAT important.

This morning I actually heard a Muslim speaker, Fatima Malik saying that violent reactions to the publications of images of Mohamed were unjustified.   Now don't get too excited.   She didn't condemn the criminals outright, or mention what an outrageous concept it is to go wrecking property just because someone somewhere drew a picture.  She didn't even call for the perpetrators to be publicly ostracised or imprisoned . . . or even stoned to death as is the penalty for really serious crimes like damaging a copy of the qu'ran.

What is all the fuss about?  You won't find a copy of this cartoon on the politically correct pages of the BBC.  There is no doubt that the picture is designed to be inflammatory but it does need to be seen, not censored.

Charlie Hebdo magazine's controversial cover,
featuring the latest Mohamed cartoon to hit the news.

Whether you think it is funny or not, one thing is certain in my mind.  Radical and violent Islamism needs to be mocked.  We must not stand for censorship in our own countries because some other culture doesn't like what we say.  What do you do when a three year old child has a temper tantrum?  Certainly you shouldn't change your actions because  of their irrational actions, so what is the difference here?

I'll be in Paris for a few days of the next week.  I might try to buy a copy of the magazine, because I do believe that satire must do everything that it can and that it is time for the Islamists just to grow up.

The German circumcision problem

What can you do when a decision is clearly right, but unpopular?  Worse still, what if the decision is unpopular for the wrong reasons?  (e.g. Namely because people are frightened to hold an opinion that has wrongly been associated with some terrible part of history.)

A German district court ruled on June 26th that parents have no right to circumcise their children without medical justification, and surprise surprise, this has kicked up a bit of a storm.  People are wrongly concluding that this was an anti-Jewish ruling, but in fact it was centred on life-threatening bleeding when a four year old child of muslim parents was circumcised in 2010.

Here we see several of the issues.  First, as Richard Dawkins says, the child is not yet a muslim, but a child of muslim parents.  Second, the child could easily have joined the dozens of others who - every year in the 'western world' - either die of blood loss or contract STDs during the ritualised removal of a perfectly good bit of his body.

The decision to take this risk was not his own, at an age where he could have given consent.  It was taken for him, by his parents while he was still helpless.

Doesn't a child - boy or girl - have a right to be protected from being mutilated in this way?  In my view the answer is an emphatic YES!

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, complained to the German ambassador in London about "this appalling decision".

"Did the court know that circumcision is the most ancient ritual in the history of Judaism, dating back almost 4,000 years to the days of Abraham?" he wrote in the Jerusalem Post.  [I wonder why he didn't write it in a German paper, or a British one, or indeed mention that the case was not about Juduaism?]

"Do judges in Cologne today really not know what happened the last time Germany went down that road?" [This very sentence shows that his argument is a weak one and has to be backed up by ridiculous rhetoric.]

He said the court was, in effect, telling Jews: "If you don't like it, leave." [Or maybe the court was telling everyone to abandon dangerous, life-threatening, pointless bronze-age rituals and join the rest of us in the new millennium.]

So now you see that Lord Sacks has immediately and wrongly assumed that it is a case of persecution of the Jews.  He has also used a ridiculous argument from Old Testament times to support the continued abuse of these children, when surely he should recognise their right to be protected from activities like this.

Germany's formidable Chancellor, Angela Merkel has now weighed-in on the argument, and quite clearly on this occasion she is firmly in the wrong.  She is trying to smooth the waters simply to be politically correct and offer positive discrimination for semitic cultures.  I thought she was above that sort of thing.  I wonder what would happen if this became a referendum issue in Germany.  I don't think it is overwhelmingly probable that she would win it.

Why can't everyone see the justice in the court's ruling?  All children must have rights, whatever the circumstances of their birth.  One item of hope remains, whatever new law Merkel would like to introduce.  She will find it very difficult to find the words to allow the genital mutilation of boys without allowing the same for girls.  Even if she succeeds, that same law should be open to a challenge on the basis of gender equality.

I'm sure the story will continue, and that it will be reported in the National Secular Society's newsletter.  Here's a link to the latest edition, and one to the subscription page.

At least there is hope of progress . . . in the right direction!

Sunday Selection 1 - a new series

This is the first post in a new series where there is little additional content from me, but I simply share a selection of items that have delighted or surprised me this week.  As almost every week, I see items on the web that I find interesting, amazing or amusing.  My thanks go to the friends who helped me to find them.  The selection might be on any of my normal topics - or on other topics entirely.

You will probably find that there is too much here for one visit, so bookmark this page and come back to read a bit more another day.

First: the long awaited video of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on stage together during the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, 13-15th April, in the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre.  Well worth watching the whole hour!

Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and a guest 'horseman', Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
Melbourne 2012, from here.

Next: a candidate horseman himself, Peter Boghossian speaking forthrightly about Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions earlier this year.  (34:50 long.)

The inspirational Peter Boghossian, from here

Podcast of the week: Yhe UK based Pod Delusion.  This week's episode, #140, (64 minutes) includes Daniel Dennett giving his take on Alan Turing, former government chief science adviser Sir David King teasing about what really went on behind the scenes of the Iraq war, and Ben Hammersley explaining why technology makes politics difficult. They also tackle Gove’s proposed new curriculum, archiving film for the future and finding out if evangelical christian women really want to go out with Jesus.  As always - a good lively programme.

New podcast of the week: goes to one that I discovered recently.  Considering that it only appears to be on its third episode, it is going amazingly well.  Alan Litchfield's  The Macontent's Gambit claims (and appears to succeed) in  Extolling the Finest in Secular Thought.  Try an episode or two and subscribe to it you like them.  Already he has had some notable and interesting guests including Peter Boghossian, Guy Harris and Victor Stenger.


Physics of the week: the solution to the problem of speeding neutrinos, as I blogged on Monday in Enforcing the cosmic speed limit.

Controversial atheism site of the week: Jesus Never Existed, which you might or might not agree with.

Satire of the week: This article from The Onion:   Capricious God Violently Shakes Ant Farm Day After Bestowing Orange Slices Upon Colony which is highly amusing.

And finally . . . 

Favorite places: a link to a fantastic HD video of Yosemite National Park (only 4 minutes) which brings back memories for me, of visiting one of the most beautiful places in the world in 2008.

Yosemite - one of my favorite places - source here.

As I said, this is the first in a series.  Your comments, visits and preferences will help me to decide whether this experiment is a good idea or not.

Rights of women or wrongs of bishops?

Annie Laurie Gaylor is one of the co-presidents of the American body, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), along with her ex-minister husband Dan Barker.

Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor of the FFRF

If you want to hear Annie Laurie and Dan in action, try listening to the podcast "Freethought Radio" as I do every week.  Although it is very much focused on issues surrounding the 1st Amendment to the US constitution (and in UK we have no such constitution) I find that they often have guests with interesting opinions.

Last week, Annie Laurie and Dan wrote a hard-hitting 'open letter' to 'Liberal' and 'Nominal' Catholics, and published it as a full page advert in the New York Times on 9th March.  Here is a copy of the letter which points out many of the evils represented by the church.

I think this goes a long way to confront the claim that the church does more good than harm.  Of course 'other' christians will cheerfully dissociate themselves from these Catholic evils.  Whatever their disagreements might be, many christians will stick together in the face of a realistic and rational challenge to the beliefs that they share.  They always do.

Much of the message is relevant to the comments left last weekend on my latest post in the series 'Things Christians Say Part 6'.

Full page advert by FFRF in the New York Times

Why is this relevant?  It all comes down to the one and only proven cure for poverty in the world.  Any society that gives women control of reproduction naturally becomes more prosperous.  This goes very much against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church - and several other notable religious movements. 

After all . . . AIDS may be bad, but condoms are a greater sin.

So, "Do you choose women and their rights, or bishops and their wrongs?" is rather a good question isn't it?

Antidisestablishmentarianism is not favoured!

Following on from yesterday's interesting revelations from the Ipsos Mori poll carried out on behalf of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, let's examine the results of part 2, which can be found in full here.

There is a thread of discussion about the topic here.  Note that this report includes the questions from part 1 which I discussed yesterday in 50% of UK christians 'not religious'.

Part 2 is much more about social attitudes of those claiming to have ticked the 'Christian' box on the 2011 census.  I will pick out a few points which seemed interesting.

Only 54% supported state funding of 'faith schools' for their own denomination, with a very slightly lower figure in favour of extending that privilege to other denominations of christianity.  The figure dropped to 44% for other religions.  To an atheist it seems surprising that 'religious' people always prefer to favour other (opposing) religious people over those who are non-religious.  It is a consistent finding but nonetheless difficult to comprehend.  I think it can only demonstrate that they haven't understood the threat properly.

There was surprisingly little support for reserving seats in the House of Lords for bishops of the Church of England.  Only 26% were in favour, with 32% against.  Similarly, support for retaining the current situation of the Church of England as the 'established church' was rather weak.  46% seemed to favour disestablishment, with 32% preferring to go for antidisestablishmentarianism.  (Not often that you have an excuse to use one of the longest words in the English language!)

Nearly half (46%) did not consider homosexuality to be 'wrong', with 28% believing that it was.  (The others were apathetic about it - which seems typical of the sample.)  Three times more agreed that homosexual couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexuals than disagreed.

Three times more agreed with legal abortions than objected, and 2.5 times more agreed with the concept of assisted suicide for the terminally ill (with proper safeguards in place).

But the big surprises come in the attitudes to the separation of church and state.  78% thought that religion should be a private matter that government should not interfere with, whereas only 7% disagreed.  A similar proportion thought that religion should not have special influence on public policy.   Perhaps if UK could have a constitution we could arrange to have the same First Amendment as USA?

The really big consensus in the whole survey was about the law.  92% agreed, very reasonably, that the law should apply to everyone equally, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.  Take note Mr Prime Minister and Judges!  Ignore this at your peril.

It is time for Sharia to be outlawed in civilised countries!


 

Legal competition from Sharia - a government plot?

Sharia law is becoming much more widely used in UK, or so we are told in the news this week. It seems that it is much cheaper to resolve legal disputes in a religious court than in a real court.

It is not new news that there are at least 85 Sharia courts operating in UK, because this surprising revelation was made in a Civitas report in 2009.  However it is about time we had an update on this aspect of creeping Islam, just in case the country is completely infiltrated before the apathetic public notices anything happening.  After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chief Justice have already acquiesced to the start of the process as you can read in that report.

Thinking about it though, perhaps there is one good thing in this news.  Almost everyone in the world (except lawyers) believes that solicitors and barristers charge too much for their services.  When did you last see a barrister on a bicycle?  Maybe it is time they had some competition. 

In fact, it is tempting to speculate that the current government - being largely right of centre - might have introduced sharia deliberately in order to create a competitive market.  The next thing will be to privatise the Magistrates Courts.  I suspect that the Crown Courts will have to wait until after the next election but at least it would be a start.

After that the Church of England might reintroduce some of its own medieval institutions.   Prerogative Courts, Consistory and Commissary Courts, Archdeaconry Courts and Peculiars.  We could do with a few witch burnings to keep the public in control.

The more the better in a free market!

So . . who will be the first person to volunteer to be judged by sharia?  It is very cheap you know - and some of the punishments are administered swiftly.  No lingering in jail waiting to be sentenced to a humane punishment.

Decapitation can't hurt for very long can it?

TAM London 2011

The skeptical community of UK has been waiting with bated breath, optimistic that the lack of news about The Amaz!ng Meeting might still be good news.  A few people have ventured questions on forums but there has been no official announcement. 

What is The Amaz!ng Meeting? Well, for several years these meetings have been held in Las Vegas, but then a couple of years ago it started to be an international event.  They bring together some of the best speakers in the world of science, critical thinking, religion, skepticism, and the paranormal. By all accounts they have been very well attended and I have never read a negative report from anyone who attended a TAM.

Last year I very nearly decided to spend my spare cash attending TAM London 2010.  (Click that link to find the only 'news' available!)  London is not very far away, and the fee for the weekend was about £200 (plus either daily travel by train or a hotel in London).  I now regret that (avoidable) family commitments and general meanness were just the excuses I needed to save my money, but as the following months passed and my interest in skepticism has continued to increase, I have read and listened to many of the speakers that I missed at TAM.  I had decided that I was going to go to the next one - definitely!  I registered for news about the sale of tickets.  I followed @TAMLondon on Twitter.  Sometimes I did a google search or looked hopefully on the web site of the JREF (the organisers of TAM).

And . . .

Nothing! 

Not even news about nothing!

Why?

I am beginning to put the responsibility for the lack of news, for the lack of anything inspiring at the JREF, with the 'new' president, D J Grothe.  Since he took over the presidency in early 2009 the JREF seems to be declining from its position at the forefront of critical thinking.  Isn't that sad?  Even their web site is becoming a little out of date, with the greatest activity being on the forum where loyal fans continue to discuss interesting topics.

You might ask why I blame Grothe (but not his partner Thomas, who he rarely fails to mention).  Well, Grothe is the president so the responsibility does lie with him in the end - even if not the fault.  But there is more to it than that.

Before joining the JREF he was the presenter of a nice (if slightly unexciting) podcast called Point of Inquiry, which he founded (with his partner Thomas).  He says that he had offered to continue to host it even though he would be employed by another organisation, and surprise surprise, the CFI declined his generous offer.  Does this begin to demonstrate how much his attention was focused on his new organisation?  Besides that, the new hosts actually do a better job in many ways (and rarely mention their partners, who might or might not be at law school - as if we cared).  Point of Inquiry goes from strength to strength - well worth a listen!

Once installed at JREF he started a new podcast called "For Good Reason" and in spite of gaining a few star speakers including Randi (twice), Victor Stenger and Richard Dawkins, the programmes seem to have petered out.  There hasn't been a new episode since August 2010, and surprise surprise, there have been no announcements to tell the listeners what has happened to it, or why.  Wouldn't it have been polite to tell us?  You never know, someone might actually have been enjoying them.  (I must admit that I wasn't - and haven't even listened to all of them.)

Are you beginning to see a consistent picture here?

Lack of commitment to the JREF's information flow, lack of focus on its potential supporters, lack of news about what might be happening and what might not (but no lack of news about Thomas wherever you hear Grothe being interviewed). 

What a shame that TAM London 2011 seems to be cancelled - well when I say cancelled maybe I should say 'abandoned' (as someone on a forum pointed out that you can't actually cancel something that was never announced).


Small note:  This is specifically not a homophobic rant, as I can honestly say that I have no concern about the private lives of the minor celebrities, but just a rant about D J Grothe.  For example, I have the greatest admiration for James "The Amazing" Randi who established the JREF.  He has been openly gay and with a long term partner (who's name I do not know).  However, it was not until after his 80th birthday (and coincidentally after Grothe took over the presidency) that he announced the fact to the world.  I think Randi was right in his explanation that he hadn't been hiding anything.  It simply wasn't relevant to anyone else and it was really none of their business

Identity crisis on Google+

Who am I - really?  That is a question that must be in the mind of a lot of people who have been considering using the new 'Google+' but are being put off by stories of account suspensions.  If you haven't heard the stories, try this link, Google+ and pseudonymity: An open letter to Google, for one of the more prominent stories of the week.  It details how a (quite well-known) online personality has had her account suspended by Google because GrrlScientist is apparently not her real name.  Even though it is a pseudonym that she has used for many years, it is deemed unacceptable by Google.

Google+ is clearly aiming to be a direct competitor to Facebook, and let's face it, Facebook needs one!  How often does FB 'helpfully' change features that we have started to think we understand.  FB doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to privacy either.  The default option seems to be to tell everyone everything.  Well I exaggerate a little, but I was amazed when I started using FB (just this year) that I had to spend so much time locking down information that I didn't want to be known to everyone in the world.  (And I was already cautious about what information I had added to it!)

There is a raft of reasons why people use pseudonyms on-line.  I can only give my own reasons here.  I masquerade here on Blogspot as Plasma Engineer, use the same name on RD.net, plasma.engineer on gmail, and use @plasma_engineer on twitter.  I use another name for a work-related technical web site that I have been running for some years.  I even have a completely anonymous-looking hotmail account to use on sites that I suspect will send me a load of spam.  However I still use the name that my parents have given me on Facebook.  A few of you know all of these names, but I trust that other readers are not offended that I keep these identities separate.  I am not upset if I don't know your personal details, but I always feel honoured if you reveal them to me.  It is not just a matter of trust, it is just that we all have degrees of friendship in our real lives, and the same happens in the online communities that we frequent.

As a professional person, I believe that it is important that my personal opinions are separated from my professional opinions.  I don't kid myself that I am so important that it really matters on the grand scheme of things, but I have a role which requires me to act with authority sometimes.  I don't want my personal views on other topics to affect that role.

Having a pseudonym online means that I can exercise my right to free speech with a little more freedom than I would under my own name.  It is not that I feel concerned from a legal perspective.  After all, Google knows perfectly well who Plasma Engineer really is and the authorities could track me down in an instant, although I do not have an I-phone!  Even if I hadn't associated Plasma's e-mail account with my personal account they could easily enough spot that I typically log in from the same few IP addresses and MAC addresses and associate them.  Before you complain that Google would not do such a thing, remember the saga of the 'accidental' logging of wireless network SSIDs, IP addresses and other information while they were conducting the photographic survey of UK for Google maps.

Let's face it.  Google knows everything about us, like it or not.  It is part of the cost of an online presence.  I like to think of it as a responsibility check in some ways.  I'm not completely comfortable that Google knows so much but it does and its too late to change that.

Identity fraud is another area of concern for all of us.  We are constantly warned about it and still we hear stories about how identities and cash are stolen from the wary and the unwary alike.

On top of that, to be perfectly honest I'm literally scared of some factions.  I tend to speak out about things that concern me and some of those things are a matter of life and death to their proponents.  Indeed the life and death matters are the ones that I feel we should all know more about - if we have no warning we can't take any action to prevent things happening.  As an recovering christian, I tend to attack Christianity's inconsistencies sometimes.  There are probably fundamentalist christians who would wish me harm.  I also point out the dangers of creeping Islam, and I am certain that there are fundamentalist muslims who would actually wish me dead, and I have had thinly-veiled threats via Twitter - generally from ignorant idiots who seem to have no notion of rationality, truth or human rights.

So, is Google right to implement a rule about the use of real names on Google+.  I really don't know.  I can see why they want to avoid online fraud from accounts based on their servers. My G+ account actually is in my real name.  So is my Facebook account, and the Something Surprising Facebook

One thing I would have liked from Google was a warning when I set up my G+ account.  If they had made it perfectly clear that our accounts had to be in our real legal names rather than with a pseudonym then I would have felt that they had good reason to close some that were not - whether we like it or not.  Just saying to those who have lost their entire Google 'lives' (however temporarily) that it is against the terms of service (TOS) of the Google account is rather lame.  I have re-read the TOS again and find it hard to work out which clause they are invoking anyway.

The reason I think this is lame is a matter of consistency.   Google's fantastic and free blogging service does not seem to apply the same rules - not yet at least!

Of all the blogs that I follow - not many, but surely a representative number - I think only 10% are published under legally recognisable names.  My main concern about Google is that this identity crisis might get extended to Blogspot.  I have put a lot of effort into this blog this year, and loved doing it.  I now have a reasonable following of intelligent readers too.  Will Something Surprising get closed summarily because I would not answer to the name Plasma Engineer in the street, even though I really am an engineer (of sorts) who works with plasma?  If so, Google will save a LOT of server space as most of our blogs will vanish overnight without warning.

I would find that sad.

(Time for a backup I think!)

Later edition:
Reading further, I think the aim of Google's campaign against pseudonyms is to avoid the launch of a lot of 'corporate accounts' for every company, band and blog.  This link is to an article that Google+ Witnesses Traffic Growth Decline.  Funnily enough it neglects to emphasise that subscription is still by invitation only.

Geert Wilders - Innocent!

How many native English speakers around the world are aware of the name Geert Wilders?  Of those who are, I suspect that only a small proportion have succeeded in avoiding the totally biased media message that he is a right-wing politician who has been stirring up hatred about Islam.  Fewer of us can pronounce his first name properly.

Although I have not heard Wilders speaking, I suspect that his British counterpart is the 'foaming-at-the-mouth' Pat Condell, who has a reputation for speaking out against the privileges of religion.  In particular on his recent podcasts and Youtube videos he has taken a strong stand against islamisation.  His style of speech is certainly not to everyone's liking, but it is hard to argue against the truth of his words and the depth of his knowledge on the danger that Islam poses to the western style of life.

For those who are not aware of the Wilders story so far, over the last few years there has been an embryonic anti-islamic backlash in the Netherlands, and one of the figureheads of this movement is the democratically elected politician, Wilders.  Not only is he elected, but he is leader of the 'Party for Freedom'.  He has been accused of criminally insulting religious and ethnic groups and inciting hatred and discrimination.  In his own defence he has claimed that

"While Islamization of our society grows, the political elite looks in the other direction and ignores the real problem, namely, the impending loss of our freedom. I am fighting not against Moslems, but against the influx of a totalitarian ideology called Islam."

According to Wilders himself, it was not he who was on trial, but his "freedom of speech" and that traditional European freedoms were at stake.

You should consider the context of his concerns.  Over recent years the tolerance that The Netherlands has shown to Islam has been serially abused.  It is dangerous to exercise your right to free speech in Netherlands if you should happen to stray onto the topic of criticism of Islam.  Notable examples include the death threats against another democratically elected politician, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (see tomorrow's post) and the actual murder of film maker Theo Van Gogh.  It is hardly surprising that some people are starting to object to the behaviour of militant islamists.

In the first attempt to take Wilders to trial last year, the judges were deemed to have acted unlawfully by showing bias against Wilders and in particular of trying to persuade a witness that the trial was justified under the law.  When the 'show-trial' was restarted in 2011 under new judges this turned out (surprisingly) to be a minor factor, and the trial proceeded.

I find it interesting to speak with some Dutch friends and colleagues on this topic.  All my colleagues have been very guarded about their opinions.  They will tell you that "not everyone in Netherlands likes the approach that Wilders takes".  They have stopped short of saying that they personally were against the way that he has been pilloried by the courts and the media.  In fact, in each case I detected a quiet admiration for the man who is saying what nobody else dares to say in public.  (I have detected similar views among British friends who know of Pat Condell.  They dare not approve too loudly.  Of course, there is also one significant difference.  Wilders is elected and Condell is self-appointed.)

Only on one occasion has a Dutch friend actually raised the subject of Wilders in my presence.  She was speaking with two members of her family, in Dutch and I think they were surprised that I picked up what they were talking about.  I detected no reticence in their views.  They were delighted that the trial was over and that the outcome was so sensible.

At last, on 23 June 2011 Wilders was acquitted on all counts:

• Group insult
• Inciting hatred against Muslims because of their religion
• Inciting discrimination against Muslims because of their religion
• Inciting hatred against non-western immigrants and Moroccans because of their race
• Inciting discrimination against non-western immigrants and Moroccans because of their race

His statements were, as presiding judge Marcel van Oosten put it, "acceptable within the context of public debate."

Now we wait in dread that those poor helpless 'insulted' plaintiffs will try to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.  We can only hope that they don't introduce a new 'right not to be offended'  That would be the end of free speech as we know it.

Related links:

Trial of Geert Wilders
BBC bias on the result of the trial
Learning from Islamic History 

Related posts this weekend:
7/7 - Imagine no religion
Geert Wilders - Innocent - this post
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - victim of Islam -  coming tomorrow

Previous related posts:
Look out! Sharia about!
Adam and Eve featured
Draw Mohammed Day
Discrimination in Afghanistan

Small note:  Does anyone detect a similarity between the appearance of Geert Wilders and that of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies?  Is this a coincidence?  (Malfoy was translated to Dutch as Malfidus.)

Did you notice?

Being relatively new at this blogging business, I have fallen into a few traps.  Since I often annoy myself in being able to recognise a mistake whenever I make it again (!!) I have been gradually updating things.  After posting something every day for 4 months I can only say that it has generally been a great pleasure and hardly ever a chore.  I can't recommend Blogger too highly!  And it is free too!  Excellent value for money!

Have you noticed:

• It is now easier to leave comments on posts if you do not have one of the accounts listed on the pull down list.  (Anonymous comments are now enabled.)
• New 'pages' have appeared just under the title (above the line between the grass and the sky), with 'Home' bringing you back to the live blog.  These are for semi-permanent features.
• Links from my posts will now open in a new tab or window, so you do not lose your place as you are reading.

Updates and news might appear periodically in the page called BlogNews.  Let me know what you think.