Dutch TV Jury Finds Bin Laden "Not Guilty"

In another example of reality tv gone bad, a tv jury of the Dutch program "Devils Advocate" has found Bin Laden not guilty of carrying out the attacks on 9/11.

In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show "Devil's Advocate" on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled that there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

Well this ought to keep the flames of the conspiracy theorists burning bright. It also marks another landmark in the Dutchs' further submission to Islam. I guess having Theo Van Gough killed in broad daylight by a jihadist, running one of your MP's out of office for her stand on Islamic fundamentalism, Ayaan Ali Hirsh, and pilloring another member of your legislature, Geert Wilders, for his outspoken criticism just wasn't enough.
Remind me again where the Vikings came from. Maybe he will come out of hiding to accept the official verdict.

'The Netherlands Has Been a Magnet for Perversities -- and We Want to Stop That'

This is sure to offend the goat lovers.

The ban was two years in the making, but the Dutch parliament has finally decided to outlaw bestiality and animal pornography.

The Dutch parliament voted unanimously Thursday to ban sex with animals and pornography depicting bestiality. Anyone breaking the law now risks being sent to jail for up to six months. Until now, Dutch law had only forbidden bestiality in cases where animal suffering was involved.

By passing the ban, the Netherlands joins the ranks of 80 countries where animal pornography is explicity forbidden, Harm Evert Waalkens, the member of parliament who proposed the law, told the Associated Press. "The Netherlands has been a magnet for perversities -- and we want to stop that," Waalkens said, adding that pornographers had lobbied fiercely against a ban.

Whatever It Takes

German pupils given Holocaust comic book
German school students have been issued with a comic book account of the Holocaust as a teaching aid to learn the lessons of history.

Die Suche, or The Search, tells the fictional story of Daniel, who after seeking information on the Holocaust on the internet, hears a first hand account from his grandmother Esther, who as a young Jewish girl saw her parents deported to their death in Auschwitz.

She, though betrayed by neighbours, survives.

"Through the comic format, the subject becomes more realistic and closer to home for young people," said Julia Franz of the Anne Frank Zentrum.

"There is definitely a huge knowledge gap among teenagers. Most know about the Third Reich but there are lots of myths, prejudices and misunderstandings."

The book, produced by the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, has already been used in the Netherlands and is also to be piloted in Poland and Hungary - all countries that lost millions of Jews to horrors of Nazi death camps.

Eric Heuvel, the book's Dutch graphic artist, previously worked as a history teacher and The Search is his sequel to his first book on Esther and Daniel's story, The Family Secret.

To create the story in the “Clear Line” style made famous by Herge's Tintin books, historians were closely involved and many of Mr Heuvel's drawings are based on original Nazi-era photographs.

Die Suche's publication and issue to students marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the stepped-up efforts to make sure young Germans do not forget the darkest moment in European history.

The book is also available in English from the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam.

Via The Telegraph

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

'We Are Making Fools of Ourselves in the Eyes of the World'
by Leon de Winter

Fear of fanatical Islamists prompted Ayaan Hirsi Ali to leave the Netherlands, her adopted home, and now she has been forced to return. Paying for her bodyguards in the United States is too expensive for the Dutch government -- what a disgrace.

Amsterdam - There are exactly five people that the Dutch government has to protect against death threats from radical Islamists.

This sort of protection is expensive. Society bears the costs because freedom of opinion, a cornerstone of our culture, is on the line. The extremists, for their part, are prepared to risk their own lives to kill those under government protection.

The costs of protection are completely disproportionate to the outcome: the continued existence of our values and norms.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the sixth person granted protection by the Dutch government. She began receiving threats when, as a Dutch citizen and member of the parliament, she spoke out critically against political Islam. After the so-called "passport scandal," when the Dutch minister of immigration and integration threatened to confiscate her passport after Ayaan had been accused of lying about her name and birth date when she first arrived in the Netherlands, she moved to the United States, which precipitated a sharp upswing in her career within only a few months. She wrote a bestseller and landed a job at the American Enterprise Institute. But as a Dutch citizen, Ayaan does not qualify for protection in the United States under US laws and regulations.

Contrary to what many in the Netherlands believe about the success of her autobiography, she is not wealthy. She could not pay for the kind of protection she needs out of her own pocket -- no matter how much she would like to do so. Besides, the Dutch government apparently failed to find the right US officials with whom they could have reached an agreement. Under a decision by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Balin, the protection paid for by the Dutch government expired on Oct. 1. Ayaan returned to the Netherlands, because without protection she doesn't have a day left to live.

How much is her life worth, according to Minister Balin's budget?

When someone in the Justice Ministry leaked classified documents on Ayaan's protection to the newspaper NRC Handelsblad, it set off a media circus. Neither Ayaan nor anyone directly associated with her was behind all the attention she is currently attracting. She would have preferred to go on living quietly in the Netherlands, and she would have liked to quietly work out a solution with Hirsch Balin.

How much is her life worth, according to Minister Balin's budget? How does he calculate this? These are politically sensitive questions, questions that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher never asked when it came to the life of Salman Rushdie, wherever he happened to be.

Dutch society has no choice in this case. Canceling Ayaan's protection would be the equivalent of a death sentence. She can lead a relatively quiet life in the United States, but not in the Netherlands. And because she is so well known in the Netherlands and practically lives the life of a prisoner, not even able to go out on the street, the most humane solution is to continue to provide her with protection in America.

When commenting about the fact that the Netherlands paid for Ayaan's protection in the United States, parliamentarian Sybrand van Haersma Buma of the Christian Democrats can't help but admit that "it was a transitional solution, one that cannot last indefinitely."

How many days will he give Ayaan? Another week to live? A month? And then it would be time for the butchers of fundamentalist Islam to move in?

Whether we think she is nice, kind or opportunist, we cannot afford anything happening to her. The Dutch government is making a problem out of something that shouldn't be one, something that only causes chaos and sorrow.

Both Hirsi Ali and Hirsch Balin can only lose. The winners are the extremists who laugh about our inability to offer this courageous woman quiet and safety. You see, it's too expensive. In fact, though, it makes you want to weep.

Translated from the Dutch by Verena Bardtholdt

Via der Spiegel International.

For the time being, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is living in a safe house.

And the free speech wonks of the Kooky Kult of Koslam/New Democrat Party are . . . silent.

Also at Atlas Shrugs.