George Handlery about the week that was. Historic and contemporary immigration. Crime and psychiatry. About what was and what can be. True or false: A wall is a wall? The present’s new past. The extended present and its pitfalls. The misuse of missile defense.
 
1. Supposedly, densely inhabited countries can prop up their dropping population by immigration. Indeed, a demographically oriented migration policy can make sense. This is why it has been applied by the classical countries of immigration. In their case, though, the purpose of immigration has not been to replace natural growth but to accelerate it. The goal was to populate empty spaces. However, these receiving countries have adjusted their policy of acceptance. Measures were introduced to filter immigrants by considering their skills and their willingness to adapt in the pursuit of success. At present, not infrequently, immigrants, who often demand entry as refugees, are unskilled. This coincides with the growing structural unemployment of unqualified indigenous workers. All too frequently, not only skills but also the aspiration to accept the values that cause social mobility is also missing. That is why, given the absolute numbers involved, the rags-to-riches stories are becoming rare among some immigrant groups. Most of their members are satisfied by the returns from bad jobs that mean dead end careers in shrinking industries ending in welfare dependency. Aggravating is the implications for the social order, public security and to the principles of the host’s political system.

From the International Free Press Society website:

Below is the text of the address that Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was invited to deliver at the House of Lords on Thursday, February 12, 2009. Instead of making this address and showing his film Fitna, he was detained by UK immigration officials on his arrival at London Heathrow airport and sent back to the Netherlands as a risk to “public security.”
 
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
 
Thank you for inviting me. Thank you Lord Pearson and Lady Cox for showing Fitna [see it here], and for your gracious invitation. While others look away, you seem to understand the true tradition of your country, and a flag that still stands for freedom.

This morning Lord Malcolm Pearson, a member of the British House of Lords, announced that he has invited Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament, to show the movie Fitna (see it here) in a committee room of the House of Lords next Thursday (12 February). Mr. Wilders has been asked to address a private meeting with members of the British Parliament, explaining to the Peers and MPs why he made Fitna and to engage in an open and frank discussion with them.

This afternoon Mr. Wilders received a letter from the British Embassy in The Hague [see below] saying that he is a “persona non grata” in the United Kingdom. The ambassador told Mr. Wilders that he is a threat to public security and public harmony because of the controversy created by Fitna. Mr. Wilders intends to go to London anyway. “Let them arrest me in Heathrow,” he says.

If Mr. Wilders is denied entry to the United Kingdom, it will be the first time that Britain refuses entry to an elected politician from another member state of the European Union. The Dutch government has protested to the British government over the unprecedented barring of an EU parliamentarian by another EU country.

The death last year of Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminded westerners of the ideological disturbances that wracked the just completed century, the greatest of which Solzhenitsyn himself had documented in The Gulag Archipelago and in his novelistic cycle The Red Wheel. The literature of the Communist tyranny in Russia, of its internal and exported violence, bulks large, even when one considers it only in terms of English translations. In addition to Solzhenitsyn, we have Gulag memoirs by Yevgeniya Ginsburg and Lev Rozgan, biographies of victims by their survivors such as Nadezhda Mandelstam’s two books about the persecution and imprisonment of her husband Ossip, and generically difficult-to-assign items like Testimony, the conversations of composer Dmitri Shostakovich with Solomon Volkov. One might easily count hundreds of titles crying out to be read.

I will defend all Western countries but I feel especially close to Britain, which makes it all the more sad to see how humiliated this once-great nation currently is. The English language once conquered the world. Now the rest of the world is conquering the English-speaking countries. If current trends continue, people in Singapore will know English while the nation that created the English language will cease to exist.

In England, one of those weeks has just ended that define an entire period. This is no consolation for those who have suffered, and who may yet suffer worse. But I have no doubt that it is worth describing what has happened and trying to explain what it means.
 
Let me begin with the facts.

The Amsterdam Court of Appeals has ordered the criminal prosecution of a Dutch Member of Parliament for criticizing Islam. The court’s ruling overturns a previous decision by Dutch public prosecutors, who had determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Geert Wilders, leader of the conservative Freedom Party, for hate crimes after he produced a hard-hitting film that says Islam promotes violence. In a written judgment, the appeals court said that “by attacking the symbols of the Muslim religion, [Wilders] also insulted Muslim believers.”

George Handlery about the week that was. Selling a pause as a peace. Another “mission accomplished” might be on its way. Hamas’ unconsulted volunteers. East and West do not want the same from NATO. Legitimate self defense requires the approval of the foe. How groups of clients can become beneficiaries of an abuse. Government servants and their politics.
 
1. The season of attempted settlements – as promised by Obama – is approaching. The self-hating friends of the foe, but also well-intentioned fools, will take the mike to sell agreements. The spiel will be to market convenient excuses that make surrender in the substance appear to be a mutual compromise. Through the same magic, an unclear agreement favoring the enemy in need of R&R, will be presented as a peace settlement. (Primarily Iran, Korea and “Palestine” are meant.)

The Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen is rapidly disintegrating. Within the space of a few weeks there have been numerous defections among those who held important posts both within the national party and in certain regional branches. It does not bode well for the future of the party, nor does it promise any real hope for Marine Le Pen. She is Jean-Marie’s daughter and he wants her to be his successor.
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On Sunday, Iceland's new social-democrat Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was sworn in after eighteen years of conservative government on the island. She is the first female Prime Minister on Iceland, the world's first lesbian government leader and will lead a leftist minority cabinet at least until the elections of 25 April. She announced that a special parliamentary commission will be set up to consider EU membership, with the delivery date for its report set to 15 April, ten days before the next elections. She reassured at the same time that Iceland won't join the union without a referendum first.