Comments on New Humanist Blog: Geert Wilders wins appeal against ban on entering ...

How typical. When you have no case, attack the app...

2009-10-22T18:59:35.245+01:00

How typical. When you have no case, attack the appearance.

Typical of who exactly? Irregular Shed, or "people I don't like"? Anyway, you have to admit, his hair is ridiculous.

It is not Israel has done nothing to bring peace. ...

2009-10-16T16:17:44.115+01:00

It is not Israel has done nothing to bring peace. They have had peace with Egypt and Jordan for years now.

Here he comes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/830...

2009-10-14T12:33:23.243+01:00

Here he comes:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8306665.stm

"How typical. When you have no case, attack the ap...

2009-10-14T10:03:27.004+01:00

"How typical. When you have no case, attack the appearance."

The case against him is large enough for me to assume it is taken as read; he's a hateful little turd of a man who placates his ego by stirring up hatred. By Jacqui Smith banning him from the country she played right into his hands - if he'd have been let into the UK I'd never even have heard of him. As it is, I now know the name of the Netherlands' own Nick Griffin.

The problem is, I believe deeply in freedom of speech, and that (painfully) includes attention-grabbing rantings from a xenophobic illusionist.

To understand Wilders you must understand the envi...

2009-10-14T09:57:23.763+01:00

To understand Wilders you must understand the environment he comes from. The Dutch government was paralysed by its own extreme political correctness and failed to acknowledge, let alone act upon, the growing problem of immigrant youth criminality. (And before I'm being labeled as a racist, when a minority of 12% is responsible for 45% of crime, there is a problem.)

Add to this the volatile mix of 9/11, the murder of Theo van Gogh by a muslim extremist, muslim outrage at anything that can even remotely be interpreted at criticism (Danish cartoons to name but one example), and a total failure of muslims worldwide to distance themselves from acts of terrorism and oppression, and you start to get the overall picture.

Geert Wilders makes use of the growing fear of islam in western society, and as long as muslism and governments keep playing in to his hands, he'll keep growing in popularity. Personally I don't see that as a huge problem - his popularity forces the Dutch government to deal with the problems they've been happily ignoring for decades, and forces Dutch muslims to engage in puiblic debates about today's issues - and I believe that he will eventually run out of steam.

That whole banning of the Koran thing, by the way, was an attempt to prove a point. Why ban Hitler's Mein Kampf while other books with far more malicious content (the Koran to name but one) are allowed to be published? Obviously that point was lost on many media outlets who instead spun the story for their own political agendas.

If he had just been allowed to come to the UK in t...

2009-10-14T03:47:48.766+01:00

If he had just been allowed to come to the UK in the first place, do his speech thing, and leave, no one would have cared. Maybe the daily mail would've drummed up a minor thing over it (supporting him while trying to look like they don't), but it would've been overshadowed by something else in a week at most.

But now if he does come back it'll be bigger, because now you've got "wrongfully banned", "government flip-flop" attitudes towards it that certain papers (i.e. the daily mail) would run with. And then the controversy, stirred up entirely by the paper's own reaction, would lead to further stories. Maybe a single muslim somewhere would complain and there'd be an article about "muslim outrage" or some such thing, like that issue with the police dog pictures a while back (which didn't happen).

You can't ban something, or someone, in the 21st century. The internet exists. Websites like youtube and wikileaks exist. Banning something just draws more attention to it nowadays.

Then again maybe no one will care. It's not like most people outside of holland and the international atheism-blog-circle even know who he is.

"In this publicity photo he looks like a shit magi...

2009-10-13T23:10:47.450+01:00

"In this publicity photo he looks like a shit magician..."

How typical. When you have no case, attack the appearance.

In this publicity photo he looks like a shit magic...

2009-10-13T20:18:32.998+01:00

In this publicity photo he looks like a shit magician in a terrible holiday camp, and with that in my mind, I'm happy - it detracts any credibility from what he says (like the Sinn Fein spokesman in The Day Today who had to inhale helium). So, if I find any of the lunatic fringe of my family nodding in agreement, should his opinions ever get aired in this country, I'll sidle up beside them and say,"yeah, but he's actually just a holiday camp magic act."