I loved Liz. Her death this week was grim, as I mourned not just a larger-than-life life but an entire ..... era, culture, my ideal. I feel her death most acutely. Of course, I had to run a Taylor film for our Saturday Night Cinema; alas, there is not much Liz in the public domain. But what there is is golden. The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S poignant story of a father's lonely love for his little girl, told in "Babylon Revisited," has "inspired" Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's big color film, "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which opened last night at the Capitol. "Inspired" is a polite way to put it. For what has actually occurred is that Mr. Fitzgerald's cryptic story of a man's return to the scene of his wantonness—to Paris, that is—in the tense hope of recovering his child by his late wife has excited the picture-makers to an orgy of turning up the past and constructing a whole lurid flashback on the loving and lushing of the man and his wife before she died. Where Fitzgerald did it in a few words—in a few subtle phrases that evoked a reckless era of golden dissipation toward the end of the Twenties' boom—Richard Brooks, who directed this picture after polishing up an Epstein-brothers' script, has done it in a nigh two-hour assembly of bistro balderdash and lush, romantic scenes. I saw this by Capote -- wanted you to see it as well: Elizabeth Taylor: Eyes so liquid with life Truman Capote met Elizabeth Taylor – who died this week – many times. In this dazzling portrait from 1974, he brings to life her wit, her honesty, her surprising love of literature – and the reality of her passion for Richard Burton. Some years ago, rather more than 15, a friend and I decided to install, among the New York social curriculum, a series of surprise-guest lunch parties; the idea seemed amusing enough for February, the dreariest month in New York, so my friend and I invited four other friends to join us for lunch at a private apartment. The idea was that the six of us would, individually, supply an additional guest, a “mystery” guest – preferably someone interesting and well-known and yet not known personally to any or at least all of us. My choice was Dr J Robert Oppenheimer, but he wasn’t available that day; now I can’t remember who I brought. But I do remember the selection made by Lady Keith, who was then Mrs Leland Hayward. Lady Keith, whom her friends call Slim, is a tall, coltish, California-bred aristocrat (northern California, need one add) with the most beautiful legs, ankles and feet extant. Her “surprise”, Elizabeth Taylor, was rather a runt by comparison – like Mrs Onassis, her legs are too short for the torso, the head too bulky for the figure in toto; but the face, with those lilac eyes, is a prisoner’s dream, a secretary’s self-fantasy; unreal, non-obtainable, at the same time shy, overly vulnerable, very human, with the flicker of suspicion constantly flaring behind the lilac eyes. We had met once before – one summer afternoon on the farm of a mutual friend in Connecticut. At the time, her third husband, the tough and short and sexy Mike Todd, still had his plane crash ahead of him, was still alive and married to this beautiful child who seemed besotted by him. Often, when couples make oozing displays of themselves, always kissing, gripping, groping – well, often one imagines their romance must be in serious difficulties. Not so with these two. I remember them, that afternoon, sprawled in the sun in a field of grass and daisies holding hands and kissing while a litter of six or eight fat Newfoundland puppies tumbled over their stomachs, tangled in their hair. But it was not until I encountered her as Slim Hayward’s guest that Elizabeth Taylor made an impression on me, at least as a person; as an actress I’d always liked her – from National Velvet straight on, but especially as the rich girl in A Place in the Sun. In the years since our first meeting, much had happened to her, but the two worst things were that Mike Todd had died and that she had married the “singer” Eddie Fisher – an event almost as unsuitable as Mrs Kennedy’s Grecian nuptials. Still, neither of these occurrences had dimmed the hectic allure Taylor radiates like a rather quivery light. The lunch was long, we talked a lot. My first discovery about her was that despite an amusing abundance of four-lettered profanity, she was in various areas a moralist, quite a strict one, almost Calvinistic. For instance, she was agitated at the thought of playing the ill-starred, hedonistic heroine of John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8; she had an unbreakable legal obligation to do the role (for which she later won an Academy Award), but she wished she could get out of it because “I don’t like that girl. I don’t like what she stands for. The sleazy emptiness of her. The men. The sleeping around.” At this point I recalled a conversation I’d once had with Marilyn Monroe (not that I’m making a comparison between Taylor and Monroe; they were different birds, the first being a take-or-leave-it professional, the other a morbidly uncertain, naturally gifted primitive). But Monroe’s moral attitude was similar: “I don’t believe in casual sex. Right or wrong, if I go for a guy, I feel I ought to marry him. I don’t know why. Stupid, maybe. But that’s just the way I feel. Or if not that, then it should have meaning. Other than something only physical. Funny, when you think of the reputation I have. And maybe deserve. Only I don’t think so. Deserve it, I mean. People just don’t understand what can happen to you. Without your real consent at all. Inside consent.” The second surprise was how well-read Taylor seemed to be – not that she made anything of it, or posed as an intellectual, but clearly she cared about books and, in haphazard style, had absorbed a large number of them. And she discussed them with considerable understanding of the literary process; all in all, it made one wonder about the men in her life – with the exception of Mike Todd, who had had a certain flashbulb-brightness, a certain neon-savvy, her husbands thus far had not been a whiplash lot: Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mr Fisher – what on earth did this very alert and swift-minded young woman find to talk to them about? “Well, one doesn’t always fry the fish one wants to fry. Some of the men I’ve really liked really didn’t like women.” And so we began to discuss a mutual friend, Montgomery Clift, the young actor with whom she had starred in A Place in the Sun, and toward whom she felt an affectionate protectiveness. She said: “You know, it happened at my house. Or rather, just after he’d left my house. He’d had a lot to drink, and lost control of his car. He was really all right before that – before the accident. Well, he always drank too much – but it was after the accident, getting hooked on all those pills and painkillers. Nobody beats that rap forever. I haven’t seen him for over a year. Have you?” And I said yes, I had. He called a few days before Christmas, and he sounded fine. He wanted to know what I was doing for lunch, and I wasn’t doing anything, I was going Christmas shopping, so he said he’d buy me lunch at Le Pavillon if I’d take him shopping. He had a couple of martinis at lunch, but he was rational, very amusing; but on the way he stopped in the gents, and while he was in there he must have taken something, because about 20 minutes later he was flying. We were in Gucci, and he had picked out and piled on the counter perhaps two dozen very expensive sweaters. Suddenly, he grabbed up all the sweaters and sauntered outside, where it was pouring rain. He threw the sweaters into the street and began kicking them around. The Gucci personnel took it calmly. One of the attendants produced a pen and sales pad and asked me, “To whom shall I charge these sweaters?” The thing was he really didn’t know. He said he wanted some identification. So I went out into the street, where Monty was still kicking the sweaters around (observed by amassing voyeurs) and asked him if he had a charge card. He looked at me with the most manic, far-gone hauteur, and said, “My face is my charge card!” Taylor, her eyes always so liquid with life, acquired an additional mistiness. “He can’t go on like that. It will kill him.” She was right; it did. But not before, greatly because of her sympathy and insistence at a time when producers were reluctant to use Clift, they worked together in Suddenly, Last Summer – which contained Clift’s last worthy performance, and one of Taylor’s best – except, many years later, the subtlety and shrewish, constrained hysteria with which she pigmented the role of the alcoholic wife in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Some years went by before we met again, on this occasion in London, where she was biding time before heading for Rome and the start of the doomed Cleopatra production. She and “The Busboy”, as Mr Fisher was called by many of Mrs Fisher’s friends, were living in a penthouse at the Dorchester. I’d visited that same penthouse often, as another friend had once lived there. Oliver Messel had tarted it up, and it was rather pretty, or had been: during the Taylor residency, the rooms were so crowded with shedding cats and unhousebroken dogs and general atmosphere of disorderly paraphernalia that one could not easily espy the Messel touch. On the first evening I saw Taylor in this particular surrounding, she tried her best to give me a charming calico cat she had gathered up off some street. “No? That’s really very mean of you. I can’t cart all this…” she extended her arms, indicating the vastness of her burdens – enough animals to stock a pet shop, a male secretary serving drinks, a maid whisking in and out of the room displaying newly arrived dresses (“All from Paris. But I’ll have to send most of them back. I can’t afford it. I really haven’t any money. He doesn’t have any either. [First wife] Debbie Reynolds – if you’ll pardon the expression – got it all”), not to mention “The Busboy”, who sat on the couch rubbing his eyes as if trying to rouse himself from a nap. She said to him, “What’s the matter? Why do you keep rubbing your eyes?” “It’s all that reading!” he complained. “All what reading?” “That thing you tell me I gotta read. I’ve tried. I can’t get through it somehow.” Her gaze disdainfully glided away from him. “He means To Kill a Mockingbird. Have you read it? It just came out. I think it’s a really lovely book.” Yes, I’d read it; as a matter of fact, I told her, the author, Harper Lee, was a childhood friend. We’d grown up together in a small Alabama town, and her book was more or less autobiographical, a roman à clef; indeed, Dill, one of the principal characters, was supposed to be me. “You see,” she told her husband, “I may not have had a particular education, but somehow I knew that book was true. I like the truth.” “The Busboy” regarded her oddly. “Oh, yeah?” A few mornings later I rang her up, and was informed by her secretary that she was in the hospital, a circumstance the London evening press confirmed: LIZ CRITICAL. When I got Mr Fisher on the phone, he was already balanced on the precipice of mourning: “It looks like I’m going to lose my girl.” He was so destined, though not in the style he presumed. Then I heard she hadn’t died after all, so I stopped by the hospital to leave her some books, and to my surprise, was ushered straightaway to her room. I was so impressed by the smallness of it; at least she wasn’t in a ward, but this claustrophobic closet, entirely stuffed by one narrow iron bed and one wooden chair, did not seem an appropriate arena for the life-death struggles of a Flick Queen. She was very lively, though one could see she had undergone a massive ordeal. She was whiter by far than the hospital’s bedsheets; her eyes, without make-up, seemed bruised and swollen, like a weeping child’s. What she was recovering from was a form of pneumonia. “My chest and lungs were filled with a sort of thick black fire. They had to cut a hole in my throat to drain out the fire. You see,” she said, pointing at a wound in her throat that was stopped with a small rubber plug. “If I pull this out my voice disappears,” and she pulled it out, and indeed her voice did disappear, an effect which made me nervous, which made her merry. She was laughing, but I didn’t hear her laughter until she had reinserted the plug. “This is the second time in my life that I felt – that I knew – I was dying. Or maybe the third. But this was the most real. It was like riding on a rough ocean. Then slipping over the edge of the horizon. With the roar of the ocean in my head. Which I suppose was really the noise of my trying to breathe. No,” she said, answering a question, “I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t have time to be. I was too busy fighting. I didn’t want to go over that horizon. And I never will. I’m not the type.” Perhaps not; not like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, both of whom had yearned to go over the horizon, some darker rainbow, and before succeeding, had attempted the voyage innumerable times. And yet there was some common thread between these three, Taylor, Monroe, Garland – I knew the last two fairly well, and yes, there was something. An emotional extremism, a dangerously greater need to be loved than to love, the hotheaded willingness of an incompetent gambler to throw good money after bad. “Would you like some champagne?” she said, indicating a bottle of Dom Perignon cooling in a bucket beside the bed. “I’m not supposed to have any. But **** that. I mean when you’ve been through what I’ve been through…” She laughed, and once more uncorked the throat incision, sending her laughter into soundless oblivion. I opened the champagne, and filled two ugly white plastic hospital glasses. She signed. “Hmm, that’s good. I really like only champagne. The trouble is, it gives you permanently bad breath. Tell me, have you ever thought you were dying?” “Yes. Once I had a burst appendix. And another time, when I was wading in a creek, I was bitten by a cottonmouth moccasin.” “And were you afraid?” “Well, I was only a child. Of course I was afraid. I don’t know whether I would be now.” She pondered, then: “My problem is I can’t afford to die. Not that I have any great artistic commitments (before Mike, before what happened to him, I’d been planning to get the hell out of movies; I thought I’d had enough of the whole damn thing). Just financial commitments, emotional: what would become of my children? Or my dogs, for that matter?” She’d finished her champagne, I poured her another glass, and when she spoke again she seemed, essentially, to be addressing herself. “Everyone wants to live. Even when they don’t want to, think they don’t. But what I really believe is: Something is going to happen to me. That will change everything. What do you suppose it might be?” “Love?” “But what kid of love?” “Well. Ah. The usual.” “This can’t be anything usual.” “Then perhaps a religious vision?” “Bull!” She bit her lip, concerned, But after a while she laughed and said: “How about love combined with a religious vision?” It was years before we met again, and then it seemed to me that I was the one undergoing a religious vision. This was one winter night in New York, and I was in a limousine together with Taylor and Richard Burton, the gifted coal-miner’s son who had replaced “The Busboy”. The Burtons’ chauffeur was driving away from, or attempting to drive away from, a Broadway theatre where Burton was appearing in a play. But the car couldn’t move because of the thousands, really thousands, of people carousing the streets, cheering and shouting and insisting on a glimpse of the most celebrated lovers since Mrs Simpson deigned to accept the King. Damp, ghostly faces were flattened against the car’s windows; hefty girls, in exalted conditions of libidinous excitement, pounded the roof of the car; hundreds of ordinary folk, exiting from other theatres, found themselves engorged among the laughing, weeping Burton-Taylor freaks. The whole scene was like a stilled avalanche nothing could budge, not even a squad of mounted policemen badgering the mob, in a rather good-natured way, with their clubs. Burton, a light-eyed man with a lilting, Welsh-valley voice and an acne-rough complexion you could scratch a match on, visibly relished the carrying-on. “It’s just a phenomenon,” he said, grinning a good grin full of expensive teeth. “Every night Elizabeth comes to pick me up after the show, and there are always these… these… these…” “Sex-maniacs,” his wife interposed coolly. “These enthusiastic crowds,” he corrected her a little scoldingly, “waiting… ” “To see a pair of sinful freaks. For God’s sake, Richard, don’t you realise the only reason all this is happening is because they think we’re sinners and freaks.” An old man who had climbed on to the hood of the car shouted obscenities as the car suddenly started an abrupt escape, and he slid off the hood under the hooves of prancing horses. Taylor was upset. “That’s the thing that always bothers me. That someone is going to get hurt.” But Burton seemed unconcerned. “Sinatra was with us the other night. He couldn’t get over it. He said he’s never seen anything like it. He was really impressed.” Well, it was impressive. And depressing. Taylor was depressed by it, and as soon as we eventually arrived at the hotel where they were staying, and where there was another group to greet their arrival, she fixed herself a sort of triple vodka. So did Burton. Champagne followed vodka, and from room service appeared a not very exciting after-midnight buffet. Burton and Taylor wolfed it down: I’ve noticed that actors and dancers always seem to have uncontrollable hungers – yet their weight stays at some strange, ethereal level (even Taylor, who never, off-camera, appears as plumpish as she occasionally does in photographs: the camera has a habit of adding 30 pounds – even Audrey Hepburn is no exception). Gradually, one became aware of an excessive tension between the two: constant contradictions in dialogue, a repartee reminiscent of the husband and wife in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Yet it was the tension of romance, of two people who had made a physical, psychological commitment to one another. Jane Austen once said that all literature revolved around two themes: love and money. Burton, an exceptional conversationalist, encompassed the first theme (“I love this woman. She is the most interesting and exciting woman I’ve ever known”), and the second (“I care about money. I’ve never had any, and now I do, and I want – well, I don’t know what you consider rich, but that’s what I want to be”). Those two subjects, and literature – not acting, writing: “I never wanted to be an actor. I always wanted to be a writer. And that’s what I will be if this circus ever stops. A writer.” When he said this, Taylor’s eyes had a particularly prideful glow. Her enthusiasm for the man illuminated the room like a mass of Japanese lanterns. He left the room to uncork another bottle of champagne. She said: “Oh, we quarrel. But at least he’s worth quarrelling with. He’s really brilliant. He’s read everything and I can talk to him – there’s nothing I can’t talk to him about. All his friends… Emlyn Williams told him he was a fool to marry me. He was a great actor. Could be a great actor. And I was nothing. A movie star. But the most important thing is what happens between a man and a woman who love each other. Or any two people who love each other.” She walked to the window and pushed back the curtain. It had started to rain and the rain was puttering against the window. “Rain makes me sleepy. I really don’t want any more champagne. No. No. Don’t go. We’ll drink it anyway. And then either everything will be wonderful or we’ll have a real fight. He thinks I drink too much. And I know he does. I’m just trying to stay in the mood. Keep up. I always want to be where he is. Remember, a long time ago, I told you there was something I wanted to live for?” She closed the curtains against the rain, and looked at me sightlessly – Galatea surveying some ultimate horizon. “Well, what do you think?” But it was a question with an answer already prepared. “What do you suppose will become of us? I guess, when you find what you’ve always wanted, that’s not where the beginning begins, that’s where the end starts.” Al Jazeera is planning to expand into the United States, and the chattering classes are treating it as a simple free speech matter. Let’s not let the Islamic supremacists once again invoke the freedom of speech to kill our freedom of speech. The ruse of using freedom of speech to allow propaganda broadcasts over our airways is another stealth attack on the United States of America. The issue of the expansion of Al Jazeera into the United States can only be likened to an expansion of Goebbels’s media network into the U.S. at the height of World War II. Remember: the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was aligned with Hitler and lived in the lap of luxury on Hitler’s dime during the height of World War II, while he made weekly addresses to the umma and all the Axis countries, spewing the most vile incitement to slaughter Jews, quoting Muhammad, shrieking Qur’an verses, demanding the rout of British and American forces. These “holy” speeches whose content came directly from the Qur’an incited violence across the Axis world and helped al-Husseini raise Muslim armies in Bosnia. Al-Husseini’s actions resulted in the deaths of 400,000 Jewish women and children. Would you have the likes of al-Husseini go up against Katie Couric? Because this is what we are suggesting. The overtly covert — or is that covertly overt? — propaganda war against the West is being waged on all fronts, but no organization has done as much to spread hate, lies and incitement to violence as Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is the leading terrorist propaganda organization in the world. Jihad murder mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki has praised Al Jazeera, and several years ago one of its most prominent reporters was arrested on terror charges. Al Jazeera also has for years been the recipient of numerous Al Qaeda videos featuring bin Laden, Zawahiri, and American traitor Adam Gadahn. Yet they never seem to be able to trace where these videos are coming from. They have repeatedly been set up at the point of attack right before a bomb went off, so that they could take the picture of the slaughtered, dismembered bodies. How did they know? Who was their Roger Ailes? A Ouija board? They don’t report news. They spread poison. They are no different from Al Manar, the “broadcast” station for Hezbollah. And Al Manar is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. And yet freedom-loving people have to listen to the Katie Courics and the Matt Lauers and all the other schmucks in the mainstream media laud the coverage of Al Jazeera, while slamming and smearing Fox News. The global jihad has every news organization at its heel. The BBC. NBC. CBS. ABC. The New York Times. The Guardian. Where can freedom-loving people get their news? Only from the Internet. And now the foremost jihad propaganda arm is coming to America, as if we weren’t getting enough jihad propaganda already. It’s clear to any objective observer that Al Jazeera is sympathetic to the global jihad, and a strong case can be made that it is complicit in those jihadist activities. In November 2010, 91 American, Israeli and Canadian victims of Hezbollah rocket attacks filed an unprecedented lawsuit against Al Jazeera in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Al Jazeera “intentionally provided real-time coverage of the locations of missile strikes inside Israel in violation of Israeli security regulations, thereby enabling Hezbollah to aim its missiles more accurately.” Read more: here I called this it -- last week. I said this is what was happening. Drudge has it today, a week after Geller. WTF are we doing in Libya, and why is the media aiding and abetting a military invasion to install Islamic fundamentalism, destroyer and annihilationist of the West? March 19th, Atlas wrote: President Hussein Backs Al Qaeda in Libya Obama: Consistently Anti-American The only revolution that was a genuine fight for life, liberty, and freedom was Iran, and Obama ignored it. Hussein sat back and watched Neda and thousands of others slaughtered. He backed the mullocracy. He will always be remembered for that, especially after the coming catastrophe. The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America AL QAEDA FIGHTERS JOIN LIBYAN REBELS Telegraph In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya". Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader". His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries". Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008. US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996. May all of the apologists, liars, deceivers, and shills for Islamic supremacism be the recipients of all the unique and special gifts that await them under the sharia. The new Egypt! Another crowning O-chievement. Respec it! Muslims Attack Christian in Egypt, Cut Off His Ear AINA Here is the historic speech which Geert Wilders gave last evening evening at the Annual Lecture of the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome. One for the ages ...... The Failure of Multiculturalism and How to Turn the Tide Speech Geert Wilders, Rome, 25 March 2011 Signore e signori, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of the Magna Carta Foundation, molte grazie. Thank you for inviting me to Rome. It is great to be here in this beautiful city which for many centuries was the capital and the centre of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture. Together with Jerusalem and Athens, Rome is the cradle of our Western civilization – the most advanced and superior civilization the world has ever known. As Westerners, we share the same Judeo-Christian culture. I am from the Netherlands and you are from Italy. Our national cultures are branches of the same tree. We do not belong to multiple cultures, but to different branches of one single culture. This is why when we come to Rome, we all come home in a sense. We belong here, as we also belong in Athens and in Jerusalem. It is important that we know where our roots are. If we lose them we become deracinated. We become men and women without a culture. I am here today to talk about multiculturalism. This term has a number of different meanings. I use the term to refer to a specific political ideology. It advocates that all cultures are equal. If they are equal it follows that the state is not allowed to promote any specific cultural values as central and dominant. In other words: multiculturalism holds that the state should not promote aleitkultur, which immigrants have to accept if they want to live in our midst. It is this ideology of cultural relativism which the German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to when she said that multiculturalism has proved “an absolute failure.” My friends, I dare say that we have known this all along. Indeed, the premise of the multiculturalist ideology is wrong. Cultures are not equal. They are different, because their roots are different. That is why the multiculturalists try to destroy our roots. Rome is a very appropriate place to address these issues. There is an old saying which people of our Western culture are all familiar with. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” it says. This is an obvious truth: If you move somewhere, you must adapt to the laws and customs of the land. The multicultural society has undermined this rule of common sense and decency. The multicultural society tells the newcomers who settle in our cities and villages: You are free to behave contrary to our norms and values. Because your norms and values are just as good, perhaps even better, than ours. It is, indeed, appropriate to discuss these matters here in Rome, because the history of Rome also serves as a warning. Will Durant, the famous 20th century American historian, wrote that “A great civilization cannot be destroyed from outside if it has not already destroyed itself from within.” This is exactly what happened here, in Rome, 16 centuries ago. In the 5th century, the Roman Empire fell to the Germanic Barbarians. There is no doubt that the Roman civilization was far superior to that of the Barbarians. And yet, Rome fell. Rome fell because it had suffered a loss of belief in its own civilization. It had lost the will to stand up and fight for survival. Rome did not fall overnight. Rome fell gradually. The Romans scarcely noticed what was happening. They did not perceive the immigration of the Barbarians as a threat until it was too late. For decades, Germanic Barbarians, attracted by the prosperity of the Empire, had been crossing the border. At first, the attraction of the Empire on newcomers could be seen as a sign of the cultural, political and economic superiority of Rome. People came to find a better life which their own culture could not provide. But then, on December 31st in the year 406, the Rhine froze and tens of thousands of Germanic Barbarians, crossed the river, flooded the Empire and went on a rampage, destroying every city they passed. In 410, Rome was sacked. The fall of Rome was a traumatic experience. Numerous books have been written about the cataclysmal event and Europeans were warned not to make the same mistake again. In 1899, in his book ‘The River War,’ Winston Churchill warned that Islam is threatening Europe in the same way as the Barbarians once threatened Rome. “Mohammedanism,” Churchill wrote – I quote – “is a militant and proselytizing faith. No stronger retrograde force exists in the World. […] The civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” End of quote. Churchill is right. However, if Europe falls, it will fall because, like ancient Rome, it no longer believes in the superiority of its own civilization. It will fall because it foolishly believes that all cultures are equal and that, consequently, there is no reason why we should fight for our own culture in order to preserve it. This failure to defend our own culture has turned immigration into the most dangerous threat that can be used against the West. Multiculturalism has made us so tolerant that we tolerate the intolerant. Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: Our opponents are keenly aware of our weakness. They realize that the pattern which led to the fall of Rome, is at play today in the West. They are keenly aware of the importance of Rome as a symbol of the West. Over and over again they hint at the fall of Rome. Rome is constantly on their minds. Our opponents are hoping for an event that is akin to the freezing of the Rhine in 406, when thousands of immigrants will be given an easy opportunity to cross massively into the West. Our opponents are aiming for a repetition of the fall of Rome in the 5th century and want to use exactly the same methods. “The strategy of exporting human beings and having them breed in abundance is the simplest way to take possession of a territory,” warned the famous Italian author Oriana Fallaci. However, the situation today could be worse than it was when the Roman Empire fell. The Germanic Barbarians who overran Rome were not driven by an ideology. After having sacked Rome, they eventually adopted the Judeo-Christian civilization of Rome. They destroyed Rome because they wanted its riches, but they realized and recognized that Roman civilization was superior to their own Barbaric culture. Having destroyed Rome, the Germanic tribes eventually tried to rebuild it. In 800, the Frankish leader Charlemagne had himself crowned Roman Emperor. Three hundred years later, the Franks and the other Europeans would go on the Crusades in defence of their Christian culture. The Crusades were as Oriana Fallaci wrote – I quote – a “counter-offensive designed to stem Islamic expansionism in Europe.” Rome had fallen, but like a phoenix it had risen again. Contrary to the Barbarians which confronted Rome, the followers of Muhammad are driven by an ideology which they want to impose on us. Islam is a totalitarian ideology. Islamic Shariah law supervises every detail of life. Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to our values. Respect for people who think otherwise, the equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, respect for Christians, Jews, unbelievers and apostates, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of islamization. Europe is islamizing at a rapid pace. Many European cities have large islamic concentrations. In some neighbourhoods, Islamic regulations are already being enforced. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqa’s, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honour-killings. “In each one of our cities” says Oriana Fallaci, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – End of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: The multiculturalist Left is facilitating islamization. Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties. Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening in Europe today has to some extent been deliberately planned In October 2009, Andrew Neather, the former advisor of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, confirmed that the British Government had deliberately organized mass immigration as part of a social engineering project. The Blair Government wanted to – I quote – “make the UK truly multicultural.” To achieve this end, 2.3 million foreigners were allowed to enter Britain between 2000 and 2009. Neather says this policy has “enriched” Britain. Ordinary people, however, do not consider the decline of societal cohesion, the rise of crime, the transformation of their old neighborhoods into no-go zones, to be an “enrichment.” Ordinary people are well aware that they are witnessing a population replacement phenomenon. Ordinary people feel attached to the civilization which their ancestors created. They do not want it to be replaced by a multicultural society where the values of the immigrants are considered as good as their own. It is not xenophobia or islamophobia to consider our Western culture as superior to other cultures – it is plain common sense. Fortunately, we are still living in a democracy. The opinion of ordinary people still matters. I am the leader of the Dutch Party of Freedom which aims to halt the Islamization process and defend the traditional values and liberties in the Netherlands. The Party of Freedom is the fastest growing party in the Netherlands. Because the message of my party is so important, I support initiatives to establish similar parties in other countries, such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, where they do not yet exist. Last month, a poll in Britain showed that a staggering 48 percent of the British would consider supporting a non-fascist and non-violent party that vows to crack down on immigration and Islamic extremists and restrict the building of mosques. In October last year, I was in Berlin where I gave a keynote speech at a meeting of Die Freiheit, a newly established party led by René Stadtkewitz, a former Christian-Democrat. German polls indicate that such a party has a potential of 20 percent of the electorate. My speech, in which I urged the Germans to stop feeling ashamed about their German identity drew a lot of media attention. Two weeks later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that multiculturalism is “an absolute failure.” Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Bavarian Christian-Democrats, was even more outspoken. “Multiculturalism is dead,” he said. Last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We have been too concerned about the identity of the immigrant and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.” – End of quote. Five weeks ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron blamed multiculturalism for Islamic extremism. “We have allowed the weakening of our collective identity,” he said. “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live […] apart from the mainstream.” – End of quote. In his speech, David Cameron still makes a distinction between the Islamist ideology, which he calls extremist and dangerous, and Islam, which he says is peaceful religion. I do not share this view, and neither did Cameron’s great predecessor Winston Churchill. Stating that Islam is peaceful is a multiculturalist dogma which is contrary to the truth. Politicians such as Merkel. Sarkozy and Cameron still do not seem to have understood what the problem really is. Nevertheless, the fact that they feel compelled to distance themselves from multiculturalism is a clear indication that they realize they need to pay lip-service to what the majority of their populations have long understood. Namely that the massive influx of immigrants from Islamic countries is the most negative development that Europe has known in the past 50 years. Yesterday, a prestigious poll in the Netherlands revealed that 50 percent of the Dutch are of the opinion that Islam and democracy are not compatible, while 42 percent think they are. Even two thirds of the voters of the Liberal Party and of the Christian-Democrat Party are convinced that Islam and democracy are not compatible. This, then, is the political legacy of multiculturalism. While the parties of the Left have found themselves a new electorate, the establishment parties of the Right still harbour their belief that Islam is a religion of peace on a par with peaceful religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others. The problem with multiculturalism is a refusal to see reality. The reality that our civilization is superior, and the reality that Islam is a dangerous ideology. Today, we are confronted with political unrest in the Arab countries. Autocratic regimes, such as that of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Kadhafi in Libya, the Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, and others, have been toppled or are under attack. The Arab peoples long for freedom. This is only natural. However, the ideology and culture of Islam is so deeply entrenched in these countries that real freedom is simply impossible. As long as Islam remains dominant there can be no real freedom. Let us face reality. On March 8, the International Women’s Day, 300 women demonstrated on Cairo’s Tahrir Square in post-Mubarak Egypt. Within minutes, the women were charged by a group of bearded men, who beat them up and dragged them away. Some were even sexually assaulted. The police did not interfere. This is the new Egypt: On Monday, people demonstrate for freedom; on Tuesday, the same people beat up women because they, too, demand freedom. I fear that in Islamic countries, democracy will not lead to real freedom. A survey by the American Pew Center found that 59 percent of Egyptians prefer democracy to any other form of government. However, 85 percent say that Islam’s influence on politics is good, 82 percent believe that adulterers should be stoned, 84 percent want the death penalty for apostates, and 77 percent say that thieves should be flogged or have their hands cut off. Ronald Reagan was right when he called Kadhafi a “mad dog.” However, we should not harbor the illusion that there can be real freedom and real democracy in a country where Islam is dominant. There is no doubt that the results of the Pew survey in Egypt apply in Libya, too. It is not in our interest to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tripoli and install a khalifate in Libya. Of course, the world has to stop Kadhafi from killing his own people. However, as UN Resolution 1973 stated last week, this is primarily the responsibility of – I quote – “in particular [the] States of the region.” End of quote. Why does a country like the Netherlands have to contribute six F16 fighter jets to enforce the arms embargo in Libya, while Saudi Arabia does not contribute a single plane from its fleet of nearly 300 fighter jets? Arabs are dying, but the Arab countries are shirking their responsibilities. And one of the major threats of the current crisis is not even addressed by our leaders: How are we going to prevent that thousands of economic fugitives and fortune seekers cross the Mediterranean and arrive at place like Lampedusa? Now that Tunisia is liberated, young Tunisians should help to rebuild their country instead of leaving for Lampedusa. Europe cannot afford another influx of thousands of refugees. Ladies and gentlemen, It is time to wake up. We need to confront reality and we need to speak the truth. The truth is that Islam is evil, and the reality is that Islam is a threat to us. Before I continue I want to make clear, however, that I do not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam. Islam strives for world domination. The koran commands Muslims to exercise jihad and impose shariah law. Telling the truth about immigration and warning that Islam might not be as benevolent as the ruling elite says, has been made a hate speech crime in several EU member states. As you probably know, I have been brought to court on charges of hate speech. That is the paradox of the multicultural society. It claims to be pluralistic, but allows only one point of view of world affairs, namely that all cultures are equal and that they are all good. The fact that we are treated as criminals for telling the truth must not, however, deter us. The truth that Islam is evil has always been obvious to our ancestors. That is why they fought. It was very clear to them that our civilization was far superior to Islam. It is not difficult to understand why our culture is far better than Islam. We Europeans, whether we be Christians, Jews, agnostics or atheists, believe in reason. We have always known that nothing good could be expected from Islam. While our culture is rooted in Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, Islam’s roots are the desert and the brain of Muhammad. Our ancestors understood the consequences very well. The Koran, wrote the historian Theophanes, who lived in the second half of the 8th century, is based on hallucinations. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,” the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II said in 1391, adding: “God is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonable is contrary to God’s nature.” For 1,400 years, Westerners have been criticizing Islam and its founder because they recognized evil when they saw it. But then, suddenly, in the last decades of the past century, especially from the 1970s onwards, Western intellectuals stopped doing so. The moral and cultural relativism of Marxism led the West’s political and intellectual elites to adopt a utopian belief in a universal brotherhood of mankind. Multiculturalism is a culture of repudiation of Europe’s heritage and freedoms. It weakens the West day by day. It leads to the self-censorship of the media and academia, the collapse of the education system, the emasculation of the churches, the subversion of the nation-state, the break-down of our free society. While today – at last – our leaders seem to realize what a disastrous failure multiculturalism has been, multiculturalism is not dead yet. More is needed to defeat multiculturalism than the simple proclamations that it has been an “absolute failure.” What is needed is that we turn the tide of Islamization. There are a few things which we can do in this regard. One thing which we should do is to oppose the introduction of Sharia or Islamic law in our countries. In about a dozen states in the United States, legislation is currently being introduced to prevent the introduction of Sharia. In early May, I will be travelling to the U.S. to express my support to these initiatives. We should consider similar measures in Europe. Another thing which we should do is support Muslims who want to leave Islam. An International Women’s Day is useless in the Arab world if there is no International Leave Islam Day. I propose the introduction of such a day in which we can honor the courageous men and women who want to leave Islam. Perhaps we can pick a symbolic date for such a day and establish an annual prize for an individual who has turned his back on Islam or an organization which helps people to liberate themselves from Islam. It is very easy to become a Muslim. All one has to do is to pronounce the Shahada, the Islamic creed, which says – I quote “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” It should be equally easy to leave Islam by pronouncing a counter-Shahada, which says “I leave Islam and join humankind.” A third measure to turn the tide of Islamization is to reemphasize the sovereignty of the nation-state. The peoples of the free world will only be able to fight back against Islam if they can rally around a flag with which they can identify. This flag, symbolizing pre-political loyalty, can only be the flag of our nation. In the West, our freedoms are embodied in our nation-states. This is why the multiculturalists are hostile to the nation-state and aim to destroy it. National identity is an inclusive identity: It welcomes everyone, whatever his religion or race, who is willing to assimilate into a nation by sharing the fate and future of a people. It ties the individual to an inheritance, a tradition, a loyalty, and a culture. I want to elaborate a bit on this since we are gathered here today in Rome. Again, it is appropriate that we are in Rome. In this city, in 1957, and – what an ironic coincidence – on this very day, the 25th of March, the Treaty of Rome was signed. This Treaty obliges the member states of the European Union to aim for “an ever closer union.” Unfortunately, this union, like other multinational organizations, has become one of the vehicles for the promotion of multiculturalism. The EU has fallen in the hands of a multiculturalist elite who by undermining national sovereignty destroy the capacity of the peoples of Europe to democratically decide their own future. The new government in my country, which is supported by my party, wants to restrict immigration. That is what our voters want. But we are confronted by the fact that our policies have to a large extent been outsourced to “Europe” and that our voters no longer have a direct say over their own future. On account of international treaties, EU legislation prevails over national legislation and cannot be reversed by national parliaments. Indeed, in 2008, the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the EU, annulled both Irish and Danish immigration legislation. The Court stated that national law is subordinate to whatever is ruled on the European level. In March 2010, the European Court of Justice annulled Dutch legislation restricting family reunification for immigrants on welfare. The ease with which Europe’s political elite conducts an immigration policy aimed at the deracination of Europe shows the insensitivity of this elite. It willingly sacrifices its own people to its political goal, without any consideration for the people involved. Lower class blue-collar people have been driven from their neighborhoods. There is no respect for their democratic vote. On the contrary, people who do not agree with the multiculturalist schemes are considered to be racists and xenophobes, while the undefined offence of “racism and xenophobia” has been made central to all moral pronouncements by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, and other supra-national organizations. This represents a systematic assault by the elite on the ordinary feelings of national loyalty. In 2008, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the member-states must – I quote – “condemn and combat Islamophobia” and ensure “that school textbooks do not portray Islam as a hostile or threatening religion.” – end of quote. In March 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution criminalizing so-called “defamation of religions.” The resolution, authored by Pakistan, mentions only one religion by name: Islam. With its 57 member states the Organization of the Islamic Conference systematically uses its voting power in the UN to subvert the concept of freedom and human rights. In 1990, the OIC rejected the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and replaced it by the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which states in articles 24 that – I quote – “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia.” – end of quote. This “human rights” charade has to stop if Western civilization wants to survive. Human rights exist for the protection of individuals, not religions and ideologies. The EU’s aim, meanwhile, seems to be to destroy the old sovereign nations and replace them by new provincial identities, which are all clones of each other. Britanistan will not differ from Netherlandistan, nor Germanistan from Italiastan, or any other province of the European superstate in the making. We must reclaim Europe. We can only do so by giving political power back to the nation-state. By defending the nation-states which we love, we defend our own identity. By defending our identity, we defend who we are and what we are against those who want to deracinate us. Against those who want to cut us from our roots, so that our culture withers away and dies. My friends, Twenty years after the ordinary people, Europe’s mainstream conservative leaders, such as Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron, have finally – better late than never – come to the obvious conclusion, namely that multiculturalism is a failure. However, they do not have a plan to remedy the situation. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for change. We must make haste. Time is running out. Ronald Reagan said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”. That is why I propose the following measures in order to preserve our freedom: First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. If we are free to speak, we will be able to tell people the truth and they will realize what is at stake. Second, we will have to end cultural relativism. To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity. Third, we will have to stop Islamization. Because more Islam means less freedom. We must stop immigration from Islamic countries, we must expel criminal immigrants, we must forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe already. Immigrants must assimilate and adapt to our values: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Fourth, we must restore the supremacy and sovereignty of the nation-state. Because we are citizens of these states, we can take pride in them. We love our nation because they are our home, because they are the legacy which our fathers bestowed on us and which we want to bestow on our children. We are not multiculturalists, we are patriots. And because we are patriots, we are willing to fight for freedom. Let me end with a final – and a positive – remark: Though the situation is bad and multiculturalism is still predominant, we are in better shape than the Roman Empire was before its fall. The Roman Empire was not a democracy. The Romans did not have freedom of speech. We are the free men of the West. We do not fight for an Empire, we fight for ourselves. We fight for our national republics. You fight for Italy, I fight for the Netherlands, others fight for France, Germany, Britain, Denmark or Spain. Together we stand. Together we represent the nations of Europe. I am confident that if we can safeguard freedom of speech and democracy, our civilization will be able to survive. Europe will not fall. We, Europe’s patriots, will not allow it. Thank you very much.
SATURDAY NIGHT CINEMA: ELIZABETH TAYLOR
THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS
Saturday, March 26, 2011
PAMELA GELLER, DAILY CALLER: STOP AL JAZEERA’S EXPANSION IN THE US
Stop Al Jazeera’s expansion in the United States -- Pamela Geller
US TROOPS JOIN AL QAEDA, REBELS IN LIBYA
Our boys fighting alongside Al Qaeda jihadists and Libyan rebels. Are they forced to pray too? You know, Obama demands that we show respect. Just how far, O?HEAR NO EVIL
"We have applied the law of Allah, now come and apply your law"
(AINA) -- A group of Muslims attacked Ayman Anwar Mitri, a 45 year old Christian Coptic man in the Upper Egyptian town of Qena, cutting off his ear. The Muslims claimed they were applying Sharia law because Mr. Mitri allegedly had an illicit affair with a Muslim woman. The Muslims called the police and told them "We have applied the law of Allah, now come and apply your law," according to Mr. Mitri in an interview for the Egyptian Human Rights Organization.
Mr. Mitri, a low grade administrator at a secondary school, from elHasweya, in Qena, 492 KM from Cairo, had rented his flat to two Muslim sisters, Abeer and Sabrin Saif Al-Nasr, through an agent. After nine months he learned the sisters had been indicted for prostitution, so he asked them to leave and they did.
On Sunday, March 20 Mr. Mitri was informed by a friend via a phone call at 4 AM that the flat where the Muslim sisters lived was on fire; he went to the flat. While waiting in the torched flat a Muslim named Alaa el Sunni came and berated him for renting his flat to prostitutes. "I tried to calm him down," said Mr. Mitri, "and told him I knew nothing about the two women since they came through an agent." Alaa suggested they would go somewhere quiet to clear the misunderstanding. They went to the flat of Mr. Mitri's friend Khaled, a policeman, where 12 Muslims were waiting for him. They started beating him and saying "We will teach you a lesson, Christian" and "This serves your right for renting your property to prostitutes."
Believing this was the end of the episode, they asked him to call the Muslim woman, so that they would send her to her father. When the woman refused to come, they asked a female Muslim neighbor to call her, saying that her belongings are with her. The woman, Sabrin, came and was told to say that she had a relationship with Mr. Mitri. "At first the woman refused, but after being beaten, she agreed," said Mr. Mitri.
Remembering his ordeal, he said that they sat him on a chair and a Muslim named elHusseiny cut his right ear off. "I felt so shocked that I do not even know what tool he used." They also made a a 10cm cut at the back of his neck, cut his other ear, his face and his arm (video showing wounds). Mr. Mitri said they wanted to throw him off the fifth floor but Khaled objected, saying he would get into trouble for just being there, since he is a policeman.
Mr. Mitri said that the Muslims tried to convert him to Islam, but he refused. The Muslims then called the police and told them to come and get the Copt saying "We have applied the law of Allah, now come and apply your civil law."
The police came and rescued Mitri and Sabrin, who told the police the Muslims forced her to lie about the illicit relationship between her and Mitri. A police report was issued, but no arrests were made.
"I feel humiliated and broken," said Mr. Mitri. "I have lost the income from the torched flat, my car, and have become disfigured. Who is going to restore my honor?"
His wife said in an interview that she is ashamed to go to work and feels very unsafe. She is afraid to let the children go to school and is hoping to leave the area.
At first Mr. Mitri said he wanted full compensation for his losses and even wanted revenge by cutting off the ear of the Muslim who cut his ear off. However, it was reported that a "reconciliation" meeting was made in the presence of Colonel Ahmed Masood, Vice military ruler of Qena, whereby Ayman Mitri and the Muslims came to an "agreement." Mr. Mitri had to withdraw the police report he filed against the Muslims.
Mr. Mitri appeared on the Coptic TV channel CTV, where he was asked about the reason he agreed to reconcile and forfeit his rights. Mitri said while sobbing "I was threatened, they threatened to kidnap the female children in our family."
Anba Kirollos, Bishop of Nag Hammadi, called on the armed forces to intervene and put an end to this "thuggery in the name of religion" so that this "infection" does not spread to other areas. He said if thuggery is put above the law the dignity and prestige of the State would be lost.
By Mary Abdelmassih
http://www.aina.org/news/20110325223845.htmGEERT WILDERS REMARKS TO THE MAGNA CARTA FOUNDATION
"THE FAILURE OF MULTICULTURALISM AND HOW TO TURN THE TIDE"
File Photo: Geert Wilders speaking at our SIOA/AFDI Ground Zero mosque protest last year (photo courtesy El Marco)
Sunday, 27 March 2011
Capitol's Film Inspired by Fitzgerald Story
By BOSLEY CROWTHER, NY Times
Published: November 19, 1954
Image 1 of 3
'This beautiful child': Elizabeth Taylor with her third husband, Mike Todd
By Truman Capote 6:28PM GMT 25 Mar 2011
No organization has done as much to spread hate, lies and incitement to violence as Al Jazeera.
Join me in the fight here: Come April 1, 2011 to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
By Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham 5:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011
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