I presume ...

... President Obama backing Turkey's membership of the EU will be seen as unwonted interference in European affairs. After all, whenever President Bush made statements of that kind, there was outrage in the land.

Then again, there seems to be no outrage or sneering contempt at the fact that the self-same ultra-brilliant President Obama thinks that they speak Austrian in Austria. Somebody should tell the highly internationally minded statesman that the language they speak in that country is German. [You have to scroll right down to the last question but one since most of the questions at the top were from American rather than European journalists.]

Fausta reports that there are likely to be some bad feeling in the Czech Republic though, presumably, President Klaus will not be given an iPod with President Obama's speeches.

We shall have more of what has come out of the NATO Summit and the various negotiations behind the scenes. For the moment let us just report that Turkey has dropped her objection to the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will be the next Secretary-General of NATO. (In Denmark he will be succeeded in the prime ministerial position by the Finance Minister, Loekke Rasmussen. Makes it relatively easy for bloggers to have prime ministers of the same surname succeeding each other.)

According to the BBC in language that reminds one of teenage girls talking about pop stars, it was the "charm and intervention of President Obama" that secured Turkey's approval. However, there are persistent rumours that the first thing the new SecGen of NATO will have to apologize for those cartoons in Istanbul. The BBC story hints at it without specifying whether it was President Obama who insisted on it. There is more on that on Hot Air.

This will really help the anti-Islamist cause whether in the West or in Turkey itself. And to think that we used to think Anders Fogh Rasmussen to be one of the few honourable leaders in Western Europe.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin who is, understandably, unhappy at the idea of an apology for those cartoons, links to the Reuters story that quotes Former Prime Minister and NATO SecGen elect Rasmussen "falling short of the full apology expected by Turkey".

Actually, the story hints that the row over the cartoons was just the cover and the real meat of the argument was Turkey wanting to extract one or two other promises from President Obama.

The row over his appointment, which threatened the image of unity at NATO's 60th anniversary summit, was resolved after Obama guaranteed Turkish commanders would be present at the alliance's command and that one of Rasmussen's deputies would be a Turk.

There has always been a very practical side to Turkish politicians. One can but applaud.

More on Geert Wilders

Front Page Magazine follows up the story of Geert Wilders and the Jordanian attempt to extradite him.

In a brazen attempt to stifle free speech in the West, a Jordanian court recently summoned twelve European citizens to answer criminal charges of blasphemy and inciting hatred.

Among those sought by the court is Geert Wilders, the Dutch liberal politician who made the anti-Islamist film, Fitna. Released last March, the Dutch MP’s production caused an uproar in Islamic countries, since it equated Islam with violence. Now a Middle Eastern court would like to prosecute Wilders for the “crime.” (Ironically, a Dutch court dropped charges against him for inciting hatred against Muslims with his film the day before the Jordanian court issued its subpoena.)

The Jordanian court’s move is only the most ambitious attempt to silence debate about Islam. Until now, the preferred strategy has been to file civil lawsuits in western courts to intimidate critics. The latest version of what may be called the legal jihad is even more disturbing.

In one subpoena, issued in early June, the Jordanian court ordered ten Danish newspaper editors to travel to Jordan for the “crime” of having republished the “Mohammad cartoons” last February. The cartoons, first published in 2005, were also greeted with disturbances in Muslim lands. Seventeen Danish newspapers republished the controversial cartoons as a response to the discovery of an Islamist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard, a caricaturist, drew the most famous of those cartoons in the form of Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, for which he is also included in the summons.

It is, of course, outrageous to have courts issuing summonses on behalf of groups with an obvious political agenda, in this case, something called "Messenger of Allah Unite Us", for something done in other countries where it is not a crime. We would never do such a thing in our civilized European Union, would we now.

If, as is presumed, the Jordanian court will try to issue an international arrest warrant, the people in question will have to rethink their future travel plans. As they all seem to be under police protection because of threats from other peace-loving, free-thinking groups and individuals, such as the man who butchered Theo van Gogh, this may not be such a big problem.

However, the boycott on Dutch and Danish goods has restarted, having been interrupted by, would you believe it, business considerations:

The boycott campaign actually began late last February but was suspended due to the losses Jordanian importers were incurring that had large stocks of unsold Danish and Dutch products.

The boycott, however, was resumed June 10. One million posters containing the logos of banned Dutch and Danish products will eventually hang in Jordanian businesses under the title “Living Without It.” The boycott will also be spread by television and radio ads, t-shirts, and bumper stickers.

As I recall the supposedly widespread boycott of Danish goods in the Middle East did very little damage to that country's economy and, in fact, encouraged other people to buy more lego and Danish cooking utensils.

It seems logical that all the businesses in question have to do is sit back and say: "Do your worst but don't expect any trade with us in future." Or words to that effect. Instead of which they do what businesses do best: they shake and shiver. Oh and grovel.

Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their products off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their nations’ values and their countrymen. The affected companies, according to The Jordan Times, were told to denounce the Dutch film and the Danish cartoons in the media both in Jordan and in at least one publication in their own country, support the Jordanian legal action taken against Wilders and the Danish newspaper people as well as the creation of an international anti-blasphemy law.

Several companies have already complied. When informed of the stipulation that requires a denunciation be published in a Dutch newspaper, a spokesman for a Dutch food company that exports to Jordan said his company “…would print it if needed.”

But such groveling will only buy these companies a little time, as another Dutch company discovered. It had immediately distanced itself from Wilders and Fitna after the film’s release last March but still had products placed on the boycott posters.

The Dutch government did not fare much better in its appeasement efforts. One Dutch embassy official in Jordan said he was surprised his country was included in the boycott in the first place since his government had already printed statements in the Jordanian press distancing itself from Wilders’ film.

And, naturally, the Jordanian blackmailers’ demands have not stopped. Only last week, Dutch and Danish companies were told to put the boycott posters up in their own countries if they did not want their products blacklisted.

Perhaps to further intimidate Holland’s and Denmark’s populations, the Jordanians are also claiming their boycott campaign is causing these countries huge financial losses of over four billion Euros in four months. A Danish official, however, says that is ridiculous since his country only exported about $50 million worth of goods to Jordan in 2007.

Somebody remind me again why we are supposed to listen to businessmen on matters political. It's just as well that some unnamed Danish official has kept his head in all this hullaballoo.

Arrests in Denmark

So far we can find reports of these arrests on the BBC site and on Sky News. Both make the mistake of repeating that images of Mohammed are “strictly forbidden” by Islam, which is not precisely true and about which there is some discussion going on.

However, they report the news that a group of people who “were allegedly planning to kill Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the drawings” have been arrested very early this morning in the Aarhus region after a long period of surveillance.

The BBC tells us that “three of those detained are Danes and the other two are foreigners”. Sky is more specific, explaining that three are Danish citizens.

Kurt Westergaard and his wife have been under police protection for several months.

In a statement on Jyllands-Posten's website, Mr Westergaard said: "Of course I fear for my life when the police intelligence service say that some people have concrete plans to kill me.

"But I have turned fear into anger and resentment."

The BBC's Thomas Buch-Andersen in Copenhagen says the arrests have stunned people in Denmark, where the furore over the cartoons was thought to have passed.

The last comment from the BBC chap I find hard to believe as the “furore” reappeared in news stories regularly and it was well known to all (except, perhaps, the BBC who at the time considered that the publication of cartoons was a dark blot on Danish society) that a number of people involved were still in hiding.

Furthermore, as Flemming Rose reported on his blog a week ago, the President of Iceland was interviewed by Al-Jazeera during his official visit to Qatar and asked to apologize for the Danish cartoons. Iceland, as Mr Rose points out, was part of Denmark from the fourteenth century until 1944 but has been a flourishing independent country since then.

It seems that President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson refused to apologize and pointed out some obvious political and geographic facts to his interviewer.

Take a referendum, any referendum

Both Reuters and AP report a statement by the newly re-elected Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on the subject of an EU referendum in Denmark. No, it is not a break-through for those who have been campaigning for a referendum on the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty. That is going to be ratified without any recourse to the people.

What Mr Rasmussen is proposing is another referendum on the euro, rejected by the Danish people in 2000 but for which there is a marginal support in the opinion polls at the moment. Marginal support will not necessarily transform itself into votes, especially not if the economy of the eurozone remains a little choppy.

Mr Rasmussen thinks that many things have changed and it is time to ask the Danes again (the last time they voted the wrong way) about that and about the opt-outs that they were promised for the second Maastricht vote (the first time they had voted the wrong way).

As our readers will recall, in the second Maastricht vote

Danish voters approved a revised treaty with clauses letting the Scandinavian country stay outside a single currency and banking system and refrain from joining a European defense structure or conform to EU citizenship laws and common law enforcement.

Is Mr Rasmussen running interference by trying to disarm those who are calling for a referendum on the treaty by promising a referendum on something nobody really wants except for the political establishment?

COMMENT THREAD

Riots in Denmark

This seems to have nothing to do with either immigrants or the Muslim community enraged by some event or another. Rather it is our old friends, anarchist “activists”, as AP describes them, though what sort of activity they engage in is unclear. Many of us might call them lay-about welfare scroungers and whingers but that would be unkind.

It all started with the Danish police evicting squatters two days ago from a house in Copenhagen that had been bought by a Christian organization six years ago. Who the new owners are is actually irrelevant. They are the owners and they would like to use their property.

Since then Copenhagen had two nights of riots and around 400 people have been arrested, 188 of them on Friday night. The Danish anarchists and “activists” have summoned their friends from other European capitals, who either went to Copenhagen to help or organized demonstrations of sympathy in their own countries, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Last heard of there were renewed, this time peaceful demonstrations on Saturday afternoon but the police was braced for more violence.

One little lad, aged 22, who gave his name as Jan, eschewing such bourgeois habits as surnames explained:

This is a display of anger and rage after more than seven years of struggle to keep what is ours.

And it is theirs on what grounds? Did little Jan, who had been going to the house in question for years, actually work, aged 15, to earn money to contribute to the ownership and upkeep of the house, which is, in fact, badly wrecked? I think not.

Meanwhile, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs points to another interesting story concerning Denmark and the way it is reported by AP.

Shock horror, they announce, under the title "Cartoons still costing Denmark", Danish exports to Islamic countries have fallen 11 per cent since the publication of those cartoons.

The next paragraph tells us that, actually, exports to countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference represent only 2.5 per cent of all Danish exports, which have, in fact risen by 9 per cent in the last year. (So much, incidentally, for how the country was going to suffer if it stayed out of the euro.)

Even Arla Foods, which suffered most in North Africa and the Middle East, say that sales are bounding back in those areas.

Now, if only they can find a way of making all those anarchist "activists" work.

COMMENT THREAD

Ahmed Abu Laban dies

Who dies, I hear readers asking themselves. Ahmed Abu Laban, the Danish imam who engineered all those cartoon riots. His death has been reported on Al-Jazeera.

Let me recapitulate very briefly. Ahmed Abu Laban who had fled from Egypt and found sanctuary in Denmark then proceeded to spend his time there attempting to introduce notions of sharia law in various parts of that country. When the Mohammed cartoons first appeared in Jyllands-Post in September 2005, Laban tried to stir up trouble in Denmark.

When this did not work out he, and some colleagues, went on a trip round some Middle Eastern countries (though not Egypt, which would not let him in) and showed the rather mild cartoons to all and sundry.

Among the original 12 drawings he had slipped three others that were considerably more offensive. One of them showed Mohammed with a pig’s snout. This was a lightly doctored picture of somebody winning the annual pig-squeaking competition in France.

Eventually, Laban admitted that he had falsified the evidence on Danish TV but pretended that he had received these pictures and messages in the post. The missives were never produced.

One way or another Laban achieved his aim: there were riots in various parts of the world and the Danish cartoonists and journalists went into hiding. The Danish government, despite pressure exerted by the UN and the EU, refused to close down the newspaper or apologize for freedom of the press.

Most European countries had one or two brave publications that put out the cartoons and they were published even in Egypt and Yemen, with unhappy results for the editors. The one country, shamefully, where no MSM outlet dared to reproduce the cartoons was the United Kingdom. This is something we shall not live down in a hurry.

Ahmed Abu Laban was next noted in Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah war last summer, when westerners were being evacuated from Beirut. It turned out that he had been given Danish citizenship and, therefore, he was rescued by the Danish embassy.

Curiously enough, this man who held Muslim thought and culture so dear to him turned to the, undoubtedly first-class, Danish medical facilities during his last illness.

Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs analyze AP's obituary piece, which has some curious omissions.

COMMENT THREAD