Update 3/31/08 - LiveLeak has restored the film "Fitna." Michelle Malkin comments .
Update 3/29/08 - The film is available here at Google video and here . Michelle Malkin offers a news update and more video locations. Wikipedia has a good overview of the film and the controversy. A European website offering on-going coverage is Gates of Vienna, see e.g. here and additional posts.
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Mark Steyn posts the update:
Geert Wilders' film is a hit - over 1.5 million views in English, over 2.5 million in Dutch last time I checked - but it's nevertheless been yanked by LiveLeak, with the following statement:
Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers. This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else.
Indeed. The Internet will keep Fitna alive in odd corners hither and yon, but only to those who actively seek it out. In the wider world, it goes without saying that such a film is unacceptable, and that this time round the pre-emptive rage (as Diana West
calls it) was so successful the next Fitna will have an even harder time: no movie theaters or broadcast networks or obscure cable channels would even consider showing it, and Google and YouTube and the other Internet biggies have grown increasingly comfortable with political speech-policing, and now one more small net operation has learned that, unless you want to be a 24/7 crusader on this issue, it's not a business worth being in. In effect, the Islamobullies have been rewarded yet again for threatening physical violence. The best way to end the debate is not to make the price of having one too high.
To reprise Douglas Murray's point below, a film such as Fitna might not even be necessary were the western news organizations not so absurdly deferential toward Muslim sensibilities that they go out of their way to avoid showing us anything that might cause us to link violence with Islam. Even that footage of those depraved West Bankers jumping up and down in the street and passing out candy to celebrate 9/11 appears to have been walled up in the most impenetrable vault of the archives these last six years. Both CNN and the BBC could only bring themselves to show the Danish cartoons by pixelating Mohammed's face - the first time this technique has ever been applied to a drawing, as if the Prophet had entered the witness protection program. At one level, they make Wilders' point for him, but, at another, they make it less likely anyone else will step forward to try to make the point next time.
In reality, it's the small band of people trying to resist the de facto universalization of Islamic prohibitions that have to enter the witness protection program. Wish Mr Wilders good luck. Neither his own government nor the feeble equivalence peddler who serves as US ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference are much help to him.