...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

 

Kudos to Harper: I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the efforts of my Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It’s been a long time since Canada has had a P.M. who has the fortitude to be a leader instead of a follower, and who is willing to stand up to the bullies of the world. My hat’s off to you, Mr. Prime Minister, and I hope you have the wherewithal to keep it up. From the Globe and Mail:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper blocked a last-minute resolution at the Francophonie summit on Friday that would have recognized only Lebanon's suffering during this summer's conflict in the Middle East.

Mr. Harper said an institution like la Francophonie could not recognize suffering based on the nationality of its victims, and he called for recognition of the conflict's effect on Israeli residents.

The resolution was proposed by Egypt at the last minute of the annual meeting of French-speaking nations.

”Obviously Canada believes that the resolution has to be balanced and that we should recognize the victims in both Lebanon and Israel. I don't think an international organization with the breadth and scope of the Francophonie would want to do anything than to make sure that victims are recognized regardless of their nationality,” Mr. Harper said.

The language on Lebanon had been proposed at the ”last-minute” by the Egyptian delegation, seconded by the Lebanese themselves, French President Jacques Chirac said.

The resolution had gained the acceptance of a majority of members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, but it faced the ”hostility” of the Canadians, who managed, with the support of Mr. Chirac, to prevent its adoption.

Mr. Harper said he hoped the dispute was more over ”language than substance.”

Mr. Chirac that negotiations are continuing on the resolution and said a solution is needed to ”allow everybody to save face.”…

Right, because there’s nothing worse that the sight of some faceless Arab French-speaking Jew-haters. They're uggh-ly!

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments (1)

 

Freedom and censorship: If I had to come up with a thumbnail definition of “freedom” it might be this: Freedom is the inalienable right to offend some of the people some of the time. From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune about the German Opera company which chose censorship over freedom:

 

…Self-censorship to mollify those who would practice violence in the name of Islam is self-defeating. Canceling an opera--or any other public event--bolsters the radicals' belief that the West can be intimidated and eventually defeated.

It's understandable that Deutsche Oper felt a threat to the safety of its players and patrons. It looks now that it will respond in the best way possible, by confronting that threat rather than succumbing to it.

Art offends some people. Books offend some people. Music offends some people. Newspapers offend some people. People choose to read or not, to listen or not, to go to the opera or not. Those choices cannot be made for them by those who are intent on doing battle with Western culture.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:14 | link | comments (2)

 

Feeding time at the crocodile exhibit: Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson wants us to know that there’s no point in trying to use our military to defeat the jihadis. (Column available online for extra shekels.) He cites two new reports—one American, one British—which conclude that engaging them in actual battle only make ‘em madder.

 

No, evidently the best way—the only way—to fight the jihad is to promote those “more tolerant voices in Islam” which might exert some “real or actual” influence over their more excitable co-religionists.

 

Topping idea, Jeff. Sound a lot like the one Daniel Pipes was promoting a few years back. But it seems to me that several years into the current round of jihad, it’s not the influence of these tolerant voices that are “real or actual”; it’s the voices themselves. And it seems to me that if they haven’t stepped in to lend us—and themselves—a hand up till now, they are probably more actual than real.

 

Simpson, quoting the British Muslim chick who penned the study by the Royal institute of International Affairs, says the “minimum” required to “win over the moderate faction within the Muslim world” is “the establishment of a Palestinian state with sovereignty over at least some parts of East Jerusalem.”

 

And the maximum? I bet the establishment of a Palestinian state with sovereignty over the entire Entity would really put them in a good mood.

 

Just kidding. Anyone who has a sense of the larger global jihad—a category which seems to exclude Simpson and report-writers—knows that this tiny Jewish morsel is unlikely to satiate the rapacious, implacable, unappeasable crocodile.

 

Update: My letter to the Globe:

 

I always wondered what was deterring “moderate” Muslims from speaking out in greater number about the extremists who have hijacked their religion. Now I know that, according a recent British report on combating the jihad, the moderates are all waiting for the Palestinians to be sovereign over a state that includes at least a portion of East Jerusalem.

 

But if that were the case, where were all these moderates when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected a deal that would have given the Palestinians exactly that? Why didn’t they raise their voices back then and encourage him to settle the matter once and for all?

 

The truth is that if moderates haven’t yet spoken out against those who imperil them as much as they do non-Muslims, I doubt it’s because the Palestinians don’t have a state. More likely, it’s because moderates fear reprisal from the extremists, or because they are unwilling to side publicly with non-Muslims, or because, in their heart of hearts, some of them are actually rooting for the jihadists who are waging war not just in Israel, but around the globe.

 

In any case, counting on these voices of “tolerance” to kick in once the Palestinian issue has been resolved, and to make any headway with the extremists on their and our behalf at that indeterminate future date, is a pipe dream—and a very dangerous one at that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments (1)

 

Persian nip ‘n’ tuck: We’re told that Moo and the mullahs are deeply unpopular, and that one day in the near or distant future, the Iranian people will muster the will to rise up and free themselves from the oppressive party poopers.

 

Mmm, don’t think so. From the sounds of it, they have some other priorities. From the Beeb:

It is eight in the morning in the plastic surgeon's office and Hussein is preparing for an operation.

He's going to have a nose job, following in the footsteps of his mother, his brother, his aunt and his cousin who have all had cosmetic surgery.

"Now it's really normal but of course 10 years ago if you were a boy and had a nose job everyone would laugh at you and make fun of you," admits Hussein.

"But now it's not like that - lots of people are doing it," he adds.

Hussein, who is a university student with a wealthy father involved in trade with China, says he met a woman the other day who asked why a boy needed to worry about his looks so much.

"I was shocked because everyone would love to have a more beautiful face," he says.

It's becoming increasingly common for Iranian men to have cosmetic surgery.

At first it was Iranian women who wanted nose jobs because strict Islamic dress regulations meant the only thing peeking out was their face and they wanted to make the best of it.

Since the revolution in 1979, Iran has become one of the world's leading centres for cosmetic surgery with three thousand plastic surgeons operating in Tehran alone...

I can think of at least one Iranian who could have benefited from a little beautification.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:28 | link | comments

 

“Theoretical” denial: You know how certain fundamentalist types try to play up the iffy nature of “natural selection” by saying that, after all, Darwin’s was only a theory of evolution?

 

That’s more or less how Ahmadinejad’s minions have come to think of the Holocaust. As the abaya-clad reporter in this visual tour of Iran’s Holo-‘toon exhibit explains to Iranian TV viewers, the Holocaust is “the theory” that six million Jews were killed by Hitler. (link via Drudge)

 

If it actually happened, I guess you could call it Hitler’s unnatural selection.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:37 | link | comments

 

Rise and shine!: Thomas L. Friedman has belatedly awakened to the fact that Islam may not be living up to its P.R. as a religion of peace, and that keeping mum about the resulting cognitive dissonance may not be in the interest of our civilization.

 

Boker tov, Tom. (link via Martin Kramer):

 

We need to stop insulting Islam. It’s enough already.

No, that doesn’t mean the pope should apologize. The pope was actually treating Islam with dignity. He was treating the faith and its community as adults who could be challenged and engaged. That is a sign of respect.

What is insulting is the politically correct, kid-gloves view of how to deal with Muslims that is taking root in the West today. It goes like this: “Hushhh! Don’t say anything about Islam! Don’t you understand? If you say anything critical or questioning about Muslims, they’ll burn down your house. Hushhh! Just let them be. Don’t rile them. They are not capable of a civil, rational dialogue about problems in their faith community.”

Now that is insulting. It’s an attitude full of contempt and self-censorship, but that is the attitude of Western elites today, and it’s helping to foster the slow-motion clash of civilizations that Sam Huntington predicted. Because Western masses don’t buy it. They see violence exploding from Muslim communities and they find it frightening, and they don’t think their leaders are talking honestly about it. So many now just want to build a wall against Islam. It will be terrible if Turkey is blocked from entering the European Union, but that’s where we’re heading, and the only thing that will halt it is honest dialogue.

But it is not the dialogue the pope mentioned — one between Islam and Christianity. That’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. What is needed first is an honest dialogue between Muslims and Muslims.

As someone who has lived in the Muslim world, enjoyed the friendship of many Muslims there and seen the compassionate side of Islam in action, I have to admit I am confused as to what Islam stands for today.

Why? On the first day of Ramadan last year a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber blew up a Shiite mosque in Hilla, Iraq, in the middle of a memorial service, killing 25 worshipers. This year on the first day of Ramadan, a Sunni suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 35 people who were lining up in a Shiite neighborhood to buy fuel. The same day, the severed heads of nine murdered Iraqi police officers and soldiers were found north of Baghdad.

I don’t get it. How can Muslims blow up other Muslims on their most holy day of the year — in mosques! — and there is barely a peep of protest in the Muslim world, let alone a million Muslim march? Yet Danish cartoons or a papal speech lead to violent protests. If Muslims butchering Muslims — in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan — produces little communal reaction, while cartoons and papal remarks produce mass protests, what does Islam stand for today? It is not an insult to ask that question…

No, but it’s an insult to the jihad and those who wage it to suggest it can be set aside through “honest dialogue.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:03 | link | comments (1)

 

Loving Hu: Democrats and other leftists, including Jewish ones, tend to think Moo’s Venezuelan pal Hu is a capital chap, mostly because his loves and hates match their own. (Loves: Chomsky-esque rhetoric which casts America as the world’s brute; hates: Chimpy McBushaliburtonwalmarthitler and his neo-Con cronies.) But as this piece on The American Thinker site points out, there’s something, oh, I dunno—Revolting? Vile? Shameful? Unforgivable?—about Jews who adore this contemptible Jew-hater:

…Late last year, Chavez took the occasion of his Christmas Eve speech to invoke an old anti-Semitic slur. Chavez declared,

“the world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ have taken over all the wealth of the world”.

While well-informed people know that Romans crucified Christ, there are many millions of ill-informed people (including, apparently Chavez) who believe that Jews killed Christ. Clearly, when Chavez spoke of the people responsible for the death of Christ taking the wealth of the world, he was not referring to any ancient centurions living in plutocratic splendor these days, he was employing an anti-Semitic canard.

However, his insults go far beyond this. In 2004, a state prosecutor and Chavez ally was killed in car bombing. The Chavez-controlled state-run television referred to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad as being behind the killing. (The Mossad is routinely dredged up by Arab anti-Semites as being responsible for all sorts of calamitous events in the world, including 9/11).

Chavez sent Venezuelan security forces to raid a Jewish private school in Caracas as the school day was beginning, in an incident widely regarded by Jews there as a warning to support him or else. His forces terrorized young children, holding sub-machine guns as the school was searched. Of course, no evidence was found implicating anyone in the killing of the prosecutor. But the event can also be seen as a present to Iran, since Chavez was visiting Iran at the time of the raid on the school.

Of course, his alliance and friendship with the Iranian regime should be enough to disconcert American Jews. Iranian-supported Hezb’allah has blown up a Jewish Community center and an Israeli Embassy in Argentina. Hezb’allah routinely attacks Israel, and the latest sneak attack resulted in a mini-war with Israel a few months ago. Of course, Iran has called for Israel to be “wiped off the face of the map”, has denied the Holocaust has occurred, is the foremost promoter of anti-Semitism around the world, and is developing a nuclear and ballistic missile program that directly threatens Israel…

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:43 | link | comments

 

Crumbs and sins: There’s a Jewish prayer which mentions how, throughout their history, the Jewish people have “eaten the bread of affliction.” (To which I once retorted—because, as you may have noticed, I’m not always as reverent as I’m supposed to be—“I’m tired of eating the bread of affliction. I think I’d like a nice baguette for a change.”)

 

I only mention this because it seems to go well with the following e-mail a friend just sent me (with thanks to Harry):

 

As one knows in Rosh Hashanah there is a ceremony called Tashlich. Jews traditionally go to a running body of water such as the ocean, a stream or a river to pray and throw in breadcrumbs.  This symbolizes throwing away one's sins which the fish devour.  Occasionally, people ask what kinds of breadcrumbs should be thrown.  Here are suggestions for breads which may be most appropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors:

 

·        For ordinary sins --white bread

·        For erotic sins - French bread

·        For particularly dark sins - pumpernickel

·        For complex sins – multi-grain

·        For sins of indecision - waffles

·        For sins committed in haste - matzos

·        For sins of chutzpah - any fresh bread

·        For substance abuse - stoned wheat

·        For committing auto theft - caraway

·        For timidity/cowardice - milk toast

·        For ill-temper - sourdough

·        For silliness, eccentricity - nut bread

·        For excessive irony - rye bread

·        For unnecessary chances - hero bread

·        For war-mongering - kaiser rolls

·        For dressing immodestly - tarts

·        For lechery and promiscuity - hot buns

·        For promiscuity with gentiles - hot cross buns

·        For racist attitudes - crackers

·        For being holier than thou - bagels

·        For overeating - stuffing

·        For indecent photography - cheesecake

·        For raising your voice too often - challah

·        For pride and egotism - puff pastry

·        For sycophancy, ass-kissing - brownies

·        For being overly smothering - angel food cake

·        For trashing the environment - dumplings

·        For telling bad jokes/puns - corn bread

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments

 

Mad science: The thing about trying to defeat the infidel through suicide terror is that it’s just so piecemeal (or “pieces”meal). Sure, a chump, er, shahid, who successfully self-detonates for Allah can often kill a number of infidels—perhaps even dozens—in  one go. But at that rate, it’s going to take forever to restore the glorious caliphate.

 

With that in mind, Al Qaeda in Iraq is conducting an executive search for the scientists who can help them achieve that goal a whole lot quicker. From the Globe and Mail:

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaeda in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released yesterday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is in a U.S. prison.

The fugitive terrorist chief said experts in the fields of "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences -- especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts" should join his group's jihad, or holy war, against the West.

"We are in dire need of you," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri. "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases [in Iraq] are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

The 20-minute audio was posted to a website that frequently airs al-Qaeda messages. The voice could not be identified independently, but it was thought to be Mr. al-Masri's. He is believed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died in a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad in June, as head of the al-Qaeda-linked organization…

The other night on its “Ideas” program, Ceeb radio ran a documentary dedicated to the proposition that Islam and science are completely compatible, at least according to the message of the Koran. Now, anyone who knows the problems that all fundamentalists, including Christians and Jews, have reconciling faith and science—and who also knows that, science-wise, Muslims have been resting on the laurels of having invented algebra in, what, the 9^th Century or something—might be sceptical about such a claim (and might even see it as another of the Ceeb’s seemingly endless shilling-for-Islam efforts). But reading the above, perhaps there’s more scope for scientific endeavour among true believers than we may think.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:44 | link | comments

 

The great divides: There are a number of ways to divide the world. There are those—you know who you are—who see it as a matter of dar al Islam vs. dar al Harb; others see it in terms of that left-right rift. Me? I tend to split the world into those who “get it” and those who don’t “get it”—and, believe me, there are far too many of the latter for my liking.

 

But here’s another way to divvy things up: between those who think “it’s about us,” and those, like Mark Goldblatt, who know it’s not about us, “it’s about them. From NRO:

According to a National Intelligence Estimate composed last February but released just this week by the Bush administration, “The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.” Because of the war, “new jihadist networks and cells, with anti-American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge.” On the other hand, the report finds that if the “jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and [are] perceived, to have failed . . . fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.”

None of this is conclusive, or even news, but the NIE’s suggestion that the war in Iraq has become a recruitment tool for Islamic terrorists was immediately seized upon by Democrats to argue, yet again, that President Bush’s decision to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein was a tactical blunder and that the effort to establish a liberal democracy in its stead has turned into an unmitigated fiasco.

The judgment of history on Bush’s Iraq strategy is still decades away. Remember, Ronald Reagan’s decision to aid the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in their fight against the Russians during the 1980s looked pretty smart after the collapse of the Soviet Union . . . except the mujahedeen mutated into the Taliban, re-focused their hatred on America, trained a generation of terrorists and sheltered Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to September 11, 2001.

That decision doesn’t seem quite so smart nowadays.

Nevertheless, to argue that the war in Iraq was ill-conceived because it might serve as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda is absurd. If America hadn’t invaded Iraq, the United Nations would presumably still be enforcing sanctions against Saddam’s regime — sanctions which were killing thousands of Iraqi children each month and which were specifically cited by Osama in 2002 as a justification for the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the situation in Iraq before the war was viewed by al Qaeda as a rationale for violence against America.

Then again, America’s support for Israel was also cited by Osama to justify his terrorist jihad. Should we therefore end that support? What about our tolerance of, in Osama’s words, “immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s [sic], and trading with interest”? If our “immorality” is being utilized by al Qaeda to recruit terrorists, should we therefore crack down on Snoop Dogg, Will and Grace, Budweiser, Las Vegas, and Citibank? And what of our stubborn refusal to convert to Islam — in Osama’s eyes, perhaps the greatest provocation of all? Should we therefore renounce our Judeo-Christian heritage, abandon the separation of church and state and adopt sharia law to escape the wrath of al Qaeda?..

 

I say “no,” but let’s ask Harpoon Siddiqui. He’s seems to be really hot for that kind of  “interfaith dialogue.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:06 | link | comments

 

They’re ba-ack!: And speaking of the old antisemtism, guess who’s enjoying a return engagement in Bavaria?

 

Yes, Bavaria.

 

I’ll give you a hint: they were all the rage there in the 1930s.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:39 | link | comments (1)

 

Forever young: The “oldest hatred” may have had a facelift, but as Victor Davis Hanson writes, it’s just as ugly and repulsive as ever. From RealClear Politics:

…We're accustomed to associating hatred of Jews with the ridiculed Neanderthal Right of those in sheets and jackboots. But this new venom, at least in its Western form, is mostly a leftwing, and often an academic, enterprise. It's also far more insidious, given the left's moral pretensions and its influence in the prestigious media and universities. We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.

The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East - and the indifference to it in the West - is a sort of "post anti-Semitism." Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference - if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff Amen in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.

The dangers of this post anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States - or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam's hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

The result is that the world's politicians and media are talking seriously with those who not merely want back the West Bank, but rather want an end to Israel altogether and everyone inside it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:32 | link | comments

 

Speaking in forked tongues: Those “Dr. Doolittles” of the EU continue to try to master that most baffling of lingos: mad mullah-speak.

 

And, naturally, I feel a song coming on:

 

If they could talk to the mad mullahs,

Learn to speak to them,

Maybe they’d prevent a genocide.

If they could learn to read taqiyah,

They’d finally be free-ah,

To see that they've been taken for a ride.

 

If they could talk to the mad mullahs,

Hear where they’re coming from,

They’d know the wicked thinking they embrace.

They’d know for sure that grim Khomeini’s

More evil than inseini,

And so is Moo, though he’s a smiley face.

 

They would converse in Shia and in Persian.

And they would curse the Zionists and Jews.

If mullahs asked, “can you speak ElBaradei?”

They’d say, “we can parlez—and do.”

 

If they conferred with the fascist fiends, dhimmi to Übermensch,  

You’d think they’d get a sense of history.

Instead they’ll try to please the mullahs,

And ne’er appease the mullahs,

They’ll go on bended knees to the mullahs,

And end up causing tons more misery.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:48 | link | comments (1)

 

Immoral imperatives: Harpoon Siddiqui has another of his “shut your pie holes, you cheeky infidels” pieces. Of course, Harpoon, who is nothing if not a master of “subtlety” and “nuance,” wraps it up in a pretty package about “the moral imperatives of our times.”

 

Here’s a taste of Harpoon’s Islamism-enabling, democracy-thwarting, morally-inverted thoughts on the subject:

 

It seems like a disaster a day on the Islam vs. West front. No sooner had the Danish cartoon controversy died down than one erupted over Pope Benedict XVI's comments on Islam.

 

He had barely managed to mitigate it — with three semi-apologies and two Vatican clarifications — when Germany finds itself engulfed in a row over a Berlin opera company's cancellation of a Mozart production featuring a severed head of the Prophet Muhammad.

 

These cultural clashes are taking place in tandem with the ongoing catastrophes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied territories. The latter does not justify the former. But to divorce the two is to live in denial and keep hurtling toward more confrontations and disasters.

 

The counter-argument would be that the Salman Rushdie affair and the Theo von Gogh murder preceded the Iraq and Afghan wars.

 

But there's no doubt that the disastrous war on terrorism has turned the world into a tinderbox. The slightest spark can cause a conflagration. We should know that by now.

 

It is, of course, infuriating that Deutsche Oper Berlin folded when faced with an anonymous threat. The culture critic for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union accused the company of "falling on its knees before the terrorists."

 

This issue is not as black-and-white as that.

 

The company had acted on the advice of police, which decided that the production posed an "incalculable" security risk.

 

Did the company cave in to the deliverer of the threat or did it bow to the presumably prudent judgment of the police?

 

Merkel herself felt that "self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practise violence in the name of Islam. It makes no sense to retreat." But, again, in the never-ending battle for freedom of expression, the answers are not always all that easy.

We must not give in to bullies, whatever their twisted motivation. Yet we cannot pretend that we do not "retreat" and self-censor when, in fact, we do every day. Ask any editor and media, movie or theatre executive.

 

But the issues involving Muslim sensibilities have made two things perfectly clear:

·  Incidents that used to pass with barely a murmur are being turned into warfare by both sides. Many Muslims are being overly sensitive and some Westerners are clamouring to put Muslims in their place.

 

·  If freedom of speech only means the right to disproportionately and gratuitously malign Muslims and Islam, the double standard will indeed be challenged.

 

When such challenges are violent, we must not flinch. If they are peaceful and intellectual, we have to have a rational answer for why we willingly practise self-restraint on certain subjects but resist it on others.

 

A similar argument is being advanced about the Western anger over the violent Muslim reaction to the Pope's original statement and to the Danish cartoons...

 

And here’s a letter which will never, ever appear in “black and white” in the Toronto Star, a most “nuanced” publication:

 

In seeking to shed light on the latest incident of Muslim outrage—the Pope’s suggestion that religious beliefs should entail reason instead of violence—Haroon Siddiqui has merely succeeded in muddying the waters. It’s not, as he says, that “both sides” have turned this and other such incidents, starting with the Salman Rushdie affair, into “warfare.” No, the “warfare” in question has been initiated and incited by one side—the one that insists non-Muslims must hold their tongues and thereby abide by Muslim doctrine. And this tactic of flying off the handle seems to be working because Westerners, like that German opera company, are now taking it upon themselves to censor material beforehand on the off chance that it may—and then again, may not—cause offence.

 

Then there’s Siddiqui’s suggestion that “freedom of religion only means the right to disproportionately and gratuitously malign Muslim and Islam” and that those on the receiving end cannot help but challenge this “double standard.” I think what Siddiqui is referring to here is a Western freedom which he seems to abhor: the freedom to criticise Muslims and hold them accountable for their actions. Siddiqui refers to this type of criticism, as practiced by people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he has written about in the past, as “Islamophobia”—the catch-all category for those who are bigots and racists, and those who aren’t, but who have valid concerns about Muslim doctrine and behaviour and who, in a free society, have every right to voice them. By labelling these non-bigots “Islamophobic,” Siddiqui and others would effectively silence them once and for all. At the same time, there is indeed a double standard in operation since many Muslims in Muslim nations and elsewhere continue to speak in the most vituperative terms about Christians and Jews.

 

Finally, in a column about “imperatives,” Siddiqui fails to mention the one imperative that threatens to revoke the freedoms that we in the West hold so dear. It is the jihad imperative, and it’s not going to go away simply because Westerners, like the Pope, are counselled to keep mum (and to apologize profusely when they don’t) lest they inflame hair-trigger Muslim tempers. In fact, holding our tongues is entirely the wrong approach, since it means the erosion of free speech, a foundational principle of our society. In the short term, it may help keep the lid on things. But in the longer-term, it only serves the political interests of those who for whom our freedoms are anathema.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments (3)

 

Chancellor-designate walks the plank: Conservative Judaism seems to be in decline these days, but the incoming head of the movement’s American wing thinks he’s figured out a way to revitalize it. From the Canadian Jewish News:

TORONTO - Even after 20 years on the faculty of Stanford University in northern California, Philadelphia native Arnold Eisen says it’s hard for him to think of himself as a “west coaster.”

But the chancellor-designate of the Conservative movement’s New York-based Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) said in a telephone interview last week that if there is anything he brings to his new position in the way of west coast sensibility, it’s that he’s “relaxed about some things [that] people consider a crisis.

“I see numbers dropping in the Conservative movement, but I see them dropping in Judaism generally. I see tremendous success stories [in Conservative Judaism],” said Eisen, referring to schools and summer camps in particular.

In the United States, the Conservative movement – formerly the largest Jewish denomination – has been surpassed in recent years by increasing numbers in the Reform movement.

Eisen’s own background in the countercultural chavurah movement in the late 1970s and subsequent leadership in the Conservative movement is not an isolated example, he noted.

Conservative Jews are overrepresented in chavurah-style independent minyans, many of which have “strong interactions” with organized movements and institutions, he added.

Currently the chair of the department of religious studies at Stanford, Eisen is on leave and will teach one last course in the spring. He is commuting to New York one week a month so his son can finish his last year of high school in California.

He said that in his new role, which becomes full-time next July, he will insist that JTS continue with its commitment to scholarship, but he noted that he wants to “bring that scholarship to bear on the issues of the day.

“We’re not just here to advance knowledge. We’re here to use knowledge for good.”

Although JTS has already been involved with Jewish-Muslim dialogue on a limited basis, Eisen – who was instrumental in setting up an Islamic studies program at Stanford – said such dialogue will now be “a major plank,” adding that “These are difficult times.”

He believes that religion, unlike politics, is a “natural” common ground for Jewish-Muslim dialogue.

But religion, in general, has “gotten a bad name lately, and been dragged in the dust by people who do bad things in its name.”

Eisen believes there is a need for Jews to “demonstrate that religion can be a force for good in the world.

“[Conservative Jews] have something to model not just for other Jews, but for other societies, that there’s no conflict between open-mindedness and fidelity to tradition.”…

Yeah, I’m sure there are tons of Muslims out there just itchin’ for the Jewish dhimmis to come “model” stuff for them, and who also think that religion, unlike politics, is a “natural” common ground for dialogue between Muslims and Jews.

And if chancellor-designate Eisen could explain how the Muslim faithful might separate the “religious” from the “political” when none of their teachings allow for such a division, he might even make some headway.

In the meantime, I suggest he crack open something, anything, by, say, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Bat Ye’or, Melanie Phillips, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali…

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:15 | link | comments

 

Caroline G. at Holy Bee: The last time I saw Caroline Glick (or as I like to call her, Caroline the Great) was back in March. She appeared at a hastily arranged gathering at Shaarei Tefillah, an Orthodox synagogue in north Toronto, and her message was dire, verging on the grim. Israel’s Gaza “disengagement” scheme, the one that was supposed to finally give rise to that much-vaunted but chimerical “two state solution,” has resulted in disaster, just as Glick had predicted. Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist Taliban, was in charge—the choice of most of the Palestinian electorate; armaments and weapons were being shipped into Gaza via Egypt; everything that the Jews had built in Gaza, including an agricultural infrastructure that had been serving as Israel’s breadbasket, not to mention synagogues, schools and other structures, had been torched in a frenzy of nihilistic destruction—a Palestine Cristallnacht. And Glick was predicted that there was even worse to come because the Olmert government was still intent on handing over the West Bank to Hamas, a move that would threaten the viability of the Jewish state.

 

Another source of her gloom: Israel’s leadership, wearing the rose coloured lenses of cockeyed (and idiotic) optimists, had decided that instead of holding the Arabs responsible for the impossible situation in which Israel found itself, found someone else to villify: religious Zionists, i.e. “the settlers” in Judea and Samaria, who were impeding the establishment of the Palestinian state, the panacea that would finally bring everlasting peace to the region and the entire world. And in order to make an example of these bad guys the government had sent in police on horseback to a West Bank settlement where they proceeded to bludgeon everyone in sight, including young school girls who were doing nothing more threatening than watching, aghast, as these Jewish Cossacks unleashed a pogrom.

 

Given these recent events, you can understand why Caroline was so horrified and angry, almost panicked, as she gave her talk—and why those who listened to her left feeling utterly, blackly depressed.

 

It was a different Caroline who spoke last evening. Relaxed, upbeat, optimistic, trading quips with Alistair Gordon of Canadian Coalition for Democracies (the organization that co-sponsored her appearance along with Holy Blossom Temple) she outlined clearly and succinctly the global jihad that imperils not only Israel, but the entire world. (It was almost as if, since a lot of the bad stuff she’d predicted had already happened, she was confident that Israelis—or at least, enough of them to make a difference—would finally “get” what she’s been saying all along.) The gist of her talk: more or less the same stuff I post about every day. There is a world-wide totalitarian threat. It is comprised of Islamic Fascists—Shiites, Sunnis, Wahabists, Salafists. It seeks to impose an Islamic caliphate on the world. Its rancid ideology is the antithesis of everything we in the free world hold dear. It is anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-American, anti-democracy. It is implacable. It is indivisible. It cannot, repeat cannot, repeat cannot, be appeased.

 

These are the facts. This is the truth. And unless those who value freedom and democracy are willing to stare this beast square in the face, and deal with it as is, there is little chance we can prevail over it.

 

That means we must, repeat must, tell the truth. Because when we equivocate, or placate, or tell the kind of half truths that Israel told itself (largely to garner favour with the international community) during the Oslo Accords and the Gaza Disengagement (“Arafat is a peace partner who will do battle with those Palestinians who don’t want peace”; “Gaza is the first step in a two state solution”; “all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds”) Islamic fascism is empowered, and disaster will be the inevitable result.

 

Glick says that we must remember that this is not about us—about what we can do to make the fascists like us more or perceive that we are being sensitive to the sensitivities of Muslims. It is about them. It is only about them. It is about their desire to conquer us, to enslave us, to kill us. It is only about us in the sense that we are the ones responsible for ensuring our own survival. And we can only begin to do that by listening to what they have to say, what they really have to say, and not think that all can be set to right by our placatory actions.

 

That’s why she had nothing but respect for the Pope—and nothing but contempt for the Olmert government. She commended the Pope for being brave enough to point out that it’s impossible to have a conversation unless those with whom you are conversing are willing to tolerate criticism. Clearly, this is not the case with Muslims, who are not only unwilling to tolerate the least bit of criticism, but who immediately deride and dismiss it as evidence of the critic’s (a.k.a. the truth-teller’s) “Islamophobia.” Glick says engagement means judgement, and that Muslims, like everyone else, must be held responsible for their actions, including the depravities being committed around the world in Islam’s name.

 

As for the Olmert government, Glick called it the worst in Israel’s history. She said it mismanaged the war in Lebanon—a war which Israel lost as result—and that, bottom line, it is incapable of defending Israel. She said the Kadima party itself is not so much a political entity as it is “a public relations firm.” As such, it is “weightless,” insubstantial, an empty shell. It stands for nothing save its own desperate desire to hold onto power. The sooner Israeli rid themselves of this disastrous group of inept, ineffectual, clueless politicians (which, at this point seems likely, since they enjoy the approval of a scant seven per cent of the population), the better for Israel, and by extension, all those fighting against the global jihad.

 

Oh, and one more crucial point I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention: “There’s a big difference,” said Glick, “between insanity and evil. (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is EVIL!”

 

And that, as they say, is the Glick’s honest truth.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:57 | link | comments (2)

 

An absurd contention: Let’s see: the Palestinians exult in a culture of death; delight in burning down churches when a Pope suggests that Muslims, on occasion, may be prone to violence; and are ruled by a democratically-elected regime of genocidal Islamic thugs who would sooner let their own people starve than recognize Israel’s right to draw air.

 

In light of all this, whom do you suppose a UN human rights “expert” holds partially responsible for the erosion of human rights in the Palestinians territorities?

 

Why, Canada, of course. From the Ceeb:

Canada is partly to blame for allowing human rights for Palestinians to deteriorate to a new low, a UN rights expert says.

John Dugard said Palestinians are subjected to "tragic" conditions in Gaza and the West Bank.

He criticized Canada, Israel, the U.S. and western European countries for cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas' victory in legislative elections in January.

Those countries have said funding will remain cut off unless the militant group renounces violence and recognizes Israel.

"In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions — the first time an occupied people has been so treated," Dugard said. "Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the U.S. and the EU."

Dugard said Israel was largely responsible for the "intolerable" situation for Palestinians, three-quarters of whom depend on food aid. He also blamed its military incursions and tough roadblocks for preventing hospitals from having enough electricity and for damaging or destroying numerous schools and houses.

"Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key," Dugard said. "A serious humanitarian crisis prevails in the West Bank."...

If Palestinians are being “punished,” the punishment is entirely self-inflicted because they have elected a regime that is unacceptable by every measure of decency, humanity and civilized behaviour. Period.

 

Update: Here’s part of John Dugard's entry in Wikipedia (with Wiki links):

John Dugard (born in 1936 in Fort Beaufort) is a South African professor of international law. He has served as Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and as a Special Rapporteur for both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has written extensively on South African apartheid…

Education

John Dugard earned his BA and LLB degrees at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and his LL.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1980.

Career

Academic

From 1975-1977, Dugard was the Dean and a Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). From 1978-1990, Dugard was the Director of the University of Witwatersrand's Centre for Applied Legal Studies, "a research centre committed to the promotion of Human Rights in South Africa".

He has held visiting professorships at Princeton University, Duke University, Berkeley University and University of Pennsylvania, and University of New South Wales (Australia).

He is a member of the Institut de Droit International.

Dugard was Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge from 1995-1997.

In 1998, he was appointed as Chair in Public International Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands and as Director of the advanced LLM programme in Public International Law.

International Law

He has, since 1997, served as a member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations. In 2000, he became its Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection.

In 2000, he served as Judge ad hoc in the cases concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Burundi) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda) and (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda) at the International Court of Justice.

United Nations

Following the recurrence of the Palestinean intifada in late 2000, John Dugard was appointed as Chairman of a UN Commission on Human Rights inquiry commission on the situation of human rights there. In 2001, he was appointed as Special Rapporteur to the Commission and has submitted annual reports and recommendations to the UN concerning the situation of international human rights and humanitarian law. He now reports to the UN Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur on the situation the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. In its first special session in July 2006, the nascent Human Rights Council decided to dispatch an urgent fact-finding mission headed by Dugard to report on the situation there. On 26 September 2006, Dugard has reported that the "standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels"^[1].(my italics)

I think it’s fairly evident from his C.V. where John Dugood, er, Dugard is coming from—and we can thus judge his words accordingly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:32 | link | comments (3)

 

Tell-alls: Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Gunther Grass writes a tell-all in which he reveals for the first time that he joined the Waffen S.S. at the age of 17. Eddie Goldenberg, former fart-catcher of former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, writes a tell-all in which he calls Chretien’s successor, Paul Martin, “a political boil that should have been lanced years earlier” and reveals (ho hum) that his boss insisted the U.S. get the approval of the UN before invading Iraq. Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s fart-catcher/butler writes a tell-all, his second, in which he reveals that (ho hum) Diana wasn’t carrying Dodi Fayed’s child when they were both killed, and was only hanging out with him to make the real object of her affection, a physican with whom she had carried on a torrid year-long affair, jealous. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Pervez Musharaf writes a tell-all in which he reveals that, after 9/11, he weighed the odds of Pakistan coming out on top in a fight with the U.S. and opted to co-operate with George W. Bush.

 

Enough already! Is there anyone on the frikkin’ planet who isn’t trying to cash in by flogging his/her memoirs?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments (1)

 

Allah’s human bombs: Toronto Star columnist Richard Gwyn says Muslim suicide bombers are largely motivated by—stop me if you’ve heard this before—“apathy” and “humiliation.” Also, they’re looking for that elusive 15 minutes of fame we’ve all been promised:

 

…The Sunday Star two weeks ago contained an excellent article quoting the diagnoses of two experts about what impels many jihadists to kill. Both placed conventional explanations, such as U.S. foreign policy blunders, well down the list.

 

Canadian Thomas Homer-Dixon's view was that jihadists are "ferociously angry because of powerful feelings of humiliation."

 

American Marvin Zonis's judgment was that the prime cause was "rage, the rage generated by deep narcissistic wounds."

 

That many Arabs harbour deep feelings of humiliation is easy to understand.

There are the well-known causes of colonial exploitation, military defeats (repeatedly by Israelis, until the Lebanon war), and the vast economic disparities between the west and the majority of the Middle East.

 

But there are critical personal factors that come much closer to the analysis of Homer-Dixon and Zonis.

 

Many young Arab men have no jobs, or menial ones. They can make no mark in their lives by really providing for their families or by ever doing something they can take pride in.

 

Killing somebody — infidels, occupiers, heretics (Shia or Sunnis), non-Muslims — is the one way many of these young men can be somebodies.

 

They rise to the status of "martyrs." Their names are honoured. They are, however briefly, noticed…

 

I thought Gwyn left a few key elements out of the mix, and wrote the Star’s editor to tell him so:

 

Richard Gwyn cites a number of experts who contend that apathy is the primary impetus behind suicide attacks. But if that were so, then teenagers and young adults of all stripes would be self-detonating all over the place, and, obviously, that’s not happening. The fact is that these days, with the exception of the odd Tamil Tiger, suicide bombers seem to be adherents of one specific religion, and if they are acting out in this particularly horrific way, they probably weren’t driven to it by apathy or even, as Mr. Gwyn would have it, “humiliation.” No, what drives them is hatred of “the other,” a perverse ideology which hails “martyrdom” as the greatest human achievement, and the promise of an eternity of delights which far exceeds anything they could experience in life.

 

When you add it all up, how could an ordinary life here on Earth possibly compete with what one pundit has called “the diabolical glamour of destruction”?

 

Incidentally, the pundit I quoted was Algis Valiunas who used the phrase (one that has stuck in my mind) in a book review in the July/August issue of Commentary Magazine.

 

Update: Here’s an alternate letter to the editor that I didn’t send:

 

It occurs to me that, aside from ethnic origin, there’s one major difference between Kimveer Gill, the loner who shot up a Montreal college and suicide bombers. Gill was a rebel without a cause. Suicide bombers, it is clear, are rebels with a cause: the jihad against the West.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:58 | link | comments

 

Landsmen (and women): Charles Krauthammer expostulates on the strange phenomenon in American politics: politicians of apparently Gentile background belatedly fessing up to having one or more Jewish forebears. The pundit has a theory on the subject which he calls “Krauthammer’s law.”  From RealClear Politics:

…Krauthammer's Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. I've had a fairly good run with this one. First, it turns out that John Kerry -- windsurfing, French-speaking, Beacon Hill aristocrat -- had two Jewish grandparents. Then Hillary Clinton -- methodical Methodist -- unearths a Jewish stepgrandfather in time for her run as New York senator.

A less jaunty case was that of Madeleine Albright, three of whose Czech grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and who most improbably contended that she had no idea they were Jewish. To which we can add the leading French presidential contender (Nicolas Sarkozy), a former supreme allied commander of NATO (Wesley Clark) and Russia's leading anti-Semite (Vladimir Zhirinovsky). One must have a sense of humor about these things. Even Fidel Castro claims he is from a family of Marranos.

For all its tongue-in-cheek irony, Krauthammer's Law works because when I say "everyone," I don't mean everyone you know personally. Depending on the history and ethnicity of your neighborhood and social circles, there may be no one you know who is Jewish. But if "everyone" means anyone that you've heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics, and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers.

There are 13 million Jews in the world, one-fifth of 1 percent of the world's population. Yet 20 percent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, a staggering hundredfold surplus of renown and genius. This is similarly true for a myriad of other "everyones" -- the household names in music, literature, mathematics, physics, finance, industry, design, comedy, film and, as the doors opened, even politics.

But it is not just Jewish excellence at work here. There is a dark side to these past centuries of Jewish emancipation and achievement -- an unrelenting history of persecution. The result is the other more somber and poignant reason for the Jewishness of public figures being discovered late and with surprise: concealment…

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:26 | link | comments

 

Mad Mel’s Mayan history lesson: Mel Gibson, reputedly sober after his run in last summer with a Jewish cop in L.A., had some screenings of his new flick, Apocalypto, in, of all places, Oklahoma—which is certainly a long way from his usual drinking, er, drugging, er, stomping ground. Donning a disguise so as to be able to avoid detection while guaging the reaction of the locals, Mel explained that, although it deals with human sacrifice and the collapse of the Mayan civilization (and, no, it wasn’t filmed in Aramaic, although I’m sure Mel was sorely tempted to do so), there are definite parallels between his film and what’s happening today with America and Iraq. “What’s human sacrifice,” queried Mel, “if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?”

 

You got me there, Mel. Call me crazy, though, but I think that, agree or disagree with that effort, trying to plant democracy in Iraq is a tad different that carving up live humans and cutting out their still throbbing hearts in tribute to a snake God (or are those the Aztecs--I always get my Pre-Columbians confused).

 

It seems to me that for those who care to look (and who aren’t suffering from an advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome), there are historical similarities that could have been explored. For example, the Mayans were conquered by an enemy who came from far away and colonized their land in order to spread their religion and strip them of their wealth. And anyone willing to open his/her eyes can see that Americans have an outside shot at being conquered by an enemy from far away who hopes to conquer and supplant them.

 

Oh, well. At least in this flick, the Jews are off the hook.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:49 | link | comments

 

Dhimmitude on campus: Welcome to clueless, multicultural Ontario, where research into “Islamophobia” on university campuses can quickly devolve into an exercise in abject dhimmitude. From the National Post (via the CJC website):

 

TORONTO - Canada's largest student umbrella organization will be touring Ontario universities this fall to gauge levels of discrimination against Muslims on campus in the wake of the terror arrests in June, the Danish cartoon controversy and other unsettling world events. A task force, struck by the Canadian Federation of Students, will ask students at each school whether they have ever been assailed by overt racism, such as slurs, or found their religious needs, like space to pray five times a day, ignored by the administration. The results will be compiled into a report to be released March 21, International Day to End Racism. "We want to stamp out Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and racism and we want to do that in a united way," said Jesse Greener, Ontario chairman of the CFS. "At this point there is an unfortunate gap in our knowledge of what Muslim students face every day." The task force is the latest in a series of initiatives undertaken by student groups since anti-Muslim graffiti was splashed on Ryerson University's campus two years ago. Ausma Malik, a vice-president of the University of Toronto's student administrative council, said in the midst of the Danish cartoon controversy last spring, a female Muslim student at her school was pushed into a campus washroom, verbally attacked and threatened. But aside from racial targeting, Ms. Malik said there is a need to look at how universities accommodate the needs of their growing Muslim student populations, such as providing women-only swim and exercise times at campus facilities and considering Islam's prohibition on alcohol at school-sanctioned events.

 

You mean a splash of grafitti and a threat or two (not that I in any way condone either) may be enough to transform Ontario university campuses into sharia-abiding zones?

 

Wow, I guess the pen (or spray paint can) really is mightier than the sword.

 

I may be going out on a limb here, but I have a hunch that researchers may find that the number of “Islamophobic” incidents on campus are far outweighed by the number of Muslim-initiated antisemtic incidents—and for obvious reasons researchers may be reluctant to reveal such findings.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments

 

All aboard!: Former Catholic schoolboy, Hamas backer and one of the most famous “reverts” to Islam, Yousuf Islam (ne Cat Stevens) has joined in the Allah-luia chorus of those criticizing the Pope for his unflattering remarks about the one true faith.

 

Listen closely and you can hear Yousuf singing his misgivings to the melody of one of his greatest hits, “Peace Train”:

 

Now I’ve been happy lately,

Ever since I “reverted” to Islam,

And I believe it’s the best thing

This Cat has ever done.

 

Oh, I’ve been smiling lately,

Dreaming of chicks up in Paradise above.

And I know shahids are up there,

Up there and finding love.

 

When I was on the edge of darkness,

I rode the Pope train.

Hopped off and caught another—

Now I ride the Mo train.

 

Now I’ve done da’wa lately,

Urging folks to come along.

Jump on board the Mo train,

And you’ll feel safe and strong.

 

Oh, Mo train sounding louder.

Ride on the Mo train.

Come on now Mo train.

Yes, Mo train holy roller.

Everyone jump on the Mo train.

Come on now Mo train.

 

Get your bags together,

Go bring your good friends too.

Cause it’s getting nearer,

It soon will be with you.

 

Now come and join the faithful,

While you still have the choice.

Cause soon you’ll have to shut up,

Soon you won’t have a voice.

 

Now I’ve been angry lately,

Thinking about what the Pope went and said.

Some say the Jews are to blame here;

Some just want to see him dead.

 

Cause out on the edge of darkness,

There rides the Mo train.

Oh, Mo train take this planet,

Come take them home again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:27 | link | comments

 

UN idol: Mark Steyn on how the UN is helping orchestrate that new Iranian song sensation, the Apocalypso:

Iran's president was a huge hit at the U.N. Short of bringing out some burqa-clad Rockettes and doing a couple of choruses of "This Is the Dawning of the Age of a Scary Us," he couldn't have been a bigger smash. I said a year or two back, apropos the U.N., that it's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and blend it with a quart of dog poop the result will taste more like the latter than the former. And last week's performances at the General Assembly were a fine illustration of that. Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez were the star finalists of "UnAmerican Idol," and, just when you need Simon Cowell, the only Brit in sight was the oleaginous Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan's deputy, fawning over every crazy in town. The rest of the bigwigs reacted like Paula Abdul, able to discern good points even in fellows who boast about not having any. That's the reality the Dershowitzes [i.e., Alan, who suggested that Iran be expelled from the UN] refuse to confront: that structurally the U.N. enables thugs to punch above their weight.

He may not have the pipes of a Clay Aitken or a Ruben Studdurd, but our Moo is angling to be number one with a ballistic missile.

And for those who missed Moo’s performance the other day, here’s his take on Harry Belafonte’s (Desmond Tutu's pal) Calypso standard, “Matilda.”

In Moo’s hands it has been recast as Apocalyso finger-snapper “Mad Mullahs”:

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullahs

Dey just as nuts as

Dat guy from Venezuela.

Ev’rybody!

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullah,

Dey just as nuts as

Dat guy from Venezuela.

 

Mad mullahs dey want a big kaboom

So all a de Jews dey meet dere doom.

Mad mullahs dey fool da UN,

 Bond wit’ dat Venezualan.

 

Mad mullahs dey send out dere man Moo.

Tell all a de kafirs what to do.

Mad mullahs dey waitin’ for de Mahdi,

Is he in Venezuela?

 

Ev’rybody!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:43 | link | comments

 

Vehicular jihad: I’m posting this one from Canadian Press “as is” because, well, because the way it’s written is as funny as the story itself:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A car dealership's tongue-in-cheek radio advertisement declaring "a jihad on the automotive market," will not be changed, the company said, despite drawing sharp criticism that the ad's content is offensive to Muslims.

Several stations rejected the spot from Dennis Mitsubishi, which boasts that sales representatives wearing "burqas" - the head-to-toe traditional dress for some Islamic women - will sell vehicles that can "comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back."

Jihad is a holy war waged by Muslims in defence of Islam.

"We firmly believe the ad does not in any way disrespect any religion or culture, but we feel, I guess, that maybe poking a little fun at radical extremists is fair game," dealership president Keith Dennis said on Saturday. "It was our intention to craft something around some of the buzzwords of the day and give everyone a good chuckle and be a little bit of a tension reliever."

While Dennis defended the ad as a harmless attempt to bring levity to a serious situation, the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it disrespectful.

"Using that as a promotional pitch when so many are dying from the criminal activity of suicide bombers, that's not funny," chapter president Asma Mobin-Uddin said. "I don't think it's appropriate when it causes real pain. It exploits or promotes misunderstanding in terms already misunderstood or misused."

In the ad, Dennis talks about "launching a jihad on the automotive market."

"Our prices are lower than the evil-doers' every day. Just ask the Pope!" the ad says. "Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies."

A fatwa is a religious edict.

Some radio stations are balking at the dealership's attempt to poke fun at extremists.

"With no disrespect to their creativity or their desire to build business, everything we're about is promoting the values of diversity. To air things of that sort would go against our mission statement," said Jeff Wilson, general manager of three Radio One stations in Columbus.

The dealership claims nothing in the ad is intended to promote a negative stereotype of Islam. A group that previewed the ad didn't raise any objections, although no one from the group was Muslim, Dennis said.

Actually, I think poking fun at extremists, those humourless party poopers, is one the best ways to deal with them. Although I wouldn’t recommend this approach in, say, Saudi Arabia where an entire gender isn’t permitted to drive a vehicle on religious grounds, and any joshing about jihad is apt to land the josher a starring role as decapitee du jour at a public beheading—the Wahabbist version of Cirque du Soleil.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:00 | link | comments

 

The Pope and “Islamophobes”: Harpoon Siddiqui wants cheeky infidels, like Pope Benedict XVI, to consider every word they utter about the one true faith. Not because that’s what sharia requires of all infidels (although it does) but because such utterances do nothing to further “interfaith dialogue.” And those who have been so nasty as to come out in favour of the Pope’s right to speak freely are likely to be—you guessed it—Islamophobes.

 

Well, what better way to get mouthy infidels to shut their yaps than by claiming that most critics of Islam are bigots?

 

To buttress his argument, he’s brought out that “big gun,” Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is the former nun who, in her second career as a popular writer on religion, has done her utmost to pull the wool over infidel eyes re Islam.

 

And, of course, both Armstrong and Harpoon know that when the faithful go ape-shit over ‘toons or Pope comments, it’s best to gloss it over and point to all the wretched things that infidels, past and present, have done.

 

From the Sunday Star:

 

…In relying on populist clichés of Islam, the Pope treads on the same turf as Islamophobes. It is not surprising that they are the loudest in defending him.

 

"Hatred of Islam brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn," writes Karen Armstrong, noted British author and a former nun. "Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet nor the Christian fundamentalists who've called him a pedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet, on Islam, they are in full agreement."

 

If the Pope sincerely believes, as did Manuel II, that Islam is a religion of the sword, what of his selective silence on the sword-wielding Christians of the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? What of the church's complicity in the genocide of the aboriginal people of the Americas? And the Vatican's relations with Nazi Germany?

 

Either because he now knows that he has erred, or merely wants to tamp down the furor, the Holy Father has expressed his "profound respect for world religions and for Muslims."

 

We should accept his words of contrition and move on.

 

One legacy of this sad episode is that he has weakened himself immeasurably in his declared mission: advancing interfaith dialogue and demanding greater freedom of religion for Christians in Muslim nations.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star, begging to differ with Harpoon’s perceptions:

 

Haroon Siddiqui says that the Pope has set back the cause of interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians, and now there is even less chance of Muslim nations granting Christian citizens greater freedom of religion.

 

Really? You mean there was a chance that the Pope, of all people, might have persuaded Muslim leaders to overlook some key Islamic doctrines which specifically deny freedom of religion to non-Muslims?

 

I think Siddiqui is overestimating both the power of interfaith dialogue and the Pope’s influence over Muslims. But perhaps without meaning to, Siddiqui has pointed to the real sticking point here. It’s not that the Pope may or may not have spoken a few ill-chosen words. It’s that religious tolerance seems to flow only one way. Muslims living in non-Muslim nations are accorded all the rights and freedoms of those societies; non-Muslims living in Muslim nations are considered second class citizens, and treated as such.

 

Unless Muslims themselves can figure out a way to get around these fundamental precepts—and, at the moment, there’s little reason to expect they can—that’s something that’s unlikely to change.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments (4)

 

A New Year’s message: On the eve of Rosh Hashana, Caroline Glick reminds us to refuse to allow ourselves to be defined by those who hate us. From JWR:

...The Jewish people gave humanity the concepts of G-d, liberty and law. Our understanding of the fallibility of mankind has prevented us from being tempted by false prophets who promise us heaven on Earth, and has allowed us to take practical steps towards improving our lot and our world.

All of the ideals that Israel represents both spiritually and physically have for millennia formed the foundations for human progress and freedom throughout the world. Our willingness to retain our loyalty to our identity and our heritage has been the key to our survival throughout the ages in the face of countless foes who sought to destroy us both spiritually and physically.

Rosh Hashana marks the beginning of the Ten Days of Repentance that precede Yom Kippur. To properly atone for our sins and correct our mistakes, we must understand who we are and what we represent and what we can and should aspire to as Jews. To do this, we must reject the notion that our haters can tell us who we are. To do this we must embrace our Jewish identity and uphold our commitment to our collective destiny.

The fact that hatred of Jews has endured for so long says nothing about the nature of the Jewish people. What does speak volumes about the nature of the Jewish people is that our fortunes throughout the ages have been directly related to our ability to spurn our enemies' distorted portraits of the Jewish people and our willingness to endure and progress as Jews in the midst of that hatred.

Pope Benedict is able to discuss Islam because, secure in his Christian identity, he has a clear basis for judging the goodness or unreasonableness of Muslim values and behavior. Whether we agree with his judgments or not, through his willingness to judge, Benedict capably defends and advances his faith.

When we embrace our moral and intellectual identity as Jews, we are similarly capable of meeting the challenges of our times. It is my prayer that in 5767, the Jewish people will rally around our heritage, history and culture and so pave the way for a secure, peaceful and moral future for our people and our world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:44 | link | comments (1)

 

Rosh Hashanah recognitions: Oh, oh—there’s been a glitch in the Stinky-Horrible nuptials because the bride (or is it the groom?) refuses to recognize a certain next-door neighbour, and declines to be party to any partnership that does so.

 

Hamas may refuse to recognize the sovereign Jews, but, this being the eve of the Jewish New Year and all, I feel it’s essential to extend Hamas a courtesy it refuses to grant Israel. So here goes. We recognize Hamas:

 

• For being a regime of fascist Islamist thugs;
• For contravening norms of civilized international behaviour by calling for the liquidation of the Jewish state;
• For sticking to its guns, literally;
• As one of many jihadi outfits around the world which aim to impose Islamic primacy on Dar al Harb;
• For epitomizing the culture of hatred in which the Palestinians have trapped themselves; a culture of destruction, not construction; of nihilism, hopelessness, hatred and death.

Shana Tova to all lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere.

 

As for the rest of you, well, I wish you enlightenment, sanity and reason—but, given the way hate corrodes the brain and the mental incapacity that results, I’m not counting on your ever finding them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

 

Rushdie’s flawed thinking: In the National Post’s “Friday Zeitgeist” feature, Marni Soupcoff highlights some of the names and topics that sparked the highest number of google search requests in the current week. Lo and behold, number one on Soupcoff's list (and number four on google’s) is none other than novelist Salman Rushdie. The publication of Rushdie’s magic realism novel, The Satanic Verses, back in 1988 elicited the kind of freakazoidal response we’ve come to know and expect from the mega-devout; a preview of coming attractions, so to speak. Rushdie is back in the news because of the latest mass eruption over Pope Benedict’s remarks.

 

Citing an interview with Rushdie in Der Spiegel, Soupcoff writes that he “sees both incidents as instances of societies infringing on a story-tellers’s right to speak without being afraid of violent retaliation from those who disagree with him.”  As well, he is “one of the few commentators on Islam to focus on the fact that most victims of Muslim terrorism are Muslims.”

 

Given that, you’d expect Salman to have a keen understanding of the predicament story-tellers and other infidels are facing today from those who would stifle their narratives.

 

Alas, he doesn’t, since he is unwilling to isolate the true problem and instead claims that “Fundamentalisms of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.”

 

Yeah, Salman, because we all need to watch our tongues lest those rampaging Haredis and Evangelicals take to the streets and their religious leaders start issuing fatwas calling upon the faithful to assassinate the cheeky.

 

Also, watch out for those Lubavitch suicide bombers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments

 

Denial is a mighty river that flows through blue states: A belatedly wised-up liberal gives it to other liberals—for their inability (or refusal) to discern what’s smack in front of their noses: the threat posed by the global jihad. From the L.A. Times (link via Arts & Letters Daily):

 

…On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode...

 

Okay, so he’s still got that liberal animus toward scary Evangelicals (booga booga), but at least he seems to be moving in the right (and the right) direction

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:14 | link | comments

 

Fly guy: My mama always told me you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar—and apparently, so did Moo’s.

 

(to the tune of “A Spoonful of Sugar”)

 

In every lie that must be told

There is an element that’s bold,

A brazen way to fool your enemies.

And ev’ry lie that you can tell,

Helps pave their way to Hell.

A breeze! A spree!

They’re so naïve, you see.

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling way.

 

A mullah building lots of nukes

Can safely banish all rebukes

By claiming it’s all for ‘lectricity.

And when we hear the big “kaboom”

By then we can assume

He fibs! He lies!

He’s full of alibis!

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling way...

 

When Moo Jihad’s at the UN,

As he is ev’ry now and then,

You’re sure to hear some bunkum and some tripe.

But like a con man pushing crap

They fall into his trap.

He raves! He charms!

“Sincerity” disarms!

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling,

(Moo is really stalling),

In the most appalling way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments

 

Lies, damned lies, and statistics: Did you know that Shias aren’t the ones who are fond of resorting to a little taqiyah? Sometimes, metrosexual Holocaust-deniers and American presidents stuck in Road Map-type thinking also find it useful. From UPI:

U.S. President George Bush praised the courage of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his efforts toward peace in the Middle East.

With Abbas at his side at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Bush said a meeting between the two leaders Wednesday morning confirmed he Palestinian leader was a "man of peace who believes in a two-state solution."

In his remarks, Abbas called Bush "the first American president to adopt the vision of two states living side-by-side."

Abbas said more than 70 percent of his people support a peaceful two-state solution -- "a state of Palestine and a state of Israel, living in peace and security next to each other."

Bush repeated the call he made before the United Nations Tuesday for Palestinian "territorial integrity" and renewed his goal to achieve peace between Israel and its neighbors before his presidential term ends.

"I fully understand that in order to achieve this vision, there must be leaders willing to speak out and act on behalf of people who yearn for peace, and you are such a leader, Mr. President," Bush said. "I can't thank you enough for the courage you have shown."

So Abbas is a courageous “man of peace,” is he, and 70% of his people support that “two-state solution”? Would that be the same 70% or so who voted a regime of genocidal Islamists into office, or a different 70%?

 

Excuse me while I puke.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

 

Holland’s loss; America’s gain: George F. Will has a piece about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s arrival in the U.S. Here’s his concise analysis of why Ms. Hirsi Ali was forced to flee the Netherlands:

Holland evidently tolerates everything except skepticism about the sacramental nature of multiculturalism. One million of the country's 16 million residents are Islamic, and the political left has appropriated the European right's traditional celebration of identity grounded in racial and ethnic traditions and culture. But the recoil of many Dutch people from Hirsi Ali suggests that the tolerance about which Holland preens is a compound of intellectual sloth and moral timidity. She was more trouble than the Dutch evidently think free speech is worth.

I’d say one other element was a factor here: the overly-regulated, overly-Socialized EU Nanny state which breeds in most of its citizens a thorough-going passivity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:18 | link | comments

 

Loony ‘toons:

Don’t look now, but the arch-enemies of freedom and democracy have been running amuck at the UN. First, Iran’s Moo Jihad, that worthless piece of Shiite, was given an international forum from which to elevate his public profile and take some snipes at Great Satan, all the while coating his words in the toxic honey of taqiyah. Then his good buddy Hugo Chavez (the Joker to Ahmadinejad’s Riddler—or is it the other way around?) was given the same opportunity to slam Great W. Satan. Hoisting his well-thumbed copy of a Noam Chomsky screed (a sight which, I admit, was pretty funny), Chavez told the assembled that Bush was “the devil” and that the joint still reeked of the sulphur he had left behind.

 

I’d say a shower and a good deodorant could take care of those pesky sulphur smells, but instead Chavez advised Bush to consult a good shrink.

 

Can you say “projection”?

 

All this devilish talk was too much for U.S. UN Ambassador John Bolton, who decried Chavez for his “cartoonish” antics.

 

What lesson can we derive from Moo and Hu’s excellent UN adventure? I think Melanie Phillips nails it:

Alan Dershowitz and others have recently suggested that Iran should be ejected from the United Nations. This seems to me to be the wrong way round. All civilised countries should now eject themselves from the UN. The disgraceful scenes of Ahmadinejad being treated this week as an esteemed member of the world community as he took the UN stage graphically illustrated the fact that the UN is not merely useless — it is the global Club of Terror, effectively run by, and in thrall to, tyrannies and corrupt despotisms which outnumber those member states that uphold human rights. The grotesque idea that such a body should be considered fit to arbitrate on international conflict — and even worse, be regarded as the ultimate arbiter of global legality and ethics — is the institutional reason why the world has ended up systematically rewarding aggression and ignoring or punishing its violence.

Club of Terror? That’s one way to describe it. But since I’m the parent of a young son, (and since Moo and Hu are immensely “cartoonish”—not that that makes them any less dangerous; Hitler was cartoonish, too) I think I might call it the League of Villains.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:44 | link | comments

 

Taqiyah alert: The Ceeb, as per usual, takes the words of the vile anti-American, Jew-hating mouthpiece of the mullahs at face value. As a public service, I’m posting the Ceeb’s account of Moo’s performance at the UN yesterday, inserting the word “LIE” (followed by an explanation) whenever Pinocchio Ahmadinejad’s nose should have been growing really, really long.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday the legitimacy of the UN Security Council has been eroded from abuses by the West's most powerful nations. (LIE: UN legitimacy has been eroded by its being hijacked by the tyranical, thuggish and despotic regimes which comprise the bulk of itsmembership.)

Ahmadinejad made his comments in a wide-ranging evening address at the 61st UN General Assembly debate in New York, speaking for nearly twice as long as the amount of time set aside for each country. (LIE: It wasn’t wide-ranging. It “ranged” over the usual limited area—American and Israeli malfeasance and Iran as the upholder of all that is good and just in the world. In other words, the usual Moo inversion of reality.)

The controversial leader accused the U.S. and Britain directly of committing acts of "aggression, occupation and violation of international law," and was clearly referring to Israel at other points. (LIE: The U.S., Britain and Israel are trying to turn back the tide of jihad. If they could accomplish it through endless jabbering, believe me, Moo, they would.)

"The abuse of the Security Council, as an instrument of threat and coercion, is indeed a source of grave concern," said Ahmadinejad.

"It must be acknowledged that as long as the council's unable to act on behalf of the entire international community in a transparent, just and democratic manner, it will neither be legitimate or effective," he said later in his 30-minute address. (Frozen Hell moment: I agree with Moo. The Security Council will never be effective. But it’s a BIG LIE when he says he believes in transparency, justice or democracy. He does, however, believe in uniting the “entire international community”—against the U.S. and Israel.)

Iran's president lashed out at the UN for inaction and delay when the Israeli military abducted Palestinian government officials and launched air strikes that ended up killing Lebanese civilians and UN observers. (LIE: Israel launched a defensive action after its sovereignty was breeched and Israeli soldiers were kidnapped. Moo’s mullocracy had managed to ship in an estimated 13,000 missiles aimed squarely at Israel while UN “observers” took their jobs literally and watched the missiles being set up.)

"When the power behind the atrocities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can the council fulfill its responsibilities?" he said. (LIE: The power behind the atrocities is the jihad, both Sunni and Shia versions.)

Ahmadinejad, who has previously denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the map, referred to the country on more than one occasion as a "regime" and again spoke of what he said were its illegitmate origins nearly 60 years ago. (LIE: Israel’s origins are perfectly legitimate, the result of a legitimate UN vote. And if Israel isn’t legitimate, then neither is Jordan or Syria or Lebanon or any other country in the region that came into being in the wake of the Great War. And, oh yeah, since Moo is so exercised about prior claims, the Jews were there first.)

On the subject of Iran's nuclear activities, Ahmadinejad said they were "transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eye" of United Nations inspectors. He questioned why his country was being denied its own nuclear program when others have not. (LIE, LIE, LIE: Iran's nuclear activites are opaque and warlike, and the UN watchdogs are toothless, ball-less and blind.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:43 | link | comments

 

Pontifications: An editorial in the Globe and Mail chastises Pope Benedict for anatagonizing “the very audience that could stand to benefit most from his message”—a most peculiar statement given that Muslims recognize only one Messanger, and it sure ain’t the Pope. The editorial acknowledges that the Pope’s not the only one who needs to temper his behaviour—“The reaction in some Muslim quarters has been outrageous and only fuels the perception that Islam encourages a culture of victimization…” (also a culture of victimizing, but politically correct niceties prevent the editorialist from venturing into those shark-infested waters). But still, the editorial makes clear that the Pope is at fault here, and that in future he better ix-nay any mention of the ihad-jay.

 

Rosie DiManno, the Toronto Star’s token voice of sanity (undoubtedly one of the world’s loneliest and most thankless positions) offers something of an antidote to the Globe’s craven dhimmitude:

 

…There's a moral vacuity in flagellating a pope for his selection of a pretty weird bit of ancient dialogue while ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is militant Islam. It is entirely true that most major religions are steeped in blood and, historically, the Catholic Church can match contemporary jihad brutality for brutality. But the Catholic Church has matured; it has acknowledged its wickedness and failures. It does not demand that the rest of the world cower before its might or threaten to blow up your stuff because of words or pictures, with a propensity toward hysteria over offence and grievance.

 

This is madness, but it's emboldened and legitimized by those who aren't so very maddened, who are afforded respect and public platforms and scholarly regard.

 

Sling all the mud you want at the Church, slander the pontiff, excoriate Christians and Jews and Hindus, but speak delicately, with cotton in your mouth, when the subject is Islam, however qualified those remarks, because the blow-back will crush you. The imbalance is staggering.

 

So unlike, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who spews vitriol about Jews almost every time he opens his mouth, and got a real kick out of a state-approved cartoon exhibit in Tehran that ridiculed the Holocaust (some polemical dissemblers actually drew an equivalent between these images and the juvenile Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad that unleashed rampaging fury months earlier) — there will likely be no invitation to speak at the United Nations for Pope Benedict any time soon.

 

He has apologized, but apparently not with sufficient scraping…

 

It sounds like Rosie “gets it.” At the same time, the cognitive dissonance of Islam being touted as a religion of peace while millions of adherents continue to find textual justification for unleashing violence around the world may well make her head explode:

 

Islam is a religion of peace. We're told this all the time. I mostly believe it to be true — insofar as any of the great monolithic religions can make a claim of universal peace — not just in theory but in practice for the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. I know it to be true from the humbled and dignified observance of their faith by Muslims both in their mosques and in the entirety of their lives, in the muezzin's call to prayer, in how the pillars of Islam infuse everyday existence.

 

But I have difficulty reconciling this Islam to the other, the one that rampages and bludgeons. And I am dismayed by piety that hardly blinks sideways at barbarism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:21 | link | comments

 

Kofi’s swan song: Kofi Annan gave his farewell speech today. In keeping with the utter cluelessness/fecklessness/uselessness that’s marked his run as UN Secretary General, Kofi gave a speech in which he insisted that the ongoing discord between Israel and the Palestinians is the most critical issue on the planet. If only the world were able to tackle and resolve this thorniest of thorny issues, said Annan, everything else would finally fall into place. (He didn’t actually say that the lion would lie down with the lamb and a little child would lead them, but that was the implication.)

 

The only possible rejoinder to that is: Bollocks! The Israel-Palestinian crisis isn’t the cause of all the world’s problems. It is a manifestation of the problem that Kofi and his malevolent gang are unprepared to tackle and which they continue to enable: the world-wide jihad.

 

Kofi wants us to keep looking through the wrong end of the telescope, magnifying the events in one tiny region of the world out of all proportion to their true importance. That way, the Israel situation can be presented as an isolated stand-alone dot, unconnected to all the other dots where the jihad is doing its dirty work, and the world can ignore the “big picture” in favour of the teensy-weensy one (and allow it to get on with the all-important business of undoing what the UN wrought in 1947 with its partition plan).

 

Hasta la vista, Kofi. Don’t let the door hit your bespoke buttocks on the way out.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:14 | link | comments (1)

 

The Pope’s unlikely protectors: The Turkish guy who tried to assassinate the previous Pope has urged the current Pope to stay away from Turkey. Benedict XVI had been planning to visit the EU-wannabe before the brouhaha erupted over his comments linking Islam to violence.

 

Mehment Ali Agca, who’s still residing in Turkish hoosegow, send a letter to a Rome newspaper in which he strongly suggested that visiting Turkey at this time was, shall we say, ill-advised.

 

But Agca’s not the only one who had surprisingly “friendly” words for the Pope today. Never one to miss an opportunity to employ some of that highly effective Shia P.R., a.k.a. taqiyah, Moo told reporters the Pope’s words had been misunderstood. From the Times Online:

In a remarkable turnaround, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamist Iranian President, also came to the defence of Pope Benedict today.

Addressing a press conference with Hugo Chavez, the left-wing, anti-American President of Venezuela, in Caracas, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "We respect the Pope, and all those interested in peace and justice."

He said he accepted the Vatican view that the pontiff’s words had been "taken out of context" and he was "given to understand" that the Pope had later modified them. He said Benedict had been "misinterpreted".

He also observed there was a contradiction between the Christian values of the West and the wars it had waged. "All the wars of the twentieth century were caused by European countries and the United States," he maintained.

Moo certainly knows how to tailor a message for the crowd. I’m pretty sure that when addressing other audiences he blames all the wars on a different culprit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:13 | link | comments

 

UN karaoke: George W. Bush and Moo Jihad squared off in front of the General Assembly today. Only instead of presenting the usual orations, they shocked the throng by bursting into “The Shoop Shoop Song.”

 

What can I say? These two are always full of surprises:

 

George W. Bush:

Does he hate us

I wanna know.

How can we tell if he loathes us so?

Is it in eyes?

(Oh, yeah, they do deceive.)

Is he telling lies?

(He’s many up his sleeve.)

If you wanna know

If he loathes us so

It’s in his hiss,

That’s where it is, oh yeah.

 

Is his aura green?

(Much greener than you think.)

Is his living clean?

(He declines to take a drink.)

If you wanna know

If he loathes us so

It’s in his hiss,

That’s where it is.

 

Moo:

Oh, oh, oh, revert

You infidels

Or taste the wrath of our ji-ha-a-a-ad.

If we hate,

And we really do,

It’s there in our hiss.

About the way we act…

 

Representatives from Russia, China and France:

It’s really not so bad.

And your dumb sanctions’ll only make him mad.

 

Moo:

If you wanna know

If I loathe you so

It’s in my hiss,

That’s where it is, oh yeah,

It’s in my hiss.

That’s where it is.

Oo oo, it’s in my hiss…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:45 | link | comments

“Peaceful” seethers: Ken Livingstone’s favourite Islamic cleric, Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, is calling for the faithful to assemble “on the last Friday in the month of Shaban” for a “peaceful protest.” The protest has been called because Qaradawi is dissatisfied with the Pope’s “apology,” which is not nearly apologetic enough for the “prominent Muslim scholar (as Islam Online describes him):

…"I urge Muslims to take to the streets on the last Friday in the month of Shaban, to express their anger in a peaceful and rational manner," Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), told Al-Jazeera's Al-Shari`ah and Life program late on Sunday, September 17.

"Muslims should be wise in their anger," he stressed, warning against attacking churches, individuals or property.

The prominent scholar regretted that some Christian places of worship had been attacked over the past few days.

"It is unfortunate that such a mistake was made by a man who represents one of the largest denominations in Christianity," Qaradawi said.

"It is unfortunate as well that the pope insulted a great religion whose followers are up to one billion people."

Pope Benedict had come under mounting pressure from Muslim leaders worldwide to retract his remarks made in Germany last week in which he quoted claims by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) brought only evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The comments had triggered widespread condemnation from Muslim scholars, religious authorities, high-level officials, inter-faith experts and Egypt's Christians.

People across the Muslim world have taken to the streets in protests reminiscent of those that erupted after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad a year ago.

"Another Insult"

Sheikh Qaradawi considered the pope's assertion on Sunday that Muslims have misunderstood him as another "insult."

"Now he says that Muslims do not understand the true sense of his words. But he must bear in mind that when the speech is utterly clear then good intentions do not matter.

"He, in effect, stopped short of apologizing and the real apology is to retract his remarks, which should be omitted from the lecture," he gave in the Germany University of Regensburg on Tuesday.

Qaradawi said the pope's remarks came to entrench offensive statements made by US President George W. Bush last month that America was at war with "Islamist fascists."

The pope's remarks "gave an international cover for what Bush is doing," Qaradawi insisted…

Maybe it’s me, but I think asking the faithful to protest this issue in a peaceful manner is about as likely a scenario as, well, asking them to engage in a peaceful protest about Danish cartoons. If the past is any guide, it’s highly unlikely the aggrieved will be able to keep a lid on their anger without burning stuff and/or going postal. Unless, of course, the Sheik is planning to distribute lots of powerful anxiolytics beforehand to keep them calm.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments

Enough already with the apologies: As a counterpoint to Madeleine Bunting (see post two below), here’s a voice of reason in, of all places, the Washington Post. Anne Applebaum, the anti-Bunting, says its time for “Western politicians, writers, thinkers and speakers (to) stop apologizing -- and start uniting”:

…By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.

Unfortunately, the Buntings of the world seem all too keen on demanding that we censor ourselves, convinced that it's the only way to keep the fanatics quiet. It won’t work. It will merely hasten the day when we finally find ourselves unable to say much of anything at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:04 | link | comments

 

Moo in Jew York: Fasten your seat belts, folks. Moo Jihad will be outlining his “global vision” today at the UN.

 

Last time he spoke at the UN he claimed to have been enveloped in a bright green aura, and Moo fans everywhere will be watching to see if he’s similarly lit on this occasion.

 

Some words I’m pretty sure he’ll omit in describing his globalization plan: caliphate, jihad, Mahdi and Dar al Islam.

 

And, oh yeah, the most important word of all: taqiyah.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments

Bunting bellows: There are those who believe that the jihadis are a clear and present threat to our civilization. And then there are those who think that the really dangerous folks are the ones—like Oriana Fallaci and Pope Benedict XVI—who warn us about the clear and present threat.

 

You can slot Madeleine Bunting of The Guardian into the second category. She sees the Pope and Fallaci as the offending parties, dangerous “Islamophobes” needlessly arousing the devout:

 

…Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, he (the Pope) said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." It was a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence, a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events (a fact that still eludes too many westerners). Even more bewildering is the fact that his choice of quotation from Manuel II Paleologos, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was so insulting of the Prophet. Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable. What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad. Given the scale of the offence, the carefully worded apology, actually, gives little ground; he recognises that Muslims have been offended and that he was only quoting, but there is no regret at using such an inappropriate comment or the deep historic resonances it stirs up.

 

By an uncanny coincidence the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died last week. No one connected the two events, but the Pope had already run into controversy in Italy by inviting the rabid Islamophobe to a private audience just months ago. This is the journalist who published a bestseller in 2001 which amounted to a diatribe of invective against Islam. This is the woman who was only too happy to fling out comments such as "Muslims breed like rats" and "the increasing presence of Muslims in Italy and Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." At the time of her papal audience, Fallaci's ranting against Islam had landed her in court and there was outrage at the Pope's insensitive invitation. The Pope refused to backtrack and insisted the meeting was purely "pastoral".

 

Put last week's lecture in Bavaria and the Fallaci audience alongside his vocal opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, and the picture isn't pretty. On one of the biggest and most volatile issues of our day - the perceived clash between the west and the Muslim world - the Pope seems to have abdicated his papal role of arbitrator, and taken up the arms in a rerun of a medieval fantasy.

 

An elderly Catholic nun has already been killed in Somalia, perhaps in retaliation for the Pope's remarks; churches have been attacked in the West Bank. How is this papal stupidity going to play out in countries such as Nigeria, where the tensions between Catholics and Muslims frequently flare into riots and death? Or other countries such as Pakistan, where tiny Catholic communities are already beleaguered? Or the Muslim minorities in Catholic countries such as the Philippines - how comfortable do they feel this week?...

 

Personally, I never cottoned to that “breeding like rats” analogy; being Jewish and mindful of history, I have an aversion to comparisons involving vermin. However, I think the Pope has (and Fallaci had) a far clearer grasp of reality—and who’s responsible for the problems—than do the bloviating Bunting and her ilk.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments (1)

 

“Big Love” in Gaza: Mark MacKinnon has another of his “heart-warming” human interest stories about Arab enemies of Israel. Today he files a report from Gaza, a place where a good man is hard to find because so many of them have self-selected for a chance at winning a Darwin award. The man shortage has meant that a lot of never-married women, as well as widows of “martyrs” (men “who have died fighting Israel,” explains Malarkey) have been consigned to a lifetime of loneliness. But now these women can have a shot at finding happiness by enrolling in program which matches them with married men.

 

Ah, ain’t that sweet.

 

Such arrangements are possible in Hamastan, where, under sharia law, men are allowed to have up to four wives, and the advantages are many. For one, it allows the widows to get out of the house and “move on.” For another, it has the advantage of “keeping her away from sin,” always a concern in a culture which situates a family’s honour between the legs of its womenfolk.

 

Then there’s the “positive side effect” the program is having on “revitalizing” pre-existing marriages in Gaza. It seems wives are striving that much harder to please their hubbies, lest they take on a second, or third, or fourth wife.

Some wives, however, are resigned to the inevitable and are even keen, writes Malarkey, to participate in the selection process:

But other women have come in with their husbands to peruse the applications and photographs on file, Mr. Tamboura said. "We encourage women to participate with their husbands in choosing the second wife so that they can live together as sisters."

Mr. Abu Samaha and Ms. Kafarneh are contemplating exactly such a future. The 45-year-old Mr. Abu Samaha, a shop owner and member of the militant Islamic Jihad movement, already has a wife and seven children. He said he applied to al-Falah because he was having "big problems" with his wife.

Things have smoothed out since then, he said, and he recently introduced Ms. Kafarneh to his current wife. Asked how the meeting went, Ms. Kafarneh stifled a laugh before responding obliquely, "I am capable of living with another woman."

A marriage made in Heaven, I’d say. Just watch the fur fly, though, when their periods synchronize and they both have PMS.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments (1)

 

Clash of monotheisms: Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Cardinal in charge of the Catholic Church’s ecumenical relations, explains to Der Spiegel Online something that should be—but isn’t necessarily—obvious, especially in light of the ongoing Papal fracas. That is, “Islam is a different culture.”

 

Gee, ya think?

 

SPIEGEL: Cardinal, are you surprised by the intense reaction of Muslims worldwide to the pope's speech in Regensburg?

Kasper: Because the Christian faith constitutes a voluntary personal act, the pope has every right to address the justifiable concerns of the Enlightenment: the concept of universal human rights, religious freedom and the distinction between religion and politics. After all, the Catholic Church is a world church and more of a global player today than ever before.

SPIEGEL: Which means that conflicts with other religions are apparently inevitable.

Kasper: The conflict with Islam has, after all, existed throughout European history, which is what the pope was pointing out. The encounter with Islam now seems to be entering a new phase. Many have called it a 'clash of civilizations.' But this phrase must be handled with great care to prevent it from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The alternative to conflict is called dialogue. This is the option the churches choose, and it's also what the pope favors. We want a peaceful difference of opinion, which, of course, is based on reciprocity. But one shouldn't harbor any illusions over the difficulties this involves.

SPIEGEL: Why is dialogue with Islam so difficult for the Catholic Church?

Kasper: There is no such thing as one Islam. The Koran is ambiguous and Islam is not a monolithic entity. The distinction between radical Islam and moderate Muslims is important, as are the differences between Sunnis and Shiites, and between militant and mystical Islam. Islam in the Arab world coexists with Indonesian, Pakistani and Turkish Islam. There is limited solidarity, even within the Arab world. Muslims living among us (in Germany) haven't managed to build an organization that represents all Muslims. Such an organization could protect us against irrational fantasies driven by fear, fantasies that completely demonize Islam. But it is difficult, under the current circumstances, to find representative counterparts to talk with.

SPIEGEL: Do you think a dialogue on equal footing is possible?

Kasper: One cannot be naïve when engaging in this dialogue. Islam undoubtedly deserves respect. It has some things in common with Christianity, such as Abraham as a common progenitor, and the belief in only one God. But Islam developed in opposition to orthodox Christianity from the very start, and it considers itself superior to Christianity. So far, it has only been tolerant in places where it is in the minority. Where it is the majority religion, Islam does not recognize religious freedom, at least not as we understand it. Islam is a different culture. This doesn't mean that it's an inferior culture, but it is a culture that has yet to connect with the positive sides of our modern Western culture: religious freedom, human rights and equal rights for women. These shortcomings are one reason so many Muslims feel such frustration that often turns into hatred and violence against the West, which is despised as being godless and decadent. Suicide attacks are the actions of losers who have nothing left to lose. In this case, Islam serves as a mask, a cover for desperation and nihilism, but not for religion.

SPIEGEL: In which direction do you believe Islam is developing?

Kasper: One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn't confuse desire with reality. How should Europe behave? Europe sees itself as a liberal-minded society. It has no desire to be, nor can it be, a "Christian club. But Europe's experiment with multiculturalism, or the side-by-side existence of different cultures, has failed throughout the continent. Integration requires a minimum basis of shared values, that is, a culture of mutual tolerance and respect -- in other words, what constitutes the heart of European culture. This is why integration is not possible without excluding those who do not recognize this culture. Those who are unprepared to demonstrate tolerance cannot expect or even demand tolerance for themselves.

SPIEGEL: What kind of Europe does the church want?

Kasper: A Europe that qualifies its own values is not attractive in the eyes of Muslims. Europe must conduct itself as a strong partner, both intellectually and spiritually, and it must be convinced of its own advantages. This is the only way we will gain respect. Only a Europe that is conscious of its own values can be both an economically strong and a morally and intellectually respected partner, and thereby extend its hospitality to others. It's a cultural disgrace that we are forced to identify no-go areas for foreigners...

 

The Cardinal’s comments reminded me of the opening line of L.P. Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.”

 

I’d rewrite it as follows: Islam is foreign religion. They do things differently there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:46 | link | comments (1)

 

Scary beliefs: Aaron Sorkin, creator of the now defunct TV show “The West Wing” has a new show that’s about to debut on NBC. I haven’t seen it yet, but here’s part of a Yahoo! review by someone named Brent Bozell III.

 

Oh, and by the way—I’ve altered one crucial word (the word appears several times). See if you can guess which one it is:

NBC's "CRAZY MUSLIMS" SHOW

That's the central plot twist in the premiere of the new NBC drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," created by "West Wing" producer-writer Aaron Sorkin. The show goes behind the scenes of a fictional sketch-comedy program resembling "Saturday Night Live" at a fictional network called UBS. The censors at UBS have scratched a skit titled "Crazy Muslims," and now all hell will break loose. We're never shown the skit, but we're told repeatedly that it's demonstrably hilarious.

Sorkin uses his first script to throw sharp knives and rusty razors at the Americans who've lobbied for less filthy television. The show begins with an improbable "standards and practices" censor telling the producer of the fictional "SNL" that he can't run "Crazy Muslims" because "what do you want me to say to the 50 million people who are gonna go out of their minds as soon as it airs?" The producer cracks wise: "Well, first of all, you can tell 'em we average 9 million households, so at least 41 million of them are full of crap. Second, you can tell 'em that living where there's free speech means sometimes you're gonna get offended."

But Hollywood writers know that in a free-speech society, people are free to denounce Hollywood's shows when they are vile and disgusting. There's also a remarkable double standard at work here. While denouncing the free-speech rights of "crazy Muslims," Hollywood exercises its own restrictions, zealously avoiding on camera the many social taboos -- smoking cigarettes, say -- to which it subscribes.

What Hollywood likes is having the almighty power to offend -- to "challenge" society, as they like to describe it -- freely. But only some people are sought out for offending. For every supposedly crazy parent who worries about sex, violence and smutty talk on TV, perhaps there's another supposedly crazy parent who worries about different offenses, such as Twinkie commercials or scenes with cool, beautiful people smoking cigarettes. But those parents don't get mocked by scriptwriters. It is those with religious objections who get singled out.

But Sorkin wasn't done lecturing. When his skit is axed, the outraged fictional "SNL" producer bounds onto the stage and unleashes a lecture on live television. It's what Sorkin has probably wanted to say about network executives (and their alleged overreaction to those crazy Muslims) many times: "The two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott." Sorkin was so impressed with his own insult that it reruns later in the show in fictional news clips…

Did you guess which word I changed? Of course you did, because not only do you know that mainstream TV would never, ever air a show denouncing “crazy Muslims”—who needs the agita of death threats and rampaging hoards?—but because you also know that La-La-Land is in the grip of a collective delusion that the really crazy scary religious people out there are the ones who follow that “angry” Jewish guy in the sandals.

 

Must be because of all those Evangelical suicide bombers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:40 | link | comments

 

“That’s a real good thing that Islam did!”: The Daily Telegraph (Australia) details some of the “peaceful” ways in which adherents of an inherently peaceful religion have expressed dismay with the Pope’s contention that their faithful may be prone to violence:

MUSLIM fanatics burned an effigy of the Pope, a Catholic nun was shot dead and terrorist organisation al-Qaeda called for holy war as protesters against Benedict XVI's comments linking Islam with violence resorted to just that.

Elderly Italian nun Sister Leonella was shot at a children's hospital in the Islamist-controlled Somali capital in an attack linked to the Pope's comments last week linking Islam to violence.

Two gunman entered the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital in Mogadishu's Huriwa District on Sunday and ambushed the nun, opening fire with pistols before killing a Somali bodyguard and escaping in the ensuing confusion, witnesses said.

In the Shi'ite city of Basra in Iraq, about 150 demonstrators demanding an apology by the Pope burnt his effigy. The agitators also burned German, US, and Israeli flags.

"No to aggression! We gagged the Pope!," the angry crowd chanted.

The protest was organised by supporters of hardline Shi'ite cleric Mahmoud Al Hasani, who demanded the Pope and the Vatican be put on trial under UN Security Council resolutions.

Pope Benedict has come under fierce criticism and demands from Muslim leaders worldwide to retract his remarks made in Germany last Tuesday, in which he quoted an obscure mediaeval text that criticised some teachings of the prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman".

On Sunday, the Pope said he was "deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address . . . which were considered offensive to Muslims."

He stressed the passages he quoted last Tuesday "do not in any way express my personal thought".

"I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect," he said.

No dice, Benedict. The faithful are still too aggrieved for that kind of appeasement—it’s nowhere near abject enough:

Iraqi-based al-Qaeda operatives posted an internet statement condemning the Pope and reiterating it would wage jihad.

"We say to the servant of the cross (the pope): Wait for defeat . . . We say to infidels and tyrants: Wait for what will afflict you. We will smash the cross . . . you will have no choice (but) Islam or death," the Mujahideen consultative council said.

And there’s only one way to counter accusuations of violent tendencies that haven't been followed by sufficient dhimmi-ish groveling—with more violence, of course:

Two other armed groups in Iraq, Jaish al-Mujahideen and Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya, have already threatened the Vatican with reprisals.

Catholic churches were immediately attacked on the West Bank and warnings were posted by officials in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country…

All I can say is the Pope is really lucky that so far he hasn’t been thought into the cornfield.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments

 

Khartoum’s “disproportionate” murder spree: Remember all that blather about Israel’s “disproportionate response” in Lebanon? Funny how the media seem a lot less exercised about a far more “disproportionate response”—and one that’s been going on a whole lot longer than the brief contretemps in Hezbollahland this past summer. The disproportion to which I’m referring, of course, is the response of Khartoum’s Islamist government, which, seven years ago, let loose a slew of Arab “devils on horseback” (the literal meaning of “Janjaweed”). The devils, who have a penchant for using low-tech weapons, like machetes, are believed to have butchered 200,000—I repeat, 200,000—black Africans, most of them other Muslims.

 

The Times Online has a capsule portrait of the situation in Darfur, a situation which threatens to become another Rwanda-like bloodbath.

 

AIR attacks preceded the torching of Darfur villages after an insurrection in 2003. Tens of thousands were killed, more than 200,000 fled into Chad and two million were left homeless. They believe Sudan’s authorities are now preparing to finish them off.

Officially the Government of President al-Bashir is airlifting troops into the western province to replace an ill-equipped African Union force. He has rejected a UN resolution calling for a fully fledged peacekeeping force to take over and is moving in 10,000 of his forces to “ensure stability”. Independent sources say that he will send in far more.

Khartoum had armed Arab tribes to suppress the 2003 rebellion, led largely by three black African tribes, the Fur, the Zaghawa and the Masalit. The area’s 6.5 million inhabitants are overwhelmingly Muslim, but the Africans, by tradition farmers, have been marginalised and had sought greater representation and autonomy from the Arab-dominated central administration.

Mr Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup by hardline Islamic army officers. responded by exploiting enmities with the largely nomadic Arab tribes, who constitute 10 per cent of the population. The Janjaweed fighters (the term is loosely translated as “devils on horseback”) were given free rein to rape, slaughter and pillage.

It is believed that 200,000 people may have been killed. Thousands died of disease and hunger in makeshift camps.

In May President Bashir signed a peace deal with a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army dominated by the Zaghawa tribe. Its leader, Minni Minawi, is now a presidential adviser. The army and Mr Minawi’s faction are poised for a joint offensive against the rebel groups, many of whom are holed up in their Jebel Marra mountain stronghold.

I know it’s unfair to generalize about these things, but it seems to me that whenever the Arabs show up in places like Sudan and Afghanistan, there’s bound to be lots of slicing, dicing, raping, pillaging and other such piratical pursuits.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments

 

Herpetology: Tony Blair may or may not be “Bush’s poodle” (I say not), but reptilian French President Jacques Chirac could well be described as the mullahs’ pet iguana. From CNN:

French President Jacques Chirac has said he believes a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis can be found without resorting to U.N. sanctions.

"I believe that dialogue still is open ... there is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction," Chirac told CNN in an exclusive interview.

The U.N. Security Council demanded that Iran suspend it uranium enrichment program by August 31 or face the possibility of economic sanctions. Iran missed that deadline but has said it would consider temporarily suspending its program as a condition for beginning talks with the United States.

The U.S., which has refused to rule out military action against Iran, last week said it was doubtful Tehran's latest offer was serious.

Diplomats from the five permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany, are to meet during this week's General Assembly session in New York to consult about a sanctions resolution.

Chirac said thy (sic) although international efforts to urge Iraq to comply had so far failed to bear fruit, he believed that negotiations remained the way forward.

"I remain convinced that dialogue is the only way that we can come up with a positive result," he said.

"And I very much hope that we will be bale to come up with a solution that will enable us to avoid any sort of conflict.

"I am always and have always been favorable to a negotiated solution. I believe that dialogue still is open ... there is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction. I very much hope that dialogue will get us out of this crisis and I believe it will."…

Yeah, “Iggy,” ‘cause there’s nothing the mullahs like more than chewing the fat with venal infidels. How else are they going to keep their Teheran Project on schedule?

Update: Gee, you don’t think “Iggy” Chirac’s calls for “dialogue” could have anything to do with this, do you?

 

Update: Here’s a good one--“Iggy” says if the UN finds it absolutely necessary to impose sanctions on Iran, they shouldn’t be unduly punitive.

 

Because, that would be, like, tres harsh, and might affect the flow of all those shekels the mullahs are sending his way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:44 | link | comments

 

Harsh truths: George Jonas has a column in the National Post today about recently deceased Islam-excoriater, Oriana Fallaci. While Jonas admires Fallaci for her fearlessness and passion, he criticizes one of her more unpopular and inflammatory assertions. “…Fallaci also seemed to posit a far more dubious equation: Islamism=Islam,” he writes. “It was probably untrue and minimally premature.”

 

I dunno. When I read the following, I can’t help but think that Fallaci had a pretty good handle on things:

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group led by al Qaeda vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross" in response to a recent speech by Pope Benedict on Islam that sparked anger across the Muslim world.

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement.

It was posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Pope Benedict said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a Medieval quotation on Islam and violence. The remarks outraged Muslims and triggered protests and attacks on churches in several Arab towns.

Another militant group in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, also vowed to fight Christians in retaliation.

"You will only see our swords until you go back to God's true faith Islam," it said in a separate Internet statement..

Fallaci was pointing out something that not even Jonas seems willing to face: Islamism isn’t an aberration of Islam; it’s simply the latest incarnation of the jihad (as anti-Zionism is the latest incarnation of antisemitism).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:07 | link | comments

 

Israel’s best EU friend: Sometimes when I take my overly-exuberant retriever for a walk, I ask myself the question, “Just who’s walking who here?”

 

Well, that’s a question that all those who consider Tony Blair to be Bush’s poodle might want to ask themselves. As Caroline Glick points out, when it comes to Israel it’s Blair who’s been the leader and Bush his compliant lap dog. From JWR:

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe.

And he's not a very good friend.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous — view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else, into one of the cognitive foundations of the US war on Islamic terror. This foundation was first enunciated at Bush's address Sept. 20 before the joint session of Congress where he identified "every terrorist with global reach" — that is every terrorist that isn't part of the Palestinian Authority — as enemies of the US.

Later, Blair was a principal force behind Bush's move to abandon the guidelines for dealing with the Palestinians that he enunciated in his speech on June 24, 2002. In that address, Bush stipulated that the Palestinians needed to transform themselves from a society that supported terror into one that combated terror in order to receive US support for Palestinian statehood. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad to Coalition forces in April 2003, Blair convinced Bush to accept the Road Map plan for Palestinian statehood. The Road Map, which effectively locks in US support for Palestinian statehood irrespective of Palestinian terrorism and radicalism, represented a practical abandonment of the positions that Bush set out in his June 24, 2002 address.

During his visit to the region this week, keeping with his studied habit, Blair ignored the fact that the Iranian-backed Hamas government was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority by a large majority of Palestinians. He ignored the fact that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's has voiced support for the abduction and continued captivity of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit and for the continuation of the terror war against Israel. He ignored the fact that rather than working to overthrow the Hamas government, Abbas has begged Hamas to allow Fatah to join their government. To this end, Abbas has accepted Hamas's policy guidelines that reject recognizing Israel's right to exist and commit all Palestinians to unite in their war against Israel. Ignoring all these inconvenient facts, Blair called on the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to renew negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the Road Map.

And yet, for all this, Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe today. He is Israel's best friend because, as opposed to all his colleagues in both Britain and the EU, Blair at least recognizes that the global jihad is a threat to the free world and that the cost of not fighting the forces of jihad will be the loss of our freedom…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:51 | link | comments

 

This just in—Pope not infallible: That’s merely one of many “insights” in an editorial in The New Nation, which bills itself as “Bangladesh’s independent news source” (to differentiate, I guess, from the country's many dependent ones). Here are some other choice observations, along the same lines:

 

Pope Benedict XVI has possibly brought the Papacy that he represents to the lowest ever level in the esteem of the conscious section of people, especially the Muslims, all over the world by his latest remarks about Islam and its Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Benedict cited an obscure Medieval text that characterises some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman"-comments some experts took as a signal that the Vatican was staking a more demanding stance for its dealings with the Muslim world.

Possibly there is little to be surprised by the fact that Muslim leaders from around the world demanded a personal apology from the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended the German-born pope, saying his message had been misunderstood. "It is an invitation to dialogue between religions and the Pope has explicitly urged this dialogue, which I also endorse and see as urgently necessary," she said on Friday.

According to agency reports, the Rev. Robert Taft, a specialist in Islamic affairs at Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute, said it was unlikely Benedict miscalculated how some Muslims would receive his speech.

"The message he is sending is very, very clear," Taft said. "Violence in the name of faith is never acceptable in any religion and that (the Pope) considers it his duty to challenge Islam and anyone else on this." The pope spoke this during his visit to his native Germany.

If one looks at the pope's observation, two things become distinctly clear. Benedict has used an obscure mediaeval Christian emperor to term the Prophet of Islam bad. That was the time of Crusades when Europe was in the words of historians in the 'Dark Age' and things temporal were subordinated to things eternal to the extent the priests even had developed the practice of selling certificates for the dead to go to heaven.

In sharp contrast the religion of Islam proclaimed a balance between earthly and heavenly lives one thousand years before the renaissance and the reformation in Europe.

The second thing is a serious lack of understanding of Islam which stands for peace, equality and tolerance. Those who resort to violence cannot necessarily be categorised as belonging to the faith of Islam. The Iraq war which is now being rejected as military adventurism based on lies was not started by people belonging to the Islamic faith…

 

You’re dern tootin’, Mr. Editorialist. It was started by Great Satan hisself, and will soon be corrected once his chief minion, a Republican, has been exchanged for a Democrat.

 

I don’t know if I can go along with the claim about striking “a balance between earthly and heavenly lives,” though. With 72,  count ‘em, 72, virgins promised each shahid who manages to die for the sake of Islam, I’d say the scale was definitely weighted in favour of the Afterlife.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:48 | link | comments

 

Coitus, interuptus: It looks like that marriage of convenience between Mahmoud “Stinky” Abbas and Islamil “the Horrible” Haniyah may not come to pass. The hitch in their getting hitched: Haniyah refuses to put a sock in it about wanting to kill all the Jews, while Abbas wants him to keep such genocidal notions to himself.

 

Too bad, because I was about to send them a lovely wedding present. (I hear they were registered at Thugs ‘R’ Us.)

 

Update: Hold everything. It looks like the nuptials may be on after all.

 

Time to rush out and buy that Rosenthal china and Crystallnacht they registered for.

 

Update: In honour of the Stinky-Horrible nuptials I’ve updated that 60s Girl Group classic, Chapel of Love:

 

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Gee, they really hate Jews so they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel of hate.

 

Fall is here,

They-ey-ey’ve stopped their row.

Buried the hatchet,

At least for now.

And soon they’ll say

A solemn vow

So the money starts flowin’ once again.

 

That’s why they’re

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Gee, they really hate Jews so they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel of hate.

 

Birds will sing,

The-ha-ha-ha Arabs will crow

Knowin’ that soon,

The loot will flow.

The gravy train

Will be a go

And they’ll get all their jizya once again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:04 | link | comments

 

More grovelling, please: It looks like the Pope’s “apology” isn’t going to be enough to satisfy some aggrieved believers. They’re demanding a much more fulsome and abject “apology.” From Times Online Breaking News:

 

Muslim leaders in the Middle East have demanded further apologies from Pope Benedict XVI for controversial remarks about Islam, as attacks on Christian churches continued in the West Bank. Mahmoud Ashour, the former deputy of Cairo's Al-Azhar, the Sunni Arab world's most powerful institution, said the Pope's apology was not enough, telling Al-Arabiya TV: "He should apologise because he insulted the beliefs of Islam. He must apologise in a frank way and say he made a mistake."The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood took a softer stance, saying the Islamic political group's relations with Christians should remain "good, civilised and co-operative".

 

I say the Pope should make this type of “apology” when the faithful agree to “apologize” for all those offensive passages in the Koran—the ones encouraging true believers to slice-and-dice the infidels, especially the Jews, who are described as being “apes and pigs.”

 

In other words, he should “apologize” after Moo Jihad has launched Armageddon and Hell has officially frozen over.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:51 | link | comments

 

The Pope’s mistake: As David Warren explains, the Pope’s error was in striving for “nuance” (“nuance” being something that, as everyone knows, only works with Democrats and other lefties):

The BBC appears to have been quickest off the mark, to send around the world in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, and Malay, word that the Pope had insulted the Prophet of Islam, during an address in Bavaria.

He had not, of course. Pope Benedict XVI had instead quoted, carefully and without approval, remarks by the learned 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaeologus, in debate with a 14th-century learned Persian. He was trying to provide a little historical depth to present controversies about the meaning of "jihad", and his very point was that on their own respective theological terms, Muslims and Christians were bound to talk past each other today, in the same ways as they did seven centuries ago. But in the most conscientious media reports I have seen, even the Byzantine emperor is quoted out of context.

Here is the point Pope Benedict was making, also in the words of that learned Byzantine emperor, speaking on the eve of one of the many sieges of Constantinople:

"God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. ... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."

It is a point the Greek-educated and Christian emperor takes as self-evident, but which is not self-evident to a theology that holds God entirely beyond human reason, and says He may command whatever He commands, including conversion by force should He so will. As the Pope said, it is a conflict that stabs us once again today: Does God act with "logos"? (This is the Greek word for "reason" as well as "word") How do we defend this very Catholic (and Orthodox) idea outside the Church, where our own theological assumptions are not shared?..

To answer Warren’s query, apparently, we don’t—defend it, that is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:26 | link | comments

 

Harpoon’s ABCs: Harpoon Siddiqui, that cunning fox, continues to harp on Stephen Harper. Specifically, on Harper being like George W. Bush’s Mini-Me, and Canada, under Harper, being a member of what Harpoon calls “America’s B team.”

 

And what Canadian in his right mind (or at least, what Canadian who’s a regular reader of the Toronto Star) wants to belong to Bush’s second string? (In the U.K., Tony Blair is accused of being Bush’s “poodle”; here in Canada, Harper is described as being a member of Bush’s farm team. Such criticisms say more about the national character of those lobbing them than they do about Bush—the “poodle” comment demonstrating how besotted the British are with their dogs (although these days they aren’t too enamoured of “Fifi” Blair); the B team comment demonstrating Canada’s inherent inferiority complex, the “mouse” to the U.S. “elephant,” in Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s memorable description.

 

But I digress. For those with a strong stomach, or for all you masochists out there, here’s a taste of Wile E. Siddiqui’s spiel:

 

Y ou didn't have to go any further than the blanket coverage of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 to know the great divide between the United States and the rest of the world, and also between those Americans and Canadians, like Stephen Harper, who support George W. Bush's geopolitics and those who don't, namely, the majority of Americans and Canadians.

 

While each of the 2,973 victims of 9/11 needs to be remembered, no less worthy of commemoration are those sacrificed in the failed war on terrorism:

 

·  The 2,670 Americans, and the 42,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq.

·  The 16 Canadian soldiers killed since May in Afghanistan.

·  The tens of thousands of Afghan civilians killed, maimed or displaced since the toppling of the Taliban five long years ago.

·  The hundreds of Palestinians killed and the hundreds of thousands starving in the Israeli-occupied territories, now with Canadian complicity.

 

These Muslim victims were, and are, not all terrorists. Not to see the connection between their tragedy and the Muslim anger around the world is to be obtuse or ideologically blind.

 

If the war in Lebanon showed how closely Harper follows Bush's script, last week provided further proof.

 

Bush linked 9/11 to Iraq, and Harper linked it to Afghanistan.

 

Bush said, "We have Al Qaeda on the run," and Harper said, "The Taliban is on the run."

Bush said, "The worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," and Harper said "The horrors of the world will not go away if we turn a blind eye to them."

 

Bush said, "We are now in the early hours of the struggle between tyranny and freedom," and Peter MacKay — clumsily wooing Condoleezza Rice, as Canadians cringed — said, "The fight against terrorism will be a long-term campaign to provide greater security of our citizens and our way of life."

 

Bush exploited the grief of victims' families for political gain and Harper did the same.

There's additional evidence of the growing "Bushification of Canada," as Bob Rae, the Liberal leadership hopeful, has called it.

 

While Harper, like Bush, posits the Afghan mission as essential to the security of the West, not enough NATO nations are convinced to pony up more troops.

Even the British commander in the field expressed skepticism when talking to a Canadian MP as early as May, as reported by the Star's Bill Schiller.

 

While Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney, like Bush, see their war on terrorism as the equivalent of fighting fascism, many of our key allies don't.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin used the 9/11 events to distance themselves from Bush. Even the British Conservatives did so.

Noting that anti-Americanism is spreading like wildfire, Tory leader David Cameron said:

"We'll serve neither our own, nor America's nor the world's interests, if we're seen as America's unconditional associate in every endeavour. Our duty is to our own citizens, and to our own conception of what's right for the world. We should be solid but not slavish in our friendship with America."

 

But our Conservative Prime Minister bows to Bush, from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Israel…

 

And here’s the letter I sent to the Star:

 

Reading Haroon Siddiqui’s latest column was a lot like watching Sesame Street. Siddiqui offers a political alphabet lesson, attempting to teach us that there’s an “A” team—the U.S. and Israel—and a “B” team—those nations, like Canada, which serve the “A” team’s interests instead of their own.

 

Unfortunately, Siddiqui seems to have left out a few letters, including “C”, for “capitulation,” which is what he appears to be counselling; and “D”, for “democracy,” which is what Canada has in common with Israel, the U.S. and other freedom-loving nations around the world.

 

The truth is that when it comes to defending our freedoms there is no “A” team and “B” team. There is only one team, indivisible: call it the “D” team. And that’s the only team that Canadians who cherish their way of life should be willing to be part of.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments

 

Unspeakable pundits: Political journalist Richard Reeves is the latest dhimmified pundit to wash his hands of the Zionist entity. And he does it in the sneakiest way possible, by quoting the words of someone else, in this case, a purportedly well-respected New York publisher named Peter Osnos. From RealClear Politics:

…"Nobody wants to talk about it, but nothing works anymore for Israel," Osnos said later. "The negotiated settlement narrative that began with Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel in 1977 has been shattered. You have to begin with the demographic facts. Even Israel will have a majority of Arabs within 15 years."

Osnos, who became a vice president of Random House and then founded his own publishing house, Public Affairs, writes his own column, focusing on media coverage of foreign affairs, distributed by the Century Foundation in New York. This is part of what he has written over the past month:

"What we must finally recognize is that the rage of the Middle East -- Arab and Jew, Sunni and Shiite, fundamentalist and pragmatist -- is intractable as other world conflicts are not. ... The historic and political case for Israel's place in the midst of a deeply volatile and insecure region where hundreds of millions are taught to despise it is no different now than it was at the time Israel was created in 1948. ...

"The optimistic view is that Arab pragmatists emboldened (and simultaneously intimidated) by their radical brethren's sense of victory may now be willing again to negotiate broader peace. The pessimists say that Israel is running out of time to secure long-term peace. ... Israel will mark its 60th anniversary in 2008. But it remains surrounded by countries and movements that at worst are sworn to its destruction and at best merely despise it. Nations are not immutable. The Soviet empire marked its 60th anniversary in 1977. Fourteen years later, it was gone, a parenthesis of time in Russian history. ...

"Much of the Western world seems no longer to believe, more than a half-century removed from the Holocaust in Europe, that civilization owes the Jews a homeland anymore. ... The image of Israel has gradually been corroded by the consequences of 40 years of occupation on the West Bank and Gaza. The country is a vibrant democracy with a deeply imbeddded dream of peaceful co-existence with its neighbors. Yet when security and dominance of its borders are at stake, Israel suspends the pleasantries. The image of Israel in the rest of the world focuses on that ferocity."

The bottom line is that, sadly, the survival of Israel depends not on its own valor and might or justice of cause, but on the friendship and support of one friend, the United States. And its friend has made all of these things worse by invading Iraq, spreading ever more chaos and hatred throughout the Muslim world.

Ironically, some of the American planners thought our weapons of shock and awe would make Israel more secure. In fact, our quick-strike aggression has done the opposite, and in many ways. As Osnos pointed out, Israel is richer and stronger, but in terms of security it is no better off than it was in 1948.

The same could be said of the Jews of Europe, circa 1938; that is, that in terms of security, they were no better off that year--and in fact, were far worse off--than we were during earlier eras of Jew-hatred. By now it should be clear to all that, by insisting on the inevitability of a second Holocaust--what he calls "speaking the unspeakable"--Reeves and his miserable ilk continue to help lay the groundwork for one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:49 | link | comments

 

P.A. ways: The suggestion that there may be something inherently violent about their religion has once again inflamed the faithful. In the Palestinian Authority, for example, that area of the planet most singularly deserving of sovereignty (or so we are constantly being told), some true believers have underscored their displeasure with the Pope’s remarks by fire-bombing a number of churches in Gaza and the West Bank.

 

The aggrieved, who, clearly, are in the grip of overwhelming emotions over which they have little control, see no apparent contradiction in trying to refute accusations of their being violent by, um, going completely bananas.

 

You would think that someone, somewhere would take note of this lack of self-control and suggest that it betokens an irrationality and immaturity that makes these people singularly unfit for nationhood, at least for the time being.

 

Oh, wait; I guess someone just did.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:31 | link | comments (1)

 

Signs of the times: In the aftermath of the Montreal shootings, people are asking the usual questions: Why didn’t anyone notice that Kimveer Gill, the 25-year old shooter who loved guns, violence video games and gruesome websites, was a ticking time bomb? Why didn’t anyone do anything to stop him? What steps, if any, can we as a society take to protect ourselves from the Kimveer Gills of the world?

 

Troubling questions all, ones which an article entitled “Are rampage killings a sign of the times?” in the Globe and Mail attempts to answer. In a sidebar to the article, a professor of psychology who specializes in aggression in children and adults offers parents and others the “tragic warning signs” that could tip them off that there’s a problem. The signs are:

 

• Resentment. Young people with virulent contempt or cynicism.

·       Arrogance. …Dr. Peterson says the kids behind the killings at Columbine High School were "above everything -- they were above their own lives, they were certainly above other people's lives."

·       A lack of responsibility. The need to blame others.

·       Either unusual isolation or association with a pathological peer group.

·       An obsession, above and beyond typical curiosity, with violence.

·       A refusal to take part in constructive activity. Not just schoolwork or hobbies -- anything.

·       Drug or alcohol use. "Enough that the long-term trajectory starts to look dismal," Dr. Peterson says.

·       Sudden declines from earlier "plateaus of performance" at school.

It strikes me that the first five, and possibly the sixth, of these signs could also describe the kind of pathology at work when, say, rioters take to the streets because a Danish newspaper has published some controversial cartoons, or because a Pope opines that killing in the name of religion is not the way to find favour with God.

Dr. Peterson says that the most “worrisome” items on the list are the "triad" of contempt, resentment and arrogance. "That's pretty much the cornerstone of real, non-organic pathology," he says.

Just so.

For whatever reason, no one paid any attention to the tragic warning signs that Kimveer Gill was about to erupt. In a similar way, for some time now too many people have failed to heed the tragic warning signs of the mass pathology that’s been let loose in our world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments

 

The Pope caves: The faithful demanded an apology and, as expected, the Pope, unable to withstand the pressure and fearful of their wrath, has delivered. From BBC News:

 

Pope Benedict XVI has said he is sorry that a speech in which he referred to Islam has offended Muslims.

In a statement read out by a senior Vatican official, the Pope said he respected Islam and hoped Muslims would understand the true sense of his words.

 

In Tuesday's speech the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

The remarks prompted protests from Muslims around the world.

 

Political and religious leaders in Muslim countries criticised the remarks and called for the pontiff to make a personal apology.

 

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Rome says the speed with which the Vatican has reacted shows just how seriously it views the situation.

 

Reading the statement, new Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said the Pope's position on Islam was in line with Vatican teaching that the Church "esteems Muslims, who adore the only God".

 

"The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers," the statement said…

 

Hands up all those who think that’s not going to be nearly abject and self-debased enough for the aggrieved.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments (3)

 

Pacific overtures: The Vatican seems bewildered by the firestorm that’s been set off by the Pope’s comments about Islam, and the Pope, while at this stage offering no apologies, is reasserting his commitment to engaging in an “interfaith dialogue.”

 

Yeah, that’ll work.

 

Meanwhile, some of the faithful are so upset by Benedict’s outrageous and unfounded assertion that Islam has some violent tendencies that they’re flipping out, running riot and burning everything in sight.

 

Um, just a suggestion here, guys, but from the standpoint of “optics,” that’s probably not the most effective way of demonstrating your faith’s inherently peaceful nature.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:38 | link | comments (1)

 

Pope in hot water: Pope Benedict XVI had the temerity the other day to assert that jihadis are killing non-Muslims and that God does not look with favour on this kind of violence.

 

Not surprisingly, his remarks didn’t sit too well with some of the faithful. They don’t like it when you point out the obvious—that those slice-and-dice-the-infidel instructions are embedded in the text—because taking such passages “out of context” is a “bigoted” and “Islamophic” way to approach these age-old teachings.

 

The last time non-Muslims “insulted” the faithful in such an “inflammatory” way, embassies were burnt down and piles of Danish cheese were left to rot on store shelves. (The rioters, who were reacting in part to the suggestion that the Prophet’s words inspired some of the faithful to become violent, saw no apparent contradiction in “protesting” this slur by becoming violent.) It remains to be seen if the Pope’s comments cause a similar erruption, but don’t be surprised if some Islamic religious leaders, who know exactly which buttons to push to get a rise out of the faithful, end up using it to their advantage.

 

From aljazeera.net:

 

Pope Benedict XVI is being urged to retract comments he made linking Islam with violence after they provoked a wave a condemnation from across the Muslim world.

 

The pope provoked anger after criticising Islam and its concept of jihad on Tuesday during a six-day visit to his native Germany, citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who said that Prophet Mohammed had brought the world "evil and inhuman" things.

 

A statement issued by the Vatican on Thursday, saying the pope had never meant to offend Islam, failed to resolve the furore.

 

The Pakistani national assembly, parliament's lower house, unanimously passed a resolution on Friday demanding the Pope retract his remarks "in the interest of harmony among different religions of the world".

 

"The derogatory remarks of the pope about the philosophy of  jihad and Prophet Mohammed have injured sentiments across the Muslim world and pose the danger of spreading acrimony among the  religions," the resolution said.

In Qatar, prominent Muslim scholar shaikh Youssef al-Qaradawi rejected the Pope's comments and said Islam was a religion of peace and reason.

 

'Lack of wisdom'

 

In Indonesia, Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Muhammadiyah, the country's second largest Islamic organisation, said: "The pope's statements reflect his lack of wisdom.

 

"It is obvious from the statements that the Pope doesn't have a correct understanding of Islam."

 

In Egypt, Muhammad Mahdi Akif, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, called for an apology.

 

"The remarks do not express correct understanding of Islam and are merely wrong and distorted beliefs being repeated in the West," Akif said in a statement.

 

'Enmity and grudge'

 

Akif said the pope's comments "pour oil on the fire and ignite the wrath of the whole Islamic world to prove the claims of enmity of politicians and religious men in the West to whatever is Islamic"…

 

Yup, sounds like it’s threatening to become the latest ‘toon tumult. Let’s see if the Pope has the backbone to stand his ground, or ends up apologizing like contrite dhimmis are expected to.

 

Update: It looks like the Vatican may cave and that the Pope may be forced to grovel. And even that may not be enough. From Naharnet:

 

Lebanon's senior most Shiite cleric on Friday denounced Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks about Muslim holy war, and demanded the pope personally apologize for insulting Islam.

 

"We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels ... and ask him (Benedict) to offer a personal apology -- not through his officials -- to Muslims for this false reading (of Islam)," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah told worshippers in his Friday prayers sermon.

 

Fadlallah's words were some of the strongest yet in response to the pontiff's remarks on Islam's prophet Mohammed and holy war, during a speech this week in Germany, which angered many in the Muslim world.

 

"We call on the pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy led by Judaism and imperialism against Islam," Fadlallah said.

 

Other Islamic leaders have demanded an apology from the pope, over remarks in which he quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian, on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said.

 

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,"' Benedict quoted the emperor as saying.

 

On Thursday, the Vatican said the pope had not intended to offend Muslim sensibilities with the remarks…

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:09 | link | comments (1)

 

The Ceeb responds: Last week I sent Robert Rabinovitch, head of the Ceeb, an e-mail in which I expressed my disgust with Ceeb reporter Nalah Ayed’s report about loathsome terrorist, Samir Qantaa. Qantar, a Pali-Nazi who kidnapped and murdered a father and his young daughter not only in cold blood but with a great deal of relish, has been sitting in an Israeli jail since his crimes, and Hezbollah, that Persian-Nazi outfit, wants to deal him in exchange for those kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Israel has nixed any attempt to include Samir in a deal. The Ceeb’s Nalah Ayed visited Samir’s elderly mother and ever-lovin’ bro back in Lebanon, and, boy, did it tug from the heartstrings as they let loose their feelings about poor Sami being locked away in a Jew pokey lo these many years. Nalah had what I call “the voice”, the vocal tone that certain Ceeb chick reporters like Nalah and Margaret Evans adopt when describing all the bad stuff Jews have done to Arabs (but which, oddly, is absent during those rare occasions when Ceeb reporters describe Israeli suffering); that suddenly soft voice, fraught with barely containable emotion, that indicates the reporter has been deeply moved by what she is about to relate.

 

Anyway, Nalah had “the voice” in that report, as she tried to drum up sympathy for poor Sami and his mishpacha, who, you know, really miss the old son of a gun. And, further, implied Nalah, aren’t the Jews nasty and self-deafeating for putting the kibosh on any deal and refusing to come to terms with Hezbollah?

 

In response to this sickening spin, I sent RR the following e-mail:

 

I am writing to voice my utter disgust with Nalah Ayed’s Sept. 4^th  report on The National about Israel’s refusal to offer up Samir Qantar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. It’s not surprising that a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction would be so keen on retrieving this loathsome murderer, a terrorist so indecent, so hateful, so barbaric that he could murder a father in front of his daughter before crushing the head of this young child. What’s truly shocking—and extremely disturbing—is that a reporter for Canada’s public broadcaster would attempt to elicit sympathy for this vile criminal and his family, and would imply that Israel’s refusal to kowtow to Hezbollah’s demands somehow represents a moral failure on Israel’s part.

 

Clearly, the moral failure here belongs to others: to Hezbollah, for making the outrageous demand; to Nalah Ayed, for lending it credence and packaging it in an emotionally-manipulative, highly-biased report; and to the CBC, for broadcasting it.

 

I don’t expect Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorist organizations to adhere to basic standards of human decency. I do, however, expect it of the CBC.

  

Yours very truly,

 

The following day Honest Reporting Canada issued an alert about the Ayed story, urging people to write to the Ceeb in protest.

 

And complain they did—likely in droves—because yesterday I received the following response. As you’ll see, it does not refer to individual e-mails—certainly, not to mine—but rather, responds to the points made in the Honest Reporting alert:

 

Thank you for your message to the President of the CBC.

 

Jonathan Whitten, executive producer of The National has asked me to forward the following to you:

 

“Thank you for your e-mail to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation drawing our attention to what you feel is a one-sided report broadcast on the September 4 edition of THE NATIONAL.

 

You may be interested in my response to a similar view concerning this report expressed in an article on the pro-Israel web site HonestReporting Canada, posted on September 6, under the headline “CBC Portrays Terrorist as Victim.”

 

With respect, that is not the case.

 

To be clear the introduction to the report on THE NATIONAL said that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was appointing a secret mediator in an effort to secure the release of the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in July.  It said that Hezbollah wants to exchange prisoners.  Indeed, the sudden videotape appearance on Lebanese television on Wednesday (September 6) of Israeli Ron Arad would seem to underline Hezbollah’s interest in an exchange. (Mr. Arad is the IAF navigator captured near Sidon 20 years ago after his fighter crashed.)

 

But as the report said, when talk turns to prisoner exchanges, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is clear that he is particularly interested in the return of Samir Qantar, the longest held Lebanese prisoner in Israel.  Qantar is serving a 542-year sentence for an attack in Nahariya 27 years ago during which he brutally beat to death a 4-year-old girl, and shot her father and two policemen. But, as the report said, while he is reviled in Israel, he is “a hero to many Lebanese. As they saw it, he was fighting for his country.”

 

In an effort better to understand that divergence of views, and the man who is likely to be pivotal in any exchange, the reporter sought out those – his family and his brother – who know him best.  She also included the views of an Israeli government spokesman who set out the Israeli government’s position and explained why an earlier exchange involving Qantar had failed.

 

I should point out, here, that this is not the only report on the matter we will be carrying. We expect to have a report on a conversation with Smadar Haran, the mother of the young girl and wife of the man who was shot, about her views of Qantar and any possible exchange on THE NATIONAL.

 

But the HonestReporting article raised several specific issues and I want to reply to them in turn. The article said that the report’s description of the brutal attack was “limited” to one sentence. If that was true, that one sentence, “Qantar shot the father and clubbed the 4-year-old to death with the butt of a rifle,” in itself, forcefully conveyed the brutality of the attack, but it was not the only sentence. There were others, and the attack they described was accompanied by video of the scene and the very bloody aftermath of the attack that would leave little doubt about its nature.

 

The article said the report “portrayed Qantar’s family in personal, even sympathetic terms.”  While the reporter went to the Qantar home and asked Bassam Qantar about his brother – in one brief clip he said he was only one at the time, but felt it was time for Samir to come home – the report was scarcely “sympathetic” to Qantar.  It is important to bear in mind here, as well, that Qantar’s actions, as despicable as they may be, are his. They are not those of his family.

 

The article said that by using the Hezbollah code name, “True Promise,” for the capture of the Israeli soldiers, the report “legitimized … unprovoked aggression.” Again, that is not the case. The reporter explained the origin of the code word: “Nasrallah called the capture of the Israelis operation ‘True Promise,’” she said, “suggesting the Israelis were taken in part to force the release of Samir Qantar.” Certainly, that appears to coincide with Nasrallah’s long stated aims. A few seconds later, she asked Bassam Qantar if he supported operation True Promise.  To explain the name’s meaning to Hezbollah and then refer to the event in the way Bassam Qantar would understand it, does not in any reasonable fashion “legitimize” what happened.

 

It is CBC’s obligation through legislation and policy to expose the different principal points of view on controversial matters, like this one. Of course, not everyone will agree with those views, as you may not in this case. Fair enough. Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to present those differing views in a balanced fair and accurate fashion, affording Canadians the opportunity and the information they need to make up their own minds about the nature or quality of the event or the views expressed.

 

Thank you again for your e-mail. I hope my reply has addressed the issues you raised and reassured you of the continuing integrity of CBC News.

 

Finally, it is my responsibility to inform you that if you are not satisfied with this response, you may wish to submit the matter for review by the CBC Ombudsman, Mr. Vince Carlin. The Office of the Ombudsman, an independent and impartial body reporting directly to the President, is responsible for evaluating program compliance with the CBC’s journalistic policies. Mr. Carlin may be reached by mail at the address shown below, or by fax at 416-205-2825, or by e-mail at ombudsman@cbc.ca.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jonathan Whitten

Executive Producer

THE NATIONAL”

 

I hope this information has been helpful and thank you again for writing.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jack Black

 

I know from personal experience that filing a complaint with the Ceeb’s Ombudsman is like barking up a dead tree in a primeval forest (not that that’s possible, but you get the drift). However, I couldn’t resist sending the following to Ceeb factotum, Jack Black. (Hmmm, Jack Black…isn’t he that manic chunky guy who played a Mexican wrestler in a movie this past summer? What’s he doing trying to placate irate Ceeb viewers?):

 

Dear Mr. Black,

 

Thank you for forwarding Jonathan Whitten's response. I am reminded of an anecdote recounted by historian Irving Abella on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of his book None Is Too Many. The book documented the Canadian government's policies vis-à-vis Jewish refugees trying to flee the Nazis. The title refers to statement made the government bureaucrat who could have--but refused to--allow any desperate European Jews onto Canada shores. When asked how many Jews he thought Canada should allow into our country, the bureaucrat replied, "None is too many."

 

In 2004, Mr. Abella recalled how, when his book was published, he was invited by the CBC to appear as a guest on its daily midday TV show. The CBC functionary he spoke to told him that someone from "the other side" had also been invited to appear, in order to present a balanced and opposing viewpoint. Mr. Abella was flummoxed for a moment, as he couldn't figure out who this "other side" could possibly be. Then it hit him. "The other side," he said. "You mean...the Nazis?"

 

In view of the CBC's commitment to providing such "balance," he respectfully declined to appear.

 

It seems the CBC is still committed to providing this type of "balanced" coverage. However, the question must be asked. Is Hezbollah, an organization as dedicated to Jewish extermination as were the Nazis, deserving of such "balanced" coverage, and does the CBC's inability to distinguish between Jews and the fascists who, then and now, have sought to liquidate them serve the interests of the Canadian people?

 

Sincerely yours,

 

I doubt very much I’ll be hearing anything further from Mr. Black.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:21 | link | comments (1)

 

Borat’s Toronto travails: It’s tough to be Borat, alter ego of British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen. As the New York Observer reports, a week ago in my hometown Borat, the cheerfully unrepentant racist/Jew-hater from Kazakhstan, was in the firing line when a screening of his new movie at the Toronto International Film Festival (affectionally known to us locals as TIFF) ran into all sorts of technical problems. And, whadya know, not even Sponge Mike Fat Pants, in town to screen his latest oevre, another of his inimitable mockumentaries, could solve them.

 

Oh, well. At least a good time was had by some:

 

…Asked by The Observer how he was treated in Toronto, Borat replied, “I was treat very luxury at this festivals, although I was humiliate that my hotel would not provide my 11-year-old son Bilak with key to room of Penelopes Cruzs. I had promise him that he could do a sexytime time with her, and he had spend three month traveling on foot from Kazakhstan with his wife and two childrens.”

 

Back inside the theater, the rock-concert atmosphere continued. Audience members waved mini Kazakhstan flags and craned their necks to see who was in the reserved seating. A chair marked “Samuel L. Jackson” was occupied by an unrecognizable blonde. The audience gave Borat a standing ovation as he took the stage and gave spazzy high-fives all around. He kissed both a Canadian and Kazakhstan flag and introduced his film.  The movie rolled, and the audience rolled with it, roaring with laughter. A happy sort of hysteria settled in. But then came the first sputtering clank, then a shuddering groan … followed by a full film stoppage. When the lights came on, the audience was confused: Was this part of the plan?

 

Out from a back row Borat popped up, made a joke about the authorities using their “strongest glue” to put the film back together, and then disappeared. Time passed. Various Canadian film-festival reps made their way timidly to the stage to plead for patience. A rumor floated down from the balcony: Michael Moore, who had been seen on the red carpet in a blue sweatshirt and shorts, was up in the projectionist’s booth trying to fix the problem.

 

By 1 a.m., the crowd was beginning to move past restless and into pissed-off. Mr. Moore, who reportedly had gotten reacquainted with Mr. Baron Cohen in the lobby of the hotel that afternoon, took the stage with Borat director Larry Charles, who was himself a sight in his long hair, long graying beard, sunglasses and dark clothing. Mr. Moore informed the crowd that he had once worked a projection booth and that they were trying to find an extra part. The men said they would answer questions on any subject. In no particular order, they were asked everything from what was scripted in the film (answer: nothing) and if any chickens were harmed (no), to if they had seen Snakes on a Plane (Mr. Moore yes, Mr. Charles no). “I never go to bed. You can’t sleep these days if you are an American,” said Mr. Moore, in answer to a question about his being at a midnight screening.  Had they seen the Suri Cruise pictures in Vanity Fair?

 

“Don’t you think it’s time to quit picking on Tom Cruise?” asked Mr. Moore. “I mean, come on, seriously—his crime is that he jumped on Oprah’s couch.”

 

“Michael has an announcement,” broke in Mr. Charles. “He’s converted to Scientology.”

 

“I’ll be making out with John Travolta in the lobby,” said Mr. Moore.

 

Finally Mr. Baron Cohen came back on stage, as Borat, pointing Mr. Moore out as “this fat man.” He apologized on behalf of Kazakhstan and did some Q&A that got the audience rollicking. (“The thing I found very surprising in Americas is that it’s now illegal to shoot at red Indians. I would like to apologize to the staff of the Poquawatomack casino …. ”) At 1:40 a.m., the final announcement went around that the problem could not be fixed, and that everyone could see the film the following night at midnight at a different theater. As boos and hissing rose, Mr. Baron Cohen looked genuinely distressed and promised the audience that he would “crush” authorities…

 

Actually, I do my best to avoid the TIFF—too many self-important film snobs; too many celebrity groupies (“Wowie zowie, Ma, it’s Jude Law!”). However, I’m sorry I missed the Borat screening because I would have loved to be the first in my set to see “the running of the Jew,” a beloved tradition in Borat’s hometown, captured on film. Guess I’ll have to wait to see it in general release with the rest of the rabble.

 

One more thought: How hilarious is it that Michael Moore finds it necessary to race to the defence of excitable Sci-fi-entologist Tommy Cruise? I’d call that a “risky business,” indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:15 | link | comments

 

Internal threat: Like Pogo, David Warren has met the enemy—and he is us. Warren asks how we can ever hope to prevail over the Islamic-fascists when George W. Bush can’t even bring himself to use that label (he did once, and there was hell to pay), and when there are so many ignorant, indolent knaves and fools in the West who are undermining the resolve to fight back. From RealClear Politics:

…I continue to be optimistic about what can be done, should we summon the will to do it. I have written repeatedly that a robust and unified Western response to "Islamofascism" could fling it quickly onto the trash-heap of history, to join Nasserism and Baathism and other earlier manifestations of Arab nationalism and socialism. Smack it hard, without apology.

My pessimism is founded in the fear that this robust and unified response cannot be mobilized. We have a huge fifth column in the West, and it is not the Muslim immigrants. They become radicalized only because our "victim culture" encourages them to nurture their grievances. Yet most, despite temptation, remain good, decent people, doing their share of the West's work.

Our real enemy is within us, in the immense constituency of the half-educated narcissists pouring from our universities each year -- that glib, smug, liberal, and defeatist "victim culture" itself, that inhabits the academy, our media, our legal establishment, the bureaucratic class. The opinion leaders of our society, who live almost entirely off the avails of taxation, make their livelihoods biting the hands that feed them, and undermining the moral order on which our solidarity depends.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

 

The Ceeb’s infamy: On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11  jihadi terror attacks, Canada’s tax-payer funded national broadcaster, the CBC (know, disaffectionally, as the Ceeb because its corporate mindset is so similar to the BBC’s—the Beeb’s) aired a "documentary" about crackpot conspiracy theorists who want to abolve the jihadis. (And this isn't the first time the Ceeb has examined these "theories.") An article on the FrontPage Magazine site excoriates the Ceeb—which, in recent days, seems to have become completely unhinged by B.D.S and general anti-Americanism--for  giving these crackpots a credibility they do not, repeat, do not, deserve, and thereby disrespecting the memory of those who were murdered.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:10 | link | comments

 

The EU to the P.A.—“no dice”: Oops! Looks like all that feigned amity between Hamas and Fatah may not be enough to persuade the EUnuchs to restart the gravy train. From the Jerusalem Post:

The Hamas-Fatah agreement to form a national unity government is not enough for the Europeans to begin channeling money back into the Palestinian Authority, a senior European diplomat told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday, a day before the EU's foreign ministers are to meet in Brussels to discuss the issue.

The diplomat also called on Israel to unilaterally release a large number of Palestinian prisoners to "improve the overall atmosphere" and possibly strengthen the position of the moderates inside the PA…

Regarding the PA unity government, the European official characterized it as "a gesture in the right direction. It is an acknowledgement that there is a problem, but it is not a true step. It is hot air and mirrors."

Meanwhile, PA cabinet ministers from Hamas handed in their resignations to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh late Wednesday, a step toward forming a unity government, a government official said.

The next step would be Haniyeh's handing in his resignation to Abbas, who would then pick a candidate to form a new government - probably Haniyeh.

The European official said that he had not seen a written text of the proposed unity government's political program, but "there has not been one single indication that any one of the three conditions would be fulfilled, not even a commitment to stop using violence."

The three conditions he referred to were the international community's benchmarks for granting legitimacy to Hamas: renouncing terrorism, recognizing Israel's right to exist and accepting previous agreements.

He said that all the Hamas-Fatah agreement really indicated was that Hamas "is now pretty desperate to get the money flowing from European countries. Some European countries are said to have told the Palestinians that if they go to a unity government the money will start up again, but I don't think that is true."

Amazing! Does that mean the EUnuchs are finally starting to wise up?

 

Hard to say. Time alone will tell if this is a faux “flying pig” moment or a genuine one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments

 

Goth with a grudge: The Toronto Star has the most information about Kimveer Gill, the man in the black trench coat who opened fire yesterday at Montreal’s Dawson College. Gill, 25, identified himself as a “Goth” and seems to have fit the profile of the Columbine killers—a young, angry male with a grudge against the world, obsessed with violence, video games, and guns.

 

Some angry young men act in packs, setting fire to vehicles, or collaborating in terror plots; others, like Gill, act alone.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:32 | link | comments

 

Why Leonard Cohen loves France—and why I don’t: A friend gave me Leonard Cohen’s latest volume of poetry, Book of Longing. I adore it for including the lyrics to what may well be my favourite Leonard Cohen song, the ravishing, the haunting “Alexanda Leaving.” I deplore it for the following bizarre appreciation of France, the country which, though rich in cultural accoutrements hasn’t always been, shall we say, hospitable toward Jews (and which, as evidenced by this story in the Jerusalem Post about French Jews making aliyah to Israel, is going through a particularly inhospitable phase at the moment):

 

WHY I LOVE FRANCE

 

O France, you gave your language to my children, your lovers and your mushrooms to my wife. You sang my songs. You delivered my uncle and my auntie to the Nazis. I met the leather chests of the police in Place de la Bastille. I took money from the Communists. I gave my middle age to the milky town of Luberon. I ran from farm dogs on a road outside of Rousillon. My hand trembles in the land of France. I come to you with a soiled philosophy of holiness, and you bade me sit down for the interview. O France, where I was taken so seriously, I had to reconsider my position. O France, every little Messiah thanks you for his loneliness. I want to be somewhere else, but I am always in France. Be strong, be nuclear, my France. Flirt with every side, and talk, talk, talk, never stop talking about how to live without G-d.

 

Be stong? Be nuclear? Um, having read my Bat Ye'or, I don’t think either are to be desired. Also, I'm a little squeamish about that "soiled philosphy of holiness" bit--it sounds like Lenny's one of those, whatchamacallems?, oh yeah, self-loathing Juifs. (Another hint that this is so is a poem in which Cohen, a Zen Buddhist for many years, avers the following: "Anyone who says/I'm not a Jew/is not a Jew/I'm very sorry/but this decision/is final".)

 

As a rule, Cohen’s poetry can usually be depended upon to be more insightful than his politics. In this instance, however, I’d say both are sadly lacking.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:30 | link | comments

 

The truth about 9/11: By one of the world’s most fearless truth-tellers, Melanie Phillips:

…We are told that we are creating more terror through the war in Iraq. In the desperate fight against jihadi fascism being waged against us, we are being blamed for our own potential destruction. The same people, of course, said exactly the same thing even before the Twin Towers disintegrated into ash on 9/11. Every single event that has happened on the international stage since then, every single act of self-defence on behalf of western civilisation, has been viewed through this same distorting prism. It Was All Our Fault.

But of course the war against the west did not start with Iraq. It did not start with Afghanistan. It did not start with 9/11. You could say that it actually started in the seventh century when Islam decided to conquer and rule the world, and was interrupted for a while after Islamic imperialism was repulsed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. You could certainly say that it started with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s, which revived the call for holy war against the non-Islamic world and whose principal thinkers, Syed Kutb and Hassan al Banna, were the ideologues behind the current war. But let us be a little more modest in our perspective, in which case we might say this particular phase of this war of religion started in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran and reignited the Muslim world to the ancient cause of jihad by two things: the simple fact of the re-emergence in the 20th century of a theocratic Islamic state governed according to the principles of the seventh century; and the explicit programme of the Islamic Republic of Iran to wage war against the west on religious grounds. Nothing to do with the many Muslim grievances around the world. The aim was to impose the rule of Islam by force on those countries which were infidel.

That is what we are up against — not just from the Iranian Shia but from their Sunni rivals al Qaeda, whose fatwas call the world to Islam, and a myriad other groups pursuing the same global jihadi objective. That is why American interests were bombed and attacked throughout the 1990s. That is why countries with no connection with Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel have been attacked all over the world. This is a war of religious conquest…

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

 

Faith-based differences: Pope Benedict XVI, showing the kind of gumption that's sadly lacking among far too many religious leaders, says (in so many words) that the jihad is incompatible with and displeases God. From the Ceeb:

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God, Pope Benedict XVI told a gathering of academics at Regensburg University in Germany. 

The Pope spoke of the relationship between faith, reason and Islam's holy war, jihad. The Pope said violence is incompatible with the nature of God and with the nature of the soul.

Historically, he said, spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable and therefore, ungodly. God is not pleased by blood, he said, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature…

Maybe so, but I’m sure the jihadis could cite plenty of textual and historical references to prove that, from their point of view (which, from their point of view is the only point of view) violence is not only acceptable, it is essential, and that the Pope is way off base.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:32 | link | comments (1)

 

Baathetic fallacy: Syrian authorities thwarted an attack yesterday on the American embassy in Damascus—and they have a pretty good handle, they think, on the identify of the perps. From All Headline News:

Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - Senior Syrian government official have accused the US of being behind Tuesday's assault on its own embassy in downtown Damascus.

A Baath party official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told WorldNetDaily, "We in the government are 100 percent sure America was behind this attack, which is not the same as other attacks by Islamic groups."

He explained, "Only the Americans can succeed in carrying out an attack just 200 meters from President [Bashar] Assad's residence in the most heavily guarded section of Syria."

The official charged that Washington had orchestrated the attack to "prove Syria is filled with terrorists and to put us in a weak position" in order to extract political concessions. Following the attack, Bush administration officials said they hoped the incident had convinced Damascus of the dangers of Islamic terror and the need to cooperate with the West against the phenomenon.

The US and several of its European allies have repeatedly demanded over the years that Damascus close down the local offices and training camps of several organizations hostile to Israel and the West.

The identities of those who attacked the US embassy Tuesday have not been revealed. Three of the gunmen were killed by Syrian guards during the assault. A fourth was reportedly captured.

Well, if they could bring down their own Twin Towers, I guess anything is possible.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:16 | link | comments

 

The dragon roars: I’m so glad that, as the Ceeb keeps telling me—and did so once again this morning—that Islam at its core is a religion of peace and the 19 9/11 hijackers were “individuals” and not representative or working on behalf of any particular religious ideology. Because now that I know for sure the terrorists constitute a mere fragment of a fraction of an innately pacific, non-domineering faith, and that only 300 million or so true believers mean me any harm, I can concentrate on the real and looming threat to the free world: les Chinois.

 

The jihadis and the Chinese. I think that's you might call a "double whammy."

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments

 

A quantum leap sideways: Oh frabjous day! Ismail “Killer” Haniyeh and Mahmoud “Stinky” Abbas have come to terms. According to Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon’s lead story on the Globe and Mail’s front page, that means Israel will be accorded “implicit” recognition (whatever that is) and the international community can one again turn on the money tap.

 

It’s so comforting for all concerned (except, of course, for those Israelis and others unwilling to cry “uncle!” to the jihad) that the Palestinians have managed to find such a clever loophole.

 

Update: The Palestinian press is hailing the Hamas-Fatah agreement as “the first step in a 1,000 mile journey.”

 

Which is a bit excessive, don’t you think, since the Zionist entity, the one they both mean to thwart, is a mere hop, skip and a jump away.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:04 | link | comments (1)

 

The Spinmeister spins: Tony Burman, editor in chief of CBC News, and a man who clearly doesn’t “get it,” offers “three lessons” he says the media must absorb post-9/11.

The title of the third “lesson”—“Cut through the spin”—made me burst out with laughter, and not the good kind:

A key lesson for the media from the past five years is to accept no one's story at face value. That's obviously not new, but this five-year journey of distortion, alarmist rhetoric and spin — from all sides — has been breathtaking.

In Saturday's New York Times, there was a page-one story about a meeting last July with President Bush and his aides choreographing the strategy for the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The story reported: "It was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock — back to a time, before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chief was a far simpler task."

Above that article was a more revealing one, with this headline: "CIA said to find no Hussein link to terror chief." Quoting a U.S. Senate panel, it reported that the American intelligence agency had repudiated the claim there were pre-war ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that led to the events of 9/11.

This was one of the key arguments used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The next day, on the eve of September 11, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney conceded in an NBC interview that this report was true, that the administration had been wrong, and that it was time to move on.

As this fifth anniversary of 9/11 is being marked — with tears, worry and foreboding — it is difficult to imagine that everyone will be so sanguine.

This from a media outlet that’s been “spinning” the anti-American, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-Muslim line so furiously—and has ramped it up to even more dizzying levels since the war in Lebanon—that the energy could be harnessed for an alternative fuel source; as far as I can tell, that’s the only good that can possibly come of it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:57 | link | comments

 

The National Post “gets it”: From the Post’s must-read editorial, 9/11 + 5:

…It may well be that we are approaching the "end of history." But it is also true that Islam's long history of military conquest has fashioned among its militant modern-day believers a unique geopolitical outlook, one that is quite different from that embraced by the secularized Westerners who see history's finish line within sight.

As Israelis have learned since 1948, this Islamist outlook is one by which history's arrow may be reversed, even if that means annihilating whole countries, even whole civilizations, in the name of Allah. In pursuing that vision, Islamists have adopted repellant methods that disgrace their religion. But when these same methods generate real victories -- such as encouraging a Canadian political party to urge that Afghanistan be given back to the Taliban -- they also gain morale, stature and new recruits for the forces of terror.

Five years after 9/11, it seems many in the West haven't learned the first thing about the enemy we're facing. As we solemnly commemorate the losses suffered by our American allies -- not to mention the 24 Canadians who perished with them -- we can be thankful that men such as Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are still in office, and that Jack Layton and other champions of appeasement are not. But if we fail to appreciate the lessons of 9/11, that may change. History shows the wages of appeasement. And the end of history may yet recede from the horizon if we are not vigilant in the face of barbarism.

Amen to that.

 

Update: David Frum, writing in the Post, “gets it,” too:

…The 9/11 attacks were the most dramatic atrocities in a larger struggle: "a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings."

Those are the brave words of Dr. Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American living in Los Angeles. For speaking thus on al-Jazeera, she too now lives under the threat of death. Until her fellow citizens of the West can bring themselves to speak with equal candour about political Islam, we will not even have begun to fight back. Five years after 9/11, is it really still too early to start?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments

 

Pledging allegiance, five years later: It’s five years to the day since Mo Atta and his unholy gang of hellions comdandeered large airliners full of people and hurtled them into two American landmarks, completely destroying one and killing almost 3,000 innocent and unsuspecting individuals. To mark the occasion, the mea culpists in the mainstream media are out in full force, beating their chests over the America’s ignominious “foreign policy,” which, for these clueless, ignorant, self-despising ninnies, is the wellspring of jihadi hatred. As if George W. Bush and the “neo-Cons” invented the jihad. As if it has nothing to do with another guy named Mo who, fourteen hundred years ago, was inspired to take on the world, and whose followers, to a greater or lesser degree, have been emulating him ever since.

 

Five years after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center—which, we should also recall, was the second attack on that edifice (an example of jihadi sticktoitiveness and the “if at first you don’t succeed” credo that drives them)—we should, we must realize that it’s not about us; it’s about them. It’s about their ambitions, their desire to be sovereign over the world.

 

And it’s not just about toppling office towers and blowing up subway trains in Western cities. It’s a much, much bigger picture, as evidenced by this little story tucked inside the Toronto Star:

 

Radio station shut down by Islamists over love songs

 

Islamic militants controlling much of southern Somalia shut down a radio station yesterday for playing love songs and other music, the latest step to impose strict religious rule which has sparked fear of an emerging Taliban-style rule.

 

Since sweeping to power in June, the Islamists have banned movie viewing, publicly lashed drug users and broke up a wedding celebration because a band was playing and women and men were socializing together.

 

The group closed Radio Jowhar, the only station in Jowhar, 90 kilometres from the capital Mogadishu, because the programs were un-Islamic, Islamic official Sheik Mohamed Mohamoud Abdirahman said.

 

So there you have it. Another guy named Mo who wants to impose his cheerless brand of fascism on the planet—and will, unless enough of us wake up and stop him.

 

Five years on, I’m not so sure that’s going to happen, but I still live in hope that it will.

 

To help crystallize the difference between them (the Islamists, the jihadis who brought down the WTC) and us (lovers of freedom), I have decided to post the American “Pledge of Allegiance” followed by its antithesis (my invention), the Islamists’ Pledge of Allegiance.

 

The Pledge of Allegiance:

 

We pledge allegiance

To the flag

Of the United States of America.

And to the Republic

For which it stands,

One nation,

Indivisible,

With liberty and justice for all.

 

 

The Islamists’ Pledge:

 

They pledge allegiance

To the man

Who established the religion of Islam.

And to the sharia,

For which it stands.

One ummah,

Indivisible,

With tyranny and injustice for all.

 

 

To all those who were murdered five years ago in Allah’s name, Requisat in Pace.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:42 | link | comments

 

Stumbling “blockage”: Tony Blair is on the scene in the Middle East, trying to persuade feckless Israeli leader Ehud Olmert and feckless Palestinian “leader” (in name only) Mahmoud Abbas to kick-start the dormant peace-in-our-times process.

 

The Ceeb’s man on the scene, Mike Hornbrook, says Blair’s initiative may come to naught because it faces an immense hurdle.  “There’s a major blockage here,” says our Mike, portentously.

 

And of what, pray tell, does that “blockage” consist?

 

Of the West’s refusal to “recognize Hamas,” of course.

 

Of course.

 

Well, Mike, there is indeed a “major blockage” here, but it’s not the West’s failure to officially acknowledge that revolting retinue of jihadi thugs over in Gaza. It’s the unwillingness of Tony Blair and other Western leaders to connect what’s been happening in Israel lo these many decades with what’s been happening more recently in the rest of the world, i.e., with the desire of one religion to be supreme, and to assert its supremacy through jihad.

 

Fact is, there can be no “peace process”—just as there can be no “peace”—until we deal with the real “major blockage.” And despite what the Ceeb and other mainstream outlets which share its dhimmfied fears and attitudes want you to think, (and, for the sake of our children, I urge you to resist, resist, their siren call to lie down and let the jihad roll over you) you can be 100% certain that the “blockage” ain’t our refusal to engage in confabs with Islamic terrorists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:41 | link | comments (4)

 

The wrong question: In its regular Sunday feature, FACEOFF, wherein rigthy Rondi Adamson and lefty Linda McQuaig (do you suppose they were chosen because their first names hint at their political inclinations?) square off on pertinent issues of the day, the Sunday Star poses a question that only those of its political persuasion would ask: “Are we safer from terrorism that we were 5 years ago.”

 

Not surprisingly, Rondi Adamson says, yes, yes we are, but that doesn’t mean we should let up on the terrorists.

 

Linda McQuaig—also no surprise—says no, no we aren’t, and furthermore, we should bow out of the ‘war on terrorism’ right now or else “a generation of angry young men (will turn) against the West.”

 

As for me—we’ll I don’t think I have to tell you where I stand. But the more relevant point, I think, is that the Star is asking the entirely wrong question.

 

I wrote to tell them so:

 

It seems absurd to pose the question “Are we safer from terrorism than we were 5 years ago?” in the middle of the war on terrorism. It would have been like asking, in 1941, if the world was safer from Nazism than it was before the start of the Second World War.

 

A far better question, it seems to me, is “Do we in the West have the wherewithal to prevail in what promises to be a very long war”?

 

If you go by what Linda McQuaig has to say, the answer would be “no.” She seems to think that fighting terrorism causes terrorism. It doesn’t. What causes terrorism—or at least, the kind of terrorism that manifested itself on 9/11—is allegiance to a fascist ideology no less dangerous to Western civilization than that earlier one.

 

What McQuaig is counselling is defeatism—and defeat.

 

All I can say is it’s a good thing she wasn’t in charge during WW2.

 

Update: I found the perfect riposte to McQuaig’s assertion that fighting terrorism will create more extremists. It’s from this excellent essay by Norwegian blogger fjordman:

  

So, if radical Muslims stage mass-murder attacks against non-Muslims, the non-Muslims must not show any anger because of this, otherwise the moderate Muslims may get insulted and become terrorists, too. Gee, isn’t it comforting to know that there is such a sharp dividing line between moderates and radicals, and that moderate Muslims have such an aptitude for self-criticism?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments

 

Taking stock, five years on: One of Mark Steyn’s most memorable columns asserted “It’s the demography, stupid.” That is, the element of Islam/Islamism/jihadism, whatever you want to call it, we in the West, and especially those in Western Euorpe, should be most alarmed about is the irrefutable fact that the indigenous folks aren’t reproducing, at least, not enough to replace themselves, but the immigrant Muslim population, too many of whom are unwilling to inculcate the ways and values of the general population, are reproducing—and then some. The result, as Steyn and others (including the Grand Poobah of Islam scholarship, Bernard Lewis) have said, is that Muslims may well accomplish through demographics what the violent jihadis are trying to achieve through warfare.

 

True enough. But on this, the day before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Steyn reminds us that it’s not just the demographics, stupid; it's really and truly the jihad, stupid:

…What was taking place that Tuesday morning was, as a lot of people said, "unimaginable." But once it happened, once we no longer had to imagine it, my main memory of that day is of how quickly the mind leapt forward to encompass the new reality. When the second plane hit, it was obvious not just that this was no accident but also that it would be impossible to find two commercial airline pilots willing to fly, even at the point of a gun, their jets into skyscrapers. Which meant that, at the moment of impact, these flights must have been in the hands of terrorists who'd trained as pilots presumably for the purpose of this mission: They had acquired at least basic skills in a profession that would guarantee a good life anywhere on the planet; they could be pulling down six-figure salaries instead of Manhattan skyscrapers. But instead they went to pilot school to make one flight one time one-way, into a tall building.

And halfway across the world, on the streets of Ramallah, people filled the streets and cheered and passed out candy. They celebrated at Concordia University in Montreal, and in northern England and in Scandinavia, too, but I didn't find that out until e-mail from readers began coming through later in the day. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and his colleagues followed events on the Arabic Service of the BBC. (Not all the BBC's output is in Arabic; it just sounds like it is.)

As the years go by, it's these curious examples of cultural interconnectedness that stay with me. "Interconnectedness" is the word used by the late Edward Said, the New York-based Palestinian grievance-monger and eminent America-disparager: A couple of weeks after 9/11, the professor deplored the tendency of commentators to separate cultures into what he called "sealed-off entities," when in reality Western civilization and the Muslim world are so "intertwined" that it was impossible to "draw the line" between them. National Review's Rich Lowry was unimpressed. "The line seems pretty clear," he said. "Developing mass commercial aviation and soaring skyscrapers was the West's idea; slashing the throats of stewardesses and flying the planes into the skyscrapers was radical Islam's idea."

Very true. But that may be the only "interconnectedness" a large part of the world is interested in: state-of-the-art technology in the service of ancient hatreds. Edward Said was right: There are no more "sealed-off entities." The "modern world" and the "primitive world" are more like those overlaid area codes the phone company's so partial to. So a man can roar "Allahu Akhbar!" as he plows his jet into an office building. Even the most primitive parts of the map aren't that "sealed off" these days. After all, why were they listening to the BBC's Arabic Service in Afghanistan? Afghanistan isn't an Arabic-speaking country. They parly-voo the old Pushtun and Dari and Turkmen and whatnot. But on Sept. 11, 2001, the nation was, in effect, under colonial occupation by thousands of Arab and other foreign jihadists. We think of the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistani border as a remote region of isolated peoples whose rituals have been unchanged for centuries. Yet the truth is that these village tribal cultures have been wholly subverted by Saudi money and ideology. The House of Saud's toxic kingdom, a land where the beheading schedule is computerized, may be a more apt emblem of the way an "interconnected" world is heading than we like to think.

Five years on, it’s clear that the problem is even bigger than that. Not only do we have to worry about the toxic Sunni Arab kingdom, we also have to keep an eye on the toxic Shia Persian republic. The Saudis, with their cockamamie notions of restoring the caliphate--a Sunni one--may have spread their hateful poison around the planet, inspiring ostensibly well-adjusted second-generation Muslims in places like Leeds and Toronto to offer up their corporeal entities for the promise of eternal bliss in an ethereal bordello, but realize this: Moo and the boys will soon have their nukes. And when they do, all bets are off as to how long it will take before they push us into what they are convinced will be a glorious apocalypse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:38 | link | comments

 

Overlooking the left: Melanie Phillips provides invaluable insight into that recently-released report about Jew-hatred in the U.K. As I mentioned in my post about the Times Online story about the report, it mentioned a “sinister alliance” between “right-wing extremists” and “Islamists,” but failed to mention how lefty snillingers are also implicated in the hatred. Phillips takes the report to task for that oversight, and corrects it in her own inimitable way. (My emphases):

Thus, although a number of witnesses are quoted identifying a specific antisemitism on the left, the report says:

Many on the left are firm in their condemnation of racism and would almost certainly not accept that they were guilty of antisemitic discourse. Ignorance of the history of anti-Jewish prejudice means that some perhaps do not even realise that the language and imagery they have used has resonances of a long tradition of anti-Jewish discourse and stereotypes.

Well, maybe they don’t realise its long pedigree. So what? All that means is that they are historically illiterate as well as prejudiced. They use such language and imagery demonising Jews for the simple reason that it expresses the prejudice they hold towards them. The fact that they sincerely believe that they are ‘anti-racist’ merely reveals that they are humbugs as well as bigots. Such a lamentable gloss on the antisemitism of the left obscures one of the most troubling aspects of the resurgence of this prejudice — that today’s antisemites do indeed march behind the banners of anti-racism and human rights. Unpicking why that should be is a vital task because it gets to the heart of the moral and intellectual sickness in our society. By skating over and sanitising it in this way, the report ducks one of its most important challenges.

If I may weigh in on the subject. In the past, the left has been involved in some worthy projects—like being in the forefront of the civil rights movement in 1960s America. However, the left has become so accustomed to resting on these laurels—and the mainstream society, which shares the same political slant is so used to letting them lie there—that it is incapable of recognizing that lefties can and do become bigots when it comes to Israel and the Jews.

 

Why have they become this way? Because the Palestinians, they have been told by the media, academe and their political leaders, are the real victims. And the Jews are their victimizers. Because any nation with a powerful army—even one that exists to defend that nation from being expunged by its enemies—is ipso facto the bad guy. Because, for these people, dhimmitude and pacifism go hand and hand, and they would sooner see the Jewish state turn to dust than to see it flex its muscles and fight back. Because they despise any nation—the U.S., Israel—which refuses to get in line with their crackpot one-world utopianism.

 

And one more thing: like Mahomoud Ahmadinejad, they prefer their Jews defenceless—and dead.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:26 | link | comments

 

A snillinger prescription for doom: If you’re looking for a snapshot of the kind of clueless lefty thinking that may very well spell the end of our civilization, and perhaps even of the world, look no further than today’s editorial in the Toronto Star. It’s all there in all its muddled, misguided, ignorant “glory.”

 

Permit me to share:

 

…But Sept. 11 invites reflection on other fronts as well.

 

Canada's Afghan mission has cost $3 billion, and 33 lives. But Harper has yet to provide a focused sense of how Ottawa intends to gauge success and to ensure that security is paired with development. Meanwhile, public support is flagging. And Ottawa seems less eager to help the United Nations keep the peace elsewhere. None of this is reassuring.

Canada has also spent $10 billion beefing up the military and security services and terror-proofing our airports, sea approaches and borders. Yet security experts say gaps still exist. What is the plan to close them?

 

And why has Canada's foreign aid program lagged behind spending on security, given the public's interest in Third World development and the fight against AIDS and other diseases?

 

Here at home, the 9/11 anniversary should prompt a review of new anti-terror laws that test our traditional freedoms. Suspects can be held in preventive arrest, and forced to give evidence. Secret hearings can be held. Evidence can be presented in the absence of a detainee or his lawyer. Detainees have no right to confront their accusers. Non-Canadian terror suspects can be detained indefinitely. Respected justices have voiced concern about all this. Parliament should insist that draconian laws that haven't proved utterly necessary be reviewed.

 

Finally, like other countries Canada has had a wrenching debate on the rights and obligations of citizenship. Our Muslim community of 750,000 has been especially stressed, feeling singled out. But every thinking Canadian is struggling to understand how our personal freedom, affluence and diversity should provoke rage among even a few alienated souls.

 

Society needs to support the majority of Muslim community leaders who promote a vision of Islam that is at ease with our tolerant, diverse society, and who publicly refute the violent few.

 

All these issues should be on Parliament's agenda this fall.

 

Five years after 9/11, there are few certainties and many threats. But Canadians have chosen to confront terror in a measured way, chiefly as a police action against a lawless few, not as a clash of civilizations. We have not withdrawn into a Fortress North America or spurned the UN by invading a country that posed no threat to us.

 

Amid the chaos that 9/11 visited on the world, Canada chose a credible path. That is something to build on.

 

Read anything there about “jihad,” “dhimmitude,” “taqiyah,” or the “occuluded 12^th imam, the Shia messiah who can’t reappear until all the Jews have been slain (hence the reason Moo Jihad and Nasrallah are pressing so hard to make that happen)?

 

No?

 

You’d think that the Star’s editorial page editor emeritus, Harpoon Siddiqui, a man who’s certainly up on all facets of the one true faith, might have taken the time to give the Star’s editorial scribes a tutorial on these crucial issues.

 

Then again, maybe he has, and that’s the problem.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:39 | link | comments (1)

Leftward Ha!: The Ceeb, that bastion of utopian dreamers and multicultural one-worlders, will do whatever it takes to dislodge the Harper Conservatives from power and return the nation to its default setting, which is left of centre. As part of its subtle—and often, not so subtle—campaign, Ceeb radio is broadcasting a “comedy” show called “The Right’s Turn”. It’s designed to lampoon those silly, scary right-wingers and all the silly, scary things they want to do to the nation.

I heard a “teaser” for the show just as I was getting ready to leave for Sabbath dinner at my mother’s last night. The snippet featured Al Rea, one the Ceeb’s resident and purportedly high-larious yucksters. Rea was doing a take-off on the Jeff Foxworthy shtick “You might be a redneck if…” (for example, you might be a redneck if  “You think Taco Bell is the Mexican phone company”), only he’d rejigged it to help identify “Conservatives” (and conservatives).

 

The only one of several quips I can remember (because none was particularly memorable) went like this: “If you think guns don’t kill people, Jamaicans with guns kill people…then you’re probably a conservative.”

 

As a said, high-larious.

 

I decided to rejig the Ceeb’s rejigging—because its likely something you’ll never hear broadcast over its airwaves. Disrespectfully, I offer my own shtick…how to figure out if you’re a lefty:

 

If you think American foreign policy is responsible for the 9/11 attacks…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you’re on a subway, and there are billows of smoke, and you’re disinclined to budge until a voice of authority comes over the P.A. system advising you to do so…you’re probably a lefty. (I speak from personal experience here.)

 

If you think people living in the Third World are inherently more virtuous than you are, solely by virtue of their living in the Third World and your living in the First World…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you think minorities are incapable of being intolerant, or, if they are intolerant, it behoves you to tolerate their intolerance because you think they've undoubtedly been victimized by the intolerant majority--meaning you…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you think that, all in all, Kofi Annan is doing a pretty good job and that, on balance, so is the UN…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you can utter the words "UN Human Rights Council" without gagging, laughing out loud, or losing your lunch...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you think we should "talk" to any of the following: the Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you think the most threatening kind of "fundamentalism" these days is Christian, not Muslim...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you think Cindy Sheehan is "a peace icon"...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you have a tendency to get all exercised about how a miniscule Jewish state—the only one in the world—is engaging in a “land grab,” but aren’t at all concerned about what’s going on in the 56 lands, some of them immense, that have been grabbed for Allah… you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you’re gay, a feminist, or a gay feminist, and have participated in an “anti-war” protest alongside religious fascists who are convinced your beliefs and lifestyle warrant a thrashing and/or a death sentence… you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you believe:

 

• Palestinians are the “new Jews”

• Arabs are the “new Jews”

• Muslims are the “new Jews”

• Jews are the “new Nazis”

• Israel is the “new old South Africa”… you’re probably a lefty.

If you think giving oodles your hard-earned tax dollars to people here and abroad who hate you, spit on you and your way of life and who, given the chance, would slit your throat or blow you up will somehow endear you to them…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If the “globalization” you’re most worried about involves burgers, not burqas…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If you think it’s all about:

 

• “colonialism”

• “imperialism”

• “racism”

• “Islamophobia”

• “poverty”

• the paucity of “human rights”

• “the occupation”

• “the oil”…you’re probably a lefty. 

If the sight of elderly Palestinians jangling keys to doors they haven't seen in almost sixty years or pointing to lost or severed olive groves gets you all verklempt...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you think that the CBC offers fair, unbiased news coverage...you're probably a lefty.

 

If you don’t believe in “good” and “evil” or “black” and “white,” only “nuance,” “subtlety,” and endless shades of grey…you’re probably a lefty.

 

If, despite 9/11 and everything that’s happened since you still don’t “get it”…you’re probably a lefty.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:21 | link | comments (1)

 

There goes the neighbourhood: A day after posting a story about how police in the U.K. are purposely ignoring the “sinister” alliance that is putting Britain’s Jews in grave peril, the Times Online, without a shred of irony, suggests as its “September walk” a tour of London’s old Jewish quarter.

 

Well, I guess now is as good time to visit as any, since if the sinister alliance has its way, the neighbourhood may not be around a whole lot longer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:34 | link | comments

 

Walking the dogma: Several of my favourite pundits—including Bruce Bawer, Bat Ye’or and the Norwegian blogger Fjordman—participate in a Front Page magazine symposium on "the death of multiculturalism." The symposium should be required reading for everyone who cares about the future of Western civilization.

 

Here’s some of what Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept, has to say on the subject. It’s an excellent summation of how and why this insidious dogma has become so entrenched in Western Europe:

 

...Multiculturalism has become official dogma in much of Western Europe, and the word is routinely used as if it were a synonym for equal rights or ethnic pluralism or colorblind democracy.  Of course, it isn’t.  It’s a grotesque expression of cultural self-contempt and self-destructiveness.  Multiculturalism compels self-declared anti-fascists to blind themselves to the most chillingly fascist phenomena of our time.  It compels feminists to accept the subjugation and abuse of women by men who believe they have the right to rape, beat, and murder them.  It compels gay activists to embrace as allies people who, given the chance, would drop a wall on them. 

 

Multiculturalism is deeply, perversely irrational.  If you’re a multiculturalist, it’s verboten even to notice, acknowledge, and express concern about murderous hatred directed against you and yours by the officially oppressed.  For a multiculturalist, any act or statement by a member of an officially oppressed group, however morally reprehensible, is to be understood either as a legitimate reaction against “our” prejudice (or our forebears’ colonialism) or as a legitimate aspect of an alien culture that we, in our pitiful narrowness, have failed to understand and respect – which is, of course, our obligation.

 

Many Europeans recognize that multiculturalism is leading their societies to disaster.  If you can get them to loosen up and trust you, they may venture an awkward, uneasy critical word or two about the proliferation in their midst of people who long for sharia law and about the refusal of multicultural-minded political leaders to address this growing crisis responsibly.  But many such Europeans hardly know how to express their concerns, because they’ve almost never heard such concerns openly, intelligently, and responsibly articulated.  All they’ve heard all their lives from officially approved authorities – teachers, professors, the media, politicians, government agency workers, talking heads on TV, the representatives of state-funded “independent” organizations like SOS Racism – is that any concern about multiculturalism and its consequences is tantamount to racism. 

 

Yes, there are so-called “populist” parties that oppose multiculturalism, but they are profoundly stigmatized, and many people who silently agree with them feel nonetheless compelled to join in the routine public mockery of them.  Some of these parties, moreover, are in fact racist, so that on the rare occasions when one does hear open criticism of multiculturalism in Europe, it often comes from people who only confirm the establishment assertion that to oppose multiculturalism is, indeed, to be racist. 

 

While many ordinary Europeans do oppose multiculturalism, then, most of them tend to keep quiet about it, or to articulate their opposition only very carefully and selectively – or, alternately, to express it in occasional (often drunken) outbursts of indignation and frustration.  Few of them, certainly, have any expectation that their views might ever affect official policy.  There’s a widespread resignation to the fact that multiculturalists control the media, academy, state agencies, and so on.  Besides, they know what happens to those few people who do openly dissent from multicultural dogma – they’re demonized as bigots and racists.  They know very well that if you want to get ahead in European society, you don’t take on multicultural orthodoxy...

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:57 | link | comments

Sense and nonsense: Rick Salutin is “heartened” by the results of a poll showing that most Canadians are content to pin the blame for 9/11 on the Americans, and not on the jihadis. Salutin sees such willful blindness as “a return to common sense,” and offers the following lame and tortured explanation to account for the survey results:

…What about the notion that U.S. foreign policy underlies 9/11 and related conflicts? How do people come to that? Personal analogy may play a part. You think about what it would be like to have powerful strangers enter your home or your space to take it over when things are ragged.

They profess good intentions but, after a while, you notice they aren't leaving and things are getting worse, not better. You don't really know their motives and you aren't sure they do either. You start thinking you'd rather deal with your own problems. You don't have illusions about things being perfect if they leave -- you'd still have family conflicts, obnoxious neighbours and overbearing employers to deal with -- but at least they're familiar. You want them out.

 

A Quebec pollster commenting on that survey said foreign policy doesn't usually affect Canadian elections. But I think things are less clear.

 

What about the free trade election of 1988? Wasn't it about foreign policy, namely Canada-U.S. free trade? A plurality voted for it, but they may have kept watching U.S. behaviour afterward and decided that, for instance, our recent surrender on softwood lumber proves free trade wasn't such a good deal after all. They draw conclusions about the U.S., and then apply those to Iraq or Afghanistan. They connect things internationally, just as they do in their own lives. It takes a while, that's all.

One more complexity. The Leger poll found a majority of Canadians think that both U.S. policy and Islamic fundamentalism were "primarily" behind 9/11. Sounds contradictory -- yet it's true. Because in much of the world, Islamic fundamentalists now lead in opposing U.S. policies that large numbers object to. Polls are crude, they have a hard time reflecting that kind of intricacy. Public opinion, on the other hand, is slow, and it's subtle.

 

It’s slow; it’s subtle; it’s as wrong-headed as blaming Winston Churchill and FDR for the rise of Nazism.

 

Salutin’s joy is my despair. Here’s the letter I sent to the Globe and Mail’s editor:

 

The majority of Canadians in a just-released poll identify U.S. foreign policy as the motivating factor behind the 9/11 attacks, and Rick Salutin hails this as an example of a return to “common sense.”

 

Puh-lease. If most Canadians prefer to blame America for the actions of jihadi terrorists, it’s hardly because of common sense. It’s because, five years on, Canadians have failed to educate themselves about the civilizational threat posed by the jihadist ideology, and have lapsed into a comforting, familiar and reflexive anti-Americanism.

 

A return to common sense? I don’t think so. More like a return to the kind of 9/10 thinking that left America—and will leave Canadians—more vulnerable to attack.  

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments

 

Opera buffa: More evidence of the moral rot that has set into the U.K.--the debut of an opera glorifying addlepated potentate, Moo Moo Khadaffy (my preferred spelling, although the opera’s composers spell it another way). From the Toronto Star:

 

From pariah to operatic hip-hop hero

Gadhafi central character in new London show

`The audience isn't going to know what's hit them'

Sep. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM

JILL LAWLESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

LONDON—He's been called a terrorist, a pariah and a statesman. Now Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is an operatic hero.

 

The larger-than-life dictator is the central figure in Gaddafi: A Living Myth, the highly anticipated season-opener from the English National Opera.

 

"The audience isn't going to know what's hit them," said ENO's artistic director, John Berry, ahead of last night's opening.

 

"It's not necessarily going to be a comfortable evening, but it will be a highly contentious, visceral experience."

 

With its genre-bending form and highly charged content, the show is a gamble for Britain's second-largest opera company. For one thing, it's not really an opera, but a multimedia musical that uses dialogue, song, dance and film to tell a story of politics, power and image.

 

Composer Steve Chandra Savale has called the show — complete with a chorus of uniformed female bodyguards belting out songs of praise for their leader — "an anti-musical."

 

Savale, a member of dance/hip-hop collective Asian Dub Foundation, mixes North African rhythms, hip-hop, reggae and drums in his score. The libretto is by Scottish playwright Shan Khan, who has said his only previous exposure to opera was the Mozart biopic Amadeus.

 

The play charts Gadhafi's journey from international pariah, accused of supporting international terrorism, to a statesman who was visited by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004 after abandoning attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Its backdrop is the violence that has shadowed Gadhafi's long reign. His regime was held accountable for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, and for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub popular with U.S. servicemen.

 

The play depicts Gadhafi brooding in his bunker, awaiting U.S. president Ronald Reagan's retaliatory air strikes.

 

Savale and Khan also try to capture the leader's charismatic side, as well as the idiosyncratic brand of pan-Arab socialism laid out in the "Green Book," Gadhafi's guide to political philosophy. Savale said in an interview that Gadhafi's "idealism, that self-belief ... makes him interesting, whatever you think about him."…

 

And if Gadhafi proves to be the boffo, “slay ‘em in the aisles” hit it’s likely to be, perhaps the ENO can dramatize the lives of some other “interesting” men—say, for example, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat and Robert Mugabe.

 

In “honour” of the opera’s debut, I was tempted to reprise my own Moo Moo song—“I Am the Very Model of An Addlepated Potentate”—which is obviously more Gilbert and Sullivan than 50 Cent. Instead, I’ve decided to give you a taste of the opera I’m currently working on. It’s a life of the mullahs' frontman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a.k.a. Moo Jihad. I call it “Moo: The Man, The Myth, The Maniac.”

 

This particular number borrows the melody from another G&S song, “I Am the Captain of the Pinafore.”

 

MOO:

I am the leader of the Re-pub-lic;

And a right crazed leader, too!

I’m really quite devout—

Of that there is no doubt—

And I loathe and despise “the Jew.”

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

He’s really quite devout,

And there isn't any doubt,

That he loathes and despises Jews.

 

MOO:

Though my Mahdi’s lying low

There’s one thing that I know

He won’t return ‘til Jews are dead.

So I won’t take their crap,

I’ll wipe them off the map,

‘Else he’s never, ever coming back!

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

What, never?

 

MOO:

No, never!

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

What, never?

 

MOO:
Never ever!

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

If Jews are here he won't come back!

Then kiss his arse, give his boots a lick,

It’s the crazy leader of our Re-pub-lic.

 

MOO:

I do my best to satisfy you all,

Though some people say I tend to blurt.

 

MOO’S YES MEN:
You’re exceedingly polite,

When to Islam you invite

Western leaders, who must all “revert.”

 

MOO:

I’m good at using deft analogy,

And am equally good at denial.

The Shoah, I’ve averred,

Is something so absurd,

And what’s more, I’m sure it ne’er occurred.

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

What, never?

 

MOO:

No, never!

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

What, never?

 

MOO:
Never ever!

 

MOO’S YES MEN:

Always says the Holocaust is most absurd.

It never happened way back when

But Moo, we pray, will bring one on again!

So give three cheers, and one more, too

For our fearless leader, the amazing Moo!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:13 | link | comments

 

Here we go again: Suzanne Fields notes the sickening similarities between the crocodile feeders who fed the German fascists and the ones who are feeding the Islamic fascists. From JWR:

 

…When Hitler famously marched into Munich in 1923 with like-minded thugs calling for the dissolution of the "criminal government" of Germany, the minimum sentence for high treason was five years, the maximum, life. A sympathetic judge saw that Hitler served less than a year. When "Mein Kampf" was published in 1925, it was largely ignored, and the few who publicly noted his plans for the Jews and the republic were largely ignored as well. Not even the German Communists, who despised the fascists, deigned to unite against him, calculating that he was a mere minor threat. They could wait him out.

The Bush administration now concedes errors in Iraq, foremost among them failure to understand the reluctance of so many Iraqis to support a democratic government. While historical parallels are always imperfect, it's fair to observe that the Germans who supported Weimar also failed to understand how fragile their republican government could be. The Western democracies were slow to perceive that, too.

Just as anti-Semitism was harnessed to bring down Weimar, hatred of the Jews keeps trouble on the boil today in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism is the refuge of cowards who are eager to exploit the appetite for hatred of the Jews. Anti-Semitism in the '20s and '30s was respectable in Germany, just as it is fashionable today among certain intellectuals and creative artists, including some Jews. Describing the Israelis as the "new Nazis" invites no outrage among certain bright young (and old) things who decry bigotry in others.

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher of the 1930s, complained about the "Judaization" of the German university. He defended himself, saying that he was no more anti-Semitic than many of his Jewish colleagues. It was a glib observation not entirely wrong, but few took on Heidegger for his outspoken anti-Semitism.

Noam Chomsky is widely respected today for his linguistic theories, but he is willing to join forces with those who deny the Holocaust. He wrote the foreword to the standard French-language textbook of Holocaust denial. He praises "Jewish History, Jewish Religion," a book by Israel Shalak, one of the most outspoken Jewish anti-Semites. Gore Vidal, who insists he's not an anti-Semite, wrote the foreword for that one.

"The appearance of political anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world is of relatively recent date," writes Walter Laqueur in "The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism." He observes how the Muslims who preach hatred of the Jews have found friends in Europe: "Islamist anti-Semites have collaborated with European anti-Semites of the left and with the neo-fascist anti-Semites in convening various conferences, protest meetings, demonstrations and declarations."

Those who assisted the Nazi rise to power held diverse views and were motivated by different influences, both inside and outside Germany, and the rest of the world recognized the peril of Nazism only slowly and reluctantly. Islamo-fascism poses a similar danger for us now.

 

I disagree with Laqueur that the appearance of Islamic “political” anti-Semitism is of recent vintage. For one thing, in Islam, the political and the religious are bound together, and inextricable. For another, anyone familiar with the fate of Jews in the Koran along with the revolting apes-and-pigs passages knows that it’s really as old as Islam itself. What’s been added to the mix in our times is that the pitiful, lowly dhimmis have defied their Koranically-defined fate and become sovereign over their own land—and that’s a reality that no practising Islamic-fascist can tolerate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments

 

Sinister Jew-hatred.: In the U.K., which these days seems to be a kingdom united against Jews, the “new” antisemtism has sidled up to and mated with the old antisemitism—and British police have been accused of turning a blind eye to the obnoxious results. From the Times Online:

 

A SINISTER alliance has developed between far-Right groups and Islamist extremists who are united in their hatred of Jews, Israel and Zionism and are contributing to increasing anti-Semitism in Britain.

A report criticises police forces for failing adequately to monitor anti-Jewish incidents. It calls on the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate why fewer than one in ten reported incidents leads to a prosecution.

The report was published after The Times revealed that conflict in the Middle East had led to a surge in anti-Semitism. It says that Britain’s 300,000 Jews are “more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer”.

It refers to “anti-Semitic discourse”, defined as a “widespread change in mood and tone when Jews are discussed, whether in print or broadcast, at universities, or in public or social settings”.

But it expresses particular concern about a new, “symbiotic” relationship between the traditional perpetrators of anti-Semitism — the far Right and some Islamist extremists — who are united in their hatred of all things Jewish.

It found that Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were stocked in Arabic bookshops in London.

Of particular concern to the inquiry was anti-Semitism on campuses, with literature being distributed that called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

The report, published today, calls on the Government, the media, academics, politicians and community leaders to understand and treat anti-Semitism in the same way as any other form of racism.

It recommends that an interdepartmental task force be set up to combat anti-Semitism, involving local government. It calls for more research into the correlation between attacks on Jews in Britain and events in the Middle East. All police forces should be required to record anti-Semitic incidents, it says.

The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism was set up last year. None of the 14 members of the panel is Jewish, but evidence was taken from across the Jewish community.The report proposes that it be made an offence to download material from the internet that could incite racial or religious hatred.

Drawing on the view of the Macpherson report that a racist act is defined by its victim, not by whether a perpetrator considers himself racist, anti-Semitism is defined in the report as “any remark, insult or act, the purpose or effect of which is to violate a Jewish person’s dignity or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for him”.

Examples in the report include insults, neo-Nazi graffiti and Jews being attacked on their way to synagogue.

The author Howard Jacobson wrote in his submission of “a certain grinding, low level of anti-Semitism all Jews learn to live with”.

The inquiry uncovered calls for the killing of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or extremist religion and the demonisation of Jews through conspiracy myths and Holocaust denial. There was a tendency to compare Israeli policies to those of the Nazis, and to hold Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel…

The report seems to have overlooked out the other “sinister” partner in the antisemitic mix: the sinister snillingers on the Left.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:19 | link | comments

 

Hegemonics: Here’s someone else who doesn’t “get it”—USA Today essayist William J. Dobson. Dobson has analysed the scene five years on and reckons that nothing much has changed since that fateful day—“globalization” is still a huge problem; America is still a “hegemon” (which, apparently, is even worse than being a Pokemon). The only difference that Dobson can discern is that, if anything, tons of non-Americans feels even more estranged from the U.S. that they did five years ago. And he knows who’s to blame for that:

…Surely, though, there is a growing gulf between America and the world.

Otherwise, how could anyone explain the mounting anti-Americanism in recent years? It is true that anti-American sentiment runs wide and deep today, but it is also true that it has a far longer lineage than the Bush administration. Its roots are in the world's collective fear that U.S. pre-eminence would become so great that the United States would come to dominate others. As early as 1983, a poll by the Gallup Organization found that a majority in Brazil, Japan and Mexico believed that a strong U.S. military presence around the world increased the chance of war. Those fears grew with the end of the superpower contest. In 1995, majorities around the world said the United States was intent on dominating them. Even with a president as beloved abroad as Bill Clinton, America was considered a bully by 83% of people polled in Israel and 61% in Britain, two of America's closest allies. The fact that anti-Americanism has spiked since the U.S. invasion of Iraq is entirely sensible. For the rest of the world, it is the realization of the fears of U.S. dominance they have long harbored.

The United States was a target on Sept. 11 because it was perceived to be the global hegemon. Al-Qaeda's efforts to overthrow Arab regimes had been an abysmal failure in the 1990s. Unable to accomplish his objectives in the Arab world, Osama bin Laden plotted to strike the "faraway enemy," the United States. By striking at the colossus, which for decades had helped shore up the bedrock of Arab regimes, bin Laden hoped to remake the world. What we saw on 9/11 was an explosion that had been building for some time…

America was attacked on Sept. 11 because the jihadis want to conquer the world for Islam and the U.S. remains the major impediment to those plans. It’s tragic—and extremely unsettling—that five years later, people like Dobson (far too many of whom, it seems, live in Israel) remain so wilfully clueless and continue to fear and blame the wrong “hegemon.”

 

And, personally, if I have to opt for one kind of "globalization" over another, I'm going for the one with the burgers, not the burkas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:04 | link | comments

 

Moo juice: Like Larry, Harpoon, Sheema and a significant number of Canadians in a just-releasd survey, Moo Jihad thinks it’s all about America’s “foreign policy," too. That’s why he’s called on President Bush to amend his policies and revert to the one true faith—and he’ll reiterate that message if the UN allows him to do so in a “debate” with Great Satan’s chief minion on September 12. From Iran Mania:

…In a fiercely religious speech to a conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad had earlier said Bush was "nothing" compared to God and was struggling against a current that was inexorably taking the world towards divinity.

"I am telling him (Bush) that all the world is threatening you since the general path that the world is taking is towards worshipping God and divinity," Ahmadinejad said.

"This massive stream is moving and you are nothing in comparison to God's will," he told a conference ahead of a major festival on Saturday marking the birth of the "hidden" 12th Shiite Imam Mahdi.

The US president had (sic) in a speech on Tuesday vowed that "America will not bow down to tyrants", recalling that Ahmadinejad had vowed last month that the United States must "bow down" before Iran.'

"The president of one of these countries has used my words as a pretext and said I am threatening him," Ahmadinejad retorted.

An official close to Ahmadinejad told AFP that the president "wanted to respond directly to Bush's speech", even if he studiously avoided using the US president's name, instead addressing him simply as "you".

The pugnacious verbal sparring came as the United States pushes for UN Security Council sanctions to be imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme, which Washington contests is cover for nuclear weapons development.

Iran maintains that its nuclear work is a purely peaceful drive intended at supplying energy to the country's growing population.

"Your problem is that you think that your nuclear and chemical weapons can keep you in power. This kind of thinking is the root of all prejudices and wars," Ahmadinejad said.

Wrongo, Moo (and by the way, may I just say this: you're nutty as a pecan pie). Bush knows for certain that the root cause of “all prejudices and wars”— or, if not all of them, then at least those that most threaten the West at the moment—is the jihad.

 

I’m looking forward to the great debate, though. Can’t wait to see if you’re once again enveloped in a magical, mystical invisible green cloak. (The Devil wears Prada, indeed.)

 

Update: More on “root causes" (links via RealClear Politics).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:54 | link | comments

 

The difference between freedom and tyranny: Letter to the editor in the Toronto Star by Larry Carney, Clifford, Ont. Mr. Carney is responding to a letter that appeared in yesterday’s paper:

 

Letter writer Ruth Abrams complains about Russia and China selling high-tech arms to Iran, insists they are only interested in Iran's oil and insists that Iran and Hezbollah are creating great suffering for the people of Lebanon.

 

I find myself wondering: How does that differ from the U.S. selling and giving arms to Israel (which already has illegally developed a nuclear bomb), and having great interest in controlling Iran's (and Iraq's) oil? And I don't think the people of Lebanon see Hezbollah and Iran as responsible for all the recent carnage and devastation of their country.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star in an effort to clarify matters for the muddled Mr. C.:

 

Since Larry Carney is confused about the difference between China and Russia selling high-tech weapons to Iran and the U.S. selling arms to Israel, permit me to enlighten him. The difference, Mr. Carney, is that Israel, the only sovereign Jewish state in the world and the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, is insisting on its right to exist and is attempting to fend off those, like Iran’s President Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Sheik Nasrallah, who are committed to wiping it off the map. Iran, on the other hand, is a genocidal theocracy led by fanatics who aim to extend the influence of their brand of religious fascism well beyond their borders and, and who are so convinced of its validity that they have “invited” Western leaders like President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to convert to their faith.

 

And here’s something else to consider. If America stops arming Israel, Israel will be destroyed. If China and Russia cannot be prevailed upon to stop arming Iran and Iran develops nuclear weapons, Israel will be destroyed.

 

In other words, it’s a win-win situation for the jihadists—and a lose-lose situation for the free world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:31 | link | comments

 

The Canadian stain: On Wednesday, September 6^th, five days before the fifth anniversary of the jihadi attacks on American soil, President Bush gave a stirring speech in which he stated clearly and powerfully what is required if the free world is to defeat the Dar al Islamists. An editorial in the New York Sun sets them out as follows.

 

Victory, it says, depends on the American publics' understanding the following key points:

 

• the current threat is akin to that posed by Communism and Fascism;  
• the Iranian-backed enemy fighting Israel is the same enemy that America is fighting in the same war;
• no negotiated settlement is possible because the enemy's goal is to convert all infidels to Islam and establish a new caliphate;
• the terrorists are counting on a divided America to retreat the way it did from Vietnam, Beirut, and Somalia.

On the very same day, a survey was released about Canadian perceptions about “the root causes” of the 9/11 attack. The results make me despair for the future of my country.

Five years on, Canadians are fumbling in the dark, oblivious to the evil that’s been let loose in the world, spinning their wheels as they ignore the jihad and identify the Americans—the Americans!— as the greatest threat to world stability.

Why do I despair? Because, when asked what they thought 9/11 was mostly the result of,

·       28% of Canadians polled said it was “a reaction against Western domination and values;

·       25% attributed it to “the conflict in the Middle East”;

·       25% said it was “the result of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world."

Only 15% of those polled thought it was because of the “unprovoked actions taken by fanatics.”

Needless to say the Ceeb has been trumpeting these results with great glee all afternoon, no doubt because they accord with its own visually-impaired take on the subject.

To review: Canadians are inclined blame Americans and Jews for 9/11 and give the jihadis and Islam a pass; most of those surveyed in the province of Quebec even think it would be a good idea to "negotiate" with the Taliban.

Gott in Himmel, how do you deal with such dunderheads?

Mark Steyn, for one, hasn't been able to answer that question. But he does offer the following by way of explaining the protean nature of Jew-hatred, and why so many dunderheads--and not just Canadian ones--seem willing, once again, to sacrifice the Jews (in this case, the Jews of Israel) to the fascists; it's  their misbegotten belief that it will "solve" that li'l old “conflict in the Middle East”--the one that absolutely nada to do with a world-wide jihad--once and for all.

As we few Canadians who actually "get it" know, it won't:

The oldest hatred didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt. Jews are hated for what they are – so, at any moment in history, whatever they are is what they’re hated for. For centuries in Europe, they were hated for being rootless cosmopolitan types. Now there are no rootless European Jews to hate, so they’re hated for being an illegitimate Middle Eastern nation-state. If the Zionist Entity were destroyed and the survivors forced to become perpetual cruise-line stewards plying the Caribbean, they’d be hated for that, too. The only difference now is that Jew-hatred is resurgent despite the full knowledge of where it ended up 60 years ago. Today, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad openly urge the destruction of the Jews, and moderate Muslim leaders sit silently alongside them, and European media commentators take the side of the genocide-inciters, and UN bigwigs insist we negotiate with them. In the 1930s, the willingness of Europe not to see the implied end-point in those German citizenship laws left a moral stain on that continent. Seventy years on, it’s not implied, and the moral stain on us will be worse. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:08 | link | comments (1)

 

Revising a resolution: Looks like the snillingers are backing off. From CTV News:

 

OTTAWA -- A group of NDP members has withdrawn controversial wording from an antiwar resolution that warned Canadian troops in Afghanistan risk "acting like terrorists."

The move Wednesday by the Nanaimo-Cowichan riding association spares the party potential embarrassment at its national policy convention this weekend in Quebec City.

The provocative wording was part of a preamble to a resolution that called on Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

It read: "No matter how noble our intentions, such as `bringing democracy' or `enabling peaceful development,' these goals cannot be achieved by violence when the `enemy' cannot be distinguished from ordinary citizens. In such a situation Canadian troops end up acting like terrorists, destroying communities, killing and maiming innocent people. In turn our troops become easy targets for others.''

The wording caught the attention of some Conservative blogs, landed on the front page of the National Post newspaper, and provided welcome fodder for right-wing radio hosts.

Party Leader Jack Layton, who has come out publicly in favour of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, wouldn't comment on the matter. But his office emphasized that it was unlikely the resolution -- among more than 600 being put forward by riding associations -- would even make it to the convention floor for debate…

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:07 | link | comments (2)

 

Bottom feeders: Coming up to the fifth anniversary of 9/11, some really smart academic types are vowing to get to the bottom of who’s really responsible for the attack. From the Daily Mail (link via Drudge):

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an "inside job", according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries.

The claims have caused outrage and anger in the US which marks the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Monday.

But leading scientists say the facts of their investigations cannot be ignored and say they have evidence that points to one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetrated.

Professor Steven Jones, who lectures in physics at the Brigham Young University in Utah, says the official version of events is the biggest and most evil cover up in history.

He has joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth whose membership includes up to 75 leading scientists and experts from universities across the US.

Prof Jones said: "We don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone.

"We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Whadya mean “get to the bottom of this”?  Everyone with half a brain knows it was the JOOOOS.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:24 | link | comments

 

Business as usual: It’s official. Under pressure from bespoke idiot Kofi Annan, Israel has agreed to lift its blockade of Lebanon.

 

The mullahs can finally get back to the serious business of putting missiles into the hands of Hezbollah, its army of occupation in the country. And UN “peacekeepers” can once again turn a blind eye to the military build-up.

 

It’s such a relief that things are returning to normal!

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:46 | link | comments

 

Mixed messages: Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes about the Bush administration’s mind-boggling inconsistency on Iran. On the other hand, it identifies the brutish, fascist, fanatical thugs who run the joint as comprising one third of “the axis of evil.” On the other hand, it gives a “get into America free” card to one of its former leaders, the Ayatollah in charge when Iran received its A of E designation.

 

What gives?

 

Jacoby detects the malign influence and muddled thinking of Foggy Bottom at work here:

 

…This schizophrenia is perfectly captured in the State Department's inane explanation for the decision allowing Khatami to enter the United States:

 

``We recognize that former President Khatami headed a regime that is a leading sponsor of terrorism (and) human rights abuses, and presided over Iran's secret nuclear program which is now the focus of possible UN action. After careful deliberation, however, we determined that issuing Mr. Khatami a limited visa, and allowing Mr. Khatami to present his views directly to the American people, will demonstrate to Iran that the United States upholds its commitment to freedom and democracy." Got that? It's up to us to convince Iran that we really are free and democratic. And how? By letting one of Tehran's senior propagandists barnstorm across America. Only in Foggy Bottom could people get paid to concoct such arguments…

 

What are they putting in the water at Foggy Bottom? Stupid pills?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:22 | link | comments

 

Kofi’s request: Kofi Annan, that soft-spoken blowhard, (and, no, in Kofi’s case that is not a contradiction in terms) has asked Hezbollah to, pretty please, voluntarily disarm and concentrate more on political pursuits than on military ones.

 

As if there’s any qualitative difference between two wings of the same bird of prey; as if “political” Hezbollah is any less bent on an agenda of extermination than is “military” Hezbollah.

 

It occurs to me that there are two things you can count on for certain in this wacky world. One, that Kofi Annan will continue being a useless putz. And two, that in neither sense of the word will Hezbollah ever be disarming.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:19 | link | comments

 

Silly snillingers: Is being a well-meaning, clueless, sanctimonious boob who’s incapable to telling the good guys from the bad guys compulsory for membership in the New Democratic Party? Or does it just seem that way? This morning’s National Post lists some of the really bad ideas NDP delegates will be voting on at their upcoming convention:

OTTAWA - Canada's troops in Afghanistan have been "acting like terrorists, destroying communities, killing and maiming innocent people", according to a resolution that will be voted on by New Democrats at the party's convention in Quebec City this weekend.

The resolution is one of 104 proposals on international affairs from local riding associations that will be presented at the convention. Others suggest Canada withdraw from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, while one riding association proposes a freeze on trade with Israel until the "occupation of Palestinian lands" is ended.

The Afghan mission was the subject of a number of proposed resolutions, all calling for the withdrawal of Canadian troops. "The Canadian occupation is propping up a regime composed of barbarous warlords who are little better than the Taliban," says one riding association.

The resolution comparing Canadian troops to terrorists, put forward by the Nanaimo-Cowichan riding association in British Columbia, says Canada's goals "cannot be achieved by violence when the 'enemy' cannot be distinguished from ordinary citizens" and calls for Canadian troops to be withdrawn from that country…

And after they vote on the thrilling resolutions, the assembly of the self-righteous will all join hands and sing a medley of their favourite songs, including “Imagine,” “We Are the World,” and “Kumbaya.” After which they will don hair shirts and stew in their guilt some more before tucking in to a tasty repast of soy burgers and crunchy granola.

 

Should be a hoot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:12 | link | comments (3)

 

Immoral Ceeb: What follows is the transcript of a report by Nalah Ayed that appeared Monday, September 4^th on CBC TV's evening newscast, The National:

 

BRIAN STEWART (HOST) :

 

The Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan says he's appointing

a secret mediator to get two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah released.

Israel says it just wants its soldiers freed as demanded by the Security

Council resolution on the cease-fire. But Hezbollah wants more. It wants an

exchange of prisoners, especially one man held by the Israelis for almost 30

years. The CBC's Nahlah Ayed tracked down that prisoner's family in Lebanon.

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

In a village far above Beirut in the mountains, Suham Qantar has been

waiting to see her eldest son for 27 years. She won't speak about it

publicly, it's just too disturbing. So she lets her younger son, Bassam

Qantar, do the talking.

 

BASSAM QANTAR (SAMIR'S BROTHER) :

 

He was a very young guy. I was only one year old. It's a matter of a long,

long time, and I think also it's time for my brother to come back home. A

picture of Samir in 1982.

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

His brother, Samir Qantar, is the longest held Lebanese prisoner in Israel.

He spent nearly three decades in various Israeli jails where he's serving a

542-year sentence. Israel convicted the secular Druze of what it describes

as one of the worst attacks ever on its soil.

 

NEWS FOOTAGE (APRIL 22, 1979) :

 

The commandos shot their hostages...

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

On April 22nd, 1979, Samir Qantar and a group of militants snuck in to the

Israeli coastal town of Nahariya. They broke into the residence of an

Israeli family, holding a father and his 4-year-old daughter hostage. After

a firefight with Israeli security forces, Qantar shot the father and clubbed

the 4-year-old to death with the butt of a rifle. Qantar became a hero to

many Lebanese. As they saw it, he was fighting for his country against a

hated enemy. In recent years, Hezbollah has repeatedly demanded his release.

There was a prisoner exchange with Israel back in 2004. Hezbollah wanted

Qantar to be part of that exchange, but in the end, the Israelis wouldn't

give him up.

 

YIGAL PALMOR (ISRAELI FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPOKESPERSON) :

 

There was an agreement to exchange Samir Qantar only and only in exchange

for new and valuable information concerning the pilot, the copilot Ron Arad

who went missing in Lebanon in the 80s. Hezbollah failed to deliver. We

never got the information or the proof we wanted, and so, of course, the

deal was off.

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made it his mission to get Qantar released

through any means necessary. "We haven't given up on any prisoners," he

said. "We will continue working on it, and we have options. We have ways to

do it." Getting Qantar out was part of what Nasrallah called his true

promise, a promise he's made again and again. For example, just this last

February, he said, "We're working to make this year the year to free our

brothers, Samir Qantar, and his friends." On July 12th, Hezbollah fighters

grabbed two Israeli soldiers, a move that infuriated Israel and ignited the

conflict. Nasrallah called the capture of the Israelis operation true

promise, suggesting the Israelis were taken in part to force the release of

Samir Qantar. But Israel says releasing Qantar is not on the table, despite

Nasrallah's calculations.

 

YIGAL PALMOR (ISRAELI FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPOKESPERSON) :

 

Israel's position on the abducted soldiers is exactly what the U.N. Security

Council resolution says. They must be released unconditionally at once.

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

Bassam Qantar isn't happy a war had to happen, but he has a stack of photos

and letters he says shows he's lobbied everyone he could think of to solve

his brother's case peacefully. So you support operation True Promise?

 

BASSAM QANTAR (SAMIR'S BROTHER) :

 

The True Promise was the latest solution after the failing of all the

diplomatic solutions to solve the case of my brother.

 

NAHLAH AYED (REPORTER) :

 

But Samir Qantar's fate is still out of his family's hands and depends on

the prospect of negotiations. All they can do is wait for the outcome.

Nahlah Ayed, CBC News, Aabay, Lebanon.

 

Here’s the e-mail I sent to Robert Rabinovitch, head of the CBC, in response:

 

Dear Mr. Rabinovitch,

 

I am writing to voice my utter disgust with Nalah Ayed’s Sept. 4^th  report on The National about Israel’s refusal to offer up Samir Qantar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. It’s not surprising that a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction would be so keen on retrieving this loathsome murderer, a terrorist so indecent, so hateful, so barbaric that he could murder a father in front of his daughter before crushing the head of this young child. What’s truly shocking—and extremely disturbing—is that a reporter for Canada’s public broadcaster would attempt to elicit sympathy for this vile criminal and his family, and would imply that Israel’s refusal to kowtow to Hezbollah’s demands somehow represents a moral failure on Israel’s part.

 

Clearly, the moral failure here belongs to others: to Hezbollah, for making the outrageous demand; to Nalah Ayed, for lending it credence and packaging it in an emotionally-manipulative, highly-biased report; and to the CBC, for broadcasting it.

 

I don’t expect Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorist organizations to adhere to basic standards of human decency. I do, however, expect it of the CBC.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:29 | link | comments (3)

 

Flying while frum: Muslims who believe they shouldn’t be subjected to unfair “racial profiling” at airports often protest that they are being singled out for the “crime” of  “flying while Muslim.” And just to prove that Air Canada, for one, isn’t engaging in such insensitive measures, here’s a story about a non-Muslim who was tossed off a flight because he was engaging in behaviour that some security-minded attendants perceived as being potentially threatening.

 

And no, it didn’t involve trying to ignite Gatorade or a sneaker. From the Ceeb (hat tip: WriterMom):

Some fellow passengers are questioning why an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight in Montreal last week for praying.

The man was a passenger on a Sept. 1 flight from Montreal to New York City when the incident happened.

The airplane was heading towards the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray. 

"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.

"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.

The man, who spoke neither English nor French, was escorted off the airplane.

Air Canada Jazz termed the situation "delicate," but says it received more than one complaint about the man's behaviour.

The crew had to act in the interest of the majority of passengers, said Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stewart.

"The passenger did not speak English or French, so we really had no choice but to return to the gate to secure a translator," she said.

The airline is not saying if the man was told he was not allowed to pray, but a spokesperson said the man was back on board the next flight to New York.

Jewish leaders in Montreal criticized the move as insensitive, saying the flight attendants should have explained to the other passengers that the man was simply praying and doing no harm.

Hasidic Rabbi Ronny Fine said he often prays on airplanes, but typically only gets curious stares.

"If it's something that you're praying in your own seat and not taking over the whole plane, I don't think it should be a problem," said Fine.

The Jewish group B'nai Brith Canada has offered to help give Air Canada crews sensitivity training. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments

 

A rationale for inaction: Why is the Bush administration shilly-shallying about taking decisive action against Iran despite previous statements about the peril posed by a nuclear Iran? Well, according to Rachel Neuwirth on The American Thinker site, it could be a function of the West’s ongoing collusion in the demise of the Jewish people:

…If Iran gets lucky and lands nukes on Tel Aviv, it is all over for Israel. The U.S. State Department’s Arabists would have achieved their secret long term goal of a Middle East free of Israel. (The consistent refusal of every U.S. administration since 1948 to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem could be interpreted as a signal to the Arabs that America regards Israel’s existence as temporary.) The Arabs would be delirious with joy, and to show their gratitude might then tolerate the U.S. smashing the Iranian nuclear facilities, in retaliation, since Persian nukes also posed a threat to them.

This cynical and sinister scenario by the U.S. administration is all too conceivable. Consider WWII as just one example among others. By the 1930’s the U.S. was already in support of England and France’s efforts to prevent a Jewish state from being reborn in the ancient Jewish homeland after nearly 2,000 years of exile. The League of Nations after WW I had established a Mandate for a Jewish National Home in Palestine to be administered by England. From the start England sabotaged the very Mandate it was charged with implementing.

During WWII President Roosevelt and the British government conspired to prevent a Jewish State from coming into existence. European Jewry was the potential source to populate that future Jewish State. Two books, the first , The Abandonment of the Jews – America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 by David S. Wyman and the second, While Six Million Died – A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse, tell the story. Actually it was much more than “apathy”. There was deliberate allied obstruction of attempts to save the Jewish people from destruction.

The Roosevelt Administration played down reports of genocide against Jews lest the American public demand action to save Jews. Hundreds of thousands of immigration slots were deliberately left unfulfilled so that coming to America was not a viable option for European Jews. England also cut off Jewish escape routes to Palestine which also pleased Arab leaders.

While voicing sympathy in public for Jews, both governments conspired to allow Hitler full reign to exterminate European Jews. Evidently having a democratic Jewish State in the Middle East might give the poor Arab masses the ‘wrong ideas’ about wanting self-government and freedom from foreign exploitation. Much easier to dominate the region through compliant Arab chieftains such as King ibn Saud of Arabia.

To many Americans such a conspiracy is too unthinkable and too awful to believe. In 1948 Harry Truman promptly recognized the reborn State of Israel. But the Truman administration promptly imposed a regional arms embargo which only affected Israel because the invading Arab armies were all well armed. It would have been a death sentence on the newborn state. Israel survived at great human cost but totally without help from America. The 1994 book, The Secret War Against the Jews – How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, by John Loftus and Mark Aarons documents this ongoing secret betrayal that extended over half a century and which still continues quietly. In all of this the American people, and even most of Congress, were kept largely in the dark while being misled to believe that U.S. administrations are being fair and supportive to our Israeli ally.

Perhaps some American officials might be secretly dreaming of a scenario in which Israel disappears and the U.S. government leaves no fingerprints. But if Israel really has 200 or more nukes, something might not go as planned by her ‘friends’.

I’m not sure if I’m willing to accept the idea that the Bush administration could be party to the same kind of collusion; to do so is entirely too horrifying as it would mean that, for the Jews at least, there aren’t any good guys.  I merely offer it up as something to consider.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:54 | link | comments

 

Sgt. Jihad’s Lonely Hearts Club: The Globe and Mail has the story of Zenab Armend Pisheh, a lonely university student who became a tool—an unwitting one, according to her—for the jihad:

 

She started out looking for a husband. Instead, the young Carleton student became a key conduit for thousands of dollars that, police say, was financing terrorism. University

Zenab Armend Pisheh, an Ottawa-area chemistry student in her early 20s, says she was used by young, aspiring jihadists in Britain and Canada and that she was handpicked because "sisters don't get caught -- brothers get caught if they send money."

For the first time yesterday, Ms. Armend Pisheh emerged as a key, co-operating witness for British and Canadian prosecutors, who are trying to prove that seven young British men and an Ottawa man, Momin Khawaja, conspired to blow up a British landmark in 2004.

The seven Britons have been on trial for months, and Mr. Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada's anti-terrorism legislation, is slated to begin his trial in January. Although Ms. Armend Pisheh didn't appear in court in London yesterday for the trial of the seven men, a statement detailing how she was first wooed, and later made a co-conspirator, was read into the record by British prosecutors.

Her double life as a money runner, she says in her statement, began in the summer of 2002, when she was finishing her CEGEP studies, the college program that Quebec teenagers must complete before attending university. Although The Globe was unable to locate Ms. Armend Pisheh, associates said that, at that time, she lived in Aylmer, Que.

She lived with her Iranian parents.

It was around that time that, through an Internet chat room, she got to know a man who identified himself as Abdul Rahman Adam. It was a whirlwind romance, and soon he was phoning her from Britain and discussing marriage. He also told her that he and some other brothers were interested in unspecified "training" in a place she presumed to be Pakistan, she said.

The man she met, prosecutors say, was actually one of the seven accused British men, Anthony Garcia, 24.

The wedding never happened; her suitor insisted that she move to Britain and live with him and his parents, and she wanted him to come to Canada, she said in her statement.

She kept in contact with him, though, and she alleges that he asked her for money.

Shortly after that, Ms. Armend Pisheh received an e-mail from a man who identified himself as "Hamza." British prosecutors have identified Hamza as Mr. Khawaja, an Ottawa software developer who is accused of designing the cellphone detonator that the Britons were allegedly planning to use to ignite 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate.

At first, Hamza talked about jihad and the "cause of Allah," she said in her statement. Eventually, they met in person, she said.

"He later told me he needed a woman to send money," she said in her statement. "He said it had to be a woman because sisters don't get caught -- brothers get caught if they send money."...

And some sisters, like the love-starved Ms. Armend Pisheh, can be counted on to be gullible fools.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:14 | link | comments

 

Sheema’s con: Last time I checked, the jihad was still a central precept in Islamic teachings. But you’d never know it by reading Sheema Khan. According to Ms. Khan, founder of CAIR-CAN and a consistent shill for the anti-Western viewpoint in the pages of the Globe and Mail, the jihad (or, as she prefers to call it, “Islamic radicalism”) is something that seems to have sprung up only recently, the result of Western encroachments on Muslim turf and America’s “blanket support” for Israel. And she wants us to know that the future of this radicalism depends entirely on us. If we’re willing fold up our tents and rescind support for Israel, she implies that the jihad will fizzle because the radicals will have no reason to take up arms.

 

If only.

 

Here’s a taste of Sheema’s “blame the victims of terrorism (and the Jews) for terrorism” rant. It purports to establish “the missing link” between Western foreign policy and its part in sparking the rise of Muslim extremists:

Shortly after the July 7 London bombings last summer, I attended a lecture on the rise of "homegrown" extremism. A security expert wove together various threads, including socio-economic factors, radical preachers and racism.

The thesis was striking for its "absence of the obvious."

Questions came from the floor. What about the trauma of witnessing the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in the heart of Europe a decade earlier? Irrelevant, according to the expert, since the West intervened to save Muslims. This, in spite of research by Harvard's Jessica Stern that shows this event sparked militancy amongst some British Muslim youth. And the role of British foreign policy in Muslim lands? "It's the elephant in the room," replied the expert, refusing further comment. Yet one bomber declared in a posthumous video: "Your democratically elected government continuously perpetuates atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible. . . until we feel security, you will be our targets."

The "absence of the obvious" was present again following the recent alleged bomb plot at Heathrow Airport. In an open letter to the British government, prominent Muslim leaders brought up the connection between radicalization and British foreign policy. The British Home Secretary angrily dismissed their suggestions (as did a recent Globe editorial).

The American government also refuses to acknowledge any such connection.

The authors of Without Precedence: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission reveal that in the final report, 9/11 commission members were forced to dilute commentary on the "why" of 9/11. Commission vice-chair Lee Hamilton thought it important to acknowledge "a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to America's long-term relationship with the Islamic world, and that the presence of American forces in the Middle East was a major motivating factor in al-Qaeda's actions." Instead, the report made peripheral mention of these issues.

This approach was in line with a 2003 Congressional report aimed at addressing the low opinion of America by Muslims worldwide. The inquiry aimed to find out why, what to do about it, and to marginalize the appeal of extremists. The main recommendation? Do a better job of selling America to the Muslim world. After all, a large proportion of Muslims expressed a desire for social justice, a fair judiciary, honest multiparty elections, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

The report claimed the oft-voiced opinion "we like Americans but not what the Americans are doing" as unrealistic, since "Americans elect their government and broadly support its foreign policy." A disingenuous statement, since most voters examine domestic issues.

The official line from London and Washington has been echoed in Ottawa. The Conservatives dutifully repeat the mantra that domestic terrorism is hatched by those who "hate freedom" and everything that "democracy stands for." But this is not the whole picture.

Canada was placed on al-Qaeda's hit list in 2002 after joining the coalition to bomb Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda's declarations -- dating back to 1986 -- have repeatedly demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East. Attacks on U.S. interests in Tanzania, Kenya and Yemen (the USS Cole) were seen as al-Qaeda's attempt to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia. The common thread linking suicide bombings is nationalism, not religion, according to Robert Pape who has compiled a database of hundreds of suicide bombers. According to Mr. Pape, the goal is "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland."

In The Next Attack, authors Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin point out that U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan; its support of autocrats in the Arab world; and its blanket support of Israel are fuelling resentment throughout the Muslim world. According to the authors, hard-core extremists are full of contempt for the West, and will not be affected by foreign-policy changes.

However, there is a larger pool that objects to foreign intervention, but does not advocate violence as an answer. A "tipping point" is possible if a small fraction of the majority becomes radicalized, leading to more devastation in Western capitals. Why not re-examine aspects of foreign policy that anger so many, the authors ask, in order to remove one of the many factors that fuel extremism?...

I have a better idea, Sheema. Why not re-examine the central tenet of your faith that continues to prove so appealing to believers? Why not re-examine Islam’s division of the world into two parts, and its textual imperative to claim the non-Muslim section for the one true faith? Why not re-examine the life and works of the most perfect human being who has ever bestridden the planet?

 

No need to answer, Sheema. To engage in any of those reassessments would be to admit that there are problematic aspects to your faith. And for those like you who are convinced of its inherent, Divinely-endowed perfection, that’s simply out of the question.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:58 | link | comments

 

Cash—with strings: Der Spiegel reports that Hezbollah, the outfit responsible for bringing on all the recent destruction in Lebanon, is endearing itself to the locals—and ensuring it will continue to be a political force in the country—by throwing around oodles of cash for reconstruction projects.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:49 | link | comments

 

Two takes on Iran: Fareed Zakaria, writing in Newsweek magazine, assures us that today’s Iran is definitely not akin to Nazi Germany.

 

Of course it isn’t. If you read this symposium in Front Page magazine, you’d know it’s much, much worse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:20 | link | comments (2)

 

Useful idiots, Jewish division: Front Page magazine has an article about Chomsky, Finkelstein and other Jewish enemies of the Jewish people—and what a revolting gallery of bounders and rogues it is!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:11 | link | comments

 

Today’s most egregious statement of the obvious: From the Times Online, an article which puts forward the "shocking" notion that an Iran with nukes will seriously undermine the international order.

 

As they like to say at the retired septic tank salesmen’s convention, no shit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:33 | link | comments

 

Rising in the ranks: A Canadian woman named Ingrid Mattson, a “revert” to Islam, was elected president of the Islamic Society of North America during the organization’s convention held in Chicago this past weekend. She’s the first woman to hold that position.

 

Ms. Mattson’s election is being hailed as a great step forward, as it shows that Muslim women can rise high in the ranks.

The Beeb story on the conference quotes Edina Lekovic, a delegate (and another “revert”?) who says that the election “has huge symbolic importance” because it “opens doors for communities who would otherwise not consider having women in leadership positions and…sends an important message to those more conservative elements within the American Muslim community.”

Maybe so, but the newly-elected moderate has some opinions which suggest that, on some issues at least, her thinking may be in line with what Ms. Lekovic calls “the establishment.”

Here, for example, is what Ms. Mattson has to say how politicians and media are characterizing the nature of Islamic terrorism:

On the first day of the convention, Ms Mattson held a news conference in which she criticised President George W Bush's use of the term "Islamic fascism" when describing the enemy in the "war on terror".

"This is a term that had very bad resonance in the Muslim majority world and makes us feel uncomfortable," she said. "We're hoping there can be some adjustment to this language."

Riiight. Because as we all know it’s the language that needs to be adjusted, and not the behaviour of those trying to sneak liquid explosives in Gatorade bottles onto airplaines.

But Ms. Mattson’s not the only one who has some complaints about how Muslims are being portrayed:

"Media Islam is the result of a one-sided understanding of Islam that is represented to us in a solitary, cliched and vicious way," said former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami in a keynote speech.

And some delegates agreed.

"I think the media portrayal of the crises around the world, many of which are dominated by Muslims, usually tends to accentuate the negative," said Dr Hesham Hassaballa, a Chicago-based columnist and author.

"If it bleeds, it leads. And so, a Muslim woman holding a candle praying for peace is not as newsworthy as a Muslim driving a truck bomb into a building."

“It bleeds, it leads” is one way of putting it. Another is to cite that old saw “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”—meaning that those who whinge the loudest tend to get placated the quickest.”

 

As for as those peace-loving Muslim candle-holders—by all means, let’s find them and focus on them because, in a man-bites-dog kind of way (i.e. newsworthy by virtue of its rarity) that is indeed a worthwhile topic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments

 

Impending slaughter: Don’t look know, but it looks like a massive blood bath may be looming in Darfur, another of those areas where the UN has proven utterly useless. From the Beeb:

 

For days now the United Nations has nervously monitored the planeloads of Sudanese troops arriving in North Darfur.

 

Now the purpose of the build-up has become clear: the African Union is being asked to leave, and the days of international peacekeeping are to end.

 

Khartoum is to settle the three-year-old rebellion on military terms.

 

There now seems no way that a United Nations force can be deployed in Darfur, since the idea of peacekeepers fighting their way into this vast, remote region is hardly plausible.

 

That will leave the huge camps housing two million displaced people extremely exposed.

 

Showdown

 

If the conflict with the rebels of the National Redemption Front escalates, the huge humanitarian effort to keep the displaced fed, clothed and provided for could collapse.

 

Less than a week ago, the UN's Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, warned that the work of the aid agencies could collapse because of a chronic lack of security.

 

That prediction has just come a step closer to realisation.

 

With the African peacekeepers now being asked to leave, a showdown between the rebels and the government seems to be on the cards…

 

Here’s another of my Nostradamus-like predictions: Should the cards pan out and a wholesale slaughter committed by Sudan’s Islamist government take place, don’t expect anyone at the Beeb or any other mainstream outlet to talk about the “disproportionate response.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments

 

Flaming Jew-hate: A Jewish school was firebombed in Montreal—again. But don’t worry, the ever-sensitive Montreal constabulary are on the job. From the Montreal Gazette:

Montreal police are investigating after somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an orthodox Jewish boys' school late Friday night.

The flaming projectile went through the window into the entrance of the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Jewish Boys school in ritzy anglophone Outremont just after midnight.

A Montreal police spokesman said a neighbour heard breaking glass, looked outside and saw flames inside the school.

The suspect was wearing a mask and surveillance tapes are in black-and-white, providing few descriptive details of the attacker's clothing.

"At this point, I'm not quite sure if it's a hate crime or just young people (causing trouble)," said Const. Raphael Bergeron.

"With all the incidents in the past year in Montreal, of course we're investigating if it's a hate crime," he said.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec Region says the Molotov cocktail went through the window only minutes after the school had been vacated.

"Such hateful acts cannot be tolerated by our society," said CJC QR president Jeffrey K. Boro.

"We have every confidence that the perpetrators of this despicable attack will be caught by police and charged accordingly," said Boro.

Of course, until police apprehend the perpetrator, there’s no point in jumping to conclusions. Why, just about anyone could be behind it. (Buddhist? Wiccan? Seventh Day Adventist?) However, given past events, I predict that if any when they finally nab the flame-thrower, he/she will be described as a “loner” suffering from some sort of debilitating mental illness who was angry about all the horrible things the Jews/Americans/infidels have been doing to true believers.

 

How else can Canadians wrap their heads around such bizarre and disturbing behaviour?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:17 | link | comments

 

The Dubaians wear Prada: The September issue of glossy fashion magazine Marie Claire has an article about the joy of being a rich chick in Dubai and mall-hopping for an outrageously expensive abaya and shaila—“the black robes and head-scarves bin Kalli and Al Hamly [the two rich chicks] wear every day.” (Sorry, no link.)

 

The article, which frequently veers into self-parody (“Still, even in a country where black is the new black, a woman can have a little fun…”) advises us, part cheekily, part solemnly, that in Dubai, there is no compulsion in fashion. Nonetheless, given a choice, women freely choose to dress in basic black, with lots of expensive accoutrements like beading, sequins and embroidery, in order to make a positive cultural statement:

 

Dubai doesn’t have fashion police—or religious ones. Bin Kalli and Al Hamly aren’t required to wear these robes; they choose to. “We’re proud to wear the abaya,” says Al Hamly. “It represents our culture. We can look glamorous and good and still be covered up.”

 

Coverage being key, of course, in order to shield these women from the eyes of lustful males who would consider bin Kalli and Al Hamly to be wee whores were they to bare an unacceptable bit of flesh (though you won't find any mention of that in the article.) (To paraphrase Cole Porter: In current days, a glimpse of stocking is looked on as something shocking/Now, Allah knows, nothing goes.)

 

But as the article assures us, it’s not such a hardship. The paucity of choice cuts down on wasteful shopping time. (Here’s more of the self-parody I was talking about):

 

To American women used to staring down a dizzying merry-go-round of new colors and trends each season—Nautical! Menswear! Bohemian!—an abaya could seem like a relief: instant wardrobe.

 

What a relief! Not that the garment, which in Dubai “is usually made of crepe,” is ideally suited to the climate:

 

This regional preference has nothing to do with the heat, which can reach an oppressive 120 degrees during the hottest months. Rather, crepe—or krebe, as it’s known here—is slightly stretchy (read: less likely to rip), and it irons well. (Important since women in Dubai typically wash their abayas every three days or so, with special detergent formulated not to fade the black color.

 

And they’re also not too practical at the office:

 

“They get caught in the wheels of our office chairs and you can’t mend them,” says bin Kalli. As a result, women tend to buy new abayas monthly. “I have no idea how many I own,” says Al Hamly. “More than 30, combined with those I share with my sisters.” Adds bin Kalli: “How many do I own? How many shoes does Carrie Bradshaw own?”

 

So you see, aside from being covered from head to toe in a hot, black, constrictive, completely impractical garment, there’s absolutely no diff between these two rich Dubai chicks and in their abayas and Carrie and the girls in their Jimmy Choos. And to emphasize that point, here’s how the article concludes:

 

Sex and the City aside, Emerati women pay close attention to global trends. “Westerners think we’re oblivious to what is happening stylewise but we’re keen on educating ourselves about fashion,” says bin Kalli. “One of my favourite channels is E!, just to see what Jessica Alba wore to the Oscars.

 

Such informed consumerism has led to fashion-forward abaya trends not found elsewhere in the Middle East. “There’s a big difference here,” acknowledges Al Hamly. “If I wore an abaya with color on it in Riyadh, they would freak out.”

 

“The abaya is our fashion, not our religion,” adds bin Kalli. We even get compliments from Western expats living in Dubai. One woman thought my shaila was so pretty, she asked where she could buy one.”

 

Indeed. I’d say we all need to “pay close attention to global trends”—you know the kind I mean—lest more and more women are persuaded and/or compelled to adopt shailas and other such fashion-backward trends.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:53 | link | comments

 

Annan lost: Kofi has been shooting off his mouth again about all the terrible things the Jews are doing—and an Israeli cabinet minister is at a loss as to who to blame for this misperception. From ABC News (Australia):

 

An Israeli Cabinet minister has described United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan as misguided after comments he made condemning Israel's continuing assault on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Avi Dichter, has given the first official response to calls from Mr Annan for Israel to stop the killing of Palestinians immediately.

"He's misguided - I don't know by whom but ... I'm afraid that he hasn't got all facts what's going on from the terrorists in Gaza towards Israel," he said.

Mr Dichter says Israel's two-month long assault has been reduced to Kassam rocket attacks on Israel from Palestinian militants.

Over 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli action.

Going by the previous post, maybe we should blame it on the Beeb (and all the other Beeb-like media entities which keep spinning endless nahrishkeit, like so many frenzied Rumpelstiltskins). For my money, though, I prefer to blame it on the influence wielded by this guy (see photo below), and all the others who, like him, have nary a good word to say about the reality of a Jewish state.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:22 | link | comments (2)

 

Blame it on the Beeb: Alarmed by the prevalence of egregious Jew-hatred in the U.K.? Me too. But, as this piece on The American Thinker site explains, a lot of it has to do with to the Beeb’s ceaseless anti-Israel propaganda. (Links from article):

…Anti-Semitic violence has been brewing for a long time in Britain.  The growing atmosphere of threat and violence is not just triggered by the Lebanon war, as the Times claims in its very misleading headline.  That is only the spark in a long-smouldering gunpowder trail concocted by the Labour Left via its propaganda arm, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The political reason is given by  commentator Rod Liddle: London has two million Pakistanis, who have been taught to hate Jews all of their lives, while Jewish votes are now scattered among electoral districts. As a result, the Labour Party has resorted to classic anti-Semitic demagogy. The London branch of the Labour Party resembles the Jim Crow Dixiecrats in Alabama: They know exactly which racist buttons to push.

Mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone manipulates hatred of Jews for political gain, last year accusing a Jewish reporter of being a concentration camp guard. It was a PR stunt  to appeal to certain voters.

Britain is now shaped by an unholy alliance between the Hard Left and Islamofascist tribalism: The Guardian meets Al Jazeera. When Tony Blair leaves office some time soon, nobody knows which way the Labour Party will jump.

The BBC has been stirring this witches’ brew for years. So the responsibility for the Nazi-like rash of violence can be placed indirectly at the feet of the good old Beeb—- once upon a time the voice of British reason and good sense. Britain has now brought a plague of Islamofascism on itself as a direct result of its own folly.  But the Beeb cannot be reformed; it is a locked-in career bureaucracy. Not until Broadcasting House is changes staff will the BBC change its ways.  Reality has no impact…

Or as they used to say on The X-Files, the truth is out there. These days, alas, the lies—and more specifically, the lies about Israel and the Jews—hold far more appeal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:47 | link | comments

 

A right wing thing: Jefferey Ewener in the Sunday Star thinks it’s a shame how the word “Nazi” has been so overused that it has become devoid of all meaning. He notes, for example, the tendency of right wingers like, say, Rush Limbaugh and Stockwell Day to try to pin the label on Hezbollah’s Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and suggests that since the epithet “Nazi” is just one in a long line of now meaningless terms—“male chauvinist pig” being another—we ought to knock it off with the Nazi stuff already.

 

Ewener’s observations, and his disinclination to, Heaven forefend, call a Nazi a Nazi (a reluctance shared by many who share his political perspective) prompted me to send the following letter to the Star:

 

Jefferey Ewener urges us not to succumb to "empty name caliing"--like labelling Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah a "Nazi"--because to do so divests the word of all meaning.

 

Before heeding his advice, I've decided to submit it to a little test. Here goes. The definition of a Nazi: someone who adheres to a fascist, supremacist doctrine which has as its linchpin the genocide of the Jews. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah: ditto.

 

It looks like the problem here may not be the sudden ubiquity of a familiar word. More likely, it's an unwillingness on the part of some to acknowledge and come to grips with an unpleasant--and extremely disturbing--truth.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:04 | link | comments

 

The tripe of the ancient-minded Mohammedan: Back from a week in Muskoka (one of my favourite places on the planet) and what do I find? The odious Harpoon is at it again, hyperventilating about those (Israel, the U.S., Bush, Harper) who want to stop the Islamoloonies dead in their tracks, and trying to convince the gullible Canadian public that the good guys are the bad guys, and vice versa.

 

Here’s a taste of today’s Lord Haw Haw-ish musings, in which our intrepid Islamism-enabler once again tries to drive a wedge between Canucks and Yanks (not so hard a feat up here in darkest Canuckistan) and encourages us accept the inevitability of a nuclear Iran. (The first line of Harpoon’s dangerous drivel evokes the opening of that S.T. Coleridge albatross poem—hence the reasoning behind my title):

 

I ran, Iran everywhere: Iran refuses to blink in the nuclear standoff. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dares George W. Bush to a TV debate. Iran frees Canadian professor but won't budge on other jailed intellectuals. Iran holds an anti-Semitic cartoon contest.

 

The cartoon caper is a tit-for-tat for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Emulating Jyllands-Posten, which had commissioned caricatures of the Prophet, an Iranian newspaper invited artists to lampoon the Holocaust, Jews and Israel.

 

Of the 1,000 entries it received from 61 countries, it is exhibiting 204 in Tehran. Among them: A Jew with a hook nose larger than his head, and a vampire with a Star of David drinking Palestinian blood.

 

If the offensive show was meant to test the limits of the West's commitment to freedom of speech, it has failed.

 

There are no violent protests. Those who have objected, including Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust authority, have done so in a restrained manner.

 

The exhibit has drawn only a minimal response from Iranians themselves, despite their president's frequent questioning of the Holocaust.

 

Conspicuous by their silence in all this are those who during the Danish cartoon controversy had mounted a noisy defence of the right to offend. They are neither lining up to reprint the cartoons from Tehran nor are they criticizing the exhibit.

 

It is a predicament of their own making. If they condemn the show, as they should, they'll open themselves to accusations of double standards, namely, that their defence of freedom of speech last spring was meant only to protect their right to malign Muslims and Islam.

 

But anti-Islamic prejudice alone does not explain the West's conflicting emotions.

Some people do believe freedom of speech is absolute. But it is not. It is constrained by the laws of libel and hate. It must be balanced against the right to freedom of religion. It is subject to self-restraint, dictated by our evolving understanding of what is and is not acceptable.

 

The Danish and Iranian cartoon controversies have added another element to this complex equation. The global village demands of us a broadened outlook, one that avoids needless needling across all religious divides in these troubled times.

 

Iran's is a particularly nettlesome case because its conflict with the U.S. is often expressed, by both the conservative clergy there and the neo-cons in the U.S., as a religious and civilizational clash. It isn't, really. It's a battle for the legitimacy of the clerical regime and for Iran's influence in the region. Most Iranians don't care about the first but do about the second.

 

To marginalize the militant ruling clergy, the U.S. should have opened relations with Iran, rather than confront it at every turn, as George W. Bush has.

 

But he is losing, badly.

 

If the Israeli onslaught on Hezbollah in Lebanon was a proxy American war on Iran, then Iran has emerged unscathed...

 

 

Of course, I’d rewrite the opening thus: “Iran, Iran everywhere, and not a sane thought for Harpoon to think.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments (1)