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

Happy trails: I will be on hiatus for the next two weeks. I hope to be back in the saddle (sorry, that horsey letter to the Star got me feeling all Dale Evans-ish) by Monday, April 16.

Chag sameach and happy holidays to all my constant readers.

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:38 | link | comments (2)

A horse of the same old colour: An editorial in the Globe and Mail rightly assails “A flawed Arab plan,” but according to an editorial in the clueless Toronto Star, “Arab peace offer (is) worth second look.”

It is? It wasn’t even worth a first look when the Saudis concocted it back in 2002.

 

Here’s some of the peerless reasoning for which the Star is justly famous and which it uses to make its case:

...By accepting the Arab League principles as the basis on which to at least reopen talks, Olmert would give away nothing on the security side, where Israelis have legitimate and serious concerns. Israel wants to redraw the 1967 frontiers in places to improve its security, insists on safeguarding Israel's historical claims in Jerusalem and rejects a massive influx of Palestinian refugees that would threaten the Jewish character of the state.

The Arab offer rules out none of this. It calls on Israel to withdraw to the June 4, 1967 lines, but a withdrawal need not preclude a negotiated adjustment of those lines. It calls for a "just solution" to the issue of Palestinian refugees who fled various Arab-Israeli wars, without explicitly demanding a "right of return." And it calls for a Palestinian state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital, something Israel has offered in the past.

For Israel, spurning the offer outright would mean more lost time before inevitable negotiations get underway and painful concessions are made. Why not sign on now, in principle, and with appropriate reservations, and work on the details? Why not work with Egypt and Jordan, which have diplomatic ties with Israel, to seek common ground?

Olmert could count on strong support from U.S. President George Bush, from the UN and from Europe for relaunching the peace process.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered greatly during the 40 years since the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Neither side wants to continue this impasse for yet another generation. Which is why Olmert should give this Arab peace initiative a second look.

And here’s the letter I sent in response:

 

In exchange for an offer of “peace”, the Arab League wants Israel to withdraw to borders that would make it virtually indefensible and allow millions of Palestinians demanding their so-called “right of return” to come flooding into Israel in sufficient numbers so as to transform the world’s only Jewish state into yet another Arab one.

 

In other words, the Arabs are seeking to do through “peace” what, in going on six decades of Israel’s existence, they have been unable to do through warfare.

 

In ancient times, such an offer was known as a “gift horse.” And Israel would have to have be insane or suicidal to say “giddyup.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:21 | link | comments

"Peace," Islamic style: The Arab League summit didn’t succeed in putting forward a realistic peace offer—more like the same old formula whereby Israel would willingly collude in its own demise. However, it did succeed in showing that the only kind of “peace” the Arabs are interested in the one that pertains once Muslims are firmly in charge (as is only right, according to Islamic teachings). It also revealed the threadbare nature of the Saudi-American “alliance”—a marriage of expedience that the Saudis seem to be looking to annul. From TIME: 

The Arab League summit that concluded in Riyadh Thursday re-affirmed the body's peace offer to Israel, but it hardly suggested the sort of "bold outreach" to the Jewish State for which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been lobbying. Indeed, the summit appeared to reveal a yawning gap between the outlooks of the U.S. and its key Arab ally, summit-host Saudi Arabia.

 

Although on her latest Middle East shuttle she managed to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to agree on holding regular meetings, Rice's efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace are looking more like crisis management than visionary deal-making. She had hesitated to spell out exactly what she meant by "bold outreach," but had urged the Arab leaders heading for Riyadh to not merely to endorse a formula for peace — the Arab League's Beirut initiative, first adopted in 2002, calls for full peace and normalization of relations if Israel withdraws from Arab lands occupied in 1967 — but also to provide a mechanism through which Arabs and Israelis could begin discussing the formula. "Regional states," she said, "should participate actively in diplomacy to advance the achievement of peace."

 

Rice seemed to be expressing the hope that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who she praised as the author of the 2002 Arab initiative, would authorize direct Saudi-Israeli talks. When asked by a reporter whether it was time for the Saudis to meet the Israelis face-to-face, Rice replied, "I would hope that every state will search very deep to see what it can do at this crucial time to finally end this conflict."…

 

Faint hope, Condi. Time to put down the Sharanksy and Lewis and pick up some Spencer and Ibn Warraq. All will be revealed therein.

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

Wrong turn: The French, as clueless as ever, are drawing the wrong lessons from their own benighted history. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, they are viewing their struggle against incipient Muslim domination as being akin to Vichy France’s persecution of the Jews:

…[Nicolas] Sarkozy, who largely has avoided the suburbs during his campaign, has criticized immigrants and their offspring who resist the French model of integration, saying it is unacceptable to want to live here without respecting and loving the country or learning the language.

 

But when he announced his proposal on television this month, it was met with a firestorm of criticism. Royal called the plan "disgraceful," adding, "Foreign workers have never threatened French identity."

 

"Indecent," was the reaction of Azouz Begag, the minister for equal opportunities. "I'm not stupid, and neither are the French," he said. "It's a hook to go and look for the lost sheep of the National Front," Le Pen's party.

 

Simone Veil, a beloved former minister and a Holocaust survivor, found herself denouncing Sarkozy's idea shortly after she endorsed him for president. "I didn't at all like this very ambiguous formula," she told the magazine Marianne. She said that a ministry for immigration and "integration" would be a better idea.

 

But Sarkozy is convinced he is right. When asked about Veil's reaction, for example, he replied tartly, "Everyone has the right to his or her own opinion."

 

Sarkozy's proposal has revived bad memories of the Vichy era. The idea of a national identity ministry has been compared to the General Commissariat of Jewish Affairs, which was created with ministerial rank under Vichy in March 1941.

 

"Only Vichy developed administrative structures in their efficient way to defend a certain concept of 'national identity,' " the columnist Philippe Bernard wrote in Le Monde last week. He said that the commissariat, "even before being a tool in the service of the policy of extermination, responded to the objective of purification of the French nation."

 

Some politically conservative Jewish voters, who were planning to vote for Sarkozy because of his staunch support of Israel, say they now are considering shifting to Bayrou...

 

 If that’s the case, then more fool them. They, too, cannot comprehend that Vichy France was a willing puppet of the Nazis, and that Nicolas Sarkozy offers them the last, best hope to stave off the Islamic-fascist conquest of Europe. Without him, I’d say it’s game over for France and its Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:59 | link | comments (1)

Dazed and confused: They held hands. They stopped and smelled the roses together. But now George Bush is all confused because his “good friend,” Kind Abdullah, is sending him some decidedly mixed signals. From VOA News:

The Bush administration Thursday expressed surprise, and said it was seeking clarification, over remarks by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah at the Arab League summit that the United States role in Iraq was an "illegal foreign occupation." U.S. officials meanwhile are welcoming the Arab League's relaunch of its 2002 peace initiative for Israel. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

Officials here are not depicting downplaying the remarks of the Saudi king as a problem in relations with Saudi Arabia, a key Middle East ally of the United States.

But they say they will contact the Saudi government over the comments, and are defending the legality of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee appearance, Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, said the United States was "a little surprised" to see the remarks, and will ask for clarification.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said there was no reason to believe that King Abdullah has been misquoted in the comments he made to the Arab League summit on Wednesday, and that the U.S. interest in an explanation is understandable.

"We certainly had not seen that particular phrase before coming out, talking about illegal occupation," he said. "I think it only stands to reason that we are interested in understanding better what exactly King Abdullah meant by that phrase."

"We are operating under [U.N.] Security Council resolutions in Iraq, as well as with the invitation of the Iraqi government," he added.

McCormack said the United States and Saudi Arabia have a shared interest in an Iraq that maintains its territorial integrity and stability, and that one indication of Saudi support for that was its participation in the recent Iraqi "neighbors conference" in Baghdad, in which Iran also took part.

He also stressed what he termed the excellent personal relationship between King Abdullah and President Bush and said that overall ties between the two countries are good and sound…

That is, as sound as relations between egregiously oily Wahabi supremacists and the foremost impediment to global Islamic primacy can be.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:38 | link | comments (1)

Only Huma: Hillary Clinton’s right hand man is a woman, one about whom even her close personal friends, like designer Oscar de la Renta, don’t know too many details. But according to Oscar, Huma Abedin, considered by many observers to be Hillary’s “secret weapon,” is Muslim and “very conservative”—and he doesn’t mean conservative in the Republican sense. He doesn’t know too much about her, though “because Huma is not such a talkative girl.” The story about Huma in the New York Observer fills in some of the till-now sketchy details:

The back story, as it were, begins 32 years ago in Kalamazoo, Mich., where Ms. Abedin, who declined to participate in this article, lived until the age of 2. Her family then relocated to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she lived until returning to the States for college. She attended George Washington University. Her father, who died when she was 17, was an Islamic and Middle Eastern scholar of Indian decent. He founded his own institute devoted to Western-Eastern and interfaith understanding and reconciliation and published a journal focusing on Muslim minorities living in the diaspora. Her mother, a renowned professor in Saudi Arabia, is Pakistani.

I suggest that any pro-Israel Jews inclined to support Mrs. Clinton's presidential bid first insist that her closest, most influential advisor answer the following questions:

1. Where do you stand on the issue of Wahabism?
2. Where do you stand on the issue of Jewish sovereignty in Israel?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:42 | link | comments (1)

European vacation: The Ceeb website has some helpful hints to help you stretch your dollars in Eurabia, should you decide to visit the Islamo-infidel continent in the the next few months.

My days of trekking through Europe are long since past, however, I have a few of my own suggestions to help those still eager to perambulate the continent’s picturesque highways and byways:

 

• Make sure to visit one of the many “no-go zones” in France, Belgium, Sweden and other Eurabian countries. Restaurants in these areas are a real bargoon, and you’ll be treated to some exotic local colour that you might otherwise miss if you stayed exclusively in the infidel cultural zones.

• For a roaring good time, drive your rental car into these neighbourhoods and watch as the local lads set it ablaze during one of their nightly car-b-cues. And don’t forget your marshmallows!

• Try to take in as many art museums as possible. In coming years many of the great works of Western civilization on display there may be removed because they are what many Eurabians like to call “un-Islamic.”

• If you don’t want to stir up local “youths,” you’re advised not to wear t-shirts with any of the following messages: “Honk if you love Jesus”; “Am Yisrael Chai!”; “Allah Snakbar”; “I heart Dick Cheney”; “Apes and Pigs Rule!”; “George ‘Wonderful’ Bush”;  and, last but not least, “There is a religious plot to control the world, only it’s no secret and it sure ain’t Jewish.”

• To help ensure you return home alive and in one piece, don’t wear any religious symbols that would tie you to the seminal monotheism; you know which one I mean.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:05 | link | comments (1)

Roll over, Lord Nelson: Melanie Phillips is less than impressed by her nation’s response to Iran’s piracy:

Admiral Lord Nelson must be revolving in his grave. While on patrol in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq, 15 Royal Marines and sailors were seized by Iran on a trumped up charge that they had entered Iranian waters.

Six days on and there is no sign of their release. On the contrary, Iran has stepped up its aggression, threatening to charge the kidnapped marines with espionage and even denying them British consular access.

We have been here before. Three years ago, six Royal Marines and two sailors were abducted from the same waterway and held for three days before being released.

And this time, the crisis is potentially far more serious. There is every prospect that these hostages will be used as bargaining counters to force the release of five Iranian Revolutionary Guards who were captured in Iraq by American troops earlier this year.

Yet in its response to these events, Britain seems to be in some kind of dreamworld. There is no sense of urgency or crisis, no outpouring of anger. There seems to be virtually no grasp of what is at stake.

Some commentators have languidly observed that in another age this would have been regarded as an act of war. What on earth are they talking about? It is an act of war. There can hardly be a more blatant act of aggression than the kidnapping of another country’s military personnel.

What clearly does belong to another age is this country’s ability to understand the proper way to respond to an act of war. When his Marines were seized by the Iranians, the commander of HMS Cornwall, Commodore Nick Lambert, did nothing to stop them and later said it was probably all a misunderstanding. If Nelson had been such a diplomat in such circumstances, Trafalgar would surely have been lost.

Our Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said the Government had been ‘disturbed’ by the incident. The Prime Minister took three days to say that the seizure was ‘unjustified and wrong’ and mouthed platitudes about the welfare of the detainees. Yesterday he talked severely of ‘moving to a new phase’.

My goodness, the Iranian regime must be shivering in its shoes. With what contempt they must regard us — a country that stands impotently by while its people are kidnapped and then does no more than bleat that it is ‘disturbed’.

What on earth has happened to this country of ours, for so many centuries a byword for defending itself against attack, not least against piracy or acts of war on the high seas?..

Two words: self-loathing.

Two more words: civilizational angst.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:32 | link | comments

Sorry seems to be the hardest word: Iran threatens that if Britain kicks up a “fuss,” it won’t be getting its sailors back any time soon. Here's the statement I imagine the mullahs would like the Brits to make, but one which, it they stick to their guns, they won't:

"We, the less powerful buddy of Great Satan, are extremely, unquestioningly, overwhelmingly contrite for having strayed into the waters of the glorious Islamic republic, a nation which, as everyone knows, is righteous, splendiferous and pure, and one which has every right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and is not, repeat, not building nuclear weapons in order to annihilate Israel.

Our bad."

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

The Fatah Godfather: Reuters headline—Abbas warns of violence if "hand of peace" rejected.

Sounds like he's making the Jews an offer they can't refuse.

Ehud Olmert better check his bed tonight. There might be a horse's head in it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments

Local shmocal: Today’s Harpoon Siddiqui is so convoluted that I don’t have the patience to try to untangle it. Let’s just say it has something to do with oppressed Thai Muslims, and how their struggle is entirely local and has absolutely no connection to—what’s that expression Harpoon is apt to shun?—oh, yeah, the global jihad. However, even though the Thai Muslims are acting locally, that doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the larger, um, global issues. During his recent excursion to the area—grist for his recent similarly impenetrable pieces—Harpoon had the chance to interview a Muslim (Arab?) Thai academic who apprised him of some local global concerns.

…"There's no evidence of any external involvement in the bombings and killings," wrote the ICG in May 2005.

The assessment has since been echoed by others, most notably a fact-finding mission from the Organization of Islamic Conference, the 57-member group of Muslim nations.

A similar view is offered by Imtiyaz Yusuf, professor of philosophy at Assumption University in Bangkok, author of Understanding Conflict and Approaching Peace in Southern Thailand .

In an interview here in Kuala Lumpur, he told me:

"The Americans seem keen to link the Thai rebellion to Al Qaeda. The Western media want to connect it to the Middle East. But the evidence is very weak. There is radicalization but it is not connected to Al Qaeda.

"The Thai Muslims did raise their voice against the Arab/Israeli dispute, and also about the Afghan and the Iraq wars. And Islam is indeed expressing itself after 30 years, with some vociferous voices."

But the rebellion is local, with links to fellow-Malay Muslims across the porous border to Malaysia.

"It is possible that some who may be involved in the rebellion do cross the border, and that some Malaysians fund the rebellion," says Yusuf. "The Thai government complains to Kuala Lumpur to do something."

That's like Baghdad and Washington blaming Iran and Syria for the mess of their own making in Iraq. Or, Kabul and Washington blaming Pakistan for the mess in Afghanistan.

So you mean even though they’re tucked away in a small corner of South Asia, Thai Muslims are consumed by thoughts of the Arab/Israeli dispute? Guess they’re not as parochial as they seem.

 

Harpoon concludes on an ominous note, warning of how a “local” jihad can suddenly merge with the larger jihad.

There's thus no end in sight to a local conflict which was posited as part of the "war on terrorism" and has indeed become a jihad with potential appeal to jihadists everywhere.

I know Harpoon is trying to scare us into backing off, but he’s actually succeeding in showing that the jihad is indeed global, and that it’s not going away any time soon.

 

Oops!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

A fly in the unguent: Uh oh. It looks like the Arab League summit which was supposed to sign off on that Saudi-sponsored “peace plan” has hit a bit of choppy water. (The plan in a nutshell: commit suicide, Israel, and you can have “peace.") Now King Abdullah seems to be backing off, not only from the “peace plan,” but from his “ally,” George Bush. From the L.A. Times via the Seattle Nation & World:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Bush administration attempts to revive Arab-Israeli peace talks and influence regional developments suffered a setback Wednesday as leaders at an Arab League summit, including the heads of state of several U.S. allies, condemned U.S. foreign policy.

Saudi King Abdullah II condemned the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq, and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa lamented "the absence of honest mediation" in the Arab-Israeli conflict, a shot at U.S. officials perceived as too pro-Israeli.

"In our beloved Iraq, blood is shed among brothers under ... illegitimate foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism that raises the threat of a civil war," the king said.

Experts on the Saudi kingdom were divided over the significance of Abdullah's comment, with one cautioning against reading too much into it and another calling the statement extraordinary, since the Saudis have officially recognized the Iraqi government and accepted post-invasion U.N. resolutions regarding Iraq.

Once among the Bush administration's most trusted allies, Abdullah has bucked the White House in recent months, inviting U.S. foe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Riyadh and cajoling the United States' Palestinian ally, Mahmoud Abbas, into joining a coalition government with Hamas, which the State Department lists as a terrorist organization…

Actually, I think the King’s words speak volumes about where his true sympathies really lie—and, despite having strolled hand-in-hand through the garden with Dubya that time, for obvious reasons, they’re definitely not with the U.S.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:58 | link | comments (1)

Doctor in the house: Miriam Garfinkle is a vocal Toronto physician who is extremely upset about the deteriorating conditions in Gaza, a situation she blames almost entirely on, guess who?, Israel. Here’s how Dr. Garfinkle and another self-described “health care professional,” Reem Abdul Qadir, laid out the problem in a recent article:

…As Canadian health care professionals, we are deeply troubled by the situation and worried for the future of the people of Gaza and especially these children. What will the long-term effects be of this endless trauma? What can we, as Canadians and health care professionals, do about it?

Resilient health care providers on the ground, like Dr. Mona El-Farra and Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, have been struggling to provide adequate grassroots primary health and mental health care in Gaza for years against these mounting odds. We have worked with a group of Palestinians and Jews in Toronto to organize a fundraiser to support the health care operations in which these physicians are involved. We are also insisting that the Canadian government restore and indeed increase its funding to Gaza.

We also demand that Israel stop its continued methods of collective punishment of civilians in direct contravention of international law. Ultimately there can be no solution to this horrific situation until there is an end to the military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which continues and indeed escalates, despite the 2005 pull-out of Israeli settlements.

There is both a public health and mental health crisis unfolding in Gaza at a breakneck pace. As human beings, as Canadians, as Jews and Palestinians, we all have a moral obligation and vital stake in protecting these children and giving them access to a viable future. The alternative is unthinkable.

And here’s Garfinkle’s letter that appears in today’s Globe and Mail under the heading “Growing crisis”:

 

The sewage disaster in Gaza (Deluge of Sewage Kills Five in Gaza Village—March 28)is the result of a deteriorating public health system and growing humanitarian crisis to which many people have been trying to draw attention. I hope that now Canada will finally see the need to help.

 

In fact, Canada has been helping, sending millions of dollars intended for humanitarian relief. Dr. Garfinkle is labouring under the misimpression that the crumbling infrastructure is ours and Israel’s fault. But since the problem that led to the disaster was pointed out to Palestinian authorities years ago when they were flush with our shekels, it’s evident she should be pointing her admonishing finger in another direction.

 

No doubt Dr. Garfinkle’s heart is in the right place. However, that’s the problem. Her compassion has apparently affected her powers of reason, compelling her to collectively blame the Jews of Israel for a problem that is exclusively Arab in origin. Meanwhile she considers as “collective punishment” Israel’s decision not to fund a regime which remains committed to its destruction.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:40 | link | comments

Don’t want to live like a “refugee”: An (imaginary) alumnus of the ’48 "naqba" sings a familiar Elvis tune:

I ran away in ’48, man.

They told be I could come back.

But almost sixty years later

My “right of return’s” not on track.

 

They promised me I’d
Return to splendour

In Palestine.

The Jews’d be dead now.

The land’d be mine.

 

Still got the keys to my door, man.

I haul them out once a year.

You know that I’m keepin’ score, man,

And my intentions are clear.

 

They promised me I’d
Return to splendour

In Palestine.

The Jews should be dead now.

The land should be mine.

 

I banked upon the intifada

To scare the dhimmis away.

But even with all the sha-hids

The Jews decided to stay.

 

I promise that I’ll
Return to splendour

In Palestine.

The Jews’ll be dead soon.

The land’ll be mine.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:05 | link | comments

Revolting “youths”: “Youths” of unspecified background are up to their old antics in Paree. This time about 100 or so are reported to have gone bananas at the Gare du Nord. Apparently, they were upset because police were so brazen as to ask a passenger to “show his ticket.”

Quel horreur!

 

Reason enough for the “youths,” already plenty mad at French authorities, especially Nicolas Sarkozy, to flex their youthful muscles.

 

But the best part of this story is how AP has so thoroughly sanitized the saga that there is nary a mention of the provenance of these youths, nor of those who rioted back in ’05. Are they Buddhists? Wiccans? Seventh Day Adventists?

 

Your guess is as good as mine:

PARIS, France (AP) -- France's opposition Socialists accused conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy of worsening tension between youths and police on Wednesday after clashes at a Paris train station overnight.

Local officials said the eight-hour long confrontation at the Gare du Nord was sparked when police arrested a 33-year old man who attacked staff who had asked him to show his ticket.

Youths at the station, which is a hub for trains to suburbs north of Paris, said police had manhandled the suspect and broken his hand. Hundreds of youths threw flower pots and bottles at police, shouting "Sarkozy hypocrite".

Police used tear-gas to disperse the youths. Thirteen people were arrested.

Sarkozy confirmed his status as a law-and-order hardliner in riots that hit the poor suburbs around Paris and other French cities in 2005, and the Socialists were quick to blame him for the climate of hostility between youths and police officers.

Delphine Batho, a Socialist official responsible for security, said Sarkozy was to blame for the difficulties police encountered when making arrests.

"On the one hand, there are hardcore offenders who want to control their territory. Secondly, there are the after-effects of the provocative habits and language of the interior minister, which has worsened the tensions," she told Le Parisien daily.

2005 riots

Sarkozy, who stepped down as interior minister on Monday to focus on his campaign, rejected the criticism.

"Shall we say it's the fault of police when someone starts a fight when they are asked for their ticket?" he said.

"I am not the interior minister. And I don't know what happened in detail. But the principal is that you cannot declare someone right who wants to pass without ticket and who beats a police officer," he told France Info radio.

The issues of security and immigration have taken center stage in past days as the April 22 first round in presidential elections approaches.

In an interview with Liberation daily which did not touch directly on the clashes, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal said Sarkozy had failed to resolve the crisis in Paris's poor suburban neighborhoods after the 2005 riots.

"There is a deep break in confidence between the youths of these neighborhoods and him," she said. "It's hard to incarnate the unity of the nation if some parts of the territory are inaccessible."

Youths angry about poverty and discrimination torched thousands of cars in November 2005 in the ethnically-diverse suburbs surrounding French cities, where unemployment often is 4 to 5 times the national average.

“Ethnically-diverse,” huh? More like “ethnically homogenous” in a largely bi-cultural country.

 

As for the pendantic Ms. Royale—she may well be the most verbally pretentious politician I have ever come across. “Incarnate the unity”? Who does she think she is—Michel Foucault?

 

And is it my imagination or is she blaming Nicolas Sarkozy for the existence of France’s no-go zones?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:44 | link | comments

Iran über alles: An editorial in the Chicago Tribune connects the dots between UN sanctions on Iran and Iran, in response, commandeering a British vessel:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled for some lectern-pounding at the UN last weekend. But he canceled at the last minute, blaming the United States for a visa snafu. Too bad. After last year's bravura tour of New York, we were hoping for a new set of flimsy denials about Iran's nuclear ambitions, further evasions on its funding for terrorism and fresh explanations of its deplorable threats against Israel. But Ahmadinejad stayed home and avoided personally witnessing not only another UN defeat but also fielding a lot of questions about what could be turning into a new hostage crisis. If he had come to New York, reporters could have asked him why Iran seized 15 British sailors and marines last Friday, stoking tensions in a region that, frankly, doesn't need any more crises.
 
Were the British forces taken as bargaining chips, to be exchanged for five Iranians captured in January by American forces in Iraq, as a Saudi-owned London-based newspaper reported? Were they seized to distract attention from a unanimous UN Security Council vote over the weekend, ratcheting up the sanctions on Tehran for its nuclear program? Or could this simply be a ham-handed warning to America and its allies that Western forces are operating in Iran's neighborhood, and Tehran can make things uncomfortable at will?

Perhaps Ahmadinejad would have impressed some New Yorkers, as he did last year, with his jaunty demeanor. But Ahmadinejad desperately needs a public relations victory not in New York, but in Iran. Many Iranians seem increasingly apprehensive as their country is driven into further isolation, diplomatically and economically. Capturing British forces, holding them incommunicado and interrogating them as spies probably plays well in a country that seeks to portray itself as a victim of Western aggression. But this is needlessly -- and reprehensibly -- provocative.

And there's evidence that Iran's belligerence is wearing thin in other parts of the world. On Monday, the presidents of Russia and China issued a joint statement calling on Iran to fulfill the Security Council's resolutions. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao said that their countries were ready to "search for a comprehensive, long-term and mutually acceptable solution to the Iranian nuclear problem." They stressed that the dispute should be resolved peacefully. But the subtext of the message was unmistakable: Two of Iran's major allies and trading partners are growing increasingly impatient.

Iran has argued for years that uranium enrichment is its right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It has brandished the treaty as some sort of bill of rights to enrich uranium. That's nonsense, of course. But now that the world is calling Iran's bluff, what do the mullahs do? They promptly begin to back out of agreements that the country pledged to follow in the same treaty. Iran announced on Sunday that it was partially suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

That would be a bigger threat if Iran were actually cooperating fully with the IAEA now. But it's not. Not even close. Just check the last, oh, half dozen reports from that agency on Iran. There's a long list of demands from the IAEA for information and documentation from Iran. Iran's response: Forget it.

Probably a good thing that Ahmadinejad skipped New York this time. His act, like his country's, is getting old.

Very old. I carbon date it to somewhere around 1939.

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

Spitting images: Ornery Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian and other-worldly American Idol contestant Sunjaya Malakar:

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:27 | link | comments (2)

Another “peace in out time” plan: The Arab League is about to rubber stamp the cockamamie Saudi scheme that would effectively put an end to the pesky Jewish state. They are calling it a “peace plan,” and the useful idiots in the mainstream media are are only too keen to play along with the fraud, the better to slam Israel should it dare reject such a "magnanimous" offer. (Memo to Olmert: beware of Arabs bearing peace gifts.) Here’s how two mainstreamers, Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon and his wife, Caroline Wheeler, the Globe and Mail’s tag team of Israel-bashers, relate the "good news."

CAIRO, JERUSALEM — Arab leaders gather in the Saudi capital of Riyadh today, swearing they will never amend their five-year-old land-for-peace offer to Israel.

But while the communiqué that the Arab League will issue at the end of their two-day meeting is expected to be written in unyielding language, many believe that the 22-nation group is nonetheless getting ready to bargain quietly.

The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was the brainchild of Saudi Arabia's then crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. Now the monarch of his oil-rich country, King Abdullah is breaking ground by thrusting his normally reclusive kingdom into the diplomatic spotlight.

Analysts believe that under his leadership, today's Arab League summit may be the first one since 2002 to serve up something besides strong coffee and stale rhetoric.

The Arab League is unlikely to bend to Israel's main demand: that it give up, before direct negotiations even begin, on the idea of allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1948 land in what is now Israel. But it's known that King Abdullah wants to send a signal to the Israelis that the peace offer is a serious one.

"The kingdom is keen that this summit should come out with one Arab voice toward issues of destiny, and in particular the Palestinian issue," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters. He said the Arab League needed to come up with solutions that are "compatible with what is dire and new."

What's dire and new in the eyes of the Sunni-ruled kingdoms of the Persian Gulf, as well as for U.S. allies such as Egypt and Jordan, is the rise of Iran.

Tehran's nuclear ambitions, as well as the sway it holds over the Shia Muslim communities across the region, have rebalanced the decades-old formula of Israel being the primary enemy of the Arab world.

The draft communiqué, according to the Reuters news agency, contains a call "to all Israelis to accept the initiative and seize the current opportunity to return to the direct and serious negotiating process at all levels."

Arab leaders can't go further than that, Dr. Gad said, because Arab public opinion is against making any concessions to Israel ahead of negotiations. The Palestinian government headed by Hamas, which has withheld comment on the Arab Peace Initiative, would also reject any changes to the text.

On the eve of the summit, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Arab countries to reassure Israel of its acceptance in the region by opening the 2002 initiative for further discussion.

"Such bold outreach can turn the Arab League's words into the basis of active diplomacy, and it can hasten the day when a state called Palestine will take its rightful place in the international community," she told a press conference in Jerusalem at the end of a regional tour that included stops in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt.

The highlight of her efforts was to extract a promise from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to meet once every two weeks for talks on daily life issues as well as to discuss what she called the "political horizon." She said, however, that she didn't expect such talks to bring about any breakthroughs in the near future.

University of Haifa historian Yair Hirschfeld said the idea of region-wide talks based on the Arab Initiative is innovative, but will face an uphill struggle because Israel has fundamental objections to some of its core principles.

The document calls for Israel to withdraw from all the land it obtained in the 1967 war, including key settlement blocks that Israel hopes to keep, and East Jerusalem, which Israel calls part of its indivisible capital.

Dr. Hirschfeld, who was also one of the architects of the Oslo accords, said the Saudi role may be key in calming conditions and bringing more radical groups onside ahead of any talks. King Abdullah recently negotiated a unity pact between Hamas and Mr. Abbas's Fatah faction that ended months of infighting.

Palestinian commentators, however, see a real opportunity for peace that could be wasted by an Israeli government that is too weak domestically to make tough compromises. Mr. Olmert's government has been dogged by scandals and public dissatisfaction with his handling of last summer's war against Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

"We are lucky to see all the Arab world united around one peace initiative, which is simply what Israel has waited for since 1967," said Sufian Abu Zaida, a senior Fatah official and former Palestinian cabinet minister.

"The problem is, in my opinion, that the Israeli government, because of the stories everybody knows, they have no mind to deal seriously with the situation now."

Thanks for your opinion, Mr. Fatah factotum (by way of Globe reporters who don't even bother to try hiding their anti-Israel bias), but here’s the real sticking point: your fearless leader’s insistence that Arabs have an Allah-given “right” to help themselves to Jewish land.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments (3)

The moral equivalence option: A choir in Victoria, B.C. is set to offer a unique interpretation of the biblical story of Samson. Instead of being a tale about an emasculated Jew who, in one last show of strength and rage, brings down a temple, it will become, get this, the story of a suicide bomber. From the National Post:

VICTORIA - In the Bible, Samson is a hero who used his superhuman strength to do God's will by pulling down pillars in a Philistine temple, killing thousands and himself in an act of vengeance.

But in what's sure to be a controversial interpretation of the story, a Victoria choir will next month present Samson as a suicide bomber.

Simon Capet, music director of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir, says he wanted to update Handel's Samson oratorio to be relevant to today's audiences by drawing comparisons to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

"We didn't want to just present the work as a simple morality tale," says Mr. Capet. "There is a social and political commentary here that's important."

While the music will not change, the setting of the oratorio will be 1946 Jerusalem. Mr. Capet says he chose the period to draw comparisons to the bombing of the British headquarters at the King David Hotel by the militant Zionist group Irgun in that year. Menachem Begin, who ordered the attack, would later become Israel's prime minister and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Capet says presenting Samson as a terrorist is not meant to offend anyone or point the finger at one group, but to challenge our notions of what a terrorist is.

"Is there any difference between pulling down a pillar or blowing a bomb?" asks Mr. Capet.

"Samson killed thousands of people. To show him in the traditional mythological sense does a disservice," Mr. Capet says.

The choir would not be the first to drawing comparisons between Samson and terrorism.

"There's a large focus on this right now, with Israel being presented as the Samson figure," says Andrew Rippin, dean of humanities at the University of Victoria and a specialist in Islamic studies. American journalist Seymour Hersh coined the term "the Samson option" in his book about Israel's development of a nuclear arsenal.

Shadia Drury, a philosophy professor and Canada Research Chair for Social Justice, recently compared Samson to World Trade Center bomber Mohammed Atta in a talk at UVic. In her book, Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics and the Western Psyche, she argues that terrorism is a biblical problem.

"The concept of a collective guilt is a flawed morality," she says. "The idea that 'We're on the side of God and everyone else is evil' has and always will be disastrous."

Ms. Drury says she thinks the choir's modern interpretation of Samson -- scheduled to run April 5, 7 and 8--is heroic…

Hey, Ms. Drury, how about this for an heroic concept--Samson as a Nazi and the Philistines as European Jews? Or Samson as an Afrikaner and the Philistines as black South Africans? Or, better yet, Samson as an Arab janjaweed and the Philistines as non-Arab Darfurians?

The possibilities are endless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:30 | link | comments (1)

Homage in Catalonia: Yesterday I posted a short piece from First Things about lame secular rituals in Catalonia. But even though Christianity seems to be in decline in these parts, another religion appears to be growing by leaps and bounds. From Islam Online:

MADRID — Faulting state statistics about the growing number of mosques, Muslims in the Spanish autonomous province of Catalonia said it is high time they established a grand mosque to meet the needs of the sizable minority instead of the dozens of prayer rooms and vaults that burst at the seams with worshippers.

"The government statistics are inaccurate because officials simply call vaults and underground prayer rooms mosques," Ali Al-Mukhtari told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, March 27.

He was referring to recent statistics released by the General Authority for Religious Affairs in Catalonia on the number of "mosques," churches and other places of worship in the posh Catalonia.

The statistics put at 169 the number of "mosques" in the province, saying that then mosques were established annually.

"They could not be called mosques," said Al-Mukhtari. "They are no more than 169 vaults and small prayer rooms in garages and basements."

Ahmed Zayen, a Spanish citizen of Moroccan origin, also questioned the state version.

"The government wants to leave the impression that mosques are on the rise and there is no need for Muslims to have a grand mosque," he said.

There are 800,00 Muslims in Catalonia, making up the bulk of the estimated 1.5 Muslims in Spain.

Islam is the second religion in the southern European country after Christianity.

Soon to be #1.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:19 | link | comments

“Peaceniks” head to Saudi summit: Excuse me while I puke. From Reuters:

RIYADH (Reuters) - Arab leaders arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday ahead of a summit set to revive a five-year-old plan to end decades of Israeli-Arab conflict at the heart of the region's problems.

The two-day Arab summit, due to open on Wednesday, is expected to renew an offer to the Jewish state of normal ties with all Arab countries if it withdraws from all territories it occupied in the 1967 war, accepts the creation of a Palestinian state and agrees to a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel to seize on the Arab offer, describing it as a last chance for Israel to live in a "sea of peace" across the Arab and Islamic world.

"This initiative simply says to Israel 'leave the occupied territories and you will live in a sea of peace that begins in Nouakchott and ends in Indonesia'," Abbas said, referring to the Mauritanian capital in West Africa and the southeast Asian country that is the Muslim world's most populous.

"If this initiative is destroyed, I don't believe there will be another opportunity in the future like this."

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Monday the plan will have a strong chance of winning international support and of reviving Israeli-Arab peace talks if adopted unanimously by all Arab leaders at the March 28-29 summit...

This initiative simply says to Israel 'we think you're dumb enough and desperate enough to fall for our latest ploy. In reality, we have no intention of ever allowing an atoll of Jewish sovereignty to exist in a sea of Islam that begins in Nouakchott and ends in Indonesia.'

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:53 | link | comments (3)

Bush doesn’t “get it”: That’s the only possible conclusion one can come to after reading the following Reuters story:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States plans to provide $59 million to strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard and support his new national security adviser, a long-time foe of Hamas.

Another $20 million will help fund any future Palestinian elections, infrastructure improvements at the Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel, and other non-security projects, according to U.S. government documents obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the money for Abbas and security adviser Mohammad Dahlan was meant to fuel divisions among Palestinians and undercut the unity government formed by the ruling Hamas Islamists and Abbas's Fatah faction.

$59.36 million security program was scaled back from an initial $86.4 million after Abbas joined forces with Hamas in a bid to end factional warfare and ease a Western aid boycott.

It is unclear whether the revised package will win U.S. congressional backing…

If there is any sanity in congress, it won't receive support.

 

Memo to the President and the befogged folks at Foggy Bottom: Abbas is about as “moderate” as Josef Goebbels. You are backing the wrong horse, guys, and it’s going to backfire, big time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:44 | link | comments

Extry, extry, read all about it/They’ve got a “new” plan and they’re gonna tout it: There’s a new quartet pushing peace at the old Palestine corral, and it’s as feckless and full of it as that other quartet. From the New York Sun:

There is a new American plan and great hope for peace among Arabs and Jews. I have read all about it and heard it on TV all day yesterday.

"We're at a critical juncture right now," David Makovsky, a Middle East expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy tells the New York Times. The Washington Post informs us that ‘‘the sense of urgency has built within the Bush administration as well" as Ms. Rice embarks on her fourth Middle East trip in four months. Several news reports quoted senior American officials speaking of a "new game plan" she carries.

There is more, too, in the shape of a quaint new ‘'Arab Quartet" — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, described by TV news as "all important" in Middle East peace efforts. These powers are meeting in grand style at the Cataract Hotel, which every press outlet has reminded us was made famous in Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile."

The platitudes of this new search are so many, so old, and so repetitive. Go back and check the late 1970s or the heyday of the Oslo accord fever of 1993, and you will encounter the same stuff: last chance, critical moment, now or never, the area is ready, etc.

Here is what is not new. The Arab Quartet is about as useless and toothless as the Arab League itself, none of whose members are prepared to recognize Israel's right to exist unconditionally. The Israelis are not about to pull out of the West Bank or the Golan Heights of Syria unconditionally, if at all.

Hamas and the other Islamic Palestinian Arab fanatics will continue to lob rockets into Israel. Hezbollah is preparing for the next round in Lebanon of fighting Israelis and Lebanese. The Palestinians will remain at each other throats in Gaza and the West Bank, regardless. Saudi Arabia is scared silly about Iran and the sectarian wars between Shiites and Sunnis on its borders, which is just about the only thing that matters in Riyadh. Egypt is steadily descending into a failed state where the succession to the post of 78-year-old dictator Hosni Mubarak promises to be messy. Jordan has virtually no role to play anywhere and no weight to speak of ever since it lost its West Bank to Israel. And the United Arab Emirates has never had any weight to begin with...

Same old bunkum repackaged by Arabs who are keen to see the demise of the Zionist entity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:31 | link | comments

Out of Gaza: Don’t look now but Egypt has left the building. From Middle East Newsline: 

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Egypt's military has quietly abandoned the Gaza Strip.

 

Israeli sources said the 100-member Egyptian military advisory delegation that arrived in the Gaza Strip in mid-2006 has been recalled. They said two generals have remained, but spend most of their time in Israel to ensure their safety from Palestinian attacks.

 

"The Egyptians have lost influence with the Hamas government and found that they were under constant threat," an Israeli source said. "Under such conditions, it was better to pull out the advisers."

 

The sources said an Egyptian security delegation formally remains in Gaza Strip. They said the delegation, led by Maj. Gen. Burhan Hamad, was comprised of a handful of personnel attached to the Egyptian Representative Office in Gaza City.

 

How bad must things be when even the Egyptians decide to skulk back to Cairo?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:22 | link | comments

Fear and intimidation in the air: A sensible editorial about the litigious, obnoxious imams (the ones who were thrown off a US Air flight last fall) in, of all places, USA Today:

…The lawsuit grew out of an incident last November when six Muslim clerics, returning from a religious conference in Minneapolis, were removed from a US Airways flight after passengers and crew raised alarms. The imams were questioned by authorities and released. The six say they are innocent victims of ethnic profiling for merely praying quietly in Arabic at the terminal.

Their lawsuit, filed earlier this month, accused the airline and Metropolitan Airports Commission of anti-Muslim bias. That was expected. What's unique and especially troubling, though, is the effort to identify an unknown number of passengers and airline employees who reported suspicions so they might also be included as defendants. For example, the imams want to know the names of an elderly couple who turned around "to watch" and then made cellphone calls, presumably to authorities, as the men prayed.

This legal tactic seems designed to intimidate passengers willing to do exactly what authorities have requested — say something about suspicious activity.

The imams' actions last November appeared to be either deliberately provocative or clueless as to how others might perceive them. Several passengers and crewmembers told authorities that the men loudly chanted "Allah" several times, cursed U.S. involvement in Iraq and switched their seat assignments. Three imams asked for seat belt extenders, which include a heavy metal buckle that could be used as a weapon, but left them on the floor.

Under the circumstances, the pilot made a reasonable judgment call to remove them from the plane. Some of the facts are in dispute: The imams deny making any anti-American remarks and say seats were changed to accommodate a blind cleric who might need assistance. They accuse the airline of slandering them.

US Airways can afford to defend itself and the crew in court. Passengers who notified authorities don't have those resources. Several lawyers have promised to represent such passengers for free. The American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a moderate Muslim group, will raise funds for their defense. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., has introduced a bill to shield from legal liability those who report suspicious behavior.

It shouldn't have to come to that, especially if a judge has the wisdom to throw out the complaints against the "John Doe" passengers before they're identified.

As for ethnic profiling — the reprehensible practice of discriminating solely based on ethnicity — this incident doesn't qualify. The imams were tossed off the plane because of suspicious behavior, which obviously can't be ignored. Suing passengers who merely report such behavior threatens everyone's ability to travel securely.

I think the editorial writer is giving them the benefit of the doubt by suggesting they were unaware of the effect their behaviour would have on others. I’m sure they knew exactly what they were doing, and deliberately set out to provoke the kind of action they did so they could launch a lawsuit—a lawsuit intended to intimidate people into keeping silent in the face of suspicious behaviour. Let’s hope that if and when this suit comes to court, the presiding judge exercises the same kind of wisdom as the US Air pilot did and throws the belligerent bums out.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments

Discontent in Gaza: They’re “pure.” They’re “clean.” But, according to a new poll, Palestinians say Hamas doesn’t have a clue about how to run a government. From the Jerusalem Post:

More than two thirds of Palestinians feel Hamas has failed at running the government, according to a poll conducted in the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported on Monday.

Over half of those surveyed felt that Hamas gave up a significant part of the group's election platform by joining the new unity government with Fatah.

In addition, less than a quarter of those surveyed said they would vote for the party again if elections were held now.

The poll also showed that nearly one third of Palestinians would emigrate to areas outside of the PA territories if they could.

The survey was published by the An-Najah University in Nablus.

I might be encouraged by the survey if not for the part about how joining up with Fatah has caused them to compromise their “election platform” Exactly which part of the platform are those surveyed upset about jettisoning? The plank where Hamas promises Allah to push the Jews into the sea?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments (1)

America’s mixed messages: Micah Halpern unpacks the confusing messages the Bush administration is emitting re Hamas. From FrontPage Magazine:

…Who can understand United States foreign policy when it is replete with mixed messages and convoluted communication?

Secretary of State Condi Rice just finished a set of meetings in the Middle East region with Palestinians and with Israelis. After her meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and the person responsible for creating a unity government with Hamas, Rice held a press conference. At the press conference the secretary of state, the highest ranking American diplomat, admitted that the United States of America will work towards a two-state solution and, she added, the United States will "work on Israel." The secretary of state said that the US is trying to create an independent and separate track of negotiations for a Palestinian state despite the new unity government led by Hamas.

The message delivered by Secretary of State Rice is simple and clear. So why the confusion?

The United States has said, sworn, affirmed and pledged not to meet with Hamas or any Hamas affiliates. And then the United States turns around and meets with Abbas and others in the Hamas Unity Government. And then the United States promises to do the utmost to help out that government create their ultimate goal, an independent state.

There's more. Israel has said that the Israeli government will not meet with anyone who meets with Hamas. Israel is saying, in other words, that it is now impossible to make a distinction between the groups, impossible to split up Hamas and Fatah. Israel is saying that once Fatah joined Hamas, Fatah became like Hamas.

Surprisingly, United Nations Secretary General Ban in an awkward nod to Israel would not meet with Hamas. But he did meet with Fatah members of the Hamas government. Personally, that is just what I would expect from the United Nation's top man.

Now it gets even more complicated and confusing.

The entire Arab world plus every member nation of the United Nations and all of Israel knows that the United States is Israel's strongest supporter. So just why is Israel's big brother making these pledges to the Palestinians and to the rest of the Arab world? Why?

The United States is being inconsistent and when that happens, everyone suffers, everyone gets hurt. Israel gets hurt because the United States is publicly, diplomatically, openly showing that the two nations no longer stand shoulder to shoulder on the question of Hamas. The Palestinians get hurt because they cannot possibly decipher what the United States really expects from them and that plays directly into the hands of the extremists i.e. Hamas. The Arab world gets hurt because double messages are doubly hard to read and the Arab world cannot possibly figure why the United States could care about the Palestinians when the Arab world could not care less.

Even the United States gets hurt. The United States is now perceived as flip-floppy and wobbly by a world that admires straight forward decisions and decisive action.

The Secretary of State is not to be blamed. In this instance, she really is only the messenger. This unfortunate change in policy comes directly from the White House. And this White House is not the first to fall victim to Hamas. The Clinton White House fell under the same spell. The belief that if you accommodate Palestinian leaders they will tame the terrorist leaders who will in turn exchange their suicide bombs for negotiating tables is naive, Pollyanna-ish and mistaken…

Still trying to turn a sow’s ear of a terrorist (Arafat, Haniyah) into a silk purse of a statesman. A more fruitless quest is impossible to imagine. Tragically, it seems that five years after the 9/11 attack, the Bushies have still not come to terms with the psyche of the enemy and the religious ideology that drives them. And that may well translate into catastrophe for us all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments (2)

Gleeful fascists: Remember way back when when a gloating fascist delighted in yanking the world’s chain, and the world responded with ever-more feckless rounds of diplomacy, culminating in a worthless piece of paper declaring “peace in our time”?

It’s baa-ack! From AP via the Washington Post:

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said Tuesday the 15 British sailors and marines it detained last week are healthy, have been treated in a humane manner and that the only female sailor among them had been given privacy.

"They are in completely good health. Rest assured that they have been treated with humanitarian and moral behavior," Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press.

Hosseini said the 26-year-old female sailor, Faye Turney, had complete privacy. "Definitely, all ethics have been observed," he said.

Hosseini would not say where the Britons were being kept and reiterated that their case is under investigation.

"The case should follow procedures," Hosseini said. "Media hyperbole will not help" speed resolution of the case.

Iran has said it is questioning the British sailors and marines to determine if their alleged entry into Iranian waters was "intentional or unintentional" before deciding what to do with them _ the first sign it could be seeking a way out of the standoff.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday he hopes diplomacy will win their release but is prepared to move to a "different phase" if not…

"A different phase," huh? How ominous. I'm sure the mullahs are quaking in their sheets.

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

Don’t know much about history: A keen student of modern history, is our Rosie O’Dious. First, she insists that 9/11 was a put up job by Americans bent on defaming poor Arabs, a pretext for invading first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Next, she decries American authorities for failing to recognize the “humanity” of Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, the bestial Jihadi who sliced off Daniel Pearl’s head. And on Monday, she rounds out her idiot’s guide to history by comparing Iran’s seizure of 15 British sailors to what occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. “Google it,” advises a smug Rosie to her clueless audience on The View.

Good advice. In so doing, it should become immediately evident that, aside from taking place on water, the two incidents have absolutely nothing in common.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:12 | link | comments

Perfidious Leeds: The other week the University of Leeds cancelled a lecture by a German academic. Prof. Matthias Kuntzel was set to discuss the relationship between the Nazis and Islamic antisemitism, but his talk was cancelled because of concerns over “security.” In fact, as Melanie Phillips recounts, there were no security issues. The university, known to be a particularly unpleasant place to study these days if you’re a Jew but a swell campus for Muslims and non-Muslims who express vocal disdain for Israel, invented the security issue because it didn’t want to disturb their clueless students by exposing them to the truth.

Here’s what the Professor would have said, if only he’d been given the chance:

…He argues that the alliance between the Nazis and the Arabs of Palestine infected the wider Muslim world, not least through the influence of the Nazi wireless station Radio Zeesen which broadcast in Arabic, Persian and Turkish and inflamed the Muslim masses with Nazi blood libels laced with Arabic music and quotes from the Koran.

Subsequently, this Nazified Muslim antisemitism was given renewed life by both the Egyptian President Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the intellectual inspiration for both Hamas and much of the current jihad against the west.

So what exactly is the ‘correct balance’ that this account fails to strike? Indeed, Küntzel makes the eminently balanced claim that this history shows there is nothing inevitable about Muslim antisemitism, which is merely Nazism in new garb.

The link he makes is no more than the demonstrable truth. But clearly, it is not possible to speak this truth at Leeds university. And the reason for this is surely that it draws a straight line between today’s Islamic world and Hitler’s Germany.

Indeed, Küntzel sees a seamless connection between Nazism and the jihad against the west. Hitler, he says, fantasised about the toppling of the skyscrapers of New York, the symbol of Jewish power. And the Hamburg trial of terrorists associated with 9/11 heard evidence that New York had been selected for the atrocity because it was a ‘Jewish city’.

For Islamists, however, such a connection threatens the image they have so assiduously cultivated for themselves as the victims of prejudice.

For their appeasers, it destroys the illusion that Islamist extremism arises from rational grievances such as the war in Iraq or ‘Islamophobia’. Worse still, those on the left who march shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists are thus exposed as the allies of Nazism…

In other words, he would have held up a mirror and would have forced the useful idiots to look at the truth of their own hideous reflection. No wonder the university shut him down.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:43 | link | comments

Fraught with meaning: An Expatica headline informs us that at this very moment Saharan sand sweeps across Belgium. 

Highly symbolic, don’t you think?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:19 | link | comments (1)

More common sense from First Things: This time about woefully misguided pundit Dinesh D’Souza, who thinks American conservatives should link arms with “moderate” Muslims to fight their common enemy—Western immorality:

“In order to defeat the Islamic radicals abroad,” writes Dinesh D’Souza, “we must defeat the enemy at home.” That is the argument of his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. Mr. D’Souza is undoubtedly right that radical Jihadists exploit—among many other things they exploit—the pervasiveness of pornography, sexual licentiousness, and other depravities America exports through its commanding role in the global media. And there is in this country an intense and open-ended conflict, commonly called a culture war, between “the cultural left” and its opponents. But to suggest that those associated with the cultural left are “the enemy” in a way comparable to al-Qaeda and its allies are the enemy is over the top. The “responsibility for 9/11” rests solidly with the international network of Jihadists who have declared their determination to use any means necessary to defeat the U.S. and force the world’s submission to Islam. The idea that they or the millions of Muslims sympathetic to them will have a change of heart about American and the West if only we put our house in moral order is not persuasive. More troubling is the implication that America, if only the American left, is responsible for the war being waged by the Jihadists. Recall the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s speech at the 1984 Republican convention and the “blame-America-first crowd.” That crowd is large enough as it is. There’s no call for self-identified conservatives to join it.

 

Hear, hear. The argument that “it’s about us, not them” makes no sense whether it comes from the left or the right.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:34 | link | comments

Empty ceremony: One big drawback of secularism is that it makes for mighty shallow—not to mention vacuous, vapid, vacant and lame—rituals. From the April issue of periodical First Things: 

From the French Revolution’s Temple of Reason to the Soviet Union’s ritulalized rites of passage, the godless have contrived ersatz ceremonies in poignant tribute to the absence of God. In that tradition, the government of the Spanish region of Catalonia has produced a “Civil Ceremonial Manual.” Noting that the number of civil marriages has surpassed the number of Catholic marriages, the government explains that “the concept of God has been strongly questioned from all points of view.” The substitute baptismal rite includes suggested readings from sources such as Pablo Neruda and Charlie Chaplin, along with music by Cat Stevens, Louis Armstrong and the Beatles. Provision is also made for the participation of “godparents.” The rite for those who commit suicide of choose to be euthanized is called a “Farewell Ceremony” and includes “a loving and fraternal embrace.” At the burial, friends may talk about “his or her more human or even humorous side, which helps to relieve the tension.” Confronted by the awesomely ultimate reality of mortality and the meaning, if any, of life, the least we can do is to relieve the tension.

 

Then again, there are some religious rituals which are imbued with a little too much significance, if you know what I mean.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:25 | link | comments

Banking on jihad: Any doubts as to whether UN is in thrall to the bad guys should be laid to rest by this story. By Anne Bayefsky on the NRO site:

The United Nations’ nourishment of terrorism (a concept it has yet to define) reached a new low last Friday. On March 23, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly’s Sixth Committee — its lead legal body comprised of all 192 member states — recommended that observer status be granted to the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB), an entity that has been directly involved in paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Back in August of 2001, Ahmad Muhammad Ali, president of the bank, was questioned by the publication Asharq Al-Awsat about payments to the Palestinian Authority for the sake of carrying out the intifada. Ali told the publication that “there was no delay in paying financial assistance to the families of Palestinian martyrs,” assuring it, “We have started paying them soon after receiving the money.”

An Arab Summit in Cairo in late October of 2000 created two funds, the Al-Quds Intifadah Fund and the Al-Aqsa Fund. According to Ali, the IDB is responsible “for the smooth functioning of the two funds.” The final communiqué of the summit made no attempt to conceal the purpose of the funds: “the Al-Quds Intifadah Fund will have a capital of 200 million dollars to be allocated for disbursement to the families of Palestinian martyrs fallen in the Intifadah.”

The creation of a fund dedicated to making suicide-bombing financially appealing was the brainchild of then Crown Prince, now King, Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. He announced the move at the Arab League Summit thus:

[W]e propose the establishment of a special trust under the name of ‘The Jerusalem Intifada Fund’ with a capital of 200 million US dollars. This amount will be allocated, to the families and the education of the children of the Palestinian martyrs who sacrificed their lives in the struggle.

(That “education” is one that will certainly include the glorification of the violent and racist goals of the children’s parents.)…

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:13 | link | comments (1)

Short lived: At the same time that Ontario ombudsman Robert Marin was detailing OLC malfeasance, a coroner in Florida was detailing the drugs that were found in the body of Anna Nicole Smith (nee Vickie Lynn Hogan—and didn’t she parlay those hogans into one exceptionally pathetic career?) Three kinds of anti-anxiety drugs. An anti-depressant. Methadone. Vicodan. An anti-biotic. Tamiflu. Diet drugs. Chloryl hydrate. And the one that, sorry, made me laugh out loud—some type of growth hormone she took for, and I’m not making this up, “longevity.” The growth hormone was part of an exotic cocktail that her creepy partner, Howard K. Stern, one of the many candidates for paternity of her infant daughter, used to inject on a regular basis into her butt.

“Longevity,” huh? How long was she expecting to live with all that other chazerei in her system? (Note: I promise you, this is the last time I will ever mention ANS.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:17 | link | comments (1)

Lottery fraud: There are those who call government revenues earned from government-sanctioned lotteries “a tax on the stupid.” After listening to Ontario ombudsmen Robert Marin blistering attack on the systemic culture of corruption at the Ontario Lottery Corporation—corruption which resulted in lottery retailers defrauding the system and rightful ticket winners of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe it should be called “a tax on the all-too trusting.” From the National Post:

TORONTO – Ontario lottery customers are vulnerable to fraud by retailers, a fact the provincial body who runs the system has known and ignored for years, ombudsman Andre Marin said Monday.

“The OLG is fixated on profit rather than on public service,” he told reporters Monday. “It is too close to its retailers, who are not just its frontline sales force but some of its best customers. It has lost site of the fact that it is supposed to be a guardian of the public trust.”

Chief among his 23 recommendations is that the OLG relinquish its role as regulator of the industry, a role he believes profoundly conflicts with its position as owner of the system. Other suggested reforms include the prescreening of retailers and a zero tolerance policy for theft and fraud.

The report was prompted by the story of Bob Edmonds, a 78-year-old small town Ontario native who was swindled out of a $250,000 prize by a corner store owner who claimed the prize for herself.

The report prompted the surprise departure of the corporation’s Chief Executive, Duncan Brown, last week.

Mr. Marin’s report, titled “A Game of Trust,” states at least 247 retail owners or their employees have won major lottery prizes since 1999. The claimants took home between $250,000 and $12.5 million.

"It's morally reprehensible," said Mr. Marin. "There's a climate in place which is quite lax, not one that discourages this kind of behaviour."

In 2003 and 2004, the OLG identified five suspicious major wins by “insiders” yet only one of the claimants was denied a prize. Mr. Marin reports the former head’s response to concerns was, in one case, “sometimes you hold your nose.”

“Instead of investigating what went wrong, as a good public servant would, it (OLG) reacted like a business facing a public relations nightmare,” Mr. Marin said.

Ontario’s lottery business took in almost $2.4-billion in 2006

And now, because of all the nose-holding, the OLG and the Ontario government are facing a public relations nightmare—and a funding calamity, since lottery earnings go towards hospitals, schools and other social infrastructure—as they endeavour to undo the harm and restore the public’s trust.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:48 | link | comments (4)

Striving to banish the beating: The International Herald Tribune has an article about Laleh Bakhtiar, the woman who has recently completed a new English translation of the uncreated word of God. But just because it was recited sura by sura to the Prophet doesn’t mean there isn’t any wiggle room. For example, Ms. Bakhtiar has figured out a way to reinterpret one of the perfect scripture’s more problematic passages, the one where men are advised not to spare the rod when their womenfolk get uppity:

…The hotly debated verse states that a rebellious woman should first be admonished, then abandoned in bed and ultimately "beaten" - the most common translation for the Arabic word "daraba" - unless her behavior improves.

"I decided it either has to have a different meaning, or I can't keep translating," said Bakhtiar, an Iranian-American who adopted her father's Islamic faith as an adult and had not dwelled on the verse before. "I couldn't believe that God would sanction harming another human being except in war."

Bakhtiar worked for five more years, with the translation, which is to be published in April. But while she found a way through the problem, few verses in the Koran have generated as much debate, particularly as more Muslim women study their faith as an academic field.

"This verse became an issue of debate and controversy because of the ethics of the modern age, the universal notions of human rights," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian-born law professor and Islamic scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The leader of the North American branch of a mystical Islamic order, Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, said he had been questioned about the verse in places around the world where women were struggling for greater rights, but most of all by Westerners.

Women want to be free "from some of the extreme ideology of some Muslims," Kabbani said, after delivering a sermon on the verse recently in Oakland, California.

In Germany last week, a judge citing the verse caused a public outcry after she rejected the request for a fast-track divorce by a Moroccan-German woman because her husband beat her. The judge, who was removed from the case, wrote that the Koran sanctioned physical abuse.

There are at least 20 English translations of the Koran.

Daraba has been translated as beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce.

"Spank?" exclaimed Fadl, who has concluded that the verse refers to a rare public legal procedure that ended before the 10th century. "That is really kinky. That is the author fantasizing too much."

Bakhtiar, who is 68 and has a doctorate in educational psychology, set out to translate the Koran because she found the existing versions inaccessible by Westerners. Many Jewish and Christian names, for example, have been Arabized, so Moses and Jesus appear in the English version of the Koran as Musa and Issa.

When she reached the problematic verse, Bakhtiar spent the next three months on daraba. She does not speak Arabic, but she learned to read the holy texts in Arabic while studying and working as a translator in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1970s and '80s.

Her eureka moment came on roughly her 10th reading of Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century, she said. Among the six pages of definitions for daraba was "to go away."

"I said to myself, 'Oh, God, that is what the prophet meant,' " said Bakhtiar, speaking in the offices of Kazi Publications in Chicago, a mail-order house that is publishing her translation.

"When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn't beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?"…

Here’s my eureka moment: Ms. Bakhtiar is suffering from a severe case of denial as to what the prophet would and would not do. A strange thing to say about someone who just spent the past half decade translating the document which details the prophet’s exploits. And she’s dreaming in Technicolor if she thinks her translation of the word—one she cherry-picked out of six—six!—pages of synonyms—will remedy the problems faced by Muslim women because of Islamic doctrine.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:19 | link | comments (1)

Jude verboten: Saudi Arabia—you know, the custodian of the two mosques, the mystical, magical Kingdom that practices gender and infidel apartheid as well as a whackadoodle brand of Islam called Wahabism—is supposed to have cooked up an intriguing “peace” plan. And some receptive internationalists are supposed to be hastening to the Saudi capital to hear what the unctuous Sheiks have to say. Unfortunately, one of their party, an Israeli journalist, isn't going to be allowed into the country. The oily ones aren’t saying why she’s been denied entry, but you know and I know that they probably don’t want  her Zionist-Jew-Devil cooties to defile their pure and holy soil.

And we’re supposed to entertain a “peace plan” from these hateful bigots?

 

From the New York Times:

CAIRO, March 24 — Saudi Arabia has barred entry to a Washington-based Israeli journalist traveling with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on his current Middle East tour, the United Nations said today.

Mr. Ban is going to Riyadh on Tuesday for two days of the summit meeting of the League of Arab States.

Orly Azoulay, the Washington bureau chief of Yediot Aharonot, was unable to obtain a visa to Saudi Arabia despite assurances the Saudi mission in New York gave the United Nations last week, said Michéle Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman.

Ms. Montas said that both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia initially refused to grant Ms. Azoulay a visa, but that Lebanon had dropped its objections last week and given her the needed stamp.

Ms. Azoulay, 53, an Israeli-born dual citizen of France and Israel, sought the visa on her French passport. She said she had traveled during the past two years to Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan and had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2000 with correspondents covering then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

When the Saudi consulate in New York returned the passports of the 11 news reporters and broadcasters to United Nations headquarters on Friday afternoon, only Ms. Azoulay’s bore no Saudi visa. Ms. Montas said this occurred despite repeated appeals to the Saudis during the week from Vijay Nambiar, Mr. Ban’s chief of staff.

Mr. Azoulay joined the trip in London on Thursday, and Ms. Montas said that the United Nations had been told that the visa might come through while the United Nations group proceeded to Cairo and Jordan.

In recent days, though, she said, the Saudi mission did not return calls from United Nations officials, and they have now concluded that Ms. Azoulay will be not be allowed to accompany the United Nations group to Riyadh…

If the UN had any stones—which, as we all know, it doesn’t—it would scotch the entire visit.

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

What price peace?: The Muslim invasion of Europe that was stymied twice before—once by Charles Martel in 732 and once at the gates of Vienna in 1683—is more or less a fait accompli (prompting an apparently senile Bernard Lewis, grand poobah of Islam scholarship, to quip, “Third time lucky?”) But the foolish EUnuchs are crowing about their “50 years of peace.”

Big whoop. The “peace” they’re signed on to is the kind that pertains when the one true faith is in the driver’s seat. And it has come at the highest possible cost: their freedom.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments (1)

Soros-cide: Forget the nukes. Israel will probably be destroyed long before they drop by a cadre of clueless, malevolent leftists.  By Caroline Glick in JWR:

…Since 2003, [George] Soros has donated more than $100 million to radical left wing groups and to the political campaigns of far-left anti-war Democratic candidates in the US. His money has made him one of the most influential forces in the Democratic Party.

 

After Hamas won the Palestinian election last January, Soros turned his guns against Israel. Last October he announced his intention to work with left wing American Jewish groups such as Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, American Friends of Peace Now, and the Israel Policy Forum to form an effectively anti-Israel lobbying group that will compete with the pro-Israel American-Israel Public Action Committee. Soros accuses AIPAC of making common cause with the war hawks and so harming US and Israeli national security.

 

This week Soros laid out his anti-Israel views in the New York Review of Books. In a longwinded screed entitled, "On Israel, American and AIPAC," Soros presents an incoherent hodge-podge of sloppy logic and contradictory statements.

 

On the one hand, he acknowledges that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza radicalized the Palestinians and brought Hamas to power. On the other hand, he insists that further Israeli withdrawals will cause the Palestinians to moderate. While he acknowledges that Hamas is a terror group, he insists that the US must recognize it and force Israel to recognize it and that AIPAC is responsible for neither recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political force in the region.

 

Soros claims to want peace for Israel. Yet he demands that the US and Israel embrace the Saudi plan which calls for Israel's effective destruction through a forced Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and the Golan Heights and the demographic destruction of the Jewish state through unimpeded immigration of 4-5 million foreign-born Arabs.

 

In effect, Soros's arguments make clear that protestations aside, the advancement of human rights and peace cannot possibly be his true goals. Rather, what seems to interest him most is the erosion of the US-Israel alliance. A US abandonment of Israel is seen as a necessary component of an overall strategy for causing the US to cease its fight against the global jihad.

 

In her visit here in Jerusalem next week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to pressure the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to continue diplomatic contacts with the Hamas-Fatah terror government through PA Chairman and Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas. In light of the administration's weakening stand on Hamas, it is clear that Soros's views have taken hold in ever-widening policy circles in Washington.

 

In advancing their anti-Israel views, Soros and his allies, (most recently, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof), invoke the work of radical leftist Israeli organizations like the Geneva Initiative, B'tselem and Peace Now. Like Soros, these organizations claim to act for the advancement of peace and human rights. And like Soros, these organizations effectively cooperate with pro-jihadist groups in eroding Israel's ability to defend its rights as a Jewish democracy…

 

Cultural Marxism in action, working hand-in-glove with jihadism to erode Western civilization. Sort of like a latter-day Stalin-Hitler pact that’s just as evil but suffused with a lot more self-righteousness.

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

Arse wipes: As the Goredolotrous ecophobes become even more hysterical, they are resorting to all sorts of ridiculous tactics, convinced that in so doing they will somehow save the planet.

The New York Times describes the efforts of one such couple, dunderheads who hail from the chattering classes. They have decided that Earth’s survival hinges on their resolving to eschew toilet tissue for a year, among several other largely pointless pursuits:

…Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.

Mr. Beavan, who has written one book about the origins of forensic detective work and another about D-Day, said he was ready for a new subject, hoping to tread more lightly on the planet and maybe be an inspiration to others in the process.

Also, he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell. This being 2007, Mr. Beavan is showcasing No Impact in a blog (noimpactman.com) laced with links and testimonials from New Environmentalist authorities like treehugger.com. His agent did indeed secure him a book deal, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and he and his family are being tailed by Laura Gabbert, a documentary filmmaker and Ms. Conlin’s best friend…

Oh, so you mean it’s not a completely selfless attempt to minimize his carbon footprint? It’s actually a brazen attempt to rake in some shekels so he can maintain the lifestyle to which he became accumstomed prior to starting this idiotic “experiment”?

 

In that case, I’m sure the Goracle would approve. (Although, if they aren't using toilet paper, I'm not so sure he'd want to hang out with them.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:28 | link | comments (2)

Mahditalky: With apologies to Lewis Carroll:

 

'Twas thrillig that the slimy Moo

Did jeer and gibber in the wake.

All shifty were the diplomoids

And the Ban Ki-moon doth quake.

 

“Beware the Mahdi talk, my son!

The barbs that bite, the claims that splash!

Beware the “Jew-Jew” squalk and shun

The furious balderdash!”

 

He took his glowgreat nuke in hand:

Long time the max’mum blow he sought—

So rested he by the unranie,

And pondered ‘fore he fought.

 

And, in huffish frame he stood.

The Mahdi talk spewed from his maw.

And rapturous, in an auragreen

He vented ‘bout his law.

 

One, two! Kill the Jew! And through and through

The glowgreat nuke went blister-black!

And once the ent’y had no ident’y

He’d come galumphing back.

 

“And has thou slain the Mahdi talk?”

“Of course not, he returneth nigh!

O frabjous war! Allahu Akbar!”

He chortled low and high.

 

‘Twas thrillig that the slimy Moo

Did jeer and gibber in the wake.

All shifty were the diplomoids

And the Ban Ki-moon doth quake.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:27 | link | comments

No Moo: The hairy Islamic Hitler says he won’t be coming to speak at the UN after all. He blames the U.S. for purposely failing to send him a visa on time. But a State Department spokesman says that’s simply not so, and that Moo’s decision to stay behind is entirely his own.

Who’s telling the truth?

 

Does it matter? The important thing is that Moo won't get his chance to hyperventilate for the world's cameras in front of a captive audience at the Security Council.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:38 | link | comments

The infamy of the UN: It was meant to be a beacon of hope, a champion of human rights, a force for good in a world where good was in desperately short supply. Instead, it has become corrupt, bloated, morally bankrupt, the catamite of dictators, and completely feckless save for its facilitation of Islamic-fascism and Jew-hatred; in that effort it has proven extremely effective.

Here’s the speech Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of the NGO United Nations Watch, delivered yesterday to the 4th plenary session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. From the National Post:

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, the UN Commission on Human Rights was created. Today, we ask: What has become of that noble dream? In this session we see the answer. Faced with reports from around the world of torture and persecution, what has the council pronounced, and what has it decided? Nothing. Its response has been silence.

One might say, in Harry Truman's words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council. But that would be inaccurate. This council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning a single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements, Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world -- millions of victims, in 191 countries --is ignored.

The corrupt dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you that they seek to protect human rights --Palestinian rights. But do they truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights -- they say nothing. Little three-year-old Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Hamas troops. Why has this council chosen silence? Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the despots who run this Council couldn't care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders' dream? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

And a nightmare, alas, from which we cannot awaken.

 

Fifty-nine years ago, in a moment of weakness occasioned by guilt over the extermination of Europe's Jews, the UN signed off on the establishment of the Jewish state. It has been doing its damndest to try to tear it down ever since.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:50 | link | comments

Naked backbone: Some laudable anti-dhimmitude from the University of Western Ontario. It is refusing to grant a Muslim student a credit for an art course she took because she wouldn't participate in the portion of the course that included “life studies”—i.e. sketching a nude model. The student had offered to receive a “zero” for that portion, and had presented a letter from a Muslim chaplain explaining that looking at naked chicks you’re not wed to is “un-Islamic” (and odd argument to make since the student in question is female), but the university refused to budge. And that made the would-be artiste very, very upset. By Michael Valpy in the Globe and Mail:

She recalled becoming emotional and starting to cry as she pleaded with her professor and chair of the department to be allowed to take the course without drawing nudes.

In any event, she graduates this spring without nude drawing in her résumé. "I don't think it's such an essential part of the work," she said.

A report on discrimination against Muslim students made public this week by the Canadian Federation of Students calls it "one of the most egregious stories" of a university refusing to accommodate diversity.

“Accommodate diversity”—a phrase designed to appeal to tender-hearted multicultists who may not realize it’s actually a demand that one accommodate oneself to Islamic law. Thankfully, the university isn’t falling for it:

Kathleen Okruhlik, UWO's dean of arts and humanities, sees it differently, and takes issue with the accuracy of aspects of the student federation's report. In the past, she said, it has been conservative Christians asking for exemption from certain instruction. Now it is Muslims.

The issue touches on a heated controversy in Quebec under the heading of accommodement raisonnable, or reasonable accommodation, for religious minorities. Premier Jean Charest has created a public inquiry to examine how far the majority should go in a liberal pluralistic democracy to accommodate minorities.

Ms. Okruhlik said the university allows students to do substitute life drawing projects in introductory courses because it is recognized that, if they don't get through the introductory course, they will be barred from going further.

"But for advanced courses for drawing and painting, we decided we couldn't alter the curriculum for Muslim students or anybody else. It doesn't keep anybody out of visual arts. It will keep some people later on out of specific drawing and painting courses. In those courses, drawing from life models is absolutely critical. It's such an important part of the tradition to be able to represent the human body."

Ms. Okruhlik said she and her academic colleagues have dealt with Christian students who don't want to read Henry Miller (who wrote detailed accounts of sexual experiences) or literature that portrays homosexuality favourably.

"And we say to those students, 'No, we value diversity and plurality, but we also value academic freedom. So if you want to take this course, you have to read the assigned reading,' she said.

"It's hard for us to see how equal treatment means we can say to some students, 'No, I'm sorry you have to read that novel that portrays homosexuality in a favourable light -- but, no, you don't have to do that drawing.' "

Bravo, Ms. Okruhlik. But you’d better steel yourself for the fallout because I have a feeling CAIR-CAN and the Canadian Islamic Congress are going to have something vociferous to say about it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments (1)

What I learned in the Toronto Star: Always a wealth of misinformation, is the Atkinson-principled multicultist rag. And were I to esteem it as an authoritative source, as do far too many avid readers, I would have discovered, courtesy Mitch Potter, the Star’s Middle East correspondent, that Islamism isn’t so scary; it’s merely another political option, an alternative to the democracy that Arabs are rejecting because it’s so alien and American. Moreover, women in Arab counties, like Luna Rajab, a well-educated, professional from Syria, are rejecting the West and “Embracing their faith” (yes, that’s actually the headline when the lengthy article continues on an inside page—doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside?).

But let’s allow Ms. Rajab to explain her decision to don the hijab, a move that isn’t sitting too well with her non-Islamist mishpacha. When a friend of hers, a Syrian journalist, “snarls” (Mitch Potter’s verb) that, “Yes, in our family we educate our women…But when they grow up their job is to chop carrots,” Ms. Rajab responds unsnarlingly:

 

“These attitudes exist, but they have nothing to do with the real Islam. Here in the Arab world there is a tendency to blame outsiders for all our problems. But to take this attitude is to admit you are powerless to change things…

 

“Well, I want to be part of the change. If we study the era of the Prophet Muhammad we know women were strong participants in society. And then somewhere along the way we fell into decline, poverty, neglect and deterioration. Islamic values were scrambled and mixed up with tribal and traditional social habits. And out of this came men who want to lock away their women in the name of Islam.”

 

Oh, brother. Or should I say, oh, sister? Ms. Rajab wants to go on a fruitless quest to uncover something that does not exist, that has never existed: an Islam which accords women the same respect and value as men. What a foolish, deluded woman.

 

(Coincidentally, I wrote the Globe and Mail a letter on much the same subject this week, in response to a letter by a Muslim woman from Edmonton:

 

Yasmin Quraishi-Nizam contends that the problems confronting Muslim women in certain unspecified countries are entirely cultural and have nothing to do with Islamic doctrine. As evidence, she mentions that women’s property rights are enshrined in the Koran—rights which women in the West achieved many centuries later. However, there are also numerous passages in the Koran which are far less, shall we say, egalitarian. These passages hold that women are lesser creatures who must always heed their husbands; who must be sexually available to them on demand; who can be beaten if they demur or are recalcitrant about following other instructions; who are responsible should they be raped; and whose testimony in court is worth exactly half that of a man.

 

Ms. Quraishi-Nizam is correct when she says that the treatment of Muslim women tends to vary from country to country, but that is because some “cultures”—like the one in Saudi Arabia, for example—follow Islamic law more rigorously than others. And in those cultures, women are bound by inequitable strictures which have not advanced an iota since the Middle Ages.)

 

Along with Mitch Potter’s informative whitewash, the Star has thoughtfully included a sidebar about the movement that gave rise to modern "political Islam," the Muslim Brotherhood. You may have heard that the Brotherhood is a group of fanatical jihadists who want to turn restore the caliphate and turn back the clock to a (fictional) pristine era of Islamic perfection, but, Allah forefend, you won’t read stuff like that here. According to the Star, the Muslim Brotherhood is

 

the main source of inspiration for many Islamist organizations in Egypt and several other Arab countries, including Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Sudan and Yemen. It was formed to link tradition with modernity, to promote social reform based on Islamic ethos, and to oppose political and social injustice and British imperialism.

 

Promote social reform? Oppose political and social injustice? Why, the Muslim Brotherhood sounds exactly like…the Star’s readers! A veritable Amnesty International, Islamic style.

 

If you told me they also want to save the whales and free Tibet, I might just send them a donation.

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

Putrid boullaibaisse: In honour of their 50^th birthday tomorrow, the EUnuchs have crafted a lofty declaration—a state of their union, so to speak. Not surprisingly, this being an EU document and all, it is far more notable for what it excludes than for what it includes. From the International Herald Tribune:

BRUSSELS: The European Union's 50th birthday declaration — meant to unite the 489 million citizens of the EU behind the ideals of a unified Europe — is a three-page document that avoids mentioning the faltering constitution, has no reference to religion and does not affirm the bloc's further expansion, according to a draft copy obtained Friday.

The declaration was conceived by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to help the 27-member Union overcome the drift that has plagued the bloc since the French and the Dutch rejected the proposed constitution two years ago. It will be the centerpiece at celebrations this weekend in Berlin that will also include a Muslim-Catholic hip-hop group from Denmark, a Beethoven performance and free beer and sausages on the streets.

But rather than unifying Europe, the document celebrating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome appears to highlight its divisions.

Poland, a large Catholic country, pleaded unsuccessfully for the declaration to mention the Christian roots of Europe. Britain, which has retained its currency, the pound, lobbied for the document to downplay the euro. France and the Netherlands — whose voters rejected the constitution — insisted that it omit mention of the charter.

The result, some EU officials said, is a compromise document that is pithy and concise by EU standards but as unlikely to cause offense as it is to inspire. "We have ended up with a fish soup that has ingredients for almost everybody, but no taste," Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, said Friday. "People will shrug and say, 'So what?'"…

I think the eloquent M. Cohn-Bendit put it very well.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:31 | link | comments (1)

Madness: Utter madness.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:17 | link | comments

A new spin: I have been saying for some time that Islam’s Achilles heel is its treatment of women. Now, some Muslim feminists are trying to give the Koran a, um, pedicure in an effort to bring in line with more modern thinking. From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new English-language interpretation of the Muslim Holy book the Koran challenges the use of words that feminists say have been used to justify the abuse of Islamic women.

The new version, translated by an Iranian-American, will be published in April and comes after Muslim feminists from around the world gathered in New York last November and vowed to create the first women's council to interpret the Koran and make the religion more friendly toward women.

In the new book, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, a former lecturer on Islam at the University of Chicago, challenges the translation of the Arab word "idrib," traditionally translated as "beat," which feminists say has been used to justify abuse.

Why choose to interpret the word as 'to beat' when it can also mean 'to go away'," she writes in the introduction to the new book.

The passage is generally translated: "And as for those women whose illwill you have reason to fear, admonish them; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them; and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!"

Instead, Bakhtiar suggests "Husbands at that point should submit to God, let God handle it -- go away from them and let God work His Will instead of a human being inflicting pain and suffering on another human being in the Name of God."

Some Muslims said the new interpretation strayed from the original. Omar Abu-Namous, imam at the New York Islamic Cultural Center Mosque, questioned Bakhtiar's interpretation…

You don't say. Something tells me the by-the-book gang isn't going to stand for a bunch of uppity females messing with the uncreated word of God.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:32 | link | comments

Iran ups the ante: Don’t look now, but Iran is becoming even more belligerent

It’s almost as if the mullahs want the infidels to attack them in order to rally support from their populace.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:15 | link | comments

Go Jews!: While the chattering classes in the U.K. (including many self-despising Jews) continue to embrace the adorable Palestinians and distance themselves from a nation they see as a racist, apartheid state, English soccer louts visiting Israel give the Jewish joint an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Here’s a YNet video of one such fan, a guy who looks like he’s enjoyed a brewski or two in his time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:11 | link | comments (1)

My Hairy Despot: The hairy Islamic Hitler is still waiting for his U.S. visa so he can come to Jew York and give all us infidels a good dressing down. (First, though, he’ll invite us to submit, as is required according to the official terms of the holy war.)

If you listen carefully, you can hear a jubilant HIH (no Moo do-little, he) singing one of the showstoppers from My Fair Lady:

 

I’m gonna speak at the UN soon.

Yell ‘bout Great Satan and his crime.

So tell Condoleeza

That I need a visa

And get me to T. Bay on time.

 

I wanna be there in the morning.

Beard trimmed and lookin’ in my prime.

I’ll pull the stops out

But don’t call the cops out.

And get me to T. Bay in time.

 

If I am lying,

Well, so what’s new?

If there’s a problem

Blame in to “the Jew.”

 

‘Cuz I’m gonna be there in the mornin’

Rage and green aura will be primed.

Kick up a rumpus—like “how dare you stump us?”

So get me to T. Bay, get me to T. Bay

For Allah’s sake, get me to T. Bay on time!..

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:05 | link | comments

M.I.T. nitwits: If you’re one of those people who happens to believe that the Israel-Palestinian issue is the alpha and omega of the world’s problems, and that the holy city of Jerusalem (I threw in the “holy” since the media’s always appending it to places in Iran, Iraq and the Magic Kingdom) is that issue’s ground zero, you might be inclined to try to “solve” the "problem" of the Jewish “occupation” of the whole city. (You’d also be inclined to overlook the real problem, the inability of Arabs and Muslims to come to terms with Jewish sovereignty over Israel and Jerusalem, but that’s not nearly as sexy an issue to the problem-solvers.) Anyway, some geniuses over at M.I.T. are holding a contest which they think may just help pave the way to a “Just Jerusalem.” From Reuters via the Toronto Star:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–It could be billed as the world's best minds tackle one of the world's biggest problems: a global competition to redesign Jerusalem in a way that fosters peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will take entries from across the globe for a "Just Jerusalem" contest starting on March 31, hoping its winning entries can help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and spur regional peace.

It poses lofty questions that have bedevilled politicians for decades such as what Jerusalem, which is at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, needs to do to become "just, peaceful, and sustainable" by 2050, and whether the city should be a capital of both Israel and Palestine or of one state.

The ideas should "reconcile long-standing and seemingly intractable conflicts," among other criteria, MIT said.

Winners of four categories on the rebuilding of Jerusalem – from updating its physical buildings and other infrastructure to overhauling its economy, civil infrastructure and "symbolic infrastructure" – and a fifth "floating" category will receive a fellowship at MIT worth $50,000 (U.S.) each.

"There is a kind of nested set of conflicts that start at a small locality like Jerusalem and work up through the nation-state level of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict," said Diane Davis, co-director of the project and associate dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan with the rest of the West Bank in 1967 and annexed it, declaring it part of what it calls its "united and eternal capital." The world does not recognize the annexation, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

The nine-member jury includes a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and a Palestinian scholar.

The contest is open to anyone and the deadline for submissions is Dec. 31.

A winner will be announced the following March.

Here’s my entry: Just lay off. Jerusalem is just fine as is, and continued Israeli control ensures that people of all three religions will have access to their holy sites.

 

And my suggestion for all the would-be problem-solvers out there: read Dore Gold’s new book, The Fight for Jerusalem. It will give you a much-needed reality check.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:27 | link | comments (1)

Al’s bad timing: F. Scott Fitzgerald famously opined that there were no second acts in American lives.

Of course, F. Scott never met Al Gore. By Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post:

If you're Al Gore, you gotta be wondering: Now they like me?

Gore supporters are convinced that their man got a raw deal from the media in 2000. There was all that focus on his sighing, his makeup, his earth-tones wardrobe, his supposed invented-the-Internet type exaggerations. Some Gore advisers concede that he ran a flawed campaign, but still believe that the press held their candidate to a different standard than George W. Bush.

What a difference seven years and two Oscars make.

When the ex-veep testified on the Hill yesterday, he was trailed by hordes of reporters. His arrival was heralded by a front-page New York Times story on how he is "a heartbreak loser turned Oscar boasting Nobel hopeful globe trotting pop culture eminence." He even has a new nickname: the Goracle.

Boy, coverage like that could have gotten him those last three electoral votes last time.

The reason the star of "An Inconvenient Truth" is now treated as a visionary is because he's been trumpeting the dangers of global warming for two decades. Bush 41 called him "Ozone Man" back in '92. But now far more people are concerned about the ozone layer and melting icecaps, and Gore's moment seems to have arrived. Reporters even surrounded him--and Tipper--in the hallway for an impromptu presser.

Not everyone is going to agree with the 10-point plan that Gore presented yesterday to the House and Senate (he served in each chamber). Indeed, some of the Republicans were all over him. But the fact that his testimony drew some live TV coverage is a (forgive me) sea change in the way he, and the issue, are covered.

Of course--let's get real--it's the mere possibility that he might run for president again that is tantalizing the same media establishment that was long dismissive of Gore. In fact, many reporters seem to be rooting for Gore to jump in and ignoring his repeated denials that he has any such intention. But if he did take the leap, the honeymoon would end within nanoseconds.

Oh, I dunno. After all, he has been bumped up from has-been to Goracle, and the Goredolatry has made significant inroads into the national consciousness such that the honeymoon would likely last at least a month or two.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:46 | link | comments (3)

The wrongs of rights: Melanie Phillips dissects the tyrany of “human rights law” and the grievous harm it has wrought on British society:

…The ideas that rights in Britain depend on human rights law is grotesque. England, after all, is the cradle of Western liberty as a result of English common law, which held that everything was permitted unless it was prohibited. Now, only what is codified and court-approved can be allowed.

Not surprisingly, liberty in Britain is now in fact much diminished. The universities close down politically incorrect debate. Anyone who criticises a minority group risks vilification and the loss of promotion or job prospects.

Freedom of religious conscience, the defining value of a liberal society, has effectively been abolished. Catholic adoption agencies will be forced to close if they refuse to place children for adoption with gay couples. But then ‘human rights’ has come to be seen, in the words of one activist, as ‘a religion for a godless age’.

Human rights law has nothing to do with true liberalism. It is instead a judicial delivery system for cultural Marxism. In short, Britain’s human rights culture should more properly be known as a culture of human wrongs. Australia, be warned.

Canada, too.

I am now memorizing the sentence bolded above, the single-most profound insight I have read in some time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:31 | link | comments (2)

Say cheese/fromage: Here’s a national snapshot of our attitudes toward the issue that “carbon-neutral” eco-deity Al “The Goracle” Gore likes to call “an inconvenient truth.” Not surprisingly, folks in Alberta are the least inclined to hop on the eco-bandwagon, while those in Quebec are likely to be first in line. From the Ceeb:

A new poll suggests most Canadians believe climate change is a reality, but people in various regions hold widely different attitudes — with Albertans expressing the most skepticism.

The survey conducted by Angus Reid Strategies released Thursday found that almost four in five Canadians — 77 per cent — are convinced global warming is real.

"This is the biggest study that has been done on Canadians and their opinions and attitudes towards global warming," Angus Reid poll researcher Ellie Sykes told CBC News Thursday.

"People are really getting on the band wagon. They're really looking for government and corporations to take a much larger step than they have so far."

In Alberta, 69 per cent of respondents said they believed in global warming, while in Quebec, the number soared to 83 per cent. 

Fifty-seven per cent of Quebecers polled said they are promoting better behaviour toward the environment, while only 36 per cent of Albertans said they are doing the same…

‘Nuff said, n’est-ce pas?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:41 | link | comments

More on 300: Classicist Victor David Hanson weighs in on the movie 300, and sees some parallels between that ancient war and our current predicament. From Real Clear Politics: 

…Some reviewers think the film is gratuitously violent. But Thermopylae was no picnic. Almost all the Spartans and Thespians were killed, along with hundreds from other Greek contingents. Some of the film's most graphic killing - such as Persians being pushed over the cliff into the sea - derives from the text of Herodotus. And the filmmakers omitted the mutilation of King Leonidas, whose head Xerxes ordered impaled on a stake.

Finally, some have suggested that "300" is juvenile in its black-and-white depiction - and glorification - of free Greeks versus imperious Persians. The film has actually been banned in Iran as hurtful American propaganda, as the theocracy suddenly is reclaiming its "infidel" ancient past.

But that good/bad contrast comes not from the director or Frank Miller, but is based on accounts from the Greeks themselves, who saw their own society as antithetical to the monarchy of imperial Persia.

True, 2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterranean world had slaves. And all relegated women to a relatively inferior position. Sparta turned the entire region of Messenia into a dependent serf state.

But in the Greek polis alone, there were elected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy at Sparta to much broader-based voting in states like Athens and Thespiae.

Most importantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition of unfettered expression and self-criticism. Aristophanes, Sophocles and Plato questioned the subordinate position of women. Alcidamas lamented the notion of slavery.

Such openness was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. That freedom of expression explains why we rightly consider the ancient Greeks as the founders of our present Western civilization - and, as millions of moviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them.

 

Back then, the Greeks had the will and the civilizational confidence to triumph. Do we?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:29 | link | comments

Brits abashed: John Bolton has told a Beeb interviewer that Israel had a green light from the U.S. to go ahead and crush Hezbollah last summer, and the Brits appear to be shocked—shocked!—by the news. From the Jerusalem Post:

The United States resisted calls for an early cease-fire in last summer's Israel-Lebanon war in order to give Israel time to defeat Hizbullah, the former US ambassador to the United Nations said.

The demand for an immediate cease-fire, backed by much of the international community but ignored for weeks by the United States and Britain, had been "dangerous and misguided," John Bolton said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview aired Thursday.

Bolton agreed with the assertion that the US had given Israel free reign in its fight against Lebanon's Hizbullah guerrillas.

"What was wrong with that?" Bolton said. "They had been attacked, they were responding. The fact was that Israel was subject to a military threat from Hizbullah on a continuous basis.

"Hizbullah had committed an act of aggression and Israel was reacting in its own self-defense. And if reacting in its own self defense meant the defeat of the enemy, that was perfectly legitimate, under international law and frankly under good politics."

Bolton, who stepped down from his UN post in December, said he was "damned proud of what we did."

Bolton was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary on the war to be broadcast in full next month.

The former ambassador, who has a reputation as a blunt-spoken hawk, is writing a book about his days at the UN titled "Surrender is Not an Option."

British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells said Bolton's remarks came as a surprise.

"I certainly didn't get the sense that there was some sort of formal collusion between the Americans and the Israelis," he told the BBC…

Um, how is that “collusion”? Aren’t they both on the same side?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments (2)

The culture of complaint: Let’s see: the hairy Islamic Hitler has hosted conferences dedicated to the related propositions that the Holocaust was a gigantic hoax and that the world would be better off were there were no Israel. He also continues to blow a big, wet raspberry to the international community as he goes ahead with plans to make nukes with which he hopes to redraw the regional map sans the Jews. With all that, plus plans for global conquest and the imminent return of the occluded 12th imam, you’d think he wouldn’t have time to kick back and watch a gory Hollywood blockbuster. And you’d be correct. The reports he’s received about the movie 300 have been entirely second hand. Even so, he’s outraged because he’s heard it depicts ancient Persians as “savages.” And, heaven knows, that’s a smear on their modern-day counterparts, like him, who are suffused with religiosity and in no way resemble those bygone brutes. From the National Post:

TEHRAN - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, accused some major powers yesterday of waging psychological war on Iran, saying they had made a film designed to portray Iranians as savage.

He did not name the film, but his comments appeared to be directed at the Hollywood blockbuster 300 that depicts a 480 B.C. battle between Greeks and Persians.

The film has topped box office charts in the United States and Asia, grossing US$130-million since its March 9 release.

Many Iranians see 300 as part of a broader campaign to vilify the Islamic Republic, which is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program. The West accuses Iran of trying to make nuclear weapons. Tehran denies the charge.

"Today they are trying to tamper with history by making a film and by making Iran's image look savage," the Iranian President said in a televised address to mark the start of the Iranian New Year. He said the campaign against Iran would not succeed.

Iranian officials, media and bloggers have criticized the way their ancestors were portrayed in the film, which was inspired by the tale of 300 Spartans under King Leonidas who held out at Thermopylae against a Persian invasion led by Xerxes.

"By psychological war, propaganda and misuse of the organizations they have themselves created, and for which they have written the rules, and over which they have a monopoly, they are trying to prevent our nation's development," he said.

Last week, Mr. Ahmadinejad's cultural advisor claimed the movie was part of a U.S.-led conspiracy aimed at vilifying Iran since the 1979 revolution that saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replace Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country's pro-Western Shah, as leader.

"American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization," Javad Shamqadri said.

"Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture. Certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

Iranian MPs have urged Manouchehr Mottaki, the Foreign Minister, and Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi, the Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister, to ask other Muslim countries not to show "this anti-Iranian Hollywood movie."…

Hitler had a cultural advisor, too. His name was Josef Goebbels.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments

The radical middle: A group of moderate U.K. Muslims is in town to educate their local counterparts on effective ways of persuading idealistic, impressionable young’uns to resist the lure of violence and redirecting them to more socially acceptable causes—like fighting poverty and global warming instead of infidels. In other words, more Goracle, less jihad. From the National Post:

…Radical Middle Way is a grassroots movement that has Islamic scholars with credibility among young British Muslims travel the country preaching against violent interpretations of Islam.

"What's happening on the ground is that 'Muslim' is becoming a political identity, not a religious identity," Mr. Malik told the gathering of about 20 Canadian Muslim leaders.

Mr. Malik said moderate leaders must reinvigorate the faith among disenfranchised youth who have adopted a Muslim identity that is more about anger over Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than it is about being a good Muslim.

He said the "writing was on the wall" long before the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that a small percentage of young British Muslims were isolated, angry and about to veer into violence.

Waqar Ahmed, an IT business owner and founding member of the anti-extremist Green Light Muslim Youth Forum, pointed to another difficulty he and other mainstream Muslim leaders face: Not all of them speak Arabic.

The majority of Britian's Muslims hail from the Indian subcontinent, he said, where Urdu and other languages dominate.

Radical imans who speak Arabic can earn instant legitimacy with confused teenagers primed to soak up whatever translation or interpretation of the Koran these Imams offer.

Yahya Fadlalla, an imam and cyber-terrorism consultant from Hamilton, echoed that sentiment earlier in the discussion.

"The word imam has its magic," he said.

He encouraged the group to keep an eye on "so-called imans" with little genuine scholarly training.

Such pretenders can exert a poisonous influence, he suggested.

Speakers from both sides of the Atlantic said Muslims can best reach out to non-Muslims by donating to charities, volunteering and supporting causes that are not considered traditionally Islamic, like the environmental and anti-poverty movements.

"I think we need to talk less about accommodation and more about contribution," said Waqqas Khan, a dentist and former student leader in Britain…

Sounds good to me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

“Unity” in Gaza: The unity government officially came on stream Saturday and today is Thursday. So that means it had, what?, a good four or five days of co-operation before the factional killing started up again. Considering the brutality and thuggishness of those involved, that’s a pretty impressive start, wouldn’t you say? From Al That Jaz:

A Fatah fighter has been killed and seven people wounded in the first deadly clash between Fatah and Hamas since a unity government was formed.

 

Within hours, two Palestinians linked to Hamas were abducted in Gaza City, raising fears that violence could spread despite the coalition's stated aim of ending factional strife and closing ranks.

Fatah said that Hamas security forces fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the northern Gaza home of a senior commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, killing one of the armed wing's members.

 

Seven people, including at least one bystander, were wounded, but the commander was unhurt.

 

Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, said on Wednesday that they had only responded to shooting from the al-Aqsa commander's house.

 

He said a Fatah fighter was preparing to fire a rocket-propelled grenade when it exploded in his hands, killing him and wounding the others.

 

But Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, charged that the attack was planned and said there would be "grave consequences" if Hamas mounted any more such attacks.

 

It was the first deadly clash since Fatah and Hamas formed a unity cabinet on Saturday…

 

And no doubt it won’t be the last.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:45 | link | comments

Moderate Muslims at risk: To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, the mass of Muslims lead lives of quiet submission. Except when a “moderate” in their midst dares to speak out and questions the inherent perfection of Islamic law. Then a quiet submissive may issue a death threat to the mouthy moderate. From the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA–Toronto police have launched a hate crime investigation into a phone call from a man who vowed to "slaughter" members of a local Muslim group unless they stop speaking publicly about Islam.

A message left Monday on the voice mail of the secretary general for the Muslim Canadian Congress warned that organization members must "cease from your campaign of smearing Islam" or "I will slaughter you."

The message mentioned congress founder Tarek Fatah and current president Farzana Hassan-Shahid by name. Both have openly criticized the politicization of Islam and alleged influence of Iran and Saudi Arabia in Canadian mosques.

It's not the first time they've been threatened. Hassan-Shahid said since publishing her book Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today, she has been heckled and had her home vandalized.

"But swearing by God that `I will do this and slaughter all of you,' that's pretty chilling," Hassan-Shahid said yesterday.

Canada's Secretary of State for Multiculturalism said he was deeply disturbed by the threat and had notified Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day about the case.

"Threats of violence against individuals for their political or religious views have no place in this country," Jason Kenney told reporters here yesterday.

"It's totally unacceptable and I would hope the whole community – both the Muslim communities and the broader community – would stand in solidarity with those who are being threatened."

Fatah is well-known for his opposition to Sharia law, having campaigned against a 2005 effort to introduce the religious arbitration courts into Ontario law. The Muslim congress has also lobbied for the right of women to lead prayers in mosques and against mandatory requirements to don the hijab.

Those who oppose his views accuse Fatah of monopolizing the media's attention and fostering Islamophobia.

He said a threat last August persuaded him to resign as communications director for the Muslim Canadian Congress, but he still writes newspaper editorials, hosts a current affairs show and is writing a book.

Fatah says both he and Hassan-Shahid will continue to speak out but are frustrated with the lack of public debate and the inability to air their views without the threat of violence.

"It's the youth I'm trying to reach out to with respect to providing a different perspective on Islam and women's rights and progress in general and nobody seems very interested in even entertaining another viewpoint," Hassan-Shahid said yesterday…

"It does surprise me a bit because Canada is a very open society and has always tolerated dissent. I feel that the subculture among traditional Muslims within Canada seems to be extremely insular, seems to not want to integrate at all."…

Multiculturalism strikes again, enshrining “group rights” at the expense of the individual, and ensuring that those who loathe Canada and the infidel West can continue to enjoy the comforts of their government-sanctioned religious ghetto.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:15 | link | comments

Good thinking (sort of): In an encouraging display of sanity, the Bush administration says that it plans to drastically cut the jizya, er, security assistance package, it sends to the Palestinians. The move is an attempt to keep funds out of Hamas coffers. From the International Herald Tribune:

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration will reduce by nearly half a proposed $86 million security assistance package to the Palestinian government to ensure that none of the money ends up with forces loyal to the radical Hamas movement.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will leave Friday for the Middle East, said Wednesday that she would soon send Congress a revised package that would fund only security elements loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate president of the Palestinian Authority.

She did not provide specifics, but a senior U.S. official said the cut would amount to about $36 million, leaving only $50 million of the original package. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about details of the plan, spoke on condition of anonymity.

"I have reformulated the plan," Rice told lawmakers. "It will request less money, precisely because some of the money I would have requested I could not fully account for."

Rice said the revisions would help to keep money away from Hamas, a member of the new Palestinian unity government established last weekend…

Really?  Or will it merely reduce the amount of money Hamas can potentially get its hands on?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:37 | link | comments

Global warning: Mohammed Elmasry’s Canadian Islamic Congress insists that Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium for “civilian use.” So does Iran, only the “civilian use” to which the hairy Islamic Hitler (HIH) and the mullahs would most like to put it is the obliteration of Israeli civilians and their state, which the HIH has colourfully described as “a tumour” on Dar al Islam’s body politic. Today, Iran’s capo di tutti capi stepped forward to issue yet another in the series of the glorious Islamic Republic’s ongoing threats to the infidel, er, international community: cease and desist your sanctions forthwith, or we shall be forced to stop playing by the rules.

As if that’s what it’s been doing up till now. From the Ceeb:

Iran's top leader has warned that his country will pursue nuclear activities outside international regulations if the UN Security Council insists it stop uranium enrichment.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that until now, all Iranian nuclear activities have been within the rules imposed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Under the treaty, a country has the right to make its own nuclear fuel — as long as the process is closely monitored. Tehran insists that it is developing nuclear technology strictly for peaceful purposes, to generate energy.

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for monitoring the non-proliferation treaty, has complained that Tehran has restricted its inspectors, raising concerns that Iran might not be forthright about its intentions and may be trying to create nuclear weapons.

However, on Wednesday, Khamenei — who tops President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wield ultimate say over Iranian policy — warned that if the United Nations takes "illegal actions" such as sanctions, "we too can take illegal actions and will do so."

Khamenei did not elaborate what actions Iran might take…

Let me take a stab at it. He’s planning to illegally enrich uranium in order to illuminate Teheran office towers, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:13 | link | comments (1)

The eyes have it: There’s a report that scientists have figured out a way to reduce the spread of malaria. They have developed a technique to make the eyes of non-malaria carrying mosquitoes glow in the dark, which apparently gives them a advantage in the wild over the disease-carrying ones.

Now if they could only figure out how to apply this technique to "moderate" Muslims and jihadis, our security problems would be over.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:56 | link | comments

A barbaric new tactic: “Insurgents” in Iraq are now using children as decoys and murdering them in the process. From Al That Jaz:

Bombers have begun using children to help carry out their attacks in Baghdad, a US general has said.

 

Adults driving a car towards a Baghdad checkpoint were allowed through after two children were seen on the backseat, major general Michael Barbero said in Washington late on Tuesday.

 

 

The adults then parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside, he said.

 

Barbero said: "Children in the back seat, lower suspicion, we let it move through.

  

"They park the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back ... the brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn't changed."…

 

Maybe not, but you can always count on these pathetic excuses for human beings to ratchet up the barbarity by coming up with a new and previously unthinkable practice. I have to say, though, that this kind of willful murder of innocents may well mark a new low--or is it a high?--in inhumanity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments (1)

Zundel’s loony lawyer: Everyone’s favourite National Socialism aficonado, Ernst Zundel, is currently cooling his heels in a German jail cell, and if wants to get out any time soon, I suggest he find himself a new attorney. From AP via the Globe and Mail:

BERLIN — German prosecutors on Tuesday charged a lawyer for far-right activist Ernst Zundel with incitement, accusing her of denying the Holocaust and ending one of her legal filings with the words “Heil Hitler.”

The lawyer, Sylvia Stolz, represented Mr. Zundel in his first trial, which collapsed after Ms. Stolz was banned from the proceedings on the grounds that she was trying to sabotage the trial.

Mr. Zundel's second trial at the Mannheim state court ended last month with his conviction for incitement for denying the Holocaust. He was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison.

Mannheim prosecutors said Ms. Stolz herself has now been charged with incitement, attempting to thwart a prosecution and using symbols of a banned organization.

Lawyer of German right wing extremist Ernst Zuendel, Sylvia Stolz, is seen in court in this February file photo. German prosecutors charged her with incitement Tuesday, accusing her of denying the Holocaust and ending one of her legal filings with 'Heil Hitler.' (AP)

During Mr. Zundel's trial, she repeatedly disputed the Nazis' mass murder of Jews, called for hatred of the Jewish population, and ended a legal document with the words “Heil Hitler,” they said in a statement.

The document was freely accessible on the Internet, they said.

The prosecutors also accused Ms. Stolz of trying to “force an end to the proceedings” with constant interventions and “provocations” that disturbed the conduct of the trial.

The presiding judge halted Mr. Zundel's trial last March to ask for Ms. Stolz's removal after she denounced the court as a “tool of foreign domination” and described the Jews as an “enemy people” in earlier sessions.

In April, she was carried out of the courtroom, shouting, “Resistance! The German people are rising up,” after defying an order for her removal.

Prosecutors also seek to ban Ms. Stolz from working as a lawyer.

Sheesh. Sounds like the excitable Ms. Stolz needs to get a grip. But that might difficult to do since it’s clear that Judenhass—the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease of hatreds—seems to have already severely corroded her brain.

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

Immature ingrates: Here’s a milestone I won’t be celebrating—the 50^th birthday of the EU. As Rosemary Righter writes in the Times, just because the EUnuchs have reached their half centenary, it doesn’t mean they have grown up. For instance, they seem to be under the impression that their current peaceful condition and economic success is something they achieved entirely on their own, without any help from America, a nation it continues to mock and despise:

The European Union, which turns 50 this Sunday, is America’s pampered godchild. You won’t find people saying that at the birthday fling that Angela Merkel is throwing in Berlin.

Praise will instead be lavished on the two European luminaries, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, whose vision of reconciliation through pooled endeavours created the European Steel and Coal Community and led, in 1957, to the Treaty of Rome. The European Economic Community was unquestionably “made in Europe”. But it would have been a sickly infant had it not been for America’s unflinching strategic and financial support for European recovery, and for the idea of European unity.

The extraordinary Marshall Plan, whose 60th anniversary this year is likely to get somewhat less attention than the EU’s half-centenary, rained American taxpayer’s money on the stricken continent — always with the proviso that the Europeans must themselves first agree where the funds were to be allocated.

Coupled with America’s “open door” to trade, Marshall aid speeded up postwar recovery, laid the foundations for decades of bounding growth in Germany, France and even Italy, and helped to give the EEC the early aura of success that made admission to the club a prize to be fought for. The EU’s chroniclers, historians and hagiographers alike, claim that its greatest achievement is to have made war between France and Germany impossible, and by extension, war in Europe. Yet it was Nato, another instance of American statesmanship, that guarded the gates of Europe’s zone of peace against the Soviet threat. If the European Venus had not had Mars at her side in those years of now mostly forgotten danger, Europeans would be nothing like as rich today; nor would they, perhaps, be so smugly self-righteous about their streak of pacifism.

“Forgiveness to the injured does belong,” wrote Dryden, “but they ne’er pardon, who have done the wrong.” The child was no sooner on its feet than it started to resent its godparent’s attentions, its teenage years were studded with rebellion and by the time it came of age as the European Union, it was itching to tell the US where to get off. It was with the words “L’heure de l’Europe a sonné” that Jacques Poos, then the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, informed Washington on behalf of the EU that Europe could handle the flaring wars in the Balkans alone.

Disaster ensued. Thousands were butchered before the muscle of Nato and US diplomacy was brought to bear. But politically, the die was cast. The EU is committed to a common defence policy, has got itself a military planning staff and is ready for anything — except the spending required to make a stand-alone capability militarily credible.

More than that, it is now dogma that, with a population of nearly 500 million, the enlarged EU is more than a match for America. The flavour of this week’s birthday celebrations, to judge by some of the supercilious rubbish already written, is to dwell on the EU’s superiority as a social, even moral, model for the world, compared with the raw brashness of American power. To a great extent, the EU defines itself by what it is not: it is not America…

No, it most definitely is not America--and that, quel ironie!, will be its downfall. What it is is a Potemkin village full of beautiful sights with little of substance behind it. As such, it will fall soon enough to those whose determination, borne of religious conviction, is far stronger than the spoiled, foolish, arrogant, self-loathing EUnuchs who have allowed Islam to gain a foothold on their continent. And this time, there’s no way the Yanks can come “over there” to rescue them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments

 A spanner in the nuclear works?: I never thought I’d say this but here goes: Yeah, Russia. From FT.com:

Russia is hardening its stance on Iran’s nuclear programme and has warned it might be increasingly difficult to complete the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power station unless Iran suspends uranium enrichment.

Igor Ivanov, secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, last week met Ali Hosseini Tash, deputy secretary of Iran’s Security Council, to discuss Russian complaints that Iran had fallen behind in payments for work on the plant and delays in equipment deliveries.

Dmitry Peskov, the deputy Kremlin spokesman, denied a report in The New York Times that Mr Ivanov had issued an “ultimatum” at the meeting that Russia would withhold fuel unless Iran suspended enrichment.

“No ultimatum was issued and such wording was never used,” Mr Peskov said. “The position of Russia is known. We keep saying to our Iranian partners that they have to comply with international law. They have to obey the resolution of the [UN] Security Council [to suspend enrichment] and they have to clarify the concerns of International Atomic Energy Agency experts with respect to their enrichment ­programme.”

The Security Council has repeatedly demanded that Tehran cease uranium enrichment, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material. It is debating a second wave of sanctions to punish Iran for its non-compliance.

Mr Peskov said Mr Ivanov warned that Iran’s failure to comply already meant some third-country suppliers could not fulfil agreements to deliver equipment for Bushehr. Atomstroiexport, constructor of the plant, has said cooling equipment is among parts being delayed.

There was no point, Mr Peskov added, in Russia delivering fuel unless the station was otherwise functional. “The unwillingness or in­ability of Iran to meet the demands of the international community already led to a certain sanctions regime and these sanctions already are jeopardising the completion of the contract,” he said. “Continued refusal, and a further UN resolution, will only bring additional obstacles.”

Russia warned last week that Bushehr – omitted from UN resolutions on Iran after Russian lobbying – would be delayed as Tehran had fallen behind on payments of $25m a month .

Unfortunately, with Russia it all comes down to rubles, and its position is apt to change if the mullahs are more forthcoming with them. But maybe the U.S. can get in there first with a more generous incentive, if you know what I mean.

Update: I knew it sounded too good to be true. Russia is denying the report.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:40 | link | comments

The Muslim (re)conquest: Al-Andalus lives! From Islam Online:

MADRID – From north to south, the Arabic language and letters are booming in Spain and proliferating in newspapers, road signs and travel agencies thanks largely to the growing number of Arab and Muslim immigrants in the southwestern European country.

 

“My colleagues used to make fun of me for learning Arabic, but not any more,” 27-year-old Pedro Smarten from  Barcelona told IslamOnline.net Sunday, March 18. Smarten said one can easily find Arabic road signs along with Spanish nationwide.

 

“Arabi letters are everywhere. Arabic is no longer a dead language,” added Smarten, who learnt Arabic in a Madric university.

Highways from northern to southern cities are beset by signs showing directions in Spanish and Arabic, guiding Arabic speakers to rest-houses, restaurants and tour operators.

The Arabic road signs can be heavily found in southern cities like M?laga, home to a sizable minority of North African origin.

In bus stops in Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, big sign boards in Arabic are set up alongside Spanish, Catalonian and English.

The thriving halal shops in the city, which are attracting now non-Muslims as well, have played a key role in the Arabic boom.

Arabic has also become music to the Spanish ears in the past few years with many Spaniards are growing familiar with the language.

Newcomers of Arab or Muslim origin do not feel abandoned or lonely when they arrive in Spain as they used in the past.

The mass circulation 20 Minutos newspaper hardly hits newsstands without one or two articles in Arabic.

The Vanguardia newspaper of Barcelona published earlier this month a one-page advertisement on its back page about a lecture on Islam…

Time to bid Espana a heartfelt hasta la vista as it descends into its long Islamic twilight.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:17 | link | comments (1)

Obnoxious Norway: No sooner had the “unity” government been officially declared than Norway raced to be the first European nation to acknowledge it and to promise to restart its share of the jizya. Unwilling to waste even a nano-second, an Norwegian official has sped to the scene and is even now meeting with the unity thugs. Israel, fortunately, has managed to muster some gumption and, according to the Jerusalem Post, is refusing a confab with the sardine man.

On the JPost site, an “insightful” poster named Mark, who hails from my home and native land, had this to say about the situation (I have left Mark’s inventive spelling intact):

Hamas was elected by the people for the people... Unfortunatly for Israel thier still are countries that understand democracy.(Norway) Norway should be priased for being Brave. To stand up and support, the oppressed peoples of Palistine. I am sure history will see Norway in positve light, not bowing down to popular pressure, but having compassion for the poor souls of Palistine and being strong enough to show that support...

Maybe you’re on to something there, Mark. If things go according to plan and the effort to eradicate Israel and replace it with “the poor souls of Palistine” is successful, Norway will be hailed as having been on the cutting edge of the project. On the other hand, if somehow Israel and the West end up prevailing—which, at the moment, is up in the air—Norway will be remembered as a traitor to Western interests. A national Quisling, so to speak.

 

In “honour” of Mark, the “compassionate” Norwegians and the first day of spring—which is frikkin’ cold here in Hogtown—I’ve rejigged a song from Rogers and Hammerstein's tropical musical, in the hopes it will warm me up:

 

Some unenchanted morning

You will see a Quisling

You will see a Quisling

Talking to terrorists.

And somehow you know

You know even then

That he’ll betray you

Again and again.

 

Some unenchanted morning

Someone will be laughin’

Haniya will be laughin’

Across a crowded room.

And day after day.

As strange as it seems

The sound of his laughter

Will haunt all your dreams.

 

Who can explain it?

Who can tell you why?

Jew-hate’s eternal.

‘Slamists always lie.

 

Some unenchanted morning

When you see a Quisling

When you see a Quisling

Decry his rottenness.

So people will know

That nothing has changed

And that such actions

Are mad and deranged.

 

Once you have seen him,

Tell him that he’s slime.

Once you have seen him,

Remind him of their crime!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:32 | link | comments (2)

Speed reading the jihad: If you want a capsule summary of today’s jihad and the threat it poses, you need look no further than an interview with Walid Phares on the FrontPage Magazine site. And if you don’t have time to read the entire interview, just read this:

FP: Expand a bit more for us on what it is that the West does not understand about the threat it faces.

 

Phares: Today's Jihadism uses history and theology as roots for their mobilization and action, but the Jihadists have developed plans as of the 1980s and 1990s which have been taking shape in the Middle East and within the West before and after 9/11.

 

The West was misled by its own elites in reading and understanding the threat. Hence, I argue in my book Future Jihad, that they have at least one decade lead ahead of the West, if not more.

 

On 9/11, most Americans didn't understand that they were attacked in a War waged against them as of the 1990s. Since 2001, the Government has been attempting to catch up with the Jihadist penetration of the country, albeit with limited successes. The infiltration of the system is deep and wide for any federal government to address without a full fledge public awareness. And this is where the battle is today: the ability of Americans to understand the threat and to support policies that can win the conflict.

 

You can see clearly that the Jihadists have been able to affect this understanding through their past and current successful campaigns to mollify the national analysis in AmericaEurope, the battle is much harsher and the stakes are much higher: European governments are under tremendous pressures by the oil producing regimes in the Arab and Muslim world on the one hand and a European network of Jihadist cadres.

 

In short, today's Jihadism has been planned and waged as of the 1990s at the least. Tomorrow's "Jihad" though, is been planned and launched today. The level of infiltration by al Qaeda and the neo-Wahabis within US and Western systems, for example, will be seen years from now.

 

The 9/11 design will be topped and bypassed by today's Jihadi strategic planners. I invite readers and analysts to look hard at the cases of terror arrests within the West, but also in the greater Middle East. Those planning strikes of agression in the US, Canada, the UK and other countries in Europe, are what we call "home-grown," but with an ideology which is Jihadi in nature.

 

Future Jihadism will be native and lethal, if not addressed quickly by the international society in general and America's leadership in particular. Future terrorists will be citizens, protected by laws, and attempting to create domestic crisis, while the Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah of the world were "aliens" who had been simply successful in infiltrating the security system. 

 

How ironic that multiculturalism, the social policy which was supposed to foster “tolerance,” has ended up being the Trojan horse of the jihad, allowing “home grown” jihadism to largely fly under the radar. Meanwhile, Islamic lobby groups insist we let down our guard, and scream about “racial profiling,” as in this report in the Globe and Mail:

OTTAWA — The federal government must press U.S. border authorities to stop racial and religious profiling of Canadian Muslims and Arabs, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations said yesterday.

The call came after a 22-year-old Northern Ontario student said he was detained for more than 12 hours and interrogated like a suspected terrorist at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last week.

The council is calling on Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay to contact U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the problem, or issue a travel advisory to Canadian Muslims to avoid travelling to the United States.

"Our government must act to ensure that Canadians are not profiled, barred entry and indiscriminately added to American no-fly lists," the council's executive director, Karl Nickner, said in a news release.

"The livelihood and future of Canadian citizens cannot be halted without just cause."

Mahmoud Zeitoun, a student at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, said the incident with airport officials occurred March 15 while he was en route to Denver with a dentist and an assistant.

Mr. Zeitoun, who was born in Lebanon but is a Canadian citizen, said he was headed to Colorado to act as the dentist's patient while she performed an exam to practise in her field in the United States.

After answering routine questions about why the group was entering the country, and his planned return five days later, Mr. Zeitoun said U.S. officials told him he could enter on the condition that he depart through a major port between 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., which conflicted with his planned return time.

When he asked to speak with a supervisor, he said he was told that he needed a visa to enter the country. Canadians travelling to the United States are not normally required to possess visas, unless they are visiting for work purposes.

Mr. Zeitoun said the dentist and the assistant left on the next flight, but he was detained for 12½ hours and asked whether he had ties to the Lebanese group Hezbollah or knew anyone who harbours hatred toward the United States.

"These questions were just so out of my range," he told Thunder Bay radio station CKPR yesterday.

"And the thing is, if you don't answer, they're going to say you're lying.”…

Sounds like Mr. Zeitoun could benefit from reading the Phares interview. Maybe then he’d understand why officials were so keen to ask him a few questions.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:30 | link | comments (4)

Rosie’s poison pen: I know that Barbara Amiel Black (wife of Lord Conrad, currently on trial in Chicago) is an almost irresistible media target, and that many are relishing the once high and mighty couple’s comeuppance, but I found Rosie DiManno’s piece on Amiel in today’s Toronto Star to be completely over-the-top in its nastiness:

There's a term for morbid sexual fascination with the elderly. It's called gerontophilia.

In Canada, it's also called Barbara Amielia.

I mean, come on, the woman is 66. A well-preserved 66, and the rest of us should look so good at half that age, but hardly cheesecake material unless we're talking aged cheddar.

Astonishingly resilient to the ravages of time, though. Perhaps it's all that blood-scrubbing, purportedly a treatment for the autoimmune disease that has longed afflicted Lady Black, formerly Mrs. Gary Smith, Mrs. George Jonas and Mrs. David Graham. Surgery has allegedly helped Amiel remain so eternally dewy, youth-restoring procedures applied head to toe, face to buttocks. The svelte figure is probably genetic, the melon bosoms natural and gravity-defying, the smouldering sultriness innate.

Still, judging from the pictures out of Chicago last week – and, admittedly, the poor woman (you should forgive the expression) is under considerable stress – Lady Black is starting to look like the late Duchess of Windsor, all pinched and desiccated, mummified, with gusts to Michael Jackson, as if that famous pout were melting.

Barbarella Doll needs inflation.

Photographed abreast of stepdaughter Alana Black – making her celebrity-pupa debut in the role of filial daughter – the older babe wilts, no cosmetic elixir or plastic surgeon's ingenuity a match for the simple, unaffected fact of youth.

Yet Amiel continues to fascinate, Canadians enthralled by her beauty and brains, even those who think her views cockamamie. Still a cover girl four decades after appearing on the front of Toronto Life, back in her swinging lefty days, before she went all Ayn Rand-ish and to-the-manor privileged…

… The day of reckoning is nigh, Black's trial (with three largely overlooked co-defendants) in Chicago on 14 charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, et cetera, finally set to truly roll with opening statements today. This should come as a relief to the scores of journalists who spent last week trying to churn colourful copy out of the boring jury selection process, although reams have been written, and broadcast, about their unfortunately blue-collar status, which purportedly renders them too stupid to appreciate the nuances of high-finance machinations.

Breathlessly, we have been told about Conrad Black arching an eyebrow, leaning forward in his seat, casting a glance over his shoulder, as if every gesture was fraught with meaning.

In this vacuum of reportable events, the other trial has already begun – an intense scrutiny of Amiel as icon in the sunset of her epoch, brought to (Manolo Blahnik) heel by hubris. The subtext here is that Amiel's insatiable greed, social ambition and stalking of A-list cachet sponsors pushed her husband toward financial knavery. Thus the engrossment with her hair and courtroom wardrobe (tasteful, bit dowdy) her expressions and carriage, trial commentators drawn from the fashion demimonde as well as the business and judicial orbits.

Must be a trial, in itself, having so long courted the limelight to now be skewered by it, Exhibit A for the folly of a man whose reach may have exceeded his grasp.

A senior citizen, public pension-eligible, yet Amiel is still measured as siren and succubus. 

But you can't grow old graciously after leading with your hooters and, temptingly, inviting the world to kiss your fabulous arse.

Is it just me, or does Rosie seem to be excessively fixated on Barbara’s marriages and physical attributes (which, to show that she’s a salt-of the-earth plebeian, unlike that mega-snob, Babs, she refers to as “arse,” “melons,” and “hooters”)? Dare one say that this fixation betokens a certain jealously on Rosie’s part that’s been pent up over the years, and that only now, with the trial on, has been allowed to fully emerge in all its vicious glory?

 

Also, Rosie has revealed herself to be an agist--a most unattractive trait.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:30 | link | comments (2)

From the glass is half full/half empty department: Two British media outlets upack the same poll. The Times says Iraqis think life is getting better; the Beeb says Iraqis think it’s getting worse.

Since the Beeb is full of self-loathing leftoids suffering from BDS/CDS, I think I'll have to go with the Times.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments

Faulty fault finders: Michael Barone describes the “default setting” of academe—i.e. if something is wrong, it’s America’s (or the West’s, or the dead white males, or Israel’s) fault—and explains the dangerous way it distorts and misrepresents reality. From RCP: 

...The default assumption predisposes them to believe that if there is slaughter in Darfur, it is our fault; if there are IEDs in Iraq, it is our fault; if peasants in Latin America are living in squalor, it is our fault; if there are climate changes that have any bad effect on anybody, it is our fault.

What they have been denied in their higher education is an accurate view of history and America's place in it. Many adults actively seek what they have been missing: witness the robust sales of books on the Founding Fathers. Witness, also, the robust sales of British historian Andrew Roberts's splendid "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900."

Roberts points out almost all the advances of freedom in the 20th century have been made by the English-speaking peoples -- Americans especially, but British, as well, and also (here his account will be unfamiliar to most American readers) Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. And he recalls what held and holds them together by quoting a speech Winston Churchill gave in 1943 at Harvard: "Law, language, literature -- these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice and above all a love of personal freedom ... these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples."

Churchill recorded these things in his four-volume history of the English-speaking peoples up to 1900: the development of the common law, guarantees of freedom, representative government, independent courts.

More recently, Adam Hochschild, in his excellent "Breaking the Chains," tells the story of the extraordinary English men and women, motivated by deep religious belief, who successfully persuaded Britain to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself. Their example was followed in time, and after a bloody struggle, by likeminded Americans. The default assumption portrays American slavery as uniquely evil (which it wasn't) and ignores the fact the first campaign to abolish slavery was worded in English.

The default assumption gets this almost precisely upside down. Yes, there are faults in our past. But Americans and the English-speaking peoples have been far more often the lifters of oppression than the oppressors.

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech last week. What is profoundly wrong is that too many of us are operating off the default assumption and have lost sight of who our real enemies are.

Barone doesn’t get into the psychology of  the “tenured radicals,” as he calls them, but, taking a crack at it myself, I think there is something perversely comforting—in a weird, masochistic way—in luxuriating in their kind of certainty. It allows one to feel morally and intellectually superior to those who lack such “insight”; it also enables you to embrace the appealing fiction that, if only we were to change, problems would be solved and utopia might finally be achieved. In other words, to lapse into the kind of dangerous wishful thinking that leads otherwise intelligent people to support those who, were they to achieve power, would put the murder of leftist intellectuals at the top of their agenda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:43 | link | comments

The ties that bind: An AP scribe with the exotic name of Scheherezade Faramazi (an appropriate moniker for a writer since the Scheherezade of the Arabian Nights was a weaver of tales) describes what some pundits consider a real head-scratcher: the seemingly inexplicable bond between genocidal Sunnis and genocidal Shias.

Yeah, ‘tis a genuine puzzlement.

 

From the Boston Globe:

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon --When Iraq hanged Saddam Hussein, furious Sunni Muslims in the militant group Hamas held mourning ceremonies. That did not sit well with Shiite Muslim Iran, one of Hamas' key backers but also a strong Saddam foe.

 

Yet the dispute over Saddam's execution did not break the Hamas-Iran alliance, either.

Instead the two -- bound by common strategic interests -- have solidified their relationship in the last year, creating a growing worry for both some Arab countries and for Israel.

 

Israel has in recent weeks accused Iran of training Hamas militants from Gaza and smuggling weapons to Hamas. The weekend formation of a Palestinian coalition government between Hamas, which won a democratic election a year ago, and the more moderate Fatah is sure to bring new attention to the issue.

 

At their core, Iran and Hamas are far apart ideologically: Iran espouses a fundamentalist Shiite version of Islam, while Hamas adheres to an equally strict rival Sunni version.

 

But when it comes to Hamas, Iran's interests are based primarily on its rivalry with Washington and with its Arab allies for influence in the region.

 

"Political Islam is very pragmatic," said Beirut-based Palestinian analyst Souheil Natour. "They are playing realpolitick."

 

Iranian analyst Saeid Leylaz said Iran's strategic goals are based on its perception that the United States is a threat to its survival…

 

What utter bollocks. Iran’s "strategic goals" are based on the mullahs' desire to kick start the Apocalypse, and “political Islam” is so “pragmatic” that it seeks to turn back to clock to the time of the Prophet when everything was supposedly Edenic—and it wants to drag everyone in the world back with it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:14 | link | comments

Demonic Jews:

On page 85 of Infidel, Hirsi Ali recalls the pedagogy of her devout instructor at a Muslim school in Kenya:

Sister Aziza told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous; they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they stuck right out of their heads like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead all Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all the Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims.

 

Sister Aziza failed to mention that it’s getting harder to recognize us these days, since plastic surgery has done wonders with great beaks and head horns. Those devils and djinns erupting from our mouths are still a dead giveaway, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments (2)

Magical thinking in the Magic Kingdom: From Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography, Infidel. This passage, on page 47, describes the kind of thinking she encountered in Mecca when she lived there as a young girl:

In Saudi Arabia, everything was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the tap stopped running, the Saudi women next door used to say the Jews did it. The children next door were taught to pray for the health of their parents and the destruction of the Jews. Later, when we went to school, our teachers lamented at length all the evil things Jews had done and planned to do against Muslims. When they were gossiping, the women next door used to say, “She’s ugly, she’s disobedient, she’s a whore—she’s sleeping with a Jew.” Jews were like djinns, I decided. I had never met a Jew. (Neither had these Saudis.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:26 | link | comments (3)

Giving it to the Beeb: Here’s another righteous flaying of the public broadcaster, this one from The New Criterion:

…The fate of the BBC is one of the greatest cultural tragedies in Britain. An institution that used to embody British virtues now routinely traduces them. In the opening months of World War II, the BBC helped secure the destruction of the German warship Admiral Graf Spee, which was cutting a wide swath through British shipping, by falsely reporting that the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the battleship Renown were operating near the German ship. In those days, the BBC was on the side of Western culture. The Brits have a new aircraft carrier called Ark Royal, the fifth warship to bear the name. It is an emblematic irony that in the opening days of the Iraq war, sailors aboard the Ark Royal turned off the news feed from the BBC because they found it indistinguishable from enemy propaganda. In their cultural offerings, as well as their news reporting, the BBC has joined the ranks of the paranoid commissars of political correctness.

 

Indeed. Today’s Beeb sounds more like Lord Haw Haw.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:38 | link | comments

On second thought…: I’ve calmed down a bit since earlier this morning and have decided that while the news about the U.S. reaching out to a portion of the unity government is bad, it may not be as dire as I first thought. I get the sense that the "realists" in Washington (who seem to have replaced the Neo-Cons) want to keep their options open with “their guy” Stinky Abbas, and may be hoping that soon enough the whole jerry-rigged unity shanty will collapse on its own.

Not that backing Stinky doesn't remain pointless and delusional.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments

Keeping up appearances: Someone who probably hasn’t read the latest opinion poll of Iraqis—weasely French Prime Minister Domenique de Villepin. De Villepin says it’s time for the U.S. to cut and run because its actions in Iraq have ruined its image and have made everyone in the West look bad. And if there’s one thing Dom is concerned about, it’s looking good to certain, er, non-Westerners. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

FRENCH Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has urged the US and other nations to withdraw from Iraq in 2008, saying the war had "shattered" America's image abroad.

 

The Iraqi conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and about 3200 US troops in the past four years, was sapping the power of the US to peacefully influence other players in the troubled Middle East, he said at Harvard University.

 

"The war with Iraq marked a turning point. It shattered America's image," said Mr Villepin, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

 

"It undermined the image of the West as a whole. It is time for the US and Europe to regain together the respect and admiration of the other people."…

 

Tell us, Dom. Exactly which “other people” do you mean?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:25 | link | comments (1)

Optimism in Iraq: Bad news for the Dhimmicrats—according to a new poll, most Iraqis say life is better now than it was under Sadaam. From the Times Online:

MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.

The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces.

Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the findings pointed to progress. “There is no widespread violence in the four southern provinces and the fact that the picture is more complex than the stereotype usually portrayed is reflected in today’s poll,” she said…

Wait, you mean it isn’t quite the “quagmire” it’s been made out to be by the mainstream media? I guess you can’t believe everything you read/hear/see.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments (1)

Feat of derring-don’t: There is an unconfirmed report (by the Beeb) that the U.S. is “‘ready’ for non-Hamas contacts” with the Palestinian unity government.

If true, this would be a remarkable display of hypocrisy (and idiocy), and an immense blow for Israel.

 

Stay tuned to see if Condi will try to perform the impressive (and impossible) feat of separating the dog from the fleas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

Sly tactics: The anti-Zionists who’ve been trying to get unions, organizations and universities to sign on to the boycott of Israel have a cunning modus operendi: they try to slip past an anti-Israel resolution when they think no one is paying attention. That’s what happened recently in Toronto, when two High School teachers, one a self-lacerating Jew, tried to get their union to not only sign on to the boycott, but to allow pro-Palestinian propaganda to be taught in the classroom. (The effort was foiled by some intrepid teachers who got wind of scheme and put up a fight. Soon after, the Jewish teacher who championed the anti-Israel resolution was suspended for jumping the gun, so to speak, and teaching pro-Palestinian propaganda to his students before he had permission.) And that’s what happened at Howard University, the highly-respected black college in Washington D.C., whose president has just announced that despite the efforts of some sneaky anti-Zionists (that’s my description for them, not his), his institution would not be joining the divestment scheme. From the Jerusalem Post:

…According to Alvin Thornton, Howard's vice provost for academic affairs, the resolution arose during a special faculty meeting convened to address a "totally unrelated" topic. The resolution was not listed on the agenda ahead of time or in any other way presented according to the rules of proper procedure.

He said that only 34 of the 441 members of the Arts and Sciences faculty were present at the March 8 meeting, and of them 26 voted for it. As soon as the college's dean found out about the proceedings - which he had not attended in person - he sent a letter to the entire school saying the resolution was "null and void," Thornton said.

The resolution, as posted on the Internet, calls for Howard University to purge its endowment, retirement and short-term investment funds of investments in "'offending' companies that are offering material support to Israeli Occupation."

The document described such companies as those that "provide material aid to the Israeli army in the form of weapons, equipment, and supporting systems used to perpetrate human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians [and] violate international humanitarian law." The Jerusalem Post was unable to reach any of the faculty members connected to the resolution…

Kudos to the president for shutting down the Jew-bashers. The incident at his university, like the one in Toronto, underscores how crucial it is to remain vigilant and stand up to the bullies whenever they try to pull a fast one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:30 | link | comments

Apt headline: Showing a full-colour photo of Stinky and the Hamas goon-in-chief, their conjoined hands raised in triumph, the Toronto Star announces to its avid readers “ Hamas-Fatah alliance forged”.

Forged—as in falsified, counterfeit, fraudulent.

 

Yup, that about sums it up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments

Disturbing sight: John Travolta in drag for the movie version of Hairspray. In case you were wondering, John’s the one on the left. I think he resembles a young Lainie Kazan (in case you were wondering, she’s the one on the right), but someone else thinks he looks more like a character from The Facts of Life.

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

Oslo accord: The party in charge of the Palestinian “unity” government remains committed to its genocidal Charter, but the mere fact of thuggish unity has been enough to prompt the continent where the Holocaust was perpetrated to set aside its reservations and embrace the “new” regime. First out of the gate, the nation renowned for herring, snow and Vidkun Quisling. From CNN:

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- A unity government formed between rival Palestinian factions was welcomed by Norway and the European Union, but Israel's prime minister told his Cabinet on Sunday that he would not work with the new coalition.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new government's platform "includes problematic elements that cannot be acceptable to Israel and the international community, like the right to resist, the use of terror and the non-recognition of Israel."

Olmert said he would stay in contact with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. However, he said, "we can't maintain contact with the government or its ministers when you consider that this is a government that does not accept the conditions of the international community."

The coalition government, approved by an 83-3 vote in Parliament, is the first forged between Hamas and its secular Fatah rivals, who have been locked in bloody factional fighting that has claimed more than 300 lives in the past year.

The United States reacted cautiously to the agreement, with a State Department spokeswoman saying it was still under review.

Israel rejected the new government before it was even formed, objecting to remarks by hard-line Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and to the unity government's refusal to recognize Israel's existence and renounce terror.

Almost immediately after the vote, Norway recognized the new government.

"Norway welcomes the formation of the Palestinian unity government," said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store. "It is essential that the unity government gains control of the security situation in Gaza and the West Bank, and that the rocket attacks on Israeli areas cease."

The Norwegian government will drop all sanctions against the Palestinians, a spokesman for the Norwegian Office of Foreign Affairs told CNN…

It’s entirely fitting that the nation which fell so quickly in line with Hitler, the one whose capital, years later, was the site of that pointless, appalling exercise that raised false hopes and led directly to an intifada and the spilling of Jewish blood, should be the first to embrace the unity thugs. And it’s no surprise that the EUnuchs, predisposed to hate Jews and love Arabs (at least for their oil and power), and not incidentally home to a critical mass of testy Muslims should do the same. However, it would be a catastrophe—and a tragedy—of mammoth proportions if the U.S., the power that stands in the way of the Dar al Islamists, were to also grant recognition. Indeed, it would officially signal the beginning of the end of the Zionist dream.

Thus, much gloom and doom in da room today. I must say, though, that Olmert’s unintentionally droll understatement about “problematic elements”—diplomacy-speak for “they want to kill us all”—gave me a welcome chuckle.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments

Letter to Heather: Just dashed this one off to the proprieter of Canada’s national book chain(s), a vocal supporter of Israel:

Dear Ms. Reisman,

 

I realize that the law of supply and demand demands that you keep a good supply of Jimmy Carter’s best-selling anti-Zionist tract, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in your stores. However, I am baffled by the decision to offer it at 30 per cent off the list price. Surely the book is already flying off the shelves in sufficiently alarming numbers that it doesn’t require that extra push.

 

Would you affix a 30 per cent off sticker to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Of course not. As I recall, you wouldn’t even stock it in your stores.

 

Yours very truly,

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:03 | link | comments (2)

A: Yasser Arafat, Liberace and the Ayatollah Khomeini: Q: Name three of the few men who have not yet stepped forward to claim paternity of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments (3)

Fear factor: There are a number of ways to divvy up the world. For instance, there’s the divide between Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb, and, in a related rift, the division between those who “get it” about the Islamic divide and those who don’t “get it.” But the division that’s getting the most news these days is the one between those of us who are a“Gore”ophobic, and those who have allowed fears of climate change—and their apparent impotence in the face of it—to consume every waking thought, thereby transforming them into whimpering, cowering, incapacitated eco-phobes.

A German scientist tries—and fails miserably—to allay the fears of those who fall into the latter group. From Der Spiegel Online:

Hans von Storch is one of Germany's leading researchers on climate change. DER SPIEGEL spoke with him about why fears of global warming are exaggerated and the doom-mongering tendencies of German scientists.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Storch, will you cancel your next long-distance flight to save the climate?

Storch: No, I already have a number of overseas business trips scheduled for this year. But I do spend my summer vacations in nearby Denmark -- not for moral reasons, but because I own a vacation house there.

SPIEGEL: Some climate protection groups and politicians are calling on Germans to spend their summer vacations in their own country in the future.

Storch: That's just another one of those typically German attempts to save the world with symbolic acts. It makes us feel like better people and morally superior to everyone else.

SPIEGEL: What's wrong with reducing CO2 emissions?

Storch: It is in fact necessary to reduce CO2 emissions. There is no reason why we shouldn't spend our vacations on (the North Sea island of) Sylt instead of in the Seychelles, or drive more economical cars -- for the sake of preserving increasingly scarce resources if nothing else. But that won't enable us to stop climate change. As long as China, India and the United States continue the way they have been, what we Germans do is more or less irrelevant.

SPIEGEL: Is it even possible to prevent global warming at this point?

Storch: No. Because of the inherent time lag in the climate system, the greenhouse gases that have already been pumped into the atmosphere will undoubtedly lead to a certain increase in temperature in the coming decades. We can no longer completely avoid anthropogenic climate change. At best, limiting the temperature rise to two degrees is just about possible, according to optimistic estimates. That's why we should spend more time talking about adjusting to the inevitable and not about reducing CO2 emissions. We have to take away people's fear of climate change.

SPIEGEL: But many believe that the end of the world is upon us. Is the climate debate gradually becoming too hysterical?

Storch: Indeed. The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one and not unlike our fear of strangers. In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better -- God's punishment for sinful behavior. And nowadays it's those hedonistic wastrels who pollute the air so that they can look at some pretty fish in the South Seas. It would be better if we only ever rode bikes. Oh, there's always someone wagging a finger in disapproval…

What a comfort to know that modern man is just as primitive and hysterical in his thinking about uncontrollable forces as was his ancient counterpart.

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

A heroine for our times: Theodore Dalrymple has a terrific review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography, Infidel, in today’s Globe and Mail:

…Hirsi Ali, who now lives in the United States, has had a profound effect on modern Holland, and through Holland the rest of Europe and possibly North America, which is an astonishing fact about a recently arrived immigrant from a culture as alien to the Dutch as the Somali. Until quite recently, the Dutch lived in a kind of complacent bubble, as if they had solved all social problems, and nothing could ever again disturb the even tenor of their society. They prided themselves that theirs was a country in which nothing happened. The assassination of Pym Fortuyn, and then of Theo van Gogh, disabused them of this mental idyll: Underneath the calm and prosperous crust of Dutch society, there was red-hot magma waiting to emerge volcanically.

I recently had the opportunity to witness Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak on the same platform as Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is often presented as the spokesman for moderate Islam in Europe. She spoke like a rapier, he like a perfumed ointment; she believed in truth, he in conciliation (at least until the upper hand has been achieved). She was vastly the more impressive.

Many readers will feel uncomfortable with her unequivocal belief in the superiority of Western societies over Islamic societies; though, of course, the ability to doubt without courting martyrdom is precisely one of the superiorities. Possibly, she will strike some as strident and uncompromising; but her life history as recounted in this book gives her good reason to be uncompromising. Had she been prepared to compromise, she would now be confined to someone or other's household, at best well-treated, at worst badly abused, but at any rate cabin'd, cribbed and confin'd. This is one of the most crucial documents of our time, and is absorbing and pleasurable to read.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:38 | link | comments (2)

Feh!: The thugs—many of them genocidal Islamists—who were persuaded to stop killing each other long enough to come together in a “unity” government continue to play along with their charade of democracy. But for the Washington Post, there’s no thuggery in sight as a headline accords the thugs the respectful designation of “lawmakers.”

That’s right, lawmakers. Don’t they sound all high-toned and judicial?

 

It would have been far more accurate to call them “law-followers,” since the laws of sharia, to which they want everyone to submit, were set in stone a long time ago.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:15 | link | comments

Moo gets his gun: Coming soon for a return engagement at the UN: the hairy Islamic Hitler. And this time he means business.

In advance of Moo’s arrival, I’ve revamped a song by "the American Jew," Irving Berlin:

 

When Moo comes a-callin’

He’ll give us all a maulin’

As he says that the Prez is bad.

Tho’ the mullahs in Persia

Don’t suffer from inertia

Oh, you can’t get the world with jihad.

 

Some folks say the Shias

Have got some strange ideas

And that Moo is just bloomin’ mad.

But his plans for upheaval

Are actually evil.

But he can’t get the world with jihad.

 

With jihad,

With jihad,

No you can’t get the world with jihad.

 

If you said Moo’s a terror

You wouldn’t be in error—

A worse foe we have never had.

But the turtles at the UN

Don’t know what they are doin’

And they sit on their hands

And heed all his commands

As he plans to get with world with jihad.

 

He won’t quit his bitchin’

As long as he’s enrichin’.

His beliefs are no passing fad.

So they why in tarnation

Is there no assassination

So he can’t get the world with jihad?

 

The guys with cojones

Cannot be labelled phonies

But they’re tied up over in Baghdad.

So the ISG’s prevailin’

And our resolve is failin’

So can he get the world with jihad?

 

If we don’t start awakin’

And see that he ain’t fakin’

Then one day we’ll all say “egad.”

‘Cuz his global ambitions

Lack any inhibitions

And he can get the world with jihad.

 

With jihad,

With jihad,

Yes, he can get the world with jihad.

 

A fanatic’s solution

To Zionist "pollution"

Are some nukes at a launching pad.

And he hopes to push a button

And turn the Jews to mutton

So we need to unplug

The short thug with a slug

So he can’t get the world with jihad.

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

Slamming the Beeboisie: Times columnist Gerard Baker has a delicious evisceration of the most insufferably smug media outlet on his side of the pond (the Ceeb winning first prize on my side):

…You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.

This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world — from colonialism to global warming.

I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to…

As we say here in bilingual Canuckistan, moi aussi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:51 | link | comments

Effective fascists: Rami Khouri, the Palestinian who edits Lebanon’s The Daily Star (and whose opinion pieces occasionally appear in the Globe and Mail) sees some positive signs in the politics of the Middle. Topping his list of good stuff: how Islamism is going mainstream as Islamists are forming alliances with non-Islamists in a number of regional governments:

Mark this third week of March 2007 as potentially a historic moment of clarity on one of the most important political questions in the contemporary Arab world: How will the troubled, turbulent Middle East make the transition from dictatorship and autocracy to more democratic, accountable systems of government, while Islamist movements are the most popular forces around? The answer seems to be, through coalition governments and transitional governments of national unity in which Islamists have a major but not the totally defining role. In recent months, Islamists and Arab governments have confronted one another politically and occasionally violently. Now, having fought each other to a standstill and shown themselves to enjoy roughly equal power in society and among foreign supporters, they are trying a different approach: that of national unity or coalition governments. The developments taking place in Palestine and Lebanon are the most interesting examples, and should be watched closely.

This may be the most important political test that Islamist movements have experienced in the Arab world in their modern history: trial by the fire of incumbency and accountability. We have had very few examples of Islamists winning power democratically, and being given the chance to exercise power by governing freely. A few cases of Islamists taking office at the local level can be studied, and they show mixed results. Other examples include Islamist ministers in governments in Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries, and their experience is also mixed.

Nowhere in the Arab world have we had a comparable experience to the ongoing incumbency of the Justice and Development Party that leads the Turkish government. There, the party's Islamist credentials and rallying cry have been put to the test of actually governing, and responding to national needs. The party continues to adjust to the reality of incumbency and national accountability, seems likely to win another election, and will probably see its leader become president soon. 

Arab Islamists will now be subjected to the same test and reality check. Hizbullah in Lebanon may be on the verge of agreeing with its political foes the formation of a national unity government that gives it and its allies (including some Christians) the ability to block major government decisions. In return for this power, if indeed a new government is formed on this basis, the party will find itself pressured to deliver practical answers to daily issues high on the priority list of ordinary citizens. The situation involving Hamas in Palestine is more clear-cut. The movement has just announced the formation of a national unity government with Fatah. It hopes, through this, to unblock the foreign financial boycott, and thus have more money with which to govern normally.

Both these Islamist parties had gained power and respect over the years, even though they catered to constituencies that formed a minority of the population, by resisting Israeli occupation and aggression. Hamas and Hizbullah both have experience in local politics and service delivery, but less so at the national level - whether because they were not allowed to govern properly thanks to outside opposition or opposition from a domestic majority, or because they only controlled a small number of ministries. They now must make two crucial transitions that they had toyed with in recent years - from dabbling in politics to full national governance; and from externally directed military resistance to providing social, political and economic services at home…

And best of all, when they aren't busy thinking up new ways to kill infidels, they make sure the trains run on time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:54 | link | comments

New life for old craft: Lace-makers from a mountain village in Poland, renowned for making items for churches and homes, have found a way to adapt to changing times. The Ceeb reports that they have pumped new life into their cottage industry by “thinking small”—fashioning delicate thongs, G-strings and other lacy unmentionables.

Clever chicks, but if they really want to be fashion forward (or, more acurately, fashion backward) and get in on a cutting-edge EU trend, maybe they should start learning to crochet burqas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:55 | link | comments

Rosie O’Dious: Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the jihadi who takes credit for 9/11, the Bali nightclub bombing and many, many other terror plots, and who claims to have personally decapitated "the American Jew" (as he so delightfully refers to him) Daniel Pearl, is a diabolical dude, one of the baddest of the bad. Right up there, in fact, with OBL and the hairy Islamic Hitler. Yet, unbelievably, know-nothing pontificator and bloviating buffoon Rosie O’Donnell of hen gabfest The View touts the Sheikh’s “humanity” and expresses concern for the way he’s supposedly been mistreated by GITMO authorities. 

Also, Rosie is pretty sure that the WTC attack was an inside job.

 

It is truly shocking that this repellent ignoramus is given a daily forum from which to blurt out her toxic views to an extremely receptive audience—and with little or no rebuttal (skinny-Minnie Elisabeth Hasselback, the show’s token right-winger, being no match for heavyweight Rosie).

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:29 | link | comments

Chic cheek: I stopped reading Internet magazine Salon when my political orientation gradually did a 180 in the months after 9/11. But this headline on google news caught my eye. Salon’s movie critic, Stephanie Zacharek, critiques the new Chris Rock movie I Think I Love My Wife. Now, I haven’t seen the movie, nor am I likely to, because the clips I’ve seen have seemed unfunny and lame. However, I found the first paragraph of Ms. Zacharek’s review to be insufferably snobbish:

The notion that Chris Rock would even think, let alone dare, to remake an Eric Rohmer movie -- specifically, "Love in the Afternoon," in which a settled suburban husband and father considers a dalliance with an old friend -- is enough to set cinephiles everywhere dashing their berets to the ground. It's OK when a Rohmer hero ogles a miniskirted jeune fille on the streets of Paris; but when Chris Rock daydreams in voice-over about a commuter-train cutie with a dazzling lip-gloss smile, we're surely talking about crass Americanism at its worst.

Ah, yes. The French are invariably classy and chic, what with their berets, jeune filles and ineffable je ne sais quois. Americans, au contraire, are unbearably crass.

 

Given the current world situation, which has seen France largely capitulate to Islamism while the U.S. remains the bulwark against the Islamic conquest, all I can say is vive le difference!

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

Leftist death wish: Clueless leftists in Israel, who always seem to think it’s far better to do something, anything, rather that to just sit tight (do they suffer from ADD, or something?), have been pressuring Israel’s clueless leaders to negotiate with Syria, the glorious Islamic Republic’s Mini-Me. In exchange for ceding the Golan Heights (and the strategic advantage it gives Israel) to Syria, Israel would receive…a piece of paper.

The absurdity—and likely catastrophe—of making such a deal at a time when Syria seems to be preparing for war is giving Caroline Glick conniptions. From JWR:

…With Syria clearly on war footing, there are several moves Israel must make right now. Militarily, Israel must prepare for war. The IDF should be pre-positioning equipment in the Golan Heights; training its reserves and regular forces for war, and updating its doctrine for fighting in the Golan Heights. So too, municipal authorities should be readying their bomb shelters for another war and preparing contingencies to evacuate civilians from the North.

If Syria does initiate hostilities, the IDF's goal must be to destroy the Syrian military and avoid a stalemate at all costs.

Diplomatically, Israel must work to cancel the diplomatic gains that Syria made this week. The goal must be to return Syria to the international isolation it has been relegated to since it engineered Hariri's murder.

Israel must also identify and assist forces in Syria that are working to undermine and topple the regime. Last week the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invited Syria's US-based agent Ibrahim Suleiman, who held contacts with the far-left former director general of the Foreign Ministry Alon Liel to address its members. That invitation should be rescinded. Rather than Suleiman, the Knesset should invite regime opponents to speak to its members.

Working with the Kurdish opposition, the US-based Center for Democracy in the Middle East operates a satellite television station that runs limited broadcasts into Syria in Kurdish, Arabic and Persian. The station educates its viewers about the regime's corruption, suppression of human rights and democracy. It calls for peaceful coexistence with Israel and the rest of Syria's neighbors. Israel should be helping to fund, expand and run these broadcasts.

For its part, the regime itself announced this week that it is planning to launch a satellite television station that will advance the Syrian-Iranian line to the Arab world. Imagine how refreshing it would be for audiences to have the opportunity to watch something other than jihad on television.

In all its dealings with Syria, Israel must understand that today Syria is a clear enemy whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the Jewish state. As a result, in all arenas and at all times, Israel should be working to weaken and destabilize the regime. There is much it can do to advance this purpose.

Unfortunately, until the current government is replaced, it is hard to imagine how this can happen.

If Israel doesn’t get rid of this useless, feckless batch of leaders—pronto!—it may as well accept that it has absolutely no future as a sovereign Jewish state.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:24 | link | comments

The nose knows: A certain Shia cleric must have a nose that’s growing abnormally long. According to Reuters, Ayatollah Mohammed Emani-Kashani (described as being “a member of Iran’s highest arbitration body the Expediency Council”—so you know he’s pretty high up) made the following statement on state radio re Iran’s nuclear program: “We are not lying. Our atomic work is for serving the nation, not for building arms.”

That’s what Ayatollah Pinocchio is saying in public. In private, though, he’s singing a different tune:

 

I’ve got some lies

That I can tell

So all the Jews

Will go to Hell.

Taqiyah’s alive, you see.

You’ll hear some lies from me.

Boo hoo, they’ll hear from Moo

As he slams Great Satan’s plans.

We hate the lot of you

For trying to enact your bans.

I’ve got some lies,

As is my right

As long as we

Keep up the fight.

How we hate your liberty.

You’ll hear some lies from me…

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:01 | link | comments

Diplomatic impunity: Egypt’s ambassador to Canada, Mohammed El-Sayeed, responds—again—to criticism of his country that has appeared recently in the letters section of the National Post:

Re: Egypt Gets A Lecture, letters to the editor, March 14; Egypt Does Not Give Lectures, letter March 13.

I was glad to see that several readers took the time to comment on my March 13 letter. What was saddening is the level of ignorance in most letters and crude bigotry in at least one. Let me try again to clarify some points.

It is a tragic mistake to associate Islam with terrorism. Terrorism is a heinous crime that has no religion. Islam, like all great religions, condemns violence and terrorism. The fact that a small number of criminals commit vicious acts of terrorism abusing the name of Islam does not warrant such blatant prejudice against Muslims. Egypt fought fanaticism, extremism and terrorism long before 9/11. We were the first country to call for international cooperation to fight this scourge.

Freedom of religion is fully guaranteed in our Constitution. Freedom of expression is also guaranteed and exercised daily by a multitude of free media. No one goes to jail for criticizing any public official. Like any civilized nation, however, we also have libel laws. Freedom does not mean chaos. As a society we respect the religious beliefs and feelings of all. That's why, for example, the book The Da Vinci Code and the movie were not allowed in Egypt, at the request of the Coptic Church.

Egypt also stands against any and all kinds of discrimination. This including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. There was never a series called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Egyptian TV. On the contrary, you can often find articles or programs proving the fallacy of the so-called Protocols.

Every country has problems. In Egypt, we know our problems and we are working hard to find solutions. We welcome advice and assistance from friends, but not lectures from anyone, anyone at all.

It’s good of the ambassador to try to “clarify” matters for us ignorant Canucks. And he’s right that Egyptian TV has never run a series called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the name of the vile, cockamamie, hate-spewing 41-part saga that took the “warrant for genocide” as its jumping off point was Horseman Without a Horse. So I’m sure, in the interest of clarification, the ambassador won’t mind if I direct people to a few links—here, here, here,  here, here, here, here,  here, here,  and  here (by no means an exhaustive listing)—which, to be somewhat less than diplomatic, show him to be full of crap.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments (1)

Dhimmis to the left of me, racists to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle: That’s the plaintive song Nic Sarkozy is singing these days. From AFP via Expatica:

PARIS, March 14, 2007 (AFP) - French presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy was put on the defensive Wednesday over a plan to control immigration as challenger Francois Bayrou again shake up the campaign.

With less than six weeks to the first round of voting, the interior minister recent proposal to create a ministry for immigration and national identity is being portrayed as a campaign ploy to appeal to far-right supporters.

"Immigration is a big subject. I want France to remain open, welcoming and generous ... but we have basic values, secularism, equality between men and women that we will not sell off," Sarkozy said in an interview with TF1 television.

"If you do not explain that to those who want to come here, to immigrants, that we have values that are non-negotiable, which are called our national identity, how do yo want them to integrate?" he said.

Socialist rival Segolene Royal has accused Sarkozy of making "an intolerable connection between immigration and a threat to national identity" while late Wednesday far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen called the plan "an illusion".

Immigration has become a sensitive issue in the campaign for the election following rioting in 2005 in predominantly immigrant suburbs across the country that highlighted France's strained integration policies.

Hundreds of buildings were burned and thousands of cars torched during the three weeks of rioting in October and November 2005, the worst civil unrest in France in nearly half a century.

Centrist Francois Bayrou, dubbed "the silent tsumani" by the French press because of his rise in opinion poll rankings, used a visit to the Paris suburbs to launch a scathing attack on Sarkozy's plan, first unveiled last week.

"National identity is not a matter for a ministry," said Bayrou.

"The first thing to do is avoid pitting people against each other by saying that the nation is under threat," he said.

"A president's duty is to ensure that the French people can live together."

Bayrou's rise in the polls is sowing panic in the ranks of the Socialist Party, which fears a repeat of the humiliating defeat in 2002 when their candidate Lionel Jospin came third behind Le Pen, failing to qualify for the second round of voting against Jacques Chirac.

The leader of the small Union for French Democracy (UDF) party is at 24 percent in the polls in the first round. This is up from 12 percent in mid-January, and just one point behind Royal, according to the latest survey.

Royal's spokesman Arnaud Montebourg described Bayrou as a "political opportunist", saying he could fit the sum of his electoral programme "on the back of a postage stamp."

Bayrou is campaigning on a platform that calls for a government of national unity that would unite the right and left.

Sounds more like a government of abject dhimmitude to me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments

Today’s jihad: George Jonas is a guy who “gets it” about the threat to the Western world posed by the jihadists. Yet even a guy who “gets it” can run into trouble when he tries to insist—as he does in the introduction to his new book about Islam, excerpted in today’s National Post—that one cannot draw a direct line between Islam and Islamism:

Islamism is not Islam. The two are not to be equated. But is there something about Islam that is conducive to the formation of extremist sects and radical movements? Is Islam a Petri dish in which a culture of fundamentalism thrives?

Arguably, yes. Some creeds are friendlier to the separation between a social and a spiritual realm than others. The notion of separating Church and State is rooted in Christianity, where it is expressed as rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. This notion is absent in Islam. For Muslims, all things belong to God, including the State. Separation amounts to sacrilege. Such a civilization may discern any manifestation of modernity an assault on its beliefs…

George must know that this supposed chasm between Islam and Islamism is a fiction, because soon after making this assertion he says this:

Islam was more than a religion from the beginning; it was also a political faction and a force. As such, it has been struggling with the non-Islamic world for supremacy for the last 1,400 years. It is important to note that for the first thousand years of this struggle Islam had been triumphant. The crescent moon has been waning only during the last three or four centuries. The gradual ebbing of the Islamic tide created the illusion that the conflict was coming to an end. Three generations in North America and in Europe, including our parents and our grandparents, experienced the mirage of a lull in the ancient struggle. The calm between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (1918) and the collapse of the Peacock Throne of Iran (1979) was especially deceptive. When Islam's jihad resumed after the fall of the Persian Shah in 1979, it caught many, if not most, Westerners by surprise.

In other words, George recognizes that today’s jihad is in fact a resumption of the jihad of the past and not a matter of today’s Islamists reinventing the wheel; he just doesn’t want to come right out and say so.

Rather than pretending that the “old” jihad has nothing to do with the “new” jihad, the new jihad being a radical Islamic reinterpretation of modern forms of fascism, it might be more helpful to thing of things in another way: Just as anti-Zionism is the latest incarnation of antisemitism, Islamism is the latest incarnation of the jihad.

If you look at it that way, you won’t get tied up in knots of illogic like George.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:46 | link | comments

Harpoon’s “moderate”: I’ve noticed that when the Toronto Star’s resident shill for Islam, Harpoon Siddiqui, wants to advance his Muslims-are-victims/there’s-no-jihad agenda, he often finds a third party to act as his mouthpiece. Such is the case today when Harpoon, on a visit to Malaysia, quotes at length the views of Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim is a former deputy prime minister who was jailed for his supposedly “moderate” views; Harpoon touts him as “democratic reformer” who has “condemned Islamic extremism at home and abroad.” A BBC profile of the “reformer” from a few years ago however, paints a somewhat different picture, one which, for obvious reasons, Harpoon completely sidesteps:

…The cries of "reformasi" on the streets of Kuala Lumpur following his arrest, and his courting of the international media during his time as Mahathir's deputy, led many in the West to portray Mr Anwar as an Asian renaissance man, leading the charge against a corrupt "ancien regime".

But many Malaysians, particularly non-Muslims, see it quite differently, pointing to Mr Anwar's political roots in radical Islam.

He made his name as a student leader, defacing English language signs at the University of Malaya and founding Malaysia's Islamic youth movement, ABIM.

Many local Chinese people, who make up the largest ethnic group after the Muslim Malays, doubt that Mr Anwar has left his radical Islamic roots far behind.

However, Mr Anwar maintains that he is a unifying figure, not a divisive one.

"I've always been identified with moderate and progressive Islam and condemned extremism in all its forms," he told the BBC from his prison cell last year…

Uh huh. Another one of those “moderate and progressive” Muslims—like Tariq Ramadan.

And if you buy that, you’ll have no trouble swallowing Anwar’s load of twaddle as iterated to Harpoon:

…The U.S. and its allies have caused havoc and destruction in Muslim lands and are treating Muslims so shabbily that "people everywhere are angry and agitated.

"Look at the American reaction to the recent attempt by the Saudis to settle the Hamas-Fatah dispute. People were killing each other and here was an attempt to stop the killing and Muslims all over the world welcomed the initiative but the Americans wouldn't go along.

 

"Look at the way they have handled Iraq. It's getting to be insane. Look at the way they have been hectoring Iran."

 

Ibrahim recently wrote that America's "prejudiced and Islamophobic mindset prevents it from discerning between mainstream political Islam and its most extreme peripheries."

 

It considers all madrassas and other religious institutions as breeding grounds for fundamentalists and terrorists.

 

And it dismisses all Muslim resistance to oppression as terrorism.

 

"This new theology of terrorism" fails to distinguish between "problems that are essentially homegrown" and those of Al Qaeda. Among the former: the Arab-Israeli issue and, in this region, the Muslim resistance in southern Thailand and southern Philippines.

 

In Thailand, Muslims are fighting government oppression and violations of human rights, such as the right to their language and culture.

 

"Similarly, the Moro uprising in the Philippines stemmed from political and socio-economic marginalization, which have no bearing with the current acts of terror ...

 

"We must deal effectively with the causes" of such conflicts, he said, rather than responding with "firepower and an overall patronizing attitude toward Muslim communities.

 

"Such a policy cannot be sustained."

 

Making matters worse, Ibrahim told me, are authoritarian rulers who cater to American demands by posing as "moderates." They pass draconian laws, increase repression and stifle democratic reform.

 

They and the American administration, especially Vice-President Dick Cheney, overreact when some Muslims espouse an Islamic caliphate – not unlike some Christians who dream of the kingdom of God on earth.

 

"It shows how arrogant and ignorant he is, and how undemocratic. What's wrong with someone saying whatever he wants to say?

 

"You take action only when he perpetrates a crime or commits violence. Here in Malaysia, some people espouse an Islamic state. Okay. You can't condemn and demonize them for saying that…

 

Obviously, a man after Harpoon’s own heart, a so-called moderate like him who counsels us foolish, gullible infidels to let down our guard and give that “tiny minority of extremists” a pass because they’re, um, a tiny minority of extremists.

 

No can do, Anwar; no can do, Harpoon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:22 | link | comments (1)

Travel woes: The Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands may be one of the less attractive locales on the planet, but they’ve proven to be a magnet for a certain kind of religious tourist—the kind who is looking to sign up for active duty in the jihad. Der Spiegel Online has a report about two such “tourists”—Germans who were recently apprehended by Pakistani intelligence:

…For most foreign visitors, the road to Waziristan ends less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Lahore, at a Pakistan military checkpoint. Beyond the checkpoint begins a journey through a mountainous no man's land dotted with small villages, past houses surrounded by high walls. Gun barrels jut from many a pickup truck with tinted windows. Getting out of the car here is not such a good idea.

Intelligence agencies are intensely interested in what goes on in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. No other area is mentioned more frequently in discussions of where exactly Osama bin Laden's hideout may be located. Pakistani intelligence agents estimate the number of terrorists in the region to be above 2,000, with most thought to come from Uzbekistan and Arab countries. "Not the right place to study the Koran," in the opinion of Ernst Uhrlau, the president of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND). His agency characterizes the region as "al-Qaida's deployment zone."

In the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it's not difficult to spot a European -- even when they're dressed in traditional garb like the two German men that showed up in northern Pakistan early this year. Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency, seized 29-year-old Nihad C. from Pforzheim, Germany, in Rawalpindi. Three days later an acquaintance of his, 30-year-old Michael N. from Oberhausen, was arrested in Raiwind…

Two thoughts occur to me: Calling them Nihad C. and Michael N. make them sound like something out of Kafka. And the German intelligence chief’s words about the inappropriateness of seeking religious instruction in the borderlands may well be the understatement of the year, if not the decade.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:59 | link | comments

Another one bites the dust: Condi “Sisyphus” Rice and other Foggy Bottom realists have been trying to float—or, to be more precise, to reinflate—the Saudi “peace” plan of a few years ago. A pointless exercise since the “unity” boys have already shot it down. Their objection: it doesn’t make provision for the Palestinians’ “right” to “return” to Israel and turn it into yet another Arab state. From the Jerusalem Post: 

The Palestinian refugees must return to their original homes inside Israel and not to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian Authority Minister for Refugees Affairs, Hamas's Atef Udwan, said on Wednesday.

Udwan's statement came in response to reports that Israel and the US had demanded that the next Arab summit, due to be held in Saudi Arabia later this month, introduce certain changes to the 2002 Arab peace initiative, especially with regards to the "right of return" for the refugees.

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, also opposed introducing changes to the Arab peace plan. "We are opposed to making any changes in the Arab plan," Abu Rudaineh said. "The plan enjoys the backing of all the Arab leaders and represents a fine and balanced basis for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Referring to the controversial refugee clause, Abu Rudaineh said that the Arab peace plan guaranteed a "just solution to the problem of the refugees on the basis of United Nations resolution 194."

Udwan, meanwhile, warned Arab states against complying with the Israeli and American demand, saying the refugees must be allowed to return to their former villages inside Israel.

"Forcing the refugees in the Arab world to return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip will only serve Israel's interests," he said. "Such a move will also fulfill Israel's desire to prevent the refugees from practicing their right of return."

Udwan warned that the return of the refugees to the West Bank and Gaza Strip would have "serious repercussions" because the international community would regard it as a solution to the problem.

"Moving the refugees to the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be in violation of United Nations resolutions emphasizing the right of return to Palestine," the Hamas minister added. He also ruled out the possibility that the Arab states would agree to make introduce changes to the Arab peace plan.

"I don't believe there is an Arab party that will agree to give up the right of return," he declared," he said. "Our people will never accept such a concession. In the past, our people have totally rejected Palestinian initiatives that ignored the right of return of the refugees and attempts to resettle Palestinians in Sinai and Iraq."

Any questions Condi?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments

Like sands through the hourglass…: Al That Jaz has a run-down of the religious and “secular” ministers who will likely comprise the Palestinians’ “unity” government—and what a delightful group of rogues, scoundrels and Zion-haters it is. Anchored, of course, by Hamas’s Ismail Haniya, who remains steadfast in his mission to ditch the Jews and who will set the tone for governance, the unity crew will have to set aside their differences (dare we call their struggle to get along “Sisyphean”?) and keep its eyes on the prize: the only sliver of land in the Middle East (and the world) over which Jews are sovereign.

Can they do it?

 

Stay tuned for the next episode of the Palestinian soap opera, The Days of Our Lives are Numbered.

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

The myth of peace: Times columnist Gerard Baker compares Condi Rice’s efforts to “kick-start” the peace process to Sisyphus’s eternal fate. As you’ll recall, in Greek myth, Sisyphus was forced to spend eternity rolling a heavy boulder up a steep hill every day, only to have it roll back. It seems to me, though, that there’s a big difference between Condi and Sisyphus. Sisyphus had no choice but to keep performing a pointless task. Condi and the U.S., however, do have a choice. And while the “realists” of Foggy Bottom may have decided that this is a particularly propitious moment to relaunch “peace” talks (which amount to little more than an effort to so weaken Israel that it will become as unviable as Palestine, and thus more easily destroyed), those of us who are “non-realists” would suggest that with Iraq crumbling, Iran in ascendence and Hamas in firm contol in Gaza, now would be exactly the wrong time to compel Israel to make concessions to genocidal Arabs-- Arabs who have demonstrated time and again that they are nowhere near being able to govern themselves in a viable manner. Like me, Gerard Baker is dubious about the mission:

...There are big weaknesses in the US grand strategy. In the Palestinian territories Hamas — especially the elements that remain committed to eliminating Israel — seem to have the upper hand.

The broader effort to exploit Sunni-Shia differences is weakened by a conflict at the heart of US diplomacy. Washington has decided that a solution in Iraq must involve the creation of a Shia, Iran-friendly government in Baghdad. But US officials continue to regard Shia Iran as the biggest medium-term threat to their interests in the region.

“In the end it is the realities on the ground that define what is possible, whetever [sic] the State Department may want,” says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA official, who has watched US policy in the region evolve.

Working around these realities will make Sisyphus’s task look like child’s play.

Put away your boulder, Condi. You can do it if you want to.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments

Moo’s hissy fit: The Security Council may soon be punishing the glorious Islamic republic for its refusal to back down from its nuclear project, and the news has inspired the hairy Islamic Hitler to reach deep into his bag of rhetorical tricks and achieve new levels of viturperative invective. From Al That Jaz:

A defiant Iranian president has condemned the UN Security Council as lacking any legitimacy s the body prepares a second package of sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Thursday that Iran would not shelve its nuclear programmes.

 

He also said that a Security Council resolution could not stop the Islamic state from obtaining nuclear technology.

 

"Today the enemies of the Iranian people are seeking to use the Security Council to prevent the progress and development of Iran," Ahmadinejad said.

  

"But the Security Council has no legitimacy among the peoples of the world," he told a rally in the central Yazd province.

 

The punitive measures under discussion by the five permanent Security Council members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the  United States  plus Germany, involve an arms embargo as well as  some financial and trade restrictions that build on the first sanctions imposed in December.

 

"What is the aim of issuing such resolutions? Today we are mastering the nuclear fuel cycle completely," Ahmadinejad said.

   

"If all of you (Westerners) get together and call your ancestors from hell as well, you will not be able to stop the Iranian nation."…

 

Wow. Moo sounds as batty as Britney Spears off her meds. I prescribe some R&R at a remote “rest farm” and some heavy-duty psychoatives.

 

Of course, I’d settle for a well-aimed bullet between the eyes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

No sympathy for the devilish jihadi: Here’s a guy I’m awfully glad is cooling his heels in Gitmo: Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed is the jihadi who masterminded 9/11. In his latest judicial hearing he’s admitted to having a hand in all sorts of malfeasance, some successful—like 9/11 and the Bali nightclub bombing—and some that went no further than the planning stage—like attacks on everything from the Empire State building to Big Ben to the Panama Canal. From CBC News:

The self-described "operational director" of the September 11, 2001, attack on America, is claiming a role in more than 30 planned or attempted terrorist attacks.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a written statement that was read to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon on Wednesday.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed statement was read at the military hearing by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as the tribunal's Personal Representative for Mohammed, who the transcript says was present and was asked by the presiding officer about the authenticity of the statement.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the statement that was just read by the Personal Representative, were those your words?" asked the presiding officer, according to the transcript, which says Mohammed replied: "Yes."

Later in the hearing, the transcript says, Mohammed spoke directly to the court, in a final statement in which he describes himself as an enemy combatant, compared the fighters in the jihad against America to George Washington, and makes a plea on behalf of "many" Guantanamo Bay detainees he says were "unjustly arrested."

The secret proceeding last Saturday was closed to news media. The detainee spoke in English to a four-officer panel during a proceeding that lasted one hour and fifteen minutes.

"I'm not making myself hero when I said I was responsible for this or that," said. The brazen list of attacks, read by his Personal Representative, ranged from the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing led by his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S., to the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people.

"This so-called confession probably dooms him [Muhammed] to a future death sentence," says CBS News legal consultant Andrew Cohen. "There are some close cases down there, some false charges, but this isn't one of them. It's only if he somehow makes it into federal court that his statements could be successfully challenged."

Mohammed's confession also refers to many plots not previously made public: potential attacks on the Panama Canal, Big Ben in London, NATO headquarters in Brussels, an assassination of former President Jimmy Carter, and the destruction of an Indonesian oil company purportedly owned by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The confession also talks of plots against U.S. and U.K. targets in Turkey, nightclubs frequented by Americans and Brits in Thailand, U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan, Israeli embassies in India and the Philippines, and the Israeli resort of Eilat.

Mohammed furthermore claims credit for training the nineteen Sept. 11 homicidal hijackers and would-be "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who was tackled by passengers on a 2001 Paris to Miami airline flight. He took responsibility for a 2002 attack that killed a pair of U.S. soldiers on a Kuwaiti island and a shoulder-fired missile that missed an Israeli passenger plane taking off from Mombassa, Kenya...

 

Reading this litany of terror, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the old Rolling Stone song “Sympathy for the Devil.” Here’s the jihadi version of the song’s first verse as sung by the conniving Sheikh:

 

Please allow my to introduce myself, I’m a man of faith and zeal.

I’ve been around for long, long years, since Mo gave us his spiel.

I was around when we slew those tribes of Jews in Medina.

I made damn sure the dhimmis had to pay us the jizya.

Please to meet you, hope you guess my name.

But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game…

 

No puzzle, really. It’s called the jihad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:20 | link | comments (2)

Iranian P.R.: I adore the language of news releases issued by totalitarian news agencies on behalf of totalitarian governments. It’s just so deliciously, deliriously Orwellian. From the Islamic Republic News Agency:

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani on Wednesday bitterly criticized the Security Council interference in Iranian nuclear program when Iran upheld Non-Proliferation Treaty and Safeguards Agreement of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"Engagement of the Security Council in Iranian nuclear program is somewhat "bad temper" being exercised vis-a-vis the great Iranian nation.

"Iran stands firm to get its legitimate rights," Larijani told reporters.

He said the miscalculation they are making will harm themselves, adding that if they go ahead with negotiation, Iran is ready to do the same, but, if they change the course with resort to language of force, Iran's response would also be stronger.

A reporter asked Larijani about Iranian reaction to possible US attack on Iran, he said that in case of military action, the Iranian response will absolutely be reciprocal.

"There is no doubt that any military action would have military response."
Asked about the delay in commissioning Bushehr power plant, he said there is no doubt that Russia has made delay in completion of the project and the Russian government should resolve the issue to pave the way for mutual business cooperation in the future.

Responding to a question about Russian officials call on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and that they made statement similar to that of the western countries, Larijani said that Russian officials respect Iranian right to produce nuclear energy and never made such a statement.

"If they call for uranium enrichment suspension it may be a tactical gesture."

What we essentially have here is Larinjitis trying to do damage control in the wake of reports that Russia may be retreating from aiding and abetting Iran’s nuclear program.

 

Won’t work.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:43 | link | comments

State sponsor of terrorism: An American judge has ruled that the government of Sudan—you know, those wonderful folks who gave us the genocide in Darfur?—is responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole that claimed the lives of 17 sailors. The terrorist attack occurred back in 2000, at a time, pre-9/11, when far too many people were living in a fool’s paradise and thought they could safely ignore the jihad.

Unlike today, of course, when far too many people are living in a fool’s paradise and think they can safely ignore the jihad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:30 | link | comments

Mission impossible: An op-ed on the JTA site calls upon the UN to “fix” its Human Rights Council.

Don't bother, I say. How can you “fix” something that is so obviously beyond repair? Far better to scrap the whole sordid enterprise than to allow the world’s bad guys to bully Israel—and to bully it obsessively and beyond all reason—in the name of patrolling “human rights.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:15 | link | comments (3)

The melody lingers on: Living here in North America, one is spared the most egregiously awful annual event in popular music: the Eurovision Song Contest. Still, I would have liked to see Israeli group Teapacks sing their catchy ditty about nuclear annihilation, which, after some hesitation on the part of contest organizers, they will be able to perform after all.

Personally, I think they’d have a much better shot at winning if they sang “In the ‘Moud”, a song with more or less the same message.

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

Po-mo “science”:  Melanie Phillips, a skeptic about the eco-orthodoxy now gripping the Western world, takes aim at one of its advocates—a scientist who urges us to jettison, um, science, in favour of a “post-normal” approach to interpreting climate change.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments

Good dhimmis: Another place where infidels and true believers are in a state of turmoil is the Phillipines. Fortunately, the infidels have acknowledged that there’s a critical mass of true believers that cannot be ignored, and are taking the necessary steps to deal with the situation.  From Islam Online:

MANILA — Philippine troops plan to start visiting mosques and madrasahs in the capital of the Roman Catholic nation to learn more about the community and address their problems, though Muslim locals are worried about their real intentions.

"The idea here is that rather than imposing the right-handed approach — military operations — we're offering the left-hand approach or enhancing community-based relations," Major-General Benjamin Dolorfino, commander of military units in Manila, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

He said troops would hold a series of meetings to know more about the Muslim community's problems and offer them solutions.

"The primary approach is dialogue aimed at knowing the problems and eventually bringing in the stakeholders so that we can bring solutions to the community's problems."

Dolorfino, himself a Muslim, believes visits to traditional Islamic meeting places would deny militants "potential sanctuary, where they can plot to explode bombs in the cities".

"We're trying to hit so many birds with just one stone," he said.

An estimated 800,000 Muslims reside in metropolitan Manila, the sprawling capital of 12 million people.

The mineral-rich southern region of Mindanao, Islam's birthplace in the Philippines, is home to 5 million Muslims out of the country's 87 million population.

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

Is Spain growing a spine: Maybe. From Expatica:

VALENCIA - Spain vowed to stand firm on Tuesday after threats from Al-Qaeda over its deployment of troops in Afghanistan. 

 

The Spanish defence minister said the threat by Al Qaeda to attack Germany, Austria and Spain if they don't withdraw their troops from Afghanistan is "one more of those threats ... (which) we can never give in to."

Jose Antonio Alonso was asked about the Internet-released videotape threatening the three countries during the presentation of the U.N. communications cent eto be located in the eastern Spanish town of Quart de Poblet, near Valencia.

 

The minister said that it was necessary to study the video, which has "all the elements of being one more of those threats" against countries that are "fighting for peace."

He also said that "we have to always be on guard against international terrorism."

 

"There have been several threats on the part of international terrorism over the past few years and this (video) has all the elements" of being one more such threat received by the different countries, he said.

Alonso said that "we can never give in to this pressure or threats suffered by several countries who are fighting for a more fair and more stable world."…

 

All in all, a much better policy than capitulation, I’d say.

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

And speaking of euphemisms…: The New York Times prefers the “m” word—“militants”:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Along the Afghan border, not far from this northwestern city, Islamic militants have used a firm foothold over the past year to train and dispatch suicide bombers against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Skip to next paragraph

But in recent weeks the suicide bombers have turned on Pakistan itself, carrying out six attacks and killing 35 people. Militant leaders have threatened to unleash scores more, in effect opening a new front in their war.

Diplomats and concerned residents see the bombings as proof of a spreading “Talibanization,” as Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, calls it, which has seeped into more settled districts of Pakistan from the tribal areas along the border, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made a home.

In Peshawar and other parts of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, residents say English-language schools have received threats, schoolgirls have been warned to veil themselves, music is being banned and men are told not to shave their beards.

Then there is the mounting toll of the suicide bombings. One of the most lethal killed 15 people in Peshawar, most of them police officers, including the popular police chief…

Now why would militants go and kill a popular police chief? Could it be that their militant interpretation of their faith compels them to get rid of anyone who impedes the larger aims of—and here’s a phrase you’re unlikely to read in this context in the NYT—Dar al Islam?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments

Resolute jihadis: Is Hamas going soft? That’s the concern of stalwart jihadis, Al Qaeda, who accused the genocidal terrorist organization of going flaccid by agreeing to join rival Fatah in a unity government. Hamas has quickly assured Osama’s #2, that nothing could be further from the truth. From Reuters (link via Martin Kramer):

…Zawahri accused Hamas of abandoning a tradition of suicide bombings for political gains. "They have ditched the movement of martyrdom operations ... for a government that plays with words in palace halls," he said.

Hamas killed nearly 300 Israelis in 58 suicide bombings after a Palestinian uprising began in 2000. It last carried out a suicide bombing in Israel in 2004.

In its statement Hamas said it continued to be a "movement of resistance, seekers of martyrdom" and that its "principles will never be changed".

"Zawahri's recent statements were wrong ... Resistance is our strategy. How and when? This depends on the reality at the time and our corresponding view of things," Hamas said.

"So be assured doctor Ayman, and all those who love Palestine like yourself, that Hamas is still the group you knew when it was founded and it will never abandon its path."

Hamas said its decision to run in the January 2006 Palestinian election that brought it to power and last month's unity deal with Fatah "came only to preserve the higher interests of the Palestinian people"…

Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The group's 1988 founding chapter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Such an attractive offer—give us a “viable” state (as if that were even in Israel’s power to do) and we promise to wait ten years before swarming you. How could Israel possibly pass it up?

 

One positive aspect of Hamas’s clarification: it should shut the door on any notion of funding the “unity” government.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments

Ceeb euphemism: In its quest to be the most politically-correct media outlet on the planet, Canada’s publicly funded broadcaster shuns the “t” word lest it give offence to those who believe one man’s “t” word is another man’s “f” words (freedom fighter). And since the “t” word is shunned, you can well imagine that the “j” words (jihad, jihadi, jihadist) are not even in the Ceeb’s lexicon. No, the accepted Ceeb-speak for tees and jays is an “i” word: “insurgents.” And those “insurgents” are surging all over the place, including Thailand, where surly insurgents have taken to blowing up, er, non-insurgents. For political, not religious, reasons, of course:

Attackers threw a bomb at a commuter van in southern Thailand on Wednesday and then opened fire on its eight passengers, killing them all, police said.

The attackers, believed to be Muslim insurgents, hurled a bomb at the van as it slowed into a curve in the road and shot the driver, who managed to survive, said police Lieut. Kitti Mankhong. The attackers then opened the side door of the van and shot each of the passengers with assault rifles.

The assault occurred as the van was shuttling people from the Betong district of Yala province to Hat Yai, the south's major city, in the neighbouring province of Songkhla.

Police and soldiers were searching for the attackers on Wednesday.

Authorities had stepped up security in the region for the Tuesday anniversary of the founding of the National Revolution Front (BRN) separatist group. Police had warned that insurgents might try to mark the anniversary with violence.

The BRN was formed in 1963, partly in opposition to a former Thai government's policy that forced southern Muslims to assimilate into predominantly Buddhist Thai society. The government has since changed the policy.

Military officials believed that BRN-Coordinate, an offshoot of the BRN, is to blame for a current spate of violence, which has left about 2,000 people dead since January 2004.

Driveby shootings and bombings occur almost daily in Thailand's three Muslim-majority provinces — Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani…

In other words, the jihad, oops, sorry, the insurgency, is the infidels’ fault.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:27 | link | comments (1)

Lachrymose “activists”: Today’s new word is “Darfurian.” A Darfurian is someone for whom Darfur is the cause du jour, and who likes to weep copious crocodile tears for those being macheted to death or displaced by government-sanctioned Janjaweed militias in Sudan, armed thanks to China.  

Here's how I'd use the world: The Darfurian had a bumper sticker on his hybrid vehicle reading “Save Darfur!", right beside the bumper sticker reading "Save the whales." In so doing, he considered himself to be a righteous humanitarian. From the American Thinker:

 

…But what should the American people and government do about it [the slaughter and displacement]? Do the Darfurians want Washington to break relations with Beijing, which is our second largest trading partner and which supplies Americans with the well-made, low-cost goods that they crave and are so eager to buy?

 

Since political pressure, economic sanctions, and moral suasion never work in places like Darfur (as they did not work in Nazi Germany), do the Darfurians want the United States to send in troops? Do they want NATO to send in troops? Do they want the United Nations to send in troops? Do they want the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference to send in troops? Do they want the Israelis, many of whose recent ancestors were  victims of genocide during the Second World War, to go into Darfur?

 

And when these foreign troops arrive, will the Darfurians let them stay long enough to end the genocide? Or will they clamor for their removal as soon as they begin to suffer deaths and heavy casualties?

 

Are those Darfurians who are young enough willing to volunteer for Darfur duty? Do they want others to volunteer? Do they want America to revive conscription - an institution most Darfurians loathe - so that we can have enough soldiers to respond to future Darfurs?

 

The rub is that so many Darfurians (or their parents and professors) hated the U.S. military during the Vietnam war era. So many Darfurians oppose the present war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And so many of them believe that dispatching American military forces anywhere to solve anything is an example of post-modernist imperialism. 

 

To Darfurians the solution to every problem is negotiation. They accept outgoing French President Jacques Chirac's contention that

 

"War is always proof of failure. It is always the worst of solutions, because it brings death and misery."

Both Chirac and the Darfurians forget that sometimes war, even with its resultant death and misery, is the only solution to evil. Both Chirac and the Darfurians forget that soldiers stopped the Muslim Turks at the Battle of Vienna in the seventeenth century, soldiers freed the American colonists from British tyranny in the eighteenth century, soldiers emancipated America's blacks in the nineteenth century, soldiers liberated the remnants of the Holocaust in the twentieth century, and soldiers stand between the State of Israel and its destruction in the twenty-first century.

 

In other words, besides sermonizing from pulpits, writing letters to editors, demonstrating on streets and campuses, and speechifying in Congress, what practical suggestions do the Darfurians have for ending the slaughter in the Sudan?

 

Um, none?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:49 | link | comments

HRC makes a big splash: I have an important announcement to make. The UN’s most blackly hilarious laughingstock, the “human rights” agency consumed primarily by the breach of one particular group’s “rights”—the Palestinians’—by one particular state—Israel—has just officially jumped the shark. Instead of investigating and condemning Israel every now and then—a schedule not nearly comprehensive enough to satisfy such arbiters of human rights as Syria, Libya and Cuba, among others—the Human Rights Council is expected “to place Israel under permanent investigation for its "violations" of international law in the territories - until such time as it withdraws to the pre-1967 border.” (Of course, once the Arabs are firmly in control of their territory, there will be no further need for such vigilance, and people will continue to be able to “honour” kill women and murder homosexuals with impunity and without any international intrusion. Just as they are free to do so in other Arab lands.) From the Jerusalem Post:

It's one of at least four anti-Israel actions he [Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch] expects the council to take during its fourth session, which started in Geneva on Monday and runs through April 5, Neuer told The Jerusalem Post from Geneva.

The UN body was created in June to replace the Human Rights Commission, which was scrapped because it had a faulty membership composition and repeatedly singled out Israel.

But since its inception, the 47-member body - which includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China - has continued to single out the Jewish State. It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.

Neuer and Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Yitzhak Levanon, said they expected this session to continue in that same pattern, although the council is also expected to discuss human rights abuses in other parts of the world, including in Darfur, Sudan.

"I'm expecting there will be some clashes concerning Israel," Levanon told the Post.

Neuer said Israel would be rapped for the Antiquities Authority's construction of an access ramp to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate.

The work has been widely condemned throughout the Muslim world.

Neuer said the council would also take Israel to task for refusing entry to inquiry teams in July and in November. The first team was sent to investigate Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping by Hamas of Cpl. Gilad Schalit in June.

The second team was dispatched to investigate the accidental discharge of an IDF artillery barrage that killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip in November.

Levanon said the investigators were denied entry because they were overtly biased against Israel…

The Human Rights Council is also set to hear a report compiled by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard that compares Israeli actions in the territories to that of the former apartheid system in South Africa…

Oh, that Special Rapporteur. Such a busy little human rights beaver. Here’s a recent Honest Reporting UK post debunking Dugard’s ongoing efforts to defame Israel by tarring it with the apartheid brush:

No stranger to HonestReporting for his anti-Israel bias, the UN's John Dugard recently produced another report accusing Israel of practising "apartheid". While Eye on the UN's Anne Bayefsky effectively rebuts Dugard, South Africa's Business Day chose to quote Dugard verbatim in a decidedly one-sided report.

To its credit, Business Day has given op-ed space to Joel Pollak who explains that Dugard's:

investigation is entirely one-sided. In his introduction he states: "I shall not consider the violation of human rights caused by Palestinian suicide bombers. Nor shall I consider the violation of human rights caused by the political conflict between Fatah and Hamas."

That sort of bias taints every page of Dugard's report and destroys the credibility of its conclusions....

Dugard also spins the facts to fit his conclusions. Palestinians and especially Israelis come in all colours, but Dugard describes them as different races to make the apartheid analogy work: "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose (of Israeli actions) is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them?" he asks.

Well, yes, actually. The continued refusal by Palestinian leaders to stop terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians has created the need for Israel's checkpoints. Security, not domination, is the reason.

John Dugard—the Jimminy Carter of South Africa. Could a Nobel Peace Prize be in his future?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments

“Apartheid” in Israel: Here’s how it works—a Muslim girl can become Miss Israel and an Arab-Israeli can anchor a newscast on Israeli TV. From JTA:

An Arab woman is a new Hebrew-language anchor for an Israeli news channel. Lucy Aharish, an Israeli Arab graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who also underwent broadcast training in Germany, was hired recently by Channel 10 television as a news anchor. Aharish, 25, told Ma'ariv in an interview Monday that although she has experienced racism in Israel, she believes Arabs can overcome such challenges and succeed. Having barely survived an attack on her family car when she visited Gaza as a child, she also voiced disinterest in the Palestinians.

Aharish is the fourth generation of a Muslim family from Nazareth but spent most of her life in the southern town of Dimona, where she celebrated Jewish festivals and served in Gadna, Israel's paramilitary youth training program.

"There is no doubt that the different experiences that I underwent caused an identity crisis, which developed for years," she said. "But the truth is that I don't regret for a moment that my parents raised me in a Jewish environment. They gave me the privilege to stand in the middle of the road and look at the whole picture. I am grateful for this."

You’d think those Afrikaner-like Israelis would have gotten the hang of it by now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:43 | link | comments (1)

Syrian sob story: The Globe and Mail often features tug-from-the-heartstrings sagas of downtrodden Palestinians courtesy Globe scribe Mark “Marlarkey” MacKinnon, who’s become a something of a specialist in these mini-melodramas. Today, however, the Globe shifts focus to some other oppressed Muslims forced to live under Jewish “occupation”—Druze who live in the Golan Heights. In today’s soap opera,  startlingly enough not written by either MacKinnon or his wife, Globe stringer Caroline Wheeler (the Globe’s married tag-team of Israel-bashers), we learn of the romantic saga of two sweethearts, first cousins who happen to live on either side of the contentious Israel-Syria border; ah, yes: so near, and yet so far. And because of their unfortunate location, and the fact that there is no free flow across this border, the female half of the romance has had to bid farewell to her family forever and go live with her cousin/husband and uncle/aunt in-laws on the Syrian side.  

Such a touching tale, and yet one with a not-so-hidden agenda: to make it appear that Israel is solely to blame for keeping the families apart, those mean, rotten Jews:

…More than a generation has passed since Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, but the border remains as contested as ever, dividing families and disrupting lives.

Today, this region is mostly populated by about 15,000 Syrian Druze who live under Israeli occupation.

The majority live in four Golan towns, including Buqata, where residents have refused to accept Israeli identity cards and still reject Israel's 1981 annexation of the heights.

The tight-knit community, which follows a religion that broke with Islam in the 11th century, is still loyal to Damascus, flying Syrian flags over their homes.

The situation has shaped a surreal existence for families like the Shahins and Harbs, who are related by blood and separated by just a few kilometres, but rarely see each other because their respective countries are technically at war.

Over the years they have tried to maintain their connection, arranging marriages between their respective sides to strengthen family ties.

They even have a weekly ritual in which they gather on either side of the border and use bullhorns to speak to their relatives across the way.

Five years ago, during one of these shouting sessions, the two families decided to organize a reunion in Jordan, which is where Ms. Shahin and Mr. Harb met.

By all accounts, it was love at first sight.

"It was very natural," recalled Ms. Shahin's uncle Amar.

But it was a diluted joy.

"If it were up to me, I wouldn't have given her away to him because I don't want her to leave her home, but one cannot stand in the way of such love," he said yesterday, as the bride's cousins danced around her, praising her beauty.

The couple's courtship consisted of long-distance phone calls routed through Cyprus. They sent photos and letters to be mailed by relatives travelling to a third country.

When they finally announced their intentions to marry, their families gave their immediate support. But it took more than a year to get the necessary approval from the Syrian and Israeli authorities, an agreement negotiated by the International Committee of the Red Cross for humanitarian purposes.

"It's a very long bureaucratic process. It can take months and in some cases, years," said Yael Segel, the Red Cross representative who escorted the Shahin bridal party to the border.

When the government authorization finally arrived last week, emotions were mixed. Ms. Shahin's mother fainted from shock. Her father wept with sadness.

Ms. Shahin briefly panicked.

In a traditional Druze wedding, the bride's family spends seven days celebrating before the marriage. But Ms. Shahin had no time.

She quit her job, packed her belongings, hastily piled her wedding dowry onto the back of two pickup trucks and bought a wedding dress in three days.

"It wasn't exactly the standard way of getting married," said her father, Yahyea.

"As happy as we are, it is still very hard for us because we cannot go to Syria," he said, sliding behind the wheel of a borrowed blue Mercedes to drive his daughter to the Kuneitra border crossing.

When they arrived, Ms. Shahin and a handful of her immediate family were shuttled through immigration under the watchful eye of United Nations observers.

By choosing to leave Israel, she automatically relinquishes her residency and any right to return.

From now on, the Israelis will consider her a "foreigner from an enemy state."

Hundreds of her relatives pressed up against the border fence, yelling at the Harb family standing 500 metres away. The ceremony would take place halfway down the asphalt road.

Ms. Shahin kissed her family goodbye, glanced at her groom waiting in the distance and turned to the waiting television cameras.

"I will pray that peace will come soon so that one day our families can be together," she said, before taking her brother's arm and crossing a metal turnstile that took her to no man's land.

Soon to be a Syrian movie of the week? Perhaps. If so it will make a nice change from the usual blood libel fare featured on Syrian TV.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments (3)

Fisk’s libel:  In the revolting tradition of blood libel, the still-prevalent calumny that Jews ritually murder juicy young goys and add their blood to holiday baked goods, comes nuclear libel, a revolting new calumny practised by odious Islamism-enabling journalist, Robert Fisk. From Honest Reporting UK (link via Tim Blair):

In October 2006, notoriously anti-Israel journalist Robert Fisk was given the front page of the UK's Independent to spread the libel that Israel had used uranium-based weapons in southern Lebanon during last summer's war.

This was challenged at the time by HonestReporting UK, following a UN investigation clearing Israel of the allegations only a short time later. HR UK castigated the Independent for its shoddy journalism and its failure to issue a retraction. (Read the full communique here.)

Still, Independent readers are under the false impression that Israel employed "secret uranium bombs". This, despite a second acquittal by the Lebanese themselves in the past fortnight, as described by Lebanon's Daily Star:

A panel of experts from the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other international agencies announced a unanimous determination Monday that no depleted-uranium weapons had been used in the summer 2006 war in Lebanon. "To date, there is no evidence of depleted-uranium-ammunitions use during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon," Didier Louvat, IAEA head of radioactive waste issues, told a news conference hosted by the National Council for Scientific Research in Bir Hassan.

Should anyone think that any "pro-Israeli' interests were able to influence these findings: 

Conference attendees included representatives of the Engineering Regiment of the Lebanese Army; the head of the National Council for Scientific Research George Tohmeh; the Arab Atomic Agency; the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP); the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission (LAEC); the IAEA and the World Health Organization.

Unsurprisingly, the Independent failed to cover this story, preferring to pass up this second chance to correct its original and libelous story. While Fisk and the Independent may have conveniently forgotten, we haven't. Please write to the Independent - letters@independent.co.uk - drawing attention to this latest acquittal of Israel and asking why the newspaper has yet to issue a retraction.

The media's failure to acknowledge previous mistakes has perpetuated many falsehoods against Israel, such as the Jenin "massacre". We urge our subscribers to take action to correct this latest untruth.

Waiting for an apology from Fisk is as pointless as waiting for Godot; however, a retraction is still in order from the paper that published his drek. It's awfully gratifying, though, that the antisemitic blowhard has been exposed as such.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:03 | link | comments (2)

B & D diplomat: Israel was recently voted the most unpopular nation on the planet, a vote fueled in large part by the almost universally bad press it receives. Thus it is extremely frustrating when a stupid Israeli does something that makes himself and Israel look ridiculous, as the ambassador to El Salvador has just done. From BBC News:

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.

 

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.

 

A foreign ministry official described Ambassador Tzuriel Refael's behaviour as an unprecedented embarrassment.

 

The incident, which happened two weeks ago, has renewed calls for a radical overhaul of the way Israel appoints and promotes its diplomats…

 

Sound like a good idea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:55 | link | comments

Russia retreats: Is Moo’s evil scheme starting to unravel? From the Washington Post:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Iran's isolation over its nuclear ambitions deepened on Monday as Russia, its closest big power ally, announced indefinite delays to a joint nuclear power project and accused Tehran of abusing its goodwill.

Russia has defied Western concerns to supply arms to Iran, help build the Bushehr nuclear power station and water down sanctions against Tehran in the United Nations, but is now signaling its patience with Iran's leadership is wearing thin.

Atomstroiexport, the state-owned contractor helping build the Bushehr plant, said the first fuel deliveries would not go ahead as planned this month and that the scheduled September launch date would not now be met either.

The contractor said the delays were caused by a payment row but observers in Moscow said the project was, in effect, being mothballed because of political sensitivities.

The United States -- which suspects Iran of accumulating nuclear know-how to build a bomb -- has for years urged Moscow to halt the project but the Kremlin refused. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

"The timeframe has been moved and so the launch cannot happen in September -- we simply cannot do it. If we can't launch the station in September then we cannot deliver the fuel according to the old timetable either," said Irina Yesipova, a spokeswoman for Atomstroiexport.

That announcement came as Russian news agencies quoted what they called an informed source in Moscow accusing Tehran of exploiting Russia's diplomatic support while making no concessions in return.

"Unfortunately, the Iranians are abusing our constructive relations and have done nothing to convince our colleagues of the consistency of Tehran's policies," the source was quoted as saying…

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:32 | link | comments

Hashmemite humbug: I missed this rousing evisceration of King Abudullah when it appeared in the New York Sun a few days ago. But better late than never, I always say:

If one were to distill 110% wrongheadedness and then distill it again a second, third, and fourth time, one couldn't come up with a speech as purely wrongheaded as the one that the Hashemite king, Abdullah II, delivered yesterday to a joint meeting of Congress. The king's aim amounted to blaming Israel for all the world's problems. "The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine," the king said. "This is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world."

Balderdash is the kindest way to describe it. It doesn't track with the actions of the violent terrorists, and it doesn't track with their statements. If the terrorists are upset about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, why are they setting off bombs in Indonesia and Spain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which are hardly in the vanguard of support for Israel? Given that the terrorists state publicly that their end goal is to make all of Europe and America subject to Islamic law, why should we believe that in fact they have the far more modest goal of merely seizing land belonging to the Jewish state?

In a speech on American soil, Abdullah incredibly snubbed his own country and his own family when he referred to "Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession." Why, his family knows all about Palestinian Arab dispossession. The gall of the son of King Hussein, who perpetrated what the Arabs call Black September, fetching up in the Congress to lecture the Americans on Palestinian Arab dispossession is astounding. Abdullah well knows that Jordan controlled the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. If the Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed during that period it was no one's fault but the Hashemites', who didn't exactly use those decades, or the years after, to race to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

Abdullah made reference to a Saudi proposal from 2002 that he described as the "Arab Peace Initiative." That plan would be more accurately described as the Arab Destruction of Israel Initiative. Its aim was to seek to reward the second so-called intifada, which followed the collapse of President Clinton's Camp David II, by giving the Palestinian Arabs half of the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. The Saudis not only sought to divide Israel's capital in Jerusalem but also to force Israel to abandon Jerusalem's Old City, retreat to militarily indefensible borders, and absorb within those borders enough Arab "refugees" so that its character as a Jewish state would be eradicated. No one fell for it save for Thomas Friedman of the New York Times…

And even old Tom’s is probably a bit abashed that he fell for it, so you know it was a really bad idea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:31 | link | comments

Good riddance (2): Adieu, Jacques. Can’t say as we’re gonna miss you:

Hasta la vista, Jacques Chirac.

We hope you’re never coming back.

Corrupt, reptilian, full of merde,

It’s time for you to gay in drerde.*

 

* Yiddish for “get thee to Hades.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments

Colonial realities: Last week I listened with rapt fascination as Jonathan Kay told an assembly of suits about the Arab perspective on Zionist “colonialism.” Apparently, we’re supposed to see it as critical to our understanding of the current scene, although one could cheekily observe that, while Arab tribesmen back in the 1890s may have indeed viewed the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews— “space aliens”—with alarm, these “tribesmen” have had more than a few years to adjust to the change. Of course, this Khalili-sanctioned version of events depends on our overlooking an inconvenient truth: the Jews' ancient claim to the land, and the historical colonization of vast tracts of the planet for Islam. And this brand of colonialism is hardly a thing of the past. In fact, at this very moment it is thriving not only geographically but institutionally. From FrontPage Magazine:

…The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), with a membership of 57 Sunni and Shia Muslim countries and headquartered in Saudi Arabia, purports to represent the “moderate” voice of Islam to the world but in reality it is a façade for Islamic propaganda. It is the second largest inter-governmental group in the world after the United Nations, where it has official observer status on a reciprocal basis. Other than some general appeals for the end to sectarian violence in Iraq and condemnation of terrorism in the abstract, the OIC is silent on putting the blame for the slaughter of innocent Muslim pilgrims precisely where it belongs – on other Muslims. Instead, the OIC squanders most of its energy condemning the West for defaming Islam whenever terrorism is in any way linked with adherents of their religion.

 

At the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Conference member states usually vote in unison, controlling about 30 percent of the total votes in the General Assembly. While as a group they pay less then 3 percent of the regular annual budget of the United Nations, they have managed to exercise an outsized amount of influence in the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies over how the UN deals with such issues as Palestine, terrorism and human rights. Next on their agenda is a permanent Islam seat on the Security Council. Iran has already been designated as the OIC’s preferred candidate for election to the Security Council in 2008. In their eyes, the Iranian president’s threat to annihilate another member state does not disqualify Iran from representing Islam on the one UN policy-making body that is supposed to protect international peace and security.

 

The UN Human Rights Council, which the OIC members dominate directly or indirectly through their ideological allies, singles out Israel for a raft of trumped up human rights violations. At least six UN bodies spend considerable time on Palestinian issues, spewing forth a stream of resolutions and investigations meant to vilify Israel.

 

The OIC members have succeeded at the UN in redefining terrorism to exclude acts by suicide bombers who are said to be freedom fighters resisting Zionist or Western “occupation.”

 

With their handpicked representative from Bahrain who was elected president of the current session of the General Assembly, the OIC members also continue to press their demands for the passage of a resolution that criminalizes insults of their religion. They are on their way to reaching their goal with the adoption last year of their draft resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions by the Third Committee of the General Assembly. That resolution emphasizes that the right to freedom of expression should be exercised within limitations as prescribed by law.

In short, the Organization of Islamic Conference bloc has been able to manipulate the UN’s machinery to turn the liberal Western vocabulary of racism, oppression, genocide, tolerance and multiculturalism against the critics of reactionary Islam. Indeed, while our secular left campuses have become playgrounds for the Islamists’ propaganda, the United Nations has turned into the Islamists’ favorite stage to act out their conspiracy drama of imagined Zionist and Western crimes against them. It is a sequel to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged Russian tract which purported to describe a Jewish plot to achieve world domination and is still believed in many parts of the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East. Zionist Israel and its protector, the United States, are cast at the UN as the arch villains who are conspiring to take control of the world. The defenders of the Islamic faith are cast as the saviors, fighting against the Zionist conspiracy and for the right of the poor downtrodden Palestinians and other victims of Western-inspired oppression to resist their oppressors by any available means including violence.

The denouement, as scripted by the Islamists, would be the eventual triumph of Sharia over Western values in which the UN Charter and human rights treaties are reinterpreted to fit within the framework of Islamic divine law. The Islamists would victoriously raise their crescent moon and star flag over the headquarters of the United Nations, which for all intents and purposes should then be renamed UNistan…

 

Funny how the Jews are always accused of having global control issues when all they’ve managed to “colonize” is one itty-bitty slice of land.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:46 | link | comments

Good riddance: One of Israel’s most toxic academics, Ilan Pappe, is leaving his post at Haifa U. He has accepted a position at a university in the U.K., a country where his aspersions are mainstream. The Washington Post—quel surprise—has a glowing account of the anti-Semitic Jew’s “journey,” painting him as an embattled maverick. I suggest you not read it on a full stomach unless you’re prepared to disgorge its contents.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:38 | link | comments

Dissatisfied customer: A patron of an internet café in Morocco was upset with the service he was receiving and decided to take excessively drastic action. From the Times Online:

A man who was prevented from looking at terrorist websites by the owners of an internet café in Casablanca blew himself up with explosives hidden on his body, a spokesman for the Moroccan Interior Ministry said today.

Four others were injured in the blast last night, including the dead man’s companion, who was taken to hospital with burns and an injury to the throat.

The authorities have said they will not describe the blast, which took place in a slum area of Casablanca, as a suicide attack until they know more about its circumstances, according to Abderrahman Achour, a government spokesman.

Police were not immediately able to identify the dead man, who was not carrying an ID card. His companion identified himself as Said Jokia, but he, too, was not carrying official identity papers, Mr Achour said.

The other three people injured in the explosion were the cybercafé owner’s son and two others, the official MAP news agency reported.

According to the agency, two men entered the cafe at 10 pm yesterday seeking access to terrorist sites. When the owner’s son forbade them from doing so, one of the men was blown up by explosives he was wearing, MAP reported, citing the Surete Nationale police…

Why did he want to look at terrorist websites? He was obviously up to speed on the mechanics of the thing. Did he want to review how many panting virgins were supposed to be waiting for him post blast-off?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:20 | link | comments

Game boy: The Globe and Mail's man in the Middle East, Mark "Malarkey" MacKinnon, often files emotionally manipulative reports about suffering Palestinians. The stories are designed to wrest maximum sympathy for the Arabs’ plight while prompting readers to go “boo, hiss, Israel.” Well, it must have been a slow news day Sunday, because Malarkey decided to take a break from the melodrama and try to solve the thorny dilemmas of the region by playing a computer game:

JERUSALEM — My choices were grim after the latest suicide bombing in Jerusalem. I could crack down on Palestinian militants -- and risk provoking civil war between Hamas and Fatah -- or I could ignore them and be accused of abetting terrorism.

I chose a middle road. I decided to speak directly to the Palestinian people, to explain to them that violent resistance was hurting our cause in the eyes of the international community, and sabotaging my efforts to rebuild the Gaza Strip. The response was harsh and derisive. President MacKinnon, I was told by my people, was "a pathetic puppet of the Zionists and America." The civil war I feared broke out a few days later and I was ousted from office.

I've discovered that it is not easy being Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Given the chance to do his job for a short while, I failed spectacularly.

Yesterday, as the Palestinian president met in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, I sat in my cluttered office a few blocks away and played Peacemaker, a new online game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Given the low expectations for the real summit talks, it seemed the best way I could help.

Playing Peacemaker, which puts the user in the shoes of the Israeli or Palestinian leaders, is about as escapist as it sounds. On a good day, you celebrate the building of a new prison. On a bad day, you're counting the dead bodies and waiting for the inevitable counterattacks. It made me miss Super Mario Bros.

The game can be played in English, Arabic or Hebrew, and is the brainchild of American game developer Eric Brown and Asi Burak, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Their goal, according to the website, peacemakergame.com, is to promote understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Your goal as player is to "establish a stable resolution to the conflict and win the Nobel Prize."

If you choose the part of the Palestinian president, your first task is responding to an Israeli tank attack that kills 18 people in the Gaza Strip. If you play the Israeli prime minister, you immediately have to deal with an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus. For those of us who live and work here, it hits very close to home.

The best part of the game is that it gives players a feel for the impossibility of Mr. Abbas's and Mr. Olmert's jobs. You spend most of the game staring at a row of opinion polls, wondering how it's possible to appease all your friends and foes at once…

Sounds about as fun as passing a kidney stone—and not nearly as useful. What’s the point of playing such a game when you fail to factor in the larger currents of global jihad and a religious doctrine which assures one of the “players” that Jews are an inferior, debased people who can never be sovereign over themselves, never mind over their Semitic superiors?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

Ehud over and out?: Some good news for a change. Caroline Glick says Ehud Olmert has been exposed once and for all as an incompetent boob, and Israel may finally get some leaders who have a clue.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:32 | link | comments (1)

Thugapalooza back on: The oil ticks tried to smooth over the differences in a grandiosely-title agreement known as the Mecca Declaration, but it’s hard to keep murderous thugs from reverting to form. From VOA:

Rival Palestinian factions have clashed in the Gaza Strip, ending a lull in infighting that lasted a month.  A local militia leader was killed and seven people wounded.  Robert Berger reports from the VOA bureau in Jerusalem.

 

Gunmen from the ruling Islamic militant group Hamas and the rival Fatah faction exchanged fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.  Each side blamed the other for starting the battle.  Fatah said it returned fire after Hamas attacked a compound of the security forces with rocket-propelled grenades.  Hamas claimed Fatah gunmen in a truck opened fire first, killing a field commander.

It was the worst fighting since the two groups agreed to form a national unity government during talks in Mecca a month ago. 

 

The violence followed an incident in the West Bank on Saturday in which Fatah gunmen fired on the car of a Hamas Cabinet minister.  No one was hurt, but the attack raised tensions between the two groups.

 

Palestinian security forces deployed on the streets of Gaza to restore calm…

 

United they don’t stand. Divided they fall.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments

Down with beauty: The typical perils that attend a beauty pageant contestant: stretch marks; insufficiently bodacious ta-tas; menstrual cramps; nasty co-competitors; honour killings...

Honour killings?

 

That’s right. But only if you’re the kind of gal whose male relatives are convinced that your hoo-haw is the final resting place of the family’s good name. From the Times Online:

Doaa Fares believed she could be somebody other than herself: a 17-year old high-school dropout from a deeply conservative Druze village, where most women marry young and settle into traditional roles.

The striking brunette with sea-green eyes and pouting lips changed her name to Angelina and entered the Miss Israel beauty pageant hoping to be crowned queen, a title that comes with a cash prize, modelling contract and a car.

Instead, Angelina — the first Druze to compete in the pageant — was threatened with death, allegedly by two uncles and other men from her village who accused her of disgracing the family name with promiscuous behaviour.

When police uncovered the apparent plot to kill her last week, Ms Fares disappeared into protective custody. When she emerged from hiding she announced that she was withdrawing from the competition, fearing for her life.

“My life is much more important than a contest, but it’s very difficult for me to give up my dream,” she said, sitting in the darkened living room of her family home in this small Galilean village. She is too frightened to answer her mobile phone or leave the house.

Ms Fares’s story has dominated the Israeli media as a high-profile example of a foiled “hon-our killing”, where a woman is murdered by members of her own family for supposed sexual offences that have somehow brought shame to the family.

Last year, seventeen Palestinian women were reported killed in honour crimes, twelve in the Gaza Strip and five in the occupied West Bank. In Israel, seven women were similarly killed for “crimes” ranging from having sex before marriage to being the victim of rape.

For Ms Fares the controversy began last November, when she decided to enter the Miss Israel contest. She chose the name “Angelina” in honour of her idol, the American actress Angelina Jolie, and spent hours watching Fashion Television to prepare for her audition.

The first phase of the competition was a bikini contest. Ms Fares knew that parading in her red two-piece could be considered controversial in the Druze community, whose religion is an offshoot of Islam.

Her participation in the pageant even raised the judges’ eyebrows. “They were very surprised when they found out I was Druze. They asked me if it would be a problem for me to be in the contest. I told them ‘no’, that my whole family supported me,” Ms Fares said.

Dalia, Ms Fares’ mother, defended that decision, saying that she did not want to interfere with her daughter’s dreams. “She was there to represent herself, not the whole Druze community,” she said.

Ms Fares was chosen as one of twenty finalists, convincing the family that they had done the right thing. “Ever since childhood I was preparing myself for this. It was like the dream I had lived inside my head for so long,” Ms Fares said.

Last month, the contestants flew to Thailand on a supervised tour with contest organis-ers, but while Ms Fares was sightseeing, swimming and sun-bathing, trouble was brewing at home. Advertisements featuring Ms Fares in a miniskirt and sleeveless top were published in magazines. On her return to Israel, she received threatening phone calls and e-mails. Men from a neighbouring village shouted insults when she walked down the street.

“They said, ‘You’re a Druze girl, you should be ashamed of yourself’. Some even accused me of prostitution.”

The accusations ignited a furious debate in the village and beyond. Ms Fares was invited to appear on talk shows; her photograph was on the front pages of Israeli newspapers.

Supporters pressed Ms Fares to remain in the competition, while critics — including the Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Mowafak Tarif — demanded that she drop out. “We do encourage progress and mod-ernisation, but certainly there are limits to which a woman can expose herself,” Sheikh Tarif told The Times.

Last week, police received a tip that a group of men in the village, including two of Ms Fares’s uncles, were plotting to kill her. Anwar and Hatem Fares allegedly hired two men to buy guns and a third man to murder their niece. She was taken into protective custody and all five men were jailed…

You mean Miss Israel can be Muslim? Why those despicable apartheid-practising Jews!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments (2)

B’day greetings in toto: The Commander-in-Chief sings a birthday song for the big lug:

All I wanna do when I wake in the morning is see you die.

Osama, Osama.

I never thought that a guy like you would ever kill, you see,

Osama, Osama, Osama.

I didn’t know that you’d go and twist an ROP*.

 

Not quite six years now since Atta’s attack, Osama, yeah.

Ever since I’ve tried so hard to get you back.

See you rot in Hell, see you rot in Hell,

Osama, yeah

See you rot in Hell, see you rot in Hell.

Osama, yeah.

 

All I wanna do is end your dream of a caliphate,

Osama, Osama.

So can’t you even help me out a tiny, little bit?

 

(Chorus)

 

(Condi Rice instrumental [piano] break)

 

See you rot in Hell, see you rot in Hell,

Osama, yeah

See you rot in Hell, see you rot in Hell.

Osama, yeah.

 

* Religion of peace

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

They seek him here/They seek him here/Great Satan seeks him ev’rywhere/Is he still bubbling with wicked glee/That demmed elusive jihadi?: Osama bin Laden turned 50 yesterday. Then again, he may not be turning 50 until the tenth of July. Then again, he may have already joined the bleedin’ choir invisible and be pushing up scrub grass someplace on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. Then again…Oh, heck, let’s just wish the big guy a very unhappy birthday with no happy returns.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:42 | link | comments

Will the real Barack Obama please stand up: A couple of weeks ago Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seemed to voice support for Israel. But according to this article in The Jewish Week, that seems to be a 180 from his previous position, when he hobnobbed at a pro-Palestinian confab with National Post comments page editor Jonathan Kay’s favourite Palestinian academic:

…Ali Abunimah, a Hyde Park Palestinian-American activist, said that until a few years ago, Obama was “quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel.” It was vivid in his memory, said Abunimah, because “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.”

In 2000, Abunimah recalled, Professor Rashid Khalidi, a leading Palestinian American advocate for a two-state solution and harsh critic of Israel, held a fundraiser in his home for Obama, embarked then on an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the House of Representatives. “He came with his wife,” Abunimah said. “That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. ... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.”

Khalidi, now the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and head of that school’s Middle East Institute, declined to comment on Abunimah’s recollections. But in an interview in Tuesday’s Daily News, he said he hosted the fundraiser because he and Obama were friends while the two lived in Chicago. “He never came to us and said he would do anything in terms of Palestinians,” Khalidi told the paper.

Nevertheless, one Hyde Park source close to Obama, speaking only on condition of anonymity, recalled, “He often expressed general sympathy for the Palestinians — though I don’t recall him ever saying anything publicly.”…

 

Best case scenario: post-9/11 Obama has come to his senses. Worst case scenario: he’s telling both audiences exactly what they want to hear.

 

In the event, Obama is running for office, and thus has a good reason to listen to what Khalidi has to say. What’s Jonathan Kay’s excuse?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:40 | link | comments

Hu’s erudition mission: Moo’s Venezuelan compadre, Hugo Chavez, has accused their mutual enemy, George W. Bush, who’s currently on a visit to Hu’s backyard, of being such an inarticulate dolt that he only has a “600 word vocabulary.” Meanwhile, the ever-loquacious Hu demonstrated his peerless way with words by taunting the president with the jibe “Gringo go home.”

Gringo go home? That’s the best he could do? The last time I heard that hoary old phrase was probably in some 1940s black and white B-movie about Me-hee-co shown on TMC. Dredging up the expression doesn’t exactly make Hu sound like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez (yes, I know he’s from Colombia, not Venezuela)—or even a  Lupe Velez.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:00 | link | comments

They say it’s your birthday: Here’s George W. Bush’s poem on the occasion of the attenuated terrorist’s half-centennary:

"Happy" Birthday, OBL,

I know you’re going straight to Hell.

And just to speed things up a bit

I’ve ordered an official hit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:34 | link | comments

Swingin’ doubles: In the mood to see the U.S. make concessions to the hairy Islamic Hitler and his puppet-masters? No? Me neither:

Who’s the hairy despot with malevolent eyes?

What a cocky rooster, tells some terrible lies.

Likes to keep us guessin’ ‘bout when he plans to blow.

Countin’ on the people to rise up, don’t ya know.

So we say politely we don’t plan to intrude

While the folks in Persia are still in the ‘Moud.

 

First we brought democracy to those in Iraq.

Soon enough “insurgents” launched a counter-attack.

Great big mess, the Dhimmicrats are singin’ a dirge.

So we thought we’d follow with a powerful surge.

Now we’re in the middle of a horrible feud

And folks back there in Persia are still in the ‘Moud.

 

In the ‘Moud,

They’re still enrichin’

In the ‘Moud,

Though some are bitchin’

In the ‘Moud,

The End he’s pitchin’.

There’s nothin’ we can do

While they’re still in the ‘Moud now.

 

In the ‘Moud,

We’ll flap our jaws now.

In the ‘Moud,

We’ll take a pause now.

In the ‘Moud,

Endure his claws now.

There’s not a lot of options

While they’re in the ‘Moud now.

 

So we’re walking softly

Trying out politesse,

Hopin’ we can dig out from the God-awful mess.

Misunderestimatin’ the resolve of our foes.

Where we go from here, Allah, er, God only knows.

Meanwhile Ahmadinejad is one evil dude

And all the mully-bullies are still in the ‘Moud…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:59 | link | comments

“Apostates” and “moderates”: The Globe and Mail takes note of the secular Muslim movement—and does a bit of a tap dance around it. Reporting from Cologne, Germany, Globe scribe Doug Saunders observes that while some see the movement as a positive sign, others are concerned that their “moderate” voices will no longer carry as much weight:

…Suddenly, non-religious Muslims here are finding their voice. Known variously as cultural Muslims or secular Muslims or, in Germany, as ex-Muslims, they describe themselves as increasingly frustrated with a society that insists on associating them with a religion that is hardly central to their lives.

This week, 500 people attended a much-publicized “Secular Islam summit” in Florida, in which prominent scholars and activists signed a statement of opposition to religious influences. Similar organizations have sprung up in recent months in Britain and Denmark. And Ayyan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician whose flamboyant protests against Muslim treatment of women led to her being threatened with death and hounded out of her country, has become a bestselling author in Europe and an inspiration to many of these groups.

Unlike non-religious Jews (who form a majority in Israel and elsewhere) or non-observant Christians, cultural Muslims aren't acknowledged by their own religion and are barely recognized by Western governments. Their numbers are unknown, but European studies indicate that a sizable majority of immigrants from Muslim countries do not regularly attend mosques, that fewer than 10 per cent of Muslim young people pray with any regularity and that a majority of Muslim immigrants consider themselves largely secular.

“This is a German identity problem,” Ms. Toker said. “When the German government looks at me or at her, they just say ‘Muslim.' And if they want to know about what we think, they ask Muslim leaders. They seem unable to realize that we are very different individuals and that maybe we're not Muslim at all.”

Much of the debate around Muslim immigrants has concerned questions of integration: Have they become isolated from mainstream European society? But this debate brings up a new dimension. Ms. Toker is a firm assimilationist; she wants to be seen as fully German, and believes in universal European values. Ms. Zainal, on the other hand, identifies herself as “Iranian-German” and is in favour of a multicultural country made up of differing ethnic communities. Both, however, were incensed when the German government held hearings into ethnic assimilation and invited mainly mosque-based organizations to participate. That sense of exclusion led to the formation of their group.

But the newfound voice of non-religious Muslims has provoked controversy across Europe in recent weeks. Many observers worry that the debate is making integration even more difficult for immigrants from Muslim countries by implying that they should give up their religious faith, a rare source of security for many newcomers. And reactions from established Muslim organizations have ranged from silence to outrage.

Ayyub Axel Koehler, a German convert to Islam who is president of the Central Committee of Muslims, the country's most prominent Muslim organization, spoke out yesterday in an interview with German state radio, expressing his displeasure with the concept of Muslims abandoning the Koran.

“Apostasy is not a matter in which we take any pleasure,” he said when asked about the group. “No religious denomination will do so. But in our charter we have committed ourselves to both positive and negative religious freedom alike, and adopted an unequivocal stance on this, both internally and externally. Hence, such phenomena have to be accepted.”

Here was the dilemma for Western governments looking for the voice of Muslim communities. Mr. Koehler's organization is among the most moderate and reformist in Europe, its views inspired by Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, who calls for a complete integration of Muslims into Western society. Its charter, in line with Mr. Ramadan's writings, declares that “the message of Islam is rationalistic” and calls for “the development of a properly European Muslim identity” and the embrace of European human rights.

It is organizations such as this that Western governments turned to after the major Islamist terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, Madrid and London, in order to try to find common cause with moderate Muslims in the struggle against terrorism. They offered the prospect of dialogue, and have helped prevent mosques from being taken over by extremist Saudi-financed influences…

Well, there’s the problem in a nutshell. If Western governments are looking to Tariq Ramadan as a voice of moderation, they’re obviously delusional. Ramadan, a real smoothie, is Sayyid Qutb disguised as a rumpled Western academic, and the EUnuchs, who are apparently in the grip of such a powerful ennui that they can’t even muster the will to google his name and find out who they're dealing with, are easy marks for his kind of soft sell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments (1)

Islam’s only hope: Phyllis Chesler reports on the secular Islam summit that took place this week in Florida. As she explains, it is clear that the participants represent Islam’s only chance to move beyond the medieval and become reconciled to the modern world. From FrontPage Magazine:

Is Islam the problem, or can it be part of the solution? Can Islam be reformed from within, or is Muslim violence and hatred due entirely to the teachings and history of the Qur'an? These were some of the major issues raised at the Secular Islam Summit in St Petersburg, Florida, this week.

A landmark event, the summit brought together such brave and eloquent defenders of freedom and conscience as the scholar Ibn Warraq (his nom de guerre); Iranian exile and activist Banafasheh Zand-Bonazzi; Austin Dacy of the Center for Inquiry; as well as many other Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents.

Most were incredible orators, some were entertainers, others were deep and mournful thinkers. They included:

* Egyptian-born Dr. Tawfik Hamid, who was once a "colleague" of Osama bin Laden's second in command, Al-Zawahiri.

* The Gandhi-like Dr. Shahriar Kabir, Bangladesh's leading human rights activist.

* Tashbih Sayeed, Pakistan's foremost opponent of radical Islam, a man of few, but fiery words.

* Dr. Afshin Ellian, an Iranian professor in exile in Holland, a close friend of Aayan Hirsi Ali, and a man of genial wit and wide-ranging knowledge.

* Egyptian-Palestinian-American author, Nonie Darwish, a warm but absolutely uncompromising thinker and speaker.

* Syrian-American psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, the woman who became instantly famous for her debate on Al-Jazeera TV. A small, trim woman, she is a towering speaker, theatrically thrilling and passionate.

Indeed, there were so many excellent speakers that I cannot do them all justice here. For now, let me focus on only two. The opening speeches were delivered by Ibn Warraq, a consummate intellectual and committed secularist, and Irshad Manji, the best-selling author and a onetime master of the spunky sound bite who is now a bit more moderate and modest in tone.

Ibn Warraq spoke of the dangers that Muslims in the Islamic world face for speaking the truth about Islam, including prison, torture, exile and death. Proving his point was the fact that a number of invitees to the summit from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia did not attend after receiving one too many death threats or after being told that their families would be targeted if they chose to attend. Most writers have been stopped in their tracks by such Muslim-on-Muslim repression.

Warraq explained that he wants an Islamic "Enlightenment," a la John Stuart Mill, rather than a "Reformation," which he considers mere tinkering. He believes that Western values are universal, although he felt that most human rights initiatives within the West, including the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, are "hopeless" and will not push sovereign Muslim tyrannies toward reform. He mourned the fact that the West continues to "apologize for colonialism and racism" and that Turkey still "refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide."

A running theme of Ibn Warraq’s remarks was the unjust treatment of Muslims in Islamic countries. For instance, he insisted that "protecting non-Muslims in Muslim societies" is crucial and can "lead to pluralism and tolerance for Muslims as well." He called for a "legal recourse" within the Islamic world for the widespread denial of freedom of speech. He "demanded the re-writing of anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish text-books, especially in Saudi Arabia and Egypt,” adding that he considers such hatred "scandalous." Warraq also implored "women's groups in the West to defend Muslim women" under siege.

In this connection, he assailed the "inconsistency and hypocrisy of the "western multi-culturalists, including feminists" and stated that the "law of the western secular state must override religious law when religious law denies basic human rights." Some European police -- he mentioned Sweden in particular -- still return the victims of family violence to the families that will kill them. In his view, the "rights of women are central to Islamic reform.” Warraq summed up his views on reform with the following credo: "No to female genital mutilation; no to forced and polygamous marriage; no to gender separatism."

Irshad Manji spoke next. She began with the wise observation that "courage is not the absence of fear but the recognition that some things are more important than fear." Manji, whose entourage included a young woman in hijab, described herself as a "person of faith but not a dogmatist." Manji found support for her moderation in a quote from the Qur'an, which "tells us to oppose your family" when the truth or true inner struggle is at stake. She pointed out that the "Qur'an says nothing about the proper form of government," which suggests that Islam should remain a private faith, not a political movement or a government.

In Manji’s opinion, "this silence is deliberate and gives us room to experiment with a different form of government." Calling for "Muslim pluralism,” Manji decried theocratic governments. In this regard, Manji commented that someone "should tell President Bush that he should not have empowered the theocrats in Iraq."

Manji proved an equal opportunity critic. She castigated "missionary atheists" who are so "angry that they resemble religious fundamentalists." At the same time, she criticized those Muslims who are so "submissive to authority that they cannot stand up to (unjust or tyrannical) authority." Agreeing with Ibn Warraq about the universal nature of human rights, she condemned the popular view that we are "not supposed to criticize another culture" if we are not part of it.

Manji shared Warraq's view that "more Muslims have been raped, tortured and murdered by other Muslims than by westerners." Moreover, she suggested that those in the Islamic world who make this argument have not considered its full implications. How can we "criticize the military culture in Guantanamo if we are ourselves are not military personnel? And, how can Muslims criticize American foreign policy if they are not American citizens?"

Finally, she made a point that I have made many times -- and which has gotten me demonized as a “racist” -- namely, that so-called western "anti-racists" are really acting as "racists" when they hold Muslims to lower standards out of some misguided notion of respect…

Ironically, the so-called “anti-racists” are the real Islamophobes because, through their moral relativism, they would consign Muslims to the imprisonment of their outdated doctrines.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:13 | link | comments (3)

Strange queries: Perusing the titles at the library, I happened upon a book with an intriguing title (intriguing to me, anyway): Multiculturalism and the Jews. Published in 2006, the book of scholarly essays was written by Sander L. Gilman. Gilman is described on the back cover as “Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is author and editor of more than seventy books, including The Jew’s Body and Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, both published by Routledge.” 

Oddly enough, I’ve read The Jew’s Body, which, as I recall, offered an interesting analysis of how, historically, non-Jews have conceptualized various parts of “the Jew’s” anatomy—for instance, the Jew’s nose. But that’s not why I decided to borrow the book. No, what piqued my interest was the title of the book’s first essay—“CAN THE EXPERIENCE OF DIASPORA JUDAISM SERVE AS A MODEL FOR ISLAM IN TODAY’S MULTICULTURAL EUROPE?” (those are his upper case letters, not mine)—as well as this query early within the body of the essay—“Can we now look at the experience within the various strands of Jewish religious (and therefore social) ritual practice from the late eighteenth century (which marked the beginning of civil emancipation) that parallel those now confronting Diaspora Islam in “secular” Western Europe?”

 

Now, I’m no distinguished professor, but as someone who’s up on her Bat Ye’or, Steyn, Spencer, Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and others, it seems to me that the answer on both counts would have to be a resounding “NO!” Bearing in mind that Western Europe is more bi-cultural than multicultural, and that the Muslim presence on the Continent is much more recent than the Jewish one, and considering as well that Judaism, unlike Islam, is not triumphalist, it seems clear that what is happening in Europe is that the newcomers are insisting that the old timers make allowances for and adapt to them, rather than the other way around. And they can make this demand because of their demographic heft and because the Continentals are afraid that, if they don’t make concessions, some of the Muslims’ more extreme co-religionists may get upset and blow themselves up in public places.

 

Nonetheless, I’m sure the professor’s essay will make for amusing reading, even if that was not his intention.

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