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

“Moderately” speaking: While I was away, I missed  this Newsweek interview with Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister of “moderate” Islamic nation Malaysia. Ibrahim has been cooling his heels in a Malaysian prison since 1998, but he’s now back on the campaign trail. Newsweek reports that he’s eager to open the lines of communication between the West and the Islamic world. He also hopes to bring “democratic reform” to Malaysia.

Here’s how a “moderate” pro-democracy reformer views the problems in Dar al-Islam and the strained relationship between it and the U.S.:

…How difficult is it to get leaders in Washington and Asia to listen?
It is more difficult to get the Washington crowd, particularly the [Bush] administration to appreciate [the need to listen] than the Islamists. When I go to Pakistan and tell the Islamists that America is not monolithic, there are those who are prepared to listen.

And the Bush administration isn't?
They think they have all the answers. It's very difficult to get them to appreciate that [Muslim] people are not inherently anti-American.

Why are governments with poor democratic credentials so entrenched in the Islamic world?
It's partly due to the connivance of the West. This is an issue that has to be dealt with by these countries, but the international community could use some moral suasion. The bottom line is money. All is tolerated as long as [repressive regimes] can do business.

Does Islam lend itself to democracy?
It's a very loaded question. Do you consider an Islamic state to be one controlled by religious scholars? I don't. It is a question of going back to the essence of Islam. Its higher objectives must be spelled out: freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, the sanctity of life and of property and respect for the dignity of men and women. That doesn't seem to be in contravention of Western ideals.

There seems to be a strong sense of victimhood in the Muslim world. Do you agree?
The vast majority of Muslims feel that they're victims of the international order, from Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan. [But] look at the whole discourse on the war on terror, the whole suspension of civil liberties, the way Muslims are treated at airports [in the West]. And then you go back to your own country and there are draconian laws against you if you don't happen to share the views of the government. The repressions abound, and they're condoned by the Western powers. As I said when I went to Pakistan, protest by all means, but [remember that] the sanctity of life and property is a fundamental principle of Sharia [Islamic law].

Ah, yes. It’s all our fault for subjecting Muslims to “profiling” indignities at airports, and, further, doing our utmost to prevent that miniscule minority of the faithful from blowing up notable landmarks and the people inside them. If only we were nicer and not so scrupulous in our security efforts, everything would be copacetic.

Isn’t it remarkable how well “moderate” thinking and “radical” thinking on the subject seem to jibe?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:46 | link | comments

Process server: Saeb Erakat, aficionado that he is of process, says the negative report about Olmert’s preparedness for the war in Lebanon may mean that the peace process will be delayed for the moment.

Really, Saeb? I thought the process was on indefinite hold because your people are ruled by a bunch of lawless thugs who aim to ethnically cleanse all the Jews out of Israel and replace it with an Islamist entity.

 

But, hey, that’s just me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:38 | link | comments

Hell, no, he won’t go: Begging the question, why the hell not?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:32 | link | comments (2)

“Chatty” mullahs: The New York Times reports that Iran will attend regional talks about Iraq violence.

An intriguing idea, no doubt, given that the Khomeinists (along with the al Qaedists) are responsible for fomenting most of the violence there. Kind of like inviting Hitler to a regional conference during WW2 to discuss violence in Europe. But who knows? Maybe it will help kick start a fruitful discussion between the Messianic-minded Shias and the power they like to refer to as "Great Satan."

 

And maybe pigs will sprout wings and Ahmadinejad will up and marry Britney Spears.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:49 | link | comments

The selling (and buying) of “green”:

“Green, green, it's green, they say
On the far side of the hill.
Green, green, I'm going away
To where the grass is greener still.”

--lyrics from 1960s pop song

 

Yesterday I went en famille to The Green Living Show down at the Direct Energy Centre (one of the buildings on the Exhibition grounds, for those familiar with Toronto). The event, held over the weekend, billed itself as the city’s “first consumer show dedicated to all things green,” and was thus not exactly my cuppa. (An exhibitor—a company doing business with my husband—gave us complimentary tickets.) Oh, it’s not that I’m averse to cleaner air, more trees, vegan cuisine and composting my kitchen waste. It’s just that I’m sick to death of products that constantly preach at me (“fair trade”; “environmentally friendly”; “sweatshop free”; “organic”, “100% recycled”—shut up, already). I’m also extremely wary of the environmental bandwagon that almost everyone seems to have hitched a ride on, seeing in the “Goracle” effect a disturbing trend: An obsessive and exclusive focus on tackling global climate change means that other perils—like, say, the global jihad—can and will be ignored.

 

It’s easy, though, to understand the allure of the green. Caring about the environment, after all, is the ultimate motherhood (or Mother Earth) issue. And although I don’t like to advertise it (because, really, who cares?), I happen to have a teensy carbon footprint. Maybe a size 5 1/2, medium width. I don’t drive. I don’t eat red meat. I love vegetarian food, provided it’s ethnic and highly seasoned. I even reduce, reuse and recycle. (I don’t ration my toilet tissue a la Sheryl Crow, but aside from a few nuts in Oregon and California, who does?) But the thing of it is, I do all these things because I want to or have to, and not because I think that doing so makes me a more virtuous, worthwhile human being.

 

Thus, I think I have the perfect credentials to weigh in on a show that draped itself in an environmental cloak of virtue, but was actually trying to sell me lots of stuff. Here are some of the things I didn’t buy:

 

• Handbags and accessories “made by a women’s co-operative in the Philippines from used juice containers.”
• A resources fund which offers “a professionally-managed investment in environmentally and socially responsible corporations.”
• A “green mortgage” (whatever the heck that is).
• Hemp salad dressing; hemp clothing; hemp oil-based premium skin-care products. (On principle, I refuse to eat, wear or slather anything made of hemp.)
• A large sack of dried mung beans. (I have nothing against the mung—which I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly consumed—but my bean preferences run more towards the versatile garbanzo and the more pedestrian kidney. Also, "mung" sounds too much like "dung.")
• “Disposable foodservice products made from annually renewable and compostable, 100% biodegradable and compostable, salad bowls cups & other products.”
• “Faith building energy audits (huh?), ‘Greening Sacred Spaces’ workshops, posters and guidebooks.”

 And my own personal favorite:

 

• An “environmentally-responsible” coffin. (Quite attractive, really, but I think I’ll hold off for the moment.)

Also on prominent display were various exhibits bought and paid for by the Ontario taxpayer including:

 

• A “Flick Off” booth where one could see close up the t-shirts and other items aimed at young Ontarians that invited everyone in the province to "eff off" (the "L" and adjacent "I" in the word "flick" forming a definite "U").
• An exhibit where one could—and I couldn’t possibly make this up—have a photo taken while “hugging a tree.” A white pine, to be exact.
• The words of our provincial Big Brother, Premier Dalton McGuinty, writ large. Here’s a choice “quotation” (actually composed, no doubt, by a communications flak): “I know we can show the world the way towards a stronger, more responsible future. We are all connected, to each other and to the world around us.”

How true. And yet, how banal.

 

Finally, I will leave you with another provincial pronouncement, one that, like the above quotation, plumbs new depths of nauseating banality, and which I think sums up the entire show: “Every day is Earth Day.”

 

Indeed. Especially since every day more and more people are jumping on the Gorecycle (the Suzukimobile?) and are itching to live a life of virtue by forking over mucho dinero for mung beans, faith-building energy audits and biodegradable caskets.

 

Now if they could only make the coffins out of hemp…

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

Revolting invitation: During the opening days of the 2004 Olympic games in Athens, a wrestler from the Islamic dystopia (the Shia one) demonstrated the kind of competitive spirit one might expect of a country that has Holocaust denial as a linchpin on its national policy: he refused to compete with an athlete from the sovereign ape ‘n’ pig entity.

 

The penalty for this egregious display of unsportsmanlike behaviour was…well, actually, there was no penalty and the wrestler was allowed to proceed in the competion.

 

That was bad enough, but as we Jews like to say (or at least, as this particular Jew likes to say), but wait, it gets worse. From MEMRI Blog:

The U.S. has extended an invitation to Iranian wrestlers and their coaches to come for training in the U.S. prior to the Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing next year.

This is considered a step toward improving the U.S. dialogue with the Iranian people.

[Readers may remember the U.S. invitation to the Chinese table tennis team to visit the U.S. in the early 1970s – later dubbed “Ping Pong Diplomacy” – which was a precursor to full diplomatic relations between the two countries.]

Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, April 27, 2007

As they say in Chinese: Sick. En. Ing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:38 | link | comments

Hear them roar: I’m far from the first person to point out that, as far as Western sensibilities are concerned, Islam’s treatment of women is its Achilles heel. And that fact has not been lost on Muslims living in the West, some of whom are becoming alarmed that the reality of female oppression is causing a number of people, many of them women, to raise their voices against it. From German publication Sight and Sound:

On May 2, German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble will convene the second Islam Conference in Berlin (more on last autumn's conference here). The meeting is meant as a forum for exchange and understanding between the state and German Muslims - not only those in official organisations. One representative is Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu. In an interview Michaela Schlagenwerth, he criticises female critics of Islam such as Necla Kelek and Seyran Ates as one-sided: "The biggest bulwark against fundamentalism is formed by devout members of Muslim associations. If you start attacking these people for their piety and belief, and if you never tire of calling on them to join the forces of reform, you end up not arguing factually at all, but just fomenting riot. Feminism and a right-wing attitude aren't mutually exclusive. And it can't be the case that reformed 68ers, right-wing conservative populists and right-wing feminists join hands and set themselves up as the defenders, the foot-soldiers of Western civilisation."  

Sounds like Feridun--who, as per usual among his ilk, tries to discredit the nay-sayers by referring to them as members of the sinister "right"-- wants to shut down these defenders before they break the magic spell of the multiculturalists’ purple Kool-Aid. We can only hope and pray that these uppity females are brave enough to defy all the Feriduns and keep up the ruckus

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments

The blonde leading the blind: Hillary Clinton is leading Jewish Democrats down the garden path, and they’re delighted to go along for the ride. From the Jerusalem Post:

All seven major Democratic presidential candidates addressed the National Jewish Democratic Council this past week, but only one had two supporters introduce her. Hillary Clinton also received the most applause and ovations before, during and after her speech.

Even those NJDC activists who aren't backing Clinton in the primary campaign acknowledged that she was the most popular choice in the hall, according to several attendees interviewed by The Jerusalem Post.

The NJDC, which describes itself as the country's only organization of Jewish Democrats, counts top political donors and activists among its members.

The other top two Democratic contenders - former vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Senator Barack Obama - had substantial support at the NJDC and some backers could be found for just about everyone.

As go the Jews, so goes the Democratic Party. Or perhaps it's the other way around.

"She [Clinton] didn't deliver the knockout she wanted to deliver at the beginning of the campaign," said Ken Goldstein, the Mosse visiting professor of political sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "She wasn't able to land a knockout blow with Jewish Democrats either."

"The Clinton people have to be disappointed because the Clinton strategy was to try to clear the field" from the beginning of the race, Goldstein assessed. "It's still her race to lose, but that being said, it's a race."

Clinton enjoys strong Jewish support due to her standing as a popular senator from the state with the country's largest Jewish population, her work promoting Jewish issues and support for Israel, and the popularity her husband enjoyed among Jews when he was president.

But Virginia-based pollster Frank Luntz, who has worked with Republican candidates in the past, said Clinton was losing support across the board. He pointed to polls that three months ago gave her more than 40 percent of the popular support, but now give her numbers in the mid-30s.

Luntz also said that when it comes to the Jewish community, Clinton has been haunted by her past - specifically an infamous photo of her hugging Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, on a visit as first lady to the Palestinian Authority...

In other words you clueless Jews, you can trust this two-faced woman about as far as you can throw the President who sponsored the Oslo Accords and whose good intentions help pave the road to our current Hell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments

Torn between two pundits: The optimist in me says Mark Steyn’s line on Iraq is the way to go. But the pessimist in me (who has always had a much louder voice) says Hugh Fitzgerald’s is the more educated opinion.

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

Bandar goes bust: For many a moon, Washington’s favourite Saudi Royal was the affable and “Westernized” Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S., knew how to through a lavish soiree, and his beneficence endeared him to an untold number of  Beltway shnorrers. As a result, he was able to coast for years on his opportunistic charm.

Then came 9/11, and the realization that despite the friendly relations with Bandar, there were some Saudis—like Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 attackers—who weren’t too fond of America. Bandar had some ‘splaining to do, not only about the Saudi role in the attack, but also about the embarrassing revelation that his own wife had issued a check that found its way into terrorist coffers. Quicker than you could say “Wahhabi,” Bandar was cashiered and summoned back to the Magic Kingdom—and a new life of obscurity, we thought. Silly us. It turns out that Bandar has actually been “helping” his “friends” behind the scenes, assuring them, in his own inimitably charming way, that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Royals and the Americans were still simpatico. But it’s been getting harder and harder for Bandar to hoist that leaky dirigible since, in recent days, the King keeps going out of his way to shoot it down. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.

Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider’s insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with Israel as part of a broad American plan to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. King Abdullah countermanded that plan…

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Since the Iraq war and the attendant plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world, King Abdullah has been striving to set a more independent and less pro-American course, American and Arab officials said. And that has steered America’s relationship with its staunchest Arab ally into uncharted waters. Prince Bandar, they say, may no longer be able to serve as an unerring beacon of Saudi intent.

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Of course it is ultimately the king — and not the prince — who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the United States and Saudi Arabia…

The Times makes it sound like it was only the Bushes, pere et fils, who fell under Bandar's spell, but he also sprinkled his oily pixie dust on a good number of Democrats, including Bill Clinton. (When he and Bandar were in the same room, the collective unctuousness must have been unbearable.)

I am reminded of a line I once read in a novel by Laurie Colwin: “She had an idea of the way things should be and edited reality heavily to conform to it.”

That, alas, seems to describe the Bush administration, with its heavy reliance on unreliable people who keep telling it exactly what it wants to hear.

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

Mooky’s demon: Choleric cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has emerged from whatever cesspool he’s been hiding in since he decamped from Iraq to tap a certain Commander-in-Chief as the anti-Christ—one who, among other shortcomings, lacks depth perception. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD, April 28 (Reuters) - The powerful Iraqi cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr called President George W. Bush the "anti-Christ" on Saturday and urged him to heed calls by the opposition Democrats to withdraw from the chaos of Iraq.

 

Sadr, whose ministers quit Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government this month, renewed his demand for a U.S. pullout a day after Bush pledged to veto legislation that would require U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1.

 

Calling Bush "the greatest evil," Sadr said in a letter read out by a Sadrist MP in parliament that an eventual U.S. pullout would be a "victory for the Iraqi people".

 

"Here are the Democrats demanding that you withdraw at least with a timetable and you are stubborn against them," said Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia fought two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004.

 

"You are like the one-eyed anti-Christ. You look with one eye and refuse to look with the other," he told Bush…

 

Sorry, Mooky. You’ve got the wrong guy. But there’s another leader who’s a far likelier candidate for the demonic post.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:16 | link | comments

Marketing to the fastest growing sector in the country: From the New York Times via Islam Online:

CAIRO — Reaching out to the fast-growing Muslim customers in the United States, major consumer companies and advertisers are adapting their products to fit the taste of the sizable Muslim minority, reported The New York Times on Saturday, April 28.

"United States companies don’t want to risk alienating their domestic consumers," said Nasser Beydoun, chairman of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn.

Many retailers are now looking into providing Muslim-like products like conservative skirts and pork-free food stuffs and drinks.

Companies in the Detroit area, where there is a dense population of Muslims, are championing the policy shift.

McDonald's, the world's largest chain of fast-food restaurants, is now serving halal chicken McNuggets for Muslim customers in the area.

Walgreens, a convenience pharmacy chain, has also Arabic signs in its aisles.

Ikea, a home products retailer, is also touring local homes in the suburb of Canton to talk to Muslim customers in an effort to figure out their needs.

It is also planning to sell decorations for the holy fasting month of Ramadan in September and is adding halal meat to its restaurant menu.

Catalogs in Arabic are also being planned, and hijab-wearing Muslim employees will be offered Ikea-branded hijabs.

"People would flock to it," said Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a nonprofit group based in New York.

"They would say ‘I can’t believe I’m being validated by Macy’s. I can’t believe I’m being validated by Whole Foods.’ "

There are between 5-8 million Muslims customers in the US.

They spend about $170 billion on consumer products and are expected to grow rapidly as the population expands…

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:14 | link | comments

Reid it and weep: One of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s communications flaks has a foul and vitriolic comment piece in the Toronto Star. The article by Scott Reid is essentially a personal attack on the character of the current Prime Minister. Here’s about as much of it as I can stomach reading in one sitting:  

At the risk of angering the acolytes of conventional wisdom, it's time someone pointed out the obvious: Maybe Stephen Harper isn't so damn smart after all.

Of course, in Ottawa these days, such an utterance passes for sacrilege. Those who dare question the Prime Minister's infallibility are called names like heretical, bedlamite or Garth Turner.

Remarkably, it's not just the Conservative caucus who seem captivated. Media and political observers describe Harper with a blend of terror and admiration previously reserved for cinematic bogeyman Keyser Soze. Even members of the opposition parties sermonize on Harper's shrewd, strategic brilliance.

To a degree, you can forgive the Liberals and the NDP. In politics, it is wise to never underestimate your opponent. At the same time, it is equally important to not overestimate his advantage.

In truth, there is plenty of evidence that Harper's political strategy is crude, over-calculated and fundamentally schizophrenic. One thing more: It's not working.

A spate of recent polls show support for Harper's Conservatives once again in retreat, leaving the political class in a twitter. How can this be? Isn't Harper's triumph inevitable?

The inability of the Prime Minister to march confidently into majority territory has left official Ottawa baffled. Like the whereabouts of Wajid Khan's Middle East report or John Baird's shame reflex, Smart Stephen's inability to pocket 40 per cent of voters is treated by media as one of the shocking mysteries of contemporary politics.

Except it's not so shocking. The reasons for Harper's difficulty are not impossible to spot.

First, he isn't remotely likeable. That, alone, isn't necessarily fatal. Pierre Trudeau, for example, was loathed by whole chunks of the electorate.

But Harper is different. He has a mean streak, a thin-skinned nastiness that he can't even be bothered to conceal. Never before has a prime minister sought to serve as his own hatchetman. Yet, Harper revels in the role.

He spitefully labels his political opponents Taliban sympathizers or child pornographers. Small wonder that Canadians haven't warmed to him. The guy's miserable. And with this week's debacle surrounding Afghan detainees, he can't even continue to claim the mantle of competence…

Unlike, I suppose, that paragon of competence, Scott Reid’s former boss.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star:

 

It’s no surprise that Scott Reid, Paul Martin’s former communications director, would want to paint Stephen Harper as a "movie villain"; it is in the interest of his party—currently out of power and desperately unhappy about it—to do so. Still, his article about the source of the current Prime Minister’s supposed “unpopularity” and his assertion that Mr. Harper resembles movie villain Keyser Soze was a particularly nasty piece of business that amounted to little more than an ad hominen attack.

 

If Mr. Reid hopes to persuade Canadians to return his party to office, he and his cohorts are going to have to do come up with something a lot better than this type of ugly character assassination.

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

Out of their flicking minds: George Jonas, in glorious high dudgeon, on the madness of the crowd. From the National Post:

Human beings live in worlds of their own making. This is true of individuals as well as nations -- even entire periods. I suppose a person couldn't help being born in the Dark Ages, but it was still people who created the Dark Ages and people who ended them. They weren't cosmic events.

If we recreate the Dark Ages in the 21st century, it will be our own doing, too. Nobody is making us. None of our Evil Empires came from outer space. The red cancer of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism may have gone into remission, but the malignancy of tyranny comes in many colours. From the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s, it came in Fascist black and Nazi brown. If it were to flare up again in green--Islamist green, environmental green, it doesn't matter --it would still be as homemade as apple pie.

What triggered this tirade? The news, needless to say. Almost any item makes one wonder about the sanity of the world, especially on or near the front page. Glancing at a photograph from Tehran. Reading a speech by Tory Environment Minister John Baird. Receiving an e-mail about a police raid in Alberta. My job is to comment on the news, but how can one comment on a nation--in this case, Iran -- choosing to live in a society where women, dressed like witches from an amateur production of Lady Macbeth, accost and berate other woman in the street for not being dressed like a witch from an amateur production of Lady Macbeth -- and they do it in 2007, in a country developing nuclear technology! It's nonsensical, unredeemed total stupidity --in short, n.u.t.s.

But for nuts we don't need to go all the way to Iran. The Green Gestapo of the environment seems ready to launch nuts right here at home. Eco-fascists share the self-righteous arrogance of Islamo-fascists, safety-Nazis and other control freaks. They're like the multicultural censors excising "Merry Christmas!" or the feminist ones neutering the word "fisherman" and substituting "fisher" as the mot juste. They're the anti-gun crusaders obliging us to register Grandpa's squirrel-plonker; they're the Victorian don't-step-on-the-grass crowd; they're our version of the Persian dress police. They're prepared to enforce a government- regulated climate in Canada, indoors and outdoors, literally and figuratively, itching to counter global warming with an economic ice age…

“Eco-fascists”—that one’s a keeper.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:48 | link | comments

Task master: Remember when those irascible lads from Leeds blew themselves up on London’s public transit? Remember how we were assured in the days following that blitz that this effort was “home grown,” the product of some DIY jihadis, and was not being directed by any organized group? Well, it seems that was a false assurance. The al Qaeda bigwig, an Iraqi, who is believe to have masterminded the 7/7 attack has just been nabbed in a land far, far away from Britian. From the Times Online:

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.

Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.

Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.

Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.

They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.

Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.

Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain…

Such a busy little supremacist. Let’s hope he can look forward to a long stretch of “retasking” in a British prison.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Flicking idiot: Those Ontario Liberals under Dalton McGuinty are just so…I think the word the young people like to use these days is “hep.” Or is it "groovy"? In a misguided attempt to be edgy and cool, the McSquinty gang have launched a campaign designed to convince Ontarians to minimize their carbon footprints. The campaign, featuring buttons, t-shirts and other paraphernalia, all funded, natch, courtesy the Ontario taxpayer, encourages everyone to “Flick Off.” Only—and here’s the “hep” part—when you look at the message quickly, you don’t see the word “flick”; you see an expletive that my eight-year-old, who seems to evince a lot more maturity than my provincial government, refers to as “the ‘f’ swear word."

Way to go, McSquinty. Thanks for setting such a good example for Ontario kids.

 

The Premier, of course, is shocked—shocked!—that people are taking offence to the campaign. As far as he’s concerned, the real obscenity is global climate change, and he insinuates that irate taxpayers can just, um, go flick themselves.

 

Right back atcha, McSquinty.

 

There’s more:

 

A Premier named Dalton McGuinty,

Stood his ground, and was firm and quite flinty

When some people did scoff

When told to “Flick off."

He’s a bit of a dim bulb, i’n’t he?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:00 | link | comments

A man who “gets it”: Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney told an audience at Yeshiva University that “radical nuclear jihad is the greatest threat that faces humanity It cannot be appeased. It can only be defeated.”

You can read excerpts from the speech here.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:39 | link | comments

A broad-based desire for primacy: The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, yet according to a just released poll, they, like their more violent brethren, share a common desire: to see the Caliphate restored so it can lord it over the planet.

Jihad expert Andrew Bostom analyses this ominous trend. From the American Thinker:

 

Writing in 1916, C. Snouck Hurgronje, the great Dutch Orientalist, underscored how the jihad doctrine of world conquest, and the re-creation of a supranational Islamic Caliphate remained a potent force among the Muslim masses:

 

...it would be a gross mistake to imagine that the idea of universal conquest may be considered as obliterated...the canonists and the vulgar still live in the illusion of the days of Islam's greatness. The legists continue to ground their appreciation of every actual political condition on the law of the holy war, which war ought never be allowed to cease entirely until all mankind is reduced to the authority of Islam-the heathen by conversion, the adherents of acknowledged Scripture [i.e., Jews and Christians] by submission.

 

Hurgronje further noted that although the Muslim rank and file might acknowledge the improbability of that goal "at present" (circa 1916), they were,

 

...comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms...

 

Thus even at the nadir of Islam's political power, during the World War I era final disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Hurgronje observed how

 

...the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future. The political blows that fall upon Islam make less impression...than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul [Istanbul], that would instantly be revealed if he were not surrounded by treacherous servants, and the fantastic tidings of the miracles that Allah works in the Holy Cities of Arabia which are inaccessible to the unfaithful. The conception of the Khalifate [Caliphate] still exercises a fascinating influence, regarded in the light of a central point of union against the unfaithful (i.e., non-Muslims). [emphasis added]

 

Nearly a century later, the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a "fringe minority"-desired this outcome (i.e., "To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate"), including 49% of "moderate" Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition "To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country."

 

Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim "advocacy" groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari'a as promulgators of "a peaceful and just society" , the findings from the University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org poll are ominous…

 

To say the least.  

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:11 | link | comments

Today’s doggerel:

A Bollywood starlet named Shetti

Consumed platefuls of yams and spaghetti.

But she got in some heck

When a Gere found her neck—

An encounter she’s bound to regretti.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments

Terror viper a pain in the Royal butt: The egregiously abundant (and wealthy and oily) Saudi Royals may be the official custodians of the two holiest sites in Islam and having paid gazillions to export their “purist” brand of Islam hither and yon, but they don’t necessarily always comport themselves in, shall we say, a holy (or wholly) self-restrained manner. Thus they have long been in the crosshairs of those—like Osama bin Laden, a princeling if not a prince of another revered Saudi family—want to replace them with a more ascetic and personally devout group of rulers. For many years, the Saudis thought they could placate the purists by outsourcing terrorism, but as we have seen on other occasions, the purists remain steadfast in their desire to topple the iniquitous House of Saud. And so it comes as no surprise today to learn that the Saudis have just nabbed another bunch of purists eager to put that plan into effect. From the New York Times:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 27 — Saudi police arrested 172 Islamic militants today who they said were planning attacks that involved flying airplanes into oil fields.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said the militants were planning suicide attacks against public figures, refineries and other oil facilities, and military installations, some of them outside the kingdom; no specific locations were mentioned.

“They had reached an advanced stage of readiness, and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks,” a spokesman for the ministry, Brig. Mansour al-Turki, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. “They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks.”

The ministry statement said that some of the people detained today had traveled to other countries to learn how to fly airplanes, so that they could carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia. There were also plans to storm a Saudi prison and free inmates, the ministry statement said.

More than $32.4 million in cash was seized by police, along with weapons and other items, the ministry said…

To quote a non-Muslim text: As you sow, so shall you reap.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:23 | link | comments

Don’t judge a book by its decorations: The Torah, the Christian Bible, and the Koran—they’re more or less the same, right? Well, if you only glance at the illustrations and don’t bother to read the text, that might be a fair conclusion to draw. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — Celebrating the commonalities between three monotheistic faiths, the British Library is showcasing rare and precious texts of the Islamic, Christian and Jewish holy books, The Guardian reported on Thursday, April 26.

"We were determined not to create faith zones, but to show these wonderful manuscripts side by side, and demonstrate how much we share - not least that these are three faiths founded on sacred texts, books of revelation," said Graham Shaw, the lead curator.

"There is a textual link that can be studied in the exhibition."

The exhibition, "Sacred: Discover What We Share", will be opened Friday, April 27, and go on for five months.

It demonstrates how calligraphers and manuscript illuminators shared influences and styles.

The microscopically detailed decorated capital letters of Lindisfarne Gospels are echoed in Islamic and Jewish manuscripts while Christian and Jewish texts borrowed Islamic-inspired decoration.

A 14th century Qur'an and a translation of the gospels into Arabic are indistinguishable at a glance.

The library believes the show will be an interesting event to the world's Christians, Muslims and Jews who together make up more than half of the global population…

Funny thing: the Torah and the Christian Bible do not contain a single line requiring the faithful to wage a holy war on non-believers in God’s name. The Koran, on the other hand, has 164 passages calling for violent jihad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:07 | link | comments

Senate stupidity: Sometimes, like when I read the following story, I feel so out of synch with my home and native land that my only recourse is to laugh hysterically at the sheer idiocy of it all. If you read this, you’ll see what I mean: 

OTTAWA (CP) - Canada should ban spanking and launch an information campaign to ban all forms of corporal punishment, the Senate human rights committee said Thursday.

The committee's report also called on the federal government to develop a strategy to combat bullying and help teach children and their parents how to resolve conflicts without resorting to physical intimidation.

The recommendations were part of (sic) document that accused the government of failing to live up to its international obligations by denying children their right to influence government decisions.

Bullying has become a priority of school boards across the country, particular as the practice spread from the school yard to cyberspace.

The report from the all-party committee also calls on Ottawa to appoint a children's commissioner to stand up for what it describes as a voiceless segment of Canadian society.

"Children's voices rarely inform government decisions, yet they are one of the groups most affected by government action or inaction," says the committee's 296-page report, entitled 'Children: The Silenced Citizens.'…

Now, I love my eight-year-old son more than life itself, and I have never raised a hand to him. But even though he’s smart and sweet and pretty level-headed for an eight-year-old, I don’t think that, given his age and life experience, he has any business trying to “influence government decisions.” That’s the domain of people called “grown-ups.” Once he has reached the age of maturity, he has every “right” to exert all the influence he wants to in that arena. Until then, he is a child, one who requires guidance from those who are older and wiser than he is. Only a bunch of clueless unelected Parliamentarians who know nothing about children (and who have probably never watched an episode of Nanny 911) could possibly believe it’s a good idea to allow kids to boss around adults.

Yet another example of how, when the words “human rights” are allowed in the front door, reason and common sense often fly out the window.

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

An “innocent” abroad?: A Canadian has been thrown in a hoosegow in China for a good long stretch because the Chinese say he was funding terrorism. As expected, his conviction has occasioned a great hue and cry in Canuckistan, with calls for an envoy to help convince the Chinese to let him go, and the possibility being raised that the case could affect Canada’s participation in the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Articles in the Globe and Mail and other mainstream media outlets have been featuring photos of the alleged terror-supporter's wife and kidlets, who fear they may never see Hussein Celil again, thus drumming up much sympathy for the unfortunate family.  

Here’s how the Globe describes the charges against “human rights activist” Celil, who became a Canadian citizen in 2005:

Mr. Celil was arrested in Uzbekistan in March 27, 2006, while visiting his wife's relatives, and was deported to China.

Mr. Celil was born in China, and is now a political refugee and Canadian citizen.

He was travelling in Uzbekistan last year when he was arrested on a Chinese police warrant and extradited to China on terrorism charges.

On April 19, a Chinese court found him guilty of giving 80,000 yuan, or about $11,700, to the founder of a terrorist organization called Hezbollah in China's Guangdong province in 1997. The founder went on to purchase arms and train terrorists, the court found.

My question: why do people automatically assume that the mere fact of Canadian citizenship means that someone convicted in a foreign court can't possibly be guilty?

 

I sent the Globe a letter making that very point, but I don’t expect to see it in print:

 

As a Canadian, I believe in the presumption of innocence, a principle that likely does not apply in Chinese courts. So when a court in China tries and convicts a Canadian citizen of being involved in terrorism, as it did to human rights activist Huseyin Celil, I, like other Canadians, may have good reason to question the verdict. I also know, however, that sometimes Canadians have been involved in terrorism-related activities in other countries.

 

For instance, there was the case of Ahmed Said Khadr, patriarch of the now infamous family. Back in the 1990s, Mr. Khadr said he was in Pakistan raising funds for charity when he was actually raising money for al Qaeda. Thrown in prison by the authorities, he insisted he was “100 per cent innocent,” and in 1996 Prime Minister Jean Chretien interceded on his behalf and convinced the Pakistanis to release him. In fact, Mr. Khadr had been doing exactly what he was accused of, and was able to return to those activities once he was out of jail.

 

So when Huseyin Celil says did not pass on a large sum of money to a terrorist group, I must presume he is innocent. At the same time I can’t assume that his innocence is guaranteed simply because he happens to be a Canadian.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments

S.F.S.S.: Never heard of it? It’s Sudden Foppatoffel Shock Syndrome, a dread affliction affecting Croc-shod hospital workers in Sweden. From The Local:

Blekinge Hospital is to ban the use of the popular Crocs, or 'Foppatoffel', slippers. Experts warn that the plastic shoes can become charged with such high levels of static electricity that they risk interfering with important electronic equipment.

Crocs slippers are widely known in Sweden as Foppatoffels, since they are imported to the country by ice hockey legend Peter 'Foppa' Forsberg.

The style police have already objected to the arrival of Crocs on Swedish shores, arguing that the country's most famous ice hockey star should have left the slippers where he found them.

But the hospital in southern Sweden has its own non-aesthetic reasons for banning Foppatoffels, according to newspaper Dagens Medicin

The problem was first detected in February when respiratory equipment used for two premature babies shut itself off and on for no immediately apparent reason.

Technical staff at the hospital soon began to suspect however that the Foppatoffels worn by many members of staff may have caused the equipment to malfunction.

"Everybody generates static electricity. But it usually loses its charge, either by disappearing through one's shoes or elsewhere," hospital spokesman Björn Löfqvist told Dagens Medicin.

But because the Foppatoffel is made of plastic, it acts as an insulator and the hospital estimates that the slippers can become charged with as much as 25,000 volts of electricity…

Yikes. Better alert Al “the Goracle” Gore. I think we may have just come up with a new, carbon-free power source.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:47 | link | comments

French fried Judenhass : I beg you, don’t go to France. But if you do go, don’t wear a Magen David around your neck. From YNet News:

A 22-year-old French woman said Thursday she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by two youths at an underground train station in Marseille.

The youths, who the woman said were of Middle Eastern origin, snatched her Star of David necklace, then lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach before fleeing the scene.

 

According to the Jewish Agency, the French police have refrained from releasing the details of the incident before it was proven that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.

 

The head of the Jewish Agency delegation in France, David Roche, told Ynet that representatives of the local Jewish community would continue to follow the investigation.

 “We will be in touch with the woman and provide her with all the help she needs,” he said, adding that the attack was the most severe anti-Semitic incident in France since the murder of Ilan Halimi in February 2006.

 Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski released a statement saying that “specifically during the course of the largest display of democracy France has known in many years this barbaric act is carried out.

 "We are doing our utmost so that the issue of the fight against anti-Semitism will top the agenda of the candidates for the presidency and of the candidate who is elected," he said. 

Good luck with that one, Ze’ev.

There's more: Melanie Phillips posts a disturbing piece on "the parlous state of French Jewry."

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:31 | link | comments (1)

The lost continent of Eurabia: Front Page Magazine has an interview with one of the world’s truth tellers—scholar of jihad and dhimmitude Bat Ye-or. The author of Eurabia weighs in one of the most depressing phemonena of our time: the “Palestinianization” of Europe:

…FP: You have introduced a new concept: "Palestinianism." What does it mean exactly?

 

Bat Ye'or: I think that it is, precisely, "Palestinianism" which is at the root of Europe's decadence. It is an ideology based on a replacement theology whereby  Palestine replaces Israel. As it has been conceived and instigated together by European and Arab intellectuals and politicians, it combines the worst of both cultures. For the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinianism embodies the ideology and aims of jihad against a rebellious dhimmi people. It is therefore based on a Muslim culture and theology that deny territorial independence and sovereignty to any non-Muslim people. 

 

Palestinianism opposes Israel on two main points: 1) Jews being a dhimmi people cannot rule Muslims ¨C even less liberate and govern their country, especially if it has been formerly conquered and colonized by jihad -- such as Israel, Spain, the Balkans, Hungary and parts of Europe. Jews must be brought under the yoke of Islam. And this, of course, applies to Christians as well; both must be reduced to submission and dhimmitude. 2) Muslim doctrine rejects the Bible, it does not accept that it is the history of the people of Israel and the source of Christianity. Muslims believe that the biblical narrative, as it is transcribed in the Koran, is the story of the Muslim people and of Muslim prophets. For this reason, they deny the historical patrimony and ancestry of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land. For them, both Testaments have an Islamic source and describe an Islamic history since the people in the Bible and Jesus himself (Isa) were Muslims. Judaism and Christianity are seen as falsification of Islam. This is the inner core of the ideology -- even a doctrine -- of Palestinianism and of its war against Israel.

 

The European trend has added to it traditional Christian antisemitism which condemns the Jews to perpetual exile till they convert. The Palestinian war against Israel, strongly encouraged by many in Europe, came as a magnificent opportunity to continue and maintain the culture of hate and denigration against the Jews -- now the state of Israel -- and by lending a moral and political support to a second Holocaust. Europe has been the biggest supporter and subsidizer for the Palestinians as well as their ideological teachers.

 

FP: Europe has been Palestinianized hasn't it? What have the consequences been to Europe?

 

Bat Ye'or: The consequences for Europe are manifold, profound and it seems irreversible. Palestinianism has been the most effective tool to divide, weaken and destroy the West. But this process could only happen because an institutional apparatus, the European Community (EC) -- which in 1993 became the European Union -- could impose Palestinianism over all its member-states as a common foreign policy.

 

While in the Arab and Muslim world Palestinianism was the jihadist tool to eradicate the independence and freedom of the Jewish dhimmi people, in Europe it assumes another signification. The EC unofficial support for the Arab League jihad to destroy Israel restores a culture of hate that is self-destructive for Europe itself. Whatever Europeans may believe today, their whole spiritual and humanistic culture come from the biblical prophets, from the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery, and the promotion of human equality and dignity, from the salvific virtue of humility, self-criticism and the asking of forgiveness, from the praise of peace and the separation of religion from the state, and so on¡­and on. All Christian feasts are Christianized Jewish feasts; Jewish holy books are Christian holy books.

 

Joining the jihadist camp involves the suppression of those links that structure and support Christianity, thereby weakening it, and leaving it ready to fall apart. And hate destroys its bearer more than its victim. It means to adhere to the jihadist ideology that seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamic rule over the world, a view that does not conceive of human plurality in equality, or accept criticism, or freedom of expression and opinion. It means that Christianity as much as Judaism, as religions and civilizations, are denied and deserve to be destroyed.

 

Palestinianism endeavors to suppress the links between Christianity and Judaism because it professes that Christianity was born from Islam, from a Jesus who was a Muslim prophet -- the Koranic Isa -- and very different from the Jewish Jesus described by the four evangelists -- themselves nurtured by the First Testament and not the Koran. In Europe, the theological replacement of Judaism triggered by Palestinianism, affects also politics. Except for derogatory comments, the media avoids mentioning Israel as if already it didn't exist, thus suppressing it by a silent boycott. Another European trend consists in imposing a strict historical similarity and equivalence between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians, whereas there are none.   

 

Since Palestinianism is now the foremost ideology of Europe, it has determined European support for jihadist tactics. And jihad is not like any war, it represents a whole theological war corpus, with its holy strategy and ritual tactics. Europe justified the PLO aim to destroy Israel from the 1970s, its abductions and killings of civilians, its air piracy, kidnapping and terrorism, blaming the victims instead of the perpetrators. In order to justify these crimes that are so contrary to humanist values and moral, Europe had to demonize Israel, to paint it as the biggest enemy of peace and has therefore rejuvenated its passionate love to hate Israel, vilifying it with its own crimes.

 

That's not all. Most Europeans do not agree with such policy. Many denounced it and fought against it. Hence through a coordinate campaign monitored by the networks of the European Union bodies, a system linking politics to markets, culture, universities, media and opinion makers, has spread its totalitarian grip over the member-states in order to impose a despicable culture of lies and denial that support Europe's pro-Palestinian foreign policy…

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:55 | link | comments

Big duh!: An article in left-leaning Canadian periodical Walrus (yes, that’s really what it’s called; I guess the names “Baby Seal” and “Moose” were already taken) seeks to solve “The Hamas Dilemma.” The purported dilemma: “With all eyes focused on Palestine, will the Islamic Resistance Movement choose violence and ideology or pragmatic rule?”

Um, I think I can address that condundrum without even reading the article. It’s no contest. Among die-hard jihadits, violence and ideology will win out every time. At least until the relevant infidels have been dhimmified, “reverted” or killed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:47 | link | comments

Strength in numbers: Akbar Manoussi is thrilled about his community’s new demographic might—one million strong and counting. Although the vice-president of the Ottawa Muslim sounds most of the notes that Canadians like to hear in this article in the Ottawa Citizen, you don’t have to delve too deeply between the lines to see what he’s really doing: flexing his muscles on behalf of the growing demographic, and demanding “accommodations” from the larger society. (With thanks to NY Nana):

…We live in Canada, we share the ambience, the environ. We meet, we work, we socialize with our compatriots. We are Canadian. We are not afraid of assimilation as there are sufficient institutions, mosques, schools and centres to incubate our heritage.

However, integration into Canadian society has become a stumbling block. Multiculturalism seems to be a quasi-apartheid of hyphenated Canadians. Muslims are Afghan-Canadians or Yemeni-Canadians, pigeon-holed rather than woven into the national fabric.

I am a first-generation Canadian. There are second- and even third-generation Canadian Muslims who know no other country except Canada. They are stalwarts of this country, more Canadian than myself.

But they may be made conspicuous by their beards or hijabs, and have to bear being termed "un-Canadian." This alienation is not helpful to us, nor to the general populace.

In debating the 1960s Bill of Rights, precursor to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, John Diefenbaker stated: "I am a Canadian, free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way. ..." It is a positive vision for Muslims or adherents of any other faith.

A daily negative barrage in the media is not going to deter Muslims, as we are here sharing our values too with most Canadians, be it halal (kosher) food or the life hereafter with its reward of heaven or hell as per our deeds. The Koran mentions that Islam started with the Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) and the legend is intertwined with angels, Shaitan (Satan), the Garden of Eden, the Fall of Man, and the lineage of the Prophets.

There is much in common among Muslims and Christians and Jews, but the differences sell.

Just prior to an election, politicians parade into the mosques glad-handing and promising Muslims heaven on earth, but there is a long dry season in between. However, the altruism shown last summer by General Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, and Rear-Admiral Tyrone Pile, chief of military personnel, in reaching out to Ottawa's Muslim community to help them understand Canadian missions in Muslim countries and regions such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, was heartwarming.

Throngs queued to shake their hands, greeting them with genuine, cordial warmth. This too demonstrated that if the top Canadian officials can come this far for us, why can't we meet our counterpart Canadians halfway?

That too is statistically possible. While successive governments espouse national unity as their raison d'etre, they should embark upon integration's Phase 1 by establishing Canada centres across the country of ours to orient new Canadians to our national identity -- ideas and ideals.

Muslims are more than simple statistics to show up once a decade, and daily as international prime suspects.

Yes, ideedee.

 

From Manoussi’s perspective, Canada is required to display its “tolerance” by adapting to Muslims instead of expecting Muslims to adapt to Canada.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments (3)

It sure ain’t Disneyland: The National Post’s go-to guy on jihadist terrorism, Stewart Bell, has an article about some excitable young lads in Canada and the U.K. who were itching to go to a mystical, magical place known as “Jihadland”:

TORONTO - Terror suspects in Canada and Britain held secret online discussions about going to "Jihadland" to become "martyrs," according to a copy of their communications obtained by the National Post.

On a password-protect message board, a notorious cyberterrorist known as Irhabi007 (irhabi is Arabic for terrorist) chatted with suspects in Toronto who likewise used fake names to guard their anonymity.

"I'm moving inshallah [Godwilling] this summer to Jihadland. Whatever happens, inshallah. So if you want to come with me, inshallah, we can go together or even with some of your friends," Irhabi wrote in March, 2005.

In the exchange with a suspected leading member of a Toronto terror cell, Irhabi wrote that he "knew a few people here" but that they had not "kept a low profile" and bringing them to Jihadland might be a security risk.

"Yeah, you come here, we buy some gear, get a story straight, like we are here to make a documentary on birds or something! Or we could play it higher, go as 'businessmen,' black suit and attitude?.

"Whatever, inshallah, we get to the bros, otherwise f--k it! We arrange something on the spot!"

The response from Toronto was: "Yeah, we see wut happens inshallah. The bros here are leaving also in the summer so with the permission of Allah, may Allah allow us to be martyrs in his cause in wutever land he wishes for us."

Irhabi does not specify the location of "Jihadland," but several terror suspects that were part of his network travelled to Pakistan in 2005, including associates of the so-called Toronto 17 group arrested last year…

In Jihadland there are no rides, no games, no cotton candy, no fun, and no sideshows featuring scantily-clad cuties; a horny young lad has to wait for marriage or “martyrdom” to hook up with any chicks—a real incentive to blast himself into Parardise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments

Horsing around: It’s stories like the following that make it worthwhile getting up in the morning. From AP via the Boston Globe:

BERLIN --An early-morning bank customer had a bit of a shock when he found a horse at the automatic teller machine.

 

The horse's owner, identified only as Wolfgang H., had a bit too much to drink the night before and decided to sleep it off inside the bank's heated foyer, police said Tuesday.

 

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had "a few beers" with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home.

 

Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he brought the 6-year-old horse, named Sammy, in with him.

 

When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank at 4:15 a.m. Monday, he called police, who then came and woke the owner up and sent him on his way.

 

No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed: Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet.

                                                            

The best thing about the story: the photo of Sammy the horse in the bank foyer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:39 | link | comments (1)

Iraq stands alone—like the Farmer in the Dell’s cheese: CBS News notes a new flaccidity in the Bush regime’s so-called War on Terror—and the mainstreamer couldn’t be more delighted:

(CBS) Despite four years of efforts, is it possible that even President Bush's own Republican Party remains unsold on the argument that the war in Iraq is a part of the overall war on terror?

Since the very beginning, opponents of the Iraq war have argued that the two are unrelated — despite the president's insistence that Iraq is a central front in the battle against terrorism. Increasingly, however, it's apparent that the two aren't closely linked in the minds of voters. You don't need polls to demonstrate this growing reality; just look at recent events and behaviors on the presidential campaign trail.

When Sen. John McCain "officially" kicked off his presidential bid on Wednesday, he paid scant attention to his steadfast support for the war in Iraq. When he did briefly touch on it, McCain sounded more apologetic than hopeful, focusing on the acknowledgement of mistakes made and lessons learned.

Although McCain allowed that "a little progress" is being made as a result of the troop surge he supports, he focused most of his remarks on what has gone wrong. "America should never undertake a war unless we are prepared to do everything necessary to succeed, unless we have a realistic and comprehensive plan for success, and unless all relevant agencies of government are committed to that success," McCain said. "We did not meet this responsibility initially. And we must never repeat that mistake again."

A bitter rival of President Bush's during the 2000 presidential contest, McCain has become the 2008 candidate most closely associated with this administration as a result of his embrace of the war. While he has also at times been harshly critical of its conduct, McCain has yet to find a way to shake the Iraq association — which has at times caused him public embarrassment. The Arizona senator still finds himself answering questions about his shopping trip to a Baghdad market.

To top it off, McCain continues to find himself an underdog in the polls (at least nationally. as he performs at or very near the top in key early states). The latest CBS News poll on the race showed him far behind Rudy Giuliani, getting just 25 percent support from GOP primary voters to Giuliani’s 47 percent.

And what is Giuliani’s strength? Why, strength in the face of terrorism of course — a point proven in dramatic fashion over the past day. According to The Politico's Roger Simon, Giuliani launched a direct attack at Democrats over the war on terrorism in New Hampshire on Tuesday, saying that a GOP loss in 2008 would lengthen that fight. "The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us," the former New York City mayor said.

And Democrats responded immediately. Sen. Barack Obama accused Giuliani of turning the threat of terrorism into "the punch line of another political attack," adding, "America's mayor should know that when it comes to 9/11 and fighting terrorists, America is united." In a statement from her campaign, Hillary Clinton said, "there are people right now in the world, not just wishing us harm but actively planning and plotting to cause us harm. If the last six years of the Bush administration have taught us anything, it's that political rhetoric won't do anything to quell those threats."

From a standpoint of their support for either the war in Iraq or the war on terror, there is little separating these two Republicans other than the public association of McCain with Iraq and Giuliani with terrorism. Both have their problems, past and present, with the traditional Republican base — but for now, Giuliani appears to be the favorite of the party. That, combined with the rapid responses of the two leading Democratic candidates suggests very few voters are connecting Iraq with the war on terrorism these days…

 

Repeat the CBS mantra after me: There’s no jihad, there’s no jihad, there’s no jihad, there’s no jihad…

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

Has Condi been trying to cozy up to the mullahs?: Michael Ledeen sure thinks so. From NRO:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose tenure at Foggy Bottom began with such energy and fine language about support for freedom in the Middle East, is begging the Iranian foreign minister to come to a “future of Iraq” conference in Egypt next week. She told the Financial Times that it would be a “missed opportunity” if Minister Mottaki didn’t show up.

In the same interview, she denied ever thinking about regime change in Iran. Our Iran policy, according to the secretary, is to “have a change in regime behavior.” Some day she will perhaps explain how any rational person can believe this cast of characters capable of changing behavior that has been constant for 28 years.

We are back to the days when Madeleine Albright went to international meetings hoping to get a one-on-one with an Iranian minister so she could apologize for past American sins and get on with the glorious business of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs. When that didn’t work, President Clinton did the public apology, and his administration trotted out a number of unilateral concessions. His vice president even made a secret deal with the Russians permitting them to sell weapons and supply expertise for the Iranian nuclear program. All for naught; the mullahs spat in our face and continued as before.

The delusion that one can settle our little disagreements with the Islamic Republic, if only the right people sit around the right conference table, has seized every administration since Jimmy Carter. Every president has sent emissaries to talk, and every administration has made demarches to Tehran. To date, the net result is hundreds of dead Americans. And yet the delusion persists. Each time it fails, the deep thinkers at Foggy Bottom manage to convince the secretary of State of the moment that we are just one small concession away from success, and by and large the secretary goes for it, just as Secretary Rice has…

 

Go ye and read the whole thing, for yea verily ‘tis an eye-opener.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:54 | link | comments

Clamping down on critical speech (and thought): The Jerusalem Post reports that Jews in the U.K. are applauding the EU’s move to ban Holocaust denial and other forms of “hate speech.”

A post on the newbusters site explains why their enthusiasm is short-sighted as such a ban is likely to be a double-edged, Orwellian sword.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:19 | link | comments

Blinkered in the Netherlands: Islam Online reports that Dutch Muslims think they’re far better off since that loudmouth, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, left for the U.S; the fools.:

 

AMSTERDAM — Almost a year after controversial Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi left the Netherlands following a scandal over lying to authorities to win asylum, Muslim women in the European country feel they are better off.

"I am glad that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is gone," Nermin Altintas, who runs an education center for migrant women, told Reuters on Wednesday, April 25.

"Now the tone has softened, it has become less extreme and tensions have eased."

Hirsi left the Netherland for the US after admitting she lied about her name and refuge status on arrival in 1992 to gain asylum in the European country.

The Somali-born MP built her popularity on odious attacks on Islam including her controversial two-part documentary "Submission" about Islam's alleged oppression of women.

The documentary, blasted as "extremely insulting" by the one million Muslim minority, led to the November 2004 killing of its director Theo Van Gogh.

The crime, committed by a Dutch man of Moroccan origin, was vehemently condemned by the vast majority of the minority.

Many accuse Hirsi of fueling racial tension in the Netherlands and diverting attention away from those trying to promote Muslim integration into society.

"Her methods were such that rather than attracting Muslim women she pushed them away," said Suzan Yucel, a 19-year-old student from Eindhoven.

"She polarized things."...

Telling the truth tends to have that effect on certain people (i.e. the people who don’t want to hear it).

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:57 | link | comments (1)

The latter, I believe: Martin Kramer, who links to this article about “Palestinian self-determination” on his Website, asks whether it’s a parody of the author is an idiot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:28 | link | comments

Hasta la vista, Rosie, and don’t let The View’s revolving door hit your gibungous keester on the way out: It’s official—Rosie O’Dious is leaving The View. Seems, in her words, her “needs for the future didn’t dovetail” with ABC’s.

Code for her refusal to tone down her unhinged truther act? Or her intention to seek a more lucrative gig with another network?

 

Maybe both?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:10 | link | comments

Empty blather: A measure of how far the Bush administration has come (though not necessarily advanced) from its resolute “axis of evil” days—the Bushies have announced that they are now open to the possibility of talking things over with the mully-bullies.

And what exactly would Great Satan discuss with implacable zealots who are at the nexus of terrorism and jihadist primacy efforts in the Middle East, and who are in the process of enriching uranium in order to excise the Jewish “tumour” (the hairy Islamic Hitler’s pathological characterization of Israel) from the map? As Yahoo reports

 

Condoleeza Rice might have one-on-one talks with Iranian leaders at an international conference on Iraq next month, but Tehran’s nuclear program would not be on the table.

 

What will be on the table? Apparently, a whole mess o’ junk food:

 

Bush said if a meeting occurs, Rice's message to the Iranians would be: "Don't send weapons in (to Iraq) that will end up hurting our troops, and help this young democracy survive."

 

Knowing the mullahs, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to comply.

 

How pathetic is it that “give ‘em Hell, Dubya” seems to have transmogrified into a John Kerry?

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

The long and the short of it: Ceeb radio show “Ideas” has the first part of its hard-hitting series called—wait for it—Phallus in Wonderland. Here’s the skinny on it:

From the beginning of civilization, the penis has been both a symbolic and flesh-and-blood gauge of man’s place in the world.

It seems men have celebrated the penis for millennia, and often used their organ as a symbol of power and dominance. In Ancient Greece it was common for men to pursue teenage boys for sexual gratification. In Ancient Rome, it was said, generals sometimes promoted soldiers based on penis size.

Throughout history, the pursuit of the perfect penis has fuelled the search for cures for impotence. In the eleventh century a recipe involved sparrows and billy-goats. When honey was added, the ingredients were cooked until the mixture became hard. It was made into pills and men would take one before intercourse. Today men pop Viagra. IDEAS producer Mary O’Connell takes us on a historical tour of male sexuality in Phallus In Wonderland.

Cute pun but I think I’ll pass.

 

As an anonymous wag once noted, “There is such a thing as penis envy, but only men have it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:37 | link | comments

Veiled threat:

Justice is supposed to be blindfolded, but a judge in the U.K. has just ruled that she may also be encased head-to-toe in a black shroud. From the Toronto Star:

LONDON–Muslim women should be allowed to wear the veil in British courts, senior judges said in guidelines published yesterday.

Muslim women should be permitted to wear the full facial covering, known as the niqab, as long as it does not interfere with the administration of justice, according to the Equal Treatment Advisory Committee of Britain's Judicial Studies Board.

Such decisions, however, should be made on a case-by-case basis, the committee said.

The guidelines were issued after an immigration judge adjourned a case in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, in November because he could not hear a Muslim lawyer who refused to remove her veil. The case resumed after her firm sent another lawyer to represent her client in court.

Forcing a woman to choose between participating in a court case or removing her veil could have a "significant impact on that woman's sense of dignity" and could exclude and marginalize her, the guidelines said.

Judges should not automatically assume a victim appearing in court wearing the niqab creates problems, the committee said. Nor should they assume it is inappropriate for a woman to testify wearing the full veil, it said.

If a judge felt it necessary to ask a victim to remove her veil, he or she should consider the request carefully, and be thoughtful and sensitive, the guidelines said.

The issue of face-covering veils has stoked debate over religious tolerance and cultural assimilation in Britain, which is home to 1.6 million Muslims…

In the U.K. these days, you can bank on sharia law—literally; you can also wear a burka to testify in court. At the moment, a woman’s testimony, veiled or unveiled is still accorded the same value as a man’s, but all that may change in time as sharia law, under which a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s, continues making inroads. In due course, the Brits may find that their “tolerance” has assimilated Muslim immigrants to the extent that the U.K. looks less and less like the cradle of Western jurisprudence and more and more like Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments

Exit, stage left?: Rumour has it that obnoxious blowhard/conspiracy monger Rosie O’Dious may be getting set to vacate her bully pulpit on hen-fest The View. To review some of Rosie’s more ga-ga assertions: 

• 9/11 was an inside job concocted by Americans who were looking for a pretext to attack Muslims in far away countries.
• People have no reason to fear Islamic terrorists because they’re Mums and Dads, same as Rosie and the rest of us.
• The Brits intentionally intruded into Iranian waters so that the U.S. and the U.K. would have an excuse to bomb Iran.

Not long after 9/11, Bill Maher was axed from his TV show Politically Incorrect when he advanced the notion that Mo Atta and Co. evinced “bravery” when they plowed airliners full of passengers into the Twin Towers. Rosie O has been making far more dangerous and even deranged pronouncements for months now with absolutely no consequences. I would cheer the story linked above but I have a feeling that A) it may not be true and B) if it is true, it likely means that Rosie, who unlike yours truly is in synch with the zeitgeist (not that that’s a good thing), is about to be given her own show.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments

Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of the Muslim crowd: There’s good news and bad news in a just-released survey of four major Muslim countries. The good news: those polled don’t condone suicide terrorism and give thumbs up to democratic rule. The bad news: they kinda like that Osama guy, think America is out to “git” Islam, and are convinced that someone other than Mo Atta and his zealous gang of houri-seekers were behind the 9/11 attacks.

Cliff May over at The Corner offers a capsule summary of the results:  

A poll of four major Muslim countries finds that most respondents have "mixed feelings" about al-Qaeda. Large majorities agree with many of its goals, but believe that terrorist attacks on civilians are contrary to Islam.

On average less than one in four believes al-Qaeda was responsible for September 11^th attacks. Pakistanis are the most skeptical—only 3 percent think al Qaeda did it. There is no consensus about who is responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington; the most common answer is "don't know."

Large majorities believe that undermining Islam is a key goal of US foreign policy.

Overwhelming majorities, asked about politically-motivated attacks on civilians, such as bombings or assassinations take the strongest position offered by saying such violence cannot be justified "at all."

Overall 67 percent agree that "a democratic political system" is a good way to govern their country and 82 percent agree that in their country "people of any religion should be free to worship according to their own beliefs.

The surveys were conducted in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia conducted from December 2006 to February, 2007 by WorldPublicOpinion.org with support from the START Consortium at the University of Maryland.

Now seems an appropriate time to cite this quote from the book whose title I paraphrased above:

 

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:46 | link | comments

“Rebels” with a cause: A bunch of Muslims massacred a bunch of Chinese workers in Ethiopia yesterday, but you’ll hear nary of the religious affiliation of the killers in this report in the International Herald Tribune. According to the New York Times-owned paper, the massacre was the work of  “separatists,” “rebels,” and “gunmen” who aim to “liberate” their part of Ethiopia:

NAIROBI: Separatist rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil facility in eastern Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing more than 70 people, including 9 Chinese workers, in one of Ethiopia's worst rebel attacks in years.

The deaths of the Chinese at the facility near the border with Somalia underscored the vulnerability of a rapidly growing Chinese presence across Africa, particularly in unstable areas where oil is being sought or produced.

Witnesses said dozens of rebel gunmen crept up to the facility around dawn and unleashed an intense barrage of machine-gun fire at Ethiopian soldiers posted outside. After a fierce hourlong battle, the rebels rushed away, taking with them seven Chinese hostages and a number of Ethiopians.

The Chinese working at the facility, in a remote area not far from the trading town of Jijiga, were part of a large Chinese presence on the continent that aims above all at gaining access to energy sources vital to the booming Chinese economy.

"The Chinese are going places where nobody else will go," said Peter Brookes, a former deputy assistant defense secretary in the Bush administration who has studied the matter. "People don't really want to go into Sudan, the Niger Delta, but the Chinese are willing to go to these places where others, for political or stability reasons, won't go."

Several Chinese workers have been kidnapped in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta.

Ethiopia, a close American ally, has been wracked by separatist violence for years, but the severity of this attack seemed to unnerve the government, whose officials usually play down any threats to their control.

"It was a massacre," said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in a broadcast address. "It was cold-blooded murder."

The Ogaden National Liberation Front, a militant group fighting for independence for part of eastern Ethiopia, immediately took responsibility, saying in an e-mail: "We will not allow the mineral resources of our people to be exploited by this regime or any firm that it enters into an illegal contract."

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the “rebel” entity:

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) (Somali: Jahbadda Wadaniga Xoreenta Ogadenia, JWXO), is a separatist rebel group fighting to make the region of Ogaden in eastern Ethiopia an independent state. Because Ogaden is populated by ethnic Somalis, the ONLF claims that Ethiopia is an occupying government. The ONLF is composed mainly of members of the Ogaden clan located in the Ogaden Somali territory.

Technically, the armed wing of the ONLF is the Ogaden National Liberation Army (ONLA).

History

Founded in 1984 by Abdirahman Mahdi, the Chairman of the Western Somali Liberation Movement Youth Union, Mohamed Ismail Omar (WSLF), Sh. Ibrahim Abdalla (WSLF), Abdi Ibrahim Geelle (WSLF-Trade Union), Abdirahman Yusuf Magan (WSLF) and Abdullahi Muhumed Sa'di-all (WSLF) and hidden members from different parts of the Somali liberations struggle, the ONLF is currently led by Chairman Mohamed O. Osman. ONLF was formed after WSLF leadership lost touch with the rank and file of Ogaden Somali people, after the defeat of Somalia in the 1977 Ogaden War. ONLF systematically recruited WSLF members and replaced WSLF in the Ogaden as the WSLF support from Somalia dwindled and finally dried up in the late eighties. By 1993 ONLF fully consolidated its support among all the Somalis in all the Somali territory under Ethiopian rule.

It’s tough being ruled by infidels. No wonder they felt the need to “rebel”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:31 | link | comments

A EUreaucrat parties on: While the predators continue to howl for Paul Wolfowitz’s blood,  Bret Stephens in Opinion Journal points to a certain, ahem, double standard in how high-profile international bureaucrats are dealt with:

Imagine that a top civil servant at a major multinational institution arranges a job for a fortysomething female colleague that comes with a $45,000 raise and brings her yearly salary to about $190,000, tax free. Now imagine that the couple has been photographed at a nudist beach--him wearing nothing but a baseball cap.

 

The latest sordid twist in l'affaire Wolfowitz? Not at all. This is the story of Günter Verheugen, first vice president of the European Commission in Brussels. In its contrasts and similarities with the "scandal" now absorbing the World Bank and its president, it offers timely instruction on the nature and power of modern bureaucracies.

 

In April, Mr. Verheugen, a former German parliamentarian for the Social Democrats, appointed economist Petra Erler as his chief of staff. In August, the couple was spotted au naturel on a Baltic shore. Mr. Verheugen--who also has a wife--has dismissed allegations of impropriety as "pure slander" and asked the German newsweekly Der Spiegel whether "two adults [can't] do as they wish in their private lives?"

 

In fact, they can't: The EU Commission's Code of Conduct, which he helped draft, observes that "in their official and private lives Commissioners should behave in a manner that is in keeping with the dignity of their office. Ruling out all risks of a conflict of interest helps guarantee their independence."

 

Don't think, however, that the commissioner is out on his ear: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier defends him as "an irreplaceable Brussels heavyweight," while Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says Mr. Verheugen has his "full confidence." That's more support than Mr. Wolfowitz will ever get from his European friends, who are clucking noisily about the need for the World Bank to preserve its "credibility" and for its president to be "beyond reproach." (It's also more than he's getting from the Bush administration, which is offering token words of support while quietly shopping former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani as a potential successor.)

But this isn't just a story of European hypocrisy (an old story). Like Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Verheugen is a man of major prior accomplishments--in his case, engineering the enlargement of the European Union to 25 from 15 member states. Also like Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Verheugen came to his current job pledging to make war on the methods of his own bureaucracy. "The idea is that the role of the commission is to keep the machinery running and the machinery is producing laws," he said last October. "And that's exactly what I want to change."

 

The machinery had a different idea. Mr. Verheugen announced plans in 2005 to do away with scores of economically burdensome and antiquated regulations, which he thought could help lift economic growth. When his efforts went nowhere, he gave an interview to the press blaming the failure on the opposition he'd encountered within the Brussels bureaucracy. The Commission's staff union reacted predictably, by calling on him to apologize and suggesting he resign. Not coincidentally, it was around the same time that stories of his special relationship with Ms. Erler, and of her new job, came to the attention of the press and the public.

 

Now consider the Wolfowitz saga. Superficially, the similarities with Mr. Verheugen rest with the details of their respective scandals: a close lady friend on staff, a suspiciously generous pay raise, allegations of nepotism and conflicts of interest.

 

But aside from the facts that Mr. Wolfowitz is unmarried and prefers his clothes on, the substance of the cases could not be more different. Mr. Verheugen seems to have obscured the nature of his relationship with Ms. Erler; Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged his relationship with Shaha Riza before he took the job as Bank president. Mr. Verheugen sought to use the power of his office to bring Ms. Erler nearer to him; Mr. Wolfowitz sought to use the power of his to move Ms. Riza away. Ms. Erler moved into a better job; Ms. Riza was forced into a lesser one. Mr. Verheugen ignored his own code of conduct; Mr. Wolfowitz followed the instructions of his ethics committee, whose chairman later praised him for acting in a "constructive spirit."

 

What the Wolfowitz scandal comes down to, then, is that he gave Ms. Riza a fat raise after the Bank's board agreed that she deserved compensation for losing her job. This is where the bureaucracy comes in and the real similarities with the Verheugen case begin…

 

The EUreaucrat has several clear advantages over Wolfowitz: he’s not American; he’s not associated with the Bush administration; and he’s not a Jew.

 

In Europe that helps smooth over a whole lot of rough patches. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:00 | link | comments

A melodious idea: Senator John McCain got in heck last week when he jokingly rewrote the chorus of Beach Boys’oldie “Barbara Ann” as “bomb Iran.” 

I say it’s too bad he didn’t get to do the whole song:

 

Bomb, bomb, bomb,

Bomb, bomb, Iran.

Bomb, bomb, bomb,

Bomb, bomb, Iran.

Oh, bomb Iran.

Yeah, that’s the plan.

Bomb Iran.

They've got some zany little mullahs

Always tryin’ to fool us,

Bomb Iran,

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

 

Keep on enrinchin’.

Won’t stop their bitchin’.

Better knock ‘em out

Or lots of nukes they’ll soon be a pitchin’.

Bomb Iran,

Bomb, bomb,

Bomb, bomb Iran.

They’re waiting for the Mahdi,

Hate is awful gaudy,

Bomb Iran,

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

 

Wicked as can be.

Evil you can see.

Want to bomb the crap

Out of the Zi’nist entity.

Oh, bomb Iran,

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

They hate civilization,

Love annihilation,

Bomb Iran…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:44 | link | comments

Mr. Popularity: Syria’s Ambassador to the U.S. used to be the loneliest guy in Washington, but in recent days his dance card is filling up with politicians who are eager to make his acquaintance. From Newsweek:

April 23, 2007 - The inked-up pages of Imad Moustapha's date book have a story to tell. In the first four months of 2007, the Syrian ambassador to Washington has had more interaction with U.S. officials than in all of 2005 and 2006. He has met with every single member of the Foreign Relations Committee, including many Republicans. He coordinated the trips to Damascus of at least three congressional delegations, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's this month. He's even had talks with a senior official in the State Department. (As further evidence of the warming trend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travels to Egypt next month to meet with representatives of Iraq's neighbors, including Syria). Many people in Washington still support the Bush administration's strategy of shunning Syria for its alleged ties to terrorist groups like Hizbullah and Hamas and its possible involvement in the assassination two years ago of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. But Moustapha, a computer scientist by training, says the isolation policy is unraveling. He spoke recently with NEWSWEEK's Dan Ephron.

NEWSWEEK: A lot was made of the visits by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to Syria, but what tangible results came of them?
Imad Moustapha: Syria sent very clear messages to all the congressional representatives and leaders from both sides of the aisle that visited Damascus. First, we reiterated Syria's willingness to engage with the U.S. on the different issues of mutual concern…. Second, we asked them to deliver a message to the U.S. administration stating that working with Syria will always yield better results than working around, or isolating, Syria.

But to many people here in Washington, Pelosi's visit looked more like partisan politics. What's your view?
It is unfortunate that this visit has been turned into a partisan topic.  The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton report recommended that the U.S. engage directly with Syria. Mrs. Pelosi's visit was a result of a general consensus amongst leaders from both sides of the aisle advocating talking to Syria.

You've been the ambassador since 2004. How lonely has it been?
There were no contacts on any level for a very, very long time—since February 2005.

So the visits mark a real change. Still, we're talking about trips by members of the legislative branch. As you know, foreign policy is made largely by the executive branch.
I think the United States, strangely enough, is reconsidering its policies…. I got an invitation from the State Department recently to meet with officials there. The assistant secretary of state for immigration, refugees and population went to Damascus. Regardless of the issue, this is the assistant secretary of state going to Damascus when three months ago they used to say, we will never talk to the Syrians. Very soon there will be a ministerial-level meeting of the neighboring countries of Iraq, somewhere in the region.

It’s sooooo nice when a lonely Baathist, the representative of a regime that sponsors terrorism and that acts as junior partner to the Holocaust-denying, nuclear warhead-building mullahs, gets to bask in the attention of clueless dhimmis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:04 | link | comments

Dick gets a clue: Ever since Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen opined that Israel was “a mistake”—a judgement he rendered at the height of Israel's war with Hezbollah in the summer of ’06—I have had little patience for his writings. So it comes as something of a surprise to read that Dick seems to “get it”—sort of—about the real reason behind the British Union of Journalists' boycott of Israel:

…The British journalists say they are moved by the plight of the Palestinian people and they are right to be. But the misery of a Gazan or a West Banker is not solely Israel's doing. The government of Gaza is the political arm of a terrorist organization and if the West Bank is suffering -- and it is -- the cause is not only Israeli land lust but also a morbid fear of terrorism. British journalists would no doubt approve similar measures if London's city buses had not once, but repeatedly, been blown to smithereens by passengers with the exact fare and a belt of explosives.

So what explains this fury at Israel -- and only at Israel? What explains this need to denounce, to boycott? Some of it surely comes from the uncritical support that Israel gets from the United States, which to lefties all over the world is a vile state, maybe worthy -- if it were not for jeans, movies and hip-hop -- of a boycott itself.

Some of it no doubt reflects frustration from the efforts of Jewish organizations to suffocate any criticism of Israel and to hurl the epithet "anti-Semite'' at anyone with an odd bent to his thinking. But some of it, surely, is anti-Semitism itself, a rage at the impudent, pushy Jew and this state created in the midst of the Arab world. Forgotten, conveniently and appallingly, is history itself and the reason for Israel's creation. This does not excuse injustice to Palestinians, it merely explains. But it is an explanation so soaked with the blood of Jews as to seem utterly concocted: It cannot be! But it was.

The British journalists, like the academics before them, dare to tread where an army of goons has gone before. If they do not recognize the ember of anti-Semitism still glowing within them, they ought to park themselves before a mirror and ask why, of all the nations, do they single out Israel for reprimand and obloquy? This business of assigning to Jews a special burden, for seeing in them both more of mankind's bad qualities and less of its good, has a dark and ugly pedigree: the Chosen People, again -- and again in the wrong way.

Does that mean he no longer considers Israel to be “a mistake”?

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

Britainistan: The conquest of Britain by sharia law continues apace.  From Islam Online:

LONDON — The British government unveils on Monday, April 23, the launch of a comprehensive study to analyze the feasibility for the government to issue Islamic bonds to enhance London's standing as an Islamic finance hub.

"I believe there are great potential advantages for the UK government issuing Shari`ah-compliant government debt," Economic Secretary to the Treasury Ed Balls will say in a speech, excerpts of which cited by Agence France Presse (AFP).

Addressing the Financial Services Authority conference, he will announce the launch of a study to analyze the feasibility for the government to issue the Shari`ah-compliant UK bonds.

The study, which results will be issued later this year, will look into the cost and potential benefits of the government issuing Islamic financial instruments in the sterling market.

"The feasibility study will also be assessing the opportunity for issuing such instruments, taking into account the government's debt management objectives."

All government bonds - called gilts - sold to individuals and big institutional investors will come under the review.

Muslims may be able to buy Premium Bonds according to the provisions of Islamic law for the first time after the government review.

Shari`ah compliant bonds have been issued by the governments of Pakistan and Malaysia and also by corporate issuers around the world, but never by a Western state.

The size of the market for Sukuk is estimated to be about $4bn (£2bn) and the British government needs to borrow almost £60bn for the 2007-08 financial year - some £1.4bn in Treasury bills and the rest in gilts.

Islamic banking operates by sharing profit or loss between the bank and its clients, instead of interest, which is forbidden.

Islam forbids Muslims from receiving or paying interest on loans…

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:04 | link | comments

Losing is not an option: Israel commemorates its 59^th anniversary.  

As they say in Yiddish, “biz hundert und zwanzig” (“to 120 years”).

 

As they also say in Yiddish, “halevai” (“if only”). From the Jerusalem Post:

After a day of mourning for Israel's fallen soldiers and victims of terror, the Israeli flag at Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl was raised from its half-mast position after sunset. Monday, marking the transition from grief to celebration as the country rang in its 59th Independence Day.

State and military officials, an IDF honor guard, members of Israel's various youth movements, and various performing artists gathered at the military cemetery - which only hours earlier had witnessed more solemn rites - for the traditional speeches, songs, and dances.

Acting President Dalia Itzik was the first to speak.

"Even on a day of flags and happiness, there are people among us who mourn their loss. We have been living for 59 years in a war the end of which is not yet in sight," she said.

Itzik finished resolutely saying that "we have won before and we will win again, for we have no other choice."

She reiterated Israel has not given up on the dream of peace, and quoted Herzl's famous saying, 'all men's deeds begin in dreams.'

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, who ascended the podium after Itzik, urged those assembled not to separate their grief for the Israel's fallen soldiers and terror victims from their celebration of the country's independence.

"We must strengthen the connection," Lupolianski said, adding that Israel would not ignore those who mourn. "We won't celebrate alone - we'll help them. Then - their memory will live," he said.

Lupolianski reminded the audience that Monday marked not only the 59th Independence Day, but the 40th anniversary since Jerusalem's reunification. "The differences, the range of cultures and ethnicities in this city, is not a disadvantage, but a challenge," the mayor said.

"Forty years ago, the walls that blocked the heart of the city fell. Now, let's bring down the walls around our hearts," he said, exhorting Israelis to pray for the peace of Jerusalem…

It’s going to take a lot more than prayers to get Israel’s enemies, the ones who commemorate Israel's founding as a "naqba", or "catastrophe,"  to accept anything other than an Islamic-style salaam—the peace they believe will come once “Al Quds” (as they prefer to call Jerusalem) is retaken (or obliterated) for Allah.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:57 | link | comments

Bum steer: Let’s see—there’s the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror (at least, there's still one being fought by the U.S.; the Brits have decided to no longer refer to it as such). But both must take a back seat to the newest, most contentious war of all: singer Sheryl Crow’s War on Toilet Paper. From Monsters & Critics:

Songstress Sheryl Crow is calling for a limit on toilet paper.

The green minded singer Crow has said a ban on using too much toilet paper should be considered to help the environment, according to the BBC.

In an unheard of celebrity tutorial on mindful Earth friendly tips, Crow suggests using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required".

The BBC unearthed this gem of information on her website.

Crow completed a tour while traveling on a biodiesel-powered bus. She teamed up with environmental activist Laurie David for the shows.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting...I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming," Crow wrote reported the BBC.

"Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Crow has also commented on her website about how she thinks paper napkins "represent the height of wastefulness" and come up with a clothing line with a "dining sleeve" that acts as an ersatz napkin…

A heroine for our times, indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:24 | link | comments (2)

Lewis dismisses “the third wave”: Offering no evidence whatsoever to support his assertion, revered scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, writes that we will be able to with withstand “the third wave” of the Muslim assault on the West:

…Where do we stand now? Is it third time lucky? It is not impossible. Muslim immigrants have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking.

They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography. The combination of natural increase and migration that is producing major population changes could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society that, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.

Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word freedom was not used in a political sense. Freedom was a legal concept. You were free if you were not a slave. They did not use freedom and slavery as a metaphor for good and bad government, as we have done for a long time in the Western world.

The terms they used to denote good and bad government are justice and injustice. A good government is a just government, one in which the Holy Law, including its limitations on sovereign authority, is strictly enforced. The Islamic tradition, in theory and, until the onset of modernization, to a large degree in practice, emphatically rejects despotic and arbitrary government. Living under justice is the nearest approach to what we would call freedom.

But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle.

Professor Lewis is far more sanguine than I am about the prospect of knowledge and the love of freedom saving the day. From where I sit, in clueless, multicultist Canuckistan, the preference is to assume that every religion is as equally benign as every other religion, save for fundamentalist Christianity, which is a clear and present threat. Further, the global scourge that has everyone’s gotchies in a twist is the threat of (shudder, cringe, pass the smelling salts) global climate change; the threat of jihadists and their desire for global primacy is seen as something cooked up by right-wing Islamophobes (just ask Rosie O’Dious of TV’s The View, who’s convinced that terrorists love their kids, same as us).

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:16 | link | comments (2)

Put out more flags: Daniel Gordis notes the paucity of Israeli flags on display in Israel during the run up to this year’s Independence Day celebrations. He attributes the lack of flags to a discontent with a scandal-ridden leadership and a deep-seated insecurity about the nation’s future. Despite their angst, writes Gordis, Israelis must focus on the positives and realize that, without a Jewish state—even one with so many messy internal problems—there’s not much of a future for the Jewish people to look forward to. From the Jerusalem Post:

…Where are we heading, Israelis wonder. And who do we want to be?

It is telling, though, that situated between the Declaration's historical mythology and utopian vision lies reference to the Jews' having returned in masses … revived their language, built cities, and [being] ever prepared to defend themselves. One might wonder: couldn't Ben-Gurion and his co-authors have come up with something a bit less quotidian [than the ambiguous phrase they used—“with trust in the rock of Israel”]? "Liberty, equality and fraternity," after all, sound infinitely more elegant.

But elegance is not our aim. Survival is. Between history and utopia, the Declaration suggests, lies messy state-making. It's what Jewish philosopher and rabbi Emil Fackenheim called the "Jewish return to history." It's about a people healing, recreating itself. It's about the Jewish people's last chance.

We can live with the myths breaking, and the utopian visions fading. What Jews will not survive without - here, or anywhere else - is an end to the building, to the revival of culture, to the defending of the perimeter. Because the state is not about history or utopia, but about the possibility [of] a future in any form. Does anyone really imagine that without this state there will be any Jewish future over which to argue?...

He’ll get no argument from me on that one.

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

Election verbs: In France, voters “flock.” In Syria, they “trickle.” And in Nigeria, they try to keep from being blown up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments

And speaking of Harpoon…: Obviously, he hasn’t read the Guardian piece (see post below) and thus offers his own typically addled assessment of what the Canada and U.S. should and shouldn’t do overseas. In Harpoonworld, a weird and wacky place, Syria is the good guy for welcoming so many refugees from Iraq, and even though, as per usual, the rest of the Arab world (with the exception of Jordan) has closed its borders, Harpoon slams the U.S. for not welcoming more Iraqis. As well, the indefatigable Harpoon perseveres in his ongoing effort to persuade all us dhimmis to lay down our weapons—both here and abroad.

Even by the standards of our chaotic age, last week tested our nerves and exposed our increasingly skewed priorities.

 

In the wake of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Americans couldn't quite bring themselves to focus on gun control. In fact, both Republicans and Democrats reaffirmed the right to bear arms.

 

There was some debate in Canada, a testimony to our resistance to gun culture. But the Stephen Harper Conservatives balked at greater restrictions on guns.

They are also very American in another respect: They think that the way to build influence in the world is to project military power abroad, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. They seem to sustain this belief despite the growing failures of those two enterprises.

 

At least 100 people a day are being killed in the carnage in Iraq presided over by the United States.

That's a higher toll than before George W. Bush committed another 30,000 troops to establish security. Yet the news is by now so routine it barely makes the news. Other catastrophes don't make it at all.

 

  The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 80 per cent of Iraqis lack effective sanitation; 70 per cent do not have access to regular clean water; 40 per cent cannot access the food distribution system; 21 per cent of kids under 5 are chronically malnourished; 70 per cent of those suffering violence-related wounds die in hospitals due to shortages of staff, equipment and drugs; and an undetermined number of pregnant women and the injured and the ill no longer risk going to the hospital for fear of being killed.

 

  On Wednesday, a United Nations meeting in Geneva was told that 1.9 million Iraqis have been internally displaced. Another 2 million have fled to Syria and to Jordan. Both have received them with grace, without getting much help from the world. But neither can take any more.

 

Other neighbours, such as staunch U.S. allies Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have closed their borders to the 50,000 refugees still fleeing Iraq every month.

Yet the U.S. will take only about 7,000 this year, even though as the New York-based Human Rights Watch said, the U.S. and Britain, which created the conflict, "bear a particular responsibility" for the refugees.

 

Canada took in only 190 last year, as the Star's Nicholas Keung has reported. One would have thought that Harper, who as opposition leader was vociferous in supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq, would have been more sympathetic.

 

If he were to be as helpful as Syria has been,

Canada would proportionately be welcoming 2.2 million Iraqi refugees.

 

America has turned Iraq into a failed state, and Defence (sic) Secretary Robert Gates toured the region last week warning the region's leaders about the dangers of a failed state in Iraq.

 

He obviously wants the neighbours to clean up after America. But, how? An Arab/Muslim peacekeeping force might still help – if the U.S. leaves, which it should, promptly.

 

A withdrawal cannot possibly make the situation any worse…

 

As always, Arabs and Muslims, so childlike, so helpless (at least as Harpoon sees them), are absolved of all responsibility.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star:

 

Haroon Siddiqui says that Canada and the U.S. have “skewed priorities” when it comes to gun control, Afghanistan and Iraq. I’d suggest what’s really skewed, however, is Siddiqui’s attempt to link the Virginia Tech massacre to what’s occurring in those two countries. What happened at Virginia Tech was the result of a systemic failure to isolate a mentally unbalanced young man so he couldn’t harm the people around him. It had nothing to do with inadequate gun control laws, since the laws that should have kept a weapon out of Cho Seung-Hui’s hands were already on the books.

 

As for Siddiqui’s contention that the horrific events in Virginia somehow factor into the current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s hard to see how more stringent gun legislation in North America could possibly have an impact on preventing Muslim suicide bombers with a yen for martyrdom from unleashing the full force of their fury on other Muslims.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:53 | link | comments

Crazy in Iraq: Some words of wisdom from, of all places, the Guardian as Henry Porter points out that the barbarity in Iraq, where al Qaeda is now deploying chlorine bombs, may not be entirely America’s fault:

…The pathologies of Iraq are hard to pin down and most people in the West have long given up trying. One bomb follows another; British and American troops are killed at an increasing rate; suicide bombers are able to penetrate the Green Zone in Baghdad and there are signs that the Shia death squads are returning. Even when the bombers struck the capital last week with five separate attacks, the largest of which killed 140 people, the Western media devoted the majority of their attention to the killings at Virginia Tech.

 

We turn away, taking a perhaps rather odd refuge in the certainty that this is all the fault of the neoconservatives, of the arrogance of Bush and Blair and what is strangely called a policy of 'liberal intervention'. A majority were against the war in 2003 and almost everyone is now.

But this carries you just so far. It is certainly true that none of this would be happening if, in the first place, the invasion had not gone ahead and if, in the second, the Pentagon had not decommissioned the agencies, police force and military units of Saddam's state. But let us just remember a few points before switching channel.

 

If the number of attacks diminished, the Americans and British troops would leave Iraq far faster than seems likely at the present. The situation, therefore, can no longer be taken for a classic resistance of an occupying force. Nor can it be entirely seen as the opposite, that is to say a guerrilla war that is maintained by Islamist, Shia and Ba'athists groups for the sole purpose of engaging the American and British military.

 

The proof of this lies in the fact that the great majority of casualties are caused by Arabs killing Arabs, Muslims slaughtering Muslims.

 

This brings us back to the chlorine bombs being built by al-Qaeda to terrorise and kill their Muslim brothers, who, we must remember, were so recently oppressed by the atheistic regime of Saddam Hussein. It is as if Protestant and Catholic groups in the French Resistance used the Nazi occupation to blow up each other's churches and market places and slaughter each other's children. Actually, it is weirder in Iraq because the Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda are killing and torturing more Sunnis than Shia, let alone US soldiers.

 

The thought process is psychopathic: it has the same logic we heard in the ravings of the gunman at Virginia Tech. There is a similarity of exhibitionism, too, a need for attention that must escalate the horror to maintain some kind of foothold in the Western news bulletins. These monsters in Iraq must have felt a mite frustrated by the events on an American campus last week, especially as a double attack on a university campus in Baghdad in January killed twice as many students but rated a mere day's coverage in the West.

 

So we are talking about civil war and the convergence in Iraq of a number of opportunistic death cults, the most crazed and narcissistic of which is probably al-Qaeda, though the Shia death/torture squads fielded by Muqtada al-Sadr run a pretty close second. Is this Bush and Blair's fault? Ultimately, yes because they opened the fissure that released the superheated gases of Islamist fanaticism.

 

But we cannot leave it at that. Somewhere in Iraq, for example, there is an individual who allowed two young children to travel into Baghdad as passengers in the back seat of car that was loaded with explosives. Naturally enough, the children's presence lowered suspicion at the checkpoints. The car entered the city, the adults hopped out and detonated the bomb with the children still inside.

That is badness of a high order and you would expect it to have offended every loving parent across Islam. You would certainly expect to hear some stern religious voices in Middle East calling for the cessation of such barbarity in the name of one or other sect or tribe or, indeed, Allah. There are murmurs of disquiet, even horror, but in a way, the Americans and British have become everyone's alibi or at least plea of mitigation…

 

And from every loving parent across Islam: {crickets}. That’s probably because they’re all far too busy surveying—how did Harpoon Siddiqui put it the other week?—oh, yeah, “the bleeding wound called Palestine.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments

“Democracy” in Syria: It’s like something out of 1984. From Reuters via the New York Times:

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrians trickled to polling stations on Sunday to vote in a tightly controlled election certain to maintain the ruling Baath Party's domination of parliament.

 

The assembly, called the Council of the People, is elected every four years and has little say over policy. Syria has been under emergency law for four decades and no opposition parties are allowed.

 

The Baath, which has ruled Syria since 1963, controls all divisions of government. Power firmly rests in the hands of President Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

 

A majority in the 250-seat assembly is effectively reserved for the Baath and its allies. Almost all of the 2,400 candidates have been vetted and approved by the government.

 

Witnesses said turnout has been low so far with few people, other than government workers pushed to vote, casting a ballot.

 

In Damascus, where government-backed lists include well-connected businessmen and religious leaders, ballot boxes at seven polling stations were largely empty by midday.

 

``I voted for the Baath front because they're the ones with some power who can help me practically,'' said Ahmad al-Hafi, a government school teacher.

 

Dissidents, a number of whom have been imprisoned or forced into exile in the last two years, have boycotted the polls, dismissing it as a sham.

 

``We have no confidence we could compete freely,'' said Hassan Abdel Azim of the National Democratic Coalition.

The Interior Ministry said it had distributed 7.6 million election cards that entitled its holders to vote among a population of 19 million.

 

Even pro-government candidates criticized management of the elections, saying officials and security forces stationed around the polls were preventing people from voting freely.

 

``They are directing voters to cast their ballot to their favorite candidates. The same people are voting with five IDs. This election has no credibility,'' said Mohammad al-Abboud, a farmer running for a seat in the eastern province of Hasakeh.

 

``They are fooling the people and trying to convince them these are real elections. I am still in the race, but I know of several candidates who withdrew,'' said Jawhara al-Ghanem, a female candidate.

 

Voting can be extended until Monday if the government deems fit.

 

Of course it can, but why bother extended it when the government is likely to get the desired result on Sunday?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:02 | link | comments

France in a pickle: Behold the inert bête that is France, a nation whose economy and culture are suspended in a permanent vegetative state. By George Walden in the Times Online:

…And what could any president do about culture? It is not only in economics that there is a sense of backwardness, even if French productivity remains higher than ours. Young people envy the British cultural scene, for all its froth, but it is America’s all-round superiority that truly hurts: in universities, in science, in orchestras, in films, in the best popular culture, in literature. Where is the French E.O. Wilson, or Don DeLillo? Where are The West Wing, The Sopranos, The Simpsons? Like us they can nod their heads sadly but knowingly at the Virginia shootings, but they are not so prejudiced as to believe that one atrocity defines a country. The new president could increase cultural subsidies farther, but the best American universities, like The Simpsons, are financed privately.

A Frenchman once described America as having no identity, though wonderful teeth. But what happens when France’s own identity fades, and its teeth are still not the best?

God knows the French can be provoking, and their chumminess with Saddam Hussein, whose payroll included senior French diplomats, tainted whatever moral authority they aspired to over Iraq. Yet to take pleasure in what a Frenchman once called their société bloquée — blocked society — would be stupid. Who but a political primitive would want to see the most beautiful country in Europe, with huge reserves of culture and intelligence, fall into decline, or social mayhem?...

I can sum up France’s recent past, present and immediate future in one word: car-b-cue!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:51 | link | comments

Another faux peace initiative: The two Arab nations who have diplomatic relations with Israel have formed “a contact group” to try to revive “peace” talks. From the Tehran Times:

Arab foreign ministers formed a contact group to directly discuss the revived peace initiative with Israel.

The decision to form the group was taken on Thursday during a meeting of 13 Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.

The group consists of Egypt and Jordan – who have ties with Israel since 1979 and 1994 respectively. Both countries will try to initiate direct talks with Israel, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at a news conference in Cairo.

They will "call on the Israeli government and all Israelis to accept the Arab peace initiative and to take this chance to resume the direct and serious talks on all levels", he added.

Faisal was referring to a five-year-old Saudi-drafted peace initiative that was revived during an Arab League summit last month.

The plan offers Israel peace and normal ties with Arab states in exchange for its withdrawal from Arab lands seized in the 1967 Middle East War. It also allows for the formation of an independent Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel said it would consider the proposal of a contact group, despite its rejection of certain parts of the Arab initiative; particularly the return of about four million Palestinian refugees who left their land in 1948…

The fact that the “contact group” still has the “right of return” in its proposal shows that the only kind of long term “peace” it’s interested in is the “salaam” that will inhere once Israel has either been conquered or obliterated.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:34 | link | comments

Silly verse: I know absolutely nothing about politics in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, but seeing it mentioned on google news inspired the following bit of doggerel:

An election in Uttar Pradesh

Is described as a bit of a mesh.

But a name like Gandhi

Can sure come in handhi,

In Uttar Pradesh, more or lesh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:04 | link | comments

From the “You’ve Got to be Kidding” Department: Reuters headline—Virginia Tech pays tribute to victims, and gunman:

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 21 (Reuters) - Mourners gathered on Saturday for the funerals of many of the 32 victims killed at Virginia Tech as some students extended a note of forgiveness to the gunman responsible for the massacre.

A small tribute to Seung-Hui Cho, who shot his victims then himself on Monday, has been added to a growing memorial of stones in the center of the sprawling university in southwest Virginia where knots of weeping students continue to gather.

I just wanted you to know that I am not mad at you. I don't hate you," read a note among flowers at a stone marker labeled for Cho. "I am so sorry that you could find no help or comfort."

The note, one of three expressing sorrow and sympathy for the gunman, a deeply disturbed English major, was signed: "With all my love, Laura." A purple candle burned and a small American flag stood in the ground nearby…

I think Laura and the two others are in serious need of some of that mental health counselling I mentioned in the previous post.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:42 | link | comments

A plethora of campus lunatics: Bad news for those who hope and pray that the Cho Seung-Hui massacre at Viriginia Tech is a one-of event. According to this report, there are many, many, more ticking time bombs on American campuses, and many universities do not have the resources to diagnose their mental health problems. And, according to this piece, even if those suffering from an illness are diagnosed and identified as certifiably demento, fears about being prosecuted for violating a student’s privacy and/or discriminating against him for being a wacko will likely prevent campus authorities from taking action to remove the threat—as happened in Cho’s case.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:36 | link | comments

Walls, new and old: The centerpiece of the U.S.’s last ditch effort to calm things down in Baghdad is a concrete barrier that’s being erected to keep fractious Sunnis and Shias apart. The wall is prompting those so inclined, including far-left Brit rag the Guardian, to draw comparisons with Israel’s infamous “apartheid” wall. Get a load of how the Guardian manages to cast aspersions on a barrier that is effectively preventing Palestinian suicide murderers from self-detonating among Israeli civilians:

The US military is building a three-mile concrete wall in the centre of Baghdad along the most murderous faultline between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

 

The wall, which recognises the reality of the hardening sectarian divide in Baghdad, is a central part of George Bush's final push to pacify the capital. Work began on April 10 under cover of darkness and is due for completion by the end of the month.

 

The highly symbolic wall has evoked comparisons to the barriers dividing Protestants and Catholics in Belfast and Israelis and Palestinians along the length of the West Bank.

 

Captain Scott McLearn, who is based at Camp Victory, the US base on the outskirts of Baghdad, said Shias "are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street".

 

Although Baghdad is full of barriers and checkpoints, particularly round the Green Zone where the US and British are based along with the Iraq government, this is the first time a wall has been built along sectarian lines.

Its construction comes as the security situation appears to be deteriorating despite the recent US troop "surge". This week a bombing at the Sadriya market in the city killed 140 people - the deadliest in the capital since the 2003 invasion.

 

Walls are controversial. The Israeli government insists its wall is effective in reducing suicide bombers but Palestinians, many of whose lives it has seriously disrupted, as well as some Israelis argue that it consolidates divisions…

 

Yeah, it was sooo much better when the divisions were unconsolidated and shadids had undisrupted lives along with free access to the Israeli populace.

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

Massive folly: I can’t help it. Whenever I hear the words “human rights” these days, I cringe. There’s a good reason for my intense and automatic reaction: the term has become so debased, so devoid of meaning, that it has come to mean its opposite—the “right” of the many to impose their will on those they have deemed unworthy. That is the version of "rights" as practised by the official international arbiter of human rights, the UN’s Human Rights Council. The Council epitomizes all that has gone awry with “human rights” on our planet, and how the effort has come to focus almost exclusively on the rights of one particular group—the Palestinians—and how their “rights” (including, as far as they are concerned, their self-granted “right” to return and turn Israel into yet another Arab backwater) are being abridged by one nation—Israel.

Thus the news that the Canadian government is going ahead with plans to construct a massive edifice devoted to “human rights” is more than a little disturbing. The pet project of the Asper family of media fame, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights is set to be built at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba. And judging by the picture of the proposed museum in the Toronto Star, it is going to be a blight on the landscape, an exceptionally hideous structure that resembles a giant check mark, or a boomerang with a truncated arm.

 

I would suggest that the last thing Canada needs is a monument to “human rights.” I would further suggest that the money being thrown away on this massive folly would be far better spent trying to educate Canadians about freedom and democracy, and how they are rapidly being eroded by those who pretend to be the guardians of “human rights,” but who are actually the willing handmaidens of Islamic fascism and other forms of tyranny.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:18 | link | comments

A failure to communicate: In the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech killings, the knee-jerk reaction among many was to once again insist on the need for tighter gun control laws. As this article in the New York Times notes, the necessary laws were already on the books. What was lacking—and what permitted Cho Seung-Hui, a man with a recognized mental illness, to get a gun—was adequate communication between federal and state authorities which would have enabled the laws to be enforced:

WASHINGTON, April 20 — Under federal law, the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday.

 

Skip to next paragraph Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun.

 

The special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.

 

A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said that if Mr. Cho had been found mentally defective by a court, he should have been denied the right to purchase a gun.

The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”

 

Mr. Cho’s ability to buy two guns despite his history has brought new attention to the adequacy of background checks that scrutinize potential gun buyers. And since federal gun laws depend on states for enforcement, the failure of Virginia to flag Mr. Cho highlights the often incomplete information provided by states to federal authorities. ..

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

Toxic lessons: The vast majority of university students are able to withstand the self-loathing, Marxism, nihilism and other far-leftist mishegas they imbibe from their professors without turning to violence and murdering dozens of their fellow students; deranged Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui, however, did not. On the American Thinker site, James Lewis looks at some of the courses on offer at Virginia Tech, and wonders if any of them could have had an impact on Cho’s distorted and disturbed thinking:

…I wonder if Cho took the senior seminar by Professor Knapp, on "The self-justifying criminal in literature." Because he certainly learned to be a self-justifying criminal. Or whether he sat in courses with Nikki Giovanni, using her famous self-glorifying book, "The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)". Maybe he read Professor Bernice Hausman's "Changing Sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender" --- just the thing for a disoriented young male suffering from massive culture shock on the hypersexual American campus.  And even more gender-bending from Professor Paul Heilker, who wrote "Textual Androgyny, the Rhetoric of the Essay, and the Politics of Identity in Composition (or The Struggle to Be a Girly-Man in a World of Gladiator Pumpitude)." Or the Lesbian love stories of Professor Matthew Vollmer. Yup, that's just what this student needs. These trophy "art works" are all advertised on the English Department faculty websites.

 

Or maybe Cho was assigned Professor Lisa Norris' prize-winning book, Toy Guns, featured on her web site. The book reviewers wrote

"All ten stories in this disturbing collection revolve around Americans' passionate devotion to guns, gun-toting, sexually-tinged violence, and the womanly pursuit of power and dignity."  [....]

"In each wrenching story, we see an America out of control, in love with war...."

 

I don't know any Americans who are in love with war, but that is the picture Cho got from his teachers. Having spent the last 14 years as a resident alien in the school system, he could know nothing else.

And then there is the big Marxist website from Professor Brizee, all in fiery red against pitch black, showing old, mass-murder-inspiring Karl flanked by two raised fists. It celebrates revolutionary violence and hate for capitalist America (which is paying for Cho's education). "Critical Social Theory" --- the euphemism for PoMo (Post Modern) Marxism --- is a big part of English teaching at VT.  The Marxist page links prominently to the British Socialist Worker's Party, which is currently leading the charge for Islamic fascism through such creatures as George Galloway.

 

And, talking about Islamist ideas, there is Professor Carter-Tod, who wrote a report about "Treatment of Arab American, Muslums and Seiks (sic) Post 911," for the US Civil Rights Commission.    The racial grievance industry is alive and growing at VT.

 

Post-modernism, with its hatred for reason, is another big theme at the VT English Department. Professor James Collier boasts  about his book, Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge: A New Beginning for Science and Technology Studies,  But "the end of knowledge" is the beginning of ignorance.

 

And of course there is the "diversity" crowd, diversity being a very well-funded program at ole' guilt-tripping VT. There's Professor Carlos Evia, who describes himself as  "...soy director de la Comisión de Igualdad y Diversidad en Virginia Tech." Or in English, "I am also chair of the Virginia Tech Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity." There's "research" in "Feminist science fiction" and "The comic strip" from Professor Susan C. Allender-Hagedorn. Scratching racial and gender wounds until they bleed is a big preoccupation at VT. What's a kid from South Korea to think?...

 

I’m sure that’s fairly typical of the kind of dreck being shoveled on most campuses these days. All I can say is thank heaven my university days are long since past.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments

Israel on the brink: Caroline Glick describes the peril that lies ahead.  From the Jerusalem Post:

Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it, since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, "a threatening system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a strike eventually caused the war."

 

Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink of the next one. And in the next war, the main enemy will be Syria, which will fight in coordination with Hizbullah and the Palestinians and under Iranian guidance.

 

Syria has been openly preparing for war since the last summer. And in the space of the past week alone, the Syrians twice announced their intention to attack Israel. On Monday, Syria's Propaganda Minister Moshen Bilal threatened that if Israel doesn't fully implement the Arab plan which calls for its retreat to the 1949 armistice lines and acceptance of millions of Arab immigrants, Syria will go to war. On Wednesday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad said, "We always prepare ourselves. Israel is a fierce enemy. We have seen nothing from it but harm."

 

A constructive Israeli policy for contending with Syria must be based on a clear understanding of both Syria's interests and our own…

 

Alas, there is no reason to expect that the Ehud/Tzipi/Amir Pittance regime will be able to cut through the fog and gain some clarity in time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:17 | link | comments

Dirty money: Two days ago I posted a story about Canadian financial institutions going to great pains to accommodate their growing Muslim clientele by adhering to Islamic banking practices. I would suggest that these banks pay attention to a report in the Times Online. It describes how sharia financial practices can and have been employed to launder drug money and other proceeds from organized crime:

Unlike the shabby tandoori restaurants and halal butchers in Lumb Lane, a former red light district, the Bradford Travel Agency oozes money.

Its smartly dressed staff serve customers from leather seats behind mahogany desks. Grand clocks show the time in Britain and Pakistan.

The reason for the luxury, it emerged this week, was that the agency was at the centre of a multinational money-laundering operation that used a traditional Islamic banking system to process more than £500 million of drug money.

A series of court cases that can be reported for the first time reveal how the fast-growing hawala system is used by criminal gangs to transfer money overseas.

The Times has learnt that hawala transactions also led to the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, who was shot during a bungled robbery at another Bradford travel agency.

The revelations raise serious concerns about how hawala has remained almost entirely unregulated while other financial systems have faced ever increasing legal controls to prevent them from being used by criminals and terrorists. As far back as the 1980s, tax inspectors were aware of the risks from the hawala system.

Hawala brokers can be found at travel agencies, grocery shops and internet cafés on the high streets of almost every town with a sizable immigrant population. They are used by hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers legitimately to transfer money to family in Asia, China, Africa and Eastern Europe. But the lack of detailed record-keeping and financial controls have obvious advantages for criminals.

Revenue & Customs officers uncovered a huge criminal operation that laundered at least £500 million of criminal assets between 1997 and 2001.

Couriers collected hundreds of thousands of pounds each day from drug gangs in London, Manchester, Liverpool, West Yorkshire and Scotland, Leeds Crown Court was told. They delivered the cash to hawala brokers based at travel agents in Bradford, Birmingham and Halifax...

Who knows how much of this filthy lucre has found its way into the coffers of jihadists, and has been funding their revolting pursuits?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

Religious conspiracy: There’s a religious/national lobby that wields an immense influence in the U.S of A. A lobby that is so unbelievably wealthy that it’s been able to make vast inroads into the American political arena, purchasing good will of Presidents and Cabinet members both past and present through the judicious release of oily lucre. A lobby about which Walt and Mearsheimer have written nary a word, obsessed as they are with the purported potency of AIPAC and the great Zionist cabal.

I’m referring, of course, to the Saudis, whose deep pockets and wide-reaching tentacles are revealed in an expose in Harper’s Magazine (link via Martin Kramer).

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:10 | link | comments

A new Duranty at the NYT?: New York Times reporter Andrea Elliott was just awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her rapturous portrait of a local imam. Unfortunately, Ms. Elliott seems to have omitted a few salient details.  From the New York Sun:

A feature by a New York Times reporter, Andrea Elliott, that this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize has come under fire from critics because it did not mention that a murderer who committed a 1994 terrorist attack had been incited by a former imam at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, as well as for portraying a succeeding imam as moderate when he had praised the leader of Hamas and a female suicide bomber.

"The article is not complete," a Middle East terrorism specialist at the American Jewish Committee, Yehudit Barsky, said. In a letter to the editor published in the New York Times on March 12, 2006, Ms. Barsky raised the fact an anti-Semitic sermon of a former imam, Mohammed Moussa, was cited as motivation for the killing of a rabbinical student, Ari Halberstam.

Pulitzer Prize entrants are supposed to tell jurors about any "significant challenges" to their work, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, Sig Gissler, said.

Asked if the Pulitzer board did review any challenges, Mr. Gissler said the deliberations are confidential. "We don't disclose what does or does not come before the board," he said…

Of course it doesn’t, otherwise how could it justify awarding prizes to those who don’t deserve them?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:21 | link | comments

It’s in the Koran: Bona fide Judenhass, that is. By Andrew Bostom on the American Thinker site:

…As a central anti-Jewish motif, the Koran decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. This motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78 which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). The related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews-as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64-of being "spreaders of war and corruption", a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

From the advent of Islam, dehumanizing Jews as apes (Koran 2:65/7:166), or apes and pigs (Koran 5:60) transcended any mere application to "Sabbath breakers." Muhammad himself, in both the sira (early, sacralized Muslim biographies) of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa‘d, referred to the Medinan Jews of the Banu Qurayza as "apes" just before orchestrating the slaughter of all their post-pubertal men.

 

This sacralized massacre is the prototype. Large scale massacres of Jews by Muslims occurred in Granada (circa 1066;  4000 killed, and Jewish society destroyed; more Jews killed in this one pogrom than in the Crusaders' much more infamous ravages through the Rhineland 30 years later); Baghdad (1290/91; hundreds killed with pogroms extending throughout Iraq, and into Persia); and the southern Moroccan oasis town of Touat (~ 1490; many Jews killed, and their Temple destroyed).

 

Each of these massacres was incited and/or celebrated by depictions of Jews as apes in verses by popular clerics-in the case of Touat, the "composer" of such a verse al-Maghili (d. 1505), an important Muslim theologian whose writings influenced Moroccan religious attitudes towards Jews into the 20^th century-led the pogrom himself. Maghili also declared in verse, "Love of the Prophet, requires hatred of the Jews."

 

The centrality of the Jews' permanent "abasement and humiliation," and being "laden with God's anger" in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61 (including the hadith and Koranic commentaries), is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah's signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators such as Tabari (d. 923), Zamakshari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), when discussing Koran 5:82 ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews and the idolaters; and thou wilt surely find the nearest of them in love to the believers are those who say 'We are Christians'; that, because some of them are priests and monks, and they wax not proud."), concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of  Koran 2:61…

 

The Koran: inspiring Jew-haters since the 7^th Century.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:10 | link | comments

The funk in France: In the run up to their impending election, the French are feeling malaise-y (also angsty, ansty and self-loathing).  From nzherald:

…France has an independent nuclear arsenal. It has overseas territories that stretch from the northwest Atlantic and South America to Antarctica and Polynesia. Its military has boots on the ground in former colonies in Africa. It is a founder member of the European Union and a driver of European integration. It is the main force behind Europe's space programme and the world's biggest airliner and makes record-breaking passenger trains. French haute couture, perfumes and cosmetics rule the world and French cuisine is a global benchmark of culinary taste.

Then there was that moment when France refused to back the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, wielding the threat of a veto at the UN Security Council.

And yet: more and more French people see their country in decline, and less and less capable of dealing with external challenges. A monthly poll of 1000 respondents by TNS-Sofres routinely suggests that two-thirds of the public believe France's role in the world is weakening. And heading the list of demons is globalisation, deemed a threat to jobs, businesses, traditions and the welfare system. According to a survey last year by the EU's opinion-poll unit Eurobarometer, 64 per cent of the French - the highest percentage in Europe - consider globalisation to be negative.

"In France, there is a particular strain of melancholy," said philosopher Chantal Delsol. "The British tell themselves,'We are no longer a great power, so we will live as a middle one.' But the French don't say that. They say: 'We are intrinsically a great power, so why isn't it working in reality?' For a while we try to shut our eyes, but that doesn't work for long. When reality truly dawns, then the first phase is extreme sadness, and that is the phase we are in now."

The malaise has percolated through the campaign of all 12 men and women bidding for the Elysee Palace…

In that case, I’d say it’s high time to put on a new pot of coffee.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:33 | link | comments

Violent metaphysicists: Way back when, Christian theologians could become exercised over abstruse point of metaphysics; for example, trying to determine the precise count of angels who could dance on the head of a pin.

I don’t think that particular issue occasions much heated discussion in our time. No, these days, the faithful (though not the Christian faithful) have moved on to more pressing matters. For instance, whether or not a certain choleric cleric can “write the name of Mohammed on the moon with his fingers.” From the Toronto Star (with thanks to Earl via LGF):

Journalist Jawaad Faizi says he can still feel broken glass showering over him in his car as he fended off blows from a cricket bat in a surprise attack he blames on "religious fanatics."

A writer for the Pakistan Post, Faizi said he was beaten by three men because he mocked a Pakistani cleric in a column.

Faizi said the men smashed the windshield and driver's window of his car as he arrived at his editor's home about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday. He said he was struck by the cricket bat and was cut on his forearm.

"They were smashing and smashing, hitting and hitting," Faizi said. "I could not stop them."

Faizi said both he and his editor, Amir Arain, recently received phone calls warning them to stop writing defamatory articles about the religious group Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran and its leader, Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri.

Faizi said he wrote a column two weeks ago mocking the cleric, who he said told a gathering in Pakistan "that he could write the name of Mohammed on the moon with his finger."…

You mean he can write the name of Mohammed on the moon with his finger?

Pretty neat trick.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:08 | link | comments

Testimony and prayers: Unless other evidence comes to light, it now seems that even though he had the words “Ismail Ax” inscribed on his arm, the Virginia Tech killer was suffering from a mental derangement and not from “sudden jihadi syndrome.” Still, one can’t help but note that prior to unleashing his full fury, Cho Seung-Hui took pains to produce a video “explaining” the reasons for his attack—a video not unlike the taped testimony that would-be shadids prepare before turning themselves into human bombs.

So for the moment there is no reason to suspect that Cho believed that, post-massacre, he was going to hook up with 72 incorporeal virgins, even though some of his stated pet peeves (Christians, the decadence of American society) were in line with the Muslim Brotherhood’s.

 

Meanwhile, students on the Virginia Tech campus are still reeling from the horrific events. According to a post on the MEMRI blog, one Muslim student sent an e-mail to other Muslims on campus, asking them pray for those on the receiving end of Cho’s rampage. She received a not-unexpected rebuff from a voice of authority:

The liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq reports that a Muslim student set off a debate when she sent an email to the mailing list of the Muslim Students' Association at Virginia Tech asking the students to pray that Allah have mercy on those killed and wounded in the shooting attack at the university.

According to Aafaq, the dean of student affairs at American International University, Abu Hamza Hijji, responded, writing that Allah the Most Merciful forbids praying for mercy for the non-Muslim dead, or even for the non-Muslim living, and that it is only permitted to pray that they be rightly guided. He added that what happened was a sad occurrence, but that does not give Muslims the right to transgress the laws of Allah the Most Merciful.

How can they be “rightly guided” if they’re already dead?

 

Allah may be the Most Merciful; the dean, however, is not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments

Nalah gets the vapours for Mooky: The Ceeb’s Nalah Ayed recounts an interview she had with choleric cleric (my characterization, not hers) Muqtada al-Sadr well before he had become “a force to be reckoned with” (her words, not mine). Ayed, one of the most egregiously clueless of the Ceeb's correspondents, fairly swoons with girlish delight as she recalls her encounter with the strong, silent Sheik, making it sound like a scene from a really crappy Harlequin romance (or what I imagine a really crappy Harlequin romance would sound like, having never read one, crappy or non-crappy):

When I met Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf back in 2003, he appeared in his dark robes with little fanfare. With a few guards, and a couple of handlers at his side, he walked from his home to the humble offices in which we were to speak.

At the last moment, his handlers asked (again) whether there wasn't a male representative of the CBC who could conduct the interview. I answered in the negative, properly attired in a head-to-toe black chador that I was instructed to wear for the occasion.

I was determined to meet this man. Though it was early going, it was clear that he would be a key player in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. And for 90 minutes, I questioned him, hoping to get to the bottom of his agenda.

Throughout the interview — during which it was difficult for al-Sadr to look me straight in the eye, I think more out of modesty than anything — the young cleric maintained despite the fact that he had formed a militia just a few months earlier that he had no political aspirations in the new Iraq.

Al-Sadr now is a very different man...

Nalah, alas, is exactly the same, rendering half-baked verdicts about what’s going on in Iraq, and positioning this pawn of the mullahs as the rational voice of Iraq's opposition:

Al-Sadr owes his power in part to the widespread loyalty to his father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a prominent cleric believed to have been killed by Saddam loyalists in 1999 along with two of his other sons.

His constituency is largely poor, disadvantaged Shia Muslims, who had long been the underdogs under the Saddam government, which were dominated by the Sunni Muslim minority.

But al-Sadr — or, according to reports, the leadership of the movement that he heads — have succeeded in translating that loyalty into concrete gains for themselves, often at the expense of the sitting government of which they are a part.

On April 9, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam's regime, al-Sadr successfully executed what amounted to a display of his street power: he mobilized tens of thousands to a huge anti-U.S. rally calling on the troops to go home.

By holding the rally, al-Sadr and his advisers appeared to be seeking to entrench him as the de facto opposition to a government now suspected of being corrupt and ineffective. Some observers believe they also sought to detract from the fact that al-Sadr had at first approved of the U.S.-led security crackdown, asking his militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay low while U.S. and Iraqi troops swept his stronghold, the Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City.

Ah, yes. Another ardent Mr. Clean come to wash away all the corruption by replacing it with a “pure” Islamist state. To Ayad, it seems, that’s an endeavour to be admired, and she conclues her assessment of the current situation (and al-Sadr's call this week for the resignation of his six supporters in Iraqi parliament, a command with which they quickly complied) by saying “It would be fascinating to interview him again.”

 

Given your obvious enthusiasm for the masterful Sheik, Ms. Ayed, I’m sure that can be arranged

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:22 | link | comments (2)

Laying blame where it’s due: In the wake of recriminations about security failures at Virginia Tech, and the desire to pin the blame on anyone and everyone other than the nutjob who perpetrated the horror (including, sickeningly, the assertion by extreme leftist rag Counterpunch that the parents of the victims got what they deserved because they most likely voted for the Bush regime and its war in Iraq), this piece by Gary Lavergne, the biographer of another notorious mass murderer on a university campus—Charles Whitman, the Texas Watchtower sniper—is like a blast of fresh air. From The Chronicle:

…Before we identify and learn the lessons of Blacksburg, we must begin with the obvious: More than four dozen innocent people were gunned down by a murderer who is completely responsible for what happened. No one died for lack of text messages or an alarm system. They died of gunshot wounds. While we painfully learn our lessons, we must not treat each other as if we are responsible for the deaths that occurred. We must come together and be respectful and kind. This is not a time for us to torture ourselves or to seek comfort by finding someone to blame. Maybe as a result of the tragedy we will figure out how to more effectively use e-mail and text messages as emergency tools for warning large populations. We may come up with a plan that successfully clears a large area, with a population density of a midsize city, in less than two hours. Maybe universities will find a way to install surveillance cameras and convince students and faculty members that they are being monitored for their own safety and not for gathering domestic intelligence. All of those steps might be helpful in avoiding and reducing the carnage of any future incidents. But as long as we value living in a free society, we will be vulnerable to those who do harm -- because they want to and know how to do it…

Hear, hear.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:39 | link | comments

Defending the indefensible: After the release of a report detailing how the government in Khartoum has not only not halted the Darfur genocide, but has been disguising aircraft and vehicles with UN insignia in order to attack the region, one might expect Blair and Bush, in utter disgust, to call for new sanctions against Sudan.

Not so fast, says Sudan’s big buddy to the north.

 

From the Scotsman:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt warned the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday not to threaten Sudan with fresh sanctions over Darfur, calling instead for confidence-building measures and dialogue.

Egypt made the call a day after the United States and Britain, cranking up pressure on Khartoum, threatened sanctions and other punitive measures unless Sudan agrees to a robust U.N. peacekeeping force in war-torn Darfur.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he sent the warning in a series of "urgent messages" to the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

"The messages that were sent stressed the need for confidence-building and strengthening contacts and dialogue with the Sudanese government rather than threatening to impose sanctions," Aboul Gheit said in a statement.

Egypt is Sudan's northern neighbour and has longstanding cultural and political ties with Sudan.

The United Nations says at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since violence flared in Darfur in 2003 in ethnic and political conflict. The violence has since spilled over to neighbouring Chad and Central African Republic.

Sudan agreed on Monday to an interim support package in which 3,000 U.N. personnel and heavy support equipment including six attack helicopters would reinforce a 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

But Sudan has refused to admit a larger "hybrid" force of more than 20,000 U.N. and African Union troops and police that Western powers say is needed to stem the violence.

Aboul Gheit said: "It would have been expected and logical for the international community to greet Sudan's agreement to the light and heavy support package ... with a welcome and encouragement instead of a threat and pressure."…

Yeah, that should do the trick.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:16 | link | comments

An immodest request: Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz (or as I prefer to call him, Amir Pittance, since that seems to represent the sum total of his military acumen) met with his U.S. counterpart, Robert Gates, in Israel the other day. Gates (whom I trust about as much as I would James Baker to safeguard Israel’s interests—i.e., not at all) said that he and Peretz discussed Syria and Iran, describing their chat as “favourable and constructive”—whatever that means. At the same time Gates told Peretz that the Iran issue must “be tackled through diplomatic channels, and that their programme should be respected.” 

Come again, Mr. Gates? You mean you want Israel to “respect” the programme in which the Mahdi-besotted mullahs and their front man, the Hairy Islamic Hitler, are seeking to build nuclear weapons in order to wipe Israel off the map?

 

Isn’t that, oh, I don’t know, COMPLETELY DERANGED?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:54 | link | comments

Happy "Islamo Fascism Awareness Day": All in all, a much saner effort than Israeli Apartheid Week.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:33 | link | comments

Sudan’s cunning strategem: They say the Jews are sneaky, what with their infecting Saudi-bound melons with the AIDS virus. But, of course, that’s a figment of overheated, hateful Saudi imaginations, and anyway, the Jews are pikers next to those crafty Islamists from Sudan. From the Times Online: 

Britain and America threatened yesterday to impose new sanctions on Khartoum after a United Nations report accused Sudan of disguising its military planes and helicopters as UN aircraft and using them to attack villages in Darfur.

The confidential report says that military aircraft were painted white — a colour usually reserved for the UN — and used to ferry arms to the janjawid militia, for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions.

The 44-page document, prepared by a panel of experts and circulated to UN Security Council members this week, accuses the authorities in Khartoum of flagrant breaches of international law and calls for tougher sanctions.

Last night Tony Blair warned the Sudanese authorities that American and British officials at the UN Security Council would begin consultations on a new resolution against Sudan if it did not stop its violations in the war-torn province. “What is happening is unacceptable. It is appalling,” he said. “The international community will not allow the scandal that is Darfur to continue.”

President Bush said that President Omar al-Bashir had one last chance to comply with existing UN demands that he halt the violence in Darfur, disarm the janjaweed militia and facilitate the deployment of UN and African Union peacekeepers. “The time for promises is over, President Bashir must act,” he said. “If President Bashir does not meet his obligations, the United States will act."

Sanctions could include an arms embargo, monitoring of aircraft on the ground and measures aimed at individuals.

The concerted diplomatic offensive was prompted in part by the leak of the UN report, which covers the period from last August to last month, when it claims both the Sudanese authorities and Darfur rebel groups had ignored ceasefires and UN resolutions.

By far the most serious charges are made against Khartoum, which is alleged to have launched a series of bloody offensives against civilians in Darfur, where 200,000 people have been killed since 2003…

An appalling figure to which the British Union of Journalists has responded by voting to boycott the products of Israel, which it falsely accuses of practicing apartheid against Arabs.

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

The condundrum of Virginia Tech mass-killer Cho Seung-Hui. Is he a later-day Travis Bickle, Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver? Was he inspired by a recent South Korean movie called Oldboy about a mild-mannered businessman who suddenly goes on a murderous rampage? Or, given that the words “Ismail Ax” were inscribed on his arm, was he perhaps motivated by another “old boy,” one of biblical vintage?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:41 | link | comments

Wrong “root”: No Harpoon Siddiqui in today’s Toronto Star, but while I was away he had a doozie about “the root causes" of terror and how we can best, er, root it out. Harpoon quotes a Canadian expert in the field, now working in Singapore, who tells him exactly what he wants to hear—that it’s all about Israel and nothing at all to do with those 164 passages in the Koran urging true believers to wage jihad against the infidel:

…What motivates the jihadists?

"The bleeding wound called Palestine, plus Chechnya, Iraq and, lately, Afghanistan. Those are huge rallying points for radicals."

Peace in Palestine "wouldn't stop terrorism but it'd take away one of the great causes of radicalization. Plus, if Iraq was not happening, if Afghanistan were only half as bad as it is, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Why is the war on terrorism failing?

"You can't just militarize the problem. As the Brits say, `Here come the Americans, all gear and no brains.'

"George W. Bush's war on terrorism will kill us all ...

"Israel and America are trapped in a kind of World War II mentality: `We have more guns and gear than them. We can kill them quickly.'

"But this is asymmetrical warfare – the weak against the strong – which we can't win with power. You can have as many satellites as you want, you cannot win. The ultimate victor will be the one with the best knowledge and will.

"Hezbollah gets it. It drove the Americans out of Lebanon; it drove the Israelis out of Lebanon, and last year, it held Israel to a draw."

What should the West do?

Stop living in fear and relying on military adventures, Quiggin believes. Don't support excessive use of force to crush local dissent, as in Uzbekistan, southern Thailand and Pakistan; that only leads to more radicalization. Regain the high moral ground. Address the root causes of terrorism. Counter jihadist propaganda.

Sounds easy-peasy, right? Unfortunately, if you proceed from the false premise that “the bleeding wound called Palestine” is at the root of global terror and call for all dhimmis to lay down their arms (since fighting back only leads to further “radicalization”), you may succeed in persuading yourself that Israel’s demise is the salve that will heal it. But the destruction of Israel won’t solve the problem of Islamic supremacism as set out in Islamic doctrine. In fact, it would only encourage the jihadis to continue their global romp until Dar al Harb is subdued.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:13 | link | comments (3)

The Islamification of Canadian finance: While the Canadian media would have us focus on would-be young Muslim women athletes being unable to compete in certain sports because of intolerant rules proscribing head scarves (and insisting that we're bigots for making the girls conform to the set rules), those who believe in a stringent application of sharia law are making encroachments in another arena. From the Toronto Star:

Members of Canada's growing Muslim community are working with secular financial institutions to develop new insurance products.

 

They intend to rally community support and the endorsement of local religious leaders to ensure success after a major bank stumbled with an Islamic or Shariah-compliant investment product in 2004.

 

Strict adherents of Islam oppose interest charges, centuries after most Jews and Christians began to interpret similar strictures in their scriptures to refer only to excessive interest charges.

 

Muslims are also taught to avoid investments in companies that issue loans and debt securities, or make armaments, tobacco products, alcohol, gambling or pornography.

 

For insurance, modern-day Islamic scholars have come to endorse a mutual or co-operative structure for sharing risk and dividing profits called takaful, the Arabic word for joint guarantee.

 

Takaful developed as a commercial product in Muslim countries in the 1980s, and is now making inroads in Europe and the Americas.

 

Not all Muslims are enthusiastic purchasers of takaful or the expanding array of other Sharia-complaint financial products. Even where they represent the majority of the population, only a minority buys them.

 

These specially engineered products, such as home purchase plans that substitute rent-to-own payments for interest charges, have tended to be costly.

 

But international accounting firm KPMG said in a 2006 report that acceptance of higher charges is fading: "No longer is there a perception that you should be prepared to pay extra."

 

Muslims make up a quarter of the world's population. But even a minority can make for a viable business proposition. It's estimated there are now about 300 Islamic financial institutions in 75 countries, holding assets of more than $300 billion (U.S.) and another $400 million in financial investments.

 

In Canada, the Muslim population has surpassed 780,000 and could reach 1.2 million within a decade, according to Statistics Canada.

 

A spokesperson for the Royal Bank of Canada found there was insufficient market interest for an investment note linked to an index of shares in Shariah-compliant companies…

For now, anyway. However that could soon change as market interest rises.

I realize that money talks--and that we're talking about oodles of boodle here. But aren't we clueless, short-sighted fools for allowing this peaceful conquest of our financial institutions by those loyal to Dar al Islam?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments

Jew-hate in Montreal: A couple of excitable young men from the Montreal area have been arrested for recent acts of Judenhass.  

Buddhists? Wiccans? Seventh Day Adventists?

 

Don’t be silly.

 

From the Canadian Jewish News:

MONTREAL - The Jewish community applauded the Montreal police for the arrests last week of two men, Omar Bulphred, 24, and Azim Ibragimov, 22, reportedly Muslims, for the firebombing attacks on the YM-YWHA Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre in Snowdon on April 3 and on the chassidic Skver Toldos Yakov Yosef school in Outremont on Sept. 2.

Police described the arsons as motivated by hatred of Jewish people, and the men could therefore receive stiffer sentences if either is convicted. Police have not linked the two men to racist or terrorist groups, although the investigation continues.

Police also reportedly foiled the pair’s planned kidnapping and confinement of an unidentified party and armed robbery.

Another crime of which they are accused, that of setting a car on fire Sept. 12 in the east-end Mercier borough, provided an important lead in the police investigation.

Police found a letter at the scene of that crime that showed the author had a knowledge of the Molotov cocktail attack on the school. The handwriting was found to be that of the same person who left at the school another note, whose existence was not revealed at the time because police believed it would impede their investigation.

The specific content of the letters was not made public.

The car’s owner was apparently not Jewish. Police also used wiretapping in their investigation.

Bulphred and Ibragimov face a total of nine counts each, including the kidnapping conspiracy, uttering threats of death, and property damage. They were arrested April 12, pled not guilty at a brief appearance in Quebec court the following day and were held in custody.

La Presse reported that Bulphred is of Algerian origin and Ibragimov is from Central Asia, and that they have been Canadian citizens for about 10 years. Bulphred is a student in a trade school and was sentenced to 30 days in jail in 2005 for robbery. Ibragimov works in a grocery store. Both live in Montreal’s east end.

“We are relieved that it appears that they acted as individuals and not as members of an organized group,” said Jeffrey Boro, president of Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec region. “We had every confidence that the perpetrators of these hate-motivated attacks would be caught and charged accordingly.”

Jihadists? Perhaps. But more likely a couple of pathetic losers taking out their frustration at their own shortcomings by lashing out at a convenient scapegoat--“the Jews.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:31 | link | comments

The vultures circle: The glorious Shia republic is using the occasion of the Virginia Tech massacre to try to score some points against Great Satan. From the MEMRI Blog:

The following is from today's Fars News Agency:

An Iranian lawmaker said the homicidal incident at Virginia University illustrates that those claiming to be responsible for the establishment of global security are not even capable of protecting their own citizens.

Speaking to FNA in the northwestern city of Tabriz on Tuesday, Eshrat Shayeq advised White House residents to deal with the United States' domestic issues instead of invading the different regions of the world and shedding the blood of innocent people.

"The United States' internal problems in the different cultural, social, political and economic grounds have aggravated to such an extent that the public opinion in that country does not accept the analyses presented by the US Republicans and the defeat of the Republic party in the recent midterm legislative elections substantiates the same fact," she said.

The legislative official further stressed the point that the increasing problems of the Americans should not be explored in Iraq or Afghanistan, "rather, the US decision-makers and politicians should swerve their view from outside to inside the United States."

"While the US president is under growing criticism for his performance and policies on Iraq, incidents such as what happened at Virginia University, undermine the status and position of the Neoconservatives in that country," she continued…

And by “Neoconservatives” she means, of course, the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:39 | link | comments

The coming war with Iran’s proxies: Look for it this summer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments (2)

Running scared: Korean students at Virginia Tech are leaving the campus because they fear a “backlash”—the same of backlash that Arabs supposedly faced in the days following 9/11. From the International Herald Tribune:

…Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman's identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them.

"My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians," said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became a U.S. citizen a year ago. "After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason."

Boaz said many Korean-American students had left campus immediately. The parents of others were preparing to pick up their children on Tuesday afternoon and take them home.

My question: were there really “a lot of Arabs” attacked after 9/11, or is that simply an assumption being made by nervous South Korean?

 

I have a feeling that while the fears are geninue, the anticipated backlash—then and now—is a fake.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:28 | link | comments

Two of a kind: A would-be politician in the Philipines is trying to parlay his striking resemblance to a certain attenuated terrorist into a political career. From AP via the Ceeb:

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Philippine elections are largely a battle of name recall, so Agakhan Sharief has chosen a moniker that will surely capture the attention of voters well beyond his backwater southern province - Osama bin Laden.

Unlike the world's most-wanted terror suspect, Sharief is known by many in Lanao del Sur province as a peacemaker who has helped broker truces when sporadic clashes have erupted between government troops and Muslim insurgents.

Sporting a 45-centimetre-long beard, turban and a neck scarf similar to that worn by bin Laden in TV images, the 35-year-old Sharief has been campaigning frenziedly for a seat in Lanao's legislative council in May 14 elections.

Posters bear his real name with the explosive moniker plastered in the middle in big, bold letters: "BIN LADEN."

He owes his nickname partly to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Sharief said.

After attending a peace-and-order meeting led by Arroyo in Lanao in 2002, Sharief asked the president to pose for a souvenir picture with him. Somebody in the crowd jokingly told Arroyo that he was known around town by the infamous nickname.

"Oh, I see, the young bin Laden of Mindanao," Sharief quoted Arroyo as saying. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

"When I walked out of that meeting, I had a different name - bin Laden," Sharief told The Associated Press by telephone…

According to the AP report, the bin Laden doppelganger is said to be much more peace-minded than the real one, even though he may be associated with “the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a large rebel group waging a decades-old rebellion for self-rule, and has helped end some clashes between the insurgents and troops.”

Doesn’t sound so “peaceable” to me.

And the Indonesian bin Laden has what AP refers to as “mixed feelings” about his Saudi counterpart:

While condemning the killing of innocent people in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., Sharief said he still is not convinced of bin Laden's involvement. Muslims have the right to struggle for living conditions, he said.

Hmmm. Very “mixed.” Not to mention “mixed-up.” In fact, not unlike the truther nonsense vented by Rosie O’Dious in her unhinged tirades on The View.

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

Hairy Islamic liar: The li’l Hitler wants us to know that the glorious army of his glorious Islamic republic is not in the least bit aggressive, and means no one, with the possible exception of the dastardly Zionists, any harm. From Al Bawaba: 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that the country's Army will resist aggressors and will cut off their hands from the Iranian territory.

 

Addressing a ceremony marking the Army Day, he hailed combat readiness of the Army in defending the territories of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

The structure of the Iranian Army is defensive not offensive, the president said, adding that the Iranian nation is against oppression and aggression and will react to such attitudes by any state or nation. Today, the Iranian nation is the harbinger of justice in the world and opposes injustice anywhere in the world, he said, according to IRNA.

 

"The Islamic Republic of Iran's army enjoys a defensive nature not an offensive one," Ahmadinejad underlined. "The nation seeks peace and security all over the world and wants to have relations with all nations and states except for the Zionist regime," Ahmadinejad noted.

 

The harbinger of fascist Islam and nuclear Apocalypse, more like.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments

The meaning of the hijab: A Globe and Mail editorial comes to the defence of plucky young Muslim chicks who want to participate in tae kwan doe events while wearing the hijab. “People, get a grip,” counsels the editorial writer, apparently unaware that this is not a matter of the larger society rejecting “harmless differences” (“Sometimes,” the editorialist assures us, “a head scarf is just a head scarf”) but involves a religio-political effort to compel all women to cover up. And, as the editorialist assures us, it's not like donning a scarf is akin to a genuinely unacceptable cultural diffence like, say, female genital mutilation. (The editorial offers this "insight" while failing to note that, quite often, those who want to force women to cover up have such a horror of female sexuality that they also feel compelled to excise a young girl's naughty nether bits before she can be considered marriagable. For more on the subject, I would direct you to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's harrowing account of her own excision in her autobiography, Infidel.)

On the comment page opposite the editorial, moderate Muslims Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah torpedo the editorial’s assertions (link unavailable online). They contend that “There is not a single reference in the Koran that obliges Muslim women to cover their hair or their face…” and that the hijab is a highly politicized issue since Islamists, who seek to impose their strict interpretation of the Koran on others, have turned it “into the central pillar of Islam.” Hassan and Fatah explain that it is not about personal choice and tolerating differences. It’s about fanatics “using young Muslim girls as shields to pursue a political agenda.”

 

One might have hoped that the Globe’s editorialist would have read and considered this explanation (and perhaps even have read Hirsi Ali's book) before penning his/her piece of squishy tripe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:23 | link | comments

Melon mush for brains: In the bad old days, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and causing Bubonic plague. But all that is just sooo 12^th Century. The latest conspiracy theory re Jewish contagion making the rounds, at least in the Medieval-minded precincts of the Magic Kingdom: Israel has been secretly importing AIDS-infected melons, yes, melons, into the country in order to sicken unsuspecting Saudi fruit-fanciers. From YNET News:

"Beware of Israeli melons infected with AIDS arriving in Saudi Arabia!" is the latest rumor being spread throughout Saudi Arabia like a wildfire.

An SMS message being sent around the country this week said, "The Saudi Interior Ministry warns its citizens of a truck loaded with AIDS infected melons that Israel brought into the country via a 'ground corridor.'"

 

The Interior Minister's spokesman General Mansour al Turki responded to news of the message and made it clear to a-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that the Ministry "did not issue any such announcement. This is just a rumor."

 

This is not the first rumor to spread through the country recently. Just last month another rumor had it that sweets containing carcinogenic flour were being sold in many stores.

 

Al Turki urged the public to ignore such passing rumors, and said that the authorities were doing everything in their power to ensure the citizens' wellbeing.

 

Head of the center for chemicals and toxins in Mecca, Dr Ahmad Elias also stressed that there was no truth to these rumors.

 "The center is the first official body that would receive such information, if it were true, in order to investigate and inform the relevant bodies to take the necessary steps," said Elias.

 "The HIV virus cannot survive in any temperature other than that of the human body, which cannot be reached in fruits," he explained.

The rumor, despite being denied several times, has gained so much steam in the Arab world that it made it to the front page of one of the most important Arabic language newspapers.

 

Many received an SMS supposedly from the Saudi Interior Ministry saying, "Please forward quickly."

 

A “ground corridor,” huh? Boy those Jews are clever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments

The wrongs of “the right”: Alan Dershowitz on the Palestinians’ bogus “right of return”—a “right” they accorded themselves in a nifty bit of legerdemain/identity theft whereby they appropriated the right of Jews in the Diaspora to seek safe haven in the Jewish homeland; a “right” which  amounts to nothing more than a desire to expunge Israel’s Jewish identity. From the Christian Science Monitor (link via Martin Kramer):

Cambridge, Mass. - Among the major barriers to peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis is the so-called right of return. In its broadest formulation, this "right" belongs to some 4 million alleged descendants of the 700,000 or so Palestinian Arabs who left what is now Israel as the result of the war that began when Israel declared statehood in 1948.

Palestinians say the Israeli government used the war as an excuse to chase a significant percentage of its Arab population out of the newly formed Jewish state. Palestinians call this war and its aftermath "al Nakba" – "the catastrophe."

Israelis insist this catastrophe was self-inflicted. By attacking Israel in a genocidal attempt to push the Jews into the sea, the combined Arab armies created the refugee problem. Israel acknowledges that it forced out some local Palestinians who lived in areas critical to the defense of the new state. But Israel insists that many other Palestinians left of their own volition or at the behest of Arab leaders who promised that the Palestinians would return triumphantly after Israel was defeated.

What is beyond dispute is that many of the refugees – regardless of how they became refugees – were placed in miserable camps and kept there for half a century by the Arab nations in which they sought refuge.

The millions of other refugees who were forced to leave their homes in the decades following World War II – the Sudeten-Germans, the Greeks and Turks, Pakistanis and Indians, and the 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries – have all been integrated and normalized. Only the Palestinian refugees have been kept in camps by their Arab hosts. The reason was and is entirely political: to maintain resentment and to hold open the empty promise of a triumphant return that would achieve demographically what the Arab nations have been unable to achieve militarily – destruction of the Jewish state.

Israel sees the right not as an individual, humanitarian claim, but rather as a collective, political assertion designed to turn Israel into another Arab state. In 1949, Egypt's foreign minister candidly acknowledged: "It is well known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of their homeland, and not as slaves. More explicitly: they intend to annihilate the state of Israel."…

In sum: they have no more “right” to obliterate the Jewish state than Hitler had the “right” to murder six million Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:51 | link | comments

HRC politesse: My nominee for the most useless and toxic UN body, the woefully misnamed Human Rights Council, was given a good what for the other week by Hillel Neuer. Neuer, of UN Watch, came out with both guns blazing, and ripped into the HRC for its fecklessness and for its undue focus on one nation—Israel. The obsession with Israel, said Neur, has allowed the council to ignore obvious and gross violations occurring in other places, including many in the unfree nations which, disgustingly, have been allowed to set themselves up as the arbiters of international “rights.”

Alan Gold in The Australian writes scathingly about Neuer’s denunciation, and how it fell with a thud on the HRC’s deaf ears:

…Giving testimony before the fourth session of the council in Geneva recently, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said: "Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution and violence against women, what has the council pronounced and what has it decided? Nothing. Its response hasbeen silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal."

De Alba had to listen in rising fury as Neuer continued to denounce the UN council in a scathing condemnation of its bias.

"The entire rest of the world, millions upon millions of victims in 191 countries, continue to go ignored," Neuer said. He claimed that racist murderers and the rapists of Darfur women insisted they cared about the rights of Palestinian women; that the occupiers of Tibet insisted they cared about those they occupied; and that the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya insisted they cared about Muslims.

It was a stunning denunciation, a non-government organisation laying bare the mendacity and prejudice of a key UN body. Yet Neuer hadn't finished.

He excoriated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for their support of Palestinian rights against Israel while remaining silent when Palestinian factions commit human rights abuses against each other.

So what was de Alba's reaction to the tirade? Did he look in any way humiliated as the failings of his council were exposed for the entire world to see?

Did he hang his head in shame for the countless men, women and children whom he and the council failed to protect and who were the victims of some of the world's most unrelenting abusers of human rights? Did he raise his voice on issues where he and his council had been woefully silent?

No. Instead de Alba upbraided the young man from the NGO for rudeness and demanded that any future statements "should observe some minimum proper conduct and language". He said: "For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the ... representative of (UN) Watch ... that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the council. The way in which members of this council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. Any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records."

For the UN Human Rights Council, it seems, politeness has to come before the rights of the abused. How civilised.

And how typical.

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

In search of elusive “moderates”: While we continue to be assured that the vast majority of Muslims are “moderates” who have no desire to topple Western democracy and replace it with a caliphate dedicated to sharia law, Daniel Pipes, a man who has long touted the importance of establishing ties with these “moderates,” lets the truth slip out: the “moderates” are in short supply and often difficult to find:

When I suggest that radical Muslims are the problem and that moderate Muslims are the solution, the nearly inevitable retort from most people is: "What moderate Muslims?"

"Where are the anti-Islamists' demonstrations against terror?" they ask me. "What are they doing to combat Islamists? What have they done to reassess Islamic law?"

My response: Moderate Muslims do exist. But, of course, they constitute a very small movement when compared to the Islamist onslaught. This means that the American government and other powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting with, funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating those brave Muslims who, at personal risk, stand up and confront the totalitarians.

A just-published study from the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, methodically takes up and thinks through this concept. Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell Schwartz, and Peter Sickle grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate Muslims to grow and prosper.

They start with the argument that "structural reasons play a large part" in the rise of radical and dogmatic interpretations of Islam in recent years. One of those reasons is that over the last three decades, the Saudi government has generously funded the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam. Saudi efforts have promoted "the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world," permitting the Islamists to develop powerful intellectual, political, and other networks. "This asymmetry in organization and resources explains why radicals, a small minority in almost all Muslim countries, have influence disproportionate to their numbers."

The study posits a key role for Western countries here: "Moderates will not be able to successfully challenge radicals until the playing field is leveled, which the West can help accomplish by promoting the creation of moderate Muslim networks."…

Easier said than done.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments (2)

I.O. lauds Soros: A good argument could be made that billionaire George Soros, extreme left dingbat, anti-Zionist and self-loathing Jew, is the most pernicious influence on the American scene today. Soros, though, continues to try to peg other Jews—and more specifically, those Jews who back Israel—as being the real danger, an opinion which sits very well with the Wahabists of Islam Online:

CAIRO — American Jewish investment baron George Soros launched a blistering criticism against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its role in shaping American foreign policy, accusing it of stifling criticism of Israel.

"While the other architects of the Bush administration's failed policies have been relentlessly exposed, AIPAC continues to be surrounded by a wall of silence," he wrote in a 3577-word article in the current issue of the prestigious New York Review of Books magazine.

"I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."

Soros, a long-time political activist, insisted that AIPAC has exceeded its original purpose of lobbying the Congress on issues and legislation that are in the best interests of Israel and the US.

"It became closely allied with the neocons and was an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion of Iraq. It actively lobbied for the confirmation of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations," he said.

"More recently, it was among the pressure groups that prevailed upon the Democratic House leadership to drop the requirement that the President obtain congressional approval before taking military action against Iran."

Soros further said the AIPAC continues to oppose any dialogue with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

"AIPAC under its current leadership has clearly exceeded its mission, and far from guaranteeing Israel's existence, has endangered it.

A year ago, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago maintained that AIPAC has diverted the US policy so far from the national interest.

In a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby," they said pressure from Israel and its lobby played an important role in the decision to invade Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.

Founded in 1953, AIPAC has more than 100,000 members and is considered one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States…

No mention, of course, of the influence wielded by CAIR and other American Muslim lobby groups.

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

The Globe's black belt in cluelessness: It seems not a day goes by without a new headscarf controversy in the mainstream Canadian media. It usually goes something like this: a plucky young Muslim girl, devout but sports-minded, is being denied the opportunity to participate in the sport of her choice due to a far too rigourous application of the rules. The implication being that said girl is being singled out and discriminated against because she is Muslim and the rule-appliers are bigots. Much hand-wringing ensues as the mainstreamers compete to show how tolerant they are of hijabs, burkas, abayas and other coverings which, ironically, symbolize a Muslim woman’s second-class status within her faith.

In today’s version of this by now standard story, the Globe and Mail hails a woman, the former dean of engineering at the University of Ottawa no less, who managed to become a tae kwan do champion while never once removing her hijab.

 

Personally, I have no problem with any woman who want to empower herself by learning the art of self defence. What irks me is the notion that requiring Muslim women to conform to the same rules required of others is a form of intolerance, and that media outlets like the Globe which highlight this supposed unfairness are somehow more virtuous and fair-minded than the rest of us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments

Israeli hero: The exact provenance of the man who perpetrated the largest mass killing in American history is not yet clear. He has been described as “Asian,” which is about as vague as it gets. However,  Reuters is reporting the heroic act of Liviu Librescru, a professor of engineering at the school. Liberscu, an Israeli citizen, was killed when he tried to protect his students by preventing the killer from entering his classroom.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:42 | link | comments

British media embrace the big lie: There’s a not-so-old saying to the effect that, during times of war, the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. Of course, that refers to another time and another war. These days, lies about Israel are proffered as truth, and the purveyors of those lies—its bodyguards, so to speak—are often journalists who are supposed to have a professional dedication to truth-telling. That’s especially so in the U.K., where, incredibly, the journalists’ union has just voted to boycott Israel on the most specious and fraudulent grounds. From Melanie Phillips’s diary:

…But it’s when it comes to Gaza, however, that the NUJ’s departure from reality to the irrational terrain of Planet Hatred becomes most apparent. For incredibly, it appears not to realise that Israel is no longer occupying Gaza. It withdrew in 2005, with members of the NUJ actually reporting that seismic event. There is no ‘slaughter of civilians’ in Gaza by Israeli troops. The slaughter that is going on in Gaza — including the recent murder of small Palestinian children by Palestinian gunmen as part of the vicious intra-Palestinian gang warfare that is going on — is by Palestinians on Palestinians. Not to mention also the rockets being fired into Israel almost daily from Gaza, and the tunnelling and huge military build-up going on there in preparation for a redoubled — and definitely ‘pre-planned’ — assault yet again upon Israel.

 

Even more remarkably, given yesterday’s deeply distressing (although as yet unconfirmed) report that the kidnapped BBC correspondent in Gaza Alan Johnston has been murdered by Palestinians, the NUJ did not see fit even to discuss the fate of their colleague at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. Instead they smeared and libelled Israel. It is a truly remarkable state of affairs when a collective body of journalists is not moved to action in protest against the kidnap and possible murder of one of its own, because he is the victim of terrorists it supports on ideological grounds, and instead decides to take punitive action against the nation that is the principal and enduring victim of those terrorists, which it defames simply because it defends itself against them.

 

By this disgusting action, the NUJ has revealed the vicious face of British journalism. It is no longer in the noble business of telling truth to power. It is now the instrument of those who use brute power to suppress the truth and snuff out justice, life and liberty. And despite the tiny size of the vote, it is likely to be the harbinger of a redoubled effort to isolate Israel and prepare the ground for its annihilation. The attempt at an academic boycott two years ago may have been aborted, but there are moves afoot for an economic boycott of Israel involving the broader trade union movement. Of course, it is astounding that British trade unionists should seek to ostracise the one country in the Middle East where trade unions — along with academics — enjoy freedom of association and expression, while uttering not a peep against those regimes which really do suppress trade unions and intellectual inquiry. But this is now the madness of Britain.

 

That anguished roar you hear is of Winston Churchill, saviour of Western democracy and a noted pro-Zionist, rolling over in his grave.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:35 | link | comments

Denial and other Holocaust indignities: A comment piece in the Jerusalem Post details the various ways in which the historical reality of the Holocaust is being distorted—by denying it, downplaying it, and using it to score points against Israel by making the Palestinians out to be the new Jews and the Jews of Israel out to be the new Nazis. But of all the sick-making efforts to spin the Shoah, the most outrageous and chutzpahdik might well be Michael Lerner’s. Lerner, Bill's and Hill’s favourite Rabbi (what, you thought maybe they had a soft spot for Shmuley Boteach?), has taken the occasion of this year’s Yom Ha’Shoah to announce the launch of his new environmental program. 

That’s right. Obscenely, Lerner wants to use Holocaust remembrance in a bid to become the next Goracle.

 

Writing in Contentions, the Commentary Magazine blog, Joshua Moravchik says that this blatant misuse of the day set aside to remember the Shoah

 

sets a new standard of coarseness. Lerner writes: “I want to explain to you why we picked the Holocaust Memorial Day to launch this initiative. To the starvation and suffering on the planet today (with 2.4 billion people living on less than $2 a day) we say: Never Again.” If taken seriously, this is moronic. Never again? Again what? There has always been starvation and suffering. And while suffering is impossible to measure, there is, proportionately, less starvation today than ever before. However sad the perdurance of these afflictions may be, it is not a discrete event. What can it possibly mean to say “never again” in this context?

 

But of course, Lerner’s explanation is not to be taken seriously. The true explanation is that this is just one more stage performance by a “rabbi” whose self-absorption is bottomless and for whom nothing, apparently, is sacred. As attorney Joseph Welch said famously to Senator McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

 

Apparently, the answer to that query would be a resounding “NO.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:41 | link | comments

Being mean to Mr. Bean: I know that the days of “a stiff upper lip”—as well as the days of captured servicemen adhering to a strict policy of revealing nothing more to the enemy than their name, rank and serial number—are long since past. However, it’s impossible not to be disgusted by the idea of the Iran-nabbed British sailors being given leave to cash in on their ordeal. And if you go by reports, some of the actual stories of the “torture” they were forced to endure don’t exactly make them sound like paragons of bravery. From the Times Online:

Faye Turney, 25, recalled of her captivity: “I cried my eyes out. I asked the guards about my friends but all they did was laugh at me.”

Arthur Batchelor, the youngest of the group at 20, revealed that he had been tormented by his captors flicking their fingers against his neck and calling him Mr Bean, the buffoon played by Rowan Atkinson. They had also taken his iPod.

“All I could make out in their language were the words ‘Mr Bean’,” he said. “They were laughing at me . . . making me feel about three inches tall.”

They took away his iPod? The knaves!

 

I am reminded of the scene in The Bridge on the River Kwai in which the British officer played by Alec Guinness—admittedly, an unappealing and delusional character—held out for days in a sweltering box without food or water solely to preserve a point of honour. In our time, the enemy need not use such drastic measures to force their captives submit. All they have to do is take away a young salt’s tunes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments (1)

A timely message: I am back from Israel, having spent the past two weeks with my family touring the country from north to south. In the days to come I hope to shake off the combination of jet lag and weariness from the long journey home (three airplanes, 48 hours in transit) and write about it in a coherent fashion. For now, let me say that it was an extraordinary experience and that Israel—the fact that it is there, the reality of what it has become—is an incredible, inspiring, beautiful, wonderful country of which every Jew and, indeed, everyone who cherishes freedom, should be proud.

 

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, there is no greater testament to the endurance of the Jewish people and the memory of those who perished because of the hatred and ambition of a fascist brute than the existence of this remarkable, marvellous nation and her remarkable, marvellous, brave citizens.

 

So to the Hitlers past and the Ahmadinejads present, I have only this to say: AM YISRAEL CHAI, you bastards!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments (2)