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

It’s the crude, dude: Janet Levy on the American Thinker site says Libya’s black gold has allowed former terror rogue Moo Moo Ghadafi to rehabilitate his image and buy his way onto the UN Security Council:

On Tuesday, the United Nations, with at least tacit U.S. approval, elected the former terrorist state, Libya, to serve a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council. The prospect that Moammar Gaddafi, once the target of U.S. and U.N. sanctions, would participate in the U.N. Security Council decision-making process is part of the charade that relations between Libya and the U.S. are, in the words of Libyan diplomat Giadalla Ettalhi, "back to normal." In truth, the acceptance of oil-rich Libya on the international body charged with maintaining worldwide peace and security, reveals how the need for oil can cleanse even the most heinous of atrocities committed by terrorist states and nullify the suffering of its victims.

With oil and gas prices climbing, Libya's plentiful oil and gas resources, have provided incentives for foreign investments. Energy firms worldwide have been anxious to do business with Libya and the governments of many European countries acted several years earlier to remove economic restrictions placed on Libya because of its past actions. U.S. companies have also pressured the U.S. government to normalize relations to stay apace with their European rivals. The U.S. desire to explore alternative sources for oil and gas may well have influenced the decision to normalize relations and paved the way for Libya to serve on the Security Council.

 

With Libya on the U.N. Security Council, the stage is truly set for a theater of the absurd. That's because the Security Council is charged with maintaining international peace and security, which Libya has a well-known history of violating. Under the provisions of its charter, the Security Council can investigate any conflict that may lead to international friction and take a full spectrum of actions ranging from recommendations and political pressure to deploying peacekeeping forces or authorizing military action. The council may also choose to institute economic sanctions, sever diplomatic ties or refer cases to the International Criminal Court for arbitration.

 

Five permanent members sit on the Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- and have veto power over resolutions. Ten temporary members serve for two-year terms. The office of the president, responsible for setting the council's agenda and overseeing crisis situations, rotates monthly among all of the member countries. 

 

Thus, in an abundance of irony, it could potentially fall to Libya to oversee a world crisis, the very country which has been anti-American since 1969 when Gaddafi came to power and which was responsible in 1988 for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 189 Americans. The Lockerbie bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack against the United States until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 

As a result, Libya until recently was under U.S. and U.N. sanctions that hindered its ability to develop its energy sector. In 2003, when Libya announced that it would dismantle its program for weapons of mass destruction, the United States and the European Union agreed to restore diplomatic relations. At the time, the Libyan government ratified a series of nominal, human rights treaties.

 

But these actions were instituted purely for political expediency and didn't reflect the situation on the ground, according to an investigation by Amnesty International, a far left-leaning, non-governmental organization known for selective criticism of human rights violations. Amnesty International found that significant numbers of Libyans were being incarcerated for non-violent political activities and the death penalty was in place for cases of political dissent. Publicly, Colonel Gaddafi denounced capitol punishment and denied human rights violations but, according to Amnesty International, death sentences, unfair trials and the use of torture to extract confessions continued to be reported by Libya's Internal Security Agency…

 

Who cares if the new Moo Moo’s not all that different from the old Moo Moo, so long as his gushers are flowing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments (1)

Trick or treat: In honour of Halloween, here’s an updated version of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” as sung by Mahmoud “Adolf” Ahmadinejad and the Maniacal Mullahs:

I was down at the reactor late one night

When my eyes beheld a wond’rous sight.

For my mahdi from his watery grave did rise

And suddenly to my surprise

 

He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash,
It was a Shia smash.
He did the mash,
It made a great big splash.
He did the mash.
He did the mahdi mash.

He said, “From the blue Med sea to Tehran’s skyline
I see a lovely vista that’s Judenrein.

Thought I, now’s the time to come again ‘n’

Help you launch that Armageddon.”

 
He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash
It was a Shia smash.
He did the mash,
It made a great big splash.
He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.

The Shias were rockin', all were digging the sounds.
The mullahs were kvelling, baying like hounds.
They’d finally got revenge, you see

For the dirt that was done to their man, Ali.

They played the mash,
They played the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash
It was a Shia smash
They played the mash.
And they had such a bash.
They played the mash
They played the mahdi mash.

 

No one was more thrilled than me, 'Madinejad.

‘Cause I knew all along I wasn’t mad.

It’s just that I'd a special job to do—

To usher in the you-know-who.

It's now the mash.
It's now the mahdi mash
The monster mash
And it's a Shia smash
It's now the mash.
It's caught on in a flash
It's now the mash
It's now the mahdi mash

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:53 | link | comments

That old apes and pigs thing, again: The speaker of the Palestinian legistlative council  uses an all-too familiar reference from the Koran to describe how he and other members of his faith view the Jews.

Personally, I think it's time for Jews to take custody of the whole ape 'n' pig slur--in the same way that African-Americans have taken ownership of the "n" word--and thereby remove its sting. To that end, I'm thinking of creating a line of merchandise--t-shirts, calenders, mugs and stuffed animals--featuring an adorable cartoon ape and pig.

My only quandry: should I call the line "ape 'n' pig" or "pig 'n' ape"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments (4)

What gives?: Accused Madrid bombing mastermind acquitted. Even though he had boasted about his role in the terror attack which snuffed out 191 lives, his lawyers successfully argued that he'd been mistranslated.

Looks like a major setback for the War on Terror.

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

Refugees heart Israel: It’s such an embarrassment when refugees from places like Sudan and Eritrea attempt to bypass Egypt and high-tail it into the Zionist entity. No wonder Egyptian authorities are trying to clamp down on the practice. From the Jerusalem Post:

Egyptian authorities detained eight Eritreans and two Sudanese early Wednesday in two separate incidents as they tried to make their way to Israel, a security official said.

The Eritreans were caught trying to take a boat across the Suez Canal to the Sinai Peninsula, to reach the border with Israel in northern Sinai, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

An Egyptian human trafficker was arrested along with the eight Eritreans, the official said.

In a separate incident, two young Sudanese refugees from the war-torn western Darfur region were arrested early Wednesday as they tried to sneak into Israel south of the official Rafah border crossing point, according to the official.

The Sudanese said they were seeking political asylum in Israel.

Israel estimates that 2,800 people have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt in recent years searching for jobs. Most have come from Africa.

Hmm. Now why do you suppose they’d want to get into Israel, a tiny Jewish nation, when there are so many wonderful Arab and Muslim ones in the region to choose from? Don’t they know that the Zionist entity is ee-vil?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:09 | link | comments

Abdullah’s defenders: Some true believers upset with a report linking Saudi Arabia to extremist literature found in U.K. mosques are dismissing it as “a PR stunt.” From Asian Image:

An Islamic organisation has condemned the opportunist release of a report by the Policy Exchange.

It has been reported agencies linked to the Saudi government have distributed extremist literature to mosques and Islamic centers in Britain.

The Policy Exchange said the material expressed a deep-rooted antipathy toward Western society, calling for violence against enemies of Islam, including women and gays who demand equal rights.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS)hit back however claiming that whilst the report is an important contribution to the academic literature on Mosques it Britain, it is actually nothing more than a PR stunt aimed to gain publicity on the back of the controversy surrounding the visit of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Faisal Hanjra, spokesman for FOSIS, said, "It is severely reprehensible for any organisation to attempt to gain short-term publicity at the expense of damaging community relations in the UK.

"The Policy Exchange document does nothing more than present single sentences, from often large documents, out of context.

"The report also fails to adequately define the term extremist literature' instead applying this label to anything outside of the authors' own personal realms of social acceptability.

"Finally, the report arrives at the illogical conclusion that this literature is in part responsible for terrorism, something not supported by the actual contents of the report."

He further added, "For the release of a year-long research report to coincide with the arrival of King Abdullah into this country is certainly suspicious…

Not “suspicious.” Propitious.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:56 | link | comments

More than skin deep: Ever wonder why Marxists are so riddled with self-loathing? Well, it could be because their guru, Karl Marx, had really bad skin. From Reuters via the Globe and Mail:

LONDON — Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands – found mainly in the armpits and groin – become blocked and inflamed.

"In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem," said Dr. Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

"This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing."

While HS is linked to boil-like lumps, the painful condition also causes more widespread infection, swelling, skin thickening and scarring.

It could also explain a number of Marx's other complaints, not previously linked, such as joint pain and a painful eye condition that often stopped him working.

Dr. Shuster based his diagnosis on an analysis of Marx's extensive correspondence, in which he wrote to friends about his health and described his skin lesions as "curs" and "swine."

"The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day," Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867…

And we have, we have. One can only imagine how different the planet might have been had old Karl been carbuncle-less and blessed with a complexion as smooth as a baby’s behind.

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

Wahhabi Judenhass: Melanie Phillips is appalled by what she calls the “grovel-fest” now taking place in London. She quotes a post by blogger David Conway, who describes some of the revolting Saudi-produced fare that’s been polluting Arab airwaves:

On May 7, 2002, wearing her customary body-length robe and fashionable head scarf, Doaa Amer -- a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA-TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world … based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – announced to her viewers that she had a special guest. Broadcasting from Egypt, she beg[a]n: “Our report today will be a little different, because our guest is a girl, a Muslim girl, but a true Muslim.”

‘The camera pans slowly down and to the right as Ms Amer greets her guest who turns out to be a small child. [Their conversation goes thus:]

Amer: Peace be upon you.
Child: Allah’s mercy and blessing upon you.
Amer: How old are you?
Child: Three and a half.
Amer: Are you a Muslim?’
Child: Yes
Amer: Are you familiar with the Jews?’
Child: Yes.
Amer: Do you like them?
Child: No
Amer: Why don’t you like them?
Child: Because…
Amer: (prompting): Because they are what?
Child: They’re apes and pigs.
Amer: Because they’re apes and pigs. Who said they are so?
Child: Our God.
Amer: Where did he say this?
Child: In the Koran.
Amer: Right, he said that about them in the Koran…. Did they love our master Mohammed?
Child: No.
Amer: No, what did the Jews do to him?
….
….
Child: There was a Jewish woman who invited the Prophet and his friends. When he asked her, "Did you put poison [in my food]?” she said to him, “Yes.” He asked her, "Why did you do this?" and she replied: “If you are a liar – you will; die and Allah will not protect you: if you speak the truth –Allah will protect you.”
Amer: And our God protected the Prophet Muhammad, of course.
Child: And he said to his friends: “I will kill this lady.”
Amer: Of course, because she put poison in his food, this Jewess.
Child: Oh.
Amer: (speaking directly into the camera):
Basmallah [the girl’s name], Allah be praised, Basmallah, Allah be praised. May our God bless her. No one could wish Allah could give him a more believing girl than she… May Allah bless her and her father and mother. The next generation of children must be true Muslims. We must educate them now while they are still children so that they will be true Muslims.’

‘Shortly before this programme aired on IQRAA-TV, the station’s owner, Prince al-Waleed bin Talil [a Saudi royal] contributed $27 million to a government-organised telethon in Saudi Arabia that raised $109 million for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Saudi King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdallah [now King] each contributed $1 million, with their wives kicking in separate cheques of close to $1 million. …

‘The telethon was hosted by a prominent Saudi government cleric named Sheikh Saad al-Buraik, who took the opportunity of the live television coverage to …[tell] his audience: “I am against American until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment. I am against America even if stone liquefies…. She is the root of all evils and wickedness on Earth… Oh Muslim Ummah, don’t take the Jews and Christians as allies… Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy. Neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take. Legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?”

‘Like the al-Ibrahim brothers, whose Middle East Broadcasting Network aired the telethon, Sheikh al-Buraik is closely tied to Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, the king’s youngest son. The sheikh hosts a regular show on MBC and the government’s Channel One called Religion and Life.’
[Kenneth Timmerman, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), pp. 117-120 passim]

Melanie’s comment: “Just remember this when you look at the pictures of Britain’s Royal Family, Prime Minister and higher establishment bowing and scraping today to the House of Saud.”

Will do, Mel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:21 | link | comments

Saudi mischief:  As the unctuous Wahhabi royal (accompanied by Bush family fave Prince Bandar, no less) continues to be feted by British dhimmis, a new report reveals the malign influence the Saudis continue to exert over U.K. mosques. From Malaysia Sun:

…Meanwhile, new research by think-tank Policy Exchange has found that hate literature calling for jihad, beheading of apostates and stoning of adulterers is freely available in several important mosques in Britain.

The research, published Monday in a report titled 'The Hijacking of British Islam', is based on visits to nearly 100 places of 'important Islamic religious institutions', including leading mosques, in various parts of Britain.

The report has been criticised by Muslim groups who fear that it will further contribute to the spectre of Islamophobia evident in Britain after the Sep 11 terror attack and July 7 London bombings.

The Policy Exchange report said: 'Extremist literature enjoys a potency through its availability in prestigious sites of Islamic religious instruction across the UK. This makes it a major impediment to efforts by Muslims to integrate into mainstream British society.

'On the one hand, the results (of the research) were reassuring: in only a minority of institutions - approximately 25 percent - was radical material found. What is more worrying is that these are among the best-funded and most dynamic institutions in Muslim Britain - some of which are held up as mainstream bodies.

'Many of the institutions featured here have been endowed with official recognition. This has come in the form of official visits from politicians and even members of the Royal Family; provision of funding; 'partnership' associations; or some other seal of approval.

'Much of the material is (thus) infused with a strident sectarianism, in which many Muslims - particularly the very large number of Sufis in this country and around the world - are placed beyond the pale.

'More widely, Muslims are urged to separate themselves from people and things that are not considered Islamic; a separation that is to be mental, emotional, and at times, even physical.

'Western society, in particular, is held to be sinful, corrosive and corrupting for Muslims. Western values - particularly concerning the position and rights of women and in the realm of sexuality generally - are rejected as inimical to Islam.'

Criticising the report, Iqbal Sacranie, a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain said: 'The majority of Muslims will totally dismiss this because it is written by the Policy Exchange, who have an agenda to denigrate the mainstream of Islam in this country.

'If there is any material which falls foul of the law, then the law should take its course. We cannot accept messages of hate - there is zero tolerance on that. But it is irresponsible to target religious texts and take them out of context. These texts can be found not just in mosques but in ordinary bookshops - the report overlooks that.'

The research found that 'most of the extremist literature is published and distributed by agencies linked to the Saudi Arabian government'. It recommended that 'there needs now to be a proper audit of the costs and benefits of the Saudi-UK relationship'.

The report recommended that the hate literature be immediately removed, and that Islamic religious institutions should be subject to greater regulation aimed at establishing a 'gold standard' for genuinely moderate Islam.

The report recommended: 'Islamic organisations to which the 'offending' institutions are currently linked - notably groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) - must categorically repudiate the extremist, separatist and often sectarian material uncovered in this report and exert pressure for change.

'Women in Muslim and other minority communities must have their human rights upheld; consideration should be given to what steps can be taken to ensure this. British Muslim women cannot be consigned to a position of inequality. Nor should the British government fail to act against the oppression of a segment of its population - whether this is 'justified' on religious grounds or otherwise'.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:32 | link | comments

Porous borders: According to Sheila Fraser, Canada’s Auditor General, the nation’s borders are as leaky as a sieve. From the Canadian Press:

OTTAWA - Weaknesses at Canada's border agency allowed many potentially dangerous people and goods to slip into the country earlier this year, says the federal auditor general.

In a report Tuesday, Sheila Fraser said border officers failed to take a closer look at numerous travellers and shipments flagged as possible risks on watch lists.

Overall, the auditor found the Canada Border Services Agency's threat-assessment systems "are not satisfactorily supporting" its efforts to manage entry to the country.

In other chapters of her latest report, Fraser found that the military has failed to validate the medical licences of its doctors and nurses; that government secrets have been allowed to fall into the hands of private contractors who lack security clearances; and that a major native land-claims deal has been shoddily administered.

But the most damning finding in this fall's report to Parliament is the lax security at the border.

Each year, the Canada Border Services Agency's officers allow 96 million people into Canada - tourists, immigrants and refugees, business people and returning Canadians. They also approve entry of more than $400 billion in goods.

The agency uses lookouts, or electronic notifications, based on intelligence information, past customs seizures, immigration violations and national security risks.

The auditor found that an average of 13 per cent of customs lookouts and 21 per cent of immigration lookouts from January to March of this year were not referred for further examination.

The border agency investigated some missed lookouts and has acknowledged that improved training of its officers was necessary, the report says.

"The agency does not have consistent monitoring in place to know the extent to which this is happening and take remedial action."

Agency officials said some lookouts may be missed or admitted to Canada at primary inspection because of incorrect matching of the lookout to a traveller or shipment.

Furthermore, the report says policies and procedures for creating lookouts vary considerably, and the agency is currently developing a new formula.

This would meet a recommendation of the federal inquiry into Maher Arar, the Ottawa engineer shipped to a Syrian prison by the United States after Canada mistakenly labelled him an Islamic extremist.

Fraser said the agency must do spot inspections. "They are focusing all of their inspections now on cases that they identify as high risk, and the only way to really ensure the system is effective is if you do these random checks."

The auditor general also noted that while the agency has created programs intended to speed the passage of low-risk people and goods across the border, these initiatives rely mainly on voluntary compliance at many border points.

Further, an internal agency evaluation recently concluded that limited screening of applicants leaves pre-approval programs potentially vulnerable to infiltration by criminals - a finding with which Fraser agreed.

Fraser also found:

-No electronic document readers at land ports of entry considered high risk.

-The agency could not provide assurance it conducts risk assessments of all air and marine cargo in advance of arrival.

-Border officers see weaknesses in new automated screening systems and therefore continue to rely more on their own analysis and judgment to select shipments for examination.

Fraser said weaknesses in the agency's data prevent it from confirming which risks are most important. "The agency has not established its desired levels of border openness and security and, as a result, cannot know whether it is achieving them."

The agency accepted the auditor's recommendations, adding it faces "considerable resource constraints" as it tries to fulfil its mandate.

In other chapters, Fraser said:

-Secret government information is leaking out to private contractors who do work for Ottawa but have not been given proper security clearances...

Doesn’t exactly inspire a feeling of confidence in the government’s ability to protect us from the bad guys, does it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:09 | link | comments

The Wheeler version: Carolynne Wheeler, of the MacKinnon-Wheeler tag-team of married Israel-bashers, has a double header in the Globe and Mail. In piece #1 she expounds on the subject of Ehud Olmert’s prostate cancer, and the impact it may or may not have on the upcoming peace blather in Annapolis. She goes on to examine the situation in Gaza, which as everyone knows, pretty well sucks and blows. As Carolynne sees it, the reason why things are so dire is because Israel is up to its old tricks—being mean and bloody-minded for no particular reason.  Here, for instance is how she describes Israel’s most recent dealings with Gaza:

…The Israeli government is also intensifying its campaign against Gaza, which it last month declared a hostile entity. On Sunday, officials made good on threats to cut the strip's fuel supply, reducing shipments of benzene and diesel and causing lineups at Gaza's gas stations. Israeli officials have said the cuts will be up to 14 per cent of the regular weekly allotment, while Palestinian officials said shipments were down as much as 50 per cent and likely to affect the fuel supply for Gaza's only power plant.

Israel's Attorney-General told the government yesterday it could not cut electrical power to the Gaza Strip as part of its sanctions against the Hamas-controlled territory, as it had planned to do, although he did approve other measures, Reuters reported.

Israel's supreme court has told the government to explain its planned actions against Gaza. Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz said that the plan to reduce power to Gaza needed further scrutiny because of the possible impact on the population.

The Sufa cargo crossing into Gaza, used for humanitarian shipments of food, fuel and medicines, has also been closed, leaving just one cargo crossing capable of handling about 55 supply trucks a day, down from 100 to 120 daily.

Got that? For some unknown, unmentioned reason, Israel has decided to “intensify its campaign in Gaza” and seems to be antagonistic toward an entire region, which it has declared “a hostile entity.” Why, it’s almost as if, to Wheeler, there’s no Hamas bent on exterminating the Jews of Israel and raining down a relentless volley of mullah-supplied rockets on the folks of the Negev and Sderot; almost as if Israel is acting out of sheer spite.

Wheeler’s second article is equally biased. In this one, her object of sympathy is Fatah, Hamas’s rival over in the West Bank. Stout-hearted men that they are, Fatah higher-ups are doing their level best to restore law and order to the lawless town of Nablus. At the moment, though, it’s unclear if they’ll be able to fulfill their goal since Israel has put up all sorts of roadblocks that are making it well nigh impossible:

…Welcome to Nablus, population 170,000, once known as the Palestinians' economic engine and a cosmopolitan centre of architecture and poetry. Today it's a city with an economy largely cut off by Israeli checkpoints and a population demoralized by unemployment; it is also subject to frequent raids by Israeli soldiers, who see it as a hotbed of terrorism.

Now, with crime rates skyrocketing, gunfire in the streets and vigilante justice rampant, Nablus poses a critical test for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who is under heavy pressure to prove that his forces are in control of the West Bank ahead of an anticipated peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next month.

In the four months since Hamas wrested control of Gaza, Mr. Abbas's forces have clamped down on Islamist movements in the West Bank; his Preventative Security troops have been criticized by Amnesty International for arresting more than 1,000 suspected Hamas members, many of whom Amnesty said were tortured in prison.

But that campaign has now been extended to a general effort to impose law and order, starting here, by cracking down on car theft, armed robberies and other gangland-style crimes. For the first time since most people can remember, the region's estimated 3,000 police officers are flagging cars, checking documents, seizing weapons and arresting wanted men.

"We have to create a positive atmosphere for our political leaders," said new Nablus police chief Colonel Ahmad Sharkawi, a long-time associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who was installed here shortly after Hamas's takeover of Gaza.

"We had to start with Nablus ... because we believe strongly that if Nablus is under control, this will be positively reflected in other places," he said.

To boost their efforts, the U.S. security co-ordinator for the Palestinians, Keith Dayton, visited Nablus last week, calling the security plan a "first real test" for a future Palestinian state.

But the task ahead is daunting: Nablus is a strong base for the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent organization that claimed full or shared responsibility for 22 suicide attacks against Israeli targets between 2001 and 2006.

There are also dozens of criminal gangs and family clans, all of them having amassed large quantities of guns.

Already there are stumbling blocks. Israel granted approval more than a month ago for the deployment of an additional 500 police officers in Nablus to help bring its chaotic streets under control. But their arrival, now expected within the next 10 days, has been delayed in part by a shortage of equipment.

More alarming, the optimism surrounding a program of amnesty for nearly 200 men wanted by Israel, mainly gunmen with the Martyrs Brigades, is also fading. The program, announced in July to much fanfare, required each man to surrender his weapons and remain in informal Palestinian Authority custody for three months on a promise of being removed from an Israeli wanted list.

But three months on, an al-Aqsa member waiting furtively on a street corner for a journalist says he is unconvinced that his name has been cleared, and is again packing a pistol on his hip. He is not the only one to rearm, he said.

"For the last three months we have committed ourselves to law and order, we have not used our weapons in any way. And Israel has not responded," said the gunman, identifying himself only as Sari…

Still, these first steps are giving the ordinary residents of Nablus, who have dared not stir out of doors at night for fear of being robbed or shot, hope that some sense of normalcy will return.

Hey, who doesn’t want that, Sari?

Now, I’m no ace reporter for Canada’s newspaper of record, but even I can see that Sari is taking the credulous Ms. Wheeler, who’s already predisposed to think ill of Israel, for a ride in the dumb dhimmi bus. Does she really believe that this “gunman” (Wheeler-speak for “terrorist”) has been sitting around for three months waiting for the Jews to take him off some list? I don’t think so. More likely he picked up a gun again at the first opportunity, as resolved as ever to kill as many Jews as is humanly possible so that the map can be restored to its pristine, pre-Israel condition.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:55 | link | comments

Rolling out the red carpet for an oily royal: A blistering exposé of British hypocrisy in—of all places—lefty rag the Independent:

This week, Gordon Brown and David Cameron will welcome the leader of one of the world's most vicious dictatorships to Britain. Both men will embrace King Abdullah al-Saud, who heads a regime in which, according to Amnesty International, "Fear and secrecy permeate every aspect of life. Every day the most fundamental human rights of people in Saudi Arabia are being violated."

In his Labour Party conference speech last month, the Prime Minister declared that he would oppose dictatorship everywhere: "The message should go out to anyone facing persecution from Burma to Zimbabwe ... human rights are universal." He has refused to even attend the same summit as the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, on the grounds that "there is no freedom in Zimbabwe, and there is widespread torture and mass intimidation of the political opposition." David Cameron has also just promised to put "human rights" at the heart of his "foreign policy vision".

Yet both political leaders refuse to make a commitment to even mention human rights to the king. Instead, he will ride in a golden carriage with the Queen, and be guest of honour at a Buckingham Palace banquet. It is the start of a three-day state visit, funded by the British taxpayer. The decision to lavish large sums and the rare prestige of a state visit on King Abdullah has attracted severe criticism in Westminster. The Liberal Democrats' acting leader, Vincent Cable, has refused to attend the banquet. The Labour MP John McDonnell said: "We are feting this man because Saudi Arabia controls 25 per cent of the world's oil, and because we sell him billions of pounds' worth of weapons. It is an insult to everything Britain stands for to put these geopolitical concerns ahead of the rights of women, trade unionists and all Saudi people."

While King Abdullah is cheered by our political leaders, many of his victims will be protesting outside. Sandy Mitchell, 52, went to Saudi Arabia to work as an anaesthetic technician at a hospital in Riyadh more than a decade ago – and got a rare outsider's glimpse into how the king maintains his power. He explains: "One day in 2000 I was getting out of my car at the hospital when I was pounced on. I was battered to the ground, a hood was put over my head, and they manacled my hands and feet. I thought – I'm being kidnapped."

He woke up in the Madhethe interrogation centre, where the Saudi police demanded he confess to being a British spy ordered to plant bombs in the country. He told then the bombs were obviously the work of Saudi Islamists – a view now accepted to be true – so they hung him upside down and began to beat his feet and buttocks with an axe handle for eight days. All the while, he could hear his friend Bill Sampson being gang-raped in the next room.

Mr Mitchell was eventually released after 32 months, when he was swapped for several Saudi citizens being held in Guantanamo Bay. But he warns: "The torture chambers in Saudi weren't created for me. These rooms were like a human abattoir. There was years' worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean. It was all over the walls. We were lucky we survived, but there are countless Saudi people who we never hear about who don't survive those chambers." Mr Mitchell will be joined at the protests by many refugees who have narrowly escaped this fate, including the trade unionist Yahya al-Faifi.

But life in Saudi Arabia is worst of all for women. While King Abdullah offers praise for Britain's female head of state, in his country all women are kept in effect under house arrest. They are banned from driving, from leaving the house without a male guardian, even in a medical emergency, or from holding a passport. Whenever women try to struggle free from these rules, the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" – a posse of uniformed thugs who stalk the streets – beat them with batons.

There was a rare glimpse into how this system of gender apartheid works last year when a female Saudi writer called Badria al-Bisher authored a plea for change. She wrote: "Imagine being a woman, and being subject to harassment, beating, or murder, then when your picture is published in local newspapers, along with the criminals' in all their murderousness, there will still be those who ask if you, the victim, were veiled ... Imagine being a woman whose nose, arms, and legs are now broken by your husband, and when you submit a complaint to a judge saying: He beats me! He'd casually reply by saying: Yes? What else? ... Imagine being a woman, and this "guardian" of yours is your 15-year-old son."

The website on which this appeal appeared has since been shut down. The House of Saud's dysfunctions are not contained within the Arabian peninsula; they are burning their way out across the world – and backfiring on Britain.

In order to appease their own internal Wahabbi-Islamist extremists, the Saudi dictatorship is handing them tens of billions of oil-dollars to promote their vision across the globe. As the dissident ex-CIA agent Robert Baer says: "Never forget that it is the al-Saud who sign the cheques for these extreme mosque schools all over the world. It's hush money to divert Muslims' attention from the [activities of] the al-Saud [royal family]." The Saudi dictatorship is slowly poisoning global Islam, ensuring the most austere and fanatical desert vision liquidates the softer, more mystical strands – and we are already seeing this backfire on to the streets of London and New York.

Privately, government ministers claim King Abdullah is slowly reforming the kingdom. They contrast him to the Interior Minister, Naif al-Saud, who blames the September 11 attacks on the Israeli security services and is even more hard line. But Human Rights Watch says that under King Abdullah, "reform has been more cosmetic than real". For example, two of the country's leading liberal reformists, Abdullah and Isa al-Hamid, are currently awaiting trial. Their "crime" was to support a totally peaceful protest organised by mothers of men who have been seized without explanation by the Saudi state and held for years, without contact, lawyers or trial. Their names will not be uttered by Brown or Cameron this week.

The truth is that the British Government – and all Western societies – are so addicted to Saudi Arabia's oil that they feel they can't speak back. They are terrified of seeing the petrol that lubricates our economy (or the arms deals that butter it) being turned off, as it was in 1973 oil crisis. It is only by making a rapid transition away from our dependence on fossil fuels that this depraved relationship with a tyranny can be unpicked – but the Government shows no sign of doing this, preferring to stick to the old exchange of sycophancy, arms deals and crude oil.

As The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it: "Addicts don't tell the truth to their dealers." That's why this week the torturer will be inside Buckingham Palace, and his victims left outside, alone…

You know things are getting way too surreal when the wife of the president who’s spearheading the War on Terror dons a hijab, while the Independent offers clarity on the subject of the Wahhabis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:18 | link | comments (1)

Humaniterrorism: It may have resulted in a hung jury, but as Steve Emerson writes, the trial of the Holy Land Foundation clearly exposed the organization’s terrorist roots. From the New York Post:

October 29, 2007 -- THE trial of four key figures with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended last week with a hung jury. Holy Land's defenders and allies are trumpeting the mistrial as a huge victory. Yet the defendants remain in legal jeopardy, with a new trial almost assured - and the prosecution has, at a minimum, closed a lucrative funding channel for the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas deserve praise for bringing this case in the first place. The trial record conclusively demonstrated that Holy Land and several of its unindicted co-conspirators - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - grew out of Hamas. Moreover, it showed that they spent the better part of 15 years deceiving government agencies and the media, hiding their true goals under a mask of work for charity and civil rights.

To be sure, the mistrial was portrayed as another in a series of setbacks for the government's anti-terror prosecution strategy. Notably, several jurors seemed to discount the testimony of an Israeli security expert, testifying under an assumed name, apparently on the belief that Israelis cannot be trusted on Palestinian matters.

Some jurors may even have bought the defense argument that anti-Israel terror isn't truly terrorism, but merely "resisting the occupation." One juror told the Dallas Morning News of his difficulty in describing Hamas as a terrorist group, stating, "Part of it does terrorist acts, but it's a political movement. It's an uprising."

The highly technical nature of some evidence likely also played a role. Whatever the reasons, prosecutors failed to persuade the jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Holy Land and its officials deliberately routed money to Hamas through a set of Palestinian charities. But the jury was also unable to fully exonerate the defendants, and the government has announced its intent to retry the case.

Moreover, the trial uncovered numerous ugly secrets of Holy Land and its leaders. For starters, it exposed as lies their oft-made claims to not be supporting Hamas. The evidence clearly linked Holy Land and CAIR to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the hard-line Egyptian Islamist umbrella group and godfather of every Sunni terrorist group from Hamas to al Qaeda…

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:58 | link | comments

Knight moves: Here’s Claudia Rosett, deliciously scathing, on the subject of the benighted Kofi Annan receiving a knighthood.

Yup, you read correctly. The silly-ass Brits up and knighted the blighter:

Yes, in the giddy afterlife of his departure from the UN Executive Suite, Kofi Annan has now received an honorary knighthood. In a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace, he was made an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. We are at least spared the prospect of referring to him as “Sir Kofi.” Unlike Annan’s former deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, who is now both “Sir” and “Lord,” it seems that Annan, not being British, is not entitled to be a “Sir.”

 

But honestly, who can keep up? Regardless of performance, UN high officials — past and present — seem to move these days through an endless shower of prizes and awards, Nobels and knighthoods, accolades and directorships (Annan has also just joined the board of Ted Turner’s UN Foundation).

 

Why? Annan by the account of the UN’s own investigation into Oil-for-Food turned in a substandard performance in his administration of the biggest relief program the UN had ever run — failing to blow the whistle on a global gala of corruption that reached multi-billion dollar proportions on his watch (and was reaching its peak right about the time he accepted his 2001 Nobel Prize). Annan failed to acknowledge his own responsibilities, failed to exercise adequate oversight when questions were raised about the UN-related business activities of his own son, and in a series of so-called sweeping “reforms” during his decade in the executive suite, he failed abysmally to reform the UN — bequeathing his successor a minefield of scandals still going off, and leaving U.S. federal prosecutors to sift through assorted cases of UN-related bribery, money-laundering and fraud which inadequate UN oversight and poor management had (to put it generously) failed to stop.

 

Were there awards for such behavior as bureaucratic passivity in the face of genocide (Annan as head of peacekeeping during the Rwanda slaughter), or hypocrisy in lecturing the world on good governance (Annan’s “Global Compact”), or evasion and obfuscation (how did the family of Kofi Annan’s brother end up with the lease on Kofi’s spacious old NY-state-taxpayer-subsidized apartment?), there might be arguments for an endless cascade of trophies. That might sound less desirable than the current bonanza of decorations and awards, but the way these UN door prizes keep piling up regardless, I’m not sure the prize-winners, or for that matter, the prize-givers, could tell the difference. By now, it’s all part of the ritual.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:30 | link | comments

 Idiotic confab: Melanie Phillips weighs in on the assininity of Annapolis:

…So much is dismally obvious from the most casual acquaintance with the facts of this conflict over the decades. Yet the Bush administration, Europe, Britain and Olmert himself (to what extent this is because he is under the American cosh is unclear) insist on behaving as if Fatah can and will make the peace. While they persist with this lethal fantasy, they guarantee the persistence of the conflict. By ignoring the fact that Abbas has not complied with one single precondition for negotiations laid down in the ‘road map’, namely that he must dismantle the infrastructure of terror and indeed has refused point blank to combat Hamas, they only ensure that terror will grow.

This is not, as they imply, a fight between two parties equally responsible for a terrible conflict. It is a war to exterminate the Jewish state that is being waged by Arabs and Islamists with differing strategies and agendas on the same continuum of annihilation – and with not one single credible interlocutor on their side who genuinely wants to live in peace with Israel. The western refusal to acknowledge this inconvenient truth gives this conflict its surreal dimension, in which a country that has been under exterminatory attack for the past six decades is expected to make reparations to its assailants and reward them with a state of their own even while they continue with their war against it; to provide food, power and other supplies to its attackers in Gaza in order that they can continue their murderous assault upon it; and to treat a leader who refuses to stop the war as an apostle of peace simply because no-one can think of a better idea.

Well here’s a better idea – fight and defeat terror and aggression by all possible means, economic, political, diplomatic and military, and exclude all those who promote it from the community of civilised nations until they renounce it forever. The alternative approach – appeasement – not only doesn't work but it ensures that the violence and aggression will only increase. As has happened everywhere this doctrine has prevailed.

This above all else is the reason why the Israel/Arab conflict seems to resist all attempts to bring it to an end. It is because, from the early years of the last century ownwards, the western world has consistently shown that it is all too willing to give terror its victory.

Once again the Jews are left to chirp furiously in the coal mine as the forces of darkness get set to take down the entire Western world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments

 Laura Bush’s muddled thinking: She’s “inspired” by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese freedom-fighter who’s been victimized by a harsh, totalitarian regime, but has no problem donning a totalitarian symbol during a visit to one of the most repressive regimes on the planet. From VOA News:

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday program, Mrs. Bush acknowledged that part of the reason for her trip was to help improve America's image in the Arab world by highlighting concern for women's health. But she stressed that she learned as much about Arab women as they did about her. She said stereotypes were broken on both sides - especially in Saudi Arabia, where she met women who were fully veiled.

"I told them that I had always felt that they were closed to me that I would not be able to reach them because of the way they are covered," added Mrs. Bush. "And one of the women said to me - she said 'You know, I may all dressed in black, but I am transparent.' And what they were saying to me is they want to reach out, they want American women to know what they are like."

The first lady said she has come to realize that her role as the wife of the President of the United States gives her a platform to speak out when she thinks she can make a difference. That has been particularly true when it comes to Burma.

In a VOA interview last month, she voiced support for the pro-democracy movement and urged Burmese soldiers to refrain from violence against those seeking freedom.

She told FOX News Sunday that she has long been inspired by the leader of the Burmese opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, noting she is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner living under house arrest.

"When I learned about her story, then I learned about Burma and how repressed they are by this military junta that leads Burma - that is the government," she continued. "In fact, I just learned about 90 percent of the people in Burma make less than a dollar a day. Burma was the breadbasket of Asia, it was known for its intellectual people, its wonderful culture and now it is just in total shambles.

Mark Twain published his book The Innocents Abroad in 1869. Laura Bush is the modern-day equivalent—a sweet, clueless innocent who can’t see that describing oneself  as "transparent" is a bad thing, since such "transparency" can only occur in a society which perceives a woman as a nullity, a blank, a void, and dresses her accordingly. By donning her head gear, silly Mrs. Bush, the wife of the leader of the free world, has only served to validate that dismal status.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments

Bizarre list: What do you get when you ask a bunch of Brits to identify the “top 100 living geniuses”? They compile a list that—go figure—includes 26 Brits and more than a few “genius” lefties (like George Soros, #3, Harold Pinter, #31, and “Avrum Noam Chomski”, #32).

Also making the grade: one terrormeister (Osama bin Laden, #43), one deranged Jew-hating Jew (Bobby Fisher, #32, although some might say that “Avrum Noam Chomski” qualifies as one too), several names that leave one scratching one’s head at their inclusion (Dolly Parton? Mohammad Ali? Morrisey?), and many names that require googling to discover who the heck they are.

Only two Canucks made the list—physicist Nima Arkani Hamed, #32, and novelist Margaret Atwood #49; Canadian-born poet Leonard Cohen, #58, is listed as “American”.

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

As easy as 1-2-3: An infidel gets a lesson in putting on a hijab:

Mrs. Bush defends her decision to don this symbol of political Islam. As she told Fox News, "[T]hey saw this as giving me a gift from their culture, and it was the scarf with the pink ribbons and the pink edging on it, the breast cancer scarf, that I put on..."I think we all have these stereotypes of each other, Americans and Arabs, and it's a really good thing to be able to break those stereotypes down and get to know each other."

Yeah, right. And, sorry Laura, but unless my eyes deceive me, I don't see a trace of pink on that shmatta.

On the plus side, Mrs. Bush has inspired me to update an old Irving Berlin classic:

In your Saudi head scarf

You’re makin’ us want to barf

When we recall Mo Atta

And his Saudi “shahids”.

 

Virgins, they would answer,

Don’t ever get breast cancer.

Unlike those real life women

With their very real needs.

 

Racked by ignorance,

So racked by ignorance,

That they’d rather die quickly

Than tell a male they’re sickly.

 

Oh, I could begin to sob

To see her in that hijab

Since it’s a symbol that Wahhabis

All love to see…

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:48 | link | comments (3)

Har dee har: Maureen Dowd, the New York Times’s dependably lame chick columnist, imagines a high-larious exchange between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney:

…RUSSERT: Conservatives are tossing around some lock-and-load language. The president is talking about Iran sparking a “nuclear holocaust” and World War III. Giuliani adviser Norman Podhoretz thinks we’re in World War IV. Shouldn’t you at least give the new sanctions against Iran a chance to work?

CHENEY: Oh, we have, Tim. The sanctions were announced Thursday. It’s now Sunday. I think things have gotten so bad inside Iran, from the standpoint of the Iranian people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.

RUSSERT: But what if your analysis is not correct — again? Let’s put up on the screen part of an interview The New York Times’s Thom Shanker did with the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen: “With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region ‘has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.’ The military option, he said, should be a last resort.” Your own chairman of the Joint Chiefs does not think the military can handle a third war.

CHENEY: If Admiral Mullen wants to be Admiral Sullen, that’s his business. I’m not going to be a defeatist or question the courage of our fighting men.

RUSSERT: Critics say that if you attack Iran, there will be riots in every Muslim capital, the Iranians will flood Iraq with more explosives and money for the Shiite militias. They say you’ll only end up making more enemies for America, and our troops.

CHENEY: Why don’t we just give the Islamofascists Sudetenland, Tim? Peace in our time.

RUSSERT: The Europeans are upset that you might start another war in their backyard.

CHENEY: (Rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath) Eurappeasers.

RUSSERT: An Iranian spokesman dismissed the new U.S. sanctions as “worthless and ineffective” and said they were “doomed to fail as before.” And Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards — a group you have accused of proliferating weapons of mass destruction — also warned that his forces would respond with an “even more decisive” strike if attacked.

CHENEY: Don’t worry about General Ali Baba, Tim. We gave the Israelis his home address.

RUSSERT: How will you even know where to bomb, given that all the experts say the Iranians have hidden their real nuclear facilities underground?

CHENEY: Can you say magic carpet bombing, Tim? We didn’t build those bunker busters just to stack ’em up in a warehouse in North Dakota.

RUSSERT: It’s so close to the next election, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t you just keep on the diplomatic track and let the next president make this decision?

CHENEY: You really want Rudy Giuliani playing with the nuclear button, Tim? Now, that’s insane.

La Dowd’s Clueless lefty “logic”: Nukes? In Iran? How ridiculous. How can there be nukes in Iran when there were never any nukes in Iraq? As for all that stuff about Ahmadinejad wanting to nuke Israel so his Messiah can have his return engagement—just a bunch of Islamophobic fear-mongering. The real reason the U.S. wants to bomb Iran is for the, um, oil.

It’s always about the oil, isn't it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:27 | link | comments

Quel relief! : Clueless nuclear watchthingy Mo ElBaradei says he's pretty sure the mullahs are"a few years away" from building a nuke.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:46 | link | comments

Panic disorder: The oily custodians of the two holy mosques have more or less come to expect that, come Haj time, a number of pilgrims—sometimes numbering in the hundreds—may  lose their lives in the crush. It's the all but inevitable result of cramming far too many people into far too small a space. Now, however, the Wahhabis are turning to German expertise to help them cut down on the casualties, which are being attributed not to greedy sheiks cramming far too many people into fall too small a space, but to a phenomenon that's been dubbed “escape panic”. From Der Spiegel:

...Every Muslim is required to make the pilgrimage to Mecca once in his life in order to prove his obedience to God. The pilgrimage, known as the hajj, takes place every year on five days during the last month of the Islamic lunar calendar. The Prophet Muhammad originated the hajj tradition in the seventh century. First, hundreds of Muslims came -- then thousands, then tens of thousands. By January 2006 the number had climbed to 3 million.

That makes Mecca, the place of redemption, a place of risk. Nowhere else in the world do as many people crowd onto as small an area. The valley at Mina is about three kilometers by three kilometers (1.9 miles by 1.9 miles) large. Every year, it's as if Berlin's entire population were to converge on the city's Schönefeld airport.

The pilgrims arrive from more than 100 different countries. For most, it is the first time they have flown in an airplane. They land at Jeddah airport by the Red Sea, which opens a special terminal during the hajj. Hundreds of thousands of them are illiterate, and they speak dozens of different languages. In some of their countries of origins, the custom is to walk on the right side of the street; in others, the custom is to walk on the left. The situation involves "many uncontrollable variables," Dirk Helbing notes soberly.

 

Researchers have learned from computer simulations that people who want to escape from a room may block each others' way in a phenomenon known as "escape panic." When those at the back push and the exit at the front is blocked, people are crushed to death. But the case in Mecca presented the scientists with a puzzle: People have died even in open areas there.

In order to evaluate the 2006 videos, Anders Johansson developed a computer program to count the pilgrims. When people crowd into a subway or an elevator, three or four of them can fit onto one square meter (10.8 square feet). In scenarios developed by researchers studying pedestrian behavior, based on the size of the average European, the maximum density was six people per square meter. In Mecca, the number per square meter was 10.

Helbing and Johansson scanned the video material for early warning signals announcing the start of a mass panic. When they viewed the film at 10 times the normal speed, they found what they were looking for: Twenty minutes before the catastrophe, the first patterns of irregular movement appeared in the crowd, which had previously been flowing at an even pace. Shortly before the catastrophe, blocks of hundreds of people suddenly began jerkily drifting in every direction. What had appeared fluid just a moment before was now behaving "like the earth during an earthquake," Helbing explains. Crevices appear between blocks of people. Some people lose traction. Those people who fall down may never stand up again…

As far as I can tell, there’s only one sure fire way to avoid falling prey to “escape panic”—apostasy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:32 | link | comments

The Jews’ lose-lose situation: If you want to enjoy the rest of your day, I’d strongly caution you not to read the following by Melanie Philips:

Norman Podhoretz, the grand-daddy of neoconservative foreign policy and now an adviser to Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, has repeated his statement that bombing Iran is now unavoidable – an argument laid out in detail in his Commentary article last June. Those, however, who believe the wicked but currently fashionable canard that warmongering neocons are pushing America into another war that will endanger the world solely to further the interests of Israel would do well to ponder the appalling prospect for both Israel and the Jewish diaspora that a strike on Iran may unleash. The most likely immediate outcome of an American strike would be a pincer attack on Israel from Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

As Amir Taheri reported last month in Gulf News, Iran has been busily buying up land in Lebanon to overcome the fact that since last year’s Lebanon war, Hezbollah missiles pointing at Israel have been pushed back behind the Litani river. So now Iran is creating a string of missile bases north of the Litani instead:

 

If the scheme is fully implemented, Lebanon's Shi'ite could end up as the only one of the country's 18 communities to have a contiguous area of their own from the Syrian border to the frontier with Israel, and passing by southern Beirut. That would give the Hezbollah, considered as a state within the Lebanese state, a clear territorial expression as well.A chunk of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah plus Gaza under Hamas control would form the two arms of a pincer that the Islamic Republic could use against Israel in case of a broader conflict in the region.

 

In addition to this expected pincer attack on Israel, it is feared that Iran will unleash Hezbollah to attack Jewish targets around the world -- of which the attacks on the Jewish community centre and then the Israel embassy in Buenos Aires in 1994 and 2003 (pictured) were a foretaste. Everything that the Iranian regime, Hezbollah and Hamas say makes crystal clear that, while their ambitions are to create a regional and global Islamic hegemony, both the Jewish state and the wider Jewish people are the objects of a particularly deranged malevolence. And Iran and its proxies are well aware – how could they not be? – that the western world, having so dismayingly absorbed some of that malevolence, is ambivalent about the fate of Israel and Jewish peoplehood.

The consequences for the Jews of a strike on Iran are therefore fearsome. But the alternative, a nuclear Iran, is worse -- not just for Israel but for the world, which from that time forth would be held hostage to nuclear blackmail by an Iran hell-bent on regional and global Islamic domination. This is not a choice between a good outcome and a bad outcome. This is a choice between a terrible outcome and a cataclysmic one. It is the choice between a rock and a very hard place; and those who now advise that there is no alternative but war with Iran do so with the heaviest of hearts…

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

Sock puppies: Couldn't resist this one from the Telegraph:

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

A choice of enemies: The leader of the Jewish community in Switzerland elucidates the dilemma of Swiss Jews: which political party should they support since the ones on the left despise Israel and the one on the right is borderline anti-Semitic. From EJP:

GENEVA (EJP)---The populist and xenophobic right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which was the biggest winner of general elections on Sunday, is bordering on what can be considered as anti-Semitism, Alfred Donath, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish communities (FSCI), told European Jewish Press on Monday.  

The anti-Europe party, led by Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, consolidated its position as the country’s leading force after a bitter campaign marred by charges of racism.

Commenting on the results of the vote, Donath told EJP: "They are not anti-Semitic because they care to avoid any outburst but their victory is certainly a kind of encouragement for anti-Semites to express themselves."

The SVP, also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC), gained seven parliamentary seats to 62 in the 200-seat National Council or lower house of parliament, while the Green party added five.

The Socialists, the second largest force in the country, were set to lose nine seats, leaving them with 43, while the business-friendly Radical Party, which has made anti-Semitic statements, was also set for sharp losses, shedding five seats to 31.

Donath said the Federation of Jewish communities has strongly reacted in the press against the SVP’s anti-foreigners positions.

One of the party's campaign rallies ended in a riot, while a poster showing three white sheep booting out a black sheep drew accusations of racism.

“For us Jews, foreigners are playing a very important role in Switzerland,” Donath said. He referred to Torah, the first five books of the Bible, in which one can read: "Remember that you were a foreigner in the land of Egypt."

"On the other side, this party has shown towards Israel a position which is the closest to ours,” Donath added.

"Not because they love Israel but because they believe that Israel and the Mideast are not Switzerland’s business."

The Swiss Jewish leader acknowledged that Jews have had problems with all the Swiss political parties.

With the Greens, for example, when two of their MPs retuning from a trip to Iran said they do not believe Tehran had any intention to use the atomic arm.

He also pointed to the "strong pro-Palestinian position" of the Greens.

"They organize and attend almost all anti-Israel demonstrations," he said.

The Jewish community, he added, has had the same problem with the Socialist party, in particular with Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey whose statements "are always unbalanced and pro-Palestinian." "At every occasion, the Greens and Socialists call for a boycott of Israeli products," he said.

Sadly, what you have in Switzerland (and elsewhere in Europe) is old nativist Judenhass on one side and new Islamic-leftist Judenhass on the other. Which leaves the Juden out in the cold—again.

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

Intrepid truth teller: What happens when an Arab breaks ranks with his landsmen and tells the truth about Israel? Why, it’s freak-out and death-threat time, of course. From albawaba:

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy has urged all Muslims across the country to express their views following a new book which hails Israel and slams Palestinian resistance groups. According to a Saudi newspaper, the leaders of the Islamic community in Italy are furious about the new book which amazingly was edited by an Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist!

 

Magdi Allam, 55, deputy chief editor of Italy’s most influential newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, is again at the center of the storm following his seventh book, dubbed “Viva Israele” (Long Live Israel). The subtitle of the book reads “From the ideology of death to the civilization of life: my story.”

 

“Long Live Israel” is the tale of his life ever since his youth under the republican regime of late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

 

According to Allam, Nasser is responsible for having turned Egypt - and the rest of the Arab world - into the cradle of the "ideology of death". Allam claims Nasser brought about an aggressive pan-Arabic dream based on the denial of Israel’s right to exist.  The need for the destruction of Israel is the dominant theme that, Allam states, made death and destruction the core values of a once liberal Islamic culture.

 

Thus, the new book defends the existence of Israel and terms armed Palestinian groups as "dangerous terrorist threats." In addition, Allam wrote that during their operations in the Palestinian territories, Israeli forces have been trying to avoid hitting Palestinian civilians and only aim to defend Israeli citizens….

 

Furthermore, Allam added that the main cause for the Israeli – Palestinian dispute stems form the Palestinian terror.

 

Allam says that "Israel - along with Pope Benedict XVI - represents the residual hope for Western civilization, which, more than other civilizations, embodies the sacredness of life and personal freedom."

 

Allam also slams the Arab calls for the killing of Jews. In the past, Allam also criticized resistance groups in Lebanon and Iraq.

 

Muslims in Italy have been claiming that Allam is an unreliable person who spreads suspicion and hatred against Islam and Muslim people by reporting undocumented, unverified or even utterly false news, just to flatter to the West.

 

It should be noted that during his adolescent years, Allam maintained completely different views. Allam was raised as a Muslim and attended the Italian school of Cairo. In Italy since 1972, Allam started his stay there as an enthusiastic activist for the Palestinian cause. At that period, Allam thought of Israel as a racist and aggressive state "invented by the Western world as some kind of compensation for the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust".

 

Years later, his interest in the history of Zionism and a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat brought him to realize that "Arafat was responsible for Palestinian terrorism" and that "the predication of the ideology of death eventually hit and harmed the Palestinians themselves."

 

The latest book has changed Allam's life. The Saudi newspaper reported that following threats to his life, the Italian police decided to intensify his security escort. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that many Muslims in Italy denounce Allam as a new "Salman Rushdie", the British writer who was forced into hiding in the 1990s after Iran's religious leaders issued a fatwa (religious edict), calling for his death.

 

Viva Allam, a Righteous Muslim. If only Condi Rice were soliciting his advice instead of him Jimminy's and James "Eff the Jews" Baker's.

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

Looking for clues in all the wrong places: Condi Rice remains as determined as ever to foist a pointless and potentially deadly Peace in Our Time process on Israel. And to help ensure she’s on the right track, she’s getting pointers on P.I.O.T. talks from a noted Israel-detester as well as from the man who sought to turn that sow’s ear of a kleptocrat, Yasser Arafat, into a silk purse of a statesman, and who, to that end, turned him into the most frequent sleep-over guest at the White House. From the New York Sun:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rice is looking to the past for lessons on how to make next month's Mideast peace conference a success.

As she prepares to host the international meeting in Annapolis, Md., Ms. Rice has delved into the history of American attempts to mediate peace in the region, plunging into the diplomatic annals and seeking out the major players responsible for both successes and failures.

"She's trying to draw on the historical record and the experiences of others to see what she can glean and how that may be applicable to the current day," a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said yesterday, ahead of Ms. Rice's November 4-6 trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, her second in three weeks to organize the Annapolis gathering.

Most recently, she met this week with President Carter, sitting down in her office on Wednesday for a talk with the former president who brokered the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, the first between the Jewish state and an Arab nation.

Mr. Carter has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Middle East polices and wrote a recent book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," that some believe is anti-Israeli. Mr. McCormack said the differences in approach were not a subject of her conversation.

Ms. Rice has also spoken by phone with President Clinton about his work on the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace deal. She discussed with both Mr. Clinton and a former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, the unsuccessful 2000 attempt in Shepherdstown, W.Va., to mediate an Israeli-Syrian agreement and their bid later that year at Camp David to forge an Israeli-Palestinian Arab pact.

Others she has reached out to include former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker, and to one-time American peace negotiators like Dennis Ross, who played a key role in the Clinton administration and the administration of President George H.W. Bush…

Since Condi’s unlikely to glean anything of value from these guys (although no doubt James “Eff the Jews” Baker had a few choice thoughts for her), I have decided to cut through the crap and give her all the pointers she’ll need. Here they are:

·         Don’t give the Arabs any more land. They’ve already screwed up all the land they have.

·         To regain your senses, repeat after me: Mahmoud Abbas is not Martin Luther King, Mahmoud Abbas is not Martin Luther King…

·         Fuggedaboutit! The only kind of “peace” the Arabs are interested in is “dar al salaam”—the peace that will exist once Israel is eliminated and Islam rules uber alles.

My consultancy bill is in the mail.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:54 | link | comments

“Peace”-mongers: You gotta love the juicy totalitarian-speak of this Tehran Times piece—sabre-rattling and belligerence ill-disguised as talk of “peace”.

TEHRAN -- Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said here on Saturday that Iranian missiles pose no threat to any country.

“Iranian missiles pose no threat to any country, and they will only come down on the heads of those who violate the territorial integrity of Iran,” Najjar told Defense Ministry Diplomatic Committee members at a meeting in the capital.

The defense capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran are at the service of regional peace and can be regarded as a part of the Islamic world’s defense force, he added.

President Bush said recently that Iran’s missiles would pose a threat to the United States and Europe by 2015.

“Our intelligence community assesses that, with continued foreign assistance, Iran could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States and all of Europe before 2015,” the defense minister said.

Bush’s statement was only a pretext for the plan to establish a U.S. missile shield in the Czech Republic, Najjar observed.

U.S. officials are also angry about the positive outcome of the recent gathering of Persian Gulf countries, which focused on establishing security in the region without the presence of foreign forces, he pointed out.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he stated that the United States’ decision to unilaterally impose sanctions on Iran is a sign of the U.S. government’s desperation.

“Such sanctions will only add to our determination to become more self-sufficient and united against enemy threats,” he asserted.

“Instead of concentrating on such propaganda and imposing sanctions and pressure on Iran, White House officials should respect the Iranian nation’s right to use this God-given energy,” he said in reference to Iran’s nuclear program.

The Europeans should also be on guard against the tricks of the warmongering U.S. government, he added.

What, no warnings about tricky, warmongering Zionists? Some little fascist flak’s falling down on the job.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments (1)

Shocking!: A review in the New York Review of Books, a lefty intellectual rag, which actually seems to “get” the jihad:

…The word sharia, usually translated as "law," refers to the "path" or "way" governing the modes of behavior by which Muslims are enjoined to seek salvation. The way may be known to God, but for human beings it is not predetermined. A famous hadith (tradition) of Muhammad states that differences of opinion between the learned is a blessing. Sharia reasoning is therefore "an open practice." In Islam's classical era, up until the tenth century, scholars exercised ijtihad—independent reasoning—in order to reach an understanding of the divine law. Ijtihad shares the same Arabic root as the more familiar jihad, meaning "effort" or "struggle," the word that is sometimes translated as "holy war." Ijtihad is in effect the intellectual struggle to discover what the law ought to be. As Kelsay remarks, the legal scholars trained in its sources and methodologies will seek to achieve a balance between the rulings of their predecessors and independent judgments reflecting the idea that "changing circumstances require fresh wisdom." The Sharia is not so much a body of law but a field of discourse or platform for legal reasoning. Recently, it has become an arena for intellectual combat.

It is therefore open to question whether the hijackers and the terrorists automatically put themselves beyond the bounds of Islam by killing innocents, as statements by Bush, Blair, and dozens of Muslim leaders and scholars suggest. With no churches or formally constituted religious authorities to police the boundaries of Islam, the only universally accepted orthodoxy is the Sharia itself. But the Sharia is more of an ideal than a formally constituted body of law. While interpreting the law was once the province of the trained clerical class of ulama, any consensus governing its correct interpretation has broken down under pressure of regional conflicts and the influence of religious autodidacts whose vision of Islam was formed outside the received scholarly tradition.

None of the three most influential theorists behind Sunni militancy, Abu'l Ala Maududi (1903–1979), Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949), and Sayyid Qutb, (1906–1966), received a traditional religious training. Yet both they and the authors of the landmark texts examined by Kelsay in his admirably lucid book (including the Charter of Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel, and bin Laden's 1998 Declaration) claim the mantle of the Sharia, as did the terrorists responsible for the atrocities in New York, Madrid, and London.

Like it or not, these terrorist campaigns were inspired by the example of the Prophet's struggle—his "just war"—against the Quraysh, the pagan tribesmen of Mecca. In the context of the original conflict between the early Muslims and the Meccans, the sources, including the Koran and the narratives of Muhammad's life, suggest that "fighting is an appropriate means by which Muslims should seek to secure the right to order life according to divine directives." In militant readings of the Sharia, the historical precedents are not so much interpreted as applied. For ultra-radicals such as bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri there is, as Kelsay observes, "little room for a sustained process of discerning divine guidance" along the lines enjoined by traditional scholars. An even more striking absence is evident in the criticisms of militant readings advanced by official Islamic authorities, including the widely respected Sheikh al-Azhar, head of the mosque-university in Cairo and once the single most important voice in Sunni Islam. While questioning the methods of the militants on grounds of practical ethics—will the "actions taken in the service of justice yield more harm than good?"—their criticisms usually fall short of challenging them on the grounds of political legitimacy. Conservative Muslim critics of militancy do not in fact dissent from the militant judgment that current political arrangements [in most Muslim majority states] are illegitimate.... In its broad outlines, the militant vision articulated by al-Zawahiri is also the vision of his critics.

The core of this consensus—shared by traditionally trained scholars and more populist leaders such as al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Maududi, his South Asian counterpart, is the belief that the abolition of the caliphate by Kemal Atatürk in Turkey in 1924 must not mean the end of Islamic government. In this vision, which is also shared by Shia jurists such as the late Ayatollah Khomeini, parliaments and elections are only acceptable within the frame of Islamic supremacy. They "cannot compromise on Muslim leadership," Kelsay writes. Full-blown democracy, where the Muslim voice might simply be one among many, implying a degree of moral equivalence between Islam and other perspectives, would be "dangerous, not only for the standing of the Muslim community, but for the moral life of humankind."…

Wonders never cease.

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

Survival 101: Being a reporter in the Middle East is fraught with peril—eating an iffy falafel, being in a shadid’s line of fire when he/she decides to self-detonate, etc. There’s also the chance that you could be kidnapped by a bunch of crazed jihadis and held for a long period of time. Now reporters in that volatile region can take a seminar being offered in Jerusalem that may provide them with the skills they’ll need to survive such an ordeal. From the Toronto Star:

…If the worst happens and you are taken against your will, your overriding goal, apart from escaping at the first good opportunity, must be to maintain as much control over your circumstances as you possibly can.

"You'd be surprised how much of your environment you can control," says Abramson. "Every time you are told to do something, you do something a little different. They say, `Don't move,' you move your toe."

Or, if your captors attempt to bind your wrists behind your back, you immediately place your hands out in front, so they are more likely to be tied there.

During four hours of skits, card tricks, monologue and discussion, Abramson offers a wealth of tips for coping with captivity. For example:

If you must venture into dangerous situations where kidnapping is a possibility, do so in a group, rather than on your own, because there really is strength in numbers.

If faced with capture, try to resist passively, a tactic that will at least buy extra time and may confuse your captors.

During interrogation, insert a lengthy pause before answering any question, even the most straightforward – a tactic aimed at preventing your interrogators from determining which subjects you are most reluctant to address.

Do not initiate casual conversation with your captors.

If your captors try to chat with you, do not reciprocate until you obtain some benefit, no matter how small – a loosening of your bonds, some food or drink, anything that increases your sense of control.

When speaking in your native language, try to enhance your control of the conversation by using lots of slang or rarefied constructions in order to make it difficult for your captors to understand you (assuming they do not speak your language well).

You are more likely to be hit or physically abused if you slouch, so try to maintain an erect posture with your head held high.

Make it clear to your captors that you are willing to co-operate with them but only if they do not hurt you.

Do your best, surreptitiously, if possible, to disconnect the wires from any explosive device placed near or on you; don't worry about which wires to pull out, because it is only in the movies that bombs are designed to detonate if the hero cuts the wrong strand (real bombs don't work that way).

Think – constantly – about a means of escape…

One “tip” not mentioned, but one which former captive, Beeb reporter Yvonne Ridley, found to be most effective: You could take Stockholm Syndrome to its ultimate conclusion and “revert” to one true faith of your captors (after which you could become a willing shill for Islam).

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

Islamic History Month a bust: Organizers in Toronto are trying to figure out why the locals didn’t bite. From the Ceeb:

Organizers of Islamic history month are mulling over why their project has failed to achieve the same success in Toronto that it's found in other parts of the country. 
 
The Canadian Islamic Congress declared October to be Islamic history month and received support from many cities and school boards, including Ottawa, Vancouver and Kingston, but not Toronto.
 
Zafar Bangash, director of the Islamic Society in York Region, said the success of black history month inspired his community to try something similar.

"Muslims have made a tremendous contribution to the development of science, geography, astronomy and so on. Which I believe is not very well known," he said. 
 
Bangash had hoped Islamic history month would spur a series of topical lectures and assignments in Toronto schools. But he said organizers were late getting started, which may explain why the Toronto school board was reluctant to jump on board.
 
Lloyd McKell, a senior official with the board's equity department, said the late start was just one part of the problem.
 
"What we have to be careful about," said McKell, "and this is why we need to discuss these initiatives and these events with these groups, is to ensure that such activities do not involve proselytizing about those faiths, specific faiths."

McKell said he's open to meeting with representatives from the Islamic community to discuss how they can get together and make the concept work next October.

Sounds like Mr. McKell ain’t no fool.

You  win some, you lose some. Even though Islamic History Month failed to fly, the CIC's Pink Hijab Day appears to have been a roaring success.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:56 | link | comments (2)

Women’s Lib in Iran: The Isalmofascist fashionistas can chuck a woman in jail should a stray hair emerge from her head covering or for a shocking glimpse of stocking, but according to this AFP piece in the Daily Star, mullocracy chicks are the most “liberated” in the Middle East. How so? They’re allowed to play rugby—as long as they’re wearing the proper garb, of course:

TEHRAN --  Elham Shahsavari, a 24-year-old Iranian woman, believes she has found her perfect sport, undeterred by a strict Islamic dress code and the long commute to training.

Shahsavari is a member of the Tehran women's rugby team.

Rugby and women may not seem an ideal combination in Islamic Iran, but girls are taking to one of the toughest sports with enthusiasm, amid greater official encouragement for them to participate in physical activities.

"In early 2006, Gorgan University advised me to play rugby because of my physical power," said the well-built Shahsavari, who overcame objections from her family, who worried about her traveling to training from a Tehran suburb.

"Rugby Union was just my thing," she said.

All women must cover their heads and bodily contours in Iran. The rugby field is no exception.

The players dart around the pitch wearing the maghnaeh, a garment that fully covers the head, shoulders, and neck, as well as a loose blue waistcoat, long-sleeved dark T-shirts, and loose tracksuit trousers.

Hardly uniform designed for a sport like rugby. But the players don't seem to mind, especially when the game allows them to let off steam in a way that is unimaginable elsewhere in their lives.

Iranian women proudly see themselves as the most emancipated in the Middle East, but still have to combine their careers and leisure activities with traditional expectations of childbearing, cooking, and cleaning.

Rugby Union, though, offers the excitement and physical activity that is sometimes lacking elsewhere. "Pass the ball ... tackle her ...catch it!" shout the women as they run and tumble around the field like their male counterparts.

"I am extraordinarily interested in rugby, and it does not matter what I wear. It is not uncomfortable," said Sahar Azizi, 16, a high school student.

It would have been inconceivable a quarter of a century ago, in the early years of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when competitive sports for women were strongly discouraged, for Iranian women to play so physical a sport as rugby.

But much has changed since then, even if Iranian women's sports still have a long way to go before they are truly competitive on the international arena.

It was in the 1990s that women in Iran started to play sports again, largely thanks to the encouragement of Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of then-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Initially, women mainly took part in stationary sports like archery and shooting, but now they compete in a wide range of activities, including strength-based disciplines like rowing, martial arts, and ... rugby.

"This is not a violent sport for women at all, despite what people think. We need to discharge our energy," said Zahra Nouri, the team's captain, who is a student of mechanics at Qazvin University west of Tehran.

The mother of one of the players, the 16-year-old Azadeh, was happy to see the level of physical activity, saying this would make it easier for her to deal with her energetic daughter at home.

"It is good for us that she has the chance here to discharge her energy," said Pouran Taherabadi. "I have nothing against it."

However, their coach, Alireza Iraj, admitted that their Islamic dress would make it impossible for the women to play against Western teams, as "the long sleeves and loose clothes gives the opponents an easy chance to grab them.

"They have to play with Muslim countries who have similar clothes."…

You’ve come a long way, baby.

The article is headed "Rugby provides outlet for women in Iran." From the looks of the photo, it is providing an outlet for really butchy women, if you catch my drift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments

Don’t shoot the messenger: That’s my message to all those whose noses are out of joint because their fearless leader, Osama bin Laden, criticized their efforts in Iraq, and Al Jazeera went ahead and broadcast it. From AP via the Toronto Star:

CAIRO–Al Qaeda sympathizers have unleashed a torrent of anger against Al-Jazeera television, accusing it of misrepresenting Osama bin Laden's latest audiotape by airing excerpts in which he criticizes mistakes by insurgents in Iraq.

Users of a leading Islamic militant Web forum posted thousands of insults against the Qatar-based pan-Arab station for focusing on excerpts in which bin Laden criticizes insurgents, including his followers.

Analysts said the reaction highlighted militants' surprise at bin Laden's words, and their dismay at the deep divisions among Al Qaeda and other Iraqi militants that he appeared to be trying to heal.

"It's not about Al-Jazeera, it's about their shock from bin Laden," said Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamic militant groups. "For the first time, bin Laden, who used to be the spiritual leader who gives guidance, became a critic of Al Qaeda and is confessing mistakes. This is unusual.''

"God fight Al-Jazeera," railed one militant Web poster, calling the station a "collaborator with the Crusaders" for suggesting the tape showed weakness in Al Qaeda and reflected splits among Iraq insurgents.

The recording aired Monday contained unusually strong criticism of insurgents in Iraq from bin Laden, who urges them to admit mistakes and unify. Bin Laden even acknowledges that he advises himself not to be "fanatical" in his stances.

"Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks," bin Laden said. "Beware of division ... Muslims are waiting for you to gather under a single banner to champion righteousness. Be keen to oblige with this duty.''

"I advise myself, Muslims in general and brothers in Al Qaeda everywhere to avoid extremism among men and groups," he said.

The Al-Fajr Media Center, which usually posts Al Qaeda video and audio tapes on the Web, accused Al-Jazeera of "counterfeiting the facts" by making the speech appear as exclusively critical of insurgents.

"Al-Jazeera directors have shamefully chosen to back the Crusaders' side, and the defenders of hypocrites and the thugs and traitors of Iraq," Al-Fajr said in a statement.

The 30-minute audio has long sections hailing Iraq insurgents for their "holy war." Al-Jazeera editor-in-chief Ahmed Sheik had no comment on the criticism but said the tape hadn't been misrepresented.

So remember, jihadis: Don’t shoot the messenger. But by all means feel free to go ahead and shoot the terrormeister.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:53 | link | comments

Grinch Salutin: My mother always told me to never attribute to malice that which could be explained by stupidity.

I repeat these words every time I steel myself to read a piece by the Globe and Mail’s battiest moonbat, Tricky Rick Salutin. In today’s column, Rick works himself into a lather at the sight of capitalism on the uptick. Socialist Rick’s much happier, of course, when things aren’t going so well, and people are more willing to let the government step in and micro-manage the economy (and maybe redistribute some of the wealth):

First we had to put up with the burbling from business reporters such as Newsworld's Jeannie Lee, as our dollar rose to parity with the U.S. dollar, like a team moving up in the standings. In fact there's been a huge downside: As the dollar rises, jobs depart, from auto-making to film shoots, because it gets costlier to produce here. Even if some prices fall, you can't buy if you aren't paid. In the same way, they cheer each rise in the stock market. Why is up good and down bad? It's like rooting for the temperature. Go global warming.

Then, as if not wanting to look boosterish, or just getting bored, they look for something to criticize: Hey, there's no fall in prices! As if the only effects people understand, or that count, lie in shopping. As if all we are is consumers, not citizens, workers or producers, God forbid. How come those stickers stay the same? Retail is all. I keep track of prices, therefore I am.

Peter Mansbridge furrows his brow but doesn't wonder why a country without workers who make anything has to pay higher markups on iPods than America does. We're on the way back to producing only what we always did: unprocessed resources like oil, wheat and wood. But the knowledge purveyors prefer to focus on the cost of Levis, obscuring rather than exploring any connection between making and buying.

What will an all-retail economy look like, when that day arrives? My stretch of College Street in Toronto is pretty much restaurants and cafés, rarely broken by even a futon store or 7-Eleven. Can a society survive by serving each other lattes? People rise in the morning, go to their posts and start feeding the customers. But everyone does it, so they're all running in and out, serving and being served. I have to finish this croissant so I can rush back and make you a falafel. I extend the metaphor to those who serve information or entertainment. That's the shell of an economy left when you produce almost nothing for basic need. Not to mention the small matter of dignity involved in making things you need and use each day.

There's nothing else on the horizon, just less of the same. This week in Winnipeg, an 86-year-old glove-making firm said it would shift all production to Asia, sending the last of its skilled workers into the latte pits, due to "global forces battering Canadian manufacturing, led by a rising Canadian dollar." The economic policies of all governments, almost everywhere for 20 years, have been on a continuum: Thatcher-Blair, Reagan-Clinton-Bush, Mulroney-Chrétien/Martin-Harper. They all back free trade and the pressure it puts on workers; plus markets, privatization, deregulation. There's no point whining about the "left" ones betraying their roots, it's what they're about now. There's been no economic alternative for decades. People searching for a better way find themselves flailing. I was on a panel with some youngish academics last week: They said it was time to revisit the classics, by which they meant Lenin! I take this as a sign of desperation.

Meanwhile, the economy continues to boom, according to the same sources pumped about parity for the dollar, even if, on the gap between rich and poor, Canada now trails Egypt and Pakistan, thanks to Paul Martin's tax gifts to the rich, soon to be outdone by Stephen Harper. I suppose in the days of Robin Hood, the economy did well too, but then as now, almost all the increase went to the sheriff and the barons…

Repeat after me: stupid, not malign, stupid, not malign…

Here’s the letter I sent the Globe. (I haven’t been keeping track, but it seems to me I’ve written more letters in response to Rick’s execrable musings than anyone else’s):

Rick Salutin is terribly upset because the economy is booming, our dollar is strong, and people are out spending money. As he sees it, the boom is actually a bad thing because it does nothing to address the growing disparity between rich and poor, which is apparently even wider here than it is in Egypt and Pakistan.

I can understand the appeal of such Grinch-like gloom, but even a Grinch must realize that living below the poverty line in the Third World is a lot different than being poor in Canada, which, being part of the First World, has a far higher standard of living and where there’s an effective social safety net in place.

As for condemning the boom, it’s hard to see how the alternative—a flagging economy, people out of work and unwilling to part with a dollar—serves anyone’s interests, least of all the poor.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:15 | link | comments (1)

Conscientious objectors: There’s been much hand-wringing in Canada of late because many Canadians seem to have become disenchanted with multiculturalism, our prevailing social dogma. They have woken up to the disconnect between how multicultism is supposed to work—ensuring that every group is acknowledged to have something equally worthwhile to contribute to the larger society—and how it really works—helping religious laws and customs that are antithetical to our way of life make inroads into the public sphere. This epiphany has resulting in much soul-searching into whether Canada has become “a nation of bigots” (the phrase most often used in connection with the soul-searching).  I think it’s fairly safe to say that there are probably a few folks who balk at multiculturalism because they are “bigots.” Most, however, reject it because it is based on false premises and because they can see it undermining Canadian society.

A letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail expresses the feelings of this larger segment:

Hérouxville's code of conduct opposes stoning and has drawn accusations of intolerance (Quebec Town Defends Conduct Code For Minorities - Oct. 25). Canada must renounce this terrible ritual, which is still carried out in some parts of the world, as forcefully as it has condemned female genital mutilation, which some immigrants still impose on their young daughters.

It is right to condemn cultural practices that we never want to see in Canada. We can no longer pretend that we are inviting immigrants to bring their culture with them. We are asking them to leave objectionable practices behind, so we are really saying that we want them to comply with Canada's customs.

We need to share the same values if we are going to co-exist.

The gentleman who wrote this letter objects, as should we all, to a doctrine that compels us to tolerate intolerance and the intolerable. No doubt the Globe will receive a letter or two objecting to this objection, and labelling the objector a bigot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (1)

Separation anxiety: The EU strategy for disarming (in both senses of the word) the mullahs: talk, coddle, and in the case of Germany, France and Russia, take oodles of moolah to pay for your expertise and materiel so that “bombs away” day draws e’er closer. And, oh yeah, pretend that at some point down the long and winding road, the UN will get its act together and do something. The American strategy for dealing with the mullahs, walk softly and carry a twig; you don’t want them to get angry and cause even more of a ruckus in Iraq. Until now, that is. Yesterday, the U.S. finally—finally!—took steps that could (but likely won’t) persuade the mullahs to knock it off. And of course, because the U.S. acted independently of Europe, the whinging began as soon as the sanctions were announced. Here, for example, is the Los Angeles Times, mighty concerned because the U.S. has forged a separate path:

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's new package of sanctions against Iran widens the gap between the United States and its European allies over how to confront Tehran.

For two years, the administration has sought to work closely with Europeans and other world powers, convinced that collective action offered the best chance to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

But efforts to push through a third round of United Nations sanctions snagged and prospects for a new international coalition to impose economic penalties appear unlikely, so the administration decided to strike out on its own Thursday.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. announced unilateral sanctions that aim to cut off Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, three key Iranian banks and others from any contact with the worldwide U.S. financial system.

The State Department designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. The sanctions imposed Thursday are aimed at any remaining financial ties.

Although few such ties are left between U.S. firms and Iranians, officials hope that the effect will be powerfully amplified with other international companies and banks shunning the Iranians to avoid jeopardizing their contacts with the United States.

Advocates say this approach will hit the Iranian elite where it most hurts. But it also puts the United States on a separate track from the Europeans. And U.S. intervention in European business interests could deepen the unwillingness of European countries that already are reluctant to take part in any U.S. actions.

Rice stressed that the United States was committed to a diplomatic solution, although she followed that comment with a warning to Tehran, saying if it chose a path of confrontation, the U.S. and other countries would "resist these threats."

The new steps are bound to appeal to administration and congressional hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who favor a tough U.S. approach to Iran. However, some Democrats criticized the announcement as an indication that President Bush considers military action a first resort.

The U.S. move was praised by the British government, but was considered unlikely to be welcomed by others, such as Germany.

"Those [in Europe] who were reluctant yesterday will probably be more so tomorrow," said one senior European official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol...

Hello, ’39. This time, though, Hitler is shorter, hairier and believes he’s been tapped by God to meet ‘n’ greet the Messiah.

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

Faulty vision: Condi Rice is reportedly afraid of losing "the window" for a two-state solution.

Look again, Condi. That ain't no window. That's what you call a brick wall.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:43 | link | comments

Sun Tzu sez: “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles... if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

Too bad the Chinese general wasn't on that Holyland Foundation jury. By Cal Thomas in JWR:

A federal judge in Dallas declared a mistrial in the case of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) when a jury was unable to reach a verdict on 197 counts brought by the government that accused the Muslim charity of funding terrorism.

A hung jury, however, is not an acquittal and even if the Holy Land Foundation eventually is acquitted (the government has indicated it will retry the case) it doesn't necessarily mean the accused is innocent (think O.J. Simpson's murder trial).

Anyone in doubt about the game plan for infiltrating, undermining and attacking America from within our borders had better sober up. Our enemies know our ways and they are using them to gain a strategic advantage over us. From the rapid construction of mosques and Islamic schools across the country — many of which are financed by Saudi Arabia — to the use of front organizations as conduits to channel money to terrorist groups abroad, a "fifth column" has been opened in the United States. For those who are unfamiliar with the term "fifth column," it usually refers to a group of people who are assumed to have loyalties to countries other than their own, or who support some other nation in war efforts against the country they live in. We used to call such people traitors before the term was submerged in a wave of political correctness.

Despite the hung jury, a lot of useful information came out at the trial that people with terrorist intent would just as soon have remained hidden. Moving under the radar and hiding your real intentions is essential for fifth column members. Among the evidence revealed in court is the connection of Holy Land Foundation and a number of other Islamic groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America, to the radical Muslim Brotherhood organization. Read a thoroughly researched and documented essay at Website http://www.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs.html.

The Holy Land Foundation is not an unfairly persecuted charity. While it exhibits some charitable work as window dressing, evidence presented at the trial show its connections with known terrorist groups.

Although scores of examples from the government's case show what we face, I offer just one found in a recent Nine/Eleven Finding Answers Foundation report: "On Aug. 16, 2007, a Miami jury convicted Adham Hassoun, Jose Padilla and Kifah Jayyousi of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. A Department of Justice press release announcing the initial indictment against Hassoun, a Palestinian national living in Florida, stated, 'As part of the conspiracy, Hassoun allegedly wrote a series of checks over several years — from 1994 to late 2001 — to unindicted coconspirators and organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, to be used to support violent jihad.' Further, Raed Awad, HLF's Florida representative and fund raiser, served as the Imam at Jose Padilla's mosque.'"

There is much more, including this from the government's case: "HLF is also mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report in connection with the investigation of Anwar Aulaqi, an Imam in San Diego and Falls Church who allegedly had a 'close relationship' with hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. Investigators probing Aulaqi prior to 9/11 learned that he 'knew individuals from the Holy Land Foundation and others involved in raising money for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.'"

That the government was unable to convince a jury of this is either the fault of the prosecutors or the blindness of the jurors. I suspect it is the latter. Americans are extremely reluctant to brand a class of people and put them in categories. Our enemies know this, so they trade on our sorry history of slavery and racism and wrap themselves in the image of civil rights workers seeking only the same freedoms everyone else enjoys...

And that, my friends, is why they’re winning.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:25 | link | comments

Today's eco-alarmist headline: Earth is reaching point of no return, says major UN environmental report.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:27 | link | comments

The madness of C. Rice: She’s convinced herself that Mahmoud Abbas is Martin Luther King and the Palestinians are pre-civil rights-era negroes in the American South.

Could someone please put this crazy woman in a straitjacket and lock her in a padded cell before she has a chance to unleash the lunacy of Annapolis?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:24 | link | comments

Louise Arbour and human wrongs: Toronto Sun editorialist Paul Berton wants Canada to listen up and take its medicine when that supreme moral authority, Louise Arbour, doles it out:

It should be embarrassing for Canadians that our very own Louise Arbour says we aren't as committed to human rights as we like to portray ourselves.

Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, says it is "astonishing" Canada has refused to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which passed the General Assembly last month by a vote of 143-4.

Not surprisingly, we joined in our opposition the likes of the United States, Australia and New Zealand, all nations with large aboriginal populations.

The refusal to sign, explains the Tory government, was based on the fact the UN declaration is too broad and conflicts with the Canadian constitution.

Perhaps, but most Canadians know our record on human rights is vulnerable indeed with regard to First Nations issues. We know it in our hearts, and we've been told -- warned -- by various native leaders and protests that it is unfair and cannot persist.

The issues are complex, the complainants are not without many faults of their own, and solutions take time, but there is ample evidence that governments across Canada can move more quickly to solve various roadblocks and settle disputes, and better indicate that progress is being made.

It's not just a reluctance to sign the UN declaration, it's an inability by all Canadians to act -- to do the right thing.

What's more, says Arbour, a former Supreme Court justice, the refusal -- and lukewarm support for other related UN initiatives -- is indicative of a nation reluctant to live up to its flagging international reputation as a leader in human rights and peacekeeping.

So, either we're serious about that reputation, or we're not. Many would say it's outdated, old-fashioned, unrealistic, impractical and who cares anyway?

But many Canadians are proud of our reputation on the international stage, we believe it's more relevant than ever before, and we know it helps us politically, socially and economically. We know it can make us an important player in the new global order.

And we can't pretend to maintain the reputation internationally if we don't live up to it at home.

In fact, Canada is to be commending for refusing to fall in line with lady Lou and her Human Rights fascisti. Here’s my letter to the Sun:

According to Paul Berton, we’re supposed to snap to attention when Louise Arbour waggles a disapproving finger at our failure to back the UN’s declaration on indigenous rights. He’s got to be kidding. Ms. Arbour heads up what is arguably the UN’s most ludicrous body, the comically misnamed Human Rights Council. The Council, formerly the Human Rights Commission, was supposedly revamped to prevent it from being a laughingstock wherein some of the world’s most repressive regimes—including Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria—were deemed fit to judge who in the world was abridging the rights of others. It didn’t work. Both incarnations of the Rights Police have focussed obsessively and almost exclusively on one supposed violator—Israel—meanwhile ignoring the horrible violations occurring in the rest of the planet, including the nations from which Council members hail.

To cite Ms. Arbour, who heads up this rouge’s gallery of rights-abridgers, as a moral authority is not only absurd. It is an insult to everyone on the planet who is being bullied, battered and brutalized by the gang of thugs and tyrants over whom she is so proud to preside.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:02 | link | comments

Mullah mobile: Move over, Toyota. There’s a new car in town. From Fars News:

You know I couldn’t resist adapting the appropriate oldie:

Well, we’re all braggin’ ‘bout the new car in town

‘Cause we got the coolest set of wheels around.

Don’t guzzle gas and it don’t pollute,

And best of all, it’s really cute.

She’s our little nuke coup.

You should know what we got.

 

Just a little nuke coup comes in all sorts of hues.

Puttin’ pedal to the metal chase away the blues.

A souped up, spruced up mullah machine.

She’ll go flat out, if you know what I mean.

She’s our little nuke coup.

You should know what we got.

 

She’s earning coin to pay for the Mahdi’s return

And to build all the bombs so the kafirs’ll burn.

And if that ain’t enough to make you flip your lids

We ain’t gonna ship it to no Yids or Yankees.

 

How ‘bout we give a bunch to the IAEA

‘Cause it helped us get to where we are today?

When Mo ElBee gets behind the wheel

He will never know how great he’s made us feel.

She’s our little nuke coupe

You should know what we got.

She’s our little nuke coupe.

You should know what we got.

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

Bombs away: At a lunchtime lecture yesterday, Ilan Berman, a noted expert on Iran’s nuclear program, informed the assembled that the mullocracy is maybe a year away from being able to build its nuke . Should the world continue to sit on its collective thumbs and do nothing to dissuade the Mahdi men from going nuclear, Iran will become empowered to an intolerable extent, and the consequences will likely be grim.

Ah, but Israel/America will bomb the bejeesus out of them before that can happen, right? Well, perhaps, but  the Iranians, observing how easy it was for Israel to take out Saddam’s nuclear program, have cunningly scattered their many sites hither and yon across the vast expanse of their country, and buried a great deal of it underground. So even if, say, six or seven were taken out, that wouldn’t even put a dent in the program.

That being said, it was still interesting to read this on FrontPage Magazine—Ralph Peters on the implications of Israel’s not-so-super-secret strike in Syria last month:

* The Syrian reactor was at a very early stage, but neither Israel nor the United States called Damascus out before the world community. This reflects exasperation with the United Nations' unwillingness to do anything meaningful to stop rogue states from acquiring nukes. Instead of complaining, the Israelis just hit the target.

* Israel also acted because its military (especially its air force) is still smarting from its embarrassment during last year's confrontation with Hezbollah. The IDF needed to renew its image as supremely capable - and the raid sent a no-nonsense message that Israel's back in form.

* The biggest question is how much Washington knew about the attack in advance: Was it a joint plan with plausible denial built in or only a matter of shared intelligence - or did Tel Aviv wait to tip off Washington at the last minute (the minimum requirement)?

* Even excluding the nuke issue, Israel had to get Syria's attention. Since its Hezbollah client "won" last year's war, the Assad regime has continued to assassinate Lebanese politicians, to re-arm Hezbollah (while providing start-up funds to alternative terror groups), to encourage Hamas, and to facilitate the passage of terrorists and weapons into Iraq, further destabilizing the region.

* The attack also put Iran on notice that neither Israel nor the United States means to tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue regimes in the Middle East. This was, to a great extent, an attack on a proxy target. Whether Iran's leaders are capable of rational analysis is another matter.

* As a number of military analysts have pointed out, if Israeli aircraft were able to operate with impunity deep inside Syria, which fields state-of-the-art, Russian-supplied air defenses, it suggests a startling breakthrough in crippling an enemy's surveillance system and his command-and-control mechanisms.

Other states, such as Iran, that splurged on made-in-Russia air-defense systems must be panicking - while the Kremlin's generals have some explaining to do to Czar Vladimir.

* If the Israelis did, indeed, employ next-level military technology, the obvious question is: Why tip off your enemies that you've got new, paradigm-shifting tools just to blow up a cluster of buildings under construction, when any serious threat remained years - probably a decade - away?

There's a gaping hole in the logic - unless that, too, was a signal to Tehran.

* North Korea's involvement is a serious embarrassment for the Bush administration, which needs a geostrategic win.

The White House has counted on marking down a no-nukes deal with Pyongyang as a major achievement. The administration's refusal to recognize that the North Koreans just don't honor agreements doesn't reflect naivete but political desperation.

* Most worrisome of all, Syria's quest for nuclear weapons (a very expensive proposition, in more ways than one) confirms the spread of the world's most dangerous fad - the obsession among anti-Western regimes with getting nuclear weapons.

It signals that players such as Iran and Syria have realized the limits of terrorism: While terror is a painful inconvenience to Israel, America and other civilized countries, sponsoring it doesn't produce decisive results.

This doesn't mean that such regimes will abandon terrorism, which they find seductive and useful. Rather, it indicates that their visions of the future have taken on an apocalyptic hue - you can talk about deterrence value all through the poker game, but nukes aren't defensive weapons.

The killed-in-the-cradle Syrian nuke program tells us (that fad again) that nukes are viewed as the only possible equalizer in a face-off with superior Western militaries. It indicates an emotional belief in nuclear weapons as a solution to the Middle East's self-inflicted problems.

The bottom line? We should be even more worried about Islamist terrorists seeking nukes than we already were. Yes, nukes are very difficult to transport, arm and use. But keep an eye on Pakistan, where a multisided civil war is only a well-aimed bullet or two away.

On Sept. 6, Israel did the right thing by defying the lawyers crippling our civilization and striking a terrorist state's nuclear program before it could gain the de facto protection of the United Nations and its satellite organizations. Unfortunately, that attack was only a beginning, not an end.

Iran in December 2008?

From the sounds of it, September might be a better bet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:24 | link | comments

Human Oreo:

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:07 | link | comments (1)

Identity theft: Not long ago on Steve Paikin’s TVO program The Agenda, I listened, mouth slack with incredulity, as Globe and Mail pundit John Ibbitson touted the success of multiculturalism in Canada. The reason why the doctrine has worked so well here, said the Ib, is because, unlike, say, the Netherlands, with its windmills, wooden shoes, and plucky little lad stuffing a digit in a leaky dike, we have absolutely no sense that being “Canadian” betokens anything special. This utter lack of any discernable identity is supposedly a big plus because it means you can come from just about anywhere on the planet and not have to worry about assuming a pre-fab and burdensome Canadian identity. In fact, should you so desire, you can remain exactly as you were in Somalia or Mauritius or Lower Slobovia--same clothes, same grub, same mindset. Canada is merely a blank page, an empty vessel, a cupboard with nothing in it save a shelf for exotic headgear and a pole with plenty of spare hangers.

It doesn’t occur to the Ibbitsons that that’s actually a huge negative, that an absence of a national ethos makes it awfully hard to build a strong and cohesive society. Mark Steyn—no fan of the multiculti—explains what’s on tap for folks who lack a strong sense of identity: they end up ceding ground to those who know exactly who they are:

These stories turn up so routinely you hardly notice them anymore:

Vancouver’s hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.

In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for the city’s Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption.

Can that be right, even in Canada? Infidels can’t smoke but Muslims can? Apparently so. As the Vancouver Sun report continued, Emad Yacoub “said hookah lounges are essential for immigrants from hookah-smoking cultures, because it helps them deal with the depression common for newcomers and gives them places like they have at home.”

Once upon a time English and Irish and French immigrants to Vancouver used to find “places like they have at home” – pubs and bars and so forth. But not anymore. In fact, if you’re at the Legion Hall and can no longer light up a fag (whoa, relax, I’m just talking about cigarettes, not another lively Muslim cultural tradition), you might be forgiven for getting the impression that fewer and fewer places seem like home anymore.

It’s good to know the state is still prepared to trust adult citizens to be able to weigh the health risks of smoking against the “cultural” value (ie, the pleasure), even if they have to convert to Islam enjoy the right. Veterans, barflies, cigar aficionados and free-born Canadians in general can no longer enjoy this responsibility. But Muslims, uniquely, can.

Well, not entirely uniquely. For as The Vancouver Sun also reported:

The one foggy point in the new bylaw was whether it will apply to crack cocaine and crystal-meth smoking.

Ah, right. If you’re taking a limo from Squamish to Richmond, you can’t light up a Craven A. But, if you do feel the need the smoke, just stop off at the nearest crack house or meth lab. It’s good to know that some aspects of infidel culture are still celebrated in Vancouver.

At casual glance, this decision by the city council breaches one of the most fundamental principles: equality before the law. Either smoking is illegal, or it’s not. But it can’t be illegal for some citizens, and not for others. But, of course, most of us don’t give that casual glance to this story, or to the gazillions that like it that bubble up at the foot of the “News In Brief” section every day of the week across the western world. And, of those who do give it a casual glance, the general blasé reaction was pithily distilled by one correspondent of mine as follows: “We’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.” Yeah, sure, it’s idiotic but it’s harmless. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Ours is such a wealthy, powerful, confident culture it can jab untold numbers of screwdrivers into its own head, and still survive. Death by a thousand cuts is not for us, even if (or just because) the cuts are self-inflicted.

I wonder. In Vancouver city council’s action, what was once dimly discerned is made explicit. An Englishman or Irishman has no culture. Indeed, Canada has no culture, save what others bring to it. Which is the logical reductio of multiculturalism: If coming to Canada causes “depression” among “newcomers”, it behooves us to bring Canada into line with “places like they have at home”. Instead of the immigrant assimilating with the host society, the host society assimilates with the immigrant. Which makes sense, given that he seems to value his inheritance more than Canada values its own. And so we confront the limits of political correctness. It’s fine for a pliant citizenry sedated by decades of propaganda, but not for Muslims or crackheads who don’t yield quite so easily. When the nanny state runs up against the unnannyable, it crumples like a cheap roll-up.

When I wrote my book about Europe and demography, dissenting critics wanted to argue about the rate of change – specifically, the date at which Islam becomes a majority on the Continent. It won’t be 2025 or 2050, they scoff. It might not even be by the end of the century, as Professor Bernard Lewis says. Maybe. Maybe not. My book has very little to say either way about the precise day on which Islam claims 50.00001 per cent of the European population. What matters is the point at which it becomes the key determining feature of a society’s political disposition. And that day will not be 2100 or 2050 or 2025, but, as we see in Vancouver, some time rather sooner.

Let us zip across the Dominion, to Etobicoke, a corner of Toronto I know well. Or I thought I did. The other day a reader sent me the list of candidates for the Etobicoke North riding in this month’s provincial election. They are as follows:

Shafiq Qaadri, Liberal
Mohamed Boudjenane, NDP
Mohamed Kassim, Progressive Conservative
Jama Korshel, Green
Teresa Ceolin, Family Coalition

“Teresa”? What kind of cockamamie name is that for an Etobicoke politician? This is the first riding in Ontario in which every major party is running a Muslim candidate. But not the last. To the casual observer, this would seem to be statistically improbable. Etobicoke is not 80 per cent Muslim, nor even 50 per cent Muslim. Yet every major national party already feels obliged to defer, in its candidate selection process, to Islam’s political muscle. I write in my book that, historically, Islam has never needed to be a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the “Islamic world” stretched from Spain to India yet its population was only minority Muslim: Islam conquered and ruled an empire of non-Muslim subjects. But, a millennium and a bit on, it’s not even necessary to conquer – not when everyone’s so eager to concede pre-emptively, all in the name of “tolerance”. As Douglas Farrow told a conference at McGill recently, tolerance is a negative: it implies a kind of passivity. “You can’t build a society on that negative principle,” he says. But you can rot and enfeeble the one you have, and in its ruins something new will be built.

Let’s zip east another few thousand miles, from Etobicoke to Brussels. The mayor of the city is a rather dreary Belgian leftie called Freddy Thielemans. He is the head of the governing Socialist Party. Of his 17-member caucus, ten are Muslim. Again, Brussels is not majority Muslim. Sure, the most popular baby boy’s name is Mohammed, but then, in western Europe, it would be easier to list the cities where it isn’t. Yet Brussels, the capital of the European Union, already has a Muslim-majority governing party.

It’s been faintly surreal following the recent ructions about the usual instabilities of the Belgian state: Is this it? Are the ancient differences between the Walloons and Flemings about to tear the kingdom apart? Etc, etc. The traditional warring tribes of Belgium are irrelevant to its future. Brussels will be a Muslim city, and so will Antwerp, and Ghent, and even my mum’s quaintly parochial Flemish backwater of St Niklaas. And the disputes of the future will be between Belgian Turks and Belgian Algerians, or Belgian Sunni and Belgian Shia, or some other variant thereof.

Twenty years ago, in The Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom wrote, “As an image of our current intellectual condition, I keep being reminded of the newsreel pictures of Frenchmen splashing happily in the water at the seashore, enjoying the paid annual vacations legislated by Leon Blum’s Popular Front government. It was 1936, the same year Hitler was permitted to occupy the Rhineland. All our big causes amount to that kind of vacation.”

Yes, indeed. “Tolerance”, “multiculturalism”, splashing in the shallows – or so we think. Those Muslims who frequent Vancouver hookah parlours because they’re “depressed”, because Canada is not like “home”, won’t have to be depressed much longer. Here, as in much of the west, the state is happy to dismantle its own inheritance. And in the vacuum of multiculturalism it’s those groups most fierce in defence of their culture who will build the future...

Which means, Mr. Ibbitson, tomorrow belongs to them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:49 | link | comments

The Ceeb in action: So obvious has the Ceeb become in pursing an agenda of slamming Israel while simultaneously shilling for Islam that it may be time to rename it the Caliphate Broadcasting Corporation. Thus almost every time Margaret “The Voice” Evans brings us yet another ain’t-Israel-awful report from the frontlines, you can just about bank upon there also being a tug-from-the-heartstrings tale of some poor unfortunate Islamic supremacist--bonus points if he has wife with a little shahid-to-be in the oven--squawking about how Canadian authorities are violating his “human rights.”

The linchpin of this multiculti “We heart Islam” agenda: the Ceeb fantasy sitcom about funny Muslims and silly infidels in Saskatchewan. On tonight’s episode of the purportedly high-larious show, the comedic hijinks continue as one of the funny Muslims—the chick “revert”—gets in trouble for maintaining her infidel habit of playing the lottery (gambling being un-Islamic, ‘cept of course if you’re an egregiously rich Wahhabi royal who thinks nothing of dropping  gazillions in Monte Carlo); in a subplot, “Amaar struggles to hip-ify Muslim youth day by re-branding it “Islamapalooza.”

Or as it's known in my neck of the woods, “Israeli Apartheid Week.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:41 | link | comments

Burying the lede: Condi Rice did it, when she talked about Iran being “an obstacle to U.S. goals.” (An obstacle? More like a flipping Mt. Kilimanjaro.) The AP reporter did it, when she finally got around to mentioning it at the end of the article.

For the benefit of Condi and the AP scribe--and at no charge to either--I have taken it upon myself to point out the bit that should have come first. From the Washington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Iran is a major obstacle to the U.S. vision of a Middle East in which nations will "trade more, invest more, talk more and work more constructively to solve problems," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says.

"The Iranian government is pursuing policies which are detrimental to the long-term interests of its neighbors, of the region, and of the Iranian people themselves. It need not be this way," Rice said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday to a House panel.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of her testimony.

Rice's testimony, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, comes amid increased frustration by Republicans and Democrats alike that the Bush administration is not doing enough to deter Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Last month, the House passed, by a 397-16 vote, legislation aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill, sponsored by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.

Rice said the administration shares Congress' goal of making sanctions tougher on Iran, but urged caution.

"We simply want to be certain that our collective efforts do not undermine our multilateral strategy, where we will have a maximum chance of success," she said.

President Bush says a U.S.-linked missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to protect against a potential Iranian strike. Plans for such a system have strained U.S. relations with Russia, which estimates Iran's capability to be less mature and has close financial ties with Tehran.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Bush administration has told Moscow it may delay activation of the system until it has proof that Iran poses a missile threat.

"We would consider tying together activation of the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic with definitive proof of the threat _ in other words, Iranian missile testing and so on," Gates said.

Rice planned to tell the House committee Wednesday that in addition to nuclear ambitions that undermine stability in the region, Tehran has provided "lethal assistance" to extremist groups in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, as well as Iraq.

In particular, she noted, activities in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds force "are inconsistent with the Iranian government's obligations and stated commitment to support the Iraqi government."

Tiny Hitler wants to unleash a big kaboom so his Messiah can return from the watery depths (he fell down a well some centuries ago) and preside over the final days of planet Earth. Condi Rice wants to discuss trade, investment and working constructively. One has to wonder which one is truly delusional.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments

Running on entity: Had a giggle at the headings on the Al Manar TV site: "Lebanon"; "Europe"; "Turkey"; "Zionist entity"; "Palestine"...

You mean people in the media actually still use that clunky, archaic expression?

It's soooo 1973.:

That whole “entity” thing is passé.

It never made sense anyway.

Call it “Fred”; call it “Joe”;

There’s one thing they should know:

"Israel’s" here to stay.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments

A test of faith: Remember when the left spoke truth to power and stood up for freedom and democracy?

No? Me neither. Sarah Baxter on the times online site has devised a fool-proof test to determine whether someone is a genuine freedom-lover, or merely one of those useless useful idiots who pays lip service to freedom:

A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father’s death and celebrate the growing solidarity between “the left and revolutionary Islam” at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America’s “earth-devouring ambitions” were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a “truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union”.

Che’s daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. “My father never mentioned God,” she said, to the consternation of the audience. “He never met God.” During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. “By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence,” the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.

After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the “supreme guide” of Guevara, was also a man of God. “The Soviet Union is gone,” he affirmed. “The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words.”

Don’t say you haven’t been warned, comrade, when you flirt with “revolutionary Islam” as if it were a mild form of liberation theology. But it is time, too, for Che to lose his secular halo. If he were still living, the chances are he would be another dictator like Castro, who has ruled Cuba with an iron fist for half a century but gets a pass from liberals because he provides a modest health service.

There used to be a clear dividing line between conservatives and liberals. It defined the culture wars of the late 20th century, which pitted reactionary fuddy-duddies against tolerant, enlightened types, who believed in equal rights for women, minorities and gays. That fault line is becoming as dated as the flower power of the 1960s.

By the time Terry Eagleton, a Marxist professor of literature – how quaint and old-fashioned that sounds – is laying into Martin Amis, the Mr Cool of British fiction, for remarks on Islam that supposedly make the son as racist as his father, Kingsley, “an antisemitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals”, it is obvious we are into a wholly different culture war, between phoney and real progressives.

Wasn’t one of Amis fils’s main complaints about Islamic militants that they were “antisemites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes”? Confused? You are not the only one.

My own test for spotting a phoney liberal is as follows. If you think Bush is a fascist and Castro is a progressive, you are not a democrat. If you think cultural traditions can trump women’s rights, you are not a feminist. And if you think antisemitic rants are simply an expression of frustration with American and Israeli policy, you have learnt nothing from history.

Works for me.

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

Eco-alarmist report of the day: Oh, no. Looks like not even Kyoto can save us from the dreaded CO2 monster (Carbonstein? Carbonzillah?).  From AP via the Ceeb:

Just days after the Nobel Prize was awarded for work that documents global warming, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 per cent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

"In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown" of nature's ability to take the gas out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization.

The changes "characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing," the researchers report.

Kevin Trenberth of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said the "paper raises some very important issues that the public should be aware of: Namely that concentrations of CO2 are increasing at much higher rates than previously expected and this is in spite of the Kyoto Protocol that is designed to hold them down in Western countries."

Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: "What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink," meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere.

The researchers blamed that reduction on changes in wind circulation, but Robock said he also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas.

"Think that a warm Coke has less fizz than a cold Coke," he said.

Neither Robock nor Trenberth was part of Canadell's research team.

Carbon dioxide is the leading greenhouse gas, so named because the accumulation of such gases in the atmosphere can help trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the planet.

While most atmospheric scientists accept the idea, finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been a political problem because of potential economic effects. Earlier this month, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for their work in calling attention to global warming.

"It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."….

No doubt about it. We’re doomed.

Let us all join hands and pray for the polar bears.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:08 | link | comments

The kiss of death: J.R. Dunn, tongue semi-lodged in cheek, says that giving Fat Al and his gang of UN gasbags the Nobel Peace Prize all but puts the final nail in the coffin of the eco-alarmist movement. From The American Thinker:

Al Gore's Nobel may very well turn out to be the beginning of the end for global warming.

How's that, you say? Surely Al and the International Panel on Climate Control, armed as they now are with the great cachet of the Nobel, will sweep away all oil-company-inspired opposition and bring the Green revolution to completion. We'll all be riding unicycles to work and recycling our nail clippings come next Tuesday, and be happy doing it, lest Al, watching from the big house in Nashville, be made unhappy and give orders to have us sent to Prudhoe Bay to feed moss to the caribou.

 

Isn't that how the Nobel's supposed to work? But in fact does it? A glance at how the causes of some recent prizewinners have fared may prove enlightening.

* In 2005, the prize went to Mohamed elBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for his efforts in discouraging nuclear proliferation. Evidently, the word hasn't reached Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Pakistan yet.

* In 2004, the winner was Wangari Maathai, for her efforts on behalf of "sustainable development, democracy, and peace", which appears to amount to planting trees in Kenya. Last year Prof. Maathai began a campaign against the menace of plastic bags. Good for her, I say.

* The 2003 winner was Shirin Ebadi, "for her efforts for democracy and human rights". Everywhere but her home country of Iran. She'll get around to it eventually, though.

* For 2002, it was our own Jimmy Carter, for peace, democracy, human rights, and I don't know what all. Two weeks ago, Jimmy was given the bum's rush by a pack of Sudanese security thugs.  I guess they hadn't heard about his Nobel.

* The 2001 prize went to Kofi Annan. Kofi has more or less dropped out of sight after leaving the UN. I wonder why?

* In 1997, it was Jody Williams of the International Campaign to ban Landmines. Haven't heard of them recently either. Did they dig ‘em all up?

* And in 1988, the nod went to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. You didn't know there was a Nobel for well-run whorehouses, did you?

But  enough. It's clear from this list that not a single cause -- from nonproliferation to land mine clearance -- has prospered recently since the major figure involved won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's true that some of these awards have been transparent efforts at PC ("We need an African woman. Any African woman."), and some have been attempts at interfering with domestic politics that the Norwegians simply don't understand and should keep out of (all four of the most recent awards can be interpreted as attacks on the Bush administration, which is four too many). But other, far more worthwhile efforts including Tibet (the Dalai Lama, 1989), and Burma (Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991) have suffered as well. 

We need to ask whether the prize itself could be a factor. Some of these campaigns, for instance, land mines, were going great guns right up until the prize was awarded. Then began a slow spiral into irrelevance, marked by neglect from the media, governments, and the public at large. Is the Noble committee unwittingly acting as undertakers to some of its favored causes?...

One can only hope and pray.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:51 | link | comments

Head counts: This morning on Ceeb radio, Margaret Evans had one of her patented “voice barely able to choke back the emotion” reports. The subject of her report: a new census that’s about to be conducted by the Palestinians. Seems the warring factions in Gaza and the W.B. have resolved to set aside their differences long enough to do a head count. The purpose of the count, said Margaret, was to get some ammo in their ongoing struggle against Israel’s security barrier which they see as a blatant “land grab.” Margaret made sure to incorporate some other buzz words that the Ceeb and other lefty media types use to summon up sympathy for the Palestinian cause, including “refugee camp” and “’67 borders.” And just so’s you won’t think that the story is really about the Arab’s desire for a land grab—a land grab of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, that is—Margaret made sure to omit the reason why to barrier was constructed in the first place (as a last resort, to keep Palestinians from entering Israel and blowing up Jews) and painted Israel as being stiff-necked and just plain mean for failing to recognize the booming Palestinian demographics and handing over East Jerusalem post haste. (By contrast, this report on Yahoo! isn’t nearly as critical of Israel.)

Isn’t it interesting how everyone is so obsessed with the burgeoning demographics in Israel and the Palestinian territories, while over there in Turkey the reality of Kurdish demographics elicits one gigantic ho hum?

Here’s Ralph Peters in USA Today on the subject of Kurdish numbers:

The eastern quarter of Turkey isn't Turkish. It's inhabited by Kurds, the descendents of tribesmen whom the Greek soldier and author Xenophon encountered in those mountains 2,500 years ago — more than a thousand years before the first Turk arrived.

If a referendum on independence were held today, Turkey's Kurds, who make up about 20% of its 73 million people, would vote overwhelmingly to secede from the shrunken empire Ankara inherited from the Ottomans. That's part of what Turkish saber-rattling on the border with northern Iraq is about — the fear that even an autonomous Kurdistan-in-Iraq threatens Turkey's territorial integrity because the region's Kurds might view it as the core of a Kurdish state.

For its part, Washington fears a Turkish-Kurdish conflict that would further destabilize the entire region — just when Iraq shows glimmers of hope.

No regional government ruling over a Kurdish minority has ever allowed an honest head count, but estimates give the Kurds a population of 27 million to 36 million, spread across portions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus. Up to 14 million of these people without a state reside in Turkey.

In addition to its determination to preserve its eastern frontier, Turkey faces internal political challenges that propel the huge Turkish military — with more than 500,000 active-duty troops — toward an intervention in northern Iraq.

The immediate justification for a parliament-authorized move across the border is Turkey's allegation that the PKK (The Kurdistan Workers' Party), a Marxist organization that has employed terror, continues to attack soldiers and civilians inside Turkey. The remnants of the defeated PKK, a few thousand men and their families, have taken refuge in Iraq. Turkey claims it wants them handed over — knowing such a course is politically impossible for any Kurdish leader.

The Palestinians are seen as being singularly deserving of statehood, although to date they have proven singularly unfit to rule themselves. The Kurds, who have shown themselves quite capable of ruling themselves, and whose claim to autonomy predates the Palestinian one by almost two and a half millennia, are denied the same right.

You can be sure that if Jews had declared sovereignty over part of Kurdistan, the world would be on it like ugly on Arafat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:28 | link | comments

Money makes the world go around: You know that canard about how the Jews are in control of the world’s finances?  T’aint so. The religion that actually has firmed up plans for global domination and is using the financial sector as one of the means to do so is…well, let’s let the all-wise Caroline Glick divulge its identity. From JWR:

…THE ESTABLISHMENT of charitable front organizations is merely one of many ways in which jihadist groups have raised funds. Today terror analysts fear that a new means has been found to skirt anti-terror laws and finance terror while rendering the financial systems of the West vulnerable to Islamic manipulation and control. The fear is that through the burgeoning presence of Shari'a-compliant investment houses, jihadist groups and financiers will be able to raise enormous sums of money to fund their nefarious activities aimed at global domination.

Islamic clerics tout Shari'a-finance as one of the central components of Islam. But this is untrue. Shari'a economics did not exist until the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi and Sayyd Qutb invented it them in the 1940s and 1950s. As Alex Alexiev explained in a recent paper on the subject published by the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, the purpose of Shari'a economics was to mobilize Muslim support for radical Islam by promoting Muslim exclusivity and separatism. That is, the purpose of Shari'a finance is religious and political, not financial.

Shari'a finance became a significant factor in the Muslim world in the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo which raised Arab oil revenues a hundredfold in under a decade. The first Shari'a-compliant banks were established in 1975 with the opening of the Saudi-controlled Islamic Development Bank and the Islamic Bank of Dubai. Today the International Monetary Fund estimates that there are some 300 Shari'a-compliant banks operating in some 75 countries. Arab estimates place the number at 400. Close to a trillion dollars are under Shari'a-compliant management.

ASIDE FROM these Shari'a-based financial institutions in the Islamic world, the new trend in the West is for Western financial institutions to offer Shari'a-compliant investment opportunities. So excited is Britain, for instance about the financial benefit to be gained by attracting oil-rich Islamic investors that in January Britain's Treasury Minister Ed Balls announced his government's intention to turn London into the center of global Islamic finance.

Given the religious rather than financial aim of Shari'a-compliant investing, it isn't surprising that Shari'a-compliant investments are little more than a word game. Paying lip service to the Koranic prohibition on interest-based transactions and risky investments, Mawdudi and Qutb invented various means to cover the fact that Shari'a-compliant investments involve both interest payments and risk.

UNDERSTANDING that Shari'a-compliant investments are the same as regular investments, banking and other financial institutions in the West that are naturally interested in attracting Islamic investors have enthusiastically opened Shari'a-compliant portfolios. Unfortunately, the banks' enthusiasm is raft with security and perhaps even criminal implications.

In order for investments to be defined as Shari'a-compliant, they must receive the approval of Shari'a advisors. Only certain Islamic entities are entitled to issue religious rulings or fatwas that can recognize investments as Shari'a-compliant. These entities include the Fiqh Academy in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, which is associated with the Saudi-dominated Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); the European Council for Fatwa Research, and the Fatwa Council of North America. All of these entities are associated with the radical pro-jihadist Wahabi and Salafi schools of Islam adhered to by groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas.

Similarly, the groups that these organizations spawned for the express purpose of overseeing Shari'a-compliant investments and the people authorized and recognized as Islamic authorities capable of declaring an investment Shari'a-compliant are identified with political Islam and, in several cases with terror financing and support…

So the West is handing the Islamic supremacists carte blanche to fund the jihad and control a significant portion of the world’s finances.

I’m sorry to say it, but they are much smarter than us.

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

Not teacher’s pet: Louise Arbour, the “human rights” czarina who presides over what is arguably the UN’s most ludicrous body (and that’s saying something, considering the multiplicity of wretched entities in contention for that title) is “profoundly disappointed” with Canada. What did we do to upset the high and mighty Lou? Isn’t it obvious? We up and installed a Conservative government which, unlike previous Liberal ones, has refused to march in lockstep with the world’s despots and their enablers—Lou’s constituency.

Yesterday the Toronto Star had an article in which Louise scolded us for voting against that UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples; the report made her sound like a testy school marm with the Harper government her recalcitrant student. Today the Star reports that Louise is still “profoundly disappointed” and is questioning Canada’s “commitment to individual rights.” Arms folded and lips pursed, school marm Lou is concerned that Canada is falling under the influence of the class juvie—the U.S.—and wants to nip this malign peer pressure in the bud:

OTTAWA–Louise Arbour, the Canadian who leads the United Nations on human rights, said Ottawa's commitment to individual rights globally appears to be shifting as the Harper government grows closer to the United States.

"There is a sense that Canada is moving away from its total commitment to multilateralism and is now, I think, advancing other forms of either national or regional alliances," said Arbour, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

In a speech to a human rights group, she hammered Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government for siding with the U.S., Australia and New Zealand last month to vote against a UN declaration upholding human rights among the world's indigenous people.

"I have to register my profound disappointment," said Arbour, now the UN Human Rights Commissioner. She said Canada's position was incomprehensible since Canadian representatives spent decades "of progressive involvement" on that issue.

"I found it rather astonishing," she told a meeting organized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Arbour criticized the Harper government for failing to maintain Canada's stature as a champion of individual rights and freedoms in the world.

"Canada has to work very hard to maintain what historically has been the perception internationally that it's a consensus builder and that it's a valid interlocutor to all," the former UN war crimes prosecutor told reporters.

Asked why this is happening, she alluded to the Conservative government's closer ties with Washington and its close allies on issues of security, the environment and foreign aid.

You can be sure that if Louise is agin’ it, it’s a sign that we’re definitely on the right track.

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

Dotty Doris: Doris Lessing just received the Nobel Prize for Literature for what the prize committee described as her “scepticism, fire and visionary power.” (Thus sparing themselves the ordeal of having to say something nice about her prose, a tough assignment since it’s turgid, humourless and largely unreadable.) The new laureate has put some of that “fire” on display, opining to a Spanish magazine that, all things considered, 9/11 wasn’t such a big deal. From Breitbart:

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were "not that terrible" when compared to attacks by the IRA in Britain.

"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," the Nobel Literature Prize winner told the leading Spanish daily El Pais.

"Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be," she said in an interview published Sunday.

"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government; it killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was (attending). People forget," she said.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. About 3,700 died and tens of thousands of people were maimed in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army guerrilla group, which caused most of the deaths, disarmed in 2005.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Lessing in London for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Her agent's office said the author was unavailable because she was not feeling well.

In the El Pais interview, Lessing had sharp words for both President Bush and his ally, former British premier Tony Blair.

"I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," El Pais quoted Lessing as saying. "Many of us hated Tony Blair, I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years. I said it when he was elected: This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems and he did."

"As for Bush, he's a world calamity," added Lessing. "Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

Iran also came in for a lashing from Lessing, who was born to British parents who were living in what is now Bakhtaran, Iran.

"I hate Iran, I hate the Iranian government, it's a cruel and evil government," she was quoted as saying.

"Look what happened to its president in New York, they called him evil and cruel in Colombia University. Marvelous! They should have said more to him! Nobody criticizes him, because of oil."…

Oh that Doris. Pushing 90 and still as batty as ever. (Then again, perhaps it's a function of age since, as she makes clear in this interview from 2000 in Salon, this former communist clearly "gets it" about the perils of Utopian thinking and political correctness.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:28 | link | comments

How the English language submitted: A linguistics lesson, courtesy Mo Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress. Mo wants us all to know the great debt the English language owes to Arabs:

For 1000 years, Arabic was the primary international language of commerce, scholarship and politics, much as English is in today’s world. In fact, over the centuries English adopted many words that were either borrowed directly from Arabic, or were absorbed indirectly through other languages, especially Spanish.

Even today, Arabic still accounts for the greatest number of Eastern elements in English. The lists of examples that follow are only a brief sampling of the many more words available; perhaps some will surprise you!

No computer, nuclear plant or microchip design could have been possible without the words and concepts we know as algorithm, algebra, and zero - all of which come from Arabic.

The names of many musical instruments -- like lute and guitar - as well as a number of technical performance terms and styles, are also from Arabic roots.

Many names of familiar animals, plants, spices, herbs and drinks began as Arabic nouns: saffron, henna, camphor, cotton, apricot, lemon, lime, orange, tamarind, lilac, sherry, mango, coffee, artichoke, spinach, jasmine, ginger, tulip, lotus, shrub, giraffe, gazelle, cobra, zebra, cheetah.

If you have ever taken a chemistry course, the word chemistry itself originates with Arabic, as well as nitro, alkali, alcohol, calibre, antimony, arsenic.

In your household and daily life, you might easily run into Arabic words that are so common we never give them a second thought: shampoo, sofa, cable, atlas, magazine, pie, pajama, bungalow, mattress, sack, khaki, candy, caramel, jar, sherbet, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, ribs, silk, cheque, chatty, sandal.

And, as you might expect, Arabic is very present in slightly more exotic or emphatic English words and proper names: tycoon, carat, chess, checkmate, Sahara, almanac, rum, musk, sesame, tariff, cashmere, mummy, coral, sapphire, jubilee, jargon, thug, Satan, fake, jungle, alchemy, zenith, safari, talc, tartar, zircon, chiffon, amber, Bedouin, Ariel.

In military vocabulary, frequently-used terms like hazard, admiral, arsenal and assassin all owe their use to Arabic.

But reference books devoted to tracing the English words borrowed from Arabic are rare. Most were written some time ago and do not include contemporary scholarship or changes in our language. The most recent is more than three decades old -- Arabic Contributions to the English Vocabulary, by James Peters and Habeeb Salloum (1973). Two other useful, but dated, titles are: A History of Foreign Words in English, by Mary S. Serjeantson (1935) and Arabic Words in English, by Walt Taylor (1933).

Words are much like organic living creatures whose character and meanings evolve over time and circumstance. Those Arabic words that made it into English must have had a fascinating history, much of which has been lost over the centuries. It makes one wonder; Who used the original Arabic words and what were they like? How did these words first come to be spoken by non-Arabs? How many variations did they go through before appearing in English dictionaries? Why are some much easier to trace back to their Arabic roots than others? Linguists have answered some of these questions but there is still much more to be known. Here is a project worthy of far greater attention. Any takers?

Merci buckets for the verbiage, Mo, but there’s only one word that’s really pertinent here—jihad. And for that one you ain’t gettin’ any thanks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:06 | link | comments

Dangerous arts and statecraft:  Nicolas Sarkozy is urging Ehud Olment to get "creative" in an effort to strike a peace deal with Abbas.

As if he hasn't been plenty "creative" already. If he's allowed to get any more "creative," he's likely to finesse the Jews plum out of their home.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:25 | link | comments

Le mot juste: David Bellamy says that when it comes to global climate change, he’s a heretic, not a denier.

Me too.

From the times online:

Am I worried about man-made global warming? The answer is “no” and “yes”.

No, because the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction has come up against an “inconvenient truth”. Its research shows that since 1998 the average temperature of the planet has not risen, even though the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to increase.

Yes, because the self-proclaimed consensus among scientists has detached itself from the questioning rigours of hard science and become a political cause. Those of us who dare to question the dogma of the global-warming doomsters who claim that C not only stands for carbon but also for climate catastrophe are vilified as heretics or worse as deniers.

I am happy to be branded a heretic because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on the bigotry of vested interests. But I don’t like being smeared as a denier because deniers don’t believe in facts. The truth is that there are no facts that link the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming. Instead of facts, the advocates of man-made climate change trade in future scenarios based on complex and often unreliable computer models.

Name-calling may be acceptable in politics but it should have no place in science; indeed, what is happening smacks of McCarthyism, witch-hunts and all. Scientific understanding, however, is advanced by robust, reasoned argument based on well-researched data…

Let’s turn to Al Gore’s doom-laden Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. First, what is the point of scaring the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction? Last year Mitchell Taylor, of the US National Biological Service, stated that “of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”

Why create alarm about a potential increase in the spread of malaria thanks to rising temperatures when this mosquito-borne disease was a major killer of people in Britain and northern Russia throughout the Little Ice Age?

Despite the $50 billion spent on greenwashing propaganda, the sceptics and their inconvenient questions are beginning to make their presence felt.

A recent survey of Klaus-Martin Schulte, of Kings College Hospital, of all papers on the subject of climate change that were published between 2004 and February of 2007 found that only 7 per cent explicitly endorsed a “so-called consensus” position that man-made carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. What is more, James Lovelock, the author and green guru, has changed his mind: he recently stated that neither Earth nor the human race is doomed.

Yes, melting sea ice around Greenland has recently opened up the fabled North West passage. And, yes, the years 2006 and 2007 have seen massive flooding in Europe. However, a quick dip into the records of the Royal Society – which ranked alongside Dr Lovelock as arch doomsters, before his change of mind – shows that dramatic fluctuations happened long before the infernal combustion engine began spewing out carbon dioxide…

 Seems to me a lot of the hot air is being belched out by the Goracle and his accolytes.

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

Two sermons: The American Thinker has the text of a sermon delivered by Richard Baehr, the site’s political director, at a Chicago synagogue. The sermon’s theme: “Why I am a Jewish Conservative.” (Baehr gave the same address to students at an Arkansas Christian college, where I suspect it may have been better received.) Here’s some of why Baehr says he aligns on the right:

Today we have a conflict that some neocons have called World War 4.  This war, like the Cold War, which by this logic must have been World War 3, is not a single battle on a single front, but one that may last decades. The Cold War lasted almost five decades. The neocons believe, as I do, that Israel is a front in the West's war with a global jihad. That jihadist threat comes from  Shiite Iran, on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, and from Sunni Al Qaeda and its financiers and proselytizers, who are either members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or wahhabists miseducated by Saudi Arabia.

 

Today this country faces serious challenges in Iraq and the Middle East, in dealing with Iran's nuclear program and its destabilizing effort in Lebanon, in battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, in keeping Pakistan, a nuclear power,  from collapsing and falling to Al Qaeda and the radical Islamists, with North Korea and their nuclear and missile programs , and even in our own hemisphere from Venezuela. It is certainly not a time to pull in our horns, and make believe the world would be a better place if we just left it alone.

 

Whatever one's views on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion, at this point, the debate needs to be on policy going forward. The neocon view is that the Middle East region will become far more dangerous for the US and its allies, including Israel, if it is perceived that we are withdrawing from Iraq before our job is done, hanging our heads in defeat. Our enemies in the current struggle and Israel's enemies keep probing to find weakness, to see if our side can deal with pain and fight on.  This country has a history of doing just that: of getting off the canvas and taking the fight to our enemies. 

 

In the case of Israel, the risks of inaction are higher. 40 % of the world's Jewish population is in Israel, and Iran is continually calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.  Of all the world's people, we Jews should know to take threats of annihilation seriously. The Jewish population worldwide is today 4 million below the level in 1939.  Could a second holocaust, this time perpetrated against Israel, be the final blow for our people? Would we have the strength to go on in a diaspora already reeling from a 50% intermarriage rate and a low birthrate?

 

It seems obvious to me that the Jewish future is in Israel, and the protection of  Israel has to be a primary concern of American Jews. I am a conservative at this moment, because I sense greater understanding of Israel's peril among conservative Jews than among liberal Jews, who sometimes seem embarrassed by Israel, and think it is Israel that has been the principal obstacle to achieving peace with the Palestinians and it neighbors.  A serious study of the history proves conclusively that this is not the case.

 

Israel needs to be high or at the top of our agenda, not way down the list after the minimum wage, stem cell research, no child left behind and Al Gore's new movie. So yes, I favor a foreign policy that does not shy away from action. And the brand of conservatism I have described here, I believe offers our best hope to expand our freedoms and continue our economic progress  at home, and to protect our freedom and Israel's from threats from abroad. And with that, I thank you, and say Amen. 

Amen.

On Saturday I heard another political conservative—Ranan Gissin, formerly, Ariel Sharon’s media spokesman—deliver an equally impassioned sermon at a synagogue. So impassioned, in fact, that he was frequently forced to catch the pink kippah he had failed to anchor with a clippy when, in the throes of rhetoric, it threatened to fall off his head. Even with all the kippah retrieval, however, he never missed a beat as he told the assembled (and here I’m boiling his words down to essentials) that Israel is a winner, that Israel’s enemies will not be allowed to destroy it, and that the Jewish claim to sovereignty over their ancient, ancestral homeland can never be legitimately be called into question, even though the media and others seem bent on doing so.

The most brilliant part of his sermon: He recounted how, at some point, he found himself in South Africa, the country that had hosted the infamous fiesta of Judenhass in Durban and the country, of course, that used to be reviled for its apartheid practices. Gissin recalled how he was set to address the smear that had branded Israel as the new “apartheid state” when, a couple of minutes prior to his talk, he was struck by a brainwave. Israel, he realized, “isn’t a state.” It’s a wildlife preserve--like Krugerpark, the renowned South African national park. Krugerpark was created to protect endangered species from the outside world. Similarly, Israel was created to protect what may well be the most endangered species on the planet: the Jews. And since the outside world wouldn’t build us such a park, we took it upon ourselves to build our own. In our preserve, as in Krugerpark, there are fences to keep out hunters and poachers. But there are also gates, so that people who don’t mean us harm can get in and out. And while we are perfectly willing to share our preserve, there is no way we will allow anyone to take it from us, and we plan to hold onto it for the sake of our species.

Amen to those words, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:27 | link | comments

Clueless on Newsnet: On CTV Newsnet’s The Verdict last evening, there was a replay of the Oct. 18 show wherein host Paula Todd and guests grappled with the issue of whether Canada “is a country of bigots.” The consensus seemed to be that it is, since what else save bigotry could explain why Canadians often react negatively to the sight of a woman encased head-to-toe in a black shroud, with only her eyes and hands exposed. After all, it’s her “free choice” to wear such a garment, isn’t it?

Well, maybe it is for some women some of the time. More often than not, however, it’s an obvious symbol of oppression and control—the real reason, I venture, why ordinary Canadians, who are often far less clueless than their elites, feel an almost visceral revulsion for it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments (1)

My favourite headline of the morning: Kid Rock jailed in Georgia waffle house brawl.

Yeah, you have to watch out for those waffle houses. They can get pretty rowdy, what with all the beaten eggs and whipped cream.

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

Bye bye Jaziri: Today may be the day we get to bid adieu to Said Jaziri, a “controversial” (the Ceeb’s word) Montreal imam. Jaziri is one of those supremacist types who wants sharia to become the law of the land, but that’s not why he’s about to be shown the door. No, being a multiculi Utopia, we here in Canada have rien de probleme embracing people who despise us. Jaziri was caught telling a big fat lie, though, which means there are valid grounds to ship his sorry keester back to Tunisia. Not that he isn't pulling out all the stops--including impregnating a local and embarking on a hunger strike--to try to stay.

The usual suspects--The Ceeb and Amnesty International--sound awfully sorry to see him go:

A controversial Montreal-based imam faces deportation Monday after efforts to get the Federal Court to intervene and stop border officials from removing him from Canada failed.

A lawyer for Muslim cleric Said Jaziri — who fervently supports the creation of faith-based sharia law for Canadian Muslims and has publicly denounced homosexuality as a sin — said the court rejected his application to stay in the country following a teleconference late Sunday afternoon.

Jaziri's last resort was an appeal to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who could have used her discretionary authority under federal law to let him stay on humanitarian grounds. But officials at her office have made it clear that won't happen, the CBC's Rosemary Barton reported.

Jaziri and his supporters, including Muslim organizations and Amnesty International, have said he will likely be tortured or killed if he returns to his native Tunisia. But government lawyers maintain that Jaziri is exaggerating the dangers he faces if he returns there.

The Muslim cleric, who heads the Al-Qods mosque in Montreal, was ordered deported last year when officials revoked his refugee status, which was obtained in 1998.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada claimed Tunisian-born Jaziri presented false information to get into Canada, and lied about having a criminal record in France, where he served jail time.

Tunisian Ambassador Abdessalem Hetira has said Jaziri will not be in any danger in Tunisia because his country respects human rights.

Jaziri has been on a hunger strike at an immigration centre in Laval since he was detained last week by authorities. His deportation may be delayed depending on whether officials feel he's healthy enough to travel, Barton reported.

Jaziri's wife, Nancy-Ann Adams, who is pregnant with the couple's first child, says she hopes Finley will intervene in the case.

Better yet, Nancy-Ann. Why not join him in Tunisia? I hear the weather’s lovely this time of year—and it’s a great place to raise the kids.

Oddly enough, the Ceeb report doesn't mention the impetus for the deportation. Seems Jaziri was more or less flying below the radar until  he was the victim of what was described as a “hate” attack. The attack—which was widely covered at the time—had the unintended consequence of getting people to ask questions about how he'd managed to finagle his way into Canada in the first place, and  the rest, as they say, is history. And if things go according to plans, Jaziri will soon be, too.

Update: Jaziri has left the building.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments (1)

Kofi's new job: Just when you were counting on him shufflling off into well-deserved obscurity, the Kofinator comes roaring back:

Kofi Annan, that  eminence grise,

Looked around for a job that would please.

And blow me down! Zuts alors!

He’s pulling a Gore!

And all's I can say’s, “quel surprise.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments

Auf Wiedersehen, Londonistan: Phyllis Chesler interviews Carol Gould, an American-born Jew who’s been living in London for the past thirty years. As Gould tells Chesler, she has decided to leave the metrolpolis that has morphed into Londonistan because the Judenhass has become unbearable:

Q: Why did you move to London from America in the first place?

A: I moved to London in January 1976 to do a postgraduate course in theatre and film studies with Temple University’s London campus. I was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Temple and wanted to have the ‘European experience’ as my sister had done in Italy as a music scholar.

Q: Why, after nearly 30 years, are you planning to leave London?

A: I am leaving because I find the level of Jew-hatred and America-loathing too much to handle now. Over the years I have allowed the nasty comments from British friends and work colleagues to roll off like water off a duck’s back, but since 9/11 the comments have been tinged with a visceral anger. I feel that ugly ‘You damned Jew; you bloody Yank’ hatred rising to the surface to such a degree that I could see myself being physically attacked very soon.

This is not paranoia; just this past week I was told by a man at my storage facility that he had taken a visiting American friend into a London pub and that the verbal abuse from ordinary English people was so severe that they had to leave. To be specific, this abuse takes the following shape: ‘How does it feel to be responsible for our British lads dying every day in Iraq so your friends in Israel can have some more guns to kill Palestinians?’ or ’ How many Americans can spell ‘dog?” or ‘Who are you and your Israeli friends going to slaughter next?’

Q: What kind of life did you have there, culturally, politically, professionally, and socially?

A: In my early years in the UK I have to say I had a rich life. I worked in the top echelons of theatre and TV and was highly respected by my colleagues. In recent years, however, I have found work hard to come by; when I have been in the workplace I have been at the receiving end of nasty comments about my Jewishness, about Americans and about being a ‘Zionist.’

When I defend my heritage, otherwise intelligent media colleagues tell me to ‘get that Holocaust chip off your shoulder.’ I was asked to leave a high-profile women’s video collective way back in 1999 when the Board - women from Britain and Africa — decided I was ‘too Zionist’ to be a ‘trusted member of the team.’

Q: Tell me about your plays, films, and other writing work.

A: In 1977 my very first plays, ‘Virgo Rising’ and ‘Barking to the Angel,’ were produced in London. I was all of twenty-three! In 1980 I had a very successful play at the Edinburgh Festival. After that I was taken on by Anglia Television as Associate Head of Drama and for ten mostly happy years was Commissioning Editor and Associate Producer/Script Editor on international Drama seen on PBS. I worked with John Rosenberg (American) and Sir John Woolf (British), who were true geniuses.

Some of my credits included ‘Tales of the Unexpected;’ ‘Cause Celebre’ by Sir Terence Rattigan; six PD James thrillers; adaptations of Somerset Maugham and of Eric Ambler.

Q: Tell me about your new-found fame as a media pundit.

A: I think I have achieved notoriety in Britain because I am the only Jewish American woman writing with passion and pride. Janet Daley is a superb Jewish-American pundit but she plays it safe and does not deal with the issues that I confront.

I have provoked the ire of the Anglo-Muslim community (not intentionally) by complaining about the virulent hatred I have witnessed at Islamic events in the UK. I also write about anti-Americanism in the UK and have upset a lot of Britons. I even invoked the ire of the famous British photographer Sally Soames because I happened to write about the disgraceful behaviour of the Manchester United fans when Jewish - American tycoon Malcolm Glazer bought that English football club.

Fans were wearing ‘Die, Glazer, Die!’ t-shirts at the first match after he sought to buy the club. I felt this was anti-Semitic and anti-American. Sally wrote to me that she was outraged that I had dared write about something I ‘know nothing about.’ As it happens, in one of my many lives I was once a professional tennis writer and photographer and I am also a sports nut! I stay up all night watching matches on TV.

I make lots of people angry, but I have also been honoured with an appearance on the legendary BBC ‘Any Questions?’ show hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, and in November will be debating Shami Chakrabarti, Helena Kennedy QC and Trevor Phillips in Newcastle for the British-American Project on the issue of Faith and Justice.

Q: What frightens you?

A: I am frightened by the anger shown me by ordinary Brits. Yesterday, I went to mail a letter and an elderly Englishwoman came up to me and started shouting at me when I told her that perhaps we were not being told the whole story about the current national postal strike. She accused me of saying ‘My country is full of liars’ and then when I reminded her I was British, too, she scoffed and quite angrily said I could never be British. This is Brit-speak for ‘you fat little Jew Yank bitch, how dare you say you are one of us? ’

She then appeared in the pharmacy and shouted at me about sponging off the NHS (our health system.) It is hard to explain to Americans the anger provoked by Jews and Americans in the UK but I suggest your readers go to my website, Current Viewpoint, and read some of my recent articles about confrontations in London…

 

Thanks, Carol. I’ve just added it to my “favourites”. 

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

Nazis and Islamists: Put this one on your “must-read” list. From City Journal:

…Better than anyone before him, [German historian] Matthias Kuntzel [in his book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11] makes sense of the deep and entangling historical ties between European National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood. “The idea of using suicide pilots to obliterate the skyscrapers of Manhattan originated in 1940s Berlin,” he notes. “Hitler envisioned having kamikaze pilots fly light aircraft packed with explosives and with no landing gear into Manhattan skyscrapers.” Like the 9/11 bombers, Hitler wanted “not merely to fight a military adversary, but to kill all Jews everywhere.”

Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate. The Brotherhood became to Islamism what the Bolsheviks were to Communism: “the ideological reference point and organization” for future radical movements. Al-Banna’s famous article, “The Industry of Death,” argued that “to a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.”

Al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood were a profound influence on the founder of the Palestinian political movement—Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who, drawing on the underworld-come-to-the-surface that [historian Norman] Cohn described [in his 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages] was “the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context.” Kuntzel explains that “although Islamism is an independent, anti-Semitic, anti-modern mass movement, its main early promoters—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti. . . . in Palestine—were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist government.”

The Mufti, who spent the Second World War in Berlin broadcasting propaganda for the Nazis while recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the SS, translated Palestinian political interests into an extension of Hitler’s intentions to wipe out the Jews. The Mufti pointed to passages in the Koran referring to Jews as dangerous and inferior, as well as to Mohammed’s own behavior in beheading the entire male population of a Jewish tribe and expelling the other Jewish tribes from Medina. The Mufti and al-Banna exemplify the fanaticism that Harris writes about. Kuntzel describes how they relentlessly killed off liberals and moderates who might impede their Islamic agenda. Their success has been the tragedy of the modern Middle East.

Apologists for Islamism argue that, if only we can resolve the conflicts in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, Nigeria, Southern Thailand, the southern Philippines, East Timor, and the cities of Europe for that matter, all will be well. But what’s at the heart of the Islamic conflict with modernity is the unvarnished political theology of Islam, which assumes that Muslims are destined to rule the earth. Hassan Butt, a former British Islamist, explains in his memoirs: “When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network . . . I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings, and 7/7 was Western foreign policy . . . they also helped draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.”…

Memo to the West: It’s the theology, stupid.

This truth was self-evident more than nine decades ago to another academic: C. Snouck Hurgronje, a professor of Arabic at the University of Leiden in Holland. In his book Mohammedism: Lectures On Its Origins, Its Religious And Political Growth And Its Present State, published in 1916, Hurgronje wrote the following:

In the first years of the strife yet another duty was most emphatically impressed on the Faithful; jihad, i.e., readiness to sacrifice life and possessions for the defence of Islam, understood since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Moslim state, first over the whole of Arabia, and soon after Mohammed’s death, over the whole world, so far as Allah granted His hosts the victory.

Hurgronje was writing at the time when Islam was definitely not in ascendence—before Wahabbi oil wealth; before the Muslim Brotherhood and its monstrous offspring Hamas, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad et al; before the Ayatollah Khomeini and the glorious Shia revolution and the revival of apocalyptic Messianism—when Islam was weak and defeated and in disarray. And yet he had no trouble pinpointing the essential, immutable crux of the faith—the jihad imperative and its agenda to Islamize the globe. You would think that we, who live in a far different age, and who see evidence of this agenda being played out on a daily basis, would be able to see what was plain to this Dutch academic all those years ago.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:34 | link | comments

Lost in translation: As Islam sees it, there’s a master copy of the Koran somewhere up in Heaven that’s been there, well, forever. When the Prophet finally hit the planet much later, and the Angel Gabriel divulged the contents of the book to him, he was merely recording something that had always been there, but had not yet been made public. Thus, he was privileged to receive God’s last—but, when you think about it, also his first—word to mankind (since the word was there, though unrevealed, from the get-go): Allah's final, perfect thoughts as dictated word for word to his final, perfect Transcriber.

Now, lo these many centuries later, an uppity chick who takes issue with some of the perfect contents—especially with the passage in which the Prophet enjoins men to raise a hand to “disobedient” wives—has taken it into her inferior little head that she has the right to tamper with perfection. From the Toronto Star:

For seven years Laleh Bakhtiar laboured over her English translation of the Qur'an, a version that is written from a woman's point of view and is also welcoming to non-Muslim readers.

Of all the 90,000 words she translated, there is just one, in chapter four, verse 34, that led to sharp criticism and controversy. It's from the section on women and describes how to deal with one who is "disobedient."

Most translations of the Qur'an, which Muslims believe to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad, say the woman should first be admonished, then left alone in her bed and then beaten, albeit lightly.

"When I got to chapter four I had to really look at this carefully," says Bakhtiar, a Chicago Islamic scholar who is the featured speaker at the 25th annual conference of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which opens on Saturday at Toronto's Noor Cultural Centre. "It took a lot of research time to see what it means.

"It's a command in the Qur'an, an imperative and the point is the Prophet never did it, it meant something else to him," continues Bakhtiar, 68, one of seven children of an American nurse and Iranian doctor. She concluded that the word idrib, which she found could have 26 different meanings, was best translated as "to go away" or "to leave," not some form of "to beat."

"Why choose the word to harm somebody, when that's not what the Prophet did? He was a model for humanity."

This new understanding was particularly important to Bakhtiar, who was trained as an educational psychologist and has worked as a counsellor with young Muslim women who were abused by their families. A practitioner of Sufism, the mystical stream in Islam, she looked on her interpretation as a "blessing" and welcomes, even encourages, the debate that comes with it.

"I just hope we keep the dialogue going so that one less Muslim woman is beaten in the name of God," she says. "That's my prayer, to get more women aware that there is an alternative. This has not been sanctioned by God; it's a criminal act."

Born in Tehran and raised in Washington, D.C., Bakhtiar returned to Iran with her husband, an Iranian architect, where she ran a publishing company and learned classical Arabic. (Raised a Christian, she converted to Islam in 1964.)

A mother of three, she returned to the U.S. in 1988 and earned a doctorate at the University of New Mexico. She has since written 20 books on Islam and translated 25 books about the faith.

Besides giving the text a female perspective, another strong motivator was her desire to offer a new English translation for non-Muslims and new Muslims. Instead of Allah, she uses God; instead of Isa, she uses the more familiar Jesus. Non-Muslims are not infidels or disbelievers, words she says are "loaded," but instead are those who are "ungrateful to God for his blessings."

"I tried to develop an inclusive translation so people from other faiths may read it and feel like it speaks to them as well, as a sacred text."

Some of her critics have cited her lack of fluency in modern Arabic as a shortcoming, a criticism that has not been applied to other translators who also are not native speakers, she maintains. "It's not a valid criticism, because the Qur'an is written in classical Arabic ... If you go through all the criticisms, when it comes down to it, the only difference is because I'm a woman. Obviously."

Some who study the Qur'an, including Nevin Reda, a University of Toronto doctoral student, have welcomed Bakhtiar's translation for the consistency of her language. Bakhtiar translated each Arabic word into an English equivalent and then stuck with that translation throughout the text as long as it worked in context. "That's something new and for me, it's really outstanding," said Reda.

Meanwhile, the head of one of Canada's leading Muslim organizations said he would not permit Bahktiar's book, The Sublime Quran, to be sold in the bookstore of the Islamic Society of North America (Canada). "Our bookstore would not allow this kind of translation," says Mohammad Ashraf, ISNA's secretary general. "I will consider banning it."

His objection is not that Bakhtiar is a female scholar, but that she was not trained at an academic institution accredited in the Muslim world – he cites the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia as such a place.

"This woman-friendly translation will be out of line and will not fly too far," he says. "Women have been given a very good place in Islam."

Walid Saleh, an associate professor of religion at the University of Toronto, notes that Bakhtiar's work is not unique, but is one of many attempts on the part of Muslims living in a changing world to come to terms with a text they still hold dear.

"She belongs to a long line of Muslim feminists, since the late 19th century, who have been attempting to make the Qur'an and Islam far more, in a sense, gender-equal than people think it is."…

There’s a word for women who mess with perfection and attempt to make the Qur’an and Islam far more, in a sense, gender-equal: blasphemer. One might as well try to translate the Koran from a Jew’s point of view, removing all the passages in which Jews are cursed, reviled, demonized, consigned to eternal Hellfire, or transformed into lowly beasts.

Of course, that would leave a gaping chasm in the text.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments

A serious disturbance of the brain: David Beidlin suggests that Condi Rice’s derangements may be the result of “Jerusalem Syndrome.”  I think she’s come down with a dreadful case of foggybottomosis. From israelinsider:

 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's mediation in Jerusalem has caused many people to question her judgment. There is a recognized clinical condition known as "Jerusalem Syndrome", which causes some people here to lose their rational judgment when they arrive in Jerusalem, the cradle of the world's three great monotheistic religions, the place where Jewish prophets once flourished and the Christians relive the story of their Savior.

Deeply religious, Rice studies portions of the Bible every day, and no one can disturb her while she studies. Nothing is wrong with Bible study, except when Rice suddenly proclaims that she is on the ultimate mission of peace , that she herself is going to foster a peace settlement in the Middle East, and that the Palestinian state must be created immediately, and she seems mysteriously disconnected from the reality of the Arab war that continues against Israel, unabated, since 1948, spawned by the Arab League whose purpose, to this day, remains Israels obliteration.

Speaking to reporters while en route to Israel, Ms. Rice told the media that her goal was to achieve "security for the Israelis and dignity for the Palestinians", as if these are the characteristics of the Middle East conflict that has lasted for the past sixty years between Israel and the Arab world.

Meanwhile, as Ms. Rice says over and over she wants the Palestinian state to be created now, she also mentions to people around her she feels that the Palestinian cause is reminiscent of the civil rights struggle, which dominated the formative years of Rice's life. Rice was the daughter of a black clergyman whose life was on the line in the 1960's in a small Alabama town. Some of her close childhood friends were, indeed, murdered in a brutal attack on a local church.

Yet it seems Ms. Rice's seminal civil rights experience has distracted her from the reality.

While Ms. Rice may imagine the PLO is a spontaneous Palestinian Arab grass roots civil rights movement, she apparently never relates to the fact that that it was the Arab League that fostered the PLO in 1964, three years before the 1967 war, in order to incite the indigenous Arab population to join their war to liquidate Israel and liberate all of Palestine.

Ms. Rice never mentions the PLO covenant to destroy Israel remains in tact as the mandate for the PLO and its progeny, the Palestinian Authority, and that the PLO covenant has not changed, except for the 1974 amendment that allows the PLO to destroy Israel in stages, which allows the PLO to use diplomatic means to that end.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was Rice's comment to her colleagues that she compares Machmud Abbas to Martin Luther King, because they are both committed to peace.

If Ms. Rice had paid more attention to the guidelines the US State Department, she could have paid more attention to the fact Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades of the Fatah, commanded by Abbas himself, was designated by the US government on March 23rd, 2002, as a terrorist organization and that Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades was and is an integral part of Fatah, whose members regard Abbas as their leader. Ms. Rice could also relate to the fact that Abbas simply refuses to disband the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

Instead, Ms. Rice lauds a terror organization which her own government defines as a terrorist group, while repeating, over and over, that she respects this same organization as a "moderate" entity. A symptom, perhaps, of Jerusalem Syndrome, since such a description bears no connection to reality…

 

Foggybottomosis it is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:28 | link | comments

You've got to be kidding: Liberal MP proposes "Pierre Trudeau Day."

I think even Margaret Trudeau Day would be a better idea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:59 | link | comments

Fat Al’s Cozy Carb’n Credit Cab’n: Tony Blankley explains those cockamamie offsets. From the Washington Times:

…Before reviewing Mr. Gore's various inanities that won him the Nobel, it is worth taking a look at one of his related projects: carbon offsets. As chairman and founder of Generation Investment Management — a firm that purchases carbon-dioxide offsets, Mr. Gore stands to further profit from what he sees as mankind's misery — which is OK by me. I'm glad to see he has finally developed the capitalist instinct (like his dad did with Occidental Petroleum and Armand Hammer).

 

But carbon offsets are a rather strange concept. Let me use a simple metaphor to explain it. Let's suppose that Mr. Gore goes to an Italian restaurant and eats a loaf of garlic bread, a plate of lasagna, a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, an extra large pizza with seven toppings, a couple or three bottles of chianti and a large assortment of pastries. As a result he puts on another 10 pounds. But he is deeply concerned that mankind is getting too fat. So, he pays 10 peasants in Asia 10 dollars each to eat nothing for a week. Although they are already thin, by starving themselves for a week they each lose a pound. As a result, after a week, mankind is weight neutral. Mr. Gore weighs 10 pounds more, 10 Asians weigh 10 pounds less — and Mr. Gore gets another Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in keeping mankind's waistline in check.

 

Of course, this example is not quite fair to Mr. Gore, because that imagined humanitarianism actually cost him cash money. In the real carbon-offset business, he looks forward to being paid for directing other carbon consumers to invest in carbon-neutral projects. But when Mr. Gore is personally using carbon, as when he flies in a Gulfstream jet belching carbon into the atmosphere, one of his companies would pay some other fella not to fly or to plant a tree or do something to offset Gore's carbon belching…

It strikes me that Al’s a lot like "Music Man" Harold Hill, who’s breezed into town to terrify folks into giving him lots of moolah:

"Well, you got trouble, my friends.

Right here, I say trouble right here on Planet Earth

With a capital "T" and that rhymes with "C"

And that stands for “con.”

We surely got trouble!

Right here on Planet Earth.

Lemme tell you ‘bout a way

That I can get your carbon ‘prints withdrawn…"

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:08 | link | comments

Take the money and run: The Brits are so desperate for failed “unassimilated” asylum seekers to return from whence they came that they’re going to bribe them to am-scray. From the Daily Mail:

Failed asylum seekers are to be offered up to £4,000 to go home voluntarily, it was revealed yesterday.

The support packages - which can include help towards private school fees - are intended to arrest an alarming slump in the number of bogus refugees being removed from the country.

But the proposals were last night attacked as an act of desperation by a Government failing to clear a backlog of 400,000 cases.

The deal includes money for housing, childcare fees and even help setting up a business. There is also a cash payment of £500 at the airport.

But the part of the increased package which provoked the most comment was the possibility that failed asylum seekers could claim money towards private school and university fees for their children.

It is estimated that only 7 per cent of British children attend a fee-paying school.  

The total budget for the scheme - to be met by the taxpayer - is £22million a year, officials said.

The Home Office has been offering £1,500 support packages to failed refugees since 2002 but the number taking the money is falling.

Last year, 5,327 accepted the payment and went home voluntarily but in the first half of this year the number fell to 1,883.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "It is extraordinary that the Government, having so patently failed to do its job, now has to bribe asylum seekers to return by paying for private schooling in their country of origin.

"If these people are able to be sent back, they should be sent back. No questions."

Every bogus refugee will be entitled to around £2,500 under the deal, while some can bid for up to £4,000.

Those who agree to go home hold a meeting with officials to agree the level of support they will receive.

The list of what's on offer includes "schooling fees, state or private". Officials will agree to the payment if they are satisfied it will "best suit" the needs of the family.

For example, failed asylum claimants could argue that their children - who may have been in the UK for many years - need extra help learning the language of their home country to help them catch up with other pupils.

The claimants would not receive any cash for the schooling themselves. Instead, it would be paid direct to the school by the International Organisation of Migration, which runs the scheme.

Any payments would have to be within the £4,000 total offered…

Sounds like the asylum-seekers are running the inmates.

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

Boo flippin’ hoo: Islam Online has a tear-jerking tale of a poor, unfortunate Gazan who is stuck in Hamastan because—get this—Israel won’t affirm his identiy:

JABALYA, Gaza Strip — Palestinians in the isolated Gaza Strip have almost lost any shimmer of hope to get official identity cards or documents issued by Israeli occupation authorities, who scarcely do it.

"I am Mr Nobody," Mahmoud Jnaid, a Gazan returnee who failed to get an ID after 12 years of his return to Gaza, told Reuters Saturday, October 20.

Earlier this month, frustrated Jnaid doused himself in petrol and tried to set himself alight before onlookers overpowered him.

Jnaid said he tried to end the nightmare he lives since his return to Gaza as he tried in vain to get official documents from Israel, which he needs to travel as well as for daily basics like opening a bank account or getting a driving license.

"When I poured the petrol on my body I felt life was the same as death."

Jnaid was born in Jordan after his family fled their home in the coastal Strip after the 1967 Six-Day War.

He returned to Gaza in 1995 at the age of 13 but still has no ID card.

With no identity card, the 25-year-old carpenter have struggled — many times in vain — to find a job and eke out a living for himself and his growing family.

"I have to take care of six children now and I am out of a job for three months," said Jnaid. "Everywhere I go people ask for an identification card and I do not have one."

The World Bank warned in July that unemployment rates in the Gaza Strip could reach an unprecedented 44 percent due to the US-led international boycott of the Strip after Hamas was voted to power in January of last year.

Only 54,000 of the Palestinians returned to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from abroad after the Oslo Peace Accord, which was signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993. They still have no identity cards because Israel refuses to approve them.

Under the controversial accord, Israel must approve all Palestinian personal documents, including ID cards.

Israel has frozen the register of Palestinians since the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.

It further denied Palestinian expatriates, whose family left the occupied territories before the Israeli invasion of 1967, Palestinian IDs.

But, earlier this month Israel granted identity cards to some 3,500 Palestinians in the West Bank as part of efforts to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah ahead of a US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace conference slated for next November.

The "goodwill" is not expected to extend to Gaza, which Israel has recently branded an "enemy entity" after Hamas took over it.

Gaza Jail

Jnaid said that Gaza has turned into a large jail for him.

"Those in Israeli jails live in small cells, I am too a prisoner but in a large room called Gaza," he fumed.

He said he has recently failed to travel to Egypt to attend the funeral of his uncle and one of his younger brothers.

Israeli authorities have also refused to allow him to travel to Egypt to undergo a surgery in his eye.

All these sufferings made Jnaid feels like a ghost.

"Not only a ghost, I do not exist," he said with a heavy heart.

Following years of silence, Jnaid and his peers recently started holding weekly protests in Gaza to highlight their plight.

Hussein al-Sheikh, head of the Palestinian Civil Affairs government office in Ramallah, which negotiates with Israel over the issue of ID cards and travel permits, said there was no sign Israel would soften their position on documents for Gazans.

In a stroke of bitter irony, Jnaid's brother was finally granted identity papers two weeks after he was killed in a protest against Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

"It was worthless, they recognized him only when he died," Jnaid said.

You mean this Gazan’s identity hinges on the despised Jewish dhimmi entity providing it?

And Islam Online has no sense that there’s something, oh, I dunno, profoundly ironic about that?

I’m sure if the Gazans of Hamastan resolved to turn over a new leaf and build their own non-Islamist state instead of waging jihad against the Jewish one, Israel would have no problem providing all the documentation they want.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:45 | link | comments

So helpful: Nicolas Sarkozy is reportedly going to tell Ehud Olmert that "it's time to make peace with the Palestinians."

Thanks for that heads-up, Nico. Now, be a good chap and tell it to the Islamic supremacists whose conception of "peace" is one which, on religious grounds, excludes a sovereign Jewish state in Israel. See how far it gets you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:28 | link | comments

Resigned or fired?: Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Laranjani, has “resigned”. According to Fars News Agency, he “resigned” due to unspecified “personal problems,” but this AP report on MSNBC seems to indicate that these pertained largely to his “personal problems” with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--meaning, he and Tiny Hitler weren't seeing eye-to-eye on nuclear issues.

Which is the reason I thought it wise to put “resigned” in scare quotes.

Update: The American Thinker has the low-down that the mainstream media, as per usual, fails to provide.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:22 | link | comments

The complete idiot’s guide to Judenhass: I’ve heard a lot of lame, ill-informed opinions accounting for antisemitism, but the one proferred by Rav Michael Laitman, the Kabbalah guy with all those glitzy Hollywood followers (and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Kabbalah), has an inside shot at being the silliest. As this sage sees it, Jews are entirely responsible for Judenhass because they have kept the wisdom of the Kabbalah hidden away, refusing to share it with the world. Had the Jew-haters been given access to this covert knowledge, they would have become enlightened, and Jew-hatred would--poof!-- disappear. And unless we all resolve to embrace this wisdom—now!—the world faces an exceedingly grim future. From the National Post:

…On Tuesday night at a Jewish community centre here, Mr. Laitman spoke through a translator (he speaks Hebrew and Russian) about how Kabbalah can heal the world and then, switching to a kindly version of an Old Testament prophet of doom, told the crowd of about 200 that if Kabbalah is not adopted they should expect Nazi regimes, the destruction of the United States, a world war and the continuation of virulent anti-Semitism.

In fact, in an interview the next day he said that is why he wrote the Idiot's Guide: in the hope that the message gets more quickly disseminated to save the world a lot of needless suffering.

"If we don't adopt Kabbalah, the result will be Nazi regimes, a Third World War, all of which will result from our imbalance with nature," he said.

Mr. Laitman told his audience about Kabbalah beginning with Adam (the first man with a soul, not the first man), who wrote The Angel of God's Secret, and then Abraham(the first Kabbalist), who wrote the The Book of Creation.

He explained there is an upper spiritual world and lower material world. Kabbalah can lead practitioners to unite those two worlds and in the process unlock for the individual and society true peace and harmony by understanding the spiritual forces at work in the world. He said Kabbalah can "correct" the runaway ego that exploits others and obsesses over material gain and transform that into altruism.

Kabbalah has nothing to do with the charms that celebrities and the wealthy embrace, he said, but celebrity interest is not all bad because it gets the word out.

The rise in celebrity interest likely conforms to predictions that were made in early Kabbalah texts. The year 1995, he said, was mentioned in The Zohar -- a seminal Kabbalah text believed to have been written 1,900 years ago. It predicted, he said, the whole 20th century would be in crisis and in 1995 a new humanity would begin. He said around this time "the forces that come to this world were completed and the crisis becomes tangibly felt. Perhaps we don't sense these things yet, but they've begun to unfold."

Mr. Laitman also believes the virulent anti-Semitism in the world is directly related to Jews hoarding the secret of Kabbalah from the world for centuries.

"We [Jews] are causing all the trouble in the world," he told his audience. During the later interview, he said Jews hold the key to the world's happiness, which was locked up for nearly 2,000 years. "The fact that humanity still does not know how to use this method ... we are to blame for not presenting it to humanity. That's the reason for anti-Semitism. Subconsciously, people hate us because they feel there's something the Jews are withholding. We're talking about a kind of hatred that seems to come within human nature."…

Kabbollocks! I don’t know which historical sources the Rav has been consulting; from the sheer ignorance on display here, I suspect he’s come up with most of this nonsense on his own. My own extensive reading on the subject—and, admittedly, I have approached it as neither a Kabbalist nor as a prophet—has revealed an entirely different basis for Jew-hatred. If people hate us, it’s not because they sense we’re “withholding” something. It’s because we had the effrontery to come first, and the two succeeding (and, as they see it, superceding) monotheisms felt compelled to validate their own doctrines by invalidated Judaism—and killing Jews. (There’s a lot more to it,  of course, including immense dollops of irrationality, Jewish powerlessness in exile, and the Jew-hatred as a useful tool for tyrants and totalitarians, but let’s not go into that now.)

In making such vile, baseless assertions this holy fool is, in his own way, as bad the non-Jewish Jew-haters.

No, I take it back—he’s even worse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:01 | link | comments

Much ado about nada: There’s been a big hullabaloo in recent days because some Jews have taken great offense to having received a Rosh Hashanah card from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A real sticky wicket they claim, since that means someone over in Ottawa knows they're Jewish, and may have even compiled a master list of Canada’s Juden. And you know what can happen when there are lists of Jews about—the banally evil may decide to use them to ship people, er, eastward, for purposes of, er, social relocation.

The utterly absurd implication here is that Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister who more than any other in recent times had stood foursquare for Israel and its right to fend off those seeking its destruction, is, if not an outright Nazi, then someone with definite fascistic tendencies. Someone, perhaps, who has one of those scary hidden agendae.

What rubbish! If the Liberal Jews behind this manufactured controversy (this means you, Susan Kadis) really want to help Israel and the Jewish people, they should park their outrage in a place where it’s far more likely to do some good—for example, by trying to persuade their own party to be as unflinching in its support for Israel as the Harper Conservatives have been.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:04 | link | comments

Cursed from the start: Kudos to Andrew Bostom, noted scholar of Islam, who shatters once and for all the myth that modern Muslim Judenhass has no basis in Islamic doctrine and was borrowed entirely from Christians. In fact, as Bostom dogged research reveals, the source of such hatred and the source of Islam are one and the same—i.e. the, um, source. Here are a few of the “delightful” things the Koran has to say about God’s first—but by no means His last—“Chosen People”. From FrontPage Magazine:

…Indeed the Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment and conviction process. The Jews wronged themselves (16:118) by losing faith (7:168) and breaking their covenant (5:13). The Jews (echoing an ante-Nicaean, Marcionite polemic) are a nation that has passed away (2:134; repeated in 2:141). Twice Allah sent his instruments (the Assyrians/or Babylonians, and Romans) to punish this perverse people (17:4-5)—their dispersal over the earth is proof of Allah’s rejection (7:168). The Jews are further warned about both their arrogant claim that they remain Allah’s chosen people (62:6), and continued disobedience and “corruption” (5:32-33) Other sins, some repeated, are enumerated: abuse, even killing of prophets (4:155; 2:91), including Isa [Jesus] (3:55; 4:157), is a consistent theme. The Jews ridiculed Muhammad as Ra’ina (the evil one, in 2:104; 4:46), and they are also accused of lack of faith, taking words out of context, disobedience, and distortion (4:46). Precious few of them are believers (also 4:46). These “perverse” creatures also claim that Ezra is the messiah and they worship rabbis who defraud men of their possessions (9:30). Additional sins are described: the Jews are typified as an “envious” people (2:109), whose hearts are as hardened as rocks (2:74). They are further accused of confounding the truth (2:42), deliberately perverting scripture (2:75), and being liars (2:78). Ill-informed people of little faith (2:89), they pursue vague and wishful fancies (2:111). Other sins have contributed to their being stamped (see 2:61/ 3:112 above) with “wretchedness/abasement and humiliation,” including—usury (2:275), sorcery (2:102), hedonism (2:96), and idol worship (2:53). More (and repeat) sins, are described still: the Jews’ idol worship is again mentioned (4:51), then linked and followed by charges of other (often repeat) iniquities—the “tremendous calumny” against Mary (4:156), as well as usury and cheating (4:161). Most Jews are accused of being “evil-livers” /“transgressors” /“ungodly” (3:110), who, deceived by their own lies (3:24), try to turn Muslims from Islam (3:99). Jews are blind and deaf to the truth (5:71), and what they have not forgotten they have perverted—they mislead (3:69), confound the truth (3:71), twist tongues (3:79), and cheat Gentiles without remorse (3:75). Muslims are advised not to take the Jews as friends (5:51), and to beware of the inveterate hatred that Jews bear towards them (5:82). The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam—the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)—they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19)…

Which explains why demented Christian medievalisms about Jews being in league with the devil and Czarist fabrications supposedly outlining the Jews’ plans for world control have fit in so well with the modern Muslim outlook: It isn’t hard to graft such poison onto such a receptive tree.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:27 | link | comments

Multifrikkinculturalism in action: Here’s how it works. If your group is non-pale and can claim at some point to have been victimized by the pale, your group has much greater moral heft, and foolish things are done at a societal level to reaffirm your high rank in the hierarchy of moral authority. And woe betide anyone who goes against the grain or dares complain about the foolishness, for to do so is to risk being branded a bigot, or a racist (or, even worse, a Zionist).

Two examples of how the cult operates on the ground: The National Post has a story about an Ontario Superior Court which has ruled in favour of a woman, a social worker, who was unjustly dismissed by her employer, a Toronto women’s shelter. The woman had been working at the shelter for six years, but things fell apart when she fell afoul of its management. Her offence: She opined to them that “it was a challenge for me to work here as a white woman with all these black women and women of colour.” That innocuous observation—hardly a racial slur, more like a statement of fact that at this particular workplace, she was a member of a visible minority—got her fired. The management of this publicly-funded shelter took umbrage not because her statement was false, but because it was made by a woman who, being white, lacked the moral authority to even be aware of the difference, much less mention it out loud. To do so, as they saw it, contravened their “zero-tolerance” policy for inappropriate behaviour. Fortunately, the court disagreed.

The second story has been making a big splash in the media and the blogosphere—the cafeteria at the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto that has gone “halal.” Or would have gone halal—fully halal—if the folks lobbying for it to go that way hadn’t pushed a wee bit too far. Here’s the latest scoop from the ever-sensitive, multicultist-minded Toronto Star:

Muslim student leaders are appealing for understanding in the wake of a controversy surrounding the halal menu at a U of T Scarborough campus restaurant.

"It's being blown out of proportion," said Emad Alarashi, president of the campus's Muslim Students Association.

The controversy began last May when the student-subsidized Bluff's Restaurant, owned by the student union and located in the student centre, began offering halal-certified meat options to cater to Muslim customers.

Halal ("lawful") foods are those that adhere to Islamic conventions on diet and meat and dairy preparations.

However because Bluff's serves alcohol, the 500-student Muslim association has refused to endorse the restaurant for its membership.

As well, some Muslim students feared the Bluff's menu addition would undermine ongoing efforts to persuade the Scarborough Campus Students Union to find space for an all-halal eatery on campus.

Student union president Rob Wulkan said that possibility still exists and the Bluff's operates as an arm's-length company and makes its own decisions.

"They are free to do whatever they want with their menu," he said. "The (students' union) is committed to trying to ensure that all students are accommodated to the greatest degree possible."

All sides agree the menu conflict has stoked debate on campus on how far secular institutions should go to accommodate religious communities.

The online version of an article in the Varsity student paper on the Bluff's halal menu is followed by a series of harsh postings about Muslims.

Editors at the student paper did not return phone calls yesterday.

Ahmad Jaballah, an MSA member who is also the vice-president of students and equity on the student union, said he is saddened by the comments.

"It just shows the ignorance of people who do not even understand what the issue is," Jaballah said.

He is working with Alarashi and other students and officials to release a unified statement to clarify the issue within the next few days.

Nouman Ashraf, the university's cultural diversity officer, said he is working with the Muslim student group to find a solution to what he believes is an equity issue...

Actually, it is “an equity issue”. The issue being that according to the built-in inequities of sharia law, Muslim rights trump infidel rights every time. Lucky for the halalists, the prevailing social doctrine, with its clear demarcations of moral authority, sees it the same way. At the same time, though, this incident shows that even sensitive multiculturalists have their limits: push them too far, and they begin to push back. The lesson for those seeking to make gains for sharia law: go slow, take baby steps, and don’t demand too much all at once.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:55 | link | comments (2)

Nostalgia ist nicht wass it used to be: Time, as they say, heals all wounds. Just look at what’s happening in Germany. More than six decades after the end of the Second World War, one in four Germans is said to be pining for the good old days of Der Fuhrer and what they see as the positive aspects of his Thousand Year Reich. This longing is attributed to “nostalgia.”

That’s right, nostalgia.

From the times online:

One in four Germans believes that the Nazis had their good side, according to an extraordinary opinion survey published in Berlin yesterday.

The findings are the result of a gradual loosening of taboos about discussing the Third Reich after 60 years of tight-lipped political caution.

Recent German-made films have attracted mass audiences by depicting Hitler as sad and mad as well as bad, or even as an impotent comic figure playing with toy battleships in his bath. Bestselling authors, meanwhile, have been praising Nazi achievements and harking back to the good, or at least not so bad, old days.

The latest clash of cultures — between a taboo-breaker and a guardian of the politically correct — came in a prime-time television chat show. Germany’s former leading television anchorwoman, Eva Herman, was expelled from the studio by the popular host Johannes Kerner after praising the motorway construction of the Hitler era.

“I mean, autobahns were built then weren’t they?” Ms Herman said. “And we’re still driving on them today.”

“Autobahn geht halt nicht,” snapped Kerner — roughly meaning, “Autobahns are a step too far” — before asking Ms Herman to leave. Newspapers have been swamped by post supporting her.

The survey, conducted by the Forsa institute after the chat show incident, asked whether National Socialism had its good sides, citing not only the autobahns, but also the lower crime rates, the creation of full employment and the supposed respect for family values. On average 25 per cent of the sample agreed that there had been a sunny side to the Nazis. Some 37 per cent of the over-60s supported the idea.

“You can’t say all these people are Nazis,” said Ulrich Dovermann, head of the Department of Extremism at the Federal Centre for Political Education. “Praise for the Third Reich is only one of several components that make up a far-right world-view.”

Eva Herman does not rank herself as a neo-Nazi and has been at pains to distance herself from her newfound politically dubious fans. Her bestselling books plead for a return to old-fashioned family values. In presenting her latest book, which accuses feminists of humiliating stay-at-home mothers and castrating men, she described the Hitler regime as a “time of cruelty”. But she went on to say: “There were things that were good too — the values, the children, the mothers, the families, the sense of solidarity.” That cost her job as an anchorwoman and presenter of a talk show.

Supporters of Herman —who presumably are among the 25 per cent registered in the Forsa survey — say that they want to recover the German language and its debating culture. “I just have to learn that one cannot talk about our history without running into trouble,” Ms Herman said.

Critics say that the crude listing of Nazi achievements is an attempt to cancel out or mitigate Nazi crimes. “There are plainly millions of people who share Eva Herman’s thoughts,” said Andreas Petzold, editor of Stern magazine, which published the Forsa study. “But these people ignore the fact that the Third Reich can only be viewed through the prism of its end.”

Autobahns were encouraged in order to transport soldiers quickly, motherhood sponsored in order to provide cannon fodder. Families were supported — but only those of healthy Aryan Germans.

Well, I can think of at least one person who’s working really hard to revive some of those Nazi family values.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:03 | link | comments

By their googling shall ye know them: It’s probably not scientific to draw conclusions from what folks in various nations are searching for on google—but it sure is interesting to see what they find interesting. From Reuters:

BERLIN, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for Web sites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google Inc.

Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed.

Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia.

The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place):

"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan

"Terrorism" - Pakistan, Philippines, Australia

"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

"Burrito" - United States, Argentina, Canada

"Iraq" - United States, Australia, Canada 

"Taliban" - Pakistan, Australia, Canada

"Tom Cruise" - Canada, United States, Australia

"Britney Spears" - Mexico, Venezuela, Canada

"Homosexual" - Philippines, Chile, Venezuela

"Love" - Philippines, Australia, United States

"Botox" - Australia, United States, United Kingdom

"Viagra" - Italy, United Kingdom, Germany…

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:35 | link | comments

Reality check--the jihad’s still on: Egypt’s disloyal opposition, The Muslim Brotherhood, has “clarified” its position re Israel, a stance it considers to be “realistic”. The Brothers accept the fact that, for the moment at least, Israel continues to exist, but that doesn’t mean they have any plans to ever accept the fact of Israel’s existence. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — The planned party of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition force in and outside parliament, will be pragmatic when it comes to dealing with Israel if voted to power in the heavyweight Arab country.

"The Brotherhood party will deal with Israel based on a political reality that Israel does exist as a state," Essam El-Erian, a senior Brotherhood leader, told IslamOnline.net in an interview on Wednesday, October 17.

"The party will deal with the political reality dictated by these circumstances."

The officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is planning a political party in defiance of the state crackdown.

Erian said the party would respect all signed international agreements, including the Camp David Accords with Israel.

"It is inconceivable that every party assuming power would scrap agreements signed by former governments."

The Camp David Accord was signed between Egypt and Israel in September 1978, to end the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.

The Accord led directly to the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Earlier, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper quoted Erian as saying that the Brotherhood party would recognize Israel and respect signed agreements.

But Erian said the party would retain the right to review and amend the peace treaty with Israel.

"If there is a popular demand for a review then this will be done according to international laws that allow each side to improve its conditions and make the best use of any treaty," he told IOL.

Different

Erian made it clear that the party's position on Israel would be quite different from that of the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

"The Muslim Brotherhood's firm stance is that Israel is an occupying entity," he told IOL.

"The movement sees Israel as an illegitimate state that has been created on Palestinian lands. Thus it can not be recognized," Erian stressed.

He, however, left the door open for a possible Brotherhood's recognition of Israel in case of a Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

"If a Palestinian state is set up with al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) as its capital, refugees are allowed back to their homes and settlements are dismantled, then we will see," he said.

"Until this happens, the Muslim Brotherhood would not recognize Israel."...

In other words, the Brothers will recognize Jewish sovereignty in Israel when Hades turns into Antarctica.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:18 | link | comments

How Gore became God: Bruce Thornton offers a succinct history of Al’s elevation to Al-lah—how a guilt-ridden limousine liberal with Rousseauian tendencies jumped on the environmental bandwagon at just the right time and rode it to Peace Prize "glory". From VDH’s Private Papers:

…Then came 2000, the “stolen” election, and the Bush administration’s subsequent rejection of the ludicrous Kyoto treaty. Now Gore’s wounded ego, his hatred of George Bush, and his romantic environmentalism all found the perfect public issue in global warming. It didn’t matter that Kyoto under President Gore would not have been ratified in the Senate, or that even if ratified it wouldn’t have made much difference in terms of reducing emissions enough to lower global temperatures. Kyoto became the perfect expression of irrational bigotry and hatred: against George Bush, against America, against the modern world and the technology that insulates us from nature’s brutal indifference and allows us to live like gods compared to previous generations. Moreover, these same prejudices dominate the media, the universities, and the EUrocrats beloved of blue-state America, insuring that Gore would have a sympathetic audience both at home and abroad.

So now Gore, previously in the news only for growing a beard or a gut, had an issue that allowed him more loudly to indulge his self-selected role as prophet, something he admitted to in [his 1992 book] Earth in the Balance: there he wrote that his purpose is “to fully search my heart and mind about this challenge to which I feel called — and in the process to summon the courage to make a full and unreserved commitment to see it through.” The rhetoric of evangelical Christianity is obvious. One wonders, though, how much “courage” it takes for a multi-millionaire and out-of-work politician to preach to a media choir that already shares many of the same prejudices and bigotries indulged by Gore. Seasoned with Bush hatred, Gore’s cinematic rants on global warming were a shoo-in for an Academy Award voted on by a cohort not exactly known for critical thinking skills, educational achievement, or even the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, as proven by the “documentary” award given to Michael Moore’s fictive pastiche Bowling for Columbine.

And now has come the global imprimatur of Western self-loathing, Bush hatred, and anti-Americanism, the Orwellian named Nobel Peace Prize. Jimmy Carter, who hasn’t met a dictator whose boots he won’t lick, got his in 2002 during the run-up to the Iraq war, right after he scolded the President as a warmonger. Mohammed El Baradei — he of the impotent International Atomic Energy Agency, another Bush-scolder whose “diplomacy” has accomplished nothing other than giving the Iranian mullahs more time to get the bomb — got one too in 2005. Then there’s the literature Nobel awarded that same year to rabid lunatic Harold Pinter, whose anti-Americanism makes Iran’s Ahmadenijad sound like a Republican Rotarian on the fourth of July. And let’s not forget the most shameless Nobel of all, the one given in 1994 to Yasser Arafat, the corrupt thug with Israeli, American, European, and Arab blood up to his elbows. How anyone could feel proud being in that company defies comprehension.

This is Gore’s “vindication” the New York Times announced? This tainted prize used to express old Europe’s envy and hatred of the America that refuses to flagellate itself and defer to the supposed superior wisdom and cultural sophistication of an exhausted civilization? But here’s the worst: now we’re guaranteed even more of Gore’s narcissistic bluster, preening self-righteousness, and gaseous apocalyptic sermons. Isn’t Jimmy Carter enough punishment?

It’s certainly enough punishment for me. But then, unlike the self-loathers, I’m not a masochist.

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

Map quest: George and Condi keep pushing the Peace in Our Time agenda, one which hinges on seeing Fatah as "secular" and amenable to hashing out the details of a two-state-solution. Meanwhile, Fatah is making no attempt to disguise what it really wants--the whole entity enchilada. Here's the map of "Palestinine" that was recently shown on Fatah-controlled Palestinian TV (from Palestinian Media Watch):

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

Beeb spin: Here's a spoof of a Beeb report from Gaza that sounds remarkably like the real thing. (Sounds a lot like something from the Ceeb, too.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:24 | link | comments

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more: That seems to sum up the Bush administration’s way of tippy-toeing around a sensitive matter that could scupper its much-vaunted peace summit before it begins. From OpinonJournal:

The silence from the Bush Administration over Israel's recent bombing of a site in Syria gets louder by the day. U.S. officials continue to look the other way, even as reports multiply that Israel and U.S. intelligence analysts believe the site was a partly constructed nuclear reactor modeled after a North Korean design.

The weekend was full of reports about these intelligence judgments, first in the U.S. media then picked up by the Israeli press. Israel's former chief of military intelligence, Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, called them "logical." That's the term of art people use to confirm things in Israel when they want to get around the military censors.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel and offered her own non-confirmation confirmation. "We're very concerned about any evidence of, any indication of, proliferation," she said, according to the New York Times. "And we're handling those in appropriate diplomatic channels." Just what you need when your enemies are caught proliferating nuclear expertise--a little more diplomacy. The world is lucky Israel preferred to act against the threat, in what seems to have been a smaller version of its 1981 attack against Iraq's Osirak reactor.

Ms. Rice went on to say that "The issues of proliferation do not affect the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts we are making," adding that "This is the time to be extremely careful." In other words, even if North Korea is spreading nuclear weapons, she doesn't want to say so in public because it might offend a country--Syria--that is refusing even to take part in the regional Palestinian-Israeli peace conference next month. That's certainly being "careful."

Or perhaps she fears offending North Korea, which the Bush Administration has agreed to trust for finally pledging to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and disavowing proliferation. In return for that promise, the U.S. is shipping fuel oil to Pyongyang and is taking steps to remove North Korea from its list of terror states. It would certainly be inconvenient, not to say politically embarrassing, if North Korea were found to be helping Syria get a bomb amid all of this diplomacy.

All the more so given that only last year, after North Korea exploded a nuclear device, President Bush explicitly warned North Korea against such proliferation. "America's position is clear," he said at the time. "The transfer of nuclear weapons or material will be considered a grave threat to the United States." More than once, Mr. Bush added that, "We will hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences."

Even granting some leeway in defining the words "fully accountable," they cannot mean winking at the spread of nuclear know-how to a U.S. enemy in the most dangerous corner of the world. With its continuing silence about what happened in Syria, the Bush Administration is undermining its own security credibility. More important, the see-no-evil pose is showing North Korea that it can cheat even on an agreement whose ink is barely dry--and without "consequences."

Tiny Hitler is cheating and undermining security every day—without consequences. What do Bush and Condi plan to do about that?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:42 | link | comments

No Zionists, please, we’re lefties: Zionism is the foundational philosophy of the state of Israel. In essence, it holds that Jews have the right to be sovereign in their ancient, ancestral homeland. To some art mavens in San Francisco, though, it’s a concept that’s far too “controversial” a concept to be the basis of an art show. From the New York Sun:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — An Israeli-American artist contends that a San Francisco gallery that displayed his paintings dropped plans to publish a catalog of his work after he proposed that the cover title of the collection refer to Zionism.

The artist, Alan Kaufman, said several of his Jewish-themed paintings were rotated on-and-off the walls at the Himmelberger Gallery near Union Square beginning in July. Some of Mr. Kaufman's works bear the names of figures from the Hebrew Bible, while others listed in a contract with the gallery have titles such as "Anti-Semitism," "Battle for Israel," and "Flight of Israel's Foes." One canvas is named after an Israeli city near the Gaza Strip, Sderot, and depicts a figure crouched under a Jewish star as missiles fly overhead.

Mr. Kaufman said he and the gallery's owner, David Himmelberger, were working closely on a catalog of the art as well as plans to exhibit it at other sites, when Mr. Himmelberger expressed discomfort with using the word "Zionist" in the catalog's title and with essays that included references to Zionism.

An attorney for Mr. Himmelberger, Edward Sarti, described the gallery's choice not to go forward with the catalog as "a business decision."

Mr. Kaufman said the disagreement erupted on October 8 at a meeting with Mr. Himmelberger to discuss the layout and contents of the 24-page catalog. "He had a printout of the catalog with ‘Visionary Expressionism: A Zionist Art' in front of him. He pointed to the word, ‘Zionism,' and said, ‘I can't do that," Mr. Kaufman told The New York Sun. "I said, ‘What exactly is the problem? You know what my paintings are about.'"

"He said, ‘I don't stand for that. … We don't want to advocate any kind of platform here,'" Mr. Kaufman said. The artist said it was not the content of his art, but the labeling of it as Zionist that seemed to be the sticking point. "None of the paintings at the gallery have the actual word ‘Zionism' in it. I think it was the appearance of the actual word Zionism in the title and all the essays that shocked him. He gave me the impression that, ‘Oh my God, we have a Zionist in the house.'"…

Hands up all those who think there would have been no problemo had the artist wanted to allude to “Palestine” or “the Occupation” or “Zionism=racism=apartheid”?

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

 Pakistani pathology:  Jason Burke, who for some years was the Guardian’s Pakistan correspondent, revisits his former bailiwick and discovers—what are the odds?—powerless, ignorant people inclined to blame their problems on a vast Zionist conspiracy (and other infidel mischief-makers):

Waheed owns land an hour's drive south of Islamabad in the relatively fertile and populous belt on the plateau around the capital city. At this time of year, the red earth is dusty as the rains have long finished, and the oxen have lost the sheen they have when they pass half the day up to their shoulders in mud.

With the clear blue autumn sky, the old eucalyptus trees, the date palms with their peeling white-and-grey bark and the carts and painted little trucks, the village in the centre of Waheed's fields has a picturesque air. But the reality of life there is, of course, far from romantic, whatever rubbish is often written about those who are supposed to be "poor but happy".

Some years ago, I spent a week in a similar village. What had struck me was how, as much as the vagaries of the seasons, the harvests or physical illness, it was the intervention of others - the bureaucrats, the big landowners, the local police chief - that determined the course of the villagers' lives. And these interventions, like those of minor deities, were unannounced, impenetrable and without answer.

If someone with power wanted you off your land, there was no recourse, whatever the personal cost. If someone requisitioned the village tractor under a long-forgotten law, or rearranged the flow of water, depriving your fields of desperately needed irrigation, you lacked means to ask why or to fight back, unless you had a bigger protector. If someone paid off the police to mount a bogus case against you, there was nothing you could do. After all, a police chief's post costs the rupee equivalent of around £17,000 in bribes, and that investment has to be recouped.

If you are at the bottom of the heap, life is something that happens to you, not something you direct towards a desired end.

Which may, along with genuine ignorance, illiteracy, shoddy journalism and various other factors, explain the extraordinary power and prevalence of conspiracy theories in Pakistan. If your control over your own life is minimal, it is easy to believe that "the hidden hand" of Indian, British, American or Israeli intelligence, or the "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" is what determines the course of historical events…

 But such derangements aren’t solely the province of the poor and ignorant. As we know from the example of Mo Atta’s gang and those explosive physicians in Glasgow, the middle class and educated can be just as susceptible:

…I know a young man in Islamabad who hoped to become a doctor. He comes from a modest family and went to a modest school but worked hard and did well in national entrance exams to medical college. Yet, despite his determination and talent and his grades, his applications to medical college went nowhere. He watched as others with inferior grades picked up places, the sons of senators, businessmen and senior military officers who had paid bribes and called in favours. When the academic year started, my friend was yet to find a place. He went into a profound depression.

The depression lasted two or three months; then he recovered. He started going to the mosque a lot, where he met some new friends. Now he has grown his beard and started praying five times a day, and spends long periods away from home with "the brothers". He rails against the Pakistani elites and their "overseas protectors". He is less interested in medicine these days and more interested in the supposed machinations of the "crusader-Zionist alliance" against the Islamic world. If I called him, I doubt he would talk to me.

Do yourself a favour and keep your distance, Jason. Or does the name Daniel Pearl mean nothing to you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:10 | link | comments

The "evolution" of Hellzbollocks: The Globe and Mail is pleased to let Rami Khouri, a Palestinian who edits Lebanon’s Daily Star, shill for Hezbollah. According to Khouri, Hezbollah is undergoing a “remarkable transition.” What’s kind of transition? Well, apparently, it has decided to drop the thuggish street-seething which wasn’t getting it anywhere and feign a willingness to hash things out with its opponents.

To paraphrase a quip by Dorothy Parker, it’s a transition that runs the gamut from A to B:

Something very important has happened to Lebanon's Hezbollah group in the past year: It has slowly and quietly become another political movement in a country full of them. It engages in the push and pull of politics, making both advances and mistakes, learning on the job. Unusually, it seems to be searching for a way out of the relative quagmire in which it has found itself, partly through the consequence of its own policies. It has not become weaker in the past 14 months, but rather more constrained.

Hezbollah continues to make a challenging, yet erratic, shift from a predominantly southern Lebanon-based military resistance organization that confronts Israel's occupation to one that must engage more directly in domestic Lebanese political horse-trading in order to preserve its main role as a resistance and deterrence force. Fourteen months after last summer's war with Israel, in which it performed rather impressively at the technical military level, its military prowess today is as much a constraining as an empowering and defining element.

The complexities of Hezbollah's status also mirror a range of related issues throughout the Middle East. The mainstream Western media and political elites - especially in the United States - continue to ignore the considerable nuances and ever-changing realities of Islamist nationalist groups such as Hezbollah. It is simplistic and counterproductive for mainstream Western elites simply to condemn Hezbollah as a terrorist organization or a dangerous Iranian- and Syrian-manipulated militia, and engage it with threats, vilification, ultimatums and sanctions.

The tendency in much of the Arab/Islamic world is to go to the other extreme, to see Hezbollah as a valiant force for righteousness, self-respect and powerful Arab and Islamic self-assertion. The truth, as always, is at neither extreme.

A timely example of how to analyze the Hezbollah phenomenon constructively appeared this week in the form of a report by the respected International Crisis Group. It accurately captures the multiple dimensions of Hezbollah, along with the many factors that must be addressed in the quest for a new political compact and balance of power in Lebanon and the region.

The report's main thesis is, "Amidst Lebanon's political deadlock, all parties and their external allies need to move away from maximalist demands and agree on a deal that accepts for now Hezbollah's armed status while constraining the ways in which its weapons can be used."

It correctly outlines Hezbollah's dimensions and its numerous, increasingly complex and sometimes contradictory relations with other political forces in Lebanon and the region. These include its role in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Israel, the elusive election of a new Lebanese president, Hezbollah's weapons, its growing status among Shiites, its increasingly tense ties with Sunni Muslims and the consequences of its failed move to try to topple a Sunni-dominated Lebanese government.

Sectarian tensions have increased in Lebanon in the past year, and the deployment of Lebanon's army and a larger United Nations force at the Israeli border has constrained Hezbollah's military posture. This has made its turn to domestic politics all the more urgent - but also messy.

"Hezbollah's resort to street politics was ultimately self-defeating," senior ICG analyst Patrick Haenni says. "The street battles quickly morphed into confessional ones, forcing Hezbollah into the sectarian straitjacket it has long sought to avoid."

The net result is that Hezbollah, as a domestic political player with a mixed performance, is now subject to analysis, criticism and horse-trading offers that had always been alien to its world. Its new status as a player that makes deals and threats and gets analyzed and kicked around is a key development that probably will open the door to more pragmatic politics - if there are any pragmatic politicians in Lebanon willing to walk through the door. We shall soon find out.

My letter to the Globe:

If Rami Khouri ever tires of his work at the Daily Star and Beirut’s American University, he could have a stellar career ahead of him pumping out P.R. for Hezbollah. He does an excellent job of trying to persuade us that Hezbollah, the Islamist militia/political party which takes its marching orders from the mullahs and is in league with the Syrians, who want to regain control of Lebanon, is in the process of transitioning into a more reasonable organization.

Has it renounced Islamism? Well, no. Has it decided to adopt a live-and-let-and-live policy vis-à-vis Israel? Don’t be silly. Has it distanced itself from Iran’s agenda of regional hegemony? Of course not. It’s entire “transition” seems to consist of acknowledging that it doesn’t as yet have sufficient power to rule Lebanon as an Islamist state, and as such, has been forced to make a show of getting along with its opposition—for the moment, anyway. When the time is ripe, Hezbollah—“God’s Party”—plans to ditch democracy and impose the only law it and other Islamists see as legitimate—the sharia, God’s law.

To pretend otherwise and to perceive a genuine transformation where none exists can only serve to hasten the day when that finally comes to pass.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:20 | link | comments

A real growth industry: Building mosques in Germany, that is, where supply is having a really hard time keeping up with the growing demand. From DW via Muslim News U.K.:

Germany's Muslim community is planning to more than double the number of mosques in the country over the next few years, according to figures released by an Islamic institute this week.

"We have recorded 184 projects to build new mosques, of which some are already under construction," Salim Abdullah, of the German Institute of Islamic Archives, told the AFP news agency this past week.

"We are talking here about buildings with a dome and a minaret, which are clearly recognizable from the outside, and not the 2,600 prayer areas housed in various buildings throughout the country," Abdullah added.

Of some 1,200 institutions used as mosques in Germany, only 159 are recognizable mosques, serving a community that numbers over 3 million. The remaining are so-called "backyard mosques," meaning they are in rooms in buildings that have other purposes or would not obviously appear to be mosques to unaware passers-by. In 2004, mosques with minarets numbered just 141.

The growth in the construction of mosques over the past two decades has made Germany one of the "best-equipped" countries in Europe for Islamic worship, Abdullah said.

Resistance to renovations

Plans to build one of the biggest mosques in Europe in the western German city of Cologne have been opposed by Christian leaders and far-right politicians.

The mosque is being planned by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), Germany's biggest Muslim group.

The Central Council of Ex-Muslims has also spoken out against the project. Speaking on German public radio, Mina Ahadi, chairwoman of the ex-Muslims group, argued that were already enough mosques in Germany.

"If more mosques are built, then women are put under increased pressure and even more children will be sent to school in headscarves, and become isolated," she said.

Churches to mosques

While the number of mosques is growing, the doors are slamming shut at Christian churches across the country.

In recent weeks, a church in the Neukölln neighborhood of Berlin was sold for 550,000 euros to the Muslim Association of Intercultural Centers, which plans to turn it into what it calls a "house of peace."

In future, the group says, the building will host prayer services, projects designed to promote integration, social advice services and career guidance.

No doubt they’re really keen to help the kafirs “integrate”—through peaceful submission.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:33 | link | comments

Windy City snake pit: If it’s “a pride of lions” and “an exaltation of larks,” what’s the proper term for a collection of some of the world’s most renowned Jewish Jew-haters, like the ones who gathered at the University of Chicago last week?

Might I suggest “a bloviation of self-loathers”?

From the Chicago Maroon (link via Martin Kramer):

Rockefeller Chapel was filled to capacity Friday as around 1,500 gathered for the much-anticipated convening of several prominent scholars whose views on politics and American policy have propelled them to the forefront of a recent debate about freedom and censorship in the academic world.

Tariq Ali, editor of New Left Review and Verso Books, moderated the conference at which Noam Chomsky, John Mearsheimer, Norman Finkelstein, and several others delivered addresses decrying recent developments that have, in the speakers’ views, imperiled the freedom of academics to produce candid scholarship free from the pressures of external interests.

The most prominent of these interests confronted during Friday’s panel presentations was the Israel lobby, which several of the speakers criticized for having an alleged chilling effect on academic discourse over its influence on American foreign policy.

“This is where we stand, and this is what we are going to defend,” Ali said in his opening remarks, responding to the recent tenure denials of DePaul University professors Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee. Nearly all of the speakers Friday made at least passing mention of the controversy that embroiled Finkelstein earlier this year.

Finkelstein, whose work criticizes the United States’s relationship with the Israel lobby, was thrust into the national spotlight this June when, citing outside pressure, DePaul denied him tenure. He mounted a vocal campaign against the university’s administration, vowing to go on a hunger strike to bring attention to the situation. The ordeal ended after Finkelstein resigned and negotiated an undisclosed settlement. Some observers have said that Larudee, a major Finkelstein supporter, was denied tenure because of her association with him.

In his speech, John Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the U of C, attempted to dismantle DePaul’s case against Finkelstein. Mearsheimer came out as an ardent supporter of Finkelstein’s tenure bid during the proceedings earlier this year and recently co-authored a controversial book examining the Israel lobby.

He also addressed the politics of Finkelstein’s denial, painting academia as the only space where Israel is “treated as a normal country, where past and present actions are critically assessed,” and the place where public opinion on the matter is most accurately reflected.

In Mearsheimer’s speech, as well as in panel responses to audience questions, the U of C was held up as an example of an institution that embraced the flourishing of unrestricted discourse.

For his part, Finkelstein defended his creative rights as a scholar, conceding only that his writing style could be considered inflammatory. But he defended his right to use polemics when merited by the situation, citing Marx’s appellation of his fellow economists, and denied allegations of faulty scholarship.

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, addressed the packed cathedral via video conference because of family circumstances that prevented him from traveling to Chicago. Chomsky outlined a constellation of forces gathering against academic freedom with the aim of justifying controversial American policies and accused institutions that bend to external political pressure of “conformist subservience to those in power.”

Chomsky, along with fellow panelist Akeel Bilgrami of Columbia University, highlighted Columbia president Lee Bollinger’s allegedly politicized and disparate treatments of controversial visiting heads of state. Bollinger largely praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during his visit to the university, but vocally criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he spoke earlier this month.

Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, spoke of academia’s duty to defend the scholarly freedom of professors who depend on it for a living. He contrasted the present situation with an earlier era when a requisite for the public intellectual was independent scholarship and identified the top threat to academic integrity as self-censorship for fear of job security.

According to Judt, the Israel lobby is an especially dangerous one because it seeks to further its own ends while attempting to silence discussion by denying its own existence. This, Judt argued, is fundamentally contrary to the elementary principle of free academic discourse.

Neve Gordon, of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, and Columbia University’s Akeel Bilgrami also appeared at the Rockefeller symposium.

Had someone cared to harvest it, the collective venom in that room could have served the Botox needs of the entire Chicago metropolitan area for many years to come.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:03 | link | comments

Child's play: A really bad idea, courtesy the same country that brought you the Nobel Peace Prize. From Aftenposten:

Norwegians woke up Tuesday morning to news that a respected Oslo pre-school teacher, backed by child psychologists, thinks children should be allowed to openly express their own sexuality, not least through sex play and games in the local day care centers known as barnehager, or kindergartens.

The vast majority of Norwegians send their children from the age of one to the kindergartens, where they spend their days until they begin school at age six.

Pia Friis, leader of the popular Bjerkealleen Barnehage in Oslo and a well-known pre-school educator, told newspaper Dagbladet on Tuesday that children should be allowed to express their own sexuality at day care centers. She doesn't want to stifle what comes naturally.

Children, she said, should be able "to look at each other and examine each other's bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate.

"But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don't want to."..

Couldn’t they just, you know, play with blocks and colour stuff?

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

Gee, ya think?: Islamist, Arab reluctance may doom latest peace push.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments

Piece(s) in Our Time: Finally, a summit that's not a complete "waste" of time.

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

Sharin’ Shira: The Globe and Mail’s Shira Herzog, e’er the cockeyed optimist, e’er lost a miasma of cluelessness and wishful thinking, forsees a day—“sooner or later”—when Jerusalem will be “shared” by Arabs and Jews.

Dream on, Shira:

…A Palestinian capital in part of greater Jerusalem is a sine qua non of any future Israeli-Palestinian agreement. What's essential to Israel is that the Jewish neighbourhoods established since 1967 and control of Judaism's holy sites remain in Israel's hands. Such a division would give Israel international recognition for Jerusalem as its capital and would relieve it of responsibility for Palestinian residents.

Mr. Olmert, when he was mayor of Jerusalem, argued against division; now he seems to see the wisdom of such a move and is cautiously paving the way domestically.

The threshold for Jerusalem's future was set seven years ago at the failed Camp David summit, when then-prime minister Ehud Barak agreed to Bill Clinton's proposal for redrawing the city's map: An Israeli capital would include all of the post-1967 Jewish neighbourhoods, and a Palestinian capital would include all of the Palestinian neighbourhoods. Later, the informally negotiated Geneva accord detailed how to preserve mobility and security in the divided city.

Today, such an approach could likely be sold to most Israelis and Palestinians.

That still leaves the heart of the conflict - the Old City, where Jewish and Muslim histories collide. On the Temple Mount, or Noble Sanctuary, where the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock overlook the ancient Jewish temple's surviving Western Wall, physical separation is impossible. Mr. Clinton's original proposal for vertical division of sovereignty (Palestinians on the Noble Sanctuary, Israel below at the Western Wall) is impractical. Instead, some form of shared sovereignty or special regime will have to be considered, and backtrack channels are exploring such options.

Like so much else about this conflict, the question isn't the "what" but the "how." Shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah this week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is realizing just how difficult the summit may be to actually pull off.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Mr. Olmert may share the will to reach an agreement, but each has drastically different needs. The Palestinian leader needs to strengthen his position vis-à-vis Hamas by delivering detailed substance and timetables from the meeting. The Israeli leader wants to keep a broad coalition intact and prefers a general statement of principles that will give hard-liners no excuse to bolt. If this gap isn't bridged, better to have no meeting than one that will fail.

My (succinct and understated) letter to the Globe:

Re “Sooner or later, Jerusalem will have to be shared”: Last week a spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas explained that his faction was perfectly willing to negotiate peace, on condition that Israel  acknowledge that the Arabs have a  greater claim to the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, than the Jews do. Any final agreement would be contingent on Israel and Jews ceding the Wall—and what amounts to their religious birthright—to the Palestinians.

It kind of puts a damper on any notion of “sharing” when one side appears to want it all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:56 | link | comments

Any friend of Tiny Hitler’s is no friend of ours: Case in point—Vladimir Putin, who’s made it abundantly clear which side of the Iran-U.S. chasm he’s prepared to hunker down on. From TIME:

That Russian President Vladimir Putin is hopping mad with Washington has been obvious for some time now. In a speech in Munich last July, he lambasted the U.S. for its "unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions," claiming that "the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way" and slamming its "greater and greater disdain" for international law. Enraged by U.S. moves to station a missile defense system on his doorstep, Putin withdrew Russia from a Cold War-era treaty governing the size of conventional military forces in Europe, and ordered its old turbo-prop Bear bombers out of mothballs to fly nuclear patrols along old Cold War frontiers. Last week in Russia, he made the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense wait 45 minutes for him before delivering them a tongue-lashing over the missile defense plan. Another jab follows on Tuesday, when Putin becomes the first occupant of the Kremlin since Stalin to visit Tehran, a capital Washington would very much prefer to keep isolated. The Russian leader's message is plain: If the U.S. continues, as he sees it, to tread on Russia's toes, Russia has little interest in helping Washington achieve its strategic goals.

Putin arrives in Iran at a moment when the U.S. and its key European allies are pushing for a new round of sanctions aimed at persuading Tehran to suspend uranium-enrichment. But the likelihood of the U.N. Security Council approving new sanctions right now appears remote, given the veto power of China and Russia — both of whom differ substantially with the West on the nature of the problem with Iran, and on how to deal with it.

 

Nor are the differences merely tactical: Russia agrees that Iran has, in some of its activities, failed to meet the transparency requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the basis for the Security Council demand that it suspend enrichment until it can clear up questions raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and restore confidence in its intentions. But the IAEA and Tehran have agreed to a "work plan" and timetable for Iran to resolve the outstanding questions, which is why further U.N. action has been tabled pending the outcome of that process.

 

At the same time, Putin insisted after talks last week with French President Nikolas Sarkozy — the most energetic European supporter of the U.S. position — that there is no evidence to suggest Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. That assessment may put him at odds with Washington, but it is, in fact, consistent with the findings of the IAEA. The difference hinges over what defines a nuclear weapons program. Last week, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner wrote to his European colleagues urging support for tougher sanctions. "Time is against us," Kouchner warned, "because each day Iran gets closer to mastering enrichment technology, in other words to having a de facto military nuclear capacity."…

The IAEA is hunkering down with the bad guys too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:05 | link | comments

Self-help in the UK: And you thought Austin Powers had bad choppers. At least he didn’t have to resort to the latest trend in the UK, one brought about by a failing system of socialised dentistry: DIY tooth extraction. From Breitbart:

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.

Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers.

More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment.

"This is an uncomfortable read for all of us, and poses serious questions to politicians from patients," said Sharon Grant of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health.

Overall, six percent of patients had resorted to self-treatment, according to the survey of 5,000 patients in England, which found that one in five had decided against dental work because of the cost.

One researcher involved in compiling the study -- carried out by members of England's Patient and Public Involvement Forums -- came across three people in one morning who had pulled out teeth themselves.

Dentists are also concerned about the trend...

No doubt. All in all, though, it’s not nearly as bad as, say, DIY proctology.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:01 | link | comments

Sheer madness: US 'wants Palestinian state now.'

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:48 | link | comments

Bad food: On sale now--The Axis of Evil Cookbook.

Only for those who have a taste for--and can stomach--such unsavoury fare.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:44 | link | comments

Wolcott’s twisted nostalgia: In the November issue of Vanity Fair, columnist and aging Boomer James Wolcott gets lost in a nostalgic reverie about, of all things, the Twist. In the rosy glow of his backward gaze, this silly dance becomes emblematic of the giddy, fizzy, carefree days that preceded the suicides of Ernest Hemmingway and Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK.

Ah, yes, I remember it well.

Never mind that we’re talking about a dance craze that coincided with the height of the Cold War, a time when kids were still doing “duck and cover” drills in schools and folks were stocking up on canned goods for their backyard fallout shelters.

Good times, mes amis, good times.

Wolcott wraps up his piece about Chubby Checker’s “liberating” dance with the following observation about our current joylessness, and what he believes is behind it:

“It does not go away…this ecstatic possibility,” Barbara Ehrenreich reflects in her recent history of communal celebration, Dancing in the Streets. “The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression. Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting and dance” Why not indeed? If we can’t Twist again, like we did last millennium, that doesn’t mean we should embrace soft internment inside our bodies. At some point the talon grip of the War on Terror  will relent out of pure tension fatigue, and perhaps the new excitements will bubble up through the floorboards, pour through the speakers, and set us momentarily but exaltedly free. Because lockstep is no way to go through life, and we’ve been under marching orders long enough.

Got that? Fuggedabout that uptight War on Terror. Just relax, get down, and Twist your tushy off.

Thanks, James, but I was a Funky Chicken kind of gal myself—and I happen to know that the jihad’s unlikely to go away just ‘cause I ignore it and concentrate on getting some ecstatic jollies on the dance floor.

Do you think, perchance, that Wolcott’s nostalgia for the Twist is really nostalgia for something even more beloved, i.e. his lost youth?

Here’s my joy-infused letter to V.F.:

I had a good chuckle at James Wolcott’s nostalgic look back at the Twist, a dance he sees as exemplifying—and unleashing—the human capacity for joy. I am old enough—just—to recall when the Twist first burst on the scene, and while he remembers it as a dance that liberated people from the oppressive regimentation of Arthur Murray-style dance moves, I recollect something far less appealing: overfed matrons with precariously high beehive hair-dos looking ridiculous while assaying what were more or less the same silly gyrations on the dance floor as everyone else. Plus, I don’t know about the matrons, but even when I was very young, doing said gyrations for any longer than a few minutes never failed to result in an excruciating side stitch.

I can understand Mr. Wolcott’s desire to reprise what he sees as those giddy, carefree days, though. Taking steps to counter the global jihad—or, in his words, marching in “lockstep” due to finding ourselves in “the talon grip of the War on Terror”—can certainly tend to put a crimp in one’s blissful, self-absorbed hedonism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:13 | link | comments

The Persian lobby: It's a lot scarier than the Jewish one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments

Jew-haters in the U.S.: They’re brazen; they’re leftist; they wear little tin-foil beanies; they luxuriate in contempt for America, Israel and themselves; they're the jihad's useful idiots. Here’s a by no means comprehensive list:

Individuals: Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, congressmen;  Adam Kokesh, Iraq War veteran; Cindy Sheehan, Harry Karry, peace activists; Michael Moore, Sean Penn, film-makers.

Organziations/Groups: Peace and Social Justice Crusade, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Code Pink, Muslim Students Association, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Students for Justice in Palestine, Revolutionary Communist Party, International A.N.S.W.E.R., Moveon.org, DailyKos.com, Indy-Media.org, HuffingtonPost.com, Ivorypower.com

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments (3)

Sign him up: Antic satirist iowahawk has the letter Al received from the peace-loving Norwegians:

Dear   ALBERT GORE JR.  :

Congratulations! On behalf of the selection committee, I am pleased to announce that you have been named a 2007 recipient of the Nobel Peace Price, in recognition of your tireless efforts to   RAISE GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE AWARENESS  .

I am also pleased to tell you that as a winner, you have been pre-approved for membership in the Nobel Peace Player's Club, offering exclusive money-saving benefits available only to laureates like you. Please take a few minutes to look over the enclosed enrollment materials. At only $299.95 per year, I'm sure you'll agree that membership is a bargain at twice the price! Here are just some of the benefits you'll receive:

·         A handsome 14-karat gold membership crest badge to display proudly on the grille of your limousine or Gulfstream

·         A framed, hand-calligraphed certificate (add $19.95 for gold leaf)

·         Special Geico group car insurance rates for you and your family

·         Listing in "Who's Who of Global Salvation" ($49.95 per copy)

·         Great coupons for Olive Garden, P.F. Chang, Six Flags Theme Parks, and more!

Plus, you'll receive the exclusive Nobel Peace Player's Club GoldCard entitling you to discount air travel and 5-star hotel accomodations from Kyoto to Darfur. But don't take our word for it! Listen to these testimonials from some of our current members:

"My career as an international peace activist means lots of air travel -- and dealing with pushy Zionists and rude natives. With my Nobel Peace Player's Club GoldCard, I finally get the respect I deserve - and it makes getting through Gaza airport security a snap!"
-- Jimmy Carter, 2002 Lareate

"Whether we're patrolling the Congo, Sudan, or Bosnia, one thing's for sure -- chicks can't resist a Nobel Peace Prize Player!"
-- United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, 1988 Winners

"My Players Club GoldCard lets me treat my friends and family to great perks."
-- Kofi Annan, 2001 Laureate

"I'm a take-action kind of guy. Whenever I fly to Tehran or Pyongyang, the first thing I pack is my Players GoldCard."
-- Mohamed ElBaradei (2005)

"I have to write a lot of honorary doctorate acceptance speeches, and writer's block can be a problem. With the Player's GoldCard I got great discounts at TermPapersLab.com!"
-- Rigoberta Menchu (1992)

"The Player's Club GoldCard is recognized everywhere -- even in hell! I redeemed my Players GoldPoints at Club Satan for an exciting eternity of getting pounded up the ass. Thanks, NobelCo!"
-- Yasser Arafat (1994)

"Don't miss the boat like I did, comrade! I forgot to enroll, and now I'm spending eternity pounding Yasser Arafat up the ass."
-- Le Duc Tho (1973)

So what are you waiting for,    ALBERT GORE JR.  ? Enroll today and start enjoing the privileges of membership. Enroll today, and we'll throw in a deluxe carbon credit package worth $1000!

Sincerely,

Ůmläut Ťïldëqvist, Chairman
The Nobel Peace Player's Club Selection Committee

I guess Al never considered Groucho Marx’s sage words: “I would never join a club that would have me as member.”

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

“Peace” called off on account of hate-mongers: The “peace” concerts set to be held in Israel and the West Bank featuring Canadian singer Bryan Adams have been put on hold for now because Palestinians keen on the event kept getting death threats.

Go figure.

From CP via the Ceeb:

A grassroots peace concert calling for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict was called off Sunday after threats were made to Palestinians supporting the event.

The New York-based OneVoice organization had planned to hold simultaneous concerts on Thursday in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and the West Bank town of Jericho, with Canadian rock star Bryan Adams headlining.

The Jericho concert was called off last Friday due to security concerns, including threats to blow up the West Bank office of OneVoice, said group founder Daniel Lubetzky. On Sunday, the Tel Aviv concert was cancelled in solidarity.

"Our mission is not to entertain … it is to mobilize moderate voices," said Lubetzky, a New York businessman. "If we have to postpone, we have to postpone."

Organizers of OneVoice aim to collect a million signatures from Israelis and Palestinians calling for their leaders to negotiate a final peace settlement within a year.

The concert was meant to support the signature campaign, with those attending the event free of charge but required to sign the petition.

Some Palestinians have criticized the organization, which they said was weak on upholding Palestinian demands, including the right for refugees to return to the lands they fled, or were forced to flee, following the Israeli-Arab war in 1948.

Leading Palestinians who initially supported the event have also distanced themselves from it. However, OneVoice does not set out a specific mandate.

Around 600,000 Palestinians and Israelis signed on to support the organization's call for negotiations to begin between both sides. It also has received support from Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Rhea Perlman, Danny de Vito and Jason Alexander.

Adams, whose smash hits include Heaven, Summer of '69 and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, was to have performed at both concerts, along with Israeli artists in Tel Aviv and Palestinian performers in Jericho.

Hey, Brad, Jen, Rhea, Danny, Jason, and all you other well-meaning Hollywood types (Brad and Jen must have signed back when they were still Brad and Jen and before Brad got reconfigured into Brangenlina—ed.):  How do you negotiate peace with avowed Jew-hating fascist supremacists (and those are the “moderates”) who think you’re lowly dhimmis and who are convinced they have greater claim to your religion’s holiest site than you do?

Bit of a pickle, I’d say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:13 | link | comments

Peace Prize losers: Here’s a compendium of folks who didn’t win Nobel Peace Prize this year, but who had far greater claim to it than Al and the UN eco-bureaucrats. From OpinionJournal:

In Olso Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Àlvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.

Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.

Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.

Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.

Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.

Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations…

Oh well. There’s always next year.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:39 | link | comments

Judenhass on Persian TV: Anti-Zionism is the latest version of that age-old pathology known as antisemtism, but that apparently comes as big news to the antisemites—especially the ones who are endeavouring to set the final Final Solution in motion. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) plans to air the TV series “Gilad”, described by its director Hossein Samieizadeh as a production that highlights the disparities between Judaism and Zionism.

The serial “Gilad” centers around the life of a young man called Ben Hur who immigrates to Iran in the 1940s.

“In the dramatization of the life story of this immigrant, we have attempted to highlight the differences between Judaism and Zionism,” Samieizadeh told Mehr News Agency.

“Gilad”, which is currently in the final stages of production, was originally slated to be broadcast during the last week of Ramadan, but IRIB was unable to fit it into their busy holy-month schedule.

Hossein Yari, Sepideh Khodaverdi, Shohreh Lorestani, Shahram Abdoli, Mohammad Omrani, Farhad Tajvidi, Mojgan Gholami, and Akbar Zanjanpur are amongst the cast.

No announcement has been made as to the precise timing of the broadcasting of this TV series which has been produced by Mehran Maham.

IRIB’s Channel 1 is currently airing “Zero Degree Orbit”, Hassan Fat’hi’s TV serial that also deals with the discrepancies between Judaism and Zionism

Seems to be a recurring theme.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:29 | link | comments

Good thinking, Condi: Ceeb headline--Rice lowers expectations ahead of summit.

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

Al Qaedist hearts Al: I can think of one guy who’s probably thrilled that Al got the Peace Prize: Osama bin Laden. Back in September, the dyed-in-the-hair terrormeister had this to say, echoing some, ahem, inconvenient truths about the current global threat (via Tim Blair):

[T]he life of all mankind is in danger because of global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations; yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistics speak of the death and displacement of millions of human beings because of global warming, especially in Africa.

No doubt there was much revelry and high-fiving at the ObL hideout in Up-the-Wahzooistan (or wherever he’s been hanging these days) when word came down about Al’s coup.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:19 | link | comments

Albert Gore, Superstar: Next to 9/11, the story of the millennium is how a puffy also-ran named Albert Gore took his sour grapes and parlayed them into something far bigger than the American presidency. He has morphed, Heaven help us, into a frikkin’ deity.

In recognition of his elevation (and inspired by this headline on the Der Spiegel site), I have revised the appropriate song:

Every time I look at you I don’t understand

How we let your influence get so out of hand.

B.D.S. and anger aimed right at your whole nation

Led  them all to give you your Peace Prize vindication.

 

If you hadn’t lost

You might have been just as fat as

You are now, but you’d not have

Your Heavenly status.

 

Don't you get me wrong
Don't you get me wrong
Don't you get me wrong, now
Don't you get me wrong
Don't you get me wrong
Don't you get me wrong
Don't you get me wrong, now
Don't you get me wrong

Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
Only want to know

Albert Gore,

Albert Gore,

Who are you,

What do you have in store?

Albert Gore,

Albert Gore.

Do you think

You’re what they’re asking for?...

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:08 | link | comments

Rosie O in the Zionist E: Did you know that loud-mouthed truther Rosie O (whose tell-all bio will shortly hit book stores) was in Israel last month with her pal Madonna? Seems Rosie, too, has taken to the Kaballah (not the abstruse teachings of Jewish mysticism but the easy-to-comprehend yoga-esque self-help movement that swiped its name).

Here's a photo of her with a mule. (Rosie's the one on the right.)

Update: On second thought, I think it's a donkey. (And Rosie's still on the right.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments

Religious warfare: Fatah and Hamas are still neck-and-neck in the holier-than-thou sweepstakes, but in advance of Condi Rice's new round of Peace in Our Time talks, “secular” Fatah appears to be trying desperately to pull ahead. Here’s how the Wahabbis’ Arab News sees the horse race:

RAMALLAH, 14 October 2007 — Palestinian security forces affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday raided five mosques in several West Bank cities and confiscated printed material belonging to rival Hamas movement.

According to local sources, the raids took place in the cities of Hebron, Nablus and Salfit. The security forces confiscated leaflets and banners that carried Hamas greetings for the Palestinian people on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr.

In addition, the forces removed some decorations and lights put on the mosque to celebrate the Eid festivals, eyewitnesses reported. The sources said that the Palestinian forces entered the mosques with their guns and shoes on during the raid of the mosques, a step viewed by the sources as against the rules of Islam religion.

Fatah and the Palestinian Authority continuously accuse Hamas of using the mosques for political purposes and to recruit Palestinians to join the movement and its armed wing.

In the past few months, a serious dispute erupted between the two major groups, when Hamas banned mass outdoor prayers, called for by Fatah. Meanwhile, a number of Hamas members handed their weapons over to the Palestinian Authority security forces in different areas in the West Bank, said a Palestinian Security source yesterday.

So according to these “sources” raiding mosques while toting guns and wearing shoes goes “against the rules of Islam religion” but using mosques to foment terrorism is okey-dokey?

Good to know.

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

Thinking about God: In an interview in Reason, Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains how the Jewish and Catholic concepts of God differ from the Islamic one:

I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims. Because my Catholic and Jewish colleagues are fine. The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you’re having constant quarrels with God. Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands, no quarreling allowed. Quarreling or even asking questions means you raise yourself to the same level as Him, and in Islam that’s the worst sin you can commit. Jews should be proselytizing about a God that you can quarrel with. Catholics should be proselytizing about a God who is love, who represents a hereafter where there’s no hell, who wants you to lead a life where you can confess your sins and feel much better afterwards. Those are lovely concepts of God. They can’t compare to the fire-breathing Allah who inspires jihadism and totalitarianism.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Jews don’t proselytize, there’s another huge difference between Judaism and Islam: Judaism considers man to have free will; Islam considers God to have free will. Which means that, according to Islam, there are no immutable laws of nature; if he so chooses, Allah can turn nature on its ear and, for example, decide to undo gravity or create an animal with six heads. Such conceptualizing—call it “magical thinking”—wreaks havoc on one’s sense of security. It also puts the kibosh on most scientific inquiry—a reason why so many Jews—and so few Muslims—have won Nobel prizes in areas of science.

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

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country of convenience can do for you: Recognize that statement? It’s a topsy-turvy version of JFK’s famous utterance, and it seems to be the thinking behind those who see being “Canadian” as a matter of convenience. Among them, those Lebanese-“Canadians” evacuated at immense cost to Canada during the Hezbollah-Israel war; these “Canadians” whinged because they had to wait a few days to be rescued and because the boats sent to save them didn’t have the same amenities as a Carnival cruise ship. Not that they stuck around long enough to even thank Canada for getting them out of harm’s way. Most of them high-tailed it back to their real home and native land as soon as the war ended.

Another group of Canadians of convenience: a whole passle of Abu Dhabians, who are official Permanent Residents of this country, but who prefer to keep living and working in the Gulf. From the Toronto Star:

As the first of Canada's new Permanent Resident cards hit their expiry date, immigrants who haven't spent the required length of time in Canada – 730 days out of five years – face losing their landed status in the next few months.

The looming cut-off means hundreds, perhaps thousands, of "phantom" residents – some of whom settled their families here and then went back to well-paying jobs in China, India or the Middle East's Gulf states – will be out of luck.

A large number of them came through a single Canadian visa office: Abu Dhabi.

A government internal report estimates that a whopping 98 per cent of "permanent residents" processed in Abu Dhabi, which serves the Gulf region, had no intention of remaining in Canada after their initial landing.

Currently, 80 per cent of the permanent resident travel applications in the United Arab Emirates capital are for people who have failed the residency requirement.

As a result, they must return to Canada to appeal the revocation of their status.

"Unless something major happens in the region to make the Gulf less attractive for expat workers, there is not a pool of professionals who are serious about settling in Canada," notes the mission's annual overview, obtained under the access to information process.

"The high application rate is related to what Canada can do for them, not the other way around."

Of course, this being an article in the Toronto Star, multiculti thinking kicks into high gear and it becomes a matter of us not doing nearly enough for them:

Dubai-based Canadian immigration lawyer Carter Hoppe has been getting calls regularly from expatriates working in the Gulf.

Hoppe says today's "best and brightest" immigrants are different from those of the past, who wanted to stay permanently. Unlike the old rules, which stipulated that newcomers must spend half of each year in Canada, the new ones give people more time to decide – what Hoppe calls a "trial engagement."

"I don't think permanent residents who don't reside full-time and work full-time in Canada, and may even end up abandoning their PR status, are abusing anything at all," Hoppe argues. "That sort of thinking about immigrants is very much a 20th-century view and completely outmoded in today's global human capital marketplace."

According to the government report, Canadian resident status is especially attractive to South Asian expatriates who don't want to return to the developing world after living in the Gulf countries, where they can get work permits but find it almost impossible to obtain citizenship. (Typically, residence of 30 years is required even to apply.)

However, many, already working in middle-management jobs, are turned off by poor job prospects in Canada, where employers demand Canadian experience and hard-to-get credentials. Plus, they pay no income tax in the Gulf states.

To make things worse, immigration consultants abroad lure clients with promises of settlement assistance and help obtaining drivers' licences, social insurance, health and bank cards – with only a minimal absence from their Gulf jobs. "Many immigrants took permanent residence as a means to obtain a subsidized university education for their children while the parents remained abroad, an opportunity for a better passport, a place to go if they cannot stay in the Gulf at retirement, or war breaks out," the annual report says. "All this may become a bigger issue for Canada if thousands of Canadians working in the Gulf, many of whom either stayed in Canada the minimum time possible, if at all, decide to return to Canada in their later years to utilize social programs."

Toronto immigration lawyer Gregory James says people who fail the residency requirement and are turned back at a port of entry can apply for a "permanent resident travel document" at local visa offices abroad, though there's no guarantee it will be granted.

Those denied PR card renewal could appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is already facing a growing backlog because of Ottawa's slow pace in appointing qualified adjudicators.

A spousal sponsorship could work if one partner has already spent sufficient time in Canada to qualify. In the worst-case scenario, skilled immigrants can reapply from scratch.

To review: Canada is nothing more than a way-station where people from an egregiously wealthy oil emirate can hang their hats now and then in order to take advantage of generous health care and other social programs they’d have to pay big bucks for back home. And Canada—more fool us—is delighted to bend over backwards to accommodate them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:17 | link | comments

You go, girl: Claudia Rosett gives it—but good—to the Norwegian peace prize poobahs and their really bad choices:

So, beyond the Nobel Prize, what is it that Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, the United Nations, Mohamed El Baradei and Al Gore all have in common?

 

The flip answer is that they have all in their time pushed out enough hot air to melt the polar ice caps on Mars, and if anyone thinks that’s an exaggeration about Mars, check out this 2003 report from NASA. (Yes, it seems that even on a planet where homo sapiens has never exhaled at all, let alone fired up an SUV or hopped a longhaul airline flight, ice caps can suffer a volatile existence).

More seriously, here on planet earth, what those on the list above all have in common is that they have all in pursuit of their own ambitions pushed agendas that corrode the real basis for building a better life for all on this planet — which, in a nutshell, is freedom.

 

Free societies may produce more CO2 (whatever that actually adds up to — or not — in the context of a world climate that was changing long before we got here, and will go on changing long after we are gone). But that’s because they also produce more, per capita, of just about everything good — including ideas, inventions, contraptions and once-undreamt-of ways not only of sustaining human life, but of making it healthier, longer, easier and better. That happens when individuals have the liberty to make their own choices and tradeoffs.

 

That is not the world envisioned by the list of Nobel laureates above. Arafat’s lethal contribution, devastating to the Palestinians themselves and poisonous in realms beyond, was to cultivate terrorism as a negotiating tactic, war as a means of keeping himself in power, and brutality instead of law. Jimmy Carter, starting with his years as America’s worst president in living memory, made a career of empowering some of the worst tyrants, leaving his successors to try to contend with the horrors emanating from Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran, while he went on to collect donations for his Carter Center from Middle Eastern potentates, and chum around with such folks as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

 

Kofi Annan presided from 1997-2006 over a UN morphing into an ever more invasive, intrusive, unaccountable and power-hungry institution — not only cozying up to a corrupt and murderous Saddam Hussein via Oil-for-Food, but aiming through a series of ever-expanding programs to manage the economic development of every country on earth, as well as the weather. And Mohamed El Baradei has run the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency in a manner that has not only failed to stop Iran’s push to acquire the nuclear bomb, but has in effect provided cover while the mullahs pursue this weapon that will greatly expand the reach and influence of their messianic, totalitarian schemes.

 

As for Al Gore, he’s riding high on the vision of a world in which someone-or-other will decide — for all of us — who may produce what, and how much. In the name of managing the climate, this is one more way of telling people how to live, and what to do, and whom to pay. And who is going to do all that managing, and dictating and toll-collecting? That is the multi-trillion dollar question, and it involves not only your money, but your freedom. The prime candidate campaigning for this job appears to be the UN, now planning yet another grand “Climate Change” summit (conveniently scheduled this December on Bali), and home to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared this year’s Nobel with Gore.

 

Why such strange choices for the Nobel Peace Prize? Over the years, this prize has gone to a highly varied set of winners, some of whom have genuinely sacrificed a great deal in the cause of liberty and peace. It has been a fine and valuable thing to see such winners as Andrei Sakharov, Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. But the roster of terrible choices dwarfs the good…

 

Since the bad is obviously driving out out the good, maybe it should be renamed the Gresham Peace Prize.

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

No yucks: Macleans has an extensive interview with “edgy” potty-mouthed comedian Sarah Silverman (begging the question: why?). In the following exchange, Ms. Silverman offers her informed opinion about two prominent world leaders:

Who scares you more: the President of Iran, or the President of the United States?
They both do. All fundamentalists from any group or religion scare me. And any nationalism scares Jews by nature.

I might be inclined to laugh at such clueless moral relativism—if it weren’t so profoundly disturbing.

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

They wuz robbed: The Norwegians gave their peace prize to Al-lah Gore, the God of the global climate change movement. Had they really wanted to advance the cause of world peace they should have given it to Israel for quietly pulling another Osirak. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.

The attack on the reactor project has echoes of an Israeli raid more than a quarter century ago, in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq shortly before it was to have begun operating. That attack was officially condemned by the Reagan administration, though Israelis consider it among their military’s finest moments. In the weeks before the Iraq war, Bush administration officials said they believed that the attack set back Iraq’s nuclear ambitions by many years.

By contrast, the facility that the Israelis struck in Syria appears to have been much further from completion, the American and foreign officials said. They said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.

Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity. In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack.

The New York Times reported this week that a debate had begun within the Bush administration about whether the information secretly cited by Israel to justify its attack should be interpreted by the United States as reason to toughen its approach to Syria and North Korea. In later interviews, officials made clear that the disagreements within the administration began this summer, as a debate about whether an Israeli attack on the incomplete reactor was warranted then.

The officials did not say that the administration had ultimately opposed the Israeli strike, but that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were particularly concerned about the ramifications of a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an urgent threat.

“There wasn’t a lot of debate about the evidence,” said one American official familiar with the intense discussions over the summer between Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. “There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.”

Even though it has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Syria would not have been obligated to declare the existence of a reactor during the early phases of construction. It would have also had the legal right to complete construction of the reactor, as long as its purpose was to generate electricity.

In his only public comment on the raid, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, acknowledged this month that Israeli jets dropped bombs on a building that he said was “related to the military” but which he insisted was “not used.”

Sort of like the “I smoked it, but didn’t inhale” argument.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:39 | link | comments

Bollinger’s political correctness: Here's a "must-read" by James Taranto about Columbia U prez Lee Bollinger’s differing response to two separate but equally disturbing incidents of hatred on his campus. Taranto’s piece includes what may well be the most “on the money” elucidation of the cult of multicultism I have ever read:

This week saw a pair of ugly incidents at Columbia University. On Tuesday, somebody hung a noose from the doorknob of a professor's office at Teachers College, Columbia's education school. Yesterday an anti-Semitic graffito was found in a men's room at Lewisohn Hall, home of Columbia's School of General Studies.

In both cases Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, sent a mass email to members of the "Columbia community." A source from within that community forwarded those emails to us, and they make for a fascinating contrast.

Here is Bollinger on the noose incident:

As most of you now know, a terrible incident of bias occurred at Teachers College yesterday, directed at a member of the faculty. Teachers College is a cherished affiliate of Columbia University with its own president, Susan Fuhrman, to whom I have offered our support and assistance. We may be two independent institutions, but we are one community; and we stand together in our commitment to oppose the frightening sentiments that lay behind this act.

Tolerance and mutual respect are among the core values of our diverse community, and all of us must confront acts of hate whenever they occur within it. As I said last night, an attack on the dignity of any member of our community is an assault on all of us.

I will be meeting with student leaders this afternoon, and other members of the administration will be communicating with faculty and students in the coming days. Our mission as a university includes addressing the most important and searing issues of our time, and we have a particular obligation to respond forcefully to events that affront our values.

And here is Bollinger on the graffito:

I am saddened to report that one of the bathrooms in Lewisohn Hall was sullied with an anti-Semitic smear. It has been promptly removed and is now being investigated.

I want to make two points. When words are the offender, as in this incident, I am reluctant to draw attention to them and will exercise restraint in doing so going forward. I do not want to broadcast, in any way, the message they attempt to send or empower those behind them. Despite the irrational, destructive hatred that persists in our society and world, we do not accept this anywhere at this University. No one among us should feel marginalized or threatened by words of hatred. We are one community; and as one community, we will overcome these hateful acts and hold each other to the highest standards of respect for the dignity and diversity of every individual.

In response to questions students have raised, I also want to reassure you that we have utmost confidence in our Public Safety officials and in the NYPD. Not only do they have well established communications protocols in place when there is an immediate threat of harm; they distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety from incidents like the one that occurred today.

What accounts for the differences in tone and substance between these two letters--expressing unambiguous outrage in the first incident, while urging restraint in the second one?

Although this second email does not mention the noose incident, it seems clear that Bollinger is trying to distinguish the rest room incident from it when he says that in the latter, "words are the offender," and that the police "distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety from incidents like the one that occurred today."

The first of these distinctions rests on a factual error. The Village Voice quotes a police report's description of the graffito: "a caricature of a male wearing a yarmulke above a swastika." (We assume this means the caricature was above the swastika, not that the male was depicted as wearing the swastika.) These cases are alike, then, in that both involve powerful symbols of hatred, not mere words.

What about the distinction between "crimes that threaten our physical safety" and "incidents like the one that occurred" yesterday? As a legal matter, the question of whether the noose constitutes a "true threat" is a very murky one, and one that depends in substantial part on the motives of the person who placed the noose--whose identity apparently remains unknown. One factor that militates in favor of its being a true threat, however, is that it appears to have been directed against a specific person. (We are assuming for the purpose of discussion that neither incident is a hoax.)

But imagine if the situations were reversed. What would Bollinger's reaction have been if the swastika were painted on the door of a Jewish professor's office and the noose turned up in a rest room?

One can only speculate, and we shall do just that. We can imagine that a swastika on a professor's door would draw a stronger reaction from Bollinger than the one in the men's room actually did. But if it were a noose in the rest room, we find it very difficult to imagine such a tepid response.

This is an educated guess based on years of observing how multiculturalism, the regnant ideology in American higher education, works. Multiculturalism conceives of mankind as being divided into various groups (based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) and imposes a complex hierarchy in which an individual's moral authority depends on the degree to which the groups to which he belongs are "oppressed."

The purest form of multiculturalism is what Shelby Steele calls "white guilt." White guilt, of course, has a real and powerful basis in history, as whites actually did oppress blacks, systematically and brutally, for most of American history. White guilt constrains Bollinger against urging blacks to "exercise restraint" in the face of the Teachers College noose. As a person of pallor, he simply lacks the moral authority to second-guess the reaction of blacks to racial offenses.

The relationship between multiculturalism and anti-Semitism is much less black-and-white (in more ways than one). Multiculturalism anathematizes anti-Semitism by white Christians, whether of the Nazi or the country-club variety. But it embraces other forms of anti-Semitism, most notably under the guise of supporting "oppressed" Palestinians against their Jewish putative tormentors.

Bollinger's muted reaction to the Lewisohn Hall episode, we'd venture, is partly a result of not knowing who the culprit was. If it turns out to be a white Christian with National Socialist tendencies, it will be easy to condemn. But what are the odds of finding such a man on an Ivy League campus in 2007? If the vandal is Muslim, or Arab, or black, or a left-wing anti-Israel activist, by contrast, the multicultural moral calculus is much more complicated and must take into account his status as a member of an "oppressed" group.

A final thought: No institution in America has embraced multiculturalism with anything like the ideological fervor of higher education. It's hard to think of any institution in America that is more beset by strife over race and other distinctions among identity groups. Could there be a causal relationship here?

I say absoposilutely!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:10 | link | comments

D’accord: Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the calamity known as the Oslo Accords, used the occasion of his first speech in the Knesset as Israel’s president to outline the danger to the world community of looking at events exclusively through the lens of the Kyoto Accord. By Saul Singer in the Jerusalem Post:

Shimon Peres is such a known quantity in Israel, and even internationally, that his visionary sound-bites have lost much of their punch. Though the presidency provides him, finally, with the most dignified platform for such pronouncements, the symbolic nature of the office also accentuates their airy quality.

That said, he is Shimon Peres, and he is the president of Israel. Attention must be paid, therefore, to his maiden speech this week at the opening of the winter session of the Knesset.

Its centerpiece was clear and original: "The nations of the world wish to encourage growth, goodwill, competition and cooperation. But two heavy shadows darken this prospect: global terror and global warming. These two dangers are more than strategic risks. They create a historic threat to the security of all countries and the safety of all the inhabitants of the globe."

Given Peres's evident indifference to the issue of global warming until recently, the cynical explanation of this juxtaposition would be that he is attempting to hitchhike on the hot global issue.

Parsing aside, however, is this formulation useful in our current predicament?

THE TRUTH is that Peres is onto something. While global warming is clearly more prominent within the West's zeitgeist, there is no doubt that global terror not only belongs at a comparable level of consciousness, but deserves even higher billing. By pairing the two, Peres's subtle message to the world is important: You had better be at least as concerned about terror as you are about warming…

Tell that to the Norwegians and the hoards of Goredolators.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:42 | link | comments

Reading between the Ayatollah’s lines: I don’t know about you, but to me the following story that appears on the Fars News Agency site reads like a barely veiled call to wage jihad (and nuke the infidels, the Jews being first on the “to-do” list):

Cleric Calls on Iranians to Accelerate Scientific Progress

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani called on the Iranian university students to appreciate the value of the present opportunities and push the country towards further scientific progress.

Addressing a large congregation of the worshippers on Tehran University Campus here on Friday, Emami Kashani said, "Today enemies know that if we are provided with the opportunity to revive the Islamic civilization, then they will have to sustain many losses. Therefore, they strive to destroy our opportunities under different pretexts."

"Today enemies are trying to stop our progress and successes. Our youths and students should, thus, be much vigilance to appreciate the value of their present opportunities," he added.

Seems pretty clear to me he’s not looking to get youths and students involved in post-graduate studies in, say, agronomy or marine biology.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:50 | link | comments

Common currency: It strikes me that Bush Derangement Syndrome--Charles Krauthammer's coinage for an antipathy to George W. Bush that 's so over-the-top that it's pathological--and Goredolatry--my coinage for over-the-top hero worship of Al "the Goreacle" Gore--are two sides of the same, well, coin.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:03 | link | comments

The Goredolators sing: As the news of their idol’s Nobel Peace Prize pushes them to new heights of rapture, the delirious hero-worshippers can be heard to cantillate their version of a hit from the ‘60s:

Gore is the greatest man the world has known.

Gore is the one whose words we heed alone.

He's got a simple plan to save the globe.

So we’ve adorned him in a holy robe.

 

Gore has all told us so.

It’s all we need ever know.

His truths, while though inconvenient,

Can’t be thought of as expedient.

 

Polar bears croak and ice caps melt away.

Purchase Al’s carbon credits now, today.

Tipper will be so pleased, for shore,

If your money in does pour

To support her squeeze, Al Gore.

So be sure to send him more.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:02 | link | comments (3)

Good one, George: In a column which posits that John Tory didn’t really want the thankless job of Ontario premier and purposely scuttled his own campaign by promising to fund religious schools, the National Post's George Jonas slips in the following wry quip:

Last month, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger invited Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, a man he described in his introduction as "astonishingly uneducated," to address the student body. When asked why, the legal scholar explained that he had asked the notorious nuclear bomb-building Holocaust denier to come to Columbia as a demonstration in the doctrine of free speech.

I guess the students were lucky that Bollinger's area of scholarship wasn't biology. Presumably, as a demonstration in sex education, he would have invited Jack the Ripper.

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

Global “irony”: The Globe and Mail printed a single letter re its online report about Al God, er, Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize. It’s headed “Peace Prize Irony”:

The Nobel Peace Prize is the only Nobel awarded by a Norwegian committee, all others are by Swedish committees. It's ironic this year's Peace Prize was awarded to Al Gore for his work in raising awareness about "man-made climate change" when Norway is among the world's top oil exporters (Gore Shares Nobel Peace Prize - online, Oct. 12).

Norwegians worked hard at the 1997 Kyoto talks to ensure Norway wouldn't have to accept the same emissions cuts as some other developed countries. In fact, Norway was able to negotiate an increase in its emissions from 1990 levels in recognition of the importance of its oil-and-gas industry. Despite this, Norway's emissions climbed 10 per cent above their generous Kyoto limit.

Perhaps the Norwegians are now trying to assuage their guilt for not taking the threat of global warming seriously enough.

Yeah, that must be the reason. And speaking of ” irony,” here’s a letter that didn’t make it into print:

The Nobel Peace Prize used to be awarded to an individual who was actually engaged in the nitty-gritty of peace-making—Lester B. Pearson for his work on the Suez crisis; Martin Luther King, Jr. for leading the civil rights movement in the U.S. These days the Norwegian committee seems more inclined to hand it out not because a person has done something that has furthered the cause of peace, but for actions that might, at some undetermined point in the future, have an impact. Thus, the committee has previously honoured Mohamed ElBaradei and his UN agency the IAEA not because it has been so successful in easing tensions re nuclear warfare, but as encouragement to keep plugging away so it might prove effective somewhere down the road. And now, using the same rationale, it has honoured Al Gore and the UN Climate Change Panel.

What next? A Nobel Prize for Literature based on what an author might write in years to come? A Nobel Prize for Medicine for a discovery that has yet to make?

It’s high time for the Peace Prize committee to return to its roots and award prizes for tangible peace achievements in the here and now, and not on the basis of work which may or may not affect the course of peace in the future.

And finallly, a letter which, for obvious reasons, I won't even bother sending:

Letter writer Alasdair Robinson may be onto something about the Norwegians trying to ease their guilty consciences for lax adherence to the Kyoto Accords by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore.  After all, in the “do as we say, not as we do” domain of international environmentalism, it is far more important to appear to tow the line than to actually tow it. That way you can all gang up on the stubborn individualist—the world’s only superpower—who refuses to get with your program.

“Ironically,” giving the award to Al Gore and the UN does nothing to further the cause of world peace; nor does it address the thorniest challenge to peace—Islamic supremacists and their agenda of global conquest through jihad. It does, however, allow a lot of people to feel really good about their decision to jump on the bandwagon of the world’s fastest growing religion: the Church of Global Climate Change. It’s a religion in which Al Gore serves as the object of veneration—call him “Al-lah”—and the Kyoto Accords function as holy scripture—its Koran.

And so easy to join, too. All you have to do is say, “I submit.”

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

A “modest” demand: Mahmoud Abbas and his “secular” Fatah party aren’t asking for too much in exchange for "peace". Just a return to pre-’67 borders, and, oh yeah, the Jews would have to agree to forfeit their holiest religious site.

A small price to pay, n’est-ce pas? From the New York Sun:

UNITED NATIONS — As an American-hosted Middle East summit approaches, Palestinian Arabs are hardening their positions: An aide to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday that the Palestinians will demand sole Arab control over Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem, the Western Wall.

Mr. Abbas's adviser on religious affairs, Adnan al-Husseini, made the new demand in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, sparking an outcry from many Israeli politicians who complained that recent reports about the Olmert government's proposal to transfer Arab-dominated neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state have led to further Arab demands.

As the last remnant of the ancient Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the common era, the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is considered Judaism's holiest site. Muslims, who call it Al-Burak, also venerate it as the place where they believe the prophet Muhammad tied his horse before ascending to the heavens.

"We are talking about full control" over Jerusalem, Mr. Husseini, a scion of one of the most prominent Palestinian Arab families, told Ma'ariv. "The Wailing Wall," he said, "is a Muslim waqf," or sacred endowment, "and therefore cannot be abandoned." He cited a 1928 British mandate white paper that called for the area to be under Muslim control where Jews would be allowed to worship…

Could someone please explain to me why we’re even talking to these ‘Slamonazis instead of telling them to take their Muslim waqf and stick it up their anal sqfincters?

But since we’re on the subject of historical promises, let’s go back to the one made by the League of Nations which set aside a whole lot more land for the Jews—the promise the British reneged on when it handed most of that land to Arabs.

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

The Cricket chirrups: Wolf Blitzer lobs softballs at freelance international buddinsky/nutty old gasbag Jimminy “Cricket” Carter. According to Jimminy, relations between Iran and the U.S. were just peachy when Bill Clinton was in charge, but with Bush in the White House, the fuzz is off the fruit (so to speak). So how should the U.S. deal with an Iran that wants to bring on Armageddon in order to spark the return of the Shia messiah, who was last seen many centuries ago disappearing down a well?  Why, by talking, talking, talking, of course.

Bill O’Reilly and a historian discuss why Jimminy’s idea blows.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:25 | link | comments

Wanted: a real peacemaker: Now that Al Gore has brought us better living through eco-fascism—a feat for which he has been showered with accolades, the latest being his Norwegian Peace Prize—we need someone to step up and deal with the real threat to world peace: overweening Islamic supremacism as expressed through the ever-widening global jihad. By Ariel Cohen in RealClear Politics:

The conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan and the global Islamist insurgency have revealed that Western democracies and their political and military leaders do not fully comprehend the multifaceted threats represented by radical Muslim nonstate actors. In this, they violate the most famous dictum of Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategic genius of 2,500 years ago: "If you know yourself and understand your opponent you will never put your victory in jeopardy in any conflict."

The broad support that al Qaeda jihadis and radical Islamist militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah enjoy in the Muslim world and in the global Muslim diaspora, as well as among non-Muslim anti-American political forces around the world demonstrates that describing the global Islamic insurgency as a fringe or minority phenomenon is unrealistic and self-defeating. Since 9/11, democracies have fought three wars against nonstate Islamist actors. The West needs to draw important lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the clash between Israel and Hezbollah to address these strategic deficits. Lack of clarity in defining the enemy and delays in formulating political and information strategy severely endanger U.S. national interests and the security of the West.

Fighting the wrong enemy

The bush (sic) administration lost valuable time before it finally defined radical Islam as the premier national security threat in October 2005. Initially in the post-9/11 period, the president targeted "evildoers" and "terrorism" as the enemy. Moreover, Islam was declared a "religion of peace" and Saudi Arabia, which has spent the last 30 years spreading its Wahhabi/Salafi gospel, was labeled as"our friend." Unsurprisingly, the nation and the military were somewhat disoriented.

The U.S. military quickly and successfully destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After that, however, the menu of enemies became slim: Saudi Arabia, from which 15 out of 19 hijackers came, was considered too important an oil supplier and too pivotal a state in the Middle East to be engaged. Pakistan, both the parent and the nursemaid of the Taliban, promised cooperation. Most important, the U.S. did not know (and still does not know) how to fight nonstate actors, be they sub-state terrorist organizations, militias, or supra-state religious/political movements.

The jury is still out as to all the reasons for the Soviet collapse, but it was defeated in part through an indirect strategy formulated by the Reagan administration, and in part because it disintegrated due to its own internal weaknesses. If we are to believe one who was "present at the destruction" -- Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar -- a key reason was the flooding of the world market with cheap Saudi oil. The Soviet Union was also bankrupted by its unsustainably expensive military-industrial complex. In addition, it was burdened with ideological fatigue and cynicism, torn by ethnic centrifugal forces, and being bled in Afghanistan by the U.S.-supported mujahedeen.1

For over a century, the U.S. military and other arms of the government have been designed, nurtured, and financed to fight nation states, from Spain in 1898, to Germany in the two world wars, to Japan in 1941-45. Working with insurgencies or counter-insurgencies hasn't been Washington's forte for a long time. The U.S. military did not succeed in defeating the North Vietnamese insurgency, nor did its Cold War guerilla allies prevail in Angola or Mozambique. Beside the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, and support of Afghan mujahedeen, U.S. insurgency and counterinsurgency successes have been limited and peripheral to war-fighting. The current conflict is fundamentally different…

Dealing, as it does, with Islamic fundamentalists and their Islamic fundamentalism.

You would think that would be obvious by now. But nooooo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:29 | link | comments

An enemy of the people: The Tehran Times has an interview with an anti-Zionist wackjob who is not the chief Rabbi of anything and whose views are in line with Neturai Karta, even though he’s not an official member of that way-out group:

TEHRAN - Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish Community in Austria, Moishe Arye Friedman, believes that the “Zionist regime is using the Holocaust concept as a tool and weapon to silence people.”

In an interview with the Mehr News Agency here on Saturday, October 6, Friedman said “the root of the world’s problems is the existence of the Zionist regime.”

The chief rabbi was in Iran on an invitation from the Islamic Republic.

Here is an excerpt of the interview:

Q: Would you please explain about your community’s activities?

A: We are in a religious community, and our activities are actually concentrated mainly and truly on exercising the religion only, by being the followers of Prophet Moses. We are actually forbidden from having any activities of political nature. But also similar to the Islamic Republic of Iran, our activities are for human rights, for world peace, resulting from a religious perspective.

Q: Don’t you think that Israel’s behavior in the Middles East, especially its treatment of the Muslims in the occupied territories, would pose threats to Jews in other countries?

A: When we talk about Israel, the catastrophe of Zionism is not only in their state, it is the regime. The Zionist regime is not concentrated only on the so called Israel, the Zionist regime is actually in the most of the world. To march to Jerusalem, we mean of course to physically be in Jerusalem, we have to wipe off the Zionist regime.

The Zionist regime includes the governments all over the world with Zionist Jewish communities. When we say Jewish people we mean Jewish people following Moses which we have around the world. Of course it is very important to distinguish between Jewish people and those Zionist people.

The behavior of some of the countries is very irresponsible. For them there is no difference between the Jews and the Zionists, and this can lead to danger. It is different in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is going to the root of the problem, to find how it was possible at all that such a regime came about. They went for example to engage with the issue of Holocaust, to have the world free from the Holocaust concept propaganda which is used as a tool for committing crimes against humanity.

There is a lot which has been done by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and especially recently, I think it was in a responsible way. Unfortunately we have to condemn those Arab regimes who are tolerating Israel. And it seems they are not dealing in a responsible way, and are even trying to misinform the public that Zionism is actually representing the Jewish people, in order to protect their interests and to keep their regime, and their population is silent.

Q: What about an abuse of Judaism by Zionists?

A: Zionism is all about to humiliate the faith in God. Not only the Jewish religion, but faith in God in all religions, mainly Islam. They also have a great interest in driving the Christians, the Catholic church, away from their traditional religions.

They are uprooting the religion, trying to reduce historical elements, and at the same time, when there are critics or people who are able to independently research such a theme, they will try everything to arrest them, to harm them, eliminate them, and that is their nature. For that purpose they have always used the Holocaust concept as their tool and weapon to silence people. Jerusalem should be wiped off from the Zionists.

Q: What does your community do to counter Israel or Zionism?

A: I think in the circumstances in which I came here with my family to Tehran could in practical terms state an example of the activities we make against Zionism, condemning the crimes against humanity.

But we have to deal with the problem by going to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that the world is actually confronted with the Holocaust based on lies. We will have to get rid of the Holocaust lies of the Zionist regime, there is no question about this. All the media is silent about all the crimes committed by the Zionist regime by using the Holocaust concept.

Q: What’s your idea about Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that the West should allocate a land to the Zionists so that they can establish their own country there?

A: The first thing which has to happen is the immediate and unconditional return of the entire Palestinian refugees to their own land. When I say unconditional, I mean without having the precondition that they have to recognize the Zionist regime. The Palestinians have to receive their rights without recognizing the Zionist regime. By recognizing the Zionist regime we are having contradiction with the Palestinians’ rights and the rights of the Islamic world. We have to discuss not about the people who lived in Palestine, but those who came from Poland, from Russia, and other places. By using the Holocaust concepts they came to the holy land to eliminate others. At the first step, they should return to where they came from. I do not understand really the logic or the position of the Europeans or the Americans for opposing the approach and initiative of President Ahmadinejad, suggesting that the Zionists should return to Europe or to U.S. because after all, the Europeans are sacrificing their whole economy for those Jews, for the colleagues and associates of those Israelis who are now in Palestine. They are even sacrificing their own national security. They are not willing to implement law and order against Jews in their own state. So what is the problem for Jews to come there? There is no problem.

As a consequence of the Second World War, in a very unjustified way, at least a third of Poland nowadays and at least 34 percent of the Zech Republic for example is simply a German territory which they robbed off unjustified, and they are not doing anything about that. So there is no problem with giving the Zionist Jews some territories.

Q: What do you think about President Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University, about Holocaust?

A: The issues which President Ahmadinejad stated and the issues that Iran’s leaders, Imam Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, have mentioned, those issues were known before, but we are living in a world that is shut by the horrific Zionist media domination. In fact he managed to break those taboos. He had his mission there. Now the world is starting to realize that the Zionist regime is not only concentrated in the holy land. The root of the problems is actually the Zionist regime elsewhere. The Zionist Jewish community is extremely violent, they are even poisoning the American society. The Zionist regime is leading them. Even they have their own police in New York. A few thousand Jews in New York are able to have their own police.

Q: What is your opinion about Iran, and about the U.S. propaganda calling Iran a terrorist state?

A: I think it is the best thing and you should be proud that the Zionist media, inside the United States, are against you. The more they are trying to attack you, the more is because you are at a better position. Do not be afraid of people who speak openly of attacks, you should rather be afraid of those who speak nice to you. No one in the world had expected the Islamic Republic to make such achievements. The Iranian people are far too clever to fall into such propaganda, and I think they are clever enough to realize that this propaganda is the exact reason to stand firmly, and they do not expect to receive cheers from the evil.

I think the Islamic Republic is the nation chosen by God for justice and peace.

That last line reminds me of Sigmund Freud’s tongue-in-cheek “testimonial” to the Gestapo: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.” The difference being that Freud meant it ironically while this Jewish anti-Zionist, this mullahs’ catamite, is deadly serious.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:13 | link | comments

Just send cash: In honour of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, I’ve decided to launch my own Web-based carbon credit company. Starting today, you can send me lots of shekels and I, with my teensy carbon footprints, will do my best to offset your far more flagrant overuse of our planet's rapidly depleting resources.

No need to thank me or give me any prizes; your money is reward enough.

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

Nobel politics and chanelling Scrooge: The Nobel prizes for Lit and Peace used to be held in high esteem—until the lefty political agenda hijacked the selection process. Now instead of recognizing genuine achievement the prize recognizes figures whose politics are in synch with the selection committeees’. Thus, the prize for literature this year goes to geriatric lit-chick Doris Lessing, a former lefty radical beloved by ‘70s-era feminists for her semi-autobiographical—and virtually unreadable—doorstopper, The  Golden Notebook; I have only dipped into a few of Lessing’s many other novels, finding hers to be the most turgid prose this side of Selma Lagerlöf (who won the prize in 1909).

As for this year’s Peace Prize winner—well, let’s just say the rationale for giving it to eco-Deity Al “the Goracle” Gore and the UN’s Panel on Intergovernmental  Climate Change  is so convoluted that it makes the decision to grant past prizes to feckless IAEA head Mo ElBarabei and kleptocratic terrorist chief Yasser Arafat seem like exemplars of sound judgement.

Then again, if you’re looking to boss around the world’s only superpower and force it to fall in line with the Internationalists and the utopian One-Worldism of their Kyoto Accords (and also get the world to look away from that far more pressing threat to world peace, the global jihad), I guess giving it to Al and the UN makes a lot of sense.

Nobel Lit and Peace prizes—bah, humbug!

Update: A limerick for Lessing:

A humourless writer named Lessing

Received the Swedes' Nobel blessing.

As to whether they’d read her,

Or were rewarding instead her

Politics—well, we’re all still guessing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments (2)

No Chin Assad slams Lebanese dhimmis: For “supporting” Israel, of course. From the Middle East Times:

DAMASCUS --  Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has slammed Lebanese, who, he said, had chosen to side with Israel and submit themselves to foreigners instead of taking the Arab path and that of resistance.

In an interview published Thursday, Assad said of the neighboring nation where it was powerbroker for nearly three decades: "It is impossible to build a relationship with some parties, who, in Lebanon ... are close to Israel, submit themselves to foreign countries, and do not believe in Lebanon."

He told the Tunisian daily Al Shuruk, in an interview reprinted in official Syrian media: "Most of the forces who hold power in Lebanon have adopted this position, which rebounds on Syrian-Lebanese relations."

Lebanon has been in crisis for months since pro-Syrian ministers pulled out of the government of West-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, creating political paralysis.

Assad said: "there have always been in Lebanon forces attached to the Arab [identity]. But there are also forces which, since Lebanon's creation - and even before - have tied their fate to the West, thus putting [their country] in danger.

"These forces link Lebanon's fate to that of regional conflicts, which signifies that Lebanon will not know stability in the near future."

Referring to the agreement that ended Lebanon's 1975 to 1990 civil war, the Syrian leader said: "Lebanon knew stability after the Taif accord when it chose the Arab path and resistance against Israel. The day it went back on this choice it again experienced instability."

Under the Taif agreement, all factions disarmed their militias with the exception of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which fought last year's war with Israel.

Hezbollah, seen as Lebanon's legitimate resistance, was also credited with forcing Israel to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000 after years of occupation.

Lebanon's political establishment is split between pro- and anti-Syrian camps. The two sides have been deadlocked over the choice of a new president to replace pro-Syrian incumbent Emile Lahoud, and a first parliamentary session that convened last month to elect a successor failed to achieve a quorum.

Assad stressed: "Lebanon was stable when it followed the Arab line, supported the resistance, and opposed itself to Israel."

Assad and his thugs just hate it when dhimmis stick together—an excellent reason for Lebanon’s Christians to tell him to take a hike.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:48 | link | comments

An embattled outpost: Melanie Phillips explains why it is crucial for the West to support Israel--because its existence is of incalculable strategic value if the West hopes to fend off the onslaught of global jihad:

As I wrote here, the Palestinian territories are steadily being Islamised. That means the west is going to have to shift its focus very radically. If the West Bank along with Gaza fall to the Islamists, the two-state solution is over. The Arabs have had seventy years to agree to it; all that time they have refused to do so; and now they seem to have blown it. A state of Palestine would be another Islamist front and a further strategic threat to the west. Israel’s position as the forward salient of the west’s defence against the Islamist world thus becomes absolutely explicit. Far from a state of Palestine providing the west with greater peace and stability by ending the Middle East impasse, as so many in the west so naively believe, an Islamic state of Palestine would pose a mortal threat not just to Israel but to Europe. As [Jonathan] Halevi [of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs] writes:

Israel, therefore, is a small link in the greater confrontation between radical Islam and the West. Accepting the Arabs’ terms for a Middle East settlement or even going so far as ‘liberating’ Palestine from Israeli rule will not be the last stop in the radical Islamic journey being led by the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, which share the vision of spreading Islam all over the world and establishing a global organizational infrastructure under a new caliphate to make this possible.

Indeed, for the West, Israel constitutes a dike against the great wave of radical Islam. The very same principle invoked for waging war against Israel — recovery of what was once Islamic territory — is being applied to Spain, the Balkans, Southern Russia, and India. Gustavo de Aristegui, a conservative Spanish parliamentarian, has disclosed that former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer once said that if Israel were to fall and be defeated, the next in line would definitely be Spain.

European pressure on Israel to make political concessions that endanger its security will only bring closer the next stage of Islam’s offensive, this time aimed at the heart of Europe.

Palestinianism, the creedal cause of Europe’s leftist elites, is in other words a dagger pointing at Europe’s heart.

Meanwhile, as Cal Thomas points out on the JWR site, the Bush administration is stuck in a rut it can’t seem to pull out of, determined to sell out Israel in its quest for the holy grail--that chimerical two-state solution:

Name one concession Israel has made in recent years that has been reciprocated by its sworn enemies. This is not a trick question. There are none.

That's why next month's announced "Middle East Summit" in Annapolis, Md., should be viewed as one more installment payment in the sellout of Israel and of American interests in the Middle East. While the United States continues to struggle to shore up democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration — like administrations before it — proceeds in undermining the likelihood that the region's first democracy will endure.

At every negotiating session, Israel is pressured into making concessions for "peace" and receives more war in response. Mostly this is because of the wishful thinking in the West that has replaced sound policy. Why should the Palestinians make concessions when they are drawing closer to their objective of eradicating Israel by throwing stones and bombs and stonewalling negotiations?

In an address to the Israeli Knesset, President Shimon Peres reaffirmed the flaw in Western thinking: "…even if there are some who express doubt at the ability of the Palestinians to achieve peace, the impression must not be created that Israel has doubts regarding the need and the willingness to achieve full peace." So it's not about hard bargaining resulting in the preservation of Israel with defensible borders and the cessation of terrorist attacks, it's about "impressions"? No wonder Israel's enemies are emboldened as never before.

While details of a "joint declaration" by Israel and the Palestinians on a final status agreement remain secret, some information has leaked. One report has Prime Minister Ehud Olmert preparing to divide Jerusalem by allowing Arab East Jerusalem to come under Palestinian control. The holy sites, now administered by Israel and open to all (which was not the case when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem prior to 1967), would be internationalized. For 40 years, Israel has provided security for the holy places. It is doubtful an international force would do as good a job protecting these sites from terrorists (think the Taliban and the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and regular attacks on Christians, their churches and schools in heavily Muslim nations).

According to one report, "the drafters are planning to call for a withdrawal by Israel to the 1967 lines," thus making Israel more vulnerable than ever to heavily armed Arab states and Palestinian enemies and leaving it completely exposed to infiltration from the East. Does anyone doubt such infiltration would not occur? Would the United States come to the aid of Israel should it again be invaded? Probably not since that might hurt our "image" in the Arab world.

Infidel Israelis, Americans and Europeans will not dissuade those sworn to destroy Israel. President Bush had promised former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon he could expect U.S. support to maintain defensible borders. In the plan now being discussed, Israel's borders would be indefensible.

In all of this, the United States is trying to prop up Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But Abbas is a figurehead, manipulated by the terrorist organization Hamas, which virtually controls the Palestinian territories thanks to democratic elections. Caroline Glick writes in the Jerusalem Post: "Over the past week, Abbas announced his adherence to maximal Palestinian demands from Israel. These include the full transfer of sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the Palestinians; the complete surrender of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians; and an Israeli acceptance of the so-called 'right-of-return' that would force Israel to accept millions of foreign Arabs as immigrants within its truncated borders."

Why should anyone expect anything else when the real intensions of Israel's enemies can be summed up in the "phased plan" for the destruction of Israel expressed in 2000 by Palestinian Minister of Supply, Abd El Aziz Shahian: "The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent arrangement, based on the premise that the war and struggle on the ground is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land … for the Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goals of the '65 revolution."

The "'65 Revolution" refers to the founding of the PLO and the publication of the Palestinian Charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel through armed struggle.

So, why is the United States hosting this sellout in Annapolis?

Why? Saudi oil wealth; force of habit; sheer stubbornness; fear; Foggy Bottom Arabism, arrogance and moral blindness; a desire to look good in the history books combined, ironically enough, with a willful ignorance/misreading of history; the size of the Muslim demographic in America; the refusal to acknowledge Islam’s jihad imperative.

Did I leave anything out?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments

Islamist-Leftist convergence: On sale now—tickets to the CAIR-CAN dinner featuring the lovely and talented Naomi Klein:

CAIR-CAN cordially invites you to its 2007 Gala Dinner with keynote speaker Naomi Klein. Klein is a highly-acclaimed Canadian journalist and activist, as well as author of No Logo and the newly released Shock Doctrine.

The dinner will be held Saturday, November 24, 2007, at 6 p.m. at the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto located at 123 Queen St. West, just opposite City Hall.

Tickets: $200/plate or $1800 for a table of 10. (There will be no fundraising segment at the dinner.)…

Thanks, but I’d rather swallow shards of glass followed by a chaser of rubbing alcohol.

Naomi Klein is certainly CAIR-CAN’s kind of Jew—one who loathes Israel and hails Hezbollah for its grassroots “community” work in Lebanon. In other words, a clueless useful idiot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:04 | link | comments (2)

Neighbourhood bully: Turkey, a secular Muslim nation in denial about the genocide it perpetrated against Christian Armenians early last century, is demanding that Israel, the Jewish state which arose from the ashes of Europe’s genocide of the Jews—a genocide inspired in no small measure by the Turkish one—use its reputedly powerful influence with the U.S. (what, have the Turks been reading Mearslimer/Walt too?) to persuade Congress not to approve a statement condemning the Turkish massacre of Armenians--a statement which, for the first time, would see Congress officially characterizing it as a genocide.

And if the Jews don’t agree to swing into action on behalf of the descendents of Naziesque murderers, the Turks are warning there will be hell to pay.

The Turks obviously don't care that the consequences of Jews allowing themselves to be bullied into defending genocide—an indefensible, patently immoral, spiritually deadening proposition—would result in far graver consequences: the serious undermining of Israel’s moral legitimacy.

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

A feeble response: Canada has been trying to deport an undesirable—undesirable because of his likely affiliation with al Qaeda—back to Morocco. But we can’t, since we’re really concerned that he might, you know, get hassled by the folks back home. Instead, we’ve decided to deal with him the only way we can—by slapping one of those fashionable Hollywood-style bracelets on his ankle and letting him get back to work…as a school teacher.  From canada.com:

MONTREAL - Adil Charkaoui, a Montrealer under a federal security certificate, will have to keep wearing a Global Positioning System device on his ankle that's monitored his every movement since early 2005, a Federal Court of Canada judge ruled Wednesday.

"The request for Mr. Charkaoui's provisional liberation without conditions is denied," Judge Simon Noel concluded in a 26-page judgment favouring the federal government.

Charkaoui will also have to continue to adhere to 15 other conditions, the judge stated, "to ensure that any danger is neutralized."

Noel left the door open for less strict conditions at some later point.

"It could be that in the future certain of his preventive conditions will be amended," he added. "The court has always invited the parties to discuss this with the goal of arriving at an agreement that could be ratified" by a judge.

Charkaoui, 34, last June requested outright revocation of all conditions.

The Moroccan-born permanent resident of Canada has been fighting possible deportation from Canada.

While Charkaoui could not be reached for comment on the ruling, "of course he is disappointed," Johanne Doyon, one of his lawyers, said late Wednesday.

"He intends to appeal," to the Federal Court of Appeal, Doyon added.

Charkaoui remains unable to travel outside Montreal without Noel's permission.

Among the other conditions, he still has to be supervised at his work, as a primary-school teacher; must be accompanied at all times by specified people when outside his home, and; must not use the Internet or cellular telephones.

Charkaoui had been imprisoned in May 2003 for 21 months, amid government allegations that he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent, until his conditional release Feb. 17, 2005.

He has demanded, repeatedly, that all evidence against him be made public.

In a hearing last August, his lawyers argued that Ahmed Ressam - a Montrealer convicted in 2001 of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport who remains jailed in the U.S. - has retracted allegations against Charkaoui.

But in his ruling, Noel said he could not conclude Ressam had lied on two separate occasions in January 2002, when Ressam told the Canadian Security Intelligence Service he recognized Charkaoui's picture and knew him as Zubeir Al-Maghrebi.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last February that the security certificate process used against Charkaoui violated the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and gave Parliament one year to draft a new approach.

Because of the Supreme Court ruling, Charkaoui's lawyers argued before Noel, any conditions imposed on Charkaoui are illegal.

We’re pathetic.

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

Getting ‘slimed: The Jerusalem Post takes note of the Mearslimer-Walt blood libel:

US support for Israel was a "major cause" of the 9-11 attacks, according to University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, who appeared at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week to promote their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

"A critically important issue when talking about America's terrorism problem is the matter of how US support for Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians relates to what happened on September 11," said Mearsheimer, who played the role of attack dog, while Walt set the stage.

Mearsheimer suggested that the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the "most powerfully recurrent in [Osama] Bin Laden's speeches," who, he said, had been deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man. He said that Bin Laden's concern had been reflected in his public statements throughout the 1990's - "well before 9-11." Citing the 9-11 Commission report, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Bin Laden wanted to make sure the attackers struck Congress because it is "the most important source of support for Israel in the United States," adding that Bin Laden twice tried to move up the dates of the attacks because of events involving Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt went on to argue that 9-11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences in the United States as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel. "Its hard to imagine more compelling evidence of the role US support for Israel played in the 9-11 attacks," said Mearsheimer.

"In short, the present relationship between Washington and Jerusalem is helping to fuel America's terrorism problem," he went on to say.

They said that US support for Israel motivates some individuals to attack the United States and "...serves as an important recruitment tool for terrorist organizations," according to Mearsheimer. He said that US support for Israel generates huge support for terrorists in the Arab and Islamic world.

Suggesting that Israel had outlived its usefulness to the United States, Walt added that "Israel may well have been a strategic asset during the Cold War," but that "...the Cold War is now over." He said that America's unconditional support for Israel in the Middle East is "one" of the reasons "we have a terrorism problem, and it makes it harder to address a variety of problems in the Middle East."…

I liked this pithy remark left by one reader: “When they run out of excuses they blame the Jews.”

The history of antisemtism—in a nutshell.

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

A loss of faith (and face): It took the pundits exactly eight minutes after the polls had closed to declare a resounding victory for the McShifty Liberals--and what looked to be an embarrassing loss in his own riding for Tory's Tories (fittingly, considering Tory's religious school funding blunder, to Liberal Education Minister, Kathleen Wynne).

It took me less time than that to come up with John Tory's post mortem limerick:

A Conservative aptly named Tory

Tried to ride to political glory.

But folks took a pass on

His funding madrassahs

And now he’s been cowed—end of story.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:52 | link | comments

Sharia in space: Sharia has broken out of its Earthy confines—without ‘sploding  martyrs or Heavenly virgins. As this article in Salon explains, however, following the one true law in outer space does present certain challenges:

Oct 10th, 2007 | KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A Malaysian doctor who will spend the last days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in space has vowed to follow the rituals of his faith even as he hurtles around Earth at 17,000 mph.

Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor lifted off Wednesday in a Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan, en route to the international space station where he will spend about 10 days.

The spacecraft — which also carried an American and a Russian — will take two days to reach the station, a period coinciding with the last days of Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Sheikh Muszaphar has said he will fast and pray in space, even though clerics said he could delay the fast.

"I am not sure how it would be done but I will share my experiences (with) all the Muslims all over the world when I get back," the 35-year-old Sheikh Muszaphar wrote in his Web journal. "After all, Islam is a way of life and I am quite sure I would not face much difficulties."

Sheikh Muszaphar is taking vacuum-packed Malaysian food, including skewered chicken, banana rolls, fermented soybean cakes and ginger jelly to mark the end of Ramadan.

A bachelor who has become a national heartthrob, the orthopedic surgeon will not be the first Muslim in space — Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman joined the crew of the shuttle Discovery in 1985 and there have been several others since.

Still, the mission initially presented a dilemma about fulfilling religious duties such as fasting, kneeling for prayers in zero gravity or facing Mecca to pray.

After all, praying five times daily on a craft that goes around Earth 16 times a day would have meant praying 80 times in 24 hours. Also, it is virtually impossible to face Mecca continuously in a craft traveling at such high speed.

Muslims are required to wash their hands, feet, face and hair before prayers — a luxury on the Soyuz where water is so precious that even sweat and urine are recycled.

To get around these problems, 150 Malaysian scholars, scientists, and astronauts brainstormed and published an 18-page booklet of guidelines for Muslim astronauts.

If he follows the guidelines, Sheikh Muszaphar can forgo fasting in space and make up for it when he returns to Earth. He can pray three times a day instead of five, facing any direction, and he can do without the ritual washing.

On Tuesday, Sheikh Muszaphar told reporters his trip will be an inspiration for his Southeast Asian homeland as well as to other Muslims worldwide.

"It's a small step for me, but a great leap for the Malaysian people," he said, rephrasing Neil Armstrong's words after the 1969 moon landing.

And one gibungous leap for Islam.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments

The paradox of tolerance: Judea Pearl, father of Daniel, the Jewish reporter decapitated on camera by a British-born, LSE-educated jihadi, isn’t too pleased with the film adaptation of his daughter-in-law Mariane Pearl’s book A Mighty Heart. Judea sees in it the moral blindness of  moral relativism. From YNet News:

I used to believe that the world is essentially divided into two types of people: Those who were broadly tolerant; and those who felt threatened by differences. If only the forces of tolerance could win out over the forces of intolerance, I reasoned, the world might finally know some measure of peace.

But there was a problem with my theory, and it was never clearer than in a conversation I once had with a Pakistani friend who told me that he loathed people like President Bush who insisted on dividing the world into "us" and them." My friend, of course, was taking an innocent stand against intolerance, and did not realize that, in so doing, he was in fact dividing the world into "us" and "them," falling straight into the camp of people he loathed.

 

This is a political version of a famous paradox formulated by Bertrand Russell in 1901, which shook the logical foundations of mathematics. Any person who claims to be tolerant naturally defines himself in opposition to those who are intolerant. But that makes him intolerant of certain people - which invalidates his claim to be tolerant.

The political lesson of Russell’s paradox is that there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance. Ultimately, one must be able to expound intolerance of certain groups or ideologies without surrendering the moral high ground normally linked to tolerance and inclusivity. One should, in fact,condemn and resist political doctrines that advocate the murder of innocents, that undermine the basic norms of civilization, or that seek to make pluralism impossible. There can be no moral equivalence between those who seek - however clumsily - to build a more liberal, tolerant world and those who advocate the annihilation of other faiths, cultures, or states.

 

Which brings me to my son, Daniel Pearl. Thanks to the release of "A Mighty Heart," the movie based on Mariane Pearl's book of the same title, Danny's legacy is once again receiving attention. Of course, no movie could ever capture exactly what made Danny special - his humor, his integrity, his love of humanity - or why he was admired by so many.

For journalists, Danny represents the courage and nobility inherent in their profession. For Americans, Danny is a symbol of one of our very best national instincts: The desire to extend a warm hand of friendship and dialogue to faraway lands and peoples. And for anyone who is proud of their heritage or faith, Danny's last words, "I am Jewish," showed that it is possible to find dignity in one's identity even in the darkest of moments. Traces of these ideas are certainly evident in "A Mighty Heart," and I hope viewers will leave the theater inspired by them.

 

At the same time, I am worried that "A Mighty Heart" falls into a trap Bertrand Russell would have recognized: The paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantanamo - it opens with pictures from the prison - and its comparison of Al-Qaeda militants with CIA agents.

You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote on The Washington Post's website that "A Mighty Heart" and his previous film "The Road to Guantanamo" are very similar. "Both are stories about people who are victims of increasing violence on both sides. There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

 Drawing a comparison between Danny's murder and the detainment of suspects in Guantanamo is precisely what the killers wanted, as expressed in both their e-mails and the murder video. Obviously Winterbottom did not mean to echo their sentiments, and certainly not to justify their demands or actions. Still, I am concerned that aspects of his movie will play into the hands of professional obscurers of moral clarity.  

Indeed, following an advance screening of "A Mighty Heart," a panelist representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations reportedly said: "We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film." The message that angry youngsters are hearing is unfortunate: All forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddiqui Khan, one of the London suicide bombers in his videotape on Al Jazeera. "Your democratically elected government," he told his British countrymen, "continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people ... . We will not stop."

Danny's tragedy demands an end to this logic. There can be no comparison between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts - no ifs, ands, or buts. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, on January 31, 2002…

Only to be revived by Michael Winterbottom and the UN’s Angelina Jolie in 2007.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:29 | link | comments

Loathing fear in Espana: A Conference on Islamophobia has just wrapped up in Cordoba, Spain. After conducting an “in depth” review of the issues, the attendees—both dhimmi and Muslim—have figured out who’s to blame for this “irrational” fear.  The jihad imperative? Terrorist attacks by jihadis heeding the jihad imperative? Foolish dhimmis determined to ignore the jihad imperative because their rose-coloured world view holds that “if we respect them, they’ll respect us”?

Don’t be ridiculous. From Islam Online:

CORDOBA, Spain — Europe's first major conference on Islamophobia wrapped up on Wednesday, October 10, blaming the alarming intolerance and discrimination against Muslim minorities on education and the media.

"Education is a fundamental instrument in the prevention and treatment of intolerance and discrimination against Muslims," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the closing session, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The two-day conference was organized in city of Cordoba by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which promotes human rights, democracy and conflict prevention in Europe, North America and Central Asia.

The gathering seeks to address discrimination against Muslim minorities across Europe.

Nearly 300 representatives from NGOs and delegations from the 56 nations that make up the OSCE participated in the event.

"The essential responsibility to face up to acts of intolerance and discrimination against Muslims belongs to participating states," said Moratinos, whose county holds the rotating presidency of the OSCE.

"No international event or political question can justify intolerance and discrimination, including that which is directed at Muslims."

A recent report by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia said Muslim minorities in Europe face deep-seated discrimination in jobs, education and housing in addition to myriad barriers that give rise to feelings of hopelessness and exclusion.

In a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on September 14, UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Forms of Intolerance Doudou Diene warned that Islamophobia has been on the rise since the 9/11 attacks.

Media

Experts said the phenomenon was taking alarming dimensions, urging governments to do more to protect Europe's Muslims from discrimination.

"The situation is very serious," said Mustapha Cherif, an expert on Islam at the University of Algiers who is known for his commitment to battling religious hatred.

"Islamophobia is a rising phenomena," agreed Jasser Auda of Britain's Forum Against Racism and Islamophobia, which is made up of representatives of the British Muslim community.

"It is good to attract the attention of governments on the issue, to increase their level of awareness," said Aydin Suer, the spokesman for Femyso, a confederation of Muslim youth groups from 22 European nations.

"The problems are complex, the solutions themselves are complex."…

Allow me to simplify them: stop waging jihad and, presto, Islamophobia will magically disappear.

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

Using a “heel” to halt a conquest: It has becoming increasingly clear to Islamists like Sheema Khan, founder of CAIR-CAN and occasional Globe and Mail opiner, that here in North American, Islam’s treatment of women is its Achilles heel. Thus, in her most recent column Ms. Khan calls for Muslims to do away with “cultural” practices such as honour killings and female genital mutilation which, while not an official part of the religion, make Islam look so bad to North Americans keen on gender equality. She mentions, as well, that unfortunate incident in Ottawa recently, when a Muslim woman offered a “clarification” about her sexual assault so that she wouldn’t be considered damaged goods—something Sheema says the Prophet, ever sensitive to the needs of women, would not have condoned:

...These tectonic shifts in attitude elsewhere have implications in Canada, as well. Especially in light of the case last month, where a Carleton University student who was sexually assaulted issued a clarification that, contrary to news reports, she had not been raped. Initial accounts described a brutal attack: An unknown assailant entered the lab where she was working, broke her jaw, knocked her unconscious and then sexually assaulted her, leaving her hospitalized for days.

Thereafter, the student identified herself as Muslim and issued the clarification to save herself from the stigma of rape. In certain cultures, this can have an adverse effect on marriage prospects. While few in the Muslim community know the woman's identity, some rightfully asked: Why should a victim of sexual assault carry any guilt about rape? This woman needs support and comfort from her community, not stigmatization. National and local Muslim organizations issued statements calling for her support, and condemning the stigma of rape.

For once, this taboo subject has been broached from within. But where are the imams and religious leaders? As in Syria, Egypt and Senegal, their voices are essential for changing disturbing cultural attitudes towards rape and abuse. After all, Prophet Mohammed punished those who molested women, without ever stigmatizing the victims.

Always looking out for the chicks, that Mo.

Someone who would beg to differ with Sheema about how the Prophet saw women is Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. Here’s his interview with Jamie Glazov in FrontPage Magazine in which he explains how Islam views women as being doubly submissive since they must submit to both Allah and their menfolk.( He also gives us the scoop on what gives with those shy, submissive, revirginizing virgins up in the Hereafter.)

FP: So tell us in general where Islam stands on women and why.

Warner: Islam’s stand on women is the same as its stand on every issue—duality and submission. Dualism demands that everything is seen, not as a unified whole, but as divided. The primary political duality is the division between kafirs (unbelievers) and believers. The primary internal duality is the division between males and females.

The principle of submission means that one must rule over the other. No surprise, the women must submit to the men.

CSPI measured the submission of the female to the male by analyzing the Islamic doctrine. All of Islam’s doctrine is found in the Koran, the Hadith (Traditions) and the Sira (the life of Mohammed), the Trilogy. We collected every verse, every paragraph and every sentence that mentioned women and their power relationships. These were all categorized into the women being superior, inferior, equal or merely mentioned.

In 4% of the cases, women were superior, in 91% of the cases they were inferior and in 5% they were equal. But there is a big catch. The only way that women are equal is after death on Judgment day, when men and women will be judged on how well they followed the Koran and the Sunna. And guess what? The only way to follow the Koran and the Sunna is to obey men. Equality means obeying men.

Woman are superior by being a mother, who must obey her husband. So the perfect woman on Judgment day will be a mother, who obeyed all the men in her life. So really, the women are subordinate to men in 100% of all of the Koran, Hadith and the Sira.

FP: So what’s the story on sex in heaven? Apparently men will have lots of fun but not women?

Warner: What does the perfect Muslim woman find when she gets to Paradise? A male Paradise. Her husband will have his pick of Allah’s houris for sex. These houris are the perfect Islamic women. They are light-complexioned, sexy, shy, perpetual virgins who never say no.

The question arises: why shy and why virgins? Since submission is key to Islam, then submission must apply in Paradise as well. A virgin knows nothing, is a blank slate, and is easily dominated. A shy woman has the same submissive qualities. A houri will not even look you in the eye, nor offer any opinions about anything.

The word houri never appears in the Koran. It is always in the plural, houris, although the Koran does not say 72 virgins, just virgins. So a subservient Islamic woman must wait in line behind perfect women to see her husband. The promised equality on Judgment day would imply that there are male houris for her pleasure, but no. There are eternally young, beautiful boys, but they don’t seem to be there for the women.

However, women are included in the drinking wine, fine food, lying about in the shade and watching and taunting the kafirs (unbelievers) burning in Hell. So Paradise is just like earth, a place based upon duality and submission. Women must submit to men in this life and the life hereafter.

This parallel between Islam after death and in this life is important. Islam is usually seen as a vague and confusing doctrine. This is not true. All of Islam is built on duality and submission. Islam is absolutely logical and coherent in heaven, hell and earth. Islam is submission and duality yesterday, today and tomorrow.

FP: Why does Islam teach that most people in hell will be women?

Warner: Women may come up shy in Paradise, but they get more than their fair share of justice in Hell. The Bukhari’s Hadith (Traditions) record over twenty times how the majority of those in Hell will be women. Why are these women in Hell? Murder? Theft? Lying? Cheating? No, they were not grateful to their husband. They were not submissive enough.

In the same hadith, Mohammed says that women are not as smart as men. That is the reason that it takes two women to equal the testimony of one man. By that formula, a woman is half as smart as a man. The final part of this hadith also assures us that women are spiritually inferior to men because they can’t pray when having their period.

Again, all of this is a manifestation of submission, women must submit to men in all things including intelligence and spirituality.

This inferiority started with Mohammed, just like everything else in Islam. Since Mohammed is the ideal model of a Muslim, the one to be copied in everything, we must turn to Mohammed to understand sexual roles in Islam…

Which means that even with calls to do away with some of the more loathsome practices justified in the name of Islam—calls which, in any event, will likely fall on deaf ears—Islam’s Achilles heel ain’t going away any time soon. And if we want to, we can exploit this weakness to help put the brakes on Islam’s onward march here in North America. (It’s probably too late to do so in Europe.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments

Unreliable source: Great news! According to Vladimir Putin, Iran is not about to go ballistic. From Reuters via the Washington Post:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a news briefing with French leader Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday that he has not seen any real evidence that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

"We do not have data that says Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons. We do not have such objective data," Putin said. "Therefore we proceed from a position that Iran has no such plans but we share the concern of our partners that all programs should be as transparent as possible."

Hope you’ll understand if we don’t take your word for it, Vlad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:14 | link | comments

Fear-mongering in the Star: John Tory says he decided to go ahead with a promise to fund religious schools even though he knew a majority of Ontarians were against it out of a sense of “fairness.”

Fair enough.

Jeffrey Ewener of the Toronto Star sees the spectre of something far more ominous behind Tory’s promise, and that spectre is…Karl Rove:

…Certainly there's enough guilt to go around. And as with most sins, you can see the appeal of religious school funding. How it must have beguiled the hungry imaginations of Conservative strategists! It offered them everything they had ever dreamed of, through those long, lonely, sweaty nights in opposition, all wrapped up in a single issue.

It would drive a wedge between ethnic voters and their beloved Liberals. It would undermine the government's claim on its proudest and most legitimate area of achievement, that of public education.

And best of all, it would call into being a passionate and unshakably conservative political grouping, a foundation on which to erect a new and enduring Conservative majority. It would create, in secular, small-l liberal Ontario, the same solid religious conservative base that brought George W. Bush and his allies to power in the United States.

And this is the heart of the matter, the ultimate cause of the transgression. This is the true object of the Conservatives' forbidden lust, hovering just beyond their trembling, grasping fingers – the puckish smile and zaftig form of the "architect" himself, Karl Rove.

There has long been a traffic across the border in political consultants, one in which – Americans being Americans, and Canadians being Canadians – what works on the world-straddling stage of American electioneering is assumed to be what will also work, sooner or later, in the rinky-dink parliamentary sideshow that so amuses us yokels.

Of course this wouldn't be nearly so insulting and embarrassing if it didn't actually work – which, sad to say, it so often does. Think of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan singing "Irish Eyes." Think of Paul Martin, the greatest government downsizer and service-slasher in Canadian history, trying to convince us, Bill Clinton-like, that he felt our pain.

And up until ever so recently, Karl Rove has been considered the greatest political genius in America, having brought George Bush from perennial business failure to two-term triumph, mostly by pandering shamelessly to the wounded egos and worldly ambitions of American religious conservatives.

So the play for a religious conservative base here in Canada was pretty much inevitable. You can hardly blame Ontario Conservatives for succumbing to the temptation. And if we can't blame them, you can hardly expect them to blame themselves.

That, as any human resources manager can tell you, is what freelancers are for.

The consultants will be the scapegoats. The sins of the late campaign will be piled upon their wretched souls, and they shall be driven out into the wilderness, over the border, to try and find themselves jobs with a field of Republican candidates who can't raise enough donations to put gas in their buses. Meanwhile, here among the tents of the righteous, John Tory and his strategists will rise again from the electoral grave, stainless and pure…

Oh my. Jeffrey seems to be in the grip of some strange overheated sexual/political/religious fever. Could someone please hose him down before he scares the livestock and insists that a secret cabal of American neocons is even as we speak putting the finishing touches on Stephen Harper’s hidden Republican/Zionist agenda (booga booga!)?

Update: My letter to the Star:

John Tory says he decided to extend funding to religious schools out of a sense of fairness, but Jeffrey Ewener sees something far more threatening behind it—the malign hand of George W. Bush’s former chief strategist, Karl Rove; Rove supposedly engineered Bush's presidential victories by “pandering shamelessly to the wounded egos and worldly ambitious of American religious conservatives.”

I guess that’s one of those scary “hidden agendas” big and small “C” conservatives are always supposed to be working on. However, in the absence of any evidence that would lend credence to Mr. Ewener’s assertions, I think it’s best to look to the principle of Occam’s razor. The Wikipedia entry paraphrases this principle as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one," or alternately, "we should not assert that for which we do not have some proof."

In which case, I’m pretty sure John Tory wanted to extent funding to Ontario’s religious schools because he thought it was the right thing, the fair thing, to do for Ontario, and not because the Conservatives harboured some “forbidden lust”—what an overheated, ridiculous idea!—for Karl Rove.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:17 | link | comments

Potter’s potty patter: Macleans columnist Andrew Potter pens one of the most witless, clueless pieces I have read in a long time—and  that’s saying something, considering how many witless, clueless pieces I’ve read over the long term. According to Andy, a shrewd observer of the cultural scene, the onward march of financial Islam is nothing to fear—and those who do fear it, like Daniel Pipes, are “missing the point.”

Alas, it is hard to read the following and not conclude that in fact it’s Andrew who has missed the point—the point being that Islam aims to rule uber alles:

Someone who cares a great deal is the Scourge of Islam, Daniel Pipes, better known as the director of the pro-Israel think tank the Middle East Forum. In a recent article in the National Post about the rise of Islamic finance, Pipes warns that there is nothing "Islamic" about the barely disguised interest payments, and that behind its economic triviality lurks a great political danger. Drawing on the book Islam and Mammon, by the Muslim scholar Timur Kuran, Pipes argues that Islamic finance was created for political motives, designed to strengthen the Muslim identity by minimizing their interactions with non-Muslims.

He concludes that by enabling the economic activities of Muslims and allowing them to "modernize without Westernizing," Islamic economics serves as a source of global instability. Pipes suggests that it would be much better if Muslims were really forbidden from paying interest or any of its facsimiles, because they would then be relegated "to the fringes of the international economy."

This is insane, not to mention a bit obtuse. For starters, not every religion places so much value on correct belief or thought. Observing the faith is in some cases more about following a strict set of rules or codes, cleaving as close as possible to their letter and worrying less about their spirit. Among the big three monotheisms arising from the Mideast, Judaism and Islam are more concerned with rules than Christianity is. That is why, to Christian eyes, Jews and Muslims seem to expend a great deal of effort trying to fool God.

One example is the Orthodox Jewish practice of installing eruvin around neighbourhoods -- symbolic fences made of rope or string slung from lampposts and street signs. It is a way of getting around the rule against carrying things from one domain to another on the Sabbath. The presence of the eruv around a neighbourhood allows residents to treat the whole area as a single dwelling, which lets them carry stuff outside on the Sabbath without breaking Torah law. Is God fooled? To ask the question is to miss the point.

If anything, we should be celebrating the rise of Islamic economics, since if its goal was to keep Muslims isolated from the corrupting influences of the West it has been a huge failure. As a major survey in the Financial Times last spring pointed out, Islamic finance is now a trillion-dollar business, and most large Western banks -- including HSBC, Barclays, and Citibank -- are racing to re-craft all of their products along Islamic lines.

To see this as a source of instability and political danger is sheer paranoia. Far from ghettoizing Muslims, sharia-compliant finance is drawing them deeper into the network of global institutions, helping them to integrate into the modern world without having to assimilate to Western values. Sure, Islamic finance appears to many -- me included -- as little more than an exercise in trying to fool God. But if helping Muslims fool their God is part of the price we have to pay for global economic and political stability, it's the bargain of the century.

And further, if kowtowing to sharia law and allowing it to make huge inroads into the West is part of the price we have to pay for global and political stability…well, you get the big jihad/dhimmitude picture, even if clueless Andy doesn’t.

Update: My letter to Maclean's:

Andrew Potter says placating Muslims by allowing them to follow the rules of sharia banking is a small price to pay for “global economic and political stability.”

 

In that case, I can think of one sure-fire way to ensure the kind of long-term stability he’s looking for: the total embrace of Islamic law by the West.

 

While that would no doubt find favour with many of those who adhere to Islamic financial practices, I’m pretty sure that even Mr. Potter would concede that such stability would come at far too high a price.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:16 | link | comments

Power to the people: They have far more sense than their wretched leaders.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:25 | link | comments

Settlers=bible-thumpers=jihadis: At least, that’s how Harpoon Siddiqui sees it. In his 2006 book Being Muslim, Harpoon explains that every version of religious fundamentalism is more or less the same:

Islamic  Resurgence

Fundamentalism has been on the rise, and not just in Islam. There has been a parallel rise in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikkism and Buddhism, with its inevitable political fallout—in the Israeli settler movement in the Occupied Territories, the politicization of the American conservative right (culminating in the election and re-election of George W. Bush), the rise to power of the Hindu nationalists in India, the Sikh separatist movement in the Punjab in India and the aggressive nationalism of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

That many Muslims have become “fundamentalists” does not mean  that they are all fanatic and militant. Nor is the Muslim condition fully explained by the use of petro-dollars. First, Arab financial  support for Islamic institutions around the world is still no match for the resources available for Christian global missionary or Zionist political work. Second, and more to the point, the rise of Islam is not confined to areas of Arab financial influence; it is a worldwide phenomenon.

So if I understand Harpoon correctly, Christian and Zionist (which, to Harpoon, is apparently the same thing as “Jewish”) influence is far greater than that of the unmentioned Wahabbis, the oily Custodians of Islam’s Two Holy Mosques. At the same time though, the Wahabbis can take credit for only a small portion of this Islamic resurgence, which is mushrooming (and soon to be mushroom clouding?) everywhere.

Imagine what kind of trouble we’d be in if their influence actually surpassed (superceded?) that of Christians and Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:09 | link | comments

Revisiting the King: You’ll never guess which formerly reviled Arab potentate is getting an image makeover in the Arab world. I’ll give you a clue. He has unpleasingly plump, and was chased away by a fascist strongman. From Asia Times Online:

DAMASCUS - Arabs have been watching a brilliant television series this Islamic holy month of Ramadan, al-Malek Farouk, about the life of Farouk I, the last king of Egypt. Farouk was toppled by a military revolution on July 23, 1952. One of the revolution's masterminds, Gamal Abdul-Nasser, eventually emerged as the strongman of Egyptian politics and "godfather" of modern Arab nationalism. Nasser influenced similar revolts against established monarchs in Iraq (1958) and Libya (1969).

For years, the Egyptian revolution tarnished King Farouk's image - often beyond imagination. The officers depicted him as a drunkard, a womanizer and a careless boy-king who cared more for his personal indulgences than the fate of Egypt and the Arab world. Hundreds of books, articles and movies were made about Farouk, accusing him of treason, saying that he was a puppet for the great powers. School textbooks throughout the Arab world repeated these accusations, saying that Nasser had saved Egypt and the Arabs from complete collapse under the rule of Farouk. As a result, six generations were taught to believe that King Farouk was "bad" and Nasser was "good".

That was simply incorrect. Each leader had his faults, and each had his positive attributes. Both were equally patriotic and both committed an equal number of mistakes…

 

Wrong. Nasser was much, much worse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

Thanks, I prefer to walk: The Toronto Star—quel surprise—gets on the “Che, Che, Che” anniversary bandwagon.

My letter informing the Star why I refuse to climb on board:

What a boon for Fidel Castro and his Communist revolution that Ernesto “Che” Guevara had the movie star good looks of a James Dean or a Jim Morrison. After all, he could have looked like, say, Nikita Khruschev or Leonid Brezhnev. In which case I doubt we’d be sitting here 40 years after Che’s death, still riveted by his eternally attractive visage. We might, in fact, be inclined to pay more attention to what his revolution has wrought—a police state which has imprisoned, murdered and exiled an untold number of its citizens, and the transformation of a country which once had a higher standard of living than half of Europe into an economic basket-case.

I hear they have excellent health care, though.

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

Andersen's confusion: Befuddled New York Magazine scribe Kurt Andersen asks whether the “controversial” statements of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whom he equates with other “loudmouths”  such as Bill O’Reilly) are “really so threatening?” Shouldn’t we all, you know, just chill when a genocidal  madman who considers Hitler’s to be the Penultimate Solution for the Jews (his own, of course, being the final Final one) be allowed to spew his venom at Columbia U, in the same way that Bill O’Reilly gets to vent on Fox?

It’s all the same sort of free expression, isn’t it?

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

ABC News helps al Qaeda: From the New York Sun:

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system.

The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda's production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

While intranets are usually based on servers in a discrete physical location, Obelisk is a series of sites all over the Web, often with fake names, in some cases sites that are not even known by their proprietors to have been hacked by Al Qaeda.

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."

By Friday evening, one of the key sets of sites in the Obelisk network, the Ekhlaas forum, was back on line. The Ekhlaas forum is a password-protected message board used by Qaeda for recruitment, propaganda dissemination, and as one of the entrance ways into Obelisk for those operatives whose user names are granted permission. Many of the other Obelisk sites are now offline and presumably moved to new secret locations on the World Wide Web...

Isn’t assisting one’s enemies during wartime considered—what’s that old-fashioned WW2-era word again?—oh, yeah, treason?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:58 | link | comments

Dawkins’ Jewish problem: You can include uber-rationalist Richard Dawkins among those who believe that Jews are inordinately (dare one say demonically?) powerful. As reported in a “gothcha” moment in a Times Online blog, Dawkins was caught making the following Mearslimer/Cartesque observation:

When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.

Ah, yes. If only clear-thinking atheists like Dick Dawkins wielded as much power and influence as those Juden, the world would be an enlightened Utopia. And if you don’t believe me, take a gander at what those famous atheists Stalin, Hitler and Mao managed to accomplish.

Personally, I’m not at all surprised that Dawkins has been caught making such an outrageous statement. I have a vivid recollection of reading his take on “the Jews” before—in a review of his book The God Delusion. Written by Marilynne Robinson, author of the ravishing novel Gilead, the review appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 2006. Here’s the bit that caught my eye back then:

In a later chapter he condemns Jews for discouraging "marrying out" and complains that such "wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness" is "a significant force for evil." It is of course no criticism to say that he values the tradition of Judaism not at all, since this is only consistent with his view of religion in general. He seems unaware, however, that there was in fact significant intermarriage between Jews and gentiles in Europe as well as secularism and conversion among the Jews, and that this appears only to have fired the anti-Semitic imagination. While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in Europe, it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

Dawkins deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of. . . an insane and unscientific eugenics theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.

There is indeed historical precedent in the Spanish Inquisition for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science. To illustrate the point: Dawkins tells the story of Edgardo Mortara, the Italian Jewish child taken from his family by the police in 1858 and reared by priests because he had been secretly baptized by a maid in his parents' house. A terrible story indeed. And how might it have been worse? If the child had fallen, as in the next century so many would, into the hands of those who considered his Jewishness biological rather than religious and cultural. To Dawkins's objection that Nazi science was not authentic science I would reply, first, that neither Nazis nor Germans had any monopoly on these theories, which were influential throughout the Western world, and second, that the research on human subjects carried out by those holding such assumptions was good enough science to appear in medical texts for fully half a century. This is not to single out science as exceptionally inclined to do harm, though its capacity for doing harm is by now unequaled. It is only to note that science, too, is implicated in this bleak human proclivity, and is one major instrument of it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:39 | link | comments

Pathetic!: After one of the most catastrophic political blunders in Canadian history--a promise to extend public funding to religious schools--the John Tory Tories are pinning their hopes on people voting for him because he's "likeable."

If that's the case, why even bother going through the motion of casting ballots?  We may as well declare a McShifty majority right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:43 | link | comments

 Fars farce: Some “delightfully” unhinged Zionhass from Iran’s Fars News Agency:

Hands up all those who think this is Iran’s not-so-subtle way of saying the nukes are almost set to go. (Notice there’s no mention about how “the Palestinian nation” is set to become collateral damage. Guess that’s because they’ll get to die as shahids and be rewarded with all that posthumous nookie. The men, anyway; the women, apparently, are “rewarded” with an unspecified number of dwarfs—thus exemplifiying the expression “getting short-changed.”)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:24 | link | comments

By their deeds shall you know them: And Mahmoud Abbas’s deeds sure make him look like a terrorism-supporting Jew-hater and not someone willing or able to come to terms with the reality of Israel’s existence. From Israel Today:

A prominent Palestinian Authority figure on Friday publicly thanked Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for resuming official financial aid to Palestinian terrorists jailed or wounded by Israel, and to the families of those killed while attacking Israelis.

Intisar al-Wazir, a 66-year-old PLO member more popularly known as "Mother of the Jihad," issued her statement on behalf of a number Palestinian non-governmental organizations that also distribute financial aid to the terrorists and their families, reported Israel National News.

The Abbas regime stopped sending money to the terrorists and their families in July and August as it recovered from losing the Gaza Strip to a Hamas coup. But al-Wazir said the Palestinian Authority government had made everything right in September by resuming the transfer of funds most likely received from the US and Europe to the enemies of the Jewish state.

Al-Wazir's husband was one of the co-founders of the Fatah movement, along with Yasser Arafat and Abbas. He was eliminated by Israel at his home in Tunisia in 1988. Intisar al-Wazir was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1995 on the strength of her husband's terrorist past.

‘Nuff said, I’d say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:37 | link | comments

We have a winner: I’m having a hard time deciding which leader poses the gravest existential threat to the Jewish state—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Ehud Olmert.

Upon further reflection—and after reading this story in the Guardian—I think I’ll have to go with Ehud:

The current Palestinian leadership is committed to peace with Israel, the Israeli prime minister said today as senior figures discussed a possible division of Jerusalem.

 

Ehud Olmert said he planned to make every effort to pursue peace with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, as he laid out his agenda.

"The current Palestinian leadership is not a terrorist leadership," Mr Olmert said. "President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are committed to all the agreements signed with Israel, and I believe that they want to move ahead together with us on a route that will bring about a change in the reality of relations between us and them."

Mr Olmert's positive comments about the Fatah leadership came amid preparations for a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, on November 15.

As Mr Olmert praised Mr Abbas's commitment to a peace deal, senior Israeli officials discussed a possible division of Jerusalem in public, signalling an Israeli shift on one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East conflict..

In recent weeks, the Israeli deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, has floated the idea of Israel giving up outlying Arab districts of the city, much to the anger of Israeli hardliners.

Mr Ramon today raised the proposal in radio interviews, but was vague on the extent of Israeli control in the Old City, its holy sites and Arab neighbourhoods in the centre of Jerusalem.

A central Palestinian demand is that their future capital should be established in all of the Israeli-annexed area of the city. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are supposed to present a joint declaration of principles that would guide negotiators in future peace talks at next month's conference.

The fate of Jerusalem would be central to any peace deal. Israel has long maintained that it would never cede control over any areas of Jerusalem, including the Arab neighbourhoods captured in the 1967 war and annexed. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, including the walled Old City with key Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines, as a capital.

Mr Ramon said Israel would not hand over the Old City and neighbouring areas - known as the "holy basin" - yet also spoke of a special arrangement in the Old City. Previous negotiations have raised the idea of turning oversight to an international body.

"I agree that all the Palestinian neighbourhoods except the Arab neighbourhoods in the holy basin ... would be transferred," Mr Ramon told Army Radio.

The Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, refused to comment on Mr Ramon's proposal, but said there have been no agreements on Jerusalem in preliminary talks so far…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:36 | link | comments

Creepy Islamofascist-Lefty convergence: George Galloway, Il Duce of the U.K.'s Respect party, pens a piece for Lefty rag The Independent about Commie folk hero, Che Guevara, that has been respectfully posted on the Tehran Times website.

Update: More Islamofascist-Leftofascist convergence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:02 | link | comments

Peaceniks: The Ceeb reports that Bryan Adams, a pop singer who reached the height of his fame two decades ago (and whose first hit—“Summer of ’69”—remains his best song) will be headlining two “peace concerts,” one in Israel, one in the West Bank, on behalf of the OneVoice organization. OneVoice is a peace-minded outfit whose goal is to promote discussion between the fed-up “moderate majority” on both sides.

Sounds like a great idea—until you dig a little further, as this article that appeared in the Stanford Review a few months ago has done:

…OneVoice asserts that “There are a majority of moderates on both sides who want peace and are prepared to compromise for it and the real battle is whether they can make their views heard over an enemy of hardliners, spoilers and extremists on either side bent on derailing the process.” Although OneVoice is ostensibly committed to peaceful dialogue, the hyperbolic language found everywhere on their website serves to whip up moral outrage and hostility towards a poorly-defined “enemy” whose identity, we can only assume, will be specified at some later date.  Taking great pains to avoid a concrete discussion of Middle East politics or history, they focus their energies on denouncing a nebulous class of “spoilers and extremists” who must be “sidelined” in order to implement the will of a “silent majority.” That movements like OneVoice make liberal use of language like this speaks volumes about the underlying nastiness of their ideological bent. Rather than being willing to engage in the difficult task of articulating a moral position and defending it against criticism, OneVoice simply designates those who disagree with their agenda as "extremists" who seek to "obstruct the will of the people." This sort of rhetoric bears a striking resemblance to that of Leninists, Maoists, and other mass-murderers of the last century who claimed special knowledge of the will of the people and saw an enemy in anyone who argued against them. By locating the source of the Middle East's problems with an abstract, amoral category of people called "extremists," OneVoice grants itself permission to dismiss, or even attack, anyone who voices a viewpoint that the organization does not approve of. 

If one may infer anything from the composition of its Board of Directors, OneVoice is unlikely to find any extremist enemies among Palestinian Arab supporters of jihad. OneVoice Board member and PA Chief Islamic Justice Taysir al-Tamimi once opined that “the Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.”  When those who hold such viewpoints are enlisted in the cause of moderation, it is difficult to imagine what might constitute a pro-Arab viewpoint that is too extreme for OneVoice. Since, on the other hand, the unacceptably extreme Jewish positions are treated by the organization as being universally agreed upon, one begins to suspect that the sidelining that OneVoice plans to undertake will focus overwhelmingly on Jewish targets. This is even more likely to be the case since, historically, criticizing Arabs with Kalashnikovs has proven to be much more dangerous than denouncing Jews with orange ribbons.

Moreover, the choice to identify extremists as the enemy is ultimately misleading. The extreme or moderate nature of a given opinion says nothing about the morality of that opinion. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to be extremely opposed to Nazism. On the other hand, a member of the KKK might be extremely opposed to letting black people vote, and we would rightly condemn his position as despicable bigotry. In the case of Israel, we have on one side a group of people with a millennia old tradition of doing their best to behave justly and morally and trying to have just one small country of their own, and on the other side a group of people one and a half billion strong with dozens of countries already who have invented a national identity for a small, miserable sub-population in their ranks that is defined entirely in terms of its commitment to erasing the Jewish State, and often the Jewish people as well, from the face of the earth. A Jewish “extremist” wants to live in the land of Israel and raise her children.  An Arab “moderate” supports the extermination of only those of her children that can be found at a certain latitude and longitude.  Finding the middle ground between two causes should not be the goal when one is wholly moral, and the other wholly immoral. When we make "extremists" the enemy, we wind up attacking decent people (like Jews living in Gush Katif) for their unwillingness to compromise with an evil foe, and promoting the views of "moderates" (like Mahmoud Abbas, Mustafa Barghouti, or any of the Arab propagandists that OneVoice trots around) who hate Jews but are willing to wait a few decades before trying once again to throw them into the sea…

One man’s “secular moderate” is another man’s Holocaust-denying, Zionism-loathing, Israel-trashing Arab.

Funny how that works.

Update: You knew it was coming:

I got my first submachine gun

Shootin’ it was just like heaven.

Told me to kill lots of Jews.

It was the summer of ’67.

 

Me and some guys from school

Had a battalion and we tried real hard.

Ahmed fled, Youssef got captured.

I shoulda known that we’d never get far.

 

Oh, when I  look back now

That war seemed to last forever

(But in the end, we kinda won

‘Cause we could seethe about the “occupation.”)

Those were the worst days of my life.

 

And now we’re still complainin’

‘Bout how Jews have stolen our land.

And lots of folks in lots and lots of places

On our behalf have taken a stand.

 

Sittin’ on their high, high horse

They tell us that they’ll march forever.

Until we get our due

They won't ease up--no way, no never.

They'll be our useful idiots…

 

And now the times are changin’

Take a look at the West Bank and Gaza.

Religiosity has taken hold there

As we submit to the law that has no flaw.

 

Sittin’ on our high, high horse

Getting set for holy war.

Islam rules; the Jews get crushed forever.

Soon enough, we’ll even up the score.

Those’ll be the best days of our lives.

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

Hirsi Ali and the demise of the Dutch:  Ayaan Hirsi Ali refuses to shut up or soften her message—and the Dutch, who are far more afraid of their own restive, unassimilated Muslim poulace than they are of a mouthy Somali chick, have decided to cut her loose (again). As Anne Applebaum explains, they have thereby submitted  (I just love using that word) to fear and paralyzing, suicidal political correctness, and may as well kiss their cherished heritage of freedom buh-bye. From the Washington Post:

…Dutch society became, and remains, bitterly divided in the wake of the Van Gogh murder. Some of Hirsi Ali's compatriots decided it was time to address the issues of women, Islam and integration head on. The Dutch writer Leon de Winter, a defender of Hirsi Ali, talks openly about his country's failure to integrate Muslim immigrants, attributing the problem to the Dutch "guilt complex": "As soon as we let people from the Third World come here to work in our rich country, we . . . somehow saw them as sacred victims."

Others simply want Hirsi Ali and her ilk to go away forever, thereby keeping Holland out of the headlines and Amsterdam off terrorists' hit lists. Unlike the British, who have gotten used to the idea that faraway events can affect them, the Dutch, at least in this century, are more insular. That helps explain why, in 2006, the Dutch government tried to revoke Hirsi Ali's citizenship over an old immigration controversy, and why her neighbors went to court that year to have her evicted from her home (they claimed the security threat posed by her presence impinged upon their human rights). But although she did finally move to the United States, the argument continued in her absence. Last week, the Dutch government abruptly cut off her security funding, forcing her to return briefly to Holland.

 

The reasons given were financial, but there was clearly more to it. To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud, too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn't sound conciliatory, in the modern continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as "brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women" with the German judge who, citing the Koran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have "expected" her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she's "brought her problems on herself." Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

Fortunately, Hirsi Ali is already back in the United States, under professional, full-time, well-resourced and for the moment privately organized protection. But this week, the Dutch parliament is due to debate her status once again. And once again, the Dutch will be confronted with the facts that Hirsi Ali remains a Dutch citizen; that the threat to her life comes at least in part from groups based in Holland; that she lives abroad because the Dutch political situation forced her to; and that when she speaks out, she does so in defense of what she believes to be Dutch values.

Whether or not the Dutch like it -- and I'm sure most of them don't -- revoking her police protection will send a clear message to the world: that the Dutch are no longer willing to protect their own traditions of free speech. Resources will be found, and she will recover. But will Holland?

It’s going to be awfully hard to recover when your major cities have Muslim majorities—which, if current trends continue, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are fated to have within the next few decades.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:37 | link |