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

A crucial first step: One might have expected a Tory to introduce a bill to tame the Thought Cops. But nooo. As Ezra Levant reports, it took a Liberal to do the dirty work:

Keith Martin, a Liberal MP from Victoria, has introduced a private member's bill motion that is as groundbreaking as it is concise:

That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act.

This is important for several reasons:

1. It's evidence that the "undernews" of the abusive, unaccountable conduct of the human rights commissions has caught the attention of at least one MP (we can assume Sen. Anne Cools is watching things, too).

2. That MP is a socially progressive Liberal (formerly a red Reformer), whose human rights credentials with the Left are impeccable. Not only has he made international human rights one of his causes in Parliament, but he has personally walked the talk, serving on various Doctors Without Borders missions.

3. If a progressive, young, hip Liberal MP from an urban seat feels comfortable proposing this motion, it is a sign that reforming these commissions is politically safe, even for a Conservative government still worried about being tagged as "anti-human rights". Martin is a political entrepreneur who goes for winning opportunities. He once ran for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance; he crossed the floor to the Liberals and was rewarded by them; he has a very friendly relationship with the press. The man picks political winners. That alone is a signal to other MPs that it's safe to stand and be counted on this fight.

4. By taking the initiative -- and beating other MPs, especially Conseratives, to the punch -- Martin will get some well-deserved credit for leadership. But he'll also make it easy for Conservative MPs, even the Conservative government itself, to "follow" his example, rather than to lead. In a way, Martin takes the political risk; by supporting him, the Tories are merely sensible and bi-partisan followers. He's the point-man. 

5. The fact that Martin is a "visible minority" is irrelevant to most normal Canadians, but to the identity politics Left, it's a sign of his moral virtue, and thus makes him even more politically safe. 

Congratulations to Martin for doing the right thing. But more than that: he has given the government itself a political opening to amend this awful law. The Conservatives should ensure that Motion M-446 goes to a vote, and every one of them -- as well as other MPs of good faith from every party that cares about freedom -- should join with Martin to make his amendment law. 

When it comes to defanging the Thought Cops, I don’t care who gets the ball rolling, so long as someone—anyone—does. Kudos to Martin for having the, ahem, balls to be the one to do it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:26 | link | comments

War movies: The good, the bad, and the clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:04 | link | comments

Madness to their Methodism: One of those “progressive” churches renews its drive to divest from the “sinful” Jewish state. And, of course, it has nothing to do with an age-old animosity toward the original monotheists. From the Jewish Daily Forward:

Washington - Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in building the separation barrier and in demolishing Palestinian homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a church-sponsored report referring to the creation of the State of Israel as the “original sin.”

Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained, following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called on American Jews to “get a life” instead of focusing on defending Israeli policies.

“This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches,” said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “These developments are a result of work of several very wicked forces that play in the church.”

The divestment campaign, thought by many in the Jewish community to be dormant, is still active among mainline Protestant churches and is re-emerging as a main issue on the agenda of Jewish groups. Attempts to block the divestment drive, which began four years ago, have proved only partially successful. Interreligious dialogue efforts and public pressure managed to mute some churchwide calls for divestment, but other initiatives are still gaining support.

The Methodist meeting, held on January 25 in Fort Worth, Texas, was an initial orientation meeting for delegation heads who will lead their groups at the church’s quadrennial conference in April. Delegation leaders were presented with speakers both supportive and opposed to the draft divestment resolution, which calls for removing all Methodist pension fund holdings from Caterpillar.

“The United Methodist Church holds $141 million of pension funds in companies that sustain the occupation,” said Susan Hoder, a member of the church’s Interfaith Peace Initiative. “This has to stop. We have to cut our ties to the occupation.”

Hoder, who strongly favors passage of divestment measures, went on to claim that American taxpayer dollars are used to fund Israeli military. “A lot of this money goes into the pockets of Israeli military leaders and politicians who get rich while the population of Israel suffers,” she said.

With 11 million members, The United Methodist Church is the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. The upcoming April general conference, the church’s main forum for making policy decisions, will first discuss the divestment resolution in a subcommittee. Afterward, the panel’s recommendations will be put to a general vote to make them official policy.

A spokesman for the United Methodist Church did not return calls from the Forward seeking comments on the divestment drive.

Arrangers of the pre-conference meeting last Friday in Fort Worth allowed a representative of the organized Jewish community to speak on the issue. Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the American Jewish Committee’s director of interreligious affairs, told the Methodist delegates that the Jewish community was concerned about the resolution. “I told them that while they may think it is not anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish, for us it feels anti-Israel and feels anti-Jewish,” Greenebaum told the Forward after the meeting.

At the same time, Greenebaum warned the Jewish community against overreacting to anti-Israel sentiments in the church. Protestant churches, he said, “care very deeply about their relations with the Jewish community.”

What prompted Jewish activists to take action was not only the renewed divestment drive but also a report from the women’s division of the Methodist church, which addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 225-page report, compiled by the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, attempts to outline the historical and current contours of the conflict, but according to Felson, the report amounts to “the most egregious thing that has crossed my desk that was not put out by an overt hate group.”

Among the statements in the report that irked Jewish community activists are a reference to the founding of the State of Israel as “the original sin,” a passage calling Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion an “extremist” and a passage defining Israeli actions as acts of “terror.” Discussing the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society, the Methodist report claims it has been the cause for “hysteria” and “paranoiac sense” among Israelis.

“Are we not called to testify when oppressors use their identity as the oppressed with stories of sixty years ago but through some failure of perception cannot see what transpires now in the shadow of the Holocaust?” the report goes on to ask...

The Longest Hatred continues, in a “new and improved” progressive/Islamist guise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:52 | link | comments

Bad moon rising: David Warren sees it. From the Ottawa Citizen (hat tip WriterMom):

Years have passed since there was genuine excitement at a State of the Union speech by President Bush, and Monday night's effusion was a long yawn. His focus has changed, by the eddying of events, from the grand foreign policy issues forced upon him at the beginning of his first term, to the desperate business of resisting an economic downturn towards the end of his second. That, he proposes to do by throwing $150 billion of tax money at the problem. There are very few politicians who will not act in this Pavlovian way, even among those with no elections left to lose.

American domestic policy is none of my business: I am interested in the survival of the free world. Yet I cannot ignore U.S. domestic politics, which have the power to enfeeble any policy initiative on the world stage. Mr. Bush's achievements on both fronts, home and abroad, are mostly invisible: the tax cut, the success in preventing any major terror attack on U.S. soil after 9/11, progress in co-ordinating the response of western governments to domestic Islamist threats, and what currently looks like victory in Iraq. Over against this: profligate and essentially "liberal" domestic policies that have disheartened the Republican base, and squandered the remaining "conservative" momentum from the Reagan revolution. And now, backsliding and retreat in foreign policy.

We (the U.S. and allies) are winning in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and losing everywhere else. The Syrians are now murdering independent Lebanese politicians with impunity. The pressure on Iran has been relieved. Pakistan is teetering towards a civil and military collapse from which only the Islamists can gain. Islamist demands for the imposition of Shariah, and for the legal persecution of religious minorities, have entered the mainstream of political life in countries that were once free of religious zealotry -- Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia. Islamist terrorists are winning effective control over the remoter Muslim-settled regions in many countries of Asia and Africa, creating streams of Christian refugees from the southern Philippines, of Buddhist refugees from southern Thailand, of Christians and Animists fleeing south across the breadth of Africa.

Saudi-sponsored Wahabi Islam is consolidating its hold over the mosques of the West, and radicalizing the huge Muslim immigrant communities that have congregated in almost every major European city. Across Europe, and increasingly in North America (and as we've seen in Canada in the obscene "human rights" trials of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant), the most radical Muslims exploit state multiculturalism to score victories over free speech and win pathetic apologies from anyone accused of the thought crime of "Islamophobia."…

As “radicalism” (a.k.a. jihadism) rises, so, too, does the Judenhass which—vicious circle—both fuels the “radicalism” and is its result.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:02 | link | comments

"How I Hoped to Turn My Body into Slivers to Tear the Sons of Zion to Pieces, and to Knock with Their Skulls on the Gates of Paradise":  Islamist “Feminism”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:35 | link | comments

Yabba DaBadu: On a visit to Israel, hip hop artiste Erykah Badu—who used to wear her hair covered in a capacious turban but who now seems to favour the Sideshow Bob look—said she approves of those those two “lovable” Jew-haters, Louis and Yasser. From the Jerusalem Post:

Sporting a huge, billowing afro and a T-shirt with an anti-Iraq war slogan, Erykah Badu expressed her support of black leader Louis Farrakhan and the Palestinian cause Thursday before a crowd of Israeli fans and journalists in Tel Aviv.

The Grammy-award winning neo-soul vocalist, 36, is in Tel Aviv to perform on Saturday night. She has also won acclaim for her acting roles in "Cider House Rules" and "House of D."

"I come from across the water bringing light and hope," said Badu in her deep, languid voice. She commissioned a poster design especially for her visit to Israel, featuring a large hamsa - a traditional Middle Eastern good luck charm _ that appears to be growing out of her hair. At the bottom, the words for peace in Hebrew and Arabic appear side by side.

However, Badu could not name any Israeli hip hop artists. She explained that she identified best with the Palestinians and their hip hop scene, saying that they are a part of her "tribe" of hip hop.

"They use (hip hop) as a form of liberation, as a form of pre-resistance, as a form of therapy," Badu said.

Badu defended Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, who has drawn fire over the years with pronouncements including praise for Hitler in a 1984 speech, for which he was censured by the US Senate, repeatedly denouncing Israel and the Jewish people and calling the pretense for the war in Iraq a "Zionist conspiracy."

The Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish group, has labeled Farrakhan's statements "bigoted and anti-Semitic." On its Web site, the ADL lists dozens of Farrakhan statements it considers anti-Semitic.

"(Farrakhan is) not an anti-Semite. He loves all people," insisted Badu. Her next album, "Nu AmErykah" will be released February 26, the date of Savior's Day, a main Nation of Islam holiday.

Israeli reggae-soul group Karolina and Funset, who will be opening for Badu's concert, posed for pictures with Badu after she spoke, then joined her in raising the "Black Power" raised-fist salute.

Charming. Just charming.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:16 | link | comments

“I can most highly recommend the Wahhabis to everyone”: A target of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia springs to her misogynistic nation’s defence after reading something she didn’t like in—of all places—the Jerusalem Post:

Hello Caroline Glick, I am a 20 year old female living in Saudi Arabia. My family and I used to live the United States for 13 years, until we decided to move back to be closer to our relatives. The other day, I was searching for articles on Google and I came across your op-ed on Laura Bush's recent visit to Saudi Arabia.

I am sorry to say but I was very disappointed with your article. You said things that are not true about my country. For instance, you mentioned that women in Saudi have no choice on who they marry, and that men can marry up to four women and divorce them just in a matter of words.

We do have a choice on who to marry. You do realize we live in the 21st century?! Both my sisters and brother knew their spouses before they were married, and I come from a relatively religiously committed family. My mother and father met through family outings in Saudi Arabia in the 50's. While it is true that men can marry up to four women, there are still consequences that comes with it.

First, this is a part of our religion which gives no one the right to mock us about it. Second, no sheikh (the equivalent to a priest) will allow a man to marry a second or third wife without conducting an interview with him to see what his reasons are. For instance, my uncle recently married a second wife. This second wife was a woman who's husband died and was in financial debt. My uncle did what he thought was right, after asking for his wife's blessing. If he had not received this blessing he would not have done it. Nor would he have done it if he had not realized how bad the situation this woman was in.

You also mention how no other religions can be practiced in Saudi Arabia. I want to point out this is the land that Islam was introduced in; the land the prophet was born in, the same land that contains Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest sites in Islam.

It makes sense not to allow another religion to be practiced in such a sacred place. As far as I know there is no mosque in Vatican City. I respect the fact that it is a sacred place for a religion, and I would expect to receive the same respect from others about my country.

AS FOR OUR education, it is well on its way to becoming one of the best in the world. We have a wide range of opportunities. The college I attend has marketing, accounting, media, nursing, special education, electrical engineering, architecture, management, finance, and psychology. Another college here offers law, graphic design, interior design, banking, Management information system and fashion design. Our public universities offer all departments of medicine, physical therapy, economics, media, sociology, religion, literature, translation and so on.

As far as I can see we are well-off, it is just a matter of what interests people. And no, contrary to what people assume, we are allowed to leave the house. Even without our brothers or fathers. It is a cultural choice whether a mother of father permit their daughters out without male supervision. Perhaps one in 15 families take a stringent position. I go to the beach, restaurants, parks, cafes, bowling...with my friends - males and females. Yes I do wear an abaya, but we do not necessarily have to cover our hair or faces; again this is a personal and cultural choice.

To be frank, abayas are not a big deal to us, we actually embrace it and design lovely abayas that portray our personalities. And yes, it was ridiculous for the French government to try and ban women from wearing scarves. Where is the freedom of choice there? Was this to protect the country from terrorists? Anyway, how did it transpire that head coverings came to be seen as symbols of oppression? I wish the world would stop judging us.

America is not perfect, Europe is not perfect, Israel is not perfect and yes even I admit the Arab Middle East is not perfect. We all have our flaws! What is the use of learning about the world if we all had the same way of living.

Our way is our choice. Nothing is forced upon us.

My advice to you, Caroline, is to befriend a Saudi. This is the best way to get to understand our culture. Or better yet, visit Saudi Arabia.

I did not write this to offend you or the Jerusalem Post, but to set the record straight. I live in Saudi Arabia. I laugh in Saudi. I am happy in Saudi. My life is not any different that it was in the United States.

One day my country will rise and shine above all, and I am sure when that happens the world will suddenly want to befriend us. Until then, I will do my part to correct misperceptions about our image. Thank you.

Editors note: The writer asked that her full name be kept in confidence.

Gee, I wonder why?

I like her advice about befriending a Saudi, though. Much nicer than the jihadis' advice about beheading a kafir.

As for one day her country rising and shining above all--sounds to me like a bit of unfriendly triumphalism is intruding on the procedings. Here's praying that the day when we're no longer dependent on Wahhabi crude comes long before the day we're forced to "befriend" (i.e. submit to) the risen, shiny Saudis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:54 | link | comments

A brilliant comparison: Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick.

You remember Tracy, don't you? She was the scheming, hyper-ambitious brown-noser played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:14 | link | comments

Banking on terrorism: Rogue French trader Jerome Kerviel says the 2005 London bombings kickstarted his life of crime.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:03 | link | comments

Cuteness alert: Baby giraffe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:14 | link | comments

Germany, 1938; Toronto, 2008: Yesterday at a local overpriced java emporium, I happened to overhear a student talking about the anti-racism rally she had taken part in at York University. She was going on and on about how “empowered” it made her feel.  Every so often I caught a reference to “the Jews,” but I wasn’t sitting close enough to hear what they had to do with anything. An article in the Jewish Tribune fills me in:

TORONTO – A heated rally organized by York University’s Black Students’ Alliance (YUBSA), prompted by the discovery of vulgar anti-Black graffiti scrawled on its offices and adjacent spaces, became yet another podium from which to attack the Jewish state.

Racist graffiti on the doors of the YUBSA such as “all niggers must die,” coincided with the celebration of the birthday of the late Martin Luther King.

According to the organizers, the rally’s purpose was to reclaim spaces that had been violated and to challenge York’s administration, including president Mamdouh Shoukri, to work more vigourously to clamp down on violence on campus. However, its speakers began attacking Israel as an “apartheid state,” as well as Premier Dalton McGuinty – who they condemned because American New Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz was denied entry to Canada last spring – and Shoukri.

The Rev. Don Meredith, chair of the GTA Faith Alliance, told the Jewish Tribune: “Clearly what has taken place is absolutely disgusting. This deplorable act of racism against Black students has nothing to do with the state of Israel or with the university allegedly being racist. It’s clearly unacceptable to turn this into an attack against the premier. To turn what should have been a united call for action against racism into a global attack on the state of Israel is totally disgusting.

“I’m asking that the York administration lodge a full investigation into this, so that York students will feel secure in an institution of learning known all over the world. I understand some progress has been made in investigating the situation and finding the perpetrators [of the anti-Black graffiti], and I applaud that. We cannot condone anything like this, whether it’s an act of antisemitism or of racism.”

Meredith said he hopes to make contact with the university president…

Yeah, that’ll counteract the Wahhabi-funded poison that’s infested our campuses and is polluting young minds.

Memo to Black students: Despite what you’ve been told, you’re being the targets of racism does not preclude your ability to be racist. Your vile, fatuous and bigoted assertions about the world’s only Jewish state are clear evidence of that distressing fact.

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

Die hard Wahhabi habits: There is a racist apartheid state in the Middle East. It’s called Saudi Arabia. In that holy shmoly kingdom, they’re very particular as to who can—and cannot—enter. For example, no ape ‘n’ piggish Judeo-Zionist is allowed in, and no kaffir can visit the two holy shmoley cities of Medina and Mecca, lest their infidel cooties fly off their bodies and defile the holy shmoly surroundings.  (And don’t get me started on the gender apartheid, a function of the Wahhabi’s Medieval, misogynistic world view.)

Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball doesn’t really want to visit those two burgs. He just wants us to notice that, us being kafirs and all, we couldn’t visit even if we wanted to.

High time to start to start a Coaltion Against Saudi Apartheid, I say. (Mi CASA es su CASA?)Too bad, unlike those anti-Zionist efforts, we don’t have that Wahhabi moolah to get it going.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments (1)

Louise retreats: It seems the UN High Commish for human rights hadn’t read and understood the entire Arab charter when she gave it her thumbs up the other day. She now concedes that the part calling for the eradication of “racist” Zionism could be somewhat, er, problematic. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, backed away yesterday from what appeared to be unqualified support for a new pan-Arab human rights charter that includes a commitment to eliminate Zionism.

The former Canadian Supreme Court justice had said in a statement that she welcomed the Arab Charter on Human Rights, a document critics say equates Zionism with racism, and some believe seeks the destruction of Israel.

In a new statement, Ms. Arbour said her Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has long been troubled by several of the "rights" enshrined in the charter, which goes into force in mid-March.

"Throughout the development of the Arab charter, my office shared concerns with the drafters about the incompatibility of some of its provisions with international norms and standards," the new statement said. "These concerns included the approach to the death penalty for children and the rights of women and non-citizens."

In addressing the Zionism references, Ms. Arbour touches on the UN General Assembly's repeal of its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. "To the extent that [the charter] equates Zionism with racism, we reiterated that [it] is not in conformity with [the 1991] General Assembly resolution, which rejects that Zion-ism is a form of racism and racial discrimination," she said.

"OHCHR does not endorse these inconsistencies. We continue to work with all stakeholders in the region to ensure the implementation of universal human rights norms."…

The only “universal human rights norms” the non-Zionist entities in that region are interested in implementing are sharia ones. Hence the reason for the conflict there and elsewhere in the world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments (2)

All the rage in the EU: Bruce Bawer, author of that superb examination of Europe’s Islamization, While Europe Slept, reports that gay-bashing has become a popular activity among certain, ahem, elements of the EU community. (Chick-bashing and Jew-bashing being quite popular, too.) What’s spurred the dramatic rise in the number and of virulence of such incidents? In a word: multiculturalism:

One day last month, I gave a talk in Rome about how the supposedly liberal ideology of multiculturalism has made possible the spread in Europe of the highly illiberal ideology of fundamentalist Islam, with allto  its brutality and – among other things – violent homophobia. When I returned to my hotel, I phoned my partner back home in Oslo only to learn that moments earlier he had been confronted at a bus stop by two Muslim youths, one of whom had asked if he was gay, started to pull out a knife, then kicked him as he got on the bus, which had pulled up at just the right moment. If the bus hadn’t come when it did, the encounter could have been much worse.

 

Not very long ago, Oslo was an icy Shangri-la of Scandinavian self-discipline, governability, and respect for the law. But in recent years, there have been grim changes, including a rise in gay-bashings. The summer of 2006 saw an unprecedented wave of them. The culprits, very disproportionately, are young Muslim men.

 

It’s not just Oslo, of course. The problem afflicts most of Western Europe. And anecdotal evidence suggests that such crimes are dramatically underreported. My own partner chose not to report his assault. I urged him to, but he protested that it wouldn’t make any difference. He was probably right.

 

The reason for the rise in gay bashings in Europe is clear – and it’s the same reason for the rise in rape. As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished. Such men need not be actively religious in order to feel that they have carte blanche to assault openly gay men and non-submissive women, whose freedom to live their lives as they wish is among the most conspicuous symbols of the West’s defiance of holy law.

 

Multiculturalists can’t face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims; and those who do mention it take the line that these perpetrators are lashing out in desperate response to their own oppression…

 

Memo to Maclean’s magazine: Best not invite Bawer to write a cover story along these lines lest some sensitive “multiculturalists” take offence and complain to one or more of Canada’s bodies of Thought Cops.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:00 | link | comments

Bloviations: Another day, another utterance about Israel’s impending demise from Iran’s tiny, hairy mullah-thingy. Today’s rant—Ahamdinejad tells West: Accept Israel’s ‘imminent collapse’—is in the grandiose tradition of this one—Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'—and this one—Ahmadinejad: Annapolis failed, Israel doomed to collapse.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to sense a pattern emerging.

I liked this comment from someone named 'The Judge':

"`imminent collapse of the Zionists...` blah blah blah.... How very paranoid that the leader of one of the World`s most oil rich nations should single out a little country the size of Wales! Funny how the civilized World is calling for sanctions, & this little squirt of a man is ranting on & on & on... I wager the Iranian mad mullah regime will fall within the next decade & that Israel, sorry, the Zionist entity, will prevail. What a pathetic speech."

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:21 | link | comments (2)

Louise’s “Final Solution” for the Jewish state: Go figure—it’s the same as the Arabs’. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has thrown her support behind a major pan-Arab human rights charter that commits to eradicating Zionism.

Some critics say this is code for the destruction of Israel, but in a statement from her Geneva headquarters, the former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada welcomed the coming into force in mid-March of the Arab Charter on Human Rights.

"Regional systems of promotion and protection can further help strengthen the enjoyment of human rights, and the … charter is an important step forward in this direction," she said.

While the document demands respect for a host of internationally recognized human rights, its references to Zionism trouble leading human rights activist groups, including Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists (IJC) and UN Watch.

Its preamble speaks of "rejecting all forms of racism and Zionism," alleging they violate human rights and threaten international peace and security.

Article 2 of the 53-article charter says, "all forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination [should be] condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination."

"These provisions cannot be dismissed as harmless rhetoric," UN Watch said in a letter sent on Monday to Ms. Arbour asking her for "clarification" of her support for the charter…

I’d say Arbour’s intentions are pretty clear. Like her Arab overlords, she wants the Jews of Israel to submit—and cease to be.

Just call her Loulou, She-Wolf of the Arab League.

Update: I just sent the following e-mail to Sandy Martin, President of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO:

Dear Ms. Martin,

 

In 2000, Hadassah-WIZO Canada honoured Louise Arbour, then a justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, with its Woman of Distinction Award. In January, 2008, Ms. Arbour, now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, sided with the bullies of the Arab League who hold her Human Rights Council in its iron grip, and, according to a report in the National Post, is backing “a major pan-Arab human rights charter that commits to eradicating Zionism.”

 

In other words, the woman whom Canada’s pre-eminent Zionist women’s organization once held in its highest esteem has joined with Israel’s enemies, and has committed to its destruction.

 

Ms. Martin, I urge CHW to take a stand against this despicable statement, one which poses such a grave threat to Israel’s continued existence. Tell Ms. Arbour—who proudly lists her 2000 award on her C.V.—that CHW no longer considers her to be a “woman of distinction”; that, in fact, she is a woman whose actions and statements regarding Israel must be condemned in the strongest terms possible by all those who deplore the Arabs’ strong-arm tactics, and who support the right of the Jewish people to continue living in freedom and sovereignty in their ancient, ancestral homeland.

 

Yours very truly,

 

My Name (A third-generation member of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments (2)

Read all about it: Mo Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress and the four budding lawyers who complained to several human rights commissions have accused Maclean's magazine of--wait for it--"Islamophobia." But after reading their complaint, posted on the CIC website, it seems obvious that the complainants are suffering from a clear-cut case of Maclean'sophobia (a.k.a. freespeechophobia).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:08 | link | comments (2)

Dear Ayman—what’s up with that fugly forehead icky?: Al Qaeda’s number two invites questions from the world wide ether. From the Ceeb:

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, who co-founded the terrorist group with Osama bin Laden and has a $25 million US bounty on his head, wants to talk to his fans on the web.

Intelligence experts said Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian medical doctor believed to be hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, instructed three al-Qaeda websites to invite jihad (holy war) sympathizers to ask him questions. More than 2,500 questions were submitted. 

The questions range from "Why hasn't there been another attack on America?"  to "How do I join al-Qaeda?" A would-be volunteer from Britain asks al-Zawahiri whether he should go to Iraq or Afghanistan to fight or to wage jihad at home.

Ned Moran, who monitors the internet for the Terrorism Research Center in Washington, said al-Zawahiri's initiative is a thinly disguised recruiting campaign.

"It would be analogous to a teenager in Canada receiving fan mail from their favourite rock star, engendering a connection that would make them a more devoted follower," he said.

Most of the questions have been from men, but there were a few from women. The theme of their questions was that while they were proud of their husbands who had gone off to fight and die, they'd been left at home with kids feeling useless.

One woman asked al-Zawahiri what he thought of creating an all-female brigade.

The websites are no longer accepting submissions, and said the questions are being forwarded to al-Zawahiri, whose responses will be posted on the internet soon.

You mean I’m too late with my query? Rats!

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:56 | link | comments

Say “cheesy”: I have absolutely no interest in watching the sorry spectacle of pop tartlet Britney Spears losing her looks and her marbles—with one exception. I was fascinated to learn,  courtesy the Gawker blog, that Brit’s latest slimy squeeze—a paparazzo named Adnan—has dabbled in trick fauxtography for the Palestinian propaganda machine:

…Back in 2006, a Reuters freelancer named Adnan Hajj got the agency into a bit of trouble by crappily photoshopping some extra smoke into a photo of the Israeli Defense Force attacking Beirut. Another manipulated Hajj photo was found, Reuters dropped him, and eventually fired a responsible photo editor.

Critics (and there are plenty!) charge that the 2006 controversy and this more recent example of, at the least, complicity in photo-staging, is proof of Big Media anti-Israel bias. We think it's more like a bias towards more dramatic photos. But it's also Reuters' unfortunate bind in covering overseas crises: they have to rely on folks who have to live there.

Mohammed Salem needs access from Hamas to continue doing his job. Hamas needs attention from western media like Reuters to drum up sympathy and stay in power. Reuters needs dramatic content. Basically, the entire situation is more or less exactly like Britney Spears, her pet paparazzi exploiters, and the media-celebrity complex. The poor Palestinian people are Britney, and Hamas is creepy Svengali lover/manager Sam Lufti.

We are all TMZ now.

I have to disagree with that assessment. Some of us are TMZ. But others of us are much more LGF.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:27 | link | comments (1)

 How low can the UN go?: David Frum writes that the impending Durban II conference on racism may well represent the international body's nadir. From FrontPage Magazine:

To call anything the United Nations does a "new low" does an injustice to all the previous "old lows."

How do you do worse than pass a resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism on the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht, as the UN did in 1974?

We have already witnessed attempts to put the UN bureaucracy to work as an international enforcer of Islamic definitions of blasphemy.

Still, even by the sordid standards of the UN, the 2001 Durban "antiracism" conference was a record-breaker. Denouncing racism while conference attendees sold copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--breathtaking.

Now, however, the UN faces a new challenge. Was the 2001 anti-racism conference truly the very worst it could do? Or could it push the boundaries even further, explore new depths? At Durban, the UN had allowed an antiracism conference to be hijacked by anti-Semites. But what if it allowed anti-Semites to organize a conference from the very start? What if it made hatred of Jews and the annihilation of the Jewish state the very organizing principle of the conference? Now that truly would be a record low.

And so it happened. The UN has been at work organizing a "Durban II" to be held sometime in 2009. The organizing committee for the conference is chaired by Libya--with seats offered to Iran and Cuba. Preparatory meetings have been scheduled for Jewish holidays, in an effort to prevent pro-Israel groups from participating.

In December, 41 Western countries voted to shut off funding for Durban II. These countries pay the UN's bills--but the non-paying majority has the votes. This week, Canada gallantly announced it will not attend the Durban II "circus of intolerance," in the scornful words of Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism.

Let's hope that Canada's example inspires other democracies to follow.

But let's also understand more clearly what is at stake at Durban II.

In the first planning session for Durban II back in August, Pakistan's representative declared: "The defamation of Islam and discrimination against Muslims represent the most conspicuous demonstration of contemporary racism and intolerance ? It is regrettable that the world media has allowed defamation and blasphemy in this form?"

These are more than mere words. We have already witnessed attempts to put the UN bureaucracy to work as an international enforcer of Islamic definitions of blasphemy.

Not “attempts.” Successful endeavours, now firmly entrenched and rolling along.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:07 | link | comments

Palestinian workopolis:  In the bizarro world of Reuters, one is apparently supposed to feel sorry for Gaza “smugglers” who suffered a reversal of fortune when that wall was breached:

This was a bad week to be a Gaza smuggler.

When militants smashed open Gaza's border wall last week, many people in the Hamas-run enclave went on a shopping spree in Egypt -- bad news for the men who make fat profits smuggling goods made scarce by an Israeli-led blockade.

Dozens of underground tunnels crisscross the frontier between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and tunnel operators make thousands of dollars per night by smuggling in everything from medicine to weapons, and even people.

Tunnel owner Abu Yassin said a customer cancelled a $150,000 job to smuggle 15 tonnes of medicine into the Gaza Strip on the night Hamas gunmen blasted open the border fence and shoppers streamed into Egypt. Since then, business has been dead.

"People bought all they needed by crossing the border in daylight and for free. We have had no business for a week," Abu Yassin told Reuters in the border town of Rafah, declining to give his full name.

Israel and the United States have been pressing Egypt to seal the tunnels to prevent militants, especially Hamas Islamists, from stockpiling weapons and longer range rockets to fire into Israel.

Despite the pressure, Abu Yassin said smugglers had dug out more tunnels since June, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip and Israel tightened sanctions on the territory.

Some 1,000 Palestinians work in the smuggling industry and have dug around 200 tunnels along the border, Abu Yassin said.

"You need at least 30 or 40 people to work with you. It is a very risky job and a very profitable one, too," the 46-year-old said. "Weapons are as cheap and as easy to find as tomatoes in Gaza these days."

Tunnel cave-ins and accidents are commonplace.

Tunnellers said Hamas warned them to stop any work in the tunnels before militants blew up the fence last week.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants to take control of Gaza's breached border with Egypt as part of a deal to sideline its Hamas rulers.

"If Rafah crossing would open properly for trade, I may quit tunnelling," Abu Yassin said…

What, and miss out on such meaningful and lucrative employment?

First Carolynne Wheeler’s little old keffiyah maker in Hebron is being put out of business because of cheaper Chinese textiles, and now this--a sidelined "smuggling industry." Oh, well. If times get really tough, here's always film piracy, making cheap knock-offs of designer bags, and selling penis enlargers over the internet.

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

Obama’s mixed (and amorphous) messages: Barack Obama’s stance re Israel is a bit of a muddle, to say the least. On the one hand, there’s this, his recent letter to the U.S.’s UN ambassador:  

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condenm the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel...

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this... Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks... If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

On the other hand, Obama has opined that Israel should be cleft in two to accommodate a “contiguous” Palestinian state. From israelinsider:

Palestinian refugees do not have a "literal" right of return to Israel, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Monday. He did not clarify whethered that implied they had a moral, metaphorical, legal or other non-literal right to return to Israel.

More controversially, Obama said he supported the division of Israel into at least two parts by a Palestinian state.

The stunning comment came as Obama struggled to articulate his stance on key Mideast issues in dispute. "The right of return [to Israel] is something that is not an option in a literal sense," Obama said, but then went on to say that "The Palestinians have a legitimate concern that a state have a contiguous coherent mass that would allow the state to function effectively."

A land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank would effectively cut Israel in half, making it incoherent and non-contiguous, divided into northern and southern portions by the Palestinian land-mass Obama supports. The Democratic candidate didn't explain why it was legitimate for the Palestinians to have a coherent and contiguous territory at Israel's expense.

"The outlines of any agreement would involve ensuring that Israel remains a Jewish state," Obama said, but provided no details about how that would be achieved. He reiterated his support for a two-state solution, but said, "We cannot move forward until there is some confidence that the Palestinians are able to provide the security apparatus that would prevent constant attacks against Israel from taking place." He provided no details on how that would be achieved.

Probably because he doesn’t have any details.  Probably because no one has those details.

For the most part, however, the clean favoured, imperially slim JFK-for-today sticks to the amorphous and the squishy, as quoted in the Telegraph:

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense, and innovation – a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes.

But here’s what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day – an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.

Ah, yes. We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start living…

Hard to get in trouble with that kind of mush.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:17 | link | comments

Jihadis empowered: One unfortunate consequence of Hamas’s wall-toppling scheme is that, along with bolstering its own fortunes, it seems to have given its like-minded Egyptian brothers a big boost. From the L.A. Times:

CAIRO -- Egypt's main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak's 26-year-old government.

Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups ostensibly have been staged to declare Egyptian solidarity with the residents of Gaza. But they are also aimed at weakening Mubarak, whom the groups accuse of oppression and criticize for economic shortcomings and close ties to Washington.

It is political theater punctuated with dangerous rhetoric. Mubarak's vast intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for "Enough," an umbrella opposition group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached border wall.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which favors a government guided by Islamic law, known as Sharia, has a platform of nonviolence but has been accused over the years of bombings and other militant acts.. Despite the arrests of hundreds of its members, the group enjoys extensive support among the poor and middle class and poses the nation's most significant political threat to Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.

The Palestinian cause is the crystallizing passion in the Arab world, but the Gaza border crisis has brought new urgency to a public relations battle between Islamists and secular governments, especially in Egypt. It has also demonstrated that Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls Gaza and is ideologically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, remains a major factor in the future Palestinian equation, contrary to the wishes of the U.S., Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority…

“A public relations battle”? Is that what they’re calling the holy war these days?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments (1)

4,200: The number of red balloons Israel has placed in front of UN headquarters in New York; each balloon represents a Qassam rocket launched into Israel by Hamas:

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:54 | link | comments

Hear, hear: The London (Ontario) Free Press calls for an end to the HRC madness (link via SteynOnline):

It's time governments across Canada reined in the power of human rights commissions.

As Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote recently, "during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."

Censorship, he said, "was hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions."

Sadly, censorship is increasingly the role they envision for themselves.

The Canadian and B.C. human rights commissions are investigating complaints from some Muslims about the 2006 decision by Maclean's to publish excerpts from Mark Steyn's book America Alone. And the Alberta commission is investigating Ezra Levant's decision two years ago to publish the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in his now-defunct Western Standard magazine.

That these probes are even taking place is dangerous to a free society.

Better for both men had they been charged criminally for spreading hatred or inciting violence -- which didn't happen because they didn't do that -- than to have fallen into the human rights bureaucracy.

In criminal trials there are prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges and juries of one's peers, clarity about the wrongdoing alleged. Human rights commissions often appear to act as complainant, prosecutor, judge and jury rolled into one. Their findings tend to be subjective, illogical -- relying more on perception than evidence.

Ironically, these commissions fit perfectly into the nightmarish world of Franz Kafka, whose novels depict citizens overpowered by government bureaucracies running amok.

This is not what Canadians were told these commissions were for when politicians created them, ostensibly to provide redress for people unfairly denied such things as employment and housing due to colour or gender. Back then, nobody said anything about prosecuting "thought crime."

Our politicians, who work for us, must stop this nonsense. Now.

Before we reach the point where no one can say nuthin’ about the threat of political Islam.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:47 | link | comments

Dedication to the cause: Even though he about to croak and shortly thereafter reconnoiter in Hades with the late Yasser Arafat, despicable terrorist thug (and founder of the PLFP) George Habash’s primary concern on his death bed (at least according to Arab News) was the feud between Fatah and Hamas:

AMMAN, 28 January 2008 — Hours before he died at an Amman hospital, the founding father of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), George Habash, expressed concerns over Palestinian disunity and Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, his aides and friends said yesterday.

“His main obsession even at hospital was how to restore Palestinian unity and establish dialogue between the Hamas and Fatah groups,” member of PFLP’s political bureau and representative in Jordan, Suhail Khouri, told Arab News.

Khouri referred to the disruption of Palestinian ranks as a result of the takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 by the radical Hamas faction after overpowering the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement in the territory.

Khouri said that Habash stood at equal distances from the two feuding factions, but was an ardent supporter of dialogue between them out of his belief that the Palestinian people “will be the sole loser” of this dispute.

Habash was “extremely angered” by US President George W. Bush’s remarks during his recent Middle East trip which implicitly excluded the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in compliance with the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948, said Saeed Diab, a close friend of Habash. “Habash was against the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel,” he said.

True green to the bitter end, the brute.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:35 | link | comments (1)

Recurrent top of mind issue: Here’s what’s numero uno on the agenda of the UN’s most ridiculous agency (indeed a crowded field):

Special session of the Human Rights Council on human rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the recent ones in occupied Gaza and West Bank town of Nablus, Geneva, 23-24 January 2008

Do these folks have nothing better to do? (No need to answer that rhetorical query since the answer, quite obviously, is “nyet”.)

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

Shed a tear for Y. Hirbawi/ Made keffiyehs, not a hobby/Caro Wheeler gets all sobby: Globe and Mail sob sister Carolynne Wheeler tells the sad, sad, tale of Yasser Hirbawi, “the last Palestinian manufacturer of the keffiyah.” Poor Yasser—whose product became famous when another, more famous Palestinian Yasser made it his “revolutionary” head gear of choice—is being put out of business by cheaper manufacturing in China and other parts of the world:

HEBRON, WEST BANK — All of Yasser Hirbawi's 76 years show on his grizzled face as he surveys the four creaking looms still churning out the black-and-white head scarves that are synonymous with his people.

 

Nearly 50 years ago, as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat emerged from obscurity and adopted his trademark headgear, Mr. Hirbawi was an ambitious young textile merchant, who saw in burgeoning Palestinian pride a business opportunity.

 

But after years of booming sales, the failing Palestinian economy and tough competition from abroad have exacted a heavy toll. And now, the only Palestinian manufacturer of the kaffiyeh, the scarf that has evolved from a symbol of Palestinian solidarity to a fashionable accessory from New York to Tokyo, has cut production to a fraction of its capacity and is in danger of closing.

 

"It's the national symbol. It must keep going and it must be produced locally. It must be protected," said Mr. Hirbawi, a dignified man with a cane in one hand and prayer beads in the other, a heavy overcoat over his traditional jalabiyah robe to ward off the Middle Eastern winter chill.

 

The kaffiyeh is a traditional desert scarf that protected wearers from hot sun and dust in summer and cold in winter. Its designs, once associated with different tribes, today carry political connotations - black-and-white is associated with Mr. Arafat's Fatah, while a red-and-white version is linked to leftist movements and, more recently, the Islamist organization Hamas.

 

Though still associated in Israel with the suicide bombings of the last Palestinian intifada, or uprising, the kaffiyeh is more popular in the West than ever, emerging in mass-market stores including Urban Outfitters and French Connection. Celebrities like Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, David Beckham and U.S. President George W. Bush's niece Lauren have been spotted wearing versions of the scarf; the Spanish fashion house Balenciaga has created a catwalk version costing nearly $6,000.

 

Since Mr. Hirbawi opened his Hirbawi Textile Factory in 1961, he has taken mass orders destined for masked gunmen and political parties as well as souvenir shops. He believes, though cannot be sure, that Mr. Arafat himself wore his kaffiyehs.

 

Surprisingly, however, his factory has become a victim of its own cause. With the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 came the beginning of an independent Palestinian economy and trade with the outside world. Before long, souvenir shops were selling scarves made not in the occupied territories, but from factories elsewhere - mainly China, where suppliers offer cut-rate prices.

 

What remains of the Hirbawi Textile Factory now is a cavernous concrete warehouse, with box upon box of unused spools of cotton yarn and a 1970s Volkswagen van in bright yellow rusting in a corner. The automatic looms brought from Japan with much fanfare in the 1960s and 1970s now sit heavy with dust and largely empty, two of them stopped in mid-production with the threads of unfinished scarves still dangling…

 

An image symbolic of the West Bank itself, where “statehood” remains unfinished and still dangling due to the Palestinians’ inability to come to terms with the reality of Israel. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:10 | link | comments

Education as inoculation: The whole rationale behind memorializing and educating people about the Holocaust is to ensure that there will never be another one. As Melanie Phillips writes, it’s not enough:

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. A lot of worthy things were said about the need to remember the Holocaust to ensure that such a thing never happens again — in a country which demonstrates every day that, by blaming the intended victims of a planned second Holocaust of the Jews and minimising or denying the threat posed by the Iranian deniers of the first, it is repeating the lesson of its own history in refusing to recognise what is happening and thus making it more likely that it will happen again.

Some years ago, the Holocaust Educational Trust was established to ensure that schools were adequately equipped to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. I think there is now an urgent need for a similar organisation to teach British children the true history of Israel and the Jewish people. I hear alarming reports from horrified parents of schools teaching their pupils the falsehood that, as a result of European guilt over the Holocaust, the modern State of Israel was created by the importation of European Jews with no connection to the land, thus displacing the rightful Arab Muslim inhabitants whose land it had been since time immemorial. Every part of that account is untrue. The result of such teaching — and worse —which I suspect is now routine in British schools is that British schoolchildren are being fed a diet of propaganda lies which is inciting them to hatred of Israel and the Jews who support its existence. On those occasions when some brave and well-informed pupil tells them the truth — the Jews were the only people for whom the land of Israel was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before the Arab conquest —their perspective immediately changes.

 
In the absence of a proper education in Jewish and Israeli history, I’m afraid that teaching the Holocaust often merely confirms British schoolchildren in the poisonous belief that the victims of the Nazis turned into Nazis. The need for an initiative to ensure that schools teach children the truth about the Jews has never been more urgent.  

First, however, those in charge of the school system would have to be able to recognize the truth—a virtual impossibility given that they share the same warped leftist world view as the Zion-hating Beeb.

In his superb reconsideration of the life, career and trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Shoah’s project manager, British historian David Cesarini writes the following:

To the fully indoctrinated Eichmann, the Jews had no intrinsic claim to life. Even more radically, according to his doctrinaire view of the Jews as ‘the enemy’ they had to be destroyed. Jews and Aryans were engaged in a war to the death. He was willing to play a part in that war although it was more like a campaign against an epidemic. He saw himself as engaged in a scientific, if distressingly messy, operation to eliminate a racial-biological threat to the Aryan people…

Eichmann was dimly aware at the time that the mass murder of the Jews was a legal and moral outrage, hence his interest in obtaining ‘cover’. After 1945 he certainly recognized that by the lights of the victorious Allies it was a crime. But he never fully repented. Indeed, his final ‘memoirs’ are shot through with self-justifications and reference to the power of world Jewry. Eichmann had learned to hate and he taught himself to be a practitioner of genocide. He learned so well that he was never able to understand that he acted wrongly.

The capacity to do what he did was not, however, inborn. Eichmann was not ‘hard-wired’ to become an accomplice to atrocities. The key to understanding Adolf Eichmann lies not in the man, but in the ideas that possessed him, the society in which they flowed freely, the political system that purveyed them, and the circumstances that made them acceptable. What Eichmann did was made possible by the dehumanization of the Jews, the construction of the Jewish people as an abstract racial-biological threat and a political enemy, and the disabling of inhibitions against killing. Anyone subject to these processes might have behaved in the same way, be it in a totalitarian state or a democracy.

Today in the totalitarian state of Iran and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world, Jews are daily subjected to the same kind of dehumanization employed by the Nazis. “The Jews,” people are told, are not human beings. They are “snakes,” or “apes and pigs” or, in the memorable word of the Hitler-wannabe who hosted “The World Without Zionism” conference, a “tumor.” Their state is thus seen as an alien and deadly cancer within the “healthy” body of Dar-al-Islam, something to be excised with the same cold-blooded determination the Nazis mustered to destroy the Jewish “bacillus” in Europe. And concurrent with the Arab/Muslim dehumanization efforts, in democracies like the U.K. there is a concerted societal effort—spearheaded by the intelligentsia—to paint the Jewish state in the blackest terms possible, thereby helping lay the groundwork for the eventual destruction of this singularly hateful, evil nation.

So what has changed in the sixty plus years since the end of WW2? Evidentally, not nearly enough to save the Jews from the latest batch of genocidaires and their willing executioners.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:50 | link | comments (3)

Sheiks, lies, and Muslim video dating tapes: Here’s a simultaneously hilarious and disturbing exposé of the wild and woolly world of Muslin dating, courtesy the New York Post:

January 27, 2008 -- A Wall Street stockbroker fears for her life after she rebuffed a Brooklyn imam she met on a Muslim dating Web site.

In an explosive $50 million lawsuit that blows the lid off the wacky world of Muslim dating in New York, Cherine Allaithy alleges the religious leader promised he would make her one of four future wives and boasted of a cousin in al Qaeda. When she dumped him, he trashed her reputation in the Arab press.

The imam, Tarek Youssoff Hassan Saleh, 42, says Allaithy is a loose, mentally unstable woman. He has filed criminal charges against her in Brooklyn for allegedly destroying two computers at the Oulel-Albab mosque in Bay Ridge. He also claims she threatened to frame him for rape.

Allaithy, 32, says she met the imam, who goes by the name Sheikh Saleh, online at the Muslim Matrimonial Network site in May 2007. They courted for a month.

In June, she claims in court documents, Saleh proposed marriage, telling her she would have to start wearing a veil and be subservient to him.

When Allaithy rejected the sheik's proposal, she alleges, he suggested they have a temporary marriage, or mu'ta, so they could have sex without committing a sin.

Allaithy again declined. In the meantime, she started dating Bessem Elhajj, an engineer also living in Bay Ridge.

Saleh said Allaithy two-timed him with Elhajj. She came to Saleh in August, the imam told The Post, distraught that Elhajj had broken up with her.

Saleh insists he is single and not actively seeking four wives. Allegations contained in the court documents say he used Arab-language newspapers to accuse Elhajj of being a womanizer bent on luring Muslim women into temporary marriages…

Obviously, Salah (who kind of looks like a paler Whoopi Goldberg—with a beard) wants to partake of some Earthly delights while he still has a pulse, and isn’t prepared to wait for the posthumous Heavenly stuff.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:18 | link | comments (2)

Harpoon pimps for Hamas: Harpoon Siddiqui explains the Gaza situation to the Toronto Star’s receptive readers:

The pictures told the story. A people penned for months broke free. As the wall tumbled at the Rafah crossing, the world witnessed their exhilaration at breathing the air of momentary freedom.

Their shopping told a story, too.

They bought medicines (antibiotics, in particular); medical supplies; groceries; fuel for cars and heaters; and other essentials desperately needed but deprived by the Israeli siege.

Israel and the U.S. blamed Hamas for the Gazans' desperation. But the people themselves praised their elected representatives for breaking open the border.

The Israeli-American policy, ardently backed by the Stephen Harper government, of trying to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Gazans is clearly not working.

And Mahmoud Abbas, the chosen Israeli-American partner for peace, looks more and more irrelevant in half the territory of which he is president.

Israel deserves protection from rockets, but its policy of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip yet throttling the 1.5 million Gazans has proven to be counterproductive.

Rockets from Gaza continue to rain down on Israel. Small arms, munitions and money continue to be smuggled into Gaza from Egypt through tunnels.

Disproportionate Israeli military retaliation and collective punishment of Gazans continue to stoke resentment and anger, as well as the radicalization of the young.

Hosni Mubarak is under Israeli-American pressure to seal the Rafah crossing. If he does, he will pay a domestic price, given the solidarity Egyptians feel with the Palestinians. He may respond to the public anger in his customary fashion, by increasing repression.

The events of the last few days also highlight the dangers of dragging the peace process endlessly.

Most of the world understands the futility of the Israeli-American approach. An increasing number of Canadians do as well, even if their prime minister doesn't.

My letter to the Star:

Haroon Siddiqui attributes the problems in Gaza to Israel’s “disproportionate military retaliation and collective punishment of Gazans.” Funny, but last time I checked, it was Hamas that was being “disproportionate” by launching a daily barrage of deadly rockets onto Israeli soil; Israel, so far, has largely held its fire. Meanwhile, Israeli electrical workers had been daily climbing cherry-pickers near Ashkelon in order to repair electrical lines going into Gaza—as they could see the projectiles coming into Sderot, the Israeli town in Hamas’s line of fire. Even Siddiqui must admit that meeting the energy needs of one’s enemies while that enemy is in the midst of an attack is an awfully strange form of “collective punishment.”

Siddiqui also refers to the world’s belated awakening to “the futility of the Israeli-American approach.” Wrong again. If anything, the world is finally becoming wise to Hamas’s fabrications which, on this occasion, consisted of turning off their own lights and drawing the curtains in order to provide the media with photo-ops of Gazans sitting in the dark. Then there was the confusing sight of “starving,” “impoverished” Gazans returning from their giddy shopping spree in Egypt not with food supplies, but with motorcycles, flat screen TVs and other big ticket items—thereby making it clear that the only thing residents were starved for was Egyptian consumer goods.

To paraphrase honest Abe Lincoln, you can fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but when you have enough disposable income to tote goats and broadloom across the border, it’s going to be very hard to convince any thinking person that you’re “poor”—or  that Israel and America are to blame for your plight.

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

A “moderate” song: Condi Rice has grievously mischaracterized the Palestinians. They aren’t Mississippi blacks circa 1960. They’re more like German Nazis circa 1939. And here’s their Horst Wessel song (one of them, anyway). From Arutz Sheva:

"My enemy. Oh, my enemy.
Stop your crimes.
Treaty breaker! Treacherous!...
If you pull out my eyes,
My heart will see. (x2)
If you cut off my hands,
My chest is knives and swords.
My enemy! Oh imperialism!
This homeland is ours. (x2)
This land will be tilled
only by our hoes. (x2)
Whenever the tension rises,
Whenever this land weeps, (x2)
the flower will return
to grow in our house.
My enemy. Oh, my enemy.
Stop your crimes.
Treaty breaker! Treacherous!...
My enemy! Oh snake!
Around the land, you are coiled. (x2)
We, noble, courageous,
on the day of ruin [battle], shall stand.
You have no choice, Oh enemy,
but to leave my country.
And my children will return.

Very catchy. Music by P. Diddy. Words by J. Goebbels.

In response to that delightful ballad (gotta love how they snuck in that reference to “imperialism”—a callout to the Noam Chomsky/Ed Said crowd), I’ve put some new words to Beethoven’s “Song of Joy”:

You’re so nuts and really crazy—

That’s what years of lies will do.

Cannot bear to share the land

With “snakes” and “apes and pigs” (the “Jew”).

In the grip of mass psychosis

You cannot “build” anything.

Here’s the name of a head shrinker.

He’s got meds—give him a ring.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments

Timely queries: Washington Times pundit Diana West poses a couple of questions I’ve been asking for some time, ones which have yet to be addressed in any satisfactory manner:

Does our "war on terror," which currently includes stabilizing U.S.-fostered governments that enshrine Shariah in Afghanistan and Iraq, in effect place the United States in the role of making the world safe ... for Shariah? That's one debate question I'd certainly like to see asked. And: Given Islamic terror groups' shared predilection for spreading Shariah, does this current U.S. strategy best serve what we like to think of as the cause of liberty?

To answer the first: hell, yes. To answer the second: not on your life.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments (1)

Think globally; act continentally: Despite all the concerted appeasement, the EUnuchs remain in the crosshairs of the jihadis. From YNet News:

Members of a terror cell nabbed in Barcelona last weekend are suspected of planning to hit public transportation targets in several European cities, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported over the weekend.

 

According to the testimony of a police informant, the 14-member terror cell affiliated with al-Qaeda planned to strike cities in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Britain. The police source said the suspects focused their attention on public transportation targets, including subways, in various cities across Europe.

 

"If we strike at subways, rescue forces won't be able to get there," one cell member reportedly told the police informant. The cell planned to send two pairs of would-be-attackers to the Barcelona subway carrying bags packed with explosives. The terror suspects planned to detonate the bombs using remote controlled devices.

 

Security officials in Barcelona estimated that the terror attack was scheduled to be carried out in the next two weeks. According to the report, other cell members were tasked with similar missions in other European cities based on the same modus operandi.

 

After the 12 Pakistanis and two Indian nationals were arrested in connection with the plot, four suspects were released due to lack of evidence against them. During the operation, security forces also recovered explosive devices and other means aimed at producing explosive devices.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:30 | link | comments

All in all it's just another hole in the wall: A Ceeb photo-gallery of the Hamas breakout.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments

Still swinging: As much of the free world continues its downward spiral into the Orwellian abyss of political correctness, one of its targets—Mark Steyn—is delighted, as usual, to expose the craven and the stupid who are in charge of this civilization-destroying operation. From the O.C Register:

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from the Daily Mail in Britain:

"Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As anti-Islamic Activity' To Woo Muslims."

Her Majesty's government is not alone in feeling it's not always helpful to link Islam and the, ah, various unpleasantnesses with suicide bombers and whatnot. Even in his cowboy Crusader heyday, President Bush liked to cool down the crowd with a lot of religion-of-peace stuff. But the British have now decided that kind of mealy-mouthed "respect" is no longer sufficient.

So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated "anti-Islamic activity." Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, unveiled the new brand name in a speech a few days ago. "There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief," she told her audience. "Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."

Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" – in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity."

But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a 5-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.

Still, it should add a certain surreal quality to BBC news bulletins: "The prime minister today condemned the latest anti-Islamic activity as he picked through the rubble of Downing Street looking for his 2008 Wahhabi Community Outreach Award. In a related incident, the anti-Islamic activists who blew up Buckingham Palace have unfortunately caused the postponement of the Queen's annual Ramadan banquet."…

Well, if the White House can have Ramadan soirees, why should her highness be deprived the fun?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:53 | link | comments

Hot for Durban II: The Toronto Star, as clueless as ever, insists that something positive can come out of Canada participating in another UN Judenhassapalooza:

A Canadian, Louise Arbour, heads the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. And Canada currently has a seat on the Human Rights Council, where we have had a chance to air our views on many issues in recent months, including the crisis in Darfur, Burma's junta, terrorism, women's rights, refugees and religious rights.

Given this busy Canadian involvement, it is hard to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to pull Canada out of a planned UN world conference next year against racism. As a democratic country and a multiracial success story, we would have a lot to offer at the conference.

Granted, the UN's controversial 2001 racism conference in Durban, South Africa, turned out to be an "ugly maelstrom of bigotry," as the Star pointed out at the time, tainted by "Israel-bashing and poisonous anti-Semitism." But Canada took part, and fought vigorously, publicly and successfully to cleanse the conference's final declaration of odious language that unfairly targeted Israel, denied the Holocaust and equated Zionism with racism.

The United States and Israel, which walked out when the debate got nasty, could claim no credit for fighting the good fight. Canada stood its ground, among 150 nations, and said what had to be said. We also aired our views on issues such as American aboriginal rights, Sudanese slavery, India's caste system and Taliban oppression of women.

This year, fearing a similar spasm of anti-Semitism, the Harper government apparently lacks the stomach for such a fight. On Wednesday, Ottawa announced it will boycott the 2009 Durban review conference and focus instead on a Holocaust education task force.

Education is a good thing. But confronting evil, especially in a UN world forum, matters as well. Canada's principled voice should be heard above those who preach intolerance, bigotry and worse.

How are you supposed to “confront evil” when the evil are in charge of setting the agenda? It would be like attending the Wannsee Conference in the hopes of trying to influence Nazi policy on the Final Solution. Far better to tell the world’s collective Jew-haters to take a hike—as Stephen Harper has so bravely done.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:25 | link | comments

Fabricating darkness: Mark Steyn on Hamas’s not-so-effective bit of lighting legerdemain.  From the Corner:

And more fun with Big Media propagandists: During an Israeli power cut, Palestinians are forced to hold a parliamentary session by candlelight. Alas, even with the curtains drawn, the blazing sunlight keeps peeping through.

These photographs were taken by Mohammed Salem of Reuters and Hatem Moussa of the Associated Press. If neither of these organizations wish to comment, perhaps some of the ethics panjandrums at America's journalism schools would like to weigh in. 

Don’t hold your breath. Such institutions are firmly within the leftist camp (I know, having attended a Canadian one). And for too many of these folks, the end (i.e. the end of the world’s designated “oppressor” and the boosting of the world’s designated victims) justifies the news agencies’ devious, fraudulent means.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:10 | link | comments

Scary story of the day: Pakistan's nuclear sites on alert.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:02 | link | comments

Thought cops, trounced: Rex Murphy, in glorious high dudgeon, nails the ridiculous HRCs:

...A Maclean's/Steyn confrontation, in tandem with the prairie whirlwind we all know as [Ezra] Levant rampant – this is too much at one time for the meticulous and tidy tribunals that alone are our guardians against every stray thought that might fracture our fabulously delicate Canadian sensibilities. While they are preoccupied with Steyn-Levant, overwhelmed, exhausted and undone by Steyn-Levant, battered, borne-down on and befuddled by Steyn-Levant – who will watch out for us?

Who will there be to read before we read, and tell us what is proper for us? Who will be there to edit the editors, to copy check the copy checkers? Who will shield our vulnerable law-students, and who will tend to the commission's most industrious serial complainant. There is one person, so eggshell brittle that he has drummed up a fierce amount of business for the HRCs. Is so loyal a customer now to be ignored because the Steyn-Levant tsunami is about to rumble mercilessly on shore?

Mostly I fear, if the HRCs are tied up, Canadians will be reading, unguided, what they choose to read, deciding for themselves what they like and what they don't, will discard a book or pass it to a friend, like a column or curse one – lit only by the light of their own reason.

The horror! Before we know it, we'll have an unstoppable epidemic of free speech, free thought, and freedom of the press. And, surely, no one wants that. Otherwise, why would we have human rights commissions?

My letter to the Globe:

Human Rights Commissions were established back in the heady days when “human rights” actually meant “human rights”—the right to a fair shake in the workplace; the right to live where you wanted to without fear of being turned away become of your ethnic origin or the colour of your skin.

Good intentions and fuzzy language have landed us where we are today: with human rights commissions being harnessed by those who want to have a say about what ordinary Canadians can—and cannot—read, see and think.

As a result, HRCs have strayed from their original mandate to such an extent that, ironically, they have become the antithesis of what they were supposed to be. They are now the touchy-feely enforcers of social “sensitivity” who are depriving Canadians of what, in a free society,  is perhaps the most essential human right of all: the right to freely offend without fear of being silenced by the state.

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

Livid about Livni: Caroline Glick on the most dangerous and clueless woman in Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments

Malark’ the knife: The Globe and Mail’s Middle East correspondent, Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon, evinces such a marked anti-Israel bias that his reportage has become as laughable as it is untrustworthy. Today, for example, Malarkey is reporting that Palestinians are “jubilant” that they were able to bring “a temporary end to the crippling Israeli blockade.” (No mention, natch, of the crippling Egyptian one.) As the letter-writer cited below notes, however, there seems to be a huge disconnect between Hamas propaganda and the reality on the ground, since, given the chance, “starving,” poverty-stricken folks are usually more interested in filling their bellies than in buying big-ticket items like motorcycles, rugs and flat screen TVs; moreover, they typically don’t have enough shekels with which to buy them.

In recognition of Malarkey’s dizzyingly skewed coverage, I have revised the appropriate standard (Bobby Darin's version):

Oh, Malark’, babe, has a knife, dear,

And he keeps it nice and honed.

Loves to wield it ‘gainst Israelis,

As the ‘rabs "fate" he's bemoaned.

 

Oh, when Malark’ wields his sharp knife, babe,

Does some damage to the Jews.

Does he care? Nope, not a bit, babe,

Long as he can shape the news.

 

Now on the newsstand most ev’ry mornin’

There’s a sad tale of such woe

That it seems there’s but one answer:

Make the Jews pack up and go.

 

Ah, there’s Egypt, huh, huh, huh, behind a wall don’tcha know

Where there’s lots of stuff to buy.

But the “blockade" is due to Jews, dear,

Here's Malark’ to tell you why.

 

Now, d’ja hear ‘bout the big drama—

Gaza plunged into the dark?

Turns out it was all an act, babe.

Paliwood is such a shark.

 

Now, lotta stories, all so tawdry,

Ooh, ‘bout the suff’rin' and the sobs.

They’ll keep comin’ fast and furious

Long as Malark’ is on the job.

 

Ah, said lotta stories, whoa, really tawdry,

Highlight suff’rin’ and so many sobs.

They’ll be endless and relentless

Long as Malark’, babe, is on the job.

 

Long as Malark’s on the job!!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:45 | link | comments

York U’s double standard: The other day a young informant of mine phoned to tell me she’d had occasion to visit the main campus of York University (she is studying at another post-secondary institution), and was extremely disturbed by what she saw there. Specifically, a display adorned with Arab flags and barbed wire devoted to advancing a “boycott” of that despised Zionist entity. Essentially, it amounted to a “Hate Israel” exhibit, replete with the usual crapola about “apartheid,” the “naqba” and racist Jews.

Hatred directed at the world’s only Jewish state is a daily occurrence that is given a free pass at York U, but when some racist graffiti about Blacks turned up on campus the other day, you wouldn’t believe the huge kerfuffle that ensued, and how quickly steps were taken to condemn it and shut it down. From the Toronto Star:

York University students held an anti-racism rally today after anti-black graffiti was discovered on campus.

The graffiti was found Tuesday on the doors of the York University Black Students' Alliance (YUBSA) office and an adjacent men's washroom.

The vandalism is the latest high-profile crime on the sprawling campus of Canada's third largest university.

Over the past five months, there have been three sexual assaults, a brutal attack on a York Student Centre employee and simmering tensions over the Middle East conflict.

These incidents "are all evidence that our campus is becoming increasingly unsafe," said Gilary Massa, vice-president, equity, of the York Federation of Students.

"York University must act immediately to prevent it from getting worse."

A few hundred students in the York Student Centre participated in a boisterous hour-long rally that started around 2:30 p.m. They cheered speakers who lashed out at the racist attack and university administrators for not being quicker to condemn them. They chanted "no white supremacists on our campus" and "no justice, no peace."

Near the end of the rally, York President Mamdouh Shoukri was stopped in his attempt to make comments. Students were angry that it took two days for him to condemn the attacks.

"This space is ours," said Nazareth Yirgalem of the black students' association. "We pay enough money to be here York has to do a better job of protecting this space."

The association is calling for a safety audit of the campus, as well as an investigation of the incident, a public condemnation by York's president and the participation of black students in university administrative committees related to racism and oppression,

"We refuse to allow this incident to create an atmosphere of social isolation, fear of harassment, or feeling that we as black students do not belong," association executives Sara Said and Tyra Jackson said in a statement.

"Hate crimes are unacceptable."…

Unless, of course, they can be disguised (though not very well) as “political” criticism of the Jewish state.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:35 | link | comments

Rich but “starving”: A letter-writer to the Globe and Mail deflates the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza with one droll observation:

So Israel's blockade is causing starvation in Gaza? Last time I was starving, I didn't buy a carpet.

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

How avarice advances sharia: Sharia law is making inroads here in Canada—courtesy such helpful handmaidens as the University of Toronto, the Law Society of Upper Canada and Canadian banks. In today’s Globe and Mail, Tarek Fatah sounds the alarm about this galloping, greed-driven push:

It seems only yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty declared: "There will be no sharia law in Ontario." Many of us, who witnessed the medieval nature of manmade sharia laws in our countries of birth, heaved a sigh of relief back in September of 2005. We thought this was the end of the attempt by Islamists to sneak sharia into a Western jurisdiction. We were wrong.

The campaign to introduce sharia is back. Last time, the campaign took a populist approach, invoking multiculturalism. This time, the pro-sharia lobby is dangling the carrot of new niche markets and has the backing of Canada's major banks. Such icons of the corporate world as Citibank NA, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Barclays PLC have endorsed sharia banking and have started offering Islamic financing products to a vulnerable Muslim population.

In May, 2007, The Globe reported that "Several Canadian financial institutions are preparing sharia-compliant mortgages, insurance, taxi licensing and investment funds to help serve the country's fastest-growing part of the population." Recently, the Toronto Star's business section reported that an unnamed bank may offer sharia loans as early as this summer; Le Journal de Montreal disclosed that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation(CMHC) was also getting in on the act. Stephanie Rubec, spokesperson for the CMHC, said the Crown corporation had launched a tender worth $100,000 to study Islamic mortgages for Muslim Canadians. Could she be oblivious to the fact that almost all Muslim Canadians currently have home mortgages through banks and don't feel they are living in sin? In fact, CMHC has gone a step further: It has quietly entered into a partnership with a Saudi company, AaYaan Holdings, to develop sharia-compliant mortgage-lending systems.

The origin of Islamic banking has its roots in the 1920s, but did not start until the late 1970s and owes much of its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people — Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The theory was put into practice by Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who established sharia banking law in Pakistan.

Proponents of sharia banking rest their case on many verses of the Holy Koran that outlaw usury, not interest.

Verses that address the question of loans and debts include:

Al Baqarah (2:275): God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury;

Al Baqarah (2:276): Allah does not bless usury, and He causes charitable deeds to prosper, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner.

Every English-language translation of the Koran has translated the Arabic word riba as usury, not interest. Yet, Islamists have deliberately portrayed bank interest as usury and labelled the current banking system as un-Islamic. Instead, these Islamists have created exotic products with names that are foreign to much of the world's Muslim population. This is where they mask interest under the niqab of Mudraba, Musharaka, Murabaha, and Ijara. Two authors, both senior Muslim bankers, have written scathing critiques of sharia banking, one labelling the practice as nothing more than "deception," with the other suggesting the entire exercise was "a convenient pretext for advancing broad Islamic objectives and for lining the pockets of religious officials." Why Canadian banks would contribute to this masquerade is a question for ordinary Canadians to ask.

Muhammad Saleem is a former president and CEO of Park Avenue Bank in New York. Prior to that, he was a senior banker with Bankers Trust where, among other responsibilities, he headed the Middle East division and served as adviser to a prominent Islamic bank based in Bahrain. In his book, Islamic Banking — A $300 Billion Deception, Mr. Saleem not only dismisses the founding premise of sharia and Islamic banking, he says, "Islamic banks do not practise what they preach: they all charge interest, but disguised in Islamic garb. Thus they engage in deceptive and dishonest banking practises."

Another expert, Timur Kuran, who taught Islamic Thought at the University of Southern California, mocks the very idea. In his book, Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism, Prof. Kuran writes that the effort to introduce sharia banking "has promoted the spread of anti-modern currents of thought all across the Islamic world. It has also fostered an environment conducive to Islamist militancy."

Dozens of Islamic scholars and imams now serve on sharia boards of the banking industry. Moreover, a new industry of Islamic banking conferences and forums has emerged, permitting hundreds of sharia scholars to mix and mingle with bankers and economists at financial centres around the globe. In the words of Mr. Saleem, who attended many such meetings, they gather "to hear each other praise each other for all the innovations they are making." He gives examples of how sharia scholars only care for the money they get from banks, willing to rubberstamp any deal where interest is masked.

No sooner had CMHC announced its plans to study sharia-compliant mortgages, than an imam from Montreal's Noor Al Islam mosque offered his services to Canada's banks, claiming Muslims are averse to conventional mortgages because "it goes against their beliefs," a claim that would not withstand the slightest scrutiny.

Other academics who have studied the phenomenon have reached similar conclusions. Two New Zealand business professors, Beng Soon Chong and Ming-Hua Liu of Auckland University, in an October, 2007, study on the growth of Islamic banking in Malaysia, wrote: "Only a negligible portion of Islamic bank financing is strictly 'profit-and-loss sharing' based. … Our study, however, provides new evidence, which shows that, in practice, Islamic deposits are not interest-free." They concluded that the rapid growth in Islamic banking was "largely driven by the Islamic resurgence worldwide."

In the name of Islam, deception and dishonesty is being practised while ordinary Muslims are being made to feel that their interaction with mainstream banks is un-Islamic and sinful. As Mr. Saleem asks, "If Islamic banks label their hamburger a Mecca Burger, as long as it still has the same ingredients as a McDonald's burger, is it really any different in substance?"

My letter to the Globe:

It is clear what’s fueling the effort to bring sharia banking into Canada: on one side, pure, unadulterated greed; on the other, as Tarek Fatah points out, the desire to broaden the influence of Islamic law here in the West.

From the sounds of it, Osama bin Laden could have saved himself a lot of trouble—and made a whole lot more money—if only he had gone into banking instead of terrorism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments

Carbon self-abasement: Breitbart has an excruciating video clip of santimonious celebrity Bono "confessing" his ecological hogishness to the god of the eco-alaramist movement, Al-lah Gore.

Warning: Do not watch it on a full stomach.

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

Spurlock’s feckless search: Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, he of “Super Size Me” fame, went in search of one Osama bin Laden. He never found him. Instead, he came face-to-face with his own cluelessness and self-loathing, which, whadya know?, were there all along. From the Guardian:

…It will come as no surprise to learn that the US administration isn't about to deposit a $25m reward into Spurlock's bank account. Bin Laden, if he is even still alive, remains at large. "I realised that finding this guy isn't the answer," says Spurlock. "I always wanted to learn what shaped him and his followers." He believes the movie shows how US foreign policy and socio-economic forces in US-backed regimes created a hatred that certain factions could exploit.

"At the same time," he adds, "I met so many people who want the same things for themselves and their families that we want. These moderate voices are not represented in the media. All we hear about are the extremists, the terrorists, because it's all about fear and scare tactics. I wanted to give these people a voice."

It's an approach that has drawn favourable comments from the LA Times, which, after chastising Spurlock for not catching his man, talks of "a surprising sweetness to be found behind some of those imposing Muslim beards. Perhaps because [Spurlock's] not shouting, people may actually listen." The website Ain't It Cool News wasn't so impressed, calling it "one big 98-minute ego-fart".

Edited down from 1,000 hours of footage, the movie [Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?] shows Spurlock strolling into several danger spots. He accompanies Israeli police on a bomb-disposal assignment, wanders into a Saudi mosque while an imam invokes war against America, unintentionally incites a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews to near-violence, and gets embedded in a US army unit in Afghanistan that comes under attack from the Taliban…

Spurlock sounds like a hopeless naïf engaged in an assignment that, all in all, sounds less perilous to his long-term health than his previous one of consuming McDonald's trans-fats, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for several months.

Update: Look again, Morgan:

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:23 | link | comments

Abuse in the Hashemite entity: “Moderate” Jordan is being chastised for engaging in some, ahem, immoderate activity. From the Beeb (its bolds):

The Philippines has banned its citizens from going to Jordan to work amid claims of widespread abuse of domestic staff by Jordanian employers.

The move affects Filipinos who want to go to Jordan for the first time, not those already working in the country.

The ban, which came into force on Monday, is only now becoming public.

Inside the Philippine embassy in the capital, Amman, more than 150 Filipino workers, most of them women, have taken refuge from abusive employers.

The notice posted on the front door of the embassy is clear: no more workers will be allowed to come from the Philippines to Jordan until further notice.

Unpaid wages

The crimes committed against them include non-payment of wages, physical abuse and even rape.

Meetings between officials from the Philippine embassy and the Jordanian government are being held to try to solve the problem…

Expect Louise Arbour’s UN Human Rights Council and NOW to get right on it and condemn this brutality…never.

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

Blue Moo: A shocking turn of events—some in the West ( Noam Chomsky excluded) are refusing to be spun by Hamas spin-meisters, and a certain height-challenged mullah-thingy is trying to “rectify” the situation. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The Zionist regime’s crimes against the oppressed Palestinian nation has been intensified before the eyes of the world, but those who claim to be human rights defenders are “dead silent” about it, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said here on Wednesday.

Israel has launched brutal attacks against the Gaza residents and blocked all food and fuel supplies to the strip. The city went dark on Sunday when the only power plant was shut down; however, the lights went back on in parts of Gaza Tuesday as the Zionists allowed some fuel and medical supplies into the impoverished territory.

Ahmadinejad seriously condemned Israel’s recent crimes in Gaza Strip, saying, “This issue is not about today or yesterday. The Palestinian nation has been suffering from this condition for 60 years.”

The Western countries are not making even the smallest movement to hinder the Zionist regime’s crimes against Palestinians, he added.

“The smallest conclusion that can be deducted from their silence and inattentive behavior is that they are partners of the crime,” he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

“I have called the leaders of many countries and many of them promised to support the Palestinian nation. I also asked (Egyptian President Mohamed) Hosni Mubarak to open a way for supplying aid to the Palestinians, and he promised to try and help change the situation,” Ahmadinejad stated…

Looks like the Iranian blogger’s prayers have been answered, since , after months of preparation, Hamas has taken it upon itself to terminate the Egyptian blockade.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:45 | link | comments

The cluelessness of Jewish American lefties: As Jonathan Tobin writes, they are quick to race to Obama’s defence, even as they refuse to acknowledge his disturbing associations with some notorious Jew-haters. From JWR:

…As soon as Obama began his run, Internet rumors about him began to spread like wildfire. The fact that he had a Muslim father and spent part of his early life in Indonesia led many to buy into the notion that he is himself a Muslim, was educated in a fundamentalist madrassa, and even that he took his oath of office to the U.S. Senate on a Koran. On the fever swamps of the right, he was denounced as a jihadi mole and latter-day "Manchurian Candidate" subverting America.

The truth is that Obama is a practicing Christian. And he is far more a product of Columbia and Harvard, as well as of the same popular culture of the 1970s and '80s on which most Americans were reared, than the Indonesian schools where he spent a portion of his youth.

But it was no surprise that amid all the acrimony of this campaign, the organized Jewish world felt it must speak up strongly in Obama's defense. Last week, the heads of nine of the most influential national Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the United Jewish Communities, signed a joint letter denouncing the rumors about Obama.

Why, despite the fact that such groups usually avoid intervening in partisan tangles, did they do it?

As their statement indicated, the rumors about Obama were clearly intended to "drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate" because of "religion." They knew that the effort to pigeonhole Obama as a sympathizer with Islamists on the basis of innuendo would poison the view of him in the Jewish community as well as black-Jewish relations.

Though urban legends such as those are almost impossible to eradicate, the groups were right to take a stand. But when substantive questions were raised about Obama's associations, the reaction from some Jews was to treat them as being just as noxious as any lie.

Thus, when Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote last week about the troubling facts about Obama's membership in a Chicago church, whose pastor was a friend and supporter of Louis Farrakhan, the racist and anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam, he raised a question that some people didn't want to hear.

In response to queries about his closeness with Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose Trumpet magazine once lauded Farrakhan as a man who "truly epitomized greatness," Obama subsequently made it clear that he didn't agree with his church and strongly condemned Farrakhan. The candidate repeated his disgust with anti-Semitism in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in King's own Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

That was more than enough for the ADL. And though some might still ask why he belonged to such a church (would any candidate get away with belonging to, say, a country club that practiced or advocated discrimination?), the case seemed closed.

However, what was equally interesting was the response to Cohen, a liberal anchor of the Post's Op-Ed page, from some on the left.

Novelist Michael Chabon wrote on HuffingtonPost.com that merely raising any questions about Obama and Farrakhan was itself illegitimate, even if the facts of this case were not Internet rumors. For Chabon, simply putting the words Obama and Farrakhan in the same article was "fear-mongering" and using the tactics of "propagandists of hatred." Chabon seemed to feel that anything written about a black that might alienate him from Jews was part of a racist mindset.

So for all the distance we have traveled toward King's vision of a colorblind society, it appears that some view any questions about a black as inherently tainted by prejudice. This is the same sort of false sensitivity that turned an otherwise unexceptionable statement from Hillary Clinton about the roles of both King and President Lyndon Johnson's in passing civil-rights legislation into a controversy.

But if Barack Obama is to be elected president, he can't be treated as a racial icon who must be treated with kid gloves and spared the examination to which other contenders must submit.

Jews and anyone else who oppose him simply because his father was a Muslim from Kenya offend the spirit of American democracy. But Jews like Chabon, himself a virulent foe of Israel, who insist that not even reasonable questions about his associations should be raised, are just as wrong. There are good reasons for Democrats to like Obama, but there are also serious worries about him…

My message to Chabon and the other clueless Jews is a paraphrase of something once said by another handsome, charismatic blindly-adored Democrat: Ask not what you can do for Obama; ask what Obama can do for you.

Update: Ed Lasky of The American Thinker raises some questions about another Obama associate--his Israel-loathing Middle East "advisor."

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

The old switcheroo: Afghanistan used to be seen as "the good war" while Iraq was "the bad war."

Not any more.

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

It’s official: Canada has told the racist “anti-racists” to shove it:

The Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Honourable Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, today issued the following statement:

 

“Canada has a long and proud history of fighting racism, discrimination and intolerance in all its forms,” said Minister Bernier. “It was for this reason, and its promise of concerted global action against racism, that we participated in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. Unfortunately, that conference degenerated into open and divisive expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism that undermined the principles of the United Nations and the very goals the conference sought to achieve.”

 

“Secretary of State Kenney and I had hoped that the preparatory process for the 2009 Durban Review Conference would remedy the mistakes of the past,” said Minister Bernier. “We have concluded that, despite our efforts, it will not. Canada will therefore not participate in the 2009 conference.”

 

“Canada will continue to focus its efforts on genuine anti-racism initiatives that make a difference,” said Secretary of State Kenney. “Our government’s decision to seek full membership on the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research demonstrates that we remain committed to the fight against racism and to the promotion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law at home and around the world.”

I just sent Messers Bernier and Kenney the following brief note of appreciation:

I want to commend you and your government for having the wisdom to see through the farce that is Durban II—which represents nothing more than yet another opportunity for “the international community” to gang up on and scapegoat Israel, the world’s only Jewish state— and the courage to take a principled stance against it. For far too long, the enemies of the West have been allowed to turn our most cherished values—including our disdain for intolerance and commitment to human rights—against us. It is heartening to know that, finally, Canadians have a government that is willing to speak truth to power and stand up for our values, even when it involves defying the received “wisdom” of the international crowd and standing alone. One can only hope and pray that other Western governments will be inspired by Canada’s example.

Thank you, sirs. You make me proud to be Canadian.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:16 | link | comments

Wakey, wakey: American feminists have finally been stirred from their somnolence—and it took a communiqué by some “right wing” pundits to wake them up. In an open letter that has been zinging through the ether, several high profile feminists have taken a break their usual pressing concerns—like worrying that some little girls like to play with dolls and toy kitchens—to express outrage at the way their Muslim sisters around the world are being oppressed and brutalized in the name of religion.

David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, for two, remain unimpressed. From FrontPage Magazine:

…The signers of this Letter claim that, “contrary to the accusations of pundits,” they support Muslim feminists in “their struggle against female genital mutilation, ‘honor’ murder, forced marriage, child marriage, compulsory Islamic dress codes, the criminalization of sex outside marriage, brutal punishments like lashing and stoning, family laws that favor men and that place adult women under the legal power of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and laws that discount legal testimony made by women.”

Well, we welcome these avowals of support for the rights of Muslim women. However, forgive us for doubting their sincerity. As one of us pointed out in a speech given at the University of Wisconsin during Islamo-Fascism Week:

“One of our concerns … is the failure of the Women’s Studies Movement to educate students about these atrocities. There are probably 600 Women’s Studies programs on American campuses, which focus on the unequal treatment of women in society. We have had a very hard time locating a single class which focuses on the oppression of women under Islamic law.”

What was true last October is still true today. As recently as December 10, a Muslim teenager was strangled by her father for refusing to wear a hijab without a protest from the American feminist movement. And that is only one of many crimes committed in the name of Islam against Muslim women over which the feminist movement continues to be silent.

On New Year’s Day, Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead in Irving, Texas. Police are searching for their father, Yaser Abdel Said, on a warrant for capital murder. The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, told reporters, “This was an honor killing.” Apparently Yaser Said murdered his daughters because they had non-Muslim boyfriends.

The signers of the Open Letter say that they are against honor killing. Here is an honor killing in the United States. Where are these feminists on this issue? Why are they not supporting the hunt for Amina’s and Sarah’s killers and organizing a campaign in the Muslim community to stop such practices?

On Sunday, January 20, the New York Times published an article, “A Cutting Tradition,” which falsely described female genital mutilation practiced under Islamic law as “circumcision” and portrayed it in a generally positive light, and even warned against “blindly judging those who practice it.” The article made no mention of the physical effects of this barbaric practice, which affects 140 million Muslim girls who have their genitals sliced off yearly, and in some 15 million cases their vaginal tract sewn up. These effects, as enumerated by the British Medical Journal in 1993, are “Immediate physical complications include severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death. Long-term problems include chronic pain, difficulties with micturition and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth.”

Where is the feminist outrage over the New York Times article? Where are the feminist demonstrations against this practice? Where are the campus teach-ins? Where are the candlelight parades? What Muslim organizations have been confronted for their complicity in this assault on female Muslim children? This is a horrific crime against the female gender -- global in extent -- and yet one would be hard-pressed to identify a single public event, protest or march organized by feminists to oppose it.

The Open Letter mentions the feminist “V-Day” organized to protest violence against women. We challenge the signers of this letter to identify the speeches given during “V-Day” that protested female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. We challenge them to identify the Vagina Monologue of Islamic misogyny.

We are encouraged by the fact that these American feminists feel the need to respond to our challenge over their silence as a movement on violence against Muslim women and to assert their opposition to these barbaric practices. We challenge them now to put actions behind their words.

Join us in sponsoring a campus tour on the Oppression of Women in Islam with speakers such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Form academic committees to provide curricula on these subjects in Women’s Studies courses. Devote a major segment of your V-Day demonstrations to the plight of Muslim women. Join us during Islamo-Fascism Week II this spring in appealing to campus Muslim organizations to condemn these practices.

Then we’ll know you’re serious.

“The Vagina Monolgue of Islamic misogyny”—good one. And wouldn’t that crowd-pleaser about loquacious vajayjays make a terrific double bill with “Puppetry of the Penis of Islamic male chauvinists”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments (1)

Buying power: The wall between Arab Hamasistan and Arab Egypt has been breached, and Gazan have reacted with a frenzy of…shopping. From the L.A. Times:

EL ARISH, EGYPT -- Dusty, wind-swept and in the throes of a shopper's high, Sobheya Hemeid sat wedged Wednesday in the back of a pickup amid 10 of her relatives and bags of toothpaste, detergent, tea, sugar, medicine, chocolates and two bunches of fake flowers.

"They're for a wedding back home," the Gaza Strip widow said. But before she could say any more the Bedouin at the wheel accelerated and the truck raced across the desert, dodging teetering taxis, lopsided buses and wobbly donkey carts carrying tens of thousands of Palestinians on an impulse buying binge across northern Egypt's Sinai towns.

It was a confusing, strange and joyous adventure. Palestinians streamed through a blown-up border wall at Rafah and temporarily left the despair of their homeland behind. They flooded past Egyptian police, followed Bedouin trackers across the dunes, walked for miles, hopped rides, slipped through barbed wire before filling plastic bags with milk, cheese, candy bars and Cleopatra cigarettes. Some bought cement; others bricks. The richer among them hired cars to bring back their haul of TVs, car tires, appliances, clothes and, in at least one case, a goat…

A clear case of being flush with cash, but having no place to spend it.

Maybe Palestinian problems could be solved with several judiciously placed Wal-Marts--and one or two Goats-R-Us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments (2)

Scorecard: Number of copies of the Walt/Mearshimer Protocols update, The Israel Lobby, I counted displayed on the shelf at my neighbourhood Heather Reisman-owned book emporium: 32

Number of copies of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Facism available at the same store: 0

Ranking of Liberal Facism on Amazon.com: #1

Looks like Heather's missing out on lots of sales from Jonah's end of the political spectrum, but is hoping to make up for it by making provision for one of fastest growing groups on the planet-- the Israel-bashers.

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

Israeli “racism”: Those dastardly Jews! They’ll stop at nothing to save the lives of helpless Palestinian infants.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:04 | link | comments

Three cheers for us: There are certain days when I’m awfully proud to be Canadian. Today, for instance. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Canada is poised to become the first country to significantly distance itself from a major anti-racism conference the United Nations is planning for next year.

Maxime Bernier, the Foreign Minister, is expected to announce as early as today Canada is dropping out of planning for the Durban II Conference, which the UN is billing as a global follow-up to its 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Insiders say the government feels the new conference is shaping up to be like the anti-West and anti-Israel free-for-all that critics said the initial gathering quickly turned into.

But the move is bound to spark accusations Ottawa is not serious about combatting racism around the world.

The Conservative government is expected to counter any criticism by stating Canada remains committed to anti-racism principles. But it will also argue planning for Durban II veers from those principles, making Canada's participation impossible.

"At the moment, much of the planning for the conference suggests it will focus little on denouncing racism wherever it occurs, and a lot on advancing some countries' agendas against Israel and the West," said one insider familiar with the new policy.

"The government feels that taking a stand against the gathering will do more in the long run for combatting racism than joining in."

Arab-and Muslim-led verbal attacks on Israel at the 2001 conference were so dominant the United States and Israel walked out in protest.

Canada, then under a Liberal administration, stayed, but its senior delegate told the assembly it did so "only … to … decry the attempts … to de-legitimize the State of Israel and to dishonour the history and suffering of the Jewish people."

The 2001 conference also saw Nigeria and Zimbabwe lead African countries in a demand Western powers apologize for the slave trade, and pay huge reparations

The UN routinely launches "review" conferences of big meetings, and member states decided late in 2006 there should be a follow-up to Durban I. But hopes in the West this one might be different were soon dashed.

The UN gave planning oversight to its Human Rights Council, which since its launch less than two years ago has targeted Israel in 14 of its 15 resolutions charging human rights violations.

States sitting on the council then placed Iran, which has called for Israel's destruction, on an executive planning committee. Libya is the chair.

Beyond Israel, some Arab and Muslim countries additionally seek the 2009 agenda to focus on what they call Islamophobia. While that could mean a legitimate study of discrimination against Muslims, UN skeptics say it is actually code to characterize Western anti-terrorism efforts as a plot to subjugate Islam.

"Make no mistake, Durban II is on track to be even worse than Durban I," said Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian academic who edits the New York-based monitoring Web site EyeontheUN.org.

"Canada, if it drops out, would be exhibiting moral clarity and courage after making the mistake at Durban I of staying despite serious reservations."…

That’s what happens when you’re led by a government that sees things clearly instead of by one that is wishy-wishy, craven, and morally adrift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:35 | link | comments (5)

Cookie crumbles: Condi Rice, who once upon a time was a smart cookie, is still misperceiving the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the lens of her pre-Civil Rights-era Mississippi girlhood.

Time to knock it off, already, Condi. By Kevin Levin in FrontPage magazine:

...Those who have pointed out the many problems in Secretary Rice's analogies between the situation of the Palestinians and her own childhood experiences have typically suggested that her error lies in uncritically applying too widely the personal precedent of African-American experience in the segregated South. But one can argue that the problem lies rather in her not applying that precedent widely enough.

Secretary Rice would arrive at a far truer comprehension of the Palestinian-Israeli, and broader Arab-Israeli, conflict, and the obstacles to its resolution, if she turned the prism of her childhood experience toward, and identified with, for example, the 2,000,000 Christian and animist blacks of the southern Sudan killed by Muslim Arab governments of Sudan in a decades-old on-and-off-again war of extermination, a war executed with broad support of the wider Arab world. Deeper understanding would derive as well from applying her personal experience to, and empathizing with, the hundreds of thousands of Darfur blacks likewise murdered by the Arab government of Sudan, and the 200,000 Kurds - another Muslim but non-Arab people - murdered by Saddam Hussein in the first stages of a campaign of extermination, again with broad support in the Arab world. Identification with the plight of the Kurds of Syria and the Berbers of Algeria - another Muslim but non-Arab people - subjected to discrimination and the suppression of their language and culture by the Arab governments of their respective states, would also cast illuminating light for the Secretary of State on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For, as has been pointed out by genuine reformist voices in the Arab world, that world is dominated by a murderous intolerance of virtually all minorities in its midst, whether religious, racial or ethnic. It is not about to make an exception for the Jews and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, whatever its borders.

Were Secretary Rice to apply her own childhood experiences of intolerance to an understanding of this broader reality, the precedent of those experiences could be usefully applied to fathoming the bias and hatred that drive the Palestinian and wider Arab war against Israel and its people and that stand in the way of movement toward peace. Her personal experiences could then be an asset rather than impediment in the fashioning of American policy - a policy whose objective would be interim steps to decrease the risks of violence until such time as changes within the Arab world allow for movement toward genuine peace.

She might, for example, click on Palestinian Media Watch every so often, to get an idea of all the lovely things her Palestinian “Negroes” are saying about the Jews.

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

Three of a kind: Canada has something in common with Afghanistan and Iraq—they don’t have freedom of speech there, either. By Diana West in the Washington Times:

Mazir-i-sharif.Ring a bell? In 2001, a 32-year-old Marine captain and CIA officer named John Micheal Spann was killed there in a prison riot, thus becoming the first American combat death in Afghanistan. Not incidentally, Spann, before violence broke out, had interrogated an uncooperative John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. This all took place before the United States military completely toppled Afghanistan's Taliban oppressors.

 

Nearly seven years later, American-liberated Mazir-i-sharif has again made headlines — well, one or two — as the site of the prison where a 23-year-old Afghan journalist has been detained for three months (and counting) on blasphemy charges. These charges derive, Reuters reports, from Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh "distributing an article which said Prophet Mohammed had ignored the rights of women." As President Bush might say... well, what might President Bush say: Let freedom reign?

 

Then there's Halabja.

 

Remember Halabja? The name is notorious for being the town where in 1988, 15 years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians to death. This month, American-liberated Halabja made headlines as the site of the court that sentenced a Kurdish author in absentia to six months in prison for blasphemy: namely, for writing in a book that Mohammed had 19 wives, married a nine-year-old when he was 54, and took part in murder and rape. (These points, Robert Spencer notes at jihadwatch.com, "can be readily established from early texts written by pious Muslims.") The author, Mariwan Halabjaee, who has asylum in Norway, says there's also a fatwa calling for his death unless he asks forgiveness.

 

Think about it. Where Americans have died, not just to de-fang jihadist threats but to "democratize" Islamic populations, freedom of speech is against the law. And not the law according to "militants," or "extremists," but the law as enforced by democratically elected governments that we, as a nation, support with everything we've got. What would Mr. Bush say to that?...

 

Here’s something he wouldn’t say (but I would): How can you have “freedom of speech” when your constitution is grounded in sharia law; or when human rights commissions are allowed to decide what sort of speech is—and is not—socially acceptable?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:35 | link | comments (1)

Multiculti hilarity: Tonight’s episode of Ceeb fantasy sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, may be the best one yet:

When the “Welcome to Mercy” sign at the town limits is destroyed, Sarah replaces it with a multicultural sign in Arabic, Ukranian and Chinese…but forgets the English.

 

As a bonus, that teaser describes the Ceeb mindset--in a nutshell capacious enough to contain it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments (2)

Glick on Obama: She’s not a fan:

Although the rumors that Obama - whose father and step-father were Muslims and who was educated in Muslim schools in Indonesia - is a Muslim are demonstrably false, his Christian affiliations are a cause for alarm in and of themselves.

Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama's spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright's anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam - fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright - who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church's anti-Israel invective.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:00 | link | comments

Kah-veth, kah-vetch, kah-vetch: The four would-be legal eagles who complained to Canada’s human rights commissars about an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book that appeared in Maclean’s magazine are bemoaning the failure of Canadians to hop onto their bandwagon. From the Globe and Mail:

On December 4, the four of us announced at a press conference that we had launched several human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October, 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn.

At the time, we expected to hear some criticism of our complaints, which were filed as a result of Maclean's refusal to negotiate space for a response to the aforementioned publication. What we did not expect, however, was the almost paranoid assault launched on the respective human rights commissions for accepting our complaints and, in one case so far, for moving ahead to schedule hearings into the matter we have brought to their attention. The latest to attack the commissions is Ezra Levant, whose commentary appeared in this space yesterday.

These human rights commissions — whose extensive and considered judgments can be located on any legal database — have been referred to disparagingly as "kangaroo courts" that reach judgments "on the basis of no fixed law," while the distinguished and legally-trained commissioners who serve on them have been referred to as power-grabbers who have "scant regard for the freedoms they suppress." One commentator has gone so far as to call for "political action" to put an end to the human rights commissions themselves! Although this blow-back heat comes as the direct result of our specific complaints, such attacks on the very principles of the provincial and federal Commissions to whom we submitted our case threatens the interests of us all. Canadians in all walks of life have come to rely on them to assert their basic human rights as employees, as persons living with disabilities, as women, as ethnic and cultural minorities, as gender-orientation minorities, and as visible religious minorities, to name only a few.

And it is not just a mere handful of Canadians who look to our provincial and federal human rights commissions. Whether we know it or not, the vast majority of us benefit from decisions and rulings by these commissions, which are filling part of the chronic access-to-justice vacuum that has resulted from the high cost of Canada's civil justice system. In March 2006, for example, the Toronto Star reported that an average three-day civil trial is likely to cost at least $60,738 — more than the median family income in Canada of $58,100. The Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, recently urged governments and the legal profession to find solutions to the access-to-justice crisis that has made this country's legal system punitively expensive for ordinary citizens.

Even though most of us cannot afford the going price of accessing the civil justice system, we have the comfort of knowing that there exists an affordable avenue for us to assert the most fundamental of our rights. Therefore, victims of the grandiose fury now being directed against the human rights commissions are none other than ordinary Canadians.

The importance of human rights codes in Canada is not limited only to affordability. These commissions guarantee our human rights against eventualities not covered by the existing Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which applies only to state entities. Thus, a diminishment in the human rights codes and the commissions that enforce them would leave a gaping hole in our rights protections — an outcome being lobbied for by a few disproportionately loud "activists."

Unfortunately, this turn of events is all too familiar to the Muslim community. Faith-based arbitration was not a "problem" until the Muslim community decided to pursue a facility already available to the Christian and Jewish communities. Similarly, funding for religious schools was not a "problem" until Ontario's Conservative leader John Tory included Islamic schools in his funding proposal. And human rights commissions were not a "problem" until the Muslim community decided to pursue the right to respond to publications that subject identifiable communities to hatred or contempt.

The "problem" is not the human rights commissions or the human rights codes they uphold. The "problem" as some choose to see it — is that the Muslim community in Canada is actually using them for their intended purposes.

No, kids, the “problem” is that Canadians are wise to your game and aren’t prepared to allow you to use HRCs to thwart our ability to hear some unpleasant truths about political Islam.

Update: My letter to the Globe:

On behalf of all freedom-loving Canadians, I would like to personally thank the four law students who complained to several human rights commissions about a Mark Steyn cover story in Maclean’s magazine. In so doing, these nascent attorneys have exposed the perils of empowering extra-judicial bodies to adjudicate matters that would never—and could never—be  entertained in a Canadian court of law.

 

At the same time, I would like to assure them that, despite the fact that in their thirty years of existence, these commissions have never failed to support the person(s) bringing the complaint, I for one do not consider them to be “kangaroo courts.” No, I prefer to think of them as our own home grown, uniquely Canadian version of a body that has a similar conviction rate: Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:51 | link | comments (1)

Worlds apart: Jonah Goldberg, author of a new book called Liberal Fascism, appeared on smug lefty Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show the other day. Needless to say it didn’t go too well. Here’s Jonah describing the encounter for the L.A. Times:

…It started civilly enough, discussing my new book, "Liberal Fascism." But things got sufficiently testy that we spent nearly 20 minutes swearing and sparring, and only six minutes aired. The result was "choppy as hell," Stewart had to concede.

Largely left on the cutting-room floor were some important points that might have made my book seem a bit more nuanced. When he railed about conservatives and gay marriage, I pointed out that in my book, I'm sympathetic to it. When he took shots at Republicans, I noted that I criticize the likes of President Bush and Pat Buchanan for being "right-wing progressives."

Viewers in search of more than disjointed, stuttering cross talk would be disappointed if they caught the whole exchange -- it was all like that. Stewart, try as he might, could not understand where I'm coming from.

His stated problem, in a nutshell, was that he didn't like the book's title or its cover (bright red with a smiley face -- oh, and the smiley face has a little Hitler mustache on it). Stewart's complaint, echoed all over the Web, radio and TV by other critics, is that books can indeed be judged by the cover. And because the title and cover amount to a giant insult to liberals (only Stewart didn't use the word "insult"), it can be dismissed out of hand.

I tried to explain, for those whose feelings were so hurt they didn't even crack the spine, that the title "Liberal Fascism" comes from a speech delivered by H.G. Wells, one of the most important and influential progressive and socialist intellectuals of the 20th century. He wanted to re-brand liberalism as "liberal fascism" and even "enlightened Nazism." He believed these terms best described his own political views -- views that deeply informed American progressivism and New Deal liberalism.

As for the smiley face, that's a reference to the comedian and social commentator George Carlin, who explained on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley."

I'm persuaded that Carlin was right -- to the extent that fascism of any kind will come to America, it will do so in the guise of something "progressive." Indeed, American progressives, particularly before Hitler arrived on the scene in the 1930s, were openly sympathetic to Italian fascism. This isn't to say they copied it (or the fascism of Soviet Russia), as many claim. But rather that the ideas that gave birth to and fueled American progressivism -- philosophical pragmatism, Bismarckian "top-down socialism," Marxism, eugenics and more -- share common intellectual sources and impulses with those that gave us both socialism and fascism.

We've allowed the staggering moral horror of the Holocaust to color our conception of what fascism was. But Wells, the editors of the New Republic and such muckrakers as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell didn't have any idea the Holocaust would happen when they endorsed Benito Mussolini's efforts.

Meanwhile, liberals routinely and cavalierly call conservatives Nazis and fascists -- with the Holocaust fully in mind -- without inviting an ounce of opprobrium from the same folks screeching about me…

Funny thing, that. Much funnier, in fact, than anything ever uttered by the purportedly hilarious Stewart.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:24 | link | comments

Soaring oinkers detected over Eurabia: A leading EU official has come out in support of Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. From YNet News (its bolds):

Top EU official: Gaza siege not a war crime

Franco Frattini, European Commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, says at Herzliya Conference that Israel has right to defend itself against Qassam rockets, expresses regret at EU treatment of Israel… 

A change in EU attitudes towards Israel? In a briefing to Israeli reporters Tuesday, European commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, Frano Frattini, said that the steps leading up to the Gaza blackout cannot be construed as a war crime and criticized the incessant Qassam rocket fire on Israeli civilian population centers. 

In a lecture sponsored by the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, Frattini also issued a massive mea culpa to the State of Israel on behalf of the European community for its treatment of Israel during the second Intifada.

“There has been a large misunderstanding in recent years between Europe and Israel. And Israel is justified in its concerns. For too long, Europe has put too much blame on Israel for lack of peace with the Palestinians. We, as Europeans, should have understood Israel's concerns sooner,” said Frattini.

The European official also noted that “as friends, it was our duty to criticize when we felt criticism was needed, but we did it too often and unfairly. We asked you to take risks and often we didn’t provide you with assurances that you wouldn't stand alone if things went badly.”

Frattini continued to say that, “Europe's attitude towards Israel is changing, and Europe better Today, Europe better understands the complexities of the Middle East landscape.”

Commenting on the rising tide of Anti-Semitism throughout Europe, which has often led to marked tension between Israel and various European nations, Frattini maintained that “We are strongly fighting against Anti-Semitism in Europe. This kind of prejudice has no place in Europe today and never will. We will not tolerate Anti-Semitism and we take it very seriously.”

The European commissioner also congratulated Israel on the Annapolis peace summit, calling it “a new opportunity in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which we must not let slip through our fingers. To make 2008 the year of Israeli-Palestinian peace, we must remember the lessons of the past and move forward,” he concluded…

The story has brought out the Longfellow in me: Quite a volte face for the dhimmified EU/ Could it be that it is finally getting a clue?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:47 | link | comments

Don't miss: Caroline Glick on Israel, and jihad and Western folly.

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

Islamist essay question: Are Muslim U.K. Visa Holders and Muslim U.K. Citizens Permitted to Carry Out Attacks in Great Britain? Discuss.

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

Yipee!: It looks like a certain bloviating mullah-thingy’s days be numbered. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:53 | link | comments

Iran’s plan: In brief, it’s to bloviate about “Zionist crimes” in order to soften up the world for Israel’s eventual destruction, all the while claiming not to be creating the nuclear weapons that will allow the mullahs to effect their final Final Solution for the Jewish state. Here’s the mullahs’ mouthpiece, the Tehran Times, gleefully spewing lies like some latter-day, Islamic version of Nazi mouthpiece, Der Sturmer:  

TEHRAN -– In a letter to world parliament speakers on Monday, 200 Iranian MPs condemned Israel’s ongoing massacre against Palestinians and called for bringing the Zionist criminals to justice.

Israel has launched brutal attacks against the Gaza residents and blocked all food and fuel supplies to the strip. The territory went dark on Sunday when the only power plant was shut down.

“Under the meaningful silence of the United Nations and human rights organizations, the occupying regime of Israel has acted against the international law, 1949 Geneva Conventions, and 1977 Additional Protocols and has continued massive attacks on Palestine’s occupied territories,” read the letter.

“There is no day without Israel’s slaying of innocent Palestinian families in winter’s bitter cold and showing the worst type of state terrorism through air and ground strikes.

Where are the vigilant consciences of the world? Where are peace-lovers and human-lovers to prevent the slaughter of the oppressed men, women, and children? Where are the alleged supporters of human rights? Why does not the UN Security Council take serious measures against this issue?

Iranian lawmakers, according to their legal and humanitarian duties to defend human rights, urge the world parliament speakers and lawmakers to condemn such organized crimes… and prepare the ground for bringing the perpetrators behind these crimes to trial so that such a humanitarian crisis would not be repeated.”

Emergency OIC meeting on Gaza crisis is essential

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Monday telephoned Saudi, Syrian, Algerian, Qatari, and Malaysian leaders to insist that it is necessity for the Organization of the Islamic Conference to hold an emergency meeting on the Zionist regime’s ongoing crimes in Gaza Strip.

Through an official letter to OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki on Sunday called on the Jeddah-based OIC to hold an emergency meeting at the foreign ministerial level.

In his calls, Ahmadinejad stated that the Islamic countries should declare their protest and not allow the Zionists to go ahead with their crimes.

It is time that the Islamic states take action and hinder crimes by the Zionist regime, the Iranian president noted.

He called for taking simultaneous “political and humanitarian” actions and urged the Arab League and OIC to study the situation and at the same time send food and medicine to Gaza to prevent a human tragedy.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose country currently chairs the 57-nation OIC, said that he will try to arrange an OIC meeting as soon as possible…

Malaysia—isn’t that one of those “moderate” Muslim nations? Why on earth would it want to co-operate with Iran’s “extremists”?

Isn’t it heart-warming to see how a mutual loathing for the world’s one and only Jewish state can build bridges between “moderates” and “extremists”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:05 | link | comments

Wilting under pressure: An editorial in the New York Post explains why Barack Obama may not yet be ready for prime time:

January 22, 2008 -- Barack Obama apparently is feeling a bit put-upon these days, what with the one-two punch he's been taking of late from the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine.

Indeed, the Illinois senator yesterday complained, "We've got a formidable opponent - actually two formidable opponents at this point, between Sen. Clinton and President Clinton."

Poor Sen. Obama.

If he's finding the Bill and Hillary tag-team too much to handle, what can we expect if he becomes president?

Maybe something like: Hey, Ahmadinejad and Putin are ganging up on me. It's two against one - no fair!

Well, if life isn't fair, what can you expect in politics?

This is no small matter.

If the Obama campaign can't handle a garden-variety Clinton tag-team slap-down without going all whiny, an Obama administration would make for a long four years.

Besides, it's not as if Obama is running all by himself against Team Clinton. He's got some pretty strong allies - including much of the national news media, which has been cheering on his "time for change" campaign.

Specifically, Obama complains that the ex-president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," in that "he continues to make statements that aren't supported by the facts."

Imagine that - Bill Clinton, disrespectful of the truth. Where was Obama during the 1990s, anyway?...

I believe he spent the first half toiling in obscurity in Chicago, and the second half toiling in obscurity in the Illinois state legislature. Not that that should be held against him; only to suggest that perhaps the clean favored and imperially slim Obama is still a wee bit wet behind the ears, an obvious disqualification for the top job.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:29 | link | comments

Al fresco desecration: Fidel Castro’s pal, Pierre Trudeau, once quipped that the definition of a Canadian is someone who can “make love in a canoe.” Had he read an article in today’s Globe and Mail, he might have further opined that the definition of a Frenchman/woman is someone who can have sex on a Canadian war monument:

Exhibitionism. Cruising in the woods. Swinging couples.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in northern France has become a gathering place for some French citizens looking for kinky sex.

Yesterday, a French couple appeared at the courthouse in nearby Arras on charges of sexual exhibitionism at the First World War memorial.

Another woman, who describes herself as being 35, appears on an "amateurs" website, which features 10 photos of her in various states of undress, which she boasts were snapped at the Vimy monument.

On the first picture, the woman, in a miniskirt and showing her bra, is leaning against a stone rampart where the names of missing First World War Canadian soldiers are etched.

The rest of the explicit pictures accompany the woman's flashing episode, which she said concluded with her having sex with two men.

On another website, the monument's parking lot is described as a place for cruising and for swingers.

A spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson said the Canadian government hopes yesterday's court appearance will send a message.

"At this point, our participation in the French legal system will be enough of a deterrent," said Richard Roik. "Inappropriate behaviour will not be tolerated."

The memorial's size and remote location might explain its popularity with sexual thrill-seekers.

About two hours drive north of Paris, the site sprawls across an isolated area, removed from any neighbouring villages and still crisscrossed by trenches and gullies.

On asexyblog.com, a French site that advertises "naughty places" and "swingers' meeting places," Vimy is one of several listed locations.

Driving directions to Vimy are given in one posting from Jan. 8, guiding aficionados to the memorial's parking lot.

"There's cruising in the woods behind the parking lot. In the evening it's directly in the parking," the site says. "Watch out in the evening, there are also swinging couples."

According to the local paper La Voix du Nord, the man and woman who appeared in court yesterday are in their 40s and had been charged in October.

The married couple was identified by a police unit specializing in cyber-surveillance, even though the woman's face had been electronically smudged.

The couple's court hearing unfolded behind closed doors. A ruling is expected Monday.

La Voix du Nord noted the thoughtlessness of people indulging in sex acts on such hallowed grounds.

"In the minds of Canadians, the historical site of Vimy nearly marks the birth of their country. If we dare sully the memory of those soldiers who died during World War I, it's the whole country that we sully," the paper said on its website yesterday.

The four-day battle at Vimy in 1917 cost 3,598 Canadian lives and left thousands wounded, marking a coming of age for Canada's military.

My late Bubby—a tiny firecracker who was never at the loss for words—had the perfect mot to describe such shameless thrill-seekers: “Feh!”

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

Blue moon moment: An editorial in the Globe and Mail sees through Hamas’s ruse:

Israel agreed Monday to allow diesel fuel and medicine into Gaza on a one-time basis, easing the blockade it imposed because of rocket attacks on Israel's southern towns. This concession will not be enough to placate critics who had jumped all over the country earlier in the day, accusing it of exacting, in the words of European Union external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, a "collective punishment of the people of Gaza." Nor will the gesture in any way encourage Hamas to order its thugs to rein in their attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Never ones to let a good turn go unpunished, one of the terrorist group's leaders, Mahmud Zahar, made as much clear yesterday, promising "to continue on the path of jihad and resistance, whatever the sacrifices and suffering, until victory or martyrdom." The villains in the tawdry drama being played out at the expense of the impoverished and downtrodden Gazans should be obvious. But in case it's not, here's a hint: It's not Israel.

Last week, 100 rockets rained down on Israel's southern towns. Israel could have defended itself against the attacks launched by militants in Gaza by responding with a bombardment of its own, endangering civilians. It could have sent the Israeli Defence Forces into Gaza,endangering civilians. Instead, Israel opted to enforce a blockade of Gaza to put pressure on Hamas.

The strategy worked. On Thursday, 40 rockets were lobbed at Israel from Gaza. By Monday, only one rocket was fired. But the improved security comes at a price. Not only the EU but officials from the United Nations and other organizations have condemned the blockade. They accused Israel of risking the safety of Gazans as a result of mounting fuel and food shortages and power outages at hospitals. They demanded that fuel be flown to the one power plant in the Gaza Strip. In fact, the power Israel provides to Gaza through the electrical grid was never cut; the interruption was to the flow of fuel used to power that plant. As Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni aptly put it, "Israel is the only country in the world that supplies electricity to terror groups which in turn fire rockets at it."

If the situation in Gaza is really as bad as some, including a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, describe it - "a desperate humanitarian situation that continues to deteriorate alarmingly" - there is a simple way to end the misery. If life in Gaza is to return to normal - at least what passes for normal in the terrorist statelet - all Hamas needs to do is call off its dogs and end its attacks. As Ms. Livni said, this would change the situation in Gaza "in a minute." The truth is, Hamas prefers it the way it is.

Crack open the bubbly: the Globe finally gets a clue. Something which will likely never be said of our perpetually clueless, determinately anti-Zionist, tax-payer funded national broadcaster.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:57 | link | comments (1)

What the future holds in store: Great news! According to a new report, that clash of civilizations we've heard so much about is off the table for now. From Arab News:

GENEVA, 22 January 2008 — The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Georgetown University, yesterday made public a report on the state of dialogue between Islam and the West.

The report is a systematic and thorough overview of how Muslim and Western societies perceive and relate to each other on the political, social, economic and cultural levels.

It is the result of in-depth research carried out by leading academics and experts. It indicates that the majority of the world’s population believes that violent conflict between the West and the Muslim world can be avoided, but they also share a great deal of pessimism about the state of the relationship.

Among both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority nations, the proportion who say they think the “other side” is committed to better relations rarely rises above 30 percent. Notwithstanding the prevalent sense of skepticism, many residents in nations around the world say that better interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.

“The World Economic Forum believes that, like all other global challenges, it will take the collaborative effort of all stakeholders from government, business, religion, media, academia and civil society to pre-empt any crisis, create alliances and find solutions,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

“Over the course of 2008, the Community of Islam and the West Dialogue will invite leaders from various walks of life to engage in a concerted dialogue and debate of the most important issues, in particular the area of citizenship and integration,” he said.

The report features a Gallup Muslim-West Dialogue Index, which is a ranking of countries based on citizens’ degrees of optimism about the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world. The report presents an analysis of the portrayal of Islam and the West in newspapers and television across 24 countries by Media Tenor, an international content analysis organization, as well as a survey by Georgetown University of international, national and local efforts to improve Muslim-Western relations.

An important finding of the report is the emergence of citizenship and integration as the second most powerful shaper of the state of dialogue after international politics.

Growing Muslim minorities committed to active and full citizenship, particularly in Europe, are increasingly finding a voice in the public sphere. Governments committed to ideals of equality and recognition, but eager to maintain majority support and national cohesion, are seeking to engage Muslim groups in structured dialogue and are experiencing mixed results.

According to a Gallup poll of 1,000 people in 21 countries, published with the report, two-thirds of people in Muslim countries said Muslims respected the West. Almost the same number felt the West did not respect them. Many Western respondents said they did not believe either side respected the other.

Incidents such as the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in European newspapers deepened distrust, with Muslims seeing them as an assault on their religion and Westerners alarmed by Muslim protests which they saw as a threat to free speech.

But the report found that majorities in all countries surveyed do not believe military conflict is inevitable, and it said the levels of mistrust varied from country to country. Iranians, whose government is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, felt less respected by the West than Turks, who are seeking European Union membership.

In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, only a minority believes the West and Muslim world are in conflict. That view may be the result of more positive Muslim perceptions of countries, such as France and Germany, seen in a better light than the United States, the report said…

Sounds like those polled in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran who aver that they’re not in conflict with Dar al Harb may be pulling a bit of taqiyaah wool over the gullible Gallupers eyes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:35 | link | comments

The lefty Weltanschauung: Moonbat extraordinaire Heather Mallick—who writes for both the Ceeb and the Globe and Mail—has done us all a huge favour. She has succinctly articulated the lefty mindset—and what a joyless, threadbare, self-recriminatory, and self-righteous mindscape it is.  From the Ceeb:

I was raised liberal, which means nonstop sympathy. I was expected to feel sorry for other less fortunate people pretty much full-time. Which is funny because my mother is a Scotswoman, and when I was a child I often felt that I was one of the less fortunate, and vastly so. In winter, the thermostat was set at Chilly, all our meals were boiled and every vacation was a speeding landscape of carsickness. Our dishtowels were ice-white and gossamer-thin; I only realized in my teens that they were old diapers. Fashion choices were few: Which parka? For a night out, we'd dine at the local hospital cafeteria.

Children aren't stupid. I knew we weren't poor. My father, a surgeon, ministered to the less fortunate (we lived in the far north). I don't think my mother ever actually said it aloud but "We weren't put on this earth for pleasure," was the family theme. I learned to shut up and embarked on an adult life of feeling sorry for other people, for "victims."…

Ah, yes: Love the “victims”; hate the Zionists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:21 | link | comments (2)

Family law in the Magic Kingdom: It’s a lot like a certain type of family law as practiced back in the Middle Ages—minus the more enlightened thinking of those times. From the New York Sun:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Two years ago, a knock on Fatima and Mansour al-Timani's door shattered the life they had built together.

It was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their marriage in absentia after some of Fatima's relatives sought the divorce on grounds she had married beneath her.

That was just the beginning of an ordeal for a couple who — under Saudi Arabia's strict segregation rules — can no longer live together. They sued to reverse the ruling, publicized their story, and sought help from a Saudi human-rights group. But the two remain apart, and Fatima said she is considering suicide if her recent appeal to King Abdullah does not reunite her with her husband.

"Only the king can resolve my case," Fatima told the Associated Press by telephone in a rare interview. "I want to return to my husband, but if that is not possible, I need to know so I can put an end to my life."

Fatima's case underscores shortcomings in the kingdom's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present, and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission. Recently, the king did intervene and pardon another high-profile defendant — a rape victim who was sentenced to lashes and jail time for being in a car with a man who was not her relative…

Oh, well. At least modern Saudis, unlike their more primitive forebears, have the advantage of living in the age of Xbox and antibiotics.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:05 | link | comments

Submission, redux: Fasten your seatbelts, folks. The seethers may be about to go freakazoidal (again) in the Netherlands. From Der Spiegel:

Déjà vu in Holland: A Dutch politician plans to release a film that rips the Koran for promoting violence and intolerance. Politicians and Muslim leaders alike are afraid of a repeat of 2004, when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam.

A Dutch politician's plan to release a film that charges the Koran with promoting violence and intolerance has sparked controversy in the Netherlands. Government officials are distancing themselves from the project and stepping up security at home and at embassies abroad, while Muslim leaders fear that it could strain relations between the Dutch and their large Muslim immigrant population.

 

Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing Freedom Party, says he will release a 10-minute-long film on Friday that shows how the Koran is used by Islamic radicals to promote homophobia, the abuse of women and violence. The film was slated to debut on Jan. 25 but as of last Friday Wilders had not found a Dutch broadcaster willing to air it. If he can not find one by Friday, he says he will post it on the Internet.

As Wilders searched for a broadcaster last week, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende urged Wilders to exercise restraint. "The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of speech, religion and beliefs," said Balkenende according to the Associated Press. "The Netherlands also has a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Unnecessarily offending certain groups does not belong here."

Balkenende said that cities in the Netherlands were on alert for potential protests in response to the film, and diplomats abroad were briefed on responding to potential animosity.

'Fascist Book that Incites Violence'

Wilders has previously sought to ban the Koran, calling it, "that horrible, fascist book that incites violence," and equating it with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The 42 year-old lawmaker has built a public image on stemming the tide of what he calls a "tsunami of Islamization" in the Netherlands, where a population of 16.3 million now includes 850,000 Muslims.

He was not available for comment Monday and a spokesman for the Freedom Party, which holds nine of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, declined to comment.

Wilders is viewed as a hero to a small but vocal group of right-wing politicians working against the influence of Islam in Europe -- particularly the group Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), an organization founded in Denmark after an international controversy erupted there when a daily newspaper published none-too-flattering caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. A leader of the group's Dutch chapter told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday that SIOE supported the film and Wilder's right to produce it.

"He has every right to use freedom of expression. We don't get it why people would get so upset about the movie," said Monique van der Hulst, who co-founded the Dutch chapter of SIOE in 2006. "He provokes of course, to make things clear. But we both say Islam is not a religion, but a dangerous and evil ideology," said van der Hulst.

She also agreed with Wilder's comparisons of the Koran to Hitler's "Mein Kampf." "You can see the evil coming up from Muslims. They do the same as what Hitler did before -- they say the same things about Jews and homosexuals."…

Inflammatory words, indeed. Ones that here in Canada—a country which, ironically, is much less farther along on the path to Islamization than the Netherlands—would likely earn you a date with an exquisitely “sensitive” human rights inquisitor. (Of course, in the Netherlands such assertions can get you killed.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:50 | link | comments (3)

Darkness visible: As expected, the melodrama about poor, ordinary Gazans being made to suffer in the dark is making a big splash in the media. How could it not, what with the Jews taking on the role of  Snidely Whiplash, and the Palestinians impersonating fair Nell? Here, for example, is how the Globe and Mail’s Mideast sob-sister, Carolynne Wheeler, writes it up. And here’s the Ceeb’s account.

“Bah, humbug!,” say I. My retort to the Globe:

Once again Hamas has made a calculated and cynical decision to make its populace suffer in order to score points against its arch-nemesis, Israel. And once again the media have picked up the Hamas football and run with it.

So “heartless” Israel has shut off power to maternity wards, cardiac units and the homes of regular folks in Gaza, has it? Puh-leeze. While that particular spin is to be expected in the Arab media, where it plays very well indeed, one would have hoped that by now Western media would have become wise to it. Instead, much of the media is prepared to accept it at face value, and to use Hamas-speak about "militants" with “makeshift” or “homemade” rockets embroiled in an uneven battle against a much more powerful foe.

For some, that makes for an “ironic”—and thus grimly satisfying—retelling of the old David and Goliath story. Too bad it’s all a crock. The reality is that the Gaza is in the grip of jihadists who will do whatever it takes to get rid of the world’s only Jewish state, a nation whose very existence they deem an “insult”. That includes withholding fuel supplies from its own populace, and launching genuine, deadly missiles into Israel so that Israel will be compelled to take measures to defend itself—such as shutting down power within its control. In so doing, Hamas itself has created the conditions which, both literally and figuratively, have put Gazans in the dark.

Update: Honest Reporting unspins the spin.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:59 | link | comments (1)

Canadhimmis: For the past several decades, Canada's Human Rights Commissions have been allowed to play a game of whack-a-mole, mostly whacking the odd white power/Nazi zany. The problem with that, of course, is that once a mechanism has been put in place to deal with those who spew repugnant lies, it can also be harnassed by those who would prefer that people not be allowed to hear unpleasant truths. Witness the recent travails of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, who dared to speak some unpleasant truths about political Islam.

Here's British ranter Pat Condell taking the piss out of Canada's Thought Cops--something which, so far, Canada's craven, dhimmified mainstream media have largely declined to do; use it (freedom of speech) or lose it, guys.

And here's Canada's national anthem, revised to reflect current realities:

Oh Canada,

Where lib’ral guilt roams free.

“Niceness” must reign

Enforced by HRCs.

With good intents

They are so attune

To sensitivities.

But the net effect

Is to turn us into silent, "nice" dhimmis.

God help us all

Should they prevail.

Oh, Canada will be a frozen jail.

Oh, Canada will be a frozen jail.

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

Outage outrage: Oh no--the Jews have shut the lights off in Gaza.

Bad Jews! How will the "Islamists" ever be able to see when they're making their "makeshift" missiles?

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

HRC in action:  Even wonder what happens in the shadowy chambers of Canada's Thought Cops? Here's the intrepid Ezra (Levant) giving it but good to an HRC commissar. The look of sheer contempt (or is it utter confusion?) on the woman's face is priceless.

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

Jews target “healers”: At least, that’s the Hamas/Reuter’s spin in a story headed “Israeli missile strike kills one in Gaza-medics”. However, the body of the article seems to tell a different tale:

GAZA, Jan 20 (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed at least one Palestinian and critically wounded another in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, local medical workers and Hamas officials said.

Hamas Islamists said the target was a group of militants who fired makeshift rockets into southern Israel.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed there had been a missile strike in the northern part of the Hamas-controlled territory.

Israel has killed at least 36 Palestinians in Gaza during the past week as part of what officials describe as a stepped-up campaign to curb rocket fire into the Jewish state.

Gaza militants have fired more than 200 mortars and rockets at Israel in the past five days, the army said.

“Islamists” or “militants” with “makeshift” rockets (“makeshift”—as if they’re jerry-rigged from a few odd scraps lying around the house): sound so much less threatening than “jihadis” hurling deadly “missiles” at Israeli civilians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:10 | link | comments

Q: What's even lonelier--and far more hazardous to your health--that being a Maytag repairman in America?: A: Being a "radical leftist" in Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:29 | link | comments

Yah mon: Just got back from beautiful Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Vacation: spectacular. Trip home: not so much. Stuck at the airport in Mo' Bay for eight--count 'em--eight hours. Plane finally left at 2:30 a.m.; arrived four hours later, but we had to wait over sixty minutes for our bags because the door to luggage hold had frozen shut. Anyway, functioning on zero sleep, so will likely not be back in gear until tomorrow. In the mean time, here's my reworking of the SpongeBob Square Pants theme song. I was inspired to write it because our resort got Nickelodeon, and my son watched a gazillion episodes in between snorkeling, riding the banana boat (which, truth be told, looked more like a pencil), careening down the water slides and setting the resort record for most french fries (sans ketchup) consumed by one child in one week:

Oh, who’s from a theocracy back in Eye-ran?

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Abhorent and bearded and putrid a man.

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

If radical nonsense be where you come from

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Then rant like a loon ‘bout the hidden imam.

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Ah-ma-

Din-ejad!

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

Later, gator:  I'm taking a week and a bit off from the jihad (if that's even possible) to rest and recharge. I hope to be back on or before the 20th.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments (1)

Shriver's travails: American ex-pat Lionel Shriver (a she whose name sounds like a he) wrote a critically praised novel—We Need to Talk About Kevin—which dealt with a Columbine-style mass murderer. I almost stopped reading it very early on, when Ms. Shiver, showing her loony-lefty political stripes, referred to Israelis as “Zionazis.” But I kept plugging away until I finally put it down for good about three quarters of the way through, defeated by the combination of the author’s fashionable Rosie O’Donnell-like contempt for the U.S., and a plot featuring several of the most unappealing fictional characters I had ever encountered, including the title character, the repellent Kevin, and the novel’s narrator, Kevin’s snarky, insufferable, self-absorbed mother.

If you want to get a taste of the book (although there’s absolutely no reason why you should want to), all you have to do is read Shriver’s comment piece in today’s Guardian. It pretty well sums up the still clueless Shriver’s feelings about her homeland at a time when “homeland” has become an adjective for “security." I include the headline and subhead to give you the full taste of Shriver’s screwy outlook:

Headline: Last time, Americans elected a moron. If they do better this time, I can show my face without shame

Subhead: A Hillary win would not strike a blow for women's rights, but merely set a precedent for ascension to the presidency by marriage

Lionel Shriver
Thursday January 10, 2008
The Guardian

These past seven years, being an American expat has been far from pleasant: watching presidential press conferences on the BBC and cringeing at the "nucular" ambitions of Iran. Suffering the smug, superior smirks of locals sure that all Americans are morons because they elected one. Walking the streets of London with a bag over my head, which has been murder on my hair.

Weary of this life of shame, I feel I have a vested interest in who takes the moron's place. With the US currently about as popular as hives, the biggest job that the next American president will take on is bolstering the country's reputation abroad. Should they win in November, the Democrats now have the extraordinary option on giving the next administration a leg-up on this Cool Americana project by picking not just whom they send to the White House, but what: a black man or a woman. So which would more likely get that bag off my head - President Minority, or President Girl?

As for the latter: other countries have already broken the gender barrier to high office - India, Israel, Germany, Pakistan, Britain, to name a few. While in the US she would indeed be revolutionary, a female president would seem less radical from an ocean away.

More to the point, Americans can't elect any female president, but only a particular one. To the rest of the world as well as to her own constituency, Hillary Clinton is familiar solely for being married to a widely admired two-term president. No Bill, no candidacy - for even foreigners realise that a former family law practitioner with the natural political skills of shrubbery would never otherwise be a serious contender for the White House. So from the outside, the election of Hillary would look like one more cronyistic, nepotistic backroom deal. It would advertise to other countries that despite all our blather about democracy, the US is no different from everywhere else: to get ahead, you have to have connections. It would portray America as one more country where power is concentrated in a few hands that never let go. A second President Clinton would make the preachy rhetoric of my nation sound just as hypocritical as it has done under President Bush Whose Daddy's Having Been President Too Is Just a Weird Coincidence.

A Hillary win would not even strike a considerable blow for women's rights. It would merely set a precedent for ascension to the presidency by marriage. Internationally, Hillary's promise to use her husband as a "roving ambassador" decodes to: if Bill would not be de facto president, he would at least run her foreign policy. (T-shirts at her rallies that read "I MISS BILL" make no bones about the fact that many of her own supporters hope that they are really voting in her husband for an unconstitutional third term.) That wouldn't make Hillary seem a strong, capable female role model, but a sidekick. In sum: no more bag, but I might still slip on dark glasses.

By contrast, a black man in the White House? It would put a lid on all the carping about how you can't lecture to us about fairness when you have all those horrible racial problems at home. (We'd still have racial problems, but we're talking appearances here.) It would betoken that cultures can change, that a country can emerge from a history of slavery to engender some semblance of racial parity. It would put a stop to superior European posing about how liberal and good and tolerant and sophisticated they are in comparison to all those bigoted, retrograde American bumpkins. And in the context of this election, it would suggest that connections aren't everything; that US elections are not a big fix; that democracy is not a farce.

Voilà: no bag. No dark glasses. I might even get my hair done…

Whoa. Might want to slow it down there, Lionel. You wouldn’t want to spring such a sight on an unsuspecting public all at once.

I sincerely hope that neither Hillary nor Obama manage to prevail and that Americans elect someone from the other party who does not perceive the jihad through the prism of the 1960s and Vietnam. I’m looking to spare America the humiliation of abject submission, and the world from the sight of Lionel with her hair done and her sour punim in plain view for all to see.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:08 | link | comments

A real toss up: On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, George W. Bush is predicting that, by the time he leaves office, Israel and the Palestinians will have come to terms and signed an effective peace deal.

On a similar basis, I predict that by the time he leaves office, pigs will have sprouted wings and will be flying.

Hard to say who's more delusional.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:13 | link | comments (2)

Chillary sings: The pollsters are still surveying the surprising results in New Hampshire and going, "Huh?" Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is taking her win in stride, and chillin' with some karaoke Smokey:

People say I am cold and robotic,

‘Cause I’m not as warm as Bill.

Although I seem frigid

You  know I like to kid

And occasionally have a thrill.

So take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

I need you, need you.

Since I lost in the boondocks of Iowa

Many folks were writing me off.

Although O. seemed to surge

The truth will emerge—

That Bill and Hill will have the last “loff”.

So take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

You need me, need me.

Outside, Barack’s explodin’

But soon, he’ll be implodin’.

No match (oh yeah)

For the likes of me.

I’ll win as predicted

And quick step to my victory.

Baby, baby, take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:36 | link | comments

George’s “fans”: You know those folks who George Bush thinks are singularly deserving of statehood? Some of them are a bit cranky because he’s shown up on their home turf, and are giving him a rousing—or, to be more precise, a seething—reception. From the Jerusalem Post:

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza staged protests against George W. Bush on Wednesday, burning Bush in effigy and underscoring the deep political split with West Bank moderates who welcomed the visit of the US president as an important gesture to the Palestinians.

Supporters of Hamas chanted "Death to America," and burned US and Israeli flags. A shadowy al-Qaida-inspired group appeared in public for the first time with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and uttered vague threats against US targets.

Bush arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a three-day visit that also includes a meeting in the West Bank on Thursday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as a pilgrimage to Jesus's traditional birth grotto in biblical Bethlehem.

A senior Abbas aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the Bush visit was an important opportunity for the Palestinians to make their demands heard. "By receiving Bush, we are not conceding our rights," Abed Rabbo said, addressing critics at home. "We are focusing on our rights before the entire world, and we will say there will be no peace in the region, and no peace in the world without people obtaining these rights."

However, polls indicate that the vast majority of Palestinians are either indifferent to US peace promises or deeply skeptical a deal with Israel can be negotiated. The US administration is widely perceived in the Palestinian territories as a friend and ally of Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians.

In an arrival ceremony at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, Bush appeared to confirm such perceptions, emphasizing an US-Israel alliance that he said "helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state." The Palestinians have balked at Israel's demand that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, amid concerns that this would block future negotiations on the fate of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in the war that surrounded Israel's establishment in 1948.

Bush also said he sees an opportunity for peace in the Holy Land.

In Hamas-ruled Gaza, about 5,000 supporters of the Islamic militant group marched in the streets to protest the visit, burning effigies of Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Some held posters showing a dog biting Bush's head, and of a young man stepping on Bush's head with his shoe.

Mahmoud Zahar, a leading Hamas hard-liner, told Hamas radio that "whoever holds much hope for the visit will be disappointed."

Even some Abbas supporters were critical of the US leader.

Some 200 supporters allied with Abbas's Fatah movement and other secular Palestinian factions urged Bush to abandon what they said was his pro-Israel bias.

"We call on President Bush in his visit to adopt an equal standard, and not to continue the biased policy in favor of the occupation government," a senior Fatah leader in Gaza, Zakariya al-Agha, told the marchers.

In the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, about 20 masked supporters of an al-Qaida-inspired group calling itself the "Army of the Nation," displayed weapons in a first public appearance.

The men wore black robes over black pants. Some wore red headbands with the words "death squad."

A spokesman for the group, who only gave his nom de guerre, Abu Hafs, said Bush was "not welcome" in the Palestinian territories. "We are coming, not to Bush in Tel Aviv, but God willing to Washington," he said…

I’m sure as soon as those West Bank “moderates” are able to sign their “peace “ treaty,  everything’ll settle down.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:58 | link | comments

Oh, grow up!: Blogger to childish, Obama-besotted Democrats.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:42 | link | comments

Dream team: Katharine Hepburn's witty line explaining the appeal of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire was that he gave her "class" while she gave him "sex."

Hasn't quite worked out that way for Nicolas Sarkozy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:55 | link | comments (2)

On the beat: George and Condi seem to have a “good cop”/”bad cop” thing going on. From israelinsider:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that the US rejects the building of homes in Jerusalem "beyond the Green Line" that once separated Jerusalem, specifically citing the neighborhood of Har Homa as objectionable. Israel has authorized building there although PM Ehud Olmert has recently waffled on his willingness to go forward with the home construction projects.

Rice went further than US officials have ever gone before in defining the American position on the issue, but stopped short of rejecting any building over the Green Line. Still, her remarks created the potential for a direct clash over the issue when Rice and US President George W. Bush visit Israel this week and try to move the peace process forward. Bush, in interviews with the Post and Yediot Aharonot, has tried to play the "good copy" referring to his April 2004 letter to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which he agreed, in a non-binding fashion, to take into account realities on the ground as a factor in the future borders between Israel and a possible Palestinian state.

Israel which annexed "east Jerusalem" after the 1967 war and distinguished the capital's Jewish neighborhoods over the Green Line with communities located beyond the city's municipal borders. Therefore, it does not consider building there to be covered by its undertaking to freeze settlement building, as demanded by the Quartet "road map".

Rice, however, said that the US considers that parts of east Jerusalem to be "settlements" in which Israel must stop building as part of its commitment to implement the first phase of the road map. She said "the United States doesn't make a distinction" between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and that the road map obligations are on "settlement activity generally." She cited Har Homa as one such "forbidden" neighborhood.

"Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning," she said, but would not be drawn in to say whether other Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, were also settlements in the eyes of the United States. "The important point here is that we need to have an agreement so that we can stop having this discussion about what belongs to Israel and what doesn't," she said, evasively.

The US has long maintained an ambiguity concerned construction in these neighborhoods, which is opposed by the Palestinians and many European countries but until now has not described Jerusalem neighborhoods as "settlements."

Bush told Reuters last week that he considered settlements an "impediment" to peace, but the Olmert government has long assumed that the US would allow Israel to retain built-up neighborhoods in the capital. That assumption has now been called into question…

On second thought, maybe there’s really only a bad cop and a worse cop.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:46 | link | comments

And speaking of demented totalitarian stylists…: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apologizes to his loyal readers for being away from the old laptop for a while. The bloggin’ Arrmageddonist offers the following explanation for the paucity of posts:

To read or to write, that is the question!‎

2007/11/18

In the Name of Almighty God-the All-Knowing, the Most Lovingly ‎Compassionate Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations. So I had to decide how to spend the limited time that I have allocated ‎for the blog; should I write new notes or respect those viewers who kindly and ‎generously have shared their thoughts and opinions with me and sent messages and read ‎their numerous received messages. ‎ ‎***‎ As you know, the purpose of running this blog is to have a direct and mutual ‎contact and communication with the viewers and even though I have received many ‎messages from the viewers to update the blog and write new notes, I preferred to write ‎less and spend more time on reading the viewers' messages – and not let this ‎communication tool become just a one-way medium.‎ ‎***‎  I personally have read those messages that are considered to be short. I even ‎have read those messages that have started with a sentence like "I know that the ‎president is not going to read this message, but…." ‎ Also some of my trusted students have shortened the long messages for me ‎and have prepared a statistical report regarding all of the messages which I have read ‎and studied those too. God willing, a portion of the overall analysis of the messages ‎and its interesting results will be posted on the blog in the future.‎ ‎***‎ I am apologetic to those who have been waiting for my new posts, but ‎fortunately overall, the analysis of the messages has got to a point that I can start ‎writing here again. ‎ I would like to use this opportunity and ask those of you who intend to send ‎me messages through blog, to make it as brief as you can. Thank you.

No problemo, your loathsomeness. Here’s my brief message: Eat arsenic and croak.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:37 | link | comments

Totalitarian style: The Arab media is home to some of the most delightfully demented prose this side of Der Sturmer. Here, for example, is a YNet News description of an editorial that appeared in Syria’s government paper:

DAMASCUS, Syria - US President George W. Bush is carrying "chaotic ideas" with him on his Mideast tour, which is doomed to fail, Syria's government Tishrin newspaper said Wednesday.  

Bush, who arrived in Israel Wednesday at the start of an eight-day tour of the region, carries "rotten produce in his pocket to market in the region and (comes) with some chaotic ideas in mind to further support Israel, undermine the Arab forces of resistance, antagonize Arab-Iran relations and justify US-Zionist hegemony," the daily said in an editorial.

Quite a mouthful. Also rather messy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:18 | link | comments

This just in...: Bush calls Israel a Jewish state.

Good for him. We know he can talk the talk, but can he--will he--walk the walk?

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

Obamarama derailed?: So the Obama bandwagon failed to barrel through New Hampshire yesterday, and Hillary ended up winning. The Guardian, for one, has an explanation for the slim black dude's defeat. It’s because of “racist voters.”

Of course.

And speaking of racism, some in the media have started asking questions about Obama’s church, which seems to have some, ahem, dubious ideas about racial empowerment. (Funny how there’s often a fine line between “empowerment” and “supremacism.”)

Update: Victor Davis Hanson attributes Hillary's victory to her semi-tearful (and he says carefully calcutated) moment on TV the other day--a moment which may have made her appear less flinty and robotic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments

Tooth jockey jihadi: So far we’ve had lots of physicians and engineers, but to my knowledge this is the first dentist mujaheed who’s made the news. From the times online:

A dentist who tried to fly to Pakistan with military equipment and £9,000 cash in his luggage has been jailed for four and a half years for preparing to engage in terrorism.

Sohail Qureshi, 29, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to charges of preparing to commit terrorist activity and possessing items of use to terrorists, including a night vision scope and medical supplies.

On a computer hard drive police found a library of jihadi literature, including the al-Qaeda training manual and the Mujahidin Poisons Handbook. A CD he was carrying included a picture of him carrying an M16 rifle.

In e-mail traffic retrieved from his computer, Qureshi talked of taking part in a three-week operation - possibly against British troops in Afghanistan. He wrote: "Make dua [pray] that I kill many - revenge, revenge, revenge".

Qureshi was stopped at Heathrow airport in October 2006 as he tried to board a flight to Islamabad where his family lived.

Forensic interrogation of his computer equipment recovered an e-mail exchange with Samina Malik, a shop assistant at Heathrow who wrote jihadi poetry under the pen-name Lyrical Terrorist, in which he inquired about security arrangements at the airport.

Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, said the pair had been in e-mail contact for around a month.

In one message, Qureshi asked Malik: "Sis, I hope you get this e-mail before anyone else does. What is the situation like at work. is the checking still very harsh or have things cooled down a bit?"

Malik, 23, was convicted last month of possessing terrorist material. She received a nine-month suspended sentence.

Her case had attracted widespread publicity, with commentators and Muslim community leaders protesting that she had been prosecuted for a "thought crime".

But her connection with Qureshi and the evidence of his planned activities could not be publicised at the time because of the danger that it might prejudice his case.

Qureshi, a shaven headed figure with spectacles and a goatee beard, was born in Pakistan but spent most of his childhood in Saudi Arabia. He lived in Russia for seven years where he took a degree in dentistry.

In 2004 he moved to Britain where he found employment as a dental assistant and lived in Forest Gate, east London.

The examination of the hard drive in his luggage and a home computer uncovered a longstanding interest in militant Islam and contact with others who discussed jihad and terrorism.

Among his luggage police found the cash and night vision scope, medical supplies, two extendable metal batons, several mobile phones, two sleeping bags and two rucksacks…

Also, some dental floss and several well-thumbed back issues of National Geographic.

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

All sizzle, no steak: George  Bush may be no Harry Truman, but according to Melanie Phillips, Barack Obama is a lot like—wait for it—Princess Di:

Watching the cresting of the Obama tidal wave, it seems that the US is having its Princess Diana moment. Hillary Clinton, turning on the tears but only succeeding once again in thus underscoring her own cynical calculation, wails fruitlessly that Obama is all warm fuzzy feeling but no substance.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, ‘what is the substance here? What, as famously was said years ago, where's the beef? You know, where is the reality?’

Welcome to Planet Diana. It was only with the death of the People’s Princess that the extent of Britain’s transformation from a country of reason, intelligence, stoicism, self-restraint and responsibility into a land of credulousness, emotional incontinence, sentimentality, irresponsibility and self-obsession became shatteringly apparent. Princess Diana was an icon of the new Britain because she embodied precisely those latter characteristics.

It became clear that politicians could score remarkable short-term success if they too got in touch with their inner trauma and felt everyone else’s pain. Bill Clinton (hideous irony for Hillary) was the first to realise this and made it his political signature. Tony Blair, whose lip periodically quivered with precision timing, had it in spades. David Cameron has it; so too does Obama.

The effect is electric, but short-lived. That is because Dianafication is essentially empty, amoral, untruthful and manipulative; eventually voters see through it and realise they have been played for suckers. But while it lasts -- and it creates presidents and prime ministers -- reason doesn’t get a look in. Warm fuzzy feelings win hands down because they anaesthetise reality and blank out altogether those difficult issues which require difficult decisions. Obama appears to be on the wrong side of just about every important issue going; indeed, were he to be elected president he would be a danger to the free world. But hey – the guy makes people feel good about themselves; he stands for hope, love, reconciliation, youthfulness and fairies at the bottom of the garden...

 

Awfully hard to resist someone whose "platform" is  a veritable Coke commercial. Just ask Margaret Wente.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments

Give ‘em heck, George: Caroline Glick compares two presidents who weathered great unpopularity—George W. Bush and Harry S Truman. One of them falls short of the other. From JWR:

Most important, though, is the fact that the new centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy agenda is to establish a Palestinian state. Bush's support for Palestinian statehood, stated first just two months after 9/11, has always been difficult to square with his recognition of the global jihad and its radical Islamic ideology as the central challenges of our age.

After all, when America was attacked the Palestinians were entering the second year of their jihad against Israel. The Palestinians greeted those attacks with open delight. And now, after the Palestinian people popularly elected Hamas to lead them and transformed Gaza into an operating base for global terrorists; while Fatah leaders like Mahmoud Abbas refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state and official Fatah security forces wantonly murder Israeli civilians, Bush's main foreign policy goal in his last year in office is to establish a Palestinian state.

WHILE BUSH argues that the Palestinians have to be shown what they can achieve if they eschew terror and accept Israel, he never mentions what price they must pay for their continued, open support for Israel's destruction and support for and involvement in the global jihad. In his treatment, then, of the Palestinian war against Israel and its central role in the global jihad, Bush has done more to undermine the coherence of his recognition of the challenges of the 21st century and his own legacy in shaping the free world's war against the forces of terror and jihad than anyone else.

Truman is today considered one of the great American presidents because his forthright clarity and consistent policies in office set the US on a steady course for victory against Soviet communism even as specific actions - like the Korean War - were deeply unpopular.

In his last year in office, Bush's central challenge is to clarify what he himself has allowed to become muddled about the nature of the current generational struggle. Unfortunately, though his commitment to Palestinian statehood, and his refusal to assert his own foreign policy against the wishes of a hostile bureaucracy, he calls to mind not Truman, but another American president who led his country at the cusp of another formative crisis. Like Bush, James Buchanan - the last president to serve before the Civil War - understood the nature of the gathering storm; yet rather than confront the dangers, he was overwhelmed by them.

For a time, George W. Bush was undoubtedly the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. That time has passed.

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

Iran takes the lead: Much to the dismay of many in the region and elsewhere, the sovereign Jewish state continues to exist—and to defend itself against those hurling rockets onto its soil. But fret not. Iran is working “behind the scenes” to try to rectify the situation. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki has talked to the secretary generals of the United Nations, Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and Arab League denouncing the Zionist regime’s brutal crimes against the innocent Palestinians, the Foreign Ministry press department reported on Sunday.

In his telephone conversations with the three officials, Mottaki insisted on the need to adopt an urgent plan for stopping Israel’s inhumane acts and halting its settlement constructions around Beit-ul-Moqaddas.

Iran’s top diplomat said the Zionist regime has become more imprudent after the Annapolis meeting.

Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea, the eighth secretary general of the United Nations, expressed “deep concern” over the Zionist regime’s misdeeds in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of construction works.

The OIC Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, said the regime’s crimes show that “Annapolis has failed” in its initial steps and could not do anything to solve the problems.

Mottaki also deplored any interference in the Lebanese internal affairs, saying that the Lebanese have enough “capacity” to reach a consensus on electing a president.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and Mottaki agreed on the necessity of a multidimensional formula for the Lebanon crisis

Israel gone; Christian power in Lebanon gone: “problems” solved.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:10 | link | comments

Not a pretty sight: Claudia Rosett casts a jaundiced eye at American foreign policy in these, the dying months of the Bush regime, and isn’t too impressed by what she sees. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

If American diplomacy were delivering on its promises, we'd be heading into boom times for peace and security. Instead, the new year begins with Washington foreign policy increasingly cocooned in a cloud of "soft power," trying to deflect threats through the wiles of diplomacy, the art of the deal. Welcome to the world of wishful thinking.

The irony is that with the gains in Iraq of the 2007 surge, the much-criticized toppling of Saddam Hussein is looking more and more like the signal success of Bush foreign policy.

It is on the rest of the chessboard, where America has been trying to go along to get along, that the real failures are now in the making. One by one, military options have been swept aside, and step by step, the quest for United Nations-style "consensus" has replaced U.S. leadership.

In 2002, President Bush described the regimes of Iran and North Korea as members of an axis of evil, their totalitarian ideologies destined for "history's unmarked graveyard of discarded lies." Today, with Hussein having in effect taken one for the team, the regimes of Iran and North Korea are just as evil, but appear destined to do pretty much what they want, as long as Washington can bottle and sell the product as diplomacy-in-progress.

Take North Korea's failure to meet the Dec. 31 deadline to come clean on the full extent of its nuclear programs. "Unfortunate" was the bland term with which State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey acknowledged this failure - as if it were an accident of fate, not a deliberate dodge by Pyongyang. Casey added, "The important thing is not whether we have the declaration by today," but that whenever it finally appears, it is "full and complete."

Actually, in the wheeling and dealing with Pyongyang, it matters quite a lot whether Kim Jong Il's regime makes the deadlines. North Korea has long experience making deals in which it promises better behavior in exchange for aid, then takes the largesse and cheats on the deal. That's exactly how the 1994 nuclear freeze deal went down the tubes during President Bill Clinton's second term: Kim raked in tribute from the West, and fed and fueled his military while an estimated one million to two million North Koreans starved to death. Now, following a North Korean nuclear test, the Bush administration is going down the same road. With every missed deadline shrugged off as "unfortunate," Washington sends the signal that we are not serious in our demands.

That message gets heard way beyond North Korea - which brings us to Iran, where U.S. policy has now entered the era of what might be called wishful estimating.

Following the release last month of an absurdly flawed and bizarrely worded National Intelligence Estimate downplaying Iran's interest in getting the nuclear bomb, Iran has been de facto downgraded as a threat. On the slim chance that, despite its rhetoric and obsessive focus on nuclear energy, Tehran actually had abandoned the bomb program the mullahs had been pursuing since the late 1980s, there could be no better opening for Iran to go full speed ahead on producing those bombs. Washington is taking a break.

Then there's nuclear-armed Pakistan, where Washington's wishful thinking last fall anointed Benazir Bhutto as the face of democracy and urged her return in the name of saving her country (and enhancing American security). This required wishful ignoring not only of the threats that on Dec. 27 cost Bhutto her life, but of her own record of failure and corruption scandals during two previous stints as prime minister - as well as her complicity during the 1990s in the clandestine program with which Pakistan acquired its nuclear bombs and missiles in the first place.

And of course there's the endless Palestinian "peace process," to which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has succumbed with a vengeance. Wishful diplomacy on that front has produced a Gaza Strip controlled by the terrorists of Hamas, and plans to pour billions more in aid into a Palestinian Authority that can guarantee nothing.

This may be the usual way of things during the final year of any lame-duck presidency. But this was the road to Sept. 11, and it is an approach that right now we can ill afford.

America doesn't have to wage war on every enemy on the planet, but appeasement and denial do not buy peace.

Not then. Not now. Not ever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:08 | link | comments

Bush in Yerushalayim: An editorial in the New York Sun “gets it.” Would that Bush did, too:

President Bush will be greeted in Israel this week as a hero of the global struggle against Islamist terror and a great friend of the Jewish state but also with concern about American policy in respect of Iran and the future borders between Israel and any Palestinian Arab state. The emerging American policy reflects a contradiction, especially even if one assumes, as we do not, that the Palestinians Arabs can reconcile their desire for a state with their hatred of Israel. Arguing about the future borders makes sense if one reckons that a proper peace treaty can be achieved.

Mr. Bush himself is down-playing expectations about the peace process he sought to revive at Annapolis, telling Israeli Television that he believes an agreement which would define the character of a Palestinian state could be reached within the year. That's more modest than a peace treaty. And his visit comes in the wake of the release of the National Intelligence Estimate that acted to diffuse much of the concern about Iran's nuclear weapons program and left Israelis wondering whether they would have to stand alone.

No doubt the president will try to reassure the leadership in Jerusalem. According to the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Bush told Israel's Channel 2 that an Iranian attack on Israel would lead to "World War III" and that military options were still on the table if for no other reason than that they increase the possibility of a diplomatic resolution. But it's hard to see how Mr. Bush will be able to do this while his administration serves, as he promised at Annapolis, as monitor and "judge" of both Israel's government and the Palestinian Authority in respect of the so-called road map.

Secretary Rice has just chastised Israel for its announcement that it will build 300 new apartments at Har Homa. So the administration is being led athwart Mr. Bush's own April 14, 2004, letter to Prime Minister Sharon offering the assurance that "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion." Har Homa is precisely one of the communities to which the Bush letter referred.

Meantime Egyptian security personnel are failing to block terrorists from smuggling cash and weapons into the Gaza district. Israel agreed to pull back from that border, the so-called Philadelphi corridor, as part of its general disengagement in 2005. It sought to satisfy demands for "a return to the 1967 border." Right now, the downside at the Gaza-Sinai border outweighs any benefits accrued to Israel for complying with the long standing wishes of the international community.

So Mr. Bush will arrive in Israel as a situation is being created in which Israel can do nothing right. Using the 1967 border model as regards Gaza has not worked; articulating a policy that would leave a few percentage points of the West Bank inside Israel runs into American opposition. No wonder the Syrians are advising their Arab brethren, who convened yesterday at Cairo to consider Syria's operations in Lebanon, that they ought not wager on America remaining a dominant power in the region. Its message, in a nutshell, was the better bet is Iran.

Mr. Bush can increase the odds that a bet on Iran will fail by avoiding the temptations to argue with Israel about apartment blocs and instead focusing on the amity that he and Prime Minister Sharon restored to relations between America and Israel, while emboldening the Israelis — and others — in respect of the wider struggle in which American and Israel stand together.

Can, but given his newfound “pragmatism,” he likely won’t.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:42 | link | comments

Leaving on a jet plane: This is the week George W. Bush will be winging to--and no doubt winging it it--the Middle East, doing his best to bring "peace" to that agitated region. As part of his send off, Condi Rice and the Foggy Bottom Pips will be singing him an updated version of an old 70s favourite:

Condi

Proved to much for the man.

(Too much for the man.)

So he’s leaving me back in Washington.

He said he’s going out to find

Ooh, what’s left of his 'trine.

The one he left behind

Not so long ago.

He’s leavin’,

On a midnight plane to Ramallah,

Seems he’s goin’ back

To a “realistic” state of mind.

He'll feel my presence there

On that midnight plane to Ramallah.

He knows he lives in this world—

The one where cars thirst for crude

(Crude, crude, crude, the cars do thirst for crude.)

 

He kept dreamin’

That he’d bring democracy.

But he sure found out the hard way

That dreams don’t always come true.

So he put his energies

Into building a terror state.

Yes, another one

To bother Jews.

Oh, yes he did,

He said he would

Be buildin’

Up a nation known as “Palestine.”

He’d rather give ‘em a state

Than listen to Arabs whine.

Go, gonna build, gonna build,
Gonna build that little state.
Gotta go, gonna build,
Gonna build,
Gonna build that little state…

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:31 | link | comments

Deflating Obama: In last week’s Globe and Mail, the normally sensible Margaret Wente was reduced to girlish gush at the prospect of slim black dude, Barack Obama, becoming president of the U.S. In today’s paper, Clifford Orwin, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, explains why Americans should be wary of Obama and his amorphous brand of “change”:

…Just what else does it [change] mean? Certainly that he differs personally from the typical candidate. His is a fresh young face, and a black one at that. He is "charismatic." He is also cool, which works wonders in politics everywhere these days; look what it did for Sarko. Yet so far he has offered only vague promises to lead America in a new direction, without articulating that direction. We know that he's the candidate of change because he tells us that, over and over. He also tells us that he can accomplish change because unlike Ms. Clinton, he's a uniter, not a divider. He'll excel at working together with the Republicans at working together with the Republicans. Beyond that, what? I disagree with John Edwards but his appeal is that you know where he stands. Mr. Obama's appeal (especially to Winfreyites) is that you don't.

Unless, of course you take the trouble to look up his voting record as a state legislator and senator. You won't find anything new there, just your typical left-wing Democrat, as comfortable as an old shoe. His only distinction is a hypothetical one: His claim that had he been a senator in 2002, he wouldn't have joined Hillary Clinton in voting to authorize the Iraq war.

Nor has Mr. Obama broken new ground in the course of the campaign (except perhaps for his impulsive suggestion that America might bomb the territory of its crucial and wobbly ally Pakistan). He's the feel-good candidate, and new ideas would only risk ruffling those good feelings.

Yes, Barack Obama's intelligent, but is he thoughtful? Indeed, is he even unthoughtful? Margaret Wente, writing in these pages last Thursday, likened Mr. Obama to Ronald Reagan in his ability to inspire optimism. Of Mr. Reagan, however, she went on to say, "you could have written his political philosophy on a paper napkin."

And on one of those little cocktail napkins, at that. Yet it proved a real advantage for Mr. Reagan that he cared about only a few issues but cared about them very much, for this yielded a clear set of priorities. Presidents don't need philosophies, they need agendas, and Mr. Reagan's "Morning in America" was all about enacting one. Barack Obama's agenda remains anybody's guess. In the blue skies of a campaign that's all about transparency hovers this rather large cloud of the opaque.

Yesterday I heard a sound bite in which Obama said he wanted to “perfect” America. If that’s what he stands for—trying to make everything perfect—he’s actually the scariest candidate in the race.

Here's another Obama sound bite. It's so "profound" that someone has put it on a t-shirt:

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

 Whining for “equal” time: So far, the reasons given for the CIC/Osgoode Hall 4 complaint against a Mark Steyn cover story in Maclean’s are:

·         Steyn’s suggestion that some “extremists” in Europe are “hot for jihad” (even though the words in quotation marks are the complainants', not Steyn's);

·         His citing an “obscure” Norwegian cleric, Mullah Krekar, who made an unfortunate comment about Euro-Muslims breeding like “mosquitoes”;

·         The complainants’ love of “free speech”.

In a letter to the editor in the Calgary Herald, David Liepert, a spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Calgary (and a Christian "revert"), offers another reason for the complaint (my bolds):

Re: "Squashing debate like mosquitoes," Mark Steyn, Opinion, Jan. 2 and "Topics for free public debate increasingly restrained," Nigel Hannaford, Opinion, Dec. 15.

It seems as if a calculated disinformation campaign is being waged against the Canadian Islamic Congress's human rights complaint against Maclean's. The issue isn't what Mark Steyn said, or that he chose to quote an obscure Norwegian imam to support his contention that Muslims breed too much.

The reason for the human rights complaint is simply that Maclean's chose to devote almost 5,000 words to his article and refused to allow Muslims anything more than a 250-word letter in response. We're left with the rest of you being manipulated into believing Steyn's contention that Krekar represents Canadian Muslims.

I hadn't even heard of Mullah Krekar before I read Steyn's article, and there's no way he can be characterized as a Muslim leader in Canada. As for the disinformation: Steyn has claimed the CIC's complaint is about what he said. That's not true. He's implied the complainants asked for money for themselves. That's not true. He said they waited five months. That's not true, either.

Muslims are standing up for free speech in Canada, and a polite and productive dialogue. We're requesting the right to represent ourselves at the table. Maclean's has refused to allow us to speak for ourselves. That's the reason for the complaint. We're happy to listen, but we want to talk, too.

My letter to the Herald:

David Liepert’s rationale for the complaint against Maclean’s magazine—that it gave Mark Steyn 5,000 words for a cover story while giving those who were offended by it a piddly 250-word letter to the editor—is risible. Freedom of speech is not a matter of word count. If it were, every publication in the county would have to be at least twice as fat, since it would be “balanced” by rebuttals from those who begged to differ with something or other they had read in a previous issue, and who were allowed equal space in which to respond.

Here’s how it usually works in a free society: people get to say things you may not agree with and would prefer not to hear, and you get to be offended. Generally speaking, you do not get “equal time” in a subsequent issue of the publication, nor is it obligated to “compensate” you for your hurt feelings.

If and when Mohamed Elmasry or one of the other complainants writes a book that Maclean’s deems worthy of a cover story, they, too, can expect the full 5,000 word treatment. Until then, they will have to settle for making their case to one or more human rights commissions—our national forums for those with hurt feelings. Barring that, I’m afraid they will have to make do with writing succinct “shocked and appalled” letters to the editor, like the rest of us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:19 | link | comments

Awry in Iran: Iran’s supreme holy rollah says the situation in Iran is “sensitive but not critical.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but reading between the somewhat cryptic totalitarian lines, one gets the feeling that something must be seriously amiss in the glorious Islamic republic, and the head mully-bully is trying to do some damage control. From Fars News:

If I were living in Iran, I don’t think those namby-pamby words would allay my concerns about the future.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:52 | link | comments

Don't miss: Rex Murphy's scathing, delicious evisceration of Canada's Thought Police and those who seek them out because something they've read has "hurt" their tender feelings. (link via steynonline)

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

Islam beckons: Sharia makes inroads in the U.K. From the Sunday Telegraph:

Oxford has become the latest place in Britain where Muslims have submitted an application to broadcast calls to prayer from a mosque.

Residents have urged the council to reject the request for a two-minute call three times a day, warning that it would turn the area into a Muslim ghetto.

However, elders at Oxford Central Mosque argue that it is part of their tradition.

Rezwana Rana, a spokesman for the mosque, said: "We don't want to tread on anyone's toes, but the area is very multicultural and we thought it would be an idea to have a call to prayer."

Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in the area, said: "It isn't a Muslim-dominated area, but I think over a period of time there would be a population shift if this went ahead."

Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and leading member of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that most residents get accustomed to the call to prayer.

The imam said cities including Bradford, Blackburn, Manchester, Bolton, Coventry and Birmingham allowed the prayers. They are restricted to "sociable hours" and to a maximum decibel level.

You thought it would “be an idea,” did you?  Well, as long as the calls are “sociable” and not too loud, I guess it’s okay.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:14 | link | comments

No right to the “right”: Rachel Neuwirth examines the media’s renewed interest in the Palestinians’ so-called “right of return.” Examines it, and deftly rips it—along with the “right”—to shreds. From the American Thinker:

…The international community has not recognized or enforced a "right of return" for most of the very numerous non-Palestinian refugee communities throughout the world. The list of refugee populations who have been forced from their homelands and whose lands have been seized without compensation because of wars and revolutions within the past 100 years is endless. The more than 850,000 Jews who have either been expelled or fled from Arab and other Muslim countries since the Arab world initiated hostilities against the Jews of Israel-Palestine in 1947; the fifteen million Germans expelled from Pomerania, Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia  by Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War II; the two million ethnic Greeks and Turks who were expelled from either Greece or Turkey in a "population exchange" administered by the League of Nations in 1922; the additional 200,000 Greeks who were expelled from northern Cyprus by the Turkish military invasion in 1974; the millions of Hindus who fled the newly created Muslim state of "Pakistan" and the millions of Muslims who fled what remained of India to Pakistan following the partition of India in 1947; the millions of Russians who fled Russia after the Communist takeover of that country in 1917 for other European countries or the United States; and the millions of Cubans, Vietnamese and Laotians who fled their homelands for the United States after the Communist take-overs of these countries, have all been denied repatriation, the return of the vast amounts of property they were forced to leave behind, or even compensation for their lost property.

Why should the Palestinian Arabs be considered a uniquely special case, with more rights than other refugees from wars and/or revolutions?

 

Last but certainly not least, implementation of the "right of return" demand for Palestinian Arabs would force the relocation of millions of people, most of them refugees or the descendants of refugees themselves, who have been resettled in the course of sixty years on land that is claimed by the Palestinian Arabs. The "return" of four million alleged "refugees," actually the descendants, mainly third and fourth generation, of people who once were or claimed to be refugees, who have been trained from birth to hate Israel, would result in a massive internal insurgency against the state, followed by the occupation of Israel by hostile Arab armies and the probable extermination of its Jewish population.  Indeed, there is considerable evidence that this is precisely what most "right of return" advocates have in mind.

 

It is long overdue for the libel of an Israeli or Zionist "original sin" against the Palestinian Arabs to be discredited, along with the supposed Palestinian Arab "right of return," which is grounded in this false "narrative." There can be no peace between Arabs and Israelis before the lies are dispelled, and people on both sides, as well as the international media, academic experts, the world's governments and international organizations all acknowledge the truth.

 

The truth? What a quaint notion. Once OPEC discovered its muscle back in 1970s, the truth flew out the window, and has been mouldering under a huge pile of bullsh*t ever since.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:55 | link | comments

Core chore: Ha'aretz reports that Israel and the P.A. will be forming a special committe to tackle "core issues."

Like, for instance, the Jews' right to sovereignty over their homeland, even though it has been claimed for all time by Dar al Islam? (Surely not.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments

“I think that I will never see/A vision lovlier than my tree…”: Word is that Anne Frank’s diary is going to be done up as a musical, and one can only imagine—and shudder—at the kind of  treacle and preachy uplift that may be coming our way. When it comes to the young diarist, I’m of the Cythia Ozick school of thought. In an acerbic essay for the New Yorker, Ozick derided the way the Anne Frank story has been “de-Judaized” and transformed into a tale of a spunky teen who, in the midst of a maelstrom, never failed to be optimistic and see the good in people. (The famous line plucked like a ripe cherry from the diary’s other, more bitter fruit: “Despite everything, I believe people are good at heart.”) That interpretation, wrote Ozick, was both a grievous misreading of Anne’s actual words, and an unconscionable insult to the real Anne Frank, who died a horrible death in a horrible place because some people are bad at heart, and because she was a Jew.

Here’s a song that should be in Anne Frank, the Musical, but, for obvious reasons, won’t be:

It’s true,

It’s true,

I really was a Jew.

The Nazis went and murdered me

And lots of others, too.

It’s true, it’s true.

They hated all the Jews.

They said that we were poisoning the gene pool—

Such grim news.

 

So Adolf Hitler worked out how to deal with this pollution.

A little plan he liked to call his ultimate “solution.”

And that is why they came around and put us in some trucks.

And I died in Bergen-Belsen,

And as for human kind—it sucks!..

There. That should put a lid on the preachy uplift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:29 | link | comments

Timing is everything: George W. Bush says America would defend Israel if Iran attacks.

Good to know, Mr. President. But it might be a good idea to defang the maniacal mullahs before they have the means to attack and reduce Israel, a "one-bomb" state, to a big pile of radioactive rubble.

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

The Islam Issue: Apologetics galore and, yes, even some crticism in today's NYT Book Review.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

Chick power: U.K. communities secretary Hazel Blears is hoping to curtail “extremism” by sparking a sexual revolution within the Muslim community. She wants to teach submissive women to stand up for themselves and just say no to radical clerics who would set their young’uns down the path to martyrdom. From the times online:

MUSLIM women are to be sent on leadership and assertiveness courses to help to prevent Islamic extremism.

In an attempt to stop young Muslims being seduced by Al-Qaeda, women will be sent on training courses designed for FTSE 100 managers to give them the skills and confidence to confront fanatics.

Amid fears that extremists are becoming more sophisticated in their recruitment, Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, has concluded that a key way to stop extremist ideas further permeating Muslim communities is to give “the silent majority” a stronger voice.

She is to publish a good practice guidance document which will say that “resilient communities can only exist where women are playing a full and active part”.

Blears will tell local authorities to use part of a £70m government fund set up to combat extremism to pay for the courses in confidence building, communication and mediation skills.

Muslim women will be offered work placements with business leaders and top athletes to imbue assertiveness and leadership and help them to advance their careers. Funding will be available to set up local Muslim women’s groups to provide a “safe space” where they can discuss their concerns. The plan is likely to attract criticism from some Muslim men who will see it as a threat to cultural traditions about the role of women in society.

Blears believes that Muslim women have “untapped potential” to become a voice of moderation in communities targeted by fanatics. Half of all Muslim women have never worked and the government believes that improving their educational and job prospects will boost their influence.

A Whitehall source said: “Muslim women can have a unique moral authority at the heart of families as sisters, mothers and friends and must be supported to play a greater role in tackling extremist ideology.”

The plans have already provoked a mixed response among Muslims. The Muslim Council of Britain accused the government of trying to turn women into government spies. “The government at first wanted our imams to act as spies on young British Muslims and now they seem to want Muslim women to do the same,” said Inayat Bunglawala, the council’s assistant secretary-general.

Shaista Gohir, chief executive of the Muslim Women’s Network, said: “It’s not about Muslim women becoming investigators, it’s about giving them a greater role in Muslim public life.”

Professional motivational firms will run role-play courses in which Muslim women will learn how to confront fanatics. Some of the courses will be run by actors who are expected to pose as radicals espousing violent jihadist arguments, whom the women will be taught to challenge effectively. Mothers will also be offered confidence-building courses to help them speak out if they see their children being wooed by extremist preachers.

The courses will help young women to have the confidence to challenge young radical men in debate.

The Home Office estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 British Muslims support Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups. The document, to be published this month, will express concern that extremists are targeting young people aged between 16 and 35.

“Extremists’ operation methods and use of technology are becoming ever more sophisticated. They are exploiting ungoverned spaces such as the internet, bookshops and cafes and using new media to put across slick and seductive messages,” a draft of the paper says.

“This is about giving the silent majority a stronger voice in their communities and equipping people with the skills and strength to withstand the messages of extremists preaching division and hatred.”

Muslims have three times the unemployment rate of the general population, with more than half economically inactive.

Empowering women is a terrific idea, but British authorities are going to have their work cut out for them since, under the terms of sharia, Allah’s law, women are called on to be doubly submissive. And for much of population, both male and female, Allah’s law is bound to be far more compelling than Blears's assertiveness training.

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

Fair warning: Ayaan Hirsi Ali reviews a new book about radical Islam for the Sunday New York Times:

Several authors have published books on radical Islam’s threat to the West since that shocking morning in September six years ago. With “The Suicide of Reason,” Lee Harris joins their ranks. But he distinguishes himself by going further than most of his counterparts: he considers the very worst possibility — the destruction of the West by radical Islam. There is a sense of urgency in his writing, a desire to shake awake the leaders of the West, to confront them with their failure to understand that they are engaged in a war with an adversary who fights by the law of the jungle. Skip to next paragraph

Harris, the author of “Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History,” devotes most of his book to identifying and distinguishing between two kinds of fanaticism. The first is Islamic fanaticism, a formidable enemy in the struggle for cultural survival. In Harris’s view, this fanaticism has acted as a “defense mechanism,” shielding Islam from the pressures of the changing world around it and allowing it to expand into territories and cultures where it had previously been unknown.

With few exceptions, Harris sees Islamic expansion as permanent. Although this point is arguable, he bravely attempts to make the case that the entry of Islam into another culture produces changes on every level, from political to personal: “Wherever Islam has spread, there has occurred a total and revolutionary transformation in the culture of those conquered or converted.”

In describing the imperialist nature of Islam, Harris suggests that it is distinct from the Roman, British and French empires. He views Islamic imperialism as a single-minded expansion of the religion itself; the empire that it envisions is governed by Allah. In this sense, the idea of jihad is less about the inner struggle for peace and justice and more about a grand mission of conversion. It should be said, however, that Harris’s argument is incomplete, since he does not address the spread of Christianity in the Roman, British and French empires.

The expansion of Islam is perhaps more potent than the expansion of the Christian empires (including Rome after Constantine) because the concept of separating the sacred from the profane has never been acceptable in Islam the way it has been in Christianity. The Romans, the British and the French went about annexing large parts of the world more for earthly or material gain than for spiritual dominance. Under these empires, the clergy was allowed to propagate its faith as long as it did not jeopardize imperial interests.

Harris goes on to argue that the Muslim world, since it is governed by the law of the jungle, makes group survival paramount. This explains in part the willingness of Muslims to become martyrs for the larger community, the umma — uniting peoples separated by geographical boundaries, with different cultures, heritages and languages. According to Harris, this sense of solidarity is sustainable only with the weapon of fanaticism, which obligates each member of the umma to convert infidels and to threaten those who attempt to leave with death. That is, the aim of Muslim culture, so different from that of the West, is both to preserve and to convert, and this is what enables it to spread across the globe.

The second fanaticism that Harris identifies is one he views as infecting Western societies; he calls it a “fanaticism of reason.” Reason, he says, contains within itself a potential fatality because it blinds Western leaders to the true nature of Islamic-influenced cultures. Westerners see these cultures merely as different versions of the world they know, with dominant values similar to those espoused in their own culture. But this, Harris argues, is a fatal mistake. It implies that the West fails to appreciate both its history and the true nature of its opposition.

Nor, he points out, is the failure linked to a particular political outlook. Liberals and conservatives alike share this misperception. Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz agreed, Harris writes, “that you couldn’t really blame the terrorists, since they were merely the victims of an evil system — for Chomsky, American imperialism, for Wolfowitz, the corrupt and despotic regimes of the Middle East.” That is to say, while left and right may disagree on the causes and the remedies, they both overlook the fanaticism inherent in Islam itself. Driven by their blind faith in reason, they interpret the problem in a way that is familiar to them, in order to find a solution that fits within their doctrine of reason. The same is true for such prominent intellectuals as Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama.

Harris does not regard Islamic fanaticism as a deviancy or a madness that affects a few Muslims and terrifies many. Instead he argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam. “The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors…

Sounds like a “must-read” to me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:38 | link | comments

Victims du jour: While still doing its bit for those who hold most-favoured victim status with the left (and the Islamists), the Ceeb has in recently happened upon a whole new set of Zion-victims—the Bedouins.

An israelinsider piece explains what’s behind the left’s sudden “discovery” of this ancient tribe (but, go figure, of only that part of it living inside Israel).

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

The best laid plans…: The rationale for the great Gaza disengagement scheme, we were told at its outset, was twofold: to put the brakes on demands for further concessions from Israel; and to “improve” Israel’s image. Now that the dust has settled (aside from the dust being churned up by all those “homemade” Palestinian rockets, that is) it looks like disengagement is zero for two. From CSN:

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Contrary to the expectations of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, international pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians increased and Israel's image in the foreign media deteriorated following Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, according to the results of a new study.

At the time of the disengagement, the Israeli leadership expected to reap public relations and media benefits from its unilateral decision to uproot 9,000 Israelis from their homes in all 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank. They also hoped that the pullout would lessen demands from the international community for further territorial concessions.

(In fact at the time Sharon's advisor, Dov Weisglass, said the disengagement would put the peace process in the "deep freeze" for years to come.)

But that has not been the case, according to the results of a new study conducted by Dr. Tamir Sheafer and Itai Gabai from the Departments of Politics and Communications & Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

During the month leading up to and including the disengagement, Israel's image improved, Sheafer told Cybercast News Service, but during the half year following the pullout, it actually deteriorated, he said.

"Improving Israel's image and lowering the demands for further concessions were among the goals for the disengagement," Sheafer said. The opposite actually happened.

"We found that one of the main reasons for this phenomenon is that Israel continues to be viewed by the world as a conquering state," Sheafer said in a statement...

Yeah, ‘cause everyone knows that we Jews are really into “conquest.” That’s why the Jewish flag, with the Magen David, flies over such an immense portion of the globe.

Which leads me to suspect that one of the main reasons for "this phenomenon" (the preception that Israel is a "conquerer") is that the world, quite simply, is bananas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:42 | link | comments

Even more enjoyable than the thought of Little Joe the 300-lb gorilla waiting for a bus: Mark Steyn riffing on multiculturalism. (hat tip: NY Nana)

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:43 | link | comments (1)

Star turn: Once in a while the Toronto star shocks the bejeezus out of me by publishing someone who has a clue. Here, for example, is Leslie Gelb reviewing that vile piece of Judenhass, The Israel Lobby:

…It's true, for instance, that the lobby has made America's long-standing $3 billion annual aid program to Israel untouchable and indiscussible. By the same token, there isn't much discussion about the $2 billion yearly aid package for Egypt. The United States regards this $5 billion as insurance against an Egyptian-Israeli war, and it's cheap at double the price.

Instinctively and without being lobbied, American presidents don't want to gang up on Israel, since virtually every other state does so.

While most countries hammer Israel for crackdowns on the Palestinians, they hardly ever criticize Palestinian terrorists or other Arab terrorists and say little about the misdeeds of Arab and Muslim dictators. When Israel crosses certain important lines, as when it expanded Jewish settlements into Palestinian areas like the West Bank and Gaza, Washington usually expresses displeasure in public, even more so in private. Mearsheimer and Walt just don't mention that.

More troubling, they don't seriously review the facts of the two most critical issues to Israel and the lobby – arms sales to Arab states and the question of a Palestinian state – matters on which the American position has consistently run counter to the so-called all-powerful Jewish lobby.

And on the policy issue that has counted most to Israel and the lobby – preventing the U.S. from accepting a Palestinian state prior to a negotiated Israel-Palestinian deal – it's fair to say Washington has quietly sided with the Palestinians for a long time.

President George W. Bush finally said this publicly in 2001. If the lobby and Israel called the shots the way Mearsheimer and Walt and so many other Middle East experts insist, the United States would not have sold all those arms to the Arabs and never would have leaned in private toward a Palestinian state.

As part of their incomplete picture, the two authors also minimize the lobbying influence of the Saudis and the oil companies, the other major forces on Middle East policy.

The Saudis, along with the Egyptians, have been significant voices in Washington, arguing for a Palestinian state. Moreover, if Mearsheimer and Walt had asked policy participants over the years, they would have been told that the Saudis are the single most potent regional voice in American policy toward the Gulf.

In any event, the real issue is not whether the Israel lobby controls policy toward Israel and the Middle East. All strong lobbies aspire to exercise control. The real issue is whether the Jewish lobby's power seriously undermines or damages American interests.

As it happens, America's commitment to Israel rests far more on moral and historical grounds than on strict strategic ones. Israel does not harm American security interests to anywhere near the degree that Mearsheimer and Walt claim it does. And the major reality is that despite whatever difficulties the Israeli-American relationship might cause, the United States is helping to protect one of the few nations in the world that share American values and interests, a true democracy.

This is the greatest strategic bond between the two countries. And not to be overlooked is the fact that when push has come to shove, Israel has always defended itself.

My prediction: In coming days expect to see one or more letters to the editor from “progressive” readers who think Gelb’s a Zionist goon and that Mearslimer are on to something.

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

Zoocapades: If you’re thinking of visiting your local zoo this weekend, you might want to think again. From the Wall Street Journal:

When an escaped tiger killed a San Francisco zoo visitor on Christmas, it was the biggest blow yet to an industry that has been working hard to improve its reputation.

The problem: Some animals aren't cooperating.

In 2007, at least 10 animal escapes from U.S. zoos generated press coverage. Fugitives include a cheetah that scaled a fence at the St. Louis Zoo, a peacock that walked out of the Denver Zoo and took up residence on the front porch of a nearby house, and a geriatric spider monkey named Rena who jimmied open her cage door at the Dallas Zoo before being recaptured.

Still at large: an African white-backed vulture with a nine-foot wing span that squeezed through a fence in Dallas. "The general feeling was that she could survive out in the wild," says Karen Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the zoo, adding that the search is ongoing.

Most animal escapes don't result in injuries to people, and the critters are usually captured and returned home. But zoo officials say recent breakouts have forced them to talk about safety at a time when they would rather discuss topics like improved facilities and efforts to save endangered species.

The nation's largest zoos are in the midst of a public-relations campaign led by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums -- a trade group that accredits zoos -- to counter recent accusations by animal-rights groups that captive creatures are mistreated. They're launching educational campaigns about the animal aging process, for example, to show that when an animal dies it is often due to natural causes. They're also talking publicly about incidents, including escapes, that they might not have disclosed in the past.

When an alligator named Reggie scaled a wall at the Los Angeles Zoo last August, spokesman Jason Jacobs says he decided to go public, even though the event occurred before the zoo opened. He invited reporters to come see Reggie, telling the Associated Press, "it proves to us that he's a very smart, healthy gator."

The AZA has also beefed up its crisis-management system. In 2006, it hired Steve Feldman from Powell Tate, a Washington PR firm, where he handled responses to plane crashes and helped environmental groups beset by scandal. Crisis-management courses are now taught at the AZA's training program in Wheeling, W. Va.

When tests determined the May death of an eight-year-old hooded capuchin monkey at the Denver Zoo was caused by bubonic plague, spokeswoman Anna Bowie says she "put out a press release and did hold a press conference with our veterinarian" to inform the public. "You hear bubonic plague and people think, 'oh my god, black plague, bring out your dead,'" says Ms. Bowie. She says the zoo worked with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to tell reporters that the monkey got plague by eating an infected squirrel, and that humans are not at risk.

Ironically, many image-rattling events can be partly traced to zoos' past attempts to improve their images. Pressured by animal-rights activists, zoos shifted over the past few decades to naturalistic habitats that are seen as more humane. Sparsely furnished cages were replaced with vegetated outdoor areas featuring few barriers beyond a trench at the perimeter.

Fewer fetters means more opportunity to flap, climb or jump away. It also tends to mean higher insurance premiums. "The more natural you make an exhibit, the more natural behaviors the animal shows," says David Orndorff, director of the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke, Va., where a giant Burmese mountain tortoise escaped in August. That was one year after Oops, a Japanese macaque monkey, went on the lam for a week.

Zookeepers say they learn through trial and error what enclosures are effective. When escapes do occur, zoo officials say the public and the media can be overly harsh. In 2003, a 300-lb gorilla named Little Joe fled Boston's Franklin Park Zoo and accosted a child before he was apprehended at a bus stop. John Linehan, the CEO of Franklin Park's parent organization, Zoo New England, says a TV reporter pressured him to euthanize the gorilla; he declined. "It's not the animal's fault," Mr. Linehan says…

They learn through “trial and error”? Somehow that doesn’t exactly inspire a great deal of confidence in their ability to keep the critters away from the visitors (who are no doubt viewed by many of the critters--including Reggie the alligator--as “lunch”). I have to say, though, the idea of Little Joe the 300-lb gorilla waiting for a bus—kind of funny.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:42 | link | comments

Terrorists speed ahead: There will be no Dakar car rally this year. It’s been cancelled due to threats of terrorism. From the Guardian:

The annual Dakar rally, arguably the most dangerous endurance event in world sport, was cancelled yesterday on the eve of the race when the organisers said they could not guarantee the competitors' safety due to the threat of terrorism.

It is the first time in the 30-year history of the race, in which cars, motorbikes and trucks battle their way across the Sahara desert, that it has been cancelled. The organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), said the threat of an attack, and the murder last December of a French family on holiday in Mauritania that has been blamed on al-Qaida-linked terrorists, meant they could not run the risk.

In a statement, ASO said: "Based on the current international political tension and the murder of four French tourists ... but also mainly the direct threats launched directly against the race by terrorist organisations, no other decision but the cancellation of the sporting event could be taken." It added that they planned to hold the race in 2009.

The race was due to start in Lisbon today and finish in Dakar, Senegal, on January 20. It would have seen around 600 racers tackle daytime temperatures that reach 40C (104F) and freezing cold at night as they travel 5,760 miles through Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. In previous years, the race had also gone through Mali, but it had already been excluded this year when the west African country's foreign ministry warned of instability in the region.

The appeal of the race is precisely its biggest weakness: the course weaves through remote scrubland, expansive deserts and mountainous dunes, making it almost impossible to provide security.

Mauritania's foreign ministry said yesterday that the cancellation was unnecessary as the country had committed a 3,000-man force to protect the racers. The French sports minister, Bernard Laporte, said that although the cancellation would have "disastrous economic consequences" for host countries, security concerns had to come first.

A spokesman for Mauritania's president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, joined other African officials in condemning the decision, saying that "despite the isolated cases of killings, Mauritania remained a safe, welcoming, hospitable and open country".

Carlos Sainz, a double world rally champion and winner of five stages in the Dakar rally last year, expressed his disappointment at the news: "The cancellation of such a great event is bad for the world of sport," he said...

The “world of sport,” a.k.a. Dar al Sport.

 

Bad for Dar al Harb, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:23 | link | comments (1)

Kenyan kapers: What's going on in Kenya? Apparently, we're only getting part of the story:

The papers all tell us it’s “tribal,”

Like some stuff that occurs in the bible.

But more than a smidge

Has to do with  relig’.

Though to say that out loud is like libel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:08 | link | comments

Vulpine survivor: Benazir Bhutto’s widower is casting doubt on the Pakistan government's ability to conduct an effective examination into his wife’s murder. “One does not put the fox in charge of the henhouse,” he says.

He should know, his being a fox and all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:57 | link | comments

Colour blinded: There must be something wrong with me because I find myself strangely unmoved by Oprah’s beamish boy, Barack Obama. Maybe it’s because nothing he has said so far has convinced me that he has a clue about what’s really going on in the world. Maybe it’s the sight of all the others all a-swoon, as if Barack were the second coming of JFK.

Anyway, that’s me. The Globe and Mail, in the guise of political scribe John Ibbitson, has no such hesitations. The centrepiece of today’s front page (“Obama’s rise, America’s renewal”—give me a break) has Ibbitson succumbing to Obama, mostly because he’s so impressed that American might actually put someone who’s half-Black into the White House. To Ibbitson, Obama’s Iowa victory betokens “a milestone in maturing.”

Big whoop. Who cares about his—or any other candidate’s—race, colour, or gender? That should be immaterial. What's most crucial: does he/she have the wherewithal to deal with the jihad?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments

The great firewall of China: China may have loosened the bonds of totalitarianism to the extent that Mao and Cho would no longer recognize the joint. But make no mistake—this is not a free society. From the Guardian:

It was the internet story of 2007, the website that brought you sneezing pandas, laughing babies, an epic battle on the African savannah and a guest appearance by Tony Blair in a video starring George Bush's dog.

But for any web surfers in China, these and other gems purveyed by the video-sharing phenomenon YouTube look likely to become impossible to access, after the authorities signalled yesterday that they would no longer tolerate the "broadcast of degenerate thinking" on the internet.

In a move apparently aimed at YouTube and scores of other smaller rivals, the Chinese authorities announced that all video-sharing websites must have official government approval before they can be accessed by Chinese surfers. New rules governing online content announced by the state administration of radio, film and television also stipulate that from the end of January only state-owned or controlled companies would be given licences to upload video in China.

"Those who provide internet video services should insist on serving the people ... and abide by the moral code of socialism," say the new guidelines. Licensed companies would be responsible for upholding national security, maintaining a "healthy online environment" and would be required to ban any videos that damage the country's reputation.

The upshot could be severe for China's 150 million internet users, who can now expect content to be dominated by footage that helps "promote overall social progress and harmony" and a "socialist morality"; think party congresses, military march-pasts and gymnastic medal hopes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

China, which now has the second largest number of internet users behind the United States, already enforces severe restrictions on web content, using its so-called "great firewall" to block websites and information deemed controversial.

The regime has a small army of up to 30,000 internet "monitors" who police the online community in China, rapidly erasing critical comment from chatrooms and bulletin boards or patrolling internet bars watching for console sleight of hand.

The crackdown is the product of Chinese government concern about the rapid growth in Web 2.0 sites, which allow the country's technically savvy youth to distribute homemade videos, photos and opinions to the rest of the world over the internet.

But even though Beijing severely restricts Chinese media outlets, it has been reluctant to strike too hard against dotcoms because of their growing economic importance. Online video has exploded in popularity inside China in recent years, and the country now boasts more than 500 websites that allow people to put their own video on to the internet.

The new rules are similar to those that China already enforces on online news providers, where only a select number of licensed companies can create their own content in addition to the officially sanctioned state news channels. Rules have also been drawn up which target the elimination of subversive content and promote "civilised" news and information…

See, in China they don’t need any HRCs since the government tells everyone what is—and is not—acceptable.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:03 | link | comments

Yummy totalitarianisms: I know they’re a bunch of fanatical, messianic thugs. But you have to admire their singular—and delightfully demented—way with words. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned against any act of aggression against the Islamic Republic.

“No one can find the slightest sign of warmongering in this nation and in the elected administration, but this peace-loving nation will crush any aggressor in such a way that the intention of the aggression would be removed from his mind,” Ayatollah Khamenei told army commanders in the city of Yazd on Friday.

And Iran will continue its peaceful activities in various areas, the Supreme Leader declared.

He also praised the bravery of Yazd Province soldiers during the Saddam Hussein regime’s imposed war (1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war).

The Supreme Leader lauded Iranians’ “numerous qualifications” in various areas, saying, “This nation, the late Imam (Khomeini), the exalted martyrs, and the Islamic Revolution’s great ideals deserve more diligence on the part of the armed forces.”

“Conveying history-making messages is not possible without perseverance and self-sacrifice, and the great nation of Iran has managed to do this through the faith, determination, and diligence of its youth,” noted the Leader.

He also voiced satisfaction with the discipline and development of the armed forces.

“The Iranian nation and the armed forces should increase their strength and alertness as a sign of their vigilance.”…

These guys make Josef Goebbels look like an amateur. And that line about this "peace-loving nation" determined to "crush any aggressor"--absolutely priceless!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:23 | link | comments

Benazir Bhutto’s “moil”: Three words I’m sure you never expected to see strung together.  From the Jewish Chronicle:

Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader assassinated last week, has been fondly recalled by one man who met her, the former chazan of Woodside Park Synagogue in North London, the Rev Michael Plaskow.

“It was an unusual experience,” he said. “She came to my home when I performed the circumcision on the baby son of her sister. Muslims in London even now ask Jewish mohelim to do their babies.”

Mr Plaskow, who retired to Netanya after 43 years at the synagogue, said: “I was very impressed with her manner. She was a very educated lady and spoke beautiful English. She told me she had Jewish friends at school and college and she hoped that Jews and Muslims could live at peace together.”

She also returned the next day when he changed the baby’s dressing.

He recalled explaining the significance of the mezuzah and the spicebox and candlesticks in his cabinet — but not the actual year of the meeting, although he believed Ms Bhutto was still at Oxford University at the time.

“I didn’t know a lot at the time about the politics in her area. I just knew she was a well-known figure even then.”

He said of her death: “It was tragic. Her father and two brothers were assassinated. When it happened in Israel with Rabin, it was also a terrible thing.”…

Muslims in London get a Jew to “do the deed”? Who knew?

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

“Jewophobia”: As David Horowitz writes, it’s all the rage:

There are six times as many hate crimes committed against Jews in America as against Muslims. This, notwithstanding the fact that no Jews have been seen flying airplanes into tall buildings with the intention of murdering tens of thousands of Americans. There are no Jewish leaders calling for the obliteration of America. Moreover, no Jews can be found on street corners calling for the obliteration of the Arab Middle East.

So how to explain that a people more victimized throughout history and more threatened in the present is the target of more hate crimes in America than any other religious group. Well, that is one explanation. The other is that a chorus of Jew-haters -- Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, Mearsheimer and Walt, Alex Cockburn, Justin Raimondo, Cindy Sheehan and a zillion Muslim fanatics have been spreading blood libels against Jews for the last few years with impunity, all the while hysterical that Muslims are in danger. Link a terrorist to the religion that inspires him and you're an Islamo-phobe. Accuse Jews of controlling the American government and you're a courageous speaker.

Whatever you want to call it--Jewophobia, Judenhass, antisemitism or anti-Zionism—it’s the same old “longest hatred.”

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

Naifs on top: According to the pundits, by voting for Obama and Huckabee yesterday, Iowans were opting for the candidates who represent "change."

Too bad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:29 | link | comments

Mail call: Letter in the Calgary Herald by Alnasir Kanji, Calgary:

Re: "Squashing debate like mosquitoes," Mark Steyn, Opinion, Jan. 2.

Quoting an obscure Scandinavian cleric and implying those views somehow represent the views of 1.3 billion Muslims is as disingenuous as if I were to quote the views of a Pat Robertson, or an Ernst Zundel, as representative of Christian views on Islam and Judaism respectively.

These self-styled leaders may have their own flock of "true believers," but their xenophobic and ill-informed views are certainly not representative of the diverse, pluralistic, respectful and tolerant views of the adherents of the world's major monotheistic faiths.

Freedom of speech and informed debate come with a responsibility to ensure one is reasonably well-informed, states one's arguments in an appropriate context, supported by relevant facts, and is respectful of the views of others. Well-informed debate on any topic (and without restriction) is the hallmark of a civilized, sophisticated, confident and inclusive society. Xenophobic rantings stem from an ignorant, insecure and simplistic view of the world.

Mark Steyn's use of the word "infidel" to describe himself and other non-Muslim writers is inaccurate and, it seems to me, used deliberately to foster his "us against them" agenda. Christians, Jews, Muslims and other adherents of monotheistic faiths are described in the Qur'an as "ahl-al-kitab" (people of the book). Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad are all bringers of God's message to mankind. No Muslim (with the possible exception of fanatical ideologues) would describe Steyn as an infidel. However, if he wishes to describe himself as such, I will defend his right to do so. In this country, we do believe in free speech.

We do? Tell it to the HRCs.

Thanks, Alnasir, for letting us “infidels” (or do you prefer the term “kafirs”?) know that Jews and Christians are “people of the book,” and that Islam recognized all those prophets. Funny how you left out the part about how we’re “dhimmis”—lesser “book people” since we messed up our own doctrines and don’t acknowledge Islam's superior, final book—and that all the prophets you mention are ipso facto Muslim by virtue of their doing religion correctly.

Letter e-mailed to the Calgary Herald, by me:

Letter-writer Alnasir Kanji criticizes Mark Steyn for citing the words of “obscure Scandanavian cleric” Mullah Krekar. “Obscure” may not be the most appropriate word to describe someone who has his own detailed Wikipedia entry, who featured prominently in Bruce Bawer’s critically-acclaimed book, While Europe Slept, and who has been the focus of a great deal of media attention in Norway, where he has lived since the early 1990s, due to his complaints about non-Muslims in his adopted country, and his alleged connections to terrorist organizations. Hence, it may be accurate to describe events  in far-off Norway as being “obscure”—at least to us here in Canada—but the mullah himself is quite famous (indeed, infamous).

As for Kanji’s contention that the Krekar is as marginalized and out of the mainstream as “a Pat Robertson or an Ernst Zundel,” that is largely irrelevant. The fact is that it isn’t the “mainstream” that is persuading young men in Europe and elsewhere to wage “jihad” and become martyrs for their faith; it is the small but influential group of radical clerics—some obscure, some better known—who have foisted their own extreme version of religion on a highly-suggestible, extremely vulnerable segment of society.

Kanji accuses Steyn of fostering a xenophobic “‘us against them’ agenda.” That’s not what he was doing. Rather, he was discussing the xenophobic “us against them” agenda of radical Muslim clerics whose toxic ideology poses a clear and present threat throughout the world to both “mainstream” Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:55 | link | comments

Sweet surrender: Van and the band perform Tupelo Honey, circa 1995. (Van doesn't come in until the third verse.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments (1)

It’s the feud, dude: One reason why al Jazeera has been heralded as the Arab world’s answer to CNN –aside from the shmancy sets and polished Western-style reportage—has been because of its propensity for dissing the Saudis. Turn out that such sauciness had nothing to do with A-J’s commitment to journalistic integrity and free speech (such Western concepts!)  but was the result of a squabble the Saudis were having with Qatar, the tiny but egregiously wealthy oil emirate that funds and hosts the channel. Now that Qatar and the Saudis have resolved their differences, criticizing the Holy Mosque Custodians is no longer de rigueur. In fact, it seems to be verboten. From the IHT:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: When a Saudi court sentenced a young woman to 200 lashes in November after she pressed charges against seven men who had raped her, the case provoked outrage and headlines around the world, including in the Middle East.

But not at Al Jazeera, the Arab world's leading satellite television channel, seen by 40 million people. The station's silence was especially noteworthy because until recently, and unlike almost all other Arab news outlets, Al Jazeera had long been willing — eager, in fact — to broadcast fierce criticisms of Saudi Arabia's rulers.

For the past three months Al Jazeera, which once infuriated the Saudi royal family with its freewheeling newscasts, has treated the kingdom with kid gloves, media analysts say.

The newly cautious tone appears to have been dictated to Al Jazeera's management by the rulers of Qatar, where Al Jazeera has its headquarters. Although those rulers established the channel a decade ago in large part as a forum for critics of the Saudi government, they now seem to feel they cannot continue to alienate Saudi Arabia — a fellow Sunni nation — in light of the threat from Iran across the Gulf.

The specter of Iran's nuclear ambitions may be particularly daunting to tiny Qatar, which also is the site of a major American military base.

The new policy is the latest chapter in a gradual domestication of Al Jazeera, once reviled by American officials as little more than a terrorist propaganda outlet. Al Jazeera's broadcasts no longer routinely refer to Iraqi insurgents as the "resistance," or victims of American firepower as "martyrs."

The policy also illustrates the way the Arab media, despite the new freedoms introduced by Al Jazeera itself a decade ago, are still often treated as political tools by the region's autocratic rulers.

"The gulf nations now feel they are all in the same boat, because of the threat of Iran, and the chaos of Iraq and America's weakness," said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "So the Qataris agreed to give the Saudis assurances about Al Jazeera's coverage."

Those assurances, Alani added, were given at a September meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and top officials in the Qatari government. For the meeting, aimed at resolving a long-simmering feud between the nations, the Qataris brought along an unusual guest: the chairman of Al Jazeera's board, Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani.

Al Jazeera's general manager, Waddah Khanfar, did not reply to phone and e-mail requests for comment. But several employees confirmed that the chairman of the board had attended the meeting. They declined to give their names, citing the delicacy of the issue. The governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia have remained silent on the matter.

Repercussions were soon felt at Al Jazeera.

"Orders were given not to tackle any Saudi issue without referring to the higher management," one Jazeera newsroom employee wrote in an e-mail message. "All dissident voices disappeared from our screens."

The employee noted that coverage of Saudi Arabia was always politically motivated at Al Jazeera — in the past, top management used to sometimes force-feed the reluctant news staff negative material about Saudi Arabia, apparently to placate the Qatari leadership. But he added that the recent changes were seen in the newsroom as an even more naked assertion of political will.

"To improve their relations with Qatar, the Saudis wanted to silence Al Jazeera," he wrote. "They got what they wanted."

The changes at Al Jazeera are part of a broader reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In December, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, announced that Saudi Arabia would send an ambassador back to Qatar for the first time since 2002. Also in December, the Saudis attended the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha, Qatar's capital, which they had refused to do the last time it was held there. The Saudis have also indicated that they may allow Al Jazeera to open a bureau in Riyadh.

The feud between Qatar and its much larger neighbor, for all its pettiness, has had real consequences. It led to the creation of Al Jazeera in the first place, which in turn helped shape perceptions — and, perhaps, realities — across the Arab world and beyond over the past decade.

The feud began in the mid-1990s, when the Qatari leadership accused the Saudis of supporting a failed coup attempt. Soon afterward, Al Jazeera was founded with a $150 million grant from the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and began reshaping the Arab media. The station was helped when the BBC's Arabic-language television station, co-owned by a Saudi company, collapsed, thanks in part to Saudi censorship demands. The BBC journalists flocked to Al Jazeera…

Looks like those “censorship demands” are back in effect.

I wonder if any of these Beeb refugees have qualms about working for an outlet that takes its marching orders from the Saudis.

Nah.  A-J; the Beeb: what’s the diff so long as someone signs their paycheque?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

Glick nails it: You can usually count on Caroline Glick to cut through the cant, bafflegab, hocus-pocus and received wisdom and expose the hard nugget of truth lurking at the heart of it all. Here she is on Pakistan, pre- and post-Benazir’s death (my bolds):

…The Pakistan which Bhutto insisted she could save is a pro-jihadist nuclear-armed state. The Pakistani public, military and intelligence services stand in sympathy with al-Qaida and the Taliban. With the support of the public and the collusion of sectors of the military and intelligence services whose ranks they have seamlessly infiltrated, the Taliban and al-Qaida daily extend their control over more and more of the country.

US officials claim that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure and under the full control of the military. Yet given the Pakistani military's sympathy for al-Qaida and the Taliban, it is irresponsible not to consider the possibility that at least some of the forces charged with securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal have operational links to the jihadists.

The Bush administration had hoped that by forcing Musharraf to work with Bhutto, the Pakistani government would be more effective in routing out the jihadists. Yet there was little reason to believe this to be the case. Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency, his arrest of democracy activists and parallel release of senior al-Qaida terrorists from custody show that he is far more prepared to combat his liberal opponents than the jihadists.

And Bhutto herself was anything but an ideal candidate to change the direction of Pakistan. Bhutto was many things, but she was neither a liberal democrat nor a strong leader. Her two brief tenures in office were marked by corruption. She was ousted from office in 1996 and forced to flee the country due to suspicions that she and her husband had purloined some $1.5 billion from Pakistan's national treasury.

In addition to racketeering, Bhutto was also suspected of engineering the assassination of her younger brother and political rival Mir Murtaza Bhutto. He was murdered by policemen in 1996 while she was prime minister. Indeed, when judged by her actions, Bhutto appeared less like a Pakistani James Madison, and more like an Al Capone from the Indus.

BEYOND THAT, Bhutto was the godmother of the Taliban and played an important role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. It was during Bhutto's terms in office that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI formed the Taliban and backed Mullah Omar's war for control of Afghanistan. Bhutto recognized the Taliban government in 1996. Pakistan was one of only three countries to do so.

Although she denied any knowledge of Pakistan's nuclear program, it was during her tenure in office that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear project, was most active in proliferating nuclear weapons technology and bomb components to countries like Iran, Libya, Egypt and North Korea. As the New York Times reported on Friday, Khan's associates allege that in one of her visits to North Korea as Pakistani premier, Bhutto picked up missile designs that were supposed to be matched to Pakistani nuclear warheads.

So in pushing for elections and democracy in Pakistan, the US has been ignoring the chief problem that nation poses for global security and focusing its attention on relatively irrelevant side-issues of governing institutions and hoping that two corrupt, ineffective leaders would be better than one…

That’s it!

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

Hellacious suggestion: Ehud Olmert says he sees "the hand of God" in the way Israel's ostensible friends have lined up to get the Palestinians a state.

Actually, Ehud. I'm pretty sure the Guy Upstairs had nothing to do with it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:32 | link | comments

Hot for Obama: Could someone please get Margaret Wente some smelling salts? She seems to be the latest middle aged woman to have fallen under the intoxicating spell of that “charismatic” Democrat, Barack Obama. Here’s the normally sensible Ms. Wente going on (and on) about Oprah’s guy:

…Mr. Obama would attract a big crossover vote. He's extremely popular with independents and even Republicans, many of whom are also sick and tired of polarizing politics. Even his stand against the war in Iraq may not hurt him much with these folks. (It actually looks prescient.) Besides, Mr. Obama has made it clear that he's not opposed to wars in general – just “dumb wars.”

In fact, Mr. Obama is a conservative in the temperamental sense. He knows that big fixes don't exist. He's an incrementalist by nature and by experience. His years working as a community organizer in the trenches of Chicago's South Side taught him that change is hard and happens slowly. He's no ideologue. He's a realist. And although he's religious – he came to it late in life – he's no fundamentalist, either.

In the end, this presidential election won't be decided on experience or policy. It will be decided on character. It will be decided on whom Americans trust the most to make the right decisions when the next terrible thing happens.

People had that kind of trust in Ronald Reagan. In most ways, the two men couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama is nuanced, intellectual and reflective; Mr. Reagan could have written his political philosophy on a paper napkin. Mr. Reagan was ideological; Mr. Obama is not. But, like Mr. Reagan, Mr. Obama knows who he is. He has a core, and that makes people inclined to trust him.

Voting for Barack Obama would be a vote to turn the page. And that's why so many thoughtful people hope he has the stuff to go the distance.

Oh, my. Peggy’s like a Bobby soxer swooning over Frank Sinatra (another slim guy who had a way with the ladies).

Over at JWR, Jonathan Tobin is far less enraptured, reminding readers of the inexperienced Obama’s “idiotic call” last month for America to wage war on Pakistan—his "nuanced" solution to the current problems. Tobin asks whether voters “can think straight about the one thing we elect presidents to do”—i.e. steer America through the often stormy seas of foreign policy.

Margaret Wente, for one, is having a hard time thinking straight on this issue. Good thing she doesn’t actually get to vote in this election.

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

The drive for equality: Change in the Magic Kingdom proceeds at a glacial pace. That’s a function of the Wahhabi belief that the best years of our lives occurred sometime back in the early Middle Ages, and that it makes sense to try to simulate those marvellous times. Now, however, some uppity chicks are attempting to drag their desert Shangri-la into the modern era. From AFP via Middle East Times:

RIYADH (AFP) Saudi women activists Wednesday began a fresh effort to get a ban on women drivers lifted in 2008, handing in a new petition to King Abdullah urging him to quash the restriction.

 

Signatories of the petition "hope that 2008 will be the year in which Saudi women obtain their natural right to drive a car," according to the document.

Campaigner Fawzia al-Oyouni told AFP the petition is part of a continuing effort to quash the ban in the oil-rich but ultraconservative kingdom, where women are forced to cover from head to toe in public.

The petition follows a similar one sent to the king last September signed by more than 1,100 Saudis.

"We hope to send a new petition each time we manage to get 1000 new signatures," Oyouni said.

Women cannot travel without the written permission of their male guardian, who could be the woman's grandfather, father, uncle, husband, son or brother.

Although women cannot drive themselves, they can be chauffeured around by hired drivers.

The petitions are the brainchild of Oyouni and three other activists -- Wajiha Huwaidar, Ibtihal Mubarak and Haifa Usra -- who have formed an association for the protection and defence of women's rights.

Although Saudi Arabia has taken small steps toward reform, women were barred from landmark municipal elections in 2005 and remain subject to a host of restrictions.

A group of 47 women defied the ban on driving by taking to the streets of the capital Riyadh in 15 cars in November 1990. They were swiftly rounded up by police and penalised, while their male guardians were reprimanded.

Is it even physically possible to drive a car while wearing a pup tent? Along with inhibiting one’s freedom of movement, wouldn’t the costume also impair a driver’s peripheral vision?

Could that be one of the reasons the “ultraconservatives” are so averse to letting women drive—because, in the interest of safety, it would entail their wearing something less far less restrictive when they get behind the wheel?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments

Cap’n Layton’s leaky vessel: Here is Canada we may not have any Huckabees or Obamas, but our political scene is certainly enlivened by the likes of “I’m Alright” Jack Layton and his sanctimonious socialist scourges. Though Jack and his pack have yet to convince Canadians to hand them the reigns of power (shudder, what a thought), he is taking steps to try to make his party more appealing by running a tighter ship. From the Globe and Mail:

OTTAWA — Having falsely accused a Liberal of bribery and a Conservative of peeking at porn in Parliament, New Democrats now have checks in place to reduce the chance of any embarrassing repeat, Leader Jack Layton says.

In an interview, Mr. Layton played down the two incidents, saying mistakes are to be expected in politics.

“If a bad day is a day when you apologize for a couple of mistakes over a period of a couple of years, then we'll accept it as part of life,” he said.

The NDP caucus and the party's campaign team have been urged to take extra steps of due diligence before making any allegations in the future, he said.

“But guess what? The NDP is human. We make mistakes that some people will judge as errors – and we acknowledge were problems – and we'll apologize when that happens.”

When the NDP candidate in Abbotsford, B.C., accused Liberal candidate David Oliver days before the 2006 vote of trying to bribe him, Mr. Layton immediately said the claims were “horrifying.”

Last month, NDP House Leader Libby Davies said the party had paid damages to Mr. Oliver and that the party “seriously erred in making the allegations public.”

Also last month, Ontario NDP MP Irene Mathyssen apologized after accusing Conservative MP James Moore of looking at “soft porn, Playboy-type stuff” on his laptop while in the House of Commons. She also linked the incident to the 1989 murder of 14 women in Montreal.

Ms. Mathyssen accepted Mr. Moore's explanation that the photo was of his girlfriend in a bikini.

When Mr. Layton was asked whether he believed it was appropriate for Mr. Moore to look at such a photo in the House even if it was not pornography, he said: “We'll let people judge that. We decided to accept that explanation.”

As for the timing of the next campaign, Mr. Layton said an election to change the political direction of the country is “desperately needed.”

He predicts Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government will fall once the budget is introduced, likely in early March.

Due to the inherent instability of a minority government, each party has long been preparing and raising money for the next campaign. From the moment the writ is dropped, staffers working in the “war rooms” of each party will begin flooding reporters with e-mails attacking their political rivals.

Mr. Layton said he hopes his third campaign will give voters the chance to make important choices, such as deciding whether to continue the military mission in Afghanistan, whether to move more aggressively on the environment and whether to help low-income Canadians by scrapping the Conservative corporate tax-cut plans.

“I'm picking up Christmas conversation, holiday conversation, a lot of people [are] unhappy with where Harper's going and want to have the chance to change it,” the NDP Leader said. “So they hopefully will have that chance fairly soon. It depends on when the Liberals stop propping up the Conservatives.”

He can’t even keep his loose cannons in line. How does he expect to run the whole country?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:23 | link | comments

East is east and West is west and there’s a sucker born every minute in both zones: In the West, we had an overpriced yoga togs company touting the mystical, magical benefits of seaweed infused t-shirts (which, go figure, didn’t actually have any seaweed embedded in the fabric). In the East, they have mystical, magical Zamzam water. MEMRI has a translation of a TV program shown last month on Dubai TV which imputed remarkable therapeutic qualities to this “Koranic water”:

"It Has Been Scientifically Proven that Water is Affected by What is Recited Over It"

Akran Al-Hashemi, Iraqi journalist: "I survived an assassination attempt in Iraq. I was hit by bullets - more than 70 bullets. I used oils, lotions, and all sorts of medicine, but unfortunately, nothing helped. I happened to meet Hajja [Samiya], and she said: 'I can heal you. I will recite Koranic verses over olive oil for you - the Al-Fatiha chapter, the Al-Kursi verse, and the Al-Ma'wiztein.' From the very first night, I felt a difference, and after one week I started walking normally."

[...]

Interviewer: "Hajja Samiya, it was you who recited Koranic verses over the oil, which he rubbed on his leg, and Allah has used you as a means for his healing."

Hajja Samiya: "Allah be praised, he was healed the very next day. To be honest, I myself was surprised. I'm not the one who needs to be thanked - I feel that God has given me a gift. I still don't know how it works exactly, but it works."

[...]

Egyptian Islamic scholar Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "We have recently realized the value of the use of amulets. It has been scientifically proven that water is affected by what is recited over it. Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto has had a unique experience. He said that he had read in a book that each snowflake falling from the sky is unique. He said that his scientific instincts told him that this was not true. The geometric shape of the snowflake is determined by its chemical composition. The composition of water is well known - two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So how come snowflakes that fall from the sky are different from one another? He said: 'I was determined to prove that this theory was false.' He built a laboratory, consisting of a deep freezer with a regulator, because no liquid subjected to sudden freezing can assume a geometric shape. The freezing must be slow, so the atoms have the chance to crystallize into the shape decreed by Allah."

"Zamzam Water Is Not Affected by Witchcraft or Jinns"

"There was a deep freezer with a regulator, a cold room at a temperature of -7°C, and several microscopes equipped with cameras, so he could photograph the snowflake before it melted. The scientists working in this room wore warm clothing. He said: 'I took samples [of water] from two faucets in the laboratory, I froze them, and each sample gave me a different snowflake. The samples came from two different wells, two different rivers, two different lakes. I almost went crazy and thought it was witchcraft.'

"A Saudi student at the University of Tokyo happened to meet him, and asked him what was wrong. Masaru told him his problem. The student said to him: 'We have blessed water, called Zamzam water. I will give you a sample of this water so you can experiment on it. The Zamzam water is not affected by witchcraft or jinns, so using it can prove or disprove the whole theory.'

"Emoto took a sample of Zamzam water, and said: 'I couldn't crystallize it, even by diluting the water by 1,000.' In other words, he turned one cubic centimeter into one liter.

[...]

"He said that when he diluted the water by 1,000 and froze it, he got a uniquely-shaped crystal. Two crystals were formed, one on top of the other, but they assumed a unique form. When he asked his Muslim colleague why there were two crystals, he told him it was because 'Zamzam' is made up of two words: 'Zam' and 'Zam.'" [...]

"If A Glass of Water is Affected By the Koran, Wouldn't the Human Body Be Affected?"

"Emoto said: 'My Muslim colleague offered to recite Koranic verses over the water. He brought a tape recorder and played some Koranic verses, and we got the most perfectly shaped crystals. Then he played the 99 names of Allah. Each name produced a uniquely-shaped crystal. Then he began cursing the water. We said: Water, you are impure. You are not suited for consumption. The water, in this case, did not freeze, or produced an extremely ugly crystal.' When they uttered bad words like 'war' or 'fighting,' the water did not freeze, or else produced an ugly shape. When the man completed these experiments, which lasted 15 years, he published a five-volume book called Messages from Water. He wrote: 'I have proven that water, that peculiar liquid, is capable of thinking, fathoming, feeling, becoming excited, and expressing itself.' Okay, the human body is composed mainly of water. If a glass of water is affected by the Koran, wouldn't the human body be affected?"

[...]

Interviewer: "An engineer called Sharif Shukran invented a device which contains water. He records Koranic verses in it, and the voice turns into electromagnetic waves that pass through the water, giving it healing powers."

[...]

Sharif Shukran: "I was trying to deal with a problem that has not been discussed so far - Satan uses humans to record negative thoughts in water.

[...]

"For 14 centuries, we've known for certain that Koran verses are recorded in water, but we never imagined that everything that is said is recorded in water. I found out that one of the methods employed by Satan is to make human beings think certain thoughts, while cooking, for example. When a human being is near any type of liquid, he might pass his negative thoughts on to the water.

[...]

"When a mother cooks... I've asked many mothers what they think about when they are cooking, and they said they were thinking about problems. Without realizing it, they insert all the problems into the food.

[...]

"What does this device do? It supplies enough water to offset the water in the body that carries negative words. A person cannot go every day to someone who would read the Koran over him, nor can he recite it himself all day long."

Interviewer: "Let's see how it works."

"If a Person Replaces Most of the Water in His Body With Koranic Water, His Body Begins to Emit Steam Which Contains the Koran"

Sharif Shukran: "The entire Koran is recorded inside this device. What I did was to use the same method of recording used by human beings. You can hear the voice, but if we press here, we stop the voice.

[...]

"A couple on the verge of divorce began using the water. The wife used to complain all the time. After a month and a half, she stopped entirely. Things that she used to make a fuss over seemed simple all of the sudden. I asked myself how this could be, and I realized something - or at least, this makes sense to me. If a person replaces most of the water in his body with Koranic water, his body begins to emit steam which contains the Koran. This creates a halo of steam around him, containing the Koran, which fends off Satan."

Wow. Never mind the seaweed. I gotta get me some of that Zamam.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:26 | link | comments

Driving while under the influence (of sharia): In a bid to keep up with the times,  the Saudis have enacted several new traffic laws. For example, it will soon be illegal in the Magic Kingdom to drive while using a cell phone.

The law prohibiting one from driving while being female, however, remains firmly in place.

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

Shilling for Islam--again: The Toronto Star is nonpareil in that department. Witness this extraordinary piece (“Bittersweet end to journey”) in the LIVING section. It detailes a Star scribe’s recent experiences during Hajj, (which, as a sur-head informs us in case we didn't know, is Islam’s "FIFTH PILLAR"):

Just as we arrived in Mecca and stepped onto the white marble-tiled prayer space surrounding the Grand Mosque, the muezzin began the prayer call for the early morning Fajr prayer.

In my haste to get to the Masjid al-Haram, I had forgotten to bring my prayer mat, and realized that when I bowed down to prostrate, I would have to place my forehead onto the cold hard floor. Seconds later, as if God had heard my concern, someone spread out a cloth prayer mat in front of me.

After completing my prayers, I turned to thank the stranger sitting next to me for her kind act. But the woman, with an Indonesian identity card hanging around her neck could not understand me, and I was unable, through words, to communicate with her. So I smiled, shook her hand, and she willingly reciprocated the gesture.

When the muezzin called out again, we both stood up to pray. We may not have been able to communicate, but we had little difficulty in comprehending the commands of God, whether it was through prayer, or coming to Mecca to fulfil the fifth pillar of our faith: the Hajj.

As a spiritual journey, Hajj is undoubtedly unique. Instead of seeking out a peaceful and secluded hideaway for some soul-searching, Muslims head to Mecca and join millions of other pilgrims from around the globe in hopes of forging a personal connection with God. The journey is not simply about prayer and reflection. It also involves a number of symbolic and physically demanding steps that re-enact the life and the struggles of Prophet Abraham and his family

Despite my best efforts, I found that achieving that continual connection with God was no easy feat – especially in overwhelming crowds, physically demanding rituals, and inevitable illness. While your heart wants to pray, your mind at times is more concerned about simply making it to the next stage.

In order to keep my heart and mind in line, I spent much of the time reflecting on why I was here. Thousands of years ago, God tested the patience and faith of Abraham and his family – and through Hajj, we acknowledge the family's unwavering devotion to God.

Among the mandatory rites of both Hajj and Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage that can be performed any time of the year, is Sa'ee, or running between the hills of Safa and Marwa.

According to Muslim tradition, Abraham's wife Hajar ran back and forth seven times in desperate search of water for her son Ishmael after they were abandoned in the hot desert by Abraham.

Ishmael, a baby at the time, struck his heel on the ground, causing a spring of water to rush forth. The well of Zam Zam is still intact today, and drinking blessed water is also a part of the pilgrimage rites.

When we perform the rituals today, the mountains are clearly marked, the path between the hills paved by marble, and hundreds of water coolers are conveniently placed throughout the mosque.

While modern luxuries and advancements have made performing the ritual easier, it has also made it significantly more difficult to feel the struggles of Hajar and Ishmael.

I adopted a simple tactic to communicate with God. Instead of reading prayers in Arabic, without understanding or reflecting on what I was saying (something often done by people from non-Arabic speaking countries), this time, my prayer took the form of talking to God in English and Urdu, as I performed the Sa'ee and the Tawaaf, the seven revolutions around the cubical structure, the Kaaba, toward which Muslims pray five times a day.

There were times when my first thought was not on prayer but on my own safety. Times when I was squeezed between individuals, or nearly knocked down by determined worshippers during tawaaf. Or when I was literally lifted by the crowds of people during the Sa'ee, an experience that not only created a lapse in my worship, but also tested the limits of my patience.

Within the organized chaos of Hajj, there are occasions when it is hard not to be moved, often to tears, by the significance of the moment.

I cried when I saw the Kaaba for the first time, the structure that Muslims around the world face five times a day in submission…

“Submission” being the operative word here.

I have no problem with the Star describing “moving” religious experiences—provided that Islam isn’t the only religion on offer. I eagerly (and no doubt, in vain) await articles describing the transcendent religious experience of pillar-less believers—say, a Christian who, struck by the holy spirit, has started speaking in tongues, or an Orthodox Jew who feels close to "Ha-Shem" when he lays tefillin every morning.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:41 | link | comments

Kidz online: Benazir’s heir apparent—just a normal 19-year-old who likes to eat junk food, play cricket and watch “Buffy” on the tube. And who now finds himself on the “to do” list of God knows how many would-be shahids who are more or less the same age as him, and who probably also have a page on Facebook (or My Space).

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

Seeing things: Generally speaking, when people start to see things that do not exist, they should either be heavily medicated or locked away so they don’t pose a threat to public safety. Unless, that is, one happens to be a “visionary” political leader. In the quest for an ever-elusive “peace,” politicians are allowed to hallucinate all they want. Last November, for instance, Condi Rice had the following delusion about the prospects for “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians:

…The violent extremism of Hamas stands in contrast to the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the legitimately elected president of all Palestinians who won a clear mandate to seek peace with Israel.  President Abbas and his government are working to overcome a long, crippling legacy of misrule and they must fully carry out their responsibility to fight terrorism and enforce the law among all Palestinians.  Yet President Abbas is demonstrating that he is a partner for peace and he is working to clarify the fundamental choice for his people, between the real benefits that peace and reform can bring and the prolonged suffering that violence and extremism guarantee.

The emergence of responsible Palestinian leaders has given Israel the confidence to reach out to them in partnership.  During my last trip to Israel, Prime Minister Olmert made a significant and path-breaking speech.  He said that Israel now has a true partner for peace in President Abbas.  He said that there is now a real opportunity to make progress toward the vision of two states.  And he said that now is the time for Israel to begin, in his words, vigorous, continuing, and ongoing negotiations for peace with the Palestinians.  Prime Minister Olmert is now embracing the legacy of Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, who were strong in Israel's defense and equally strong in their quest for peace.

Now I do not deny that the present moment is challenging and complicated, but when has the Middle East ever been unchallenging or uncomplicated?  The fact is conditions between Israelis and Palestinians are now fundamentally different and, frankly, better than they were a few years ago.  And we now have a real opportunity to seek peace.  Just consider, most Israelis now believe that a responsible Palestinian state is in the national interest of Israel and that true security will require an end to the occupation that began in 1967.  Most Palestinians now believe that Israel will always be their neighbor and that no Palestinian state is going to be born through violence.

And among most Arab states, as they recently made clear in reaffirming the Arab League Peace Initiative, the question now is not whether Israel will exist, but on what terms to make peace with Israel.  Indeed, the threat of violent extremism has created a new strategic alignment in the Middle East.  Responsible states now see that they share a common interest in combating a common threat and that a responsible Palestinian state can be a bulwark against that threat.

I believe that most Palestinians and most Arab states are ready to end the conflict.  I believe that most Israelis are ready to leave most of the -- nearly all of the West Bank, just as they were ready to leave Gaza, for the sake of peace.  I believe that we have two democratic leaders in Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas, who know that the best way to serve their people is to build a basis for peace…

Dream on, Condi.

Just recently, President Bush and two other U.S. politicians have found themselves in the grip of another powerful fantasy (as reported in Beirut’s Daily Star):

DAMASCUS: Two visiting US Congressmen announced after talks with Syrian leaders on Sunday that they had secured a pledge that jailed dissidents would be freed and said they saw scope for progress in the peace process with Israel. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a member of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic representative from Rhode Island, met with President Bashar Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.

Kennedy said that he had secured Assad's undertaking that seven secular dissidents in jail for criticizing the Damascus regime and its policy toward Lebanon would all be freed.

"The president said that they would be released," Kennedy said. He said Assad identified "Akram Bunni, Walid Bunni, Jaber Shufi, Ali Abdullah, Fidaa Horani, Mohammad Yasser Aiti and Ahmad Tohmeh ... [and] assured me personally that they were [to be] released." 

The seven opposition figures had signed a "Damascus Declaration" calling for radical change. The declaration united communist, nationalist, liberal and Kurdish parties under a National Council to press for its implementation. They were arrested in a crackdown on dissent this month that drew harsh criticism from the White House.

Bush applauded the formation of the grouping, saying "the brave men and women who formed this council reflect the desires of the majority of Syrian people to live in freedom, democracy and peace." Bush had said earlier this month: "My patience ran out on President Assad a long time ago." 

How does he know how the majority of Syrians want to live? Has he asked them? More likely, he’s projecting onto Syrians what he wants them to want. Which advances the cause of true “peace” not a whit—and, indeed, probably sets it back some—but sure makes for a good sound bite on the evening news.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:34 | link | comments

A New Year's valjean for Abbas: Funny thing, it works equally well for Olmert:

Mahmoud Abbas has no charis'.

Like soda pop without the fizz.

Think he should try some other biz.

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

Underage heir: Bilawal Bhutto Zardari may be the designated co-leader of his late mother's political party, but, by law, he won't be able to run for a seat in parliament until he's 25--six years from now.

He should live so long.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:38 | link | comments

All the time in the world: Hillel Halkin explains why Palestinians—even the “moderate” ones—will never concede their  “right of return”:

On the face of it, the Palestinians’ insistence on their “right of return” to homes lost 60 years ago in Israel is absurd. It would be absurd quite apart from the fact that no such right was ever demanded on behalf of far larger refugee populations in the 20th century, such as the millions of Greeks thrown out of Turkey in 1921-22, the similar numbers of Germans evicted from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1945, or the tens of millions of Muslims and Hindus who fled India and Pakistan in 1948. It is also absurd for the simple reason that most of these homes no longer exist and those that do cannot be returned to.

The majority of Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 were rural; nearly all of their villages were razed to the ground long ago to make room for Jewish settlements and Jewish agriculture. Of those who were city dwellers, some lived in houses and neighborhoods that are still standing; yet for the last half-century these have been inhabited by Israelis who are their legal owners and cannot be made to surrender them. Where in Israel would the families of refugees go if their “right of return” were recognized? The poorer would end up in Israeli Arab slums hardly more congenial than the “refugee camps” they reside in now. The wealthier would find that their present homes in Amman or Damascus are grander than anything they could afford in Haifa or Jaffa. None would be returning to family property, and all would be choosing to live in a Jewish state whose customs are alien and where they might be discriminated against in various ways. How could this, rather than financial compensation or resettlement elsewhere, be the preferred option of most Palestinians?

And in fact it is not. The same polls that show a large majority of Palestinians vehemently supporting the “right of return” to Israel, a country that few of them have ever been in, report that not many are interested in “returning” there themselves. As in the old Jewish joke that a Zionist is a Jew who gives money to a second Jew in order to send a third Jew to Palestine, the average Palestinian would like another Palestinian to exercise the “right of return” for him.

But this is no reason for Israel to give ground on the refugee issue in the false belief that it is a purely symbolic one. In a diaspora of many millions, there will always be poor and unemployed Palestinians sufficiently attracted by Israel’s need for cheap labor to move there, and there will always be a Palestinian establishment to encourage them. If Ehud Olmert offers “symbolically” to accept 10,000 Palestinian refugees annually for five years, Mahmoud Abbas will ask for 50,000; if a compromise is reached, the Palestinians will fight to have it worded in such a way that it can be challenged later. There will always be pretexts for claiming that Israel has not honored the “right of return” as it promised to.

There will always be pretexts, too, for claiming that Israel is a systemically “racist” society that must be made to surrender its Jewish identity. It is already clear that a long-term campaign along these lines, in close collaboration with a Palestinian state, is the future strategy of Israel’s own Arab leadership. It will not be bought off by half-measures. If Israel gives greater equality to its Arab citizens, it will be told to repeal the Law of Return that gives every Jew the right to immigrate and settle in the country; if it repeals the Law of Return, it will face a demand for Israeli Arab political autonomy; if it grants political autonomy, heavily populated Arab areas will vote for Anschluss with the state of Palestine. Occupying only a small part of the country that Palestinians will still consider rightfully their own, this state will find Palestinian irredentism an overpowering temptation.

This is why, though political commentators may have trouble understanding it, the stubbornness of Palestinian “moderates” on the refugee issue, and their refusal to recognize the Jewish character of Israel, are not bargaining chips they can be expected to give up. They are strategic positions. From the Palestinians’ point of view, despite all the suffering caused by the Israeli occupation, there is no hurry. If they achieve a state on their own terms, well and good. If not, so much the better. One way or another, time is on their side.

Yes it is.

Update: You had to know it was coming. “Mick” Abbas sings:

Time is on our side.

Yes it is.

Time is on our side.

Yes it is.

Now I’ll always claim

That we want to have “peace”.

You’ll send jizya back,

You’ll send jizya back,

And we’ll have lots of palms to grea-ea-ease.

 

Time is on our side.

Yes it is.

Time is on our side.

Yes it is.

 

You’re searchin’ for answers.

Think you’ll find them all here.

That’s so we can make,

That’s so we can make,

That’s so we can make

Israel disappear…

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:15 | link | comments

Free speech: Maclean’s Magazine’s all but unavoidable rendezvous with one or more of Canada’s extra-judicial enforcers of political correctness has hit the pages of the Washington Times:

TORONTO — A Muslim group is suing Canada's leading national newsweekly for the right of rebuttal because it published excerpts warning of high Muslim birthrates in the book "America Alone," by syndicated columnist Mark Steyn.

 

The Canadian Islamic Congress filed complaints last month against Maclean's magazine with Canada's national human rights commission and provincial rights commissions in Ontario and British Columbia, charging that Mr. Steyn's writings promote hatred and contempt against Canada's estimated 750,000 Muslims.

 

The commission in British Columbia accepted the case and has scheduled a hearing for early June.

 

Mr. Steyn, whose syndicated columns appear in The Washington Times, writes that rising birthrates in Muslim countries and the declining number of babies in Christian and Westernized countries represent a long-term security threat.

 

Mr. Steyn, in the excerpts used by Maclean's, compared Muslims to Indians in the Old West infiltrating "the white cities" and suggested many Muslims are "hot for jihad" and favor a "bloody" war against the West.

 

The U.S. magazine Human Events published its own account of the Maclean's article, highlighting this passage:

 

"There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."

 

The Human Events article goes on to say: "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children."

 

Mr. Steyn, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did not write the mosquito metaphor. The quote was from a jihadist mullah living in Norway.

 

In a written response published by the magazine, Mr. Steyn defended the right of everyone to be as "Judeophobic and homophobic and Steynophobic" as he or she wants.

 

Canada's federal and provincial human rights commissions are under fire from some conservatives and human rights activists for considering the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint.

 

The commissions are probably best-known in the United States for expunging references to Jesus in public celebrations of Christmas.

 

In an editorial, Canada's National Post newspaper condemned anti-Jesus rules as an attempt to please "overly sensitive post-Christian liberals" and atheists who file human rights complaints.

 

For his part, Canadian Islamic Congress President Mohamed Elmasry said the complaint is not about stifling free expression but ensuring large media outlets like Maclean's provide a voice for minorities to respond.

 

The group is not seeking any monetary damages. It wants Maclean's to publish its rebuttal, Mr. Elmasry said.

 

"We are for free speech and free expression, but it shouldn't be exclusively for the rich and powerful corporate media," he said…

 

It isn’t. And if don’t believe me, just ask the egregiously rich and powerful Wahhabis, who have managed to spread their “message” far and wide.

 

In his book The War on Ideas (which I have just finished reading and highly recommend), Walid Phares explains how we in the West are being played for fools  in the name of cultural “sensitivity”:

But jihadists understand very well how democratic cultures work and how they protect their communities from physical and moral harm; hence they have inserted their ideology inside the West by camouflaging it as an issue of religious freedom and tolerance. Thus liberal democracies, themselves sensitive to the “sensitivities” of all communities, backed off from what could have been seen as moral aggression against Muslim communities. A weakness was exploited by the Islamists and their allies within the West, who gagged debate and granted exclusive rights to the jihadists to determine what is “sensitive” in Muslim culture.

That’s not to say that Mo Elmasry or any of the law students who are party to the Maclean’s complaint are jihadists—Heaven forefend! However, it seems clear that, like the jihadists, the Maclean’s 5 are most interested in the kind of “free speech and free expression” that enables them to disseminate their message—ideally, so that it can drown out all others. And given the way HRCs operate and the kind of people who make them up, these bodies are ideally situated and suited to help them do so.

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

Kiss, kiss, bang, bang: How Palestinians rang in the New Year.

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

Trivial pursuit, Palestinian style: The contest is over now, but had you been on the ball at Ramadan time last year, you could have won 600 shekels from Voice of Palestine for correctly identifying a genocidal lunatic—revered by many Palestinians—from the following clues. From PMW:

"He was a leader and politician, born in 1889 in Braunau, Austria.
He served in the German army during the First World War, was wounded in service and awarded two Medals of Honor.
He joined a small right-wing party in Munich and became the head of this party without a struggle within two years.
In 1923, he attempted to execute a coup but failed. He was arrested, imprisoned and released after serving a year in prison.
In 1933 he became his country’s Chancellor, and used the state's mechanisms to crush his political opponents.
He earned his popularity by succeeding to lower unemployment rates and to generate an economic recovery in his country. Later he prepared his country for the Second World War.
His golden year was 1940, when his armies invaded Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, and Belgium and defeated France in June 1940.
That year Britain managed to withstand the attacks of his Air Force and he missed the victory over Britain.
His armies conquered Greece and Yugoslavia in 1941.
That year he violated the non-belligerency treaty and attacked Russia. His armies took control of vast Soviet areas.
His armies were defeated in Stalingrad.
He declared war on the United States in 1941. By mid 1942, his country controlled the largest land area in Europe and large parts of North Africa.
The turning point of the war occurred late in 1942, when his forces were defeated in the Battle of Al-Alamein.
He refused to surrender and continued to fight for two more years, but, his bitter end came in the spring of 1945 when he took his own life, and his country surrendered a week later. Who is he?
Answers should be sent to the address: Ramallah … Voice of Palestine, Division of Program [Development], Ramadan [Trivia] Quiz…the first prize is 600 NIS."

Wait, I think it’s coming to me…Heinrich Himmler. No, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat ?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:35 | link | comments

Achtung: drivel alert: Heather Mallick, a fully paid up member of Canada’s chattering classes (she writes a column for the Globe and Mail and the Ceeb) shares “a very special moment” with us, her rapt readers:

I read one of my husband’s Christmas gifts to me, The Ghost, Robert Harris’s roman à clef about his former friend, Tony Blair. It was marvellous and I read it at one enthralled sitting.

My husband, meanwhile, gazed at one of my Christmas gifts to him. It is a huge wall-filling giclée poster of a Swiss bellhop. It is vaguely 1930s, not a time Switzerland was behaving well. He is wearing a scarlet cap and strange insignia on the collar of his uniform. In the shop, it was an inspired choice. At home, we are both wondering if we can endure this sinister man gazing at us every day from the lobby of the Schweizerhof. This may be my worst gift ever. Why didn’t I just buy the man a nice novel?

A “strange insignia,” huh? Might it perhaps be one of these? (Surely not.)

Maybe it’s me, but Heather sounds kind of bummed out that hubby was such a cheapskate this year.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:07 | link | comments

Pakistan, in short: Victor Davis Hanson sums up the failed state/powder keg of Pakistan in a single sentence:

Pakistan is a nuclear dictatorship, with a thin Westernized elite sitting atop a vast medieval Islamist badlands that it cannot control.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:35 | link | comments