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

If you thought Ceeb shill-com Little Mosque on the Prairies was excruciating...: This Ceeb "reality" show is even worse.

Not coming soon to a public broadcaster near you: a reality show called "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?" Here's a bit of the theme song:

...How do you solve a problem like sharia?

How do you keep the people all in line?

How to define the law that is sharia?

“Intrusive” and “harsh,” “Draconian” and “Divine”?

Many a thing you know it wants to tell you.

Many a thing with which you must comply.

But how do you keep it at bay,

And keep it from having its way?

How to remain a kafir by and by?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like sharia?

How do you solve sharia, me, oh, my?...

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

Re the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision: It is of inestimable value to have the right to bear arms if you want to prevent someone from taking away your right to bare arms.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:53 | link | comments

Tarring fundamentalists with the same brush: The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown points to a disturbing trend—the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the U.K. However, since it would be, you know, prejudiced to single out one religious group, she insists that Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are equally dangerous. With no evidence to speak of, she makes the outrageous claim that all three fundamentalisms are plotting together:

…Go into any British university and you see huddles of manifestly Muslim men and women sitting apart from others, including Muslims who refuse to cover up or live separate lives. You never saw this before because, until a decade back, there wasn't this distorted Islamicisation of Muslim life. An evocative film to be broadcast in July on Channel 4 on the Qu'ran examines this alarming spread across the world. More Muslims hate this reactionary Islam than do outsiders. Our thoughts tend not to matter to people like Odone.

The reason so many Muslim girls are abused, denied education and pushed into early marriages is because the community and family patriarchs and matriarchs violate their human rights. Proportionately more Muslim girls and boys run away from home than do the children of other Britons. Are they trying to escape the freedom of British society, or trying desperately to find it? Our state needs to protect these girls, not hand them over to their oppressors.

Odone praises one school where girls, covered up completely except for the face, are kept apart from boys. An "elegant Arabic-style courtyard with a fountain" is the barrier. That's fine then. What about those young girls so swathed and swaddled they constantly fall over in playgrounds? These shrouds sexualise them as much as boob tubes do the daughters of the "infidels". Both see young females as objects of unhealthy desire.

The report disapproves on our behalf of state education which offers "mixed gym classes or art classes where they are asked to draw a human body". Ya Allah. What next? Maybe science books, fiction with male and female characters falling in love, poetry? You want our children to go to hell like yours?

A bigger game is being played here. Some ardent Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims are rising, collaborating to demolish secularism in the UK, which has always been weak and too loosely committed to the separation of faith and state. So the Archbishop of Canterbury ruminates fondly about Sharia family law and his conservative bishops plot to gain moral supremacy. Some from this devious coalition briefed against the nascent British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Ed Hussein's Quillam Foundation. They condemn gay rights, liberal principles and personal freedom…

Ms. Alibhai-Brown is a bit confused. The Archbish’s ruminations aren’t a function of some fundamentalist plot to demolish secularism. They are a sign of the cleric’s fear that Islam is in ascendance while Christianity is in decline—thus his rush to be one of the first on his block to publicly embrace what he sees as an all but inevitable dhimmitude. Christian and Jewish by-the-bookniks may not exactly be thrilled with modernity, but it’s absurd and dangerously wrong-headed to claim that they’re in cahoots with the Islamists. Muslim fundamentalists want to foist dhimmitude on all Christians and Jews, regardless of the intensity of their religious beliefs and level of discomfort with modernity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments (1)

Who knew?: The Hulk is a Jew.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:49 | link | comments

Traitors: The Jews have Neturai Karta, hateful anti-Zionists who have hooked up with today’s Nazis to bring about the demise of the Jewish state. The Americans have senescent old gasbag Gore Vidal, who's been uttering many a discouraging word about the U.S. since Eisenhower was in office. (In the senescent old gasbag sweepstakes, American division, Gore is neck-and-neck with Hamas aficionado Jimminy Carter.)  Here he is (ga-ga Gore, not Jimminy or Ike) in conversation with one of the mullahs’ minions on Iran TV:

...Press TV: You have often written about the United States’ superpower status in terms of the history of previous superpowers. Do you think we’re witnessing the end of U.S. power as some suggest. Will the White House be seen like Persepolis?

Gore Vidal: Well it won’t make such good ruins, no. It’ll be more like the tomb of Cyrus nearby. They managed to destroy the United States -- why? Because they’re oil and gas people and they’re essentially criminals. I repeat that this is a criminal group that’s seized control of the country through what looked like an ordinary election. But there’s some very nice films and documentaries about what happened in the year 2000 when Albert Gore won the election for president and they saw to it that he couldn’t serve. They got the Supreme Court -- which is the Holy of Holies ordinarily in our system - to investigate and then accuse the thieves of being absolutely correct and the winners -- Mr. Gore and the Democrats -- of being the cheaters. It’s the first law of Machiavelli, whatever your opponent’s faults are, you pick his virtues and you deny he has them. That’s what they did when Senator Kerry ran a few years ago for president. He’s a famous hero from the Vietnam War. They said he was a coward and not a hero. That’s how it’s done. When you have a bunch of liars in charge of your government you can’t expect to get much history out of that. But later on we’ll dig and dig… and we will dig up Persepolis.

Press TV: Senator Obama talks about change but of course he has courting Wall Street as well as the Israeli lobby -- do you see any prospect of change with him as president?

Gore Vidal: Not really. I don’t doubt his good faith, just as I do not doubt the bad faith of Cheney and Bush. They are such dreadful people that we’ve never had in government before. They would never have risen unless they were buying elections as they did in Florida in 2000, as they did in the State of Ohio in 2004. These are two open thefts of the Presidency. When I discovered that this did not interest the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of the press of the country I realized our day was done. We are no longer a country we are a framework for crooks to go in and steal money. Knowing that they’ll never be caught and they’ll be admired for it. Americans always take everybody on his own evaluation. You say I’m a state and they say “oh, yeah yeah yeah, he’s a state, isn’t that great.” And you accuse the other people of your crimes before you commit them. It’s an old trick which was known to Machiavelli who wrote about it in his handbook, the Prince.

Press TV: Finally that issue which is exercising so many minds in the Middle East and beyond. You, yourself have written about so many Imperial wars of the United States. Do you think Bush and Cheney would risk another war in what Mohammad ElBaradei of the IAEA calls a fireball?

Gore Vidal: They are longing to but they have spent all of the money. They have got it in their own private companies like the Vice-President and a company called Halliburton which is stealing more money and should be on trial sooner or later before Congress. But perhaps not, who knows? But it’s well known in Washington, these people are leaking away the money of the country. Well there’s no more money. They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies.

The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don’t stop. When the public that’s lied to 30 times a day it’s apt to believe the lies, is not it?

Iran no threat? Vidkun Vidal seems to be off his meds (or is it his rocker?) again.

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

Marxism by any other name still stinks: An article in the Toronto Star outlines some of the changes we can expect when Ontario human rights apparatchinks’ “new” and expanded powers kick in today. I’ve taken the liberty of fisking the sucker (in italics):

While it remains to be seen whether a new human rights system that takes effect in Ontario today will be an improvement over its predecessor, people with discrimination complaints probably won't have to worry about hiring a lawyer. (An improvement? Are you kidding? Was the UN’s Human Rights “Council’ and improvement over its Human Rights Commission? This kind of stuff never “improves.” It only gets more overweening, more intrusive, more ridiculous.)

Nearly two dozen lawyers and paralegals have been hired for a new human rights legal support centre that's been set up in Toronto to provide free legal advice to complainants as well as representation before a tribunal. (Two dozen, huh? How much is that going to set us back? I would point out that this merely reaffirms the unfairness of the process—offering “free” legal services to the complainant, but leaving the person being complained about to shoulder his own legal costs.)

Raj Anand, who heads the board of the new centre, believes it delivers a complete answer to critics who were afraid people complaining of human rights violations would be left on their own to battle employers or government agencies in discrimination cases. (It looks like the apparatchniks have too much time on their hands, Ontarians being insufficiently hateful/bigoted/discriminatory, and are trying to drum up some more business to justify their unnecessary existence.)

The new system revolves around the concept of giving complainants "direct access" to an adjudicator. Under the old system, the Ontario Human Rights Commission would first launch an investigation into a complaint before deciding whether it deserved a hearing. Cases were often stuck in the bureaucracy for years. (“Direct access”—wow, makes it sound so fair and “democratic.” I have a much better solution for unsticking those cases that get stuck for years on end—do away with the entire bureaucracy. )

If they did make it to a tribunal, commission lawyers would present the case.

But Anand said it's a myth commission lawyers were acting on behalf of complainants. In fact, their role was similar to that of a Crown attorney; they didn't answer to complainants and could proceed as they saw fit, he said. (Crown attorneys—that’s a laugh and a half. How can you act as a Crown attorney in a setting which abjures British Common Law and replaces it with a mixture of feel-good mush and Marxist gobbledygook?)

"I can tell you, some of the greatest battles I've had while representing complainants has been with the commission" lawyers, said Anand, who once headed the human rights commission and is now in private practice.

If complainants want to hire their own lawyer, they still can. But one notable feature of the new support centre is that it isn't restricted to serving only those with low incomes, which is generally the case with legal clinics funded by the province, as the new support centre is. There is no financial eligibility criteria, Anand said. (Why would complainants want to hire their own lawyer when they can get a freebie? Since the odds are already weighted so precipitously in their favour, they don’t exactly need a Clarence Darrow in this setting.)

But while the support centre may satisfy those who worried complainants would be left to represent themselves, it may not do much for those who say the deck is stacked against employers under the new system. (Stacked against them under the “old” system, too. Stacked against anyone on the receiving end of the complaint.)

Some law firms who represent employers began holding workshops more than a year ago, to prepare corporate managers for the new human rights regime. At one, Robb Macpherson, a lawyer at McCarthy, Tetrault, a big downtown Toronto law firm, predicted it will be "a field day" for complainants. In addition to state-funded legal counsel, they gain more bargaining power under the new system. (Do you get the feeling that the “human rights” apparatus has it in for business and capitalism? Why not call it what it is—stealth Marxism.)

One reason is that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal plans to schedule hearings within about three months of receiving a complaint. That means employers will be under more pressure to work out a quick settlement with workers who've filed a human rights complaint – or they'll find themselves before a tribunal, facing the prospect of having a more severe penalty imposed. (Bad for businesses; good for “the worker” and the human rights wonks.)

Lawyers who act for respondents – those accused of human rights violations – expect to see an increase in complaints, not only because it's supposed to be easier for individual complaints to get before a tribunal, but because third parties such as unions and community groups will be able to launch complaints on their behalf. (Oh. My. Gawd. Get set for an inundation of complaints that will keep the apparatchniks busy for years—and, I predict, result in exactly the same kind of inertia as before,  necessitating the hiring of even more employees to service the ever-expanding behemoth.)

Courts will also gain new power to hear human rights complaints and will be able to order employers, in the context of these cases, to reinstate workers who were wrongfully dismissed from their jobs. (As I said, stealth Marxism, as the workers and their advocates get to boss around the bosses.)

The tribunal has only been hearing about 150 cases a year, but it will likely have to deal with several thousand more than that once complaints start getting sent there directly under the new system. (Arrrrgh!)

As a result, many cases are expected to be resolved through mediation... (To the advantage of the complainant, of course, and the disadvantage of the employer.)

Workers of Ontariostan unite! You have nothing to lose but your...well, actually, you have nothing to lose. (No wonder we’re in decline.)

Update: A story in the London Free Press (not so "free" as it turns out, what with the current chill on free speech) crunches the numbers:

Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley says the current backlog of 4,200 cases and delays of up to five years to get to a tribunal for a decision are unacceptable.

Today, the government is implementing some of the changes designed to eliminate the backlog and cut wait times at human rights tribunal to less than one year.

The long delays in the system are making it futile for anyone to file a complaint, Bentley said.

"Whatever damage is done is forgotten or, even worse, it has been ongoing," said Bentley, MPP for London West.

The overhaul will cost the government about $31.7 million, including $14 million for the immediate changes.

As of today, anyone with a human rights complaint will go directly to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, instead of going through the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). About 2,500 complaints are filed every year.

"This eliminates a big step and greatly speed things up," Bentley said.

Bentley said the human rights tribunal, which hears and makes decisions on human right complaints, became bogged down because there were only a few full-time adjudicators. The number of full-time adjudicators is gradually being boosted to 20, with another 25 part-time adjudicators.

The tribunal will also get better facilities with more meeting rooms in Toronto...

Not just "better"--"state-of-the-art." What an unconscionable waste of time and money. We are beyond imbecilic for tolerating this toxic blossom.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments

Husseiniacs: In honour of their favourite fast change artiste, Bambi Fauxbama, a buncha knuckleheads have adopted his middle name.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:33 | link | comments

Terrifying insight: Obama's America is Canada.

In that case the West may as well call it a wrap right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:08 | link | comments

Les maudits Francais: The Weekly Standard has a superb analysis of the al-Dura affair--a latter day Dreyfus case that demonstrates that, when it comes to Jew-hatred, the French--especially the ones French media--are in the front ranks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:03 | link | comments

It's the temporary marriage, stupid: The irresistible "secret weapon" that may Islamize the West (supposedly).

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:51 | link | comments

Unassailable hatred: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-freedom apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:

…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.

In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword...

Any thoughts on that, Barbara/ Heather/ Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?

Tammy?

(As an aside—sort of—here’s a bit of info I hadn’t come across before. I found it on babbling Babsy’s Wiki entry:

At a meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation on the day after the British Columbia Human Right Tribunal heard the complaint, Hall served on a panel along with Khurrum Awan, one the student lawyers who helped file the complaint who testified for at the BC Tribunal against Macleans, and Haroon Siddiqui, editor emeritus of the Toronto Star. Hall joked to the audience that she can finally speak freely with her co-panellist Mr. Awan about his complaint. Awan praised Hall's condemnation of Maclean's, stating that he had difficulty developing support until Ms. Hall called Maclean's Islamophobic, and then "everyone wanted to be our uncle.”

That’s our Babsy—the Louise Arbour of Ontario.)

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

Unassailable hate: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-free speech apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:

…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.

In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword.)…

Any thoughts on that, Barbara/Heather/Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?

Tammy?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:58 | link | comments

Tick...tick...tick: The former head of the Mossad says Israel must stop Iran within the next year--sooner if Bambi is elected--or it's toast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

The Aussie way: As evidence that we don’t need authorities to mediate and ameliorate hurt feelings, I offer Exhibit A—Tim Blair’s account of what happened when he posted those offensive Mo ‘toons on his site. What happened—or, more to the point, what didn’t happen? Well, let’s just say it didn’t involve an Islamic supremacist scrawling out a complaint in chicken scratch citing passages from the Koran in order to punish a brazen ‘toon-publishing Jew. Nor did it involve a five day show trial convened in a windowless, airless bunker:

…Because papers and magazines were a little shy, I put the cartoons – none was so bold as that Gold Coast kid’s T-shirt – on my personal website. Reaction was interesting. The Sydney Morning Herald ran an item on it, which of course required an accompanying image. Rather than display one of the cartoons, they ran a shot of me.

There was some hilarious bending and twisting from commentators who’d previously defended religious insults. ``We need to understand the value of artistic freedom,’’ wrote the Herald Sun’s Jill Singer in 1997, standing up for the Australian display of Andres Serrano’s ``Piss Christ’’, which depicted a crucifix in a vial of urine.

In 2006, though, Singer denounced those far milder Mohamed cartoons: ``Who wants a totally uncensored media run by those devoid of judgment, taste or social responsibility?’’
The ABC was forbidden – forbidden – to run even a singlecartoon.

Police called, offering a safe house until the heat died down. I declined, figuring the heat wouldn’t be all that great. And it wasn’t. I think I received two emails from Islamic readers taking issue with my decision, but politely so.

All  in all, a much better way of going about it, because the freedom to debate, denounce and offend remains intact.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:43 | link | comments

The Calgary Herald nails it: High five’s all ‘round at the news that the CHRC has declined to hear the CIC’s complaint against Maclean’s, right? Not so fast, says a wise editorial in the Calgary Herald. The decision doesn’t mean the that the human rights apparatchniks have any intention of folding up their tents. It is merely an indication that they have no taste for a battle with the moneybags behind Maclean’s. How comes? Well, first off,  it wipes away the complainants' financial advantage in that the people they’re hassling can well afford the fight. Second, since the process—years of being strung along with no end in sight; years of struggling under the burden of onerous legal bills—is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment, the punishment doesn’t have nearly as much sting when the defendant is rich. Lastly, taking on a high profile complaint at a time when the feds are breathing down their necks would garner them unwanted public scrutiny, and these beetles function much better in the shade, under a rock, where they can get away with—or used to be able to get away with—grinding down the poor and obscure.

Anyway, here’s what the Herald had to say:

So, Maclean's and Mark Steyn walk. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided there's not enough evidence to support a complaint from Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, that an article by Steyn was "likely to expose" Muslims to hatred or contempt.

A win for free speech, then?

Yes and no. Yes, in the obvious sense that by declining to prosecute, the CHRC concedes what was published violated no laws.

No, because if you need pockets as long as Maclean's to wring that concession out of them, free speech is only for the rich.

Fact: It costs nothing to complain. Then, if an HRC takes it on, it will be prosecuted on the taxpayers' dollar. It's amazing there aren't more cases like Steyn's. Maclean's, on the other hand, is into this for big bucks, and sadly, there are limits to what even the boldest publishers can afford on a point of principle.

This is how these things work. Let a citizen of modest means utter a politically incorrect thought: He will be crushed, and a precedent thereby created with which to crush others.

But, confronted by strength, (and just now in the CHRC's case by awkward public relations issues,) and they back off.

It is called chill. When a citizen must count the cost of putting his money where his mouth is, he is not free. Ottawa must do the right thing: Defang this censor.

Hear, hear.

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

Big mosque in the Rockies: A new prayer facility is getting set to open in Calgary, and it's a beaut.

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

Ka-vetch, ka-vetch, ka-vetch: You think Mo Elmasry, Faisal Joseph and the socks like to whine? They’re pikers compared to the folks of Dearborn, Mich., “America’s Arab capital.” Toronto Star scribe, Michelle Shephard visited the 'burb and recorded some of its residents’ gripes:

DEARBORN, MICH.–In a time before 9/11, this town – home to the nation's largest population of Arab Americans – was one of George W. Bush's stomping grounds.

He spoke of the indignities of racial profiling and the use of secret evidence and the plight of Palestinians. And he appealed to the largely conservative nature of the population on issues such as abortion.

That was 2000, and many Muslims here had Bush bumper stickers.

Now, this Detroit suburb of 100,000 – often cited as a bellwether for America's 6 million Muslim voters –provides a study on the effects seven years of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies have had on a religious and ethnic group.

Sharpen the focus further and enter the Shatila bakery on Warren Ave. on a busy afternoon. Every patron has a story about feeling like an outcast in the country where many of them were born or have lived for most of their lives.

Dr. Nazem Alhusein is a 46-year-old pediatrician who came here 21 years ago from Syria.

"In 2000, I voted for Al Gore," he says proudly, his Michigan baseball cap resting on a table inside the bakery. "Ninety-nine per cent of my friends voted for George Bush. Eventually, after we had him for two administrations, everyone felt I did the right thing."

Alhusein's wife is Canadian and his sisters live in Toronto, which means he drives north about once a month and endures repeated questioning at the border – something that didn't happen before 9/11, he says.

Syrian-born Ayman Saleh has a similar story.

"We feel like we're watched and held to a higher standard in every way," he says of travelling with his family.

The Shatila bakery is on a stretch of Warren Ave. that blends the Middle East with Middle America.

Signs here for halal meat shops, bakeries and grocery stores are mainly in Arabic – until McDonald's, KFC and Taco Bell logos mark the unofficial end of Dearborn's Arab strip.

West on Warren and it's a dismal row of auto-repair shops, liquor joints and dry-cleaning operation called Happy Cleaners, which looks neither happy, nor clean.

Dearborn's Arab community traces its roots to 1927, when hometown boy Henry Ford opened his car plant and Lebanese immigrants took advantage of his generous $5 a day wage for assembly-line work.

When immigration reform began in the 1960s and '70s, Muslim Iraqis, Yemenis, Palestinians and Syrians joined the Lebanese community, which had been predominantly Christian.

By the 1990s, Dearborn had a larger Arab population than any other U.S. city.

It's been called the Muslim capital of America, though its population certainly isn't representative of America's Muslims – since it is predominantly Shiite and there is no South Asian Muslim presence. Still, this is where politicians come to take the pulse of Muslim voters.

Last month, Barack Obama held a private meeting with Imam Hassan Qazwini, the Iraqi American who heads the Islamic Center of America, which boasts the largest mosque in North America, and is a favourite contact for world leaders.

Ushering a Toronto Star reporter into his impressive office for a recent interview, Qazwini offered tea and chocolates as he spoke of every Muslim American's "moral duty" to get involved in the November presidential election.

What unites U.S. Muslims, he said, is their fear of the erosion of civil rights and a "war on terror" that is really a campaign against Islam.

Qazwini related his own problems with profiling, saying he undergoes at least two hours of interrogation when he travels internationally.

"I'm someone who meets with presidential nominees, with the Pope and at least five times with President Bush since 2000 and I'm a well-known moderate leader in this country," Qazwini said.

"If this happens to me, what happens to the other six million Muslims in this country?"

Ironically, profiling was what he talked about with Bush eight years ago – when it was a problem that paled in comparison to what some Muslim and Arab Americans face today…

Tell me, Mr. Qazwini: Who’s to blame for the “profiling” (i.e. hyper-vigilance aimed at thwarting jihadi terrorist attacks)? George Bush? Or the jihadi terrorists?

Take your time mulling that one over.

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

A shared future: Just returned from a trip to the EU, Diana West outlines some American-EU differences and commonalities, and warns of the bumps ahead:

…Such differences [EU socialism vs. U.S. capitalism] have helped turn Europe into the European Union, a nation-destroying behemoth both driven and empowered by the infantilizing machinery of the welfare state. Indeed, so shockingly totalitarian is the orientation of the EU, it strikes me that President Bush's misguided effort to democratize the Islamic Middle East might well have been better aimed at liberating the hostage peoples of the Brussels-dominated supra-state.

That said, it's crucial to recognize the precious common ground between the United States and Europe. While on a different plane from those fallow battlefields of the Ardennes, it is also sacred soil. I refer to our shared cultural and historical progressions as civilizations whose ideals are founded on liberty. Such liberty is once again under threat and from an ideological enemy -- the ideology of Islam, which, as spread by a massive influx of Islamic immigration over the past several decades, promises, as historians and writers from Bat Ye'or to Mark Steyn have copiously explained, to transform all of Europe into an Islamic continent.

And what do our presidential candidates think of the strategic ramifications of an Islamic Europe? Who knows? The likely but not inevitable civilizational shift is so far off the U.S. radar screen (with our government keeping it there, what with its recommended lexicon discouraging all terror-related references to Islam) it is invisible. American tourists -- those flush enough to pay their way with Euros, that is (and I didn't see many) -- can still visit the old Europe of gingerbread towns and Gothic cathedrals without noticing much more than a few hijabbed women, signs of Islamization that usually fail to register more than a multicultural nod.

Of course, even many (most?) residents are blind to the staggering changes in progress. This is something I discovered, to take one example, in conversation with a conservative British MEP (Member of European Parliament), who, after nine years of representing a sector of southern England in Brussels, both doubts the existence of "no-go zones" in Britain -- despite the writings on the subject by the Bishop of Rochester -- and has never visited the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. A stone's throw from the ritzy EU environs in which we sat, this Islamic enclave more closely resembles a bustling outpost of the umma than the so-called capital of Europe.

"You ought to get out more," I suggested…

I recommend a visit to Canada, where the politician can see for himself what happens when political correctness is allowed to metastasize in the body politic. It should prove to be a real eye-opener.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:59 | link | comments

Today's Der Sturmer, er, sorry, Arab News 'toon: As per usual, the subject is Jewry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:20 | link | comments

A sign that the Apocalypse is nigh: The same Harpoon Siddiqui screed--the one in which he gives a shout out to Barbara Hall and Tammy Farber--appears on both the CJC and the CIC sites.

Can Pestilence, War, Conquest and Death be far behind?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:05 | link | comments

Shot down: CIC attorney Faisal Joseph is mighty disappointed that he's not going to get a change to present his case against Maclean's to Canada's federal kangaroos. He told the Canadian Press he's quite certain the 'roos would be swayed by "the compelling evidence of hate and expert testimony" of the, er, experts he was planning to call--the same bunch who shared their pearls of wisdom at the B.C. show trial.

I have to say I'm kind of disappointed too. I was hoping to hear yet again from the Queen Latifah/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Islamophobia scholar. Anyone who can meld such diverse interests into a field of study is worth listening to at least twice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:49 | link | comments

Rice's "realism": In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice expatiates on, well, on just about every frickin thing on the planet (though not, alas, on totalitarian courts prosecuting thought crimes in her neighbour to the north)—and a mighty soporific slog it is. Here she is ‘splaining that pesky Israeli-Palestinian situation:

…A third challenge is finding a way to resolve long-standing conflicts, particularly that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Our administration has put the idea of democratic development at the center of our approach to this conflict, because we came to believe that the Israelis will not achieve the security they deserve in their Jewish state and the Palestinians will not achieve the better life they deserve in a state of their own until there is a Palestinian government capable of exercising its sovereign responsibilities, both to its citizens and to its neighbors. Ultimately, a Palestinian state must be created that can live side by side with Israel in peace and security. This state will be born not just through negotiations to resolve hard issues related to borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem but also through the difficult effort to build effective democratic institutions that can fight terrorism and extremism, enforce the rule of law, combat corruption, and create opportunities for the Palestinians to improve their lives. This confers responsibilities on both parties.

As the experience of the past several years has shown, there is a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Palestinian society -- between those who reject violence and recognize Israel's right to exist and those who do not. The Palestinian people must ultimately make a choice about which future they desire, and it is only democracy that gives them that choice and holds open the possibility of a peaceful way forward to resolve the existential question at the heart of their national life. The United States, Israel, other states in the region, and the international community must do everything in their power to support those Palestinians who would choose a future of peace and compromise. When the two-state solution is finally realized, it will be because of democracy, not despite it.

This is, indeed, a controversial view, and it speaks to one more challenge that must be resolved if democratic and modern states are to emerge in the broader Middle East: how to deal with nonstate groups whose commitment to democracy, nonviolence, and the rule of law is suspect. Because of the long history of authoritarianism in the region, many of the best-organized political parties are Islamist, and some of them have not renounced violence used in the service of political goals. What should be their role in the democratic process? Will they take power democratically only to subvert the very process that brought them victory? Are elections in the broader Middle East therefore dangerous?

These questions are not easy. When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections -- largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.

Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.

The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression…

“Problematic,” you say? “”Standards,” you say. Oh, Ms. Condi, don’t you know your “standards” are never going to “deradicalize” jihadis committed to redressing what they see as a cosmic wrong—i.e. Jewish sovereignty on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah’s “chosen”? Don't you know that the Palestinians who, after all, voted these lunatics into office, love their Hamas? And isn’t is wishful thinking of the “I have in my hand a piece of paper signed by Herr Hitler” variety to think a “democratic alternative” is going to magically appear in a place that harbours the same kind of hate-on for Jews that the Nazis did?

Strange kind of “realism” you got going there, Ms. Rice.

Update: The real realism--whether Iran gets to unleash its Final Solution for the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:47 | link | comments

Coren throttles Corrie: That execrable piece of pro-Palestinian useful idiocy, My Name is Rachel Corrie, got a semi-favourable write-up in the Canadian Jewish News the other week. Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun, on the other hand, has a far less, ahem, nuanced review:

…The play was created by two writers, Katherine Viner from Britain's relentlessly liberal and viciously anti-Israel Guardian newspaper and, wait for it, Alan Rickman. Yes, the man from Harry Potter and Robin Hood. He of frighteningly extended vowel sounds. Yes, the guy who can turn you into a newt or torture you in a dungeon.

And being an actor he obviously knows all about the Middle East and the geopolitics of Israel and Palestine.

So the play is just as you would imagine. There is no context or balance. Corrie is a saint, the Palestinians are lovely and the Jews -- and this is highly significant -- are faceless, anonymous creatures representing something vaguely dark and persecuting. Bad guys. Rather like how we depicted Nazis until it became trendy to do otherwise.

Some, but very few, critics remarked on this when the play ran in Britain. It was lauded in a media that is too frightened to condemn Islamic extremism, but routinely lambastes Israel.

Nobody suggested, for example, that partly because of Corrie's obstruction of the Israeli army, guns were smuggled to terrorists who then murdered Israeli children. Nor did they mention the meeting that took place between her allegedly "peaceful" organization and British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif.

There is also another screaming, bleeding absence in all of this. Just a few days after the fanatic Corrie lost her life in an accident that she had caused, an Israeli child was blown to mangled flesh and smashed bone by a suicide bomber. This little girl was not allowed even to cross the road by herself, let alone find the time and money to travel halfway across the world to support the latest cause.

Pro-peace

Her Israeli parents were children of Holocaust survivors and extremely pro-peace and compromise. Unlike Corrie, they understood the situation because they lived there. They identified their child by her teeth. Her baby teeth.

There is no play written about her and no fatuous leftists are championing her story. It could be called "My name is."

That's right, they don't know, because they don't care. My name is hypocrisy, my name is cruelty, my name is racism.

He forgot my name is clueless.

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

Words of wisdom: Prime Minister Stephen Harper decries the "election" in Zimbabwe as "an ugly perversion of democracy."

Funny, that's exactly what I say about the HRCs.

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

Even cheesier than the original: "Dutch Jimmy Carter" accuses Israel of terrorism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:33 | link | comments (2)

Scant attention: While the National Post continues to follow “the” Canadian story—the appropriation of our free speech in the misbegotten name of “human rights”—and has an editorial on the subject today (see my comments in the post two below), here, in toto, is all the Globe and Mail, which considers itself to be our nation’s newspaper of record, could muster on the subject—an “IN BRIEF” that lives up to its name:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint against Maclean's magazine over a controversial article on the future of Islam, magazine officials said yesterday.

Meanwhile, a decision from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the same issue isn't expected for several months.

The Canadian Islamic Congress launched the dual complaints over an article by Maclean's journalist Mark Steyn. The article, The Future Belongs to Islam, came under fire by Muslim critics who claimed it spreads Islamophobia.

Earlier this month, closing arguments were made before B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal over the article, which appeared in Maclean's in October, 2006.

C’est tout. Given the magnitude of the issue, a bit on the skimpy side, I’d say.

Update: Robert Spencer's response to the line about the claims of Muslim critics: "When the truth spreads 'Islamophobia,' maybe it's time for a bit of introspection."

Robert, of all people, must know that charging people with thought crimes is easy; introspection is hard.

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

 A “tribal” crime: A father and his son stand accused of murdering a young woman—their daughter and sister—because she balked at the father’s authority and refused to wear a headscarf: One of those “honour killings” we’ve heard so much about, whereby the family considers that its “honour” resides between the legs of its female members, and the family’s men folk are moved to “defend” their “honour” by offing any uppity chicks. Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington weighs in on an (alleged) local honour killing, as does an imam, who insists it is “tribal” and has nothing to do with religion:

…"This is not Islam, this is barbarism," Stephen Rockwell, host of Saturday's national TV show Call of the Minaret on Vision TV, said of the strangulation murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez that many believe is a cultural honour killing.

"Dishonour killings," is how blogger Ellen R. Sheeley describes these homicides.

"There should be no discussion of this honour business," writes in Ron Date. "If these people want to maintain their 'honours' customs, they really should return to their homeland."

It's a hot topic and Peel police should be commended for recognizing honour killings have gotten out of control in some countries, like in Germany last year where a Kurdish man from Iraq received a life sentence for killing his 24-year-old wife for leaving him. "He was proud of his evil deed," said Stephen Brown, a columnist for Front Page Magazine which covers this subject matter extensively. "Only three hours after his wife had successfully divorced him in 2006, he ambushed her, stabbed her 12 times and then poured gasoline over her, burning her alive. He told the court she had betrayed him and 'my religion and culture forbid that.' "

However in all the reaction I received from yesterday's front page showing the arrest of Aqsa Parvez's brother on first-degree murder charges, I did not get one Muslim writing in defending this homicide of the Applewood Heights 11th grader on Dec. 10, 2007. Or any homicide.

Actually it was the contrary - many believing it should be up to an individual if she wants to wear a traditional head scarf and/or embrace western traditions. Perhaps a proper, open and non punitive discussion with Muslim women will emerge out of this with real dialogue on whether they want to continue wearing the Hijab and if they are concerned for their safety should they not want to.

Either way, the Syrian-born Rockwell and many e-mailers said that debate should never end up with a homicide.

"Teen Aqsa was innocent in the sense that irrespective of 'Hijab' or 'no Hijab,' she had equal right to live in this world," writes Qasim Abbas. "No fundamentalist or otherwise have any authority to force any one to follow any act of Muslim religion in accordance of teaching in Muslim Scripture."

Rockwell, the spiritual leader of The Downtown Mosque on Bond St., agrees, "if they want to leave, they will leave. You can't stop them and you can't persuade them."

Nor should you. "Verse 256 of the second chapter in the Koran," said Rockwell. "Let there be no compulsion in religion. It is ridiculous. You can't legislate religion down somebody's throat."

Having said that, though, Rockwell does not want to see people using this murder to label Muslim families in a country where "if you bash Islam, you are given press time."

He said he reminds new Canadians of Muslim faith, "everyone will be standing before God. I preach on TV to love Islam and practice it the way it came, don't use tribalism." …

The thing about the Koran is that for every hearts and flowers verse about there being no compulsion in religion you can usually find another one that contradicts it. For instance, while there may be no compulsion in religion (a moot point, since under the terms of sharia, all non-Muslims must “submit” to Islam’s authority) in matters of gender, the man is definitely superior to women. It says so right here. Those words, too, are a product of tribalism—the 7^th Century tribalism of the Arabian subcontinent. And to this day they are used to justify the acts of fathers, brothers and uncles who murder daughters, sisters and nieces for failing to comply with the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

It would be helpful if, instead of dismissing “honour” murders as being entirely “tribal,” moderates like Rockwell could acknowledge that the desire to control women springs in no small part from what is written.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:49 | link | comments

What's so good about it?: The National Post hails the latest “good news” about “rights”:

On Friday, it was announced that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint filed against Maclean's magazine by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC). Supporters of free speech should be careful to put this victory in context: A similar complaint against Maclean's is still being adjudicated in British Columbia. Moreover, the very fact that human rights bureaucrats presume to sit in judgment as to what can and cannot be published in this country is appalling in itself. Still, it is nice to see the CIC's gag squad get handed a loss.

On First Nations, too, some good news is at hand. Thanks to changes finally pushed through by Stephen Harper's Conservatives, natives living on reserves will now enjoy the same rights under the HRA that non-natives have taken for granted for more than three decades. As of now, band members will be able to file human rights complaints against Ottawa and their tribal leadership (though bands will have 36 months to adapt to the new legislative changes). We are particularly gratified on behalf of native women -- who often are subject to the sort of institutionally sexist treatment that went extinct in Western society almost a century ago.

What is needed now is similar root-and-branch reform of the Human Rights Act -- beginning with the elimination of Section 13, which bans the electronic transmission of material that bureaucrats judge "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." Provincial human rights codes should be similarly amended. As Maclean's declared on Friday: "No human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media."

Oh, so you mean First Nations individuals, who certainly deserve the same “rights” as the rest of us, can now run to the commissars with their complaints too? How is that “good news”? The “good news” would be that the government had finally come to its senses and decided that the totalitarian enterprise is inimical to freedom, a drain on our economy, and as useless as ta-tas on a bull.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:31 | link | comments

Feel the pain: CHRC commissar-in-chief Jennifer Lynch tries to rally the troops by getting them to sing the Canadian Kangaroo Theme Song. (You may recognize it as a revamp of one of the most execrably saccharine tunes of the 70s--a decade replete with songs of that type.)

Feelings.

We care for your feelings.

Wanting to protect your feelings from hate.

Teardrops

Rolling down on your face,

Show tender-hearted feelings affronted by hate.

 

Feelings, devoted to your feelings.

We wish you all would shut your traps

And always be polite.

 

Feelings,

Woe-woe-woe, feelings,

Woe-woe-woe,

Feeling your feelings have been hurt.

 

Feelings, Tammy Farber’s feelings,

Mo Elmasry’s feelings; we feel the pain they feel.

 

Feelings, put feelings over freedom,

Our feeling's that we need ‘em

In order to feel fine.

 

Feelings,

Woe-woe-woe, feelings,

Woe-woe-woe feelings again and again.

Feelings…(repeat & fade).

 

Emphasis on the fade, one hopes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:52 | link | comments (4)

A reason for optimism: Times columnist Gerard Baker says all signs point to the fact that the good guys are winning the wars—the one being waged against the jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the PR war being waged against the Islamists:

…The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.

Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It's right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?

Yes, the fight is worth it—if it indeed succeeds in thwarting the Dar al Islamists. But how is that possible if, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, jurisprudence continues to be grounded in sharia? Isn’t that like thwarting the Germans but allowing a modified version of Nazism to remain in effect?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments (2)

We owe it all to socks: Poor Khurrum Awan and the sockettes. After the sorry spectacle of the B.C. show trial, and in light of a federal probe and unfamiliar public exposure, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided not to entertain their sockmeister’s complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

Woe is them.

Ezra Levant is certain that, as instinctive self-preservation kicks in, the British Columbia virtue tribunal will tell the sockmeister and the kids to take a hike, too—which would be a first for thought crime prosecution in the p.c. courts. I’m not so sure about that. However, I do know that before everyone does a happy dance, we need to get a grip and realize there’s still a long way to go. The fight won’t be over until the human rights vipers have been legally—and permanently—defanged.

That being said, we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Khurrum, Syed and the other Islamic aggrieved. Without their hurt feelings, Canadians might never have become aware of the internal totalitarian threat; without them, we might all still be sleeping.

Thanks, socks. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments (2)

Besotted by Bambi: So enamoured are the media of the Obamessiah, so caught up are they in the fizzy magic of his campaign, that despite his flip-flops, “clarifications” and dubious associates, he would more or less have to be caught in flagrante with a hooker or Al Gore—or both—for  the media to begin questioning his character.

Here’s a wry Charles Krauthammer on the subject of Bambi’s about faces, and on the media’s unquestioning adoration:

…As public financing is not a principle dear to me, I am hardly dismayed by Obama's abandonment of it. Nor am I disappointed in the least by his other calculated and cynical repositionings. I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight -- switching sides in World War II, for example -- whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. "He does what politicians do," explained Jeremiah Wright.

When it's time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia -- only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright. Today, she is a featured prop in Obama's fuzzy-wuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad.

Not a flinch. Not a flicker. Not a hint of shame. By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

In the Bambi campaign, shamelessness is next to godliness.

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

Funny Muslims and silly infidels going south: Fox TV has picked up the rights to purportedly high-larioius Ceeb shill-com, Little Mosque on the Prairie. Apparently, someone at Fox thinks Americans would be interested in seeing sharia cast in an amusing light, too. From the Hollywood Reporter:

BANFF, Alberta -- 20th Century Fox TV has acquired the U.S. format rights to the popular Canadian comedy "Little Mosque on the Prairie."

There is no writer attached yet to adapt the comedy about a Muslim community in a small prairie town.

"Comedy is a great way to bridge cultures and bring peoples' guards down," said the original series' executive producer, Mary Darling of Toronto-based Westwind Pictures, who announced the deal with 20th TV on Monday at the Banff World Television Festival.

"Mosque" has garnered extensive U.S. interest in the media and within the TV industry since its premiere on pubcaster CBC in January 2007.

Darling said that Westwind and CAA were close to a U.S. deal just before the WGA strike but took a break in negotiations when Hollywood writers took to the picket lines.

Ultimately, 20th TV, led by head of comedy development Jonathan Davis, beat out rival U.S. studios and cable channels for the format rights.

"Fox got the creative vision of the show, that it has to be funny while it treads sensitively on certain Muslim issues," Darling said…

Yes, because you don’t want to touch off a riot or a boycott or a complaint to a Human Rights Commission or something.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:06 | link | comments (1)

Jihadis in our midst: Is the trial of an alleged jihadi terrorist in Ottawa a sign that lots of other Khawajas have secretly inserted themselves into Canada's body politic and are working to destroy democracy and replace it with sharia? Terrorism expert David Harris seems to think so. In today's Ottawa Citizen, he counsels Canadians to beware the enemy within.

Better watch what you say, David. The truth being no defense here in the Soviet Republic of Kanuckistan, one or more of our national jokers may getcha.

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

Boker tov!: Jeffrey Tobin advises American Jews to wake up so they can see who their friends are. His scorecard: Evangelicals--friends; Presbyterians--not so much.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:28 | link | comments

America alone: What sets the U.S. apart from the rest of the West, including Canada? As Adam Liptak writes on the Terrorism Awareness Project site, it’s a commitment to individualism and free speech:

…The distinctive U.S. approach to free speech, legal scholars say, has many causes. It is partly rooted in an individualistic view of the world. Fear of allowing the government to decide what speech is acceptable plays a role. So does history.

"It would be really hard to criticize Israel, Austria, Germany and South Africa, given their histories," for laws banning hate speech, said Schauer, the professor at Harvard, in an interview.

In Canada, however, the laws seem to stem from a desire to promote societal harmony. Three time zones east of British Columbia, the Ontario Human Rights Commission - while declining to hear a separate case against Maclean's - nonetheless condemned the article.

"In Canada, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, nor should it be," the commission's statement said. "By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to 'the West,' this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others."

British Columbia human rights law, unlike that in Ontario, does appear to allow claims based on statements published in magazines.

Steyn, the author of the Maclean's article, said the court proceeding illustrated some important distinctions. "The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they're not about facts," he said in a telephone interview. "They're about feelings."

"What we're learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins," Steyn added. "Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world."

America has freedom; Canada has a totalitarian nomenklatura that’s in the business of assuaging “hurt feelings” for the sake of imposing an artificial societal harmony. In other words, Americans have a state that treats them like grown-ups, while Canadians have one that treats them like errant, misbehaving kids.

Time for Canadians to come of age, grow a pair, and tell Mommy to lay off, I’d say.

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

Aliterate in Iran: According to a new survey, the average Iranian reads one book every five years.

I’ll say that again: one book every five years. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- Each Iranian individual reads one book in every 1892 day (over 5 years), IRIB News and Media School reported in a study published on Wednesday.

The study was carried out last month by a group of students from the school to find out the relations between the high price of books in Iran and the rate of book reading amongst the people.

The report indicates that people in the developing countries account for 80 percent of the world population, but produce less than 30 percent of the books, and even less than 30 percent of the people read the books. Meanwhile, 70 percent of all books are produced in industrialized countries.

For example, France with 60 million populations or more sells over 350,000 volumes of books per day, the report adds.

It is to mention that in Iran, girls read more than boys in their spare time. Students also read 5.5minutes in their weekends and spend most of their times on doing homework, watching TV and doing personal activities.

At the present time, there are almost 1,775 libraries housing 15 million books across the country, but based on an international standard, 14,000 more libraries with 140 million more books are needed.

The report also continues that each Iranian family spends a little on purchasing books. This shows their low interest in book reading. Only 1,029,000 people are members of libraries in Iran, while in modern countries over 30 percent of people are members of libraries.

And that’s why Iran with a long cultural background does not enjoy a good status amongst the world countries.

The report ends up with the conclusion that high price of books is the major reason for not having the culture of book reading in the country.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s all about the high price of books and has nothing to do with having to live in a police state ruled by ignorant fanatics.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments (3)

 No loss: The Toronto Star’s Bob Hepburn is perturbed that “a Canadian hero” is retiring from a high-profile position, and Canadians aren’t according her the admiration she deserves. The hero in question: UN “human rights” Czarina, clueless Lou Arbour:

Next Monday, Louise Arbour will close out her four-year term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, considered one of the most politically sensitive and thankless jobs in the world.

She will leave her Geneva-based position and return home to Canada having earned the respect and admiration of human rights advocates around the globe.

In her role, she was fearless and outspoken. She ruffled feathers.

And because of that, she has apparently so upset Prime Minister Stephen Harper that his government is snubbing this remarkable woman, who can easily be described as a true Canadian hero.

Indeed, U.S. and European media reports suggest Harper torpedoed her chance of a second term by failing to support her because of his displeasure with her criticism of the Bush administration.

Arbour has been called many things during her long career as a jurist and human rights champion.

Amnesty International, for example, describes her as a "forceful and formidable" advocate for the rights of minorities, women and the oppressed. Universities around the world think so highly of her work that nearly 30 of them have awarded her honourary doctorates.

At the same time, though, she has been the target of hateful attacks.

She has been branded by some Rwandans as a corrupt war criminal, "a shame to all Canadians." Protesters in the Mideast have heckled her and stoned cars in which she has been riding.

And in Ottawa, she was bitterly criticized last week by Treasury Board President Vic Toews, who called Arbour "a disgrace."

Through it all, Arbour has remained calm and cool.

"It would be surprising or unimaginable to do this work for four years and to depart with unanimous accolades from all players, you would have to wonder about the quality of work," she told the UN Human Rights Council in March when she announced she would not seek a second term.

For her part, Arbour insists there was no diplomatic pressure in her deciding not to seek a second term.

Still, her departure will be a loss for Canada and all those who promote human rights. ...

A loss for all those who are pushing for human rights under sharia, no doubt. For those who aren’t, Louise’s retirement from that UN snake pit can’t come soon enough, and is cause for revelry and celebration.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:38 | link | comments (5)

Tyrant demoted: There's a report that the Queen has stripped Zimbabwe despot Robert Mugabe of his honourary knighthood.

I think I speak for many people when I say Robert Mugabe had a knighthood?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:23 | link | comments

Thompson kayos Tammy: An article in The Canadian Jewish News offers two very different interpretations of the Hezbollah threat—Tammy Farber vs. John Thompson. To the CJC’s unflappable Farber, last week’s ABC News report was all a matter of chatter—and American chatter at that. To the Mackenzie Institute’s John Thompson, Hezbollah poses a clear and present danger (sorry, no linky):

…Farber insisted the report was merely a rehash of old news by ABC, an American television network, relating to chatter that was picked up in mid-February after Imad Mugniyah—a notorious senior Hezbollah official—was assassinated in Damascus…

When asked specifically if Toronto’s Jewish community needs to worry about going to shul [synagogue], Farber stated “absolutely not.”

John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a non-profit organization that studies political instability and terrorism, says Hezbollah poses a “real threat.”

“Hezbollah is on Iran’s leash, and Iran has been cruising for trouble for a few years. When Iran is locked within a major conflict with Israel and the United States, they activate [sleeper] cells.”

“The threat to the Jewish community is coming. The threat to the Jewish community is real.”…

Hmm. Now whom should we believe? The Jew with the chip on his shoulder and the oven door on his wall who’s fending off the phantom menace of decrepit-and-neo Nazis and logging significant sack-time with the likes of Harpoon Siddiqui and Mo Elmasry? Or one of Canada’s foremost experts on the terrorist threat?

Sorry, Tammy. It’s no contest.

Update: Tammy--or should that be Nellie?--sings of his passion for his strange bedmate:

I’m as clueless as Carter in Gaza,

I’m a typical Liberal guy.

“Tikkun olam” they say where I come from.

I’m in bed with a wonderful guy!

 

I am an unconventional censor

With a conventional silencer’s eye.

Do not speak “hate” lest you discriminate--

What I say to my wonderful guy.

 

I’m as blind and as daft as a Jew who once laughed

As the Nazis rolled in.

I’m bromidic and calm

At Hezbollah’s aplomb--

Looky here at my grin.

 

I’m as clueless as Carter in Gaza,

Haven’t a fear that a thing is awry.

Thrilled to join hands with one who understands.

I’m in bed, I’m in bed, I’m in bed, I’m in bed

I’m in bed with a wonderful guy!

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:33 | link | comments

Ceeb shills for Hamas: Oh, that Ceeb—always doing its bit for the Arabs’ landscape improvement efforts (which entrails erasing the Jewish “blot” from their landscape). Here’s our narrow-minded national broadcaster, in full blown al Jazeera mode, furioiusly spinning a story about Israel being in the wrong—again (brazen spin highlighted in bolds):

Israel closed its cargo crossings into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in response to rocket attacks a day earlier, which it said violated a ceasefire agreement with Palestinian militants.

Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers called the decision to close the border crossings a “clear violation of the calm.” A spokesman for the group said Hamas remained committed to the truce, but would not act as Israel’s police force by confronting militants violating the deal.

Israeli military liaison Peter Lerner said the crossings would stay closed until further notice and that “any reopening will be in accordance with security considerations.”

Meanwhile, fringe militant group Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks that lightly wounded two Israelis, vowed to continue launching rockets into southern Israel. It said the rockets are an “exceptional” response to Israel’s killing of a senior Islamic Jihad commander in an early-morning raid Tuesday in the West Bank.

Israel has said it holds Hamas responsible under the truce for ensuring a complete cessation of rocket fire from the territory and reining in smaller militant groups. The Islamist group wrested control of Gaza from forces loyal to West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a year ago.

In violence Wednesday, an elderly man was shot along Gaza’s border with Israel and moderately wounded, Palestinian doctors said.

The man, 81, was walking east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza when he was shot in the arm and hand. His family and Hamas accused Israel of shooting him. The Israeli army said it didn’t know of any such incident.

“Wrested control,” did they? Well, that’s one way to characterize (and sanitize) a bloody and barbaric power play. And don't you just hate how those dastardly Jews up and shot a defenceless old grandpa? No wonder those nice, peace-minded Hamasniks remain “committed to the truce” but refuse to “act as Israel’s police force” (I hereby nominate the foregoing as the most risible statement yet uttered by a Palestinian jihadi—no small feat considering the vast number of risible statements from which to choose).

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:53 | link | comments

Hark, hark, the Islamist doth bark: In a 2004 article posted on the CIC site, the lovely and talented Wahida Valiante, Mo Elmasry’s number two, explained the difference between Muslims and Jews (my bolds):

…Even today, there persists a popular myth in the West that Islam is a "new" religion and that Muslims worship a "different" God, called Allah, not the God Yahweh or Jehovah of Jews and Christians. But the truth is that Muslims worship the same God and follow the same Prophets as Jews and Christians, their brothers and sisters "of the Book." In fact, this is clearly stated in the Qur'an, where anyone of normal intelligence can read it. However, differences between the Qur'an and the Torah and Bible are evident in how the Qur'an views human equality and in how its teachings seek to eliminate inequalities that exist between races. Most notably, the Qur'an rejects the Jewish concept of racial superiority; that is, the status of their being a chosen people. This concept is not only racist, but directly contradicts the Qur'anic worldview of racial equality. Unfortunately, the Jewish idea of being "chosen" not only institutionalized racism, but also set a terrible precedent for human history in general, where racial superiority claims became the norm, the divisive standard by which all others, those not like us were to be judged and treated…

Yeah, aren’t we awful, what with our laws and commandments and ethical monotheism that helped lay the groundwork for Western jurisprudence? Our bad. (Apparently, Wahida's skill at mispresenation isn't limited to her insistence that the National Post brands all Muslims terrorists. Here she is, years ago, misrepresenting God's call for the Jews to be "a light unto nations" as "institutionalized racism.")

Wahida demonstrates that, while there is no such thing as “Islamophobia” (in the Islamist sense of the word, i.e. a pervasive and irrational prejudice against Muslims), there are certainly plenty of folks like her who harbour a religiously-based Judeophobia.

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

Goodnight, Ed: Sad news today for aficionados of the politically incorrect. Toronto’s most famous sock puppet, the incorrigibly sexist and offensive Ed, has been canned. A fixture on local TV for lo these many years, Ed is the victim of a new regime that wants to attract more female viewers (something which Ed, the Howard Stern of hosiery, was never able to do).

Don’t despair, Ed. I hear this guy’s always on the lookout for new socks.

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

Islamist misperceptions: On a local phone-in cable chat show yesterday, the CIC’s Wahida Valiante expressed grave concern about two key issues: “Islamophobia” being fomented by the media in general and Maclean’s and the National Post in particular (Mo Elmasry’s #2 claims the Post consistently states that “all Muslims are terrorists”); and, of course, “Palestine”. Co-incidentally--and helpfully--in today's edition of FrontPage magazine, a former Muslim accounts for Wahida’s “woe is us” mindset:

FP: We’re here today to discuss how many Muslims consider themselves to be victims of oppression vis-à-vis the West. Let’s begin our conversation with this question: What is the Islamic definition of oppression?

Ask any Islamist this question and he will certainly provide answers such as: Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia….and so on. Think carefully, how true these statements are. In fact, if one takes the trouble to read the blood-soaked history of Islam, one could not help wondering why this label of oppression not be imposed on Islam itself? The unprovoked, savage invasions by the Bedouin Arabs, to subjugate, at the point of swords, the people of Iraq, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Armenia, Cyprus, Sicily, Crete, Spain, Afriqiya (north Tunisia), India to their fascistic/Arab imperialism (peddled as Islam) demonstrate a naked truth—that it was Islam that started this oppression.

Therefore, the charge that the Islamic mayhem in the current world is due to what is happening (read oppression) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya are just sham pretensions by the Islamists, the ideological gurus of the Islamist terrorists and the suicide bombers. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and France have none of their soldiers fighting in Iraq, yet these countries are not immune from the Islamist terrorists’ attack. Did you ever wonder why? Not being satisfied with the campaign of unremitting terror in the infidel territories, the Islamist terrorists even have to terrorize the innocent people of Islamic Paradises.

FP: So what is the psychology behind the Muslim belief that Islam is being oppressed?

Kasem: This fact is: Islam is grossly offended/oppressed by any un-Islamic moves of the infidels/not-so-good Muslims (like the Islamic Paradises I just listed). This is simply because these Islamists audaciously believe that Islam is the only religion into which each and every person on this planet must be subjected to by hook or by crook—using terror, force and slaughter, if need be. They have the Qur’an solidly backing them up. This is the major theme of the Qur’an. This belief, for instance, was eloquently supported by the cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika in an interview with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in November 2005. The spiritual leader of the Victorian terror cell, Benbrika made the following statement: “I am telling you that my religion doesn’t tolerate other religion. It doesn’t tolerate. The only one law which needs to be spread, it can be here or anywhere else has to be Islam.”…

I’m sure the hurt feelings and the persecution complex will disappear once we kafirs resolve to swallow the “medicine” of total silence.

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

Heat seeking: I don't know about you, but I feel in desperate need of some warmth. Enjoy it now, while you still can.

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

The new ice age: Truth-teller Robert Spencer on the big chill in Canada  (from Human Events):

…“Hate speech” is also a tool to prevent the dissemination of what have more of a claim to be called “inconvenient truths” than anything Al Gore has ever been involved with. Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada right now for telling the truth. The renowned Canadian journalist and politician Peter Worthington commented acidly about the Steyn proceedings: “Truth is no defence before a Human Rights tribunal. Steyn’s accuracy is not at issue, just his opinions. Under hate legislation, opinions are punishable if they offend a particular group. If you think about it, this is an abomination.”

Indeed it is -- and Steyn is not the only victim. The contentious exchange at the UN Human Rights Council that led to the prohibition of criticism of Islam involved a presentation by David G. Littman of the Association for World Education of information about female genital mutilation, the stoning of adulteresses, and honor killings in Islamic countries. The first victims of the ban on such talk at the Human Rights Council will be those who suffer from such barbarities -- and will now have no one who is allowed to speak for them without dissembling about the causes and extent of the problem.

It is telling that when Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and the OIC think of “defending the image of Islam,” they don’t mean working in Muslim communities to combat the influence of the jihad ideology or Islamic supremacism among Muslims worldwide. They don’t have in mind developing any large scale initiatives to combat Osama bin Laden’s version of Islam, and to teach Muslims how to resist the jihadist appeal. The organization hasn’t ever acknowledged the obvious fact that it could end “Islamophobia” right away by rejecting Islam’s doctrines of violence, supremacism and conquest and moving strongly against those Muslims who are acting upon those doctrines.

Instead, they have made themselves the enemies of honest men like Mark Steyn who have called attention to this supremacist agenda. They will be working with American policymakers to restrict free speech -- that is, honest discussion of the elements of Islam that the jihadists use to justify their actions and gain recruits.

Can honest discussion really be outlawed? You bet it can…

…and the big chill at the UN (from FrontPage magazine).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments

The bigger chill: Both globally and locally, sharia-enthusiasts are marshalling under the banner of “human rights” in order to curb our “Islamophbia” (really our freedom to talk about Islam; our freedom to be free). Melanie Phillips has a chilling (there’s that word again) overview of the situation:

The signs have been ominous for some time but now it has become clear beyond a doubt that those who tell the truth about Islam, Islamism or Islamist terrorism risk having their career, livelihood and maybe even their liberty placed in jeopardy – and all in the name of human rights. In Canada, the columnist Mark Steyn has been arraigned before a kangaroo court for the crime of publishing in Macleans magazine an excerpt from his bestseller, America Alone, in which he argues that demographic change is turning Europe Islamic. Led by the Canadian Islamic Congress, Muslims have taken Steyn and Macleans to a ‘human rights’ tribunal on a charge of ‘hate speech’, a totalitarian statute enforced by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (sic) who are in the business of destroying the freedom to voice perfectly legitimate – indeed, absolutely vital and important – opinions about the need to defend western society against Islamist attack. Bad enough that Islamists browbeat and threaten people who express such opinions. For a body such as the CHRC to do their dirty work for them and act as the enforcers of the jihad against free speech takes us straight into the nightmare landscape of Kafka. Read this article to get a flavour of the terrifying nature of these proceedings, the mixture of gross abuse of power, mad thinking and clownish incompetence which characterises totalitarian regimes and has been playing in a courtroom in downtown British Columbia. Perhaps the most chilling observation of all is this:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, which enforces the act, has a record of conviction that recalls the awful efficiency of Soviet courts: In over three decades of existence, the commission has yet to find someone innocent.

This article spells out in more detail how the Canadian human rights tribunals have been handed unfettered power to abuse power:

The human-rights tribunals are a censor’s dream. Under Canada’s human-rights act, commissioners can convict if they believe any published material is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” Since they are “remedial” institutions and not real courts, they need not follow strict legal procedures or grant traditional rights of the accused. No one goes to prison, but the panels can fine and silence people at will — and run up the lawyer bills for years. Truth is no defense, and commissioners are authorized to confiscate a computer without a warrant. Evidence can be woefully flimsy.

But this appalling development is not confined to Canada. A few days ago the UN decided to outlaw any criticism of Islamism – as defined by the Islamists themselves. Since they classify any criticism whatsoever of Islamist aggression as ‘Islamophobic’, this means that the UN will outlaw all such comment. As Jeffrey Imm has reported on CounterterrorismBlog:

On June 16, 2008 UNHRC president Doru Romulus Costea announced that criticism of Sharia law will not be tolerated by the UNHRC, based on the complaints and pressure by Islamist delegates to the UNHRC. In effect, the Islamist nations represented at the UNHRC have effected a Jihad against freedom of speech at the United Nations when it comes to criticizing Sharia or Islamic supremacist (aka Islamist) theocratic ideologies that threaten the freedom and lives of innocents around the world. This again demonstrates the key imperative of control for Islamists -- in this case in terms of controlling ideas, thoughts, and words of an international organization intended to promote human rights. Outgoing UNHRC Commissioner Louise Arbour subsequently raised concerns about debates on Sharia becoming 'taboo' within the United Nations group, stating that it 'should be, among other things, the guardian of freedom of expression.'

The UNHRC ban on debate regarding Sharia came as a result of a three minute joint statement by the Association for World Education with the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) to the Human Rights Council on women's rights and the impact of Sharia law. These NGOs sought to address international issues of violence against women, specifically, the stoning of women, 'honor killings' of women, and female genital mutilation, as a result of Sharia law.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Arab Republic of Egypt vehemently criticized this attempted NGO message, interrupting it via ‘16 points of order’, for an hour and twenty-five minutes per the IEHU. Jihad Watch provides a full transcript of the debate. The Egyptian UNHRC delegate claimed that silencing these NGOs was necessary to ensure ‘that Islam will not be crucified in this Council,’ but the fact is that Islamist forces seek to silence any debate on Sharia at all -- anywhere, any time.

This is of course merely the latest demonstration that the UN is now simply a club of tyranny. But the really frightening thing is the almost total indifference to these developments by the western media. So quick to take up the cause of free speech when the protagonists are the enemies of the west, they are all but silent when the freedom to speak in defence of western values is snuffed out. That of course is because the freedom of speech lobby marches behind the banners of ‘human rights’ and minority victim culture which, despite their mind-bending self-designation as ‘progressive’ attitudes, constitute nothing other than a full-out onslaught against western values by cultural Marxism -- now marching shoulder to shoulder with the Islamists in their common cause to destroy the free world. Their ranks include a distressingly large number of useful idiots, who for a variety of reasons – posturing vanity, conformist inanity, shallow ignorance, careerism, fear, whatever – are helping to further the jihad against the free world, which is predicated upon precisely this kind of cultural and moral confusion…

If the Spectator was published in Canada, I’m sure certain folks who had suffered hurt feelings as a result of reading Melanie's words would even now be demanding a 5,000 retraction and/or filling out the paperwork that would ultimately compel this politically incorrect publication toe the politically correct line. The most brilliant part of the analysis: Melanie's insight that the "progressive" crowd  are cultural Marxists who despise Western values as much as the Islamists do; Canada's 14 "human rights" bodies and the UN's reconstituted but same old, same old "human rights" body--the toxic spawn of progressives and Islamists--bear testiment to that terrifying truth. And that line about useful idiots and their "posturing vanity, conformist inanity, shallow ignorance, careerism, fear"--that's Canada's Jewstablishment, in a nutshell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments (1)

Cold front: After months of silence, CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mohamed Elmasry has re-emerged from wherever he’s been chillin’ to defend his “right” to combat rampant Canadian “Islamophobia”. Here he is, sounding remarkably Farberesque, in the Waterloo Record:

Since 9/11, Canadian Muslims are the number 1 minority group being demonized in the public square, in books, in print and broadcast media.

The recent smearing of a Canadian institution like our human rights commissions by Islamophobes, who claim to be protecting "free speech," is a classic case of chopped logic.

They seem to have forgotten that reconciling two potentially conflicting legal rights that are also human rights -- the right to be free from hate propaganda, and the principle of freedom of expression -- is not a new challenge, nor is it an easy one.

Recently, the Canadian magazine Catholic Insight, has been facing a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging it made derogatory comments about homosexuals.

In 1998, someone representing Canadian Jews filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission against North Shore News columnist Doug Collins. The commission ordered Collins to pay $2,000 in damages to the complainant for "injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect." The commission also ordered the North Shore News to cease publishing statements that expose Jews "to hatred and contempt."

A lawyer with the Canadian Jewish Congress was quoted by the Jewish Independent on Dec. 21, 2001, saying the decision reflects Canadian legal precedents which recognize that certain types of speech are not legally permissible, especially if they are seen to cause public harm.

In these two cases there were no critics of the human rights commissions. But the situation changed dramatically in another recent case, when four Canadian Muslim law students launched human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn. The Canadian Islamic Congress, of which I am president, acted as a facilitator.

The basic premise of Steyn's article is that, just as the "white man settled the Indian territory," Muslims in the West are poised to take over entire societies and the "only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." Once the ominously predicted transfer occurs, Steyn's article implies, citizens will be subjected to oppressive Islamic law.

The impending Muslim takeover is in turn attributed to immigration and multiculturalism, which have resulted in Muslims flooding into Western societies and enjoying far too much freedom of movement in them. The flood, the freedom of movement, and the fact that "enough" Muslims share the goals of terrorists -- the imposition of Islamic law -- mean that the Muslim takeover is inevitable.

On March 30, 2007, the law students met with Maclean's senior editors and proposed that the magazine publish a balanced response to Steyn's article from a mutually acceptable source.

The response was that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt."

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, however, declined to hear the case because its code does not cover printed magazines.

But in a rare public statement, the commission rightly noted that "this type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians," and further noted the "serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."

The B.C. Human Rights Commission finished hearing the case earlier this month. The decision on whether the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission will hear the case is still pending.

After the B.C. hearings, Brian Strader said this about Steyn's article in a letter published by the Vancouver Province: "It's the closest thing to Nazi and anti-Jewish posters I have seen. Nazi propaganda was meant to show that Jews were a threat. The current analogy with an 'Islamic threat' is truly chilling."…

Au contraire, Mo. What’s truly chilling is that Canadian “niceness” is helping pave the way for sharia-style “free speech”. What’s truly chilling is that your second-in command, the lovely and talented Wahida Valiante, can go on a local cable show (as she did yesterday afternoon) and spread the calumny that the National Post constantly says that “all Muslims are terrorists.” What’s truly chilling is that a flagrant Jew-hater who continues to lobby for Israel’s demise and who has stated that every Israeli adult is a legitimate target for liquidation (put ‘em all together and you got yourself a nice little genocide) has the chutzpah to insist that what’s happening to Muslims in Canada is akin to what happened to Europe’s Jews in the run-up to the Holocaust. What’s truly chilling is that you think you can shut down discussion about Islam and jihad and sharia and dhimmitude by shouting “racist!” at those who care to educate themselves about the one, the only true faith and its ummah.

What’s truly chilling is the Jewstablishment’s utter cluelessness: in seeking to “protect” Jews from the Nazi “threat” (a phantom menace) they have laid down decades of legal precedent that has done grievous injury to our body politic, weakening our ability to remain free.

Brrrr! Someone pass me my parka. All this chillin’ has given me a bad case of hypothermia.

Update: Another CIC functionary, imam Zijad Delic, has an anti-free speech rant in the Ottawa Citizen.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments (3)

Isn't that special?: The Canadian Arab Federation is pleased to report that it hosted anti-Zionist Orthodox nutbars Neturei Karta at a recent event. (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a soft spot for these Jewish lunatics, too, even though they're each awaiting a different Messiah.) Frankly, I can't think of two organizations that are more eminently deserving of one other.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:23 | link | comments

Cool it, lefties: Fouad Ajami advises those in despair over America’s apparent lack of popularity in the Muslim world to chill. From the Wall Street Journal:

So America is unloved in Istanbul and Cairo and Karachi: It is an annual ritual, the June release of the Pew global attitudes survey and the laments over the erosion of America's standing in foreign lands.

We were once loved in Anatolia, but now a mere 12% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the U.S. Only 22% of Egyptians think well of us. Pakistan is crucial to the war on terror, but we can only count on the goodwill of 19% of Pakistanis.

American liberalism is heavily invested in this narrative of U.S. isolation. The Shiites have their annual ritual of 10 days of self-flagellation and penance, but this liberal narrative is ceaseless: The world once loved us, and all Parisians were Americans after 9/11, but thanks to President Bush we have squandered that sympathy.

It is an old trick, the use of foreign narrators and witnesses to speak of one's home. Montesquieu gave the genre its timeless rendition in his Persian Letters, published in 1721. No one was fooled, these were Parisian letters, and the Persian travelers, Rica and Usbek, mere stand-ins for an author taking stock of his homeland after the death of Louis XIV and the coming of an age of enlightenment and skepticism.

"This King is a great magician. He exerts authority even over the minds of his subjects; he makes them think what he wants," Rica writes from Paris. "You must not be amazed at what I tell you about this prince: there is another magician, stronger than he. This magician is called the Pope. He will make the King believe that three are only one, or else that the bread one eats is not bread, or that the wine one drinks is not wine, and a thousand other things of the same kind." Handy witnesses, these Persians.

The Pew survey tells us that some foreign precincts show a landslide victory for Barack Obama. France leads the pack; fully 84% of those following the American campaign are confident Mr. Obama will do the right thing in foreign policy, compared with 33% who say that about John McCain. There are similar results in Germany, and a closer margin in Britain. The populations of Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan have scant if any confidence in either candidate.

The deference of American liberal opinion to the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Amman and Karachi is nothing less than astounding…

I dunno. It doesn’t astound me that “liberal opinion” thinks more highly of Third World “wisdom” than it does of the Western variety. In fact, I’d be astounded if such opinion managed to get beyond the accepted orthodoxy and get a clue.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:47 | link | comments

Further evidence of the UN’s moral bankruptcy: As if we needed any more. From the New York Sun:

Bowing to pressure from pro-Palestinian Arab activists in America, the United Nations Children's Fund is cutting ties with a billionaire Israeli donor, Lev Leviev, in response to allegations that one of his companies is financing the construction of settlements in the West Bank.

Activists had campaigned for several months for the aid organization to reject financial donations and other assistance from Mr. Leviev. In a letter to the advocacy group that led the drive, Adalah-NY, UNICEF said it had reviewed the matter at the group's request and would meet its demands.

"UNICEF has concluded that it will not consider partnerships — direct or indirect — with Mr. Leviev or any of his corporate entities, and will not accept financial support that we know is from him or his corporate entities," a senior communications adviser for UNICEF, Christopher de Bono, wrote.

The letter was posted on Adalah-NY's Web site, alongside a statement from the New York-based pro-Palestinian organization praising UNICEF for its decision and congratulatory notes from local officials in West Bank towns where the settlements in question are under construction. Other groups opposed to Israel's presence in the West Bank, such as Defence for Children International, have also issued statements lauding the decision.

Mr. de Bono told The New York Sun that UNICEF usually screens only formal partnerships with corporate and nonprofit partners, not individual donors such as Mr. Leviev, for violations of U.N. resolutions or regulations. The agency decided to investigate Mr. Leviev, who was born in Uzbekistan and made his fortune in diamonds after immigrating to Israel, following complaints from advocacy groups, Mr. de Bono said.

"We wouldn't partner with someone the Security Council said was engaged in activity contrary to United Nations resolutions, like those regarding the settlements," he said.

UNICEF also screens partners for connections to the gambling industry, Mr. de Bono added. Mr. Leviev's company, Africa-Israel Investments Ltd., paid $625 million last year for a 60-acre parcel of land in Las Vegas on which it planned to develop a new casino. The purchase could have affected the UNICEF decision, though it is unrelated to the initial complaint brought forward by Adalah-NY.

A professor at Touro College and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Anne Bayefsky, called the decision to break with Mr. Leviev "grotesque discrimination."

"This is part and parcel of an ongoing U.N. effort to isolate, marginalize, and demonize Israelis and Israel as a whole," Ms. Bayefsky, senior editor of the watchdog group Eye on the U.N., said in an interview. "UNICEF apparently has no problem taking money from thugs, dictators, and butchers the world over. But when it comes to money from Jews they suddenly have a problem. Let's call it what it is: It's racism."

Targeting Mr. Leviev is "a double standard of the worst kind," Ms. Bayefsky said, noting that the governments of several member nations that sit on UNICEF's executive board, including Burma and Zimbabwe, are widely regarded by the international community as serial violators of human rights...

For years now the Israel-bashers have been striving to make Israel’s existence morally indefensible, a prelude to getting rid of the pesky entity. But the truth is that it the UN itself, in thrall to the 57 nations comprising its largest voting bloc, that is morally indefensible and must cease to be.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments (1)

None so blind: The Canadian Jewstablishment’s Tammy Farber isn’t at all concerned about the possibility of a Hezbollah terrorist attack here in Toronto. Heck, no. As he sees it, it’s all a matter of “chatter”. What's top-of-mind with Tammy is the possibility that in a bungalow basement in some remote corner of Manitoba there yet lurks a white power creep who has logged onto an “I heart Hitler” website and said something hateful about “the Jews”. Now those guys are scary!

If Tammy had even half a clue, he’d forget about playing “gotcha” with Aryan pishers and pay attention to this—Andrew Bostom outlining the genuine threat Hezbollah poses to Canadian Jews. From the American Thinker:

…The Shi'ite jihadist organization Hezb'allah thus proclaims with triumphant exuberance its visceral opposition to Judaism and the existence of Israel, stressing the eternal conflict between the Jews and Islam. Eradicating Israel, and terrorizing, perhaps even destroying Jewish communities worldwide, represents an early stage of Hezballah's Pan-Islamic ambitions, and its jihad against the rest of the non-Muslim world. Blithely ignoring this reality, and allowing places such as Toronto, Canada, or Dearborn, Michigan to become hubs for Hezb'allah fund-raising and organizing is both morally repugnant, and destructive to our must fundamental Western values…

 

Toronto? A hub for Hellzbollocks? Oh, Andy, you're such an alarmist.

Update: While Tammy is determined to keep his eyes wide shut, terrorism expert John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute thinks Jews would be well advised to brush up on their first aid and hold escape drills in their synagogues and other institutions--just in case. Here's what he said in a recent e-mail to my colleague:

We know that Hizbollah has been around, and that Iran holds Hizbollah's leash.  But I'm told that background chatter and reconnaissance activities have intensified in the last few months.  If Israeli tensions with Iran heat up, or with Hizbollah, then expect an attack.

Not much you can do except to educate yourselves to potential threats (I've attached the last version of my pamphlet on this); and make sure that you have rehearsed fire evacuation drills, made sure that emergency equipment is up to date, and that first aid kits are stocked.  More training for first aid wouldn't go amiss.

In short, for most organizations and institutions in the Jewish community, I'd strongly recommend that somebody start 1) thinking about your responses to likely attacks -- such as a vehicle bombing, or attack by a group of gunmen; 2) planning your responses; 3) acquiring the necessary materials; and 4) rehearse your plans.  Planning should focus on safe evacuations, and reactions that minimize the loss of life.

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

No sex in the city: A burg in “moderate” Malaysia has nixed bright lipstick and Manolos for chicks because it supposedly gets the local lads in a lather. (The real reason for such bans, as we know, is that sharia-fanciers are obsessed with controlling their womenfolk). From news.com.ca:

A MALAYSIAN city has banned Muslim women from wearing bright lipstick and noisy high heels to work to prevent rape and illicit sex, local media reports.

City officials in Kota Bharu, the capital of conservative northern Kelantan state - which is run by the Islamic party PAS - distributed a circular to local firms last month to outline the dress code, the Bernama national news agency said yesterday.

The report said the circular stated that the directive, which targeted Muslim women working in food outlets and other business premises, was aimed at preventing incidents like rape and illicit sex.

It ordered women not to wear thick make-up including bright lipstick, or high-heeled shoes "that gave a tapping sound", although rubber-soled heels were permitted.

The directive said that the headscarf worn by many Muslim women in Malaysia should also cover the chest and not be made of transparent material, and that those who flouted the rules faced a fine of 500 ringgit ($160).

Kelantan, run by PAS since 1990, is the most conservative state in Malaysia. The country's population is dominated by Muslim Malays, alongside large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.

The state's rulers have in the past made headlines with laws that require separate queues for men and women in shops, and for imposing fines on skimpy clothing.

However, in recent years the party has begun introducing reforms designed to tone down its hardline reputation and woo young voters.

An official from the city's law enforcement department said there had been an "awareness campaign" encouraging Muslim women to conform with Islamic dress codes "with less make-up and more modesty, including wearing headscarves".

She said she had not seen the circular reported both by Bernama and a television network, and there were no laws forbidding women from wearing heavy make-up or noisy footwear.

"It is a ridiculous piece of news," said the official, who declined to be identified.

Smart thinking, anonymous official. You wouldn’t want to run afoul of the authorities by being seen to side with the brazen red-lipped, high-heeled vixens.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments (1)

“Hate speech” in the Globe: Under the terms of the anti-hate speech sections of our federal, provincial and territorial human rights acts—which, for the moment, override our fundamental Charter right of free expression—the truth is irrelevant if it has the potential to expose an identifiable group to “hatred” at some unspecified point in the future. In light of that legistlation, how can the Globe and Mail justify its report about Ottawa lad Mohammad Momin Khawaja, who is said to have “lived for jihad” (hey, who doesn’t?)? Khawaja is in the dock for his alleged involvement with some British home-growners who apparently wanted to take their paintball training to the next level by slicing and dicing real live kafirs:

OTTAWA -- Mohammad Momin Khawaja thought of little else but holy war, an Ottawa court heard yesterday.

As the trial of the first man charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act got under way four years after police raided his home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, the Crown gave a two-hour summary of its case, in which it will present dozens - perhaps hundreds - of intercepted conversations to show that the accused admitted he had a one-track mind. Mr. Khawaja, the court was told, wrote that "that devotion to the effort of jihad is part of me" and said that not a day went by in which he didn't want to join the mujahedeen, or holy warriors.

He also allegedly said, "The kuffar [infidels] are treacherous and understand only death and destruction."

The Crown alleges Mr. Khawaja, now 29, was involved in a trans-Atlantic conspiracy dating back to two years before his arrest in 2004. It is alleged that he met fellow extremists in London and learned at a training camp in Pakistan how to fire AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. He is accused of trying to build a remote-controlled detonation device for a British cell that wanted to attack civilian targets in London, including possibly a night club and power grids.

Prosecutors said yesterday that Mr. Khawaja was so deep into the idea of holy war that even his attempts at marriage foundered after he told a prospective bride she had to understand he was "down with J" - or armed jihad, battles aimed at changing world governments or, at the very least, securing martyrdom for himself.

The Crown also said he was caught wiring funds to terrorist co-conspirators through a female friend selected because, as Mr. Khawaja wrote to her, "sisters don't get caught, brothers, if they send money, they get caught."

As the charges were read, the soft-spoken Mr. Khawaja, shaven and with long hair parted in the middle, said "not guilty" seven times, responding to each charge against him.

Members of his family, who have frequently accused the RCMP of building a racist case, sat in the courtroom in silence. Counterterrorism experts and international journalists looked on with interest, as the trial promises to provide insight into both radicalization and the incestuous nature of international jihadi schemes…

“Jihad”?  “Kuffars”?  “Mujahedeen”? Isn’t it, um, Islamophobic to mention such things? Won’t it just make the disaffected young lads even angrier, resulting in even more plots of this nature?

If I were Khurrum Awan, I’d give serious consideration to lodging a complaint with one or more of Canada’s anti-hate bodies, because this type of report is likely to expose Muslims to far more “Islamophobia” than anything ever penned by Mark Steyn.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:41 | link | comments (3)

Harpoon’s curiously contradictory C.V.: According to his Wiki entry, in 2002, Bernie’s amigo Harpoon Siddiqui “was awarded the World Press Freedom Award by the National Press Club in Ottawa for his James Minifie Memorial Lecture at the University of Regina, warning against ‘creeping censorship’ in Canada under media concentration.”

Yet here we are six years later, with yet another Harpoon column beating the drum for the flagrant censorship of Canada’s human rights apparatus.

On second thought, maybe it’s not so contradictory. After all, “media concentration” has long been a top-of-mind canard, er, concern in certain quarters, while Harpoon can't help but approve of the “galloping censorship” of the human rights thuggees, since it will help facilitate the creep, nay the canter, nay the gallop of sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:39 | link | comments

The Messiah of ready-to-wear: Obama inspires Milan runway fashions.

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

What we’re up against: There’s some primo cluelessness on display in the Toronto Star’s letters page today. One chap rushes to defend Human Rights Czarina Louise Arbour, whom he insists is an “honourable Canadian.” Another reader—a Muslim woman with an Italian-sounding name (can you say “revert”?) upbraids Star columnist Richard Gwyn for failing to notice that “Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded by the U.S. and its allies” and for writing something which “perpetuates the notion that Muslims are largely responsible for acts of terror.”

Yeah, Dick, where on Earth could you have gotten such a preposterous notion?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments (2)

Boys’ll be boys: The Ottawa Citizen details the story of a local lad who liked Tupac and weight-lifting and, oh yeah, maybe the jihad:

Ottawa . Four days after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a gang of white males in Orléans pulled a 15-year-old Muslim boy off his bicycle and beat him unconscious.

It was a random attack, a backlash by the ignorant reported in minor fashion amid the daily, multi-page coverage in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Buried in the Citizen story of the boy's beating was a quote by a 22-year-old man named Mohammad Khawaja.

"I didn't think something like that would happen in Orléans," he told a Citizen reporter during a random interview at the Orléans mosque. "It's shocking."

The next time Mohammad  Momin Khawaja's name appeared in the newspaper, Ottawa - indeed, Canada - was saying much the same thing about him.

It was on March 30, 2004, the day after he was arrested for alleged involvement in an international terrorist conspiracy. When Mr. Khawaja's non-jury trial begins under tight security in Ottawa on Monday, prosecutors will allege that he was a key player in a thwarted plan by terrorists to detonate a large bomb in London - at a location where it would inflict the greatest damage to people and property.

Five of his alleged accomplices are serving lengthy sentences in British prisons. Much of the same evidence that put them in jail is expected to be used against Mr. Khawaja when he becomes the first Canadian to be charged under the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks in the U.S.

Prosecution witness and convicted terrorist Mohammed Junaid Babar, an American of Pakistani origin, told the British trial that he worked with Mr. Khawaja in Pakistan at an al-Qaeda training camp during the summer of 2003 and that Mr. Khawaja returned to Pakistan months later.

Mr. Babar's lawyers have negotiated a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Mr. Khawaja and others.

Mr. Khawaja has consistently denied all seven charges against him and none has yet been heard in a Canadian court. The evidence that convicted his alleged conspirators in London was presented with neither Mr. Khawaja nor his lawyer in the court to offer a defence.

Shortly after his arrest, Mr. Khawaja's family said he told them that he went to Pakistan looking for a wife - the same reason he gave for visiting London weeks before his arrest. Relatives told reporters that he went on a pre-arranged family visit to the British capital because he had been unable to find a wife in Pakistan or a "suitable" Canadian woman to marry.

But at the trial of the London terrorists, prosecutors said Mr. Khawaja was shadowed by the British spy agency MI5 from the moment he arrived in London. They said he was seen getting into an associate's car and driving to an Internet café, where he allegedly showed images of explosive devices to associates. London prosecutors also alleged that he told his co-conspirators how to detonate bombs using mobile phones.

British media dubbed Mr. Khawaja "The Fixer," claiming he was a mentor to the British-born terrorists.

The portrait London police, prosecutors and their witnesses have painted of Mohammad Momin Khawaja - similar to the portrait federal prosecutors are scheduled to begin creating Monday - bears no resemblance to the Momin described by family and friends in various interviews in the days after his arrest.

"He's just a chillin' type of guy," said his brother, Qasim. "Some of the stuff they've alleged is so out there - they're whacked theories.

"The allegations against Momin are false," insisted his father, Mahboob.

"He was just like any other normal kid. There was nothing special about him," said Fazal Khan, a longtime family friend and president of the Islamic Society of Cumberland, who had often seen the young man at prayer.

"I've known the family for many years and the boys are exemplary in their behaviour," said Sulaiman Khan, director of the Islamic Information and Education Centre on Lisgar Street, where Mr. Khawaja prayed daily while working downtown…

"Chillin’"—great way to put it. Notice how the report opens with the Islamophobic hate attack, as if that, and not certain problematic religious teachings, are what's behind the alleged plot.

Update: Oh, look--they're having some trouble with the young'uns in Algeria, too. A global phenomenon, wouldn't you say?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

Stand by your shiller: "Tammy" Farber sings:

Sometimes it’s hard to be a leader

Giving all your time to just one cause.

You’ll have good times

Curtailing thought crimes,

An effort that should give one pause.

But if you think you’re right you’ll plow on,

Remaining mired in cluelessness.

And if you hate speech,

Eliminate speech,

And soon enough it will be gone.

Stand by Harpoon.

Give him your rapt attention

And please try not to mention

That he cannot be trusted.

Stand by Harpoon.

And say he’s so respected.

You’ll feel much better very soon.

Stand by Harpoon.

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

Disempowering the freedom deriders: Canada’s Barack Obama, Pierre E. Trudeau, once famously opined that the state had no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Given the growing foofarah over the human rights racket and its intrusive powers, it is time update the quip. The new version should read: “The state has no business in the headrooms of the nation.”

Feel free to put it on t-shirts, key chains and coffee mugs.

The lead editorial in Ed Greenspon’s Globe and Mail makes the same point, more or less:

Hate is a subject that the Canadian Human Rights Commission wisely wishes to think about. A law professor at the University of Windsor, Richard Moon, will write a wide-ranging report for the CHRC, to come out in October, on "the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing hate messages."

In her announcement of this policy review on Tuesday, Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner, unmistakably alluded to the debate over three human-rights complaints against Maclean's magazine about "The future belongs to Islam," an article in 2006 by Mark Steyn. There is no hearing date yet for the proceeding at the CHRC; the complaint in B.C. has been heard but not decided; while the Ontario one failed for lack of jurisdiction, the commission joined in the accusation by way of press release.

The Canada Human Rights Act deals with hate in a section that was originally about telephone "hate messages." But in December, 2001, the Anti-Terrorism Act made clear that Internet communications were covered. Of course, Internet publication now largely overlaps with print media. An enactment that once dealt, for example, with a phone number that one could call to hear a recorded "white power message" now looms over the whole of the press in Canada.

Like its sibling in the B.C. Human Rights Code (at the core of the Maclean's hearing in Vancouver earlier this month), section 13 of the federal statute is aimed at what is "likely to expose" people to hatred or contempt because of ethnicity, religion and other specified factors. Evidence of such a likelihood - in the absence of a solid science of mass psychology on which to base expert testimony - is bound to be dubious, and there are no defences of the kind found in civil lawsuits about damage to reputation, such as fair comment.

Back in 1990, a case from the federal human-rights commission about the hate-message section made its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Khurrum Awan, one of the instigators of one of the trio of complaints against Maclean's, has portrayed the court's decision in that case as an active recommendation of section 13, in preference to the hate-speech sections of the Criminal Code. In fact, both the majority and the dissenting minority were troubled that the hate-message section is not limited to cases where there is hateful intent, though the majority was sufficiently comforted that the Human Rights Act's penalties were less drastic than the Criminal Code's.

Whether or not the future belongs to Islam, as Mr. Steyn fears, both the present and future belong in large measure to the Internet. A statutory provision that once restrained racist cranks who were putting telephones to wicked uses now threatens public debate in the press on matters of concern to all Canadians. It may well have been too broad in 1990, as three out of seven Supreme Court judges then thought; it is much too broad in the 21st century.

Let us hope that Richard Moon says likewise to Ms. Lynch and her colleagues, and that the Parliament of Canada then repeals, or severely limits, section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act.

Not nearly enough, oh insightful editiorialist. The entire monstrous, embarrassing, egregiously expensive apparatus must be torn down, pronto.

My letter:

It remains to be seen whether or not, as that controversial issue of Maclean’s magazine asserted, the future belongs to Islam. What should concern us most at this stage is that, in matters of free expression, the “human rights” agenda—which seeks to limit speech lest it hurt people’s feelings—and the Islamist agenda—which brooks no criticism of any aspect of that religion—are in perfect synch.

Never mind the “Islamophobia”. Canadians who value freedom would be well advised to check for symptoms of HRC-ophobia, a dire totalitarian condition which manifests itself as an inability to utter anything other than government-approved banalities, platitudes and bromides.

Expect to see the above in print when Khurrum Awan joins the B’nai Brith.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:40 | link | comments

The object of their disaffection: Capitalism, democracy, freedom—they’re just sooo Age of Enlightenment. What’s got some of the young’uns in the U.K. all stirred up is the prospect of going back to the future—think 7^th Century Arabia, only with iPods and dynamite vests. From the Telegraph.

Extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Britain's young Muslims, a disturbing police report warns.

Increasing numbers have become so alienated from mainstream society that they could even lend their support to jihadi terrorism, the study claims.

While most reject violence, many distrust police and are reluctant to inform on extremists.

The report was commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) after last year's failed bomb attacks in London's West End and at Glasgow Airport. It is to be discussed at Acpo's annual conference this week.

In the most comprehensive research of its kind to date, Prof Martin Innes, of the Universities' Police Science Institute in Cardiff, led a team of researchers which carried out face-to-face and telephone interviews with more than 600 Muslims in London, Birmingham and Oldham.

They found that the radicalisation of young British Muslims was more widespread than previously feared, with "a disturbing proportion" expressing support for extremist elements.

The report, which is being distributed among senior officers, Whitehall officials and ministers, finds that:

• Anger and disaffection are "widespread in sections of Muslim youth".

• There is tacit support for extremist violence within sections of the Muslim community.

• Police need to do more to win the trust of Muslim communities if they are to tackle radicalisation.

• Many Muslims distrust police and are reluctant to inform on extremists, preferring to deal with problems inside their communities.

The study, entitled Hearts and Minds and Eyes and Ears: Reducing Radicalisation Risks Through Reassurance Orientated Policing, warns that "the threat to the UK from jihadist terrorism may increase in the future".

It concludes: "Increasing numbers of young Muslim people are becoming sufficiently disaffected with their lives in liberal-democratic-capitalist societies that they might be willing to support violent terrorism to articulate their disillusionment and disengagement."…

Couldn't they articulate their disillusionment and disengagement in the time-honoured fashion of other young male geeks—i.e. smoke reefer, play video games in the folks’ basement, scarf down pizza pockets, crank up the Led Zeppelin way too loud, and pretend to be Vulcans?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:42 | link | comments

Mostly the latter: Der Spiegel query--Muslim headscraves: Religious Tradition or Political Syymbol?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:16 | link | comments

Still shilling: The jig is mostly up for Canada’s p.c. court system, what with Moses Znaimer, the PEN crowd and even, Heavens to Betsy, the Toronto Star decrying its unfair, unfree modus operendi. At the moment, the only people who still think the HRCs are performing a valuable public service are the hack bureaucrats who work for them and others who toil for the grievence industry; Muslims who cannot abide any critical discussion of their perfect—and thus unassailable—faith; and the Jewstablishment, which is addicted to the thrill of hunting down every last neo-and decrepit-Nazi in Canada, a pre-requisite, purportedly, for the Jews’ psychological well-being. And the Jews are so clueless and short-sighted that they can’t see that, on the issue of free speech, the HRC agenda dovetails very nicely with the Islamist one.

Speaking of the Islamist agenda, Bernie’s pal Harpoon, is at it again, trying to whip up support for the nation’s busy-bodies from his bully pulpit in the Toronto Star. Here’s most of today’s sermon:

According to some journalists, freedom of speech is in peril in Canada. And human rights commissions are "kangaroo courts."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Only genuine misunderstanding or deliberate distortion can explain the media's mostly one-sided discourse on the case of Maclean's before the federal, as well as the Ontario and British Columbia, human rights commissions. The group that filed the complaint against the magazine argued that a series of articles, especially a 4,800-word piece portraying Muslims as a menace to the West, may have constituted hate speech.

Canada has followed a different path on free speech than the United States, where there are no anti-hate laws because the U.S. Bill of Rights says "Congress shall make no laws ... abridging freedom of speech or of the press."

The Canadian Charter of Rights, too, guarantees "freedom of the press," but it places "reasonable limits" on it. That's why the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the anti-hate provisions of both the Criminal Code and human rights statutes.

What constitutes hate is up to the commissions and, ultimately, the courts to decide. But this being Canada, different jurisdictions tackle the issue differently…

The federal commission was mandated to deal with hate transmitted by phone. In 2001, it added the Internet. It did not foresee media websites.

Thus a conundrum for the commission: It cannot sit in judgment on what the media say in print but it can when they put the same material on their websites.

This being Canada, the commission has appointed a commission. Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor was asked Tuesday to come up with a solution…

…The federal commission gets up to 15,000 inquiries a year, says Jennifer Lynch, chair. "We take up only about 700 and refer only about 70 or 80 to the tribunal.

"Hate cases are only 2 per cent of that stream. The tribunal has dealt with only about 15 hate cases, so far. And not a single one of them has been overturned by the courts." So, why the hue and cry?

Karim Karim, chair of Carleton University's School of Journalism, says journalists are "fixated on their own right and privileges.

"What about the rights of people to be free of discriminatory and hateful speech? Journalists talk about one principle, and not the other."…

…Anti-hate laws could be made consistent across Canada by exempting the media, as in Ontario, or axing the anti-hate provisions altogether. We may even adopt the American system and remove the anti-hate section from the Criminal Code as well.

Many disagree, including the Canadian Jewish Congress. Its head, Bernie Farber, says the anti-hate laws have helped make Canada "the warm, tolerant and accepting nation that it has become."

Beyond the law, there's self-restraint. Most media exercise it, every day. We do not publish racist cartoons and anti-Semitic rants. That Maclean's published a series of virulent articles about Muslims itself speaks volumes.

Got that? Canadians must learn to exercise “self-restraint” by, for example, curbing their lack of enthusiasm for sharia and not getting too excited about reports that a genocidal jihadi terror outfit linked to the mullahs may be getting set to unleash an Argentina-style attack on one or more Jewish sites in Canada. The CJC’s Bernie Farber, a warm, tolerant and accepting chap if there ever was one, especially to those like Mo Elmasry and Harpoon Siddiqui who share his concerns about “hate speech,” has certainly absorbed that lesson.

As for Maclean’s “virulent” articles—well, that’s how they would be described in, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Here in the West we have another word for them: the “truth”.

Update: Harpoon sings the Beatles:

When I find myself in times of trouble Bernie Farber comes to me

Whispering these letters:

“HRCs”.

And in my hour of struggle he is marching right along with me

Speaking these three letters:

HRCs.

HRCs, HRCs, HRCs, HRCs,

Speaking these three letters:

HRCs.

 

When all the single-minded sockies

Get so riled that speech is free

There will be an answer:

HRCs.

For though they may be p.o.’d

They can still have faith that we’re p.c.

There will be an answer:

HRCs.

HRCS, HRCS, HRCs, HRCs,

There will be an answer:

HRC.

 

A good thing Bernie’s clueless

And has not had an epiphany.

Thinks they’ll stop the Nazis:

HRCs.

I wake up to the sound of silence--

A sound that quite appeals to me.

There will be no “hate speech”:

HRCs.

HRCs, HRCs, HRCs, HRCs,

There will be no “hate speech”:

HRCs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments (4)

We’re doomed: The basis of my conclusion: the fact that Canadian kafirs—and not just the ones in the Jewstablishment—are so clueless about Islam and its teachings that they can’t see through the doublespeak of  “moderate” imam, Hamid Slimi. From the Toronto Star (my bolds):

There are international precedents for the job Hamid Slimi might soon be asked to do. There are precedents, yes, from Slimi's own life.

But Omar Khadr is Omar Khadr, and there is no precedent for him.

Khadr's military lawyer wants Slimi, a Toronto imam, to create a "religious rehabilitation" program for the 21-year-old Guantanamo detainee – to build a bridge between Canadian society and an alleged Al Qaeda operative raised in a family of radicals, shot three times in Afghanistan at age 15, imprisoned for six years, and possibly tortured.

For that job, there are no ready-to-use blueprints. Which may be why the lawyer has called on a man with a reputation as a bridge-builder.

In May, Slimi became the first Muslim to address Toronto's Neighbourhood Interfaith Group. He was invited by Bryan Beauchamp, its Anglican chair, who met him when both participated in a Habitat for Humanity project.

"That was a good starting point," Beauchamp says. "It was tangential, but important, because it indicated the type of guy he was."

"My involvement with him has been with – believe it or not – are you sitting? Organ donation," says Rabbi Reuven Bulka, co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and chair of the Trillium Gift of Life Network.

Morocco-born Slimi, 39, leads the International Muslims Organization, an Etobicoke mosque. He has two masters degrees, chairs the Canadian Council of Imams, hosts and produces television shows for his Faith of Life Network, and works with a dizzying array of interfaith and community groups.

"Islam is a religion of justice and peace and love," he says. "My job is to do the opposite of those who want to hijack the name of Islam."

Slimi's book, Terrorism: An Islamic Perspective, denounces terror in strong terms: "Islam does not condone or tolerate any terrorist acts including the killing of innocent people no matter what their faith is," he writes. But it also defends "Jihaad," which he defines as a defensive response to aggression.

"All nations do Jihaad when they are attacked," he writes, and Muslims should "defend themselves against their enemy, again, within well defined rules of engagement"; if "freedom and dignity fighters" are "trying to liberate their lands from usurpers, settlers and occupiers, why should they not get help from their fellow humans?"

Secular Muslim commentator Tarek Fatah argues a man with such beliefs is unfit to counsel Khadr.

Slimi says charges of extremism vastly misstate his views. His conception of jihad, he says, would simply permit Canadians to fight back if Canada were attacked.

"Blowing up people when they're sleeping, putting a bomb in a pizzeria – that is not jihad. I am furious when I see those things. That is terrorism. Jihad is defending your house. If someone invaded Canada, what would you do?"

Canadian officials, he says, understand his true nature. The RCMP website quotes him praising its education program, which his mosque has hosted. And after the 2006 bust of the "Toronto 18" alleged terror group, prosecutors asked him to counsel two of the young accused…

See, the imam’s a proponent of that “defensive jihad” (as well as the go-slow jihad)—which is okey-dokey with the CJC’s Bulka and the RCMP (but not, you’ll note, with Tarek Fatah, who is wise to the ways of a slippery Salafist).

Update: Here's the Wikipedia entry for "defensive jihad," which is easily accessible to any CJC or RCMP operative. Its explanation of the concept—quel surprise—is somewhat at odds with Slimi's.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:13 | link | comments (1)

Obamaphobia?: Bambi says Republicans will use race to stoke fears.

That's rich coming from a guy who spent 20 years at Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Black Power Church of Abominate Whitey and the Jooos.

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

A call for action: Canada's Jewstablishment is so thoroughly out to lunch (no doubt at some posh boîte where the vino flows like water and there's plenty of log rolling--"You're the bestest Nazi-fighter!"; "No, no, you're the bestest Nazi-fighter!"), that it cannot be counted on to serve our interests. Therefore, what we need in Canada is an anti-Jewstablishment--the anti-Jewstablishmentarians.

Who's in?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments

Emancipated female: Move over, Carrie Bradshaw. Saudi Arabia's unofficial minister for women—an attractive young woman who wears lipstick and writes Arab chick-lit (which, go figure, is not an oxymoron)—wants us to know that, despite the burqas and the purdah, the anti-vice/pro-virtue police and the sharia, Saudi Arabian women still have lots of opportunies. From the timesonline:

Saudi Arabia has a new minister for women. She’s 25, likes designer labels, lipstick and cars. Rajaa Alsanea is, of course, not in government, for in her country it’s not really the done thing for females to air their opinions. They are not allowed to drive, let alone have employment or voting rights.

Alsanea, however, has captured a vast constituency. She is a bestselling author, the only chick-lit one from the Arab world, and as such she has become a sort of spokeswoman for 21st-century Saudi women. Her book, Girls of Riyadh, about to be published in Britain by Fig Tree, tells the stories of four middle-class young women searching for love and just a little bit of fun in a suffocating culture.

It’s hardly Jilly Cooper – the references to sex are coy with lots of talk of yearning and disappointment – but with tales of the girls drinking (very small sips of Dom Pérignon) and – gasp – sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, it caused a scandal. This is a country, remember, where a woman might be stoned for kissing a man in public.

Alsanea has received death threats by e-mail and many tried to suppress her book. At one point, black market versions of this Arabic version of Sex and the City changed hands for £300.

“I didn’t think about breaking any taboos or being a rebel. I wanted to describe how people find ways to get around some of the traditions. Young women I know want to be modern, hip, stylish and fall in love, the same as women everywhere. I was never trying to cause a scandal,” she tells me over tea at the Dorchester hotel in London.

Alsanea is modestly and fashionably turned out in expensive, loosely cut jeans, a white fitted jacket and a coordinating white, silken hijab. There are a couple of lightly Wagish touches – a diamond watch with a pink strap, a Gucci bag and a French manicure – but she is a class act.

In an American accent she speaks softly, in perfect English with impeccable sentences: “I started writing when I was 18 and I knew I wanted to be a published author. I have been blessed with a very supportive family and we were encouraged to express ourselves.” Her father, who worked for the information ministry in Kuwait, died when she was eight and Alsanea and her five older siblings were raised by her mother in Riyadh: “As I got older, I wanted to write something I would enjoy reading. I just wrote about what I saw around me – what the girls I knew were like.”

After her book was eventually published in 2005, young women began to see Alsanea as their mouthpiece: “At one point I was getting 1,000 e-mails a day. Women who were divorced, women who were married in an arranged way and didn’t like their husbands; those who were struggling with their families were reaching out. Girls came up and hugged me and wanted to take pictures with me. All of a sudden I felt it was my duty to take care of these people.

“I knew that no one had really written about modern life in Saudi but – perhaps because I was young – I didn’t think it would be sensational.”

It’s hard to imagine this smart and beautiful girl ever being naive. Last year she was voted the Arab world’s premier intellectual by Elaph, the online magazine. All her siblings are either physicians or dentists and she is a graduate student in dentistry, arguing that there is no money in being a Saudi writer (I suspect she is an exception to this rule). She was savvy enough not to send her manuscript to the Saudi information ministry, where all books must be vetted before publication. Instead, she got her brother to take it to publishers in more liberal Lebanon.

When she didn’t hear from them immediately, she boldly sent her book to her favourite writer, the poet Ghazi al-Gosaibi, a former UK ambassador and now a Saudi government minister: “He is an idol of mine and when he called me to say he liked the book I was, like: call me back in five minutes. I need to freak out.” It was his endorsement that prompted the buzz across the Middle East and the book deal. And it was only then that she let her family read her work.

“My brother was worried for me.

He asked whether I really wanted to publish it under my own name. He thought it might affect my chances of marriage, that there would be men who wouldn’t want to marry me.” She raises an eyebrow – precisely threaded to Hurleyish perfection – and shrugs: “I just thought, hey, I wouldn’t want to marry them, either. It’s a good way of weeding some out.”…

Oho, good one, Ms. Alsanea. Just be careful your uppity, progressive views don’t put you in line for one of those “honor” murders we don’t hear nearly enough about.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments

Do you believe in magic?: One of the Magic Kingdom’s innumerable oleaginous princes sure doesn’t. He says there’s no way the Wahhabis can “wave a magic wand” and somehow roll back oil prices, currently zooming into the stratosphere. Who do you think they are—a slut of an infidel TV witch who could make things happen with just a twitch her nose or something?  (He didn’t say that last part, of course, but he may have been thinking it.) From Arab News:

JEDDAH: Saudi officials said yesterday that the Kingdom has no “magic wand” that will resolve the skyrocketing oil prices.

Addressing a press conference ahead of tomorrow’s International Energy Conference here, Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said: “There are political, economic and regulatory factors involved.

“The soaring oil prices require immediate intervention by everyone. Combined solutions are needed where roles are defined.”

Echoing a commonly held view that market speculation has at least as much of a role in current pricing as supply, the prince said that no single factor is in play and that it is in Saudi Arabia’s interests to see a stabilization of the market.

He attributed much of the cause of this current crisis to “subjective circumstances” and warned that people should not be “overly optimistic” that anything but “temporary solutions” could be reached.

Ibrahim Al-Muhana, a ministry consultant, said tomorrow’s meeting of principal producing and consuming nations is important to identifying the causes and the solutions to the current troubles. “The emergence of new players has made it difficult for us to put our fingers at a clear reason (for the current problems),” he said, attributing the shift of speculation from the US subprime crisis to commodities trading as one reason for the rise in the prices of a range of commodities, not just oil.

Al-Muhana said it was obvious right now that all market forces are in harmony so it must be something outside the supply-demand formula that is causing the hike in prices. Financial factors contributing to the hike included a weak dollar and high demand on the euro in addition to the American subprime crisis.

“The fluctuation in the oil market is what made the king call the meeting,” he said.

Prince Abdulaziz said that there is cooperation among Saudi Arabia, OPEC, the International Energy Forum and the International Energy Agency to present a working paper to the meeting.

However, Saudi officials did not reveal any details about what they intended to propose at the meeting.

To combat the rise in prices, Saudi Arabia announced recently it would increase its production capacity by three million barrels per day to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. Saudi Aramco recently announced plans to build new refineries with French Total and US Conoco in order to meet the shortage of oil derivatives. Al-Muhana acknowledged that there is a link between the shortages of refiners and rising oil prices but said that this link is not a major factor.

OPEC President Chakib Khelil, who will attend the Jeddah oil summit, said yesterday it was illogical and irrational to ask the organization to increase output so as to take the pressure off soaring prices.

“Saudi Arabia decided to hold this meeting... in order to determine the causes behind rising oil prices,” he said. “The principal objective of the Jeddah meeting is to clarify positions regarding the reasons behind this rise”…

Mind if I give it a shot, Mr. Prez? How about greed, a desire to punish the U.S. for supporting the Zionist entity and an in-your-face show of power by the oil nations?

Did I mention greed?

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

Some "hudna": Even though Israel and Hamas are into the third day of their Egypt-brokered "truce", Hamas's thug-in-chief Ismail Haniyeh says he has no intention of halting the smuggling of arms into Gaza (a condition of the truce).

Of course he doesn't. Why should a little thing like a hudna stop him from getting on with plans for the jihad?

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

Can we get that in writing?: UN nuclear watchkitty Mo ElBaradei says he'll resign if Israel attacks Iran.

I say why wait for an attack? Do it now! 

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

Projecting, deflecting, protecting: Iran calls Israel "a dangerous regime."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

The Koran’s contents: In the book section of the Globe and Mail, University of Glasgow prof Mona Siddiqui makes a case for the Koran as one of the world’s 50 GREATEST BOOKS:

How do you measure a book's worth? By its sales in the millions, by its perennial appeal to generation upon generation, by the beauty of its language and style or because, as in the case of the Koran, the book is considered sacred and venerated as God's very word. With more than one billion Muslims in the world who believe that the Koran is God's last revelation in human history, the Koran, like the Bible, is one of the most widely read, revered and recited books in the world.

Its reach is global, its influence is global. It has been the inspiration to one of the greatest civilizations in the world and is the basis for some of the most impressive art, architecture, literature, philosophy and science the world has ever known.

A relatively short scripture, the Koran is the culmination of a series of revelations that Muslims believe were given to Muhammad, a seventh-century Arab who became God's last Prophet and the recipient of God's final revelation.

The book was revealed in Arabic and subsequently compiled in Arabic. Though it has been translated into numerous languages, the faithful nevertheless always try to read the original Arabic because the power of the book lies as much in the oral recitation of the verses as its does in its content. For Muslims, the Koran is central to the good and moral life.

Like most Semitic scriptures, the Koran refers to the big themes: God, prophecy, angels, the eschaton (the end of days), punishment and reward. But it also refers to people of other faiths, namely Jews and Christians. These are people who also received divine revelation, who had their own prophets and who might also be saved in the next world. Thus, Muslims have always shared an ambivalent history with the people of both these faiths.

The Koran also refers to what are understood to be more socio-ethical matters: marriage, divorce, sexual relations, slavery, inheritance laws, poverty, penal laws, ecology and ritual practice. Man worships God not just through submission to ritual but through the ethical relations he forms with the world and people around him.

This is where the greatness of the Koran lies. With its insistence on reflection on God's world and its emphasis on the performance of just and charitable acts, the Koran contains a transformative power. The language is poetic, passionate and persuasive. The narrative is both long and elaborate, and short and choppy. The thread that ties all the different themes together is God' mercy, or rahma. The Koran is itself a reflection of God's mercy and compassion, and must be central to the way we think of one another and the relationships we form.

But like all scriptures, the Koran contains another side. In the post-9/11 world, many in the West are suddenly awake to the power of scripture, and to the fact that zealotry and fanaticism can find their roots in scripture just as much as compassion can. Issues of gender inequalities and a justification for violence are being seen as defining descriptors of the Islamic world with their basis in the Koran...

In his new book, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Andrew Bostom makes a case for Jew-hatred as one of those defining descriptors. Here he is describing his research to the Jerusalem Post’s Sam Sher:

…WHILE SEARCHING for the roots of jihad, Bostom found the roots of Islam's Jew-hatred. More often than not, they were intertwined.

"As I was putting the first book [The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims] together, I came across Ahmad Sirhindi," he explains. "He was an Indian Sufi who was enraged by the reforms of Moghul Akbar, who abolished the jizya [poll tax]. This enraged the orthodox ulema [scholars], one of the chief representatives of whom was Sirhindi. Amongst his virulent tracts against the moghul he says, 'Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.' Now, this is a 16th-17th century anti-Hindu ideologue, and there's no evidence that he ever had contact with a Jew. So I was like, 'Where on earth did this come from?'"

Bostom looked first to the Koran for an explanation.

"When I put together the Koranic verses on the Jews," he continues, "they read like an indictment, prosecution and conviction. It was virulently anti-Semitic. Going into the hadith and the histories of Muhammad - where his assassination is attributed to a Khybar Jewess, for example - only strengthened this conviction.

"So when I juxtaposed that with the notion that there was no theological anti-Semitism in Islam, it was stunning. It's just so in-your-face that to claim that the foundational sources don't create anti-Semitism or aren't inherently anti-Semitic... it's absurd."…

You can be certain, though, that no one, and I mean no one would ever run to an HRC with a complaint about the Koran's hate speech. Now that would be absurd!

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

Captivating gent: Since this is the weekend when the Get Smart movie hits theatres, it has put me in mind of one of my favourite episodes of the Mel Brooks-Buck Henry TV show. I don’t recall many plot details, but it involved a Chaos agent named Simon the Likeable who, in a case of perfect casting, was played by likeable character actor Jack Gilford. (Gilford had an inherent sweetness about him, along with one of the most appealing lisps in showbiz.) Now there was no doubt that Simon was up to no good, but no one was able to do much about it because he was so amiable, so attractive, so congenial, so gosh-darned, well, likeable, that he cast a spell over whomever he encountered and stopped them dead in their tracks.

In fact, he was a lot like this guy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:57 | link | comments

A clear and ever-present danger: Bernie Farber may be blasé about the prospect of an Argentina-style Hezbollah attack in Canada. But then, as long as the Jewstablishment Linuses can snuggle with their HRC security blankie, they’re gonna keep grooving to that old Bob Marley refrain: “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing/’Cause every little thing’s gonna be alright…” As far back as 2002, though, Stewart Bell of the National Post, the Canadian media’s foremost expert on terrorism, has been reporting on the apparent threat:

The terrorist group Hezbollah has been using Canada as an offshore base for raising money and purchasing supplies needed to carry out and videotape attacks against Israel, documents obtained by the National Post show. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents detail how Hezbollah has laundered tens of thousands of dollars through Canadian banks while drawing on the accounts to shop for military equipment. Hezbollah agents shopped for blasting devices, night-vision goggles, powerful computers and camera equipment used to record attacks against Israeli forces, according to dozens of CSIS wiretaps obtained yesterday. The Canadian operation was so successful that CSIS agents overheard suspected Hezbollah operatives in Vancouver in early 1999 congratulating each other in a monitored telephone conversation. "Ali Adham Amhaz informed Mohamad Hassan Dbouk that he was watching the latest news on today's operation involving Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Amhaz congratulated Dbouk for Hezbollah's success in their improving ability which was making Israel retaliate for the attacks."

Even as they lived in Canada with their families as immigrants the Hezbollah operatives apparently remained disdainful of their new surroundings, denouncing "the Canadians and the Zionists" in a wiretapped conversation. Hezbollah is a radical Shiite group formed in Lebanon in 1982 that is funded by Iran and Syria. It is responsible for kidnappings, hostage takings and bombings that killed hundreds of Americans in the early 1980s. Although defended recently as a political movement by Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, and Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hezbollah has been running secret operations in Canada for more than a decade. Mr. Chrétien declined to condemn Hezbollah after he attended an event at the francophone summit in Beirut two weeks ago that was also attended by the group's leader.

But Canadian police and intelligence reports show the group has been using Canada in recent years to buy materiel, forge travel documents, raise money and steal luxury vehicles. CSIS reports dated April, 2002, show that in 1999 and 2000, Hezbollah sent detailed shopping lists to agents who were allegedly part of a network with operatives in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal who filled the orders and shipped the equipment back to Lebanon in courier packages. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were moved through various Canadian banks such as the Bank of Nova Scotia to finance purchases for what the participants referred to as the "resistance" and the "brave people." Canadian Hezbollah agents also discussed a scam they called a "miracle strike," which involved taking out life insurance on someone and then having them killed in a bombardment in Lebanon. ..

The extent of Hezbollah operations in Canada first came to light in the 1990s when an agent named Mohammed Hussein al-Husseini was arrested for deportation. He told CSIS about a vast cross-Canada network. He also confessed that agents had spied on Canadians and sent information about Canadian life and infrastructure back to Lebanon "in case there's a problem with Canada." In two cases, alleged Hezbollah agents wanted for terrorist activities overseas were found hiding out in Edmonton and Ottawa. One of them has been charged with taking part in a 1993 bombing attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. "Hezbollah has members in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto -- all of Canada," Mr. Al-Husseini, a member of Hezbollah's security organization, told CSIS before he was deported in 1994.

"Hezbollah wants to collect information on Canada, on life in Canada, its roads and so on, in case there's a problem with Canada." He was reportedly referring to videotapes of Canadian landmarks sent to Hezbollah…

If we told Bernie et al that they could haul Sheik Nasrallah before an HRC—do you think that would rouse them from their torpor?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:30 | link | comments

Mr. Oven Door: This is the kind of man CJC chief Bernie Farber is: when he was in Poland a few years ago, he went to the town where his family used to live before being murdered by the Nazis. Upon finding what was once his family's home, he cased around for a memento to bring back with him when his eyes lit upon the oven door. Though it was made of cast iron and must have put his luggage drastically overweight on the flight home, he shlepped it all the way to Toronto, and mounted it on his living room wall.

That's the kind of guy he is--a guy who's so wracked with anger at what the Nazis did to his family and the Jews of Europe that he has an oven door on his wall, a symbol of his determination to root out every last decrepit-and-neo-Nazi in the country lest they pose a threat to Canadian Jewry.

Query him about that Hezbollah threat we've all been reading about, though, and Bernie turns positively docile. Oh, that's just "chatter," he sniffs. Nothing to worry about. Move along now and let us get on with extending a hand of friendship to all our Muslim friends (like Harpoon Siddiqui).

Bernie Farber, this one's for you:

Bernie Farber will now weigh in upon

All the threats that will plague us anon:

“We must cower in dread

At white creeps on the Web

But as for Hezbollah--what a yawn!”

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:39 | link | comments (1)

Drunk and disorderly: During their off hours, some British soldiers assigned to a military base in Medicine Hat, Alberta have been imbibing too much brewski and puking their guts out—a habit that hasn’t endeared them to local pub owners.  The publicans have been denying them service since the “right” to be drunken yobbo isn’t enshrined in Canada’s human rights legislation. At least, not yet. From the Ceeb:

Citing drunken and disorderly conduct, some bars near a southern Alberta military training base are banning British soldiers.

Bars in Medicine Hat are used to serving British military personnel who work or train at Canadian Forces Base Suffield, 50 kilometres west of the city. But run-ins with theft, vandalism and drunkenness have some bars refusing entry to British soldiers.

Stuart Hardiker, who has served in both the British army and the Canadian military, said he asked a hostess at one bar about a sign reading, No British Soldiers Allowed.

"She explained that, that soldiers get drunk and they throw up. And I said, 'Well, do Canadians not get drunk, and you know, do they not throw up?' Is it not the licensee of that establishment's legal obligation to monitor the consumption of alcohol to the patrons?" he told CBC News Thursday.

Another pub posted a sign to the attention of British soldiers requiring them to show proof of Alberta residency — effectively banning their access.

The British military has been using CFB Suffield as a training facility since 1971, and it's estimated it injects about $100 million into the local economy. The majority of Brits at Suffield are support staff, but the bars say their problems are with visiting trainees who are battle troops.

Some bars report incidents of soldiers urinating and vomiting in their establishments, as well as stealing tips from waitresses and exposing themselves to other customers.

"I'm not barring them because they're battle groups, I'm barring them because of what they're doing in here," Ross Beach, owner of Rossco's Pub, told the Medicine Hat News.

He accepts it's a case of a few bad apples, but said the soldiers' behaviour is unfair to his patrons and cleaning staff.

However, Gord Callaghan of O'Riley's Irish Pub said he's dealt with only a few incidents involving British soldiers over the years, pointing out he's had trouble with all kinds of people who get drunk.

Former soldier says policy is discriminatory

Hardiker estimates that he's been turned away from bars about 25 times since moving to the city of about 60,000 people 12 years ago. Often, it's at night, but he said he was refused service once at lunch time when he was accompanied by his wife.

Hardiker said he was embarrassed recently when he tried to take visitors from the United Kingdom out for a few drinks —and bar staff told him, "Sorry, no Brits allowed today."

"It embarrasses me as a resident of Canada … because of the fact that Canada prides itself throughout the world as being a nation thriving on its human rights, and yet we refuse soldiers that are here to train to be deployed in operational conflicts around the world … in a country that is supposed to be part of the British Commonwealth."

Hardiker is no longer a soldier, but said he's been refused service because of his accent — which he believes is discriminatory.

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Act says businesses can refuse service to people who might pose a threat to the patrons, staff or property, and the Alberta Human Rights Act states they cannot discriminate against people on grounds of race, colour, ancestry or place of origin.

At the same time, the Human Rights Act also has a clause that allows a business to discriminate against a customer if there's proof of reasonable and justifiable causes.

Hands up all those who foresee a human rights complaint lodged by soldiers who’ve experienced “pain and suffering” due to “prejudiced” publicans.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:41 | link | comments

It just gets worse: Caroline Glick sheds light on Israel's darkess week.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:06 | link | comments

Shavian Islamists: The Canadian Islamic Congress thinks so highly of this quote by Fabian crackpot George Bernard Shaw that it is posted on its website:

"We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives.

Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives?

Where are such voters to be found today? Nowhere."

I’m not entirely sure what Shaw had in mind when he expectorated this pseudo-profundity; probably something to do with how the hoi polloi could not be trusted to put the right people—i.e. people who thought like him—into office. And I’m not sure what CIC thinking is in posting it. All I know is that it doesn’t seem to be particularly complementary to either democracy or the Canadian electorate. It does, however, seem to be a sort of backhanded pitch for a “benevolent despot,” or, barring that, a call to "breed political capacity."

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (3)

The animate and the animated: An AP report lists the celebrities who will be getting a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. See if you can guess which celeb is the odd one out:

Los Angeles -- Hollywood will enshrine an eclectic bunch in its famous curbside Walk of Fame next year, including Hugh Jackman, Ben Kingsley, the Village People and Tinkerbell. Other recipients of stars include Felicity Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy; Cameron Diaz; Robert Downey Jr.; Tim Burton; Leslie Caron; Charles Durning and Ralph Fiennes.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's Walk of Fame Committee chose the recipients, who were ratified yesterday.

It’s Leslie Caron, of course. Her mother tongue is French.

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

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all?: Stéphane Dion, a man so bland and colourless that he’s the human equivalent of Sleep-Eaze, has a plan to get a handle on that tricky climate change. A cockamamie, unworkable plan. From the Globe and Mail:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the idea crazy, and the reaction of big business was mixed, but the votes that matter for Stéphane Dion and his new Green Plan exist on the other end of the political spectrum.

The Liberal Leader staked his political future yesterday on a controversial plan that, experts say, is an effort to win support on the splintered left. The plan, which balances $15-billion in carbon taxes with an equivalent cut in income taxes, will be a main plank in an election campaign that at least some Liberals now believe will come in the fall.

"There's no question they're aiming at the NDP and the Green Party and the Bloc," said Peter Donolo, a pollster with the Strategic Counsel. "They're making a generational pitch and maybe another opportunity to make a play in Quebec."

The theory, according to some Grits, is to have Mr. Dion find a progressive spot on the political battlefield that no other party will occupy, and reap the rewards if he can communicate the plan as a reasonable one.

Perhaps sensing this, the New Democratic Party pounced hard on the Liberal proposal yesterday, with Quebec MP Tom Mulcair saying it showed "crass ignorance" and predicting that it would create an expensive federal bureaucracy...

Did you say “expensive federal bureaucracy”? Why, that’s the Liberal Party’s middle name. My letter:

Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” may well be the quintessential Liberal policy. It punishes the rich through onerous taxation.  It enables the government to grind out a whole slew of confounding regulations that will engage untold numbers of bureaucrats for many years to come. Best of all, it allows people to feel virtuous about making sacrifices for what they believe is the greater good.

Will it make a shred of difference to global climate change? Probably not. Canada is far too puny to have any impact on the big picture. But then, the point of the exercise is not to effect any serious change. The point is to ride the coattails of the environmental movement back into power.

If Stéphane's greenery doesn't do the trick, Canada could always buy lots of carbon credits from Big Al's Cozy Carbon Credit Emporium.

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

In the same boat: On a day when the front page of the National Post trumpets the possible activation of Hezbollah sleeper cells in Canada, two of Toronto’s most vocal Jewish anti-Zionists crawl out of the woodwork and display their “wisdom” (such as it is) on the letters page.

As if, like the Nazis, Hezbollah makes any distinction between the “good Jews” and the “bad Jews.”

Update: More Jewish anti-Zionists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:53 | link | comments (10)

Slogan theft: Has anyone noticed that Bambi's slogan--"YES WE CAN"--has either been swiped without attribution from Bob the Builder, or swiped without attribution (though with a slight change) from the late Sammy Davis, Jr.?

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:18 | link | comments

Wahhabi science: A most worthy endeavour. From Arab News:

MADINAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is likely to open a three-day international knowledge forum, which will bring together prominent scientists from across the world, at the Le Meridien in Madinah on June 22.

“King Abdullah has cordially accepted the invitation to honor the forum,” said Amr Al-Dabbagh, governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the main organizer of the event.

Prominent scientists from across the world — including Dr. Afzal Hossain and Stein Sture from the United States, Professor Sar Sardy from Indonesia, Dr. Musa M. Nordin from Malaysia and Dr. Anis Ahmed from Pakistan — are expected to attend the event, entitled “Noor” (Light).

“The primary objective of the annual forum is to promote human civilization from the land of Madinah by attracting investors, scientists, scholars and pioneer institutions to the Knowledge Economic City, which is set to become an international center for knowledge,” SAGIA officials said.

Crucial topics to be discussed at the forum include high-tech innovation and creativity in the Muslim world, strategies to decrease genetic disorders, knowledge infrastructure development through engineering and information and communications technology (ICT), and bioinformatics-based investment in the Kingdom. Al-Dabbagh also announced that SAGIA plans to hold the knowledge forum each year. This year’s forum will focus on health care, and ICT…

Sounds like they plan to give the Jewish state, per capita the most innovative nation on the planet, a run for its money. To help the forum get going, I propose a strategy to tackle the problem of genetic disorders: knock it off with all the inter-cousin canoodling.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:03 | link | comments (2)

All joking aside: The man who wants be in charge of the American economy seems to have a shaky grasp of numbers, as evidenced by this item on James Taranto’s OpinionJournal:

The Chicago Defender notes a curious claim by Barack Obama in his Father's Day speech:

"We know that more than half of all Black children live in single-parent households. We know the statistics--that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison," he said, as his wife Michelle and two daughters listened from the front row.

We're certainly inclined to believe that the absence of a father makes a child likelier to run afoul of the law, but can it really be true that fatherless children are 20 times as likely to end up in prison but only five times as likely to commit crimes? That would mean criminals from intact families get away with their crimes three times as often as those raised by single mothers.

It reminds us of that old joke about the definition of chutzpah: when a guy kills his mother and pleads for mercy because he has a father.

I thought the joke was about the guy who throws the Grandma who raised him and his father-figure under the train, and then tries to make everyone feel sorry for him because he’s an orphan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:54 | link | comments

Divide it, but don’t use barbed wire: What Obama meant by “an undivided Jerusalem.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:41 | link | comments

A stark illustration: Robert Spencer--wearing a gag to illustrate how free speech is being gagged, particularly here in Canada--explains that Islamic supremacists are using the concept of "Islamophobia" to shut down all criticism of anything pertaining to Islam and the jihad. This effort is helping further the interests of the supremacists, and is effectively putting an end to free speech as we know it (with the able assistance of Canada's Jewstablishent, the soft jihad's useful idiots).  

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

The real threat: While Canada’s Jewstablishment keeps up its dogged fight against the phantom menace of neo-and-decrepit Nazis, Hellzbollocks is reportedly getting set to activate sleeper cells in Canada to launch attacks against Jewish targets.

So much for that HRC security blankie.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:30 | link | comments (2)

The kangaroo cabaret: Time to say Auf Wiedersehen to the whole cockamamie system. Right, Liza?:

We used to all have something known as “freedoms”

And in our cherished Charter we could read ‘em.

The end result of centuries of thinking.

But now go take a whiff: something is stinking.

The day we all stopped paying close attention

Is a day you must agree’s too sad to mention.

For once where we could think and speak so free

We're now, unhappily, ruled by what’s p.c.

I think of freedom every single day,

And since I miss it so, I have to say:

 

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Join the insurgency!

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

Get rid of HRCs.

 

Pick up your laptop, your phone and your pen.

Complain to authorities.

Get rid of HRCs, M.P.s,

Get rid of HRCs.

 

They’ve overstepped.

They’re so unfair.

There is no doubt they’re totalitarian.

Speak up now, and be contrarian.

 

No use kowtowing to thought cops and courts

When we need our liberty.

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

Get rid of HRCs.

 

And as for me,

And as for me:

I made my mind up in adolescence:

“No” to cant and acquiesence.

 

Start by admitting from east  to B.C.

We must have a free country.

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

We don’t need those HRCs!

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

Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl: The way I figure it, that’s who’s running the Toronto Transit Commission and City Hall, since only the witless products of rural inbreeding could possibly screw things up this bad. From the National Post:

Fire trucks cannot safely navigate the new streetcar right-of-way along St. Clair Avenue West, according to a fire department report that sounds the alarm about delays in emergency response times.

Residents who have vigorously opposed the streetcar project were outraged yesterday even as officials from Toronto Transit Commission and the fire department tried to play down the risks.

"Our concerns have been vindicated by this report but it's not a pleasant feeling to be vindicated," said Margaret Smith, chairwoman of Save Our St. Clair, a grass-roots group that raised concerns about safety, accessibility and congestion over years of countering the 6.7-kilo-metre, $95-million project.

The report suggests that the dedicated streetcar track -- used by emergency vehicles to bypass cars as they respond to calls -- contains a serious design flaw…

Then again, Curley, Larry and Moe could be in charge.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments (2)

Circle saavy: The Times reports on a new-fangled crop circle, one much more elaborate than usual :

Wroughton Mathematicians are perplexed after a highly complex crop circle appeared in a Wiltshire field - depicting a fundamental mathematical symbol.

The circle is, apparently, a coded image representing a complex mathematical number — the first ten digits of pi — and even astrophysicists admit they find it “mind-boggling”.

The circular pattern was created in a barley field near Barbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort, earlier this month.

Measuring around 46m (150ft) in diameter, it has had crop circle enthusiasts and experts stumped.

The symbol was identified eventually by Mike Reed, a retired astrophysicist who contacted Lucy Pringle, a crop circle photographer and expert, with an explanation.

Maths codes and geometric patterns have long been an important factor in crop circle formations — one of the most famous formations ever created showed the image of a complex set of fractals known as The Julia Set, in a field near Stonehenge, 12 years ago.

Lucy Pringle, who researches the effects of electromagnetic fields on living systems and crop formations and has the largest database of crop circles in the world said of the phenomenon: “This is an astounding development — it is a seminal event.”

Or at the very least, a circular event. I like the comment left by a skeptical reader: “i’m a wiltshire lad and this crop circle bothers me because i never met anyone clever enough in wiltshire to carry this out.”

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

The curious case of the recanting Islamist: What’s the deal with Mubin Shaikh? The Crown’s star witness in its case against the Mississauga jihadi laddies, he’s gone from being the snitch who ratted them out to the kafirs, to the guy who now seems determined to subvert the entire prosecution. On the witness stand yesterday, Mr. Shaikh recollected things differently than he had in previous statements to police, and appeared to be trying to protect one of the youths he had implicated in the alleged plot; in earlier testimony, he described the cadre's ring-leader as being a "few fries short of a Happy Meal"--meaning he was far too addlepated to conduct an effective attack.

So what’s going on? Is Shaikh:

·         someone who started out with the aim of thwarting the jihadis (because they were likely to make his “soft jihad” approach of inserting sharia into the Canadian body politic via other means, including sharia tribunals, that much harder to achieve), but who, at cruch-time, had second thoughts about being seen to side with the kafirs?;

·         a double-dealing rat who had always hoped to placate both sides?;

·         a single-dealing rat, who had every intention of torpedoing the Crown’s case right from the start?

Keep your eyes on the Brampton proceedings, where all may (or may not) be revealed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments (2)

Money for nothing: On the israelinsider site, Michael Freund questions the wisdom of spending vast sums of money each year to confirm the self-evident, i.e. that they hate us; they really, really hate us:

What a colossal waste of Jewish resources. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent monitoring and examining, exploring and investigating the extent of global anti-Semitism.

Reports are compiled, press conferences are held, and trends are carefully studied and assessed, all as part of a monumental effort to track the spread of that age-old virus known as Jew-hatred.

On the governmental level, the US State Department maintains an Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism, while Israel runs its own Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism.

Universities from Yale to Hebrew U have created centers to study the phenomenon, and then, of course, there is the alphabet-soup list of American Jewish groups, such as the ADL and AJC, all of whom make a fine living by sounding the alarm over anti-Jewish bigotry.

And yet, despite it all, confusion still reigns regarding the very nature of the beast. Who hates us so much? And why?

You'd think that after pouring so much time and money into the issue, we'd have a better grasp of the subject.

Now consider the following. The Anti-Defamation League, based in New York, which bills itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency," spent over $76 million in 2006.

That same year, the American Jewish Committee laid out more than $48 million, while the American Jewish Congress shelled out another $6 million.

All told, these three self-styled US Jewish defense agencies, which are devoted to combating anti-Semitic hatred, spent over $130 million in just one calendar year.

Now, according to the ADL's own figures, the total number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in the US that year was 1,554.

That comes out, on average, to a whopping $83,655 per incident that these organizations are costing the Jewish people.

Is that really justified?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of countering anti-Semitism and standing up to our foes. It is essential to educate the public, spotlight media bias and denounce those who hate us with all our might.

And yes, the three groups in question all do engage in a variety of activities beyond just combating anti-Semitism.

But at a time when budgets are tight and Jewish needs are growing at home and abroad, do we really need several overlapping Jewish organizations doing pretty much the same thing? Frankly, this is profligacy at its worst. And it comes with a hidden, yet painful, cost to the Jewish people and their future.

Indeed, just think about what all that money could achieve if it were put to better use, such as funding scholarships at Jewish day schools, subsidizing trips to Israel for Jewish youth or underwriting the costs of Jewish books.

If even half of the $130 million spent by these groups each year were to go towards strengthening Jewish education, it could have a far more profound impact on Jewish life than the issuance of additional reports on anti-Semitic outbreaks...

Another problem with this monitoring: when it reveals that instances of Judenhass are on the uptick, rarely if ever does it identify who’s behind the hatred. White power punks and teenage pranksters, sure. But more often, these acts are perpetrated by those who have a pathological hatred for the uppity dhimmi state which dared to set up shop in Dar al-Islam. For reasons of political correctness, though, that info is unlikely to be divulged.

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

Hamas, the Holocaust and HRCs: Even as the latest “hudna” with Hamas takes effect and Jews are encouraged to “dialogue” with jihadis, Caroline Glick poses a timely question: Why can’t Israelis see that the Palestinians harbour the same genocidal ambitions as the Nazis? From FrontPage Magazine:

The television camera lens moves with seeming effortlessness from the pictures of suffering and death at the Hebrew University to the carnival in Gaza City, where thousands take to the streets in celebration of the pictures from Jerusalem.

Gazing at the revelers on the screen, one strains one's eyes to find an expression of shame, guilt, or remorse on the faces in the crowd. One unconsciously prays to discern anything that would show that those in front of the camera are there by accident or because they were forced to be there. But no, the faces on the screen are uninhibited, joyful ones.
 
Far from being forced to participate in the festivities, each and every one of the people at the parade in Gaza makes a personal decision to leave his or her home and join the crowd in applauding the mass murder of Jews. They are there because they support the murders. They are there because such murders make them happy. These Gazans, and their counterparts at Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were not celebrating a military victory. There was no battle at the cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra International Student Center.

These Palestinians - men, women, teenagers, and small children - came together to celebrate another massacre in their genocidal campaign against the Jewish people. Yes, genocide. The Palestinians have reached a point in this war where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish. That is, the Palestinian goal today is genocide.

In a seminal article in Commentary magazine this past February on the recent rise of anti-Semitism, Hillel Halkin argued, counterintuitively, that the Holocaust is the main reason why it is so difficult for Jews today to accept the fact of anti-Semitism. In his words, "The Holocaust has made some Jews less, rather than more, able to see anti-Semitism around them. This is because if the Nazis demonized the Jew, they also demonized the anti-Semite." In short, if an anti-Semite is not a Nazi, then it is hard for Jews to perceive him as a threat. Just so.

Even as generations of Jews adopted "Never Again" as their rallying cry, the Holocaust made it difficult for us to notice when genocide is adopted as a policy against the Jewish people, without gas chambers present. The fact that the Palestinians currently lack the means used by the Germans to perpetrate their genocidal policy against the Jews blinds us from the fact that their desire to do so is the same as that of the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s…

Canada’s Jewstablishment can’t see past the Holocaust, either. That’s part of the reason why they continue to clutch the HRC security blankie that enables them to persecute incontinent Nazis and white power pishers; that’s why they see nothing wrong in hooking up with the likes of Mohamed Elmasry and Harpoon Siddiqui, gents who compose vile anti-Israel screeds and shill for the sharia agenda.

What will it take for these Linuses to get a clue, drop their blankie, and see that the next Holocaust, should it come, won’t involve Jews being stuffed into cattle cars and incinerated in ovens; it will arrive when some Islamic supremacist pushes a button and deploys one judiciously aimed nuke?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments (1)

Disgusting trend: The last word is radical chic-anery--a t-shirt of Anne Frank wearing a terror shmatta.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:53 | link | comments

Two freedom fighters: Frederick Douglass and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

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

Revenge of the deciduous: If you want a good chuckle, read this hilarious review of M. Night Shyamalan's eco-horror flick, The Happening (though not if you plan to see the movie, since it contains spoilers galore).

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:42 | link | comments

R.I.P. Cyd Charisse: Hollywood's sexiest female dancer ever, and a woman who had one of the Silver Screen's all time best "before" names--Tula Ellice Finklea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:27 | link | comments (1)

 No strings: Dilbert doodler Scott Adams says that if Bambi is defeated come November, it will point to the existence of a conspiracy by unnamed but very powerful “puppet masters”:

There are few things I enjoy as much as a good conspiracy theory. The upcoming election in the United States will be fascinating because there is a high probability we will find out if there are any hidden puppet masters running the United States. That would happen if, for example, Obama is clearly ahead in the polls in November but somehow loses the election. I consider both of those outcomes likely.

Obama's tax plan involves taking money from the presumed puppet masters (rich people and corporations) and divvying it up among the people he hopes will vote for him (the masses). The only way that approach could fail with voters is if there really are puppet masters and they really are determining who gets to be president…

Actually, I agree with the conspiracy-addled Mr. Adams that there are “puppet masters”. This guy, for example.

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

Today’s quotation: I dedicate the following piece of wisdom, penned by George Orwell not long after WW2, to that enthusiastic purveyor of opaque bureaucratese (I know, I know: an oxymoron), the lovely and talented Ms. Jennifer Lynch:

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

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

Bambi’s show of weakness: Rudy Giuliani—remember him?—isn’t too impressed by Bambi’s stance on “terrorism”; me neither. From KRLA:

John McCain’s presidential campaign is making former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani point man in attacking Barack Obama’s approach to combating terrorism.

Giuliani said Obama’s praise for a recent Supreme Court decision to grant terrorist detainees rights to habeas corpus hearings was “startling” in a conference call on behalf of the McCain campaign Wednesday morning.

It shows “more concerned about the rights of terrorists than the American people have to safety and security,” Giuliani said. Under the new decision, “It is fair to say that Osama Bin Laden [if caught and taken to Guantanamo Bay]…would be given new rights that no one else has been given before,” Giuliani said.

In addition to speaking to reporters on a conference call Giuliani appeared on MSNBC and CNN to blast Obama earlier that morning, indicating a substantial, renewed effort to boost McCain. “This is going to be a debate that is joined many times during this campaign because it’s an honest one,” Giuliani said. “Senator Obama has a defensive approach to terrorism.”

Giuliani’s remarks come in response to remarks Obama made in an interview with ABC news that were aired Monday evening. Obama said, “What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims."…

Riiiight! Because if only the Americans who, correct me if I’m wrong here, were on the receiving end of the 9/11 attacks, hadn’t sent the jihadis to Gitmo, U.S. “credibility” would be in much better shape.

Why do Lefties always think it’s always about me, me, me and never about the enemy—their die-hard enmity for America; their will to power?  

No need to answer. I know it’s because it gives folks like Bambi the illusion that they have things under control—or will have them under control once they figure out the precise combination of charm and self-abasement that’s likely to give their “popularity” a boost.

If Bambi is installed in the White House, I foresee at least four years of concerted “credibility”-building—a.k.a. full-blown masochistic dhimmitude—on display every day from the man at the top.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:29 | link | comments

Image is all: For the sake of "optics," Bambi Fauxbama has ordered that babushka'd Muslim chicks be banished.

Way to show your support for the the underdog, Bambi!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:33 | link | comments

Coren capers: If you have a spare hour—and even if you don’t—drop everything and watch Ezra Levant on last night’s Michael Coren Show (link via Shaidle).  It’s been posted in six segments on YouTube. In parts 3 and 6 you can see CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mohamed Elmasry’s notorious appearance on the show when he insisted that every Israel civilian aged 18 and up was an appropriate target for whacking (which rather makes him sound like the Islamist Tony Soprano). Amusingly—that is if, like me, you’re amused by how those caught in a blatant falsehood endeavour to cover their arses—the CIC website offers a different version of what transpired on that fateful show:

Following the controversial airing of the Michael Coren Show on October 19, 2004 Canadian news media launched a relentless and unfair attack against Canadian Islamic Congress president Dr. Mohamed Elmasry -- and some continue to do so.

 

Before, during, and after the above-mentioned show Dr. Elmasry reiterated his belief that killing civilians -- any civilians, for any cause -- is an immoral act of the worst kind.

 

Yet it was widely reported, for example, that "Mr. Elmasry said all Israelis over 18 were legitimate targets for suicide bombers."

 

THIS IS TOTALLY FALSE.

 

In response, Dr. Elmasry and the CIC are suing certain media organizations for defamation...

 

Would that be a suit in a real court of law, or in the same kind of faux-courts you ran to with your complaint about Maclean’s? If it’s in the former setting, where justice is blind and the truth, last time I checked, was still relevant, you’ve got a snowcone’s chance in Hades of making your case.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:35 | link | comments (2)

Jen’s gift of gab: Jennifer Lynch, who heads up the federal thought cop commissariat, has obviously been feeling the heat lately. That’s the reason she’s trying to pull the old bait-and-switch on us. The bait: telling Canadians that she’s appointing a legal expert to “assess” how the CHRC deals with hate on the Internet. The switch: she’s hoping that, in so doing, she with “switch” us from our focus on CHRC malfeasance to one on “hate” (which, when you think about it, is the way the human rights apparatchniks often expand their power).

But let’s let the eloquent Ms. Lynch speak for herself, shall we, as she does in Joseph Bream’s article in the National Post:

In an interview yesterday with the National Post, her first since the controversy hit the headlines this year, Ms. Lynch said the "tidal bore of interest on both sides of the equation" prompted her to take this "more formal step to lead some cutting-edge thinking."

Whoa. Now there’s a woman who evinces the same flair for rhetoric as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who, like our Jen, is much taken with the metaphor. And if the bearded one ever gets tired of lobbing colourful threats at the Zionists, he could always emigrate to Canada and take up a position with one of our country’s 14—count ‘em, 14—human rights commissariats. With his experience and mindset, I have no doubt he would fit right in.

Update: A poem for Jen:

Re her role as head thought cop, Ms. Lynch,

Is highly unlikely to flinch.

It’s a cinch that Ms. Lynch

Is determined to pinch

All our freedom--the self-righteous Grinch.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments (3)

Cry “hatred” and let loose the dogs of soft jihad: Robert Spencer outlines how Muslims are using charges of “hate speech” to silence anyone who has the audacity to criticise their religion or its adherents. From FrontPage Magazine:

…If people can be prosecuted for insulting words, we are all in trouble. Soon they will begin prosecuting those who commit “Islamophobia,” as the Organization of the Islamic Conference wants Western countries so very much to do. After all, it is no accident that CAIR and co. so consistently and indefatigably label all Islamorealistic discourse as “hate speech”? They want to make it illegal for the kuffar to dare to point out that Muhammad and the Qur’an preach the subjugation of the Infidels under Sharia. Then it will be against the law to discuss the motives and goals of those who would conquer and subjugate us. And one of the last defenses against that conquest will have fallen.

And make no mistake: this is coming fast. The UN’s the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diène is working on it, and American Muslims are helping him. Diène recently came to the United States, where he held a hearing in Miami on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination. At the hearing he met with ex-CAIR operative Ahmed Bedier, who indulged in flights of fantasy as he told Diène “how Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric by officials and pundits are contributing to hate crimes against Muslims across Florida.”

But such wild claims have a purpose. Pakistan just asked the EU to restrict freedom of expression so as to curb “offenses to Islam.” Finland just gave a blogger 2 1/2 years in prison for “insulting Islam.” Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada for essentially the same thing. Yet the worldwide assault on the freedom of speech is completely off the mainstream media radar, and even most large American blogs are consumed with the election and trivia and have paid it little notice. We could very easily fall into a situation where it becomes a prosecutable offense to discuss the war that is being waged against us the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security are only abetting this by forbidding use of the word “jihad” to describe the motives and goals of those who would destroy us. We are not to use the word, we’re told, because to do so would offend peaceful Muslims.

This is fully in accord with Mark Steyn’s precise observation that “so-called hate speech laws” are “not about facts,” but rather, “they’re about feelings.”…Hate speech laws are an assault on truth telling, at precisely the moment when so few dare to tell the truth, and it is for that reason all the more urgently needed.

If Islam’s Achilles Heel is its treatment of women, the West’s Achilles Heel is its misguided desire to spare people from hurt feelings. 

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

It's about time: Annoyed by rude Rice remarks, Israeli officials dismiss her as irrelevent.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:06 | link | comments

Mo’ ‘toons: A High School textbook in Norway has incorrectly asserted that the Danish Motoon published by a Norwegian newspaper included one of the Islamic prophet sporting pig ears.  (In fact, the image in question wasn’t of Mo, but of a French farmer participating in a rural hog-calling competition; it was added to the package of ‘toons by Danish imamswho wanted to make sure to get a rise out of their more excitable co-religionists.) The textbook  publisher has withdrawn it and offered an apology, but now the newspaper publisher is worried that the false information will put him and his family at risk.

See? If Norway had such a thing as thought cops and courts, those apt to get all hot and bothered at the sight of Motoons and the info contained in the text would have a socially acceptable venue in which to park their anger.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:01 | link | comments

Today's quotation: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."--John Milton 

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:59 | link | comments

A message to my fellow Ontarians: Enjoy whatever lingering vestige of freedom you happen to have, because come the end of the month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s “new and improved” power to hassle us kicks in. Here’s how the commissariat describes its expanded mandate (my bolds, to emphasize the horror):

When the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2006 comes into effect on June 30, 2008, there will be a number of significant changes in the mandate of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

 

Under the new Act, the role of the OHRC in preventing discrimination and promoting and advancing human rights in Ontario will be strengthened. The OHRC will expand its work in promoting a culture of human rights in the province. We will have the power to conduct public inquiries, initiate our own applications (formerly called ‘complaints’), or intervene in proceedings at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO). We will be able to engage in proactive measures such as public education, policy development, research and analysis.

 

The OHRC has also been given broad inquiry powers. The HRTO may refer matters in the public interest to the OHRC and may ask the Commission to conduct an inquiry. We will have the power to monitor the state of human rights and report directly to the people of Ontario. The OHRC may also apply to the HRTO to state a case to the Divisional Court where it feels the HRTO decision is not consistent with OHRC policies.

 

We will, however, no longer process human rights complaints under the Ontario Human Rights Code. Dealing with such complaints will be the job of the HRTO. A new body, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, will offer independent human rights-related legal and support services to individuals, ranging from advice and support to legal representation.

 

We will continue to be guided by the Human Rights Code in all our work. The overall spirit of the new law is that the OHRC is one part of a system for human rights alongside the HRTO and Human Rights Legal Support Centre.

 

In some ways, the new law enhances the OHRC’s independence. We will file our annual report directly to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, instead of through the Attorney General, as we currently do. We will have the power to monitor and report on anything related to the state of human rights in the Province of Ontario.

 

Our powers to review legislation and policies, for example will be very broad. The new law refers to our ability to consider whether legislation is inconsistent with the intent of the Code. We will have a role in dealing with “tension and conflict” and bringing people and communities together to help resolve differences. Our current role as a developer of public policy on human rights is made explicit in the new legislation, as is the way those policies can be used in issues that are before the Tribunal.

 

Arrrrgh! Run for the hills, villagers; the monster is out of control!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:12 | link | comments (4)

Rehabilitating Omar: A government committee has been told that, if and when Omar Khadr gets to come home (he’s been enjoying the hospitality at Gitmo for the past five years), he’s going to need a little help, er, readjusting. From the Ceeb:

Omar Khadr will need help re-entering Canadian society if he's ever released from custody at Guantanamo Bay, and a House of Commons committee has been hearing how to address that, CBC News has learned.

Khadr's lawyers have prepared a 10-page report on how to reintegrate Khadr into Canada after more than 5½ years in U.S. military custody.

The report has been sent to the Commons subcommittee on international human rights, which has been studying Khadr's case.

The 21-year-old Toronto man is scheduled to appear before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay this week, charged with killing a U.S. army medic in 2002, but there is no indication of any plan to free him or arrange a plea bargain.

Rather, his lawyers say a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the legality of the military trials at Guantanamo has thrown the whole future of the controversial legal procedure into doubt.

As well, both U.S. presidential candidates running in this November's elections have said they will shut down Guantanamo, which makes it necessary to plan for Khadr's release, the lawyers say.

Their report proposes that Khadr, if freed, be sent first to a mental health facility in Toronto for a full assessment of the effects of his experiences in Afghanistan and U.S. custody.

CBC reporter Bill Gillespie said the young man has spent years imprisoned with alleged religious extremists, and a more moderate imam would be appointed to oversee his return to Toronto's Muslim community.

The cleric, Hamid Silmi of the International Muslims Organization, has also helped counsel young suspects in the Toronto-area alleged bomb plot case.

Restrictions on associates possible

Gillespie said the report also foresees possible legal restrictions on whom Khadr would be allowed to associate with, if he is ever released.

University of Toronto law professor Anthony Doob said Canada's anti-terrorism law has a provision that might allow Khadr's release with conditions governing his activities and the company he keeps.

"He has to agree to those conditions, and if he doesn't, he can be incarcerated [again]," Doob told CBC News. "It might include an order not to associate with certain people. I might include an order that he gets certain kinds of education."…

“Certain people”—oh, you mean like those two unrepentant jihadis, madr and sisdr Khadr?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:44 | link | comments (1)

Herbal essence: It occurs to me that one of the reasons I am immune to Bambi Fauxbama’s appeal is not unlike the reason why my brother is immune to the appeal of cilantro. You see, my brother is among the minority of folks who lack the enzyme that makes cilantro taste good. So while I adore the zesty freshness the leafy green herb adds to Mexican, Thai and Indian dishes, to my brother it tastes like soap.

That’s like me with Fauxbama. To tons of people, he’s the tastiest dish du jour. To me, a person who obviously lacks the Bambi enzyme, he’s like a whole lot of soap in my salsa.

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments

“Human rights”—here and there: In B.C. some years ago, a post-operative tranny was awarded damages by the Human Rights Tribunal because a rape crisis centre refused to hire her, causing her no end of “hurt feelings” (a big no-no here in our “we feel your pain” Trudeaupia); those who ran the centre reasoned that, considering its clients’ fragile emotional state, said individual, having only recently transgendered into womanhood, was probably not the right person for the job. In the U.K., a hair salon has just been ordered to pay a bundle of cash for refusing to hire a be-hijabed hair stylist; the salon owner reasoned that, since a stylist’s hair is one of the best advertisements for her and the salon, a woman who kept her hair under wraps might not be as much of an asset as, say, one whose charms were in plain sight.

So many “rights”; so little freedom to exercise common sense.

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

People power: Melanie Phillips comments—drolly—on how the Irish vanquished the EU behemoth:

I am attending a conference in Berlin where senior EU panjandrums are reeling around clutching their heads over the ‘disaster’ of the Irish vote against the Lisbon constitutional treaty. Of course, they take it for granted that everyone will agree that the Irish vote was a disaster. This is a given here. If you say brightly that actually you think it was the best thing that’s happened for a very long time, you are looked at with total incomprehension, disbelief and distaste rather as if you had just got up and announced that paedophilia should be made compulsory. One very senior Eurocrat sighed this evening that the Irish hadn’t really studied the constitution and so the vote couldn’t really be taken as a rejection of the constitution at all. Ah yes, of course – the people deliver the wrong result, so the people must be stupid or ignorant or both. Sack the people! After all, a stupid thing like democracy mustn't be allowed to get in the way of the behemoth of Brussels…

I just had a thought. How about a referendum in Canada to determine the fate of the HRCs? Let the same kind of "ignorant or stupid" hoi polloi who gave the EU the old heave-ho decide whether they want these intrusive, freedom-hating busy-bodies to be able to push them around and tell them what they can and cannot say. Power to the people, not the commissars!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments (3)

Militants? Losers? Jew-haters? Virginizers?: Daniel Pipes says it’s impossible to defeat your enemy if you’re not prepared to identify him. From FrontPage Magazine:

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals. Two high-level U.S. statements from late 2001 typify the vague and ineffective declarations issued by Western governments. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defined victory as establishing "an environment where we can in fact fulfill and live [our] freedoms." In contrast, George W. Bush announced a narrower goal, "the defeat of the global terror network" – whatever that undefined network might be.

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari‘a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism…

I’d put it to you somewhat differently. The “enemy” are those who are pushing the sharia agenda. Are these folks likely to be open to “an alternative form of Islam”? Doubtful. Any “alternate form” would be immediately discounted as Satanic or the domain of the apostate (which, to the sharia-shillers, often amounts to the same thing). Also, if those who are already practicing an “alternate form of Islam”—Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Salim Mansur and the like—are going to have any influence, they will have to fend off all the death threats, the method those devoted to Islam in its purest form often use to deal with their “deviants”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments (6)

Just desserts: Remember Al Gore? The Goracle? The God of the global climate change movement? Winner of a bloomin’ Nobel Peace Prize? Well, it seems he’s been deposed from his throne by American’s new “Messiah,” clean-favored and imperially slim Bambi O.

Shed no tears for Fat Albert, though. He and the Tipster are likely still raking it in big time from Al’s carbon credit flim-flam.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

Advantage, Levant: I wish Ezra Levant’s speech at the Ontario Bar Association yesterday could be posted on You Tube. Barring that (sorry), you can get a feel for what it was like—including Ezra’s dramatic encounter with “Official Jew” Leo Adler—by reading Ezra and  Kathy and Denyse (oh, my).  Denyse, who must know shorthand or something, managed to record large portions of the talk, including this, the central point:

I put it to you that over the last ten, twenty, thirty years, by prosecuting our political opponents for merely being political deviants, we have laid down ten, twenty, thirty years of jurisprudence that it is okay to take out your political opponent, absent any proof of damages, absent any crime, absent any acts, you can take out your opponents if you can define them as haters. So is it any surprise that with the great influx of Islam into Canada in the last ten or fifteen years, including radicals like the Jew-hater Mohamed Elmasry ... is it any surprise that he has said, 'I'll take those precedents, I'll use them.'?

The Ezra-Leo fracas was, in a word, delicious. Ezra, clearly, didn’t know that such august members of the Jewstablishment were in attendance, and when Leo appeared at the microphone to ask a question, Ezra didn’t know who he was until he identified himself. I knew who he was, since I was at the desk when he arrived to register (oddly enough, neither Adler nor his boss, Avi Benlolo, were on the list; they had gotten an underling to register for them using her name).  And I recognized him from that town hall I attended a couple of summers back where Adler had assured the audience that even if the worst-case scenario were to pan out and Israel was wiped out by an Iranian nuke, we Jews should take comfort in the knowledge that, as Celine sings about “the heart” in that overwrought Titanic song, the Jews will go on and on (and on). (He didn’t use the Celine song to illustrate his point, but he could have.) That remark left a foul taste in my mouth for weeks—and now that I have dredged it up from the recesses of my memory, the foulness has returned. For, even if the #2 at Canadian Wiesenthal could even bring himself to conceive of things post-Israel—something which I am certainly not prepared to do, thank you very much—why on Earth would he verbalize it in front of such a gathering? Why even go there at all? It was at that moment I realized that Adler and I did not see eye to eye, and were unlikely to do so in the future. That insight was reaffirmed yesterday during his contretemps with Ezra (in which game, set and match went to Levant, even though Adler had the element of surprise on his side).

Update: I just noticed that Leo's Wikipedia entry refers to the Wiesenthal Center's "holohoax studies." Someone at Wiesenthal—perhaps the underling who registered for him?—might want to clean that up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:42 | link | comments (2)

Unfrikkinbelievable!: The CJC posts the Harpoon anti-free speech column on its website.

Memo to Bernie and Co.: Here's a rule of thumb. If you find yourself on the same page as the likes of Mo Elmasry and Harpoon Siddiqui--Islamists who have no qualms about pushing the Islamist agenda--you can be certain without a shadow of a doubt that you're on the wrong page.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments (6)

The amazing Dr. Bostom: Washington Times columnist Diana West takes a look at Andrew Bostom, the academic whose career took a dramatic turn on 9/11. From JWR:

On Sept. 11, 2001, Andrew Bostom, an academic research physician at Rhode Island Hospital, did what many outraged and shocked Americans did. On his way home from work, he stopped at a bookstore and bought a book about Islam.

As he recalls, it was something by Karen Armstrong, who, he didn't know at the time, is famous — infamous — for being a serial apologist for Islam. Reading parts of the book aloud that same night to his wife, also an academic, as they went about accounting for friends and family in their native New York City, he found the book "treacley" and superficial, lacking not only the scholarly heft he was used to in scientific research, but also a connection to unfolding events. Even a more extensive survey of readily available works on Islam yielded similar platitudes rooted less in Islamic theology and history than in the contemporary political dictates of multiculturalism. The scientist in him wanted to know more.

Thus marked the unexpected beginning of a rigorous and illuminating academic odyssey deep into the study of Islam — "this depressing obsession of mine," as Bostom calls it. It has also acquainted the medical researcher with a global fraternity of Islamic scholars, which includes the two he calls his mentors: the Egyptian-born historian of dhimmitude, Bat Ye'or, and the Pakistani-born scholar of Islam and the West, Ibn Warraq.

So far, his studies have resulted in two meticulously researched and trail-blazing tomes of his own: "The Legacy of Jihad," published in 2005, and "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism," which has just come out, garnering enthusiastic advance comment from academics ("a ground breaking event" said Steven T. Katz, director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University), historians ("It is magnificent," said Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill), and experts ("One of the most important books of our time," said Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author, "Infidel"). The obvious question is: How does a medical researcher studying homocysteine's effect on cardiovascular disease in patients suffering from chronic kidney problems shift his focus to the study of jihad and anti-Semitism in Islam?

Answer: He doesn't. That is, while embarked on his Islamic studies, Bostom — a lifelong Democrat, by the way — has remained the Principle Investigator in a $40 million, decade-long National Institutes of Health renal study involving more than 4,000 patients in the United States, Canada and Brazil. Not only that (and this is something that has impressed me, both as what you might call a confrere in Islamic inquiry and also as a friend), he has applied essentially the same scientific principles he uses in medical research to the study of Islam…

Good thing he doesn’t live in Canada. In our glorious multishmulti Trudeaupia, such “scientific principles” take a backseat to ameliorating the “hurt” feelings of Islamists and their young socks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Show Trial: As the opening bars of Stephen Sondheim's antic musical heralded the arrival of Tony Show host Whoopi Goldberg (looking ridiculous in a too-small black frou-frou number) last night, I though now would be a good time for a song parody:

Something familiar,

Something peculiar,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

 

Something appallin’,

Something like Stalin,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

 

Nothing that’s free, nothing that’s fair.

Bring on the “nice” and “peace” everywhere.

 

New situations,

Old complications,

Stuff that’s presumpt’ous and outré;

Comedy tomorrow,

Tragedy today!

 

Something outrageous,

Something contagious,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

 

Something Orwellian,

Machiavellian,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

 

Nothing with truth, nothing makes sense.

Long as the show trials still can commence!

 

Nothing that’s formal,

Nothing that’s normal

No oaths to swear or to purvey;

Open up the courtroom:

Tragedy today!...

 

Nothing that’s Brit.

No Magna Cart’.

It's more important to show we've got "heart".

Business as usual!

Meant to confuse y’all!

Hundreds of bureaucrats at play!

Charlatans and shysters!

Marxists and spin-meisters!

Rulings and chastisements!

Cutting down to size-ments!

Panderers!

Misunderstanderers!

Dhimmitude!

Versimilitude!

Mistakes!

Fakes!

Buffy!

Fluffy!

Stumblers!

Grumblers!

Bumblers!

Fumblers!

 

No looking back, turn for the worse.

And there’s a crappy ending, of course!

Badness is goodness,

Do-as-you-shouldness--

Right now our future’s underway!

Comedy tomorrow.

Tragedy today!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:57 | link | comments

Middle East update: Here's what you need to know--Condi Rice is trying to control Israeli policy while Saudi Arabia is trying to control the U.S. and the UN.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:41 | link | comments

Bambi’s theology: The Toronto Sun’s Salim Mansur is worried about Bambi’s belief in “black liberation theology” and what it says about the type of guy he is:

…The fact is Obama spent more than a third of his adult life as a member of a church where black liberation theology is taught on a regular basis.

Black liberation theology is a mixing of the Christian gospel with Marxism, and the man most responsible for doing this is James H. Cone, a preacher turned professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Cone is the mentor of Wright, and he was reported to say following Obama's Philadelphia speech that he found nothing in Obama's books or speeches contradicting black liberation theology.

The core idea in Cone's theology is about black man's freedom and what the quest for it means. Cone approvingly quotes Eldridge Cleaver (once a key member of the Black Panther Party), "We will have our manhood. We shall have it, or the earth will be levelled by our attempts to gain it."

Cone's writings are a passionate denunciation of the white America that enslaved blacks, and an imaginative -- many Americans would say, quite rightly, hateful -- representation of God and Jesus as being black

Cone writes, "There is no place in black theology for a colourless God. Because God has made the goal of blacks God's own goal, black theology believes that it is not only appropriate but necessary to begin the doctrine of God with an insistence on God's blackness."

About Jesus, Cone writes, "If Christ is not truly black, then the historical Jesus lied. If Christ is not black, the gospel is not good news to the oppressed."

Americans generally are religious people. For most Americans freedom is not about being black or white, it is about holding firmly the republican principle "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of Many, One."

As they learn more about Obama and his politics influenced by black theology's divisiveness, they most likely will be less inclined to vote for him.

Me?  I think Bambi’s “theology” was mostly a matter of convenience:

 

I agree with Salim Mansur that Americans should be wary of a presidential candidate who espouses “black liberation theology.” However, I am not convinced that Barack Obama ever truly believed in it. Oh, sure, he belonged to a Chicago church which embraces the philosophy, and for twenty years he and his wife attended faithfully most Sundays as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright spewed his hateful invective. But, like many things in Obama’s life, belonging to the church seems to have been largely a matter of expedience. He joined it way back when to gain the “street cred” he needed to launch his political career. He jettisoned both the minister and his church when they proved to be a liability instead of an asset.

 

It is this facet of Obama’s personality--his willingness to say and do whatever it takes to advance his prospects, and the way it seems to point to the lack of a clear moral compass--about which Americans should be most concerned.

 

Bambi may or may not be a die-hard black liberationist, but I'm pretty sure his Missus, the First Lady-in-waiting, is a true believer.

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

Happy Father's Day: In honour of all the Dads, here's a poem I wrote a few years ago in the voice of my young son. I had it framed along with his handprint as my husband's Father's Day gift that year:

Daddy—here is my hand.

It helped you build a castle of sand.

It drew that picture you liked so much.

It lets me explore the world through touch.

It can hold a caterpillar,

Or help me blow a bubble.

And sometimes (but not too often) it can even get me into a little trouble.

It makes sounds, like clapping,

And holds my spoon for eating.

And when you come home it gives you a greeting.

It carries my teddy

And catches balls that you throw

And gets bigger and stronger the more I grow.

 

Daddy—here is my hand so you will know

When to hold on...

And when to let go.

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

Siddiqui’s free speech: The Toronto Star’s resident shill for the Islamist agenda—and a guy who’s a big hit with Socky and the Sockettes—weighs in on the free speech/hate speech kerfuffle. Shockingly, Harpoon thinks the whole cockamamie racket imperils our freedom and should be dismantled post haste. And so does his compadre, CJC chief Bernie Farber.

Just kidding. Of course, both agree that those who express the same kind of hatefulness as Steyn and Levant should continue to be silenced by the retinue of righteous ‘roos:

One staple of anti-Semitism has been that Jews have taken over the world, or are about to. Now Muslims are being accused of the same.

That Muslims pose a dire demographic and ideological threat to the West was the hypothesis of a 4,800-word article, The Future Belongs to Islam, in Maclean's magazine in October 2006. Its reverberations are still being felt.

Last month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission called it "Islamophobic." This month, the British Columbia commission held a week-long hearing. And the federal commission is weighing a report from its investigators.

The commissions are responding to petitions filed by a Muslim group that argued the article constituted hate and that Maclean's refused an adequate counter-response.

The issue has triggered a heated debate.

Many commentators vilified the complainants – or Muslims in general. Joining the latter was CBC-TV's Rex Murphy. He sneered at the idea that Canadian Muslims would have the temerity to go to human rights commissions when "real human rights violations" were rampant across the Muslim world, especially in Saudi Arabia.

The parallel was similar to ones heard by Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor commission, which has since dismissed them as "deceitful."

Murphy is entitled to his sulphurous opinions. But why doesn't the publicly funded CBC offer counterbalancing points of view?

Other commentators have invoked the free-speech argument, in its various formulations – free speech is so precious that even hate speech should not be censored. Or hate speech may be curbed but only through the Criminal Code. Or hate speech is best dealt with under human rights statutes, which should be tightened to allow only "vexatious" cases, not "frivolous" ones.

But freedom of speech is not absolute. "Except for the U.S., virtually every Western democracy has laws against hate," notes Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "Our anti-hate laws are probably the most underused."

The Supreme Court has upheld those laws. Jewish, gay and other groups have long advocated their use. Few Canadians complained. But now that Muslims are, many are.

"That's really what it's about," Farber told me. "When non-Muslims were using it, nobody really cared.

"People need scapegoats. It used to be Jews. Now it's Muslims, to a great extent. Tomorrow, it may be Bahais or somebody else ...

"People should focus on the law, not on those using it. If the complaint is frivolous, the system will deal with it."

Barbara Hall, chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, has offered a similarly clear-headed view.

Even while refusing to hear the Maclean's case – because her commission, unlike the one in B.C., does not have the jurisdiction to hear cases against the media – she used her "broader mandate to promote and advance respect for human rights" to speak out:

"Islamophobia is a form of racism ... Since September 2001, Islamophobic attitudes are becoming more prevalent and Muslims are increasingly the target of intolerance ...

"The Maclean's article, and others like it, are examples of this. By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to `the West,' this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others."

Her statement, posted on the commission's website, is worth reading…

Indeed it is—but only for its comedic value.

Update: Kathy has a heated exchange with Bernie's pal--who, with his insincere palaver about how she's certainly entitiled to her opinions, that's fer shure, sounds like he's chanelling Ezra Levant's interogater, Shirlene McGovern. (Isn't it nice to know that, on this issue, the Canadian media's foremost shill for the Islamist agenda and Canadian Jewry's most prominent spokesperson are on the same page? Nice for the Islamists, I mean. For me, the CJC jumped the shark three years ago, when it condemned the Danish Motoons, thereby pledging allegiance with the Islamists and announcing its intention to cast our freedom adrift. With Harpoon's high fiving of Bernie in the pages of the Toronto Star, the CJC jumps the shark all over again--and with a far bigger splash. Let's hope that finally, finally, it will be the wake-up call Jews need to tell the clueless HRC boosters where to go.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:19 | link | comments (4)

Wiki wacky woops: Here’s the Wikipedia entry for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. I had a good mordant guffaw upon reading the intro (my bolds):

The Canadian Human Rights Commission was established in 1977 by the government of Canada. It is empowered under the Canadian Human Rights Act to investigate and try to settle complaints of discrimination in employment and in the provision of services within federal jurisdiction. The CHRC is also empowered under the Employment Equity Act to ensure that federally regulated employers provide equal opportunities for four designated groups: women, Aboriginal people, the disabled and visible minorities. The CHRC also acts as an advocate for human rights and issues reports on various aspects of discrimination as well as educational materials designed to promote human rights and inform employers and the general public about human rights regulations. The Commission also sponsors research into human rights and makes policy recommendations.

The Commission is composed of eight commissioners. The Chief Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner are appointed for terms not exceeding seven years while other commissioners are appointed for three year terms.

Jennifer Lynch was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in March 2007.

The daily work of the Commission is carried out by a staff of approximately 200 people.

The Commission investigates complaints, attempts to facilitate a resolution between the parties if appropriate and refers matters for which a resolution cannot be found to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal which holds hearings and hands down rulings. Where appropriate, the CHRC may (sic) a prosecutorial role in Canadian Human Rights Tribunal much like a Crown Attorney. [1]

And should you stray from the p.c. path, and someone were to complain about your affront to social orthodoxy, the CHRC would indeed sic a prosecutor on your tail. But definitely NOT one who would act much like a Crown Attorney.  A Crown Attorney belongs to a court system where Lady Justice still wears a blindfold, and her scales are in balance. A Human Rights persecutor, er, prosecutor, on the other hand, isn’t concerned about truth, or justice, or fairness, and gets to make up the rules anew for each case.

It bears repeating that an estimated 200 employees help the eight commissars do what they do. Two hundred! Aside from all the shekels taxpayers shell out every year to keep our anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel public broadcaster up and running, I can’t think of a more depressing waste of our money.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:33 | link | comments (1)

Appropriate—and inappropriate—apologies: George Jonas has the same hesitations about Stephen Harper’s “apology” to Canada’s First Nations that I do. There’s something fake about apologizing for a misguided policy of your grandfather’s generation—paying it backward, so to speak. Now, if Mr. Harper wanted to apologize for doing nothing of any substance to dismantle the p.c. thought cops/courts, or, given his minority situation, to at least reign them in, that would be an apology worth hearing.

To get the P.M. in the mood for what one hopes and prays will be the next government mea culpa, here are the song stylings of the e’er lachrymose Miss Connie Francis:

Who’s sorry now?

Who’s sorry now?

Who’s so contrite we’ve been forced to kowtow?

Who’s saying, “Please, ditch HRCs.

We’ll get your freedom back somehow?”

 

“Rights”—what a joke!

Gone up in smoke.

Can’t think or say what’s not allowed.

The Left had its way.

Now we must pay.

No way that they’re sorry now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:57 | link | comments

Genocide squabble: The Toronto District School Board has introduced a new program to acquaint students with the concept of genocide. Since it isn’t a survey course, three genocides are going to be discussed—the Armenian one, the Holocaust and the one in Rwanda. Naturally, this being multicultist Toronto, some groups are miffed about being left out—or in. From the Toronto Star:

Toronto District School Board made only minor changes to a new Grade 11 genocide course at a special meeting last night, sending dozens of protestors home unhappy.

More than 40 Ukrainian-Canadians and 60 Turkish-Canadians picketed before the meeting, then packed the board's gallery seats.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress wanted the 1932-1933 forced famine in Soviet Ukraine used as the course's fourth case study with the Nazi Holocaust, 1994 Rwanda genocide and 1915 mass murder of Ottoman Empire Armenians.

The Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations and Council of Turkish Canadians sought the removal from the curriculum of the Ottoman killings, which the government of Turkey contends did not constitute genocide.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, like the government of Canada, does deem them genocide. The Ottoman case was not mentioned at the meeting, and no trustee proposed adding the Ukrainian famine as a core case.

The board, however, passed two amendments. The first allows teachers to spend significant time on genocides other than the three core case studies as they "see fit." The second notes the curriculum's exclusion of specific genocides does not imply the board believes those events are of "lesser significance."

Trustee Mari Rutka said she planned to propose at a regular board meeting that material on the Ukrainian famine be added to the curricula of other courses in 2009-10 and proposed a school system-wide famine remembrance day.

The Muslim Canadian Congress also expressed disappointment over the board's decision to include a "one-sided" view of the Armenian genocide in the curriculum without including pre-WWI "ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the Balkans and southern Europe."

I’m surprised that the MCC, which can usually be counted on to be a voice of reason in its community, has taken this position. One hopes it’s not a sign that it is becoming less moderate and more like the CIC.

Update: Two courses they won't be teaching at Toronto High Schools--Muslim Persecution of Christians and The Legacy of Muslim Anti-Semitism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

Now is the time for all sockettes to come to the aid of their socky: On the National Post site, Khurrum Awan’s bookends rush to defend him from the slings and arrows of an outraged Tarek Fatah. I’ve subjected their comments to a semi-rigorous fisking (my comments are in brackets):

In his piece Islamists who have a problem with free speech should leave, Tarek Fatah enlightened the Post’s readers with the name-calling he directs at anyone he disagrees with, which Muslims across Canada have grown accustomed to. This time around the target was our colleague and fellow sock-puppet (as we have come to be known) in our human rights complainants against Maclean’s, Khurrum Awan. (You gotta LOVE how the socks have taken ownership of their hosiery designation. Too funny. One must note, however, that it isn’t Fatah, but his opponents, who are devoted to “enlightening” us about how anything to do with Islam is off limits for kafirs and apostates. To emphasise their dismay with those who “talk back,” Fatah has also been on the receiving end of many death threats. As far as I know, no one is threatening to permanently silence the sockies or their sock master.)

According to Fatah, by filing a human rights complaint and calling upon Muslims to demand a representative voice in media, this law student qualifies as an “Islamist” allied with Osama bin Laden. (Not allied with ObL per se. Allied with those who want to silence all critics of Islam, thereby making us fall in line with a fundamental tenet of sharia.)

Fatah’s muddled rant reminds us of a December 3rd press release about our complaints issued by Fatah’s Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), an organization consisting of five individuals and a coffee table: “Mark Steyn’s piece was definitely alarmist, but the answer to his challenge is to write a counter-piece and demand that Maclean’s publish it.” Of course, we had already asked Maclean’s for a counter-piece nine months earlier and been refused. But verifying facts is not a quality that Fatah’s crew is known for. (1. If the MCC consists of five individuals and a coffee table, what’s the CIC? One bearded Jew-hater and a computer? 2. All they wanted was to commandeer someone’s private property to serve their own ends. That’s not too much to ask, right? Especially since their counter-pieces haven’t expended nearly enough column inches in newspapers from coast to coast. 3. Let’s all take a moment to verify the “facts” on the CIC site—that Israel is a colonialist interloper/racist apartheid entity with to right to exist. That’s the kind of quality fact-verification the CIC is famous for.)

But Fatah wasn’t done. Following the Ontario Human Rights Commission statement condemning Maclean’s for its Islamophobic content, Fatah told the Post that the statement was the work of “hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism” employed by the Commission. The same day, Fatah’s MCC issued yet another press release informing Canadians that the Commission’s statement was “cause for celebration in Osama bin Laden's cave and among the soldiers of the world Jihadi movement.”

Apart from the evident ridiculousness of these assertions, it is interesting that Fatah has such insight into the activities underway in Osama’s cave. Perhaps a lengthy interview with CSIS is in order. (The sockettes are tres droll these days—a quality that was never once in evidence in their previous interviews. Could it be that some of the despised Steyn has rubbed off on them?)

On a more serious note, Fatah’s name-calling detracts from the real issue, which is the exclusion of Muslim voices from our national media in a context where Islam and Muslims are a regular subject of discussion. One would think that if Muslims were a topic of interest, our national media would provide some coverage to their perspectives.

In fact, the only Muslim columnists providing some informed perspective on Muslim-related issues are Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star and Sheema Khan of the Globe and Mail. Ms. Khan’s column is only published monthly, and both columnists are frequently subjected to abuse from the likes of Fatah. On the other side of the equation, newspapers across Canada employ multiple commentators providing regular, right-wing analysis on Muslims and Islam. (The “only” Muslim columnists? Are they kidding? Those two have the two biggest bully pulpits in the country. Not to mention all the pro-Muslim views on display daily at al Jazeerea's farm team, the Ceeb. If only someone on the pro-Israel side had the same high-profile opportunity to express his/her views.)

And that is our point; anti-Muslim prejudice is growing because of pieces like the one that Maclean’s published, and that led to our human rights complaints, in a context where there is an absence of Muslim (or other) voices to challenge the material in question. The limitless free speech model — that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech — does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate that: Maclean’s still refuses to publish a response to just one of over twenty articles that even the Ontario Human Rights Commission condemned as Islamophobic. (Anti-Muslim “prejudice” isn’t growing. It’s just that some kafirs are waking up to the whole Dar al Islam/Dar al Harb business and aren’t too keen about sharia making inroads in the West. That’s not “prejudice”. That’s self-preservation.)

And that is why free speech is not limitless in our democracy. Section 1 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that all rights in our democracy are subject to reasonable limits. The Supreme Court of Canada (not a bunch of Islamists) properly recognized that free speech is not limitless in upholding our criminal and human rights laws regulating hate speech. In imposing these limits, the Supreme Court noted that hate speech undermines the equality rights and multicultural heritage guaranteed in our Charter. (The Supreme Court erred in deferring to Canada’s totalitarian faux-courts. It is time to acknowledge that error and rectify it.)

If however our media would like speech to be limitless, it has an obligation to cover the views of the community it is talking about. (Sorry to break it to you sockettes, but in a free society, the media are under no such “obligation.” Such “obligations” are the domain of police states like Saudi Arabia and Iran, where there is no freedom. Your mistake.)

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

Sorry seems to be the hardest word: The Canadian Jewish Congress, which condemned the exercise of free speech in Denmark when those Motoons were published, praises the Canadian government's abject apology to the aboriginal community for crappy government policies of yore.

How about an apology from the CJC for being terminally clueless about the thought cops and courts which have turned our nation into a Union of Soviet Socialist Provinces?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:21 | link | comments

Heh: A little levity, from the New York Daily News:

LOS ANGELES - The obscenity trial of a a Bronx-born porn king was put on hold today after the respected judge presiding over the case was caught with kinky fetish photos on his personal website.

The images on Judge Alex Kozinski's site included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Kozinski is presiding over the trial of Bronx-born Ira Isaacs, who has been brought up on rare anti-smut charges for his hard-core videos - which include portrayals of bestiality.

The judge, who was once a winning contestant on "The Dating Game" (see the video, below), blocked access to the site after he was questioned by the Times and said he didn't realize the images could be seen by the public.

Kozinski, a Reagan appointee who's now chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour suspension of the closely watched obscenity trial after prosecutors said they needed time to explore a possible conflict of interest.

"It's unfortunate, because he's such a fair judge," Isaacs, 57, told the News. "I think it's a non-issue. I hope he doesn't recuse himself. Now we have to investigate every judge to see if they watch porn before they can do my trial? Do investigations on everybody? Do we want that?"

Isaacs, a self-described "shock artist," is on trial for allegedly making and selling criminally obscene fetish videos.

Isaacs, who grew up in the South Bronx, is the first smut peddler to go on trial in the porn capitol of the country since religious conservatives convinced the Bush administration to form a new decency task force in 2005.

"If I go to prison, I go as an artist," Isaacs told the Daily News.

Vincent Van Smut?

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

Blech!: Ghastly George Galloway on Hamas TV.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:47 | link | comments

So long, it's been good to know ya: The list of Bambi's cast-off pals grows e'er longer by the day.

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

The grassy knoll in Moo Moo's brain: The nuttiest waxwork in Africa says that the reason Obama made that "I Wuv Israel" speech at an AIPAC convention was because he wanted to avoid getting offed by the Mossad like JFK did when he when was going to look into Israel's nuclear program.

Funny, I thought it has something to do with a cynical ploy to get Jews to vote for him. (As if the already smitten wouldn't have backed him regardless.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:28 | link | comments

Oblivious to the obvious: Ceeb headline--Federal copyright law may lead to 'police state.'

Too late. What with the thought cops and courts and their overwhelming, overweeing powers, we're already there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:07 | link | comments

It's all their fault: In an interview with Der Spiegel UN nuclear watch-kitty Mo ElBee, naturlich, disparages the Yanks and the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:52 | link | comments

The perils of “virtue”: It seems the Saudi Arabian version of our HRCs, the Virtue/Vice Commission, is finding itself under greater public scrutiny, too. The Commish is firing back at its critics in an effort to silence the populace and protect its turf. From Arab News:

During a formal gathering for retirees from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the organization’s head said that he was worried that the new generation would hate the committee members. He gave as the reason for his concern the media’s constant coverage of mistakes made by commission members.

He went on to say, “Everyone who works (for the commission) has enemies. The commission prevents people from succumbing to their desires and it is those same people who hate our work and look hard to find mistakes so that they can magnify them for the public.” The director also stated that he was demanding a 20 percent increase in the salaries of commission members in order to compensate them for the dangerous nature of their jobs.

What we conclude from the director’s speech is that he considers anyone who points out a mistake or complains about an injustice perpetrated by the commission members to be an enemy of the establishment. He specifically addressed the members of the press who were present at the meeting and told them to be more careful when covering such news so that they would not create “negative feelings in the minds of the young generation.”…

The only good thing to say about Canada’s Virtue officials: aside from comanding folks to shut the heck up, they don’t get to mete out the kind of punishments called for in sharia law.

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

Where's our apology?: Some years and several generations ago, Canada engaged in a largely despicable national policy wherein children of First Nations people were taken from their parents are placed in government-run schools. The idea was to to "assimilate" these children so that they would become part of mainstream society, and the whole reservation situation would become a thing of the past. Of course, it didn't work out as anticipated. Parents were tormented by the loss of their children, and many of the children suffered abuse at the hands of sexual sadists who were supposed to be educating them.

A stain on our nation's history, no doubt, and the occasion for much angst and self-reproach. Yesterday, in what proved to be an orgasm of contrition, Prime Minister Stephen Harper "apologized" to Canada's aboriginal peoples for the government's crappy policy of yore. The P.M.'s apology is the kick-off to a Truth and Reconciliation Committee that will comb the country for the next five years in order to allow everyone affected by the residential schools who so chooses to come forward and bear witness to his/her mistreatment.

My question: where's our apology? Oh, not for having been forced to attend schools staffed by pervs; for having our freedom stripped away in the name of "human rights"? Who's going to "apologize" for foisting these crappy "human rights" cops and courts on us? Where's the government's angst over its failure to keep its promises as set our in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedom's? Over our Supreme Court's deference to faux-courts that enforce political correctness? Down the road, is anyone going to apologize to my kid for turning his country into something that more closely resembles a Soviet republic than a freedom-loving Western democracy? Where's the Truth and Reconciliation Committee for Canadians whose freedom was stolen out from under them and replaced with a bunch of airy-fairy piffle about "rights". Where's the government's apology for putting us under the thumb of the hacks, fools and mediocrities who have been empowered to punish us for thinking and saying the unacceptable?

On second thought, no apology required. I'll settle for the dismantlement of the p.c."courts" and the return of my Charter-guaranteed freedoms.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:11 | link | comments (1)

Want peace?: Get rid of UNRWA.

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

Reader rebuts CJC big wigs: Last week in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the two guys who head up the Canadian Jewish Congress tried to make a case for preserving the HRCs, but limiting who had access to them—as if that’s in any way feasible. (Oddly enough, the article has yet to show up on the CJC site.) Today, the paper published  this trenchant response from Brian Sanderson of Wolfville, N.S.:

Shaky foundation

Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Sylvain Abitbol ("Some human rights complaints are frivolous," June 7 opinion piece) defend the continued existence of Human Rights Commissions, while at the same time accepting that those same commissions have entertained frivolous complaints that abuse defendants and diminish freedom of speech.

Their argument seems to hinge upon "balancing a diminution of individual rights against the greater collective good of social harmony and cohesion."

The proposition that individual rights must be diminished for the collective good has a shaky foundation – the 20th-century experiment with communism is a clear counter-example. Three hundred years of science clearly shows that resplendent order arises from "simple" atoms. If the dogma promoted by Sylvain Abitbol and Reuven Bulka serves any purpose, it is to illustrate the intellectual bankruptcy that has shaped the political, legal and religious disciplines.

Any Human Rights Commission that violates freedom of speech also violates our human rights. Preservation of human rights is more important than the interests of flawed Human Rights Commissions and their lackies.

The Human Rights Commissions have made fatal errors – like Maxime Bernier, they must go.

I don’t know that I’d equate metrosexual Maxime’s girl troubles with the HRCs. Other than that, Mr. Sanderson is on the money.

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

No peaceful easy feelin': The Eagles are coming to town and, well, I just couldn't resist having a go at what may well be their signature song:

In a dark, airless courtroom, no breeze anywhere,

Rank smell of the seated rising up though the air.

Up ahead in the distance, I saw three serious ‘roos.

They cleared their throats and looked straight ahead.

They had a job to do.

There they sat at a table, and I could quickly tell

The next few days here were shaping up to be a Vancouver version of hell.

Then they started the hearing, and it got underway.

There were bloggers blogging furiously.

I thought I heard them say…

 

Welcome to the courtroom kangaroo-an.

Such a dreadful place, such a dreadful place.

No freedom of speech at the courtroom kangaroo-an.

Any time of year, you won’t find it here.

 

Their minds are “human rights”-addled, they full of sanctimony.

They got a lot of petty, petty rules meant for you and for me.

How they prance in the courtroom, ‘roos on a tear.

In their republic of virtue, there’s no “hate” anywhere.

 

So I researched McNaughton,

Looked up her previous words:

Tranny deprived of the “right” to a job--a ruling strictly for birds.

And still her judgements are backed by BC's HRT.

Any “wisdom” is so hard to find; no kind of Solomon, she.

 

Welcome to the courtroom kangaroo-an.

Such a dreadful place, such a dreadful place.

No freedom of speech at the courtroom kangaroo-an.

Any time of year, you won’t find it here.

 

Coat of arms in the background, makes things look legit.

And she said, “You are all just prisoners here, of the ‘rights’ racket.

It’s like a Soviet chamber, where they punish the bold.

So ‘fess up now, try to look contrite,

And please do as you’re told.”

 

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door.

I had to find the passage back to the way things were before.

“Relax,” said the lefties, “and do as you should.

It’s best to jettison the impulse to speak, for the greater good.”

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

Elmo’s warm-up: Prior to lodging official complaints about Maclean’s magazine’s purported “Islamophobia” to several of our nations august panels of officious busy-bodies, the CIC’s Mo Elmasry got in some practice by complaining to the Ontario Press Council. The subject of his complaint: a column in the Toronto Star by Rosie DiManno, the paper’s token non-loon, on the occasion of the assassination of the founder of genocidal terror outfit Hamas. Mo and his co-complainant, Hajara Kutty, said the entire column was “racist and wilfully promoted hatred against Arabs,” but, in particular, they objected to this passage:

The Arab world is in acute lamentation over Yassin’s extermination, which says a lot about what passes for leadership in societies infused with choler, where wickedness is bred in the bone, and where the very idea of Israel as a sovereign state, with the right to exist, is anathema. Yassin was an arch-terrorist by any definition of the term, a viper in a wheelchair, and if his murder is now inducing shrill promises of revenge from radical groups that actually have little use for each other, sharing only an irreversible enmity for Israel, then it only underscores how depraved some societies have become, how far they have slithered away from even the most basic respect for human life.

The phrase that really sent them into a tizzy was the one about wickedness being “bred in the bone.” They claimed that the concept of hatred been passed from one generation to the next is inherently “racist”. They were also distressed by the word “extermination,” which they said compounded the “racism”.

The Ontario Press Council, not unexpectedly, caved. It held that, while DiManno was certainly entitled to her opinions, that’s fer shure (or words to that effect),

it considers such words as “bred in the bone” to be denigration of a whole society and that some of the language crosses the line between acceptable and unacceptable comment and is unnecessarily hurtful.

The complaint was upheld, the requisite apologies were made, and, several years later, the man with the “hurt” feelings felt confident enough to take on Maclean’s.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:57 | link | comments (1)

 Fauxbama's "change": Same old, same old.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:23 | link | comments

Jews in charge: Found this "charming" 'toon on the Arab News site:

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

Don't know how I missed this one: Mo Elmasry high fiving Fauxbama's racist Rev and former mentor, Jeremiah "Whitey Gave Us AIDS" Wright.

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

UN watch-kitty throws hissy fit: He's all upset because the Jews made it known they have no intention of sitting back and letting the mullahs blow them to smithereens.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:11 | link | comments

Takes one to know one: Eliot Spitzer mulls starting vulture fund.

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

The book thieves: As someone who loves books and reading, the following story strikes me as being an immense tragedy, epitomizing the kind of sterile and cheerless society that results when totalitarian killjoys get to run things. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- Writer Samira Aslanpur is convinced that Iranians show no interest in book reading and that the country does not have a book reading society.

Aslanpur, who is also the culture minister’s advisor in women’s affairs noted, “Big chances are being lost during our childhood and pre-school years. In order to encourage children to the habit of book reading, we must begin with attractive methods of teaching; thus, make them interested in reading when they grow up.”

She also emphasized that cultural officials must help with the state of the writers, adding, “The government must change the culture of people and train them; and training begins in childhood.”

She continued that writers, producers of cultural products, readers and the ones who acquire cultural products as well as the cultural officials are all related to one another like a chain, adding, “When someone in this chain faces a problem, it affects the entire system.”

With reference to the problems of the writers, she stated, “Writing is not considered a job in the country. A writer can not make a living through writing and he is obliged to work. This gives them little chance to study and conduct research, making the production less attractive.”

“Part of the problems goes back to the society and cultural officials, and part of them is related to the writers themselves. On the other hand, I must admit that people have also lost their interest. Not many know a good writer with over 30 years of experience, while they know every detail about a minor actor,” she remarked.

“We must learn to replace new methods with the old ones to identify weak points”, she concluded.

What you need to replace, dearie, are the religious nutjobs who have censored all the good books (also the bad ones), thereby turning your country into an intellectual and cultural wasteland.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:58 | link | comments

High profile sock: When Mo Elmasry figures it’s time to shuffle off and make way for the next generation, he need look no further than socky Khurrum Awan—who, with the Maclean’s complaint has managed to gain quite a high profile for himself in a relatively short period of time—to take his place. The socky is the subject of today’s editorial in the National Post. It's a superb take-down of the CIC’s anti-free speech ethos:

Freedom of speech does not include the right to have one's views published or broadcast. Nor does freedom of the press carry with it an obligation to give space to views opposed to those held by the press' owners or their editors.

Indeed, the only way that a right to have one's views aired could exist is if the government restricted the freedom of the press, forcing media outlets to publish or broadcast material that was deemed otherwise unworthy.

In other words, such a "right" would exist only if the state assumed the power to regulate public discourse, which would be anathema to our democratic ideals.

Apparently, Khurrum Awan doesn't have much respect for those ideals. A recent graduate of Osgoode Hall law school in Toronto, Mr. Awan has put his name to various human-rights complaints against Maclean's magazine and writer Mark Steyn, whom the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) accuses of Islamophobia. Mr. Awan and his coplaintiffs demand that the magazine provide a pro-Islamist writer with space equal to the amount devoted to Mr. Steyn's work.

At a conference over the weekend, Mr. Awan betrayed just how thoroughly he and his fellow travellers misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. He told the Canadian Arab Federation that Muslims must "demand [the] right to participate" in national media. "And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars."

That someone who graduated from law school would issue forth with this hostile jumble of threats is a sad reflection of our rights-mad age. Apparently, Mr. Awan sees freedom of speech and freedom of the press as petty concepts to be brushed aside in the service of identity politics. In his world, the repository of expressive rights is not the individual, but rather ethnic and religious collectives, whose members must bully taxpayers and media owners into disseminating their propaganda…

Given the above, it is tres amusing to see Khurrum’s missive to the paper featured as its "LETTER OF THE DAY”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:36 | link | comments (1)

Bill's "brand"--aging horndog with shrewish wife pre-empted by slim, slow-talkin' Messiah-wannabe?: Business Week ponders a burning issue--in the wake of Hillary's loss, "How will Bill Clinton manage his brand?"

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:57 | link | comments

A trend that’s even more disturbing than the sight of Urban Outfitter keffiyahs on Toronto streets: Judenhass (poorly disguised as humanitarian concern for the plight of Palestinians) in the U.K.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:52 | link | comments

"Human rights" in Pakistan: As this report in the Globe and Mail recounts, it includes the “right” to settle an inter-tribal squabble by treating your daughters as chattel:

ISLAMABAD -- It started with a badly behaved dog but by the time the bitter quarrel was over, 20 people had been killed and 15 girls, the youngest only three years old, were to be given in "marriage" to a rival tribe to settle the dispute.

The handing over of girls is an ancient custom in some parts of Pakistan, but the fate of the 15 girls, in this case, has prompted a furious outrage.

"The murderer gets away. It is his daughter, his sister, his niece, that pays the price," said Samar Minallah, a human-rights activist based in Islamabad. "The girl has to pay the price for the rest of her life."

Although the tradition governing the handoff of the girls -- involving a ceremony in which the other tribe formally claims the girls by laying a scarf or dupatta on their heads -- provides for them to live at home until they are 18, many observers believe the girls will not be permitted that luxury.

"Once the dupatta is laid on the girls, they become the personal property of the [other tribe] and they can take them away when they want," said Indadullah Khoso, the local co-ordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

According to human-rights activists, girls in such cases are poorly treated by their new families because they are thought to be tainted by shame. They can be subject to rape while they are still minors.

Vani or swara, as the custom is called, usually involves the daughters of illiterate and poor people, who do not have money or other assets that can be used as compensation. Ms. Minallah said although vani is illegal, the settlements are often ordered by rich local landowners who adjudicate disputes and who are educated people; some are members of parliament. Police and local administration officials rarely intervene…

Coming soon to the rights-addled Trudeaupia weak and unfree?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:35 | link | comments

Fashion statement: And the statement is “I am a clueless fashionista who thinks it’s way cool to wear a terror shmatta.” By Shinan Govani in the National Post:

Queer Eye for the Scarf Guy? That was the case, indeed, when Carson Kressley showed up at Circa in Toronto last week. And if arriving with Cyndi Lauper wasn't proof enough that this is one girl who just wants to have fun, it should have been clear by the latest in edgy gay neckwear that he had on.

The TV samaritan, Lauper in tow, worked what appeared to be a keffiyeh, a scarf that is largely associated with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but that more recently has not only become appropriated by the boho-homo set in large numbers, but by trend-spreading celebrities such as David Beckham, Colin Farrell and those rad bad Olsen twins.

Kressley, for the record, worked his fabulous keffiyeh with an updated do that made me wonder if he's been using Ellen Barkin's hairdresser of late. The black and white cloth, I also noted, was tied casually, but not too casually, around the neck, along with a casually three-buttons-unbuttoned shirt to give the appropriate I'm-cold-but-I'm-hot motif.

Possibly, a saturation point for the keffiyeh trend? One that Karen Burshtein, here in the Post, tracked as far back as May of last year, declaring then, "Keffiyehs seem to be the new pashminas."

Back then Burshtein pointed out Urban Outfitters was selling the ironic-Arabic garb, that Sienna Miller has been spotted wearing one and that "French designer Nicholas Ghesquiere even referenced the keffiyeh in his collegiate-inspired ready-to-wear collection for Balenciaga."

Since then, of course, there has also been the Great Dunkin' Donuts Keffiyeh Scandale. It's the rowdy scenario that arose just last month when of-the-people cook Rachael Ray was shot wearing the ethnic scarf in an ad for the doughnut chain -- one that eventually got conservatives' bloods boiling, and ended with Dunkin' yanking the commercial soon enough.

Was all this going to stop Carson from wearing his own accessory of mass distraction when out on the town in Toronto? Hell, no…

Why stop at the terror shmatta? I see the next fashion trend looming—shiny black jackboots and festive swastikas. And for the Jews, embroidered yellow stars.

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:17 | link | comments

A step in the wrong direction: Yesterday Mo Elmasry was heard to grumble about Muslims being also-rans in StatsCan’s “hate crime” sweepstakes. Elmo insists, without any data to support him, that “hate crimes” against his community are being drastically underreported. In a piece in last month’s JURIST, guest columnist Faisal Joseph talked about the Maclean’s case and, like Elmo, made a similar claim about widespread discrimination (my bolds):

…The fact of racism against Muslims can no longer be denied. In a 2004 Heritage Canada survey, 80% of Canadians agreed that Muslims and Arabs are the main targets of discrimination in Canada today.

The media cannot shy away from its contributory role in the discrimination of Muslims any longer. As the Ontario Human Rights Commission said in a historic public statement issued last week: "the media has a significant role to play in either combating societal racism or refraining from communicating and reproducing it."

The statement was the result of human rights complaints filed by my clients - the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of Osgoode Hall law students - against Maclean's magazine for its refusal to publish a mutually acceptable response to just one of more than twenty Islamophobic articles published between January 2005 and July 2007. Among others, these articles allege that "enough" Muslims share the basic objectives of terrorists; refer to Muslims as "sheep-shaggers"; and allege an impending, "bloody" Muslim takeover of the West.

In response to the complaints, the Commission exercised its mandate to speak out against actions it saw as "inconsistent with the spirit of the [Ontario Human Rights] Code." In doing so, the Commission strongly condemned "the targeting of Muslims, Arabs, [and] South Asians ... by the media as being inconsistent with the values enshrined in the Code."

In particular, the Commission expressed "serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's Magazine and other media outlets," noting that "this type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting social intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians."

While recognizing the importance of the freedom of expression, the OHRC also stated that it could not be used as a guise to target vulnerable groups and for the dissemination of xenophobic opinions.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding their recognition of the "Islamophobic" content of several articles published by Maclean's, the Commission was unable to proceed with my clients' complaints because s. 13(1) of the Ontario Human Rights Code does not cover the content of newspapers and magazines. This gaping hole in the Code leaves minority groups, with little or no public voice, without a remedy for redressing group defamation and racism disseminated in our mass media.

Alternative venues to combat media-promulgated racism are conspicuously limited. Yes, Canada has criminal hate speech laws, but when the sources of hate speech are found in our own print and broadcast journalism, they provide little or no protection to minorities. All hate speech prosecutions require the Attorney General's consent - an unlikely event if the potential defendant is a large media organization.

Provincial press councils provide an avenue for reader complaints, but membership is voluntary and many offending media organizations, such as Maclean's, do not subscribe to them.

In principle, we could encourage more and better speech to counter the effects of prejudicial and hateful speech. In practice, a review of major Canadian publications indicates that the "more and better speech" is disturbingly scarce. When it comes to Muslims, right-wing journalists across the country have plenty to say. But who is providing the "more and better speech" to mitigate their toxic effects? The "more and better speech" formula fails marginalized minorities - a lesson that Canadian Muslims have painfully learned. In my clients' case, Maclean's preferred bankruptcy to publishing a mutually acceptable response to one of over twenty Islamophobic articles published in two-and-a-half years.

Given the lack of viable alternatives, the Commission must be lauded for its courageous stance against media-promulgated racism and Islamophobia. Its (sic)clear and unambiguous public statement is a source of hope for minorities, particularly Muslims, who have consistently received the short-end of the media stick. A powerful and respected public institution has spoken out against the persistent denigration of the Muslim community in our mass media. We can only hope positive change is on its way.

The fact that 80 per cent of Canadians had the impression that Muslims and Arabs were the main victims of discrimination doesn’t make it so. Impressions aren’t facts. As for the  “positive change” that’s supposedly on the way, all I can say is that one person’s “positive change” is another person’s demise of free expression.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:59 | link | comments

Get Smart: What’s the deal with those Osgoode Law School sock thingys? Why have they raised their voices against Maclean’s malfeasance at this particular time? I could be wrong, but it appears to part of a concerted strategy that is just now starting to bear fruit. The strategy, outlined in detail here, is called “Smart Integration.” Here’s CIC attorney Faisal Joseph explaining to a CIC gathering back in 2005 how it was going to work (my bolds):

…"This community is under a microscope, the likes of which has never been seen in history," Joseph declared, and it was clear that the mood of the room agreed with him.

But Joseph's argument and theme didn't stop there, because no condition is without a solution. Along with CIC national president Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, guest Imam Dr. Mohamed Khattab, and comedian/MC Rasul Somji, the London criminal lawyer and political advocacy expert invited Saturday's listeners to to (sic) imagine a different -- and wholly achievable -- future for the next generation of Canadian Muslims.

The key lies in attracting the brightest and best of young Muslim men and women to enter professions which, until now, were considered non- traditional. Instead of automatically setting their sights on engineering, architecture, medicine, information technology and related fields, a new CIC program is providing post-secondary scholarships for students willing and able to try political science, journalism, law, social sciences -- areas in which the Muslim presence has been vastly under-represented, even by Canada's multicultural standards.

It's all part of an even wider movement toward a concept called Smart Integration, an enlightened stratagy (sic) for being wholly Canadian and wholly Muslim. It's not infiltration, not assimilation, not a self-protective disappearing act, but rather an approach to being true Canadians whose lives are also grounded in a faith that fundamentally speaks peace…

And that fundamentally loathes the Zionist entity. But, never mind about that for the moment. What’s important is that the best and the brightest, like Khurrum Awan and the Sockettes, have answered the call and are doing their bit to ensure that a faith that fundamentally speaks peace is and remains unassailable.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:30 | link | comments (1)

Number grumbler: Blacks and Jews are reportedly at the top of the list of those in Canada being targeted for “hate crimes,” but the CIC’s Mo Elmasry begs to differ. From the Ceeb:

Race and ethnicity still top the list of Canada's most common motivators of hate crimes, according to a Statistics Canada report released Monday that shows blacks as the main target.

The report was limited to data obtained from police cases from forces covering 87 per cent of Canada's population and additional information from victimization surveys.

Of the 892 hate crimes reported by police forces across the country in 2006, six in 10 were linked to race or ethnicity, the report says.

Nearly half of the 502 race-linked hate crimes targeted blacks, compared with 13 per cent, or 66 incidents, aimed at South Asians and 12 per cent, or 61 incidents, at Arabs and West Asians. Twenty-five police-recorded hate crimes targeted Caucasians and 24 were directed at Aboriginal people, with the remainder accounted for by categories titled multiple races and others.

More than half of the total hate crimes in 2006 were property offences such as mischief, but about one-third involved violence, including assaults, one homicide and two attempted murders.

While race remained the highest motivator, religion appeared to account for one-quarter of the police-reported hate crimes. Jewish-faith targets accounted for almost two-thirds of the incidents followed by Islamic targets at 21 per cent and Catholics with six per cent.

Muslim leader questions numbers

Some members of the Muslim community are questioning the numbers.

Mohamed Elmasry, national president of Canadian Islamic Congress, suggested the report doesn't reflect reality, saying a lack of resources led to the community neglecting to report every single hate crime.

"The Muslim community was under great stress since 9/11," he said, adding that it exhausted its resources trying to report all the crimes…

It exhausted its resources trying to report them, but not trying to prevent them.

There's method to Elmo's madness. If he can convince Canadians that "the Muslim community" is being unduly "victimized," we, tender-hearted naifs that we are, are more likely to swallow the codswallop about having to shut down free speech in order to protect his victim group from the onslaught of rampant "Islamophobia".

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

The best offence is a good offence: Iran is whinging because a representative of the country it has vowed to wipe of the map has informed Iran of his disinclination to go along with the map-wiping agenda. From JTA:

Iran filed a U.N. Security Council complaint after an Israeli official threatened to attack its nuclear facilities.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defense chief, told the daily Yediot Achronot on Friday that Israel would have no choice but to attack Iran given the failure of U.N. Security Council sanctions in curbing its nuclear program.

The comments contributed to a record 9 percent hike in the price of oil, though they were disavowed by Jerusalem.

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding a Security Council condemnation of Israel.

"Such a dangerous threat against a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations constitutes a manifest violation of international law and contravenes the most fundamental principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and, thus, requires a resolute and clear response on the part of the United Nations, particularly the Security Council," Khazaee wrote.

Ban's office had no immediate response.

UN resolution condemning Israel (but not Iran) in five, four, three, two…

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

Bossy sock: Sock thingy Khurrum Awan is demanding an “equal voice” for Muslims in the Canadian media. Apparently, this lack of “equality” is why the truth about Islam (which, as we know, is no defence if it leads to hurt feelings) keeps finding its way into print.

What’s behind the inequity? Awan’s puppet master, Mo Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress, accounted for it back in 2006. In a speech delivered to the Canadian Association of Journalists, he said it could be attributed in part to “The high concentration of Canadian media ownership in the hands of a few families or corporations, none of which are friendly to Muslims.”

Well, of course. The Jews, a.k.a. the Aspers, owners of CanWest, “control” the media. A classic bit of Judenhass, cleaned up and “Canadianized” for the august audience.

Leaving aside Mr. E.’s quacking canard (which, were I so inclined,, might serve as the basis of an HRC suit, since reading it has caused me to feel “stressed,” “hurt” and “offended”), what the equality-minded lobbyist neglected to mention is that any "inequity" is offset by Canada’s most influential media corporation, the CBC. The Ceeb, which is funded by we, the people, remains doggedly leftist and anti-Zionist (just like the CIC), and is so “friendly to Muslims” that it serves as a training ground for Al Jazeera.

Seems to me what socky is asking for is not an “equal” voice, but a commanding one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:22 | link | comments (1)

McNaughton’s law or don't throw tranny from the train: Here’s a press release from back in 2002, detailing one of the B.C. ‘roos’ previous rulings. Laugh? I thought I’d cry (my bolds):

Vancouver - In the midst of the Provincial government’s drastic cuts to services and programs the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has released its decision in the case of Nixon vs Vancouver Rape Relief Society, January 18, 2002.

In that decision, Tribunal Member Heather McNaughton has ordered Vancouver Rape Relief to pay $7,500, the highest award ever for injury to feelings so far in British Columbia, to Kimberly Nixon, a post operative male-to-female transsexual. It was held that Vancouver Rape Relief was in breach of the Human Rights Code in refusing to allow a person without the life experience of being treated as a woman to train as a volunteer peer counsellor of a women-only rape crisis centre and shelter for battered women.

The Tribunal however also recognized that Vancouver Rape Relief acted in good faith, meant no harm and recognized that Rape Relief workers believed they were respectful towards Ms Nixon. The Tribunal Chair noted that Ms. Nixon was “unable to understand the challenge to her participation in the training in any but a personal way and as a challenge to her status as a woman.” As well, the Tribunal recognized that it is harmful to create a situation that would potentially silence a rape victim. For a summary of the Human Rights Tribunal decision please see the attached Summary of Decision.

Professor Christine Boyle of the Faculty of Law of the University of British Columbia , who was co-counsel for Vancouver Rape Relief, comments: “ I’m disappointed that the BC Human Rights Tribunal did not take the same approach as the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Kavanaugh and the Canadian Rights Commission (2001). In that case it was recognized that the difficulties female inmates in correctional facilities have in dealing with men are based in part on painful life experience. So should the significance of life experience for raped and battered women be acknowledged by law.”

Despite the support of a broad based community, the 6 year long defense has strained the volunteer organization. Suzanne Jay a collective member of Rape Relief says “We were fortunate that people stepped forward to offer us some financial support that was directly about the case. Otherwise, I can’t see how we could have continued our service delivery work and make a defense.”

However, there are no regrets about defending the case, “To Vancouver Rape Relief this is a test case in which we are defending the human right to women-only space. This case is about what Rape Relief sees as fundamental to our work - the life experience of being treated as a woman. We respect the human rights of everyone, irrespective of gender. But we don’t exist to meet the needs of volunteers. We need volunteers with the life experience of being treated as women to offer help to women who need shelter from violence.” states Lee Lakeman a collective member of Vancouver Rape Relief…

It took six frikkin' years to wrap up this case? Unbelievable! How much did that it cost B.C. taxpayers to award the person who hadn't any "life experience of being treated as a woman"  $7,500 for her hurt feelings? And how much did it cost the rape crisis centre, which appears to provide a vital service, and which, if others hadn't stepped forward to shoulder some of the costs, might have had to close because of this ridiculous suit?

What errant nonsense!

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:38 | link | comments

Well looky here: The CIC's  HRC complaints about Maclean's magazine has its own Wikipedia entry--some of which needs to be updated. Funny how none of the sock thingys are mentioned by name, but I guess that's because, officially at least, they aren't party to the complaint. There's also no mention of the Buffy/Queen Latifah scholar, a serious oversight as far as I'm concerned.

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

The “Jew’ of nations: In a post in Contentions, the Commentary magazine blog, Noah Pollak nails it:

One of the goals of Zionism was to take the diseased and often brutal relationship between gentile and Jew and elevate it to a new plane, so that Jews could interact with the gentile world in the realm of nation-states. By assuming the responsibilities of sovereignty, Jews would re-enter history on what was hoped to be an equal footing with those who in exile had been their tormentors. That project has been a dreamscape of success, insofar as Israel today is an economic, political, and military powerhouse. But it has been a failure insofar as the same diseased and brutal relationship that once existed between Jews and gentiles in the Diaspora has, in important ways, simply been replicated in the international discourse between Israel and other nations. There is probably no solution to this; Israel will never be permitted to be normal.

That’s why the efforts to “rebrand” Israel and make the world like it based on its impressive utility are doomed to fail.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:03 | link | comments

Fauxbama's faux-platform: And it sounds like the real deal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:36 | link | comments

Socks sing: Only one of their many talents.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:21 | link | comments

Just an average two weeks in the life of the endemically, systemically corrupt international “virtue” racket: The inimitable Claudia Rosett assesses the UN’s state of affairs post-Kofi—and it isn’t a pretty picture:

It’s been a busy fortnight at the UN.

In response to the latest allegations of peacekeeper rape, in Haiti, Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire, a UN spokesman explained that the UN’s “zero tolerance” policy of such stuff is unrealistic – or, to put that in plainer English, if you want UN blue helmets, you’d better be ready to accept child rape as part of the package. In Rome, a UN food summit became a portal for appearances by Iran’s Mahmushroom-cloud Ahmadinejad (whose country is in nose-thumbing violation of three UN resolutions on its nuclear program, and who seized the chance to grandstand yet again about his desire for the destruction of Israel) and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (Father of Famine in his own country), who was able to flout an EU travel ban thanks to the UN welcome wagon.

In New York, the UN Development Program –flagship agency of the UN – spun as an exoneration of its Cash-for-Kim activities in North Korea a much-delayed report which in fact details a host of ways in which the UNDP lends itself as a vehicle for exploitation by rogue states. Also in New York, the UN General Assembly, by acclamation, chose as its next president a former foreign minister of the brutal Soviet-lovin’ Sandinista era in Nicaragua, winner of the 1985 Lenin Prize, Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, with the monk-murdering regime of Burma to hold one of the 21 vice-presidential slots. In what sounds like a parody of UN-speak, Ban Ki-Moon’s deputy, Asha-Rose Migiro, welcomed d’Escoto’s “election,” saying that his “long and varied career” would — as paraphrased by the UN News Centre — “serve him well at the UN.” And, as the UN launches a $1.9 billion renovation of the New York headquarters from which it runs this ever-expanding empire, the NY City Controller was trying to collect millions in back-rent he says the UN Development Corporation has refused to pay.

This is the UN after what Ban Ki-Moon advertised as the new era of responsibility and transparency, after what Kofi Annan advertised as the sweeping reforms of 2005-2006, which followed the reforms of 2002, which followed the sweeping reforms of 1997. Which followed, well, you get the idea … does anyone see a problem here?

Of course not. They’re too busy worrying about Israel’s ongoing malfeasance/infamy to concern themselves with such picayune affairs.

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

Quote of the day: “I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”—Woodrow Wilson

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:33 | link | comments (1)

Charisma sucks:  Mark Steyn observes that there are two kinds of reactions to Bambi Fauxbama. There are those, like TV loudmouth Chris Mathews, who get weak in the knees and swoon with pleasure when they hear the Bamessiah’s vow to “remake” America (apparently into something that more closely resembles Canada and Western Europe). And there are those, like Mark Steyn (and moi) who cringe, shudder, and shrink back in horror when they hear such grandiose promises. From the O.C. Register:

…The first [reaction is] exemplified by the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder:

"What a different emotional register from John McCain's; Obama seems on the verge of tears; the enormous crowd in the Xcel Center seems ready to lift Obama on its shoulders; the much smaller audience for McCain's speech interrupted his remarks with stilted cheers."

The second reaction boils down to: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee onto their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term. As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it? A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine – John Gross of Quebec – sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign:

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

I thought this was so cute, I posted it on the Web at National Review. Whereupon one of those Internetty-type things happened, and three links and a Google search later the line was being attributed not to my correspondent but to Sen. Obama, and a few weeks after that I started getting e-mails from reporters from Florida to Oregon, asking if I could recall at which campaign stop the senator, in fact, uttered these words. And I'd patiently write back and explain that they're John Gross' words, and that not even Barack would be dumb enough to say such a thing in public. Yet last week his demand in his victory speech that we "come together to remake this great nation" came awful close.

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there…

And no one at all wants to live on an atoll.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:26 | link | comments

Three strikes yer out: The Canadian Jewish Congress was wrong about the Danish Motoons (condemning their publication as being "inexcusably provocative”), wrong about wanting Queen’s Park to pay for religious schools (thereby funding sharia schools), and wrong, wrong, wrong, about using HRCs as a security blankie to “protect” Jews from hate (at the cost of our most crucial freedom—free expression). Here are the two guys who head up the outfit that claims to represent the interests of Canadian Jews, but which went off the rails some time ago, attempting to rationalize their devotion to Canada’s cockamamie kangaroo “courts,” an exercise which succeeds only in highlighting their own breathtaking—and sick-making—cluelessness. From the Halifax Chronicle Herald:

…In the past, the Canadian and provincial human rights commissions have played an important role in protecting Canadian society, and particularly its vulnerable minorities, from the corrosive effects of hate speech.

They have also historically been effective in breaking down barriers of discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity for all Canadians.

In the interest of full disclosure, we should note the Canadian Jewish Congress has made use of the Canadian Human Rights Commission on a number of occasions over the decades in order to protect the rights and security of the Jewish community when threatened by extremist racists and hatemongers. In our view, these individuals not only put our community at risk, but promoted a worldview that was antithetical to core Canadian values.

In some cases, our complaints were accepted and led to a human rights tribunal or to mediation; and in other cases, our complaints were denied. This is part of the process, and we accepted the outcomes.

But while we have always argued that the state has a fundamental role to play in protecting vulnerable minorities from hate speech and the harmful impact of hate, there have to be limits on the limitations.

Plainly put, it’s the responsibility of the human rights commissions to assess complaints as they are tendered and to determine if those complaints fall within the ambit of the relevant human rights legislation, and then to determine if the complaints are legitimate, vexatious or frivolous.

Human rights commissions must constantly recalibrate where the balance lies between free expression and its abridgement, but the determination of where to place the fulcrum must always be based on the statutory standard that such expression is "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

This cannot be meant to take into account speech that is merely offensive, "politically incorrect," unpopular or critical, or that hurts feelings. In a sophisticated country such as Canada, offence should not be given or taken so easily.

In our estimation, the complaints against Maclean’s and Levant fall well short of the mandated standard of the provincial human rights commissions petitioned for redress and should not have been accepted. In the case of the latter, while the CJC deplored Levant’s decision to reprint the offending cartoons, there must be no doubt that in a free and democratic society, he has the right to be offensive.

Yes, our community knows only too well that words hurt and have been used as weapons of hate. But there must be some parameters and standards for state action to kick in. If every statement or publication that is unpopular or causes hurt feelings is actionable, then none is.

And as we have seen from the firestorm of criticism of these decisions, such abuse of legitimate human rights mechanisms vitiates their effectiveness and brings into disrepute their true value and necessity.

In the end, the appropriate application of statutory criteria is our best defence against those who would eliminate the law to protect their interests, and against those who would use the law to promote a narrow political agenda.

Memo to CJC mucky-mucks: the “appropriate statutory criteria” can be found in Canada’s regular hate laws, the contravention of which are determined in courts were justice does not favour one side and where the person in charge is a judge, not a hack bureaucrat with hard leftist leanings and a head full of Marxist mumbo-jumbo. (Although Canada has plenty of lefty judges--like the four on the Supreme Court who, back in the '80s, validated the faux-courts' ability to adjudicate matters of "hate speech"). Period. Full stop. Now, thanks to Mo Elmasry and his sockies, the light of day has been shone on the foul HRC proceedings, and it looks like your days of getting the 'roos to shut down the last three neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan (and lining the pockets of your favourite honoree) may finally be coming to an end—and not a moment too soon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments (1)

A Titanic joke/tragedy: Summer camp is on the horizon, a fact that has inspired me to refloat a song I used to sing back when I was but a mere slip of a scaramouche. Here are the original lyrics I used to sing around the campfire. And here's my updated version

Oh they built the HRCs to try to make things fair

Like if you wanted to live some place and they said you couldn’t live there.

But we gave them too much weight

When we let them rule on “hate”.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

Oh, It was sad.

It was sad.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

And it’s high time we said no, nein, non and nyet

To the “court” that’s Soviet.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

 

Oh, Canadians were asleep and they didn’t say a peep

When the target was a Nazi White Power creep.

But when the ‘slamists used the law

It exposed the gaping flaw.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

Oh, it was sad.

It was sad.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

And it foundered on the shoals of “human rights”

And inspired lots of fights.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

 

Oh, the moral of the story as you can plainly see

Is to never take for granted that your land will stay free.

‘Cause we didn’t stand on guard

And we’ve fallen very hard.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

Oh, it was sad.

It was sad.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground

And the sound of those who want ‘em off their ass

Is reaching critical mass.

It was sad when our freedom ran aground.

 

Since I couldn't find the camp song on YouTube, here's the next best thing--a song about how we're sailing on "A Ship of Fools"

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

A word from the wise: And the word is “freedom”:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.—Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.—C. Wright Mills

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.—Clarence Darrow

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.—Dorothy Thompson

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.—Dorothy Thompson

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.--Edward R. Murrow

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.—Eleanor Holmes Norton

Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day!—Florynce Kennedy

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.—Goethe

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.—H.L. Mencken

 There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.—John Adams

 

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.—John P. Zenger

If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.—Noam Chomsky

Freedom lies in being bold.—Robert Frost

It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.—Sam Adams

Everything can be taken from a man but ... the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.—Victor Frankl

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.--Voltaire

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.—Wendell Phillips

And finally,

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.—William O. Douglas

The one un-Canadian act, too.

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

Syndrome sufferers: The Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross writes about a strange malady—Jerusalem syndrome. It strikes Christian and Jewish men whose encounter with the holy city prompts some odd behaviour:

JERUSALEM–More than 2 million visitors flock to this holy city in a good year – including business-people, pilgrims and vacationers – and most survive the experience without suffering major upset.

But there are some notable exceptions.

In the medical literature, the condition is referred to as a form of "psychotic decompensation" or a "unique acute psychotic state."

Or, to put it in layman's terms, the City of Gold can have a strange effect on some people's heads. About 100 people a year, on average.

There's even a name for the sometimes-unnerving result.

They call it the Jerusalem syndrome.

It seems there is something about this lofty city of limestone walls, winding streets and cypress groves, a city redolent with the ancient histories of three great world religions, that makes some people go – not to put too fine a point on it – insane.

"People come to Jerusalem with deep religious convictions, and they go over the edge," says Jeremy Milgrom, a local rabbi.

In its so-called "pure" form, the phenomenon tends to follow a fairly consistent, if bizarre, pattern.

Within a day or so of arrival, some visitors to Jerusalem will gradually cease to interact with their travelling companions, first becoming obsessed with personal hygiene.

Before long, they are apt to don a white toga-like robe – hotel bedsheets are popular – before setting off on foot for the Old City or the Mount of Olives, where they will typically begin to preach a sermon, usually a plea for a return to a simpler, more spiritual life.

"They think they are Jesus themselves or they are someone who predicts Jesus's return," says Sigal Manor, an Israeli businesswoman who conducts organized tours designed around the phenomenon. "Every two or three months, I see something weird."

The pure form of the syndrome seems to affect Protestants almost exclusively, especially those from highly religious backgrounds.

Some Israeli psychologists have suggested these individuals – representing fewer than 5 per cent of the total number affected by the syndrome – have no previous history of mental instability, but this view is disputed.

In any case, the pure form is only one manifestation of the affliction.

Israeli researchers have isolated three distinct categories of the syndrome, with numerous subgroupings.

Overall, about two-thirds of those affected by some version of the syndrome are Jewish, and the rest Christian.

For some reason, Muslims do not seem to be affected, even though Jerusalem is holy to their faith as well…

Might that be because, despite Jerusalem being holy to their faith as well, the city is not mentioned by name --no, not even once--in the Koran?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:20 | link | comments (2)

Not nearly enough: An editorial in the Globe and Mail calls for British Columbia’s “hate provision” to be “excised”:

…The B.C. hearing has illustrated the folly of inquiries into whether a publication is likely to expose people to hatred and contempt. For example, a recent PhD in journalism and communications, Faizi Hirji, was called as an expert witness. Even if hatred and contempt amounted to a field of scholarly expertise, her doctoral research into identity construction as influenced by Bollywood movies would not make her a (sic) expert in the causation of hatred.

The Criminal Code deals with hate speech, too. But its prohibitions of incitement and willful promotion of hatred are directed at intentional, conscious acts, not at risks of incidental responses to a person's words. Moreover, criminal charges are subject to all the defences and procedural protections of criminal law.

Mr. Steyn may well underestimate the strength of the forces of assimilation and integration through popular culture, workplaces, schools and mass media, but then again he may be right. In any case, the political consequences of religious beliefs are a proper topic of public discussion.

Section 7 of the B.C. Human Rights Code is not compatible with freedom of speech and expression in Canada, and should be struck down by a court, if not by the tribunal.

Um, you mean the tribunal should strip itself of power? You must be joking.

My letter:

The B.C. hate provision is merely the tip of the iceberg, since there are 12 other jurisdictions in Canada--provincial, territorial, national--which feature similar provisions curtailing free speech. In each jurisdiction, people can be made to account for their words in a “court” which turns eight centuries of jurisprudence on its ear by doing away with the presumption of innocence, fixed rules of evidence and even, heaven help us, any regard for the truth.

It makes far more sense to tear down the whole vast “human rights” bureaucracy. It is expensive, unfair (since it invariably favours the complainant), intrusive, and serves little purpose other than to give employment to a bunch of bureaucrats. If Canadians want to prosecute other Canadians for “hate speech” in this, the least hateful country on the planet, they can do so within the context of a regular court which adheres to our most fundamental values. That other “court”--the one that wants us all to shut up and has made Canada something of a laughingstock on the international scene--is out of place in a free society.

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

Make some noise: That's the only way we're going to persuade Canadians that their freedom defends on stripping the Human Rights apparatchniks of their power. Right, Smokey?

Maybe they think that speech ain’t really free,

Since they can run right to an HRC.

And maybe they think we won’t put up a fight,

And the urge to stifle freedom is a “right”

 

Oh, Mr. E, in that case we will rant and roar.

We do believe that we were better off before.

Oh, if we want our freedom back,

If we got that notion,

We’ll second that commotion.

If we feel like tellin’ ‘roos

Go jump into the ocean,

We’ll second that commotion.

 

Maybe you think there’s nothin’ left to lose,

And there’s no problem givin’ power to ‘roos.

Or maybe you think we’re acting like such fools

Abiding by their cockamamie rules.

 

Oh, Mr. Steyn, in that case we will all talk back.

We do believe it’s crazy to empower a hack.

Oh, if we want democracy,

If it’s our devotion,

We’ll second that commotion.

Said, if we want the HRCs

To go jump in the ocean.

We’ll second that commotion. 

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

Steyn sweats the big stuff:  Mark Steyn says he wants to lose the thrilla in Vancouvah, but fears the 'roobunal will rule against him because the CIC's attorney was so "staggeringly inept." Only by losing, you see, can the case be heard in a real court, one which has yet to eschew all those niceties the HRC system has done away with. Things like fairness. And "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" (a.k.a. discoveries). And regular rules of evidence. And the presumption of innocence. You know, all the stuff that makes Western law, er, Western.

Have no fear, Mark. From what I've read, Mr. Joseph's ineptitude won't phase the 'roo triumverate one little bit; heck, it probably isn't even on their GPS. I'm pretty sure they're accustomed to such ineptitude, and were so riveted by the testimony from the Buffy expert and the other authorities that Mr. Joseph's fumbles won't be a factor in their decision.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:16 | link | comments (1)

Brrrr: Though the mercury in Toronto has skyrocketed into the 40s, there’s a definite chill in the air. It arrives courtesy Faisal Joseph’s closing argument, as summarized by blogger extraordinaire, Andrew Coyne:

We’re here to right a terrible wrong. Case involves a complicated intersection of two important values — free speech and the right to be free from discrimination. Neither trumps the other, in his view. Not all speech is afforded the same protection — speech that is not close to the “core value” of free speech is not as well protected. That would be hate speech. Doesn’t advance truth-seeking, because it silences the target group. Doesn’t advance their self-development, etc.

Not offensive speech we’re after, but hate speech. And only on enumerated grounds — so just exposing individual polticians, say, to hatred is okay, but not those groups listed in the code. Two-part test under the code: does the speech itself espouse hatred, and is it likely to cause others to hate.

Going through the case law on Sect. 7.1 of the BC Human Rights code. Factors to take into account: the vulnerability of the target group, the tone of the message, whether it’s presented as opinion or fact, the context, the method of dissemination. Particular case that’s noteworthy: Canadian Jewish Congress vs. North Shore News (ie the “Doug Collins” case.)

Stressing that it’s a two-part test, so free speech is  well protected. eg. Speech that is neutral in tone, but might cause someone else to hate, is not caught; ditto speech that is itself hateful, but might not cause others to hate. Catches “only the speech that is appropriately silenced.” Application ensures there will be no — he pauses to do big air-quote — “chilling” effect.

Concedes some speech within a “shaded” area will be suppressed — but will only require authors who are “close to the line” to “think very carefully” about how they say it.

Using “Taylor” definition (from eponymous Supreme Court decision)  of hatred and contempt — “extreme ill will,” group presented has having “no redeeming qualities”, “looking down upon” targeted group etc. 

Law focuses on effects on targeted group, not the intentions of the author, so as to allow reparations. Test to apply is how a reasonable person would interpret the content, in this time and place, and if informed of its social and historical context: would a reasonable person find it hateful...

And who gets to decide what’s “reasonable,” Mr. Joseph? Mohamed Elmasry? Karrun Awan? Barbara Hall? All, no doubt, among the most “reasonable” of the “reasonable” in this, the best of all possible Trudeaupias. But what passes muster as “reasonable” at certain times and in certain places is not, ipso facto, “reasonable,” or for that matter, rational. After all, in apartheid-era South Africa, the powers-that-be deemed it “reasonable” for a portion of the population to face discrimination and be consigned to a second-class status based purely on their skin colour. In Nazi Germany, those in charge thought it “reasonable” to want to get rid of the Jews. Is it “reasonable” that, in Canada, a bunch of hack bureaucrats presiding over Soviet-style courts get to shut down any and all criticism of Islam, even as sharia, quietly and without much fanfare, continues to insinuate itself into our body politic? Is it “reasonable” for Canadians to be held hostage to a Supreme Court decision made a generation ago, when the world was a far different place?

A pox on “reasonable.” Give us back our freedom.

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

Ontario turns a blind eye to creeping sharia: Stephen Brown in FrontPage Magazine blasts the lily-livered McGuinty Liberals for doing nothing to shut down the sharia-sanctioned polygamy taking place in the province:

…The Liberal Party, which currently rules Ontario, is adopting a cowardly see-no-evil attitude toward the reported simultaneous marriages. In the provincial legislature, a Liberal member of parliament explained, in true political doublespeak, that since no marriage licenses were obtained and no registration of such marriages took place, then there is no evidence the polygamous unions ever occurred.

Only a politician could utter such useless drivel for an excuse.

But what makes this shameful blot of inaction even worse is the cold contempt in which Liberal politicians, much like Hindy, are holding their very own Canadian laws. Regarding this issue, Ontario’s provincial criminal code states that a person who enters into any form of polygamy, whether the law has recognized the union or not, as well as those who assist in the rite, can receive up to five years in prison.

But the worthless Liberal response should come as no surprise. While Hindy holds Canadian law in contempt in order to slowly spread his version of fundamentalist Islam in an infidel country, the self-serving Liberals are doing the same thing in order, as usual, not to lose votes and jeopardize elections.

The Liberal Party, you see, has been Canada’s party of multiculturalism since the days of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who unilaterally declared Canada a multicultural country in the early 1970s. The Liberals regard the ethnic groups who have immigrated to America’s northern neighbor since that time as core supporters and vote reservoirs; much like the Democratic Party in the United States views the black and union vote.

As result, the Liberals are, predictably, very hesitant to take action against a religion shared by several such large ethnic groups whose voting numbers are growing in the key Toronto and Toronto-area ridings where the majority of Canada’s 700,000 Muslims live and where Ontario elections are decided.

In all, the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty, are just practising the traditional Liberal policy of seizing power at all costs and holding power at all costs, even if it means ignoring an odious aspect of sharia that goes against the rights of women they’ve always espoused. All of which goes to show that, once more, it is not the Hindys who pose the most danger to the Western way of life, but rather the appeasers and collaborators with their lack of courage and unwillingness to stand up for the values of our democratic societies and civilization.

The Canadian media have also been unhelpful regarding the Muslim polygamy issue. For years, they have hypocritically focused their attention on a small, isolated and polygamist Mormon fundamentalist community in British Columbia (a safe target), while Muslims have been practising polygamy in major Canadian urban areas at the same time. Hindy said even some imams have second wives, making one wonder why Canadian newspapers never covered this story among the hundreds they have published about Islam.

Women’s groups have been equally and hypocritically silent. And yet lost in all this is the fact that it is the women, and their children, who suffer the most from polygamy. One would think Canadian feminists would have long ago made this social blight a top priority, using their taxpayer-funded government grants to study and prevent it. Families are devastated by this archaic practice that is so unjust and detrimental to the women they claim to represent.

One woman’s life, for example, was shattered when she discovered her husband married two other women after he had sent her to Egypt with their four children for a year. Hindy told the woman, who had cried for six days after discovering the awful news: “You should stop causing problems to him (the husband). You will not get anything by divorce except destroying your life.” But this big-hearted guy says, in a few cases, he has gone to homes with the news of a husband’s new marriage to help lessen the blow for the first wife.

Well, that certainly makes a big difference.

Unlike the spineless Liberals, the secular Muslim Canadian Congress has asked police to investigate “the growing number of polygamous marriages” and lay charges. In a communiqué, the MCC called polygamy “degrading to women”, stating the original reasons for its existence, one of which was the providing for widows and orphans of men killed in battle, no longer exists.

The MCC also wants Ontario’s government to uphold the law in regard to family social benefits. While only one wife is supposed to be able to claim such benefits, some extra wives are collecting them as individual applicants, further draining the treasury. Indirectly the taxpayer, by supporting the second and third families, in other words the husband’s harem, is unknowingly supporting sharia law.

The issue of polygamy, it is generally recognized, will probably now go to court where its advocates, like Hindy, will fight for its legalization under the banner of religious freedom contained in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court hopefully will perceive that the case is simply an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists to use our tolerance to promote their intolerance, and thus rule against it...

I wouldn’t count on it. It was our Supreme Court, after all, that gave the HRCs the thumbs up to override one of our fundamental Charter freedoms—the right to free expression. I’d say it’s up to us—we the people—to raise our voices and make our displeasure known to Queen’s Park. That’s how we got McShifty to nix the sharia tribunals, isn't it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:40 | link | comments

Not a fan: Smart cookie Melanie Phillips is not bamboozled for even a nano-second by Bambi’s “I Love Israel” spiel:

So the new dawn of American politics has brought us, on day one, what exactly? First off, Obama makes a speech to the American Jews of AIPAC that is such a brazen piece of cynicism as to make one’s eyes water. The man whose support for Israel has hitherto been, let us say, equivocal, who thinks ‘no-one is suffering more than the Palestinian people’ who he therefore thinks are suffering more than the Israelis they routinely murder, whose every foreign affairs adviser is viscerally hostile towards Israel with one of them, Daniel Kurzer, saying last month that Israel should surrender part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, suddenly tells the Jewish lobby group AIPAC in his first major speech after clinching the Democratic nomination that he is Israel’s bestest friend in the whole wide world and insists that

Jerusalem must always remain the capital of Israel and must never be divided.

His number one fans in the Middle East, Hamas, didn’t like that one little bit; nor did that man of peace Mahmoud Abbas. But they needn’t have thrown their keffiyehs out of their prams so quickly. For within hours Obama had backtracked, as the Jerusalem Post  reports: 

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama did not rule out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem when he called for Israel's capital to remain ‘undivided,’ his campaign told The Jerusalem Post Thursday’’. .. a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes ‘Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties’ as part of ‘an agreement that they both can live with.’ ‘Two principles should apply to any outcome,’ which the adviser gave as: ‘Jerusalem remains Israel's capital and it's not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.’

I think this is what’s called ‘change we can believe in’.

How can someone who goes in for this kind of outrageous doublespeak – not to mention claiming that talking to Iran without preconditions amounts to tough and principled diplomacy possibly be considered a serious contender for the American Presidency? The man represents a positive danger to the free world. Are the Americans completely nuts?...

Not “nuts” so much as bewitched, hypnotized and entranced by a pretty boy with a compelling presence and a way with words.

Update: Quel surprise! No sooner are the words out of his mouth than he feels compelled to offer an, ahem, "clarification."

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:05 | link | comments

Animal lovers: Over in that other courtroom—the one where some devout lads are in the dock for allegedly plotting acts of terror—the talk isn’t about the malign influence of Mark Steyn’s Maclean’s article. It’s about the malign influence of…well, you know who. Here’s Christie Blatchford’s colourful account in the Globe and Mail:

BRAMPTON, ONT -- Killing rats. Now that they fretted about.

The alleged leader of the alleged Toronto 18 terror bomb plot had just broken the news to one of his alleged co-conspirators that the house they were thinking of renting as a base had a rat problem.

"I don't like wanna live with rats," the leader said.

The co-conspirator, who clearly was still pining and pushing for the house rental, inquired rather timidly, "It's permissible to kill rats?"

The leader thought about it, and concluded, a bit reluctantly, that rat-killing was probably allowed by the Koran.

"Is there any good about rats?" the co-conspirator asked.

Well, said the leader, a little anguished because such matters are not so simple, only that the rat "is a creature of Allah."

Jews, not so much. There was no such hand-wringing about Jew-killing.

Jews, the leader had told this same co-conspirator and two others a month earlier, you can kill with abandon. Because of what they had done to Palestine and "stuff like that, they're all our enemies. It's not enough to say they're only my enemy in a certain part of land, they're your enemy everywhere you see them....every single Jew is your enemy."

One of the co-conspirators asked if by that, the leader meant that Jews here, in Canada, could be attacked.

Yes and no, said the leader. You weren't compelled to attack them or anything, but if one was boldly walking down the street with a sign that read "pro-Zion, pro-Zion, whatever," or if he "wears a big Jewish thing" (what that would be, whether yarmulke or the Star of David or something else he didn't say), well, you should think about it.

Why? Because "Now, you are a target, and you would be rewarded for it, because he is your enemy...and if you were to do it, you wouldn't be held accountable" in the eyes of Allah…

How can Blatch write this stuff?!?  Isn’t she worried that some sock thingy will accuse her of “stereotyping” Muslims and haul her to the west coast to face some ‘roos?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments (1)

A “Dear Jack” letter: The Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC) is urging us to write letters to Jack Layton, informing him of our displeasure with the NDP’s decision to lobby for Canada’s attendance at that international gang-bang of Israel, Durban 2. Initially, the NDP had supported the Harper government’s refusal to attend the conference (which bears the name of the South African city where the first one was held shortly before 9/11, but which is actually going to take place in Geneva). Here’s what I wrote. I’m pretty sure it’s not what CJPAC had in mind:

Dear Jack,

I want to thank you for doing a volte face and encouraging Canada to participate in the upcoming Durban 2 conference. When the NDP backed the government’s move to stay away, it was so out of character that it made me dizzy. “What’s going on here?” I would ask myself in the throes of one of these spells. “Could it be that Canada’s socialist party, the party that is so consistently clueless, the party that just about defines the term “useful idiots,” could finally have gotten a clue?”

Well, let me tell you, the disconnect between your usual stance and your stance on Durban 2, the anti-Israel bash being co-organized by the Jewish state’s worst enemy, Iran, caused me to reach for the smelling salts on more than one occasion. However, I am pleased to report that, now that the NDP has reverted to form and sided with the folks who are labouring so hard to render Israel’s existence morally indefensible so that—move over, Adolf—they can justify its destruction on moral grounds (genius; sheer evil genius), my dizzy spells have ended.

Keep up the bad work!

Yours truly,

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

Patsy and the Patsies: On the day when the B.C. ‘roos will be entertaining final arguments in the CIC v. Maclean’s, there’s only one appropriate song to parody:

Crazy, it’s crazy what’s happened to justice.

It’s crazy, crazy to deal with those ‘roos.

They’re judging without any compass to guide ‘em.

We the people are the ones who are fated to lose.

Sleepin', all of us must have been sleepin’.

Wondrin’ how 'twas allowed to begin.

Crazy for thinkin’ our speech was protected.

We’re crazy for bowing, nuts for kowtowing,

And we’re crazy for letting 'em win.

Crazy for makin’ this Frankenstein monster.

We’re crazy for bowing, nuts for allowing,

And we’re crazy for letting ‘em win.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:42 | link | comments

A suit that would have a good chance of winning were it heard by the ‘roos: Iran threatens to sue Western countries that are mean and hurt its feelings.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:56 | link | comments

Change of venue: Prior to the start of the B.C. show trial, Nayier Habib, the only B.C.-er involved in the CIC complaint, issued this call to supporters on the BC Muslims website:

An Open Letter From Br Naiyer Habib

Assalamo Alaikum WRB,Dear Brs and Sisters in Islam.
We are going through very difficult time. Macleans  is apparently  coming with lots of their supporter for the hearing on the case filed by us regarding "The future belongs to Islam" (attached 3 articles in one).There will be media. This has been extensively publicized.

WE NEED SUPPORT OF AS MANY MUSLIMS/NONMUSLIMS/LADIES/Gents AND FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE TO ATTEND AS AUDIENCE PLEASE.

It will begin on June 2nd Monday from 9:30 Am to 5pm daily till June 6th. Friday inclusive. Although case will go on for whole week but our majority of the witnesses are on June 2nd including my self who has lodged the complaint.
PLEASE let others know. Please attend and send others. Retired individual and self employed may be able to adjust their schedule to show up and come on behalf of their family.

The hearing is at the court house in Vancouver:
Robson Square Provincial Court
800 Hornby Street
Vancouver, BC

This is  advance notification so that you can arrange your schedule although on short notice. We were not aware of such preparation till today. Hearing was to be at BCHRC office. Now has been moved to court house because of large number of expected audience.

Wassalaam

Dr. Naiyer Habib

I’m not sure how many heeded the call and actually showed up, but it’s interesting to learn that at the last minute the venue was changed from the “BHRC office” to a real courtroom, with a Royal coat of arms on the wall and everything. Was the change really due to the worry that the office wouldn’t be able to accommodate all those who were likely to show up (hard to believe, since, going by Andrew Coyne, the "new" venue is an airless, windowless sweatbox; what was the office like?--a broom closet?). I suspect that the venue change may have been due at least in part to the desire to add gravitas to the proceedings--which the tribunal knew would be well-publicized--by holding it in a genuine courthouse.  

In unrelated news, BC Muslims has organized a paintball event this Saturday for youths aged 14 years and over. The $25 fee includes admission along with “Gun, Mask, 100 Paintballs.”

Some fun.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:38 | link | comments

Ceeb priorities: What Canadian news story is top-of-mind at the CBC? No, it's not that pathetic show trial in B.C. wherein a bunch of hopped up 'roos are turning Canadian jurisprudence on its arse. It's whether or not the Hockey Night in Canada theme song is going to be mothballed when the next stick 'n' puck season rolls around.

Yeah, that's the one that's keeping me up nights, too.

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

Kitchen sink jurisprudence: Mark Steyn finally weighs in on the ‘roo proceedings. He observes that part of the lunacy—aside from the fact that this is a “court” in the totalitarian, not the Western, sense—is that the the sockthingy and the attorney he’s articling for seem to be throwing in lots of extraneous stuff (i.e. everything including the kitchen sink) that has absolutely nothing to with the complaint:

…So, as Faisal Joseph dredged up TV broadcasts from Ontario (which is not within British Columbia's jurisdiction), obscure blog posts from the Internet (which is not within this tribunal's jurisdiction), plus reports of his own press conference in Toronto (a well-known city in British Columbia, apparently) and snippets from the Brussels Journal (based in the capital city of the European Union, which British Columbia has presumably joined), Maclean's counsel Julian Porter, Q.C., pointed out that, whatever the debate in these various fora, they had nothing to do with my article but rather were responses to the various "human rights" suits launched by the Canadian Islamic Congress. At the opening of Tuesday's proceedings, Faisal Joseph announced that he wanted to devote that day not to me or Maclean's or the substance of my article but to the media and blogospheric reaction to the complaints. In other words, he was explicitly confirming Porter's point — insofar as anything has exposed Khurrum Awan to "hatred and contempt," it's not the Maclean's cover story but his own lawsuit. Whether or not it is appropriate (or even legal) for Canadians to be "contemptuous" of the Canadian Islamic Congress's thuggish assault on ancient liberties, the fact is Mr. Awan's lawsuit has earned him far more "contempt" than anything in my article. He should be suing himself. Which would be less wacky than most of the admissibility rulings by the B.C. troika…

Throw enough mud at something, and some of it’s bound to stick—especially in a cockamamie court where the “judges” get to make up the rules as they go along, and the complainants' expert on “stereotyping”  also specializes in such rigorous academic subjects as Queen Latifah and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:52 | link | comments (3)

‘Roo story: The NRO's Mark Hemmingway has a good summary of how we got from there (having freedom) to here (sans freedom). It started back in the late 70s, continued when our Supreme Court deferred to our faux-courts, and

As a result, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is stunningly effective: In its 31 years of existence, not a single complaint brought before it has been dismissed. That's right: Everyone is guilty before God and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

But that’s only half the story. With the legal hurdles cleared, the national commission wasn’t alone in being empowered — the regional Human Rights Commissions and their corresponding tribunals were too. There’s a labyrinthine series of these kangaroo courts in Canada; there are also the provincial human-rights commissions and their corresponding tribunals, each with its own differing laws.

So when a group of Muslim law students filed suit against Steyn and Maclean’s, they didn’t just go to the CHRC. They also went jurisdiction-shopping. In addition to the national complaint, they filed complaints with the British Columbia and Ontario tribunals as well, as those were the two provincial commissions whose laws they felt would be most favorable to their case. That’s how this week’s hearing in Vancouver got underway, and the national tribunal is pending.

Ontario’s commission said it would decline to take the case because Ontario’s Human Rights Code “does not give the Commission the jurisdiction to deal with the content of magazine articles through the complaints process.” But in their statement, they took the opportunity to condemn Steyn and Maclean’s because they have “a broader duty to express [their] opinion regarding issues that are brought to [their] attention which have implications from a human rights perspective.” They continued:

The Commission is concerned that since the September 2001 attacks, Islamophobic attitudes are becoming more prevalent in society and Muslims are increasingly the target of intolerance, including an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of their religious beliefs and practices.

Unfortunately, the Maclean’s article, and others like it, are examples of this. By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to “the West,” this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice towards Muslims and others. An extreme illustration of this is a “blog” discussion concerning the article that was brought to the attention of the Commission which, among many things, called for the mass killing, deportation or conversion of Muslim Canadians.

So Steyn and Maclean’s are thus responsible for a “blog” discussion they had nothing to do with about killing Muslims? Can I file a complaint with the Canadian Logic Commission?...

Alas, there is no Canadian Logic Commission (or, for that matter, Groucho, any Sanity Clause). And if there were, we couldn’t possibly find enough Canadians to staff it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments

Honk if you love Gaia: In an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book, David Solway notes how Earth-worship has replaced God-worship, thus satisfying the inherent human need for transcendence. From FrontPage Magazine:

But the crucial issue, as I have suggested, has to do with the profound human predicament posed by the Deus Absconditus, the evacuation of the Divine and of the resulting consecration of moral principle from the conduct of modern life in the Western world, leaving a vast abyss in consciousness that must be filled by a substitute pseudo-celestial, a new species of pietism. In his recent book A Secular Age, philosopher Charles Taylor argues that the experience of transcendence is not obsolete and opts for an “exclusive humanism” to re-energize our “social imaginary,” but this effort at re-enchanting a desiccated world seems dubious. A strange inversion has occurred in which the Earth itself, a Divinity called Gaia, has arisen to sit upon the empty throne of Heaven. But Gaia is a false god (or goddess). It cares nothing for human activity, whether reverent or invasive, will absorb our depredations as it has metamorphic natural disasters over the evolutionary time scale, is utterly devoid of values, and confers neither obligation nor love upon us. We idealize that which has no interest in us whatsoever and which cannot open and sustain a dialogue with the human soul. We have come to revere a cold, deterministic and solipsistic deity, attributing our own values, ideals and sentiments to that which cannot feel or respond to them. The irony latent in such an upheaval is that, in effect, man is now worshipping himself; and the sense of his own planetary nobility is fueled by a kind of quasi-religious hysteria that operates in defiance of critical facts.

Gaia may be cold and inert, but polar bears are cute and furry.

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

Don't miss: Ezra Levant going mano a mano with Mo Elmasry's co-complainant--a great moment in the history of Canada's kangaroo courts.

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

Identity crisis: In his review of Ceeb shill-com, Little Mosque on the Prairies, Mark Steyn cheekily commented that Muslims on TV are “the new gays.’  He meant, of course, that, a la Will and Grace, they now get all the best lines. But since in our glorious Trudeaupia criticising LMOP is like farting in public, i.e., something that’s simply not done, the Steyn review was included in the Canadian Islamic Congress’s package of examples showing Maclean’s’ rampant “Islamophobia”.

On the tube, Muslims may be the “new gays”. In real life, they seem to have assumed the identity of another victim group. From the Globe and Mail (my bolds, and yes, this is the entire report):

VANCOUVER — Columnist Mark Steyn denounced the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal's scrutiny of his work this week as part of a "ludicrous" system run by "pretend judges."

The tribunal is meeting because of a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress over a piece by Mr. Steyn published by Maclean's magazine in October, 2006. Muslim critics have said the article, titled, "The Future Belongs to Islam," spreads Islamophobia by alleging the religion will soon take over the Western world.

Mr. Steyn, making his first appearance yesterday at the tribunal's hearings, won't testify in the case but had plenty to say outside the courtroom.

"I think we are almost certain to be convicted and then we will appeal," he said.

If that happens, he added, "We are going to have a privately owned magazine under state regulation. There are countries where that happens. And there's a word for that: totalitarian."

Mr. Steyn expressed frustration that the tribunal does not allow him to confront his accusers and does not provide him due process.

He was absent the first two days of the hearings because of an important prior commitment: He had dinner with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

While Mr. Steyn couldn't confirm whether he'll stay until the hearing concludes, he suggested that once he leaves Vancouver, he won't be back.

Inside the courtroom yesterday, claimant lawyer Faisal Joseph called two expert witnesses to point out inaccuracies in Mr. Steyn's article.

The first, Faiza Hirji, a professor at Carleton University and an expert at analyzing stereotypes in the media, suggested Mr. Steyn's work brought up recurring negative images of Muslims.

The second, Mahmoud Ayoub, a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University, said he was concerned that the article could lead to Muslims being subjected to the same treatment once endured by the Jewish community.

The hearings continue today.

I can see his point. After all, Muslims are so powerless. And there are so few of them. And they never know when their persecutors, who throughout history have scapegoated them for a variety of political and religious reasons, are going to let off some steam in a pogrom, or round them up for extermination, or nuke their one and only state.

I know how they feel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:22 | link | comments

A little "rights" music: Send in the clowns, indeed:

Isn’t it cracked?

Are we insane?

Ceding our freedom this way.

Where was our brain?

And there are the ‘roos.

Send in the ‘roos.

 

Isn’t it bleak?

Trudeau would approve.

All of that blather ‘bout “rights”

Was so in his groove.

There are the ‘roos.

Send in the ‘roos.

 

Just when you thought freedom’s a go

Here comes the human rights racket to say it ain’t so.

Making their entrance again with that devil-may-care.

Sure of their power.

Shall we despair?

 

Don’t you love farce?

Tons of it here.

Trapped in a small, airless room,

Nothing to cheer.

And there are the ‘roos.

They’ve sent in the ‘roos…

Wish they’d disappear.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:40 | link | comments

Power grab: In case you were wondering where the sock-thingys were going with their complaint—aside from the desire to pocket some quick coin for a worthy cause, I mean—it becomes clear in this snippet of reportage from Maclean’s blogger on the scene, Andrew Coyne (his italics):

1:30 PM Back from lunch, and the first witness is Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, an expert on the Koran, and Islam. Again, the Maclean’s side is raising questions about what terms of reference he was given in his retainer letter. I think they’re trying to suggest, or at least hint, that these expert witnesses were coached or pointed down a certain path, which is a no-no in most courts, and perhaps even here.

The letter, which [Maclean's lawyer] Julian Porter, is quite bald in setting out the complainants’ objectives. “This case is very important to Muslim minorities who are consistently misrepresented in the media.” They cite approvingly the BC human rights legislation. “We anticipate that success in this case will provide the impetus for prohibiting discriminatory publications in the other provinces.” So there you have it…

Members of the Jewstablishment keep running to the ‘roos because they want to be able to retain their paid-up membership in Canada’s Special Victims Unit, and give their much-honoured “Nazi-hunter,” He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (because to name him, he thinks, is to defame him), a chance to shut down the last three neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan. “The Muslim minorities who are consistently misrepresented in the media,” on the other hand, have a completely different agenda. They desire nothing less than to control the content of information published in Canada about Islam and its adherents.

If that don’t chill you right to the marrow, I don’t know what will.

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

Jolson sing again: This time Joley mugs for the cutest presidential candidate ever (though definitely not with all that stuff on his face):

Bambi, how they love ya

How they love ya

Bambi Fauxbama.

They’d give the world to see

You in the White H-O-U-S-E-ven tho’

Your granny she’s a whitey, that’s alrighty,

Dad gave you substance.

‘Mahdinejad’s

Glad

That you have prevailed.

Smooth sailin’ now for all his nukes.

Bambi, Bambi,

You’re such a good-lookin’ candi.

Your Missus

Throws kissus

‘Cause Camelot deux is nigh...

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:45 | link | comments

No "show" on Mo's site: Mohammed Elmasry has wisely decided to remain in the background during the show trial in B.C. Likewise, the CIC site is keeping mum about the whole 'Rooapalooza.

When the 'roos formally arrive at their foreordained decision, we may hear some noise. Until then we'll have to make do with the slim pickens that are available--eg. an Elmasry peroration on the nature of Israel ("A Colonial-Settler State?") on the occasion of its 60th anniversary, and the CIC's "backgrounder" on Maclean's magazine's purported "Islamophobia".

Update: Nothing on the CAIR-Can site either (but you can still get your tickets for the big fundraiser featuring Alexandre "Sacha" Trudeau).

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:10 | link | comments (1)

Going, going…: The Secretary of State who views the Palestinian issue through the prism of the American Civil Rights movement bid a final farewell to “the Jewish lobby.” Her address, which included a call for a Palestinian state a.s.a.p., had all the appeal of pork chops at a kosher restaurant.

Earlier that day, the Secretary was pleased that a minor kerfuffle regarding Palestinian Fulbright scholars was resolved when Israel agreed to issue visas to four of the seven Gazans.

Hasta la vista, Condi. Can’t say I’m sorry to see you go. (Not that the next guy/gal’s likely to be any better.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments (2)

The Baathists' choice: Bambimania hits Syria.

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

Wake up!: Scholar and historian of Islam, jihad, and dhimmitude, Andrew Bostom, issues a wake up call to a Jewstablisment which harbours delusions of building bridges with people who despise them. From the American Thinker:

…Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction. 

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation...All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages--vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude--can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.

As a pre-condition to real dialogue--not its miserable simulacrum--Jews and their leadership-religious, political, and intellectual-must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught in Islamic schools, and contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.

Let us demonstrate as Jews that we are no longer living with 12^th century expectations of Muslims, otherwise they will oblige us.

Alas, here in Canada the Jewstablishment is perfectly willing to live with 12^th century expectations, as long as they or one of their proxies can still haul “the last three neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan” (Mark Steyn’s characterization of the Nazi “threat”) before one or more kangaroo courts.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

Understatement of the day: Iran challenge looms large for next U.S. president.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:09 | link | comments

Ban shmoozes with would-be genocidaire: The head of the UN has gotten together for a chat with the religious fanatic who has vowed to remove one of the international body’s members from the map.

How “civilized”. From the New York Sun:

UNITED NATIONS — On the same day Secretary-General Ban met with President Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader told reporters that the European people "love" to hear his frequent calls to wipe out one of the United Nations's 192 members, Israel.

Yesterday's meeting in Rome underlined the increasingly chaotic state of a U.N. conference on food shortages, at which Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, has been given a platform to disparage perceived enemies such as Britain. Thirty world leaders, gathered in the Italian capital to discuss food aid, have instead heard Mr. Ahmadinejad blame "powerful and international capitalists" for rising food and energy prices.

Messrs. Ban and Ahmadinejad yesterday "discussed Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Iran nuclear issue," a U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, told The New York Sun. "Mr. Ban said that Iran needs to resolve its nuclear issue through dialogue and in a way consistent with all relevant Security Council resolutions on the issue."

The utility of meetings between Western leaders and Mr. Ahmadinejad has become a source of contention beyond the American presidential campaign trail. The European Union's top negotiator with Iran, Javier Solana, has been unable to secure a meeting on the nuclear issue with Tehran's leading mullahs for months.

"We expect to hear that the secretary-general told the Iranian president that he was in violation of three Security Council resolutions, that he should comply with international demands to stop enriching uranium, and to stop the crazy talk," a spokesman for the American mission to the United Nations, Richard Grenell, said…

And I expect pigs to fly and Canadians to get a clue about their kangaroo courts. Guess we’re both going to be disappointed, Dick.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

Comedy in the courtroom: Scan the pages of the Globe and Mail, which bills itself as Canada’s “National Newspaper,” and you’ll find nary a mention of ‘roos, sock puppets or show trials held in airless rooms. What you will find is the paper’s designated pit bull, Christie Blatchford, assigned to the trial of the “Toronto 18”, the local lads who had some grandiose ideas which included decapitating the Prime Minister. On the first day of the proceedings, the Blatch has them pegged as a bunch of bumbling clowns. The headline of her article—“Terror trial begins with notes of divine comedy”—no doubt sets the tone for what’s to follow.

My letter:

I know it’s impossible to be in two places at once, but, oh, it would be wonderful if, along with covering the terror trial in Ontario, Christie Blatchford could also be in Vancouver reporting on the “divine comedy” of Maclean’s magazine’s B.C. Human Rights Tribunal show trial.

Update: My mistake.The Globe does have an article about the show trial. But it's so puny and innocuous (unlike the Blatch's front page splash) that it was hard to find.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

Courting disaster: A quintessential 1960s protest song, revised for our time:

Come gather ‘round folks from St. John’s to B.C.

And acknowledge what should be as plain as can be:

Where once we had freedom, we’re no longer free.

There’s a war out there that we’re wagin’.

What’s at stake’s nothing less that our dem-oc-ra-cy.

For the ‘roos they are a-ragin’.

 

Come writers and pundits, this fight is yours too.

Unless you speak up now your writing is through.

It’s pleasantries, platitudes, bromides for you.

From the truth you’ll be disengagin’.

And the truth is reality’s now a taboo.

For the ‘roos they are a-ragin’.

 

Come MPs and senators: heed the call, please.

And turn your attention to those HRCs.

They’re “curing” us all of a dreaded “disease”--

Free thought and expression they’re gauging.

And their “cure” is bringing us down on our knees.

For the ‘roos they are a-ragin’.

 

Come mothers and fathers who care about kids

And know what a Thought Cop allows and forbids.

No talk-back, no sassiness--that flips their lids.

Our society’s rapidly agin’.

And the new generation will soon hit the skids.

For the ‘roos they are a-ragin’.

 

The line it is drawn, the die has been cast.

The future’s the future, the past is the past.

And the chasm between ‘em should leave us aghast.

Our freedom is rapidly fadin’.

And the loser now won’t be able to last.

For the ‘roos they are a-ragin’.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:21 | link | comments

“Law” and disorder: All told Canada has 13—count ‘em—13 sets of thought cops. Most of them consist of two parts: the human rights commissions, which investigate “offenses”; and human rights tribunals, which adjudicate them. (One exception: the province of British Columbia, which has a tribunal but no commission—the reason why an aggrieved sockthingy from Ontario would be inclined to head all the way west to kvetch about Maclean’s and Mark Steyn.)

With that in mind, it’s time to rewrite the line that opens every episode of “Law and Order”:

In the human rights “justice” system, the people are harassed by two separate yet equally important groups: the thought police who investigate the thought crime, and the hack bureaucrats, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories...

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

Dream team?: More like in your dreams, Hillary.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:31 | link | comments

The Hitch pitch: Some as yet unidentified holy warrior 'sploded his way to that eternal bordello yesterday because he was affronted by three-year-old Danish Motoons.

At least, that's the word in the Globe and Mail.

My reaction:

Every time some nutjob tries to blow up something Danish, officials and the media are quick to attribute it to anger over “cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed,” the ones published more than three years ago in a Danish newpaper. The cartoons are what famed director, Alfred Hitchcock, used to call “the MacGuffin”--the thing that advances the movie’s plot, but which, in the final analysis, is irrelevant. In this case, the MacGuffin is being used to try to make a hateful, deranged act sound as though it has some underpinning of sanity.

 

Psycho, indeed.

Here's how Hitchock once explained it to Francois Truffaut (from the Wikipedia entry for "MacGuffin"):

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all."

Just like the 'toons.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:51 | link | comments

Israel derangement symdrome: It's rampant.

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

The hurdle of disbelief: Sitting at a swank gathering last evening (a fundraiser for a Jewish school which featured Elie Wiesel as the keynote speaker), I got to talking, as I am wont to do, about the greatest threat facing Canadian society. No, not al Qaeda sleeper cells. No, not Celine Dion. It’s the cockamamie kangaroo court system that has jettisoned 800 years of British Common Law in favour of Marxist mumbo jumbo and enforced groupthink—George Orwell by way of Alice in Wonderland by way of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Over dinner I tried to explain to my tablemates how it worked.

“So the Ontario Human Rights Commission can come into your home without warning or a warrant, go through your things, take away whatever it wants, and use it against you in a “court” where there’s no presumption of innocence, the truth is irrelevant, and the verdict is always guilty. Oh, and you’re on the hook for all your legal fees, while the person who complained doesn’t have to pay a dime.”

From the looks on their faces I could see they thought I had taken complete leave of my senses and made up the whole thing.

It occurs to me that that’s likely to be the biggest impediment to getting rid of this ridiculous system—the fact that people simply cannot fathom that HRCs/tribunals actually have the power to do what they do.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:50 | link | comments

Watch me kangaroo court, sport: Maclean's columnist Andrew Coyne is blogging live from the B.C. show trial. Reading his account of the proceedings, one can't help but feel that the real cruel and unusal punishment is the decision to hold the show, which will likely continue all week,  in a windowless, airless sweatbox of a room.

For those not inclined to keep tabs on the trial, I've summarized yesterday's events--and sped head to the anticipated "guilty" verdict--in the form of a hokey Aussie novelty song:

See the Coyne blogger sweat, pet.

See the Coyne blogger sweat.

Not much air anywhere, there.

See the Coyne blogger sweat.

 

Watch me kangaroo court, sport.

Watch me kangaroo court.

See the ‘roos all cavort, sport.

Watch me kangaroo court.

 

Hear the ‘Slamist berate, mate.

Hear the ‘Slamist berate.

Rails against Maclean’s “hate,” mate.

Hear the ‘Slamist berate.

 

Mind the sock puppet’s flak, Jack.

Mind the sock puppet’s flak.

Elmo’s keeping way back, Jack.

Mind the sock puppet’s flak.

 

Play your digeridoo, Lou.

Play your digeridoo.

Helps drown out all the 'roos, Lou.

Play your digeridoo.

 

Farce a pain in the arse, Barb.

Farce a pain in the arse.

Truth and justice and sparse, Barb.

Farce a pain in the arse.

 

Free expression is dead, Fred.

Free expression is dead.

Bad moon rising ahead, Fred.

Free expression is dead.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments

Quel relief!: Looks like we can all quit worrying about that global jihad. A report from a B.C. university shows there’s been a downturn in Islamic terrorism (a verboten phrase in many quarters). From the Ceeb:

A new report from Simon Fraser University in B.C. concludes there has been a sharp decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world, challenging assumptions that the global threat has been increasing.

The Human Security Brief 2007 says fatalities from terrorism have decreased by some 40 per cent in recent months. It also concludes the terrorist network associated with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support in the Muslim world.

The study analyzed data produced by three U.S.-based terrorism research centres: the National Counterterrorism Centre; the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism; and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

Andrew Mack, the director of the Human Security Report Project, said all three "distort the global terrorism trend data" by counting civilian deaths in the civil war in Iraq as incidents of terrorism.

The project conducts research on global regional trends in political violence and is affiliated with the university's School for International Studies.

Mack said the decline in popular support for the Islamists in the Muslim world has affected the al-Qaeda network's ability to co-ordinate and launch attacks.

"The reduction in Islamist violence has attracted virtually no notice because the media don't report attacks that don't take place," he said…

They don’t? What’s wrong with them?

Another issue which, for the most part, has attracted virtually no notice is creeping sharia in the form of: sharia financing; Human Rights Commissions that serve the interests of Islamists and are torpedoing the fundamental Western value of free speech; and the flagrant flouting of Western marriage laws and the state underwriting polygamous Muslim unions.

So who needs terrorism?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:50 | link | comments

Slime time: Here's Caroline Glick on Olmert's slimy American benefactor, a man who claims to have spent oodles of shekels on him solely out of concern for Olmert, the state of Israel and the Jewish people, expecting absolutely nothing in return.

And if you believe that, I have a tall, freestanding structure you might want to purchase.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:30 | link | comments

Otherwise engaged: A piece in the Wall Street Journal insists that, even as his term in office winds down, President Bush must still deal with rogue states.

Not gonna happen. He's too busy trying to get Israel and the Palestinians to macht "peace".

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:47 | link | comments

It's show time!: Well, the big day has finally arrived. Here's a number by Elton John--a man who knows a thing or two about putting on a show--to mark the bleak occasion:

When are we gonna fight back?

When are we going to know

We should have stuck with our laws,

We shouldn’t have listened to P. Trudeau?

 

You know “human rights” is a smokescreen.

A redistribution of power.

As long as those HRCs still function

We folks are losin' our rights every hour by hour (ah ah ah; ah ah ah ah ah; ah ah ah).

 

“So goodbye freedom of speech”--

What the lovers of freedom should howl.

We can’t stand hacks in out courtrooms.

It’s time they throw in the towel.

A pack of self-righteous and clueless old ‘crats.

A pack of dhimmified hounds.

Oh, it’s time we decided no future lies

Without our freedom of speech.

 

How did we let this happen?

I bet we were all asleep.

It’ll take us all plenty of jeers and letters

To put ‘em on the refuse heap.

 

You know we don’t need a replacement.

Our genuine courts will do.

Courts were the truth still matters

And British Common Law values do, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:01 | link | comments

Rattling his nukes: Another day; another existential threat from would-be genocidaire Moo Ahmadinejad. This latest one makes it sound as though his nukes are ready and raring to go. From YNet News:

Iran's president said on Monday Israel would soon disappear off the map and that the "satanic power" of the United States faced destruction, in his latest verbal attack on the Islamic Republic's arch-foes.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was speaking at a gathering of foreign guests marking this week's 19th anniversary of the death of Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989, the official IRNA news agency said.

"You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene," he said.

Turning to the United States, he said the era of decline and destruction of its "satanic power" had begun and added: "The bell on the countdown of the destruction of the empire of power and wealth has begun to ring."

Opposition to Israel is a fundamental principle in Shiite Muslim Iran, which backs Palestinian militants opposed to peace with the Jewish state.

A 2005 statement by Ahmadinejad saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map" outraged the international community.

In April, a senior Iranian army commander said Iran will respond to any military attack from Israel by "eliminating" it, in comments condemned by Washington.

The United States, which severed ties with Iran shortly after its 1979 Islamic revolution, is leading efforts to isolate Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

Some analysts have speculated that Israel might attack Iran to stop its nuclear activities, which the West fears are a front for weapons development. Iran, which does not recognize Israel, insists it wants nuclear technology only for electricity...

Yeah, right. In the same way the Nazis wanted Zyklon-B gas “only” for pest control.

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

Raggin’ on the Star: In a letter to the Toronto Star, one Ida C. Henderson of Ottawa takes issue with Dunkin’ Donuts' decision to axe the TV ad in which an egregiously perky talk show host was shown accessorized with Yasser Arafat’s favourite shmatta:

A kaffiyeh is normally recognized as a sign of sympathy with the suffering of the Palestinian people, not with "murderous Palestinian jihad." [American academic] Amahl Bishara is quite right that reducing its meaning to support for terrorism definitely has a "racist tone" to it. Shame on Dunkin' Donuts for caving on this one.

So complaining about Palestinian terrorism is now considered "racist," huh? Good to know.

On Saturday, the Star published this op-ed piece about the meaning and import of the shmatta. Written by a 20-year-old Kuwaiti studying journalism at Ryerson University, the piece featured an illustration of hunky Commie Che Guevara wearing the emblematic scarf, symbolizing the marriage of convenience between the Islamists and their useful idiots on the hard left. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the picture was drawn by the Brazilian who had the distinction of being runner-up in Shoah-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust ‘toon contest.

No way of getting around it: despite plenty of competition from the Ceeb and the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star is still Canada’s Moonbat Central.

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

Feckless UN pimps celebs: On the occasion of a new assignment (as far as I know it’s not with al Jazeera) the Ceeb’s man at the UN, Neil Hurland, looks back at his three years at Turtle Bay:

When I first arrived at United Nations Headquarters in 2005, it was a different place.

The UN was still reeling from the oil-for-food scandal, few Westerners had even heard about Darfur and Kofi Annan was Secretary-General; a job he had held for almost a decade.

The institution was struggling to define its role in the world, troubled by its inability to stop the United States from invading Iraq and haunted by its failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda. Even in New York intellectual circles, I would meet otherwise educated people who traded in UN conspiracy theories involving black helicopters and one new world order government.

My Jewish friends insisted the UN was anti-Semitic.

Muslim friends were convinced the UN was Islamophobic.

Everyone agreed the UN was ineffective.

Three years later, so much has changed and yet the UN continues to search for its place on the world stage. Few people talk anymore about UN forces in black helicopters taking over the United States. Perhaps because the UN can't even find the 24 helicopters it needs to provide air patrol over Darfur. The peacekeeping mission is in jeopardy and the ghosts of Rwanda hover ominously over what will likely become another failed effort to save African lives.

I have seen no shortage of celebrities during my time at the United Nations. When famous actors and singers appear at the UN, the world media seem to notice. Nicole Kidman, George Clooney and even Shakira have all joined the league of Goodwill Ambassadors. Governments may lie, but hips certainly do not…

Dumb celebs. They don’t even realize they’re being used as decoys—attractive window dressing—to deflect attention away from the rot inside.

For that matter, Hurland doesn’t seem to realize it either.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments

Call them un-responsible: An Arab News pundit says the PLO is at a crossroads—and whatever happens, it’s all part of the hidden Israel-U.S. master plan over which the Palestinians have no control.

The Palestinian national movement is at a historical crossroads, trapped by a peace option that could not deliver.

The movement finds itself in a deteriorating state of paralysis. “There’s almost no Palestinian leadership,” Kadoura Fares, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and a leading member of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, told the Washington Times on May 15.

The emergence of Fatah Al-Islam in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, “the infestation of Al-Qaeda-type salafism,” which has already reached Gaza Strip, according to Khalidi, and the widespread attraction of the one-state or binational state option among the Palestinians as an alternative to the two-state solution are manifestations of the declining influence of the national movement led by both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas.

Several interrelated and interdependent factors are sustaining the status quo:

First, the US-sponsored political process launched with much fanfare in Annapolis, Maryland on Nov. 17 last year has almost lost steam, leaving the two-state solution doomed and the PLO disillusioned, with no idea of what the next step should be.

The PLO is now aware that they were used by the US-Israeli allies to appease the Arab “moderates” so they would close their eyes to what the US was doing in Iraq and vis-à-vis Iran and Syria.

The Quartet of the Middle East peace mediators, comprising the US, UN, EU and Russia, subscribes to the same policy.

Second, peace alternatives, like the one-state solution, have little or no chances of being accepted by Israelis and are already ruled out by the US-Israeli determination to retain Israel as a “Jewish state”.

Third, Both Amman and Cairo as well as Palestinians rule out an old Israeli alternative to annex the West Bank to Jordan (the so-called “Jordanian option”) and Gaza Strip to Egypt. “Jordanians consider the mere talk on this ... a conspiracy against them,” former minister of information and member of the upper house of parliament, Saleh Qallab, wrote in Asharq Al-Awsat on Jan. 31, adding that Egypt “knows” that restoring Gaza to its pre-1967 status would be an Egyptian “time bomb.”

Forth (sic), the peace “contacts” via Turkey between Syria and Israel is further proof of the impasse on the Palestinian-Israeli track. Marc Perelman, in The Jewish Daily Forward on May 22, quoted Aaron David Miller, who was part of American peace negotiation teams in the region for three decades, as saying: “Leaving one track and going for the other is a way for Israel to get some leverage on the Palestinian track that seems stuck.”

Fifth, the multilayer internal division (between Hamas and Fatah, within Fatah itself, the presidency and Hamas, which dominates the Palestinian legislative Council (PLC), the governments of Ramallah and Gaza) is paralyzing Palestinian central decision-making. “Neither the peace process, nor the (upcoming) sixth Fatah conference can succeed without national reconciliation,” senior Fatah leader Jibril Al-Rjoub told Al-Arabiyya satellite television on Feb. 17. However, national reconciliation remains hostage to US-Israeli veto and anti-Hamas preconditions.

The last Fatah conference was held in 1989. The PLO has been practically overtaken and marginalized by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its marginalization doomed its leading role among the Palestinian diaspora and refugees in exile, leaving a vacuum that was filled by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

President Abbas’ term expires next January; the PLC, whose term will expire in January 2009, is paralyzed by Israeli detention of more than fifty of its lawmakers.

Palestinian Central Election Commission is already bracing for local elections by the yearend.

Restoring the PLO back to its leading role, acceptance by the PLO of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other emerging non-PLO political parties, are crucial for Palestinian national unity.

The present state of affair (sic), if allowed to continue, would render the Palestinian people leaderless and, deprive Israel of a credible Palestinian peace partner and rule out peace and any credible peace process for a long time to come. In the end this could be the real undeclared US-Israeli strategy!

No need to “plot” this strategy, Ms. Pundit. The Palestinians have proven themselves quite capable of torpedoing their own fortunes without any help at all, and have up and done so again and again and again.

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

Bad news for Jews: Salim Mansur longs for an Islamic Luther to "reform" the faith.

That might be good for Islam (though given its propensity for "reform" that looks backward, not forward, unlikely to ever happen). However, any kind of "Luther" is unlikely to be "good for the Jews," as they say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments

All’s fair in love and sharia: Now here’s one you probably haven’t seen on Oprah or Jerry Springer. A Canadian had his wife brazenly stolen by his best friend—who already had a wife and planned to keep her—and the union was sanctioned by a local imam. From the Toronto Star:

…More than two years after his wife left him, Boutaya remembers every detail of the moment of revelation he has relived in his mind many times since. The former civil servant came home early from a job-hunting trip to Ottawa to surprise his wife and two children, picking up a cake on his way. When he arrived, he found Ismail sitting at the dinner table, eating comfortably, as if he was in his own home.

"I asked him, `What are you doing here, my friend? You should not be here alone with my wife when I am not here,'" said Boutaya.

"What's the problem?" Boutaya said Ismail replied. "She is my wife."

In shock, Boutaya stormed out with his two children – a daughter, 7, and son, 11 – and drove to the local police station in Hamilton.

"It was my first reaction. I just needed someone to listen to me and protect me," said Boutaya. Instead, he was told that he didn't have much of a case.

So Boutaya sought proof. He spent the next month talking to imams while taking care of his children and trying to adjust to life at the Good Shepherd Centre, a local shelter, where they lived for four months. His wife continued to live in their home.

"It's been so hard for my kids. They were in shock for weeks afterwards," said Boutaya, who now lives in subsidized housing.

For years, officials have said part of the difficulty in prosecuting polygamy has been that it is a victimless crime. But the story of Boutaya and Rigby, and the seven children caught in between, suggests there can be a great deal of emotional harm.

"For the women and men, it is devastating and life changing," said MPP Horwath, who says she has spoken to a number of women and men affected by polygamy. Horwath says she has been urging the government to liaise with the Muslim community, and to put legislation in place that protects the rights of all people.

Boutaya insists on speaking out publicly about what he says is the abuse of polygamy, even though he has had little support from within the Muslim community and his own situation is irretrievable. He's now in the middle of getting a divorce.

"If I can't save my family," he said. "Maybe I can save the situation of someone in the future."

Good luck, Boutaya. Canada not only turns a blind eye to the “victimless crime” of polygamy, it underwrites it.

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

Bambi ditches spiritual home: In the wake of yet another unfortunate sermon, Bambi and the Missus won’t be logging any more pew-time at Trinity United. From the Ceeb:

Barack Obama has resigned his 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had resigned from the church "over the last few days."

Campaign aides said they weren't immediately certain how the resignation took place, whether by letter or in some other fashion, and were trying to find out.

Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

The development came as Obama campaigned in South Dakota.

Obama said he disagreed with Wright but initially portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for about 20 years.

But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community.

He also praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced those Wright comments as "divisive and destructive."

Comments by Wright inflamed racial tensions and posed an unwanted problem for Obama, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he seeks to wrap up the nomination.

More recently, racially charged remarks from the same pulpit by another pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, kept the controversy alive and proved the latest thorn in the side of Obama.

Pfleger mocked Obama rival Hillary Clinton as a guest speaker at Obama's church. Although Obama condemned comments by both Wright and Pfleger, the controversy has persisted.