scaramouche

Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Hard to UNderstand: Eve Ensler, amanuensis of loquacious vajajays, blasts the UN for turning a blind eye to a horrific crime--rape as an act of war in the grotesquely misnamed “Democratic” Republic of Congo. From the WaPo:

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Just over a year ago, in answering whether sexual violence in conflict was an issue that the U.N. Security Council should take on, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed, "I am proud that, today, we respond to that lingering question with a resounding 'yes!' " With this statement, and with the cooperation of other power brokers at the table, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1820, which finally recognized sexual violence as a widely used strategy of warfare and cleared the path for the council to respond to it worldwide.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to report to the Security Council today on implementation of Resolution 1820. What will we learn? A year after adopting the resolution, Congo remains the worst place on the planet to be a woman. Over 12 years, in a regional economic war for resources, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured, their bodies destroyed by unimaginable acts. The Security Council's implementation of Resolution 1820 in Congo -- the very place that inspired it -- has been an utter failure.

Rape as a weapon of war has increased in eastern Congo since June 2008. In January, military operations were launched in North Kivu with the supposed goal of arresting the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and neutralizing his National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) troops as well as the FDLR, the former Rwandan Hutu genocidaires. Even now, with Resolution 1820 in place, no one considers the women. Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch, just back from the front lines in both North and South Kivu, told me Monday that in nearly all the health centers, hospitals and rape counseling centers she visited, rape cases had doubled or tripled since January.

Rapes continue to be committed with near complete impunity. While the number of criminal prosecutions has risen marginally, only low-ranking soldiers are being prosecuted. Not a single commander or officer above the rank of major has been held responsible in all of Congo. Rapes by the national army are increasing, too. MONUC, the U.N. peacekeeping mission, is not only allowing perpetrators to go unpunished but is also providing logistical support to them for their movements in the field. A blacklist of war criminals and rapists who were commanders in current operations was shown to the Security Council, which gave it to President Laurent Kabila. Despite incriminating evidence, none of the commanders was removed. Resolution 1820 was supposed to make the United Nations more sensitive to the issue of sexual violence. How is it possible that in the past year, the United Nations became complicit in supporting rapists as commanders in its operations?...

How is it possible? It’s possible because the UN has strayed so far from its original noble purpose that it has ended up aiding and abetting mankind’s most despicable.

That’s how it’s possible.

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

Strange bedfellows: Official Jew Bernie Farber had all sorts of concerns about the English Al Jazeera network, a.k.a. the Ceeb sans hockey, being beamed into Canada. Very cannily, though, the A-Jers got him to shut up by appealing to his vanity and offering him a seat at their table. From JTA:

TORONTO (JTA) -- Canadian Jewish groups have indicated that they will not oppose the arrival in the country of the English version of Al-Jazeera.

The move comes after an aggressive campaign to bring Al-Jazeera English to Canada, which saw the network take the unusual step of consulting both the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada in February to work through concerns about its programming.

Bernie Farber, chief executive officer of the CJC, said he has not offered an outright endorsement of Al-Jazeera English, but said an invitation to sit on the consulting committee helped ease concerns.

"We do not oppose [the service] but remain vigilant and concerned," Farber told JTA.

Similarly, B'nai Brith said in a letter to Canada's broadcast regulator that "in the spirit of cooperation," it would not oppose the bid but will remain vigilant.

Tony Burman, a former executive of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. who is now managing director of Al-Jazeera English based in Doha, Qatar, has proposed that his consultative committee meet every six months to discuss the network's on-air content to ensure that there are no major concerns.

Jewish groups had sounded strong opposition in 2003 when the Arabic-language version of Al-Jazeera applied for a broadcast license in Canada. Fears were raised then that the network would beam messages of hate against Jews and Israel into the country.

In 2004, Canada federal regulators approved the application but attached conditions so stringent that cable providers were unable to comply.

Al-Jazeera English could be available in Canada this summer.

So you mean Canada’s foremost Official Jew now sits on the AJE “consulting committee”? Um, isn’t there something, oh, I dunno, completely bonkers about that?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:44 | link | comments (3)

Extry, extry--Canada exempt from the jihad: A Muslim University of Toronto professor who teaches a course on--what are the odds?-- sharia law claims that Islamic texts “glorifying jihad” pose absolutely no threat to Canadians. From the Ceeb:

A leading expert in Islam says texts glorifying jihad seized from the home of one of the so-called Toronto 18 do not advocate violence against Canadians.

Mohammad Fadel, a University of Toronto professor, is the final defence witness at the sentencing hearing for 22-year-old Saad Khalid.

Khalid has pleaded guilty to taking part in a domestic terror plot that involved plans to detonate bombs at a number of high-profile targets over three days.

Fadel told a Brampton, Ont., court on Thursday that the five documents found on Khalid's laptop and on a memory card in his bedroom are simply moral arguments, not legal decrees that must be followed.

Even the most "incendiary" text, one that singles out the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, only calls for Muslims to donate money to the Taliban and pray for victory.

It's expected final submissions at the sentencing hearing will begin Friday.

Oh, Mohammad, you old taqiyaah-spewing smoothie. No doubt that kind of stuff flies in your classroom, but I think you may have a harder time getting a judge to buy it.

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

A tale of two tyrannies: Oh, sure, here in Canada we don’t have to worry about nutty, draconian Ayatollahs crushing us like bugs--call it a tyranny of the un-nice--but as David Warren writes, we are at the mercy of another, equally soul-destroying tyranny:

…In contemporary Canada we also face tyranny, but of a sort that we have brought upon ourselves in ways no Czechs, no Persians, ever did. There is no regime in Ottawa that seized power by violence, and imposed the "politically correct" ideology on us from a party manifesto. The advance of this tyranny -- of the Nanny State and all its trappings -- has been accomplished in plain view, by incremental advances, with our co-operation.

In two generations, we have witnessed a transformation, and nearly an inversion, of all the moral and ethical principles that guided us through countless generations before. The "revolution" has been accomplished by such means as George Orwell predicted: by changing the meanings of words.

Most overtly it has been done with "rights language" -- by the construction of new, artificial and quite abstract "group" rights that are anathematic to individual freedom. But beneath this, we have watched court and legislative interventions to redefine such basic ideas as manhood, fatherhood; womanhood, motherhood -- a purposeful destruction of the family in the cause of extending the powers of the state. We have likewise watched the religious order of society being systematically undermined, so that atheism or "irreligion" has become the default position from which the state now issues its ukases…

Ukases? Under the circumstances (those being how well the Trudeaupian “human rights” agenda dovetails with the Islamist sharia one) there’s a much more fitting word for such state pronouncements: fatwas.

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

A guide for the perplexed: I have come to the conclusion that, in a free society, it is essential to allow for offensive speech. Otherwise you end up with the state deciding what is and isn’t “offensive,” and free speech, the pre-requisite for a free society, ends up in the dumper. That being said, Ontario does have laws on the books dealing with “hate speech,” and a young U of T jihadi named Salman Hossain who opined on the 'Net that Jews should be murdered en masse would appear to meet all the critera for criminal prosecution. However, as Stewart Bell reports in the National Post, authorities have decided not to charge the jihadi laddy:

A Toronto man who had posted messages on the Internet supporting terrorist attacks in Canada and the deportation of Jews will not face criminal charges, police said on Monday.

The Ontario Provincial Police hate crimes and extremism unit had been investigating Salman Hossain - whose writings included a call to kill Western soldiers "so that they think twice before entering foreign countries on behalf of their Jew masters" - for willfully promoting hatred toward the Jewish community, but the case was recently closed.

"The OPP reviewed the case with Crown counsel. As a result of that review, it was determined that insufficient grounds existed to support willful promotion of hatred charges," said Detective-Sergeant Brent Young.

Police would provide no further explanation. In Ontario, hate-crimes charges must be approved by the Attorney-General. The spokesman for the Ministry said the Attorney-General had not been asked to approve charges in this case.

"The Attorney-General did not reverse any decision. In fact, no direct request was made of the Attorney-General. In accordance with the long-standing procedure for such cases, the matter was carefully reviewed by counsel who determined a request to the Attorney-General was not appropriate in this case," Brendan Crawley said.

The Canadian Jewish Congress said it was "perplexed" by the decision. "We recognize that the bar is set high in terms of not only laying charges, but in terms of gaining a conviction," said Len Rudner, the CJC's Ontario regional director. "But I'm not a lawyer, so when I look at somebody talking about the charge that Western nations invade countries under the control of ‘Jew masters,' that concerns me."

Writing in online Internet forums, Mr. Hossain frequently singled out Jews, calling them derogatory names, claiming the Holocaust was "fictional" and once asking, "When do I get to shoot a few Jews down..."

In one posting, Mr. Hossain wrote, "Here's what I suggest we do ... just throw out the Jews (by religion or blood) out of the instruments of mainstream media, finance/banking, government/politics, and the intelligence/secret services."

"That's how the Muslims have done it in the past, especially when they were in power and glorious. Leave behind the token Jew here and there just to appear non-discriminatory.

"Then send the Jews packing on a different ship to their own territory or maybe the South Pole to live with the penguins. Do this before they claim we gonna do another ‘holocaust.' There's no Jew better than an exile Jew."…

Charming lad. Salt of the Earth. Well-spoken, too. Len Rudner may be “perplexed” at how such obviously hateful utterances failed to pass muster with the cops. Me? Not so much. It’s clear that had Hossain’s last name been, say, Keegstra or Ahenakew--or even Boisson--the full weight of the law would have been brought down to bear on him. But since he was neither white, nor a Nazi, nor a Christian, but is an Islamic Jew-hater, authorities decided to drop it lest they incur the acrimony of local Muslims, with whom they are endeavouring so hard to “build bridges.”

One would think that Len and his ilk would be able to see the ugly truth--that there’s a huge double standard in effect, and that Jews cannot count on authorities to silence a Jew-hater should he be Muslim. But knowing how Official Jewry thinks, I’m not expecting them to have a “eureka” moment and drop their tattered security blankie (state censorship) any time soon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments (11)

Mully-bullies crow: Now that the Ayatollah has reasserted control (more or less) over his cranky populace, some weasels outside Iran are reportedly doing some concerted kissing up. From Press TV (which seems to be some sort of Iran-based site):

Hours after the Guardian Council confirmed the results of the June 12 poll; Lebanese President Michel Suleiman congratulated Iran's president on his re-election.

Iran's electoral watchdog late Monday said the recount of 10 percent of the ballot boxes had shown no irregularities.

The recount was done after defeated presidential candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei rejected the result of the election as "fraudulent".

Speaking via telephone from his office in Beirut, Suleiman told Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that his re-election has "thrilled" the government and people of Lebanon.

Kuwait's Crown Prince, Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, has also commended Ahmadinejad over his Super Friday win.

The presidential election in Iran turned grim when supporters of the defeated candidates took to the streets, demanding a re-run. The rallies turned violent, resulting in the death of at least 20 people in the country's capital.

“Thrilled” were they? “Thrilled” that the totalitarian tyrants have snuffed out the people’s rebellion? “Thrilled” that the Ayatollah and A-jad can continue to build nukes and fund regional jihadists like Hamas and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s disloyal opposition party? Anyone else find that a wee bit implausible?

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:55 | link | comments (1)

Monday, 29 June 2009

Today's "you gotta be kidding me" headline: Jackson family seeks normalcy for grieving kids.

Normalcy? Normalcy went out the door when daddy Michael walked in. Now that he's gone, giving his kids to the brutish man who raised him doesn't sound like a recipe for normal to me, even in the Hollywood sense of things.

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

The Ayatollah, useful idiocy, multiculturalism, free speech, HRCs and the stealth jihad: In his new book, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, Bruce Bawer explains how they’re all connected:

Khomeini’s fatwa [re Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses] reflected the recognition that jihad’s proper targets don’t just include Western vessels and buildings. They also, and more fundamentally, include Western freedoms--above all, the foundational freedom: freedom of speech. What has emerged from this recognition is a new phase of jihad whose advantages include not requiring jihadists to engage in combat to the death but only in such low-risk activities as the writing of letters of complaint to government officials, participating in “intercultural dialogue,” and the occasional rally, march, riot, flag-burning, or act of embassy vandalism. Not only do the participants in this jihad take virtually no chances (there is little likelihood of arrest and even less of conviction), but they also enjoy the assistance of non-Muslims who, when not supporting these New Age jihadists our of a misguided sense of sympathy or outright fear, are motivated by ideology--namely, the pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism, which teaches free people to belittle their own liberties while bending their knees to tyrants, and which, as we shall see, has proven to be so useful to the new brand of cultural jihadists that it might have been invented by Osama bin Laden himself.

Calling multiculturalism “pernicious”: such delicious heresy--in Norway and in Canada

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:40 | link | comments (1)

All “pride” is equal, but some "pride" is more equal than other "pride": The Pride Parade went ahead as scheduled yesterday, even though city workers are on strike, and non-unionized workers had to be hired to do the post-parade clean up. On the other hand, Toronto has cancelled Canada Day celebrations for Wednesday, because city workers are on strike, and non-unionized workers would have to be hired to do post-celebrations clean up.

Is that our P.C. mayor's way of saying that queer pride trumps Canadian pride?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:23 | link | comments

Sunday, 28 June 2009

Laughing all the way to the beach: Jihad pays, writes Guy Benson in Townhall--especially if you’re a former Gitmo Uighur:

After training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Uighers were caught on the battlefield (the terrorist Miranda warning policy wasn’t in effect at the time—a grave injustice) and transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where they were afforded soccer, television, and pizza privileges. Their TV viewing got a bit dicey at times, as they reportedly destroyed a television set after being subjected to the obscene image of a woman’s bare arms. Aside from picayune details like that, they’re generally regarded as a pretty reasonable, well-adjusted bunch. They’re now arriving in exotic vacation destinations, along with millions of US tax dollars in aid—making themselves at home on pristine tropical islands. Islands, mind you, that most law-abiding, tax-paying, non-terrorist American citizens couldn’t afford to visit right now, given the current economy. Wage war against the West, and you too might end up catching rays in Bermuda! What a deal.

Everybody sing: Oh, I’d love to be a former Gitmo Uighur, that is what to Allah I besee-ee-eech/Cuz if I was a former Gitmo Uighur, I’d be catchin' rays there on the beach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:47 | link | comments (2)

Bruce Bawer commits a thought crime in Norway: In City Journal, Jacob Laskin reviews the aforementioned’s new book:

With the release of his new book, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, the American writer and critic Bruce Bawer (some of whose work has appeared in City Journal) may have committed a crime in his adoptive Norway. In 2005, Norway’s politically correct parliament passed the so-called Discrimination Act, a law that, among other curbs on free speech, criminalized “utterances” that may be “insulting” to those of certain religious beliefs. Since Surrender is a searing indictment of Western opinion makers, especially in the media, for capitulating to the rise of radical Islam in Europe, and since Islamic extremists are bound to take issue with the author’s appeal for a sterner defense of Western freedoms, it’s a real possibility that Bawer could be prosecuted for what he has written.

That it has come to this in politically progressive Norway makes Surrender urgent reading. It also serves to bolster Bawer’s chief contention: that many in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the United States, are prepared to roll back essential civil liberties in order to pacify (or so they hope) Muslim radicals. Bawer embarks on a broad offensive, counting leading political, religious, and academic figures among the defeatists. Mainly, though, he directs his rhetorical fire at the press. In their eagerness to forfeit the free-speech rights on which they depend—whether through self-censorship or through craven reporting that casts avowed Islamists as “moderates”—journalists may present the most agonizing illustration of Bawer’s theme that, for too many in the West, surrender is indeed an option.

In Bawer’s telling, the white flag first waved in 1989. That year, Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, earned him a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. In his decree, Khomeini called on Muslims across the world to hunt down and kill Rushdie and anyone involved in the book’s publication “so that no one will dare to insult Islamic sanctities again.” The fatwa forced Rushdie into hiding and led to the murder of his Japanese translator. But while many writers rallied to Rushdie’s defense, some perversely blamed the novelist for provoking his own death sentence. Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper sneered that he “would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring Mr. Rushdie’s manners, were to waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them.” At the time, he writes, Bawer dismissed the Trevor-Roper view as an anomaly. Surely, he reasoned, most civilized people would defend free speech against its Islamist despisers. He was wrong…

Wow. Norway’s Discrimination Act sounds every bit as “progressive” as Canada’s Section 13s. Better watch it, Bruce. Some aggrieved imam may take offense to your “insults” and kvetch about you to the Lynch mob and one or more of its provincial/territorial equivalents.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:27 | link | comments

Hopeychange springs eternal: Despite everything that’s happened in recent days, including the tiny totalitarian comparing the Godly one to George W. McHaliburtonbushitler, the hopeychangers refuse to knock it off with the outreach. From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration will leave open the door for discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions even as demonstrators question the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, administration officials said Sunday.

Ahmadinejad has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the United States for alleged meddling. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran has said it's considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain.

The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said he would make the U.S. regret its criticism of the postelection crackdown and said the "mask has been removed" from Obama's efforts to improve relations.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that Ahmadinejad is falling back on his government's usual strategy of blaming the West and the U.S. in particular for its internal problems.

"This is a profound moment of change. And what Ahmadinejad says to try to change the subject is, frankly, not going to work in the current context, because the people understand that the United States has not been meddling in their internal affairs," she said.

The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability, Rice said.

"It's in the United States' national interest to make sure that we have employed all elements at our disposal, including diplomacy, to prevent Iran from achieving that nuclear capacity," she said.

Both Rice and David Axelrod, Obama's top adviser, said Ahmadinejad doesn't appear to have the final say over Iran's foreign policy. Axelrod, dismissing Ahmadinejad's harsh language against the U.S. and Obama as "bloviations," said being open to talks with Iran is not an effort to reward the country.

"We are looking to ... sit down and talk to the Iranians and offer them two paths. And one brings them back into the community of nations, and the other has some very stark consequences," Axelrod said...

Stark consequences--oooo, scary. I’m sure the mullahs are quaking in their sheets.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:17 | link | comments (2)

Something’s rotten in the Dominion of Canada: And that something is our very own Big Brother/P.C. enforcers, the “human rights” system. However, thanks to Ezra Levant’s book Shakedown, a detailed expose of the racket, others--for instance, Weekly Standard columnist Michael Taube--are waking up to the awful truth about the state-sanctioned murder of Canadian free speech:

…It soon became clear these human rights commissions had nothing to do with human rights but were the first-line defense of the left-wing agenda against the rights and freedoms of opposing doctrines. Levant's case became a cause célèbre: Conservatives, liberals, and more than a few socialists strongly supported his right to free speech, whether they agreed with him or not, and Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, noted that "during the years when my colleagues and I were laboring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."

The silent Canadian media, print and electronic, suddenly seized the opportunity to blast away at the concept of "human rights commissions,"

McGovern resigned from the case, and Soharwardy dropped his complaint.

Levant's particular ordeal with the Alberta HRC also helped change the direction of another high profile case against Mark Steyn. The Ontario HRC was going to hear a complaint by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean's for reprinting portions of Steyn's book, America Alone. The matter was ultimately dropped--but not before the commission issued a pugnacious statement that groups should always be able "to challenge any institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions."

Shakedown might well shock your senses; it certainly will make you shudder about Canada's lackadaisical support for free speech. Mark Steyn, who has written Shakedown's introduction, calls Levant "a true Canadian hero." I'll take it one step further: He's a true hero for all people, and societies, who love freedom.

Hear, hear, hear.

I think that’s worthy of an extra “hear,” don’t you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:07 | link | comments

The absurdity of ‘human rites’ commissions: A Canadian is about to get the axe--literally-- in Saudi Arabia despite pleas to the head of that nation’s “human rights” commission (where beheading's a right as well as a rite). From the Ceeb:

A Montreal man facing beheading in Saudi Arabia has written directly to Stephen Harper, asking the prime minister to personally intervene in his case.

Mohamed Kohail's family members gave the letter to Trade Minister Stockwell Day when they met in Jidda on Saturday and relatives asked Day to deliver it to Harper.

In it, Kohail tells Harper he feels his government has let him down.

"I am currently spending more time in jail than William Sampson although my case does not have any political implications," Kohail wrote.

"Yet I feel my government had failed to help me in every simple legal and councillor [consular] procedure, which led me to the fate I am facing today, beheading by sword."

Sampson, who holds dual British-Canadian citizenship, was imprisoned and tortured in Saudi Arabia, where he was arrested in 2001, accused of involvement in a string of bombings in Riyadh. He was among seven foreigners granted amnesty and freed in 2003.

In a statement, Day said he gave the Kohail family assurances that Ottawa "is pursuing all avenues to assist him."

But those assurances weren't enough for Kohail, who has written a previous letter that never reached Harper.

In his latest letter, Kohail asks the prime minister to personally contact Saudi King Abdullah.

"I hope that my letter will reach you this time, and you will take 10 minutes of your time and contact the Saudi king, his Majesty King Abdullah, to intervene and get me out of jail."

While Day met with the family, he didn't go to the prison where Kohail is being held.

The minister was in Saudi Arabia as part of a business trip to the Middle East.

But Liberal MP Dan McTeague said Day should have met with Mohamed Kohail at the prison, and should have been more forceful with Saudi officials over the case.

"Mr. Day has had two opportunities to travel to Saudi Arabia, suggested he's met with the right people to raise this," said McTeague.

"He ought to have visited Mr. Kohail and he ought to have been very forceful in the concerns that he and Mr. Kohail have raised about . . . allegations of torture."

Day's office said the cases of Mohamed Kohail and his brother Sultan were also raised by the minister during bilateral meetings, including one with Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission...

All the top countries have "human rights commissions," don't ya know. Hey, maybe the Canadians can forestall the axing by inviting Bandar to do a meet 'n' greet with his Canadian "human rights" counterparts at the next CASHRA conference. I hear they put on quite the swanky do.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:21 | link | comments

Follow the leader: Imam Dr. Zijad Delic, a bigwig in the Canadian Islamic Congress, exhorts the faithful to become politically “proactive” because that’s what Islam’s founder would have wanted:

…The challenges Canadian Muslims face -- just as other communities did in the past -- are not a valid argument for self- exclusion. If anything, these challenges should motivate stronger reasons to become more seriously and effectively involved.

Even in the early days of Islam in 7th-century Makkah and Madinah, Muhammad (S) and his Sahabah (companions) were greatly involved in their society. What Canadian Muslims, and especially Canadian Muslim leaders, need to understand is that Islam itself would never have made such a positive social and cultural impact on the world had Muhammad (S) and his Companions not been so politically proactive.

Muhammad (S) lived in Makkah for 13 years and even though his own tribe and culture rejected him and his teachings, this setback did not deter him from engaging with and contributing to that same society. He would meet with the leaders of Quraysh and try to influence the chain of power, especially if justice was obstructed, or anyone needed their interests defended. He always stood up for societal issues that needed attention.

If Muhammad was willing to take a strong moral stand during the 7th century, we need to ask ourselves why 21st-century Canadian Muslims (and other religious groups) do not do so now. There are many areas in which people, despite different faiths or values, could come together for important common causes that affect their own communities as well as the welfare of numerous other Canadians they may never get to know.

Islamic formative principles, for example, exhort us to stand up for justice even if it be against ourselves and those near and dear to us. These principles ask people, and especially people of faith, to find a common ground and work for good causes. The story of Yusuf (Joseph) is the best example and a very clear indicator that it does not matter what kind of government we have; it is still our responsibility to place our brick (contribution) into the structure. Yusuf’s willingness to help the government of his day was not driven by personal interest. Rather, he saw it as an opportunity to do good and prevent harm, not just for himself but for all of society. The principle of promoting good and preventing harm is central to Qur’anic logic and therefore central to Islam.

Both past and present Islamic scholars affirm that the purpose of the Muslim community in this world is defined through the basic objectives of Shari’ah (maqasid) which is designated to protect core values: life, faith, intellect, progeny and property.

All of this is tied to the notion of social justice, for the pursuit of justice can only be meaningful when people are granted dignity and when their fundamental rights are guaranteed. The Qur’an further explains that differences among us exist to be explored rather than to become obstacles in the way of cooperation and mutual support…

I suppose it would be churlish in the midst of a plea for political engagement to point out that the kind of “proactive” political policies Muhammad pursued involved the violent conquest of a goodly portion of the infidel world, jihad being the way and sharia being the goal and all that. Not that such Medieval history need concern us here in Canada. As the imam is quick to note, returning to one of the Islamists’ most oft-deployed talking points,

Canadian Muslims are not a uniform and homogeneous community, any more than Canada itself could be described as a homogenous society; this diversity is our collective asset as citizens…

Right, because one of the best ways to slip sharia past gullible infidels is to harp on the non-homogeneity of the ummah and use the word “diversity” as often as possible--ideally, more than once in the same sentence. That way the kafirs may not notice that you’re weaving sharia--a decidedly un-diverse, homogenous set of laws that are completely antithetical to Western notions of freedom and democracy--into the “diverse” multishmulti tapestry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:24 | link | comments

Harpoon, the professor and the “one-state solution”: What a tale of woe Harpoon Siddiqui weaves today--all about poor, sad Sharryn Aiken, the Jewish academic who helped organize the Israel-bash held this past week at York University. Poor, sad, Sharryn is upset because she was “vilified”--villifed!--by those in her own community who didn’t understand that all the conference meant to do was explore the possibility of a “one-state solution.” “I am not a self-hating Jew…I am not an anti-Zionist,” blubbers Sharryn. “I care about a continued safe place for Jews in Israel.”

And, really, what’s so wrong about that? After all, as Harpoon points out, plenty of people in Israel are open to such a discussion, especially since a “one-state solution” holds out the possibility of “one state in which Arabs and Jews would live as equal citizens.” Why are the Jews of Toronto so resistant to the idea?

Sharryn, a law prof at Queen’s, has a ready answer for that. She contends it’s due to “the dynamics of diasopora.” You see, the further away one gets from one’s “homeland or spiritual homeland,” the more “orthodox” one tends to be.

Guess that explains all those Muslim young’uns here in Canada who have suddenly become so, um, orthodox.

Sharryn’s theory is that the Jewish diaspora differs from all other diasporas because “Israel has been instrumentalized by mainstream Jewish organizations as the primary marker of Jewish identity. Any criticism of Israel is perceived as anti-Semitic.”

In other words, if I as a Jew speak out in support of Israel and condemn the way it has been singled out for vilification because it is Jewish (the very definition of anti-Semitism), it’s because I’ve been “instrumentalized” by Official Jewry? You mean I've been turned into a robot by Bernie and Frank? Boy, for a smart chick that Sharryn’s a real idiot--a real useful idiot, to be more precise.

Let’s cut through the doo doo, shall we? The salient points here are:

· The conference was convened to lend an academic gloss to the “one-state solution”--i.e. the end of Jewish sovereignty over Israel. The people attending the conference weren’t looking to have a “critical dialogue” (as Sharryn calls it). They were looking to end the dialogue and get on with the dismantling as per their advice as our intellectual superiors.

· Arab citizens of Israel are accorded their full gamut of rights--the right to vote, the right to sit in the Knesset, etc.. They have far more rights than Muslims have in Muslim countries, and far more rights than non-Muslims have in Muslim countries.

· The way sharia works is that Muslims are supposed to rule over Jews, but Jews cannot--I repeat--cannot rule over or be equal to Muslims. Thus the idea that there could be an non-Jewish “Israel” or Isratine (kooky Qadafi’s name for the one-state) in which Jews and Arabs would be equal is even more of a deranged fantasy than is the chimerical two-state solution.

· Harpoon Siddiqui is a crypto-Islamist who is doing his utmost to boost the cause of sharia and annihilationist agenda (I’m sure you’ve noticed the two go hand-in-hand) from his bully pulpit in the Toronto Star.

My letter:

It has been clear for some time that academia has taken a leading role in purveying fictions about Israel. It should thus come as no surprise to Sharryn Aiken and others if Jews who support Israel’s right to exist shine a light on this activity, and refuse to be cowed into silence just because the people advancing the blood libels (i.e. that Israel practises “apartheid”; that it’s Nazi-like, etc.) happen to have some fancy letters after their name.

If Sharryn Aiken feels “vilified” by her own community, perhaps it’s because she chose to align herself with those who vilify the Jewish state. If, as she says, she truly cares about finding “a continued safe place for Jews in Israel,” she should find herself another gathering, one which is genuinely open to advancing the discussion in a way that doesn’t “solve” Israel out of existence.

Update: Sharryn is someone who is terribly concerned about the plight of “refugees,” especially Palestinian ones. To show you where her head is really at (i.e. off in some Palestinian “refugee” camp, feeling really crappy about all the bad things Israel has done to Arabs) here’s a 2002 newsletter she edited.

Update: Sharryn schmoozed with other international "experts" searching for "peace" at a UN-sponsored confab back in '06. Such a busy gal!

Update: Sharryn used to be president of this organization.

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

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Paying lip service to "diversity"--as Canadian as poutine and maple syrup: In the run up to Canada Day on July 1, notable Canadians on the Ceeb site are pumped about "diversity."

The question to be asked: how many of these proud Canadians believe in the only kind of "diversity" that truly matters in a free society, the kind that will keep the true north strong and free, i.e. diversity of opinion, no matter how "offensive"? I venture to say not many of them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:26 | link | comments

Still hissing and dissing: A-Jad just blew another wet one in Obama’s direction. From VOA:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeated his call to U.S. President Barack Obama to not interfere in Iran's affairs.

The official IRNA news agency on Saturday quoted the Iranian leader as saying Mr. Obama talks about change, but continues to interfere in Iran's state matters.

Friday, President Obama called recent post-election violence against protesters in Iran "outrageous." He also said any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran will be affected by the recent events.

The official death toll from violence since the disputed June 12 vote is 17, but witnesses say it is much higher.

Supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who allege the vote was rigged, held large demonstrations in the days after the election.

In a sermon at Tehran University Friday, a senior Iranian cleric, Ahmad Khatami, described the demonstrators as rioters who, in his words, wage war against God ("mohareb"), a crime under Islamic law, and punishable by death…

You just know that somewhere in Tehran A-jad and a few of the mully-bullies are sitting around and chortling like mad at Obama and his silly infidel outreach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments

She's got a little list: "Koko" Lynch, Canada's Lord High Executioner of Free Speech, sings her showstopper from G&S's The Mikado:

Of some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list.

Of society offenders who might well go underground,

And who never would be missed, who never would be missed.

There’s pestilential nuisances--those bloggers on the ‘Net,

And blabbermouths like Ez and Steyn who write stuff they’ll regret.

All those who say rude things and whose attacks are oft ad hominen.

All those who think that censorship is still a strange phenomenon.

And all “Islamophobes” who aren’t multiculturalist

They’d none of ‘em be missed, they’d none of ‘em be missed.

Chorus of apparatchiks:

She’s got ‘em on the list;

And they’ll none of ‘em be missed,

They’ll none of ‘em be missed…

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

Who ‘gets it’ about our ‘human rights’ system, and who’s sitting in a dark room with an empty light socket?: Prime Minister wannabe Bob Rae (a.k.a. Sideshow Bob) claims that Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t “get it” about our “human rights” system because some years ago, long before he was prime minister, Harper said this:

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society…It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff. (BC Report, January 11, 1999)

Mr. Rae claims that he, Sideshow Bob, does “get it” because he knows that “Human Rights Commissions, like the Ontario Commission, provide a vital resource to the community. They are an avenue to handle claims and disputes in a manner that is far more financially accessible than litigation.” And further,

They can never replace courts of law, but they help to assure that principles of fundamental justice – namely access to justice and fairness – are available to all Canadians. While we clearly have no control over what happens to the Ontario Commission, we would hate to see this ideological government use this as an excuse to attack the federal commission.

The Liberals, though not the Conservatives, “get it,” says Rae, because Liberals

believe in the protection of minorities and minority rights, and we support legislation, commissions and tribunals that aim for those goals. While there is always room for improvement and reform, scrapping the entire human rights-focused system is irresponsible public policy based solely on political calculation. There is no need to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

Oh, no--not that bit about the bambino in the bathtub again. Is Bob cribbing notes from the CJC’s censorious Bernie Farber, or, like Bernie, is he merely so bereft of original thinking on the matter that he has no choice but to resort to the obvious cliché? Probably the latter, I suspect. Either way, anyone who can’t see “ideology” is behind the system, and that “ideology” is what makes and keeps it fundamentally unfair and exclusionary (since only some Canadians--i.e. the ideologically sound ones--will have their complaints accepted, which others--Christians and anyone complaining about hateful Muslims--can take a hike) isn’t going to be able to see the truth behind the cliche. And that is (sorry to have to repeat myself, but Bob leaves me no option): the baby’s a killer; the bathwater’s toxic. Time to throw them both out!

Unfortunately, I’m not even sure Prime Minister Harper, “gets it” anymore. Oh, sure, ten years ago, when the Prime Ministership was but a mere glint in his eye, he felt free to make an emphatic statement about the dangerous direction in which our HRCs were heading. Now that he’s looking to hold onto power, through, he hasn’t been nearly as forceful. Indeed, it would be more accurate to describe his response of late as tepid verging on the--dare one say it?--Rae-ish. It’s no wonder, then, that Sideshow Bob would seize the opportunity to step into the vacuum. If Iggy ends up choking, maybe Bob can even run with the HRC issue all the way to 24 Sussex Drive, his preferred address. (In which case, he’d no longer be Sideshow Bob but would become Mainevent Bob--a terrifying thought for Ontarians who retain fresh memories of Bob the feckless Ontario premier.)

Will Canadians ever be able to throw off the crushing yoke they’ve been suckered into wearing? I’d like to remain optimistic, like the ever-ebulliant Ezra Levant. Alas, my default setting is permanently stuck on dubious/pessimistic, and what I see is that HRCs have become so firmly entrenched in our body politic that they're almost like a tumour in the part of brain that controls respiration. Performing the radical surgery necessary to extract the carcinoma is thus going to prove extremely tricky, if not next to impossible. That being said, I remain committed to pushing for the proceedure. Because unless the HRC tumour is completely removed, or at the very least substantially cut back, Canada's long-term prognosis is grim.

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

Friday, 26 June 2009

One of the stranger episodoes in a very strange life: The time they built a gibungous Jacko statue (that wasn't a terribly good likeness) and floated it down the Thames.

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

Hopeychanger appoints envoy to the Jewish world: Just pulling your leg, there. Of course, the envoy will try to reach out and touch hearts 'n' minds in Dar al Islam.

Good luck with that one, Pandith.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments

Don’t tell me--his “Rosebud” was Ben the rat: Michael Medved sees parallels between Michael Joe Jackson and Charles Foster Kane:

There’s also an odd parallel in his story to the most acclaimed American movie of them all—“Citizen Kane.” While the fictional press baron Charles Foster Kane (obviously based on the real-life William Randolph Hearst) poured much of his fortune into his exotic and eccentric estate, “Xanadu,” Michael Jackson lavished untold hundreds of millions into his similarly peculiar “Neverland Ranch.” Both estates featured private zoos of unusual animals. Like Kane, MJ won widespread admiration for his youthful achievements, but then became better known for his quirks, idiosyncrasies and scandals. For his last word, Citizen Kane pronounced “Rosebud,” connecting him with the sweet joys of a distant childhood; Michael Jackson, touring the world from his earliest years, experienced those joys only in his imagination or his unfulfilled longing.

As Brit poet Philip Larkin once wrote: “They f*ck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do…” But guess what? They have therapy for that kind of stuff. Michael’s problem seemed to be that although he was seriously messed up because of his crappy childhood, for a variety of reasons he never got the help he needed to come to terms with it in a healthy way.

Update: Jackson's personal physician seems to have vanished.

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

Bob Rae pimps for the thought police: In a breathtaking show of cluenessness/lust for political clout, Socialist turned Liberal Bob Rae reaffirms the "value" of Canada's "human rights" constabulary.

I won't bother saying "shame on you, Bob," since it's clear that the engenderer of Rae Days is as shameless as he is clueless.

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

Today's blindingly brilliant Obama observation: Violence affects hope for dialogue with Iran.

No kidding. Not that Iran's religious lunatics had any intention of "dialoguing" with or without the violence.

Update: Oh, wait--there's more brilliance. Obama says he doesn't take A-Jad's demand for an apology seriously.

Yeah, because everyone knows he doesn't really mean it and that once you get past all the zany totalitarian stuff he's really just a big mushball.

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

Kapos in da House: Some Obama Jews are helping facilitate what an American Thinker calls “the rape of Israel”:

Two years ago, Haaretz 's chief editor David Landau advised US Sec of State Condoleezza Rice to "rape Israel," to force it into making concessions. Rice tried to follow Landau's suggestion, but her efforts were not matched by her boss, President Bush. Now, that policy seems to be led by President Obama himself.

Assisted by Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Ross, Dan Kurtzer, and others, Pres Obama seems intent on taking Israel down. In addition to the usual left wing Jewish organizations, the Reform Movement's PAC, Americans for Peace Now, a collection of marginal anti-Israel organizations have also lined up for the gang rape.

The analogy is appropriate: A stronger power forces his will upon a weaker victim regardless of what is fair, moral, and without any concern for the trauma he inflicts. The rapist (in this analogy) does what he thinks is good for himself. He wants what he wants.

When rape occurs in a family situation the rapist is often aided and abetted by a family member, often the wife/mother, either to please the rapist, or - in denial - to pretend that it wasn't happening, or carelessness bordering on neglect. That a family member is involved in the rape makes the act even more traumatic, since it involves the ultimate betrayal.

President Obama and his Jewish (and some Israeli) facilitators may believe that what they are doing is for Israel's own good. That might be acceptable if they explained how it works. Would a second Arab Palestinian state run by terrorists enhance Israel's security, promote peace with Israel and in the region, resolve the issues of Jerusalem, and millions of "Palestinian refugees"? Would the Palestinians and Arab states recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and acknowledge facts of Jewish and world history? Would the proposed state include Jews with full rights, as Israel includes Arabs with full rights?

Nowhere in Obama's agenda are these questions raised or answered. Nowhere is there a hint of how his plan will be carried out, nor concern for what might happen if things don't go according to his visions. That's understandable, since his policy, like sexual aggression, is single minded.

His Jewish and Israeli enablers, like family members who participate in rapes, no doubt believe that what they are doing is in the name of Love. They might even argue that rape is better than murder, that forcing Israel to surrender and survive, albeit crippled and more vulnerable, is preferable to isolation, attack and invasion.

Raping Israel might be convenient for some, temporarily, even a perverted rescue from more dire consequences that would assuage any feelings of guilt. As long as the victim remains alive and available, however, the rapist will return. There's nothing like conquest to whet the appetite for more…

Cruel to be kind, eh Kapos?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:09 | link | comments

Jacko the Jew-hater?: I had a vague memory of Mikaeel (the Muslim name Jackson took following his “reversion”) having had some, er, issues, with “the Jews,” and a quick google search confirmed my recollection. Here’s a Beeb story from ’05:

A Jewish group has accused pop singer Michael Jackson of anti-Semitism based on remarks he allegedly made in 2003.

Earlier this week the US TV show Good Morning America aired what it claimed to be an answerphone message in which Jackson referred to Jews as "leeches".

In response, the Anti-Defamation League called on the star to apologise for his "hurtful and hateful words", claiming he had "an anti-Semitic streak".

Jackson's spokeswoman Raymone Bain said the singer had no comment.

The message was among around a dozen released by attorney Howard King, who is representing Jackson's former advisor Dieter Wiesner in a legal action against the singer.

Mr Wiesner is suing the pop star for $64m (£37m), alleging breach of contract and fraud.

'Stereotypical'

In the message broadcast on Tuesday, the following remarks were attributed to Jackson: "They suck... they're like leeches... It's a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

"It seems every time he has a problem in his life he blames it on Jews," said Abraham H Foxman, the Anti-Defamation

"It is sad that Jackson is infected with classically stereotypical ideas of Jews as all-powerful, money-grubbing and manipulative."

In 1995 Jewish groups reacted angrily to Jackson's song They Don't Care About Us, which included the lyrics: "Jew me, sue me, everybody do me."

The singer apologised, saying he had intended to demonstrate the hatefulness of racism. He subsequently changed the offending lyrics...

“Jew me, sue me…”: hey, didn’t he swipe that--with a minor rewrite-- from that Jew Frank Loesser?

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

Scapegoats ‘R’ Us: Jews know what it’s like to get blamed for stuff they had nothing to do with, a state of affairs that arises because some people are conniving and/or plum loco. Now it seems the White House is getting a taste of it. From the Beeb:

The White House has accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of seeking to blame the US for unrest following Iran's disputed election.

The US replied one day after Mr Ahmadinejad was sharply critical of President Barack Obama for condemning Iranian violence against protesters.

Tehran's leadership has accused foreign governments of fuelling the protests.

Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Italy, said they "deplored" the post-election violence in Iran.

In a draft statement, they urged Iran "to respect fundamental human rights" and settle the crisis "through democratic dialogue and peaceful means".

Earlier, Iran's Guardian Council said it had nearly finished examining the allegations of vote-rigging and had found no irregularities.

"We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had," a spokesman for the election watchdog, Abbasali Kadkhodai, told the Irna news agency.

"I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian hardline cleric said in his Friday sermon that the leaders of the protests should be dealt with "severely and ruthlessly".

"I want the judiciary to... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson," Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran university in comments broadcast nationwide.

War of words

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Iran's president was attempting to deflect attention events at home.

"There are people in Iran who want to make this not about a debate among Iranians in Iran, but about the West and the United States.

"I would add President Ahmadinejad to that list of people trying to make this about the United States," Mr Gibbs said…

Now he knows how Israel feels.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments (1)

Ez vs. El: You may recall that in a letter in yesterday’s National Post, Pearl Eliadis tried to make her case for the HRCs by insisting that a scant 5% of “human rights” complaints actually make it to the tribunal stage; apparently, Pearl is hewing to the same lame communication strategy as Jennifer Lynch, a vain attempt to distance the “commissions” from the “tribunals” (as if the two weren’t part of the same rotten whole). Ezra’s response appears in today’s paper:

Former HRC-employee Pearl Eliadis says we shouldn't be worried about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's 100% conviction rate for censorship prosecutions, because the CHRC doesn't prosecute every complaint it receives. Of course it doesn't --it would need a much larger budget to prosecute everyone on its list of enemies. According to CHRC boss Jennifer Lynch, that's 1,200 files.

Ms. Eliadis says that for every victim the CHRC formally prosecutes, many more are investigated without a formal hearing. I know all about that: I was investigated for 900 days by 15 bureaucrats and lawyers at Alberta's HRC because of some cartoons in a magazine I published. In the end, the HRC didn't formally prosecute me, but taxpayers spent $500,000 on that witch hunt and I was stuck with my own $100,000 legal bill.

Recently, the CHRC targeted Father Alphonse de Valk, an elderly Toronto priest. He didn't have his day in kangaroo court -- but he was put through the ringer by the CHRC all the same. As he struggles to pay off his $20,000 legal bill, I doubt he feels good that he wasn't formally "prosecuted" -- merely harassed for two years by a human rights commission that doesn't give a damn about human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In fact, I think she does give a damn about “human rights”--but not the real ones Ezra mentions; the kind that get you invited to lavish confabs where you get to schmooze with other members of the local and international “human rights” Cosa Nostra.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

He’s with Allah now: Lest we forget, Jacko was a pervert, er, I mean a “revert”:

New Delhi, June 26, 2009: Pop star Michael Jackson who died yesterday had converted to Islam last year. The fifty year old star who was under immense pressure, both financial and legal had reportedly embraced Islam in a Los Angeles mosque.

Even before he converted to Islam he had donated a huge sum for the construction of a grand mosque in UAE that he said would further the teachings of Islam.

His brother Jermaine who is also a convert had claimed the “Thriller” hitmaker had taken interest in the religion since Jermaine converted in 1989, and had been considering converting following his acquittal on child abuse charges in 2005.

Jermaine had said, “When I came back from Mecca I got him a lot of books and he asked me lots of things about my religion and I told him that it’s peaceful and beautiful.

The 50-year-old star had pledged his allegiance to the Koran in a ceremony at a friend's mansion in Los Angeles, the Sun reported.

At the time of his conversion Jackson reportedly sat on the floor wearing a tiny hat after an Imam was summoned to officiate. The star reportedly decided to adopt Islam while he was recording a song at the home of his friend where a Jehovah's witness was brought up to help him through the ceremony…

Huh? Why was a “Jehovah’s witness” brought up to help him through it? No matter. He seems to have “reverted” more out of boredom and financial desperation than out of true conviction; the idea of Michael Jackson humbling himself before a deity higher than himself is pretty hard to swallow.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:09 | link | comments (1)

How to remember Jacko?: Too-hip-for-words (and thus embarrassingly uncool) Ceeb guy George Stroumboulopoulos says we should forget all the freaky stuff about Michael Jackson's life and focus solely on the music. Oh, please. What makes the Jackson story so redolent, so Sunset Boulevardish, is the freaky stuff, and there's no use pretending otherwise.

How will I remember Jackson? I'll remember the music--I Want You Back, Rock with You. I'll remember the moon walk, and how he blew everyone away at that Motown tribute twenty-five years ago. And--sorry, George--I'll remember him as the guy who took Brooke Shields and Emmanuel Lewis as his dates to the Grammys; the grown man who claimed Peter Pan--the Disney version--as a role model, and who was so revolted when, physically, he seemed to be morphing into Joe Jackson, the abusive father who stole his childhood, that he felt compelled to transform himself into a poor facsimile of Tinkerbell.

Update: Through the magic of youtube, here are two chestnuts from the vault--the intro to the Jackson 5 animated TV show, and a performance of I Want You Back from their Going Back to Indiana TV special (with Bill Cosby, looking like a black Groucho Marx, doing the set up).

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:47 | link | comments

Thursday, 25 June 2009

Michael Jackson dead?: That’s what TMZ is reporting:

We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but he was completely unresponsive.

We're told one of the staff members at Jackson's home called 911.

La Toya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.v

If true, then truly tragic--someone who was so talented, but so messed up. You’ll forgive me, though, if I giggle just a bit at the names of his poor fatherless kids, evidence, as if any were needed, of his derangement.

Update: I'm sure you've already heard that Farah Fawcett died today, too. Tough break to end up dying on the same day as the King of Pop--and it's sad that she had to go so young--but maybe it will mute the media's egregiously maudlin Princess Di-ish stuff about how "she was an Angel on Earth, and now she's angel in heaven" (mega-blech). One can only hope and pray, eh?

Update: I remember this as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:10 | link | comments (2)

Don’t pin your hopes on Iran’s “green revolutionary”: Seriously, I don’t mean to be a spoilsport, but the following quote by Iran’s Barack Obama (the guy who’s hoping for change) makes it clear that what he’s fighting for isn’t an end to the glorious Islamic Republic, but a whole new beginning for it:

We are not up against our sacred regime and its legal structures; this structure guards our Independence, Freedom, and Islamic Republic. We are up against the deviations and deceptions and we want to reform them; a reformation that returns us to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution.

Got that? He wants to reform the revolution so it’s “pure” again.

If history has taught us anything, it is to beware of gents who believe "purity" is the way to go.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:57 | link | comments

Just desserts: You try to remain upbeat. You keep reaching out again and again. You refrain from commenting until you absolutely have to, and even then you insist that what happens in Iran stays in Iran. And what does it get you? Some tiny tinpot calls you a “meddler” and compares you unfavourably to George W. Bush.

Sheesh. What’s a happy hopeychanger gotta do to catch a break from these guys (is a question the eloquent outreacher is no doubt asking himself)?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:27 | link | comments (1)

Claudia Rosett poses a question: Where, queries the saucy Ms. Rosett, has the UN’s Secretary General been hiding while the mullahs were busy brutalizing protesters? Asked and answered--Ban was tending to, ahem, more pressing matters:

…The next day, June 16, when asked again about Iran, Ban came up with pretty much the same anodyne answer: "taken note ... very closely following ... just seeing how the situation will develop." Other than that, for the next six days, Ban had lots to say--but not about Iran. He sent a message to a meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was attending as an observer, having briefly decamped from the upheaval that his own Ayatollah-blessed, irregularity-fraught "re-election" had sparked in Iran.

To this gathering in Russia, where Ahmadinejad posed for the cameras among a lineup of heads of state, Ban dispatched a message full of buzzwords about poverty, climate change and "combined commitment to a peaceful and prosperous common future." He made no mention of the "situation" in Iran.

Ban also found time for such activities as addressing a seminar on "cyber-hate." He paid tribute to Gabon's late President Omar Bongo Ondimba. He fretted about the effects of desertification on migration patterns by the year 2050. This past weekend, as the world played and replayed the footage of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan bleeding to death on a street in Tehran, Ban was in Birmingham, England, apparently absorbed in accepting an award at a Rotary International Convention…

Well, that cyber-hate stuff is really “dismaying,” which, incidentally is how Ban characterized his feelings vis a vis Iranian demonstrators being pummelled, throttled, shot, and arrested by the Ayatollah’s security thugs. And, hey, it’s not like what’s happening in Iran is as “dismaying” as, say, what went on in Gaza:

[C]ontrast Ban's lukewarm angle on Iran with his "around-the-clock efforts with world leaders"--as his spokeswoman described it--to produce an immediate ceasefire when Israeli forces went into terrorist-run Gaza last December to try to stop Iranian-backed Hamas from launching rockets into Israel. In that case, Ban declared himself "deeply dismayed," "deeply alarmed," and having demanded, urged and condemned, he finally traveled to Gaza.

There, Ban did not wait for any considered inquiry and analysis to unfold. He let fly, condemning Israel for "excessive" use of force, and pronouncing himself incensed that U.N. buildings had been hit--never mind why. He rolled out for the press such phrases as "outrageous, shocking and alarming," demanded a full investigation and pronounced himself too "appalled" to be able to describe his full feelings.

No such vocabulary or demand has been emanating from Ban's office over the carnage that Iran's government, in order to maintain its monstrously repressive grip, has been inflicting on its own people…

That’s the UN for you--useless at everything save doing dirt to “Zionists.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:09 | link | comments

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…: In a letter to the National Post, Jennifer Lynch’s predecessor in the CHRC Czarina spot touts the success of her beleaguered shakedown racket:

Letter-writer Ezra Levant can't have it both ways. When he was targeted by human rights complaints, he (and others like him) protested that his "conviction" was a certainty, even though the complaint was only at the preliminary screening stage. At that stage, however, the statistic I quoted ( "Understanding the hate speech debate, letter, June 19") -- which is publicly available at page 24 of the Special Report to Parliament-- is nowhere near 100%. In fact, only one-quarter of cases get through.

What Mr. Levant now does is to change footing, by blurring the preliminary screening phase and the tribunal phase. Once a case gets that far, very few complainants lose--not because the fix is in, but because commissions screen aggressively. The numbers speak for themselves: For example, in Quebec, roughly 1,500 human rights cases are filed each year and about 750 are investigated. Of those, about 95% are bounced before getting anywhere near a tribunal.

Mr. Levant is right to point out that the success rates are high among the very few that do get to tribunal. Continuing the Quebec example, the rates hover in the 90% range for all cases --but the point is that it is 90% of less than 5%. To go on about "100% rates" when what we are talking about is "100%" of such tiny numbers is stunningly disingenuous.

Pearl Eliadis, Montreal.

Such as stickler for accuracy, is our Pearl. And she’s right, in a way. The intake end of the racket--the “human rights” commissions--manages to settle nearly all its complaints. But that’s only because those being griped about see it as the lesser evil, and don’t want to be subjected to many more years of probing and legal bills, only to be shot down by a “human rights” tribunal (where the defendant, more often than not, has been judged guilty before he even steps through the door, and there’s absolutely no way to recover any costs).

It is stunningly disingenuous of Eliadis to suggest that a shakedown racket is anything other than a shakedown racket.

cartoon duck final

Update: A correction--Pearl replaced Babs Hall at the OHRC, not Jen Lynch at the CHRC.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (5)

Hug a thug: In a gobsmacking (well, slightly more gobsmacking than usual) column in the Toronto Star, Harpoon Siddiqui appears to be doing P.R. for Iran’s odious thugocrats:

…Can we do business with Iran?

Iran is what it is: a deeply flawed theocratic democracy, which vets candidates. The Guardian Council rejected about 400 presidential hopefuls, including every woman.

But Iran is a lot more democratic than Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman – all our allies. One cannot imagine street protests there of the magnitude, and near gender parity, as we have seen in Iran.

As brutal as the regime has been, Tehran has not been Tiananmen Square. Yet we deal with China.

Iran may be headed toward a bomb. But the International Atomic Energy Agency has yet to find a smoking gun.

Iran's mullahs are pragmatic, says professor Mohsen Milani of the University of South Florida. In Foreign Affairs magazine, he notes that Khomeini did a deal with Israel in the Iran-Contra affair. In 2001, Iran helped in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It has helped settle Iraq down. It supports Hamid Karzai, and has pledged $560 million for Afghan development.

Both Iran and the U.S. have missed several opportunities in the past to mend fences. In conveying his determination to engage Iran, Obama has created an incentive for Tehran not to risk his wrath by killing its own citizens.

Wrong again, oh stealthy one. It is Obama’s pusillanimity, not his “wrath,” that has given the thugs the go-ahead to crack down hard on the populace. And once they’ve gotten everything under control once again, they’d as soon mend fences with him as go for spa treatments at the Dead Sea. In any case, there’s absolutely no incentive to get on Obama’s good side. Heck, with Obama in charge, America isn’t even Great Satan anymore, just one of those lesser demons who can be safely ignored.

My letter:

Is it my imagination, or is Haroon Siddiqui doing P.R. for Iran’s odious, unlovable mullahs?

“Pragmatic” are they? Well, that’s certainly one way to spin it. The more accurate word is “opportunistic,” since it is evident from three decades of rule as well as their current difficulties with an outraged populace that they are prepared to seize every opportunity to solidify their hold on power.

“More democratic” than other Middle East regimes who are our allies, huh? Iran may pretend to be more democratic, but as we have seen from the recent election--if that’s what you want to call it--their “democracy” is a sham because no matter who the people vote for, the mullahs’ choice will always come out on top. In any event, calling Iran more “democratic” than Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other regional dictatorships is hardly a selling point.

Iran “supports Hamid Karzai, and has pledged $560 million for Afghan development.” Yes, but not out of the goodness of its heart, but because it wants to extend its sphere of influence and undermine Western efforts there.

And finally, “Iran and the U.S. have missed several opportunities in the past to mend fences.” I must have been napping for the past few decades, because for the life of me I can’t recall a single occasion when the mullahs were open, even for a moment, to the possibility of “mending fences” with the nation the Ayatollah Khomeini declared war on soon after the revolution, and remains at war with to this day. Instead of “mending fences,” they are in the process of “building nukes,” and are unlikely to be deterred from their goal--they’re doing it for God, after all--no matter how much Barack Obama is prepared to grovel, er, sorry, “engage” them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

On second thought, your absence is requested: The White House finally twigs to the bad optics at this particular juncture of having Iranian diplomats partake in July 4th celebrations and cancels their invitations.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:55 | link | comments

What do Iranians want?: That’s the question I asked myself after reading this times online report about the rooftop howls of frustrated Iranians:

At about 9pm each day Nushin, a young housewife, performs the same curious ritual. She climbs up the stairs to the roof of her Tehran home and begins shouting into the night. Allahu akbar,” she cries, and sometimes “Death to the dictator”.

She is not alone. Across the darkened city, from rooftops and through open windows, thousands of others do the same to form one great chorus of protest — a collective wail of anger against a reviled regime that no amount of riot police and Basiji militia can stop. “It sounds like the wailing of wolves,” said one Tehrani.

And each night, as the street demonstrations are crushed with overwhelming force and the regime cracks down on all other forms of dissent, it grows steadily louder and more insistent, not just in Tehran but in other densely populated cities of the Islamic Republic.

“It’s the way we reassure ourselves that we are still here and we are still together,” says Nushin, a woman who has never dared to rebel before.

“This is what people did before the revolution and I hope it warns the regime about what could happen if it doesn’t change its way.

“And because I’m a religious person the sound resonating in the neighbourhood makes me feel better. Even my little daughter joins me, and I can see how she feels that she is part of something bigger. It is our unique way of civil disobedience and what’s interesting is that it increases every time they do something that makes people angrier.”

Ever resourceful, the opposition has developed other ways of showing dissent short of wearing green or taking to the streets. They honk their horns, and they drive their cars and motorbikes with their headlights on. But the hour of chanting is anonymous, safe and almost impossible for the security forces to stop. Who could arrest someone for shouting their praise of God? Hossein, a young engineer, is another nightly participant. “The first time I did it, it was in protest to the theft of my vote, the insult that the President had made towards us,” he told The Times. But after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, ruled out any compromise in his sermon last Friday, “it has become much more than that. It is the people’s way of saying that they are still together and will stay that way until they reach their goal. It has become a way of getting out our anger when we can’t protest and to keep it going . . . It makes me happy to hear others, it reminds me that I’m not alone.”

In many ways this has been a high-tech rebellion, with the opposition using video clips shot with mobile phones, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the internet to generate outrage around the world. But the rooftop protests are the precise opposite and a deliberate and resonant throwback to an earlier age.

It is what Iranians did before the revolution of 1979. From their roofs, they would shout Allahu akbar” to support Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in his battle against the tyranny of the former Shah. That a later generation should now be using the very same weapon against the regime that Khomeini helped to establish is an irony lost on no one.

Indeed, but wouldn’t it also be an irony if we in the West had completely misread what’s going on, and that rather than seeking “freedom” and “democracy” as we understand it, what folks in Iran really want is to replace one set of religious thugs with a marginally less thuggish though still very “religious” leadership?

You don't cast your eyes skyward and scream “Allahu Akbar” if you’re looking to de-Islamize the joint.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:01 | link | comments (2)

The real impediment to peace: Like Obama, Nonie Darwish thinks a pesky problem in the Middle East must first be “solved” if true peace is to follow. Where they differ is on the nature of--and thus the solution to--the problem:

…The problem of the constant political turmoil and restlessness in Muslim countries is rooted in Islamic Law, which does not allow democracy while dictating violent jihad as one of the main duties of the Muslim head of state against non-Muslim lands. According to Islam, Muslims must live in an Islamic State ruled by Sharia. The Muslim leader must preserve Islam in its original form and prevent any change or ‘bidaa,’ meaning any new idea. The hostile and unfriendly relationship between Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries is clearly stated in Muslim scriptures. That leaves Muslims and Muslim leaders who want to follow their religion in a dilemma; to make peace with the non-Muslim world and violate one’s religion or be in a constant state of war with the West and Israel and be faithful to one’s religion.

Until this dilemma is settled Muslims will live in constant turmoil. Such turmoil affects the rest of the world and the option for the West is either to support leaders who are friendly with the West and subject them to assassination or allow tyrannical regimes to engage in jihad against Israel and the West and hope for the best.

The choice for the West is often not between good and bad but between bad and worse. It is either the current Saudi royal family or a Wahhabi hostile government; or president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or the Muslim Brotherhood.

The turmoil in the Muslim world has only just begun.

No, no, Nonie. It’s the “settlements” and Palestinian displacement and, um, the “settlements” and Israel’s “occupation” and…zzzzzzzzz

Sorry, nodded off there for a second due to the drone of the same old malarkey.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:45 | link | comments (2)

Too hot to chop: Who says sharia courts aren't empathetic? Take that one over in Somalia. It has deferred carrying out sentences of amputation until the weather cools out of concern that the heat could cause criminals to bleed to death (and result in a bloody great mess, too).

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments (1)

La vie en rose dans la Maison Blanche: Trust a happy hopeychanger to see the current agita in Iran as a mere speed bump on the road to eventual nuclear amity:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Behind President Barack Obama's toughened but modulated response to the Iranian election crisis is a calculation that when the dust settles, the United States will still face an unpredictable adversary that gets closer every day to producing nuclear weapons.

No one can say whether the unrest following disputed presidential elections will yield an Iran more willing to cut a deal over its disputed nuclear program. But as Obama sees it, the United States must be ready to talk no matter who sits on the other side of the table.

"My position coming into this office has been that the United States has core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn't possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders," Obama told reporters Tuesday.

The new president has tried not to poison chances for negotiations over those threats, although that gave Republican critics room to call him timid.

His unspoken strategy aimed at defusing Iran's nuclear threat has been coupled with public messages that seek to avoid giving Iran's rulers any ammunition to claim that the United States is meddling.

"My role has been to say the United States is not going to be a foil for the Iranian government to try to blame what's happening on the streets of Tehran on the CIA or on the White House," Obama said during a news conference, "that this is an issue that is led by and given voice to the frustrations of the Iranian people."

Days of deadly tumult and then quiet defiance on Tehran's streets mark the greatest challenge to Iran's ruling structure since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

They also present a huge wild card for the new U.S. administration, which came to office pledging a fresh start with Iran after three decades of mutual suspicion and hostility.

The budding outreach to Iran could be smothered in the cradle, as Obama acknowledged.

"We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out," he said. "It is up to them to make a decision."

That's the same thing Obama said before the disputed June 12 election, and it's also the same thing President George W. Bush said during his last two years in office.

The stakes are higher for Obama, in no small part because Iran's nuclear machinery is still chugging toward the ability to produce nuclear weapons if the regime chooses to do so. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used the program as a nationalist rallying cry.

Ahmadinejad claimed a landslide re-election despite obvious questions about the size and distribution of his support, and the results were endorsed by Iran's senior cleric, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad's main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, claims the vote was fixed, and the heavy-handed government response has given Iran's largely disorganized resistance a new organizing principle.

The election results could mean greater internal pressure on Ahmadinejad to improve relations with the West and bargain over the nuclear program, as Obama hoped out loud on Tuesday.

"The fact that they are now in the midst of an extraordinary debate taking place in Iran, you know, may end up coloring how they respond," Obama said...

It, you know, may? What a, you know, extraordinary comment, considering that what’s happening in Iran is the antithesis of a “debate.” There’s no “debating” the mullahs, Mr. President. You have a choice between getting your head kicked in, or remaining silent. Which do you prefer?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments (1)

It’s Monty Obama’s grovelling circus: In the run-up to the now disputed Iranian “election” (a pretence of democracy wherein the restless populace got to “choose” one of several “candidates” pre-approved by the Grand Ayatollah), the leader of the free world sat down and penned a missive. From the Washington Times.

Prior to this month's disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself.

Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed the letter toward the end of a lengthy sermon last week, in which he accused the United States of fomenting protests in his country in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential election.

U.S. officials declined to discuss the letter on Tuesday, a day in which President Obama gave his strongest condemnation yet of the Iranian crackdown against protesters.

An Iranian with knowledge of the overture, however, told The Washington Times that the letter was sent between May 4 and May 10 and laid out the prospect of "cooperation in regional and bilateral relations" and a resolution of the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

The Iranian, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the letter was given to the Iranian Foreign Ministry by a representative of the Swiss Embassy, which represents U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of U.S.-Iran diplomatic relations. The letter was then delivered to the office of Ayatollah Khamenei, he said.

The letter was sent before the election, whose outcome - delivering a supposed landslide to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - has touched off the biggest anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Obama administration, while criticizing a violent crackdown on demonstrators by Iranian security forces, has said that it will continue efforts to engage the Iranian government about its nuclear program and other issues touching on U.S. national security.

In his news conference on Tuesday, however, President Obama gave his most forceful statement yet about Iran's actions, which have led to the deaths of at least 17 protesters, including a young woman whose shooting death has become known around the world through the Internet.

"I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost," Mr. Obama said. "I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place...Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history...

Right, but those who try to reason with and suck up to brutal totalitarian thugs are always on its wrong side. You would think a “smart guy” like Obama would know that. Obviously, though, when he wrote this letter, he and his advisors were expecting the “election” would run as smoothly as these things always do, and had no idea of what was to come. Nonetheless, their sending such a communiqué on the cusp of an election, even a sham one, is reprehensible. It amounts to the leader of the free world tacitly approving of the fakery: “So you’re having an ‘election,’ are you? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, ‘cause we know whoever’s ‘elected’ you’ll still be in charge.”

It’s Pythonesque--and not in a good way.

Update: The Super-Duper Holy Rollah sings a 60s oldie:

Give me a Koran and a prayer rug.

Ain’t got time to do much more than shrug.

Allahu Akbar, y’all,

‘Bama’s come to call.

Obama he wrote me a letter.

He don’t care how much brute force I exercise.

Nor that I'm working for Israel’s demise.

Allahu Akbar, y’all,

‘Bama’s come to call.

Obama just wrote me a letter.

Well, he wrote me a letter

Says he’s hopin’ we can put our nukes and grievances aside.

Listen mister can't you see that what you're tryin' to do's akin to suicide?

Anyway…

Give me a Koran and a prayer rug.

Ain’t got time to do much more than shrug.

Allahu Akbar, y’all,

‘Bama’s come to call.

Obama he wrote me a letter.

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

The unbearable lightness of being clueless: Channelling his inner Rich Little, Victor Davis Hanson does a perfect impersonation of an Obama-lover reviewing the past few marvellous months (marvellous because you-know-who’s in the White House and all is suddenly right with the world):

…Now in near summer there are no tensions any more, at least those serious ones that Bush created out of thin air. It’s good to know that we don’t “meddle” any more in Iran, that North Korea is just blustering when it claims (who can believe that?) it will shoot a missile Hawaii way. Who believes that Putin really wants to bully his neighbors or replace the dollar as the international currency?

There never really was an “axis”, much less the reductionist “evil,” still much less any notion that North Korea or Iran posed much of a threat to anyone. (As if Hawaii ever might have needed one of those Bush boondoggle missile-defense systems!). It’s good to see the Queen, Sarkozy, and Merkel at last at ease with a competent, sensitive President. Unwatchable DVDs and inscribed I-pods are a hell of a lot better than neck rubs for Angie and “Yo Blair!”

By June it had been almost six months of joy in not having an historically-challenged President mangling the English language and “making-up stuff” as he went along. (And wasn’t it nice to get rid of the hack Scott McClellan and finally get a true intellectual like Mr. Gibbs, as suave and cosmopolitan as his boss at those televised press briefings?).

Some of us, true, were a little confused about that bit about Muslims suddenly fueling the Renaissance and Enlightenment, or stopping those awful Christians in Cordoba from torturing, or Islam inventing printing and medicine and high math. But then for the first time I realized I went to school in the old days and was brainwashed by the ‘narrative’ that had privileged white male Christian heterosexuals. Brilliant speechwriters of a younger, better generation disabused me of all that. And if not, what’s wrong with a few ‘noble lies’ anyway?

Here it is nearly the first of July and all racism has disappeared as well and there are no more red, no more blues states. I know that because Justice Sotomayor has assured me that I could never, with all the legal training in the world, be as good a justice as someone of her race and gender. Eric Holder, thank God, taught me, a mere typical white person who clings to my guns, that I was cowardly in keeping silent about race. Michelle reminded me that Princeton must have been something like Guantanamo for once tormented poor souls like herself and Justice Sotomayor stranded on an Ivy-League atoll-always forced to look over their shoulders as they endured all those nasal-voiced Buffys and Brents scurrying around in their V-neck sweaters and Gucci shoes on their Friday-night way to Nantucket or the Hamptons. I now know by this fall that Acorn, “comprehensive” immigration reform, the “race on the table” discussions with Hugo Chavez in South America, the Senate apologies for slavery, and more to come have made us a more racially tolerant society in a way George Bush with his inauthentic Powell, Rice, Gonzales, etc appointments could never imagine.

It is an incredible time. We all feel in our legs, in our souls this new lightness of being, in which the old burdens-that tired jobless recovery, those billion-dollar deficits, the hatred of the world, the old stegosauruses GM and AIG, those nasty energy shortages, the old unpatriotic, won’t pay their fair share misers, that trumped up GWOT-have godlike, magically been ordered to go, and so they just vanished. We have become ever so happy, ever so light as never before.

I’m all a-tingle (not).

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

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

What are the odds?: Did you know there's another Jennifer Lynch? She's the daughter of David Lynch, director of oddball movies, and she made a movie (released last year) called--shades of the other Jennifer Lynch and her capacious file folder--Suveillance.

Kind of freaky, huh?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments (2)

It's about time: Obama belatedly remembers that, oh yeah, he's the leader of the free world and makes a clear statement condemning the mullahs' actions.

Way to go, O! We knew you could do it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:11 | link | comments

What’s in the Lynch File?: Isn’t it obvious?

Seventy-six blog posts by a Blazing Cat

And one-seventeen by a “mean” guy named Steyn.

There were more than four score of rants

By a fellah named Levant

Who just can’t help panting there online.

Seventy-six blog posts by a furious chick

(A pretty neat trick since she’s but five feet tall).

There were several hundred on hand at freecanuckistan

Venting rage and bile and spleen and gall.

There were letters to the editor from coast to coast
Thundering, thundering, louder than before.
Columnists in newspapers who joined the throng,
Came along, sounding alarms galore.

There were insults, gripes, complaints, 
Contempt and ‘caricatures’.
Thundering, thundering, for the right to yell.
Conservatives of ev’ry stripe 
And lib’rals, too, who liked to gripe 
And knew that the country’s going to hell.

Seventy-six blog posts by that Currie dude
And some spurious screeds penned by C in the C.
Then I modestly took an aisle in the centre of the file--
The Jen Lynch mob’s Hall of Infamy.

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

Feckless “effect”: Caroline Glick examines the Obama effect--the faux one, as purveyed in the pages of the New York Times by pundit Helen Cooper:

…But as Cooper sees it, the protesters [in Iran] owe their ability to oppose the regime that just stole their votes and has trampled their basic human rights for 30 years to Obama and the so-called "Obama effect." Offering no evidence for her thesis, and ignoring a public record filled with evidence to the contrary, Cooper claims that it is due to Obama's willingness to accept the legitimacy of Iran's clerical tyranny that the protesters feel emboldened to oppose their regime. If it hadn't been for Obama, and his embrace of appeasement as his central guiding principle for contending with the likes of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, as far as Cooper is concerned, the people on the streets would never have come out to protest.

By this thinking, America is so despised by the Iranians that the only way they will make a move against their regime is if they believe that America is allied with their regime. So by this line of reasoning, the only way the US can lead is by negative example - which the world in its wisdom will reject…

And the real one, as purveyed by American media in general:

THE REAL OBAMA effect on world affairs relates to the US media's unprecedented willingness to abandon the basic responsibilities of a free press in favor of acting as propagandists for the president. From Cooper - who pretends that Obama's unreciprocated open hand to the mullahs is what empowered the protesters - to Newsweek editor Evan Thomas who referred to Obama earlier this month as a "sort of God," without a hint of irony, the US media have mobilized to serve the needs of the president.

It is hard to think of an example in US history in which the media organs of the world's most important democracy so openly sacrificed the most basic responsibilities of news gatherers to act as shills for the chief executive. Franklin Delano Roosevelt enjoyed adoring media attention, but he also faced media pressures that compelled him to take actions he did not favor. The same was the case with John F. Kennedy.

Today the mainstream US media exert no such pressures on Obama. Earlier this month NBC's nightly news anchorman Brian Williams bowed to Obama when he bid him good night at the White House…

Oh, I dunno, Caroline. It isn’t as if the Obama effect hasn’t paid off in other ways. For example, because of the president’s outreach, Iran’s thugs now consider America to be the nation formerly known as Great Satan, and have filled the gaping void with the Brits (no doubt much to the Brits’ great surprise).

Update: Jonah Goldberg says the Obama M.O. went out with the Hapsburgs.

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

Partyting with tyrants: Just because they've been brutally clamping down on the populace and a youtube video showing them snuffing out the life of a beautiful young woman named Neda Soltan has been making the rounds and eliciting shock and horror, is that any reason to disinvite representatives of Iran's theocratic thugs from July 4th celebrations?

Apparently not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:49 | link | comments (1)

You can cross two more off Ezra’s “baby name” list: Even though Ezra Levant’s wife just had a baby, the couples’ second (for obvious reasons, they decided not to name her Jennifer Shirlene Elmasry Levant), the relentless scourge of Canadian “human rights” imbecility had time to dash off this one to the National Post:

Re: Understanding The Hate-Speech Debate, letter to the editor, June 19.

Letter-writer Pearl Eliadis, a former employee of a human rights commission, is entitled to her own opinions, but she's not entitled to her own facts.

Ms. Eliadis denies that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has a 100% conviction rate for hate speech prosecutions. But it's true: Since the law was enacted in 1977, not a single person has ever been acquitted by the tribunal that hears the cases. That's not surprising, given that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act does not allow truth or fair comment as a defence.

In the 32 years the law has been used, only one prosecution has ever failed: the ridiculous case of beachesboy@aol.comvs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com.Seriously, that's what the case was called -- one Internet nickname complained about what another nickname said on an Internet chat site. The CHRC subpoenaed AOL to find out who drumsaremybeat@aol.comwas and narrowed it down to someone living at the home of Ronald and Heather Fleming in Edmonton. But the CHRC refused to tell the Flemings who beachesboy@aol.comwas. drumsaremybeat@aol.com-- whether or not it was one of the Flemings -- wasn't convicted that day. But he wasn't acquitted, either. The CHRC forgot to bring any witnesses or the mystery complainant, beachesboy@aol.com.So after asking the security guard to look around the lobby for someone looking like a beach boy, the tribunal just cancelled the whole gong show. That's not an acquittal-- that's just incompetence. Other than that, every single person who the CHRC has prosecuted has been convicted. Not even North Korea can boast a 100% conviction rate.

I guess that means the names Pearl and Kim (as in Kim Jong-Il) are out of the question, too, huh?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:09 | link | comments

Obvious though subtle nuance: Two newspaper accounts of the same story--newly disclosed court testimony re the thwarted Toronto terrorist attack-- demonstrate the different mindset of the left and the right. First, the Toronto Star’s p.o.v., which makes the whole thing sound rather amateurish and tentative (my bolds):

It was to be "the Battle of Toronto," a three-day bombing assault aimed at shutting the downtown core, crippling the economy and killing civilians.

Members of the so-called Toronto 18 would pack three U-Haul vans with explosives and park them at three locations: the Toronto Stock Exchange; the Front St. offices of Canada's spy agency; and a military base off Highway 401 between Toronto and Ottawa.

If they got their act together in time – if they procured the necessary ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitric acid – maybe the bombings could begin on Sept. 11, 2006.

And if all went according to plan, they would wait three months and launch another attack on the Sears Building in Chicago or the United Nations building in New York City.

The destruction in Toronto would make London's 2005 subway bombings appear "very small." And, it would "screw" with the prime minister, government and military so much that they would pull Canada's troops from Afghanistan.

That’s three “ifs” and one “maybe”--in other words not much to worry about here, folks. Y'all move along now.

By contrast, here’s the National Post’s report:

TORONTO — The Toronto Stock Exchange, a CSIS building in Toronto and a Canadian Forces base in Ontario were all targets of a thwarted terror attack by the so-called Toronto 18 in 2006, a sentencing hearing for one of the accused heard Monday.

In a statement of facts released in a courtroom in Brampton, Ont., Saad Khalid, 22, admitted to playing a role in planning the foiled attacks, which co-conspirators allegedly said would be greater than the planned London subway bombings of 2005.

Khalid is the first accused to plead guilty in the case. The attack was allegedly set for a morning in mid-November 2006.

The statement alleges Khalid’s co-conspirators planned to target the TSE, a CSIS building on Front Street in Toronto, and an unidentified military base between Toronto and Ottawa near Highway 401.

Three U-Haul vans were to be rented with fake identification, packed with explosives and detonated remotely, the statement says. One of the co-accused made the detonators and tested them himself, the 37-page document reads. The bombings were to occur on three consecutive days, rather than simultaneously.

The group communicated using pagers and USB memory sticks to pass around instructions, the statement says, so they did not have to use e-mails or cellphones.

An undercover police agent was enlisted by the group to procure nitric acid and ammonium nitrate for the bombs, the statement says.

The statement also says one of Khalid’s co-accused told the undercover agent that he wanted the attacks to occur on Sept. 11, 2006, so the date would be remembered forever.

The co-accused allegedly said the attack’s purpose was to affect the economy, and that he hoped the bombings would encourage Canada to pull troops from Afghanistan...

Not a single if or maybe in that one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:41 | link | comments (2)

What is this, Czarist Russia?: A letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

I am writing to voice my alarm over an article that appeared in the June 22^nd National Post. In an interview with Post reporter Joseph Brean, Jennifer Lynch, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, mentioned that she has compiled a thick file folder--she estimated it contained up to 1,200 pages--containing the words of those who had been critical of her and/or her organization; in a recent speech, she dubbed such criticism a “reverse chill.” As someone who has questioned Canada’s human rights apparatus on many occasions, both in letters to the editor and on my blog, I am disgusted--no, sickened--that in a democracy such as ours a powerful official is collecting evidence of dissent.

Ms. Lynch insists that compiling this file is part of her job description--her way of defending all the vulnerable and marginalized who are meant to be protected by Canada’s human rights code. I trust you will understand if I, as someone who believes that free speech and the exercise thereof is the linchpin of a free society, see it as something else--as a blatant show of power and a profound threat to our personal and national freedom.

Ms. Lynch’s anachronistic file would not have been out of place in, say, 19^th Century Russia, where police compiled dossiers on citizens at the behest of the Czar, or even 1970s America, where Richard Nixon maintained a long and continually-growing “enemies list.” It has no place in the Canada of today. I urge you to take the appropriate steps and show both the woman and her repellent file folder the door a.s.a.p.

Sincerely,

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:49 | link | comments (17)

Dossier relativism: Could it be that Jennifer Lynch's terrifyingly thick file folder is the Canucki equivalent of late Palestinian chieftan Yasser Arafat's dreaded red binder?

Just a thought.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:57 | link | comments

Monday, 22 June 2009

Balls: While America’s seem to have receded, France, unexpectedly, has grown a pair:

Full-body gowns that are worn by the most conservative Muslim women have no place in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday.

Speaking to a joint session of parliament, the French leader said wearing the burka or the niqab isn't about religion, but the subjugation of women.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause in a speech at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

He said the burka — an all-concealing traditional dress, with built-in mesh covering the eyes — is "a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement."

"I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory," he said.

Dozens of French legislators have proposed a parliamentary commission to study the small but growing trend of wearing burkas and niqabs…

I predict you’ll never hear such ballsy words escape the lips of anyone whose middle name is Hussein.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:11 | link | comments (6)

A little birdie told me...: Bernie Farber's on twitter. No doubt his tweets are riveting.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:17 | link | comments

How the Lynch Stole Free Speech?: Ho ho ho:

You better watch out.

You better be nice.

You better back down

And take her advice.

Jennifer’s compiling a file.

She’s surfing the Web

And clicking on links.

She’s searchin’ for scamps

And doubters and finks.

Jennifer’s compiling a file.

She sees what you’ve been writing

And, man, it’s made her sore.

And pretty soon the thought police

May be burstin’ through your door.

So you better shut up

And button your lip

‘Cuz, sadly, our Jen is losin’ her grip.

Jennifer’s compiling a file.

Update: And furthermore...:

Every blogger on freecanuckistan liked free speech a lot.

But the Lynch, who resided in Bytown, did not.

She hated their freedom,

The whole “speech” situation.

She wanted to stifle the “misinformation”.

Why?

It could be because Jen believed she was smarter.

It could be she saw free speech as a non-starter.

But I think it’s not that she thought we were rubes.

It’s she feared that her racket

Was going down the tubes…

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:11 | link | comments (5)

Wrong focus: Some anti-Zionist academics have gathered at York U this week to address the perplexing problem of Israel's continuing existence.

Think of how much better their time would be occupied were they instead to search for "solutions" to brutal mullahs--the spiders in the center of a web of jihadi terrorism--bashing in the heads of freedom-seeking Iranians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (1)

Jen’s agenda: Looking awfully, er, refreshed in her photo (Botox or airbrushing?), CHRC Czarina Jennifer Lynch forges ahead with her last ditch effort to save her phony baloney job. Jen informs National Post scribbler Joseph Brean that we poor dimwits are being “misinformed” by relentless rascals with a dastardly “agenda”:

Canadians are uninformed and deliberately misinformed about the hate speech provisions of human rights law, and are engaged in a debate that is "completely unbalanced," according to Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

"We welcome this debate. We want it to be an informed debate in the right forum, a place where people can have an informed dialogue. [That place is] Parliament, and parliamentary committees. This why we did a special report to Parliament [last week]. That's the appropriate forum," she said in an interview.

She criticized Conservative MP Russ Hiebert for relying on "one source that is full of misinformation," in his study of the CHRC in a parliamentary subcommittee. But she placed most of the blame on conservative author Ezra Levant and his blogging allies for spreading "misinformation" about the CHRC's mandate and practices.

"Please, please, look. We have experienced 16 months of invective hurled at us, and at any time when anybody has tried to speak up and correct misinformation, gross distortions, caricaturizations, then the very next day there's been some full-frontal assault through the blogs, through mainstream media. I have a file. I'm sure I have 1,200, certainly several hundred of these things," she said.

"There is an agenda out there, and I'm a public servant responsible for giving effect to the principle that 'individuals should have the right equal to others to make for themselves a life they are able and wish to have,' and I'm going to do it. I'm not going to sit by. Others are afraid to speak out because they know they're going to be attacked. If you Google my name today you'll see how I've been attacked."…

She has a file, people--a thick one--so lay off. (Someone’s doing “caricaturizations” of Jen--what, like ones showing her with a bomb in her bonnet?)

Jen’s right, though, about misinformation being spread in the service of an agenda. Fortunately, it’s not going to do her the least bit of good.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments (3)

Daddy, dearest: Here's a Father's Day saga to warm the cockles of your heart (where are those suckers--in the left ventricle?). A dad in India didn't like the cut of his daughter's fiance's jib--so he beheaded her in one of those so-called honour killings.

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

What’s up, doctrine?: P. David Hornik unpacks the screwy Obama Doctrine (“treat your enemies like friends and your friends like enemies”), although he doesn’t mention it by name:

…Many have speculated as to Obama’s motives. One fruitful place to look is his policy toward the Middle East’s only accomplished democracy, which has stunned the Israeli people and intimidated a newly elected prime minister into altering his lifelong stance of opposition to a Palestinian state abutting Israel’s capital city, airport, vital infrastructure, and crowded coastal strip.

If the contrast between Barack Obama’s Iranian and Israeli policies indeed stems from a flawed worldview in which aggressors like the Iranian regime and Hamas are manifesting just grievances that it is the West’s duty to mollify, then the world is in for a tough ride and the fighters against evil will keep finding themselves very much alone.

Memo to the hopeychangers: If you start with a false premise--solve that pesky Israel problem and all else will fall into place; it’s the “settlements,” stupid; I have an “in” with the Muslim world ‘cause my middle name’s Hussein--you will invariably arrive at a false conclusion, and the result may be catastrophic.

Call it the Scaramouche Doctrine.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:41 | link | comments

Sunday, 21 June 2009

The curious case of Fareed Zakaria: What is one to make of Fareed Zakaria, the pundit who, some months ago, wrote the cover story in Newsweek urging infidels to relax and learn to live with "radical Islam"? As if that weren't confounding enough, on the CNN site, Fareed has gone and unilaterally declared Mahmoud A-jad the victor in Iran's election, implicitly criticizing freedom-seeking Iranians, yearning to get out from under the mullahs' iron grip, for rejected the results.

Is Fareed A) a crypto-Islamist; B) a clueless useful idiot; or C) all of the above?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:50 | link | comments

Another jihadi in paradise?: Claudia Rosett counsels Obama to make the biggest holy rollah of them all an attractive offer:

…For an America apparently unwilling to use military force to deter Iran’s regime from its malignant and terror-based ambitions on the global stage, this rebellion is the best chance that has come along in the 30 years since the Islamic revolution to see the Iranian regime collapse. Which could be a genuine game-changer for peace and progress in the Middle East, in a way that no amount of Obama’s speechifying and respect-offering and nuclear-haggling could possibly achieve.

For such a collapse to happen would almost certainly require that Iran’s pervasive and armed security forces flip sides, and go over to the demonstrators. That is far less likely to happen as long as major powers, especially the U.S., are busy offering or showing “respect” — to borrow one of Obama’s favorite words — to the current regime.

For Obama to refer — as he did this week – to Iranian tyrant Ali Khamenei by his own preferred title of “Supreme Leader” is to reinforce the very regime that is the source of the problem. For Obama to say, as he did on Friday and again on Saturday, that “I think ultimately the Iranian people will obtain justice,” is to address a real and immensely important crisis with words out of la-la land.

This would actually be a very good time for Obama to talk about Ali Khamenei, but by way of scrapping the grotesque titles and offering Ali, with a grand gesture of American magnanimity, a small compound to which he might retire in exile, like Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Since Guantanamo is apparently out (and relocating its current inmates to Bermuda and Palau is already costing U.S. taxpayers multiple millions) – maybe someplace like Hawaii?

Hey, if it’s good enough for the Uighurs, it’s good enough for el Supremo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:30 | link | comments

A song for Father's Day: This one--"Die Gedanken Sind Frei" (Thoughts Are Free) goes out to my late father. When I was growing up, the Limeliters' version of this anti-Nazi song was one his favourites, and I'm pretty sure it's part of the reason why I'm such a jackanape to this day. I believe Pete Seeger did the translation that my dad (a physician and who had a gentle spirit, a puckish wit and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, but who, alas, also had a bum ticker, five kids to feed and who worked himself into an early grave) liked to listen to. (Here's Pete's version. And this one' s nice, too, but I don't who how sings it; it sounds a bit like that chick who sang "99 Red Balloons.") These are the stirring--and still inspiring--lyrics:

Die gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower.
Die gedanken sind frei
My thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them.
No hunter can trap them.
No man can deny
Die gedanken sind frei.
I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure.
My conscience decrees
This right I must treasure.
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator.
No man can deny
Die gedanken sind frei.
Tyrants can take me
And throw me in prison
My thoughts will burst forth
Like blossoms in season.
Foundations may crumble
And structures may tumble
But free men shall cry
Die gedanken sind frei!

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

Harpoon goes to bat for the censors (again): The Toronto Star’s resident shill for the Islamist perspective ‘splains what’s behind Ontario Tory leadership candidates treating the idea of getting rid of the “human rights” apparatus as though they were Superman and it was Kryptonite. It’s because they don’t want to get caught with their pants down (so to speak), as they did last go-round with when they glommed onto religious school funding (the issue that torpedoed former leader John Tory’s campaign). And anyway, everyone knows that having mediocre bureaucrats overseeing our thoughts and behaviour is a good thing, and that anyone who balks is a--I believe Harpoon’s derisive nouns of preference are “bigot” and “libertarian” (I wonder--does he really mean “libertine”?):

…For years, human rights agencies across Canada have been adjudicating complaints against anti-Semites, homophobes, etc. But when some Muslims cited Maclean's magazine for Islamophobic content, a storm broke out: political correctness was running amok, government censors were lurking at every corner and freedom of speech was in peril.

This is the bandwagon Hudak and Hillier are on, just as Jason Kenney and some federal Conservatives were.

There's a libertarian streak to this position ("No commission is gonna tell me how to behave"). But it is clear that Hudak and Hillier are playing the same game as Harris, who had tapped into a different sort of bigotry by demonizing minorities and those on social assistance. That Harris is Hudak's chief cheerleader completes the equation.

Such tactics can work, especially during recessions. They did for Harris. Witness also the recent wins by virulently anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim parties in the elections for the European Parliament.

But the politics of polarization, besides engendering deep divisions, can also produce unintended consequences.

Yes, things tend to get sooo messy when people are polarized. Why, just look the unintended consequences of those deep divisions in Iran. If not for those noisy reformers, think of how much calmer and more peaceful everything’d be.

One group, as we know, is especially vulnerable in such “recessionary times,” and thus keen to hold tightly to the HRC status quo:

Jewish groups have lobbied to keep the anti-hate provisions of the Criminal Code as well as the human rights codes. The first is punitive (you can go to jail for spreading hate), while the latter is remedial (getting the hate material removed from websites, etc.).

Both have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court. It said freedom of speech is not absolute. It is not a licence to spread hate, which does pose a serious threat.

That last sentence deserves a fisking all on its own. “Both have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court”: the asterisk in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the one restricting “hate speech,” came because of a ruling that occurred well before there even was an Internet. It is unlikely such a ruling would be made today; indeed, the CHRC’s own appointee, Richard Moon, called for the elimination of Section 13 because he said it was impossible to police the Internet. Mark Steyn and Macleans had hoped to get an updated ruling from the Supreme Court on the issue of “hate speech,” but, alas, the appartchiks, frantic that their the jig was up on their racket, dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress’s three “hate speech” complaints, so there was no chance for Steyn and Macleans to take the matter to a higher court. “It said freedom of speech is not absolute”: True enough, but no one ever said it was. We have legal constraints--laws protecting people from being libelled and slandered and the state from sedition, but they are adjudicated in courts of law that are presided over by judges, not judgemental bureaucrats, and are bound by such niceties as the presumption of innocence, the truth being a defence, regular rules of evidence, none of which are in effect for hearing at “rights” tribunals. “It is not a licence to spread hate…”: No, but the way free speech works, Harpoon, is that people are free to say whatever stupid, hateful things they so desire as long as they don’t fall into any criminal category, and other people, who don’t like what they’re saying, get to criticize, lambaste and lampoon it as much as they’d like by employing what Alan Borovoy calls “effective invective.” It’s usually only in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia that effective invective is forbidden. “…which does pose a serious threat”: It is abundantly clear that the far more serious threat is posed by those who would jettison free speech in the misguided belief that it protects them from “hatred”; those who look to the state to smooth out all our rough edges, at least the superficial ones, so that everyone is forced to sing from the same hymnal (a good working definition of totalitarianism, no?).

Ah, but all is not lost, according to Harpoon, since the federal Tories (an extremely “vulnerable” group itself) seem have lost the will to fight:

Stephen Harper has said he will not axe the anti-hate provision of the federal human rights code. So, Kenney et al. have quietly fallen in line. Elliott, whose husband Jim Flaherty is a Harper minister, understands. So does Klees.

Hence their dire warnings against the Hudak-Hillier jihad on the Human Rights Tribunal, which risks offending both Jewish and Muslim groups, as well as those who want to protect such vulnerable groups as gays from hate.

Where else but in a democracy would the interests of such seemingly disparate groups merge?

Where, indeed? Too bad some of these “gays” are busy this weekend siding with one vulnerable group (the Muslims) against another vulnerable group (the Jews) as they take the popular blood libel about the world’s sole sovereign Jewish state to Toronto’s Pride Parade.

So much for solidarity among the “vulnerable,” eh?

In his wrap up, Harpoon seems to be channelling zany CHRC Czarina Jen Lynch. Like her, he ventures it’s in our best interest to continue to “draw the line on freedom of speech vs. hate.” Then, veering into Frank Dimant territory, he insists we can find a way to “tinker with the rules of human rights agencies to make them less onerous on the defendants” in a way that would “end the inconsistencies between the federal and various provincial bodies.” Of course, Frank wants to end the inconsistencies so that ne’ermore would the apparatchiks be able to weigh in on “nuisance suits” by Islamists whilst continuing to fend off the looming spectre of Nazis in, say, Flin Flon, something which would unlikely find favour with Harpoon. But no matter. At the end of the day they’re both on the same page--the page that wants retain to our crappy “human rights” system--because, as Harpoon writes,

our common good rests in ensuring an equal application of the law for one and all. Otherwise, we get the tyranny of the bigoted, the loudest or the most powerful.

“Bigots”? “Loudmouths”? Oh, you mean the people who scream like the dickens when they see their most valuable freedom being trashed by totalitarian buffoons who think they know what’s best for us? They're more powerful that a vast state bureacracy? Oh dear, 'tis to laugh. And at end of the day, that's exactly what I, as a lover of free speech, choose to do--to act like a jackanape and laugh at the buffoons. Because in the face-off between jackanapes and buffoons, it's the jackanapes who are on the side of the angels.

Update: My jackanapish letter:

The ability to pay lip service to free speech while searching for that ever-elusive (elusive because it doesn’t exist) “balance” between free speech and “hate speech”? Check. The inclination to dismiss all those who refuse to fall in line with state censorship as “bullies,” “libertarians,” “bigots” and loudmouths? Check. A blind spot about the inherent inequities built into our vast “human rights” system, the ones the “bullies,””libertarians,” “bigots” and “loudmouths” keep on and on about? Check.

No doubt about it. Haroon Siddiqui has the perfect credentials to become the next head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:28 | link | comments (4)

Saturday, 20 June 2009

Blocking access to the undesireable on the 'Net: Chinese censors show Canadian censors how it's done.

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

Proud to politicize Pride: This weekend’s the one when a Palestinian “activist” who wants “justice” for Gaza will sit at the head of the Pride Parade, an anomaly (there’s rather a harsh “justice” meted out to the differently-sexual in Hamasistan) that’s lost on organizers. Here’s the pitch on their official site:

As part of Toronto’s 29th Annual Pride Week celebration, the LGBTTIQQ2S communities, families and friends will unveil this year’s Pride Parade on Sunday June 28th at 2 pm. It will shine with all colours of the rainbow and showcase the wonders of our heritage as one community.

Enjoy what Pride Week has to offer and marvel as downtown Toronto comes to life in a spectacular pride parade that is uniquely Torontonian.

Join our International Grand Marshal, Victor Juliet Mukasa, Parade Grand Marshal, El-Farouk Khaki and Honoured Group, AIDS Committee of Toronto, as they guide the LGBTTIQQ2S communities through our amazing stories of equality, human rights, respect, diversity, honour, love and acceptance. Discover your dreams coming true in a Pride experience that is as big as your heart and courage.

This year, we will celebrate our new theme "CAN'T STOP: WON'T STOP" by elevating the Pride Parade. It will be broadcast LIVE for the first time on CP24…

"CAN'T STOP: WON'T STOP"--funny, that also describes the Muslims’ efforts to get rid of the Zionist entity (which, come to think of it, is like the LGBTTIQQ2S--sorry, you lost me after the second “T”--of the Middle East).

Update: Okay, here's the scoop. LGBTTIQQ2S means "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgendered, Intersexual, Queer, Questioning, 2-Spirited (First Nations LGBT...s).

Anyone else think the acronym's getting a tad unwieldy?

Update: Why are Aboriginals the only group with their own designition? How 'bout one for members of my tribe--Jew-Spirited?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments (5)

“Human rights” uber alles: The highest court in the land genuflects to the primacy of “human rights” codes--a revoltin’ development that, quel surprise, finds great favour with Commissar Babs Hall (my bolds):

Adjudication Boards Build Human Rights into Decisions

For immediate publication

June 18, 2009
Toronto - Recent settlements of complaints with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing show an emerging commitment to human rights, the Ontario Human Rights Commission reports. The settlements follow the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Tranchemontagne v. the Ministry of Community and Social Services. In that decision, the Court told the Social Benefits Tribunal to apply the Code to resolve the issue before it. The Supreme Court stressed the primacy of the Code over other Ontario laws, unless the legislation governing the body expressly states that the Code will not prevail.

In the case of Giresh Patel v. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, Mr. Patel, a Hindu, was deemed by a Board adjudicator to have refused suitable work offered by his employer, even though this work involved food handling processes that were contrary to his religious beliefs. After Mr Patel filed a human rights complaint against the ruling, the Board agreed to work with the OHRC to provide direction to its decision-makers, so that human rights considerations are taken into account when decisions are made on claims before the Board.

The case of Carlo v. the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing involved a complaint by Mr. Carlo that the services of the Landlord and Tenant Board were not accessible to him. He had requested a number of accommodations based on disability such as producing documents in large print. As part of a settlement, the Board has agreed to review its procedures for receiving, processing and hearing applications, as well as for issuing decisions and releasing records, to make sure all of these steps are consistent with the Human Rights Code.

“I am pleased to see Boards apply the Code to their work,” said Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall. “All Boards have a responsibility to apply human rights in their decisions. We will continue to work in partnership with Boards and other Ontario Government agencies to help them avoid future human rights complaints; by working together, we can better serve all Ontarians.”

We can better subjugate Ontarians, more like.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:07 | link | comments

Losing his grip?: The Grand Supreme Biggest Goshdarn Holy Rollah in the Whole Entire Glorious Islamic Republic seems to have misplaced his mojo. Only one thing to do--spin like mad and blame your troubles on nefarious outsiders. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN - Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said all four presidential candidates belong to the Islamic system and thus all pursue their complaints through legal channels.

He made the remarks in his sermons delivered at Friday prayers in Tehran.

The Leader stated that the presidential election’s ‘unprecedented’ turnout of almost 85 percent hit the enemy like a ‘political earthquake’ and became a cause for a ‘real celebration’ for the friends of the country.

Ayatollah Khamenei said the high turnout in the election, in which about 40 million Iranians cast ballots, was a great manifestation of the people’s solidarity with the Islamic establishment.

He went on to say that the June 12 presidential election showed that the Iranian nation has a ‘common sense of responsibility’ to determine the destiny of the country.

All those who took part in the election proved their ‘political consciousness and commitment’ to the Islamic establishment to the entire world, he added.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will by no means betray the votes of the nation,” he asserted.

However, Ayatollah Khamenei maintained that the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing the election, would look into the complaints of the candidates who are unhappy about the election results.

The Leader stated that the establishment would never give in to illegal demands and urged all presidential candidates to pursue their complaints through legal channels. He also called on the people to halt the illegal street demonstrations over the election results.

Following the announcement of the outcome of the election, supporters of the defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi -- who has rejected the election results -- took to the streets of Tehran and other cities in daily rallies.

“It must be determined at the ballot box what the people want and what they don't want, not in the streets,” he said.

The Leader also urged all presidential candidates to be vigilant in the face of enemy plots to sow the seeds of discord in the nation…

You reap what you sow, rollah, and it looks like you may be about to reap a whirlwind (depending on your ability to whup folks back into line, that is).

Update: Betcha didn't know the Ayatollah was poet (much more of a Longfellow than, say, that pipsqueak Ahmadinejad):

Said the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei,

“I’m tired of hearing y’all complenei.
But if worse come to worst
You know who to curse?

The Zionists, Bush and Dick Cheney.”

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

No booze, no swearing, no skin, no fun: Skanky celebrity Paris Hilton has found a new venue for her BFF “reality” show:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Paris Hilton said she studied the culture of Dubai and promised the Middle East version of her reality show will steer clear of the drinking and the swearing it had in Los Angeles and London.

The remarks came as Hilton, 28, launched the Mideast edition of her "Paris Hilton's My New BFF" series in Dubai, a glitzy sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates. BFF stands for best friends forever.

"I wanted to know everything about this place first because I wanted to make sure everything was OK," the hotel heiress was quoted as saying by The National newspaper Thursday. "I just want to respect everyone here."

The fame-loving Hilton promised to dress conservatively and said her Dubai-based MTV series will be open to women only. There will be no finger pointing and laughing at anybody, the show's producers said.

"I expect to learn a lot here. It's a completely different world," Hilton also said.

Twenty-two contestants will try their best to become Hilton's new BFF in the 20 days she will spend in the Emirates. No air date has yet been set for the Mideast show.

When not filming her reality show, intended for broadcast throughout the Arab region, Hilton will explore the desert, go camel riding, get a henna tattoo and go skiing on Dubai's famed artificial ski slope inside a shopping mall.

The show's producer Michael Hirschorn said that the filming will last some three weeks, while the finale will be filmed in Los Angeles. The plan is to build "My New BFF" into a global franchise, with Hilton searching for BFFs around the world.

Hilton previously filmed two seasons in Los Angeles for MTV and one in London for British television.

Contestants were competing fiercely for the title in the U.K. and the U.S. versions of the show. They drank alcohol and used foul language and tactics to earn it — something producers said will not be allowed in Dubai.

Let me guess--in one episode they all try on burkas and get silly after drinking too many Virgin Marys. Sounds like a hoot 'n' a half.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:19 | link | comments

Friday, 19 June 2009

A little Coward for the Commissars: This one goes out to Jen Lynch and all the federal, provincial and territorial apparatchiks nation-wide:

In wintery climes there are certain times of day

All the censors conspire to get the bloggers to retire.

It’s one of those tricks that the apparatchiks hurray

Because the light is too revealing
And you’ll find what they’re concealing is quite dire.

Papalaka-papalaka-papalaka-boo. (Repeat)

Allahakbar Allahakbar Allahakbur-doo. (Repeat)

The censors fume that we won’t heed their advice

Because we’re obviously, definitely not nice.

Leftists and Islamists don’t watch you to have free speech.

The mullahs and Ayatollahs want to stop it holus-bolus.

Hamas and the Taliban say back-talk all at once must cease.

Such freedom, sez those huffers, 's for kafirs.

In Saskatchewan it would make you yawn to hear Basement Nazis blither.

And off in B.C., between you and me,
Some 'roos have been known to dither.

Cuz freedom is dangerous, and they practice what they preach.

And leftists and Islamists don’t want you to have free speech.

It’s such a surprise for Canadian eyes to see

That there’s an asterisk in their Charter--

You’d have thought that they’d be smarter.

But Trudeaupia doesn’t come cheaply, you must agree.

And the hoi polloi are used to being scolded by “elites” who disagree.
Bolyboly-bolyboly-bolyboly-baa. (Repeat)
Habaninny-habaninny-habaninny-haa. (Repeat)

It seems quite surreal our Achilles’ Heel’s that we’re mild.

But then how else could you get treated like a child?

Leftists and Islamists don’t want you to have free speech.

The UN, it must be stated, feels such freedom’s overrated.

The OIC says, “Fiddle-dee-dee, sharia will fill the breech.”

But then its real ambition’s submission.

In the desert sands you hear strong commands that are often lobbed and flung.

And in Canada you can find a law that can make one hold one's tongue.

For Jen Lynch
To give an inch

Is seldom, if ever, in reach.

Since leftists and Islamists

Don’t what you to have

Say you shouldn’t have

Don’t want you to have free speech!

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:25 | link | comments

Now playing:

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

Those "settlers" have got to go: No, not the Jewish ones.

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

Obama AWOL: Iran abuzz?/What's Obama have to say?/Rien/Nada/He's M.I.A.

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

Nubs and contexts and matrixes, oh my: Did you hear Jennifer Lynch on the Oakley Show? As she did yesterday on TV with CTV’s Tom Clark, our very own fair-haired Czarina endeavoured mightily to put things “in context.” You see, once everything has been properly “contextualized,” thinks Jen, all will be copacetic.

She began with a spiel about the Human Rights Act, how it’s 40 years old, and all the wonderful stuff it’s supposed to do, i.e. create a perfect society, free from discrimination and hatred, with full equality for all. And, hey, who could possibly disagree with that, asks Jen? (Who? Well, me, and practically everyone else who knows that such social tinkering--an endless work in progress--comes the cost of our most crucial freedom Ms. Lynch.)

Jen then resorted to, yes, that all-important “context” again. The CHRC isn’t judge, jury and all of that regular criminal court stuff. In fact, at one point Jen, using the same “tone” often employed by Ontario Chief Commissar Barbara Hall (why do these chicks all seem to come from the same mould?) soundly scolded John for daring to use “criminal” lingo in reference to what her side of our quasi-semi-ersatz-faux judiciary does. The CHRC is on the intake end of complaints. It assesses them and tries to settle the ones it considers legit. It’s only when the shakedown, er, mediation fails that it’s then passed on to the Tribunal--a COMPLETELY SEPARATE BODY, emphasizes Jen--which then does through all quasi-semi etc. legal motions. (Were I the head of the Tribunal I’d be pretty p.o.’d, since Jen made it sound as though it does all the dirty work while the Commission’s hands remain pure and unsullied.)

So you see, it’s a mistake to think of the Commission as doing anything mean and nasty, since it’s simply in the business of taking stuff in and passing it on.

But what about the big chill so many are feeling, asked Oakley, especially since now the CHRC is going to be overseeing “hate” on the Internet. How are we supposed to define such “hate”?

“Well, that’s the nub of it, isn’t it John?” responded Jen. And what a tricky little nubbins it is, since Canada’s censorship provision, Section 13, refers to speech that “is likely” to lead to something bad happening to a particular group, not something bad that has actually occurred. And that fuzzy wording means the defendant--ooops, there’s that unacceptable “criminal” lingo again--the person being complained about is going to be guilty, sorry, going to be in the wrong no matter what.

A mere bagatelle, says Jen. And, BTW, did you know that the CHRC is a COMPLETELY SEPARATE BODY from the CHRT?

But back to the definition of “hate.” The hate at issue here is only of the most “ardent and extreme nature,” the type that undermines the “dignity and self-worth” of vulnerable victim groups. As such, claims Jen, it has “a very narrow definition.” (Narrow? Hah, that’s a laugh. It’s so “narrow” you could drive a HumVee through it. It’s so “narrow” you could form a human chain of every censor in Canada, and still not be able to span it. It’s so “narrow” that…okay, I’ll stop now.) What journalists ought to focus on are the hundreds of complaints that are settled within the CHRC precincts and don’t get passed on to the Tribnal.

Did she mention that it’s a COMPLETELY SEPARATE BODY?

Oakley took the plunge and asked her about Fr. Alphonse de Valk, the Catholic priest who got in deep “human rights” doo doo because of his comments about homosexuality. Isn’t he entitled to his opinon, and why is he out of pocket for his all his legal expenses while the complainant gets a free ride?

Well, answered Jen, completely changing the subject, in the balanced, unbiased and comprehensive analysis we delivered to the House of Commons this week, we agreed that people are free to express an opinion, and that no one has a “right” not to have hurt feelings. And despite all our best efforts to make the system “modern and effective” (about as “modern” as Cold War-era Russia; about as “effective” as any totalitarian body), our detractors still try to undermine us at every opportunity.

What about Dean Steacy, asked Oakley, the CHRC official who rebuked “freedom of speech” as an “American idea”?

Jen had a ready, though hair-splitting and ridiculous answer for that one. Steacy didn’t mean that here in Canada we don’t believe in free speech. All he meant by that was that the Americans call it “free speech” while Canadian parlance is “free expression.” Same diff, right? (Riiiiiight!) To further “clarify” (bafflegab alert): Canadians have a “matrix of interdependent” something or others that allow us to “strike a balance” between some more mumbo-jumbo, which is a much more “modern and effective” way to do things, don’t you know? It’s only that those “detractors” (Mark Steyn; Ezra Levant; carping bloggers) have blown everything out of proportion, thereby causing a great “furor” to erupt. Those trouble-makers--here, let me read you a particularly nasty quote by Steyn about “pedophiles”--are looking to “undermine” an essentially sound and balanced and modern and effective system: they’re the ones who are doing the real harm.

And finally--my favourite part of the interview. The part where Jen, nose growing to Pinnochioesque lengths, insists that the system “works”. As evidence (there I go again) she says that three--count ‘em, three--“human rights” bodies considered but ultimately dismissed the hate speech complaint brought against Rogers/Macleans/Steyn.

Bollocks on toast with a parsley garnish! The reason the B.C. ‘roos dismissed it was because the media glare made their proceedings look ridiculous. The reason Babsy Hall, head of the Ontario wing of the apparatchiks, dismissed it was because of the unflattering spotlight that had been shined in B.C. (and even though she insisted the complaint was out of her “jurisdiction,” she still deigned to offer a drive-by verdict--guilty as charged). And the CHRC dismissed it--after the OHRC did--for exactly the same reason.

Funny how Jen’s ability to “contextualize” things seems to come and go, depending on what it is that needs to be put into “context”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:30 | link | comments (6)

Heads-up: CHRC Czarina Jennifer Lynch will be defending her phony baloney job on the John Oakley Show at 7:70 EST. I'll be taking notes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:11 | link | comments

Thursday, 18 June 2009

Who’s chillin’ now?: Jennifer Lynch and her ilk don’t like it when Canadians dare to criticize state censorship. She (or one of her communications flaks) has even come up with a name for it: “reverse chill.”

It occurs to me that there’s another group that’s frequently accused of “reverse chill”--Jews who fight back against lies/blood libels about Israel (that it practises apartheid; that Israelis are like Nazis) purveyed by the likes of the Canadian Arab Federation and George Galloway.

You see, leftists and Islamists hate it when people don’t shut up and submit to their bullying (for the greater good, of course), as so many are inclined to do (the path of least resistence tending to be the most well-trodden).

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

Barack…Chamberlain?: Jonathan Rosenbaum remarks on the eery similarity between Obama and Neville Chamberlain, two men incapable of perceiving genuine evil, even when it's right in from them:

…The parallels between today and the earlier period are eerie. Chamberlain, like President Obama today, enjoyed an overwhelming majority in Parliament. His party whips enforced party discipline with an iron hand — think Rahm Emanuel — and backbenchers who stepped out of line put their political futures on the line…

…Chamberlain never read Mein Kampf, in which Hitler laid out in startling fashion both his future plans for the Jews and for German conquest. Far from viewing Hitler as an evil man, Chamberlain believed him to be a "gentleman," with whom he could do business. He was more than once shocked to find that Hitler had lied to him, even though that too was foreshadowed in Mein Kampf, Said future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, "He didn't believe people existed [who would] say one thing and do another. …It was pathetic, really."

Chamberlain, according to Olsen, ''could never bring himself to believe that [Hitler and Mussolini] wanted to go to war. Clinging to the security of his ignorance, he created a peace-loving image of them that defied reality." For a decade, the English and French did nothing in response to fascist aggression in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and precious little even in the wake of the German invasion of Poland.

France and England thereby encouraged Hitler to believe they were too weak to prevail, a judgment in which he was very nearly right. That should have taught us — but did not — that those who hope to avoid war via appeasement inevitably end up fighting later on worse terms.

At no point, did Chamberlain recognize that Hitler constituted a mortal threat to Western civilization. As a consequence, he displayed far more ruthlessness fighting those within his own party who dared challenge his policies than he did in fighting Hitler.

The inability to recognize Hitler as evil incarnate is the most frightening parallel to today. President Ronald Reagan was reviled by Western elites for calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, as was President George W. Bush for grouping Iran, North Korea, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq together as the Axis of Evil.

The West still remains incapable of acknowledging evil or giving credence to the pronouncements of evil men. Ayatollah Khomeini long ago made clear that he was prepared to see Iran go up "in flames," if the worldwide rule of Islam were thereby furthered. Mutual assured destruction, says Bernard Lewis, the greatest living authority on Islam, is for Ahmadinejad, "not a deterrent but an incentive." Surveying the scene in Beslan, where Chenyan Muslims killed nearly 300 Russian schoolchildren, one of the speakers on The Third Jihad puts the point succinctly: Why should those who don't hesitate to send out their own children to be killed hesitate to kill other peoples' children?

Yet the highest wisdom in the West today is to not take seriously the threats of Ahmadinejad or the speculations of the Iranian leadership about the mathematics of a nuclear exchange with Israel. They are not madmen, we are constantly told.

President Obama has no taste for confrontation with radical Islam (only with Israel). He cannot even admit that it exists. Evil, it seems, is one of the few words that does not come trippingly off his tongue.

How can there be “evil” when everything is, you know, relative?

BarackChamberlain-1.jpg image by ColonialMarine

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:06 | link | comments

Totalitarian bafflegab: Iran's democratic election presents challenge to the West--Ahmadinejad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:13 | link | comments

Tropical and topical: Get one now before they're gone (the Ts, not the Uighurs):

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:36 | link | comments

Quote of the day: “It’s only a simple, uncomplicated administrative process”--CHRC Commissar-in-Chief Jennifer Lynch explaining her racket’s M.O. to somewhat testy CTV News Channel interviewer Tom Clark.

Notice how Jen endeavours to downplay her extraordinary power in a desperate bid to keep from losing it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:50 | link | comments

"A totalitarianism of half-wits": Slam-dunk, Mark Steyn.

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

That Barack Obama--you know he wouldn't harm a fly: Maybe. And then again, maybe not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:13 | link | comments (2)

“We’re Number One!”: It may not lead the way in literacy rates or number of Nobel Prize winners perhaps, but at least the Muslim world is supreme at something:

(IsraelNN.com) Muslim countries in the Middle East and north-central Africa lead the world in human trafficking, according to a new U.S. State Department report. Of the 17 countries that were given the "Tier 3" listing reserved for the worst offenders, nine were Muslim countries or countries with a large Muslim population from these two regions. Tier 3 countries are defined as those “whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards" of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and "are not making significant efforts to do so.”

The Middle Eastern countries with Tier 3 status are Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The north-central African countries are Mauritania, Chad, Sudan, Niger and Eritrea, all of which have very large Muslim populations.

Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Lebanon are on the Tier 2 Watchlist – one step above Tier 3.

The data in the report indicates that Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa are continuing their centuries-old practice of human trafficking. Historians estimate that between 9 and 14 million black Africans were brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade and between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert between the Muslim conquests in the 7th century and 1900…

Never mind all that. Let’s talk about that really pressing problem--the Palestinians:

…U.S. President Barack Obama, himself a descendant of black Africans, did not mention the subject of Muslim human trafficking in his recent speech to the Arab world in Cairo. He did mention, however, that “for centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation,” but did so in the context of talking about Palestinian suffering.

Yes, what are centuries of slaves being lashed and humiliated compared to what the Palestinians have had to endure at the hands of nasty “Zionists”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:52 | link | comments (2)

Don’t know much about history: Bruce Thornton writes that what Obama doesn’t know about history could, well, fill volumes:

Barack Obama, as Victor Hanson recently documented, may be our most historically challenged president ever. Some might think that the inaccuracies Hanson identifies are no big deal, but there are several reasons to be troubled by such ignorance.

First there’s the double standard of a mainstream media that for eight years scorned George Bush as a syntactically challenged ignoramus, and now gush over a president touted as an eloquent intellectual. Of course, the media have to ignore the fact that Obama’s eloquence is dependent on the teleprompter, or that he refuses to publicize his college transcripts, not to mention the numerous errors of fact evident both in his campaign and presidential speeches. Their assertions of his brilliance, despite gaffes such as those on display in Cairo, are like their assertions of Bush’s stupidity: wish-fulfilling myths serving partisan ends.

But more important is the danger to our foreign policy that such an ignorance of history represents. Particularly in our fight against radical Islam, history supposedly provides the basis of Muslim grievances against the West, especially the United States. Colonial occupation, imperialist aggression, the Western imposition of Israel on the “Palestinian homeland” in order to atone for the Holocaust––these sins of the West against the House of Islam are constantly put forth as rationalizations and justifications for violence against Western interests.

It isn’t just that he’s ignorant about history. It’s his whole flipping Weltanshauung--his world view which skews everything and makes up look like down and day look like night. You can read all the history you can get your hands on, but if you’re only reading stuff by people who see things exactly like you do, you’re going to remain bone ignorant.

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

Shameless equation: In his latest sage observations, noted shill for Islam Harpoon Siddiqui offers a breathtaking display of (im)moral relativism:

…However, Ayatollah Syed Khamenei, the supreme leader, retains his veto on all key policies. He reflects the national consensus on the nuclear issue and also Israel. He considers Hamas and Hezbollah as legitimate forces battling Israeli occupation/invasions/oppression. He'll bend only when he thinks Israel has done right by the Palestinians.

If Ahmadinejad would rather talk about Israel than his domestic political and economic problems, Benjamin Netanyahu would rather talk about Iran than Palestine.

But the Israeli prime minister's rhetoric won't budge Iran. It's also not likely to move Barack Obama off his goal of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict…

My response:

Haroon Siddiqui often says things that make my gorge rise, but his sentence linking Mahmoud Ahmadinehad and Binyamin Netanyahu (the former, writes Siddiqui, “would rather talk about Israel and his domestic political and economic problems” while the latter “would rather talk about Iran that Palestine”) marks a new low--or should that be a high?--in gorge elevation.

Surely Siddiqui doesn’t mean to equate Netanyahu, the leader of the free, democratic Jewish state who has legitimate concerns about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons (the reason he isn’t as focused on "Palestine" as Siddiqui would like), with Ahmadinejad, the leader who has vowed to wipe the Jews off the map, and frontman for a bunch of totalitarian theocrats who just rigged an election?

And if he does--then shame on him.

Harpoon is one of those dapper Islamists we have here in the West who wants you to think Israel is the alpha and the omega of the Mideast’s problems. In that way at least, he’s not unlike those thugs in Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments

It stinks: Every couple of years during the summer, when it's hot and sticky and garbage left on city streets is apt to rot and supperate quickly, resulting in a foul sight and stench that makes both residents and visitors gag, city workers are pushed by their union to go on strike.

A pox on ye all and your greedy union!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:18 | link | comments (1)

Spilling the beans: Oops! One sheepish diplomat has some ‘splaining to do. From the National Post:

Iran's envoy to the UN atomic watchdog caused a buzz yesterday when he apparently misspoke and said his country had the right to a nuclear weapon. After saying as usual Iran was only pursuing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, pictured, said, "The whole Iranian nation are united ... on [the] inalienable right of [having a] nuclear weapon." Asked later to clarify, Mr. Soltanieh insisted he had not meant to say a nuclear weapon but to talk of nuclear services.

Back to the salt mines for some taqiyaah lessons, Mr. Soltanieh.

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

A reminder: One day to go before "motime" goes "slinder." As of tomorrow, my new address is: www.scaramouche.us.splinder.com

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:04 | link | comments (2)

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Axis of irony: Just when you think things in the Mideast can’t get any loopier, they go right ahead and do exactly that. Here Melanie Phillips comments on a Jerusalem Post article about Hamas coming to the aid of its Iranian sponsors, who seem to be going through a bit of turbulence at the moment:

Yesterday, there were suggestions that Hezbollah forces were being brought into Iran to help put down the revolt against the regime. Today, as reports seep out of the brutality being meted out to the protesters – the anonymous post here at 6.03 pm is particularly affecting – which suggest that the casualty toll is far higher than has so far been claimed, the Jerusalem Post reports that Palestinian Hamas thugs have been imported into Iran to crush the uprising:

On Tuesday two protesters told The Jerusalem Post that Palestinian Hamas members are helping the Iranian authorities crush street protests in support of Mousavi... ‘The most important thing that I believe people outside of Iran should be aware of,’ the young man went on, ‘is the participation of Palestinian forces in these riots.’

Another protester, who spoke as he carried a kitchen knife in one hand and a stone in the other, also cited the presence of Hamas in Teheran. On Monday, he said, ‘my brother had his ribs beaten in by those Palestinian animals. Taking our people's money is not enough, they are thirsty for our blood too.’

It was ironic, this man said, that the victorious Ahmadinejad ‘tells us to pray for the young Palestinians, suffering at the hands of Israel.’ His hope, he added, was that Israel would ‘come to its senses’ and ruthlessly deal with the Palestinians. When asked if these militia fighters could have been mistaken for Lebanese Shi'ites, sent by Hizbullah, he rejected the idea. ‘Ask anyone, they will tell you the same thing. They [Palestinian extremists] are out beating Iranians in the streets… The more we gave this arrogant race, the more they want… [But] we will not let them push us around in our own country.’

It would indeed be ironic if, while Obama is putting the thumbscrews on Israel to facilitate a Palestinian state as a precondition for America getting tough with Iran, the Palestinians are being used to keep the Iranian regime in power…

An “irony” that will no doubt be lost on the clueless hopeychanger.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:27 | link | comments (2)

Uighur spin: They’re really, really nice, hard-done-by victims, those Uighurs. Or so might one conclude upon reading the first nine paragraphs of this AFP story:

BEIJING (AFP) - - China on Thursday called on the United States to hand over a group of ethnic Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay rather than send them to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, which has offered to resettle them.

The strong reaction from Beijing, which says the 17 Uighurs are members of an Islamic insurgent group operating in far western China, came one day after Palau said it had agreed to take them in temporarily.

The United States should "stop handing over terrorist suspects to any third country," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, adding the Uighurs should be sent back to China "at an early date."

"China urges the US to implement the UN Security Council's relevant resolutions and its international obligations on counter-terrorism," he said.

"China also opposes any third country taking these terrorist suspects."

The detainees were part of a group of 22 Uighurs living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in their home region of Xinjiang in western China.

The United States cleared the men of wrongdoing four years ago but they remained at the controversial US-run prison camp in Cuba due to fears they would be tortured if handed to China.

Five of the Uighurs have been resettled in Albania, which was reluctant to accept any more after angering Beijing. The United States tried in vain to get Canada, Australia and Germany to take in some of the remaining 17 Uighurs.

The “money” paragraph, the one which might persuade you that the Uighurs aren’t quite so sweet and cuddly:

Qin said the Uighur detainees were "members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement" -- a group listed by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation.

Oh, so you mean they’re a bunch of--I believe the word for their sort is--jihadis?

Bury the lede much, AFP?

Update: Earlier this afternoon on CNN, a Republican senator whose name I didn't catch referred to the Gitmo Uighurs' predicament as "Margauighurville." I believe the chorus to that song goes

Wastin’ away again in Margauighurville.

Searchin’ for my lost copy of the Koran.

Some people claim that George Bush is to blame.

But I know it’s the jihad's fault.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:21 | link | comments (1)

History repeats (in an entirely bathetic and ridiculous way): Two quotes, one from the past; one from just the other day. The first--that now familiar line uttered by President Kennedy in his Inaugural Address, stirring words that resounded with a generation and inspired such efforts as the Peace Corps. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” said Kennedy. “Ask what you can do for your country.”

And now the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. The other day, in a bid to get taxpayers to back his ridiculously pricey early education program, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty could actually be heard to say,“"Ask not what four-and five-year-olds can do for you, but ask what together you can do for four-and five-year-olds."

Were I the premier, (which, thankfully, I am not) I would fire the lazy speechwriter who thought this occasion as good a time as any to rip off Kennedy’s familiar trope.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:07 | link | comments

Not exactly something to be proud of: Reading Kady O’Malley’s live blogging of the House of Commons hearings into the CHRC yesterday, I learned an intriguing fact. As part of its bona fides, the CHRC proudly touts its “A” rating from--wait for it--the UN Human Rights Council. Yes, folks, Jen Lynch and her coterie of apparatchiks are actually under the impression that getting the seal of approval from the perma-Durban, an outfit in the grip of a bunch of Israel-loathing bounders and rats, is a good thing, a sign of what an A-1, first rate, high class racket they’re running.

Poor Jen. Doesn’t she realize that getting a thumbs up from the UNHRC is rather like a doctor getting an endorsement from Josef Mengele?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments (5)

Time to put that figment to bed: Way back when, Anwar Sadat, sporting a nifty swastika tie, came to Israel to trade land for “peace.” But well before that, madmen, Americans and the UN have chased that same “land for peace” chimera, as they continue do to this day, even as the amount of land available for trading grows smaller and smaller. George Jonas explains why “land for peace” is, was, and shall remain a fantasy:

…Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon's response to the UN partition plan creating side-by-side Jewish and Arab states was what UN general secretary Trygve Lie called the first aggressive war since the Second World War. To everyone's surprise, fledgling Israel fought five Arab armies to a standstill. At the conclusion of the hostilities, the Jewish state was in possession of Gaza as well as the Sinai. The Armistice Agreement of 1949 returned those territories to Egypt. Giving land for peace (or its illusion) was what Israel did long before the phrase was invented.

Unfortunately, it never got peace for land.

Chapter One of the Zionist saga has Jews going to their forefathers' home to offer gold to its Turkish title-holders and Arab inhabitants for desert sand. They irrigate it with sweat, turn it into arable land and defend it with blood against those they had given gold for it. In Chapter Two, Israelis offer to trade the land they had developed with their sweat from the sand for which they had paid gold to those who accuse them of having stolen it, in order to obtain peace from their accusers against whom they had defended with blood what they had bought from them with gold.

As Chapter Three begins, Israel's friends advise Jews to keep offering land they bought with gold, developed with sweat and defended with blood in case it brings a promise of peace...This is where we are. Maybe it's time to turn the page.

I’d say “peace talks” could benefit from a period of benign neglect, wouldn’t you? In the meantime, the world might want to figure out what to do about Iran, among other far more pressing and more immediately “solvable” problems.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Museum of Human Rights accused of, er, treading on human rights: For obvious reasons, I got a chuckle or two out of this story on the Ceeb site which recounts how the Canadian Mausoleum for Human Rights is built smack over the remains of an unexcavated native settlement:

A retired Manitoba archeologist is accusing the builders of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights of mistreating First Nations heritage.

Leigh Syms, former curator of archeology for the Manitoba Museum, said the national museum is being constructed on one of the richest sites in the province for aboriginal artifacts. Although the museum funded an excavation of the site last summer, Syms said it didn't go far enough.

He said only two per cent of the artifacts buried at the site were recovered because the museum won't foot the bill for a larger dig to retrieve and preserve the remains of aboriginal settlements that date back thousands of years.

Part of the reason for the shortcuts is that Manitoba has one of the weakest heritage regulation bodies in Canada, Syms suggested.

"So, [museum officials] were left up to their own goodwill and they chose to ignore it totally. I just find it so ironic that human rights museum would mistreat first nations heritage that way," he said.

"They did provide money for good excavation for that two per cent but they did not provide money for collections management. [The artifacts were] supposed to go to the Manitoba Museum and as soon as they found there were costs involved they cancelled that.

"So right now they have this small but important collection sitting unnumbered in bags being stored in the basement of some government warehouse."…

You would think that people who are so high on “human rights” would have considered whether this was really the best spot for their white elephant of a museum before they went ahead and built the sucker.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:17 | link | comments (3)

Jenny preaches to the choir: I'm trying to finish a big writing assignment (paid work), so blogging will likely be light for the next few days. I don't have time to analyze the speech CHRC Czarina/Commissar (take your pick) Jennifer Lynch gave to fellow members of the grievance industry--and anyway, BCF and Mark Steyn have already done an estimable job of taking it apart--so here's my contribution:

A bold Commissar named Jen Lynch

Was beginning to feel the pynch.

So she let out a screech

And gave a big speech.

Is she giving up ground? Not an ynch.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:14 | link | comments

Carter, ferklempt: Jimmy Carter, that sanctimonious old gasbag, was so overcome during a visit to Gaza that he had a hard time holding back the tears. Here’s the Beeb on the near-lachrymosity--read it and weep (or barf):

Former US President Jimmy Carter has said he had to "hold back tears" while viewing destruction on a visit to Gaza.

He is due to meet leaders from Hamas, which controls Gaza but is considered a terrorist group by western countries.

The veteran politician is expected to hand over a letter for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from his family.

He condemned "deliberate" destruction in Israel's January offensive, but also expressed sadness over Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

The former US president, who brokered the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace deal, has long advocated engagement with the militant Hamas movement as crucial for progress on peace.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Gaza says he is one of the highest profile figures to visit Gaza for years.

While Mr Carter is not visiting in an official capacity, many in Gaza hope he has the ear of US President Barack Obama, our correspondent says.

Visiting the American School in Gaza, damaged in Israel's three-week operation, Mr Carter said "it's very distressing to me".

He said the school had been "deliberately destroyed by bombs from F-16s made in my country and delivered to the Israelis".

"It's not good to see this destruction, but it's also not good, when I go to Sderot, to see rockets falling on Israelis," he said, in reference to an Israeli town that is a frequent target of rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

"The only way to avoid this tragedy happening again is to have genuine peace agreed between the Palestinians and Israel," he said...

Here’s a shot of Carter in happier times, after he helped “scrutinize” the election that brought Hamas to power. (Carter’s the one between the "M" and the "A"):

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments (2)

Monday, 15 June 2009

Memo to Obama-besotted American Jews: He's just not that into you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:12 | link | comments

Clueless femmes out to lunch and on the wrong side of history (to mix a metaphor): Contentions’ Abe Greenwald comments on the affection felt by CODEPINK moonbat chicks for a recently "re-elected" height-challenged jihadist:

When we last checked in with Codepink, the group was swooning over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president was in New York to speak at the UN, and the “women for peace” organization got an audience with him in order to condemn American aggression and to praise Iranian goodwill. A convivial time was had by all:

The CODEPINK women proposed inviting American and Iranian artists to build a “peace park” in Tehran, a memorial dedicated to people-to-people commitment to peace and diplomacy between our two countries.

They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles. This grassroots investment would be the opposite of efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to tighten sanctions, a move which CODEPINK thinks would only hurt ordinary, everyday Iranians. Such a symbolic CODEPINK investment in a green, sustainable business would challenge U.S. regulations blocking trade with Iran and would show how diplomacy and trade are preferable to war and sanctions.

Speaking of green and (one hopes) sustainability, Codepink’s flattery of Ahmadinejad renders the group diametrical enemies of the Iranian protesters now challenging that peaceful fellow’s reelection. Interesting that a group of peace-loving American women now find themselves standing foursquare with the mullahcrocy and riot police trying to beat down the internal forces of reform. This wholesale embrace of tyranny and oppression, however, does explain why the lead headline under “breaking news” at the group’s website is “Israeli Police and Military Brutalize Peaceful Protesters at Netanyahu’s Speech,” and why not a word about unrest in Iran is to be found.

To a chick, Codepinkos are terminally clueless and insufferably self-righteous.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:56 | link | comments

Rapacious CHRC gets a smack down: A Globe and Mail editorial slams the CHRC’s latest power grab (my bolds):

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has unfortunately overcome its previous doubts about its own power to restrict freedom of speech, in the form of electronic transmissions - ranging from the telephone to the Internet - which are found likely to expose people to hatred or contempt.

On Thursday, the commission delivered a report that recommended no major changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act.

In the light, or shadow, of complaints to the federal, B.C. and Ontario human rights commissions about an article in Maclean's magazine by Mark Steyn, the federal commission had asked Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor to review the hate-speech section of the CHRA. He recommended its repeal and the leaving of hate speech to the mercies of the Criminal Code.

All those complaints failed, the Steyn-Maclean's controversy faded and the federal body is less worried about the hate-speech section. It now recommends the addition to its statute of what the Supreme Court of Canada had already effectively read into it, 18 years ago. Then, the court said the section can pass muster with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the hatred or contempt consists of "unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification" that are "ardent and extreme."

The Supreme Court's interpretation thus means that the purveyors of hatred must have certain mental states, if they are to be reached by the section, but the commission's report to Parliament decides against the explicit addition to the CHRA of any requirement of hateful or contemptuous intention…

Frankly, I don’t know what’s most revolting--the fact that the Supreme Court made freedom of speech contingent on the absence of “certain mental states” (which means our highest court sees itself as--what?--the Supreme shrink?); that censorship provisions in our human rights codes--Section 13 and its provincial/territorial ilks--forbid speech that’s “likely to cause hatred or contempt,” a category so broad and yet so vague that it could potentially include, say, most satire, all criticism of Islam, and many high school history textbooks; or that the Lynch mob believe that the heat's off and they can get back to their shakedown racket without fear of interference, and even up their power ante.

Kind of a toss-up, I’d say. All things considered, though, I think I’d have to give the prize to the Lynch kids' audacity--so brazen, so egregious, so outrageous, so clued-out that it truly leaves one breathless.

Update: This one goes out from me and Jerry Lee to one mighty masterful chick in Ottawa.

Update: Mark Mercer explains why censorship and democracy are incompatible. I'd go even further. Our HRCs and democracy are incompatible. (h/t WM)

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

Bibi the spoiler?: 'T'were this a rational world, the acceptance of a patent reality--that, like it or not, Israel is the Jewish state--would not only be a no-brainer and a prerequisite for a "peace deal." Alas, the world is full of zanies and fools who don't believe in sensible rules. Case in point: Hosni "Mr. Moderation" Mubarak. According to him, Netyanhu's demand that, if the world wants to get behind the "two-state" solution, the Palestinians must first accept what's in front of their faces--Israel's Jewishness--and get rid of the weapons they use strictly for offensive purposes--i.e. to kill Jews--has "ruined"--yes, ruined!--any chances for a "peace" deal.

I'd say Bibi played this chess move extraordinary well, wouldn't you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:41 | link | comments

Just a pawn of schmoes: I always enjoy reading Mark Steyn's Song of the Week. Here's his latest, followed by my cheeky update:

I'm Ahmadinejad and people say I’m mad.
They can see the part I'm playin'.
Paid for by these schmoes, keepin’ up the pose.
Ooo, watch them flayin’.

There will come a day when Jews'll pass away.
What then'll folks say about me?
They’ll be thankin’ me like mad
They’ll say "Ahmadinejad--
He’s a devout jihadi!”

I'm Ahmadinejad and I am never sad.
Even when I lose, I’m winnin’.
Never mean to brag but election’s in the bag.
Ooo, a new beginnin’.

There will come a day when Jews'll pass away.
Hey, what a great day that’ll be.
When the end comes, egad!
They’ll say, “ Ahmadinejad
What a swell jihadi!”

Cuz I ain't got no mahdi
No mahdi's come for me, no mahdi, no madhi's come for me
He’s a real somebody,
A somebody, a somebody.
Won't return till Jews are history…

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

In the grand tradition of Billy Carter and Roger Clinton: One thing you can always count on when there’s a new president--sooner or later his disreputable relatives are bound to show up:

NEW YORK (AP) — Another Obama relative has a book deal.

A memoir by George Obama, the president's half brother and a resident of Huruma, Kenya, will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2010. George Obama, 27, shares the same father with his famous, older half sibling, although George and Barack Obama — 20 years apart in age — did not grow up together and did not meet as children.

George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died.

Little is known about George Obama. The book, tentatively titled "Homeland" and to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama's fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them.

"Even had George Obama not been our President's half brother, his story is moving and inspirational," David Rosenthal, Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president, said in a statement Sunday. "It is an object lesson in survival, selflessness and courage."

Financial terms were not disclosed, but an official with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal was worth six figures…

Guess it’s also an object lesson in how to cash in.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments (2)

Same old lunacy in a “moderate” package: Don’t mean to rain on the parade of Iranian “reform,” but from the sounds of this piece by Kenneth Timmerman that appeared earlier this month in Newsmax, that so-called “reformist” candidate who “lost” the election isn’t really much of a reformer:

The leading contender of the “reformist” camp in Iran’s presidential elections, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi Khameneh, was a founder of Hezbollah and a key architect of the Islamic Republic’s dreaded intelligence services, Iranian political activists and scholars tell Newsmax.

His wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is making campaign appearances with him wearing an Iranian-style Islamic veil. Some in the West are even calling her the “Michelle Obama” of Iran. And yet, a recent photograph from an official Iranian news agency shows her stomping on an American flag.

Is Mousavi really a “reformer” who, if elected on June 12, will change significantly the way the Iran treats its own citizens and deals with the outside world?

Or is he just the latest smiling face being put forward by the regime to raise false hopes among Iranians and beguile the West, just as Mohammad Khatami managed to do in 1997?

Well, he's no reformer, in the eyes of the spokesman for the hard-left People’s Fedai Guerillas of Iran, who uses the nom de guerre “Bahram'.”

“He believes in the most radical ideology of the regime, but he sometimes appears more logical than the other candidates,” Bahram told Newsmax. “No one should expect more freedoms in Iran if he is elected.”

Mousavi was “one of the architects of the Ministry of Intelligence and Information” when it was established in 1984, Bahram said.

That ministry, also referred to as MOIS, was modeled closely after the KGB and was established with the help of Soviet advisers.

Like its predecessor, SAVAK, the MOIS plays a key role in suppressing domestic dissent. It recruits informers, arrests critics of the regime, and tortures them brutally in special political prisons.

MOIS also has been involved in murdering Iranian dissidents overseas and has been cited as a key player in terrorism cases from Germany to Argentina. In 2007, Interpol issued its third arrest warrant for former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian on terrorism charges. Fallahian is an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

A former Iranian intelligence officer, Abdolghassem Mesbahi, tells Newsmax that he used to work for Mousavi when Mousavi headed the regime’s intelligence services as Iran’s prime minister.

Today’s reformer was yesterday’s terrorist, he says.

“Mir Hossein Mousavi was one of the founders of Hezbollah. Ayatollah Khomeini put him on the Hezollah leadership council when the group was created in 1982-1983. “

In an interview with Payane Enghelab magazine in 1981, Mousavi called for the creation of an Iranian-controlled Lebanese militia to spearhead a military confrontation with Israel.

“We are ready to participate with an armed force to fight Israel,” he said. “We have repeatedly announced that we are ready to have an actual, real and military presence in Southern Lebanon and on the borders of the occupied Palestinian lands,” a euphemism for Israel…

And this guy would be an improvement over Ahmadinejad--how?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:19 | link | comments

Sign of desperation: In a bid to quell the widespread dissent unleashed by the stolen election, the holiest rollah of all has appointed some minions to look into it and get back to him.

Don't think that's going to do it, oh holy one.

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

A 'toon is worth a thousand words: Kudos to Dry Bones for saying it all re Bibi's comments about Palestinian statehood:
a demilitarized State of Palestine : Dry Bones cartoon.
Gotta love those "VICTIM" headbands. So much more cutting edge than that passé keffiyah.

Update: For those who prefer words to pictures, Melanie Phillips has a few choice ones:

...Israel wants peace with the Palestinians. The cause of the conflict remains, as it ever was, the Arabs’ refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland of Israel, which (contrary to Obama’s claim) predated the Nazi Holocaust by several thousand years. Those (like Obama) who think the cause is the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza are confusing cause and effect. The fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is therefore a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Far from Israel occupying Palestinian land in Judea and Samaria, it is the Palestinians who are living within the ancient Jewish homeland. Israel does not wish to rule them and they can have a state of their own, provided they accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and provided a Palestinian state is demilitarised so that it does not possess the means to destroy Israel...

Which means a Palestinian state living side-by-side with a Jewish one is about as remote a possiblity as life on Mars.

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

Sunday, 14 June 2009

Loud and clear: Wow. This AP shot certainly makes a statement:

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man walk past posters, hung by an extremist right wing group, depicting US President Barack Obama wearing a traditional Arab headdress, in Jerusalem, Sunday, June 14, 2009. Senior aides say they don't expect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to explicitly endorse Palestinian statehood when he delivers an anxiously awaited policy speech Sunday night, a stance that would preserve an uncomfortable impasse with the United States. T (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:17 | link | comments (2)

Come again?: CSM headline--Netanyahu expected to offer Zionist response to Obama's Cairo speech.

What an odd way to put it. Surely he's going to be offering the "Israeli" response, him being Israel's P.M. and all. Or is the "Zionist" a subtle dig meant to distinguish him from those in Israel and elsewhere who are decidedly anti-Zionist?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:07 | link | comments

Happy hopes for change dashed (as always) by bracing dose of reality: In view of the foregone conclusion of Iran's election results--Ahmadinejad wins no matter how many ballots are cast for his opponent--Obama's declared "excitement" last Friday about Iran's "robust election debate" seems even more pathetically out-to-lunch. Did he really think elections in Ayatollahville would be as fair and square as they are in, say, Chicago?

Oops. Bad example.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:43 | link | comments (1)

"Wisdom" from the Sunday Star: A stolen election? Mullahs still holding tight to the reins of power despite the huge groundswell of support for their guy’s “moderate” rival? A minor speed bump on the road to “engagement,” according to the Toronto Star’s pundit di tutti punditti (and resident shill for all things Islamic), Harpoon Siddiqui:

It is hard to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won the Iranian presidential election, given the reported widespread support for the reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi.

With the latter claiming vote rigging and intimidation by state institutions controlled by the incumbent, the Islamic republic faces a crisis of credibility.

The shortages of ballots, the shutting down of websites and text messaging on election day, the closing down of rival campaign headquarters after the vote and the clashes between the security forces and angry citizens lend credence to the charge that the election was stolen from Mousavi.

All this suggests that Barack Obama's plan to engage Iran might become that much more difficult. Yet engage he must.

After all, it was never going to be easy dealing with a country whose president questions the Holocaust, threatens to wipe out Israel, berates the Great Satan and boasts about Iran's nuclear advances (spooking both Israelis and Arabs alike).

Yet it is also true that Ahmadinejad was never going to be central to a possible dialogue between Iran and the U.S.

He has been even more of a marginal figure than Iranian presidents usually are. Constitutionally, real power rests with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei…

True enough, but what makes Harpoon think the holiest rollah of all would be any more, er, engageable, than Ahmadinejad? The short answer: he wouldn’t be. Nonetheless Harpoon “reasons” (or perhaps “calculates” would be the better word) that Iran’s a good bet:

Iran has never invaded a neighbour in modern times. It also opposed the Taliban long before the U.S. did. Recently, it responded to the U.S. call for help for Pakistan by pledging $300 million. It also sent ships off north Africa to curb Somali pirates.

The U.S. can do business with Iran, so long as it engages in a pragmatic give-and-take. What it cannot do is to try to dictate to Iran. That has been tried for the last 30 years – with zero success.

Never mind that Iran is the spider in the centre of a web of nefarious jihadi activity that buttresses the likes of Hezbo, Hamas, and Syria’s chinless wonder. And never mind that the reason Iran “opposed” the Taliban is because, as Sunni jihadis, the Taliban are bitter and despised arch-rivals of Iran's Shias. All that’s merely another aspect of the “challenge,” eh Harpoon? As for the notion that, since three decades of “dictating” to Iran (is that what we’ve been doing?) hasn’t worked it’s time to--what?--allow Iran dictate to us? I think that’s what they call a non-starter.

In other wacky Star opining, Richard Gwyn espies “Signs that sanity returning to the Middle East.” I think they have meds for that sort of thing, Dick.

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

Saturday, 13 June 2009

Move over, Allah: "Obama Hu-Akbar!"

Talk about idolatry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:25 | link | comments

Mass protest in Iran: The Iranian people aren't taking the mullahs' robbery of the election lying down.

Well, at least until they're mowed down by the mullahs' attack dogs, that is. (Wouldn't it be great if the people could pull off a Caeucescu on the mullahs and their hairy beast, though?)

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:23 | link | comments

Thanks, John: The French-looking Vietman vet who once ran for president says the Iranians have every right to enrich all the uranium they want to--and the Tehran Times, one of the mullahs’ house organs, is pleased to quote him:

WASHINGTON (Financial Times) - One of the most senior Democrats in Washington has dismissed a key element in the West’s long standing strategy on Iran’s nuclear program as “ridiculous”. His comments throw open the debate about how far the U.S. and its partners should go in seeking a compromise with Tehran after Friday’s presidential election.

John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, told the Financial Times in an interview that Iran had a right to uranium enrichment.

The U.S. and the world’s other big powers have repeatedly demanded that Tehran suspend enrichment – a policy pioneered by the former Bush administration that has since been given the force of international law by successive United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“The Bush administration (argument of) no enrichment was ridiculous ... because it seemed so unreasonable to people,” said Kerry, citing Iran’s rights as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. “It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will,” he added. “They have a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose.”

Enrichment supported by almost all of Iran’s political class, with wide popular backing – is at the heart of the Iranian nuclear dispute.

Although the UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iran suspend enrichment date back to March 2006, Tehran has systematically accelerated its nuclear program, producing 1.3 tons of low enriched uranium hexaflouride.

Kerry argues that in the wake of the former Bush administration’s failure to enforce the “red lines” it set Iran, Barack Obama needs to build an international coalition around an enforceable demand that at the minimum would provide more information about the nature of Iran’s program.

He added that he had sent Obama his suggestions in a memo…

The only consolation here is that I’m sure Obama filed them under “irrelevant”.

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

How…multicultural (and terminally clueless): The CAF Weekly Bulletin alerts us to an exciting upcoming event:

4- Arab Youth Program invites you to a soccer game between AL QUDS FC and TORONTO POLICE FC at BMO FIELD, June 20, 2009, Toronto
The Al-Quds FC will be facing off in an epic match against the Toronto Police FC!We invite you to join us in this unprecedented match! Proceeds will go towards helping the team in their venture to Palestine! Get your ticket today for only $15. When: June 20, 2009. Time: 6:00 p.m. Location: BMO Field 170 Princes Blvd (At the Exhibition Place).For tickets: Mississauga: Ahmad: 647 333 2045 or Raed: 905 399 0416. London: Nasser: 519 697 0160. Toronto: Wessam: 647 588 6401. If you would like to advertise at BMO, contact Ahmad at 647-333-2045 or emailabuhanoud48@hotmail.com

Er, are Toronto Police aware that “Al Quds” is the ugly Arabic name for Jerusalem which divests it of its Jewish identity (a neat trick, considering that but for the Jews there would be no Jerusalem) and that by participating in this event those who “serve and protect” are giving a tacit thumbs-up to the Arabs' pathological anti-Zionism?

Just asking.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:29 | link | comments

Palau not a done deal: I’d hold off on the bon voyage celebrations for now. It looks like those wascally (uiscally?) Uighurs may not be shipping out to their South Sea paradise just yet:

KOROR, Palau (AP) — The president of Palau is flattered by all the publicity he's had since agreeing to take in more than a dozen Guantanamo detainees, but he said Saturday their transfer is not a done deal.

The likelihood that 13 Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, will actually arrive on this tiny Pacific nation is about "50-50," President Johnson Toribiong said. And even if they do, it won't be for another two or three months.

"It's still tentative, it's not definite yet," Toribiong told The Associated Press. "Maybe some other country may say if a little island like Palau is willing to accept them, why not us?"

Palau, a former U.S. trust territory about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the Philippines, made news last week after agreeing to President Barack Obama's request to take the Uighurs. Other countries had turned it down.

It is one of the world's smallest countries, with about 20,000 people scattered over islands of lush tropical jungle. Most work in tourism, construction and farming.

Toribiong, interviewed by AP at a beachfront resort, said he had never heard of the Uighurs until the U.S. approached him earlier this month. He has sent four Palauan officials to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to learn more about them.

"They come from a high-altitude country," he said. "I don't know if they like the ocean." He said the men are between 30 and 40 years old but knows little more…

Yeah, we wouldn’t want any Uighurs to get, you know, seasick or anything.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:51 | link | comments (1)

If it were me, I'd write "BITE ME" on it in crayon, fold it into a paper airplane and send it flying into Gaza: "Palestinian negotiator accuses Israel of playing with Road Map."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments

Motime a goner: I've been notified by my blog host that, come June 19th, the name "motime" will cease to be. It will be replaced by "splinder," the host's name in Italy. My new address (on that date, but not before): http://scaramouche.us.splinder.com

Gosh, I'm glad I held off printing up those "scaramouche.motime" business cards.

In honour of the change, I've written this rhyme:

There’s no time for motime no mo’;

The old name is going to go.

So listen up, kinder,

The new name is “splinder.”

(What the heck the name means, I don’t know.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:18 | link | comments (2)

Like the fix wasn't in: Da "winner":

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

Another deathless headline: Ahmadinejad lead a blow to U.S.-Arab allies. Well, one chap's blow is another chap's kick in the head, right Dino, er, Mahmoud?:

How lucky can one guy be

To win a great victory?

Like the mullah once said,

Ain’t that a kick in the head?

It came as no great surprise

Except for those with closed eyes.

Like the tailor said, “Sport,

Ain’t those pants really too short?

The centrifuge spinnin',

Meanwhile the scientists grinnin'.

I know that we will keep winnin'.

Our life is gonna be bee-yoo-ti-full.

I’ve venom and hatred to spread.

And people I wanna see dead.

Tell me quick

Ain’t that a kick in the head?...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments

Another huge surprise: Remember back when Obama was running for president and some folks warned that he would not, as they say, be “good for the Jews” because he had some pretty dubious “friends” who had no great love for “Zionism”?

Such party-poopers the lot of us, eh WaPo?:

President Obama's close friends and key advisers have helped him shape the toughest line against the continued expansion of Israeli settlements since the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

The result has been a confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that has surprised the Israeli government and many analysts. Netanyahu is preparing to make a major speech tomorrow in which he is expected to respond to the new American pressure.

Obama's aides are steeped in the complex issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in U.S. attempts to resolve it. Many of them bring long memories of difficult dealings with Netanyahu when he served as prime minister more than a decade ago.

Obama's advisers have concluded that peace in the Middle East will require an end to the construction of new Israeli homes on occupied territory that Palestinians claim for a new state. In his speech in Cairo this month, Obama made it clear he had reached the same conclusion. Forcing Netanyahu to relent on settlements would offer the U.S. administration leverage in persuading Arab states to engage in peace talks.

"There is a strong consensus in the White House that the status quo is not going to produce progress and that the moment could slip away here for a real, just, lasting peace that would bring Israel the security it needs," said David Axelrod, one of Obama's top advisers.

But several senior White House officials described the president's views on Israeli settlements as years old and not the product of recent events or discussions. "It would be a mistake to suggest that anyone led him to this position," a senior adviser said. "It's one that he generated himself."…

One of those “friends” colouring Obama’s perceptions on “settlements”--and not in a good way: court Jew Rahm Emmanuel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:32 | link | comments

Knock me over with a feather: The tiny totalitarian--you know, the one who wants to make smithereens out of Israel--has won another "surprise" victory.

The media may be surprised, and the Iranian people may be surprised, and Barack Obama may be surprised. As for me? Not so much.

Update: It's a landslide!

Update: Sing it, Stevie!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments

Losing our freedom by inches: During his interview with Ezra Levant the other day, TVO host Steve Paikin asked Ezra if, because of Canada’s HRCs “it’s 1984.” Well, no, Ezra replied. Not exactly. But, he went on, 1984 doesn’t happen overnight. It happens “incrementally,” month by month, year by year. And then one day you wake up and--kapow!--Big Brother punches out your lights.

Read Ezra’s latest blog post--a three alarmer, so you know it’s really big--and tell me if the shocking tale of how the Jen Lynch mob tried to bully CTV into keeping Ezra off the air doesn’t make it seem like it’s, oh, at least six months into 1983.

Which goes to show yet again that the whole “human rights” construct isn’t about “rights” as much as it is about ideology and power. And here’s the thing--if you put in place an apparatus that allows for powers of censorship, power to mete out punishment to the ideologically undesirable, and powers of search and seizure normally reserved for police states--i.e. the very conditions that make a Big Brother possible-- it would be imbecilic not to expect a Big Brother (or in this case, apparently, a Big Sister) to incrementally take advantage of it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:49 | link | comments (2)

Friday, 12 June 2009

Sticking up for a hate-spewer: The Baptist Minister who invited rantin' Rev. Wright to come preach at his San Francisco church last week says Wright's no "anti-Semite"; he's, you know, "misunderstood." The Baptist claims Wright's recent observations about "da Jews" were--hello!--"taken out of context."

I'm not sure what "context" you can put "the Jews are keeping me away from Barack" in and have it be okay.

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

Freiman flails and flops: Mark Freiman, the new president of the CJC, is certainly well-suited for the job. Not only does he think state censorship/criminalizing “hate speech” is essential to “protect” vulnerable Jewry, he is someone with a vested interest in the grievance industry. In fact, he acted as “lead counsel in the Canadian Human Rights Commission section 13 proceeding against Ernst Zundel.” That bit about Zundel appears at the end of his review of Ezra Levant’s Shakedown (it's in the July Literary Review of Canada) that the Ceej just sent round to some machers (of whom I most definitely am not one, though I do have my macher sources--h/t to them). Read it and weep at the inanity/insanity/verbosity of the clueless:

Trial by Anecdote

A controversial polemicist takes on Canada's commitment to human rights.

On January 11, 2008, Ezra Levant, his lawyer and a video camera attended an interview with a human rights officer from the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. In 2006, Levant had published in the soon-to-be-defunct Western Standard the twelve famous Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that had caused riots in Europe and Asia, leading to many injuries and a number of deaths, ostensibly because the visual depiction of Mohammed constituted an insult to Islam. In Alberta, Levant's publication led to two complaints against him under the provision of the Alberta Human Rights Code that deems it a discriminatory practice to disseminate material "likely to expose" minorities to "hatred and contempt."

The interview at the commission lasted 90 minutes and, as Levant tells it, for every moment the human rights officer spoke, he spoke for ten. He has not stopped talking about it since.

In Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights, he gets to talk about it some more. The book is part exposé, part polemic and part self-promotion. Levant has a breezy, amusing style that works well when he is skewering alleged knaves and fools, although he is also prone to veering off into bathos and pomposity when he feels the need to celebrate his own courage and wit.

Levant picks his targets inclusively if predictably, given his neoconservative leanings. His ultimate target is the whole concept of equality as a human right. Although he starts and ends with hate speech provisions in human rights codes, before he is done he has taken on both federal and provincial human rights commissions and tribunals, those who work for them, those who complain to them and those who support them. Within the bounds, one assumes, of the laws of libel, he settles grudges and scores with a long list of adversaries old and new, who parade through his pages in their assigned roles of dupes, rogues, buffoons and hypocrites.

Levant practises argument by anecdote. The anecdotes are well chosen and effectively narrated, allowing him to present a rolling cavalcade of surrealistic scenarios that demonstrate bureaucratic affronts to reason and common sense.

Shady characters with apparent radical or totalitarian sympathies appear as human rights complainants or even investigators. A restaurant is ordered to compensate a worker for discrimination on account of a disability after she has been let go because a medical condition makes it impossible for her to wash her hands as often as the health code requires. In another restaurant incident, a local layabout insists on exercising his legal dispensation to smoke medical marijuana by toking up at the front door of the establishment. This puts the owner in the impossible position of having to choose between being found guilty of discrimination on the one hand and driving away his customers and potentially losing his licence on the other.

These and similar tales of Keystone Kommissars are meant to support Levant's argument to delegitimize human rights regimes. According to Levant, there was a time when human rights were worth fighting for, a time when racial prejudice and religious discrimination were real. But, he says, those days are gone. The battle has been won. Today we live in a tolerant cosmopolitan society in which human rights have become a weapon wielded by feckless claimants and cynical left-wing ideologues to advance personal or political agendas that in fact conflict with the "real," still-valid fundamental rights underlying democracy, such as freedom of property and the freedom to say whatever one chooses. In this "shakedown," the scheming antidemocratic conspirators are enabled by "useful idiots"-the investigators and adjudicators employed by human rights commissions and tribunals-and by the unprincipled politicians who support the entire ramshackle regime in order to curry favour with special interests. For Levant, human rights code provisions dealing with "hate messages," such as those under which the Alberta complaint against him were made, are only the extreme manifestations of a human rights regime whose hallmark is a wanton disregard of individual rights in the name of political correctness.

There is a lot wrong with large swaths of this argument. Both at its widest point, with his claim of the obsolescence of the human right of equality in an age of tolerance triumphant, and at its narrowest point, with his allegation that the regulation of hate messages is nothing more than a craven concession to political correctness, Levant's assertions simply do not stand up to scrutiny…

Alas, I have neither have time nor energy right now to give this piffle the fisking it so richly deserves (“Keystone Kommissars”--oh, Mark, you're such a wag!); perhaps Ezra, whose energy is unflagging, will have a go at it (you can listen to him make all the pertinent arguments here). I would merely note that each and every one of Levant’s assertions does stand up to scrutiny--and then some--but that those who toil in the dank corridors of Canada's parallel "justice" system are perhaps not the best scrutinizers. Why not? Well, for one thing, they're extremely short-sighted. They’re not looking out for freedom. They’re not seeing the big picture (a picture which shows the OIC and the UN trying to place Islam above reproach). Heck, they’re not even looking at the Moon report. The only thing they're looking at is,as my fellow free-speecher Kathy Shaidle likes to say, how best to protect their phony-baloney jobs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:55 | link | comments (3)

Judicial anachronism: Did you know that in--where am I again?--oh, yeah, Toronto, Canada in--what’s the year again?--oh, yeah, 2009, prospective jurors are queried as to whether they think they can render an impartial verdict should the accused in a case be black? No? Me neither, until I read this in the Toronto Star:

An Ontario Superior Court judge says it is time to scrap the practice of routinely asking jurors in Toronto and the surrounding area if their ability to render an impartial verdict could be affected by the fact the accused is black.

"We live in the world of Spike Lee – not that portrayed by Harper Lee," said Justice John Murray in refusing to permit such language, which singles out black people, while challenging jurors for bias at an assault trial of a man in Milton.

Murray argued the words seem a condescending throwback to the 1960s attitudes laid bare in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

He suggested jurors be asked in more generic terms whether they would be able to judge the case "without regard to the race of the accused."

Today, in jury trials in the Greater Toronto Area, an accused black person charged in a case involving a victim of another race has the right to ask would-be jurors whether their ability to judge the case impartially could be affected by the race of the accused and the interracial nature of the alleged crime.

If the victim isn't of a different race, potential jurors can be asked as part of a "challenge for cause" whether a verdict could be affected by "the fact the accused is black."

In 2009, however, those words feel "wrong in the pit of the stomach" and many in the justice system are uncomfortable with such questions, Murray said.

The questions suggest there is a recognition "embedded" in the justice system that society consists of "Us" (whites) and "Them" (black persons) and that one particular form of prejudice, anti-black racism, is more pervasive and pernicious than any other, he said in a written decision Wednesday...

Indeed. Given the temper of the times, perhaps the more appropriate query would be: Do you think you can render an impartial verdict if the defendant is a “Zionist”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments (1)

BB at a loss: So after being in on the ground floor of Canadian state censorship; and after itself getting bit on the tuches by it (a five-year-long persecution by the Manitoba “human rights” body sparked by an accuser who to this day remains nameless); and after making some lame recommendations for “reforming” the system such that Jews would still get to kvetch about scary Nazis, but Islamists wouldn't get to complain about Jews or non-Jewish "Islamophobes" like Mark Steyn with Jewish-sounding names (in other words, censorship for we, not thee--a clear impossibility in our multiculti Wonderland); and after reading the Canadian Human Rights Commission's new report which ignores the call to get rid of state censorship and instead presumes to demand for itself even greater censorship powers, Frank Dimant’s fiefdom still--still!--doesn’t get what’s at stake. Here's its latest word on the subject (h/t MK; my bolds):

TORONTO, June 11, 2009 – B’nai Brith Canada has characterized as “coming up short” the recommendations contained in the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) report on Freedom of Expression and Freedom from Hate released earlier today.

“While we are pleased that the Commission acknowledged the significant problems in the system and undertook a process of review, we feel that its recommendations did not go far enough to address these issues,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “What the Commission is recommending is, in essence, cosmetic tinkering to deal with a human rights system that is in need of a major overhaul.

“The Commission fails to address head on the need for strong enforcement of procedural protections and instead focuses on legislative amendments, which would not be necessary if an active enforcement regime of current policies was already in place. For example, amending section 41 of the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow for the early dismissal of frivolous complaints is a power that the Commission already holds. Its suggestion to add definitions of hatred and contempt under Section 13 is yet another example of skirting the need for actual reform as these definitions already exist under the governing decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.

“Conspicuously absent from the report are many of B’nai Brith’s key recommendations, notable amongst them the urgent need to educate and train staff so that they have a keen understanding of the geo-political context within which they operate. A training and awareness campaign is essential if investigators are to recognize frivolous complaints at the outset and act accordingly. As well, while the Commission identifies ‘forum shopping’ as a problem, that is the filing of complaints in more than one jurisdiction, it offers no concrete recommendations on how to resolve this problem.

“We urge the Commission to implement a full package of substantive reform, so that it does not leave the door wide open for future ongoing abuses. We call on Parliament to examine in Committee the report tabled today and be guided by the many recommendations submitted by B’nai Brith Canada in its report to Prof. Richard Moon.”…

Sorry to have to break it to you, Frank, but those "frivolous complaints" are the apparatchiks' bread and butter, your "key recommendations" are worth borscht, and the only way to “fix” this dreadful system is to chuck it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:07 | link | comments

Thursday, 11 June 2009

The Neil spiel: Seething Ceeb anti-Zionist Neil MacDonald (formerly its Mideast correspondent; currently its man in Washington) approves of the hard line Obama is taking with Israel and his “elliptical” approach to ~~placating~~ dealing with Muslims:

…Obama's speech contained a number of criticisms of Arab society, too. But they were elliptical, another rhetorical device highly prized in Oriental culture.

Where George W. Bush would have waded in with a club, Obama chose to highlight the Arab world's deficiencies by drawing attention to American failures, then allowing the listener to reflect.

For example, "I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States."

In one sentence, Obama manned up to American abuses that every Arab has read about and, at the same time, prodded his listeners to ponder what still happens in police stations and interrogation rooms all over the Arab world.

I tend to doubt that happened, though, given the ability of so many in the Arab world to ignore deep injustice in their own society while dwelling with near religious intensity on the many insults inflicted by the foreigner (read Westerner) over the past century.

The real point of the speech, however, wasn't to make Arab nations stop torturing, or repressing (or killing) their women, or crushing any movement toward democracy, or overlooking, even encouraging, a weird, obsessive hatred of Jews.

Those things will likely continue, at least in this lifetime.

Rather, Obama is taking his shot at finding some durable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian blood feud, which more than anything else crystallizes Muslim anger at the West.

Clearly, he believes that he must first convince his listeners that he is now approaching this problem as an honest broker.

Taking on Israel?

Now that is an epic task. Generally, Obama's predecessors in the White House have stitched themselves so closely to Israel that Israelis commonly joke about being "the 51st state."

The Arabs apply a different description: "America's spoiled child."…

Substitute “Canada” for “America” and you have a perfect description of the Ceeb--and of Neil.

Update: Hosni MacDonald?:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Barack Obama has presented a fresh understanding of Islam not shown by predecessors, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in his first interview since the U.S. president addressed the Muslim world from Cairo.

Obama called for a "new beginning" in ties between the United States and Muslims, many of whom felt targeted by the "war against terror" launched by former President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Under the past administration, there was a feeling that the Islamic world was a group of terrorists, Islam was hated and Muslims should be watched, and that the previous administration was scared of any Muslim," Mubarak said.

"But Obama came and said we will not fight Muslims and Islam. He is a sympathetic man, and says the United States will not fight Islam because Islam is a heavenly religion," he told state television in an interview broadcast late Wednesday…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:41 | link | comments (1)

Spin alert: I commented in a nether thread--where you may have missed it--that the MSM spin re James Von Bunn, seems to be shaping up as follows: Why were authorities so considerate of rights of the nutty 'right-winger' when they continue to subject innocent Muslims to the indignity of 'racial profiling'? On CNN, for example, perenially outraged (and perenially clueless) lefty Rick Sanchez even dragged in the example of Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian who was "profiled" by U.S. authorities and ended up in a Damascus jail cell where he said he was tortured by Boy Assad's sadists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:04 | link | comments (2)

Not feeling the love: Obama’s honeyed words about Islam haven’t soothed the savage breast of Libya’s addlepated and waxen dictator. Moo Moo’s as p.o.’d at the U.S. as ever. From VOA News:

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi has lashed out at the United States by likening the 1986 U.S. Strikes on Libya to Osama bin Laden's terror attacks on the United States in 2001. He was speaking Thursday in Rome, where he is on a three-day official visit.

In a speech to Italian lawmakers, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi urged the world to understand the reasons that motivate terrorists. He called for dialogue with terrorists, saying, "One must talk to the devil, if it brings about a solution."

While condemning al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, he implied there was little difference between bin Laden's terror attacks and the U.S. strike on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. He added that the West should not interfere in the governments chosen by other countries.

The United States ordered airs strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi after an attack on a disco in Germany killed three people, including two U.S. servicemen.

Mr. Gadhafi, who came to power following a 1969 coup, had long been ostracized by the West for sponsoring terrorism, but in recent years sought to emerge from his status by abandoning weapons of mass destruction and renouncing terrorism in 2003.

Libya has since agreed to pay compensation to the families of the Berlin disco victims as well as the families of the victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Colonel Gadhafi, who arrived Wednesday in Rome on a three-day official visit, was to have addressed lawmakers in the Italian Senate. But he was forced to give his speech at another building after opposition leaders voiced strong criticism at giving him such a rare honor.

Mr. Gadhafi's first trip to Libya's former colonial ruler is being seen as an open acknowledgment the two nations have put their past behind them and are ready to forge closer ties…

Isn’t that sweet? Let’s celebrate with pizza and canolis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments

Nice work if you can get it: Four of the Gitmo Uighurs destined for the South
Pacific island of Palau have decided to live in Bermuda instead:

And now, the Beach Boys sing about some of the other Atlantic-based locales
where Uighur jihadis may want to live.

Update: Pop-cult crackpot that I am, "Uighurs" reminded of the Weavers, a folk
group that had its heyday back in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and that featured
radical banjo player Pete Seegar on lead vocals. (Not long ago Pete announced
that supporting Uncle Joe back in the day may not have been the brightest move.
Oh, well, better late than never, I suppose). The Weavers' most famous song--the
group's theme song in fact--was "Goodnight Irene," written by the great Huddlie
Ledbetter. Here it is, tweaked for our time:

Gitmo goodbye, Gitmo goodbye.

Goodbye Gitmo, goodbye Gitmo.

For now we gotta fly.

Last Saturday night we got spru-huh-ung.

After a many long year.

Can’t say we’re gonna miss Gitmo

Or that we'll shed a tear.

Gitmo goodbye…

Sometimes we’ll live in the country.

Sometimes we’ll live in the town.

Sometimes we take a great nation.

And try to bring it down.

Gitmo goodbye…

Stop being “Islamophobic”

Stop keeping up in jail.

Embrace the one true faith and law.

You know that they won’t fail.

Gitmo…

Gitmo goodbye, Gitmo goodbye

Goodbye Gitmo, goodbye Gitmo.

For now we gotta fly.

Everybody!

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:26 | link | comments

A glimpse into the dark mind of a racist killer: Fox News reports that the neo-Nazi geezer who killed a black security guard at the Washington Holocaust Museum loathed blacks and Jews equally (his only nod to equality) but hated “the Jews” just a little bit more:

The accused Holocaust museum gunman who allegedly shot and killed a black security guard had been growing more angry, hateful and desperate in recent weeks, according to those who know him.

James W. Von Brunn, 88, told friends his Social Security benefits had been stopped, and he warned in a mass email message to white supremacist associates that they may not hear from him again, The Washington Post reported.

Von Brunn, who was shot and critically wounded after he burst into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and opened fire, was sending increasingly violent messages. In one email, he wrote, "It's time to kill all the Jews," according to the Post.

He also told friends he was in financial trouble and was going to give away his computer.

""He said his Social Security had been cut and that he was barely making it," acquaintance John de Nugent, a self-described white separatist, told the Post. "He felt it was the direct result of someone in Washington looking at his Web site."

Von Brunn, an anti-Semitic World War II veteran, had long been known among white supremacist circles for his racist rants and extreme hatred of Jews and blacks. He lives in Annapolis, Md., and has a history of anger, abusive behavior, anti-Semitism and anti-government aggression.

The Web site attributed to Von Brunn says he wrote a book called "Kill the Best Gentiles," about how to "protect your white family."

Online writings said to be Von Brunn's claim the Holocaust was a hoax and lambast a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool."

Neighbors of Von Brunn said they had recently invited him over for a drink and out of the blue, he said the Holocaust did not occur, the Post reported.

A former White House aide to Reagan who later became affiliated with extremist groups said he spent a lot of time with Von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people," Todd Blodgett told the Post. "He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be Jews."

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:36 | link | comments (2)

At least she makes the human rights complaints run on time (not): In totalitarian systems, the powers-that-be know they don’t have to answer to anyone and can do as they please. In Canada, too, where the Canadian Human Rights Commission seems to think it can ignore the recommendations of its own appointee to get rid of censorship provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act (the notorious Section-13) and carry on censoring with impunity.

Ladies and gents, give it up for Jennifer Mussolini.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:26 | link | comments (2)

Cutting news on the bias: There's nothing on the Toronto Star front page about the crazed neo-Nazi geriatric ex-con who shot and killed a guard at Washington's Holocaust Museum; that story doesn't show up until page 4. There is, however, a gripping piece about Israel TV celebrity Dudu Topaz, who seems to be undergoing some sort of emotional crisis, along with a report about Bob Rae's "nightmare" in Sri Lanka (apparently, they wouldn't let him in, and he had to spend the night at the airport).

Priorities, right?

My letter:

A front page story about the emotional crisis of an obscure Israeli TV celebrity (who no one outside Israel has probably even heard of) would seem to indicate that it was a slow news day. But as we know, it was the antithesis of a slow news day, since a crazed rifle-toting neo-Nazi ex-con in his late 80s burst into Washington’s Holocaust Museum and shot and killed a guard. A front page story, to be sure, but one that doesn’t show up in your paper until page 4.

Does your editor really think that Dudu Topaz’s suicide attempt and Bob Rae’s adventures in Sri Lanka are more important than that?

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

Chicks for change: Reuters reports that women’s groups in Iran are hoping change
is in the air:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Women's rights activists say pledges made by rivals of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Friday's election offer new hope for their drive to end what they call institutionalized discrimination against women in Iran.

The position of women has become a prominent issue in campaigning for Iran's presidential vote Friday, in which moderates seeking political and social change are bidding to deny the hardline incumbent a second four-year term.

The two pro-reform candidates -- former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi and cleric Mehdi Karoubi -- say they would seek to enhance the role of women in the conservative Islamic state if they were elected president.

"Whoever comes to power has to respond to the demands of the women's rights movement," said rights campaigner Sussan Tahmasebi. "We are no longer invisible."

Activists say women in Iran are subject to discrimination that makes them second-class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody, legal matters and other aspects of life.

Under Ahmadinejad, there was an attempt to push women back into the "private sphere and promote them as mothers and wives," Tahmasebi said.

Iran says women in the country are better treated than in the West, where it says they are often seen as sex symbols…

Oh, please. Nothing’s going to change until the mullahs and their draconian sharia law get the old heave-ho.

As for being seen as a sex symbol--personally, it doesn’t happen too often these days (except, of course, for my husband), but any day of the week I’d rather be seen as a sex symbol--and at least be seen--than have to hide behind yards of cloth because some misogynistic holy rollah says the female form is too provocative.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:23 | link | comments (2)

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Some perspective: Hugh Hewitt made a good point on his radio show. What happened at the Holocaust Museum was awful, but let's not forget that the real threat to the Jewish people today isn't some nutbar neo-Nazi in Washington. It's that nutbar neo-Nazi who's running for re-election over in Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:58 | link | comments

Great news for Gitmo Uighurs: Palau says, "C'mon down!"

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:44 | link | comments

Two shot at Washington's Holocaust Museum: I guess it you're a "lone gunman" looking to shoot some Jews (because maybe you think the Jews are now like Nazis, or for some other demented reason), it's a safe bet you'll find some at a Holocaust museum.

Update: The gunman has been identified as James Wenneker von Brunn. A google search reveals he's a Stormfront guy. Born in 1920, which makes him...89? That can't possibly be right, can it? My question: how did an 89-year-old gunman sneak a rifle past security (or maybe he snuck it through because he's really old, and no one thought "grandpa" could be packing heat).

Update: I predict some of our local Jews will make great hay about this incident and claim that the actions of this old white power guy justify Dick Warman's Nazi-hunting efforts on the Web.

Update: From the New York Times:

...The gunman was identified by NBC News as James W. von Brunn, a man in his late 80s who embraces a far-reaching conspiracy theory involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups, according a Web site he maintains. Early reports indicated that he lives in eastern Maryland.

However, the police chief here, Cathy Lanier, said the identity of the gunman had not been confirmed.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington said at an afternoon news conference that the gunman was in critical condition, and the security guard, whom he declined to identify, was in grave condition.

Law enforcement officials said they have long been familiar with Mr. Von Brunn, who has claimed variously to be a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. fraternity; to have been a P.T. boat captain in World War II and to have been victimized by a court system run by Jews and black people...

A lunatic. Maybe senile, too.

Update: The CJC, right on cue (my italics):

Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) expresses profound sadness upon learning of today's violent attack inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

TORONTO - Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) is shocked and saddened to learn of today's shooting inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"The Holocaust Memorial bears witness to the world about the atrocities and mass murders committed during the Shoah. To bring the tools of violence and to mount an attack in such a place, dishonours the memory of those who suffered and perished during that dark period in human history." said CJC President Mark Freiman.

"The very idea that this type of violence would take place inside a Holocaust memorial is almost unfathomable in this day and age. Today's attack sustains the critical need for ongoing vigilance and rigorous security precautions," said CJC CEO Bernie M. Farber…

Vigilance, eh? Best get back to work, Dickie boy.

Update: Here’s the wacko’s self-written bio from holywestern.org, his defunct website:

James W. von Brunn holds a BachSci Journalism degree from a mid-Western university where he was president of SAE and played varsity football.

During WWII he served as PT-Boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a Commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society.

In 1981 Von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. (Read about von Brunn's "Federal Reserve Caper" HERE.) He is now an artist and author and lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog is the culmination of his life's work.

I don’t know what that "Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog" stuff is about (the words are Hebrew for either “good that seven goyim got killed’ or “seven good goyim got killed”--I think), but it seems his “life’s work” may have had its culmination today.

Update: It's supposed to mean "kill the best gentiles." Some little loony needs a better English-Hebrew dictionary.

Update: It appears "kill the best gentiles" is a favourite quote of the lunatic fringe. It turns up in this "analysis" by David Duke (who, by the way, bills himself as a PhD in the same way that Von Brunn claimed to be a member of MENSA; apparently the freakazoidal seem to think such
intellectual bona fides confer legitimacy on their deranged views).

Update: Just gets curiouser and curiouser. From Fox News:

"In 1981 Von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison."

The Web site attributed to Von Brunn also says he wrote a book called "Kill the Best Gentiles," about how to "protect your white family."

Online writings said to be Von Brunn's claim the Holocaust was a hoax and lambast a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool."

"At Auschwitz the 'Holocaust' myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations," the writings say.

A woman identifying herself as Von Brunn's ex-wife said he is an abusive, racist alcoholic and she divorced him because his hatred of Jews and blacks "ate him alive like a cancer," according to the New York Daily News.

The woman said she married Von Brunn in the mid-1960s and divorced him 10 years later. She said he drank red wine all day, frequently engaged in verbal attacks and was consumed by his prejudices.

"It's all he would talk about," she told the paper.

For 20 years, according to the bio, Von Brunn worked as an advertising executive and film producer in New York City. The bio says he is a member of Mensa, the organization of people with exceptional IQs.

A few years ago, Von Brunn reportedly had a volatile exchange with novelist Tom Clancy in which he called Colin Powell a n——r, according to the white-supremacist Web site Thebirdman.org.

Clancy responded to the Web site by suggesting that he is interested in and often writes about "abnormal personalities," but Von Brunn was an "ass" and an "idiot" who didn't deserve his time."

Von Brunn's age is in dispute. Some media are reporting that he is in his 60s, while The Associated Press says he is 89 years old.

Update: There's that "v" word again (my bolds):

TORONTO, June 10, 2009 – B’nai Brith Canada has called on the members of Canada’s Jewish community to continue to be vigilant at all times, in the wake of this afternoon’s shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“We are deeply disturbed by the shooting earlier today at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s Executive Vice President. “News is only now beginning to emerge that conveys details of this attack, including early indications that the perpetrator is reportedly a longstanding White Supremacist. Its impact, however, is being felt around the globe, particularly in Jewish communities, whose members know all too well the feeling of vulnerability that comes with being the target for ongoing hate.

“We are concerned that the radicalized anti-Jewish rhetoric currently being disseminated by propagandists of both the far-right and far-left may be viewed by some as a call to arms, whether or not it bears out in this case.

“We urge Canada’s Jewish community to continue its ongoing vigilance, in what has become a necessary and routine course of action.

Kind of like a Sesame Street lesson for the letter V--the vulnerable must always be vigilant.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments (5)

Read it; memorize it: I’d like to thank Voltaire’s Bastard, a regular commenter over at Ezra Levant’s blog, for bringing this C.S. Lewis quote to my attention:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

An awesome description of Barbara Hall and her fellow torment-deliverers, no?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:28 | link | comments

Pot calls kettle black: Ahmadinejad is accusing his rivals of using "Hitler tactics".

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

Diversity-averse: I had a good chortle at the claim in this Globe and Mail article that the reason York U’s Juden Raus Conference was convened was because organizers wanted to solicit the "diverse" views of academics re the “solution” to that pesky Israel “problem.” (The intrepid solution-searchers are p.o.'d that the jig is up, and that the government may pull funding from their Keffiyahpalooza.)

“Diversity”? In academe? ‘Tis to laugh. Why, “diversity” is as rare an avis in those exquisitely refined quarters as is a live dodo bird. As scarce as a vegan at an all-you-can-eat ribfest. As unlikely as a Jason Kenney fan at a Canadian Arab Federation convention. As…well, you get the picture. My response:

The idea behind the Mideast forum at York University may have been “to bring academics with diverse ideas together” to look at “alternatives” to the “two-state” solution. The reality is that diversity of opinion in academia is in extremely short supply these days, and the scholars attending this conference have pretty much decided that the “one-state” solution--i.e. a “solution” that “solves” the Jewish state right out of existence--is the way to go.

I can understand why conference organizers would want to push the “diversity” angle, though. Coming right out and calling it the Let’s Get Rid of Israel Conference (a paraphrase of Mahmoud Ahmadinehad’s World Without Zionism Conference) might have been a bit of a tougher sell.

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

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

Obama’s tropical logic: Here’s how it works--spend a wack of cash to relocate a handful of Chinese jihadis from a Caribbean Island (where you can keep an eye on ‘em) to one in the South Pacific (where you can’t). Contentions’ Jennifer Rubin quotes this AP report:

The Associated Press has learned the Obama administration is in talks with the remote South Pacific island nation of Palau (PA’-lau) to resettle some or all of 17 Chinese Muslims now held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. . . The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the delicacy of the negotiations. They said the U.S. is prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in aid to accept the Uighurs. Palau is an independent nation about 500 miles east of the Philippines that has close ties with the U.S.

Rubin explains what’s behind this madness:

Why are the taxpayers supposed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to move the Uighurs from a Caribbean Island to a South Pacific Island? Well, so everyone will think so much better of us. Once the terrorists stop convulsing with laughter (”Hey — get captured, get a cabana from those crazy Americans!”) I am sure they will conclude we have ceased to be serious about national security and have become obsessed with “image.” And they will be right.

In honour of the Uighurs’ relocation, I’ve revised a song from South Pacific:

Some enchanted evening

You will see some Uighurs

On a Pacific isle.

And you’ll surely see

You’ll see on their face

That they're so confused how they got to this place.

Some enchanted evening
You will hear them laughin',
You will hear them laughin'
On that Pacific isle.
And night after night,
Their laughter will stay.

‘Cause they’re at a resort where

They don’t have to pay.

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools like Obama
Make one want to cry…

Update: Then again, maybe the Uighurs are better off in Palau.

Update: I thought the name Palau rang a bell. Turns out it was twice the location for reality TV show Survivor. And now, how about a new reality show in which two tribes battle for supremacy--Jihadi Survivor Palau?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:31 | link | comments (2)

What’s up in Dar al-Barb?: And now, an important message from Ontario’s Chief Human Rights Commissar, er, Commisioner, Barbara Hall. It’s her way of introducing her outfit’s business plan for the next couple of years, and how it intends to continue its dauntless (also relentless) pursuit of those who refuse to bow down to its world view:

Message from the Chief Commissioner

"Whether our families have been here for centuries, decades or days, deep down, we are all the same -- with the same basic hopes and dreams. It is up to us to work and build and dream together so that we can make Ontario even stronger for the generations to come." (Premier McGuinty, 25 March 2006)

Human rights are the foundation of an inclusive, successful society and a thriving economy. The barriers produced by discrimination stop progress; they create an underclass that cannot contribute to the level of their ability and ultimately lead to tension, conflict and discord.

The Government has emphasized the need to identify and deal with the root causes of discrimination. The OHRC has responded to that objective by realigning its strategic goals and refocusing its organizational structure to deliver those goals effectively.

While tackling discrimination on a reactive case-by-case basis helps protects the rights of individuals, dealing with the sources of prejudice requires pro-active, long-term efforts; real change takes time.

The OHRC will continue to develop leading-edge human rights policy. We will research, investigate, monitor and report on discrimination that hurts the most vulnerable people in our society. For example, we will continue to work with police services to end stereotyping and with transit providers to make their systems accessible to all. We will share our knowledge and guidance through public education and outreach programs designed to make the fight against inequity and intolerance a common responsibility. By bringing partners in the community together, as in our Asian Canadian Anglers initiative, we are raising awareness of problems – and solutions.

Ontario’s rapidly changing demographic mix makes the task complex and urgent. In the context of an economic slowdown protecting the rights of marginalized people it is more important than ever.

My thoughts: I don’t know about you, but as a small “c” conservative living in Ontario, I’m feeling pretty “marginalized” these days: Tell me Babs, what are you planning to do for me and my hounded “community”? Also--allow me to quote from A Dictionary of Bullshit re "leading-edge": "marketing weasel-speak for something that is nominally innovative." Also--Babs must be thanking her lucky stars that those hassled Asian anglers turned up, else how could she ever justify the OHRC’s plans to waste oodles of our hard-earned dollars “in the context of an economic turndown’? Also--now seems like the perfect time to change the name of Babs’ provincial racket to reflect its ultimate mission. To that end, I suggest it be called “The Leftism Supreme Council of Ontario.”

Or something like that.

Update: In the Weekly Standard's cover story about "wise Latina" Sonia Sotomayor, Jennifer Rubin describes the "extreme variety of multiculturalism" espoused by leftists like the judge and Obama--a description that, with the odd word change here and there, works equally well here in Canada to describe Babs and the grievance industry (although up here this type of multiculti would be considered mainstream, not extreme):

They have dispensed with Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a "colorblind" society, in which people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The notion of a shared American tradition is considered a dodge for maintaining white, male domination of society. Instead, they aim to secure the levers of power, to empower disadvantaged groups to pursue their distinct ideology, culture, and language. It is not enough to eliminate barriers to entry in business, universities, government, or the bench; numerical quotas are essential to securing each group's "fair share." And most critically, group identity and goals supplant individual identity and professional obligations.

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

My new favourite word: It's "snarge." As I just learned, it refers to what's left of a goose (or other fowl) once it's been sucked into a jet engine. I couldn't resist writing a poem about it:

No befeathered fowl merits the charge

That he or she wants to be snarge.

Every birdie just hates

This most awful of fates

And tries to avoid it, by and large.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments

Sheema blows smoke (again): One of the many unpleasant repercussions of Obama’s Cairo declaration is that it affords Islamists like Sheema Khan another opportunity to lecture us for our “intolerance”/”Islamophobia” (really, our distress over creeping/cantering/galloping sharia):

Last week's historic speech by Barack Obama was seen by many as an overture toward bridge-building between the United States and the “Muslim” world.

Key aspects of the speech, however, pointed to principles upon which people everywhere, including Canadians, must reflect. We shouldn't be satisfied to be mere bystanders of a historic moment, but active participants in improving dialogue within and between civilizations.

As Mr. Obama said, while the fear and anger provoked by 9/11 was understandable, “it led us to act contrary to our ideals.” In particular, he noted that America and Islam share the common principles of “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Voices calling for internal reform, urging Muslims to be true to the example of Prophet Mohammed, must be far louder than those who chronically blame others. While many in the Muslim world are waiting to see what the U.S. will do, in reality, people should be thinking of what they can do to move forward, in small concrete steps. Taking responsibility for one's actions is the first step toward empowerment and progress.

Has Canada been true to the ideals embodied in its Charter of Rights? One might argue that governments, Liberal and Conservative, have, at times, fallen short in the post-9/11 era. Security has been used as a pretext to justify secret evidence, collusion in rendition and torture, and the defence of Guantanamo Bay. It has led to two-tiered citizenship, in which citizens of Arab and Muslim background are denied rights guaranteed to all Canadians. Yet, the genius of democracy provides for checks and balances, to counteract the excesses of executive power.

That last bit is an obvious yet subtle swipe at the Harper Conservatives, who aren’t nearly as nice to Islamists as the Liberals and NDP are. And should you be wondering what kind of “denied rights” Sheema’s referring to, all is revealed several paragraphs later:

Some, especially in Quebec, would like to ban such clothing, thereby undermining the very foundational principles of a democratic society: freedom of choice and conscience. The marketplace of ideas offers a plethora of “goods,” some reject a narrow vision of the secular ideal and instead opt for a wider vision in which a woman's choice is respected.

Let’s digest that last part, shall we? What Sheema appears to be saying is that our system is “narrow” and deprives women of rights while the sharia system (the one which accords women a second class status and abjures their rights) has the “wider,” more “respectful” outlook.

Thus does Muslim Brotherhood sophistry and propaganda insert itself into the “marketplace of ideas.”

Update: My letter:

How tiresome to be lectured to by Sheema Khan, who wants us to think that any hesitation about seeing tangible signs of sharia in our midst--hijabs and the like--is proof that we have a “narrow vision” while societies where sharia rules have a “wider” one. It takes but a minute or two of research to determine that the opposite is true--that women in the West are free to do whatever they choose and are accorded their full gamut of rights, while women in sharia societies have a second class status and must bend to the will of men.

Ms. Khan claims to be really big on “the marketplace of ideas,” but in this instance at least she seems intent on selling us a bill of goods.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments (6)

People poems: A clerihew for a defunct strongman:

Omar Bongo

Should have ruled in the Congo.

Instead he’s dead and gone

From Gabon.

And a limerick for a bent actor:

David Carradine (remember Kung Fu?)

Had something he wanted to du.

So like a big jerk he

Got trussed like a turkey,

And now he is dead. Boo hu.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (1)

Why the U.S. needs a Kirk, not a Spock: Don't miss Bill Whittle amazing riff wherein he explains why Spock-ish intellectuals like Obama don't belong in the captain's chair.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:18 | link | comments

Monday, 08 June 2009

‘Horse bomb attack’ by Hamas terrorists twarted: You read that correctly--horse bomb attack. From the Beeb:

Four Palestinian militants have been killed on Gaza's border as Israeli forces fired at what they said were men and horses carrying explosives.

The Israeli military said its forces returned fire at a group including a few men wearing explosive vests and five horses loaded with explosives.

Israel said the Palestinians opened fire and tried to plant bombs near a crossing on the Gaza-Israel border.

Palestinian officials said about 10 gunmen were involved in the incident.

The Palestinian health ministry, which is run by the Hamas movement that controls Gaza, confirmed that four fighters were killed in the shooting.

Israeli forces fired on the militants with machine guns and tanks backed up with combat helicopters, the military said…

When will those Israelis knock it off already with that “disproportionate force”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:33 | link | comments (4)

Bad moon rising: The Wahhabi potentate, who’s paying mega-bucks for the soft jihad to make inroads in the West (so far, so good--or bad, depending on your vantage point), wants the submissive superpower to “impose” a “solution” on a certain annoying problem he sees as the source of all regional (also global) strife:

RIYADH (Reuters) - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to impose a solution on the festering Arab-Israeli conflict if necessary, a Saudi newspaper said on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab states want Obama to get tough with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has balked at Palestinian statehood and defied U.S. calls to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements.

King Abdullah told Obama during his visit to Riyadh last week that Arab patience was wearing thin and that a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be the "magic key" to all issues in the region, al-Hayat said, quoting what it called informed sources.

"We want from you a serious participation to solve the Palestinian issue and impose the solution if necessary," the Saudi monarch told Obama, according to the paper, which is owned by a nephew of the monarch. It did not elaborate.

Saudi Arabia was the driving force behind an Arab peace initiative first put forward by Arab states in 2002 offering Israel recognition in return for withdrawal from Arab land occupied in 1967 and a Palestinian state.

Israel has reacted coolly to the offer, renewed in 2007, saying a return of Palestinian refugees to areas now inside Israel would destroy the Jewish character of the state.

"We (Arabs) want to devote our time ... to build a generation capable of confronting the future with science and work," King Abdullah said, according to al-Hayat…

And, you know, those Joooos just keep getting in the way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:58 | link | comments (2)

Delusion and reality: In Cairo Obama described Islam as he wants it to be--essentially moderate, tolerant of non-believers, compatible with democracy--a wishful thinker/hopeychanger version of the faith. In FrontPage Magazine, David Solway describes it as it is--literalist, supremacist, totalitarian, and highly resistant to change (though, obviously, full of hope):

Unlike the Old and New Testaments as received by the majority of Jews and Christians, the Koran is read literally by all believing and surely most practising Muslims. The many surahs and ayaat (messages, verses) enjoining violence against the unbeliever have been neither mitigated nor annulled and it remains the sacred duty of all Muslim communicants, whether “moderate” or “extremist,” to accept them at face value.

Indeed, former Muslim and Al-Azhar Cairo university professor “Mark Gabriel” suggests in Islam and Terrorism that extremism is not a deviation from the faith or a matter of approximate percentages but pukka Islam itself. To pretend that the faith has been pirated by a few bad characters—Obama’s “small but potent minority of Muslins”—is both jejune and counterfactual. However offensive it may be in our chlorinated age to acknowledge what should be self-evident, Islam is, or functions as, a totalitarian political ideology packaged as a religion. In this sense, the distinction between “moderate” and “extremist” is an empty one.

I stand by my observation: Islam is benign only to the extent that Muslims are able to shun or ignore the core Islamic tenet requiring everyone--Muslim and non-Muslim alike--to accede to the primacy of sharia, Islam’s universal law.

The hopeychangers are free to borrow it--but I don’t expect they ever will.

Update: Some more straight talk, courtesy Hugh Fitzgerald:

Perhaps Barack Obama should be asked to read over the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the U.N. adopted (and which Iran -- the Iran under the Shah -- actually subscribed to). One of the careful authors of the UN Human Rights Declaration was the Lebanese Christian statesman Charles Malik, who as a Christian was one of Islam’s victims. Malik was formally Greek Orthodox, but he possessed the attitudes, the firmness toward Islam, of a Maronite. Obama should look carefully at the individual rights shown such solicitude, and then he should compare those documents, that overlap so much, with the Isamic attempt to present a version that would not be recognized for what it is -- one based on the primacy of the Shari'a, and thus, one in which all the most important provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are removed. The Cairo Declaration, as it is called, represents not merely an "Islamic version" of the Universal Declaration, but is in fact a celebration of Islam and its collectivism, and its refusal to accord to individual Muslims the right to, for example, change their religion for another or for unbelief. The Cairo Declaration refuses to accord legal equality to non-Muslims. Such equality has never ever been part of Islam and shows no signs of becoming so now.

This is not a matter of nuance, or emphasis, or opinion. It is a matter of fact. The Shari'a flatly contradicts in letter and spirit the most important provisions of the American Constitution; it offers a collectivist faith, based on the view of Believers as "slaves of Allah" who are never to use their own judgment, or develop themselves morally or mentally, but are simply to accept, without questioning, the Rules of Islam: What Is Commanded, and What Is Prohibited. And Islam itself is suffused with the idea of a state of permanent war (though not always of open warfare) with all non-Muslims, for non-Muslims have no right to retain, or to set up obstacles, to the spread and then the dominance of Islam. Islam is collectivist, the West individualist.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:25 | link | comments

Another kind of J-Date: YNet News reports that the jihadis of Hamas have gone into the matchmaking biz and, well, inspiration struck:

Chicks sing:

Matchmaker, matchmaker, match one for me

Catch me a catch

Who’s jihadi.

Day after day I’m stuck behind this shroud

And dating is not allowed.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I’ll bring the veil.

(Like there’s a choice for a female.)

Bring me a man to fulfill all my needs

And we can breed young shaheeds.

For Papa make him a bomber.

For Mama make him suave and devout.

For me, well, I’d be much calmer

If he kept the semtex not in, but out.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,

Find me a guy

Who hates the Jews,

Wants ‘em to die.

They are the reason that we suffer so.

Those dhimmis have got to go!

Matchmaker sings:

Hanan, I told him

Your virtues are exact:

You’re fetching, you’re sweet,

(Tho’ maybe not intact).

But you’re a good girl, a great catch, fact?

Fact!

Won’t promise you’ll be happy.

Don’t offer guarantees.

And who’s to blame for that?

The Israelis.

Hawwa, I found him.
Go out and buy that dress!
He's handsome, he's tall--

(Tho’ mentally a mess)
But he's a fine man, a swell catch, yes?

Yes!

You heard he has a temper.
He'll beat you every night,
And say that in the Koran
That it’s alright.

Did you think you'd get a prince?
Well I do the best I can.
With no dowry, no hymen, no prospects to speak of
Be glad you got a man!

Chicks sing:

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Don’t mean to beg.

I’m kind of old--

Please, shake a leg.
Time is a-wasting
And I know myself
I could get stuck on the shelf.

Dear Ismail say that I’m gentle

And “down there” I am suitably “cut”.

It’s not just I’m fundamentalist--

It’s also I’m desperate!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Plan me some plans.
I'm in a rush.

I’ve seen the light.

I know with matches a girl can ignite.

So bring me a ring.

Groom me a groom.

Find me a find.

One just for me.

I need my own

Jihadi!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments (2)

Sunday, 07 June 2009

Fighting back against jihadi terrorists okay as long as it's Muslim-on-Muslim: Ever notice how the Ceeb seems remarkably calm when, say, Pakistanis take action against Taliban terrorists, but that the same sanguinity isn't evident in reportage concerning Israel and Hamas?

Odd, that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:34 | link | comments

What one pundit learned from “the speech”: A few of the many lessons Ralph Peters took from the Cairo speech, from Peters’s column in the New York Post:

…"It was not violence that won full and equal rights" for black Americans. So much for the Civil War and my ancestor, who volunteered to wear Union blue and paid for it with his life. I thought a half-million Americans died fighting to end slavery. Silly me. Still, it was brave of our president to highlight slavery's "lash of the whip" in his speech, since his own ancestors, as Muslims along Africa's Swahili Coast, would have been complicit - if not actively engaged - in enslaving their fellow black Africans for Arab masters. As a self-proclaimed "student of history," Obama surely knows that.

Holocaust, schmolocaust. Aren't those pesky Jews ever going to go away? Yes, denying the Holocaust is "hateful." But let's get a grip. Palestinians "endure . . . daily humiliations." Their lot's "intolerable." Israel "devastates Palestinian families." No wonder our president shunned wicked Israel during his trip - sending a clear, if unspoken, message that Jews are now fair game.

"America's strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable." Yup. And they're issued by Chrysler.

Hamas is a legitimate, recognized voice of the Palestinians. Rocket attacks against civilians, suicide bombings and kidnappings really work.

Iran can have nukes. Our president's acceptance of "peaceful nuclear power" for Tehran was coded language for "no pre-emptive military action."

Jordan doesn't matter. So much for one Arab country's attempts at human decency. If you want attention from our president, you've got to be a desert gangbanger.

My wife wondered why Obama didn't make his speech in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim state, where he would've been welcomed proudly as a home-boy. Obama just reinforced the stereotype that Muslim equals Arab.

Democracy isn't for everybody. We're done peddling that particular drug.

Of course, our president didn't mention al Qaeda's catastrophic defeat in Iraq, where millions of Sunni Arabs rejected the terror organization. Iraq was Bush's war, so it's all bad.

And forget junk like modern medicine, telecommunications or even the internal combustion engine. Islam's been the source of real progress. Like "calligraphy." Medieval Islam's ballyhooed contributions actually were due to Greek-speaking Christians (including slaves) employed as court officials, to Armenian architects and Jewish physicians. But, yeah, Arabs had really good penmanship.

Our president's breakthrough message to the Muslim world was that America overthrew democratic regimes, slavery was our history's central feature, and we invaded people on a whim - but we're sorry now…

Cue the lugubrious Connie Francis track: Who’s sorry now?/He’s sorry now/Who’s such a dhimmi he’s bowed and he’s cowed?...

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:26 | link | comments

The Times they are a-changing: Here are two interpretations of the latest IAEA report, the first from the Washington Times:

...The IAEA report, also released Friday, said Iran is operating more than 5,000 centrifuges at its declared nuclear facility in Natanz and has a total of more than 1,300 kilograms (2,860 pounds) of low-enriched uranium. This form of uranium is used for civilian power plants but can be further refined to make fuel for weapons. The difference lies in the concentration of a uranium isotope, U-235, whose atoms can be split apart to produce vast amounts of energy. For civilian use, fuel must contain about 5 percent of the isotope; for weapons, more than 80 percent.

Nuclear weapons 'breakout capability' is a scenario that involves enriching LEU [low-enriched uranium] to weapon-grade uranium, said the analysis by nuclear specialists David Albright and Jacqueline Shire.

This could be accomplished within three to six months at either the Natanz facility or a clandestine gas centrifuge facility. It provides a measure of Iran's growing nuclear weapons capabilities. Whether Iran intends to pursue this approach is unknown, the analysis said.

Whether Iran has a clandestine nuclear program is a matter of dispute. The unclassified version of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released in December 2007 said Iran had suspended its nuclear weaponization program, which it distinguished from uranium enrichment and the development of ballistic missiles, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

European intelligence services and Israel assert that Iran is operating an active weapons program in secret...

The second one is from the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN - In its latest report released on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency reconfirmed that there has been no diversion of Iran’s nuclear material.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by the Tehran Times, also stated that Iran’s enrichment activities at the Natanz facility “remain under agency containment and surveillance.”

In another part of the detailed report, the IAEA said its inspectors have conducted many “unannounced inspections” of Iran’s nuclear activities. “Since March 2007, 26 unannounced inspections have been conducted at FEP (Fuel Enrichment Plant).”

In its report, the IAEA said that uranium is only enriched to a level needed to operate nuclear reactors. “…results have shown particles of low enriched uranium (with up to 4.4% U-235), natural uranium and depleted uranium (down to 0.4% U-235 enrichment).

Tehran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, said the agency once again announced that it has found no evidence of diversion in nuclear materials in Iran.

“After six years and over 20 reports, ElBaradei once again announced that there is no evidence of any diversion of nuclear materials…and the agency is still verifying (Iran’s nuclear program) without any kind of constraint,” Soltanieh told the Fars News Agency shortly after IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei circulated his report on nuclear safeguards in Iran to the agency’s Board of Governors.

Soltanieh stated that Iran will press ahead with the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes and will continue its cooperation with the IAEA...

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

AP’s brilliant insight: If some, ahem, “extremists” appear to be less than receptive to Obama’s message, it’s not because they and many others remain committed to the to jihad and the supremacist agenda. As AP ~~spins~~ explains, it’s “a sign that some may be nervous about losing support if animosity toward the U.S. fades.”

Now why didn’t I think of that?

Then again, there's a good chance aninosity may indeed fade--as long as the Americans continue to signal their willingness to remain supine and non-threatening (the essence of dhimmitude). In which case, the "extremists" won't need to recruit more holy warriors since the jihad will have succeeded without them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:49 | link | comments

Pick Flick?: Apparently there’s a name for what Obama is doing--“global populism”- and apparently it has something to do with bypassing the “elites” and appealing directly to the hoi polloi. The concept is unpacked (sorta) in the Christian Science Monitor:

Paris - Over three days in the Middle East and Europe, President Obama began an ambitious recasting of politics and global perceptions – taking his case for a new beginning directly to the world's people.

The American president started with a nuanced bid for US-Muslim understanding and Mideast peace at the storied Cairo University – and ended in front of a soaring statue at the American cemetery at Omaha beach in Normandy titled, "The Spirit of American Youth, Rising from the Waves."

The trip, unusual in its limited time with state leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany, and France – was a sweeping bid for the possibility of progress in long-intractable conflicts and standoffs, and a recasting of America's role in that effort. It was an appeal to reason, history, values, remembrance, and common aspirations of humanity, in a populist fashion rarely seen on the world stage, say diplomats and specialists.

"Obama is going over the heads of elites, attempting to establish moral legitimacy as a leader, turning popularity into policy," says Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "What we are seeing is not spin, but a sincere effort to reach out to hearts and minds, appealing to better instincts, to the reasonable nature of others. It is a revolutionary approach."

In Egypt, Obama set out to drain the poison in US-Muslim world relations in recent years, and backed a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, as well as an unambiguous freeze on settlement activity. On Saturday, at the Buchenwald concentration camp, with noted Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama reaffirmed America's core understanding of the historical event that led to the creation of the state of Israel. On Saturday, speaking to an ever smaller band of veteran brothers on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, he honored the sacrifice and the role of allies in the war against fascism that brought America fully onto the world stage in the mid-20th century.

Reaching hearts and minds in new fashion

Some diplomats say Obama's foreign policy tactics, similar to those used in the 2008 election campaign to create an improbable and popular grass-roots movement, are so new that they defy definition at this point. While the Bush administration began a strong emphasis on public diplomacy, Obama's own biography and experience seem to allow him to connect and build bridges that reach hearts and minds among ordinary people in a new fashion. A recent poll conducted in the US and major European countries by Harris International showed that the president was the most popular Western leader, with 70-80 percent seeing him as positive. Two separate polls of Arab public opinion in late May showed him as enjoying less support, but still viewed more favorably than US policy as a whole...

Barry Rubin calls Obama’s Cairo speech “bizarre” and says it sounded like "his main goal was to obtain votes in the next Egyptian primary." But I see him more as an over-achieving, hyper-self-confident Tracy Flick-type who seems to think he’s running for student council president of the entire world. Either way, “global populism” is destined to fail because, like it or not, it’s going to butt up against a competing “global populism”--Islam--which, as we are frequently reminded, is “the world’s fastest growing religion.”

You can try to run from the inevitable clash of “populisms,” Mr. President, but you just
can’t hide.

Update: How does Obama see himself? Certainly, not as a Tracy Flick. More likely
as a cross between Honest Abe and MLK, writes David Warren:

When a politician announces, at the beginning of a major speech, that he is going to be entirely honest with you, you should stop trying to protect your wallet. For it is time to defend your soul.

This aphorism occurred as I listened to the opening of Barack Obama's major speech in Cairo. As I have argued previously, he is not an honest man but, instead, a demagogue. He plays games with reality in the course of weaving his rhetorical spells. To be clear: he is no Hitler, no Mussolini, with some vision of national or racial glory, cynically manipulating the crowds to purposes that are ultimately violent. Far from that.

Nor is he a Trudeau, precisely, with an inner contempt for the people he is pledged to serve, and his own agenda to put past them. I do not even think Obama suffers from the vanity of Trudeau, who may actually have imagined himself to be some sort of "philosopher king."

Obama's is a different, more insidious vanity. He acknowledges his rhetorical gift as a gift, but imagines the solutions to problems coalesce of their own accord in his presence. He is President Orpheus, the "poet king," transforming nature with his music. The German weekly, Die Zeit, expressed this perfectly in a headline: "I am a dream!"

It is the failure to acknowledge hard realities that makes Obama dangerous. As a wise Texan of my acquaintance put it, "he is attempting to model himself on Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. But, it's with a twist. He sees himself as the Great Mediator -- the One who will step into every conflict around the globe, bring to bear his superior intelligence and teleprompted eloquence, and leave the parties in a warm embrace."...

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:15 | link | comments

Democracy in action: It’s election day in Lebanon, and you know what that means--Lebanese and Lebanese/Canadians of convenience will be streaming to the polls to choose between faux-moderates and outright totalitarians. From AP via Yahoo! News:

BEIRUT – Lebanese streamed to their hometowns on the Mediterranean coast and high in the mountains Sunday to vote in a crucial election that could unseat a pro-Western government and install one dominated by the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The race for the 128-member parliament will set Lebanon's political course for the next four years, with repercussions beyond this tiny Arab country's borders. A win for the Shiite militant group, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, and its allies could bring isolation to Lebanon and possibly a new conflict with Israel.

It could also set back U.S. Mideast policy and boost the influence of Hezbollah's backers, Syria and Iran.

"I voted for the first time in my life today simply because these elections will decide in which direction the country will go," said Elie Yacoub, a voter in his 30s who cast his ballot in Beirut.

Lebanon has long been a main front in what many see as a power struggle between two main camps in the Mideast — the U.S. and its moderate Arab allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt on one side, and Iran and Syria and militant groups such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas on the other..

Pardonez-moi for a sec as a chortle, whinny, cackle and snicker about the idea of Wahhabis being “moderate”…

There now--laughing fit done.

AP is wrong, of course, about the nature of the power struggle. It’s really about the ongoing struggle between supremacist Islam and uppity infidels (Christians in Lebanon; Jews in Israel) who dare to claim sovereignty over teeny bits of dar al-Islam. (Lebanon is an example of a "one state solution," and offers proof of how, inevitably, infidels in such an entity get squeezed out.) Don’t expect anyone in the MSM to frame it that way, though, since clarity and reality aren't exactly its strong suit.

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

Both sides now: Obama Derangement Syndrome--from the right, and from the left.

What drugs are these guys smoking?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:04 | link | comments

Bullies for Jew-bashing: Queers for Hamas (which is what Queers Against Israeli Apartheid amounts to) has to be one of the silliest, most self-defeating constructs ever. It’s akin to “Jews for Nazis” or “Tutsis for Hutus”--sheer idiocy (or in this case, useful idiocy). Nonetheless, the jihad makes for, er, strange bedfellows, and I guess queers don’t want to be left out of the leftist/Islamist par-tay, even if it means crapping on a nation where they have every right, and championing sharia, which considers gay-ness a crime punishable by death.

The Canadian Arab Federation is delighted to include delusional queers in its big tent (plenty of room for all if you’re prepared to slander the Jewish state), and quick to decry as “bullies” those who are wise to its M.O. (drape yourself in the banner of “human rights” and make a big to-do about “justice” and “freedom of expression”--which, funny thing, never seems to include the freedom to criticize Islam) and true agenda (creeping sharia, baby). Here’s the June 2 CAF press release wherein, yet again, the real bullies are revealed:

QuAIA Should Be part of Toronto Pride Parade

The Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) urges Pride Toronto to maintain their strong position andstand for freedom of expression when considering a possible application by the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) to march in the 2009 Pride Festival. In a recent article in the Jewish Tribune, pro-Israel lobbyists declared their intention to threaten government and corporate sponsorship of the annual Toronto Pride Festival unless the organization banned pro-Palestinian marchers from the parade. While it is becoming a trend in Canadian politics to threaten cuts to funding in order to silence any discussion of Israeli policies (as was the case for CAF), we urge Pride Toronto to put freedom of expression where it truly belongs, in the heart of the LGBT celebration of freedom and equal rights and take pride in, and supporting all members of your community with their diverse identities, history and political affiliations. This type of bullying is now used against a wide range of Canadian groups that dare speak about justice, including Unions, play writers, students, Academics and, now, the gay and lesbian community.

CAF also takes this opportunity to applaud Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) for reminding us all that oppression and injustice are not exclusive, and that the rights of people living under occupation are human rights just as queer rights are human rights. By recently organizing a successful public event on May 23rd titled “Coming Out Against Apartheid’. “QuAIA sent a message to all of us that Queer rights are human rights and we should all be passionate about them as much as we are towards the rights of Palestinians living under occupation, and for that we are thankful and proud” said Khaled Mouammar, President of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Mr. Khaki who is also Grand Marshall for Pride this year, has been viciously attacked for speaking at the QuAIA event, though he was not speaking on behalf of Pride or in his capacity as Grand Marshall. Mr. Khaki has an impressive record as a strong advocate of social justice and human rights for all. We commend him for his participation at the QuAIA event as a link and a connection between the LGBT community and the Muslim communities of Canada, and for that, we support his right to be Grand Marshall this year without having to endure harassment from pro-Israel groups.

Yes, those pro-Israel groups are so harrassing. Why, it was only a few months ago that a mob of pro-Israeli harrassers gathered in downtown Toronto to seethe and rage and bellow the ugliest sort of racism, and police told a small group of counter-protesters to flee for their lives lest the enraged harrassers break through the police cordon and run riot. And remember how splenetic pro-Israeli harrassers at York University cornered a bunch of Arab students, who were forced to barricade themselves in a room until police could come rescue them?

What’s wrong with those Jooooos?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:17 | link | comments

Saturday, 06 June 2009

The great scholar of dhimmitude nails it: Bat Ye'or opines in the National Review:

The president’s speech is similar to many such declarations by European leaders. The question it raises is how much the West is ready to forgo truth and its basic principles in its supplication for obtaining peace with Islam. Clearly, the full Islamization of the West is the quickest way to obtain it. Obama’s political program in connection with the Alliance of Civilizations conforms to an OIC strategy that has already been accepted by the EU. In history, this policy has a name: the dhimmitude syndrome.

Exactamundo. The exquisitely sensitive/thoroughly craven--EUnuchs and
hopeychangers--know that submission is always the path of least resistence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:00 | link | comments

Another dissatisfied observer: The Toronto Sun’s Peter Worthington says
Obama blew it:

The trouble with U.S. President Barack Obama's boffo speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was not what he said -- but that he said it.

To explain: The content was generally fair, rational, evenhanded and fitting for a moderator, arbitrator or neutral adjudicator.

But that's not what Obama is. He is, or should be, the embodiment of his country and its interests. When he appoints himself the go-between who sees all sides and takes no sides -- who chastises all conflicting parties equally and impartially -- he does a disservice to himself, his country and to truth.

His speech has generally been applauded. Superficially, at least.

But on reflection it was arrogant, condescending. A "father knows best" speech of moral and practical equivalency.

It was a speech that the world's moderate middle could relish and feel good about. But it was also a speech unlikely to appease extremist factions of any side. A speech that simply didn't ring true in many ways.

All civilizations are not equal. All cultures are not equal. Some are more benign than others, some more lethal. Some crueler and less deserving of tolerance.

Fine for Obama to stress the tolerant, benign nature of Islam, but whatever it was in the past it is not that tolerant or benign now -- and I'm not thinking of 9/11, or suicide bombers, or its bigotry towards women. Sunni and Shiites often cannot tolerate each other, and kill over the issue of who are the true followers of Mohammed.

Avoiding the word "terrorists," Obama chose the gentler word "extremists", which clouds what he's saying and softens the impact.

He slighted America by failing to mention that after 9/11, his countrymen showed remarkable generosity and grace by rejecting reprisals against Muslims and, in fact, going out of their way to absolve Muslims of blame.

There was nothing resembling the flavour of internment camps that were imposed on Japanese-Americans in the early days of the Second World War, when hysteria reigned.

MISLEADING

By his laboured impartiality, Obama seemed to imply that before his coming to presidential power, America was somehow lacking, negligent or derelict in generosity and decency. Nothing could be further from reality.

Stressing America's "unbreakable" bonds with Israel while pledging "we will not turn our backs" on the "intolerable" situation of Palestinians who endure "the daily humiliations that comes with occupation" is grotesquely misleading.

Good politics if it works, and effective diplomacy, but it's dishonest. Until the Arab countries attacked Israel in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza were "occupied" by Egyptians and Jordanians…

Oh, yeah. Funny how that almost never gets mentioned.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:48 | link | comments

How Obama sees Islam:

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:33 | link | comments

Change of venue: Diana West thinks Obama should have delivered his address not from Cairo, but from Little Rock, where an American serviceman was murdered the other day by a jihadi:

The last thing "President Hussein" did not do before flying Magic Carpet One to "the Kingdom" was .... OK. Hang on a sec. I'm just trying to get into the Islamo-spirit of being a citizen of what the 44th president called, and I quote: "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." Yes, Barack Obama was talking about the United States, which, with somewhere between 2 million and 3 million Muslims tops (not all of whom are citizens) doesn't exactly sound like Mecca for Islam, literally or figuratively.

So why did the president say this bizarro thing? Was it just one more super-corny, proto-crypto-Islamic slip, a la his visits to, as Obama put it on the campaign trail, "all 57 states" (the Organization of the Islamic Conference has 57 member states)? Or the "five pillars" of his economic plan (Islam has "five pillars")? Or was it more prosaically the case that the teleprompter was taking the day off?

We just don't know. But don't expect the White House press corps to find out, particularly not after the State Department warned media traveling with al-POTUS (President of the United States) to Saudi-land not to stray from either pre-planned coverage or their hotels at the risk of "arrest and detention by Saudi authorities." Yes, these were the ground rules dictated by Saudi Arabia and agreed to by the U.S. government -- and, apparently, all major media. Are we dhimmi or are we dhimmi?

But I digress…

No problem, Diana. I for one love your digressions. They’re usually far more compelling than most pundits’ (hello, Thomas L. Friedman) main event. She continues:

Taking it from the top: The last thing President Obama did not do before leaving for Saudi Arabia, "addressing" the Muslim world from Cairo, and commemorating D-Day in Europe (in that order) was condemn a bona-fide jihadist attack on a Little Rock, Ark., Army-Navy recruiting station that left U.S. Army Pvt. William Long, 23, dead, and U.S. Army Private Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, wounded. The killer was Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, an American convert to Islam originally named Carlos Bledsoe. Muhammad had recently returned from studying jihad in nearby Yemen -- nearby, that is, to Saudi Arabia, President Obama's first stop abroad...

Nothing to worry about, really. Only a tiny minority of “reverts” end up killing American soldiers or trying to blow up synagogues.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments

Folie à deux: Obama and Sarkozy agree on the Mideast. Both think Ahmadinejad's word are fou (not that they're prepared to do anything about his genocidal threats), and both think it's vital to break the "stalemate" and "solve" the Jewish problem.

Swell.

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

G&M puff piece: The Globe and Mail has a delightful front page story about--and photo of--Salma, a 17-year old Muslima “born and raised in Canada” who, along with her some of her sisters, has found a way around the pesky problem of chick-guy proms. “The Sister’s Prom,” gushes Globe scribber Erin Anderssen,” an annual event for girls like Salma that has no booze and no boys,

has become a symbol of the balance being achieved by ambitious young Canadians who watch Wolverine movies, coach soccer and look forward to the day they will be courted by men, guided by their parents, but free to make their own choice. It’s that shining example of the intersection of cultures that Barack Obama stressed in his historic speech this week.

Oh, please. Just because you watch Wolverine movies and play soccer doesn’t preclude your falling under the influence of a slick-talking imam who’ll persuade you to become the Human Torch for the greater glory of Islam: those fish ‘n’ chips-scarfing, football-adoring jihadi laddies from England’s north who blew themselves up on London transit are proof of that.

As for being courted by men and guided by parents--these prom sisters had better make damn sure they don’t mess around before marriage, or choose someone their fathers and brothers don’t like, or even defy the rules and remove their head-coverings in public. Otherwise, it could turn out as badly for them as it did for Aqsa Parvez and the rest of the girls murdered every year in “honour killings,” a most dishonourable crime.

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

A burdensome debt of gratitude: I don't know why Obama bothered with a 6,000 word speech when he could have captured it all in a single Bob Hope theme song (an oldie I'm reprising in honour of Obama's Cairo declaration):

Thanks for the minarets.

The muezzin’s call to prayer.

I sure wish I was there

To hear that “Allahu Akbar”

Chanted here and everywhere,

How lovely it is!

Thanks for the algebra.

It’s such a groovy math.

It set us on our path.

So what if there were times when we

Experienced your wrath?

How lovely it was!

Many’s the time we were conquered

And many’s the time we aquiesced.

And the jihad, with which we were bested?

We did have fun, and no harm done.

And thanks for sharia law.

A law that’s so sublime.

For now and for all time.

Let's raise a glass sans alcohol
And toast it with L'Chaim!

I thank you so much…

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments (1)

D-Day and dhimmitude: It occurs to me that had the One and Only been at the helm in 1939, he would have tried "reaching out" to the Germans via a major radio address from Berlin, America would have likely sat out WW2 (don't want all those German, Italian and Japanese folks, who've given so much to mankind, to hate us), and the "Jewish problem" (including the problem of Jewish "settlements") would have been "solved" once and for all back then.

It also occurs to me that in his Muslim outreach/ingratiation efforts, Obama is like a Bernie Farber writ large; a Bernie on the global stage.

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

Friday, 05 June 2009

Obama’s “truths” not so self-evident: You can add Carolyn Glick to the list of grumpy Gussies who think Obama’s analysis of the Holocaust as it pertains to Jewish statehood is totally out of whack:

On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."

Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it.

The basic Arab argument against Israel is that the only reason Israel was established was to sooth the guilty consciences of Europeans who were embarrassed about the Holocaust. By their telling, the Jews have no legal, historic or moral rights to the Land of Israel.

This argument is completely false. The international community recognized the legal, historic and moral rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel long before anyone had ever heard of Adolf Hitler. In 1922, the League of Nations mandated the "reconstitution" - not the creation - of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel in its historic borders on both sides of the Jordan River.

But in his self-described exercise in truth telling, Obama ignored this basic truth in favor of the Arab lie. He gave credence to this lie by stating wrongly that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history."

But Carolyn--he took a tour of Buchenwald with Elie Wiesel and unequivocally stated his contempt for Holocaust denial. Surely that has to count for something,yes?

Well, yes. Good on him for excoriating an obvious wickedness. But phooey on him for drawing a direct line between the evil that was done to the Jews of Europe, and the plight of the Palestinians, which, in keeping with Muslim thinking, he largely blames on the Jews.

Which just goes to show the limitations of Holocaust education--i.e. that knowing about the horror, and knowing that it’s wrong to deny it, doesn’t necessarily make you any wiser about today’s Judenhass, especially if you’re coasting on a smile and a shoeshine and haven’t put in the time to learn about and understand the Islamic dogmas that are driving that hate.

Update: This just in--Obama sees 'serious progress' for Mideast peace.

I'd get my eyes checked if I were him.

Update: From the American Thinker:

The parallel between the deliberate slaughter of 6 million Jews and the lot of Palestinians in refugee camps and in the West Bank and Gaza, where the UN supplies them with schools, food and shelter, is unsupportable. Yes, it's an unhappy lot, but it's not Auschwitz or Buchenwald. Not by a long shot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:22 | link | comments

Delusions of grandeur Ezra Levant thinks that "taqiyah" is behind sock-guy Kharrum Awan's taking credit for the complaint to the Alberta HRC about "Islamophobe" Ez publishing some controversial 'toons. (In fact, as Erza points out, the complaint was lodged by Canadian Islamic Supremo Syed Soharwardy).

Respectfully, I beg to differ.

I think the ambitious kvetcher took credit purely for reasons of self-aggrandizement, and because he's confused. It's not so much that he's fibbing about having made the complaint. Rather, it's that he thinks so highly of himself--and is so used to complaining--that he probably thinks he made it.

Delusional? In more ways than one, I'd say.

Gee, I wonder how Syed feels about it all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:36 | link | comments (2)

Islam is like a box of chocolates: A Globe and Mail editorial applauds the president’s naivete and the power of his naïve words:

…If it is naive to insist before the world that common ground is possible, then he is naive. If it is naive to act as if the U.S. presidency carries some moral weight in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, or as if he himself, by virtue of his background, as the Christian son of a Kenyan father whose family includes generations of Muslims, is worth listening to on the subjects of Islam and women, Islam and tolerance, Islam and the West – then he is naive. If it is naive to think he can compete for the Arab street with the radicals, then he is naive…

My not-so-naive letter:

The idea that being “naïve” is now a trait to be valued in an American president is, well, pretty naïve--and very disturbing. It’s another sign that Obama can count on the contents of his speeches taking a back seat to the way he delivers them--the triumph of eloquence and an impassioned style over a “naïve” and overly optimistic substance.

I like Forrest Gump as well as the next person, but I shudder to think of him in the White House.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:59 | link | comments

The hype machine kicks into overdrive: “A speech that might change the world,” blares the headline on the front page of Canada’s most widely-read newspaper, the Toronto Star. Below is a photo of a Muslim family in India watching the Big Speech on a little TV. And below that is a familiar quote from “the Holy Qur’an,” one that’s trotted out with great frequency to prove what a tolerant faith Islam is. Then more photos of people in various locales (Israel, “Palestine,” Somalia, Egypt) also listening with rapt attention. And then, the meat--a peroration by Harpoon Siddiqui, the Star’s go-to guy for the OIC p.o.v. “Muslims--here in North America and Europe--will be relieved,” gushes the gleeful savant. “Islamophobes, of whom we have our share, will not be pleased.”

You got that right, bucko. This “Islamophobe,” for one, doesn’t have very high hopes for the kind of “change” the speech is likely to bring--if, indeed, it brings any at all, and doesn’t fizzle like a wet firecracker (which seems far more likely). My letter:

I didn’t spend my school days in Indonesia, and I don’t have any Muslim relatives in my family tree, but I have read “the Holy Qur’an”. So I know that when someone seeking to “change the world” cherry picks those passages that fall so pleasingly on Western ears--like the oft-quoted one about how killing an “innocent” is akin to killing humanity--he isn’t presenting a complete picture.

I’d be far more heartened about the prospect for genuine and positive change if Obama had acknowledged that the Qur’an also contains some words that aren’t so friendly, for example, the ones commanding Muslims to avoid making friends with Jews and Christians and to fight “the infidel” until they’re subdued. Also, it would have been more truthful had he noted that the Qur’an has some pretty hair-raising things to say about the Jews in particular, passages that have a huge bearing on how Muslims continue to perceive the Jewish people and that help explain why the bulk of the Muslim world is adamant that Jews have no right to sovereignty in Israel.

Thus, the first step toward a genuine peace in the Mideast isn’t the dismantling of Jewish “settlements”; that’s the reddest of herrings. It’s acknowledging the complexity of “the Holy Qur’an,” and the reality that its observations about “the Jews” (who, by the way, don’t seem to fall into the “innocents” category; so much for that one) is the real impediment to progress.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments (2)

Thursday, 04 June 2009

The logical conclusion of Obama's message to Muslims:

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

Fitzgerald's devastaking take-down: Hugh on a tear--a thrilling thing to read (and by all means read the whole thing, as this is just a taste to get you hungry):

...Now comes Barack Obama, the famous liberal, the supporter of liberalism. And when Barack Obama has to choose between liberalism and the defense of individual rights, including the full equality of women on the one hand and Islam on the other, Barack Obama chooses to abandon liberalism and even to mock it.

Here is how he put it in the Speech That Will Live In Infamy:

“We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism."

Where shall we begin with such a remark, or a dozen other such incredible remarks, in this incredible speech?

Please note: "The pretence of liberalism." It is all this talk of full equality for women that is merely a "pretence of liberalism." Those who talk about that must have their motives questioned, and they must be denounced -- because, you see, they might merely be using their interest in the rights of women not to be forced, out of fear or filial piety, to wear the hijab (which Obama pronounced "hajib," showing how unfamiliar he is with things he spoke with such smooth and presumptuous authority about).

And presumably, you must also be denounced if you raise the issue of "freedom of speech" -- if, for example, you do not think that Danish citizens should receive death threats from Muslims living in their midst or from Muslims elsewhere, for that matter, and if you do not think that Danish goods should be boycotted, or diplomatic relations with Denmark be cut, or Danish institutions abroad not only threatened but attacked, in order to prevent Danes, liberal Danes in famously liberal Denmark, from exercising their rights of free speech in their own countries. What does Obama think, if anything, about the threats against French people (see the death threats to Robert Redeker, the brave lycee teacher) and against English people (see the case of Will Cummins), and against Italians (those death threats that Oriana Fallaci ignored, and that Magdi Allam can't afford to ignore), and that are not only made against both Geert Wilders and the celebrated truth-telling apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but also have been carried out, by lone murderers who were either Muslim or manipulated, in the case of van der Graaf the killer of Pim Fortuyn, by Muslims? See the corpses of Theo van Gogh and Fortuyn.

And what does Obama make of the climate of fear that causes hotel chains to cancel conferences in Florida and, most recently, in Tennessee? Is he aware of all this?

Could it be that people really do care about freedom of speech and legal equality for women, and that these are not "pretexts" for an underlying pre-existing hostility toward Islam? Could it be that these concerns are in fact among the many reasons why people who had no knowledge of Islam at all begin to ponder, and then to find out more, and more, and more about Islam? And it is these things that indeed do make them hostile to Islam in the end, because unlike Obama, even if they call themselves "conservatives," their attachment is to individual liberties that have been the achievement, over slow time, of the West, and are essential to "liberalism" -- in the older, and truer sense. Think of the old-fashioned liberal who would have no trouble finding his support in those who wrote the American Constitution, and in John Stuart Mill and the line of liberalism that runs all the way to Michael Oakeshott and Karl Popper and even to John Rawls, and which can be found to have been given expression in the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution, and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is so very very different from the "Islamic" version concocted by the Muslim states to pretend that they too subscribed to the very same, or "almost" the very same, rights, save for a little clause about the Shari'a that fatally vitiated the whole thing.

Do see, if you have time, and Barack Obama of course doesn't have the time, the Cairo Declaration, and compare it to the Universal Declaration of which it pretends to be merely an innocuous variant.

What a farce. How dangerous his particular blend of self-assured presumption, the result of decades of never having been challenged to think or to learn, but rewarded with so many glittering prizes for, it is clear, his "personal narrative" and his "personal journey." For Barack Obama takes an inordinate interest in, and displays an exaggerated respect for, those narratives and those personal journeys, for that is most of what he has to offer. And that is most of what he has been so richly rewarded for, from his days at Columbia, and then at Harvard Law School -- where being elected President of the Law Review, on grounds other than those of merit, set him on his ambitious path. Today Gannett House, tomorrow the world!...

Update: Don't miss Robert Spencer's glorious fisking of the speech.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson sees Obama's cluelessness as a function of
his po-Mo world view:

(W)ithout absolutes, moral equivalence triumphs. In Obama’s world, that most of the Arab world is authoritarian, plagued by gender apartheid, tribalism, religious intolerance and statism matter little. Instead, as the less powerful, their writs against us must be as valid and compelling as are ours against them.

There is no such thing as calibration, a misdemeanor of the overdog must always be equivalent to the felony of the underdog. Guantanamo is about the same as the gulags in Russia, China, or the Arab world and logically deserves as much of the world’s condemnation. In the mind of the postmodernist it matters not at all that a million Arabs live safely under the rule of law inside Israel while Jews in turn live on the West Bank in danger — in the former it is legal and right, in the latter illegal and wrong. Why? The former are without power, while the latter use it to construct a “truth.”

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

Advantage, Muslims: With his pitch today to the Muslim world, Obama’s “outreach”
reached its apex (at least, we can only hope and pray). But an editorial in the
Washington Times points to the basic problem with it, i.e. that one side is doing all the
outreaching while the other side isn’t willing to extend itself in the same way, or at all:

Respect is a two-way street. Recent polls suggest that about half of Americans hold negative views of Islam, and this is not merely blind bigotry. If they want respect, Muslim states must seek active ways to improve relations with the United States. We would like to see a generally more positive and welcoming tone, with fewer anti-American harangues in official media and firebrand sermons in state-controlled mosques. Those countries that support terrorism - either through financing, providing materiel or intelligence support, or safe havens - must immediately stop. Respect for Islam would be much more palatable if the Muslim world decriminalized conversion to other faiths and allowed true religious freedom, as Muslims enjoy in America.

With respect to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, many Muslim leaders seem to expect progress to come through the United States pressuring Israel unilaterally to surrender to Arab demands. But they, not U.S. officials, will play the decisive role in settling the matter, since they are the countries refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist (excepting Egypt and Jordan). The peace process would be pushed immeasurably forward by Arab leaders taking concrete steps in that direction.

A good first step would be to end the Arab League boycott of Israel, which will also help develop the Palestinian economy. Muslim governments can make gestures such as granting civilian overflight rights, establishing postal and telecommunications ties and promoting regional travel. The Arab states should pursue diplomatic meetings and multilateral accords, brokered by Egypt and Jordan, with a view toward establishing a framework for full diplomatic recognition. Israel has shown a desire to do all these things, so the ball is in the Muslim world's court…

Yes, and given today’s speech, it looks like game, set and match, Dar al-Islam without
any effort on its part.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments

Be afwaid. Be very, vewy afwaid: For some reason I felt the need to channel Elmer Fudd to deliver this very bad news:

Mr. Layton is off to D.C.

He’s as proud and as chuffed as can be.

Will his brisk “consulation”

Inter the whole nation?

Given his Weltanshauung, well, yesiree!

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

First take on “it”: Did you hear “it”--Obama’s “historic” speech, I mean? The one he delivered at Cairo University? The one which he hoped would mark a watershed in Islamic-American relations? Well, what did you think? Personally, I found it to be rather bizarre and, yes, as cluelessly Lennonesque ("all’s I am sayin’ is give peace a chance") as I expected. Oh, sure, he said all the right things about Israel--its right to exist, the “tragic” history of the Jewish people and the Holocaust blah blah blah (this to a crowd whose forebears were fully onside with the Grand Mufti, a Hitler ally who did his level best to help out with that final solution). But then, there you go again, Barack, about the “settlements,” and how they, and not Arab implacability and Koranic notions of supremacism, are the stumbling block to “peace.”

Eloquent? Yes. Impassioned? You betcha. I’ll even grant that it was utterly sincere (even though the more grovelling bits, about the “debt” we all owe to Islam, were hilariously over the top, and the parts where he quoted "the holy Koran" and apologized for the West’s “colonialism” well nigh made me upchuck). But will it make a whit of difference to Muslims’ perceptions--their sense that they’ve been hard done by, their desire to see Israel become a footnote in history, their bifurcation of the globe into Muslim lands and infidel ones, and never the twain shall meet? No way, no go, no how.

Barack may be corruscatingly charismatic, stinking with charm, and oozing self-confidence, but he’s not--I repeat, not--the Messiah ('cept, of course, in his own mind).

Update: Michael Rubin in The Corner on "it": "Obama gave a rousing speech and got a standing ovation, but abandoned key U.S. principles and moral clarity. Bush gave a so-so speech but liberated 50 million people. Who should history favor?"

Time will tell, eh?

Update: My second take is that Obama's message about the Holocasut was entirely the wrong one to take to the Muslim world. That world is already convinced that the only reason the Jews have a state is because of a war in Europe, and that the detritus of that war--the Jews who survived--were offloaded into the Mideast, where they don't belong and where they're "colonial" interlopers. What Obama should have said is that the Jews are in Israel as a birthright. It's their ancient, ancestral homeland, and there was a Jewish presence there long before Mohammed was a glint in his mama's eye. He should have emphasized the fact that the Jews are indigenous to the region (heck, we were in Medina before Islam's prophet arrived), and that, over the millennia, there has always been Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Only after stating the aforementioned should he have brought up the subject of the Holocaust, and only then to underscore the need for there to be a Jewish country in which Jews call their own shots and aren't subject to the ebb and flow of Judenhass in the diaspora.

That's what he should have said.

Update: Melanie Phillips seconds my emotions:

The Jews’ aspiration for their homeland does not derive from the Holocaust, nor their overall tragic history. It derives from Judaism itself, which is composed of the inseparable elements of the religion, the people and the land. Their unique claim upon the land rests upon the fact that the Jews are the only people for whom Israel was ever their nation, which it was for hundreds of years – centuries before the Arabs and Muslims came on the scene. As for antisemitism, he made no mention of the alliance between the Palestinians and the Nazis during the 1930s, and the fact that Nazi-style Jew-hatred continues to pour out of the Arab and Muslim world to this day.

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

Wonders never cease: I actually agree with something written by the Toronto Star’s resident for the Islamic perspective:

It is foolhardy to think that he'd [the Wahhabi king'd] align "moderate" Sunni Arab forces with the U.S. and Israel against Shiite Iran. Jordan and the Gulf oil sheikhs may worry about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but he's not about to lead a cold war against Iran, let alone a hot war.

Right on, Harpoon!

Of course, the rest of his column is the usual farrago of hogwash, bollocks and crypto-supremacist bilge.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments (1)

Egyptian logic: An extremely dapper and well-spoken minister in Hosni Mubarak's government expatiates on his theory that Islamic terrorists learned their violent ways from--wait for it--Europe. As the minister sees it (and he's lectured on the subject on the very continent in question), it was those two 20th Century World Wars, both of which occurred in Europe, that provided the inspiration.

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

Turning to Japanese: It’s hard to say who’s more clueless and narcissistic--Barack Obama, outreacher to Muslims and solver of the pesky Israel problem, or Thomas L. Friedman, the NYT pundit who writes the most mundane, the most prosaic prose, and who, in his most recent column, regales readers with how he cracked up the president with a Jew joke:

During a telephone interview Tuesday with President Obama about his speech to Arabs and Muslims in Cairo on Thursday, I got to tell the president my favorite Middle East joke. It gave him a good laugh. It goes like this:

There is this very pious Jew named Goldberg who always dreamed of winning the lottery. Every Sabbath, he’d go to synagogue and pray: “God, I have been such a pious Jew all my life. What would be so bad if I won the lottery?” But the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Week after week, Goldberg would pray to win the lottery, but the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Finally, one Sabbath, Goldberg wails to the heavens and says: “God, I have been so pious for so long, what do I have to do to win the lottery?”

And the heavens parted and the voice of God came down: “Goldberg, give me a chance! Buy a ticket!”

Hardee har har. Laugh? I thought I’d puke. But wait--there’s more:

I told the president that joke because in reading the Arab and Israeli press this week, everyone seemed to be telling him what he needed to do and say in Cairo, but nobody was indicating how they were going to step up and do something different. Everyone wants peace, but nobody wants to buy a ticket.

“We have a joke around the White House,” the president said. “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working — and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.”

The “truth” according to Samantha Power and the State Department, you mean--
the “truth” of die-hard anti-Zionists. Tom continues:

A key part of his message, he said, will be: “Stop saying one thing behind closed doors and saying something else publicly.” He then explained: “There are a lot of Arab countries more concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon than the ‘threat’ from Israel, but won’t admit it.” There are a lot of Israelis, “who recognize that their current path is unsustainable, and they need to make some tough choices on settlements to achieve a two-state solution — that is in their long-term interest — but not enough folks are willing to recognize that publicly.”

There are a lot of Palestinians who “recognize that the constant incitement and negative rhetoric with respect to Israel” has not delivered a single “benefit to their people and had they taken a more constructive approach and sought the moral high ground” they would be much better off today — but they won’t say it aloud.

“There are a lot of Arab states that have not been particularly helpful to the Palestinian cause beyond a bunch of demagoguery,” and when it comes to “ponying up” money to actually help the Palestinian people, they are “not forthcoming.”

And you’re not going to believe what comes next:

When it comes to dealing with the Middle East, the president noted, “there is a Kabuki dance going on constantly. That is what I would like to see broken down. I am going to be holding up a mirror and saying: ‘Here is the situation, and the U.S. is prepared to work with all of you to deal with these problems. But we can’t impose a solution. You are all going to have to make some tough decisions.’ Leaders have to lead, and, hopefully, they will get supported by their people.”…

Kabuki?! Kabuki?! If you’re going to toss around Japanese terms to show how cultured and erudite you are, Barack, the more appropriate one would be kamikaze, as in “Palestinian suicide bombers, fanatics who turn themselves into instruments of mass murder in the insane belief that it somehow pleases their God, are the kamikazes of our time.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:18 | link | comments (2)

Wednesday, 03 June 2009

Still clueless after all these years: Showing that he has learned nothing from history and understands bupkes about Islam, Shimon Peres flaps his gums about “opportunity” and “change” and “normalisation” and other mishegas to the timesonline:

President Obama's journey to Saudi Arabia and Egypt could be an opportunity. It reflects both the need for an historic change in the Middle East and a unique chance of achieving it.

Various ideas are being discussed. One significant concept is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia's peace initiative which was adopted by the Arab League in Beirut. Much wisdom lies also in King Abdullah of Jordan's proposal of a “57-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The kings are right in seeing both the proper destination and the surest path for its realisation. With the support of the leadership in Egypt, it seems the time is ripe to end the Israeli-Arab conflict once and for all.

Achieving this historic goal calls for a twin-track approach. It requires bilateral negotiations between Israel and each of its neighbours - the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon. And in tandem with this, a regional process of normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab states.

Bottom of Form

Such diplomatic architecture may introduce a win-win strategy for all parties. Support from the entire Arab world will provide legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority as it approaches the difficult task of making and then implementing historic compromises. At the same time it may reassure Israel that the painful concessions it will make will be rewarded by a broader, more enduring comprehensive peace across the region.

This approach is already set down in the internationally accepted “road map”. This framework outlines certain steps of normalisation towards Israel that must be taken by the Arab states as the bilateral process advances. In its second phase, it calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders that will serve as a step leading to permanent status. A similar plan was negotiated in the past. The Palestinians rejected provisional borders out of concern that they might become permanent. A regional agreement with American and European guarantees may assuage their doubts.

Looking back, I confess that well-formulated peace plans are not enough on their own. Something else is often required…

Yeah, something like completely trouncing your enemies, as the Allies did to the Axis powers during WW2.

Sing it, Paul:

I heard an old lefty on the tube last night.

He seemed so high on “progress,” I just sighed.

And he talked about the "road map"

And he downplayed all our fears.

Still clueless after all these years.

Ah, still clueless after all these years…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:44 | link | comments

Do do that Voodoo: Obama is A) looking to touch the soul of the Muslim world, and B) apparently convinced that the U.S. is part of that world despite Muslims comprising a scant 1.5% of the population.

Only one recourse: Get out your doll and pins.

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

Michelle Malkin's scathingly brilliant observation: "When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone."

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

Still BFFs: Despite rumours to the contrary, ObL assures us that al Qaeda and the Taliban are as tight as ever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments

Narcissist on the loose: What happens when someone who’s embarrassingly self-besotted becomes president of the United States? Stuff like this (from CNN):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- President Obama wants to form positive partnerships with Muslim nations to address issues "that matter to people's lives" such as economic development, education, health, science and technology, an administration spokesman said Wednesday.

Ben Rhodes said that when Obama takes the stage Thursday for a major speech in Cairo, Egypt, he also will express the need to promote democracy and human rights.

Obama will repeat a sentiment he expressed in a speech in Ankara, Turkey, in April, Rhodes said.: "This can't be just (about) what we're against, but what we're for."

Rhodes said Obama asked administration staff to "cast a wide net" to gather a range of viewpoints, including those of Muslim-Americans, as he was preparing his Cairo comments.

Obama leaves late Wednesday for Cairo, Egypt, where he is to address a mostly Muslim audience Thursday at 6 a.m. ET.

His plans to improve America's image among Muslims have been in the works since his first week in office.

"My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect," Obama said in a January interview with Al-Arabiya television network.

"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," he said…

And as has become abundantly clear, it’s all about you, isn’t it, Barack? Your relatives. Your school days in Indonesia. Your ever-loving Muslim granny.

All’s I can say: For God sake's, man, get a grip, and for the good of humanity--GET THE HELL OVER YOURSELF!

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

Arab demands: NYT headline--As Obama begins trip, Arabs want Israeli gesture.

Here's the one I'd suggest:

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

Elmo had some little lambs: Displaying the same razor-sharp logic they deployed in their battle against Mark Steyn, two of Elmo’s sockies fling mud at another notorious “Islamophobe” (i.e. an advocate of free speech and a critic of jihad, sharia and other problematic aspects of Islam and its adherents)—Ezra Levant—in a letter to the Toronto Star:

Ezra Levant accuses Canada's human rights commissions of censorship for investigating our hate-speech complaints about his publishing of cartoons depicting Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad as suicide bombers and for hearing our complaints regarding Maclean's magazine's refusal to publish a response to one of more than 20 articles. Among other things, the articles imply that Islam condones sex with minors and animals, refer to Muslims as "sheep-shaggers" and allege that Muslims believe in drinking the blood of their enemies.

Although Levant may regard this rhetoric as "free speech," most Canadians would recognize it as racist if not hateful. Indeed, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said it has, "serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's magazine and other media outlets . . . (for) contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian Canadians."

It is not surprising that Levant is smearing our HRCs for bringing public attention to bear on his own Islamophobic track record.

Khurrum Awan, Naseem Mithoowani, Toronto

Again with the sheep? Clearly, the sockies haven’t read Steyn’s latest book, wherein it’s explained that the sheep-shaggery was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s shtick. The holy one was consumed by questions of post-coital etiquette, specifically, was it acceptable to consume the ovine object of one’s desire following sexual congress with it? Employing that “tone” that the B.C. “human rights” ‘roos found so distasteful, Steyn dared to spoof the Ayatollah’s woolly-headed edicts—something that’s not allowed in lands where sharia (and a “human rights” apparatus) calls the shots.

Memo to the relentless—and relentlessly clueless—socks: what causes “societal intolerance” toward sock-types is their gross mischaracterization of the facts; their trashing of our most valuable freedom, free speech; and their dignifying the words of that sanctimonious doofus Babs Hall, the hanging judge who took it upon herself to pass sentence on a case over which she had no jurisdiction.

Update: "Socky and Cher"? Oh, Mark, you're just too funny.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:04 | link | comments (7)

Tuesday, 02 June 2009

Troublesome reverts: On the same day that four jailhouse “reverts” and would-be NYC synagogue bombers were indicted, another “revert” is in the news—this one in Bill Clinton’s old stomping grounds. From FOX News:

The suspect in the deadly shooting at a military recruiting center in Arkansas is the latest in a series of Muslim converts accused of planning or launching violent attacks in the U.S., part of what security experts call an alarming domestic trend.

The attack came less than two weeks after a foiled bomb plot on two synagogues in Riverdale, N.Y., allegedly led by four men who converted to Islam in prison or shortly after their incarceration.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the 23-year-old accused of killing a U.S. soldier and injuring another in the attack Monday in Little Rock, was born in Tennessee as Carlos Leon Bledsoe. He reportedly converted to Islam as a teenager, and court records show he changed his name in March 2006.

Little Rock police said there was no indication Muhammad was part of a wider plot to attack the military, but terrorism experts say there are important connections between his and other homegrown terror plots in recent years, including their targets, motives and inspiration.

"The real common denominator is the ideological commitment (present) in every single case I've seen over the past few months and over the past few years," said Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Phares said the vast majority of converts are nonviolent, but a few embrace the teachings of extremist religious mentors.

"In the lives of these diverse people there's always one moment where there's a click," he said — in which the budding convert is turned by a radical cleric or ideologue, or swayed by indoctrinating material they find online.

Prosecutors say Muhammad was targeting U.S. soldiers "because of what they had done to Muslims in the past" and was angry about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But some terror experts say that reasoning is a cover for their true grievances. The alleged ringleader of the plot in New York professed a similar motivation and hoped to take down a military plane at a local airstrip — but only after he tried to bomb two synagogues in a war against the Jews…

But don’t worry. A terrorism expert assures us that people who act out in this way do so because of personal problems, and not because they’re in the grip of a supremacist/genocidal ideology:

"I think there are a lot of personal reasons these people do this — as opposed to the ideological reasons or religious reasons that become the excuse," said Neil Livingstone, a national security and terrorism consultant.

Riiight. They were potty-trained too soon. Or too late. Or mummy didn’t love them enough. Or the old man used to haul off and slap ‘em black and blue. Or…

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:56 | link | comments

He doesn’t get it: Obama has poured on the charm, grovelled like crazy and, go figure, the Arabs are still giving his peace push the cold shoulder. From the NY Times:

CAIRO — President Obama starts his much anticipated Middle East tour on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to press the Arab states to offer a gesture to the Israelis to entice them into accelerating the peace process.

But when he meets in Riyadh with King Abdullah, Saudis officials and political experts say, he should be prepared for a polite but firm refusal, for the Arab states are convinced that they have made enough concessions already. It is up to Israel to make a gesture, they say, perhaps by dismantling settlements in the West Bank or committing to a two-state solution.

“What do you expect the Arabs to give without getting anything in advance, if Israel is still hesitating to accept the idea of two states in itself?” said Mohammad Abdullah al-Zulfa, a historian and member of the Saudi Shura Council, which serves as an advisory panel in place of a parliament.

While not dismissing the possibility of some movement on the peace process, the Saudis say the Arab world made substantial concessions in the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed by a 22-nation colaition during an Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002. That proposal offered full recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel withdrawing to its 1967 borders and agreeing to a “just settlement” to the issue of the Palestinian refugees.

The Saudis are concerned about the potential threat to the coalition should one nation make further concessions on its own. That, they say, could provide the less committed countries a rationale for abandoning the peace initiative, according to officials and regional analysts.

“Any unilateral decision from any Arab head of state will shred the Arab world and tear its ranks because there will always be those who oppose and those who support,” said Anwar Majid Eshki, director of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

President Obama has said he is traveling to the Middle East to push for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict and to improve the image of the United States in the Muslim world. There are likely to be other issues discussed as well, including efforts to curtail Iranian influence in the region and the price and supply of oil…

What doesn’t Obama get? He doesn’t get that he isn’t Jesus. He doesn’t get that they could care less that he’s a cool dude, a smooth talker, mega-glam, a charmer—all the pizazzy, superficial stuff that plays so well to Western crowds. He doesn’t get the jihad. He doesn’t get that the Arabs are no more closer to coming to terms with the reality of a sovereign Jewish nation called Israel than they were when Israel was trying to get off the ground. He doesn’t get that they’ll never be able to come to terms with it because of who they are, who the Jews are, and what the holy Koran has to say about it all. He doesn’t get that, barring a clerically-authorized bowdlerization of that scripture, and a resolve to set aside its supremacist tenets, and/or the secularization of a critical mass of the Muslim world—two impossibilities and one not bloody likely—that acceptance is never going to come. He doesn’t get that if he throws Israel to the slavering wolves, the barbarians will know that, soon enough, they can make a meal of the rest of West too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:20 | link | comments (1)

The vox populi speaks: Bad news for Obama. His sanguine view of Dar al-Islam—the object of his ongoing charm assault—doesn’t seem to be shared by regular Americans. From CNN (my bolds):

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Shortly before President Obama departs for a trip to the Middle East, a new national poll suggests that one in five Americans has a favorable view of Muslim countries.

That view compares with 46 percent of the people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey who say they have an unfavorable opinion of Muslim countries. That's up 5 percentage points from 2002, when 41 percent indicated that they had an unfavorable view.

Meanwhile, three in 10 say they have a neutral opinion of Muslim countries.

The poll also suggests that most Americans suspect people in Muslim countries don't think highly of the United States. Nearly eight in 10 questioned say people in Muslim countries have a unfavorable opinion of the United States, with 14 percent saying Muslims hold a favorable view.

But the poll indicates Americans seem to be split on whether such negative opinions by Muslims matter. Fifty-three percent of those questioned say they think Muslim views of the United States matter greatly or moderately, with 47 percent saying that Muslim opinions of the United States don't matter very much or at all.

The poll's release comes hours before the president flies to Saudi Arabia for meetings with King Abdullah. Following the stop in Saudi Arabia, Obama will head to Egypt, where he'll deliver a long-awaited speech Thursday on relations between the United States and the Muslim world.

At a town hall in Turkey earlier this year, the president declared that "the United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam."

Many Americans seem to agree with the president: Sixty-two percent of those surveyed say they don't think the United States is at war with the Muslim world, with 36 percent indicating that the country is at war with Muslim countries. Those numbers have remained stable since CNN's 2002 poll.

But the poll suggests that six out of 10 think that the Muslim world considers itself at war with the United States…

Whadya know? The hoi polloi has a much better grip on reality than the Beltway brainiacs. Had this been a Canadian poll, of course, “human rights” imams in the Dar al-Barb (Hall) would be issuing frantic calls for more “education” to counteract the spiralling “Islamophobia,” and the Toronto Star would have a hand-wringing editorial about our endemic “racism,” and how it’s worse than ever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:02 | link | comments (1)

See the pyramids along (with) denial: Obama’s going to Egypt, and the locals are pulling out all the stops to show the outreacher a good time. From Xinhua:

CAIRO, June 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama is to deliver a landmark speech at Cairo University on Thursday, in his latest attempt to improve the tarnished image of the United States in the Arab and Muslim World and so as to start a new chapter of partnership between U.S. and the Muslim World.

Obama's visit to the Egyptian capital of Cairo, hit headlines on Tuesday in most of Egypt's local newspapers, which all welcomed warmly the upcoming long-waited visit.

The official al-Ahram newspaper wrote that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will discuss with his U.S. counterpart Obama the latest developments in the Middle East on Thursday.

The report quoted the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary affairs Mufeed Mahmoud Shehab as saying that Obama's visit is a turning point in the relations between the United States and Arab and Muslim World.

Shehab said that Obama decided to deliver his speech in Cairo because of Egypt's pioneering role in the Arab and Muslim World, adding that this choice expresses the U.S. understanding of Egypt's civilization and history.

Al-Ahram outlined in its lead the itinerary of Obama' visit to Egypt. Obama will have tete-a-tete talks with Mubarak on his arrival then the two leaders would be joined by delegations of the two countries. Official ceremonies will be held at Kubbeh Palace and later Obama will give a speech to the Muslim World at Cairo University before 2,500 political and religious figures and representatives from all segments of the Egyptian people.

Before leaving Cairo at 18:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) Obama will visit archaeological sites in the Pyramids area and Sultan Hassan Mosque.

Meanwhile, local daily newspaper Almasry Alyoum wrote in its editorial under the headline "Obama's coming, Cairo in bronze" that the area of Citadel, which includes Salah Al-Din Square and the area around Sultan Hassan witnessed unprecedented large scale beautification process. Workers also painted lampposts along Tharwt, Gamaa and Nahda streets in bronze.

It added that Palms and decorative plants were put, while piles of garbage have been removed from around the area, as news has come in that the U.S. president would visit the area of the Citadel.

The newspaper cited Zahi Hawas, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, as saying that Obama would visit the pyramids after his speech at Cairo University.

Hawas said that as a part of his 80-minute tour on foot, Obama would enter the Pyramid of Cheops and visit the nearby Sphinx…

How appropos. I’ve often thought that Obama is rather Sphinx-like—a cipher, an enigma, a puzzle wrapped in a riddle ziplocked in a mystery.

Either that or he’s just another clueless leftist who, alas, has a chance to run the superpower into the ground.

Update: Couldn't resist:

See the pyramids and O’s denial.

Watch the strategems and Arab guile.

Just remember, kafir, all the while

It’s Dar al-Islam.

See the market place in Old Cairo.

Order Kushari and fries to go.

Just remember one thing you should know

It’s Dar al-Islam.

They’ll be so warm and embracing

No doubt you’ll be friendly too, sans a clue.

Trash the Zion state ‘cause it’s so small.

Claim that it's to blame when "peace talks" stall.

Just remember, O, how empires fall

To Dar al-Isam.

Update: Robert Spencer turns speechwriter and pens the words Obama should say in Cairo, but won't.

Update: Sounds like one little jihadi (the one with the fugly prayer icky on his forehead) is off his meds again--and dead set against Obama's visit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:04 | link | comments

Now I’ve heard everything: The dopeychanger has invited those who decry America as “the Great Satan” to 4^th of July celebrations. From FOX News:

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras -- In a new overture to Iran, the Obama administration has authorized U.S. embassies around the world to invite Iranian officials to Independence Day parties they host on or around July 4th.

A State Department cable sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates late last week said that U.S. diplomats could ask their Iranian counterparts to attend the festivities, which generally feature speeches about American values, fireworks, hot dogs and hamburgers.

The notice, sent on Friday, said that the posts "may invite representatives from the government of Iran" to the events, a State Department official said Tuesday, quoting from the document. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal communication.

It was not immediately clear how many embassies and consulates would actually invite Iranian diplomats to the July 4 parties or whether any Iranians would accept the invitations.

The cable was first reported by The New York Times.

The move comes amid the administration's ongoing efforts to engage Iran in variety of venues, including formal diplomatic meetings over its nuclear program, violence in Iraq and the situation in Afghanistan…

Everybody sing!

I’m a happy hopeychanger

A hopeychanger through and through.

A real live product of Alinsky’s school,

Stealin’ your freedom from you.

I’ve got a hopeychanger sweetheart.

She’s the apple of my eye.

Hopeychanger’s reachin’ out,

Reachin’ out to nukers.

I am a hopey-dopey guy.

Update: Diana West quips: "So, we'll bring the sparklers, they'll bring the centrifuge....?" Hey, don't forget the Hebrew National hot dogs, Di.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments

A display of gratitude; a show of “Pride”: Someone whose last name means "German" offers thanks to the Toronto Star:

Re:Jewish group slams anti-Israel gays, May 28

Thank you for exposing Israeli government-promoted propaganda and McCarthyism.

Dr. James Deutsch, Toronto

You’re welcome, Doc. Always happy to oblige in defaming da Jews.

And here’s the piece that sparked Deutsch’s dismay, a hissy fit by the Star’s anti-Zionist Cruella De Ville, Antonia Zerbesias. Antonia summoned up her highest dudgeon to give B’nai Brith’s Frank Dimant a good shellacking for his effrontery in daring to point out that “Queers for Hamas” does not compute:

…The [B’nai Brith news] release not only demanded that the gay community condemn the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, it also implied that this year's parade grand marshal, human rights activist and refugee lawyer El-Farouk Khaki, is "part and parcel of the anti-Israel machinery that continues to churn out hateful and divisive propaganda."

That's because Khaki , who founded a support group for gay Muslims, spoke at a Queers Against Israeli Apartheid event last Saturday.

Now you'd think B'nai Brith would be supportive of a man who not only is a progressive Muslim but who also wants to maintain peace in the Middle East.

Instead, Dimant, who is on the faculty of McVety's Canada Christian College, and accepted an honorary doctorate from the school, told the National Post yesterday that Khaki should be subject to "disciplinary action" by Pride Toronto.

But no such action is forthcoming, Pride's executive director Tracey Sandilands assured me, insisting that, contrary to the report in the Post, "Where we stand at this point in time is, we are not taking a side. We are not going to ban anybody from the parade."

However, all entrants, as usual, must meet the legal criteria for participating.

That said, the parade's voluntary security contingent and the city's police presence will be considerably beefed up this year.

As for participation by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, spokesperson Corvin Russell told me that it intends to follow the rules – and that B'nai Brith's insistence that gays have more rights in Israel than in Arab countries is beside the point.

"If you're interested in queer rights in Palestine, then help them with their struggle and don't demonize them," he said. "Palestinian queers can't seek refuge in Israel."

See you all at Pride.

Think I'll give it a pass, Toni.

Now, I have some problems with Frank, too, since he’s one of those O.J.s who promotes state censorship, even when it bites his own organization on the tuches. However, I do think there’s something, well, bananas, about people crapping on an entity where they are free to pursue their sexual proclivities, and championing Gaza, where homosexuality is considered a capital crime punishable by death.

Also pretty kooky (and extremely disturbing): the politicization of Gay Pride, and how it’s been harnessed to the annihilationist agenda.

Gay Pride? McCarthyism? It’s the jihad, babycakes, with pieced nipples and rock-solid abs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments (2)

Cry me a river Nile: I don’t know how many shekels have been thrown at the Palestinians—enough to buy a major stake in Government Motors, no doubt. And what do they have to show for it? Not heck of a lot, as a storekeeper bemoans to a sympathetic Oakland Ross, Toronto Star Mideast scribbler, in an article headed "Starved for cash in the Gaza Strip":

GAZA CITY – People around the world are suffering through the international credit crunch, but Khamis al-Awi doesn't worry about credit.

Like other businesspeople in the beleaguered Gaza Strip, al-Awi worries about cash.

One day, the customers at al-Awi's grocery store on Omar Mukhtar St. will have money to spend. A day later, they won't.

The problem is not that his clients are poor, although many of them certainly are. The problem is that there simply isn't any money to be had.

"When cash is short, they come to me and they borrow the goods, and I write down their names," explained the round-faced, 30-year-old grocer. "I have to wait for them to pay me back, until the banks bring in the money."

Welcome to the Gaza Strip, Middle Eastern home of the "cashless society."

When people in other lands use the phrase, they are referring to an emerging economic system in which most financial transactions are conducted with credit cards or by other electronic means.

Here in Gaza, however, the term means an economic system in which there is no money – or very little.

"There is cash now in Gaza," said Sami Abdel Shafi, a Gaza City economist, "but I wouldn't count on cash next week."

The problem is structural as well as political.

With no currency of its own, and with its borders closed for most economic purposes, Gaza has no coherent system for the supply and distribution of bank notes.

The result is a chronic and at times calamitous cash squeeze that affects every aspect of what is already a crippled economy, burdened by an unemployment rate of more than 60 per cent and weighed down by an ongoing economic siege imposed by neighbouring Israel.

"As a businessman, you cannot plan anything," said Shafi. "Any financial forecast will fail. You cannot make deals."

Among the main sources of outside cash for Gaza's hobbled economy is the monthly payment of salaries to tens of thousands of police officers and civil servants who used to work for Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian political faction that now rules the West Bank.

Fatah was ousted from Gaza two years ago, following an outbreak of internecine warfare with Hamas, which now controls the narrow coastal strip, but Fatah continues to pay its former workers here.

Each month, the funds are transferred by armoured car from Ramallah, the de-facto West Bank capital, to Gaza, where the money is distributed to various banks and paid out in the form of Israeli shekels. These monthly transfers involve the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, and they have a significant impact on Gaza's wilted economy, but the effect is not significant enough to get the economy moving again.

Money also flows into Gaza through the operations of United Nations agencies here, as well as private non-governmental organizations that run aid projects.

Substantial sums of foreign currency are spirited into Gaza through the network of smugglers' tunnels that run beneath the border to Egypt.

No one really knows how much money flows in or out of the territory because most economic activity in Gaza is conducted on the black market.

"The Gaza Strip is not a normal economy," said Gil Feiler, director of the Middle East Business and Economic Research Institute, based in Herzliya, Israel. "It's under siege. It's a smuggling economy. It's a barter economy."…

It’s a jihadist economy. It’s a UN-ruined economy. It’s a non-productive death-to-the-Jews economy. That’s the problem.

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

Monday, 01 June 2009

Jihadi hands across the border: The Ceeb has a story about some jihadis in Atlanta who got together with jihadis in Toronto, some of whom went on to become the “broad strata” of plotters known as the Toronto 18, the ones who wanted to blow up landmarks and behead the prime minister. When the story was played on the radio, the reporter made sure to advise listeners that the Atlanta plotters were young men in their early 20s in high school and college (in high school in their 20s? really?) and that their jihad, such as it was, mostly involved sitting around watching the Iraq war on TV and talking about how they wanted to seek revenge for what America was doing to Muslims; you know, one of those defensive jihad thingys. Anyway, the Atlanta plotters never got beyond the “wouldn’t it be fun to stick it to Great Satan?” stage—unlike their Canadian counterparts, who’d actually gone ahead and ordered the fertilizer with which they hoped to make their bombs:

An Atlanta terrorism suspect travelled to Canada in 2005 to meet with three members of an alleged Toronto extremist group to plot attacks on oil refineries in America, U.S. prosecutors said Monday at the start of his trial.

Prosecutors accuse Syed Haris Ahmed, 25, of providing material support for terrorism and seeking military training with a terror group in Pakistan.

In his opening remarks at a U.S. federal court in Atlanta, assistant U.S. attorney Robert McBurney portrayed Ahmed as a militant time bomb who sent enthusiastic, unencrypted emails to confederates.

Ahmed headed to Pakistan to sign up for jihad training, then backed out, McBurney alleged. He also shot surreptitious video of potential targets in Washington, D.C., and when the FBI showed up, he talked for hours without asking for a lawyer and provided a confession that fills hundreds of pages.

The court heard how Ahmed and a co-accused allegedly found some "Canadian brothers" online, and travelled to Toronto in 2005 to meet with three other would-be jihadists, identified only as Azdee, James and Jamal.

According to the prosecution, Ahmed proposed attacking U.S. oil refineries and storage tanks.

"I wanted to attack those places because oil is being stolen from Muslims," Ahmed is quoted as telling investigators in his confession.

The Canadian conspirators, he told the FBI, had even grander plans to attack global-positioning satellites.

"We discussed using either lasers or jammers to disrupt the GPS," Ahmed told the FBI. "This attack would cause confusion for everyone, including the military."

The Canadians had been under surveillance by CSIS, Canada's spy agency, which tipped off the FBI to Ahmed's alleged activities.

The Canadians, eventually nicknamed the "Toronto 18," were arrested in a series of high-profile raids in the summer of 2006.

Seven of those accused have since had their charges stayed or dropped. One suspect, a minor at the time of his arrest, was convicted in September of conspiring to bomb several targets. Another of the alleged group's members, Saad Khalid, 22, pleaded guilty last month in a Brampton, Ont., court to a charge of intending to cause an explosion.

The remaining individuals have yet to stand trial on a range of charges, including participating in a terrorist group, receiving training from a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion that could cause serious bodily harm or death.

During his remarks to the court Monday, Ahmed's lawyer, Jack Martin, called his client's plotting childish and immature, more playing terrorist than terrorism.

"Where would they get the lasers?" Martin asked the court. "Radio Shack?"…

Well, maybe not Radio Shack. But I hear they have a fabulous laser sale going on at Home Jihad Depot online.

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

Hear ye, hear ye: An important announcement from Canada’s federal P.C.-enforcers (a.k.a. the Lynch mob):

Improved Service Delivery

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has designed a new system to provide better service to all parties to human rights complaints.

A new case management system (CMS) will permit Commission staff to better input, review, retrieve and manage important complaint file information. One of the many benefits of the new CMS is the enhanced ability for Commission staff to record and meet expressed communication needs. This will allow us to better meet the needs of individuals who are visually impaired or those who are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, and who have specific communication requirements. To effect these changes, a team of special IT advisors has been established. These advisors will support Commission staff who require assistance in meeting such communication needs.

Oh, so you mean up till now the hearing-impaired haven’t had the same opportunity to whine, whinge and kvetch as the rest of us? How discriminatory! And how very, um, empathetic of the CRHC to rush (well, not rush exactly; more like saunter) to fill in this gaping hole in service. My question: how much is all the “improved service delivery” with its various changes, special IT advisors and whatnot going to cost us?

That's the CHRC for you--always coming up with new and enhanced ways to spend our money.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:46 | link | comments (1)

UN Human Rights Council investigators arrive in Sri Lanka to probe war crimes: Just kidding. A mere—what?—20,000 civilians were said to be killed during the government’s victorious assault on the Tamil Tigers, compared to the massive casualties inflicted during Israel’s Gaza incursion. And, hey, who are we to compare Sri Lanka to Gaza when everyone ~~who wants to get rid of Israel~~ who's in the know knows there’s simply no comparison? But have no fear—the UN’s perma-Durban has dispatched a team of probers, including a South African Jew (to remind everyone of the connection between apartheid-era S.A. and apartheid-today Israel) to Hamasistan to get to the bottom of things. From Xinhua:

A UN inquiry team arrived in the Gaza Strip on Monday to investigate the performance of Israel and Hamas during a three-week offensive Israel launched in the Hamas-controlled territory at the end of 2008.

South African veteran prosecutor Richard Goldstone leads the mission which the UN Human Rights Council appointed. Goldstone and the 14 legal experts entered Gaza through Rafah crossing point, coming from Egypt.

The delegation will visit areas where Israeli ground troops operated during Operation Cast Lead and the places that were hit by aircraft.

The team is scheduled to meet "all concerned parties," including Palestinian victims and officials from the Hamas-run health ministry, said a previous statement by the mission.

Adel Zourob, a spokesman for Hamas government, welcomed the arrival of the delegation, urging Goldstone to "work extensively to expose, condemn and chase down the Israeli war criminals."…

Have an eggroll, Mr. Goldstone. And then go ahead and stick it in yer ear.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:39 | link | comments

Gentlemen of unspecified religious origin caught planting what they thought were explosives at NYC synagogue: TimesWatch, citing a FOX News panel, notes the New York Times's strange reticence in recent reportage about a jihadi bomb plot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:45 | link | comments

Not-yet-ready-for-prime-time-online: After reading BCF’s amusing report about his infiltration of Elmo’s auction house, I decided to check out the website of Canadian Charger, the former CIC head's new online magazine and the beneficiary of the auction’s shekels. (Elmo didn't make much headway in comandeering Maclean's magazine, so I guess he sees this as the next best thing. Can't say I fault him for that. The whole idea of a free press is that the press gets to say stuff you may not like, and, if you're not satisfied with complaining about it via a letter to the editor, you're free to go start your own magazine. You do not, I repeat, do not, get to take over the magazine and insert your da'wa to rebut the words of those whom you view to be flagrant "Islamophobes".)

The Charger has no content as yet, just the following, which amounts to a cross between a mission statement and a naked plea for moolah to help get this steed off the ground (if I may be permitted to mix a metaphor in reference to such a high-brow and genteel publication):

Canada Deserves Better!

We recently took steps to establish Canada's Voice Corporation (CVC) as an independent not-for-profit publisher of high-value alternative multimedia interactive online magazines using the most advanced telecommunication technology.

In July 2009 The Canadian Charger will be launched as its national weekly multimedia interactive online current-affairs flagship.

We are pleased to invite you to donate to make this a reality.

In The Canadian Charger, we are committed to presenting a diversity of views and counter-views on issues of importance to Canadians, written by journalists, academics, outstanding professionals, award-winning experts, social and political activists, literary essayists, novelists, poets and artists.

We are doing all this for one vital and urgent reason: We believe that Canada deserves better!

We depend on our donors, subscribers, and sponsors.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely yours,

The Canadian Charger's Editorial Board

Abigail Bakan, Margaret Pappano, Michael Keefer and Mohamed Elmasry

CC also has a “Board of Contributors” which lists nearly sixty names, including former rogue M.P. Carolyn Parrish, and Jason Kunin, the height-challenged anti-Zionist (think Napoleon, but Jewish) who’s a familiar name on the letters page of Toronto papers, and who was once suspended from his teaching duties for adding pro-Palestinian propaganda to his high school class’s curriculum. All in all, a typical assortment of leftists and Islamists you’d expect to be drawn to a high-value alternative multimedia interactive online magazine/national weekly multimedia interactive online current-affairs flagship such as this. (And if that’s an example of the kind of high-value online current-affairs phraseology we can expect from Elmo's horse, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be around for too long.)

Update: Nice company that Elmo keeps. Michael Keefer is one of those nutty "truthers," while Margaret Pappano is an anti-Zionist Jewess who's active in the academic jihad against Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:34 | link | comments (2)

Driving her crazy: Today’s the day that auto dinosaur GM declares bankrupty, and the U.S. government officially goes into the car business. (And why shouldn’t it, when its busy fingers are in so very many pots these days?) Rosabeth Moss Kanter, for one, isn’t thrilled about being thrust into the car game against her will and better judgement:

If I had wanted to buy General Motors stock, I would have talked to my financial manager. Now I am forced to own it, along with other American taxpayers, because of the federal government's bankruptcy deal.

It is hard to see what good will come of this, and it sets a dangerous precedent. If the U.S. needs a major auto company, we have one already in Ford. Ford has proven to be nimbler, more innovative, more globally-integrated, and more competitive than GM. It saw the need to change earlier, changed faster, and did not need a government bailout. Ford's advertising is trying to make the most out of its accomplishments, but I fear that Ford will be dragged down by the GM situation and be forced to cut too deeply into its own flesh as GM is cut to the bone.

The government's rationale for its involvement with GM falls in the "too big to fail" department. I know that the current administration is dedicated to ending the recession with as few human costs as possible in lost jobs and lost wages. Yes, the auto industry's woes coincided with the financial meltdown creating a liquidity crisis which left the federal government with the only pockets deep enough to invest in the bail-out and buy-out. But the macro-management of the economy at the federal level begins to look like micro-management when they get into the details of owning (or running) specific companies.

Is this a productive new use of assets? No. Is this a move toward transforming transportation? No. Is there a significant national security interest? No. Will this save more jobs than it kills? No. Will this promote innovation and industries of the future? No…

Rosabeth has some advice for the hopeychangers—and, man, do I wish she were sitting on its car advisory committee (assuming they have one):

I would advise the Obama administration to help innovative new companies emerge from the ashes of GM. The entrepreneurial spirit will restore the American economy more effectively than propping up falling giants.

Oh, Rosabeth, you shameless capitalist. Don’t you know that the government can do anything and everything it resolves to do? And, who knows, maybe we’re looking at a government-backed car company success story to rival the Lada's.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:36 | link | comments

Jew-love in T.O.: Rosie DiManno (the Toronto Star’s token non-loon) has a terrific column about politicians trying to outdo each other’s Israelophilia at the CJC’s plenum (a word that always reminds me of “plectrum”—you know, the thing you use to pluck guitar strings?). It is undercut to a degree by the Star’s jeering headline, “Canada’s leaders swoon over Israel”:

Have you hugged a Jew today?

Couldn't hurt, on any day, given some worrisome trends in Canada – though less here than in Europe – to demonize both Jews and Israel, particularly via the rubric of anti-Zionism, which anybody with half a brain recognizes for what it is: The same old anti-Semitism tarted up in sleazy pedantic finery.

But yesterday, at the Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda synagogue in North York, the most astonishing thing happened. Leaders of Canada's political parties got all gushy and goopy, practically falling over one another to show they love Jews – and Israel – best.

How gratifying this must have been for those assembled, and a wider constituency that has found itself besieged anew, bewildered and alarmed by the increasing brazenness of Jew-bashing in this country, a toxic debate that finds fertile soil in the political sludge of the Middle East.

There was Prime Minister Stephen Harper using the occasion to announce a new bill that would allow victims to sue perpetrators and sponsors of terrorism – whether individuals, organizations or foreign states – through Canadian courts, civilly.

And there was Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, sounding rather ticked that the Tories had thus pre-empted a private member's bill on that very issue, which justice critic Irwin Cotler had planned to introduce in the Commons.

Jack Layton had no such bill in his back pocket – perhaps left it in his other pants – but was adamant that New Democrats stood four-square with the Canadian Jewish Congress as human-rights advocates, whilst denying that new-wave anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of the modern left.

The Green party's Elizabeth May extolled Israel as "an exemplar of democracy" in the Middle East, while claiming violence in the region is fuelled by "petro-dollars to petro-dictators." The Bloc called in sick and was excused…

During Israel’s troubles with Hezbollah a few summers ago, Iggy made an unfortunate and completely unfounded comment about Israeli “war crimes.” But all that’s in the past as he strives to out-Harper Harper in his devotion to the Jewish state:

Ignatieff yesterday conceded no ground to Harper's Tories on steadfastness with Israel.

First he teed off on Iran, "a dreadful regime that uses a great religion and then poisons the wellspring of generosity in that great religion with statements inspired by hatred. This is a state seeking weapons of mass destruction. This is a member of the UN denying another member of the UN the right to exist. Canada cannot be silent when one state denies another state their right to exist. Canada cannot be silent when a president of a state denies the Holocaust. And we cannot be in the room when the president of a state engages in vicious lies. Denial of the Holocaust is an unacceptable moral disgrace."

Ignatieff reminded that his father was a Canadian diplomat who served on the UN committee that recommended partitioning Palestine – "a plan accepted by Jews, but rejected by the Arab world. Too much violence has followed."

Five months ago, Ignatieff drew intense criticism for refusing to assail Israel's protracted military assault on Gaza, in response to incessant rocketing of Israeli towns. "I was proud to stand with Israel, my party was proud to stand with Israel, during that hour of trial."

As an elected politician, Ignatieff added, he is required to represent and listen to all factions. "But it does not mean agreeing with everyone and there are some lines I cannot cross. I cannot be neutral between a member of the UN and a terrorist organization. I cannot be neutral between democracy and terror. I cannot be neutral with historical facts. I cannot meet groups or appear on platforms with groups that have links or connections to terror.

"I cannot say one thing in a synagogue and another in a mosque."

But Ignatieff, sensing electoral drifts ahead, warned against exploitation of solidarity with Israel as a partisan political wedge.

"It is reckless, reckless, for leaders to try to score points by branding one another as anti-Israel, to try to claim votes by claiming a monopoly on support for Israel. The true interests of Israel will not be served if Israel becomes a domestic political football in this country."

Wow, talk about playing to the crowd. I sure want to believe him, but I think I’ll reserve judgement pending his comments to mosque-folk; I can’t imagine he’ll express himself to them in quite the same way.

As for the new Tory legislation, hard-fought for by several prominent Jews, allowing victims of terrorism to sue those responsible for the terror—it sounds like a good idea, but how is it actually going to work? Goldfarb vs. al Qaeda in a Canadian courtroom? Lots of luck getting the jihadis to pay up.

Update: Ezra Levant doubts Iggy's sincerity too:

Ignatieff spoke at the CJC today, too, and was surely obsequious. But can anyone in the room really count on Ignatieff's support for Israel when the chips are down? It's Ignatieff's former colleague at Harvard, Samantha Powers -- his "soul mate" -- who has argued that the U.S. should use military force against Israel, to force it to submit to Arab demands. That sounds like a typical kook academic -- but Power is a senior Obama advisor.

Update: Here's a preview of how "suing the terrorists" may well play out. From LiveLeak:

Members of 9/11 victims’ families, who filed a lawsuit seeking to pin blame on the Saudi royal family for financing attacks against the United States, just acquired a significant new opponent: the Obama administration.

A Department of Justice brief filed with the Supreme Court on Friday argues that the Saudi royal family is party to a sovereign state and cannot be sued in American courts.

Fifteen of the 19 alleged 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, according to the FBI. Former President George W. Bush waited six years to acknowledge this in public.

“Several lower courts have dismissed the lawsuit,” noted the Associated Press.

“Lawyers for the Saudi family said that they were heartened by the department’s brief and that it served to strengthen their hand before the court, which has not decided whether to hear the case,” reported The New York Times.

“But family members of several Sept. 11 victims said they were deeply disappointed and questioned whether the decision was made to appease an important ally in the Middle East,” continued reporter Eric Lichtblau. “The Saudis have aggressively lobbied both the Bush and Obama administrations to have the lawsuit dismissed, government officials say.”...

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

Pathological disorder: There’s a new mental illness in the bible of psychiatric maladies, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reports the National Post. It's called "post traumatic embitterment disorder":

…Post-traumatic embitterment disorder is described as a pathological reaction to a single, negative life event, such as conflict at work, unemployment, divorce, illness or separation. People view the event as unjust, a violation of their basic beliefs and values, and "want the world to see how badly they have been treated," according to published studies.

"People feel wronged, humiliated and that some injustice has been done to them," said Dr. Michael Linden, the German psychiatrist who named the behaviour after reporting an increase in affected patients in the wake of German reunification.

People have intrusive thoughts and memories about the event, and get locked into a serious mental state, he said.

"These people don't have the feeling that they must change, but rather have the idea that the world should change or the oppressor should change, so they don't ask for treatment."…

Eureka! We finally have a diagnosis for what ails the Palestinians, as well as a wide swath of the Muslim world.

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

Can’t anyone stop this crazy carousel?: Mark Steyn’s Song of the Week,
fittingly, is “June Is Busting Out All Over,” from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical
that, IMHO, has the most gorgeous score (though not a lot of laughs). No need for me
to revise it, since I did so back in the summer of ‘07:

Jihad is bustin’ out all over.

All over the city and the town!

Shaheeds’re burstin’ outa jackets,

Makin’ tons of dins and rackets

As authorities claim they are clampin' down!

Jihad is bustin’ out all over.

The warfare is gettin’ so intense!

And now some youn’uns on computers

Are becomin’ holy shooters

And the bloodshed here and there has grown immense!

‘Cause it’s jihad.

‘Had, ‘had, ‘had.

Just ‘cause it’s jihad, ‘had, ‘had!..

Jihad is bustin’ out all over.

The third time it’s gone for world control!

‘Cause Allah promised them the power,

And they want to make us cower,

And the Taliban, we’re told, are on a roll!

Jihad is bustin’ out all over.

The sheep aren’t sleepin’ anymore!

All the commotion’s spoiled their slumber

As they wake in greater number

To the fact of what jihadis have in store.

On accounta it’s jihad…

‘Had, ‘had, ‘had.

Just ‘cause it’s jihad, ‘had, ‘had!

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