scaramouche

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Last one, I promise: Barack Hussein Obama has just tapped Mary Robinson, the odious Irish chick behind the Durban I Fiesta of Judenhass, for a Medal of Freedom.

Way to spit on the Juden, Barack.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:38 | link | comments

One more before I go: Obama says he's "fascinated by the fascination" with l'affaire Gates and how his not-so-off-the-cuff remarks sparked a huge and unanticipated controversy.

As for me, what I find fascinating is his alleged fascination with the fascination, because I don't think he's fascinated at all. What he is is confounded. He had thought "whitey is rascist; Blacks/Latinos are victims of police 'profiling'" was the default setting in Obamerica, and is flabergasted to find that that's simply not so.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:47 | link | comments

My long weekend: I'm taking a break for the next few days. I hope to be back at the laptop on Tuesday.

See y'all then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:32 | link | comments (2)

Like shooting Germans in a barrel: What’s the best way to ensure that German soldiers serving in Afghanistan incur plenty of casualties? The short answer: require them to pre-warn the bad guys of their intentions in three official languages--none of which is German. From the timesonline:

Taleban insurgents fighting German forces in northern Afghanistan have often lived to fight another day thanks to trilingual warnings that have to be shouted out before the men from the Bundeswehr can squeeze their triggers.

The seven-page pocket guide to combat tucked into the breast pocket of every German soldier offers such instructions as: “Before opening fire you are expected to declare loudly, in English, ‘United Nations — stop, or I will fire,” followed by a version in Pashtu — Melgaero Mellatuna- Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!”

The alert must also be issued in Dari, and the booklet, devised by a committee in some faraway ministerial office, adds: “If the situation allows, the warning should be repeated.” The joke going round Nato mess tents poses the question: “How can you identify a German soldier? He is the corpse clutching a pocket guide.”

So nothing better reflects that the Germans are now in a real war for the first time since 1945 than the release of new rules of engagement this week, giving their forces more freedom to shoot back and shout warnings later.

The German language used to be famed for its crisp commands — “Achtung!”, “Zum Befehl!” — rather than its legalistic circumlocutions. “The warnings”, said General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn, the leading German commander, “were well intended but not realistic.”

The German Army, mocked and criticised by its Nato partners because of the many caveats limiting its operations, has been taking serious casualties in the north of the country, especially around the Kunduz region…

My question: Why are the Germans bothering to follow these ridiculous orders? Why don’t they tell the UN to stick its Melgaero Mellatuna- Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum! where the Sonne don’t shine?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments (1)

Mum’s the word for feministas: Naomi Lakritz does a run-down of some mouthy Canadian chicks who, go figure, are maintaining a stony silence about recent “honour killings:

…I checked out the web-sites of the usual suspects. Naomi Klein is busy tooting her own horn with an announcement that her book, The Shock Doctrine, won the Warwick Prize for Writing! (Exclamation point hers). I did a search for "honour killing" on her site and came up with "Your search yielded no results."

It's possible that my good old namesake, Naomi, is unclear on the concept of oppression. Klein, who is Jewish, is calling for boycotts of Israel in support of the Palestinian cause whose leaders have declared they want to kill Jewish people. Maybe if she supported the Palestinian people via protesting their oppression by their terrorist Hamas leaders, she'd have a worthy cause.

Then I looked at Judy Rebick's blog. Like Naomi, she's preoccupied with flogging her own book, Transforming Power. Her most recent post, dated July 28, is entitled: The Toronto Municipal Strike: Who Do We Get Mad At?

I don't know who to get mad at about the garbage strike in Toronto, Judy. Living in Calgary, it doesn't cross my mind that much. But shouldn't we all be even a teeny bit mad at the way women are being denied their selfhood by the patriarchal environments they live in, be it in Canada, Phoenix or wherever it's happening?

Judy does have a post from June entitled "Take action in solidarity with the indigenous people of Peru."

What about a little solidarity with four dead women whose car ended up in the Rideau Canal near Kingston? How about a show of solidarity with that beauty queen in Saudi Arabia who's obviously a brilliant girl because she plans to go to medical school, but who can't show her face to the world because to do so might dishonour her family and lead to a fatal consequence?

And is there nary a tear to be shed or a word to be spared for that poor child in Phoenix whose family has tossed her aside like so much trash for something that was not her fault?

Meanwhile, on Rose's Place, which bills itself as a blogsite for Canadian feminists, recent discussions centred around Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's birth certificate and U. S. health reform, with Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias complaining about Muslim-bashing regarding the alleged honour killings...

Well, after all, these (clueless) chicks do have their priorities.

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

Sowell sounds the alarm: Fasten your seat belts, folks. Obama is taking us on a joy ride to catastrophe, says wise pundit Thomas Sowell:

The desire of many Americans for a “post-racial” society is well-founded, though the belief that Barack Obama would move in that direction was extremely ill-advised, given the history of his actions and associations.

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites — and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

The Greeks had a word for a “greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities”--hubris. And it has been the downfall of many a lead character--both on the stage and in real life.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments (3)

Elmo tips his hand: Famous Canadian Islamist/Charger/Sock Puppet Master Mohamed “Elmo” Elmasy cites the following quote by Egyptian despot Gamal Abdul Nasser as an example of the kind of thinking he can really “relate to.”

“As I stood in front of Kaaba [during my last visit] I found myself thinking: Our idea of the pilgrimage should change. Going to the Kaaba should never be a passport to heaven, after a lengthy life…. The pilgrimage should be a great political power conference. The press of the world should resort to and follow its news, not as a series of rituals but as a regular political congress wherein the leaders of Muslim states, their officials, their academics and youth draw up, in a universal Islamic parliament, the main lines of policy for their countries and their co-operation until they meet again next year..…

“I expressed some of these sentiments to His Majesty King Sa‘ud. He said to me: ‘This is the real purpose of the pilgrimage.’ Verily, I cannot visualize a higher purpose.…

“When I visualize these millions of Muslims united in one faith, I know of the tremendous potential that cooperation amongst them all can achieve—a co-operation that does not deprive them of their loyalty to their countries, but which guarantees for them and their brethren a limitless power.”

A universal Islamic parliament; Muslims united in one faith; a guarantee of limitless power. I think that about says it all.

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

Oh Gawd: Anyone else want to tell a happy hopeychanger what to do with his "teachable moments" ? The very concept is so pious and condescending it makes my skin crawl.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:49 | link | comments

Another “revert” behaving badly: Another “revert” is in hot water---this time in Oz:

An Australian Islamic man has told a court in Melbourne he is guilty of being part of a terror cell that plotted to kill thousands of people at major sports events.

Only moments before his retrial, Muslim convert Shane Kent, 33, pleaded guilty to being amember of a terror cell led by radical cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika.

Kent admitted involvement in the cell's plans to place bombs at a major football event in Melbourne: the Australian Grand Final in 2005, which attracted nearly 100,000 fans and a TV audience of millions.

Kent has been tried once before and was about to face a retrial on charges he had previously denied.

Six other members of the cell, as well as the cleric Benbrika, were last year found guilty on related charges.

Benbrika was jailed for 15 years, but not before he nominated women and children as fair game for terrorists.

He referred to himself as a holy warrior, and said he considered violent jihad to be an important part of his religious obligations.

Material seized from Benbrika and his group included bomb-making instructions and video tapes with messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The plot on the football match was discovered after a series of intelligence operations by police and Australia’s secret service.

Don’t worry, though. I'm told only a tiny minority--an infinitesimal fringe--of “reverts” ever turn to violent jihad.

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

Skin deep: Recently I heard a line--I can’t remember who said it--I thought was so insightful yet so stunningly obvious I had to let it percolate for a while before repeating it. It is this: You need a thick skin to live in a democracy.

Think about it. In a democracy, where people are free to express themselves without fear of retribution by the state, words can be said that some would perhaps prefer not to hear. Rude words. Hurtful words. And that’s as it should be because it is this free-for-all, this hurly-burly (as Toronto Star word-guardian Kathy English somewhat snippily characterized the blogosphere, probably the last bastion of unfettered--and therefore often foul speech) that’s a touchstone of freedom, and that distinguishes free countries from un-free ones. But to survive and even thrive in the hurly burly, you have to be tough. You need to be able to let the slings and arrows of creeps and fools bounce right off you, and counter with your own “effective invective” (a phrase I stole from “human rights” pioneer Alan Borovoy, ironically, the guy who was instrumental in setting up state censorship, but who now is a vocal opponent of it). You can’t go running off like a cry-baby to some “human rights” constabulary, or some representative of your minority/victim group, and demand they protect you from the big, bad word-hurlers. You have to suck it up, shuck it off, and fight back.

In other words, you have you act like a grown up.

If you aren’t prepared to act like a grown up, if you’re so thin-skinned you, say, feel compelled to sue someone for “insulting” you, or you freak out at the sight of a few fairly innocuous cartoons, you are in effect conceding that you aren’t mature enough to handle free speech, and need the state to be the grown up. And believe me, there are loads of places--many of them under the sway of sharia, a set of legalisms that maintains people in a permanent state of immaturity, e’er submissive to higher ups--where the state is more than happy to oblige. Places like Iran. And Saudi Arabia. And, oh yeah, Canada, which, though not officially a sharia state, incorporates sharia-like elements--hello, Section 13--in its “human rights” codes.

Sock puppets, as we know, have the thinnest of skins. They demand compensation for their hurt feelings. They want the state to intercede of their behalf when someone says something they don’t want to hear. And they want everyone to remain as thin-skinned as they are because some of them, not mentioning any names, know that the more thin-skinned people there are, the less free speech--the enemy of sharia; the freedom di tutti freedoms that keeps sharia at bay--there will be.

So grow an extra layer or two--or ten--of epidermis. Manifest a Naugahyde hide, if you can. In a very real sense, the future of Western civilization depends on it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:25 | link | comments (3)

Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Dear Skip: Ruth Wisse pens an open letter to a Harvard professor.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:17 | link | comments

Islamophobia scam: An Official Muslim tries to assure us that “honour killings” pertain more to geography than they do to a sharia mindset. The O.M. claims to be worried that the sight of Muslim menfolk murdering their womenfolk as a way to restore the family’s “honour” (which, apparently, is inconveniently situated in what Oprah likes to call the “vajayjay”) could lead to “Islamophobia”. From the Montreal Gazette:

Speculation that the recent deaths of four Montreal women were honour killings has prompted the Canadian Muslim Forum to issue a statement condemning conjugal violence and violence against women.

Honour killings, representative Mohamed Kamel said yesterday, are more likely linked to geographic location since they're sharply prevalent in southern Asia and the Middle East.

"Statistically speaking, most of the honour killings that have been reported are in Pakistan, India, Jordan and some other (nearby) countries," Kamel said. "In some cases, non-Muslims are subject to them."

The term "honour killing" usually refers to the murder of someone by a family member because the victim is accused of having brought shame to the family.

The Canadian Muslim Forum fears the deaths will lead to "Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments."…

You may have noticed a trend--whenever Muslims behave badly (i.e. kill women because they think they have violated the family’s “honour”; hurl large aircraft into office towers, etc.) the spectre of “Islamophbia” is immediately raised. And no wonder. It has proven to be a tried and true way of deflecting attention away from that bad behaviour and tamping down on criticism from infidels who are afraid of been thought of as “bigots” and “racists.”

DO NOT FALL FOR THE CON.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:12 | link | comments (1)

"The nicest terrorist" in the world: AP is reporting that Daniel Boyd and sons tried to get into Israel but were turned away at the border by suspicious Jews. Also, as per usual in such cases, the neighbours are shocked--shocked!--to hear about the arrest. Dan seemed like such a nice fellow--so quiet and unassuming, liked to walk the dog with the missus, not at all like someone who was plotting to overthrow kafir-rule via violent jihad:

RALEIGH, N.C. — Israel denied entry two years ago to members of a North Carolina family that includes three men accused of plotting to execute terror attacks in foreign countries, an official said Wednesday.

Daniel Boyd, 39, was arrested Monday with six others, including two sons. Authorities claim Boyd was the ringleader of a group that was gearing up for a "violent jihad," though prosecutors haven't detailed any specific targets or timeframe. If convicted, the men could face life in prison. An eighth suspect is believed to be in Pakistan.

Boyd's wife, Sabrina, told a Raleigh newspaper that he and one of their sons flew to Israel in 2007 to visit Muslim holy sites but were denied entry and detained for two days. That followed a trip Daniel Boyd made with another son, who is not charged, to Israel a year earlier. She denied any malevolent motive for their visits.

The U.S. indictment said Boyd and two sons — Zakariya, 20, and Dylan, 22 — traveled to Israel in July 2007 to meet with two of the other defendants but returned home "having failed in their attempt at violent jihad."

An Israeli security official confirmed that members of the Boyd family were denied entry in 2007. He declined to say why they were stopped or provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not officially made public.

Israeli police and the Interior Ministry, the office in charge of immigration, would not comment.

Sabrina Boyd, 41, urged the public not to rush to judgment.

"We have the right to justice, and we believe that justice will prevail," she said in a statement. "We are decent people who care about other human beings."

In an interview with the News & Observer of Raleigh, Boyd said her husband and sons' trips abroad were pilgrimages.

"The point of a pilgrimage is to see the Al-Aksa mosque, the Dome of the Rock, to hear the call to prayer and to make a prayer," she said.

Prosecutors said Boyd received terrorist training years ago in Pakistan and brought the teachings back to North Carolina, recruiting followers willing to die as martyrs waging jihad — the Arabic word for holy war.

Frustrated by Raleigh-area mosques that he saw as too moderate, Boyd started breaking away this year to hold prayers in his home, prosecutors said. In the last two months, he took two group members to private property in north-central North Carolina to practice military tactics and use weapons.

"It's clear from the indictment that the overt acts in the conspiracy were escalating," U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said.

Boyd's wife told the newspaper she knew nothing about the training site cited by prosecutors, and she said the family had firearms because they enjoyed hunting and shooting.

Boyd's neighbors also defended the drywall contractor.

"If he's a terrorist, he's the nicest terrorist I ever met in my life. I don't think he is," said Charles Casale, 46, a neighbor in Willow Spring.

Jeremy Kuhn, 20, said the family seemed closer and more loving than any of the other nearby households.

"If it turns out they were terrorists, I will be the most shocked person in the world," he said…

“The Nicest Terrorist I Ever Met”--publishers take note, there’s the title for your book about the Boyd gang.

Update: Janet Napolitano is depending on ordinary Americans to be hyper-attuned to people in their everyday lives so they can spot the ones who are secretly conspiring to unleash terrorism on the general populace.

You know--like Daniel Boyd’s perceptive Raleigh neighbours, who lived near him for years, and who think he’s the nicest alleged terrorist around.

Do you have a Plan B, Janet?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:31 | link | comments

Whose rights takes precedence?: That’s a question attendees of an LGBT conference should—but aren’t—asking themselves in light of their one and only “right” under sharia law (i.e. the “right” to be killed for following their sexual inclinations). From the Copenhagen Post:

International conference focuses on minority rights and human rights being equally important

An international conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) human rights entitled 'Love of Freedom – Freedom to Love' has begun in Copenhagen. The three-day event kicked off at DR's Concert Centre yesterday.

The conference is coordinated by leading human rights activists from around the world and coincides with the World Outgames taking place in Copenhagen.

The conference has more than 110 workshops with presenters from about 70 countries worldwide.

Denmark's Socialist People's Party member Kamal Hameed Qureshi took part in the Human Rights Conference panel discussion entitled ‘LGBT party politics: 30 Years after Nancy Wechsler and Harvey Milk: Lessons for the Future.’

A heterosexual, Qureshi's presence diversified the panel which comprised gay and lesbian political party members from Austria, Canada, Nepal and Spain.

Born in Pakistan to Indian parents who moved to Denmark when he was young, Qureshi, spoke about the challenges of growing up in Denmark as a minority and the importance of declaring equal rights for every individual.

‘There are no gender rights without LGBT rights. There are no ethnic rights without LGBT rights,’ he said.

Proclaiming that some of his own party members have called him a bit ‘radical’ in his crusade for equal human rights, Qureshi told The Copenhagen Post he would like to see same-sex marriage in the church made legal.

'Denmark has laws forbidding human rights,' Qureshi explained citing the fact that same-sex marriages cannot be carried out in the church.

Same-sex marriages, or civil unions, are legally recognised by the state of Denmark. However, the law dictates that same-sex marriage ceremonies cannot be conducted in a church.

'We need to take the good parts of the existing laws [pertaining to same-sex unions] and combine them with the common law,' stated Qureshi.

Hailing from a Muslim background, Qureshi is no stranger to minority issues in Denmark. In 2001, he became the first elected Danish Parliament member from an ethnic background. Since then, he has feverishly campaigned to improve equal rights for minorities in Denmark.

‘Neighbouring countries like Sweden are good examples of how we can better our laws concerning equal rights. One thing Denmark needs is an ombudsman who can determine where the laws are lacking in human rights so we don’t have to wait until something like a hate-crime is committed before we act.’…

Good luck with that, LGBTers. Neighbouring countries like Sweden have large and growing Muslim minorities are becoming more Islamized with each passing day. Failure to deal with that reality (and deluding yourselves into thinking that an “ombudsman”—‘tis to laugh—is the way to go) is tantamount to signing your own death warrants. The LGBT crowd should be on the ramparts, defending Western civilization against the onslaught of sharia. Instead, they're mired in Leftist victim group psychology--diddling with details like same sex marriage while all around them the fire of sharia rages and burns.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments (3)

It's Socksational!: Support free speech. Buy some stuff.

Update: One singular socksation....but is he peripatetic, poetic and chic?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:54 | link | comments (2)

Culture, shmulture, it’s still spelled j-i-h-a-d: The Globe and Mail’s occasional Palestinian pundit, Rami Khouri, describes a charming cultural practice which he claims has been adopted by the happy hopeychangers:

In traditional Arab culture, when a man wants to ask for a woman's hand in marriage, his family undertakes a jaha – a delegation of men who visit the family of the would-be bride to make the request. The jaha often includes prominent men from outside the groom's relations, the aim being to impress the woman's family that she is marrying into a family with social standing and clout. Sending all the family males in the jaha also signals collective security and consensus – that the young woman is marrying into a family that fully welcomes her and ensures her future is safe.

A jaha delegation can include as few as 10 men, and as many as a hundred or more. While it is designed to impress and comfort at the same time, there is also an unspoken element of subtle pressure – making the woman's family an offer they cannot possibly refuse.

The rules of jaha culture are such that the groom's family knows ahead of time that the bride's family will accept the marriage proposal. It would be massively and punishingly humiliating to assemble all the males of the tribe, add on a few prominent members of society at large, make the trip to the woman's home – and then be turned down. The jaha, therefore, is part show, part power politics, a non-violent shock-and-awe spectacle in the all-important matrimonial and tribal realms.

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama has made history by sending the first ever diplomatic jaha to Israel. The Obama jaha of Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Mideast special envoy George Mitchell, National Security Adviser James Jones and White House senior adviser Dennis Ross aims simultaneously to impress, comfort, pressure and woo the Israeli government to accept the terms of engagement in the Arab-Israeli peacemaking process that the United States has unilaterally tabled.

The Obama jaha of senior tribal males is a critical manifestation of American seriousness. The variety of positions held by these men is important, because it helps assure Israel that the United States understands its fears and will work to assuage them. Washington is saying it will continue to address common concerns about Iran's nuclear plans, work for comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreements, insist that Arabs and Israelis simultaneously make concessions and conciliatory gestures, and comply with past agreements and prevailing legal norms.

The need to resort to the overkill of a jaha approach reflects the enormity of the challenges the United States faces as it tries to rekindle Arab-Israeli peacemaking…

You say jaha and I say jihad--let’s call the whole thing off. Also--you would have thought someone at the Globe might have questioned the wisdom of analogizing American foreign policy and Arab tribal marriage rites mere days after a Muslim family was charged with doing away with a slew of nubile daughters (and a first wife/aunt) in one of those so-called “honour killings.”

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

One war segues into another: The thing I find most intriguing about the story of the Raleigh “revert” who allegedly indoctrinated his sons in the jihad ethos and was trying to recruit other Muslims to join his terrorist cadre, is that he reportedly fought alongside the Taliban “with the full backing of the U.S.” against the Soviets two decades ago. You may recall that this covert effort was the subject of a book and, later on, a movie starring Tom Hanks-- Charlie Wilson’s War. Old Charlie was a horndog Congressman from Texas who, abetted by a shambolic CIA agent and a wealthy Texas matron--none of whom had a clue about Islamic doctrine--was the driving force behind America supplying arms, via Pakistan (then ruled by the Islamist Zia-ul-Haq) to the mountain warriors trying to turn back the Soviet invaders.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

None of them could foresee, of course, that having dispatched one set of kafir invaders, the Taliban, fanatical jihadis who aim to restore the Caliphate, would then turn on their American benefactors, and that America would be dragged into battle. Nor, I’m sure, did they ever imagine that, decades later, an American, as white bread as they come, would be so inspired by his time with the Taliban that he would end up going gaga for jihad. (It’s unclear at this stage when he “reverted”--before, during or after his Afghanistan sojourn.

Ironically, the sequel to Charlie Wilson’s War may turn out to be Daniel Boyd’s Jihad.

Update: Robert Spencer puts it in context:

It all started in 1989, when, according to the indictment, Boyd went to Pakistan and Afghanistan, attended jihad training camps, and fought alongside jihadists in Afghanistan. He didn’t leave Central Asia until 1992. His wife Sabrina Boyd has pointed out indignantly that in Afghanistan in the late Eighties, Boyd was battling the Soviet invaders “with the full backing of the United States government.” Indeed. But at that time the U.S. was aiding the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviets – and once they drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, those same mujahedin quickly dashed hopes that the U.S. had won over their hearts and minds, hewing closely to the jihadist perspective that both the Soviet Union and the United States represented Satanic superpowers at war with Islam. If Boyd was fighting alongside the Afghan mujahedin in the late Eighties and early Nineties, that hardly constitutes evidence that his commitment to America was strong, or that his commitment to jihad was weak.

Exactly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments (2)

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Sacha meets sharia: Sacha Baron Cohen is in hot water for making a real terrorist, who may or may not be still be a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the butt of a joke in his Bruno movie. The Martyrs are pissed off (and vowing revenge) because, well, they take themselves waaaay too seriously. The terrorist is upset (and is suing Cohen) because, according to his lawyer (whose first name--tee hee--is Hatem), his appearance in the movie could cause him no end of problems. The timesonline has all the wacky truth-is-stranger-than-Bruno details:

Sacha Baron Cohen has stepped up his security after being threatened by a militant Palestinian group angered at its portrayal in the film Brüno.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a coalition of Palestinian militias in the West Bank, said in a statement released to a Jerusalem-based journalist that it was “very upset” that it featured in the film starring Baron Cohen’s homosexual fashionista alter ego.

“We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man,” it said. “The movie was part of a conspiracy against the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.”

The London-born comic is taking the threat seriously and has improved security for himself and his

The group is alleged to be responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and shootings. It has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States. Baron Cohen’s Austrian character ridicules the Martyrs’ Brigades when he attempts to get himself kidnapped during a meeting with Ayman Abu Aita, who is identified in the film as the leader of the organisation.

His character is shown telling Mr Abu Aita: “I want to be famous. I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me. Al-Qaeda is so 2001.” Brüno then suggests that Mr Abu Aita remove his moustache, explaining: “Because your king Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard or homeless Santa.”

The group condemned the use of the interview with Mr Abu Aita. “This was a dirty use of our brother, Ayman, and we don’t accept that the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is part of the film,” the statement said.

Mr Abu Aita claims that he was tricked into appearing in the film and that he is no longer involved with the Martyrs’ Brigades. He has threatened to sue Baron Cohen. “This man, I think he is not a man,” Mr Abu Aita said. “He is not saying the truth about me. He lied.”

Mr Abu Aita’s lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, said that he is preparing a legal action against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the Martyrs’ Brigade reference could get his client in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by the Palestinians.

Mr Abu Ahmad said: “This joke is very dangerous. We are not in the United States, we are not in Europe, we are in the Middle East and the world operates differently here.”…

Right. To paraphrase a famous Middle Eastern operator: “There are no jokes in Islam. Or at least, no second jokes, because the first one will get you strung up, impudent blasphemer.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments (2)

Shocking (but encouraging) news: Arlo Guthrie (you know--son of folk icon Woody, starred in a hippy-dippy 60s flick about a chick with a restaurant) is a Republican.

If you told me Jane Fonda had joined the GOP, I couldn't be more surprised.

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

Bewitched, bollocksed and Obama'd: The fools! Don't they realize what they're doing is sheer "Wishcraft"?

Those “settlers” gone from there.

That effort to repair.

That strips their logic bare.

It’s wishcraft.

And there is no defence for it.

The cry is too intense for it.

What good would common sense for it do?

Cause it’s wishcraft, fatal wishcraft

And although we know it’s strictly koo koo

When you can’t see reality

The whole insane totality

Appeasers think it’s what we should do.

It’s such a rotten fish.

A cracked and broken dish.

Cause wishing cannot make it come true.

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

Baggage handler: Judging purely by the content of his character, Thomas Sowell would have made an excellent POTUS. Alas, we’re stuck with the other guy who, as Sowell writes, brought along his shoddy “community organizer” baggage when he moved into the White House:

…For "community organizers" as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama's background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

Not only Barack Obama's past, but his present, tell the same story. His appointment of an attorney general who called America "a nation of cowards" for not dialoguing about race was a foretaste of what to expect from Eric Holder.

The way Attorney General Holder has refused to prosecute young black thugs who gathered at a voting site with menacing clubs, in blatant violation of federal laws against intimidating voters, speaks louder than any words from him or his president.

President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.

An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.

Sowell/Bolton (or the reverse) 2012!

Update: Here's Tom Wolfe's classic and still-hilarious essay about the early days of exacting "benefits and revenge" in America--Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:58 | link | comments

More “denormalizing” of the “human rights racket: Sun Media eminence grise Peter Worthington lays it all out--there is no Nazi threat, Jennifer’s sleuths are wasting their time and our money playing “gotcha” with a few creeps on the Internet, and it’s time for the Harper government to defang the “human rights” viper:

…To many (including me) the CHRC is unnecessary and a direct threat to free speech -- a kangaroo court more intent on lynching (no pun intended) than seeking truth or justice.

CHRC investigators likely see themselves as crusaders, exposing suspect or dangerous organizations and gathering evidence to protect society. Hardly.

Canadian democracy is not threatened by white supremacists or anti-Semites.

Democratic countries generally show repugnance toward extremism.

One gets the feeling the CHRC sets up targets to knock down, thereby justifying its existence. For more details on CHRC mischief, try going to the blog ezralevant.com, or other sites giving details about provocateurs pretending to be racists in hopes of catching racists. Try RichardWarman.com or Google Dean Steacy, and see for yourself.

Short of disbanding the CHRC, Section 13 of the Human Rights Act must be scotched. It "empowers the Commission to deal with complaints regarding the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet ... any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."

That's pretty broad, especially when the Criminal Code already allows for legal action in many cases where human rights vigilantes seem intent on waging vendettas.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should rein in the human rights bureaucracy that too often offends the very essence of due process and democracy.

I wish Worthington had gone even further. The bureaucracy, that smug bunch of ideologues, does more than “offend” our system. It makes a mockery of it. We need to get rid of Section 13 and its equivalents country-wide as a first step in reclaiming our rights--real rights, crucial rights, not the fake ones the apparatchiks are so keen to grant (the “right” to be an overripe stripper; the “right” to wield a willy in a women’s locker room/washroom). (One also wishes Worthington had acknowledged that there is a threat from extremism--Muslim extremism--but that the apparatchiks wouldn't touch that one with a gazillion-foot pole.)

To boil it down: We can have a “human rights” bureaucracy or we can have our freedom. We cannot--I repeat, cannot--have both.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:53 | link | comments (2)

N.C. “reverts” turn to jihad: Members of what my Italian friends would call a “mangia cake” family have been arrested for plotting “violent” jihad. From AP:

RALEIGH, N.C. — A father, his two sons and four other North Carolina men are accused of military-style training at home and plotting "violent jihad" through a series of terror attacks abroad, federal authorities said Monday.

Officials said the group was led by Daniel Patrick Boyd, a married 39-year-old who lived in an unassuming lakeside home in a rural area south of Raleigh, where he and his family walked their dog and operated a drywall business. But two decades ago, Boyd, who is a U.S. citizen, trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and fought against the Soviets for three years before returning to the United States.

An indictment released Monday does not detail any specific terrorist plans or targets overseas, although it claims some of the defendants traveled to Israel in 2007 with the intent of waging "violent jihad" and returned home without success.

"These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right here at home," U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said. He would not give details of the alleged plots beyond what was in a news release and indictment.

The seven men made their first court appearances in Raleigh on Monday, charged with providing material support to terrorism. If convicted, they could face life in prison. Court documents charged that Boyd, also known as 'Saifullah,' encouraged others to engage in jihad.

Boyd stopped attending worship services at a moderate mosque in the Raleigh area and instead began meeting for Friday prayers in his home, Holding said.

"These people had broken away because their local mosque did not follow their vision of being a good Muslim," Holding said.

In 1991, Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan — accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. Each was sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the decision was later overturned.

Their wives told The Associated Press in an interview at the time that the couples had U.S. roots but the United States was a country of "kafirs" — Arabic for heathens.

Jim Stephenson, a neighbor of Daniel Boyd in Willow Spring, said he saw the family walking their dog in the neighborhood and that the indictment shocked the residents.

"We never saw anything to give any clues that something like that could be going on in their family," Stephenson said.

Two of the suspects are Boyd's sons: Zakariya Boyd, 20 and Dylan Boyd, 22. The others are Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziyad Yaghi, 21. Hysen Sherifi, 24, a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent was also charged in the case. He was the only person arrested who was not a U.S. citizen.

No attorneys for the men were listed in court records.

Reached at her home in Silver Spring, Md., Boyd's mother said she had not heard of their arrests and knew nothing about the current case.

"It certainly sounds weird to me," Pat Saddler said. "That's news to me."…

Hey, isn’t it always?

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:32 | link | comments (1)

Monday, 27 July 2009

Nice work if you can get it: British Muslim lawyer makes mega-millions defending terrorists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:57 | link | comments (2)

Socking it to Sock: Quick now, who wrote the following to a litigious Socky?

It requires what can only be described as chutzpah for you to be associated with Mr. Elmasry while accusing others of promoting hatred toward another group. Whatever credibility you may have as a proponent of racism is compromised by your continued association with someone who would hold such odious views

Was it Mark Steyn, “flagrant Islamophobe” and author of America Alone, an excerpt of which in Maclean’s magazine was the final straw which prompted Elmo to complain to three—count ‘em, three—of Canada’s “human rights” bodies?

Was it perhaps Ezra Levant, who currently finds himself in the Sock’s crosshairs, accused of “defamation”?

Nope and nope. It was Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, who suffers neither fools nor testy Socks gladly. You can read the entire missive (and a delightful read it is) here.

Is part of the reason why the Sock is thinking of suing Levant because he’s frustrated that he can’t sue Kenney?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:52 | link | comments

Elmo’s world: On his new Slamolefty website, the Canadian Charger (named for a white horsey, not someone who incurs debt on a credit card), noted historian Mohamed Elmasry, former head of the Canadian Islamic Congress and sock puppet-master extraordinaire (Mark Steyn details the latest antics of one of his socky protégées here) offers his own unique perspective on American history—and what a brutal, bloody saga of relentless torture and unredeemable evil it is (Elmo's emphases):

“I could see them, dragged naked along the concrete corridor,” reported the 18-year-old boy.

“Their skin was tearing off their bodies and the extreme pain showed on their faces. Electric shockers such as are used on livestock had first been used on them. I saw the burns on their arms and legs. Then ‘wrist-breakers’ were used on them; clamps with a handle for applying pressure on the wrists. Their wrists were swollen twice their size and twisted about two-thirds out of proportion.”
This is not a recent report by a Muslim who just got out of Guantánamo describing the conditions of other fellow prisoners. This is a report by Kenneth Shilman, a white American, published in /The Jackson Daily/, Mississippi, on June 21, 1961.

Shilman was a member of a civil-rights movement called Freedom Riders. The movement had both white and black Americans and they rode from city to city on interstate buses to challenge racial segregation in the South. The treatment of the black Riders, when arrested, was far worse.

Welcome to torture - American style!...

Now, there's a man who knows how to set a scene!

Elmo goes on to hit some other high, er, low points, including the thuggish practices of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, of all people (funny how they left the “torture” part out of the Broadway musical version of the “Little Flower’s” life), the Spanish Inquisition, Judge Roy Bean, Barack Obama and, of course, Abu Ghraib (in its brief pornographic, less sanguinous American incarnation, not its much longer and bloodier life as Saddam’s personal House of Horrors).

All in all, a delightfully madcap romp though history as seen through the eyes of someone who despises Zionists and America in equal measure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments

Harper to “rights” tyrants--piss off: The UN’s bossiest and most revolting agency, the one that presumes to tell the world how to behave, “human rights”-wise, but that’s in cahoots with the most reprehensible and rights-abridging regimes on the planet, is hurling its edicts in our direction. Thankfully, the Canadian government is refusing to submit. From the Edmonton Journal:

Despite its recent defeat on the issue in the Federal Court of Canada, the Conservative government has rebuffed the UN Human Rights Council and reasserted its "case-by-case" approach to seeking clemency for Canadians facing execution in foreign countries.

The decision was denounced Monday by Liberal MP Dan McTeague, the party's consular affairs critic, as the latest reflection of the government's "bloodthirsty, revenge-seeking" ideology on crime and punishment.

In March, the UN council issued its period review of Canada's human rights record and recommended — at the urging of delegates from Denmark and the Netherlands — that this country "consider reinstating the policy of seeking clemency for all Canadian citizens sentenced to death in other countries."

In its response to the UN review, a six-page report posted Friday on the Department of Canadian Heritage website, the government rejects the call to change its policy.

"Canada does not accept recommendation 30," states the report, referring to the UN council's push for automatic clemency requests. "The government of Canada continues to consider whether to seek clemency for Canadians facing the death penalty abroad as these cases arise. Canadian citizens detained abroad continue to receive consular assistance."

In March, the government's controversial case-by-case policy was dealt a blow by the Federal Court of Canada, which ruled against the Conservative cabinet's October 2007 decision to abruptly halt efforts to secure clemency for Alberta-born killer Ronald Smith from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Smith, who is on death row for the 1982 murders of two Montana men, had been backed by Canadian diplomats for years in an effort to have his death sentence commuted.

Smith sued the government in November 2007 for reversing the policy. In March, Federal Court Justice Robert Barnes declared the government's handling of the Smith case "unlawful" and ordered it to resume clemency efforts in Montana.

"I am ordering the government to continue to apply the former policy of supporting clemency on behalf of Canadians facing the death penalty in any foreign state," Barnes said.

The judge also criticized the government for making inconsistent statements about its policy on the clemency issue.

The government declined to appeal and said it would comply with the Federal Court order to restart clemency efforts for Smith, although it isn't clear yet whether that effort has begun.

But statements made at the time of the ruling indicated the government intended to maintain its "case-by-case" approach to seeking clemency for Canadians abroad…

Good plan. This one world government thing is great if you’re willing to take your marching orders from despots and thugs. Otherwise, not so much.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:52 | link | comments

The Caliphate, for the helluvit: Oh, goody--Hizb ut-Tahrir is setting up a northern branch. From the Counterterrorism Blog:

Later this month, the members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Canada will host a conference in Mississauga to discuss the establishment of a Caliphate. The conference announcement acknowledges the presence of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Canada for the first time publicly; indicating that, like Hizb ut-Tahrir America (HTA), it may have recently transitioned into the second stage of its three-stage strategy. (For more on the method of Hizb ut-Tahrir, please see my previous article, linked here).

Branches of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) worldwide are hosting Khilafah conferences this month as part its "Rajab Campaign." Rajab, on the Islamic calendar, is the month of the fall of the Ottoman Empire; or, as HT views it, the anniversary month of the destruction of the Khilafah.

The announcement for the Mississauga conference refers to the hosts as "the members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Canada" rather than as "Hizb ut-Tahrir Canada," a moniker that would be consistent with the names of the other HT branches around the world. Also, the venue for the conference is smaller than HTA's Chicago-area conference. HTA conference-goers filled the Grand Ballroom at the Oak Lawn Hilton for the full-day affair. The Canadian conference is booked in a lounge at the Mississauga Community Center for only two hours in the evening of July 31st. According to the center's web site, the Frank Bean Lounge (the room booked for the meeting) seats only 40 people. The HT conference organizers have described the meeting as an "open question session on issues of importance to the Ummah, including the re-establishment of Islam as a way of life, the role of the Khilafah Rashida, and the role of the Muslim community in Canada."

That the Canadian branch refers to itself as "Hizb ut-Tahrir in Canada" may signify that there are too few adherents to warrant the official title "Hizb ut-Tahrir Canada." Certainly, the scale of the Canada event shows that the group is far smaller and perhaps more loosely organized than the US-based branch. It may also mean that the Canadian branch may fall under the authority of a larger branch elsewhere; possibly even HTA.

Mohammad Malkawi, a resident of the US who acted as HTA's spokesperson to the media at Sunday's conference in Oak Lawn, and who delivered the keynote address, has traveled to Canada to deliver speeches at universities and at mosques in the province of Ontario. For example, in March 2007, Malkawi gave a speech titled "Islam & Contemporary World Affairs" at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. Also in 2007, Malkawi delivered a lecture at a mosque in Hamilton. The content of these lectures were based entirely on the ideology of HT, although Malkawi did not openly acknowledge his affiliation with HTA at that time. These events, and others, likely indicate that Malkawi has an established relationship with the members of HT in Canada.

My HT limerick:

In assessing Hizb ut-Tahrir

One thing is perfectly clear:
Their old time religion

Has made us the pigeon

And who’s going to get plucked? We’re.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:37 | link | comments (1)

Sunday, 26 July 2009

I'll have the braised tabby and a side order of calico au gratin, please: The Toronto Star has an article about feline cuisine in Southern China.

Fingers crossed that fare doesn't turn on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (the show with the pig's ear sandwiches was about as much as I could handle--and even then it was touch and go in the upchuck department).

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:57 | link | comments (2)

Waiting for the other Sock to drop: I must admit I had prior knowledge that a certain Sock was thinking of putting the screws to Ezra Levant (suing Levant--now there's an original concept). But being a paragon of discretion, I managed to keep it on the q.t. while waiting for Ezra to break the news himself. Now he has--here.

What does this piece of...hosiery have to gain by pursuing such a suit? That's a question that only he, and perhaps his lawyer, can answer. Part of it, I think, is that he enjoyed his time in the spotlight during his contretemps with Mark Steyn, and this is a bid to reclaim it. Also--maybe he's looking to boost his profile in the run up to a possible poltitical career. Elmo's Sock: NDP MP. Elmo's Sock: Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism. And maybe someday, Elmo's Sock: Order of Canada.

Definitely not outside the realm of possiblity in this, the best of all possible Trudeaupias.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:35 | link | comments

Clueless Jews, then and now: What follows is the most incisive assessment I have yet read--it’s by Matthew M. Hausman--of the blindness of American Jews who continue to support Obama--yes, I mean you, Alan Dershowitz--despite plenty of evidence that his preference is deference to the Jews’ enemies, and who therefore compare unfavourably to the Jews who adored FDR despite his refusal to send European Jews a lifeline:

Is there a difference between the Jews who blindly supported Roosevelt and those who support Mr. Obama and his destructive foreign policy today? As morally ambiguous as the actions of Rabbi Wise, the AJC and others may have been, they were arguably not actively aiding or abetting the Axis powers or strengthening Germany’s ability to perpetrate genocide. Moreover, Israel did not yet exist, and many saw the United States as the Jews’ greatest chance for salvation. Thus, although they may have convinced themselves that supporting Roosevelt, and by extension the war effort, afforded the best opportunity for saving European Jewry, they were not intentionally taking actions to empower those who sought to exterminate the Jewish People. Moreover, they were not supporting a president who actively sought dialogue with murderous regimes or who was attempting to appease governments that threatened or engaged in genocide.

In contrast, Mr. Obama fawningly courts an Arab world that openly seeks the destruction of Israel and the Jewish People, and actually lends credence to the Arabs’ unhistorical claims and polemical grievances. This President also continues to seek dialogue with an Iranian regime that has specifically stated its intent to “wipe Israel off the map.” Thus, Jews who support Mr. Obama are directly supporting policies that compromise the safety and security of Jews in Israel and in Diaspora. Moreover, left-wing Jews who act as apologists or actively advocate for the Arab cause, who support Hezbollah and Hamas, and who belittle the threat of a nuclear Iran, are directly bolstering regimes that have sworn to destroy Israel.

The obstructionist efforts of Roosevelt’s Jewish political allies, their failure to lobby Roosevelt to act in defense of the Jews of Europe, and their opposition to a boycott of Nazi Germany before the war certainly cost Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Although the standard justification by these progressives was that they intended to assist the war effort and thereby save Jewish lives, such explanations were recognized as hollow rationalizations by many others, including the Bergson Group, the Aggudat ha-Rabbonim, and American followers of Zeev Jabotinsky. Rationalizations aside, the conduct was clearly indefensible. Yet, it is difficult to imagine that even the most rabidly assimilationist Jewish organizations of Roosevelt’s day would have knowingly supported or facilitated Germany’s efforts to carry out the Final Solution.

In contrast, today’s liberal apologists and left-wing extremists adopt positions that give succor to Israel’s enemies, and continue to support a foreign policy that is clearly prepared to offer up Israel as a sacrificial lamb. Similar to their progressive forebears who slavishly supported Roosevelt without critical scrutiny, many of today’s liberal and left-wing activists claim that they are actually acting in the Israel’s best interests when they support demands for a freeze on settlements, lobby for the creation of a Palestinian state, view the Arab “right of return” and the division of Jerusalem as legitimate items for discussion, or argue that Israel should be a bi-national state instead of a Jewish one.

In order to claim that such advocacy is in Israel’s best interests, those who make the argument must supplant real history with political propaganda. They must ignore that Islam has always considered Jews as monkeys and pigs, treated them as a subjugated people within their own land, and that any land incorporated into dar al-Islam (the world of Islam) through conquest can never go back to its “infidel” owners. They must likewise ignore the years of Arab rejectionism that preceded Israel’s declaration of statehood and the existence of any “settlements.” They must also ignore the Arab-initiated wars of extermination, that Palestinian peoplehood was a myth created in the 1960s as a tool to challenge the legitimacy of Israel, and that there was never a country called Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. Finally, they must ignore the continuing history of Arab incitement, as reflected in the Palestinian Charters (whether those of the PLO or Hamas), which call for Israel’s destruction and reject any permanent peace with Israel.

These facts are difficult to ignore, however, and those Jews who do so must either be ignorant or naïve in the hope that the Arabs don’t really mean what they say. But such hope requires that a fairly significant leap of faith be imposed upon Israel, which having been required to defend herself from annihilation since her modern rebirth, is far better qualified to determine what risks she is willing to take.

Then, there are those left-wing Jews who know the history but simply do not care, or who really don’t want Israel to survive as a Jewish state. Their motivation is not borne of some naïve belief that everybody can learn to live together in mutual respect. Rather, they simply do not want Israel - or traditional Judaism - to continue to exist. They condemn Jewish nationalism and the Jewish belief in a biblical birthright as obstacles to peace, and yet refuse to condemn the unhistorical myth of the Palestinian people and the religious basis for Muslim antisemitism and rejection of Israel…

These are Jews for whom Leftism takes precedence uber alles; Jews who have convinced themselves that abortion rights and health care for the uninsured are far more important than “foreign affairs” and defending Israel’s sovereignty. They are, in fact, the equivalent of German’s assimilated Jews who were certain that their German-ness was more salient than their Jewishness.

Those Jews, at least, had an excuse--they didn’t have the instructive example of the Holocaust to guide them. There is absolutely no excuse for Alan Dershowitz the other Obama-besotted Jew, whose adulation is counter-productive and defies all reason.

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

Colossal waste of taxpayers’ money (cont’d): Winnipeg Sun scribe Kevin Engstrom concurs with my assessment of the Mausoleum of Human Rights--i.e. that Canadian taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners largely to massage the egos of for some well-meaning but misguided Aspers:

It is ironic Gail Asper is on a quest to build a museum for human rights while simultaneously ignoring the plight of taxpayers who have to foot most of the bill.

Don't get us wrong, we imagine Asper and the other Friends of the Canadian Human Rights Museum are nice people who truly believe they have the best interests of this city at heart.

But as the price tag of this shrine continues its climb to the stratosphere, it's more than a little disappointing Asper and friends keep expecting taxpayers to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets to bail them out.

On Friday, Asper said she wanted another $10 million of taxpayer money to help pay for a $45-million shortfall in funding.

This, of course, is on top of the $160 million the three levels of government already committed, millions more in "private" fundraising taken from government-owned Crown corporations, and the $21 million in upkeep fees once the place actually opens.

Seems the shortfall came from the fact nobody seemed to account for the fact construction costs for the place had skyrocketed in the years between the time Izzy Asper dreamed of it and shovels were put in the ground until just a few months ago.

And, oh yeah, museum officials never figured out they'd have to pay $9 million per year in municipal taxes until recently, either.

Oops.

According to Asper, the best way to fix these little accounting oversights is simple: dip a little deeper into the public purse.

Well, forgive us, Gail, but colour us less than enthusiastic about giving more cash to a project showing definite signs of becoming a financial boondoggle the likes of which this city hasn't seen in a generation.

Listen, this isn't about whether this is a noble project. Shining a light on human rights atrocities in this world is obviously a worthwhile endeavour.

But there are a lot of projects in this province just as worthy of taxpayer money, if not moreso, and that's without even venturing into the whole issue of our pothole-infested streets and highways.

At some point, enough is enough -- and $160 million plus upkeep costs, in our opinion, to put into this money pit is already past that.

Fortunately for Asper, Gary Doer is of a different mind.

The feds have pretty much declined, the city would be crazy to do it after whining about how the province is screwing them on infrastructure funding, but the premier said recently he'd be open to giving her more green.

In political jargon, that means it's pretty much a done deal.

Given the ever-increasing cost of construction and Arni Thorsteinson's admission on Friday the estimated cost of maintaining the museum will rise by the time the doors swing open, you can bet it won't be the last time Asper asks for a helping hand from all of us.

All we can hope for at this point is Gail sets aside a wing of the museum for atrocities committed against taxpayers.

How many shekels have to be squandered on this misbegotten project before someone in the Conservative Government finally gets a clue and decides enough is enough (because enough is waaaay too much)?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:29 | link | comments (2)

Saturday, 25 July 2009

Money talks (and corrupts): Like others who have been on the receiving end of Wahhabi beneficence--American universities; former American presidents, etc.-- the UN is expressing mucho gratitude for the generosity of richer-than-Croesus sheiks:

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has been ranked as “the largest international donor to humanitarian appeals” when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The Kingdom gave 0.19 percent of the value of its economy to humanitarian funding abroad. This is large in comparison to the US, which spent 0.02 percent of its GDP on humanitarian aid in 2008.

“The US came in 19th on the list,” said a report released by the United Nations last week.

Commenting on the report Riyad Musa, the UN’s resident coordinator in Saudi Arabia, said that the rise of Saudi Arabia as the world’s top humanitarian donor “is a great success and shows the strong commitments of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.”

“Recent years have seen the rise of Saudi Arabia as an important and growing force in global development and humanitarian initiatives,” added Musa. “The UN office in Riyadh commends the nation for its solidarity with fellow countries, and stands ready to continue this agenda through our cooperation programs and initiatives in the Kingdom and abroad.”

Referring to the humanitarian gesture of the Saudi government, the report said Riyadh not only led humanitarian donors as a percentage of GDP when compared to the US, but also in comparison to the more generous European countries, such as Sweden (0.14 percent) and Norway (0.13 percent).

“Many small European countries, with large and generally affluent populations, were also part of the lead countries by GDP,” explained the report.

The United Nations has announced that it is running a record funding-shortfall of $4.8 billion for its aid operations in 16 crisis-ridden countries, thanks largely to the global economic downturn that has disproportionately affected the impoverished in the developing world.

The UN says it has received less than half of the $9.5 billion it needs to carry out humanitarian operations this year.

Calling on nations to render urgent support, the UN said that the number of people needing help this year was 43 million compared to 28 million last year. As a consequence, more money is needed to care for them. The United Nations says it requires $1.5 billion, or 19 percent, more money this year to maintain its operations.

John Holmes, the top UN humanitarian official, has been quoted as saying in the report that “the global recession itself is having an effect on the number of people in need.”

He said that more people need assistance in the Palestinian territories because of the conflict with Israel early this year…

We should all be wary of Saudis bearing gifts. Their so-called “humanitarianism” is nothing more than jihad by other means.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:24 | link | comments (1)

What’s behind the Gates fracas?: Roger L. Simon sees it as a case of “nostalgia” for the bad old days, when racism was rampant, and the nightly news (helmed by Huntley and Brinkley and the avuncular Walter C.) was full of ugly scenes of Whites behaving badly in places like Alabama and Mississippi:

…We all grew up with the received wisdom, with the donnée, if you will, that the U.S. was a racist country. And it was.

So were most countries. In fact, you might say all were racist. Despite the cliché wallowed in by our self-critics, racism is a global human phenomenon, not even remotely exclusively American.

In fact the United States, of all places I have visited, has done the most to obliterate its racism in a concerted manner. Perhaps it is because we are such a melting pot and have little choice that we have made a great effort. And of course there is the more than justifiable guilt over slavery. So we tried hard. And we’ve done a remarkably good job, considering that deep in the human psyche is distrust of the other. Most of us prefer to live in a comfort zone of our own people, our own ethnic, religious and racial groups. But we know that’s not cool and have, in our culture, worked very hard to combat that. Most of us have, anyway. And we have reached a point, I would say as long as twenty years ago or maybe more, when to be a racist or to exhibit racist tendencies was despised. To put it succinctly, to be a racist was to be a jerk.

But when the rules change, when values change, not everyone can adjust with it — not only the racist, but also those who depended on being victims of racism. For all his brilliance, Henry Lewis Gates is evidently such a man. Otherwise, why cry out about being victimized as a “black man in America” before there is any evidence that that is the case?

This is nostalgia for racism and our president probably suffers from it as well, although perhaps to a lesser degree, considering he clearly plunged into the fray without thinking. The problem is that this nostalgia not only blames people unfairly, it also increases the very thing it pretends to oppose — racism itself. The unfair or inaccurate imputation of racism promotes racism…

Me? I’m not sure “nostalgia” comes into play. I think it’s more about a radical Leftist worldview--the same worldview that’s behind multiculturalism and “human rights” commissions--that sees all Whites as racists or potential racists, and all “minorities” as victims or potential victims. And because this worldview has given rise to a whole gamut of professionals--community organizers, “human rights” activists, “victim group” mouthpieces, diversity mongers, and academics such as “Skip” Gates (is it racist to opine that “Skip” seems about as unlikely a nickname for this particular gent as, say, “Bubba” or “Corky”?)--whose bread and butter depends on maintaining this as the dominant Weltanshauung, it is likely to stick around for the foreseeable future.

As Mark Steyn remarks, a propos the wide spectrum of Cambridge constabulary who responded to a possible B&E in progress:

The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop – Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe – standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.

Indeed. The lead cop in the arrest was so attuned to the nuances of racial sensitivity that he even taught a course in “racial profiling.”

And that, you should pardon the expression, ain’t no Bull.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:43 | link | comments

Friday, 24 July 2009

End the mausoleum madness!: If someone can point to a more colossal waste of taxpayers’ money than the Mausoleum of Human Rights (our "human rights" racket excluded), I’d be prepared to sauté a copy of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and eat it for dinner. From the Ceeb:

Governments are being asked to put up more money for Canada's next national museum.

Officials at The Canadian Museum For Human Rights announced earlier this year that they would require an extra $45 million in donations because rising construction costs had driven up the price by 17 per cent.

On Friday, they announced plans to approach various provinces and the City of Winnipeg to help foot the $310-million bill.

"I have been having very, very wonderful chats with [British Columbia] Premier Gordon Campbell, who passionately believes in this project," said Gail Asper, chair of the fundraising campaign.

"Also, Nova Scotia, we've been chatting with them for a little while and we're hopeful there, and we always hope Saskatchewan will come on board as our neighbour."

The museum, which is to be the first national museum outside of the Ottawa region, was initially pushed by Asper's father, media mogul Izzy Asper, who died in 2003.

The federal government has already committed $100 million in construction costs and $22 million in annual operating expenses. The Manitoba government has chipped in $40 million and Winnipeg has put up $20 million.

But that money, along with $107 million raised in private donations so far, isn't enough to cover labour and material costs that have risen since the museum's budget was first discussed six years ago.

Asper estimates she needs at least $7 million in extra funding from provinces and another $3 million from Winnipeg.

Capital costs are not the only problem. The museum's board of directors reported a shortfall in operating expenses earlier this year, and is grappling with how it will pay up to $9 million a year in property taxes once the museum opens…

Quit your grappling. Commence with the scrapping. The thing is an architectural eyesore and a national embarrassment.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:52 | link | comments

Let him make one thing perfectly clear: I thought it was appropriate to borrow the Nixonism to convey the following--the President doesn't regret his unfortunate and ill-informed comment re the "stupidity" of the arrest of an African-American academic. He does, however, regret the "furor" and the "obsession" over his comment.

See the difference?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:34 | link | comments (2)

Common sense about the Gates fooferah: Victor Davis Hanson unpacks the “stupidity.” He says police were going to get slammed no matter what:

The Gates incident seems to have had little to do with race but a lot to do with the natural human misunderstandings that happen every day in police scenes — and its final twist has everything to do with insider privilege and aristocratic disdain.

Regarding the latter, here are the apparent facts: Both an African-American and a Hispanic officer were soon at the scene and seem to confirm the arresting white officer’s narrative, as do disinterested witnesses in the neighborhood (Cambridge, Mass., not being known as a hotbed of racist activity); a picture tells a thousand words, as one seems to show a handcuffed Gates screaming among a calm group of multiracial police; anyone who has had law enforcement come to his residence investigating a possible break-in knows that the one thing you do not do is begin insulting armed policemen who are tense and not sure exactly what is going down as they arrive; soon the machinery of Harvard University, the African-American mayor and governor, and ultimately the president all weigh in on behalf of Professor Gates in a way not true of most “I say/he says” disputes.

And when the president says the police acted “stupidly” he speaks without the facts of the case and is more right that he thinks: If someone were to call a policeman in Cambridge to investigate a possible entry by two African-American looking suspects into the home of the country’s leading emblem of racial theory and grievance, the officer would be entering a cultural minefield from which he might not escape unscathed: come too late to Professor Gates’s home: racist; come not at all to Professor Gates’s home: racist; come to Professor Gates’s home: racist.

When the healer President Obama casually characterizes law enforcement as acting “stupidly” and then blithely says we all know that African-Americans and Latinos are stopped disproportionately — without the corollary that we all know that African-American and Latino males also commit and are convicted of crimes in numbers higher than their general percentages of the population and therefore can naturally also become more likely suspects — then we simply regress on questions of race, though in frustration rather than due to the “cowardice” cited by the attorney general.

It is tragic that the officer did not say, “Sorry for bothering you, Professor Gates. Of course I recognize you and regret that I had to bother you while you were legitimately breaking into your own home. This won’t happen again.” (And of course, Professor Gates might have said, “No problem; I’m relieved you’re looking out for my house while I’m gone.”) But as the Romans said, sumus homines, non dei...

I love it when Victor speaks Latin.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments (1)

Misnomer: "Were deaths of 4 women a matter of 'honour'?" asks the Toronto Star headline. Well, no. All the details have yet to emerge, but should this indeed turn out to be another Aqsa Parvez case, it is obvious that "honour" had nothing to do with it. There is nothing the least bit "honourable" about controlling insolent daughters by murdering them. (The theory is that the eldest daughter has been fraternizing with an unsuitable boy--he was Pakistani, they're from Afghanistan; apparently, an insurmountable cultural chasm for the alleged murderers. But why murder the two younger girls and the aunt/first wife too?)

Heinous, wicked, sick, demented: yes. "Honour"? A pox on the word, the thinking and especially the deeds.

Update: A Tu Quoque argument about the crime, made by a woman who should know better, as quoted in the Montreal Gazette (with the Tu Quoque part—i.e. you guys do it, too—in bolds):

…Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, cautioned against branding the deaths as honour killings.

“I’m really hesitant to use that term,” she said.

“We need to remember this is murder, and nothing should distract from that.”

Violence against women is endemic in societies where men wield control over women’s lives, she said. However, she pointed out that patriarchal thinking is not limited to the Middle East and Asia.

“There are Canadian men who stalk and intimidate their wives and commit murder. Is that an honour killing?”

To attribute violence against women to cultural factors might appear to condone it, she added.

“I think we should look at it as a tragedy. The acts are immoral and reprehensible and should be dealt with as murder.”…

Religion/culture being implicated in the murder of uppity Muslimas? Move along now, foolish infidels. Nothing to see here.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments (3)

Barack Obama--nekkid as a jaybird: So saith the sage Krauthammer:

WASHINGTON -- What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.

But you can't fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes.

President Obama premised the need for reform on the claim that medical costs are destroying the economy. True. But now we learn -- surprise! -- that universal coverage increases costs. The congressional Democrats' health care plans, says the CBO, increase costs in the range of $1 trillion plus.

In response, the president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue neutral. But that's classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable…

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

Just when you think you've heard everything...: Alan Dershowitz accuses Melanie Phillips of speaking "lashon harrah"--malicious evil words--about the Obama administration.

Don't know what's more outrageous--that or his charge that she's a dead ringer for Noam Chomsky. (Alan and Irwin--see post below--appear to be suffereing from the same derangement. I believe it's called "leftism".)

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

Question: Does radical Islam make you nuts, or were you kind of nutty beforehand, and that’s why you turned to radical Islam? Rather a chicken-or-egg-type quandary, I know, but I couldn’t help ruminating on it while reading this story about a Catholic kid from Long Island who “reverted” to Islam, ran away to Pakistan to join Al Qaeda, and told Pakistan authorities who apprehended him about a plot to blow up the Long Island railway. His mother, who has now disowned him, is baffled by the transformation. "I raised a good boy; he was beautiful, normal " she tells the NY Daily News.

I dunno. Maybe it’s hormones. And jihad. Hormones and jihad: a very bad--and potentially very deadly--combo.

My theory, anyway.

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

Irwin Cotler’s bizarre apology to the mullahs: You have to read it to believe--and even then you may find it as astounding as I did:

Re: Our Role In Containing The Mullahs, Irwin Cotler, July 23.

I was shocked to see the heading "Our role in containing the mullahs" above my op-ed in yesterday's edition. Invoking the mullahs of Iran was erroneous and irresponsible -- the word "mullah" appears nowhere in my piece. I make no reference at any point to any Iranian other than a governmental leader or former leader. And at no time do I make any suggestion that anyone other than the governmental regime in Iran -- led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- is responsible for the human rights abuses suffered by the people of Iran.

I have the highest respect for the religion of Islam, and recognize the heroic efforts of many religious leaders in contemporary Iran to stand up to the repressions wrought by the ruling regime. To take but one example, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri issued a fatwa last week, proclaiming: "A regime that uses clubs, oppression, aggression against [the people's] rights, injustice, rigged elections, murder, arrests and medieval or Stalin-era torture, [a regime that] gags and censors the press, obstructs the media, imprisons intellectuals and elected leaders on false allegations or forced confessions ... [such a regime] is despicable and has no religious merit."

I will continue to stand up against the human-rights abuses and violations of international law that take place systematically in contemporary Iran. But I refuse to associate these crimes generically with the mullahs of Iran, and I deplore any attempt to do so.

Irwin Cotler, Montreal.

Yes, because everyone knows there are good mullahs and bad mullahs--and the bad mullahs are spoiling it for the good ones. The state of mullahdom per se isn’t what determines one's goodness or badness; what does is one's dedication, or lack thereof, to, er, “human rights.”

You're right, though, that it’s not about the mullahs, Irwin. It’s the sharia, baby--the repressive, inequitable law that even “heroic” mullahs want all to follow. You'd know that if you had even a scintilla of insight into Islam and its doctrines.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:17 | link | comments (5)

Thursday, 23 July 2009

Who's he kidding?: Netanyahu calls on Arab world to strive for regional peace.

That's what it's been doing all along, Bibi--only it's the type of "peace" that precludes Israel's existence.

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

Outreach on hold: The turmoil inside Iran has really thrown the hopeychangers. They had proceeded on the (inane, asinine) assumption that they could “negotiate” with A-jad and the mully-bullies, but now they’re stymied, flummoxed, at a loss. Here’s Hillary, one of the more feckless Secretaries of State of modern times, confessing that the administration she represents hasn’t a clue about what comes next. From the Beeb:

The political turmoil inside Iran has left Washington grappling for a way forward in its attempts to engage its long-time foe.

In a BBC interview, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tehran did not have the "capacity" to make decisions about its relations with the outside world at the moment.

"The internal debates going on inside Iran have made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to pursue any diplomatic engagement, not just with us but anyone, like the P5+1 (permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany), there is so much that is on hold."

She added that Washington was looking to engage Iran as an entity, and as a country that was on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons.

She refused to be drawn on whether the US would talk to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he accepted the offer of engagement, saying it was hypothetical…

When I first read that last sentence, I thought it said “hypocritical.” Under the circumstances, a much better word, I’d say.

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

Heh: New survey shows Obama more popular abroad than at home.

They love him in Europe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:52 | link | comments

Profiles in “profiling”: Barack Obama proclaimed that Cambridge, Mass., police acted “stupidly” when they arrested Henry Louis Gates. (Silly police--they didn’t realize that what appeared to be a break-and-enter in progress was actually esteemed Harvard Professor Gates returned from abroad sans his house keys and trying to gain forcible entry without them.) Roger Kimball, for one, sees it differently:

What an outrage! What an embarrassment! A couple of nights ago, Cambridge, Massachusetts policemen, responding to a call from a concerned neighbor, arrived at the house of Harvard Prof Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to find a couple of chaps pushing in at the front door.

What, in that policeman’s shoes, would you have done? I would have done exactly what the chap in question did: “Wot’s all this?” followed by a demand for some identification.

Here comes the outrage, and the embarrassment. 95 percent of it belongs to Harvard’s famous Professor of Afro-American studies, who responded to the request for identification with “Why, because I’m a black man in America?” and then, having produced the requested documents, embarked on making a loud scene with the police outside his house. Result: arrest for disorderly conduct, handcuffs, and a free ride in a police cruiser. The other 5 percent of the outrage and embarrassment, I hasten to add, belongs to the Reverend Al Shaprton (I always giggle a little at that conjunction: “reverend” and “Al Sharpton,” don’t you?) and other representatives of what Michael Meyers, in one of the best pieces about the incident, called “the race industry.”…

Racial profiling and the race industry are subjects of consuming interest here in Canada, too. In a font size generally reserved for the start and end of World Wars, the front page headline in the Toronto Star shrieks ‘Working while BLACK’. The article details the sorry story of a black letter carrier who was “profiled” by the cops while performing his duties in one of Toronto’s shmanciest neighbourhoods.

Ron Phipps admits he was criss-crossing Vernham Ave. the day he was stopped by police in the Bridle Path.

He was also wearing a Canada Post coat and carrying two mailbags while filling in for the regular letter carrier.

Nearby, Toronto Police Const. Michael Shaw and another officer were investigating cut phone lines and looking for suspects described as male, white and eastern European who were seen in a car.

Phipps, who is black, raised suspicions with Shaw because he spoke to a homeowner but didn't give her any mail.

But the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has ruled that by stopping Phipps on March 9, 2005, questioning him, trailing him and asking a white letter carrier to verify his identity, Shaw was guilty of racial profiling.

The fact that Phipps "was an African-Canadian in an affluent neighbourhood was a factor, a significant factor, and probably the predominant factor, whether consciously or unconsciously, in Const. Shaw's actions," adjudicator Kaye Joachim wrote in his decision last month.

At the hearing, Shaw contended each of Phipps' actions was suspicious, despite his uniform.

Joachim batted each one down.

"Letter carriers take vacation, retire and/or switch routes" so seeing a man with a mailbag he didn't know doesn't explain Shaw's suspicions, Joachim wrote.

"I do not accept Const. Shaw's evidence that the applicant was crossing the street back and forth in an unusual fashion. Const. Shaw was well aware that letter carriers do not stop at every house. It was not unusual to misdeliver mail and to go back and try to retrieve it.

"The fact that it was an African-Canadian male without a vehicle that attracted Const. Shaw's attention is what is unusual," wrote Joachim.

The ruling is just the first half of the case that started that chilly morning in March 2005.

The tribunal on Sept. 14 will hear the same accusations against the Toronto Police Services Board and Chief Bill Blair.

"This was always broader than Const. Shaw," Phipps said yesterday from his Thornhill residence.

"I know there is more than one Const. Shaw in the world."

This case is important, said law professor David Tanovich, because it is the second clear Ontario human rights tribunal ruling of racial profiling against police…

Here’s my problem with the whole “profiling” concept: It could be that this gent was hassled merely because he's black (or BLACK), and that the cops are flagrant racists who deserve to be reprimanded by a "rights" tribunal. Then again, it could be that, being cops, they know that a disproportionate number of break-ins in this particular neighbourhood (and other neighbourhoods) happen to be the work of…well, mum’s the word as to who’s behind them, because here in the Trudeaupia "sensitivity" apparently demands we be colour blind when it comes to criminality.

A resolve to get rid of “profiling” is great news for Rev. Sharpton and the race sharpies on both sides of the border. Alas, it is also great news for those who will count on an absence of “profiling” to, say, slip past authorities at airports or break into homes. The fear, of course, is that all this heightened sensitivity will end up causing authorities to slack off to a degree, and will thus end up facilitating more criminal activity--and perhaps even more terrorism. Something to bear in mind when you read this--a report in the National Post about Hezbollah possibly targeting Jews in Canada should Israel act against Iran.

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

Distracted (and addled) by irrational hatred: Israel-loather Sid "Vicious" Ryan's union has turned Toronto's summer of '09 into a stinking, festering Garbagepalooza. Perhaps if the union wasn't so focused on what was going on in far-off Gaza (where, go figure, there are no unions; you have to cross into Israel to find them) his union would be able to remove its collective heads from its collective arses long enough to come to reasonable terms with the city, and the Annapurnas of trash in our parks and mass influx of vermin could be dealt with post haste.

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

D.O.A.: "Obama says recovery depends on healthcare"--WaPo header.

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

The plot thickens and sickens: Here’s more, from the Toronto Star, about a watery “accident” that now appears to have been most purposeful (my bolds):

MONTREAL–The tale of three Montreal sisters and their aunt who were found dead in their car in the Rideau Canal in Kingston has taken a dramatic turn with the arrest of three family members, who may have been trying to flee the country.

Kingston police have scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. today where Police Chief Stephen Tanner will outline the details of a major change in focus of the investigation. Up to now, police have only gone so far as to call the deaths "suspicious."

The three suspects, believed to be the sisters' father, Mohammed Shafi, his wife, and his 18-year-old son, were apprehended yesterday morning while heading to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, possibly to flee the country, La Presse newspaper reported, citing unnamed police sources. They were taken to Kingston.

The Shafi sisters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17 and Geeti, 13 – died along with their aunt, Rona Amir Mohammed, on June 30. The family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto when they stopped for the night at a motel in Kingston.

The car was found that morning, submerged in the Rideau Canal, the bodies of the victims inside.

Officially, Kingston police would only say yesterday there had been a "change in the status" of the investigation based on "what's happened in the last 24 hours."

"It was a suspicious death and that has been changed," said Kingston police spokesman Const. Mike Menor. "We're not saying what that is."

Neighbours of the Shafi family in the Montreal borough of Saint-Léonard told the Star police were at the family's home last night for at least three hours. Earlier this month, the supervising regional coroner, Dr. Roger Skinner, told the Star preliminary autopsy results were communicated to the family verbally. However, the family repeatedly denied having received any such results from the coroner.

The family hails from Kabul, Afghanistan, but spent 15 years in Dubai before moving to Montreal two years ago.

The father, Mohammed, is a businessman dealing in electronics. He also owns a Laval shopping centre. A relative called him "wealthy."

Shortly after the deaths, distraught family members speculated that one of the older sisters, likely Zainab, might have taken the car out to practise driving.

Mohammed Shafi said the family was travelling in two cars and arrived in Kingston at 1:30 a.m. June 30.

Shortly after, Zainab came to get the car keys from her mother, Tooba Mohammad Yhaya, apparently to retrieve clothes from the car.

At 7:30 a.m., Shafi woke up and looked out the motel window, and the car was gone, he said. The police told him of the car's whereabouts later that morning.

However, the circumstances were always uncertain.

The car, a Nissan Sentra, would have had to traverse numerous obstacles, including a locked gate and stone moorings, to make it into the water, yet there were no skid marks, witnesses said.

Kind of a dead giveaway, that--literally. Also the fact that it makes no sense why the three other women would willingly go for a ride with a girl who didn’t have a driver’s license.

BTW, in another interesting twist, 680 News just reported that the drowned aunt was the bereaved dad’s “first wife.” Not sure if that means they were divorced or whether he continued to be married to two sisters (until one met a watery demise).

Update: Mark Steyn comments on the plethora of Muslima drownings in the Kingston, Ontario area this season:

There would seem to be a statistically improbable number of multiple drownings of female members of Muslim families in Kingston this summer. If you're a young female Muslim, and you have any say in the matter, you might want to vacation elsewhere.

Update: The Ceeb reports that the couple who were arrested for the murders (along with their son) have three more kids--two girls and a boy--who have now been taken into protective custody. A commenter on the Ceeb site raises an interesting point:

Perhaps it's a case of the husband in cahoots with the second wife killing the first wife and her kids.

Do we know whose kids were born to which mother?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:29 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

Muslim women drowned in Kingston: Several weeks ago there was a horrible occurrence--the tragic drowning of three young Muslim sisters and another women relative in Kingston, Ontario. The story told by the sisters’ purportedly heartsick parents, recent arrivals from Afghanistan, was that their eldest daughter had taken their car without their permission, loaded it up with the other women, and somehow managed to end up in the drink.

At the time I thought it sounded a bit fishy, and now it seems my suspicious may have been well-founded. A Montreal radio station is reporting that

Kingston police say they'll release more information tomorrow, after reports that they've made arrests in the deaths 3 weeks ago of 4 Montreal woman who drowned in the Rideau canal near Kingston.

Three members of the women's immediate family reportedly were arrested as they headed for Trudeau airport; apparently to leave the country.

Investigators aren't ruling out an honour-killing in the Afghan women's death: 3 young sisters from the Shafii family -- aged 13 to 19 -- and a 50-year-old relative --Rona Amir Mohammed.

Police might want to explore if there’s an honour killing angle to this Kingston drowning story, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:44 | link | comments

All aboard!: Just doing my part to help derail state censorship, one song parody at a time:

Pardon me, boy, is this the ‘human rights’ commission?

Section 13,

You know the one that I mean.

You can’t afford

To get aboard this kooky choo choo.

It isn’t fair.

You never wanna go there.

You’ll see that Jennifer the Commissar

Is doin’ her job.

Wants you to be wary of what ‘scapes from your gob.

Allahu Akbar, honey,

Blasphemy ain’t funny.

Shut yo’ mouth or it’ll cost you money.

When you read the Moon report you’ll know it’s absurd

To have a bunch of censors judgin’ your ev’ry word.

True north strong and free-ah,

‘Cept for the sharia.

(Gets thumbs up from the CHRC-ah.)

There’s gotta be

A lotta outrage from the public.

Both left and right

Have got a dog in this fight.

We’re gonna cry

If it turns out we can no longer scoff.

So ‘human rights’ commission

Where do you get off?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:32 | link | comments (5)

Triumphalism 101: Coming this week to Toronto's Ryerson University--an intensive four day course on "the fall and rise"--yes, that's really how it's billed--"of the Muslim ummah." While the event is open to everyone, the promo explains that it "is geared towards students of knowledge who are willing to take an activist's approach to the acquisition of knowledge: learning from the past and looking for ways to implement those lessons for the future."

No doubt. Terry Glavin in the National Post has more about the, ahem, "activist" organization behind the course (Jew-hating; Islamist) and the "professor" who will be teaching it (ditto; and ditto).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:52 | link | comments

Life in “moderate” Malaysia: A sharia court rules no brewski for youski:

Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian state sharia court has sentenced a Muslim woman to be given six strokes of the cane after she pleaded guilty to consuming alcohol openly at a club two years ago, news reports said Tuesday. Kartika Sari Sewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old part-time model from Singapore, was also ordered to pay a 5,000-ringgit (1,350-dollar) fine.

She had earlier admitted to drinking beer when Islamic department officers conducted a raid at the nightclub in July 2007.

"The [caning] is aimed at making the accused repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims," the Syaria High Court judge was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times daily.

Kartika's attorney said she would file an appeal, the report said.

Under Pahang state's sharia, or Islamic, law, those found guilty of consuming alcohol face a fine of up to 5,000 ringgit, three years in jail and six strokes of the cane.

At least she gets to keep all her appendages.

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

The bloom is off the rose: Americans are slowing awakening (Halleluiah!) to the fact that a former community organizer cannot, as it turns out, walk on water or cure the scrofular. He can, however, make a humungous mess o’ potage with his hopenchange (‘n’ changenhope).

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

Multiculturalism--tarnished, tattered and deeply shallow: George Jonas, God bless him, has an absolutely brilliant column about the grotesque failure of multiculturalism, a social doctrine that “silver-plates” immigrants but that cannot necessarily inculcate Canadian values:

…Our great-grandfathers assessed matters more accurately. They had taken it for granted that integration is a process of considerable complexity that occurs over historic time. It isn't achieved by a quick immersion in another culture, even when the immersion is, as in the case of Ms. N & Co. [the “silver-plated” Muslima partners of the “Toronto 18”; the as yet unnamed chicks vented their Judenhass/fondness for jihad in perfect English vernacular on the Web] superficially complete. Our generation not only overestimated the effects of such cultural silver-plating, but tried reducing it even further by the imposition of multiculturalism.

Cultural silver-plating may not achieve much beyond teaching al-Qaeda idiomatic English anyway, but multiculturalism makes it stick even less and wear off even quicker. Cultural silver-plating may produce amusing incongruities, like jihadists with pre-nuptial agreements and Wahhabi feminists who retain their maiden names after marriage. But computer-literate fundamentalists take us no closer to a harmonious society. They only illustrate how ultra-liberal policies, slogans and practices confuse and alienate vulnerable youngsters of foreign ancestry and increase the number of our solitudes.

"You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" offered Ms. C in a 2004 posting. Ms. R saw things in even simpler terms: "May Allah curse the Jews," wrote this 19-year-old product of Canadian inclusiveness and tolerance.

Multicultural Canada is turning from a country of two nations into a country of a dozen xenoliths: Inward looking, hostile fragments, jealously guarding their ethno-religious distinctions as entitlements, while resenting the entitlements of others as privileges. It's scant consolation that, being culturally silver-plated, such groups are likely to express their sectarian sentiments in idiomatic suburban English, sometimes peppered with current slang, Internet lingo or even mock-liberal concerns…

The problem is we’re so far down the multiculti rabbit hole that I’m not sure we can dig our way out, especially when most people don’t even understand the doctrine and its false premises, and think multiculturalism boils down to a wider availability of tasty ethnic foods at the local grocery store. (Chicken Korma in a pouch--yum!)

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:56 | link | comments

Blasphemers R Us: The word “blasphemy” has an unpleasantly Medieval ring to me, but then the Medieval seems to be all the rage these days. Just take a gander at Ireland, where, as the Ceeb reports, blasphemy has been dusted off and given a whole new life:

If you visit Ireland after October, you'd better watch what you say about God.

A blasphemous slip of the tongue could cost you 25,000 euros under revamped legislation that will soon be signed into law.

Blasphemy is an act of challenging or offending a religious belief.

In recent years, western countries such as England have been taking blasphemy laws off the books, or changing their focus so that they cover hate-related crimes in general. Ireland has taken a different approach, updating its legislation but maintaining a focus on religion.

In Ireland, it has been a crime to publish blasphemous material since 1961, although nobody has ever been convicted. The Seanad, the Irish senate and upper level of parliament, passed the Defamation Bill in July that makes uttering blasphemy a crime as well.

The bill was originally proposed in 2006. It worked its way through parliament and received final approval on July 10 this year, when it passed by a slim margin of 23-22.

Lorraine Weinrib, a law professor at the University of Toronto, says the bill is a modern update of blasphemy laws.

"I don't see this as a new thing as much as an old thing that hasn't quite disappeared in Ireland," she says.

"Unlike the old blasphemy laws which only protected the dominant religion [Roman Catholicism] … this one seems to protect all religions, so it kind of has a modern equality bent to it," Weinrib adds.

But blasphemy laws can have an impact on freedom of expression, Weinrib says.

"They create a crime where one of the basic elements of the crime is subjective outrage of particular people. So there's really no objective measure, and this can cause a disruption in the modern understanding of the relationship between religion and the public space of a liberal democracy."

Gee, ya think? Luckily, under the new Irish legislation, “blasphemy” is not only that which offends and angers, but that which also provokes a violent reaction. (Like when some “blasphemous” ‘toons make folks so irate they feel compelled to torch embassies, say?)

And lest you think Ireland is the only Western nation with a “blasphemy” law, think again. Canada has a blasphemy law, too. It’s written right into our Criminal Code:

Canada lists blasphemous libel as a crime under the Criminal Code, which carries a penalty of up to two years in jail. But the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees free speech rights that supersede the blasphemy law.

The Canadian code says, "No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject."

Of course, that’s been superseded by Section 13 of our “human rights” code, which the Supreme Court of Canada says trumps our Charter right to free speech, and which allows for state prosecution of “offensive” language without affording the accused blasphemer any of the protections available in a regular court of law.

That smacks of the Medieval, too, I’d say (also the Maoist and the Stalinist), but is fully in line with judicial thinking in some Muslim nations:

In countries where Islam is the state religion, blasphemy is still considered a serious offence. In countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, the penalty for blasphemous crimes can be execution.

A number of Islamic countries have been pursuing an international anti-blasphemy resolution at the United Nations that would restrict any speech that is offensive to any religion. But that approach assumes everyone is religious, Weinrib says, and issues can crop up when two religious groups have contradictory points of view.

Nuh-uh. That approach assumes that sharia--God’s law--is the world’s one and only valid law, and that, sooner rather than later, everyone will (must) acknowledge its primacy.

Update: Sing it, Johnny:

Blasphemy

It’s a concept that’s so downright Wahhabi.

And they feel like they’re clinging to the law

We must understand.

No “blaspheming” is Allah’s command.

Walk their way

And you get to keep your life and limb, okay?

Otherwise the mere sound of your voice

Can get you in heck--

That blasphemy’s a pain in the neck.

They can say it’s a matter of “rights”

But the truth is you’ve no rights at all.

Don’t you notice how hopelessly we’re lost

When we heed the censorious call?

On our own

Will we ever figure out how it is goin’?

Never knowing sharia’s the goal

Jihad is "Divine"

And “blasphemy” helps keep us in line.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:52 | link | comments (2)

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

Hollywood Loser, official clothier to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy/Zionist Cabal: Get yer T-shirts here.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:40 | link | comments

Another Jackson pal who didn't make the funeral:

Who knew when this photo was taken that ET would turn out to be the far less other-wordly one?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:29 | link | comments (2)

Appropriate transportation: Dry Bones has Obama's number (i.e. he's Number One on so many levels):

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

Y oh Y?: The news release says that the Canadian Islamic Congress is drawing attention to the Uyghur Muslim plea for help.

Scratch that--it makes too much sense. The organization that issued a release to draw attention to the Uyghur's plight is--wait for it--now wait for it some more, because it's really worth the wait--B'nai Brith Canada.

Um, the Jews do realize that the Uyghurs (I see the BB has opted for the fancier "y" spelling favoured by the Globe and Mail; everyone else seems to make do with an "i") want to break away from China and be governed by sharia law, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:26 | link | comments (1)

Obit for a multiculturalist: The Toronto Star has an obituary for a “Muslim visionary who ‘believed in the promise of multiculturalism’”:

When Syed Mumtaz Ali, a youg lawyer from Hyderabad, moved to Toronto in 1960, he saw it as a place of unparalleled religious freedom. A city where, even years before prime minister Pierre Trudeau's ideal of multiculturalism became public policy, Muslims could live, work and practise their faith freely.

It was a first impression that Ali dedicated his life to preserving.

He was one of the first Muslims to obtain a law degree in Ontario, in 1962. He challenged convention when, after being called to the bar, he became the first lawyer to take the oath of office on the Qur'an instead of the Bible. But his foray into the public sphere came when he spearheaded the movement to bring religious arbitration and Muslim family law to Ontario.

Ali, a visionary and a leader in the city's Muslim community, died Thursday after complications from kidney failure. He was 82.

His devotion to his faith was intertwined with his commitment to the law. He studied the Charter of Rights and Freedoms thoroughly. He remained vocal about ensuring that Muslims, too, were entitled to freedoms under the law.

"He saw the rights that other communities had, and felt Muslims were entitled to the same," said Qari Ataullah, a long-time friend. "Even when his stance was unpopular, he stood behind it and defended it."

In the early '90s, Ali threw his weight behind the Muslim Law Campaign, an effort to address issues of Muslim family law through religious arbitration. It was an effort perceived by many as a campaign to introduce sharia, Islamic religious law, into Canada. But that was never Ali's intention

"He truly believed in the promise of multiculturalism and the potential of Canada to deliver on this promise, not only for Muslims but for all faith-based communities," said Harris Ali, his son. "Religious arbitration was one aspect of the fulfilment of this promise."

When the Star spoke to him in 2004, Ali remained devoted to his cause, and to upholding the law of the land. "It will be a watered-down sharia, not 100 per cent sharia," he told the reporter…

Right, because here in Canada we’re not prepared to accept 100 per cent sharia--at least, not right away. (Is that perhaps why the dear departed was studying the Charter so assiduously--because he was looking for loopholes that would accommodate the one and only true law?)

I’m sure the Star didn’t mean to expose the fatuousness of multiculturalism, the misbegotten doctrine of hyper-tolerance that considers sharia, even in “a watered-down” form (whatever that means--you can hit your wife only every other day?), to be a good thing for a free, democratic, Western country, but that’s exactly what it has done.

Update: As I suspected, the reason the late legal scholar was so big on multiculturalism is because he could see that it and sharia were mui sympatico. Here's what he wrote in 1993 (my bolds):

Obviously, therefore, Muslims must operate within the framework of the Canadian laws and the laws of the Western countries they happen to be living in. With intellectual and moral evolution, there is a tendency in human society to facilitate the assimilation of the foreigner.(47) Modern, liberal-minded Western countries, particularly those with democratic forms of governments, are becoming increasingly convinced of the need for adopting a humanitarian notion of social unity as the basic tie of society. One by one, these countries are rejecting the conceptions of "national unity" based on accidents of nature, the notions which belong more to the animal instincts rather than to the rationality of man. Blood relationship, colour of skin, language, place of birth, are all accidents and hazards of birth. These primitive bases of assimilation are being replaced more and more by the basis identity of ideas. Such a notion of unity and assimilation depends on the choice of man and is therefore closer to reason and more practical. It is common knowledge that Islam has always followed this method of assimilation, showing how to live one's life in peace and tranquillity.

Update: Theodore Dalrymple explains that, rather than bringing people together, muliculturalism actually serves to keep them apart. The result: no social cohesion at all:

Multiculturalism, at least in Britain, has been another unwitting ally of Muslim extremism, Malik rightly argues. Multiculturalism has created an informal system, like the late Ottoman empire’s millet system, in which various groups receive their privileges but are expected to live separately and distinctly from everyone else. This serves to prevent the various groups from developing any common identity and stimulates the ascent of political entrepreneurs whose power depends on the maintenance, aggravation, and inflammation of supposed grievances. Islamists are political entrepreneurs with a plausible doctrinal reason for violence. They are now able to extract from society the kind of respect that street muggers demand, and multiculturalism has become the ideological wing of sheer cowardice.

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

The only real change you can believe in: Forget about Obama’s vision for change. David Solway argues that the only way to avoid Europe’s fate--an angry, reactionary right battling the squishy, multicultist left that has facilitated the Continent’s Islamization (“the savage dialectic,” in his brilliant coinage)--is by turning to moderate conservatism:

…It would be sheer folly to assume that we in North America are privileged spectators who are somehow exempt from the savage dialectic that Europe is now experiencing. It is starting to happen here as well. We may have a little more time at our disposal to try and come to terms with the predicament, but we are equally at risk. The gravest peril to America today is not an external enemy but its own developing fault lines. The tectonic plates that undergird the sense of national unity are moving apart. Strictly speaking, our situation is not identical to Europe’s, but close enough to warrant concern. If we are not vigilant and prepared to reconsider our generic assumptions about the culture of indiscriminate inclusion and the politics of spineless appeasement, Europe is our inevitable future.

Speaking at the National Press Club on June 10, 2009, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center warned that a “perfect storm is brewing for the buildups of these hate groups,” of which the Center lists over 900. Many of the members of these cadres enlist in the army “to learn skills they will later take back to their groups while, in other instances, [they] work to recruit frustrated veterans.” Dees isolates the phenomenon of rampant Latino immigration as “the biggest engine generating increase in hate groups,” though Jew-hatred also figures prominently. But there can be no doubt that galloping Muslim immigration and high fertility rates, as well as the burgeoning influence of radical Islamic organizations, will fuel the rage felt and violence perpetrated by these virulent cells and networks.

There is only one way to defeat the extreme Right as it rises to its own depraved version of the defence of the West, and that is to disarm the common enemy and, by so doing, deprive a nascent fascism of its populist fuel. Which is another way of saying that immigration policies currently in place will need to be rethought and rendered more appropriate to the nation’s requirements, as is the case, for example, in Switzerland, the sole western European country that attaches a high value to citizenship. And unpleasant as this may sound, we will also have to become less tolerant of the intolerant Other which refuses to recognize our values if we are to avoid the pendulum swing toward a vicious intolerance of all perceived outsiders.

We will, in short, have to embrace the conservative tradition of the moderate Right, based on the liberty of the individual, the duties of responsible citizenship, a coherent pluralism that respects the customs of the majority culture rather than a fractious multiculturalism that corrodes them, and the robust defence of the homeland against the threats, both domestic and external, that mobilize against it…

Hear, hear. Now, how do we make it happen?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:36 | link | comments

Monday, 20 July 2009

Contextualizing a controversial T: When the Toronto Star’s Kathy English apologized on behalf of her paper to an Official Jew, a flaming heterosexual, for being misidentified as gay by an anti-Zionist Star columnist/blogger who had her tongue planted firmly in her cheek, Ms. E. wasn’t aware of all the facts. To be specific, she had no idea that the gent in question was sporting a T shirt that read “NOBODY KNOWS I’M GAY” while marching with panache (and orange leis on his wrists) in the Pride Parade. The sheepish editor has now apologized for her earlier apology, sort of, but not entirely:

…I haven't altered my view that [Antonia] Zerbisias's blog comment (about Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber) fell short of the Star's standards of fairness.

But I have learned more this week about its context. My own standard of fairness thus demands reconsideration of the harsh assessment I expressed in last week's column.

Though I gave Zerbisias opportunity to comment before publication of that column, she said little to help me understand the context of this comment she posted on her Star blog about Farber's participation in the Pride parade: "Imagine my surprise when I saw Bernie Farber identifying himself as queer by joining a pro-Israel gay rights group in the parade ... Funny because I didn't know he was gay."

Farber is not gay and Zerbisias knows that.

Here's the fuller context that explains why she wrote this: Zerbisias had seen Farber marching in the Pride parade wearing a T-shirt that said, "Nobody knows I'm gay." She didn't include that information in her blog so readers didn't know that context. Nor did she tell me that when I showed her my column before publication.

In complaining to the Star, neither did Farber think to tell me that he, along with dozens of others who marched with the Kulanu group, had worn a T-shirt that made its own ironic quip. That's context I sure wish I had known.

This makes it clear to me that Zerbisias's comment was intended as sarcastic irony, stock in trade for this columnist and blogger. But I think her attempt at irony failed here; the quip – as published without that context – was ambiguous and could be misunderstood.

In this new media world where what is published online lives on forever, I think that was unfair and left this news organization wide open to the CJC's concern that a Star journalist had published something that she knew to be untrue.

To be fair to Zerbisias, it should be made clear, though, that she did not "make things up," as Farber interpreted it. "I don't `make things up' – ever," she said, adding that there "is a lot of space between publishing falsehoods and spouting irony."

The principle of my column last week remains. Toronto Star journalists simply can't engage in this hurly-burly tone of the blogosphere if it confuses readers or doesn't meet the Star's journalistic standards…

Yes, we’ll have none of that hurly-burly here at the Star, where the soporific and the humdrum are the order of the day.

Update: You know what English's half-hearted apology is really about don't you? It's about "old" media taking a stand against that sassy young upstart, "new" media, i.e. the blogosphere. It's about someone situated entirely in the old chastizing someone who has a foot in both camps, underscoring to her that the "hurly-burly" (or rough and tumble) of the unedited, unmediated, uncontrollable Internet shall neither encroach on nor defile the Simon Pure precincts of the old newsprint Grande Dame.

Think of English as Queen Victoria, surveying the unfortunate habits of the less civilized members of her Empire and offering a dismissive "We are not amused."

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments (6)

Odd couple: I liked this quip, from a deliciously nasty piece about Dubai in the Times:

…the hideous bling of downtown Dubai, a vast architectural experiment conducted by, seemingly, Albert Speer and Victoria Beckham.

Now there are two names I never thought I’d read in the same sentence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:32 | link | comments

The audacity of treachery: Anne Bayefsky blasts Obama for deferring to Muslims and trashing America’s relationship with Israel (h/t TS):

President Barack Obama last Monday met for the first time with leaders of selected Jewish organizations and leaks from the meeting now make one thing very clear. The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world. Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the state of Israel.

This was the very first meeting with Jewish community's leaders. Earlier requests for an audience with major Jewish organizations had reportedly been ignored. Six months after taking office the president finally got around to issuing an invitation to stop the bleeding. Increasing numbers of Jews even among the overwhelming number who voted for Obama have been voicing serious concern about his real agenda.

The meeting, however, did not showcase the president's trademark engagement and dialogue routine. Instead, he decided to cherry pick his Jewish audience to include pro-Obama newcomers with little support in the mainstream Jewish world, such as J Street, while blackballing the Zionist Organization of America. The oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, with a Washington office second in size only to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was not a voice Obama wanted to hear. This leaves the president willing to engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but not ZOA President Mort Klein.

The growing alarm in the Jewish community was also something the White House was bent on covering up. They refused to put the meeting on the President's public schedule until it was outed. The White House demanded strict confidentiality and issued a terse couple of lines that it occurred when it was all over.

WAKE UP!
But there is no papering over the distressing reality that emerged. The president told his listeners that he preferred putting daylight between the United States and Israel. His reported justification: "there was no light between the US and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and no progress was made."

Evidently, unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, 21 settlements and 9,000 residents counts for nothing. The Palestinian terrorist leadership and street have refused to accept a Jewish state for the past eight years (and the previous 53) because the United States did not add sufficiently to Israel's isolation…

If anything, Israel ethnically cleansing itself from Gaza is proof positive that hope ‘n’ change unmoored to reality can be a calamitous policy. Proof, too, that there is such a thing as Obama Derangement Syndrome--but only those who desperately cling to the hope that this president will somehow turn out to be “good for the Jews” (and, for that matter, good for America and the rest of the free world) have it.

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

Sponging off the enemy: It’s one thing to tolerate a crazed jihadi in your midst. It’s quite another to actually underwrite his efforts--as the Daily Mail reports the Brits are doing:

On a hot summer afternoon, a man with a microphone stands on a busy London street. He is a tubby figure and sports a black, bushy beard, flecked with grey. He is shrieking at passing shoppers, insisting they follow him - and save their souls.

Teams of young, tough-looking men - all clearly devoted to their leader - dart through the crowds, handing out leaflets and haranguing anyone who questions their message.

From the other side of the street, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a harmless, if colourful, example of citizens making full use of Britain's ancient tradition of free speech.

But there is nothing harmless about what is really going on here. For the man with the microphone is Anjem Choudary, branded the most dangerous man in Britain.

An extremist who believes his sole-calling is to wage holy war against Britain and her 'infidel' allies, he is trying - and succeeding - to prepare the ground for his global Islamic jihad.

Funded by the taxpayer - he claims benefits so that he has plenty of free time to spread his message - Choudary is openly staging these 'Islamic roadshows' across Britain. And their aim is to recruit young British men prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for his chilling cause.

Islamic law in Britain

Exhorting Britain's 1.8 million Muslims to follow his example, Choudary dreams of seeing the black crescent flag, which is the symbol of his organisation, flying over Downing Street, and a draconian form of sharia law imposed across the UK.

He wants alcohol banned, amputations for thieves, and adulterers to be stoned to death.

'People are living in anarchy,' he says. 'There is a rape every minute. Islam has the answer to everything.

'It is a deterrent. If you steal, you know you will face having your hands and feet cut off. Why should I not invite the British people to embrace Islam and save themselves from punishment in the hereafter?'…

Speaking of having things cut off--why won’t the Brits cut off the blackguard’s welfare payments and make him, you know, work for a living? Are they too stupid? Too scared? Both?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments (1)

A clash of systems: Capitalism has been having a rough go of it lately what with the financial finagling of Fannie, Freddie, Bernie and Barack, but a group of jihadis has descended on the Windy City with a cure for what ails us--the Caliphate. From IPT:

Oak Lawn, Illinois - Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the international movement to re-establish an international Islamic state or Caliphate - kicked off a new campaign to win American recruits Sunday afternoon in this Chicago suburb. Nearly 300 people packed the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel for its Khalifah Conference on "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam" to listen to listen to HT ideologues blame capitalism for World War I and World War II; the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown; the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; world poverty and malnutrition and inner-city drug use.

A speaker identified as Abu Atallah even blamed capitalism for the late singer Michael Jackson's decision "to shed his black skin."

Hizb ut-Tahrir aims to restore the Caliphate that existed during the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk abolished it in 1924 in an effort to create a secular, Europeanized state.

Security at the conference was very tight. Oak Lawn police maintained a checkpoint outside the Hilton, and local police and HT's own security people had a substantial presence inside the hotel. In the ballroom where the conference took place, men and women were largely segregated, with men in the front and women in the back. This became a significant point of contention between HT supporters and several members of the audience who objected to this arrangement. At one point, an unidentified Hizb ut-Tahrir speaker became flustered over this line of questioning.

"Men and women," he blurted out, must be kept separate "to prevent people from behaving like animals."

A woman in the audience responded: "How does intermingling between men and women make you animals?" HT panelists didn't have a persuasive answer, and soon adjourned that session.

The conference was sometimes poorly organized. There was no list of speakers, forcing reporters to sometimes guess at the spelling of speakers' names. But HT certainly appeared to be serious about working for the larger goals of the conference: abolishing capitalism and imposing Caliphate rule over the world…

Whereupon HT unveiled its hip new slogan: “Try the Caliphate--for the Helluvit!”

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

Darfur and Israel: Kenneth Levin elucidates the link between these two seemingly unconnected locales. And the link is genocide--one that’s unfolding and one that’s impending--and the world’s seeming indifference to both. From FrontPage Magazine:

The world’s media have given scant coverage lately to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and - despite extensive reporting on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict - they have likewise offered little on the continuing campaign of genocidal incitement against Israel by her enemies. While seeming very separate issues, the two campaigns, and the choice by media and world leaders largely to ignore both, are, in fact, connected.

On one level, of course, the connection is obvious. Israel-hatred is spearheaded by the Arab world; in virtually every Arab nation, demonizing and delegitimizing of Israel, and often of Jews, is a staple of government-controlled media, schools and mosques. This is true even of the Arab states with which Israel is formally at peace. At the same time, the Arab world is the chief support of fellow Arab leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his Sudanese regime's genocidal assault on the Muslim blacks of Darfur. Illustrative was the Arab League’s unanimous, effusive embrace and defense of al-Bashir at its meeting in Doha, Qatar, in March, shortly after his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Tunisian human rights activist Mohammed Bechri several years ago argued that to understand Arab support for the genocide in Darfur, one has to recognize the "twin fascisms" - Bechri’s term - that dominate the Arab world: Islamism and Pan-Arabism. The first rejects the legitimacy of any non-Muslim group within what the Arabs perceive as their proper domain; the latter takes the same view towards any non-Arab group. The genocidal rhetoric, and efforts at mass murder, directed at Israel, and the genocidal assault on the Muslim but non-Arab people of Darfur follow from this mindset. (Bechri’s "twin fascisms" also account for the besiegement of Christians across the Arab world and backing for Sudan’s murder of some two million Christian and animist blacks in the south of the country. They help explain as well broad Arab support for the mass murder of Kurds - a Muslim but non-Arab people - in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and for the besiegement of the Kurds of Syria and the Berbers - another non-Arab Muslim group - in Algeria.)

But the connection between animosity towards Israel and coldness towards the victims in Darfur extends beyond the Arab world. It embraces, for example, all those European leaders who bend their consciences to accommodate Arab power - in oil, money and strategic territories - and who may pay lip service to recognizing the murderous incitement and related threats faced by Israel or to deploring the crimes suffered by Darfur but refuse to take serious steps to curb either…

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:21 | link | comments

More Russian (window) dressing: How can Obama placate Jews critical of his policies? Appoint a “Latke Czar,” of course. From Arutz Sheva:

Bruce Bialosky, former national treasurer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, has sarcastically suggested that President Obama overcome growing Jewish criticism of his policies on Israel and create a “Latkes Czar" to ensure quality of the potato pancake traditionally associated with the holiday of Hanukkah.

“He can save many Jews a lot of anguish during the upcoming holiday season and possibly lock up the Jewish vote for generations," Bialosky wrote on the TownHall.com website.

“This may not affect the average American, but to Jewish Americans this is of utmost importance. Since the President has done everything possible to antagonize Jews over Israel, I thought he might go for this one… There are some pretty bad latkes out there. Since we wait all year to savor these delectable items, being faced with bad latkes during Hanukkah can ruin the entire holiday season and carry over into the New Year.”

The suggestion of a “Latke Czar” comes on the heels of reports that the president has appointed up to three dozen czars, in charge of an array of issues including closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, ending the genocide in Darfur and overseeing intelligence and drug smuggling…

The problem as I see it: If he appoints a Latke Czar there’s bound to be contention between a faction calling for an accompanying Sour Cream Czar and one desirous of an Apple Sauce Czar.

You know us Jews. We can never agree on anything.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:01 | link | comments

Sunday, 19 July 2009

Why “hate speech” laws should go sleep with the fishes: Sunday Sun columnist Alan Shanoff takes a stab at explaining the ins and out of prosecuting “hate speech” in Canada:

Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed the importance of freedom of expression by striking down British Columbia Transit rules that prohibited political advertisements on buses.

The Supreme Court has also recently strengthened the fair comment defence and is considering a new responsible journalism defence for defamation actions. So isn't it time we did something about the odd state of affairs governing hate speech laws in Canada?

First, a disclaimer: I'm in favour of good hate speech laws. I abhor the vile extremist hatred preaching speech freely available on the Internet, but our hate speech laws are subject to abuse and in need of massive reform.

Every province as well as the federal government has a human rights code. Some deal explicitly with hate speech and others do not. The provisions overlap with Criminal Code hate speech offences. Some cover written publications, while the federal code only covers the Internet and other electronic distribution. Many are restricted to notices, signs and symbols. While hate speech laws are intended to capture the most extreme speech, the statutory language is extraordinarily vague. The federal code covers any speech "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."

FILE COMPLAINT

Anybody or any group can file a complaint. Complaints may be filed in multiple jurisdictions concurrently. While complainants need not retain a lawyer or incur any legal expenses, the subject of a complaint would be foolish not to do so. Having launched a complaint, complainants need not appear at or testify at any subsequent hearing. There is no effective screening process to eliminate complaints with no reasonable prospects of success. Only complaints shown to be trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith may be disposed of expeditiously. There is no fixed time period within which a complaint must be investigated or brought to a hearing.

The subject of a complaint can be left twisting for years as B'nai Brith Canada discovered when it became the subject of a complaint in Manitoba. There is no defence of truth, fair comment or lack of intent. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has wide powers including the power to award monetary damages and fines to an aggregate of $30,000.

Dealing with hate speech issues is different from the other tasks of human rights commissions.

In dealing with a hate speech complaint one must weigh two competing interests.

The interest in free expression and the right not to have that right suppressed competes with the rights of the person or groups offended by the speech.

In all other tasks human rights officials must concern themselves solely with the right of the person or group who claim discrimination...

First a disclaimer: I don’t think in our current climate it is possible to compose “good hate speech laws.” By that I mean that, no matter how you write them, the net effect is that only some people--Christians and “Nazis,” mostly--will likely ever find themselves charged with “hate speech” while other hate-speakers--Islamists, members of other designated victim groups--can expect to get a free pass. The same is true of our kooky parallel “justice” system, the “human rights” racket. “Anybody or any group can file a complaint,” as Shanoff writes, but in practice the ideologues who staff these commissions and tribunals are never going to go after, say, a hate-spewing imam. So there again, the double standard is in effect.

As Shanoff mentions, there’s another huge problem with the parallel racket in that, as B’nai Brith discovered, you can be the target of a hate speech complaint, and hounded for many years without ever learning the identity of your accuser--a situation straight out of the pages of Kafka.

As I see it, though, perhaps the biggest danger at the moment is that the parallel “justice” system--the one in which there can be no justice as we have come to understand it, because of a cavalier disregard for the fundamentals of English Common Law, including the presumption of innocence and a regard for the truth--is now seeking to undermine, to pollute, our regular judicial system; Jennifer Lynch, Canada’s chief censor, wants the regular system, the valid one, to reject truth as defence, too.

Rewrite Canada’s criminal “hate speech” laws? Fuggedaboutit. There’s hardly any point while Jennifer’s “human rights” Costa Nostra retains its power and influence. And, for that matter, since the laws, however rewriten, are bound to be unequally applied while there's a jihad on and the multiculti Kool-Aid is still working, fuggedaboutit, period.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:08 | link | comments (2)

"Gentle" haters: I just finished reading Exiles From Nowhere, Alan Mendelson's fascinating analysis of the "genteel" antisemitism of Canada's ruling elites. This type of antisemitism, a manifestation of Christian supercessionism, was bloodless, antiseptic, and allowed revered public intellectuals such as George Grant (a focus of Mendelson's book) to lob aspersions at "the Jews" (despised for rejecting Jesus way back when, and thus considered both irrelevant--a "fossil" religion--and yet somehow still exceedingly dangerous) from the lofty heights of an ivory tower. (Two of Grant's intellectual heroes, Martin Heidegger and Arnold Toynbee, did the same). This genteel antisemitism is behind the the "none-is-too-many" mentality that kept the gates of Canada shut to Jews seeking to escape their horrible fate in Europe.

"Genteel" antisemtism is distinguished from the messier, thuggish antisemitism of the hoi polloi--the type of antisemitism that results in cracked heads and dead Jews--only in its modus operandi.

It strikes me that much the same could be said about the jihad. There are those who are willing to get down and dirty, to become warriors on the battlefield or transform themselves into human bombs. And then there are "genteel" jihadis--the Tariq Ramadans and others who would never, ever, get their own hands bloodied--being altogether too refined for that--but who are no less devoted to the jihad's ultimate goal--i.e. the installation of God's law as the law over the entire planet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:19 | link | comments (1)

All systems go for A-JE: Now that Al Jazeera English will likely start broadcasting in Canada (the final stumbling block--the Official Jews' qualms--having been dissipated via the clever machinations of a former Ceeb chief, now an A-JE exec), it seems like a good time to revive this parody:

Come on, babe, why don’t we paint the news?

And Al-that-Jaz.

We’re gonna praise some ‘rabs

And then we’ll slam some Jews

And Al-that-Jaz.

Start your day with scenes of lots of gore

It’s sure to stir the blood and leave you wantin’ more.

But then we’ll say again

It’s just like CNN

And Al-that-Jaz.

Don’t you love those scenes from Palestine?

And Al-that-Jaz

The ghastly Gaza stuff has gotta blow your mind.

And Al-that-Jazz.

Who’s to blame?

You know it’s hard to tell

If it’s America or if it’s Is-ra-el.

But you can never lose if you just blame the Jews

And Al-that-Jaz.

Oh, we’re first to scoop with those Osama tapes

And Al-that-Jaz.

Then it’s fun to show you who decapitates

And Al-that-Jaz.

Poke some fun at Arab despots.

See who shows up in our guest spots:

Someone who you’ll wanna boo

And Al-that-Jayazz

Don’t you think it’s awf’lly like the Ceeb?

And Al-that-Jaz.

Why, look, right over there is a self-hating Heeb,

And Al-that-Jaz.

Yes, we know that we cannot go far

Broadcasting Hockey Night from sunny, hot Qatar

Don Cherry--Mr. Big--ain’t gonna do that gig.

And Al-that-Jaz.

Oh, just tune us in and then turn off your brain

And Al-That-Jaz.

You will soon be hooked and singing this refrain

And Al-that-Jaz:

“Golly, it’s so good to see ya,

Better than al-Arabiya.

We’re so queer for al-Jazeer’

And all that jazz.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:32 | link | comments (1)

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Jewish nutjobs helping facilitate the final Final Solution: In the pantheon of useful idiots, Jewish division, no group looms larger than Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist-waiting-for-Moshiach loonies who are pleased to make themselves available to Israel’s and the civilized world’s enemies:

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A former senior U.S. diplomat met with two senior officials of Hamas.

Thomas Pickering, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, met with Bassem Naim and Mahmoud al-Zahar in Switzerland last month, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Also Thursday, four members of the fervently Orthodox group Neturei Karta met with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. The Neturei Karta does not recognize the State of Israel.

As to the meeting between Hamas and Pickering, who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs, U.S. officials said Pickering had no official standing and that he had scheduled it on his own. The officials told the Post they learned of the meeting after it happened.

The meeting occurred after President Obama's June 4 Cairo speech but before a June 25 speech by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in which he praised the president's "new language" toward the group.

Naim told the Post he hoped the meeting would be "the beginning of addressing some of the mistakes of the last three years. This was a first meeting to investigate the positions in general terms of both parties without any commitment on any side."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated Wednesday that Hamas must "recognize Israel and renounce violence and agree to abide by prior agreements" before the United States will deal with the group.

The Neturei Karta group arrived in Gaza through its border with Egypt along with a convoy of aid and international activists. Haniyeh called the Jewish activists "heroes," telling the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency, "Those religious figures that express their objection to the siege, the aggression and the crimes -- we can't help but respect them and for their beliefs and their culture."

Rule of thumb, Nutbars: If Ismail Haniyeh thinks you’re “heroes,” it’s time to take a sober second look at your worldview.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:11 | link | comments (1)

To Sir With Hate: Teaching ignorant, racist, insolent young’uns in working class London isn’t what it was back when dolly-bird Judy Geeson was swooning over Sidney Poitier while Lulu belted out a hymn to him at the final prom. Consider this article in the Daily Mail about a latter-day “Sir” who had an altogether different experience (this being an altogether different time):

A teacher claims he has been sacked for reprimanding pupils who made racist remarks about his being a Christian.

Nicholas Kafouris said he lost his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'openly racist' behaviour of pupils as young as eight.

He said the predominantly Muslim youngsters openly praised Islamic extremists in class, and hailed the September 11 terrorists as 'heroes and martyrs'.

Greek-born Mr Kafouris, 40, taught for more than ten years at Bigland Green Primary in Tower Hamlets, East London, where according to the most recent Ofsted report 'almost all' the 465 pupils are from ethnic minorities and a vast proportion do not speak English as a first language.

He is taking the school, its headmistress and assistant head to an employment tribunal where he will claim he was forced out after highlighting the rise in racism among pupils.

In 2006, said Mr Kafouris, he brushed against a boy while giving him a book.

'He said rather brusquely to me, "Don't touch me, you're a Christian". I found this very offensive.'

Later that year, he said children aged eight and nine in his class praised the suicide bombers in the 9/11 attacks.

'In late November and December 2006, many various unacceptable and openly racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian remarks were being made by many and various children in Year 4,' he said.

'These included, "We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up", "the Twin Towers bombers are heroes and martyrs", "we hate the Jews" and "we hate the Christians".'

And in January 2007, he claims some pupils 'expressed delight' that a child had died when a wall collapsed on him in London.

When asked why, he said one of the children replied: 'Because he's English.' The following month, during a religious education lesson about Jonah and the whale, he claims one of the pupils asked if Jonah was a Jew, before shouting: 'I hate the Jews, they're our enemies.'

Mr Kafouris says he completed 'Racist Incident Reporting Sheets' and notified headmistress Jill Hankey in writing about each incident.

But he claims his concerns were ignored because she wanted to maintain the school's 'good' Ofsted rating...

And isn’t that really the problem--and not only in the U.K.? Authorities want to maintain a ‘good’ Ofsted rating, so to speak. Meaning that if comes down to a choice between standing up to Islamic racists and possibly eliciting their ire, and not standing up to them, the ‘good’ Ofsted rating-seekers (police, politicians, “human rights” apparatchiks, etc.) are far more inclined to take the path of least resistance, and submit.

“Those schoolgirl days of telling tales and biting nails are gone,” indeed. Dead and gone.

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

Another one for Jennifer's file: The Windsor Star has a good editorial criticizing the Lynchers and our two-tier (in)justice system:

Just how much power should human rights commissions have? It's a question that's been directed at bodies at both the federal and provincial levels, and most recently at the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

At the federal level, we have what amounts to two-tier policing of racism and hate speech in Canada -- one through the courts applying Criminal Code and the other through a human rights act.

Critics say the Code is all that's needed. They contend that the CHRC, with a bar set far below criminal standards, often adjudicates trivial complaints and serves as a censor of ideas that are not intended to provoke hatred or violence, but to promote controversy and debate. As well, the commission has an almost never lost a case it's prosecuted.

Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, counters that the Code and act "serve useful purposes in protecting Canadians from discrimination in today's society."

Lynch's view of freedom on (sic) expression is that the "power of words and ideas) while overwhelming positive, can also be used to undermine democracy, freedom and equality."

However, the problem is that the CHRC is essentially the investigator, prosecutor and judge of complaints of racism and hate speech. The burden of proof under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is also subject to interpretation. It says it's an offence to communicate anything "likely to expose a person ... to hatred or contempt."

Ezra Levant, who was the subject of an unsuccessful complaint before the Alberta after he published controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, says CHRC's standards make it an advocate of censorship.

"The word 'likely' is amazing. The CHRC doesn't have to prove you've actually done anything, just that you might in the future," says Levant. "And all they have to prove is that you said something that might cause one person to have hard feelings about another."

The Criminal Code, meanwhile, has clear sanctions to deal with true hate speech -- which must clearly encourage or incite hatred and violence. This is far different than making individuals account for expressions of thought that are controversial, offensive or deemed to be politically incorrect.

Last year, an independent report by the University of Windsor's Richard Moon said the Canadian Human Rights Commission should be stripped of its power to investigate online hate messages. That job, says the free speech expert, is best left to police, prosecutors and Internet service providers.

"Censorship of hate speech should be limited to speech that explicitly or implicitly threatens, justifies or advocates violence against the members of an identifiable group," Moon said, having concluded that the commission's current mandate to probe Internet postings "likely to expose" complainants to hate was just too broad. The commission didn't agree with Moon's recommendation.

In Ontario, new Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is calling for the scrapping of the province's Human Rights Tribunal, which hears complaints similar to the federal CHRC. Hudak also feels the courts are the right place to deal with human rights issues.

We agree and, at least Ontario, there is going to be a debate. It's one that should also be going on in Ottawa.

It should, but it won’t, not until and unless the Tories get a majority and/or voices like this one become too loud to ignore.

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

Friday, 17 July 2009

The Mom Song: Apparently it's gone viral, but I saw it for the first time today and thought I'd share.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments (1)

If you can’t lick ‘em, co-opt ‘em: As a free-speecher, I’m not terribly concerned about Al Jazeera English being beamed into the Great White North. After all, with the likes of CTV and the Ceeb, not to mention CNN, MSNB and the other American networks, already broadcasting here, what’s one more anti-Israel news outlet, more or less? However, I do think it’s rather, ahem, interesting that a gent who’s been one of the prime movers and shakers behind Canadian state censorship has suddenly gone ga-ga for “free speech” in its A-JE incarnation, and is even promoting it via Twitter.

The smartest thing Tony Burman ever did was to appeal to the Official Jews’ vanity and invite them onto a special board of advisors to oversee A-JE content. (And should they object to anything they see, what then? Is Tony going to nix the offensive programming? Of course not. He’ll just give the OJs a chance to blow off some steam under A-JE auspices--which will have the effect of making the Jews look foolish--and programming will continue as before.)

Oh, and by the way, here’s an example of the kind of “balanced,” “unbiased” coverage we can expect to see once A-J-E hits our shores--a love song to Ur-Islamic terrorists, the PLO.

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

Appalling smugness blows up in pundit’s face: Last Sunday, Harpoon Siddiqui, Order of Canada recipient and shill for the Muslim world, chided us infidels for our “appalling ignorance” of his bailiwick. He mentioned Indonesia as an example of a Muslim democracy that’s both functional and forward-looking:

Indonesia – the world's most populous Muslim nation, at 235 million, and the third largest democracy, after India and the U.S. – held a free and fair presidential election. It featured three secular-minded candidates, including a woman who does not wear the hijab.

Even an ignorant kafir such as I knows that, for the sharia-minded, a non-hijab-wearing, secular-minded woman is the equivalent of waving a red sheet in front of a snorting bull. To prove my “ignorant” point: Today some crazed jihadis (members of Indonesia's Islamic Defender Front, perchance?) took out their frustration at secularists and non-hijab-wearing chicks in the world’s most populous Muslim country by blowing up two luxury hotels frequented by infidel tourists.

Whatever miniscule vestige of credibility Harpoon had remaining just went kaboom like those two hotels.

Update: I just heard on the radio that jihadi group Jamaat Islamiya was behind it. Here's some info about what motivates such groups--info that would never show up in a Harpoon piece that purports to enlighten the ignorant:

…To the average American, the Arabic language is just another foreign language. To Muslims, however, it is the language of God. Islamic culture places a premium on literary expression.[3] The inherent power of the Arabic language within the culture amplifies the import and power of the fatwas issued by individual radical scholars to potential jihadists. While Islamist advocacy groups argue that jihad is a peaceful, internal struggle, many classical Muslim theologians as well as today's radicals understand it to mean holy war. Michael Bonner, a professor of medieval Islamic history at the University of Michigan, explains:

Most accounts of the jihad agree that it has both an external and an internal aspect. The external jihad is an activity in the world, involving physical combat against real enemies in real time … Most modern Western writings on the jihad consider that the external jihad, the physical combat against real adversaries, was the first to arrive in history and has priority in most ways. In this view, the internal jihad, the spiritualized combat against the self, is secondary and derivative, despite all the importance it eventually acquired in Muslim thought and society.[4]

Indeed, most comprehensive compilations of Islamic law and hadith (sayings and actions of Muhammad) contain sections on jihad, often describing it in the violent sense. To the militant, it does not matter how advocacy groups or media networks define jihad. What matters is what teachers and philosophers believe. Here, the militant will find much to support his views. Muhammad bin Isma'il al-Bukhari (810-70), the most famous compiler of hadith, dedicated one-third of his fourth volume to jihad as physical holy war.

While U.S. authorities often defer judgment on jihad in response to some advocates who say that true jihad is not violent, extremists adhere closely to the teachings of radical scholars. Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328) provides inspiration for many Sunni radicals, notably the Salafis. So, too, does Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhab an-Najdi (1703-92). More recently, Syed Abul A'la Maududi (1903-79) argued, "The objective of Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule."[5] Sayyid Qutb (1906–66), an important Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, said,

It is not the function of Islam to compromise the concepts of Jahiliya [pre-Islamic ignorance or barbarism extended to the present day] which are current in the world or to coexist in the same land together with a jahili (barbaric) system. Jahiliya, to whatever period it belongs, is jahiliya; that is, deviation from the worship of one Allah and the way of life prescribed by Allah.[6]

Street level police officers should recognize that such historical references remain significant; the commentaries of Bukhari, Ibn Taymiya, Maududi, and Qutb provide a baseline understanding as to jihad's motivation or justification. Islamist believers utilize these scholars and the standard Islamic texts, the Qur'an and the hadith collections, as part of their daily justification for attacks in the name of Islam…

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:35 | link | comments

Thursday, 16 July 2009

Jazz and July: I must admit that most of the year I'm not the biggest jazz fan on the planet--I tend to enjoy jazz singers more than I do jazz combos sans a vocalist. But on sulty summer days like this, there's often nothing I like more than sitting outside, sipping some vino, and listening to stuff like this.

Pure heaven, if you ask me.

Update: Here's another one perfect for a steamy day. I love how the horns and vocal build to a crescendo, and then subside toward the end. Not to mention the uber-sexy lyrics ("Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum...")

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:22 | link | comments

Aussies show spine: Kudos to the organizers of the Melbourne Film Festival, who refused to buckle before persistent Jew-haters (my bolds):

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- An international film festival rejected calls by Palestinian activists to sever ties with Israeli films and sponsorship.

Melbourne International Film Festival chief executive Richard Moore, responding to an open letter by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said that films for the festival are not selected on political criteria but on artistic merit.

Moore cited “Young Freud in Gaza,” about a psychotherapist dealing with the trauma of victims of the Mideast conflict, which will be screened at Australia’s largest film festival between July 24 and Aug. 9.

“I'm not going to engage with this issue,” he said. “I'll leave it to audiences to make up their own minds.”

The activists' letter called on the festival ”not to accept blood money” from Israel. It said Israel's sponsorship of the festival “would be tantamount to an implicit endorsement of the war crimes it [Israel] has committed and is still committing in Gaza.

For years the Israeli Embassy in Canberra has supported cultural festivals across Australia, an embassy spokesman told JTA. The spokesman said the embassy was helping with funding to bring Israeli-born director Tatia Rosenthal to Melbourne for the premiere of “$9.99,” the first Israeli-Australian film co-production.

“$9.99,” directed by Rosenthal, is based on award-winning author Etgar Keret’s short stories. The embassy is organizing a red carpet event in Melbourne for Aug. 4.

Moore rejected a threat by prominent British filmmaker Ken Loach to withdraw his film “Looking For Eric” unless the film festival severs ties with Israel.

"We will not participate in a boycott against the State of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting films from China or other nations involved in difficult, longstanding historical disputes,” he said.

Loach prompted the Edinburgh Film Festival in May to return a grant to the Israeli Embassy.

Loach is a louse. Let's all boycott "Looking for Eric," shall, we?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:52 | link | comments (1)

Turkey (the pot) calls China (the kettle) black: Further to yesterday's story about the Muslim world's defeaning silence about the Uighurs, at least one Muslim country--an ostensibly secular one--has now spoken out. Turkey's prime minister, who heads up an Islamist party, calls China's anti-Uighur actions a "genocide."

Kind of funny, that, since Turkey has long balked at using the "g" word to describe what it did to the Armenians.

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

If it looks like a Nazi and quacks like a Nazi…: Have no fear. As CHRC Chief Censor Jennifer Lynch explains in a letter to the National Post, it’s probably just a CHRC investigator, hot on the trail of a “real” Nazi:

Re: Neo-Nazi Hate, Courtesy Of The CHRC, Ezra Levant, July 15.

Both the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner have conducted a thorough investigation into the alleged "hacking of a private citizen's account" and have both determined that no further proceedings are warranted. The Canadian Human Rights Commission considers this matter closed.

In investigating hate messages complaints, the commission has logged on to websites to view their contents and to obtain evidence. In some investigations, postings were made, but this has never included the posting of hateful or derogatory messages, nor would the commission condone such a practice if it occurred. The suggestion that the commission's investigation of neo-Nazi websites equates to "active" membership in neo-Nazi organizations is simply irresponsible.

I regret that this important discussion has degenerated into unwarranted personal attacks on the employees of the Canadian Human Rights Commission carrying out their legislated mandate.

Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissioner, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa.

Well, if all she’s doing is a carrying out her “legislated mandate,” I guess there’s nothing to worry about. And I'm sure it's a mere oversight that she seems to have forgotten all about an intrepid and much-honoured CHRC "Nazi hunter" who was chastized by an HRT "judge" for making hateful, Nazi-esque comments on the 'Net during the course of his "Nazi hunting" duties.

With so many "unwarranted personal attacks" to deflect, it must have slipped her mind.

Update: And speaking of farts (see comment #2), C in the C says Jen's fart-catchers have failed her, hence the reason she has to conduct the holy war against the rude largely on her own.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments (2)

Khaled attempts more damage control: Rumour has it the Canadian Arab Federation is an anti-Western, anti-Zionist lobby group masquerading as an Arab cultural entity. Khaled Mouammar, CAF chief, seeks to disabuse us of that wacky notion by composing this, er, clarification of this clarification to the Toronto Star:

Re:Arab group disavows

Canada Day diatribe, July 3

It is regretful that a respectable newspaper like the Star would quote without hesitation the serious allegation that CAF has been taken over "by militants of Hezbollah and Hamas." CAF is run by an executive committee that is elected every two years by a board of directors representing the thousands of Arab Canadians who belong to its 20 member organizations across Canada.

CAF's executive and board proudly serve the Arab Canadian constituency and its integration into the larger Canadian society, and closely co-ordinate and network with many Canadian groups that defend and advocate for human rights and social justice issues.

I am a Christian and I am the current president of CAF. I am not surprised that I am labelled a militant by someone who has labelled Jack Layton "Jack Taliban" but I am disappointed that the Star would publish such ludicrous claims.

It is also disconcerting to have the Star prejudge CAF's case against Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for cutting funding to our settlement services program when the case is still before the courts.

Khaled Mouammar, National President, Canadian Arab Federation

“Jack Taliban”?! You mean like Jack Black or Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick? Hilarious! I’d check that if I were you, Khaled. Backward it got you think I.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:34 | link | comments (1)

The Toronto Star cheerleads for sharia: There’s a fine line between multiculturalism and sharia, and, as is evidenced by this editorial, the Canadian paper with the widest circulation is delighted to cross it whenever possible. Here it is making the case for sharia-based burials:

Rest in peace? Not for the GTA's rapidly growing population of nearly 300,000 Muslims, for whom arranging a timely and dignified burial can be a challenge:

Islamic burials must take place within 24 hours. But as the Star's Noor Javed reported yesterday, the absence of a suitable Islamic cemetery in the region is a source of anxiety for many Muslims. On statutory holidays, for example, staff in non-denominational cemeteries are unavailable – making it impossible for Muslims to comply with the 24-hour deadline dictated by religious law.

Other Islamic requirements are that the body be washed and shrouded and the face turned toward Mecca. Untrained staff at existing cemeteries may be unfamiliar with these rites.

Toronto Muslims have been trying for years to set up a new cemetery big enough to accommodate the community's needs, but they have found it difficult to acquire suitable land. Ottawa's Islamic community also had difficulty obtaining the required approvals; zoning requirements and licensing conditions caused delays of 15 years.

Local governments in the GTA ought to extend every possible assistance in the search for a suitable site. And existing non-denominational cemeteries should consider standby arrangements to provide burials, on call, during holiday and weekend periods to accommodate Muslims seeking a decent burial for loved ones.

And while we’re at it--prayer rooms and footbaths in every public location and the Koran on school curricula!

It’s only fair.

Update: I thought that 300,00 figure sounded a bit fishy. In fact, the Muslim population of the GTA is likely about a tenth of that. I wonder where the Star got the drastically inflated number?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:19 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

The Muslim world’s deafening silence about the Uighurs: Foreign Policy makes note of a strange phenomenon, to whit, when a few ‘toons were published in an infidel paper, the faithful were cajoled into going nuts. People were killed, embassies burnt and “human rights” complaints lodged with the appropriate authorities. But when China comes down hard on Uighurs, the Muslim world suddenly turns into Harpo Marx. What gives?:

Where are the fatwas? The angry marches in front of embassies, the indignant speeches? Where are al Qaeda's videos? In short, what does China have that Denmark did not? China has been actively discriminating against Muslims, and recently a number of them have been killed in violent street riots.

In Denmark a newspaper printed cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and the Muslim world erupted in anger. Today that same Muslim world seems to be mute, deaf, and blind, and is oblivious to the violence and discrimination suffered by the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group, at the hands of the Chinese government.

The reaction to the cartoons was swift and furious. Eleven ambassadors from Muslim countries formally protested to the Danish government, which offered the obvious response: In Denmark, freedom of the press is deeply respected and the government had nothing to do with the images that caused the offense. The reply was as obvious as it was futile: The Danish consulate in Beirut was burned, and several people died in violent street riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia. Newspapers in Norway and elsewhere decided to print the cartoons in an act of solidarity, which inevitably fueled the wave of violence. In Damascus, a large crowd burned down the Danish and Norwegian embassies. In Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retaliated with an alternative cartoon exhibit mocking the Holocaust. Threatening fatwas thundered against the journalists, publishers, and editors who went into hiding and had to seek police protection. Al Qaeda's videos and Web sites explained that the offensive cartoons were simply another example of the continuous crusade of the West against Islam…

Guess they only care about the West’s crusade against Islam, not the one being conducted by China. Either that or they wouldn’t dare mess with the Chinese, who, unlike us “emphathetic” Westerners, never feel guilty about their historical missteps, are immune to multiculti bunkum, and who, given the chance, will flatten you, no questions asked. All of which makes them a far more formidable opponent of Islamic supremacism than we can ever hope to be.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments

The insidious and corrupting influence of Wahhabi shekels: Not even Human Rights Watch can withstand it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:22 | link | comments (1)

Whatever you do, don’t confuse us with “those Jews”: This letter, by the communications flak for the Canadian Jewish Congress, appeared in the Toronto Star last week (it's posted on the CJC site). It urges folks not to mix up the multiculti-minded Ceej Jews (i.e. the “nice” Jews) with those Jews (a thinly-veiled reference to the JDL):

Columnist only spoke the truth, Letter July 7

First Antonia Zerbisias, then Haroon Siddiqui, now letter writer Elizabeth Pickett all speak of so-called "Jewish groups" or "Zionists" attempting to decide who or what Canadians can see or hear. There are numerous so-called "Jewish groups" in Canada, each with its own mandate and perspective on a variety of issues.

I speak only for the Canadian Jewish Congress. We never tried to censor Seven Jewish Children nor did we attempt to have British MP George Galloway banned from entering Canada. So, in the future, for your own credibility we ask that you have the decency and the professionalism to name the organization to which you are referring as opposed to lumping any number of diverse organizations together under the extremely vague title of "Jewish groups."

Jordan Kerbel, National Director of Public Affairs, Canadian Jewish Congress

The oddest thing about this letter: instead of criticizing the Zerb, Harpoon and the letter-writer, Kerbel appears to be criticizing “those Jews” with whom the Ceej does not care to be lumped (i.e. the JDL). And the oddest thing about that--back in March the Ceej had no compunction about letting the JDL do the heavy lifting, Galloway-wise, and then, when it worked, hailing the Canadian government "for denying George Galloway entry to Canada.”

Sounds to me like the Ceej is looking to have it both ways. It wants to maintain its cred with the Jewish community while remaining on the good side of the Star’s lefties/multicultists.

Can’t be done, guys. The lefties loathe you for supporting Israel, and the Jewish community is getting really fed up with your bumbling and your cluelessness.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:03 | link | comments (4)

Hamas summer camp for girls: No boys, no swimming, no s'mores, no fun. However, you do get to study the Koran all day and wear a burqa, even though you haven't hit puberty yet. Which sort of begs the question--how is "camp" any different from "school"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:51 | link | comments (2)

Bite me, Barack: William Kristol responds to Obama’s treachery--his demand that Jews engage in “serious self-reflection”:

...“Serious self-reflection!” It’s really good that Barack Obama is reminding the leaders and people of Israel to engage in that. I hope they’re up to it. After all, what do Israelis know about reflecting on, and living with, the life and death consequences of political decisions? What do Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya’alon -- either as individuals or as leaders -- know about war and peace? These are guys -- and the Israelis are a people -- who just coast along, taking an easy path, never debating, never thinking, never questioning, never second-guessing...and never making or asking their fellow citizens to make sacrifices.

Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod, on the other hand -- they’re seriously self-reflective individuals. Look at their wide experiences at peace and in war. Look how they’ve had to grapple with life and death decisions for decades. For them, it’s not just talk and spin and positioning. The American president and his advisors -- they’ve made personal sacrifices, they’ve come to grips with the tough choices over their decades of accomplishment in public life. They’ve got the standing to lecture the people and leaders of Israel on the need for self-reflection.

And so they did.

And shame on them.

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

New Ceeb sitcom: "Lynch's Heroes"--it's all about a gang of intrepid "Nazi hunters" who troll the 'Web, searching for dangerous "Nazis" who write ecomiums to Hitler from the comfort of the folks' basement in a split level in Medicine Hat.

Here's Ezra Levant's review (he gives it a thumbs down) in the National Post.

Update: My letter to the Post re Ezra's "review":

Nelly Hechme, the poor woman who was “hacked” by Jennifer Lynch’s pretend Nazis, says all she wanted was “some answers and maybe a little justice.”

Silly Nelly. Doesn’t she realize that this is Canada, where “human rights” investigators go deep undercover so they can entrap some schmo in, say, Flin Flon, into saying something flattering about the Fuhrer? Meanwhile, the most outrageous Jew-hatred is expressed right out in the open every day by a fiery young Islamist, and even though his words appear to meet all the criteria for criminal “hate speech”--and would have gotten someone named Ahenakew or Keegstra in deep doo doo--police decline to press charges and look the other way.

The headline above Lorne Gunter’s column on the same page as Ezra Levant’s piece says it all--“Double Standards on Parade.” Again and again, Jennifer Lynch and her ilk have demonstrated great zeal in hunting down and punishing the ideologically undesireable--the Mark Lemires and Reverend Stephen Boissons--but have turned a blind eye to “hate speech” expressed by Islamists. It’s unclear if such reticence is a function of cowardice or a multicultural worldview (which allows members of designated “victim groups” to express all the hate they want to because they’re, well, “victims”--kind of like affirmative action for haters)--or both. One thing’s for sure, though: The “double standard” is evidence that rot has set in to the entire “human rights” system, and Jennifer Lynch and her gang of self-righteous Nazi impersonators pose a far graver threat to our social fabric than do “real” Nazis (all--what?--six of them) hunkered down in Prairie basements.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:46 | link | comments

Gives a whole new meaning to “double your pleasure, double your fun”: Hamas is accusing the Jews of corrupting pure Muslim youth by putting an aphrodisiac in “Jewing” gum. From the Jerusalem Post:

Hamas accused Israel of distributing chewing gum which boosts sex drive in order to "corrupt the young generation," according to an official quoted in an AFP report on Tuesday.

Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said, "We have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza Strip from Israeli border crossings… The first type is presented in the form of chewing gum and the second in the form of drops."

The official said that suspects were detained who admitted to helping bring the products into the Strip, and that they were "linked to the Zionist intelligence services."

There was no official comment from the IDF on the accusations, though a military source was quoted by AFP as calling them "absurd."

If the kids are so hot and bothered, I don’t think it’s the gum. It’s because they have to live out their lives in a place that doesn’t exactly have a healthy attitude toward sex and sexual relations. Then again, if the Jews really could invent a gum that made you horny, it would make gazillions--so maybe some enterprising Yids are now hard at work in a laboratory, inspired by this zany report.

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

Dredging up Gaza--again: The Toronto Star's Oakland Ross is pleased to join in another anti-Israel pile on--yet again having to do with Israel's supposed brutality in Gaza. (The Star's surhead, head, and subhead say it all: GAZA INVASION DEADLY TACTICS; 'If you're not sure--kill'; Israeli soldier's accounts of January betray little regards for civilians). My response:

During Operation Cast Lead, its Gaza incursion, the IDF took great pains to minimize civilian casualties, often at the risk of its own soldiers’ lives. That’s markedly different from, say, the indiscriminate killing of Tamils by the Sri Lankan military, Uighurs by Chinese, and Chechens by Russia. And yet, all these months after the Gaza Operation, the Israeli military is still being singled out and criticized for its actions.

Why the disparity? One must conclude that, once again, Israel is being held to a completely different standard. One must also conclude that the reason why Sri Lanka, China, Russia get a pass while Israel gets another pasting is because criticizing those other militaries does nothing to advance the agenda of those, both inside and outside Israel, who are pushing for a “one state solution,” i.e. Israel’s demise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:16 | link | comments

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

The extremists who consider Hamas “too soft”: Steve Emerson sheds light on Hizb ut-Tahrir, a jihadi group that used to skulk around and lurk in the shadows but that in Obama’s America feels quite comfortable recruiting right out in the open:

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international movement seeking to re-establish an international Islamic state - or Caliphate - and to indoctrinate Muslims into supporting jihad, wants to step up its recruitment efforts in the United States. On July 19, the group, whose alumni include 9/ 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and suicide bombers, will hold a conference titled "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam" in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Oak Lawn, Ill, a Chicago suburb.

For decades, Hizb ut-Tahrir America (HTA) has operated covertly, holding these Khalifa (Caliphate) conferences in the United States under the name of front organizations. But that has begun to change. Last fall, the group issued a leaflet in its own name urging Muslims to boycott the U.S. elections. The group just released this video promoting the July 19 conference. According to the conference website, the program includes a question-and-answer session and two panels; one entitled "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," the other "The Suffering Under Capitalism."

The conference initially was scheduled for the Aqsa School in Bridgeview, Ill. But the school withdrew, claiming Hizb ut-Tahrir officials "misrepresented themselves." An official said the group approached the school in late April claiming it wanted to hold a bazaar-type event in July that would involve selling traditional food and clothing. School officials said that when they learned the real purpose, they cancelled and refunded the group's deposit.

While solid numbers are difficult to come by, there is little question that Hizb ut-Tahrir's worldwide membership has grown substantially since the September 11 attacks, says Madeleine Gruen, a senior analyst with the NEFA Foundation. In 2003, estimates of HT membership ranged from 10,000 to 100,000 people worldwide. Today, by contrast, the group (currently active in more than 40 countries) has approximately 100,000 members in Indonesia alone and "many thousands" more around the world, Gruen told IPT News.

In the United States, Hizb ut-Tahrir's following is estimated at no more than a few hundred. The decision to hold this month's conference under its own name is a sign that the group is preparing to raise its profile. Once that is achieved, Gruen adds, its cadres are supposed to establish "an Islamic government and military" in order to take Hizb ut-Tahrir's message to the world.

HT seeks to fuse an ideology combining orthodox Islam, Marxist-Leninist economics, anti-Semitism and opposition to Western democracy into a political program to bring back the Caliphate. Despite its public rhetoric about nonviolence, Hizb ut-Tahrir has "precisely the same ideology and objectives" as al Qaeda, Gruen told IPT News. And HT has a much larger membership base to recruit from, she added.

While it refrains from carrying out terrorist actions itself, Hizb ut-Tahrir glorifies jihadism and excoriates the terrorist organization Hamas as being too soft on Israel. In a leaflet posted on its website July 1, HT said that if the Caliphate were in existence, all of "Palestine" would be rid of "the usurpation of the Jewish occupiers" and brought "to the fold of the Islamic state."…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:50 | link | comments

Great news for hopeychangers; bad news for Western civ: Obama calls economic crisis transformative.

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

Obama plays favourites: It’s a question that had to be asked and Anne Bayesfsky in the Australian dares to ask it--what’s up with the different way Obama approached Africans (who got a good tongue lashing) and Arabs (who got hugs ‘n’ kisses and lots of ego-stroking)?

Why couldn't the US President talk tough in Cairo like he did to the Africans.

SPEAKING in Ghana on Saturday, Barack Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing.

Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of the US President's foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words terrorism or genocide. In Egypt, there was nothing "brutal" he could conjure up, no "corruption" and no "repression". In Ghana, with a 70 per cent Christian population, he mentioned "good governance" seven times and added direct calls to "make change from the bottom up". He praised "people taking control of their destiny" and pressed "young people" to "hold your leaders accountable".

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states, despite the fact not a single Arab country is free, according to the latest Freedom House global survey. Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the "prison at Guantanamo Bay", "rules on charitable giving (that) have made it harder for Muslims to fulfil their religious obligation", impediments to the choice of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any US president, he chastised: "It's easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict ... but the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy ... or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants ... tribalism and patronage and nepotism ... and ... corruption."

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: "It's easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews -- albeit on a fraction of 1 per cent of the territory inhabited by the Arab world -- but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries." But he did not...

Bayefsky’s conclusion:

The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

Much as I admire Bayefsky’s acumen, I have to disagree with her on this point. I think it’s actually indicative of a dangerously coherent agenda--call it strategic dhimmitude.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:20 | link | comments

Obit for Obama aid: Tragic news from the White House--one of the president’s closest friends, Mr. Telly Prompter, is dead. From the L.A. Times:

Breaking News, literally: After helping both candidate and chief executive deliver weighty words countless times on the campaign trail, on the road to, from and within the White House, the beloved Teleprompter of Democrat President Barack Obama died tonight.

The fragile overused speech aid was little more than two years old. No immediate cause of death and no autopsy were announced.

The passing of the celebrated speech-giving helper happened suddenly and unexpectedly. The president was looking right at the Teleprompter, giving remarks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. He was rigorously defending his economic stimulus package, which has been rigorously criticized recently for being like many political speeches, not very stimulating.

Virtually everywhere he's gone in recent years the Teleprompter has been faithfully at Obama's side, and slightly to the front.

Through a transparent glass plate, it shows the text of even his briefest remarks, enabling the president to appear to make eye contact with eager, attentive audience members without looking down to....

...read from a lectern text or from cue cards like late-night TV comedians. So ubiquitous was the Obama Teleprompter that it launched many jokes and even some Twitter accounts that alleged to speak for the politician's essential gadget.

For countless speeches the trusty Teleprompter, controlled from offstage, slowly scrolled the ex-state senator's magic words which, along with $750 million, enabled the smooth-tongued fellow to get elected as leader of the free world and enhanced his public reputation as a really good talker.

Virtually all the important words and statements of first candidate and then president Obama began their flight as lettered images on that Teleprompter screen. Including the Inaugural Address that so many millions watched around the world. Remember the historic line: "I've made my position abundantly clear"? That too began life on the Teleprompter.

Obama and the Teleprompter were a very effective team, better together than their predecessors. Obama became so attached to the faithful Teleprompter that he took it virtually everywhere. He once even used the gawky machine for campaign remarks on the dirt floor of a rodeo arena. In the White House the Teleprompter could slide modestly into the floor after use, so in wide TV shots no one need know the 44th president uses it.

But all that came to a crashing and dramatic end Monday night. As the president launched into his 11-minutes of stimulating remarks, according to eyewitnesses, the old Teleprompter simply expired, came loose, fell silently as if in movie slow motion before the stunned eyes of watchers and smashed into many pieces on the hard floor.

"Oh, goodness!" Obama exclaimed. "Sorry about that, guys." The heartless audience of mayors, urban policy wonks and administration crowd-packers laughed out loud at the sudden death…

The cads!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:22 | link | comments

Flying pig moment?: I think this one may qualify as an airborne porker sighting--an opinion piece in the Toronto Star that’s a marvel of veracity:

It's impossible to guess what direction Iran's protest movement will take in the weeks ahead.

But here's one prediction: Less enthusiasm by Iranian reformers for all that reflexive invective against Israel.

Every week for the past three decades, the chants at Friday prayers have pitted the Islamic Republic against the Jewish State – or the Little Satan, as Israel is popularly known (America being the bigger devil).

It's the longest running show in Tehran. The fulminations reached a fever pitch during the past four years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency, when he denied the Holocaust and threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

It worked wonders for him, as it has for decades whenever Arab dictators needed to distract their own people from injustices closer to home. But impassioned denunciations of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians lose their street cred when your own Revolutionary Guard or Basiji thugs are cracking heads and making martyrs on the streets of Tehran.

Now, the anti-Israel tirades sound tired; and the anti-Ahmadinejad Tweets are gaining eyeballs.

But zoom out from the streets of Tehran and listen to the rhetoric in places where Iran wields clout – notably southern Lebanon and Gaza. Their words speak volumes about how radical Islamists view the democratic rights of Muslims.

Hezbollah regularly contests elections but still holds Lebanon hostage; Hamas boasts it won a fair vote, but later ran Fatah out of town. Too bad they can't be counted on when the ballots are being counted in Iran.

Hamas certainly hasn't endeared itself to the Iranian reform movement by sending exuberant congratulations to Ahmadinejad on the disputed election – lavishing praise on his shining victory while democracy activists were protesting furiously.

"The results of the Iranian election are a victory for Iranian democracy, the Iranian people, the leaders and all parties and factions that participated in these elections," Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhum declared.

Hamas took a similar line in Sudan, where it has long maintained an office. Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas's second-in-command, flew to Khartoum last March to embrace Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir after his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur.

More than 300,000 people – mostly Muslims, actually – have been slain and 2.7 million others displaced in that tortured region of Sudan. But Hamas knows who its friends are. So much for solidarity with the Muslims of Darfur…

It continues in this vein for many more paragraphs. How such a bracing dose of reality managed to slip past the Star’s dependably (robotically) leftoid editors is anyone's guess. Enjoy it while you can because you may not see its like again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:04 | link | comments

Shocking tactic: The news that the CIA was secretly targetting Al Qaeda bigwigs--not so shocking. (What should the CIA have been doing--flattering the thugs and inviting them to July 4th celebrations at the U.S. Kabul embassy?) The way the "virtuous" Obama administration is trying to make a big deal about ee-vil Cheney and his behind-the-scenes finagling so as to deflect attention away from the Sotomayor hearing and other Obama woes--tremendously shocking.

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

Obama’s betrayal: Remember those honeyed words in Cairo about how Israel and the U.S. are BFFs for life? What a crock! Turns out (quel surprise) the real plan is to keep Israel at arm’s length while embracing the howling jackals of Dar al-Islam. Here’s the L.A. Times account of a "secret" meeting between Obama and some Official Jews during which the man who’s shaping up to be one of the biggest disappointments in Jewish history basically laid down the law and told the Jews to button it--or else (my bolds):

Reporting from Washington -- A private meeting Monday held to ease tensions between the White House and American Jewish leaders included a pointed exchange as President Obama said public disagreements between the U.S. government and Israel are useful in the pursuit of Middle East peace, several participants said.

The president's remarks, surprising to some in the room, came as he was questioned about a perceived distance between his administration and Israel -- specifically in his insistence that Israel halt all settlement construction in the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out building new homes in existing settlements, a policy that Palestinian leaders say would preclude their sitting down for peace talks.

Obama, according to participants, said his approach would build more credibility with Arabs, and he criticized the Bush administration policy of unwavering agreement with Israel as ineffective.

"He said, 'The United States and Israel were very, very close for eight years, and it produced very little,' " said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, described as one of the more aggressive questioners during the 45-minute session.

The White House did not release a transcript of the meeting, and participants were forbidden to share direct quotes from the president. But at least four participants confirmed Obama's comments, as did a White House official present at the meeting.

The president's remarks are politically sensitive because he devoted a great deal of time during his presidential campaign to convincing Jewish voters that he would be a staunch supporter of Israel -- but now he appears to some to be willing to test nascent bonds with a key constituency as he reaches out to the Arab and Muslim world.

Some American Jewish leaders have complained that Obama has demanded more concessions from the Israelis on settlements and other matters than he has sought from the Palestinians.

Some Israel supporters were also critical of Obama's speech last month in Cairo to the Muslim world in which he described U.S.-Israel ties as "unbreakable" but also assigned moral heft to the Palestinian cause.

Foxman said he disagreed with Obama's remarks at the meeting Monday, and that showing distance between the two countries gave Palestinians the ability to "play the United States against Israel" in order to gain leverage.

Several other participants agreed with Foxman but declined to be quoted criticizing the president.

Some at the meeting said Obama's arguments were strong.

"I share the same reticence of others in the Jewish community as to his position," said Rabbi Steven Wernick, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, "but I'm prepared to give him the opportunity to test these approaches and to see if they bear fruit."...

You can count on them “bearing fruit,” Rabbi--piles and piles of rotting Jaffa oranges and other Israeli produce, along with lots of dead Jews (because, relative to the Muslims world, there are so few of us, and we're expendable).

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:38 | link | comments (2)

Monday, 13 July 2009

They dream of genie: And no, not the Barbara Eden type of genie, a cute blonde who lives in a bottle and calls you “Master” and wears harem pants. From the Tehran Times:

Saudi family takes genie to court

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

An investigation was under way, local court officials said.

“We have to verify the truthfulness of this case despite the difficulty of doing so,” Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, the head of the court, told Al-Watan. “What makes this case and complaint more interesting is that it wasn't filed by just one person. Every member of the family is part of this case.”

The family, which has lived in the same house near the holy city of Medina for 15 years, said it became aware of the spirit in the past two years.

“We began hearing strange noises,” the head of the family, who requested anonymity, told Al-Watan. “In the beginning, we didn't take it seriously, but after that, stranger things started happening and the children got really scared when the genie began throwing stones.”

A local charity has moved the family to a temporary residence while a court investigates, the newspaper said.

In Islamic cultures, a belief in genies, or jinns, is common.

Genies not only appear in pre-Islamic fiction such as “Arabian Nights,” but are also mentioned in the Holy Quran.

Many Saudis believe invisible genies live among them and are capable of demonic possession and revenge.

And those TV astronauts thought they had their hands full.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:34 | link | comments (1)

The "finacial wizards" behind modern “sharia banking”: Go figure--they’re some of the same firebrands behind the modern jihad, as this article in Standpoint points out:

…The first detailed and comprehensive argument for the creation of a sharia-based financial system was articulated by the Pakistani journalist and thinker Sayyid Abul-ala Mawdudi (1903-1979), one of the godfathers of modern jihad and the founder of the Jamaat e-Islami (JI). For Mawdudi, the answer to the perceived ills of Muslims around the world was to be found in a return to the days of Muhammad. He identified western concepts, particularly secular liberal democracy, as an existential threat to the umma (the worldwide Muslim population, conceptualised as a monolithic political bloc) and his answer was twofold. First, Muslims had to identify themselves first and foremost by their religion and therefore separate and isolate themselves from the "unbelievers". Second, Muslims had to engage in jihad to reclaim formerly "Islamic lands" and eventually establish global supremacy. Mawdudi believed that Islamic finance was one of the essential cogs of a totalitarian Islamic state.

This notion was quickly taken up by Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), one of the founders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, widely recognised as a direct inspiration for al-Qaeda. The fact that Islamic economics offered very little change in practical terms was of little significance to Islamist ideologues such as Mawdudi and Qutb. It was simply yet another way of Islamising Muslims and presenting the West as evil, avaricious and corrupt…

Maybe sharia financing wouldn’t be making as much headway here in the West were we to call it what it really is--Muslim Brotherhood banking. Then again, that “Brotherhood” word has a nice interfaith ring to it, no? Just the kind of thing that gulls multiculti-minded infidels into letting down their guard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:29 | link | comments

No Lenny in Ramallah: Boycott cretins are hailing the cancellation of a concert in Ramallah by monotonal Canadian troubadour Leonard Cohen a “small victory” for the, um, cretinous. The boycotters didn’t want him to perform there because he was also going to be appearing in Tel Aviv--a blatant unfairness, as far as the Zion-despisers were concerned (h/t BCF):

Ramallah, West Bank (TML) - Internationally-renowned artist Leonard Cohen will not be performing in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as originally planned.

The 74-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter has had his concert in Ramallah cancelled in a development viewed as a small victory by groups calling to boycott Israel.

Pro-Palestinian activists said Cohen was not welcome in Ramallah as long as he insisted on performing in Tel Aviv, where a concert is planned for September 24.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club, which was organizing the event, decided to cancel the concert because it was becoming too politicized, but the club insisted it did not bow to pressure from boycott organizations.

"I wouldn't call it pressure," Qadura Fares, president of the Prisoners' Club told The Media Line. "We can organize the event-it's not difficult or impossible-but we prefer not to have these hard discussions."

"We need people like Leonard Cohen to share his support for the Palestinians and it means a lot, but the boycott [campaign] thinks that it's like the experience in South Africa - that anyone that wants to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom should only visit Palestine and not Israel."

Fares said he wanted to maintain the organization's reputation as a non-political entity.

"We're a sensitive group and we work with all the Palestinians," he said.

"We're not a political organization and we to continue our help to the prisoners without interference of political issues. The administration in the Palestinian Prisoners' Club decided to freeze this event. They will have discussions but for the time being it's been frozen."

It appears the concert would have been more a symbolic gesture than a gig to please the fans, especially as Fares estimates that Cohen does not have a large following in the Palestinian territories.

The concert would have been attended by families of Palestinian prisoners, human-rights activists and handicapped people. It was agreed that the concert would be dedicated to the prisoners, Fares said.

Organizations calling to boycott Israel were satisfied with news of the cancellation.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) said, "Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel's colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel."

The cancellation of the concert is seen in the wider context of cultural, academic and trade boycotts of Israel and Israeli products.

"PACBI has always rejected any attempt to "balance" concerts or other artistic events in Israel - conscious acts of complicity in Israel's violation of international law and human rights - with token events in the occupied Palestinian territory," the organization said.

Grassroots activists are trying to raise awareness about the plight of the Palestinians by calling for these boycotts…

Grassroots activists are merely Jew-hating thugs decked out in leafy greens. Here’s an example of what folks in Ramallah will be missing because of the boycott cretins (it’s my favourite Cohen number). But, really, how many Leonard Cohen fans do you figure there are in Ramallah? I say three, maybe four tops. So maybe calling off the concert was actually a good thing for Cohen, since it spared him the embarrassment of what would undoubtedly have been a sparse crowd.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:37 | link | comments (1)

How to Succeed in Thuggery Without Even Trying: Victor Davis Hanson has a few hints--a Complete Idiots Guide, so to speak--for up-and-coming Thugs. A few highlights:

Don’t Forget Grooming

Try the perpetual three-day beard, Arafat-style, as if you’re always shaving in the field with your comrades. Next best is mangy facial hair, à la Ahmadinejad, which suggests you once were an artist, novelist, or dissident of some sort. Castro’s bushy beard and curls also convey an admirable defiance of the man in the gray flannel suit. In South America and the Middle East, the black moustache alone will do. Che-style hair and beard do well for the revolutionary phase, but they should be tamed to the Daniel Ortega half-bad look once you’ve taken over the government.

Again, watch the sunglasses: They evoke a Greek colonel or South American strongman. Go instead with the nerd look of a 1950s intellectual: plastic rims on top, bare glass on the bottom. The more studious, the more bookish — the more you can jail. Think Allende or Trotsky, not Somoza.

Speech Codes

Don’t use the hobgoblin word Communism: It’s always socialism when you nationalize, steal property, take over businesses, shoot protestors, and shut down newspapers. Stay on message: The enemy is “globalization,” capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and always the United States. Be sure to use the buzz words “democracy” or “republic” in all your briefings, as in “The People’s Republic of . . . ” or “The Democratic Federation of . . . ” Throw in “rule of law” and “constitution” anytime you shoot more than 100; evoke an Egyptian novelist, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela when you send out the tanks. Abu Ghraib cannot be overused.

If in doubt about what resonates in the West, pick up a course catalogue online from UC Santa Cruz or Vassar, and just cut and paste some course descriptions into your next communiqué. Always play offense: It is Mossadeq, Bay of Pigs, United Fruit, Exxon, Vietnam, and Guantanamo all the time.

Don’t be afraid to dig up any fossil you can. One stale My Lai reference still gets you a pass for 1,000 jailed; an Abu Ghraib is worth 5,000 in your gulag. Play full-court press until the U.S. cracks and turns it over with, “I’m sorry for slavery, the Native American genocide, the A-bomb, Dresden, ethnically profiled airport security, the Klan, the Greek coup . . . ” Once the Americans start blabbering, they won’t stop — and you can step up the killing, jailing, and torturing without much worry.

Milk the U.N.

Get on as many U.N. committees as possible. The more slots you have on the Human Rights Commission and its appendages, the more you can imprison. Send a few goons to serve on a U.N. peacekeeping force. They’ll like the money and sex, and it wins you cover later on. (Who knows: When the shooting starts at home, they may send some of your own blue-hats to patrol your streets.)

Anything with the word “High,” as in High Commission, or a phrase containing the word “Refugees,” earns exemption. Israel is always a winning slur (but watch Holocaust denial; it works three or four times, but gets old quickly). In general, avoid the overt “Jews” and just keep it to “Zionists.” Most people will know what you mean.

Jew-hating is always a win-win situation: The Euros love the rarified anti-Israel shtick (Israel has no oil, no terrorists, no mobs, and few people), and you can sprinkle in “apartheid,” “racist,” and “colonialist” as cover to liven it up if anyone objects. Don’t laugh: “The Jews did it” still works. Ask Ahmadinejad about last week.

Hey, why re-invent the wheel when “the Jews did it” is a no-brainer?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

You say Weeghur and I say Wyeghur: How come the Globe and Mail spells it with a "y"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

Lynching Lynch: While conceding that some of what’s been said about Jennifer Lynch and her “human rights” posse has been “inaccurate and unfair” (not sure which parts those are--ed), Janet Freeling in the Montreal Gazette gets down to basics-- Jen’s cavalier disregard for our most basic freedom (my bolds):

…But Lynch is wrong on some basic issues, most importantly on freedom of expression. She says that the "power (of words and ideas) while overwhelmingly positive, can also be used to undermine democracy, freedom and equality." For that reason "Canada, and many other nations, have enacted laws to limit forms of extreme hateful expression that have very minimal value in the free exchange of ideas, but do great harm to our fellow citizens."

In fact, most ideas are neither "overwhelmingly positive" nor harmful - they are trivial. It's not only "extreme hateful expression" that has "very minimal value." Just turn on the TV, go to nearly any blog or Twitter.

Why then is freedom of expression so important? Because it is too dangerous to let people decide for others what they can say or hear - except in a few limited circumstances, where the harm is serious, and irreparable or imminent, such as, yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre.

Curtailing freedom of expression is no idle concern. For example, the reasoning behind the ruling that Rev. Stephen Boissoin's letter to the editor violated Alberta's human-rights statute was abysmal, the penalty imposed on him absurd. Boissoin is banned for life from expressing his sincere, religiously-founded opinion that homosexuality is evil.

While I detest Boissoin's opinions, giving a single human-rights commissioner the power to shut you up forever because he or she thinks something you said is offensive or hateful is dangerously wrong. Boissoin's views might have no social value, but what about the next visionary dissident with an unfashionable truth to tell?

The fact is that stifling people like Boissoin will not make their views go away; it will only force them underground, where they can fester, inspiring even worse down the road.

Lynch's opinion that "the modern concept of rights is that of a matrix with different rights and freedoms mutually reinforcing each other to build a strong and durable human-rights system," invites us to think of freedom of expression as just another ingredient in an evolving recipe - a dash of equality here, a pinch of liberty there - for the perfect human-rights concoction.

But freedom of speech is not just another human right. It has a pragmatic priority, because it is necessary for the realization of all other rights. Freedom is not more important than equality, but you will never have equality if you can't speak freely. Think of Iran: Women there will never have equal rights if their demands for them can't even be articulated…

Right. And when you try to “balance” free speech with “hate speech”--Jen and the state censors' stated goal--what you end up with is the kind of “free expession” that’s available under sharia law, i.e. hold your tongue, impertinent ones. That’s where we’re headed (and may, in fact, have already arrived) unless Jen and her mob are cashiered and censorship is taken out of the “human rights” equation once and for all.

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

Jacko, PBUH?: Elder of Ziyon reports on an unfortunate faux pas:

On an Arabic MBC TV report about the death of Michael Jackson, the announcer made a poetic allusion to Mohammed that has outraged many viewers.

After Mohammed died there was much confusion and denial among Muslims, who were only calmed down when Abu Bakr said "O people! Whoever worships Mohammed , he should know that Mohammed has died , and he who worships Allah, he should know that Allah is alive, he never dies."

The broadcast ended with "Whoever loves Michael Jackson should know that Michael has died, and those who love his music can still enjoy it forever."

The news announcer apologized for the incident, saying that it was an off-the-cuff remark and that he did not intend to consciously evoke Mohammed. This might stave off his being fired or murdered in the name of Allah.

Good save. An off-the-cuff can offtimes result in an off-with-your-head.

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

Funny, he doesn't look gayish: Mark Steyn does an estimable job of summarizing the flap over an Official Jew's appearance at the Pride Parade decked out in a T shirt proclaiming his queerness (even though he isn't, er, Jew-Spirited)--so I won't go into it all myself. I would merely point out that the whole brouhaha could have been avoided had the gent in question had even a shred of a sense of humour about it. Instead, he was advised to demand an apology for being mistaken for gay (even though that's what his T read, he was wearing it in a gay pride parade, he had accessorized it with a jaunty bright orange lei wrapped around his wrist, and, oh, yeah, he tweeted the photo himself to his twitter critters). Had I been his communications advisor, I would have told him to A) chill, or B) issue a tongue-in-cheek statement--something to the effect of "I'm not gay, I just play one in parades."

Pride goeth before a fall?

Update: A mouthy fashionista has her say.

Update: A good argument could be made that anti-Zionist gays may well be the most idiotic useful idiots of all, since, come sharia, their par-tay is toast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:26 | link | comments (1)

Sunday, 12 July 2009

"She Who Must Be Obeyed": As we know (we know because she constantly reminds us) CHRC Czarina Jennifer Lynch has a "Q.C." after her name. The letters stand for "Queen's Council," an impressive-sounding but largely meaningless category of Canadian attorney. Mark Steyn, that scamp, says considering Jen's proclivities, it should really stand for "Queen's Censor." Good one, Mark. And might I add that I think we should add to her honours with a highly-coveted S.W.M.B.O--"She Who Must Be Obeyed." That's a nod to Rumpole of the Bailey, the late John Mortimer's cantakerous creation, who used to refer to his wife this way--albeit more lovingly--in the many novels in which they both appeared.

To recap: from now on it's Jennifer Lynch Q.C, S.W.M.B.O.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:50 | link | comments

Worst. Justification. Ever!: The federal “human rights” racket ‘splains to Canadians that Section 13, that part of the “human rights” code dealing with (and prohibiting) offensive speech, is completely consistent with “international” thinking on the subject:

Is section 13 consistent with international human rights law?

Yes. International human rights treaties provide that careful restrictions of some forms of speech are both desirable and necessary.

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) guarantee freedom of expression.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 19 of the ICCPR amplifies on the Universal Declaration by specifying:

Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

However section 19 also allows that certain restrictions may be imposed on freedom of expression by specifying that:

The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

Article 20 of the ICCPR requires states to prohibit speech that incites war or promotes hatred:

Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law…

Bear in mind that this is the same UN that, in keeping with sharia law, recently banned blasphemous speech about Islam (though, of course, there’s no mention of such picayune details on the CHRC site).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments

Harpoon enlightens us: Harpoon Siddiqui, Toronto Star sage, says that we, poor, ignorant infidels, have Dar al-Islam all wrong; that it’s really a pretty nifty place with loads of opportunity, especially for chicks (except the ones who have the misfortune to live in the Arab part):

…If you include the elected governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh (populations 176 million and 158 million, respectively) and add the Muslims of India (155 million), you realize that about 800 million Muslims enjoy varying degrees of democracy.

The Western view of Muslims living under military or monarchical despots is true mostly of the Middle East. And the worst among them (Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states) are the closest allies of the U.S. – and Canada.

So the idea of America as the harbinger of democracy for Muslims is humbug. The ballyhooed democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan (never the aim of the invasions) has come at a horrendous human cost, widely viewed in the Muslim world as crimes against humanity.

A parallel notion, that Muslim women are living in the Dark Ages, also applies mostly to the Arab world, especially the nations closest to the U.S. and Canada.

Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh have had women leaders. Even in Iran, the land of limited democracy and crackdowns, women are in the forefront of civic engagement, including protests…

Notice how Harpoon implies that if Muslim women in the Arab world are living in the Dark Ages, it must have something to do with us? And there he goes again, misrepresenting what’s going on in the Mullocracy, the most fanatical, dangerous, repressive regime on the planet. So chicks in Iran “are in the forefront of civic engagement, including protests” are they? Funny how he doesn’t mention that that also places them in the forefront of being iced and executed by the mullahs’ thug-police.

It’s kind of like praising the U.S.S.R. (back in the day) by saying “Jews are in the forefront of civic engagement, including protests,” without revealing what their “engagement” got them--another day older and deeper in the Gulag.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:11 | link | comments (1)

Who’s following Bernie on twitter?: Among his 62 “people”--Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton (twice), Maude Barlow, Bob Rae, Heather Reisman, Warren Kinsella, and the lovely and talented Sarah Silverman.

Sarah Silverman?!

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

No middle ground when it comes to Jen: In the National Post, someone named Mel from Calgary thinks Jennifer Lynch, CHRC Czarina (an attorney who believes truth as a defence, a linchpin of a free society, should be done away with because it reduces the likelihood of guilty verdicts in criminal “hate speech” cases), is on the right track. Saith Mel re Jen’s latest extenuation of her censorious racket’s M.O.:

Sounds reasonable and she makes her case.

There is (sic) a lot of people saying outragious (sic) things about the various human rights commissions and it is important that they are talking about how the procedures are rather than hear-say (sic).

Ezra, also from Calgary, begs to differ--and then some.

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

Blather: A few quotes for your consideration:

The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. (”Learning to Live with Radical Islam,” Newsweek cover story by Fareed Zakaria, Feb. 28, ’09)

“No.” (Former NDP MPP Marilyn Churley’s terse response when queried by Michael Coren as to whether we should be concerned about the danger posed by radical Islam, The Michael Coren Show, July 8, ’09)

For that matter, there's little evidence that Muslims themselves see any contradiction between allegiance to the state and their religious faith. An overwhelming majority of Muslims in France and Germany told Gallup's pollsters that they believed Muslims were loyal to their country. British and German Muslims were more likely than their countrymen to say they were confident of the judicial system and financial institutions and the honesty of elections. It seems that if Europe is in the throes of revolution, many of the supposed combatants appear strangely content with the established order. (William Underhill, dispelling the “myth” of Eurabia, Newsweek, July 11, ’09)

You know, after reading these optimistic prognostications, I’d feel so much better about things--were it not for this:

You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli – Rahm Emanuel– his number one man. His number two man – [David] Axelrod – another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world? You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don't you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That's what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement. There's some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah. (Imam Warith Deen Umar, Judaism “expert” and former head of New York prison’s Muslim chaplain program, in an speech at “mainstream” organization ISNA’s 2009 convention)

Oh, and also this:

My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he was really one who truly loves his fellow-man, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good. That he feels himself to a deliverer of his people from tyranny. (Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s journal entry following his pleasant tete-a-tete in Germany with the Fuhrer, 1937, quoted in Exiles From Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite, by Alan Mendelson)

And, in particular, this:

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low. (The Koran, 9:029)

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

Saturday, 11 July 2009

The siren call of jihad: Some Somali college kids in the Midwest--who seemed to be as American as all get out--have pledged allegiance to another team. From the New York Times:

MINNEAPOLIS — The Carlson School of Management rises from the asphalt like a monument to capitalist ambition. Stock prices race across an electronic ticker near a sleek entrance and the atrium soars skyward, as if lifting the aspirations of its students. The school’s plucky motto is “Nowhere but here.”

For a group of students who often met at the school, on the University of Minnesota campus, those words seemed especially fitting. They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur.

But last year, in a study room on the first floor of Carlson, the men turned their energies to a different enterprise.

“Why are we sitting around in America, doing nothing for our people?” one of the men, Mohamoud Hassan, a skinny 23-year-old engineering major, pressed his friends.

In November, Mr. Hassan and two other students dropped out of college and left for Somalia, the homeland they barely knew. Word soon spread that they had joined the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group aligned with Al Qaeda that is fighting to overthrow the fragile Somali government.

The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert M. Mueller, has said Mr. Ahmed was “radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.”...

In Minnesota, huh? Maybe we can send ‘em some Canadian Jewish “mentors” to put these misguided college kids back on track.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:13 | link | comments

The redemption of Caliban: In his 2003 book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the ramifications of this sweet-sounding but fatuous ideology) Peter Wood, an anthropology professor who writes with clarity and wit, explains why and how academe has embraced one of Shakespeare’s more repellent creations:

In 1976, the literary critic Stephen Greenblatt published an essay, “Learning to Curse,” that began Caliban’s rehabilitation as a figure of native resistance to European imperialism. Since then, the conceit has grown and it is now difficult to find a college Shakespeare course in which The Tempest is taught that does not attempt to salvage Prospero’s “poisonous slave” who “never/ yields us kind answer.” Caliban is multiracial, “got by the devil himself/upon [his] wicked dam,” the black witch Sycorax. He is the indigenous human population of the island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda were cast up years earlier. Prospero at first treated Caliban kindly (“Strok’st me and made much of me,” recalls Caliban), gave him flavoured water and taught him to talk. In turn, Caliban welcomed the newcomers and showed them “the fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.” But Prosepero at length subjects Caliban to servitude and limits his movement (“here you sty me/in this hard rock”).

Or maybe not. Prospero remembers a different history. He responds to Caliban’s account by calling him a “lying slave,” and declaring that he treated Caliban with “human care” and exiled him from Prospero’s own house only when Caliban “didst seek to violate/The honor of my child.”

Caliban, the indigene--dispossessed of his land by a white European male, who subjects him to harsh labor and stereotypes him as a sexual predator--is cultural diversity in all its oppressed innocence and authenticity. We can overlook his plots to have Stephano murder Prospero by knocking a “nail into his head,” or battering him with a log, “paunching” him with a stake, or cutting his throat; his wish to burn Prospero’s books, and his lascivious eye for Miranda. Caliban is shameless (“Let me lick thy shoe”), craven (“I’ll fall flat./Perchance he will not mind me”) and murderous, but he is also a victim of hierarchy and therefore the man/child for our time.

His plans having come to nothing, Caliban accepts Prospero’s pardon and declares, “I will be wise hereafter/And seek for grace.” But it seems unlikely. All Caliban has really gained from his subjection to Western culture is the ability to speak, a gift which he uses, as Professor Greenblatt noted, to curse his oppressor.

Today, of course, Caliban would be on a different footing altogether. Admitted to an elite college on a full scholarship (mixed-race, single parent family; great diversity essay), he would find a whole Caliban curriculum to choose from.

Heh. And after graduation, were he to head north, he could undoubtedly have a great career in the grievance industry or the government bureaucracy (Caliban on the Refugee Review Board, say?). Eventually, he could be tapped to run one of our nation’s many, many august “human rights” bodies, and perhaps even pick up an Order of Canada.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:41 | link | comments

The Sacha Baron Cohen movie I’m waiting for: Sacha, playing Yankel, a Lubavitch Jew, “punks” a variety of Europeans, demonstrating not only their lingering Judenhass but the fact that American hicks from the sticks aren’t the only ones who reveal inner truths about themselves when they don’t realize they are being caught on tape by a guy who wants to make them look as foolish/racist as possible.

The difference between Sacha’s Yankel character and both Borat and Bruno: Yankel doesn’t make it out alive.

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

Method in their madness: The National Post explains what’s behind the Zion-haters’ deranged attempt to claim the Dead Sea Scrolls--now on display at the Royal Ontario Museum--as Muslim property:

…An odd assortment of groups are protesting the exhibit on the grounds that the scrolls are stolen artifacts and really belong to Arabs, not Jews. Yes, you read that correctly: Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Bible that were written centuries before Muhammad was born are, apparently, Muslim property.

It's easy to see what's going on here. Just as Holocaust denial circulates in some corners of the anti-Israel movement, there is a parallel effort to deny the Jewish people's ancestral connection to the Holy Land. The idea is to de-legitimize Israel by denying the indigenous rights of Jews. Some Israel-haters have even taken to arguing that Palestinian Arabs are the real descendants of "ancient Hebrews."

It was interesting, for example, to see an online magazine called the Canadian Charger go after the Royal Ontario Museum for declining an "interview" with one of its correspondents. The Canadian Charger just a few days earlier published a strong defence of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praising his "social justice policies."

So the point remains: When you see a campaign like the one against the Dead Sea Scrolls, take a look at who -- and what -- is behind it.

The Canadian Charger, it should be pointed out, is former Canadian Islamic Congress boss/censorhip buff Mo Elamsry’s new website--and Elmo, apparently, is the author of the article praising A-jad. I can't find it on the Charger site--the flatulent horsey seems yet to be up and running--but here it is in an "alternative" Vancouver paper.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:14 | link | comments

Bibi uses the "J" word: Israel's P.M. tells Germany's foreign minister that there's no reason the West Bank has to be "Judenrein" (you know, like Jordan and Gaza are).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:03 | link | comments

Friday, 10 July 2009

Desperately seeking kvetchers: As part of its new “pro-active” mandate, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is offering what it calls “a new electronic learning series, Human Rights 101. Human Rights 101 will provide a wide audience with an introduction to human rights protections and a basic understanding of how the Human Rights Code can be applied.”

The OHRC is no doubt hoping this “education” will have the desired payoff--i.e. lots more complainants making lots more complaints, thereby helping justify this egregious waste of taxpayer’s money, and keeping it in business for the time being.

Feel free to take Babsy’s survey. Better yet, don't, since it will only encourage her.

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

Federal Inquisitors make a brazen play for more power: Our federal censors, the Canucki Torquemadas of the CHRC, want to remove truth as a defence in criminal “hate speech” cases because, in their words, it “unduly hampers prosecutions.” Well, yes, giving people geniune rights does tend to have that effect--witness prosecutions conducted under the auspices of “human rights” tribunals, which make no allowance for truth or fair comment, and where, for precisely that reason, the conviction rate is so much higher than it is in regular courts. A few days ago, the Calgary Herald slammed the greedy censors for trying to further empower themselves at our expense and, in a cri de coeur, called on the Conservative government to stand up for liberty:

…This, getting rid of the truth defence, and more special police hate crime units and/or Crown prosecutors with specialized knowledge in this area of the law: It is a censor's wish list.

Those who take salaries from the human rights establishment believe they do a good thing. Even those who write racist remarks on websites in an attempt to draw out other racists, believe the end justifies the means.

But of course, so in a bygone age did Torquemada, so do Iran's mullahs today. Zealots can be found on all continents and in all centuries. They believe things would go better if only people believed as they did. Unfortunately, these are usually the last people to whom the state's coercive power should be entrusted.

Canada is among a handful of nations, which have discovered that liberty elevates the human spirit, and freedom of communication is its foundation. It can be uncouth, and unruly. Untruth will certainly vie with truth for a hearing. Yet, ever since Nova Scotia publisher Joseph Howe stood up for truth before a colonial court--empowered in 1835, like human rights commissions today, to silence unpopular opinions--Canadians have been able to tell one from another. The censor's hand has not been the price of a peaceful commonwealth: In fact, that it has been withheld is one of the reasons why so many people from around the world, accustomed to oppression, delight to call Canada their new and chosen home.

We have little expectation that the Conservative government will be inclined to accept this report.

We wish, however, that it would affirm basic Canadian liberties by trimming the CHRC's powers to regulate speech and publication.

Preventing further erosion of the status quo is not enough.

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

Garbage and Gershwin: Old joke--what are the two seasons in Toronto? Answer: Winter and road repair. New joke--what are the two seasons in Toronto? Answer: Winter and garbage strikes. It's day 19 of the current work withdrawal, and with no end in sight, one can retch and pull out one's hair, or one can sing. I choose to sing:

Summertime

And the garbage is icky.

Rats are gleeful

And the mountains are high.

The union’s striking

And the mayor is useless.

So, hush, you Hogtowners,

Don’t you cry.

One of these mornings

You’re going to rise up screaming.

Then you’ll shoo that mayor

And elect a new guy.

But till the morning

There’s a’nothing but refuse

Piled higher and higher,

Up to the sky.

Summertime

And the garbage is stinking.

Rats are gleeful

And the mountains are high.

The union’s striking

And the mayor is useless.

So, cry, you Hogtowners,

As summer slips by.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:36 | link | comments (2)

Move over, Alfred Rosenberg: Despite his Jewish-sounding name, Al Rosenberg was a member of Hitler's Nazi tribe, not Moses's Jewish one. Al, a crackpot ideologue who supplied the Third Reich with some of its primo mishegas about "the Jewish conspiracy," was the author of a work of "scholarship" called The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Al is long dead and gone, of course, but his memory--and nonsense--live on. Indeed, this chap, an imam with "mainstream" Islamic organization ISNA (an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorism fundraising cases), may well be the Al Rosenberg of our era ('cept he Heils Allah, not Hitler); ISNA, you may recall, was the organization charged with "reeducating" Christian pastor Mark Harding when he had the temerity to express some unfortunate truths about Islam and was prosecuted by Ontario authorities for a "hate crime."

Anyway, the ISNA Jew-hater, who offered his Rosenbergesque perspective this week at the ISNA convention, is the author of another impressive work of "scholarship," a "scientifitc" examination of the Jewish bid for global control called--wait for it--Judaiology.

Somewhere down in Hades, Al Rosenberg is looking up and shepping naches at the literary accomplishments of one his heirs. (Note the Nazi yellow star on the cover of his successor's book.)

The torch has been passed, eh Al?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:29 | link | comments

Who killed Michael Jackson?: New theory--he was done in by Sarah Palin. And/or the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:37 | link | comments

Thursday, 09 July 2009

Bubbles' Lament: A has-been, formerly the most famous simian in the world, rails at the fates:

Oh, where, oh, where has the human gone?

The friend of my youth who dressed me in braid.

Oh, how I do miss what once we did have--

The tenderness, the escapade.

Oh, once I was smooth-faced,

And playful, and free.

His Majesty’s favourite,

Pampered, adored.

Then one day, alas,

I lost my allure.

Became like a Culkin--

Discarded, ignored.

Oh, where, oh, where has the human gone?

The one who grew younger as I grew old.

Oh, how I do long for Neverland.

But the Ferris Wheel's stopped

And the human

Is cold.

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

Dazed and confused in T.O.: As we know, the Canadian Jewish Congress is “perplexed” because police refused to lay charges against an Islamic Jew-hater even though had a Nazi” expressed the same hateful sentiments he would have been charged with a hate crime quicker that you can say Heil Hitler. Me, I understand the double standard completely: it’s a function of fear and abject dhimmitude (a concept that the CJC and other multishmulti types can never seem to grasp). One thing does “perplex” me, though--it’s this, from the CJN:

…Asked whether Congress would contemplate initiating a section 13 complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act, which makes it an offence to use the Internet to promote hate, [Len]Rudner said Congress would prefer to see [Salman] Hossain [the Muslim Jew-hater] prosecuted under the Criminal Code.

A police investigation has already been undertaken and documentation gathered. “I certainly don’t see any downside to letting the matter proceed criminally,” he said.

If the criminal track doesn’t pan out, Congress’ legal affairs committee would determine whether to lay a human rights complaint.

“We’re considering all options at the moment,” Rudner said.

Let me say it again--I’m perplexed, Len. Why no Section 13 complaint about the Muslim? Does the Ceej want to reserve such complaints solely for its favourite Nazi-hunter, Richard Warman? Or does it know that, for P.C. reasons, the Lynchers would turn up their noses at any complaint about a Muslim Jew-hater, even one who sounds an awful lot like a Nazi?

That’s some security blanket you got there, guys. It “protects” us from the terrifying spectre of Nazis in small town Saskatchewan (all, what, three of them?), but can do nothing to stifle bloviating jihadi bloggers in Toronto. (Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many of those there are? Far more than there are “Nazis” in Saskatchewan and the rest of Canada, I wager.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:19 | link | comments (6)

When rights collide: Who has the “right” to use a public women’s washroom? Women only? Or women-to-be who currently have male accoutrements but who have been instructed to use the women’s loo as part of their pre-op therapy? That’s a question that, should mediation fail, will likely be decided by the Ontario “Human Rights” Tribunal. And by “will likely be decided” I mean it has already been decided in advance in the complainant’s favour. The Toronto Sun has the scoop:

A Meaford transgendered woman alleges she was humiliated when a female security guard escorted her out of a women's washroom at Casino Rama in Orillia.

Carol Ann Kotsopoulos, 38, who has been undergoing the sex change process for 21/2 years, is taking action against Casino Rama over the alleged treatment she endured on March 27, 2008.

Kotsopoulos has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and is awaiting a mediation session with Casino Rama and an adjudicator. It will take place in the fall at the earliest.

"I almost tried to commit suicide by taking pills. They humiliated me," Kotsopoulos said yesterday.

According to Kotsopoulos, she and roommate Glenda Killby were in the women's washroom when a female security guard shouted at Kotsopoulos, who was sitting inside a closed stall. "She asked me, 'Are you a woman or a man?' " said Kotsopoulos. "I told her I'm a transgendered woman, do you want to look? I joked with her.

"Then she said, 'You cannot use this washroom, you'll have to use the unisex washroom.' She said she was called there due to a complaint by another patron, a third party. There is no unisex washroom that I have ever seen there."

The 5-foot-8, 175-pound Kotsopoulos, who is on a disability pension for a nervous breakdown linked to childhood trauma, said she was escorted to a public area where she was surrounded by four guards.

"It was so unprofessional. I was in total shock," she said.

Kotsopoulos, who moved from Toronto to Meaford, 20 km south of Owen Sound, a few years ago, said she is filing her complaint "to educate the public."

Jennifer Ramsay of Human Rights Legal Support Centre, which represents Kotsopoulos, said transgendered people born as men are instructed to live like a woman for years before undergoing surgery.

"It's a long, arduous process and we know that a lot of people suffer discrimination during this process. There is a lot of harassment generally and for someone to be publicly humiliated by someone in authority is especially troubling," said Ramsay.

Kotsopoulos said she will undergo surgery in 2011. No one from Casino Rama returned calls from the Sun yesterday.

I don’t think anyone should be “humiliated,” and this was obviously an extremely unpleasant experience for Kotsopoulos, who seems to be a tortured soul. However, I’m not sure s/he has a “right” to use the women’s washroom any more than she has a “right” to, say, compete as a woman in the Olympics. Then again, for obvious reasons the men’s washroom won’t work either. So what’s the solution? A unisex, “family” or otherwise non-specific washroom seems to fit the bill. I have no doubt, though, that that’s not the solution the “rights” authorities will arrive at, and the "disabled" woman-to-be in question will be duly compensated for her trauma. Let’s hope for her sake she doesn’t spend it all on the slots.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments (1)

Ethically challenged ideologues: In the National Post, Conservative MP Russ Hiebert takes on la Lynch and Co.--a blistering rebuke to state censorship and the indefensible Star Chambers that make a mockery of the democratic rule of law:

Recently, Canadian Human Rights Commission chief Jennifer Lynch criticized me for relying on "one source that is full of misinformation," in my parliamentary study of the CHRC ( "Canadians 'misinformed' on hate speech," June 22). It may surprise Ms. Lynch to learn that the source of my "misinformation" is her own commission and its companion body, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Every question I raised in committee about the lack of due process and an ethics code for commission employees, and the absence of rules of evidence, came from commission and tribunal documents, many of which are currently available on the commission's own website ( www.chrc-ccdp.ca).The transcripts of tribunal hearings provide telling evidence of the wayward approach the commission's investigators take in prosecuting their cases. Recent hearings, such as the Marc Lemire case, have revealed that current CHRC investigator Dean Steacy and former CHRC investigator Richard Warman regularly posted neo-Nazi diatribes under assumed names on white supremacist web-sites. Further, uncontradicted expert evidence presented before the hearing demonstrated that investigator Steacy illegitimately used an unsuspecting private citizen's wireless Internet service to post his offensive comments.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the commission asked the tribunal to exclude the media from the hearing that day. Fortunately, for the sake of accountability, a secret hearing was rejected and we know more about the CHRC's inner workings.

However, other hearings have been held in secret, as Ms. Lynch has admitted, supposedly for the "safety" of a witness but contrary to the ancient right of being able to face one's accuser in court. Indeed, in the ongoing case of beachesboy@aol.comvs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com,the commission hasn't even revealed the identity of the complainant. Interestingly, the commission's website does name the complainant for 12 of the 14 hate speech cases that have come before the tribunal in the last eight years: Richard Warman. Ms. Lynch's deputy appeared before my committee in Parliament recently and admitted that the commission does not have to follow rules of evidence or legal procedure, but merely has "operating procedures" that identify the timelines for addressing complaints. To put that in plain English: defendants have no guarantee of a fair hearing.

A 2003 internal government review of the CHRC found that the commission scored only 2.5 out of five on an ethics test…

That high? They must have been marking on a curve.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:11 | link | comments (1)

Surrender, Stephen!: Like some Wicked Witch of the North, the dependably deplorable Harpoon Siddiqui writes some smoky letters in the sky warning Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he had better start--how does the Star headline-writer put it again?--oh, yeah, “falling in line with Obama”--or else. One particularly spiky bone of contention: Harper’s failure to call off his, um, jihad:

On Obama’s rapprochement with the Muslim world, Harper is silent.

Obama consulted widely with the mainstream Muslim community in the U.S. In Cairo, he was inclusive of them: “Let there be no doubt, Islam is part of America. And that includes nearly 7 million American Muslims.” He said he was proud to carry “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum.”

In a break from the post-9/11 demonization of Islam, Obama said: “Partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

Canadians have yet to hear Harper and his minions call off their cultural warfare against Muslims.

Yeah, what’s wrong with that Harper? Won’t grovel. Won’t suck up. Won’t pay Islamists to teach conversational skills to new Canadians. Won’t get rid of that “Islamophobe” Jason Kenney. And a Zionist-lover, to boot. Things’ll sure be different once Iggy’s in charge and Canada will once more be “falling in line with Obama” and the rest of the Israel-crushers.

As for Harper’s supposed “cultural warfare against Muslims”--a pure case of projecting one’s own aims onto ones’ enemies, a classic stratagem ripped straight from the Adolf Hitler/Muslim Brotherhood playbook.

Instead of doing my usual--writing an outraged letter--I composed this verse:

Stephen Harper has yet to submit

And Harpoon doesn’t like it one bit.

Whereas that weird psychodrama

Involving Obama

Is boffo! A sell-out! A hit!

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

Wednesday, 08 July 2009

Death by chocolate: Literally.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:39 | link | comments

Who says there's no such thing as bad publicity?: CNN covers Toronto's garbage strike and the reeking refuse in city streets that's making visitors gag and prompting them to ask themselves why they didn't go to Montreal instead.

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

Good question: "How did things get to a point where someone who lived such a grotesque life receives more favorable coverage than a devoted mother and self-made Governor of Alaska?"

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:19 | link | comments

Sing out, Jennifer: Is it just me, or does Canadian "human rights" Diva Jennifer Lynch bear a certain resemblance to Angela Landsbury? Here's Jen essaying one of Angela's best-known Broadway show stoppers:

Some countries can be content

With free expression and free dissent.

That’s okay for some countries

That aren’t terribly nice.

Some countries don’t draw a line

‘Tween speech that’s hateful and speech that’s fine.

That’s ducky for some countries

And they’ll soon pay the price.

But “nice” it goes well with ice.

And my advice: mind your words

‘Cuz they can offend,

And mind your thoughts,

‘Cuz they can cause harm.

Don’t be mean or rude, snide or nasty

Come on, people, heed my alarm.

Some countries aren’t in a thrall

To cant about “muliticultural”.

That’s peachy for some countries

For some misrun countries now and then.

But some countries ain’t Jen.

I had a dream,

A wonderful dream, people,

All about curbing the wrong kind of voices

And folks’d self-censor, because it’s their choices…

Some countries are out of touch.

Their First Amendment is such a crutch

That’s freedom in some countries,

In some misrun countries now and then.

Well, they can go get stuffed

But not Jen!

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

Conservatives are from Venus; Liberals are from Uranus: Phyllis Chesler says that when it comes to Muslima religious attire, Liberals and Conservatives are worlds apart:

1. Liberals do not really believe there is a war on, that there is any clear and present danger; they fear that any relaxation of our fundamental civil rights will either lead to their permanent loss or, like the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, will turn into a permanent blot on America’s moral reputation.

2. Liberals do not like the idea of the government telling them how to dress or nosing into their business. Wait a minute. I thought this is a conservative position…and it is. But what liberals seem to have in mind is clothing, sexual activities, free speech, and the right not to be coerced into any religious practice; conservatives tend to first think about the right to bear arms, family morality, or the right to practice one’s religion apart from state scrutiny.

Then, surely, liberals will best safeguard Asma al-Ghul’s right to dress “immodestly” at the beach. Ah–not so fast.

3. Liberals tend to view all immigrant groups, especially if they are Muslims, as persecuted victims, not as barbaric oppressors. Therefore, very often, essentially secular or atheistic liberals are willing to believe that the burqa is truly mandated by the Qu’ran (it is not) and is a religious right that should be guaranteed in America. Thus, if the equivalent of the Hamas police move here and force or persuade their women to wear the burqa, how will liberals be able to distinguish a free choice from a forced choice when someone else’s religious rights are being invoked? Will their feminism trump their multi-culti respect for Islam?

5 Liberals believe in “choice.” Thus, they also believe that women have the right to choose: an abortion (I strongly agree with this), to rent out their wombs (I strongly disagree with this), or to work as a prostitute or in the pornography industry. (I am a long-time abolitionist on these last two points). Call me conservative; call me an Old Time radical feminist, because I understand the difference between a “free” choice and a “forced” choice. Fifteen year old girls who have run away from home to escape lives of incest and physical abuse are not freely choosing to sell sex for food. And, when they turn eighteen—now that’s a subject for another blog.

6. For such reasons, I cannot persuade most true liberals that most/many? /some? /a handful of Muslim women wear the burqa mainly in order to avoid being killed. Western liberals simply do not believe it. Their professors and most beloved journalists have not educated them about the phenomenon. They want to believe that everyone is like them.

Yes, I know, I know: There are all kinds of ostensibly religious pro-burqa testimonials one can find in the mass media (and even in the comments section of my last three blogs) written by women and by men about “modesty” but I doubt that true modesty requires putting a bag over one’s head or dropping a sheet over oneself in public. Surely, as Daniel Pipes has pointed out, there are more “modest” ways to be modest.

Ways that don’t oblige you to perambulate in a black pup tent--thus transforming you into a nullity, a blankness, a void--and potentially suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency, he means. Well, they could always dress like Haredi women--modestly, but in a way that doesn’t turn them into walking ghosts.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments (2)

Broom and black cat included, presumably: Are you a chick who’s looking to make a career change or is, as they say, between jobs? The Beeb reports on a unique position that may or may not be up your alley:

A job centre is advertising a "witch" vacancy with tourist site Wookey Hole, in Somerset, for £50,000 a year.

The witch, who has to live in the site's caves, is expected to teach witchcraft and magic.

Wookey Hole staff say the role is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch and do the things witches do.

The advert for the post, placed in the local press as well as job centres, says applicants must be able to cackle and cannot be allergic to cats.

The job has come up after the previous witch retired from the role.

"We are witchless as the moment so need to get the role filled as soon as possible," said Daniel Medley from the tourist destination...

Witchless are they? Kind of like how the Toronto Star feels when Antonia Zerbisias goes on vacation (and, hey, wouldn’t she be ideal for the job?).

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

Hezbollah opposes the right of return: The right of Lebanese who left for sanctuary in Israel to return to Lebanon, that is. It's still fully onside with the Palestinians' "right" to "return" to--and overwhelm through sheer numbers--the world's solitary Jewish state.

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

Hu's on first?: Now seems a perfect time to revive a classic routine.

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

Tuesday, 07 July 2009

Obama sends Joe to the woodshed: Seems the Veep misspoke. Or spoke too soon. Or spoke without permission. Or something:

WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States had "absolutely not" given Israel a green light to attack Iran over its nuclear program, but he said Washington cannot "dictate to other countries what their security interests are."

"It is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels," Obama told CNN in an interview during his trip to Russia.

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC's "This Week" program on Sunday that Israel had a sovereign right to decide what is in its best interest in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, a comment seen by some as giving Israel a green light to attack.

Asked if that was the intent of his administration, Obama said: "Absolutely not."

"I think Vice President Biden stated a categorical fact which is we can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are," Obama said.

"We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and solve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East," he said.

Obama came into office earlier this year hoping to engage Iran in a dialogue to ease tensions between the two longtime rivals, but his efforts have made little progress so far…

Obama’s Iran policy: If at first you don’t succeed in "engaging" the mullahs, try, try grovelling again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:59 | link | comments

The other CHRC: The Caribbean Harm Reduction Coalition, an organization devoted to helping people in the area reduce harmful drug use/abuse, and which doesn't appear to browbeat citizens into holding their tongues about certain designated "sacred" topics--Islam, homosexuality, state censorship, multiculturalism and the like.

Think folks in the Caribbean could be persuaded to do a trade?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:02 | link | comments

Unbelievable chutzpah: Cash-strapped Los Angeles is asking Jackson fans to pony up donations to help defray the estimated $2.5 cost of their idol's memorial.

My suggestion: ask Mariah Carey and the other egregiously rich celebs participating in the event for some shekels, and sent the remainder of the bill to the Jackson estate (which is going to cash in--big time--on his death).

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

Bernie’s new M.O.?: Could it be that the CJC’s head honcho is finally taking Alan Borovoy’s advice to fight “hate speech” with “effective invective” instead of by running off in a panic to the state censors every time some bonehead expresses a fondness for Hitler? One can only hope and pray, since Bernie himself twitters this one, from the Ottawa Citizen (my bolds):

The head of the Canadian Jewish Congress says he was "astounded" at the comments of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, who praised Adolf Hitler this weekend as being a man who "got things done."

Bernie Farber said Ecclestone, the auto racing league's commercial rights owner, should stick to what he knows best rather than making outlandish statements

"The man is an ignoramus," Farber said. "There's nobody today that would honestly pat Adolf Hitler on the back as being somebody worthy of any attention. The only thing Hitler is worthy of is being a historical evil. Ecclestone's expertise is in racing cars; let him stick to pistons and engines.

"It's absolutely astounding that in the year 2009 that a person like Bernie Ecclestone, or anybody that has the ear of the public, would in any way pay any positive attention to the most evil figure in modern history. The man should be ashamed of himself."

In an interview with The Times newspaper in London, Ecclestone praised strong leadership and said that he preferred totalitarian regimes to democracies.

Ecclestone said: "In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was, in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.

"In the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it ... so either way he wasn't a dictator."

Saying he liked "strong leaders" such as former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Ecclestone suggested that FIA president Max Mosley would make a good British prime minister.

Farber stopped short of suggesting any actions be taken against Ecclestone, who has compared women to household appliances in the past.

"I think sometimes when you hold people up to the glare of public attention and let the people decide for themselves once they see what a person is all about, that sometimes is more than enough," Farber said.

Wow. That represents nothing less than a quantum leap forward for someone so heavily invested in the censorship industry. Of course, it could be that he "stopped short" because Ecclestone is out of the Canadian thought cops' jurisdiction. But let's give Bernie the benefit of the doubt for now and see if this is a sign that there's been a major breakthough in his thinking.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:28 | link | comments (7)

Uighur woes: The--what does the media like to call it again? oh, yeah--"ethnic unrest" in China inspired the following couplet:

Whither the Uighurs, and the trouble we’re seein’?

Why not ship ‘em off to the Caribbean?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:10 | link | comments

Is it over yet?: So out of synch with the zeitgeist am I that I plan to do to the Jackson memorial service, which "over a billion people" are said to be planning to watch, what I did to the Obama inauguration, i.e. avoid it like the bleeping plague.

Think I'll pass the time reading Pushkin. In Urdu.

Update: Some Pushkin for the occasion:

Good for the poet who applies

His art in royal chambers' splendor.

Of tears and laughter crafty vendor,

Adding some truth to many lies,

He tickles the sated taste of lords

For more greatness and awards.

And decorates all their feasts,

Receiving clever praise as fees...

But, by the doors, so tall and stout --

On sides of stables and backyards --

The people, haunted by the guards,

Hark to this poet in a crowd.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments (2)

And in another display of intellectual pretentiousness, er, prowess…: Obama, that smarty-pants, reads Pushkin, writes American Thinker James Lewis:

Two weeks ago it was the Urdu poets. This week it's Obama's love for Pushkin's poetry. The week before it was probably the Bhadavad-Gita in Sanskrit. If it's Tuesday this must be Zorba the Greek --- in Greek.

It's all in a day's light reading for our Obama. Whaddaguy! He lifts weights two hours a day and has pecs like Arnie. Then he spends the rest of the day reading Urdu, Russian, and classical Arabic. Then he runs the three-trillion dollar US economy down the tubes all by himself, takes over the banks, passes Health Care for All (and saves money in the bargain!) and has just enough time left to read his daughters to sleep. Urdu poems, natch. Gotta get those kids started early…

Oh, James, you’re just upset because there’s an intellectual--a reader of great books--in the White House instead of the previous guy--what’s his name again? The closest he ever came to great books was marrying a librarian. As that famous poet Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins once remarked, “Urdu You Love?”...

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:22 | link | comments (2)

De trop in the Globe: The public memorial for a song-and-dance guy lifts Globe and Mail pop-cult diva Lynn Crosbie to new heights of pretentiousness:

…What does all of this mean? This trash, where, occasionally, doves alight?

At its best, it is seizure; it is looting. It is crazed grief, one step removed from authentic grief, as none of us knows him, expressions of love that are both true and ridiculous, as what we want, is nothing but an ethereal, glittering bead of his magnetic fame.

At it best, it is seizure; it is looting. It is crazed grief, one step removed from authentic grief, as none of us knows him, expressions of love that are both true and ridiculous, as what we want, is nothing but an ethereal, glittering bead of his magnetic fame.

At its worst, it is not so complicated: It is guilty stars (Jackson is reported to have had a serious cardiac event a few years ago and when asked who should be called he said, “There's no one.”); it is the smug moral superiority, ironic detachment and hate that hounded the man to his grave.

Another persistent rumour is that Jackson's coffin will be encased in concrete, because his family fears grave robbers. This fear seems derived from Thriller – and is there a more poignantly repulsive zombie than a hard-core fan? – and justified. Shortly after Elvis Presley was buried in Los Angeles's Forest Lawn Cemetery, someone tried to rob his grave: His body was moved then to Graceland's Meditation Garden.) The concrete is a luscious metaphor: Fans cannot reach or revive this sleeping beauty – it is time, in Emily Dickinson's staunch words, to summon a “formal feeling,” to shake off the “chill” and “stupor” towards “the letting go.”

Today, Jackson he rests like a small fierce jewel in a complex Byzantine setting. There he is, not at peace, for his energy is wild and mournful; because peace is not absence.

There he lies, inexplicably halted. “You're just a particle of loveliness,” one wishes to say, quoting him, lovesick also.

“A particle of loveliness”? Oh, dear. Lynn seems to have succumbed to her own worse impulses as a writer--with no editor in sight to reign her in. Can she really believe he was “hounded to his grave” by our “smug moral superiority,” etc.? All indications are he was done in by the need to replenish his depleted financial coffers, the stress of a too-rigorous rehearsal schedule for his upcoming 50--count ‘em--50 shows, and the resulting insomnia that prompted him to mainline a knock-out drug rarely seen outside operating rooms. But, hey, I’m just a prosaic blogger who would never think to quote Emily Dickinson, of all people, in the context of the mass lunacy unleashed by the untimely passing of talented but inestimably creepy pop icon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:14 | link | comments (2)

Monday, 06 July 2009

“I want to go simply when I go…”: 60s folkie Tom Paxton sings a Steve Goodman song that may well describe what’s in store tomorrow when a moon-dancer who had a penchant for disfiguring plastic surgery and an unhealthy obsession with prepubescent lads is laid to rest.

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

Come again?: Today’s example of deliciously empty, self-important bafflegab comes courtesy my favourite UN body, the UN Human Rights Council. It’s supposed to describe one of the council’s manifold resolutions this year:

The Council decided to establish an Open-ended Working Group of the Human Rights Council to explore the possibility of elaborating an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure complementary to the reporting procedure under the Convention.

Yummy! And how nice that the Working Group will be Open-ended. So much airier and less stressful than those Close-ended groups.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:42 | link | comments

Blinded by the leftism: Victor Davis Hanson describes Obama’s blinkered world view:

What is our logic? Given the history of imperialism and colonialism, anytime in Latin America anyone in uniform arrests an elected president in a tie, it is a coup and must be condemned, no matter the legality or the ideology involved.

But let us not miss the forest for the trees. The larger fact is that suddenly the United States has become a sort of revolutionary force itself. At the next G-8 summit there will be no more hectoring of Europeans to stop selling sniper rifles to Iran or sophisticated machines tools used to enhance nuclear centrifuge operations.

Instead, the Europeans–”shocked” over the mayhem in the streets of Teheran, and still hurting over the kidnapping of British sailors, the jailing of Western journalists, and the arrest of Western embassy personnel–will be hectoring the Obama administration to please tighten up the old Bush sanctions. (In the new, no-more-anti-ballistic-missile age, Frankfurt and Paris will soon be in range of the planned Iranian nukes.)

And Americans, I think, will resist increased sanctions or embargoes. As a transracial, transnational Gandhi-like figure, Obama believes that he alone understands and empathizes with the previously demonized Third-World revolutionary leaders.

Yes, on our behalf it is his destiny to talk with them, and tame them in a manner of speaking, perhaps to stop their terrorizing, drug-running, arming, and bullying, or more likely the overt manifestation of all that. In other words, he’s our Che, a universal pop star, part Bono, part Mandela, part Michael Jackson, and part Al Gore that deflects criticism that we are all Texas oil men with twangs who talk about Gawd, Eye-Rack, and Jasus.

This metamorphosis is to be accomplished by Obama’s singular charisma and ‘empathy’: as a person of color, from a paternal Muslim family, and of African heritage, Obama “knows” that he too has been on the butt-end of Western hegemony (forget the subsidized ride to prep school, Occidental, Columbia, Harvard, the mansion, etc.; we are talking of perceptions, not reality), and thus can assure an Ahmadinejad he ‘feels’ what it is like to be an Iranian leader with all sorts of globalized and Western-inspired pressures. Just as the elite Sotomayor knows what it is to be a Latina in a repressive America, so Obama knows what it is to be a leader of color in a Western-dominated global order…

Crikey, it’s like having one of my old camp counsellors--an earnest, sanctimonious, full-of-himself college kid majoring in sociology or poli/sci--in charge of the entire free world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:30 | link | comments (1)

Sharia law in the U.K.: It’s there, beware, get used to it. From the Sunday Mercury:

TWENTY-two secret Islamic courts are issuing rulings under strict sharia law in the Midlands, the Sunday Mercury can reveal.

The courts sit in mosques and community centres, with self-styled Muslim scholars offering judgements – referred to as fatwas – online.

Their rulings include statements condemning homosexuals to harsh beatings and ordering a wife to have sex with her husband “even if she is busy in the kitchen” at the time.

Experts from thinktank Civitas, who have compiled a report on sharia law in the UK, say it is impossible to find out what goes on in the closed courts and fear there could be more of them operating in secret.

The tribunals usually settle financial or family disputes according to Islamic principals, but judgements published online by self-styled Muslim scholars based in the Midlands have offered illegal advice.

These include rulings that men can coerce their wives to have sex with them, that husbands can ban their wives from leaving the marital home, and warnings that Muslims must not join the police.

Decisions made by religious tribunals are legally binding and can be enforced in county courts and the high court if both parties have agreed to be ruled by sharia.

Civitas director Dr David Green last night called for an immediate end to the recognition of Islamic courts by British law.

He said: “The reality is that for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation, backed by the ultimate sanction of a death threat.”

Previous research had suggested there were only two sharia courts in the Midlands – one in Birmingham and one in Warwickshire.

The Sunday Mercury revealed that a Muslim Arbitration Tribunal was operating the UK’s first official sharia court at Hijaz College Islamic University in Nuneaton last year.

Now the shock report by Civitas has revealed the existence of 85 sharia courts across the country.

More than a quarter of these are based in the Midlands, with eight sitting in Birmingham, while Stoke-on-Trent, Worcester, Burton-on-Trent, Derby, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Leicester also have sharia tribunals.

Islamic studies expert Denis Maceoin, who compiled the report, said there could be more Muslim tribunals operating without the government’s knowledge…

If they’re so secret, how come the Sunday Mercury knows about them? Makes you wonder how many secret courts are secretly operating in Canada.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:35 | link | comments

Slaughter! Massacre! Disproportionate response!: Oh, never mind. It's just Chinese indiscrimately killing Uighurs, and since it doesn't involve Jews and Palestinians not worth a second thought.

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

There is no She Bop in Islam: A cleric warns the ladies, "Hands off."

Cyndi Lauper begs to differ.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments

An unwelcome addition to the multiculti landscape: The Ceeb reports on a pervy “refugee” we can’t seem to get rid of (‘cause if we did he could, you know, get hurt or something):

A convicted sex offender and drug dealer who was supposed to be deported from Canada after leaving Manitoba's Stony Mountain Penitentiary this week is free on bail and remains in the country.

Farid Noedost, 33, is an Iranian refugee convicted two years ago of drug trafficking and sex offences involving minors. His convictions should have meant his immediate deportation once he was released on parole but on Thursday, Noedost went before an Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada hearing in an effort to prevent being sent away.

He told the board he would face execution if he was sent back to Iran. Immigration officials agreed, ruling the danger Noedost faced in being sent back outweighed the risks he poses to the Canadian public.

Michael McPhelan of the Immigration and Refugee Board, who ordered Noedost's release with strict conditions, called the man's conduct while in Canada 'despicable' and said he was a "danger to girls under 18."

McPhelan also said he was not convinced Noedost would not reoffend, but said there were no grounds to keep him locked up. Noedost has served his sentence.

Canadian immigration law states that a Geneva Convention refugee can't be deported unless the federal public safety minister declares him to be a dangerous offender.

Noedost came to Canada years ago and was given asylum as a Geneva Convention refugee. He was granted permanent resident status in 2001.

His lawyer told the immigration board that Noedost was granted the status because of the persecution he suffered in Iran.

Canada Border Services has asked for Noedost to be designated as a dangerous offender but no hearing has been scheduled yet.

While on parole, Noedost is prohibited from being around female minors and is required to meet weekly with a parole officer and monthly with immigration officials.

I’m sure parents of female minors can sleep soundly at night knowing a parole officer and immigration officials are keeping their daughters safe from this predator.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:50 | link | comments

The worst shopping experience ever: What’s the biggest indignity faced by a woman in Saudi Arabia? The prohibition against driving? The encumbrance of the black shroud, the public symbol of her repression? How about this--the fact that she is forced to buy her lacy unmentionables from someone with an Adam’s apple because chicks aren’t allowed to sell lingerie? From FrontPage Magazine:

In June 2009, a group of 26 women completed a course in how to fit, stock, and sell lingerie. It was the first course of its kind ever offered in the Saudi Kingdom. Trained by an Australian woman using colorful bras donated by Victoria Secret, the women engaged in a ten day course culminating in a small graduation ceremony at a college in Jeddah on June 23, 2009. However, the graduates might have celebrated pre-maturely, as they are forbidden to put their new skills into practice.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy, governed by Wahabbi ideology which is implemented through strict Sharia (Koranic) law. The society operates under rules of gender apartheid by segregating men and women who are not close relatives or married to each other. The two sexes are not permitted to stand in the same fast food lines together, be in a room alone together, travel in the same car, or meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Violations of these rules are punishable by law.

Additionally, women’s rights are drastically lagging behind those of men. Women are forbidden to vote or drive. They cannot go to college or have surgery without permission from a male relative. And in courtroom trials, the testimony of a woman counts one half that of a man’s. In accordance with their country’s religion, women must be covered in black abbayas from head to toe whenever they are in public.

It seems ironic that in this environment women would be forced to discuss the details of their intimate apparel purchases with male strangers. Yet, this is the case.

Traditionally, women in Saudi Arabia were not permitted to own businesses of any kind, including lingerie shops. Until recently, all the lingerie shops were staffed 100% by men. In keeping with the notion that accurate depictions of women should not be publicly displayed, the lingerie shops showcased headless mannequins dressed in pajamas. Inside the stores were racks of racy lingerie, sexy bras, lacy teddies and thongs. But there was nowhere to try on lingerie before buying it, as the religious police banned dressing rooms in women’s apparel stores. They consider it is morally wrong for a woman to undress in a public place…..even when nobody can see her.

To make matters worse, because unmarried men and women are forbidden by law to touch each other, male staffers cannot measure women for their proper bra size. Women are left in a position where they must guess what size they wear. Sometimes they are subjected to the scrutiny of male staffers who size them up, looking them up and down, perhaps in disagreement with their request. “No, I think you need a smaller cup size” or “You should get a larger cup size” are common comments made by the salesmen…

If I were a Saudi chick I‘d boycott these stores and buy online (assuming that’s permissible in wacky Wahhabiland).

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:36 | link | comments

Sunday, 05 July 2009

Museum’s reach exceeds its grasp: If you have a few minutes to spare, you might want to take a gander at this promotional DVD for Canada’s Museum for Human Rights. It’s what you might call a real eye-opener since it reveals that the museum is not a “museum” as you or I understand it--a place to exhibit and preserve ephemera, relics and oddities from the past. My word, no. It has far loftier goals. It aims at nothing less than transforming the entire planet. And how does it hope to fulfill such an ambitious agenda? As far as I can tell, it’s with lots of fancy technology like “holograms” and gimmicks like an “electronic human rights key” that will enable visitors to feel good and guilty by listening to shadows telling us about Canada’s awful history vis-à-vis its Aboriginals (and, lucky us, we can even “step into a sharing circle”). We will also get to learn about how crappy it feels to be “bullied” at school and “the importance of clean air and drinking water for all humanity”--that is, stuff that really isn’t about “human rights” per se, but that’s a nice distraction from a global scene that reveals that “human rights” are reserved for a fairly small segment of us, while the majority is forced to live under sharia and other brutally oppressive systems.

All in all, it amounts to little more than feel-good mush for the clueless masses. And because it presents such a falsely sanguine view of mankind (i.e. that we’re destined to continue “ascending” and “advancing”), I predict it will end up doing more harm than good (not to mention the harm it’s doing to taxpayers’ wallets).

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

Truth stranger than fiction: The report about Steve McNair, the famous football player, being involved an apparent murder-suicide, is bizarre enough. But I noticed something that makes the story even freakier (my italics):

NASHVILLE, TN -- Former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was killed in an apparent murder-suicide with a young woman who worked at an Opry Mills restaurant and had been dating him for months.

McNair, a hometown hero who did extensive charity work in Nashville, had several gunshot wounds, including one to the head. He was found on the sofa of a Second Avenue condominium that he rented, police said. Sahel Kazemi, 20, was found on the floor near him with a single gunshot wound to her head. A pistol was found near her body.

Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said investigators were not actively looking for suspects Saturday night but had not ruled out any scenarios. He stopped short of calling the deaths a murder-suicide, but said the police should be able to classify the deaths today after autopsies and forensic work.

"We expect to make additional conclusions after the autopsy process," Aaron said

Though much of the attention was on the Second Avenue crime scene, police also swarmed Kazemi's apartment at the Cherry Creek complex in Hermitage on Saturday. They questioned neighbors who said they often saw McNair visiting Kazemi. Sometimes, neighbors said, she would arrive home in a limousine in the early morning. They also heard arguments between her and her boyfriend.

Most recently, she had a new black car she said was a gift from her boyfriend.
She was arrested in that car, a black 2007 Cadillac Escalade registered to her and McNair, early Thursday at Broadway and Ninth Avenue, just two days before the deaths. She was charged with driving under the influence and refusing to take a breath test. She told police she was not drunk, but high.

McNair was in the car, a fact that was not in the police affidavit but was confirmed by police Saturday night. Police allowed McNair to take a cab home. He later bailed Kazemi out of jail, according to bail bondsmen.

Ex-boyfriend worried
Keith Norfleet, who said he dated Kazemi for four years before they broke up five months ago, was worried about her dating McNair, a married man. She met McNair while she was a waitress at Dave & Buster's Grand Sports Cafe, he said.

Norfleet said he moved here with Kazemi from Jacksonville, Fla., where her family lives. She was raised by a sister. Her mother, a native of Iran, was murdered when Kazemi was 9, Norfleet said…

Her mother--goosebumps time--was Zahra Kazemi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments (3)

Funny guy: Looking for some boffo entertainment? The Toronto Star suggests you take in this show:

F----ing Stephen Harper: How I Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and Where It Got Me

Glen Morris Theatre, 4 Glen Morris St. Next performance Tuesday at 6 p.m.

Recommended

Gay journalist/activist Rob Salerno weaves a comic tale about a fictional encounter on the campaign trail during which, after repeatedly having his interview requests refused, he accosted the PM at an Etobicoke school and basically made brief contact with the Right Honourable testes (described as "small c-Conservative).

It's really just an opportunity to remind the audience – and all Canadians – that the governing Conservatives under Harper have a pretty anti-gay track record. (Not exactly a revelation.)

Accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, Salerno demonstrates some flair and wit. Example: his take on Montreal MP Justin Trudeau: "With hair that good, he's got to be at least bi-curious."

But Salerno needs to sharpen his claws if he intends to draw blood.

“The Right Honourable testes”? Move over Neil Simon, there’s a new comic genius treading the boards!

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

Harpoon Siddiqui, state censorship’s biggest fan: You have to give Harpoon Siddiqui credit. Another pundit might have avoided the subject of “hate speech” mere days after a Canadian Arab Federation executive was heard to "f**k Canada" on the occasion of its birthday, and it was revealed that a Muslim U of T student would not be charged with a hate crime despite having said stuff that would make even Jim Keegstra and David Ahenakew blush. Not our Harpoon, though. He’s determined to brazen it out:

Where do you stand on the classic Canadian issue of freedom of speech vs. hate? There's the constitutionally guaranteed free speech. And there are anti-hate laws, under the Criminal Code as well as the federal and provincial human rights codes.

The Supreme Court has upheld both sets of laws. Neither trumps the other. They work in balance.

But of late, Canadians are deeply divided on the issue:

• A small but noisy lot favours unfettered free speech and no anti-hate laws. A less absolutist sub-group feels that if we must legislate against hate, we had better do it under the Criminal Code, which demands a higher proof for conviction. Let's not have human rights commissions refereeing free speech.

The media are in this group – in the company of libertarians.

• Many Canadians still support anti-hate laws. Some among them, though, want those laws applied mostly in areas of concern to them.

Yes, they'd say, hear complaints about anti-Semitism and gay bashing but not about anti-Islamism.

Partly because of these competing forces and partly because of differences in jurisdictions, we have ended up with a hodgepodge system.

The federal and several provincial rights commissions do not hear complaints against the media. But the ones in Alberta and B.C. do.

All commissions curb hate on the Internet. But the ones that won't regulate the media don't know what to do with media websites.

Richard Moon of the University of Windsor, an expert on freedom of expression, suggested Ottawa get out of Internet policing. Recently the federal commission responded that it does have a role in rolling back web-based hate, which can be spread fast, far and wide.

That's where the matter stands, awkwardly…

No, Harpoon, that’s where Islamists and leftist ideologues stand, triumphantly. My letter:

What a funny concept of “free speech” we have here in Canada. The way it seems to work is that Islamists have the freedom to say whatever hateful things they want about Christians, Jews and, of course, “Zionists,” knowing full well that authorities will never call them to account for their hateful words. Meanwhile, if you’re, say, a First Nations leader who makes similarly hateful comments about “the Jews” you can count on being dragged through the courts, and if you’re a Christian clergyman who happens to write a letter to an editor criticizing homosexuality, you’ll be hauled in front of a “human rights” body and forbidden to weigh in publicly on the subject for the rest of your life. And if you’re someone who supports Israel and has the temerity to protest the way the Jewish state is being systematically slandered and smeared in plays such as Seven Jewish Children, at conferences such as the one recently held at York University devoted to “the one state solution” (i.e. Israel’s demise), and by anti-Zionists such as George Galloway, you can count on Haroon Siddiqui and other powerful media voices to slam you for expressing your views.

It’s not, as Siddiqui suggests, that our “hate law” is in danger of being seen as an ass. It’s that Canadians are asses for thinking that state censorship has any place in a free society, and for tolerating a law that is so thoroughly asinine and so inconsistenly applied.

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

Saturday, 04 July 2009

Too late, turncoat, Elvis has left the building: Colin Powell is reportedly cautioning Barack Obama about big governemt.

He's kidding, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:58 | link | comments

Acceptable--and unacceptable--“free” speech: Michael Coren nails it (my bolds):

…Just outside of Toronto a young Muslim student was told by the police and the judiciary that he would not be charged or prosecuted for writing on the Internet that Canadian soldiers should be killed in Canada so that they could not travel to Islamic countries such as Afghanistan. He also repeatedly called for "evil and vile" Jews to be slaughtered.

Direct calls for violence towards an identifiable group and pleas for the killing of members of the Canadian military.

Yet politicians, lawyers and police officers conclude that nothing was said that broke the law.

It could, of course, be argued that the dunderhead has every right to be offensive on the Internet. Problem is, the authorities have not thought so when comments nowhere near as violent and incendiary have been made in the past about Muslims and gays.

Who says?

Which leads us to realize that it is not what is said but about whom it is said and who says it that is the issue.

A Muslim calling for Jews and soldiers to be killed apparently is not as bad as a Christian claiming that homosexuality is sinful or a Jew stating that terror is sometimes committed in the name of Islam. OK? Good. It's important that you understand so as not to get into any problems.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:48 | link | comments (1)

American meanies: Globe and Mail scribbler Omar El Akkad wants to know why U.S. border guards are “so mean”:

There's a story from border-guard lore about the day Ahmed Ressam drove from Canada into the U.S. to detonate a bomb in Los Angeles.

Mr. Ressam – the only convicted terrorist caught trying to enter the U.S. from Canada – drove a rental car onto the ferry from Victoria to Washington State in December of 1999. U.S. border inspectors searching his car found some white powder in the trunk, and began testing it as though it were a drug. But after watching Mr. Ressam's panicked reaction to the way they were handling what turned out to be a massive explosive, they figured maybe they had something else on their hands.

In the decade since, the story of Mr. Ressam's capture has come to encapsulate everything that the task of U.S. border protection has become – a mandate that has shifted from counter-narcotics to counterterrorism, and whose biggest success stories are as likely to be the result of heightened vigilance on the part of border officers as blind luck.

That greater emphasis on security has changed the border-crossing experience. In turn, the U.S. border officer has become the stern symbol of post-9/11 America.

The perception among many Canadians is that today's U.S. border officers are meaner. The reality is that they are likely to be younger, under more pressure and – should you give them a reason – yes, meaner.

There used to be a time when crossing the border, even amid the gridlock of a holiday weekend like this one, was a quick formality. In the age of counterterrorism, however, that's no longer the case – even though there are more border officials than ever.

That greater emphasis on security has changed the border-crossing experience. In turn, the U.S. border officer has become the stern symbol of post-9/11 America…

Um, and that’s supposed to be America’s fault? Funny, I thought the jihadis and their terrorist antics were, you should forgive the expression, the root cause of the heightened security. Is Omar implying that being “nice” to Canadians is more important than keeping terrorist riff-raff from entering the U.S.?

Frankly, we here in Canada could do with a little less “nice” and a lot more “mean” (and for that matter, now that Obama's running things so could the U.S.).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:10 | link | comments

Still clueless: For the life of it, the Canadian Jewish Congress can’t figure out why Ontario authorities won’t press charges against enthusiastic Judenhass-spewer Salman Hossain. Surely it must be that the right person--i.e. the province’s attorney-general--hasn’t been properly informed about the situation. Once he finds out about it, though, and the CJC can persuade him to arrest Hossain and, oh yeah, censor the entire flipping Internet, all will be swell once more. Here’s the CJC’s news release which urges authorities to get with the Official Jews’ censorship program:

Jun 30, 2009 - Canadian Jewish Congress calls for further criminal investigation into Internet hate: Meeting requested with Attorney-General

Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region called upon the Ministry of the Attorney General to conduct a review of statements alleged to have been made by Salman Hossain to determine if charges should be laid under section 319(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada.

"The statements alleged to have been made by Salman Hossain appear to reflect a deep hatred of Jews and speak to a mindset that embraces the most corrosive conspiracy theories," said Mark Goldberg, chair of the community relations committee of Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region "These statements present Jews as puppet-masters, as a treacherous nation and as the perpetrators of 9-11."

"The statements alleged to have been made by Salman Hossain proclaim that Jews are troublemakers and should be thrown out of a variety of industries - and indeed out of the country," said Len Rudner, regional director of Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region. "He looks forward to the opportunity of shooting 'a few Jews' and hopes for the killing of 'Western Soldiers'. Such statements go beyond offensive and give every appearance of crossing the line into willful promotion of hatred as defined by the Criminal Code."

"It is our understanding that this matter did not reach the office of the Attorney General," said Goldberg. "For this reason, we are requesting a meeting with Minister Chris Bentley to discuss this matter in greater detail."

Yeah, I’m sure that'll make all the difference.

The Jews don’t get it--the multiculturalist ethos they were hoping would protect them from Jew-haters has ended up being the excuse craven authorities will use to not protect them from Muslims. The CJC had assumed that by coming to the aid of Islamists and doing dirt to the likes of Mark Harding, it was serving Jewish interests. It wasn’t. What it was really doing, of course, was serving the Islamist agenda (which, as should be crystal clear by now, dovetails quite nicely with multiculturalism). I’d call the CJC’s current plight--i.e. its inability to get authorities to do anything about Islamic Jew-hate--Harding’s revenge, only I’m sure, being a Christian pastor, he’s likely to have forgiven these pathetically misguided Jews by now (assuming he’s still around, that is).

Update: The O.P.P. Glee Club revives an old Patsy Cline hit:

Craven,

We’re craven and feelin’ so wimpy.

We’re craven, craven and feelin’ so blue.

We know it looks like we’re runnin’ for cover

Since “hate speech” is something that Muslims can’t do.

Standards, why do we have double standards?

Wond’rin’ why in the world we’re such wimps?

Craven, ‘cuz some folks can get rather testy.

We’re cravin’ some quiet; don’t want ‘em to riot

And we’re craven and dhimmified fools.

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

The curious case of the kafir in the Trudeaupia: The Mark Harding “hate speech” case just gets curiouser and curiouser (or outrageouser and outrageouser). I found this, from 2002 (my bolds):

An Ontario man convicted of promoting hatred against Muslims says his community-service sentence has included indoctrination into Islam.

After losing an appeal to Canada's Supreme Court on Oct. 17, Mark Harding must resume his sentence of two years probation and 340 hours of community service under the direction of Mohammad Ashraf, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ont.

Harding, 47, said he had one session under Ashraf in 1998 before an appeal process stayed the sentence.

Ashraf, according to Harding, said that instead of licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, "it would be better if you learned about Islam."

The cleric made it clear, Harding recalled in an interview with WorldNetDaily, that during the sessions nothing negative could be said about Islam or its prophet, Muhammad.

"He said he was my supervisor, and if I didn't follow what he said, he would send me back to jail," recounted Harding, who had been prevented from speaking publicly about his case under a gag order.

Harding was convicted in 1998 on federal hate-crimes charges stemming from a June 1997 incident in which he distributed pamphlets outside a public high school, Weston Collegiate Institute in Toronto. Harding – who said that until that point he spent most of his time evangelizing Muslims – was protesting the school's policy of setting aside a room for Muslim students to pray during school hours.

In one of his pamphlets, Harding listed atrocities committed by Muslims in foreign lands to back his assertion that Canadians should be wary of local Muslims.

The pamphlet said: "The Muslims who commit these crimes are no different than the Muslim believers living here in Toronto. Their beliefs are based on the Quran. They sound peaceful, but underneath their false sheep's clothing are raging wolves seeking whom they may devour. And Toronto is definitely on their hit list."

"The point I was trying to make is you shouldn't have a violent religion like Islam allowed in a school when Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism is not allowed," he told WND.

Harding, an evangelical Protestant, insists he has love rather than hatred toward Muslims and wants to see them go to heaven.

A lawyer for Harding, Jasmine Akbaralli, says she is trying to obtain permission for her client to serve out his sentence in an Islamic community closer to his current home in Chesley, Ont., north of Toronto and about a three-hour drive from the Islamic Society of North America.

The plea is based on humanitarian grounds, she said, due to her client's poor health.

Harding said he has suffered four heart attacks since 1997, and he and his wife and two children are penniless because his health has prevented him from maintaining his trade as a cabinetmaker.

Akbaralli said she would not comment on Harding's previous experience with Ashraf, noting that she was not representing him at the time. Calls to Ashraf and others at the Islamic Society of North America on Tuesday and Wednesday were not returned.

Understanding Islam

During his 1998 session with Ashraf, Harding was told to read a book called Towards Understanding Islam, by Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi.

On page 12 of the book, Harding noted, it gives a description of a "kafir," or infidel, a person who does not follow Islam.

"Such a man ... will spread confusion and disorder on the earth," the book says. "He will without the least compunction, shed blood, violate other men's rights, be cruel to them, and create disorder and destruction in the world. His perverted thoughts and ambitions, his blurred vision and disturbed scale of values, and his evil-spelling activities would make life bitter for him and for all around him."

"It was obvious that he intended to make sure I understood that I was a kafir," Harding said of Ashraf.

Harding's 1998 conviction on three counts of willfully promoting hatred was commended by Canadian Muslims.

"The verdict sends a message to Christians, Muslims and Jews that personal views of that nature can't be allowed in a public forum," said Shahina Siddiqui, coordinator of community relations and social services for the Manitoba Islamic Association, in a report by the Canadian evangelical publication Christian Week. "There's a fine line between freedom of expression and hatred. Harding crossed that line."

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said after the verdict that "spreading hate is against Canadian values and against Canadian law, and it doesn't matter the group that is victimized."

The verdict was not a suppression of free speech, Elmasry insisted, according to Alberta Report magazine, arguing that he would not consider scholarly books in the library that criticize Islam to be hate literature. Harding "is just trying to stereotype and put out hate literature, and he was found guilty by the courts," he said.

Harding asserted at the time that he meant to criticize only Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims. But he added that faithful Muslims will always engage in jihad, or holy war, against non-Muslims because it is required by Islamic teachings…

And there you have it. State mechanisms in a non-Islamic state, a democracy no less, were used to silence a man who was not spreading hate, but who was sounding the alarm about jihad and sharia. Even more outrageous, the clueless authorities, who know nothing about Islamic doctrine but who have swallowed the stupid juice of multiculturalism and assimilated all its attendant palaver about “stereotyping” and “victims” and hair-breadth “lines” separating “free speech” from “hate speech,” hounded him, destroyed his health and livelihood, and, shades of Stalin and Mao, served him up to the Islamists for reprogramming.

What happened to Mark Harding is beyond reprehensible. It is a crime, pure and simple. It is even worse than what supposedly happened to Maher Arar, because all of it occurred entirely inside Canada. The nation owes this man (is he still alive?) an apology and mega-millions in compensation--at least as much as we shelled out to Arar for being tortured by the Syrians.

Update: What, pray tell, is ISNA, the organization charged with reprogramming this recalcitrant kafir? According to An Activist’s Guide to Muslim Groups (posted on the FrontPage Magazine site),

ISNA enforces Wahhabi theological writ in the country’s 1,200 officially recognized mosques (out of a possible total of 4,000, including unrecognized and small congregations). ISNA president Muzammil Siddiqi, described by many of his critics as a power-hungry fanatic, appeared in an official ceremony at the National Cathedral in Washington directly following September 11. On October 28, 2000, at an anti-Israel “Jerusalem Day” rally sponsored by Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute (see below), AMC, and other groups, Siddiqi asserted, “America has to learn… if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that?… If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come.” Many of the main mosques in the U.S. were recently built with Saudi money and saddled with a requirement that they follow Wahhabi imams and Wahhabi dictates…

In other words, Harding was handed over to the very people he was warning us about. It doesn't get more Kafkaesque than that!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:10 | link | comments

Happy Independence Day, America: And in honour of your birthday--a fireworks display by North Korea.

Obviously, one tiny despotic lunatic is feeling left out of the Obama outreach program.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:35 | link | comments

Friday, 03 July 2009

George Orwell lives here: In 2009, Ontario Provincial Police decided not to press charges against Salman Hossain for hate speech, even though speaking hatred--about "the Jews" and Canadian troops in Afghanistan--is exactly what he'd been doing over and over for quite some time. By contrast, flashback to ten years ago, when Daniel Pipes mentions in Commentary Magazine that Canadian police had arrested a man for distributing "leaflets protesting the Muslim persecution of Christians," which led to a criminal conviction for "hate speech," which led to his being sentenced to "240 hours of community service and six months of probation." The Pipes quote is cited in Bruce Bawer's new book, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.

I'm been trying to chase down the name of the "hate monger," so far with no luck. Whoever the poor sap was, though, it seems clear that his "hate speech" was nothing of the kind, but that authorities, in their cravenness and imbecility, (mis)construed it as hate.

Now, let's compare what Hossain and this nameless gentleman were saying, shall we? Hossain was spewing deranged, Nazi-like invective--the type of words that no one in his right mind could possibly mistake for anything other than Judenhass. The Christian chap, on the other hand, was shedding light on an unpleasant truth--the oppression of Christians living under Muslim rule. One of these men gets a severe smack down and a criminal record. The other gets off without so much as a good talking to.

The depressing conclusion: in modern-day Canada (a.k.a. the multiculti Trudeaupia), Christians dare not say anything negative about Muslims, even if it's the truth, while Muslims are free to spew whatever vile nonsense they want to with complete impunity.

Nice to know at least someone in the land has free speech.

Update: Eureka! The guy’s name was Mark Harding. Faisal Kutty a well-known “human rights” lawyer/Islamist activist, wrote it up at the time (1998) for the National Post (my bolds):

Convicted last June of three counts of inciting hatred toward Muslims, Mark Harding was sentenced yesterday to a three-month conditional sentence, to be served outside prison, during which he has to perform 240 hours of community service. He is also prohibited from publishing or distributing material of any kind during his sentence. And he will be on probation for two years, during which he cannot publish material “similar” to the kind that landed him in court.

Harding’s conviction last summer of “willfully promoting hatred toward an identifiable group” intensified the debate between defenders of free expression and anti-hate activists. The question now is, does the punishment fit the crime?

A cabinetmaker from Meaford, Ont., Harding published and distributed pamphlets in Toronto through his organization, the Christian Standard. According to Detective Dino Doria, who lead the investigation, the Standard, which describes itself as a “self-supporting group of Christian soldiers serving God and the Lord Jesus Christ in Canada and around the world,” was a one-man show.

The Standard’s recorded phone message told callers that Muhammad was a false prophet, and that the Qur’an was the work of the devil. In a pamphlet entitled “Are all the Muslims living in Canada today TERRORISTS [sic],” Harding suggested that Muslims “sound peaceful and try to act peaceful, but underneath their false sheep’s clothing are raging wolves, seeking whom they may devour, and Toronto is definitely on their hit list.”

Harding’s defenders contended that he was only expressing his views and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. They deny that he was spreading hate. Michael Coren wrote in the Financial Post that a civil society “rests on the uninhibited expression of adult ideas concerning mature and sensitive subjects, even if some people are offended by such discourse.”

I agree. Nobody should oppose Harding’s right to believe in and to preach his belief in the exclusive truth of Christianity and the falsehood of Islam, just as a Muslim must have the right to advocate belief in the exclusive truth of Islam.

But Harding went beyond this. He tried to create fear of Muslims. He was not debating theology or ideology. If Harding’s stereotyping and calls to be wary of Muslims were not hatemongering, then what is? Bernie Farber, director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress, said that Harding’s material “could have been a tinderbox. It could lead to violence.” Many would agree.

A strong message must be sent to propagators of hate. This is especially so given the fact that hate-motivated crimes reported to police in Toronto grew by 19% in the first half of 1998, according to the interim semi-annual report released last summer by the Toronto Hate Crimes Unit. Ninety-two hate crimes were reported in the first six months of 1998, as opposed to 77 the year before. (The unit’s annual report is set to be published this month.)

Will Harding’s case have a chilling effect on debate? George Batarseh, whose group, the Arabic Pentecostal Church in Waterloo, supported Harding, said that “the arrest of Mark Harding marked the day that freedom died in Canada.” Nonsense. The slippery-slope argument is unconvincing. Opponents of the hate-promotion law overlook the fact that before a charge can be laid, the consent of the attorney-general must be obtained. Not an easy task. In the case at hand, the police received numerous complaints from Muslims and non-Muslims, but nothing could be done until Charles Harnick, Ontario’s Attorney-General, approved the charges. The section also provides for defences such as the truth of the statement and good faith argument. Moreover, as pointed out by the Supreme Court, the intent component required for a conviction is quite onerous.

At trial presided over by Justice Sidney Linden, Harding testified that he was a sincere Christian trying to present the gospel to Muslims, and apologized for offending Muslims and labelling them all as terrorists. His apology is hard to accept, given that even after his trial he was hosting a radio segment for the “Voice of Christian Martyrs,” during which he continued his diatribes against Muslims. During one segment, he had a guest from the Philippines who warned Canadians to be wary of Muslims because in the Philippines they are known to cut open pregnant Christian women and roast alive Christian youth.

Determining a sentence to fit the crime is a difficult task. The maximum sentence for the offence was two years in jail. Creativity was in order. Last year, for instance, Justice Mary Hogan of the Ontario court ordered counselling from the Canadian Jewish Congress for a man convicted of a hate-motivated crime. Harding has already spent two days in prison, suffered two heart attacks and has been dragged through the courts for a year and a half.

Given this fact, the goals of sentencing — specific deterrence, general deterrence, punishment, rehabilitation and restitution — are satisfied by yesterday’s sentence. The interests of society were best served by not imposing a jail sentence. Harding should not be made into a martyr for the defenders of irresponsible free speech and/or hatemongers.

Ironic, no?, that some three years after Kutty wrote this piece, Mo Atta and his gang of jihadi terrorists gave us 9/11, and, some years after that, a group of would-be terrorists now known as the Toronto 18 would be arrested for, in Harding’s prescient words, “putting Toronto on their hit list.” And how fitting, too, that the ever-clueless Bernie Farber turned up with some silliness about how Harding’s words could have “been a tinderbox” that might lead to violence (violence by whom--crazed Evangelicals?), and to take the Muslims’ side against the Christian.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:16 | link | comments (1)

Chinless thug puts out the welcome mat for a son of a…Muslim: Iran’s Mini-Me wants Obama to c’mon down. From VOA:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is praising U.S. President Barack Obama and says he would like to "welcome" the U.S. leader to Syria.

Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, says the Syrian leader sent a congratulatory telegram to President Obama to mark the July 4 Independence Day holiday. The telegram complimented Mr. Obama on the values he has adopted, saying they are the values that the world needs today.

Mr. Assad also extended an informal invitation to the U.S. president during an interview with Sky News, broadcast late Thursday. The Syrian leader said the U.S. "has a special role as the greatest power," but that the timing of a meeting depends on President Obama.

The Syrian leader also said that while he and Mr. Obama may not agree on everything, he said "this is how we can close the gap."

Washington has long accused Damascus of supporting groups like Hamas that the U.S. considers terrorist organizations. It also has voiced concern about Syria's human rights record and its role in neighboring Lebanon. But recent developments suggest the relationship between the U.S. and Syria may be thawing.

The U.S. announced last week that it plans to reinstate its ambassador to Syria after a four-year absence. A White House spokesman said the move reflects the administration's hope of the role that the Syrian government can play constructively, to promote peace and stability in the region.

Last month, U.S. envoy George Mitchell met with President Assad in Damascus for discussions on Middle East peace efforts.

Mitchell described the talks as serious and productive, and said Syria has an integral role to play in U.S. efforts to secure a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

“Serious and productive”--diploweasel-speak for “Syria’s on board with any ‘peace’ deal that rules out Jewish sovereignty over ‘Palestine.’” Who says Obama’s outreach efforts to the Muslim world aren’t paying off--for Muslims?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:43 | link | comments

A Grand Inquisitor vs. a fiery feline: As a Maclean’s subscriber, I get to read Mark Steyn’s weekly savaging of the supremacist and the stupefyingly clueless at least half a week before Mark posts it on his site. (It’s the whole reason I subscribe to Maclean’s.) In case you missed it in hard copy, here’s his latest column wherein he ponders why Canada’s vast ‘human rights’ bureaucracy is so afeard of one little kitty:

…Meanwhile, in Montreal, Jennifer Lynch, QC, Canada’s Chief Censor, gave a speech to CASHRA. Do you know what CASHRA is? You should. You pay for it. It’s the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies. That’s right; they have a club they all belong to. Alas, the conga lines were more muted this year. Like Professor Miller, Commissar Lynch worries about the threat to free speech in Canada. But, in her case, the Chief Censor is now complaining that I’m suppressing the free speech of her massive government bureaucracy. Seriously. As The National Post put it:

“She also claimed that those who accused the CHRC and its provincial counterparts of ‘chilling’ free expression with the prosecutions of writers such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant were themselves guilty of ‘reverse chill.’ Harsh criticism of the commissions in the media had discouraged many of their supporters from coming forward to defend their missions, she said. Others who were brave enough to speak out had been subjected to withering personal criticism in opinion pieces and letters to the editor.”

Oh, dear, what’s the country coming to? Defenders of state censorship are too cowed to speak out in favour of not letting people speak out? You could hardly ask for a better snapshot of the degradation of “human rights” in contemporary Canada than the chief censor whining to a banqueting suite full of government apparatchiks that the ingrate citizenry are insufficiently respectful of them. The bureaucrats at the top table control hundreds of millions of public dollars. Jennifer Lynch represents state power; Ezra and I represent a bunch of impecunious bloggers. Yet the Dominion of Canada has been reduced to complaining that Blazing Cat Fur is out to get it.

“Human rights” are rights for humans, for individuals …and restraints upon government power. Canada has now precisely inverted the concept to mean enhanced government power and restraints on individuals. The CHRC justifies it thus:

“In the debate about freedom of expression and freedom from hate, Canada’s commitment to equality lies at the centre.”

Ah, but there is no equality. An Alberta pastor writes a short letter to the paper about homosexuals and gets a lifetime speech ban. A Montreal imam publishes an entire book calling for homosexuals to be “beheaded”, and the CHRC rejects the complaint.

There is no “equality”, because tyranny is always whimsical…

One minor quibble with an otherwise faultless (and, as always, hilarious) analysis. The word “whimsical” seems to me too, well, light-hearted. Dr. Seuss is “whimsical.” Jen Lynch’s outfit, on the other hand, is about as light-hearted as Torquemada. The better way to describe it, I think, is “capricious”--that is, impulsive, unpredictable, changeable. The CHRC and other “human rights” bodies (the UN's "Human Rights" Council comes to mind) are “capricious” in the same way and for the same reason that a psychopath is “capricious”--as a way to keep others permanently off balance so the psychopath can remain firmly in control. At the same time, though, Lynch’s obsessive interest in Blazing Cat Fur, a blogger known for his scathing views about censorship (and such a “danger” to our vulnerable Dominion that Jen’s intrepid probers maintain close tabs on his blog) isn’t entirely “capricious,” since BCF is precisely the kind of cheeky blabbermouth the ideologically “pure” cannot abide.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:28 | link | comments (2)

Blind to the truth: Melanie Phillips blasts Allen Dershowitz for his refusal to see Obama for what he is--a bumbling, fumbling creep and no friend of Israel:

The American lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable (sic) defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west. So a piece by him in the Wall Street Journal giving expression to the rising anxiety being felt about Obama by American Jews naturally arouses great interest.

But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.

Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama’s attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn’t really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don’t support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.

It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel’s six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression. The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama – coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends -- would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.

In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do. On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That’s some omission…

What’s a hopeychanger got to do to make the scales drop from American Jews’ eyes? Surround himself with anti-Zionist advisors? Make Israel out to be the bad guy while sucking up to mullahs who are going nuclear so they can wipe the map clean of Jews? Give a sniveling, factually-inaccurate speech to the Muslim world itemizing Islam’s manifold accomplishments?

Oh, wait…been there, done that. It seems nothing short of Obama attending a Wannsee-type conference and officially signing on to the Arabs’ final solution for Israel can break the spell. And even then no doubt many, many Democratic-for-life Jews will still love their beamish ‘Bama; as an American I know explained it prior to the election: “If Adolf Hitler was the Democratic candidate for president, I would still vote Democratic.”

Hard to argue with “logic” like that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:36 | link | comments

Ducking into the tepee for cover: A former CAF executive who expressed some, ahem, colourful birthday greetings to his adopted home and native land is attempting to deflect the flak by hiding behind Aboriginals, as the National Post reports:

A former vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation is not backing down after posting "F---Canada Day" on his personal Facebook page.

Omar Shaban, a 22-year-old university student, resigned from the CAF's executive on Wednesday night after his comments, which also referred to Canada as a "genocidal state," provoked an online backlash. Rather than apologize for his remarks, however, he published an extensive blog post yesterday defending them.

"I regret the dark history this country has," he wrote. "We are only lying to ourselves if we deny the dark past that Canada was founded on. Canada Day is seen as tragic by its true indigenous population. When Canada Day is celebrated for true freedom and not mourned by the indigenous population of Canada for its colonial and dark past, I will gladly show them my support."

Earlier this week, Mr. Shaban posted on Facebook that he "couldn't be more ashamed to be Canadian." He also wrote, "Might as well kill more natives ... as a token of support for this genocidal state." As opposition swelled on Canada Day, the CAF released a statement distancing the organization from Mr. Shaban, saying it "is proud of its Canadian identity and heritage" and the comments "in no way reflect of CAF nor its feelings towards Canada."

Mohamed Boudjenane, the CAF's executive director, referred to Mr. Shaban's comments as a "stupid faux pas."

"He made a stupid mistake we don't agree with, he resigned and the board accepted his resignation," Mr. Boudjenane said. "Omar Shaban is a young activist.... Obviously he holds certain views in respect to First Nations' rights and he expressed them on Facebook. That has nothing to do with CAF as an organization, but they will be used against us. We're not surprised."

Since his resignation, Mr. Shaban says he has received supportive emails from members of the native community.

Mr. Shaban's online commentary came at a particularly bad time for the CAF, an umbrella organization that represents 40 Arab groups. In April, the group lost nearly $2-million in federal funding after its president referred to Jason Kenney, the Immigration Minister, as a "professional whore" for his support of Israel. In his blog post, Mr. Shaban fired back at the CAF's characterization of his departure. "I resigned from CAF because I do not want to be part of an organization that openly refuses to acknowledge Canada's colonial and shameful history," he wrote…

Don’t you love it when an Arab points to Canada’s “shameful history” (for which it has offered endless apologies to its native population)--as if the Arab world, which systematically and unapologetically oppresses its minorities and is a morass of tyranny and pathological Jew-hatred, were a model of good behaviour?

As for Shaban's expletive being a mere faux pas (way to downplay it there, Mohamed): how can a statement that was obviously made with malice aforethought be dismissed as a mistake?

Better watch it, Omar. Your Islamist worldview is showing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:49 | link | comments (3)

Caught on YouTube: Some Canadian senators---members of our upper governmental chamber which exists, apparently, to provide "a sober second thought" to government legislation (at least that's what I learned in my high school civics class)--were caught on tape behaving like a pack of whooping hyenas.

On sober second thought, maybe it's time to get rid of the Senate--the cushiest gig in the land, bar none--which seems to exist mostly so the government of the day can reward (and sideline) some high profile Canadians.

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

Thursday, 02 July 2009

A complaint that’s bound to fall on deaf ears: After reading Salman Hossain’s splenetic rants about “the Jews,” a member of the tribe (my tribe, not Hossain’s) took it upon himself to complain to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for the Ideologically Sound, as he informs National Post readers:

Re: No Charges For Man's Call To Kill Soldiers, June 30.

I've just finished leaving a message with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) regarding Salman Hossain's malefic statements about Jews and Canadian soldiers. Let's see if they return my call.

Better yet, let's see if the HRTO does anything about Salman Hossain's hate-mongering. A similarly unctuous tribunal went after Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant with a vengeance by reason of Mr. Steyn's uncomfortable statements about Islamic extremists and Islam's darker side. Now let's see if they go after Mr. Hossain for his mendacious statements about the Jewish people and brave Canadian soldiers.

I wonder what Salman Hossain did on Canada Day?

Michael Devolin, director, B'nai Elim, Tweed, Ont.

How did the vile Jew-loather spend Canada Day? The way he spends most days, I venture--spewing poison and stewing in triumphalism.

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

Canadian Arabs ill-served by the CAF: Barbara Kay says it’s time for the racist, Islamist, Judeophobic Canadian Arab Federation to make like a dodo and become extinct:

…Vancouver-based Omar Shaban is the Vice President for western Canada of the Canadian Arab Federation, and he is definitely not feeling the gratitude vibe. Quite the opposite. Shaban has labelled Canada a "genocidal state" and described our national holiday on Facebook as "F*** Canada Day," adding, to be sure he had made his point, "It's finally Canada Day...Couldn't be more ashamed to be Canadian." Shaban is no aberration in the CAF. As staunchly anti-Islamist Tarek Fatah reported here: "While one VP of the Canadian Arab Federation was throwing insults at Canada, another Vice President of CAF was on cable TV showering praise on the discredited leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Appearing on a Muslim cable TV show, Ali Mallah endorsed the election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as valid, and echoed the official line of the Tehran regime, claiming Western governments and Western Media were to blame for the current unrest in Iran. "

You will recall that in February of this year Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced he would slash federal funding to the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) after its president, Khaled Mouammar, called him a "professional whore" for supporting Israel. This was not a one-off. During the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign, the CAF initiated a smear campaign against Bob Rae solely on the grounds that his Jewish wife was active in her community. The CAF are also 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and last year sponsored an essay contest on "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," in which it urged high school students to channel the group's own fervid hatred of Israel for prizes.

As Jonathan Kay noted February 17 here, "Last year, the National Post editorial board hosted Mouammar and a CAF colleague for an editorial board meeting. To our collective shock, they laid blame for virtually every problem the world faces on Israel - including the alienation of Arab-Canadian children in Canada's public school system. (One explained that he had sent his daughter for education overseas - because the inclusion of Israel in Canadian textbooks was too traumatic for her to endure.)"

Many liberals reflexively rose up to challenge Jason Kenney's announcement that the government would no longer fund the CAF. The wonder to any objective observer of this hateful group is how they ever came to get a red cent from the government in the first place. Nobody in this country is forced to celebrate Canada Day, but it's a bit much, even for us phlegmatic types, to witness the alleged spokesman of a cultural community spewing hatred against a democracy they had no part in making, and whose freedoms and security, so unlike the countries they come from, they apparently take for granted. To bite the hands of one's benefactor on the most symbolic day of the benefactor's year is a provocation that must not go unchallenged. There is tolerance and there is masochism. We too often confuse them in this naive and well-meaning nation. It is past time that this intolerant and subversive organization folded its tents and retreated from the public forum. It is a disgrace to all Arabs, and it is, by the way, past time that we heard the same from a sizable number of Arab-Canadians. Loud and clear.

Masochism; multiculturalism. Same difference. The joke is that for many years the Canadian government actually forked over taxpayer shekels so that the CAF could teach new immigrants English as a second language. Of course, given the opportunity, the CAF managed to insert some messages about its understanding of “peace” and “justice” into the language lessons. And, revoltingly, the government’s imprimatur gave recent arrivals the impression that the CAF was a well-respected organization, and thus worth listening to re other subjects, such as the wickedness of Israel’s “occupation.” I’m actually pleased that the CAF has dropped the sheep’s clothing it has worn for purposes of blending into the multiculi flock, and has finally revealed the hungry wolf that lurks beneath.

Update: In the wake of the eff Canada Day comment, the Canadian Arab Federation tries to distance itself from its voluble Veep:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 1, 2009

CAF Disassociates Itself From Recent Comments

The Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) is proud of its Canadian identity and heritage andwould like to disassociate itself from recent comments attributed to one of its members.

The comments made are in no way reflective of CAF nor its feelings towards Canada.CAF sent out a Canada Day Greeting to its members and general public on June 30^th 2009 and continues to wish all Canadians a Happy Canada Day.

Quick, back into the lamb get-up before the kafirs notice our bushy tail!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:03 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 01 July 2009

Kind of patronizing, no?: The Canadian Human Rights Commission is promoting a Canada Post effort to give Aboriginal Canadians who pursue at least a year of post-secondary education a $1000 reward. In other words, to pat them on the head for doing something that in many other communities is really no biggie.

Dare one call it the soft bigotry of low expectations?

Meanwhile, over in Alberta, the pack of jackals that hounded Ezra Levant relentlessly for several years provide an update on an acronym-rich endeavour that one can barely make head or tail of:

Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination (CMARD) update on the Welcoming and Inclusive Communities initiative:

The Commission is partnering with Alberta Culture and Community Spirit and the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) to convene a networking meeting of Alberta municipalities working to build welcoming and inclusive communities (WIC). The meeting, to be held in September 2009, will be an opportunity for municipalities to learn about and share strategies for building WIC communities.

The September event follows the March 19, 2009 meeting of Alberta member CMARD municipalities involved in building welcoming and inclusive communities, which took place in Calgary. The meeting of Alberta municipalities took place after the second pan-Canadian working meeting of CMARD member municipalities.

The Commission, AUMA, and Alberta Culture and Community Spirit are members in a three-year WIC partnership to support municipalities in building their capacity to be welcoming and inclusive, and to combat racism and discrimination.

So if I’m reading correctly, the AHRCC is partnering with Alberta Culture and Community Spirit and AUMA with the aim of furthering WICs, something that was discussed following the second--not the first, mind you, but the second--pan-Canadian working meeting of CMARD member municipalities (of which I assume there are plenty, since who the heck would want to miss out on the chance to take part in a pan-Canadian working meeting, no less?).

The ‘human rights’ racket may do a crappy job of defending our free speech, but in the area of coming up with ever-newer and more confounding titles and acronyms designed to make what they do sound really important, it is virtually without peer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:48 | link | comments (1)

Glorious and free? Think again: Mark Steyn puts Salman Hossain’s hateful --but apparently entirely legal--remarks in context, that being that up here in our "human rights" Trudeaupia, “Nazis” and other pale-faces had better watch their every word lest they get hauled in front of a fully or quasi-judicidal body to account for their thought crimes, but Muslims who want to vent about, say, “the Jews” can do so secure in the knowledge that the state will adopt a hands-off approach to their, er, free speech.

The Hossain incident reminded me of another occasion when Canadian authorities decided it was okey-dokey for a Muslim to speak freely. You may recall a couple of summers ago that a jihadist cleric from Pakistan was heard to say the following on Vision TV, Canada’s multiculti channel:

Now the other two strands are that is Jihad for Allah. But Jihad can be divided again into two, because whenever you find, so Jihad in the way of Allah for the cause of Allah can be pursued either with your financial resources or your bodily strength, when you go to fight the enemy in the battlefield. So Jihad, the highest form is fighting in the cause of Allah. And to give your contribution so as the requirements of the propagation of the Islamic message and the requirements of the requirements of the struggle to establish the message of Allah that can be fulfilled. You need money for that. And that is spent for the cause of Allah.

Only the insensate could mistake this for anything other than what it was: a clear call to jihad. And insensate is a good way to describe the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which, following up on a complaint about the broadcast, could find nothing wrong with a crazed jihadi Jew-hater making such a call over Canadian airwaves. Here’s how the CBSC described the incident in its 2007-08 Annual Report:

It was a religious program that was the subject of VisionTV re Dil Dil Pakistan (CBSC Decision 06/07-1426, November 29, 2007). The program featured a Muslim imam, Israr Ahmad, giving a sermon in a mix of English and Arabic. On the episode of July 14, 2007, Ahmad discussed Sura 2 of the Qur’an and touched on the issue of jihad. He explained that jihad can be achieved through either physical or financial means.

The CBSC received a complaint that this mention of jihad would encourage violence against particular groups. VisionTV was also criticized for even allowing Ahmad to appear on television because he had apparently authored anti-Semitic books. The National Specialty Services Panel concluded that the broadcast did not violate any of clauses of the CAB Code of Ethics. The Panel pointed out that “although there is a reference [...] to the ‘enemies of Allah’, nowhere has the imam directly identified any group.” With respect to the mention of jihad, the Panel noted that the term “has no exclusive or limited meaning as a holy war. It is at least as understandable asreferring to struggle or strife, with no necessary implication of battle or hostility.”

The Panel also had no problem with Ahmad appearing on television since he uttered nothing abusive or unduly discriminatory on the challenged program, whatever he may have written or said elsewhere. There is no Code prohibition on allowing individuals with chequered pasts to appear in a broadcast:

“Even a notorious figure [...] could be an acceptable invitee to discuss appropriate subject matter in controlled circumstances.”

You see, when Ahmad mentioned that jihad could be waged against the enemy via warfare or via funding the warfare, he wasn’t actually coming right out and telling the faithful to high-tail it to the nearest available battlefield. No, indeed. What the chequered dude was actually doing was giving folks the option: You can either fight infidels on a battlefield OR you can wage the kind of jihad that involves a lot of internal soul-searching--you know, that non-threatening kind of jihad we keep hearing so much about. And since Ahmad didn't think to "specify" which inifidels he wanted them to fight, what else could the CBSC do but give him the benefit of the doubt?

Happy Birthday, Canada! You are in the hands of clueless, craven imbeciles who are serving you up to the jihad on a silver platter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:36 | link | comments

Back on your knees, dhimmis: NYT headline--European Criticism May Hinder Talks, Iran Says.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

FYI: Ezra Levant's on the Oakley Show--now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments

Zerb sounds the alarm about “Zionists”: One of the things the Toronto Star’s anti-Zionist bloviator, Antonia Zerbesias, is proud of on this Canada Day is “free expression.” Trouble is some sneaky “Zionists” are conspiring to steal it away in the dark of night, those perfidious cads:

Freedom of Expression: Excuse me but since when did the interests of Zionist lobby groups determine who or what Canadians can see and hear?

In recent months, to list just three examples, there have been concerted campaigns against the staging of Caryl Churchill's controversial Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza and an academic conference at York University where the so-called "one-state solution'' was to be discussed. We also saw British MP George Galloway be denied entry to the country for a speaking tour, just because he brought aid to bombed-out Gaza.

Now comes word that the only way the respected Al-Jazeera English news service, currently applying for TV distribution in Canada, can win the support of these same Jewish groups is to have them become consultants.

Journalistically speaking, that is hardly kosher.

Get it? “Zionists”; kosher? Quel sparkling Dorothy Parkeresque wit! My response:

Newsflash for Antonia Zerbesias: “Zionist lobby groups,” as she calls them, do not determine “who or what Canadians can see or hear.” However, this being a free society, those who support Israel’s right to exist are free to voice their disgust whenever Israel-bashers spread falsehoods, smears and libels about the Jewish state.

You see, that’s how free expression works. Antonia Zerbesias, a vocal anti-Zionist, can write something that sounds an awful lot like that old anti-Semitic canard about “the Jews” conspiring to control everything, and I can counter by freely pointing out how ridiculous and hateful such assertions are.

Journalistically speaking, that’s called chutzpah--the linchpin of a free society.

If Antonia was truly concerned about free speech--free speech for everyone, I mean, not just for politically correct types who think exactly as she does--she would be criticizing the “human rights” system that spits on and makes a mockery of our most valuable right. Far easier to spit on the “Zionists,” eh? (I have to agree with her, though, about Official Jews acting as A-J "consultants"--really bad optics, guys.)

Update: As quoted in a piece by Don Feder on the FrontPage site, Obama’s former spiritual leader/replacement dad spews in the manner of the Star’s star Israel-despiser:

…Wright complained to a reporter that “them Jews” had denied him access to his disciple.

“Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me …. He’s got to do what politicians do. And the Jewish vote, the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) vote that’s controlling him…that’s talking this craziness on Israel because they’re Zionists, they will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza (I thought it was apartheid. Maybe it’s both.) – the ethnic cleansing of the Zionists is a sin and a crime against humanity.” The Zionists are in good company. As Rev. Michael Pfleger (another Obama bud) put it in a sermon at Wright’s church, “America is the great sin against God.” “God damn America!” the Rev. Jeremiah responds.

Wright later apologized for his “them Jews” comment, claiming he meant to say “the Zionists” not “the Jews.” Usually, anti-Semites say “Zionists” when they mean “Jews.” and not the reverse...

Watch your back, Zerb. The Rev. has the chops to replace you as a Star opiner.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:20 | link | comments (3)

Happy Canada Day, Toronto!: Now is the summer of our discontent--city workers are on strike; rats high five each other as they frolic amidst the mountains of garbage bags that blight city parks; kiddies can't go swimming at public pools 'cause there's a great big lock on the gate; and public celebrations have been cancelled, because there are no unionized workers to clean up the mess. Only one thing left to do--sing!

Start spreadin’ the trash, it’s reeking today.

Don’t want to be a part of it--T.O., T.O.

The big city bash has now been delayed

Until the strikers strike a deal--T.O., T.O.

Don’t wanna wake up in a city that stinks like sh*t

To find our swimming pools shut; mayor’s a twit.

These big city blues aren’t melting away

Because the trash is piled sky-high--T.O., T.O.

No celebrations here, that is unless you’re queer.

A misery--T.O., T.O...

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