scaramouche

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Spinning gold out of dross: Here’s how the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal describes its M.O. in its 2008 Annual Report:

Like a court, the Tribunal is strictly impartial. Unlike a court, the Tribunal provides an informal setting where the parties can present their cases without legal representation and without adhering to strict rules of evidence. Parties call witnesses or testify on their own behalf, and witnesses are subject to crossexamination. Documentary evidence can also be adduced. At the end of the hearing, final arguments are made. Tribunal members are seasoned human rights adjudicators. They are also experienced mediators. If complainant and respondent are willing, a Tribunal member is assigned to help them achieve a mediated settlement. Otherwise, or if mediation fails, a Tribunal member hears the complaint and renders a written decision. The parties may elect to settle the complaint at any time before the Tribunal renders its decision. Tribunal decisions are subject to review by the Federal Court at the request

of any of the parties.

Here’s how it really works: The Tribunal is not impartial. It is set up to favour the complainant, whose legal tab is picked up by the taxpayer; the targets of the complaint, on the other hand, is on the hook for their own legal fees, the reason why they may not want to bring legal representation into the faux-court, and why they may want to settle with the complainant and fork over mucho dinero rather that have the thing drag on for years and years, as it often does (the process, as Ezra Levant, who should know, has pointed out, being part of the punishment). If the complaint isn’t resolved and does end up being heard by the Tribunal, once again the complainant is favoured because

· Unlike a real court, a Tribunal hearing makes no presumption at the outset that the defendant is innocent.

· Unlike a real court, there are no strict rules of evidence, so all sorts of inflammatory stuff that would never be allowed in real courts are allowed to be heard, and tribunal members hearing the case can basically wing it, making up their own capricious rules and rulings as they go along.

· Unlike a real court, the informality strips the defendant of due process, a fundamental value of English Common Law upon which our regular judicial system is based, as are regular rules of evidence and the presumption of innocence.

Blazing Cat Fur informs me that the Tribunal will not be appealing the Lemire-Warman ruling, but that at the same time, it seems to be proceeding on the assumption that Section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act ruled unconstitutional by Lemire-Warman, is still in effect. Or, as it is set out in the ’08 Annual Report:

The Act also prohibits telecommunications and Internet messages that are likely to expose people to hatred or contempt because of their race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or other prohibited ground of discrimination.

The “gotcha” part of that line: the bit about “likely to expose people to hatred and contempt”, meaning you can--and if it comes before the Tribunal you must--be convicted of a crime that has yet to occur; a pre-crime, as it has come to be called. Unlike a real court, which only considers cases in which a crime has actually--or has allegedly--taken place.

If the Tribunal is prepared to pretend that Section 13 is still a go, I’m prepared to take Mark Steyn’s sage advice and be my own Section 13 repealer. I’m pretty sure I have the Charter on my side. I know I have truth, justice and freedom, the values that make and keep a democracy a democracy, in my corner.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:55 | link | comments

Five years of "scaramouche": I just realized today is the fifth anniversary of this blog. I started it to have a place to vent, riff and rant, and as an outlet for my creativity, such as it is. The daily routine of surveying the scene to find things to write about has helped me keep stay focused and grounded, and enabled me to laugh at the world's madness, for me the most effective way to maintain my own sanity so I can keep up the fight. Unexpectedly, it has also helped with my professional writing; turning out analytically sound, fairly polished thousand+ word essays in no time flat will tend to do that (as for my many typos--sorry about that, but my thoughts sometime race ahead of my fingers' ability to catch up, and my proofreading is often too rushed, which makes it hard to catch my errors). And it has been essential to my activism; reading vast amounts of info and boiling it down has enabled me to become a far more effective--and successful--writer of letters to the editor.

Perhaps the best thing about blogging: it has hooked me into a community of like-minded loudmouths--bloggers like Kathy Shaidle, blazing cat fur, wendy sullivan (girl on the right), Josephine (Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy), binky and Conservative in the Closet, and, of course, those lovable hate-mongers Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, who continue to inspire and amaze us.

Looking back over these five years, much has changed (hello, hopeychangification) and very little has changed (howdy, UN eliminationist agenda). All I know is when I started out five years ago I was under the impression that Canada had free speech, that "human rights" commissions were a good thing, and that the Canadian Jewish Congress was doing a superb job of representing the interests of Canadian Jews.

Oh, well, live and learn. Wisdom is a process, and as long as I continue to learn at least one new thing every day, I figure I'll get there--sooner or later.

Anyway, I'd like to thank all my readers--even the ones who disagree with me. And I'd like to thank splinder, formerly motime. While occasional glitches and revampings have been a source of frustration for an inherent technoplebe such as I (eg. the latest glitch--the confounding pop up requesting authentication; whassup with that?) for the most part posting here has been easy-peasy--one of the reasons I've stuck around so long and would be most reluctant to leave.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:55 | link | comments (5)

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the doggerel of war: Here's my contribution to the canon of Afghanistan War poetry:

Higgedly-piggedly

Gen’ral McChrystal says,

“Win hearts and minds and break

Taliban’s spell.”

One line explains why that

Plan’s a non-starter--it's

They’re true believers and

We’re infidel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:33 | link | comments

Cowed and declawed: Kathleen Parker diagnoses Obama's problem: He "is a cat in a dog-eat-dog world."

I don't know if I'd put it that way. There was a cat that lived behind us, for instance, that used to terrorize my golder retriever. That cat was nasty--certainly no wussy pussy. On the other hand, I remember the time a huge Doberman, its owner nowhere in sight, came running up to me and my golden at the park. The Dobie took one look at my dog (who had no cojones--at least, no physical ones) and rolled onto its back, all four legs in the air, as if to say, "Uncle!"

In other words, it matters not whether you're a cat or a dog. What matters is whether you're dominant or submissive.

In the canine/feline world no less than in the human one.

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

Friedman plays the “climate” card: The most over-rated pundit in America, the NYT’s Thomas L. Friedman, wants everyone to stop hassling President Obama because it’s creating the same kind of toxic environment that led directly to the assassination of Israel’s Yitchak Rabin:

I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it

I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly…

In these times, but not only in these times, there are madmen who will be driven by their own personal pathologies to want to execute leaders. Let us recall, for example, the times when two Republican presidents--Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan--were targeted by deranged would-be assassins. Would Friedman attribute those attempts, too, to “the same kind of climate” that gave rise to Rabin’s killing? Of course not, because that madness was of the leftist variety, and thus could not be blamed on the horrible “climate” created by the “extreme right wing.” (When leftists want to murder a president they loathe, they don't blame the climate, they blame the president, and few raise an eyebrow when, say, Nicholson Baker writes a book imagining the president's assassination: Can you even imagine the uproar if such "assassination porn" was written about BHO?)

Friedman’s “oh, woe is us” sounds a lot like the kind of hand-wringing that occurred after JFK's assassination--the hogwash about how the extreme right-wingers in Texas, the John Birchers and the like, were complicit in creating “the climate” that led directly to the president’s murder. As if it he was killed by some sort of atmospheric disturbance, and not by a Communist who had defected to the Soviet Union, returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife, and, who, disillusioned with the U.S.S.R. but still devoted to the Communist cause, idolized Fidel Castro’s Third World brand of Communism, had been trying without success to get to Cuba.

That is to say, the “climate” in Texas didn’t kill JFK; Lee Harvey Oswald, devoted Commie, did. (The mythology about the “climate” is still fully in effect. Check out last month's Vanity Fair cover story about William Manchester, JFK’s mythologizer, which includes this astounding passage:

He discovered deep political enmities that had simmered at the time of the assassination, not just against the Kennedys but among the Democrats as well. Indeed, that’s what had compelled Kennedy’s trip to Dallas in the first place: John B. Connally, the conservative Democratic governor, was at war with the more liberal Democratic senator Ralph W. Yarborough. Even a formidable Texas politician like Vice President Johnson couldn’t put out the oil fire the two men had ignited. Kennedy didn’t want to lose the state in the upcoming ‘64 election, so he’d agreed to go to Dallas in an attempt to heal the rift.

Manchester also discovered that Dallas “had become the Mecca for medicine-show evangelists … the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry Societies, and the headquarters of [ultra-conservative oil billionaire] H. L. Hunt and his activities.”

“In that third year of the Kennedy presidency,” Manchester wrote, “a kind of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed, ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas.…Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were required to attend radical seminars.” A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as “the Democrat flag.” A wanted poster with J.F.K.’s face on it was circulated, announcing “this man is Wanted” for—among other things—“turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations” and appointing “anti-Christians … aliens and known Communists” to federal offices. And a full-page advertisement had appeared the day of the assassination in The Dallas Morning News accusing Kennedy of making a secret deal with the Communist Party; when it was shown to the president, he was appalled. He turned to Jacqueline, who was visibly upset, and said, “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country today.”

Manchester discovered that in a wealthy Dallas suburb, when told that President Kennedy had been murdered in their city, the students in a fourth-grade class burst into applause. For Manchester, who revered Kennedy, such responses, encountered throughout Dallas, were deeply offensive and would influence the book he was about to write.)

To repeat: Lee Harvey Oswald, Communist, and not Dallas, “Mecca” for crazed right-wingers, killed JFK.

Now, it could be that there are lunatics out there who do indeed want to murder BHO; I’d be surprised if there weren’t. Of course, they must be stopped. But we don’t know who’s behind this Facebook assassination poll; it is entirely within the realm of possibility that it was created by someone looking to delegitimize the right. (Remember that Obama as the Joker poster? It was created by a Chicago university student, a Palestinian Arab and Dennis Cucinich supporter.) But it seems to me if you want to push through your guy’s hard-leftist agenda, it doesn’t hurt to harp on right-wing “madness”.

How you think America ended up with The Great Society?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:26 | link | comments

Virtual exchange: According to the New York Times, Israel and Hamas have worked out a prisoner exchange whereby Hamas gets back real, live terrorists currently enjoying the hospitality of Israeli lock-ups, and Israel gets back a videotape of Gilad Shalit.

Unless Hamas is prepared to get videotapes, too, or is prepared to release Gilad Shalit in whatever state the poor man is in, I'd nix this terrible plan on the grounds that it's an unfair exhchange that benefits Hamas and harms Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments (1)

Non-violent is not a non-threat: Sure, violent jihad gets all the headlines (if it bleeds, it leads), but a far more insidious threat, writes Frank Gaffney, Jr. in the Washington Times, is the non-violent--or “stealth”--jihad. While no one is getting blown to smithereens by the latter, both styles of jihad are united by one goal: spreading sharia, Allah’s divine law, far and wide:

…What happens as tolerant democratic societies try to accommodate themselves to the stealthy form of jihad, backed by the persistent threat of the violent form - if not its actual occurrence, can be seen in much of Western Europe. For example, France now has 751 zones urbaines sensibles - Muslim-only areas that amount to "no-go" zones for French authorities.

In these zones, Shariah rules instead of the laws of the host government, at the expense most notably of women's rights, due process and public order (especially for Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims).

To be sure, accommodations to date to Shariah have not metastasized in the United States to nearly this extent. There are, however, numerous worrisome examples of concessions that have been made here, too.

To cite a few: Taxpayer-financed foot baths for Muslims installed at state universities; corporations providing Muslim-only prayer rooms and time off for prayers; government-sanctioned discrimination by taxi drivers against passengers deemed "impure" (haram) because they have alcohol or dogs; unhygienic practices in food plants to accommodate the preferences of Muslim workers; government-offered Shariah-compliant mortgages; Islamic proselytizing in public school curricula, etc…

An example of stealth jihad in Canada: in honour of Islamic History Month, as October has been officially designated by the Canadian government, a U.K.-based shill for sharia finance will be travelling across the land to deliver a lecture entitled “ISLAMIC FINANCE: ISLAMIC SOLUTIONS FOR THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS.”

See, the best thing about the stealth jihad, from the standpoint of those waging it, is that you can get the infidels to help underwrite it as long as you tell them it serves the Great God Multiculti.

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

Mausoleum already inspiring bad ideas: It’s bad enough that Manitoba gives space to that tin-foil beanie of an edifice, Canada’s mausoleum of “human rights”. Now, inspired by the sight of the site, a contender for the provincial leadership of the NDP is making some scary promises about 'human rights'. From the Ceeb.

Ashton promises ‘dignity’ bill

Manitoba NDP leadership candidate Steve Ashton pledged Tuesday to make the province a model for human rights if he becomes premier.

Ashton said he would introduce legislation that would target racism and intolerance.

His so-called dignity bill would ensure governments, workplaces and public establishments worked towards zero tolerance for discriminatory, demeaning or racist actions.

Ashton said the legislation would strengthen and expand Manitoba's existing human-rights laws.

Ashton, who is running for the party leadership against Greg Selinger, made the announcement during a campaign stop in Winnipeg at the site of the future Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The two members of the legislature resigned from cabinet positions this month to seek the leadership.

The winner will replace Gary Doer, the longtime premier who has been named Canada's next ambassador to the U.S.

NDP delegates will choose a new leader Oct. 17.

Zero-tolerance, eh? Looks like the tin-foil beanie building is going to be a lightning rod for “human rights” types with grandiose schemes for erecting a polity predicated on ‘virtue’. Had Izzy Asper thought to build a monument to liberty and freedom instead of one to ‘human rights,’ he could have spared us all this fallout.

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

And the word is "Judenhass": LG&F took some shots of Toronto's outdoor bookfest, Word on the Street. As you can see from this display, the useful idiots were out in full force; while the Arab world is marked by a severe paucity of literacy and literature (though not, of course, of literalness--hence its contempt for Jews based on the literal words of the Koran), the useful Hamas-abetting idiots (more than a few of whom are Jewish) are very well read and know their Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky chapter and verse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

"Preachy, grim and downright silly": No, not a description of Gadafi's antics at the UN. A description of yet another novel about a dystopia by Margaret Atwood.

Think I'll wait for the movie--and take a pass on it, too.

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

All they really need to know they learned in Kindergarten: Obama's M.O. continues to boggle. From contentions:

We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said [Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, J. Scott] Gration, who was appointed in March. “Kids, countries—they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”

“Hello, Mr. Janjaweed militia person. Here’s a smiley face for not lopping off anyone’s arm today.”

Yeah, that’ll work.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:17 | link | comments

"Rights" amock: Iran insists on its "nuclear rights."

Its "nuclear right" to obliterate Israel, that is. Yet another example of how the "human rights" concept has been subverted and brought low and, in Iran's case, is serving the annihilationist agenda.

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

New lead or red herring?: The latest twist--maybe--in the disappearance of 17-year-old Mariam Makhniashvili: her parents claim it may have something to do with a “charismatic” Georgian priest. From the Toronto Sun:

The parents of missing teen Mariam Makhniashvili called a Georgian TV channel hoping to find out more about a Georgian religious leader said to be based in Toronto.

According to reports, the religious leader reportedly convinced 35 university students to break contact with their families. However, Mariam's father doubts the figure has anything to do with his daughter's disappearance.

Det.-Sgt. Dan Nealon, the lead detective on the Mariam task force, said police are aware of the story of the religious leader, but that any possible connection to Mariam's vanishing is speculation.

A day after removing its command post from outside the family's north Toronto home, Nealon said yesterday police are getting tips and possible sightings of the girl from across Canada and that new information is coming in.

"There's still a lot of angles for us to work," Nealon said.

On the two-week anniversary of his daughter's disappearance, Mariam's dad, Vakhtang Makhniashvili, 49, said he is holding out hope the girl is alive. "That's a hard question that's constantly on our minds," Makhniashvili said. "It's too difficult to think about."

Mariam, 17, vanished on Sept. 14 after walking to school, Forest Hill C.I., with her brother.

Makhniashvili said he and wife Lela Tabidze called Tbilisi-based Imedi TV last week to find out more about a religious leader, who in 1994 convinced 35 students to leave Georgia with him, according to an Imedi report.

"We don't know about him, we just heard about him," Makhniashvili said yesterday. "In Georgia, there were several rumors about him."

Makhniashvili was able to find out that the religious leader is a priest at an evangelical church, but he didn't know where.

The Sun was unable to confirm existence of the religious figure in Toronto, but the story continues to be discussed in Toronto's Georgian community and in Georgia.

Goderdzi Sharashia, a journalist with the Tbilisi-based Imedi TV, reported several months ago on the man, a former Georgia Technical University professor. Sharashia said yesterday the man is believed to be living in the Toronto area, but didn't have contact information for him.

According to Sharashia, the charismatic and persuasive priest left Georgia in June 1994 with about 35 students. Some of the students are now in Canada and the U.S. "These people don't have contact with their families; he doesn't give them permission to call their relatives," Sharashia said through a translator.

To recap: an unnamed priest, who, rumour has it, left Georgia fifteen years ago, and who may or may not be living in the Toronto area, may have something to do with Maryam’s disappearance, even though the girl, who grew up in Georgia, would have been two years-old when he left, and had only been living in Toronto for a very short time prior to her disappearance, which makes it highly unlikely she would have come into contact with the, er, “charismatic,” whoever and wherever he is.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Law & Order, but the priest angle sounds about as plausible as Maryam’s dad’s contention that he was driving in L.A. with a wide-mouthed jar containing shaving--or was it sour?--cream.

I know police are looking into all possible leads, but before they go off in search of a man who may not even exist, it might be wise to focus on the place where Mariam was last seen before her brother claims she vanished (since her brother is the only person who can place her at school on that day). That would be the Toronto waterfront, where she was reportedly watching “a Dragon Boat event” with her dad the day prior to her disappearance.I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think Mariam is anywhere near a Georgian “charismatic.” I think she may be sleeping with the fishes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:44 | link | comments (2)

Obama pledges allegiance to the UN’s kooky Utopian project: The flip side of isolationism, a policy America pursued in the early part of the 20^th Century until it was dragged kicking and screaming into two World Wars, is globalism. Globalism is the touchy-feely mush of one-world government (in reality, a totalitarian construct) wherein for the greater good of humanity national sovereignty is subsumed into the international whole. And the epitome of globalism is something called “the Millennium Development Goals,” which, as David Limbaugh writes, is mostly a bunch of breathless Utopian malarkey that demands submission to the UN (and from submission to the UN it's but a hop, skip and a jump to submission to the UN's largest voting block). As Limbaugh points out, the ee-vil Bushites were clever enough to sidestep this stinker of a project, but the genius hopeychanger think it’s just swell:

…True to his word, though barely reported, Obama made this statement in his U.N. speech: "We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals." I'm not sure where he got the authority to make that unilateral declaration, but he nonetheless made it. I guess now that he's president, he can sometimes just issue fiats instead of having to deal with the cumbersome legislative process -- such as when he had difficulty as senator getting his Global Poverty Act passed. That bill would have committed the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of the U.S.' gross domestic product on foreign aid, amounting to $845 billion more than the U.S. already spends.

So why do you suppose the evil Bush administration opposed the innocuous-sounding "Millennium Development Goals"?

Well, how about its multi-pronged assault on America's national sovereignty? It commits participating nations to be bound by the International Criminal Court treaty; support regional disarmament measures for small arms and light weapons; and press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Wikipedia describes as "an international legally binding treaty" that includes among its goals a "fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources," the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, described as "an international bill of rights for women," and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which purports to be a "legally binding international instrument" that gives children the right to express their own opinions "freely in all matters affecting the child" and requires those opinions be given "due weight."

The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as "the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development."

Indeed, under President Obama, "We Are the World."

Frankly, I always preferred “God Bless America” to that syrupy uplift. As for that "due weight" stuff: I always give my 11-year-old's opinions due weight, but if they're silly or outrageous or ill-conceived or just, you know, childish, I as the the parent, the grown-up, the person responsible, along with my husband, for my child's health and well-being, never fail to exercise my right to set my child straight. That's what parents are supposed to do. The idea that the UN--the UN!--wants to tell me how to raise my kid (talk about micromanaging) is as beyond ridiculous. It is deranged.

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

When the slayer was still a hero: I was checking the CJC site to see if there was any mention of its “Nazi”-slayer running afoul of the human rights apparatchiks. (His “crime”: in the course of his Javert-like pursuit of subterranean Nazis, he seems to have indulged in an unseemly amount of “hate speech” himself). Of course, there was nary a mention. I did, however, find this, from back in Jan. ’03--an article from Toronto’s freebie lefty rag NOW Magazine. The piece speaks volumes about the Ceej’s mindset, its slayer, and its ongoing obsession, uber alles, with the phantom menace of home-grown Nazis (the Ceej’s bolds):

Racist rockers go clubbing

Groups that monitor far-right activities are still trying to decide what to make of a skinhead concert in Etobicoke January 11 that caught all of them by surprise. Toronto police say about 125 people showed up for the event featuring several Detroit-based bands known for lyrics promoting hate and violence.

It’s the third time since June that concerts featuring skinhead bands have been held here. Two previous shows in Scarborough attracted about 50 and 75 people respectively.

Unlike previous shows, which were advertised on flyers and on the Internet, the latest gathering seems to have slipped under local anti-racists’ radar.

Anti-Racist Action, which was busy organizing its own concert and workshops on the same Saturday, had been tracking another skinhead get-together supposedly being planned for Oshawa, but that’s now thought to have been a decoy.

This resurgence in activity is “something Toronto hasn’t really seen in a few years,” says Evan Simmons of ARA.

Toronto police aren’t saying how they heard about it. What they will say is that most of the concert-goers seemed young and not connected with older neo-Nazi types.

That police from Kitchener-Waterloo were also on the scene, however, suggests that the increase in neo-Nazi activity here has its roots in southwestern Ontario, where the far right has had a more pronounced and visible presence than in Toronto in recent years.

“This is not pleasant, smoking-room racism,” says Richard Warman, an Ottawa-based lawyer who tracks hate groups.

He says there’s been an upsurge in hate-themed concerts across southern and southwestern Ontario since 9/11. How several Detroit-based bands known for promoting hate got past tightened border security -- police say nearly half of all those at the show were from the U.S. -- is “troubling,” says Canadian Jewish Congress executive director Bernie Farber.

Farber, another who only found out about the concert through a police press release, says many groups that used to monitor racist or anti-Semitic activity have been so sidetracked by events in the Middle East that surveillance of neo-Nazi movements may not be what once was.

“It means they’re trying to get the phoenix to rise again,” Farber says.

One of the bands at the concert, Blue-Eyed Devils, has recorded songs like Holocaust 2000, with the lyrics “We’ve heard your tales of persecution and we’ve listened to your lies / But this time it’s for real / The final genocide.”

Police seized a number of CDs of known “hate rock” bands from one concert-goer. But Toronto detective James Hogan says police are still considering whether any charges will be laid under Canada’s hate laws.

Yes, isn’t it awful how the clear and present danger of Judenhass that targets Israel and rebounds upon Jewry in general has “sidetracked” the focus on “Nazis,” a big fat non-threat? (We couldn’t even muster up our own home-grown skinhead acts, and had to import them from the U.S.--something I, for one, would have found encouraging, not “troubling.” Me, I'm far more "troubled" by the anti-social and sexist lyrics in Gangsta music, and what it says about a society that not only sanctions this ugliness, but idolizes it.)

The “phoenix” Farber mentions has risen again. Only it’s a phoenix with a distinctly Islamist/leftist face. And rather than being a sideshow, it’s the main event, the big kahuna, and has been for some time.

In his heart of hearts, even Bernie, obsessed though he is with fighting the last war, must know that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

The “hope” dope and the return of (cue the scary music) the neocons: Brett Stephens notes that the hopeychangers’ “realism” (really, their confounding reliance on “niceness” and wishful thinking in an arena where it least belongs) has set the stage for a momentous comeback:

The other day I was asked by a writer for a mainstream French newspaper to say something about the "return" of the neoconservatives. His thesis seemed to be that the shambles of Barack Obama's foreign policy had, after only nine months, made what was thought to be the most discredited wing of an ostensibly brain-dead conservative movement relevant again. And France—no longer straining at the sight of Michelle Obama shopping in Paris's 6th arrondissement—is taking notice.

My answer was that the neocons are back because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin never went away. A star may have shone in the east the day Barack Obama became president. But these three kings, at least, have yet to proffer the usual gifts of gold and incense and myrrh.

Instead, the presents have been of a different kind. North Korea claims to be in the final stages of building a uranium enrichment facility—its second route to an atomic bomb. Iran, again caught cheating on its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, has responded by wagging a finger at the U.S. and firing a round of missiles. Syria continues to aid and abet jihadists operating in Iraq. NATO countries have generally refused to send more troops to Afghanistan, and are all the more reluctant to do so now that the administration is itself wavering on the war.

As for Russia, its ambassador to the U.N. last week bellyached that the U.S. "continues to be a rather difficult negotiating partner"—and that was after Mr. Obama cancelled the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus does the politics of concession meet with the logic of contempt.

All this must, at some level, come as a surprise to an administration so deeply in love with itself. "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world," Mr. Obama told the U.N.'s General Assembly last week with his usual modesty. He added that those expectations were "rooted in hope—the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change."

Yet what sounds like "hope" in, say, Toronto or Barcelona tends to come across as fecklessness in Warsaw and Jerusalem. In Moscow and Tehran, it reads like credulity—and an opportunity to exploit the U.S. at a moment of economic weakness and political self-infatuation.

For those much-scorned neocons, none of this comes as a surprise. Neoconservatives generally take the view that the internal character of a regime usually predicts the nature of its foreign policy. Governments that are answerable to their own people and accountable to a rule of law tend to respect the rights of their neighbors, honor their treaty commitments, and abide by the international rules of the road. By contrast, regimes that prey on their own citizens are likely to prey on their neighbors as well. Their word is the opposite of their bond.

That's why neocons have no faith in any deals or "grand bargains" the U.S. might sign with North Korea or Iran over their nuclear programs: Cheating is in the DNA of both regimes, and the record is there to prove it. Nor do neocons put much stock in the notion that there's a "reset" button with the Kremlin. Russia is the quintessential spoiler state, seeking its advantage in America's troubles at home and abroad. Ditto for Syria, which has perfected the art of taking credit for solving problems of its own creation.

Where neocons do put their faith is in American power, not just military or economic power but also as an instrument of moral and political suasion…

Morality? In foreign policy? How quaint. Didn’t Stephens get the memo about moral relativism and American self-loathing (of one’s country, not of one’s self; one’s self being a preening narcissist with delusions of divinity) being the way of the new world order?

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

Another fine mess: Does a pilot working for Air Canada have a “human right” to fly past age 60 when that’s the retirement age that’s been negotiated by his union? The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that he does, and that to hold him to the number set through collective bargaining is what human rights types would describe as “ageist”. The regular court system--which threw this hot potato in the CHRT’s lap in the first place--is now being asked to revisit the ruling on the grounds that it contravenes legal precedent. From the Globe and Mail:

TORONTO — The Federal Court of Canada is being asked to step into a dispute between pilots at Air Canada (TSX:AC.A) and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

At issue is a tribunal decision that called into question the retirement age provision of the collective agreement between the Air Canada Pilots Association and the airline.

In a new release issued Monday, the association says it believes the tribunal "erred at law by ignoring Supreme Court of Canada decisions which found it acceptable for employers and employees to determine a retirement age through the collective bargaining process."

The tribunal, in an Aug. 28 decision, ruled that Section 15(1)(c) of the Canadian Human Rights Act cannot be justified under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a reasonable limit prescribed by law that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

That section of the human rights law states that a practice is not discriminatory if an individual's employment is terminated because he or she has reached the normal age of retirement for employees working in similar positions.

As a result of this interpretation, the tribunal refused to apply this section of the human rights act in considering a complaint regarding the association's collective agreement, which contains a contractual obligation for Air Canada pilots to retire at age 60.

If left unchallenged, the decision could potentially have an impact on the wages and benefits of the active pilot group and thousands of other federally regulated employees currently working under collective agreements containing a fixed age of retirement.

"The contractual retirement age and associated post-employment benefits are cornerstones of our collective agreement, which has supported Air Canada pilots' careers for decades," said Capt. Brian Murray, chair of the association's Age 60 Legal Support Committee.

"The overwhelming majority of our members support this provision and we will use every legal means to protect their right to collectively bargain terms of retirement," Murray said.

The Air Canada Pilots Association is the largest professional pilot group in Canada, representing the more than 3,000 pilots who operate Air Canada's main fleet.

The question is: When the quasi-judicial is at odds with the regular judicial, who prevails? A question that wouldn’t even arise were there no quasi-judicial around to offer contradictory rulings.

Methinks there are one too many official judiciaries in the land.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments

Falking brilliant: UN special rapporteur Richard Falk was in town the other day to offer his insights into the Israel-Palestinian situation. I’m sure it was a riveting speech, and every bit as “unbiased” as UN special rapporteur Richard Goldstone’s, er, rapport.

To give you a taste of Mr. Falk’s rare ability to size things up from the get-go, here’s his assessment of the Ayatollah Khomeini that appeared in the New York Times two weeks after the holy rollah's return to Iran. Falk’s op-ed piece was headlined “Trusting Khomeini”. In it, according to Wikipedia

He criticized President Jimmy Carter's accusations of “religious fanaticism” and media descriptions of Khomeini as being backward, antisemitic, and guilty of “theocratic fascism.” Arguing Khomeini was being judged unfairly, he concluded “the depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false ... To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. ... Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”

How wise--and how prescient. No wonder they made him a rapporteur. If he plays his cards right--and he is, he is--maybe they’ll make him the next UN nuclear watchdog.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:09 | link | comments

Monday, 28 September 2009

Wake up, little snoozie:

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:50 | link | comments

Banking on sharia: The Sharia Finance Watch blog reports that the banking element of Allah’s law is all systems go here in Canada:

In a new report entitled “Islamic Finance in North America 2009,” a consortium of lawyers, public relations professionals and various participants in the financial services industry is predicting that North America is the next growth market for Shariah-Compliant Finance.

Among those who would like to inflict this malady on North America are Yasaar Media, Codexa Capital, UM Financial Group, King & Spalding, and Doha Islamic Bank.

Codexa Capital is an investment banking firm with the rather descriptive slogan: “Connecting Wall Street with the Islamic Crescent.”

UM Financial is a Canadian Shariah-compliant financial firm. They are especially noteworthy in that they do not disclose the members of their Shariah advisory board…hmmm.

Doha Islamic is a big Shariah firm out of the UAE.

Yasaar Media is a p.r. firm specifically specializing in Shariah finance.

And last, but not least, we come to King & Spalding. King & Spalding is a huge international law firm. We say huge, but they are actually getting smaller, having reportedly laid off 37 lawyers and 85 staff over the summer. For a firm as up to its rear end in Shariah finance as King & Spalding, one would think that they would be in better shape. After all, according to the promoters of Shariah finance, it is virtually immune to the effects of the economic downturn. I guess there’s more to that story than they want you to know.

Keep these firms in mind and keep an eye out for them when making personal investment and legal decisions. They are promoting the enemy’s threat doctrine.

How silly. Everyone knows sharia finance is perfectly benign--like the rest of sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:46 | link | comments

Here comes da judge: Israeli TV spoofs Justice Goldstone and his "unbiased" report.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:34 | link | comments

The Ceeb’s skewed worldview: On tonight’s episode of Little Mosque on the Prairies, our national broadcaster’s shill-com that aims to put the “fun” back into Islamic fundamentalism,“Rev. Magee’s replacement wants Amaar and the Muslims out until he realizes his congregants like having the Mosque around.”

Yes, because everyone knows those Christian clergymen can be sooo intolerant.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:31 | link | comments

You, sir, are no John F. Kennedy: America’s descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, as captured in two POTUS quotes (my bolds):

1. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty. JFK Inaugural Address, 1960

2. Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people, and – in the past – America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy. But that does not weaken our commitment, it only reinforces it. There are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self evident – and the United States of America will never waiver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny. BHO Address to the UN, 2009

In Obamerica, “liberty” has given way to feel-good, brain-dead multiculti mush; to self-abnegation bordering on the suicidal; to an America that doesn’t lead, but tries to blend in with the mediocre hoard so as to not raise enemy hackles; to an America that pays lip service to “universal principles” while subscribing to the fiction that people ground down by tyrants and despots are the beneficiaries of those principles, or are in any position to choose their own fate.

Bathetic, yes; but pathetic, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:22 | link | comments

Sunday, 27 September 2009

A minor stumbling block on the road to the "two-state solution": From Islam's p.o.v., Israel, the sovereign Jewish nation, is rebuke to Allah and his law, and simply cannot be.

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

Nutty revelers: If anything could put me off my Skippy, it is this story from the Ceeb:

PLAINS, Ga. - The small southwestern Georgia town of Plains has two famous exports: peanuts and peanut farmer-turned-president Jimmy Carter.

Both were feted Saturday with a parade and a celebration of the legume whose reputation struggled after a salmonella outbreak earlier this year. The outbreak, linked to a plant in nearby Blakely, forced state legislators to adopt new food safety regulations after it sickened hundreds and may have caused the deaths of as many as nine people.

But the peanut is bouncing back, boosters say: Sales are up about 15 per cent last month after plunging 20 per cent in the wake of the salmonella scare.

"It's a miracle," said Tyron Spearman, executive director of the National Peanut Buying Points Association. "It has come back at an unbelievable pace."

The outbreak sent shudders throughout Georgia's peanut industry, which employs more than 50,000 people and packs an estimated economic impact of $2.5 billion.

For Plains, the crop is a way of life even if there are fewer farmers than there used to be.

"We've always depended on peanuts here," said Carter, who has been involved in peanut production since he was a 5-year-old on his family farm. "It's still a great factor in my life. Peanut growers, peanut producers - we all feel like a giant family and we're celebrating one of the greatest products here."

Saturday's festival featured fried peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter ice cream, peanut brittle, boiled peanuts, roasted peanuts and enough peanut candies to supply Halloween treats for the whole town of more than 600 people. Peanut sculptures, toys and antiques were on sale.

Peanut princesses and farmers driving antique tractors snaked along the parade route, turning to acknowledge the 39th president as he stood on the balcony of the Plains Historic Inn.

The president, who turns 85 on Thursday, said he always goes out of his way to clear his schedule so he can preside over the annual parade.

Besides, Spearman quipped, it wouldn't be much of a celebration without him. The festival's motto is: "Plains, peanuts and a president."

“Plains, your president is nuts.” There. Fixed it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:56 | link | comments

Where’s Mariam?: 17-year-old Mariam Makhniashvili vanished--poof--almost two weeks ago in one of Toronto’s toniest neighbourhoods. Police say there is no evidence of foul play but have yet to turn up any trace of the girl, who arrived in Canada from Georgia (the one beside Russia, not Tennessee) mere days before her disappearance.

Conservative in the Closet says something fishy is going on here and speculates about the possibilty of an “honour killing” angle. In the absence of specific info about the family’s background, it’s hard to say; while Mariam’s mother’s name is Muslim-sounding, the father’s name--Vakhtang Makhniashvili--sounds typically Georgian (like Josef Dzhugashvili, the birth name of Georgia-born Joseph Stalin). However, it is, shall we say, interesting, to learn that prior to coming to Toronto, Mariam's father was involved in a "misunderstanding" of sorts in Los Angeles, where police caught him actly strangely near a daycare facility:

…A jury acquitted him of two charges stemming from the incident and a third count was dropped.

"I was shaving," the 49-year-old unemployed professor of philosophy said in an interview last night.

"I know it was difficult to understand in that country but it is something from the third world to do that. I was a victim of a misconception."

The prosecution alleged Makhniashvili, who is from the Republic of Georgia, was in his car rubbing his groin in front of a child daycare centre. The document states police "discovered a wide-mouth plastic bottle and a plastic shopping bag" which "contained what appeared to be ejaculate/semen."

The statement said "the defendant claimed that the material was shaving cream" and then "claimed that the material was sour cream."

Later the documents state Makhniashvili went to a towing pound where it "appears the defendant removed and has concealed or destroyed the two pieces of inculpatory evidence that are subject to this motion."

"I was misaccused," said Vakhtang, who said he had his day in court and was acquitted "by a jury almost unanimously."

He said the jury understood he was "a PhD and caregiver" who was "living in his car" with "one dollar".

He was a victim of being a "third-world person" in a "wealthy country," he said...

Hey, it sounds plausible. You’re driving around with shaving/sour cream beside you in wide-mouth jar, and just because you’re foreign and down on your luck, police jump to the conclusion that you’re a perv who gets his kicks by jerking off in front a daycare centre. (His statement about it being “something from the third world to do that” is a bit confusing. What “something” is he talking about? Motoring with an open jar of “shaving cream,” or getting turned on by kids? Since it was all a “misconception” and the evidence was conveniently destroyed, I guess we’ll never know.) My questions: if he was down to his last dollar and living in his vehicle, how could he afford the gas for such excursions? Where was his wife living at the time? And if they were so broke, how were the couple able to get here from L.A. and settle in one of Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods and bring their children over from Georgia?

Presumption of innocence and all that, but I can’t help being reminded of another immigrant family involved in another incident that sounded highly implausible at the time. That event had a shocking--a sickening--conclusion. I pray things turn out differently this time, and that Mariam eventually turns up safe and sound. I can’t say I’m optimistic, though, that that’s in the cards.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:08 | link | comments

A tune for nuclear winter: This seems an appropriate moment to revive one of my favourite parodies, a reworking of this song:

In Iran if you’re looking

Yellowcake is still cooking.

They’re making some nukes

Despite our rebukes.

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

They’ll say, “Hey, glad to see ya!”

As they practice taquiyyah.

And tell Mo ElBee

There’s nuthin’ to see.

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

Underground is where they’ll hide the bombs now.

Then pretend it isn’t what we think.

They will tell us lies with such aplomb now.

If we buy them we all need to see a shrink.

Later on they’ll conspire.

Say they plan to retire.

They’ll sing us a song

And string us along

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

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

A raft of revolting rapporteurs: Last week brought the sorry, surreal spectacle at Turtle Bay--Barack, Muamar and Mahmoud, the Larry, Darryl and Darryl of the internationalist set offering their own unique perspective on world affairs. But enough about that. Harpoon Siddiqui wants to discuss the real threat facing our world--Israel, and how it refuses to take constructive, or rather deconstructive, criticism from totally unbiased UN rapporteurs. (Speaking of which, the UN thinks if it gives these henchmen a French-sounding title, it makes them sound tres intellectual, tres Rene Descartes: well, "merde" does sound better than "sh*t".) One such rapporteur, Richard Falk, will be bringing his message to a receptive audience in Toronto today (where there is no shortage of Islamists/Israel-bashers), and Harpoon couldn’t be more pleased:

In trying to discredit Richard Goldstone's UN report on the Israeli attack on Gaza, Israel and its supporters are shooting the messenger, says another high-profile Jewish public intellectual critical of Israeli policies on Palestinians.

Richard Falk, professor emeritus in international law at Princeton University and prolific author, is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Last December, he was expelled from Israel after characterizing the crippling Israeli economic blockade of Gaza (in effect since 2007) as collective punishment, amounting to "a crime against humanity."

Falk is to speak in Toronto today on the Arab-Israeli conflict (2 p.m., U of T's Health Sciences Building, 155 College St., Room 610).

A four-person panel led by Judge Goldstone of South Africa, the former chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza, including deliberately targeting civilians.

Falk said in a phone interview Thursday that the panel "confirms the prior allegations that Israel has been acting unlawfully, indeed criminally, but it (the panel) does so more comprehensively and with a very credible group led by Goldstone, who's known for his sympathy for Zionism and Israel.

"I've known him well. He has deep emotional and intellectual links to Israel but he also has a professional attachment to the rule of law. If he can be attacked as biased against Israel, then anyone on the planet is susceptible to that attack.

"Israel's tactic – I've also experienced this myself – is that rather than discuss the message, they talk about the messenger and try to discredit the auspices or the person who's bringing critical assessments of their behaviour.

"They don't make any effort to engage in the substantive debate because they really can't do that with any degree of effectiveness."…

“Israel’s tactic” is to try to keep surviving in a world full of Harpoons and Gadafis and Obamas and Ahmadinejads and Goldstones and Falks, and to speak truth to power, as Benjamin Netanyahu dared to do in his UN address. There are a handful of leaders who manifest moral clarity in today’s crazy, upside down world. Netanyahu is one. Canada’s Stephen Harper is another. Anyone who cannot see that, and who continues to proffer the UN and its repellent rapporteurs as the standard bearers of world morality is at best an untrustworthy observer and at worst complicit in the annihilationist agenda.

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

Stop the presses!: Iran intends to create nuclear weapons says U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In other starlingly obvious news for the cognitively impaired: Obama is a narcissist and Gadafi is a nutter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:00 | link | comments

Saturday, 26 September 2009

Simultaneous Translation Stress Disorder: An obscure psychological condition has recently been observed, one which strikes a tiny but select group. You can read (and laugh) about it in the New York Post:

After struggling to turn Khadafy’s insane ramblings at the UN into English for 75 minutes, the Libyan dictator’s personal interpreter got lost in translation.

"I just can’t take it any more," Khadafy’s interpreter shouted into the live microphone – in Arabic.

At that point, the U.N.’s Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over and translated the final 20 minutes of the speech.

"His interpreter just collapsed – this is the first time I have seen this in 25 years," another U.N. Arabic interpreter told The Post.

Breaking with protocol, Khadafy brought his own interpreters from Tripoli for Wednesday’s speech rather than use one of the 25 Arabic translators supplied by the United Nations, staff interpreters said.

"This is the best team in the world – most heads of state prefer to use U.N. interpreters because then – no matter what happens – they can blame the interpreter," one staffer said.

Khadafy told the U.N. that he was supplying his own French and English interpreters because he would be speaking a special dialect only they would understand, but staff interpreters said he actually spoke standard Arabic.

Those who have translated for Khadafy in the past said they could empathize with his interpretator’s exasperation.

It’s not just the zany conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination and swine flu that are a challenge, but the loony Libyan’s strange mannerisms.

"He’s not exactly the most lucid speaker," another Arabic interpreter said. "It’s not just that what he’s saying is illogical, but the way he’s saying it is bizarre. However, I think I could have made him sound a lot better."

Khadafy has a habit of repeating the same phrase over and over again, "which is good because if you don’t understand what he says the first time you can get it right the second or third time," the interpreter said.

The Colonel extemporaneous ramblings are a particular challenge, another interpreter said.

"Sometimes he mumbles, sometimes he talks to himself," he said.’

Ajalyaqeen, who had to rescue the bealegured interpreter, was given the day off yesterday.

"Ten minutes with Khadafy earns you a lot of annual leave," one interpreter said…

I think that has the makings of a terrific reality show--a bunch of “Khadafy” translators compete to see who can keep from collapsing/going bonkers the longest.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:30 | link | comments (1)

Hiroshima mon 'atollah: Iran boasts that its until-now secret second nuclear plant will soon "blind the eyes" of Iran's enemies.

What, with its blinding "peacefulness"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:48 | link | comments

Sharia for everyone!: Iran’s real goals are exposed in this Fars News item:

Official Urges for Conveying Quranic Teachings to All Nations

TEHRAN (FNA)- Head of Iran's Islamic Culture and Relations Organization Mehdi Mostafavi on Tuesday described Quran as a book for all world nations, and stressed the need for propagating Quranic teachings among all nations and communities worldwide.

"Quran is not just for one nation or people, therefore the notions and interpretation of (the holy Quran's) divine verses should be translated into all languages so that everyone can benefit from its guidelines," Mostafavi said in a round table on translation and interpretation of the holy Quran at the 17th International Exhibition of the Holy Quran here in Tehran.

He noted that Quranic concepts will lead to the unity of views, thoughts and actions of peoples in different world countries, and added, "All thinkers who speak of human freedom, should understand the holy Quran in order to materialize their goals. Their lack of information about Quranic teachings is the reason why they have not gained success yet."

Mostafavi reiterated that the present injustice at the United Nations organization and in the powerful countries of the world lies in the materialistic and human thinking of their communities and lack of Quranic notions…

Yes, who needs “human thinking” when it’s all been thought out for you via Allah’s law?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:38 | link | comments

Thanks for coming and try the jihad: I have it on good authority that when the evening of his "big day" rolled around, the Libyan loon ducked into a local karaoke bar and performed his own variation of Billy Joel's Big Apple homage:

Some folks like to spew and rant

Spreading lies and cant from a podium.

Pitch a tent up in Central Park,

It is such a lark.

Why the odium?

I’m nutty as fruitcake,

And one thing you will always find.

I’m in a UN state of mind.

Seen all the presidents

Who’ve been residents

Of that house so white.

Stayed the course

Over forty years,

Won’t give up the fight.

They’ve bombed then embraced me.

See my face--it's very lined.

I’m in a UN state of mind.

It was so easy speakin’ on TV.

Out to lunch, and raggin’ on Jews.

For 90 minutes there I riffed and raged.

I knew that it would made the news.

Comes down to reality...

(What’s reality? I don’t really know.)

It was great to be headlining at the UN show.

It’s a swamp I can swim in--there are lots more of my kind.

I’m in a UN state of mind.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments

An anthropological wonder: No, not the discovery of a previously unknown tribe who use Stone Age tools; discovering a previously unknown medieval tribe of “white Germans” who wage jihad using 21^st Century weapons. The Telegraph details this marvel:

The village, in Taliban-controlled Waziristan, is run by the notorious al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which plots raids on Nato forces in Afghanistan.

A recruitment video presents life in the village as a desirable lifestyle choice with schools, hospitals, pharmacies and day care centres, all at a safe distance from the front.

In the video, the presenter, "Abu Adam", the public face of the group in Germany, points his finger and asks: "Doesn't it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!"

According to German foreign ministry officials a growing number of German families, many of North African descent, have taken up the offer and travelled to Waziristan where supporters say converts make up some of the insurgents' most dedicated fighters.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has a foothold in several German cities, has capitalised on growing concern over the rising profile of German forces in Afghanistan. Their role has become increasingly controversial in Germany in recent weeks after dozens of civilians were killed in an air strike ordered by German officers.

Last night a foreign ministry spokesman told The Daily Telegraph they were now negotiating with Pakistani authorities for the release of six Germans, including "Adrian M", a white Muslim convert, his Eritrean wife and their four year old daughter, who were arrested as they were making their way to the "German village". They are particularly concerned about the welfare of the child.

They are being held in custody in Peshawar after their arrest in May shortly when they crossed the border from Iran. They are understood to have left Germany in March this year.

The spokesman said negotiations were "under way" with Pakistani authorities "concerning a group of German citizens" and that it had been aware that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan had been recruiting in Germany "since the beginning of the year".

Their recruitment drive has been led by "Abu Adam", a 24-year-old German believed to be of Turkish or North African descent who was raised with his, and fellow Jihadi, Abu Ibrahim, in the smart Bonn suburb of Kessenich.

Adam, whose real name is Mounir Chouka, received weapons training from the German army as part of his national service, and later spent three years training at the Federal Office of Statistics where colleagues described him as a "nice boy".

He left in 2007, telling colleagues he was joining a trading firm in Saudi Arabia, but is believed to have joined a terrorist training camp in Yemen…

To update that popular WWI-era song: how ya gonna keep ‘em in the EU after they’ve seen Waziristan?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

Stop me if you've heard this before: I've just had the most scathinging ingenious idea. Why doesn't the UN set up an arragement whereby Iran could sell nuclear energy for food and other incentives like, say, Air Miles. They could call it the UN Nuclear-Power-for-Food-and-Points Program.

Hey, it could work.

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

Headline at odds with content: The WSJ headline proclaims “Obama Talks Tough on Iran,” but scanning down to the article the words turn out not to be “tough” at all, just the same old flaccidity we’ve come to expect and that Gadafi's UN warm-up act never fails to deliver:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama, in his weekly radio address Saturday, reinforced pressure on Iran to cooperate with the international community and come clean about its nuclear proliferation efforts.

Mr. Obama, ahead of a key meeting with the Middle Eastern country next week, said Iran "must now cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency and take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions."

On Friday, Mr. Obama and the heads of France and the United Kingdom at the Group of 20 nations' summit in Pittsburgh accused Iran of building a covert uranium enrichment facility, adding urgency to the drive to curb the country's nuclear ambitions ahead of a key meeting with the Middle East country next week.

His remarks on Iran's nuclear efforts were both conciliatory and frank, saying the door is open for the country to live up to its "responsibilities and achieve integration with the community" or "face consequences."

He also reiterated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's support for Iran to comply with the IAEA probe of its nuclear efforts, a shift for a country that has previously sided with Iran.

Mr. Obama also reiterated that the world's major economies are working together to spur global demand that is "balanced and sustained." He said the world's major economies reached a historic agreement to reform the global financial system…

Whoa, “face consequences,” will they? That’s about as “tough” as an overcooked strand of fettuccine. I’m sure the mullahs had a good chuckle over that lamest of threats.

Update: More "tough" talk--UN Secetary-General expresses "grave concerns".

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:53 | link | comments

Quelling queer fears: Stuart Murray, the former Manitoba Tory leader who’s been appointed to a plum position, head of the “human rights” mausoleum, met with reps from the LGBT community who were concerned about his, er “homophobic” tendencies; they also wanted assurances that their victum group had made the cut and would be represented inside the mausoleum. The meeting seems to have gone fairly well, as evidenced by this report in gay rag Xtra (my bolds):

…The Canadian Museum for Human Rights hasn't made any formal announcements about its content, causing many gay rights leaders — including Helen Kennedy of Egale Canada — to fear that queer history might be overlooked.

Murray insists we're in. But considering his flip-flop in 2002 [when, as Tory leader, he first supported, then backed off, an NDP bill allowing same-sex couples to adopt], why should we believe him?

"I think there's a danger in trying to equate party politics with what's going to happen in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights," he said.

According to Murray, the museum is a team project, with many managers and curators deciding what gets included. But he also admits that, as CEO, the buck stops with him.

What if Murray wants queer content, but the majority of his employees don't?

"Clearly there's no place for hatred," he said, "but there has to be room for controversy, for different pieces of opinions."

Throughout the interview, Murray said that he's committed to meeting with queer community members early — and often.

"What I'm saying very forcefully is, 'Let's work together.' Relationships are two-way things. I'll do everything I possibly can and I expect the community, rather than just sit with its arms folded, to say, let's give each other a hug."

The interview ended with a handshake, and an invitation from Murray. "Let's meet again."

My, he seems very affectionate--for an uptight “homophobe.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:25 | link | comments

Friday, 25 September 2009

He's, uh, reviewing the, uh, situation: As Obama hems and haws and hems some more, Claudia Rosett turns prophetess:

What more do we need to know about Iran's projects and plans? I have visions of our political leaders climbing from the rubble of the nuclear blast, brightly aglow, riffling with radioactive hands through the latest report they are about to discuss, revising yet again their estimate of when Iran will get the bomb, and whether to consider fresh measures — after, of course, another round of talks.

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

Calling all would-be artists: If you can draw, sketch or demonize, you can earn big $$$ in propaganda. Like these folks.

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

UN antics plus an epiphany: Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discuss moral leadership--who is exercising it and who isn’t--and the danger that lies ahead:

HH: Mark Steyn, I think Obama laid down the leadership of the West yesterday, but I think Netanyahu picked it up today.

MS: Yes, I think he did. At a certain level, it is pathetic that in the Year 2009, a prime minister has to stand at the podium of the United Nations general assembly, and hold up documentary proof of the Holocaust, because we all know for one thing that Ahmadinejad and Co. aren’t interested in documentary proof. There’s plenty…or even in many human beings walking around the planet with those concentration camp numbers on their wrists. But the fact that a prime minister has to stand at the podium and hold up documentary proof of the Holocaust testifies to what a diseased institution the United Nations is. The reality is that whatever it was in its founding in 1948, it is a very different creature now. And I am embarrassed and ashamed by what the president of the United States said yesterday, compared to what this prime minister said today.

HH: Exactly, and now tomorrow, I’m going to talk with Norman Podhoretz, author of Why Are Jews Liberals? about his new book, but I’m going to tell him a story. I went to the law school today, and one of my colleagues there, a big supporter of Israel, a Jewish American, and although he was disappointed in the speech, he immediately turned to bashing Bush – you know, we’re in the position we are because of Bush. You know, I just don’t think the American left understands how dangerous the world is, and how much more dangerous President Obama’s rhetoric and his actions are making it, Mark Steyn.

MS: No, and whatever one feels about President Bush, I think he was a man who did what Netanyahu did today. He stood before the United Nations general assembly in the fall of 2002, seven years ago, and he told them the truth. And the way that President Obama today instead, yesterday, instead took refuge in these fluffy bunny banalities, that there is no difference in the world between the United States and Burkina Faso, and no one nation is more important than any of the others. That is making a very dangerous world. And the first people who’ll come to understand that, eventually, will be all these Europeans who hated Bush, and think that Obama is finally the kind of American president they’ve always wanted. They’ll be the first to learn the cruel, hard realities of a world in which Obama is played for a sap and a patsy by the likes of Russia, China, Iran and anybody else, and ultimately, even Burkina Faso.

It occurs to me: you know what the problem is with the UN? The UN is multiculturalism writ large. That is, every thugocracy, every tin-pot dictatorship whether large or small, is accorded the same respect as the nations of the free world. And we who live in freedom have to pretend that every country is the same--and equally as wonderful--as every other country. And we have to listen to lectures by lunatics because, after all, they’re from the Third World, which is noble and virtuous, and we’re from the First World, which foisted itself on the Third World through imperialism way back when, for which sin we we must devalue our freedom, blend in with the hoard, and hang our heads in contrition forever.

At the national level, multiculturalism is a lie that is undermining the fabric of our society. At the international level, it is a failed experiment that is undermining the future of our world.

Update: Speaking of Burkina Faso, as Mark and Hugh were doing, I was fascinated to learn that this African backwater used to be known as the Republic of Upper Volta (beggin the question: where the heck was what Republic of Lower Volta, and perhaps the upper republic wouldn't have had to change its name to Burkina Faso, which sounds like something that should be played in a same symphonic program as Cavalleria Rusticana, had they decided to go with the Republic of Upper Travolta, in homage to Hollywood's John.) Even more amusing: its capital city is Ougadougou, which sounds a lot like the background gibberish repeated over and over in one of the cheesier hits from the '70s--"Ougadougouougadougou--I can't stop this feelin' deep inside of me..."

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:36 | link | comments

Hotel Hell: “No monument stands over Babi Yar,” begins the famous poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a memorial to the 33,700 Jews who, over two days in late September, 1941, were murdered in an orgy of bloodlust by their Ukrainian neighbours. But if some entrepreneurs have their way very soon a hotel will stand there. (Ironically, the most horrific description of the massacre I've ever read was in D.M. Thomas's novel The White Hotel.)

My advice to the entrepreneurs: don’t do it. Any hotel built on that site will be cursed--and haunted.

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

Elmo’s blame game: The Muslim world is awash in Judenhass, the result of resurgent Islam, Islamic texts attesting to the Jews’ lowliness and affiliation with Satan, and an inability (because of Islamic doctrine) to come to terms with the reality of a Jewish state on a sliver of Dar al Islam. Meanwhile in Europe, writes Christopher Caldwell in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, “Among Muslim immigrants, dislike (to put it mildly) of Jews is endemic. One French government report noted that, in heavily immigrant schools, anything that was crummy, corrupt, broken, dirty or undesirable was described as feuj, a slang word for Jewish.” And that’s the least of it as Jews in Western Europe are taking their licks from young Muslims, often operating in gangs. One such gang in France kidnapped a Jew named Ilan Halimi, tortured him for weeks and then savagely murdered him-- brutality that shocked even the French.

And yet Mohamed Elmasry, former chief of the Canadian Islamic Congress, insists Muslims should not be blamed for antisemitism. His “reasoning”: when he was but a wee Elmo growing up in Egypt, Jews and Muslims got along famously; why there was even a popular sitcom on TV about two Jews and a Muslim:

The new Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism needs to be alerted not to follow the pattern of the U.S. State Department’s "Report on Global anti- Semitism."

The report cites Muslims as one of the four main sources for "global anti- Semitism in recent years" and blames western European Muslims -- especially those it calls "disadvantaged and disaffected Muslim youths."

But the report does a gross disservice to the truth, beginning with a prejudicial hate-inciting statement that declares, "This trend appears likely to persist as the number of Muslims in Europe continues to grow, while their level of education and economic prospects remain limited."

As I was growing up in Egypt during the 1950s, we loved to watch a TV comedy called "Hassan, Marcus and Cohen." Previously, it had played for years in the theater, delighting audiences with its humorous look at the daily lives of three Egyptian men, a Muslim, a Coptic Christian and a Jew.

Their families were all neighbours and the three men were good friends. When they got together, they would usually bitch about their wives, their kids and government policies. We liked the show because it celebrated everyday events with just the right mix of teenage problems, marriages, divorces, births and deaths. Life was reflected brilliantly in the relationships among these Egyptian men and their families.

At that time, Egypt had the largest number of Jews in the Muslim world. Most of our major department stores were owned by Jews, but Egyptians did not discriminate in their shopping habits based on store ownership. Nor did they discriminate in politics, for Jewish politicians became government ministers in Egypt before their counterparts in Western countries. In fact, during the 1930s and 1940s, prominent Egyptian labour and socialist political party leaders were Jewish.

And that shouldn't be a surprise. After all, Moses was an Egyptian citizen, born and raised in Egypt, and educated at the best university of the ancient world, the Pharaoh's palace. The Qur’an mentions Moses as a prophet and his story is told there several times. According to Islamic Law, Egyptian Jews were given autonomy in the administration of their religiously based family and personal laws dealing with marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody, etc.

Nothing like this Islamic form of advanced natural justice dealing with family law can be found today, even in liberal western democracies. In fact Egyptian Jews never supported Zionism as a political ideology. Given their history in Egypt, there was no reason to, none whatsoever…

That's because Egyptians practiced their pluralism on the ground, not as an abstract concept…

Well, of course. As long as the Jews knew their place (i.e. below Muslims, their obvious superiors saith Allah to Islam’s founder), Egypt was a veritable Utopia of interfaith harmony. But the minute those uppity Jews up and went all “sovereign,” everything turned to crap.

In other words, don’t blame Muslims for antisemitism. Blame Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (2)

Iran plays the world for chumps: "Iran admits to a second uranium enrichment plant"

Great "watchdogging" there, ElBaradei.

Update: A-jad says the watchdogs can bring their white canes and inspect this second nuclear facility any time they'd like. Really. The workers promise not hide a thing. Just let 'em know when you're coming so they can, you know, prepare refreshments and stuff.

Update: Here's the best one yet--A-jad claims Iran is enriching uranium for, er, "medical purposes." Kind of a stretch, but I suppose it could be considered medical in the sense that they're planning a surgical strike to extract the "tumour" that is Israel from the body politic of the Midesast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:52 | link | comments

Not impressed: The New York Post is underwhelmed by Obama’s performance:

Who wrote President Obama's speech for the start of the UN General Assembly yesterday -- Rodney King? You know, the guy whose videotaped run-in with cops sparked the 1992 LA riots, leading King to ask: "Can't we all just get along?"

Today that question is used derisively, to mock naive "solutions" for social ills. But it essentially sums up Obama's 38-minute UN plea, as Washington's former UN envoy John Bolton noted.

Except that Obama is supposed to be the wise leader of the Free World.

What a truly pathetic performance.

Not only because of the president's stunning cluelessness about the world's nature. But also because of his repeated insults to America. And his back-stabbing of Washington's top Mideast ally, Israel.

Obama, yet again, focused on the world's "distrust" of this nation, thanks to the "belief . . . that America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interest of others" -- presumably, under George W. Bush's presidency.

Not to fear, though; Obama's here: He's closing Gitmo, he said, banning torture, quitting Iraq, scrapping nukes . . .

What about protecting America?

Obama believes "deeply," he said, that "the interests of nations and peoples are shared." (Cue the Kumbaya singers.)

Indeed, he practically begged world leaders to take their "share of responsibility" in responding to global challenges.

Did no one brief him about who'd be at the event? Like lunatic Libyan murderer-in-chief Moammar Khadafy (who ranted for 95 minutes)? And Holocaust-denying, terror-sponsoring, nuke-building, election-stealing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Obama can't truly believe these guys will do their "share" to make the world safe, however much he pleads...

Wanna bet?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:39 | link | comments

Hapless hopeychanger: Hugo Chavez may not have detected any sulphur in the air (even though there were plenty of devils in the room), but the scent of Eau de Suck-Up, Obama’s preferred fragrance, was pervasive, and unmistakable. Melanie Phillips itemizes The Orator’s foreign policy failures so far; no doubt there are many more to come:

...[Obama’s] approach was to be the antidote to the supposed gung-ho militarism of George W Bush. Swords would be beaten into ploughshares, genocidal lunatics would swap recipes and holiday snaps with their erstwhile victims and there would be peace on earth and the brotherhood of man. But we can see that everywhere Obama has applied this policy approach it has failed, humiliating America by revealing it to be weak, incompetent and naive to the point of imbecility and thus strenghtening the enemies of America and the free world.

In the Middle East, his policy has collapsed. Obama’s giant grovel to the Muslim world in Cairo failed to shift any belligerents or impress the rest.

His extended hand of friendship to Iran’s murderous regime had the effect of abandoning those Iranians who are fighting and dying for freedom from tyranny, while failing to stop, delay or in any way deter Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

He made America less safe by abandoning the central European missile defence shield against Iran, showing contempt for Poland and the Czech Republic along the way.

He has rewarded North Korea for its continued belligerency by agreeing to its demand for bilateral talks.

His engagement with Syria has failed to end its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

As far as Israel and the Palestinians are concerned, Obama marched his troops to the top of the hill only to have to march them down again with their tail between their legs. In response to his bullying over the settlements, Israel faced him down by agreeing to a Palestine state; but stipulating that for this to happen the Palestinians must accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. With the Palestinians loudly refusing to do so, thus demonstrating that it is they who refuse to accept a two-state solution, Obama has nevertheless forced ‘peace process’ negotiations to restart between Israel and a Palestinian leadership which refuses to accept the existence of Israel and says there is nothing to discuss. While he grovels to America’s enemies, Obama continues to treat its ally, Israel, as an enemy…

So far so bad.

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

Thursday, 24 September 2009

Now it smells of something far worse--dry rot, bullsh*t and abject fear: Hugo Chavez is thrilled to return to the UN now that George W. Bush is no longer president, and the joint doesn't stink of sulphur.

Oh, and like kooky Gadafi, Hugo gives props to Obama for doing such a fab job as Dubya's replacement.

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

It has come to this: What kind of psycho world do we live in? One that is so freaky, so demented, that to rebut an Iranian leader's lies, the Prime Minister of Israel would feel compelled to stand up at the United Nations holding aloft documents attesting to the reality of the Holocaust.

As if A-jad and the other Jew-haters deny it due to a scarity of credible documentation.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:58 | link | comments

Two ways to look at Obama's UN speech: First way: If you're followed by Mouamar Gadafi, an out-and-out loon, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an out-and-out Holocaust denier/Jew-hater, your words are bound to sound good, no matter how mediocre and unimpressive they are.

Second way: If you're what amounts to the warm-up act for an Arab despot and a Shia who's building nukes so he can wipe Israel off the map, nothing you say is going to sound good, and you will look bad--really bad--for lacking the good sense to nix appearing on the same bill as these slimeballs.

Update: Anne Bayefsky, a long-time observer of UN dysfunction, hits the nail on the head:

This speech ought to send shockwaves through the United States and our European allies...We have the weakest president in modern times ensconced in Washington, a man who will run away from saying what has to be said, if it doesn’t appeal to an audience rife with demagogues.

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

Weapons of mass bleach-blonding?: The alleged Aghan terrorist from Flushing, Queens was allegedly planning to make bombs out of chemicals commonly used by beautry parlors.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:57 | link | comments (2)

To Ayers is human..: And Obama's writing that book about his Daddy is what helped persuade more than a few Americans that he was "Divine".

He isn't, and he didn't even write the book. As has been suspected for some time based on its odd references and turns of phrase, the book is largely the work of a ghost--Obama compadre and former Weatherdude, Bill Ayers. (H/T WriterMom)

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:21 | link | comments

(S)he-bop: The testing of a South African runner of indeterminate gender has touched off a debate—sort of—about whether “gender” is a fixed reality or a matter of “culture.” Margaret Wente comments:

You've got to pity Caster Semenya, the ambiguously sexed runner who won a women's world championship race last month – by quite a wide margin. The poor South African girl has been betrayed by her handlers and exploited by her own country. She has set off a huge debate about the uses and abuses of gender testing in elite sports. Her track career is probably over. On top of that, the entire world is curious about her genitalia.

And now, she's become the poster victim for a bunch of folks who think that gender is just cultural, that our questions about Ms. Semenya are oppressive, sexist and racist, and that gender testing ought to be abolished.

“Results of the gender investigation aside, Caster Semenya's humanity has already been sacrificed to Western culture's desperate, frightened effort to maintain the fiction of binary, fixed gender,” wrote Kai Wright at The Root.

“The salacious sports media and the puritanical zealots that run international track and field have joined forces to hit a new low,” thundered Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation.

“To win, you need to start with an unfair advantage. Maybe Semenya has one, but I'm still not sure it matters,” argued Craig McInnes in The Vancouver Sun.

Ms. Semenya is blameless in this matter. She was raised as a girl and identifies as a woman. At first, the villain was the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which ordered her to be tested after she won. The tipoff might have been that she looks like a man. She has a man's musculature, flat chest and thicker facial features. She has a deep voice, too. I'm ashamed to admit that when I saw her picture, I too rushed to judgment. “That's a man,” I thought…

As did I. However, as anyone who’s been following “human rights” cases in Ontario knows, one’s “gender” is definitely not about one’s genitalia. Dangly bits aside, the determining factor is whether you yourself identify as “female” or “male”. That’s why, for example, a pre-operative transsexual can complain to the OHRC when a gym owner won’t allow her to use the women’s change room. Oh, sure, the women around whom she is changing may be somewhat disturbed to see her full kit and caboodles, but their discomfort pales beside a chick-to-be’s “right” to be seen as a women, dangly bits be damned!

Not that the Ontario way is going to help at the Olympics, where, for obvious reasons, they’re a bit pickier about who’s a man and who’s a woman. But since the kind of gender testing Semenya has been forced to undergo is so “humiliating,” and since the “modern” way is to let everyone decide their gender for themselves—and since some sort of testing is still needed, or else “cultural” women who remain physically male will be scooping up all the prizes in women’s events—I suggest another form of testing. I call it “the burka test.” Here’s how it works. If you look like someone a mullah or imam would stick in a burka, you can compete as a woman. If you don’t, then you can’t.

Essentially, it amounts to the OHRC’s rigorous gender definition, only with a distinct multicultural/sharia twist.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:42 | link | comments

Live by Section 13, die by Section 13: The CJC's beloved "Nazi"-slayer--the former Canadian Human Rights Commission employee who laid claim to the censorship provision of our federal human rights code and made into his own personal duchy--is being investigated by the commission for--wait for it--"hate speech."

Savour the irony. It is so delicious that it borders on the Shakespearean.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments (1)

Iggy tries--and fails--to steal Harper’s thunder: It has been brought to my attention that some pro-Israel Jews who are looking for an excuse to vote for the Liberals in the next election despite that party’s rather spotty record (to drastically understate it) re Israel have been circulating this statement:

Statement from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations today

Published on September 23, 2009

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the genocide of the Holocaust while inciting a new one against the Jewish people. The global community has a collective obligation to remind the world of what President Ahmadinejad stands for – along with his atrocious human rights record against his own people.

If we do not speak out – if we stand silent – we are allowing evil to triumph.

Boycotting President Ahmadinejad’s speech is absolutely the right thing to do – just as it was the right thing to do at the Durban Review Conference back in April.

I question, however, why Stephen Harper has refused to take action in Canada to hold the Iranian regime to account.

In the absence of Conservative leadership, the Liberal Party has taken the lead in Canada and around the world to hold Iran’s leadership to account for domestic repression, nuclear proliferation and state-sanctioned incitement to genocide.

In June, Liberal MP and Special Counsel on Human Rights & International Justice Irwin Cotler introduced Bill C-412, the Iran Accountability Act, which our party has endorsed. Professor Cotler’s global Responsibility to Prevent petition against the Iranian leadership, which we also endorse, was signed by 60 leading genocide scholars and survivors on the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, including former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Canadian Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour.

For months, we have been pushing the Harper government to join us in this condemnation, yet they have been silent. Where Liberals have been leading by example, Mr. Harper hasn’t been leading at all.

Nor does today’s boycott of one speech excuse the Prime Minister’s absence from a special meeting of world leaders at the United Nations today.

While the rest of the world gathers to confront the global challenges of nuclear proliferation, respect for human rights, and climate change, Mr. Harper has silenced Canada’s voice on the world stage.

I continue to strongly urge this government to endorse Mr. Cotler’s Bill in Canada and his international petition that seeks to hold the Iranian leadership to account. Actions speak louder than words, Mr. Harper.

Harper has “silenced” our voice? That’s bollocks flambé with a side of hogwash au gratin. To recap, Harper:

· Has stood up for Israel again and again, including the times it was fighting Hezbollah and Hamas. He has done so as a matter of principle, and not because he’s out for votes (because it’s a pretty crappy way of getting them; standing up for Israel almost invariably causes his approval rating to drop).

· Was the first leader in the world to give Durban II, a reprise of the UN’s fiesta of Judenhass, the finger.

What have the Liberals ever done for Israel except vote in lock step every year with the UN’s raft of anti-Israel resolutions, and speak out of both sides of their mouth as they try to curry favour with Jews and Muslims? (I highly doubt Iggy will be citing the above statement when he drops by Toronto mosques. More likely he will telling the folks how much he supports a Palestinian state, and how he wants Canada to "return" to being an "honest broker" and a "peacekeeper".)

It beggars belief that Iggy, desperate for power though he is, would stoop to such a pathetic display, and, further, that Irwin Cotler, who isn’t even a member of Iggy’s shadow cabinet, would allow himself to be used in such an insulting manner--as Iggy’s prop, his token Jew. (As for Cotler's bill: Louise Arbour endorsed it. 'Nuff said.)

If pro-Israel Jews want to vote for Iggy, b’vakasha (as they say in the homeland). But know this: Iggy cannot--can never--be counted on to act out of principle; he will always act out of self-interest. And I can assure you if he’s prime minister when Israel most needs him, he and his party won’t be there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:45 | link | comments

And a special guest appearance by Judy Rebick’s Bubby: To make her case against Israel and for the boycott of TIFF Tel Aviv flicks, Judy Rebick trotted out her late Bubby. It was Rebick’s way of lending heft and legitimacy to her long-standing gripe against the Jewish state. Fred Stoll, a letter-writer to the National Post (one of many who have been all over Judy for her Bubbemeises), channels Bubby to give Judy a good scolding:

The one thing that Judy Rebick got right in her comments defending the TTIF controversy is that her grandma "might not agree with Naomi [Klein] on Israel." Her grandma sounds like quite a lady with a lot of smarts and I would suggest that she definitely would not be kvelling (taking joyful pride) over Naomi Klein.

I believe she would say something like this to Ms. Klein and Ms. Rebick: "Are you both inguntsen meshuga (totally nuts)? Hamas is sending thousands of rockets into Israel and Israel should do nothing? Stop already with this loshon hora (evil talk) about Israel and concentrate better on her enemies. Oy vey (woe is to me). Judy, I thought I taught you better."

Don’t blame Bubby. It isn’t her fault that her granddaughter took a far left turn and got lost.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:54 | link | comments

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Gimme shelter: Still no place in New York for Qaddafi's tent--NYT

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

A big clue you're doing something wrong, Mr. President: Kooky Gadaffi sings Obama's praises at the UN.

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

Loving Al Jazeera: Writing in the Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan pens a rapturous love note to the Arab CNN. Why does he love it so? Because it’s hard-hitting. And “honest.” And boldly goes where CNN and other tread-gently media dare not. If Kaplan has one quibble, it is minor, and it is this:

Overlying Al Jazeera’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Bush sentiment is a breezy, pacifist-trending internationalism. In too many of its reports, the subliminal message appears to be that compromise should be the order of the day. According to Al Jazeera, the politically weak, merely by being so, are automatically in the right. A certain kind of moral equivalency is Al Jazeera’s lifeblood. The history of human suffering seemingly begins and ends with that of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and that of the Iraqis under erstwhile American occupation.

Yet Al Jazeera is forgivable for its biases in a way that the BBC or CNN is not. In the case of Al Jazeera, news isn’t so much biased as honestly representative of a middle-of-the-road developing-world viewpoint. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you sit in Doha or Mumbai or Nairobi, the world is going to look starkly different than if you sat in Washington or London, or St. Louis for that matter. By contrast, in the case of the BBC and CNN, you are explicitly aware that rather than presenting the world as they find it, those channels are taking a distinct side—the left-liberal internationalist side—in an honest and fundamental debate over foreign policy.

For Kaplan, that’s a minor hesitation he can quite easily overcome. For me, it’s major, and colours everthing else A-J does, no matter how high its quality.

Kaplan may be able to get past A-J's inherent Zionhass--the same hatred which underpins the internationalists' Israel-removal plan. I could not—and never will.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:38 | link | comments (1)

David brings his “noble” fight to da right place: Embattled (at least in his own mind) York U prof David Noble has taken his fight for equity and fairness to--where else?--the Ontario Human Rights Commission. From the Toronto Star:

He is a thorn in the university's side.

History professor David Noble has taken on York University for years; accusing it of playing religious favourites by cancelling all classes on Jewish holidays (and he's Jewish); claiming pro-Israeli members of its fundraising foundation have too much sway over campus operations; slamming former president Lorna Marsden for expelling a pro-Palestinian protester and questioning the credentials of a recent faculty hire.

Since 2004, he has written a pamphlet critical of the influence of what he calls the "Israeli lobby" at York – whom he named, one by one.

He has filed union grievances against his employer and taken York to the Ontario Human Rights Commission over its practice of cancelling classes on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which he claimed discriminated against students of other faiths. York stopped the 34-year-old practice this fall before the commission made a ruling.

He even won a $2,500 award from his bosses when a labour arbitrator ruled York curbed his academic freedom by issuing a 2004 press release that criticized his pamphlet on Israeli influence.

This week, he is asking a human rights tribunal to find York has penalized him for all his rabble-rousing. Noble says York assigned him less popular timeslots for his lectures in 2006 – Friday afternoons. He says the university's press release suggested he himself was anti-Semitic. He claims he was threatened with reprisal in 2005 if he held classes on Jewish holidays, so he did not – not until 2008, when he would demand a security guard unlock a classroom so he could lead a tutorial on a campus otherwise empty for Rosh Hashanah.

And York failed to intervene, he contends, when a student disrupted his class in 2005 over his stand on the Jewish holidays, and the student then launched an internal complaint against Noble with the help of B'nai Brith and York's human rights office.

"The disruption by that student was very traumatic, and part of the campaign of reprisal against me for my efforts to end discrimination," said the professor, 64, this week.

"I've been teaching for 35 years and I no longer can trust my students when I walk into class. I don't know which one of them could be spies."

Yesterday former president Lorna Marsden denied any retaliation against Noble when she appeared as a witness before the Human Rights Commission of Ontario, which is hearing the complaint…

Yeah, Dave, those Jewish “spies” are out to get you--and, don’t look now, but they could be anywhere. (Is it just me, or does the prof sound a tad paranoid in the ignoble tradition of nutty Jewish conspiracy-theorists?)

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

Taking a stance against Stinky's rants: Canada says once Stinky Ahmaninejad starts propounding his loopy Holocaust theories in front of the General Assembly, we're outta there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments (2)

Going “Dutch”: Sheesh, what’s an overly nipped ‘n’ tucked Arab despot gotta do these days to find decent digs in the Big Apple? A question that’s posed and answered in this hilarious timesonline piece:

Libyan officials posed as Dutch diplomats to try to find Colonel Gaddafi a place to stay this week on his first visit to the US.

The envoys, including one calling himself Ronald, approached a property agent on the Upper East Side of New York to inquire about renting the Barclay Mansion, a six-storey townhouse on East 78th Street.

Jason Haber, who has a master’s degree from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, realised the ruse and the deal did not go through.

“When someone says they are representing the Dutch, you accept that at face value,” Mr Haber told The Times. “After a few conversations, the accents did not match. When the e-mails started it became quite clear. The e-mails had a Libyan Embassy address.”

Colonel Gaddafi, the world’s longest-serving leader, was due to arrive in New York last night for his first visit to the annual UN General Assembly.

After 11 years of UN sanctions, Libya now holds a seat on the 15-nation Security Council and the presidency of the 192-nation General Assembly. Colonel Gaddafi is also the head of the African Union.

His rehabilitation on the international scene has been dented by Britain’s release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi. The outcry with which the release was met in America has made it difficult for Colonel Gaddafi to find a place to stay.

The Libyan leader originally asked to pitch his customary Beduin tent in Central Park but was turned down by city authorities. He then considered staying at a Libyan-owned mansion in the New Jersey suburb of Englewood, prompting a local uprising that forced him to abandon the plan…

You know those snooty Manhattaners--when it comes to Dutch “Beduins,” they’re sooo NIMBY. (What else do you expect from "Jew" York?)

BTW, here's the limerick I sent to Maclean's Magazine when it featured the Colonel, decked out in full military regalia, as its "FACE OF THE WEEK":

Your FACE OF THE WEEK, M. Gadafi,

Is one stunningly weird photographi.

A visage as waxen

As the late Michael Jackson.

And he’s dressed up like Bubbles--what a laughi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments

When the 'roos come a-knockin', don't go a-talkin': George Jonas writes about how “human rights” heinousness operates at the international level--through the UN and its toxic offshoot (one of many, alas), the UNHRC. Jonas says that for democracies, including Israel (which has just been savaged by a South African jurist in a UNHRC report) there’s nothing to be gained--and a great deal to be lost--by submitting to supranational ‘roos and their rigged investigations:

…Should a democracy like Canada co-operate with international commissions?

I suppose the answer depends on our assessment of the folk who request our cooperation. We should present our case to a tribunal or commission whose jurisdictional competence and open-mindedness we have no reason to question, yes. But UNHRC-type charades are unlikely to be open-minded; will almost certainly be politically motivated and may be jurisdictionally incompetent to boot.

Co-operating with a self-mandated UN tribunal or commission whose competence we question and hostility have every reason to assume in the hope of a slightly less scathing condemnation of our supposed misdeeds is nothing short of demeaning. We shouldn't do it any more than Israel did. Legitimizing a kangaroo court by co-operation doesn't signal the presence of a "strategic mind" -- sorry, Prof. Dror [an Israeli academic who criticized Israel for not cooperating with the Goldstone marsupials]-- but the absence of moral fibre. It's not only unseemly, but fundamentally and profoundly wrong.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments

What the Falk?: Yes, it’s true. UN “rapporteur” Richard Falk is coming to Toronto to tell all the Zionhassers (leftist, Islamist) about the, er, rapporteuring he's been doing in the Palestinian territories. The Canadian Arab Federation, a big-time Falk fan, promotes the lecture with nuch fanfare and enthusiasm in its Sept. 21 Weekly Bulletin:

Richard Falk in Toronto – September 27, 2009, Toronto

Annual James Graff Memorial Lecture: The amazing Richard Falk will be speaking in Toronto. When: September 27, 2009. Time: 2:00p.m. Location: U of T Health Centre, 6th Floor, Room 610, 155 College Street, Toronto, ON. Falk, currently the U.N. Special Rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territories, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton, and a prolific author is a fearless and articulate advocate for human rights. For Info: necef.canada@gmail.com

And by “a fearless and articulate advocate for human rights” the Arab “human rights” group means he’s fully onside with the deranged international agenda that intends to strip the Jews of Israel of their right to live in a Jewish state (“human rights” generally being the tip-off in our era that something heinous is underway).

Update: Here’s what I mean by heinous. In a letter to the Ceej’s Bernie Farber, the president of NECEF (the organization behind the Falk talk and one of the groups involved in last winter’s low-key, civilized pro-Hamas gathering in downtown Toronto) condemns Judenhass while engaging in blatant Zionhass--as if the latter isn’t a function of the former so long as it’s conducted under the banner of “human rights”. Further, she warns Farber (a chap who’s hot for state censorship and Canada’s hate speech laws because he sees them as a means of protecting “vulnerable” Jews from the non-existent threat of homegrown Nazis) that she will turn him into the RCMP forthwith unless he apologizes for saying "hateful" things that have offended her.

That’s “human rights” in Kafka-eque Canada, folks: A victim group honcho offends a “human rights” honcho, and “human rights” is used to justify and disguise hatred of Israel, which won’t be considered hatred because it’s the socially-acceptable hatred of the leftist intelligentsia, which only wants the best for humanity, and thinks everyone everywhere should shut up and be nice to Muslims, who are incapable of racism themselves because they’re from the impoverished/virtuous Third World, which has been victimized by racist, colonialist White folks, and have therefore been accorded "victim" status in perpetuity (much like the Palestinians have been accorded "refugee" status in perpetuity--or until the uppity Zionist entity is finally gone, a requirement if "human rights" and "social justice" are to be served).

Got that? Good, because there will be a quiz.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments

Tweeting hate: Jonathan Kay takes the piss and vinegar out of a Toronto Star scribbler, a notorious Israel-loather:

Over the past few months, I've been traveling the United States, doing some research on radical political activists for a book I am writing. Most of the people I've met are fairly decent folks — even if they have views outside of the mainstream. But sometimes, you meet some hatemongers. They don't come out and say that they hate "Blacks" or "Jews" per se. This is 2009, after all. Instead, they use code words and euphemisms. So, for instance, instead of attacking Barack Obama's race, they make the ridiculous argument that he is somehow a Kenyan, and not a U.S. citizen. And when they are trashing Jewish-American politicians, they will call them "Israeli-American citizens" — implying that the fact the person is Jewish means he is somehow a secret Zionist agent. It's the old claim of "divided loyalties."

It's not the sort of creepy verbal trick I expected from a broadsheet Canadian newspaper journalist — until I got an email tipping me off to the fact that Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star put this up on her Twitter feed: "MP Irwin Cotler's children join IDF. http://bit.ly/1Ttsq0 Which country are you loyal to, sir?"

Loyalty tests for a person's children? That's pretty disgusting, Antonia. Now why don't you use your Twitter feed to apologize. Or are you going to wait until your own newspaper slaps you down for yet another inappropriate attack on a Jewish public figure — like it did in July?

I think I see a pattern here. Just another example of how hatred of Israel is driving the once-respectable Canadian left stark raving batcrap.

Hatred of Israel--late stage Judenhass--is driving the left of the entire Western world psycho: Obsessive, irrational Jew-hate/Utopian fantasizing tends to have that effect on people.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:00 | link | comments

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

More mausoleum madness: The October issue of Canadian Geographic has an article by Susan Peters about the Canadian human rights museum controversy. No, not the one involving a Conservative homophobe. The one about the museum being built on ground sacred to First Nations peoples. It seems the museum was lax in conducting due diligence about the suitability of its chosen site. No sooner had it broken ground than it was turning up achaeological artifacts--pottery shards, bones and other stuff. When that happened, as the article recounts, “archaeologists and aboriginal organizations [started] accusing the CMHRC of trampling on First Nations’ cultural heritage during construction.”

To assuage the hurt feelings of aggrieved archaeologists and aboriginals, the museum went on a fishing expedition (so to speak) for more artifacts. The first, more extensive dig, in the summer of ’08 “cost $550,000, employed 26 people and up 400,000 artifacts, including the showstopper: an 800- year-old human footprint.” The second dig, this past summer, turned up “stone tools, pottery, mammal bones and a lot of fish bones.” The showstopper this time around was far less, er, show-stopping: two pottery shards that fit together.

Has all the digging and collecting satisfied those who were upset? Not so much.

“We would rather not have had the building on a historic site, “ says Jack Brink, president of the Canadian Archaeological Association (CAA). “Maybe putting it a couple miles away would have been best. “

Too late now, Jack. That sucker’s a go right where it is, and there’s no turning back.

Greg Monks, a University of Manitoba anthropology professor, is steamed because the museum should have spent at least one percent of its $310 million budget on “archaeological mitigation, as is done in the United States. “

Don’t worry, though. The museum mucky-mucks are working really closely with the aboriginal community, and keeping its sensitivities in mind during construction:

For now, the augers keep grinding down, and the two pottery shards that fit together and other artifacts from the site won’t end up on display in the CMHRC--archaeology is not part of the museum’s mandate.

Oh. Does that mean we’re going to have to build a whole new museum that does have a mandate to house them? Who’s to say? I do know that all us taxpayers who are forking out mucho dinero to keep this tin-foil beanie of a structure up and running, lock, stock and archaeological artifact, can sleep well at night knowing that museum officials have everything under control:

…before construction started, museum officials did seek advice from elders at Winnipeg’s Circle of Life Thunderbird House. So after the augers do their work, but before the concrete is poured, a medicine bag containing sage, sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco will be placed at the bottom of each hole. The bag is an offering of thanks, a blessing for good things to come--medicine to heal the Earth.

And there you have it: Well-meaning, modern Canadians who wanted to build a shrine to ’human rights’ digging into to the sacred ground of one of the victim groups to which it devotes a great deal of exhibit space, and pandering to the group after the fact by pretending to--you should forgive the expression--go all Native. I’d say that about sums up the whole wacky project, wouldn't you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:15 | link | comments

The madness of niceness: Ralph Peters weighs in on ill-conceived U.S. strategies:

GEN. Stan McChrystal, an honorable soldier, has reported from Afghani stan: He wants more troops for a "classic" counterinsurgency strategy to secure the population, then win hearts and minds.

President Obama needs to make a decision: Either give the general the resources he believes he needs, or change the mission.

I'm for changing the mission. Concentrate on the continued destruction of al Qaeda and its allies. Nothing else matters in this mess.

Last spring, the president handed McChrystal an impossible mission: Turn Afghanistan into a prosperous, rule-of-law democracy cherished by its citizens. The general's doing his best. But we have zero chance -- zero -- of making that happen.

Meanwhile, we've forgotten why we went to Afghanistan in the first place. (Hint: It wasn't to make nice with toothless tribesmen.) Here's a simple way to conceptualize our problem: A pack of murderous gangsters holes up in a fleabag motel. The feds raid the joint, killing or busting most of them. But some of the deadly ringleaders get away.

Should the G-men pursue the kingpins, or hang around to renovate the motel? Common sense says: Go after the gangsters. They're the problem, not the run-down bunkhouse.

Yet, in Afghanistan, we've put the bulk of our efforts into turning a vast flophouse into the Four Seasons -- instead of focusing ruthlessly on our terrorist enemies. It's politically correct madness…

Madness, indeed. That’s what comes of a resolve to remain ignorant about and/or dismiss Islam's foundational doctrines about jihad and sharia: the delusion that Afghanistan’s problems are the result of “poverty” and can be remedied once we infidels have found a way to make ourselves sufficiently endearing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:01 | link | comments

Mahmoud "le Pew" suggests a sharia punishment for youse Jews: The tiny terror, who will be jetting into NYC to present another civilized, eloquent oration at the UN (the gist: Kill the Jooos! They're poison!) is vowing to cut the hands off anyone who dares mess with the Holy Rollah Empire.

And the UN is letting this skunk stink up the premises again because....?
pepe-le-pew.jpg pepe le pew image by PurpleIris1

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:38 | link | comments

Suffering in comfort: It's spa time in Gaza!

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

Sing along with Mark: Mark Steyn salutes songwriter Carl Sigman on the occasion of his centennary in this delightful podcast.

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

An image I could have gone the rest of my live without picturing, and will now strive mightily to erase from my brain: "Drunk, in his underwear and craving pizza: Boris Yeltsin's [Clinton] White House high jinks exposed"

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

Klein gangbanged!: Well, that's one way to look at Judy Rebick's astounding claim in the National Post that self-loathing Jewess Naomi Klein is the victim of "a pile-on of angy Jewish males."

Sounds to me like a certain bodacious and dainty feminista may be having overheated sexual fantansies involving the poster girl for demento-leftism. Could somebody puh-leeze hose her down?

Update: David Gutman writes that anti-Zionist Jews (like Naomi and "Jewdy"--well, after all she does have a Jewish Bubby and Zaidy, the proper credentials, or so she thinks, for bashing Israel) are "addicted to the aroma of their own own resentments." Boy, does Gutman, a clinical psychologist, ever have la Rebick’s number:

The chief excuse offered by the Jewish quislings and their apologists holds that the Jews are uniquely endowed with a strong, often oppressive conscience. Because our long history of suffering and victimization have, understandably, made us particularly sympathetic to the pain of other vulnerable groups, we are not allowed to be violent against those who, like the Palestinians, carry the title of “victim.” Even when they murderously attack us, the victims can never be blamed - certainly not by us Jews, who turned those innocent, agrarian Palestinians into victims. It is only we, the Victimizing Jews, who merit censure.

This rather glib rationale both flatters us Jews and lets the quislings among us off the hook: “When we abandon Israel it is for the purest of motives; indeed, it is we who are morally superior to the bloody-minded Jewish hawks that we condemn.” You can in short bash your fellow embattled Jews, and acquire merit for so doing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:52 | link | comments (3)

Worst. Ad campaign. Ever!: A campaign for this year’s World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) conflates AIDS, a disease resulting from a virus passed through unsafe sexual practices and when illicit drug users share needles, with totalitarian thugs who blithely murdered millions of people for their own evil ends. Michael A. Jones (see post below for his bona fides) ‘splains:

What do Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and AIDS all have in common? According to one new advertising campaign, launched in the lead up to World AIDS Day on December 1, it's the fact that all four are mass murderers. And each time someone engages in unsafe sex, it's like getting down and dirty in the bedroom with the likes of the Third Reich.

Provocative? Check. Certain to attract attention? Check. An edgy new way of looking at HIV/AIDS? Yup, that too.

But as the summer of "Let's compare everything to Hitler" ends, does this type of advertising take things a little too far?

The "AIDS is a Mass Murderer Campaign" points out that the world needs new, edgy ways of looking at AIDS in order to avoid complacency. They point out that more than 28 million people worldwide have died of AIDS, with another person dying every 15 seconds from the disease. Certainly tragic numbers, especially in the wake of reports that suggest apathy about HIV/AIDS is causing higher contraction rates among certain populations, like young adults and adolescents.

The ads are trying to nail home a message of prevention - that unsafe sex could be as risky as living in Nazi Germany, or Stalin's Russia, or Saddam's Iraq. But they might be serving a negative, unintended purpose as well: demonizing people with AIDS. That's what Shawn Syms with Canada's Xtra.ca argues.

"Did the campaigners not think twice about wrongly comparing human sexual behaviour to the Holocaust, and inappropriately demonizing people with HIV in the process?" Syms asks. "The insistence on seeing HIV transmission as villainy obscures the most stubborn fact about the epidemic -- far from being the realm of malevolent or sociopathic people, HIV is transmitted through behaviours that are otherwise completely natural and normal, such as penetrative intercourse -- or behaviours that may often be hard to control rather than 'intentional,' such as needle sharing in the context of addiction."

Syms has a point there. Catchy public relations slogans or graphic images may grab one's attention, but if the underlying message is people with AIDS are on par with Hitler, is it even worth running the campaign at all?...

No, it’s not. In fact, it’s a really, really stupid idea that insults the memory of all those who were wilfully and cruelly murdered by these brutes. Furthermore, I doubt it will stop a single person from thinking twice about hopping in the sack and having unsafe sex; in a perverse sort of way, it might even make the idea more appealing.
Stalin Hussein

(Um, since AIDS strikes far more men than women, shouldn't it be guys and not chicks having sex with these thugs? This poster looks like a promo for a porno about geezers who like jailbait.)

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

Are Murray’s days at the Mausoleum numbered?: News that a “homophobe” has been tapped to head up our “human rights” mausoleum has hit the blogosphere . I found this, written by “the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School,” in the GAY RIGHTS section of Obama-prop site change.org:

…The politician in question is Stuart Murray, and in addition to voting against gay adoption, he also favored denying pension rights to same-sex partners as a member of Parliament from 2000-2006. And that has many Canadian activists crying foul and hypocrisy that someone opposed to human rights for LGBT people would be selected to lead a museum commemorating such rights.

One activist, Daniel Voth, told the Winnipeg Free Press, "We must let our voices be heard loud and clear that homophobia cannot be tolerated anywhere, least of all in a national museum on human rights."

Other activists are saying that Murray's appointment is nothing more than political cronyism at play, with a friend of conservative political interests being rewarded with a good job. That's what Lorri Millan told Extra.ca. "[Murray] was a marginal leader during his time and he doesn't reflect any diversity. He's not a curator and he's not a director. I can't see it as anything other than a cushy appointment for a long-time Tory."

Ouch. So not only was he a marginal leader, but he also supported anti-gay policies. Seems like quite the imperfect fit to direct a human rights museum. It might be like asking Dick Cheney, who proudly voted against recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in the U.S., to direct a civil rights museum.

LGBT rights are human rights. Any director of a human rights museum needs to recognize that.

For their part, one of Canada's largest LGBT organizations, Egale Canada, is scheduled to meet with Murray to ask him some tough questions about his record on LGBT rights. Suffice it to say, if Murray doesn't answer up for some of his past votes, he doesn't deserve to be directing one of the world's largest museums for human rights.

One of the world’s largest museums for human rights? You mean there are others? Then why the heck do we need another one hoovering up our tax dollars here in Canada? Wouldn’t it have been better for all concerned had we concentrated our efforts on guaranteeing real human rights--like the ones “human rights” outfits and sharia-enthusiasts are trying to take away from us--instead of putting up a silly edifice which sacralizes victimhood and the grasping, whiny “human rights” industry that services it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:43 | link | comments (2)

Monday, 21 September 2009

“Bundler” on the hook for a bundle: Hassan Nemazee has been indicting for defrauding a bank of something in the region of $290 million.

Who’s Hassan Nemazee? According to Wikipedia he’s a rich, well-connected Democrat who is

known as one of the top political donors in the United States.

During the United States presidential election, 2004, Nemazee was a supporter of John Kerry and a major contributor to his campaign. He was the New York Finance Chair for the Kerry campaign, and is currently the national finance chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.[3] With Nemazee as the national finance chair, Chuck Schumer's DSCC in 2006 raised $115 million, outpacing the NRSC by substantial sums, and helping the Democratic Party take control of the Senate.[4] During his presidency, Bill Clinton nominated Nemazee to fill the position of U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.[5]

More recently, Nemazee served as Finance Chairman to Hillary Clinton's 2007-08 presidential campaign, and also donated $50,000 (the maximum amount) to Barack Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee.[6] In addition, Nemazee was a bundler for the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee.[7]

Sounds like the bundler may be a bungler.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:30 | link | comments

Ars gratia Obama: A truly scandalous story--how the Obama administration is using the National Endowment for the Arts to propaganzide on behalf of its agenda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:15 | link | comments

So You Think You Can Dance, Eco-Geek Edition: Time is running out--an exercise in mass hysteria (and choreography).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:07 | link | comments

Obama's bias (a function of his worldview) evident in holiday greetings to Jews, Muslims?: You decide.

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

Mad, bad and a dangerous M.O.: Some people (i.e. the happy hopeychangers) continue to flog a dead camel (i.e. Middle East "peace") despite stating their "low expectations" for success at the outset.

To "summit" up: searching for "peace" in that region at this time is the very definition of insanity.

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

The TLC “strategy”: The head of NATO forces in Afghanistan is calling for lots more troops on the ground. Not for a "surge," or to engage the Taliban in battle and hand them a decisive defeat. Dear me, that would be so…violent. No, in this man’s army, the idea isn’t to “defeat” the enemy so much as it is to “mentor” and mollycoddle those whom you hope will take on the job themselves, the "reasoning" being they will do so because, well, because you’ve just been so goshdarned nice to them. From the WaPo:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document's five-page Commander's Summary on a note of muted optimism: "While the situation is serious, success is still achievable."

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

McChrystal's assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be."

The commander has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon.

Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations. A declassified version of the document, with some deletions made at the government's request, appears at washingtonpost.com.

McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory…

You mean McChystal thinks “protecting Afghans” will provide the impetus these backward tribesmen need to get their act together and get them to identify with infidels over other Muslims? Seriously?

That’s the lamest idea since “multiculturalism can be fixed if we get Jews to ‘mentor’ Somalis.” Had that kind of “strategy” been employed during WW2 (“Hey, let’s go over to Germany and ‘protect’ Germans”), we’d have lost for sure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:59 | link | comments (2)

Wishing us “peace” and issuing threats: The Christian Science Monitor does a rundown of Eid greetings from various “leaders”:

…In Iran, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei used his Eid al-Fitr sermon to blast Israel, Western powers, and the foreign media, the Times of London reported. Mr. Khamanei said Zionism was “gnawing into the lives of the Islamic nations” and “spreading through the invading hands of the occupiers and arrogant powers.”

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai used his Eid speech to extend an olive branch to Taliban militants, according to Pakistan’s Daily Times.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians they suspected might be planting explosives, according to the Arab Monitor. The news agency also reported that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh issued a fatwa against Palestinians who worked for firms building what Palestinians say are “illegal” Israeli settlements.

In Iraq, many streamed north to Kurdistan to celebrate the holiday, and seek respite from the violence that still plagues much of the rest of the country…

And there you have it. Not much “peace” to be found in or emanating from those quarters--at least, not in the infidel sense of the word.

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

“Pushy Jew” gets really animated: Okay, I admit it--this item in the Toronto Star made me smile:

The Simpsons has snagged Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Brüno) to voice an episode as an angry Israeli tour guide who encounters Homer, Marge and the gang during a church group trip to the Holy Land, says Entertainment Weekly. "He's trying to get Marge to give him good grades on the comment card, and she goes, 'You people are pushy,' and he goes, 'What do you mean, you people? You try having Syria for a neighbour! What do you have – Canada?' " says executive producer Al Jean. The episode, "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," is tentatively scheduled to air on March 28. Season 21 of The Simpsons begins Sept. 27 on Fox and Global.

Syria; Canada. Now, that’s funny!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:42 | link | comments

Respected imam “betrays” authorities: At least, that’s how authorities in New York City are viewing it, as per this report in New York Times:

Ahmad Wais Afzali had for years been a popular imam in Queens. First at one mosque, and then at others, he had become known for his moving sermons. He also ran a funeral home, and won praise for helping families deal with their grief.

He was also a source of information for local and federal authorities on the alert for any criminal activity. A good citizen, his lawyer called him.

And so this month, Mr. Afzali was approached by law enforcement officials concerned that a terror suspect had unexpectedly driven to Queens from Colorado. Over time, Mr. Afzali had phone conversations with the suspect, Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old former food-cart vendor who had grown up in Queens.

Those phone calls and others, court records show, included talk of the interest in Mr. Zazi among law enforcement officials and the possibility that he might be picked up by the authorities. They included mentions of what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One conversation involved talk of “evidence.”

The imam’s lawyer said he was merely trying to help the authorities. But on Saturday night, federal officials arrested Mr. Afzali, 37, effectively claiming that their onetime source of assistance had betrayed them by tipping off Mr. Zazi, and then lying to them about it…

The kafirs to whom he was snitching may see this act as a betrayal. However, the imam sounds like a man who knows exactly where his true loyalty lies.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments (1)

Beginning to?: "President Obama is beginning to look out of his depth"--the Telegraph.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments

Mullah Omar’s festive message: MEMRI has a translation of the Afghan jihadi leader’s greeting to his flock on the occasion of Eid. Shockingly, it contains this thought:

No country in the world has right to meddle in the internal affairs of its neighboring country, according to the modern international principles.

Oh, so you mean Israel’s neighbours have no right to meddle in its internal affairs, and jihadis have no right to meddle in affairs of the nation formerly known as Great Satan (by, you know, blowing up urban landmarks)?

Er, no, not exactly. As always re the jihad, it’s a matter of do as we say, uppity infidel, not as we do, impertinent kafir. The mullah continues in the clunky phraseology that’s a mark of totalitarian speechifying the world over (and which perhaps sounds more lilting in the original Pashto):

The arrogant powers-that-be at the White House and its British ally should know their interference from thousands of kilometers away is never acceptable to the countries of the region and can never be tolerated. The plans of colonial expansionism underway in the region, under the notorious and unlawful slogan of war on terrorism is, in fact, an endeavor against the universal human values, justice, peace, equal distribution of resources, and independence – an endeavor tainting the true representatives of the aspirations of the people under one name or another. All countries, particularly the Islamic countries, our neighbors, the powerful countries, the movement of the non-aligned countries should feel and fulfill their historical role.

Historical role, eh? And what, pray tell, might that be?

I urge the Islamic Ummah, particularly the Islamic and Jihadic organizations, to remain aware of the conspiracies of the enemy; to abandon the internal differences; and to begin a concerted and comprehensive struggle for the defense and freedom of the oppressed and occupied Ummah.

To end, I urge all God-fearing Muslims, as they themselves share the joy and happiness of this occasion with their families, not to forget the widows of the martyrs, [their] orphans, and the mothers who have lost their sons. They are the martyrs who laid down their lives against the bloc of the infidels, for the establishment of Islamic system.

Not gonna happen, Omie--not with us Canucks and Yanks rolling up our shirt sleeves and working so hard to win Afghan full-and-part time Taliban warrior “hearts and minds.” Anything else you want to say on this festive occasion? Hugs and kisses? Keep the faith? Allahu Akbar?

Finally, I extend my felicitation to you on the occasion of Eid-ul-fitr, and wishing you independence.

Hoping and praying for the achievement of independence and the establishment of a complete Islamic system.

Allahu Akbar it is.

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

Sunday, 20 September 2009

“Pinocchio” Khamenei strikes again: The rabid fundamentalist insists that his fundamentalist republic is “fundamentally”--yes, that’s the word he really used--against Iran having its own nukes:

TEHRAN, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Sunday rejected the West's charge that his country wants to develop nuclear bombs, saying Tehran is "fundamentally" opposed to such weapons.

"Accusing the Islamic Republic of seeking nuclear arms is a blatant lie. We are fundamentally opposed to nuclear weapons," the English-language Press TV quoted Khamenei as saying.

"We consider the use and proliferation of nuclear arms as forbidden," he added.

The Iranian supreme leader said the United States and its Western allies are promoting the policy of Islamophobia, in a bid to prevent the Islamic world from maintaining its unity, Press TV reported.

"The U.S. authorities, who consider Iran's missiles as threats and claim Tehran is producing nuclear bombs, are well aware that their accusations are baseless and contrary to the fact," Khamenei said.

He insisted that Iran would resist such a policy and would never step back in the face of any aggression.

The United States and other Western countries claim that Iran intends to secretly develop nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council also requires Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activity.

Iran, however, insists that its nuclear plan is only for peaceful purposes, vowing to continue its uranium enrichment activity despite pressure and sanctions from Western countries.

That’s quite the proboscis you’re growing there, your holy-shmoleyness. If you ever get tired of being Iran’s Thug-in-Chief and shovelling all that taquiyaah, you could always get the lead in a revival of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:15 | link | comments

Now leading a nation downgraded from "Great Satan" and "the world's only superpower" to "the nicest pushover on the planet": "Obama Retakes Global Stage, but with Diminished Momentum."

Momentum shmomentum.Can't we be honest enough to admit that hopeychange isn't all it was cracked up to be?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:58 | link | comments

Whassup with the Ceej?: The censorious CJC posts this, Maclean’s magazine’s fungu to the Ceej and its favourite Nazi hunter--and a heartfelt cry to get rid of our oppressive system of state censorship by a magazine that has felt its sting (the bolds are the Ceej’s, not mine):

Following widespread public outrage regarding the obvious zealotry at the CHRC, and the complaints made against this magazine, last year the CHRC commissioned academic Richard Moon for an opinion on Section 13. He concluded it should be repealed. The Criminal Code already does everything necessary to keep Canadians safe from hate speech, he said, and in a way that properly protects the rights of the accused. All Section 13 does is trample on the rights of Canadians to hold views that the CHRC disapproves of.

Rather than accept Moon's sensible recommendation, the CHRC instead released its own in-house report this June. Its review of itself called for Section 13 to be maintained.
Then, this year, Section 13 came under further scrutiny from within the human rights apparatus. A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision in March cast a scolding eye on CHRC investigatory practices and, in particular, serial complainant Richard Warman, who acknowledged placing inflammatory messages on Internet sites under a variety of aliases. The tribunal found these actions to be "disturbing."

And earlier this month, another nail in Section 13's coffin. All complaints in a long-standing case against webmaster Marc Lemire were dropped for constitutional reasons.

After Warman spotted some allegedly offensive articles on one of Lemire's websites, Lemire removed them and repeatedly offered to seek conciliation. This was refused. It became clear to Athanasios Hadjis, the tribunal vice-chair who issued the ruling, that it was the CHRC's intent to punish Lemire, not mediate. In doing so, the CHRC had mutated far beyond what was contemplated in the Supreme Court's Taylor ruling. Section 13 now violates Lemire's basic Charter rights of freedom of expression. Since it's beyond Hadjis's powers to declare the law unconstitutional, he said he would simply choose to ignore it.

A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has thus decided Section 13 is so badly flawed and abused that it will pretend the law doesn't exist. The CHRC has remained mute on this crippling blow.

To complete the demolition of Section 13, Harper must now amend the legislation. Besides reflecting common sense and current facts, it will prove to be a popular move.

A proposal to repeal Section 13 received near-unanimous approval at a 2008 Conservative party conference, and enjoys support from several key cabinet ministers. It is also an issue that crosses political divides. Even the perennially left-wing editorial board of the Toronto Star has endorsed an end to Section 13, saying it "isn't salvageable."

While certain lobby groups courted by Harper and the Conservative party, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress, are outspoken in support of Section 13, this certainly does not imply monolithic support among all minority groups. For example, many prominent Jewish advocates of human rights legislation, including Alan Borovoy, who was involved in establishing the CHRC, have spoken out about the errors of Section 13.

And Harper himself appears to accept Moon's point that the Criminal Code makes Section 13 redundant. In receiving the Saul Hayes Human Rights Award from the Canadian Jewish Congress last year, Harper called the Criminal Code an "effective legal weapon against naked hate-mongering, without compromising the elemental right to freedom of expression." If the Criminal Code is so effective, why do we need Section 13?

M.strong> Of course the blame for Section 13's continued existence does not rest solely with Harper, particularly in a minority government.

Michael Ignatieff has also been a profound disappointment. As a prolific writer and celebrated thinker previous to his political career, one would expect the Liberal leader to be a passionate defender of the right of Canadians to express reasoned and informed views, regardless of whom they might offend.

And yet, he has shrugged off responsibility and left the issue to his backbench. Last year Liberal MP Keith Martin introduced a private member's motion calling for the repeal of Section 13, but it languishes at the bottom of the Liberal priority list. (The top Liberal priority appears to be a motion supporting a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare.) Why has Ignatieff not adopted Martin's position as official party policy? Or moved his motion up in significance?

Academic and popular opinion is solidly behind removal of Section 13. It is an unnecessary measure for protecting Canadians from hate speech, and represents a clear threat to freedom of speech. It's also clear the CHRC has expanded its powers far beyond the limits considered to be constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1990. And now even the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has declared the law unconstitutional. The only real problem left appears to be a lack of political leadership to make the change.

Parliament needs to repeal Section 13.

My sentiments to the tee. My question: is the Ceej posting this piece because

a) It realizes the tide has turned against state censorship, and this is the Ceej’s way of signalling its willingness, at last, to admit its error?

b) It still doesn’t “get it,” will never “get it,” and believes its position to be so self-evidently correct that upon reading this piece from Maclean’s we Jews will immediately see the issue exactly as it does?

c) It wants to show that it’s such a fan of “free speech” that it is willing to post something that puts it in such a negative light?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:26 | link | comments (4)

Al Quds Day in Hogtown: Don't miss intrepid videoblogger Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy's photos of Judenrein Day, er, Al Quds Day festivities at Queen's Park. LG&F, an honourary member of the tribe, ventured deep into the heart of darkness so you wouldn't have to.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:46 | link | comments (5)

Another Goldstone fan: It just goes to show, if you give the people what they want--an excuse to pile on Israel under the guise of “human rights”--they will embrace it with the alacrity of a tweener who’s won a date with a Jonas brother. Take Harpoon Siddiqui (please!). The Goldstone report has really raised the shill-for-Islam’s dander. In today’s Star, he pens a nasty little screed dripping in contempt for everything he most loathes, i.e. Israel and Canadian “apologists” for Israel, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

…Goldstone urged the UN Security Council to ask both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to hold transparent investigations and report back in six months.

Failing that, the council should turn the matter over to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

Israel had boycotted the panel and refused it entry into Israel. Panellists entered Gaza via Egypt for inspections and interviews. They went to Jordan to meet Palestinian Authority officials from the West Bank. They heard testimony from Israelis, including some victims of Hamas attacks, by flying them to Geneva.

The 575-page report – based on 188 interviews, 10,000 pages of documentation, 1,200 photographs and satellite imagery – is not easily dismissed. But Israel and its defenders are trying, with a smear campaign:

What else would you expect from a report done for the anti-Israeli UN Human Rights Council? Where was the need for a UN inquiry when Israel has conducted more than 100 of its own?

The former South African Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judge is not easily cowed into silence. "It is grossly wrong to label a mission or to label a report critical of Israel as being anti-Israel." He urges "fair-minded people" to read the report for themselves. (Go to the UN website, UN.org, and search for the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict.)

Goldstone's report is a condemnation not only of Israel but also its apologists in Canada, including the media. The latter are now busy burying the report under an orchestrated avalanche of negative reaction without ever properly reporting its contents.

Notice how Harpoon has anticipated the charge that the UNHRC is “anti-Israel” in his own inimitably sarcastic way, thinking that that somehow mitigates the verity. “A” for effort there, Harpoon.

Notice, too, how the UNHRC selected a Jewish South African to conduct its probe, both to re-emphasize that Israel is just like apartheid-era South Africa, and because it thinks using a Jew to do its dirty work makes the whole thing look kosher.

As an apologist for Israel who, like a courageous South African jurist, won’t be cowed into silence, and who knows that this mountain of data has been assembled for one reason and one reason alone--in order to bury Israel--I dashed off the following:

I eagerly await the Goldstone report investigating “disproportionate force” in Sri Lanka (against Tamils), in Russia (against Chechens), in China (against Uighurs), and last but by no means least in Iran against its own protesting populace.

What’s that? There won’t be any United Nations Human Rights Council probe into such obvious and egregious violations of human rights?

In view of the sorts of nations that sit on the UNHRC--such bastions of freedom as China, Cuba, Libya and others--that’s hardly shocking. What is shocking is that anyone who knows this outfit operates; how it has consistently singled out one nation as being in breach of all it stands for; how it reserves the concept of “disproportionate force” for Israel alone (“disproportionate” apparently referring to Israel’s decision not to use swords and rocks to fend off enemies bent on its annihilation) would see the Goldstone report as being fair and valid. It is neither. It is a manifestation of the same old irrational obsession with and hostility toward Israel, and no more becoming simply because it has been dressed up in judicial robes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments (2)

Saturday, 19 September 2009

Mausoleum appointment runs into a snag: You had to know this was coming (even if the Harper government didn't):

Stephen Harper's pick for CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a long-time Conservative politician with a history of voting against gay and lesbian rights.

This week's announcement that Stuart Murray, former leader of Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party, will head up Canada's newest national museum has sparked cries of protest across the country.

"I'm outraged," says Daniel Voth, a political science student at the University of British Columbia. Voth sent an email to academics, politicians and friends urging them to take action against Murray's appointment. "I hope people make a stink."

"His voting record concerns me," says Jennifer Breakspear, the executive director of Vancouver's queer resource centre, Qmunity. She is also a member of the museum's content advisory committee, which is conducting public roundtables across Canada. "I look forward to meeting him and asking him about his record and where he stands now."

Murray was leader of Manitoba's official opposition from 2000 to 2006, when the NDP government introduced legislation to extend pension and adoption rights to same-sex couples. He opposed both measures.

Murray answered questions about his political record during an interview with a CBC Radio show in Winnipeg. When asked about his party's stand against same-sex adoption, he said, "That was a caucus decision that we made. I don't have an issue with that personally." But he refused to say whether, if given a second chance, he would vote the same way.

Asked whether he agrees that same-sex couples should be entitled to equal pension rights, he answered, "As a private citizen, I do."

Murray recently served as CEO of a hospital foundation in Winnipeg. Prior to entering politics, he was CEO of Domo Gas.

The $265-million Canadian Museum for Human Rights is being built in Winnipeg, where it is slated to open in 2012. Following the outburst over Murray's appointment, the museum issued a statement declaring that he would "welcome the opportunity to meet with representatives from the LGBT community to a meeting at their earliest convenience."…

Appointing someone who appears more in synch with the Reverend Stephen Boisson than with Commissar Lynch to head up our nation’s shrine to victimhood? Oh, dear. Stephen Harper, you got some ‘splaining to do.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:22 | link | comments (2)

Party animal's reservation cancelled: A-jad’s New York City soiree will have to find another venue. The swanky hotel where it was supposed to be held told him and his nutty nukers to take a hike:

A US advocacy agency, cofounded by advisors to the Obama administration, has managed to prevent a New York hotel from hosting a banquet for Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Helmsley Hotel on Friday said it had canceled a banquet set for next week, when the 'United Against Nuclear Iran' group informed the posh hotel that Ahmadinejad was on the guest list.

The Iranian president is expected to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week.

The vacancy, booked by an Iranian student organization four months ago, was withdrawn after the hotel was warned of protests should Ahmadinejad attend the banquet.

Originally launched by US advisors Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross, 'United Against Nuclear Iran' seeks "to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons."

The organization is currently headed by Republican lawyer Mark Wallace. He had previously served in the United States Mission to the United Nations under Ambassador John Bolton.

Western countries, spearheaded by the US and Israel, accuse Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of seeking nuclear weapons through its enrichment program.

Iran has denies the charges and asked for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction around the globe...

All I can say it don’t cry for him, Ayatollah. Money talks, especially in times of recession, and it’s a cinch the nukers will find some other place to hold their do.

Update: The party animal sings Gore (and I don't mean the carbon credit flim-flammer):

Nobody knows where my A-bombs are stashed.

The UN can’t find a trace.

Can’t wait to see if they work

And Jews are put in their place.

It’s my party, and I’ll nuke if I want to

Nuke if I want to, nuke if I want to.

You would nuke too

To get rid of “the Jew”.

Lyin’ like crazy in front of the world.

Gosh, it’s such a huge rush.

Once Jews are wiped off the map

The rest of you we will crush.

It’s my party, and I’ll nuke if I want to

Nuke if I want to, nuke if I want to.

You would nuke too

To get rid of “the Jew”.

Third time around I'll just walk through the door
Of the Gen’ral ‘Sembly.
Green aura’s formin’ again

As everybody can see.

It’s my party, and I’ll nuke if I want to

Nuke if I want to, nuke if I want to.

You would nuke too

To get rid of “the Jew”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:34 | link | comments

Say what?: Obama, as we know, is not a Muslim, although his father was Muslim, his step-father was Muslim, he spent a portion of his boyhood in Indonesia, a Muslim nation, and he seems inordinately affectionate toward the Muslim world. No, Obama is certainly no Muslim. What he is, according to David Paul Kuhn of Real Clear Politics is--stay with me here ‘cause you’re never going to believe this one--Jewish:

He is of a diaspora. Has often been compared to Star Trek's Vulcans. His pedigree is that of the overachieving Ivy Leaguer. A lawyer who married a lawyer. He emerged in Chicago activism as a disciple of Jewish urban organizer Saul Alinsky. He is Hyde Park liberal--urbane with a preference for arugula. An intellectual's intellectual, in virtue and in vice.

This is a man famous for his Talmudic-like mind. He deconstructs, deduces, feels compelled to cover all sides of a debate. His humor leans heavily on self-deprecation. He even held the first Passover Seder inside the White House.

Two of his closest advisers are Jewish men--David Axelrod, cast as the archetypal sophist, and Rahm Emanuel, cast as the excitable dealmaker. He is caricatured as a "rootless cosmopolitan." His beliefs are attacked as "socialist." He is even said, by some, to not really be an American.

Barack Obama, the first Jewish president…

If Obama is Jewish then I’m Aretha Franklin.

Update: Obama "the Jew" is stumped by Israel. Guess he's more like one of those "independent" Jews than one of those those Zionist ones.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:33 | link | comments

Still enshrouded after all these years: The Globe and Mail's front page is given over to an announcement of a hard-hitting investigation into the lives of Afghan women. As part of this "groundbreaking multimedia series," ten women from Kandahar "reveal their world, explaining how they are losing hard-won rights and being sold by their families."

There's a photo of each woman, each wearing the obligatory drapery, the Islamist shield that protects them from lustful stares of men not in control (or so we are told) of their animalistic inclinations and thus prone to having their way with any babe who's uncovered. One face is completely hidded behind mesh (headgear that would no doubt work well in Algonquin Park during black fly season). Two faces have but one eye showing. Five show two eyes. Two show their entire face, but one is out of focus, a way, obviously, of obscuring the woman's identity.

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. And this picture reveals that, in the area of gender equality and freeing Afghan women from the bondage they endured under the Taliban--one of the reasons Canadians have been willing to fight for, and all too often die for, our long mission in Afghanistan--we appear to have made little headway. But then, how could we when the Afghan Constitution enshrines sharia, a law that reviles the concept of equality?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments

Zinger of the day: George Jonas puts the Goldstone probe into Israeli and Hamas war practices, conducted under the auspices of the vile UN Human Rights Council (a report heralded in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by Erna Paris), into perspective. Writes Jonas, the “UNHRC investigating war crimes allegations has the credibility of a commission made up of Ted Bundy, Paul Bernardo, Jeffrey Dahmer and Jack the Ripper investigating allegations of sexual misconduct.”

Good one, George.

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

Friday, 18 September 2009

Ramadan “slackers” and secret eaters: Think you can get out of fasting for Ramadan if you’re sick or nursing or due to some other lame reason? Think again. As this L.A. Times report makes clear, you may get out of your obligations for a day or two, or however long you’re unable to fulfill them. But know this--Ramadan is kind of like a final exam, and at some point you’re going to have to make it up:

When Aatif Sharieff was growing up in a Maryland suburb, none of the other kids in his elementary school knew about Ramadan.

Each year, as the Muslim month of fasting came around, Sharieff had to explain to fellow students why he couldn't eat lunch with them or drink from the water fountain.

"Everybody would ask," he recalls. "It became like a broken record, 'I'm fasting, I'm spiritual.' "

These days, Sharieff finds himself explaining to Muslims and non-Muslims alike why he no longer observes the traditional dawn-to-dusk fast. The 27-year-old Virginia architect lets people know that severe acid reflux means that he cannot go long without food.

"There's this expectation . . . that everyone is fasting, so you kind of feel like this anomaly," he said. "The first question people ask is 'How's your fast going?' "

He has to tell them that it's not.

Each year as Muslims across the world observe Ramadan, which ends this weekend, other members of the faith face the challenge and occasional awkwardness that comes with eating and drinking in public during daylight hours. Some explain their situation to friends and colleagues and eat openly; others take furtive sips of water or quick bites of food in stairwells, cars or even bathrooms.

"You should not eat in public. It's not banned, it's just emphasized that you should respect Ramadan," said Muzammil Siddiqi, a director of the Islamic Society of Orange County and chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, which rules on issues of Islamic law. "It's not just an individual observance, it's a community observance."

In some predominantly Muslim countries, eating in public during Ramadan is illegal or so socially scorned that the decision for non-fasters is made for them. But in the United States and other countries with Muslim minorities, the choice can be more complicated. There are no rules banning public eating, but a rising cultural and global awareness means that more people -- even non-Muslims -- might ask, "Why aren't you fasting?"

"It's not a hidden phenomena like when I first came to America 35 years ago," said Maher Hathout, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California and a longtime Muslim leader in Los Angeles. He pointed to the annual Ramadan dinners now held at the White House and State Department, and growing coverage of the month by U.S. media outlets.

"Everyone knows, so it's better to eat at home or shut the door of your office," Hathout said.

Fasting for Ramadan can be a bit like filing complicated income tax forms, with various one-time or ongoing exemptions available.

Chronic illnesses such as diabetes or stomach ulcers can put a Muslim out of the Ramadan rotation permanently. Instead of fasting, those with such conditions are asked to feed a hungry person each day of the month. Muslims who are sick, traveling, menstruating, pregnant or breast-feeding have temporary exemption from fasting and must later make up the missed days…

They have to hide out in stairwells and loos if they want to eat? Why don’t they drive to an IHOP that’s out of their ‘hood and/or tell the Ramadan busybodies to, you know, mind their own beeswax?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:57 | link | comments

Scuzzy Zazi no longer fuzzy: An alleged jihadi who was allegedly working toward a mass murder on the New York City subway has admitted after some coaxing that yes, yes he does have ties to al Qaeda. From FOX News:

DEVELOPING: The man under FBI investigation for alleged ties to a New York subway terror plot has admitted he has ties to Al Qaeda and is in negotiations to plead guilty to a terror charge, FOX News confirmed Friday.

Najibullah Zazi reportedly told officials that he had received explosives training and his possible guilty plea would be part of a deal to cooperate with the government.

An attorney for Zazi issued the following statement on Friday: "The FBI has asked to speak to my client's father, Mr. Mohammed Zazi, and we are cooperating fully with the FBI's request."

The 24-year-old Zazi had earlier insisted that he had no connection with Al Qaeda, but after two eight-hour interrogations at the FBI offices in Denver on Wednesday and Thursday, Zazi told law enforcement a different story Friday…

Gee, I sure hope extracting the ‘different story’ didn’t involve any of that barbaric waterboarding.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:41 | link | comments

Obama's bizarre M.O.: Hug your foes and shaft your friends.

Update: It's deja vu all over again.

Update: A shocking development--the White House may be on the verge of perceiving the obvious.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:09 | link | comments

An encouraging sign?: The mully-bullies have been using “the Palestinians” (about whom they care not a whit) to steel Iranians for the job ahead--i.e. wiping the impudent Jews off the otherwise pristine Islamic map. Now, however, it appears as though some Iranians may be getting wise to the ruse--and are rejecting it. From the CSM:

Thousands of Iranian opposition supporters in Tehran defied warnings Friday and marched in protests that were intended as an annual day of solidarity with the Palestinians and later turned violent.

As tens of thousands of government supporters marched and chanted “Death to Israel,” opposition protesters thronged to the streets wearing their signature green and chanting “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran.”

An opposition leader was reportedly attacked during the protest, and sporadic fights broke out between the opposition protesters and government supporters and security forces.

Marchers had answered a call by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to keep the protest movement alive after three months of government crackdown following June presidential elections. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory over Mr. Mousavi and other challengers despite widespread complaints of fraud, spawning massive protests. The last large antigovernment rally took place in mid-July.

Al Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, is an annual day of protest in Iran against Israel and in solidarity with the Palestinians. Opposition supporters had been warned by the regime not to disrupt the traditional message with antigovernment slogans.

According to the Los Angeles Times, there were unconfirmed reports of tear gas being fired into the crowds, where protesters chanted in support of Mousavi…

Presumably the opposition is also well aware of the consequences of taking “solidarity with the Palestinians” to its demented--which is to say its nuclear--conclusion: a pre-emptive strike on Iran by Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments

Sweetness and light: Here's wishing all my Jewish readers (you know who you are) a happy, healthy and sweet New Year.

Update: In keeping with the spirit of the holiday (magnanimous, forgiving, optimistic) I send the following Rosh Hashanah greetings to some Jews with whom I don't see eye to eye. I do so in the hope that this is the year when they’ll have a much-needed epiphany:

Happy New Year, Bernie Farber,

Though you give censors safe harber.

And to you, Naomi Klein,

The jihad’s useful concubein.

Richard Goldstone, Shana Tova!

Hope your “probing” days are ovah!

Could I forget you, Rebbick, Judy?

You bet your less-than-sweet patootie.

Hey there, Noam and Norm and Rahm;

I know where y’all are comin’ frahm.

Howdy, Jewish academics

Who pen those "Israel sucks" polemics.

Here’s to all the Code Pink ladies:

Knock it off or go to Hades.

And to scribes like Erna Paris

Whose musings never fail t'embarris.

Time to get a clue, George Soros—

You and your Halleluiah choros.

To ev’ry Jew who means well, ne'er bad:

May this be the year you finally wake up—and smell the jihad.

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

Erna hearts Dickie; Dershy--not so much: Erna Paris, writing in the Globe and Mail, thinks the Goldstone report is hunky-dory and commends its author for his wisdom and fair-mindedness:

…Judge Goldstone has proffered something quite remarkable. By recommending that Israel and Hamas conduct investigations that meet international standards, he has effectively offered both parties a way out. He has also opened a door into the 21st century, should they wish to step through. The hard struggle for accountability in the case of major human-rights abuses is still in its infancy, but the trend is unmistakable. Almost every democracy in the world supports the precepts of international justice.

Nevertheless, the Netanyahu government has launched an international diplomatic offensive to persuade the major Western democracies to reject the report. Judge Goldstone is being impugned as a “self-hating” Jew, a hater of Israel and, egregiously, as the creator of a new “blood libel.” Still, it will prove hard to puncture his reputation, for there is no one on the international legal stage who commands more widespread admiration.

Before joining South Africa's Constitutional Court, he chaired a national commission of inquiry that helped to effect the bloodless dismantling of apartheid. In 1994, he was appointed as the first chief prosecutor of the new UN international criminal courts for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. He is a Zionist – as are all of us who connect the dots between the unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. He is committed to the rule of law, itself a historic Jewish value, and to the principle that impunity for high-ranking perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes must be addressed.

By rejecting his report and its recommendations, both Israel and Hamas are clinging to an obsolete view of the state and its entitlements…

Yes, how dare Israel (which, as Goldstone and Paris--Jews, moral relativists--see it is exactly the same as Hamas) cling to the “old” ways--the ways of statehood--when the modern way is to let the “international community” tell you what is and isn’t right? Doesn’t Israel realize that “the state” per se (or the Jewish one at least) is passé?

Begging to differ with the Israel-despising internationalist bullies and their eliminationist agenda, Alan Dershowitz, in FrontPage Magazine thinks the Goldstone report is a piece o’ crap, the same substance, as it happens, with which its author is filled to the brim:

…Every serious student of human rights should be appalled at this anti-human rights and highly politicized report. Judge Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself. In an apparent effort to curry favor with the international anti-Israel establishment, and perhaps with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, he has abandoned all principles of objectivity and neutral human rights. He no longer deserves the mantle of a human rights advocate. He has done more to destroy the credibility and objectivity of human rights than any credible human rights personage in modern times.

If the methodology and conclusions of this infamous report were ever applied generally to democracies seeking to combat terrorists who hid behind civilians—as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq—it would constitute a great victory for terrorism and a defeat for democracy. But not to worry. The report is not intended to establish general principles of international law, applicable to all nations. It is directed at one nation and one nation only: the Jew among nations—Israel. For shame.

For shame? As Dershowitz well knows, when it comes to Israel, the UN and its enthusiasts (some of whom, alas, are Jewish useful idiots) are utterly shameless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:23 | link | comments

A “human rights” twofer: In Alberta the reverend who was silenced for life by the Alberta Human Rights Commission for making inflammatory comments about gays is trying to get a real court to overturn his speech ban. He was prompted to do so by the recent Canadian Human Rights Commission/Tribunal ruling which held that Section 13, the censorship provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, was unconstitutional.

What are his chances? According to an article in the Montreal Gazette

The [federal human rights] commission's ruling has no legal impact on the Alberta case, said University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon, who wrote a report last year for the [federal human rights] commission that called for the policing of hate speech to be left to the criminal justice system.

"It certainly has no legal significance for this decision being made in Alberta," he said.

"Now, with that said, any decision that's made by anybody who's put their mind to the question is going to be taken into account."

I think that means his chances are pretty good, and that, ding dong, Section 13 and its equivalents across the land are well and truly dead. (That will certainly come as bad news to those Jews who think state censorship is essential because it protects the vulnerable--meaning Jews--from “hate speech”--meaning “Nazis” on the Internet. For instance, there’s a well-connected young man I know who hates--hates--Ezra Levant because he says Levant is in favour of and defends “Nazis”. This young man is far from being the only Jew who can’t seem to wrap his noggin around how this free speech thing works--i.e. it’s not about the “freedom” to express anodyne views, ones that couldn’t possibly offend even the thinnest skinned. It’s about bucking up, being an adult, and allowing for speech that you don’t want to hear; speech that’s offensive, and ugly and rude. And if you aren’t prepared to make room for that kind of speech, well, then, you had better be prepared to have your own words silenced by those in positions of power and influence who would prefer not to hear what you have to say.)

Meanwhile over in Quebec the thought cops have gone fishin’:

The Quebec Human Rights Commission yesterday launched a consultation on racial profiling and its consequences.

People age 14 to 25 from all ethnic groups are encouraged to speak about their encounters with racial profiling. The commission invites youths, parents, teachers and others to make submissions before Nov. 30 on incidents of racial profiling.

For more information, contact the commission at 514-873-5146 or 1-800-361-6477, Local 359, or go to the website www.cdpdj.qc.ca

No doubt the Quebec commission with catch lots of fish in its net--enough, anyway, to keep employees busy for a while, which I suspect is the whole point of the exercise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:03 | link | comments

Thursday, 17 September 2009

The Duchess and the orphans: Sarah Ferguson and her daughter went to Turkey and secretly filmed the appalling conditions in that country's orphanages. Later on this footage was used in a documentary that aired on British TV. Turkish authorities, reminiscent of a dead English queen, say they are not amused by the Duchess's skullduggery. Indeeed, as per this report in the Globe and Mail, they sound an awful lot like another English queen--the one who said, “Off with her head!”

On a busy tour in Canada and the United States to promote her new film on the early life of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, the Duchess of York has become the apparent subject of bizarre judicial machinations in connection with another of her forays into broadcast entertainment.

The Duchess of York, the former Sarah Ferguson, became the target of the Turkish administration's ire when her documentary on the country's orphanages aired on British television in November, 2008. Yesterday, reports surfaced that the Turkish government had requested Britain's help in extraditing and charging the Duchess.

Turkish authorities are reported to have filed a request with the British Home Office to have the Duchess questioned about her filming of the documentary to obtain evidence on allegations that she broke Turkish privacy laws when she and her daughter Eugenie shot the film undercover last year.

The Turkish government could then, in theory, seek her arrest or extradition.

A spokesman from the Home Office said that although all requests for mutual legal assistance of the kind Turkey is apparently requesting go through that department, it cannot confirm any requests it has received.

London's The Sun newspaper quoted an anonymous Home Office official as saying, "it seems likely the request will be granted." Katherine Clarke of the London-based Sputnik Communications firm, which represents the Duchess, said she couldn't comment on the allegations or confirm whether Turkish authorities had contacted Britain's Home Office.

Turkish officials, including the country's foreign minister and minister of women and family affairs, said the documentary purposely humiliated the country, which has applied for European Union membership. The Duchess's representatives responded at the time that it was motivated solely by her concern for children's welfare, for which she has been a vocal advocate…

You’ll notice that they don’t seem terribly upset about the appalling conditions, only about the “humiliation” of having them exposed to the larger world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments (3)

Fighting a war without acknowledging the elephantine enemy (the jihad) in the room: Tarek Fatah speaks some unpleasant truths about our “nation-building” mission in Afghanistan and why, unless there's a drastic change, it’s destined to fail. From the National Post:

…What is our professional Canadian army doing in Afghanistan if Obama is reaching out to accommodate the very ideology that created the Taliban and al-Qaeda? This is insanity. Bring back our troops, not because I do not wish to inflict a defeat on the jihadis, but because we are being betrayed by NATO and the U. S., who sent them there.

If we and our American-British allies do not have the spine to challenge the Islamist doctrines, send our soldiers home. To fight malaria, we need to drain the swamp, not kill individual mosquitoes, one at a time. Our young men and women must not be gun fodder for the profiteers who befriend the Saudis, but bomb the Afghans while trading with the Iranian ayatollahs.

This sham must end. So long as we remain unwilling to challenge the ideology of jihad, let us admit defeat and retreat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

I hate (and love) when I’m right: Remember when the CJC made a big deal about its “success” in persuading the United Church of Canada to “drop” its call for a boycott of Israel? Remember all the nice things it said about the church at time? Blather about its relationship and building bridges and so on? Remember how I said whoop-dee-doo (or words to that effect) because I knew the church was never our friend, is not our friend now, and will never be our friend?

Hate (and love) to say “I told you so,” but I did (and do). My reason for saying so now (aside from the fact that, unlike the denizens of the Ceej, I’m not a squishy leftist who belives in the Great Trudeaupian God, multiculturalism)? It’s this, from the National Post:

The United Church of Canada helped finance the founding event of a controversial new Jewish organization that challenges mainstream Jewish groups and supports a boycott of Israel.

The United Church’s national office confirmed to the National Post it had donated $900 to the March 2008 conference that led to the creation of Independent Jewish Voices. The contribution, which paid 10% of the event’s costs, was intended to defray travel expenses for the meeting and should not be considered seed money for the alternative Jewish group, a United Church official said.

Told of the funding arrangement, the Canadian Jewish Congress said it was “shocking, outrageous, shameful and scandalous” that a Christian church had financially backed an event aimed at forming such an organization.

“That a mainstream Christian faith group would provide funding to create an anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish group is absolutely astounding,” CEO Bernie Farber said.

“Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and the Canadian Jewish Congress or another mainstream Jewish organization were to have funded a Christian group to be critical of the United Church of Canada.”

The donation was provided to help cover the airfare for up to three international speakers attending the Toronto event, the United Church said.

“The intention of the grant was to facilitate voices being present from the [Middle East],” said Bruce Gregersen, spokesman for the United Church, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination. “The description of the event is consistent with our overall policy that the end of the occupation must come in order to bring peace and justice.”

The donation was approved by the national office and was not vetted by an elected members’ group because it was less than $2,000, Mr. Gregersen said. He also said it is “not typical to fund events hosted by another faith.”

The two-day conference was put on by the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians to “discuss co-ordinating anti-Occupation movements across Canada,” the registration packet said. “Working together, we have the potential to offer alternative perspectives to the views of organizations like the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’Nai Brith, who support uncritically all actions of Israeli governments.”

Diana Ralph, co-chair of the IJV and former co-chair of the Alliance, said she solicited the “generous donation” from the United Church via a letter sent ahead of the event. “That conference led to the founding of the Independent Jewish Voices,” she said.

Mr. Gregersen said the United Church’s “small contribution to a particular event” should not be viewed as money meant to help launch the group. “There would be no justification or rationale for us to support the creation [of the IJV],” he said. “If that’s the implication that people take from this, that would not be true.”

Said Mr. Farber: “It is a horse by the same name. The United Church provided funding to establish an organization whose goal it is to target and attack the mainstream Jewish community.”…

Mr. Farber (he of the worn out clichés--getting rid of state censorship is akin to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”; the usefully idiotic United Church funding anti-Zionists and attacking mainstream Jewry is “a horse by the same name”) may be shocked to learn that a lefty church whose problem with Jews goes way back (hello, Moderator McClure) and that has never made the least effort to hide its allegiance to the Palestinian cause would act in such a way (one entirely in keeping with its history and world view). Me? I’m shocked that any sentient human being, much less any sentient Jew, would be shocked.

Posted by: scaramouche at 02:31 | link | comments

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

Islam on the buses: Waiting for my son at the bus stop after school, I noticed an interesting message on the side of a TTC bus. “Catch a ride to inner peace,” it read. And how, exactly, is one supposed to do that? Apparently, by heeding the bus ad’s advice to “Discover Islam Canada.”

Now, I’m aware of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and CAIR-CAN and--my absolute favourite--the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, and various other organizations and societies that have “Islam” in their name. But “Discover Islam Canada”--that's a new one on me.

Intrigued, I clicked on the Web address mentioned in the ad and discovered this fascinating info (my bolds):

The Quran

The final message to all of humanity

The Book of God, in it is the record of what was before you, the judgment of what is among you, and the prophecies of what will come after you. It is decisive, not a case for levity. Whoever seeks guidance from other than it will be misguided. The Quran is the unbreakable bond of connection with God; it is the remembrance full of wisdom and the straight path. The Quran does not become distorted by tongues, nor can it be deviated by caprices; it never dulls from repeated study; scholars will always want more of it. The wonders of the Quran are never ending. Whoever speaks from it will speak the truth, whoever rules with it will be just, and whoever holds fast to it will be guided to the straight path."

A Source of Guidance

The ultimate manifestation of God's grace for man, the ultimate wisdom, and the ultimate beauty of expression: in short, the word of God. If one were to ask any Muslim to depict it, most likely they would offer similar words. The Quran, to the Muslim, is the irrefutable, inimitable Word of God. It was revealed by God Almighty, through the instrument of Prophet Muhammad (peace be Upon Him). The Prophet (peace be upon him) himself had no role in authoring the Quran, he was merely a human secretary, repeating the dictates of the Divine Creator.

The Quran was revealed in Arabic, to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) over a period of twenty-three years. It is composed in a style so unique, that it cannot be deemed either poetry or prose, but somehow a mixture of both. The Quran is inimitable; it cannot be simulated or copied, and God Almighty challenges mankind to pursue such an endeavor if he thinks he can.

It goes on in this vein for many more paragraphs, wrapping up the da’wa with this pitch:

The Quran is the clear message to all of humanity. When you read the Quran, you will find the answers to those questions which touch the very heart of your being:

Why am i here? Where am i heading? How may i achieve happiness? How can i find inner peace? The answers given are plain and simple, what it requires is natural and fulfilling.

One in every five humans has accepted this message.
We invite you to contemplate.

You are also invited to “Support a noble cause” and “sponsor a bus ad.”

My response: Thanks, but no thanks, Islam Canada. Since I have already managed to find “inner peace” on my own sans the Koran and using lots of “levity” (an facet of the human response to the world I happen to cherish and, pace the Ayatollah Khomeini's thoughts on the subject, would hate to eschew) I think I’ll have to pass. However, I would be interested in learning who’s behind this new da’wa push, since, given the rather odd way it's written, English appears not to be their first language.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:48 | link | comments (5)

Paging Jennifer Lynch: Is Canada’s Queen Censor aware that the chap chosen to helm the Canadian Mausoleum of Human Rights himself holds the kind of views that have in the past been enough to get one hauled in front of one of Canada’s many “human rights” outfits? From the Winnipeg Free Press (my bolds):

HIS human rights resumé is thin and his political record shows he voted against extending rights to the province's gays and lesbians.

But former Tory Leader Stuart Murray says his business acumen and strong relationship with all levels of government will make him an effective chief executive officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

"This is a chance of a lifetime to make a difference not only for Winnipeg and Canada but internationally," said Murray Tuesday. "It's an extraordinary opportunity for me and I am honoured to be part of it."

Murray will become the face, fundraiser and key political liaison for the museum, which is slated to open at The Forks in 2012. Murray leaves his post as president and CEO of the St. Boniface Hospital and Research Foundation, but he's perhaps best known for the five years he spent as the leader of the Manitoba Tories.

Murray said he grew up near Saskatchewan's Gordon Reserve and its residential school and is attuned to aboriginal rights issues. And he has some world experience, travelling to Israel and elsewhere.

Beyond that, he has relatively little direct experience in the human rights field. When he was Tory leader, despite saying he personally supported the rights of gays and lesbians, he voted against an NDP bill allowing them to adopt children. He didn't show up to vote on an earlier bill extending alimony, pension and death benefits to homosexuals.

But Murray said his links to Ottawa and to the business community -- which will be called on again to make up a multimillion-dollar funding shortfall in capital and operating funds -- are his chief strengths. He'll be able to draw on the organizational, fundraising and business experience he earned at the helm of DOMO gas, the 1999 World Junior Hockey Championship and several fundraising campaigns for local arts groups.

"More importantly, there is a team of people I am surrounded by," said Murray. "This is going to be a conglomerate effort."

Isn’t it, oh, I dunno, completely hypocritical of a “museum” devoted to fetishizing victimhood to hire a CEO who’s so out of step with its way of thinking? Then again, even as Gail (daught of Izzy) Asper kvells about how much money she’s raised for this money pit, the Harper Government (which, bizarrely, sees the mausoleum as a way to “enhance the public's understanding of human rights, promote respect for others, and encourage reflection and dialogue on various human rights issues”) seems to understand that the annual costs associated with running this behemoth make a CEO’s fundraising acumen far more important than his ideological soundness as defined by Canada’s “human rights” industry.

Or could Murray’s appointment be seen as the government’s somewhat subtle, roundabout way of spitting in the industry’s eye (since Harper isn’t yet prepared to do anything of substance re the rights racket like, say, getting rid of Jennifer Lynch and/or Section 13)?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:41 | link | comments (4)

Cluelessness and dhimmitude in T.O.: Blogger Creeping Sharia reports on an instance of c.s. in my hometown, reputedly the most multishmulti burg on the planet--a public High School in Toronto that closes early on Friday so Muslim students can get home in time for prayers.

Aren't we "tolerant"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments

On second thought: Jane Fonda says she’s sorry for signing an anti-Israel petition. From the Guardian (my bolds):

Jane Fonda has apologised for signing a petition decrying the decision by organisers of the Toronto film festival to showcase films from Tel Aviv.

In a post on the Huffington Post blog yesterday, Fonda said she had signed the letter, which has been fiercely criticised by Hollywood luminaries such as Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman and Sacha Baron Cohen, "without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn't exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue".

She continued: "In the hyper-sensitised reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians. By neglecting to do this the letter allowed good people to close their ears and their hearts."

However Fonda pointed out that her decision had been based on anger over the suspicion that Toronto was being used by the Israeli government to boost its newly launched campaign to "rebrand" the country. "Arye Mekel, the Israeli foreign ministry's director general for cultural affairs, has said that artists and writers must be enlisted in order to 'show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war'," she said. "The protesters felt it was wrong for the much-respected festival to be used in this manner."…

Um, I could be wrong, but that sounds like a rather half-hearted apology to me. In effect: “I’m ‘sorry’ I reacted in my usual knee-jerk fashion, but you can understand my behaviour since it’s common knowledge about those ee-vil Zionists.”

I’m sorry--and, again, I mean this most sincerely--that you haven’t changed a bit and are still the same usefully imbecilic pawn you’ve always been, Jane.

In any event, Israel’s “prettier face” isn’t much in evidence at TIFF, since most of the Tel Aviv films toe the uglier lefty line.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments (3)

Is a Canada-style "big chill" coming to the U.S?: Under the guise of "diversity" and "tolerance," there's a move afoot in the U.S. to silence conservative viewpoints. (Swiping a page from the totalitarian playbook, the powers-that-be always employ words like "tolerace" and "diversity" and "multiculturalism" and "hopenchange" when they want to sugarcoat repellent concepts such as censorship, statism and ideological correctness. See, if you called the Canadian Human Rights Commission by a more accurate name--say, the Canadian Censorship/Punishment Commission--it wouldn't sound nearly as appealing.)

My prediction: It'll never fly because Americans will shoot it down, secure in the knowledge that their free speech is protected by the First Ammendment.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (2)

UN moral equivocator relies on an immoral source: It’s official! According to UN sleuth Richard Goldstone, Israel and Hamas are equally guilty of “war crimes.” And on whom did Dick rely to provide info about Israeli “crimes”? Why, on none other than...Hamas.

Hey, it’s a trustworthy source that never fabricates/prevaricates, right?

Update: Have an Eggroll, Mr. Goldstone.

Better yet, and I mean this sincerely, have a kidney stone, Mr. Goldstone.

Update: Melanie Phillips unpacks Goldstone's blood libel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:18 | link | comments

Playing the race canard, er, card: You knew once the rapture had worn off and people started to express their distress over how the hopeychanger was steering the ship of ship, those who dared to criticize the American Idol would be accused of "racism."

Well, it is the easiest way to shut people up (viz the efficacy of lobbing the "Islamophobia" charge).

Update: White House rejects racism claim. Good on the White House.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:03 | link | comments

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Useful idiots do damage control: After catching heaps of flak merely for drawing attention to the critical issue of Jews purloining Arab land, the TIFF Hamas-buffs have issued a “clarification”:

Artists opposed to a spotlight on Israeli films at the Toronto International Film Festival insisted yesterday they are not calling for a boycott, after drawing the ire of a growing list of celebrity critics.

Filmmakers including Toronto’s John Greyson and Palestinian-Israeli director Elia Sulieman were to hold a press conference yesterday to explain their position and reveal messages of solidarity from supporters including historian Howard Zinn, U.K. director Ken Loach and U.S. author Alice Walker.

Organizers say they have collected more than 1,500 signatures to a letter protesting the program, including those of author Naomi Klein, actress Jane Fonda and musician David Byrne.

“The declaration is not a call to boycott TIFF, nor is it a demand to boycott individual Israeli artists,” organizers said yesterday in a release.

“It is a statement of principled opposition to the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to honour Tel Aviv with a special spotlight this year.”

Tel Aviv is the first city selected as the focus of the festival's “City to City” program, meant to spotlight the films from a particular urban centre.

Protesters say the choice is seen by many Palestinians as taking Israel’s side in the Middle East conflict.

Clearly, “many Palestinians” haven’t seen the films in question, several of which portray Israel in a less than positive light and could thus be seen as taking the Palestinian side.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:24 | link | comments (2)

A grumble about the un-humble: Among those who aren’t too impressed at how an apparently inebriated Kanye West ruined Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards are Barack Obama and NYT pundit David Brooks. Obama, as eloquent as ever, is said to have called West a “Jackass.” Brooks says that West’s bluster compares unfavourably with the “self-effacement” and “humility” displayed by the Greatest Generation. Contention’s Jennifer Rubin, commenting on Brooks’ observations, points out that, while West is obvioulsly no GGer in the humility department, neither is a certain full-of-himself hopeychanger:

David Brooks, spurred by a radio show that aired the day WWII ended, is nostalgic for an era of “humility.” He explains: “But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.” That, he regrets, didn’t last:

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

[. . .]

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

But oddly, there is one very famous figure missing from that lineup who personifies Brooks’s point: Obama. Obama ran an egomaniacal campaign, complete with creepy iconography, Greek Temple stage setting, and promises to lower oceans and heal the planet. Its central “idea” was him—the leader of a New Politics, a transformational figure. Now as president, he, like the athletes Brooks chastises, is a chest beater (”I won”). He too claims to know all (from racial profiling to red/blue pills to the inner workings of the “Muslim world”) and to know it better than others. Unlike the 1945 movie stars whom Brooks praises, there is nothing about Obama that is “understated, self-abnegating, modest and spare.” (We’re not talking about Obama’s views of the country he leads—which is forever required to apologize and atone for sins—but his views of himself and his relationship to his fellow citizens.) Many have remarked on his hubris in the current health-care debate—he alone will permanently fix the health-care system, and he alone is truth-telling…

What, you mean he can’t lower oceans and heal the planet? How…disappointing.

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

Don't toy with us, Mikey: A shlubby cap-wearer, currently making the scene at TIFF, says he might quit making documentaries.

An idle promise to be sure, since what he's been making all these years are ideological confabulations, not docs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments

Chavez-Ortega-Ahmadinejad--the toxic triad: “Hatred of the USA is uniting leftist and Islamist leaders. Anti-Semitic propaganda and conspiracy theories are part of the way they see the world says Wolf-Dieter Vogel in his essay.” Here’s a brief excerpt:

It is, of course, their common enmity towards the USA that is unifying leftist and Islamist anti-imperialists. Their world view requires a black and white analysis that has little to do with any real and necessary criticism of the imperialistic behaviour of the major powers: for them it is about the "good" oppressed peoples' fight against their enemies, the "outsiders", who attack "their" culture, however that may be defined; the "good people" who are lied to and cheated by propaganda or other influences from "outside".

In short, a view of the world tailor-made for conspiracy theories.

In short, the Joooos control the world!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments

In desperate need of Canadian Jewish "mentors": Somali insurgents vow to avenge U.S. raid.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:17 | link | comments (1)

Looming taqiyaah alert: Turkey to 'host' talks between Iran and the West.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments

Gay-bashing in Iraq: A dreadful, absolutely appalling story, from the Guardian:

Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

"It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up," he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi's group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

The deputy leader of the group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. "Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts," he told the Observer. "We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God's forgiveness before they are killed."

The violence against Iraqi gays is a key test of the government's ability to protect vulnerable minority groups after the Americans have gone…

So far the government’s getting an F.

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

Tragic comedy: And by the same oxymoronic token,“Benign sharia finance,” a risible concept touted in the National Post by someone named Lorne Cutler, a self-described “Ottawa-based Independent financial consultant”:

Each Islamic bank has a panel of three Islamic scholars who opine on whether something is shariah-compliant. These panels can only determine what constitutes shariah-compliant financing, not whether the structure complies with the laws of the country, and they have no authority to act against the country's law.

There are international agreements prohibiting banks from money laundering and funding terrorist groups. If required, existing international agreements can be modified to ensure Islamic banks are governed by these agreements if they aren't already. If certain banks don't abide by these rules, Western banks will be prohibited from working with them. Canada's criminal code also makes it an offense to support terrorist groups. If a religious scholar advising a particular Islamic bank also preaches jihad, regulations could be established to prevent our banks from dealing with that bank. Islamic banks would be subject to the same regulations and supervision as are conventional banks.

Interest is a merely a tool, not a fundamental Canadian or Western value. If certain groups have problems charging interest, there is nothing inherently wrong in setting up financial institutions that can provide funding in a way that does not abrogate religious principles. Our existing and future banking laws and regulations can protect us against the risk of a bank engaging in illegal activities…

Does Mr. Cutler not get that “illegality” is beside the point? The point being that sharia finance is one component of an all-encompassing universal law that, because it comes from Allah, is destined to squeeze out and replace our iniquitous infidel law (our “fundamental Canadian or Western values”). For that reason we’d be well advised to recite the following prayer, a paraphrase of the one suggested by the rabbi in A Fiddler on the Roof as the appropriate blessing for the Czar. All together now: May God bless and keep sharia…far away from us.

Of course, with the likes of short-sighted, self-interested Ottawa-based Independent financial consultants like Lorne Cutler, that’s getting harder and harder to do.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:57 | link | comments (3)

Monday, 14 September 2009

Flushing 'em out of Flushing: Up till now, the only thing I knew about Flushing, Queens is that it was the provenance of Fran Fine, the nasal-voiced character played by nasal-voiced Fran Drescher on the sitcom The Nanny ("She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens/'Til her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes...") Today I also know it as a place where some alleged jihadis have been living, and allegedly plotting to unleash terrorism on an unsuspecting populace.

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

As long as they spell your name right, who cares if you look like an utter dolt?: The CJC proudly posts this piece from Maclean’s about the CHRT ruling which shot down the Ceej’s beloved “Nazi hunter”; apparently, Bernie is under the impression that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, even when you sound like a clueless boob in the Canadian magazine that was itself the target of a notorious censorship campaign launched by the Canadian Islamic Congress. (The CIC had sought to commandeer several pages in the magazine to propagandize on behalf of Islam, which it felt had been slighted by some Maclean’s scribes, including Mark Steyn. The magazine told it to take a hike--resulting in a complaint to three of Canada’s censorship outfits). The censorship-buff’s comments have been highlighted by his organization:

The growing number of critics of the Canadian Human Rights Commission received a shot in the arm last week. In a ruling released Wednesday in Ottawa, the commission's own tribunal ruled that Section 13(1), a controversial provision of the Human Rights Act, was unconstitutional. That is, the tribunal flatly challenged the legality of its own hate-speech law, concluding that it violates the freedom-of-expression guarantee of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While the quasi-judicial body doesn't actually have the authority to strike a federal law -- that's up to a judge or Parliament -- the ruling has opened a constitutional can of worms, further undermining a provision that, for two years, has faced intense public scrutiny. The surprise ruling has left even legal experts puzzling over what happens next. Meanwhile, more and more scholars, academics and scribes are lining up against Section 13(1), urging for its immediate repeal.

The controversy arose last week when the commission's tribunal dismissed a complaint filed against Marc Lemire, the far-right webmaster behind Freedomsite.org, which bills itself as the country's "freedom resource centre." The complaint, filed by Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, alleged that racist and homophobic material posted to the site was discriminatory, and "likely to expose" minority groups to "hatred and contempt." Although the tribunal's vice-chairperson, Athanasios Hadjis, found that Lemire had, in one instance, violated Section 13(1) -- in a post viewed by a total of eight people -- he let him off, deeming the provision unconstitutional. In a lengthy, 107-page decision, Hadjis noted that conciliation and mediation, intended to be central to the human rights process, had fallen to the wayside. (Lemire had removed the offending material after getting notification of the complaint.) The CHRC, he said, has instead grown increasingly aggressive and "penal in nature," acquiring the capacity to exact stiff fines for opinions that, as its critics say, can fall well short of incitement to hatred.

Media reaction was swift. It's unsalvageable, the Toronto Star said of Section 13(1) in an editorial published the next day. "It can be interpreted to cover stereotyping and defaming. The tribunal can accept evidence that wouldn't stand up in court. And it doesn't have to establish guilt beyond doubt," they wrote. "It's that bad." "Put Section 13 out of its misery," the Montreal Gazette urged Parliament, saying the case had exposed the "folly" of an "odious" law.

The question, for parliamentarians and the commission itself, becomes: what now? The ruling "cannot be ignored," says University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon. Sure, the commission can "continue to investigate under Section 13(1) and send complaints onward," he adds -- but "if this is the automatic response, then it's all wasted effort," and Section 13(1) becomes, in effect, a dead-letter law. Even if tribunal members do not adhere to Hadjis's ruling, it is the "elephant in the room," impossible to overlook, says University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. (The CHRC says it is "reviewing the decision," and continues to refuse comment on the ruling, and on whether it will continue to investigate and prosecute under Section 13(1).) Both the B.C. and Ontario rights commissions told Maclean's that the federal statute is not binding on provincial tribunals, which will proceed as before.

The Canadian Jewish Congress called for the ruling to be appealed: "This is one ruling by one adjudicator," says its CEO, Bernie Farber, adding that Section 13(1) is an "important instrument" in "protect[ing] the vulnerable." Indeed, it is highly likely the case gets appealed -- "all the way to the Supreme Court," adds Moon. (In 2008, he authored a report for the CHRC which called for the repeal of Section 13(1) -- a year ago, the section was used, unsuccessfully, to prosecute Maclean's before the CHRC for material complainants felt was anti-Islamic.)…

An important instrument in protecting the vulnerable, eh? More like a cudgel with which to clobber the ideologically “impure.” And, any day now, the Ceej itself, like the B’nai Brith before it, may find itself in that category by virtue of its vocal support for the Jewish state. Won’t that be ironic?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:54 | link | comments (1)

Fostering terror: A jaw-dropper of a story out of the U.K--the jihadi who plotted to blow up a bunch of airplanes a la Lockerbie--and who’s been locked away to serve a 40 year jail term as a result--was a social services-approved foster parent. (The story is from British rag The Sun, hence the, er, rather overheated language which we here in North America are unaccustomed to outside the National Enquirer tabloid media milieu):

A FOSTER child was rescued from the maniac behind the liquid bomb jet plot - as cops found a book by Osama Bin Laden's mentor in a cot.

The helpless youngster had been placed with evil Abdulla Ahmed Ali's family as the beast drew up plans to take kids on airliners targeted by suicide bombers.

Last night the astonishing blunder - by the SAME council slammed over the death of Baby P - left MPs horrified. Anti-terror cops had kept Ali under surveillance and seen the foster child.

The hidden book - written by Abdullah Azzam - was discovered after they swooped to arrest the monster days before his plan to stage seven Lockerbies.

Sharon Shoesmith - belatedly given the boot after 17-month baby Peter Connelly was horrifically tortured to death by his mother, lover and lodger - was in charge of children's services at the time.

Outraged local Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone declared yesterday: "Just when you think Haringey cannot get any worse, it does. This beggars belief."

Tory shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove said: "It's truly frightening to think the social services department of this council placed a child with a terrorist - and even more so to think the child could have been used as part of the foil for the bomb plot.

"Haringey council needs to make public exactly what vetting procedures it has in place to ensure this can never happen again. As with the Baby Peter tragedy, there has been far too much secrecy."

Yesterday Haringey insisted Ali did NOT live at the same property as the fostered child - then couched the statement to say only they had "no record" of him doing so. An official insisted the foster family was checked with the Criminal Records Bureau.

The placement was made "before anyone was made aware of any terrorist activity in the extended family network".

The council added: "The placement was ended immediately when the police were in touch and the arrests were made.

"The family no longer fosters for Haringey."

It refused to reveal the age or sex of the child and declined to say if staff had been disciplined.

Shoesmith is demanding £1million compensation for being fired.

Ali, 28, and two cohorts are behind bars awaiting sentence after they were convicted last week over the bomb plot - which led to the ban on liquids being taken aboard planes. Police said the blitz, which would have sent seven airliners from Heathrow crashing down on the US and Canada, would have caused carnage on an "unprecedented scale".

Jurors at the plotters' trial, who saw video of Ali ranting against the West, heard he and his gang discussed taking children on the flights to throw security off guard.

It was unclear whether the fostered child was among those Ali proposed to sacrifice.

The jobless sponger had a record of spouting fundamentalist Islamic views - in which he praised the Taliban and advocated the imposition of Sharia law in the UK.

One of his brothers worked for the Home Office while another was a Muslim activist. A source said of the foster child's placement: "A desperate shortage of Muslim foster families may have been a factor. Muslim children can only be placed with people of the same faith and the need to find foster parents could mean corners were cut in the vetting process."…

No kidding.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments

U.S. says toe-may-toe, Pakistani military says toe-mah-toe: A piece in the Western Standard outlines the vast disparity between America and Pakistan’s security forces vis-à-vis Afghanistan, India and the Taliban:

We envision an Afghanistan in which a legitimate, democratic state is capable of defeating the insurgency and fostering opportunity for its people; the Pakistani military views Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth against India and backs Taliban fighters to achieve it. The United States envisions a global strategic partnership with a rising India and an enduring peace between New Delhi and Islamabad; Pakistan's military views India as an existential threat to be countered asymmetrically with terrorists based in and backed by Pakistan. Finally, the United States seeks a comprehensive relationship with a civilian-led, democratic Pakistan to fight extremism and expand justice and prosperity for its people; elements of the Pakistani security establishment undermine exactly these goals by meddling in politics and sponsoring terrorism.

Let’s call the whole thing off?

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

A-Jad shuns the invite: President Outreach may think he's making headway with his plans to sit across a table from the mully-bullies and hash out their differences over Shiite nukes, but, alas, the tiny thug just isn't into it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:52 | link | comments

Sunday, 13 September 2009

Goin' to the chapel 'cause they're gonna get ma-a-a-ried...: Blogging will be light to non-existent for the rest of the day. My brother is getting hitched (to an absolutely lovely woman) and I'll be far too busy celebrating. I'd say that calls for a drink--and a song.

Update: Same song, only faster and sung by a guy.

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

Rebick a Jew-hater?: The bodacious and dainty Judy Rebick, miffed about the Toronto Star’s interpretation of the tiff TIFF, expresses her displeasure in a tiny masterpiece of sanctimony and reckless endangerment (of Israel’s future and her own reputation):

Re:Tel Aviv tiff at TIFF,

Editorial, Sept. 8

What you call "anti-Israel diatribes" may be a bore to your editorial writer but they are vital solidarity to the Palestinian people who have suffered under a terrible occupation for decades.

No one is suggesting TIFF is "in the pocket of the Jews," nor asking people not to see Israeli films. The letter that has now been signed by hundreds of filmmakers and artists, among them Israelis and Jewish Canadians, is a protest against the TIFF highlight of Tel Aviv in the year of the terrible assault on Gaza.

I am not surprised that you imply anti-Semitism in the protest since this is the charge levelled against every criticism of Israel these days.

But it is hard to silence a protest that includes many of the strongest voices for human rights in the arts around the world like Ken Loach, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker, Danny Glover and John Greyson.

Judy Rebick, Toronto

My somewhat sarcastic response:

I can tell it’s very upsetting for Judy Rebick and others involved in the “boycott, divest and sanction” movement to have to keep defending themselves against charges of anti-Semitism. After all, the only thing they want is “justice” and "human rights" for Palestinians. And if that happens to entail an obsessive and exclusive focus on the world’s only Jewish state--the Middle’s East’s sole democracy--and a disinclination to zero in on injustice occurring elsewhere in the world, well, that must be because Israel alone is morally indefensible, in the same way that South Africa once was. To remedy the “injustice,” Rebick and those who view events view through the same cracked lens believe Israel should knock it off already with its stiff-necked insistence on remaining “Jewish,” the root cause of all the problems, and agree to blend in with the rest of the landscape--as Jews throughout history, prior to Israel's establishment, were often encouraged for the sake of social harmony to stop being "a state within a state" and blend in with the rest of the populace.

See, if your intentions are pure and good and sincere, as Ms. Rebick’s obviously are, it can’t possibly be “anti-Semitism,” right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:26 | link | comments (1)

Saturday, 12 September 2009

Irony alert--Israelis their own worst enemies:While the bash-Israel crowd continues to throw a tantrum about Tel Aviv films at this year’s TIFF, over at the other film festival, an Israeli flick has just scooped up the top prize. And the irony to which I refer, the flick is exactly the kind that would meet with the approval of the bash-Israel crowd since, like most Israeli movies, its orientation its leftist, and thus completely in line with the bashers’ (my bolds):

Historic achievement for Israel: Samuel Maoz's film Lebanon scored an extraordinary triumph for Israeli cinema Saturday, after winning the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.

The victory marks the first time an Israeli film wins the prestigious award.

"I dedicate this award to the thousands of people all over the world who, like me, come back from war safe and sound," the director told the audience at the closing ceremony.

"Apparently they are fine ... but inside, the memory will remain stabbed in their soul," he said.

Maoz's film dates back to June 1982, during the first day of the first Lebanon War. The film takes place almost entirely inside an Israeli tank, while offering the point of view of young Israeli soldiers who find themselves alone in war while facing a genuine existential threat.

'Truly a dream come true'

The film's storyline, which is based on a true story, recounts the experiences of Israeli soldiers in a tank sent along with a paratroop company on a mission to scour a hostile community in Lebanon.

The forces end up trapped in the center of the razed town and barely make it out alive

The story shatters several myths which the IDF has been boasting of, while raising incisive moral questions.

Sigh. Isn’t there perhaps one or two little filmmakers over in Israel making movies that don’t shatter myths, ones about Israelis I mean, not ones about Palestinians?

Just goes to show that Naomi and Jane were making a big foofaraw over nothing because, as Leftists first and Israelis second, Israeli filmmakers are hardly engaging in propaganda for the Zionist cause.

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

RIP Larry Gelbart: My political orientation has done a 180 since the days when I used to chortle with glee at the mad caperings on M*A*S*H. Times being what they are, I don’t know that I’d take quite the same delight today in the way the ever-virtuous Hawkeye Pierce stuck it to the ever-malevolent and bumbling army brass. (I’m pretty sure, though, I’d get the same kick out of Corporal Max Klinger, the most hirsute--and possibly the most stylish--cross-dresser in TV history.) No matter. Upon learning of the death of Larry Gelbart, the show’s creator, at the age of 81, I am prepared to set aside politics and extend my sincere thanks to him for all the laughs he’s given me over the years--on M*A*S*H, in the movie Tootsie, and in the Broadway show A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum, whose book he co-authored.

In tribute to Gelbart, I am reprising my parody of that show’s opening number, written on the occasion of Mark Steyn’s prosecution by the British Columbia thought police (a kind of madness that makes the army's Korean War-era lunacies depicted on M*A*S*H seem almost tame by comparison. Yes, I know the original lyrics are by Stephen Sondheim, not Gelbart, but I think you’ll understand when I say that writing parodies of books of Broadway musicals holds far less appeal.) Anyway, this one's for you, Mr. Gelbart:

Something familiar,

Something peculiar,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

Something appallin’,

Something like Stalin,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

Nothing that’s free, nothing that’s fair.

Bring on the “nice” and jackanapes beware.

New situations,

Old complications,

Stuff that’s pathetic and outré;

Comedy tomorrow,

Tragedy today!

Something outrageous,

Something contagious,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

Something Orwellian,

Machiavellian,

Something Canadian:

A tragedy today!

Nothing with truth, nothing makes sense.

Long as the show trial now can commence!

Nothing that’s formal,

Nothing that’s normal

No oaths to swear or to purvey;

Open up the courtroom:

Tragedy today!...

Nothing that’s Brit.

No Magna Cart’.

It's more important to show we've got "heart".

Business as usual!

Meant to confuse y’all!

Hundreds of bureaucrats at play!

Charlatans and shysters!

Marxists and spin-meisters!

Rulings and chastisements!

Cutting down to size-ments!

Panderers!

Meanderers!

Dhimmitude!

Words misconstrued!

Mistakes!

Fakes!

Buffy!

Huffy!

Stumblers!

Grumblers!

Bumblers!

Fumblers!

No looking back, turn for the worse.

And there’s a crappy ending, of course!

Badness is goodness,

Do-as-you-shouldness--

Right now our future’s underway!

Comedy tomorrow.

Tragedy today!

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:22 | link | comments (1)

The ‘rights’ racket vs. the feds: I could be wrong but this newswire release seems to me to be about the “human rights” cadre flexing its muscles and sending the government a message to lay the heck off; that, despite much grumbling in the media and the blogosphere about how they’ve vastly overreached their original mandate (and overstayed their welcome), the apparatchiks are prepared to defend their turf against those who would like to show them the door--for good:

Media Advisory: Historic First Nations Human Rights Case reaches the Human Rights Tribunal

OTTAWA, Sept. 11 /CNW Telbec/ - For the first time in history a case alleging that the federal government has discriminated against First Nations families and children will be heard by a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

This first and historic case which proceeds before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on September 14th, asserts that the federal government has discriminated against First Nations children in state care. The federal government has applied for a judicial review that will challenge the Tribunal's right to hear the case.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo and First Nations Child and Family Caring Society CEO Cindy Blackstock will provide an important update for media on the human rights challenge in Press conference to be held September 14th at the AFN Office on 473 Albert Street at 11:30 am…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:28 | link | comments

Brutal Jews wreaking havoc (as per usual): A cheeky Stefan Kanfer, impersonating a Jew-loathing newspaper editor, pens a rapturous letter about Tarantino’s latest to his Dear Leader:

TO: Adolf Hitler
FROM: Julius Streicher
DATELINE: Hell

Mein Führer:

Much excitement to report! The good news is piling up like copies of Der Stürmer in the good old days, when I published caricatures of the International Jew as predator and violator. Remember what we discovered in the 1930s? The secret of the Big Lie was to turn the truth on its head. Well, here we are in the New Millennium, and on the wide screen, the B.L. is more monstrous than ever! The film is entitled Inglourious Basterds (their spelling, not mine). And—are you ready for this?—it’s produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein!

Earlier this month, before Basterds was screened for a private audience, Harvey W. told his invitees, “Please keep in mind that it’s a fable.” And what a fable it is—a revenge fantasy, actually. The plot is as elemental as a bayonet. A group of six violent American sociopaths, all of them Jewish, are under the command of Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a gentile hillbilly with a scar on his neck and ice in his heart. After D-Day, Raine’s squad is let loose in Europe. There, its members take almost as much delight in scalping Germans as director/writer Quentin Tarantino does in showing the removal of skin and hair. One of the enlisted men, dubbed the “Bear Jew” (Eli Roth), is especially revolting. When a German officer honorably refuses to betray his fellow soldiers, the Bear bludgeons him to death with a baseball bat. The execution is shown in exquisite and sanguinary detail as audiences chortle. It goes without saying that the dirty half-dozen are licensed to kill by whatever means necessary.

Earlier in the film, we see the sophisticated and multilingual SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) order the execution of a Jewish family hiding in a French farmhouse. One girl survives because Landa whimsically allows her to run away. That, however, is the extent of German malfeasance. No mention is made of the Holocaust. Dachau? Never heard of it. Auschwitz-Birkenau? Chelmno? Treblinka? Sorry, Herr Tarantino isn’t very good with names. The death of 6 million Jews as a result of forced labor, exposure, brutality, disease, execution? Nicht ein wort. You, mein Führer, are played by Martin Wuttke, who turns you into a buffoon. The same goes for Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) and most of the other top Nazis.

But Tarantino’s purpose is not to comment on human events. It is to comment on cinematic events, as he did in his previous features Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. Thus the name Aldo Raine suggests that of Aldo Ray, the veteran of many American war films. Thus the soundtrack blares “The Green Leaves of Summer,” the theme song from The Alamo, starring John Wayne. Thus the Jewish escapee, now the owner of a Paris cinema, says in classic Cannes Film Festival style: “We’re French; we respect directors in our country.”

But what Tarantino and his benefactors have done is something far more interesting than mere celluloid scholarship. They have joined the dark side. And we welcome them! Imagine a filmmaker who can trivialize Nazi crimes against humanity, make the Jews the brutal ones, evoke laughs from horror, and create a finale in which the German High Command, from you on down, are locked into a film house. Cinema Paradiso turns into Cinema Inferno when it’s set aflame, thus reversing the image of the death-camp ovens.

As our old enemy Karl Marx observed: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Or as our new colleague Herr Tarantino states proudly: “This ain’t your father’s World War II movie.” Indeed it ain’t, mein Führer. That’s why it’s thriving at the box office. New times demand new directors, new narratives, new history. Nicht wahr?

Yours until the next farce,

J. S.

The next farce? It’s playing out even as we speak at this year’s TIFF.

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

Happy Quds Day!: Woo hoo! It’s A-jad's and the Ayatollah’s mostest favourite day of the year. From mully-bully mouthpiece, the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN - Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said that International Quds Day is the symbol of the Iranian people’s unity.

“The enemy has always sought to undermine the Quds Day ceremony, but again this year, the Iranian nation will honor this day with marches in Tehran and the rest of the country and many of the Muslims of the world will follow this nation and revive the name of Quds once again,” Ayatollah Khamenei told worshippers in a sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran.

People should be careful that certain individuals do not use Quds Day to organize gatherings to create divisions among the people, because the Iranian nation can be a leader in supporting Palestine only when they are united, he noted.

International Quds Day is a day of solidarity with Palestine observed on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan. Anti-Zionist demonstrations are held on Quds Day all over the world, but especially in Iran where the event was inaugurated after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The late Imam Khomeini made the proposal to establish an international day of solidarity with Palestinians in August of that year.

Ayatollah Khamenei also said diverse views -- as opposed to disagreements about the principles of the revolution -- are beneficial for society.

“Critical people and groupings… are beneficial to the country if this… is within the framework of its principles, i.e., Islam, the Constitution, and the Imam’s guidelines and will,” he said.

“Contrary to some propaganda, if a person or a grouping disagrees… the establishment lets them be. But if somebody stands against the foundation of the system and undermines and draws his sword against the revolution, this would not be tolerated anywhere in the world, and also in Iran, the establishment will deal with him decisively,” he added.

You gotta love that clunky totalitarian locution--an uneuphonious marriage between Joseph Stalin, the Ayatollah Khomeini and the head of one of Canada's larger "human rights" outfits. And speaking of “the framework of its principles, i.e., Islam, the Constitution, and the Imam’s guidelines and will, “Death to Israel!”

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

Table talk: Iran has finally gotten back to the international community with a batch of proposals--with no time to spare, since the time limit the leader of the nation formerly known as Great Satan had given the mullahs to respond to his "outreach" was set to expire. Michael Ledeen calls the document "pure pablum, unworthy of a smart sixth-grader. Five and a half pages of cliches and slogans without any real content." (Speaking as a parent of a smart sixth-grader, I hope he'll understand if I take umbrage at that. In fact, when me and my husband attended curriculum night at our son's school this week, I had to ask myself, "Are You Smarter Than a Sixth-Grader?". And hearing about some of the stuff he'll have to cram into his cranium this year I had to sadly answer, "You know, I'm not so sure I am.") Ledeen says the Iran's doc's being 100% content-free is neither here nor there. What's important is that it affords the happy hopeychanger the opportunity to do what he's wanted to do all along: sit across the table from the mully-bullies (think of the photo ops!) and use all his powers of persuasion (currently being deployed on Americans to ram through Obamacare) to get the mullahs to give up their nukes.

Good luck with that one, Barry. (And you thought government-run health insurance was a tough sell.)

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

We’re poor little dhimmis who have lost our way, bow, bow, bow…: Diana West posts an interview in the Yale University paper (hence my possibly obscure reference to the famous Yale song composed by university alumnus, Cole Porter) with the man who used to be seen as Bush’s poodle, but who is now merely another supine ovine. (Those are West’s sarcastic comments and emphases.)

Q: I wanted to ask you about the cartoon controversy at Yale. How would you have approached that matter and is that an example of the sort of ails of globalization?

A: It’s certainly an example — I mean, the whole fury is an example of how it’s important to get a better and easier way of having a dialogue about things of religious sensitivity for sure.

Oh, I seeeeee. Mum's the word then, is it?

But I mean, I was heavily involved at this, I was Prime Minister at the time all this broke, and obviously it was condemned very strongly, the violence that surrounded it, but I really think from Yale’s perspective it made the right decision. Because this is not a piece of original research that Yale has suppressed.That would obviously be a completely different issue.

Oh, completely, Tony, old bean. I mean, what ho?

The question is, does it reignite a controversy that has already been there or not.

Oh, profound, old thing. Mustn't reignite a controversy that has already been there -- and done that, what?

Conclusion:

I think it was an entirely responsible and sensible thing that they did.

Submission.

The song’s final line still rings true: Lord have mercy on such as he; bow, bow, bow.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:15 | link | comments

Aesopian hopeychange: Roger Kimball posts this update of a formerly familiar fable:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant ’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group curse God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

The only thing I would have added (perhaps after the Kermit the Frog line):

The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid calls for a boycott of Israeli academics and products because the industrious Israeli ants (those loathsome imperialist scoundrels!) have stolen the Palestinian grasshoppers' land, including all the beautiful olive trees which, from time immemorial, have belonged to the grasshoppers.

What has that to do with an American ant ‘n’ grasshopper tale? Nothing much, but, as in the real world, the story wouldn’t be complete unless the Israel-bashers were there somewhere in the thick of the leftist potage. The moral, however, remains the same: Be careful who you vote for (especially if you’re an ant).

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:43 | link | comments

Friday, 11 September 2009

The Unflinching Lynch: Could someone please tell Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., that the jig is up, Section 13 is a goner, and she can no longer go around in public making pretending all is well with her wretched Commissariat—not without making those outside the “human rights” cadre titter as her risible claims, that is. Here’s a speech Jen delivered in the Grand Ballroom of a swanky Toronto hotel a mere two days ago at something called the “National Council of Visible Minorities (NCVM) 7^th Symposium and National General Meeting”. (At least this time we only had to pay for her to go to Toronto, and not all the way to Dublin or some tres expensive European city.) You’d never know from these words that Canada’s “human rights” racket had just been dealt a severe body blow by one of its own, the Commissar who ruled against the federal “rights” types’ favorite “Nazi”-slayer. I particularly liked (and by “liked” I really mean “I almost threw up upon reading”) the following:

…When most people think of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, they think of us as a regulatory body – receiving human rights complaints, and conducting employment equity audits.

Indeed, complaints are, of course, important parts of our mandate.

As, or more important I would argue, is our proactive work with employers to help effect systemic and organizational change.

In recent years, the Commission has restructured itself so that we can shift our emphasis to be more proactive than reactive:

· We have created a Knowledge Centre, which develops research on key issues of the day.

For example, a recently published research report examined whether racial profiling is an effective tool in ensuring security and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to legitimize the practice of profiling.

A joint public statement by the Commission and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation recommends that agencies mandated to monitor the activities of security agencies need to play a role in reporting on human rights issues and in encouraging appropriate corrective action, where necessary…

“Appropriate corrective action,” eh? Oh, you mean the way you and your proactive ilk in the CHRC harass, bully and shakedown the ideologically “impure” for the greater good of the Trudeaupia? The way you’re freaked by “racial profiling” but not at all concerned about how Muslims intent on sharia “profile” others—Jews, “Zionists,” Christians, etc.?

Yeah, I’d be really proud of that “shift” (which, funny thing, doesn’t appear to involve much “shifting,” since you’ve been doing the same sort of stuff for far too long).

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

Pathetic fallacies on the anniversary of 9/11: If you studied Shakespeare in High School, you probably learned about "pathetic fallacy." That's the literary term that describes how a character's emotions are mimicked by inanimate objects or by the weather. So, for example, when King Lear rages against the unforgiving fates, there is much attendant sturm und drang on stage--wind howling, lighting striking and the like.

On this, the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's raining in New York City. I like to think of that happenstance of weather as a pathetic fallacy, only a real one, not a stage effect: it's as if the heavens were weeping in synch with the emotions of the people on the ground.

A pathetic fallacy of another kind: the belief that, eight years on, the jihad doesn't continue to pose an immense and ongoing threat to our values and way of life.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

Kenney goes out on a limb--but is it far out enough?: There is much to admire about Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, who spoke to a lunchtime crowd of around 150 in the board room of a Downtown Toronto law firm yesterday. Mr. Kenney, after all, is the guy who saw what a penny ante outfit of Jew-haters the Canadian Arab Federation had turned into, and who revoked its federal funding. (Astoundingly, the CAF had been provided with taxpayer shekels to teach language skills to Canadian immigrants, thereby validating itself and its, ahem, interesting take on Jews and their homeland in the eyes of newcomers.) In so doing, Kenney became a target for Slamoloonylefty rage, and even received more than a few death threats from those who saw him as the poster boy for the “Zionist conspiracy,” both because of his vocal opposition to the CAF, and because his government has sided with Israel against Hezbollah, Hamas and the hateful internationalists, henchmen of the jihad against the Jews, who convened Durban II, a sickening reprise of the first UN fiesta of Judenhass.

Mr. Kenney recounted his own journey. He started out as an Alberta lad who knew nothing about Jews and Israel, and who swallowed all the poisonous teachings he imbibed at university--that Israel is a product of Western imperialism and colonialism; that it’s the neighbourhood bully of the Mideast; that the Palestinians are Israel’s victims and heaven and earth must be shifted to bring them “justice”; and all the rest of the nonsensical, untruthful, ahistorical palaver that has infested academe and made it such a pestilential swamp. It was only in 2002, said Kenney, when he attended a presentation by Palestinian Media Watch and saw the Palestinians’ Jew-hate in all its ugliness that he had what he called a “revelation” and realized that everything he’d been fed about Israel by his professors had been a lie. The resulting transformation has been nothing short of astonishing, to the point that, as a Canadian cabinet minister, he well understands that Judenhass is the most “enduring and durable” of all hatreds, and that, although other groups are the targets of hatred, this there is something qualitatively different about the hatred directed at Jews. Kenney also realizes that, while not all criticism of Israel is antisemtic, the obsessive, exclusive, irrational focus on the infamy of one nation--the Jewish one--is how Jew-hate has manifested itself in our time.

Mr. Kenney, to his credit, sees this as a problem not only for Jews, but for all Canadians, and says his government aims to bring that message to the population at large, i.e. that it’s in everyone’s interest to be aware of Judenhass and to reject it because it does not jibe with Canadian values. Again--commendable. It was at this point in the proceedings, though, when Minister Kenney began to discuss the ways in which his government was tackling the problem that I began to get a wee bit disheartened. For, as Mr. Kenney explained, the Harper Tories are dealing with the tremendous challenge posed by thousands upon thousands of immigrants who don’t share our values; who don’t, for example, believe that men and women are equal (not naming any names of those who don’t believe it, nor the law that commands them to uphold the inequities because that’s what their God bids them to do). And the best way the Conservatives can think of to change their minds is to back such initiatives as--wait for it--“Jews Mentoring Somalis” and the vast money pit that is the Canadian Human Rights Museum. (Mr. Kenny even introduced the obviously sincere and well-meaning gent behind the mentoring scheme, who was in the audience. Had an Asper or two--the folks behind the “human rights” mausoleum--been there, no doubt they, too, would have been asked to rise and receive the audience’s warm applause) The minister mentioned as well that his government has acknowledged and apologized for the “none is too many” mentality of Canadian authorities during and after the Second World War. That mindset of genteel antisemitism closed Canada’s doors to Europe’s Jews seeking refuge from the unfolding genocide, including the ones on board the St. Louis, which was turned back in Canadian waters. In recognition of this heinous act, said Kenney, a plaque will be placed in Halifax harbour.

Another facet of Tory efforts: Mr. Kenney has been crossing the country, speaking to many, many Muslim groups, often at mosques (“I speak to far more Muslims groups than I do to Jewish groups,” he said). Why would he go to such, you should forgive the expression, extremes, knowing full well Muslims are not--are never-- going to vote for the Conservatives? He sees is as a way of trying to inculcate “Canadian values.”

So there you have it--a mixed bag, to say the least. On the international scene, the Harper government is strong, resolute, unafraid of standing up for what’s right poking the hateful internationalists in the eye--and on principle, and not because it’s going to translate into votes. For that it is certainly to be commended, and I have to say it’s the reason I will vote for them again. However, domestically, I think we’re in rather a muddle. We are still saddled--burdened--with “multiculturalism,” that “gift” from our hopeychanger, Pierre E. Trudeau (eloquent, charismatic, devastatingly attractive, swoon-inducing--ring any bells?). And as much as Mr. Kenney thinks the Conservatives can put their own particular spin on “multiculturalism” (not unlike the way the B’nai Brith, another group of conservatives, thinks it can put its own particular spin on state censorship), whatever they do will be way too little, way too late. The reality is that those who believe in inequities between the sexes because sharia says it’s right and true to thus believe are already here--the Mouammars, both Mr. and Missus, Mrs. Harpoon Siddiqui and many other Liberal appointees who sat on Canada’s messed-up Immigration and Refugee Review Board have already let them in. And unless the Tories are prepared to repudiate the doctrine of muliculti and acknowledge that the concept of “human rights” has been thoroughly compromised by the Slamoloonylefties (many if not most of whom are onside with an agenda that seeks nothing less than Israel’s annihilation, the completion of that Final Solution)--which, trust me, is never going to happen--nothing in Canada will even begin to change.

If, eight years after 9/11, “mentoring Somalis,” chatting up Muslims in mosques and constructing a shrine to a concept that has been thoroughly discredited due to its association with the clueless and the annihilationist is the best the Tories have to offer; if they and leaders of other Western nations are not prepared to band with other Western nations to prevent sharia from making further inroads--via sharia financing, by using zakat to fund terrorism here and abroad, through the various accommodations we naively make in the name of “tolerance”--I fear will be up a creek, riding in a Trudeaupian canoe, paddling madly and fruitlessly against the all-too-powerful current.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments (7)

Thursday, 10 September 2009

Message conveyed--repeatedly--but not received: Melanie Phillips gives props to Michael Ledeen for daring to "connect the dots." The picture thereby revealed shows that, despite the hopeychangers’ leftist orientation and concerted effort to reach out to thugs, the thugs, confoundingly, still despise the U.S. and everything it stands for--and are doing their level best to deal it a death’s blow:

Michael Ledeen does what few other commentators are doing by joining up the dots – and thus correctly assesses the true and terrifying reality of the threat facing the free world:

There is a mounting body of evidence of a global alliance directed against the United States, running from Moscow to Tehran, Damascus and Caracas. United by hatred of America, funded by oil and narcotics revenues (including our own), and unanimous in their contempt for free societies, the leaders of Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia publicly declare their intentions and demonstrate their resolve. Manhattan District Attorney, the legendary Robert Morgenthau recently spoke of the Iranian-Venezuelan collaboration in very stark terms: ‘[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have created a cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus…

Kissing up to these blackguards is the antithesis of anything that could possibly be described as “smart politics.” Indeed, it is evidence of a cluelessness so delusional, so self-destructive, that it amounts to a kind of madness.

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

More fun with Jon and Jane: Angelina’s Pa blasts Ted’s former squeeze in the National Post’s LETTER OF THE DAY:

Re: Protesters Object To Spotlight On Tel Aviv, Sept. 4.

Jane Fonda is backing the wrong people again. She is getting into the mix of a very serious situation that many Israelis have given their lives for. Her whole idea of the "poor Palestinians" and "look how many Palestinians the Israelis killed in Gaza" is misguided. Does she not remember what actually took place in Gaza?

Did Israel not give the Palestinians of Gaza the hope that there could be peace? In response, did Hamas not launch rockets from Gaza into Israel, killing many innocent people?

This seems to me to be another one of Jane Fonda's misplaced "patriotic" duties toward the wrong people. I was in Israel. I saw the rockets coming down on Sderot, and visited many families who lost their loved ones. How long can a democratic country keep from defending itself ?

I accuse Jane Fonda, and all those who signed the letter with her, of aiding and abetting those who seek the destruction of Israel. After six million people were brutally slaughtered in the Holocaust, the Jewish people took a barren desert and cultivated it into a magnificent oasis.

Time and again, they offered the Palestinians land. The Palestinians always refused. They don't want a piece of the pie; they want the whole pie. They will not be happy until they see Israel in the sea.

People like Jane Fonda and all the people whose names are on that letter are assisting the Palestinian propagandists against the State of Israel. Tell me, my Canadian and American friends, would you give up land you lived in for 3,500 years, just because someone decided they want it?

Jon Voight, Los Angeles.

Okay, it’s official: I’m in love Jon Voight.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments (5)

Funny, he doesn’t sound Jihadish: The first person convicted in the “broad strata” of terrorists case has finally been named--and it’s not a name you might have expected to hear:

A judge has lifted a publication ban that had prevented the press from naming the first person convicted under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act.

Nishanthan Yogakrishnan had previously been referred to only by his initials because he was a minor at the time he committed some of his criminal acts, but yesterday an Ontario court said his name could now be published.

Last September, Yogakrishnan was convicted for his involvement in a terrorist group that plotted attacks in southern Ontario to protest Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

He was sentenced to 30 months, but credited for time served and released on parole. His lawyer had wanted the court to protect Yogakrishnan's identity while he appeals the verdict and sentence.

"There are serious concerns that, pending the outcome of the appeal, once you release his name the harm is irreparable," said lawyer Faisal Mirza. "The anonymity is already lost."

Yogakrishnan, who is of Sri Lankan origin, converted to Islam from Hinduism and became an eager follower of a Scarborough extremist, one of the terrorist group's two alleged ringleaders.

He attended a 12-day "terrorist indoctrination" and training camp north of Toronto in 2005, and a second training camp at Rockwood Conservation Area, where he "wore camouflage while participating in clandestine military-style exercises," according to the Crown…

There are those who will tell you that all “fundamentalist” forms of the Abrahamic faiths are similarly “extremist”. But if Yoga had converted to, say, fundamentalist Judaism instead of “reverting” to fundamentalist Islam, he’d probably be obsessing about following the rules of Kashruth to the letter and leaning on his Rebbe a wee bit too much. And he’d likely be wearing a completely different kind of “camouflage” that would help him blend in with the crowd, not the foliage.

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

And now, another number from that famous musical, Tranny Get Your Gun--“I’m Indigenous Too”: Former Liberal Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Warren Allmand tut-tuts Canada for failing to leap on the UN’s “indigenous rights” bandwagon:

Indigenous peoples around the world, who now number 370 million, have been routinely marginalized, impoverished and victimized. At the United Nations, efforts have been made to affirm and protect the rights that are indispensable to their survival and well-being.

Two years ago, on Sept. 13, 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by an overwhelming majority of 144 to 4. The declaration recognizes the distinct identities and cultures of indigenous peoples, their rights to lands, territories and natural resources that are critical to their way of life, and their need for protection against genocide and discrimination.

The idea for the declaration originated in 1982 and its development for more than 20 years has made it one of the most intensely debated and carefully scrutinized instruments in UN history.

The declaration provides an inspiring vision of a new relationship between states and indigenous peoples, one based on cooperation and respect for the rights of all. The declaration consistently and repeatedly refers to collaboration, cooperation or partnership and contains some of the most comprehensive balancing provisions that exist in any international human rights instrument.

Although UN declarations are generally not legally binding, they intensify public awareness of the issues and exert moral pressure on nations to implement the human rights principles that have been affirmed.

Four countries voted against the declaration: Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada.

The arguments put forward by the Harper government for opposing adoption of the declaration do not stand up to legal scrutiny. This text is standard-setting and aspirational, and does not create a legally binding treaty. Its provisions have been examined, and supported, by federal government lawyers in the departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs, as well as by previous governments.

A May 2008 open letter endorsed by more than 100 experts in the fields of indigenous rights and constitutional and international law calls on the government of Canada "to cease publicizing its misleading claims, and together with indigenous peoples, actively implement this new human rights instrument." Former UN high commissioner for human rights and former Canadian Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour has expressed "profound disappointment" over Canada's stance…

Louise is profoundly disappointed? Reason enough to run like the dickens from this thing. A piece in FrontPage Magazine from ’07 reveals what’s really going on here--another UN effort to empower some while disempowering others:

…Although not legally binding as a treaty, the Declaration is intended by its proponents to set forth international norms to govern the collectivist rights of indigenous peoples over ‘their’ lands, resources and ‘traditional knowledge’. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (an advisory group under the UN’s Economic and Social Council), said that the Declaration "sets the minimum international standards for the protection and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples. Therefore, existing and future laws, policies and programs of indigenous peoples will have to be redesigned and shaped to be consistent with this standard."[1]

Remember that you will not find any definition of “indigenous peoples” in the Declaration. It relies entirely on communities’ own self-identification as indigenous peoples, based on claims asserting historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies, a strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources, and different cultural, linguistic, traditional, and other characteristics to those of the dominant culture of that region or state. That could mean just about any self-declared minority group with alleged ties to an area of land can claim indigenous status, insist on self-determination over control of huge swaths of territory and resources within national borders and demand reparations for perceived wrongs against them and their ancestors.

Not surprisingly, for example, the Palestinians are asserting with a straight face that “Palestinian rights are enshrined in the universally accepted principle that land belongs to its indigenous inhabitants”.[2] They got help in this regard from a document published as far back as 1990 by the UN’s Division for Palestinian Rights, which contrasted the ‘outsider’ Zionists who came from Europe to establish the state of Israel with the “indigenous people of Palestine, whose forefathers had inhabited the land for virtually the two preceding millennia”.[3] Of course, under the UN principle of self-identification - which the Palestinians are all too happy to exploit to their political advantage - no proof is required of any Palestinian ties by birth, continuity of land possession, language, religion or tradition to the ancient idol-worshipping Canaanites whom Muslim Palestinians now conveniently claim to be their indigenous forebears. By contrast, Jews living in Israel today are indisputably connected by common religion, heritage and language to the ancient Hebrews who inhabited the land several millennia ago.

Masters of propaganda and of playing victim, the Palestinians have shamelessly linked their situation with that of indigenous groups such as the Six Nations Indian tribes in Canada. One of their motives is to whip up as much indigenous grassroots and sympathetic Leftist support as they can for their global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel by using the vocabulary of oppression, colonialism and apartheid that the Left loves to hear…

Yet again the Left’s good intentions (“let’s help poor native groups”) are being hijacked to serve the jihadist agenda. (Not that the useful idiots--as clueless and blinkered as ever--can see it.)

Update: My unpublishable letter:

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the rights of all human beings, irrespective of their creed, status, ethnicity or national original. Why, then, do we need another declaration dealing exclusively with the rights of “Indigenous Peoples”? Doesn’t that amount to a kind of--what’s that word the human rights clique likes to fling with great frequency?--oh, yeah, discrimination?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:50 | link | comments

The Great Divide: An AP scribbler named Allen G. Breed describes the yawning chasm in America. It’s not a red state/blue state thing (which always sounds too Dr. Seuss by half to me). It’s a floored/not floored by impassioned teleprompter-assisted speechifying thing:

While some were moved to tears by the president's soaring rhetoric, others were moved not at all. Where some saw a new clarity, others saw more vagueness. And while some praised him for reaching out to Republicans, there were those who felt he was overreaching in some ways and not reaching far enough in others.

I find it encouraging that the “soaring rhetoric” is falling flat with “others”. They’re the ones I’m counting on to pull the country out of its tailspin.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:28 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 09 September 2009

A preview of coming attractions: You would think that Wahida Valiante, Elmo’s successor at the helm of the Canadian Islamic Congress, would be a bit sheepish about shamelessly touting the financial component of the jihad--sharia banking--in conjunction with this year’s Islamic History Month. In that case, you would be completely mistaken (my bolds):

Islamic History Month Canada emerged on the Canadian multicultural scene just three years ago as a long dreamed-of intercultural and educational project, created by Canadian Muslims for all Canadians. It has now become an annual and eagerly anticipated reality.

Since its launch in October 2007, we are proud that IHMC has been officially declared and recognized by the Parliament of Canada, as well as by a number of Canadian cities and organizations, including: Victoria BC, Toronto ON, Kingston ON, Ottawa ON, Calgary AB, Burnaby BC, Port Coquitlam BC, Surrey, BC and Vancouver, BC. Other cities are planning to follow this example, Insha’Allah.

As a permanent highlight of Canada's multicultural calendar, IHMC works with similar events across the country to build bridges of understanding, mutual discovery and appreciation between Muslims and all other Canadians.

The past two years have proved a great adventure and positive achievement for our organizers and volunteers, as well as for Canadian Muslims and their fellow citizens of all backgrounds and heritage.

Now as we rapidly approach October 2009 and our third year of Islamic History Month Canada, we will again devote this special month to celebrating and sharing the diversity of Muslim civilization, both past and present -- including our contributions to the arts, sciences, medicine, architecture, humanities, music, spirituality, and every area of human knowledge and endeavour.

Our guest speaker is Dr. Toby Birch, Managing Director of Birch Assets Ltd. in Guernsey UK (registered company number 49994). His company seeks to manage money based on ethical Islamic principles and to provide sustainable investment to both Muslims and non- Muslims alike.

Dr. Birch’s speaking tour on the theme of ISLAMIC FINANCE vs. RECENT GLOBAL CRISES will include the Ontario cities of Toronto, London, Kingston, and Ottawa; he will also visit Montreal QC, Edmonton AB, Saskatoon SK, and Vancouver BC…

What Wahida doesn’t tell us: were we to follow the Birch approach to things, in due course there would be no further need for a designated Islamic History Month since sharia would be celebrated the whole year though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:13 | link | comments

CAF promotes self-loathing Jewish curmudgeon: The obsessive Zionhassers of the Canadian Arab Federation promote the loopy idees of a non-Jewish Jew (see its Sept. 8/09 Newsletter):

Voice of Palestine, Canada will be interviewing Lenni Brenner http://www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner/ this coming Tuesday evening Sept. 8, 2009 between 8:00pm-9:00pm (PDT). Lenni is one of the leading authorities on Zionist collaboration with the Nazis and we will be talking with him about his book "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis" that was released in paperback edition last month. People outside of Vancouver can listen to the show live on the Internet http://www.coopradio.org/listen/.

Who is this Lenni Brenner? According to Wikipedia he is

...an American Marxist Trotskyist writer. In the 1960s, Brenner was a prominent civil rights activist and a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War.

Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at age 10 or 12[1] and a Marxist at age 15.[1] Brenner's involvement with the American Civil Rights Movement began when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the "freedom rides" of the early 1960s. He also worked with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" march on Washington. (Neither were Marxists.)

Brenner was arrested three times during civil rights sit-ins in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in jail when a court revoked his probation for marijuana possession, because of his activities during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.

He was an anti-war activist from the first days of the Vietnam War, speaking frequently at rallies in the Bay Area. In 1963 he organized the Committee for Narcotic Reform in Berkeley. In 1968 he co-founded the National Association for Irish Justice, the American affiliate of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

In the 1990s, he and Kwame Ture (aka Stokely Carmichael), the legendary "Black Power" leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, co-founded the Committee against Zionism and Racism. They also published The Anti-War Activist.

In 2003, Brenner spoke at the inaugural meeting of Jews Against Zionism in London.

Sounds like a delightful chap--the epitome of the CAF’s favourite kind of Jew. The only good thing I have to say about him is that I like the working title of his next book: The World’s Grouchiest Marxist.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:42 | link | comments

Rx for "the Public Option": Flog dead horse. Repeat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:07 | link | comments

Fighting a war with two hands tied behind your back: Obamas's rules of engagement are getting American soldiers killed.

If we had had to fight WW2 this way, I wouldn't be here, and the "pure" among you would be sieging heil.

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

Fun with Jon and Jane: Back in the day, when Jon Voight and Jane Fonda starred in the flick Coming Home, they were both on the same side of the political fence. These days, of course, Jane has stayed put while Jon, like a lot of us, has drifted over to the "dark side". Now Jane's a-ragin' about Tel Aviv films at TIFF, while Jon is slagging her for it--to the delight of those who share his ee-vil predilections.

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

Eine Klein nachtmusik: The malign Ms. Klein, useful tool of the jihad, gets clobbered (mostly) in letters to the Globe and Mail.

Update: A double dactyl for Naomi:

Mummery-flummery

Klein’s malign specialty

Raises her profile and

Fattens her purse.

Self-loathing Jewesses

Traitors and shrew(esses)

Stew in their anger as

Zion they curse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:25 | link | comments

Why lesser is more, not less (more or less): The indefatigable Tarek Fateh beseeches the faithful, “Abandon the doctrine of jihad”:

We Muslims had barely recovered from the news of the 14-year conviction of the Canadian terrorist Saad Khalid, when our Labour Day holiday was interrupted with the bulletin that three of our co-religionists had been found guilty in the U. K. of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes bound for Toronto, Montreal and other North American cities.

A British court convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as soft drinks, and later boasting in videos there would be "floods of martyr operations" that would leave body parts scattered in the streets. "Don't mess with Muslims," Hussain threatened.

I will not be surprised if Islamist leaders in the U. K. and North America now line up at the mics and issue the familiar denunciations of terrorism accompanied by the oft-repeated claim that "Islam is a religion of peace." I say to them, this is not enough. Now is the time to say loudly, the doctrine of jihad is outdated and needs to be abandoned.

However, instead of distancing themselves from jihad, too many Muslim leaders are defending it by hiding behind its supposedly peaceful nature. Many take to the pulpit and state with disarming smiles and polite language that jihad is a peaceful exertion of spiritual warfare waged against oneself--against one's ego and against one's evil intentions, a sort of a cleansing of the soul. This is all said to be true because after returning from a battle, the Prophet told his colleagues: "You are returning from a lesser jihad to a greater jihad," and when asked to clarify, he said the greater jihad "is the jihad against your passionate souls."

But make no mistake: The jihad that Osama bin Laden and these three now-convicted British lieutenants wish to launch on British and Canadian citizens is the lesser jihad…

Maybe it seems that way to Tarek, a self-described secular Muslim who has renounced sharia, Islam’s universal law. But to the ulema--the religious authorities who interpret Islamic teachings and who therefore hold much greater sway with the ummah--Tarek’s lesser is the greater, and his greater much the lesser. Additionally, why on Earth would Muslims abandon the doctrine of jihad when it seems to be getting them exactly what they want, i.e. sharia spread far and wide and infidels by the million embracing their inner dhimmi?

Update: Hugh Fitzgerald gets to the bottom of the "greater and lesser" business. As Hugh sees it

This "Greater Jihad" business is designed merely to convince Infidels that the real "Jihad" -- the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then to the dominance, of Islam -- is not that, but a lesser thing, something hovering in the background, while all attention should be focused on these individuals wrestling with their consciences. The weight of authority is completely on the other side. Qur'anic commentators and Muslim jurisconsults and Muslim historians all agree that the "Jihad" means that "struggle" to spread Islam, and that the "internal struggle" is simply a later invention by a few Muslim would-be reformers who realized that "Jihad" would not be wise or even possible in a world of overwhelmingly more powerful Infidels, and that therefore the idea should be given a different interpretation. Or at least they would try to do the impossible and hope that some Muslims might actually accept that interpretation.

In a nutshell, that describes Tarek's laudable but ultimately quixotic quest: to dream the impossible dream of reforming Islam.

Update: Here's Broadway's original Man of La Mancha, Richard Kiley, essaying the tune on the Ed Sullivan Show. All these years later he's still in good voice, but that makeup is ridunkulous.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:37 | link | comments

Unenlisted tranny gets a thumbs down from the CHRT: Last week, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal blew a big, wet raspberry at the only guy who was availing himself of Section 13 censorship provisions (which at this stage could well be renamed “Richard’s Law”). This week, another shocking ruling--one that likely would not have turned out this way in years past, when the spotlight wasn’t focused so intensely on the Commissars and the shakedown artistes who keep them in business. From the Canadian Press:

MONTREAL — A federal human rights tribunal has rejected a complaint by a transgendered lawyer that she was discriminated against when the Canadian Forces refused to enlist her.

Micheline Montreuil alleges the Forces did not accept her 1999 application because of her sexuality.

"For sure, it's a disappointment," Montreuil said of the ruling Tuesday.

"More than anything, it's a loss for human rights."

In December 2002, she filed the complaint and tried to claim $547,000 in damages for loss of salary and moral prejudice.

The case was heard in Quebec City between December 2006 and December 2007.

A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled last month that Montreuil, who represented herself, couldn't prove her sexuality was the cause of the refusal.

In the 300-page ruling released Tuesday, Judge Pierre Deschamps said the "allegations are not credible and that Micheline Montreuil is not credible."

In a separate case in 2007, the human rights tribunal ruled the Canadian Forces discriminated against Montreuil when they passed her up for a job as a grievance officer.

The Forces found she was a qualified candidate but ultimately turned her down, claiming there wasn't enough work to justify hiring someone who spoke only French.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Montreuil's sexuality was the real reason she didn't get the position and awarded her $40,000 for loss of income.

She won a similar case in 2004 when the same tribunal ruled against the National Bank for failing to hire Montreuil as a customer service representative.

In 2007, Montreuil was nominated to run for the federal New Democratic Party, but was dumped as a candidate by the party a few months later.

She claimed it was because she is transgendered.

Micheline had alleged that an NDP official told her the party had a tough time attracting new candidates in the province because of her sexuality.

An NDP spokesman said her nomination was not annulled because of her sexuality but because she was not a team player.

We spend mega-millions each and every year to keep a “human rights” system up and running. And for what? Not to redress genuine “discrimination,” because there’s not nearly enough of that these days to justify the tremendous expense of maintaining the "rights" nomenklatura in their cushy digs and jetting off to commune with their own at lavish international confabs. No, the reason we’re out of pocket, as this story shows, is so that a confused individual with a sense of victimhood as wide as a Prairie vista can blame his, er, her, er, whatever, lack of success on us. (Success in the real world, that is, not in the zany Through-the-Looking-Glass world of the "human rights" tribunals, a domain in which s/he has been extremely successful up till now.) Good on the Commissar for disabusing the confused one of that notion. That said, we’re still on the hook for costs associated with years of “investigation” and composing that behemoth of a ruling (300 pages for this nonsense--what a joke!)--and so are all the folks s/he complained about. So until and unless we get rid of the whole rotten apparatus, we will continue throwing good money away on bad law.

Update: A droll feline calls it "Tranny Get Your Gun" (wish I'd thought of that). Some highlights from the show: "There's No Racket Like the 'Human Rights' Shakedown Racket"; "Doin' What Comes Unnaturally"; "You Can't Get a Basement Nazi With a Gun (But You Can With a Section 13 Complaint)"; and a rousing duet featuring a noted censorship aficiondado, "Anyone You Can Sue, I Can Sue Better."

Update: And speaking of the "rights" nomenklatura jetting off to lavish conferences...

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:59 | link | comments (2)

More jiggery-pokery: I think I'm getting the hang of it:

Higgeldy-piggeldy

Michael Ignatieff

Thirsting for victory

In a new race.

Call an election, Mike.

See what it’s getting you:

Cast aside, power-less

Flat on your face.

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

Tuesday, 08 September 2009

Higgedly-piggedly jiggery-pokery: The National Review’s John Derbyshire challenges readers to come up with a higgedly-piggedly.

What the heck is that?

According to one source, it’s

a form of poem, also called a double dactyl, in which most of the eight lines are made up of two dactyls. The name "higgledy-piggledy" is the most common first line of such poems, although "jiggery-pokery" and other nonsense phrases often appear. The second line should, and generally does, name the subject of the poem.

Here’s Derbyshire’s stab:

Higgledy-piggledy
44th president
Penned a long book titled
Dreams from My Pa.

Millions, inspired by this
Autobiography,
Voted for post-racial
Utopia.

As a stickler for the rules of doggerel, I would have changed the second line to "Barack Obama he." Here's my first-time effort:

Twittering-sputtering

CJC's Farber, B.

Tweets a “discussion” on

Matters of “hate.”

Censorship’s champion--

Him and the CIC--

Scorn Hadjis’ words which they

Recriminate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:36 | link | comments

Welcome to the crazy, mixed-up Ceej, where “wins” are “losses”--and vice versa: This is what the CJC considers to be a big victory for “our side”--the wording from the “amended proposal” drafted by the United Church of Canada at its recent conference (“amended” from a stance calling for a boycott of Israeli academics, that is):

Amended Proposal: Implementation of Measures Towards Peace In The Middle East:

That the 40th General Council 2009

1. Record its convictions that a just peace in the Middle East will require:

The denunciation of Human Rights abuses committed by Israel and Palestine, as documented by Amnesty International and the United Nations, that will result in Member States of the United Nations taking subsequent, appropriate actions;

That the occupation and siege of Gaza by Israel cease, requiring the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;

That the Government of Canada and Member States of the United Nations support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza;

The withdrawal of Israeli military forces to pre-1967 borders and ending all forms of violence by the Israeli Government upon the Palestinian people;

The cessation of suicide bombings and other violent attacks directed towards Israeli civilians on the part of Palestinians;

Recognition that East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitute an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967 and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem must be dismantled;

The recognition by the emergent State of Palestine of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within safe and secure borders;

The recognition by the Israeli Government and the emergent state of Palestine of equal citizenship rights, protections, privileges and responsibilities for all of their respective citizens regardless of religious or national origins.

2. Direct the General Secretary, General Council to inform the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in writing, of the above convictions and urge that Canadian policy and commitments in the Middle East reflect this position.

3. Affirm The United Church of Canada’s participation in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel and seek further ways of augmenting our physical presence in the Middle East.

4. Support the principles of the Amman Call particularly those that promote Peace-Making, Bridge-Building and the development of long term strategies for peace and right relations.

5. Direct the General Secretary, General Council to engage in consultation, dialogue and study (with relevant partners and other interested parties), concerning implications of past and future actions to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and enter into conversation as to how to move the two peoples toward reconciliation (including, but not limited to economic boycott), and to report to the 41st General Council and to provide continuing guidance to the other United Church courts until GC41.

In other words, the boycott has only been taken off the table only for the moment, pending implementation of the above, which is a patent impossibility. Therefore, although the Ceej trumpets this a great victory for it (and us) the amended proposal can most charitably be described as a non-win that only succeeds in forestalling the all-but-inevitable return to the original boycott position (since, just as leopard can’t change its spots, the UCC can’t change its head-up-its-collective-arses devotion to “social justice” and the rest of that leftist mush. (h/t to JB for sending me the amended proposal.)

At the same time, this is what the Ceej considers a loss, one worth fighting to overturn--the words of a “human rights” Commissar declaring the Offical Jews' beloved Section 13 unconstitutional:

I have determined that Mr. Lemire contravened s. 13 of the Act in only one of the instances alleged by Mr. Warman, namely the AIDS Secrets article. However, I have also concluded that s. 13(1) in conjunction with ss. 54(1) and (1.1) are inconsistent with s. 2(b) of the Charter, which guarantees the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. The restriction imposed by these provisions is not a reasonable limit within the meaning of s. 1 of the Charter. Since a formal declaration of invalidity is not a remedy available to the Tribunal (see Cuddy Chicks Ltd. V. Ontario (Labour Relations Board), [1991] 2 S.C.R. 5), I will simply refuse to apply these provisions for the purposes of the complaint against Mr. Lemire and I will not issue any remedial order against him.

In a letter to the Globe and Mail last week, Ceej National President Mark Freiman accused the Swedish government of “shoddy moral leadership” for its refusal to criticize an anti-Israel blood libel that had been printed in a Swedish newspaper. Though I am no fan of the Swedes, Euroweenies of the first order who have been engaged in a campaign of vilifying the Jews’ homeland while kissing up to Muslims (Sweden is graced with a large and growing Muslim population), one cannot help but conclude that, in their abject failure to discern wins from losses (and losses from wins) and in their continuing support for state censorship, a concept inimical to Jewish values, the CJC itself is guilty of shoddy moral leadership, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:16 | link | comments (2)

Newfangled coinage for an age-old phenomenon: Laura Rosen-Cohen coins a term to describe the efforts of Ms. Klein, Ms. Rebbick, Mr. Chomsky and their reprehensible ilk who leap at the chance to further the interests of the Jews’ enemies--“Jewish Judenhass”:

…Is there any other religious group, or national-ethnic group that has a similar propensity to alignment itself ideologically with its sworn enemies? It is difficult to recall another other community that has had such a distinguished history of voluntarily abandoning its own values, and produced people to serve the forces that would exterminate them. It is clearly a form of mental illness, a chilling variety of anti-Semitism that one can only be characterized as Jewish Judenhaas.

It is quite pathetic to see the degree to which Jews such as Ms. Klein will bend to please their anti-Semitic overlords. Yet, as history has proven time and time again – it’s never enough. For Hitler, even being one-quarter Jewish -- ie: one Jewish grandparent -- was enough to make one Jewish; mischling, enough for the gas chambers. In Israel, despite the wishful thinking of Israeli leftists, not a single suicide bomber has ever canvassed Israeli civilians within bombing range, asking how they voted in Israeli elections -- Peace Now, Labour or Likud…

As I’ve said before, come the second Shoah, the malign Ms. Klein and the rest of the “non-Jewish Jews” (an earlier coinage for more or less the same phenomenon) will have to crowd onto the cattle cars (even if this time around they’re only metaphorical ones) same as the rest of us Juden.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:26 | link | comments

A Stone's throw: Film director Oliver Stone (is he still around?) says he's afraid his (hagiographic) documentary about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (that odious thug) won't get much play in the U.S. Reuters, for one, can't see any good reason for that, calling the film "good-humoured, illuminating and without cant."

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

A frozen Hades/flying swine/cobalt moon moment: The Toronto Star, yes, you read that right, the Toronto Star has an editorial excoriating the hypocrites behind the TIFF tiff:

…It is tempting to ignore this latest, tedious tiff over TIFF, spawned by a few dozen protesters who signed the petition – Jane Fonda and Naomi Klein among them. The anti-Israel diatribes are becoming a bore: Complaints against the Royal Ontario Museum for showing Israel's biblical Dead Sea Scrolls; "Israel Apartheid Week" for high-minded student activists; CUPE locals calling for a boycott of Israeli academics; and the latest Pride parade featuring a float that attacked gay-friendly Israel for apartheid policies (ignoring other Middle Eastern regimes that persecute gays).

Now TIFF is the target for those who would treat Israel as a pariah, demonize every aspect of its existence, and smear its supporters in Canada. TIFF, they imply, is in the pocket of the Jews – from both Canada and Israel. Their open letter conspicuously highlights the names of "Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation," noting ominously that TIFF is now "complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine." Cue dark clouds of conspiracy.

Replying to his accusers, TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey says he chose Tel Aviv to inaugurate an annual "City to City focus on films" that will showcase cities through a cinematic lens. TIFF took no Israeli money. The festival will also be showing films by Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese filmmakers when it opens this Thursday.

What a strange plot twist: Canadian filmmakers who pay lip service to free expression trying to bring the curtains down on Israeli filmmakers whose art is tainted by their Tel Aviv origins. But if the protesters are applying a litmus test to all world cities, why not castigate city hall for twinning Toronto with Chongqing, given China's human rights abuses? Or demand that Toronto sever its "friendship" links with Volgograd because of Russia's political sins?

Tel Aviv, it seems, makes for a more tempting target.

Hey, doesn’t it always? My letter:

Ordinarily I’d be upset at yet another round of protests (same old, same old) about Israel. However, the fact is that these boycotts end up having the opposite effect from the one the “protesters” desire. For that reason, I’d like to thank all those--Naomi Klein, Jane Fonda, Danny Glover et all--who have advocated the TIFF Tel Aviv boycott and other anti-Israel boycotts. Without them, exhibits such as the Dead Sea Scrolls at the ROM and tickets for Tel Aviv films at TIFF wouldn’t be nearly as popular, and Israeli products --wine, skin creams, etc.--wouldn’t be flying off the shelves.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:56 | link | comments (4)

Celebration's on, despite the Slamolefties: Useful idiot/Hezbo fan Naomi Klein 'splains to Globe and Mail readers why she and other Slamist tools have raised such a ruckus about Israeli films being featured as this year's TIFF. Kvetches Avi's squeeze: "We don't feel like celebrating with Israel this year."

Well, who wants you at the party, m'dear?

George Gilder, author of a new book about Israeli achievements and how they have benefitted mankind, lends credence to the celebration.

Update: An appropriate punishment for the malign Ms. Klein: when her number is up, she has to watch this TIFF Tel Aviv flick (which, as it was described to me by someone who's seen it, involves much gratuitous f**king between two dudes, one Israeli, one Arab) on endless loop at the Hellfire Multiplex.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:22 | link | comments

Wahhabi shekels compromise academic integrity (again): Melanie Phillips has returned from her late-summer hiatus to blast Oxford U for its latest appointment:

Tariq Ramadan, the darling of the British political and security establishment which foolishly and ignorantly believes his aim is to modernise Islam whereas his actual agenda is to Islamise modernity, has for some years been referred to as an Oxford professor. This was not actually true; he was not a professor at Oxford University but a mere research fellow of St Anthony’s College, Oxford. But now the wish has become father to the deed. In the depths of the long vacation, the Oxford University Gazette announced that Ramadan had been appointed

His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies with effect from 1 October 2009.

Gratified as I’m sure everyone will be to hear that Tariq Ramadan (who was barred from the USA in 2004 and again in 2006 for allegedly giving money to a charity supporting Hamas, a ruling revoked by a federal court in July) can now really call himself an Oxford professor, there are disturbing implications for academic integrity when an Oxford University chair can be purchased in this fashion by an interest group – the Islamic world – which does not share the western understanding of academic objectivity. The chair is funded by a benefaction from Qatar, of which the Sheikh is the Emir. (The Sheikh is also one of the Arab associates of the ‘Oxford College for Research and PhD Studies’ -- which, since it poses with heraldry and Oxford blue logo, might be thought by the unwary to be a real Oxford University college when it is not.)

This needs to be put in the context of more general concern about the way in which Arab and other foreign governments are increasingly funding British universities…

A very disturbing “context,” indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:31 | link | comments

Free speech makes a comeback in Canada: Take note of how it was accomplished, Americans.

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

Does it come in a little green book?: A true believer claims "Our kids need President Obama's wisdom."

Speaking as a parent, I'd say Obama's "wisdom" is about the last thing my kid needs.

Update: Obama's "wisdom" will no doubt be scrutinized in great depth at this institution.

Update: A gent who likely won't be on that institution's curriculum (even though he should be, for balance and a different perspective) says Obama is smart but not wise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:07 | link | comments

Monday, 07 September 2009

Quip of the day: Mark Hemmingway has this to say about a swiftly dispatched "Green Czar": "Van Jones is an admitted former Communist in an administration that thinks "vetting" has something to do with universal health care for pets..."

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

Evidence of incipient senility: Jimminy "Cricket" Carter outlines the "Elders View of the Middle East." In a nutshell, the geezers are upset that the Jews keep building, thereby driving Palestinians to "despair."

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:46 | link | comments

Mr. Obama goes to Turtle Bay: Can you say “shameless panderer”? Anne Bayefsky sure can--and does:

Looking for a quick and easy boost in the polls, President Obama has decided to go to the one place where merit bears no relationship to adulation: the United Nations. On September 24, the president will take the unprecedented step of presiding over a meeting of the UN Security Council.

No American president has ever attempted to acquire the image of King of the Universe by officiating at a meeting of the UN’s highest body. But Obama apparently believes that being flanked by council-member heads of state like Col. Moammar Qaddafi — who is expected to be seated five seats to Obama’s right — will cast a sufficiently blinding spell on the American taxpayer that the perilous state of the nation’s economy, the health-care fiasco, and a summer of “post-racial” scapegoating will pale by comparison.

After all, who among us is not for world peace?...

Who, indeed? All together now: “All we are sayin’/Is give shameless pandering to genocidal Jew-hating despots a chance…”

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:05 | link | comments

So much for that "post-racial" business: The deity who was supposed to bridge the racial chasm is fast losing the support of one side of the divide.

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

Mutt saves toddler: I love this story.

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

"Civil rights" today: In remarks at his Ramadan dinner, the clueless One told the assembled he's "inspired" by a girl who stood up for her "right" to wear a hijab.

Yeah, she's a regular Rosa Parks, Barack.

Update: “Inspired” by a hijab-wearer? Bah, humbug. These are the sorts of Muslim women who are truly inspirational--the ones brave enough to defy draconian sharia:

NAIROBI, Kenya — This is not about pants, Lubna Hussein insists. It is about principles.

A woman should be able to wear what she wants and not be publicly whipped for it, says Mrs. Hussein, a defiant Sudanese journalist, and on Monday her belief will be put to the test.

Mrs. Hussein has been charged in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, with indecent dress, a crime that carries a $100 fine and 40 lashings. She was arrested in July, along with 12 other women, who were caught at a cafe wearing trousers.

Sudan is partially ruled by Islamic law, which emphasizes modest dress for women. Mrs. Hussein, 34, has pleaded not guilty and is daring the Sudanese authorities to punish her.

“I am Muslim; I understand Muslim law,” Mrs. Hussein said in an interview. “But I ask: what passage in the Koran says women can’t wear pants? This is not nice.”

Several women protesters, some of them wearing pants, were carted away by police officers after they demonstrated in front of the court in Khartoum on Monday. Witnesses said police officers beat at least one woman before arresting her. As of 11 a.m., the court session was still going on and it was not clear if Mrs. Hussein would be punished or not.

Mrs. Hussein even printed up invitation cards for her initial court date in July and sent out e-mail messages asking people to witness her whipping, if it came to that. She said she wanted the world to see how Sudan treated women.

Hundreds of Sudanese women — many wearing pants — swarmed in front of the court where the trial was supposed to take place, protesting that the law was unfair. Twice now, the trial has been postponed. Some of the other women arrested with Mrs. Hussein have pleaded guilty and were lashed as a result. Past floggings have been carried out with plastic whips that leave permanent scars.

“The flogging, yes, it causes pain,” Mrs. Hussein said. “But more important, it is an insult. This is why I want to change the law.”…

For obvious reasons, it’s women who are trying to drag Islam (kicking and screaming all the way) into the 21^st Century. Obama should be applauding these chicks, not the ones who want to don the hijab, a symbol of Islamic repression.

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

It’s the system, stupid: An Ottawa Citizen editorial points out the bitter irony re Canada’s “human rights” system--that it has morphed into a punitive apparatus that deprives Canadians of rights (my bolds):

…The Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal have become increasingly punitive and powerful. As law professor Richard Moon pointed out in a 2008 report, the Criminal Code already criminalizes speech that incites, advocates or justifies violence. Why do we need another system -- a system with a lower burden of proof -- to penalize hate speech?

It's clear that Section 13 has serious problems. Instead of listening to the growing chorus of criticism, Chief Commissioner Jennifer Lynch has reacted defensively, accusing critics of harbouring "a new agenda" and preparing "a broader assault on freedoms they would subordinate to absolute freedom of expression." It isn't respect for human rights that is at issue, but a system that is itself a violation of the rights of Canadians.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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

A language they understand: Speaking the lingo of the international community, the tiny bloviator says acquiring nuclear capability is a non-negotiable “right”. From VOA News:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his country's nuclear program is a "right" that he will never negotiate with world powers.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said from Iran's point of view, the nuclear issue is concluded. But he said Iran will discuss ways to cooperate on the "peaceful use" of nuclear energy.

A group of six world powers made up of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain) plus Germany has been seeking a dialogue with Iran over its controversial nuclear program.

The group has offered Iran incentives to halt nuclear enrichment activities, and has been considering sanctions on Iran if it does not cooperate.

Iran says it will present the group its own package of proposals soon.

Mr. Ahmadinejad also offered to hold a public debate with U.S. President Barack Obama.

The United States and its Western allies have accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atomic program is for peaceful, civilian purposes.

And by “for peaceful, civilian purposes” he means “for the purpose of effecting the ‘peace’ that will come about when Islam in its Shia manifestation is calling the shots worldwide.” Which, in view of the former Great Satan’s fecklessness, cluelessness and cravenness vis a vis the Ayatollah’s grandiose agenda, appears to be unfolding before our very eyes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:22 | link | comments

Sunday, 06 September 2009

Joke's on the clueless Jewesses: Canadian Hadassah WIZO is a Canadian Zionist women’s organization that supports various projects in the Jewish homeland. Zarqa Nawaz is not a Hadassah member. She's the hijab-wearing creator of the CBC shill-com Little Mosque on the Prairie. Despite Ms. Nawaz’s stated aim to put the “fun back in fundamentalism”--as if there was ever any there in the first place--the show is a decidedly fantastical and unfunny look at cuddly Muslims and silly infidels in small town Saskatchewan; some have even gone so far as to criticize it for sanitizing Islam and sharia law. Lending ammo to these critics: an article about Ms. Nawaz in which she describes how her perceptions about fundamentalism (an ideology, lest we forget, which represses women, calls for apostates and homosexuals to be killed, dhimmifies “people of the book, and describes Jews, memorably and notoriously, as “apes and pigs”) play out on screen:

…"You have to overstep the borders a little bit more every day to grow and develop as a community," Nawaz sums up her attitude to life.

So it comes as no surprise that the question of suitable clothing for Muslim women plays a central role in the series. Like in the episode in the local swimming pool, when the female water aerobics coach is suddenly taken ill and replaced by a man – Johnny. The Muslin women, who usually only leave the house fully covered, come out of the changing rooms laughing and chatting, only to freeze in horror.

Initially, Nawaz was unhappy with the actresses' performance. "They didn't really look like they were panicking. But for a Muslim who wears Hijab it's an absolute catastrophe to be seen without her body covered." In the comedy it turns out that Johnny is gay – and protests that women's hair doesn't turn him on in the slightest.

Muslims celebrating Halloween?

"I always start that kind of conversation in my community," Nawaz laughs. Conversations like whether gay men count too? Whether women have to cover themselves in front of them? "These are subjects that are never debated in Muslim countries, or by imported Imams in North America either." Or questions of whether Muslim children should be allowed to celebrate Halloween, more of a Christian matter, like their classmates.

But the makers of the series don't just want to entertain. Just as humour and comedy have helped Jews, Italians and gays to gain recognition in mainstream society in the past, Nawaz and the producers hope to help the approximately seven million Muslims living in North America with their show.

"On the news, they're always talking about Muslims with extreme positions. Our comedy just tells a funny story of perfectly normal people," says Nawaz.

“Perfectly normal” fundamentalists. Meaning folks who just want to live and let live--provided at some point down the road sharia gets to reign supreme as called for in the world’s only perfect book by the world’s only perfect man.

Given that there’s absolutely nothing funny about fundamentalist Islam, especially when it comes to its repellent ideas about Jews, could someone please explain to me why the Regina chapter of Hadassah-WIZO honoured Zarqa Nawaz? (The event occurred last year, but there's a photo of it in the latest issue of the CHW magazine--where I became aware of it for the first time.) An explanation that makes sense, I mean, not one that mentions “building bridges” or any of that malarkey:

Women for Women Dinner Honours Creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie
REGINA - Please join the Regina Hadassah-WIZO in honouring Zarqa Nawaz, creator of “Little Mosque On the Prairie” at their annual Women for Women Dinner in support of Women’s Shelters. The evening will be held on Sunday, September 14, 2008 at the Wascana Country Club. Dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 per person...

Better they should have honoured one of the actresses on Corner Gas. At least that show never tried to scam anyone.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:03 | link | comments (2)

Who cares?: Slovenly fat guy declares "all out war" against Capitalism.

Update: Oh, wait. The slovenly fat guy (a major beneficiary of the Capitalist system by virtue of his unwatchable though unaccountable profitable docs) is slovenly no more. The trademark scruff and cap are gone, and--could it be?--he's actually wearing a suit. See what having a few dollars in your pocket will do--cause you to become a sell out to the very system you decry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:04 | link | comments

Bernie’s tweet: Bernie Farber, big fan of state censorship that he is, “tweets” this link to a “discussion” about free speech in the Toronto Star. The reason the word discussion is in scare quotes is because it’s a “discussion” in the Star/Ceej sense of the word--i.e. only one of the, er, discussers is completely agin’ censorship while the other three are, like Bernie, in favour of it in at least some form or another. Here they are (my bolds):

Hate speech makes most people recoil, yet in choosing to deal with it through the criminal law we run the risks of being both over-inclusive and ineffective. It can be exceptionally difficult to decide whether a particular expression embodies "hate" as opposed to other strong emotions, such as passion or anger, that have a legitimate place in public debate. In a society marked by diverse groups with different conceptions of the good, we should be especially wary that such laws will be used against those who hold odd or unorthodox beliefs, or are simply slower to accept new social norms. Canada criminalizes hate speech on the basis that it contributes nothing to our society and harms the groups that it targets. If the harm can be addressed through non-criminal means, then resorting to the criminal law is inappropriate. Procedural safeguards do not mitigate the risks posed by a vague and indeterminate law. There is a place for intervention to deal with material that actively subverts rather than enhances public policy, a threshold that our society is entitled to determine. But such intervention ought to be primarily directed at the materials, not the speaker. In the absence of a specific risk of violence or advocacy of unlawful behaviour, hate speech should not be criminalized.

–Carissima Mathen, Professor of Law, University of New Brunswick

“Addressing the harm through non-criminal means”--isn’t that precisely what Section 13 is supposed to do? And isn’t that precisely the problem--giving hack bureaucrats the power to decide what is and what isn’t acceptable speech? Next:

Certainly, racist hate speech should be restricted in some circumstances. The publications we call hate speech are often intended to do two things: (1) to defame and attack the dignity, honour and social standing of minorities and their members; and (2) to undermine the assurance that any good society is trying to give to its most vulnerable citizens that they and their families can go about their lives with some basic security against humiliation, discrimination and violence. Perhaps a society with no history of racial, ethnic or religious tension can afford to ignore this. But in the real world, such expressions of hate function as reminders that what has happened in the past might happen again – reminders that are heard differently by members of vulnerable minorities than by members of the secure majority. Dignity and assurance for all are fragile and vulnerable achievements, and well-drafted laws against hate speech, if they are administered carefully through the courts by an attorney general (or by prosecutors who bear proper responsibility for preserving public order), can play an important role in upholding them.

–Jeremy Waldron, University Professor, NYU Law School

“A society with no history of racial, ethnic or religious tension"--oh, you mean Utopia? I guess that’s the prof’s subtle way of saying that every society needs censorship. As for his idea about the need for “well-drafted laws against ‘hate speech’”--is it possible to devise such laws while still allowing for free speech? I think not, since, as we have seen in Canada over the past few decades, the two principles--maintaining free speech and curbing “hate speech”--are incompatible. Finally:

All societies regulate uncivil speech regarded as inconsistent with the prerequisites of social solidarity. One question is who is authorized to define such speech. Countries with strong, coherent elites, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, unilaterally define uncivil speech in terms of the ideology of these elites. Self-consciously multicultural societies, like Canada, India or Australia, must also rely on powerful centralized elites to define the rules by which diverse groups shall be permitted to deal with each other. In societies like the United States, in which such elites are weak or fractured, authority to define uncivil speech is correspondingly reduced. A second important variable in the comparative regulation of hate speech is the need for free and undisciplined participation in public discourse in order to secure democratic legitimation among heterogeneous populations. The stronger this need, the more the regulation of hate speech will be reduced. Finally, some states affirm social solidarity based upon the "levelling up" of all citizens to the norms of honour previously associated with aristocratic elites, whereas other societies, like the United States, affirm social solidarity based upon a "levelling down" to mass proletariat manners. The regulation of hate speech is much less urgent in the later circumstances.

–Robert Post, Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, The Yale Law School

I don’t know what Sol and Lillian would make of this utterance, but my reaction is: “Huh?” Wouldn’t it be more accurate (though less academic) to say that the reason the U.S. has such a strong tradition of free speech is because there's a First Amendment to the Constitution which protects it, and the reason the rest of us in the West are more inclined to try to “balance” free speech and “hate speech” is because we don’t have a First Amendment?

All in all, a rather lopsided “discussion,” wouldn’t you say? But then, those who admire our “human rights” system aren’t terribly perturbed by its lopsidedness (the way it is set up to favour the complainant over the target of the complaint), either.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments (1)

The ‘Slamists seize the leftist agenda: To be clear, there are no labour unions in “Palestine”--or anywhere else in the Middle East for that matter: if you want to find thriving outfits dedicated to workers' rights you’ll have to go to Israel, a veritable worker’s paradise. Similarly, there aren’t a lot of “out” gays in Gaza (where practising such sharia-contravening proclivities will net you a death sentence) but you’ll find plenty in the Zionist ent’y. But just as those who hope to tear down Israel by conflating it with apartheid-era South Africa have politicized Toronto’s Gay Pride Parade, so, too, have they managed to politicize the city’s Labour Day Parade. Here’s how the Canadian Arab Federation, a prime mover and shaker in national anti-Israel efforts, publicizes the politicization in its latest Weekly Bulletin:

March with Labour for Palestine at the Labour Day Parade! September 07, 2009, Toronto
Join Labour for Palestine as we march in Toronto's Labour Day Parade for the fourth consecutive year. A visible Palestine solidarity contingent in the parade is more important this year than ever. Our many victories have resulted in a backlash against Palestine solidarity activists and their allies in trade unions. Join us on Labour Day to send a strong message that Canadian workers stand in solidarity with Palestinian workers and all Palestinian people. When: September 07, 2009. time: 10:00 .am. Location: TBA. For info: labour@caiaweb.org

“Labour for Palestine”--something else that makes about as much sense as “Gays for Hamas” or “Jews for Nazis.”

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

D.I.Y: Mark "Dirty Harry" Steyn says there’s no need for anyone to repeal Section 13 and its provincial/territorial ilks. We can each be our own repealer:

In an exchange which didn't make his published report, Joseph Brean of The National Post asked me what I expected Parliament to do now, and I replied: Nothing. I expect nothing of the Government of Canada in particular, or of the political class in general, never mind the vast herd of statist suck-ups like "journalism doctor" (and renowned ovine fornication specialist) Professor John Miller* who regard themselves as qualified to pronounce on this issue. I'm not waiting for the Supreme Court to strike down Section 13 or for the Government to repeal it. I've repealed it myself. I do not regard myself as within its jurisdiction. I've opted out. I say what I want, and, if Commissar Lynch and her dress-up Nazis want to go one more round, well, go ahead, "human rights" punks, make my day.

Free speech: use it or lose. Steyn (and many others) choose to use it.

Stick that in your Section 13 pipe (and/or your capacious dossier of Section 13 balkers) and smoke it, Ms. L.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments (2)

Relativistically speaking: The Toronto Star’s resident shill for the Islamist perspective tries to persuade us that genuine jihadis and those who try to fight genuine jihadis are both “terrorists”:

Saad Khalid of Mississauga has been sentenced to 14 years for planning terrorist attacks in Toronto. Earlier, a co-accused was found guilty on a related charge. Nine others are awaiting trials. But NATO has not bombed Mississauga or invaded or occupied it, let alone killed and displaced tens of thousands of civilians there.

Yet it continues to do precisely that in Afghanistan, ostensibly to prevent just such terrorist plots.

Setting aside all the propaganda about liberating Afghan women and other imperial good deeds, even Barack Obama has come to define the NATO Afghan mission in terms of our own security – preventing the re-emergence of Al Qaeda bases that were eliminated with the Taliban in 2001.

There are Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan, though. And active Al Qaeda branches in Saudi Arabia and North Africa. NATO is not invading those parts of the world.

For good reason.

Most terrorist attacks are coming from insurgents/militants in U.S.-occupied Iraq and NATO-held Afghanistan. In the West, they are mounted by "home-grown cells," which are not Al Qaeda cells at all, or even "Al Qaeda-inspired," as the lingo has it.

Rather, they are disparate groups driven to vengeance for western misdeeds against Muslims and given to draping their mission in misguided notions of jihad…

Yes, they’re so “misguided.” Why can’t they do what the Koran says--spread the sharia, God’s universal law--in less messy ways--say, by writing opinion pieces in the mainstream media?

My letter:

I’m not a big fan of our muddled mission in Afghanistan--I can’t see much point in westerners fighting and dying to “build” a nation whose constitution enshrines sharia law. But even I know there’s a huge difference between NATO forces, who seek to help the people of Afghanistan and prevent their nation from falling back into the hands of the Taliban, and a bunch of home-grown jihadis who have banded together to unleash terrorism and havoc in Canada, in other words, solely for purposes of destruction.

The fact that Haroon Siddiqui sees no difference between these two vastly different groups and lumps them together in what can only be described as an egregious display of moral relativism is highly disturbing. However, the almost daily sight of explosions and killings in the Muslim world--most of it Muslim-on-Muslim violence--is proof that these “disparate groups,” as Siddiqui calls them, are not merely being driven by a desire to avenge “western misdeeds against Muslims.” Muslims themselves, and not the west, are the source of--and bear the bulk of responsibility for--what ails Muslims.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments (1)

Saturday, 05 September 2009

Mutation abomination: The Calgary Herald minces no words in describing what Canada’s “human rights” system has become--a monstrous mutation/blunt instument for punishing the ideologically unsound. The paper also has some mighty harsh words for the Ceej’s favourite “Nazi slayer":

(T)he Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is no longer the conciliatory instrument of building goodwill and better understanding it was conceived to be, and that persuaded the Supreme Court of Canada that the nation's free-expression rights could be safely entrusted to its healing hands. In Hadjis's words, it has become "aggressive," and "penal in nature," and has acquired over the years the capacity to exact heavy fines on people who expressed opinions far short of incitement to hatred or riot -- in some cases, more matters of rudeness than hatefulness. (One comment that was seriously investigated referred to Quebecers as "ungrateful cheese sniffers" who "vote Liberal.") And, lacking even the courtesy of due process, the federal CHRC has truly metastasized into a thought police: To be complained of, was to be denounced--often by self-appointed crusaders for their own particular brand of public virtue, (notably one Richard Warman, an Ottawa lawyer with an incestuous connection to the commission itself.)

R.I.P., slayer. You can’t say you didn’t have a very good run.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:24 | link | comments

Advantage: Levant: In the ongoing war of words between Ezra Levant and Pearl Eliadis in the letters page of National Post, Ezra launches the latest volley--and, as per usual, scores a direct hit:

Re: What The Tribunal Ruling Really Means, letter to the editor, Sept. 4.

As a former human rights commission employee, Pearl Eliadis can't bring herself to admit that censorship is a violation of Canadian values. It's understandable -- it must be embarrassing to know that you're part of an industry that has been illegally prosecuting Canadians for years.

In her letter yesterday, Ms. Eliadis is in full denial mode. She writes "Warman vs. Lemire does not, actually, declare Section 13 to be unconstitutional."

Really? Here's the full text of paragraph 295 of the tribunal's landmark ruling this week: "For all the above reasons, I find that s. 13(1) infringes on Mr. Lemire's freedom of expression guaranteed under s. 2(b) of the Charter, and that this infringement is not demonstrably justified under s. 1 of the Charter."

Perhaps Ms. Eliadis thinks she can censor that, too.

Ezra Levant, Calgary.

Does she think she can censor that, Ezra? Probably not. Would she like to censor it? Knowing Pearl, she probably would. (FYI, listen for a Steyn/Levant doubleheader--way to go, Wendy!--on Brass Balls Radio this Monday.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments (4)

There's a fine line between education and indoctrination--and the hopeychangers have crossed it: Not even in the headiest days of Trudeaumania, Canada's hopeychangiest era ever, were we schoolkids forced to sing syrupy paeans to our charismatic leader. But watch this video of a bunch of moppets prompted by their teacher to perform a semi-rappish tribute to "Barack Hussein Obama" (a name they repeat again and again) and see if it doesn't chill the blood. Mark Steyn comments on efforts to build the cult of personality among the young'uns here: it seems, what with Obama's overexposure (111 speeches so far about "heath care"), the novelty of his godliness is wearing off among those of voting age and older, and in desperation the hopeychangers are trying to build allegiance among the youngest and most vulnerable--with the willing complicity of their indoctinators, er, educators.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:35 | link | comments

Friday, 04 September 2009

The censorship fraternity: Two Canadian Congresses, one Islamic, one Jewish, are equally miffed that a CHRT apparatchik decided to march to a different drummer on the censorship issue.

Kvetchers of a feather, eh?

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:55 | link | comments

Zero hour is upon us: As a parting shot, UN nuclear watchkitten Mo ElBaradei sought to downplay the terrifying reality of what’s fast approaching--the terrifying reality of mullahs with nukes. Caroline Glick elucidates why no one--save for Israel, of course--seems particularly concerned about what’s looming:

And all in all, the totality of the UN-led international community's responses to Iran's moves make clear that the world will take no effective action to prevent Iran from gaining the capacity to wage nuclear war. The world today will again to nothing to prevent the genocide of Jewry. And that's the thing of it. So long as the mullahs continue to signal that the Jews are their first target, the world will be content to allow to them to build their nuclear weapons and use them. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's contention that the US will retaliate against Iran if it launches a nuclear attack against Israel makes clear, Washington will only consider acting against Teheran after the US moves to the top of Teheran's target list.

Kind of makes the whole Canadian “human rights” mausoleum thing look rather pointless, no? Then again, after the blast the mausoleum could always add a new exhibit on the final Final Solution.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:01 | link | comments (1)

Victims R Us: Guess who’s really keen on that humungous waste of taxpayers’ money, Canada’s “human rights” mausoleum? None other than that dogged champion of state censorship, the CJC. The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reports that the mausoleum is on the prowl for “stories” from Canadians. You know the kind I mean. Stories about Pain. And Suffering. And anything and everything that smacks of victimhood and thereby justifies the huge expense of the mausoleum and Canada’s vast “human rights” racket. And, quel surprise, the Ceej is right in the thick of it, cheering ‘em on:

Residential schools forced on native children. Japanese families sent to Second World War-era internment camps. Black citizens resisting racism in their struggle for civil rights.

Gay bashing. Anti-Muslim activity.

The Holocaust.

Survivors of the aforementioned human rights abuses are among the many people in this country who have been victimized by state-sanctioned big-otry or the hateful intolerance of individuals.

This month, Nova Scotians will get their chance to say how they think such societal stains — and others — should be handled by a new national museum being built in Winnipeg.

Officials from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights will be holding a public roundtable Sept. 23 in Halifax and local folks are welcome to participate.

The session aims to collect "human rights stories, perspectives and ideas that can be used to develop the content of the museum," a website said.

In Halifax, a submission from the Atlantic Jewish Council will be part of the consultation process, a spokesman said Thursday. The council is affiliated with the Canadian Jewish Congress, which has urged its member agencies to address the content committee when it visits various communities across Canada.

The consultation process began in May and is resuming now after a summer break.

The Canadian Jewish Congress "will be submitting a brief to the museum on the need for a prominent and dedicated Holocaust section in the new museum," said an email message sent to the Atlantic Jewish Council.

Jon Goldberg, the council’s executive director, told The Chronicle Herald he intends to take part in what has been described as a two-pronged process. He said he’ll attend the public roundtable and a more private "bilateral" discussion with museum officials. Mr. Goldberg said it’s too early to say what exactly his submission will be about, but he acknowledged it’ll promote the historical significance and impact of the Holocaust…

Oh, gawd. A “bilateral” discussion, yet. Let me guess: it will focus exclusively on the Nazis and won’t have anything to do with the current threat to human rights--real ones, I mean--posed by the toxic alliance of Islamists and their useful lefty tools.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:38 | link | comments (1)

Yesterday: gossamer wings. Today: feet of clay: Charles Krauthammer points to a fascinating but completely unsurprising phenomenon--the de-deification of Barack H. Obama:

WASHINGTON -- What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chavista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged…

Just goes to show--once a Chicago community organizer, always a Chicago community organizer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:24 | link | comments (2)

"Troofer" in the House: Obama's Green Czar (I don't know about you, but the combination of those two words make me shudder--and giggle) is an out-an-out-Truther. That is, he believes George W. Bush was forewarned about 9/11, but did nothing to stop it because he wanted to use the attacks as a pretext to go to war.

Generally speaking, you can tell a lot about a person by the people he chooses to surround himself with--in which case Obama had better find some new people to hang out with if he doesn't want us to assume he's one seriously kooky dude.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:39 | link | comments (1)

A tiff at TIFF: While Bernie and the Congree remain consumed by fears about “Nazis” and their rarely-patronized websites, the true face of our era’s Jew-hate--Botoxed, usefully idiotic and very glam--reveals itself in all its ugly glory on the front page of the National Post:

TORONTO -- The signatories of a new letter accusing the Toronto International Film Festival of becoming "complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine" run the gamut from an Oscar-winning actress to a rabble-rousing author to a Talking Head.

More than 50 people have added their name to what's being called The Toronto Declaration, including musician David Byrne, actors Danny Glover and Jane Fonda, and author Alice Walker.

The letter, drafted by a committee that includes Canadian writer Naomi Klein and Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni, is the latest move in a controversy that began when Canadian director John Greyson withdrew his short documentary, Covered, from the festival last week. The veteran filmmaker is protesting the festival's inaugural City to City Spotlight on Tel Aviv, a 10-movie program that TIFF's website promises will "explore the evolving urban experience while presenting the best documentary and fiction films from and about a selected city." This year is Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary.

Greyson penned an open letter to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey, as well as to Noah Cowan, artistic director of the under-construction Bell Lightbox, blasting the initiative.

The declaration states that while the signatories are not protesting the individual filmmakers participating in the program and do not seek to exclude Israeli films from the festival, "in the wake of this year's brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime."

The protesters say that the City to City Spotlight is connected with the Israeli government's "Brand Israel" media and advertising campaign, which was launched in 2008.

Both Greyson's letter and the declaration mention an August 2008 article in the Canadian Jewish News in which Israeli Consul General Amir Gissin says Israel would have a major presence at this year's festival. Gissin was not available for comment.

It is a charge Bailey denies.

"The City to City series was conceived and curated entirely independently," Bailey writes in a letter posted on the festival website. "There was no pressure from any outside source. Contrary to rumours or mistaken media reports, this focus is a product only of TIFF's programming decisions. We value that independence and would never compromise it."...

Alas, in the same letter, Bailey, who obviously wants to remain in the glitterlefti good books, also employed these weasel words (my bolds):

We recognize that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and that the city remains contested ground. We continue to learn more about the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. As a festival that values debate and the exchange of cultures, we will continue to screen the best films we can find from around the world. This is our contribution to expanding our audiences’ experience of this art form and the worlds it represents.

Au contraire, Cam. Tel Aviv has been a Jewish city for 100 years--a fact that’s un-contestable. The only thing that’s “contested” is the contemptible and, yes, racist, Slamolefty notion that Jews are not entitled to be sovereign over even a minute piece of Middle East real estate.

Thankfully, Simcha Jacobovici is around to explain what’s really afoot:

"I think some of these people are well-meaning, some of these people are less well-meaning," said Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, when reached in New York City. "Frankly, I think there's no other word but anti-Semitism. I don't know if they're doing it consciously or unconsciously, I want to make that clear, but the idea that anything that Israel does is by definition illegitimate, and anything that the other side does is by definition legitimate, what do you call that?"

What do you call it? It should be painfully evident by now that is starts with a “Juden” and ends with a “hass”--and it has now infested the festival.

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

He was depraved on account he was deprived: The Toronto Star offers a “Sgt. Krupke” explanation to account for why a young lad would join a violent gang:

Saad Khalid was only 16 when he was dealt a devastating blow.

He returned home to find paramedics trying to revive his mother, who had been found submerged in the bathtub. He sank to his knees in despair and buried his face in his hands. She was gone.

The once-gregarious teen became reticent. He withdrew from sports, tended to his younger siblings and took on more household chores.

He and his brothers and sisters were discouraged from speaking about his mother's struggles with depression and her death. Instead, they were told to pray to God.

Khalid, whose family was Muslim but not overly religious, found comfort in Islam. At his Mississauga high school, he started hanging around Muslim students with extremist views, denouncing the West and leading impassioned sermons about jihad and martyrdom.

Reflecting on those years, Khalid would later tell a psychiatrist that he had developed a "connection toward the Muslim cause" and an "increased sense of meaning." He believed he was "here for a purpose." By age 19, he felt a religious obligation to do something to change Western policies that he believed were hurting Muslims.

Yesterday, Khalid, now 23, was sentenced to 14 years for his role in a homegrown terror cell known as the Toronto 18, which was busted in June 2006 for plotting to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto…

Hey, it could happen to any of us. One day you’re a happy-go-lucky teen, without a care in the world. The next, mom drowns in a tub (another one of those “suspicious” drownings?), and for solace you turn to jihad. Now that Saad has been in the slammer for the past 7 years and has acquired “a better understanding of Islam,” though, I’m sure he’ll straighten up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:52 | link | comments (3)

Censorship's "default" setting: Here’s how the Ceeb--admittedly, not always the most authoritative source (given its inherent lefist bias)--unpacks the CHRT ruling:

A provision in the Human Rights Act that bans hate speech on the internet is unconstitutional, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

In a decision released Wednesday, the commission's tribunal dismissed a complaint filed against Marc Lemire, a webmaster who runs freedomsite.org, a site that bills itself as "Canada's freedom resource center."

The complaint, which alleged that messages posted on the site were discriminatory and exposed minority groups to "hatred and contempt," was filed by Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.

In rejecting the complaint, commissioner vice-chair Athanasios Hadjis ruled that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act violates the Charter of Rights and Freedom, "which guarantees the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression."

Hadjis said that it is not within the commission's ability to change the rules — that must be done by the courts — so he refused to impose penalties on Lemire or order him to take down his website.

Section 13 of the Act, which prevents the spread of "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" through telecommunications systems, originated in the 1960s to prevent racist phone hotlines and was extended by default to include the internet.

Warman had asked the tribunal for a cease-and-desist order against Lemire, and a $7,500 fine. Warman accused Lemire of posting anti-Semitic and anti-gay material on the web.

Conservative commentators called the decision a victory for free speech while other groups, including the Canadian Jewish Congree (sic), called for a quick appeal.

The Canadian Jewish Congree, eh? How mortifying for the champions of state censorship that a Ceeb piece that declares their cause all but dead can’t even bother to spell their outfit’s name correctly.

How upsetting, too, for Jennifer Lynch that, despite her best efforts to convince us that her Canadian Human Rights Commission is completely separate from--and should thus in no way be lumped together with--the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the Ceeb goes ahead and calls it "the commission's tribunal." Ouch!

The line that caught my eye, though, is the one about how Section 13 was first instituted to prevent racist phone messages, and was extended by default to include the Internet. It just goes to show how, once censorship takes hold, it can grow unchecked--unless something is done to halt it in its tracks. From shutting down one--count ‘em, one--little racist hotline, which required you to pick up a phone and actually dial a number to access the hatefulness (and more often than not, you'd get a busy signal, and have to redial over and over again--I know, because I remember doing just that because I was so intrigued to hear the message), to the authority to police the entire World Wide Web: now, that’s what you call a real growth industry.

Or, looked at another way, a cancer.

Update: Oops! The National Post seems to have, er, misread the ruling a la the Ceeb. Lucky for us the OHRC’s former chief Commissar Pearl Eliadis (the unbodacious Babs's predecessor), who remains a vocal advocate for state censorship, is here, as always, to set us straight.

Warman vs. Lemire does not, actually, declare Section 13 to be unconstitutional. What the decision says is that Section 13 is constitutional (following the Supreme Court's Taylor case), but that punitive payments, which go to the government instead of the victim, are inconsistent with the constitution. This is not a "technicality" -- it is the central issue.

Practically, this means that Section 13 cases that only seek cease and desist orders or personal damages to the victim, are still constitutional within the meaning of the ruling.

Given the remedial nature of human rights laws, the legality of the punitive remedy will have to be sorted out in appeal. It is worth mentioning, though, that there are cases from the tribunal going the other way. The constitutionality of punitive damages does not or should not affect the legality of the hate speech law itself.

This is where tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis has erred: Linking the constitutionality of punitive damages to the hate speech law provoked confusion and this is a reason in itself to appeal. The media headlines trumpeting the decision as a blow to hate speech laws are evidence of how badly the reasons were interpreted.

It is one thing for the media -- or anyone else -- to make an honest mistake about a long and complex decision. It is quite another to have a journalist like Joseph Brean, who was specifically told everything that is written above, to distort the central reasoning of the case and misconstrue what I said to him.

Pearl Eliadis, human rights lawyer, Montreal.

To review: Hadjis “erred”; Bream “misconstrued” (how rude!); and, according to Pearl and the Congree, Section 13 remains up and running.

Quel relief!

Posted by: scaramouche at 02:05 | link | comments

Thursday, 03 September 2009

Sex and violence in Ayatollahville: If you thought the Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideas about the etiquette of sheep-shtupping were far out, wait’ll you hear what A-jad’s “spiritual guide,” a lunatic named Aytollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, has so say on the subject of rape and torture. From Arutz Sheva:

...Asked if a confession obtained "by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure" was "valid and considered credible according to Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi replied: "Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih ("Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists", or the regime of Iran's mullahs) is permissible under any condition." The ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?"

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?"

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women - ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

Looks like, all things considered, the sheep get off pretty easy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:15 | link | comments (1)

Just asking: Anyone else skeeved out because the King of Pop is due to be buried 70 days after his use of a powerful anaesthetic he customarily turned to as a sleep aid finally caught up with him?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:59 | link | comments

Send your propaganda to Joe: Making himself useful for a change, the blandest, most retiring Vice Prez in recent memory “asks you to help bust the myth that health insurance reform isn't important by posting your video response on why reform matters to you.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:51 | link | comments

Mitigating remorse: A judge has handed down a sentence for the first member of that “broad strata” of society who wanted to unleash jihadi terrorism in Canada--a sentence that takes into consideration the lad’s apparent “remorse.” From the Globe and Mail (my bolds):

A terrorist bomb plotter received a 14-year sentence today for his role in a scheme to bomb government targets in downtown Toronto.

Saad Khalid, a 22-year-old who pleaded guilty in the so-called Toronto 18 conspiracy, was credited with seven years for his time in pretrial custody, meaning he will spend a maximum of seven more years in custody.

“Canadian society relies on ballots and not bullets or bombs to change policy,” said Mr. Justice Bruce Durno, who added the punishment must show society's revulsion for “vile” terrorist crimes.

Mr. Khalid was close shaven and wore a black blazer, a tie and jeans, and nervously exhaled as he took the prisoner's box to await the decision in a packed courtroom. He hunched over and furrowed his brow as he sat down to await judgment, burying his head in his hands after hearing the ruling.

On June 2, 2006, Mr. Khalid was caught in a police sting. As hundreds of police rounded up more than a dozen other Muslim youth around Toronto, Mr. Khalid was caught unloading boxes marked “ammonium nitrate” from the back of a truck.

He has since admitted he knew the fertilizer was to be used to construct truck bombs to be detonated in the downtown. “He knew serious bodily harm or death were likely,” Judge Durno said.

He later added that Mr. Khalid “was not just a gopher,” as defence lawyers had argued, but a conspirator who knew the overarching plot.

But the judge added that there were many mitigating factors. “I accept he is truly remorseful,” said Judge Durno. He pointed out the accused had accepted responsibility for his crime, had no prior convictions and came from a loving family.

He added that the death of Mr. Khalid's mother, when he was 15, left him “vulnerable” to terrorist recruiters. The accused hails from a Pakistani family who raised him in Saudi Arabia before moving to Canada when he was eight.

While awaiting resolution of his case, Mr. Khalid spent three years in jail, some of it in harsh conditions such as segregation, before deciding to plead guilty.

Last week, he was remorseful as he asked for leniency.

“I acknowledge that I made a huge mistake, and not a day passes by that I am not filled with regret for my role in this despicable crime,” Mr. Khalid told the court.

He had already pleaded guilty to involvement in the foiled bomb plot, and in doing so became the first insider to speak of the motivations behind the crime.

“I am not a lunatic who is hell-bent on destruction of Western civilization,” said Mr. Khalid, who explained that he was a middle-class university student from a good home. He said his involvement arose from a “disagreement on the issue of Canadian foreign policy, specifically Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.”

But, “I know now that resorting to violence is not the way to bring about social or political change,” he added.

He told the court he has a better understanding of Islam since being jailed...

Er, call me a sceptical kafir, but I’m not sure that's entirely a good thing.

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

UN-believable!: Just when you think the UN’s bald-faced treachery can’t get worse, it does. Claudia Rosett, incorrigible scourge of the internationalist set, has the info:

With four sets of sanctions over the past three years, the United Nations is supposed to be leading the charge to stop Iran's drive toward the nuclear bomb. The most recent U.N. move, Security Council Resolution 1803, passed in March 2008, calls upon all U.N. member states "to exercise vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks domiciled in Iran." This resolution highlights two Iranian state-owned banks as nuclear proliferators: Bank Saderat and Bank Melli.

You might, then, suppose the U.N. itself would steer clear of at least these two banks.

But in the case of Bank Melli, think again. The U.N. Children's Fund, better known as UNICEF, has been keeping an account at Iran's U.N.-flagged Bank Melli, and using that account not only for funds to be spent inside Iran, but to collect money for transfer to U.N. operations in terrorist-controlled Gaza.

Posted on the English-language Web site of UNICEF's Iran office is an invitation to make donations via Bank Melli. UNICEF includes the account number, 5005, and the location, at Bank Melli's Eskan branch in Tehran.

Nearby, on the same UNICEF site, is a link to an appeal by UNICEF's Iran office for donations for relief to Gaza, through the same Bank Melli Account ("key word: Gaza"). Gaza is controlled by a U.S.-designated terrorist group, Hamas. Dedicated to the destruction of Israel and hostile to the U.S., Hamas in recent years has been receiving training, funding and weapons from Iran.

In sum, UNICEF has been offering itself as a conduit for funds between terrorist-sponsoring, U.N.-sanctions-violating Iran and terrorist-controlled Gaza, via a bank that the U.N. itself has specifically flagged as prone to illicit nuclear proliferation activities…

Par for the course for an organization in thrall to its largest voting bloc.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:32 | link | comments

Trouble under the "W": If you want a sense of how one man has been allowed to to comandeer a flagrantly unfair and ludicrous system, look here and scroll down. You will soon find one name that predominates above all others.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:13 | link | comments

If a blog post falls in a primeval Internet jungle, does it make a sound?: It does if the CJC and the B’nai Brith are there to intercept it and raise a great godawful clamour. Otherwise, writes Mark Steyn, how would we know such “dangerous” hate speech even existed (my bolds)?

...The sole Internet post on which Mr Lemire was found "guilty" was one called "Aids secrets". It was seen by a total of eight people within the Dominion of Canada - or nought-point-eight of a Canadian per province, or 0.61538 if one includes territories. However, you've got to figure that maybe two-to-three of those eight views were from Richard Warman trying to figure out how many thousands of bucks he could get by suing over it; another two views came from the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission; a couple more came from Bernie Farber's CJC and B'nai Brith; and maybe the sole remaining view came from Mr Lemire just after posting to check that it was formatted and displaying correctly.

In other words, no one in Canada saw this post. The only reason we know how "offensive" it is is because of the publicity given to it by Warman and the CHRC dress-up Nazis. Mr Lemire is not a threat to Canadians. Commissar Lynch and Richard Warman are.

As for Bernie Farber, for some reason he thinks an unread website is a threat to Jews in Canada, and not the ever swelling tide of daily, routine, widely accepted Jew hatred from what a, ahem, non-white supremacist source. The "Official Jews" (in Ezra's designation) have proved not merely useless against the new anti-Semitism, but in their pursuit of irrelevances and distractions are actually abetting it. Jews of all people should be no fans of government censorship.

The problem, of course, is that a leftist perspective and an unshakeable belief in multiculturalism messes with your head such that you’re no longer capable of distinguishing genuine threats from bogus ones--and are willing to sacrifice the most crucial freedom of all because you think that will somehow keep you safe.

Such short-sightedness is not only a tremendous embarrassment for me as a Jew, it is the very definition of cluelessness.

Update: Would that Canada’s Official Jews took to heart the words of famous Jewish American jurist, Louis Brandeis:

"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

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

Buh bye state censorship? Not so fast: There’s a good reason I never became a lawyer--reading legal lingo makes my head spin and my eyes glaze over. Thus, I depend on others to interpret rulings such as the one released yesterday which favours a “hate-monger” over a “courageous Nazi hunter.” But is this really a great victory for free speech? Well, yes, but, alas, we can’t consign Section 13 to the dustheap just yet, as this post in the Western Standard blog explains:

The constitutionality of Section 13(1) remains intact. It's just that a major sanction in the Tribunal's toolkit has now been removed, or at least blunted. The CHRC/T can still silence you; it just can't bankrupt you in the process.

And Warman et al. is likely to appeal the ruling -- and he'll probably succeed (hint: Hadjis should have "read out" the constitutionally questionable portion of the Act.)

Again, I have no legal expertise to draw upon, but it seems to me that since it was the Supreme Court of Canada which held that Section 13 trumps our Charter right to free expression, only the Supreme Court can reverse that ruling.

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

Wednesday, 02 September 2009

A sudden--and shocking--renunciation of Thought Police-type thinking by a card-carrying member of the Lynch mob: What’s the country coming to when one of the Queen Censor’s commissars favours a purveyor of “hate speech” over a much-honoured “Nazi hunter” who's the most successful CHRC complainant of all time?

Nothing that can’t be reversed by an Iggy victory in the next election.

Update: The complainant and the target of the complaint weren’t the only ones involved here. Mention should be made of the peanut gallery--the “Interested Parties” who were party to the proceedings. They are:

· The Attorney General of Canada

· Canadian Association for Free Expression

· Canadian Free Speech League

· Canadian Jewish Congress

· Friends of Simon Wiesenthal for Holocaust Studies

· League for Human Rights for B’nai Brith

It’s pretty easy to guess which of these outfits is breaking out the bubbly today, and which is singing the blues while clinging e’er tighter to the security blankie (state censorship) which has long afforded a false sense of protection, and which today’s decision renders all but obsolete.

Update: Right on schedule--the Ceej expresses its “regrets”:

TORONTO- Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) said today it believes the decision in the case of Warman v. Lemire is wrong in law and should be appealed. CJC also noted it believes section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) remains constitutional.

The case involves a complaint filed against Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org, by Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, for a number of alleged antisemitic postings on Lemire's web site.

"We are pleased that Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Member Athanasios Hadjis found that some of the material posted by Lemire violated s. 13 of the CHRA. However, we strongly disagree with his decision not to impose a cease and desist order because he believed the penalty provisions in the Act render s. 13 unconstitutional," said Joel Richler, CJC National Honourary Legal Counsel.

"Reasonable people can differ regarding the penalty provisions of the Act - that is a matter for the Federal Court of Canada to determine," said Richler.

"The Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that s. 13 was constitutional long before the penalty provisions were added to it. As such, Mr. Hadjis should have simply ignored the penalty provisions and applied the appropriate cease and desist order against Mr. Lemire," he added.

"This action is known as the doctrine of 'reading out' - a well-established practice endorsed by the Supreme Court of Canada under which the portion of a law that may be unconstitutional is edited out but the remaining constitutional elements are applied. Mr. Hadjis should have 'read out' of section 13(1) the penalty provisions and preserved the rest of the section. Mr. Hadjis failed to consider this option, even though the Supreme Court of Canada has been clear that section 13(1) is perfectly constitutional," Richler explained.

"This was a decision by a single member of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. We should recall that there have been two previous decisions by the Tribunal that rejected the constitutional challenges to s. 13. In order to clarify the law, we strongly urge the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Mr. Warman to appeal this decision," CJC CEO Bernie Farber said.

That’s old Bernie for you: never say die to state censorship, even when it’s clear the tide is turning against it, and never, ever muster up the vaguest shadow of a scintilla of a clue.
Update: Here's the National Post's report on the ruling.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments (10)

All together now: Back in the olden days, B.O. (before Obama), Mark Steyn wrote a book called America Alone. Now that hopeychangification is in the air and the Oval Office, though, America no longer stands alone. It is merely one of the dhimmified throng--along with the egregious Euroweenies. Thomas Sowell weighs in on this appalling state of affairs (and affairs of state):

Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi— the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people— is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time.

In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.

The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."

He wrote this long before Barack Obama became President of the United States. But this administration epitomizes the "concessions and smiles" approach to countries that are our implacable enemies.

Western Europe has gone down that path before us but we now seem to be trying to catch up…

“Concessions and smiles”--hey, it worked for Neville Chamberlain, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

Obama's Ramadan dinner: The guest list for the White House meal includes the head of the Palestinian mission and the Israeli ambassador. (I'm kind of hoping he shows up and brings gefilte fish.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments (1)

Missing the point: An Official Jew comments on a Globe and Mail editorial:

It's hardly surprising you endorse a robust press free of government interference. But supporting the notion that governments do not have the right to criticize something published in a newspaper is untenable. Newspapers must be held accountable in democratic societies, and Sweden's elected officials have every right, and the responsibility, to join right-minded citizens in condemning hate wherever it appears. Free speech is neither a veil to publish slander nor an acceptable excuse for misguided neutrality. Shoddy journalism shouldn't be compounded by shoddy moral leadership.

Mark J. Freiman, national president,

Canadian Jewish Congress

And speaking of shoddy moral leadership, here’s the news release the Ceej issued on the occasion of the publication of some Danish ‘toons, the one in which it chastised the paper for being “inexcusably provocative.”

The point Mr. Freiman should have made is that, in a bid to placate its restive Muslim population and because of its clueless leftist orientation, Sweden has been engaging in a campaign of vilifying the Jewish state, of which the libellous article is the merest tip of the iceberg. The country is therefore incapable of displaying “moral leadership” since it abdicated its morality some time ago.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Can whites be the victims of “racism”?: Not according to the government of South Africa, which is crying foul and accusing Canada of being racist for accepting the refugee claim of a white South African. From the Globe and Mail:

South Africa's ruling party has denounced Canada as “racist” for granting refugee status to a man who claimed he was persecuted in South Africa because he is white.

The decision by a refugee board member in Ottawa has ignited a firestorm of controversy in South Africa, damaging relations between the two countries and denting Canada's image in a country where it was once seen as a stalwart of the anti-apartheid struggle.

The refugee board member, William Davis, ruled that South Africa had failed to protect its white citizens from robberies and muggings, which he described as the “persecution” of whites by “African South Africans.”

Brandon Huntley, a 31-year-old South African who stayed illegally in Canada in 2006, after first arriving on a work permit as a carnival attendant, was awarded refugee status after complaining that he was mugged and stabbed in seven attempted robberies in South Africa. He said he was called a “white dog” and a “settler” during these attacks, although he did not report any of the attacks to the police because he “did not trust them.”

Mr. Davis said in his ruling that Mr. Huntley would “stand out like a sore thumb” in any part of South Africa because of his colour. He said Mr. Huntley had given “convincing proof” of the government's “inability or unwillingness to protect him.” He added that Mr. Huntley would be unable to find a job in South Africa because of affirmative action in favour of blacks.

Mr. Davis ruled that Mr. Huntley had been attacked six or seven times “because of the colour of his skin” and had a legitimate fear of persecution. He said Mr. Huntley had scars on his body to prove the attacks...

Rather an ironic twist to the South Africa story, no?--endemic white racism gives way to endemic black racism, an unpleasant verity that upends one of the most sacred leftist idées fixes about who can be a racist and who can be a victim of racism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:02 | link | comments

Tuesday, 01 September 2009

Obama “outreach” a bust: Elliot Abrams writes that, as predicted by anyone with half a clue, Obama’s ingratiation scheme is an abject failure:

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation. Thus there have been six visits to Damascus by high-level administration officials, including two by George Mitchell. Moreover, the administration has signaled that its handling of export license applications for Syria will be more "flexible" than that of the Bush administration, which tried to deny every shipment it could.

Well, the returns are in. Within the past week, Iraq has withdrawn its ambassador from Damascus and accused Syria of involvement in terrorist incidents in Baghdad. Iraqi TV has also aired a confession by an accused al Qaeda terrorist, a Saudi who claimed he had been trained in Syria--by the Asad regime's intelligence services. Nor is this all. Syria continues to support Hezbollah's blocking of the formation of a government in Lebanon, backing Hezbollah in its demand for a "blocking third" that would prevent any decisions Hezbollah opposes in any new Cabinet. The Palestinian terrorist groups remain headquartered in Damascus, and under no visible restraints. And on August 19, President Bashar Asad paid a visit to President Ahmadinejad in Tehran, to showcase his support of the latter during the current Iranian political crisis…

Thank heavens Obama is a “smart” president, unlike that other guy whatsisname.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:48 | link | comments

Wretched excess: Iran is about to publish a 60-volume history of its eight-year-long war with Iraq.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:37 | link | comments

The appeal of Islamic swimwear: Go figure--the burkini is welcome in the U.K. but not in Egypt, as this Islam Online piece recounts:

The impression Omayma Mansour got from her last visit to Egypt was that Islam could also be unwelcome even in one of its lands.

The Egyptian-American mother of two was staying at the Moevenpick in El Gouna resort in Hurghada when she received a shock that might take her months to recover or understand.

Seeing her youngest son, 2, struggling in the swimming pool, she went into the pool with her burkini, a waterproof swimsuit that covers most of the body, to help her kid.

Mansour was immediately asked by a swimming pool attendant to exit the pool.

The man told her she was not allowed to use the swimming pool with her burkini, an outfit consisting of a headscarf, a tunic and trousers.

"The policy to ban veiled women from the pool is discriminatory to all practicing Muslim women," Mansour told IslamOnline.net.

"This is definitely a violation of our religious freedom as Muslim women."

Having endured this humiliation, Mansour headed straight to the office of the hotel manager but got nothing back expect what she calls "nonsensical excuses".

"I think people at these hotels view it [the Islamic dress] as perhaps low-class," she said.

"So they don't want that image portrayed in their five-star resorts."

The burkini, derived from the words burqa (a head-to-ankle dress) and bikini, resembles a wetsuit with built-in hood.

The three-piece covers the whole body except for the feet, hands and face.

The full-length lycra suit is not too figure hugging to embarrass, but is tight enough to allow its wearer to swim freely.

Around 90 percent of Egypt's 80-million population are Muslim…

What are the odds? That’s fairly close to the percentage of Egyptian women who have been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:56 | link | comments

What a difference a few decades make: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country"--JFK Inaugural Address, January, 1961.

"Ask not what your president can do for you. Ask what you can do for your president"--the gist of a soon-to-be-delivered Obama address to American youth, September, 2009.

Update: Indoctination through Education has begun.

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

What was he thinking?: A truly shocking turn of events--Michael Bryant, once the Attorney-General of Ontario and a man who aspired to become the next Liberal premier of the province, has been involved in a particularly nasty and bizarre hit-and-run. The exact details of what transpired remain somewhat murky, but it appears that Bryant, who was behind the wheel of his Audi, may have became involved in an altercation with a cyclist, who ended up clinging to Bryant's car. In an effort to dislodge him, Bryant drove down the wrong side of the road, hitting trees and, yikes!, a mailbox along the way. The cyclist fell off, landed under the wheels of Bryant's car, and was killed. Bryant then fled from the scene, only to be apprehended a short time later by police.

Incredible, isn't it, how one's life can change in a matter of seconds? One might be inclined to call it Bryant's Chappaquiddick, only it's unlikely he'll get off as easily as did Ted.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:28 | link | comments (8)

Where there’s a Will there’s a way: Diana West applauds George Will’s latest piece:

"Time to Get Out of Afghanistan" is the headline of George Will's column today, a welcome affirmation by a conservative of my own rather lonesome position as first expressed five months ago in "Let Afghanistan Go", which draws on the military expertise of Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely (USA ret.), and in various writings since.

Will's heavy-weight weighing in prompted headlines everywhere, driving Surger-cons at NRO's The Corner and Hot Air, into rapid-response-mode to bat down Will's heterodoxy. This is a good thing because there has been no debate on the Right on this vital national concern.

It will be a hard slog, however. What animates and drives the more or less institutional Right is its vision of Iraq as a "success," and its desire to repeat that "success" in Afghanistan. But, as noted here, "an infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an islamic nation." Correction, it can fight -- which US forces have been doing for the past eight years -- but it cannot win. There is nothing to win, which is why, for example Iraq, after six awful years of US involvement, is still just another stinkin' OPEC-belonging, Israel-boycotting, Hezbollah-sympathetic, anti-US entity with new and improved ties to Iran. The fundamental reason for this, the truth that is never admitted in our PC-educated See-No-Islam-ever dhimmitude, is that our belief systems, Islam's and the West's, are diametrically opposed. Left and Right in this country rigorously scrub this truth and its centuries of confirming history from all policy -- an excessively antiseptic way to view conflict in the world that will always miss the cure by ignoring the germs...

Mark Steyn is mostly onside, too:

It seems to me we have no very clear war aims in Afghanistan, which is never a good position to be in.

Are we "nation-building"? With U.S. commanders talking about ending Afghanistan's "culture of poverty," it sounds like it. Yet, even assuming you could build a nation in any meaningful sense of the word on Afghan soil, such a nation would be profoundly uncongenial to us.

Are we there just to quarantine al-Qaeda in their Pakistani redoubts and whack any bad guys who wander in range? That might be worthwhile, but is a tough sell to NATO forces who (excepting Brits, Canucks, and a couple of others) operate under ludicrously constrained rules of engagement. So the "nation-building" facade is necessary to square it with the multilateral types.

The much misunderstood British strategy in Afghanistan was, by contrast, admirably clear-sighted, and worked (for them) for over a century. They took a conscious decision not to incorporate the country formally within the Indian Empire because they didn't want a direct British land border with Russia. So instead they were content with a highly decentralized semi-client state and a useful buffer between the British Empire and the Tsars, a set-up that worked well (from London's point of view) for over a century until it all fell apart in the Sixties when Moscow started outbidding the Brits for the loyalty of various factions — or what passes for loyalty in that part of the world.

The British strategy was cold and calculated and, if you care about Afghan child mortality rates and women's rights, very unprogressive. But it was less deluded than asking Western troops to die in pursuit of the chimera of ending a "culture of poverty" while in reality providing multilateral window-dressing for the country's slippage back to warlordism and sharia...

One can’t really call it a “slippage,” though, when the “new” Afghanistan enshrined sharia law from the get-go--my biggest (and quite longstanding) concern about the whole nation-building mission.

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

The voice of reason: John Bolton explains why sanctions won't stop mullahs intent on building nukes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments

Downing Street’s maladroit play: Britain’s P.M. has promised to release all correspondence pertaining to the release of the Lockerbie Libyan--with one glaring exception:

Downing Street has confirmed that papers relating to Tony Blair's meeting with the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, will not be among the documents about the Lockerbie bomber being released this afternoon.

The prime minister's spokesman said the government would publish all "relevant" correspondence relating to the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 bombing, this afternoon.

The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice are putting documents on their website after 2pm. In Edinburgh the Scottish government will also be releasing its own documents, probably later in the afternoon.

But the papers will not cover Blair's meetings with Gaddafi in 2004 and 2007, which paved the way for a prisoner transfer agreement between the two countries, Downing Street said today...

Guess they don’t want any letters saying in effect “Give us the oil and the dude’s all yours” to come to light.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:34 | link | comments (2)

Two takes on the Islamic shroud: Daniel Pipes says niquabs and burqas are ideal cover-ups when commiting a robbery. Meanwhile, clueless feminista Naomi Wolfe goes all girlish and giddy when she gets to wear a black pup tent because of the sexy lingerie one can hide underneath.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:37 | link | comments (2)

Blind to the blood: The Globe and Mail is apoplectic because of the Israeli P.M.’s reaction to a scurrilous Swedish newspaper article:

An article in a Swedish newspaper alleging that Israeli soldiers have engaged in organ theft from dead Palestinians was highly offensive. But Israel's reaction has been over-the-top. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that the Swedish government condemn the article, implying that democratic governments are somehow accountable for what is published in free societies. They aren't.

The article by Donald Bostrom in the Aftonbladet tabloid paper last month fell far below the basic standards of journalism. The story begins with the arrest of a Brooklyn rabbi on a charge of organ trafficking, and moves on to revive the reporter's 1992 allegations of organ trading. In that year, the reporter says, Israel's health ministry began a public campaign to encourage organ donation. "While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days, Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open." And, "On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it." From this collection of pseudo-facts, unsourced, the reporter all but screams out a nefarious conclusion ("It's time to bring clarity to this macabre business"), yet he has told Israeli media that he was merely reporting allegations, and has no idea whether they are true.

Israel's official response has been to compare the story to the blood libel, the long-lasting lie that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood in ritual observances. Falsehoods have indeed caused great harm throughout history, but not every piece of bad journalism is the blood libel. Trying to portray this slight and marginal piece as if that were the case is so excessive as to make one wonder if Mr. Netanyahu is hoping to use the issue to deflect attention off the more day-to-day worries of the Israeli public…

Quel insight--and willful blindness about blood libel. My rejoinder:

I agree that the Swedish government isn’t responsible for words that appear in a Swedish newspaper--no more than, say, the Danish government is responsible for a series of cartoons that appears in a Danish paper. However, your editorial’s assertion that the article in question, which accused Israelis of harvesting the internal organs of Arabs, does not constitute a classic “blood libel” is exactly what you accuse Israeli’s Prime Minister Netanyahu of being: “over-the-top.”

Update: Yossi Klein Halevi rightly situates this "tiny" incident in the much larger context:

…The scandal would not have been possible without decades of one-sided reporting about the Middle East conflict, along with increasing demonization in recent years. When Israel is repeatedly cited in the Swedish media as the main obstacle to peace, when Swedish churches single out Israel as a target for boycott, the inevitable result is a resurrection of anti-Semitic motifs. In critiquing Israel, there are no longer standards or shame.

Aftonbladet’s editor, Jan Helin, wrote that he was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. The first claim is no doubt true, the second debatable. Contrary to widespread assumptions among Europeans, one does not need to be a Nazi to be an anti-Semite. Contemporary European anti-Semitism has two spiritual roots: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The big lie of Zionism as Nazism and of the Jewish state as successor to Nazi Germany originated in Moscow, and became an essential part of Soviet ideology following the 1967 Six-Day War. Of the two versions of modern European anti-Semitism as they exist today, the far more pervasive — and dangerous — is the Soviet version. The rise of Western European anti-Zionism, then, is a posthumous victory for the Soviet Union.

Aftonbladet’s blood libel has offered Israel an opportunity to place the wider problem of anti-Zionism on the European agenda. And so the Israeli government was right in responding with outrage. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the Swedish government’s refusal to condemn the article to its “position during World War II, when it also did not become involved,” while finance minister Yuval Steinitz declared relations between the two countries to be in “a crisis until the government of Sweden understands otherwise.” Previous opportunities to confront the thin line between European anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism — for example, cartoons in European newspapers equating the Palestinian situation with Jesus on the cross — were squandered. This time, the Israeli government seems genuinely determined to take the offensive.

The question, though, is how. So far, the government's response has been diffuse and at times counter-productive. Pressure on the Swedish government to condemn the article has not only failed but allowed the Swedes to turn the issue into a spurious dispute over freedom of the press. Prime Minister Netanyahu did note that, when Christians were offended by an Israeli television satire on Jesus, then-Prime Minister Olmert condemned the program without compromising freedom of the press. But Israel needs to more aggressively expose the Swedish argument as a sham — particularly in light of the country's far-reaching "hate speech" regulations, which have been used repeatedly in recent years to prosecute critics of Islam.

At the same time, the Aftonbladet needs to be challenged, in court if possible. Delaying issuing credentials to Aftonbladet reporters — as the Israeli government press office has done — is an emotionally satisfying but hardly adequate response.

Most of all, Israel needs to use this affair to challenge the general climate of Israeli demonization in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, and expose the conceptual links between classical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism…

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

Same as the old one--build A-bombs, kill Jews: Iran says it has a "new plan" for its nuclear program.

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

Obama sweats the big stuff: According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama is having a tough time selling the American people on Obamacare because he has yet to articulate his specific ideas for it. And, claims the paper, the reason for his "hand-off" approach is that he didn’t want Obamacare to go down in flames a la Clintoncare, a plan that was fully fleshed-out (and therefore D.O.A):

Among the many problems President Barack Obama confronts on the health-care front, one is fairly simple. He is defending a plan that doesn't really exist.

It may be time for the White House to change that. As the president and his administration figure out how to hit the reset button on health at the close of a bruising August, one option is to, at last, lay out exactly what Mr. Obama now wants in an overhaul package, and start selling and defending that.

To restart health debate, WSJ's Jerry Seib suggests President Obama draw up a plan of his own rather than defend those composed by congressional committees. He discusses how Obama has been defending a plan that doesn't really exist.

No less a legislative master than former Republican Senate leader Robert Dole is suggesting that course, and it may be the best idea available as Washington returns from an uneasy summer break.

As a matter of political and legislative strategy, the White House has never actually presented an "Obama health-care bill." As in the earlier quest for an economic-stimulus package, it chose instead to enunciate some general principles and let Congress craft the actual legislation. Four committees have done so, and a fifth is trying.

The reasoning was fairly simple: As soon as there is a presidential bill, it becomes the target of all attacks. There also is a historical reason to avoid presenting a specific bill. President Bill Clinton offered an (overly) detailed health plan in 1993, and his critics picked it apart, chart by chart and page by page. That wasn't a path the Obama White House was going to travel.

But in recent weeks the downsides of that strategy have become clear. The absence of an actual Obama health plan hasn't stopped Republicans from attacking as if there was one anyway and convincing many Americans they are opposed to it…

I suspect there's more--and less--to it than that. As always, Obama could care less about working out the picayune details--he’s content to let the Pelosis wrestle with the small stuff. He’s got his eyes on the prize. The Big One. The Whopper. The Mother of All Obamaplans: government control over a vast sector. That’s what Republicans are attacking and what so many Americans continue to oppose.

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