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

The Left and Jew-hatred: A must-read by Richard Brookhiser in The New York Observer about how AmericanJews find themselves being reviled by the Left. Given that that's the end of the political spectrum where, traditionally, most Jews have parked their support, it's a most pertubing--and disturbing--realization:

“The jewel is in the eye of the lotus” is a Buddhist mantra. “The Jew is in the eye of the leftist” is a mantra of our time.

 

My National Review colleague Byron York reported on last Saturday’s anti-war rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. The main message of the rally was President Bush’s evil and stupidity—fair enough, in a two-party system—and the main instance of it was Iraq. The warriors of the anti-war movement—Joan Baez, Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan—were front and center.

 

A secondary text of the rally was Katrina; weather, the perennial joke of the newsroom, has become a main event. But another theme was anti-Zionism. As Mr. York reports, kaffiyehs outnumbered American flags. George Galloway, the left-wing M.P., wore one around his neck. Occasionally, the themes were weirdly conflated: One group of college kids chanted, “From Palestine to New Orleans, no more money for the war machine.”

 

Now, on the one hand, this is fringe stuff, as many liberals and war opponents themselves recognize. The liberal Daily Kos Web site was filled with negative comments on the rally, seeing it as an off-message distraction from the duty of beating Republicans. But the fringe itself, including the Jew-bashing fringe, is perilously close to the center. Who else in the Democratic Party has passion, or ground troops, these days?

 

I started writing full-time the year I moved to New York City, which was 1977. The notion that Jews could be a punching bag was inconceivable then. Jews were it, here and therefore nationally. They were a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, Mickey Mouse. Saul Bellow had won the Nobel Prize the year before. Abe Beame, the first Jewish Mayor, was about to surrender Gracie Mansion to three terms of Ed Koch, the second Jewish Mayor. Everyone praised Jews, and indeed they seemed universally praiseworthy. Those who didn’t got into trouble. In 1979, Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the U.N., met with a representative from the P.L.O. and promptly lost his job. (Who knew that Yasir Arafat would have his own Nobel Prize soon enough?)

 

This high tide of nachas began to abate with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. NBC’s John Chancellor compared Israeli operations to the bombing of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. (What, then, was the Syrian regime in Lebanon, which has only now begun to crack? Spain after the Spanish Civil War?) Comparing Israel to brutal bombers—fascist ones at that—was a new trope in mainstream American journalism.

 

More was coming. In 1984, Jesse Jackson made his first run for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The Jackson campaign was both part of the old world and harbinger of the new. When Mr. Jackson said, in a reporter’s hearing, that he was headed for an event in “Hymietown” (i.e., New York City), he had to apologize. When Nation of Islam cleric Louis Farrakhan, who had been warming up Jackson rallies, called Judaism a “gutter” religion, he was dropped from the campaign. Yet Mr. Jackson went on to a second Presidential run and elder statesmanship. Even Mr. Farrakhan, like a comet, periodically reappeared in the fringes of respectability, as people hoped against hope that he had mellowed. Somewhere, Andrew Young was wincing.

 

The next step down for Jews was the intifada. Maybe they shouldn’t have invaded Lebanon. Maybe we shouldn’t have fought the Vietnam War. Countries make mistakes. But the intifada cast Israel as Goliath in the West Bank and, increasingly, in Israel itself. When Palestinian kids threw rocks, Israel looked like Bull Connor. When Palestinian terrorists planted bombs, Israel looked prophetically like the Marines trying to retake Falluja. Palestinians became what the Israelis and Jews had always been: underdogs. In P.R. terms, the intifada turned Israel into a run-of-the-mill occupier, and American Jews who supported it into run-of-the-mill apologists.

 

American Jews were unprepared for this change of weather, to put it mildly. Historically, their enemies—even in this Hitler-less country—had been on the right. T.S. Eliot’s pokes and jabs; Richard Nixon and Billy Graham grumping together in the Oval Office—these were the villains Jews were used to in American life...

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

Cluelessness across the political spectrum: There are few issues on which I am likely to agree with Sidney Blumenthal, nor with The Guardian, the newspaper in which he has an article today. But reading through the first half of his skewing of Karen Hughes's "Innocents Abroad" tour of Arab nations, I admit to emitting a chuckle or two:

When two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned this year in frustration, in the face of the precipitous loss of US prestige around the globe, Bush found Hughes a new slot. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior state department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the US.

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is, of course, the most populous Arab country... Saudi Arabia is our second stop; it's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, and yet is proud of the saying that 'All are Turks'."

Hughes appeared as one of the pilgrims satirised by Mark Twain in his 1869 book Innocents Abroad, on his trip on the Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. "None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty... We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans - Americans!"

Hughes's simple, sincere and unadorned language reveals the administration's inner mind. Her ideas on terrorism and its solution are straightforward. "Terrorists," she said, "their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up." That is: somehow, magically, these evil-doers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve.

"Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why Mr Bush mentions God in his speeches, Hughes asked him whether he was aware that "previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our constitution cites 'one nation under God'."

"Well, never mind," he said.

Then, however, Blumenthal veers into moonbat territory, citing University of Chicago poli-sci prof, Robert Pape, who says that Hughes and Bush are unintentionally demonstrating that Osama bin Laden's arguments about America are correct--and thus unintentionally assisting bin Laden.

How so? According to the good professor, who has conducted extensive research on the subject, for Islamic fundamentalists, and, more specifically, suicide terrorist,  to be motivated to act, a particular set of circumstances must be in place. First, there "must be the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize; second, there must be a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals."

In other words, it's about what we do to provoke them, not about any insidious ideology lurking in their ancient text which has resulted in the ebb and flow of violent jihad ever since Mo.

In his own way, it seems, Pape is as clueless as Hughes. And so is Sidney Blumenthal, for citing Pape's nareshkeit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:40 | link | comments

The son rises in the (Middle) East: Egyptians recently got to cast a vote in a presidential election a measure which is seen as part of the "democratization" of the Arab portion of the Middle East.

Credit for this new openness is usually claimed by the U.S., which fronted the invasion of Iraq and brought rule of the people are by the people to Iraqis (with a few glitches still to be worked out). Others may point to Natan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy", which is said to have inspired the Bush push to champion democracy in the region.

Now someone else has stepped forward to receive the accolades--none other than democratically-elected despot Hosni Mubarak's heir apparent (or dauphin), his son Gamal.

Gamal says he's responsible for reforms in Egypt, so don't be giving any kudos to the Americans, 'kay?

There are two ways to look at Gamal's statement: the optimist's way and the pessimist's way.

Let start with the optimist's: Gamal is a forward-looking, politically-ambitious young man who believes that Egypt will be stronger and have a more vibrant economy if it becomes a democracy.

Now the pessimist's: Gamal is a backward-looking, politically-ambitious despot-in-waiting looking to raise his profile so he's ready to step into Dad's job when the time is ripe.

Hmm. I wonder which view is more realistic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:08 | link | comments

Riders on the storm: In Darfur yesterday, hundreds of Arabs riding horses and camels rode into a refugee camp and slaughtered 29 unarmed civilians. The mounted barbarians are thought to have also attacked and burned a nearby village.

Had the atrocity been committed by Jews against Palestinians, you can bet it would have been featured on front pages across the world. News shows on TV would have led with it, probably for days, and the UN would be called into special session to vent international spleen about the murderous Israelis. A number of churches would even now be preparing boycotts against the Jewish state, and some universities would announce they would be divesting their Israeli holdings, so as not to defile the rest of their portfolio.

Don't think so? Recall the tummult following the faux-massacre at Jenin, which is still cited as evidence of Israeli "overkill".

About the murders in Darfur committed by atavistic jihadis, you'll likely hear nary a peep.

Must be because the Arabs used a Seventh Century mode of transportation instead of tanks, right? Much more colourful.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments (1)

The Eating Fields: A restaurant in Cambodia may have come up with the worst theme ever for an eating establishment: a nostalgic take on the Pol Pot regime. From Reuters:

A new Cambodian cafe is offering diners a slice of life under the Khmer Rouge, with a menu featuring rice-water and leaves, and waitresses dressed in the black fatigues worn by Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist guerrillas.

Newly opened across the road from Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng "S-21" Khmer Rouge interrogation and torture centre, the cafe is meant to remind Cambodians of the 1975-1979 genocide in which an estimated 1.7 million people died.

But the set "theme menu" of salted rice-water, followed by corn mixed with water and leaves, and dove eggs and tea at $6 a time is proving too much to swallow for many visitors.

"Our grandfather and other relatives lost their lives under Pol Pot's regime," said 17-year-old manager Hakpry Agnchealy, whose brother owns the business. "This is more than just a restaurant. It is to remind us of those who died."

"We opened two weeks ago, but have only had two Europeans coming here to eat. We don't know how much longer we can go," she said.

Faithful to the Khmer Rouge era, when many victims starved to death after a disastrous attempt to transform the country into a peasant utopia, the waitresses are barefoot and clad in the black pyjamas and red-white scarves of the guerrillas.

Speakers blare out tunes celebrating the 1975 toppling of U.S.-backed president General Lon Nol and the walls are adorned with the baskets, hoes and spades Pol Pot hoped would power his jungle-clad south-east Asian homeland to communist prosperity.

Recognising that many tourists might not be able to stomach such a close brush with the Killing Fields, the "Khmer Rouge Experience Cafe" is also promoting itself to those wishing to shed a few pounds... 

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

Frum and Post eat crow: In its roundup of Jewish news snippets called "The News in Brief", the Canadian Jewish News has an item about a statement that appeared in the National Post earlier in the month (and which I missed at the time). Here's the snippet:

TORONTO — The National Post and columnist David Frum have settled a defamation suit filed by the Council of American-Islamic Relations Canada (CAIR-CAN) and its chair Sheema Khan stemming from two columns last fall that criticized the group and Khan. A statement published Sept. 17 in the Post said that “David Frum and the National Post acknowledge that neither [Khan] nor [CAIR-CAN] advocates or promotes terrorism” and that the group is “a national grassroots organization with the stated purpose of empowering Canadian Muslims through community education.”

What, no statement about Islam being a peaceful, beautiful religion which affirms the equality of women?

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

Alive and kicking: Big news: Oprah's book club is going back to reading  books by living authors! Oprah has been eschewing writers with a pulse ever since that fracas with Jonathan Franzen a few years ago, opting instead for authors like Tolstoy and Steinbeck who can't talk back and embarrass her. But since her book club had become more like a homework assignment than a friendly chat about the latest woman-in-peril-abused-by-a-husband-or-relative-but-able-to-find-gumption-and-fulfillment tomes she used to feature, she's decided to give the extant another go. And besides, it's not as much fun with dead guys; Leo and John aren't around to collect the kudos--and more crucially, the big bucks--that ensue when Oprah selects your book.

The New York Times has an amusing piece by a would-be novelist who wants Oprah's light to shine on him:

MAY I first say how lovely you looked on the latest cover of your marvelous magazine, of which I am a very big fan. What a neat idea, putting yourself on the cover of every issue. You certainly like the color red. (How weird, me too!)

Let me also say that I do not care for the work of Jonathan Franzen. What "corrections" was he even talking about? And that whole bit where Chip goes to Ukraine? Hello! I might add that if you were to invite me on your show or pick my novel (which at no point mentions Ukraine or lesbian sex or what was, to my mind, a very cruel, though, in its own way, a very funny depiction of an incontinent elderly Alzheimer patient) for your book club I would say what my parents taught me to say, which is "Yes, Oprah, thank you very much." James Joyce often wrote run-on sentences.

Did I mention that I recently completed my first novel? It's called "Pass the Gravy, Nana."

It is, Oprah, a novel about family. Well, more a dysfunctional family (aren't they all, ha-ha!). A dysfunctional family from Bolivia that is involved in corn (autobiographical) but also in drug dealing and child prostitution (made up!). They move to Appleton, Wis., after their farm is burned to the ground by the Medellín cartel for late payment. There, they are haunted by the ghost of former Senator Joseph McCarthy (like me, an Appleton native). It's a comedy but also deeply emotional.

The center of the book is Nana. Like you, Oprah, she is a strong, vibrant, tough-yet-gentle former communist laborer and soccer star for the Bolivian national team. (She played disguised as a man because, sadly, Nana has the Bolivian woman's curse of copious facial hair. Although in no way do I mean to suggest that you are a communist laborer or have issues with facial hair.)

What do I mean by "Eastern establishment?" And by that I mean that Wally Lamb would be making grande skim doppio macchiatos were it not for your vision! My point is that words like "Yale," "Penn," "squash," "Martha's Vineyard," "Chestnut Hill types" - like Gary in "The Corrections!" Honestly, Oprah, what "corrections" was he talking about? And good for you for disinviting him to your show, which makes me laugh and cry! How do you do this? My larger point eludes me.

You ask me what my "writing" style is. Ironically enough, it is Wally-Lamb-meets-Toni-Morrison- has-lunch-with-Walt-Disney. I would remind you that a woman is the central character of my book, and, coincidentally, many women are part of your book club, which I think should have a T-shirt, which I would wear!

Question: Has anyone ever finished Don DeLillo's "Underworld?"...

Answer: Actually I have. But it was years ago, and for the life of me, I coudn't tell you what it was about (although, as I recall, it had something to do with baseball and garbage).

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments

Available in two versions--mutilated and non-mutilated: Move over, Barbie. There's a new gal (well, a semi-new gal)  in Damascus, and she's putting decadent, scantily-clad, sexually promiscuous dolls like you to shame. From The Middle East Times:

Syrian girls have abandoned Barbie dolls in favor of a homegrown, Muslim version that comes complete with Islamic clothing and a tiny pink prayer mat.

The black-haired doll named Fulla is about the same size and build of Mattel's classic doll, but is boxed wearing a black abaya (Arab cloak-like garment) and matching headscarf, along with the mat.

NewBoy Design Studio, based in Syria, introduced the doll in November 2003, and she has quickly become a bestseller all over the region, The New York Times reports.

In Damascus a Fulla doll sells for about $16, in a country where average per capita income hovers around $100 per month.

In corner shops in Syria , Egypt, Jordan and Qatar there is Fulla breakfast cereal or Fulla chewing gum, Fulla bicycles and girls wearing trademark "Fulla pink" clothing.

However, Maan Abdel Salam, a Syrian women's rights advocate, said that Fulla was emblematic of a trend toward Islamic conservatism sweeping the Middle East.

"If this doll had come out 10 years ago, I don't think it would have been very popular," he said.

The most telling line in the article is the one in bold: The Syrian economy is in such dire shape that the average family would have to scrape together over 15 per cent of its monthy income to purchase one of these Islamic Barbies.

Update: Looks like The Middle East Times is, well, behind the times. According to a story in the St. Petersburg Times-Floridian--written in a disconcertingly upbeat style--Fulla is almost as sexy, cheeky and fashionable as her American prototype. Apart from Fulla being more of a hearth and home type of gal than Barbie, who's embarked on any number of exciting but ultimately short-lived careers in her life, it seems there's only one major difference between them: no Ken.

Good thing. We wouldn't want any of Fulla's male relatives to have to take steps to preserve her (i.e. the family's) honour.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments (4)

That's his road map and he's stickin' to it--or is he?: After resorting to some unilaterateral measures, including the recent withdrawal from Gaza, Ariel Sharon affirmed that he still sees the quartet's "road map" as the only route to peace in our time. From the Jerusalem Post:

"There is no other plan besides the road map," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday a day after key officials declared their support for more unilateral steps.

Sharon, who addressed an economic conference in Tel Aviv, said, "This country is plagued by rumors. Yesterday such a rumor began circulating, a rumor which emanated from unfounded comments, as if Israel was examining other plans."

"Israel is not and will not examine any other plan; there is only one plan – the road map. It is the best plan for the future of Israel," Sharon emphasized.

According to the prime minister, "One ambassador after another approached the Prime Minister's Office to determine if the rumor was correct, including a very stern appeal from Washington."

Now, it could be that Sharon has been caught up in the whole post-withdrawal euphoria which seems to have swept the State Department and that he, like they, think now is an opportune moment to press on to a final settlement.

And maybe apes and pigs can fly. More likely, Sharon is saying things he thinks the Americans want to hear, but knows that, since Abbas is uwilling to reign in it his seethers--the step which sets the rest of the road map in motion--the map has become obsolete.

A clue to Sharon's true intentions come from those two "key officials" who (intentionally? unintentionally? hard to say) let the chatool out of the bag:

On Wednesday, outgoing OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) and Eival Gilady, former head of strategic planning in the IDF, came out in favor of further unilateral Israeli steps.

Ze'evi and Gilady's comments, made at a Tel Aviv University symposium, dovetailed with comments Sharon's top political advisor Eyal Arad made Tuesday night at a symposium in Herzliya sponsored by the Reut Institute.

"Disengagement was not a strategic move, despite its importance, but rather a tactical one," Arad said.

He said, however, that if in the future the stalemate with the Palestinians continues, it would be possible for disengagement, in the form of further unilateral acts, to become Israeli strategy.

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

Bin Laden and the Brits: The Times has an astonishing report today. Apparently, as he was planning the  9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden was simultaneously toying with the idea of seeking asylum in Old Blighty:

HE CLAIMS to hate everything the West stands for. But yesterday it emerged that Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Britain even as he was planning the September 11 attacks on the US.

The al-Qaeda leader wanted to abandon his base in Sudan at the end of 1995 and asked some of his followers in London to sound out whether he would be able to move to Britain.

Michael Howard, who was then Home Secretary, recalls how his aides told him of the asylum request from the Saudi-born militant of whom the world knew little of ten years ago. A number of his brothers and other relatives, all members of the wealthy bin Laden construction empire, owned properties in London by the mid-1990s.

The teenage bin Laden had reportedly toured Europe with his family and became an Arsenal fan, though there is no record of his ever having been to a match at Highbury.

The astonishing approach to the British authorities happened only months after bin Laden had secretly organised a terror summit in Manila in January 1995 to begin planning how hijackers would turn passenger planes into flying bombs. He called it the “Bojinka plot”, which is Arabic slang for an explosion.

By this time bin Laden had also transferred some of his considerable personal fortune to London for his followers to establish terror cells here and across Europe...

Guess he thought he'd fit right into the whole "Londonistan" milieu. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:09 | link | comments

Arrests put a damper on politically-ambitious terrorists: I know I'm not supposed to find the following story funny (in a bleak, black, what-a-crazy-world-we-live-in kind of way), but I can't help it; I do. From the Globe and Mail:

For a central campaign headquarters on the day before a municipal vote, the discreet Ramallah office of the Reform and Change party is eerily quiet.

Faxes and letters are left unread in mailboxes. Desks are stacked with untouched papers. Only three staff members and a large poster with an Arabic H as a centrepiece at the doorway are left to show that this is the West Bank campaign headquarters for Hamas, the militant group trying to convert popular support into political muscle.

It was dealt a blow this week after Israeli security forces arrested 415 suspected militants connected to Hamas and Islamic Jihad between Saturday night and yesterday afternoon. Hamas leaders say the sweep caught 35 of its 450 municipal election candidates, along with some campaign co-ordinators and staff. An independent list compiled by the National Democratic Institute, which is supplying election observers, on Tuesday showed 27 candidates, co-ordinators and electoral support staff in custody, with more names expected.

Hamas had been expected to do well in this third of four rounds of municipal polling, as it has in two previous ballots. The vote is seen as a bellwether for parliamentary elections in January, in which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's more secular Fatah party is expected to struggle to hold on to power.

"If the arrests stop now, maybe we will be able to find substitute candidates to carry on with our political program. However, if Israel carries on the arrests in the West Bank, it will be extremely difficult to continue with the election process," said one of Hamas's central campaign co-ordinators, Abu Mustafa, who insisted on using a pseudonym. He and his remaining colleagues are no longer sleeping at home, after one man's house was raided by Israeli troops, and they spend little time at the office.

While Hamas brags of reaping sympathy votes for its jailed candidates -- who are permitted under Palestinian electoral law to run for election and hold office from prison for up to four years -- Abu Mustafa knows this cannot last forever. "It will weaken, definitely, the ability to be effective, and to come out with new and effective leadership," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has warned that Israel would not co-operate with Palestinian parliamentary elections in January if Hamas - whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel -- was allowed to participate...

Observers say the kidnapping (and killing of Israeli businessman Sasson Nuriel), at a time when Hamas leaders in Gaza were celebrating the Israeli withdrawal, is emerging evidence of a hard-line faction within Hamas that is not entirely under the control of their political masters. The organization is also suffering from an accidental explosion at a Hamas rally in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza last week that killed 20 people, including several children.

"That made a lot of people angry, which is the problem they've got," said Michael Murphy, director of the National Democratic Institute office in Gaza and the West Bank, who said Hamas is now juggling its image of resistance with its attempts at political involvement.

"I think Hamas is growing up, and it could go the same way that Fatah has gone -- every day there seems to be a new faction popping up that wasn't there before."

Quick now: What's more pathetic and contemptible? a) A bunch of terrorists whose political dreams are being scotched by their own haplessness. Or b) a Globe and Mail freelancer who writes a story in such a way that one is meant to dredge up some sympathy for them? The answer, obviously, is a), but reporter Carolynne Wheeler should be recognized for her P.R. efforts on behalf of the Jew-killing terrorists who, gosh-darn it, can't seem to catch a break if their lives depended on it (which, as it turns out, they do).

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:38 | link | comments

Terrorists as heroes: Coming soon to a theatre near you--a picaresque tale about two young Palestinian amigos in hot pursuit of incorporeal virgins. The movie, called Paradise Now--get it?--is a French/German/Dutch production distributed by Warner's Independent Picutures. It's set for release on Oct. 28. Here's how Yahoo descrbes it: 

Two youths from the Gaza strip are just 48 hours away from becoming the latest suicide bombers. Two young Palestinian men, Khaled and Said, are both recruited to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The two men are allowed to spend what is presumably their last night alive with their families. However, since absolute secrecy must be maintained and they can tell nobody of their mission, theirs can be no proper farewell. The next morning, the men are brought to the border. The bombs have been attached to their bodies in such a way as to make them completely hidden from view. However, the operation does not go according to plan and the two friends lose sight of each other. Separated from each other and left to their own devices, it's up to them to face their destiny and stand up for their convictions...

Can't hardly wait. Next up from Warner's--how about a remake of Schindler's List from the Nazis' point of view?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:06 | link | comments

Little Boy blue: Poor Boy Assad. Clinging to power in his terror-riven state, even though he possesses not a fraction of his late father's charisma. Feeling beseiged from all sides just because Syria continues to participate in the insurgency in Iraq and murdered the most popular politician in Lebanon.

What's a chinless, gormless, former eye guy to do?

Why, what else but try to divert attention away from his own failed regime by fomenting violence against Israel?

The Jerusalem Post reports that Assad met with some excitable lads from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and asked them to amp up their terrorism against Israel so as to take some of the heat off of him.

Silly Boy, tricks are for Yids. Don't you know that the Jews have your number--and your foul suggestions are going to backfire both on you and your frothing terrorist minions?:

(Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev) Boim told the Post that Assad's support for terror was not new. "[Terrorism] is a regular way of life [for the Syrian regime], one which Assad the father began and Assad the son is continuing," he said.

"It is a fact that over the years, Syria has hosted these terror organizations. This gives Assad a direct connection to the snakes' heads, the heads of the terror organizations," Boim told the Post.

While Boim wouldn't say whether Israel had independent intelligence confirming the meeting in Damascus, Boim asserted that "you don't need special intelligence" to recognize the Syrian regime's connection to Palestinian terror.

Earlier this week, Assad arrived in Cairo for an urgent meeting called at Egypt's request. According to Palestinian sources, who reportedly also gave the information about the Damascus meeting to the Egyptians, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak told Assad not to interfere in the Palestinian arena.

Boim added that while Israel would still hold the Palestinian Authority formally responsible for terror from its territory, "We don't care at this point exactly who is doing the shooting. Any missiles or Kassam artillery barrages will receive a response in kind. We will do what Abu Mazen [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] refuses to do. Our hands will not be tied in any way.

"Abu Mazen made the greatest mistake he could," Boim continued, "when he invited Hamas into the political system without forcing it to take even the very first step toward participation in a democratic system: disarmament."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

Outnumbered by despots: A perceptive and mordant look by Jonathan Gurwitz (link via RealClear Politics) at the hapless, hopeless, comically-misnamed international body, the United Nations.

Nothing "united" about it.

After mentioning some of the "enlightened" leaders who showed up to scold America at the recent world summit--a rogue's gallery of thugs, goons and despots from various parts of the world--Gurwitz notes that after four years of effort, the organization couldn't even arrive at an acceptable definition of terrorism. This failure, says Gurwitz, is symbolic of the UN's impotence:

The United Nations can't condemn what it won't define, can't fix what many of its member states want to remain broken. And so terrorism, like nuclear proliferation and U.N. reorganization, went unresolved.

The statements of some of the world's most oppressive leaders are integrally tied to this failure. There are, according to Freedom House, 88 members of the United Nations that are full-fledged democracies. The rest — 103 — are not.

Citizens of free societies tend to look on the United Nations as the last, best hope for humanity. Leaders of despotic societies look at it as a tool for undeserved legitimacy, a vehicle to spread ideology and — as the oil-for-food scandal has demonstrated — an international trust off which they can aggrandize power and wealth.

As long as the United Nations makes no fundamental distinction between free and unfree nations and legitimate and illegitimate governments, the lofty goals set for it by Annan will remain a distant vision.

On the plus side, I hear the food in the UN cafeteria is mighty tasty.

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

Big boom: The culture which glorifies martyrdom, strapping explosives on the chests of youngsters who've been fed a steady diet of hatred, is bound to suffer from certain traumas. It must be deeply unsettling, for example, to be a child watching a parade featuring some of your favourite Jew-hating goons, only to witness one of their floats suddenly blow up.

Be that as it may, Islam Online suggests another reason for these kids' trauma: sonic booms from Israeli jets. It is the sight and sound of these planes--and not their culture of Jew-hatred--which causes "Palestinian children to feel insecure, to suffer nightmare, and to grow up hating the Jewish state":

As the Palestinian Intifada marks its fifth anniversary Wednesday, September 28, the suffering of Palestinian children is still as high as ever, with nightmares and fear making them bear the brunt of Israeli psychological warfare over the skies of Gaza as fighter jets unleash sonic booms.

A sustained Israeli bombing campaign against what it calls "militant infrastructure" since fighters launched a new cycle of rocket attacks Friday – in retaliation to the killing of 19 Palestinians blamed by Hamas on an Israeli missile -- has been accompanied by routine booms from jets breaking the sound barrier.

"We haven't been able to sleep for four days. The raids, whether they are real or not, have a devastating effect on the mental health of my children," 32-year-old mother Ibtissam Abu Hashem, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"If we grown-ups are frightened, what can you say about them?"

Overnight, during the school run and afternoon siesta time, Israeli fighter jets have periodically roared through the skies fast and low enough to cause sonic booms that shatter windows and send children running for cover.

Ten-year-old Ahmed has suffered from nightmares ever since his school, run by the powerful Islamic resistance movement Hamas was destroyed in an Israeli air raid.

"I'm afraid the Jews will shell our house after hitting the school," he said...

So inconsiderate, those Israelis, to leave their airplanes unmuffled when responding to rocketfire emanating from Gaza.

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

Consider the source: Conventional thinking, backed up by several accounts on the ground, has held that a large proportion of the "insurgents" in Iraq are Saudis enticed by the prospect of waging jihad--thinking which caused a great deal of embarrassment in the corridors of Saudi power. A recently-released report, however, rejects the notion that the Saudis are taking an active role in the insurgency, and says 90 per cent of the 30,000 or so excitable lads are "Sunni Arab Iraqis motivated by fear of Shiite domination or anger over lost power."

Some of the other nationalities who comprise the remaining 10 per cent include, in declining order, Algerians, Syrians and Yemenis.

And, oh  yeah, there are a few Saudis scattered about, but the report places their number at a paltry 350, and says about 130 of them have either been killed or captured.

Where did the think-tank, the Washington-based Center for Strategic Studies, get its information? AP reports it was "compiled from estimates provided by Saudi intelligence services based on interegations of captured militants and other sources and by intelligence agencies of other governments in the region. It does not identify the other nations."

Oh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:32 | link | comments

Tired of Hamas?: Can the Palestinians' love affair with death cultists Hamas be coming to an end? Maybe. From the Globe and Mail:

Outside the hovels of the Jabalya refugee camp opposite the blood-speckled curb where 20 Palestinians died from an explosion during a gun-toting Hamas celebration parade last week, stood neat rows of white plastic chairs under a long green-coloured mourning tent -- all courtesy of Hamas.

But Fawzi Wadee, who just returned from the funeral of his 10-year-old son, was unimpressed with the gesture of support.

The unemployed 32-year-old father of four felt no gratitude toward Hamas, which called his son 'a martyr,' blaming the Israelis for last week's explosion. Mr. Wadee, in fact, pins the blame on Hamas for the death of his son, who succumbed yesterday morning to wounds in his head from three shards of metal.

"I'm angry at the Hamas," said Mr. Wadee, his voice low from lack of sleep due to long stays at the hospital and restless nights as low-flying Israeli fighter jets screamed across the Gaza Strip in a series of retaliatory assaults. "Before I supported them. Now I don't."

The militant celebrations and rocket attacks that until recently earned Hamas accolades from Gazans have become a source of resentment, forcing the group to strike a more conciliatory attitude toward Israel...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:12 | link | comments

Dancing Rabbis: And to help dispel the gloom "engendered" (please, stop me before I use the word again) by the story below, here's a link sent to me by my cousin, G.L., who recently made aliyah.

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

Doom and gloom: Today's depressing article comes courtesy Cal Thomas in the Jewish World Review. Surveying the "goodwill" engendered by Israel's pullout from Gaza, Mr. Thomas concludes that the Jewish state has only hastened its inevitable extinction at the hands of "well-meaning" peace mongers:

The "quartet" of the U.N., the United States, Russia and the European Union has succeeded only in pressuring Israel to give and give and give. Whatever pressure it has applied to the Palestinian-Hamas-Fatah side has produced no cessation of violence, no disarmament and, in fact, no concessions at all.

The frustrating part is that no one pays attention to the pronouncements of the terrorists. Hamas announced it would flood Gaza with its soldiers once Israel withdrew. Islamo-fascist clerics call for the annihilation of Israel and tell jihadists it is their religious duty to kill Jews and Christians. Our "friends," the Saudis and Egyptians allow this rhetoric to flow unimpeded from their mosques and in their government-run media. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration and its State Department sink deeper into denial and pretend the terrorists don't mean what they say. The terrorists trumpet their plans and then carry them out. After they have caused death and destruction, they promise to do it again. Objectives can't be made clearer than that.

Will a second coming of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister make a difference? Perhaps. He once told me he had learned a valuable lesson from his own concessions during the Clinton Administration. Netanyahu should tell Israelis and the world that if he again becomes Prime Minister he will not budge on more land concessions until the Palestinian-Hamas-Fatah side begins responding positively to all of Israel's concessions.

Having given so much and received nothing in return, it may now be too late to save Israel, but giving more without getting anything ensures Israel's extinction sooner, rather than later.

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

Starts with "wh", ends with "re": And today's winner of "the leader who takes the cake for most egregious behaviour" award (drum roll, coronet-blast please): Tony Blair.

Mr Blair earns the prize for the report (in UPI) that he is trying to unload $40 million dollars worth of jet fighters in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, lest you forget (which I'm sure you don't) are deeply implicated in funding and perpetuating the World Wide Jihad (or WWJ, and no, it's not  the Islamic equivalent of the WWE).

And don't think they're planning to make it easy for Blair to close the deal. Far from it. If Tony wants to be sure of the sale, he must first to agree to turn over and let the Saudis soundly roger him. To be specific:

...the Saudis are holding out on the purchase over three demands. The first two are the resumption of British Airways flights to Riyadh, currently canceled due to terrorism fears; and that a corruption investigation implicating the Saudi ruling family and British arms-maker BAE should be dropped.

The third is the most contentious: Saudi Arabia wants Britain to revoke asylum and expel two anti-Saudi dissidents, Saad al-Faqih and Mohammed al-Masari. The Saudis have been trying for years to get their hands on Faqih, who they claim was involved in a plot to assassinate the recently enthroned King Abdullah.

There's a name for someone willing to sell himself for a few measly million dollars (see above).

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:55 | link | comments

Oh no. It can't be. Don't tell me. Is there light at the end of the quagmire?: CSM headline: U.S. logging gains against al Qaeda in Iraq.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:36 | link | comments

Nukes don't kill people; the person who pushes the button activating  the nukes kills people: At least, so says an article in The Guardian, which suggests that, since Iran is going to go nuclear no matter what, we should be more concerned about who controls the nukes than the fact that the nukes exist.

And the power we should really be wary of is--wait for it--the same one the mully-bullies have unaffectionately dubbed 'Great Satan':

Even more pressing is the threat of invasion from the US as soon as it is done in Iraq. The Americans now either control or have influence and military bases in almost every neighbouring country of Iran. What else but nuclear weapons could stop a US administration such as Bush's invading Iran, the world's second biggest producer of oil?

Sigh. Because it's always--and only--about the oil, right? And, by the way, did you know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

One more thing: If Iran is the world's second biggest producer of oil, why the heck is it itching to build nuclear power plants? Instead, why not set up a few hundred thousand windmills: the immense quantity of hot air which courses through the mullocracy every day should be enough to top up its power needs for at least several decades.

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

Damned if you do or you don't: Now that the world community has stood up to Iran's mully-bullies by referring their nuclear exploits to the Security Council, where the country faces possible sanctions, the bullies are falling back on some old habits. That is, when all else fails, threaten, threaten, threaten.

At the moment, the irrational totalitarians have hauled out that tried and untrue favorite: if you force us to go the Security Council (because you want us to stop building nukes), we're going to go ahead and build our nukes. And if you don't force us to go the the Security Council (because you want us to stop building nukes), we're going to go ahead and build our nukes.

Tehran must be one of the few places on the planet where that type of logic makes sense.

Update: Islam the Sham and the Ayatollahs sing:

Uno, dos, ahchud, shtayim, shalosh, arba—
Ahmadinejad told ya
To get off our case.
Then he went on scold you
‘Cause we’re still in the race.
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies, mully-bullies.

Don’t want none o’ your sanctions.
Stick ‘em all in your ear.
‘Cause the mullahs mean business,
And we got nothing to fear.
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies, mully-bullies.

So don’t try to persuade us
Or tell us what to do.
'Cause in the nuke/phallic sweepstakes
We’re much bigger pricks than you.
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies
Mully-bullies, mully-bullies, mully-bullies.

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

The global fight for women's rights: A perceptive article by Ralph Peters in USA Today points out the War on Terror is also a War on Male Chauvinism--especially in its Islamic guise:

The greatest social revolution in history is underway all around us: The emancipation of women. Advanced in our own society, elsewhere the battle for women's rights lies at the heart of colossal struggles over the future of great religions and civilizations.

The Washington establishment would shrink from any such claim, but the Global War on Terror is a fight over the social, economic and cultural roles of women. The core issues for the terrorists are the interpretation of God's will and the continued oppression of women. Nothing so threatens Islamic extremists as the freedom Western women enjoy.

Equal partners

The sudden transition of women from men's property to men's partners in our own country unleashed dazzling creative energies. In the historical blink of an eye, we doubled our effective human capital — and made our society immeasurably more humane. Our half-century of stunning economic growth has many roots, but none goes deeper than the expansion of opportunities for women.

But such unprecedented freedom threatens traditional societies. Behavior patterns that prevailed for millennia are suddenly in doubt. Relationships that granted males the power of life and death over female relatives have disappeared from successful cultures. Defensively, the failing cultures left behind cling harder than ever to the old ways amid the tumult of global change.

The true symbols of the War on Terror are the Islamic veil and the two-piece woman's business suit...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:40 | link | comments

Hughes on first: More evidence that Karen Hughes, Dubya's "goodwill envoy" currently on tour in the Middle East, is seriously out of her depth. Hughes is on a mission to drum up support for the U.S. in a regioni of the world where her nation is reviled. The State Department seems to think it's a matter of "rebranding" the American image, as if the nation were a pair of jeans or a bar of soap. So far, Hughes' visit--she was in Cairo yesterday--has demonstrated that that's going to be a tough sell, as they say in the marketing game.

But Hughes is going to give it the old Foggy Bottom try. Here are a few of the tactics being employed in States' strategic plan--and why each is doomed to fail.

• The "We're Religious Too" tactic: Wherein the Foggy Botton Brobdignagian (physically, Hughes is, well, huge) tries to convince Muslims that, like them, Americans are suffused by a deeply-held faith. Why the tactic is doomed to fail: Because, no matter how sincere their religious convictions, Americans (except for the Muslim ones) belong to the wrong religion.
• The "We Brought you Democracy" tactic: At the American University of Cairo University yesterday, Hughes hinted that it was American pressure which enabled Egyptians to vote in their first democratic election, and asked for a show of hands of those who had availed themselves of this perogative. Only one person raised his hand. Now, it could be that most in the audience--students who had participated in an exchange program with American high school students and had visited the U.S.--were too young to vote (the voting age in Egypt is 18). Or it could be...Why the tactic is doomed to fail:...that Egyptians are somewhat cynical about democracy in Egypt, knowing that just because you get to vote for a despot--who, in any case, ran without any serious opposition--it doesn't mean that, presto change-o, you live in a democracy.
• The "'We're Throwing Heaps o' Cash at You" tactic: Hughes took the occasion of her tour to announce that the U.S. will be spending $10 million on a special program to upgrade and restore some Egyptian antiquities. Why the tactic is doomed to fail: The U.S. already throws away gazillions in Egypt and other Arab states which buys it, you should pardon the expression, bupkes. In Islamic terms, the dhimmis are merely giving Muslims their due--paying the jizya, the tax, to their superiors.
• The "Shake Hands With the Moderates" tactic: On Sunday, Hughes met with Sayed Tantawi, the spiritual leader of the University of al-Azhar al-Sharif, a leading Sunni Muslim center, whom she hailed as a voice of moderation in the Muslim world. Dhimmiwatch has a few of the "moderate" leader's "moderate" words, including his calls for a fatwa against America and his support for suicide bombnings in Israel. Why the tactic is doomed to fail: If this is what passes for moderation in the Muslim world, Osama must be a real hard-ass.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:19 | link | comments

Goodwill hunting: Like most Ceeb-tailored stories about Israel, this one is cut on the bias. The headline reads "Israel presses forward with offensive, despite Hamas pledge to halt rocket fire", leading one to believe that Israel, drat those Jews, is offensively offensive, especially when "miliant" group Hamas "pledges" (in good faith, right?) to stop hurling fiery projectiles at Israelis.

The story is written by someone named Ibrahim Barzak, whose ethnicity, I'm sure,  has absolutely no bearing on his interpretation of events and merely reflects the Ceeb's current thinking  about Israel. And even if his background does happen to impinge on his reports, it doesn't matter because he is already totally in synch with the Ceeb.The writer--one Ibramim Barzak (Jewish?)--

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli aircraft attacked suspected weapons factories throughout the Gaza Strip on Monday, pressing an offensive against Palestinian militants despite a pledge by a top Hamas leader to halt rocket fire.

The air strikes knocked out power to eastern Gaza City and damaged several buildings, but no injuries were reported. Israeli security officials said they would wait to see whether Palestinian attacks would in fact halt before calling off the military assault launched over the weekend.

The fighting came ahead of a key vote Monday in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party on when to hold a primary election. It is widely seen as a test of Sharon's leadership.

Sharon, under fire from party hard-liners over recent withdrawal from Gaza two weeks ago, walked out of a stormy Likud meeting Sunday night without delivering his prepared speech. A problem with the sound system prevented him from speaking. Some Likud officials said the system was sabotaged by Sharon opponents.

Israel launched the weekend offensive following a rocket barrage from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns.

It has carried out a series of air strikes, killing four militants and destroying several weapons facilities, and has arrested more than 200 Palestinians. The fighting has destroyed any goodwill from the Gaza pullout and increased already intense pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to confront militants.

I'm sure I speak for many when I say, "What goodwill?" The "goodwill" that was still apparent when hate-addled Hamas members rampaged through synagogues and burnt them to the ground? The "goodwill" engendered when they crowed about how the Israeli withdrawal was a great victory for the tactic of terrorism? The "goodwill" which continues in the Palestinian media, which still glorifies suicide killers and incites hatred against the despised entitiy?

Thanks, Mr.Barzak, but you can take that "goodwill" and stick it in the orifice of your choice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:43 | link | comments

Decommisioning terrorism: Palestinian terrorist groups have put their weapons and explosives out of commission, according to an independent monitor.

Sorry, make that the IRA has put its weapons and explosives out of commission, according to an independent monitor.

We can dream, can't we?

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

Jews and Buddhists: In an article in FrontPage Magazine about how the U.S. government unwittingly funds Palestinian terrorism, Rachel Ehrenfeld and Paul E. Vallely note the disparity in the world's reaction to the destruction of non-Muslim religious symbols by seething Muslims:

On September 11, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared that the synagogues left in Gaza would be destroyed. Shortly afterward mobs of Palestinians torched all the synagogues while the Palestinian police stood by. Unlike the Western world outcry following the destruction of the Buddha statutes in Afghanistan in early 2001 by the Taliban, the silence following the destruction of the Jewish synagogues by the Palestinians is deafening.

Perhaps I could help explain the resounding silence. The statues were Buddhist; the synagogoues were Jewish. Had the statues been Jewish (which, of course, they couldn't have been, given the ancient Jewish restrictions against golden calves and such idols), and the synagogues Jewish, you can be sure that the destruction of the statues would have passed without comment, while the synagogue torching would have been loudly condemned.

All of which makes me think: maybe it's time for God's chosen people to choose Buddha. 

Just jesting, of course. 

Speaking of Buddha, I happen to know several Jewish-Buddhists--JewBus, as they are called. I'm not exactly sure how they reconcile the two religions--which to me seems even less of a "good fit" than "Jews for Jesus--hey, at least their object of veneration was a Jew--but I guess merging two seemingly irreconcilable faiths isn't all that unusual these days. It's part of the "new-agey" environment which mixes together aspects of different religions in one spicy but often unpalatable masala, and sees non-Jewish celebrities like Madonna and Britney Spears wearing red threads on their wrists and drinking outrageously expensive sanctified water to show their allegiance to Kabbalah.

Update: And speaking of celebrities and Kabbah, CBS News is reporting that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, neither of whom is Jewish, were married by a rabbi in "a Kabblah ceremony" on the weekend:

Representatives for Kutcher, 27, and Moore, 42, could not be immediately reached for comment, but both Us Weekly and People magazine reported on their Web sites that the couple was married in Los Angeles area on Saturday.

Here is what Cagle knows about the ceremony: It was a Kaballa (sic) ceremony at the house Kutcher and Moore share in Beverly Hills that was just renovated.

"They waited for the renovation because no marriage can survive a renovation," Cagle says tongue-in-cheek and points out the couple has already been together for two years.

Moore, who starred in "Ghost," "G.I. Jane" and "Striptease," first began dating the younger Kutcher in 2003, just as she was making a highly publicized return to the screen as a high-kicking villain in "Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle."

The ceremony was traditional with men seated on one side and women on the other. It was performed by a rabbi, who is Moore's spiritual adviser and teacher.

You know, I'm really a live-and-let-live kind of gal. But there's something ridiculous, not to mention wrong, with going through the motions of being Jewish when you're not a Jew. There are other religions which welcome you in to the fold without any significant effort or study on your part: Judaism isn't one of them. There is something extremely creepy about seeing superficial Hollywood celebrities taking up a superficial cult and play-acting at being Jewish.

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

To a "t" (word): To hear the Ceeb and Beeb tell it, those excitable boys in dashing Zorro-style masks who aim to turn the Zionist entity into a charnel house are "militants", "actitivits", "rebels"--anything but terrorists. Terrorists and terrorism, the public broadcasters have decreed, are loaded words which cause grave offence in certain quarters. (That these are apt to be some of the same quarters from which the jihad impulse springs is conveniently ignored. Also ignored is the inconsistency which allows reporters and newscasters to refer to a War on Terror, but, curiously, finds it devoid of terrorists.)

Such reticence--borne of political correctless and a fundamental bias against Israel--has become so thoroughly entrenched that when you see the word "terrorist" in print these days, it is actually kind of shocking. I admit to doing a double take this morning at the sight of front page of the National Post. There, in bold, upper case letters, the headline "JETS SILENCE GAZA TERRORISTS". And there, several times  in the body of the article, the "t" word in all its inglory: "the terror group Hamas"; a resumption in "targeted assassinations of top terrorists"; Sharon orders "the arrest of 207 suspected terrorists".

So this morning I say, "Kudos to the Post." For all its flaws, it has the courage to call a terrorist a terrorist. And in today's namby-pamby climate, in which weasel words all too often insinuate themselves into media reports, the courage to speak plainly is to be prized.

(As an aside, as my fingers flew across the keyboard just now--in the race between my thoughts and my fingers, my fingers usually come in a distant second, hence the large number of typos which I often fail to catch, and for which I apologize--I accidentally typed "Gaga" for "Gaza". A typo, yes, but a not inaccurate description of the now Jundenrein region.)

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

Relatively speaking: Arts & Letters Daily has a gorgeous speech by Mexican novelist, Carlos Fuentes. It's about Don Quixote, and how the novel, like no other human endeavour, can reveals truths about humanity and the human condition. And the greatest of all truths, according to Fuentes, is that, no matter what, mankind will continue. Here's a taste (the emphasis in bold letters is Fuentes'):  

"Between pain and nothing, I choose pain", Faulkner famously said, adding: "Man will prevail". And is this not, perhaps, the truth of the novel? Humankind will prevail and it will prevail because, in spite of the accidents of history, the novel tells us that art restores the life in us that was disregarded by the haste of history. Literature makes real what history forgot. And because history is what has been, literature will offer what history has not always been. That is why we will never witness --bar universal catastrophe-- the end of history.

But despite the finely-wrought wording of what follows, it's here that Fuentes and I must part company:

Compare then the words of Franz Kafka and William Faulkner to the half-baked notions of the end of history and the clash of civilizations. I speak as a writer in the Spanish language from a continent that is Iberian, Indian and Mestizo, Black and Mulatto, Atlantic and Pacific, Mediterranean and Caribbean, Christian, Arab and Jewish, Greek and Latin.

If I am faithful to the accomplishments but above all to the purposes, to the attainments as well as to the possibilities of my own culture, I can not accept that we live in a clash of civilizations because all those that I have evoked are mine, not clashing, but talking, speaking to one another, disputing in order to understand, communicating in my very soul the relativity of both triumphalism and dejection, the need to venture what will never perish even if it has fallen back – my ancient Indian and Islamic cultures – and to earn what thinks of itself as permanent – the Western, Christian strains of my being beyond their present sufficiency – and to celebrate the meeting place of all of them, the place of speech and thought and memory and imagination that each one of us carries with him and her, asking us to participate in a dialogue of civilizations and to deny the end of history.

For how can history end as long as we have not said our last word?

For Fuentes, then, it's all relative: triumphalism and dejection; venturing forward and falling back; ancient pre-Columbian civilizations and ancient Islam. No clashes. No discord. Mankind will go on forever as long as we yak it up, each to the other, in the spirit of harmony, dialogue, and communication.

You know, if not for the jihad--which seeks to erase the "speech and thought and memory and imagination" of those who do not espouse the jihadi ideology--that might actually work.

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

Separate but unequal: CTV News showed a brief clip from the opening of the fourth Muslim Women's Games, being held in Tehran. The competition allows Muslim female athletes to compete in their sports while complying with sharia laws regarding female modesty. This might make for some satisfying sport among competitors, but don't expect to see any time shaved off world records: it's hard to go longer, faster, higher when you're wearing a burka.

Still, it's nice to see Muslim women participating in any sort of competitve sport, even if it's only with other Muslim women. And the Games are probably one of the few officially sanctioned venues--maybe the only sactioned venue--in the Muslim world for this kind of competition. As the story on Italian Muslim news site AKI explains:

Islam is not against women's partecipation (sic) in society and in sports, as long as they follow the Islamic teaching" said Elham Buaras, a British Muslim with Sudanese origins working for Muslim News, who pointed out that the Prophet Mohammed himself had said "teach your children horse riding" and not simply teach your "boys".

And while there are various interpretations of Islam, many Muslim women want to or feel compelled to wear the Islamic headscarf.

"Keep the options open" is the catchphrase behind the British team to the Islamic Women's games, Buaras explained, recalling the case of one member taking part. To play in the university's football team, the girl was faced with a dilema, as she was asked not to wear the headscarf.

"A girl should not have to decide whether to follow her religion or the sport she loves. If a Muslim girl wants to wear a hijab, because she believes it is a religious prescription, she should be free to do so".

"The same applies to Muslim school", continues Buaras. "The British government allows religious schools and gives its citizens the option to choose."

"Being equal while maintaining diversity", is how Buaras would like to see the situation in Britain, who argues that this is the official policy in Iran, where women take an active part in politics, business and sport.

The Women's Islamic Games were launched in 1993 to give athletes from Muslim countries an opportunity to play sport at an international level, while not violating Sharia law by competing in front of men in inappropriate attire.

At the Tehran games the athletes must wear the headscarves in presence of men, confirms Buaras, but once males are excluded from the audience and there are no male referees and no media coverage, women are free to remove some clothing and compete dressed more comfortably...

But don't think because they're forced to wear cumbersome costumes, can't compete against non-Muslims in other sporting venues, and aren't allowed to have their events covered by the media that these women are in any way treated as second class citizens by their societies. Far from it. Why, all you have to do is read the Games' mission statement to see what's really going on here:

Sports and physical education is regarded as necessity for women since, (sic) they take on their shoulders some specific responsibilites in families and societies, (sic) wich is very important. Holy religion of Islam deeply concerns (sic) sport and advise the training sport (sic) activity by parents to children as a religious duty.

I trust that's clear.

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

Standing up to a bully: For weeks--months--we've heard the threats: refer us to the Security Council and you'll face "dire consquences", "increased radicalism"; tell us we can't build our nukes, and we'll move ahead even faster,  just to to spite you. And for weeks, months, the EUnuchs have backed away and backed down, afraid of what the crazed croc might do. Now, finally, someone has said, "basta!"--enough. And guess what? The bully, being a bully, doesn't seem inclined to carry through with his threats. From Forbes:

TEHRAN (AFX) - Iran blasted as 'illegal' a resolution passed by the UN's nuclear watchdog that sets the country up for referral to the Security Council, but in the face of mounting international pressure asserted negotiations were still possible.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki signalled that his government is still considering how to respond to the text, after initial threats of a radical backlash that could lead to an escalation of the crisis.

'In no way will Iran give up its right to nuclear technology, including the fuel cycle for peaceful purposes, as is enshrined in the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),' Mottaki told the official news agency IRNA, saying the 'resolution has no legal foundation and is therefore not acceptable'.

But he also struck a more conciliatory tone by saying Iran is 'committed to the NPT and does not see the path of negotiations closed'...

We shall see if the US and the U.K. have the cojones to keep up the pressure.

Update: In defeat, a victory--at least, that's how the Tehran Times is spinning it for the hometown crowd:

On Saturday, Western countries failed to win an international consensus against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting in Vienna and were forced to pass a resolution on Iran through a vote.On Saturday, Western countries failed to win an international consensus against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting in Vienna and were forced to pass a resolution on Iran through a vote.On Saturday, Western countries failed to win an international consensus against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting in Vienna and were forced to pass a resolution on Iran through a vote...

Update: One of the most irrational regimes on the planet calls the UN resolution "illogical".

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments

A preview of life without Israel: A "heartwarming" take on the chaos which saw thousands of rampaging Palestinians strorm across the Egyptian border. From Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram:

For seven days Palestinians in Gaza experienced life without borders, and borders without fear: that is, without Israel. Thousands streamed back and forth through the punctured walls, earthworks and fences that separate Egypt from Gaza or "Rafah Sinai" from "Rafah sumud," the most lethal front-line of the Intifada.

How the fortresses were breached depends on who you ask. According to Captain Gamal -- a track-suited Egyptian police officer, with a glint in his eye and a smile permanently on his lips -- it was a "government decision, a humanitarian gesture to allow relatives on both sides of Rafah to join hands and taste some freedom," he grinned.

According to a UN official, it was a fit of Egyptian pique, angered by Israel's decision on 7 September to close Rafah crossing without agreement on when, where or how Palestinians could leave Gaza. "They must have got an amber light from the Americans," he surmised. "Can you imagine Egypt opening the border unilaterally?"

According to locals, it was a Palestinian right, sparked by the killing of a Palestinian boy by Egyptian police on 12 September. In retaliation a truckload of Hamas fighters blasted holes through Israel's eight-metre high iron wall. No Egyptian tried to thwart them.

But whatever the cause, the breach allowed a flood of humanity that no force could contain or repel. There were thousands of Palestinian family reunions but one stuck in everyone's mind.

It was of an old man, crawling through a crack in the wall on 12 September. Once through, he fell to his knees, kissed the earth and burst into tears. It was the first time he had touched Palestinian soil since the bulk of Rafah was taken from him by the 1982 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. He lives in Rafah Sinai, less than 200 metres from where he kissed the ground...

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments

International soldier: In the 1960s, Buffy Saint Marie wrote an anti-war song called "Universal Soldier". In a British courtroom the other day, a judge handed down sentence to an "international solidier"--a jihadi whose holy war had taken him across many continent, to many lands, and who, luckily, was nabbed before he could do any harm. From the Times Online:

FOR more than a decade Andrew Rowe travelled the globe in pursuit of the jihad, cutting his ties with his mother, wife and three children to wage his “holy war”.

He fought in Bosnia and Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and met al-Qaeda operatives in the Far East and Morocco. His odyssey ended yesterday at the Old Bailey, where a judge jailed him for 15 years for terrorist offences.

Born in West London of Jamaican parents, Rowe owed a debt to Islam which he believed had saved him at the age of 19 from a life of petty crime and drug abuse. A senior counter-terrorist offical said: “Rowe is truly an international warrior. Look at his travel pattern, for ten years or more he’s travelled the world in pursuit of his cause. He is a dedicated and committed jihadist and I have no doubt he has the potential to be very violent.”

Mr Justice Fulford said he had no doubt that Rowe’s personal jihad had reached the point where he was involved in terrorism, rather than guerrilla warfare, and was in the final stages of planning an atrocity.

The judge told him: “You were an adherent of an ideology which places the killing of Americans and their Christian and Jewish supporters as a matter of Muslim faith.”

The judge imposed consecutive sentences of 7½ years on Rowe for two offences of possessing mortar-firing instructions and a secret codebook for terrorist purposes. The code contained references to airports, aircrew, explosives and targets, giving rise to fears that Rowe’s target was Heathrow.

The judge told him: “In the post 9/11 world it would require no imagination to understand what would have been within your contemplation and what would have been your purpose.”

Between 1995 and his arrest in October 2003, Rowe travelled to Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. There were, in all likelihood, more destinations but he masked his movements by changing his British passport four times in seven years, claiming each time that the document had been lost or damaged. Combined with his use of multiple mobile phones and SIM cards, his concealment activities were, security sources say, evidence of al-Qaeda training. He had also received instructions in firearms and mortar use, radio communications and self-defence and possessed a range of extremist literature and videos.

The peripatetic Mr. Rowe inspired me to take a crack at reworking Buffy's famous song:

He’s six foot six and he’s five foot four.
He fights with semtex and with spears.
He’s the one who loves to kill
The unbelieving infidel.
Has waged jihad more than a thousand years.

He’s a utopian who harks
To the “perfection” of the past
When the Prophet was around to rule the land.
And his triumphalism’s flush,
And it turns his brains to mush
Which him so much simpler to command.

And he’s fighting in Chechnya,
He’s fighting in Iraq,
In Britain, Palestine, Afghanistan.
And he’s burning with a flame,
And he knows just who to blame.
He’s a man who has a mission and a plan.

And he’s fighting the democracies,
He’s fighting former Reds.
He believes it’s for the good of one and all.
He has the power to decide
Who to kill through suicide
And he thinks he’s hearing Allah’s siren call.

But without him
How would al Qaeda send their zealots off to war?
Without him, Hamas wouldn’t stand a chance.
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of jihad
And doesn’t care about the risk or circumstance.

He’s the International Soldier
And he really is to blame.
He’s in the grip of something cold and strong and hard.
His orders come from far away,
But he is here to stay.
Look around—
He’s in your own backyard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments

The Cat came back: After years of silence, Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, is returning to the recording studio. Islam, who renounced his iniquitious musical career when he took the faith that became his last name, has decided that, despite Islam's restrictions against most musical expression, there is a place--narrow and confining though it may be--for his kind of singing. From the Sunday TImes:

In his previous career, Islam sold 50m albums. After his conversion in 1976, the singer, christened Steven Demetre Georgiou to a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother, became a teacher and founded an Islamic school in northwest London in 1983.

He admitted taking drugs including LSD in his pop heyday, but after his conversion recoiled even from picking up a guitar. He auctioned his instruments and gold records for Islamic charities and tried to persuade record companies not to release his songs.

His only album releases since then have been devotional, such as A Is for Allah and The Life of the Last Prophet in 1995. In 1992 he refused to allow use of his song The First Cut Is the Deepest in a commercial for Levi’s jeans, describing the ad as “overtly sexual”.

Islam claims to have moderated his position after listening to the recordings of Bosnian Muslims whose music, he says on his website, helped “inspire them with the religious spirit of faith” in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Since then, said a source close to him, he had “softened his stance”. He is now often seen without his trademark Islamic garb and is said to have appeared in western clothes in the recording studio.

A weblog on his official site also notes: “After one of his lectures on how he came to Islam, a fellow asked Yusuf if he still listens to his old songs from time to time. Brother Yusuf immediately answered ‘No’, then after a few seconds pause he started laughing and said, ‘Um, yes I do’.”

Personally, I'm pleased that Cat's coming back. Tea for the Tillerman was the first album I ever bought, and his music formed an integral part of the soundtrack of my adolescence. Even when he became an insufferable shill for Islam and a fundraiser for a charity associated with Hamas, I still liked his voice, although at that point I didn't listen to it. I've rediscovered it recently on the soundtrack to the 1999 movie, Rushmore, my current favourite album on my iPod, on which he sings two songs.

That's me, though. Others with less ecclectic tastes than mine are not so thrilled:

The singer’s decision to return to pop has not met with universal approval from leading Muslims.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s mosque and community affairs committee, conceded some scholars would admire Islam for reaching out to the wider world with his message of peace but said: “My personal view is the only music that should be permitted is the voice and the drum. I do not believe the electric guitar is acceptable for Muslims. Contemporary music has many associations with dance, nudity and taking drugs, which is not allowed.”

Sounds to me like Cat is caught between two competing and compelling religions--the stifling but comforting restrictions of Islam and the anarchic freedom of rock and roll. I wonder which one he'll choose.

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

Gaza goons play blame game: As you'll recall, a parade of thugs was rudely interupted yesterday when one of the floats accidentally blew up, killing and wounding a number of people in the crowd. Nonplussed by their own incompetence, the thugs quickly blamed Israel for the explosion because, well, isn't Israel always to blame? The Jerusalem Post keeps us abreast of the latest round of charges, counter-charges, excuses, rationales, recriminations and muddle-headedness gripping the the powers that be (and the powers that wannabe) in Gaza:

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas traded accusations over the weekend following the Friday evening explosion in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip that killed 19 people and injured more than 120.

The blast was reportedly caused by the explosion of Kassam rockets carried in the back of a pickup truck that was taking part in a Hamas rally organized to celebrate the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. According to the PA Health Ministry, a number of senior Hamas operatives were killed in the explosion, which was apparently caused when explosives in the truck were accidentally triggered. Of the dead, at least three were children under 15. Nineteen of the wounded were also minors, the ministry said.

PA officials held Hamas responsible for the explosion, but Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip claimed that Israel was behind the explosion and vowed to resume attacks on Israeli targets.

The ruling Fatah party issued a statement in Gaza City condemning Hamas for holding paramilitary rallies in residential areas. "This rally was held despite our warnings to refrain from displaying and storing weapons in residential areas," the statement said. "The Fatah Central Committee holds Hamas fully responsible for the deaths that occurred during the military rally [in Jabalya]."

However, other Fatah groups in the Gaza Strip rejected the charges against Hamas and accused Israel of standing behind the explosion. In addition, Fatah's armed wing, Aksa Martyrs Brigades, distributed leaflets accusing PA Interior Ministry Gen. Nasser Youssef, who is in charge of security, of "high treason and collusion" with Israel. "It's clear to us that Israel is behind the massacre in Jabalya and our response will be painful," the group said.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who blamed Israel for the latest deterioration, refrained from voicing criticism against Hamas. "The situation is very dangerous and Israel bears full responsibility for this deterioration," he told reporters in Ramallah. "We urge the international community to interfere to put an end to the Israeli escalation." ...

I'd say these folks are ready for demands of statehood, wouldn't you?

Update: I call them thugs. The Ceeb radio newscast at 6:00 referred to them as "activists". Let's see if that works by rewritting the story accordingly:  During show of military strength in Gaza yesterday, some hyperactive Hamas "activists" unintentionally activated an explosion.

Nah. Thugs is much better.

Update: I just reread the JPost story and noticed that the casualties were tallied by a body called "the PA Health Ministry".

In other places, the Health Ministry offers helpful hints on cutting down on saturated fats. In the PA, the Health Ministry totes up victims cut down by moronic thugs.

I guess that about says it all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:13 | link | comments (3)

Who were those masked men?: HonestReporting Canada just emailed me a review of Hamas: Behind the Mask, the Ceeb doc I couln't bear to watch in its entirety.

Apparently, the film made an effort to appear " balanced", but, as is typical with docs such as this (see The Fence, by Alexandre Trudeau), the filmmaker's bias shone through:

The narrator informed viewers that, "Since it was founded, Hamas has claimed responsibility for the deaths of over 400 Israelis," and acknowledged that, "Unlike Hamas, Israeli operations do not target civilians." At one point, the filmmaker challenged a Hamas leader: "How can you, a man of religion, defend the morality of suicide bombing? No matter how just the Palestinian cause, it's appalling to see young people going and blowing themselves up and killing innocent women and children on the Israeli side.":

 

The majority of interviews took place on the Palestinian side. The filmmaker interviewed people throughout the Hamas echelon, from gun-toting youths, to a Hamas "journalist," to the organization's leadership. Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad al-Sarraj theorized that Palestinian youths, traumatized by Israel's humiliation of their real fathers, adopt Hamas as a kind of surrogate father-figure. Hamas officials justified the use of violence as a response to Israeli aggression--a point the film reinforced visually by showing 16 dead or wounded Palestinians, compared to one image of a dead Israeli.  

 

The narrator benignly characterized Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, arguably one of the most ruthless terrorist leaders of the last two decades, as "a handicapped schoolteacher, who believed Palestinians could not restore their homeland until they restored their faith."

 

The most chilling part of the film was a segment in which a Palestinian mother dispatched her 17-year-old son to blow himself up in the midst of Israeli students, killing five.

 

The film would have been stronger had it examined at greater length, and with greater clarity, Hamas's ultimate objective. The narrator alluded to the possibility that Hamas might amend its charter and delay its struggle to eliminate Israel, but never explored the point in a meaningful way. 

 

 In interviews, Hamas leaders exploited semantic loopholes. For example, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said: "With these operations we say to Israel: choose between two things. If you want security, let the occupation end. If you insist on occupation, you will have no security. Israel cannot occupy us and feel secure."

 

But most viewers understand "occupation" as meaning Israel's presence in the West Bank and (until recently) Gaza Strip. What the film did not clarify for viewers is that by "occupation," Meshaal means the existence of Israel on any part of what he considers Muslim land. In other words, Hamas's vision of "Israeli security" is one in which Israel does not exist...  

Update: A little old "handicapped schoolteacher", eh? I bet he only drove that wheelchair around the block and never put much mileage on it like...why, just like that little old lady from Pasadena:

 

It’s the little old teacher, Ahmed Yassin-ah…

The little old teacher, Ahmed Yassin-ah.
(Go, Killer, go, Killer, go Killer go.)
Was involved in a well-known Jew-killing scheme-ah.
(Go, Killer, go, Killer, go Killer go.)
But parked in a rickety old wheel chair
He got blown up and is no longer there.

CHORUS:
And everybody’s sayin’ there’s nobody sweeter
Than that little old Hamas-founding spirit’chal leader.
(He screamed real loud and he shouted plenty.
He was the terror of that awful Zionist ent'y.)

It’s the little old teacher, Ahmed Yassin-ah...

 
If you ever heard him preach, you’d understand
(Go, Killer, go, Killer, go Killer go)
Why he wanted all the infidels off his land
(Go, Killer, go, Killer, go Killer go).
‘Cause the Koran says that those apes and swine
Aren’t supposed to be in charge in Palestine.

CHORUS:
And everybody knows he was so religious
Even though his hate was so prodigious.
(He shrieked and seethed like a true Jew-hater—
L’hitraot, sheikh, we’ll have to catch you later)…

 

 

The little old handicapped

schoolteacher, with one

of his many admirers

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments

When all else fails, condemn Israel: As the world flails about ineptly, trying to strike just the right balance between speaking to Iran in a harsh voice--"No nukes for you, Mr. Mullah! It's off the the Security Council!"--and speaking to Iran in  a soft voice--"Pretty please, Mr. Mullah, don't blow us up"--the Arab world has figured out how to defuse the increasingly tense situation: Turn the tables and point your digits at the Jews. From Al That Jaz citing a Reuters report:

Arab member states of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency plan to push the agency to condemn Israel as a threat to peace in the Middle East for possessing nuclear weapons, reported Reuters.

Under its policy of "nuclear ambiguity," Israel refuses to neither deny or admit possessing a nuclear arsenal, though experts say that Jewish state has between 100 and 200 atomic bombs.

In a letter submitted to the IAEA, Oman, on behalf of the Arab member states, demanded that the agency's annual General Conference of the IAEA's 138 member states in Vienna next week to consider a statement strongly criticising Israel.

"Israel's possession of nuclear weapons is likely to lead to a destructive nuclear arms race in the region, especially if Israel's nuclear installations remain outside any international control," a text attached to the letter said, listing 11 UN General Assembly resolutions asking Israel to sign the NPT.

The move follows a row at the IAEA's 35-nation governing board over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme...

Brilliant scheme! Tie up the world's attention by focusing exclusively on Israel, and maybe no one will notice when the jihad creeps stealthily (but explosively) across the planet.

As the late, lamentable Yasser Arafat used to say, "Go with what works."

And for those still uncertain about the mullahs' true intentions (all three of you), here'a another Al That Jaz story which should clear everything up:

The policy Iran pursued with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the EU Big Three; Britain, Germany and France, with who it is negotiating the future of its nuclear program, prove that the Islamic republic is indeed staking everything.

Commenting on the remarks of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, in which he stated that in case the EU continues to reject the nuclear fuel cycle program, the Islamic Republic would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and deny IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear facilities, analysts say that Iran is totally aware of the grave concerns its withdrawal from the treaty will arise in the EU, as it will be a clear signal that a nuclear program is ready for military application.

Update: Another ever-effective tactic--at the appropriate moment, jump on a chair and scream the word which makes Westerners recoil like Dracula confronted by garlic: Colonialism!

Update: Despite the attempt to deflect criticism away from Iran by concentrating on Israel, the IAEA has resolved to send the issue of a nuclear Iran to the Security Council. Real soon. Like, maybe next week. Or next year. Or some other--how did the IAEA word it?-- "unspecified date".

But for sure before Iran gets around to nuking anyone.

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

The sweet stench of success: An editorial in the Globe and Mail lauds Ariel Sharon's recent moves in Gaza--a "successful withdrawal...supported by most of the public and....the world"--and is confounded as to why "his party colleagues may be about to fire him."

"What are they thinking?", queries the editorialist.

Well, perhaps they are thinking that "success" is entirely subjective, especially when it involves peace-in-our-times schemes like Oslo and Gaza, and that "the world" is fickle and apt to revoke its approval when Israel is forced to respond to situations like this. From ABC News:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Sep 24, 2005 — Israel's defense minister ordered ground forces to the Gaza border on Saturday and vowed a "crushing" response to Hamas rocket fire on Israeli towns.

Israel also imposed a blanket closure on the West Bank and Gaza, barring thousands of Palestinian laborers from jobs in Israel.

Shortly after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz gave the order to deploy troops near Gaza, witnesses reported hearing three loud booms in Gaza City and said they saw Israeli warplanes overhead. But Palestinian officials said no one was hurt.

The Palestinian Interior Ministry accused Israel of having launched "fake" airstrikes to terrify the Palestinian population

"We have to make it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not let the recent events pass without a response," Mofaz said in a statement, referring to the Hamas rocket fire. "The response needs to be crushing."

The overnight rocket barrage by Hamas was the first since Israel pulled out of Gaza nearly two weeks ago. Israel has said it will show "zero tolerance" for attacks after the withdrawal.

Mofaz decided to deploy troops on Israel's border with Gaza after meeting his security chiefs, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting. Thousands of soldiers received call-up notices, and their leaves were canceled.

Mofaz also said Israel might resume targeted killings of Palestinian militants. During more than four years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, scores of militants were killed in targeted attacks, most by missiles fired from Israeli aircraft...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments

"Blammo!" "Kaboom!" "Allah Akbar!": A new line of Egyptian comic books features the first Arab "super heroes".

Here are some characters who were considered but ultimately rejected:

• Jihad Boy: A nerdy teen who dons a semtex vest which endows him with super powers. In the afterlife, he turns into a Rico Suave who scores with scores of compliant virgins.
• Super Yasser: A nerdy kleptocratic terrorist leader who dons a black-and-white-chequed kafiyah which endows him with the power to bamboozle the world into believing he's a statesman.
• Burka Babe: A gorgeous, intelligent women is compelled by her misogyistic culture to don a black pup tent representing the nullity and powerlessness of her entire gender. She foils the misogynists by turning her burka into a hot air balloon and soaring through the sky--a la the Flying Nun--to rescue women in distress.
• The Chinless Wonder: A nerdy former ophthamalogist is convinced to follow in the footsteps of his Dad, a successful despot. He foils the efforts of naysayers who believe he's not up to the job.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:20 | link | comments (2)

Non-survival of the unfittest: From a Darwinian perspective at least, Israel has little to fear from terror outfit Hamas. Not when they keep "self-selecting" their own people for oblivion by accidentally blowing themselves and others up, as they did again today at one of their rallies. (Of course, the knee-jerk response immediately "kicked in", and they blamed Israel for the fireworks.) From AP:

...The rally was held in the Jebaliya refugee camp, one of the last military-style parades before a ban on flaunting weapons in public - agreed to by all militant groups - takes effect Saturday evening.

Witnesses said participants, including children, crowded around the pickup truck just before the explosion. The witnesses said the truck carried two homemade rockets.

One man, who only gave his first name, Hussam, said he helped pull three men out of the pickup, two of them dead and one still alive. The side of the pickup was charred.

The witness said he saw five dead children nearby. Dozens more were wounded. The Hamas military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, is popular with youngsters and when the pickup with the gunmen arrived at the rally, many crowded around the vehicle.

After the blast, men carried bodies wrapped in blankets and body parts to nearby cars.

At Shifa Hospital in Gaza, doctors treated patients on the emergency room floor because they ran out of beds. Masked Hamas men wheeled in casualties, including children.

The truck was not heavily damaged by the blast.

One witness, Hazem Abu Rashad, 18, said the truck had two rockets in its bed. Three militants rode in the back and at least three more were inside, he said.

"There was smoke all over, and then we saw people in pieces, but we couldn't make out what really happened," he said...

Pathetic.

Update: Mahmoud Abbas is mortified because these bozos, to whom he is determined to grant political legitimacy, are making that decision look, well, kind of dumb. From al Reuters (which, in this story about Abbas blasting Hamas's ineptitude, still manages to get in a swipe against Israel):

..."The Fatah Central Committee holds the Hamas movement fully responsible for the victims of the military parade (that was held) among civilians," the committee said in a statement.

Hamas said an explosion at its rally in the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabalya was caused by an Israeli airstrike.

Israel denied involvement in the blast, the first deadly incident in the territory since it completed its Gaza pullout.

Fatah's Central Committee slammed Hamas for holding a rally in the densely populated camp, where thousands watched the parade procession attended by dozens of gunmen, armed with rifles and other weapons.

The explosion, which killed 10 people, including children and militants, tore through a vehicle carrying Hamas gunmen. About 60 people were also wounded in the blast, medics said.

Hamas denied reports that the vehicle had contained explosives that detonated prematurely, saying the vehicle carried plastic models of rockets that could not explode...

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

Rx for cluelessness: The Globe and Mail has a mostly unsatisying commentary on the perils of multiculturalism by British journalist Owen Bennett-Jones. Mr. B-J writes that Europe's--and, more specifically, Holland's and the U.K.s-- previously unshakeable belief in multiculturalism has been rattled by "Islamic radicalism". But like most who refuse to accept that the jihad is at the core of our current problems, he flails around, desperately searching for clues to answers that remain e'er murky:

That there is a problem is indisputable. Theo van Gogh's murderer and the London bombers were so alienated that they felt it quite acceptable, obligatory even, to kill fellow civilians in their own society.

The question is why.

Radical Islamists blame the hypocritical nature of Western foreign policy: While Western governments talk of democracy and human rights, in reality, they attack Muslim countries killing civilians in the process. The U.S. and its allies, the argument goes, install or back governments that serve Western interests. The Islamist demands are clear: They want the Israelis out of the West Bank; the Indians out of Kashmir; the Russians out of Chechnya and the Americans out of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Western governments are reluctant to accept the idea that their foreign policies have anything to do with the problem. And, in the current postbombing political climate, they are not in the mood to take high-profile measures to address the kind of discrimination cited here.

So, what lesson should Canada draw from these developments? Simply this: However firmly entrenched multiculturalism might appear, things can change surprisingly fast. In the face of the attacks in Europe, the multicultural consensus has proved to be far more fragile than many would have predicted. These days, it is described, even by its former defenders, not as the solution to modern society but as part of the problem.

What he have here, in other words, is not really a criticism of a failed policy, but yet another stealth attack on Western responses to terrorism. As Bennet-Jones sees it, having ignored the clear-cut demands of the radicals in their midst, and having shunted aside their Muslim immigrants to the point where they become so "alienated" that they feel compelled to act out against Western "hypocrisy", the West has brought most of the problems on itself.  

Mr. Bennet-Jones is suffering from that widespread malady, dhimmi blindness . As a treatment, I prescribe Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad and the collected works of Robert Spencer and Bat Ye'or.

Update: The widow of a 7/7 suicide murderer--he was a Jamaican-born convert to Islam--accounts for her husband's strange behavior. And unlike Mr. Bennett-Jones, her explanation has nothing to do with Western hypocrisy or the failure of multiculturalism. To be blunt, she says, he was brainwashed. From the Times Online:

THE widow of one of the July 7 suicide bombers told how her “innocent and naive” husband had been poisoned by elements in radical mosques as she cradled their new born baby daughter in her arms.

Samantha Lewthwaite said that she “totally abhorred” the actions of her husband Jermaine Lindsay, who killed 26 people on a Piccadilly Line tube train near King’s Cross; but she said that she still wore the white gold ring her husband had given her and would pass it on to their first child, a son, Abdullah, when he marries. Ms Lewthwaite, 21, a Muslim convert, said that her husband had been a peaceful man whose behaviour changed when he began visiting mosques in London and Luton.

She said: “His behaviour gradually began to change. He turned from the man that I married. In hindsight I can now see exactly what was happening to him and why. How these people could have turned him and poisoned his mind is dreadful. He was an innocent, naive and simple man. I suppose he must have been an ideal candidate.” ...

Update: Another British convert to Islam, no doubt inspired by the same sort of religious teachings and preachings as the dead Jamaican, was apprehended before he could blow himself up for Allah. Taking a page from yet another British convert to Islam, failed shoe-bomber Richard Rowe, this guy was found in the vicinity of the Chunnel, with traces of explosives in his socks. A British court has just convicted him of terrorism.

Don't you wish all these converts to Islam had become Scientologists (or Wiccans, or Buddhists, or Seventh Day Adventists) instead? 

Update: Elephant, a commenter on the JihadWatch thread about the jihadi from Jamaica, points out some inconsistencies in the Times Online story. Apparently, the "innocent and naive" dupe portrayed by the grieving widow was actually a drug-dealer  who hated white folks, converted to Islam at the age of 15, and traveled to Afghanistan for some lessons in jihad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments (5)

The romance--and reality--of Hamas: The Ceeb aired it's much publicized documentary about Hamas last night. Called "Hamas: Behind the Mask", it promised to be a hard-hitting, probing look into what motivates young men to join a terrorist outfit.

I don't know whether it fulfilled its promise, because about 10 minutes into the film I became so disgusted by the slant--handsome, hazel-eyed young men, faces disguised by romantic Zorro-style masks, fighting for a cause about which they are passionate--that I had to turn the channel.

I'm sure that at some point in the proceedings, the Ceeb dropped its romance with these Palestinian Che Gueveras long enough to point out the havoc they have wreaked, not only on Israel, but on their own people; how they are jihadis, holy warriors who are inspired by a fanatical belief in their own religiously-based triumphalism, implacable in their hatred of loathsome, subhuman Jews; how there is nothing "romantic" about murderers who hide, like KKKers and other racists, behind masks.

Or maybe not.

The Edmonton Sun reported Friday that B'nai Brith Canada, which had been shown an advanced screening of the documentary, was criticizing the Ceeb for airing it:

B'nai Brith has slammed the CBC for airing a new documentary that the Jewish human rights organization describes as an apologist film for a terrorist group and part of the public broadcaster's "long history of anti-Israel bias."

Hamas: Behind the Mask was scheduled to air last night on CBC's The Passionate Eye, with a repeat telecast next Thursday evening on Newsworld.

The documentary, by Emmy- and Gemini-winning filmmaker Shelley Saywell, provides what the producers said is an unusually intimate look inside the Palestinian resistance organization as it evolves into a legitimate political contender in the disputed territory.

B'nai Brith said it has written to CBC president Robert Rabinovitch with its concerns. The organization is also urging Canadians to contact the CBC and tell them it is a shameful use of taxpayers' dollars.

Frank Dimant, Canadian executive vice-president of the organization, said an advance screening of the film revealed it to be "an apologist sanctioning of Hamas, a terrorist group that is outlawed here in Canada and which is banned in democratic countries across the globe."

Dimant said it is irresponsible to legitimize in this way a group which has as its aim the shedding of blood of innocent civilians.

But Saywell says her film is timely, balanced and important. "As frightening as they (Hamas) are, it's really important to look at them, and that is what the film attempted to do." She said she wasn't expecting criticism so quickly but understands passions run high on Middle Eastern issues.

Unlike the Ceeb,  former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Zalman Shoval, has no romantic delusions about terrorists. He speculates that the reason he has not acted against Hamas--which is drastically outnumbered by P.A. security forces--is that, like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat,  Abbas wants to preserve his "terror option": From Front Page Magazine:

Official Palestinian television has encouraged Palestinians to perceive the Israeli disengagement from Gaza as a first step toward Israel's destruction. Even more worrying than Mr. Abbas declamatory fomentations, has been his complete failure to act against Hamas (though Hamas membership is only about 1,200, while the armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority number approximately 40,000 men). Quite the opposite, he granted them political legitimacy, while his prime minister went to Damascus, the home-base of many of the Middle East's terrorist groups, to sign an agreement which allows Hamas to keep its arms.

 

While some Hamas spokesmen, aware of the opposition of the United States to their participating in the planned Palestinian elections, have recently toned down their virulent anti-Israel statements, this shouldn't mislead anyone about the organization's real intentions. To quote Mahmoud Zahar, Gaza's Hamas leader (as reported in the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat, published in London): "We do not and will not recognize a state called Israel. Israel has no right to any inch of Palestinian land. Let Israel die." When asked whether Hamas would resume its terrorist operations in Israeli towns after the withdrawal from Gaza, Mr. Zahar replied: "There are no Israeli towns. These are settlements." Not to be outdone, the Palestinians' "moderate" leader, Mr. Abbas has also said that "we will not rest until they leave from all our land" -- when Palestinian maps show "our land" as all of mandatory Palestine with Israel nowhere to be seen.

 

Some people thus suspect that what Hamas says -- others, including some self-declared "moderates," think -- and more specifically, that legitimizing Hamas was a deliberate act on behalf of Mr. Abbas to preserve the terrorist option for the future.

 

Similar to Yasser Arafat in his day he would then try to convince the world of his continued commitment to peace and diplomacy, blaming the violence on "uncontrollable" others and, of course, on Israel...

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

Die Zionist scum, but first, give me some chemo: After rampaging through Gaza and setting synagogues ablaze; after crowing about how the withdrawal from Gaza marks a great victory for the Palestinian nation against the Israeli tyrants; after year upon year of incitement against Jews in the Palestinian media, comes this: a report in Al That Jaz about heartless Israel turning away Palestinian cancer patients.

Can you say "chutzpah"?

Palestinian cancer patients are being denied access to hospitals in Israel, especially after Israeli soldiers left the Gaza Strip, right groups and Palestinian doctors say, according to AFP.

"Israel only gives permits in extremely urgent cases. We make 30 to 50 requests every day, mostly for cancer patients, but they are only accepted in five percent of cases," said Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, head of emergency services at the Palestinian Interior Ministry.

Dr. Hassanein added that even the dead were having difficulties moving between Gaza and the West Bank, as the Israeli military refuses in most cases to allow the dead body to be buried in its place of birth.

Israeli rights group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, says that Israel allowed only "six to seven urgent cases" per day to enter the Jewish state for medical care since the withdrawal, compared to a pre-pullout average of 40.

The group said that 16 Palestinian children, who suffer from cancer and regularly undergo chemotherapy in Israel, have also been banned from entering the Jewish state...

"Even the dead were having difficulties moving between Gaza and the West Bank"? I guess they never caught that flick Weekend at Bernie's. Now there was a dead guy who didn't let a little thing like mortality get in the way of his movement.

Memo to Palestinian cancer patients: Maybe they can find some room for you in Cairo or Beirut or Amman or Riyadh or...how about this--why don't you build your own frikkin' hospitals?

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

War and peace: I have often mused on how frequently the word or theme of peace turns up in Israeli popular music. There are scores of songs, past and present,  about the longing for peace, and the hope (hatikvah) that that glorious day will come tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or sometime while the Jews of Israel are still around to enjoy it.

You might contrast that with the Palestinians, many of whom revere suicide murderers as martyrs, and glorify the holy war against the Jews. In Gaza, for instance, jihad-devotees Hamas has announced plans to turn a former synagogue into a "weapons museum" full of arms  used in the battle against the Zionist usurpers. From the New York Sun:

Emboldened by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Hamas yesterday announced its plan to turn a synagogue in Netzarim into a museum that would display weapons employed by the terrorist group's members against Israeli civilians.

A statement issued yesterday by Hamas said, "Qassam rockets and other locally made arms will be exposed, since it is the legal weapon that evicted the occupation forces." The Middle East Media Research Institute yesterday reported that recent sermons delivered by Hamas leaders pledged to resist efforts from the Palestinian Authority to disarm the organization ahead of upcoming elections.

The standoff between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which has claimed credit for numerous suicide bombings in Israel, could scuttle parliamentary elections in January as Israel has insisted that no armed terror groups participate in the vote. If Hamas fends off demands that it relinquish its weapons it could set a dangerous precedent in the region as Lebanon moves closer to asserting its sovereignty - and includes Hezbollah in its ruling coalition.

So far, America and its allies have accepted that there is little Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas can do to tame Hamas. On Tuesday the Quartet, a diplomatic group comprising America, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, released a statement that envisioned the disarming of Hamas in phases and not necessarily as a precondition for its participation in parliamentary elections on January 25...

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:44 | link | comments

Running on empty: Claudia Rosett, the journalist who, more than any other, ensured that the oil-for-food scam stayed  front and centre, notes that there was a blackout the other day at the UN. Power was soon restored but, writing in the WSJ,  Ms. Rosett poses a timely question: would it have made much of a difference if the power stayed off for good?

In the debate over U.N. reform, that is the no-go zone. It is accepted practice to issue tons of documents outlining endless reform, argue over all of it, despair of most of it, mangle the remainder and then recite as an axiom of the modern universe that the U.N. is a flawed institution, but it's all we've got. To whisper that maybe the U.N. is a relic beyond repair, and perhaps a new age of the world deserves a new and better institution, is to knock yourself right out of the debate. No one would want to do that; or at least no one who has invested the eons it takes to read Kofi Annan's 87-page reform plan, Mr. Bolton's sagely line-edited version of the ensuing reform document, the final version of the "outcome" document, the stack of U.N.-reform-related congressional proposals and testimony, the think-tank documents, the zillion-and-one op-eds, and of course the recent 847-page report of Paul Volcker's inquiry.

But in the fleeting twilight moment this past Monday of contemplating a U.N. without power, I did wonder what a new world council would look like, if instead of restitching the creation animated by our forefathers in 1945, we created an institution tailored to our own era--not the 20th century, but the 21st.

The upside of an entirely new U.N. could go well beyond better electrical circuits at headquarters, or more agile computer backup (for a while, the U.N. Web site went out along with the lights). The current U.N. dates back to a time when the frontier of information technology was the vacuum tube, the ascendant philosophy in the developing world was communist central planning, and the kind of war the U.N.'s founders sought to prevent was chiefly the domain of uniformed armies clashing under the flags of sovereign states.

The U.N. founders wrote a charter at the end of World War II filled with wonderful words about reaffirming faith in "human rights" and "the dignity of human beings." They then contradicted themselves in practice from day one by respecting thug regimes enough to provide Stalin's Soviet Union a permanent seat on the Security Council and two extra seats in the General Assembly. They set up a U.N. system that not only failed to prevent a long series of wars but today fails to curb terrorism, or even adequately define it. In other words, to create an inclusive gathering of nations in 1945, our forefathers made some big practical compromises with their lofty ideals. In making those tradeoffs, their priorities did not reflect a world in which Osama bin Laden could surf the Internet.

Nor did they set up a U.N. replete with the checks and balances and transparency widely recognized these days as necessary to good governance. The U.N. founders did not provide adequate defenses against the tangled growth of U.N. bureaucracy, the packing of the ranks over the decades with cronies and rival national cliques, or the formation of influential lobbying groups of despotic regimes such as the former Soviet bloc or the current Arab League. And in setting up the U.N. as the mother of all multilateral aid agencies, the U.N. founders never came to grips with the vital principle that if private enterprise is the real engine of prosperity--which it is--then the secret is not to jack up government-channeled aid at every opportunity but to push chiefly for more liberty, even if that means a lesser role--and smaller budget--for the U.N...

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:16 | link | comments

Salama Salama explains it all for you: I had a good chuckle at this piece in Egyptian rag, Al-Ahram.  First, because the author has one of those delightfully redundant names--like Sirhan Sirhan or Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Second, because Salama Squared has a comically skewed perspective on the Iran nuke situation:

Arab countries press on with their petty squabbles and the world moves on. In recent UN meetings the US and the EU III (UK, France and Germany) have gone out of their way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. This is because they don't want any country to challenge Israel in this part of the world. Consequently, a showdown between Iran and the US is in the offing.

The European troika has failed to persuade Tehran to freeze its nuclear activities in return for trade and other incentives. Iran is defending its right to produce enriched uranium, a right upheld by various international agreements, including the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, and says its nuclear programme is peaceful. So far it's been a stalemate. Iran says it will continue to produce enriched uranium but is ready to accept monitoring of such activities to allay international fears. The US, for its part, says that Iran should not be allowed to produce enriched uranium because it will use it for nuclear weapons. This is nothing more than a conjecture, though the US is using it to pressure Iran, blackmail Gulf states and rally Europe, Russia and China to its side.

The US does not want Iran -- a country that opposes US policies in the Gulf, Iraq and Palestine -- to acquire nuclear leverage. For the past few years, Tehran has managed to stay ahead of the US-Israeli game. It has proposed that the entire region, including Israel, be turned into a nuclear-free zone. It is a demand Egypt has made repeatedly and one the US and Europe reject for obvious reasons. It would make perfect sense for Egypt to coordinate its position with Iran on this point yet inexplicably it has not done so.

Evidently, Mr. Salana and I have been reading different reports. I thought the EU and US had been doing their utmost to avoid a confrontation with Iran, continually refusing, for example, to send the matter to the UN because Iran might face sanctions. And they've been postponing high noon not because they want to avoid challenging Israel--although it's always convenient for Jew-haters/Israel-bashers to make that charge--but because they want to avoid challenging Iran.

But, hey, if the writer wants to believe that Iran is committed to a nuke-free region and that it's a good idea for Egypt to co-ordinate its position with Iran on anything, b'vakasha. Just remember, Mr. S., if you get into bed with vipers, you're bound to get the odd bite.

But that's not the only blackly amusing piece in the current issue of the paper. Here's a topsy-turvy rewrite of history in which the Palestinians had an "exodus" from their homeland, 3/4 of Palestine was "conquered" by Israel in 1948, and Israel has been "ethnically-cleansing" the region--a pretty neat trick considering that the Palestinian population has been increasing, not decreasing. The article answers the question, "Why bother with historical accuracy when you can simply invent the facts to suit your own purposes"?

To Palestinians, as well as to an increasing number of people the world over, Al-Nakba represents the largest, longest, planned ethnic cleansing in modern history for which reason the title under which this article appears may appear at first sight cynical, if not downright offensive.

The trauma of Al-Nakba is imprinted on the psyche of every Palestinian, on those that witnessed it as well as those that did not. They have all suffered, and in a multitude of ways: they lost their livelihoods, nationality, identity and, above all, their homes. In order to survive Palestinians were forced to defend themselves, fighting on many fronts.

The sheer size of Al-Nakba is overwhelming. Over three quarters of Palestine was conquered in 1948 by Israeli forces that staged their attacks from bases on land acquired during the British Mandate, as a direct result of British policy or with British collusion.

Some 675 towns and villages were seized and their populations forcibly removed or massacred. On the day that Israel came in to existence 85 per cent of Palestinians whose homes had been on the land occupied by the newly created state found themselves refugees, and remain so until today.

Al-Nakba goes on. It continues every day, in different places and through different means. Whatever the legal cover fabricated by Israel the process remains the same. People are uprooted, and thrown to the four corners of the earth; their land is taken, their landscapes and history obliterated.

So how can Al-Nakba be praised?

It can be praised only because, from the ashes, the Palestinians have risen like the proverbial phoenix. They realised that with no home, no military power and no powerful friends they would have to depend on that greatest of gifts, the human spirit...

Wow. Such indomitable spirit. No home, no power, no friends. Rising from the ashes like...wait a minute, it'll come to me...why, if I'm not mistaken, just like the Jews.

Update:

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:28 | link | comments

Lock up your daughters: Macleans magazine is trying to break out of its mold as Canada's blander, more staid version of Time or Newsweek--and sell a heap more copies of its bland, staid periodical. The current edition features a cover story about "girls gone wild"--today's generation of young women who've been persuaded that women's liberation refers to one's willingness to reveal one's ta-tas in public. Macleans has dubbed these gals--one of whom is prominently displayed on the front, naughty bits tastefully covered by print--"The female chauvinist pig". The subhead: HOW IT BECAME COOL TO TREAT YOURSELF LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT.

Certainly, a story of enduring fascination for any number of people, probably most of whom are male, but unlikely to rank as one of Macleans' finest hours. Apart from the ugliness of the cover--glassy-eyed, open-mouthed chick in a cowboy hat pulling up her shirt--and the utter inanity of the article, the magazine can't even get the concept of male--or female--chauvinism right (which, having been dredged up from the sweaty recesses of the 1970s, is in itself an embarrassing anachronism).  Clearly, these young women are displaying their (often surgically-enhanced) wares because they've had a few too many shooters, not because of any innate sense of female superiority.

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

Abdullah extends a hand: A moderate Muslim leader--heretofore, an apocryphal being--has stepped up to the plate. Speaking to a gathering of American rabbis yesterday, Jordan's King Abdullah slammed al Qaeda and its brand of extremism, and said that Jews and Muslims are "tied together by culture and history" and it's time for Muslims to "mend fences" with the Jewish community. According to the Washington Times, his speech was laced with quotes from both the Old Testament and the Koran, and he told the assembled, "We face a common threat: extremist distortions of religion and the wanton acts of violence that derive therefrom."  "Such abominations," said the King, have already divided us from without for far too long."

Good going, Abdullah! But it seems you face an uphill--or, more accurately, an upmountain--battle. Not only must you contend with the jihadis--who see you as an impediment to the jihad, and thus a target for assassination--but you must also convince your own people that it's in their best interest to set aside their deep-seated emnity towards Jews. The Times story explains the challenges Abdullah faces in his own backyard:

At home, however, the king encounters massive anti-Semitism. According to a July poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on global attitudes toward religious groups, 100 percent of Jordanian respondents said they either had a "very unfavorable" or "somewhat unfavorable" view of Jews.

Not only are there no known Jews living in Jordan, but also 1.7 million Jordanians are Palestinian refugees, many of whom fled their homeland in 1948 when Israel was proclaimed a Jewish state.

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:13 | link | comments (1)

Strange mix: Dreadful news today: Hurricane Rita, which could qualify as a category 6 storm if ratings went that high, is bearing down on Galveston. The EUnuchs are backing off their threat to refer the brash, nuclear-bound mullocracy to the UN--not that UN sanctions would make a whit of difference. North Korea is backing of from promises to abandon its nuclear weapons. And the head of Shin Bet warns that Al Qaeda is setting up shop in Gaza and says he expects terrorist attacks from the West Bank to begin at any time.

On days like this, one thirsts for a little levity (or, given the story posted below, a little more levity). And here it is, from Ananova:

Ice-T is to produce David Hasselhoff's first hip-hop album.

The pair are neighbours in Los Angeles and are said to have struck up a close friendship.

Hasselhoff has had some success as a singer, releasing seven albums. He's also said to be very popular in Germany.

Ice-T, who was one of the first real hip-hop stars in the late 1980s, said: "The man is a legend. And we are going to show a whole new side of him."

The rapper is said to be convinced that the 51-year-old for Knight Rider and Baywatch actor can take on the biggest names in rap, reports The Sun.

Ice-T added: "He's gonna come out as Hassle The Hoff - I promise you. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills and humour."

Hassle The Hoff? Yeah, that sounds really cool.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:30 | link | comments

"Did you remember your Clinton?" "No, but I brought a Lewinsky": A company in China has produced a new line of prophylactics named for the randy former president and his Rubenesque intern. From the L.A. Times:

A new line of condoms is grabbing headlines in China even as its sparks a debate about trademark law and promotion campaigns. The products' brand names: "Clinton" and "Lewinsky."

The condoms are sold in boxes of 12, with the brand named after former President Bill Clinton priced at $3.70 and that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky at $2.25.

Guangzhou Haojian Bioscience Co. said it registered both trademarks and is pricing the brands differently to reflect the higher quality of the Clinton line.

"We chose the name because we think Clinton is a symbol of success and a man of responsibility. And Lewinsky is a woman who dares to love and dares to hate," said Liu Wenhua, the company's general manager.

"We haven't told Clinton about this yet, but maybe you could help us find him," Liu added. "We'd like to tell him how respected he is in China, so we can boost his confidence and help his career."

Liu said he settled on the Clinton name after a year of research sparked by the news that the former president had been named to head an international initiative to combat HIV and AIDS. Some of the other names he considered and rejected included "First Night," "18 Years Old" and "I Miss You." They didn't have the same aura of respectability, he said...

Poor Monica. Shafted again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:39 | link | comments

Creeping sharia: The Premier of Ontario just nixed the recommendation that he legally sanction sharia courts, but that doesn't mean you can't find other ways to incorporate sharia law into everyday life. Why, in the U.S. and elsewhere, for instance, more and more Muslim landlords are insisting that their transactions with tenants conform to Muslim law. From the New York Times:

As rising crude oil prices leave many Middle Easterners flush with cash, much of their money is being invested in real estate, both in the United States and abroad.

Most transactions are still conducted the conventional way, but some real estate specialists say there is a growing appetite among investors for deals that conform to the rules of the Koran. Adhering to Shariah, or Islamic law, can determine how a project is financed - riba, or interest, is prohibited, for example - and also generally means excluding such tenants as bars, mortgage lenders and video stores.

No one knows just how much capital from the Persian Gulf states is finding its way into real estate in the United States. "This capital is very difficult to track as many Middle Eastern buyers work hard to maintain their confidentiality," said Robert M. White Jr., the president of Real Capital Analytics, a research firm in New York.

And Shariah-compliant investing is still in its infancy. But "a lot more people are talking about it," said Steven J. Adelkoff, a real estate lawyer at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham in Pittsburgh, one of a handful of American lawyers with expertise in this field. "In the past 18 months I've had more inquiries than ever before."

Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo, an American Shariah consultant who helped set up the Dow Jones Islamic Markets Index, said that this type of investing caught on only after it was shown to be just as profitable as conventionally structured investments. "Most people feel that if I have choice - all things being equal - I'll take Shariah," he said of Islamic investors. "Then I can sleep at night."...

I'm so glad he can sleep at night. Me, I sleep far less soundly knowing that oily Middle Easterners are slowly buying up the planet so they can turn it into one immense fun-free, sharia-embracing zone.

See, the jihad takes many forms, only one of which involves violence and terror.

And speaking of oily Middle Easterners funding the jihad...From JWR:

...For decades the Saudi royal family has been the main financial supporter of Palestinian terrorist organizations, through the creation of two major committees. According to records on a Saudi royal family website, Ain-Al-Yaqeen, The Popular Committee for Assisting Palestinian Mujahideen and The Support Committee for the Al-Quds Intifada and The Al-Aqsa Fund have given over 15 billion Saudi Riyals (4 billion $U.S.) and reportedly pledged Palestinians up to 1 billion dollars to finance the continuation of the Intifada, which they commonly referred to as "Jihad" and "resistance." The Committees are headed by powerful Prince Salman Ibn Abd Al-Aziz, the Governor of Riyadh, and Prince Nayef bin Abd Al-Aziz, the Interior Minister.

The August 29 Iqra program included the Secretary General of the Saudi Government's Muslim World League Qur'an Memorization Commission (www.hqmi.org) Sheikh Abdallah Basfar explaining why it was an "obligation" for all Muslims to support Jihad.

Shiekh Basfar promised "all of the funds sent via the known charities and organizations" reach those who the funds are meant for. The Saudi government official then citied a few Hadiths, or sayings of Muhammad, including: "He who equips a fighter — it is as if he fought himself." Another Hadith explained: "Someone who does not fight or equip a fighter — Allah will afflict a disaster upon him." He clarified his statement claming "if you don't give money… you should expect punishment from Allah because Jihad is… the most important thing."

Shiekh Basfar's statement explaining "money is so important… Jihad can not be waged without it," was followed by the question, "Who will care for the families of these martyrs who sacrifice their souls? Can we be stingy with our money?"...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:31 | link | comments

Randy's not dandy: The folks over at the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (O.C.A.P.) suggest the Randy Newman tune "Political Science" should be "George W. Bush's theme song":

No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us

We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too

Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

You know, in my previous incarnation, I used to love Randy Newman--his erudite and mordant lyrics, his sprightly melodies, his bluesy vocals. I never realized what a sanctimonious, clueless git he was.

Mind you, I still have a soft spot for the song "Louisiana 1927".

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

Petite frites: Let me get this straight: The Liberals squandered untold millions of taxpayers' dollars--money that ended up in the pockets of dapper Quebec ad execs--in a cockamamie scheme to persude Quebekers to stay in Cananda. The media, while compelled to pay attention to such obvious fraud perpetrated at the highest levels of power, decided it was wiser to overlook the Liberals' flim-flammery (or at least, to defer further examination until Justice Gomery came down from the mountain with his Adscam report, now delayed by at least six weeks) and concentrate on torpedoing the political career of "scary" Conservative leader, Stephen Harper.

So far, so bad.

Now, however, the media are going coco-loco over Immigration Minister Joe Volpe's dinner bills. (Did you know that, on average, he billed taxpayers a whopping $220 for his meals?)

Okay, so he obviously wasn't having anything that would fall under the rubric of  "finger lickin' good". But really...Considering the big bucks that went astray in Quebec, don't Joe's food tabs amount to mighty small potatoes?

Update: Blogger angry in the great white north has a list of some cabinet ministers' "hospitality expenses" so far this year. Topping the list, the above mentioned Joe, at $9,507.23. At the bottom: John Godfrey, Minister of State for Infrastructure Canada, who billed a paltry $305.24.

Joe, who occasionally billed for two breakfasts (I guess presiding over a busy portfolio, a guy works up quite an appetite), sounds likes a caviar and gravlax kind of guy to me. John, on the other hand, seems more the Egg McMuffin type

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:22 | link | comments

Tips for donors: You knew it was coming. Whenever there's a catastrophe, there's bound to be a number of unscrupulous folks who will try to benefit from it. ABC News reports that, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, plenty of fraudmeisters are trying to take advantage of the kindness of strangers. Here are some hints for ensuring your relief dollars actually end up where you want them to, and not in the pockets of unscrupulous grifters:

• Give to established organizations. It's wise to be wary of newly-minted outfits like "The Crawfish Etouffe Foundation" or "I Survived Katrina--Now Pony Up the Dough".
• If you receive an email from a Nigerian widow evactuated from New Orleans who says her money is tied up in some mine somewhere in Africa, and who requires only a modest sum from you, say a few thousand g's or so, to get it released, and who would be more than willing to share her bounty with you at that time, ignore it. The so-called Nigerian is likely a hirsute, beer-bellied scamster from Jersey who's never even seen the French Quarter.
• If someone claiming to be Emeril Lagasse knocks at your door collecting money for Katrina victims, DON'T let him in. The man in a "BAM" artist.
• Ditto for someone who wants to tie Katrina relief to other causes--"Palestinians for Katrina Relief", "Madrassahs for Katrina Relief", "Oil-for-Food-for-Katrina"--you get the picture.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments

Moderate leaders: Daniel Pipes lauds Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharaf, for differentiating himself from the Islamic pack of leaders and making conciliatory moves toward Israel. Score one for Musharaf's "moderate Islam", an entity Pipes is constantly touting as the only solution to "radical Islam" but which, up to now, has seemed mostly a creature of legend, like Sasquatch, or the Tooth Fairy. Pipes insists that Musharaf's meeting with an Israeli cabinet minister marks a great step forward--and perhaps it does. But Musharaf has demonstrated a canny ability to play both ends of the street--placating the seethers in his midst by not cracking down too hard on them; cracking down just hard enough to show the Yanks and the Brits that he's onside with the War on Terror. This stroll down the centre of the road may have bought him some time, but some on the seether side are still determined to bring him down (he's survived at least two assassination attempts), which means his nation's overtures to Israel are likely to be as long (or short) lived as his time in office.

According to Pipes, only one other Muslim leader is worthy of being called a "moderate": Jordan's King Abdulluh. Abdulluh may or may not be a "moderate", but according to a recent survey, (see yesterday's dhiimiwatch), Jordanians are second to none in their Jew-hatred (a unanimous 100% of those polled disapproved of Jews), and no slouches when it comes to reviling America.

In their own unassuming, moderate way, of course.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:33 | link | comments

Death of a Nazi hunter: Simon Wiesenthal died in his sleep last night in Vienna, Austria. He was 96. Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who devoted his post-war life to bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, was a living testament to the protean nature of Jew-hatred. When he started out, the Jew-hatred of the times had a right-wing, fascist, European orientation, as exemplified perhaps by loony Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel. Over the years, Jew-hatred has drifted to the left side of the politicial spectrum and taken on a decidedly Islamic cast; leftists and Muslims, united in their loathing of Israel, have taken up the cause of the oppressed Palestinians and, in the ultimate insult to Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors, have branded the Jews of Israel the new Nazis.

Thus, while the man who gave his name to Simon Wiesenthal Center, the organization which attempts to counter rampant, irrational Jew-hatred may have passed on, Jew-hatred carries on as always; now ebbing, now flowing, never going away.

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

When pigs and apes learn to fly: An editorial in the Jerusalem Post says that Hamas must agree to give up its weapons if it wants to be allowed to enter the sphere of legitimate politics. 

Memo to the Post: Hamas is about as likely to throw out its ammo as, well, I think the first seven words of my post say it best.

Here's the far likelier scenario. Hamas gives up nada, fields candidates in the election, and gives the feckless, incompetent Abbas a genuine run for his shekels. All with the approval of Condi and the Foggy Bottom boys.

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

Undeniable denial: Recently, Tony Blair was counseled by some Muslim advisors that a good way to curry favour with the young seethers in his midst would be to do away with Holocaust Memorial Day. Far too "exclusive", sniffed the advisors, who wanted to see a more all-embracing multicultural event called "Genocide Day".  This ecumenical memorial  would acknowledge all the other "Holocausts" throughout history which had been perpetrated against Muslims.

Fortunately, Blair didn't fall for this "advice", which, after all, was little more than a tacit admission that, decades after the fact, Muslims still have, shall we say, a bit of a problem coming to terms with the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews.

An article in the Boston Globe examines this Muslim difficulty with the Holocaust, and concludes, quelle surprise!, it has a lot to do with their difficulty with the Jews. Of course, Muslims have attempted to disguise their disdain by pretending it's all about, encore quelle surprise!, the Palestinians:

But the problem with the proposal goes far deeper. The other ''genocides" for which they want recognition include the Israeli killings of Palestinians.

Clearly, Palestinians have suffered under the occupation. Over 4,000 have been killed since the renewal of violence five years ago. Some of these dead were completely innocent victims; others were fighters, violent protesters, or suicide bombers. (Nearly 1,000 Israelis have died as well.) This death toll is tragic; but to call it ''genocide" is to cheapen the word.

Any equation between the Holocaust and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is absurd. The effect of such a parallel is not to promote ''inclusiveness" -- it is to erase and minimize the tragedy of the Jews as past victims of genocide by slanderously assigning them an equal role as its present-day perpetrators.

The committees are formally presenting their proposal (backed by the head of the Muslim Council of Britain) to the government later this week; the Home Office has already reportedly indicated that it does not plan to act on the recommendation. What's frightening, however, is that such a proposal could come from a group of people charged with the task of helping the government combat extremism.

Alas, this is not a unique case. The same issue of the London Daily Telegraph that reported the attack on Holocaust Day carried another remarkable story. Ahmad Thomson, deputy chairman of Britain's Association of Muslim Lawyers and occasional adviser to the prime minister, recently claimed that Blair had been pressured into entering the Iraq war by a sinister conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons. In his 1994 book, ''The Next World Order," Thomson (a convert to Islam) claimed that the Holocaust is a ''big lie" and that the presence of US soldiers in Saudi Arabia is especially outrageous because many of them are Jewish.

These two stories illustrate an uncomfortable truth: The infection of anti-Jewish bigotry is alarmingly widespread in the Muslim community today, not only in predominantly Muslim and Arab countries -- where the media routinely circulate anti-Semitic libels and conspiracy theories while preachers and editorialists compare Jews to pigs and monkeys -- but in Western democracies as well. Some apologists on the left blame this virulent hatred on the Israeli occupation of the territories. But is it plausible to believe that a state of Israel within its 1948 borders would be less hated by those who believe all of its land rightfully belongs to Muslims?...

Update: Robert Spencer comments on the Boston Globe's dizzying inconsistency--with articles that veer precipitously from outright dhimmitude to criticism of Muslim positions, like the article above.  He also notes that the paragraph which estimates Palestinian casualites at around 4,000 is extremely misleading:

This is inadequate. It is true that some were fighters, violent protesters, and suicide bombers. It is also true that some were innocent victims. But the number of those innocents was inflated by the Palestinian Arabs themselves, by their deliberate practice of staging attacks from civilian areas, so that when the Israelis retaliated they would kill civilians -- and thus provide useful propaganda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments (1)

No nukes is good nukes: In a stunning victory for the Bush Administration, North Korea has agreed to give up its nukes.

With Pyongyang out of the picture (at least for now), Bush can now focus his attention on the nuclear-minded mullahs.

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

"Defilers" of Islam: Arab News, a Saudi news source, details how some "deviants" defiled the name of Islam on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 by chatting online about how thrilled they were that it had happened:

There is no name for such savage behavior. We may use the word “deviant” but it is not nearly strong enough. Amazingly, there are people who used the Internet to defile and insult both Islam and humanity on the recent anniversary of 9/11. Barbaric and incredible as it may seem, they actually celebrated the senseless slaughter of innocents by the mass murderers of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization.

Amid the high-tech madness which poured out of cyberspace, many Saudis acknowledged the garbage for exactly what it was. One man, calling himself “Jedawi” wrote: “I wonder how people can celebrate the killing and deaths of innocent citizens. No religion allows that.”

Perhaps another writer summed it up when he questioned the sanity of those who slaughter women and children and believe that a merciful God will bless them for their acts. “Those people need medical treatment — urgently,” he wrote.

Referring to the senseless deaths of airline passengers, businessmen and women, service workers, emergency and military personnel as the “Battles of New York and Washington,” some people are actually uploading prayers for God to accept as martyrs the murderers of innocent people. Others are praising the slaughter and urging people to defile the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him).

One misguided writer said that the so-called mujahedeen will always remember what he called “the great heroes of Manhattan in the 9/11 victory.” He went on to say: “We will dance and celebrate this occasion for another 10 years,” he said, adding that those responsible would continue to plan more slaughters of more innocent people.

On the Al-Farouq website, which is dedicated to encouraging murder and apostasy, a writer boasted that the killers had changed the face of the world and created a “better respected position” for murderers everywhere.

“Those heroes have cleaned the image of the nation that was drawn by hypocrites,” one defiler of Islam writes.

Another deviant calling himself Abu Zubair claimed to have been with Bin Laden the night before the attack and gave a long description of what it was like to contemplate defiling the Qur’an by washing it in the blood of innocents. “He was very nervous and thoughtful, always looking into the sky or staring at the ground,” the deviant wrote. “He was silent most of the time; he hardly spoke to any of us. No one was able to talk to him, even his closest associates couldn’t get a clear answer when they queried him.”

Of course, these same "deviants" are looking to topple the Saudi monarchy, a regime full of jaded, irreligious princes which they see as iredeemably corrupt. Ironically, some royals--like the wife of Prince Bandar, former ambassador to the U.S.-- have been known to offer financial support to the would-be topplers; a cheque from Bandar's wife found its way into the bank account of one Mohammed Atta.

Update: Monsters & Critics has more on Al-Farouq, the extremist website mentioned in the article. Apparently, the site's seethers have called for "a cyber jihad":

A Web forum for Muslim extremists is calling on its members to organize an Islamic hackers` army to carry out internet attacks against the U.S. government and has posted tips, software, and links to other resources to help would-be holy cyber warriors.

The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit with a history of extensive ties to the CIA, says that it has monitored postings on a new section of a jihadi bulletin board called al-Farooq.

According to Jeffrey Poole, a researcher for the foundation, the forum "represents a how-to manual for the disruption and/or destruction of enemy electronic resources, including e-mail, websites and computer hardware."

The new section was set up two weeks ago, says a briefing written by Poole and distributed by the foundation, which adds that one member of the forum has called for the creation of an Islamic cyber-operations organization, which he dubbed "Jaish al-Hacker al-Islami," the Islamic Hacker`s Army.

The would-be Islamic cyber-warrior, who calls himself "Achrafe," points out that organization of large numbers of attackers is a key force multiplier in some forms of Web warfare -- such as so-called Denial of Service attacks, where the target`s servers are bombarded with so many requests for information from other parts of the internet that they effectively shut down.

The briefing describes in detail a "hacker library" maintained on the al-Farooq site, which includes special software that can be used to steal passwords; tools and tips on anonymous Web surfing; and programs that claim to be able to destroy or disable a target computer if installed on it.

But Ron Gula, a former National Security Agency official who worked on cyber security issues and now runs his own IT company, says that most of the cyber attacks attempted by such groups are "amateurish" and "lost in the background noise" of other hackers and internet criminals.

"Between 1 and 5 percent of the internet is infected (with viruses, spyware, worms or other malicious software) at any one time," Gula told United Press International.

So-called keystroke logs -- which record every letter typed into a computer -- were among the programs offered for download on al-Farouq. The software can be used to learn passwords and login information. Once clandestinely installed on a computer, typically via a virus or an unwitting download, the records of the key strokes are transmitted to the hacker, which can give them access to password-protected computer systems...

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments

Politics is the art of the expedient: The Shias of Iran and Wahabists of Saudi Arabia detest each other, each convinced that they alone practice the "true" version of the one true faith. You'd never know it, though, from this Orwellian article in the Tehran Times:

JEDDAH (IRNA) -- Visiting Chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here on Saturday evening that Iran and Saudi Arabia play key roles in the Islamic world.

He made the remark in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah where he underlined the need to promote bilateral cooperation between the two Muslim states.

Experience of the past cooperation between the two countries shows that Tehran and Riyadh can solve the existing regional problems through unity and sharing identical stands, he added. Referring to high level of economic and trade cooperation between the two states, Rafsanjani said, "Private sectors, particularly those active in the areas of oil, gas and petrochemistry, can further promote trade and economic relations between the two sides."

Expressing his concern over the latest developments in the war-torn Iraq, he said the ongoing crisis in Iraq is a major and complicated problem for the entire Islamic world.

"Saudi Arabia can play an effective and constructive role in settlement of the Iraqi problems through cooperation with Iran and coordination with regional states including Jordan, Syria and Turkey," the EC chairman suggested. He further said Palestine is an issue of the whole Islamic world, adding, "Legitimate rights of the Palestinian nation cannot be ignored."...

It's so nice when two totalitarian theocracies can set aside their ideological differences for the moment in the spirit of economic cooperation. And don't you love how Rafsanjani is Iran's "Chairman of the Expediency Council"?  (I trust the word "visiting" refers to his current visit to Saudi Arabia and isn't part of his official title.) George (O, not Dubya) couldn't have come up with a better title himself.

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

You are what you eat: According to the UN (admittedly, not the most trustworthy source of information) the most dangerous country in the developed world is--wait for it--Scotland.

A gastronome might suggest it has something to do with the haggis. Having that as your national food is apt to make anyone quarrelsome.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:08 | link | comments (1)

Bad timing: ABC news reports that a plastic surgeon is pushing to perform the first face transplant.

Rats! The man who been a perfect candidate for the procedure has already passed on to his reward (or in his case, punishment).

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments

Mother Goose for Dhimmis:

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:29 | link | comments

Orwell at the UN: Living up to its billing as the most amoral international body on the planet, the UN has once again failed to come up with an "acceptable" definition for terrorism. The sticking point: for the non-Islamic world, terrorism refers to acts of terror committed against any individual or individuals. For the Islamic world, terrorism does not include violent acts intended to oust recalcitrant Jews from that scintilla of land which Muslims consider to belong, in perpetuity, to dar al Islam.

You can see where that might make it difficult to come to terms. From the L.A. Times:

THE MOST SHOCKING outcome of last week's U.N. summit was the failure, once again, of the world organization to take a definitive stand against terrorism. It was scarcely surprising that the 191 member-states could not come to agreement on adding members to the Security Council or on sweeping management reforms or on foreign aid, however disappointing these failures were to some. But a long-overdue declaration on terrorism had seemed well within reach.

That it was needed in the first place will surprise many. The sad fact is that the U.N. has never spoken clearly on this issue, thanks to the stubborn efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, made up of 56 states — nearly 30% of the U.N.'s membership.

After 9/11, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan took it upon himself to secure a blanket condemnation of terrorism, but it was beaten back by the OIC. Last year, after the attack that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, Annan tried to get a resolution of this kind through the Security Council but was forced to settle for equivocal language in order to secure the votes of OIC members Pakistan and Algeria.

A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation.

To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes...

In solving this condundrum, perhaps the UN might look to the example set by George Orwell in his satire, Animal Farm. Sure, Orwell was poking dark fun at the Communists, and, yes, the main characters are pigs, an animal Muslims consider haram (Jews, too, for that matter, even though in the Koran, that's one of the lowly beasts which Mo turned them into). But those were might smart pigs in the novel. Pigs who, to preserve their own power but, at the same time, placate the masses by paying lip service to the concept of equality, come up with definition that could, today, be modified especially for the UN.

The original Animal Farm motto: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

For the UN's purposes, however, that could be changed to: "All terrorism is equally reprehensible, but some terrorism is less reprehensible than other terrorism."

I think that manages to capture the UN concept in a nutshell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:54 | link | comments

Same costume; different system: The New York Times has a photo of a woman in Afghanistan casting a ballot in today's Presidential election. No doubt a breakthrough for a nation that, not too long ago, was ruled by Muslim Salafists who insisted on keeping their women encased head to toe in an ambulatory pup tent.

Oh well. At least now they get to vote.

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

The Straw calling the kettle black: Jack Straw wasn't the only one who got to yammer away in front of a UN crowd the other day. On Saturday, hardline Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new President, has his New York debut in front of the UN's General Assembly (or General Ass, as I like to call it) . Ahmadinejad was trying to convince everyone that his country, which in the vanguard of the jihad against the country they lovingly refer to as Great Satan, is planning to use its nuclear technology for goodness and nicess, and not to build nuclear weapons which it hopes to lob at those uppity dhimmis squatting on that sliver of dar al Islam.

The British Foreign Secretary, who, in his pathetic and unintenionally comical address to the General Ass did his best to suck up to jihadis by touting purported--and, by this point, centuries-old--achievements in 'rithmatic, said he was less than impressed by Ahmadinehad's speech. Straw called it "disappointing and unhelpful".

Now there's a man without an ironic bone in his body.

Update: There's no better way to push the world's buttons than to dredge up the "a" word--"apartheid". The seethers did it to Israel, seeking to draw a connection between the Jewish state and the reviled and discredited regime in South Africa. Now, Ahmadinejad is calling the efforts to deprive Iran of it's Allah-given right to a refine uranium "nuclear apartheid".

Update: The UN website puts the most positive spin possible on Ahmadinejab's harangue:

In a much-anticipated speech, the President of Iran today pledged before the United Nations General Assembly that Tehran would open its uranium enrichment programme to cooperation with private and public sector players, eschew the production of nuclear arms, engage the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and continue talks with concerned countries on the issue.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prefaced his proposals by warning that “once certain powerful States completely control nuclear energy resources and technology, they will deny access to other States and thus deepen the divide between powerful countries and the rest of the international community.”

He charged that “hegemonic powers” have misrepresented Iran's technological endeavors in the nuclear field as pursuit of nuclear weapons. “This is nothing but a propaganda ploy.”

Declaring that Iran, in accordance with its religious principles, would never develop nuclear weapons, he said that his country is “prepared to engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of uranium enrichment program in Iran.” ...

More evidence that the UN exists in a twilight world of fantasy and delusion.

Not surprisingly, Arabic News has a somewhat different take on the subject, noting Ahmadinejab's refusal to be "bullied". It includes this except which attempts, as always, to lay responsibility for all the problems at the feet of, yawn, The Jews:

"The special committee should report on how the material, technology and equipment needed for production of nuclear weapons has been transferred to the Zionist regime in contravention of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and come up with practical plans to make the Middle East free from nuclear arms," he said. "Certain powerful states are attempting to lay the foundations of a nuclear apartheid system through discriminatory approach to the access of NPT member states to peaceful nuclear material, equipment and technology."

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

How he learned to stop worrying and love the jihad: Jack Straw, whose last name, more and more, seems to describe most of the contents of his cranial cavity, repeats many of the lies dhimmis tell themselves when they don't want to have to think about the jihad. Speaking to a receptive audience at the International Dictators and Enablers Assembly (a.k.a the UN), Straw insisted there was absolutely, positively no difference between Islam and the West. He said that the only people who believed such a ridiculous idea were "terrorists and the preachers of hate." And anyone who believes anything they have to say is succumbing to "a philosophy of mistrust and despair."

The reason some poor soles turn to terrorism, says the "insightful" Mr. Straw, has nothing whatsoever to do with the jihad, perish the thought, and everything to do with, in the words of the Beeb report, "poor economic prospects and stunted political freedoms (which) had led to widespread disillusionment among young and talented Muslims."

Moreover, the problem is exacerbated by  "the easy availability of weapons in what has become an anarchic, unregulated trade."

In other words, jihad doesn't kill people; unregulated, easily-accessible weapons kill people.

As well, our dismay that some "young and talented Muslims", spurred on by poverty and easily-acquired arms, have acted out in an inappopriate manner must be tempered by the huge debt huge debt of gratitude we owe "Arab peoples" for having "developed the mathematical foundations on which the digital world is based."

So thanks for the math, Arab peoples. Now, could you please stop blowing us up?

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

Beeb shocks Blair: Tony Blair told Rupert Murdoch he was shocked by the BBC's coverage of hurricane Katriana, saying it was "full of hatred of America". (link via Drudge)

You mean the Beeb and other mainstream outlets (like the Ceeb, the Glib and Mewl, the New York Times et al) would use the occasion of a natural disaster to lambaste the U.S. is typical self-loathing, self-flagellatory fashion?

Shocking!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:27 | link | comments

Utopian delusions: The other day, Nobel Peace Prize wannabe Bono lectured Canada's Prime Minister for failing to come through on his promises to throw away heaps o' cash on African relief. An article in Foreign Policy explains why they Geldof-Bono approach to the problems is less than effective--and may be doing more harm than good:

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments

Arik snubs Tony: Eurabian antipathy toward Israel took a more ominous turn last week when an Israeli army general evaded arrest by Scotland Yard. A British judge had been convinced to issue a warrant for the general's arrest for purported war crimes resulting from the Israeli occupation, but the wily Jew was alerted to the plan and refused to deplane from his El Al 737 when it landed in London. He flew back to Israel, scott free.

The incident sparked outrage in Israel, which questioned Britain's--or any other Eurabian nation's--right to arrest an Israeli official. (Tellingly, these same nations would never dream of issuing a warrant for the arrest of, say, a Yasser Arafat, responsible for multiple war crimes against Jews.) Now, Ariel Sharon has pointedly snubbed Tony Blair's invitation to visit the U.K., reasoning that he, too, could face the wrath of sanctimonious Israel-haters. From the Times Online:

BRITAIN is desperate to avoid a diplomatic row with Israel after Ariel Sharon apparently snubbed an invitation from Tony Blair to visit London, claiming that he feared arrest.

The Israeli Prime Minister is understood to have cited the case of a senior general who narrowly escaped detention at Heathrow on war crimes charges last week. Doran Almog remained on an El Al Boeing 747 rather than risk falling into the hands of Scotland Yard after a human rights group lodged charges that cannot be brought in Israel.

Mr Blair suggested that Mr Sharon could visit Britain when the pair met for talks on the sidelines of the United Nations’ 60th anniversary summit in New York. The Israeli premier shot back that because of his years of army service he could also find himself facing arrest.

“I would really like to visit Britain,” Mr Sharon was said to have told Mr Blair. “The trouble is that I, like Major-General Almog, also served in the (Israeli Defence Force) for many years. I too am a general. I have heard that the prisons in Britain are very tough. I wouldn’t like to find myself in one.”

The growing legal threat to Israeli officers also forced the former Chief of the Army Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, to cancel a fund-raising visit to London because of fears that he might be arrested on war crimes charges relating to attacks on Palestinian civilians and property.

Israeli authorities have also warned the serving chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, against travelling to Britain because of the war crimes complaints filed against him by the left-wing army “refusenik” group, Yesh Gvul.

Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said the attempted arrest of Major General Almog and the risk to others as an “outrage”, saying he would press British authorities for a change in the law.

Mr Shalom said: “The fact that Israeli soldiers and high-ranking officials are prevented from entering European countries is an outrage. We take a grave view of this. Don’t forget that Britain has troops in Iraq. What will it do if other countries decide that British soldiers and officers committed war crimes in Iraq? Will it consent to having them arrested in other countries? I think it should change at once.”

Israeli Army radio quoted aides of Mr Sharon yesterday saying that Mr Blair was “clearly embarrassed” by the exchange at the UN meeting and promised to take care of the matter...

Update: Britain has cancelled the warrant against the Israeli general, citing "procedural reasons".

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

Validating the terrorists: Before reading this Beeb story about how Hamas held prayer services (so devout, those Hamasniks )  in abandonned Jewish settlements in Gaza, you'd be wise to recall that this is the same terrorist outfit which was involved in whipping up the rabble to torch synagogues and greenhouses.

Without that knowlege, you might assume that Hamas was actually a religious service organization along the lines of, say, an Islamic Knights of Columbus.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:03 | link | comments

The crushing embrace of the jihad: In recent days, I have come to the conclusion that political correctness is actually a kind of dementia, an affliction which, like Jew-hatred, has the ability to corrode the brains of those suffering from it. As Exhibit 1, I offer the story of those brain-corroded dupes who thought it was a good idea to commemorate Todd Beamer and the rest of those on Flight 93 who thrwarted the designs of the terrorists on 9/11 by building a giant "red crescent of embrace" in  the Pennsylvania field in which the airplane crashed. This abomination, as Mark Steyn called it, would have been akin to errecting a huge swastika to honour the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Reason prevailed for a change, and the memorial, in that form at least, has been iced.

As always, Cox and Forkum have a clear-eyed, blackly amusing take on the controversy:

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:42 | link | comments

Azure moon moment: Well knock me over with a feather. The International Herald Tribune, one of the most consistenly clueless of mainstream media outlets, has an article today which actually makes sense. The writer, Bassam Tibi, a professor at a German university, argues that sharia law as it is about to be enshrined in the Iraqi constitution, is inconsistent with democracy:

...The call for Shariah that one hears today throughout the Muslim world, as religion becomes politicized and the law Islamized, is a call for an Islamic state based on the idea that Shariah can form a country's constitution. The global context is the political revival of religion - and along with it the idea of divine law. But is Shariah really constitutional law? And how does the call for Islamization of the law fit in with democracy?

In fact, Shariah understood as modern constitutional law is in conflict with individual human rights.

Take the question of freedom of faith. Islam respects the other monotheist faiths, Judaism and Christianity, and provides their believers with recognition as "protected minorities," but does not view them as equals. Muslims themselves are denied the right of conversion, which is regarded as "riddah," or apostasy. If Muslims convert, the Shariah calls for them to be punished with death.

For that reason, Shariah cannot contribute to a legal pluralism, because any pluralism must combine diversity with basic common understandings. The commitment to universal international standards can coexist with a diversity of cultures, but only if a common concept of law is insisted upon.

Respect for the global political revival of religion means recognizing religious legal traditions, even ones recently revived or newly invented. But Shariah would have to be reformed before an Islamic democracy could come about that was based on the recognition of commonalities in constitutional law.

In its present form, Shariah is not eligible as a model for constitutional law. The inclusion of Shariah in the Iraqi constitution, even as "a source," gives concern over whether this is to become the model for the rule of law in the envisioned process of a transformation of the greater Middle East.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:24 | link | comments

The son also rises: In the Globe and Mail today there's a charming photo of noted artist, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of Libyan potentate and all-round wackjob Moo Moo Gadhafi (apparently, the spelling du jour of this evanescent last name).  And lest you think that Seif is in the Kofi Annan, Bashar Assad mold--i.e. pallid spawn of strongman father--think again. Not only is Seif, touted as one of his father's possible successors, a self-assured statesman (last year he warned Canada it would "pay the price" if we didn't perforce appologize for supporting the UN embargoes against Tripoli), he's also a  talented (well, that's what his Dad says, anyway) painter whose works have been exhibited in a number of galleries around the world.

The photo in the Globe shows a pensive Seif in front of one of his oevres. No doubt the full impact is lost in a black and white photo, but even so, you can see the effect the artist was going for. The painting shows what I presume are the Three Magi, one holding aloft a large cross. Their backs are turned, and they appear to be looking in the distance at an object of veneration. One would assume, given their obvious association with Christianity, that they might be looking for a sign from the God the Father, Son, or Holy Spirt. But no. Up in the heavens, or at least, in the top right hand corner of the painting, you can clearly discern the face of another kind of God the Father: the chin-jutting, Mussolini-esque visage of Moo Moo himself.

Way to ass-lick, Seif. That should help keep you high up in the successor sweepstakes--for now, anyway.

The painting is part of a larger exhibit of works, not all by Seif, which is opening in Monteal. The exhibit is sponsored by some corporate heavyweights, including engineering giant, SNC-Lavalin. Lavalin, which not co-incidentally is doing lots of work in Libya, and clearly, hopes to do more, has no hesitations about sponsoring an exhibit by a country whose human rights record is, to use an artistic word, sketchy. Declining to comment on these human rights abuses, a  Lavalin V.P. calls Libya a "country in transition...where we see shared values."

Shared values like greed and sucking up to dictators, I suppose.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:45 | link | comments

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:35 | link | comments (6)

Who's the boss?: It's official: the inmates are running the asylum. From the Seattle P-I (again):

Armed militants set up checkpoints in Gaza's evacuated Jewish settlements for a second day Thursday, doing the job of Palestinian security officials who have been unable to rein in the chaos since Israel's withdrawal.

Dozens of gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - a militant group linked to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah movement - were determined to restore order and stop fellow Palestinians from looting valuable equipment from greenhouses Israel left behind.

The gunmen's rule underscored the weakness and ineffectiveness of Abbas' Palestinian Authority, which has failed to impose law and order throughout Gaza. The lack of control was most apparent along the Gaza-Egypt border, where people have been crossing largely unfettered since Israel's pullout on Monday.

Abbas' inability to control the area strengthens the rival Hamas militant group just three months ahead of a parliamentary election, when Fatah and Hamas are to face off for the first time in a political playing field. The outcome of the Gaza power struggle could greatly influence voting...

Update: The Seattle P-I story has the rather benign headline "Palestinian gunmen set up Gaza checkpoint." The website israelinsider eschews this word-mincing and heads the same story "Terrorist gunmen take over for Palestinian security forces".

Hmm. I wonder which heading is more accurate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments

La cage aux folles: The oxymoronically named Seattle (thick-as-a) Post-Intelligencer has a cockle-warming (and sick-making) story about Palestinians rekindling romances which had been sundered by the Israeli Berlin Wall:

Once Israel had pulled its last troops out of Gaza, Abdullah Sweillam left behind the strip's squalid ghettos along with his wife and three children, slipping into Egypt to rekindle a romance with his second spouse.

Sweillam, who is in his 40s, was among thousands of Palestinians who crossed to the Egyptian side of this desert town, which has been split by a brick wall and barbed wire fence since Israel's occupation of Gaza began 38 years ago. Israel finalized its pullout on Monday, handing Gaza over to Palestinian control.

But unlike most who clambered back over the walls onto the Palestinian side Wednesday to comply with a deadline to return, Sweillam says he is staying put for "at least a year" to live with his Egyptian-born wife, who he last saw before the Palestinian uprising started in 2000.

"I can't leave here after what I saw and return to that crowded place with three kids and a wife," said the unemployed Sweillam, who climbed into Rafah on Wednesday, hours before Egyptian police tried to impose a 6 p.m. deadline to close the border.

"Besides, they've got enough money to last for a year," he said of his Palestinian family.

Islam gives men permission to marry more than one woman, although the practice has largely waned in many parts of the Arab world.

Like Sweillam, 50-year-old Palestinian construction worker Ibrahim Abu Younes has a Palestinian and Egyptian wife. He accompanied the latter to Rafah to meet her relatives Tuesday.

But unlike his compatriot, Abu Younes intends to return to Gaza, where he lives with his 16 sons, four daughters and two wives in a three bedroom apartment.

"Gaza Strip is like a bird cage," he said. "But now I feel like a bird who has flown its cage and is breathing freedom."...

Twenty-three folks in a three bedroom apartment. Sounds like it's time for someone to fly the coop.

Two words for Abu Younes: birth control.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:21 | link | comments (1)

Again with the Wall: Globe and Mail reporter Mark MacKinnon is so enthralled by his wildly inaccurate Berlin Wall analogy that he's decided to haul it out for another day. After torching some synagogues and tearing down their walls of oppression, his jubilant (ecstatic, elated, thrilled as all get out, pleased as non-alcoholic punch...) natives are running amuck:

It was as if the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the next day Russian and U.S. soldiers went around asking everyone to return to their own side so that the barrier could be rebuilt and the hated status quo restored.

After tearing down the metal fence that had separated them for 23 years and pouring across freely for a day, residents of the two sides of Rafah -- an impoverished town that straddles the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt -- repeatedly defied efforts yesterday to reseal the border and stop the flow of people.

Tens of thousands of elated Palestinians, many of them reuniting with long-lost relatives on the other side, have made the crossing in the past 48 hours, some wedging themselves through tiny crawl spaces torn in the 10-metre-high metal fence with hand tools.

Under pressure from Israel, which fears that militants and weapons are also flowing across the border in large numbers, Egypt declared the border officially closed yesterday and moved to plug the largest hole that was torn in the fence Monday in the hours after the Israeli army completed its withdrawal from Gaza. But initial efforts to stem the tide of people crossing the border seemed futile...

Oh those pushy Jews. There they go again, "pressuring" people, forcing them to plug holes in walls to prevent jubilant, jihad-minded Jew-haters from reuniting with their loving relatives. Never mind that these same impoverished "streamers" represent as great a threat to Egypt, and for that matter, the rest of the world, as they do to Israel. Let's put it down to Jewish paranoia and mean-spiritedness over Palestinian nationalistic aspirations, shall we, so we, like MacKinnon, can pretend there's no such thing as the jihad and sleep the smug, peaceful slumber of the clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:12 | link | comments

Unimpirical empire: In an article in the rightish British periodical, The Spectator,  paleo-Conservative Patrick J. Buchanan says that hurricane Katrina probably marks the end of the line for "the American empire". Buchanan, a man who regularly proves that inanity and fatuousness are not the exclusive domain of those on the other end of the political spectrum--and who, in this article, sounds remarkably similar to delusional loonbat Gore Vidal, who also has some pretty far-out theories about America--concludes his morose screed with the following observations:

America remains a superpower, but seriously overstretched. With armed forces of 1.2 million, we are fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, have troops in scores of countries, and are committed to defend dozens of others all over the world. The US budget is $400 billion in deficit, as 77 million Baby Boomers approach retirement age and eligibility for social security and Medicare. Either the Bush tax cuts go and we recruit hundreds of thousands more troops, or the war guarantees must be re-assessed and the empire abandoned.

My feeling is that when the time comes to choose, the empire goes. Message from Katrina: come home, America.

Nice try, Pat, but America is about as "imperial" as Israel is "colonial". In fact, both are popular fabrications which aim to discredit those attempting to combat the totalitarianism of our era, the jihad.

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

But only long enough for the mullahs to get their nukes up and running: Google News (Miami Herald) headline: U.S. ready to delay showdown on Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:32 | link | comments

Foggy Bottom raspberry: Caroline Glick says the State Department refused Israeli aid following hurricane Katrina because, well, you can probably guess why. From JWR:

Why would there be a problem with Israel assisting the US? How dare the administration hint that Israel integrate its assistance with that of an American religious and ethnic minority — Jewish or otherwise? Did the US suggest that the Irish or Indian governments integrate their relief assistance with relief efforts being carried out by the Irish-American or Indian-American communities? Perhaps Israel should feel grateful that the Bush administration accepted our offer at all.

After all, it refused Israeli offers of assistance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. At that time a delegation from Zaka, the non-governmental organization of volunteers that collects body parts for identification and burial after terror attacks in Israel, was grounded at Ben-Gurion Airport when it received word that the Bush administration had adamantly rejected its offer to come to New York to help identify victims at the World Trade Center.

AT THE same time, as is the case today with Hurricane Katrina, the administration loudly applauded the "outpouring" of assistance it had received from such allies as Saudi Arabia. It took then New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani to set the record straight when, on October 10, 2001, Giuliani rejected a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

Giuliani discovered that the prince had claimed that "Israeli attacks on Palestinians" were the cause of the al-Qaida bombings in the US. In rejecting the donation Giuliani said, "Not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem."

Unfortunately, the problem continues...

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:28 | link | comments

Dead end: Why the road map to peace in our time is not worth the dead wood it's printed on. From the Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinian Religious Scholars Society on Wednesday issued a fatwa (Islamic religious decree) forbidding normalization with Israel.

The fatwa came in response to a surprise ruling earlier this week by Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, head of Egypt's al-Azhar Mosque University, in favor of normalization with Israel.

"Islam does not prohibit normalization with other countries, especially Israel, as long as this normalization does not affect religion," Tantawi, one of the Arab world's leading Muslim scholars, wrote.

Condemning Tantawi's stance, the Palestinian Religious Scholars Society said his ruling was tantamount to supporting infidels, a move that is banned by Islam. "This is like sharing with the infidel in his evil deeds," it added.

Reaffirming a long-standing ban on normalized relations with Israel, the Palestinian group said relations with occupiers of Muslim lands meant recognition of their aggression.

"It is the religious duty of all Muslims to help their brethren in driving the enemy out of their lands," the Palestinian group added. "How can there be any cooperation between Muslims when some of them are involved in normalization with the enemies of Islam?"

Criticizing Egypt's agreement to deploy border guards along the border with the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian "scholars" said they were expecting the head of al-Azhar to issue a fatwa "calling for the mobilization of Muslim armies to expel the Jews from the rest of the lands of Palestine instead of deploying troops to defend the enemy's borders."...

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:10 | link | comments

A: From the looks of things, Hamas: Q: Who controls Gaza (Time Magazine headline)?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:49 | link | comments

Q: What do you get an amoral world body which is generally held hostage by its despotic, chaotic, iredeemably corrupt majority for it's 60th birthday?: A: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:47 | link | comments

No fun, fun, fun: It's amazing what occurs to you in the middle of the night. Stuff like this:

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

Oh, freedom: The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the Communists during the Cold War in a divided city to prevent East Berliners from slipping the bonds of tyranny and finding freedom in the West.

The Israeli security barrier was constructed to prevent Islamic zealots enslaved by a jihadi ideology from slipping into Israel and blowing up Jews.

See the difference?

Then you're not Mark MacKinnon, the Globe and Mail reporter who, during his tour of duty in the region, seems to have gone native. And by native, I mean Gazan:

In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of jubilant Palestinians in the south of the Gaza Strip tore down sections of a metal barrier and streamed south across the border into Egypt yesterday, reuniting with relatives they hadn't seen in years.

The southern town of Rafah, divided in two under a 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, was again one yesterday, and Palestinians poured en masse across the border to sightsee, shop and hold picnics with friends and family.

Men in army fatigues, women in flowing black abayas and children skipping school stepped over the rubble of homes demolished by the Israeli army last year and followed the bulldozer tracks toward a series of holes that had been ripped in the metal border fence. By some estimates, 20,000 people crossed yesterday, almost all of them heading into Egypt from Gaza.

"We're going to al-Arish!" shouted Samira Awrabi, a 50-year-old hairdresser, as she excitedly marched with her daughters toward a town about 30 kilometres away in the north of the Sinai Peninsula.

"I don't know anything about al-Arish, I've never been there, but we've been locked up for so long and this is our chance to get out and see the world," Ms. Awrabi said...

Funny, I don't remember Berliners torching synagogues during the course of their demolition.

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

"Nice" nukes: The two remaining members of the axis of evil (the third member having been sidelined by an American invasion) say they plan to pursue their rights to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. A curious statement indeed, given that North Korea already has nuclear bombs and everyone (save UN nuclear Chihuahua, Mohammed ElBaradei) knows that if Iran doesn't yet have them, it will have them soon. I guess there's strength in numbers, and the "dynamic duo" is hoping to present a united front.

Tell me, how do you say "taqiyah" in Korean?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:01 | link | comments

Give him hell, Hitch: Tomorrow night Christopher Hitchins squares off against George Galloway in a debate in New York City. The subject: the war in Iraq. Since the debate is being run under the auspices of Bush-bashers, the audience is likely to be stacked heavily in the odious Mr. G.'s favour, but I have no doubt that Hitch will be able to hold his own. (story via Daimnation)

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:52 | link | comments

Give 'em hell, George: It takes a man of character, courage and principle to take responsiblitity and "stop the buck". George W. Bush is such a man. From MSNBC:

President Bush said Tuesday that he takes responsibility for any federal failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, adding that the disaster raised broader questions about the government’s ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said when asked about the federal response at a White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

“To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” he said. “I want to know what went right and what went wrong.”

The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government’s ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

“Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond,” Bush replied.

As for blunders in the federal response, “I’m not going to defend the process going in,” Bush said. “I am going to defend the people saving lives.”...

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

Get out your teeny-weeny violins: From Reuters AlertNet, natch:

Palestinians desperate for income dug through the rubble of former Jewish settlements in Gaza for anything of value on Tuesday, dodging security forces scrambling to restore order.

Equipped with hammers, saws and wire-cutters, scavengers milled around piles of concrete chunks and twisted metal for items such as copper wire, plastic piping, aluminium and iron.

Some of them rented tractors to pull electric cables from the ground to ease the labour. Donkey carts loaded with materials lined the road between Gaza City and the abandoned settlement of Elei Sinai, once home to 400 settlers.

"We earn a living and we contribute in keeping the environment clean, and this is not looting," said Ayman Soboh, a former farmer. "The Israelis stole this land for 38 years. Now they are returning the land to us. It's ours."

"Do you think I am happy to work like this? I want to earn some living to feed my children," said Anas Mahmoud, 29, as he loaded plastic irrigation pipes into his cart. Palestinians said each cartful could garner up to 40 shekels ($8.80).

Most of the 1.4 million Palestinians in tiny Gaza are unemployed and live below the U.N.'s global poverty line of $2 a day. Large, extended families typically have one breadwinner struggling to support them.

The 8,500 uprooted settlers, who took virtually all of their personal possessions with them, are to receive an average of $200,000 in compensation from Israel's government...

Damn you, infernal Zionist colonial occupiers. Keeping those nice Palestinian revelers and scavengers from their land all these years--and taking all your personal possessions with you when you left.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:45 | link | comments (2)

Unintentional comedy, brought to you by the Arab Thought Foundation:  From UAE news site chubawumba, er, alibaba, er, albawaba:

The Arab and World Media Conference will be held in Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai on 5th - 6th December, <i>WAM</I> reported. The event is organized by the Arab Thought Foundation and the Dubai Press Club has been announced. The forum will highlight issues such as media and the political reform in the Arab World, technology, censorship, propaganda, and accuracy in reporting, Arab youth media, democracy in the Arab world and some of the ethical dilemmas faced by journalists.

Considering how little reform, democracy, ethics and accuracy in reporting--and how much censorship and propoganda--there is in the Arab media, it should be quite an eye-opening event. (I wonder if "Arab youth media" includes all those "newsy" extremist sites.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments

Personally, I never found him terribly appealing: Google news headline: U.K. bomb suspect loses appeal.

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

Huh?: Google News (Korea Times) headline: Nuke talks may seek different modality.

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

Pieces in our time: The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece about a triumphant Abbas planting a Palestinian flag in Gaza. The flag symbolizes the Palestinians' bold victory over the Zionists, ending what the P.A.'s Fearful Leader calls 38 years "colonialism and occupation".

Yeah, Mahmoud, that's what it was all about. How dare those rapacious Zionists set up one of their colonies smack in the middle of dar al Islam?

Now that some Arab grievences have been redressed and at least a portion of hard-fought for land returned, there remains the minor matter of setting up a functioning Palestinian state.

Piece o' cake, says Abbas. All we need to do is work out a few details. You know, like East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the right of return, the rest of Israel, the continued Jewish sovereign Jewish presence in the region. Some minor technicalities on the road to statehood which can all be ironed out through negotiation.

Not so fast there, bucko, says Hamas and the other excitable jihadi lads. We're having way too much fun blowing up the Zionist colonial occupiers and torching their abandoned synagogues (Allah Akbar!). And we don't plan to quit:

Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar said "the Zionist enemy is today fleeing the Gaza Strip with its head bowed in humiliation. ... This is a real victory for all Palestinians, especially the heroes who fought against this enemy."

Mohammed Hijazi, commander of one of the Fatah-affiliated militias in the Gaza Strip, said on Palestinian television that his men were planning suicide attacks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba. "We will continue our martyrdom operations inside Israel until all our lands are liberated," he said. Islamic Jihad leader Muhammed al-Hindi said his group's main task now was to liberate Jerusalem and the West Bank.

But don't worry. Mahmoud has a plan for the seethers, too. He's going to calm them down by getting them to focus on politics instead of heavenly whores. Also by offering free classes in yoga, Pilates, tai kwan do and tai chi.

Okay, I made up that last part. But considering the absurdity of Abbas's plan, a little Pilates and yoga couldn't hurt.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments

A mixed blessing: Daniel Pipes weighs the positives and negatives of the invasion of Iraq.

On the plus side, he says had America not invaded Iraq:

The Iraqi population would still suffer under the totalitarian rule of Saddam Hussein. The shaky economy, car bombs and ethnic unrest that Iraqis face today are far lesser evils compared with the poverty, injustice, brutality and barbarism that was their fate between 1979 and 2003.

Regional security would be imperiled. Saddam Hussein invaded two countries (Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990) and launched missiles against two others (Saudi Arabia, Israel); the chances are high that he would aggress again, perhaps this time to impede oil routes through the Persian Gulf. Additionally, he sponsored suicide terrorism against Israel and maintained close relations with the thug regime of Bashar al-Asad of Syria.

U.S. security would be endangered so long as a megalomaniac ruled Iraq with the means to build and the will to use weapons of mass destruction. Hussein showed this capability as early as 1988, when he several times deployed chemical gas, even against his own people (in a village in 1988, killing 5,000). His links to al-Qaeda might have led to his cooperating with it to deploy WMD in the United States.

On the minus side, had there been no invasion:

European attitudes toward the United States would be improved. Polling and other data demonstrate that the Iraq war inflamed an international hostility against Americans unprecedented since 1945.

Muslim unrest has been exacerbated by the war. A powerful radicalization has been apparent not only in majority-Muslim countries (Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan are good examples) but also in Western countries (such as the United Kingdom).

Domestic U.S. politics would be less fractious without the war. The post-9/11 solidarity had already frayed before the Iraqi war began in March 2003, but that decision worsened tensions, as symbolized by the heightened acrimony in the U.S. presidential elections of 2004.

On the whole, Pipes sees more positives than negatives but concludes that because of the invasion--which he sees as a military success but a political failure for the Bush administration--"the world is safer but more divided".

He may be right. On the other hand, no one is prescient enough to forsee what could have been. Who's to say that with Saddam still around and being perceived as the Arab/Muslim world's other strongman (along with Osama, who since 9/11 has been mostly invisible) the situation would have been any better? It may well have been "better" in the short term but, even so, it could have turned out to be much worse in the long term.

If I could predict the unpredictable, I'd change my name to Cassandra.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:59 | link | comments (2)

Plus ca change...:

Exultant at their victory over the infidel Zionists, Palestinians rampaged through Gaza yesterday. During their revelry, they torched Jewish synagogues so these symbols of Judaism would no longer blight the landscape of Dar-al Islam. (Alternatively, they might have built gold-domed mosques on top of them--and still may.)

Well, isn't that always the way? What the Jew builds, the Jew-hater seeks to destroy.

Looking at these appalling scenes of destruction, I was reminded of the compelling documentary I saw on PBS last week, "Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust". Part of a series called "POV", which showcases independent documentaries, the documentary was about a modern Orthodox Jewish father's attempt to convince his ultra-Orthodox sons to open themselves us, at least a little, to the world outside their insular environment--an environment which rejects all aspects of the non-Jewish world. The father, filmmaker Menachem Daum. got them to agree to join him and their mother in a quest. They would travel to Poland and visit the town where his father--a Holocaust survivor, still alive but too frail to make the journey--used to live. They would also try to find the family which, at grave personal peril, had hidden Mrs. Daum's father and his two brothers on their farm for 28 months, saving them from capture by the Nazis. Although the three brothers survived and eventually made their way to America, they had never contacted the family to thank them.

At one point, there's a scene where the Daum family is brought to the ruins of the synagogue in the Polish town where Mrs. Daum's father had lived. You can see that it was once an impressive structure, but all that remains is a burnt-out shell in a grassy field. Mrs. Daum and her sons were overcome by the sight and begin to weep--as did I. "Look at what the Jew-haters did," I said to myself through my tears. "Throughout history, the Jews build and the Jew-haters tear it down."

As in Poland, so in Gaza. And make no mistake: given the chance, the same Jew-haters who set those Gaza synagogues ablaze would do the same to the entire Jewish state.

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

McGuinty comes to his senses: Yesterday, I was feeling mighty down. Today, my faith in reason has been somewhat restored. Dalton McGuinty has rejected sharia law. From the story in the National Post:

All forms of religious arbitration -- including Islam's sharia law, which was the subject of worldwide protest last week -- will be outlawed in Ontario, the Premier said yesterday.

''I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough,'' Dalton McGuinty told The Canadian Press yesterday.

''There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians.''

The government will introduce legislation this fall that prohibits existing religious tribunals, used by Christians and Jews to settle family law matters on a voluntary basis since 1991.

''It would have been appropriate for the Premier to consult with members of the other faith-based communities that would be affected by this decision,'' Joel Richler, the Ontario regional chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said last night in an interview. He called the government's announcement shocking -- a ''knee-jerk'' reaction to the recent controversy over sharia law.

Sources said the Premier has weighed the issues surrounding religious arbitration for months, since former NDP attorney-general Marion Boyd recommended in December that faith-based courts be allowed to stay.

Mr. McGuinty said yesterday that religious arbitrations ''threaten our common ground."

''Ontarians will always have the right to seek advice from anyone in matters of family law, including religious advice,'' he said. ''But no longer will religious arbitration be deciding matters of family law.''

The announcement comes just days after hundreds of people staged demonstrations across the country against a proposal to recognize sharia law tribunals in Ontario. Critics say sharia law, a code of conduct based on the Koran by which Muslims must abide, discriminates against women.

Protesters in such European cities as Dusseldorf, Paris, London and Amsterdam lent their support to the movement, dubbed the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada and organized by a Toronto woman.

''I'm so happy. Today is my day,'' campaign co-ordinator Homa Arjomand said yesterday. ''Believe me, [the government's decision] is the first step. The second step is to let the community know about their rights,'' she added.

Ms. Arjomand, who orchestrated the international protests on Thursday, said she will continue to lobby the government to explicitly outlaw all sharia practice so that those who continue to practise the form of religious arbitration underground face penalties.

Tarek Fatah, of the ''progressive'' Muslim Canadian Congress, said the premier's decision sends a ''huge message'' to Islamic fundamentalists that they cannot impose their laws on Canadians.

''This has once and for all put an end to unnecessary division within the community,'' Mr. Fatah said. ''It's a tremendous defeat for Islamic fundamentalism in North America.''...

All I can say is, "Halleleuiah!"

Update: Over at dhimmiwatch, Robert Spencer notes that getting rid of all religious courts might send the message that sharia law is equivalent to other relgious law. Some dhimmiwatch commenters see this as evidence of McGuinty's dhimmitude. Maybe so, but realistically speaking, there was no way the Premier could nix one set of laws--Muslim law--and allow the other courts to continue. It was either all or none, and, detecting the direction in which the political winds were blowing, McGuinty opted for none.

That being said, there is still one area in which the government is not opposed to favouring the rights of one religious group over all others: education. The province funds Catholic private schools but does not extend the same funding to other religions. Efforts have been made over the years to redress this obvious unfairness--which has something to do with promises made to Catholic leaders when Canada became a nation--but so far they have always failed. That means parents like me pay taxes to fund the public and Catholic systems, and also fork out mucho dinero so our kids can attend a private religious school. I'm prepared to live with that, and given the outcry over funding sharia courts, I certainly don't expect the province to up and fund religious schools, including Muslim ones; I also don't begrudge Catholic parents the right to send their kids to religious school. I would just note that in the sphere of education, exceptions have been and continue to be made.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments (4)

Time to recharge: There are days when the world is entirely too much with you. Today is one of those days. Not only is it the fourth year of the anniversary of 9/11, the day the jihadis brought the holy war to America, but there's a report in the Times Online that Tony Blair is considering whether to do away with "Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day"--a commemoration he himself established--lest it offend the tender sensibilties of British Muslims:

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

The draft proposals have been prepared by committees appointed by Blair to tackle extremism. He has promised to respond to the plans, but the threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the Jewish community.

Holocaust Day was established by Blair in 2001 after a sustained campaign by Jewish leaders to create a lasting memorial to the 6m victims of Hitler. It is marked each year on January 27.

The Queen is patron of the charity that organises the event and the Home Office pays £500,000 a year to fund it. The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims.

A member of one of the committees, made up of Muslims, said it gave the impression that “western lives have more value than non-western lives”. That perception needed to be changed. “One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national Genocide Memorial Day.

“The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others. It’s a grievance that extremists are able to exploit.”

I find certain passages of the Koran offensive to Jews, but I presume Tony cannot be persuaded to scrap them. And if I weren't so sickened by the idea of a "Genocide Day" being put forward by those seeking to appease the religion which virtually invented the concept of genocide, the better spread the one true faith (query: will Genocide Day acknowledge the mass murder of Armenians by Turks and Sudanese by Arabs?), I might be driven to black and bitter laughter by the horrific absurdity of it all. But as Paul Simon once wrote, today "there's no laughs left, 'cause we laughed 'em all". So for the sake of my sanity I will bid you adieu for the moment and go read my newly-purchased biography of piano genius and fellow Torontonian, Glenn Gould (whose family name was really "Gold" but whose family added the "U" so people wouldn't think they were, perish the thought, Jewish. Sigh. Jew-hatred: it's everywhere.)

A bientot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:02 | link | comments

Speaking of hot air...: Iran warns of "certain consequences" if the UN tries to subvert its nuclear ambitions.

Whatever these unspecified consequences may be--if, indeed there are any and Iran isn't merely rattling its silos--they can't be any worse than if the UN doesn't get involved.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:28 | link | comments

"Feel anything yet, Abdul?" "Nope, you feel anything, Omar?" "Nope": Beeb headline: Winds of change blow slowly in Egypt.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:11 | link | comments

Safety first: The P.A. Prez tells Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post how he plans to tame Hamas and follow the roadmap to peace in out time (with a few detours along the way, natch):

...You've talked about cooperating with Hamas and letting them become a political party rather than confronting them. Why don't you tackle them?

We prefer the safe way -- to cooperate with them in order that they will be diverted into a political party. In the beginning, they accepted the truce. After that they participated in local elections. Now they're aiming to participate in the legislative elections. I hope after that, they will become a political party. This is the safest way.

But they have an army of 5,000 here in Gaza. How can you have an election with an army of that size?

They have an army. When we say there should be one law, one authority, we mean it.

If there should be one law, how can Hamas have its own militia?

There will be one law. But let us come to this period. We are preparing ourselves and rebuilding our apparatuses. When we are strong enough, we will say one law for everybody. We aren't going to confront Hamas because . . . we aren't ready for a civil war.

Aren't they a danger to you [and] the Palestinian Authority?

Nobody can deny that . . .

What should the next step be in the peace process?

To return to the roadmap and implement the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings. There was an agreement that the Israelis would evacuate [some West Bank] cities . . . This was not implemented. . . . Of course, we want them to freeze [West Bank] settlement activities and [stop building] the wall.

The roadmap says the Palestinian Authority should dismantle the infrastructure of terror and Israel should freeze settlements and illegal outposts. Prime Minister Sharon says that Israel's not in the roadmap yet. And you argue for going to phase three of the roadmap.

I'm talking about the first and the second phase, [which says] that the Israelis should evacuate [land] and release prisoners . . .

If they do that, what are you going to do about the infrastructure of terror?

As I explained to you, we use dialogue -- talks with the Hamas and others. Until now, we succeeded. Let us use our way. We are doing everything we can...

That's exactly what we're afraid of, Mahmoud.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:25 | link | comments

9/11/05: Four years on it's time to take stock. Are we any further ahead in our effort to roll back the jihad?

Yes.

And no.

What's changed since 9/11:

- the Taliban no longer rule Afghanistan;

- Afghanistan no longer offers safe haven to Osama, his unmerry band of holy murderers and the mujahedeen;

- Saddam Hussein sits in an Iraqi jail, on trial for crimes against his people;

- the Oil-for-Food spigot has been shut off forever;

- Yasser Arafat has taken up residence in Hades;

- Abu Hamza and his hook are no longer on site to instigate and offer succor to jihadis at London's Finsbury Park Mosque, and Britain is finally turfing out some other dangerous imams;

- there is a democratically elected President in the P.A. and Egypt;

- there are signs that at least some in the West are waking up to the reality of the true threat posed by religiously-motivated holy warriors.

What hasn't changed since 9/11:

- the Taliban, though out of power for now, have not gone away;

- Osama and his generals have relocated the jihad to iraq (and Bali, and Madrid, and Beslan, and London...);

- the Khomeinist agenda is stronger than ever in Iran, with the election of a zealot as President; concurrently, the mullocracy edges ever closer to nuclear capablity while the UN, EU and U.S. dither ineffectually;

- Israel may be in more peril than ever, with Hamas setting up on its doorstep in Gaza and the P.A. descending into further lawlessness and chaos;

- Palestinian leadership is as feckless, reckless and hopeless as ever; Abbas is a slicker, better-groomed version of Arafat who does not possess his "moral" (immoral) authority;

- Mubarak is still an autocrat--a democratically elected autocrat, but an autrocrat nonetheless. Pointing to the fact that democracy is much more than the physical act of casting a ballot;

- a large segment of the Western world, including many in America who see mounting casualties in Iraq with little sign that the "insurgency" is backing down, have little taste for countering the jihad. They are more inclined to appease the jihadis--like Ken Livingstone and Jose Zapatero; throw in their lot with them--like the Quislingesque George Galloway; ignore them--like most of the people I (and perhaps you) know; or cut their losses and retreat--like bereaved, Zionist-slamming Supermom Cindy Sheehan and her ilk;

- the ideology of multiculturalism continues to jibe nicely with the ideology of jihadism--witness the sorry spectacle of sharia law on the verge of receiving official legal sanction in Ontario;

- despite instance after instance to the contrary, Western leaders still assert that Islam is a religion of peace and that the jihadis have twisted the Prophet's true intentions;

- the Arab/Muslim world is in the grip of compelling assortment of fantasies, derangements and conspiracies, many of which posit "The Jews" (or as the Koran picturesquely refers to them,"apes and pigs") as the source and embodiment of the world's evil.

In short, four years after the Pearl Harbor of our times, World War Three is far from over.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

Zacci attack: There's a new idol in the French pop star pantheon, and no, it's not Johnny Depp or Kanye West. It's--fasten your seat belts--Zacharias Moussaoui.

And since Moussaoui is the French immigrant who is awaiting judgment in America for his part in the 9/11 conspiracy, which entailed hurtling large aircraft into American landmarks, "fasten you seatbelts" is the appropriate phrase to append to his name.

According to a story in the dead tree edition of the Globe and Mail about the appeal of jihadism (or, it's known in the mainstream press, "radical Islam") for young Muslims living in Europe, Zacci is all the rage with some Parisian youth. So taken are they with the glamorous America-bashing rebel (think Che Guevera from North Africa) that they emulate his appearance down to the last detail, including chrome dome, beard, long tunic and sullen demeanor. "Look", says someone, pointing out a Zacci clone to Globe reporter Doug Sanders, "there's a Moussaoui."

Sanders sheds some light on why so many of these high-spirited youngsters find Moussaoui so attractive:

Mr. Moussaoui, to a surprising number of young French men here in the 19th district of Paris, is a role model. We know this not just because so many French teenagers here from moderate to non-religious North African families are now sporting the beards and tunics of the true believer and attending 5 a.m. prayers at fringe mosques, but also because many of them have followed more directly in the footsteps on their al-Qaeda role models.

In the past few months, at least eight young French-born men from this district have blown themselves up in Iraq. Another is believed the leader of a cell of insurgents within Iraq. A number have been arrested on their return from Iraq, and authorities believe they are planning to commit terrorist attacks within Europe...

Here's my question: why have French authorities continued to allow these "fringe mosques" to remain open? At the very least, I hope police have the sense to keep a close watch on the Moussaoui wannabes.

And, oh yeah, so much for banning the hijab.

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

Wanted: new FEMA chief--no experience necessary: My significant other is between jobs at the moment. But I have no doubt he will find something soon. He's highly respected professional, has a wealth of experience in his field, and has a most impressive resume. Anyone who hires him can be assured he will perform his job with skill and sense, drawing upon the knowledge he has acquired over the years.

Unlike, say, the next employer of defrocked FEMA head, Michael Brown. Brown, who was recently relieved of command of the New Orleans relief effort by the Commander-in-Chief, had no experience in the field, and thus, had acquired no discernable skills. Anyone perusing his resume would have immediately been struck by what it didn't include, most notably, anything which might have equipped him for the job. However, thinking ahead, the ambitious Mr. Brown decided to plug the gaps with some judicious (or, as it turns out, injudicious) padding.

Even so, there is no disguising the fact that Mr. Brown's sole previous experience for helming America's emergency rescue body was his 11 years as--and I couldn't possibly make this up--"the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association".

That's right. The guy who was supposed to co-ordinate and manage the rescue of victims of hurricane Katrina used to work with horses. And he wasn't even in charge of the whole horse organization, only one of its branches.

But maybe I'm being hasty. Maybe supervising horse judges for 11 years was a really rigourous job which put Mr. Brown's managerial skills to the test every day. Maybe keeping tabs on the disparate facets of horse judging was an extremely challenging task which sharpened Mr. Brown's judgment and honed his ability to make quick decisions in difficult circumstances--decisions upon which the lives of horse judges and their judged horses depended.

Let's go directly to the source, shall we, and see exactly what the job involved. Here's how a spokesperson for Mr. Brown's former employer described the position to a reporter from the Boston Herald:

We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records.

Wow. They even keep records. That alone would ensure Mr. Brown a top spot on my short list of candidates.

But wait, it gets better. Not only did Brown have no qualifications for running FEMA, not only did his sole managerial exptertise entail looking after a bunch of horse judges, he couldn't even do that job properly. According to the Boston Herald, "Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

So how, with no skills or experience and with an unimpressive (to put it mildly) employment record did he manage to land such an important position?  Simple. His roommate in college was the previous FEMA chief, and when George W. was casting around for a replacement, he looked no further than that. In other words, Brown, like Kojo Annan, another underexperienced job-seeker who found himself in hot water, got the job through connections (or as some of the tribe like to call it, shlep).

Now, it could be that even with an experienced FEMA chief, New Orleans would have turned into the same catastrophe, more or less. Maybe the die was already cast: a mayor also out of his depth (no pun intended); a lawless populace armed with guns; a corrupt police department and state government;  underfunded levees, each of which functioned under a seperate authority; a city which should never have been where it was--in a bowl under sea level. But maybe, just maybe, an adept FEMA chief might have mitigated at least some of the horrors. Maybe he or she could have saved a few more lives.

Tragically, we will never know. We do, however, know this: the people of New Orleans may have paid an exceptionally high price for George W. Bush's ill-considered decision.

And now, fittingly, so has George W. Bush.

Update: I posted the above piece on blogcritics where it elicited the following comment from Jewel:

Brown was disliked by many people in the I.A.H.A. (International Arabian Horse Assoc.). I have been a member of I.A.H.A. Am I surprised to be hearing his resume' and creds may not be all he touted them to be? No. He should be out of a job. He'd do well in 'network marketing'

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:38 | link | comments (3)

A rational fear of sharia: On the afternoon of the Toronto's anti-sharia rally, I was listening to John Moore's call-in show on CFRB. John can usually be counted to tow the left-lib, multicultist line, but that afternoon he said he was not in favour or sharia tribunas in Ontario. He said, however, he understood that many of those who opposed them did so because they were "Islamophobic".

Well, here's an open letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty in the Globe and Mail from a few of these "Islamophobes". They include some of Canada's most notable women--feminists, writers, activists, politicians. Among them: novelist Margaret Atwood; Toronto Star columnist (and wife of former provincial NDP leader Stephen Lewis) Michele Landsberg; former Conservative MP and cabinet minister Flora MacDonald; actor and activist Shirley Douglas, whose father, Tommy Douglas, was the father of Canada's social safety net and who was voted in a CBC poll last year the most important Canadian in history; and June Callwood, the writer and activist who spoke at the rally. (Callwood said that instead of erecting a bureacracy to ensure sharia tribunals are abiding by Canadian values, we should just "cut out the middle man" and follow Canadian law in the first place.)

Here's their letter:

Dear Mr. McGuinty:

An important tenet of Canadian democracy hangs in the balance of your response to the matter of religious arbitration in the province of Ontario. While many Canadians may assume that we are all governed by one system of laws, created by publicly elected officials who are accountable to the electorate, your government is poised to shift the ground under this cornerstone of liberal democracy.

While our public system of law is not always perfect, it is designed to recognize the realities of all citizens and is open to public scrutiny and improvement. Such is not the case with private systems of law, such as religious laws.

The public may identify this issue from media reports as "Sharia law in Ontario," but they, and you, need to understand that this is a matter of the formal separation of all religious matters from the business of the state. This is in no way an infringement on religious freedom, which we endorse as an equally important tenet of Canadian democracy. Religion should simply remain an important part of the lives of citizens but not of public law.

Surely the separation of church and state is understood by today's politicians to be the fertile ground upon which modern, rights-based democracies such as that in Canada have flourished. Arbitrariness, petty theocracies and selective -- rather than universal -- access to public law await us if we simply treat this issue as a detail in the daily business of government.

Ontario's commitment to religious freedom, anti-racism and multiculturalism are very important to us and to all Ontarians. Some have argued that to deny arbitration based on religious laws is a breach of these commitments.

We do not agree.

Allowing the use of religious arbitration will lead to divisiveness, the ghettoization of members of religious communities as well as human-rights abuses, particularly for those who hold the least institutional power within the community, namely women and children.

We urge you to speak strongly in favour of Ontario's commitment to one system of laws for all, as well as for freedom of religion and anti-racism. Prohibit the use of religion in the arbitration of family law disputes through appropriate amendments to the Arbitration Act. The eyes of the world are quite literally watching Ontario at this time to see if we have the courage to move forward on this issue in a way that preserves our common bond and is inclusive and respectful of all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments (1)

FEMA chief fired: I first posted this over at LGF under the story about FEMA chief Michael Brown being relieved (in more ways than one, no doubt) of his postition. But I liked it so much I thought I'd post it here too.

Busted flat in Baton Rouge.
Headed to D.C.
FEMA Chief's
Been stripped of his command.
George has started taking stock.
Throwin' out dead wood.
Big Easy's drying out its soggy land.
They've started pointin' fingers
At the Texan they all hate,
And sayin' things
They're never takin' back.
Like "Bush controls the weather"
And "he loathes you if you're poor"
And "Katrina is exactly like Iraq".
Freedom's just another word for
"Let's pile on dumb old Bush.
The neocons control him anyway.
He stole that first election
From our man, Albert Gore.
And now we're glad
We'll finally make him pay."

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:40 | link | comments (3)

Rally post mortum: In reviewing my notes from yesterday's anti-sharia rally, I was struck by several things.

First, that initial rationale for allowing religious groups to take over judicial responsiblity for family and some other civil issues was because of the huge backlog in the province's family courts. In other words, the province is in this bind today because of its own indolence, lethargy and inefficiency. Instead of trying to solve the problems inherent in the system, it took the easy way out, shunting aside its responsibility to its citizens by using the escape valve of religious arbitration. Now that Muslims want to get into the act--have gotten into the act--it is faced with a really big problem: how to square sharia law with our own when such laws are completely antithetical, especially in the areas of women and the family.

The fact is, it can't. Oh, it can try to, but instituting certain safeguards--43 to be exact. But it you need that many safeguards to make something "safe", it's clear you're dealing with a pretty unseaworthy vessel in the first place--and at least some Muslim women are going to go down with the ship.

That's a risk the government is more than willing to take, however. Which brings me to my second point, raised by Tarek Fateh of the Canadian Muslim Congress. Mr. Fateh is disgusted by the government's utter cynicism, at how it willingly and wilfully sold out the rights of Muslim women for the payback of a few more seats in the legislature. Moreover, he expressed contempt for how the Liberal government went about commissioning the report on the Arbitration Act. It made sure to assign it to a New Democrat, former attorney-general Marion Boyd, so it could claim credit for the report, should it receive positive feedback, or blame it on Boyd the New Democrat, should the report be reviled.

Which leads me to my third and final point. The report has been reviled. Not by the media, which keep writing editorials supporting sharia tribunals. Not by Ontario politicians--not one of whom had the stones to show up yesterday's protest. It has been rejected by  the ordinary people of Ontario. The ones who showed up yesterday to join in an international effort protesting sharia law. The ones who phoned into local talk shows, decrying the use of Islamic law on Canadian soil. The ones who know that the only was to ensure that everyone in Ontario has the same rights is to have one law--a universal law--for all.

I have no doubt that, were a referendum to be held tomorrow, the people of Ontario would resoundly reject religious arbitration. Unfortunately, we will never have the chance to reject it. Even if Dalton McGuinty is defeated in the next election, it would now be too difficult, burdensome, and expensive  for the province to reconfigure the justice system and do away with religious arbitration.

Pandora's box has been opened. May the Supreme Deity help us all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:12 | link | comments (2)

More brain power, please: Headline on google news: Human brain is still evolving.

Apparently, not nearly fast enough for some of us.

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

Finger pointing: Today's example of the unbridgeable left-right chasm: Charles Krauthammer tells us Where to Point the Fingers for the debacle following Hurricane Katrina. In descending order, it's at nature, the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, the head of FEMA, the president, Congress and the American people.

Paul Krugman also wants to Point Those Fingers, but his digits are aimed exclusively at one target--President Bush. And, once again, a parallel is drawn between Katrina and Iraq:

It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.

In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.

The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.

Personally, I point the finger at Allah. But that's another story.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments

Women's lib for martyrs: FrontPage Magazine has a symposium on the only kind of feminism permitted by Islamists: a woman's unalienable, Allah-given right to strap on a bomb and blow herself (and many others) up.

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

Cherie does Delhi: While Tony Blair rails against terrorism, his wife, Cherie, has been vocal in ensuring that terrorism suspects are accorded their full panoply of civil rights. She has also commented that, while the actions of suicide bombers are reprehensible, in Israel at least one can understand how their "frustration" might have driven them to act in this way. (She made this remark, Jordan's Queen Rania by her side, after a suicide bombing in Israel, well before a similar attack in London. One doubts she would be idiotic and insensitive enough to make a similar comment today.)

Cherie seems to be taking a new tack, one which may alienate some of her potential clients.  From the Times Online:

CHERIE BLAIR has risked offending Muslims by criticising the way in which Islam is used in many societies to keep women in check.

Mrs Blair told a group of Indian journalists in Delhi that attitudes towards women in some Muslim societies were out of date and needed to change. She urged Muslims to embrace more modern attitudes to sex equality.

Mrs Blair, a human rights lawyer with a long-standing interest in women’s issues, was accompanying her husband on a four-day visit to China and India. She made the remarks at a private lunch for the Indian Women Press Corps, where she also revealed her childhood dreams of marrying an Indian prince. Although she has largely avoided the British media during the visit, and British officials have refused to discuss her programme, reporters present said that she moved from table to table to talk with them in groups.

At one table, Mrs Blair spoke of how as a Christian she was fascinated by Islam and thought there was much good about it. But after she was asked about the London bombings she said: “The religion has a deep philosophical base but there are misinterpretations by some groups in some parts of the world about women that I have a problem with.”

Mrs Blair then suggested that Islamic scholars should review or re-examine Muslim teaching on the place of women. But at that point she appeared consciously to check herself...

Well, maybe not a completely new tack.

Update: Robert Spencer cites some passages from the Koran which some groups in some parts of the world may be "misinterpreting".

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:57 | link | comments (1)

It's Hosni in a walk: The Egyptian populace has spoken. In the first "democratic" election ever held in that country, more than 80% of voters opted for the autocrat currently in power.

Mubarak can now return to doing what he does best: ruling with an inflexible fist and ignoring the will of the people.

That is, until the next campaign in six years when he may feel the need to participate in another election charade. (If one of the Muslim brethren doesn't kill him first.)

Update: An interesting take on the election in Reason Magazine. The writer is more sanguine than I am about the possibility that democratic elections may eventually open to door to reform but says that, ironically, it's Egyptian liberals who may be standing in the way of change:

...There is little doubt that Mubarak agreed to a competitive presidential election at least partly because of the election in Iraq. He knew that domestic voters would wonder why, despite the daily violence, Iraqis were offered a choice, when Egyptians, who live in a more or less peaceful country, were not. Egyptian liberals have been among the most vociferous critics of the American occupation of Iraq. Yet if they benefit from the competitive election process, will they admit that this resulted to some extent from that occupation?

A major obstacle to their doing so is that Arab liberals, for example those in Egypt's bourgeois Wafd or Syria's National Bloc, have historically spearheaded anti-colonial struggles. The legacy of mistrust of Western intentions (often accompanied by near impossible demands for how Western states should resolve Arab problems) has not worn off, even as the world around the liberals has fundamentally changed. Opposition to the U.S. today is often spun as anti-colonialism, or anti-neocolonialism, but the colonial narrative is no longer as relevant as it once was...

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

Anti-sharia protest in Toronto: I attended the anti-sharia rally in front of the Ontario parliament this afternoon. Although the crowd was not huge--perhaps a few hundred or so showed up--what it lacked in size it made up for in spirit. Some impressions off the top of my head:

I arrived about half an hour before the rally started. At that time, there were only a few people there and I seated myself with some of them at the foot of a statue of an Ontario statesman (Oliver Mowat, I think). Looking around, it quickly became evident that most of them were of a similar type: female, white, on the far side of middle age. It struck me that these were probably the same women who fought in the trenches of the feminist movement of the 1970s, and who were now shocked to find themselves fighting a new battle for women's rights, one they had to wage against their own government. (Also, younger women would likely either be working or contending with the demands of childcare and thus unavailable for a midday protest.)

As we sat there, another woman arrived. She was carrying a homemade sign broadcasting her anger about the prospect of sharia law in Ontario. One of the women struck up a conversation with the sign-carrier, who turned out to be an immigrant from Pakistan who has lived here for 20 years. She said she moved to Canada so she could bring up her daughter in a country where there was no sharia law, only to find that it had now followed her here.  "I want to live with Canadian laws," she said, calling the prospect of sharia in Canada "a nightmare".

The woman she was talking to agreed. "In the twenty years you've been here, there have been changes in the laws to protect our rights. It's tragic to think that we're going to to be moving backwards--tragic for you and for us."

Just then, another woman sat herself at the bottom of old Ollie. She told me her name was Catherine. She asked if I was Muslim. "No", I said. She told me she'd  just had a run-in with a woman in full-blown burka who told her she was a Muslim convert, originally a Catholic from Poland. 

"There's no discussion, no reasoning with her," said Catherine.

"You can't reason with true believers," I said.

Catherine was livid about the idea of religious law in Canada--so livid, in fact, that she said it was difficult for her to speak about her rage. She wasn't thrilled about the inroads being made by the Christian right in America either--clearly, she was no fan of George Bush and his agenda--but I pointed out that at least Americans didn't have to worry that their state legislatures would institute sharia tribunals.

We both commented on the small size of the crowd. Catherine suggested it was because the event hadn't been publicized enough. I agreed.  "Wouldn't it be ironic," I said, "if more people showed up to protest in the other cities than in Toronto?"

By the time the protest got underway several minutes later, the crowd had grown considerably. It still seemed largely female, post-menopausal and white, but some younger women--university students--had joined in. There were also a few more males around, Muslim and non-Muslim. As I made my way to the front of the crowd, I was just in time to hear Tarek Fateh, the head of the Canadian Muslim Congress and a self-described "moderate" Muslim (who was one of the speakers at the protest), engaged in a heated exchange with the much younger Muslim man. The younger man was insisting that Muslims had a right to sharia tribunals; Fateh, who has had his own problems with religious zealots (they've accused him of being an apostate and even threatened him with death) countered that he knew that the younger man was a follower of Osama's, a charge that the man denied.

The sniping was cut short by the start of the official protest. Among those who spoke:

- Homa Arjomand. Ms. Arjomand, who is from Iran, is the organizer of No Sharia in Canada, the international effort to thwart the institution of sharia law in Ontario. A fiery speaker, Ms. Arjoumand noted that, unfortunately, this was the second time people have gathered to protest sharia. Despite a first protest a year ago, the Ontario government has yet to nix the idea of sharia. And that makes Ms. Arjoumand mad--very, very mad. Especially, since, as an Iranian, she knows firsthand what sharia law means, and she does not want to see repressive, misogynistic Khomeini-style being imposed on Muslim women in Ontario. She accused Dalton McGuinty of being "naive" or thinking that people are "stupid"  if he believes that sharia was a good idea and was disgusted by his comment earlier this week that he was convinced sharia tribunals would not infringe the rights of Muslim women.  She said, sadly and bitterly, "I'm not living in Toronto; I'm living in Iran."

She also noted that sharia law was part of a larger global effort which she called "political Islam". (It occurs to me that this new locution is the way moderate Muslims refer to--and distance themselves from--the jihad, probably so they don't have to address the thorny issue of its source in the Koran. They are thus free to divide Islam in two--the religious, which is good and beautiful, and the political, which is crappy and dangerous.)

- June Callwood. Callwood is a writer and activist who has been associated with many progressive causes over the years. Now elderly and battling cancer, she said she came to the rally to support the rights of "our Muslim sisters", rights she believed are in peril if Ontario goes ahead with its plans. Quoting Canadian feminist Rosemary Brown, Callwood said, 'Until the rights of all women are secure, the rights of no women are secure."

- Sally Armstrong. Armstrong is a journalist and activist, the former editor of Homemakers Magazine, who has written extensively on the plight of women in Afghanistan living under the Taliban. Armstrong asked why the Premier was willing to consider sharia law for Ontario when these laws were clearly "not working in a single country" where they are in effect. She noted that religious arbitration was introduced into Ontario in order to clear the backlog in Family Courts, and the the arbitration act will have to be further amended with the introduction of sharia courts. Rather that making these extensive amendments--which will never be able to ensure that Muslim women will be treated fairly, a better idea is to scap these religious courts altogether and deal with the real problem--the backlog in regular courts. Only in these courts, says Ms. Armstrong, are the universal rights of women guaranteed.

-  Amanda Dale. Dale is the communications director of the YWCA, one of 100 organizations protesting the Ontario measure. Ms. Dale--who replaced Irshad Manji, scheduled to speak at the Toronto rally but unexpectedly called to Vancouver, the site of another protest--said that despite government promises, sharia tribunals would be conducted in secret and would not be open to public scrutiny. Her message for the Premier: "We know the womens' vote got you in. It can also get you out." (To which I silently responded, "halevai".)

- Mamood Ahmadi. Amadi heads the Federation of Iranian Refugees. He itemized some harrowing instances of sharia as it's practiced in his homeland. This included: burying women up to their chests and then stoning them to death in public for the delectation of a crowd of onlookers; raping women who are virgins prior to their execution so they won't be allowed into heaven; according men the right to rape their wives. He, too, noted the threat that "political Islam" posts to the rest of us, and said that the movement that wants to bring sharia to Ontario is the same as the one that stones Iranian women in the streets.

- Tarek Fateh. Fateh, who had heated words before the event became even more heated in his speech. One might even call it "splenetic" as he assailed McGuinty, sitting, remote and deaf in "his big palace". "It's not your daughters who will suffer because of sharia law," he raged. "It's my daughters who will suffer. It's the daughter of Muslims who will suffer." Fateh sneered at the government's hypocrisy, it's willingness to sell out Muslim women for the sake of a few more seats in parliament. In seeking to be more tolerant, more fair, the government is actually endorsing racism, since Muslims alone will be subject to sharia. "We urge Canadians to wake up from their slumber and end the racism of lower expectations," he thundered.

He also ripped into the the pro-sharia forces at the rally who sought to interupt the proceedings, pointing out how they whooped and catcalled whenever a woman spoke but kept quiet for the men--a clear example of their sharia-based misogyny.

- The head of an organization called Secularism in Iraq (whose name I didn't catch). This genteman, who journeyed to Toronto from Bagdhad for the second time (he also participated in last year's rally, said Canadians and Iraqis are fighting the same fight--the fight to resist sharia from dragging us all backwards. "Womens' rights are universal," he said, but are threatened by the doctrine of multiculturalism. It's time to "drag multiculturalism down from its ivory tower" so we can "scrutinize it" and defend ourselves from its good but misguided intentions.

- A U of T gradutate student named Samira. Perhaps the most impassioned and eloquent speaker at the rally--and definitely the wittiest--Samira pointed out the naivete and flawed logic in the Boyd report. She said Marion Boyd had averred that Muslim tribunals would accord with "Muslim principles", but at no time explained what these principles were.

"Who is going to be doing the interpretation?," railed Samira. "What mechanism will the government have in place" to ensure womens' rights are protected?

Samira said her parents fled to Canada twenty years ago not because they were "in search of a winter wonderland", but because they were looking for "freedom of choice"--a freedom prohibited in their native land (she didn't say where they were from). She said sharia tribunals would only serve to make Muslims more insular and ghettoized and warned that, despite safeguards, tribunals would fly under the radar of public scrutiny, to the detriment of Muslim women. Even more worrisome, we would likely never know what these women had been subjected to because "The victims of these laws are ones we will never hear from."

- Justin Trottier. Trottier, a U of T student, represents an organization called the Secular Alliance. He detailed his experience with his university's student government, which reviled his support of universal laws and participation in the anti-sharia protest as "racist" and "Islamophobic".

Quelle surprise. Isn't that how so-called Liberals who support the world's most regressive laws usually delegitimize their opponents?

Trottier raised an interesting point. He said that, to a man (and woman),  U of T's student government supports universal health care. But universal rights--that's an entirely different kettle of gefilte fish. (Obviously, that's my phraseology, not his.)

- Beverly Lafrancois. Lafrancois, a veteran of the fight 25 years ago to ensure that women's rights were enshrined in the Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was there representing four different organizations, including a women's shelter in the Halton region. She said women cannot count on others to protect their rights, and that given Ontario's willingness to take a big step backwards, the battle she fought in Ottawa way back when must be refought today.

My thoughts on the rally: It confirmed all my worries about sharia in Ontario--how it will claw back women's rights, how it is tied to a larger global movement--but I was heartened to see that at least some people in Ontario, and not just those who identify themselves on the right, are beginning to recognize the dangers of a blind adherence to the doctrine of multiculturalism. I figure that any rally which includes June Callwood, Tarek Fatah, and a song from The Raging Grannies (sigh, the poor dears)  is far more representative of Ontario's diversity than any institutionalized diversity the government might come up with.

The problem remains, though. Will the government come to its senses and hear these enraged voices? Will it take off its rose-coloured glasses long enough to see the danger sharia law poses to us all?

Of course not. Consider this: Sharia tribunals are already operating in Ontario. At this point,  the government's final decision represents little more than a rubber stamp on what is essentially a fait accompli.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:53 | link | comments (4)

Where's the jihad?: An article in American Muslim, a magazine published by the American Muslim Society, puts Islamic terrorism in the context of terrorism throughout history. In this version of events, Islamic terrorism, including the kind perpetrated by suicide killers, is described as a response by the weak to the powerful, a way of fighting back against their repression.

The notion that Islamic terror is qualitatively different in that it is tied to the exclusively Islamic concept of jihad is conveniently avoided,  the better to butress the specious idea that Islamic terrorism is about an effort to redress "injustice":

...American leadership, owing to various pressures, is not ready to accept that terrorism is a reaction to injustice. Presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), talking on “Face the Nation,” said that to win the war on terrorism, the U.S. needs much more that an intelligence operation and a law enforcement operation — it needs “the most robust, aggressive, forceful foreign policy.”

This “forceful” foreign policy is not about enforcing justice, but about using the big stick to suppress any reaction to injustice. He wants the U.S. to engage in governing Muslim countries due to his belief that terrorism results from widespread unemployment, and “as long as they are educated in schools which teach them to hate, to hate Israel, to hate us, and to give them the capacity to become terrorists, we need to change that relationship.”

Senator Joe Biden, (D-DE), ranking member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed similar views on May 25 on “Meet the Press.” He blamed Saudi textbooks, declaring, “You cannot allow state-run newspapers, you cannot allow the school system you run to preach hatred, to preach anti-Semitism, to preach anti-Western notions and then expect us to say that they’re cooperating with us…”

The same selective thinking is being propagated by academia. Jerrold Post, who founded the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, interviewed 21 people held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons, told the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting on May 22 that Palestinians have “basically been bred to hate from very early on.”

The article concludes that the American misperception of terrorism is at the reason its policy is bound to fail:

The U.S. has placed itself in a corner: It insists that other governments stop, prevent, and even help it to fight terrorism, and yet arms such practitioners of state terrorism as Tel Aviv.

Today, terrorism refers to those whom the U.S. dislikes, especially Muslims, or who work against a U.S. ally-of-the-moment. Thus, the war of liberation in Chechnya is terrorism against Russia, the war of liberation in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) is terrorism against China, and the movement for self-determination in Kashmir is terrorism against India.

The change of definition and the high-powered media beating the official drums are meaningless, because the ground reality says that justice is being denied. This is where the difference between peace and forced acceptance counts. Even official U.S. occupation, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, cannot extinguish this reality.

Wrong again. The "ground reality" is that these conflicts arise not because "justice is being denied" but because Islam is being denied. And that is anathema to those true believers who are determined--nay, commanded--to restore it to power.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

Darkness and light: Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente notes that Baghdad and Toronto have something in common: today, women in both cities will be demonstrating against the introduction of Islamic law.

But here's the difference. In Baghdad, Islamic law is being pushed by the most regressive forces in society; in Toronto, it is being touted by some of the most liberal and enlightened individuals around.

Enlightentened folks like Marion Boyd, who wrote a report supporting the notion that Muslim women could get a fair deal from sharia tribunals.

Enlightened people like Premier Dalton McGuinty, the man who commissioned the report, and who is convinced that sharia law can be sufficiently defanged to bring it in line with Canadian civil law. (Wente comments that the Boyd report "came up with a Rube Goldberg plan to monitor sharia courts so they won't run afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms." If Rube Goldberg, and not a government bureaucracy were in charge of keeping tabs on things, one might have more a bit more faith in it; at least his jerry-built contraptions looked like they might actually work.)

Enlightened men like Syed Mumtaz Ali, the guy who has waged a 10-year campaign to bring sharia to Ontario. Mr. Syed said recently that Canadian civil law, being secular, is insufficient for Muslims living here because sharia must "govern" every aspect of life. According to Mr. Syed, "If you are not obeying the law, you are not a Muslim. That's all there is to it."

Oops. Seems Mr. Ali may have a different kind of "enlightenment" in mind.

No matter. With useful idiots like Boyd and McGuinty in his camp, he can be assured that sharia law will ride into the province on the coattails of the enlightened policy of multiculturalism.

Today Ontario; tomorrow the rest of the Western world.

At least, that's the "enlightened" plan.

The Premier needn't look any further than the front page of The Globe and Mail for an example of how sharia law will function in practice. A story headed "A Muslim woman's sharia's ordeal" offers a cautionary tale, should McGuinty and crew care to heed it:

For months, a Muslim woman living in Toronto tried to wring a divorce out of her local imam.

Under sharia law, her husband had to consent to the divorce-- even though he had abandoned the family four years earlier and married another woman in a South Asian country where polygamy is legal.

The imam told her that her spouse wanted $100,000 and all her gold jewellery, she said, asking that her identity not be disclosed because she fears retribution from her ex-husband, the imam and her community.

She managed to bargain him down to $5,000, money she had to borrow. She also agreed to give up all child-support payments and alimony, and not to take legal action against him in the future.

Without his consent, she could not remarry within her religion.

"The imam told me, 'there are some sharia conditions you must follow, we must come to a settlement within sharia.' I agreed because I was desperate," said the woman, 29, who uses the pseudonym Shinaz.

"If the mullah, our religious leader, didn't grant the divorce, then under sharia I would have lost custody of my son when he turned eight. Also, I could not remarry."...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:01 | link | comments (2)

Mark and Tom on disaster: I can think of no better illustration of the chasm that exists between the Left and the Right in America than these two pieces linking 9/11 and hurricane Katrina. The first is by Mark Steyn; he imputes the disaster of Katrina to the failure of the welfare state which has helped make defenseless babes of the poor. The second is by Thomas L. Friedman; he thinks it's all about the Bush administration's appalling record in the areas of conservation and the enviroment and quotes a friend of his, "a Democratic entrepreneur", who observed that the Bush team's philosophy post 9/11 has been: "We're at war. Let's party."

Given that assinine statement, old Tom had better find himself some new friends.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:05 | link | comments

The head won't roll: Kofi Annan says he accepts blame for the oil-for-food debacle, which Paul Volker's report, released today, characterized as making "a deal with the devil" (the devil, of course, being Saddam, not Kofi).  The beleagured Secretary General, whose spawn Kojo was among those who pocketed big shekels from the scheme, says the UN should be deeply embarrassed that such a scandal could have occurred under its auspices.

And now that that's out of the way, Kofi plans to get on with his job.

Update: The Volker Report describes Kojo as a liar with expensive taste.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:49 | link | comments

Modern-day Pharaoh: Der Spiegel has an instructive interview with Numan Gumaa, one of the candidates vying for office in Egypt's faux-democratic election.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:21 | link | comments

Left Side Story: Dalton McGuinty sings (with apologies to L. Bernstein and S. Sondheim):

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

There are none so blind...: The government of Ontario finds itself in quite a pickle these days. On the one hand, it wants to extend the same "rights" to Muslims that other religious groups have: to settle family and some other civil matters in accordance with religious law. On the other hand, voices of doubt and outrage are being raised, not only in the province, but around the world. These people fear that giving sharia law--which is inherently unfair to women and antithetical to Western law--any judicial teeth, however modified, will set a dangerous precedent for other Western countries. The protest will culminate tomorrow when anti-sharia forces will gather in several cities in the Western world in an effort to convince Ontario to take off its multi-cultist glasses long enough to see the perilous course it is setting.

Faint hope. In today's Globe and Mail, Premier Dalton McGuinty seems to be playing the Hamlet act to the hilt ("to allow sharia or not to allow sharia"), but a clue to his eventual decision is contained in the headline: "Islamic-law plan will respect rights, Premier says". The article goes on:

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty vows that the rights of women will not be compromised if sharia tribunals get the go-ahead to settle marital disputes for Muslims in the province.

Amid a growing international outcry against allowing such tribunals, Mr. McGuinty said the government will decide "shortly" on whether to permit Islamic law to be used in Ontario family arbitration cases.

"But whatever we do, it will be in keeping with the values of Canadians and Ontarians," he told reporters yesterday.

Mr. McGuinty said the government is still in the process of reviewing a report by former New Democrat Attorney-General Marion Boyd, which concluded that Muslims in Ontario should have the same rights as other religious groups that use faith-based arbitration to settle family disputes. The government has been sitting on her report for nine months.

think they're actively looking for solutions," Ms. Boyd said in an interview yesterday. "I think they have to have the political courage to recognize they're not going to satisfy everybody."

The issue of sharia-based tribunals in Ontario is raising alarm bells among women's groups in Canada and Europe, as well as human-rights activists and dissidents from Islamic states such as Iran. They argue that sharia, even limited to family arbitration, could discriminate against Muslim women who could feel pressured into it against their will.

The controversy will hit closer to home when demonstrators converge on Queen's Park at noon tomorrow as part of planned protest marches in 12 cities in Canada and Europe, including Victoria, Ottawa, Montreal, London, Paris and Stockholm.

The protesters say allowing Islamic law to be used in Ontario would create a precedent for religious fundamentalists working to suppress women's rights, and give fodder to political Islamists in Europe who are also lobbying for sharia law to be used to settle family matters.

However, Ms. Boyd concluded in her report that there was no evidence women were being discriminated against in faith-based arbitration and recommended that the province's existing arbitration system be strengthened.

The government is in a conundrum over the issue, said a senior government source. While government officials think it is only fair to extend religious arbitration to Muslims, he said they are unsure of how to communicate that to the public, especially in the wake of this summer's bomb attacks in London carried out by three British Muslims of Pakistani origin and a Jamaican-born Briton.

"I think people just viscerally react negatively to the idea of there being any Muslim- type law in Ontario or any decision influenced by Muslim law," he said.

A conundrum, indeed. How to convince people that "Muslim-type law" is compatible with our own when adherents of said law take it as their inspiration to blow up Westerners? How to ensure that Muslims are given the same "rights" as others when that may involve abridging the rights of an entire gender? How to allow sharia on a limited basis (as if such a thing were even possible) and not have it perceived by the holy warriors and their enablers as a great victory for their cause, a symbol that, ultimately, the West will be unable to withstand their onslaught?

I know. Let's be like Dalton and Marion and pretend. Pretend there's a way to amend sharia--seen by the faithful as "perfect" and god-given, and thus not subject to tampering by anyone, least of all an infidel state. Pretend that sharia can be made compatible with Western law and still be considered sharia. Pretend that Muslim women will have safeguards to ensure they won't be railroaded by men in their family to seek out a "religious" resolution to family problems. Pretend that sharia in Ontario has absolutely nothing to do with the desire of some of the faithful to impose all-sharia, all the time, on that portion of the world still resistent to it. Pretend, with all the ardour of a multicultural ideologue, that every culture, every religion, every group, has ideas which are equally valuable and valid. Pretend with every fibre of your being that all will be for the best in this, the best of all possible provinces.

Only by pretending, long and hard and foolishly, could one ever decide that sharia law--anywhere, in any form--was a good idea.

Update: Here are the details of the anti-sharia protest in Toronto.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:31 | link | comments (1)

The upshot of UNSCAM: The Volker Report--all nearly 1,000 pages of it--is set to land with a thud tomorrow. According to initial media reports, Volker lambastes UN corruption as it operated in the oil-for-food program, while letting the wretched international organization's head honcho more or less off the hook, at least for now. He even musters a few encouraging words about Saddam's honeypot, saying that it succeeded in feeding the odd mouth or two.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

Expect Kofi to crow once again about his vindication. Meanwhile, a commentary piece in The Australian shows a good grasp of the larger issues involved:

...This scandal exposes the inherent flaws in the UN, a body routinely accorded more legitimacy than it deserves.

Republicans in the US have been keen to turn the scandal into Kofigate. And it is true that under Kofi Annan's stewardship, the oil-for-food program, which ran from December1996 until November 2003, was mired in corruption. The Volcker report found that Benon Sevan, the former director of the program handpicked by Annan, received $US150,000 in kickbacks, and a procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev, was attempting to solicit bribes. A final report due out soon will decide on Annan's role in Cotecna, a Swiss company that secured an oil-for-food contract and paid his son, Kojo, $US370,000 between 1996 and 2005.

The evidence so far suggests that half of the 4500 companies that took part in the $US110 billion oil-for-food program - the world's largest humanitarian program - were paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. That's a lot of fraud and corruption under Annan's watch. Were he the chief executive of a public company, he would be booted out before you could say humanitarian relief.

But were the UN a public company, its directors -- otherwise known as Security Council members -- might also find themselves turfed out. The Security Council created and supervised the oil-for-food program. British and American negotiators let Saddam choose to whom he sold oil and which goods Iraq would buy in return. Oil-for-food contracts went to the Security Council 661 Committee for approval. Moreover, despite the UN raising specific concerns about dubious pricing, none of the members, which included the US, knocked back a contract based on corrupt pricing practices.

As James Traub wrote in The New Republic in February, the five permanent members of the Security Council were making political decisions according to their own priorities. "Officials from the major countries understood the game in all its complexity and cynicism," says Traub. "It was ugly, but it worked."

And that is the UN's central flaw. The UN's governing council comprises countries that make decisions based on one fact alone: their self-interest. Decisions may be couched in the feel-good, sound-nice language of some higher good. But in the end, no country makes a decision not in its self-interest.

The upshot of that is obvious: just because the UN says something is a good thing does not make it so. It probably just means a number of countries have been bribed into taking that position. Keep that in mind next time you hear the UN described as the repository of international legitimacy...

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:41 | link | comments

Just say no: This Thursday, protesters in serveral Western cities will gather to express their dismay at the possiblility of sharia law being legally sanctioned in the province of Ontario. Maryam Namazie, the host of an Iranian television program in the U.K.., explains why Ontario must not permit sharia tribunals to operate in the West. From Butterflies and Wheels:

The ‘Islamic Institute of Civil Justice’ or what has become known as the Sharia Court has been heralded by proponents as a multi-cultural way of determining personal and family disputes for those who ‘choose’ to abide by Sharia law in Ontario, Canada. We are told it will promote ‘minority rights’ and that it is equitable, tolerant, and fair. We are told that if it is not established, the ‘Muslim minority’ will be marginalised and discriminated against. That anything less is racism pure and simple.

This is not the case.

Deceptively sugar-coating an Islamic Court in civil rights terms cannot and will not conceal the stark realities of Sharia law and its regressive implications for human beings and Canadian society.

To begin with, Sharia law is inherently unjust and unfair even if it’s only being implemented in the area of what some call mundane civil disputes. In fact, discriminatory family and personal status codes are important pillars in the oppression of women in Islamist societies. Much of the struggle for women’s rights has taken shape in countries like Iran vis-à-vis these very aspects of Sharia law. Discrimination and gender-based persecution in areas of marriage, divorce, child custody and so on are in fact reasons why many women flee Islamist societies and seek refuge in Canada and the west. These so called ‘mundane’ disputes have cost many a woman and girl her rights and life in the Middle East and North Africa. Now, it aims to do the same in Canada.

Yes we know. Those who avail of the court will ‘choose’ to do so; it will be completely voluntary. It is interesting how pro-women’s choices the political Islamic movement becomes when it is vying for power in the west. Where are the choices for women in Iran and Afghanistan under Sharia law and Islamic states? Where is it for women of Iraq or Saudi Arabia? The political Islamic movement is renowned for threatening, intimidating, mutilating, maiming and killing all those who refuse and transgress. Women and girls are always its first victims...

And she concludes with this stirring message:

And there are some who say opposing the Sharia Court and Islamic laws is racist.

It is not.

Opposition to or critiques of or even 'phobias' of ideologies, religions, cultures, laws or political movements are not racism. Islamophobia is not racism. Only phobias against people because of their race are racism. It is only under the New World Order's multi-culturalism that Islamophobia has been increasingly and deceptively given legitimacy as a form of racism. The political Islamic movement labels it such only to silence those who critique it or stand up to it.

In fact it is racist to create a Sharia Court. It is racist to discriminate against so-called minorities and deny them universal and equal rights and standards and the secularism fought for and established by progressive movements over centuries. It is racist to justify and ignore violations of civil rights and misogyny under the pretext of multi-culturalism. It is racist to deny equality of all citizens before the law. It is racist to create separate legal, social, cultural, religious systems for people deemed different.

Enough is enough! The Sharia Court in Canada is an extension of that movement that stones women on streets and hangs apostates from cranes on city squares in Iran. It is an extension of the same movement that has threatened to kill Yanar Mohammad of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq for defending women’s rights there. It is an extension of the same movement that imprisons women in burqas in Afghanistan. It has no right to speak of civil rights and justice. It is itself a pillar of injustice and rightlessness in the world today. A Sharia Court in Canada? No way! No How! We will not allow it. Enough is enough!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:01 | link | comments

Bringing the world together: The United Nations has announced a new effort designed to strike a "cultural alliance" between Muslims and the West.

This being the UN, where malign intentions tend to be wrapped up in the prettiest, most high-minded of words, it all sounds quite lovely, a way to engender understanding and good feelings by bringing people together. But since the people involved with the program include some of the most dhimmified doormats in the world, including ex-nun and apologist for Isam, Karen Armstrong, and appeaser-weasel Jose Zapatero, it seems that the real aim may be to help reconcile recalcitrant Westerners with their eventual domination and subjagation by the non-Western side of the cultural equation.

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

Spitting image: I finally figured out who New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reminds me of. It's this guy.

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

Say it loud, I'm jihadi and I'm proud: A chilling article in FrontPage Magazine by Daniel Pipes on the emergence of a new threat to American (and hence North American Jews): African-American convicts who have converted to Islam while in prison.

These new jihadis are homegrown and eager to demostrate their zeal for Allah. They had been planning a large massacre of Jews in Los Angeles during the High Holy Days this year, but, luckily, their plot was uncovered before they could put it into action. But you can be sure that like the Little Jiihadi Engine Who Could, they will try, try again.

Pipes says the rise of these American jihadis marks the end of the golden age of Jews in America.

And now that I am thoroughly depressed by this piece, I will have to consume a sufficient amount of chocolate to offset it.

If such an amount exists.

Update: Another country heard from: In the U.K., a Muslim named Andrew Rowe is on trial for alleged jihadist activity. Rowe is a convert to Islam who hails from the West Indies.

Another sign that Islam's appeal to the underclass is dangerous for the larger society

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:09 | link | comments

Democracy in action: Tomorrow, the majority of Egyptians who muster up the enthsiasm to actually make it to a voting booth will likely cast their ballot for a corrupt, autocratic burnt-out leader who is known to be extremely beneficent to his cronies.

You know, just like in Canada.

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

Not that they're biased or anything: Yesterday, this is how Yahoo News reported on the premature explodiation of some excitable boys in Gaza:

A mysterious blast after nightfall Monday leveled a building in Gaza City, killing four people and wounding at least 30, residents and hospital officials said. The violent Islamic Hamas group blamed Israel, but the Israeli military said it was not involved.

The explosion came hours after Palestinian security forces got their first look at demolished Jewish settlements in Gaza, touring the area ahead of Israel's formal handover in mid-September. The joint tour by Palestinian commanders and Israeli military officials marked the first time Palestinian authorities were allowed into the settlements, which were evacuated two weeks ago...

Reading that, one might get the impression that Israel was somehow at fault, what with Hamas pinning the blame on the Jews and  Palestinian security forces only now being able to have their first look-see at the area of withdrawal.

Today, the Beeb sets us straight, sort of:

Palestinian interior ministry says Monday's blast in Gaza City was caused by militants accidentally detonating explosives.

A huge explosion rocked the centre of Gaza City on Monday, killing five people and injuring 20 others.

At least three houses were destroyed in the explosion, one of which Palestinian officials said was used by the militant group, Hamas, for making bombs.

Hamas has maintained that the house was the target of an Israeli air strike.

But the Israeli authorities have denied having anything to do with the incident.

The blast occurred in the eastern Shajaiyeh area of Gaza city, near the border with Israel.

"According to our investigation and eyewitness accounts, what happened in Shajaiyeh was an internal explosion resulting from a fire in a house due to an error during the making of explosives," Palestinian interior ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said.

The Israeli air force has often targeted Hamas members in Gaza and the West Bank, but military sources denied they were behind Monday's blast.

Sometimes blasts are caused by the accidental detonation of weapons caches kept by militant groups, says BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston...

"An error during the making of explosives", huh? You'll never get your compliant, incorporeal virgins that way, guys.

Update:

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

Chewing on the good book: Douglas Coupland is a novelist (Generation X, Girlfriend in a Coma, Eleanor Rigby) and visual artist from Vancouver. Today's review section of the Globe and Mail features a shot of his latest acclaimed oevre, which happens to be both literary and visually arresting. It's a three dimemsional work of art which looks like a hornet's nest. It was  fashioned in part out of a masticated Gideon Bible, the mastication being performed by the artist himself.

Can you imagine the outrage if he had chewed up and spat out a Muslim holy book? At this very moment, they might be issuing fatwas and rioting in the streets of Islamabad. Meanwhile, agrieved believers would even now be plotting to avenge the blasphemy by blowing up some infidels as they rode on public transit.

Good thing there's no jihad in the bible.

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

Love of country vs. love for "the world community": FrontPage Magazine has an interesting symposium on the subject of treason. I was particularly struck by this flight of eloquence from David Horowitz, one of the participants:

Loyalty to humanity is in fact a concept so abstract and malleable that it means literally nothing. It is not a loyalty to anyone or any value. It is an excuse to betray one’s country. In my book, Unholy Alliance, I have called people who invoke this particular form of bad faith – Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan come to mind – “secessionists” in that that they have abandoned America for what they think is membership in an imaginary “world” community.

The truth about the world is encapsulated in its only institutionalize form (much favored by this crowd) the United Nations. In the real world, the UN is  a collection of tyrannies, kleptocracies and slavocracies, and feckless democracies like Germany and France who are appeasers and abettors of the same. The UN is a moral cesspool that has honored terrorists like Arafat and once gave a standing ovation to a cannibal named Idi Amin. The UN only yesterday colluded in the genocide of the Rwandans, colludes today in the enslavement and slaughter of black Africans in the Sudan and embezzled billions from the criminal coffers of Saddam Hussein. This is humanity as it has evolved without the great foundational covenants that guide this country and that created in these territories a government of, by and for the people, dedicated to the belief that all men are created equal and that they endowed by their Creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The first duty of a citizen of America is to defend this -- these institutions and this people that created America ’s democratic culture and has sustained it. The idea that suicide bombing terrorists in the Middle East who strap bombs to their own children and tell them to blow up other children and they will go to heaven – the idea that savages like this will create anything in the Middle East but a second Holocaust is a delusion. But it is a delusion that unites the factions of the political left in America and leads them to betray their own country and their own people.

Destruction on a massive scale is the only thing America ’s enemies have shown themselves capable of. To denounce America and its elected president in the midst of the terrorist war being waged against it – to denounce America as “the greatest terrorist state” and to proclaim its terrorist enemies “freedom fighters” in the manner of Cindy Sheehan, who is the symbol and mouthpiece these days of the political left, is to declare oneself an enemy of one’s own country and its people, and to proclaim oneself a waiting and willing accomplice to those who want to destroy it...

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:57 | link | comments

Hat's off to Hosni: Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is facing a strong field of strawmen in his electoral battle to retain office.

Okay, maybe not so much strong as bizarre.

Take, for example, Ahmad Al Sabahi. Not only is Mr. Al Sabahi the oldest candidate in contention, he's running on what I'm fairly certain is the race's most intriguing platform. Should voters select him, he promises to immediately compel all Egyptian men to wear a fez. That's the round little beanie which, historically, was worn by Muslims in places like Egypt and Turkey, but which is currently favoured by Shriners, members of an American service club, when they ride those tiny motorized vehicles in parades.

Should he lose the race--which seems a pretty safe bet (as Toronto Star reporter, Mitch Potter, puts it, the madcap headgear promise is "emblematic of how little stands in the way of President Hosni Mubarak's bid for a sixth tern of office")--Al Sabahi can always go back to his day job. He's an astrologist and palm-reader who has just released the 23rd book in his series on the interpretation of dreams.

The book's dedicatee? Why, none other than five, soon to be six, term president, Hosni Mubarak.

Update: Well knock me over with a feather: The Times Onlne reports that Mubarak's brush with democracy now seems to be little more than window dressing.

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

The gall!: Turkish news site Zaman Online is offended by what it calls, oxymoronically, Israel's "diplomatic offensive". First, Pakistan; now, Dubai.

Where will the offensive offensive end?:

Israeli administration continues its diplomatic offensive against Muslim countries. After holding talks with Pakistan, with which it had had no relation for 57 years, it is claimed that Israel opened a secret diplomatic mission in Dubai, the capitol of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to the Haaretz’ report, Israel has opened a secret diplomatic mission in Dubai, presenting its staff as businessmen. While Israeli Foreign Office spokesperson Mark Regev denied the claim, Haaretz wrote that three Israeli diplomats and their wives, carrying foreign passports came to Dubai with the approval of local authorities. The newspaper underlined that UAE presented a big economic potential for Israeli high-tech firms and assessed the development as a large achievement. Haaretz wrote that the mission was kept secret to circumvent the criticisms of the radical opposition.

In the meantime Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom will reportedly make a visit to Tunisia in November. Shalom’s visit will be the first since 2000. Shalom, accompanied by the Transportation Minister Dalia Itzik, will attend a scientific conference to be held in Tunisia. Silvan Shalom, who was born in the southern Gabes region of Tunisia, may reportedly visit his natal house as well.

The Muslim countries Israel has embassy-level diplomatic ties are Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania...

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:18 | link | comments

Anti-sharia protest: While the multi-cultists keep trying to drum up support for allowing sharia tribunals into Ontario (including, by my count, at least three lead editorials in the Globe and Mail) a coaltition of international naysayers is attempting to keep the province--and all Western nations--a sharia-free zone. From the Ceeb website:

Almost 100 organizations around the globe will protest Thursday against a proposal that would allow Islamic law to be used in family arbitration and mediation cases in Ontario.

Canadian and European feminist groups, dissidents from some Islamic states such as Iran, human-rights activists, writers and journalists will march Thursday in six European cities, and at least five Canadian ones. Protests will take place in Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo, Ont., Montreal and Victoria, and in Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Gutenberg, Stockholm, London and Paris.

Speakers at the Canadian events will include journalists June Callwood, Irshad Manji and Sally Armstrong.

Sohaila Sharifi, an Iranian emigrant who is organizing the London protest, said the protests are part of a global battle between secular societies and "political Islam."

"If [hardline Muslims] win this fight in Canada, there is always the possibility that they would see it as a victory that could bring them one step forward," Sharifi said in an e-mail exchange with the Canadian Press.

"They would use the same argument to establish the same religious system here in Europe and elsewhere."...

We shall see if the message penetrates to Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, and he has the sense to stop "political Islam" (otherwise known as plain old Islam) from gaining a judicially-sanctioned toehold in the province.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments

Hamas unmasked: Those men in black (sheets) have decided to step forward and divest themselves of their bedclothes. According to the Beeb, it's because they want to make sure their people know whom to credit for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza:

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has for the first time made details of its top military commanders public.

The organisation published pictures of and interviews with seven commanders, giving their names, rank and role, on its website and in a newspaper.

Hamas has previously kept such details secret, amid the threat of assassinations by Israel.

Correspondents say the move is part of an effort by Hamas to claim credit for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas has carried out scores of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel since the 1990s, while dozens of its fighters and leaders have been killed by the Israeli military.

Warnings

Each of the seven appears with a biography, stating his rank, how