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

 

Un-hole-y terror: An unintentionally hilarious story, from the Canadian Jewish News:

 

A teenager, Connor Raniera, 18, confessed to vandalizing a Judaica store in Boca Raton, Fla, on May 21. He drew four white swastikas and a misspelled message that read “BUN THE JEWS.” He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.

 

No, no, Connor. Not BUN, BAGEL.

 

If you’re going to slander the Jews, you should at least use the right carb.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:32 | link | comments

 

Mama mia: A German mater makes her (failed) bid for paradise. From BBC News:

 

German mother ‘planned bombing’

Berlin police say they have foiled a German woman's plans to travel abroad to become a suicide bomber.

She is one of three women who media reports say are being investigated after announcing plans on the internet to carry out missions in Iraq.

Berlin police said the woman may have been planning to take along her child, who has since been taken into care.

Last year, a Belgian woman who had converted to Islam blew herself up in Baghdad, killing six people.

Berlin police told the BBC they had discovered that a 40-year-old woman was "planning via an internet forum to commit suicide, kill or injure other people abroad".

"She herself is a convert to Islam and was thus hoping to get into paradise," the police said. "It could not be ruled out that, in doing so, she would also kill her small child, who lived with her."…

 

As the mother of a young child myself, I have only one thing to say: There are no words.

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

 

Today’s “let’s talk” update: Let’s see. Israel is willing to talk to  Hamas, if and when the genocidal jihadis renounce terrorism and recognize Israel. And now there’s word that the U.S. is willing to talk to Iran, provided it renounces uranium enrichment.

 

That’s a lot of conversation contingent on crazed Islamists behaving like civilized human beings.

 

At this stage, I suggest no one hold his/her breath.

Update: What'd I tell you? The mully-bullies to Condi: take a hike.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:54 | link | comments

 

Little Israel on the Prairies: In the Globe and Mail’s Letter to the Editor today, Shirley Groves of Beaconsfield, Quebec, writes:

Contrary to your tiresome mantra about Hamas's "violent opposition to Israel," what the Palestinian government opposes is not Israel's existence per se, but its occupation of Palestinian lands (Abbas Sets The Bar -- editorial, May 30). All Palestinians -- including Hamas -- would gladly recognize a Jewish state if it had been carved out of Canada rather than Palestine. Surely Albertans would gladly give up half of their province for such a noble endeavour?

Well, Shirley (and I hope you won’t mind if I call you by your first name, but from the tone and tenor of your letter, I feel I know your type so well) for that to happen we Jews would have to completely amend our history, our holy books, our religion, and our eternal connection to the land of Israel. And why should we when, newsflash, we were there first. (For more on the unbreakable bond between Jews and Israel, see this article by Dennis Prager.)

 

Also, if we moved the Jewish state to Alberta we’d have to change the prayer to “Next year in Medicine Hat,” and, frankly, that’s a little too much to ask.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:18 | link | comments (1)

 

The hills are alive with the sound of Judenhass: In 1965, the New Yorker’s late, great film critic, Pauline Kael, was fired from her earlier job with McCalls magazine when she made the following deliciously malicious quip about that much-loved but unbearably saccharine musical, The Sound of Music:

 

Wasn't there perhaps one little von Trapp who didn't want to sing his head off, or who screamed that he wouldn't act out little glockenspiel routines for Papa's party guests, or who got nervous and threw up if he had to get on a stage?

 

I was thinking about this quote—one of my favourites—the other day when I read that 900—count ‘em, 900—CUPE Ontario members attending the Union’s annual meeting in Ottawa had voted unanimously to boycott Israel. Wasn’t there perhaps one little CUPE member who didn’t want to fall in line with the mob, or who screamed that a boycott against Israel was like doing little glockenspiel routines for Mahmoud Abbas and the other Israel-trashers, or who got nervous and threw up upon realizing the significance of singling out the Jewish state in this despicable way?

 

Guess not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:54 | link | comments

 

Les Incorigables: It’s almost summer in France, and you know what that means. No, I’m not referring to the beautiful and the disreputable co-mingling at the Cannes Film Festival. I’m speaking, cher amis, of those spirited “youths” from the 'burbs and their madcap hijinks.

 

No keggers or beach parties but lots and lots of convivial car-b-cues. From the BBC:

 

Youths clash with French police

 

Rioting youths have set fire to cars and thrown stones at police in a second night of violence in the Paris suburbs.

 

The trouble has flared up little more than six months after the area endured weeks of riots and clashes with police.

 

A number of officers were injured in the violence on Tuesday and at least 13 youths were arrested.

 

One was an 18-year-old involved in the electrocuting incident last October which left two friends dead and led to the riots in suburbs across France.

 

The violence on Tuesday took place in Montfermeil, 15 km (10 miles) east of the centre of Paris, and in the nearby suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, the flashpoint of last year's rioting...

 

Update: As if the car-b-cues, now into their second night, aren’t bad enough, there’s a report on the The Times Online site that some “youths” have been taking their “grievances” to Paris’s Jewish district to take them up with les Juifs. From the Times Online:

 

POLICE sent reinforcements to the troubled suburbs of northern Paris yesterday after a night of rioting revived fear of a return to the violence that raged through France’s immigrant housing estates last year.

In another sign of continuing racial tension, the Government also ordered an inquiry into an anti-Semitic black group that staged an aggressive march through the Jewish quarter of the capital…

Politicians and Jewish organisations united yesterday in condemning the acts of the so-called Tribu KA black supremacy group that intimidated passers-by last Sunday in the Rue des Rosiers, the Jewish quarter in the Marais district.

Black supremacy; Muslim supremacy. If they’re so “supreme”, why don’t they have a "clash of the titans" and leave the Jews alone?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:35 | link | comments

 

Take two: Here are two versions of the same news story. The first, from the Toronto Star:

 

Israeli troops raid Gaza rocket zone

Four Palestinians killed in gunfight Hamas promises to pay some wages

May 31, 2006. 01:00 AM

SARAH EL DEEB

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

GAZA CITY—Israel launched its first ground military operation inside the Gaza Strip since it pulled out of the region last year, killing three members of a Palestinian rocket squad and a policeman in a fierce battle yesterday, the Israeli army said.

 

The gunfight between Israeli commandos and Islamic Jihad militants took place about three kilometres inside northern Gaza. Militants based there have fired hundreds of homemade rockets at Israeli border communities in recent years.

 

The operation marked a change in army tactics since the September pullout and signalled a further escalation in cross-border fighting…

 

Now, here’s the same story, which originated in The Daily Telegraph, as it appears in the National Post (no link):

 

ISRAEL AMBUSHES TERRORISTS IN GAZA

Members of Islamic Jihad about to launch rocket

 

BY TIM BUTCHER

 

JERUSALEM Israeli special forces entered Gaza and ambushed a group of Palestinian terrorists about to fire a rocket into Israel yesterday in the army’s first ground raid into the territory since an Israeli pullout last year.

 

With a helicopter providing cover, the covert team opened fire, killing all three members of an Islamic Jihad unit that was preparing to fire a small, homemade rocket, known as a Qassam.

 

As the troops withdrew, an Apache helicopter fired a missile into the ground near an approaching Palestinian ambulance. There were reports that a Palestinian policeman unconnected to the rocket party was also killed…

 

The above demonstrates in Rashomon-like fashion that the identical story can be perceived in completely different ways, depending on one’s perspective.

 

On another note, is having an “el” in your name a prerequisite for employment as an AP scribe?

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

 

A war by any other name: Canadian soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, but Canada’s Defence Minister isn’t prepared to characterize it as a “war.”

 

Of course, he hasn’t yet been able to come up with exactly the right euphemism to describe it. (A non-peace? An interminable skirmish? Forceful peacekeeping?) From the CBC:

 

Canada isn't at war in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said on Tuesday, but some in the opposition say the government is just playing semantics for political reasons.

 

O'Connor told a committee hearing that Canada has 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan — many of them involved in reconstruction, peacekeeping and democracy building — even though they've also been involved in heavy and deadly fighting.

 

"I don't consider this war," O'Connor said, but he declined to explain.

 

"To me, war would be — well, I can start going into what war would be, I just don't consider this to be war."

 

The Liberals charge that Mr. O’Connor is having trouble untying his tongue—and his brain—because he doesn’t want to put the word “war” into public consciousness due to its unpleasant association with Bush’s “war on terror” and the war in Iraq.

 

But I’m sure Canadians will be pleased to know that, even though we’re not fighting a war

 

Nonetheless, O'Connor says, Canada is winning in Afghanistan.

 

"If you concentrate against our military, then, you know, we can defeat them. And lately they have been concentrating against our military in our area and they have been taking very large casualties," he said.

 

Memo to Mr. O’Connor: if it looks like a war and quacks like a war…

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

 

Hubbub at the UN: Iran and Syria, two terror states which would be pleased to see the Zionist entity eradicated, and sooner rather than later, reiterated their deep-seated desires in a most congenial setting—congenial to them, that is: the UN Security Council.  The Israeli involved, UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman, defended the right of his nation to be a fait accompli. And, of course, the AP scribe, who I’m sure is completely unbiased even though his name is Tarek El-Tablawy, wrote the whole thing up as another one of those tit-for-tat things, Israelis and Muslims, both equally intransigent, sniping at each other across the floor.

 

He also recorded some of the terror states’ loopier assertions about there being a clear line of demarcation between terrorism being perpetrated inside Israel and terror that occurs everywhere else.

 

Guess which one they say is permissible.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Syrian and Iranian diplomats traded barbs with Israel's UN ambassador on Tuesday, as a routine Security Council meeting on fighting terrorism degenerated into insults.

At a meeting aimed at assessing the progress and work of the Security Council's three anti-terror committees, Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman described Iran and Syria as part of an "Axis of Terror" and said Iran was the "greatest state sponsor of terrorism and the largest threat to international peace and security."

Gillerman also lashed out at the oft-repeated argument by Iran and many Arab states that a distinction must be made between terrorism and armed resistance movements - namely the Palestinians' fight against the Jewish state.

The Israeli ambassador said his country has "an intimate awareness of the need to fight international terrorism," and stressed that there can be no justification for terrorism, the fight against which he described as the "Third World War."

Syrian diplomat Ahmed Alhariri countered that Damascus has taken a front-line role in the fight against terror and called on the Security Council to "avoid double standards in combating terrorism." Such a battle must be "based on strict legal criteria, and not flimsy political considerations," he said.

"In this regard, I must stress that Israel is duty bound to cease this cheap blackmail against the United Nations," said Alhariri. "All are aware that the source of terrorism in the region is Israel's continuing occupation of Arab lands, and the ejection of Palestinians from their land . . . as well as continued aggression against Arabs and the denial of their fundamental rights."

Israel and the United States have routinely accused Syria and Iran of supporting terror, either by hosting and funding militant groups such as Hezbollah, or by doing little to halt the flow of weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq - a country grappling daily with sectarian killings, suicide bombings and other violence…

Yeah, Mr. Gillerman. Get with the program. All are aware that the source of terrorism is “the occupation”—of a sovereign Jewish land by, um, the Jews. And if those uppity dhimmis would only acknowledge their fundamentally lowly status in this world and thus restore that natural order of things as promised by Allah and recorded by Mo—everything would be copasetic.

However, Mr. Gillerman was able to “lash out” with what was probably the most accurate, and certainly the drollest, statement of the afternoon:

Gillerman was quick to fire back, expressing his "appreciation, which I hope is shared by members of the Security Council, for the opportunity afforded to all of us to hear lectures about terrorism by two of the world's greatest experts on that subject."

To echo the wry words of Sigmund Freud when he was released by the Gestapo, Gillerman can most highly recommend Syria and Iran to everyone.

Update: Hmm. Funny how the AP story left out this part. From the New York Sun:

 

UNITED NATIONS - A verbal brawl erupted at the Security Council yesterday as it debated the subject of terrorism. During the skirmish, Syria accused Israel of starting World Wars I and II, as well as "contemplating" a third world war.

 

The anti-Semitic outburst by the Syrian representative, Ahmad Alhariri, as well as allegations by his Iranian colleague, Ahmad Sadeghi, countered comments from Israel's U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, who said both Syria and Iran are part of an "axis of terror" that would pit them against a group of anti-terrorism "allies" in a "World War III."…

 

In honour of the Syrian Jew-hater’s undiplomatic outburst, I have decided to re-post a song from my never-to-be-produced musical Elders!, the musical version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The song, “Ours”, is sung by several of the shadowy ones, and spoofs the age-old canards about “the Jews” being behind all the bad stuff.

 

Ours

 

Consider all historical calamity

The war, the pain, the fear and insanity,

We like to claim, with no trace of vanity—

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Seven Years, Hundred Years, ev’ry duration

Of warfare and strife throughout ev’ry nation,

Conduct a little investigation—

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

Behind revolutions, both French and Russian,

Populations we’re fond of crushin’,

Wells that are poisoned and loos that ain't flushin'

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Wars between States and ‘tween Roses—ours!

The Cold War we suppose is—ours!

Some war we can’t disclose is—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

Unrest in southern Albania—ours!

The onset of mania in Spain-ia—ours!

The sinking of the Lusitania—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Trouble that’s murky and vague—ours!

Civil unrest in The Hague—ours!

A little old thing like the plague—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Turkish synagogue bombings—we plotted for hours.

Silence and subterfuge—part of our powers.

And somehow we toppled those big ol’ Twin Towers.

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

There’s nothing you can do to please us

Nothing that will e'er appease us

And don’t forget, we also killed Jesus.

He was ours, ours, ours!

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

 

Hit and myth: Moo and a Der Spiegel interviewer have a heated exchange about the veracity of the Holocaust. The Der Spiegel scribe insists the Shoa is a fact. Moo, not surprisingly, begs to differ. Here’s just a portion of the interview:

SPIEGEL: There was great indignation in Germany when it became known that you might be coming to the soccer world championship. Did that surprise you?

Ahmadinejad: No, that's not important. I didn't even understand how that came about. It also had no meaning for me. I don't know what all the excitement is about.

SPIEGEL: It concerned your remarks about the Holocaust. It was inevitable that the Iranian president's denial of the systematic murder of the Jews by the Germans would trigger outrage.

Ahmadinejad: I don't exactly understand the connection.

SPIEGEL: First you make your remarks about the Holocaust. Then comes the news that you may travel to Germany -- this causes an uproar. So you were surprised after all?

Ahmadinejad: No, not at all, because the network of Zionism is very active around the world, in Europe too. So I wasn't surprised. We were addressing the German people. We have nothing to do with Zionists.

SPIEGEL: Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Germany. Are you indifferent when confronted with so much outrage?

Ahmadinejad: I know that DER SPIEGEL is a respected magazine. But I don't know whether it is possible for you to publish the truth about the Holocaust. Are you permitted to write everything about it?

SPIEGEL: Of course we are entitled to write about the findings of the past 60 years' historical research. In our view there is no doubt that the Germans -- unfortunately -- bear the guilt for the murder of 6 million Jews.

Ahmadinejad: Well, then we have stirred up a very concrete discussion. We are posing two very clear questions. The first is: Did the Holocaust actually take place? You answer this question in the affirmative. So, the second question is: Whose fault was it? The answer to that has to be found in Europe and not in Palestine. It is perfectly clear: If the Holocaust took place in Europe, one also has to find the answer to it in Europe.

On the other hand, if the Holocaust didn't take place, why then did this regime of occupation ...

SPIEGEL: ... You mean the state of Israel...

Ahmadinejad: ... come about? Why do the European countries commit themselves to defending this regime? Permit me to make one more point. We are of the opinion that, if an historical occurrence conforms to the truth, this truth will be revealed all the more clearly if there is more research into it and more discussion about it.

SPIEGEL: That has long since happened in Germany.

Ahmadinejad: We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust. We oppose every type of crime against any people. But we want to know whether this crime actually took place or not. If it did, then those who bear the responsibility for it have to be punished, and not the Palestinians. Why isn't research into a deed that occurred 60 years ago permitted? After all, other historical occurrences, some of which lie several thousand years in the past, are open to research, and even the governments support this.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, with all due respect, the Holocaust occurred, there were concentration camps, there are dossiers on the extermination of the Jews, there has been a great deal of research, and there is neither the slightest doubt about the Holocaust nor about the fact - we greatly regret this - that the Germans are responsible for it. If we may now add one remark: the fate of the Palestinians is an entirely different issue, and this brings us into the present.

Ahmadinejad: No, no, the roots of the Palestinian conflict must be sought in history. The Holocaust and Palestine are directly connected with one another. And if the Holocaust actually occurred, then you should permit impartial groups from the whole world to research this. Why do you restrict the research to a certain group? Of course, I don't mean you, but rather the European governments.

SPIEGEL: Are you still saying that the Holocaust is just "a myth?"

Ahmadinejad: I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it…

It’s good to know Moo’s a man of conviction. It helps us understand who we’re dealing with (i.e. an utter whackjob with a Messiah complex who wants to get rid of the world’s only sovereign Jewish state).

I hope everyone who wants us to negotiate with him--that means you, Jimminy Carter and Harpoon Siddiqui--is taking notes.

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

 

Who’da thunk it?: A glowing profile of fearless, heroic truth-teller, Oriana Fallaci from, wonders never cease, The New Yorker: 

...Today, Fallaci believes, the Western world is in danger of being engulfed by radical Islam. Since September 11, 2001, she has written three short, angry books advancing this argument. Two of them, “The Rage and the Pride” and “The Force of Reason,” have been translated into idiosyncratic English by Fallaci herself. (She has had difficult relationships with translators in the past.) A third, “The Apocalypse,” was recently published in Europe, in a volume that also includes a lengthy self-interview. She writes that Muslim immigration is turning Europe into “a colony of Islam,” an abject place that she calls “Eurabia,” which will soon “end up with minarets in place of the bell-towers, with the burka in place of the mini-skirt.” Fallaci argues that Islam has always had designs on Europe, invoking the siege of Constantinople in the seventh century, and the brutal incursions of the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She contends that contemporary immigration from Muslim countries to Europe amounts to the same thing—invasion—only this time with “children and boats” instead of “troops and cannons.” And, as Fallaci sees it, the “art of invading and conquering and subjugating” is “the only art at which the sons of Allah have always excelled.” Italy, unlike America, has never been a melting pot, or a “mosaic of diversities glued together by a citizenship. Because our cultural identity has been well defined for thousands of years we cannot bear a migratory wave of people who have nothing to do with us . . . who, on the contrary, aim to absorb us.” Muslim immigrants—with their burkas, their chadors, their separate schools—have no desire to assimilate, she believes. And European leaders, in their muddleheaded multiculturalism, have made absurd accommodations to them: allowing Muslim women to be photographed for identity documents with their heads covered; looking the other way when Muslim men violate the law by taking multiple wives or defend the abuse of women on supposedly Islamic grounds. (European governments are, in fact, hardening on these matters: France recently deported a Muslim cleric in Lyons who advocated wife-beating and the stoning of adulterous women.)

According to Fallaci, Europeans, particularly those on the political left, subject people who criticize Muslim customs to a double standard. “If you speak your mind on the Vatican, on the Catholic Church, on the Pope, on the Virgin Mary or Jesus or the saints, nobody touches your ‘right of thought and expression.’ But if you do the same with Islam, the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad, some son of Allah, you are called a xenophobic blasphemer who has committed an act of racial discrimination. If you kick the ass of a Chinese or an Eskimo or a Norwegian who has hissed at you an obscenity, nothing happens. On the contrary, you get a ‘Well done, good for you.’ But if under the same circumstances you kick the ass of an Algerian or a Moroccan or a Nigerian or a Sudanese, you get lynched.” The rhetoric of Fallaci’s trilogy is intentionally intemperate and frequently offensive: in the first volume, she writes that Muslims “breed like rats”; in the second, she writes that this statement was “a little brutal” but “indisputably accurate.” She ascribes behavior to bloodlines—Spain, she writes, has been overly acquiescent to Muslim immigrants because “too many Spaniards still have the Koran in the blood”—and her political views are often expressed in the language of disgust. Images of soiling recur in the books: at one point in “The Rage and the Pride” she complains about Somali Muslims leaving “yellow streaks of urine that profaned the millenary marbles of the Baptistery” in Florence. “Good Heavens!” she writes. “They really take long shots, these sons of Allah! How could they succeed in hitting so well that target protected by a balcony and more than two yards distant from their urinary apparatus?” Six pages later, she describes urine streaks in the Piazza San Marco, in Venice, and wonders if Muslim men will one day “shit in the Sistine Chapel.”

These books have brought Fallaci, who will turn seventy-seven later this month, and who has had cancer for more than a decade, to a strange place in her life. Much of the Italian intelligentsia now shuns her. (The German press has been highly critical, too.) A 2003 article in the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica called her “ignorantissima,” an “exhibitionist posing as the Joan of Arc of the West.” A fashionable gallery in Milan recently showed a large portrait of her—beheaded. After the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published the long article that became “The Rage and the Pride,” La Repubblica ran a reply from Umberto Eco, which did not mention Fallaci by name but denounced cultural chauvinism and called for tolerance. “We are a pluralistic society because we permit mosques to be built in our own home, and we cannot give this up just because in Kabul they put evangelical Christians in jail,” he wrote. “If we did, we would become Taliban ourselves.”...

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

 

The NYT shills for Moo: Sure, he’s a Mahdi-crazed, nuke-seeking, Jew-hating, full throttle Jihadist, but once you get past all that, he’s not such a bad guy. From The American Thinker:

…While the New York Times cannot quite bring itself to call Ahmadinejad a “reformer,” that is clearly the thrust of the article [that appeared in the Sunday paper].  For example, the article repeatedly trumpets that Ahmadinejad is “a proponent of women’s rights,” has “challenged high-ranking clerics on the treatment of women,” and has “defended women in a way that put him outside the mainstream of conservative Islamic discourse.”  Of course, the “mainstream of conservative Islamic discourse” takes a rather dim view of “women’s rights”—certainly as westerners have understood that term for the past several hundred years.  Moreover, the only specific example of Ahmadinejad’s alleged support for women was his proposal to allow women into sports stadiums—which was promptly rejected by the Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei.  So much for Ahmadinejad as Iran’s Susan B. Anthony.

Another aspect of Ahmadinejad’s leadership style that appeals to the New York Times is his economic populism.  The article quotes Ahmadinejad as saying that “parliament and government should fight against wealthy officials,” who “should not have influence over senior officials” and who “should not impose their demands on the needs of the poor people.”  As for the poor people, Ahmadinejad “promises to improve the lives of the poor” by forcing banks to lower interest rates, offering inexpensive housing loans, promoting “development projects” throughout the country, and trying to inject oil revenue into the economy.

Although the Times acknowledges that the Iranian economy is “almost entirely in the hands of the government” and that Ahmadinejad lacks “a strong grasp of economics,” nowhere does it suggest that greater freedom and deregulation might be the keys to a stronger economy.

Ah, freedom.  Something the New York Times interprets most expansively at home (e.g., the alleged First Amendment right to expose national security secrets), but cares rather little about abroad, at least in countries not allied with the United States.  Hence, the article on Ahmadinejad offers little disapprobation for his “political arrests,” which the Times brightly reports “are down”; or for his “pressure” on newspapers “to be silent on certain topics, like opposition to the nuclear program”; or for his “punishment” of officials running the nation’s cell phone system, which people were using to circulate jokes about Ahmadinejad’s poor personal hygiene.

This sounds like a joke itself, but totalitarianism is no laughing matter.  Plainly, the Times downplays the tyranny and brutality of Ahmadinejad’s regime because it does not fit into the “reformer” mold into which the article tries to squeeze him.  Apparently, Islamic tyrants are now going to be accorded the same white glove treatment that the Left has always shown Communist tyrants.

Lastly, the Times article paints Ahmadinejad as an “ideologically flexible” leader who seeks a “dialogue” with the United States.  Indeed, Ahmadinejad’s ridiculous, and chilling, letter to President Bush is presented as a “significant” act of “reaching out.”  The Times also describes Ahmadinejad’s “consistent theme” as “the concept of seeking justice.”  Again, a term that has very different meaning to westerners than to Ahmadinejad and his supporters.  The point of these word games, and blatant misrepresentations, is to suggest that Ahmadinejad is not the warmongering Islamic fanatic that he, in fact, has shown himself to be time and time again.  Quite obviously, this is part of the Times broader strategy of opposing U.S. military intervention in Iran.  The Times once again takes the side of America’s enemies…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:50 | link | comments (2)

 

How to grow a  jihadi: All this week, CBC radio has been featuring stories about Islamic extremists and how there seem to be so many more of them around these days.. The Ceeb’s trenchant conclusion: the jihadis are being incited not so much by their own radical and incendiary ideology as by the measures we in the West have been taking to protect ourselves from the jihadis. It seems lots and lots of moderate Muslims, who would never dream of training with the mujahedeen or strapping on Semtex have found themselves at the receiving end of “racism”, “Islamphobia” and “profiling”—you know, because the Powers That Be in Western nations are apt to be more vigilant that they used to be about checking into the background and extra-curricular activities of Muslims. That vigilance—and yes, on occasion, hyper-vigilance—is pushing otherwise mild-mannered, contented young Muslims into the arms of the radical fringe.

 

At least, that’s the word according to the Ceeb.

 

But then, the Ceeb is a paid-up member of the self-loathing class. As such, it feels compelled to assume the mantle of blame for its “sinful” culture and proclaim the virtue and innocence of the “other”—that is, anyone “other” than us rich, decadent First Worlders (or that other “other”, the Jews). I, however, let my membership lapse some time ago, and am quite content to assign blame where it’s really due.

 

And so, it seems, is CSIS, Canada's security agency (although the Ceeb report prefers the cloak-and-daggerish locution "spy service") which warns that homegrown jihadis are among us, and there’s no doubt that at some point, probably sooner rather that later, Canadians will face an attack:

 

Canada's spy service is warning of an increasing threat from "home-grown terrorists" already living in communities across the country.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) deputy director of operations Jack Hooper made the comments Monday before a Senate defence committee.

He says young Canadians from immigrant backgrounds are becoming radicalized through the internet and are looking for targets at home, not abroad.

"They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth. They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be — to all intents and purposes — well-assimilated," he said.

"[They] look to Canada to execute their targeting."

The men responsible for the 2005 transit bombings in London were from immigrant families, said Hooper.

"I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here now in Canada," he said.

Training camps in Afghanistan produce terrorists, said Hooper, including a Canadian resident who played a key role in an earlier attack.

"The individual who trained the bombers in the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was a former resident of Vancouver who fought in Afghanistan," he said.

That is a good reason for Canadian troops to remain in Afghanistan, he said.

Hooper, who complained about cuts in funding, says it is difficult to properly screen immigrant applicants.

Of the roughly 20,000 from the Pakistani-Afghanistan region, Hooper said CSIS could only vet about "one-tenth."... 

One tenth of 20,000. Let’s see—that’s only around…yikes!

 

Looks like they're going to have to do a whole lot more "profiling" if they want to keep anyone safe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments

 

EU prognosis—poor to grim: In an earlier era, Turkey was described as “the sick man of Europe.” Today, of course, things are much different. Turkey, a secular Muslim nation (for now, at least), is still knock, knock, knockin’ on Europe’s door, but the sick man of Europe is…Europe. From the L.A. Times (link via RealClear Politics):

 

…Four main forces are undermining the EU's foundations.

First, Europe's paternalistic welfare states are struggling to survive the dual forces of European integration and globalization. Citizens are fighting back, insisting that the state reassert its sovereignty to block unwelcome change. When they voted down the EU constitution last May, many French citizens blamed the "ultra-liberal" EU for their economic woes. This spring, rioters took to France's streets to block labor reforms. Italians grumble that adopting the euro has depressed their economy.

Especially in France, Germany and Italy, governments are caught in the middle, squeezed from above by the pressures of competitive markets and from below by an electorate clinging to the comforts of the past and fearful of the future. The result is political stalemate and economic stagnation, which only intensify the public's discontent and its skepticism of the benefits of European integration.

Second, a combination of the EU's enlargement and the influx of Muslim immigrants has diluted traditional European identities and created new social cleavages. The EU now has 25 member-states at very different levels of development. Fifteen million Muslims reside within the EU, and Turkey, with 70 million Muslims, is knocking on the door. Too many of Europe's Muslims are achingly alienated, inviting radicalism. Unaccustomed to a multiethnic society and fearful of an Islamist threat from within, the EU's majority populations are retreating behind the illusory comfort of national boundaries and ethnic concepts of nationhood.

Third, European politics is growing increasingly populist. Voters see both European and national institutions as elitist and detached. In France, the far-right National Front is enjoying unprecedented popularity; in a recent survey, one-third called the anti-immigrant party in tune with "the concerns of the French people." Polish voters recently elected a president, Lech Kaczynski, who insists that "what interests the Poles is the future of Poland and not that of the EU."

Finally, Europe is lacking the strong leadership needed to breathe new life into the union. Governments in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome are fragile and preoccupied by their divided and angry electorates. Generational change is exacerbating matters. For Europeans who lived through World War II and its bitter aftermath, the EU is a sacred antidote to Europe's bloody past. But this generation is passing, and younger Europeans have no past from which they seek escape — and no passion for political union…

 

Oh, no. You mean we could see the return of that “ethno-nationalism” that Europes’ elites and the Leftist intelligentsia have been warning us about?

 

It Europeans are hoping to stem the tide of Islam, it can’t happen soon enough.

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

"Hoser" Chavez: Betcha didn't know the Venezuelan dictator favoured the same kind of headgear as Bob and Doug Mackenzie. From the Jerusalem Post:

Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez (right) wears a Bolivian poncho as he speaks to a crowd while Bolivian president Evo Morales looks on.
Photo: AP

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

 

An open letter to Sid Ryan, President, CUPE Ontario:

 

Dear Sid,

 

First off, I want to commend you and your union for taking active steps to dismantle that pesky State of Israel. Way to go! As every fair-minded, human rights-oriented multicultist knows, Israel is the alpha and the omega of the world’s problems. In fact, were the Jewish state to be eliminated once and for all tomorrow, the Palestinians could look forward to living in peace and freedom for the rest of recorded history, or until Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blows us all to Kingdom Come, whichever comes first. Best of all, the Arabs would finally have a chance to use all those keys they’ve been holding onto for lo these many years.

 

Just pulling your leg there, Sid. Actually, I think your call for a boycott demonstrates a woeful and alarming inability to properly analyze current events, and to situate them within an historical context. It seems to me that once again, forces on the left have hitched their wagon to the totalitarians. A bit of a history lesson may be in order here. I’m sure the name V.I. Lenin must ring a bell. He’s the Soviet tyrant who was perhaps the first to figure out that people like you and your membership could be harnessed in the struggle. He even coined a term to describe you: useful idiots. And how useful these idiots proved to be, doing their utmost to propagandize in the West on behalf of the noble Soviet experiment. Today, of course, the experiment has long since failed, and the Soviet Union is no more. So what’s a useful idiot to do? Why, move on to support the next world-wide totalitarian effort, the one where the forces of darkness—call them Islamists or jihadists or just plain old jihadis—are doing their darndest to overwhelm Western civilization. And the presence of the Jewish state in the midst of a sea of Muslims being an impediment to their plans, they’re doing whatever it takes to enlist useful idiots like you to do their dirty work. And the utter brilliance of the thing is that they’ve managed to convince you all that you’re doing it in the name of “human rights.”

 

Genius. Sheer evil, lamentable genius.

 

Thus, it’s not unfair to say there’s not a whole lot of difference between CUPE’s useful idiots and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Truthfully, the difference is more one of style than of substance. You both aim to expunge the Jewish state, only Moo would do it in one feel swoop, with a judiciously aimed nuke. CUPE, on the other hand, would take a slower approach, by insisting that millions of Arabs, most of whom were not born in Israel, have a right—a right!—to enter the Jewish state and smother it to death through their sheer numbers.

                           

Ah, but as you’ve assured us, Sid, this has nothing whatsoever to do with any particular animus towards the Jewish people. Perish the thought. It’s all about how Israel—an “apartheid” state—has been trampling on the Palestinians' “human rights.” As such, Israel and Israel alone, of all other nations in the world—not Sudan, not Darfur, not China, not dozens of others—must be singled out for your opprobrium

 

Forgive me for pointing this out, Sid, but an undue and obsessive emphasis on Israel on the part of Canadian union members who should really be paying attention to what’s happening in their own back yard, IS anti-Semitic; and anti-Zionism, which singles out the Jewish state for demonization and calls for measures that would inevitably lead to its destruction IS the new Judenhass—and poses no less a threat to the long term survival of the Jewish people than did the Shoah.

 

Finally, Sid—and I hope you won’t take this personally—I’d like to take the opportunity to say this: shame on you. Shame on you for being a useful idiot. Shame on you for wrapping Jew-hatred in the cloak of self-righteousness. But most of all, shame on you for being so blind.

 

Yours,

 

scaramouche

 

Update: Here's one Sid and the gang might want to sing at the next CUPE convention. (To the tune of “Look for the Union Label,” the old ILGW song set to the tune of “Look for the Silver Lining”):

 

Look for the CUPE label

When you are aiming to punish the Jews.

You know that somewhere

The Jews are thriving,

So we’re conniving

To make them lose.

You know the Arabs

Have lost some rights now

Because the Jews are still sov’reign and free.

So always look for the CUPE label

And help jihadis push them into the sea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:18 | link | comments (1)

 

Union blues: I’m feeling rather anti-union today. First, because the transit union of Canada’s largest city has decided to call a wildcat strike. That means in a city already whose roadways are already overburdened with traffic and whose air is currently replete with exhaust fumes and smog, people will have to find their way to work with no public transit. Swell. According to the Ceeb radio report at the top of the hour, the strike was called when about 50 maintenance workers were transferred from a day shift to a night shift. Yes, that’s right. We’re being held hostage by a few disgruntled workers and their power-crazed union leaders.

 

As if that weren’t bad enough, there's a report on the Ceeb website this morning that the Ontario wing of CUPE, Canada’s largest union, has decided TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL! It’s because Israel is so mean to those Palestinians and won’t let them come flooding back into Israel to reclaim their “ancestral” lands, stolen by those wicked Jews. Israel also constructed what those seeking to de-legitimize and dismantle it like to call like to call “an apartheid wall.” Welcome to 1938, folks, where Judenhass is alive and well in Ontario. It masquerades as concern for the “underdog” as is perpetrated by the jihad’s useful, hateful, clueless tools:

The Ontario division of Canada's largest union has voted to support an international campaign that is boycotting Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

Delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario convention in Ottawa voted overwhelmingly Saturday to support the campaign until it sees Israel recognizing the Palestinians' right to self-determination. The Ontario group represents more than 200,000 workers.

The global campaign started last July and has been supported by many North American churches, 20 Quebec organizations, and others, Canadian Press said.

CUPE also condemned what they called Israel's "apartheid wall," saying it is illegal under international law.

"Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa," said Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee.

"We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties."

Shame on CUPE.

It bears repeating: Shame on CUPE.

Memo to the Jews of Israel: If you want to placate the union tools and get with their eliminationist program, you know what to do. Tear down that "illegal" wall! Let the terrorists kill you! Allow the poor dears to use their beloved keys!  Embrace your Muslim future! Cease and desist to exist!

Now, is that so much to ask?

Update: It gets worse. The vote to boycott was held on Saturday, which meant there was no organized Jewish presence to oppose it. From the National Post:

The Ontario wing of Canada's largest union has voted to join an international boycott campaign against Israel "until that state recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination."

 

Sid Ryan, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario president, said 896 members voted unanimously at its convention in Ottawa on Saturday to support the campaign.

"This is not an attack on Jewish people. It's [an objection to] the state of Israel's policies on Palestinians," Mr. Ryan said yesterday. "They say they are creating an independent state but they're not giving them the tools to do that."

 

Steven Schulman, Ontario regional director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called the vote "outrageous."

 

"For a respected labour union to engage in such a vote, which is completely one-sided and based on mistruths, is shocking," he said.

 

He charged that CUPE Ontario's press release about the vote "reads like a piece of propaganda." He said Israel has recognized the Palestinian right to self-govern and has been engaged in a peace process.

 

Under the resolution approved by delegates, the union -- which represents more than 200,000 workers -- will also develop an education campaign about the issue, according to a press release. The statement condemned the West Bank barrier erected by Israel.

"The Israeli 'apartheid wall' has been condemned and determined illegal under international law," the release reads.

 

In a reference to boycotts, it also notes, "Canada has a free trade agreement with Israel, the only such agreement this country has outside of the Western hemisphere."

"In Ontario, the Liquor Control Board carried more than 30 Israeli wines, many produced in the occupied Golan Heights."...

 

Mr. Ryan said the global campaign started last July and has been supported by 170 organizations around the world. "It's a human rights issue," he said.

 

He said the union has also come out in the past against attacks by Palestinian extremists and suicide bombers.

 

CUPE Ontario's next step, he said, is to try to get other unions such as the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress to join the campaign of "boycott, divestment and sanctions."

 

In recent years, CUPE Ontario has called for the end of Israeli military action and a withdrawal from the occupied territories. The executive of the Canadian Labour Congress crafted a resolution in 2002 comparing Palestinians in the occupied territories to blacks living under apartheid in South Africa.

 

Ed Morgan, national president of the CJC, said the organization will continue to engage in discussions with unions and added he does not think the vote was representative of CUPE and CUPE Ontario. The vote occurred on the Jewish Sabbath and there was no organized Jewish presence at the convention, he said.

 

"Boycotts are not the answer to political disputes. Dialogue is the answer to political disputes," Mr. Morgan said.

 

Update: And here are some more eliminationist tools: the British teacher’s union. From YNet News:

 

LONDON - Britain's National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) Monday approved an academic boycott on Israeli higher education institutions that do not condemn Israel’s “apartheid policy.” NAFTHE, which with a membership of 67,000 educators

 

is one of the UK’s largest teachers' unions, voted 106 to 71, with 21 abstentions, in favor of the boycott during a Blackpool convention.

 

The move to boycott Israeli academics reopened a front which formerly involved a different British teachers’ association, the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which advanced a motion in April of last year to shun Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities. Responding to the urgings of Palestinian organizations, AUT declared the boycott and decided to exclude the two institutions from conventions and research projects.

 

A month later following a wide Israeli lobbyist campaign, the union voted to cancel the boycott. Soon after Monday’s Blackpool summit, the two teachers’ organizations are expected to unite into one association.

 

At the Blackpool summit, two motions were put to vote. The first called to help aid, protect and support Palestinian institutions and universities in light of the continuing attacks by the Israeli government, and to maintain ties with the Palestinian government to underscore this support. This motion also accuses Britain of scandalous incitement against Hamas.

 

The second motion called to renew last year’s boycott, and mentions “Israel’s persistent apartheid policy,” which includes the construction of the security fence and other discriminatory practices in the education system.

 

The motion invites members of the organization to consider their conduct to promise equality and non-discrimination in academic ties with Israeli academic institutions, and to way shunning those that don’t publicly distance themselves from such a country.

 

No mention, natch, of those other “discriminatory practices”—the ones calling for non-believers to be killed, “reverted” or forced to pay a dhimmi head tax. Why confuse the tools with the big picture when they’re so intent on focusing a magnifying glass on the little Jewish one?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:31 | link | comments (2)

 

It started with Rushdie: The Guardian, of all places, has an excerpt of Melanie Phillips’s book Londonistan. In this “explosive excerpt” (the paper’s phrase) she recounts how our current travails with literal Islam and its fanatical proponents started with that fatwa against Salman Rushdie:

 

In 1988, the novelist and British citizen Salman Rushdie published his novel, The Satanic Verses. A bitter satire on Islam which understandably gave serious offence, its publication provoked uproar in the Islamic world with protests in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that led to the deaths of five Muslims. Shortly afterwards, in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, sentencing Rushdie to death for writing the book, along with 'all involved in its publication who were aware of its content'. As a result, Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for many years and to live the life of a highly guarded fugitive, with a bounty on his head for anyone who succeeded in killing him.

This incitement to murder a British subject and his associates in the publishing world set the Muslim community in Britain alight. Literally so - they burned the book in the street, in scenes uncomfortably reminiscent of Nazi Germany. There was a positive feeding frenzy of incitement. Sayed Abdul Quddus, the secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques, claimed that Rushdie had 'tortured Islam' and deserved to pay the penalty by 'hanging'.

 

Speaking in Bradford, where the first demonstrations against the book took place, he said: 'Muslims here would kill him and I would willingly sacrifice my own life and that of my children to carry out the ayatollah's wishes should the opportunity arise.' Dr Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Iranian-backed Muslim Institute, shouted at a meeting: 'I would like every Muslim to raise his hand in agreement with the death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Let the world see that every Muslim agrees that this man should be put away.'

The importance of this episode and the no less significant reaction to it by the British establishment can hardly be overestimated. Such scenes were unprecedented in Britain. The home of freedom of speech was playing host to the burning of books and an openly homicidal witch-hunt. Yet not one person who called for Rushdie to be killed was prosecuted for incitement to murder. The most the government could bring itself to say was that such comments were 'totally unacceptable'.

 

On the contrary, they seemed to be not only accepted but even endorsed by certain members of the British establishment. Far from universal condemnation of this murderous expression of religious fanaticism, various people used their public position to jump prematurely upon Rushdie's grave. Eminent historian Lord Dacre said he 'would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring Mr Rushdie's manners, were to waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them'. In Leicester, Labour MP Keith Vaz led a 3,000-strong demonstration intent on burning an effigy of Rushdie and carried a banner showing Rushdie's head, complete with horns and fangs, superimposed on a dog.

Here in microcosm were the key features of what would only much later be recognised as a major and systematic threat to the state and its values. There was the murderous incitement; the flagrant defiance of both the rule of law and free speech; the religious fanaticism; the emergence of British Muslims as a distinct and hostile political entity; and the supine response by the British establishment. What was also on conspicuous display was the mind-twisting, back-to-front reasoning that is routinely used by many Muslims to turn their own violent aggression into victimhood. Muslim leaders claimed that the refusal by the British government to ban The Satanic Verses showed that Muslims in Britain were under attack, with the political and literary establishment trying to destroy their most cherished values. 'They are rapidly coming to the conclusion that they will have to fight to defend Islam in Britain,' said Dr Kalim Siddiqui of his community…

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

 

Paradise how?: The leader of Islamic Jihad and his brother were killed when their car was bombed in Gaza. The Arabs, natch, are blaming the Jews for the bombing, but Israel says it had no part in it.

 

The story put out by SANA, Syria’s news agency, announces the “martyrdom” of the two jihadis.  But I’m confused. I thought in order to be considered a martyr and ascend to Paradise to canoodle with your harem of virgins (or your harem of white raisins, depending on the translation) you had to be a bomber not a bombee.

 

Or has Syria decided to ease the rules?

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

 

The 51 per-cent solution: Mohamed Harkat is one in a long line of Mos—Mo Atta springs to mind--who seem bent on doing whatever it takes to subvert the infidel West. Mo H. is a suspected Algerian terrorist with ties to al Qaeda who’s been stuck in a Toronto jail for the past few years. Authorities want to send him back to Algeria, but he says it he goes back he’s likely to be tortured and killed. And you know what that means. Hearings, hearings and more hearings, as Mo exhausts all his refugee claim options.

 

The other day, a Judge decided he had no other recourse but to release Mo, under certain stringent conditions. The lead editorial in the Globe and Mail recounts Harkat’s adventure and the ridiculous situation Canada finds itself in vis a vis suspected terrorists:

Mohamed Harkat, suspected of being an Algerian terrorist, has been released from an Ottawa jail after a Canadian judge concluded that, with stringent conditions on his release, there is at least a 51-per-cent chance he won't blow anyone up.

Feel safe now?

Yet it must be acknowledged, with a sigh, that perhaps Madam Justice Eleanor Dawson of the Federal Court has hit on a reasonable answer in the circumstances. No perfect answers exist to the Mohamed Harkats of the world after 9/11. Canada has little choice but to lean heavily on the wisdom of its designated judges -- the members of the Federal Court who hear national-security cases.

Like all other countries, Canada reserves the right to deport non-citizens if it believes them to be criminals or terrorists. But once foreigners set foot on Canadian soil, they have constitutional rights -- essentially the right to due process before being deported. They cannot simply be put on the next flight home.

So Canada is in a box. If a suspected terrorist makes the case that he will be tortured if sent home -- Mr. Harkat's case -- it may be impossible to deport him. The claim gives rise to an exhaustive set of hearings. Mr. Harkat has been in jail since Dec. 10, 2002, without being charged criminally. There is a certain discomfort in a free society in detaining a man indefinitely -- or until his appeals are exhausted, which in Canada amounts to the same thing -- without charge. But it is neither practical nor desirable to charge Mr. Harkat as a criminal or terrorist for his affiliations in the Middle East. His case is properly an immigration matter.

That is why Judge Dawson asked herself whether there were conditions that, on a balance of probabilities (that is, at least a 51-per-cent chance), would "neutralize or contain the danger posed by his release." Her answer: "In that circumstance, his continued incarceration cannot be justified because of Canada's respect for human and civil rights, and the values protected by our Charter."

That answer demands that Canadians accept a measure of risk as the price of liberty. Canada is not the first country, Judge Dawson points out, to say that some risk is necessary. Britain has released several terror suspects on strict conditions, including the requirement to wear an electronic monitoring tag, remain at home at all times, and telephone a security company five times a day at specified times. "It is hard to see why" this would be ineffective, a British judge said.

Judge Dawson's conditions were not quite so far-reaching. For instance, Mr. Harkat will be allowed out of the house three times a week for four hours at a time, with approval from the Canadian Border Services Agency on 48 hours notice, as long as he is accompanied by certain individuals accepted by the court. He will have to wear an electronic monitoring device at all times. He is barred from using cellphones, pagers and the Internet. He must give officers of the border agency access to his home at any time.

Judge Dawson takes a hardheaded view of Mr. Harkat. "Unchecked, Mr. Harkat would be in a position to recommence contact with members of the Islamic extremist network." She points out that he lied to the court on several important points. He falsely denied knowingly assisting Islamic extremists who have come to Canada; he falsely denied having been associated with Abu Zubaida, a close associate of Osama bin Laden's.

It's a paradox, to say the least, that Mr. Harkat has been declared a danger to the security of Canada and yet safe to release into the community. It is also not clear how closely he will be monitored by the state...

Thus do the jihadis play us—like a virtuoso violinist with a Stradivarius.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments (1)

 

Too hot to handle: I haven’t read Harper’s Magazine in years, finding its political orientation, shall we say, uncongenial with my own. (I used to read it in a previous life, when I lived in a bubble and thought the CBC was remarkably perceptive. You know, before 9/11.) But I’d love to get my hands on the latest issue because it has an article by Maus cartoonist Art Spiegelman in which he analyses and rates the Danish Mo ‘toons, awarding them between one and four “fatwa bombs.” Unfortunately, I won’t be able to find it at my local Indigo book store—Canada’s largest retail chain—because once again its boss, Heather Reisman, has taken it upon herself to decide what does and does not constitute appropriate reading matter for the Canadian public, and has refused to stock the offending magazine in her 260 stores. From the Globe and Mail:

...Indigo Books and Music took the action this week when its executives noticed that the 10-page Harper's article, titled Drawing Blood, reproduced all 12 cartoons first published last September by Jyllands-Posten (The Morning Newspaper).

The article also contains five cartoons, including one by Mr. Spiegelman and two by Israelis, "inspired" by an Iranian newspaper's call in February for an international Holocaust cartoon contest "to test the limits of Western tolerance of free speech."

It's unclear what part, if any, the five cartoons played in the Indigo ban; phone calls to its Toronto headquarters were not returned yesterday. In 2001, Indigo founder and CEO Heather Reisman ordered all copies of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf pulled from stores, describing the book as "hate literature." Two years later, she helped found the powerful lobby group the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy.

In a memo obtained by The Globe and Mail that was e-mailed to Indigo managers yesterday about "what to do if customers question Indigo's censorship" of Harper's, employees are told to say that "the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world. Indigo [and its subsidiaries] Chapters and Coles will not carry this particular issue of the magazine but will continue to carry other issues of this publication in the future."

Indigo normally carries as many as 3,000 copies each month of Harper's, about 11 per cent of the New York magazine's total retail distribution in Canada, according to a Harper's circulations manager.

Harper's publisher John MacArthur said he was "genuinely shocked" by Indigo's action, in part because two large U.S. chains, Borders and Waldenbooks, are selling the issue.

(Three months ago, both chains yanked a small U.S. publication, Free Inquiry, when it reproduced four of the Danish cartoons. That Free Inquiry issue with the cartoons is currently on sale at Indigo.)

"I'd expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian," Mr. MacArthur said yesterday. "Even though you have tougher libel laws than us and your own versions of political correctness, to my mind [Canada] has always been a freer place for political discourse."…

Oh, Mr. MacArthur. How little you know of us. It’s only a freer place for political discourse if you’re prepared to trash Americans, bash their President, pat yourself vigorously on the back for having the wisdom to live in the Great White North, bow to the gods of multiculturalism and genuflect furiously to the sainted memory of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Any other kind of discourse and you’ll likely be dismissed as a right wing crank and find you have all the appeal of a red-neck Republican at a Tinsel Town fundraiser for Al Gore.

 

There is one minor consolation here.  At least we know that the timorous Ms. Reisman, who took it upon herself to remove right wing Alberta-based periodical The Western Standard when it published the ‘toons last fall, is an equal-opportunity censor.

At the same time, it's grimly ironic that a women who was instumental in setting up an advocacy group to champion Israel would cave in to precisely the same kind of primitive religious imperatives that are trying to destroy the Jewish state.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments (2)

Getting up close and personal: IranMania headline: Iran FM felicitates new Italian counterpart.

"Felicitates," huh? I didn't know they were that intimate.

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

The importance of being Ignatius: Washington Post columnist David Ignatius thinks the U.S. should take Iran up on its offer, such as it is, to engage in talks. And to butress his belief, he cites a famous quotation by British novelist E.M. Forster: "Only connect."

"Only connect"? With the mullahs? What is he, nuts?

The only way to only connect with those lunatics is to only give them and only them exactly what they want.

Oh, and if you could "revert" to Islam or agree to throw a whack of jizya their way, that would make them even happier.

Another WaPo columnist, Charles Krauthammer, begs to differ with the earnest Mr. I.

Update: It seems the mullahs aren’t looking to “only connect”—at least for now. From  IranMania:

LONDON, May 26 (IranMania) - Iran has decided not to take up an offer from Washington of direct talks over the future of Iraq for the time being, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on a visit to Baghdad on Friday, Reuters reporterd.

Iran's initial acceptance of talks had been exploited for propaganda by the United States, and Tehran had therefore decided to suspend its decision to take part, he said.

"We have decided to have direct talks on the issue of Iraq with Americans," Mottaki said at a joint news conference with his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshiyar Zebari.

"Unfortunately, the American side tried to use this decision as propaganda and they raised some other issues. They tried to create a negative atmosphere and that's why the decision which was taken for the time being is suspended," he added.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:00 | link | comments

 

Dispelling stereotypes: Saudi Arabia, the Magic Kingdom that sends its Wahabist poison out into the world and has one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, is actually a very modern, forward-looking place. And if you don’t believe me, read this piece on the Arab News site. It recounts a writer’s recent experience with a German journalist who, until he had a chance to visit, had harboured all sorts of unfair and ridiculous stereotypes--a function, writes the wise Saudi, not of Saudi repression but of its "closed society":

The past couple of weeks witnessed a flurry of activity with various delegations arriving from different parts of the world. At an official dinner, I found myself sitting next to a German journalist who showed a genuine enthusiasm in getting to know more about the Kingdom. As is always the case with first-timers, I asked him about what his initial impressions were.

“It’s surprisingly modern,” he commented.

“Why is that a surprise?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose I just didn’t expect it. It’s my first trip here and I wasn’t prepared to see a slice of America in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula,” he continued.

“It is a bit Los Angeles, I guess,” I concurred.

“Not really L.A., but something more of Texas. You know sand and skyscrapers,” he grinned.

“Yes, that’s probably more apt,” I volunteered. “But what about the Saudis themselves. What did you think of them?”

“Now that was shocking,” he confessed. “They are such nice people. Many of them are very smart and the welcome we got was exceptional.”

“So why the shock?” I probed.

“It’s just that I thought that most people in your country would be extremists. I never expected to find, what’s that word? Moderation. That was my overriding perception before I came that the majority of guys I would meet here would have fundamentalist views.”

For some reason, unbeknownst to me at the time, I felt quite humiliated by his statement and suddenly found myself becoming quite defensive.

“But I thought you said you were a journalist, right?” I questioned, building up for the attack.

“Yes, that’s right,” he confirmed.

“And you told me that you have traveled all over the Middle East, so it’s not like you are unfamiliar with the region,” I reiterated.

“Yes,” he said, slowly raising his eyebrows.

“Then how on earth can someone like you with all your education, training and experience come up with such a ridiculous stereotype! Isn’t that a tad similar to what your own countrymen faced after World War II? That all Germans were Nazis. And haven’t you spent much of recent history apologizing for the crimes of your forefathers?”

“Yes, you’re right,” he retorted. “Apologies are important especially for what was definitely the darkest episode in the last century. I think that we are now at the stage where we can move on from there. Perhaps you’re not quite there yet,” he concluded...

See? The Saudis are just like you and me. And Saudi Arabia is a kind of like, what’s that word, Los Angeles.

 

Except, of course, that the L.A. government isn’t engaged in a wide-ranging effort to spew hatred against the Jews—shades of the German regime mentioned above. Also, in L.A., women are allowed to drive and can show a bit more skin in public.  

 

Otherwise, they’re spitting images.

 

One has the sense that the German reporter was expecting a scene out of the Arabian Nights--desert vistas dotted by camels and tents.

 

Silly German. Everyone knows where to find the biggest, most impressive Saudi Arabian tent: in Londonistan.

 

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

 

A New York state of mind: The New York Times had an epiphany the other day. It looked at a map of the Middle East, apparently for the first time, and noticed--holy Bantuland, Batman!--that Gaza and the West Bank were what you might call “non-contiguous.” This shocking discovery occasioned an impassioned editorial calling for a “viable” Palestinian state—you know, one that would be able to claw back some of the Jewish part:

It's long been clear that getting a workable, feasible Palestinian state out of two geographically separate masses of land in the desert will be an uphill battle. Now, because of two culprits and one enabler — Hamas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Bush — that hill is becoming a mountain.

Mr. Bush handed Mr. Olmert the perfect welcome-to-Washington gift on Tuesday: conditional support for Israel's plans. Mr. Olmert wants to go ahead with Ariel Sharon's misbegotten plan to unilaterally redraw the borders of what could eventually be Palestine. The key word here is unilaterally, because the Israelis are prepared to do this without any input from the Palestinians. They would be left to try to cobble together a country out of whatever remained behind.

To a significant degree, the Palestinians put themselves in this spot by electing Hamas to run their government, and the Bush administration is right to refuse to legitimize a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. But Mr. Bush should not punish the Palestinian people by endorsing any unilateral proposal — doing that would punish them for exercising their democratic right to vote.

Mr. Olmert's proposal has two parts, and the first one is fine: to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from vast areas of the occupied West Bank. That's a worthy goal, and one that has been way too long in coming.

The problem is with the second part of the proposal: to retain several large settlement blocs in the Palestinian West Bank. That's a recipe for disaster.

Anyone who has ever really looked at a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza can see how hard it will be to form a Palestinian state. Even a future Palestine that includes all of the West Bank and Gaza is still going to be in two pieces with Israel in the middle, separating Gaza from the West Bank.

To get an idea of this, imagine a map of Manhattan. The West Bank would be, very roughly, East Harlem and the Upper East Side. Gaza would be Battery Park City, far to the southwest. Now imagine trying to create a fully functioning city with its own economy out of those pieces while an entirely independent, antagonistic city remained in between…

Got that? The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down—and the Jews are in between.

 

Oh, well. If the Jews of Israel were really considerate of their neighbours’ need for viability (as the NYT seems to be), they would pack up their bags and move to their real homeland--NYC.

 

(Just kidding. Everyone knows the real Jewish homeland is in Florida.)

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

 

Little old Hitlers: The Globe and Mail is positively giddy this morning about Abbas’s “ultimatum” to Hamas. “Recognize the entity, or face a referendum (or words to that effect),” said the canny, unhappy-at-being-sidelined President to his terrorist rivals.

 

While Hamas is mulling over the idea, the Globe and other mainstreamers are shifting into high gear, seeing The Silver Fox’s latest ploy as a sign that peace—or at least, peace in our time talks—could once again be looming.

 

But before everyone gets the vapours, I suggest they chill and maybe take the time to read this piece in today’s FrontPage Magazine. No, it’s not an exhaustive account of the situation as it stands, but it does provide a window into the Palestinian mindset, and its admiration of and adoration for the man who arranged for more Jews to be slaughtered that anyone else in history: Adolf Hitler. Indeed, the architect of the Holocaust is held in such high esteem that there are a whole slew of elderly Arabs who proudly bear “Hitler” as their first name:

…It may be surprising to Western observers to see Palestinians taking pride in having been praised by Hitler. But it is important to understand that the utter revulsion of Hitler expected in the West is not true in Palestinian society. Palestinians can be found who are named "Hitler" as a first name: Hitler Salah [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Sept. 28, 2005], Hitler Abu-Alrab [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Jan. 27, 2005], Hitler Mahmud Abu-Libda [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Dec.18, 2000].

This phenomenon of Palestinians being named after Hitler was explained in an article in the official PA daily praising the rewriting of history and the doing of "justice" to Hitler:

"Even Adolf Hitler, who after the fall of Nazi Germany turned into a political horror for most of the writers and artists, during the last decades has started to return himself to his part of the picture. There are some in Britain who defended Hitler and tried to do justice for him. There are elderly people, among them Arabs, who still carry the name Hitler since their fathers, who were charmed by him, linked them [their children] with his name."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2000]…

I don’t know why they like him so much. According to Hamas’s patron, Moo Jihad, Hitler’s Holocaust (the one that never happened) is what brought the remnants of Europe’s Jewry, those alien colonizers, onto Arab turf. In that sense, isn’t Hitler the man most single-handedly responsible for the naqba?

 

Update: Quel surprise! It looks like Hamas won’t take the bait. From Reuters:

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Hamas will not be "blackmailed" into accepting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's proposal for Palestinian statehood that implicitly recognises Israel, a member of the movement's exiled leadership said on Friday.

Mohammad Nazzal did not reject the proposal outright, but he criticised Abbas for threatening to put it to a referendum if it was not agreed by Palestinian factions within 10 days.

"We see this referendum as a tool of pressure on Hamas," Nazzal told Reuters, adding the proposal "cannot be used as a way to blackmail Hamas".

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

Peekaboo Moo: Here's a shot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas playing another round of that old Palestinian game "see no evil." After that, he had a go at outfoxing his Hamas rivals by calling for a referendum on negotiating a peace treaty with Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:45 | link | comments

The Chosen beer for the Chosen People: And it's brewed by Shmaltz! (link via lileks)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:02 | link | comments

 

Sounding the alarm: Boston Globe columninst Jeff Jacoby makes note of a disturbing new trend: supporters of Israel who are so exasperated and alarmed by Ehud Olmert’s disengagement scheme, seeing it as a calamitous and potentially suicidal policy, that they are speaking out in a very vocal way. From JWR:

EHUD OLMERT'S first visit to Washington as Israel's prime minister has been eventful. What with meeting President Bush at the White House, addressing a joint session of Congress, and taking part in all the other social and substantive activities that get packed into a Washington summit, Olmert probably hasn't had much time to hang out and watch TV. So he may not have seen a new television ad that takes aim directly at Israel's ongoing campaign of territorial surrender.

The ad pulls no punches. Israeli withdrawals from south Lebanon and Gaza, it says, have played into Al Qaeda's hands and increased the terror threat "for Israel and for us." Olmert's proposed "convergence" program in the West Bank — a follow-up to last year's unilateral retreat from the Gaza Strip, when 21 communities were destroyed and 9,000 Israelis were expelled — will only intensify that threat. "Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," the ad bitingly observes. "We cannot afford any more of this insanity."

Condemnation of the Jewish state by its detractors is nothing new, but this TV spot isn't the work of an Israel-basher. It is part of a campaign launched by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank committed to pursuing international peace through American strength. For years, the center has staunchly supported Israel's right to defend itself against its enemies. Why is such a longtime ally so publicly opposing the new prime minister and his signature policy?...

In a democracy, it is said, people get the leaders they deserve. Israeli voters chose Olmert in a free and fair election, knowing full well that he intended to "disengage" from the enemy by giving more land. If that enemy threatened only the people of Israel, perhaps a case could be made for letting them lie in the bed they themselves have made.

But Israel's enemy — a murderous Palestinian regime and the international terror network of which it is a part — is our enemy, too. "By Allah," proclaimed Sheik Ibrahim Mudayris in a sermon broadcast on Palestinian TV, "the day will come and we shall rule America. . . . We shall rule the entire world." When Florida teenager Daniel Wultz was horribly wounded in a recent suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, terrorist leaders rejoiced that an American was among the casualties. After Daniel died of his injuries last week, Abu Nasser of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades cheered the news as "a gift from Allah" and promised Americans "more Daniel Wultzes and more pain and sorrow."

Israel cannot afford to succumb once again to the delusion that retreating in the face of terror will bring safety and peace of mind. Wars are not won by evacuations, as Winston Churchill told his British countrymen in 1940. Israelis, weary after so many years under siege, wish to pretend otherwise? Then it is up to their friends to tell them the truth.

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

 

Not nuts: To Western ears, he may sound like an utter loon, but as this piece on The American Thinker site assures us, not only is Moo Jihad not unhinged, all his hinges are in perfect working order. They’re just in keeping with his fantatical religious beliefs, mostly involving the occluded imam.

The world is captivated by the sudden rise of a relatively unknown to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for his torrent of outrageous statements and claims. He has, thus, in a short time acquired great many appellations. He is viewed as zealot, fascist, fanatic, anti-Semitic, lunatic and more.

One prominent Western journalist called him “unhinged.” All these labels aim, in part, to dismiss the man as an aberration. As someone who is in urgent need of psychological help, a person out of touch with reality who represents nothing of substance.

Once again the West is misreading and misjudging the people and the events in the Middle East, due to the fact that it views things through its own culturally-filtered spectacles. Looking at the man through Western lenses, he indeed appears to be all of the above and more. Yet Ahmadinejad is far from unhinged.

As a matter of fact he is firmly hinged to a set of beliefs that dictate his view of the world and how he should deal with it from his position of power. An unhinged mind has the potential of being hinged. But, there is very little that can be done to a person who is irreparably hinged. A prominent feature of a mentally disturbed person is the display of contradictory thoughts and behavior. Ahmadinejad’s words, deeds and beliefs show a person fastened to a dangerously consistent and faulty hinge.

Ahmadinejad’s views are firmly rooted in the most orthodox philosophy of Shiism. To understand his mind set and behavior requires a close scrutiny of the elaborate and intricate theology of Hujetieh Shiism – perhaps the most fundamentalist of numerous Shiite sects. There is a full internal consistency in Ahmadinejad. Below are a few examples of his sayings, beliefs and actions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with them, they all fit perfectly into a consistent pattern.

* He literally believes in the imminent emergence of the Mahdi – the Shiites’ promised one who is expected to appear to set aright a decadent and wretched world.

* He views himself as the vassal of Mahdi, working for him and being accountable to him.

* His main task is to prepare the world so to hasten the Mahdi’s coming. If this preparation requires much destruction and bloodshed, so be it.

* As a former mayor of Tehran, he developed elaborate detailed plans preparing the city for the arrival of the Mahdi.

* He allocated generous sums for extensive road improvement to a mosque at Jamkaaraan near the city of Qum where it is believed the promised Mahdi is hiding in a well since the age of nine some 1100 years ago.

* He reportedly visits the well frequently and drops his written supplications into the well for the hidden Mahdi to act upon them.

* He reportedly has said in private that it was him who asked the Mahdi to inflict the massive stroke on Ariel Sharon.

* He sees the Jews as the sworn enemies of Islam. The hostility dates back to the time of Muhammad’s own treatment of the Jews in Medina. At first, expediently, Muhammad called the Jews “people of the book,” and accorded them a measure of tolerance until he gained enough power to unleash his devastating wrath on them.

* He says that the Holocaust is a myth. He is, in this respect, in good company with a number of other claimants.

* He wants Israel to be wiped out of the map or transferred to Europe.

* In his speech at the UN general assembly, he implored the Mahdi to come and save the world. He claimed that during his speech of some twenty odd minutes, a powerful light enveloped him and all participants were held transfixed unable to move their eyes.

* He believes that the earth is Allah’s and all people must either become believers of his brand of Islam or must perish as infidels who by their very own presence defile Allah’s earth.

* He believes that this earthly life is passing and worthless in comparison to the afterlife awaiting a devoted and faithful believer. Hence, he holds to the old belief that if a faithful kills and infidel, he goes to Allah’s paradise; and, if the faithful gets killed in the process of serving the faith, again he goes to Allah’s paradise. Hence, it is a win-win proposition for the faithful.

There is nothing “unhinged” about Ahamadinejad’s thinking, statements and actions within the cultural and religious framework from which he comes. They are internally consistent. He is simply a fanatic who is wedded to an extremely dangerous exclusionary system of belief.

Humanity must remember, or tragically re-learn, that dismissing a fanatic as lunatic or unhinged rather than squarely facing the likes of Ahmadinejad and Hitler will result in great suffering. But in the age of Weapons of Mass Destruction a man with huge sums of petrodollars potentially can serve as the catalyst of total annihilation...

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:57 | link | comments (2)

Jee had!: Saddle up, cowpokes. Here’s today’s RoP round-up.

From the Guardian:

SRINAGAR, India (AP) - India's prime minister was upbeat Thursday after talks in troubled Kashmir, making a rare acknowledgment of human rights violations and announcing measures aimed at ending 16 years of violence in the Himalayan region.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said his country was ``committed'' to living in harmony with neighboring rival Pakistan and to resolving the issue of Kashmir with a lasting peace treaty. He also said the number of troops in the state - estimated at more than 500,000 - could be reduced if violence abated, and promised to hold talks with rebels if they ended terror attacks.

``This conference certainly gives hope ... and confidence. I see light at the end of the tunnel, a ray of hope,'' he told a news conference after two days of discussions with pro-India groups.

But suspected militants delivered a grim reminder of his challenges barely an hour after he flew out of the region, killing four people - a man, two women and a child in an explosion that blew up a bus carrying Indian tourists. The explosive was apparently planted by militants inside the bus, said Senior Superintendent of Police Munir Khan. Six people were injured.

From News 24:

 

Khartoum - Sudan on Wednesday said it would not accept the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur as a security council deadline for a UN team to be allowed into the strife-torn region expired.

 

Presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmed said: "The government does not accept the deployment of foreign forces under UN security council chapter seven."

The declaration came after talks with UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and deputy under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations Hedi Annabi, who flew into Khartoum on Tuesday to arrange access for the team.

 

Their arrival followed a UN security council resolution passed under chapter seven on May 16 urging speedy implementation of a peace accord reached in Nigeria early this month between Khartoum and the main Darfur rebel group…

 

Ahmed suggested that the planning mission for a force of about double the current 7 000-strong AU [African Union] mission was unnecessary as an earlier AU technical mission "studied the situation in Darfur and there is sufficient information on what is now going on there"

 

UN chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday called Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to urge him to let the UN military planners in, telling him he "hoped to see the UN assessment mission dispatched as soon as possible".

 

Khartoum had blown hot and cold over whether it would accept a UN deployment in Darfur, initially flatly refusing such a move, but more recently suggesting it was willing to be flexible on the issue.

 

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who had been dispatched to several hotspots in recent years, was due to meet Beshir on Thursday to put his case for the UN technical mission to be allowed in.

 

Three years of war in Darfur between rebels and Khartoum's forces backed by proxy Arab militias had claimed at least 300 000 lives and displaced 2.4 million people.

 

From Canada.Com:

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Renewed fighting between Islamic militias and secular warlords killed at least 39 people in the Somali capital Thursday and sent thousands of frightened civilians running from their homes, medical officials and a militia commander said.

According to reports collected from the Somalian capital's main hospitals, at least 30 people were killed when Islamic militias and their secular rivals intensified fighting in Mogadishu after a day's lull.

 

Ali Mohamed Siyad, a leader of an Islamic militia said his group had lost eight combatants. In addition, Medina Hospital received 60 injured people and Keysaney Hospital 30.

 

Later Thursday, Dr. Sheikhdon Salad Elmi, director of Medina Hospital, said that a mortar landed in the hospital's first aid section, killing a patient and wounding two others.

Witnesses say the fighting has spread across Mogadishu, from its northern end, which had been the scene of fierce battles in recent weeks, to the southern and eastern parts of the capital.

 

The latest fighting comes despite a May 14 ceasefire between Islamic militias and a rival alliance of secular warlords.

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

 

Reading between the lines: I was going to write about how the Washington Post and other clueless dhimmis (like Jimminy “Cricket” Carter, who was blithering away on CNN last evening when everyone was watching American Idol) are promoting the idea that hidden within Moo’s loopy hand-penned screed to Bush was actually an invitation to hash things out at the bargaining table. Luckily, Roger L. Simon has saved me the trouble:

Mainstream media journalism is more mysterious than blogs - and consequently more opaque. And by feigning objectivity, the mainstream is often more potent at propaganda - or at least tries to be. An interesting example is Wednesday's Washington Post article Iran Requests Direct Talks on Nuclear Program. It doesn't take a great deconstructionist to understand that the authors - Karl Vick and Dafna Linzer - are writing with a specific intent: to promote US direct negotiation with Iran. Numerous quotes, anonymous (como siempre) and attributed, are sprinkled throughout the article to create that effect while delicately preserving the illusion of objectivity. Unfortunately, they give the game away by ending the article thusly: "We have not had any relations for so many years, and Iran was always accused of being unwilling to talk," Masood Mohammadi, 23, said as he left Friday prayers last week. "Now Iran has taken the first step, and I hope the U.S. president replies in kind."

Now who is Masood Mohammadi and why should he stand in for all Iranian public opinion? No reason is given other than, perhaps, the number 23 - the implication being that he is (or stands for) Iranian youth. Of course that's not possible for any single person (in a country of 70 million!). The Washington Post writers are fiddling in the nether regions of propaganda here. But no matter. It is not exceptional. This is how journalism is practiced on a daily basis and, to a great extent, taught. Most readers of this blog know to beware of it, but I will go a bit further (following my earlier reference to deconstruction).

The writers of this article, although they may think they are subtly supporting an argument, are also sabotaging those beliefs. Today's more sophisticated reader is increasingly educated in and put off by this style of writing. Using myself as an example, I do not have a fixed opinion on whether we should negotiate with Iran. I simply do not know enough. But when I read an article like this, I become immediately suspicious. Who is writing this and why, I want to know. What clandestine operative is whispering in what reporter's ear? Cui bono? My back is up... I am being manipulated. My stance toward negotiating with Iran shifts to the negative...

Maybe I’ve done a bit more reading on the topic than Roger, because I’m pretty sure that bargaining with the mullahs is the deadest of dead ends. Get rid of the mad mullahs, and maybe there’ll be a reason to talk. Of course, get rid of the mullahs and you probably obviate any need to talk.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:06 | link | comments

 

Judenhass uber alles: Sure, they’ve had their difference over the years, ones which most recently have resulted in their aiming guns and bombs at each other. But there’s so much more that unites Hamas and Fatah than divides them. For instance, there’s their Jew-hatred. And their annual commemoration of the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state as a naqba—a “catastrophe.” And their Jew-hatred. And their mutual loathing of “the occuptation.” And their Jew-hatred. And their desire to see the Jews get out of the West Bank. And their Jew-hatred. And their belief in Islamic supremacism. And their Jew-hatred.

 

With bonds like that, I’m sure they’ll be able to iron out their differences. From Reuters:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Rival Palestinian factions began a two-day 'national dialogue' on Thursday with a pledge to set aside the acute differences that have pushed the Hamas-led government and its opponents into open conflict.

Speaking via video-link from his Gaza stronghold, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of Hamas, told delegates in the West Bank city of Ramallah that he was committed to unity and determined to prevent Palestinians fighting one another.

"Our meeting today aims to cement our national unity," Haniyeh, who is prevented from going to the West Bank because of Israeli travel restrictions, told a packed audience.

"I assure our hero prisoners that we will not bring pain into your hearts by having a Palestinian-on-Palestinian struggle ... Our difference is with the Israeli occupation and not with any of our brothers," he said.

The urgent convening of the meeting follows weeks of tension between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement since Hamas, a militant Islamic group, took office in March. Before Hamas's rise, Fatah was the dominant Palestinian political force.

A power struggle between Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, has led to gunfights between their factions in the streets of Gaza in the past week.

Haniyeh tried to play down tensions between himself and Abbas, saying their differences could be bridged, even as the video link underscored the physical distance between them.

"We do not deny that there are differences but we have always stressed that these differences will only be resolved through continued dialogue and in accordance to the law."… 

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

 

Dead ringers?: I’ve heard about casting against type, but this is ridiculous. From AFP:

Australian beauty Cate Blanchett is one of six actors recruited to play Bob Dylan in a film biography of the legendary singer-songwriter.

The film, I'm Not There will cast the actors as Dylan, to show various sides of the composer of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," who celebrated his 65th birthday Wednesday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Blanchett will play a young Dylan. Another Australian, Heath Ledger - star of the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain will incarnate an older Dylan.

Ledger's girlfriend and fellow "Brokeback" star Michelle Williams has also signed up for the movie, as have Christian Bale, Julianne Moore and Richard Gere.

The movie is to be directed by Todd Haynes, who directed the 2002 movie Far from Heaven, but was criticized for taking liberties in the 1998 Velvet Goldmine - a biopic on rock star David Bowie.

Looks like he hasn’t learned from past mistakes. Bob must be pleased, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments (1)

Apt header: My favourite headline about critically-panned but packin'-em-in flick The Da Vinci Code comes from The New York Observer: Opie does Opus.

Much better than "Richie ravages Rome."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:22 | link | comments

Self-smearing mullahs: Iran was so upset about a false report in the National Post that the mullahs were getting set to compel their dhimmis to wear identifying colour-coded tags that it summoned the Canadian ambassador for a severe finger-waggling.

The Post has since apologized for the story, which raised the specter of Nazi-style yellow badges (even though the measure pertained to sharia law, not Nazi law). But some, like Tom Poteous in today’s Globe and Mail, aren’t prepared to let it rest. Porteous sees all sorts of portends in the smear, and rushes to defend the Islamist dystopia against the nefarious slanderers and war-mongers who seek to give it a black eye.

“When does misinformation work?” he thunders in a veritable hissy fit of righteous indigination. “It works when it plays to existing prejudices and assumptions and when it is broadcast loudly and widely enough. Then it will do its pernicious work however strenuously the lies and distortions are subsequently denied and exposed.” (You’ll have to pay to read the whole article but, trust me, it’s not worth the money.)

 

Riiiight. Heaven forefend we do anything to besmirch the good name of the meshuganeh mullahs and their wonderland. In fact, no need to resort to such efforts when, as this article from IranFocus demonstrates, the mullahs are perfectly capable of doing the job themselves (link via jihad watch):

 

Tehran, Iran, May 24 – Iran will launch a new suicide-bombers garrison on Thursday, according to the head of a group affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Mohammad-Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Headquarters to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a government-orchestrated campaign to recruit suicide bombers, told the state-run news agency Mehr on Tuesday that the group planned to officially announce the existence of the new garrison in a ceremony in Tehran’s largest cemetery on Thursday afternoon.

The new garrison will be named after Nader Mahdavi, an IRGC naval commander who died in a suicide attack on an American naval vessel in 1987, Samadi said.

The report said that more that 55,000 “volunteers for martyrdom-seeking operations” had been registered so far by the organisation, which also calls itself “Estesh’hadioun”, or martyrdom-seekers.

In February, the group launched a new recruitment drive for suicide bombers in Tehran to fight against “Global Blasphemy”.

The group was set up by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 2004. Those who join have three choices: To carry out suicide attacks against “the infidels occupying Iraq”, against Israel, or against Salman Rushdie.

 

Salman Rushdie? How’d he sneak in there?

 

Incidentally, Tom Porteous’s spell-check suggested name is Tom Piteous.

 

Works for me.

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

 

Optimistic Prospect: An article in British periodical Prospect paints a rosy picture of the Hamas regime and its “true” intentions. According to scribe Alastair Crooke, Hamas is devoted to good government, believes in a bottom-up instead of a top-down adherence to rigid sharia law (whatever that means), and has no intention of carrying out its Charter goals of eliminating the Jews.

 

Phew. What a relief:

 

…According to Hamdan, Hamas’s other priorities are to reform the security services, to create effective judicial oversight over the security agencies and, above all, to make parliament accountable for and the instrument of control of all Palestinian institutions and ministries. Hamas has not perpetrated any direct attack in Israel since late 2003; its military wing has focused instead on targets within the occupied territories. For over a year, Hamas has observed a unilateral de-escalation, or tadiya. The suicide attack in Tel Aviv in April that led to the death of 11 Israelis was mounted by Islamic Jihad in response to an earlier killing of several of its leaders. In a response that was widely criticised, Hamas spokesmen refused to condemn Islamic Jihad, repelling any tentative European feelers towards engagement. But Hamas wanted to signal clearly that it would not be Israel’s policeman in the territories. It had learned from Fatah’s experience that to publicly condemn such attacks was to invite US and Israeli pressure to arrest members of Islamic Jihad, something it was not ready to do given the risk of being outflanked by more militant groups. Hamas also knows that if it begins to arrest Palestinians, Israel will send lists of further Palestinians to be arrested. These lists, which were sent to Arafat as soon as he took office in 1993, proved deeply corrosive to Fatah’s credibility and legitimacy. The language used by Hamas, however, was not well chosen. Israel may have understood the signal, but externally it was damaging.

Hamas and Fatah represent two very different traditions of Muslim thinking. Fatah has looked to the international community to help balance the asymmetrical relationship with Israel, whereas Hamas’s Islamist approach relies on the inner resources of its constituency for the fortitude to persevere. But contrary to the popular view, Hamas does not believe in imposing Sharia law on Palestinians, or anyone else. This has been said publicly. It does not seek a “top-down” Islamic state that imposes norms of Islamic behaviour but has no real Muslims living in it. It prefers the goal of a state peopled by believing Muslims whose freely chosen priorities colour society from below.

If Muslims judge Hamas to have been successful, this approach will change the face of Islamism. It will do more than any other initiative to swing the pendulum away from the revolutionary groups that aim to radicalise and to impose strict Islamic structures. And the commitment to reform will appeal to public opinion throughout the region. It is this that represents the revolutionary nature of the Hamas electoral victory and explains the antagonism of leaders like Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, who can see the implications only too clearly.

It seems likely that Hamas will continue to refuse to recognise Israel, at least until the final shape of an agreement is clear, but it will be pragmatic in signalling that it seeks a state on land occupied in 1967 and is not pursuing any destruction of Israel. Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader, and Sheik Natche of Hamas, both in jail in Israel, have signed a joint statement indicating that a future Palestinian state would be based on the lands occupied in 1967 only…

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:46 | link | comments

Moo on the Net: I'm sure you have a few choice words you'd like to share with Iran's avidly communicative President, Moo Jihad. You can reach him at: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir --and, no, I'm not making that up; apparently, it's his real email address.

There's no guarantee he'll get back to you, of course. He's very busy at the moment writing detailed invitations to join Islam to other Western leaders.

If you're so inclined, you can also peruse Moo's Website (link via discarded lies).

I especially enjoyed the speech entitled "Zionist regime, unending threat." I'm sure you will, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:59 | link | comments

Dense diplomats: At the beginning of the year, I bookmarked this article that appeared in The Guardian. It seems appropriate to bring it out again as we shake our heads in wonderment at the EU's modus operendi re Iran:

A confidential intelligence report says that Iran's government has combed Europe for parts to build both nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, a British newspaper said Wednesday.

The 55-page assessment, which draws on material from Western intelligence agencies, offers names and locations of suspected players in the global trade in components needed to build weapons of mass destruction, the Guardian newspaper said in a front-page report.

"In addition to sensitive goods, Iran continues intensively to seek the technology and know-how for military applications of all kinds," the Guardian quoted the report as saying.

The report - based on data obtained by British, French, German and Belgian agencies - also concluded that Syria and Pakistan have been scouring the marketplace for technology and chemicals needed to enrich uranium and develop rocket programs. Russia's role in the escalating arms build up in the Middle East also is outlined, as is the role of Chinese companies supplying North Korea's program.

The assessment - dated July 1, 2005 - is seen as a warning to European Union governments, which have been struggling to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons.

It also will add fuel to critics who believe Iran wants to develop a nuclear arsenal and are skeptical of Iran's claims that its nuclear programs are aimed only at power generation...

It's going on five months later and the question must still be asked: What part of "WE WANT TO NUKE THE JEWS" don't they understand?

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

It's a scared world, after all: It's remarkable how easily the EUnuchs have slipped back into their historic role of sycophantic appeasers. "Like buttah," as Mike Meyers imitating his now ex-mother-in-law used to say on Saturday Night Live.

In "honour" of the Euro-weasels, who are attempting to do with Moo what they previously attempted--and failed--to do with Hitler, I've revised that Disney theme song, "It's a Small World After All":

It's a world of 'peasers
A world of fools.
It's a world that follows
Some silly rules
As they placate jihad
It can make you so mad.
It's a scared world, after all.

It's a scared world, after all.
It's a scared world, after all.
It's a scared world , after all.
It's a scared world, after all.

It's a world of EUnuchs
And mullahs, too.
They've a common bond
That involves "the Jew."
And if Moo cleans the map
It could cause quite a flap.
It's a scared world, after all.

It's a scared world, after all.
It's a scared world, after all.
It's a scared world , after all.
It's a scared world, after all.

Kofi Annan and Mo ElBaradei--
If we heed them there will be hell to pay.
So lets all say our prayers
As the agita flares.
It's a scared world, after all…

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:48 | link | comments

 

Coming soon to a Continent near you: A recent essay on my favourite Wahabi site, Islam Online, elucidates how the West, and more specifically, Europe, has been trying to emasculate the Muslim family. It has something to do with Europe being “feminine” and Islam being “masculine” and the girly-men of Europe trying to foist their wimpish ways on their Muslim population.

 

And here the EUnuchs thought they were being all sensitive and multicultural. Just goes to show how, in the words of that old expression, no “good” deed goes unpunished:

 

From the beginning of time, the family has served as the fundamental unit around which life evolved. The family was universal, receiving support from the extended family, which consisted of blood relations of one sort or another and was called a tribe. The patriarchal polygamous societal structure existed for millennia among humans.

As humankind began to evolve, spiritually enlightened men known as prophets gave oral direction to the people, which always included the proper relationship between men and women so as to enable them to propagate and perpetuate the species — a function so important that the instructions were written down and recorded in many books. In the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic religions, all their texts clearly show the relationship of men to women and the importance of the patriarchal-polygamous structure. These texts also abound in stories of how society crumbled when the patriarchal- polygamous structure was abandoned. It was not until the advent of European society that a different form of societal structure would take root.

European society represents the feminine principle without the balance of the masculine principle. It espouses gross materialism and is opposite in all respects to the universal patriarchal structure. Not having a patriarchal structure, the Europeans soon learned that the nuclear family could not sustain itself and that it required external support. A government would have to be created to supply this external support and to become the motivating force for the development of the Greek city-states. The Europeans came up with different forms of government because none of them properly provided for the well-being of the people. Each form of government expanded its influence into the activities of what the patriarchal system normally and naturally provided. The final form of government would be democratic socialism. The democracy part is fading rapidly and an all-encompassing tyranny will soon prevail…

 

No need to fret. Soon enough it’ll all be superceded by that “universal patriarchal structure.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:35 | link | comments

 

Wake up and smell the jihad, Ehud: This is the definition of jihad that appears on Robert Spencer’s website, Jihad Watch:

 

Jihad (in Arabic, "struggle") is a central duty of every Muslim. Modern Muslim theologians have spoken of many things as jihads: the struggle within the soul, defending the faith from critics, supporting its growth and defense financially, even migrating to non-Muslim lands for the purpose of spreading Islam. But violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Many passages of the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad are used by jihad warriors today to justify their actions and gain new recruits. No major Muslim group has ever repudiated the doctrines of armed jihad. The theology of jihad, which denies unbelievers equality of human rights and dignity, is available today for anyone with the will and means to bring it to life.

Would someone do me a favour and send it to Ehud Olmert?  He seems to think Hamas, the genocidal jihadis now in charge of the P.A., can somehow be prevailed upon to not, as he puts in, “veto peace.”

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

 

Sing a song of genocide: The mully-bullies’ front man, Moo Jihad, has dusted off one of my favourite mouldy oldies—“Sixteen Tons” (‘cause he owes his soul to the Messanger Mo):

 

Some people say Jews have stolen our land.

“Ship ‘em back to Europe,” is what I command.

And if they won’t vamoose, we’ll do as we please.

So all those sad folks can use their old keys.

 

You load sixteen nukes and what have you done?

Another day closer to Armageddon.

The Mahdi is returning if we’re on the right track.

Gotta kill the Jews off before he gets back.

 

Well, some people say Mo made ‘em all pigs and apes,

And if we wanna kill ‘em off it ain’t sour grapes.

Their entity’s unsightly, a blot on our map.

Don’t have to put up with their Zionist crap.

 

You load sixteen nukes and what have you done?

Another day closer to Armageddon.

The Mahdi is returning if we’re on the right track.

Gotta kill the Jews off before he gets back.

 

Well, I’ve taken some blows and I’ve taken some knocks.

And though I seem loopy I’m crazy like a fox.

Invited George Bush to join Islam.

It ain’t no ploy and it ain’t no scam.

 

You load sixteen nukes and what have you done?

Another day closer to Armageddon.

The Mahdi is returning, he’ll be here in a mo.

Gotta get ready for the really big show…

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

 

The enemy within: Melanie Phillips links to this New York Sun editorial about the new “Battle of Britain”—and this time, a stiff upper lip and the RAF won’t be enough to defeat the totalitarians who seek to destroy them:

…The thing to keep in mind this week is that Britain is under attack not only from without but from within. The British author and journalist Melanie Phillips, in a new book, offers a startling account of the transformation of London into "Londonistan," the hub of the global Islamist terror network, notorious among intelligence agencies as a place where terrorists and those who inspire them could find refuge and disappear. According to Ms. Phillips, the London bombings in July disclosed the extent of Islamist penetration of British society, with extremist preachers in British mosques indoctrinating young Muslims, training them for jihad, and despatching them to attacks America, Israel and other targets. Several of the most infamous terrorists, including Zacarias Moussaoui, were recruited in London by such figures as Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Mohammad.

What has made the unthinkable possible is the radicalization of Britain's Muslim minority since the Rushdie affair in the late 1980s. Their increasingly aggressive demands have been accompanied by the emergence of multiculturalism, which leads to official appeasement of fundamentalism, an interpretation of human rights doctrine that can be exploited by the Islamists to undermine Western values, and a rise of anti-Semitism, which has regained respectability even within such institutions as the Church of England under the guise of "replacement theology." As a result of this hollowing out of British identity, as it has been called, the victims rather than the perpetrators of Islamist terrorism are made into scapegoats: Israel and the U.S.

Why should this new battle of Britain matter to Americans? Partly because Britain is a land that nurtured many of the basic ideas that have made Western civilization possible: the rule of law, constitutional government, parliamentary democracy, religious toleration, freedom of speech and the press. Partly because moral and cultural relativism and victim culture are eating away at American society, too, and there are lessons to be learned from Londonistan. But most of all because the loss of America's closest and most important ally would be a serious setback for the war on terror... 

To update Churchill: We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender—until, of course, our brains have become so befogged by multiculturalism, Jew-hatred and political correctness that we can't see our way clear to do anything else.

Or, as Noel Coward put it during Britain’s last go-round with fascism:

There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by,
With a scowl and a frown
We'll keep our peckers down
And prepare for depression and doom and dread,
We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead.

Such a card, was that Sir Noel.

Update: There’s a large operation now underway which aims to scoop up some of Britain’s more aggrieved and volatile seethers. From the CBC:

Nine people were arrested Wednesday in a series of anti-terrorism raids by 500 police in several parts of England.

The raids involved five police forces and were aimed at people suspected of being involved in planning attacks outside of the United Kingdom, police said.

They have so far not given any further details except to say that the raids are expected to continue for most of the day.

Properties were searched with warrants that had been issued under U.K.'s terrorism act.

Eight people were arrested in Manchester and one in Merseyside, police said. There were also raids in Birmingham and Middlesbrough.

The police forces involved included  London's Metropolitan Police, Birmingham's West Midlands Police and Cleveland Police in northeast England.

The raids were jointly organized with tMI5, he British security service, and were the result of an investigation that has been going on for months, the BBC reported.

500 infidels to arrest 9 jihadis? I think the jihadis should be pretty proud about those numbers, realizing at the same time that it's a mere drop in the ocean. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:54 | link | comments

 

Anti-dhimmitude in da House: The House “gets it," even if the President doesn’t always. From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly backed legislation on Tuesday to impose broad restrictions on U.S. aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, defying President George W. Bush in the midst of high-profile Mideast talks.

The House voted 361-37 for the bill that backers said was needed to keep any U.S. funds from supporting Hamas, a militant group pledged to the destruction of Israel and deemed a terrorist organization by Washington.

The vote came during Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's first trip to Washington, where a topic was expected to be how to ease the Palestinians' humanitarian crisis while isolating the Hamas Islamists controlling the Palestinian government.

The Bush administration contends this bill would tie its hands in that effort. The administration has cut off direct aid to the Hamas-led government, but the bill would put into law more sweeping bans.

The House bill would cut off direct and indirect U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority, other than aid to meet "the basic human health needs" of the Palestinian people and for measures Congress approves on a case by case basis. It would limit aid through nongovernmental organizations and restrict diplomatic contacts with representatives of Hamas.

The bill calls for the Palestinian Authority to be designated a "terrorist sanctuary," and bans visas for entry into the United States of any official or member of the PA or any component of the PA. It also recommends withholding U.S. contributions to the United Nations proportional to the amount the world body provides the PA.

Facing insurmountable bipartisan momentum in the House for the sanctions bill, congressional aides said the administration likely will try to block companion legislation in the Senate to keep the measure from going to a House-Senate conference and reaching Bush's desk.

The House bill is more restrictive than a Senate version that has not yet moved through committees. Under it, aid would be restored if Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist, renounces terrorism and disarms…

All I can say is thank heaven for America—and God bless it.

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

 

Welcome to the nightmare: FrontPage Magazine has a “don’t miss” interview with Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept. Bawer, who’s gay, left the U.S. because of fears that those scary fundamentalists—you know which ones—were taking over. He decamped to Europe, where he found a whole bunch of scarier and far more alarming fundamentalists—the Islamic ones, who were transforming the continent into Eurabia, and the not-yet-Muslim Powers That Be, the government  elites (fundamentalists of another stripe), who were endlessly helpful in effecting the transformation:

 

Bawer: In 1998 I moved from New York, where I’m from, to Amsterdam. I loved the Netherlands – its tolerance, its secularism, its heritage of freedom and learning and culture. But in early 1999, living in a largely Muslim area called the Oud West, I saw another side of the Netherlands, and of Europe, that I hadn’t seen before, or even been particularly aware of. The Oud West seemed less a neighborhood than an enclave – a piece of another society that had been dropped down into the city and that lived apart from it and its values. Just to walk from downtown Amsterdam into the Oud West was to experience a staggering contrast.

I soon came to realize that Amsterdam wasn’t unique – virtually every major city in Europe had Muslim enclaves like this one. The people outside of them were living in a democracy, but the people in them were living in a theocracy, ruled by imams and elders who preached contempt for the host society and its values. They were against secular law, against pluralism, against freedom of speech and religion, against sexual equality. Husbands believed it was their sacred right to beat and rape their wives. Parents practiced honor killings and female genital mutilation. Unemployment and crime rates were through the roof.

Most remarkable of all, nobody was saying or doing anything about any of this. European politicians took a hands-off attitude. Journalists sang the praises of multicultural society. With very few exceptions, nobody in a position of authority seemed willing to stand up for basic democratic values.

FP: You were at one time, I think it would be safe to say, a man of the Left. But you grew quite critical of leftwing European attitudes toward the US, Israel and capitalism. Could you give us an insight into your intellectual journey in this context?

Bawer: I’ve always thought of myself as a more or less classic Cold War liberal. But never New Left. The New Left always appalled me, and I’ve always been strongly anti-Communist. Yes, I’ve changed political alliances more than once over the years – not because I’ve changed positions, but because the labels started meaning different things.

This business of labels is maddening. In Stealing Jesus I criticized Christian fundamentalism and liberals loved it; in While Europe Slept, I criticize Islamic fundamentalism, which is by any measure a lot worse than Christian fundamentalism, and some of the same people who loved Stealing Jesus are appalled and think I’ve totally changed my politics, when in fact I’m being totally consistent. Anyway, as I explain in While Europe Slept, I moved to Europe in 1998, not long after Stealing Jesus came out, I looked forward to living in what I thought was a secular society. What I found, however, was a society governed according to what I gradually came to recognize as another kind of fundamentalism – namely, big-government, welfare-state social democracy.

European social democracy was rigid, doctrinaire, controlling. Social democrats ran politics, the media, and the academy, and they worked together to propagandize against their system’s #1 competition in the world – namely, American-style liberal democracy. The anti-Americanism I encountered every single day in the European media floored me. The American media had given me a very flattering picture of today’s Western Europe. But reading European papers and watching European TV news and talking to individual Europeans, I got a picture of America I hardly recognized. They depicted a capitalistic nightmare straight out of Upton Sinclair, a country where education and health care were only for the rich and where there was no such thing as unemployment insurance or retirement benefits.

The hostility to America was ubiquitous, and reflexive. Ditto the hostility to Israel, which Europeans have been taught by their elite to see almost exclusively as America’s 51st state, an oppressor of Palestinians and an illegal occupier of Arab and Muslim lands. I had been in many ways a critic of America, but in Europe I increasingly came to appreciate its virtues – and repeatedly found myself in social situations where I was obliged to defend it against people who regurgitated inane anti-American clichés that they’d been fed since infancy...

Update: At the height of the Danish cartoon controversy, the Canadian Jewish Congress issued a news release condemning the violence that had ensued, but also condemning the Danish newspaper, calling its decision to publish the cartoons "inexcusably provocative, insensitive and disrespectful of Muslim believers." In a heated email exchange with CJC’s Bernie Farber, I expressed my outrage that the CJC has taken a position so at odds not only with Jewish interests, but the interests of a free society; a position that weakened our free society by caving in to people who seek to curtail all criticism of their doctrines, and who aim to make us heed them.

Mr. Farber defended the CJC’s position by citing a “do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you”-type saying, as if the situation were a matter of being sensitive to the feelings of our “neighbours” and not about true believers wanting to dominate and shut us up.

In his interview with FrontPage, Bruce Bawer articulates why Bernie was dead wrong, and what he should have learned from the example of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister:

FP: What do you think the cartoon controversy signified? What does it portend? What does the case of Denmark teach us?

Bawer: What happened in the cartoon controversy was that Danish Muslim leaders thought they could get lots of Muslims out into the streets making noise and making threats, and thereby force the Danish government to punish Jyllands-Posten editors and cartoonists in order to quiet things down. This would have put a chill on freedom of speech and advanced Islamist goals in Europe by a giant step. What they didn’t count on was Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The case of Denmark teaches us that there are people in Europe who see what’s going on and are deeply disturbed and angry about it – who love their countries and want to preserve their democracies. The people in Denmark who feel this way are lucky because they have a leader who agrees with them and who’s not afraid to say so and to act accordingly. It was very cheering during the cartoon controversy to see in the polls that Fogh Rasmussen’s posture on all this enjoyed the support of a huge majority of the Danish people. Even in the face of a boycott of Danish companies in the Muslim world, most Danes felt: “Okay, let’s take an economic hit, it’s worth it. We’re standing up for principle.” The lesson of this is that Europe needs principled leaders who believe fiercely in secular pluralistic democracy and who aren’t afraid to offend democracy’s enemies.

What’s dismaying is that Denmark has taken a lot of heat from journalists and politicians elsewhere in Europe. Denmark stood up for democracy, and it’s being attacked for being culturally insensitive, anti-Muslim, racist. Some Danes are very upset about this. They worry that their country’s image has been tarnished. They don’t seem to grasp that the people criticizing their prime minister are dhimmis, and they’re criticizing him for not being a dhimmi.

It’s also dismaying that as time goes by, the fortitude of some Danes seems to be ebbing. Apparently, they’re increasingly willing to make compromises for “peace.” Something similar also appears to be going on in the Netherlands, where recent polls revealed a surprising hostility toward Ayaan Hirsi Ali – whose only crime has been standing up for the freedom of the people who despise her. Europe needs a few Churchills to keep the people from back down – to remind them on a regular basis how much they have to be grateful for and how much they have to lose if they don’t stand up for it.

Canada could use a few Churchills, too, but it seems we’re unlikely to find any at the CJC.

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

 

Romantic outlaws: Mitch Potter, the Toronto Star’s man on the scene in Gaza, has been having lots of Tom Cruise action flick-style adventures lately. In today’s episode, a masked Palestinian gunman, a member of an outfit called the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), takes Mitch on a thrilling ride through some Gaza back alleys. And since Potter writes for the Star, Harpoon Siddiqui’s mothership, you can be sure he’ll give it the appropriate spin. Think PRC gunmen as the canny (sort of) and romantic Arab Robin Hoods; they’re the good guys. Think Israel as the despised Sheriff of Nottingham, trying but failing to apprehend the dashing, daring outlaws. In this classic scenario, the Jews, quite clearly, are the villains:

 

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip—A Palestinian intermediary steps furtively into the car at a pre-arranged street corner, shakes our hands in silence and makes a brief cellphone call. "Yela," he tells the driver. "Let's go."

 

A few minutes later, winding through the back alleys of the southern Gaza Strip, a mosque comes into view, where our guide receives further directions in Arabic from a second intermediary waiting outside.

We pull finally to a stop in a laneway so narrow the car barely fits within its graffiti-strewn walls. A third liaison is waiting. "Come. This way."

 

A steel door opens, revealing a mixed grove of olive, orange and lemon trees. And beneath its protective canopy stands a local cell of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in full battle regalia, each hooded gunman armed to the teeth.

 

Such are the training camps of Gaza today, where a moveable feast of militants find themselves always in hiding and always on the prowl for new clandestine locations, lest they be exposed to the crosshairs of Israeli eyes in the sky.

 

This particular PRC cell hasn't been in this hideout long, and it won't be here much longer. Earlier this month, a pinpoint Israeli air strike on a similar encampment in Gaza City's Al Sabra neighbourhood killed five PRC operatives, including four family members of the group's top commander, Mumtaz Dourghmush.

And last week, a similar Israeli air force missile intercepted a carload of Islamic Jihad militants near Khan Younis, injuring four, one critically. The group was on its way to launch rocket attacks on Israel, the air force said in a statement.

 

Staying in one place for long is a deadly game of chance for Palestinian militias, whose greatest worry remains the fleet of unmanned Israeli aerial drones that buzz constantly over Gaza, retrieving high-resolution video crisp enough to identify the guns in their hands.

 

Forced into hiding by the flying cameras above, the Palestinian gunmen live a life that contradicts a rash of recent media accounts describing how the armies of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad have brazenly built training camps on the lands of former Jewish settlements that Israel evacuated last summer…

 

A similar theme is raised during our visit to the elusive Popular Resistance Committees camp, where Muhammad Abu Mujahid, spokesman of the group's militant wing, the Nasser Saladin Brigades, describes PRC attempts to play peacemaker between the warring Palestinian factions.

 

"We cry blood when we see the problems between Hamas and Fatah," says Abu Mujahid. "We have made every effort to find a solution and so far we have failed. But we must continue to work toward unity. Our enemy is Israel."

 

Founded during the most recent Palestinian intifada as a kind of unified front representing all factions, the PRC may ring few bells to occasional followers of the Middle East, fewer at least than the better-known militants of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad.

 

Yet the PRC has scored a number of direct hits against Israeli interests, including the unlikely feat three years ago of blowing up a Merkava III tank, at the time the most impregnable weapon in the Israeli arsenal. The aftermath saw the walls of Gaza illustrated with thousands of graffiti pictorials celebrating what Palestinians saw as a David-vs.-Goliath triumph…

 

On this visit, we find the Khan Younis cell of PRC gunmen kitted with immaculate materiel of war, from rocket-propelled grenades seemingly fresh out of the crate to glistening M16 rifles slung upon shoulders clad in unworn battle vests.

 

On the ground are two somewhat less impressive Nasser I rockets, nestled in tripod metal launchers. The rudimentary, metre-long missiles are made in Gaza. And like the thousands of similar Palestinian projectiles that have flown already, they will soon be lobbed into Israel, where the impact will be almost entirely psychological.

Nerve-rattling but rarely on the mark, these homemade rockets routinely land harmlessly in Israeli farm fields. Or, alternately, explode in the faces of their Palestinian launchers.

 

The PRC's Abu Mujahid is nevertheless proud that thus far in this deadly game of cat and mouse, his rockets stand intact and ready to fire. This is one cell that has yet to appear on the scanners of the Israeli drones overhead.

 

"This simple technology is not very much," he says, pointing to his rockets. "But Israel, even with the greatest technology that exists, still can't catch it."

 

 

They seek ‘em here, they seek ‘em there. Those Zionists seek ‘em everywhere. Be they enslaved or be they free. That demmed elusive PRC.

 

Update: Israel nabs an outlaw. From the CBC:

 

Israeli forces captured the head of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank during a raid in the town of Ramallah early Tuesday.

 

Ibrahim Hamed, 41, has been Israel's most wanted man in the West Bank since 1998.

 

He took over the leadership of the Izzedine al Qassam brigades in the region in 2003.

 

Israel has accused Hamed of masterminding a series of suicide bombings that killed as many as 78 people, including two bombings in one day in 2003 – the first outside an army base near Tel Aviv, the second at a popular café in one of Jerusalem's wealthiest neighborhoods.

 

Early Tuesday morning, units from the army, police and intelligence service surrounded Hamed's Ramallah home, a pair of apartments located above street-level shops.

 

He refused to come out until the Israelis opened fire and, using a loudspeaker, threatened to use a bulldozer to destroy the two-storey building.

 

Hamed obeyed orders to remove his shirt and pants and come out of the building in his underwear to prove he wasn't wearing hidden explosives.

 

Hamed was alone and armed at the time of the arrest, an Associated Press report said.

 

After the capture, an Israeli army official said that what made Hamed invaluable to Hamas was his "creativity in finding very complex ways to attack Israelis."

 

The officer suggested Hamas's militant wing will have a hard time replacing Hamed.

 

Count on Mitch Potter to romanticize the “creative" underdog in coming reports.

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

 

“I went to the animal fair/The birds and the beasts were there/The big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his auburn hair/The monkey he got drunk/And sat on the elephants trunk/The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees and that was the end of the monk…” And you thought that was only a silly kiddy song. From CNN:

 

BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) -- Monkeys and apes at the Budapest Zoo drink their way through 55 liters of red wine each year, albeit in small quantities each day, to help boost their red blood cells, the zoo said Monday.

Budapest Zoo spokesman Zoltan Hanga said it was the 11 anthropoid apes who drank most of the wine in 2005.

"Obviously, they do not have it all at once and get drunk, but they get it in small amounts mixed in their tea," Hanga said.

"And it's not Eger Bull's Blood or some expensive wine that they are getting but simple table wine, as it's mainly good for their blood cells."

Bull's Blood from the town of Eger in northeast Hungary became one of Eastern Europe's best-known wines under communism…

…but since communism fell, they’re more partial to Goats do Roam and Cats Pee on a Gooseberry Bush.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:41 | link | comments

 

An offer I can’t help but refuse: British lefty periodical The New Statesman has a “can’t miss” offer. If I sign up for a subscription, I’ll pay significantly less than the newsstand price (if the magazine happened to be available at my local newsstand, which it isn’t). Along with that, I’ll get a free copy of Noam Chomsky’s new book.

 

Thanks, but I think I’d rather have all my teeth pulled without anaesthesia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:37 | link | comments

 

“It was a dark and stormy night, and the Jews, the ones the Prophet (pbuh) had just turned into apes and pigs, were causing all sorts of problems again…”: He’s no Dan Brown, but Saddam Hussein and his novel, Get Out, Damned One (catchy, no?) are making inroads in the lucrative Asian market. From the CBC:

A novel supposedly finished by Saddam Hussein the day before the U.S. invasion of Iraq went on sale Friday in Japanese bookstores.

Devil’s Dance tells the story of a Euphrates River tribe that ousts an invading force 1,500 years ago.

Saddam's eldest daughter, Raghad, said she brought the novel out of Iraq when she fled to Jordan just before the U.S.-led invasion. She claimed her father had finished it the day before the invasion.

Tokuma Shoten says it is the first publisher in the world to put out the novel, which is Saddam's fourth.

Although versions of the book were circulating in the Middle East, Jordan banned the book on the grounds it could damage ties with Iraq.

An excerpt of the book, called Get Out, Damned One at that point, was published in several Arab newspapers. Pirated copies of the tale became a bestseller in Amman.

Japanese journalist and translator Itsuko Hirata wrote the Japanese translation. Hirata has written several books on Middle Eastern leaders…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:48 | link | comments

 

Almost nuclear: Speaking of different kind of numbers game (see post below about surging demographics), many experts have been assuring us that the countdown to an Iranian nuke is at least two, perhaps five and maybe even ten years away.

 

Israel’s Ehud Olmert thinks otherwise. From AP via israelinsider:

 

Iran is just a few months from acquiring the technological know-how that will allow it to build a nuclear bomb, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying Sunday in the transcript of an interview he gave to CNN.

Olmert was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer from CNN's Late Edition on Thursday, days before heading to Washington for his first meeting as prime minister with U.S. President George W. Bush.

In addition to discussing his plan to draw Israel's final borders by 2010, Olmert is also expected to raise the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions during his meeting Tuesday with Bush.

Olmert said the key issue regarding Iran was not when it builds a nuclear bomb, but rather when it acquires the knowledge they need to manufacture such arms.

"This technological threshold is nearer than we anticipated before. This is because they are already engaged very seriously in enrichment," Olmert said.

"The technological threshold is very close. It can be measured in months rather than years," Olmert added, repeating statements previously made by other senior Israeli officials.

Noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, Olmert said the world could not take his nuclear ambitions lightly. However, he said it was unlikely Israel would act on its own, diplomatically or militarily, to deal with the problem.

 

In that case, you may as well say your prayers now, Ehud, because it could very well be game over for the Jews. (Unless, of course, Ehud is borrowing a tactic from the Shia playbook, and spreading a little taqiyah himself about Israel’s plans.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:02 | link | comments

 

Not like a virgin: When a Danish Newspaper dared to publish some “blasphemous” ‘toons showing the Prophet, some of the faithuful went ape-shiite and burnt down a few embassies. When The Da Vinci Code, a movie based on a novel which basically disembowels Christian doctrine, premiered this past Friday, amazingly enough, the theatres remained intact.

 

That said, if the Christian faithful were inclined to respond to real or perceived slights to their religion in the same way as some of the Muslim faithful (which, obviously, they aren’t), I can think of a certain aging-but-still-hogging-the-limelight singer with a faux English accent who’d be in biiiiiig trouble. From BBC News:

 

Madonna has kicked off her Confessions world tour with a high-energy performance involving a crucifix and a giant disco ball.

Stagehands involved in an industrial dispute picketed the venue in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, but the protest failed to disrupt the concert.

Despite some of the highest ticket prices ever for a pop concert, the gig was a sell-out.

At 47, Madonna performed with the agility and vigour of someone half her age.

The singer emerged from a huge mirror ball that descended from the ceiling at the end of a catwalk section of the stage.

Disco diva

Dressed in S&M style riding gear, complete with whip, Madonna started the show with the song Future Lovers.

In the background, video footage of people falling off horses served as a self-deprecating reminder of the singer's much-publicised riding accident.

It was not long before she belted out the biggest crowd-pleaser of the night, Like a Virgin.

Madonna later suspended herself from a giant mirrored cross while performing the ballad, Live to Tell.

Wow. How edgy, in a been-there-done-that-back-in-the-80s kind of way.

 

I guess Madonna is off the Kabbalah and has returned to her Catholic roots.

 

But only for the purpose of making a buck and pretending she isn’t a has-been, of course.

 

Update: Found this photo on Drudge of Madonna posing Christ-like on her Vegas-style cross.

I'm waiting to see what she can do with a bomb and a turban.

 

Update: Madonna sings:

 

They went and published that bad ‘toon.

It was so blasphemous that soon,

Lots of angry believers

Couldn’t help but swoon.

It showed the Prophet with a hat,

And it made fun of him like that.

Left them no other recourse

But torch buildings in no time flat.

 

Like a turban,

One with a honkin’ big bomb.

Like a tur-ur-ur-ur-ban.

That believers

Think makes fun of Islam…

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:04 | link | comments

 

International justice: To protect itself against a genocidal maniac with delusions of religious grandeur, Israel is turning to the International Court of Justice in the Hague--the same one that came down with that “enlightened” ruling about Israel’s security barrier. From Ynet News:

 

A group of Israeli diplomats plans to turn to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and demand that it launch legal proceedings against Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for conspiring to commit crimes against humanity.

 

Following the scathing remarks made by Ahmadinejad in the past few months against Israel's right to exist and his Holocaust denial, while the Iranians are exerting increasing efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, Israeli diplomats decided to form a group aimed at looking into the possibility of launching a legal procedure.

 

On Sunday, the group members announced that a legal examination of the issue, in which international legal experts took part, ended with the conclusion that the Iranian president could be sued. The legal file against Ahmadinejad is almost ready for submission.

 

Among the forum members are former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and France Dr. Meir Rosen, former Foreign Ministry Director-General Eytan Bentsur, and former Minister Dan Naveh. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), headed by former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold, is providing the forum with logistic assistance in preparing the lawsuit…

 

Good luck with that one, Dore. But I have the sense that looking for justice in The Hague is a lot like looking for chastity in a whorehouse.

 

In a related Ynet story, one the Court might want to take into account in considering Israel’s case, students in Iran have set up a special “Kill the Jews” charitable fund. For the sake of their poor, oppressed--and now starving--Palestinian brothers, of course:

 

Iranian students set up fund dedicated to Israel's destruction. Encouraged by regime, students call fund 'symbolic move' in support of Palestinians
Associated Press

 

A group of Iranian students announced Sunday at an event attended by a high-ranking member of the elite Revolutionary Guard that they were setting up a fund to destroy Israel.

 

Although the initiative's name - "The Student Fund for Demolishing Israel" - brings to mind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call last year to destroy the Jewish state, an organizer said its goal was to support the cash-strapped Palestinian government.

 

Some 300 students attended the event hosted by a group calling itself the Movement of Justice-seeking Students at the University of Tehran.

 

"This is a symbolic move to attract public attention to the Palestinian cause at a time when Western countries have halted financial support to the Hamas-led government," Javad Miri, the group's spokesman, told The Associated Press.

 

Miri said the group was collecting money that it will send it to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. "When an elected government is in power in Palestine and Israel is pressuring it, everybody should help the Palestinians”

 

The United States and the European Union halted most of their aid to the Palestinian Authority following Hamas' victory in Palestinian legislative elections in January, requiring that the group renounce violence and recognize Israel.

 

Popular campaigns to collect money for the Palestinians have been launched in several Arab countries.

 

'We are ready to support Palestinians by any means'

 

A general in the elite Revolutionary Guards, Saeed Ghassemi, struck a militaristic note in his address to the crowd. "Resistance is the only solution for Palestinians," He said. "If you abandon the sword, that will be the beginning of your end," he advised Hamas.

 

But the response to the call for donations was hardly overwhelming. About 10 students dropped money into a box labeled with the fund's name. They also put stones in the box in a symbolic gesture of solidarity that alluded to the first Palestinian intefadeh, or uprising, when youths pelted Israeli soldiers with rocks.

 

"I hope it's the start of popular financial support for the Hamas government," Einollah Zarrinjoo, 21, a male student of philosophy said.

 

Mahin Rezai, 20, a female Persian literature student said, "We are ready to support Palestinians by any means. Silence could make the situation worse."...

 

Obviously, like lots of other Muslims who shed copious crocodile tears for the Palestinians, the Iranian students aren’t ready to fork over any actual moolah to save them from starvation. (Thanks for the symbolic stones, guys, but how ‘bout some real bread?) Why should they, when, as history has shown, it’s far more effective to keep the Palestinians pathetic and abject?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:59 | link | comments

 

Constitutionally undemocratic: I’m certainly no legal expert, but I’ve been trying to make sense of some constitutions, those national framing devices which set out how and under which set of laws a nation is to operate. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about constitution of Afghanistan, the one Canadian soldiers have been fighting and dying for. As mentioned in a previous post, Afghanistan defines itself as an Islamic republic, and, while it hits all the right notes about equality and human rights, the fact is that Islamic law, and not secular, democratic law, is supreme. The point being that, bottom line, Canadians and other NATO members are in Afghanistan not to set the country on the path to democracy—because that’s clearly impossible with sharia law in the driver’s seat—but to enable it to function as a “moderate” Islamic nation with some of the trappings of democracy, like democratic elections, instead of a freaky, radical, terror-fomenting Talibanized one.

 

Maybe that should be enough for us. But since, four years after being chased out, and despite our best efforts, the Islamists seem bound and determined to stick around for the long haul, I’m not so sure.

 

Then again, even if Afghanistan was democratic and secular, there’s no assurance it would stay that way. Look at what’s been happening in Turkey, which has been secular since 1922, when Attaturk chased out the last Ottoman caliph. The appeal of secularism seems to be eroding as Islamists—who don’t even enjoy the same kind of rights they do in many secular Western nations, like the right to wear a head scarf in public, and who can be thrown into jail, or worse, for such efforts—become stronger and more brazen, aligned, as they are, with a global movement to ensure Islam’s dominance.

 

Then there’s a case of Iran, which, as an essay in The Sunday Star explains, has a wonderful constitution. Problem is, when Khomeini and the mullahs took over, so did sharia, and the official document became as worthless as fish-wrap--and not nearly as useful. The essay’s writer, an Iranian, tries to shed light what he calls “Iran’s baffling, bipolar government” which he asserts is not a “theocracy” by virtue of said fish-wrap:

 

But Iran is actually not a theocracy. A theocracy suggests rule by God, and as any Iranian will tell you, God is noticeably absent in Iran.

 

In a theocracy, particularly an Islamic theocracy like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Qur'an is the only constitution. Yet the Islamic Republic is constructed upon a remarkably modern and surprisingly enlightened constitutional framework in which are enshrined fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, education, and peaceful assembly.

 

Iran's constitution calls for equality under the law with regard to race, ethnicity, language, and even gender. It provides for a comprehensive amendment process as well as the opportunity to launch national referendums to decide the course of the country.

 

Most importantly, Iran's constitution stipulates that all domestic affairs must be administered "on the basis of public opinion expressed by means of elections," thus establishing an empowered legislature and a strong, independent executive. All of this exists under the moral guidance of a single clerical authority — the faqih — who is appointed by an "assembly of experts" based in Qom, which, in turn, is directly elected by the people (if no single religious authority is qualified for the post, then the assembly chooses a "Supreme Court" of three to five clerics).

 

In theory, the faqih was intended to be a papal figure who would ensure the "Islamic character" of the state. However, in the chaotic aftermath of the revolution, the parameters of the office were dramatically altered as Iran's powerful clerical establishment — helmed by the overwhelming charisma of Iran's first faqih, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (who invented the post) — put into effect a series of constitutional amendments and judicial rulings that spectacularly extended the scope of their power.

 

They relied on their command of personal militias and extensive numbers of Orwellian subcommittees to wrest control of the provisional government from the hands of the capable, if rather dour, technocrats who had been appointed to lead Iran after the fall of the shah.

 

By the time Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980, the time for debate and dissent over the nature of the republic was over. What had begun as a vibrant experiment in Islamic democracy quickly deteriorated into an authoritarian quagmire — a state ruled by an inept clerical oligarchy with absolute religious and political power…

 

In other words, you can have the most enlightened, humanitarian, democratic constitution in the world, but if totalitarians take control, it’s not going to do the average Joe (or Reza, or Nikolai, or Juan) much good.

 

As an insightful scholar of Constitutional law might say, “Duh!” (Although another highly-regarded pundit would probably say, "Doh!")

 

It’s comforting to know, however, that if Iranians ever muster the gumption to topple the despicable mullahs, whom they profess to despise, there will at least be a constitution on which they can base their new and democratic republic. As long as they do away with that faqih guy, of course.

 

There’s probably no other place on the planet where sharia law and secular law collide with more ferocity than in Pakistan. Rather than attempting some feeble and probably unworkable  accommodation between sharia and secular law, it operates with two sets of laws on the books. That means that an individual can be acquitted in a secular court, but be tried and convicted on the basis of sharia law in a religious court.

 

That’s the sad predicament of Tahir Mizra Hussain, a British-Pakistani who is sentenced to hang for a crime that a secular court cleared him of a decade ago. During a visit to Pakistan in 1988, the then 18-year-old Hussain was riding in a taxi when the driver stopped the car, drew a gun, and physically and sexually assaulted him. During the struggle, the gun went off and the driver was killed.

 

A clear case of self-defence, right? Well, eventually, that’s how the secular court saw it. But after his acquittal—hello, double jeopardy—a sharia court tried and convicted him on different charges based on a different set of laws, and he’s been languishing in a particularly nasty jail in Rawalpindi ever since. From the Toronto Star:

 

Hussain voluntarily reported the incident to police and was arrested. In September 1989, a sessions court sentenced him to death. The high court revoked the death penalty in November 1992 due to serious discrepancies in the prosecution's case and ordered a retrial. In April 1994, his sentence was reduced to life in prison; in May 1996, the high court acquitted Hussain of all charges.

 

But a week later, while he was waiting for release, his case was referred to the Islamic or sharia court on the basis that the crime he was charged of — armed robbery — came under its jurisdiction.

In August 1998, in a split 2-1 verdict, the Islamic court's judges sentenced him to death again, although the legal provision he was tried under required a confession or witness to the crime. The prosecution had neither.

 

The dissenting judge, Abdul Waheed Siddiqui, gave a scathing assessment of the prosecution in a 59-page judgment. He described Hussain as "an innocent, raw youth not knowing the mischief and filth in which the police of this country is engrossed."

 

He said police introduced false witnesses and "fabricated evidence in a shameless manner" against Hussain, who had no criminal record.

 

Amnesty and other rights groups have condemned the trial as unfair, but Pakistan's government maintains Hussain has been treated with due process. Last year, Musharraf, an advocate of moderate Islam, rejected his mercy petition.

 

Legal experts say having both secular and sharia law at work in Pakistan only allows for abuse.

 

"It's a basic and fundamental flaw with our criminal justice system," said Hina Jilani, vice-chair of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "There should be just one set of laws."

 

Indeed. But if that one set of laws is sharia law, people like Hussain and Abdul Rahman, the Afghani convert to Christianity who had to flee the country when a court in the Islamic republic convicted him of apostasy, an offense punishable by death, aren’t going to be any better off.

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

 

Losing the numbers game: There are only around 13 million Jews in the world. There is said to be 100 times as many Muslims. But, as historian Niall Ferguson points out, Jews aren’t the only ones who should be feeling outnumbered. As the irrepressible Mark Steyn has put it, describing the birth rates in Europe and what it means for the continents’ future, “It’s the demographics, stupid.” From The Telegraph (link via Martin Kramer):

 

Nuclear power is not the only weapon Iran has at its disposal – its population is growing seven times faster than Britain’s. In this exclusive extract from his new book, Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game

 

For many people the end of the 20th Century was 'the triumph of the West'. Writing in 1989, Francis Fukuyama argued that the crumbling of Soviet Communism marked 'the end of history'. Capitalism, liberalism and democracy had emerged as the victors of the century's protracted ideological conflicts.

 

Yet the extreme violence of the 20th century had been caused by much more than clashes of ideology. Ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline: these were the factors that had generated so much conflict and cost so many millions of lives. And events dating back 10 years before the fall of Communism pointed to a recurrence of what I have called 'The War of the World'.

 

The year 1979 brought a woman to power in England, a woman wholly committed to the idea that salvation lay in the free market. (Mrs Thatcher, it might be said, was one of the root causes of the subsequent Soviet crisis.) But 1979 also brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran, a man just as committed to the idea that salvation lay in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.

 

One leader read Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, the other the Koran. One revolution pointed to a world based on free trade, the other to a world based on holy writ.

 

There were many reasons why Iranians rallied to a leader who routinely denounced the United States as 'the Great Satan'. In 1953 it had been the CIA (along with MI6) that had overthrown the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and installed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as a dictator. The Shah's regime was by no means the most vicious the United States bankrolled during the 1960s and 1970s; nevertheless, his combination of private hedonism and public repression sufficed to put a powder keg under the Peacock Throne.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 was partly a matter of settling scores against the Shah's military and secret police. But under Khomeini's leadership its main goal became to turn back the clock; to purify Iranian society of every trace of Western corruption. It also aimed to challenge American pretensions throughout the Islamic world.

 

As a religion, Islam is of course far from monolithic. There are deep divisions, not least between the Shiites who predominate in Iran (and Iraq) and the Sunnis who predominate in the Arab countries. But 'Islamism' was a militantly political movement with an anti-Western political ideology that had the potential to spread throughout the Islamic world, and even beyond it...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments

 

Empathy for the enemy: As strong and resolute as Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, has been in standing up to Islamic terrorism, according to this piece on the FrontPage Magazine site, his countrymen (and women) have been dangerously weakened by their own misplaced compassion. This bizarre empathy for those who despise them and mean them harm—is it stupidity? is it masochism?—has enabled Islamism to move right in and feel right at home:

 

…In Australia, where 300, 000 Muslims live within a melting pot of 20 million citizens, the warning bells ought to be waking the cultural gatekeepers from their slumber. But, here too, they are weeping for the Muslims.

 

In 2000, gangs of Lebanese Muslims in Sydney hunted down young Australian girls on the basis of their ethnicity and raped and tortured them while calling them “sluts” and “Aussie pigs”. One of the convicted rapists, Bilal Skaf, sent a text message on his mobile phone, “When you are feeling down ... bash a Christian or Catholic and lift up.” Despite this, the mainstream media painted the crimes as run-of-the-mill rapes and deleted ethnicity from the crime scene. When the Premier of NSW publicly acknowledged the ethnic background of the rapists, the politically correct thundered its disdain.

 

For years the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal has been granting asylum to Islamic refugees who claim to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Australian (April 08, 2006) reported that Ahmad al-Hamwi  – better known to the RRT by his alias, Abu Omar – had “alleged links to terrorist organisations spanning a good part of the globe.” The newspaper further asserted that al-Hamwi was connected to Osama bin Laden and was a “senior al-Qa’ida bagman linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef.”

 

There is little doubt about al-Hamwi’s terrorist connections. He freely admitted before the RefugeeTribunal to playing a key role in the International Research and Information Centre (IRIC). According to terrorism expert Zachary Abuza, the IRIC was an Islamic terrorist front that provided funding to “the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, al- Qa’ida and Abu Sayyaf, a group that conducted military training with Jemaah Islamiah.” Despite this, granted al-Hamwi asylum in 1996.Australia