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

 

Kudos to Harper: I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the efforts of my Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It’s been a long time since Canada has had a P.M. who has the fortitude to be a leader instead of a follower, and who is willing to stand up to the bullies of the world. My hat’s off to you, Mr. Prime Minister, and I hope you have the wherewithal to keep it up. From the Globe and Mail:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper blocked a last-minute resolution at the Francophonie summit on Friday that would have recognized only Lebanon's suffering during this summer's conflict in the Middle East.

Mr. Harper said an institution like la Francophonie could not recognize suffering based on the nationality of its victims, and he called for recognition of the conflict's effect on Israeli residents.

The resolution was proposed by Egypt at the last minute of the annual meeting of French-speaking nations.

”Obviously Canada believes that the resolution has to be balanced and that we should recognize the victims in both Lebanon and Israel. I don't think an international organization with the breadth and scope of the Francophonie would want to do anything than to make sure that victims are recognized regardless of their nationality,” Mr. Harper said.

The language on Lebanon had been proposed at the ”last-minute” by the Egyptian delegation, seconded by the Lebanese themselves, French President Jacques Chirac said.

The resolution had gained the acceptance of a majority of members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, but it faced the ”hostility” of the Canadians, who managed, with the support of Mr. Chirac, to prevent its adoption.

Mr. Harper said he hoped the dispute was more over ”language than substance.”

Mr. Chirac that negotiations are continuing on the resolution and said a solution is needed to ”allow everybody to save face.”…

Right, because there’s nothing worse that the sight of some faceless Arab French-speaking Jew-haters. They're uggh-ly!

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments (1)

 

Freedom and censorship: If I had to come up with a thumbnail definition of “freedom” it might be this: Freedom is the inalienable right to offend some of the people some of the time. From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune about the German Opera company which chose censorship over freedom:

 

…Self-censorship to mollify those who would practice violence in the name of Islam is self-defeating. Canceling an opera--or any other public event--bolsters the radicals' belief that the West can be intimidated and eventually defeated.

It's understandable that Deutsche Oper felt a threat to the safety of its players and patrons. It looks now that it will respond in the best way possible, by confronting that threat rather than succumbing to it.

Art offends some people. Books offend some people. Music offends some people. Newspapers offend some people. People choose to read or not, to listen or not, to go to the opera or not. Those choices cannot be made for them by those who are intent on doing battle with Western culture.

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

 

Feeding time at the crocodile exhibit: Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson wants us to know that there’s no point in trying to use our military to defeat the jihadis. (Column available online for extra shekels.) He cites two new reports—one American, one British—which conclude that engaging them in actual battle only make ‘em madder.

 

No, evidently the best way—the only way—to fight the jihad is to promote those “more tolerant voices in Islam” which might exert some “real or actual” influence over their more excitable co-religionists.

 

Topping idea, Jeff. Sound a lot like the one Daniel Pipes was promoting a few years back. But it seems to me that several years into the current round of jihad, it’s not the influence of these tolerant voices that are “real or actual”; it’s the voices themselves. And it seems to me that if they haven’t stepped in to lend us—and themselves—a hand up till now, they are probably more actual than real.

 

Simpson, quoting the British Muslim chick who penned the study by the Royal institute of International Affairs, says the “minimum” required to “win over the moderate faction within the Muslim world” is “the establishment of a Palestinian state with sovereignty over at least some parts of East Jerusalem.”

 

And the maximum? I bet the establishment of a Palestinian state with sovereignty over the entire Entity would really put them in a good mood.

 

Just kidding. Anyone who has a sense of the larger global jihad—a category which seems to exclude Simpson and report-writers—knows that this tiny Jewish morsel is unlikely to satiate the rapacious, implacable, unappeasable crocodile.

 

Update: My letter to the Globe:

 

I always wondered what was deterring “moderate” Muslims from speaking out in greater number about the extremists who have hijacked their religion. Now I know that, according a recent British report on combating the jihad, the moderates are all waiting for the Palestinians to be sovereign over a state that includes at least a portion of East Jerusalem.

 

But if that were the case, where were all these moderates when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected a deal that would have given the Palestinians exactly that? Why didn’t they raise their voices back then and encourage him to settle the matter once and for all?

 

The truth is that if moderates haven’t yet spoken out against those who imperil them as much as they do non-Muslims, I doubt it’s because the Palestinians don’t have a state. More likely, it’s because moderates fear reprisal from the extremists, or because they are unwilling to side publicly with non-Muslims, or because, in their heart of hearts, some of them are actually rooting for the jihadists who are waging war not just in Israel, but around the globe.

 

In any case, counting on these voices of “tolerance” to kick in once the Palestinian issue has been resolved, and to make any headway with the extremists on their and our behalf at that indeterminate future date, is a pipe dream—and a very dangerous one at that.

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

 

Persian nip ‘n’ tuck: We’re told that Moo and the mullahs are deeply unpopular, and that one day in the near or distant future, the Iranian people will muster the will to rise up and free themselves from the oppressive party poopers.

 

Mmm, don’t think so. From the sounds of it, they have some other priorities. From the Beeb:

It is eight in the morning in the plastic surgeon's office and Hussein is preparing for an operation.

He's going to have a nose job, following in the footsteps of his mother, his brother, his aunt and his cousin who have all had cosmetic surgery.

"Now it's really normal but of course 10 years ago if you were a boy and had a nose job everyone would laugh at you and make fun of you," admits Hussein.

"But now it's not like that - lots of people are doing it," he adds.

Hussein, who is a university student with a wealthy father involved in trade with China, says he met a woman the other day who asked why a boy needed to worry about his looks so much.

"I was shocked because everyone would love to have a more beautiful face," he says.

It's becoming increasingly common for Iranian men to have cosmetic surgery.

At first it was Iranian women who wanted nose jobs because strict Islamic dress regulations meant the only thing peeking out was their face and they wanted to make the best of it.

Since the revolution in 1979, Iran has become one of the world's leading centres for cosmetic surgery with three thousand plastic surgeons operating in Tehran alone...

I can think of at least one Iranian who could have benefited from a little beautification.

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

 

“Theoretical” denial: You know how certain fundamentalist types try to play up the iffy nature of “natural selection” by saying that, after all, Darwin’s was only a theory of evolution?

 

That’s more or less how Ahmadinejad’s minions have come to think of the Holocaust. As the abaya-clad reporter in this visual tour of Iran’s Holo-‘toon exhibit explains to Iranian TV viewers, the Holocaust is “the theory” that six million Jews were killed by Hitler. (link via Drudge)

 

If it actually happened, I guess you could call it Hitler’s unnatural selection.

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

 

Rise and shine!: Thomas L. Friedman has belatedly awakened to the fact that Islam may not be living up to its P.R. as a religion of peace, and that keeping mum about the resulting cognitive dissonance may not be in the interest of our civilization.

 

Boker tov, Tom. (link via Martin Kramer):

 

We need to stop insulting Islam. It’s enough already.

No, that doesn’t mean the pope should apologize. The pope was actually treating Islam with dignity. He was treating the faith and its community as adults who could be challenged and engaged. That is a sign of respect.

What is insulting is the politically correct, kid-gloves view of how to deal with Muslims that is taking root in the West today. It goes like this: “Hushhh! Don’t say anything about Islam! Don’t you understand? If you say anything critical or questioning about Muslims, they’ll burn down your house. Hushhh! Just let them be. Don’t rile them. They are not capable of a civil, rational dialogue about problems in their faith community.”

Now that is insulting. It’s an attitude full of contempt and self-censorship, but that is the attitude of Western elites today, and it’s helping to foster the slow-motion clash of civilizations that Sam Huntington predicted. Because Western masses don’t buy it. They see violence exploding from Muslim communities and they find it frightening, and they don’t think their leaders are talking honestly about it. So many now just want to build a wall against Islam. It will be terrible if Turkey is blocked from entering the European Union, but that’s where we’re heading, and the only thing that will halt it is honest dialogue.

But it is not the dialogue the pope mentioned — one between Islam and Christianity. That’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. What is needed first is an honest dialogue between Muslims and Muslims.

As someone who has lived in the Muslim world, enjoyed the friendship of many Muslims there and seen the compassionate side of Islam in action, I have to admit I am confused as to what Islam stands for today.

Why? On the first day of Ramadan last year a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber blew up a Shiite mosque in Hilla, Iraq, in the middle of a memorial service, killing 25 worshipers. This year on the first day of Ramadan, a Sunni suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 35 people who were lining up in a Shiite neighborhood to buy fuel. The same day, the severed heads of nine murdered Iraqi police officers and soldiers were found north of Baghdad.

I don’t get it. How can Muslims blow up other Muslims on their most holy day of the year — in mosques! — and there is barely a peep of protest in the Muslim world, let alone a million Muslim march? Yet Danish cartoons or a papal speech lead to violent protests. If Muslims butchering Muslims — in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan — produces little communal reaction, while cartoons and papal remarks produce mass protests, what does Islam stand for today? It is not an insult to ask that question…

No, but it’s an insult to the jihad and those who wage it to suggest it can be set aside through “honest dialogue.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:03 | link | comments (1)

 

Loving Hu: Democrats and other leftists, including Jewish ones, tend to think Moo’s Venezuelan pal Hu is a capital chap, mostly because his loves and hates match their own. (Loves: Chomsky-esque rhetoric which casts America as the world’s brute; hates: Chimpy McBushaliburtonwalmarthitler and his neo-Con cronies.) But as this piece on The American Thinker site points out, there’s something, oh, I dunno—Revolting? Vile? Shameful? Unforgivable?—about Jews who adore this contemptible Jew-hater:

…Late last year, Chavez took the occasion of his Christmas Eve speech to invoke an old anti-Semitic slur. Chavez declared,

“the world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ have taken over all the wealth of the world”.

While well-informed people know that Romans crucified Christ, there are many millions of ill-informed people (including, apparently Chavez) who believe that Jews killed Christ. Clearly, when Chavez spoke of the people responsible for the death of Christ taking the wealth of the world, he was not referring to any ancient centurions living in plutocratic splendor these days, he was employing an anti-Semitic canard.

However, his insults go far beyond this. In 2004, a state prosecutor and Chavez ally was killed in car bombing. The Chavez-controlled state-run television referred to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad as being behind the killing. (The Mossad is routinely dredged up by Arab anti-Semites as being responsible for all sorts of calamitous events in the world, including 9/11).

Chavez sent Venezuelan security forces to raid a Jewish private school in Caracas as the school day was beginning, in an incident widely regarded by Jews there as a warning to support him or else. His forces terrorized young children, holding sub-machine guns as the school was searched. Of course, no evidence was found implicating anyone in the killing of the prosecutor. But the event can also be seen as a present to Iran, since Chavez was visiting Iran at the time of the raid on the school.

Of course, his alliance and friendship with the Iranian regime should be enough to disconcert American Jews. Iranian-supported Hezb’allah has blown up a Jewish Community center and an Israeli Embassy in Argentina. Hezb’allah routinely attacks Israel, and the latest sneak attack resulted in a mini-war with Israel a few months ago. Of course, Iran has called for Israel to be “wiped off the face of the map”, has denied the Holocaust has occurred, is the foremost promoter of anti-Semitism around the world, and is developing a nuclear and ballistic missile program that directly threatens Israel…

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

 

Crumbs and sins: There’s a Jewish prayer which mentions how, throughout their history, the Jewish people have “eaten the bread of affliction.” (To which I once retorted—because, as you may have noticed, I’m not always as reverent as I’m supposed to be—“I’m tired of eating the bread of affliction. I think I’d like a nice baguette for a change.”)

 

I only mention this because it seems to go well with the following e-mail a friend just sent me (with thanks to Harry):

 

As one knows in Rosh Hashanah there is a ceremony called Tashlich. Jews traditionally go to a running body of water such as the ocean, a stream or a river to pray and throw in breadcrumbs.  This symbolizes throwing away one's sins which the fish devour.  Occasionally, people ask what kinds of breadcrumbs should be thrown.  Here are suggestions for breads which may be most appropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors:

 

·        For ordinary sins --white bread

·        For erotic sins - French bread

·        For particularly dark sins - pumpernickel

·        For complex sins – multi-grain

·        For sins of indecision - waffles

·        For sins committed in haste - matzos

·        For sins of chutzpah - any fresh bread

·        For substance abuse - stoned wheat

·        For committing auto theft - caraway

·        For timidity/cowardice - milk toast

·        For ill-temper - sourdough

·        For silliness, eccentricity - nut bread

·        For excessive irony - rye bread

·        For unnecessary chances - hero bread

·        For war-mongering - kaiser rolls

·        For dressing immodestly - tarts

·        For lechery and promiscuity - hot buns

·        For promiscuity with gentiles - hot cross buns

·        For racist attitudes - crackers

·        For being holier than thou - bagels

·        For overeating - stuffing

·        For indecent photography - cheesecake

·        For raising your voice too often - challah

·        For pride and egotism - puff pastry

·        For sycophancy, ass-kissing - brownies

·        For being overly smothering - angel food cake

·        For trashing the environment - dumplings

·        For telling bad jokes/puns - corn bread

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

 

Mad science: The thing about trying to defeat the infidel through suicide terror is that it’s just so piecemeal (or “pieces”meal). Sure, a chump, er, shahid, who successfully self-detonates for Allah can often kill a number of infidels—perhaps even dozens—in  one go. But at that rate, it’s going to take forever to restore the glorious caliphate.

 

With that in mind, Al Qaeda in Iraq is conducting an executive search for the scientists who can help them achieve that goal a whole lot quicker. From the Globe and Mail:

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaeda in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released yesterday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is in a U.S. prison.

The fugitive terrorist chief said experts in the fields of "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences -- especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts" should join his group's jihad, or holy war, against the West.

"We are in dire need of you," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri. "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases [in Iraq] are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

The 20-minute audio was posted to a website that frequently airs al-Qaeda messages. The voice could not be identified independently, but it was thought to be Mr. al-Masri's. He is believed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died in a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad in June, as head of the al-Qaeda-linked organization…

The other night on its “Ideas” program, Ceeb radio ran a documentary dedicated to the proposition that Islam and science are completely compatible, at least according to the message of the Koran. Now, anyone who knows the problems that all fundamentalists, including Christians and Jews, have reconciling faith and science—and who also knows that, science-wise, Muslims have been resting on the laurels of having invented algebra in, what, the 9^th Century or something—might be sceptical about such a claim (and might even see it as another of the Ceeb’s seemingly endless shilling-for-Islam efforts). But reading the above, perhaps there’s more scope for scientific endeavour among true believers than we may think.

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

 

The great divides: There are a number of ways to divide the world. There are those—you know who you are—who see it as a matter of dar al Islam vs. dar al Harb; others see it in terms of that left-right rift. Me? I tend to split the world into those who “get it” and those who don’t “get it”—and, believe me, there are far too many of the latter for my liking.

 

But here’s another way to divvy things up: between those who think “it’s about us,” and those, like Mark Goldblatt, who know it’s not about us, “it’s about them. From NRO:

According to a National Intelligence Estimate composed last February but released just this week by the Bush administration, “The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.” Because of the war, “new jihadist networks and cells, with anti-American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge.” On the other hand, the report finds that if the “jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and [are] perceived, to have failed . . . fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.”

None of this is conclusive, or even news, but the NIE’s suggestion that the war in Iraq has become a recruitment tool for Islamic terrorists was immediately seized upon by Democrats to argue, yet again, that President Bush’s decision to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein was a tactical blunder and that the effort to establish a liberal democracy in its stead has turned into an unmitigated fiasco.

The judgment of history on Bush’s Iraq strategy is still decades away. Remember, Ronald Reagan’s decision to aid the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in their fight against the Russians during the 1980s looked pretty smart after the collapse of the Soviet Union . . . except the mujahedeen mutated into the Taliban, re-focused their hatred on America, trained a generation of terrorists and sheltered Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to September 11, 2001.

That decision doesn’t seem quite so smart nowadays.

Nevertheless, to argue that the war in Iraq was ill-conceived because it might serve as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda is absurd. If America hadn’t invaded Iraq, the United Nations would presumably still be enforcing sanctions against Saddam’s regime — sanctions which were killing thousands of Iraqi children each month and which were specifically cited by Osama in 2002 as a justification for the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the situation in Iraq before the war was viewed by al Qaeda as a rationale for violence against America.

Then again, America’s support for Israel was also cited by Osama to justify his terrorist jihad. Should we therefore end that support? What about our tolerance of, in Osama’s words, “immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s [sic], and trading with interest”? If our “immorality” is being utilized by al Qaeda to recruit terrorists, should we therefore crack down on Snoop Dogg, Will and Grace, Budweiser, Las Vegas, and Citibank? And what of our stubborn refusal to convert to Islam — in Osama’s eyes, perhaps the greatest provocation of all? Should we therefore renounce our Judeo-Christian heritage, abandon the separation of church and state and adopt sharia law to escape the wrath of al Qaeda?..

 

I say “no,” but let’s ask Harpoon Siddiqui. He’s seems to be really hot for that kind of  “interfaith dialogue.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:06 | link | comments

 

They’re ba-ack!: And speaking of the old antisemtism, guess who’s enjoying a return engagement in Bavaria?

 

Yes, Bavaria.

 

I’ll give you a hint: they were all the rage there in the 1930s.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:39 | link | comments (1)

 

Forever young: The “oldest hatred” may have had a facelift, but as Victor Davis Hanson writes, it’s just as ugly and repulsive as ever. From RealClear Politics:

…We're accustomed to associating hatred of Jews with the ridiculed Neanderthal Right of those in sheets and jackboots. But this new venom, at least in its Western form, is mostly a leftwing, and often an academic, enterprise. It's also far more insidious, given the left's moral pretensions and its influence in the prestigious media and universities. We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.

The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East - and the indifference to it in the West - is a sort of "post anti-Semitism." Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference - if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff Amen in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.

The dangers of this post anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States - or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam's hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

The result is that the world's politicians and media are talking seriously with those who not merely want back the West Bank, but rather want an end to Israel altogether and everyone inside it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:32 | link | comments

 

Speaking in forked tongues: Those “Dr. Doolittles” of the EU continue to try to master that most baffling of lingos: mad mullah-speak.

 

And, naturally, I feel a song coming on:

 

If they could talk to the mad mullahs,

Learn to speak to them,

Maybe they’d prevent a genocide.

If they could learn to read taqiyah,

They’d finally be free-ah,

To see that they've been taken for a ride.

 

If they could talk to the mad mullahs,

Hear where they’re coming from,

They’d know the wicked thinking they embrace.

They’d know for sure that grim Khomeini’s

More evil than inseini,

And so is Moo, though he’s a smiley face.

 

They would converse in Shia and in Persian.

And they would curse the Zionists and Jews.

If mullahs asked, “can you speak ElBaradei?”

They’d say, “we can parlez—and do.”

 

If they conferred with the fascist fiends, dhimmi to Übermensch,  

You’d think they’d get a sense of history.

Instead they’ll try to please the mullahs,

And ne’er appease the mullahs,

They’ll go on bended knees to the mullahs,

And end up causing tons more misery.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:48 | link | comments (1)

 

Immoral imperatives: Harpoon Siddiqui has another of his “shut your pie holes, you cheeky infidels” pieces. Of course, Harpoon, who is nothing if not a master of “subtlety” and “nuance,” wraps it up in a pretty package about “the moral imperatives of our times.”

 

Here’s a taste of Harpoon’s Islamism-enabling, democracy-thwarting, morally-inverted thoughts on the subject:

 

It seems like a disaster a day on the Islam vs. West front. No sooner had the Danish cartoon controversy died down than one erupted over Pope Benedict XVI's comments on Islam.

 

He had barely managed to mitigate it — with three semi-apologies and two Vatican clarifications — when Germany finds itself engulfed in a row over a Berlin opera company's cancellation of a Mozart production featuring a severed head of the Prophet Muhammad.

 

These cultural clashes are taking place in tandem with the ongoing catastrophes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied territories. The latter does not justify the former. But to divorce the two is to live in denial and keep hurtling toward more confrontations and disasters.

 

The counter-argument would be that the Salman Rushdie affair and the Theo von Gogh murder preceded the Iraq and Afghan wars.

 

But there's no doubt that the disastrous war on terrorism has turned the world into a tinderbox. The slightest spark can cause a conflagration. We should know that by now.

 

It is, of course, infuriating that Deutsche Oper Berlin folded when faced with an anonymous threat. The culture critic for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union accused the company of "falling on its knees before the terrorists."

 

This issue is not as black-and-white as that.

 

The company had acted on the advice of police, which decided that the production posed an "incalculable" security risk.

 

Did the company cave in to the deliverer of the threat or did it bow to the presumably prudent judgment of the police?

 

Merkel herself felt that "self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practise violence in the name of Islam. It makes no sense to retreat." But, again, in the never-ending battle for freedom of expression, the answers are not always all that easy.

We must not give in to bullies, whatever their twisted motivation. Yet we cannot pretend that we do not "retreat" and self-censor when, in fact, we do every day. Ask any editor and media, movie or theatre executive.

 

But the issues involving Muslim sensibilities have made two things perfectly clear:

·  Incidents that used to pass with barely a murmur are being turned into warfare by both sides. Many Muslims are being overly sensitive and some Westerners are clamouring to put Muslims in their place.

 

·  If freedom of speech only means the right to disproportionately and gratuitously malign Muslims and Islam, the double standard will indeed be challenged.

 

When such challenges are violent, we must not flinch. If they are peaceful and intellectual, we have to have a rational answer for why we willingly practise self-restraint on certain subjects but resist it on others.

 

A similar argument is being advanced about the Western anger over the violent Muslim reaction to the Pope's original statement and to the Danish cartoons...

 

And here’s a letter which will never, ever appear in “black and white” in the Toronto Star, a most “nuanced” publication:

 

In seeking to shed light on the latest incident of Muslim outrage—the Pope’s suggestion that religious beliefs should entail reason instead of violence—Haroon Siddiqui has merely succeeded in muddying the waters. It’s not, as he says, that “both sides” have turned this and other such incidents, starting with the Salman Rushdie affair, into “warfare.” No, the “warfare” in question has been initiated and incited by one side—the one that insists non-Muslims must hold their tongues and thereby abide by Muslim doctrine. And this tactic of flying off the handle seems to be working because Westerners, like that German opera company, are now taking it upon themselves to censor material beforehand on the off chance that it may—and then again, may not—cause offence.

 

Then there’s Siddiqui’s suggestion that “freedom of religion only means the right to disproportionately and gratuitously malign Muslim and Islam” and that those on the receiving end cannot help but challenge this “double standard.” I think what Siddiqui is referring to here is a Western freedom which he seems to abhor: the freedom to criticise Muslims and hold them accountable for their actions. Siddiqui refers to this type of criticism, as practiced by people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he has written about in the past, as “Islamophobia”—the catch-all category for those who are bigots and racists, and those who aren’t, but who have valid concerns about Muslim doctrine and behaviour and who, in a free society, have every right to voice them. By labelling these non-bigots “Islamophobic,” Siddiqui and others would effectively silence them once and for all. At the same time, there is indeed a double standard in operation since many Muslims in Muslim nations and elsewhere continue to speak in the most vituperative terms about Christians and Jews.

 

Finally, in a column about “imperatives,” Siddiqui fails to mention the one imperative that threatens to revoke the freedoms that we in the West hold so dear. It is the jihad imperative, and it’s not going to go away simply because Westerners, like the Pope, are counselled to keep mum (and to apologize profusely when they don’t) lest they inflame hair-trigger Muslim tempers. In fact, holding our tongues is entirely the wrong approach, since it means the erosion of free speech, a foundational principle of our society. In the short term, it may help keep the lid on things. But in the longer-term, it only serves the political interests of those who for whom our freedoms are anathema.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments (3)

 

Chancellor-designate walks the plank: Conservative Judaism seems to be in decline these days, but the incoming head of the movement’s American wing thinks he’s figured out a way to revitalize it. From the Canadian Jewish News:

TORONTO - Even after 20 years on the faculty of Stanford University in northern California, Philadelphia native Arnold Eisen says it’s hard for him to think of himself as a “west coaster.”

But the chancellor-designate of the Conservative movement’s New York-based Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) said in a telephone interview last week that if there is anything he brings to his new position in the way of west coast sensibility, it’s that he’s “relaxed about some things [that] people consider a crisis.

“I see numbers dropping in the Conservative movement, but I see them dropping in Judaism generally. I see tremendous success stories [in Conservative Judaism],” said Eisen, referring to schools and summer camps in particular.

In the United States, the Conservative movement – formerly the largest Jewish denomination – has been surpassed in recent years by increasing numbers in the Reform movement.

Eisen’s own background in the countercultural chavurah movement in the late 1970s and subsequent leadership in the Conservative movement is not an isolated example, he noted.

Conservative Jews are overrepresented in chavurah-style independent minyans, many of which have “strong interactions” with organized movements and institutions, he added.

Currently the chair of the department of religious studies at Stanford, Eisen is on leave and will teach one last course in the spring. He is commuting to New York one week a month so his son can finish his last year of high school in California.

He said that in his new role, which becomes full-time next July, he will insist that JTS continue with its commitment to scholarship, but he noted that he wants to “bring that scholarship to bear on the issues of the day.

“We’re not just here to advance knowledge. We’re here to use knowledge for good.”

Although JTS has already been involved with Jewish-Muslim dialogue on a limited basis, Eisen – who was instrumental in setting up an Islamic studies program at Stanford – said such dialogue will now be “a major plank,” adding that “These are difficult times.”

He believes that religion, unlike politics, is a “natural” common ground for Jewish-Muslim dialogue.

But religion, in general, has “gotten a bad name lately, and been dragged in the dust by people who do bad things in its name.”

Eisen believes there is a need for Jews to “demonstrate that religion can be a force for good in the world.

“[Conservative Jews] have something to model not just for other Jews, but for other societies, that there’s no conflict between open-mindedness and fidelity to tradition.”…

Yeah, I’m sure there are tons of Muslims out there just itchin’ for the Jewish dhimmis to come “model” stuff for them, and who also think that religion, unlike politics, is a “natural” common ground for dialogue between Muslims and Jews.

And if chancellor-designate Eisen could explain how the Muslim faithful might separate the “religious” from the “political” when none of their teachings allow for such a division, he might even make some headway.

In the meantime, I suggest he crack open something, anything, by, say, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Bat Ye’or, Melanie Phillips, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali…

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

 

Caroline G. at Holy Bee: The last time I saw Caroline Glick (or as I like to call her, Caroline the Great) was back in March. She appeared at a hastily arranged gathering at Shaarei Tefillah, an Orthodox synagogue in north Toronto, and her message was dire, verging on the grim. Israel’s Gaza “disengagement” scheme, the one that was supposed to finally give rise to that much-vaunted but chimerical “two state solution,” has resulted in disaster, just as Glick had predicted. Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist Taliban, was in charge—the choice of most of the Palestinian electorate; armaments and weapons were being shipped into Gaza via Egypt; everything that the Jews had built in Gaza, including an agricultural infrastructure that had been serving as Israel’s breadbasket, not to mention synagogues, schools and other structures, had been torched in a frenzy of nihilistic destruction—a Palestine Cristallnacht. And Glick was predicted that there was even worse to come because the Olmert government was still intent on handing over the West Bank to Hamas, a move that would threaten the viability of the Jewish state.

 

Another source of her gloom: Israel’s leadership, wearing the rose coloured lenses of cockeyed (and idiotic) optimists, had decided that instead of holding the Arabs responsible for the impossible situation in which Israel found itself, found someone else to villify: religious Zionists, i.e. “the settlers” in Judea and Samaria, who were impeding the establishment of the Palestinian state, the panacea that would finally bring everlasting peace to the region and the entire world. And in order to make an example of these bad guys the government had sent in police on horseback to a West Bank settlement where they proceeded to bludgeon everyone in sight, including young school girls who were doing nothing more threatening than watching, aghast, as these Jewish Cossacks unleashed a pogrom.

 

Given these recent events, you can understand why Caroline was so horrified and angry, almost panicked, as she gave her talk—and why those who listened to her left feeling utterly, blackly depressed.

 

It was a different Caroline who spoke last evening. Relaxed, upbeat, optimistic, trading quips with Alistair Gordon of Canadian Coalition for Democracies (the organization that co-sponsored her appearance along with Holy Blossom Temple) she outlined clearly and succinctly the global jihad that imperils not only Israel, but the entire world. (It was almost as if, since a lot of the bad stuff she’d predicted had already happened, she was confident that Israelis—or at least, enough of them to make a difference—would finally “get” what she’s been saying all along.) The gist of her talk: more or less the same stuff I post about every day. There is a world-wide totalitarian threat. It is comprised of Islamic Fascists—Shiites, Sunnis, Wahabists, Salafists. It seeks to impose an Islamic caliphate on the world. Its rancid ideology is the antithesis of everything we in the free world hold dear. It is anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-American, anti-democracy. It is implacable. It is indivisible. It cannot, repeat cannot, repeat cannot, be appeased.

 

These are the facts. This is the truth. And unless those who value freedom and democracy are willing to stare this beast square in the face, and deal with it as is, there is little chance we can prevail over it.

 

That means we must, repeat must, tell the truth. Because when we equivocate, or placate, or tell the kind of half truths that Israel told itself (largely to garner favour with the international community) during the Oslo Accords and the Gaza Disengagement (“Arafat is a peace partner who will do battle with those Palestinians who don’t want peace”; “Gaza is the first step in a two state solution”; “all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds”) Islamic fascism is empowered, and disaster will be the inevitable result.

 

Glick says that we must remember that this is not about us—about what we can do to make the fascists like us more or perceive that we are being sensitive to the sensitivities of Muslims. It is about them. It is only about them. It is about their desire to conquer us, to enslave us, to kill us. It is only about us in the sense that we are the ones responsible for ensuring our own survival. And we can only begin to do that by listening to what they have to say, what they really have to say, and not think that all can be set to right by our placatory actions.

 

That’s why she had nothing but respect for the Pope—and nothing but contempt for the Olmert government. She commended the Pope for being brave enough to point out that it’s impossible to have a conversation unless those with whom you are conversing are willing to tolerate criticism. Clearly, this is not the case with Muslims, who are not only unwilling to tolerate the least bit of criticism, but who immediately deride and dismiss it as evidence of the critic’s (a.k.a. the truth-teller’s) “Islamophobia.” Glick says engagement means judgement, and that Muslims, like everyone else, must be held responsible for their actions, including the depravities being committed around the world in Islam’s name.

 

As for the Olmert government, Glick called it the worst in Israel’s history. She said it mismanaged the war in Lebanon—a war which Israel lost as result—and that, bottom line, it is incapable of defending Israel. She said the Kadima party itself is not so much a political entity as it is “a public relations firm.” As such, it is “weightless,” insubstantial, an empty shell. It stands for nothing save its own desperate desire to hold onto power. The sooner Israeli rid themselves of this disastrous group of inept, ineffectual, clueless politicians (which, at this point seems likely, since they enjoy the approval of a scant seven per cent of the population), the better for Israel, and by extension, all those fighting against the global jihad.

 

Oh, and one more crucial point I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention: “There’s a big difference,” said Glick, “between insanity and evil. (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is EVIL!”

 

And that, as they say, is the Glick’s honest truth.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:57 | link | comments (2)

 

An absurd contention: Let’s see: the Palestinians exult in a culture of death; delight in burning down churches when a Pope suggests that Muslims, on occasion, may be prone to violence; and are ruled by a democratically-elected regime of genocidal Islamic thugs who would sooner let their own people starve than recognize Israel’s right to draw air.

 

In light of all this, whom do you suppose a UN human rights “expert” holds partially responsible for the erosion of human rights in the Palestinians territorities?

 

Why, Canada, of course. From the Ceeb:

Canada is partly to blame for allowing human rights for Palestinians to deteriorate to a new low, a UN rights expert says.

John Dugard said Palestinians are subjected to "tragic" conditions in Gaza and the West Bank.

He criticized Canada, Israel, the U.S. and western European countries for cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas' victory in legislative elections in January.

Those countries have said funding will remain cut off unless the militant group renounces violence and recognizes Israel.

"In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions — the first time an occupied people has been so treated," Dugard said. "Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the U.S. and the EU."

Dugard said Israel was largely responsible for the "intolerable" situation for Palestinians, three-quarters of whom depend on food aid. He also blamed its military incursions and tough roadblocks for preventing hospitals from having enough electricity and for damaging or destroying numerous schools and houses.

"Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key," Dugard said. "A serious humanitarian crisis prevails in the West Bank."...

If Palestinians are being “punished,” the punishment is entirely self-inflicted because they have elected a regime that is unacceptable by every measure of decency, humanity and civilized behaviour. Period.

 

Update: Here’s part of John Dugard's entry in Wikipedia (with Wiki links):

John Dugard (born in 1936 in Fort Beaufort) is a South African professor of international law. He has served as Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and as a Special Rapporteur for both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has written extensively on South African apartheid…

Education

John Dugard earned his BA and LLB degrees at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and his LL.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1980.

Career

Academic

From 1975-1977, Dugard was the Dean and a Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). From 1978-1990, Dugard was the Director of the University of Witwatersrand's Centre for Applied Legal Studies, "a research centre committed to the promotion of Human Rights in South Africa".

He has held visiting professorships at Princeton University, Duke University, Berkeley University and University of Pennsylvania, and University of New South Wales (Australia).

He is a member of the Institut de Droit International.

Dugard was Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge from 1995-1997.

In 1998, he was appointed as Chair in Public International Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands and as Director of the advanced LLM programme in Public International Law.

International Law

He has, since 1997, served as a member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations. In 2000, he became its Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection.

In 2000, he served as Judge ad hoc in the cases concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Burundi) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda) and (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda) at the International Court of Justice.

United Nations

Following the recurrence of the Palestinean intifada in late 2000, John Dugard was appointed as Chairman of a UN Commission on Human Rights inquiry commission on the situation of human rights there. In 2001, he was appointed as Special Rapporteur to the Commission and has submitted annual reports and recommendations to the UN concerning the situation of international human rights and humanitarian law. He now reports to the UN Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur on the situation the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. In its first special session in July 2006, the nascent Human Rights Council decided to dispatch an urgent fact-finding mission headed by Dugard to report on the situation there. On 26 September 2006, Dugard has reported that the "standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels"^[1].(my italics)

I think it’s fairly evident from his C.V. where John Dugood, er, Dugard is coming from—and we can thus judge his words accordingly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:32 | link | comments (3)

 

Tell-alls: Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Gunther Grass writes a tell-all in which he reveals for the first time that he joined the Waffen S.S. at the age of 17. Eddie Goldenberg, former fart-catcher of former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, writes a tell-all in which he calls Chretien’s successor, Paul Martin, “a political boil that should have been lanced years earlier” and reveals (ho hum) that his boss insisted the U.S. get the approval of the UN before invading Iraq. Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s fart-catcher/butler writes a tell-all, his second, in which he reveals that (ho hum) Diana wasn’t carrying Dodi Fayed’s child when they were both killed, and was only hanging out with him to make the real object of her affection, a physican with whom she had carried on a torrid year-long affair, jealous. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Pervez Musharaf writes a tell-all in which he reveals that, after 9/11, he weighed the odds of Pakistan coming out on top in a fight with the U.S. and opted to co-operate with George W. Bush.

 

Enough already! Is there anyone on the frikkin’ planet who isn’t trying to cash in by flogging his/her memoirs?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments (1)

 

Allah’s human bombs: Toronto Star columnist Richard Gwyn says Muslim suicide bombers are largely motivated by—stop me if you’ve heard this before—“apathy” and “humiliation.” Also, they’re looking for that elusive 15 minutes of fame we’ve all been promised:

 

…The Sunday Star two weeks ago contained an excellent article quoting the diagnoses of two experts about what impels many jihadists to kill. Both placed conventional explanations, such as U.S. foreign policy blunders, well down the list.

 

Canadian Thomas Homer-Dixon's view was that jihadists are "ferociously angry because of powerful feelings of humiliation."

 

American Marvin Zonis's judgment was that the prime cause was "rage, the rage generated by deep narcissistic wounds."

 

That many Arabs harbour deep feelings of humiliation is easy to understand.

There are the well-known causes of colonial exploitation, military defeats (repeatedly by Israelis, until the Lebanon war), and the vast economic disparities between the west and the majority of the Middle East.

 

But there are critical personal factors that come much closer to the analysis of Homer-Dixon and Zonis.

 

Many young Arab men have no jobs, or menial ones. They can make no mark in their lives by really providing for their families or by ever doing something they can take pride in.

 

Killing somebody — infidels, occupiers, heretics (Shia or Sunnis), non-Muslims — is the one way many of these young men can be somebodies.

 

They rise to the status of "martyrs." Their names are honoured. They are, however briefly, noticed…

 

I thought Gwyn left a few key elements out of the mix, and wrote the Star’s editor to tell him so:

 

Richard Gwyn cites a number of experts who contend that apathy is the primary impetus behind suicide attacks. But if that were so, then teenagers and young adults of all stripes would be self-detonating all over the place, and, obviously, that’s not happening. The fact is that these days, with the exception of the odd Tamil Tiger, suicide bombers seem to be adherents of one specific religion, and if they are acting out in this particularly horrific way, they probably weren’t driven to it by apathy or even, as Mr. Gwyn would have it, “humiliation.” No, what drives them is hatred of “the other,” a perverse ideology which hails “martyrdom” as the greatest human achievement, and the promise of an eternity of delights which far exceeds anything they could experience in life.

 

When you add it all up, how could an ordinary life here on Earth possibly compete with what one pundit has called “the diabolical glamour of destruction”?

 

Incidentally, the pundit I quoted was Algis Valiunas who used the phrase (one that has stuck in my mind) in a book review in the July/August issue of Commentary Magazine.

 

Update: Here’s an alternate letter to the editor that I didn’t send:

 

It occurs to me that, aside from ethnic origin, there’s one major difference between Kimveer Gill, the loner who shot up a Montreal college and suicide bombers. Gill was a rebel without a cause. Suicide bombers, it is clear, are rebels with a cause: the jihad against the West.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:58 | link | comments

 

Landsmen (and women): Charles Krauthammer expostulates on the strange phenomenon in American politics: politicians of apparently Gentile background belatedly fessing up to having one or more Jewish forebears. The pundit has a theory on the subject which he calls “Krauthammer’s law.”  From RealClear Politics:

…Krauthammer's Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. I've had a fairly good run with this one. First, it turns out that John Kerry -- windsurfing, French-speaking, Beacon Hill aristocrat -- had two Jewish grandparents. Then Hillary Clinton -- methodical Methodist -- unearths a Jewish stepgrandfather in time for her run as New York senator.

A less jaunty case was that of Madeleine Albright, three of whose Czech grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and who most improbably contended that she had no idea they were Jewish. To which we can add the leading French presidential contender (Nicolas Sarkozy), a former supreme allied commander of NATO (Wesley Clark) and Russia's leading anti-Semite (Vladimir Zhirinovsky). One must have a sense of humor about these things. Even Fidel Castro claims he is from a family of Marranos.

For all its tongue-in-cheek irony, Krauthammer's Law works because when I say "everyone," I don't mean everyone you know personally. Depending on the history and ethnicity of your neighborhood and social circles, there may be no one you know who is Jewish. But if "everyone" means anyone that you've heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics, and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers.

There are 13 million Jews in the world, one-fifth of 1 percent of the world's population. Yet 20 percent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, a staggering hundredfold surplus of renown and genius. This is similarly true for a myriad of other "everyones" -- the household names in music, literature, mathematics, physics, finance, industry, design, comedy, film and, as the doors opened, even politics.

But it is not just Jewish excellence at work here. There is a dark side to these past centuries of Jewish emancipation and achievement -- an unrelenting history of persecution. The result is the other more somber and poignant reason for the Jewishness of public figures being discovered late and with surprise: concealment…

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:26 | link | comments

 

Mad Mel’s Mayan history lesson: Mel Gibson, reputedly sober after his run in last summer with a Jewish cop in L.A., had some screenings of his new flick, Apocalypto, in, of all places, Oklahoma—which is certainly a long way from his usual drinking, er, drugging, er, stomping ground. Donning a disguise so as to be able to avoid detection while guaging the reaction of the locals, Mel explained that, although it deals with human sacrifice and the collapse of the Mayan civilization (and, no, it wasn’t filmed in Aramaic, although I’m sure Mel was sorely tempted to do so), there are definite parallels between his film and what’s happening today with America and Iraq. “What’s human sacrifice,” queried Mel, “if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?”

 

You got me there, Mel. Call me crazy, though, but I think that, agree or disagree with that effort, trying to plant democracy in Iraq is a tad different that carving up live humans and cutting out their still throbbing hearts in tribute to a snake God (or are those the Aztecs--I always get my Pre-Columbians confused).

 

It seems to me that for those who care to look (and who aren’t suffering from an advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome), there are historical similarities that could have been explored. For example, the Mayans were conquered by an enemy who came from far away and colonized their land in order to spread their religion and strip them of their wealth. And anyone willing to open his/her eyes can see that Americans have an outside shot at being conquered by an enemy from far away who hopes to conquer and supplant them.

 

Oh, well. At least in this flick, the Jews are off the hook.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:49 | link | comments

 

Dhimmitude on campus: Welcome to clueless, multicultural Ontario, where research into “Islamophobia” on university campuses can quickly devolve into an exercise in abject dhimmitude. From the National Post (via the CJC website):

 

TORONTO - Canada's largest student umbrella organization will be touring Ontario universities this fall to gauge levels of discrimination against Muslims on campus in the wake of the terror arrests in June, the Danish cartoon controversy and other unsettling world events. A task force, struck by the Canadian Federation of Students, will ask students at each school whether they have ever been assailed by overt racism, such as slurs, or found their religious needs, like space to pray five times a day, ignored by the administration. The results will be compiled into a report to be released March 21, International Day to End Racism. "We want to stamp out Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and racism and we want to do that in a united way," said Jesse Greener, Ontario chairman of the CFS. "At this point there is an unfortunate gap in our knowledge of what Muslim students face every day." The task force is the latest in a series of initiatives undertaken by student groups since anti-Muslim graffiti was splashed on Ryerson University's campus two years ago. Ausma Malik, a vice-president of the University of Toronto's student administrative council, said in the midst of the Danish cartoon controversy last spring, a female Muslim student at her school was pushed into a campus washroom, verbally attacked and threatened. But aside from racial targeting, Ms. Malik said there is a need to look at how universities accommodate the needs of their growing Muslim student populations, such as providing women-only swim and exercise times at campus facilities and considering Islam's prohibition on alcohol at school-sanctioned events.

 

You mean a splash of grafitti and a threat or two (not that I in any way condone either) may be enough to transform Ontario university campuses into sharia-abiding zones?

 

Wow, I guess the pen (or spray paint can) really is mightier than the sword.

 

I may be going out on a limb here, but I have a hunch that researchers may find that the number of “Islamophobic” incidents on campus are far outweighed by the number of Muslim-initiated antisemtic incidents—and for obvious reasons researchers may be reluctant to reveal such findings.

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

 

All aboard!: Former Catholic schoolboy, Hamas backer and one of the most famous “reverts” to Islam, Yousuf Islam (ne Cat Stevens) has joined in the Allah-luia chorus of those criticizing the Pope for his unflattering remarks about the one true faith.

 

Listen closely and you can hear Yousuf singing his misgivings to the melody of one of his greatest hits, “Peace Train”:

 

Now I’ve been happy lately,

Ever since I “reverted” to Islam,

And I believe it’s the best thing

This Cat has ever done.

 

Oh, I’ve been smiling lately,

Dreaming of chicks up in Paradise above.

And I know shahids are up there,

Up there and finding love.

 

When I was on the edge of darkness,

I rode the Pope train.

Hopped off and caught another—

Now I ride the Mo train.

 

Now I’ve done da’wa lately,

Urging folks to come along.

Jump on board the Mo train,

And you’ll feel safe and strong.

 

Oh, Mo train sounding louder.

Ride on the Mo train.

Come on now Mo train.

Yes, Mo train holy roller.

Everyone jump on the Mo train.

Come on now Mo train.

 

Get your bags together,

Go bring your good friends too.

Cause it’s getting nearer,

It soon will be with you.

 

Now come and join the faithful,

While you still have the choice.

Cause soon you’ll have to shut up,

Soon you won’t have a voice.

 

Now I’ve been angry lately,

Thinking about what the Pope went and said.

Some say the Jews are to blame here;

Some just want to see him dead.

 

Cause out on the edge of darkness,

There rides the Mo train.

Oh, Mo train take this planet,

Come take them home again.

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

 

UN idol: Mark Steyn on how the UN is helping orchestrate that new Iranian song sensation, the Apocalypso:

Iran's president was a huge hit at the U.N. Short of bringing out some burqa-clad Rockettes and doing a couple of choruses of "This Is the Dawning of the Age of a Scary Us," he couldn't have been a bigger smash. I said a year or two back, apropos the U.N., that it's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and blend it with a quart of dog poop the result will taste more like the latter than the former. And last week's performances at the General Assembly were a fine illustration of that. Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez were the star finalists of "UnAmerican Idol," and, just when you need Simon Cowell, the only Brit in sight was the oleaginous Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan's deputy, fawning over every crazy in town. The rest of the bigwigs reacted like Paula Abdul, able to discern good points even in fellows who boast about not having any. That's the reality the Dershowitzes [i.e., Alan, who suggested that Iran be expelled from the UN] refuse to confront: that structurally the U.N. enables thugs to punch above their weight.

He may not have the pipes of a Clay Aitken or a Ruben Studdurd, but our Moo is angling to be number one with a ballistic missile.

And for those who missed Moo’s performance the other day, here’s his take on Harry Belafonte’s (Desmond Tutu's pal) Calypso standard, “Matilda.”

In Moo’s hands it has been recast as Apocalyso finger-snapper “Mad Mullahs”:

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullahs

Dey just as nuts as

Dat guy from Venezuela.

Ev’rybody!

Mad mullahs,

Mad mullah,

Dey just as nuts as

Dat guy from Venezuela.

 

Mad mullahs dey want a big kaboom

So all a de Jews dey meet dere doom.

Mad mullahs dey fool da UN,

 Bond wit’ dat Venezualan.

 

Mad mullahs dey send out dere man Moo.

Tell all a de kafirs what to do.

Mad mullahs dey waitin’ for de Mahdi,

Is he in Venezuela?

 

Ev’rybody!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:43 | link | comments

 

Vehicular jihad: I’m posting this one from Canadian Press “as is” because, well, because the way it’s written is as funny as the story itself:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A car dealership's tongue-in-cheek radio advertisement declaring "a jihad on the automotive market," will not be changed, the company said, despite drawing sharp criticism that the ad's content is offensive to Muslims.

Several stations rejected the spot from Dennis Mitsubishi, which boasts that sales representatives wearing "burqas" - the head-to-toe traditional dress for some Islamic women - will sell vehicles that can "comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back."

Jihad is a holy war waged by Muslims in defence of Islam.

"We firmly believe the ad does not in any way disrespect any religion or culture, but we feel, I guess, that maybe poking a little fun at radical extremists is fair game," dealership president Keith Dennis said on Saturday. "It was our intention to craft something around some of the buzzwords of the day and give everyone a good chuckle and be a little bit of a tension reliever."

While Dennis defended the ad as a harmless attempt to bring levity to a serious situation, the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it disrespectful.

"Using that as a promotional pitch when so many are dying from the criminal activity of suicide bombers, that's not funny," chapter president Asma Mobin-Uddin said. "I don't think it's appropriate when it causes real pain. It exploits or promotes misunderstanding in terms already misunderstood or misused."

In the ad, Dennis talks about "launching a jihad on the automotive market."

"Our prices are lower than the evil-doers' every day. Just ask the Pope!" the ad says. "Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies."

A fatwa is a religious edict.

Some radio stations are balking at the dealership's attempt to poke fun at extremists.

"With no disrespect to their creativity or their desire to build business, everything we're about is promoting the values of diversity. To air things of that sort would go against our mission statement," said Jeff Wilson, general manager of three Radio One stations in Columbus.

The dealership claims nothing in the ad is intended to promote a negative stereotype of Islam. A group that previewed the ad didn't raise any objections, although no one from the group was Muslim, Dennis said.

Actually, I think poking fun at extremists, those humourless party poopers, is one the best ways to deal with them. Although I wouldn’t recommend this approach in, say, Saudi Arabia where an entire gender isn’t permitted to drive a vehicle on religious grounds, and any joshing about jihad is apt to land the josher a starring role as decapitee du jour at a public beheading—the Wahabbist version of Cirque du Soleil.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:00 | link | comments

 

The Pope and “Islamophobes”: Harpoon Siddiqui wants cheeky infidels, like Pope Benedict XVI, to consider every word they utter about the one true faith. Not because that’s what sharia requires of all infidels (although it does) but because such utterances do nothing to further “interfaith dialogue.” And those who have been so nasty as to come out in favour of the Pope’s right to speak freely are likely to be—you guessed it—Islamophobes.

 

Well, what better way to get mouthy infidels to shut their yaps than by claiming that most critics of Islam are bigots?

 

To buttress his argument, he’s brought out that “big gun,” Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is the former nun who, in her second career as a popular writer on religion, has done her utmost to pull the wool over infidel eyes re Islam.

 

And, of course, both Armstrong and Harpoon know that when the faithful go ape-shit over ‘toons or Pope comments, it’s best to gloss it over and point to all the wretched things that infidels, past and present, have done.

 

From the Sunday Star:

 

…In relying on populist clichés of Islam, the Pope treads on the same turf as Islamophobes. It is not surprising that they are the loudest in defending him.

 

"Hatred of Islam brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn," writes Karen Armstrong, noted British author and a former nun. "Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet nor the Christian fundamentalists who've called him a pedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet, on Islam, they are in full agreement."

 

If the Pope sincerely believes, as did Manuel II, that Islam is a religion of the sword, what of his selective silence on the sword-wielding Christians of the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? What of the church's complicity in the genocide of the aboriginal people of the Americas? And the Vatican's relations with Nazi Germany?

 

Either because he now knows that he has erred, or merely wants to tamp down the furor, the Holy Father has expressed his "profound respect for world religions and for Muslims."

 

We should accept his words of contrition and move on.

 

One legacy of this sad episode is that he has weakened himself immeasurably in his declared mission: advancing interfaith dialogue and demanding greater freedom of religion for Christians in Muslim nations.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star, begging to differ with Harpoon’s perceptions:

 

Haroon Siddiqui says that the Pope has set back the cause of interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians, and now there is even less chance of Muslim nations granting Christian citizens greater freedom of religion.

 

Really? You mean there was a chance that the Pope, of all people, might have persuaded Muslim leaders to overlook some key Islamic doctrines which specifically deny freedom of religion to non-Muslims?

 

I think Siddiqui is overestimating both the power of interfaith dialogue and the Pope’s influence over Muslims. But perhaps without meaning to, Siddiqui has pointed to the real sticking point here. It’s not that the Pope may or may not have spoken a few ill-chosen words. It’s that religious tolerance seems to flow only one way. Muslims living in non-Muslim nations are accorded all the rights and freedoms of those societies; non-Muslims living in Muslim nations are considered second class citizens, and treated as such.

 

Unless Muslims themselves can figure out a way to get around these fundamental precepts—and, at the moment, there’s little reason to expect they can—that’s something that’s unlikely to change.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments (4)

 

A New Year’s message: On the eve of Rosh Hashana, Caroline Glick reminds us to refuse to allow ourselves to be defined by those who hate us. From JWR:

...The Jewish people gave humanity the concepts of G-d, liberty and law. Our understanding of the fallibility of mankind has prevented us from being tempted by false prophets who promise us heaven on Earth, and has allowed us to take practical steps towards improving our lot and our world.

All of the ideals that Israel represents both spiritually and physically have for millennia formed the foundations for human progress and freedom throughout the world. Our willingness to retain our loyalty to our identity and our heritage has been the key to our survival throughout the ages in the face of countless foes who sought to destroy us both spiritually and physically.

Rosh Hashana marks the beginning of the Ten Days of Repentance that precede Yom Kippur. To properly atone for our sins and correct our mistakes, we must understand who we are and what we represent and what we can and should aspire to as Jews. To do this, we must reject the notion that our haters can tell us who we are. To do this we must embrace our Jewish identity and uphold our commitment to our collective destiny.

The fact that hatred of Jews has endured for so long says nothing about the nature of the Jewish people. What does speak volumes about the nature of the Jewish people is that our fortunes throughout the ages have been directly related to our ability to spurn our enemies' distorted portraits of the Jewish people and our willingness to endure and progress as Jews in the midst of that hatred.

Pope Benedict is able to discuss Islam because, secure in his Christian identity, he has a clear basis for judging the goodness or unreasonableness of Muslim values and behavior. Whether we agree with his judgments or not, through his willingness to judge, Benedict capably defends and advances his faith.

When we embrace our moral and intellectual identity as Jews, we are similarly capable of meeting the challenges of our times. It is my prayer that in 5767, the Jewish people will rally around our heritage, history and culture and so pave the way for a secure, peaceful and moral future for our people and our world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:44 | link | comments (1)

 

Rosh Hashanah recognitions: Oh, oh—there’s been a glitch in the Stinky-Horrible nuptials because the bride (or is it the groom?) refuses to recognize a certain next-door neighbour, and declines to be party to any partnership that does so.

 

Hamas may refuse to recognize the sovereign Jews, but, this being the eve of the Jewish New Year and all, I feel it’s essential to extend Hamas a courtesy it refuses to grant Israel. So here goes. We recognize Hamas:

 

• For being a regime of fascist Islamist thugs;
• For contravening norms of civilized international behaviour by calling for the liquidation of the Jewish state;
• For sticking to its guns, literally;
• As one of many jihadi outfits around the world which aim to impose Islamic primacy on Dar al Harb;
• For epitomizing the culture of hatred in which the Palestinians have trapped themselves; a culture of destruction, not construction; of nihilism, hopelessness, hatred and death.

Shana Tova to all lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere.

 

As for the rest of you, well, I wish you enlightenment, sanity and reason—but, given the way hate corrodes the brain and the mental incapacity that results, I’m not counting on your ever finding them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

 

Rushdie’s flawed thinking: In the National Post’s “Friday Zeitgeist” feature, Marni Soupcoff highlights some of the names and topics that sparked the highest number of google search requests in the current week. Lo and behold, number one on Soupcoff's list (and number four on google’s) is none other than novelist Salman Rushdie. The publication of Rushdie’s magic realism novel, The Satanic Verses, back in 1988 elicited the kind of freakazoidal response we’ve come to know and expect from the mega-devout; a preview of coming attractions, so to speak. Rushdie is back in the news because of the latest mass eruption over Pope Benedict’s remarks.

 

Citing an interview with Rushdie in Der Spiegel, Soupcoff writes that he “sees both incidents as instances of societies infringing on a story-tellers’s right to speak without being afraid of violent retaliation from those who disagree with him.”  As well, he is “one of the few commentators on Islam to focus on the fact that most victims of Muslim terrorism are Muslims.”

 

Given that, you’d expect Salman to have a keen understanding of the predicament story-tellers and other infidels are facing today from those who would stifle their narratives.

 

Alas, he doesn’t, since he is unwilling to isolate the true problem and instead claims that “Fundamentalisms of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.”

 

Yeah, Salman, because we all need to watch our tongues lest those rampaging Haredis and Evangelicals take to the streets and their religious leaders start issuing fatwas calling upon the faithful to assassinate the cheeky.

 

Also, watch out for those Lubavitch suicide bombers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments

 

Denial is a mighty river that flows through blue states: A belatedly wised-up liberal gives it to other liberals—for their inability (or refusal) to discern what’s smack in front of their noses: the threat posed by the global jihad. From the L.A. Times (link via Arts & Letters Daily):

 

…On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode...

 

Okay, so he’s still got that liberal animus toward scary Evangelicals (booga booga), but at least he seems to be moving in the right (and the right) direction

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:14 | link | comments

 

Fly guy: My mama always told me you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar—and apparently, so did Moo’s.

 

(to the tune of “A Spoonful of Sugar”)

 

In every lie that must be told

There is an element that’s bold,

A brazen way to fool your enemies.

And ev’ry lie that you can tell,

Helps pave their way to Hell.

A breeze! A spree!

They’re so naïve, you see.

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling way.

 

A mullah building lots of nukes

Can safely banish all rebukes

By claiming it’s all for ‘lectricity.

And when we hear the big “kaboom”

By then we can assume

He fibs! He lies!

He’s full of alibis!

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling way...

 

When Moo Jihad’s at the UN,

As he is ev’ry now and then,

You’re sure to hear some bunkum and some tripe.

But like a con man pushing crap

They fall into his trap.

He raves! He charms!

“Sincerity” disarms!

 

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

Taquiyah go dow-wown

Taquiyah do down

Just a spoonful of honey helps taqiyah go down

In the most appalling,

(Moo is really stalling),

In the most appalling way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments

 

Lies, damned lies, and statistics: Did you know that Shias aren’t the ones who are fond of resorting to a little taqiyah? Sometimes, metrosexual Holocaust-deniers and American presidents stuck in Road Map-type thinking also find it useful. From UPI:

U.S. President George Bush praised the courage of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his efforts toward peace in the Middle East.

With Abbas at his side at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Bush said a meeting between the two leaders Wednesday morning confirmed he Palestinian leader was a "man of peace who believes in a two-state solution."

In his remarks, Abbas called Bush "the first American president to adopt the vision of two states living side-by-side."

Abbas said more than 70 percent of his people support a peaceful two-state solution -- "a state of Palestine and a state of Israel, living in peace and security next to each other."

Bush repeated the call he made before the United Nations Tuesday for Palestinian "territorial integrity" and renewed his goal to achieve peace between Israel and its neighbors before his presidential term ends.

"I fully understand that in order to achieve this vision, there must be leaders willing to speak out and act on behalf of people who yearn for peace, and you are such a leader, Mr. President," Bush said. "I can't thank you enough for the courage you have shown."

So Abbas is a courageous “man of peace,” is he, and 70% of his people support that “two-state solution”? Would that be the same 70% or so who voted a regime of genocidal Islamists into office, or a different 70%?

 

Excuse me while I puke.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

 

Holland’s loss; America’s gain: George F. Will has a piece about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s arrival in the U.S. Here’s his concise analysis of why Ms. Hirsi Ali was forced to flee the Netherlands:

Holland evidently tolerates everything except skepticism about the sacramental nature of multiculturalism. One million of the country's 16 million residents are Islamic, and the political left has appropriated the European right's traditional celebration of identity grounded in racial and ethnic traditions and culture. But the recoil of many Dutch people from Hirsi Ali suggests that the tolerance about which Holland preens is a compound of intellectual sloth and moral timidity. She was more trouble than the Dutch evidently think free speech is worth.

I’d say one other element was a factor here: the overly-regulated, overly-Socialized EU Nanny state which breeds in most of its citizens a thorough-going passivity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:18 | link | comments

 

Loony ‘toons:

Don’t look now, but the arch-enemies of freedom and democracy have been running amuck at the UN. First, Iran’s Moo Jihad, that worthless piece of Shiite, was given an international forum from which to elevate his public profile and take some snipes at Great Satan, all the while coating his words in the toxic honey of taqiyah. Then his good buddy Hugo Chavez (the Joker to Ahmadinejad’s Riddler—or is it the other way around?) was given the same opportunity to slam Great W. Satan. Hoisting his well-thumbed copy of a Noam Chomsky screed (a sight which, I admit, was pretty funny), Chavez told the assembled that Bush was “the devil” and that the joint still reeked of the sulphur he had left behind.

 

I’d say a shower and a good deodorant could take care of those pesky sulphur smells, but instead Chavez advised Bush to consult a good shrink.

 

Can you say “projection”?

 

All this devilish talk was too much for U.S. UN Ambassador John Bolton, who decried Chavez for his “cartoonish” antics.

 

What lesson can we derive from Moo and Hu’s excellent UN adventure? I think Melanie Phillips nails it:

Alan Dershowitz and others have recently suggested that Iran should be ejected from the United Nations. This seems to me to be the wrong way round. All civilised countries should now eject themselves from the UN. The disgraceful scenes of Ahmadinejad being treated this week as an esteemed member of the world community as he took the UN stage graphically illustrated the fact that the UN is not merely useless — it is the global Club of Terror, effectively run by, and in thrall to, tyrannies and corrupt despotisms which outnumber those member states that uphold human rights. The grotesque idea that such a body should be considered fit to arbitrate on international conflict — and even worse, be regarded as the ultimate arbiter of global legality and ethics — is the institutional reason why the world has ended up systematically rewarding aggression and ignoring or punishing its violence.

Club of Terror? That’s one way to describe it. But since I’m the parent of a young son, (and since Moo and Hu are immensely “cartoonish”—not that that makes them any less dangerous; Hitler was cartoonish, too) I think I might call it the League of Villains.

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

 

Taqiyah alert: The Ceeb, as per usual, takes the words of the vile anti-American, Jew-hating mouthpiece of the mullahs at face value. As a public service, I’m posting the Ceeb’s account of Moo’s performance at the UN yesterday, inserting the word “LIE” (followed by an explanation) whenever Pinocchio Ahmadinejad’s nose should have been growing really, really long.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday the legitimacy of the UN Security Council has been eroded from abuses by the West's most powerful nations. (LIE: UN legitimacy has been eroded by its being hijacked by the tyranical, thuggish and despotic regimes which comprise the bulk of itsmembership.)

Ahmadinejad made his comments in a wide-ranging evening address at the 61st UN General Assembly debate in New York, speaking for nearly twice as long as the amount of time set aside for each country. (LIE: It wasn’t wide-ranging. It “ranged” over the usual limited area—American and Israeli malfeasance and Iran as the upholder of all that is good and just in the world. In other words, the usual Moo inversion of reality.)

The controversial leader accused the U.S. and Britain directly of committing acts of "aggression, occupation and violation of international law," and was clearly referring to Israel at other points. (LIE: The U.S., Britain and Israel are trying to turn back the tide of jihad. If they could accomplish it through endless jabbering, believe me, Moo, they would.)

"The abuse of the Security Council, as an instrument of threat and coercion, is indeed a source of grave concern," said Ahmadinejad.

"It must be acknowledged that as long as the council's unable to act on behalf of the entire international community in a transparent, just and democratic manner, it will neither be legitimate or effective," he said later in his 30-minute address. (Frozen Hell moment: I agree with Moo. The Security Council will never be effective. But it’s a BIG LIE when he says he believes in transparency, justice or democracy. He does, however, believe in uniting the “entire international community”—against the U.S. and Israel.)

Iran's president lashed out at the UN for inaction and delay when the Israeli military abducted Palestinian government officials and launched air strikes that ended up killing Lebanese civilians and UN observers. (LIE: Israel launched a defensive action after its sovereignty was breeched and Israeli soldiers were kidnapped. Moo’s mullocracy had managed to ship in an estimated 13,000 missiles aimed squarely at Israel while UN “observers” took their jobs literally and watched the missiles being set up.)

"When the power behind the atrocities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can the council fulfill its responsibilities?" he said. (LIE: The power behind the atrocities is the jihad, both Sunni and Shia versions.)

Ahmadinejad, who has previously denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the map, referred to the country on more than one occasion as a "regime" and again spoke of what he said were its illegitmate origins nearly 60 years ago. (LIE: Israel’s origins are perfectly legitimate, the result of a legitimate UN vote. And if Israel isn’t legitimate, then neither is Jordan or Syria or Lebanon or any other country in the region that came into being in the wake of the Great War. And, oh yeah, since Moo is so exercised about prior claims, the Jews were there first.)

On the subject of Iran's nuclear activities, Ahmadinejad said they were "transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eye" of United Nations inspectors. He questioned why his country was being denied its own nuclear program when others have not. (LIE, LIE, LIE: Iran's nuclear activites are opaque and warlike, and the UN watchdogs are toothless, ball-less and blind.)

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

 

Pontifications: An editorial in the Globe and Mail chastises Pope Benedict for anatagonizing “the very audience that could stand to benefit most from his message”—a most peculiar statement given that Muslims recognize only one Messanger, and it sure ain’t the Pope. The editorial acknowledges that the Pope’s not the only one who needs to temper his behaviour—“The reaction in some Muslim quarters has been outrageous and only fuels the perception that Islam encourages a culture of victimization…” (also a culture of victimizing, but politically correct niceties prevent the editorialist from venturing into those shark-infested waters). But still, the editorial makes clear that the Pope is at fault here, and that in future he better ix-nay any mention of the ihad-jay.

 

Rosie DiManno, the Toronto Star’s token voice of sanity (undoubtedly one of the world’s loneliest and most thankless positions) offers something of an antidote to the Globe’s craven dhimmitude:

 

…There's a moral vacuity in flagellating a pope for his selection of a pretty weird bit of ancient dialogue while ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is militant Islam. It is entirely true that most major religions are steeped in blood and, historically, the Catholic Church can match contemporary jihad brutality for brutality. But the Catholic Church has matured; it has acknowledged its wickedness and failures. It does not demand that the rest of the world cower before its might or threaten to blow up your stuff because of words or pictures, with a propensity toward hysteria over offence and grievance.

 

This is madness, but it's emboldened and legitimized by those who aren't so very maddened, who are afforded respect and public platforms and scholarly regard.

 

Sling all the mud you want at the Church, slander the pontiff, excoriate Christians and Jews and Hindus, but speak delicately, with cotton in your mouth, when the subject is Islam, however qualified those remarks, because the blow-back will crush you. The imbalance is staggering.

 

So unlike, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who spews vitriol about Jews almost every time he opens his mouth, and got a real kick out of a state-approved cartoon exhibit in Tehran that ridiculed the Holocaust (some polemical dissemblers actually drew an equivalent between these images and the juvenile Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad that unleashed rampaging fury months earlier) — there will likely be no invitation to speak at the United Nations for Pope Benedict any time soon.

 

He has apologized, but apparently not with sufficient scraping…

 

It sounds like Rosie “gets it.” At the same time, the cognitive dissonance of Islam being touted as a religion of peace while millions of adherents continue to find textual justification for unleashing violence around the world may well make her head explode:

 

Islam is a religion of peace. We're told this all the time. I mostly believe it to be true — insofar as any of the great monolithic religions can make a claim of universal peace — not just in theory but in practice for the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. I know it to be true from the humbled and dignified observance of their faith by Muslims both in their mosques and in the entirety of their lives, in the muezzin's call to prayer, in how the pillars of Islam infuse everyday existence.

 

But I have difficulty reconciling this Islam to the other, the one that rampages and bludgeons. And I am dismayed by piety that hardly blinks sideways at barbarism.

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

 

Kofi’s swan song: Kofi Annan gave his farewell speech today. In keeping with the utter cluelessness/fecklessness/uselessness that’s marked his run as UN Secretary General, Kofi gave a speech in which he insisted that the ongoing discord between Israel and the Palestinians is the most critical issue on the planet. If only the world were able to tackle and resolve this thorniest of thorny issues, said Annan, everything else would finally fall into place. (He didn’t actually say that the lion would lie down with the lamb and a little child would lead them, but that was the implication.)

 

The only possible rejoinder to that is: Bollocks! The Israel-Palestinian crisis isn’t the cause of all the world’s problems. It is a manifestation of the problem that Kofi and his malevolent gang are unprepared to tackle and which they continue to enable: the world-wide jihad.

 

Kofi wants us to keep looking through the wrong end of the telescope, magnifying the events in one tiny region of the world out of all proportion to their true importance. That way, the Israel situation can be presented as an isolated stand-alone dot, unconnected to all the other dots where the jihad is doing its dirty work, and the world can ignore the “big picture” in favour of the teensy-weensy one (and allow it to get on with the all-important business of undoing what the UN wrought in 1947 with its partition plan).

 

Hasta la vista, Kofi. Don’t let the door hit your bespoke buttocks on the way out.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:14 | link | comments (1)

 

The Pope’s unlikely protectors: The Turkish guy who tried to assassinate the previous Pope has urged the current Pope to stay away from Turkey. Benedict XVI had been planning to visit the EU-wannabe before the brouhaha erupted over his comments linking Islam to violence.

 

Mehment Ali Agca, who’s still residing in Turkish hoosegow, send a letter to a Rome newspaper in which he strongly suggested that visiting Turkey at this time was, shall we say, ill-advised.

 

But Agca’s not the only one who had surprisingly “friendly” words for the Pope today. Never one to miss an opportunity to employ some of that highly effective Shia P.R., a.k.a. taqiyah, Moo told reporters the Pope’s words had been misunderstood. From the Times Online:

In a remarkable turnaround, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamist Iranian President, also came to the defence of Pope Benedict today.

Addressing a press conference with Hugo Chavez, the left-wing, anti-American President of Venezuela, in Caracas, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "We respect the Pope, and all those interested in peace and justice."

He said he accepted the Vatican view that the pontiff’s words had been "taken out of context" and he was "given to understand" that the Pope had later modified them. He said Benedict had been "misinterpreted".

He also observed there was a contradiction between the Christian values of the West and the wars it had waged. "All the wars of the twentieth century were caused by European countries and the United States," he maintained.

Moo certainly knows how to tailor a message for the crowd. I’m pretty sure that when addressing other audiences he blames all the wars on a different culprit.

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

 

UN karaoke: George W. Bush and Moo Jihad squared off in front of the General Assembly today. Only instead of presenting the usual orations, they shocked the throng by bursting into “The Shoop Shoop Song.”

 

What can I say? These two are always full of surprises:

 

George W. Bush:

Does he hate us

I wanna know.

How can we tell if he loathes us so?

Is it in eyes?

(Oh, yeah, they do deceive.)

Is he telling lies?

(He’s many up his sleeve.)

If you wanna know

If he loathes us so

It’s in his hiss,

That’s where it is, oh yeah.

 

Is his aura green?

(Much greener than you think.)

Is his living clean?

(He declines to take a drink.)

If you wanna know

If he loathes us so

It’s in his hiss,

That’s where it is.

 

Moo:

Oh, oh, oh, revert

You infidels

Or taste the wrath of our ji-ha-a-a-ad.

If we hate,

And we really do,

It’s there in our hiss.

About the way we act…

 

Representatives from Russia, China and France:

It’s really not so bad.

And your dumb sanctions’ll only make him mad.

 

Moo:

If you wanna know

If I loathe you so

It’s in my hiss,

That’s where it is, oh yeah,

It’s in my hiss.

That’s where it is.

Oo oo, it’s in my hiss…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:45 | link | comments

“Peaceful” seethers: Ken Livingstone’s favourite Islamic cleric, Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, is calling for the faithful to assemble “on the last Friday in the month of Shaban” for a “peaceful protest.” The protest has been called because Qaradawi is dissatisfied with the Pope’s “apology,” which is not nearly apologetic enough for the “prominent Muslim scholar (as Islam Online describes him):

…"I urge Muslims to take to the streets on the last Friday in the month of Shaban, to express their anger in a peaceful and rational manner," Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), told Al-Jazeera's Al-Shari`ah and Life program late on Sunday, September 17.

"Muslims should be wise in their anger," he stressed, warning against attacking churches, individuals or property.

The prominent scholar regretted that some Christian places of worship had been attacked over the past few days.

"It is unfortunate that such a mistake was made by a man who represents one of the largest denominations in Christianity," Qaradawi said.

"It is unfortunate as well that the pope insulted a great religion whose followers are up to one billion people."

Pope Benedict had come under mounting pressure from Muslim leaders worldwide to retract his remarks made in Germany last week in which he quoted claims by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) brought only evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The comments had triggered widespread condemnation from Muslim scholars, religious authorities, high-level officials, inter-faith experts and Egypt's Christians.

People across the Muslim world have taken to the streets in protests reminiscent of those that erupted after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad a year ago.

"Another Insult"

Sheikh Qaradawi considered the pope's assertion on Sunday that Muslims have misunderstood him as another "insult."

"Now he says that Muslims do not understand the true sense of his words. But he must bear in mind that when the speech is utterly clear then good intentions do not matter.

"He, in effect, stopped short of apologizing and the real apology is to retract his remarks, which should be omitted from the lecture," he gave in the Germany University of Regensburg on Tuesday.

Qaradawi said the pope's remarks came to entrench offensive statements made by US President George W. Bush last month that America was at war with "Islamist fascists."

The pope's remarks "gave an international cover for what Bush is doing," Qaradawi insisted…

Maybe it’s me, but I think asking the faithful to protest this issue in a peaceful manner is about as likely a scenario as, well, asking them to engage in a peaceful protest about Danish cartoons. If the past is any guide, it’s highly unlikely the aggrieved will be able to keep a lid on their anger without burning stuff and/or going postal. Unless, of course, the Sheik is planning to distribute lots of powerful anxiolytics beforehand to keep them calm.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments

Enough already with the apologies: As a counterpoint to Madeleine Bunting (see post two below), here’s a voice of reason in, of all places, the Washington Post. Anne Applebaum, the anti-Bunting, says its time for “Western politicians, writers, thinkers and speakers (to) stop apologizing -- and start uniting”:

…By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.

Unfortunately, the Buntings of the world seem all too keen on demanding that we censor ourselves, convinced that it's the only way to keep the fanatics quiet. It won’t work. It will merely hasten the day when we finally find ourselves unable to say much of anything at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:04 | link | comments

 

Moo in Jew York: Fasten your seat belts, folks. Moo Jihad will be outlining his “global vision” today at the UN.

 

Last time he spoke at the UN he claimed to have been enveloped in a bright green aura, and Moo fans everywhere will be watching to see if he’s similarly lit on this occasion.

 

Some words I’m pretty sure he’ll omit in describing his globalization plan: caliphate, jihad, Mahdi and Dar al Islam.

 

And, oh yeah, the most important word of all: taqiyah.

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

Bunting bellows: There are those who believe that the jihadis are a clear and present threat to our civilization. And then there are those who think that the really dangerous folks are the ones—like Oriana Fallaci and Pope Benedict XVI—who warn us about the clear and present threat.

 

You can slot Madeleine Bunting of The Guardian into the second category. She sees the Pope and Fallaci as the offending parties, dangerous “Islamophobes” needlessly arousing the devout:

 

…Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, he (the Pope) said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." It was a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence, a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events (a fact that still eludes too many westerners). Even more bewildering is the fact that his choice of quotation from Manuel II Paleologos, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was so insulting of the Prophet. Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable. What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad. Given the scale of the offence, the carefully worded apology, actually, gives little ground; he recognises that Muslims have been offended and that he was only quoting, but there is no regret at using such an inappropriate comment or the deep historic resonances it stirs up.

 

By an uncanny coincidence the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died last week. No one connected the two events, but the Pope had already run into controversy in Italy by inviting the rabid Islamophobe to a private audience just months ago. This is the journalist who published a bestseller in 2001 which amounted to a diatribe of invective against Islam. This is the woman who was only too happy to fling out comments such as "Muslims breed like rats" and "the increasing presence of Muslims in Italy and Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." At the time of her papal audience, Fallaci's ranting against Islam had landed her in court and there was outrage at the Pope's insensitive invitation. The Pope refused to backtrack and insisted the meeting was purely "pastoral".

 

Put last week's lecture in Bavaria and the Fallaci audience alongside his vocal opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, and the picture isn't pretty. On one of the biggest and most volatile issues of our day - the perceived clash between the west and the Muslim world - the Pope seems to have abdicated his papal role of arbitrator, and taken up the arms in a rerun of a medieval fantasy.

 

An elderly Catholic nun has already been killed in Somalia, perhaps in retaliation for the Pope's remarks; churches have been attacked in the West Bank. How is this papal stupidity going to play out in countries such as Nigeria, where the tensions between Catholics and Muslims frequently flare into riots and death? Or other countries such as Pakistan, where tiny Catholic communities are already beleaguered? Or the Muslim minorities in Catholic countries such as the Philippines - how comfortable do they feel this week?...

 

Personally, I never cottoned to that “breeding like rats” analogy; being Jewish and mindful of history, I have an aversion to comparisons involving vermin. However, I think the Pope has (and Fallaci had) a far clearer grasp of reality—and who’s responsible for the problems—than do the bloviating Bunting and her ilk.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments (1)

 

“Big Love” in Gaza: Mark MacKinnon has another of his “heart-warming” human interest stories about Arab enemies of Israel. Today he files a report from Gaza, a place where a good man is hard to find because so many of them have self-selected for a chance at winning a Darwin award. The man shortage has meant that a lot of never-married women, as well as widows of “martyrs” (men “who have died fighting Israel,” explains Malarkey) have been consigned to a lifetime of loneliness. But now these women can have a shot at finding happiness by enrolling in program which matches them with married men.

 

Ah, ain’t that sweet.

 

Such arrangements are possible in Hamastan, where, under sharia law, men are allowed to have up to four wives, and the advantages are many. For one, it allows the widows to get out of the house and “move on.” For another, it has the advantage of “keeping her away from sin,” always a concern in a culture which situates a family’s honour between the legs of its womenfolk.

 

Then there’s the “positive side effect” the program is having on “revitalizing” pre-existing marriages in Gaza. It seems wives are striving that much harder to please their hubbies, lest they take on a second, or third, or fourth wife.

Some wives, however, are resigned to the inevitable and are even keen, writes Malarkey, to participate in the selection process:

But other women have come in with their husbands to peruse the applications and photographs on file, Mr. Tamboura said. "We encourage women to participate with their husbands in choosing the second wife so that they can live together as sisters."

Mr. Abu Samaha and Ms. Kafarneh are contemplating exactly such a future. The 45-year-old Mr. Abu Samaha, a shop owner and member of the militant Islamic Jihad movement, already has a wife and seven children. He said he applied to al-Falah because he was having "big problems" with his wife.

Things have smoothed out since then, he said, and he recently introduced Ms. Kafarneh to his current wife. Asked how the meeting went, Ms. Kafarneh stifled a laugh before responding obliquely, "I am capable of living with another woman."

A marriage made in Heaven, I’d say. Just watch the fur fly, though, when their periods synchronize and they both have PMS.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments (1)

 

Clash of monotheisms: Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Cardinal in charge of the Catholic Church’s ecumenical relations, explains to Der Spiegel Online something that should be—but isn’t necessarily—obvious, especially in light of the ongoing Papal fracas. That is, “Islam is a different culture.”

 

Gee, ya think?

 

SPIEGEL: Cardinal, are you surprised by the intense reaction of Muslims worldwide to the pope's speech in Regensburg?

Kasper: Because the Christian faith constitutes a voluntary personal act, the pope has every right to address the justifiable concerns of the Enlightenment: the concept of universal human rights, religious freedom and the distinction between religion and politics. After all, the Catholic Church is a world church and more of a global player today than ever before.

SPIEGEL: Which means that conflicts with other religions are apparently inevitable.

Kasper: The conflict with Islam has, after all, existed throughout European history, which is what the pope was pointing out. The encounter with Islam now seems to be entering a new phase. Many have called it a 'clash of civilizations.' But this phrase must be handled with great care to prevent it from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The alternative to conflict is called dialogue. This is the option the churches choose, and it's also what the pope favors. We want a peaceful difference of opinion, which, of course, is based on reciprocity. But one shouldn't harbor any illusions over the difficulties this involves.

SPIEGEL: Why is dialogue with Islam so difficult for the Catholic Church?

Kasper: There is no such thing as one Islam. The Koran is ambiguous and Islam is not a monolithic entity. The distinction between radical Islam and moderate Muslims is important, as are the differences between Sunnis and Shiites, and between militant and mystical Islam. Islam in the Arab world coexists with Indonesian, Pakistani and Turkish Islam. There is limited solidarity, even within the Arab world. Muslims living among us (in Germany) haven't managed to build an organization that represents all Muslims. Such an organization could protect us against irrational fantasies driven by fear, fantasies that completely demonize Islam. But it is difficult, under the current circumstances, to find representative counterparts to talk with.

SPIEGEL: Do you think a dialogue on equal footing is possible?

Kasper: One cannot be naïve when engaging in this dialogue. Islam undoubtedly deserves respect. It has some things in common with Christianity, such as Abraham as a common progenitor, and the belief in only one God. But Islam developed in opposition to orthodox Christianity from the very start, and it considers itself superior to Christianity. So far, it has only been tolerant in places where it is in the minority. Where it is the majority religion, Islam does not recognize religious freedom, at least not as we understand it. Islam is a different culture. This doesn't mean that it's an inferior culture, but it is a culture that has yet to connect with the positive sides of our modern Western culture: religious freedom, human rights and equal rights for women. These shortcomings are one reason so many Muslims feel such frustration that often turns into hatred and violence against the West, which is despised as being godless and decadent. Suicide attacks are the actions of losers who have nothing left to lose. In this case, Islam serves as a mask, a cover for desperation and nihilism, but not for religion.

SPIEGEL: In which direction do you believe Islam is developing?

Kasper: One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn't confuse desire with reality. How should Europe behave? Europe sees itself as a liberal-minded society. It has no desire to be, nor can it be, a "Christian club. But Europe's experiment with multiculturalism, or the side-by-side existence of different cultures, has failed throughout the continent. Integration requires a minimum basis of shared values, that is, a culture of mutual tolerance and respect -- in other words, what constitutes the heart of European culture. This is why integration is not possible without excluding those who do not recognize this culture. Those who are unprepared to demonstrate tolerance cannot expect or even demand tolerance for themselves.

SPIEGEL: What kind of Europe does the church want?

Kasper: A Europe that qualifies its own values is not attractive in the eyes of Muslims. Europe must conduct itself as a strong partner, both intellectually and spiritually, and it must be convinced of its own advantages. This is the only way we will gain respect. Only a Europe that is conscious of its own values can be both an economically strong and a morally and intellectually respected partner, and thereby extend its hospitality to others. It's a cultural disgrace that we are forced to identify no-go areas for foreigners...

 

The Cardinal’s comments reminded me of the opening line of L.P. Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.”

 

I’d rewrite it as follows: Islam is foreign religion. They do things differently there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:46 | link | comments (1)

 

Scary beliefs: Aaron Sorkin, creator of the now defunct TV show “The West Wing” has a new show that’s about to debut on NBC. I haven’t seen it yet, but here’s part of a Yahoo! review by someone named Brent Bozell III.

 

Oh, and by the way—I’ve altered one crucial word (the word appears several times). See if you can guess which one it is:

NBC's "CRAZY MUSLIMS" SHOW

That's the central plot twist in the premiere of the new NBC drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," created by "West Wing" producer-writer Aaron Sorkin. The show goes behind the scenes of a fictional sketch-comedy program resembling "Saturday Night Live" at a fictional network called UBS. The censors at UBS have scratched a skit titled "Crazy Muslims," and now all hell will break loose. We're never shown the skit, but we're told repeatedly that it's demonstrably hilarious.

Sorkin uses his first script to throw sharp knives and rusty razors at the Americans who've lobbied for less filthy television. The show begins with an improbable "standards and practices" censor telling the producer of the fictional "SNL" that he can't run "Crazy Muslims" because "what do you want me to say to the 50 million people who are gonna go out of their minds as soon as it airs?" The producer cracks wise: "Well, first of all, you can tell 'em we average 9 million households, so at least 41 million of them are full of crap. Second, you can tell 'em that living where there's free speech means sometimes you're gonna get offended."

But Hollywood writers know that in a free-speech society, people are free to denounce Hollywood's shows when they are vile and disgusting. There's also a remarkable double standard at work here. While denouncing the free-speech rights of "crazy Muslims," Hollywood exercises its own restrictions, zealously avoiding on camera the many social taboos -- smoking cigarettes, say -- to which it subscribes.

What Hollywood likes is having the almighty power to offend -- to "challenge" society, as they like to describe it -- freely. But only some people are sought out for offending. For every supposedly crazy parent who worries about sex, violence and smutty talk on TV, perhaps there's another supposedly crazy parent who worries about different offenses, such as Twinkie commercials or scenes with cool, beautiful people smoking cigarettes. But those parents don't get mocked by scriptwriters. It is those with religious objections who get singled out.

But Sorkin wasn't done lecturing. When his skit is axed, the outraged fictional "SNL" producer bounds onto the stage and unleashes a lecture on live television. It's what Sorkin has probably wanted to say about network executives (and their alleged overreaction to those crazy Muslims) many times: "The two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott." Sorkin was so impressed with his own insult that it reruns later in the show in fictional news clips…

Did you guess which word I changed? Of course you did, because not only do you know that mainstream TV would never, ever air a show denouncing “crazy Muslims”—who needs the agita of death threats and rampaging hoards?—but because you also know that La-La-Land is in the grip of a collective delusion that the really crazy scary religious people out there are the ones who follow that “angry” Jewish guy in the sandals.

 

Must be because of all those Evangelical suicide bombers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:40 | link | comments

 

“That’s a real good thing that Islam did!”: The Daily Telegraph (Australia) details some of the “peaceful” ways in which adherents of an inherently peaceful religion have expressed dismay with the Pope’s contention that their faithful may be prone to violence:

MUSLIM fanatics burned an effigy of the Pope, a Catholic nun was shot dead and terrorist organisation al-Qaeda called for holy war as protesters against Benedict XVI's comments linking Islam with violence resorted to just that.

Elderly Italian nun Sister Leonella was shot at a children's hospital in the Islamist-controlled Somali capital in an attack linked to the Pope's comments last week linking Islam to violence.

Two gunman entered the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital in Mogadishu's Huriwa District on Sunday and ambushed the nun, opening fire with pistols before killing a Somali bodyguard and escaping in the ensuing confusion, witnesses said.

In the Shi'ite city of Basra in Iraq, about 150 demonstrators demanding an apology by the Pope burnt his effigy. The agitators also burned German, US, and Israeli flags.

"No to aggression! We gagged the Pope!," the angry crowd chanted.

The protest was organised by supporters of hardline Shi'ite cleric Mahmoud Al Hasani, who demanded the Pope and the Vatican be put on trial under UN Security Council resolutions.

Pope Benedict has come under fierce criticism and demands from Muslim leaders worldwide to retract his remarks made in Germany last Tuesday, in which he quoted an obscure mediaeval text that criticised some teachings of the prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman".

On Sunday, the Pope said he was "deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address . . . which were considered offensive to Muslims."

He stressed the passages he quoted last Tuesday "do not in any way express my personal thought".

"I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect," he said.

No dice, Benedict. The faithful are still too aggrieved for that kind of appeasement—it’s nowhere near abject enough:

Iraqi-based al-Qaeda operatives posted an internet statement condemning the Pope and reiterating it would wage jihad.

"We say to the servant of the cross (the pope): Wait for defeat . . . We say to infidels and tyrants: Wait for what will afflict you. We will smash the cross . . . you will have no choice (but) Islam or death," the Mujahideen consultative council said.

And there’s only one way to counter accusuations of violent tendencies that haven't been followed by sufficient dhimmi-ish groveling—with more violence, of course:

Two other armed groups in Iraq, Jaish al-Mujahideen and Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya, have already threatened the Vatican with reprisals.

Catholic churches were immediately attacked on the West Bank and warnings were posted by officials in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country…

All I can say is the Pope is really lucky that so far he hasn’t been thought into the cornfield.

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

 

Khartoum’s “disproportionate” murder spree: Remember all that blather about Israel’s “disproportionate response” in Lebanon? Funny how the media seem a lot less exercised about a far more “disproportionate response”—and one that’s been going on a whole lot longer than the brief contretemps in Hezbollahland this past summer. The disproportion to which I’m referring, of course, is the response of Khartoum’s Islamist government, which, seven years ago, let loose a slew of Arab “devils on horseback” (the literal meaning of “Janjaweed”). The devils, who have a penchant for using low-tech weapons, like machetes, are believed to have butchered 200,000—I repeat, 200,000—black Africans, most of them other Muslims.

 

The Times Online has a capsule portrait of the situation in Darfur, a situation which threatens to become another Rwanda-like bloodbath.

 

AIR attacks preceded the torching of Darfur villages after an insurrection in 2003. Tens of thousands were killed, more than 200,000 fled into Chad and two million were left homeless. They believe Sudan’s authorities are now preparing to finish them off.

Officially the Government of President al-Bashir is airlifting troops into the western province to replace an ill-equipped African Union force. He has rejected a UN resolution calling for a fully fledged peacekeeping force to take over and is moving in 10,000 of his forces to “ensure stability”. Independent sources say that he will send in far more.

Khartoum had armed Arab tribes to suppress the 2003 rebellion, led largely by three black African tribes, the Fur, the Zaghawa and the Masalit. The area’s 6.5 million inhabitants are overwhelmingly Muslim, but the Africans, by tradition farmers, have been marginalised and had sought greater representation and autonomy from the Arab-dominated central administration.

Mr Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup by hardline Islamic army officers. responded by exploiting enmities with the largely nomadic Arab tribes, who constitute 10 per cent of the population. The Janjaweed fighters (the term is loosely translated as “devils on horseback”) were given free rein to rape, slaughter and pillage.

It is believed that 200,000 people may have been killed. Thousands died of disease and hunger in makeshift camps.

In May President Bashir signed a peace deal with a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army dominated by the Zaghawa tribe. Its leader, Minni Minawi, is now a presidential adviser. The army and Mr Minawi’s faction are poised for a joint offensive against the rebel groups, many of whom are holed up in their Jebel Marra mountain stronghold.

I know it’s unfair to generalize about these things, but it seems to me that whenever the Arabs show up in places like Sudan and Afghanistan, there’s bound to be lots of slicing, dicing, raping, pillaging and other such piratical pursuits.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments

 

Herpetology: Tony Blair may or may not be “Bush’s poodle” (I say not), but reptilian French President Jacques Chirac could well be described as the mullahs’ pet iguana. From CNN:

French President Jacques Chirac has said he believes a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis can be found without resorting to U.N. sanctions.

"I believe that dialogue still is open ... there is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction," Chirac told CNN in an exclusive interview.

The U.N. Security Council demanded that Iran suspend it uranium enrichment program by August 31 or face the possibility of economic sanctions. Iran missed that deadline but has said it would consider temporarily suspending its program as a condition for beginning talks with the United States.

The U.S., which has refused to rule out military action against Iran, last week said it was doubtful Tehran's latest offer was serious.

Diplomats from the five permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany, are to meet during this week's General Assembly session in New York to consult about a sanctions resolution.

Chirac said thy (sic) although international efforts to urge Iraq to comply had so far failed to bear fruit, he believed that negotiations remained the way forward.

"I remain convinced that dialogue is the only way that we can come up with a positive result," he said.

"And I very much hope that we will be bale to come up with a solution that will enable us to avoid any sort of conflict.

"I am always and have always been favorable to a negotiated solution. I believe that dialogue still is open ... there is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction. I very much hope that dialogue will get us out of this crisis and I believe it will."…

Yeah, “Iggy,” ‘cause there’s nothing the mullahs like more than chewing the fat with venal infidels. How else are they going to keep their Teheran Project on schedule?

Update: Gee, you don’t think “Iggy” Chirac’s calls for “dialogue” could have anything to do with this, do you?

 

Update: Here’s a good one--“Iggy” says if the UN finds it absolutely necessary to impose sanctions on Iran, they shouldn’t be unduly punitive.

 

Because, that would be, like, tres harsh, and might affect the flow of all those shekels the mullahs are sending his way.

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

 

Harsh truths: George Jonas has a column in the National Post today about recently deceased Islam-excoriater, Oriana Fallaci. While Jonas admires Fallaci for her fearlessness and passion, he criticizes one of her more unpopular and inflammatory assertions. “…Fallaci also seemed to posit a far more dubious equation: Islamism=Islam,” he writes. “It was probably untrue and minimally premature.”

 

I dunno. When I read the following, I can’t help but think that Fallaci had a pretty good handle on things:

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group led by al Qaeda vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross" in response to a recent speech by Pope Benedict on Islam that sparked anger across the Muslim world.

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement.

It was posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Pope Benedict said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a Medieval quotation on Islam and violence. The remarks outraged Muslims and triggered protests and attacks on churches in several Arab towns.

Another militant group in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, also vowed to fight Christians in retaliation.

"You will only see our swords until you go back to God's true faith Islam," it said in a separate Internet statement..

Fallaci was pointing out something that not even Jonas seems willing to face: Islamism isn’t an aberration of Islam; it’s simply the latest incarnation of the jihad (as anti-Zionism is the latest incarnation of antisemitism).

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

 

Israel’s best EU friend: Sometimes when I take my overly-exuberant retriever for a walk, I ask myself the question, “Just who’s walking who here?”

 

Well, that’s a question that all those who consider Tony Blair to be Bush’s poodle might want to ask themselves. As Caroline Glick points out, when it comes to Israel it’s Blair who’s been the leader and Bush his compliant lap dog. From JWR:

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe.

And he's not a very good friend.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous — view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else, into one of the cognitive foundations of the US war on Islamic terror. This foundation was first enunciated at Bush's address Sept. 20 before the joint session of Congress where he identified "every terrorist with global reach" — that is every terrorist that isn't part of the Palestinian Authority — as enemies of the US.

Later, Blair was a principal force behind Bush's move to abandon the guidelines for dealing with the Palestinians that he enunciated in his speech on June 24, 2002. In that address, Bush stipulated that the Palestinians needed to transform themselves from a society that supported terror into one that combated terror in order to receive US support for Palestinian statehood. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad to Coalition forces in April 2003, Blair convinced Bush to accept the Road Map plan for Palestinian statehood. The Road Map, which effectively locks in US support for Palestinian statehood irrespective of Palestinian terrorism and radicalism, represented a practical abandonment of the positions that Bush set out in his June 24, 2002 address.

During his visit to the region this week, keeping with his studied habit, Blair ignored the fact that the Iranian-backed Hamas government was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority by a large majority of Palestinians. He ignored the fact that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's has voiced support for the abduction and continued captivity of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit and for the continuation of the terror war against Israel. He ignored the fact that rather than working to overthrow the Hamas government, Abbas has begged Hamas to allow Fatah to join their government. To this end, Abbas has accepted Hamas's policy guidelines that reject recognizing Israel's right to exist and commit all Palestinians to unite in their war against Israel. Ignoring all these inconvenient facts, Blair called on the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to renew negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the Road Map.

And yet, for all this, Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe today. He is Israel's best friend because, as opposed to all his colleagues in both Britain and the EU, Blair at least recognizes that the global jihad is a threat to the free world and that the cost of not fighting the forces of jihad will be the loss of our freedom…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:51 | link | comments

 

This just in—Pope not infallible: That’s merely one of many “insights” in an editorial in The New Nation, which bills itself as “Bangladesh’s independent news source” (to differentiate, I guess, from the country's many dependent ones). Here are some other choice observations, along the same lines:

 

Pope Benedict XVI has possibly brought the Papacy that he represents to the lowest ever level in the esteem of the conscious section of people, especially the Muslims, all over the world by his latest remarks about Islam and its Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Benedict cited an obscure Medieval text that characterises some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman"-comments some experts took as a signal that the Vatican was staking a more demanding stance for its dealings with the Muslim world.

Possibly there is little to be surprised by the fact that Muslim leaders from around the world demanded a personal apology from the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended the German-born pope, saying his message had been misunderstood. "It is an invitation to dialogue between religions and the Pope has explicitly urged this dialogue, which I also endorse and see as urgently necessary," she said on Friday.

According to agency reports, the Rev. Robert Taft, a specialist in Islamic affairs at Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute, said it was unlikely Benedict miscalculated how some Muslims would receive his speech.

"The message he is sending is very, very clear," Taft said. "Violence in the name of faith is never acceptable in any religion and that (the Pope) considers it his duty to challenge Islam and anyone else on this." The pope spoke this during his visit to his native Germany.

If one looks at the pope's observation, two things become distinctly clear. Benedict has used an obscure mediaeval Christian emperor to term the Prophet of Islam bad. That was the time of Crusades when Europe was in the words of historians in the 'Dark Age' and things temporal were subordinated to things eternal to the extent the priests even had developed the practice of selling certificates for the dead to go to heaven.

In sharp contrast the religion of Islam proclaimed a balance between earthly and heavenly lives one thousand years before the renaissance and the reformation in Europe.

The second thing is a serious lack of understanding of Islam which stands for peace, equality and tolerance. Those who resort to violence cannot necessarily be categorised as belonging to the faith of Islam. The Iraq war which is now being rejected as military adventurism based on lies was not started by people belonging to the Islamic faith…

 

You’re dern tootin’, Mr. Editorialist. It was started by Great Satan hisself, and will soon be corrected once his chief minion, a Republican, has been exchanged for a Democrat.

 

I don’t know if I can go along with the claim about striking “a balance between earthly and heavenly lives,” though. With 72,  count ‘em, 72, virgins promised each shahid who manages to die for the sake of Islam, I’d say the scale was definitely weighted in favour of the Afterlife.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:48 | link | comments

 

Coitus, interuptus: It looks like that marriage of convenience between Mahmoud “Stinky” Abbas and Islamil “the Horrible” Haniyah may not come to pass. The hitch in their getting hitched: Haniyah refuses to put a sock in it about wanting to kill all the Jews, while Abbas wants him to keep such genocidal notions to himself.

 

Too bad, because I was about to send them a lovely wedding present. (I hear they were registered at Thugs ‘R’ Us.)

 

Update: Hold everything. It looks like the nuptials may be on after all.

 

Time to rush out and buy that Rosenthal china and Crystallnacht they registered for.

 

Update: In honour of the Stinky-Horrible nuptials I’ve updated that 60s Girl Group classic, Chapel of Love:

 

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Gee, they really hate Jews so they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel of hate.

 

Fall is here,

They-ey-ey’ve stopped their row.

Buried the hatchet,

At least for now.

And soon they’ll say

A solemn vow

So the money starts flowin’ once again.

 

That’s why they’re

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Gee, they really hate Jews so they’re

Gonna get ma-a-a-ried.

Goin’ to the chapel of hate.

 

Birds will sing,

The-ha-ha-ha Arabs will crow

Knowin’ that soon,

The loot will flow.

The gravy train

Will be a go

And they’ll get all their jizya once again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:04 | link | comments

 

More grovelling, please: It looks like the Pope’s “apology” isn’t going to be enough to satisfy some aggrieved believers. They’re demanding a much more fulsome and abject “apology.” From Times Online Breaking News:

 

Muslim leaders in the Middle East have demanded further apologies from Pope Benedict XVI for controversial remarks about Islam, as attacks on Christian churches continued in the West Bank. Mahmoud Ashour, the former deputy of Cairo's Al-Azhar, the Sunni Arab world's most powerful institution, said the Pope's apology was not enough, telling Al-Arabiya TV: "He should apologise because he insulted the beliefs of Islam. He must apologise in a frank way and say he made a mistake."The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood took a softer stance, saying the Islamic political group's relations with Christians should remain "good, civilised and co-operative".

 

I say the Pope should make this type of “apology” when the faithful agree to “apologize” for all those offensive passages in the Koran—the ones encouraging true believers to slice-and-dice the infidels, especially the Jews, who are described as being “apes and pigs.”

 

In other words, he should “apologize” after Moo Jihad has launched Armageddon and Hell has officially frozen over.

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

 

The Pope’s mistake: As David Warren explains, the Pope’s error was in striving for “nuance” (“nuance” being something that, as everyone knows, only works with Democrats and other lefties):

The BBC appears to have been quickest off the mark, to send around the world in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, and Malay, word that the Pope had insulted the Prophet of Islam, during an address in Bavaria.

He had not, of course. Pope Benedict XVI had instead quoted, carefully and without approval, remarks by the learned 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaeologus, in debate with a 14th-century learned Persian. He was trying to provide a little historical depth to present controversies about the meaning of "jihad", and his very point was that on their own respective theological terms, Muslims and Christians were bound to talk past each other today, in the same ways as they did seven centuries ago. But in the most conscientious media reports I have seen, even the Byzantine emperor is quoted out of context.

Here is the point Pope Benedict was making, also in the words of that learned Byzantine emperor, speaking on the eve of one of the many sieges of Constantinople:

"God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats. ... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."

It is a point the Greek-educated and Christian emperor takes as self-evident, but which is not self-evident to a theology that holds God entirely beyond human reason, and says He may command whatever He commands, including conversion by force should He so will. As the Pope said, it is a conflict that stabs us once again today: Does God act with "logos"? (This is the Greek word for "reason" as well as "word") How do we defend this very Catholic (and Orthodox) idea outside the Church, where our own theological assumptions are not shared?..

To answer Warren’s query, apparently, we don’t—defend it, that is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:26 | link | comments

 

Harpoon’s ABCs: Harpoon Siddiqui, that cunning fox, continues to harp on Stephen Harper. Specifically, on Harper being like George W. Bush’s Mini-Me, and Canada, under Harper, being a member of what Harpoon calls “America’s B team.”

 

And what Canadian in his right mind (or at least, what Canadian who’s a regular reader of the Toronto Star) wants to belong to Bush’s second string? (In the U.K., Tony Blair is accused of being Bush’s “poodle”; here in Canada, Harper is described as being a member of Bush’s farm team. Such criticisms say more about the national character of those lobbing them than they do about Bush—the “poodle” comment demonstrating how besotted the British are with their dogs (although these days they aren’t too enamoured of “Fifi” Blair); the B team comment demonstrating Canada’s inherent inferiority complex, the “mouse” to the U.S. “elephant,” in Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s memorable description.

 

But I digress. For those with a strong stomach, or for all you masochists out there, here’s a taste of Wile E. Siddiqui’s spiel:

 

Y ou didn't have to go any further than the blanket coverage of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 to know the great divide between the United States and the rest of the world, and also between those Americans and Canadians, like Stephen Harper, who support George W. Bush's geopolitics and those who don't, namely, the majority of Americans and Canadians.

 

While each of the 2,973 victims of 9/11 needs to be remembered, no less worthy of commemoration are those sacrificed in the failed war on terrorism:

 

·  The 2,670 Americans, and the 42,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq.

·  The 16 Canadian soldiers killed since May in Afghanistan.

·  The tens of thousands of Afghan civilians killed, maimed or displaced since the toppling of the Taliban five long years ago.

·  The hundreds of Palestinians killed and the hundreds of thousands starving in the Israeli-occupied territories, now with Canadian complicity.

 

These Muslim victims were, and are, not all terrorists. Not to see the connection between their tragedy and the Muslim anger around the world is to be obtuse or ideologically blind.

 

If the war in Lebanon showed how closely Harper follows Bush's script, last week provided further proof.

 

Bush linked 9/11 to Iraq, and Harper linked it to Afghanistan.

 

Bush said, "We have Al Qaeda on the run," and Harper said, "The Taliban is on the run."

Bush said, "The worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," and Harper said "The horrors of the world will not go away if we turn a blind eye to them."

 

Bush said, "We are now in the early hours of the struggle between tyranny and freedom," and Peter MacKay — clumsily wooing Condoleezza Rice, as Canadians cringed — said, "The fight against terrorism will be a long-term campaign to provide greater security of our citizens and our way of life."

 

Bush exploited the grief of victims' families for political gain and Harper did the same.

There's additional evidence of the growing "Bushification of Canada," as Bob Rae, the Liberal leadership hopeful, has called it.

 

While Harper, like Bush, posits the Afghan mission as essential to the security of the West, not enough NATO nations are convinced to pony up more troops.

Even the British commander in the field expressed skepticism when talking to a Canadian MP as early as May, as reported by the Star's Bill Schiller.

 

While Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney, like Bush, see their war on terrorism as the equivalent of fighting fascism, many of our key allies don't.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin used the 9/11 events to distance themselves from Bush. Even the British Conservatives did so.

Noting that anti-Americanism is spreading like wildfire, Tory leader David Cameron said:

"We'll serve neither our own, nor America's nor the world's interests, if we're seen as America's unconditional associate in every endeavour. Our duty is to our own citizens, and to our own conception of what's right for the world. We should be solid but not slavish in our friendship with America."

 

But our Conservative Prime Minister bows to Bush, from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Israel…

 

And here’s the letter I sent to the Star:

 

Reading Haroon Siddiqui’s latest column was a lot like watching Sesame Street. Siddiqui offers a political alphabet lesson, attempting to teach us that there’s an “A” team—the U.S. and Israel—and a “B” team—those nations, like Canada, which serve the “A” team’s interests instead of their own.

 

Unfortunately, Siddiqui seems to have left out a few letters, including “C”, for “capitulation,” which is what he appears to be counselling; and “D”, for “democracy,” which is what Canada has in common with Israel, the U.S. and other freedom-loving nations around the world.

 

The truth is that when it comes to defending our freedoms there is no “A” team and “B” team. There is only one team, indivisible: call it the “D” team. And that’s the only team that Canadians who cherish their way of life should be willing to be part of.

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

 

Unspeakable pundits: Political journalist Richard Reeves is the latest dhimmified pundit to wash his hands of the Zionist entity. And he does it in the sneakiest way possible, by quoting the words of someone else, in this case, a purportedly well-respected New York publisher named Peter Osnos. From RealClear Politics:

…"Nobody wants to talk about it, but nothing works anymore for Israel," Osnos said later. "The negotiated settlement narrative that began with Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel in 1977 has been shattered. You have to begin with the demographic facts. Even Israel will have a majority of Arabs within 15 years."

Osnos, who became a vice president of Random House and then founded his own publishing house, Public Affairs, writes his own column, focusing on media coverage of foreign affairs, distributed by the Century Foundation in New York. This is part of what he has written over the past month:

"What we must finally recognize is that the rage of the Middle East -- Arab and Jew, Sunni and Shiite, fundamentalist and pragmatist -- is intractable as other world conflicts are not. ... The historic and political case for Israel's place in the midst of a deeply volatile and insecure region where hundreds of millions are taught to despise it is no different now than it was at the time Israel was created in 1948. ...

"The optimistic view is that Arab pragmatists emboldened (and simultaneously intimidated) by their radical brethren's sense of victory may now be willing again to negotiate broader peace. The pessimists say that Israel is running out of time to secure long-term peace. ... Israel will mark its 60th anniversary in 2008. But it remains surrounded by countries and movements that at worst are sworn to its destruction and at best merely despise it. Nations are not immutable. The Soviet empire marked its 60th anniversary in 1977. Fourteen years later, it was gone, a parenthesis of time in Russian history. ...

"Much of the Western world seems no longer to believe, more than a half-century removed from the Holocaust in Europe, that civilization owes the Jews a homeland anymore. ... The image of Israel has gradually been corroded by the consequences of 40 years of occupation on the West Bank and Gaza. The country is a vibrant democracy with a deeply imbeddded dream of peaceful co-existence with its neighbors. Yet when security and dominance of its borders are at stake, Israel suspends the pleasantries. The image of Israel in the rest of the world focuses on that ferocity."

The bottom line is that, sadly, the survival of Israel depends not on its own valor and might or justice of cause, but on the friendship and support of one friend, the United States. And its friend has made all of these things worse by invading Iraq, spreading ever more chaos and hatred throughout the Muslim world.

Ironically, some of the American planners thought our weapons of shock and awe would make Israel more secure. In fact, our quick-strike aggression has done the opposite, and in many ways. As Osnos pointed out, Israel is richer and stronger, but in terms of security it is no better off than it was in 1948.

The same could be said of the Jews of Europe, circa 1938; that is, that in terms of security, they were no better off that year--and in fact, were far worse off--than we were during earlier eras of Jew-hatred. By now it should be clear to all that, by insisting on the inevitability of a second Holocaust--what he calls "speaking the unspeakable"--Reeves and his miserable ilk continue to help lay the groundwork for one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:49 | link | comments

 

P.A. ways: The suggestion that there may be something inherently violent about their religion has once again inflamed the faithful. In the Palestinian Authority, for example, that area of the planet most singularly deserving of sovereignty (or so we are constantly being told), some true believers have underscored their displeasure with the Pope’s remarks by fire-bombing a number of churches in Gaza and the West Bank.

 

The aggrieved, who, clearly, are in the grip of overwhelming emotions over which they have little control, see no apparent contradiction in trying to refute accusations of their being violent by, um, going completely bananas.

 

You would think that someone, somewhere would take note of this lack of self-control and suggest that it betokens an irrationality and immaturity that makes these people singularly unfit for nationhood, at least for the time being.

 

Oh, wait; I guess someone just did.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:31 | link | comments (1)

 

Signs of the times: In the aftermath of the Montreal shootings, people are asking the usual questions: Why didn’t anyone notice that Kimveer Gill, the 25-year old shooter who loved guns, violence video games and gruesome websites, was a ticking time bomb? Why didn’t anyone do anything to stop him? What steps, if any, can we as a society take to protect ourselves from the Kimveer Gills of the world?

 

Troubling questions all, ones which an article entitled “Are rampage killings a sign of the times?” in the Globe and Mail attempts to answer. In a sidebar to the article, a professor of psychology who specializes in aggression in children and adults offers parents and others the “tragic warning signs” that could tip them off that there’s a problem. The signs are:

 

• Resentment. Young people with virulent contempt or cynicism.

·       Arrogance. …Dr. Peterson says the kids behind the killings at Columbine High School were "above everything -- they were above their own lives, they were certainly above other people's lives."

·       A lack of responsibility. The need to blame others.

·       Either unusual isolation or association with a pathological peer group.

·       An obsession, above and beyond typical curiosity, with violence.

·       A refusal to take part in constructive activity. Not just schoolwork or hobbies -- anything.

·       Drug or alcohol use. "Enough that the long-term trajectory starts to look dismal," Dr. Peterson says.

·       Sudden declines from earlier "plateaus of performance" at school.

It strikes me that the first five, and possibly the sixth, of these signs could also describe the kind of pathology at work when, say, rioters take to the streets because a Danish newspaper has published some controversial cartoons, or because a Pope opines that killing in the name of religion is not the way to find favour with God.

Dr. Peterson says that the most “worrisome” items on the list are the "triad" of contempt, resentment and arrogance. "That's pretty much the cornerstone of real, non-organic pathology," he says.

Just so.

For whatever reason, no one paid any attention to the tragic warning signs that Kimveer Gill was about to erupt. In a similar way, for some time now too many people have failed to heed the tragic warning signs of the mass pathology that’s been let loose in our world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments

 

The Pope caves: The faithful demanded an apology and, as expected, the Pope, unable to withstand the pressure and fearful of their wrath, has delivered. From BBC News:

 

Pope Benedict XVI has said he is sorry that a speech in which he referred to Islam has offended Muslims.

In a statement read out by a senior Vatican official, the Pope said he respected Islam and hoped Muslims would understand the true sense of his words.

 

In Tuesday's speech the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

The remarks prompted protests from Muslims around th