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

 

Canada caves: It looks like Harpoon may be getting his wish (see post below). After months of standing up to the forces of darkness, Canada’s P.M. appears to be signalling that he's at least willing to entertain the idea of getting with the "new world order" program.

 

But I’m going to let the president of the Canadian Coalition for Democracy, Alistair Gordon, a brave and very funny man, describe the caving. Here’s the press release I just received from the CCD:

 

Canada Joins Running of the Jew at U.N. for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Canukistan*

 

For Immediate Release
 
Toronto, Thursday, November 30, 2006 – The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) is disappointed by the voting of the government of Canada in yesterday's slew of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.

"Canada has again legitimized the use of UN resolutions to demonize one nation, while ignoring the truly serious human rights violations of other member states," said Alastair Gordon, president of CCD. "Until resolutions are applied even-handedly to all UN members, Canada must express its condemnation by voting 'no' on all such resolutions."

In its first 42 years, the UN tabled 370 resolutions condemning Israel and zero resolutions critical of the PLO or any Arab state. When Syria slaughtered 20,000 of its own citizens at Hama in 1982, or when it sponsored the destruction and occupation of Lebanon, or even when Iraq massacred its Kurdish citizens with poison gas, there were no UN resolutions criticizing the perpetrators. In recent years, a handful of resolutions have targeted other Middle Eastern states, but the lion's share is still reserved for Israel.

In October 2005, former Prime Minister Paul Martin referred to "the annual ritual of politicized anti-Israel resolutions" at the UN. In November 2004, Canada's then ambassador to the United Nations, Allan Rock, announced to the General Assembly that "resolutions [against Israel] are often divisive and lack balance." Yet even with this recognition, both our past and present governments' anti-Israel voting pattern has barely changed.

 

The Fourth Committee yesterday tabled nine ritualized resolutions targeting Israel for criticism. Canada voted against Israel on seven, and supported Israel on two. The only change from last year's voting pattern was the change of one abstention to a 'no'.

 

"The Stephen Harper government has taken a number of principled foreign policy positions that Canadians can be proud of. Yet it is choosing to continue the despicable bullying of one nation, a travesty that was  identified by our former Prime Minister and UN ambassador," added Gordon. "Until UN resolutions are an unbiased tool applied equally to all member states, Canada's response to all ritualized anti-Israel resolutions must be NO."

 

* with apologies to Borat

 

No apologies necessary, Al. Borat’s merely a cruder, hairier version of Harpoon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:24 | link | comments (1)

 

Diet aid: I have hit upon the easiest, most effective way to lose weight. Better than Atkins. Better than Jenny Craig. Before sitting down to a meal, read a column by the Toronto Star’s Harpoon Siddiqui. You will become so nauseated that your appetite will disappear for hours.

 

In today’s piece—good for at least five hours’ worth of appetite suppressant—Harpoon crows about Islam’s victory and smugly assures readers that it’s only a matter of time before Prime Minister Stephen Harper is forced to bow down in abject dhimmitude before the might of the Muslim world (as the Pope has done) and acknowledge what Harpoon calls “a new world order.”

 

As Stephen Harper takes satisfaction in the NATO decision to free up a few more troops for deployment in southern Afghanistan, Canada seems oblivious to a major reassessment underway in Washington and elsewhere away from the military and cultural confrontations with the Muslim world.

 

The Pope is making amends in Turkey, dropping his long-standing opposition to its entry into the European Union.

George W. Bush is in Jordan to try and find a political way out of Iraq, where the U.S. military engagement has now lasted longer than it did inWorld War II.

 

His host in Amman, King Abdullah, wants him to help avert a potential civil war in Lebanon, as well as the humanitarian crisis in the Israeli Occupied Territories. The same message was conveyed to Dick Cheney Saturday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who said the Arab-Israeli dispute is "the core issue" in the Middle East.

 

On all three fronts, Washington needs the help of Syria and Iran — something the Iraqi government already understands. Baghdad has just normalized relations with Damascus after a 24-year break, and has been paying heed to Tehran.

 

All this is the exact opposite of what the Bush neo-cons had in mind in launching their war of choice on Iraq. A major oil producer and developed Arab state would be in American hands.

 

Arabs, Palestinians in particular, would be more amenable to American and Israeli dictates, as would Iran and Syria, the patrons of Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel militias.

 

Lebanon, too, now represents the opposite of what Israel had envisaged in invading and pulverizing it last summer. The pro-Western Siniora government is teetering, pushed by the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is also said to be training Shiite militias in Iraq.

 

It is these failed American-Israeli policies that Harper has committed Canada to. While he took pride in boarding Bush's sinking ship, the president is being counselled to bail out, and quickly.

 

A bipartisan Congressional commission, co-chaired by Jim Baker, the veteran diplomat and Republican troubleshooter, is likely to recommend that Bush enlist regional help in managing the crises roiling the Middle East...

 

Yeah, he's a real "troubleshooter," that "Jim" Baker. And the "trouble" he most often likes to "shoot" is that obdurate Jewish entity perched ever-more precariously in the heart of Dar al Islam. And looky at who else Harpoon elicits to "troubleshoot." Why, it’s none other than that Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mr. Peanutbrain hisself, Jimminy “Cricket” Carter, a man who certainly knows a thing or two about the new world order; heck, he helped invent it when he was president, and has been doing his utmost to serve its interests ever since.

 

...In interviews for his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the former president is also rejecting the accepted wisdom (endorsed by Harper as well as the main Liberal leadership candidates) that it's the Palestinians — Hamas, in particular — who are to blame for the lack of progress.

 

"There hasn't been one day of substantive peace negotiations in the last six years," Carter said in one interview. "You can't say the election of Hamas interferes with the peace efforts, because no peace effort has been going on."

 

He noted that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestine interlocutor favoured by both Israel and the U.S., was not called upon to negotiate when he was prime minister nor has he been since being elected president.

 

"The oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories is horrendous," Carter said. "It is one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world.

 

"The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank. Gaza is surrounded by a high wall. There's only two openings in it, one into Israel, which is mostly closed, the other into Egypt. The people there are encapsulated. And the deprivation of basic human rights among the Palestinians is really horrendous."

 

In another interview, Carter said:

 

"A minority of Israelis are perpetrating apartheid on the Palestinian people. It's not based on race. It's not a racist inclination. It is a desire for Palestinian land. Contrary to the United Nations resolutions, contrary to the official policy of the U.S., contrary to the Quartet's so-called road map, contrary to a majority of Israeli people's opinion, this occupation and confiscation and colonization of land in the West Bank is the prime cause of the continuation of violence."...

  

Harpoon touting Jimminy. I think my head has officially exploded.

 

My letter to the Star:

 

It seems almost pointless these days to try to refute the anti-Israel, anti-Western sentiments that Haroon Siddiqui purveys week after week. The big lies—about Israel being a racist apartheid state, about Israel and not Hamas, a regime of intransigent Islamists dedicated to Israel’s demise, being the impediment to progress in the region, about how it is the West, and not those who espouse the ideology of jihad who are responsible for our current world crisis—have been told so often that they are now taken to be truth by those who share Siddiqui’s worldview. I would hope, however, that before people accept these ideas as gospel, they have the presence of mind to ask whose interests will be served by what Siddiqui calls “a new world order.” If they are brave enough—and honest enough—they will be able to see what they stand to lose by making ever-greater accommodations to those forces in the world who revile freedom and democracy, and who seek to bring it down.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments (3)

 

Reality check: Andrew McCarthy advises that it’s long past time to wake up and smell the rancid humus (in a manner of speaking). From NRO: 

This is a war of will. If we lose it, the historians will marvel at how mulishly we resisted understanding the one thing we needed to understand in order to win. The enemy.

In Iraq, we’ve tried to fight the most civilized “light footprint” war of all time. We made sure everyone knew our beef was only with Saddam Hussein, as if he were a one-man militia — no Sunni Baathists supporting him, no Arab terrorists colluding, and no Shiite jihadists hating us just on principle.

No, our war was only with the regime. No need to fight the Iraqis. They, after all, were noble. They would flock to democracy if only they had the chance. And, once they hailed us as conquering heroes, their oil wealth would pay for the whole thing … just 400 billion American dollars ago.

This may be the biggest disconnect of all time between the American people and a war government.

In the wake of 9/11, the American people did not care about democratizing the Muslim world. Or, for that matter, about the Muslim world in general. They still don’t. They want Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors crushed. As for the aftermath, they want something stable that no longer threatens our interests; they care not a wit whether Baghdad’s new government looks like Teaneck’s.

To the contrary, Bush-administration officials — notwithstanding goo-gobs of evidence that terrorists have used the freedoms of Western democracies, including our own, the better to plot mass murder — have conned themselves into believing that democracy, not decisive force, is the key to conquering this enemy.

So deeply have they gulped the Kool-Aid that, to this day, they refuse to acknowledge what is plain to see: While only a small number of the world’s billion-plus Muslims (though a far larger number than we’d like to believe) is willing to commit acts of terrorism, a substantial percentage — meaning tens of millions — supports the terrorists’ anti-West, anti-democratic agenda...

 

“Gulped the Kool-Aid”—heh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:24 | link | comments

 

A turkey of an idea: The usually dependable National Post has an extremely wrong-headed editorial echoing the Pope’s call for Turkey’s entry into the EU. Here’s the paper’s “reasoning” (which to my mind is far from reasonable):

…Turkey is an officially secular nation. Indeed, it applies the division between church and state more strictly than any Western country. It is also a NATO member, a Western ally in the Middle East, a friend to Israel and a loyal partner in the war against terrorism. After over 40 years as an associate member of the European Union, and with an improving human rights record, the country deserves an opportunity for full membership.

That is not to say the Turks' membership application doesn't have its blemishes. For instance, the country is maddeningly stubborn in refusing to admit its genocidal treatment of Armenians during the First World War. Ankara also has shown itself inflexible in its quarrel with the EU over the status of Cyprus, itself an EU member. In particular, Turkey refuses to trade with the Greek-speaking half of the island. This, despite the fact that the EU made it clear more than a year ago that ending this dispute would be a condition for entering formal EU membership talks.

But such matters can be negotiated and should not be allowed to stand in the way of cementing Turkey's place in the Western camp by allowing it into the EU…

I felt compelled to send the following response to the editorial, knowing it was highly unlikely the paper would publish it because I had had something in the letters section last week, and the paper has a policy of requiring two weeks to elapse between the publication of letters by the same person:

Let’s see: at a time when the Muslim population of Western Europe is surging and some cities, like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, will shortly have Muslim majorities; on a Continent where the number of “no-go zones”—places where non-Muslims fear to tread and where civic authorities are incapable of maintaining order (in France alone there are said to be 751 of these sites) are increasingly almost daily; at a juncture in history when the very survival of Western civilization is up in the air—at a time like this, your editorial calls for the EU to allow entry of one of the most populous Muslim nations in the world, a move that would increase the Muslim population of Europe five-fold, to a total of 86 million.

 

My question for your editorialist: are you mad or merely suicidal?

 

True, Turkey is an ostensibly “secular” nation, and ostensibly a friend and ally of the West. But I would suggest that that friendship is superficial and largely expedient. You don’t have to dig too deeply to see that Turkey, which has been secular since Kemal Ataturk threw out the last caliph in 1922, is ruled by Islamists who want to undo Atarturkism, re-establish sharia law and bring back the caliphate. And while Turkey is also an ostensible friend of Israel, it is also a nation where Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a perennial best-seller and hatred of Israel and the Jewish people is pervasive. As well, Turkey is looking to act as the Sunni counterweight to a Shia Iran--a desire that, trust me, does not come out of its “secular” impulses.

 

Finally, I would point out that Europe managed to halt the previous invasion of Islam at the gates of Vienna in 1683. It would be a catastrophe of the first order if, more than 300 years later, the EU willingly lets down its guard and allows Turkey in.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:09 | link | comments (2)

 

A song for the Pope: As sung by a young and not-yet-surgically “enhanced” Michael Jackson:

 

Ben, you want to try and quell the storm

So you’re being very sweet and warm.

Saying, Islam’s really nice,

But please take my advice:

Appeasement doesn’t work.

They still think you’re a jerk.

(Still think you’re a jerk.)

 

Ben, you’re acting like a dhimmi now.

Can’t you see they love to see you bow?

Weakness doesn’t strengthen you.

You know what you should do.

You seem to have a clue.

We hope you still come through.

(Hope that you come through.)

 

Ben, you’re laying it on mighty thick.

Saying Islam’s so “affectionate.”

Such assertions sound quite mad

Especially since jihad’s

As kindly as a snake.

Oh, please, give us a break.

(Please give us a break.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:15 | link | comments

 

Mo’ Mo ‘toons: Jewish residents of a London, Ontario riding where a federal by-election was held on Monday received a surprise in their mailbox: some antisemitic hate ‘toons. They were put there courtesy Canada’s answer to David Duke, Mo Elmasry. Mo’s the excitable fellow who heads up the Canadian Islamic Congress and who once insisted that all Jews are fair game for aggrieved terrorists.

 

Topping chap, that Mo.

 

I heard about the hate story—once, and in an abbreviated version with no mention of Mo—on Ceeb radio Monday morning, but could find no trace of it anywhere else. Until now. It turned up in Ezra Levant’s blog on the Web site of the Western Standard, the magazine he edits. (Ezra’s has had his own run-in with ‘toons. He printed the Danish Mo ‘toons in his magazine, and is being hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission by a disgruntled true believer who took grave offence.)

 

Levant chastises the Canadian media, not only for ignoring the story of hate lit. in London, but for giving props and respect to an outright hate-monger who espouses views that we here in multi-cultist Canada are supposed to deplore:

…I don't think it should be a crime to be a Jew-hater. I don't think it should be a crime to distribute Jew-hating literature. That's part of freedom -- it's a little bit messy, and sometimes people say offensive things.

What I am against, though, is that Elmasry's anti-Semitism is ignored by the mainstream press -- who would crucify any WASP for saying and doing the things that he does. Because he's Muslim, brown-skinned, from Egypt and speaks with an accent, his David Duke act has been given a pass by a press corps that would normally be apoplectic. This is the same guy who told Michael Coren's TV show that any Jew 18 years or older in Israel is fair game for a terrorist attack.

It's not just the media -- even the federal government's grotesque Trudeau Foundation, stacked with Liberal hacks from Marc Lalonde to Alexandre Trudeau, is sponsoring a speech by Elmasry.

So the Trudeau Foundation’s in bed with Elmasry, eh?

 

Can’t say as I’m surprised.

 

Sickened, yes; surprised, no.

 

Just for “fun,” I googled the Trudeau Foundation. Lo and behold, Elmasry spoke at a conference that had a particularly ga-ga theme:

There is no "Islam" and there is no "West"…

‎In the light of international events over the last five years the theme of the third annual ‎Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Conference on Public Policy could not be more timely ‎and relevant: Muslims in Western Societies. Some of the most distinguished minds will ‎share their views in plenary and working group sessions in Vancouver from November ‎‎16 to 18.

The dialogue will focus on the relationships between Muslims and other citizens ‎of Western societies and tackle topics such as religious belief and secularism, ‎multiculturalism, women, political violence and security issues. The Trudeau Foundation ‎aims to generate informed debate and dialogue. The outcomes will be published after the ‎conference.

 

I can’t wait to read how the “distinguished minds” attempt to validate the lie on which the conference was predicated. Should make for some interesting (in the Orwellian sense of the word) reading.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:33 | link | comments (2)

 

A marriage sundered by Borat: Ordinarily I try to avoid posting anything to do with celebrity hijinks (unless they happen to involve Scientology, a creepy and oddly fascinating “religion”). But I found this one too yummy to resist. From The Showbuzz:

 

(CBS) After less than four months of marriage, and a handful of wedding ceremonies, Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock's marriage is already over.

A pal tells the New York Post that Rock's "male insecurity and major anger issues," are to blame and that a big fight over her participation in the film "Borat" caused tension between them.

"(Universal Studio chief ) Ron Meyer held a screening of 'Borat' at his house for a bunch of people, including Pam and Bob (Rock's real name is Robert Richie)," the model's pal tells the Post. "It was the first time Bob had seen the movie, and, well, he didn't like it."

In the film, Sasha Baron Cohen's character, Borat, falls for the "Baywatch" actress and travels the U.S. on a quest to ask her to marry him.

"Bob started screaming at Pam, saying she had humiliated herself and telling her, 'You're nothing but a whore! You're a slut! How could you do that movie?' — in front of everyone. It was very embarrassing," the source said. "Pam thought he could have a sense of humor about the movie. She was in on the gag from the very beginning and loved doing the movie. And on the eve of what was supposed to be a very positive thing, he made it an awful night."

Ever since the outburst, things cooled down between the couple…

 

I can see why. Maybe Pam would have been better off if she’d married Borat instead of Bob.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:39 | link | comments (1)

 

What goes around comes around: Welcome to 1938, folks. All in all, it was a very bad year—not unlike this one. From the American Thinker:

 

“It is 1938; Iran is Germany; and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons.” Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punctuated his speech in Los Angeles earlier this month with that sentence.  It was an effective rhetorical device, conveying both a sense of threat and a sense of urgency.

But 1938 may be relevant in more ways than as a rhetorical device.  Revisiting that year, through Winston Churchill’s compelling account in “The Gathering Storm,” is an instructive exercise, and one the Iraq Study Group might consider as it completes its deliberations. 

* * *

February 20, 1938:  Churchill spent the entire night without sleep, “consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear” -- the only time he went sleepless even after he became Prime Minister.  He had received a call late that evening informing him that Anthony Eden had resigned as Foreign Secretary. 

 

Eden, who shared Churchill’s views about Germany and Italy, had found himself almost isolated in the Cabinet, opposed by the Chiefs of Staff who “enjoined caution and dwelt upon the dangers of the situation.”  Churchill was despondent over the resignation:

I must confess that my heart sank, and for a while the ark waters of despair overwhelmed me. . . .  I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.

 

A precipitating factor in Eden’s resignation had been Neville Chamberlain’s decision to enter into direct negotiations with Italy.  Chamberlain’s position was that:

His Majesty’s Government would be prepared . . . to recognize de jure the Italian occupation of Abyssinia, if they found that the Italian Government on their side were ready to give evidence of their desire to contribute to the restoration of confidence and friendly relations.

 

For Churchill, it was evidence that “in the dawn of 1938 decisive changes in European groupings and values had taken place.”  The Western democracies had “seemed to give repeated proofs that they would bow to violence so long as they were not themselves directly assailed.”

 

That same day, Germany had begun to raise the issue of Czechoslovakia, and “the usual techniques were employed” -- the de-legitimization of the target through the rhetoric of grievances, combined with the knowledge that the West lacked both the will (“owing to their love of peace”) and the means (due to their failure to rearm) to protect its broader interests…

 

The similarities are indeed mind-blowing, but there is one profoundly disturbing difference between then and now. This time around, there is noWinston Churchill.

 

We must also acknowledge that, while Churchill, through sheer force of personality and will was able to save Western civilization from falling into the abyss (at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor forced America’s hand and she entered the fray), he either could not or would not do anything to stop the Nazis from murdering six million Jews.

 

Not much comfort there, I’m afraid.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:26 | link | comments

 

Also, the religion of furry kittens, fuzzy bunnies, and warm, comfy slippers: It’s official. The Pope has bowed to a higher power (political correctness) and averred that Islam is a “peaceful and affectionate" religion.

 

I could be wrong, but I’m sure it was neither peacefulness nor affection Daniel Pearl was experiencing when the holy warriors put a blade to his throat and sliced off his head.

 

Just a hunch, mind you.

 

Update: Not to mention its “benevolence.”

 

Excuse me, your Eminence. But don’t you think you’re laying it on a bit thick?

 

Update: And it’s not like all the grovelling is doing him any good.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:58 | link | comments

 

Coping strategy: Some people deal with unpleasant reality by ignoring it, or by taking a long walk, or by turning to drink. And if that doesn’t do the trick, there’s always that old standby: blaming the Jews.

 

Me? I channel my angst into tasteless song parodies. Like this one, an update of Sir Paul McCartney’s jaunty tune about Maxwell Edison, a medical student and cold-blooded murderer whose weapon of choice was a silver hammer:

 

Moo was radical,

Also quite fanatical,

Mahdi was his man.

Does all that he can

So he’ll retur-ur-ur-urn.

Enrichin’ uranium

Ranting and explainium

That he feels the need.

Make the dhimmis blee-eed

To please Allah-ha-ha-ha.

And now he’s almost ready to roll.

Achieve his final goal.

 

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Rained down upon their heads.

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Made sure that they were dead.

 

P.C. reticence

Led to UN hesitance

Didn’t do a thing.

Moo felt like a king

And acted thus-us-us-us.

Russia helped him out,

Armageddon came about

Due to Putin's greed.

Serviced Mahmoud’s nee-eed

To be on tah-ah-ah-op.

And soon, where once

Jews were on the map,

You’ll see a great big gap.

 

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Rained down upon their heads.

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Made sure that they were dead.

 

Sad the world won’t learn

Fascists want the Jews to burn

But they won’t stop there.

‘Specially when they’re heir

To jihad imper-er-it-ives.

It’s dependable.

Jews are quite expendable.

Feed the crocodile.

But watch out for his smile

Because you're nex-ex-ex-ext.

And as you’re sleeping snug in you bed

His bomb’s headed your way.

 

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Rained down upon their heads.

Boom, boom,

Mahmoud’s shiny A-bomb

Made sure that they were dead.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:31 | link | comments

 

Two-four-six-eight-the-Pope-will-now-capitulate: Looks like that may become the new Turkish cheer—and with good reason. From Bloomberg:

Pope Benedict XVI said he backs Turkey's bid to join the European Union, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after meeting the pontiff upon his arrival in Ankara for his first visit to a Muslim country.

The Pope told Erdogan that while the Vatican seeks to stay out of politics it ``desires Turkey's membership in the EU,'' Erdogan said at a news conference after the 15 minute meeting that initiated his four-day visit to Turkey. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he had said in 2004 that allowing Islamic Turkey to join the EU would be a "grave error.'' The Vatican has yet to confirm Benedict's comments today.

The EU, backed by U.S. President George W. Bush, last year began membership talks with Turkey to build a bridge between the Christian and Muslim worlds and boost democracy in the Middle East. The pope's defense of Christian Europe and the violent reaction to his comments about Islam fed political resistance to a Muslim nation of 72 million people joining the EU's ranks.

Only 39 percent of Europeans support Turkey's accession to the EU, according to a July survey published by the European Commission. Turkish entry would boost the number of Muslims living in Europe more than five-fold to about 86 million.

And the Pope thinks that will serve the interests of Western civilization, not to mention the Holy Roman Catholic Church—how?

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

 

Olmert’s “real peace” plan: Well, it looks like one of my greatest fears has been realized, and the Peace in Our Time process may be gaining traction. Ehud Olmert, who I’ve come to think of as Israel’s very own Jimminy “Cricket” Carter, i.e., a hapless, moist, self-loather who hasn’t a clue as to what motivates his enemies, is trying to reel in the secular nutter faction of Palestinian leadership (as opposed to the religion nutter wing) with a package of tasty incentives. The usual enticements have been offered—land for “real peace”; release of more than a thousand Palestinians currently enjoying the hospitality of Israeli prison in exchance for one Israeli soldier; and oodles of moolah, something the Palestinians are supposedly in short supply of these days, what with the dhimmis having turned off the jizya spigot when Hamas came to power. “I extend my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbours, hoping it will not be rejected, “said the feckless P.M. as he extended his hand in peace, hoping it wouldn’t be rejected.

 

While not rejecting the outstretched hand outright, the Palestinians are said to be reacting “coolly” to the peacefully extended paw. From the Chicago Tribune:

"We want to see deeds, not words," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Abbas. "What we are looking for is real negotiations, based on the road map and the Arab peace initiative. Land for peace."

Abu Rudeineh referred to a Saudi initiative adopted at an Arab League summit in 2002 that called for recognition and normal ties with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from territories it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

 

The “Saudi initiative,” huh? Isn’t that the one that pundit of pundits, Thomas L. Friedman was really keen on for a while? Too bad old Tom has washed his hands of the Israel-Palestinian contretemps (at least, that’s what he told a standing room only crowd of avid listeners at a Toronto synagogue several weeks ago) because he sees no way out of the impasse. But maybe Olmert could put a call into Tom, to see if he’s willing to jump back on the Saudi bandwagon.

 

As for me, I don’t know why Jimminy Olmert is bothering with all this intermediate stuff when we know the—what was that phrase head negotiator Saeb Erekat used yesterday?—oh, yeah, the “end game” the Palestinians are really playing, and it ain’t that proverbial “two state solution.” Why not save everyone lots of time and bloodshed and concede defeat now, right away? Give the Palestinians and their Arab/Muslim/international enablers what they want—the only thing they want, i.e. a Palestine which takes in all of Israel—and put an end to all this interminable P.I.O.T. claptrap once and for all. Then, pack up all the Jews and leave in a mass exodus.

 

Heaven knows, it’s not like they haven't had one of those before.

 

The only other option is to keep fighting and existing, but Olmert, a weary man, seems to lack the will for that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments (3)

 

Narrow focus: This morning I listened, my mouth opened in astonishment and horror, as former President and utopian internationalist Jimminy “Cricket” Carter (he won a Nobel Peace Prize, you know) expostulated on Ceeb radio about all the dirt the Jews of Israel have dished to the Palestinians. How they’re “oppressed.” How they’re the victims of “apartheid.” How they long for a “two state solution,” but how their dreams continue to be stymied by—wait for it—the Jews.

 

And I also waited—in vain, of course—for hostess with the leastest Anna Maria Tremonti to at least play Devil’s advocate and suggest that perhaps what’s occurring in Israel is merely one of the dots in the larger global jihad. But since Anna Maria herself is incabable of discerning a pattern that’s obvious to anyone who doesn’t look through the same lens as the Ceeb, she was—wait for it—worse than useless.

 

It’s bad enough that there is great evil at work in this world. What sticks in the craw is that it’s being enabled and abetted by those, like Jimminy Carter, who are absolutely certain they are working for the greater good.

 

An article on the American Thinker site blows at big, wet raspberry at Jimminy and the other international jihad-enablers who continue to focus obsessively and almost exclusively on the word's only Jewish state:

 

Every single day, hundreds of African tribesmen are killed in Darfur by militias acting with the blessing of Sudan's Arab Islamist government. Each day, Hamas bombs from Gaza deliberately target innocent Israeli civilians in Sderot: although the weapons are crude, they occasionally find their mark -- last week a Qassam killed Fatima Slutsker, a 57-year-old (Muslim) Israeli woman who was waiting for her (Jewish) Israeli husband at a bus stop. Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has ratcheted up its campaign of violence this week, assassinating a Maronite Christian cabinet minister in Lebanon in a blatant attempt to provoke a constitutional crisis. (As of this writing, under the Byzantine Lebanese constitution, the terrorist group needs to eliminate only one more minister to bring about the collapse of the government.) The life-span of Zimbabweans is 34 years, and 550,000 have died over the past three years due to deliberate policies of the Mugabe dictatorship.

All of these barbaric crimes are human and moral tragedies that call for international action, prioritization, even obsession.  But that self-proclaimed source of international legitimacy, the United Nations is not obsessed or even particularly concerned with any of them. None of these abuses of human rights by authoritarian regimes or movements was the object of the General Assembly resolution "condemning the military assaults...which have caused loss of life and extensive destruction...of property...in particular the killing of many... civilians, including children and women." For none of these violations of the right to life did the UN summon righteous indignation to "emphasize the importance of the safety and well-being of all civilians" and demand "the immediate cessation of military incursions and all acts of violence, terror, provocation, incitement and destruction."

 

Rather, since November 7, the UN has been obsessed with one accident, committed in self-defense, by the world body's favorite pariah, the democratic State of Israel...

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:28 | link | comments

 

Knowledge is power: I know that the Pope wants to quell all that “clash of civilizations” stuff, but could someone please tell me why he has chosen to visit Turkey at this particular time? It’s not like the locals, who continue to take grave offence at his suggestion that Islam has some irrational and violent tendencies, are eager to host him on their soil—not unless he’s willing to eat crow and acknowledge Islam’s inherent goodness and niceness. And if, Heaven forefend, that it is the plan, then it would have been far better for us non-submissives if he’d stayed home in V.C. (a site which, for now anyway, remains outside Europe’s “no go” zones).

 

In order to help him gain an even better understanding of what he’s dealing with—although, so far he seems to "get it"—I’d direct the Pope to this piece in the Daily Telegraph.  It describes what's at stake in his visit, and warns of the dangers we in the West face if we ignore and/or miscomprehend the threat of triumphalist Islam. (link via RealClear Politics)

…To understand the life-or-death significance of what the Pope does and says when he arrives in Istanbul, it is necessary to see this confrontation for what it is. This will involve some traumatic re-adjustment for most of the opinion-forming class in Britain. The first assumption that will have to go is the premise that Islamist terrorism can be understood in pragmatic, politically rational terms: in other words, that it can be addressed with the usual mechanisms of negotiation, concession and amended policy.

The most readily accepted version of this is that a change to our policy in the Middle East will remove the grievances that "fuel" Muslim terrorism. The Cabinet has apparently been advised that all foreign policy decisions over the next decade should have the goal of thwarting terrorism in Britain and that this should involve "a significant reduction in the number and intensity of the regional conflicts that fuel terror activity". So Britain is contemplating constructing a foreign policy, specifically in the Middle East, that is designed to give in to terrorist blackmail.

Never mind that the hereditary grievance of almost all British-born Muslim terrorists is the Kashmir question, to which the almost entirely irrelevant Palestine issue has been tacked on by political manipulators with larger ambitions. (The easiest way to make a connection between the Palestine-Israel conflict and the problem of Kashmir is to construct a global theory of persecution in which British-born Muslims may see themselves as born into a victimhood perpetrated by all non-Muslim nations upon Islam.

That, as it happens, chimes perfectly with the true goal of Islamism, which is global supremacy.) So this ignominious posture – what you might call the "save our own skin; who cares what happens in the rest of the world?" view – is based on a false premise. It is not adjustments to our stance on Israel-Palestine that the international Islamist terror movement wants.

That demand was just a bin Laden afterthought that went down a treat with the old reliable anti-Semitic interest in Europe. What Islamic fundamentalism plans to achieve (and it has made no secret of it) is a righting of the great wrong of 1492, when the Muslims were expelled from Spain: a return of the Caliphate, the destruction of corrupt Western values, and the establishment of Sharia law in all countries where Muslims reside. That is what we are up against.

The Pope characterised it as a battle between reason and unreason. Scholars may debate the theological and historical soundness of his analysis. But what is indisputable is that this is not an argument that is within the bounds of diplomatic give and take, the traditional stuff of international policy argy-bargy. What we could plausibly offer to the enemy, even at our most craven, would never be sufficient.

What is being demanded is the surrender of everything that Western democracy regards as sacred: even, ironically, the freedom to practise one's own religion, which, at the moment, is so useful to Muslim activists. We are forced to accept the Islamist movement's own estimation of the conflict: this is a war to the death, or until Islamism decides to call a halt…

Memo to the Pope and all free thinking infidels: Read, learn, assimilate the above. It will help strengthen you for the dark days of conflict that lie ahead.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:29 | link | comments

 

'Real peace' pipe dream: Is it possible to survive if you refuse to acknowledge what motivates your enemies? Let’s ask Israel’s P.M., Ehud Olmert, who thinks “real peace” is possible if Israel gives up the West Bank—and the nation’s security—to the Palestinians so they can finally get down to their long-deferred project of building a viable state.

 

Major communication glitch here.  For Olmert, “real peace” is the cessation of hostilities and the acceptance of Israel's reality. For Arabs and Muslims, “real peace” is the peace that will pertain once every last bit of the planet, including Israel, is under the thumb of the religion of peace.

 

From the Jerusalem Post:

 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered wide-ranging peace concessions to Palestinians on Monday if they turned away from violence, saying they would be able to achieve an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in real peace talks with Israel.

 

Olmert declared that Israel would leave "large territories" and "dismantle settlements" in exchange for real peace.

 

"We will agree to leave large territories and dismantle settlements that we have established," he said during a speech at a memorial service for former prime minister David Ben Gurion at Sde Boker. "We will be willing to do this in exchange for real peace."

 

The prime minister stressed that the border of a future Palestinian state would differ from the current settlement borders.

 

In what was billed as a major policy speech, Olmert said that Palestinians stood at a "historic crossroads" and could choose to continue on the path of violence or peace.

 

If they choose the peace path, Israel will ease checkpoints and release frozen funds to the Palestinian Authority.

 

Olmert also said that Israel planned to release "many Palestinian prisoners" after Palestinian militants free a captured IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

 

Shalit's on June 25 sparked a widescale IDF offensive in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants demanded that Israel release hundreds of prisoners in exchange for Shalit, a demand Israel had publicly rejected.

 

But in recent days, there have been signs of progress between the two sides. Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a cease-fire in Gaza that took effect Sunday morning, stirring hopes that further agreements could follow.

 

Olmert's speech Monday was an effort to entice the Palestinians to return to peace talks, with the Israeli leader promising an immediate improvement in their lives.

 

"We cannot change the past and we will not be able to bring back the victims on both sides of the borders," he said. "All that we have in our hands to do today is to stop additional tragedies."

 

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians were ready to negotiate a final peace deal.

 

"I believe Mr. Olmert knows he has a partner, and that is President Abbas. He knows that to achieve peace and security for all, we need to shoot for the end game," Erekat said…

 

And I think we all know what Abbas’s and Erekat’s “end game” is—and you can be sure it doesn’t include Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments (1)

 

Dear John: One of the few bright spots in the toxic environment of Turtle Bay has been U.S. Ambassador John Bolton. But now that the Dhimmicrats have taken Congress, Bolton’s days as a voice of sanity in the loony bin are probably numbered. Suzanne Fields, former utopian dreamer, now a wised-up realist, offers an impassioned argument for retaining Bolton. From JWR:

…To the liberal Democrat I was then, having grown up in a devout New Deal family, the U.N. was the great hope for humanity. In our Utopian imagination, the U.N. would be the place where different countries with different kinds of governments would put factionalism aside, discard tribal loyalties and every day in every way Make Nice.

We soon watched innocence and idealism swamped by greed and cynicism, as the U.N. became a fat and inefficient bureaucracy, riven with strife and anger, a mouthpiece for the most corrupt and incompetent leaders in the world. As if in a satire by Evelyn Waugh, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights became a platform for speeches by representatives of nations with the worst record of human rights abuses.

Our ambassadors to the United Nations have often been forced into isolation, to defend the United States from attacks by nations whose only contribution to the debate is insignificance, envy and hypocrisy. The likes of Adlai Stevenson, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan were powerfully eloquent defenders, and their rhetorical flourishes have recently found voice in John Bolton, whose recess appointment expires in January. President Bush has resubmitted the nomination, but despite what everyone says is his good job, he's unlikely even to get an up-or-down vote in the new, kinder, gentler Democratic Senate.

If the senators were to re-examine his record in the spirit of what we're told is the less partisan Democratic Congress, instead of preening with outdated cynicism, they could demonstrate that they mean what they say about eliminating cheap and thoughtless partisanship.

His eloquent arguments against the relentless attacks on Israel, while the U.N. ignores the nations that could use such attention to their brutality, demonstrates his ability — and his willingness — to display toughness with good sense. He shows how U.N. bias reveals a fundamental lack of seriousness about solving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Even Kofi Annan, no particular champion of the West, acknowledged the other day that the U.N.'s obsession with perceived human-rights abuses in Israel, to the exclusion of other abuses even in Darfur, encourages the public to see the U.N. as unfair. (Imagine.)

The report by the European-led U.N. Interim Force (UNIFIL) on what's happening in Lebanon exposes how the U.N. suffers destructive myopia. "UNIFIL was so obsessed with the Israeli reconnaissance flights above," writes Benny Avni in the New York Sun, "that it totally missed 720 Islamist fighters below who came from Somalia to join Hezbollah in its holy war."

Bias against the West in general and the United States and Israel in particular is not an isolated issue, but demonstrates clearly what's wrong at Turtle Bay. "Member states must choose," says John Bolton. "Do we desire a viable United Nations system, composed of agencies respected for their role in conflict resolution, human rights, economic development, education and culture, or will we continue to acquiesce to a narrow agenda of bias, stalemate and polemics?"…

I fear that Bolton is soon to be replaced by someone who, in an effort to play ball with and be “liked” by the international community, is planning to opt for acquiescence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments

 

Seasons of hate: I read this story about how “youths” now wield such immense power in France that there are literally hundreds of places in the Republic where infidels fear to tread. And you know me, sometimes I just can’t help a song parody from bursting forth. This one, in case you don’t recognize it, is a reworking of the big hit from the musical Rent:

 

Seven hundred fifty-one

Dhimmi “no go” zones in Fra-ance.

How do you measure the success of a jihad?

 

In torchings, in riots, in fear

And ‘timidation,

In inches, in metres,

In numbers who are mad.

 

Seven hundred fifty-one

Established “no-go” zones in Fra-ance.

How do you ever take the measure of jihad?

 

How about hate?

How about hate?

Measure in hate.

Seasons of hate.

Seasons of hate.

 

Seven hundred fifty-one

Established “no go” zones in Fra-ance.

How many are there in Spain and the U.K.?

 

Seven hundred fifty-one

Official “no go” zones in Fra-ance.

How many more 'til Eurabia’s a fait accompli?

 

In truths that they’ll learn.

By then it’ll be too late.

The faithful will reign—

A reign of rage and hate.

 

It’s time now to sing out

Tho’ they’ve waited too long.

They’ll all bow and scrape

To submission’s potent song.

 

Beware of the hate!

Beware of the hate!

Seasons of hate!

 

Oh, they better beware of the hate!

Remember the hate!

Remember the hate ‘cause it never will abate.

Seasons of hate.

Spread hate, share hate, feel hate.

Measure, measure their lives in hate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:16 | link | comments

 

The jig is up: Oops! It looks like the UN’s arbiter of the world’s “human rights,” the Human Rights Council, has been so obviously and unduly focused on a single issue that no less a personage than Kofi Annan—yes, Kofi Annan—has felt compelled to criticize its obsessive anti-Israel bias.

 

And no, so far Hell has not developed permafrost and flying pigs have yet to be sighted on the radar. But you know if Kofi “The Buck Never Stops” Annan is forced to acknowledge the self-evident, it’s going to be awfully hard to keep trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the dhimmi sheep. (A metaphor worthy of that pundit of pundits, Thomas L. Friedman, n'est ce pas?)  From VOA News:

…Since the Council was inaugurated in June, it has held two special sessions dealing with the situation in the Gaza Strip and one special session on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon in August.

Even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who pushed strongly for the creation of the Council, says it should broaden its focus and look at as many situations as possible.

"Whether their meetings coincided with the Lebanese war, or not, they have tended to focus on the Palestinian issue, and of course, when you focus on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, without even discussing Darfur and other issues, some wonder what is this Council doing?  Do they not have a sense of fair play?  Why should they ignore other situations and focus on one area?," Mr. Annan asked.

Some countries have severely criticized the 47-member Council for condemning Israel four times, while not taking up human-rights violations in countries such as Myanmar, North Korea, and Sudan.

The President of the Council, Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, rates the work of the Council as fair.

"I would not say good.  I wish it could have been much better," de Alba says.

But, de Alba says he expects the Council to improve and notes that in the last session it dealt with a number of substantive issues.

"We addressed situations as complex as the question of religion, intolerance," de Alba says.  "The question of Guantanemo, the question of Sudan, the question of Sri Lanka.  We dealt with a lot of issues, not only the Middle East."...

Wow. How wide-ranging of you, Signor de Alba. Too bad that no matter what other issues you human rights types choose to explore, it always, always seems to come back to the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:25 | link | comments (2)

 

No Turkish delight: An article in the Turkish English language daily,  the Turkish Daily News, addresses the half-hearted reception the usually hospitable Turks are likely to accord Pope Benedict. The newspaper attributes the expected lackadaisical response to the fact that Benedict is “a polemical Pope.”

 

To translate for those not of the faith (the faith of submission, that is) a “polemical Pope” is one who so far has refused to genuflect before the pieties of political correctness.

 

It remains to be seen if the Pope will retain the courage of his convictions, but those of us non-Catholics who so far have seen him as a God-send (so to speak) can only pray that he finds the strength to keep speaking the truth, as unpopular as that’s likely to be in “secular” Turkey.

 

And watch out for those disgruntled Turks, Benedict. One of them almost got your predecessor.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:41 | link | comments

Oh, no, not that; anything but that: The dreaded Peace in Our Time process rears its revolting visage once more.

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

 

Q: When is a ceasefire that’s not a ceasefire still called a ceasefire?:

 

A: Easy. When there’s no ceasefire, but everyone pretends there’s one.

 

If this were a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen (instead of a grim, all-too-real news story), the pretenders might say that the buck nekkid ceasefire is wearing a lovely new set of clothes.

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

 

Ties that bind: A visit to Iran by Iraq’s President, Jalal Talibani, is on hold for the moment: too much commotion going on in Baghdad.

 

Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Iran the bad guy, the enemy of Great Satan? Isn't it the Islamist entity that's getting set to hurl one or more nukes Tel Aviv-ward? Why is the President of Iraq, the nation where American troops are fighting and dying in order to help Iraqis make their country safe for democracy, consorting with Moo and the mully-bullies?

 

Might we say that bonds between Shias are a lot stronger than ones between democracies?

 

Update: From the above link:

The U.S. military said coalition forces killed four insurgents and captured 11 suspected terrorists during a Sunday morning raid targeting al Qaeda in Iraq members in the Diyala province near Baquba.

One of the terrorists detained was discovered hiding in a house dressed as a woman and pretending to nurse a baby, the military said.

Think Three Men and a Baby, jihad-style.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:58 | link | comments

 

Leave it to cleavers: The world for today is “cleave,” as in this headline—Leaders cleave to Gaza cease-fire, despite violations by rocket crews.

 

Funny word, “cleave,” because it has two definitions that are direct opposites.

 

To “cleave” means to adhere firmly, as in “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem…let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

 

To “cleave” also means to detatch or sever, as in “the jihadis cleaved the infidel’s head from his body.”

 

I’m sure Israel’s leaders are looking for a “cleave” more in line with the first definition. However, I’m fairly certain the Palestinian leaders are looking for something more in keeping with the second meaning.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:02 | link | comments

 

“Palestinians”: Golda Meir once said, famously, “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more that they hate us”—and if I had a shekel for every time someone has cited that quotation, I’d be a very rich anti-Jihadist.

 

And if Condoleezza Rice could only assimilate that single insight, she’d be a far more effective anti-Jihadist.

 

In acknowledgement of Golda’s wisdom and Condi’s cluelessness (see post below) I’ve revised Sting’s song “Russians.” The original song recalls that halcyon time when our enemies were deterred from nuking the living daylights out of us by considerations of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. Ironically, our current era is far madder, but our enemies not only don't care about MAD, but actually welcome it because to them it means Islam wins.

 

Anyway, here’s my take on Sting:

 

In America and Israel,

There’s a growing sense of the Islamists’ will.

Conditioned to respond to all the threats

Some Jews are expressing some regrets.

Mr. Ahmadinejad says we’ll wipe you off the map.

The Palestinians concur with that Hitler crap.

It would be such a foolhardy thing to do

To think that Palestinians love their children too.

 

How can Jews save their kids and all the rest

From shahids wearing semtex vests?

There is no monopoly on common sense

But little on the Arab side of the fence.

We share the same biology

But they’re warped by ideology.

Believe me when I say to you

I wished the Palestinians loved their children too.

 

There’s lots of historical precedent

Jihad’s been waged to the same extent.

And if we end up losing this war

Who knows what darkness lies in store?

Mr. Abbas says, "we will all return."

But hopes that first the Jews will burn.

Believe me when I say to you.

I wish the Palestinians love their children too.

 

We share the same biology

But they’re warped by ideology.

We can’t save me and we can’t save you

If we think that Palestinians love their children too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:12 | link | comments

 

Jill without a jeep: One of the reasons I love Mark Steyn is because, like me, he is fixated on the ephemera of a bygone era, specifically, the movies and music of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He builds his column today around Four Jills in a Jeep, a largely forgotten WW2-era flick designed to boost the spirits of the folks back home while the troops were trying to defeat fascism over in Europe. Standard fare for the time—a little song, a little dance, a little melodrama—it dealt with the mostly real-life adventures of four USO girls on tour, and was enlivened by the over-the-top antics of comedian Martha Raye, also known by her nickname “the big mouth,” and prettified by Carole Landis, a starlet who is most famous for committing suicide after being spurned by Rex “Henry Higgins” Harrison (and I promise, that’s all the trivia I’ll inflict on you today).

 

Steyn writes that one of the Jills of our times is none other than U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Now Condi’s a bright gal, a real brown nose, who, back in the day, seemed to “get it” about the current fascist threat, or at least appeared to while Colin Powell was in charge of State. Alas, the Foggy Bottom fumes (and hacks) have done dire damage to Condi’s cognitive powers, and she has joined the ranks of the diplomatic pod people, unfortunate souls whose brains have been turned to sawdust by a combo of Arabism, cluelessness and wishful thinking. This renders her all but incapable of seeing what’s what:

"The great majority of Palestinian people," said the secretary of state to Cal Thomas the other day, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Cal Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Dr. Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

Um, I don’t know which Palestinian people you’re describing, Condi; maybe the ones who dwell on another planet in an alternate universe. But the ones we’re stuck with here on the soon-to-be-late great planet Earth are, as Steyn mentions, just thrilled to bits (pun intended) that a raging granny, a woman in her 60s with scores of grandkids, has just self-detonated for Allah. She thus becomes the oldest—and the oldest woman—ever to strap on the semtex to off the brutal Zionist imperialist invaders.

 

Props all round, Bubbie, and I’ll be sure to alert the Guiness people to reserve a spot in their world records book just for you.

 

Recently, another “big mouth,” Rosie O’Donnell, opined from her bully pulpit on chick chat show “The View” that there is no reason to fear the terrorists because they’re “moms and dads,” like the rest of us.

 

How chilling is it that Condi Rice seems to be taking her talking points these days from Rosie O’Donnell?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments (1)

 

Weekend off: Family festivities mean I’ll be away from the computer this weekend. Back on Monday.

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

 

Let ‘em eat carp: Today’s unintentionally hilarious headline comes from the Globe and Mail—UN fails to recommend ban on bottom trawling.

 

I’m not surprised. The UN has been serving the interests of bottom feeders for years. (Bah dah pum.)

 

And speaking of bottom feeders, the UN Human Rights Commission, er, Council, er, Cabal, er, whatever you want to call it (because whatever you call it, it’s the same old cesspool) is the focus of a Globe editorial. The editorial notes the Council’s obsessive interest in the world’s only Jewish state and, in another bit of unintentional hilarity, sees Kofi Annan, the UN’s outgoing (but hardly outgoing) Secretary General as someone who’s been working really hard to “fix” the UN’s problems.

 

Laugh? I thought I’d cry.

 

Anyone who cares to look honestly at the UN would see that Annan, a man for whom the buck has never stopped, is part of the problem, not part of the solution. And the problem cannot be fixed by applying paint and spackle to a rotten edifice.

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

Grim fairy tale: Have I mentioned that I am convinced Cox & Forkum are the wisest, most adept political cartoonists of our time? Here's why:

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:00 | link | comments (1)

 

Kicking butt: Finally, an international organization that has the balls to stand up to Iran (link via Drudge).

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:31 | link | comments (3)

 

Thanksgiving: I’m not too thrilled that Americans were so foolish as to place Nancy Pelosi within two beating hearts of the presidency, but today, on the American Thanksgiving, I give thanks for America, the only real barrier to Islamist triumphalism--and triumphant Islamism.

 

I think novelist David Evanier expresses it best. In an interview in today’s Front Page Magazine about his early life as a Stalinist, and why he left it and all the delusional true believers behind he says, “I cannot imagine the barbarism that would engulf the world without the existence of America.”

 

As we say up here in darkest Canuckistan (made a little brighter, at least for the moment, by a Prime Minister who “gets it” about the global jihad), moi aussi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:05 | link | comments

 

The new definition of “chutzpah”: It’s defying the world’s nuclear watchdog (admittedly, one much more Bichon Frise than Rottweiller) and going ahead and enriching uranium so you can make atomic bombs to nuke the Jews, and then asking the watchdog to help you work out a glitch in one of your reactors.

 

Now that’s chutzpah.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments

 

Dying tree: David Warren on the tragedy of Lebanon, a county that, not long ago, was an oasis of the Arab  world, now torn asunder by fascists who seek to devour it:

 

…Here is a country that was once a little citadel of Christianity -- the last "Crusader kingdom", if you like -- and, only a few decades ago, by far the most economically advanced, the most free, and most liveable country in the Middle East (excepting Israel). Beirut was the entrepôt, through which commercial prosperity passed into many Arab lands. It was incidentally the centre for Arab music, as well as publishing, and the like -- the one place in the whole vast, squalid, backward region where, regardless of his religion, an Arab artist or intellectual could enjoy freedom of expression. It melts now in the hellfire of radical “Islamism”, and the exodus of its once-majority Christians is accelerating. The Cedar Revolution, that briefly promised a restoration of freedom and democracy, is coming to an end. Tyranny and death will now call the tunes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:42 | link | comments

 

The world according to Jimminy “Cricket” Carter:  And as Alan Dershowitz writes, a weird, wacky, unwised-up world it is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:36 | link | comments (1)

 

You want fries with that?: These guys must really have had the munchies. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Two employees of the [Boise, Idaho] city's ice skating rink have been fired for making a midnight fast-food run in a pair of Zambonis. An anonymous tipster reported seeing the two big ice-resurfacing machines chug through a Burger King drive-through and return to the rink around 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 10. The squat, rubber-tired vehicles, which have a top speed of about 5 mph, drove 1 1/2 miles in all.

The Zamboni operators, both temporary city employees whose names and ages were not released by Parks and Recreation Department, had to negotiate at least one intersection with a traffic light on their late-night creep from Idaho Ice World.

"They were fired immediately," said Parks Department Director Jim Hall. "We're pretty sure it was just the one time. When we interviewed them, they didn't seem to be too concerned about it. I don't think they understood the seriousness of it."

Hall said neither the $75,000 Zambonis nor their $10,000 blades appeared damaged, but the city could charge the employees with operating an unlicensed motor vehicle on a public street.

Also with freaking out the late shift at the Boise BK.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:30 | link | comments

 

You take the high road and they’ll take the low road and they’ll win the jihad afore ye: A piece on the American Thinker site takes notes of the practice of civilians volunteering to be “human shields” in order to serve the interests and advance the cause of terrorism—a new low in human behaviour that ranks down there with the human bomb:

…This new phenomenon seems to have been invented by Jamila Shanti, former philosophy professor and current Palestinian legislator, who also founded the women’s branch of Hamas. Shanti also led the successful human shield campaign in Beit Hanoun on November 8th. According to her shield theory:

“We consider it a new kind of resistance, highly successful, one that will serve us well against the Israeli enemy.”

In the most recent event, the human shields at Baroud’s house fired guns into the air and energetically chanted “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” One special shield at Baroud’s house was Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

“We are so proud of this national stand. It’s the first step toward protecting our homes, the homes of our children,” he said, while ascending to the roof.

Israel seems alarmed by all this. Also confused. According to military spokeswoman Noa Meir:

“What happened over the weekend is very worrisome to us. Not only are they using their civilians as human shields, they continue to endanger the lives of our own civilians with their rocket attacks. It presents us with a very difficult dilemma, because we want to do everything possible to keep civilians out of harm’s way.”

Such is Israel’s moral ignorance, weakness, and virtual bankruptcy. Humanity seems to have hit a new low with this. The Palestinians are using the Israelis’ well-known dedication to high principles and moral ideals against them. As one military spokesman foolishly put it, “We differentiate between innocent people and terrorists.”

The problem is those innocent people are acting completely in concert with the jihadis and support them utterly. They’re hardly innocent. They have made themselves into combatants.

Utlimately, the flawed moral beliefs of the Israelis need to be discarded and replaced with something far different. The Jewish State needs to reacquaint itself with the noble concept of self-defense—and recognize that all those jihadi-supporting “human shields” are properly subject to attack.

Ain’t never gonna happen—at least not with Ehud “The Invertebrate” Olmert in charge.

Personally, I think it’s a brilliant (though morally reprehensible) tactic—a win-win one for the ‘Slamists and a lose-lose one for the Israelis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:21 | link | comments (1)

 

Punting on de Nile: And I bet you thought the Thames was the waterway that flows through London.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:10 | link | comments

 

Harpoon Hears a Jew: With more apologies profuse to Dr. Seuss:

 

On the fifteenth of May, in the burg of T.O.,

In a newspaper building, on a floor down below,

He was writing…enjoying the joys of composition

When Harpoon the pundit became aware of some fission.

So Harpoon stopped writing. He looked up at the screen.

“That’s funny,” said Harpoon. “I wonder, what can it mean?”

Then he looked up again. And he saw a great cloud.

And he said, little realizing he was talking out loud.

“Well, it looks like the Jews have bitten the dust.

Time to survey the damage and weigh in as I must.

“I believe,” wrote Harpoon, “a great horror has occurred.

And to say I don’t feel it, why, t’would be quite absurd.

‘Cause you know what I think. I’ve opined and I’ve nattered.

I’ve dealt with the facts—the one I thought have mattered.

And I’m telling you this: while I’m sorry they’re gone,

The Jews, er, the Zionists, were engaged in a con.

They were mean to some Arabs,

And wouldn’t “deal” with the Moo,

So he did what he said he was fated to do!

What else could he do? Because after all,

A Moo is a Moo, and the Jews had such gall.”

So, gently, and using the quintessence of care,

The pundit stretched his elastic mind and expressed his despair.

And he dredged up some pity and spread it all through his piece.

And placed it there, gently, with aplomb and much ease.

But just then…

“Humpf!” humpfed a voice. ‘Twas the ghost of an old Jew.

“You never did get it at all ‘bout the Moo.

Why, he’s been itching to off us since Khomeini’s revolution.

He promised to bring on the Jews’ execution.

But have you been list’ning? Have you heard him at all?

No, you’ve been bloviating about how the U.S.

Must have a great fall.

And now it’s too late, we’re history, we’re toast,

And the Moo, that fahrkakter, can swagger and boast.”

“Believe me,” said Harpoon. “I meant you no harm,

Why, I once even wrote that the Hassids had charm.

You cannot blame me if the Moo did his feat.

So don’t you be goin’ and flappin’ your sheet.

(Not that ghosts wear a sheet, but you know what I’m saying.)

Now shoo, go away!

Stop your kvetching and braying.”

But the dead Jew stayed put. He hovered and haunted.

He flew through the newsroom. He shrieked, and he taunted:

“Tho’ you don’t think your thinking was dark and malevolent

And say in defence it’s pervasive and prevalent

And that Norman and Noam and Harold, et al,

Thought the Moo was a Moo, and the Jews had much gall.

But really, Harpoon, t’was the constant accretion

Of zings and zaps,

Of slams and slaps

That has finally resulted in Israel’s deletion.”

“Look, see this here on my forearm?” said the old Jew,

And he showed him a number.

“This was put here the last time the world was a-slumber.

I escaped when the first Holocaust was on the world’s menu.

But, oy, look at me now—new Shoah, different venue.”

“No, no, no,” said Harpoon, and he burst into tears.

“You misunderstand my kindly intentions.

I only want to acquaint infidels with some harmless conventions

Like wearing the veil, and bowing down in submission.

I never wanted the Jews to meet up with perdition.

I’m really a nice multiculturalist—see, look,  here’s my prize.”

And he wiped copious, coursing tears from his eyes.

The ghost looked at Harpoon with dismay and disgust

And said, “I can see my haunting is pointless, so pardon my dust.”

Then he disappeared—poof!—feeling most unfulfilled

And joined the millions of ghosts of the Jews who’d been killed.

And Harpoon—

He heaved one final crocodile sob

And looked down at his keyboard,

And went back to his job.

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

 

Gaza melodrama: Mark “Malarky” MacKinnon, the Globe and Mail’s man on the scene in the Middle East, has an unbelievably overwrought story today about UN Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour in Gaza. Here are the first few paragraphs:

BEIT HANOUN, GAZA STRIP -- The grieving Gazan mother looked the powerful former Canadian judge in the eyes and tried to explain, woman to woman, what had happened to her family. But Tahani Athamna couldn't find the words; instead she sobbed as she placed her hand on a picture of her 12-year-old son, Mahmoud, who was killed by an errant Israeli shell two weeks ago.

Louise Arbour was clearly moved by the encounter on the top floor of a home that had been repeatedly punctured by Israeli artillery fire two weeks ago, which helped lead the UN high commissioner to conclude that a human-rights "catastrophe" had occurred in the Gaza Strip.

"I was sleeping here with my husband when the artillery shell hit," Ms. Athamna told Ms. Arbour, taking her by the arm and guiding her across a floor that was covered with the rubble of what was once the roof of her family's home.

Until that point, Ms. Athamna's voice had been an angry shout, trying to convince her guest of the horror her family had experienced on Nov. 8, the day Israeli shells rained down on their simple concrete house and the building next door, killing 18 of her relatives.

But upon coming face to face with a photograph of Mahmoud -- short-haired and smiling -- that was taped to the otherwise bare white wall, Ms. Athamna broke down. "The children slept here," was all that she communicated through a translator before her words dissolved into a wail. Ms. Arbour said nothing, but clutched her own hand to her heart in sympathy…

And guess what? You don’t even have to conjure up a mental image of Louise and the weeping relatives. The Globe has thoughtfully provided an AP photo of the whole terrible scene, with a sobbing (at least I think she’s sobbing; her hands are covering her face) female relative posed in profile in the foreground, while Human Rights Czarina Louise Arbour and the rest of the extended mishpacha, stand, posed front, in a doorway. (Louise is the one with a blue shmatta draped on her shoulder. Beside her, standing sideways, slumped, with a hand on the wall is a guy who looks like he could be the center for the Palestinian basketball team. Obviously, he wasn't posed in the doorway with the rest of them because he’s too frikkin’ big to fit.)

 

I don’t remember reading such highly-charged, emotionally-manipulative scenes since Erich Siegel’s Love Story—and that was only a harmless novel, not an article in Canada’s leading newspaper designed to elicit mega-sympathy for Palestinians and boos and hisses for the Snidely Whiplash of the piece, those brutal Jews. (Just a mo—who’s that I hear whispering in my ear? Why it’s none other than the ghost of Thelma Ritter in her role as Birdy, Bette Davis’s mordant maid in the movie All About Eve. And she’s saying, “Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her read end.” Which, oddly enough, is a scene that has yet to make it into one of Malarkey’s melodramas, but describes the kind of sob story modus operendi that infuses almost everything he writes from the region.)

 

If Malarkey’s real lucky, maybe he has an inside shot at writing the screenplay for Beit Hanoun Story.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:32 | link | comments

 

A real Lou-Lou: Louise Arbour, head of what is quite possibly the most ludicrous and discredited of all the UN’s many agencies and affiliates (and that’s saying something) is in the Middle East and, whadya know?, she thinks the Jews have been up to some major breaches of “human rights.” From the Ceeb:

"Massive" human rights violations are being committed in the Gaza Strip, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said Monday as she kicked off a tour of the region.

The former Supreme Court of Canada justice, on a five-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, toured the area of Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza town where 19 members of the Al Athamna family were killed earlier this month in an Israeli artillery attack. Israeli officials have claimed it shelled the town in error.

"I'm basically here to express my concern and bring some comfort, I hope, by showing these victims that the world has not abandoned them," Arbour told reporters.

Israel has been operating in the area to halt Palestinian rocket strikes. Last week, an Israeli woman was killed in a rocket attack. 

Arbour was swarmed by residents flashing pictures of their dead and wounded relatives and calling for punishment of the Israeli soldiers responsible for the attacks.

She acknowledged their concern but also said the Palestinian leadership must offer the residents some hope...

But they are, they are, Ms. Arbour. They’re telling their people that, if they only keep the faith, soon enough the Jews will be nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

 

But then, if Moo’s nuke veers off track by even a little bit, it’s likely that the Palestinians will be, too.

 

Gotta love how the Ceeb sticks in that “claimed,” though,  just to show it doesn’t buy the Jews’ excuses.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:50 | link | comments (1)

 

Two for Tony: I admit to be completely flummoxed by Tony Blair. There he is, a craven invertebrate, flopping around and announcing his plans to appease the Islamo-Nazi Ahmadinejad by including Iran and its Mini-Me, Syria, in the Middle East Peace in Our Time process. Here he is, only days later, summoning up a spine and vowing that British troops won’t leave Afghanistan until the Taliban have been defeated.

 

What gives?

 

Well, you might say that the two pronouncements show the two sides of Tony: the one side that doesn’t “get” Israel at all and enjoys vacationing en famille with Jordan’s Royals; the other side that, despite the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune, manages to muster a semblance of the Churchillian now and then.

 

I’ve written two limericks. One for the spineless Blair:

 

Where on earth did Mr. Blair’s backbone go?

It was here just a minute ago.

Now his realpolitik

Is making me sick

And his "help" is so not à propos.

 

And one for the Blair with guts:

 

Tony Blair—he is one in a million.

Why, at times he is actu’lly Churchillian.

That “give ‘em hell” Tony

Is ballsy and stoney.

Heck, better make that one in a billion.

 

Personally, I have a sense that the first verse is more fitting.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:16 | link | comments (2)

 

Vital signs: President Bush is visiting Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, and lots of the locals are outraged (aggrieved, incensed, irate, full of piss ‘n’ vinegar, freakazoidal, etc.) that he’s there. They’re organized a massive protest, and there are reports that one of the faithful may try to self-detonate in his presence.

 

Bush claims to be unperturbed by the display, saying "I applaud a society where people are free to express their opinion," which, I heard him just say on the radio, is a sign of a society’s “health.”  

 

Hmmm. As I recall, the last time the President spoke about a Muslim society’s so-called “health” was when he said that participating in a free and democratic election, even one that put a genocidal Islamist terror regime into office, was a sign of the Palestinians’ “health.”

 

Alas, that isn’t health but it’s opposite—the pathogen of hatred that infests and warps the mindset of much of the Muslim world. That the regime of Indonesia allows its populace to vent their rage in this way is a sign of collective delusion, not societal “health.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:29 | link | comments

 

Ignoring the threat: No wonder the Brits are having a hard time standing up to the jihadist threat in their midst. They aren’t even willing to take the necessary steps when confronted by the obvious symptoms of a heart attack. From the Times Online:

The British stiff upper lip is costing thousands their lives by deterring them from seeking help when they are having a heart attack, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

Almost half the population would ignore the chest pains that could be heart attack symptoms, preferring to wait and see if they improved before calling for medical help, a survey for the charity suggested.

As prompt treatment improves greatly the chances of surviving a cardiac arrest, this is almost certainly contributing to thousands of deaths each year. Anyone with chest pain should call the emergency services immediately, the charity said. While most people assume that the pain from a heart attack is intense, the first symptoms are often mistaken for indigestion and ignored.

The BHF survey indicated that 40 per cent of people would wait to see whether their chest pains went away before dialling 999. Sixty-four per cent said that they would call a friend, relative or doctor before calling for an ambulance. Four out of five people said they would doubt the seriousness of the symptoms.

The results were announced yesterday, as the BHF began its “Doubt Kills” campaign to encourage people to ring the emergency services if they experience symptoms consistent with a heart attack…

Doubt kills. And so do jihadis.

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

 

All talk, little action: Tony Blair, formerly resolute British Prime Minister, currently the world leader spearheading the drive to “negotiate with,” i.e. appease, the fascist regime that is on the cusp of nuclear capability that will allow it to nuke the Jewish state, and Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani Prime Minister who has been playing a canny game of both sides against the middle in an effort to save his own neck, have resolved to “fight terror together.”

 

Good luck with that one, chaps. You might find it a bit of a rough go though, since it’s impossible to “fight terror” by acquiescing to it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:46 | link | comments

 

A step in the wrong direction: In the run-up to the Second World War, the Brits had a Prime Minister who moved them away from a policy of appeasement toward a resolve to defeat the fascist enemy no matter the cost (“We shall never surrender!’). Today, their Prime Minister is moving them in the opposite direction (“Let’s bring the fascists in from the cold”). From Zee News:

 

Islamabad, Nov 19: British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday indicated that the West's approach to the "war on terror" has changed, as Pakistan's leader called for less emphasis on military action in Afghanistan.

Blair gave a broad hint that western policy towards tackling global extremism had shifted amid anticipated changes to coalition strategy in Iraq and calls for US foes Syria and Iran to be involved in the Middle East peace process.

Asked whether the United States and its allies like Britain were winning the "war on terror", he told a news conference: "We begin to win when we start to fight properly and I think we are now fighting properly but we've got to do more."

His official spokesman told British reporters later that Blair was not criticizing a previous approach or a particular tactic.

Instead, he said Blair was referring to the "fuller appreciation" of what was required in fighting extremism as part of a "broader global issue" that included the middle east.

Blair has previously called for a change in western strategy on combating extremism, urging the use of "soft power" techniques like aid and economic development as much as military might.

His comments -- made after talks with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf -- suggest other allies are now coming around to that line of thinking in the face of growing sectarian violence in Iraq and Taliban resistance in Afghanistan.

 

If that’s the case, then all I can say is God help us all.

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

 

Judenhass in France: A blackly amusing story in the pages of the Independent. Seems Jean-Marie Le Pen, far-right ultra-nationalist and noted Jew-hater, has been trying to improve his changes of election by moseying over from the fringe to the centre, where more French voters are supposed to lurk (or cower, depending on how you see it). His daughter has been working hard toward this end and had invited a group of Jews to attend one of papa’s rallies so they could see firsthand how much more moderate he’s become. Trouble is, she failed to run these plans past papa. He’d already gone ahead and invited Dieudonné, France’s black Jew-hating “comedian,” to deliver one of his trademark anti-Semitic rants at the rally. Zut alors! C’est un grand faux pas!

 

Now stay with me here: Dieudonné (that’s his stage name—you know, like Borat) used to be “of the extreme left,” but in recent days he’s decided that, since all the problems in the world are due to a massive but secret Jewish conspiracy, he feels very comfortable aligning himself with the likes of far-right xenophobe, Le Pen.

 

So what have we learned here?

 

Left, right or even more to the centre, in France, Judenhass is a tie that binds and unites.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:23 | link | comments

 

Sounds painful:  In a Times Online story about Ségolène Royale, the woman who wants to become the next president of France so she can save her country from its "malaise,"  Royale describes herself as “the incarnation of rupture.”

 

Come again? The whosit of whatsit?

 

One cannot imagine a leadership contender in any other Western democracy (with the possible exceptions of Michael Ignatieff in Canada and John Kerry in the U.S.) using such highfalutin’ and bizarre phraseology.

 

To translate for those outside of France who don’t know what the heck she’s talking about (as I certainly didn’t), calling herself “the incarnation of rupture” is apparently Royale’s way of saying that she and not her arch-rival Nicolas Sarkozy is the true agent of change (that is, of a “rupture” with France’s past).

 

I’m so glad I could clear that up.

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

 

Sneaky Siddiqui: In his column today, Harpoon Siddiqui comes out in favour of our accepting cultural and religious differences, for example, by allowing Hasidic Jews to erect an eruv, and not making a fuss should Muslim women decide to wear a niqab:

 

Should there be limits on multiculturalism? If so, how do we define and implement them?

 

Such questions are raised when there's a cultural conflict or an outright clash between "secular" and "religious" values.

 

There was the debate over what to do with conservative Muslim women who, for reasons of cultural practice or religious belief, want to wear not just the hijab (head scarf), but the niqab, the cloth that covers the face.

 

There was the legal row in 2001 over the Montreal Hasidic community stringing up a fishing line along utility poles to create an expanded eruv, the area in which the Orthodox may carry on activities which otherwise would be prohibited on the Saturday Sabbath. The Hasidim are in the news again:

 

·  A Montreal yeshiva, religious school, paid an adjacent YMCA to frost four windows, to remove the temptation for students to peep at scantily-clad exercising women.

 

·  The police force in Montreal is under the gun for suggesting that female officers call in their male colleagues to deal with ultra-Orthodox men who may not want to talk to women.

 

Harpoon is responding to a recent poll showing that, on the whole, Canadians are quite Islamophilic, but they draw the line at countenancing religious law that oppresses women and clashes with our cherished Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Harpoon wants to assure us that Islam is not the only religion that has laws proscribing female behaviour, and that “Multiculturalism is...not to blame for the discrimination against women in various faiths.”

 

Well, who said it was? Isn’t the whole point that the “various faiths” are responsible for it?

 

At first glance, Harpoon’s championing the rights of Hasidic Jews and Muslim women seems to be mighty accepting and Kumbaya-ish of him; he appears to be arguing for tolerance and, as Martha Stewart says, that’s a good thing. But delve a little deeper and you realize that what Harpoon is really asking for is, well, the same thing he’s always asking for: He wants Canadians to become accustomed to the kind of radical Islam that demands that women don a niqab. He also wants to drive a wedge between Canada and the only power in the world that stands in the way of the Islamist global agenda:

 

A multicultural and multi-faith environment demands of us suitable policies for our Christian majority but not Christian country.

 

Employers generally accommodate observant Jewish employees wanting to take Saturday off and let Muslim employees adjust their work schedules to take an hour or two off for the Friday noon prayers.

 

Urban schools wonder how Christian the Christmas Concert can be. Some draw the line at carols and the nativity scene. Others call it the Winter Concert.

 

Paradoxically, Canada, with a less rigid approach to the issue of church vs. state has ended up with a more secular political culture than the United States which, despite its strict constitutional separation between church and state, finds its secular space increasingly breached by religion.

 

This is a record to be proud of, not panic over, as the sensationalist media coverage of such issues tends to suggest.

 

Got that? Harpoon doesn’t want us to succumb to “the sensationalist media” no matter which religious issues it chooses to sensationalize. So Hasidic Jews lobbying for an eruv, Christians who want to sing Christmas carols at a school concert, and Muslims who choose to pursue a radical agenda that requires women to publicly acknowledge their nullity by wearing a black pup tent—it’s all the same to him. And he wants it to be all the same to the rest of us, too.

 

Very clever, that Harpoon. Scary clever, if you ask me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments

 

Clarity and blindness: Some straight talk from General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East. Notice, however, how Islam Online endeavours to pour cold water on it and twist it into something else:

 

CAMBRIDGE — The top US general in the Middle East has warned of a third world war over the rising "Islamic militancy", comparing the militant ideologies to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Gen. John Abizaid said in a speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston, on Friday, November 17, Reuters reported.

The US commander said that failure to stop the militancy would allow extremists to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction and to develop a national place from which to operate."

"And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend," he added.

The United States and its ally Britain have been accused of playing the terror card and employing the fear factor to boost plummeting ratings.

President George W. Bush's Republican Party has taken a drubbing in the November midterm Congress elections in which the Democrats wrestled control of both houses of Congress.

A recent report by British think tank, the Chatham House, said that five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Al-Qaeda group is losing sympathy in the broad Muslim world over discomfort about the association of Islam with violence and the indiscriminate civilian killings.

In a report presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday, November 13, a galaxy of world-renowned scholars, politicians and religious leaders blamed political conflicts rather than religious differences for a yawning divide between Muslims and the West…

So who’s right here—the tough talking General or the craven dhimmis in the U.S., the U.K. and the UN who think they can sit out the jihad by playing ostrich?

 

I’d say that one’s a no-brainer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:45 | link | comments (2)

 

Saud. House of Saud: As the newest James Bond flick, Casino Royale, swipes the box office title from a wiry Jew-hating faux Kazakhstani, there’s a scenario underway that’s worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster (but will never find its way onto movie screens because it’s far too politically incendiary). From the Sunday Times Online:

 

SAUDI ARABIA is threatening to suspend diplomatic ties with Britain unless Downing Street intervenes to block an investigation into a £60m “slush fund” allegedly set up for some members of its royal family.

A senior Saudi diplomat in London has delivered an ultimatum to Tony Blair that unless the inquiry into an allegedly corrupt defence deal is dropped, diplomatic links between Britain and Saudi Arabia will be severed, a defence source has disclosed.

The Saudis, key allies in the Middle East, have also threatened to cut intelligence co-operation with Britain over Al-Qaeda.

They have repeated their threat that they will terminate payments on a defence contract that could be worth £40 billion and safeguard at least 10,000 British jobs.

The Saudis are furious about the criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into allegations that BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defence company, set up the “slush fund” to support the extravagant lifestyle of members of the Saudi royal family.

The payments, in the form of lavish holidays, a fleet of luxury cars including a gold Rolls-Royce, rented apartments and other perks, are alleged to have been paid to ensure the Saudis continued to buy from BAE under the so-called Al-Yamamah deal, rather than going to another country. Al-Yamamah is the biggest defence contract in British history and has kept BAE in business for 20 years.

At least five people have been arrested in the probe. They include Peter Wilson, BAE’s managing director of international programmes, and Tony Winship, a former company official who oversaw two travel and service firms that are alleged to have been conduits for the payments. Both deny any wrongdoing.

The Saudi threat was made in September after the royal family became alarmed at the latest turn in the fraud inquiry. Sources close to the investigation say the Saudis “hit the roof” after discovering that SFO lawyers had persuaded a magistrate in Switzerland to force disclosure about a series of confidential Swiss bank accounts...

To paraphrase Lord Acton, money corrupts, and an absolutely endless supply of oil money corrupts absolutely.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:24 | link | comments (1)

Close but no cigar: After reportedly being a hair’s breadth away from working out a deal, talks between Hamas and Fatah have broken down. From AFP:

Unity talks between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, prime minister Ismail Haniya and the man tipped to be the new premier ended on Saturday without agreement, a Palestinian source said.

Abbas, from the moderate Fatah movement, Haniya from the Islamist Hamas and his "neutral" replacement Mohammed Shubair declined to comment on the Gaza City talks, but presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said they had focused on "all the details connected to the national unity government."

"Things are going well," Abu Rudeina said. "We are going in the right direction and are close to reaching an agreement."

Meanwhile, senior Fatah and Hamas officials wrapped up a three-hour meeting aimed at hammering out the details of a future national unity cabinet, also without reaching a final agreement…

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:02 | link | comments

Islam gets a pass: Harold Evans, former editor of the London Times, recalls a telling incident from a couple of years ago. His anecdote shows that while the Brits have no trouble looking at Christianity’s “naughty bits” vis-à-vis the Jews, when someone is so politically maladroit as to raise the instances of Judenhass embedded in the Koran, there’s simply no discussion. From the New York Sun:

When I spoke at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival a couple of years back and criticized newspapers that headlined suicide bombers as martyrs, I was told by two angry leading intellectuals that I had lived too long in America.

Something similar happened at this year's Hay-on-Wye festival, sponsored by the Guardian, where a five-person panel discussed "Are there are any limits to free speech?" One of the Muslim panelists said if anyone offended his religion, he would strike him. A lawyer, Anthony Julius, responded that Jews had lived as minorities under two powerful hegemonies, Christian and Muslim, and had been obliged to learn how to deal nonviolently with offense caused to them by the sacred scriptures of both. He started by referring to an anti-Semitic passage in the New Testament — which passed without comment. But when he began to list the passages in the Koran that denigrate Jews, describing them as monkeys and pigs, the panelists went ballistic. One of them, Madeline Bunting of the Guardian, put her hand over the microphone and said words to the effect, "I am not going to sit here and listen to any criticisms of Muslims." She was cheered, and not one of the journalists in the audience from right or left uttered a word about free speech — not hate speech, mind you, but free speech of a moderate nature.

It is understandable that the leaders of the Muslim community are sensitive to a stereotype of Muslims as enemies of the people. The vast majority — in Britain and certainly here — are decent, law-abiding citizens, and they deserve our sympathy and respect. But it is undeniable that terrorist crimes are committed by Muslims, and leaders in their communities have an obligation to denounce the jihadists. Symptomatic of the moral queasiness is the protest in Britain by 38 Islamic organizations, together with three members of the House of Commons and three of the House of Lords, who blame terrorism not on the jidhadists but on the foreign policy of Tony Blair and George Bush.

This attitude is, at the least, unhistorical. Islamic radicals were using Afghanistan as a base to plot murder, climaxing in 9/11, long before the ill-judged invasion of Iraq. In fact, they were plotting when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was moving to a peaceful resolution. By attacking Mr. Blair instead of Osama bin Laden, the protesters in the Muslim community and their nursemaids in news organizations give the radicals a free pass and feed a sense of grievance among perennially disgruntled youth. Maybe the latest terrorist news — a plot to flood the subways under the Thames — will give second thoughts to all those well-meaning battalions of left and right and leaders of the Muslim community who have yet to see an anti-terrorism measure they approve.

The free pass is extraordinary in light of the deaths in Britain, the conviction last week of a man plotting to blow up the London subways, and the public warning last week by the head of British intelligence, who traditionally remains anonymous, that 30 more plots were in the offing…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:51 | link | comments

 

Peace, how? Peace Now, that organization of clueless but dangerous leftists who threaten Israel’s existence, are at it again. And it won’t rest until the Jews agree to “negotiate.” From YNet News:

Some 400 left-wing activists demonstrated Saturday opposite the Erez Crossing in northern Gaza, calling for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians.

 The protest, organized by Peace Now, was held under the title, “Only negotiations will stop Qassams.”

 Addressing the rally journalist Gideon Levi declared that there is no room for comparisons between Sderot and Beit Hanoun . “Sderot is weeping over one victim, while Beit Hanoun mourns 80,” Levi said.

Fatah leader Sufian Abu Zaida was barred from entering Israeli territory, and therefore spoke to the crowds with the aid of a cell phone and loudspeaker. Abu Zaida asserted that solutions were not bound up in military action.

 “Whoever plans the next military operation, Defensive Shield 2 or 10, must be told, ‘You tried this a thousand times. It won’t stop the Qassams. The only solution is two nations for two peoples.’”…

Um, I’m pretty sure Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and the majority of Muslims have a somewhat different take on the subject.

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

 

Sins of the father: An interesting post on The American Thinker site by J.R. Dunn. After commenting on Charles Krauthammer’s most recent column in the Washington Post wherein he notes that Iraq seems to lack the kind of leadership necessary for democratic rule, Dunn lays the blame for this deficiency squarely in the lap of Bush père and his motley crew:

…One of the last mass slaughters carried out by Saddam occurred just after the First Gulf War, as a direct result of George H.W. Bush’s encouraging the Shi’ite and Kurdish resistance to take down the regime. Saddam reacted with all the force he had at his command (considerable, even after the whipping he’d just taken), particularly air power in the form of helicopter gunships. Tens of thousands were added to his tally, while the U.S. stood by under the specious and transparent excuse that we’d “guaranteed” not to interfere with Saddam’s helicopters. Two months passed before the U.S. stepped in to set up the northern and southern no-fly zones, effectively curtailing the massacre.

How many of those who died in that paroxysm were the leaders we look for today but can’t find?

We need to keep in mind is that this episode was the contribution of the realist school, now being touted as the saviors of American Middle East policy. It was their advice and influence that held back the orders to knock down those gunships. Ever enthralled by the mirage of “stability”, the realists did their best to save Saddam Hussein, thus playing a large part in creating the situation we find ourselves in today. 

Several of the principals behind the that policy, chief among them James Baker, are members of the Iraq Study Group, even now working up its final report on possible solutions for the Iraq “situation”. It would nice to think that the realists have learned from their errors. But the kind of leaks that have been appearing the past few weeks suggest that may be too much to hope for. In judging the findings of the Iraq Study Group, we should, among other criteria, consider whether it’s as bloodless, cruel, and futile as the advice they offered in 1991.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:02 | link | comments

 

Assad-licker: The prize for the most barf-inducing comment of the day goes to Guardian scribe Faisal al Yafai. Faisal calls on Tony Blair to demean himself and the entire Western world by appeasing one of world’s most loathsome despots, a man he describes thus:

 

Syria's president, Bashar Al Assad, has a rather boyish way of laughing. It's almost endearing, as if he's been caught playing at politics. That laugh must be ringing throughout the presidential palace these days. Certainly you can hear its echo at Damascene dinner parties…

 

Yeah, that Boy Assad—he’s such a scamp.

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

 

Pappe’s pap: David Pryce-Jones has a delicious evisceration of Ilan Pappe and his new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (link via Martin Kramer). The book is sure to be grabbed up by the same crowd eager to read Jimminy “Cricket” Carter’s new piece o’ fecal matter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.  Pappe is a self-loathing Jewish academic of the Noam Chomsky/Norman Finkelstein school. Because he’s an Israeli, though, he focuses his obsessive self-hatred on efforts to bring down the Jewish state, which he sees as an (stop me if you’ve heard this before) illegitimate-colonialist-imperialist-apartheid entity.

 

Pryce-Jones writes that, despite the fact that Pappe’s ideas are “expressed with obsession and a degree of paranoia,” they can be unpacked in a rational way. First, he explains that Pappe is an old-style Stalinist (yes, such strange anachronisms still exist in the new millennium, although you would think that a far-leftist bleeding heart would be more than a little embarrassed to identify with one of history’s all-time great mass murderers). An ardent internationalist, Pappe sees nationalism (and, therefore, Zionism) as an impediment to the global worker’s utopia as promised by Karl Marx.

 

Second, Pappe is one of those Jews who, historically, have sought to expunge his/her own identity by “blending in” with Communists or Nazis—totalitarians with an immense animus toward the Jewish people.

 

And finally, there’s this point, which I quote because I am always thrilled when someone puts my own thoughts into words—and does so in such an eloquent, on-the-money manner:

 

Contemporary intellectuals have long been accustomed to glorying in an adversarial stance towards their own society, preening themselves as men of nobler spirits than the dull indifferent masses around them, and isolated not because they are foolish but because they are brave. It is a form of snobbery – moral snobbery – which is why intellectuals of this kind are so widely resented.

 

Snobbery, yes, but arrogance, too. These folks are convinced that, because of their intellectual gifts, they and they alone have the inside track on understanding and explaining the world. Ironically, despite their acumen, they usually manage to get almost everything wrong.

 

George Orwell had these preening dimwits pegged some time ago when he drolly commented: “Some things are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:06 | link | comments (2)

 

Standing pat: In a pointless waste of breath and energy, the U.S. has urged Hamas, the terrorist organization which has an agenda of genocide, to “change.”

 

Hamas has dispresectfully declined the request and invited Great Satan to stick it in his ear. Also, they’d be most appreciative if the U.S. were to do all the pertinent “changing”. From news.com.au:

THE Hamas-led Palestinian Government has said that the US, rather than Hamas, must change its policies if it hopes for peace.

Washington is preparing for a possible peace push that could include an international peace conference in Jordan at the end of the month.

But US diplomats said any such meeting hinged on a planned Palestinian unity government meeting the conditions of the Quartet of Middle East mediators: to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by past agreements.

Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction and has said that any unity government it joins will not recognise Israel's right to exist.

But Deputy Palestinian Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer said rival Palestinian factions had reached a "consensus" that the unity government's programme would be separate from Hamas's.

"There's an agreement that the government would go about its business and the factions would go about theirs. There's no need for combining the governmental and factional work," Mr Shaer said.

The comments raised the possibility that the unity government could try to meet at least some of the Quartet's conditions while Hamas remains committed to Israel's destruction.

"American policy is the biggest obstacle to bringing peace and security to the region," said Hamas's Ghazi Hamad, the Palestinian cabinet spokesman.

"The Americans should not demand from the Palestinian side to commit or to abide by the Quartet conditions. The Americans should change their own policy and ask Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinian people," he said.

Ismail Rudwan, a spokesman for Hamas, said the militant group would never recognise Israel's right to exist. Likewise, Mr Rudwan said he expected the platform of any unity government "not to recognise the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation".

Mr Hamad said progress was being made in weekend talks between Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah over forming the unity government.

"There is great hope that we will be able to form the government before the end of this month in a satisfactory manner to all parties," Mr Hamad said.

  Can’t hardly wait for that one.

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

 

Sir David’s new role: There was an extremely mediocre movie back in the late 1960s called The Magic Christian. I don’t recall why it had that title—there didn't seem to be anything magical or religious about it. Just the opposite, in fact. It dealt with the quotidian and the decidedly unmetaphysical. The premise of the movie, which starred Peter Sellers and Ringo Star, was that people are irredeemably greedy, and, for the love of lucre, are willing to debase themselves in the most disgusting ways. The movie’s theme song, sung by a group of Beatles soundalikes, underscored the on-screen antics: “If you want it, here it is, come and get it, but you better hurry ‘cause it’s going fast.”

 

I haven’t thought of that movie or song in a very long time, but it bubbled up from the recesses of my memory this morning upon reading this story in the Times Online. It recounts how Sir David Frost, pre-senescent British TV yammerer, and a man about whom someone once quipped that he “rose without a trace,” has, for an undisclosed but no doubt immense amount of moolah, decamped from the Beeb to the English-language Al That Jaz. And in a coup of sorts, his first interviewee was none other than beleaguered British P.M., Tony Blair, the man who, in his dying days of leadership, hopes to buff up his tarnished image by bringing “peace” to the Middle East.

 

That should go over well with Al That Jaz’s viewers:

 

EVERY exit is an entrance somewhere else, says the Player in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Sir David Frost’s entrance into the studios of al-Jazeera comes after his exit from the BBC after 12 years interviewing fame-hungry, preening, self-obsessed people — not all of them politicians.

His questions to Tony Blair, his prize catch of a debut interviewee, covered a topic that an admirer would say showed Frost’s professionalism in tailoring his interrogation to the audience’s area of interest. A cynic might wonder if the choice reflected an awareness of who is paying Frost’s salary.

Apart from asking Blair if he might consider staying on under a Brown Administration as Foreign Secretary (No — “When you step down as Prime Minister you step down”), and whether Cherie might consider doing a Hillary Clinton after Tony quit No 10 (“No”), the inquisition focused almost exclusively on the Middle East.

Frost asked Blair about his perceived hesitation in rapping Israel’s knuckles during the Israel/Lebanon conflict. Frost remarked on Iraq: “So far it’s been pretty much of a disaster.” The Taleban was still strong, Frost noted, even though Blair had said, in 2001, that they were in disarray. And what happened to finding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan? You began to feel that Claire Short would have found little to complain about in Frost’s line of inquiry.

No doubt aware that Frost’s legendary interviews with President Nixon are currently being re-lived as a drama on the London stage, Blair was clearly not planning to be cast in the Nixon role — tearfully apologising to the world for mistakes that some sections of al-Jazeera’s audience might believe him to have made in the Middle East.

Blair was eloquent, confident and sticking to his guns. He cited peace between Israel and Palestine as “the single most important objective for us”, but wasn’t going to be drawn into regretting the invasion of Iraq.

Young hacks might gawp in wonder at how Frost became the worldwide phenomenon he has. It’s not just that he has made a calling-card of the catchphrase “Hello, good evening, and welcome”, the way Leslie Phillips did with “Ding dong!”, it’s that Frost’s questions sound so tame compared with the modern style of aggressive interviewing. His technique seems to be the interviewer’s equivalent of the tennis player who calculates that if he can just manage to keep lobbing the ball back over the net, however gently, the other guy is bound to slip up sooner or later and gift him a point.

Frost is the sort of shiny TV bauble that al-Jazeera must be hoping will catapult it from being regarded as a largely Arab mouthpiece into an international, English-language news channel that is spoken of in the same breath as CNN, Sky News and BBC World.

That might be too big a weight for Frost’s shoulders to bear, though he seems game to try. Frost is past retirement age, but you can’t see him ever ditching his clipboard: even after he’s dead it’s likely to be Frost asking the questions of St Peter rather than the other way round...

Indeed, but only if God agrees to pony up the cash to pay him for the interview.

 

Update: I’ve done some research and found out the “The Magic Christian” of the title was actually a cruise ship where some of the hijinks took place.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments (1)

 

Campus crapola: Last week, I happened to be travelling on the subway, and on the seat beside me there was a copy of Excalibur, the newspaper of York University. Because of its extremely large and vocal population of Muslim students, York is less-than-fondly known by another moniker: Gaza U.

 

The front page of the paper had two main stories, side by side. The story to the right explained how the university was scrambling to meet the demand of all the Muslim students who needed to pray during their time at school. The story on the right dealt with the numerous anti-Semitic incidents that had occurred during Holocaust Education Week.

 

“Hmmm,” thought I, a former student of journalism who once had a hand in putting out a campus newspaper. “Isn’t it interesting that the editor didn’t see the unintentionally amusing juxtaposition here?" An outside observer—moi—could, without going out too far on a limb, see that the first story might have have had something to do with the second story, although, clearly, that observation flew right over the head of the Excalibur's oblivious editor. 

 

I thought about writing a letter to the editor pointing out the grimly comical placement of the two stories, but between one thing and another, I never got around to it.

 

As it turns out, one of the stories, the one about the spike in anti-Semitic incidents during Holocaust Education Week, did elicit a number of letter. Three, to be exact.  Two of them, quelle surprise, say that Israeli policies are a factor in the spike. The other, refreshingly, comes to Israel's defence.

 

I thought I’d post one of the letters—to my mind, the most revolting one. For while my expectations of students on North American (and European) campuses is extremely low—I know how hard it is for the timourous, the uninformed and the easily led to row against the surging tide of leftist, anti-Zionist propoganda—I find it particularly appalling when a Jew of any age uses the example of the Holocaust to score points against the Jewish state.

 

Here’s the letter:

 

Dear Editor,

    I just hate to whip out the "my grandparents were Holocaust survivors who fled to Palestine in 1948, and I am still a Jew who boycotts Israeli apartheid" card, but in response to Valary Thompson's erratic article, I feel as though I must.

    I was a student at a conservative Hebrew day school for 10 years and therefore, I feel that I'm greatly schooled in the meaning of anti-Semitism. To call the plastering of anti-Israeli apartheid stickers in the Student Centre elevator as such is nothing short of absurd.  

    There are many folks associated with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), including Jews (shocking isn't it?), and to make the assumption that this was an act of anti-Semitism when there could've very well been Jewish participation attests to this article as both poorly researched and ignorant.

    I would never deny the importance of Holocaust Education Week anywhere, as it allows for the retelling of histories, for myself as well. But Adam Hummel buries himself in his own irony when he makes the claim that the goal of Holocaust Education Week at York is to start talking about other genocides while he simultaneously denies that there is a genocide happening in Palestine. How typical.

    In fact, on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 28 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These included eight children and seven women who were sleeping in their homes when they were murdered. Call me a sensationalist; call me a self-hating Jew, and call me insensitive to my family's legacy of survival, but I will not stand idle when folks who speak out against Israel's mass extermination of Palestinians are named anti-Semites.  And as a testament to my grandparents, I will also not stand idle when a system of apartheid is maintained in the name of a Jewish state, in my name.

Okay, I'll bite: You're a sensationalist; you're a self-hating Jew; you're insensitive to your family's legacy of survival. Furthermore, I'm sure your grandparents (if they're still alive), people who survived the same kind of unhinged fascist hatred that now threatens to obliterate the world’s only Jewish state, must very proud of their idiot granddaughter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:53 | link | comments (3)

 

Nazi crawls out of the woodwork: Now that Judenhass is once again acceptable, at least in certain quarters, it’s an opportune time for old-fangled Nazis to re-emerge from their holes. From Der Spiegel:

An avowed neo-Nazi in Saxony's state parliament has made a spectacle of himself this week with two outright -- and illegal -- statements of praise for Hitler. His German party, the NPD, hasn't distanced itself from his words, though it has kicked him out of its caucus.

Germany's far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was busy with spin control this week after a member of its elected fraction in Saxony's state parliament praised Adolf Hitler -- not once, but twice.

Klaus-Jürgen Menzel, a 66-year-old farmer and member of Saxony's NPD caucus, told a TV interviewer over the weekend, "I support the Führer, just as I always did. Nothing's changed, and why should it?"

By Tuesday, he was out of the NPD fraction -- on a technicality, though, not for mentioning Hitler. "With his actions and words he has become a burden for the party," read an official statement.

But on Wednesday Menzel caused another uproar by stepping up to the podium in Dresden with two shotgun cartridges in his coatpocket and declaring support for vigilante justice. "This is how I would deal with child molesters," he said, producing the cartridges. Then he exchanged words with a left-wing, Austrian-born politician named Peter Porsch. "There are several kinds of Austrians," Menzel said to Porsch while he was still in the parliamentary hall. "But when I see someone like you in front of me, the other (Austrian) always seems more sympathetic."

A ranking member of the legislature later asked Menzel if he meant Hitler, who was Austrian-born. Menzel said it would make no sense to compare the last chancellor of the German Reich with a "Stasi snitch" -- a jab at Porsch, who had links to the East German secret police apparatus during the communist era.

Menzel was then barred from the plenary session. It was the first time in recent memory that Hitler had been praised in a German legislative hall…

The first, but doubtless not the last.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:11 | link | comments

 

A tree grew in Amsterdam: I have a bit of a problem with the whole Anne Frank business, how the diary of a young girl murdered by the Nazis became a vehicle for treacly uplift, how her saga has been sanitized and de-Judaised, and turned into a universal story about racial discrimination. (Cynthia Ozick has a brilliant essay on the subject.) Nonetheless, at a time when Jews are facing a reprise of the Holocaust, there is something disturbingly symbolic about this Der Spiegel story:

The famous chestnut tree which provided succor to Anne Frank during her years of hiding from the Nazis has succumbed to infection. It will soon be cut down – but will live on in the Internet.

After a long battle with illness and infection, the famous chestnut tree which provided Anne Frank inspiration and support during her years of hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam will now have to be cut down. For the last two years, the 150-year-old tree has been the victim of an aggressive fungus, as well as the dangerous horse chestnut leaf miner moth, for the last two years. It’s now at risk of falling over. The decision was announced on Tuesday by the Amsterdam city council.

The news comes after a long battle to keep the tree alive. Last year, the tree’s crown was cut back for stability. A number of botanists have also been performing tests and observing the chestnut in the past six months to do what they can to save it. In the 1990s, the city of Amsterdam spent €160,000 on a soil sanitation program after it was found that leakage of domestic fuel from a nearby underground tank was threatening the tree’s root system. All for naught.

“It’s very sad, but the decision has been taken,” Patricia Bosboom, spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House Museum, told the AP. “It’s one of the oldest chestnut trees in Amsterdam.”

The tree made several appearances in Anne Frank’s diary, written during the 25 months she and her family spent hiding from the Nazi occupiers from 1942 to 1944. It was the only bit of nature she could see from attic of the house in central Amsterdam – all the other windows in the apartment were blacked out.

“Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs,” she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. “From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind….”

In May of that year, she wrote: “Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year….”

If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Hitler of our times, has his way, today’s Jews will also be cut down like Anne’s tree--and like Anne herself--and live on solely on the Internet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:46 | link | comments

 

The anti-Zionist Beeboisie: The American Thinker site has a piece about the Beeb’s egregious biases, now because of the Balen report, exposed for all to see (or at least, for all who care to look). But, as the writer notes, the Beeb has lots of company in the British media (links from AT piece):

 

…Its [the Beeb’s] Europhilia, its nauseating culture of anti-Americanism and its associated loaded anti-Iraq war coverage – culminating in its public humiliation by the Hutton Inquiry – have all been well exposed. But, somehow, a misty-eyed romanticism about the BBC still persists despite the hard evidence. Indeed, such is the wholesale departure of the BBC from its own Charter on Informed Citizenship and its declared commitment to ‘accurate, impartial and independent’ journalism, that even a leftwing think-tank has called for its public service broadcast status to be revoked.

 

But if anything has created a strong moral distaste among media commentators it is the BBC’s increasingly blatant anti-Israel news coverage.  If anti-Semitism is on the ‘orchestrated’ rise across Europe, as even the BBC admits, then the left-dominated Western media is increasingly conducting the symphony. Nor is the BBC alone in being accused of anti-semitic prejudices in the UK media.

 

We have had the sick  Independent cartoon of Ariel Sharon swallowing a baby. The leftwing New Statesman published its famously bigoted Kosher Conspiracy over which its editor was forced to apologize. In August the Independent on Sunday ran Robert Fisk’s (yes, he famously of the beating at the hands of an Afghan Muslim mob ‘driven to it’, so he claimed, by US foreign policy) hysterical Slaughter in Qana. Fisk’s piece turned out to be yet another diatribe short on facts and long on anti-Israel propaganda. 

 

And perhaps you remember John McCarthy? The former hostage held by terrorists in Lebanon? Well it appears he’s now working for them. The Independent’s anti-Israel op-ed column that is, not the terrorists.

 

And only last month leading US lawyer Alan Dershowitz, having found the core thesis of his new book Preemption: a knife that cuts both ways had been entirely misrepresented in a Guardian book review, was reduced to drafting an Open Letter to set the record straight after Guardian editors refused a print redress.

 

I have often conjectured that if ever Oliver Stone re-made Casablanca it would be set in an Islamic Republic, star George Galloway or Mel Gibson as ‘Rick’ and the role of the iconic Transit Papers, conceived to achieve safe passage through the evil Taleban host, supplanted by a copy of The Guardian or New York Times.

 

But it is the culture of anti-Israel propaganda at the publicly-funded BBC with which we are concerned here. Even BBC Governors were forced to uphold a complaint of bias by numerous MP’s after the BBC’s Middle East correspondent revealed she had been “moved to tears” as Yasser Arafat was helicoptered away to die. And immediately after the Reuters photo fakery was exposed, BBC morning TV presenters actually diverted an on-screen report on the affair into an attack on “right-wing US bloggers” for “causing” the rumpus.

While I might prefer the BBC to own up to what Monty Python’s Cleese would call the “bleedin’ obvious” – its ideological ‘values-bias’, as the Balen Report may help to confirm beyond doubt – what I truly resent, as a Brit taxpayer, is being legally bound to subsidise ideologically left-biased ‘public service’ broadcasting – and, by nauseating extension, its iniquitous anti-semitic propaganda.  

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:31 | link | comments

 

Ripe for the picking: When Willie Sutton, a notorious American bank robber of the 1930s was asked why he robbed banks he is said to have replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

 

Well, duh!

 

If one were to ask the jihadists why they’re looking for new recruits on university campuses, they might well paraphrase Willie and reply, “Because that’s where the anti-Zionism is.”

 

From the Telegraph:

 

Britain faces a sustained threat from extremist Islamic groups recruiting in British universities, the Government warned today.

 

Releasing new guidance designed to root out suspected terror cells, Bill Rammell, the higher education minister, said there was evidence that undergraduates were being "groomed" by groups infiltrating campuses disguised as ordinary students.

 

The document, released to all universities today, warns lecturers to be vigilant of students suspected of circulating extremist literature and extremist speakers visiting campuses.

 

It outlines a series of "scenarios" based on real events reported by university and college staff to illustrate the kind of threat being posed.

 

This includes a teacher who found pamphlets with titles such as "Who is a legitimate target?" and "From Jihad to a new world order" and a tutor who had been approached by students concerned about a speaker delivering a talk entitled "Terrorist or freedom fighter?".

 

It also describes how librarians have reported spotting students looking at computer images of men "dressed in military and civilian clothing holding guns" and concerns over extreme views being aired by members of Islamic societies.

 

Mr Rammell said: "This guidance provides a recognition - that I believe must be faced squarely - that violent extremism in the name of Islam is a real, credible and sustained threat to the UK, and that there is evidence of serious, but not widespread, Islamic extremist activity in higher education institutions."…

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

 

Thanks for coming and try the veal: Ladies and gents, I give you the inimitable song stylings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or as he’s known on the Islamist lounge circuit, Old Black Eyes. Here’s his version of that old Knack fave, “My Sharona”:

 

Ooh my old and perfect law, perfect law.

When you gonna up and rule the world, Sharia?

Gotta have a big jihad, a big jihad.

Then infidels’ll have it as their law, Sharia.

Never gonna stop, give it up.

Such a stalwart bunch. Infidels won’t know what hit ‘em;

They’re all out to lunch.

My my my i yi woo.

Ma-ma-ma my Sharia.

 

Time is drawing near, ah do you hear?

Close enough that I can see it now, Sharia.

There’s no mystery, that’s the key.

Everyone can do it with no fuss, Sharia.

Never gonna stop, give it up.

Such a perfect law. Give it up for God,

His law’s without a flaw.

My my my i yi woo.

Ma-ma-ma my Sharia.

 

When you gonna give up, give it up?

It is just a matter of time, Sharia.

It’s your destiny, destiny.

It isn’t just a game in my mind, Sharia.

Never gonna stop, give it up.

Such a perfect tool. Use it so the world submits

To the Shia’s rule.

My my my i yi woo.

Ma-ma-ma my Sharia.

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

 

Once and again: As more than a few have noted, there are eerie similarities between 2006 and 1938. The most disturbing parallel is that the world seems to have concluded that, once again, that the Jews are expendable. There's one big difference, of course. Back then, the Jews were completely powerless. Today, on the other hand, the Jews are, if not completely powerless, then unwilling to exercise the power they have. Which amounts to more or less the the same thing. Caroline Glick's conclusion: time to show Israel's feckless leaders the door. From JWR:

To the delight of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, an international coalition has coalesced around Iran's nuclear weapons program.

In his remarks Tuesday in Los Angeles before the delegates to the United Jewish Communities' General Assembly, Olmert explained his enthusiasm. First he stated, "America's leadership in preventing Iran's nuclearization is indisputable and unequaled. I just met my good friend, a true friend of Israel, President George W. Bush in Washington..His determination to prevent this most serious of developments is unquestionable. But America must have the support of the international community if we are to successfully defuse this mortal threat."

So from Olmert's perspective, it is America's responsibility — not Israel's — to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel. At the same time, he accepts that the US will take no action against Iran without first receiving permission from the French, Russians, Chinese and the Arabs.

Olmert then explained that the Arabs have to agree to let the US protect Israel. As he put it, "A coalition of moderate Arab countries can and must unite their common interest in preventing Iran from undermining stability in the Middle East. This coalition must struggle against the dangers of radical Islam that manipulate the very source of Islam itself."

For her part, Livni told the crowd in California that there is little doubt that the nations of the world will shortly unite to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities. As she put it, "If the promise of 'Never Again' is more important than the price of oil, then the time for international indifference and hesitation in the face of the Iranian threat has long passed."

Livni then explained that she is eager to give Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians and is working to "brand" Israel as a place where it is fun to live. She concluded by recommending that American Jews invite Israeli Nobel laureates to visit their communities.

In sum, our Foreign Minister is certain that the international community will act against Iran because it means it when it says it thinks that the Holocaust was a bad thing more than it means it when it says, "Fill it up with unleaded." Moreover, as far as Livni is concerned, the world will protect Israel because the Olmert government is so eager to render Jerusalem and Tel Aviv defenseless by surrendering Judea and Samaria Palestinian jihadists.

Aside from that, Livni trusts that the world will protect the Jews because thanks to her we have UN forces protecting Hizbullah on our northern border and we're rebranding ourselves to let the international community know that Jews are both good at science and really fun to drink with.

To their credit, Olmert and Livni are correct to say that today an international coalition made up of the US, the EU and some of the Arabs is forming around Iran. But what binds the members together is their collective opposition to taking any effective action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons...

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:37 | link | comments

 

Peace in Our Time alert: The EUro-weenies who, to mix two metaphors, wouldn’t touch the hot potato of Iran’s nukes with a ten metre pole (or a ten metre Pole) are mighty keen to put in their two peso’s worth (make that three metaphors) about the supposed “root cause” of all their agita. From MSNBC:

Spain, France and Italy plan are to present a new Middle East peace initiative to their European partners at an EU summit in December, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spanish prime minister, said on Thursday.

Spain hopes to gain the backing of Germany and Britain for the initiative, calling for an immediate ceasefire, the formation of an internationally recognised Palestinian unity government and a peace conference.

"We cannot remain impassive in the face of the horror that continues to unfold before our eyes," Mr Zapatero told reporters during a summit of Spanish and French leaders in Girona, Spain.

"Peace between Israel and the Palestinians means, to a great extent, peace at an international level," he said.

Mr Zapatero's government has struggled to carve out a role on the international stage, following the withdrawal of troops from Iraq after his election in 2003, despite the presence of Spanish troops in Afghanistan and Lebanon. His most high–profile international initiative, reviving the "alliance of civilisations" to foster better relations between Western and muslim countries, has been dismissed by critics at home as wishy-washy.

Jacques Chirac, French president, said Mr Zapatero had proposed the joint initiative when they met at the beginning of the summit, according to Reuters. The two had arranged to call Roman Prodi, the Italian prime minister, to discuss the initiative.

Mr Chirac said France would "act jointly" with Spain, Italy and other European countries to "try to initiate indispensable moral and political reforms in the Middle East."…

Pardonez-moi, but the thought of the likes of Zapatero and Chirac dispensing morality to anyone is, as M. Chirac might say, incroyable.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:09 | link | comments (2)

Nutty professors: Goddam you, Adolf Hitler. You and your Shoah are responsible for Palestinian suffering. At least, that’s the “educated” opinion of a number of highly-placed German academics. From the Jerusalem Post:

The German Embassy rejected on Thursday a call made by 25 German academics for the country to abandon its "special relationship" with Israel in favor of a stance recognizing Palestinian suffering as an outcome of the Holocaust.

 

In a lengthy petition published in the Frankfurter Rundschau regional newspaper Wednesday, the scholars said that, "The roots of this bloody 60-year confrontation in the Middle East are German and European. The Palestinian population doesn't have the responsibility to take on European problems in the Middle East," according to translations in English-language media.

 

The signers also questioned whether German backing for Israel was causing tension within German society, and objected to German sales of hi-tech weaponry to Israel despite its actions against the Palestinians.

 

In addition, the petition also requests a "friendship free from past burdens" between the two countries, in which Israel could be criticized, and, according to news accounts, states that "a large part of the German society has turned the shame and grief of the Holocaust into a ceremonial matter. That is how a problematic philo-Semitism has developed in Germany."

 

A German Embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv, however, dismissed the petition. "It in no way reflects the position of the German government. The position of the German government regarding the special relationship with Israel will not change."

 

He described that relationship as stemming from German behavior in the Holocaust.

 

"We accept fully that because of the Shoah, the German people and [government] have a special responsibility to the State of Israel," he said, emphasizing that all of Germany's top leaders have stressed their support for this policy in recent years.

 

"There's no way Germany can be a new Germany if we cannot accept this special relationship," he continued. "Our special relationship with Israel is one of the pillars of our foreign policy."

 

Despite media references to the professors who signed the petition as respected and employed by the state - as faculty of public universities - the spokesman said they didn't reflect the views of a majority of German academics, let alone the government that pays their salaries…

 

Good to know. Otherwise one would be tempted to conclude that Germans had the same Weltanshauung on this issue as that evil, blinkered Jew-hating Shoah-denier over in Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:57 | link | comments

 

There are none so blind…: …as Kofi Annan, who seems to think that he’s leaving the world a much more peaceful place than it was when his term as UN secretary general began. From AHN:

Nairobi, Kenya (AHN) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has summarized his decade-long tenure as the world's leading diplomat on Wednesday by highlighting his contributions to the cause of poverty and diffusing conflicts in war-torn regions.

Annan said, "As Secretary-General I have put the issue of inequity and the question of poverty at the center of the U.N.'s work."

The Ghanian diplomat will step down after 10 years in office.

He also said, "Development assistance has already reached $100 billion."

Annan added, "We have had debt relief for about 18 countries and if we can settle the conflicts on this continent then I am sure investors would come."

The U.N.'s top diplomat was in Kenya for a conference on climate change. He mentioned as part of his success, the containment or ending of wars Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Eritrea and Ethiopia: "I am pleased to say there are fewer wars in the world today than 10 years ago ... so there is some progress, but there are still far too many conflicts, particularly on our continent."…

He’s kidding, right? Either that or he’s completely off his rocker.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:39 | link | comments

 

And speaking of global jihad-enablers…: Harpoon Siddiqui weighs in on —and gives a hearty nod of approval to—the Alliance of Civilizations’s just-released report. The report, a masterpiece of evasion, deceit and willful blindness, situates responsibility for world-wide Muslim terror (a.k.a the global jihad, although the pompously-named UN affiliate, for reasons of fear, stupidity and outright denial, refuses to acknowledge it as such) on one very tiny locus. It seems that Arabs and Muslims, not content with controlling vast swaths of the planet (and angling to control even more), can’t seem to let go of their obsession with that minute bit of land under Jewish rule. Those few puny hectares, say the Alliance’s “rift-healers,” are the alpha and the omega of all the world’s grief. Here’s Harpoon, making his way through the report’s key points:

 

·  "The Israeli-Palestinian issue has become a key symbol of the rift between Western and Muslim societies, and remains one of the gravest threats to international stability."

 

(UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan elaborated further: "We may wish to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many. It is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield.'')

 

(Separately, Tony Blair made about the same point Tuesday.)

 

·  "Western military operations in Muslim countries contribute to a growing climate of fear and animosity that is spreading around the world. The spiralling death toll in Iraq and the conflict in Afghanistan