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

Cry “hammock!” and let loose the dog days of summer: It’s that time of year again—my annual final week of August vacance. I’m signing off for the rest of the month, and hope to be back on Labour Day or shortly thereafter (depending on how quickly I can get my act in gear). See y’all then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:36 | link | comments

Amanpour’s shameless apologia for Islam: Phyllis Chessler demolishes Christiane "Useful Idiot" Amanpour’s appalling exercise in moral equivalence and insult to our intelligence--her three part CNN documentary about religious extremism:

 In her three part series, Amanpour is far more combative and confrontational with both Jewish and Christian religious leaders than she is with Muslim leaders. She is warmer, softer, more "at home," with even the most extreme of Islamist leaders, perhaps even more respectful, than she is with their allegedly Jewish or Christian counterparts.

 Amanpour completely fails to make the distinction between Islamists who teach hatred of infidels and women and who blow infidel and Muslim civilians up (as well as honor-murder their own women); Israelis who are under perpetual terrorist seige and who are trying to defend themselves against Islamist attacks; and conservative Christians who are trying to moblize votes, change laws, or win hearts and minds with words, not bombs (although she certainly has lots of footage of the bloody bombings at abortion clinics--bombings I personally abhor and mourn--as do many Christians).

  Amanpour wants us to like Muslims--even the most extremist among them. They are human, prick them will they not bleed? But she does not want us to like Christians or Jews, especially those who are Zionists.

 Amanpour does not seem to show the same respect towards conservative Christians who wish to dress modestly, remain chaste until marriage, and avoid a secular culture of rampant pornography and rape as she shows their far more extremist counterparts in the Islamist world or than she shows, at great length, one well-spoken Muslim-American woman who decides to "cover."

 In one instance, Amanpour accuses Ron Luce, a Christian leader of teenagers, as being like the Taliban. He actually answers Amanpour in a rather charming, disarming way. She will not be moved. Amanpour herself takes no stand on what Luce says about an American secular and popular culture which allows virgin teenager America to be raped on the sidewalk as we pass by without stopping or caring.

  Perhaps Amanpour can't forgive these "radical" Christians their support for Israel, their "Zionism." She presents Pastor John Hagee (together with the late Jerry Fallwell) as Doctor Strangeloves. Hagee, by the way, sees Iran as a threat to America and Israel. As he speaks of his Christian love of Zion, Amanpour cuts to a presumed Israeli air attack againt innocent civilians, replete with weeping, civilian Arab women.

  Amanpour again returns to former President Jimmy Carter--this time to have him tell us that he had to break with evangelical Baptists over their sexist position on women in the church. Carter who believes that Israel is an "apartheid" state and whose library has been hugely funded by the Saudis is the new feminist in town.

 Amanpour has a definite political agenda--no less so than the Christian conservatives whom she attacks for daring to conduct "stealth politics, under the radar" when they engage in Christian voter drives. Amanpour wants to put a Democrat in the White House. She wants someone there who will move against the so-called Israel Lobby and who will finally stop funding Israel. She wants our next Commander in Chief to engage in nicey-nice diplomacy with Iran. She wants Americans to stop fearing that every Muslim might be a terrorist and to start accepting a parallel Islamic/Islamist universe right here on our own soil.

  Yes, our ethnically super-trendy, British-accented war correspondent really wants exactly this. And she wants us to see that such right-wing Christians are no different than Islamists, including Bin Laden, who want a world Caliphate. (We are all the same, all cultures are equal, remove the mote from your own eye before you judge anyone else, etc.)

 To accomplish her goal, Amanpour presents Christian conservatives as truly scary, as mounting a Crusader-like Army against liberal secular America--but not necessarily a violent war against terrorist Islamism. Amanpour exploits America's hottest domestic issues (abortion and gay marriage) in order to accomplish her own foreign policy aims.

 By the end of her third and final segment we are meant to fear and loathe the Christian conservative right far more than we are meant to fear or loathe Amanpour's Amadinejad whom --incredibly--she never accuses of funding Hezbollah's terrorist work abroad. What she mainly shows us in Iran are Shi'a Muslims at prayer, engaged in theatrical-religious rituals. We do not see them funding and masterminding Hezbollah as it takes down civilian (and Christian) Lebanon, lays seige to Israel, blows up the Jewish Community Center in Argentina. She shows us the child-martyrs (one estimate has 850,000 dying in the Iran-Iraq war) as themselves true believers as opposed to victims of sadistic adult handlers.

 Her third segment is one long running advertisement for a Democratic candidate for the next Presidency. She is electioneering as hard as she accuses the Christians of doing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:52 | link | comments

The mullahs tighten the noose: Word is that the lit’ler Hitler and the mully-bullies are so despised on their home turf that any moment now the fed-up, put-upon populace is about to rise up and throw the blackguards out.

Faint hope, I’d say. It’s awfully hard to rise up when the merest peep of dissent can land you an appointment with the Shia hangman, one of the busiest chaps in the land. From the Telegraph (which, amusingly, refers to the pint-sized Shia-Nazi as “Mr” Ahmadinejad):

 

Stonings, hangings, floggings, purges. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might claim that United Nations sanctions can't hurt his country, but that is not how it feels for Iran's long-suffering population which now finds itself on the receiving end of one of the most brutal purges witnessed since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

 

The most visible manifestation of the new oppression sweeping Iran has been the wave of public executions and floggings carried out in Teheran and provincial capitals over recent weeks in a blatant attempt by the regime to intimidate political opponents. The official government line is that the punishments are part of its "Plan to Enforce Moral Behaviour".

 

It's the same kind of argument that was used immediately after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control to purge the country of its prosperous, secular middle class and secure his hold on power. Now Mr Ahmadinejad is adopting similar tactics in a desperate attempt to keep his embattled regime in power.

 

Although Iran has one of the world's highest execution rates, until recently most of the sentences were carried out within the confines of prisons such a Teheran's notorious Evin complex. But this month diplomats at the Japanese and Australian embassies in the capital were alarmed to find the bodies of two convicted criminals hanging from cranes stationed directly outside their office windows.

 

The location of the cranes, at a busy thoroughfare surrounded by office blocks, was chosen as much to remind the diplomatic community that Mr Ahmadinejad's hardline regime was still very much in charge as to send a message to ordinary citizens.

 

For these public executions, together with the estimated 30 others that have taken place in other parts of the country, are nothing more than a brutal exercise in political, as opposed to religious, persecution. There have also been several public floggings carried out on men and women accused of flouting the strict morality laws. Many of the executions were shown live on Iranian television. The message the government wants to get across is clear: mess with us and this is what will happen to you.

 

However much the authorities insist the sentences relate only to their campaign to improve public morals, Western diplomats in Teheran believe many of the victims have been singled out for their participation in the anti-government fuel riots that erupted in late June.

 

Those disturbances, in which an estimated third of the country's petrol stations were destroyed by protesters angry at the introduction of fuel rationing (Iran, remember, boasts the world's second largest oil reserves), can be seen as a direct consequence of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations over Iran's controversial nuclear programme…

 

So much for the oppressed Iranians being the agents of regime change, at least for the time being.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:05 | link | comments

The siren call of jihad: David Horovitz writes about The Islamist, a book written by someone who was well down the road to martyrdom but who, fortunately, managed to take a detour. The same can not be said of friend, the young Brit who strapped on a bomb for Allah and blew up a Tel Aviv beach bar. From the Jerusalem Post:

On April 30, 2003, Asif Hanif, 21, achieved the notorious feat of becoming Britain's first suicide bomber, killing Ran Baron, Dominique Hass and Yanai Weiss and wounding 60 others when he detonated his explosives to murderously shatter the mellow peace of Mike's Place, the Tel Aviv beachfront blues bar.

Ed Husain knew Hanif, and remembers him as "a teddy bear of a character: generous, kind, selfless and committed."

Both men had been studying Arabic in Damascus not long before the bombing. But while Husain was in the process of reeducating himself and rejecting Islamic extremism, Hanif was plunging ever deeper into violent radicalism.

"The Asif I knew did not believe in killing innocent civilians in Britain or any other country, but Islamist rhetoric had convinced him that Israelis, without exception, were not innocent but occupiers of the Palestinian homeland," Husain writes in his frankly horrifying book The Islamist. "Asif's recruitment to suicide bombing came about against a backdrop of increasingly radicalized young Muslims in communities across Britain," the author notes. "The qualities that made Asif a great Muslim host - selflessness and commitment - were the same traits that, when corrupted, transformed him into a suicide bomber."

Had Husain not so starkly changed course, he might have wound up as murderously transformed as Hanif. For Husain had traveled along the same route to indoctrination. He too had been well on the way to persuasion, over years of deepening immersion in the prevalent victim-aggressor culture of perverted Islam, that it was God's will, Allah's will, for his soldiers to kill the infidels - Jews, Christians, even nonextreme Muslims - to establish an all-powerful Islamist state.

Husain's book, recently published in the UK and yet to appear in the US, is horrifying precisely because it documents so candidly the smoothness with which Husain was recruited to such misguided ruthlessness. He was gradually drawn into ever more intolerant circles, and became prominent within them - helping to galvanize the process by which the racist, misogynist and thuggish ideology came to dominate various colleges in East London a decade or so ago.

Husain himself was thus instrumental in the trend that saw Islamist separation politics rise and thrive; hatreds inculcated among thousands of recruits against nonbelievers and against Britain; the adoption of Islamic clothing by female students on campuses, open confrontation with utterly overwhelmed and impotent college authorities and, in what was for Husain a climactic, epiphanic incident, a murder just outside the grounds of his own Newham College for which he holds himself partially, indirectly responsible. "It was we who had encouraged Muslim fervor," he writes, "a sense of separation from others, a belief that Muslims were worthier than other humans."…

I think Ed is being too hard on himself. The Muslim fervor and sense of superiority he speaks of isn’t something he, his late friend and other impressionable young lads came up with on their own. It’s all there, chapter and verse, in the perfect, uncreated word of God as text messaged to the Islam’s founder, the world’s first—and still most influential—jihadi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:55 | link | comments (1)

Backlash on campus: Queens University head Karen Hitchcock isn’t the only one feeling the heat after signing a strongly-worded public statement condemning British academe’s boycott of Israel. Ryerson’s Sheldon Levy is also feeling the sting of the anti-Zionists and their clueless but humanitarian-minded helpers. From the Jewish Tribune:

TORONTO – Ryerson University President Sheldon Levy has already denounced the proposed boycott of Israeli Academics by the British Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) but newly elected Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) executives drafted a motion calling for a retraction of Levy’s statement on the basis of academic freedom – ironically, the very same principal Levy said the boycott undermines. Heather Kere, the new RSU vice president of education, drafted the motion along with RSU Academic Council Director Saron Ghebressellassie on July 19, a day after Kere attended a meeting sponsored by Student’s Against Israeli Apartheid  (SAIA) held in the boardroom of Ryerson’s Continuing Education Student’s Union and promoted by the Canadian Arab Federation.

“The main thrust of the meeting was strategizing ways they could get the university president to rescind his statement and get back at him through some sort of popular movement [for making his statement]. They seemed quite comfortable with using RSU resources and staff for this pro-Palestinian movement,” said a Canadian Federation of Jewish Students’ official who attended, who asked to remain anonymous.

“It’s like you know exactly what happened, like you talked to someone at the meeting,” Kere said, when asked to confirm whether the idea for the motion came from this meeting.

Kere, although she wouldn’t confirm or deny it, is alleged to be an active member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), but insists she is not anti-Israel and that the motion was drafted because Levy did not consult students before speaking for the university on such a large issue.

However, she did not consult students to find out what they thought before drafting the resolution either.

“There was no consultation needed for such a motion because we weren’t pushing a position we were simply asking that before any statement be made, consultation happen. There are certain decisions I am entrusted with as an elected official and I think student’s need to be asked [what they think by the university] before a statement is made.”

However, there is one member of the Ryerson community who wishes they were consulted about the motion. An anonymous letter to the Jewish Tribune reads: “I don’t think that my students’ union has the right to take this sort of position on behalf of the students of Ryerson – many of whom are Jewish – the majority of which would be offended to have their students’ union support antisemitism. I think that this decision is motivated by bigotry and arrogance and will create a chill on campus so that Jewish students don’t feel welcome. It will be very divisive and we don’t want what happens at York to happen at Ryerson too.”

RSU President Nora Loretto agrees that students should have been told about the motion.

“I think it’s kind of bizarre that we don’t get direction from the membership on this and this issue is so big that we definitely need it,” she said.

She added that this year’s executive is more divided than in previous years.

The motion was not tabled at the last board meeting due to a lack of a quorum, but it was expected to be tabled again at the next meeting on Aug.  22.

 

It’s nice to see that RSU Academic Council Director Saron Ghebressallassie is continuing her career of activism on behalf of progressive causes—and has now turned an eye toward what Canadian Arabs have isolated as a crucial global challenge. During her previous incarnation, as education and campaigns co-ordinator for the Ryerson Women's Centre, the highly motivated Ms. Ghebressallassie tended to concern herself with local controversies—like the woeful condition of tampon dispensers in Rye High’s chick washrooms.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments

Pilger—the man and the verb: Pernicious anti-Zionist John Pilger—who, like all pernicious anti-Zionists, exists in an alternate reality wherein Jews are Nazis, Palestinians are innocent, victimized Yids and there’s no discernable jihad—is ecstatic that the world has finally come to its senses (in reality, lost its marbles) and signed on to the boycott of Israel. From hard left U.K. mag the New Statesman:

From a limestone hill rising above Qalandia refugee camp you can see Jerusalem. I watched a lone figure standing there in the rain, his son holding the tail of his long tattered coat. He extended his hand and did not let go. "I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now."

"How do you feel about all that?" I asked him.
"Do you expect me to feel hatred? What is that to a Palestinian? I never hated the Jews and their Israel . . . yes, I suppose I hate them now, or maybe I pity them for their stupidity. They can't win. Because we Palestinians are the Jews now and, like the Jews, we will never allow them or the Arabs or you to forget. The youth will guarantee us that, and the youth after them . . .".

That was 40 years ago. On my last trip back to the West Bank, I recognised little of Qalandia, now announced by a vast Israeli checkpoint, a zigzag of sandbags, oil drums and breeze blocks, with conga lines of people, waiting, swatting flies with precious papers. Inside the camp, the tents had been replaced by sturdy hovels, although the queues at single taps were as long, I was assured, and the dust still ran to caramel in the rain. At the United Nations office I asked about Ahmed Hamzeh, the street entertainer. Records were consulted, heads shaken. Someone thought he had been "taken away . . . very ill". No one knew about his son, whose trachoma was surely blindness now. Outside, another generation kicked a punctured football in the dust.

And yet, what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral issue of the age" refuses to be buried in the dust. For every BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more powerful now than ever. Documentation of the violent expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is voluminous. Re-examination of the historical record has put paid to the fable of heroic David in the Six Day War, when Ahmed Hamzeh and his family were driven from their home. The alleged threat of Arab leaders to "throw the Jews into the sea", used to justify the 1967 Israeli onslaught and since repeated relentlessly, is highly questionable. In 2005, the spectacle of wailing Old Testament zealots leaving Gaza was a fraud. The building of their "settlements" has accelerated on the West Bank, along with the illegal Berlin-style wall dividing farmers from their crops, children from their schools, families from each other. We now know that Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon last year was pre-planned. As the former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison has written, the recent "civil war" in Gaza was actually a coup against the elected Hamas-led government, engineered by Elliott Abrams, the Zionist who runs US policy on Israel and a convicted felon from the Iran-Contra era.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history.

But something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our lives, has finally brought the attention of the international community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to one of its principal sources, Israel…

The greatest moral issue of the age, huh? I thought the greatest moral issue of our age was whether the West had gumption enough to stand up to the Islamic supremacists. But then, I’m not a sagacious Elder, like old Nelson; nor am I a useful idiot determined to pilger (i.e. to pillory, smear, delegitimate) the one democracy—and the one bright spot—in the entire Islamo-loopy Middle East.

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

Read between the lines (and the lyin'): The countdown to Iran’s nuclear capability continues, as the world continues to dally and dither and do nothing of real substance to dissuade the religious zanies from their plans. Meanwhile, we can read stories like this in one the Tehran Times. The text deals with how the mully-bullies are supposedly “co-operating” with the UN nuclear watchkitty; the subtext confirms that the IAEA is as clueless and toothless as ever, and it’s all systems go for blastoff:

TEHRAN – After two days of talks in Tehran between senior officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian nuclear negotiators, the two sides said on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement on a “timetable” for Iran to answer the remaining questions about its nuclear activities.

Iran and the IAEA previously agreed that the remaining questions about Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program would be answered within the framework of a 60-day modality plan.

""We have in front of us… a work plan. We agreed on modalities on how to implement it. We have a timeline for the implementation,"" IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen said after the talks, which he said were ""good, constructive.""

""I think this was an important milestone,"" he told a press conference. ""But this process will take its time.""

Heinonen said work would start swiftly on implementing Tuesday's agreement, with activities later this month as well as in September and October. Details of the deal would be included in a report for the IAEA board by early September.

Javad Vaeedi, the head of the Iranian negotiating team, also said the two sides agreed on a framework to resolve the ambiguities.

""The talks produced very great results and constructive progress,"" he added.

""We came up with a working plan on how to address the remaining issues,"" AFP quoted Vaeedi as saying.

In the modality plan, each subject will be investigated by a particular date, he explained.

Iran and the agency are currently in agreement on the methods for investigating the issues, Vaeedi added.

“Our desire to answer the remaining questions is serious.”

Iran has no intention of wasting time and this is why Iran has succeeded in reaching an agreement with the agency on a timeline, he observed.

On the details of the modality plan, he said issues such as inspection of the Arak heavy water facility and the drafting of a plan for the inspection of the Natanz enrichment facility have been included in the agreement.

Iran and the IAEA also met in July and earlier this month.

The two previous rounds of talks, in Vienna and Tehran earlier this summer, appeared to have improved relations between Iran and the UN agency.

Well, as long as the mully-bullies and the IAEA are getting along better—that’s all that really counts.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:16 | link | comments

A tale of two women: Not long ago the Canadian Islamic Congress went ballistic over the news that historian Bat Ye-or would be speaking at a conference sponsored by the Fraser Institute. And no wonder. Bat Ye’or has arguably done more than anyone else to shed light on a dark corner of history—Islam’s jihad against infidels and its ignominious treatment of dhimmis, conquered Christians and Jews. To add insult to injury (in CIC eyes, anyway), in her book Eurabia she documented the EU elites’ wholesale sell-out of Western civilization to the Arab world.

The CIC doesn’t like Bat Ye-or; not one little bit. But there is a wench who is far more to their taste: Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who “reverted” to Islam when she was kidnapped by some ardent true believers, and a key member of George Galloway’s Islamo-Fascist Respect Party. The CIC is so thrilled to have the lovely and talented Yvonne in the fold that it is featuring her at some upcoming fund-raisers, and is promoting the events on its website:

 

How many times have we heard; "Where were you on 9/11?" Yvonne Ridley is certainly no stranger to one of the most loaded questions of our time. And in large measure, she chose to answer it not with the expected blow-by-blow reportage of a veteran journalist but with Ticket to Paradise, a debut novel combining love, tragedy and impeccably researched factual foundations.

The immediate logical approach would say that you can't properly analyze a historical event -- especially one of this magnitude -- by portraying the interwoven lives of fictional people. But after reading Ticket to Paradise and finding myself scarcely able to put it down between chapters, I think Ridley has found just the right formula to draw us into the unimaginable and give it a truly human face.

For each of us, the day that changed our world forever is etched into our minds by the image of World Trade Centre twin towers burning like ghastly torches over the ravaged skyline of Manhattan. But alongside that shared nightmare vision are very personal recollections of our own from that fateful Tuesday morning; decisions made and altered, viewpoints radically examined, dreams and aspirations deferred. Anyone who can say that he or she continued about their business as if nothing had happened is simply not telling the truth.

As a journalist, Yvonne Ridley was profoundly affected -- both personally and professionally -- by 9/11 and its fear-driven global aftermath. She became oddly famous not long after, getting herself captured by the Taliban while trying to work under cover (literally ... in a burka) in Afghanistan. Her first book, In the Hands of the Taliban, is a veteran reporter's factual account of the experience and is a must-read for anyone who wants to cut through the media misperceptions surrounding the incident.

But 9/11 itself was the ignition and momentum for her rather clumsy donkey ride into Taliban territory and subsequent international emergence as one of the most outspoken and proactive freed hostages of modern times (to the everlasting embarrassment of the British government!). During her days in captivity, in which she seriously dialogued with her keepers about the real truths of Islam, and the months following her media-splashed return to Britain, Ridley studied the people of the faith as intensely as the Qur'an itself, along with the tawdry international sub-politics of contrived warfare.

With her vast experience and ability at sifting mountains of raw news data to see the core of a story, she could have become a non-fiction expert and contributed yet another volume to the growing monument of "think tank literature" that will surely make 9/11 the most documented event of this century. But like such illustrious precursors as James Michener or Edwin Rutherford -- whose lengthy fiction odysseys have inspired many to study the factual events that inspired them -- Yvonne Ridley's shorter but no less insightful tale gives feet to real-world events and weaves a complex but accessible series of personalized responses around them.

I won't tell you the plot of how feisty London reporter, Judith Tempest, narrowly avoids marriage to an obscenely rich, charming and ethically empty New York lawyer; becomes romantically involved with a mysterious Muslim stranger; fights (and usually wins) battles with narrow-minded and self- absorbed editors; is followed by several sets of spying eyes; questions her faith and wrestles with the tensions between religion and culture; or how she is finally caught up in a surprising and shocking denouement.

What I've listed above are merely the ingredients. What Yvonne Ridley has accomplished in Ticket to Paradise is a tightly written narrative whose potent mixture of elements tells the truth behind the headlines through the realistic lives of imaginary people. This is fiction that often comes far closer to the heart of the 9/11 aftermath than most headline-driven news writing ever will. I know. I've been there.

GET "TICKET TO PARADISE" & DINE WITH YVONNE RIDLEY

-- AUTHOR WILL SIGN HER RECENT BOOK "TICKET TO PARADISE" AT CIC FUND RAISING DINNERS IN MONTREAL (FRIDAY SEPT.7), TORONTO (SAT SEPT.8) AND WATERLOO (SUN SEPT.9)

-- TICKETS: $40 regular, $20 reduced for students, seniors, etc , $100 for family

Fun for the whole mishpacha.

 

The Western Standard posts an open letter from some Quebec intellectuals who aren't too keen on Yvonne, and who deplore her upcoming Montreal appearance:

“Yvonne Ridley is coming to Montreal and Toronto this September at the invitation of the Islamic Congress of Canada. A British journalist captured by the Taliban in 2001, Yvonne Ridley converted to Islam and took up the faith and cause of her abductors. Her case is strangely evocative of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

“A commentator for Britain’s Islam Channel, where she is responsible for political issues, she is a founder and frequent candidate for the Respect Party, a deviant coalition of leftists, fundamentalist Muslims and Islamists. Yvonne Ridley supports, in its essence and entirety, the ideological program of radical Islam and defends even today the very Taliban against which the Canadian Forces is fighting a just and necessary combat.

“Ridley is also the London correspondent for a new television channel created by the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Press TV. The channel offers, according to Ridley, ‘…a different perspective from conventional media”. The Internet site of this channel has a section called “Analyses,” where one can find insinuations that the British government orchestrated the recent car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow in order to tarnish the image of Muslims in Great Britain. Ridley claims that she can say what she wants on Press TV.

“Why do the Iranian governmental authorities not stop her from lionizing Abu Hamza al-Masri, the openly Jihadist Imam at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque who Ridley called ‘quite sweet really’. Al-Masri is a fervent partisan of Al-Qaeda and has been detained by British police.

“Why do the Iranian authorities not reprimand her for calling on the British Muslim community to stop co-operating with the police in any security investigation? Why don’t they reproach her for having called Chechan Shamil Basayev, who perpetrated the horrific Beslan school massacre, a ‘martyr’?

“Why do the Iranians not oppose her eulogies to suicide bombers? Why are they not vexed that this ‘journalist’ expresses open sympathy for notorious terrorists, like Jordanian Abu Musad al-Zarqawi?

“Why? Because Yvonne Ridley plays the game for the enemies of the West and the friends of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

“We, the undersigned demand that the Islamic Congress of Canada publicly disassociate itself from Yvonne Ridley and manifest clearly to the Canadian and Quebec public its refusal to offer any form of support — direct or indirect — for Islamist terrorism." (The Suburban)

That Mo Elmasry sure can pick ‘em.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:34 | link | comments

Another cautionary tale: If you don’t pay attention to what’s happening under your very nose, pretty soon a humungous mosque will come to dominate the landscape. From Expatica:

Cologne, Germany (dpa) - Plans to reduce the height of a planned mosque in the cathedral city of Cologne were dropped on Wednesday after objections by the architects.

The Turkish mosque association Ditib said the mosque's two minarets would be 55 metres high, although some modifications would be made to the original design of the complex.

Architect Paul Boehm said reducing the height of the minarets would have left them out of proportion with the rest of the building and surrounding structures, such as a television tower and a high- rise block.

The Muslim minority has been facing vehement criticism in the city where there is a strong opposition to the 40-million-dollar (30- million-euro) mosque covering an area of 20,000 square metres.

The most widespread criticism has been that the proposed building would be too dominant. Plans call for it to have a 35-metre glass dome, space for 1,900 worshippers and a community centre with shops well as offices and a restaurant.

Boehm said the minarets would be more abstract and less traditional due to "organic changes in the dome-shaped construction of the mosque's prayer room."

Cologne Mayor Fritz Schramma had originally welcomed plans by Ditib to consider shortening the height of the minarets as a "first and an important step."

He said many city residents still had difficulty accepting the size of the mosque's domed roof in Cologne's Ehrenfeld inner-city area. Ditib said the mayor was happy with the latest compromise.

A recent survey of city residents by Omniquest pollsters showed 36 per cent favoured the original design, 31 per cent opposed the project and 27 per cent said they would accept a mosque on a smaller scale.

Ditib, backed by the Turkish ministry of religion, is a a major builder of mosques for ethnic Turkish Muslims in Germany.

Ralph Giordano, a novelist of Jewish origin with atheist views, has been one of the most vocal critics of the project. He said last month that mosques were "popping up like mushrooms and named after Ottoman conquerors."

He has also called on Muslims to learn secular values and integrate into German society.

Giordano received death threats for his criticism, but these were condemned by Ditib, which claims to represent a large section of the 3.2 million Muslims resident in Germany.

 

Why would Muslims want to learn secular values and integrate into German society when they can build immense palaces for Allah and remain exactly as they are?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments (1)

You get what you pay for: Ontario Conservative leader John Tory is running on an agenda of extending public funding to religious schools in the province; currently, Catholics are the only ones who have the tab for their schools picked up by the government. FrontPage Magazine offers a cautionary tale about what can happen when public coffers are opened and shared with an Islamic school—the public ends up financing an anti-social religious curriculum:

…The Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), a publicly funded Arab language children’s school, is set to open its doors next month, on September 4, 2007. It’s a fact that has many in the community uneasy and upset, as the school has been found to have had numerous ties to Islamic extremism -- most notably through its Principal-designate, Debbie Almontaser, who recently resigned from her position after she defended t-shirts calling for a violent uprising (intifada) in New York City. Unfortunately, the radical behavior of KGIA extends much further than that of Miss Almontaser.

The KGIA Advisory Council is made up of a group of area leaders. One of the advisors is Talib Abdul-Rashid, the imam of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood (MIB), located in Harlem. From his infectious smile to his work with interfaith groups, one could easily get the false impression that this man is harmless, but viewing the institution he presides over, one sees an entirely different picture.

Allah is our goal
The Prophet Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah is our leader
The Qu’ran is our constitution
Jihad is our way
And death in the way of Allah is our promised end.

Reading the above passage, apart from its English translation, one would think that they were in Cairo, Egypt or Lahore, Pakistan, as it is straight out of the text of the Muslim Brotherhood founder’s, Hasan Al-Banna’s, treatise, ‘The Message of the Teachings.’ It is these exact words that have been the impetus for violence in the Muslim world for generations and the inspiration for scores of terrorists from Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the like. However, this author’s source for this is not Middle-Eastern or South Asian. No, it was written in the “About” section of the website for Abdul-Rashid’s mosque.

According to the site, the mosque, MIB, was founded in 1964, after Malcolm X departed from the Nation of Islam (NOI), the anti-Semitic hate group that is today run by Louis Farrakhan and his disciples. Abdul-Rashid became the imam of the center in 1989. Prior to that, he was receiving accolades for his leadership skills as a Cub Scout Master, and by the time he took over as imam, MIB’s Boy Scout program – Unit 357 – was well established. But what would seem to be a wholesome American pastime, when combined with Radical Islam, could be a recipe for disaster.

Unlike most Boy Scouts, MIB’s troop wore patches containing the Sword of Islam, a symbol of armed might. In time, the children got older, and MIB Boy Scout Troop 357 became Sea Explorer Ship 357, utilizing the SUNY Maritime Campus at Fort Schyler for meeting and training. This history is chronicled on the mosque’s website. Along with this are shown a series of pictures. Some are obviously old, photographed in black and white. However, some are in color and more recent. It’s the latter pictures that are disturbing, as a few of them portray older youths and adults in combat fatigues.

Was this just honest recreation or was/is it something more?

The MIB website was created in October of 2006. It was last worked on in December. This means that the material on it has been up for at least eight months, which encompasses more than the entire time that intentions of the new KGIA were announced to the public. When the founders of the school were picking an Advisory Council, one would think that they would have thoroughly researched the backgrounds of those they would soon entrust with their children’s well being. That is, unless those involved with the school had other intentions.

Even before Debbie Almontaser resigned, concerns about Khalil Gibran International Academy were understandable. Now that it has been revealed that one of its advisors heads a Muslim Brotherhood-oriented mosque with possible combat training, how can KGIA move forward? Unless they’re considering converting the school to an Islamist military academy, common sense would say it can’t…

Tell me, Mr. Tory: what safeguards will be in effect to prevent a Khalil Gibran-type school from sucking at the public teat in Ontario?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:01 | link | comments (2)

Arrrrgh!: Jihad on the high seas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:43 | link | comments (1)

Flying chazer moment: A Ceeb report about Israel that isn't snide, scolding or in lockstep with hard Leftoid loathing for the Jewish state; a report that--be still my racing heart--is actually kind of positive.

Wonders never cease.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:09 | link | comments

The King sings: If Hizb ut-Tahir and the other Islamic supremacists have their way, the world will be presided over by a Muslim strongman—the caliph.

Here’s the caliph-to-be—whoever he is—proclaiming his caliphate to the tune of an old Roger Miller number. (All you dhimmis, start snapping your fingers now—or else):

 

Jihad has been the key—

That and the demography.

Our juggernaut’s been hailed.

Now ev’ry chick's been veiled.

Ya know, a caliph’s what I am.

Hey there, you, put down that ham.

I’m a man of laws with no flaws,

King of the world.

 

Third time we’ve gone all in.

Knew that it’s a cinch we'd win.

Allah, he sure came through

Just like Mo foretold he'd do.

We flog those who defy sharia.

Sometimes till they're red and raw.

I’m a man of laws with no flaws,

King of the world.

 

I know every dhimmi chief

In every land.

All of their children

Now heed my command.

And every kafir who’s not of “the book”

If they don’t fit and won’t submit

Well, their goose is cooked.

 

I sing, jihad has been the key—

That and lots of treachery.

Our juggernaut’s been hailed.

Now ev’ry chick's been veiled.

Ya know, a caliph’s what I am.

Hey there, you, put down that ham.

I’m a man of laws with no flaws,

King of the world.

Yes, I’m

King of the world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments

CAIR’s decline: Things had been going so well for CAIR. Its spokesman, “revert” Ibrahim Hooper, got plenty of airtime on mainstream media outlets like CNN. It had managed to downplay its supremacist agenda such that it was seen as a “moderate” advocacy group—the Muslim equivalent of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Folks down in Washington were feeling all warm ‘n’ fuzzy about it. Then—a naqba. CAIR was accused of helping siphon money to Hamas, and, so far, just hasn’t been able to get its groove back. From the Washington Times:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it's suffering a decline in membership and fundraising and blames the Justice Department for listing it as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas case against a charity accused of ties to terrorists.

CAIR asked a U.S. District Court in Dallas to strike it from the list of more than 300 other Muslim groups named as unindicted co-conspirators in the government's case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The case is being tried in Dallas.

"The public naming of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has impeded its ability to collect donations as possible donors either do not want to give to them because they think they are a 'terrorist' organization or are too scared to give to them because of the possible legal ramifications of donating money to a 'terrorist' organization," CAIR said in an amicus curiae brief filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The brief cites reporting by The Washington Times as evidence of the organization's declining membership. When this account of declining CAIR membership was published in The Times earlier this summer, CAIR denounced it as a "hit piece."

The Justice Department shut down the Holy Land Foundation and in 2004 indicted several of its top officers, who are accused of raising $36 million from 1995 through 2001 for the benefit of organizations and persons linked with Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the Clinton administration in 1995. The foundation raised $12.4 million after the designation that made such fundraising illegal, prosecutors say.

The 42-count federal indictment accuses the foundation's officers of conspiracy, providing support to terrorists, money-laundering and income-tax evasion.

On May 29, the Justice Department made public a list naming 307 unindicted co-conspirators — including CAIR — in the case now being tried before U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish.

"The name of CAIR has been smeared by association with a criminal case that ostensibly involves the charitable funding of a 'terrorist' group," the brief, filed last week, sets out. The brief argues that federal prosecutors had no legitimate governmental interest in publicly releasing the names of CAIR and other unindicted co-conspirators. "Instead, the disclosure is the vindictive attempt of the government to smear a group which has been critical of the government's actions in aggressively and selectively prosecuting Muslim groups or persons," CAIR told the court.

Looks like Ibrahim and the brothers still have a lot of ‘splaining to do.

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

Popular supremacists: The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon has an article about a so-called "alternative to Hamas":

KFAR AQAB, WEST BANK — The bearded young Muslims strode in silence until we reached the threshold of a nondescript mosque in this middle-class town on the edge of Ramallah. "Now we'll see if we can convert you," he said with a sudden smile.

He laughed, but it wasn't entirely a joke. There's nothing a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir takes more seriously than trying to convert others to their particular brand of Islam. The party's goal is the establishment of a worldwide Caliphate, a global Islamic empire. We're all welcome to join the umma, or Islamic nation, and become its subjects.

Founded in 1953, Hizb ut-Tahrir has for decades troubled governments from the United Kingdom to Uzbekistan with its calls for peaceful Islamic revolution and the establishment of strict sharia law. But it wasn't well known outside of intelligence circles until now.

In recent weeks, a newly assertive Hizb ut-Tahrir has been showing its strength across the Muslim world, most impressively by drawing 100,000 people to a soccer stadium in Indonesia earlier this month. They noisily called for a return to the time of the caliphs, a line of centuries of Islamic rulers that ended with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire more than 80 years ago.

Now the rapidly growing movement has been emerging from the shadows in the Palestinian territories as well, capitalizing on public unhappiness with the recent bloodshed between the mainstream Hamas and Fatah movements that has split the Palestinian cause in two. A recent rally in the West Bank drew a crowd estimated in the tens of thousands. Days later, the centre of Ramallah is still covered in dark red posters praising "The Caliphate: The Coming Force," and Palestinians are flocking to mosques to hear preachers with an angry message.

"Why are we watching infidels prosper in this world and not stopping them?" Sheik Abu Abdullah, a young-looking man sporting a black turban and a neat black beard, asked a silent crowd of 50 people gathered at the al-Faruq mosque in Kfar Aqab last night. The audience, all men, most middle-class professionals, sat in silence as a battery of ceiling fans sliced through the humid night air.

"Muslims in China, Indonesia, Pakistan and everywhere in their thousands are asking for God's government through the Caliphate. They demand the return of God's rule on Earth," the preacher continued. He acknowledged the road to a global Islamic empire would be a long one, but told the worshippers to "please be optimistic."

The scene at al-Faruq mosque was one that's now repeated nightly at mosques all around the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hizb ut-Tahrir even offers such post-prayer "lessons" at Jerusalem's iconic al-Aqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam.

The message they're selling is one that resonates with Palestinians who feel betrayed by both the secular, corrupt Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the often senseless violence perpetrated by Hamas, which recently seized military control of the Gaza Strip.

"Our numbers have increased and most importantly, the ones who are coming are the younger generation," Sheik Abdullah, who works as a health-care administrator during the day, said after the mosque had largely emptied. "People have tried other political parties and are fed up with them."

But Hizb ut-Tahrir won't try to capitalize on its new popularity in the next Palestinian elections. It teaches members that there should be no democracy, because democratic systems are a tool of Islam's chief enemy, the United States.

Nor does Hizb ut-Tahrir see value in Hamas's policy of using violence against Israel. Sending poorly armed Palestinians to fight the Israeli army is "fruitless," Sheik Abdullah said. The Jewish state and its occupation of Palestinian lands will be dealt with later by the combined armies of Islam.

"The solution is not to send 10,000 people from Gaza into Israel or to remove some military checkpoints," said Abu Abed, a 36-year-old physics teacher and senior Hizb ut-Tahrir member who attended last night's lesson.

"Even if a Palestinian state was established under the best conditions, what kind of country would it be? A country like Yemen or Jordan?" he continued, listing off two Arab regimes with repressive, secular, governments that Hizb ut-Tahrir wants to overthrow.

The movement also shrugs off Hamas's recent takeover of the Gaza Strip, charging that Hamas is not Islamic enough because it pursues the goal of a Palestinian state instead of a borderless caliphate. Other fundamentalists who seized power, such as Afghanistan's deposed Taliban, are also dismissed as not having gone far enough…

On the continuum of Islamic lunacy, I’m not sure anything can go farther than Hamas and the Taliban, but it sounds like HuT, an Islamic supremacist movement renowned for extremism, is willing to give it that old college try.

 

My ultra-succinct letter to the Globe:

 

So the “alternative” to Hamas, an Islamist organization which seeks to restore the caliphate—the world-wide rule of Islam—through violent means is Hizb ut-Tahir, an Islamist organization which seeks to restore the caliphate through less violent means?

 

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I’d say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:43 | link | comments

Bewitched, bothered, black and blue: Count your blessings that you do not have to perform one of the most thankless—and potentially, one of the deadliest—jobs in the world: female domestic in Zam Zam land. From Arab News:

JEDDAH/RIYADH, 22 August 2007 — One of the Indonesian maids allegedly beaten up by her employers two weeks ago was taken into custody on Monday from hospital where she was being treated for her injuries.

The Indonesian Embassy was not informed beforehand of the transfer nor has it been allowed official access to the woman or her fellow maid, who was also beaten up by the employers and is still in hospital.

“Tari Tarsim, 27, has been taken away by police to an unknown destination, while Ruminih Surtim, 25, is still in the hospital recovering from her injuries,” Sukamto Javaladi, labor counselor at the Indonesian Embassy, told Arab News yesterday.

A vicious attack two weeks ago on four maids working for the same employers in Aflaj in the Riyadh region resulted in the death of Siti Tarwiyah Slamet, 32, and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan, 28. Tari and Ruminih were left severely injured in the incident. Seven members of the family that the maids were working for are also being held.

The Indonesian Embassy has not yet been officially notified of the incident and only found out about it through Indonesian nationals in Aflaj.

Tarsim and Surtim were admitted into intensive care at Aflaj General Hospital and then were transferred last week to the Riyadh Medical Complex where they have been placed under 24-hour police guard.

“Tari was transferred to police custody yesterday (Monday) but we don’t know why,” said Adi Dzul Fuat, vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy. “The policewoman guarding their room at the hospital told us that Tari has been transferred to jail,” he said.

The embassy has not yet been given a copy of the medical report or allowed access to pictures of the victims. According to doctors Ruminih would take at least seven more days to get recover. Tari came to the Kingdom in early January, while Ruminih has been in the Kingdom since October last year.

Tarsim spoke to Arab News about the attack when she was at Aflaj Hospital. She said that the 17-year-old son of her employer whipped her with his igal accusing her of practicing witchcraft…

I'm not even going to ask what his "igal" is.

 

All things considered, you would think that being adept at witchcraft would be seen as a plus in the maid game. Just think of all the housework that could be conjured à la Samantha Stevens with a twitch of the nose.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:31 | link | comments

Oh, goody: The UN is planning to hold another of its anti-racism soirees. The last one was a dazzling fiesta of unapologetic Judenhass held in Durban, South Africa during what turned out to be the calm before the 9/11 storm. Can’t hardly wait to see what the Jew-hating internationalists have cooked up this time.

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

But she draws the line at getting a clitorectomy: Gwen Stefani, now on tour promoting her latest batch of brainlessly infectious tunes, reportedly covered up for some "moderate" Muslim fans.

You know they're "moderates" because the real holy-rollers ain't going anywhere near a Gwen Stefani concert--unless it's to rage and seethe about what a decadent slut she is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:25 | link | comments

Packaged wisdom: I am constantly amused—and not in a good way—by the plethora of self-righteous marketers who consider the vendor-customer relationship to consist in large part of the vendor getting to feel good about selling the customer a bunch of half-baked ideas along with the product. A real package deal, if you will. For example, I received a birthday gift that came from lululemon, an upscale (and dare one say, overpriced) chain devoted to Yoga apparel. But not just to tight-fitting track suits with lots of give. Lululemon is committed to selling the Yoga lifestyle and all it supposedly entails: spirituality, self-reflection, social responsibility, a commitment to the environment, goodness, niceness, faith, hope and charity—the whole Yoga enchilada. The reusable bag in which my gift was tucked was emblazoned with two messages on which, no doubt, I was supposed to ruminate. On one side: “Friends are more important than money.” On the other side: “Jealousy works the opposite way you want it to.”

Wow. How mega-profound—and how tedious. Preachy uplift from a shopping sack.

 

Another company given to such preaching: Starbucks. Stopping for my usual hot beverage (a venti Earl Grey tea) at my favourite Starbucks, I had occasion to imbibe the message on the two paper cups handed to me by the Starbucks barista. (I always mean to remind them that I only need one cup, but only after they’ve put the way-too-hot tea in two cups plus a cardboard ring to keep the heat from my hand.) Starbucks has a running series of preachy uplift on its paper cups—drink for thought which it calls “The Way I See It.” I was confronted by “The Way I See It,"  nos. 247 and 248. Here’s #247, the reflection of someone named Bill Scheel, whose sole credential for offering this deep thought is that he is a “Starbucks customer”:

 

Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imagination for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.

 

We are? What about those catastrophes that are the result of natural causes? The ones we generally refer to as—what’s that old-fashioned expression?—oh, yeah, “acts of God.” I don’t know about Bill, but I’m not ready to claim to be able to strong to enough to cause a tsunami, or an earthquake.

 

But while we’re on the subject of God and belief, by what right, divine or decaffeinated, does Starbucks think it can push an atheistic agenda on its coffee cups? Who are they, the Richard Dawkins of java? And isn’t one’s faith—or lack thereof—a strictly private matter that is none of anyone's—and least of all, Starbucks’—business?

 

The next “The Way I See It” is by Jimmy Wales, “Founder of Wikipedia.” Jimmy, too, wants us to consider the big, beautiful picture:

 

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Wikis give us a place where anyone who is kind, thoughtful, and intelligent can come and join us in building a better and more rational world.

 

Well, Kumbafrikkinya. As has been recently revealed, Wikis also give us a place where anyone with a political agenda or an axe to grind—someone who may or may not be kind, thoughtful, and intelligent—can add his or her cents worth, thereby helping to build a world that is neither better nor more rational, nor one in which Wikipedia can or should be trusted as an authoritative source of information.

 

Enough product profundity for one day. I am now going to tear open a bag of JELLY-BELLY jelly beans which, praise the Lord (or Gaia), is delightfully message-free.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:16 | link | comments

Membership has its privileges: How to account for the enduring appeal of the jihad? Islam’s founder, the world’s first and foremost jihadi (and a man who, first and foremost, was a jihadi) offered what for many has proven to be a nearly irresistible rewards program: booty in this world; booty in the world to come.

Sort of like Air Miles—only with a much bigger pay off.

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

In a “charitable” frame of mind: Islam Online decries the way the U.S. has clamped down on humaniterrorism (my portmanteau, of course, not the Wahhabists’):

DEIR EL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The US and the West Bank-based government of Salam Fayyad are trying to dry up the major charities in the impoverished and isolated Gaza Strip on accusations of being Hamas real power base.

"They (the banks) said they were sorry but that they had no choice," Abu Ahmed, an official at Al-Salah Association, one of the largest charities in the Strip and which had its bank accounts frozen by the government earlier their month, told Reuters.

Some 80 percent of the charity's annual budget, estimated at $5 million, comes from donors abroad using the banking system. Al-Salah, which is based in the Deir el-Balah refugee camp in Gaza also pays its beneficiaries by cheque.

The Faayad's decision came after the US government designated the charity a "key support node for Hamas."

Established in 1978, al-Salah runs two schools and four medical centers and provides support each month to the families of more than 10,000 Palestinian children who have lost their fathers.

Abu Ahmed, who declined to give his full name for fear he would be added to the US government blacklist, said the charity's services were open to all poor Palestinians, regardless of faction.

"Now all this will stop," Abu Ahmed said. "I don't know what I will tell them. I don't know what to say."

Abu Ahmed said the decision is politically motivated and driven by the Bush administration to help the Fayyad government.

The Islamic Charity, another large Gaza service provider, said it emptied out most its own bank accounts after receiving warnings that it could be targeted next.

The US government has already targeted Islamic charities in the USA, which the administration accused of being linked to Hamas.

Officials and financiers of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once America's biggest Muslim charity, are standing trial over links to Hamas, which Washington designates as a terrorist organization.

In 2003, the Bush administration froze the assets of five Islamic charities abroad, accusing them of funding Palestinian "terrorist" activities.

But a former FBI operative in the occupied Palestinian territories had told The Washington Post that Palestinian groups gave US money funneled to them under the guise of donations to charitable organizations and not used them for "terrorist activities."…

A former FBI operative, huh? I guess he doesn’t want to be named for fear of looking like A BLITHERING IDIOT.

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

Neat trick: Using the Koran to try to persuade impressionable British lads who might be prone to “extremism” to settle down and become good citizens, that is. From the New York Times via the Toronto Star:

BRADFORD, England–At the Jamia Mosque on Victor St. in this racially and religiously tense town, Idris Watts, a teacher and convert to Islam, tackled a seemingly mundane subject with a dozen teenage boys: why it is better to have a job than to be unemployed.

"The Prophet said you should learn a trade," Watts told the students arrayed in a semicircle before him. "What do you think he means by that?"

"If you get a trade it's good because then you can pass it on," said Safraan Mahmood, 15.

"You feel better when you're standing on your own feet," offered Ossama Hussain, 14.

The back-and-forth represented something new in Britain's mosques: an effort to teach basic citizenship issues in a special curriculum designed to reach students who might be vulnerable to Islamic extremism.

Over the long haul, the British government hopes civics classes using the Qur'an to answer questions about daily life will replace often tedious, sometimes hardcore, religious lessons taught in many mosques, often by Pakistani-born imams with little contact to larger British society.

The curriculum, written by Bradford teacher Sajid Hussain, 34, who holds a degree from Oxford University, is being taught in some religious classes in a city increasingly segregated between South Asians and whites.

The effort is backed by the Labour government as part of a hearts-and-minds campaign to better integrate the country's roughly 2 million Muslims into British culture.

Since four British Muslim suicide bombers attacked the London transit system in July 2005, and two other major terrorist plots supposedly planned by British Muslims were alleged last year, officials have been struggling with how to isolate extremists.

Gordon Brown, the new prime minister, said at his first news conference last month he wanted to demonstrate the "importance we attach to non-violence, the importance we attach to the dignity of each individual.

"The question for us," he said, "is how we can separate those extremists from the moderate mainstream majority."

The Labour government has been particularly concerned because, in part through its involvement in the Iraq war, it lacks credibility with large swaths of British Muslims.

An estimated 100,000 school-age Muslim children attend religious classes at mosques in Britain daily, generally after regular school hours, said Jane Houghton, a spokesperson for the Department of Communities and Local Government. "The impact this teaching could have is quite considerable," she said…

One humungous fly in the ointment: all those post-Hejira passages, the ones that cancel out the earlier nicey-nicey “there’s no compulsion in religion” type passages—commanding the faithful to wage a jihad on the infidels until the world has been conquered for Islam. Kind of hard to ignore what’s writ—what’s holy writ—in black and white.

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

Propoganda in the Globe: Apparently, we’re all supposed to feel really sorry for the poor Palestinians over in Gaza who, because of a Western fuel embargo, haven’t had any power for the past few days. (Surely their non-Western "friends"—the ones with all the oil—could help them out.) The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon, ever one to wax lachrymosely over the Palestinians’ plight, bemoans the results of what he calls “the international war of attrition against Hamas.” And to drive the point home, his article is adorned with a Reuters photo of a Gaza moppet, in the dark save for a small candle casting light on his adorable form. Indeed a poignant chiaroscuro, one bound to tug the pliant heartstrings of Globe readers.

Well, not all its readers:

As the Reuters photo of a small Palestinian boy clutching a candle in the midst of a Gaza power failure shows, it is always the children who suffer the most from the ill-considered decisions of their elders. In this child’s case, he is doubly in the dark. He is at the mercy of a rogue regime which takes its marching orders from Iran, and which remains intent on an implacable jihadist agenda. He has also been bombarded by messages of hate on Hamas TV, most sickeningly, perhaps, on a children’s show on which large talking animals implore the very young to become suicide bombers—martyrs for Allah.

 

The one obvious benefit of the current blackout: the toxic kiddie program is off the air. However, the children of Gaza had better hunker down for a long period of darkness—both literally and figuratively—because the lights can only come on once Hamas has been deposed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments

Barak’s “heresy”: Ehud Barak, formerly Israel’s Prime Minister, currently its defence minister, dares to ask a question no one seems to want to pose—what happens when, as now seems likely, Hamas is finally in charge of the whole Palestine shebang? From YNet News:

One shouldn't envy the head of the Labor Party. The "priests" of peace will not forgive him. Although he has not yet renounced the central tenet – a foreign state on the Land of Israel, Jerusalem to the Arabs, Jewish communities to be destroyed and expelled – but for Catholics, even a small sign of independent thought or doubt is enough to depose a person from the church of true believers, and from there the way is short to the stake.

Barak says that we cannot allow the establishment of a Palestinian state until we find a way to stop the Qassam rockets. He talks of a period of at least five years. And here's another proof of the dangers of allowing independent thinking: Is it only Qassams that are likely to be fired from Palestine?

After all, how many years will it take before we find an electronic defense against the bullets that will fly in Jerusalem from the Palestinian streets? And after we find a solution to the "flying objects", will we have to hold back on a Palestinian state until there's an answer to the tunnel that our pleasant neighbors will dig under the separation fence? 

And if Barak insists on first closing every possible hole – is there an electronic device against handgrenades thrown at Jewish vehicles from the other side of the wall? Against suicide bombers? Against terror planned by a sovereign Palestinian state, or supported from abroad, or from the "Revolutionary Guards" brought by Iran, or scores of thousands of "refugees" who will march in the direction of Lod and Ramle?

According to Barak's methodology, grass will grow on the cheeks of the peace camp, and the redemption of Palestine will not come to pass, until a miracle occurs in the hearts and minds of the Arabs, and they, of their own free will, will reeducate their children, from kindergarten to university, to a different, a more Western worldview.

Barak is also likely to think another step ahead, and arrive at the conclusion that there will never be, in response to Palestinian provocation, another chance to implement Operation Defensive Shield. The world will not allow us to go back into the cities of a sovereign Palestinian state to fight against terror.

At this point, we are only a few steps away from the greatest heresy of all – the conclusion that Jewish settlement, which sits in the heart of the lions' den, is a positive development because it prevents the establishment of a terror state that would turn the life of the Jewish state into hell.

And here's another heresy uttered by Barak: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are unable to implement anything in the "West Bank"….

 

Shocking! But only for those who haven’t been reading and heeding Ms. Caroline Glick, who’s been shouting it from the rooftops for lo these many months.

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

How do you solve a problem like the mullahs?: Common sense seems to be in uncommonly short supply these days. It is thus refreshing to read something like this, from NRO:

Two reactions are appropriate to the Bush administration’s decision to place Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. First, one should cheer. Second, one should ask how much longer it will take the president to resolve the contradiction at the heart of his Iran policy.

One should cheer because the Revolutionary Guard is among the world’s most effective forces for barbarity and chaos. Separate from Iran’s regular military, it espouses the revolution-exporting ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei (the latter of whom possesses ultimate control of its actions). It has killed Americans gladly, as at the Khobar Towers. Its current specialty is killing American soldiers in Iraq, through Iraqi proxies, with armor-piercing bombs. These things alone do not make it a terrorist group in the precise sense of that term, but its arming and financing of Hezbollah certainly does. Likewise the massacres of civilians that its aid to Iraqi militants has made possible.

To designate the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity, then, is to acknowledge reality. Yet there is something decidedly unrealistic in the idea that the Revolutionary Guard can be separated from the Iranian government as a whole. (The distinctions got even more jesuitical when it emerged that the State Department might not designate the entire Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, but simply its Quds Force, composed of special covert units.) There is no getting around the fact that the Revolutionary Guard — including the Quds Force — expresses the will of Iran’s highest rulers. If what it does counts as terrorism, they count as terrorists.

Given their history of working mayhem in the Middle East and beyond (recall, for example, their handiwork in Argentina in 1994), this is an obvious enough fact, and the State Department designation will do little to make it more obvious. It will also do little to hurt Iran — the designation would freeze any assets the Revolutionary Guard had in the U.S., but, as you might imagine, it prefers to bank elsewhere.

What the designation does do is lay bare the contradiction in President Bush’s Iran policy. After September 11, in a moment of great strategic clarity, Bush said that the U.S. would not distinguish between terrorists and the governments that harbored them. Yet his administration has approached Iran — the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism — as though it were a legitimate government, capable of being persuaded to adopt positions agreeable to liberal democracies.

On Iran’s nuclear program, Bush has deferred first to Europe and then to Condoleezza Rice’s State Department in allowing years of negotiating, followed by a few more years of negotiating, followed by (wait for it) more negotiating.

Worse than do nothing, this strategy created an illusion that the world was seriously confronting Iran when just the opposite was true. The two Security Council resolutions against the Islamic Republic were so weak as to be meaningless, except in distracting attention from alternative courses of action (e.g., effective sanctions or military force). Iran’s leaders have grown more brazen at every turn — kidnappings of foreign soldiers and proxy wars are now par for the course — yet the Bush administration has remained unable to forge a credible policy.

What one should hope now is that the administration, in its waning days, is making a course correction. The squeamishness with which much of Europe opposes the designation suggests that it fears just this. For a variety of reasons — economic interest, anti-Americanism, and reflexive pacifism chief among them — it would prefer to avoid any bad blood with the Islamic Republic. Most of the U.S. State Department feels likewise. But the simple truth is that, unless Iran’s regime gives up both its terrorist ideology and its weapons, we will never be safe. The president has taken an important — albeit partial and overdue — step toward facing that unpleasant reality.

 

Partial and overdue—but not nearly far enough to thwart the kooky nukers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:36 | link | comments

Even-steven at CNN: Starting tomorrow there’s going to be yet another mainstream exercise in moral equivalence, this one courtesy the earnest folks over at CNN. Christiane Amanpour, adept at such legerdemain, hosts three one hour documentaries exploring extremism in the three Abrahamic faiths. Here’s the low down on what to expect, from the Toledo Blade:

Davoud Abdolhadi was 13 years old when the Iranian army sent him to the front lines to fight Iraq.

He came home alive — and today, more than two decades later, he remains disappointed by his survival.

“Martyrdom was my greatest wish, but for me it was not meant to be,” Abdolhadi says.

Yehuda Etzion of Israeli spent seven years in prison for plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, an act that likely would have triggered a Jewish-Islamic bloodbath. The mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, sits atop the ruins of Judaism’s Second Temple, and Etzion asserts that the Messiah cannot appear until the temple is rebuilt.

Ron Luce, founder of Teen Mania Ministries, says “virtue terrorists” are “raping virgin teenage Americans on the sidewalk and everybody is walking by and acting like everything is OK. It’s not OK.”

These examples of religious extremism have become increasingly common over the last three decades, but most of the time the media report the news without exploring the underlying factors that breed radicalism and terrorism.

God’s Warriors, a three-part television series to be broadcast Tuesday through Thursday at 9 p.m. on CNN, Buckeye CableSystem Channel 2, looks at the reasons why people of faith are willing to kill or be killed for their beliefs.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, spent eight months traveling the globe, interviewing dozens of religious leaders, scholars, and politicians for the program that will be broadcast in three two-hour segments — God’s Jewish Warriors, God’s Muslim Warriors, and God’s Christian Warriors.

For those who follow the news closely, there will be few major revelations in this series. Most of God’s Warriors centers on pivotal events of recent history that have religious connections — from the 1967 Six-Day War to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin in 1995 to the London subway bombings of 2005 to the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

Around this historical framework, however, Amanpour and her crew expand on the events by interviewing extremists and their families and getting insights from political, cultural, and religious experts, seeking to understand the reasons behind the headlines…

 

Unbelievable. Six years on and clueless Christiane and her gormless employers still refuse to acknowledge that there’s something qualitatively different about the jihad.

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

Political animal: Dr. Mohammed Elmasry, a mainstay of the Liberal Party and the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, generously shares his wisdom with us in another of his insightful, erudite essays. In his most recent peroration, Mo slams the usual suspects—the Americans and the JOOOS—for being the font of all evil, with Arabs, as always, being their innocent, “peace”-minded victims:

It is a sad but common reality that domestic politics in any country are conducted on a lower moral plane than private sector institutions.

At the international level, where standards are often even lower, brave attempts have been made by such organizations as the League of Nations and its successor, the UN, to raise matters of governance to a somewhat higher standard.

But in a world which still operates largely according to the law of the jungle, the United States - as the only remaining global superpower -- gets what it wants, when it can, for the benefit of its citizens; or more accurately, for the benefit of its rich and powerful citizens.

This primacy of American goals leaves all other Western countries including Canada in the role of junior partners (or less), who must submit to U.S. bullying tactics. Other countries on the international stage are victimized because of their rich resources.

With such a badly skewed and uneven playing field, it is no wonder that the intelligent and honest application of politics in international affairs is painfully lacking. Western political leaders, more than any others throughout history, continue to be responsible for ongoing warfare that daily causes devastation, destruction, death and chronic human misery for millions. Just as tragically, these same leaders have also been originators of too many "bad peaces." Their wars have been heralded as necessary to preserve "civilization," to "make the world safe," to spread "democracy," to "destroy Communism," to fight "against terror," etc.

But the hard truth is that their wars were attacks upon peaceful nations. And their so-called diplomacy bypassed the core values of rule by reason and law, upheld by the UN in the hope of making future conflict impossible. That hope has been dashed countless times.

The American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the continuing occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel for more than 40 years, and current threats by the U.S. and Israel to attack Iran, are all classic examples of political evil made incarnate….

 

Look in the mirror, Mo, and behold the true image of political evil made incarnate—political Islam in all its preening glory.

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

Beeb imbecility: The Beeb, ever sensitive to the sensitivities of a hyper-sensitive community, has decided not to film an episode of a popular drama series in which a terror attack would be perpetrated by radical Muslims. Instead, the perpetrators of the terror attack will be members of a radical animal rights group.

The powers-that-Beeb may think that, by taking this route, they’re safe from reprisals. In which case, I have two words for them: Pim Fortuyn.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:30 | link | comments

Last one out of Gaza, be sure to shut off the lights: Oh, wait—they’re already off. From China Daily:

GAZA CITY - Gaza hummed with the sound of generators on a fourth day of power cuts on Monday as the European Union reviewed whether to resume paying for fuel of the territory's sole power plant.

Candles disappeared from supermarket shelves as the coastal strip's residents stocked up on supplies in one of the world's most densely populated places where most people depend on outside aid for survival.

"Our life is becoming more and more difficult," said Umm Jaber, a 40-year-old mother of six in Gaza City. "They've closed the borders, they've cut jobs. Today they've cut the electricity, tomorrow they'll cut the air for us."

The power cuts were the latest blow to hit the territory that has been effectively sealed off by Israel since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control two months ago, sparking fears of a humanitarian crisis.

They also marked the latest point of contention between the Western-shunned Islamists and the Western-backed Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank, as the two sides blamed each other for the cuts.

"Everything in my refrigerators is rotting," said Abu Mohammed, a supermarket owner in Gaza City. "All of the ice cream stocks have been ruined. I'm losing a lot of money."

The power outages began late on Friday when Gaza's only power plant -- which according to the EU provides between 25 and 30 percent of the territory's power -- shut down all but one of its generators.

It did so because its diesel supplies had dwindled after Israel shut the fuel border crossing, citing security concerns.

Israel reopened the crossing on Sunday, but diesel for the plant was not delivered because the EU -- which finances the supplies -- suspended payments out of "security concerns," forcing the plant to close completely.

"We are still assessing the situation" and hope to resume supplies either later on Monday or Tuesday, an EU spokeswoman in Jerusalem said.

In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Antonia Mochan said however it would not resume paying for fuel unless it receives assurances that Hamas will not tax electricity in Gaza.

The EU's executive arm understands that Hamas "plans to introduce taxes on electricity bills in the Gaza Strip," Mochan said.

"As you can understand, this would not allow us to continue paying for fuel helping to produce the electricity," she said.

The EU blacklists Hamas as a terror group and refuses to have any dealings with the Islamists. If it provides fuel to a power plant, and Hamas earns money by introducing taxes on that plant's production, the bloc could be seen as indirectly financing the movement.

The power cuts have become a new source of tension between Hamas and president Mahmud Abbas's government in Ramallah.

"We warned for weeks that Gaza would fall into darkness if Hamas does not stop occupying the electricity company and does not stop holding on to millions of shekels that they collected from the people of Gaza," information minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters in Ramallah.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: "The leaders in Ramallah bear complete responsibility for the power cuts in Gaza. They have incited Israel and the European Union to stop the delivery of fuel."

Hamas, which has been in the dark (or at least in the Dark Ages) from the beginning, is now sitting there literally.

I think that’s what you’d call “just desserts”.

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

Hard truths: In keeping with its traditional fondness for masterful totalitarians, the hard left is currently infatuated with one of the most unlovable bunch of strongmen on the planet—Iran’s mully-bullies. Joseph Klein on the FrontPage Magazine site lambastes the useful idiots whose boundless adoration for the bad guys is exceeded only by their revulsion for the civilized world:

In the alternative universe inhabited by the radical Left, Iran’s mad mullahs want nothing more than peaceful co-existence with the United States and Israel. Vice President Cheney and Senator Lieberman are the war-mongers, we are told - egged on by the Zionists and the Jewish lobbyists who control the key power centers in Washington, D.C.

You can read an example of this kind of pro-Iranian propaganda in a blog, featured on the August 17^th edition of the Left-wing Huffington Post, entitled Cheney, Lieberman and Iran War Conspiracy.  The author, Dr. Gareth Porter, is described on his blog as an investigative historian, journalist on U.S. national security policy and frequent writer on Iran and Iraq.

Porter is one of the radical Left’s most prolific commentators who lash out against the Bush Administration’s policy toward the Islamic fanatics running Iran today. His articles appear regularly on Left-wing sites like Huffington Post, American Prospect, Antiwar.com, and TomPaine.com.

Gareth Porter, along with Noam Chomsky, are heroes of the radical Left movement for their long record of denouncing American policies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, which they say are built on lies and reflect our country’s imperialistic designs to dominate the world with military force. Consistently on the wrong side of history as millions have been liberated from the yoke of oppressive regimes by the sacrifices of the American people, these Leftist idols plow on with their defense of the indefensible. Giving the benefit of the doubt to their own democratically elected leaders rather than some of the world’s worst tyrants is simply not part of their DNA.

Porter’s writings on Iran provide clues to this boneheaded ‘thinking’. For example, in one recent article, Porter claimed that “[D]espite the administration’s complaints that Iran is supporting the Shiite militias who are causing sectarian violence, the United States itself is the quartermaster of the forces of sectarian civil war.”

Our tireless attempts to foster a viable ruling coalition representing the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, operating in a constitutional framework within which they can settle their differences peacefully, floats completely over this radical apologist’s head…

 

Actually, it also floats completely over this unapologetically non-radical’s head. It’s hard to see how, operating in a constitutional framework predicated on sharia law, one inimical to democracy, the groups involved are going to be able to “settle” their age-old differences—especially with the mullahs doing their level best to ensure that chaos prevails, the framework for the return of their Messiah, which they see as imminent. Then again, it's hard to see Iraqis being able to come to a peaceful resolution even if their constitution were democratic.

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

First and best: The masses have spoken and have decided that the opening line of Rick James’s song “Super Freak” is the best one that’s ever been penned. The line in question: “She’s a very kinky girl.” (Not surprisingly, it was written by someone who was a very kinky boy.)

Wow. How very Cole Porter.

 

I can think of lots of other openers that are far more compelling, including:

 

• You walked in to the party/Like you were walkin’ onto a yacht…

 

• Holly came from Miami, F-L-A…

 

• Well, it’s a marvellous night for a moondance/With the stars up above in your eyes…

 

• The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways…

 

• Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light…

 

• On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair/Warm smell of colitas risin’ up through the air…

 

• Once upon a time you dressed so fine/You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

And from an earlier era:

 

Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight.

 

For my money, you can’t beat those Gershwins.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments (2)

Sing out, Osama: The Globe and Mail has an amusing editorial cartoon. It shows three 7^th Century nostalgists—“the Taliban Glee Club"—performing a rollicking parody of a seasonal song:

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of jihad.

Those days of car bombs and martyrs and fear.

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of jihad

You’ll wish that jihad could always be here!

 

Not bad. Here’s my song parody, a nod to the first—and to my mind, the best—musical in which swastikas and Nazis were integral elements (so there, Mel Brooks). I imagine it being belted out by ObL, who, while claiming to revile our decadent, devilish way, knows a thing or two about showstoppers:

 

What good is living in Dar al Islam?

Life there it ain’t so great.

Let’s have a Caliphate, my friends.

We need a Caliphate.

Pick up a sabre, a bomb and a gun,

Fill up your hearts with hate.

Let’s have a Caliphate, my friends.

We need a Caliphate.

Come seethe and rage.

Come rant and whine.

Come take what’s yours

And act all vultural.

They won’t mind—

It’s multicultural!

Start by admitting

From cradle to tomb,

Is only when you’re sensate.

Let’s have a Caliphate, my friends.

We need a Caliphate.

And as for me,

And as for me,

I made my mind up back in Saudi

When I go

It’s gonna be gaudy!

Strap on some semtex

And blow yourself up.

Your body is just dead weight.

The afterlife is your fate, my friends.

And we need a Cal-

Iph-

Ate!

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments

Dead Catholic Elder pulls the strings: The Catholic Church in France has never been noted for its warm ‘n’ fuzzy feelings toward the Jews, but according to an article on Islam Online, French bishops are supposedly resisting a rapprochement with Muslims because of—well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?

…Father Michel Le Long, the founder of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Department, said the camp [at a just-ended week long forum organized by the department] opposing any rapprochement with the Muslim world is having the upper hand in the French Catholic Church.

"Those who don't want to reach out to Muslims are dominating the French Catholic Church," he told IOL.

"They believe that dialogue with Muslims is insignificant."

Le Long said bishops like himself who fervently call for a dialogue with Muslims and see them as partners remain "a minority" in the church.

He blamed this on a domineering "Christian-Jewish culture" inside the church, championed by Cardinal Jean Marie Lustiger, who passed away earlier this month.

"This cam [que ce-que c’est?—ed] is highly influential and politically motivated."

Le Long said Lustiger was known for his opposition to Muslim-Christian dialogue.

"Lustiger used to consecrate bishops, who share the viewpoint that Christianity is an amalgam of Christian and Jewish cultures, while Islam and other religions are meaningless."

Lustiger, he added, was a staunch opponent to the establishment of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM).

"His political stances were also biased towards Israel all along."

Le Long said the Catholic church's upcoming elections to choose a successor to Lustiger is highly important.

"The Jewish-Christian camp is serving the interests of Israel and the occupation, while it vigorously opposes Islamic culture and even does not recognize the Muslim faith as a new religious element in Europe."

Lustiger, born to Jewish parents, used to identify himself as Jewish-Christian and had asked that his funeral include both faiths.

He was an important symbol in France, a country that is historically Catholic.

President Nicolas Sarkozy — who was raised Catholic but whose maternal grandfather was Jewish — interrupted his US vacation to jet to Paris for the funeral.

Before his death, Lustiger asked that a commemorative plaque be placed inside Notre Dame reading: "I was born Jewish. I received my paternal grandfather's name, Aron, I became Christian by faith and baptism, and I remained Jewish like the Apostles did.

As the late Cardinal Lustiger—one of those infamous Jewish elders—might have said, oy vey!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:34 | link | comments

VisionTV’s pathetic excuses: I wish I could have been a fly on the wall this week to hear the multi-religious task force struck by VisionTV to deal with the thorny issue of providing Islamic supremacists with a forum on Canadian TV. I’m sure Bill Roberts, VisionTV’s CEO, is delighted about having to revise his Code of Ethics to ensure that the likes of Dr. Israr Ahmad and Harun Yahya don’t get any more airtime courtesy Canada’s only multicultural, multi-faith channel. Let’s see what Roberts had to say on the subject a few weeks ago, following that nuptial-related “mix-up” with an Ahmad tape. From Canadian Christianity:

…Roberts said Vision has "the 'gold standard' of ethics policies." It has both a 'Code of Ethics and a 'Code on Violence.'

The code of ethics states: "Neither the content nor the tone of programming will incite people to commit violent acts or attacks on any other group or person. Violence will neither be glorified, nor exploited, nor used out of context to shock -- or for trivial reasons."

Roberts said all producers must sign on to these codes. He recalled one previous incident in which a US televangelist was accused of violating the code's provision that "programming must not . . . incite discrimination, hatred or violence against any individual or identifiable group" because of his teaching on homosexuality. Vision thought the program was "close" to violating the standards, but the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled it had gone over the line; the televangelist agreed to abide by the ruling, and the issue never came up again.

Roberts said the July 21 program represented "an embarrassing failure of process". He told CC.com every program on Vision is screened by both the producer and by Vision staff. In this case, the producer was preoccupied with his daughter's wedding, and did not do a proper job of pre-screening the July 14 program.

Vision staff had also screened the program, but while they are well versed in Vision's Code of Ethics, they are not necessarily trained in all of the theological issues, said Roberts. In particular, they do not have the time or resources to do background checks on all guests on Vision programs, and they were unaware of Ahmed's other teachings.

Roberts said the examination of Vision's broadcast standards gets at some "deeply important issues." He noted that while he has been "a defender of human rights and free speech" as a member of Amnesty International, a broadcaster sometimes has to make a "wrenching judgment call" between Charter guarantees of free speech and laws against hate crimes.

Roberts said it is clear in this case that Ahmed is "a dangerous man" who should not be given air time, but a broadcaster might be on shaky ground if it starts to evaluate not just programming but also those who produce it.

"Are we going to do a background check on everyone who goes on air?" he asked. "Should we pull Mel Gibson's movies?" he added, referring to Gibson's comments about Jews during an arrest for drunken driving last year. Roberts also raised the question of whether the broadcaster should ban a televangelist who says derogatory things about homosexuals in public meetings in the U.S. even if he doesn't make them in his Canadian programming.

Roberts said the broadcaster also risks getting into difficult privacy issues. "Where do we draw the line? Should we do credit checks?" he asked, adding that measures like these could have "a chilling effect on freedom of speech."…

To answer your query, Bill: We draw the line at giving airtime to Mel repeating his drunken tirade about “the Jews” and their scheme for global conquest. We draw the line at broadcasting the views of his crackpot, conspiracy-addled, Holocaust-denying Papa. We draw the line at allowing jihadis to preach jihad in the hopes of finding new recruits for the holy war against the infidels. We draw the line at letting the jihad hitchike into Canada under the guise of multiculturalism and human rights and free speech.

 

That’s where we draw the line.

 

As for VisionTV lacking the time and resources to do background checks: It’s been running Ahmad’s sermons for at least two years and Yahya’s “documentaries” for much longer than that. Surely in all that time someone at VisionTV could have found a mo to google their names and retrieve some info about them. It took me all of a minute to find this, the mission statement of Tanzeem-e-Islami, the Pakistani Caliphate restoration movement founded by Ahmad:

 

The essence of what we call the “Islamic revolutionary thought” consists of the idea that it is not enough to practice Islam in one's individual life but that the teachings of the Qur'an and those of the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) must also be implemented in their totality in the social, cultural, juristic, political, and the economic spheres of life. The credit for reviving this dynamic concept of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, after centuries of neglect and dormancy, goes to Allama Muhammad Iqbal. The first attempt towards the actualization of this concept was made by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad through his short-lived party, the Hizbullah. Another attempt was made by Maulana Sayyid Abul A`la Maududi through his Jama`at-e-Islami; however, the decision by the Jama`at after the creation of Pakistan to take part in the electoral process instead of continuing the original revolutionary methodology gradually resulted in its degeneration from a pure Islamic revolutionary party to a mere political one. The vacuum left by the departure of Jama`at-e-Islami is being filled by Tanzeem-e-Islami, founded in 1975.

 

Objective

 

The obligations of a Muslim as ordained by the Qur'an and Sunnah, can be understood as having four levels:

 

a Muslim is required to develop real faith and conviction (Iman) in his heart;

he is required to live a life of total obedience to the injunctions of the Shari`ah;

he is required to propagate and disseminate the message of Islam to the entire Humanity;

and he is required to try his utmost in establishing the ascendancy of Islam over all man-made systems of life.

 

The objective of establishing Tanzeem-e-Islami is to assist the Muslims in carrying our (sic) these obligations. The ultimate goal is to seek Allah's pleasure and salvation in the Hereafter.

 

Nope. No alarms bells there.

 

It took me less than a minute to google Harun Yahya and find the following on--what are the odds?--Harun Yahya’s own website:

 

The author has also produced various works on Zionist racism and Freemasonry and their negative effects on world history and politics. The Zionism criticised by the author in his books is the baseless claims of Zionist extremists pretend to world sovereignty, regard other human beings as worthless entities, maintain that the Jews are the chosen people and that God is theirs alone.

 

Again, completely innocuous.

 

Seems to me that it wasn’t a matter of VisionTV lacking the time and resources to conduct “background checks”; nor was it about the broadcaster’s having to make some "wrenching" decisions weighing Charter freedoms and hate speech. It was about VisionTV’s being bone lazy, dead ignorant, asleep at the switch, and not overly concerned about who was providing its Islamic content so long as the bills got paid.

 

A situation which a new Code of Ethics, as well as a CRTC investigation conducted at the behest of B’nai Brith Canada, will no doubt rectify.

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

Nasty’s master: To mark the first anniversary of Hezbollah’s great victory over the Zionist scourge, a bunch of the faithful in Windsor, Ontario paid to mount a billboard featuring the visage of Sheik Hassan “Nasty” Nasrallah and other Hezbollah notables. The pro-Hezbollah Muslim Canadians asserted that Nasty and his cohorts were “peacemakers” seeking to bring, um, "peace," to Lebanon, and that they hoped to bring the same kind of, er, "peace" to Canada.

Well, don’t ya know that old Nasty had to go and blow their cover? In an interview on Iranian TV, he explains that all the palaver about wanting “peace” in Lebanon is a fraud. What Nasty and his cohorts really desire is to serve their Iranian masters for the greater glory of Shia Islam, the one true branch of the one true faith. From YNet News:

Parts of an interview given by Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to Iranian national television were censored by Iran's censors to avoid raising ire in Lebanon.

"We are ready to be torn apart, spliced into tiny pieces, so that Iran will remain exalted. For if Iran remains exalted, we too shall be exalted. I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hizbullah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini, with the aid of Imam Hussein, and sent their blessings to the Iranian people," said Nasrallah in an interview with reporter Bijan Nobaveh on the day marking the start of the Second Lebanon War according to the Persian calendar.

 

Nasrallah also thanked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all the "brothers and sisters" in Iran.

From an internal Lebanese perspective, Nasrallah's words, which carry much weight, are tantamount to dissent. Nasrallah confirms that he serves supreme leader of Iran (Khamenei) and that his men fought for Iran last summer…

Nasty could care less about “Lebanon.” All he cares about is ethnically cleansing the infidels in the vicinity (in both Lebanon and Israel) so his Messiah can unocclude and usher in the end of the world.

 

Put that on a billboard, Windsor Hezbollahites!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:03 | link | comments

Bad date: Looking for love on the Net? I'd definitely give this guy a pass.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments (2)

Totally awesome imams: There’s a shortage of homegrown imams in the OC, which is a problem since foreign born ones don’t speak the same lingo, dude, and have a completely different frame of reference than the Americans they’re guiding. From the Orange County Register:

The muezzin's call echoes around the mosque here, beckoning the Muslim faithful to midday Friday prayers.

Stragglers scurry to take their places, as imam Yassir Fazaga – at 35, younger than many in attendance – comes down from his office ready with this week's sermon on lessons from the recent violence at a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, that left more than 100 dead.

During the 20-minute prayer and talk, Fazaga moves fluidly from Arabic to English. Afterwards, he stands outside the mosque entrance, where congregants line up to speak with him.

Omar Azizi, 21, and his brother Mostafa, 16, of Mission Viejo, hug the sheik and exchange greetings.

The Azizi brothers represent the growing ranks of Muslims in Southern California and in the United States. By some estimates more than half of the 5 million to 7 million Muslims in America are under 18. While the East Coast has more native and native-trained imams than the West Coast, there's a shortage of such imams in the country, especially of Middle Eastern heritage, and difficulty connecting with the youth.

An imam is the religious leader of a mosque, helping worshippers fulfill their spiritual needs, performing services and counseling them. There is no system of ordained clergy in Islam. Ultimately, the community picks the person it trusts and who is educationally qualified to be an imam, Muslim leaders say.

The Azizi brothers, born in the United States to Afghan parents, are comfortable with Fazaga, in part because he speaks fluent English and frequently searches the standard American calendar for ideas. Recently, Fazaga was mulling a sermon on what he called the "bored American child syndrome" during summertime.

"That is the most difficult part – deciding on what is going to be the topic and how can I make it relevant," he said. "So sometimes I look into the calendar to see what is happening. What is today? World AIDS Day, Earth Day, today is domestic-violence month awareness."

That may very well be where the key difference between foreign and native imams lies.

"The difference is the imams that have been living here a while, they know how the society is, how the people are," said Omar Azizi, a part-time college student.

"They can make much more difference than the imams overseas. I am not saying the imams overseas aren't as knowledgeable," he added. "The imams overseas, they don't really know what's going on here, especially California, United States."

"Its way better when it's someone who understands the culture, the media," Mostafa Azizi said. "It's like they watch the same news as we do, so they're pretty much translating everything the news is saying … and it's just totally, totally better."…

Totally. On the one hand, I’m inclined to agree with him. Native imams are likely to be better than ones whose provenance is, say, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. On the other hand, an American born imam can be every bit as “by the book” as one born in Dar al Islam, in which case, the totality of the totalitarian message imparted would be totally, totally the same—and totally dangerous for the unreverted.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:15 | link | comments

How the cult of multiculturalism enfeebles us and empowers our enemies: By Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal:

In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow’s public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period.

 

Apparently the bureaucrats believe that the would-be bombers were demanding sandwich-free offices in Glasgow hospitals during Ramadan. This kind of absurdity is what happens when the highly contestable doctrine of multiculturalism becomes a career opportunity for the semi-educated and otherwise unemployable products of a grossly and unnecessarily swollen university system.

Meanwhile, the highest court in Italy was confirming an appeals court’s acquittal of the father and brother of a Muslim girl, whom they beat and locked up for becoming too Westernized—that is to say, for having a Western friend. The court ruled that, though they had undoubtedly beaten her and locked her up, this was not because of any culpable ill-feeling toward her. It was, rather, because of “her lifestyle, which did not conform to their culture.”

 

The sound of a civilization committing suicide can be heard in these stories; for civilizations collapse not because the barbarians are so strong, but because they themselves are so morally enfeebled.

 

And so utterly clueless.

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

Mully-bullies flex their muscles: There goes the mullocracy again, rattling its nukes and lobbing threats at Great Satan. From the aptly-named IranMania:

LONDON, August 18 (IranMania) - Ahmad Khatami, a senior Iranian cleric said that plans by the United States to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist group invited a fight with the Iranian nation which America could not win, Reuters reported.

"Americans should know that in this field, as with nuclear energy, they are dealing with the whole nation. And the great nation of Iran will never abandon its revolutionary people," Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

"Americans should know that if they act madly in this regard, they would be entering a swamp they won't be able to get out of," the conservative cleric said in a speech that was broadcast live on the radio.

Khatami is a member of the Assembly of Experts, an influential clerical body which has the power to appoint or dismiss Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

US officials said on Wednesday the United States may soon name the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist group, reflecting frustration over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected role in Iraqi violence.

The designation would be the first time the United States has placed the armed forces of any sovereign government on its list of terrorist organizations and would allow Washington to target the Guards' finances.

A Guards official brushed off the threat, saying the force "will grow in strength despite US efforts to isolate it."…

I thought Khatami was supposed to be one of those “moderate” senior Iranian clerics.

 

Go figure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:45 | link | comments (1)

Projection, projection, projection: The hairy lit'ler Hitler calls Israel "the standard-bearer of Satan"--a demonization effort similar to the one that preceded the Nazis' Penultimate Solution (as it will be known once Ahmadinejad gets to finish what Hitler started).

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

Webmasters: Consider the Nazis. With the crude media available at the time—the radio, the printing press, the newsreel, the Leni Riefelstahl film—they managed to bewitch an entire people into buying into a supremacist, totalitarian ideology predicated on the genocide of the Jews and a global conquest that was supposed to endure for a millennium.

Now, consider the jihadis. They have the entire global web at their disposal, and, as Globe and Mail investigative reporter Omar El Akkad writes in a must-read report, they are using it to spread their pernicious propaganda hither and yon and entice lots of young lads to sign up for the holy war. And we clueless infidels seem powerless to stop them.

 

When it comes to propaganda, the jihadis make the Nazis look like pikers:

…The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.

This is the new jihad – the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations – run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks – deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.

The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.

All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer – a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.

In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with “conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes.” Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle – his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.

Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else's civil liberties.

And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.

Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict – a battle that, so far, the West is losing...

In this web of hate, they’re the spiders and we’re the flies—and insects who resist their fate are immediately accused of arachnophobia. Surely our side can marshal enough computer geeks to sabotage the electronic jihad before we all get consumed.

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

Heart of Stone; head of mush: Film director Oliver Stone is like a pitbull with a juicy bone--he won’t let go. The bone in question: a bio-doc about pint-sized Islamic Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ollie thinks Moo, like other Muslims, hasn’t gotten a fair shake in the Western media, and wants to help rectify the situation. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN – Oliver Stone is still proposing to make a documentary about the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Iranian producer and filmmater Alireza Sajjadpur said on Thursday.

The request has been submitted by Stone’s publicist via an email to the president’s office, he added.

“Stone’s publicist referred to the bad image that the U.S. media has given to Islam and Islamic countries and said that the documentary could assist in countering such negative propaganda,” Sajjadpur explained.

Sajjadpur, who is regularly consulted by the president’s art and cultural advisors and is also the secretary of Iran’s Islamic Society of Artists, emphasized that it is western media and Hollywood which are the culprits responsible for creating a bad image for Islam and said, “We should see how Stone can manage to improve this image within such a bad atmosphere which has been created by the media.”

Ahmadinejad’s art advisor Javad Shamaqdari stated that the president has not yet given any response to this latest request and remarked that Ahmadinejad wants the film to be made by an Iranian.

Stone’s first request for making the documentary was announced by Sajjadpur on June 28, but President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s media advisor Mehdi Kalhor rejected Oliver Stone’s request calling him a part of the Great Satan.

The Founder of the Islamic Republic, the late Imam Khomeini, first dubbed the U.S. “the Great Satan” after the 1979 Islamic Revolution

Just call him Ollie Riefenstahl.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:49 | link | comments (1)

Food for thought: Eat up. From the National Interest (link via Martin Kramer):

One of the more puzzling aspects of the Iraq misadventure has been President Bush’s serene confidence of ultimate success amid the mounting evidence that the mission is crumbling. We now have some important insights into Bush’s thinking from a recent interview with National Review editor Rich Lowry and other conservative journalists. Lowry quotes the president extensively regarding prospects for democracy in the Middle East.
 
What emerges from Bush’s remarks is the picture of a man who largely rejects the role of culture in determining political values and systems. Embracing the "universality of freedom", he states bluntly that "Muslims desire to be free just like Methodists desire to be free." He adds that "nothing will change my belief." Later, he states that governments can transform societies (citing the example of Japan after World War II) and that the emergence of governments based on liberty is "inevitable."
 
Bush’s view is not merely simplistic, it is profoundly dangerous. The president assumes that when people in the Middle East and people in the West speak of freedom, they have the same concept in mind. There is virtually no evidence to support that belief. For all too many people in the Middle East, freedom means the ability to live the way the local mullah tells them that they ought to.
 
The foundation of an effective democracy is not some subjective desire of a person to live in freedom (however defined)—it is the willingness to allow fellow citizens, who may have different values and lifestyles, to live in freedom. That crucial spirit of tolerance is tragically underdeveloped in Middle Eastern societies. So is a pervasive attitude that political, economic and religious disputes must be settled solely by peaceful means.
 
Without those two pillars—the essence of a vibrant civil society—prospects for even quasi-liberal democracies in the foreseeable future are extremely dim. Even in Turkey, where these conditions are markedly stronger than in Arab countries, the political system is, at best, a shaky, rather illiberal democracy. Putting in place the mechanisms of electoral democracy before the necessary cultural conditions are strong (as the United States has done in Iraq) is likely to make bad situations even worse. Pushing for democracy without those crucial preconditions is akin to trying to build a house from the roof down.
 
Elections in such an environment will merely empower political demagogues and religious extremists. It is no accident that voters in Iraq spurned the more tolerant, secular parties who sought to reach across the Sunni-Shi‘a-Kurdish divides and instead supported blatantly sectarian parties. The fallacy of assuming that democracy is a panacea for the Middle East was even more graphically confirmed by the elections in the Palestinian
territories, when Hamas routed the more moderate (though hardly tolerant) Fatah.
 
That is not to say that Middle Eastern societies will never be ready to implement Western-style liberal democracy. There is no anti-democracy gene in human DNA. Societies change over time, and the emergence of stable, liberal democratic systems in the Middle East might well occur at some point in the future. But it’s not likely to happen in the next generation or two, and for the president to base U.S. policy in the region on the expectation that it will is irresponsible...

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:37 | link | comments (2)

Splitting the holy war: A report commissioned by the New York Police Department has revealed a growing threat of “homegrown terror.” According to the report, this type of jihadi terror bears absolutely no resemblance to the type of homegrown terror faced by Israelis. From an editorial in the New York Sun:

...We've got our own issues with the NYPD report, primarily the troubling way in which it contrasts homegrown Western terrorism with Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel. "Much different from the Israeli- Palestinian equation, the transformation of a Western-based individual to a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation," the report says. Since the report is a study of terrorist attacks in America and Europe, not attacks against Israel, it's hard to see the basis for the NYPD's assessment of the motivation of attacks on Israel. If any such basis exists, evidence for it certainly is absent from the report. Many of the attacks on Israel are motivated, inspired, supported, and funded by Saudi, Iranian, and Syrian agitators who are neither oppressed nor suffering nor desperate...

 

Newsflash for the NYPD: There’s one jihad, indivisible, with tyranny, injustice and homegrown terror for all infidels.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:39 | link | comments

Systems disruption, networked gangs and bioweapons, oh my: An article about the coming urban terror, from City Journal:

For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the world’s population is living in urban environments. Cities—efficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capital—are thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.

 

Over the last few years, small groups’ ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity—their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.

 

Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city...

 

Years ago, I read Jonathan Raban’s book Soft City, in which he wrote that the city is the perfect place for those who want to disappear and/or remain anonymous. Here’s a quote from that book, written long before city dwellers (and non-city dwellers) had any awareness of jihadism and martyrs seeking posthumous nookie:

 

We live in cities badly; we have built them up in culpable innocence and now fret helplessly in a synthetic wilderness of our own construction. We need—more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes—to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make a serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.

 

Given what’s happening today—Islamic supremacists using the city’s plasticity, privacy and freedom to devise plots to blow up infidels—the above seems positively quaint.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments (2)

D.I.Y for jihadis: The biggest difference between Mafia thugs and jihadi thugs—aside from a little matter of religion, of course: the jihadi thugs have how-to manuals. MEMRI has info about one of these documents, which tells the fanatical how to kidnap infidels and hold them for ransom—a time-tested piratical/jihadi pursuit. The manual can be found on a jihadi website hosted in Texas:

The guide begins by enumerating goals that a kidnapping can achieve, including the release of prisoners, extraction of information from the hostage, weakening the enemy's morale and creating deterrence, raising international awareness of conflicts in which the kidnappers' organization is involved, blackmailing the enemy for money, and generating anti-government sentiment in the hostage's country of origin.

In the section dealing with selecting a target, the guide recommends choosing someone of importance to the enemy (such as a high-ranking military officer or a prominent businessman). However, he should not be a physically strong person who can put up significant resistance. In order to ensure that the operation goes smoothly, it is recommended that he be knocked out with tranquilizers.

As for the kidnappers, the guide states that they should be devout and in good physical condition. In addition, they must be familiar with the locale, and must be able to disguise themselves and to blend in with their surroundings. The guide gives various scenarios and explains how to deal with them - for example, what to do if the target enters a building or turns around suddenly while being followed. The guide states that, ideally, the kidnapping should be carried out at night, and in an isolated spot.

Next, the guide explains how to transport the hostage to the hideout. It recommends using a vehicle of a type that is common in the locale, and that it be prepared by removing the handle on the inside of the door where the hostage will sit. As for the hideout itself, it must be a large apartment with several exits, and the hostage must be kept in a windowless room. The apartment must not be on a road where there are checkpoints.

The last section of the guide deals with the demands stage, and states that after stipulating their demands and setting a deadline, the kidnappers must conduct negotiations using a mobile phone registered under a false name, or else a pay phone (a different one for each call). The guide also explains that if it becomes necessary to execute the hostage, this is best done by hanging or poisoning rather than by shooting. This is because soldiers regard death by shooting as an honorable death, and because shooting leaves considerable bloodstains at the scene.

The better to film and showcase in gory-ous Technicolor for this and other jihadi websites.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments

The perils of internet dating: Lonely? Single? Female? Looking for love in Israel and environs? Whatever you do, don’t fall for a slick Prince Charming who seems to be really into you, but who wants to lure you into a life of sexual slavery. From YNet News:

A Palestinian from Ramallah turned an 18-year-old Israeli girl he met on the internet into his sex slave, Ynet reported on Friday.

A few months ago Tal (not her real name) met who she thought was her prince charming in an internet chat room. Following a brief period of online correspondence, the two met in person. The Palestinian took Tal out to restaurants and showered her with gifts, and the unsuspecting Israeli teen thought she had found the man of her dreams.

 'Muslim girls are afraid to return to Israel'

Within a month of their first encounter she was already in love with him, and did not hesitate for a second when he asked her to move into his home in Ramallah. But shortly after the two began living together the man approached Tal and asked that she “comfort” a friend of his. She agreed to sleep with the friend as a one-time gesture for her beloved boyfriend, but was forced to have sex with others as time went by.

Tal was then brought to a lavish villa, where she and several Muslim women granted sexual services to senior Palestinian Authority officials on a regular basis. Eventually Tal managed to escape and return to Israel.

 

A volunteer in an organization that offers help to Israeli teenagers who have experienced similar traumas told Ynet that Arab girls from Jaffa have also been lured to the territories under false pretenses.

 

“The Muslim girls are afraid to return to Israel because they lose their virginity there. When they meet the person in a chat room they are certain that it will lead to marriage. Their families in Israel don’t want them back because they have ‘brought shame’ upon them,” she said.

 

The volunteer said the victims are usually lonely people from a low socio-economic background. 

 

At least, once rescued, girls like Tal don’t have to worry that their father or uncle or brother is going to murder them to restore family honour.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments (1)

A Padilla poem: 

When convicted, the famed “dirty bomber”

Had a demeanour which couldn’t be calmer.

Though he’ll be locked in the can

He’ll still read his Koran

And continue to be a salaamer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments

The world’s strangest laws: I would direct your attention to numbers 14 and 1, laws that are not only strange, but that are strange in a weird, sexual way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:01 | link | comments

Critical of cynophobes: I didn’t write a letter to the Vancouver Sun re its report about that city’s “Solomonic” taxi cab settlement, but I applaud George Muenz, a Vancouverite who “gets it”, and who did write one:

Re: Taxi firm settles with blind man refused ride because of guide dog, Aug. 16

It might look like an accommodation was reached on this issue, but it sets a dangerous precedent. Who decides whether an issue or a person is "contrary to religious beliefs"? In several Muslim countries, women are forbidden to leave the house unless they are accompanied by a male relative. Will local Muslim cab drivers refuse to take women who are travelling alone?

In several Muslim countries, women are required to be completely covered. Will cab drivers refuse to take passengers who are not "suitably" covered according to their "religious" interpretation? Many Muslims do not eat pork. Will cab drivers refuse service to someone who has purchased bacon at the grocery store?

Right on, George!

My solution: the Halal Taxi Company, which employs and transports true believers and only true believers.

Either that or cabbies who refuse to carry service dogs because they’re “unclean” have to suck it up or find another line of work.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:41 | link | comments

Bad law: Those who subscribe to a totalitarian system cannot abide those who refuse to get with their all-encompassing program and who go even further and, Heaven forefend, make fun of it. Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen is one person who has experience totalitarian wrath for her outspokenness, most recently when a bunch of religious totalitarians in India crashed a party launching one of her books. The totalitarians ran riot and physically assaulting Nasrim because, once again, she had dared to “insult Islam”—a big no-no with these types. (According to the Ceeb report, which tries to downplay the riot, the aggrieved merely “threw flowers and other items and called for her death.” What other “items”? Chairs? Rocks? Whatever they were, I have a feeling they had a lot more heft than pretty blossoms.) India, the world’s largest democracy but one with a substantial and restive Muslim population, took the only action open to it by law—it arrested the outspoken author:

…Nasreen, author of Wild Wind and Shame, is an exile from her native Bangladesh because of a fatwa against her and a threat by the government to lay charges stemming from her writing.

She lived in Sweden and France for several years, but moved to India in 2002.

In articles and books, she writes about the poor treatment of Hindus in mostly Muslim Bangladesh, and rape and mistreatment of women in Muslim societies. A police official in Hyderabad said Nasreen had been charged with "hurting Muslim feelings," according to Agence France Presse.  

Under Indian law, promoting "disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will" between religious groups is punishable by up to three years in jail.

Three legislators were charged with rioting after a police investigation into the incident at the publication party.

However, a senior member of an Islamist party registered a complaint, leading to the charges.

Nasreen has been an outspoken advocate of women's rights and opponent of sharia law.

In March, an Indian Muslim group from Uttar Pradesh state offered a bounty of 500,000 rupees ($13,000 Cdn) for her beheading.

However, human rights groups in India are arguing on her behalf.

If democracies are governed by laws that make it illegal to speak out against the obvious brutalities of a totalitarian system, including the system of laws that sanctions beheading—beheading!— for the mouthy, they are helping facilitating the totalitarian agenda. And there is no way a democracy can remain strong and free with such foolish laws on its books.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:20 | link | comments

A Tonge lashing: Jennie Tonge, one of the U.K.’s most over-the-top raving moonbats (and in a field that includes Robert Fisk, Ken Livingstone, Harold Pinter and George Galloway, that’s saying something) knows who’s to blame for the wretched circumstances the Palestinians find themselves in. Not Yasser Arafat. Not Mahmoud Abbas. Not Ismail Haniyeh. Not any of the mully-bullies or their front man, the hairy lit’ler Hitler. Nope. The people who are to blame for the Arabs’ desperate plight are—wait for it; you know it's coming; who else could it be but; drum roll, please—THE JEWS.

That’s right. If not for the Jews and their selfish desire to have their own sovereign nation, the Palestinians, a civilized, refined, highly cultured people, would have constructed a veritable ancient Athens—with an Islamist twist, of course. Instead, those dastardly Jews have foisted “apartheid” on these poor blameless victims, and single-handedly transformed a would-be Utopia into a Third World backwater. From the Jerusalem Post:

An Israeli scholar has firmly rejected comments by controversial UK Liberal Democrat politician Jenny Tonge, who recently accused Israel of driving the Palestinians to their current impoverished situation and claimed that this issue was being used to fuel Islamic extremism.

"Ever since 1948, Palestine has been used as a battle cry and a propaganda weapon for Islamists worldwide," she said in a speech in the House of Lords last month. "I have witnessed this in some African countries and, more recently, in Bangladesh. Palestine is what the West does to Muslims. That is the message. The Palestinians have been brought to their knees. A cultured and well-educated society with high skill levels has been reduced to a Third-World country. The statistics are there for all to see."

Tonge also alleged that the IDF was disrupting school exams in Nablus, resulting in a generation of illiterate and unskilled Palestinians.

"Even education is being destroyed as children are terrorized by raids on their schools," she said, claiming that the products of such a system would be "capable of very little except low-wage labor. The economy cannot be rebuilt unless Israel changes its policies."

But Dr. Jonathan Spyer, research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, disputed such assertions, which he said betrayed an "appalling ignorance of Islamist movements. Radical Islam is a political idea, some of whose proponents use the method of terrorism. This idea sees world events as shaped by a struggle between the forces of authentic Islam, and those of the non-believers. It uses a long list of supposed Muslim grievances as a way to mobilize support," he told The Jerusalem Post.

He noted that al-Qaida had been formed to overthrow the Saudi Arabian government in opposition to the US presence there in the 1990s. "Al-Qaida hardly mentioned the Palestinian issue prior to 2001."

"The idea that this trans-national idea, which feeds off many local issues, is somehow 'traceable' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would be settled by the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel - an outcome which the Islamists in any case reject - is an absurd one. It's used by people like Tonge in order to hold Israel to blame for radical Islam's war in the West."

Baroness Tonge was sacked as a member of Parliament and as the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman in 2004 after expressing support for Palestinian suicide bombers.

Daniel Seaman, director of the Israeli Government Press Office, told the Post on Thursday that at a recent meeting in Jericho, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the PA could not control Hamas.

"Any disruption is down to the extremists of Hamas who are operating in the area. Israel is operating in the area to protect its citizens. If exams are being disrupted, this is unfortunate. However, exams can be retaken. Lives cannot be brought back," Seaman said.

Tonge also questioned how things could get better. "The new government talks of rebuilding the economy in Palestine and of getting the Palestinians back to work, which is very welcome, but how will they do that with road blocks, checkpoints and Bantustans divided by settler-only roads?" she asked. "I am not anti-Semitic, but I am appalled by the racist, apartheid state of Israel. I use the word 'apartheid' in its literal sense; it means separation, because that is what is going on."...

Poor Jen. She’s a bulb with exceedingly low wattage. If she wants to know what a real apartheid state is like, I suggest she direct her attention to Zam Zam land, where Jews are not allowed to set foot lest they defile the holy turf with their Jew-dhimmi-devil-infidel cooties.

 

And FYI Jennie: an antisemite is someone who has an irrational, over-the-top hatred of Jews, one that belies the facts and the reality of who Jews are and what they do. As such, I'd say you have impeccable credentials to be considered antisemitic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:59 | link | comments (3)

Ritual ablutions: It’s that time of year again. From Arab News:

MAKKAH, 16 August 2007 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah washed the Holy Kaaba on Tuesday night in the presence of princes, prominent religious scholars, government ministers, foreign dignitaries and members of the diplomatic corps from Muslim countries.

Those who participated in the washing of Islam’s holiest edifice included Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of Azhar University Dr. Muhammad Syed Tantawi and Mufti of Egypt Dr. Ali Jumaa.

King Abdullah performed the ritual circumambulation around the Kaaba and the two-rakah prayer of the Tawaf on his arrival to the holy precinct, Saudi Press Agency reported yesterday.

The king then proceeded to wash the interior of the Kaaba with Zam Zam blended with rose water and several other perfumes. The ritual also included rubbing the walls with a cloth drenched in perfumed Zam Zam.

The Kaaba is washed twice a year, once before the fasting month of Ramadan and once during Haj. The ceremonial washing follows the practice of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) of cleansing the Kaaba on the day he conquered Makkah in the eighth year of Hijrah (Migration) to Madinah…

Circumambulation, the two-rakah prayer of the Tawaf and perfumed Zam Zam—that Abdullah sure knows how to throw a shindig.

 

My limerick for the royal Zam Zam user:

 

King Abdullah, an unctuous Wahhabi

Was in no way a guy you'd call snobbi.

His circumambulation

Delighted the nation

And tickled the whole Muslim lobbi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:14 | link | comments (1)

Dangerous critters: PETA is peeved at Hamas for showing cruelty to animals on its kiddie indoctrination TV show, the one the used to feature Nahoul the Jihadi Mouse but, following that character’s untimely demise, is now hosted by Nahoul, the adorable—but pathological—Killer Bee. (No mention of PETA’s objecting to the show’s cruelty to Jews—I guess that’s way outside its purview).

The news inspired me to revise Edward Lear’s anthropomorphic poem, “The Owl and Pussycat”; sorry about that, Ed:

 

Farfour and Nahoul appeared on TV

To teach all the youn’uns to hate.

They spewed some lies

And gave alibis

To soften them up for their fate.

Farfour looked straight into the camera, and smiled,

And spoke of remarkable deeds,

“O lovely children! O children, my loves,

You were all born to be shahids, shahids, shahids,

You were all born to be shahids.”

Nahoul said to the vermin “It’s hard to determine

Precisely who hates the Jews most.

Is it you, you faux Mickey, who’s so very tricky,

Or I, who most wants them to roast?”

Then Farfour was shot dead

By a Zi’nist who said,

“We’ve claimed every bit of your land.”

And in Gazastan, Hamas hatched a plan

To make ev’ryone heed its command, command,

To make ev’ryone heed its command.

“Wee shahids are you willing to get on with the killing?”

Said the kidlets, “We believe, and we will.”

So Nahoul carried on, tho’ Farfour was gone—

There was plenty of blood left to spill.

And the hate filled young brains till no reason remains;

Their hearts thrilled to their mur’drous endeavour.

‘Cause there’s one thing we know,

“Peace” plans come and they go,

But the Judenhass lasts forever, forever,

The Judenhass lasts forever.

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

A very Canadian solution: Welcome to Canuckistan, a multiculti Trudeaupia where newcomers don’t have to adapt to our prevailing values because we are merely an empty vessel into which they pour their own far more important values (since they emanate from the impoverished, non-Western—and thus inherently virtuous—Third Word). Canuckistan—where a blind man with a seeing eye dog is denied a ride by a Muslim cab driver because, according to his religious precepts, the service animal is “unclean,” and it’s hailed as a great victory for all concerned when a court rules he never has to pick up such a fare again so long as he’s made his beliefs known in advance to his employers. From the Vancouver Sun:

A blind Vancouver man who was shunned by a taxi driver who didn't want a guide dog in his cab has reached a $2,500 settlement with North Shore Taxi.

Bruce Gilmour, 49, had called a cab from a West Vancouver coffee shop after a day of skiing in November 2006.

But North Shore Taxi driver Behzad Saidy, a Muslim, refused to transport Gilmour and his golden retriever Arden, saying he drove a no-pet cab. Saidy later said his religion prevents him from associating with dogs on the basis that they are "unclean," Gilmour said.

Gilmour, who has been blind for 30 years, filed a human rights complaint, alleging discrimination.

"I'm tired of defending my dignity," he said in an interview Wednesday.

Last Friday -- three days before a B.C. human rights tribunal hearing -- Gilmour reached a settlement with the taxi company that was issued as a tribunal order.

It attempts to balance the rights of blind people with guide dogs to obtain taxi service with the rights of a Muslim cab driver to follow his personal beliefs.

Gilmour said he will donate part of the monetary settlement to the Az-zahraa Islamic Centre in Richmond because of the help he received from Imam Syed Jaffir, who acted as an expert witness, and to B.C. Guide Dog Services. They will likely get $500 to $700 each, he said.

Under the terms of the settlement, North Shore Taxi was ordered to immediately establish a policy forbidding any driver to refuse a fare from a blind person accompanied by a certified guide dog.

The only exceptions are for drivers allergic to dogs and those who satisfy the company that they have an honest religious belief that precludes them from transporting certified guide dogs.

However, such drivers must call dispatch for the next available cab, give their name to the blind person and remain with them until the next cab arrives…

A brilliant solution! Why, it’s practically Solomonic (or, as Behzad Saidy and the imam might call it, “Suleimanic”). My question: what happens when, due to an honest religious belief, a cabbie decides he can’t in good conscience pick up an unveiled woman, or one who insists on appearing in public without a male family member to act as her escort and preserve her family’s honour? Tell me: where do we draw the line?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments (2)

Catching kafirs with honey: An expert on the Islam Online site advises true believers on how to practice da’wa—inviting infidels to answer Islam’s call and submit to the one true faith. As he sees it, semtex and explosive shampoo is out; good manners and a Boy Scout demeanour are in:

…What should you say when people ask about Islam? Well, first of all, if they ask you a question and you do not know the answer, apologize to them and admit as much. Do not make up an answer, to make yourself look clever. Explain that you will get back to them with a full answer to their question.

Islam is perfect and it has the answer to every question in the minds and hearts of men and women. The problem is that, because we do not read and study enough, we do not always know what that answer is, so we make Islam seem inadequate, when we are really the ones who do not know.

Never imagine that you have to persuade anyone to become Muslim. This is not da`wah. Our duty is simply to proclaim the message, and we then leave others to make up their own minds.

What a terrible thing if we were to persuade someone to become Muslim, in the heat of the moment, and then leave them without any support so that they quickly gave up their good intentions.

Millions of pounds, in fact, are spent in calling others to Islam, but hardly a penny is spent in looking after the new Muslims once they have declared Shahadah. If anything, we should actually make people hesitate, take their time, before embracing Islam. Make sure they know what they are accepting.

One very useful way of talking to others about Islam, especially if they have misconceptions about different aspects of it, is to talk about things from our own experience.

For example, if someone brings up the whole thorny issue of Muslims being terrorists, you can tell them that you are not a terrorist and that you do not know any. No one can argue with your personal experience without calling you a liar.

It is important, too, to speak to people in a language they understand. There is no need to go into special religious jargon just because you talk about Islam. Chances are that the one you are talking to will not know what you are talking about. No, use the language and the things people are familiar with.

Similarly, do not expect to prove a point by quoting them chunks from the Qur'an. The Qur'an will not have a value for non-Muslims until it has been proved to have a value. Do not expect them to be bowled over with your quotes.

Finally, always be very courteous and very cheerful. Show people that being Muslim does not mean you have to stop being human. A cheerful expression and a very polite manner will go a long way to give a very image of Islam…

For more pointers on being very courteous and very cheerful to kafirs, tune into the Ceeb’s fantasy agit-prop sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie.

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

Rudy rocks!: There’s no way Rudy Giuliani can become president. He speaks truths far too many Americans—including Dubya and Condi— simply don’t want to hear. From the New York Sun:

WASHINGTON -- In a sweeping repudiation of the conventional wisdom that America's war on terrorism must address Palestinian Arab national grievances, the leading Republican contender for the presidency is warning of the dangers of pressing too soon for Palestinian statehood and is asserting that Israeli security is a "permanent feature of our foreign policy."

"Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians-- negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again," Mayor Giuliani writes in an essay published yesterday in Foreign Affairs. "It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism."

In some of the boldest language on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict used thus far by any presidential candidate, Mr. Giuliani writes: "Palestinian statehood will have to be earned through sustained good governance, a clear commitment to fighting terrorism, and a willingness to live in peace with Israel."

That language appears to be a direct shot at President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, who are making just such a push for final status negotiations between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert in September, despite Hamas's takeover of Gaza in June…

A man who truly “gets it”—and for that reason virtually unelectable.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:05 | link | comments

Iranian terrorists: The Bush administration is pondering whether to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a group deeply implicated in fomenting chaos in Iraq, as a terrorist organization.

Truth be told, the whole frikkin’ mullah apparatus is a terrorist organization, but the AP, for one, isn’t too encouraging about the possibility of the new designation for this one sector. From the Washington Post:

CAIRO, Egypt -- A Bush administration move to blacklist Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group would ratchet up pressure on businesses from construction to oil that the military corps is thought to control, analysts said Wednesday.

Such a step also would heighten the U.S. confrontation with Iran, giving a pretext for tougher action in the future, they said.

A U.S. official in Washington said the administration had not yet decided whether to sanction the entire Guards organization or just part of it. Either way, the move would be dramatic _ the first time the U.S. has put a foreign government's military agency on the list, which includes the al-Qaida network and the Middle Eastern militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

The more confrontational U.S. stance comes after months of diplomatic wrangling over American accusations that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of its treaty commitments and supplying Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq. Tehran denies doing either.

"The move reflects that there is a lot of frustration that the diplomacy isn't yielding results," said Ray Takeyh, a specialist on Mideast policy at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

The designation would allow Washington to freeze U.S.-based assets of companies connected to the Guards, but those are believed to be minimal. More importantly, the listing would give the U.S. a cudgel to pressure foreign enterprises to cut off doing business with Guards-linked firms _ the threat of being accused of supporting terrorism.

The Revolutionary Guards is an elite force separate from Iran's regular military and has its own ground, naval and air units, with an estimated 200,000 men. It has also become increasingly involved in Iran's vital commercial affairs, with interests in oil, nuclear infrastructure and construction.

A terror listing would signal to Iran that the United States was ready to act against the Guards at some point, analysts said.

"Once they get classified as terrorist, American institutions will have the legitimacy they need to fight the Revolutionary Guards," said Mustafa Alani, a terrorism expert at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

"If this is a terrorist organization and it fires missiles in the (Persian) Gulf, then the U.S. would have an obligation to fight the Guards," he said. But Alani said he did not expect any such action soon, since American military forces are heavily involved in Iraq.

There was no immediate reaction from Iranian officials to the Bush administration's move to blacklist at least some of the Guards, which was first reported by The Washington Post…

I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure it won't meet with their approval.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:39 | link | comments

No longer in love: In a previous lifetime, my Sundays were punctuated by two key pastimes: listening to the Sunday morning show on Ceeb radio, and reading the Sunday New York Times, which was delivered each week to my doorstep.

Times, as we know, have changed, (although the Times, as we also know, has not). Today I would sooner open a vein than listen to Michael Enright and the other hard lefties bloviating away on the Ceeb, or waste good money on a subscription to the Sunday New Dhimmi Times.

 

Someone else who seems to have taken the same journey: Phyllis Chessler, who recounts her former infatuation--and more recent disenchantment--with the Times on the FrontPage magazine site:

 

Once upon a time, I only read and wrote for the most radical, left, and feminist media on the face of the earth. Reluctantly, suspiciously, I read just one establishment, "grown up" paper: The New York Times. After all, it was my home town paper and being as provincial as most Manhattanites, I somehow still believed (you learn this from the drinking water) that the Times covered issues in an objective, sophisticated, and leading-edge way.

 

I still subscribe to, and read the Times, but never first and sometimes not at all (I love how they cover weddings and usually check their obituaries). But duty calls and, as a culture warrior on the front lines, so to speak, I have to read the Times.

 

But now, I first read The New York Sun, Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, Commentary, Middle East Quarterly, the American Jewish media, the online Israeli and Middle Eastern papers and then check about twenty five other internet websites beginning with FrontPage and Pajamas Media in order to steel myself for the ordeal of reading The Paper of Record--yes, the same paper which buried news of the Holocaust on its back pages; the one which today, chooses, positions, and captions photos in such a way that over time, its readers have come to believe that Israel is really an "apartheid" nation state and that every single Palestinian, including the suicide killers, their handlers, and their billionaire funders are barefoot, unarmed, and innocent victims of Israeli and Jewish aggression.

Just the other day--on precisely August 11, 2007, what fresh outrage blinded me and caused me to reach for my blood pressure medication? There, right on the front page of the Saturday Times was a photo four columns wide and five inches hig. It was not about the American miners who were, at the time, heartstoppingly, tragically trapped in Utah.

It showed us a lonely man (Camus' existential stranger-hero, perhaps Kafka's lonely civilian facing a nameless bureaucracy) on a long, long road surrounded by a high wall. The article was captioned: "A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land." One more time, the Israeli attempt to defend itself from terrorist attacks by building a security wall and, incredibly, in this instance, to allow the West Bank Palestinians (those who do not comprise the 1.2 million who live in Israel proper as Israeli citizens) to travel from Ramallah to Bethlehem without checkpoints, without being stopped, without having to deal with Israeli soldiers.

One might think that congratulations were in order. Nope. In fact, the pull quote read: "A Lack of Exits Will Keep Palestinians Out of Jerusalem." I do not recall any similar pull quotes about how Jews or Christians are not allowed to practice their religions in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or even at their own holiest sites in Muslim-held territory. And, as Paul Berman has brilliantly pointed out, the Times has glamorized fascism in its overly gushing reviews of the work of Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of The Muslim Brotherhood, who now teaches at Oxford University and is published by their distinguished press.

When Islamic jihad intensified against Israel in 2000, I began meticulously to document such media biases. I wrote articles, delivered speeches, lost old friends and colleagues but made new ones for doing so. I counted myself one lucky woman when HonestReporting, Camera, and Memri emerged to do just this both systematically and splendidly. Let me note that because the Times is still so large it can afford to throw bones, offer scraps, to cover their considerable moral nakedness.

Thus, the paper has also published inspired, "corrective" reportage by Nicholas Kristof, Christopher Caldwell, and David Brooks--even occasionally by Thomas Friedman on the subjects of Islamic gender and religious apartheid and about the Middle East. And, let me admit: I still read their Sunday Book Review which, although it chose not to review my last two books, (a "first" for me, but a very educational experience), still remains essential reading. But, the book reviews in the New York Sun, Wall Street Journal, and Weekly Standard are now also essential reading…

If, on September 10, 2001, you had told me that in fairly short order I would be shunning the Ceeb, the NYT and other mainstream outlets in favour of the New York Sun, the National Post and the NRO, I would have called you an absolute lunatic.

 

And I would have been dead wrong.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:04 | link | comments (5)

B’nai Brith complains about VisionTV: In the wake of articles in the National Post about VisionTV’s Dil Dil Pakistan program and its propensity for featuring material from notable Jew-haters, B’nai Brith Canada has lodged an official complaint with Canada’s broadcasting regulatory body, the CRTC. From the Jewish Tribune:

B’nai Brith Canada, Canadian Jewry’s senior human rights organization, has filed an official complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) following the airing of a series of broadcasts on Vision TV’s Dil Dil Pakistan of individuals holding antisemetic and anti-western views.

 

Bill Roberts, president and CEO of Vision TV, following reports a month ago in the National Post about the glorifying of jihad on Dil Dil Pakistan by fundamentalist Islamic preacher Israr Ahmad, apologized profusely for the incident. He told the Jewish Tribune last month that sometimes the screeners don’t know the background of the person and that his station will be more vigilant in future (see Jewish Tribune, July 26, 2007).

 

Yet only a week later, Ahmad again appeared on Dil Dil Pakistan, and a few weeks after that, another individual known for his hatemongering – Turkish author Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya – was given air time.

 

In a letter sent to CRTC Secretary-General Robert Morin last week, Anita Bromberg, director of B’nai Brith Canada’s Legal Department, said the organization carefully reviewed the tapes of the original broadcast by Israr Ahmad, during which he stated: “Jihad is the way of Allah,” and “in execution of this responsibility [of jihad], you might have to lay down your lives also, to sacrifice your lives.” This clearly brings to question the excuses given by Vision TV executives that Ahmad was merely providing “historical” commentary.

 

“The open calls for jihad broadcast directly into Canadian homes could clearly be interpreted by his supporters as a call to engage in terrorism,” Bromberg wrote. “While we have accepted Vision TV’s invitation to lend our expertise to a revision of its policies and procedures in its effort to take corrective actions [following the July 14 screening], we believe that the repeat broadcasts of Israr Ahmad’s lectures, as well as the subsequent airing of Mr. Yahya’s documentary, clearly merit a formal investigation by the CRTC. The procedural failures, which arose here, leave little confidence in the broadcaster’s present ability to implement procedures to meet its responsibility to control the content of its varied mosaic programming. B’nai Brith indicates that it has pressed ahead with its CRTC complaint because in its view these incidents highlight the broader need to ensure that effective industry-wide safeguards and procedures are in place, so that Canadian airwaves cannot be turned over to preachers of hate.

 

While I’m pleased that B’nai Brith has filed the complaint, I have about as much confidence in the multicultists of the CRTC being able to figure out what’s really going on here (i.e. clever Islamists taking advantage of Canadian cluelessness) as I have in VisionTV's being able to figure it out.

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

Paging Maggie Poppano: If, as she says, the Queen’s University English prof is genuinely concerned about “Palestinian oppression,” she might want to have a gander at this IPS story and start organization her boycott of Lebanese academe:

BADDAWI CAMP, Northern Lebanon, Aug 13 (IPS) - Palestinians displaced by the fighting at the northern Lebanese refugee camp Nahr al-Bared have accused the Lebanese Army of torturing and abusing civilians.

As the fighting between the Sunni Islamist group Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army enters its 12th week, thousands of Nahr al-Bared residents have sought refuge in the nearby Baddawi camp. Many give detailed descriptions of days spent in detention under harsh interrogation.

Fadi Wahbi, 36, told IPS that he was detained for questioning by the Lebanese army as he fled Nahr al-Bared with family members. He was held for two days at the nearby Kobbeh military base and then transported, along with other young and middle-aged men who fled the fighting, to what he believes was the Ministry of Defence in Beirut.

There Wahbi's long ordeal began. Prison officials accused him of belonging to Fatah al-Islam, and kept him blindfolded in a crowded prison cell for eight days with scores of others similarly accused. When he insisted on his innocence, they began to beat him.

"Every time I said that I was not lying, they struck a blow," he recalled. "I did not know where the blows were coming from. I spent most of the eight days blindfolded and without sleep." Prison authorities also tortured Wahbi, twisting his extremities almost to the point where he lost consciousness. Later he said he was forced to stand in excruciating positions for days.

"I expected it to last an hour or two, but they kept me standing, handcuffed behind my back, blindfolded, for 36 hours," he said. "Every two or three hours I would fall to the floor. As soon as I hit the floor, someone would beat me up against the wall. It happened five or six times. Then I started to like falling, because it meant I could rest my legs. It was so painful that I preferred to fall and rest for a few seconds, even if that meant being beaten."

Dozens of Palestinians were kept in a single room, without space to sleep and unable to communicate with each other.

"We were never allowed to stretch our legs. We slept handcuffed, sitting with our backs to the wall and legs bent," he said. "If you stretched your legs, someone was there to kick you on your legs."

He was eventually sent back to Kobbeh in northern Lebanon, and managed to reach a nearby hospital after his release.

The psychological toll was extreme. Wahbi recalled that "at one point, I was seeing things. Unreal things. One time I imagined a door opening up in the wall that led me to my family. I stood up and ran into the wall. A guard came to me and shouted 'What are you doing? Are you trying to hurt yourself? You are not allowed to hurt yourself, only we are allowed to hurt you.' And he started beating me."

Wahbi's story mirrors the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians, most of whom are too terrified to speak on the record. Milad Salameh, a nurse at the Shifa' Clinic in the Baddawi camp, says he has seen more than 30 cases of abuse at the Army's hands.

"Many of the injuries we received," he told IPS, "were sustained under detention, inside the army detention centres. Many people came with signs of torture, abuse and beatings. We saw signs of electrical shocks as well, and some even reported sexual abuses, such as rape by bottle."

The Shahed Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Beirut, has documented over 50 cases of torture of Nahr al-Bared residents. Its director, Mahmoud al-Hanafi, told IPS that the army has systematically ignored human rights in its battle with Fatah al-Islam, and called upon both the Army and Fatah al-Islam to respect the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of civilians during wartime…

 

The international community’s response to the Lebanese Army’s actions—one resounding ho-hum; as we know, the world only gets in a lather about Palestinians being mistreated when Jews are involved.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:24 | link | comments

Campus backlash: The heads of several Canadian universities recently released a statement in which they condemned British academia’s boycott of Israeli universities. The Canadian academics, who, thankfully, seem to have a clue, slammed the boycott for unfairly singling out Israel for opprobrium. The fallout from that principled stance is now beginning to be felt, as the anti-Zionists on campus take to howling and seething about “Palestinian oppression” and how Israeli academics are somehow implicated in it. (A real knee-slapper, considering that much of Israel’s academe is as cluelessly leftist and self-excoriating as the boycott supporters) The Toronto Star, for example, has an article about the flack Karen Hitchcock, the head of Queen’s University, is getting from the vocal anti-Zionists on her campus:

The head of Queen's University is being accused of "hypocrisy" on her home campus for condemning a proposed British boycott of Israel's universities over its treatment of Palestinians.

 

Principal and vice-chancellor Karen Hitchcock was told her anti-boycott position, matched by several other university presidents in Canada and globally, is a "mischaracterization and defamation of Queen's community members ... who strongly oppose your stance," the Queen's Coalition against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination advised her in a letter this week.

 

Calling her statement "blatantly political," English literature professor Margaret Pappano said yesterday her QCRED group is angry that it was posted on the Queen's website without prior debate, contrary to the principles of healthy academic discourse.

 

"There's great hypocrisy in all this," said Pappano. "You can't be silent for years about what's gone on to Palestinian academic freedom and suddenly issue a statement of support for Israeli academic freedom without it having political connotations."

 

Britain's University and College Union decided in May to consider suspending links with Israeli academic institutions, a step that has been urged by Palestinian groups.

 

The boycott, which trade-union academics are now debating at the local level, could affect such interactions as student exchanges, publishing of research papers and attendance at conferences.

 

Those favouring a boycott say Israel's intellectuals and academics have been complicit in their nation's oppression of Palestinians.

 

A Queen's spokesperson said yesterday the campus group's dissenting letter had been received but that Hitchcock is away.

 

Her July statement will remain on the website, the spokesperson said.

 

In it, Hitchcock denounces the boycott as "antithetical to the core value of academic freedom, which is cherished by Queen's and other universities around the world."

 

She said if the U.K. union pursues its "ill-advised course," it should add Queen's to its boycott list.

 

Ryerson, York and University of Toronto are among numerous Canadian universities also denouncing the proposed boycott.

 

"We will not stand by as the very nature of university education is being undermined," said Ryerson president Sheldon Levy.

 

Joel Duff, Ontario organizer with the Canadian Federation of Students, said his group has not taken a position on the boycott. Student unions at the campus level may choose to consider the proposal once the school year starts, he said.

 

The real “hypocrites,” of course, are the mouthy Pappano and her ilk—Palestinianists who are actively working for Israel’s demise (the final Final Solution), but who have the audacity to frame this effort a matter of “justice” for the “oppressed.” Newsflash for Maggie et al—we know what you’re up to, and we ain’t gonna stand for it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:06 | link | comments

Clueless in Oz: For the moment both Canada and Australia have Conservative Prime Ministers, but that could change for both countries come election time. In Canada, polls show Stephen Harper is neck and neck with his opponent, pallid eco-freak Stephane Dion (whose command of spoken English is even shakier that that of old syntax-fracturer, Jean Chretien, but who has a doggie named Kyoto—very appealing for the sanctimonious green crowd). In Australia, John Howard is trailing Kevin Rudd, a clueless Laborite with an internationalist outlook.

Mary Kissel in OpinionJournal offers this capsule portrait of the man challenging Howard:

…After a few leadership debacles, the Labor Party found Mr. Rudd, a 49-year-old fresh face. He styles himself a new left "economic conservative" who would keep the budget balanced. He spouts the odd non sequitur--he'd "keep interest rates low" while "preserving central bank independence"--and panders to the trade unions, threatening to roll back the Liberals' program of flexible work contracts. But other than that, Mr. Rudd largely echoes Mr. Howard's free trade, conservative economic management--something the prime minister acknowledges with relish. "I think it's a bit of a risk electing a bloke who doesn't have a plan of his own," Mr. Howard told radio host Mr. Hadley.

 

It's on the "fear issues" such as climate change, job security and foreign policy where Labor wants to distinguish itself--and where the election, if Mr. Rudd wins, could impact the U.S. and its allies. The opposition leader wants a phased withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq, playing to local fears that the war on terror has "made Australia a target." He advocates humanitarian aid for, and dialogue between, opposing factions--unsurprising positions for a man who spent seven years as a foreign service bureaucrat before entering politics. Under a Rudd government, Australia would maintain its close U.S. alliance, he says, but plump for a stronger United Nations and nurture its relationship with China. Mr. Rudd also supports ratifying the Kyoto Treaty…

 

God help the Aussies—and us—if they opt for the guy who wants “a stronger” U.N. and who thinks the jihad won’t come a-knockin’ once the Aussies decamp from Iraq.

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

Halleluliah!: That’s me cheering on Gregory Davis, author of Religion of Peace? Islam’s War Against the World, as he cuts through the multiculti crap in an interview in FrontPage magazine:

FP: Why do you think there is so much that the West actually doesn’t know about Islam? Why the impulse to deceive oneself?

Davis: I think that there are several reasons. The first is a natural if unwarrantable reluctance to face the very uncomfortable reality that there is an entire civilization seeking our subjugation under nothing less than a totalitarian system of government, i.e., Islamic (Sharia) law.

When faced with National Socialism and Communism, the West demonstrated a similar unwillingness to face up to very grim realities. The continued emphasis on a "new world order" in which violence and warfare will be swept into the dustbin of history makes it that much more difficult for people to realize that, far from a coming era of perpetual peace and happiness, we are facing a future of conflict and civilizational struggle.

The second reason I believe is the persistence of the multicultural myth that all peoples, religions, and civilizations are morally equivalent. Despite its manifest absurdity, this idea nonetheless continues to taint just about every public discussion on Islam and throttles any kind of objective analysis of the origins of Islamic violence.

Thanks to multiculturalism, every theory except the obvious one -- that Islamic violence has roots in Islam -- is advanced: that the jihadists are acting out of "frustration" due to "poverty," "disenfranchisement," etc. Such theories are belied by such jihadists as the 7/7 bombers in London, who were native Britons, and the more recent British doctors, who seemed to have plenty to live for in Western society.

And then there is of course someone like Osama bin Laden, a multimillionaire many times over, a father, poet, and animal-lover, who nonetheless is willing to throw it all away in order to follow in the footsteps of Muhammad. The unhappy truth is that the jihadists are, to a great extent, acting from genuine, deeply-held religious conviction.

Invariably, the jihadists are serious, pious Muslims, many of whom recently rediscovered the tenets of their faith. It is an uncomfortable fact for a tolerant society such as ours to acknowledge that sincere religious belief can pose an imminent danger to a society's physical safety. We would be better off discarding "religion" as a term and instead focus on the very real distinctions between religions and their implications.

FP: So what hope exists that there can be a modernization and democratization within the Islamic world? How can this even begin to happen when the extremists appear to be in command in most of its quarters?

Davis: Hope that a "reformation" of Islam will somehow eliminate its fundamental hostility to the non-Muslim world is wishful thinking. The only even modestly successful attempts to "reform" Islam have taken the form of de-Islamization. This was the policy of Attaturk, who in Turkey replaced the cult of Muhammad with the cult of himself.

Throughout Islamic history, the only alternative to the rule of Islamic law is military dictatorship. It is between these two extremes that modern Turkey continues to oscillate.

Democratizing Islam is really a contradiction in terms: one might as well try democratizing National Socialism or Communism. Islam is what it is: a repressive, expansionary, militaristic religious and political system with a mandate from Allah to conquer the globe. Putting it that way almost sounds silly to the Western ear, but this does not deny the truth of it.

The fundamental problem is that the Muslim extremists are not really "extreme" at all -- rather they are the orthodox faithful. By Western logic, Muhammad himself -- who engaged in political assassination, wars of aggression, and massacre --- would qualify as an "extremist." Violence and intolerance are mainstream in Islam, not distortions of its orthodox traditions as they would be in a religion such as Christianity.

And let us say, “Amen.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:35 | link | comments (1)

A clueless lefty gets a clue—sort of: Toronto Star fortnightly writer Mark Abely recalls his encounter with Taslima Nasreen. Nasreen is the outspoken Bangladeshi novelist, a Muslim apostate, who has written about the horrific plight of Muslim women. She has been the target of many death threats over the years, and last week was set upon by a seething mob of true believers who almost succeeded in killing her.

Abely abely describes Nasreen’s bravery, and her refusal to submit to those who want to silence her:

Courage is one thing Nasreen has in abundance. "In Christian countries," she told me on that visit, "people can say anything they like against Christianity. So why should people in Islamic countries not have the right to criticize Islam? If any religion keeps women in slavery, then I cannot accept that religion."

Out of deference to the sensitivities of believers, many of us in Canada tiptoe around that kind of statement. We hate to cause offence. The last thing we want to do is sound like imperialists.

Nasreen has no such qualms. She speaks the truth as she sees it. And, as the news item from Hyderabad reminded me, she pays a price for her outspokenness.

Nasreen was trying to launch a Telugu language version of one of her novels. A mob broke into the Press Club, where the event was being held, hurling objects at Nasreen and shouting abuse. One of them – Akbaruddin Owaisi, an elected member of the Andhra Pradesh legislature – personally threatened to behead her.

After several days, the local police registered a case against him. They had already registered a case against Nasreen for "promoting enmity between different groups." They did this at the behest of Akbaruddin Owaisi, who declared that Nasreen's writings "hurt the sentiments of the faithful."

So should the sentiments of the faithful have the power to turn an unbeliever into a criminal – or a corpse?

At this stage cognitive dissonance rears its head, and a lefty who submits to the mainstream mishegas wherein Muslims are always the victims, the West (especially America and Israel) is always wicked, and the jihad is a fanciful creation of George W. Bush and his band of neo-Jews, gets a glimmer of a clue that his usual way of thinking makes no sense:

At some point, Western liberals have to draw a steadfast line. Sure, the American invasion of Iraq was an atrocity; sure, Muslim minorities from Bosnia to China have suffered grievous oppression; sure, Palestinians continue to be mistreated and abused; sure, the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving people.

But having said all that, we liberals need to define and hold onto the values that are essential to us – values we hold sacred, to use a loaded word. We need to defend and proclaim our own moral convictions.

For me, freedom of speech is sacred. For me, a library is as holy as any mosque or church. I despise anyone for whom religious sentiments justify a threat of murder.

I also despise anyone who thinks that out of sensitivity to Muslims, we should keep silent about the threats against Taslima Nasreen.

Good on you, Mark. You’re on the road to enlightenment—maybe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:57 | link | comments

“Peace” in Windsor: The pro-Hezbollah billboard in Windsor has been replaced with an ad for a car vendor, but the Islamic supremacist whose idea it was to put it up is pleased that, in its brief two days on the scene, it got its message across. From the Windsor Star:

The controversial billboard depicting Hezbollah's leader had disappeared Monday morning, but one of the men responsible for the sign says it's not because they're backing down from fierce public backlash.

"What ever we believe, we'll speak about it anytime," said Hussein Dabaja. "We will speak about human rights, about the truth, about Nasrallah. We're going to do it and nobody can stop us. We'll talk about it anywhere, any place we have a chance."

Dabaja said the company that owns the sign, CBS Outdoors, covered the billboard because the Lebanese community members only paid to have it up

"We paid for the weekend and it's done," said Dabaja. "We have our message, and our message got the point across."

CBS Outdoor didn't return phone calls on Monday.

The billboard depicting Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah was quietly replaced Monday morning with an advertisement for a car dealership.

The sign was erected Friday morning at the corner Wyandotte Street and Marion Avenue, and immediately drew fire from the Windsor Jewish Community Centre, the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb and others.

Among other Lebanese leaders, the sign prominently depicts the head of the political and military group representing Shia Muslims. Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the Canadian government, was created in 1982 primarily to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon that lasted two decades.

Dabaja said it was meant to honour friends and family who have died fighting in Lebanon.

To be accurate: it was meant to honour the “martyrs” who have died fighting the jihad against the uppity Jewish dhimmis, the ones who refuse to get with the Prophet’s program and grovel to their Islamic superiors. It was also meant to brazenly announce Hezbollah’s presence in Windsor.

Thankfully, the local Jews refused to submit:

Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre, said the sign was "the opposite of peace" and a message from terrorists.

"I'm pleased it is down," said Kessler. "Hopefully, it leads to a discussion about the kind of community we want to live in. Also in the Lebanon