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

A crucial first step: One might have expected a Tory to introduce a bill to tame the Thought Cops. But nooo. As Ezra Levant reports, it took a Liberal to do the dirty work:

Keith Martin, a Liberal MP from Victoria, has introduced a private member's bill motion that is as groundbreaking as it is concise:

That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act.

This is important for several reasons:

1. It's evidence that the "undernews" of the abusive, unaccountable conduct of the human rights commissions has caught the attention of at least one MP (we can assume Sen. Anne Cools is watching things, too).

2. That MP is a socially progressive Liberal (formerly a red Reformer), whose human rights credentials with the Left are impeccable. Not only has he made international human rights one of his causes in Parliament, but he has personally walked the talk, serving on various Doctors Without Borders missions.

3. If a progressive, young, hip Liberal MP from an urban seat feels comfortable proposing this motion, it is a sign that reforming these commissions is politically safe, even for a Conservative government still worried about being tagged as "anti-human rights". Martin is a political entrepreneur who goes for winning opportunities. He once ran for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance; he crossed the floor to the Liberals and was rewarded by them; he has a very friendly relationship with the press. The man picks political winners. That alone is a signal to other MPs that it's safe to stand and be counted on this fight.

4. By taking the initiative -- and beating other MPs, especially Conseratives, to the punch -- Martin will get some well-deserved credit for leadership. But he'll also make it easy for Conservative MPs, even the Conservative government itself, to "follow" his example, rather than to lead. In a way, Martin takes the political risk; by supporting him, the Tories are merely sensible and bi-partisan followers. He's the point-man. 

5. The fact that Martin is a "visible minority" is irrelevant to most normal Canadians, but to the identity politics Left, it's a sign of his moral virtue, and thus makes him even more politically safe. 

Congratulations to Martin for doing the right thing. But more than that: he has given the government itself a political opening to amend this awful law. The Conservatives should ensure that Motion M-446 goes to a vote, and every one of them -- as well as other MPs of good faith from every party that cares about freedom -- should join with Martin to make his amendment law. 

When it comes to defanging the Thought Cops, I don’t care who gets the ball rolling, so long as someone—anyone—does. Kudos to Martin for having the, ahem, balls to be the one to do it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:26 | link | comments

War movies: The good, the bad, and the clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:04 | link | comments

Madness to their Methodism: One of those “progressive” churches renews its drive to divest from the “sinful” Jewish state. And, of course, it has nothing to do with an age-old animosity toward the original monotheists. From the Jewish Daily Forward:

Washington - Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in building the separation barrier and in demolishing Palestinian homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a church-sponsored report referring to the creation of the State of Israel as the “original sin.”

Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained, following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called on American Jews to “get a life” instead of focusing on defending Israeli policies.

“This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches,” said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “These developments are a result of work of several very wicked forces that play in the church.”

The divestment campaign, thought by many in the Jewish community to be dormant, is still active among mainline Protestant churches and is re-emerging as a main issue on the agenda of Jewish groups. Attempts to block the divestment drive, which began four years ago, have proved only partially successful. Interreligious dialogue efforts and public pressure managed to mute some churchwide calls for divestment, but other initiatives are still gaining support.

The Methodist meeting, held on January 25 in Fort Worth, Texas, was an initial orientation meeting for delegation heads who will lead their groups at the church’s quadrennial conference in April. Delegation leaders were presented with speakers both supportive and opposed to the draft divestment resolution, which calls for removing all Methodist pension fund holdings from Caterpillar.

“The United Methodist Church holds $141 million of pension funds in companies that sustain the occupation,” said Susan Hoder, a member of the church’s Interfaith Peace Initiative. “This has to stop. We have to cut our ties to the occupation.”

Hoder, who strongly favors passage of divestment measures, went on to claim that American taxpayer dollars are used to fund Israeli military. “A lot of this money goes into the pockets of Israeli military leaders and politicians who get rich while the population of Israel suffers,” she said.

With 11 million members, The United Methodist Church is the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. The upcoming April general conference, the church’s main forum for making policy decisions, will first discuss the divestment resolution in a subcommittee. Afterward, the panel’s recommendations will be put to a general vote to make them official policy.

A spokesman for the United Methodist Church did not return calls from the Forward seeking comments on the divestment drive.

Arrangers of the pre-conference meeting last Friday in Fort Worth allowed a representative of the organized Jewish community to speak on the issue. Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the American Jewish Committee’s director of interreligious affairs, told the Methodist delegates that the Jewish community was concerned about the resolution. “I told them that while they may think it is not anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish, for us it feels anti-Israel and feels anti-Jewish,” Greenebaum told the Forward after the meeting.

At the same time, Greenebaum warned the Jewish community against overreacting to anti-Israel sentiments in the church. Protestant churches, he said, “care very deeply about their relations with the Jewish community.”

What prompted Jewish activists to take action was not only the renewed divestment drive but also a report from the women’s division of the Methodist church, which addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 225-page report, compiled by the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, attempts to outline the historical and current contours of the conflict, but according to Felson, the report amounts to “the most egregious thing that has crossed my desk that was not put out by an overt hate group.”

Among the statements in the report that irked Jewish community activists are a reference to the founding of the State of Israel as “the original sin,” a passage calling Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion an “extremist” and a passage defining Israeli actions as acts of “terror.” Discussing the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society, the Methodist report claims it has been the cause for “hysteria” and “paranoiac sense” among Israelis.

“Are we not called to testify when oppressors use their identity as the oppressed with stories of sixty years ago but through some failure of perception cannot see what transpires now in the shadow of the Holocaust?” the report goes on to ask...

The Longest Hatred continues, in a “new and improved” progressive/Islamist guise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:52 | link | comments

Bad moon rising: David Warren sees it. From the Ottawa Citizen (hat tip WriterMom):

Years have passed since there was genuine excitement at a State of the Union speech by President Bush, and Monday night's effusion was a long yawn. His focus has changed, by the eddying of events, from the grand foreign policy issues forced upon him at the beginning of his first term, to the desperate business of resisting an economic downturn towards the end of his second. That, he proposes to do by throwing $150 billion of tax money at the problem. There are very few politicians who will not act in this Pavlovian way, even among those with no elections left to lose.

American domestic policy is none of my business: I am interested in the survival of the free world. Yet I cannot ignore U.S. domestic politics, which have the power to enfeeble any policy initiative on the world stage. Mr. Bush's achievements on both fronts, home and abroad, are mostly invisible: the tax cut, the success in preventing any major terror attack on U.S. soil after 9/11, progress in co-ordinating the response of western governments to domestic Islamist threats, and what currently looks like victory in Iraq. Over against this: profligate and essentially "liberal" domestic policies that have disheartened the Republican base, and squandered the remaining "conservative" momentum from the Reagan revolution. And now, backsliding and retreat in foreign policy.

We (the U.S. and allies) are winning in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and losing everywhere else. The Syrians are now murdering independent Lebanese politicians with impunity. The pressure on Iran has been relieved. Pakistan is teetering towards a civil and military collapse from which only the Islamists can gain. Islamist demands for the imposition of Shariah, and for the legal persecution of religious minorities, have entered the mainstream of political life in countries that were once free of religious zealotry -- Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia. Islamist terrorists are winning effective control over the remoter Muslim-settled regions in many countries of Asia and Africa, creating streams of Christian refugees from the southern Philippines, of Buddhist refugees from southern Thailand, of Christians and Animists fleeing south across the breadth of Africa.

Saudi-sponsored Wahabi Islam is consolidating its hold over the mosques of the West, and radicalizing the huge Muslim immigrant communities that have congregated in almost every major European city. Across Europe, and increasingly in North America (and as we've seen in Canada in the obscene "human rights" trials of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant), the most radical Muslims exploit state multiculturalism to score victories over free speech and win pathetic apologies from anyone accused of the thought crime of "Islamophobia."…

As “radicalism” (a.k.a. jihadism) rises, so, too, does the Judenhass which—vicious circle—both fuels the “radicalism” and is its result.

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

"How I Hoped to Turn My Body into Slivers to Tear the Sons of Zion to Pieces, and to Knock with Their Skulls on the Gates of Paradise":  Islamist “Feminism”.

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

Yabba DaBadu: On a visit to Israel, hip hop artiste Erykah Badu—who used to wear her hair covered in a capacious turban but who now seems to favour the Sideshow Bob look—said she approves of those those two “lovable” Jew-haters, Louis and Yasser. From the Jerusalem Post:

Sporting a huge, billowing afro and a T-shirt with an anti-Iraq war slogan, Erykah Badu expressed her support of black leader Louis Farrakhan and the Palestinian cause Thursday before a crowd of Israeli fans and journalists in Tel Aviv.

The Grammy-award winning neo-soul vocalist, 36, is in Tel Aviv to perform on Saturday night. She has also won acclaim for her acting roles in "Cider House Rules" and "House of D."

"I come from across the water bringing light and hope," said Badu in her deep, languid voice. She commissioned a poster design especially for her visit to Israel, featuring a large hamsa - a traditional Middle Eastern good luck charm _ that appears to be growing out of her hair. At the bottom, the words for peace in Hebrew and Arabic appear side by side.

However, Badu could not name any Israeli hip hop artists. She explained that she identified best with the Palestinians and their hip hop scene, saying that they are a part of her "tribe" of hip hop.

"They use (hip hop) as a form of liberation, as a form of pre-resistance, as a form of therapy," Badu said.

Badu defended Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, who has drawn fire over the years with pronouncements including praise for Hitler in a 1984 speech, for which he was censured by the US Senate, repeatedly denouncing Israel and the Jewish people and calling the pretense for the war in Iraq a "Zionist conspiracy."

The Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish group, has labeled Farrakhan's statements "bigoted and anti-Semitic." On its Web site, the ADL lists dozens of Farrakhan statements it considers anti-Semitic.

"(Farrakhan is) not an anti-Semite. He loves all people," insisted Badu. Her next album, "Nu AmErykah" will be released February 26, the date of Savior's Day, a main Nation of Islam holiday.

Israeli reggae-soul group Karolina and Funset, who will be opening for Badu's concert, posed for pictures with Badu after she spoke, then joined her in raising the "Black Power" raised-fist salute.

Charming. Just charming.

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

“I can most highly recommend the Wahhabis to everyone”: A target of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia springs to her misogynistic nation’s defence after reading something she didn’t like in—of all places—the Jerusalem Post:

Hello Caroline Glick, I am a 20 year old female living in Saudi Arabia. My family and I used to live the United States for 13 years, until we decided to move back to be closer to our relatives. The other day, I was searching for articles on Google and I came across your op-ed on Laura Bush's recent visit to Saudi Arabia.

I am sorry to say but I was very disappointed with your article. You said things that are not true about my country. For instance, you mentioned that women in Saudi have no choice on who they marry, and that men can marry up to four women and divorce them just in a matter of words.

We do have a choice on who to marry. You do realize we live in the 21st century?! Both my sisters and brother knew their spouses before they were married, and I come from a relatively religiously committed family. My mother and father met through family outings in Saudi Arabia in the 50's. While it is true that men can marry up to four women, there are still consequences that comes with it.

First, this is a part of our religion which gives no one the right to mock us about it. Second, no sheikh (the equivalent to a priest) will allow a man to marry a second or third wife without conducting an interview with him to see what his reasons are. For instance, my uncle recently married a second wife. This second wife was a woman who's husband died and was in financial debt. My uncle did what he thought was right, after asking for his wife's blessing. If he had not received this blessing he would not have done it. Nor would he have done it if he had not realized how bad the situation this woman was in.

You also mention how no other religions can be practiced in Saudi Arabia. I want to point out this is the land that Islam was introduced in; the land the prophet was born in, the same land that contains Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest sites in Islam.

It makes sense not to allow another religion to be practiced in such a sacred place. As far as I know there is no mosque in Vatican City. I respect the fact that it is a sacred place for a religion, and I would expect to receive the same respect from others about my country.

AS FOR OUR education, it is well on its way to becoming one of the best in the world. We have a wide range of opportunities. The college I attend has marketing, accounting, media, nursing, special education, electrical engineering, architecture, management, finance, and psychology. Another college here offers law, graphic design, interior design, banking, Management information system and fashion design. Our public universities offer all departments of medicine, physical therapy, economics, media, sociology, religion, literature, translation and so on.

As far as I can see we are well-off, it is just a matter of what interests people. And no, contrary to what people assume, we are allowed to leave the house. Even without our brothers or fathers. It is a cultural choice whether a mother of father permit their daughters out without male supervision. Perhaps one in 15 families take a stringent position. I go to the beach, restaurants, parks, cafes, bowling...with my friends - males and females. Yes I do wear an abaya, but we do not necessarily have to cover our hair or faces; again this is a personal and cultural choice.

To be frank, abayas are not a big deal to us, we actually embrace it and design lovely abayas that portray our personalities. And yes, it was ridiculous for the French government to try and ban women from wearing scarves. Where is the freedom of choice there? Was this to protect the country from terrorists? Anyway, how did it transpire that head coverings came to be seen as symbols of oppression? I wish the world would stop judging us.

America is not perfect, Europe is not perfect, Israel is not perfect and yes even I admit the Arab Middle East is not perfect. We all have our flaws! What is the use of learning about the world if we all had the same way of living.

Our way is our choice. Nothing is forced upon us.

My advice to you, Caroline, is to befriend a Saudi. This is the best way to get to understand our culture. Or better yet, visit Saudi Arabia.

I did not write this to offend you or the Jerusalem Post, but to set the record straight. I live in Saudi Arabia. I laugh in Saudi. I am happy in Saudi. My life is not any different that it was in the United States.

One day my country will rise and shine above all, and I am sure when that happens the world will suddenly want to befriend us. Until then, I will do my part to correct misperceptions about our image. Thank you.

Editors note: The writer asked that her full name be kept in confidence.

Gee, I wonder why?

I like her advice about befriending a Saudi, though. Much nicer than the jihadis' advice about beheading a kafir.

As for one day her country rising and shining above all--sounds to me like a bit of unfriendly triumphalism is intruding on the procedings. Here's praying that the day when we're no longer dependent on Wahhabi crude comes long before the day we're forced to "befriend" (i.e. submit to) the risen, shiny Saudis.

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

A brilliant comparison: Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick.

You remember Tracy, don't you? She was the scheming, hyper-ambitious brown-noser played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:14 | link | comments

Banking on terrorism: Rogue French trader Jerome Kerviel says the 2005 London bombings kickstarted his life of crime.

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

Cuteness alert: Baby giraffe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:14 | link | comments

Germany, 1938; Toronto, 2008: Yesterday at a local overpriced java emporium, I happened to overhear a student talking about the anti-racism rally she had taken part in at York University. She was going on and on about how “empowered” it made her feel.  Every so often I caught a reference to “the Jews,” but I wasn’t sitting close enough to hear what they had to do with anything. An article in the Jewish Tribune fills me in:

TORONTO – A heated rally organized by York University’s Black Students’ Alliance (YUBSA), prompted by the discovery of vulgar anti-Black graffiti scrawled on its offices and adjacent spaces, became yet another podium from which to attack the Jewish state.

Racist graffiti on the doors of the YUBSA such as “all niggers must die,” coincided with the celebration of the birthday of the late Martin Luther King.

According to the organizers, the rally’s purpose was to reclaim spaces that had been violated and to challenge York’s administration, including president Mamdouh Shoukri, to work more vigourously to clamp down on violence on campus. However, its speakers began attacking Israel as an “apartheid state,” as well as Premier Dalton McGuinty – who they condemned because American New Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz was denied entry to Canada last spring – and Shoukri.

The Rev. Don Meredith, chair of the GTA Faith Alliance, told the Jewish Tribune: “Clearly what has taken place is absolutely disgusting. This deplorable act of racism against Black students has nothing to do with the state of Israel or with the university allegedly being racist. It’s clearly unacceptable to turn this into an attack against the premier. To turn what should have been a united call for action against racism into a global attack on the state of Israel is totally disgusting.

“I’m asking that the York administration lodge a full investigation into this, so that York students will feel secure in an institution of learning known all over the world. I understand some progress has been made in investigating the situation and finding the perpetrators [of the anti-Black graffiti], and I applaud that. We cannot condone anything like this, whether it’s an act of antisemitism or of racism.”

Meredith said he hopes to make contact with the university president…

Yeah, that’ll counteract the Wahhabi-funded poison that’s infested our campuses and is polluting young minds.

Memo to Black students: Despite what you’ve been told, you’re being the targets of racism does not preclude your ability to be racist. Your vile, fatuous and bigoted assertions about the world’s only Jewish state are clear evidence of that distressing fact.

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

Die hard Wahhabi habits: There is a racist apartheid state in the Middle East. It’s called Saudi Arabia. In that holy shmoly kingdom, they’re very particular as to who can—and cannot—enter. For example, no ape ‘n’ piggish Judeo-Zionist is allowed in, and no kaffir can visit the two holy shmoley cities of Medina and Mecca, lest their infidel cooties fly off their bodies and defile the holy shmoly surroundings.  (And don’t get me started on the gender apartheid, a function of the Wahhabi’s Medieval, misogynistic world view.)

Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball doesn’t really want to visit those two burgs. He just wants us to notice that, us being kafirs and all, we couldn’t visit even if we wanted to.

High time to start to start a Coaltion Against Saudi Apartheid, I say. (Mi CASA es su CASA?)Too bad, unlike those anti-Zionist efforts, we don’t have that Wahhabi moolah to get it going.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments (1)

Louise retreats: It seems the UN High Commish for human rights hadn’t read and understood the entire Arab charter when she gave it her thumbs up the other day. She now concedes that the part calling for the eradication of “racist” Zionism could be somewhat, er, problematic. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, backed away yesterday from what appeared to be unqualified support for a new pan-Arab human rights charter that includes a commitment to eliminate Zionism.

The former Canadian Supreme Court justice had said in a statement that she welcomed the Arab Charter on Human Rights, a document critics say equates Zionism with racism, and some believe seeks the destruction of Israel.

In a new statement, Ms. Arbour said her Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has long been troubled by several of the "rights" enshrined in the charter, which goes into force in mid-March.

"Throughout the development of the Arab charter, my office shared concerns with the drafters about the incompatibility of some of its provisions with international norms and standards," the new statement said. "These concerns included the approach to the death penalty for children and the rights of women and non-citizens."

In addressing the Zionism references, Ms. Arbour touches on the UN General Assembly's repeal of its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. "To the extent that [the charter] equates Zionism with racism, we reiterated that [it] is not in conformity with [the 1991] General Assembly resolution, which rejects that Zion-ism is a form of racism and racial discrimination," she said.

"OHCHR does not endorse these inconsistencies. We continue to work with all stakeholders in the region to ensure the implementation of universal human rights norms."…

The only “universal human rights norms” the non-Zionist entities in that region are interested in implementing are sharia ones. Hence the reason for the conflict there and elsewhere in the world.

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

All the rage in the EU: Bruce Bawer, author of that superb examination of Europe’s Islamization, While Europe Slept, reports that gay-bashing has become a popular activity among certain, ahem, elements of the EU community. (Chick-bashing and Jew-bashing being quite popular, too.) What’s spurred the dramatic rise in the number and of virulence of such incidents? In a word: multiculturalism:

One day last month, I gave a talk in Rome about how the supposedly liberal ideology of multiculturalism has made possible the spread in Europe of the highly illiberal ideology of fundamentalist Islam, with allto  its brutality and – among other things – violent homophobia. When I returned to my hotel, I phoned my partner back home in Oslo only to learn that moments earlier he had been confronted at a bus stop by two Muslim youths, one of whom had asked if he was gay, started to pull out a knife, then kicked him as he got on the bus, which had pulled up at just the right moment. If the bus hadn’t come when it did, the encounter could have been much worse.

 

Not very long ago, Oslo was an icy Shangri-la of Scandinavian self-discipline, governability, and respect for the law. But in recent years, there have been grim changes, including a rise in gay-bashings. The summer of 2006 saw an unprecedented wave of them. The culprits, very disproportionately, are young Muslim men.

 

It’s not just Oslo, of course. The problem afflicts most of Western Europe. And anecdotal evidence suggests that such crimes are dramatically underreported. My own partner chose not to report his assault. I urged him to, but he protested that it wouldn’t make any difference. He was probably right.

 

The reason for the rise in gay bashings in Europe is clear – and it’s the same reason for the rise in rape. As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished. Such men need not be actively religious in order to feel that they have carte blanche to assault openly gay men and non-submissive women, whose freedom to live their lives as they wish is among the most conspicuous symbols of the West’s defiance of holy law.

 

Multiculturalists can’t face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims; and those who do mention it take the line that these perpetrators are lashing out in desperate response to their own oppression…

 

Memo to Maclean’s magazine: Best not invite Bawer to write a cover story along these lines lest some sensitive “multiculturalists” take offence and complain to one or more of Canada’s bodies of Thought Cops.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:00 | link | comments

Bloviations: Another day, another utterance about Israel’s impending demise from Iran’s tiny, hairy mullah-thingy. Today’s rant—Ahamdinejad tells West: Accept Israel’s ‘imminent collapse’—is in the grandiose tradition of this one—Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'—and this one—Ahmadinejad: Annapolis failed, Israel doomed to collapse.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to sense a pattern emerging.

I liked this comment from someone named 'The Judge':

"`imminent collapse of the Zionists...` blah blah blah.... How very paranoid that the leader of one of the World`s most oil rich nations should single out a little country the size of Wales! Funny how the civilized World is calling for sanctions, & this little squirt of a man is ranting on & on & on... I wager the Iranian mad mullah regime will fall within the next decade & that Israel, sorry, the Zionist entity, will prevail. What a pathetic speech."

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

Louise’s “Final Solution” for the Jewish state: Go figure—it’s the same as the Arabs’. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has thrown her support behind a major pan-Arab human rights charter that commits to eradicating Zionism.

Some critics say this is code for the destruction of Israel, but in a statement from her Geneva headquarters, the former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada welcomed the coming into force in mid-March of the Arab Charter on Human Rights.

"Regional systems of promotion and protection can further help strengthen the enjoyment of human rights, and the … charter is an important step forward in this direction," she said.

While the document demands respect for a host of internationally recognized human rights, its references to Zionism trouble leading human rights activist groups, including Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists (IJC) and UN Watch.

Its preamble speaks of "rejecting all forms of racism and Zionism," alleging they violate human rights and threaten international peace and security.

Article 2 of the 53-article charter says, "all forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination [should be] condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination."

"These provisions cannot be dismissed as harmless rhetoric," UN Watch said in a letter sent on Monday to Ms. Arbour asking her for "clarification" of her support for the charter…

I’d say Arbour’s intentions are pretty clear. Like her Arab overlords, she wants the Jews of Israel to submit—and cease to be.

Just call her Loulou, She-Wolf of the Arab League.

Update: I just sent the following e-mail to Sandy Martin, President of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO:

Dear Ms. Martin,

 

In 2000, Hadassah-WIZO Canada honoured Louise Arbour, then a justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, with its Woman of Distinction Award. In January, 2008, Ms. Arbour, now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, sided with the bullies of the Arab League who hold her Human Rights Council in its iron grip, and, according to a report in the National Post, is backing “a major pan-Arab human rights charter that commits to eradicating Zionism.”

 

In other words, the woman whom Canada’s pre-eminent Zionist women’s organization once held in its highest esteem has joined with Israel’s enemies, and has committed to its destruction.

 

Ms. Martin, I urge CHW to take a stand against this despicable statement, one which poses such a grave threat to Israel’s continued existence. Tell Ms. Arbour—who proudly lists her 2000 award on her C.V.—that CHW no longer considers her to be a “woman of distinction”; that, in fact, she is a woman whose actions and statements regarding Israel must be condemned in the strongest terms possible by all those who deplore the Arabs’ strong-arm tactics, and who support the right of the Jewish people to continue living in freedom and sovereignty in their ancient, ancestral homeland.

 

Yours very truly,

 

My Name (A third-generation member of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments (2)

Read all about it: Mo Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress and the four budding lawyers who complained to several human rights commissions have accused Maclean's magazine of--wait for it--"Islamophobia." But after reading their complaint, posted on the CIC website, it seems obvious that the complainants are suffering from a clear-cut case of Maclean'sophobia (a.k.a. freespeechophobia).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:08 | link | comments (2)

Dear Ayman—what’s up with that fugly forehead icky?: Al Qaeda’s number two invites questions from the world wide ether. From the Ceeb:

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, who co-founded the terrorist group with Osama bin Laden and has a $25 million US bounty on his head, wants to talk to his fans on the web.

Intelligence experts said Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian medical doctor believed to be hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, instructed three al-Qaeda websites to invite jihad (holy war) sympathizers to ask him questions. More than 2,500 questions were submitted. 

The questions range from "Why hasn't there been another attack on America?"  to "How do I join al-Qaeda?" A would-be volunteer from Britain asks al-Zawahiri whether he should go to Iraq or Afghanistan to fight or to wage jihad at home.

Ned Moran, who monitors the internet for the Terrorism Research Center in Washington, said al-Zawahiri's initiative is a thinly disguised recruiting campaign.

"It would be analogous to a teenager in Canada receiving fan mail from their favourite rock star, engendering a connection that would make them a more devoted follower," he said.

Most of the questions have been from men, but there were a few from women. The theme of their questions was that while they were proud of their husbands who had gone off to fight and die, they'd been left at home with kids feeling useless.

One woman asked al-Zawahiri what he thought of creating an all-female brigade.

The websites are no longer accepting submissions, and said the questions are being forwarded to al-Zawahiri, whose responses will be posted on the internet soon.

You mean I’m too late with my query? Rats!

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:56 | link | comments

Say “cheesy”: I have absolutely no interest in watching the sorry spectacle of pop tartlet Britney Spears losing her looks and her marbles—with one exception. I was fascinated to learn,  courtesy the Gawker blog, that Brit’s latest slimy squeeze—a paparazzo named Adnan—has dabbled in trick fauxtography for the Palestinian propaganda machine:

…Back in 2006, a Reuters freelancer named Adnan Hajj got the agency into a bit of trouble by crappily photoshopping some extra smoke into a photo of the Israeli Defense Force attacking Beirut. Another manipulated Hajj photo was found, Reuters dropped him, and eventually fired a responsible photo editor.

Critics (and there are plenty!) charge that the 2006 controversy and this more recent example of, at the least, complicity in photo-staging, is proof of Big Media anti-Israel bias. We think it's more like a bias towards more dramatic photos. But it's also Reuters' unfortunate bind in covering overseas crises: they have to rely on folks who have to live there.

Mohammed Salem needs access from Hamas to continue doing his job. Hamas needs attention from western media like Reuters to drum up sympathy and stay in power. Reuters needs dramatic content. Basically, the entire situation is more or less exactly like Britney Spears, her pet paparazzi exploiters, and the media-celebrity complex. The poor Palestinian people are Britney, and Hamas is creepy Svengali lover/manager Sam Lufti.

We are all TMZ now.

I have to disagree with that assessment. Some of us are TMZ. But others of us are much more LGF.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:27 | link | comments (1)

 How low can the UN go?: David Frum writes that the impending Durban II conference on racism may well represent the international body's nadir. From FrontPage Magazine:

To call anything the United Nations does a "new low" does an injustice to all the previous "old lows."

How do you do worse than pass a resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism on the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht, as the UN did in 1974?

We have already witnessed attempts to put the UN bureaucracy to work as an international enforcer of Islamic definitions of blasphemy.

Still, even by the sordid standards of the UN, the 2001 Durban "antiracism" conference was a record-breaker. Denouncing racism while conference attendees sold copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--breathtaking.

Now, however, the UN faces a new challenge. Was the 2001 anti-racism conference truly the very worst it could do? Or could it push the boundaries even further, explore new depths? At Durban, the UN had allowed an antiracism conference to be hijacked by anti-Semites. But what if it allowed anti-Semites to organize a conference from the very start? What if it made hatred of Jews and the annihilation of the Jewish state the very organizing principle of the conference? Now that truly would be a record low.

And so it happened. The UN has been at work organizing a "Durban II" to be held sometime in 2009. The organizing committee for the conference is chaired by Libya--with seats offered to Iran and Cuba. Preparatory meetings have been scheduled for Jewish holidays, in an effort to prevent pro-Israel groups from participating.

In December, 41 Western countries voted to shut off funding for Durban II. These countries pay the UN's bills--but the non-paying majority has the votes. This week, Canada gallantly announced it will not attend the Durban II "circus of intolerance," in the scornful words of Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism.

Let's hope that Canada's example inspires other democracies to follow.

But let's also understand more clearly what is at stake at Durban II.

In the first planning session for Durban II back in August, Pakistan's representative declared: "The defamation of Islam and discrimination against Muslims represent the most conspicuous demonstration of contemporary racism and intolerance ? It is regrettable that the world media has allowed defamation and blasphemy in this form?"

These are more than mere words. We have already witnessed attempts to put the UN bureaucracy to work as an international enforcer of Islamic definitions of blasphemy.

Not “attempts.” Successful endeavours, now firmly entrenched and rolling along.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:07 | link | comments

Palestinian workopolis:  In the bizarro world of Reuters, one is apparently supposed to feel sorry for Gaza “smugglers” who suffered a reversal of fortune when that wall was breached:

This was a bad week to be a Gaza smuggler.

When militants smashed open Gaza's border wall last week, many people in the Hamas-run enclave went on a shopping spree in Egypt -- bad news for the men who make fat profits smuggling goods made scarce by an Israeli-led blockade.

Dozens of underground tunnels crisscross the frontier between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and tunnel operators make thousands of dollars per night by smuggling in everything from medicine to weapons, and even people.

Tunnel owner Abu Yassin said a customer cancelled a $150,000 job to smuggle 15 tonnes of medicine into the Gaza Strip on the night Hamas gunmen blasted open the border fence and shoppers streamed into Egypt. Since then, business has been dead.

"People bought all they needed by crossing the border in daylight and for free. We have had no business for a week," Abu Yassin told Reuters in the border town of Rafah, declining to give his full name.

Israel and the United States have been pressing Egypt to seal the tunnels to prevent militants, especially Hamas Islamists, from stockpiling weapons and longer range rockets to fire into Israel.

Despite the pressure, Abu Yassin said smugglers had dug out more tunnels since June, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip and Israel tightened sanctions on the territory.

Some 1,000 Palestinians work in the smuggling industry and have dug around 200 tunnels along the border, Abu Yassin said.

"You need at least 30 or 40 people to work with you. It is a very risky job and a very profitable one, too," the 46-year-old said. "Weapons are as cheap and as easy to find as tomatoes in Gaza these days."

Tunnel cave-ins and accidents are commonplace.

Tunnellers said Hamas warned them to stop any work in the tunnels before militants blew up the fence last week.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants to take control of Gaza's breached border with Egypt as part of a deal to sideline its Hamas rulers.

"If Rafah crossing would open properly for trade, I may quit tunnelling," Abu Yassin said…

What, and miss out on such meaningful and lucrative employment?

First Carolynne Wheeler’s little old keffiyah maker in Hebron is being put out of business because of cheaper Chinese textiles, and now this--a sidelined "smuggling industry." Oh, well. If times get really tough, here's always film piracy, making cheap knock-offs of designer bags, and selling penis enlargers over the internet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:45 | link | comments

Obama’s mixed (and amorphous) messages: Barack Obama’s stance re Israel is a bit of a muddle, to say the least. On the one hand, there’s this, his recent letter to the U.S.’s UN ambassador:  

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condenm the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel...

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this... Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks... If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.

On the other hand, Obama has opined that Israel should be cleft in two to accommodate a “contiguous” Palestinian state. From israelinsider:

Palestinian refugees do not have a "literal" right of return to Israel, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Monday. He did not clarify whethered that implied they had a moral, metaphorical, legal or other non-literal right to return to Israel.

More controversially, Obama said he supported the division of Israel into at least two parts by a Palestinian state.

The stunning comment came as Obama struggled to articulate his stance on key Mideast issues in dispute. "The right of return [to Israel] is something that is not an option in a literal sense," Obama said, but then went on to say that "The Palestinians have a legitimate concern that a state have a contiguous coherent mass that would allow the state to function effectively."

A land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank would effectively cut Israel in half, making it incoherent and non-contiguous, divided into northern and southern portions by the Palestinian land-mass Obama supports. The Democratic candidate didn't explain why it was legitimate for the Palestinians to have a coherent and contiguous territory at Israel's expense.

"The outlines of any agreement would involve ensuring that Israel remains a Jewish state," Obama said, but provided no details about how that would be achieved. He reiterated his support for a two-state solution, but said, "We cannot move forward until there is some confidence that the Palestinians are able to provide the security apparatus that would prevent constant attacks against Israel from taking place." He provided no details on how that would be achieved.

Probably because he doesn’t have any details.  Probably because no one has those details.

For the most part, however, the clean favoured, imperially slim JFK-for-today sticks to the amorphous and the squishy, as quoted in the Telegraph:

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense, and innovation – a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes.

But here’s what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day – an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.

Ah, yes. We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start living…

Hard to get in trouble with that kind of mush.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:17 | link | comments

Jihadis empowered: One unfortunate consequence of Hamas’s wall-toppling scheme is that, along with bolstering its own fortunes, it seems to have given its like-minded Egyptian brothers a big boost. From the L.A. Times:

CAIRO -- Egypt's main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak's 26-year-old government.

Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups ostensibly have been staged to declare Egyptian solidarity with the residents of Gaza. But they are also aimed at weakening Mubarak, whom the groups accuse of oppression and criticize for economic shortcomings and close ties to Washington.

It is political theater punctuated with dangerous rhetoric. Mubarak's vast intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for "Enough," an umbrella opposition group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached border wall.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which favors a government guided by Islamic law, known as Sharia, has a platform of nonviolence but has been accused over the years of bombings and other militant acts.. Despite the arrests of hundreds of its members, the group enjoys extensive support among the poor and middle class and poses the nation's most significant political threat to Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.

The Palestinian cause is the crystallizing passion in the Arab world, but the Gaza border crisis has brought new urgency to a public relations battle between Islamists and secular governments, especially in Egypt. It has also demonstrated that Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls Gaza and is ideologically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, remains a major factor in the future Palestinian equation, contrary to the wishes of the U.S., Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority…

“A public relations battle”? Is that what they’re calling the holy war these days?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments (1)

4,200: The number of red balloons Israel has placed in front of UN headquarters in New York; each balloon represents a Qassam rocket launched into Israel by Hamas:

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:54 | link | comments

Hear, hear: The London (Ontario) Free Press calls for an end to the HRC madness (link via SteynOnline):

It's time governments across Canada reined in the power of human rights commissions.

As Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote recently, "during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech."

Censorship, he said, "was hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions."

Sadly, censorship is increasingly the role they envision for themselves.

The Canadian and B.C. human rights commissions are investigating complaints from some Muslims about the 2006 decision by Maclean's to publish excerpts from Mark Steyn's book America Alone. And the Alberta commission is investigating Ezra Levant's decision two years ago to publish the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in his now-defunct Western Standard magazine.

That these probes are even taking place is dangerous to a free society.

Better for both men had they been charged criminally for spreading hatred or inciting violence -- which didn't happen because they didn't do that -- than to have fallen into the human rights bureaucracy.

In criminal trials there are prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges and juries of one's peers, clarity about the wrongdoing alleged. Human rights commissions often appear to act as complainant, prosecutor, judge and jury rolled into one. Their findings tend to be subjective, illogical -- relying more on perception than evidence.

Ironically, these commissions fit perfectly into the nightmarish world of Franz Kafka, whose novels depict citizens overpowered by government bureaucracies running amok.

This is not what Canadians were told these commissions were for when politicians created them, ostensibly to provide redress for people unfairly denied such things as employment and housing due to colour or gender. Back then, nobody said anything about prosecuting "thought crime."

Our politicians, who work for us, must stop this nonsense. Now.

Before we reach the point where no one can say nuthin’ about the threat of political Islam.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:47 | link | comments

Dedication to the cause: Even though he about to croak and shortly thereafter reconnoiter in Hades with the late Yasser Arafat, despicable terrorist thug (and founder of the PLFP) George Habash’s primary concern on his death bed (at least according to Arab News) was the feud between Fatah and Hamas:

AMMAN, 28 January 2008 — Hours before he died at an Amman hospital, the founding father of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), George Habash, expressed concerns over Palestinian disunity and Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, his aides and friends said yesterday.

“His main obsession even at hospital was how to restore Palestinian unity and establish dialogue between the Hamas and Fatah groups,” member of PFLP’s political bureau and representative in Jordan, Suhail Khouri, told Arab News.

Khouri referred to the disruption of Palestinian ranks as a result of the takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 by the radical Hamas faction after overpowering the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement in the territory.

Khouri said that Habash stood at equal distances from the two feuding factions, but was an ardent supporter of dialogue between them out of his belief that the Palestinian people “will be the sole loser” of this dispute.

Habash was “extremely angered” by US President George W. Bush’s remarks during his recent Middle East trip which implicitly excluded the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in compliance with the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948, said Saeed Diab, a close friend of Habash. “Habash was against the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel,” he said.

True green to the bitter end, the brute.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:35 | link | comments (1)

Recurrent top of mind issue: Here’s what’s numero uno on the agenda of the UN’s most ridiculous agency (indeed a crowded field):

Special session of the Human Rights Council on human rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the recent ones in occupied Gaza and West Bank town of Nablus, Geneva, 23-24 January 2008

Do these folks have nothing better to do? (No need to answer that rhetorical query since the answer, quite obviously, is “nyet”.)

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

Shed a tear for Y. Hirbawi/ Made keffiyehs, not a hobby/Caro Wheeler gets all sobby: Globe and Mail sob sister Carolynne Wheeler tells the sad, sad, tale of Yasser Hirbawi, “the last Palestinian manufacturer of the keffiyah.” Poor Yasser—whose product became famous when another, more famous Palestinian Yasser made it his “revolutionary” head gear of choice—is being put out of business by cheaper manufacturing in China and other parts of the world:

HEBRON, WEST BANK — All of Yasser Hirbawi's 76 years show on his grizzled face as he surveys the four creaking looms still churning out the black-and-white head scarves that are synonymous with his people.

 

Nearly 50 years ago, as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat emerged from obscurity and adopted his trademark headgear, Mr. Hirbawi was an ambitious young textile merchant, who saw in burgeoning Palestinian pride a business opportunity.

 

But after years of booming sales, the failing Palestinian economy and tough competition from abroad have exacted a heavy toll. And now, the only Palestinian manufacturer of the kaffiyeh, the scarf that has evolved from a symbol of Palestinian solidarity to a fashionable accessory from New York to Tokyo, has cut production to a fraction of its capacity and is in danger of closing.

 

"It's the national symbol. It must keep going and it must be produced locally. It must be protected," said Mr. Hirbawi, a dignified man with a cane in one hand and prayer beads in the other, a heavy overcoat over his traditional jalabiyah robe to ward off the Middle Eastern winter chill.

 

The kaffiyeh is a traditional desert scarf that protected wearers from hot sun and dust in summer and cold in winter. Its designs, once associated with different tribes, today carry political connotations - black-and-white is associated with Mr. Arafat's Fatah, while a red-and-white version is linked to leftist movements and, more recently, the Islamist organization Hamas.

 

Though still associated in Israel with the suicide bombings of the last Palestinian intifada, or uprising, the kaffiyeh is more popular in the West than ever, emerging in mass-market stores including Urban Outfitters and French Connection. Celebrities like Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, David Beckham and U.S. President George W. Bush's niece Lauren have been spotted wearing versions of the scarf; the Spanish fashion house Balenciaga has created a catwalk version costing nearly $6,000.

 

Since Mr. Hirbawi opened his Hirbawi Textile Factory in 1961, he has taken mass orders destined for masked gunmen and political parties as well as souvenir shops. He believes, though cannot be sure, that Mr. Arafat himself wore his kaffiyehs.

 

Surprisingly, however, his factory has become a victim of its own cause. With the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 came the beginning of an independent Palestinian economy and trade with the outside world. Before long, souvenir shops were selling scarves made not in the occupied territories, but from factories elsewhere - mainly China, where suppliers offer cut-rate prices.

 

What remains of the Hirbawi Textile Factory now is a cavernous concrete warehouse, with box upon box of unused spools of cotton yarn and a 1970s Volkswagen van in bright yellow rusting in a corner. The automatic looms brought from Japan with much fanfare in the 1960s and 1970s now sit heavy with dust and largely empty, two of them stopped in mid-production with the threads of unfinished scarves still dangling…

 

An image symbolic of the West Bank itself, where “statehood” remains unfinished and still dangling due to the Palestinians’ inability to come to terms with the reality of Israel. 

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

Education as inoculation: The whole rationale behind memorializing and educating people about the Holocaust is to ensure that there will never be another one. As Melanie Phillips writes, it’s not enough:

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. A lot of worthy things were said about the need to remember the Holocaust to ensure that such a thing never happens again — in a country which demonstrates every day that, by blaming the intended victims of a planned second Holocaust of the Jews and minimising or denying the threat posed by the Iranian deniers of the first, it is repeating the lesson of its own history in refusing to recognise what is happening and thus making it more likely that it will happen again.

Some years ago, the Holocaust Educational Trust was established to ensure that schools were adequately equipped to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. I think there is now an urgent need for a similar organisation to teach British children the true history of Israel and the Jewish people. I hear alarming reports from horrified parents of schools teaching their pupils the falsehood that, as a result of European guilt over the Holocaust, the modern State of Israel was created by the importation of European Jews with no connection to the land, thus displacing the rightful Arab Muslim inhabitants whose land it had been since time immemorial. Every part of that account is untrue. The result of such teaching — and worse —which I suspect is now routine in British schools is that British schoolchildren are being fed a diet of propaganda lies which is inciting them to hatred of Israel and the Jews who support its existence. On those occasions when some brave and well-informed pupil tells them the truth — the Jews were the only people for whom the land of Israel was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before the Arab conquest —their perspective immediately changes.

 
In the absence of a proper education in Jewish and Israeli history, I’m afraid that teaching the Holocaust often merely confirms British schoolchildren in the poisonous belief that the victims of the Nazis turned into Nazis. The need for an initiative to ensure that schools teach children the truth about the Jews has never been more urgent.  

First, however, those in charge of the school system would have to be able to recognize the truth—a virtual impossibility given that they share the same warped leftist world view as the Zion-hating Beeb.

In his superb reconsideration of the life, career and trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Shoah’s project manager, British historian David Cesarini writes the following:

To the fully indoctrinated Eichmann, the Jews had no intrinsic claim to life. Even more radically, according to his doctrinaire view of the Jews as ‘the enemy’ they had to be destroyed. Jews and Aryans were engaged in a war to the death. He was willing to play a part in that war although it was more like a campaign against an epidemic. He saw himself as engaged in a scientific, if distressingly messy, operation to eliminate a racial-biological threat to the Aryan people…

Eichmann was dimly aware at the time that the mass murder of the Jews was a legal and moral outrage, hence his interest in obtaining ‘cover’. After 1945 he certainly recognized that by the lights of the victorious Allies it was a crime. But he never fully repented. Indeed, his final ‘memoirs’ are shot through with self-justifications and reference to the power of world Jewry. Eichmann had learned to hate and he taught himself to be a practitioner of genocide. He learned so well that he was never able to understand that he acted wrongly.

The capacity to do what he did was not, however, inborn. Eichmann was not ‘hard-wired’ to become an accomplice to atrocities. The key to understanding Adolf Eichmann lies not in the man, but in the ideas that possessed him, the society in which they flowed freely, the political system that purveyed them, and the circumstances that made them acceptable. What Eichmann did was made possible by the dehumanization of the Jews, the construction of the Jewish people as an abstract racial-biological threat and a political enemy, and the disabling of inhibitions against killing. Anyone subject to these processes might have behaved in the same way, be it in a totalitarian state or a democracy.

Today in the totalitarian state of Iran and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world, Jews are daily subjected to the same kind of dehumanization employed by the Nazis. “The Jews,” people are told, are not human beings. They are “snakes,” or “apes and pigs” or, in the memorable word of the Hitler-wannabe who hosted “The World Without Zionism” conference, a “tumor.” Their state is thus seen as an alien and deadly cancer within the “healthy” body of Dar-al-Islam, something to be excised with the same cold-blooded determination the Nazis mustered to destroy the Jewish “bacillus” in Europe. And concurrent with the Arab/Muslim dehumanization efforts, in democracies like the U.K. there is a concerted societal effort—spearheaded by the intelligentsia—to paint the Jewish state in the blackest terms possible, thereby helping lay the groundwork for the eventual destruction of this singularly hateful, evil nation.

So what has changed in the sixty plus years since the end of WW2? Evidentally, not nearly enough to save the Jews from the latest batch of genocidaires and their willing executioners.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:50 | link | comments (3)

Sheiks, lies, and Muslim video dating tapes: Here’s a simultaneously hilarious and disturbing exposé of the wild and woolly world of Muslin dating, courtesy the New York Post:

January 27, 2008 -- A Wall Street stockbroker fears for her life after she rebuffed a Brooklyn imam she met on a Muslim dating Web site.

In an explosive $50 million lawsuit that blows the lid off the wacky world of Muslim dating in New York, Cherine Allaithy alleges the religious leader promised he would make her one of four future wives and boasted of a cousin in al Qaeda. When she dumped him, he trashed her reputation in the Arab press.

The imam, Tarek Youssoff Hassan Saleh, 42, says Allaithy is a loose, mentally unstable woman. He has filed criminal charges against her in Brooklyn for allegedly destroying two computers at the Oulel-Albab mosque in Bay Ridge. He also claims she threatened to frame him for rape.

Allaithy, 32, says she met the imam, who goes by the name Sheikh Saleh, online at the Muslim Matrimonial Network site in May 2007. They courted for a month.

In June, she claims in court documents, Saleh proposed marriage, telling her she would have to start wearing a veil and be subservient to him.

When Allaithy rejected the sheik's proposal, she alleges, he suggested they have a temporary marriage, or mu'ta, so they could have sex without committing a sin.

Allaithy again declined. In the meantime, she started dating Bessem Elhajj, an engineer also living in Bay Ridge.

Saleh said Allaithy two-timed him with Elhajj. She came to Saleh in August, the imam told The Post, distraught that Elhajj had broken up with her.

Saleh insists he is single and not actively seeking four wives. Allegations contained in the court documents say he used Arab-language newspapers to accuse Elhajj of being a womanizer bent on luring Muslim women into temporary marriages…

Obviously, Salah (who kind of looks like a paler Whoopi Goldberg—with a beard) wants to partake of some Earthly delights while he still has a pulse, and isn’t prepared to wait for the posthumous Heavenly stuff.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:18 | link | comments (2)

Harpoon pimps for Hamas: Harpoon Siddiqui explains the Gaza situation to the Toronto Star’s receptive readers:

The pictures told the story. A people penned for months broke free. As the wall tumbled at the Rafah crossing, the world witnessed their exhilaration at breathing the air of momentary freedom.

Their shopping told a story, too.

They bought medicines (antibiotics, in particular); medical supplies; groceries; fuel for cars and heaters; and other essentials desperately needed but deprived by the Israeli siege.

Israel and the U.S. blamed Hamas for the Gazans' desperation. But the people themselves praised their elected representatives for breaking open the border.

The Israeli-American policy, ardently backed by the Stephen Harper government, of trying to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Gazans is clearly not working.

And Mahmoud Abbas, the chosen Israeli-American partner for peace, looks more and more irrelevant in half the territory of which he is president.

Israel deserves protection from rockets, but its policy of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip yet throttling the 1.5 million Gazans has proven to be counterproductive.

Rockets from Gaza continue to rain down on Israel. Small arms, munitions and money continue to be smuggled into Gaza from Egypt through tunnels.

Disproportionate Israeli military retaliation and collective punishment of Gazans continue to stoke resentment and anger, as well as the radicalization of the young.

Hosni Mubarak is under Israeli-American pressure to seal the Rafah crossing. If he does, he will pay a domestic price, given the solidarity Egyptians feel with the Palestinians. He may respond to the public anger in his customary fashion, by increasing repression.

The events of the last few days also highlight the dangers of dragging the peace process endlessly.

Most of the world understands the futility of the Israeli-American approach. An increasing number of Canadians do as well, even if their prime minister doesn't.

My letter to the Star:

Haroon Siddiqui attributes the problems in Gaza to Israel’s “disproportionate military retaliation and collective punishment of Gazans.” Funny, but last time I checked, it was Hamas that was being “disproportionate” by launching a daily barrage of deadly rockets onto Israeli soil; Israel, so far, has largely held its fire. Meanwhile, Israeli electrical workers had been daily climbing cherry-pickers near Ashkelon in order to repair electrical lines going into Gaza—as they could see the projectiles coming into Sderot, the Israeli town in Hamas’s line of fire. Even Siddiqui must admit that meeting the energy needs of one’s enemies while that enemy is in the midst of an attack is an awfully strange form of “collective punishment.”

Siddiqui also refers to the world’s belated awakening to “the futility of the Israeli-American approach.” Wrong again. If anything, the world is finally becoming wise to Hamas’s fabrications which, on this occasion, consisted of turning off their own lights and drawing the curtains in order to provide the media with photo-ops of Gazans sitting in the dark. Then there was the confusing sight of “starving,” “impoverished” Gazans returning from their giddy shopping spree in Egypt not with food supplies, but with motorcycles, flat screen TVs and other big ticket items—thereby making it clear that the only thing residents were starved for was Egyptian consumer goods.

To paraphrase honest Abe Lincoln, you can fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but when you have enough disposable income to tote goats and broadloom across the border, it’s going to be very hard to convince any thinking person that you’re “poor”—or  that Israel and America are to blame for your plight.

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

A “moderate” song: Condi Rice has grievously mischaracterized the Palestinians. They aren’t Mississippi blacks circa 1960. They’re more like German Nazis circa 1939. And here’s their Horst Wessel song (one of them, anyway). From Arutz Sheva:

"My enemy. Oh, my enemy.
Stop your crimes.
Treaty breaker! Treacherous!...
If you pull out my eyes,
My heart will see. (x2)
If you cut off my hands,
My chest is knives and swords.
My enemy! Oh imperialism!
This homeland is ours. (x2)
This land will be tilled
only by our hoes. (x2)
Whenever the tension rises,
Whenever this land weeps, (x2)
the flower will return
to grow in our house.
My enemy. Oh, my enemy.
Stop your crimes.
Treaty breaker! Treacherous!...
My enemy! Oh snake!
Around the land, you are coiled. (x2)
We, noble, courageous,
on the day of ruin [battle], shall stand.
You have no choice, Oh enemy,
but to leave my country.
And my children will return.

Very catchy. Music by P. Diddy. Words by J. Goebbels.

In response to that delightful ballad (gotta love how they snuck in that reference to “imperialism”—a callout to the Noam Chomsky/Ed Said crowd), I’ve put some new words to Beethoven’s “Song of Joy”:

You’re so nuts and really crazy—

That’s what years of lies will do.

Cannot bear to share the land

With “snakes” and “apes and pigs” (the “Jew”).

In the grip of mass psychosis

You cannot “build” anything.

Here’s the name of a head shrinker.

He’s got meds—give him a ring.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments

Timely queries: Washington Times pundit Diana West poses a couple of questions I’ve been asking for some time, ones which have yet to be addressed in any satisfactory manner:

Does our "war on terror," which currently includes stabilizing U.S.-fostered governments that enshrine Shariah in Afghanistan and Iraq, in effect place the United States in the role of making the world safe ... for Shariah? That's one debate question I'd certainly like to see asked. And: Given Islamic terror groups' shared predilection for spreading Shariah, does this current U.S. strategy best serve what we like to think of as the cause of liberty?

To answer the first: hell, yes. To answer the second: not on your life.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments (1)

Think globally; act continentally: Despite all the concerted appeasement, the EUnuchs remain in the crosshairs of the jihadis. From YNet News:

Members of a terror cell nabbed in Barcelona last weekend are suspected of planning to hit public transportation targets in several European cities, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported over the weekend.

 

According to the testimony of a police informant, the 14-member terror cell affiliated with al-Qaeda planned to strike cities in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Britain. The police source said the suspects focused their attention on public transportation targets, including subways, in various cities across Europe.

 

"If we strike at subways, rescue forces won't be able to get there," one cell member reportedly told the police informant. The cell planned to send two pairs of would-be-attackers to the Barcelona subway carrying bags packed with explosives. The terror suspects planned to detonate the bombs using remote controlled devices.

 

Security officials in Barcelona estimated that the terror attack was scheduled to be carried out in the next two weeks. According to the report, other cell members were tasked with similar missions in other European cities based on the same modus operandi.

 

After the 12 Pakistanis and two Indian nationals were arrested in connection with the plot, four suspects were released due to lack of evidence against them. During the operation, security forces also recovered explosive devices and other means aimed at producing explosive devices.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:30 | link | comments

All in all it's just another hole in the wall: A Ceeb photo-gallery of the Hamas breakout.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments

Still swinging: As much of the free world continues its downward spiral into the Orwellian abyss of political correctness, one of its targets—Mark Steyn—is delighted, as usual, to expose the craven and the stupid who are in charge of this civilization-destroying operation. From the O.C Register:

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from the Daily Mail in Britain:

"Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As anti-Islamic Activity' To Woo Muslims."

Her Majesty's government is not alone in feeling it's not always helpful to link Islam and the, ah, various unpleasantnesses with suicide bombers and whatnot. Even in his cowboy Crusader heyday, President Bush liked to cool down the crowd with a lot of religion-of-peace stuff. But the British have now decided that kind of mealy-mouthed "respect" is no longer sufficient.

So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated "anti-Islamic activity." Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, unveiled the new brand name in a speech a few days ago. "There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief," she told her audience. "Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."

Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" – in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity."

But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a 5-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.

Still, it should add a certain surreal quality to BBC news bulletins: "The prime minister today condemned the latest anti-Islamic activity as he picked through the rubble of Downing Street looking for his 2008 Wahhabi Community Outreach Award. In a related incident, the anti-Islamic activists who blew up Buckingham Palace have unfortunately caused the postponement of the Queen's annual Ramadan banquet."…

Well, if the White House can have Ramadan soirees, why should her highness be deprived the fun?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:53 | link | comments

Hot for Durban II: The Toronto Star, as clueless as ever, insists that something positive can come out of Canada participating in another UN Judenhassapalooza:

A Canadian, Louise Arbour, heads the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. And Canada currently has a seat on the Human Rights Council, where we have had a chance to air our views on many issues in recent months, including the crisis in Darfur, Burma's junta, terrorism, women's rights, refugees and religious rights.

Given this busy Canadian involvement, it is hard to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to pull Canada out of a planned UN world conference next year against racism. As a democratic country and a multiracial success story, we would have a lot to offer at the conference.

Granted, the UN's controversial 2001 racism conference in Durban, South Africa, turned out to be an "ugly maelstrom of bigotry," as the Star pointed out at the time, tainted by "Israel-bashing and poisonous anti-Semitism." But Canada took part, and fought vigorously, publicly and successfully to cleanse the conference's final declaration of odious language that unfairly targeted Israel, denied the Holocaust and equated Zionism with racism.

The United States and Israel, which walked out when the debate got nasty, could claim no credit for fighting the good fight. Canada stood its ground, among 150 nations, and said what had to be said. We also aired our views on issues such as American aboriginal rights, Sudanese slavery, India's caste system and Taliban oppression of women.

This year, fearing a similar spasm of anti-Semitism, the Harper government apparently lacks the stomach for such a fight. On Wednesday, Ottawa announced it will boycott the 2009 Durban review conference and focus instead on a Holocaust education task force.

Education is a good thing. But confronting evil, especially in a UN world forum, matters as well. Canada's principled voice should be heard above those who preach intolerance, bigotry and worse.

How are you supposed to “confront evil” when the evil are in charge of setting the agenda? It would be like attending the Wannsee Conference in the hopes of trying to influence Nazi policy on the Final Solution. Far better to tell the world’s collective Jew-haters to take a hike—as Stephen Harper has so bravely done.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:25 | link | comments

Fabricating darkness: Mark Steyn on Hamas’s not-so-effective bit of lighting legerdemain.  From the Corner:

And more fun with Big Media propagandists: During an Israeli power cut, Palestinians are forced to hold a parliamentary session by candlelight. Alas, even with the curtains drawn, the blazing sunlight keeps peeping through.

These photographs were taken by Mohammed Salem of Reuters and Hatem Moussa of the Associated Press. If neither of these organizations wish to comment, perhaps some of the ethics panjandrums at America's journalism schools would like to weigh in. 

Don’t hold your breath. Such institutions are firmly within the leftist camp (I know, having attended a Canadian one). And for too many of these folks, the end (i.e. the end of the world’s designated “oppressor” and the boosting of the world’s designated victims) justifies the news agencies’ devious, fraudulent means.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:10 | link | comments

Scary story of the day: Pakistan's nuclear sites on alert.

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

Thought cops, trounced: Rex Murphy, in glorious high dudgeon, nails the ridiculous HRCs:

...A Maclean's/Steyn confrontation, in tandem with the prairie whirlwind we all know as [Ezra] Levant rampant – this is too much at one time for the meticulous and tidy tribunals that alone are our guardians against every stray thought that might fracture our fabulously delicate Canadian sensibilities. While they are preoccupied with Steyn-Levant, overwhelmed, exhausted and undone by Steyn-Levant, battered, borne-down on and befuddled by Steyn-Levant – who will watch out for us?

Who will there be to read before we read, and tell us what is proper for us? Who will be there to edit the editors, to copy check the copy checkers? Who will shield our vulnerable law-students, and who will tend to the commission's most industrious serial complainant. There is one person, so eggshell brittle that he has drummed up a fierce amount of business for the HRCs. Is so loyal a customer now to be ignored because the Steyn-Levant tsunami is about to rumble mercilessly on shore?

Mostly I fear, if the HRCs are tied up, Canadians will be reading, unguided, what they choose to read, deciding for themselves what they like and what they don't, will discard a book or pass it to a friend, like a column or curse one – lit only by the light of their own reason.

The horror! Before we know it, we'll have an unstoppable epidemic of free speech, free thought, and freedom of the press. And, surely, no one wants that. Otherwise, why would we have human rights commissions?

My letter to the Globe:

Human Rights Commissions were established back in the heady days when “human rights” actually meant “human rights”—the right to a fair shake in the workplace; the right to live where you wanted to without fear of being turned away become of your ethnic origin or the colour of your skin.

Good intentions and fuzzy language have landed us where we are today: with human rights commissions being harnessed by those who want to have a say about what ordinary Canadians can—and cannot—read, see and think.

As a result, HRCs have strayed from their original mandate to such an extent that, ironically, they have become the antithesis of what they were supposed to be. They are now the touchy-feely enforcers of social “sensitivity” who are depriving Canadians of what, in a free society,  is perhaps the most essential human right of all: the right to freely offend without fear of being silenced by the state.

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

Livid about Livni: Caroline Glick on the most dangerous and clueless woman in Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments

Malark’ the knife: The Globe and Mail’s Middle East correspondent, Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon, evinces such a marked anti-Israel bias that his reportage has become as laughable as it is untrustworthy. Today, for example, Malarkey is reporting that Palestinians are “jubilant” that they were able to bring “a temporary end to the crippling Israeli blockade.” (No mention, natch, of the crippling Egyptian one.) As the letter-writer cited below notes, however, there seems to be a huge disconnect between Hamas propaganda and the reality on the ground, since, given the chance, “starving,” poverty-stricken folks are usually more interested in filling their bellies than in buying big-ticket items like motorcycles, rugs and flat screen TVs; moreover, they typically don’t have enough shekels with which to buy them.

In recognition of Malarkey’s dizzyingly skewed coverage, I have revised the appropriate standard (Bobby Darin's version):

Oh, Malark’, babe, has a knife, dear,

And he keeps it nice and honed.

Loves to wield it ‘gainst Israelis,

As the ‘rabs "fate" he's bemoaned.

 

Oh, when Malark’ wields his sharp knife, babe,

Does some damage to the Jews.

Does he care? Nope, not a bit, babe,

Long as he can shape the news.

 

Now on the newsstand most ev’ry mornin’

There’s a sad tale of such woe

That it seems there’s but one answer:

Make the Jews pack up and go.

 

Ah, there’s Egypt, huh, huh, huh, behind a wall don’tcha know

Where there’s lots of stuff to buy.

But the “blockade" is due to Jews, dear,

Here's Malark’ to tell you why.

 

Now, d’ja hear ‘bout the big drama—

Gaza plunged into the dark?

Turns out it was all an act, babe.

Paliwood is such a shark.

 

Now, lotta stories, all so tawdry,

Ooh, ‘bout the suff’rin' and the sobs.

They’ll keep comin’ fast and furious

Long as Malark’ is on the job.

 

Ah, said lotta stories, whoa, really tawdry,

Highlight suff’rin’ and so many sobs.

They’ll be endless and relentless

Long as Malark’, babe, is on the job.

 

Long as Malark’s on the job!!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:45 | link | comments

York U’s double standard: The other day a young informant of mine phoned to tell me she’d had occasion to visit the main campus of York University (she is studying at another post-secondary institution), and was extremely disturbed by what she saw there. Specifically, a display adorned with Arab flags and barbed wire devoted to advancing a “boycott” of that despised Zionist entity. Essentially, it amounted to a “Hate Israel” exhibit, replete with the usual crapola about “apartheid,” the “naqba” and racist Jews.

Hatred directed at the world’s only Jewish state is a daily occurrence that is given a free pass at York U, but when some racist graffiti about Blacks turned up on campus the other day, you wouldn’t believe the huge kerfuffle that ensued, and how quickly steps were taken to condemn it and shut it down. From the Toronto Star:

York University students held an anti-racism rally today after anti-black graffiti was discovered on campus.

The graffiti was found Tuesday on the doors of the York University Black Students' Alliance (YUBSA) office and an adjacent men's washroom.

The vandalism is the latest high-profile crime on the sprawling campus of Canada's third largest university.

Over the past five months, there have been three sexual assaults, a brutal attack on a York Student Centre employee and simmering tensions over the Middle East conflict.

These incidents "are all evidence that our campus is becoming increasingly unsafe," said Gilary Massa, vice-president, equity, of the York Federation of Students.

"York University must act immediately to prevent it from getting worse."

A few hundred students in the York Student Centre participated in a boisterous hour-long rally that started around 2:30 p.m. They cheered speakers who lashed out at the racist attack and university administrators for not being quicker to condemn them. They chanted "no white supremacists on our campus" and "no justice, no peace."

Near the end of the rally, York President Mamdouh Shoukri was stopped in his attempt to make comments. Students were angry that it took two days for him to condemn the attacks.

"This space is ours," said Nazareth Yirgalem of the black students' association. "We pay enough money to be here York has to do a better job of protecting this space."

The association is calling for a safety audit of the campus, as well as an investigation of the incident, a public condemnation by York's president and the participation of black students in university administrative committees related to racism and oppression,

"We refuse to allow this incident to create an atmosphere of social isolation, fear of harassment, or feeling that we as black students do not belong," association executives Sara Said and Tyra Jackson said in a statement.

"Hate crimes are unacceptable."…

Unless, of course, they can be disguised (though not very well) as “political” criticism of the Jewish state.

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

Rich but “starving”: A letter-writer to the Globe and Mail deflates the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza with one droll observation:

So Israel's blockade is causing starvation in Gaza? Last time I was starving, I didn't buy a carpet.

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

How avarice advances sharia: Sharia law is making inroads here in Canada—courtesy such helpful handmaidens as the University of Toronto, the Law Society of Upper Canada and Canadian banks. In today’s Globe and Mail, Tarek Fatah sounds the alarm about this galloping, greed-driven push:

It seems only yesterday that Premier Dalton McGuinty declared: "There will be no sharia law in Ontario." Many of us, who witnessed the medieval nature of manmade sharia laws in our countries of birth, heaved a sigh of relief back in September of 2005. We thought this was the end of the attempt by Islamists to sneak sharia into a Western jurisdiction. We were wrong.

The campaign to introduce sharia is back. Last time, the campaign took a populist approach, invoking multiculturalism. This time, the pro-sharia lobby is dangling the carrot of new niche markets and has the backing of Canada's major banks. Such icons of the corporate world as Citibank NA, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Barclays PLC have endorsed sharia banking and have started offering Islamic financing products to a vulnerable Muslim population.

In May, 2007, The Globe reported that "Several Canadian financial institutions are preparing sharia-compliant mortgages, insurance, taxi licensing and investment funds to help serve the country's fastest-growing part of the population." Recently, the Toronto Star's business section reported that an unnamed bank may offer sharia loans as early as this summer; Le Journal de Montreal disclosed that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation(CMHC) was also getting in on the act. Stephanie Rubec, spokesperson for the CMHC, said the Crown corporation had launched a tender worth $100,000 to study Islamic mortgages for Muslim Canadians. Could she be oblivious to the fact that almost all Muslim Canadians currently have home mortgages through banks and don't feel they are living in sin? In fact, CMHC has gone a step further: It has quietly entered into a partnership with a Saudi company, AaYaan Holdings, to develop sharia-compliant mortgage-lending systems.

The origin of Islamic banking has its roots in the 1920s, but did not start until the late 1970s and owes much of its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people — Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The theory was put into practice by Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who established sharia banking law in Pakistan.

Proponents of sharia banking rest their case on many verses of the Holy Koran that outlaw usury, not interest.

Verses that address the question of loans and debts include:

Al Baqarah (2:275): God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury;

Al Baqarah (2:276): Allah does not bless usury, and He causes charitable deeds to prosper, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner.

Every English-language translation of the Koran has translated the Arabic word riba as usury, not interest. Yet, Islamists have deliberately portrayed bank interest as usury and labelled the current banking system as un-Islamic. Instead, these Islamists have created exotic products with names that are foreign to much of the world's Muslim population. This is where they mask interest under the niqab of Mudraba, Musharaka, Murabaha, and Ijara. Two authors, both senior Muslim bankers, have written scathing critiques of sharia banking, one labelling the practice as nothing more than "deception," with the other suggesting the entire exercise was "a convenient pretext for advancing broad Islamic objectives and for lining the pockets of religious officials." Why Canadian banks would contribute to this masquerade is a question for ordinary Canadians to ask.

Muhammad Saleem is a former president and CEO of Park Avenue Bank in New York. Prior to that, he was a senior banker with Bankers Trust where, among other responsibilities, he headed the Middle East division and served as adviser to a prominent Islamic bank based in Bahrain. In his book, Islamic Banking — A $300 Billion Deception, Mr. Saleem not only dismisses the founding premise of sharia and Islamic banking, he says, "Islamic banks do not practise what they preach: they all charge interest, but disguised in Islamic garb. Thus they engage in deceptive and dishonest banking practises."

Another expert, Timur Kuran, who taught Islamic Thought at the University of Southern California, mocks the very idea. In his book, Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism, Prof. Kuran writes that the effort to introduce sharia banking "has promoted the spread of anti-modern currents of thought all across the Islamic world. It has also fostered an environment conducive to Islamist militancy."

Dozens of Islamic scholars and imams now serve on sharia boards of the banking industry. Moreover, a new industry of Islamic banking conferences and forums has emerged, permitting hundreds of sharia scholars to mix and mingle with bankers and economists at financial centres around the globe. In the words of Mr. Saleem, who attended many such meetings, they gather "to hear each other praise each other for all the innovations they are making." He gives examples of how sharia scholars only care for the money they get from banks, willing to rubberstamp any deal where interest is masked.

No sooner had CMHC announced its plans to study sharia-compliant mortgages, than an imam from Montreal's Noor Al Islam mosque offered his services to Canada's banks, claiming Muslims are averse to conventional mortgages because "it goes against their beliefs," a claim that would not withstand the slightest scrutiny.

Other academics who have studied the phenomenon have reached similar conclusions. Two New Zealand business professors, Beng Soon Chong and Ming-Hua Liu of Auckland University, in an October, 2007, study on the growth of Islamic banking in Malaysia, wrote: "Only a negligible portion of Islamic bank financing is strictly 'profit-and-loss sharing' based. … Our study, however, provides new evidence, which shows that, in practice, Islamic deposits are not interest-free." They concluded that the rapid growth in Islamic banking was "largely driven by the Islamic resurgence worldwide."

In the name of Islam, deception and dishonesty is being practised while ordinary Muslims are being made to feel that their interaction with mainstream banks is un-Islamic and sinful. As Mr. Saleem asks, "If Islamic banks label their hamburger a Mecca Burger, as long as it still has the same ingredients as a McDonald's burger, is it really any different in substance?"

My letter to the Globe:

It is clear what’s fueling the effort to bring sharia banking into Canada: on one side, pure, unadulterated greed; on the other, as Tarek Fatah points out, the desire to broaden the influence of Islamic law here in the West.

From the sounds of it, Osama bin Laden could have saved himself a lot of trouble—and made a whole lot more money—if only he had gone into banking instead of terrorism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments

Carbon self-abasement: Breitbart has an excruciating video clip of santimonious celebrity Bono "confessing" his ecological hogishness to the god of the eco-alaramist movement, Al-lah Gore.

Warning: Do not watch it on a full stomach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:53 | link | comments

Spurlock’s feckless search: Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, he of “Super Size Me” fame, went in search of one Osama bin Laden. He never found him. Instead, he came face-to-face with his own cluelessness and self-loathing, which, whadya know?, were there all along. From the Guardian:

…It will come as no surprise to learn that the US administration isn't about to deposit a $25m reward into Spurlock's bank account. Bin Laden, if he is even still alive, remains at large. "I realised that finding this guy isn't the answer," says Spurlock. "I always wanted to learn what shaped him and his followers." He believes the movie shows how US foreign policy and socio-economic forces in US-backed regimes created a hatred that certain factions could exploit.

"At the same time," he adds, "I met so many people who want the same things for themselves and their families that we want. These moderate voices are not represented in the media. All we hear about are the extremists, the terrorists, because it's all about fear and scare tactics. I wanted to give these people a voice."

It's an approach that has drawn favourable comments from the LA Times, which, after chastising Spurlock for not catching his man, talks of "a surprising sweetness to be found behind some of those imposing Muslim beards. Perhaps because [Spurlock's] not shouting, people may actually listen." The website Ain't It Cool News wasn't so impressed, calling it "one big 98-minute ego-fart".

Edited down from 1,000 hours of footage, the movie [Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?] shows Spurlock strolling into several danger spots. He accompanies Israeli police on a bomb-disposal assignment, wanders into a Saudi mosque while an imam invokes war against America, unintentionally incites a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews to near-violence, and gets embedded in a US army unit in Afghanistan that comes under attack from the Taliban…

Spurlock sounds like a hopeless naïf engaged in an assignment that, all in all, sounds less perilous to his long-term health than his previous one of consuming McDonald's trans-fats, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for several months.

Update: Look again, Morgan:

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

Abuse in the Hashemite entity: “Moderate” Jordan is being chastised for engaging in some, ahem, immoderate activity. From the Beeb (its bolds):

The Philippines has banned its citizens from going to Jordan to work amid claims of widespread abuse of domestic staff by Jordanian employers.

The move affects Filipinos who want to go to Jordan for the first time, not those already working in the country.

The ban, which came into force on Monday, is only now becoming public.

Inside the Philippine embassy in the capital, Amman, more than 150 Filipino workers, most of them women, have taken refuge from abusive employers.

The notice posted on the front door of the embassy is clear: no more workers will be allowed to come from the Philippines to Jordan until further notice.

Unpaid wages

The crimes committed against them include non-payment of wages, physical abuse and even rape.

Meetings between officials from the Philippine embassy and the Jordanian government are being held to try to solve the problem…

Expect Louise Arbour’s UN Human Rights Council and NOW to get right on it and condemn this brutality…never.

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

Blue Moo: A shocking turn of events—some in the West ( Noam Chomsky excluded) are refusing to be spun by Hamas spin-meisters, and a certain height-challenged mullah-thingy is trying to “rectify” the situation. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The Zionist regime’s crimes against the oppressed Palestinian nation has been intensified before the eyes of the world, but those who claim to be human rights defenders are “dead silent” about it, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said here on Wednesday.

Israel has launched brutal attacks against the Gaza residents and blocked all food and fuel supplies to the strip. The city went dark on Sunday when the only power plant was shut down; however, the lights went back on in parts of Gaza Tuesday as the Zionists allowed some fuel and medical supplies into the impoverished territory.

Ahmadinejad seriously condemned Israel’s recent crimes in Gaza Strip, saying, “This issue is not about today or yesterday. The Palestinian nation has been suffering from this condition for 60 years.”

The Western countries are not making even the smallest movement to hinder the Zionist regime’s crimes against Palestinians, he added.

“The smallest conclusion that can be deducted from their silence and inattentive behavior is that they are partners of the crime,” he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

“I have called the leaders of many countries and many of them promised to support the Palestinian nation. I also asked (Egyptian President Mohamed) Hosni Mubarak to open a way for supplying aid to the Palestinians, and he promised to try and help change the situation,” Ahmadinejad stated…

Looks like the Iranian blogger’s prayers have been answered, since , after months of preparation, Hamas has taken it upon itself to terminate the Egyptian blockade.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:45 | link | comments

The cluelessness of Jewish American lefties: As Jonathan Tobin writes, they are quick to race to Obama’s defence, even as they refuse to acknowledge his disturbing associations with some notorious Jew-haters. From JWR:

…As soon as Obama began his run, Internet rumors about him began to spread like wildfire. The fact that he had a Muslim father and spent part of his early life in Indonesia led many to buy into the notion that he is himself a Muslim, was educated in a fundamentalist madrassa, and even that he took his oath of office to the U.S. Senate on a Koran. On the fever swamps of the right, he was denounced as a jihadi mole and latter-day "Manchurian Candidate" subverting America.

The truth is that Obama is a practicing Christian. And he is far more a product of Columbia and Harvard, as well as of the same popular culture of the 1970s and '80s on which most Americans were reared, than the Indonesian schools where he spent a portion of his youth.

But it was no surprise that amid all the acrimony of this campaign, the organized Jewish world felt it must speak up strongly in Obama's defense. Last week, the heads of nine of the most influential national Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the United Jewish Communities, signed a joint letter denouncing the rumors about Obama.

Why, despite the fact that such groups usually avoid intervening in partisan tangles, did they do it?

As their statement indicated, the rumors about Obama were clearly intended to "drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate" because of "religion." They knew that the effort to pigeonhole Obama as a sympathizer with Islamists on the basis of innuendo would poison the view of him in the Jewish community as well as black-Jewish relations.

Though urban legends such as those are almost impossible to eradicate, the groups were right to take a stand. But when substantive questions were raised about Obama's associations, the reaction from some Jews was to treat them as being just as noxious as any lie.

Thus, when Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote last week about the troubling facts about Obama's membership in a Chicago church, whose pastor was a friend and supporter of Louis Farrakhan, the racist and anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam, he raised a question that some people didn't want to hear.

In response to queries about his closeness with Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose Trumpet magazine once lauded Farrakhan as a man who "truly epitomized greatness," Obama subsequently made it clear that he didn't agree with his church and strongly condemned Farrakhan. The candidate repeated his disgust with anti-Semitism in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in King's own Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

That was more than enough for the ADL. And though some might still ask why he belonged to such a church (would any candidate get away with belonging to, say, a country club that practiced or advocated discrimination?), the case seemed closed.

However, what was equally interesting was the response to Cohen, a liberal anchor of the Post's Op-Ed page, from some on the left.

Novelist Michael Chabon wrote on HuffingtonPost.com that merely raising any questions about Obama and Farrakhan was itself illegitimate, even if the facts of this case were not Internet rumors. For Chabon, simply putting the words Obama and Farrakhan in the same article was "fear-mongering" and using the tactics of "propagandists of hatred." Chabon seemed to feel that anything written about a black that might alienate him from Jews was part of a racist mindset.

So for all the distance we have traveled toward King's vision of a colorblind society, it appears that some view any questions about a black as inherently tainted by prejudice. This is the same sort of false sensitivity that turned an otherwise unexceptionable statement from Hillary Clinton about the roles of both King and President Lyndon Johnson's in passing civil-rights legislation into a controversy.

But if Barack Obama is to be elected president, he can't be treated as a racial icon who must be treated with kid gloves and spared the examination to which other contenders must submit.

Jews and anyone else who oppose him simply because his father was a Muslim from Kenya offend the spirit of American democracy. But Jews like Chabon, himself a virulent foe of Israel, who insist that not even reasonable questions about his associations should be raised, are just as wrong. There are good reasons for Democrats to like Obama, but there are also serious worries about him…

My message to Chabon and the other clueless Jews is a paraphrase of something once said by another handsome, charismatic blindly-adored Democrat: Ask not what you can do for Obama; ask what Obama can do for you.

Update: Ed Lasky of The American Thinker raises some questions about another Obama associate--his Israel-loathing Middle East "advisor."

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:18 | link | comments

The old switcheroo: Afghanistan used to be seen as "the good war" while Iraq was "the bad war."

Not any more.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:53 | link | comments

It’s official: Canada has told the racist “anti-racists” to shove it:

The Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Honourable Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, today issued the following statement:

 

“Canada has a long and proud history of fighting racism, discrimination and intolerance in all its forms,” said Minister Bernier. “It was for this reason, and its promise of concerted global action against racism, that we participated in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. Unfortunately, that conference degenerated into open and divisive expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism that undermined the principles of the United Nations and the very goals the conference sought to achieve.”

 

“Secretary of State Kenney and I had hoped that the preparatory process for the 2009 Durban Review Conference would remedy the mistakes of the past,” said Minister Bernier. “We have concluded that, despite our efforts, it will not. Canada will therefore not participate in the 2009 conference.”

 

“Canada will continue to focus its efforts on genuine anti-racism initiatives that make a difference,” said Secretary of State Kenney. “Our government’s decision to seek full membership on the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research demonstrates that we remain committed to the fight against racism and to the promotion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law at home and around the world.”

I just sent Messers Bernier and Kenney the following brief note of appreciation:

I want to commend you and your government for having the wisdom to see through the farce that is Durban II—which represents nothing more than yet another opportunity for “the international community” to gang up on and scapegoat Israel, the world’s only Jewish state— and the courage to take a principled stance against it. For far too long, the enemies of the West have been allowed to turn our most cherished values—including our disdain for intolerance and commitment to human rights—against us. It is heartening to know that, finally, Canadians have a government that is willing to speak truth to power and stand up for our values, even when it involves defying the received “wisdom” of the international crowd and standing alone. One can only hope and pray that other Western governments will be inspired by Canada’s example.

Thank you, sirs. You make me proud to be Canadian.

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

Wakey, wakey: American feminists have finally been stirred from their somnolence—and it took a communiqué by some “right wing” pundits to wake them up. In an open letter that has been zinging through the ether, several high profile feminists have taken a break their usual pressing concerns—like worrying that some little girls like to play with dolls and toy kitchens—to express outrage at the way their Muslim sisters around the world are being oppressed and brutalized in the name of religion.

David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, for two, remain unimpressed. From FrontPage Magazine:

…The signers of this Letter claim that, “contrary to the accusations of pundits,” they support Muslim feminists in “their struggle against female genital mutilation, ‘honor’ murder, forced marriage, child marriage, compulsory Islamic dress codes, the criminalization of sex outside marriage, brutal punishments like lashing and stoning, family laws that favor men and that place adult women under the legal power of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and laws that discount legal testimony made by women.”

Well, we welcome these avowals of support for the rights of Muslim women. However, forgive us for doubting their sincerity. As one of us pointed out in a speech given at the University of Wisconsin during Islamo-Fascism Week:

“One of our concerns … is the failure of the Women’s Studies Movement to educate students about these atrocities. There are probably 600 Women’s Studies programs on American campuses, which focus on the unequal treatment of women in society. We have had a very hard time locating a single class which focuses on the oppression of women under Islamic law.”

What was true last October is still true today. As recently as December 10, a Muslim teenager was strangled by her father for refusing to wear a hijab without a protest from the American feminist movement. And that is only one of many crimes committed in the name of Islam against Muslim women over which the feminist movement continues to be silent.

On New Year’s Day, Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead in Irving, Texas. Police are searching for their father, Yaser Abdel Said, on a warrant for capital murder. The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, told reporters, “This was an honor killing.” Apparently Yaser Said murdered his daughters because they had non-Muslim boyfriends.

The signers of the Open Letter say that they are against honor killing. Here is an honor killing in the United States. Where are these feminists on this issue? Why are they not supporting the hunt for Amina’s and Sarah’s killers and organizing a campaign in the Muslim community to stop such practices?

On Sunday, January 20, the New York Times published an article, “A Cutting Tradition,” which falsely described female genital mutilation practiced under Islamic law as “circumcision” and portrayed it in a generally positive light, and even warned against “blindly judging those who practice it.” The article made no mention of the physical effects of this barbaric practice, which affects 140 million Muslim girls who have their genitals sliced off yearly, and in some 15 million cases their vaginal tract sewn up. These effects, as enumerated by the British Medical Journal in 1993, are “Immediate physical complications include severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death. Long-term problems include chronic pain, difficulties with micturition and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth.”

Where is the feminist outrage over the New York Times article? Where are the feminist demonstrations against this practice? Where are the campus teach-ins? Where are the candlelight parades? What Muslim organizations have been confronted for their complicity in this assault on female Muslim children? This is a horrific crime against the female gender -- global in extent -- and yet one would be hard-pressed to identify a single public event, protest or march organized by feminists to oppose it.

The Open Letter mentions the feminist “V-Day” organized to protest violence against women. We challenge the signers of this letter to identify the speeches given during “V-Day” that protested female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. We challenge them to identify the Vagina Monologue of Islamic misogyny.

We are encouraged by the fact that these American feminists feel the need to respond to our challenge over their silence as a movement on violence against Muslim women and to assert their opposition to these barbaric practices. We challenge them now to put actions behind their words.

Join us in sponsoring a campus tour on the Oppression of Women in Islam with speakers such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Form academic committees to provide curricula on these subjects in Women’s Studies courses. Devote a major segment of your V-Day demonstrations to the plight of Muslim women. Join us during Islamo-Fascism Week II this spring in appealing to campus Muslim organizations to condemn these practices.

Then we’ll know you’re serious.

“The Vagina Monolgue of Islamic misogyny”—good one. And wouldn’t that crowd-pleaser about loquacious vajayjays make a terrific double bill with “Puppetry of the Penis of Islamic male chauvinists”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments (1)

Buying power: The wall between Arab Hamasistan and Arab Egypt has been breached, and Gazan have reacted with a frenzy of…shopping. From the L.A. Times:

EL ARISH, EGYPT -- Dusty, wind-swept and in the throes of a shopper's high, Sobheya Hemeid sat wedged Wednesday in the back of a pickup amid 10 of her relatives and bags of toothpaste, detergent, tea, sugar, medicine, chocolates and two bunches of fake flowers.

"They're for a wedding back home," the Gaza Strip widow said. But before she could say any more the Bedouin at the wheel accelerated and the truck raced across the desert, dodging teetering taxis, lopsided buses and wobbly donkey carts carrying tens of thousands of Palestinians on an impulse buying binge across northern Egypt's Sinai towns.

It was a confusing, strange and joyous adventure. Palestinians streamed through a blown-up border wall at Rafah and temporarily left the despair of their homeland behind. They flooded past Egyptian police, followed Bedouin trackers across the dunes, walked for miles, hopped rides, slipped through barbed wire before filling plastic bags with milk, cheese, candy bars and Cleopatra cigarettes. Some bought cement; others bricks. The richer among them hired cars to bring back their haul of TVs, car tires, appliances, clothes and, in at least one case, a goat…

A clear case of being flush with cash, but having no place to spend it.

Maybe Palestinian problems could be solved with several judiciously placed Wal-Marts--and one or two Goats-R-Us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments (2)

Scorecard: Number of copies of the Walt/Mearshimer Protocols update, The Israel Lobby, I counted displayed on the shelf at my neighbourhood Heather Reisman-owned book emporium: 32

Number of copies of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Facism available at the same store: 0

Ranking of Liberal Facism on Amazon.com: #1

Looks like Heather's missing out on lots of sales from Jonah's end of the political spectrum, but is hoping to make up for it by making provision for one of fastest growing groups on the planet-- the Israel-bashers.

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

Israeli “racism”: Those dastardly Jews! They’ll stop at nothing to save the lives of helpless Palestinian infants.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:04 | link | comments

Three cheers for us: There are certain days when I’m awfully proud to be Canadian. Today, for instance. From the National Post:

UNITED NATIONS - Canada is poised to become the first country to significantly distance itself from a major anti-racism conference the United Nations is planning for next year.

Maxime Bernier, the Foreign Minister, is expected to announce as early as today Canada is dropping out of planning for the Durban II Conference, which the UN is billing as a global follow-up to its 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Insiders say the government feels the new conference is shaping up to be like the anti-West and anti-Israel free-for-all that critics said the initial gathering quickly turned into.

But the move is bound to spark accusations Ottawa is not serious about combatting racism around the world.

The Conservative government is expected to counter any criticism by stating Canada remains committed to anti-racism principles. But it will also argue planning for Durban II veers from those principles, making Canada's participation impossible.

"At the moment, much of the planning for the conference suggests it will focus little on denouncing racism wherever it occurs, and a lot on advancing some countries' agendas against Israel and the West," said one insider familiar with the new policy.

"The government feels that taking a stand against the gathering will do more in the long run for combatting racism than joining in."

Arab-and Muslim-led verbal attacks on Israel at the 2001 conference were so dominant the United States and Israel walked out in protest.

Canada, then under a Liberal administration, stayed, but its senior delegate told the assembly it did so "only … to … decry the attempts … to de-legitimize the State of Israel and to dishonour the history and suffering of the Jewish people."

The 2001 conference also saw Nigeria and Zimbabwe lead African countries in a demand Western powers apologize for the slave trade, and pay huge reparations

The UN routinely launches "review" conferences of big meetings, and member states decided late in 2006 there should be a follow-up to Durban I. But hopes in the West this one might be different were soon dashed.

The UN gave planning oversight to its Human Rights Council, which since its launch less than two years ago has targeted Israel in 14 of its 15 resolutions charging human rights violations.

States sitting on the council then placed Iran, which has called for Israel's destruction, on an executive planning committee. Libya is the chair.

Beyond Israel, some Arab and Muslim countries additionally seek the 2009 agenda to focus on what they call Islamophobia. While that could mean a legitimate study of discrimination against Muslims, UN skeptics say it is actually code to characterize Western anti-terrorism efforts as a plot to subjugate Islam.

"Make no mistake, Durban II is on track to be even worse than Durban I," said Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian academic who edits the New York-based monitoring Web site EyeontheUN.org.

"Canada, if it drops out, would be exhibiting moral clarity and courage after making the mistake at Durban I of staying despite serious reservations."…

That’s what happens when you’re led by a government that sees things clearly instead of by one that is wishy-wishy, craven, and morally adrift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:35 | link | comments (5)

Cookie crumbles: Condi Rice, who once upon a time was a smart cookie, is still misperceiving the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the lens of her pre-Civil Rights-era Mississippi girlhood.

Time to knock it off, already, Condi. By Kevin Levin in FrontPage magazine:

...Those who have pointed out the many problems in Secretary Rice's analogies between the situation of the Palestinians and her own childhood experiences have typically suggested that her error lies in uncritically applying too widely the personal precedent of African-American experience in the segregated South. But one can argue that the problem lies rather in her not applying that precedent widely enough.

Secretary Rice would arrive at a far truer comprehension of the Palestinian-Israeli, and broader Arab-Israeli, conflict, and the obstacles to its resolution, if she turned the prism of her childhood experience toward, and identified with, for example, the 2,000,000 Christian and animist blacks of the southern Sudan killed by Muslim Arab governments of Sudan in a decades-old on-and-off-again war of extermination, a war executed with broad support of the wider Arab world. Deeper understanding would derive as well from applying her personal experience to, and empathizing with, the hundreds of thousands of Darfur blacks likewise murdered by the Arab government of Sudan, and the 200,000 Kurds - another Muslim but non-Arab people - murdered by Saddam Hussein in the first stages of a campaign of extermination, again with broad support in the Arab world. Identification with the plight of the Kurds of Syria and the Berbers of Algeria - another Muslim but non-Arab people - subjected to discrimination and the suppression of their language and culture by the Arab governments of their respective states, would also cast illuminating light for the Secretary of State on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For, as has been pointed out by genuine reformist voices in the Arab world, that world is dominated by a murderous intolerance of virtually all minorities in its midst, whether religious, racial or ethnic. It is not about to make an exception for the Jews and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, whatever its borders.

Were Secretary Rice to apply her own childhood experiences of intolerance to an understanding of this broader reality, the precedent of those experiences could be usefully applied to fathoming the bias and hatred that drive the Palestinian and wider Arab war against Israel and its people and that stand in the way of movement toward peace. Her personal experiences could then be an asset rather than impediment in the fashioning of American policy - a policy whose objective would be interim steps to decrease the risks of violence until such time as changes within the Arab world allow for movement toward genuine peace.

She might, for example, click on Palestinian Media Watch every so often, to get an idea of all the lovely things her Palestinian “Negroes” are saying about the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:57 | link | comments

Three of a kind: Canada has something in common with Afghanistan and Iraq—they don’t have freedom of speech there, either. By Diana West in the Washington Times:

Mazir-i-sharif.Ring a bell? In 2001, a 32-year-old Marine captain and CIA officer named John Micheal Spann was killed there in a prison riot, thus becoming the first American combat death in Afghanistan. Not incidentally, Spann, before violence broke out, had interrogated an uncooperative John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. This all took place before the United States military completely toppled Afghanistan's Taliban oppressors.

 

Nearly seven years later, American-liberated Mazir-i-sharif has again made headlines — well, one or two — as the site of the prison where a 23-year-old Afghan journalist has been detained for three months (and counting) on blasphemy charges. These charges derive, Reuters reports, from Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh "distributing an article which said Prophet Mohammed had ignored the rights of women." As President Bush might say... well, what might President Bush say: Let freedom reign?

 

Then there's Halabja.

 

Remember Halabja? The name is notorious for being the town where in 1988, 15 years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians to death. This month, American-liberated Halabja made headlines as the site of the court that sentenced a Kurdish author in absentia to six months in prison for blasphemy: namely, for writing in a book that Mohammed had 19 wives, married a nine-year-old when he was 54, and took part in murder and rape. (These points, Robert Spencer notes at jihadwatch.com, "can be readily established from early texts written by pious Muslims.") The author, Mariwan Halabjaee, who has asylum in Norway, says there's also a fatwa calling for his death unless he asks forgiveness.

 

Think about it. Where Americans have died, not just to de-fang jihadist threats but to "democratize" Islamic populations, freedom of speech is against the law. And not the law according to "militants," or "extremists," but the law as enforced by democratically elected governments that we, as a nation, support with everything we've got. What would Mr. Bush say to that?...

 

Here’s something he wouldn’t say (but I would): How can you have “freedom of speech” when your constitution is grounded in sharia law; or when human rights commissions are allowed to decide what sort of speech is—and is not—socially acceptable?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:35 | link | comments (1)

Multiculti hilarity: Tonight’s episode of Ceeb fantasy sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, may be the best one yet:

When the “Welcome to Mercy” sign at the town limits is destroyed, Sarah replaces it with a multicultural sign in Arabic, Ukranian and Chinese…but forgets the English.

 

As a bonus, that teaser describes the Ceeb mindset--in a nutshell capacious enough to contain it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments (2)

Glick on Obama: She’s not a fan:

Although the rumors that Obama - whose father and step-father were Muslims and who was educated in Muslim schools in Indonesia - is a Muslim are demonstrably false, his Christian affiliations are a cause for alarm in and of themselves.

Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama's spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright's anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam - fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright - who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church's anti-Israel invective.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:00 | link | comments

Kah-veth, kah-vetch, kah-vetch: The four would-be legal eagles who complained to Canada’s human rights commissars about an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book that appeared in Maclean’s magazine are bemoaning the failure of Canadians to hop onto their bandwagon. From the Globe and Mail:

On December 4, the four of us announced at a press conference that we had launched several human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October, 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn.

At the time, we expected to hear some criticism of our complaints, which were filed as a result of Maclean's refusal to negotiate space for a response to the aforementioned publication. What we did not expect, however, was the almost paranoid assault launched on the respective human rights commissions for accepting our complaints and, in one case so far, for moving ahead to schedule hearings into the matter we have brought to their attention. The latest to attack the commissions is Ezra Levant, whose commentary appeared in this space yesterday.

These human rights commissions — whose extensive and considered judgments can be located on any legal database — have been referred to disparagingly as "kangaroo courts" that reach judgments "on the basis of no fixed law," while the distinguished and legally-trained commissioners who serve on them have been referred to as power-grabbers who have "scant regard for the freedoms they suppress." One commentator has gone so far as to call for "political action" to put an end to the human rights commissions themselves! Although this blow-back heat comes as the direct result of our specific complaints, such attacks on the very principles of the provincial and federal Commissions to whom we submitted our case threatens the interests of us all. Canadians in all walks of life have come to rely on them to assert their basic human rights as employees, as persons living with disabilities, as women, as ethnic and cultural minorities, as gender-orientation minorities, and as visible religious minorities, to name only a few.

And it is not just a mere handful of Canadians who look to our provincial and federal human rights commissions. Whether we know it or not, the vast majority of us benefit from decisions and rulings by these commissions, which are filling part of the chronic access-to-justice vacuum that has resulted from the high cost of Canada's civil justice system. In March 2006, for example, the Toronto Star reported that an average three-day civil trial is likely to cost at least $60,738 — more than the median family income in Canada of $58,100. The Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, recently urged governments and the legal profession to find solutions to the access-to-justice crisis that has made this country's legal system punitively expensive for ordinary citizens.

Even though most of us cannot afford the going price of accessing the civil justice system, we have the comfort of knowing that there exists an affordable avenue for us to assert the most fundamental of our rights. Therefore, victims of the grandiose fury now being directed against the human rights commissions are none other than ordinary Canadians.

The importance of human rights codes in Canada is not limited only to affordability. These commissions guarantee our human rights against eventualities not covered by the existing Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which applies only to state entities. Thus, a diminishment in the human rights codes and the commissions that enforce them would leave a gaping hole in our rights protections — an outcome being lobbied for by a few disproportionately loud "activists."

Unfortunately, this turn of events is all too familiar to the Muslim community. Faith-based arbitration was not a "problem" until the Muslim community decided to pursue a facility already available to the Christian and Jewish communities. Similarly, funding for religious schools was not a "problem" until Ontario's Conservative leader John Tory included Islamic schools in his funding proposal. And human rights commissions were not a "problem" until the Muslim community decided to pursue the right to respond to publications that subject identifiable communities to hatred or contempt.

The "problem" is not the human rights commissions or the human rights codes they uphold. The "problem" as some choose to see it — is that the Muslim community in Canada is actually using them for their intended purposes.

No, kids, the “problem” is that Canadians are wise to your game and aren’t prepared to allow you to use HRCs to thwart our ability to hear some unpleasant truths about political Islam.

Update: My letter to the Globe:

On behalf of all freedom-loving Canadians, I would like to personally thank the four law students who complained to several human rights commissions about a Mark Steyn cover story in Maclean’s magazine. In so doing, these nascent attorneys have exposed the perils of empowering extra-judicial bodies to adjudicate matters that would never—and could never—be  entertained in a Canadian court of law.

 

At the same time, I would like to assure them that, despite the fact that in their thirty years of existence, these commissions have never failed to support the person(s) bringing the complaint, I for one do not consider them to be “kangaroo courts.” No, I prefer to think of them as our own home grown, uniquely Canadian version of a body that has a similar conviction rate: Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:51 | link | comments (1)

Worlds apart: Jonah Goldberg, author of a new book called Liberal Fascism, appeared on smug lefty Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show the other day. Needless to say it didn’t go too well. Here’s Jonah describing the encounter for the L.A. Times:

…It started civilly enough, discussing my new book, "Liberal Fascism." But things got sufficiently testy that we spent nearly 20 minutes swearing and sparring, and only six minutes aired. The result was "choppy as hell," Stewart had to concede.

Largely left on the cutting-room floor were some important points that might have made my book seem a bit more nuanced. When he railed about conservatives and gay marriage, I pointed out that in my book, I'm sympathetic to it. When he took shots at Republicans, I noted that I criticize the likes of President Bush and Pat Buchanan for being "right-wing progressives."

Viewers in search of more than disjointed, stuttering cross talk would be disappointed if they caught the whole exchange -- it was all like that. Stewart, try as he might, could not understand where I'm coming from.

His stated problem, in a nutshell, was that he didn't like the book's title or its cover (bright red with a smiley face -- oh, and the smiley face has a little Hitler mustache on it). Stewart's complaint, echoed all over the Web, radio and TV by other critics, is that books can indeed be judged by the cover. And because the title and cover amount to a giant insult to liberals (only Stewart didn't use the word "insult"), it can be dismissed out of hand.

I tried to explain, for those whose feelings were so hurt they didn't even crack the spine, that the title "Liberal Fascism" comes from a speech delivered by H.G. Wells, one of the most important and influential progressive and socialist intellectuals of the 20th century. He wanted to re-brand liberalism as "liberal fascism" and even "enlightened Nazism." He believed these terms best described his own political views -- views that deeply informed American progressivism and New Deal liberalism.

As for the smiley face, that's a reference to the comedian and social commentator George Carlin, who explained on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley."

I'm persuaded that Carlin was right -- to the extent that fascism of any kind will come to America, it will do so in the guise of something "progressive." Indeed, American progressives, particularly before Hitler arrived on the scene in the 1930s, were openly sympathetic to Italian fascism. This isn't to say they copied it (or the fascism of Soviet Russia), as many claim. But rather that the ideas that gave birth to and fueled American progressivism -- philosophical pragmatism, Bismarckian "top-down socialism," Marxism, eugenics and more -- share common intellectual sources and impulses with those that gave us both socialism and fascism.

We've allowed the staggering moral horror of the Holocaust to color our conception of what fascism was. But Wells, the editors of the New Republic and such muckrakers as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell didn't have any idea the Holocaust would happen when they endorsed Benito Mussolini's efforts.

Meanwhile, liberals routinely and cavalierly call conservatives Nazis and fascists -- with the Holocaust fully in mind -- without inviting an ounce of opprobrium from the same folks screeching about me…

Funny thing, that. Much funnier, in fact, than anything ever uttered by the purportedly hilarious Stewart.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:24 | link | comments

Soaring oinkers detected over Eurabia: A leading EU official has come out in support of Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. From YNet News (its bolds):

Top EU official: Gaza siege not a war crime

Franco Frattini, European Commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, says at Herzliya Conference that Israel has right to defend itself against Qassam rockets, expresses regret at EU treatment of Israel… 

A change in EU attitudes towards Israel? In a briefing to Israeli reporters Tuesday, European commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, Frano Frattini, said that the steps leading up to the Gaza blackout cannot be construed as a war crime and criticized the incessant Qassam rocket fire on Israeli civilian population centers. 

In a lecture sponsored by the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, Frattini also issued a massive mea culpa to the State of Israel on behalf of the European community for its treatment of Israel during the second Intifada.

“There has been a large misunderstanding in recent years between Europe and Israel. And Israel is justified in its concerns. For too long, Europe has put too much blame on Israel for lack of peace with the Palestinians. We, as Europeans, should have understood Israel's concerns sooner,” said Frattini.

The European official also noted that “as friends, it was our duty to criticize when we felt criticism was needed, but we did it too often and unfairly. We asked you to take risks and often we didn’t provide you with assurances that you wouldn't stand alone if things went badly.”

Frattini continued to say that, “Europe's attitude towards Israel is changing, and Europe better Today, Europe better understands the complexities of the Middle East landscape.”

Commenting on the rising tide of Anti-Semitism throughout Europe, which has often led to marked tension between Israel and various European nations, Frattini maintained that “We are strongly fighting against Anti-Semitism in Europe. This kind of prejudice has no place in Europe today and never will. We will not tolerate Anti-Semitism and we take it very seriously.”

The European commissioner also congratulated Israel on the Annapolis peace summit, calling it “a new opportunity in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which we must not let slip through our fingers. To make 2008 the year of Israeli-Palestinian peace, we must remember the lessons of the past and move forward,” he concluded…

The story has brought out the Longfellow in me: Quite a volte face for the dhimmified EU/ Could it be that it is finally getting a clue?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:47 | link | comments

Don't miss: Caroline Glick on Israel, and jihad and Western folly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:31 | link | comments

Islamist essay question: Are Muslim U.K. Visa Holders and Muslim U.K. Citizens Permitted to Carry Out Attacks in Great Britain? Discuss.

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

Yipee!: It looks like a certain bloviating mullah-thingy’s days be numbered. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:53 | link | comments

Iran’s plan: In brief, it’s to bloviate about “Zionist crimes” in order to soften up the world for Israel’s eventual destruction, all the while claiming not to be creating the nuclear weapons that will allow the mullahs to effect their final Final Solution for the Jewish state. Here’s the mullahs’ mouthpiece, the Tehran Times, gleefully spewing lies like some latter-day, Islamic version of Nazi mouthpiece, Der Sturmer:  

TEHRAN -– In a letter to world parliament speakers on Monday, 200 Iranian MPs condemned Israel’s ongoing massacre against Palestinians and called for bringing the Zionist criminals to justice.

Israel has launched brutal attacks against the Gaza residents and blocked all food and fuel supplies to the strip. The territory went dark on Sunday when the only power plant was shut down.

“Under the meaningful silence of the United Nations and human rights organizations, the occupying regime of Israel has acted against the international law, 1949 Geneva Conventions, and 1977 Additional Protocols and has continued massive attacks on Palestine’s occupied territories,” read the letter.

“There is no day without Israel’s slaying of innocent Palestinian families in winter’s bitter cold and showing the worst type of state terrorism through air and ground strikes.

Where are the vigilant consciences of the world? Where are peace-lovers and human-lovers to prevent the slaughter of the oppressed men, women, and children? Where are the alleged supporters of human rights? Why does not the UN Security Council take serious measures against this issue?

Iranian lawmakers, according to their legal and humanitarian duties to defend human rights, urge the world parliament speakers and lawmakers to condemn such organized crimes… and prepare the ground for bringing the perpetrators behind these crimes to trial so that such a humanitarian crisis would not be repeated.”

Emergency OIC meeting on Gaza crisis is essential

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Monday telephoned Saudi, Syrian, Algerian, Qatari, and Malaysian leaders to insist that it is necessity for the Organization of the Islamic Conference to hold an emergency meeting on the Zionist regime’s ongoing crimes in Gaza Strip.

Through an official letter to OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki on Sunday called on the Jeddah-based OIC to hold an emergency meeting at the foreign ministerial level.

In his calls, Ahmadinejad stated that the Islamic countries should declare their protest and not allow the Zionists to go ahead with their crimes.

It is time that the Islamic states take action and hinder crimes by the Zionist regime, the Iranian president noted.

He called for taking simultaneous “political and humanitarian” actions and urged the Arab League and OIC to study the situation and at the same time send food and medicine to Gaza to prevent a human tragedy.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose country currently chairs the 57-nation OIC, said that he will try to arrange an OIC meeting as soon as possible…

Malaysia—isn’t that one of those “moderate” Muslim nations? Why on earth would it want to co-operate with Iran’s “extremists”?

Isn’t it heart-warming to see how a mutual loathing for the world’s one and only Jewish state can build bridges between “moderates” and “extremists”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:05 | link | comments

Wilting under pressure: An editorial in the New York Post explains why Barack Obama may not yet be ready for prime time:

January 22, 2008 -- Barack Obama apparently is feeling a bit put-upon these days, what with the one-two punch he's been taking of late from the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine.

Indeed, the Illinois senator yesterday complained, "We've got a formidable opponent - actually two formidable opponents at this point, between Sen. Clinton and President Clinton."

Poor Sen. Obama.

If he's finding the Bill and Hillary tag-team too much to handle, what can we expect if he becomes president?

Maybe something like: Hey, Ahmadinejad and Putin are ganging up on me. It's two against one - no fair!

Well, if life isn't fair, what can you expect in politics?

This is no small matter.

If the Obama campaign can't handle a garden-variety Clinton tag-team slap-down without going all whiny, an Obama administration would make for a long four years.

Besides, it's not as if Obama is running all by himself against Team Clinton. He's got some pretty strong allies - including much of the national news media, which has been cheering on his "time for change" campaign.

Specifically, Obama complains that the ex-president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," in that "he continues to make statements that aren't supported by the facts."

Imagine that - Bill Clinton, disrespectful of the truth. Where was Obama during the 1990s, anyway?...

I believe he spent the first half toiling in obscurity in Chicago, and the second half toiling in obscurity in the Illinois state legislature. Not that that should be held against him; only to suggest that perhaps the clean favored and imperially slim Obama is still a wee bit wet behind the ears, an obvious disqualification for the top job.

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

Al fresco desecration: Fidel Castro’s pal, Pierre Trudeau, once quipped that the definition of a Canadian is someone who can “make love in a canoe.” Had he read an article in today’s Globe and Mail, he might have further opined that the definition of a Frenchman/woman is someone who can have sex on a Canadian war monument:

Exhibitionism. Cruising in the woods. Swinging couples.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in northern France has become a gathering place for some French citizens looking for kinky sex.

Yesterday, a French couple appeared at the courthouse in nearby Arras on charges of sexual exhibitionism at the First World War memorial.

Another woman, who describes herself as being 35, appears on an "amateurs" website, which features 10 photos of her in various states of undress, which she boasts were snapped at the Vimy monument.

On the first picture, the woman, in a miniskirt and showing her bra, is leaning against a stone rampart where the names of missing First World War Canadian soldiers are etched.

The rest of the explicit pictures accompany the woman's flashing episode, which she said concluded with her having sex with two men.

On another website, the monument's parking lot is described as a place for cruising and for swingers.

A spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson said the Canadian government hopes yesterday's court appearance will send a message.

"At this point, our participation in the French legal system will be enough of a deterrent," said Richard Roik. "Inappropriate behaviour will not be tolerated."

The memorial's size and remote location might explain its popularity with sexual thrill-seekers.

About two hours drive north of Paris, the site sprawls across an isolated area, removed from any neighbouring villages and still crisscrossed by trenches and gullies.

On asexyblog.com, a French site that advertises "naughty places" and "swingers' meeting places," Vimy is one of several listed locations.

Driving directions to Vimy are given in one posting from Jan. 8, guiding aficionados to the memorial's parking lot.

"There's cruising in the woods behind the parking lot. In the evening it's directly in the parking," the site says. "Watch out in the evening, there are also swinging couples."

According to the local paper La Voix du Nord, the man and woman who appeared in court yesterday are in their 40s and had been charged in October.

The married couple was identified by a police unit specializing in cyber-surveillance, even though the woman's face had been electronically smudged.

The couple's court hearing unfolded behind closed doors. A ruling is expected Monday.

La Voix du Nord noted the thoughtlessness of people indulging in sex acts on such hallowed grounds.

"In the minds of Canadians, the historical site of Vimy nearly marks the birth of their country. If we dare sully the memory of those soldiers who died during World War I, it's the whole country that we sully," the paper said on its website yesterday.

The four-day battle at Vimy in 1917 cost 3,598 Canadian lives and left thousands wounded, marking a coming of age for Canada's military.

My late Bubby—a tiny firecracker who was never at the loss for words—had the perfect mot to describe such shameless thrill-seekers: “Feh!”

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

Blue moon moment: An editorial in the Globe and Mail sees through Hamas’s ruse:

Israel agreed Monday to allow diesel fuel and medicine into Gaza on a one-time basis, easing the blockade it imposed because of rocket attacks on Israel's southern towns. This concession will not be enough to placate critics who had jumped all over the country earlier in the day, accusing it of exacting, in the words of European Union external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, a "collective punishment of the people of Gaza." Nor will the gesture in any way encourage Hamas to order its thugs to rein in their attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Never ones to let a good turn go unpunished, one of the terrorist group's leaders, Mahmud Zahar, made as much clear yesterday, promising "to continue on the path of jihad and resistance, whatever the sacrifices and suffering, until victory or martyrdom." The villains in the tawdry drama being played out at the expense of the impoverished and downtrodden Gazans should be obvious. But in case it's not, here's a hint: It's not Israel.

Last week, 100 rockets rained down on Israel's southern towns. Israel could have defended itself against the attacks launched by militants in Gaza by responding with a bombardment of its own, endangering civilians. It could have sent the Israeli Defence Forces into Gaza,endangering civilians. Instead, Israel opted to enforce a blockade of Gaza to put pressure on Hamas.

The strategy worked. On Thursday, 40 rockets were lobbed at Israel from Gaza. By Monday, only one rocket was fired. But the improved security comes at a price. Not only the EU but officials from the United Nations and other organizations have condemned the blockade. They accused Israel of risking the safety of Gazans as a result of mounting fuel and food shortages and power outages at hospitals. They demanded that fuel be flown to the one power plant in the Gaza Strip. In fact, the power Israel provides to Gaza through the electrical grid was never cut; the interruption was to the flow of fuel used to power that plant. As Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni aptly put it, "Israel is the only country in the world that supplies electricity to terror groups which in turn fire rockets at it."

If the situation in Gaza is really as bad as some, including a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, describe it - "a desperate humanitarian situation that continues to deteriorate alarmingly" - there is a simple way to end the misery. If life in Gaza is to return to normal - at least what passes for normal in the terrorist statelet - all Hamas needs to do is call off its dogs and end its attacks. As Ms. Livni said, this would change the situation in Gaza "in a minute." The truth is, Hamas prefers it the way it is.

Crack open the bubbly: the Globe finally gets a clue. Something which will likely never be said of our perpetually clueless, determinately anti-Zionist, tax-payer funded national broadcaster.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:57 | link | comments (1)

What the future holds in store: Great news! According to a new report, that clash of civilizations we've heard so much about is off the table for now. From Arab News:

GENEVA, 22 January 2008 — The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Georgetown University, yesterday made public a report on the state of dialogue between Islam and the West.

The report is a systematic and thorough overview of how Muslim and Western societies perceive and relate to each other on the political, social, economic and cultural levels.

It is the result of in-depth research carried out by leading academics and experts. It indicates that the majority of the world’s population believes that violent conflict between the West and the Muslim world can be avoided, but they also share a great deal of pessimism about the state of the relationship.

Among both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority nations, the proportion who say they think the “other side” is committed to better relations rarely rises above 30 percent. Notwithstanding the prevalent sense of skepticism, many residents in nations around the world say that better interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.

“The World Economic Forum believes that, like all other global challenges, it will take the collaborative effort of all stakeholders from government, business, religion, media, academia and civil society to pre-empt any crisis, create alliances and find solutions,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

“Over the course of 2008, the Community of Islam and the West Dialogue will invite leaders from various walks of life to engage in a concerted dialogue and debate of the most important issues, in particular the area of citizenship and integration,” he said.

The report features a Gallup Muslim-West Dialogue Index, which is a ranking of countries based on citizens’ degrees of optimism about the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world. The report presents an analysis of the portrayal of Islam and the West in newspapers and television across 24 countries by Media Tenor, an international content analysis organization, as well as a survey by Georgetown University of international, national and local efforts to improve Muslim-Western relations.

An important finding of the report is the emergence of citizenship and integration as the second most powerful shaper of the state of dialogue after international politics.

Growing Muslim minorities committed to active and full citizenship, particularly in Europe, are increasingly finding a voice in the public sphere. Governments committed to ideals of equality and recognition, but eager to maintain majority support and national cohesion, are seeking to engage Muslim groups in structured dialogue and are experiencing mixed results.

According to a Gallup poll of 1,000 people in 21 countries, published with the report, two-thirds of people in Muslim countries said Muslims respected the West. Almost the same number felt the West did not respect them. Many Western respondents said they did not believe either side respected the other.

Incidents such as the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in European newspapers deepened distrust, with Muslims seeing them as an assault on their religion and Westerners alarmed by Muslim protests which they saw as a threat to free speech.

But the report found that majorities in all countries surveyed do not believe military conflict is inevitable, and it said the levels of mistrust varied from country to country. Iranians, whose government is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, felt less respected by the West than Turks, who are seeking European Union membership.

In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, only a minority believes the West and Muslim world are in conflict. That view may be the result of more positive Muslim perceptions of countries, such as France and Germany, seen in a better light than the United States, the report said…

Sounds like those polled in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran who aver that they’re not in conflict with Dar al Harb may be pulling a bit of taqiyaah wool over the gullible Gallupers eyes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:35 | link | comments

The lefty Weltanschauung: Moonbat extraordinaire Heather Mallick—who writes for both the Ceeb and the Globe and Mail—has done us all a huge favour. She has succinctly articulated the lefty mindset—and what a joyless, threadbare, self-recriminatory, and self-righteous mindscape it is.  From the Ceeb:

I was raised liberal, which means nonstop sympathy. I was expected to feel sorry for other less fortunate people pretty much full-time. Which is funny because my mother is a Scotswoman, and when I was a child I often felt that I was one of the less fortunate, and vastly so. In winter, the thermostat was set at Chilly, all our meals were boiled and every vacation was a speeding landscape of carsickness. Our dishtowels were ice-white and gossamer-thin; I only realized in my teens that they were old diapers. Fashion choices were few: Which parka? For a night out, we'd dine at the local hospital cafeteria.

Children aren't stupid. I knew we weren't poor. My father, a surgeon, ministered to the less fortunate (we lived in the far north). I don't think my mother ever actually said it aloud but "We weren't put on this earth for pleasure," was the family theme. I learned to shut up and embarked on an adult life of feeling sorry for other people, for "victims."…

Ah, yes: Love the “victims”; hate the Zionists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:21 | link | comments (2)

Family law in the Magic Kingdom: It’s a lot like a certain type of family law as practiced back in the Middle Ages—minus the more enlightened thinking of those times. From the New York Sun:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Two years ago, a knock on Fatima and Mansour al-Timani's door shattered the life they had built together.

It was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their marriage in absentia after some of Fatima's relatives sought the divorce on grounds she had married beneath her.

That was just the beginning of an ordeal for a couple who — under Saudi Arabia's strict segregation rules — can no longer live together. They sued to reverse the ruling, publicized their story, and sought help from a Saudi human-rights group. But the two remain apart, and Fatima said she is considering suicide if her recent appeal to King Abdullah does not reunite her with her husband.

"Only the king can resolve my case," Fatima told the Associated Press by telephone in a rare interview. "I want to return to my husband, but if that is not possible, I need to know so I can put an end to my life."

Fatima's case underscores shortcomings in the kingdom's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present, and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission. Recently, the king did intervene and pardon another high-profile defendant — a rape victim who was sentenced to lashes and jail time for being in a car with a man who was not her relative…

Oh, well. At least modern Saudis, unlike their more primitive forebears, have the advantage of living in the age of Xbox and antibiotics.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:05 | link | comments

Submission, redux: Fasten your seatbelts, folks. The seethers may be about to go freakazoidal (again) in the Netherlands. From Der Spiegel:

Déjà vu in Holland: A Dutch politician plans to release a film that rips the Koran for promoting violence and intolerance. Politicians and Muslim leaders alike are afraid of a repeat of 2004, when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam.

A Dutch politician's plan to release a film that charges the Koran with promoting violence and intolerance has sparked controversy in the Netherlands. Government officials are distancing themselves from the project and stepping up security at home and at embassies abroad, while Muslim leaders fear that it could strain relations between the Dutch and their large Muslim immigrant population.

 

Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing Freedom Party, says he will release a 10-minute-long film on Friday that shows how the Koran is used by Islamic radicals to promote homophobia, the abuse of women and violence. The film was slated to debut on Jan. 25 but as of last Friday Wilders had not found a Dutch broadcaster willing to air it. If he can not find one by Friday, he says he will post it on the Internet.

As Wilders searched for a broadcaster last week, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende urged Wilders to exercise restraint. "The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of speech, religion and beliefs," said Balkenende according to the Associated Press. "The Netherlands also has a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Unnecessarily offending certain groups does not belong here."

Balkenende said that cities in the Netherlands were on alert for potential protests in response to the film, and diplomats abroad were briefed on responding to potential animosity.

'Fascist Book that Incites Violence'

Wilders has previously sought to ban the Koran, calling it, "that horrible, fascist book that incites violence," and equating it with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The 42 year-old lawmaker has built a public image on stemming the tide of what he calls a "tsunami of Islamization" in the Netherlands, where a population of 16.3 million now includes 850,000 Muslims.

He was not available for comment Monday and a spokesman for the Freedom Party, which holds nine of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, declined to comment.

Wilders is viewed as a hero to a small but vocal group of right-wing politicians working against the influence of Islam in Europe -- particularly the group Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), an organization founded in Denmark after an international controversy erupted there when a daily newspaper published none-too-flattering caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. A leader of the group's Dutch chapter told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday that SIOE supported the film and Wilder's right to produce it.

"He has every right to use freedom of expression. We don't get it why people would get so upset about the movie," said Monique van der Hulst, who co-founded the Dutch chapter of SIOE in 2006. "He provokes of course, to make things clear. But we both say Islam is not a religion, but a dangerous and evil ideology," said van der Hulst.

She also agreed with Wilder's comparisons of the Koran to Hitler's "Mein Kampf." "You can see the evil coming up from Muslims. They do the same as what Hitler did before -- they say the same things about Jews and homosexuals."…

Inflammatory words, indeed. Ones that here in Canada—a country which, ironically, is much less farther along on the path to Islamization than the Netherlands—would likely earn you a date with an exquisitely “sensitive” human rights inquisitor. (Of course, in the Netherlands such assertions can get you killed.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:50 | link | comments (3)

Darkness visible: As expected, the melodrama about poor, ordinary Gazans being made to suffer in the dark is making a big splash in the media. How could it not, what with the Jews taking on the role of  Snidely Whiplash, and the Palestinians impersonating fair Nell? Here, for example, is how the Globe and Mail’s Mideast sob-sister, Carolynne Wheeler, writes it up. And here’s the Ceeb’s account.

“Bah, humbug!,” say I. My retort to the Globe:

Once again Hamas has made a calculated and cynical decision to make its populace suffer in order to score points against its arch-nemesis, Israel. And once again the media have picked up the Hamas football and run with it.

So “heartless” Israel has shut off power to maternity wards, cardiac units and the homes of regular folks in Gaza, has it? Puh-leeze. While that particular spin is to be expected in the Arab media, where it plays very well indeed, one would have hoped that by now Western media would have become wise to it. Instead, much of the media is prepared to accept it at face value, and to use Hamas-speak about "militants" with “makeshift” or “homemade” rockets embroiled in an uneven battle against a much more powerful foe.

For some, that makes for an “ironic”—and thus grimly satisfying—retelling of the old David and Goliath story. Too bad it’s all a crock. The reality is that the Gaza is in the grip of jihadists who will do whatever it takes to get rid of the world’s only Jewish state, a nation whose very existence they deem an “insult”. That includes withholding fuel supplies from its own populace, and launching genuine, deadly missiles into Israel so that Israel will be compelled to take measures to defend itself—such as shutting down power within its control. In so doing, Hamas itself has created the conditions which, both literally and figuratively, have put Gazans in the dark.

Update: Honest Reporting unspins the spin.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:59 | link | comments (1)

Canadhimmis: For the past several decades, Canada's Human Rights Commissions have been allowed to play a game of whack-a-mole, mostly whacking the odd white power/Nazi zany. The problem with that, of course, is that once a mechanism has been put in place to deal with those who spew repugnant lies, it can also be harnassed by those who would prefer that people not be allowed to hear unpleasant truths. Witness the recent travails of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, who dared to speak some unpleasant truths about political Islam.

Here's British ranter Pat Condell taking the piss out of Canada's Thought Cops--something which, so far, Canada's craven, dhimmified mainstream media have largely declined to do; use it (freedom of speech) or lose it, guys.

And here's Canada's national anthem, revised to reflect current realities:

Oh Canada,

Where lib’ral guilt roams free.

“Niceness” must reign

Enforced by HRCs.

With good intents

They are so attune

To sensitivities.

But the net effect

Is to turn us into silent, "nice" dhimmis.

God help us all

Should they prevail.

Oh, Canada will be a frozen jail.

Oh, Canada will be a frozen jail.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:56 | link | comments

Outage outrage: Oh no--the Jews have shut the lights off in Gaza.

Bad Jews! How will the "Islamists" ever be able to see when they're making their "makeshift" missiles?

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

HRC in action:  Even wonder what happens in the shadowy chambers of Canada's Thought Cops? Here's the intrepid Ezra (Levant) giving it but good to an HRC commissar. The look of sheer contempt (or is it utter confusion?) on the woman's face is priceless.

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

Jews target “healers”: At least, that’s the Hamas/Reuter’s spin in a story headed “Israeli missile strike kills one in Gaza-medics”. However, the body of the article seems to tell a different tale:

GAZA, Jan 20 (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed at least one Palestinian and critically wounded another in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, local medical workers and Hamas officials said.

Hamas Islamists said the target was a group of militants who fired makeshift rockets into southern Israel.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed there had been a missile strike in the northern part of the Hamas-controlled territory.

Israel has killed at least 36 Palestinians in Gaza during the past week as part of what officials describe as a stepped-up campaign to curb rocket fire into the Jewish state.

Gaza militants have fired more than 200 mortars and rockets at Israel in the past five days, the army said.

“Islamists” or “militants” with “makeshift” rockets (“makeshift”—as if they’re jerry-rigged from a few odd scraps lying around the house): sound so much less threatening than “jihadis” hurling deadly “missiles” at Israeli civilians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:10 | link | comments

Q: What's even lonelier--and far more hazardous to your health--that being a Maytag repairman in America?: A: Being a "radical leftist" in Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:29 | link | comments

Yah mon: Just got back from beautiful Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Vacation: spectacular. Trip home: not so much. Stuck at the airport in Mo' Bay for eight--count 'em--eight hours. Plane finally left at 2:30 a.m.; arrived four hours later, but we had to wait over sixty minutes for our bags because the door to luggage hold had frozen shut. Anyway, functioning on zero sleep, so will likely not be back in gear until tomorrow. In the mean time, here's my reworking of the SpongeBob Square Pants theme song. I was inspired to write it because our resort got Nickelodeon, and my son watched a gazillion episodes in between snorkeling, riding the banana boat (which, truth be told, looked more like a pencil), careening down the water slides and setting the resort record for most french fries (sans ketchup) consumed by one child in one week:

Oh, who’s from a theocracy back in Eye-ran?

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Abhorent and bearded and putrid a man.

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

If radical nonsense be where you come from

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Then rant like a loon ‘bout the hidden imam.

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Ah-ma-din-ejad!

Ah-ma-

Din-ejad!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:51 | link | comments

Later, gator:  I'm taking a week and a bit off from the jihad (if that's even possible) to rest and recharge. I hope to be back on or before the 20th.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments (1)

Shriver's travails: American ex-pat Lionel Shriver (a she whose name sounds like a he) wrote a critically praised novel—We Need to Talk About Kevin—which dealt with a Columbine-style mass murderer. I almost stopped reading it very early on, when Ms. Shiver, showing her loony-lefty political stripes, referred to Israelis as “Zionazis.” But I kept plugging away until I finally put it down for good about three quarters of the way through, defeated by the combination of the author’s fashionable Rosie O’Donnell-like contempt for the U.S., and a plot featuring several of the most unappealing fictional characters I had ever encountered, including the title character, the repellent Kevin, and the novel’s narrator, Kevin’s snarky, insufferable, self-absorbed mother.

If you want to get a taste of the book (although there’s absolutely no reason why you should want to), all you have to do is read Shriver’s comment piece in today’s Guardian. It pretty well sums up the still clueless Shriver’s feelings about her homeland at a time when “homeland” has become an adjective for “security." I include the headline and subhead to give you the full taste of Shriver’s screwy outlook:

Headline: Last time, Americans elected a moron. If they do better this time, I can show my face without shame

Subhead: A Hillary win would not strike a blow for women's rights, but merely set a precedent for ascension to the presidency by marriage

Lionel Shriver
Thursday January 10, 2008
The Guardian

These past seven years, being an American expat has been far from pleasant: watching presidential press conferences on the BBC and cringeing at the "nucular" ambitions of Iran. Suffering the smug, superior smirks of locals sure that all Americans are morons because they elected one. Walking the streets of London with a bag over my head, which has been murder on my hair.

Weary of this life of shame, I feel I have a vested interest in who takes the moron's place. With the US currently about as popular as hives, the biggest job that the next American president will take on is bolstering the country's reputation abroad. Should they win in November, the Democrats now have the extraordinary option on giving the next administration a leg-up on this Cool Americana project by picking not just whom they send to the White House, but what: a black man or a woman. So which would more likely get that bag off my head - President Minority, or President Girl?

As for the latter: other countries have already broken the gender barrier to high office - India, Israel, Germany, Pakistan, Britain, to name a few. While in the US she would indeed be revolutionary, a female president would seem less radical from an ocean away.

More to the point, Americans can't elect any female president, but only a particular one. To the rest of the world as well as to her own constituency, Hillary Clinton is familiar solely for being married to a widely admired two-term president. No Bill, no candidacy - for even foreigners realise that a former family law practitioner with the natural political skills of shrubbery would never otherwise be a serious contender for the White House. So from the outside, the election of Hillary would look like one more cronyistic, nepotistic backroom deal. It would advertise to other countries that despite all our blather about democracy, the US is no different from everywhere else: to get ahead, you have to have connections. It would portray America as one more country where power is concentrated in a few hands that never let go. A second President Clinton would make the preachy rhetoric of my nation sound just as hypocritical as it has done under President Bush Whose Daddy's Having Been President Too Is Just a Weird Coincidence.

A Hillary win would not even strike a considerable blow for women's rights. It would merely set a precedent for ascension to the presidency by marriage. Internationally, Hillary's promise to use her husband as a "roving ambassador" decodes to: if Bill would not be de facto president, he would at least run her foreign policy. (T-shirts at her rallies that read "I MISS BILL" make no bones about the fact that many of her own supporters hope that they are really voting in her husband for an unconstitutional third term.) That wouldn't make Hillary seem a strong, capable female role model, but a sidekick. In sum: no more bag, but I might still slip on dark glasses.

By contrast, a black man in the White House? It would put a lid on all the carping about how you can't lecture to us about fairness when you have all those horrible racial problems at home. (We'd still have racial problems, but we're talking appearances here.) It would betoken that cultures can change, that a country can emerge from a history of slavery to engender some semblance of racial parity. It would put a stop to superior European posing about how liberal and good and tolerant and sophisticated they are in comparison to all those bigoted, retrograde American bumpkins. And in the context of this election, it would suggest that connections aren't everything; that US elections are not a big fix; that democracy is not a farce.

Voilà: no bag. No dark glasses. I might even get my hair done…

Whoa. Might want to slow it down there, Lionel. You wouldn’t want to spring such a sight on an unsuspecting public all at once.

I sincerely hope that neither Hillary nor Obama manage to prevail and that Americans elect someone from the other party who does not perceive the jihad through the prism of the 1960s and Vietnam. I’m looking to spare America the humiliation of abject submission, and the world from the sight of Lionel with her hair done and her sour punim in plain view for all to see.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:08 | link | comments

A real toss up: On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, George W. Bush is predicting that, by the time he leaves office, Israel and the Palestinians will have come to terms and signed an effective peace deal.

On a similar basis, I predict that by the time he leaves office, pigs will have sprouted wings and will be flying.

Hard to say who's more delusional.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:13 | link | comments (2)

Chillary sings: The pollsters are still surveying the surprising results in New Hampshire and going, "Huh?" Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is taking her win in stride, and chillin' with some karaoke Smokey:

People say I am cold and robotic,

‘Cause I’m not as warm as Bill.

Although I seem frigid

You  know I like to kid

And occasionally have a thrill.

So take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

I need you, need you.

Since I lost in the boondocks of Iowa

Many folks were writing me off.

Although O. seemed to surge

The truth will emerge—

That Bill and Hill will have the last “loff”.

So take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

You need me, need me.

Outside, Barack’s explodin’

But soon, he’ll be implodin’.

No match (oh yeah)

For the likes of me.

I’ll win as predicted

And quick step to my victory.

Baby, baby, take a good look at my face.

You know I’m in such a tight race.

But up my sleeve I’ve got an ace—

The tracks of my tears.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:36 | link | comments

George’s “fans”: You know those folks who George Bush thinks are singularly deserving of statehood? Some of them are a bit cranky because he’s shown up on their home turf, and are giving him a rousing—or, to be more precise, a seething—reception. From the Jerusalem Post:

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza staged protests against George W. Bush on Wednesday, burning Bush in effigy and underscoring the deep political split with West Bank moderates who welcomed the visit of the US president as an important gesture to the Palestinians.

Supporters of Hamas chanted "Death to America," and burned US and Israeli flags. A shadowy al-Qaida-inspired group appeared in public for the first time with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and uttered vague threats against US targets.

Bush arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a three-day visit that also includes a meeting in the West Bank on Thursday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as a pilgrimage to Jesus's traditional birth grotto in biblical Bethlehem.

A senior Abbas aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the Bush visit was an important opportunity for the Palestinians to make their demands heard. "By receiving Bush, we are not conceding our rights," Abed Rabbo said, addressing critics at home. "We are focusing on our rights before the entire world, and we will say there will be no peace in the region, and no peace in the world without people obtaining these rights."

However, polls indicate that the vast majority of Palestinians are either indifferent to US peace promises or deeply skeptical a deal with Israel can be negotiated. The US administration is widely perceived in the Palestinian territories as a friend and ally of Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians.

In an arrival ceremony at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, Bush appeared to confirm such perceptions, emphasizing an US-Israel alliance that he said "helps guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state." The Palestinians have balked at Israel's demand that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, amid concerns that this would block future negotiations on the fate of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in the war that surrounded Israel's establishment in 1948.

Bush also said he sees an opportunity for peace in the Holy Land.

In Hamas-ruled Gaza, about 5,000 supporters of the Islamic militant group marched in the streets to protest the visit, burning effigies of Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Some held posters showing a dog biting Bush's head, and of a young man stepping on Bush's head with his shoe.

Mahmoud Zahar, a leading Hamas hard-liner, told Hamas radio that "whoever holds much hope for the visit will be disappointed."

Even some Abbas supporters were critical of the US leader.

Some 200 supporters allied with Abbas's Fatah movement and other secular Palestinian factions urged Bush to abandon what they said was his pro-Israel bias.

"We call on President Bush in his visit to adopt an equal standard, and not to continue the biased policy in favor of the occupation government," a senior Fatah leader in Gaza, Zakariya al-Agha, told the marchers.

In the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, about 20 masked supporters of an al-Qaida-inspired group calling itself the "Army of the Nation," displayed weapons in a first public appearance.

The men wore black robes over black pants. Some wore red headbands with the words "death squad."

A spokesman for the group, who only gave his nom de guerre, Abu Hafs, said Bush was "not welcome" in the Palestinian territories. "We are coming, not to Bush in Tel Aviv, but God willing to Washington," he said…

I’m sure as soon as those West Bank “moderates” are able to sign their “peace “ treaty,  everything’ll settle down.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:58 | link | comments

Oh, grow up!: Blogger to childish, Obama-besotted Democrats.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:42 | link | comments

Dream team: Katharine Hepburn's witty line explaining the appeal of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire was that he gave her "class" while she gave him "sex."

Hasn't quite worked out that way for Nicolas Sarkozy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:55 | link | comments (2)

On the beat: George and Condi seem to have a “good cop”/”bad cop” thing going on. From israelinsider:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that the US rejects the building of homes in Jerusalem "beyond the Green Line" that once separated Jerusalem, specifically citing the neighborhood of Har Homa as objectionable. Israel has authorized building there although PM Ehud Olmert has recently waffled on his willingness to go forward with the home construction projects.

Rice went further than US officials have ever gone before in defining the American position on the issue, but stopped short of rejecting any building over the Green Line. Still, her remarks created the potential for a direct clash over the issue when Rice and US President George W. Bush visit Israel this week and try to move the peace process forward. Bush, in interviews with the Post and Yediot Aharonot, has tried to play the "good copy" referring to his April 2004 letter to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which he agreed, in a non-binding fashion, to take into account realities on the ground as a factor in the future borders between Israel and a possible Palestinian state.

Israel which annexed "east Jerusalem" after the 1967 war and distinguished the capital's Jewish neighborhoods over the Green Line with communities located beyond the city's municipal borders. Therefore, it does not consider building there to be covered by its undertaking to freeze settlement building, as demanded by the Quartet "road map".

Rice, however, said that the US considers that parts of east Jerusalem to be "settlements" in which Israel must stop building as part of its commitment to implement the first phase of the road map. She said "the United States doesn't make a distinction" between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and that the road map obligations are on "settlement activity generally." She cited Har Homa as one such "forbidden" neighborhood.

"Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning," she said, but would not be drawn in to say whether other Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, were also settlements in the eyes of the United States. "The important point here is that we need to have an agreement so that we can stop having this discussion about what belongs to Israel and what doesn't," she said, evasively.

The US has long maintained an ambiguity concerned construction in these neighborhoods, which is opposed by the Palestinians and many European countries but until now has not described Jerusalem neighborhoods as "settlements."

Bush told Reuters last week that he considered settlements an "impediment" to peace, but the Olmert government has long assumed that the US would allow Israel to retain built-up neighborhoods in the capital. That assumption has now been called into question…

On second thought, maybe there’s really only a bad cop and a worse cop.

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

And speaking of demented totalitarian stylists…: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apologizes to his loyal readers for being away from the old laptop for a while. The bloggin’ Arrmageddonist offers the following explanation for the paucity of posts:

To read or to write, that is the question!‎

2007/11/18

In the Name of Almighty God-the All-Knowing, the Most Lovingly ‎Compassionate Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations. So I had to decide how to spend the limited time that I have allocated ‎for the blog; should I write new notes or respect those viewers who kindly and ‎generously have shared their thoughts and opinions with me and sent messages and read ‎their numerous received messages. ‎ ‎***‎ As you know, the purpose of running this blog is to have a direct and mutual ‎contact and communication with the viewers and even though I have received many ‎messages from the viewers to update the blog and write new notes, I preferred to write ‎less and spend more time on reading the viewers' messages – and not let this ‎communication tool become just a one-way medium.‎ ‎***‎  I personally have read those messages that are considered to be short. I even ‎have read those messages that have started with a sentence like "I know that the ‎president is not going to read this message, but…." ‎ Also some of my trusted students have shortened the long messages for me ‎and have prepared a statistical report regarding all of the messages which I have read ‎and studied those too. God willing, a portion of the overall analysis of the messages ‎and its interesting results will be posted on the blog in the future.‎ ‎***‎ I am apologetic to those who have been waiting for my new posts, but ‎fortunately overall, the analysis of the messages has got to a point that I can start ‎writing here again. ‎ I would like to use this opportunity and ask those of you who intend to send ‎me messages through blog, to make it as brief as you can. Thank you.

No problemo, your loathsomeness. Here’s my brief message: Eat arsenic and croak.