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

Run, don’t walk…: To the nearest mega-bookstore to purchase a copy of Diana West’s The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization. West is second only to the great Mark Steyn in her ability to make you laugh out loud while bringing you the grimmest of news about our society's chances for survival.

On second thought, better order your copy online, since the nearest mega-bookstore is probably stocked with so many Chomsky tomes and the collective “wisdom” of the rest of the Bush=Hitler crowd that there’s likely little room left (pun intended) on the groaning shelves for the likes of West. To whet your appetite, here’s a tasty sample:

It is surely a paradox that the rest of the world—meaning the nations of the non-Western world about which the Western world is so assiduously “inclusive”—remains strikingly, immovably and unapologetically nondiversive, uniform even, in every way: ethnically, religiously and culturally. For example, you may speak Urdu, Arabic, Pashtun and Turkish in British, French, Dutch and German schools; they don’t, however, speak English, French, Dutch and German in Pakistani, Arab, Afghani and Turkish schools. Mosque construction breaks ground all over Europe and the United States, but churches and synagogues do not rise in the Islamic world. The president of the United States adds a Koran to the White House library for Ramadan; Bibles are confiscated and destroyed by the Saudi Arabian government. Born in Benin, Achille Acakpo teaches traditional African dance and percussion in Vienna; who born in Vienna is teaching Strauss waltzes in Benin?

Good question. The conclusion to draw from this: multiculturalism is a one-way street that ultimately leads to our own dead end.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:00 | link | comments

The price of ricin: I’m not one to jump to conclusions every time something blows up or an odd white powder is detected in a plain brown package, but I had to giggle at this NYT report about an as yet unnamed individual who has fallen victim to deadly toxin found in his Vegas motel room. (To be clear, I wasn’t giggling at the man’s plight but at the way it was reported):

Police in Las Vegas said a man is in critical condition after staying in a motel room where ricin, a deadly poison, was later found.

Skip to next paragraph The victim called for an ambulance two weeks ago, while he was staying in the room, complaining of breathing difficulty. Police said a man identifying himself as a relative went to the room, which has been unoccupied since, on Thursday to retrieve personal items belonging to the sick man and discovered vials of powder in a plastic bag.

Local public health officials confirmed Friday that the powder is ricin.

The man who discovered the poison is one of seven people hospitalized in the incident, but six of those people were admitted only as a precaution. He was not identified by police.

Police said the ricin did not appear to be intended for use in a terror attack…

Of course not. No doubt it was intended solely for his personal use.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:39 | link | comments

Back from the dead: It's a miracle!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:30 | link | comments

Scare mongers: Muslims are upset that Islam is being dragged into the campaign to scare people away from voting for Obama. From the San Jose Mercury News:

Muslim rumors have dogged Barack Obama throughout this presidential campaign, but the political arrows flew fast and furious this week, leaving Maha ElGenaidi anxious that her community would be further wounded in the aftermath.

"The outcome of this game they're playing amongst themselves is possibly tragic for Muslims in America," said ElGenaidi, founder of the San Jose-based Islamic Networks Group.

American Muslims complain their faith is being used as a scare tactic, possibly inflaming prejudices already heightened by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the subsequent war and terrorist bombings. The recent ploys, leaders say, insinuate that simply being or associating with Muslims is sinister.

This week, a photo of Obama in a turban surfaced, flashing across television and computer screens coast to coast. At a Republican campaign rally in Cincinnati, a speaker repeatedly stressed his full name, "Barack Hussein Obama." And during Tuesday's debate, the Democratic front-runner was questioned about support from the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan.

The Muslim faith group also finds itself politically isolated. Though candidates have been courting voters in this tight race, none of the three top contenders has met with major Muslim groups. Neither, they say, have major interfaith groups and politicians rallied around them to loudly condemn the anti-Islamic strategies.

"It would be good if the president and leaders of both parties would say 'Enough. We're better than this,' " said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "It's disconcerting to me they haven't."

Republicans have criticized some of the tactics, as has the National Council of Churches. Muslim leaders say while the politicians' admonishments are needed, they fall short of the full-throated defense other religions would receive.

"They're not apologizing for the bigotry, but rather it's unstatesmanlike to insult each other," ElGenaidi said.

John McCain repudiated the conservative radio host at the Cincinnati rally who kept referring to Obama by his full name and said he would "saddle up next to Hezbollah." The Republican candidate said it was wrong to disparage Obama or Hillary Clinton's integrity.

And after complaints, the Tennessee Republican Party altered a memo that used Obama's full name and a photo of him in tribal African garb, inaccurately labeled as "Muslim" dress.

Bill Hobbs, spokesman for the Tennessee GOP, said he didn't commonly use someone's full name and he couldn't remember why he made an exception for Obama. Obama is named after his late father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. As for the photo, Hobbs found it on the Internet and it seemed relevant.

"The photo seemed to fit the issue being discussed - whether his policies would lean toward Israel," Hobbs said, "or whether he'd lean toward Israel's Muslim-dominated neighbors who are enemies of Israel."

He acknowledged that Obama isn't Muslim - he's a member of the United Church of Christ - but noted it was understandable that people questioned his religious affiliation. "His name, not just his middle name, brings that up, especially after Sept. 11," Hobbs said.

ElGenaidi wonders if such moves would be tolerated against another religious group. Imagine the furor, she said, if photos of a candidate wearing a yarmulke were circulated, along with whispers of, "You know his middle name is Jewish."

During the debate Tuesday, Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton took pains to "denounce" and "reject" Farrakhan for his past anti-Semitism. They've also met with Jewish groups and stressed their support for Israel.

Despite their concerns, Muslim leaders say they're careful not to overly criticize the candidates themselves.

"We know these candidates will do what they have to do to get voted in," said Safaa Ibrahim, director of the Santa Clara chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Because there's such a negative outlook on Muslims, middle America would not smile upon candidates that are sensitive to Muslim issues."…

Hurray for “middle America”—the last line of defence against the kind of “sensitivity” that results in creeping (also galloping) sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:57 | link | comments

Cute: The front of the Globe and Mail's review section has this header about the new Portman/Johansson flick --"Boleyn for dollars."

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:38 | link | comments

“Deep” thinker: The Globe and Mail’s resident aging radical, Rick Salutin, offers another of his embarrassing rants, today on the subject of Prozac, “change,” and Barack Obama:

In praise of placebos

It's been a Prozac world for 20 years now, yet an international team of researchers has just concluded that Prozac is no more effective than placebos or sugar pills. This is big news, considering all the lives in which antidepressants are lodged.

It's not an inherently negative finding. It doesn't mean Prozac doesn't work. Lots of people "improve" when they take it. But they feel about as good when they take placebos, which they think are Prozac.

This is complicated. Could you just take placebos, if your doc prescribed them, and get relief? No. Because placebos work when you think they're Prozac, which you think works. And if people stopped taking either, they'd stay depressed, whereas they now feel better.

It's a bit like organized religion. Almost any version seems to lighten people's load. So why can't they just tolerate other religions, letting them work for other people? Because often, it seems, if you aren't sure your faith is the "true" one, and others are false, then it won't work for you either.

Of course drug companies are defiant and say the study ignores clinical experience. But no one denies the experience. It's just that it isn't the ingredients in the antidepressants that produce the results, it's something else. What might that be? How about - hope? The doc says, "Take this, it should help." People yearn to get better - and SHAZAM! What does it prove? People want change, they need hope. It's the Obama effect!...

As for the restorative effect of Barack Obama, it may be "working" because expectations of actual change in the world have been ratcheted down so far that people are ready to settle for a strong feeling of hope for change, a feeling that change is merely possible, full stop. This seems to be an era of feelings and mood swings in politics, rather than action. What I've never got about fervid right-wingers is why they care so much who's in power. It doesn't affect their real lives - even if it's a Clinton or Chrétien. Yet they need to feel their side has won and that the dark side hasn't.

This kind of internalized politics may be just as well for Barack Obama, if he gets to be president, since there are vast limits on what any president can do.

Profound social change tends to be based on mass movements, such as civil rights, anti-war or labour movements - with vast numbers of ordinary people beavering away. I know the term is used for the Obama campaign, but it looks a lot like a sugar pill to me.

My letter:

Rick Salutin mentions new research showing that the anti-depressant Prozac—which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary—is no more effective than a placebo. At the same time, though, he wants us to swallow an even older, more radical “remedy”, one which dates back to the 1960s: the notion that we’re in desperate need of “profound social change.”

I’m not really sure what kind of “profound social change” Mr. Salutin is seeking; for some reason, those who advocate “change”—whether it’s “profound” or the shallower, Obama-esque variety—often tend to be fuzzy on the details. But for the short-and-long-term health of our society—which, all in all, is in pretty good shape—it’s probably best to opt for incremental “changes” rather than “profound” ones: History has shown that, all too often, “profound social change” can devolve into chaos and tyranny.

If Mr. Salutin finds the “go-slow” approach too depressing, he could always try taking a placebo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments (2)

Buh bye, mass gasser: "Chemical Ali" is toast--or will be soon:

Saddam’s “cuz”, Chem Ali, was defanged.

Though like him, he harrumphed and harangued.

But alack and alas, er,

Ali was a gasser,

And now he is going to be hanged.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments

Dear Jews: Simon Rocker in The Jewish Chronicle picks apart a letter from “Muslim scholars” which, at first blush, seems to be quite conciliatory. In fact, as Rocker reveals, it’s about as conciliatory toward today’s Jews as Muhammad was to the Jews of his time:

Let me be clear from the start that this is not a criticism of the interfaith intentions of the letter from Muslim leaders covered in today’s news pages; rather, a critique of its inaccuracies, lack of sources and methodology, and the questionable overall efficacy of such a letter. I am fully aware of the several important Muslim names that are given as allegedly having written this letter (issued through the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations in Cambridge).

However, it is unclear whether these

“Muslim scholars throughout the world” are generally supporting good relations between Jews and Muslims, or this particular letter with its naïve and condescending approach.

Having spoken with several Muslim academics, it seems to me that this letter is more appropriate as an RE essay by a 15-year-old than a scholarly letter addressed to “rabbinic leaders and the wider Jewish communities of the world”. To assume that the problems of Muslim-Jewish relations worldwide can be resolved simply because we all worship a Unity, give charity and eat kosher and halal food is intellectually offensive equally to both sides.

There are a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the letter. However, there is only room to deal with a few here. The letter quotes several passages in English from the Qur’an to show the positive and ecumenical approach of Islam towards Jews and Christians. However, the letter does not inform us which particular translation has been used, which, firstly, leads to confusion regarding the numbering of the verses in different editions; and, secondly, the translation at times seems to be a free translation.

More importantly, for a letter supposedly written by scholars, it quotes the verses out of context — historical, geo-political, theological, and hermeneutical. This means, regrettably, that almost all the verses quoted are from chapters 2, 3 and 5, which contain the majority of the strongest anti-Jewish verses in the Qur’an. Therefore, each quote, put in its correct context, is actually an admonition of the Jews or the Children of Israel.

One example is Qur’an 2:62, the verse that opens the letter. This verse, which is part of the narrative of the rebellion of the Israelites against God during their wanderings in the wilderness, was part of the verses revealed during the period of strife and animosity between the Muslims and Jews in Medina. It shows similarities between the actions of the Jewish tribes of Medina and their Israelite ancestors.

The verse is preceded by Q.2:61 “And so, ignominy and humiliation overshadowed them, and they earned the burden of God’s condemnation: all this because they persisted in denying the truth of God’s messages and in slaying the prophets against all right: all this because they rebelled [against God], and persisted in transgressing the bounds of what is right” (The Message of the Qur’an, Translated and Explained, by Muhammad Asad).

No one denies that any positive interaction at any level between Muslims and Jews should be appreciated and supported. But if we genuinely want to appeal to the religious leaders and academics, which this letter intends to do, we need to have the academic courage and rigour to be impartial. Only then can we move on.

The letter also refers to a few hadiths (traditional sayings of the Prophet). The only one quoted with the source reference is about the Prophet standing up respectfully when the bier of a Jew is passing. Once again the letter gives an imaginative punch line translation.

When the companions of the Prophet ask him why he stands up in respect for a dead Jew, the letter quotes: “Is he not a human being!” The Arabic text of al-Bukhari reads: “Whenever you see a funeral procession, you should stand up.” Again, I question the scholarly value of jazzing up of classical text for effect. It could be misunderstood and misleading.

There are no source references for the other iconoclastic hadiths — unusual for a scholarly letter. One in particular is astounding. The letter states that Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet worked for a Jew: “She would spin for him in return for grain.” No one I spoke with has ever heard of such an illogical hadith. She was married to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin. By that time the Prophet was a wealthy man. Why should his daughter perform such a menial task in return for food?

The letter refers to the Jewish wife of the Prophet. He married one of the captured women after the fall of Khaybar, the Jewish stronghold near Medina. The letter calls her “Sofia”. Sofia is a Greek name; her name was Safiyya. It is an Arabic name with a completely different root to that of Sofia. It beggars belief that a Muslim scholar would make such a mistake.

The paragraph on the Constitution of Medina — the agreement between Muhammad and the Jewish and Arab tribes— suffers from the familiar absence of sources, free translation and re-adjustments of phrases and sentences. Furthermore, it is academically imbalanced. It fails to make any mention of the confiscation of land and property and exile of the two Jewish tribes of Medina and the beheading of all the males of the third tribe of Banu Qurayza, whose women were sold into slavery. This evasive approach and lack of academic rigour does not encourage bilateral trust and genuine dialogue.

Finally, no Muslim-Jewish talk or article is complete without the vapid and superficial reference to Maimonides, and this letter is no exception. The usual claims for Maimonides being the physician to the great “Sultan Salah-ud-din” abound, but this letter also states “philosophical exchanges between Ibn Rushd and Maimonides” without giving any source reference.

This is not surprising since this is a complete fantasy; no such document has ever existed. It seems to me that the information on Maimonides was gathered more from a Google search than academic research.

There is no shortage of Islamic scholars in the UK, I have known and worked with many of them for almost two decades. There is also no doubt about the goodwill from the majority of British Muslims. This “open” letter and its timing do not sit comfortably with all of that. One wonders.

One does indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:54 | link | comments

Paper tiger: When he held the post of UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan was well known for papering over some unpleasant truths. Like, say, ones pertaining to a certain oily little Saddam scam.

No surprise, then, that in his current guise as elder-statesman-at-large--he's currently trying to straighten out some tribal differences in Kenya--Kofi is still trying to paper things over.

Maybe he should just stay home and count his paper money.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:39 | link | comments

Palestinian cannon fodder:

Maybe not. The "cannon-fodder" seems to be balking at its assigned role.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:15 | link | comments

Avi at A-J: It’s official! Clueless Ceeb spieler and Hirsi Ali scourge Avi Lewis has jumped ship and signed up with Al Jazeera. I know for a fact that his parents, Michele Landsberg and Stephen Lewis, are inordinately proud of their spawn. (Well, the apple certainly didn’t fall far from that tree.)

In “honour” of Avi’s new position, I’ve revised my song parody about the Arab TV station, a haven for useful Western media idiots. No doubt Avi will fit in there just fine.

 

Come on boys, we’re gonna paint the news,

And Al that Jaz.

We’re gonna praise some ‘rabs

And then we’ll slam some Jews,

And Al that Jaz.

Start your day with sights that will engage.

It’s sure to stir the blood, inspire fits of rage.

But then we’ll say again

It’s just like CNN

And Al that Jaz.

 

Come on friends, those scenes from Palestine

And Al that Jaz,

Are gonna rev you up and really blow your mind,

And Al that Jaz.

Who’s to blame?

You know it’s hard to tell

If it’s America

Or if it’s Is-ra-el.

There’s a conspiracy

Behind your misery

And Al that Jaz.

 

Oh, we’re gonna scoop with an Osama tape,

And Al that Jaz.

Then go on to show you who decapitates,

And Al that Jaz.

Poke some fun at Arab despots;

See who shows up in our guest spots:

Someone who thinks just like you,

And Al that Jaz.

 

Hey, there, Av, we got a spot for you,

Here at Al Jaz.

We know that you’re in synch,

And you know you are, too,

With Al that Jaz.

That wife of yours is such a smokin’ chick.

And such a famous feminine apparatchnik.

But will she be allowed

To ever wear a shroud

And Al that Jaz?

 

Oh, just tune us in and then turn off your brain,

And Al that Jaz.

You will soon be hooked and singin' this refrain,

And Al that Jaz:

 “Golly, it’s so good to see ya,

Better than al-Arabiya.

We’re so queer for al-Jazeer’

And all that Jazz.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:31 | link | comments (2)

Delusions of totalitarian grandeur: The Shoa-denying Shia supremacist crows, "We're numro uno!"

Must be all that "peaceful" nuclear energy that's making him feel so empowered.

 

 

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:05 | link | comments

The price of “nice”: Conventional (Democratic Convention-al) wisdom holds that the world will “like” America a whole lot more once that nasty rabble-rouser, GWB, saddles up his horse and moseys off into the sunset. Victor Davis Hanson takes out a sharp object (his mind) and bursts that bubble. From RealClear Politics:

…Won't adversaries back off when the Christian cowboy George Bush rides back to Texas -- and we have a kinder, gentler commander-in-chief who offers hope, or at least change, to the world?

Hardly.

There are plenty of problems that both antedated George Bush and are likely to continue well after he's left office.

For starters, the next American president will have to deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia, which is proud and angry for reasons that go well beyond the Bush administration. Russia is flush with petrodollars, still smarting over lost empire and tired of lectures about human rights from impotent European states.

Iran, which repeatedly snubbed the efforts of the Clinton administration to normalize relations, will still want a bomb, will still intimidate neighbors and will still threaten Israel. Indeed, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Hitlerian fashion, has called the Jewish state "filthy bacteria" and promised to wipe it off the map. He didn't say these things because George Bush is president, and he won't stop when Bush is gone.

Sen. Barack Obama, who looks more and more every day like he'll be the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he'd be in favor of taking out "high-value terrorist targets" inside Pakistan on our own if the Pakistani government won't. But so far we haven't done that because Pakistan is nuclear and friendlier to jihadists than it is to us. That won't change, either.

Osama bin Laden's attacks on Americans also predated George Bush. The war on terror started only when we finally decided to strike back in 2001. And it will end only when we destroy the jihadists and alter the conditions that created them -- or give in and return to the earlier policy of inaction.

Long-term global challenges are bipartisan concerns -- neither caused by conservative Republicans nor solved by easy answers from liberal Democrats.

Should we guarantee the new independence of Muslim-dominated Kosovo, if Christian Serbia and its Russian patrons seek to get it back by force? If so, consider the chance of another bloody war inside Europe, and no appreciation for our help in Kosovo from the Muslim world.

Should we press China to clean up its trade practices and grant basic human rights to its own citizens? If so, be ready to see hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese-held U.S. government bonds sold off.

Should we extend formal diplomatic recognition to Iran and begin talks? If so, be prepared that, with even less worry, Tehran will accelerate efforts to get the bomb.

It is a cop-out to say George Bush caused all these problems. They loom large mostly for two reasons. One, the United States promotes global democratic capitalism, and our military ensures international free commerce in the air and on the seas. This bothers regional dictators and terrorists eager to carve out their own spheres of influence, regardless of who's sitting in the Oval Office.

Two, billions of people in India, Russia, China, Asia and Latin America, having copied American business and culture, are now doing better, and demand the same good lives we take for granted.

Our rivals suspect that we are played out, short of energy, long on debt, and hogging the world's resources. They see no reason to stop pushing just because of our past strength and reputation. They think the future is theirs, the past ours. And so all over the globe they will surely challenge the next president, however nice, to prove them wrong.

The question is: Will a “nice” president be up to the challenge?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:00 | link | comments

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Rami Khouri offers a very Motown-esque explanation to account for Muslim glumness. From The Muslim News (U.K.):

…A fascinating new global poll by the Gallup organization, covering societies with 1 billion Muslims, clearly reaffirmed something that those of us who live in Muslim-majority societies have long recognized as a prevailing reality: Muslims most resent the West's "disrespect of Islam" and are critical of many American policies, not American values. The commitment to democratic norms, even the definition of democracy, is virtually identical among Americans and Muslims, the poll found. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed have just published an important new book on the poll results, titled "Who Speaks for Islam."

Backed by massive polling data - not so new in itself, since other polls have shown similar results, but never on such a scale - they make a critically important point that cannot be over-emphasized: Muslims' sense that they and their religion are disrespected by the US leads to a widespread feeling of humiliation, and also of being threatened and controlled by others. This can spill over into radicalism in some cases.

The centrality of "respect" for Muslims, Arabs and others who resent American or Western double standards and mistreatment needs to be better appreciated. This is especially true if we wish to reduce global tensions and the violence now routinely practiced by the US armed forces and official and private armies throughout the Arab-Islamic world.

The good news is that this message is getting through to some Americans who make the effort to listen and understand, and in turn expect Arabs and Muslims to reciprocate the courtesy.  One example was the concluding review of the gathering by Brookings Institution Vice President Carlos Pascual. He acknowledged the "reinforcing paranoias" in both societies, affirmed the need for law-based regional and global orders that treat all people equally, and concluded that "respect" was the elusive point of convergence that could gather together the rights and aspirations of all concerned. This "call to coexistence," he said, requires reciprocal understanding, human capacity, good policies and action…

So you see, folks, it has nothing to do with global jihad in both its soft and hard forms. It’s all about the West “dissing” “Muslims, Arabs and others who resent American or Western double standards,” and how that can’t help but reinforce global “paranoias”. Give ‘em that full-blown Aretha treatment (“What you want/Baby I got/What you need/Do you know I got it?”) and, presto, reciprocal understanding and “peace” will prevail.

Of course, so, too, will Dar al Islam. But, hey, that’s a small price to pay for “peaceful” coexistence, right?

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

Hot zones: In an attempt to get a handle on a “home grown” problem, the Brits are getting set to “map” the areas of the country most prone to “extremism”. From the Daily Mail:

Every part of Britain will be mapped for its potential to produce violent Muslim extremists under a new strategy drawn up by senior police officers, it has emerged.

 

At its counter-terrorism conference in Brighton this week, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) approved a blueprint for how to prevent al Qaeda recruiting fresh supporters.

The 40-page document aims to stop extremist ideas gaining hold in schools, colleges, prisons and over the internet.

It includes advice for parents on how to stop their children searching for jihadist websites.

"The internet is a potential area where a tendency towards violent extremism can be exploited..." it reads.

"Parents and carers have a need for advice on how to control access for their children and to understand what defines the legal-potentially illegal divide."

The strategy also outlines details of an anti-extremist agenda to be included at every level of state-maintained education from primary school to university by 2008-09.

It speaks of a "pressing need" to develop relationships between the police and the education sector "at every level" with regard to preventing violent extremism.

It also warns: "Research last year revealed that the police service would be very low on the list of agencies that the Muslim community would turn to if they had concerns about a member of their community who embraced violent extremism...

"The police service has a long way to go in building a relationship of trust around these issues."

The strategy will be rooted in "neighbourhood profiling" to establish what is normal and what is unusual behaviour.

An unnamed senior source told The Guardian that it was important to map areas of the country for their tendency to produce extremists…

Let me take a stab at it: the “neighbourhoods” (no-go areas?) with a higher concentration of radical mosques, jihad-spewing imams and impressionable Muslim youngsters are more likely to be spawning grounds for “extremism.”

There, and it didn’t cost the British government a farthing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments (1)

The man who should be Archbish: The Bishop of Rochester is as stalwart, brave and clued-in as his Archbish is invertebrate, craven and clueless. From FrontPage Magazine:

…Nazir-Ali’s father was a convert from Islam to Christianity, a decision that could have resulted in his death in Pakistan .  After himself becoming an Anglican bishop in Pakistan at age 35, Nazir-Ali had to resettle in Britain because of Islamist death threats. So this bishop has few illusions about the threat posed by creeping Islamization.  Nor is he a stranger to the possibly lethal consequences of challenging radical Islam.    

"If you disagree, that must be met by counter-arguments, not by trying to silence people,” he explained to The Telegraph about the latest dangers his remarks have aroused.  “It was a threat not just to me, but to my family. I took it seriously, so did the police. It gave me sleepless nights."

For many of Britain’s cultural and religious elites, Britain’s Islamic minority is merely an opportunity to burnish their multicultural credentials and atone for the real and imagined sins of Christendom across the centuries.  Just as British appeasers of 70 years ago sanctimoniously believed themselves virtuous because of their zeal to accommodate fascism, today’s multiculturalists are smugly blind.  They want to pretend that radical Islam will neatly fit into their dreams of a beautiful social mosaic.  They are loath to admit that multiculturalism is the hobby of Western liberals, who can freely enjoy their hobby only thanks to Western concepts of tolerance.   That which they seek to appease in fact would ultimately smash their rainbow kaleidoscope, if permitted the power.    

"The recovery of Christian discourse in the public life of this nation is so important,” Nazir-Ali told The Telegraph.  “It's that discourse that will allow us in a genuine way to be hospitable to those who come here from different cultures and religions."   Having come from the Global South, the Bishop of Rochester knows that humanity is overwhelmingly religious by nature.  Europe ’s brief flirtation with aggressive secularism will not persist.  "The real danger to Britain today is the spiritual and moral vacuum that has occurred for the last 40 or 50 years,” the bishop warned.  “When you have such a moral vacuum something will fill it.”

Nazir-Ali prefers Britain ’s historic religious traditions to the traditions of his native Pakistan :   "If people are not given a fresh way of understanding what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a Christian-based society then something else may well take the place of all that we're used to and that could be Islam."  

The Telegraph reported that many Church of England clerics rallied to defend their chief prelate, Rowan Williams, when he was criticized around the world for his voluminous pontifications about possible civil recognition of Islamic Law.   Few senior prelates offered a similarly robust defense of Nazir-Ali, despite the death threats against him. 

"I don't court popularity,” Nazir-Ali told The Telegraph.  “If I say something it's because I think it's important enough to say it.”  But he is perplexed by the reluctance of other British bishops to address the Islamization of some British cities that even some British civil authorities openly acknowledge:  "I can't guess why they haven't talked on the issue. I'm not responsible for other people's consciences." When The Telegraph asked if Britain’s religious officials are silent due to cowardice, the Bishop of Rochester responded:  "You'd have to ask them."

Nazir-Ali told The Telegraph that Islamist teachings about polygamy, women’s rights and freedom of belief would undermine British civil concepts about equality:  "People of every faith should be free within the law to follow what their spiritual leaders direct them to, but that's very different from saying their structures should replace that of the English legal system because there would be huge conflicts."

The Bishop of Rochester speaks clearly when many of his fellow Church of England clerics, presiding over empty museum-churches, prefer to obfuscate.   But having fled his native land once in the face of Islamist threats, Nazir-Ali seems undeterred.

Reminds me of another encounter/collision between a brave individual whose family lived under oppressive sharia and who became champion of freedom, and a clueless lefty who couldn’t even begin to fathom what such oppression is all about.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments (2)

Jews for Bambi: Apparently “he shares many of Judaism's values, including social justice, education, and family.” Good to know. In an ideal world, these “shared values” would be enough to offset the fact that he attends a racist, black power church whose leader, Bambi’s “spiritual advisor,” is a big fan of loopy NOI Jew-hater, LouFa (his rapper name). In the real world, however, the one that we’re stuck with, these “values” are likely to colour his perceptions of the Jewish state--and not in a good way.

Condi Rice, whose experiences growing up in pre-Civil Rights-era Mississippi, caused her to misperceive the problems and misrepresent the Palestinians as being the new Negroes, was bad enough. One cannot even begin to imagine what kind of fresh hell is in store for Israel when Bambi brings his “spiritual values” to the perpetual “peace process.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

Kent’s condensation: A friend sent me this—former TV news anchor and would-be Tory M.P. Peter Kent’s thumbnail sketch of the Canadian press:

The Globe and Mail is read by people who think THEY should run the country...

La Presse is read by people who USED to run the country...

The Ottawa Citizen is read by the WIVES of people who think THEY run the country...

Le Devoir is read by people who think the country ought to be run AS ONE COUNTRY...and ANOTHER country...

The Toronto Star is read by people who are convinced this country IS run by another country...

The Financial Post and Report on Business are read by people who OWN the country…

The National Post is read by people who THINK they need a few more seats to run the country better… 

And, the Toronto Sun is read by people who DON'T CARE who runs the country..so long as the Leaf's win..and there's a little cheesecake and beefcake…somewhere in the paper.

I would add one more item to the list—a broadcaster, not a newspaper, this time: The CBC is watched/listened to by people who think that anyone who runs the country should have a world view that’s in synch with the Ceeb’s. (Which is why they’re so miffed that Stephen Harper and his “scary” Tories are still in charge.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:00 | link | comments

A timely quote: In a blog post about the sources of Muslim zaniness re: “the Jews,” historian Andrew Bostom cites a quotation by Maimonides:

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation…All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

Maimonides made that statement 850 years ago: He could just have easily been commenting on the situation today, when the Canadian Jewish establishment finds it necessary to humble itself—and sell out basic Western values—in order to curry favour with Muslim faux-moderates, and the Israeli establishment continues to extend a hand of peace, even as the Islamic Jew-loathers laugh at such fecklessness, and stir up the strife and sedition meant to bring about Israel’s demise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:30 | link | comments

(B)arf!: When last we heard from the Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross, he was breathlessly recounting how Palestinians in Gaza had formed themselves into a human chain to engage in a radical new tactic: peaceful protest.

How very John Lennon/Mahatma Gandhi of them.

My letter to the Star:

I can understand why Oakland Ross would want to make such a fuss about a peaceful protest in Gaza. In light of the usual commotion there—bloody civil unrest, rockets being hurled into Israel, barriers to Egypt being toppled—such behaviour is so atypical that it falls into the “man bites dog” category of news. I’m guessing that’s also the reason why, on the same day, a peaceful protest in Toronto which rallied an estimated 2,000 people to support Sderot, the Israeli city which for the past seven years has found itself in the crosshairs of Palestinian Qassam rockets, rated nary a mention in your paper.

A report about thousands of Israel supporters rallying peacefully to draw attention to a war crime—the tormenting of civilians though daily bombardment; children being purposefully targeted and killed: Ho hum. Just another one of those “dog bites man” stories, I suppose.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:19 | link | comments

Not every Anglican is a squish like the Archbish: I was surprised and delighted to find this.

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

Creative spin: When I heard Toronto’s new Israeli consul-general, Amir Gissin, at one of those lunch ‘n’ learn thingys at a downtown law firm not long ago, he was energized by his “new” idea for sprucing up Israel’s tattered image. The idea: “branding.” I won’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say that Gissin asserted that the only way ahead was to market Israel based on a number of key messages. The first message: “Israel is entrepreneurial.” Apparently, the world is supposed to be so blown away by its creative zest (“Did you know that the cell phone was invented in Israel?”), that it would forthwith be embraced by the international community.

My problem with the idea—aside from the fact that it ignored current realities as well as those associated with the “longest hate”: Some of the folks to whom you’re touting Israel’s creativity reached the height of their creativity back in the Middle Ages. Their last truly creative endeavour of note—and one they’re still mighty proud of, I might add—was when, quite some years ago, they supposedly invented algebra. And these folks don’t give a fig about the Jewish state’s contributions to humanity, impressive though they may be. They want Israel gone a.s.a.p. because it’s the Jewish state.

In FrontPage Magazine, the director of a news agency takes a look at Muslim “creativity,” i.e. the marked lack thereof:

…BetBasoo: Let me preface my remarks by saying that I do not claim that Muslims have made no accomplishments. Individual Muslims have been successful in the full range of the human scientific and artistic endeavor. But a closer examination of these successes reveals that they came about because these individuals stepped outside of the Muslim realm. For example, today Muslim scientists and scholars are trained in the West. I claim that Islam is not conducive to the pursuit of rational inquiry, and when Islam asserts itself, it borrows, co-opts and ultimately, when time has passed and memory forgotten, claims that these borrowed and co-opted things were originated by Muslims, not by the native cultures that preceded the Muslims.

If something cannot be so expropriated, it is often destroyed. The most recent example was the Taliban's destruction of the 2500 year-old Buddhist statues in Afghanistan . In Iran , the UNESCO world heritage sites, Pasargadae and Persepolis , are threatened by the construction of the Sivand dam, and the Mullahs simply don't care, though they claim the water line will be below these cities, which date back to 560 B.C..

In Iraq , history text books teach that the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians were in fact Arabs -- never mind that these civilizationsexisted a good 5600 years before Arabs/Muslims came into Mesopotamia .

In the Middle East it is nearly impossible to separate Islam from Arabs, they are two sides of the same coin. Hence, if you are an Arab, you must surely be a Muslim, and your accomplishments as well. If you are not a Muslim, then you need to be.

In India , over 3500 Hindu temples have been occupied and converted to Mosques, the most famous being the Taj Mahal. In Kosovo, under the auspices of the UN "peace" keeping force, over 600 Serbian churches and monasteries have been occupied or destroyed by the Muslim Kosovars. Kosovo is the most important religious center for the Serbians.

FP: So how about Muslim claims of accomplishment that aren’t real?

BetBasoo: Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing to do with. Arabic numerals? From India . The concept of zero? From Babylonia . Parabolic arches? From Assyria . The much ballyhooed claim of translating the Greek corpus of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian Assyrians, who first translated to Syriac, then to Arabic. The first University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988 A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had three departments: Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. Al-Azhar only teaches Theology.

Speaking of medicine, Muslims will claim that medicine during the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world. That is correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu family, Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of doctors, who were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for nearly 200 years.

There are many more examples, but I think these are enough to make the point.

FP: Why, in your view, does Islam fail in producing scholars and thinkers?

BetBasoo: It is a bold assertion to say that Islam fails in producing thinkers. Yet one is lead to this conclusion by a historical examination of Islamic civilizations. The putative "Golden Age of Islam", the Abbasid period, has been shown to be not the product of Muslims, but of their Christian subjects. In his book How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, O'Leary's lists 22 scholars and translators during the Golden Age of Islam; 20 were Christians, 1 was a Persian, and 1 was a Muslim. This covers about a 250 year period. This "Golden Age", incidentally, came to an end after the Caliphs had forcefully converted enough Christians to Muslims (through the Jizya) that the Christian numbers fell below the critical threshold needed for sustaining the intellectual enterprise.

Given that this intellectual enterprise during the Abbasid period was the product of Christians, we ask the question: has there ever been an Islamic golden age? There was none during the rule of the Mamluks, who overthrew the Abbasids. Can we say the Ottomans, who followed the Mamluks, ever had a golden age?

In his book Religion of Peace, Robert Spencer has offered a penetrating and incisive analysis of why Islam fails to produce thinkers. His explanation is theological and theoretical. I will summarize it now and then give my own complimentary explanation, which is practical.

According to Robert Spencer, the Muslim god, Allah, is capricious. He is not subject to any laws and can, in fact, change laws arbitrarily without restraint. Quoting the Pope, Spencer says:

“for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”

Spencer continues:

"the Pope was not so much saying that in the Islamic view Allah would command his people to do evil, but that he might change the content of the concepts of good and evil. In other words, Allah would always enjoin “justice and kindness,” but what constitutes “justice and kindness,” just as what constitutes “innocent blood,” might change."

And

"He [Allah] was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. 'He cannot be questioned concerning what He does'" (Qur’an 21:23 ).

And

"Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was al-Ghazali, the philosopher that the authors of the Open Letter recommend to the Pope, who 'denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.' He adds that 'Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom.' Social scientist Rodney Stark adds that 'it would seem that Islam has a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science. Not so. Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah’s freedom to act.'"

Thus there is no incentive for Muslims to pursue rational inquiry, since any results obtained can be invalidated by Allah at his whim…

Interesting that the marked absence of  rational inquiry and its resulting creative fruits hasn’t hampered their ability to “brand” themselves as being highly “creative.” Mr. Gissin: please take note.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments (2)

Tinkering with the text: Great news! Those misogynistic, supremacist doctrines—the ones calling for the stoning of adulterers and perpetual warfare until the kafir submits—are getting an update. From the Beeb:

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

'Reformation'

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion…

I have a feeling it’s going to take a little time for a full-blown  Reformation to kick in (especially since, while the Turks may be able to “reinterpret” the Hadith, they’re no way to “revise” the foundational document; as every good Muslim knows, that text is perfect and thus unassailable). In the meantime, my attitude toward Islamic law remains the same as that of the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof when he was asked to recommend a blessing for the Czar. To paraphrase: “May God bless and keep sharia…far away from us.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:11 | link | comments (4)

Rally for Sderot: A very emotional evening yesterday—Toronto’s Rally for Sderot. More than 2,000 people, many of them teenagers and young adults, crowded into the ballroom on a downtown hotel. They were there to show solidarity with the Israeli town, a mile from the Gaza border, that, for the past seven years—that’s right, seven years!—has been bombarded by Palestinian Qassam rockets. All told, about 9,000 have fallen on the city in that time, an accurate count since every missile that falls is collected, catalogued and stored. In a live hook-up from Sderot, we saw the room where missiles lay, now inert and harmless, on shelves, a chilling archive of death and destruction.

But what damage those projectiles have wrought! What a toll they have taken on the lives of men, women and children, parents and families, who spend their lives waiting for the next “tzevah adom”—“code red.” Once the siren has been sounded, they have up to 15 seconds—and sometimes as few as five seconds—to seek shelter; sometimes, there’s no warning at all, and a wayward bomb (they have no guidance systems and, like chips, fall where they may) drops on and destroys your home.

And yet, there they are and there they remain—defiant, resolute, determined to hold their ground whatever the cost, because they refuse to let Hamas, a gang of evil-Jew-hating, jihadi thugs, chase then from their land—land that is rightfully theirs. It was both inspiring, and hugely depressing, to see the faces of the people of Sderot. They, too, had gathered for the rally, in the recently-opened community centre that doubled as a bomb shelter, built with funds donated by Toronto and Canadian Jews. It was 3 a.m. their time, on an especially difficult day, one that had seen a young child severely injured by rocket fire. Despite the advanced hour, they had filled the hall, cheered to see us in Toronto, cheering for them and waving our Canadian and Israeli flags. They told us of their fears, and the physical and emotional price they exact; teenagers in the audience, beautiful, spirited, yet tired of living under siege, wanting only to live a “normal” life. A woman sitting on the stage, a nurse who was born in Sderot (a community founded in 1951) recounted her recent brush with death; how, without any warning, a Qassam rocket made a direct hit on her house and how, miraculously, she her four-year old son and his five-year-old playmate managed to survive. We also heard from a mother direct from a home in Sderot. She was sitting in bed with her kids—she has six—and explained how the entire family sleeps in that one bedroom, “the safe room.” And, perhaps most movingly, a choir of Sderot teenagers performed "Al Kol Eyleh”—“On All These”—a song that describes how Israelis accept what life hands them, the bitter along with the sweet. (An amusing aside—because I, too, try to take the bitter with the sweet: as we were waiting for the event to begin, some jazzy music was being piped into the ballroom. The first song: “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” Given the reason we were all there, it may not have been the most sensitive song choice, but I have to admit it did appeal to my somewhat ghoulish sense of humour.)

There were a number of addresses from both sides of the live feed, but I will mention only two, both from the Toronto end: Israel’s consul-general, Amir Gissin, and the keynote speaker, Alan Dershowitz.

I mention Gissin not because anything he said was particularly inspiring—although he did praise the Toronto Jewish community for once again leading the way in support of Israel. (Yay us: we come through every time.) I mention him because of the weasely way he supported the Israeli’s government disgusting lack of action (only now, for instance, has it decided to spend money to fortify Sderot roofs—the least it could do), how he validated seven years of doing nothing to prevent the missiles from falling and how, in fact, the wimps and wishful thinkers who’ve been running the joint virtually guaranteed that the reign of missile terrorism would continue—and get even worse—when they decided to leave Gaza. Shame on you, Mr. Gissin, for spouting the government’s indefensible line.

I wasn’t taking notes, so I can’t quote chapter and verse from the Dershowitz speech. I can tell you it was thrilling—angry, passionate, emotional—an oratorical masterpiece which, unlike the empty oratory of B. Obama, was chock-full of content. Some highlights:

·         What’s being done to Sderot is a war crime, but for seven long years the international community has refused to acknowledge it as such, and has instead focused its efforts on condemning Israel for its defensive actions.

 

·         He was scathing in his criticism of UN Human Rights diva Louise Arbour, noting that she loves spending time in Lebanon and Gaza, but hasn’t once visited Sderot. He issued a challenge to her to accompany him during his next visit there, in three weeks.

 

·         The usual loathsome suspects—the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch—also came in for a lashing. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you why.

 

·         He noted the unfairness of the world’s double standard: Every other nation is allowed to defend itself except Israel. Russia can carpet-bomb Chechnya and the world doesn’t say boo. But let Israel harm a hair on the chinny-chin-chin or of a Palestinian—something which is unavoidable since the bad guys insist on using civilians as “human shields”—and the world goes ballistic. In defending itself, Israel kills fewer civilians than anyone else, but that’s still not enough to satisfy the international community, since Israel is held to an impossibly high standard.

 

·         What we are witnessing is a culture of death versus a culture of life. The terrorists (my one quibble is that he always called them terrorists, never jihadis) esteem death and martyrdom—especially the martyrdom of their own young children—as their highest value. Thus for them, terrorism is a win-win situation. They believe if they martyr themselves, it’s an instant ticket to Paradise, and if they get Israel to take action and defend itself against terrorism, it’s instant opprobrium for Israel. Heads they win; tails we lose.

 

·         He deplored the numbers game that’s going on—“What’s the big deal?” people keep asking him. “Only nine people have been killed.” “Only nine people,” he repeated several times. A number which doesn’t take in all the injuries, all the destruction, year after year after year of living in fear and living with stress. “Only nine people,” he said again. What will it take for the government to finally do something to stop the targeting of its civilians? A direct hit on a school bus? On a school? Is the government waiting for the death count to be sufficiently high before it feels justified in doing something? That’s outrageous. Far better to take action now, before more Jews are killed.

 

·         He challenged the leaders of the world's nations to put themselves in Israel’s place and ask themselves one question: “What would you do?” Would you allow your civilians to be sitting ducks, cannon fodder for terrorists? Highly doubtful. Like every other nation, Israel has the right to defend itself, even if that means some Arab lives will be lost.

 

·         He ripped to shreds the notion that Israel taking steps to counter Hamas (for example, by shutting off power to Gaza) is a form of “collective punishment.” The very idea is absurd, he said, akin to saying that WWII exacted “collective punishment” on the Germans. There are consequences for actions, and the Palestinians must face the consequence—and take responsibility for—electing Hamas. Same as the Germans had to face the consequences of electing Hitler.

 

·         Sderot is emblematic of Israel as a whole. As Sderot goes, so goes Israel, and, for that matter, so goes the West.

 

·         Quoting a Jewish prayer, he said that Jews must be “strong” before there can be peace. (Would that Israel’s government understood that message—the most crucial message. Because if it doesn’t, and it keeps on its present course, Israel cannot, it will not, survive.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:28 | link | comments (4)

Iran's willing executioners: "Iran wants to hang the Jewish state--and Germany and Austria are selling it the rope."

Update: Rope-seller in Tehran.

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

No comparison: Israel—a vibrant, creative, entrepreneurially-minded democracy—is booming. Iran—a vapid, destructive, Armageddon-minded totalitarian theocracy—not so much. From MEMRI:

…Iran is not poor by necessity; it is poor by choice. Billions of dollars of oil windfall profits were squandered on subsidies (including gasoline), a vast armament industry, including a clandestine nuclear program, and financing of terrorism in many hot spots of the world. Operating under the weight of U.N., but more potent, US sanctions, Iran is going through hard economic times despite the quintupling of oil prices in the last three years, and economic growth of about 6 percent in the last Iranian year (which ended in March 21, 2007). Inflation was running at more than 19 percent in 2007 compared with 12 percent in 2006, unemployment is high in general but extremely high among the 15-24 age group (estimated at more than 30 percent), 50 percent of the population is poor, and more than 20 percent live below the poverty line. Drug abuse is rampant, and hoards of intoxicated Iranians sleep on street pavements. Corruption is rampant, particularly among the Mullahs who are in charge of enforcing the rules of religious orthodoxy and religious piety. And, for all intents and purposes, the country is isolated.

And yet, all systems are still go for the Big Kaboom—and much of the world will cheer if it comes off. That’s because much of the world could care less that Israel is a vibrant, creative, entrepreneurially-minded democracy. They want it gone for one reason and one reason only: because it’s Jewish.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments

The lunacy of the left: Ha’aretz calls on the world’s only Jewish state to recognize the world’s newest Muslim one—a staging ground for the global jihad:

After half a century under Serbian sovereignty and nine years of autonomous rule under the aegis of the United Nations, Kosovo yesterday decided unilaterally to separate from Serbia, thus becoming the seventh country within the former Yugoslavia. The Belgrade government has said that it considers recognizing an independent Kosovo as undermining Serbian sovereignty. Although the Serbs constitute only about 5 percent of Kosovo's 2 million inhabitants, the Serbian leadership declared that Kosovo "will forever remain part of Serbia." NATO declared an alert, fearing the diplomatic tension would give rise to violent clashes.

The declaration of independence by the Kosovar parliament, like most of the political and security events in the Balkans in recent years, is dividing the international community. Russia demanded an urgent discussion in the UN Security Council in order to prevent the move. Countries including Spain, Greece and Cyprus, which are fighting separatist tendencies, are opposed to the declaration, arguing that the move is contrary to international law and constitutes a precedent that could threaten European security. In contrast, the United States and the leading members of the European Union, including Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy, are planning to recognize the new country by today.

Kosovo expects dozens of countries to recognize its independence. We have to hope that Jerusalem has properly weighed the reasons in favor of responding to the call of the new European state, in the face of pressure from Serbia. Although most of the residents of Kosovo are Muslims, the district has not identified with extremist Islamic tendencies and has kept a distance from Israel's opponents in the Arab world.

The Balkan experience has provided a cruel lesson in how difficult it is to repair national, ethnic and religious rifts. Joint sovereignty that lacks a social or political grounding does not erase historical tensions and cultural differences. Approximately 12,000 Albanians and 3,000 Serbians, who lived as neighbors for years, were killed in the bloody clashes that climaxed in 1998. Tens of thousands of Muslims fled or were expelled from their homes in what was described as ethnic cleansing. Only active intervention by the international community put an end to the violent conflict that caused an upheaval in central Europe, and Kosovo became a mandated area of the UN, under NATO military control.

Jerusalem's special relations with the U.S., its major ally, always have been a central factor in Israeli diplomacy. Washington's decision to recognize Kosovo makes it easier for Israel to do so, too. The struggle of the persecuted Kosovar people for independence is reminiscent of struggles by other nations for the right to self-determination. The State of Israel, which was established in the wake of the Jewish people's struggle for a national home, should stretch out a hand to other nations seeking self-determination.

Israel maintains diplomatic and economic relations with Arab and Muslim countries around the world. The government has a unique opportunity to stretch out a hand to the new state, and to prove that the Jewish state is not an enemy of the Muslims.

Yeah, that should do the trick.

A voice of sanity ‘splains why recognizing Kosovo is not in the West’s interests.

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

A brilliant disguise: By day, he’s “Clark” Soharwardy, who, is his guise as mild-mannered head of Muslims Against Terrorism has earned the admiration of the CJC and is solicited for his “expert” opinion by the Ceeb. By night, he’s “Superman” Soharwardy, head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, a caped crusader (er, sorry, unfortunate word choice—better make that “a caped Islamist”) who hauled Ezra Levant’s butt in front of the Alberta HRC because he dared to “blaspheme” the Prophet by printing some Danish Mo ‘toons.

The disguise is looking a bit threadbare these days, Syed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:09 | link | comments (1)

Rhyme time: The Globe and Mail reports on the latest craze sweeping Arab TV—competitive versifying:

ABU DHABI -- In the Arab world's answer to American Idol, the contestants carry prayer beads, the judges are tenured academics and the hostess wears a fuchsia abaya. It is Tuesday night and in a lavish theatre on the edge of Abu Dhabi, the live taping of Million's Poet, the most popular prime-time show in the Middle East, is about to begin.

Contestants are gathered in a green room, praying for God to bless them with a strong sense of rhyme and metre. The Crown Prince of Bahrain is in the audience. So are several of the ruling sheik's wives. Most of these poets come from poor Bedouin villages, where their ancient art of Nabati poetry - composed spontaneously and delivered in colloquial Arabic - was slowly dying. Tonight, they will perform for a live television audience and 70 million viewers, competing for a cash prize of one million dirhams ($275,000) and the greater goal of restoring their tribe's lost pride.

"This show is getting more response than soccer. More than soccer. Can you imagine that?" said Mahdi al-Wayli, a 33-year-old contestant from the village of Najan, Saudi Arabia.

Mr. al-Wayli's poetry is inspired by his two divorces and often lingers on the topic of lost love…

Better that than the topic of “kill the dhimmis who stole our land!”

My letter:

 

Re: Arabic TV takes a turn for the verse:

 

The new focus on verse is just dandy.

Glad so many “Longfellows” are handy.

‘Cause the usual cryin’

And kvetchin’ ‘bout Zion

Is hardly what I’d call “ear candy.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:33 | link | comments

The big chill: Remember that Twilight Zone episode where people were going crazy from the heat because the Earth was moving closer to the Sun, but the twist at end is that, in fact, the opposite is true and that a new Ice Age is underway?

Seems kinda prescient.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:42 | link | comments

Worlds apart: Diana West explains that a big difference between cons and libs is that cons are worried about the onward march/silent creep of sharia; libs think the whole thing’s been waaay overblown, since only a miniscule fringe of fanatics is involved. From the Washington Times:

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr. thinks there's "something peculiar" about conservatives who turn "Islamic extremism into a mighty ideological force with the power to overrun the world."

 

In a way, he's right. There is indeed something peculiar about portraying "extremism," Islamic or otherwise, as an ideological movement of sufficient mass and might to capture the world. After all, "extremism" is something "extreme" practiced by, well, "extremists." You know — a few far-out kooks on the margins. Why worry? There's always that disclaimer that we, as a post-September 11 society, invoke when we talk about "Islamic extremism" (or, plain "extremism," as President Bush now prefers): namely, that such "extremism" has nothing doctrinally or traditionally to do with Islam as practiced by the rest of the world's billion-plus Muslims. So much more reassuring to see things this way, at least as long as no one notes that Shariah (Islamic law) is advanced by "extremism" and Islam alike.

 

Of course, if Western society understands "extremism" merely as a marginal phenomenon, little wonder Mr. Dionne thinks it's "odd" that "so many" conservatives take it seriously — specifically, he writes, "Osama bin Laden's lunatic claims that he will build a new caliphate." Isn't bin Laden just an extremist fruitcake on Islam's fringe, who, naturally, makes "lunatic claims"? It should take not a war to subdue him, but a warden.

 

Personally, I doubt "so many" conservatives really take the prospect of a Shariah-governed world seriously — even a Shariah-governed Europe, or, for starters, a Shariah-governed Britain. And that goes whether such prospects are promulgated by a notorious al Qaeda jihadist or the Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, the threat to Western-style liberty posed not only by violent "extremism" but by creeping Shariah — with its dire implications for monogamy, women's rights, laws of evidence, freedom of belief and expression — has never even made it into the rationale behind Mr. Bush's so-called war on terror. It certainly hasn't been a topic on the campaign trail or most opinion pages. What seems to divide political thought these days is that conservatives still worry about "extremism" and liberals don't. Conservatives want to fight "extremism" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and liberals don't. Islam — even as a, yes, democratically spread conduit of liberty — shrinking Islamic law out of the political debate altogether.

 

Not surprisingly, then, Mr. Dionne thinks conservative concerns over mere "extremism" are a political liability that Democratic presidential candidates in their appeal to Americans bent on a leader "righting a jittery economy" and "rolling back extreme inequality" (did I miss the socialist takeover?) should exploit. Examining John McCain's stated belief that "radical Islamic extremists," or plain "extremists," pose the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century," Mr. Dionne argues that Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should be knocking this contention, which seems to strike the liberal columnist as fantastic. He writes: "Does [Mr. McCain] mean that in the year 2100, Americans will look back and say everything else that happened in the century paled in comparison with the war on terrorism?"

 

Well, who knows? If, for example, Europe has become an Islamic continent by century's end, as predicted by the oft-cited Bernard Lewis, they just might. They might also wonder why in tarnation their post-September 11 forbears (us) failed to note the obvious connection between "extremists" like bin Laden and the millions of ordinary Muslims who Islamized the European continent, which is a roughly shared devotion to Islamic law.

 

What's notable here is that Mr. Dionne, and, presumably some significant swath of liberal thought, don't see the war on terrorism as the stand-out priority even now. That's why he wants Democratic candidates attacking Mr. McCain on it. "If McCain's 'transcendent challenge' claim falls apart on close examination," he writes, "the best rationale he has for his election would disappear."

 

In a way, he's right again. There is a transcendent challenge facing Americans, but we can't rise to it if our leaders can't explain it…

 

But they can’t (or won’t), so it looks like we’ll have to DIO—Do It Ourselves.

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

What the CJC (and not just the CJC) needs to know (but doesn’t): By Andrew Bostom in FrontPage Magazine:

…More than a decade ago, Samuel Huntington observed appositely, and with a candor that is now exceedingly rare, 

The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture… 

During his recent debate with the cultural jihadist Tariq Ramadan, Ibn Warraq elucidated what is at stake should such Islamic supremacism prevail: 

The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing. 

…Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

The CJC should be trying to “build bridges” with people like Ibn Warraq, not with faux-moderates who helm outfits like the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. (You would think that that name alone would have been a dead giveaway, but some Jews are so needy, so desperate for Muslim approval, that they are willing to renounce Western values and grovel in abject dhimmitude before their “superiors”.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:53 | link | comments

Loopy Julie: During the pre-Oscar red carpet spectacle broadcast on Canadian TV, hosts Ben Mulroney and Jeanne Becker (showing a kilometre-long cleavage; a single engine aircraft could have taken off on that sucker) pulled aside Sarah Polley and Julie Christie. They were there together because Polley had written and directed the movie which had netted them both a nomination (Polley for best adapted screenplay; Julie for best actress). The two are now BFFs, separated by generations, but united, it seems, by their film and their devotion to lefty causes. Ben and Jeanne spoke to Sarah first, the usual blah blah blah about how thrilled she was to be there and blah blah blah about her firm friendship with Julie. Sarah then pointed to her new friend, resplendent in a shimmery, rust-coloured gown, and commanded the yackers to query her about a pin she was wearing, one of those ribbon loopy thingys. Was it for breast cancer? AIDS? Herpes? Female Genital Mutilation?

Don’t be silly.

It was to draw attention to the plight of—are you sitting down?—those prisoners of conscious still languishing in Gitmo. Yup, that’s right, Julie’s terribly concerned about all the incarcerated, She wants Gitmo shut down, “And I’m sure you are, too,” she said to her interlocuters.

What a shame that French chick scooped up the prize that everyone was so sure was going to go to Julie, and she never had a chance to display her loopy thingy to the captive audience.

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

Still dhimmi after all these years: A few days ago, Ezra Levant has a post about his exchange with CJC vice prez, Manuel Prutschi:

...And then I remembered a brief e-mail exchange that I had with Manuel Prutschi, the vice president of CJC, two years ago, right when the Western Standard was about to print the Danish cartoons as part of a news story.

Here are those e-mails. Some excerpts:

A number of us have been working painstakingly and over the long term to build bridges between the Jewish and Muslim communities here in Canada.  This effort has borne some fruit as attested, for example, by the positive reaction from various Muslim leaders to CJC’s press release.

This is a version of Stockholm syndrome, when one is so desperate to appease one's tormentors that one psychologically begins to side with them. There are milder versions of this -- it's why foreign diplomats are rotated amongst countries, lest they "go local" and begin to advocate for the country to which they have been dispatched, rather than for their home country.

The CJC was more interested in its "relationship" with various Muslim leaders, than with freedom of speech or the separation of mosque and state.

These are the words of moderate Muslims who merit our respect and encouragement. They are individuals like those you met at CJC’s civil discourse conference in Vancouver and whose contributions you undertook to publish in your magazine.

Moderates, eh? The list of moderates on the CJC's list includes Syed Soharwardy in the form of two of his personal organizations, the Islamic Supreme Council and the ironically named Muslims Against Terrorism. No true moderates supported the fatwa -- moderates like Tarek Fatah, or the columnist we ran regularly in the magazine, Salim Mansur believe in freedom and pluralism too much.

We all share with you your disgust at the vile antisemitic cartoons, articles, television series, movies, statements, etc., many of them directed at our beloved State of Israel, that pollute sectors of the Muslim world, including in the West. But in the specifically current Canadian context does the publication of the cartoons serve as an antidote?

You, better than most, know Hillel’s dictum not to do unto others what we would not want others to do unto us. In other words, two wrongs don’t make a right. 

Huh? The Western Standard was a news magazine, and these cartoons were news. To imply that the publication of them was some weird Zionist conspiracy to "get even" with anti-Semitism is, well, something that Syed Soharwardy would say.

My favourite line is Prutschi's final note to me:

Your decision leaves me regretful

The above certainly rang some bells. In my e-mail exchange with CJC’s CEO Bernie Farber two years ago on the occasion of the CJC issuing a news release condemning the publication of the ‘toons in Jyllands-Postum as  “inexcusably provocative, insensitve and disrespectful of Muslim believers,” much the same dhimmitude and cluelessness was on display. Here’s a portion of that correspondence (my bolds):

From Bernie:

Thank you for your email. We understand fully the troubling issues that you raise but we had to limit ourselves to what, as we saw it, was most necessary under the specific circumstances.

As a religious minority we know full well the effects of free expression when it goes beyond the acceptable even if it is not illegal. By speaking out we retain our credibility with other minorities and the larger society as well as strengthen our capacity to respond when we are vilified, and when that vilification comes from sectors of the Arab and/or Muslim communities we are in a position to call on our developed Muslim contacts for a counter-response. If we are hoping that moderate Muslims will have the strength and the courage to take on the radicals we must bolster their sense that they are not alone.

We note as well that we unequivocally condemned the violence and the fanning of the flames by the radicals and expressed our strong solidarity with the Danish people.

We believe that the CJC statement is carefully balanced. We add that we are beginning to receive positive reactions to our press release from those sectors of the Muslim community to whom we have been reaching out, as follows:

Co-ordinator of the Islamic Council of Imams-Canada: “Thank you very much for a well worded Press Release. I have circulated to member Imams. Please convey our appreciation to CJC officials.

Immediate Past President, Muslims Against Terrorism, Canadian Chapter [yes, there is such an organization]: Thank you Manuel. I have sent a press Release to the Toronto Star denouncing the Iranian cartoons of the holocaust. I hope they'll print it otherwise I'll send it to you directly.

Past Chair, Federation of Muslim Women: Thank you for the press release. I am just as appalled by the violence and the antisemitic rhetoric that some of the Govts, eg Iran are spouting. These are hurtful and sad times for all. I must admit that given the human right history of Denmark I was very surprised that this kind of racism should have originated there. I pray for peace and calm.

Salaam and shalom

President, Islamic Supreme Council of Canada: Thanks for your email. I am thankful for the statement that the Canadian Jewish Congress sent out. I agree with you that violence is not the path to resolve issues. Hatemongering cartoons are very provocative but Muslims should not resort to violence in protesting against these insulting and racist cartoons. I am not sure you saw our press release regarding Iranian newspaper. Here it is for your information. Thanks again. God willing, we will meet one day.

Provocation from Muslims will not be Tolerated

Iranian Newspaper Must not Publish Any Cartoons Against Holocaust

This is not an easy matter but in our tradition we are told; What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." Talmud, Shabbat 31a. and this is followed with "And what you hate, do not do to any one." Tobit 4:15. As Jews we are both the canary in the mine and a community that understands the pain of offense and derision. Our Rabbonim knew of what they spoke and we must try to work towards that highest ideal..

Thanks for your email. I hope this response gives you a different view of our goals as an organization on behalf of our community.

Cheers:

Email from me:

Bernie—The fact that you received positive feedback from the Muslim community shows that your statement sits very well with them. And no wonder. You are siding with them in the controversy. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean the CJC took the right position, merely the one that was most likely to placate Muslim leaders. The fact is that the Danish cartoons were printed without incident back in September. The matter would have ended there had Danish imams not taken it upon themselves to go to Lebanon, where they systematically distributed these cartoons to Islamic leaders, including Yousef al-Qawadari—along with many more that were far more inflammatory and would never have appeared in a Western newspaper (although cartoons such as these with a Jewish theme appear regularly in the Muslim press). That is what lit the spark. It is also interesting to note that the same cartoons had previously appeared in an Egyptian newspaper—where they elicited no reaction at all.

Thus, the entire cartoon controversy is obviously much larger than a Danish newspaper daring to contravene Muslim doctrine. (And there again, there is some dispute as to whether it actually is Muslim doctrine, there being no specific restriction in the Koran about depicting the Prophet.) It is about Islamic extremists wanting to stir up trouble and widen the chasm between cultures for their own religious and political purposes. And it seems to me that your empathetic response to “the pain of offense and derision” is woefully misguided because it unintentionally plays right into their hands.

As for the kind words from Canadian Muslim leaders—that’s all very nice. I doubt, however, that these folks have anything positive to say about the existence of a sovereign Jewish state on their “occupied” land. Nor have I heard a single Canadian Muslim leader come out against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the Holocaust and his desire to remove the “blot” of Israel from the map of the Middle East—an ambition he may be able to fulfill soon enough if the world continues to sit on its hands while Iran goes nuclear. And the existential threat to the Jewish state has just increased exponentially because the Palestinians have elected Hamas, a terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction. Let’s ask Canadian Muslim leaders, shall we, where they stand on that issue.

Obviously, I don’t have to tell you that these are incredibly perilous times for the Jews—and not just for the Jews. But, as the lesson of the Holocaust shows—tragically—acceding to the demands of fascists—whether secular or religious--can only pave the road to doom.

From Bernie:

Well we will have to agree to disagree on this one. We have had many emails form our community on this release and it is running about 3:1 in favour. Many understand that there are times for us to speak out even times when we walk arm in arm with Muslim Canadians as we continue to do in our battle for funding for Jewish and faith-based schools.

I am saddened to see those who wish to continue to polarize rather than within a Canadian context find some common ground that will eventually lead to civil discourse. We can vehemently disagree with many groups but in Canada we still must find a way to do so with dignity and emphasis.

Interestingly there were Muslim groups that spoke out against the Iranian President’s dictates including “Muslims Against Terrorism” and the “Muslim Canadian Congress”. It wasn’t necessarily what we would have written but it was a start...

Back then, of course, I had no idea that the guy in charge of Muslims Against Terrorism was the same guy who was in charge of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada; heck, I didn’t even know there was an Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, or anything about its Islamist-in-chief, Syed Soharwardy. What I did know what that it was madness, nay, suicide, to compromise basic Western values in a quixotic bid to get the province to pay for religious schools. I knew for sure it wasn’t going to fly because I had attended that anti-sharia rally at Queen’s Park the previous fall, and could see there was no way Ontarians, who had howled in outrage at the idea of sharia tribunals, were going to allow their hard-earned tax dollars to fund madrassahs.

But then, I’m no dhimmi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:36 | link | comments (2)

Bambi’s background: The NYT’s Nicholas Kristoff is worried that Bambi’s humble family origins will be held against him by "snobbish," "paranoid" enemies:

…Mr. Obama’s late grandfather is said to have been the first person in the area to wear Western clothes rather than just a loincloth. For a time he converted to Christianity and adopted the family name Johnson.

Later he converted to Islam, taking four wives. Senator Obama’s father, who apparently converted to Catholicism while attending a Catholic school, was also polygamous in keeping with local custom, taking an informal Kenyan wife who preceded Mr. Obama’s mother but remained a consort, according to accounts by local people and the senator himself.

The father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, was as much of a pathbreaker as his son. He went from herding goats in Kogelo to studying in Hawaii and at Harvard, even if his career as an economist was frustrated in part by ethnic rivalries.

Senator Obama barely knew his father and does not know his Kenyan relatives well. He has visited Kenya three times, most recently very briefly in 2006.

On his last visit, Mr. Obama visited two area schools that had been renamed for him. The intention in renaming the schools seems to have been partly to attract funding. One person after another noted pointedly that it was a shame that a school named for a great American should be so dilapidated.

Some of Mr. Obama’s innumerable relatives also see him as a meal ticket. They have made arrangements with a tour group to bring buses of visitors to have tea with Mama Sarah.

They are also trying to raise money from interviews with her. I had made arrangements to visit Mama Sarah weeks ago, and she had agreed to speak. But when I showed up, she said that her children had told her to keep quiet. Frantic phone calls. Fierce arguments. Hints that money might make an interview possible. I didn’t pay. I didn’t get the interview.

That’s O.K. Having seen the poverty in Kogelo, I’m less offended by the outstretched palms than awed by the distance that the Obama family spans.

Frankly, I worry that enemies of Senator Obama will seize upon details like his grandfather’s Islamic faith or his father’s polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values. But snobbishness and paranoia ill-become a nation of immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits, not their pedigrees. If we call ourselves a land of opportunity, then Mr. Obama’s heritage doesn’t threaten American values but showcases them…

Have no fear, Nick. Bambi’s “enemies” don’t really care if a candidate’s mishpacha comes from a shack in Kenya—or a log cabin in Illinois. Call them “paranoid,” but they’re far more concerned about a candidate’s philosophy than his provenance. And Obama’s affiliation with a church that holds Nation Islam bloviator Louis Farakhan in such high regard is very disturbing indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:10 | link | comments

A Streetcar Named Disaster: Caroline Glick minces no words in explaining why an independent Kosovo is a bad idea—for the West in general and Israel in particular. From JWR:

…The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for Al Qaida operations; that members of the ruling KLA have direct links to al Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and the rest of the Balkans in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including a training center in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service, BND confirmed that the 2005 bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "the man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo…who is second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48 percent of the population in 1948 to 92 percent today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78 percent of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims that are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs — some 250,000 people — have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the Roadmap Plan to a Two-State Solution in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international "Quartet" to serve as judges of both Palestinian and Israeli actions towards one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations towards the establishment of a Palestinian state…

Great: Tzipi, Ehud and the other clueless lefties have managed to turn Israel into Blanche DuBois.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:44 | link | comments

Rejection junkie: Ralph Nader announces his bid--his fifth--to become president of the U.S.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:47 | link | comments

A wake-up call: The Diana West of the West, the Calgary Herald’s Licia Corbella, urges Albertans grow a pair and not allow the clueless human rights types—and the Islamists—to strip them of their most basic right:

…The Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act is being used to stifle and trample our most fundamental human right. The human rights complaint brought against Ezra Levant, publisher of the now defunct Western Standard magazine, is proof positive of that.

For the past two years Levant has had the almost limitless power of the state grinding away against him, costing him about $100,000 for doing what he should have every right to do: publish news and images in a magazine. In this case, he published the now infamous Danish cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The cartoons caused murderous riots around the world -- mostly in countries where the citizens are kept illiterate and ignorant by their oppressive governments and are not free to live and speak as they please.

A Calgary imam and a Muslim group from Edmonton didn't like the cartoons, sought to have Levant first arrested and then, when that didn't work, they sicced the human rights commission on Levant to shut him up.

But Levant, to his credit, isn't the type to shut up or appease those who attack Canadian values, and so the threat to freedom of expression has become almost as big a news story as Britney Spears of late.

So, what can Albertans do to stop the tyranny of the state? Recently, the Calgary Herald editorial board had the honour of spending a couple of hours with one of the founders of human rights commissions, Alan Borovoy, the general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. He pointed out that as he and others toiled to establish Canada's first human rights commission "nobody ever foresaw this instrument being used to muzzle the expression of opinion." He says he worked to establish human rights laws primarily to stop discriminatory actions that denied housing or a job to a person based solely on their sex, race or other characteristic. "We didn't even fathom that this would be used this way and in fact there were then no provisions in human rights statutes comparable to the one that's been used here," he said, referring to Alberta.

The "provision" he's talking about was enacted in 1996 when the Alberta government added the following section to its now inappropriately named human rights act: 3(1) No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that . . . (b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt." Borovoy says speech that denies people equality is already well covered by the act and hate speech is covered by the Criminal Code. Borovoy therefore has a solution to restore human rights to Alberta's human rights commission.

"I think the removal of this section is necessary, but it may well not be sufficient," he warned. "I think there's no substitute -- as with so many other things -- for a lot of vigilance at the citizen level." Vigilance at the citizen level? He means you and I doing our bit to stand on guard for the values of this country, not the values of Saudi Arabia or Syria…

Power to the people—but not to the people who sit on, or support, HRCs!

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:05 | link | comments

More ROP hijinks: A suicide bomber has attacked a group of Shia pilgrims in Iraq, killing and wounding multitudes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:27 | link | comments

Text and subtext: The thing about a Harpoon Siddiqui column is that, to understand what he’s really saying, you have to become adept at reading between his lines. Today, for instance, Harpoon notes that “demographic changes” in Canada’s population are having an impact on our foreign policy. What he’s really saying, though, is that he wants “demographic changes”—i.e. the burgeoning numbers of Muslims both here and abroad—to have an impact on Canada’s foreign policy, since—what’s that old expression again?—oh, yeah, “Might makes right.”

But here, judge for yourself:

…The greater demands of different communities prompt some to say that "ethnics" had better keep "old country" troubles out of Canada. That's not realistic. We see second- and third-generation Canadians taking a keen interest in ancestral nations. And newer diaspora communities are even more connected to where they came from.

Their input into foreign policy is perfectly legitimate, so long as it is done peacefully and within rules. Those who don't, make little or no headway or run afoul of the law.

Some feel that Ottawa listens only to powerful groups with strong lobbies. It should not be so but is. Democracy belongs to those who actively participate in it. However, the Canadian polity is far more amenable to change than others.

Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy, a reflection of our collective values and, above all, our strategic and economic interests.

How this balance is, or should be, achieved is debated in a new book, The World in Canada: Diaspora, Demography and Domestic Politics (McGill-Queen's University Press), a collection of essays by experts.

Our demographic transformation is more and more of a factor, note co-editors David Bercuson of the University of Calgary and David Carment of Carleton University.

"Canadian foreign policy cannot be considered viable if it contradicts the preferences of ordinary Canadians."

A government may pay a political price for letting a democratic deficit develop on foreign policy. Which is what partially explains the inability of the Harper Tories to make inroads into urban Canada.

Hmmm. To which “powerful groups with strong lobbies” are you referring, Harpoon? Might one of them be the same "lobby" Walt and Mearslimer are so perturbed about?

Reading between the above lines it sounds to me like:

A)    Harpoon wants us all to chill and let those “second-and-third generation Canadians” who take a keen interest in ancestral laws—hello, sharia!—to connect with their roots, so long as they do so "peacefully" (even if said Canadians also have a keen interest in seeing those laws become rooted here in Canada); and

 

B)    Harpoon is warning the Harper government that if it doesn’t get with the international agenda (an agenda which, go figure, has also been heavily influenced by demographics) of defaming Israel and rendering its very existence morally indefensible, Muslims (who live in "urban Canada") won't vote for the Tories, and Harper won't get a majority in the next election.

But, hey, that’s just my take. I’m sure the Star’s receptive readers won’t read it that way at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:57 | link | comments

The Sound and the Fuhrer: No, it's not a description of the Canadian Jewish Congress's obsession with geriatric Nazis and the non-existent White Power threat (the reason, "reasons" CJC bigwigs, why Jews need human rights commissions to protect them from such hate--even if it comes at the cost of allowing Islamists like Mo Elmasry to dictate what Canadians can and cannot say about matters Islamic). It's a description of a novel about non-existent fascists.

Jonathan Kay weighs in on the CJC's focus--and its dangerous ramifications:

…As far as Canadian Jews are concerned, there is another less obvious cost to putting the community's moral authority behind institutionalized censorship: It cements a collective self-identity based around victimhood. The message is: "We are so vulnerable, so incapable of arguing down the brain-dead lunatics who attack us with words, that we need state censors to act as our shield."

Though criminal prosecutions against anti-Semites are actually quite rare, the few that arise encourage the conceit of a community besieged by murderous hatred. This conceit, though useful in creating a shared sense of community solidarity, has served to distract Canadian Jews from the happy fact that anti-Semitism is completely extinct in our society's respectable mainstream. Canada is probably as close to a post-anti-Semitic society as has ever existed in any nation in Western history --including modern-day Israel. But you wouldn't know it from the lachrymose doom-speak emanating from the acronymed Jewish activist establishment.

That is one of the many reasons why the stakes are so high in the fight to reform human-rights law in this country. The ongoing sniping match between Levant and the Jewish establishment is essentially a proxy battle in a larger struggle for the political soul of the Jewish community. It is a fight between those Jews who support free speech, and those who support censorship; between those focused on the new threat of militant Islam, and those still worried about neo-Nazi kooks; between those who want Jews to take a vocal leadership role in the defining ideological battle of our time, and those who see themselves as passive victims who require protection from a nanny state.

Exactamundo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments

Unintended consequences, unpacked: David Warren on the Pandora’s Box that was opened when Bill Clinton persuaded NATO to go to bat for Kosovo:

Readers with exceptionally tenacious memories will recall that this pundit was opposed to the NATO intervention in Kosovo, nine years ago. This may come as a surprise to readers without tenacious memories, since it is widely believed that I never saw a war I didn’t like. Yet believe it or not, I was opposed not only to the wanton bombing of Serbia, but also to the whole “inevitable” project of carving a new European Muslim state out of the flesh of that Orthodox Christian country.

I was not without sympathy for the “plight of the Kosovars,” however. Like virtually all journalists at that time, not of Serbian ethnicity, I fell for a great deal of typically Balkan propagandist rubbish that has since been quietly withdrawn.

My rule of thumb, on wars, is to fight them with your enemies, when absolutely necessary; but never with your friends, and in particular, never in order to create new enemies. True, as we all know from personal experience, sometimes your friends are more irritating than your enemies, and the temptation to bomb them is always there. It is a temptation that must be resisted, however.

This temptation was surely in play with the Serbians, under the late Slobodan Milosevic, who seemed determined to inspire loathing and distrust, when not pointed suspicion that he was doing in Kosovo precisely what his nationalist allies had done in Bosnia: i.e. “ethnic cleansing,” also known as the massacre of innocents. Although not nearly as monstrous as, say, Saddam Hussein, nor anything like Saddam’s threat to the West, Milosevic missed as many opportunities to come clean with his diplomatic interrogators. The Serbs who allowed this vicious old Communist, turned chauvinist demagogue, to remain in power, showed very poor judgement.

But the fact that Kosovo had a significant ethnic majority of Albanian Muslims over Serbian Christians was not, in itself, sufficient argument to detach it from Serbia by main force. For if that is the argument, the state system which provides the only international order the planet currently enjoys will tend to disintegrate.

Strange to say, I am with Vladimir Putin on this one, and against George W. Bush. Mr Putin’s remarks on the inspiration Kosovo’s independence has given to violent separatists in Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and elsewhere, are entirely to the point.

Verily, driving the Serbian government and people into the protective embrace of ex-Soviet Russia, and ultimately her ex-KGB strongman, was among several counter-productive dimensions in the war that Madeleine Albright organized, along with other ruinous Clinton interventions in areas of peripheral interest to the U.S. (Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, etc.)

The NATO action in Kosovo brought Mr Putin -- the hammer of the Chechens -- to power, by demonstrating that force and force alone will decide secession struggles, East or West. It restored anti-Americanism to its place in the Russian national security consensus, indirectly bringing an end to the Yeltsin reform era.

It was an incredibly stupid war to wage, and the product was on display in Brussels, yesterday, where the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogovin, actually threatened the use of force to prevent Kosovo’s declaration of independence from going any farther.

President Bush, who was prompt to recognize the self-declared Kosovar state (together with most European powers), feels obliged to accept the fait accompli he inherited from the preceding administration. He, or his successor, will then try to resist the next stage of demands, for a Greater Albania in which Albania and Kosovo attempt to merge, and insurrections begin in the adjoining Muslim-majority districts of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece, as each asserts its “right” to join them. By recognizing Kosovo, Bush et al. have validated exactly that: a deadly new round of Balkan troubles, ripe for Islamicization…

Because, Allah knows, there isn’t nearly enough Islam in the world.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments

Their keeper’s brother: Cuba’s 31-member council of ministers is meeting today to decide who will succeed dictator-for-life (or, at least, dictator-until-too-infirm-to-function) Fidel Castro—and I’m sure, like me, you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear who it'll be. Will it be Fidel’s brother, Raul, who’s been the de facto leader for the past two years, or will it be…Raul, who’s been the de facto leader for the past two years?

Be still my racing heart.

Update: Pass me the smelling salts--Raul's the one! By the looks of it, though, (desiccated, shriveled, Yoda-esque)  Fidel's kid brother may only have a few good years of rule. Aren't there any younger Castros around? (If not, maybe they could import one of the Trudeau boys.)

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

Noonan nails it: Peggy Noonan pinpoints what’s missing in Bambi’s presentation:

Barack Obama's biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That's good. He's compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him "impossibly eloquent" and say "he gave me thrills and chills." But, in fact, when you go on the Internet and get a transcript of the speech and print it out and read it--that is, when you remove Mr. Obama from the words and take them on their own--you see the speech wasn't all that interesting, and was in fact high-class boilerplate. (This was not true of John F. Kennedy's speeches, for instance, which could be read seriously as part of the literature of modern American politics, or Martin Luther King's work, which was powerful absent his voice.)

Mr. Obama is magnetic, interacts with the audience, leads a refrain: "Yes, we can." It's good, and compared with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, neither of whom seems really to enjoy giving speeches, it comes across as better than it is. But is it eloquence? No. Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing. What is present are sentiments…

Like I’ve been saying, 100% content free. The packaging is very attractive, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:02 | link | comments

Shock! Horror! Outrage!: A few of the things you won't hear the international community expressing, even though Turkey has launched--what's that expression they like so much at the UN?, oh, yeah--a massive "disproportional response," and has pulverized at least 79 Kurds.

Poor Kurds. If only they'd had the good fortune to be pulverized by Zionists, all eyes would be on their tragic plight right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:43 | link | comments

In your dreams, Tiny Hitler: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants the U.S. and its allies to "apologize" for imposing sanctions on his glorious (actually, God-awful) theocracy.

Sure thing, T.H. Just as soon as all you and all the other holy rollers get a shave.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:23 | link | comments

Hirsi Ali’s insight: The bravest woman in the world explains “honor killing” to a crowd of people—some receptive, some not so much—in Dallas. From the Dallas News:

…Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a sleek, soft-spoken native of Somalia, does not shy away from accolades and accusations against her. She warmly greeted a crowd of more than 500 people gathered Thursday at the downtown Hyatt Regency Dallas as part of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth global philanthropy series.

Ms. Hirsi Ali, who travels under constant security because of death threats, calmly laid out her cause against female genital mutilation and honor killings.

She began her speech by pointing to the killings of Sarah and Amina Said, Lewisville sisters whose father, Yaser Said, disappeared after the two were shot and left to die in his parked cab at an Irving hotel in January.

"I want to tell you why their father killed them," Ms. Hirsi Ali said.

Mr. Said's daughters were known to date non-Muslim men and dress in Western clothing, Ms. Hirsi Ali said, and in her estimation, the perceived loss of honor motivated Mr. Said, an Egyptian-born Muslim, to take his children's lives.

Mr. Said is accused by police in connection with his daughters' slayings. Family members have denied that his religion or culture had anything to do with the killings.

Ms. Hirsi Ali described a "cult of virginity" in Islam directed only toward women, wherein men are absolved of their sexual urges and are charged with protecting the honor of the family at all costs. The honor and shame code is an integral part of a culture that values virginity before marriage and fidelity afterward.

"The essence of a woman in this culture is reduced to the value of their hymen," she said. "In countries ruled by Islam, women are treated as slaves or pets."

She quickly pointed out, "I must add that not all Muslim men are perpetrators and not all Muslim women are victims."

Born in Somalia, she and her family moved to Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, eventually settling in Kenya, where she practiced a strict form of Islam. A victim of genital mutilation, Ms. Hirsi Ali eventually sought asylum in the Netherlands after a forced marriage.

"There is no argument that can be made for tolerating the killing and abuse of women and girls," she said.

Yanina Vashchenko, an interfaith coordinator with Thanks-Giving Square, said Ms. Hirsi Ali's story is compelling. "A childhood like that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy," she said.

But she said that Ms. Hirsi Ali, who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, had been heavily influenced by her own negative experiences and expressed concern that as a public speaker she would encourage people to take an unfairly negative view of Islam.

"It's very dangerous," she said. "They want somebody of the faith to talk bad about the faith."

Dr. Nia Mackay, a mother of two from Indonesia, said it was difficult to listen to the speech. "It makes me sad that she's blaming one religion instead of emphasizing a problem."

Dr. Mackay, 46, a Muslim and part-time aerobics teacher, was featured in the documentary American Ramadan and is president-elect for the nonprofit organization Peacemakers Inc….

“A Muslim and part-time aerobics teacher”—love it! I guess that means she's Muslim full time. Of course, I just had to google her nonprofit organization, and in so doing I turned up some delicious squish:

Very Bambi Obama-esque, I’d say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:11 | link | comments

Loony toons: The Palestinians aren’t the only Mideasterners protesting the reprinting of those blasphemous ‘toons. Followers of “firebrand” Mahdi Army chief, Hakuna Muqtada, er, Muqtada al-Sadr, gave it that old jihadi jeer, too. From AP:

…U.S. attacks against Shiite splinter groups fed frustration among some al-Sadr followers, who had advised the cleric not to extend the cease-fire. But in the days leading up to al-Sadr's message, Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, one of his aides, had extolled fighting "by peaceful ways."

Following Friday's services in Sadr City, thousands of worshippers did just that.

They rallied against the republication by Danish newspapers of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad — one of 12 cartoons that sparked major protests in Muslim countries in 2006. Protesters also took to the streets in the Shiite holy cities of Kufa and Najaf.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

The protesters set U.S. and Danish flags on fire, then stomped out the flames once they were consumed.

So “peaceful”— and very un-idolatrous. (Can you imagine the state these folks would get themselves into if they were idolatrous?)

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

Mariachi Bambi: Kind of catchy, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:34 | link | comments

Fidel’s Afterlife: When I was a kid, my father’s favourite group was The Limeliters. One of their songs I remember most fondly was called “The Ballad of Harry Pollitt”—a mock tribute to an English Communist leader who was quite well known in his time, at least in Britain, but who has long since faded into obscurity. I remember Glen Yarborough, the group’s short, squat tenor who sang with the voice of an angel, introducing the song by explaining that, when it was written, Harry Pollitt wasn’t really dead; he had “retired” because his man, Joe Stalin, had been renounced by short, squat Nikita Krushchev (who didn’t sing like an angel, but who could pound a shoe on a desk like nobody's business).The guy who wrote the song imagined Harry shuffling off—first to Heaven and then to a more “tropical” clime—and composed a cheeky musical eulogy to speed him on his posthumous journey. You can read it here.

The reason I bring it up is because the Maclean’s cover story this week is about another Communist, one who has just announced his retirement—Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. I had to smile when I read the words on the cover—HASTA LA VISTA, BABY—because only the other day I had used the same expression in a brief poem bidding the despot adieu. Inspired by both my triplet and the old Limeliters song (and also by  this “nostalgic” photo of a short, squat Russian Bolshevik and a tall, dark and handsome Cuban one—a stark reminder of how long Fidel has been around), I wove together a limerick and sent it to Maclean’s:

A canny old Commie, Fidel

Scammed his people exceedingly well.

The appropriate prize,

The one I’d advise:

Commissar of Soviet Hell.

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

Still toothless, still feckless, still useless: Even though Iran has been less than forthcoming (in diplomatic lingo, failed to be completely “transparent”) about its nuclear program, the mullahs’ lapdog, er, UN nuclear watchdog has given the bearded ones an “E” for “effort”. From the Ceeb:

Iran has increased the transparency in its nuclear enrichment program, but has not shown enough evidence to demonstrate its goals are peaceful, the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday. 

The findings of the report, presented Friday by International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei to the agency's board of governors in Vienna, could bolster calls in the UN Security Council for a fresh set of sanctions against Iran.

The report outlined the state of ElBaradei's investigation into Iran's nuclear past, including experiments, materials and documents that could be linked to a weapons program.

In a statement accompanying the report, ElBaradei said there has been "quite good progress" on other issues, such as Iran's long-delayed decision to grant monitors access to its nuclear component development sites.

Iran has increased the transparency in its nuclear enrichment program, but has not shown enough evidence to demonstrate its goals are peaceful, the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday. 

The findings of the report, presented Friday by International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei to the agency's board of governors in Vienna, could bolster calls in the UN Security Council for a fresh set of sanctions against Iran.

The report outlined the state of ElBaradei's investigation into Iran's nuclear past, including experiments, materials and documents that could be linked to a weapons program.

But the report also said Tehran has shown no movement forward on key topics, including alleged experiments and research that the United States and other Western powers have said show the regime was trying to develop nuclear weapons.

"Iran in the last few months has provided us with visits to many places that enable us to have a clearer picture of Iran's current program," ElBaradei said. "However, that is not, in my view, sufficient."

Report backs up Iran's claims, official says

According to the Reuters news agency, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said the IAEA report proved what Iran has insisted all along — that its nuclear research is for peaceful purposes.

"This report is another document which proves the Iranian nation was right about the nature of its nuclear activities," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Last fall, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the nuclear issue was "closed" and vowed to defy any UN sanctions.

The report comes a day after Britain and France formally introduced a Security Council resolution calling for a third round of sanctions against Iran for its failure to suspend uranium enrichment.

Under the proposed new sanctions, all countries would have to ban the entry or transit of individuals involved in Iran's nuclear program — a step up from a previous call for vigilance over their travel.

For the first time, trade in equipment and technology that can be used in both civilian and nuclear programs would also be banned.

But since Russia and China would veto any such resolution, the whole question is moot. Iran has clearly been running rings around the lapdogs—and taken them for a ride—in an effort to tire them out. If Israel wants to keep Tiny Hitler and the Shia boychicks from nuking it to Kingdome Come, looks like it’s going to have to take matters into its own hands.

Was it only—what, two, three years ago?—that I acknowledged the mullahs’ plans for the Jews in a song parody of “Winter Wonderland”?

In  Iran if you’re lookin’

Yellowcake is still cookin’.

They’re makin’ some nukes

Despite our rebukes

Buildin’ an Islamist arsenal.

 

They’ll say,“Hey, glad to see ya”

As they practise taqiyah.

And tell Mo ElBee

There’s nuthin’ to see

Buildin’ an Islamist arsenal.

 

Underground is where they’ll hide the bombs now,

Then pretend it isn’t what we think.

They will tell us lies with such aplomb now.

If we buy them we all need to see a shrink.

Later on they’ll conspire.

Say they plan to retire.

They’ll sing us a song

And string us along

Buildin’ an Islamist arsenal...

Some song just never get old.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:08 | link | comments

You know things have reached a new--and likely never to be surpassed--level of surrealism/absurdity when...: You tune in to CBC radio and hear Harpoon Siddiqui interviewing Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber about CJC efforts to protect Canadian Jews by flagging the occasional Nazi who happens to pop up, and complaining about him to one or more of those helpful HRCs.

Methinks my noggin it did explodeth.

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

Two peas, one pod: How curious. “Secular,” “moderate” Fatah is behind an incendiary protest over the republication in Denmark of some blasphemous Mo ‘toons. From Middle East Online:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Around 200 Palestinians demonstrated in the Gaza Strip on Friday against Danish newspapers that reprinted a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed deemed offensive by Muslims.

They gathered in the southern town of Rafah on the Egyptian border in response to a call from the so-called mini-parliament, an organ of the Fatah party of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Children burned Danish, American and Israeli flags and a banner read "to hell with Denmark. We will accept nothing less than an apology and a trial."

Last week, a number of Danish newspapers published the cartoon, vowing to defend freedom of expression a day after Danish police foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist.

The caricature, featuring the prophet's head with a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse, was one of 12 cartoons published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that sparked bloody riots in the Islamic world...

But wait—there’s method to Fatah’s madness. It turns out it’s trying to play a game of catch-up with fanatical, radical Hamas (which has been there, done that):

Hamas, the Islamist group that ousted Fatah from power in Gaza in June, held a demonstration of its own last week.

Speaking to the crowd in the northern town of Jabaliya, Hamas MP Yussef Sharafi called on the Danish government to "apologise to Muslims for the offence to the prophet."

Hamas condemned the newspapers and called for those responsible to be put on trial, saying publication of the cartoon was an "offence to the feelings of tens of millions of Muslims.

"We call for the trial of those responsible for publishing these drawings in the Danish newspapers," Hamas said, demanding that "official apologies be made" to Muslims.

Danish police arrested a Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians suspected of plotting to kill the creator of the turban cartoon, Kurt Westergaard.

You don’t suppose this means there’s actually not a whole lot of difference between the “moderates” and the extremists, do you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:41 | link | comments

Better duck: The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee explains why we shouldn’t be so quick to applaud Kosovo’s independence:

…The United Nations resolution that came out of the Kosovo war explicitly recognized the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia (in today's terms, Serbia, Yugoslavia's recognized successor state). That clearly meant that the UN was not endorsing the secession of Kosovo. Yet, the U.S., Britain, Italy and France have all recognized the breakaway Kosovo state. No wonder the Serbs feel angry and betrayed. They are losing a large part of their already diminished country. They are seeing many of their ethnic kin in Kosovo, the 120,000 remaining Serbs, marooned in a hostile Albanian sea.

Western governments argue (with considerable logic) that the horse has bolted the barn. The Kosovo Albanians are never going to agree to live under Serbian rule again, and every attempt at reaching some Serbian-Albanian compromise, such as autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia, has failed utterly. They say (again with logic) that, after nearly a decade in limbo, Kosovo has to be left to get on with its life as a free nation. As U.S. President George Bush put it, "The Kosovars are now independent."

But have they really thought through what this means? Other ethnic secession movements certainly have. "I salute the independence of Kosovo. No people can be forced to live under the rule of another," said Mehmet Ali Talat, leader of the Turkish Cypriots. The Basque regional government in northern Spain hailed Kosovo's independence as "a new example of the right of self-determination." Leaders of breakaway movements from the Transdniester region of Moldova to South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia chimed in, too. Even the Bosnian Serbs, who were the centre of the worst of the Balkan bloodshed in the 1990s, claim that Kosovo's secession justifies their own bid to be free of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the patched together federation that the West has tried for years to keep from coming apart.

Western governments can't just dismiss these as the wild claims of woolly foreigners. Many have secession movements close to home. Britain has Scotland, which has been part of the United Kingdom for a mere 300 years, considerably less than Serbia's claim to Kosovo. Spain has the Basques and the Catalans. That is why Madrid has refused to jump on the bandwagon and recognize Kosovo. It argues, quite rightly, that Kosovo's independence has neither the consent of both parties involved nor the assent of the Security Council (which is deadlocked on the issue).

Let's not even speak of Quebec. Canadian warplanes took part in the campaign against Serbia in 1999, a campaign that has resulted in the secession of a province on the basis of its people's demand to be maîtres chez nous. Is this what was intended when the West cheered victory in Kosovo?

Once again, the West is poleaxed by the boomerang of “unintended consequences”. Come to the aid of ethnic Albanians, and end up being midwife to a new Muslim nation and (maybe) heightening global tensions because other separatists will be inspired to break away. Secretly supply Afghan mujahedeen with weaponry to defeat the evil Soviet empire, and end up with holy warriors who feel so empowered—and so invincible—that they come gunning for you. Send your troops to fight—and die—for a “democracy” whose new constitution is grounded in sharia and end up….

 

I can’t bear to finish that sentence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:21 | link | comments

Get ‘em while they’re young: It’s not enough to fill their minds with toxic sludge once they get to university. If you want them to pick up the torch and get on with the "virtuous" task of dismantling Israel, you’ve got to indoctrinate them when they’re even younger. From the Jewish Tribune:

TORONTO – A trustee at the Toronto District School Board said she is now launching a complete investigation into anti-Israel programs in public high schools, as a result of information obtained by the Jewish Tribune.

It appears that a new and serious development in the campaign to vilify Israel is infiltrating public high schools in Ontario through the use of virulent anti-Israel propaganda – labelling Israel as an apartheid state and challenging its legitimacy.

For several months, a group called High Schools Against Israeli Apartheid (HAIA) has been holding meetings in the University of Toronto’s OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) building. In fact, the details of a meeting to be held in December were placed on the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid web site.

When this reporter arrived, the gentleman at the information desk claimed no knowledge of any such event. However, a number of people showed up in the lobby, but only a few were quietly led to one of the many meeting rooms on another floor.

A group of young women in their late teens or 20s, when approached as to whether they know anything about a HAIA meeting, sarcastically responded that they were making wedding plans and didn’t appreciate the interruption.

“I’m getting married and I’m going to have lots of Palestinian children,” one of them declared.

Another HAIA meeting at the same location, on a Saturday, was publicized as part of Israeli Apartheid Week in February, but that meeting was advertised as open to high school students only.

It’s the secrecy surrounding these meetings that calls for concern.

Some questions need to be asked: Are there really high schools against Israeli apartheid? Are there educators at public secondary schools in Ontario who teach with a political agenda?

Last week the Jewish Tribune learned that one Jewish student felt compelled to leave the public school he had been attending because of the intense anti-Israel atmosphere that made him “feel like an alien,” his mother said.

Rachel Adelman, a post-doctoral fellow in Jewish Studies at U of T, said that last fall her son Eitan, a Grade 12 student, told her about an initiative launched by one of the students at the Student School – a small, alternative public school in downtown Toronto – to advocate for a boycott against Israel.

Eitan grew up in Israel – this is the first year he has lived outside the Jewish state – and he was shocked that Israel was being portrayed as an apartheid state. It was shortly after the showing of the anti-Israel film Occupation 101 at school, along with the proliferation of posters about Israel being an apartheid state adorning the walls, that Eitan enrolled at CHAT, his mother confirmed.

Otherwise, “it was such a nice, warm school,” Adelman said. “It’s such a shame. So many people are so naïve. They don’t have a clue about Israel.

They’re just getting on the bandwagon.”

Irene Atkinson, a Toronto District School Board trustee, was shocked by the allegations made by Adelman and found them hard to believe...

She was shocked—shocked!—to hear that the Big Lie has infiltrated the schools? I’m shocked—shocked!—by her astounding naivete.

And speaking of getting them while they’re young, nobody does it better than the Palestinians. Who else (save for perhaps the mullahs) would even think of producing a Sesame Street for widdle psychopaths?  Down the road, maybe the Apartheid types could get Farfour or Nahoul to drop by a few public schools and regale the kiddies with horrific tales of colonialist racist Zionists stealing their land and murdering them in cold blood.

After all, when it comes to Zionist crimes, Farfour, Nahoul and the CAIA are reading from the same playbook.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:07 | link | comments (1)

Addicted to O: Oh, my. Normally tough-as-nails Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Went has come down with a bad case of gush. The woman who some readers describe as a “Devil’s advocate” (the “Devil,” apparently, being Stephen Harper and anyone connected to the GOP) is head-over-heels for that clean favoured, imperially slim young dude, Barack Obama. It is not a pretty sight:

Sometimes, I watch Fox News so I can find out what those people on the Dark Side are saying. Funnily enough, a lot of Dark Siders (i.e., Republicans) are big fans of Barack Obama. They know he's a natural, one of the best politicians in a generation. On Tuesday night, I watched them watching him as he routed Hillary Clinton yet again. Karl Rove was shaking his head in awe. That's when it dawned on me: This man is going to be president.

Before you accuse me of mindlessly succumbing to Obamamania, it's only partly true. I don't think he walks on water, or will lead America to the promised land. He doesn't offer any policies that are particularly interesting or that will tackle the country's fundamental problems. I have no idea how he'd handle nukes in Iran, or the next big terrible thing. But he connects with people in a way we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan. Or Pierre Trudeau, in 1968. Or JFK. He's someone who can make people feel good about their country again.

Just to be clear, Hillary is toast. She can't recover. Wisconsin was supposed to be her kind of state, but the Illinois senator beat her by a whopping 58 per cent to 41 per cent. He beat her among the lunch-bucket set and he ran almost even among women. She needs overwhelming victories in Ohio and Texas to stay alive, and she won't get them. The only question is whether she'll go down ugly, or with grace.

Can Barack Obama beat John McCain? How can he not? The Arizona senator's natural constituency is aging white male Republicans, a shrinking demographic group that's out of touch with an increasingly multiracial America. John McCain is a maverick only when compared with other aging Republicans. They're the people, you may recall, who reminded David Letterman of "guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club."

Barack Obama's natural constituency is everybody who's not in the country club. It includes the 40 per cent of Americans who are Latino, black, Asian or otherwise visible. It includes a majority of women voters, and most people under 40. This isn't just an age divide, it's a cultural one. His campaign includes a Facebook strategy. I'd be amazed if John McCain has even heard of Facebook. After all, he's almost as old as Fidel Castro.

The Obama constituency also includes millions of middle-aged whites - even Republicans - who may disagree with his policies but find his candidacy compelling. All these people vow to turn out in record numbers on voting day. Meantime, the Republicans, with their two-term legacy of failure, are in a rotten mood.

The race factor is a huge advantage. Barack Obama's race makes him a visible symbol of change; it also makes him almost unassailable. As Republican commentator Peggy Noonan wrote, "The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented - 'He's too young, he's never run anything, he's not fully baked' - the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones." In other words, Obama is not Bambi (as Maureen Dowd would have it). He's bulletproof.

Americans are desperate for change. And they're desperate for a president they can be proud of. That's why they don't care about Barack Obama's policies...

Au contraire, Peggy. They don’t care about Obama’s policies because, as T.S. Eliot observed, human kind cannot bear very much reality. And who wants to deal with the unpleasant reality of radical Islam and civilizational peril when you can “feel good” by soaking in a nice warm tub of Obama bubbles?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments (3)

On tonight’s episode of Cuddly, Non-Threatening Muslims and their Wee, Adorable Mosque: “Rayan and J.J. have decided to start dating. Now, in accordance with Muslim tradition all they need is a chaperone…”

In accordance with Muslim tradition, she might also want to scrape together a dowry and practise being submissive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:58 | link | comments (2)

Jonesing for Bambi: With apologies to the late, great Robert Palmer:

The lights aren’t on and no one’s home.

Your will is not your own.

Your palms sweat, the room spins.

You can’t wait till he wins.

 

You feel faint, you start to sway.

You’re so convinced he’s JFK.

Your throat is tight, you gasp for air.

He’s just so cute, so debonair.

 

Whoa, you are so thrilled to go along for the ride, oh yeah.

So, please, take a pill and chill, and breathe in real slow

Because you’re gonna have to face it you’re addicted to O.

 

You’re all for “hope.” You want some “change”.

America all rearranged.

Don’t want no war. Let’s just make nice

And take George Soros’s advice (such crap advice).

 

You can’t be spared; you can’t be saved.

Oblivion is what you crave.

The mania has taken hold

And now all else will leave you cold.

 

Whoa, you like to think that you have still got a grip, oh, yeah.

But if you think that Bambi has a clue where you go

You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to O.

 

Bama lama ding dong, you’re addicted to O-

Bama lama ding dong, you’re addicted to O-

Bama lama ding dong, you’re addicted to O-

Bama lama ding dong, you’re addicted to O.

 

There's also an Islamist version of the song: Addicted to Mo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:26 | link | comments

Compliant felines: The mullahs have Mo ElBee and his nuclear watchkittens eating out of the palm of their hands—and aren’t shy about letting us know it. From mullah mouthpiece, the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -– International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will likely submit his report on Iran’s nuclear program to the Board of Governors on Feb. 25, an IAEA official who requested anonymity told the Mehr News Agency on Tuesday.

The Board of Governors is scheduled to discuss the report on March 3-7.

Iran has developed full cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog to address the ambiguities surrounding Plutonium, P-1 and P-2 centrifuge machines, the source of uranium contamination found at Tehran University, metal uranium, and Gachin mine, in line with a modality plan reached by the two sides in August 2007.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has submitted two official letters to Iran’s representative at the IAEA, confirming that the issues of the P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, and the metal uranium have been resolved and the nuclear diplomats are continuing talks on the remaining issues.

A report issued by UN nuclear watchdog on November 8 confirmed the transparency of Iran’s nuclear program, saying it found Tehran to be generally truthful about the key aspects of its nuclear history.

I’m glad they got those plutonium ambiguities sorted out. I was kinda worried about them.

In other mullocracy news, Khamenei's sock puppet, the truncated Hitler, has once again compared the Jews to "a filthy bacteria". Nothing a little plutonium wouldn't cure, no doubt.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:07 | link | comments

Sharia on the move: The thing about Islamic law is that it’s an all (i.e. an Allah) or nothing proposition. Believers believe there's no division between mosque and state, and thus you cannot select one portion of the sharia menu—say, laws pertaining to the marriage and divorce--and discard the rest. You are expected, nay, commanded to swallow the whole enchilada. That seems not to have penetrated to Adam Liptik, a New York Times scribe who opines that, while there are certain factors to consider before deciding to legally enshrine sharia tribunals here in the West, on the whole, they may not be such a bad idea.

A PRETTY good way to generate an outcry, as the archbishop of Canterbury learned in Britain recently, is to say that a Western legal system should make room for Shariah, or Islamic law. When the archbishop, spiritual leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, commented in a radio interview that such an accommodation was “unavoidable,” critics conjured images of stonings and maimings, overwhelming his more modest point. Skip to next paragraph

The archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, did not propose importing Shariah into the criminal law and was referring mostly to divorces in which both sides have agreed to abide by the judgment of a religious tribunal. His proposal was groundbreaking only in extending to Islamic tribunals in Britain a role that Jewish and Christian ones have long played in the judicial systems of secular societies. Courts in the United States have endorsed all three kinds of tribunals.

In 2003, for instance, a Texas appeals court referred a divorce case to a local tribunal called the Texas Islamic Court. In 2005, the federal appeals court in New Orleans affirmed an award in an employment arbitration by the Institute for Christian Conciliation, which uses Biblical teachings to settle disputes. And state courts routinely enforce the decisions made by a Jewish court, known as a bet din, in commercial and family law cases.

The outcry in Britain was apparently something of a visceral reaction to aspects of Islamic law, though the archbishop himself condemned what he called the inhumanity of “extreme punishments” and some Islamic countries’ “attitudes toward women.”

The larger question, legal experts in the United States said, is whether government courts should ever defer to religious ones. The answer may depend on whether the people involved authentically consented to religious adjudication, whether they are allowed to change their minds and whether the decisions of those tribunals are offensive to fundamental conceptions of justice.

All of that, said John Witte Jr., a law professor at Emory University, “is the big frontier question for religious liberty.”

The archbishop speaks in sonorous circumlocutions and he was not a model of clarity when he was interviewed by BBC radio on Feb. 7. Even his followers had a hard time untangling just what he meant.

“I’m an Episcopalian,” said Janice A. Schattman, the lawyer in the Texas case who persuaded the appeals court to defer to the Islamic one. “Rowan Williams, bless his heart, can be quite obscure.”

But the archbishop’s central point seemed to be that people should be able to agree to have family law cases resolved by religious courts if all concerned agree. By Monday the archbishop was backtracking, saying he had spoken clumsily with “a misleading choice of words.”

Azizah Y. al-Hibri, the president of Karamah, an international lawyers’ group based in Washington and made up of Muslim women, said she applauded the archbishop’s initial position.

“Muslims, Christians and Jews should all deal with their own family law issues in their own arbitration councils,” she said. “The government should stay out of the bedroom.”

That notion has met resistance where Islam is involved. After the authorities in Ontario raised the possibility that arbitrators might use Shariah to settle family disputes, formal recognition of all religious arbitrations there, including existing Catholic and Jewish ones, was withdrawn.

“There will be one law for all Ontarians,” Dalton McGuinty, the province’s premier, said in 2005.

Almost no one suggests that criminal law should take into account the defendant’s religion in meting out punishment. At the other extreme, few people object to allowing purely commercial disputes between sophisticated businesspeople to be adjudicated through private arbitrations. The hard questions, as the archbishop learned, arise in the area of family law, where the agreement to arbitrate may be uninformed or obtained by duress. State courts have occasionally refused to enforce separation agreements reached through bet din arbitrations on the ground that the woman involved had been pressured into participating.

Once consent is given, moreover, questions arise about whether and when it may be withdrawn. “People have a right in Western systems to change religions,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “Can they opt out after the dispute arises or after the judgment is given?”

Most fundamentally, some judgments from religious tribunals may be at odds with constitutional protections, human rights and basic notions of fairness…

Gee, ya think?  He couldn’t be more wrong (wronger?), though, about sharia devotees being satisfied with an itty bit of the law. Give ‘em a beachhead and they’re going to want to take over the whole blooming beach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:46 | link | comments (1)

Hell, no, he won't go: Even though he was handed a resounding defeat by Pakistan voters, President Musharraf is refusing to step down and hand over power to a new government.

Anyone else not surprised by this turn of events?

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

Pass the caterpillars: The UN is finally doing something useful. It is trying to persuade people to consume a cheap and widely available (if singularly unappealing) source of protein. From the Globe and Mail:

'Today, monsieur, might I recommend the grubs au gratin to start followed by the crickets en croûte and perhaps the locusts with crème fraîche for dessert?"

Ah yes, but what wine to have with such a meal? How about lots.

Okay, insect eateries might not be coming to Canada any time soon, but insects are on the menu this week at a United Nations meeting in Thailand, where experts are considering the dietary value of bugs and ways to farm the creatures that are delicacies in some countries.

More than 1,400 insect species are eaten by humans worldwide, so they offer promising possibilities both commercially and nutritionally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN said yesterday.

Among the most popular insect munchies are beetles, ants, bees, crickets and moths, the FAO said, noting that they can be nutritious, sometimes offering as much protein as meat and fish.

The FAO organized the three-day meeting in Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai to examine how nutritious insects are, and to discuss ways of cultivating the ones most widely eaten.

While eating insects may seem unusual or even unappetizing to some, human consumption of insects is common all over the world. At least 527 different insects are eaten across 36 countries in Africa, while they are also eaten in 29 countries in Asia and in 23 in the Americas.

In some areas, insects are only occasionally eaten as "emergency food" to stave off starvation, but in many regions, they are a regular part of the diet.

In Thailand, nearly 200 different insect species are consumed, many of which are highly sought after as snacks and treats. Vendors selling insects are a common sight throughout the country.

Cultivation of insects could provide new sources of income for rural populations around the world, Patrick Durst, senior FAO forestry officer, said in a statement.

"Opportunities also exist for improved packaging and marketing to make edible insects more enticing to traditional buyers and to expand the market to new consumers, especially in urban areas," Mr. Durst said.

As for Canada, if you'd like to munch on an insect treat, one place you can head for is the gift shop at the Montreal Insectarium. "We have mealworms in candy lollipops," communications director Karine Jalbert said yesterday, "and you see the mealworm in the middle." Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm beetle.

"We also we have them in boxes in different flavours such as barbecue and cheese."…

What, no ketchup bugs? 

Update: Next on the menu: rat dumplings?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:47 | link | comments (2)

Wahhabiwood: Saudi Arabia, being a puritanical Wahhabi kingdom where fun is strictly verboten (unless you’re a holy oily royal, in which case, party on), has neither a film industry nor any movie theatres. But, hey, why should that stop it from hosting a film festival? From the Ceeb:

Saudi Arabia, which has no cinemas, will be holding its first government-approved film festival in May, according to a local newspaper.

The five-day festival, starting May 20, will screen Arabic films from the region and is being co-sponsored by the Saudi Society of Arts and Culture and a literary club in the eastern city of Dammam.

The country banned the screening of movies in the early 1980s because the conservative clergy viewed it as a waste of time. There are no details on where the movies will be shown.

The Dammam literary club, though, has been hosting Sunday film screenings.

Last October, two Saudi hotels in Riyadh and Jeddah screened several American animated and family movies in celebration of the holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hardline Saudi clerics criticized the showings in online forums, blaming the  Ministry of Culture and Information for failing to stop the screenings…

Hope festival organizers remembered to invite the chuckleheads from the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Those guys always add lots of colour (white; sometimes black) to the red carpet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:22 | link | comments (2)

Sneaky Jews: Back in 2005, British authorities—spurred on by Arabs—almost manage to arrest an Israeli general for “war crimes,” but the wily Jew got away. The times online recounts how General Doron Almog, in London at the time for a Jewish fundraiser, was able to evade those who sought to bring him to “justice”:

An Israeli general wanted for alleged war crimes escaped arrest in the UK because police officers feared an armed confrontation with the airline’s armed air marshals.

Documents detailing why the Metropolitan Police failed to act in their own jurisdiction, despite being in possession of a warrant, have emerged today.

They show that the police were unable to obtain advice as to their right to proceed and feared risks to the public if its officers boarded the plane as well as “the international impact of a potentially armed police operation at an airport”.

Major General Doron Almog had flown to the UK in September 2005 for social and charitable visits to Jewish communities in Solihull, in the West Midlands, and Manchester. The Metropolitan Police, acting to execute a warrant for his arrest issued a day earlier at Bow Street court, had arrived to meet him at the airport, hoping to detain the general at immigration control.

Major General Almog would later tell Israel Army Radio how he came to be tipped off about the impending arrest. “We were about to get off the plane, and then one of the stewards came up to me and said the pilot had asked me to disembark last.'' He waited, then he was told the Israeli military attaché was on his way. "I phoned him and he told me not to get off the plane.''

El Al, Israel’s national airline, refused permission for officers to board and the stand-off continued. For two hours the Metropolitan Police held back from boarding the plane, which then flew straight back to Israel, with Mr Almog and his wife on board. Their failure to arrest the general prompted anger from the lawyers who had obtained the warrant, acting on behalf of Palestinian campaigners, and calls for an investigation. A decisions log prepared for the Independent Police Complaints Commission and seen by the BBC now answers some of the questions that arose over the incident.

Palestinian campaigners had lobbied for the Metropolitan Police to act over allegations that the general had ordered the destruction of over 50 Palestinian homes in the Gaza strip, in retribution for a Palestinian militant attack. Lawyers argued that this contravened the laws of war protecting civilian property.

The Met refused to get involved, citing massive pressures on its counter-terrorism teams in the wake of the July 7 bombings, but the legal team successfully applied to a judge to obtain a warrant for a private prosecution…

Sure, arrest the Jew for the “war crime” of bulldozing some property, but say nothing about the unadulterated chutzpah of those who defend the “militants” who blow up—i.e. murder, eviscerate, vaporize—actual human beings.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:20 | link | comments (2)

One Mo' rhyme: The list of suspects in the plot to kill Dodi and Di now includes Eeyore; Piglet; all the Seven Dwarfs, except for Sneezy; all the Spice Girls, except for Sporty; Rush Limbaugh; Nigella Lawson; and the late Luciano Pavarotti.

Just kidding, of course--although with mad Mo you never know. I'd say such lunacy merits a limerick, wouldn't you?:

A rich nutter named Mo Al-Fayed

Exclaimed, “It is just as I said:

Tony Blair and Prince Phil

Connived for to kill,

And now I say, ‘off with their 'ead!’”

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:19 | link | comments

Wahhabi humour: Who says there’s no comedy in the Arab world? Witness the outrageous tomfoolery of one Abdulaziz H. Al-Sowayegh, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Canada. In response to a piece by the Israeli ambassador about the Big Lie of “Israeli Apartheid,” Abdulaziz, or one of his minions, penned the following letter to the National Post:

While I acknowledge the Israeli ambassador's right to defend his country with respect to the "Israeli Apartheid Week" recently hosted by several Canadian universities, I don't think that he has the right to somehow implicate and attack the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his article. The fact that his country is considered an apartheid regime has absolutely nothing to do with Saudi Arabia.

When I arrived in Canada I quickly realized that this country has a deep-rooted history of high principles and values and that everyone is equal before the law in terms of their rights and obligations. In this same spirit, I tried to avoid getting involved in confrontations with any of my colleagues, knowing that there is no such thing as absolute truth.

Thus, I was very keen not to get involved in any frictions with the Israeli ambassador, as I am convinced that the reality on the ground is sufficient enough to condemn Israel's conscience without any further contribution form my part.

For this reason, I leave it up to readers to learn about the reality on the ground in Israel by referring, for instance, to the American peace activist Rachel Corrie on the internet or Palestine: Peace not Apartheid by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Rachel Corrie? Jimmy Carter? Stop it, Mr. Ambassador, you’re killing me. Jimminy “Cricket” Carter is an old anti-Semite, in the pay of the Wahabbis, whose animus to the Jewish state, like yours, is rooted in religious belief. Rachel Corrie was a clueless useful idiot who died defending the “right” of Arab supremacists to murder Jewish men, women and children by using terrorism. That you hold out these two cracked plaster saints, these pathetic Jew-haters, as exemplars of “the reality on the ground” shows how unmoored from reality comedians like you really are.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:26 | link | comments (1)

Old Communists never die, they just announce their retirement: After almost five decades of absolute rule, that old reprobate--and good friend of the Trudeau mishpacha--Fidel Castro, is stepping down. In honour of this momentous occasion, the retirement of an anachronism (Fidel's a relic of a Cold War that wrapped up some time ago), I have penned a brief poem:

Hasta la vista to you, Fidel.

You scammed your people very well.

Enjoy your retirement. Then go to Hell.

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

Simply irresistible: He’s so handsome. And slim. And young. And passionate. (Did you know that he’s black?) He cares about all the little people—the poor, the marginalized, the ignored. When he speaks, women swoon, young people get pumped, and strong men are reduced to mush. He’s for motherhood. And hope and change. And audacity. And “can’t we all just get along?”

Then why, oh why, does Barack Obama leave me strangely unmoved?

I think Naomi Ragan explains it pretty well. From Israpundit:

…But there are a number of other things circulating that haven’t yet been “debunked” and these are far more worrying because they are true. Like the fact that Mr. Obama’s church gave an award to the notorious Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. As Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post on January 15:” Barack Obama is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama’s spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said “truly epitomized greatness.” That man was Louis Farrakhan.”

Huh?! Say what? You mean the Farrakhan who said: “The real anti-Semites are those who came out of Europe and settled in Palestine, and now they call themselves the true Jews, when in act, they converted to Judaism,” as Farrakhan told Al Jazeera on March 18, 2007. The Farrakhan who said in a Swing magazine interview: “Until Jews apologize for their hand in that ugly slave trade; and until the Jewish rabbis and the Talmudic scholars that made up the Hamitic myth — that we were the children of Ham, doomed and cursed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water — apologize, then I have nothing to apologize for.” Or as he said in the Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 3/19/95: “German Jews financed Hitler right here in America …International bankers financed Hitler and poor Jews died while big Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust…Little Jews died while big Jews made money. Little Jews [were] being turned into soap while big Jews washed themselves with it. Jews [were] playing violin, Jews [were] playing music, while other Jews [were] marching into the gas chambers…”

I suggest you google Farrakhan ADL or Nation of Islam and see some of the other things Mr. Farrakhan has said.

And yet, the man who would be president has a spiritual leader who has applauded Farrakhan’s: “depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation.” He praised “his integrity and honesty.” He called him “an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.” As Mr. Cohen wrote in the Washington Post: “These are the words of a man who prayed with Obama just before the Illinois senator announced his run for the presidency. Will he pray with him just before his inaugural?”

Now, Mr. Obama is no dummy. Following the Cohen outing of this information in the Washington Post,Obama’s aides issued the following statement on his behalf: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

Yes, Mr. Obama distanced himself. Even Mr. Farrakhan understands why. As Farrakhen said recently on ABC’s Nightline: “I like him very much. …He has a fresh approach…If avoiding me would help him to become president, I’d be glad to stay in the background.”

Jews like Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation Committee are forgiving. “”When someone close to a political figure shows sympathy and support for an individual who makes his name espousing bigotry, that political figure needs to distance himself from that decision. Senator Obama has done just that.”

Well bully for Mr. Foxman! Having been in a suicide bombing attack which killed people- many of them Survivors and their children and grandchildren- at a Passover Seder in 2002, I’m a little less warm-hearted and forgiving. If I had a Rabbi, for example, who publicly supported and honored a despicable racist, I’d change shuls. Mr. Obama’s distancing himself, even during a political campaign, has not included either changing churches or spiritual leaders. In light of this, the fact that Mr. Obama’s father and step-father were both Muslim, and that he spent part of his childhood in a Muslim school in Indonesia perhaps should begin to concern us. Yes,indeed, depite the fact that CNN (which we all know has tremendous credibility) has taken great pains to put our minds at rest by visiting this school, assuring us that it is not a madrassa that educates suicide bombers.

But honestly, all this wouldn’t be enough for me to dismiss the very articulate and charismatic Mr. Obama if he wasn’t consistently exhibiting worrisome, non-debunkable evidence that he is neither a friend either of Israel, or the Jewish people. And please spare me the letter from the token Jew who “met him and spoke to him and is completely convinced he is a friend of Israel blah, blah.

Actions speak louder than words...

To which I would only add that I want the president of the U.S. to be someone who “gets it”—about the global jihad, about what needs to be done to stop the totalitarian supremacists and prevent Western civilization from sinking without a trace (the supremacists, as we know, being awfully fond of obliterating all evidence of the "jahilya" that preceded their ascendence). 

I want John Bolton; Obama, I fear, is more like Bambi. And you know what happened to Bambi when she met up with Godzilla…

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

Shirlene, we hardly knew ye: Ezra Levant’s star chamber inquisitor, the inquisitive Shirlene McGovern, has resigned her position with the Alberta Human Rights Commission. It seems she couldn’t stand the heat, so she got out of the human rights kitchen.

Shirlene may be gone, perhaps, but she will ne’er be forgotten. She will live on on You Tube as the bureaucrat who, when confronted by a torrent of Levantian eloquence, responded with the deathless Valley Girl-esque one-liner: “Well, you’re entitled to your opinions, that’s for sure.”

Fer shure. And while you’re at it, Shirl, like, gag me with a spoon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:21 | link | comments (1)

A revert in Nashville: Yvonne Ridley, the Beeb reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban and was so impressed by their ardour that she “reverted” while in captivity, touched down in the capital of Country music last month. Rachel Bynum, in the New English Review, has the details:

…Referring to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair she said [to an audience at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University], “Their brand of extremism brought us 9/11, the London bombings, Madrid and other carnage around the world,” and “I know 9/11 had a huge impact on the world, but it wasn’t really the start of something … it was the continuation of a legacy of US imperialism and its fear of Islam.”

She has warned Prime Minister Blair to “stay away from our areas” meaning the Muslim enclaves in England. She has also exhorted the Muslim community to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form."  She has referred to the moderate Muslims academics who advise the Prime Minister (and who have suggested that British Muslims may nurse a false sense of grievance) as “rancid, spineless Uncle Tom house-slaves” who have “castrated themselves in their bid to please the government.” In her speech to the 2006 Global Unity and Peace Conference in London Ridley said,

The new slaves of the West criticize Islamist parties and governance by shari’ah. I call them the Happy Clappies. They are being flown in by the Government from the US, Canada, Yemen and Mauritania to preach a diluted form of Islam.

The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims condemn the actions of their brothers and sisters who courageously resist occupation and oppression with whatever they have.

She defended the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, when members of his own family distanced themselves from him after the 2005 bombing in Amman in which 60 people were killed and injured. And after the Chechen Muslim leader Shamil Basayev (the architect of the Moscow theater takeover and the especially heinous Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote that Basayev was “loved and adored by many” and that he had become a Shaheed (a martyr for Islam) and was therefore assured a Muslim paradise. Here are her words:

However, for me personally, the arrival of this sad news provided one of those awful coincidences which make you shudder and reminds you of your own mortality ... you see moments earlier I had been leafing through a manuscript of his unpublished work called a Book of a Mujahiddeen. The paragraph I was reading said: "A Mujahid is looking closely into a child's eyes, for they are the ones that get to see the world without sorrows. When a Mujahid wants to know whether someone beside him is trustworthy, he tries to see it with the eyes of a child."

Basaev led an admirable fight to bring independence to Chechnya and resorted to targetting Russian civilians in the latter years of his struggle to try and bring the plight of the Chechen people to the wider world. He will probably be best remembered for masterminding the siege of the Moscow Theater and then the taking hostage of the children at a school in Beslan which sent shudders of revulsion around the world when both plans went tragically wrong.

On both occasions there were scores and scores of civilians deaths and injuries, but the overwhelming numbers of civilian killed actually died because of the actions of Russian troops who bungled rescue raids on both operations. No one could share the pain and loss of the Beslan parents more than Chechen mothers ... let's not forget that 42,000 Chechen children have been slaughtered in the last decade by Russian bombs and shells.

Ms. Ridley is openly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood (the women’s wing is called the Muslim Sisters) and refers to the Brotherhood as a “disciplined intellectual organization” which has the potential to be “a shining power to lead the Middle East.” She even traveled to Egypt to campaign for the release of Brotherhood members held on terrorism charges. Said she, “The Muslim Brotherhood has an honorable and just cause, and enjoys strong public support which will enable it to withstand the [Egyptian] government’s oppressive campaigns against its members." She is also an avid reader of Sayyid Qutb, a founding intellectual in the Brotherhood, who was hanged by Nasser in 1966. She even met with Qutb’s sister, Amina, during her Hajj. She is also a great admirer of Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and the grandfather of Tariq Ramadan whom Caroline Fourest has exposed as a master of “doublespeak” as he tirelessly promotes the cause of Islamic domination while claiming to be a reformer. Likewise Ridley is said to admire the work of Zeinab al Ghazali, a female founding member of the Brotherhood and clearly a fanatic, who was also imprisoned by Nasser and for whose book, Des jours de ma vie, Ramadan wrote an introduction.

Ridley’s television program “The Agenda” was taken off the Islam channel in Great Britain after she refused to shake hands with a visiting Saudi Prince. This was probably due to her Brotherhood sympathies. “The Agenda” is now being carried by Press TV which is funded by the government of Iran.

Ridley has described her viewpoint as “pretty much in line with Hamas” and has described Israel as "that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East" and furthermore that her political party, the Respect Party, "is a Zionist-free party… if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists,” and that both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are "riddled with Zionists." Ridley’s first husband was Daoud Zaaroura a former PLO colonel. And yet she warns “[I]f any of those Zionist idiots continue to try and paint me as an anti-semite I must warn you ... one of my closest friends is one of Britain's best defamation lawyers. Oh, and she happens to be Jewish (for some reason most of the best lawyers and hairdressers are).” Point taken...

 

Charming woman. She has all the appeal of a Magda Goebbels combined with the feminine elan of an Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

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

It’s still the jihad, Dad: Israel’s a “cancer” and Hezbollah’s “radiation” is the answer—merely the latest metaphor in Iran’s colourful linguistic arsenal. (Jews as a bacillus: Hmm, sounds strangely familiar.) And guess who’s given tacit approval to the impending genocide? All the nice “moderate” Muslims who plan to show up and pay their respects to the recently ‘splodiated terrormeister. From Ynet News:

Iran: Cancerous Israel to be destroyed by radiation

In letter of condolence to Hizbullah secretary-general following Imad Mugniyah's assassination, Revolutionary Guards commander says, 'In the future we will bear witness to the disappearance of this cancerous bacterium, Israel, by the radiation of Hizbullah fighters'

Dudi Cohen

General Mohammad Ali Jaafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has sent a letter of condolence to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah following the assassination of the organization's senior commander Imad Mugniyah, saying he believed "the cancerous bacterium called Israel" would vanish soon, the Iranian news agency Fars reported Monday.

According to Jaafari, "I am convinced that with every day that passes Hizbullah's power increases, and in the near future we will bear witness to the disappearance of this cancerous bacterium, Israel, by the radiation of Hizbullah's fighters."

In the letter comforting Nasrallah over the death of the "shahid" (martyr) Mugniyah, Jaafari wrote, "There is no doubt that the death of this loyal fighter will strengthen the determination of all the revolutionary and warrior Muslims in their battle against the Zionist regime, and particularly the determination of those fighting alongside this shahid."

Mugniyah was considered close to the Revolutionary Guards, and particularly to the Quds Force, which was recently designated by the United States as a supporter of terror. Together they trained Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon and Iran and planned terror attacks worldwide.

Upon hearing of Mugniyah's death, the Iranian leaders, headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent cards and letters of condolence to Nasrallah.

Their message was clear: Mugniyah's death would only strengthen Hizbullah, and he would be replaced by hundreds and thousands of other fighters ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the battle against Israel.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards and other Iranian officials, including Vice President Perviz Daudi, took part Sunday in a memorial ceremony for Mugniyah at a Tehran mosque.

On Tuesday, the Tehran University will hold a ceremony in memory of the assassinated commander, which will be attended by Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad representatives and ambassadors from Islamic countries.

The ummah comes together to mourn one of its own.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments (2)

Judenhass in the U.K.: A close relative of mine—English by birth—returned from a trip to the U.K. last fall and insisted that, according to her Jewish friends, Jews are as safe now as they were my relative left more than fifty years ago. So you see, she assured me, nothing much had changed since her girlhood. How, then, to account for the alarming reports in the media about anti-Semitic attacks, most at the hands of Muslims? Well, she explained, it could be that things look much worse from a distance than they are where you actually live there.

No point in arguing with that logic. Nor with this: Melanie Phillips—a woman who certainly has a grip on the situation—reports on to the alarming number of anti-Semitic attacks in Britain:

 

Violent attacks on British Jews hit record levels last year, although the overall number of anti-Jewish incidents was down slightly on the previous year to its second highest level ever. As the Guardian reports:

Overall, in 2007 there were a record 114 violent assaults, one of which resulted in life-threatening injuries, among 547 race hate incidents against the Jewish community.

To put this in context, there are around 280,000 affiliated Jews in Britain (out of a population of more than 60 million). Given how reluctant many Jews are to report the harassment to which they are subjected, I reckon these figures — which are high in relation to the size of the community — understate the true situation.

 

Seems to me the assimilated Jews of Germany used to feel pretty secure, too.

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

 Mo’s dementia: The thing about being egregiously rich and owning Harrods is that you can be completely off your nut and people are still going to dignify your delusions. Case in point: Mohamed Al Fayed, father of the late playboy who died along with Di. From the Guardian:

Mohamed Al Fayed branded Prince Philip a "Nazi" and a "racist" in the high court today as he detailed his belief that his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales were "murdered" at the request of the royal family.

The Harrods owner repeated to the court his claims that Diana was killed because she was pregnant at the time of her death, and that she and Dodi had been planning to announce their engagement.

"Diana told me on the telephone that she was pregnant," he told the inquest. "I was the only person that they told."

"They told me they were engaged and would announce their engagement on Monday morning. She would speak to her sons when she returned from Paris."

He said Diana told him "she knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her" a month before the crash.

He named the photographer James Andanson, who has since died, as the most likely suspect to have carried out the murder on the orders of the security services.

"There was one paparazzi member in the pay of the security services. This is likely to have been James Andanson, who exacted the murder in his own Fiat, pushed the car and a strobe light having been used to blind Henri Paul," Fayed said.

A "steel wall from the security services" prevented him from providing proof of all his claims, Fayed said. "I have been fighting for 10 years to be where we are," he told the jury.

Fayed claims the royal family would never have accepted a marriage between the mother of the second heir to the throne and an Egyptian Muslim, and alleges the Queen's husband worked with the security services to stage the car crash in Paris in August 1997 that killed the couple and their driver.

"It's time to send [Philip] back to Germany from where he comes," Fayed said. "You want to know his original name - it ends with Frankenstein."

Charles participated in the hope that he would then be able to marry his long-term mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, Fayed said.

Fayed described Parker Bowles as a "crocodile wife" and the Windsors as "that Dracula family", according to reports of his testimony by Sky News.

He disputed evidence that Henri Paul, the driver, was drunk. Paul was part of the plot, Fayed said.

"When he was killed, they find 20,000 francs in his pocket, because he disappeared three hours before the murder being briefed on what to do."

Fayed said it had been proved "black and white" that blood samples from Paul proving the driver was intoxicated were not his.

"The blood had been taken from someone in the mortuary who had been breathing carbon monoxide by the pathologist who refused to appear because they know their arguments are false and it's baloney and it's not facts," he said.

Fayed said the withholding of a lawyer's note recording Diana's fears for her safety proved she had been deliberately killed. He said she had kept letters from Prince Philip to be revealed in the event of her death, but those letters had now gone missing...

Quite the intricate plot there, Mo. Are you sure some shadowy Jewish elders and maybe the Mossad and a grassy knoll weren’t also involved? (Got a giggle out of "Frankenstein," "that Dracula family" and "crocodile wife," though.)

 

Update: Mo's on a real tear. His list of conspirators now includes Tony Blair, senior members of parliament, police chiefs, the CIA and Sarah McCorquodale, Diana's sister. (Let me guess--they all stabbed Di and Dodi on the Orient Express so that no one person could be held responsible.) The most amusing part of the proceedings, aside from the crack about the Royals resembling characters from old horror flicks, occurred when Mo insisted that, all evidence to the contrary, he wasn't a lunatic:

 

Mr Al Fayed particularly objected to being asked to produce evidence to back his claims, saying it was impossible to get hard proof because the intelligence agencies had erected a "steel wall" to stop him getting at the truth.

And his temper boiled when Richard Horwell QC, the barrister for two former Metropolitan Police chiefs whom he has accused of playing central roles in the plot, suggested he was more interested in "assumptions" than evidence.

With his voice raised and finger pointed in the air, Mr Al Fayed replied: "I am not a mad person, right, as you are trying to portray me, please.

"I am not taking any more questions from you."

Evidence or no evidence, Mr Al Fayed is pinning his hopes on the jury backing his claims of a major cover-up.

"I believe I am right," he said.

"I always win and I am going to - with God's blessing, with a fair-minded ordinary people, the jury, I will win."

With God's blessing you're going to end up in a nice padded room.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments (2)

The next Theo van Gogh?: “Far-right” (as the hard-left likes to describe him) Dutch politician Gert Wilders is defying death threats and getting set to release his exposé  of the Koran. From the Ceeb:

Iranian officials have formally demanded the Dutch government stop the screening of a film in the Netherlands about the Qur’an that was produced by a politician.

The film, its title still under wraps, is by Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders, who says his film shows the Muslim holy book as something that motivates people to murder.

The Iranian justice minister, Gholam Hussein Elham, wrote to his Dutch counterpart, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, calling for a ban.  He urged Ballin to prevent this "provocative and satanic act on the basis of European Convention on Human Rights.

"We must not allow the freedom of speech … to be used as a cover for assaulting the sensibilities, and exalted moral and religious values which are respected by all of humanity," Elham said in the letter.

The Dutch government has refused to intervene. At the same time, it also has plans for an emergency evacuation of its nationals and diplomats from the Middle East should the Wilders film be shown.

"It's like a walk through the Qur'an," said Wilders, describing his 10-minute film to the Guardian newspaper in an interview published Sunday.

"My intention is to show the real face of Islam. I see it as a threat. I'm trying to use images to show that what's written in the Koran is giving incentives to people all over the world."

The politician has said he has nothing against Muslims, just their faith. He has also argued that the Qur'an be outlawed in Holland, that immigration from Muslim countries be halted and that the building of new mosques be stopped…

Better make sure you have plenty of burly bodyguards on hand during your stroll through the text, Gert. (Since the whole thing lasts a scant ten minutes, it sounds more like a gallop.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:38 | link | comments (1)

 Hope the ballot's in Urdu Braille:

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments

Sharia financing in Pakistan: Can’t pay your debts? Hand over your daughter. From the Washington Times: 

LAHORE, Pakistan--Humaira Shahid spent her first four years in Pakistan's National Assembly trying desperately to build support for a bill to outlaw a corrupt lending practice in which families — unable to keep up interest payments in excess of 100 percent — can be forced to hand over a daughter to settle their accounts.

 

"These women were used as collateral, to barter, and it turned into a mafia business overnight," said Mrs. Shahid, astounded that colleagues did not share her outrage.

 

"I said, 'You can outlaw usury and save these women, and it doesn't cost anything, not even politically.' But there was resistance."

 

Mrs. Shahid finally got her law passed in May, but she is an unusually powerful senator: Her husband's family owns a chain of newspapers, which she could use as both a soapbox and research department.

 

She is running for re-election today and is so sure of success that she is barely campaigning.

 

But the writer, newspaper editor and mother of three feels mainly contempt for most of the five dozen women who, like her, were elected to parliament five years ago in seats reserved for women.

 

"Most of them were the wives or daughters of party men, and even the most effective were, so to say, constituency-oriented," she said. "Or they were obsequious, always voting yes. And a lot of them took a lot of trips, cut a lot of ribbons. They were corrupt."

 

Today is election day in Pakistan, a tumultuous nation of 164 million people balanced between feudal or tribal traditions and the demands and expectations of the 21st century.

 

It is a country that elected Benazir Bhutto — the first female prime minister to serve in a Muslim country — but one in which local courts still recognize a Shariah-based law that makes it easier to prosecute the victim of a rape than the perpetrator.

 

It is also a nation in which just 10 percent of women work in formal jobs, and only 38 percent can read, according to U.N. agencies…

 

No society can thrive with those pathetic numbers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:20 | link | comments (1)

Sharia? No thanks: In the name of “tolerance” and out of fear, the head of the British church would subject Muslim women in the U.K. to religious laws that enshrine male chauvinism. Mona Eltahawy, a New-York based journalist, decries the Archbish’s thoughtless, dangerous call. From the Globe and Mail:

…Remember, please, that Dr. Williams is the head of the global Anglican community, the U.S. branch of which ordained a gay priest in 2003. But the Archbishop clearly does not believe in wishing unto others as you would unto your own. He extends no such progressive ideals to Muslims. Most interpretations of sharia consider homosexuality an abomination.

He probably thinks his tolerance for sharia is progressive enough in light of the rabid Islamophobia that mars parts of Europe today. But it is a tolerance that condones only the most conservative options for Muslims. It is, at best, a form of the racism of lower expectations - the cheapest bargaining chip of liberal guilt.

Witness the Archbishop's insistence that he wasn't advocating the "inhumanity" of sharia à la Saudi Arabia or Iran, where adulterers are stoned and thieves have hands amputated. No, no, he told us. He was just referring to the use of sharia to resolve marital disputes, he insisted.

But that is precisely where the "inhumanity" of sharia lies for women. As a Muslim woman - born in Egypt, raised in Saudi Arabia - I can only laugh at the Archbishop's naiveté. In Egypt, as in many Muslim countries, the legal system has been completely modernized with the exception of one area that stubbornly remains caught in the web of edicts issued by Muslim scholars who lived centuries ago - family law.

Sharia is used only to govern the lives of women and children.

Sudanese-American law professor Abdullahi An-Nai'm long ago pointed out the lie at the heart of calls for sharia: They are essentially an attempt to "protect a patriarchal system."

There are already some sharia councils operating in Britain for Muslims who agree to abide by their rulings, but these are unofficial bodies not recognized by British law. It's not difficult to imagine women being pressured to agree to abide by such rulings. And it's just as easy to understand why a man would choose them over the secular legal system that would not be as tilted in his favour.

Why on Earth are these religious cop-outs allowed to exist in Britain? It's not just unofficial sharia councils, but Orthodox Jewish courts - and similar councils for British Sikhs. Women from those communities tell similar stories of how difficult it is to be granted divorces by their respective religious leaders.

What's wrong with the British legal system that religious groups are allowed to create parallel systems to it?

For the less naive view of just how humane sharia is to women in Britain, I refer the Right Honourable Rowan Williams to the recent study, Crimes of the Community: Honour-Based Violence in the U.K. by James Brandon and Salam Hafez. It makes for difficult reading. Women and activists mince no words in showing the hurdles for women with children who want to get divorced, and, tell the researchers that women are being forced to stay in violent marriages as a result of skewed decisions of the sharia council.

Tanisha Jnagel told the report that the Islamic Sharia Council hears both sides, but relies on religious texts to decide whether a divorce should be granted.

"In our experience, this isn't going to result in a solution that is fair for the woman."…

Here’s “fairness”: a woman may have to leap hurdles to obtain a divorce; all a man has to do is text message “I divorce thee” three times. Thus does high tech gadgetry facilitate Medieval  jurisprudence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments

Forever clueless: Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the travesty known as the Oslo Accords, that is. From the Jerusalem Post:

"The window of opportunity for peace is shrinking," President Shimon Peres said Sunday during a meeting with visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

"People are losing faith in peace," Peres said. "The Middle East has a policy of talk but not action - everybody talks, but nobody does anything. Only a fundamental change at the ground level, thousands of new workplaces and a raise in the quality of life in the West Bank will strengthen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] and the moderate peace camp."

The two also discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and the Iranian nuclear program, according to a statement issued by the president's office.

Kouchner said there had been no real progress in the peace process since December's donors conference in Paris, in which the international community pledged billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians over the next few years.

The French foreign minister told Peres he felt a great deal of despair, frustration and hopelessness among Palestinians regarding the prospects of establishing a Palestinian state. This, he said, was "a dangerous thing."…

Not nearly as “dangerous” as establishing a Palestinian state, which would undoubtedly be yet another Islamic backwater/terrorist enterprise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:27 | link | comments

The real Corrie story: Rachel Corrie, so we were told at the time, was either intentionally or accidentally crushed to death while defending a Palestinian home from an Israeli bulldozer. She thus instantly became a martyr for the Palestinian cause, the "new" Anne Frank, a symbol of  innocence “crushed” by the brutal “occupation.”

New information has just come to light which suggests it was all a crock. Rachel Corrie may have been killed trying to defend a tunnel through which terrorists had been smuggling weapons. She was intentionally put in harm’s way by the Palestinians so they could make a martyr of her and make Israel look bad. And, go figure, it worked like a charm. (No doubt there would never have been a “My Name is Rachel Corrie” if the truth had been known at the time; it’s hard to make a martyr out of someone who died so that terrorists could be armed to kill civilians. Mind you, they managed to make a martyr out of someone who participated in this.)

Blogger Israel Matzav (a.k.a Carl in Jerusalem) has the astonishing—and sickening—details. (Hat tip: NY Nana)

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah: A piece on the American Thinker site argues that it’s “premature” to predict an Obama victory. Maybe so, but I can see a mania in the making, and, if that’s the case, there’s no way you can stop Beatle—or Obama—mania by offering the kids some Lawrence Welk (or his current non-musical Republican equivalent, old man McCain). In fact, there’s no way you can stop Beatlemania.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:13 | link | comments

They're reviewing the situation: Just so's you don't think Hezbollah lashes