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

If you thought Ceeb shill-com Little Mosque on the Prairies was excruciating...: This Ceeb "reality" show is even worse.

Not coming soon to a public broadcaster near you: a reality show called "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?" Here's a bit of the theme song:

...How do you solve a problem like sharia?

How do you keep the people all in line?

How to define the law that is sharia?

“Intrusive” and “harsh,” “Draconian” and “Divine”?

Many a thing you know it wants to tell you.

Many a thing with which you must comply.

But how do you keep it at bay,

And keep it from having its way?

How to remain a kafir by and by?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like sharia?

How do you solve sharia, me, oh, my?...

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

Re the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision: It is of inestimable value to have the right to bear arms if you want to prevent someone from taking away your right to bare arms.

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

Tarring fundamentalists with the same brush: The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown points to a disturbing trend—the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the U.K. However, since it would be, you know, prejudiced to single out one religious group, she insists that Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are equally dangerous. With no evidence to speak of, she makes the outrageous claim that all three fundamentalisms are plotting together:

…Go into any British university and you see huddles of manifestly Muslim men and women sitting apart from others, including Muslims who refuse to cover up or live separate lives. You never saw this before because, until a decade back, there wasn't this distorted Islamicisation of Muslim life. An evocative film to be broadcast in July on Channel 4 on the Qu'ran examines this alarming spread across the world. More Muslims hate this reactionary Islam than do outsiders. Our thoughts tend not to matter to people like Odone.

The reason so many Muslim girls are abused, denied education and pushed into early marriages is because the community and family patriarchs and matriarchs violate their human rights. Proportionately more Muslim girls and boys run away from home than do the children of other Britons. Are they trying to escape the freedom of British society, or trying desperately to find it? Our state needs to protect these girls, not hand them over to their oppressors.

Odone praises one school where girls, covered up completely except for the face, are kept apart from boys. An "elegant Arabic-style courtyard with a fountain" is the barrier. That's fine then. What about those young girls so swathed and swaddled they constantly fall over in playgrounds? These shrouds sexualise them as much as boob tubes do the daughters of the "infidels". Both see young females as objects of unhealthy desire.

The report disapproves on our behalf of state education which offers "mixed gym classes or art classes where they are asked to draw a human body". Ya Allah. What next? Maybe science books, fiction with male and female characters falling in love, poetry? You want our children to go to hell like yours?

A bigger game is being played here. Some ardent Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims are rising, collaborating to demolish secularism in the UK, which has always been weak and too loosely committed to the separation of faith and state. So the Archbishop of Canterbury ruminates fondly about Sharia family law and his conservative bishops plot to gain moral supremacy. Some from this devious coalition briefed against the nascent British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Ed Hussein's Quillam Foundation. They condemn gay rights, liberal principles and personal freedom…

Ms. Alibhai-Brown is a bit confused. The Archbish’s ruminations aren’t a function of some fundamentalist plot to demolish secularism. They are a sign of the cleric’s fear that Islam is in ascendance while Christianity is in decline—thus his rush to be one of the first on his block to publicly embrace what he sees as an all but inevitable dhimmitude. Christian and Jewish by-the-bookniks may not exactly be thrilled with modernity, but it’s absurd and dangerously wrong-headed to claim that they’re in cahoots with the Islamists. Muslim fundamentalists want to foist dhimmitude on all Christians and Jews, regardless of the intensity of their religious beliefs and level of discomfort with modernity.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:21 | link | comments (1)

Who knew?: The Hulk is a Jew.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:49 | link | comments

Traitors: The Jews have Neturai Karta, hateful anti-Zionists who have hooked up with today’s Nazis to bring about the demise of the Jewish state. The Americans have senescent old gasbag Gore Vidal, who's been uttering many a discouraging word about the U.S. since Eisenhower was in office. (In the senescent old gasbag sweepstakes, American division, Gore is neck-and-neck with Hamas aficionado Jimminy Carter.)  Here he is (ga-ga Gore, not Jimminy or Ike) in conversation with one of the mullahs’ minions on Iran TV:

...Press TV: You have often written about the United States’ superpower status in terms of the history of previous superpowers. Do you think we’re witnessing the end of U.S. power as some suggest. Will the White House be seen like Persepolis?

Gore Vidal: Well it won’t make such good ruins, no. It’ll be more like the tomb of Cyrus nearby. They managed to destroy the United States -- why? Because they’re oil and gas people and they’re essentially criminals. I repeat that this is a criminal group that’s seized control of the country through what looked like an ordinary election. But there’s some very nice films and documentaries about what happened in the year 2000 when Albert Gore won the election for president and they saw to it that he couldn’t serve. They got the Supreme Court -- which is the Holy of Holies ordinarily in our system - to investigate and then accuse the thieves of being absolutely correct and the winners -- Mr. Gore and the Democrats -- of being the cheaters. It’s the first law of Machiavelli, whatever your opponent’s faults are, you pick his virtues and you deny he has them. That’s what they did when Senator Kerry ran a few years ago for president. He’s a famous hero from the Vietnam War. They said he was a coward and not a hero. That’s how it’s done. When you have a bunch of liars in charge of your government you can’t expect to get much history out of that. But later on we’ll dig and dig… and we will dig up Persepolis.

Press TV: Senator Obama talks about change but of course he has courting Wall Street as well as the Israeli lobby -- do you see any prospect of change with him as president?

Gore Vidal: Not really. I don’t doubt his good faith, just as I do not doubt the bad faith of Cheney and Bush. They are such dreadful people that we’ve never had in government before. They would never have risen unless they were buying elections as they did in Florida in 2000, as they did in the State of Ohio in 2004. These are two open thefts of the Presidency. When I discovered that this did not interest the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of the press of the country I realized our day was done. We are no longer a country we are a framework for crooks to go in and steal money. Knowing that they’ll never be caught and they’ll be admired for it. Americans always take everybody on his own evaluation. You say I’m a state and they say “oh, yeah yeah yeah, he’s a state, isn’t that great.” And you accuse the other people of your crimes before you commit them. It’s an old trick which was known to Machiavelli who wrote about it in his handbook, the Prince.

Press TV: Finally that issue which is exercising so many minds in the Middle East and beyond. You, yourself have written about so many Imperial wars of the United States. Do you think Bush and Cheney would risk another war in what Mohammad ElBaradei of the IAEA calls a fireball?

Gore Vidal: They are longing to but they have spent all of the money. They have got it in their own private companies like the Vice-President and a company called Halliburton which is stealing more money and should be on trial sooner or later before Congress. But perhaps not, who knows? But it’s well known in Washington, these people are leaking away the money of the country. Well there’s no more money. They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies.

The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don’t stop. When the public that’s lied to 30 times a day it’s apt to believe the lies, is not it?

Iran no threat? Vidkun Vidal seems to be off his meds (or is it his rocker?) again.

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

Marxism by any other name still stinks: An article in the Toronto Star outlines some of the changes we can expect when Ontario human rights apparatchinks’ “new” and expanded powers kick in today. I’ve taken the liberty of fisking the sucker (in italics):

While it remains to be seen whether a new human rights system that takes effect in Ontario today will be an improvement over its predecessor, people with discrimination complaints probably won't have to worry about hiring a lawyer. (An improvement? Are you kidding? Was the UN’s Human Rights “Council’ and improvement over its Human Rights Commission? This kind of stuff never “improves.” It only gets more overweening, more intrusive, more ridiculous.)

Nearly two dozen lawyers and paralegals have been hired for a new human rights legal support centre that's been set up in Toronto to provide free legal advice to complainants as well as representation before a tribunal. (Two dozen, huh? How much is that going to set us back? I would point out that this merely reaffirms the unfairness of the process—offering “free” legal services to the complainant, but leaving the person being complained about to shoulder his own legal costs.)

Raj Anand, who heads the board of the new centre, believes it delivers a complete answer to critics who were afraid people complaining of human rights violations would be left on their own to battle employers or government agencies in discrimination cases. (It looks like the apparatchniks have too much time on their hands, Ontarians being insufficiently hateful/bigoted/discriminatory, and are trying to drum up some more business to justify their unnecessary existence.)

The new system revolves around the concept of giving complainants "direct access" to an adjudicator. Under the old system, the Ontario Human Rights Commission would first launch an investigation into a complaint before deciding whether it deserved a hearing. Cases were often stuck in the bureaucracy for years. (“Direct access”—wow, makes it sound so fair and “democratic.” I have a much better solution for unsticking those cases that get stuck for years on end—do away with the entire bureaucracy. )

If they did make it to a tribunal, commission lawyers would present the case.

But Anand said it's a myth commission lawyers were acting on behalf of complainants. In fact, their role was similar to that of a Crown attorney; they didn't answer to complainants and could proceed as they saw fit, he said. (Crown attorneys—that’s a laugh and a half. How can you act as a Crown attorney in a setting which abjures British Common Law and replaces it with a mixture of feel-good mush and Marxist gobbledygook?)

"I can tell you, some of the greatest battles I've had while representing complainants has been with the commission" lawyers, said Anand, who once headed the human rights commission and is now in private practice.

If complainants want to hire their own lawyer, they still can. But one notable feature of the new support centre is that it isn't restricted to serving only those with low incomes, which is generally the case with legal clinics funded by the province, as the new support centre is. There is no financial eligibility criteria, Anand said. (Why would complainants want to hire their own lawyer when they can get a freebie? Since the odds are already weighted so precipitously in their favour, they don’t exactly need a Clarence Darrow in this setting.)

But while the support centre may satisfy those who worried complainants would be left to represent themselves, it may not do much for those who say the deck is stacked against employers under the new system. (Stacked against them under the “old” system, too. Stacked against anyone on the receiving end of the complaint.)

Some law firms who represent employers began holding workshops more than a year ago, to prepare corporate managers for the new human rights regime. At one, Robb Macpherson, a lawyer at McCarthy, Tetrault, a big downtown Toronto law firm, predicted it will be "a field day" for complainants. In addition to state-funded legal counsel, they gain more bargaining power under the new system. (Do you get the feeling that the “human rights” apparatus has it in for business and capitalism? Why not call it what it is—stealth Marxism.)

One reason is that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal plans to schedule hearings within about three months of receiving a complaint. That means employers will be under more pressure to work out a quick settlement with workers who've filed a human rights complaint – or they'll find themselves before a tribunal, facing the prospect of having a more severe penalty imposed. (Bad for businesses; good for “the worker” and the human rights wonks.)

Lawyers who act for respondents – those accused of human rights violations – expect to see an increase in complaints, not only because it's supposed to be easier for individual complaints to get before a tribunal, but because third parties such as unions and community groups will be able to launch complaints on their behalf. (Oh. My. Gawd. Get set for an inundation of complaints that will keep the apparatchniks busy for years—and, I predict, result in exactly the same kind of inertia as before,  necessitating the hiring of even more employees to service the ever-expanding behemoth.)

Courts will also gain new power to hear human rights complaints and will be able to order employers, in the context of these cases, to reinstate workers who were wrongfully dismissed from their jobs. (As I said, stealth Marxism, as the workers and their advocates get to boss around the bosses.)

The tribunal has only been hearing about 150 cases a year, but it will likely have to deal with several thousand more than that once complaints start getting sent there directly under the new system. (Arrrrgh!)

As a result, many cases are expected to be resolved through mediation... (To the advantage of the complainant, of course, and the disadvantage of the employer.)

Workers of Ontariostan unite! You have nothing to lose but your...well, actually, you have nothing to lose. (No wonder we’re in decline.)

Update: A story in the London Free Press (not so "free" as it turns out, what with the current chill on free speech) crunches the numbers:

Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley says the current backlog of 4,200 cases and delays of up to five years to get to a tribunal for a decision are unacceptable.

Today, the government is implementing some of the changes designed to eliminate the backlog and cut wait times at human rights tribunal to less than one year.

The long delays in the system are making it futile for anyone to file a complaint, Bentley said.

"Whatever damage is done is forgotten or, even worse, it has been ongoing," said Bentley, MPP for London West.

The overhaul will cost the government about $31.7 million, including $14 million for the immediate changes.

As of today, anyone with a human rights complaint will go directly to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, instead of going through the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). About 2,500 complaints are filed every year.

"This eliminates a big step and greatly speed things up," Bentley said.

Bentley said the human rights tribunal, which hears and makes decisions on human right complaints, became bogged down because there were only a few full-time adjudicators. The number of full-time adjudicators is gradually being boosted to 20, with another 25 part-time adjudicators.

The tribunal will also get better facilities with more meeting rooms in Toronto...

Not just "better"--"state-of-the-art." What an unconscionable waste of time and money. We are beyond imbecilic for tolerating this toxic blossom.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments

Husseiniacs: In honour of their favourite fast change artiste, Bambi Fauxbama, a buncha knuckleheads have adopted his middle name.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:33 | link | comments

Terrifying insight: Obama's America is Canada.

In that case the West may as well call it a wrap right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:08 | link | comments

Les maudits Francais: The Weekly Standard has a superb analysis of the al-Dura affair--a latter day Dreyfus case that demonstrates that, when it comes to Jew-hatred, the French--especially the ones French media--are in the front ranks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:03 | link | comments

It's the temporary marriage, stupid: The irresistible "secret weapon" that may Islamize the West (supposedly).

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:51 | link | comments

Unassailable hatred: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-freedom apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:

…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.

In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword...

Any thoughts on that, Barbara/ Heather/ Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?

Tammy?

(As an aside—sort of—here’s a bit of info I hadn’t come across before. I found it on babbling Babsy’s Wiki entry:

At a meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation on the day after the British Columbia Human Right Tribunal heard the complaint, Hall served on a panel along with Khurrum Awan, one the student lawyers who helped file the complaint who testified for at the BC Tribunal against Macleans, and Haroon Siddiqui, editor emeritus of the Toronto Star. Hall joked to the audience that she can finally speak freely with her co-panellist Mr. Awan about his complaint. Awan praised Hall's condemnation of Maclean's, stating that he had difficulty developing support until Ms. Hall called Maclean's Islamophobic, and then "everyone wanted to be our uncle.”

That’s our Babsy—the Louise Arbour of Ontario.)

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

Unassailable hate: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-free speech apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:

…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.

In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword.)…

Any thoughts on that, Barbara/Heather/Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?

Tammy?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:58 | link | comments

Tick...tick...tick: The former head of the Mossad says Israel must stop Iran within the next year--sooner if Bambi is elected--or it's toast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

The Aussie way: As evidence that we don’t need authorities to mediate and ameliorate hurt feelings, I offer Exhibit A—Tim Blair’s account of what happened when he posted those offensive Mo ‘toons on his site. What happened—or, more to the point, what didn’t happen? Well, let’s just say it didn’t involve an Islamic supremacist scrawling out a complaint in chicken scratch citing passages from the Koran in order to punish a brazen ‘toon-publishing Jew. Nor did it involve a five day show trial convened in a windowless, airless bunker:

…Because papers and magazines were a little shy, I put the cartoons – none was so bold as that Gold Coast kid’s T-shirt – on my personal website. Reaction was interesting. The Sydney Morning Herald ran an item on it, which of course required an accompanying image. Rather than display one of the cartoons, they ran a shot of me.

There was some hilarious bending and twisting from commentators who’d previously defended religious insults. ``We need to understand the value of artistic freedom,’’ wrote the Herald Sun’s Jill Singer in 1997, standing up for the Australian display of Andres Serrano’s ``Piss Christ’’, which depicted a crucifix in a vial of urine.

In 2006, though, Singer denounced those far milder Mohamed cartoons: ``Who wants a totally uncensored media run by those devoid of judgment, taste or social responsibility?’’
The ABC was forbidden – forbidden – to run even a singlecartoon.

Police called, offering a safe house until the heat died down. I declined, figuring the heat wouldn’t be all that great. And it wasn’t. I think I received two emails from Islamic readers taking issue with my decision, but politely so.

All  in all, a much better way of going about it, because the freedom to debate, denounce and offend remains intact.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:43 | link | comments

The Calgary Herald nails it: High five’s all ‘round at the news that the CHRC has declined to hear the CIC’s complaint against Maclean’s, right? Not so fast, says a wise editorial in the Calgary Herald. The decision doesn’t mean the that the human rights apparatchniks have any intention of folding up their tents. It is merely an indication that they have no taste for a battle with the moneybags behind Maclean’s. How comes? Well, first off,  it wipes away the complainants' financial advantage in that the people they’re hassling can well afford the fight. Second, since the process—years of being strung along with no end in sight; years of struggling under the burden of onerous legal bills—is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment, the punishment doesn’t have nearly as much sting when the defendant is rich. Lastly, taking on a high profile complaint at a time when the feds are breathing down their necks would garner them unwanted public scrutiny, and these beetles function much better in the shade, under a rock, where they can get away with—or used to be able to get away with—grinding down the poor and obscure.

Anyway, here’s what the Herald had to say:

So, Maclean's and Mark Steyn walk. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided there's not enough evidence to support a complaint from Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, that an article by Steyn was "likely to expose" Muslims to hatred or contempt.

A win for free speech, then?

Yes and no. Yes, in the obvious sense that by declining to prosecute, the CHRC concedes what was published violated no laws.

No, because if you need pockets as long as Maclean's to wring that concession out of them, free speech is only for the rich.

Fact: It costs nothing to complain. Then, if an HRC takes it on, it will be prosecuted on the taxpayers' dollar. It's amazing there aren't more cases like Steyn's. Maclean's, on the other hand, is into this for big bucks, and sadly, there are limits to what even the boldest publishers can afford on a point of principle.

This is how these things work. Let a citizen of modest means utter a politically incorrect thought: He will be crushed, and a precedent thereby created with which to crush others.

But, confronted by strength, (and just now in the CHRC's case by awkward public relations issues,) and they back off.

It is called chill. When a citizen must count the cost of putting his money where his mouth is, he is not free. Ottawa must do the right thing: Defang this censor.

Hear, hear.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments

Big mosque in the Rockies: A new prayer facility is getting set to open in Calgary, and it's a beaut.

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

Ka-vetch, ka-vetch, ka-vetch: You think Mo Elmasry, Faisal Joseph and the socks like to whine? They’re pikers compared to the folks of Dearborn, Mich., “America’s Arab capital.” Toronto Star scribe, Michelle Shephard visited the 'burb and recorded some of its residents’ gripes:

DEARBORN, MICH.–In a time before 9/11, this town – home to the nation's largest population of Arab Americans – was one of George W. Bush's stomping grounds.

He spoke of the indignities of racial profiling and the use of secret evidence and the plight of Palestinians. And he appealed to the largely conservative nature of the population on issues such as abortion.

That was 2000, and many Muslims here had Bush bumper stickers.

Now, this Detroit suburb of 100,000 – often cited as a bellwether for America's 6 million Muslim voters –provides a study on the effects seven years of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies have had on a religious and ethnic group.

Sharpen the focus further and enter the Shatila bakery on Warren Ave. on a busy afternoon. Every patron has a story about feeling like an outcast in the country where many of them were born or have lived for most of their lives.

Dr. Nazem Alhusein is a 46-year-old pediatrician who came here 21 years ago from Syria.

"In 2000, I voted for Al Gore," he says proudly, his Michigan baseball cap resting on a table inside the bakery. "Ninety-nine per cent of my friends voted for George Bush. Eventually, after we had him for two administrations, everyone felt I did the right thing."

Alhusein's wife is Canadian and his sisters live in Toronto, which means he drives north about once a month and endures repeated questioning at the border – something that didn't happen before 9/11, he says.

Syrian-born Ayman Saleh has a similar story.

"We feel like we're watched and held to a higher standard in every way," he says of travelling with his family.

The Shatila bakery is on a stretch of Warren Ave. that blends the Middle East with Middle America.

Signs here for halal meat shops, bakeries and grocery stores are mainly in Arabic – until McDonald's, KFC and Taco Bell logos mark the unofficial end of Dearborn's Arab strip.

West on Warren and it's a dismal row of auto-repair shops, liquor joints and dry-cleaning operation called Happy Cleaners, which looks neither happy, nor clean.

Dearborn's Arab community traces its roots to 1927, when hometown boy Henry Ford opened his car plant and Lebanese immigrants took advantage of his generous $5 a day wage for assembly-line work.

When immigration reform began in the 1960s and '70s, Muslim Iraqis, Yemenis, Palestinians and Syrians joined the Lebanese community, which had been predominantly Christian.

By the 1990s, Dearborn had a larger Arab population than any other U.S. city.

It's been called the Muslim capital of America, though its population certainly isn't representative of America's Muslims – since it is predominantly Shiite and there is no South Asian Muslim presence. Still, this is where politicians come to take the pulse of Muslim voters.

Last month, Barack Obama held a private meeting with Imam Hassan Qazwini, the Iraqi American who heads the Islamic Center of America, which boasts the largest mosque in North America, and is a favourite contact for world leaders.

Ushering a Toronto Star reporter into his impressive office for a recent interview, Qazwini offered tea and chocolates as he spoke of every Muslim American's "moral duty" to get involved in the November presidential election.

What unites U.S. Muslims, he said, is their fear of the erosion of civil rights and a "war on terror" that is really a campaign against Islam.

Qazwini related his own problems with profiling, saying he undergoes at least two hours of interrogation when he travels internationally.

"I'm someone who meets with presidential nominees, with the Pope and at least five times with President Bush since 2000 and I'm a well-known moderate leader in this country," Qazwini said.

"If this happens to me, what happens to the other six million Muslims in this country?"

Ironically, profiling was what he talked about with Bush eight years ago – when it was a problem that paled in comparison to what some Muslim and Arab Americans face today…

Tell me, Mr. Qazwini: Who’s to blame for the “profiling” (i.e. hyper-vigilance aimed at thwarting jihadi terrorist attacks)? George Bush? Or the jihadi terrorists?

Take your time mulling that one over.

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

A shared future: Just returned from a trip to the EU, Diana West outlines some American-EU differences and commonalities, and warns of the bumps ahead:

…Such differences [EU socialism vs. U.S. capitalism] have helped turn Europe into the European Union, a nation-destroying behemoth both driven and empowered by the infantilizing machinery of the welfare state. Indeed, so shockingly totalitarian is the orientation of the EU, it strikes me that President Bush's misguided effort to democratize the Islamic Middle East might well have been better aimed at liberating the hostage peoples of the Brussels-dominated supra-state.

That said, it's crucial to recognize the precious common ground between the United States and Europe. While on a different plane from those fallow battlefields of the Ardennes, it is also sacred soil. I refer to our shared cultural and historical progressions as civilizations whose ideals are founded on liberty. Such liberty is once again under threat and from an ideological enemy -- the ideology of Islam, which, as spread by a massive influx of Islamic immigration over the past several decades, promises, as historians and writers from Bat Ye'or to Mark Steyn have copiously explained, to transform all of Europe into an Islamic continent.

And what do our presidential candidates think of the strategic ramifications of an Islamic Europe? Who knows? The likely but not inevitable civilizational shift is so far off the U.S. radar screen (with our government keeping it there, what with its recommended lexicon discouraging all terror-related references to Islam) it is invisible. American tourists -- those flush enough to pay their way with Euros, that is (and I didn't see many) -- can still visit the old Europe of gingerbread towns and Gothic cathedrals without noticing much more than a few hijabbed women, signs of Islamization that usually fail to register more than a multicultural nod.

Of course, even many (most?) residents are blind to the staggering changes in progress. This is something I discovered, to take one example, in conversation with a conservative British MEP (Member of European Parliament), who, after nine years of representing a sector of southern England in Brussels, both doubts the existence of "no-go zones" in Britain -- despite the writings on the subject by the Bishop of Rochester -- and has never visited the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. A stone's throw from the ritzy EU environs in which we sat, this Islamic enclave more closely resembles a bustling outpost of the umma than the so-called capital of Europe.

"You ought to get out more," I suggested…

I recommend a visit to Canada, where the politician can see for himself what happens when political correctness is allowed to metastasize in the body politic. It should prove to be a real eye-opener.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:59 | link | comments

Today's Der Sturmer, er, sorry, Arab News 'toon: As per usual, the subject is Jewry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:20 | link | comments

A sign that the Apocalypse is nigh: The same Harpoon Siddiqui screed--the one in which he gives a shout out to Barbara Hall and Tammy Farber--appears on both the CJC and the CIC sites.

Can Pestilence, War, Conquest and Death be far behind?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:05 | link | comments

Shot down: CIC attorney Faisal Joseph is mighty disappointed that he's not going to get a change to present his case against Maclean's to Canada's federal kangaroos. He told the Canadian Press he's quite certain the 'roos would be swayed by "the compelling evidence of hate and expert testimony" of the, er, experts he was planning to call--the same bunch who shared their pearls of wisdom at the B.C. show trial.

I have to say I'm kind of disappointed too. I was hoping to hear yet again from the Queen Latifah/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Islamophobia scholar. Anyone who can meld such diverse interests into a field of study is worth listening to at least twice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:49 | link | comments

Rice's "realism": In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice expatiates on, well, on just about every frickin thing on the planet (though not, alas, on totalitarian courts prosecuting thought crimes in her neighbour to the north)—and a mighty soporific slog it is. Here she is ‘splaining that pesky Israeli-Palestinian situation:

…A third challenge is finding a way to resolve long-standing conflicts, particularly that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Our administration has put the idea of democratic development at the center of our approach to this conflict, because we came to believe that the Israelis will not achieve the security they deserve in their Jewish state and the Palestinians will not achieve the better life they deserve in a state of their own until there is a Palestinian government capable of exercising its sovereign responsibilities, both to its citizens and to its neighbors. Ultimately, a Palestinian state must be created that can live side by side with Israel in peace and security. This state will be born not just through negotiations to resolve hard issues related to borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem but also through the difficult effort to build effective democratic institutions that can fight terrorism and extremism, enforce the rule of law, combat corruption, and create opportunities for the Palestinians to improve their lives. This confers responsibilities on both parties.

As the experience of the past several years has shown, there is a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Palestinian society -- between those who reject violence and recognize Israel's right to exist and those who do not. The Palestinian people must ultimately make a choice about which future they desire, and it is only democracy that gives them that choice and holds open the possibility of a peaceful way forward to resolve the existential question at the heart of their national life. The United States, Israel, other states in the region, and the international community must do everything in their power to support those Palestinians who would choose a future of peace and compromise. When the two-state solution is finally realized, it will be because of democracy, not despite it.

This is, indeed, a controversial view, and it speaks to one more challenge that must be resolved if democratic and modern states are to emerge in the broader Middle East: how to deal with nonstate groups whose commitment to democracy, nonviolence, and the rule of law is suspect. Because of the long history of authoritarianism in the region, many of the best-organized political parties are Islamist, and some of them have not renounced violence used in the service of political goals. What should be their role in the democratic process? Will they take power democratically only to subvert the very process that brought them victory? Are elections in the broader Middle East therefore dangerous?

These questions are not easy. When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections -- largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.

Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.

The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression…

“Problematic,” you say? “”Standards,” you say. Oh, Ms. Condi, don’t you know your “standards” are never going to “deradicalize” jihadis committed to redressing what they see as a cosmic wrong—i.e. Jewish sovereignty on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah’s “chosen”? Don't you know that the Palestinians who, after all, voted these lunatics into office, love their Hamas? And isn’t is wishful thinking of the “I have in my hand a piece of paper signed by Herr Hitler” variety to think a “democratic alternative” is going to magically appear in a place that harbours the same kind of hate-on for Jews that the Nazis did?

Strange kind of “realism” you got going there, Ms. Rice.

Update: The real realism--whether Iran gets to unleash its Final Solution for the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:47 | link | comments

Coren throttles Corrie: That execrable piece of pro-Palestinian useful idiocy, My Name is Rachel Corrie, got a semi-favourable write-up in the Canadian Jewish News the other week. Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun, on the other hand, has a far less, ahem, nuanced review:

…The play was created by two writers, Katherine Viner from Britain's relentlessly liberal and viciously anti-Israel Guardian newspaper and, wait for it, Alan Rickman. Yes, the man from Harry Potter and Robin Hood. He of frighteningly extended vowel sounds. Yes, the guy who can turn you into a newt or torture you in a dungeon.

And being an actor he obviously knows all about the Middle East and the geopolitics of Israel and Palestine.

So the play is just as you would imagine. There is no context or balance. Corrie is a saint, the Palestinians are lovely and the Jews -- and this is highly significant -- are faceless, anonymous creatures representing something vaguely dark and persecuting. Bad guys. Rather like how we depicted Nazis until it became trendy to do otherwise.

Some, but very few, critics remarked on this when the play ran in Britain. It was lauded in a media that is too frightened to condemn Islamic extremism, but routinely lambastes Israel.

Nobody suggested, for example, that partly because of Corrie's obstruction of the Israeli army, guns were smuggled to terrorists who then murdered Israeli children. Nor did they mention the meeting that took place between her allegedly "peaceful" organization and British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif.

There is also another screaming, bleeding absence in all of this. Just a few days after the fanatic Corrie lost her life in an accident that she had caused, an Israeli child was blown to mangled flesh and smashed bone by a suicide bomber. This little girl was not allowed even to cross the road by herself, let alone find the time and money to travel halfway across the world to support the latest cause.

Pro-peace

Her Israeli parents were children of Holocaust survivors and extremely pro-peace and compromise. Unlike Corrie, they understood the situation because they lived there. They identified their child by her teeth. Her baby teeth.

There is no play written about her and no fatuous leftists are championing her story. It could be called "My name is."

That's right, they don't know, because they don't care. My name is hypocrisy, my name is cruelty, my name is racism.

He forgot my name is clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:51 | link | comments

Words of wisdom: Prime Minister Stephen Harper decries the "election" in Zimbabwe as "an ugly perversion of democracy."

Funny, that's exactly what I say about the HRCs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:48 | link | comments

Even cheesier than the original: "Dutch Jimmy Carter" accuses Israel of terrorism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:33 | link | comments (2)

Scant attention: While the National Post continues to follow “the” Canadian story—the appropriation of our free speech in the misbegotten name of “human rights”—and has an editorial on the subject today (see my comments in the post two below), here, in toto, is all the Globe and Mail, which considers itself to be our nation’s newspaper of record, could muster on the subject—an “IN BRIEF” that lives up to its name:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint against Maclean's magazine over a controversial article on the future of Islam, magazine officials said yesterday.

Meanwhile, a decision from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the same issue isn't expected for several months.

The Canadian Islamic Congress launched the dual complaints over an article by Maclean's journalist Mark Steyn. The article, The Future Belongs to Islam, came under fire by Muslim critics who claimed it spreads Islamophobia.

Earlier this month, closing arguments were made before B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal over the article, which appeared in Maclean's in October, 2006.

C’est tout. Given the magnitude of the issue, a bit on the skimpy side, I’d say.

Update: Robert Spencer's response to the line about the claims of Muslim critics: "When the truth spreads 'Islamophobia,' maybe it's time for a bit of introspection."

Robert, of all people, must know that charging people with thought crimes is easy; introspection is hard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:27 | link | comments

 A “tribal” crime: A father and his son stand accused of murdering a young woman—their daughter and sister—because she balked at the father’s authority and refused to wear a headscarf: One of those “honour killings” we’ve heard so much about, whereby the family considers that its “honour” resides between the legs of its female members, and the family’s men folk are moved to “defend” their “honour” by offing any uppity chicks. Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington weighs in on an (alleged) local honour killing, as does an imam, who insists it is “tribal” and has nothing to do with religion:

…"This is not Islam, this is barbarism," Stephen Rockwell, host of Saturday's national TV show Call of the Minaret on Vision TV, said of the strangulation murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez that many believe is a cultural honour killing.

"Dishonour killings," is how blogger Ellen R. Sheeley describes these homicides.

"There should be no discussion of this honour business," writes in Ron Date. "If these people want to maintain their 'honours' customs, they really should return to their homeland."

It's a hot topic and Peel police should be commended for recognizing honour killings have gotten out of control in some countries, like in Germany last year where a Kurdish man from Iraq received a life sentence for killing his 24-year-old wife for leaving him. "He was proud of his evil deed," said Stephen Brown, a columnist for Front Page Magazine which covers this subject matter extensively. "Only three hours after his wife had successfully divorced him in 2006, he ambushed her, stabbed her 12 times and then poured gasoline over her, burning her alive. He told the court she had betrayed him and 'my religion and culture forbid that.' "

However in all the reaction I received from yesterday's front page showing the arrest of Aqsa Parvez's brother on first-degree murder charges, I did not get one Muslim writing in defending this homicide of the Applewood Heights 11th grader on Dec. 10, 2007. Or any homicide.

Actually it was the contrary - many believing it should be up to an individual if she wants to wear a traditional head scarf and/or embrace western traditions. Perhaps a proper, open and non punitive discussion with Muslim women will emerge out of this with real dialogue on whether they want to continue wearing the Hijab and if they are concerned for their safety should they not want to.

Either way, the Syrian-born Rockwell and many e-mailers said that debate should never end up with a homicide.

"Teen Aqsa was innocent in the sense that irrespective of 'Hijab' or 'no Hijab,' she had equal right to live in this world," writes Qasim Abbas. "No fundamentalist or otherwise have any authority to force any one to follow any act of Muslim religion in accordance of teaching in Muslim Scripture."

Rockwell, the spiritual leader of The Downtown Mosque on Bond St., agrees, "if they want to leave, they will leave. You can't stop them and you can't persuade them."

Nor should you. "Verse 256 of the second chapter in the Koran," said Rockwell. "Let there be no compulsion in religion. It is ridiculous. You can't legislate religion down somebody's throat."

Having said that, though, Rockwell does not want to see people using this murder to label Muslim families in a country where "if you bash Islam, you are given press time."

He said he reminds new Canadians of Muslim faith, "everyone will be standing before God. I preach on TV to love Islam and practice it the way it came, don't use tribalism." …

The thing about the Koran is that for every hearts and flowers verse about there being no compulsion in religion you can usually find another one that contradicts it. For instance, while there may be no compulsion in religion (a moot point, since under the terms of sharia, all non-Muslims must “submit” to Islam’s authority) in matters of gender, the man is definitely superior to women. It says so right here. Those words, too, are a product of tribalism—the 7^th Century tribalism of the Arabian subcontinent. And to this day they are used to justify the acts of fathers, brothers and uncles who murder daughters, sisters and nieces for failing to comply with the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

It would be helpful if, instead of dismissing “honour” murders as being entirely “tribal,” moderates like Rockwell could acknowledge that the desire to control women springs in no small part from what is written.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:49 | link | comments

What's so good about it?: The National Post hails the latest “good news” about “rights”:

On Friday, it was announced that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint filed against Maclean's magazine by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC). Supporters of free speech should be careful to put this victory in context: A similar complaint against Maclean's is still being adjudicated in British Columbia. Moreover, the very fact that human rights bureaucrats presume to sit in judgment as to what can and cannot be published in this country is appalling in itself. Still, it is nice to see the CIC's gag squad get handed a loss.

On First Nations, too, some good news is at hand. Thanks to changes finally pushed through by Stephen Harper's Conservatives, natives living on reserves will now enjoy the same rights under the HRA that non-natives have taken for granted for more than three decades. As of now, band members will be able to file human rights complaints against Ottawa and their tribal leadership (though bands will have 36 months to adapt to the new legislative changes). We are particularly gratified on behalf of native women -- who often are subject to the sort of institutionally sexist treatment that went extinct in Western society almost a century ago.

What is needed now is similar root-and-branch reform of the Human Rights Act -- beginning with the elimination of Section 13, which bans the electronic transmission of material that bureaucrats judge "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." Provincial human rights codes should be similarly amended. As Maclean's declared on Friday: "No human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation's media."

Oh, so you mean First Nations individuals, who certainly deserve the same “rights” as the rest of us, can now run to the commissars with their complaints too? How is that “good news”? The “good news” would be that the government had finally come to its senses and decided that the totalitarian enterprise is inimical to freedom, a drain on our economy, and as useless as ta-tas on a bull.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:31 | link | comments

Feel the pain: CHRC commissar-in-chief Jennifer Lynch tries to rally the troops by getting them to sing the Canadian Kangaroo Theme Song. (You may recognize it as a revamp of one of the most execrably saccharine tunes of the 70s--a decade replete with songs of that type.)

Feelings.

We care for your feelings.

Wanting to protect your feelings from hate.

Teardrops

Rolling down on your face,

Show tender-hearted feelings affronted by hate.

 

Feelings, devoted to your feelings.

We wish you all would shut your traps

And always be polite.

 

Feelings,

Woe-woe-woe, feelings,

Woe-woe-woe,

Feeling your feelings have been hurt.

 

Feelings, Tammy Farber’s feelings,

Mo Elmasry’s feelings; we feel the pain they feel.

 

Feelings, put feelings over freedom,

Our feeling's that we need ‘em

In order to feel fine.

 

Feelings,

Woe-woe-woe, feelings,

Woe-woe-woe feelings again and again.

Feelings…(repeat & fade).

 

Emphasis on the fade, one hopes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:52 | link | comments (4)

A reason for optimism: Times columnist Gerard Baker says all signs point to the fact that the good guys are winning the wars—the one being waged against the jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the PR war being waged against the Islamists:

…The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.

Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It's right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?

Yes, the fight is worth it—if it indeed succeeds in thwarting the Dar al Islamists. But how is that possible if, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, jurisprudence continues to be grounded in sharia? Isn’t that like thwarting the Germans but allowing a modified version of Nazism to remain in effect?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments (2)

We owe it all to socks: Poor Khurrum Awan and the sockettes. After the sorry spectacle of the B.C. show trial, and in light of a federal probe and unfamiliar public exposure, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided not to entertain their sockmeister’s complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

Woe is them.

Ezra Levant is certain that, as instinctive self-preservation kicks in, the British Columbia virtue tribunal will tell the sockmeister and the kids to take a hike, too—which would be a first for thought crime prosecution in the p.c. courts. I’m not so sure about that. However, I do know that before everyone does a happy dance, we need to get a grip and realize there’s still a long way to go. The fight won’t be over until the human rights vipers have been legally—and permanently—defanged.

That being said, we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Khurrum, Syed and the other Islamic aggrieved. Without their hurt feelings, Canadians might never have become aware of the internal totalitarian threat; without them, we might all still be sleeping.

Thanks, socks. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments (2)

Besotted by Bambi: So enamoured are the media of the Obamessiah, so caught up are they in the fizzy magic of his campaign, that despite his flip-flops, “clarifications” and dubious associates, he would more or less have to be caught in flagrante with a hooker or Al Gore—or both—for  the media to begin questioning his character.

Here’s a wry Charles Krauthammer on the subject of Bambi’s about faces, and on the media’s unquestioning adoration:

…As public financing is not a principle dear to me, I am hardly dismayed by Obama's abandonment of it. Nor am I disappointed in the least by his other calculated and cynical repositionings. I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight -- switching sides in World War II, for example -- whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. "He does what politicians do," explained Jeremiah Wright.

When it's time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia -- only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright. Today, she is a featured prop in Obama's fuzzy-wuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad.

Not a flinch. Not a flicker. Not a hint of shame. By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

In the Bambi campaign, shamelessness is next to godliness.

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

Funny Muslims and silly infidels going south: Fox TV has picked up the rights to purportedly high-larioius Ceeb shill-com, Little Mosque on the Prairie. Apparently, someone at Fox thinks Americans would be interested in seeing sharia cast in an amusing light, too. From the Hollywood Reporter:

BANFF, Alberta -- 20th Century Fox TV has acquired the U.S. format rights to the popular Canadian comedy "Little Mosque on the Prairie."

There is no writer attached yet to adapt the comedy about a Muslim community in a small prairie town.

"Comedy is a great way to bridge cultures and bring peoples' guards down," said the original series' executive producer, Mary Darling of Toronto-based Westwind Pictures, who announced the deal with 20th TV on Monday at the Banff World Television Festival.

"Mosque" has garnered extensive U.S. interest in the media and within the TV industry since its premiere on pubcaster CBC in January 2007.

Darling said that Westwind and CAA were close to a U.S. deal just before the WGA strike but took a break in negotiations when Hollywood writers took to the picket lines.

Ultimately, 20th TV, led by head of comedy development Jonathan Davis, beat out rival U.S. studios and cable channels for the format rights.

"Fox got the creative vision of the show, that it has to be funny while it treads sensitively on certain Muslim issues," Darling said…

Yes, because you don’t want to touch off a riot or a boycott or a complaint to a Human Rights Commission or something.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:06 | link | comments (1)

Jihadis in our midst: Is the trial of an alleged jihadi terrorist in Ottawa a sign that lots of other Khawajas have secretly inserted themselves into Canada's body politic and are working to destroy democracy and replace it with sharia? Terrorism expert David Harris seems to think so. In today's Ottawa Citizen, he counsels Canadians to beware the enemy within.

Better watch what you say, David. The truth being no defense here in the Soviet Republic of Kanuckistan, one or more of our national jokers may getcha.

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

Boker tov!: Jeffrey Tobin advises American Jews to wake up so they can see who their friends are. His scorecard: Evangelicals--friends; Presbyterians--not so much.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:28 | link | comments

America alone: What sets the U.S. apart from the rest of the West, including Canada? As Adam Liptak writes on the Terrorism Awareness Project site, it’s a commitment to individualism and free speech:

…The distinctive U.S. approach to free speech, legal scholars say, has many causes. It is partly rooted in an individualistic view of the world. Fear of allowing the government to decide what speech is acceptable plays a role. So does history.

"It would be really hard to criticize Israel, Austria, Germany and South Africa, given their histories," for laws banning hate speech, said Schauer, the professor at Harvard, in an interview.

In Canada, however, the laws seem to stem from a desire to promote societal harmony. Three time zones east of British Columbia, the Ontario Human Rights Commission - while declining to hear a separate case against Maclean's - nonetheless condemned the article.

"In Canada, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, nor should it be," the commission's statement said. "By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to 'the West,' this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others."

British Columbia human rights law, unlike that in Ontario, does appear to allow claims based on statements published in magazines.

Steyn, the author of the Maclean's article, said the court proceeding illustrated some important distinctions. "The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they're not about facts," he said in a telephone interview. "They're about feelings."

"What we're learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins," Steyn added. "Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world."

America has freedom; Canada has a totalitarian nomenklatura that’s in the business of assuaging “hurt feelings” for the sake of imposing an artificial societal harmony. In other words, Americans have a state that treats them like grown-ups, while Canadians have one that treats them like errant, misbehaving kids.

Time for Canadians to come of age, grow a pair, and tell Mommy to lay off, I’d say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:43 | link | comments

Aliterate in Iran: According to a new survey, the average Iranian reads one book every five years.

I’ll say that again: one book every five years. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- Each Iranian individual reads one book in every 1892 day (over 5 years), IRIB News and Media School reported in a study published on Wednesday.

The study was carried out last month by a group of students from the school to find out the relations between the high price of books in Iran and the rate of book reading amongst the people.

The report indicates that people in the developing countries account for 80 percent of the world population, but produce less than 30 percent of the books, and even less than 30 percent of the people read the books. Meanwhile, 70 percent of all books are produced in industrialized countries.

For example, France with 60 million populations or more sells over 350,000 volumes of books per day, the report adds.

It is to mention that in Iran, girls read more than boys in their spare time. Students also read 5.5minutes in their weekends and spend most of their times on doing homework, watching TV and doing personal activities.

At the present time, there are almost 1,775 libraries housing 15 million books across the country, but based on an international standard, 14,000 more libraries with 140 million more books are needed.

The report also continues that each Iranian family spends a little on purchasing books. This shows their low interest in book reading. Only 1,029,000 people are members of libraries in Iran, while in modern countries over 30 percent of people are members of libraries.

And that’s why Iran with a long cultural background does not enjoy a good status amongst the world countries.

The report ends up with the conclusion that high price of books is the major reason for not having the culture of book reading in the country.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s all about the high price of books and has nothing to do with having to live in a police state ruled by ignorant fanatics.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:58 | link | comments (3)

 No loss: The Toronto Star’s Bob Hepburn is perturbed that “a Canadian hero” is retiring from a high-profile position, and Canadians aren’t according her the admiration she deserves. The hero in question: UN “human rights” Czarina, clueless Lou Arbour:

Next Monday, Louise Arbour will close out her four-year term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, considered one of the most politically sensitive and thankless jobs in the world.

She will leave her Geneva-based position and return home to Canada having earned the respect and admiration of human rights advocates around the globe.

In her role, she was fearless and outspoken. She ruffled feathers.

And because of that, she has apparently so upset Prime Minister Stephen Harper that his government is snubbing this remarkable woman, who can easily be described as a true Canadian hero.

Indeed, U.S. and European media reports suggest Harper torpedoed her chance of a second term by failing to support her because of his displeasure with her criticism of the Bush administration.

Arbour has been called many things during her long career as a jurist and human rights champion.

Amnesty International, for example, describes her as a "forceful and formidable" advocate for the rights of minorities, women and the oppressed. Universities around the world think so highly of her work that nearly 30 of them have awarded her honourary doctorates.

At the same time, though, she has been the target of hateful attacks.

She has been branded by some Rwandans as a corrupt war criminal, "a shame to all Canadians." Protesters in the Mideast have heckled her and stoned cars in which she has been riding.

And in Ottawa, she was bitterly criticized last week by Treasury Board President Vic Toews, who called Arbour "a disgrace."

Through it all, Arbour has remained calm and cool.

"It would be surprising or unimaginable to do this work for four years and to depart with unanimous accolades from all players, you would have to wonder about the quality of work," she told the UN Human Rights Council in March when she announced she would not seek a second term.

For her part, Arbour insists there was no diplomatic pressure in her deciding not to seek a second term.

Still, her departure will be a loss for Canada and all those who promote human rights. ...

A loss for all those who are pushing for human rights under sharia, no doubt. For those who aren’t, Louise’s retirement from that UN snake pit can’t come soon enough, and is cause for revelry and celebration.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:38 | link | comments (5)

Tyrant demoted: There's a report that the Queen has stripped Zimbabwe despot Robert Mugabe of his honourary knighthood.

I think I speak for many people when I say Robert Mugabe had a knighthood?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:23 | link | comments

Thompson kayos Tammy: An article in The Canadian Jewish News offers two very different interpretations of the Hezbollah threat—Tammy Farber vs. John Thompson. To the CJC’s unflappable Farber, last week’s ABC News report was all a matter of chatter—and American chatter at that. To the Mackenzie Institute’s John Thompson, Hezbollah poses a clear and present danger (sorry, no linky):

…Farber insisted the report was merely a rehash of old news by ABC, an American television network, relating to chatter that was picked up in mid-February after Imad Mugniyah—a notorious senior Hezbollah official—was assassinated in Damascus…

When asked specifically if Toronto’s Jewish community needs to worry about going to shul [synagogue], Farber stated “absolutely not.”

John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a non-profit organization that studies political instability and terrorism, says Hezbollah poses a “real threat.”

“Hezbollah is on Iran’s leash, and Iran has been cruising for trouble for a few years. When Iran is locked within a major conflict with Israel and the United States, they activate [sleeper] cells.”

“The threat to the Jewish community is coming. The threat to the Jewish community is real.”…

Hmm. Now whom should we believe? The Jew with the chip on his shoulder and the oven door on his wall who’s fending off the phantom menace of decrepit-and-neo Nazis and logging significant sack-time with the likes of Harpoon Siddiqui and Mo Elmasry? Or one of Canada’s foremost experts on the terrorist threat?

Sorry, Tammy. It’s no contest.

Update: Tammy--or should that be Nellie?--sings of his passion for his strange bedmate:

I’m as clueless as Carter in Gaza,

I’m a typical Liberal guy.

“Tikkun olam” they say where I come from.

I’m in bed with a wonderful guy!

 

I am an unconventional censor

With a conventional silencer’s eye.

Do not speak “hate” lest you discriminate--

What I say to my wonderful guy.

 

I’m as blind and as daft as a Jew who once laughed

As the Nazis rolled in.

I’m bromidic and calm

At Hezbollah’s aplomb--

Looky here at my grin.

 

I’m as clueless as Carter in Gaza,

Haven’t a fear that a thing is awry.

Thrilled to join hands with one who understands.

I’m in bed, I’m in bed, I’m in bed, I’m in bed

I’m in bed with a wonderful guy!

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:33 | link | comments

Ceeb shills for Hamas: Oh, that Ceeb—always doing its bit for the Arabs’ landscape improvement efforts (which entrails erasing the Jewish “blot” from their landscape). Here’s our narrow-minded national broadcaster, in full blown al Jazeera mode, furioiusly spinning a story about Israel being in the wrong—again (brazen spin highlighted in bolds):

Israel closed its cargo crossings into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in response to rocket attacks a day earlier, which it said violated a ceasefire agreement with Palestinian militants.

Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers called the decision to close the border crossings a “clear violation of the calm.” A spokesman for the group said Hamas remained committed to the truce, but would not act as Israel’s police force by confronting militants violating the deal.

Israeli military liaison Peter Lerner said the crossings would stay closed until further notice and that “any reopening will be in accordance with security considerations.”

Meanwhile, fringe militant group Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks that lightly wounded two Israelis, vowed to continue launching rockets into southern Israel. It said the rockets are an “exceptional” response to Israel’s killing of a senior Islamic Jihad commander in an early-morning raid Tuesday in the West Bank.

Israel has said it holds Hamas responsible under the truce for ensuring a complete cessation of rocket fire from the territory and reining in smaller militant groups. The Islamist group wrested control of Gaza from forces loyal to West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a year ago.

In violence Wednesday, an elderly man was shot along Gaza’s border with Israel and moderately wounded, Palestinian doctors said.

The man, 81, was walking east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza when he was shot in the arm and hand. His family and Hamas accused Israel of shooting him. The Israeli army said it didn’t know of any such incident.

“Wrested control,” did they? Well, that’s one way to characterize (and sanitize) a bloody and barbaric power play. And don't you just hate how those dastardly Jews up and shot a defenceless old grandpa? No wonder those nice, peace-minded Hamasniks remain “committed to the truce” but refuse to “act as Israel’s police force” (I hereby nominate the foregoing as the most risible statement yet uttered by a Palestinian jihadi—no small feat considering the vast number of risible statements from which to choose).

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:53 | link | comments

Hark, hark, the Islamist doth bark: In a 2004 article posted on the CIC site, the lovely and talented Wahida Valiante, Mo Elmasry’s number two, explained the difference between Muslims and Jews (my bolds):

…Even today, there persists a popular myth in the West that Islam is a "new" religion and that Muslims worship a "different" God, called Allah, not the God Yahweh or Jehovah of Jews and Christians. But the truth is that Muslims worship the same God and follow the same Prophets as Jews and Christians, their brothers and sisters "of the Book." In fact, this is clearly stated in the Qur'an, where anyone of normal intelligence can read it. However, differences between the Qur'an and the Torah and Bible are evident in how the Qur'an views human equality and in how its teachings seek to eliminate inequalities that exist between races. Most notably, the Qur'an rejects the Jewish concept of racial superiority; that is, the status of their being a chosen people. This concept is not only racist, but directly contradicts the Qur'anic worldview of racial equality. Unfortunately, the Jewish idea of being "chosen" not only institutionalized racism, but also set a terrible precedent for human history in general, where racial superiority claims became the norm, the divisive standard by which all others, those not like us were to be judged and treated…

Yeah, aren’t we awful, what with our laws and commandments and ethical monotheism that helped lay the groundwork for Western jurisprudence? Our bad. (Apparently, Wahida's skill at mispresenation isn't limited to her insistence that the National Post brands all Muslims terrorists. Here she is, years ago, misrepresenting God's call for the Jews to be "a light unto nations" as "institutionalized racism.")

Wahida demonstrates that, while there is no such thing as “Islamophobia” (in the Islamist sense of the word, i.e. a pervasive and irrational prejudice against Muslims), there are certainly plenty of folks like her who harbour a religiously-based Judeophobia.

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

Goodnight, Ed: Sad news today for aficionados of the politically incorrect. Toronto’s most famous sock puppet, the incorrigibly sexist and offensive Ed, has been canned. A fixture on local TV for lo these many years, Ed is the victim of a new regime that wants to attract more female viewers (something which Ed, the Howard Stern of hosiery, was never able to do).

Don’t despair, Ed. I hear this guy’s always on the lookout for new socks.

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

Islamist misperceptions: On a local phone-in cable chat show yesterday, the CIC’s Wahida Valiante expressed grave concern about two key issues: “Islamophobia” being fomented by the media in general and Maclean’s and the National Post in particular (Mo Elmasry’s #2 claims the Post consistently states that “all Muslims are terrorists”); and, of course, “Palestine”. Co-incidentally--and helpfully--in today's edition of FrontPage magazine, a former Muslim accounts for Wahida’s “woe is us” mindset:

FP: We’re here today to discuss how many Muslims consider themselves to be victims of oppression vis-à-vis the West. Let’s begin our conversation with this question: What is the Islamic definition of oppression?

Ask any Islamist this question and he will certainly provide answers such as: Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia….and so on. Think carefully, how true these statements are. In fact, if one takes the trouble to read the blood-soaked history of Islam, one could not help wondering why this label of oppression not be imposed on Islam itself? The unprovoked, savage invasions by the Bedouin Arabs, to subjugate, at the point of swords, the people of Iraq, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Armenia, Cyprus, Sicily, Crete, Spain, Afriqiya (north Tunisia), India to their fascistic/Arab imperialism (peddled as Islam) demonstrate a naked truth—that it was Islam that started this oppression.

Therefore, the charge that the Islamic mayhem in the current world is due to what is happening (read oppression) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya are just sham pretensions by the Islamists, the ideological gurus of the Islamist terrorists and the suicide bombers. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and France have none of their soldiers fighting in Iraq, yet these countries are not immune from the Islamist terrorists’ attack. Did you ever wonder why? Not being satisfied with the campaign of unremitting terror in the infidel territories, the Islamist terrorists even have to terrorize the innocent people of Islamic Paradises.

FP: So what is the psychology behind the Muslim belief that Islam is being oppressed?

Kasem: This fact is: Islam is grossly offended/oppressed by any un-Islamic moves of the infidels/not-so-good Muslims (like the Islamic Paradises I just listed). This is simply because these Islamists audaciously believe that Islam is the only religion into which each and every person on this planet must be subjected to by hook or by crook—using terror, force and slaughter, if need be. They have the Qur’an solidly backing them up. This is the major theme of the Qur’an. This belief, for instance, was eloquently supported by the cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika in an interview with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in November 2005. The spiritual leader of the Victorian terror cell, Benbrika made the following statement: “I am telling you that my religion doesn’t tolerate other religion. It doesn’t tolerate. The only one law which needs to be spread, it can be here or anywhere else has to be Islam.”…

I’m sure the hurt feelings and the persecution complex will disappear once we kafirs resolve to swallow the “medicine” of total silence.

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

Heat seeking: I don't know about you, but I feel in desperate need of some warmth. Enjoy it now, while you still can.

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

The new ice age: Truth-teller Robert Spencer on the big chill in Canada  (from Human Events):

…“Hate speech” is also a tool to prevent the dissemination of what have more of a claim to be called “inconvenient truths” than anything Al Gore has ever been involved with. Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada right now for telling the truth. The renowned Canadian journalist and politician Peter Worthington commented acidly about the Steyn proceedings: “Truth is no defence before a Human Rights tribunal. Steyn’s accuracy is not at issue, just his opinions. Under hate legislation, opinions are punishable if they offend a particular group. If you think about it, this is an abomination.”

Indeed it is -- and Steyn is not the only victim. The contentious exchange at the UN Human Rights Council that led to the prohibition of criticism of Islam involved a presentation by David G. Littman of the Association for World Education of information about female genital mutilation, the stoning of adulteresses, and honor killings in Islamic countries. The first victims of the ban on such talk at the Human Rights Council will be those who suffer from such barbarities -- and will now have no one who is allowed to speak for them without dissembling about the causes and extent of the problem.

It is telling that when Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and the OIC think of “defending the image of Islam,” they don’t mean working in Muslim communities to combat the influence of the jihad ideology or Islamic supremacism among Muslims worldwide. They don’t have in mind developing any large scale initiatives to combat Osama bin Laden’s version of Islam, and to teach Muslims how to resist the jihadist appeal. The organization hasn’t ever acknowledged the obvious fact that it could end “Islamophobia” right away by rejecting Islam’s doctrines of violence, supremacism and conquest and moving strongly against those Muslims who are acting upon those doctrines.

Instead, they have made themselves the enemies of honest men like Mark Steyn who have called attention to this supremacist agenda. They will be working with American policymakers to restrict free speech -- that is, honest discussion of the elements of Islam that the jihadists use to justify their actions and gain recruits.

Can honest discussion really be outlawed? You bet it can…

…and the big chill at the UN (from FrontPage magazine).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments

The bigger chill: Both globally and locally, sharia-enthusiasts are marshalling under the banner of “human rights” in order to curb our “Islamophbia” (really our freedom to talk about Islam; our freedom to be free). Melanie Phillips has a chilling (there’s that word again) overview of the situation:

The signs have been ominous for some time but now it has become clear beyond a doubt that those who tell the truth about Islam, Islamism or Islamist terrorism risk having their career, livelihood and maybe even their liberty placed in jeopardy – and all in the name of human rights. In Canada, the columnist Mark Steyn has been arraigned before a kangaroo court for the crime of publishing in Macleans magazine an excerpt from his bestseller, America Alone, in which he argues that demographic change is turning Europe Islamic. Led by the Canadian Islamic Congress, Muslims have taken Steyn and Macleans to a ‘human rights’ tribunal on a charge of ‘hate speech’, a totalitarian statute enforced by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (sic) who are in the business of destroying the freedom to voice perfectly legitimate – indeed, absolutely vital and important – opinions about the need to defend western society against Islamist attack. Bad enough that Islamists browbeat and threaten people who express such opinions. For a body such as the CHRC to do their dirty work for them and act as the enforcers of the jihad against free speech takes us straight into the nightmare landscape of Kafka. Read this article to get a flavour of the terrifying nature of these proceedings, the mixture of gross abuse of power, mad thinking and clownish incompetence which characterises totalitarian regimes and has been playing in a courtroom in downtown British Columbia. Perhaps the most chilling observation of all is this:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, which enforces the act, has a record of conviction that recalls the awful efficiency of Soviet courts: In over three decades of existence, the commission has yet to find someone innocent.

This article spells out in more detail how the Canadian human rights tribunals have been handed unfettered power to abuse power:

The human-rights tribunals are a censor’s dream. Under Canada’s human-rights act, commissioners can convict if they believe any published material is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” Since they are “remedial” institutions and not real courts, they need not follow strict legal procedures or grant traditional rights of the accused. No one goes to prison, but the panels can fine and silence people at will — and run up the lawyer bills for years. Truth is no defense, and commissioners are authorized to confiscate a computer without a warrant. Evidence can be woefully flimsy.

But this appalling development is not confined to Canada. A few days ago the UN decided to outlaw any criticism of Islamism – as defined by the Islamists themselves. Since they classify any criticism whatsoever of Islamist aggression as ‘Islamophobic’, this means that the UN will outlaw all such comment. As Jeffrey Imm has reported on CounterterrorismBlog:

On June 16, 2008 UNHRC president Doru Romulus Costea announced that criticism of Sharia law will not be tolerated by the UNHRC, based on the complaints and pressure by Islamist delegates to the UNHRC. In effect, the Islamist nations represented at the UNHRC have effected a Jihad against freedom of speech at the United Nations when it comes to criticizing Sharia or Islamic supremacist (aka Islamist) theocratic ideologies that threaten the freedom and lives of innocents around the world. This again demonstrates the key imperative of control for Islamists -- in this case in terms of controlling ideas, thoughts, and words of an international organization intended to promote human rights. Outgoing UNHRC Commissioner Louise Arbour subsequently raised concerns about debates on Sharia becoming 'taboo' within the United Nations group, stating that it 'should be, among other things, the guardian of freedom of expression.'

The UNHRC ban on debate regarding Sharia came as a result of a three minute joint statement by the Association for World Education with the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) to the Human Rights Council on women's rights and the impact of Sharia law. These NGOs sought to address international issues of violence against women, specifically, the stoning of women, 'honor killings' of women, and female genital mutilation, as a result of Sharia law.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Arab Republic of Egypt vehemently criticized this attempted NGO message, interrupting it via ‘16 points of order’, for an hour and twenty-five minutes per the IEHU. Jihad Watch provides a full transcript of the debate. The Egyptian UNHRC delegate claimed that silencing these NGOs was necessary to ensure ‘that Islam will not be crucified in this Council,’ but the fact is that Islamist forces seek to silence any debate on Sharia at all -- anywhere, any time.

This is of course merely the latest demonstration that the UN is now simply a club of tyranny. But the really frightening thing is the almost total indifference to these developments by the western media. So quick to take up the cause of free speech when the protagonists are the enemies of the west, they are all but silent when the freedom to speak in defence of western values is snuffed out. That of course is because the freedom of speech lobby marches behind the banners of ‘human rights’ and minority victim culture which, despite their mind-bending self-designation as ‘progressive’ attitudes, constitute nothing other than a full-out onslaught against western values by cultural Marxism -- now marching shoulder to shoulder with the Islamists in their common cause to destroy the free world. Their ranks include a distressingly large number of useful idiots, who for a variety of reasons – posturing vanity, conformist inanity, shallow ignorance, careerism, fear, whatever – are helping to further the jihad against the free world, which is predicated upon precisely this kind of cultural and moral confusion…

If the Spectator was published in Canada, I’m sure certain folks who had suffered hurt feelings as a result of reading Melanie's words would even now be demanding a 5,000 retraction and/or filling out the paperwork that would ultimately compel this politically incorrect publication toe the politically correct line. The most brilliant part of the analysis: Melanie's insight that the "progressive" crowd  are cultural Marxists who despise Western values as much as the Islamists do; Canada's 14 "human rights" bodies and the UN's reconstituted but same old, same old "human rights" body--the toxic spawn of progressives and Islamists--bear testiment to that terrifying truth. And that line about useful idiots and their "posturing vanity, conformist inanity, shallow ignorance, careerism, fear"--that's Canada's Jewstablishment, in a nutshell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments (1)

Cold front: After months of silence, CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mohamed Elmasry has re-emerged from wherever he’s been chillin’ to defend his “right” to combat rampant Canadian “Islamophobia”. Here he is, sounding remarkably Farberesque, in the Waterloo Record:

Since 9/11, Canadian Muslims are the number 1 minority group being demonized in the public square, in books, in print and broadcast media.

The recent smearing of a Canadian institution like our human rights commissions by Islamophobes, who claim to be protecting "free speech," is a classic case of chopped logic.

They seem to have forgotten that reconciling two potentially conflicting legal rights that are also human rights -- the right to be free from hate propaganda, and the principle of freedom of expression -- is not a new challenge, nor is it an easy one.

Recently, the Canadian magazine Catholic Insight, has been facing a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging it made derogatory comments about homosexuals.

In 1998, someone representing Canadian Jews filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission against North Shore News columnist Doug Collins. The commission ordered Collins to pay $2,000 in damages to the complainant for "injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect." The commission also ordered the North Shore News to cease publishing statements that expose Jews "to hatred and contempt."

A lawyer with the Canadian Jewish Congress was quoted by the Jewish Independent on Dec. 21, 2001, saying the decision reflects Canadian legal precedents which recognize that certain types of speech are not legally permissible, especially if they are seen to cause public harm.

In these two cases there were no critics of the human rights commissions. But the situation changed dramatically in another recent case, when four Canadian Muslim law students launched human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine with respect to its October 2006 article, The Future Belongs to Islam, written by Mark Steyn. The Canadian Islamic Congress, of which I am president, acted as a facilitator.

The basic premise of Steyn's article is that, just as the "white man settled the Indian territory," Muslims in the West are poised to take over entire societies and the "only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." Once the ominously predicted transfer occurs, Steyn's article implies, citizens will be subjected to oppressive Islamic law.

The impending Muslim takeover is in turn attributed to immigration and multiculturalism, which have resulted in Muslims flooding into Western societies and enjoying far too much freedom of movement in them. The flood, the freedom of movement, and the fact that "enough" Muslims share the goals of terrorists -- the imposition of Islamic law -- mean that the Muslim takeover is inevitable.

On March 30, 2007, the law students met with Maclean's senior editors and proposed that the magazine publish a balanced response to Steyn's article from a mutually acceptable source.

The response was that Maclean's "would rather go bankrupt."

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, however, declined to hear the case because its code does not cover printed magazines.

But in a rare public statement, the commission rightly noted that "this type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians," and further noted the "serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."

The B.C. Human Rights Commission finished hearing the case earlier this month. The decision on whether the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission will hear the case is still pending.

After the B.C. hearings, Brian Strader said this about Steyn's article in a letter published by the Vancouver Province: "It's the closest thing to Nazi and anti-Jewish posters I have seen. Nazi propaganda was meant to show that Jews were a threat. The current analogy with an 'Islamic threat' is truly chilling."…

Au contraire, Mo. What’s truly chilling is that Canadian “niceness” is helping pave the way for sharia-style “free speech”. What’s truly chilling is that your second-in command, the lovely and talented Wahida Valiante, can go on a local cable show (as she did yesterday afternoon) and spread the calumny that the National Post constantly says that “all Muslims are terrorists.” What’s truly chilling is that a flagrant Jew-hater who continues to lobby for Israel’s demise and who has stated that every Israeli adult is a legitimate target for liquidation (put ‘em all together and you got yourself a nice little genocide) has the chutzpah to insist that what’s happening to Muslims in Canada is akin to what happened to Europe’s Jews in the run-up to the Holocaust. What’s truly chilling is that you think you can shut down discussion about Islam and jihad and sharia and dhimmitude by shouting “racist!” at those who care to educate themselves about the one, the only true faith and its ummah.

What’s truly chilling is the Jewstablishment’s utter cluelessness: in seeking to “protect” Jews from the Nazi “threat” (a phantom menace) they have laid down decades of legal precedent that has done grievous injury to our body politic, weakening our ability to remain free.

Brrrr! Someone pass me my parka. All this chillin’ has given me a bad case of hypothermia.

Update: Another CIC functionary, imam Zijad Delic, has an anti-free speech rant in the Ottawa Citizen.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments (3)

Isn't that special?: The Canadian Arab Federation is pleased to report that it hosted anti-Zionist Orthodox nutbars Neturei Karta at a recent event. (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a soft spot for these Jewish lunatics, too, even though they're each awaiting a different Messiah.) Frankly, I can't think of two organizations that are more eminently deserving of one other.

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

Cool it, lefties: Fouad Ajami advises those in despair over America’s apparent lack of popularity in the Muslim world to chill. From the Wall Street Journal:

So America is unloved in Istanbul and Cairo and Karachi: It is an annual ritual, the June release of the Pew global attitudes survey and the laments over the erosion of America's standing in foreign lands.

We were once loved in Anatolia, but now a mere 12% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the U.S. Only 22% of Egyptians think well of us. Pakistan is crucial to the war on terror, but we can only count on the goodwill of 19% of Pakistanis.

American liberalism is heavily invested in this narrative of U.S. isolation. The Shiites have their annual ritual of 10 days of self-flagellation and penance, but this liberal narrative is ceaseless: The world once loved us, and all Parisians were Americans after 9/11, but thanks to President Bush we have squandered that sympathy.

It is an old trick, the use of foreign narrators and witnesses to speak of one's home. Montesquieu gave the genre its timeless rendition in his Persian Letters, published in 1721. No one was fooled, these were Parisian letters, and the Persian travelers, Rica and Usbek, mere stand-ins for an author taking stock of his homeland after the death of Louis XIV and the coming of an age of enlightenment and skepticism.

"This King is a great magician. He exerts authority even over the minds of his subjects; he makes them think what he wants," Rica writes from Paris. "You must not be amazed at what I tell you about this prince: there is another magician, stronger than he. This magician is called the Pope. He will make the King believe that three are only one, or else that the bread one eats is not bread, or that the wine one drinks is not wine, and a thousand other things of the same kind." Handy witnesses, these Persians.

The Pew survey tells us that some foreign precincts show a landslide victory for Barack Obama. France leads the pack; fully 84% of those following the American campaign are confident Mr. Obama will do the right thing in foreign policy, compared with 33% who say that about John McCain. There are similar results in Germany, and a closer margin in Britain. The populations of Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan have scant if any confidence in either candidate.

The deference of American liberal opinion to the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Amman and Karachi is nothing less than astounding…

I dunno. It doesn’t astound me that “liberal opinion” thinks more highly of Third World “wisdom” than it does of the Western variety. In fact, I’d be astounded if such opinion managed to get beyond the accepted orthodoxy and get a clue.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:47 | link | comments

Further evidence of the UN’s moral bankruptcy: As if we needed any more. From the New York Sun:

Bowing to pressure from pro-Palestinian Arab activists in America, the United Nations Children's Fund is cutting ties with a billionaire Israeli donor, Lev Leviev, in response to allegations that one of his companies is financing the construction of settlements in the West Bank.

Activists had campaigned for several months for the aid organization to reject financial donations and other assistance from Mr. Leviev. In a letter to the advocacy group that led the drive, Adalah-NY, UNICEF said it had reviewed the matter at the group's request and would meet its demands.

"UNICEF has concluded that it will not consider partnerships — direct or indirect — with Mr. Leviev or any of his corporate entities, and will not accept financial support that we know is from him or his corporate entities," a senior communications adviser for UNICEF, Christopher de Bono, wrote.

The letter was posted on Adalah-NY's Web site, alongside a statement from the New York-based pro-Palestinian organization praising UNICEF for its decision and congratulatory notes from local officials in West Bank towns where the settlements in question are under construction. Other groups opposed to Israel's presence in the West Bank, such as Defence for Children International, have also issued statements lauding the decision.

Mr. de Bono told The New York Sun that UNICEF usually screens only formal partnerships with corporate and nonprofit partners, not individual donors such as Mr. Leviev, for violations of U.N. resolutions or regulations. The agency decided to investigate Mr. Leviev, who was born in Uzbekistan and made his fortune in diamonds after immigrating to Israel, following complaints from advocacy groups, Mr. de Bono said.

"We wouldn't partner with someone the Security Council said was engaged in activity contrary to United Nations resolutions, like those regarding the settlements," he said.

UNICEF also screens partners for connections to the gambling industry, Mr. de Bono added. Mr. Leviev's company, Africa-Israel Investments Ltd., paid $625 million last year for a 60-acre parcel of land in Las Vegas on which it planned to develop a new casino. The purchase could have affected the UNICEF decision, though it is unrelated to the initial complaint brought forward by Adalah-NY.

A professor at Touro College and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Anne Bayefsky, called the decision to break with Mr. Leviev "grotesque discrimination."

"This is part and parcel of an ongoing U.N. effort to isolate, marginalize, and demonize Israelis and Israel as a whole," Ms. Bayefsky, senior editor of the watchdog group Eye on the U.N., said in an interview. "UNICEF apparently has no problem taking money from thugs, dictators, and butchers the world over. But when it comes to money from Jews they suddenly have a problem. Let's call it what it is: It's racism."

Targeting Mr. Leviev is "a double standard of the worst kind," Ms. Bayefsky said, noting that the governments of several member nations that sit on UNICEF's executive board, including Burma and Zimbabwe, are widely regarded by the international community as serial violators of human rights...

For years now the Israel-bashers have been striving to make Israel’s existence morally indefensible, a prelude to getting rid of the pesky entity. But the truth is that it the UN itself, in thrall to the 57 nations comprising its largest voting bloc, that is morally indefensible and must cease to be.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments (1)

None so blind: The Canadian Jewstablishment’s Tammy Farber isn’t at all concerned about the possibility of a Hezbollah terrorist attack here in Toronto. Heck, no. As he sees it, it’s all a matter of “chatter”. What's top-of-mind with Tammy is the possibility that in a bungalow basement in some remote corner of Manitoba there yet lurks a white power creep who has logged onto an “I heart Hitler” website and said something hateful about “the Jews”. Now those guys are scary!

If Tammy had even half a clue, he’d forget about playing “gotcha” with Aryan pishers and pay attention to this—Andrew Bostom outlining the genuine threat Hezbollah poses to Canadian Jews. From the American Thinker:

…The Shi'ite jihadist organization Hezb'allah thus proclaims with triumphant exuberance its visceral opposition to Judaism and the existence of Israel, stressing the eternal conflict between the Jews and Islam. Eradicating Israel, and terrorizing, perhaps even destroying Jewish communities worldwide, represents an early stage of Hezballah's Pan-Islamic ambitions, and its jihad against the rest of the non-Muslim world. Blithely ignoring this reality, and allowing places such as Toronto, Canada, or Dearborn, Michigan to become hubs for Hezb'allah fund-raising and organizing is both morally repugnant, and destructive to our must fundamental Western values…

 

Toronto? A hub for Hellzbollocks? Oh, Andy, you're such an alarmist.

Update: While Tammy is determined to keep his eyes wide shut, terrorism expert John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute thinks Jews would be well advised to brush up on their first aid and hold escape drills in their synagogues and other institutions--just in case. Here's what he said in a recent e-mail to my colleague:

We know that Hizbollah has been around, and that Iran holds Hizbollah's leash.  But I'm told that background chatter and reconnaissance activities have intensified in the last few months.  If Israeli tensions with Iran heat up, or with Hizbollah, then expect an attack.

Not much you can do except to educate yourselves to potential threats (I've attached the last version of my pamphlet on this); and make sure that you have rehearsed fire evacuation drills, made sure that emergency equipment is up to date, and that first aid kits are stocked.  More training for first aid wouldn't go amiss.

In short, for most organizations and institutions in the Jewish community, I'd strongly recommend that somebody start 1) thinking about your responses to likely attacks -- such as a vehicle bombing, or attack by a group of gunmen; 2) planning your responses; 3) acquiring the necessary materials; and 4) rehearse your plans.  Planning should focus on safe evacuations, and reactions that minimize the loss of life.

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

No sex in the city: A burg in “moderate” Malaysia has nixed bright lipstick and Manolos for chicks because it supposedly gets the local lads in a lather. (The real reason for such bans, as we know, is that sharia-fanciers are obsessed with controlling their womenfolk). From news.com.ca:

A MALAYSIAN city has banned Muslim women from wearing bright lipstick and noisy high heels to work to prevent rape and illicit sex, local media reports.

City officials in Kota Bharu, the capital of conservative northern Kelantan state - which is run by the Islamic party PAS - distributed a circular to local firms last month to outline the dress code, the Bernama national news agency said yesterday.

The report said the circular stated that the directive, which targeted Muslim women working in food outlets and other business premises, was aimed at preventing incidents like rape and illicit sex.

It ordered women not to wear thick make-up including bright lipstick, or high-heeled shoes "that gave a tapping sound", although rubber-soled heels were permitted.

The directive said that the headscarf worn by many Muslim women in Malaysia should also cover the chest and not be made of transparent material, and that those who flouted the rules faced a fine of 500 ringgit ($160).

Kelantan, run by PAS since 1990, is the most conservative state in Malaysia. The country's population is dominated by Muslim Malays, alongside large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.

The state's rulers have in the past made headlines with laws that require separate queues for men and women in shops, and for imposing fines on skimpy clothing.

However, in recent years the party has begun introducing reforms designed to tone down its hardline reputation and woo young voters.

An official from the city's law enforcement department said there had been an "awareness campaign" encouraging Muslim women to conform with Islamic dress codes "with less make-up and more modesty, including wearing headscarves".

She said she had not seen the circular reported both by Bernama and a television network, and there were no laws forbidding women from wearing heavy make-up or noisy footwear.

"It is a ridiculous piece of news," said the official, who declined to be identified.

Smart thinking, anonymous official. You wouldn’t want to run afoul of the authorities by being seen to side with the brazen red-lipped, high-heeled vixens.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments (1)

“Hate speech” in the Globe: Under the terms of the anti-hate speech sections of our federal, provincial and territorial human rights acts—which, for the moment, override our fundamental Charter right of free expression—the truth is irrelevant if it has the potential to expose an identifiable group to “hatred” at some unspecified point in the future. In light of that legistlation, how can the Globe and Mail justify its report about Ottawa lad Mohammad Momin Khawaja, who is said to have “lived for jihad” (hey, who doesn’t?)? Khawaja is in the dock for his alleged involvement with some British home-growners who apparently wanted to take their paintball training to the next level by slicing and dicing real live kafirs:

OTTAWA -- Mohammad Momin Khawaja thought of little else but holy war, an Ottawa court heard yesterday.

As the trial of the first man charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act got under way four years after police raided his home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, the Crown gave a two-hour summary of its case, in which it will present dozens - perhaps hundreds - of intercepted conversations to show that the accused admitted he had a one-track mind. Mr. Khawaja, the court was told, wrote that "that devotion to the effort of jihad is part of me" and said that not a day went by in which he didn't want to join the mujahedeen, or holy warriors.

He also allegedly said, "The kuffar [infidels] are treacherous and understand only death and destruction."

The Crown alleges Mr. Khawaja, now 29, was involved in a trans-Atlantic conspiracy dating back to two years before his arrest in 2004. It is alleged that he met fellow extremists in London and learned at a training camp in Pakistan how to fire AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. He is accused of trying to build a remote-controlled detonation device for a British cell that wanted to attack civilian targets in London, including possibly a night club and power grids.

Prosecutors said yesterday that Mr. Khawaja was so deep into the idea of holy war that even his attempts at marriage foundered after he told a prospective bride she had to understand he was "down with J" - or armed jihad, battles aimed at changing world governments or, at the very least, securing martyrdom for himself.

The Crown also said he was caught wiring funds to terrorist co-conspirators through a female friend selected because, as Mr. Khawaja wrote to her, "sisters don't get caught, brothers, if they send money, they get caught."

As the charges were read, the soft-spoken Mr. Khawaja, shaven and with long hair parted in the middle, said "not guilty" seven times, responding to each charge against him.

Members of his family, who have frequently accused the RCMP of building a racist case, sat in the courtroom in silence. Counterterrorism experts and international journalists looked on with interest, as the trial promises to provide insight into both radicalization and the incestuous nature of international jihadi schemes…

“Jihad”?  “Kuffars”?  “Mujahedeen”? Isn’t it, um, Islamophobic to mention such things? Won’t it just make the disaffected young lads even angrier, resulting in even more plots of this nature?

If I were Khurrum Awan, I’d give serious consideration to lodging a complaint with one or more of Canada’s anti-hate bodies, because this type of report is likely to expose Muslims to far more “Islamophobia” than anything ever penned by Mark Steyn.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:41 | link | comments (3)

Harpoon’s curiously contradictory C.V.: According to his Wiki entry, in 2002, Bernie’s amigo Harpoon Siddiqui “was awarded the World Press Freedom Award by the National Press Club in Ottawa for his James Minifie Memorial Lecture at the University of Regina, warning against ‘creeping censorship’ in Canada under media concentration.”

Yet here we are six years later, with yet another Harpoon column beating the drum for the flagrant censorship of Canada’s human rights apparatus.

On second thought, maybe it’s not so contradictory. After all, “media concentration” has long been a top-of-mind canard, er, concern in certain quarters, while Harpoon can't help but approve of the “galloping censorship” of the human rights thuggees, since it will help facilitate the creep, nay the canter, nay the gallop of sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:39 | link | comments

The Messiah of ready-to-wear: Obama inspires Milan runway fashions.

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

What we’re up against: There’s some primo cluelessness on display in the Toronto Star’s letters page today. One chap rushes to defend Human Rights Czarina Louise Arbour, whom he insists is an “honourable Canadian.” Another reader—a Muslim woman with an Italian-sounding name (can you say “revert”?) upbraids Star columnist Richard Gwyn for failing to notice that “Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded by the U.S. and its allies” and for writing something which “perpetuates the notion that Muslims are largely responsible for acts of terror.”

Yeah, Dick, where on Earth could you have gotten such a preposterous notion?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments (2)

Boys’ll be boys: The Ottawa Citizen details the story of a local lad who liked Tupac and weight-lifting and, oh yeah, maybe the jihad:

Ottawa . Four days after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a gang of white males in Orléans pulled a 15-year-old Muslim boy off his bicycle and beat him unconscious.

It was a random attack, a backlash by the ignorant reported in minor fashion amid the daily, multi-page coverage in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Buried in the Citizen story of the boy's beating was a quote by a 22-year-old man named Mohammad Khawaja.

"I didn't think something like that would happen in Orléans," he told a Citizen reporter during a random interview at the Orléans mosque. "It's shocking."

The next time Mohammad  Momin Khawaja's name appeared in the newspaper, Ottawa - indeed, Canada - was saying much the same thing about him.

It was on March 30, 2004, the day after he was arrested for alleged involvement in an international terrorist conspiracy. When Mr. Khawaja's non-jury trial begins under tight security in Ottawa on Monday, prosecutors will allege that he was a key player in a thwarted plan by terrorists to detonate a large bomb in London - at a location where it would inflict the greatest damage to people and property.

Five of his alleged accomplices are serving lengthy sentences in British prisons. Much of the same evidence that put them in jail is expected to be used against Mr. Khawaja when he becomes the first Canadian to be charged under the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks in the U.S.

Prosecution witness and convicted terrorist Mohammed Junaid Babar, an American of Pakistani origin, told the British trial that he worked with Mr. Khawaja in Pakistan at an al-Qaeda training camp during the summer of 2003 and that Mr. Khawaja returned to Pakistan months later.

Mr. Babar's lawyers have negotiated a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Mr. Khawaja and others.

Mr. Khawaja has consistently denied all seven charges against him and none has yet been heard in a Canadian court. The evidence that convicted his alleged conspirators in London was presented with neither Mr. Khawaja nor his lawyer in the court to offer a defence.

Shortly after his arrest, Mr. Khawaja's family said he told them that he went to Pakistan looking for a wife - the same reason he gave for visiting London weeks before his arrest. Relatives told reporters that he went on a pre-arranged family visit to the British capital because he had been unable to find a wife in Pakistan or a "suitable" Canadian woman to marry.

But at the trial of the London terrorists, prosecutors said Mr. Khawaja was shadowed by the British spy agency MI5 from the moment he arrived in London. They said he was seen getting into an associate's car and driving to an Internet café, where he allegedly showed images of explosive devices to associates. London prosecutors also alleged that he told his co-conspirators how to detonate bombs using mobile phones.

British media dubbed Mr. Khawaja "The Fixer," claiming he was a mentor to the British-born terrorists.

The portrait London police, prosecutors and their witnesses have painted of Mohammad Momin Khawaja - similar to the portrait federal prosecutors are scheduled to begin creating Monday - bears no resemblance to the Momin described by family and friends in various interviews in the days after his arrest.

"He's just a chillin' type of guy," said his brother, Qasim. "Some of the stuff they've alleged is so out there - they're whacked theories.

"The allegations against Momin are false," insisted his father, Mahboob.

"He was just like any other normal kid. There was nothing special about him," said Fazal Khan, a longtime family friend and president of the Islamic Society of Cumberland, who had often seen the young man at prayer.

"I've known the family for many years and the boys are exemplary in their behaviour," said Sulaiman Khan, director of the Islamic Information and Education Centre on Lisgar Street, where Mr. Khawaja prayed daily while working downtown…

"Chillin’"—great way to put it. Notice how the report opens with the Islamophobic hate attack, as if that, and not certain problematic religious teachings, are what's behind the alleged plot.

Update: Oh, look--they're having some trouble with the young'uns in Algeria, too. A global phenomenon, wouldn't you say?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

Stand by your shiller: "Tammy" Farber sings:

Sometimes it’s hard to be a leader

Giving all your time to just one cause.

You’ll have good times

Curtailing thought crimes,

An effort that should give one pause.

But if you think you’re right you’ll plow on,

Remaining mired in cluelessness.

And if you hate speech,

Eliminate speech,

And soon enough it will be gone.

Stand by Harpoon.

Give him your rapt attention

And please try not to mention

That he cannot be trusted.

Stand by Harpoon.

And say he’s so respected.

You’ll feel much better very soon.

Stand by Harpoon.

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

Disempowering the freedom deriders: Canada’s Barack Obama, Pierre E. Trudeau, once famously opined that the state had no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Given the growing foofarah over the human rights racket and its intrusive powers, it is time update the quip. The new version should read: “The state has no business in the headrooms of the nation.”

Feel free to put it on t-shirts, key chains and coffee mugs.

The lead editorial in Ed Greenspon’s Globe and Mail makes the same point, more or less:

Hate is a subject that the Canadian Human Rights Commission wisely wishes to think about. A law professor at the University of Windsor, Richard Moon, will write a wide-ranging report for the CHRC, to come out in October, on "the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing hate messages."

In her announcement of this policy review on Tuesday, Jennifer Lynch, the Chief Commissioner, unmistakably alluded to the debate over three human-rights complaints against Maclean's magazine about "The future belongs to Islam," an article in 2006 by Mark Steyn. There is no hearing date yet for the proceeding at the CHRC; the complaint in B.C. has been heard but not decided; while the Ontario one failed for lack of jurisdiction, the commission joined in the accusation by way of press release.

The Canada Human Rights Act deals with hate in a section that was originally about telephone "hate messages." But in December, 2001, the Anti-Terrorism Act made clear that Internet communications were covered. Of course, Internet publication now largely overlaps with print media. An enactment that once dealt, for example, with a phone number that one could call to hear a recorded "white power message" now looms over the whole of the press in Canada.

Like its sibling in the B.C. Human Rights Code (at the core of the Maclean's hearing in Vancouver earlier this month), section 13 of the federal statute is aimed at what is "likely to expose" people to hatred or contempt because of ethnicity, religion and other specified factors. Evidence of such a likelihood - in the absence of a solid science of mass psychology on which to base expert testimony - is bound to be dubious, and there are no defences of the kind found in civil lawsuits about damage to reputation, such as fair comment.

Back in 1990, a case from the federal human-rights commission about the hate-message section made its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Khurrum Awan, one of the instigators of one of the trio of complaints against Maclean's, has portrayed the court's decision in that case as an active recommendation of section 13, in preference to the hate-speech sections of the Criminal Code. In fact, both the majority and the dissenting minority were troubled that the hate-message section is not limited to cases where there is hateful intent, though the majority was sufficiently comforted that the Human Rights Act's penalties were less drastic than the Criminal Code's.

Whether or not the future belongs to Islam, as Mr. Steyn fears, both the present and future belong in large measure to the Internet. A statutory provision that once restrained racist cranks who were putting telephones to wicked uses now threatens public debate in the press on matters of concern to all Canadians. It may well have been too broad in 1990, as three out of seven Supreme Court judges then thought; it is much too broad in the 21st century.

Let us hope that Richard Moon says likewise to Ms. Lynch and her colleagues, and that the Parliament of Canada then repeals, or severely limits, section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act.

Not nearly enough, oh insightful editiorialist. The entire monstrous, embarrassing, egregiously expensive apparatus must be torn down, pronto.

My letter:

It remains to be seen whether or not, as that controversial issue of Maclean’s magazine asserted, the future belongs to Islam. What should concern us most at this stage is that, in matters of free expression, the “human rights” agenda—which seeks to limit speech lest it hurt people’s feelings—and the Islamist agenda—which brooks no criticism of any aspect of that religion—are in perfect synch.

Never mind the “Islamophobia”. Canadians who value freedom would be well advised to check for symptoms of HRC-ophobia, a dire totalitarian condition which manifests itself as an inability to utter anything other than government-approved banalities, platitudes and bromides.

Expect to see the above in print when Khurrum Awan joins the B’nai Brith.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:40 | link | comments

The object of their disaffection: Capitalism, democracy, freedom—they’re just sooo Age of Enlightenment. What’s got some of the young’uns in the U.K. all stirred up is the prospect of going back to the future—think 7^th Century Arabia, only with iPods and dynamite vests. From the Telegraph.

Extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Britain's young Muslims, a disturbing police report warns.

Increasing numbers have become so alienated from mainstream society that they could even lend their support to jihadi terrorism, the study claims.

While most reject violence, many distrust police and are reluctant to inform on extremists.

The report was commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) after last year's failed bomb attacks in London's West End and at Glasgow Airport. It is to be discussed at Acpo's annual conference this week.

In the most comprehensive research of its kind to date, Prof Martin Innes, of the Universities' Police Science Institute in Cardiff, led a team of researchers which carried out face-to-face and telephone interviews with more than 600 Muslims in London, Birmingham and Oldham.

They found that the radicalisation of young British Muslims was more widespread than previously feared, with "a disturbing proportion" expressing support for extremist elements.

The report, which is being distributed among senior officers, Whitehall officials and ministers, finds that:

• Anger and disaffection are "widespread in sections of Muslim youth".

• There is tacit support for extremist violence within sections of the Muslim community.

• Police need to do more to win the trust of Muslim communities if they are to tackle radicalisation.

• Many Muslims distrust police and are reluctant to inform on extremists, preferring to deal with problems inside their communities.

The study, entitled Hearts and Minds and Eyes and Ears: Reducing Radicalisation Risks Through Reassurance Orientated Policing, warns that "the threat to the UK from jihadist terrorism may increase in the future".

It concludes: "Increasing numbers of young Muslim people are becoming sufficiently disaffected with their lives in liberal-democratic-capitalist societies that they might be willing to support violent terrorism to articulate their disillusionment and disengagement."…

Couldn't they articulate their disillusionment and disengagement in the time-honoured fashion of other young male geeks—i.e. smoke reefer, play video games in the folks’ basement, scarf down pizza pockets, crank up the Led Zeppelin way too loud, and pretend to be Vulcans?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:42 | link | comments

Mostly the latter: Der Spiegel query--Muslim headscraves: Religious Tradition or Political Syymbol?

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

Still shilling: The jig is mostly up for Canada’s p.c. court system, what with Moses Znaimer, the PEN crowd and even, Heavens to Betsy, the Toronto Star decrying its unfair, unfree modus operendi. At the moment, the only people who still think the HRCs are performing a valuable public service are the hack bureaucrats who work for them and others who toil for the grievence industry; Muslims who cannot abide any critical discussion of their perfect—and thus unassailable—faith; and the Jewstablishment, which is addicted to the thrill of hunting down every last neo-and decrepit-Nazi in Canada, a pre-requisite, purportedly, for the Jews’ psychological well-being. And the Jews are so clueless and short-sighted that they can’t see that, on the issue of free speech, the HRC agenda dovetails very nicely with the Islamist one.

Speaking of the Islamist agenda, Bernie’s pal Harpoon, is at it again, trying to whip up support for the nation’s busy-bodies from his bully pulpit in the Toronto Star. Here’s most of today’s sermon:

According to some journalists, freedom of speech is in peril in Canada. And human rights commissions are "kangaroo courts."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Only genuine misunderstanding or deliberate distortion can explain the media's mostly one-sided discourse on the case of Maclean's before the federal, as well as the Ontario and British Columbia, human rights commissions. The group that filed the complaint against the magazine argued that a series of articles, especially a 4,800-word piece portraying Muslims as a menace to the West, may have constituted hate speech.

Canada has followed a different path on free speech than the United States, where there are no anti-hate laws because the U.S. Bill of Rights says "Congress shall make no laws ... abridging freedom of speech or of the press."

The Canadian Charter of Rights, too, guarantees "freedom of the press," but it places "reasonable limits" on it. That's why the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the anti-hate provisions of both the Criminal Code and human rights statutes.

What constitutes hate is up to the commissions and, ultimately, the courts to decide. But this being Canada, different jurisdictions tackle the issue differently…

The federal commission was mandated to deal with hate transmitted by phone. In 2001, it added the Internet. It did not foresee media websites.

Thus a conundrum for the commission: It cannot sit in judgment on what the media say in print but it can when they put the same material on their websites.

This being Canada, the commission has appointed a commission. Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor was asked Tuesday to come up with a solution…

…The federal commission gets up to 15,000 inquiries a year, says Jennifer Lynch, chair. "We take up only about 700 and refer only about 70 or 80 to the tribunal.

"Hate cases are only 2 per cent of that stream. The tribunal has dealt with only about 15 hate cases, so far. And not a single one of them has been overturned by the courts." So, why the hue and cry?

Karim Karim, chair of Carleton University's School of Journalism, says journalists are "fixated on their own right and privileges.

"What about the rights of people to be free of discriminatory and hateful speech? Journalists talk about one principle, and not the other."…

…Anti-hate laws could be made consistent across Canada by exempting the media, as in Ontario, or axing the anti-hate provisions altogether. We may even adopt the American system and remove the anti-hate section from the Criminal Code as well.

Many disagree, including the Canadian Jewish Congress. Its head, Bernie Farber, says the anti-hate laws have helped make Canada "the warm, tolerant and accepting nation that it has become."

Beyond the law, there's self-restraint. Most media exercise it, every day. We do not publish racist cartoons and anti-Semitic rants. That Maclean's published a series of virulent articles about Muslims itself speaks volumes.

Got that? Canadians must learn to exercise “self-restraint” by, for example, curbing their lack of enthusiasm for sharia and not getting too excited about reports that a genocidal jihadi terror outfit linked to the mullahs may be getting set to unleash an Argentina-style attack on one or more Jewish sites in Canada. The CJC’s Bernie Farber, a warm, tolerant and accepting chap if there ever was one, especially to those like Mo Elmasry and Harpoon Siddiqui who share his concerns about “hate speech,” has certainly absorbed that lesson.

As for Maclean’s “virulent” articles—well, that’s how they would be described in, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Here in the West we have another word for them: the “truth”.

Update: Harpoon sings the Beatles:

When I find myself in times of trouble Bernie Farber comes to me

Whispering these letters:

“HRCs”.

And in my hour of struggle he is marching right along with me

Speaking these three letters:

HRCs.

HRCs, HRCs, HRCs, HRCs,

Speaking these three letters:

HRCs.

 

When all the single-minded sockies

Get so riled that speech is free

There will be an answer:

HRCs.

For though they may be p.o.’d

They can still have faith that we’re p.c.

There will be an answer:

HRCs.

HRCS, HRCS, HRCs, HRCs,

There will be an answer:

HRC.

 

A good thing Bernie’s clueless

And has not had an epiphany.

Thinks they’ll stop the Nazis:

HRCs.

I wake up to the sound of silence--

A sound that quite appeals to me.

There will be no “hate speech”:

HRCs.

HRCs, HRCs, HRCs, HRCs,

There will be no “hate speech”:

HRCs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments (4)

We’re doomed: The basis of my conclusion: the fact that Canadian kafirs—and not just the ones in the Jewstablishment—are so clueless about Islam and its teachings that they can’t see through the doublespeak of  “moderate” imam, Hamid Slimi. From the Toronto Star (my bolds):

There are international precedents for the job Hamid Slimi might soon be asked to do. There are precedents, yes, from Slimi's own life.

But Omar Khadr is Omar Khadr, and there is no precedent for him.

Khadr's military lawyer wants Slimi, a Toronto imam, to create a "religious rehabilitation" program for the 21-year-old Guantanamo detainee – to build a bridge between Canadian society and an alleged Al Qaeda operative raised in a family of radicals, shot three times in Afghanistan at age 15, imprisoned for six years, and possibly tortured.

For that job, there are no ready-to-use blueprints. Which may be why the lawyer has called on a man with a reputation as a bridge-builder.

In May, Slimi became the first Muslim to address Toronto's Neighbourhood Interfaith Group. He was invited by Bryan Beauchamp, its Anglican chair, who met him when both participated in a Habitat for Humanity project.

"That was a good starting point," Beauchamp says. "It was tangential, but important, because it indicated the type of guy he was."

"My involvement with him has been with – believe it or not – are you sitting? Organ donation," says Rabbi Reuven Bulka, co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and chair of the Trillium Gift of Life Network.

Morocco-born Slimi, 39, leads the International Muslims Organization, an Etobicoke mosque. He has two masters degrees, chairs the Canadian Council of Imams, hosts and produces television shows for his Faith of Life Network, and works with a dizzying array of interfaith and community groups.

"Islam is a religion of justice and peace and love," he says. "My job is to do the opposite of those who want to hijack the name of Islam."

Slimi's book, Terrorism: An Islamic Perspective, denounces terror in strong terms: "Islam does not condone or tolerate any terrorist acts including the killing of innocent people no matter what their faith is," he writes. But it also defends "Jihaad," which he defines as a defensive response to aggression.

"All nations do Jihaad when they are attacked," he writes, and Muslims should "defend themselves against their enemy, again, within well defined rules of engagement"; if "freedom and dignity fighters" are "trying to liberate their lands from usurpers, settlers and occupiers, why should they not get help from their fellow humans?"

Secular Muslim commentator Tarek Fatah argues a man with such beliefs is unfit to counsel Khadr.

Slimi says charges of extremism vastly misstate his views. His conception of jihad, he says, would simply permit Canadians to fight back if Canada were attacked.

"Blowing up people when they're sleeping, putting a bomb in a pizzeria – that is not jihad. I am furious when I see those things. That is terrorism. Jihad is defending your house. If someone invaded Canada, what would you do?"

Canadian officials, he says, understand his true nature. The RCMP website quotes him praising its education program, which his mosque has hosted. And after the 2006 bust of the "Toronto 18" alleged terror group, prosecutors asked him to counsel two of the young accused…

See, the imam’s a proponent of that “defensive jihad” (as well as the go-slow jihad)—which is okey-dokey with the CJC’s Bulka and the RCMP (but not, you’ll note, with Tarek Fatah, who is wise to the ways of a slippery Salafist).

Update: Here's the Wikipedia entry for "defensive jihad," which is easily accessible to any CJC or RCMP operative. Its explanation of the concept—quel surprise—is somewhat at odds with Slimi's.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:13 | link | comments (1)

Obamaphobia?: Bambi says Republicans will use race to stoke fears.

That's rich coming from a guy who spent 20 years at Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Black Power Church of Abominate Whitey and the Jooos.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:17 | link | comments

A call for action: Canada's Jewstablishment is so thoroughly out to lunch (no doubt at some posh boîte where the vino flows like water and there's plenty of log rolling--"You're the bestest Nazi-fighter!"; "No, no, you're the bestest Nazi-fighter!"), that it cannot be counted on to serve our interests. Therefore, what we need in Canada is an anti-Jewstablishment--the anti-Jewstablishmentarians.

Who's in?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments

Emancipated female: Move over, Carrie Bradshaw. Saudi Arabia's unofficial minister for women—an attractive young woman who wears lipstick and writes Arab chick-lit (which, go figure, is not an oxymoron)—wants us to know that, despite the burqas and the purdah, the anti-vice/pro-virtue police and the sharia, Saudi Arabian women still have lots of opportunies. From the timesonline:

Saudi Arabia has a new minister for women. She’s 25, likes designer labels, lipstick and cars. Rajaa Alsanea is, of course, not in government, for in her country it’s not really the done thing for females to air their opinions. They are not allowed to drive, let alone have employment or voting rights.

Alsanea, however, has captured a vast constituency. She is a bestselling author, the only chick-lit one from the Arab world, and as such she has become a sort of spokeswoman for 21st-century Saudi women. Her book, Girls of Riyadh, about to be published in Britain by Fig Tree, tells the stories of four middle-class young women searching for love and just a little bit of fun in a suffocating culture.

It’s hardly Jilly Cooper – the references to sex are coy with lots of talk of yearning and disappointment – but with tales of the girls drinking (very small sips of Dom Pérignon) and – gasp – sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, it caused a scandal. This is a country, remember, where a woman might be stoned for kissing a man in public.

Alsanea has received death threats by e-mail and many tried to suppress her book. At one point, black market versions of this Arabic version of Sex and the City changed hands for £300.

“I didn’t think about breaking any taboos or being a rebel. I wanted to describe how people find ways to get around some of the traditions. Young women I know want to be modern, hip, stylish and fall in love, the same as women everywhere. I was never trying to cause a scandal,” she tells me over tea at the Dorchester hotel in London.

Alsanea is modestly and fashionably turned out in expensive, loosely cut jeans, a white fitted jacket and a coordinating white, silken hijab. There are a couple of lightly Wagish touches – a diamond watch with a pink strap, a Gucci bag and a French manicure – but she is a class act.

In an American accent she speaks softly, in perfect English with impeccable sentences: “I started writing when I was 18 and I knew I wanted to be a published author. I have been blessed with a very supportive family and we were encouraged to express ourselves.” Her father, who worked for the information ministry in Kuwait, died when she was eight and Alsanea and her five older siblings were raised by her mother in Riyadh: “As I got older, I wanted to write something I would enjoy reading. I just wrote about what I saw around me – what the girls I knew were like.”

After her book was eventually published in 2005, young women began to see Alsanea as their mouthpiece: “At one point I was getting 1,000 e-mails a day. Women who were divorced, women who were married in an arranged way and didn’t like their husbands; those who were struggling with their families were reaching out. Girls came up and hugged me and wanted to take pictures with me. All of a sudden I felt it was my duty to take care of these people.

“I knew that no one had really written about modern life in Saudi but – perhaps because I was young – I didn’t think it would be sensational.”

It’s hard to imagine this smart and beautiful girl ever being naive. Last year she was voted the Arab world’s premier intellectual by Elaph, the online magazine. All her siblings are either physicians or dentists and she is a graduate student in dentistry, arguing that there is no money in being a Saudi writer (I suspect she is an exception to this rule). She was savvy enough not to send her manuscript to the Saudi information ministry, where all books must be vetted before publication. Instead, she got her brother to take it to publishers in more liberal Lebanon.

When she didn’t hear from them immediately, she boldly sent her book to her favourite writer, the poet Ghazi al-Gosaibi, a former UK ambassador and now a Saudi government minister: “He is an idol of mine and when he called me to say he liked the book I was, like: call me back in five minutes. I need to freak out.” It was his endorsement that prompted the buzz across the Middle East and the book deal. And it was only then that she let her family read her work.

“My brother was worried for me.

He asked whether I really wanted to publish it under my own name. He thought it might affect my chances of marriage, that there would be men who wouldn’t want to marry me.” She raises an eyebrow – precisely threaded to Hurleyish perfection – and shrugs: “I just thought, hey, I wouldn’t want to marry them, either. It’s a good way of weeding some out.”…

Oho, good one, Ms. Alsanea. Just be careful your uppity, progressive views don’t put you in line for one of those “honor” murders we don’t hear nearly enough about.

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

Do you believe in magic?: One of the Magic Kingdom’s innumerable oleaginous princes sure doesn’t. He says there’s no way the Wahhabis can “wave a magic wand” and somehow roll back oil prices, currently zooming into the stratosphere. Who do you think they are—a slut of an infidel TV witch who could make things happen with just a twitch her nose or something?  (He didn’t say that last part, of course, but he may have been thinking it.) From Arab News:

JEDDAH: Saudi officials said yesterday that the Kingdom has no “magic wand” that will resolve the skyrocketing oil prices.

Addressing a press conference ahead of tomorrow’s International Energy Conference here, Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said: “There are political, economic and regulatory factors involved.

“The soaring oil prices require immediate intervention by everyone. Combined solutions are needed where roles are defined.”

Echoing a commonly held view that market speculation has at least as much of a role in current pricing as supply, the prince said that no single factor is in play and that it is in Saudi Arabia’s interests to see a stabilization of the market.

He attributed much of the cause of this current crisis to “subjective circumstances” and warned that people should not be “overly optimistic” that anything but “temporary solutions” could be reached.

Ibrahim Al-Muhana, a ministry consultant, said tomorrow’s meeting of principal producing and consuming nations is important to identifying the causes and the solutions to the current troubles. “The emergence of new players has made it difficult for us to put our fingers at a clear reason (for the current problems),” he said, attributing the shift of speculation from the US subprime crisis to commodities trading as one reason for the rise in the prices of a range of commodities, not just oil.

Al-Muhana said it was obvious right now that all market forces are in harmony so it must be something outside the supply-demand formula that is causing the hike in prices. Financial factors contributing to the hike included a weak dollar and high demand on the euro in addition to the American subprime crisis.

“The fluctuation in the oil market is what made the king call the meeting,” he said.

Prince Abdulaziz said that there is cooperation among Saudi Arabia, OPEC, the International Energy Forum and the International Energy Agency to present a working paper to the meeting.

However, Saudi officials did not reveal any details about what they intended to propose at the meeting.

To combat the rise in prices, Saudi Arabia announced recently it would increase its production capacity by three million barrels per day to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. Saudi Aramco recently announced plans to build new refineries with French Total and US Conoco in order to meet the shortage of oil derivatives. Al-Muhana acknowledged that there is a link between the shortages of refiners and rising oil prices but said that this link is not a major factor.

OPEC President Chakib Khelil, who will attend the Jeddah oil summit, said yesterday it was illogical and irrational to ask the organization to increase output so as to take the pressure off soaring prices.

“Saudi Arabia decided to hold this meeting... in order to determine the causes behind rising oil prices,” he said. “The principal objective of the Jeddah meeting is to clarify positions regarding the reasons behind this rise”…

Mind if I give it a shot, Mr. Prez? How about greed, a desire to punish the U.S. for supporting the Zionist entity and an in-your-face show of power by the oil nations?

Did I mention greed?

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

Some "hudna": Even though Israel and Hamas are into the third day of their Egypt-brokered "truce", Hamas's thug-in-chief Ismail Haniyeh says he has no intention of halting the smuggling of arms into Gaza (a condition of the truce).

Of course he doesn't. Why should a little thing like a hudna stop him from getting on with plans for the jihad?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

Can we get that in writing?: UN nuclear watchkitty Mo ElBaradei says he'll resign if Israel attacks Iran.

I say why wait for an attack? Do it now! 

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

Projecting, deflecting, protecting: Iran calls Israel "a dangerous regime."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

The Koran’s contents: In the book section of the Globe and Mail, University of Glasgow prof Mona Siddiqui makes a case for the Koran as one of the world’s 50 GREATEST BOOKS:

How do you measure a book's worth? By its sales in the millions, by its perennial appeal to generation upon generation, by the beauty of its language and style or because, as in the case of the Koran, the book is considered sacred and venerated as God's very word. With more than one billion Muslims in the world who believe that the Koran is God's last revelation in human history, the Koran, like the Bible, is one of the most widely read, revered and recited books in the world.

Its reach is global, its influence is global. It has been the inspiration to one of the greatest civilizations in the world and is the basis for some of the most impressive art, architecture, literature, philosophy and science the world has ever known.

A relatively short scripture, the Koran is the culmination of a series of revelations that Muslims believe were given to Muhammad, a seventh-century Arab who became God's last Prophet and the recipient of God's final revelation.

The book was revealed in Arabic and subsequently compiled in Arabic. Though it has been translated into numerous languages, the faithful nevertheless always try to read the original Arabic because the power of the book lies as much in the oral recitation of the verses as its does in its content. For Muslims, the Koran is central to the good and moral life.

Like most Semitic scriptures, the Koran refers to the big themes: God, prophecy, angels, the eschaton (the end of days), punishment and reward. But it also refers to people of other faiths, namely Jews and Christians. These are people who also received divine revelation, who had their own prophets and who might also be saved in the next world. Thus, Muslims have always shared an ambivalent history with the people of both these faiths.

The Koran also refers to what are understood to be more socio-ethical matters: marriage, divorce, sexual relations, slavery, inheritance laws, poverty, penal laws, ecology and ritual practice. Man worships God not just through submission to ritual but through the ethical relations he forms with the world and people around him.

This is where the greatness of the Koran lies. With its insistence on reflection on God's world and its emphasis on the performance of just and charitable acts, the Koran contains a transformative power. The language is poetic, passionate and persuasive. The narrative is both long and elaborate, and short and choppy. The thread that ties all the different themes together is God' mercy, or rahma. The Koran is itself a reflection of God's mercy and compassion, and must be central to the way we think of one another and the relationships we form.

But like all scriptures, the Koran contains another side. In the post-9/11 world, many in the West are suddenly awake to the power of scripture, and to the fact that zealotry and fanaticism can find their roots in scripture just as much as compassion can. Issues of gender inequalities and a justification for violence are being seen as defining descriptors of the Islamic world with their basis in the Koran...

In his new book, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Andrew Bostom makes a case for Jew-hatred as one of those defining descriptors. Here he is describing his research to the Jerusalem Post’s Sam Sher:

…WHILE SEARCHING for the roots of jihad, Bostom found the roots of Islam's Jew-hatred. More often than not, they were intertwined.

"As I was putting the first book [The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims] together, I came across Ahmad Sirhindi," he explains. "He was an Indian Sufi who was enraged by the reforms of Moghul Akbar, who abolished the jizya [poll tax]. This enraged the orthodox ulema [scholars], one of the chief representatives of whom was Sirhindi. Amongst his virulent tracts against the moghul he says, 'Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.' Now, this is a 16th-17th century anti-Hindu ideologue, and there's no evidence that he ever had contact with a Jew. So I was like, 'Where on earth did this come from?'"

Bostom looked first to the Koran for an explanation.

"When I put together the Koranic verses on the Jews," he continues, "they read like an indictment, prosecution and conviction. It was virulently anti-Semitic. Going into the hadith and the histories of Muhammad - where his assassination is attributed to a Khybar Jewess, for example - only strengthened this conviction.

"So when I juxtaposed that with the notion that there was no theological anti-Semitism in Islam, it was stunning. It's just so in-your-face that to claim that the foundational sources don't create anti-Semitism or aren't inherently anti-Semitic... it's absurd."…

You can be certain, though, that no one, and I mean no one would ever run to an HRC with a complaint about the Koran's hate speech. Now that would be absurd!

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

Captivating gent: Since this is the weekend when the Get Smart movie hits theatres, it has put me in mind of one of my favourite episodes of the Mel Brooks-Buck Henry TV show. I don’t recall many plot details, but it involved a Chaos agent named Simon the Likeable who, in a case of perfect casting, was played by likeable character actor Jack Gilford. (Gilford had an inherent sweetness about him, along with one of the most appealing lisps in showbiz.) Now there was no doubt that Simon was up to no good, but no one was able to do much about it because he was so amiable, so attractive, so congenial, so gosh-darned, well, likeable, that he cast a spell over whomever he encountered and stopped them dead in their tracks.

In fact, he was a lot like this guy.

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

A clear and ever-present danger: Bernie Farber may be blasé about the prospect of an Argentina-style Hezbollah attack in Canada. But then, as long as the Jewstablishment Linuses can snuggle with their HRC security blankie, they’re gonna keep grooving to that old Bob Marley refrain: “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing/’Cause every little thing’s gonna be alright…” As far back as 2002, though, Stewart Bell of the National Post, the Canadian media’s foremost expert on terrorism, has been reporting on the apparent threat:

The terrorist group Hezbollah has been using Canada as an offshore base for raising money and purchasing supplies needed to carry out and videotape attacks against Israel, documents obtained by the National Post show. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents detail how Hezbollah has laundered tens of thousands of dollars through Canadian banks while drawing on the accounts to shop for military equipment. Hezbollah agents shopped for blasting devices, night-vision goggles, powerful computers and camera equipment used to record attacks against Israeli forces, according to dozens of CSIS wiretaps obtained yesterday. The Canadian operation was so successful that CSIS agents overheard suspected Hezbollah operatives in Vancouver in early 1999 congratulating each other in a monitored telephone conversation. "Ali Adham Amhaz informed Mohamad Hassan Dbouk that he was watching the latest news on today's operation involving Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Amhaz congratulated Dbouk for Hezbollah's success in their improving ability which was making Israel retaliate for the attacks."

Even as they lived in Canada with their families as immigrants the Hezbollah operatives apparently remained disdainful of their new surroundings, denouncing "the Canadians and the Zionists" in a wiretapped conversation. Hezbollah is a radical Shiite group formed in Lebanon in 1982 that is funded by Iran and Syria. It is responsible for kidnappings, hostage takings and bombings that killed hundreds of Americans in the early 1980s. Although defended recently as a political movement by Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, and Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hezbollah has been running secret operations in Canada for more than a decade. Mr. Chrétien declined to condemn Hezbollah after he attended an event at the francophone summit in Beirut two weeks ago that was also attended by the group's leader.

But Canadian police and intelligence reports show the group has been using Canada in recent years to buy materiel, forge travel documents, raise money and steal luxury vehicles. CSIS reports dated April, 2002, show that in 1999 and 2000, Hezbollah sent detailed shopping lists to agents who were allegedly part of a network with operatives in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal who filled the orders and shipped the equipment back to Lebanon in courier packages. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were moved through various Canadian banks such as the Bank of Nova Scotia to finance purchases for what the participants referred to as the "resistance" and the "brave people." Canadian Hezbollah agents also discussed a scam they called a "miracle strike," which involved taking out life insurance on someone and then having them killed in a bombardment in Lebanon. ..

The extent of Hezbollah operations in Canada first came to light in the 1990s when an agent named Mohammed Hussein al-Husseini was arrested for deportation. He told CSIS about a vast cross-Canada network. He also confessed that agents had spied on Canadians and sent information about Canadian life and infrastructure back to Lebanon "in case there's a problem with Canada." In two cases, alleged Hezbollah agents wanted for terrorist activities overseas were found hiding out in Edmonton and Ottawa. One of them has been charged with taking part in a 1993 bombing attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. "Hezbollah has members in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto -- all of Canada," Mr. Al-Husseini, a member of Hezbollah's security organization, told CSIS before he was deported in 1994.

"Hezbollah wants to collect information on Canada, on life in Canada, its roads and so on, in case there's a problem with Canada." He was reportedly referring to videotapes of Canadian landmarks sent to Hezbollah…

If we told Bernie et al that they could haul Sheik Nasrallah before an HRC—do you think that would rouse them from their torpor?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:30 | link | comments

Mr. Oven Door: This is the kind of man CJC chief Bernie Farber is: when he was in Poland a few years ago, he went to the town where his family used to live before being murdered by the Nazis. Upon finding what was once his family's home, he cased around for a memento to bring back with him when his eyes lit upon the oven door. Though it was made of cast iron and must have put his luggage drastically overweight on the flight home, he shlepped it all the way to Toronto, and mounted it on his living room wall.

That's the kind of guy he is--a guy who's so wracked with anger at what the Nazis did to his family and the Jews of Europe that he has an oven door on his wall, a symbol of his determination to root out every last decrepit-and-neo-Nazi in the country lest they pose a threat to Canadian Jewry.

Query him about that Hezbollah threat we've all been reading about, though, and Bernie turns positively docile. Oh, that's just "chatter," he sniffs. Nothing to worry about. Move along now and let us get on with extending a hand of friendship to all our Muslim friends (like Harpoon Siddiqui).

Bernie Farber, this one's for you:

Bernie Farber will now weigh in upon

All the threats that will plague us anon:

“We must cower in dread

At white creeps on the Web

But as for Hezbollah--what a yawn!”

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

Drunk and disorderly: During their off hours, some British soldiers assigned to a military base in Medicine Hat, Alberta have been imbibing too much brewski and puking their guts out—a habit that hasn’t endeared them to local pub owners.  The publicans have been denying them service since the “right” to be drunken yobbo isn’t enshrined in Canada’s human rights legislation. At least, not yet. From the Ceeb:

Citing drunken and disorderly conduct, some bars near a southern Alberta military training base are banning British soldiers.

Bars in Medicine Hat are used to serving British military personnel who work or train at Canadian Forces Base Suffield, 50 kilometres west of the city. But run-ins with theft, vandalism and drunkenness have some bars refusing entry to British soldiers.

Stuart Hardiker, who has served in both the British army and the Canadian military, said he asked a hostess at one bar about a sign reading, No British Soldiers Allowed.

"She explained that, that soldiers get drunk and they throw up. And I said, 'Well, do Canadians not get drunk, and you know, do they not throw up?' Is it not the licensee of that establishment's legal obligation to monitor the consumption of alcohol to the patrons?" he told CBC News Thursday.

Another pub posted a sign to the attention of British soldiers requiring them to show proof of Alberta residency — effectively banning their access.

The British military has been using CFB Suffield as a training facility since 1971, and it's estimated it injects about $100 million into the local economy. The majority of Brits at Suffield are support staff, but the bars say their problems are with visiting trainees who are battle troops.

Some bars report incidents of soldiers urinating and vomiting in their establishments, as well as stealing tips from waitresses and exposing themselves to other customers.

"I'm not barring them because they're battle groups, I'm barring them because of what they're doing in here," Ross Beach, owner of Rossco's Pub, told the Medicine Hat News.

He accepts it's a case of a few bad apples, but said the soldiers' behaviour is unfair to his patrons and cleaning staff.

However, Gord Callaghan of O'Riley's Irish Pub said he's dealt with only a few incidents involving British soldiers over the years, pointing out he's had trouble with all kinds of people who get drunk.

Former soldier says policy is discriminatory

Hardiker estimates that he's been turned away from bars about 25 times since moving to the city of about 60,000 people 12 years ago. Often, it's at night, but he said he was refused service once at lunch time when he was accompanied by his wife.

Hardiker said he was embarrassed recently when he tried to take visitors from the United Kingdom out for a few drinks —and bar staff told him, "Sorry, no Brits allowed today."

"It embarrasses me as a resident of Canada … because of the fact that Canada prides itself throughout the world as being a nation thriving on its human rights, and yet we refuse soldiers that are here to train to be deployed in operational conflicts around the world … in a country that is supposed to be part of the British Commonwealth."

Hardiker is no longer a soldier, but said he's been refused service because of his accent — which he believes is discriminatory.

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Act says businesses can refuse service to people who might pose a threat to the patrons, staff or property, and the Alberta Human Rights Act states they cannot discriminate against people on grounds of race, colour, ancestry or place of origin.

At the same time, the Human Rights Act also has a clause that allows a business to discriminate against a customer if there's proof of reasonable and justifiable causes.

Hands up all those who foresee a human rights complaint lodged by soldiers who’ve experienced “pain and suffering” due to “prejudiced” publicans.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:41 | link | comments

It just gets worse: Caroline Glick sheds light on Israel's darkess week.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:06 | link | comments

Shavian Islamists: The Canadian Islamic Congress thinks so highly of this quote by Fabian crackpot George Bernard Shaw that it is posted on its website:

"We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives.

Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives?

Where are such voters to be found today? Nowhere."

I’m not entirely sure what Shaw had in mind when he expectorated this pseudo-profundity; probably something to do with how the hoi polloi could not be trusted to put the right people—i.e. people who thought like him—into office. And I’m not sure what CIC thinking is in posting it. All I know is that it doesn’t seem to be particularly complementary to either democracy or the Canadian electorate. It does, however, seem to be a sort of backhanded pitch for a “benevolent despot,” or, barring that, a call to "breed political capacity."

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (3)

The animate and the animated: An AP report lists the celebrities who will be getting a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. See if you can guess which celeb is the odd one out:

Los Angeles -- Hollywood will enshrine an eclectic bunch in its famous curbside Walk of Fame next year, including Hugh Jackman, Ben Kingsley, the Village People and Tinkerbell. Other recipients of stars include Felicity Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy; Cameron Diaz; Robert Downey Jr.; Tim Burton; Leslie Caron; Charles Durning and Ralph Fiennes.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's Walk of Fame Committee chose the recipients, who were ratified yesterday.

It’s Leslie Caron, of course. Her mother tongue is French.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:42 | link | comments

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all?: Stéphane Dion, a man so bland and colourless that he’s the human equivalent of Sleep-Eaze, has a plan to get a handle on that tricky climate change. A cockamamie, unworkable plan. From the Globe and Mail:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the idea crazy, and the reaction of big business was mixed, but the votes that matter for Stéphane Dion and his new Green Plan exist on the other end of the political spectrum.

The Liberal Leader staked his political future yesterday on a controversial plan that, experts say, is an effort to win support on the splintered left. The plan, which balances $15-billion in carbon taxes with an equivalent cut in income taxes, will be a main plank in an election campaign that at least some Liberals now believe will come in the fall.

"There's no question they're aiming at the NDP and the Green Party and the Bloc," said Peter Donolo, a pollster with the Strategic Counsel. "They're making a generational pitch and maybe another opportunity to make a play in Quebec."

The theory, according to some Grits, is to have Mr. Dion find a progressive spot on the political battlefield that no other party will occupy, and reap the rewards if he can communicate the plan as a reasonable one.

Perhaps sensing this, the New Democratic Party pounced hard on the Liberal proposal yesterday, with Quebec MP Tom Mulcair saying it showed "crass ignorance" and predicting that it would create an expensive federal bureaucracy...

Did you say “expensive federal bureaucracy”? Why, that’s the Liberal Party’s middle name. My letter:

Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” may well be the quintessential Liberal policy. It punishes the rich through onerous taxation.  It enables the government to grind out a whole slew of confounding regulations that will engage untold numbers of bureaucrats for many years to come. Best of all, it allows people to feel virtuous about making sacrifices for what they believe is the greater good.

Will it make a shred of difference to global climate change? Probably not. Canada is far too puny to have any impact on the big picture. But then, the point of the exercise is not to effect any serious change. The point is to ride the coattails of the environmental movement back into power.

If Stéphane's greenery doesn't do the trick, Canada could always buy lots of carbon credits from Big Al's Cozy Carbon Credit Emporium.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:51 | link | comments

In the same boat: On a day when the front page of the National Post trumpets the possible activation of Hezbollah sleeper cells in Canada, two of Toronto’s most vocal Jewish anti-Zionists crawl out of the woodwork and display their “wisdom” (such as it is) on the letters page.

As if, like the Nazis, Hezbollah makes any distinction between the “good Jews” and the “bad Jews.”

Update: More Jewish anti-Zionists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:53 | link | comments (10)

Slogan theft: Has anyone noticed that Bambi's slogan--"YES WE CAN"--has either been swiped without attribution from Bob the Builder, or swiped without attribution (though with a slight change) from the late Sammy Davis, Jr.?

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:18 | link | comments

Wahhabi science: A most worthy endeavour. From Arab News:

MADINAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is likely to open a three-day international knowledge forum, which will bring together prominent scientists from across the world, at the Le Meridien in Madinah on June 22.

“King Abdullah has cordially accepted the invitation to honor the forum,” said Amr Al-Dabbagh, governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the main organizer of the event.

Prominent scientists from across the world — including Dr. Afzal Hossain and Stein Sture from the United States, Professor Sar Sardy from Indonesia, Dr. Musa M. Nordin from Malaysia and Dr. Anis Ahmed from Pakistan — are expected to attend the event, entitled “Noor” (Light).

“The primary objective of the annual forum is to promote human civilization from the land of Madinah by attracting investors, scientists, scholars and pioneer institutions to the Knowledge Economic City, which is set to become an international center for knowledge,” SAGIA officials said.

Crucial topics to be discussed at the forum include high-tech innovation and creativity in the Muslim world, strategies to decrease genetic disorders, knowledge infrastructure development through engineering and information and communications technology (ICT), and bioinformatics-based investment in the Kingdom. Al-Dabbagh also announced that SAGIA plans to hold the knowledge forum each year. This year’s forum will focus on health care, and ICT…

Sounds like they plan to give the Jewish state, per capita the most innovative nation on the planet, a run for its money. To help the forum get going, I propose a strategy to tackle the problem of genetic disorders: knock it off with all the inter-cousin canoodling.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:03 | link | comments (2)

All joking aside: The man who wants be in charge of the American economy seems to have a shaky grasp of numbers, as evidenced by this item on James Taranto’s OpinionJournal:

The Chicago Defender notes a curious claim by Barack Obama in his Father's Day speech:

"We know that more than half of all Black children live in single-parent households. We know the statistics--that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison," he said, as his wife Michelle and two daughters listened from the front row.

We're certainly inclined to believe that the absence of a father makes a child likelier to run afoul of the law, but can it really be true that fatherless children are 20 times as likely to end up in prison but only five times as likely to commit crimes? That would mean criminals from intact families get away with their crimes three times as often as those raised by single mothers.

It reminds us of that old joke about the definition of chutzpah: when a guy kills his mother and pleads for mercy because he has a father.

I thought the joke was about the guy who throws the Grandma who raised him and his father-figure under the train, and then tries to make everyone feel sorry for him because he’s an orphan.

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

Divide it, but don’t use barbed wire: What Obama meant by “an undivided Jerusalem.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:41 | link | comments

A stark illustration: Robert Spencer--wearing a gag to illustrate how free speech is being gagged, particularly here in Canada--explains that Islamic supremacists are using the concept of "Islamophobia" to shut down all criticism of anything pertaining to Islam and the jihad. This effort is helping further the interests of the supremacists, and is effectively putting an end to free speech as we know it (with the able assistance of Canada's Jewstablishent, the soft jihad's useful idiots).  

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

The real threat: While Canada’s Jewstablishment keeps up its dogged fight against the phantom menace of neo-and-decrepit Nazis, Hellzbollocks is reportedly getting set to activate sleeper cells in Canada to launch attacks against Jewish targets.

So much for that HRC security blankie.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:30 | link | comments (2)

The kangaroo cabaret: Time to say Auf Wiedersehen to the whole cockamamie system. Right, Liza?:

We used to all have something known as “freedoms”

And in our cherished Charter we could read ‘em.

The end result of centuries of thinking.

But now go take a whiff: something is stinking.

The day we all stopped paying close attention

Is a day you must agree’s too sad to mention.

For once where we could think and speak so free

We're now, unhappily, ruled by what’s p.c.

I think of freedom every single day,

And since I miss it so, I have to say:

 

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Join the insurgency!

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

Get rid of HRCs.

 

Pick up your laptop, your phone and your pen.

Complain to authorities.

Get rid of HRCs, M.P.s,

Get rid of HRCs.

 

They’ve overstepped.

They’re so unfair.

There is no doubt they’re totalitarian.

Speak up now, and be contrarian.

 

No use kowtowing to thought cops and courts

When we need our liberty.

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

Get rid of HRCs.

 

And as for me,

And as for me:

I made my mind up in adolescence:

“No” to cant and acquiesence.

 

Start by admitting from east  to B.C.

We must have a free country.

Get rid of HRCs, my friends.

We don’t need those HRCs!

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:17 | link | comments

Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl: The way I figure it, that’s who’s running the Toronto Transit Commission and City Hall, since only the witless products of rural inbreeding could possibly screw things up this bad. From the National Post:

Fire trucks cannot safely navigate the new streetcar right-of-way along St. Clair Avenue West, according to a fire department report that sounds the alarm about delays in emergency response times.

Residents who have vigorously opposed the streetcar project were outraged yesterday even as officials from Toronto Transit Commission and the fire department tried to play down the risks.

"Our concerns have been vindicated by this report but it's not a pleasant feeling to be vindicated," said Margaret Smith, chairwoman of Save Our St. Clair, a grass-roots group that raised concerns about safety, accessibility and congestion over years of countering the 6.7-kilo-metre, $95-million project.

The report suggests that the dedicated streetcar track -- used by emergency vehicles to bypass cars as they respond to calls -- contains a serious design flaw…

Then again, Curley, Larry and Moe could be in charge.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments (2)

Circle saavy: The Times reports on a new-fangled crop circle, one much more elaborate than usual :

Wroughton Mathematicians are perplexed after a highly complex crop circle appeared in a Wiltshire field - depicting a fundamental mathematical symbol.

The circle is, apparently, a coded image representing a complex mathematical number — the first ten digits of pi — and even astrophysicists admit they find it “mind-boggling”.

The circular pattern was created in a barley field near Barbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort, earlier this month.

Measuring around 46m (150ft) in diameter, it has had crop circle enthusiasts and experts stumped.

The symbol was identified eventually by Mike Reed, a retired astrophysicist who contacted Lucy Pringle, a crop circle photographer and expert, with an explanation.

Maths codes and geometric patterns have long been an important factor in crop circle formations — one of the most famous formations ever created showed the image of a complex set of fractals known as The Julia Set, in a field near Stonehenge, 12 years ago.

Lucy Pringle, who researches the effects of electromagnetic fields on living systems and crop formations and has the largest database of crop circles in the world said of the phenomenon: “This is an astounding development — it is a seminal event.”

Or at the very least, a circular event. I like the comment left by a skeptical reader: “i’m a wiltshire lad and this crop circle bothers me because i never met anyone clever enough in wiltshire to carry this out.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:28 | link | comments

The curious case of the recanting Islamist: What’s the deal with Mubin Shaikh? The Crown’s star witness in its case against the Mississauga jihadi laddies, he’s gone from being the snitch who ratted them out to the kafirs, to the guy who now seems determined to subvert the entire prosecution. On the witness stand yesterday, Mr. Shaikh recollected things differently than he had in previous statements to police, and appeared to be trying to protect one of the youths he had implicated in the alleged plot; in earlier testimony, he described the cadre's ring-leader as being a "few fries short of a Happy Meal"--meaning he was far too addlepated to conduct an effective attack.

So what’s going on? Is Shaikh:

·         someone who started out with the aim of thwarting the jihadis (because they were likely to make his “soft jihad” approach of inserting sharia into the Canadian body politic via other means, including sharia tribunals, that much harder to achieve), but who, at cruch-time, had second thoughts about being seen to side with the kafirs?;

·         a double-dealing rat who had always hoped to placate both sides?;

·         a single-dealing rat, who had every intention of torpedoing the Crown’s case right from the start?

Keep your eyes on the Brampton proceedings, where all may (or may not) be revealed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments (2)

Money for nothing: On the israelinsider site, Michael Freund questions the wisdom of spending vast sums of money each year to confirm the self-evident, i.e. that they hate us; they really, really hate us:

What a colossal waste of Jewish resources. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent monitoring and examining, exploring and investigating the extent of global anti-Semitism.

Reports are compiled, press conferences are held, and trends are carefully studied and assessed, all as part of a monumental effort to track the spread of that age-old virus known as Jew-hatred.

On the governmental level, the US State Department maintains an Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism, while Israel runs its own Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism.

Universities from Yale to Hebrew U have created centers to study the phenomenon, and then, of course, there is the alphabet-soup list of American Jewish groups, such as the ADL and AJC, all of whom make a fine living by sounding the alarm over anti-Jewish bigotry.

And yet, despite it all, confusion still reigns regarding the very nature of the beast. Who hates us so much? And why?

You'd think that after pouring so much time and money into the issue, we'd have a better grasp of the subject.

Now consider the following. The Anti-Defamation League, based in New York, which bills itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency," spent over $76 million in 2006.

That same year, the American Jewish Committee laid out more than $48 million, while the American Jewish Congress shelled out another $6 million.

All told, these three self-styled US Jewish defense agencies, which are devoted to combating anti-Semitic hatred, spent over $130 million in just one calendar year.

Now, according to the ADL's own figures, the total number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in the US that year was 1,554.

That comes out, on average, to a whopping $83,655 per incident that these organizations are costing the Jewish people.

Is that really justified?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of countering anti-Semitism and standing up to our foes. It is essential to educate the public, spotlight media bias and denounce those who hate us with all our might.

And yes, the three groups in question all do engage in a variety of activities beyond just combating anti-Semitism.

But at a time when budgets are tight and Jewish needs are growing at home and abroad, do we really need several overlapping Jewish organizations doing pretty much the same thing? Frankly, this is profligacy at its worst. And it comes with a hidden, yet painful, cost to the Jewish people and their future.

Indeed, just think about what all that money could achieve if it were put to better use, such as funding scholarships at Jewish day schools, subsidizing trips to Israel for Jewish youth or underwriting the costs of Jewish books.

If even half of the $130 million spent by these groups each year were to go towards strengthening Jewish education, it could have a far more profound impact on Jewish life than the issuance of additional reports on anti-Semitic outbreaks...

Another problem with this monitoring: when it reveals that instances of Judenhass are on the uptick, rarely if ever does it identify who’s behind the hatred. White power punks and teenage pranksters, sure. But more often, these acts are perpetrated by those who have a pathological hatred for the uppity dhimmi state which dared to set up shop in Dar al-Islam. For reasons of political correctness, though, that info is unlikely to be divulged.

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

Hamas, the Holocaust and HRCs: Even as the latest “hudna” with Hamas takes effect and Jews are encouraged to “dialogue” with jihadis, Caroline Glick poses a timely question: Why can’t Israelis see that the Palestinians harbour the same genocidal ambitions as the Nazis? From FrontPage Magazine:

The television camera lens moves with seeming effortlessness from the pictures of suffering and death at the Hebrew University to the carnival in Gaza City, where thousands take to the streets in celebration of the pictures from Jerusalem.

Gazing at the revelers on the screen, one strains one's eyes to find an expression of shame, guilt, or remorse on the faces in the crowd. One unconsciously prays to discern anything that would show that those in front of the camera are there by accident or because they were forced to be there. But no, the faces on the screen are uninhibited, joyful ones.
 
Far from being forced to participate in the festivities, each and every one of the people at the parade in Gaza makes a personal decision to leave his or her home and join the crowd in applauding the mass murder of Jews. They are there because they support the murders. They are there because such murders make them happy. These Gazans, and their counterparts at Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were not celebrating a military victory. There was no battle at the cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra International Student Center.

These Palestinians - men, women, teenagers, and small children - came together to celebrate another massacre in their genocidal campaign against the Jewish people. Yes, genocide. The Palestinians have reached a point in this war where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish. That is, the Palestinian goal today is genocide.

In a seminal article in Commentary magazine this past February on the recent rise of anti-Semitism, Hillel Halkin argued, counterintuitively, that the Holocaust is the main reason why it is so difficult for Jews today to accept the fact of anti-Semitism. In his words, "The Holocaust has made some Jews less, rather than more, able to see anti-Semitism around them. This is because if the Nazis demonized the Jew, they also demonized the anti-Semite." In short, if an anti-Semite is not a Nazi, then it is hard for Jews to perceive him as a threat. Just so.

Even as generations of Jews adopted "Never Again" as their rallying cry, the Holocaust made it difficult for us to notice when genocide is adopted as a policy against the Jewish people, without gas chambers present. The fact that the Palestinians currently lack the means used by the Germans to perpetrate their genocidal policy against the Jews blinds us from the fact that their desire to do so is the same as that of the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s…

Canada’s Jewstablishment can’t see past the Holocaust, either. That’s part of the reason why they continue to clutch the HRC security blankie that enables them to persecute incontinent Nazis and white power pishers; that’s why they see nothing wrong in hooking up with the likes of Mohamed Elmasry and Harpoon Siddiqui, gents who compose vile anti-Israel screeds and shill for the sharia agenda.

What will it take for these Linuses to get a clue, drop their blankie, and see that the next Holocaust, should it come, won’t involve Jews being stuffed into cattle cars and incinerated in ovens; it will arrive when some Islamic supremacist pushes a button and deploys one judiciously aimed nuke?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:33 | link | comments (1)

Disgusting trend: The last word is radical chic-anery--a t-shirt of Anne Frank wearing a terror shmatta.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:53 | link | comments

Two freedom fighters: Frederick Douglass and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

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

Revenge of the deciduous: If you want a good chuckle, read this hilarious review of M. Night Shyamalan's eco-horror flick, The Happening (though not if you plan to see the movie, since it contains spoilers galore).

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:42 | link | comments

R.I.P. Cyd Charisse: Hollywood's sexiest female dancer ever, and a woman who had one of the Silver Screen's all time best "before" names--Tula Ellice Finklea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:27 | link | comments (1)

 No strings: Dilbert doodler Scott Adams says that if Bambi is defeated come November, it will point to the existence of a conspiracy by unnamed but very powerful “puppet masters”:

There are few things I enjoy as much as a good conspiracy theory. The upcoming election in the United States will be fascinating because there is a high probability we will find out if there are any hidden puppet masters running the United States. That would happen if, for example, Obama is clearly ahead in the polls in November but somehow loses the election. I consider both of those outcomes likely.

Obama's tax plan involves taking money from the presumed puppet masters (rich people and corporations) and divvying it up among the people he hopes will vote for him (the masses). The only way that approach could fail with voters is if there really are puppet masters and they really are determining who gets to be president…

Actually, I agree with the conspiracy-addled Mr. Adams that there are “puppet masters”. This guy, for example.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:54 | link | comments

Today’s quotation: I dedicate the following piece of wisdom, penned by George Orwell not long after WW2, to that enthusiastic purveyor of opaque bureaucratese (I know, I know: an oxymoron), the lovely and talented Ms. Jennifer Lynch:

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:39 | link | comments

Bambi’s show of weakness: Rudy Giuliani—remember him?—isn’t too impressed by Bambi’s stance on “terrorism”; me neither. From KRLA:

John McCain’s presidential campaign is making former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani point man in attacking Barack Obama’s approach to combating terrorism.

Giuliani said Obama’s praise for a recent Supreme Court decision to grant terrorist detainees rights to habeas corpus hearings was “startling” in a conference call on behalf of the McCain campaign Wednesday morning.

It shows “more concerned about the rights of terrorists than the American people have to safety and security,” Giuliani said. Under the new decision, “It is fair to say that Osama Bin Laden [if caught and taken to Guantanamo Bay]…would be given new rights that no one else has been given before,” Giuliani said.

In addition to speaking to reporters on a conference call Giuliani appeared on MSNBC and CNN to blast Obama earlier that morning, indicating a substantial, renewed effort to boost McCain. “This is going to be a debate that is joined many times during this campaign because it’s an honest one,” Giuliani said. “Senator Obama has a defensive approach to terrorism.”

Giuliani’s remarks come in response to remarks Obama made in an interview with ABC news that were aired Monday evening. Obama said, “What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims."…

Riiiight! Because if only the Americans who, correct me if I’m wrong here, were on the receiving end of the 9/11 attacks, hadn’t sent the jihadis to Gitmo, U.S. “credibility” would be in much better shape.

Why do Lefties always think it’s always about me, me, me and never about the enemy—their die-hard enmity for America; their will to power?  

No need to answer. I know it’s because it gives folks like Bambi the illusion that they have things under control—or will have them under control once they figure out the precise combination of charm and self-abasement that’s likely to give their “popularity” a boost.

If Bambi is installed in the White House, I foresee at least four years of concerted “credibility”-building—a.k.a. full-blown masochistic dhimmitude—on display every day from the man at the top.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:29 | link | comments

Image is all: For the sake of "optics," Bambi Fauxbama has ordered that babushka'd Muslim chicks be banished.

Way to show your support for the the underdog, Bambi!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:33 | link | comments

Coren capers: If you have a spare hour—and even if you don’t—drop everything and watch Ezra Levant on last night’s Michael Coren Show (link via Shaidle).  It’s been posted in six segments on YouTube. In parts 3 and 6 you can see CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mohamed Elmasry’s notorious appearance on the show when he insisted that every Israel civilian aged 18 and up was an appropriate target for whacking (which rather makes him sound like the Islamist Tony Soprano). Amusingly—that is if, like me, you’re amused by how those caught in a blatant falsehood endeavour to cover their arses—the CIC website offers a different version of what transpired on that fateful show:

Following the controversial airing of the Michael Coren Show on October 19, 2004 Canadian news media launched a relentless and unfair attack against Canadian Islamic Congress president Dr. Mohamed Elmasry -- and some continue to do so.

 

Before, during, and after the above-mentioned show Dr. Elmasry reiterated his belief that killing civilians -- any civilians, for any cause -- is an immoral act of the worst kind.

 

Yet it was widely reported, for example, that "Mr. Elmasry said all Israelis over 18 were legitimate targets for suicide bombers."

 

THIS IS TOTALLY FALSE.