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

Song for All-Hallow's Eve: No, not "Witchcraft"--it's "That O-Bam' Magic"

That Obam’ magic has them in a spell

That Obam’ magic that we know so well.

Icy tingles up Chris Matthews' knees.

The same derangement of a brain disease.

That same old tingle captivates D. Frum.

His wife wants invites--gonna get them some.

And down and down they go, round and round they go, like it’s the Beatles in ’64.

They can’t help themselves, the pull is so strong.

And he’s such a handsome dude--how could they go wrong?

They hear his name and they’re all aflame.

Aflame with such a burning desire that only his win can put out the fire.

For he’s the leader they have waited for; The One that fate had him created for.

And every time they hear his voice, Bambi, down and down they go,

Round and round they go.

In a spell, a spell we know all too well, under that Obam’ magic called love.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:27 | link | comments

Caught on tape: The story so far: the L.A. Times has in its possession a video tape of Barack Obama attending—and speaking at—an event back in ’03 honouring his close pal, Arafatiste/anti-Zionist academic Rashid Khalidi. Word is that at this dinner a number of Palestinians got up and said some pretty hair-raising things about a certain entity they and the honouree all loathe, and that, not wanting to be the wallflower at the hate-orgy, Bambi got up and said a few choice things himself. Of course, we may never know what’s on the tape because, did I mention that the L.A. Times outright refuses to release it? Anyway, a FOX newshound managed to chase down Khalidi, who, for obvious reasons, was most reluctant to talk. Here’s the video clip of the encounter. And here’s part of the transcript:

GRIFF JENKINS, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Professor Khalidi? Hi, Griff Jenkins with FOX. Can I ask you a quick question?

(CROSSTALK)

JENKINS: Can you just tell me? What's your relationship with Senator Obama? Sir, you clarify it, sir? I apologize for interrupting but you have become the centerpiece of the election. Will you at least call for the "L.A. Times" to release the video? What was said? What was said at the speech?

RASHID KHALIDI, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: Go away. Get this guy out of here.

JENKINS: Will you talk to us?

KHALIDI: I will not.

JENKINS: Were you the spokesman for the PLO? Will you confirm that?

KHALIDI: Get these guys out.

JENKINS: You're at the center of the election, sir. Just some quick clarifications then we'll leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

JENKINS: OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HANNITY: That's Arafat's former spokesman a little quiet there. So why is it every time we find one of these associates of Barack Obama they run away and refuse to say anything? Why do they all seem to look so guilty?

But that's not the only tape we obtained today of Mr. Khalidi. Now take a look at this speech. He gave this speech in 1998 and he is discussing how American foreign policy gets corrupted by domestic politics but the example that he uses, that's what caught our attention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KHALIDI: The second thing to keep in mind about American foreign policy is that it is largely determined by domestic considerations almost all the time. There are many other things that go into it. But domestic considerations are always extremely important.

And these are often quite mundane, indeed these are sometimes appallingly crass interest. They are the kind of things that move domestic politics in Chicago — money, votes, corruption, bribery, influence peddling, back-door deals.

The kind of things that Cook County, the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, the politics on the local level work through and because of. The kind of you scratch my back and I scratch yours kind of (INAUDIBLE) type of dealing, which we — which we — when it's talked about in the Middle East it's considered revolting and degrading and third world corruption.

It's actually what oils American politics. If you don't know this you're not living in the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Now anybody know any politicians from Chicago? Now Khalidi makes it sound like corruption is just part of life in windy city politics.

Now, good thing Senator Obama doesn't know any one, let's see, like Tony Rezko? But that's not all. In just a few minutes, we're going to reveal some shocking and potentially explosive details about the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.

We have just confirmed — you see this book here — today and you won't believe what we're going to show you and who this book by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn was dedicated to. That's coming up.

But joining us first tonight with more on these stories is former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, columnist Ann Coulter.

You know here's a guy, the L.A. Times went — there is a tape that he is praising this man, former, you know, terrorist spokesman for Yasser Arafat. We know that he — you know, viewed the creation of Israel as a disaster.

ANN COULTER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST & AUTHOR: Right.

HANNITY: And anti-Semitic things were said at this event and Barack Obama praised Khalidi.

COULTER: Right.

HANNITY: So, but of course, nobody cares.

COULTER: Right, I mean, even what little they reported about the event, it is shocking that a presidential candidate of a major party would be there. You have Ayers and Dohrn again, of course. You have this Khalidi. You have Obama who's apparently constantly having dinner with the Khalidis.

HANNITY: They ear (sic) dinner frequently. They were frequent dinner companions….

I’m sure, though, that at none of those dinners did Khalidi ever express his oft-stated opinion about Israel being a racist, apartheid state. And even if he did, I’m sure it’ll have absolutely no bearing on Bambi's dealings with Israel once most American Jews have voted for him and he’s safely ensconced in the Oval Office.

Right?

Update: American Jews living in Israel support McCain over Obama 3-1, whereas Americans Jews living in America support Obama over McCain by the same margain.

What do Americans living in Israel know that Americans living at home don't?

Update: A rhyme for Rashid:

Bambi’s buddy, Professor Khalidi

Is what you could call very needi.

It can’t be denied

That he needs to deride

Jewish sov’reignty: oh, yes, indeedi!

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

Trick or treat: This adorable little moppet wants all you kafirs to shell out. Or get out. Or something.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:27 | link | comments

Abandoning ship in order to jump on the Bambi bandwagon: Irrepressible satirist iowahawk does a hilarious impersonation of another irrepressible satirist—the scion of the Conservative icon who founded the National Review:

As a Conservative I must say I like the cut of this fellow Obama’s jib

By T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Columnist, The National Topsider
Membership Chairman, The Newport Club

When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative journal National Topsider in 1948, he famously declared that "Now is the time for all good conservative helmsmen to hoist the mizzen, pour the cocktails, and steer this damned schooner hard starboard." In the 60 years since he first uttered it after one-too-many Cosmopolitans at one of Pamela Harriman's notorious foreign policy black tie balls, father's pithy bon mot has served as a rallying cry for conservatives from Greenwich to Chevy Chase. Today, I say it's time for we conservatives to once again grab the rigging and set sail with the flotilla of the true conservative in this race: Barack Obama.

Trust me, I haven't taken this tack lightly. No Van Voorhees has supported an avowed socialist since great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpapa Cragmont Van Voorhees lent Peter Minuet $24 and a sack of wampum to swing a subprime mortgage on Manhattan Island. Old dad himself often recounted how, as a lad, he would command the family chauffeur Carleton to drive the Duesenberg down to the Times Square Trans-Lux so he could hiss Roosevelt. But I've taken a good measure of this Obama fellow, and I must say I like the cut of the man's jib.

How can I say this, you ask? One look at this Obama chap is all the answer you need. Suave, tanned, unflappable, Harvard connections; it's obvious that here is a man to the conservative manor born. One imagines him at the helm of the Ship of State, basked in the sunlight diffusing through the seaspray over the bow, like some beautiful rugged Othello from a rapturous Ralph Lauren catalog, calmly issuing instructions to the deck crew in that magnificent mellifluous baritone of his. It's that easy-going, almost effortless grace that has all the A-list conservatives like David Frum and Kathleen Parker whispering Reaganesque in hushed tones. Even Peggy Noonan -- the Grand Dame of Gipperism -- has succumbed to Obama's undeniable conservative charms. Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final.  "Why Peggy, you old dowager," I quipped, "I believe you just had an orgasm."

Certainly, my endorsement has raised more than a few eyebrows around the National Topsider water cooler, particularly among the alumni of jejune cow colleges like Michigan or Dartmouth. They sometimes point to Mr. Obama's radical Rolodex and his hooey about "weath redistribution" and "dictatorship of the proletariat." But, as I patiently explain, this is precisely the point - it is hooey, over-the-top rhetorical flourishes obviously designed by Mr. Obama to win over benighted inner city hoi polloi (a feat, I might add, that even the Great Communicator himself was unable to accomplish). As for his so-called radical ties, who among us hasn't sent dinner party invitations to Gore Vidal and a leftwing terrorists or two to enliven the postprandial conversation? Leonard Bernstein loved hosting all manner of Weathermen and Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army celebrities at his Park Avenue pied a terre, but it didn't mean the Maestro wasn't in favor of low taxes. On the contrary; I know for a fact he itemized every cent of the catering bills for his famous terrorist cocktail parties.

Just so, I have every confidence that Obama's true conservative butterfly will emerge once in office,  coaxed from its Maoist cocoon by conservatives like myself and Frum and Parker and Noonan -- all of whom I am pleased to report are already under consideration for the Obama Administration State Dinner shortlist...

Tee hee. Iowahawk demonstrates once again that the liveliest prose around is to be found not in the dead tree media but in the blogosphere.

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

The 1948 equivalent of "OBAMA DEFEATS McCAIN": A gal can dream, can't she?

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

“Tolerance” and its opposite: The Wiesenthalers have been dying to build another of their edifices devoted to “tolerance”—this time in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they’ve run into a bit of a pickle. The site they were hoping to use has turned out to be the final resting place of some Muslims, and, well, the Arabs aren’t as keen as the tolerance machers about having a building on top of their bones. Here’s some background on the controversy, from a September ‘06 AP report:

The Museum of Tolerance started off with good intentions, over US$100 million in donations, an eye-catching design by architect Frank Gehry, a 2004 kickoff ceremony attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a great piece of Jerusalem real estate.

But underneath that real estate, it turned out, there were Muslim graves. As a result, instead of bringing this contentious city's warring tribes together, the museum has sparked a fight with political, religious and historical dimensions between Muslims and Jews _ and all this before it has even been built.

Months of arbitration have ended in deadlock, the site is enclosed in aluminum walls, and the dispute is now before Israel's Supreme Court. Even if the court gives the go-ahead, however, the Museum of Tolerance could well remain permanently tainted by allegations of intolerance.

The museum was conceived by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nonprofit Jewish human rights group based in Los Angeles. It was to promote coexistence in a city holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, and claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians as a capital.

The center's plan includes a conference center, a theater, and museums for adults and children with exhibits covering Jewish history and Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors.

The Jerusalem municipality gave the Wiesenthal Center a municipal parking lot in central Jerusalem on which to build the museum.

But in Jerusalem, a parking lot is rarely just a parking lot. Before it was turned into a four-story underground garage in the 1970s, the land had been a small part of a sprawling Muslim cemetery.

The cemetery fell out of use after the creation of Israel in 1948, but many of its graves are still visible, crumbling among trees in what has become the heart of the Jewish side of the city. Part of the cemetery is now known as Independence Park. Another part had been sold much earlier, in the 1930s, at the initiative of the top Muslim clergyman of Jerusalem, to become the renowned Palace Hotel.

The project's backers say they didn't know the lot contained graves when they got it, and cite the Palace Hotel precedent and a 1964 ruling by a top Muslim cleric permitting construction on the land. But this has not mollified critics, who charge that nothing justifies the desecration of graves.

When surveyors found human remains at the site early this year, two Israeli Arab groups got a court order freezing construction.

One of the groups fighting the museum is the Al-Aqsa Company, affiliated with Israel's Islamic Movement, a rising political force among the country's 1.2 million Arab citizens.

"Islamic law is very clear: You can't build on land that was once a cemetery," said Muhammad Suleiman, a lawyer for the group. The cleric who issued the 1964 ruling was corrupt, Suleiman charged, and the fact that Arabs were silent about the parking lot's presence for decades doesn't mean they should remain silent now.

The Wiesenthal Center's compromise proposal -- to move the graves, construct a memorial and fund the rehabilitation of the remaining gravestones nearby -- is not good enough, Suleiman said, insisting that the museum must be moved.

The Wiesenthal Center refuses, saying it has already spent millions. Rabbi Marvin Hier, who heads the center and conceived the museum idea, said the delays alone have cost more than US$1 million…

Here’s an update on the kerfuffle from Islam Online:

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court ruling allowing the construction of a Jewish museum over graves of some companions of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in Al-Quds is sparking a controversy.

"Israeli is declaring a global war on Muslims and Arabs," Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, told a press conference on Thursday, October 30.

"A general of the [prophet's] Companions is buried in this cemetery."

Sheikh Salah noted that thousands of other Muslims have been buried in the cemetery, putting the number at 70,000 thousands until 1948.

Israel's High Court on Wednesday, October 29, rejected an appeal by two Muslim groups to halt the building of a Jewish museum on the site of a Muslim cemetery in central Al-Quds.

The court argued that the cemetery has been in public use since the municipality authorities put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard in the 1960s.

It claimed that a proposal put forward by the museum planners to rebury the bones or cover the graves was "satisfactory" to resolve the issue.

The court said the construction of the museum, halted in 2006 after human remains were discovered during the digging, can resume immediately.

The Mufti of Al-Quds, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, said the verdict was a "grave decision which harms the Muslim holy sites."

He described the construction of the $250-million museum by a Los Angeles-based Jewish group as "act of aggression."…

Now, bearing in mind that Islam Online is a Wahhabi mouthpiece and fully onside with the eliminationist agenda, and bearing in mind, too, that Arabs have never exactly respected Jewish sites in Jerusalem (an understatement of immense magnitude) and that they’re apt to cry foul no matter what the Jews do there, one cannot help but think that perhaps Wiesenthal may have erred here. So it spent a bunch of money on plans—so what? Isn’t it sending entirely the wrong message—a message of intolerance—to persist in trying to build a shrine to “tolerance” on this site?

For that matter, do we really need another such shrine at all, since Jerusalem already has Yad Vashem, its world-renowned Holocaust memorial and since, clearly, “tolerance” is a fiction which actually has very little to do with Judenhass or with the reason why eliminationists persist in wanting to rid the world of Jews?

Just asking.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments

Life in “apartheid” Israel: This JPost report doesn’t really jibe with the upcoming conference’s whole “Zionism is racism” shtick:

The number of Arab-Israelis performing national service has quadrupled in the last two years and now exceeds a thousand, according to government statistics.

The figure had increased from 230 two years ago to 630 last year before already surpassing more than 1,000 volunteers for the 2008/2009 fiscal year. More than 80 percent of the Arab participants are women, officials said.

"The young Arabs - male and female - who have joined the national civic service in the last year or two have reached very high levels of satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment and a strong sense of helping their own community. And that has spread by word of mouth from one to another," said Dr. Reuven Gal, head of the Administration for Civilian National Service.

National service affords women the opportunity to "join open society" and connect with potential future jobs, Gal said. Arab men are much more interested in securing immediate full-time salaried positions, and thus furnished far fewer volunteers, he added.

But others attribute the increase in Arab participation to their desire to receive the financial and social benefits that civic service offers - equivalent to the benefits received by those who serve in the army. Volunteers living at home, as most Arab-Israelis do, earn roughly NIS 500 a month and are eligible for several thousand shekels in grants after completing one year of service.

"Arabs want to receive the same status as those who are released from the army... They receive all kinds of benefits [via national service]," said Sami Smooha, a University of Haifa sociology professor. "And also, they have the possibility - through this status - to connect to 'Israeliness' ... And that's also the reason that the [Arab] leadership is opposed."…

No kidding.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments

Not to be missed: FrontPage Magazine’s David Horowitz rips Chris Hitch a new one for his hysterical evisceration of Sarah Palin:

“This idiot woman, this blind, short-sighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community.” Is this a description of Rosie O’Donnell explaining that metals don’t melt and 9/11 was an inside job? A swipe at Green Party presidential aspirant Cynthia McKinney explaining how the Jews were responsible? A shot at Gloria Steinem for defending partial birth abortion under the delusion that a living child is actually a disposable “fetus”? No, this is a psychotic attack on Governor Sarah Palin by an Obama supporter. Palin’s sin? Her opposition to earmarks, in particular an earmark for olive fruit fly research. The same earmark recently provided my good friend Christopher Hitchens to express his contempt for Palin and justify his endorsement of her opponents.

While not as vitriolic as his attacks on Mother Teresa and Princess Di, Hitchens’ assault on Palin is characteristically extreme. In a display of liberal snobbery in Slate  – “Sarah Palin’s War On Science: The GOP Ticket’s Appalling Contempt For Knowledge And Learning” – Hitchens explains to readers the benefits of fruit fly research (as though anyone – even a small town bumpkin like Alaska’s governor – wouldn’t have learned about fruit flies in high school biology). Fruit fly research allows us to study the DNA of living organisms, “which makes it useful in studying disease.” This ranks Palin as a hypocrite in Hitchens' eyes since her “signature issue” is disability and special needs: “She might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina.”

Thanks for the tip Hitch.

But when Palin attacked the earmark, she wasn’t campaigning against fruit fly research. She was campaigning against earmarks – the $18-billion-a- year scam under which forces taxpayers to underwrite personal favors that congressmen perform for their “constituents,” like giant agribusiness corporations. Such earmarks are transparent bribes since they are bound to encourage constituents who receive them to fund congressional campaigns. The fruit fly earmark was the project of a California congressman named Mike Thompson; the service provided was to the California agribusiness community, which was looking for taxpayer help with a fruit fly problem that threatened their designs to turn olive trees into a profit. The earmark was not about autistic kids. It was about a corrupt patronage system used to benefit one congressman and the olive oil industry.

Of course, Hitchens is smart enough to smell the rat in his own argument. Without exactly explaining what the earmark was for, he writes: “The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent.” Christopher! This isn’t about DNA, and not all research is fungible. This is a welfare handout to giant corporations. Instead of going to funding sources where projects are peer-reviewed, they can appeal to one pliable congressman, likely to appreciate their ability to help his re-election.

In an earlier Slate column (“Vote for Obama”), Hitchens described McCain’s selection of Palin as “the most insulting thing a politician” could do and therefore, apparently, a cause to throw the Iraqis and his country under the bus. Of course, the author of the religion-bashing book, God Is Not Great, is not really enraged at Palin because of her concern about earmarks. His contempt is for the fact that she believes in a Deity, and a moral law higher than a California congressman. Even this contempt coming from Hitchens is puzzling, since the chief sin Hitchens ascribes to the religious in his polemical book is presuming to speak in the name of God. Since Palin readily concedes her inability to read the Creator’s mind, she should get a pass.

But she doesn’t.

Instead, Hitchens suggests that with Palin “the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister… She is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools….” Well, not exactly. As Hitchens himself explains, she has not advocated imposing Creationism on the schools. She merely wants to “smuggle” the doctrine through the door in “the innocent disguise of ‘teaching the argument.’” Oh. She wants students to be made aware of the discussion over evolution, whereas Hitchens wants the fact that some members of the scientific community believe in Intelligent Design to be suppressed –  and this in the name of “knowledge and learning”!

Hitchens is normally able to make the sharpest distinctions, but this ability is strikingly absent from these electoral ruminations. Perhaps his instincts have been blunted by the new company he is keeping among the bigoted hysterics of the political left, to whom distinctions appear as mere distractions from the righteous Path of Truth…

As one wag (okay, it was me) once opined re fanatical atheist Hitch (borrowing someone else’s quotation): There but for the grace of God, goes God.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:42 | link | comments

The need to believe: A friend e-mailed to tell me that when she read the words “mass manipulation” in the previous post, she immediately thought of Bambi. The same thought occurred to me as I was reading this line in Friedlander’s conclusion: “Hitler was surrounded by the hysterical adoration and blind faith of so many for so long…”

Blind faith; hysterical adoration: sounds a lot like the Bambi-soxers to me.

The other day on Ceeb radio, the talking head reading the news said Americans were “enchanted” with Bambi and I thought--exactly!  It’s like he’s cast a spell, bewitched them. With his voice, his promises, his presence—not unlike how Hitler bewitched the Germans. From Friedlander:

The major question that challenges all of us is not what personality traits allowed an “unknown corporal” of the Great War to become the all-powerful leader Adolf Hitler, but rather why tens of millions of Germans blindly followed him to the end, why many still believed in him at the end, and not a few, after the end.

Not that Bambi’s Hitler, of course.  But he does have that indefinable something, that “charisma,” that Hitler had, and at present Bambi’s “charisma” seems every bit as intoxicating to his followers (and as baffling to those immune to the swoon) as Hitler’s was to the Germans. Like Hitler, too, Bambi seems to satisfy from deep-seated need to believe in the redemptive power of one man, one leader. Friedlander again:

[We] are hard put to identify the importance of charisma in a modern society functioning along the rules of instrumental rationality and bureaucratic procedures. There remains one plausible interpretation: Modern society does remain open to—possibly in need of—the ongoing presence of religious or pseudoreligious incentives within a system otherwise dominated by thoroughly different dynamics.

Or, in the words of that oft-repeated quote by G.K Chesterton, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."

Update: Melanie Phillips on the politics of mass hysteria.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments

Why it can’t happen here: Well, I finally finished Saul Friedlander’s Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination—by no means a quick read or an easy read (far from it, in fact, given the grim contents), but for those who want to gain a clearer understanding of the whos, hows and whys of the Holocaust, might I say, an essential read.

These lines from the final chapter are particularly pertinent for Canadians, as they explain the two primary factors that facilitated the Holocaust:

Propaganda and all the trappings of mass manipulation were an essential part of the emotional-psychological mobilization that took hold of the German population. However, without Hitler’s uncanny ability to grasp and magnify the basic urges of such a mass craving for order, authority, greatness, and salvation, the techniques of propaganda alone would not have sufficed. In that sense National Socialism could not have arisen and taken hold without Adolf Hitler on the one hand, and without the German response to Hitler on the other.

So the idea that “hate speech” gave rise to the Holocaust and that, left unchecked, Nazi "hate speech" could cause the same thing could happen here in Canada (the rationale behind playing “gotcha” with basement Nazis wearing their gotchies, and for depriving all Canadians of their right to free speech) is nothing more than a bunch of ahistoric hogwash. I wonder, though—how much if any of that crucial point will get out during this year’s Holocaust Education Week, which begins on Monday?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:35 | link | comments

Doctor in the house: Ezra Levant has a post about Dr. Zijad Delic, national executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress (he’s #2 to Elmo’s #1). Delic will be speaking to whoever cares to listen at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Ottawa. As Ezra comments

That's right: the Jew-hating, terrorist-condoning Canadian Islamic Congress will be lecturing Canadian diplomats and bureaucrats, on government property and the taxpayers' dime.

And we voted for the Conservatives because….could someone please remind me because when I read stuff like this the reason plum escapes me.

No word yet on the subject of the “lecture,” but the event is being held in conjunction with Islamic History Month, so it’s bound to offer some of the CIC’s all-too-imitable insights into the historical record. For those unable to attend, here’s a taste of another Delic “talk”—one near and dear to the hearts of Ezra and other free speeches, as well as anti-blasphemy types like Delic and his boss (my bolds):

The fact is that a discussion of free speech cannot be divorced from a discussion of who in our society has the power to express themselves and through which medium. The limitless free speech model -- which posits that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech -- does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate that: Maclean's still refuses to publish a response to just one of more than 20 articles that even the Ontario Human Rights Commission recently condemned as contributing to Islamophobia. And that is why free speech is not limitless in our democracy.

See what I mean about the CIC’s insights being all too imitable? Why, they’re being imitated at this very moment by the CJC, the BB, and the Wiesenthalers. Too bad that Delic’s claim that we have “limitless” speech is a crock; our speech is limited to the variety that isn’t criminal or tortious. But you can see where Zijad is coming from (i.e. from an Islamic understanding of “freedom” and what “works”).

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

Tie me Internet down, sport: Australia is about to join China as the second nation that has resolved to censor Internet access.

Um, shouldn't that be a clue to the Aussies that it's a hell of a crappy idea?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:32 | link | comments

Plain speaking in the Globe and Mail: "Jihadist found guilty of terrorist crimes." How refreshing--a headline that neither minces words nor beats around the bush.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:24 | link | comments

Razor sharp: A letter-writer in today’s National Post scales the seemingly insurmountable pile of troofer “proof” for a seemingly overwhelmed J. Kay (my bolds):

Re: Humbled By The Truthers, Jonathan Kay, Oct. 28; The Week In Letters, Paul Russell, Oct. 27.

I prefer to think that Jonathan Kay is too sensible to fret over losing his "intellectual self-esteem amidst the Truther onslaught" and that his passion for journalistic objectivity has, in this instance, gotten the better of him. Just as Paul Russell is impressed by their "rational and well-constructed" notes, Mr. Kay is inexplicably wowed by the skeptics' mastery of the "minutiae of 9/11-ology." Why is he concerned about an "informative imbalance" when that only indicates that he has a life and Truthers don't?

It's no secret, no conspiracy: Most people go to work for their families; the unbalanced spend their time positing alternative 9/11/UFO scenarios.

Mr. Russell frowns that it is "derisive" to label the conspiracists as "nutbars." Mr. Kay repents his "blithe dismissal" of them by his earlier use of the term. Why the gushing politeness?

Instead of his acquiescent silence during his aunt's dinner party, when a cousin said, "I don't buy the official [9/11] story," Mr. Kay should have replied: "Do you really ascribe to the belief that democratically elected American officials were part of a sinister cabal, capable of machinating the murder of thousands of fellow citizens in the furtherance of some murky, right-wing plot? If you do, then you need professional help."

Gary McGregor, Ladner, B. C.

You nailed it, Gary—you and Friar Occam.

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

And then my head exploded: The CJC hails its “Jews mentoring Somalis” initiative (so not my bolds):

Canada's largest Somali and Jewish community organizations chose a local high school with one of the city's largest Somali student populations as the setting for a 'groundbreaking' announcement this week.

The Jewish-Somali Project, a joint partnership between the Canadian Somali Congress (CSC), the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto (UJA), the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Canadian International Peace Project, will pair established Jewish professionals with young Somali university students to provide mentoring.

"Many Canadians might be surprised the Muslim and Jewish communities are coming together for this project, because often when we talk about the issues, sadly it becomes political, which only leads to strife," Bernie Farber, CEO of the CJC, said at the launch at Kipling Collegiate on Tuesday. "But today, with the Canadian Somali Congress and the Canadian Jewish Congress, the stress is on the 'Canadian' part of our names... Together, we are trying to forge a path and make a statement we haven't been able to make before. This is more than just a dialogue."

"This project is a microcosm of Canadian values. It's very Canadian, very appropriate and very urgent," added Howard English, VP Corporate Communications for UJA.

As a relatively new immigrant community, Canadian Somalis, like Jewish Canadians in years past, have been undergoing a number of growing pains as they adjust to life in Canada, said Mark Persaud, president of CIPP. "Being poor, black and Muslim only adds to those challenges," he said, noting the necessity of developing a cadre of Canadian Somali professionals to aid in the integration process.

To address the issue, the CSC invited other Canadian communities to assist Canadian Somalis in their efforts to successfully integrate into Canadian society, and the Jewish community responded to that call, Persaud said.

"Canadian multicultural policies and practices have traditionally focused on individual communities being accepted and respected in Canada.

The Jewish-Somali Project presents a paradigm shift in our approach to multiculturalism wherein two very different and diverse groups are working together to assist in building stronger communities," he said of the project, which will start in Toronto, then branch out nationally, to Ottawa first, then Edmonton, then beyond. It's a project all sponsoring organizations hope will be held up as an ideal.

"We hope this type of mutual understanding is adopted in abundance by other communities. This project is an example of what is possible in a country like Canada," said CSC's Digal Hiao.

"Today, we bring together the Muslim and Jewish communities in the Canadian context. We're not here as Muslims, we're not here as Jews. We're here as Canadians, and that's incredibly important," added James Morton, governor of the CIPP.

May I just say that several of my least favourite jargon-y phrases are embedded in the above, including “paradigm shift and “in the Canadian context.” Now that that’s out of the way, I might note that, in this world of competing universalisms—the sharia one and the man-made one—there’s no such thing as a “Canadian context”. To those who truly believe—and I’m not certain how devout the Somalis in question are, or where they stand on the issue of the Zionist entity (you might want to ask them, Bernie)—a kafir is a kafir and a dhimmi is a dhimmi whether you mentor them or not. So go ahead and mentor away, Jews and other useful idiots. It ain’t going to erase all those problematic passages in the Koran (apes and pigs, etc.); all the Hadiths (the one about the Gharkad tree--a personal fave); all the intrinsic supremacism of Islamic jurisprudence. As long as it helps you sleep better at night--dreaming sweet dreams of multiculturalism and bridge-building and mentorship and, down the road, maybe even marching arm-in-arm to Queen's Park to get the province to pay for your schools--well, I guess it's worth it, eh?

Update: Please do read Kathy Shaidle on the subject. The money sentence:

Another pathetic waste of time, as Jews once again hope against hope that by embracing their sworn enemies, they won't get killed this time around.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments

He slices, he dices, he even juliennes: Mark Steyn watched the O-tel infomercial so I didn’t have to. Thanks, Mark. I owe you:

For what it's worth, I don't think the night worked for him. The last time anyone did this — Ross Perot — it was so weird a world unto itself (strange-looking guy with pie charts) that, beached between Cybill and Murphy Brown (or whatever it was back then), it had a kind of integrity and distinctiveness. This time round, The O Show followed by the Phillies followed by Jon Stewart cumulatively undermined the candidate.

For a start, the show itself was slick only in a drearily generic way. The waving wheat and music made it seem like a standard campaign commercial, only longer — "It's Morning, Noon And Night In America," which is a big enough problem thanks to the media's Obama cultists without the candidate himself piling on. As for the King Barack Meets [Insert Name Of Downtrodden Subject Here] stuff, aside from the fact that I don't recognize the hellhole this country apparently is, there's something faintly ridiculous in doing it in the middle of the Phillies winning the World Series. Maybe on Super Bowl Sunday, instead of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunctioning, Obama could come out and interview people about how our entire rotten society is malfunctioning. And then The Daily Show kibbitzing stepped all over the infomercial even more.

This is an amazing race. The incumbent president has approval ratings somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the ebola virus. The economy is supposedly on the brink of global Armageddon. McCain has only $80 million to spend, while Obama's burning through $600 mil as fast as he can, and he doesn't really need to spend a dime given the wall-to-wall media adoration. And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced that his leg tingle has metastasized leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on "I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy."

And yet an old cranky broke loser is within two or three points of the King of the World. Strange.

Let me guess, it went something like this: blather, blather, blather, “let’s all come together.” Blather, blather, blather, “a brand new day for America.” Blather, blather, blather, “hope ‘n’ change ‘n’ peace ‘n’ love ‘n’ ain’t I adorable?”

Am I close?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

Durban II—the long and the short of it: Apparently unwilling to tackle the Matterhorn of troofer “proof,” the National Post’s Jonathan Kay has a go at decoding another pile of nonsense—the Durban II “Programme of Action”:

...The five-part "Draft Outcome Document" contains 88 pages and 646 provisions. Most of it consists of boilerplate repetition of the same small handful of themes (encapsulated well in this UN Watch report): (1) Racism is everywhere, (2) The fault for this lies with the West, because of its "genocidal" legacy of slavery and colonization, (3) "Islamophobia" and discrimination against "people of African descent" are especially prevalent and pernicious, and (4) Israel is a blight upon nations (Paragraphs 114-117 of Section 1, for instance, are dedicated exclusively to bashing the Jewish state. No other country comes in for singling out in the whole document). In many cases, whole paragraphs are repeated several times over (such as a lengthy Jimmy Carteresque screed about Israel promoting "a new kind of apartheid").

Yet buried amidst all this are some weird, and sometimes welcome, non sequiturs.

One section singles out Europe's Roma population as being especially vulnerable (true). In other parts, anti-Semitism and "Christianophobia" (a word I've never heard before) are described as serious problems. "Tribal" violence is deplored -- an implied (and deserved) knock on Africa of the type that this sort of tier-mondiste UN body typically stays far away from. There is full-throated advocacy for the rights of women and children -- despite the obvious clash with traditional Muslim social practices.

And then there's Paragraph 109 of Section 1, which calls for nations to address the memory of the "trans Saharan slave trade and the slave trade in the Indian Ocean" -- a clear reference to the Arab and Muslim contribution to the slave trade, which is usually taboo at this sort of anti-Western confab.

Even more shocking (given the number of radical Muslim states that had a hand in this document) was Paragraph 292, which "Affirms that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice and recalls again that the Holocaust must never be forgotten."

Amen to that. Didn't think I'd find it here, though.

On my pet subject, freedom of speech, the document is a contradictory mess. Section 1, Para. 30 warns us, Canadian Islamic Congress-style, that Islamophobia "takes cover behind the freedom of expression" -- but then, 11 paragraphs later, the document laments, Ezra Levant-style, that the "fight against racial and religious hatred" is "being used as a pretext legitimising impermissible limitations to freedom of expression."

And then, later on, this somewhat confusing -- but not altogether censorious -- take on the subject: "285.Stresses that, as human rights are universal, interdependent, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing, the coexistence of rights does not only imply that a particular right should be seen in a restrictive manner because of the existence of another right; 286.Stresses that the right to freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, as it ensures individual self-fulfillment and a pluralistic, tolerant society with access to multitudes of ideas and philosophies."

Sadly, that is not the document's final say on the subject. Section 5, Para. 100 "Urges States to take serious steps to address the contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in this context to take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols." (In other words, no pix of Mohammed.)

And then, in Sec. 5, Para 142, comes this especially creepy one-world-government "universal" approach to censorship: "National laws alone cannot deal with the rising tide of defamation and hatred against Muslims, especially if such trends are spreading to the grass root communities. A framework is needed to analyze national laws and understand their provisions. This could then be compiled in a single 'universal document' as guidelines for legislation – aimed at countering 'defamation of religions.'"

At other points, the text is weirdly esoteric. Paragraph 276 of Section 1, for instance, invites "the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, in connection with the 2010 Football World Cup tournament to be held in South Africa, to introduce a visible theme on non-racism in football." And then there's Sec. 1, para. 227, which is almost enough to make a reader laugh outright. It warns "that a failure of the Durban review process would, above all, pave the way for intensification of worrying racist and xenophobic trends."…

I could have saved Jonathan the trouble and boiled down the entire “programme” into two succinct statements. Statement #1: Israel has got to go. Statement #2: The world must kowtow to the universal faith of Islam—now!

There, now, that wasn’t so hard.

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

How I spent my $150 million: Bambi will shortly blitz/hijack three out of four American networks with a last minute half hour pitch.

Money talks, and the Bambino has scads of it, unlike poor, old (and I mean that literally) John McCain.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:33 | link | comments

120: The number of children--children!--on Iran's death row.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:28 | link | comments

Enough, already: The Ceeb still wants us all to feel really awful about the travails of Maher Arar and his wife, even though they’re now swimming in moolah courtesy Canada’s guilt-ridden taxpayers:

"I lost trust in humanity, I lost trust in the system and I lost trust in myself," says Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher Arar and author of a new book called Hope and Despair, about her struggle to free her husband from a Syrian jail.

In an exclusive interview with CBC's The Current and The National, Mazigh said she wished she could better understand what her husband went through.

"I feel the ghost of that [episode] along our lives at home, and how do I react to this? Sometimes I try to ignore it. Sometimes I'm so mad, I just want to, you know, that I can't wait ... [to] put it behind me," she says speaking from Ottawa where she lives with her husband and two children.

Mazigh's book documents her ordeal after her husband was arrested and how she campaigned to clear his name.

Mazigh worked tirelessly to free her husband from a Syrian prison, where he was held on suspicion of terrorist activity and tortured.

She became the face and voice of a campaign that attracted international attention. Her efforts led to Arar being released and ultimately vindicated.

Though her fight was very public, privately she struggled to balance her commitments as a mother with the task of fighting for her husband.

Arar emerged from the saga a changed man. And Mazigh's ordeal left profound marks on her, too…

Surely $10 million is enough to restore one's faith in the system and help heal the pair’s wounds.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:25 | link | comments

"I love arachanids": That's a line from Discovery Canada's delightful theme song--a tribute to our awesome planet. Boom dee ya da, indeed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:55 | link | comments

"If I had a million dollars..." : I'd buy lots of cocaine, get caught red-handed (white nosed?) and get off without having to face any jail time or a criminal record.

It sure pays to be a buck nekkid lady.

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

Bambi’s signature “duality”: This is Bambi’s John Hancock:

A graphologist on the JWR site claims, among other things, 

The particular graphics in his signature hint at symbolism both religious and tribal, assuming the role of a coat of arms. The signature is well balanced looking as if it could have begun on the right or left side. This facility one has if you are raised writing Arabic — moving right to left, and English — moving left to right. A duality is carefully crafted in the upright line of the O: it forms a Christian cross, it is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet the Alif, which is representative of the Islamic prophet Allah and hints at the Crescent, the symbol of Islam.

Interesting. Kind of nutty (isn't Mo the Islamic prophet?), but interesting all the same.

Update: Amir Taheri analyzes Bambi's and the Bambi mishpacha's names:  

Note that Obama wouldn't be the first politician with Muslim roots to lead a major non-Muslim country. Carlos Menem, a Muslim of Syrian descent, served as Argentina's  president from 1989 to 1999. But he dropped his Arab-Islamic first name and adopted his baptismal Christian name before entering politics.

Obama, by contrast, has retained his Arabic-Islamic names. (Barack means "blessed" and Hussein means "beautiful.") His family name is Swahili, an East African lingua franca based on Arabic. Arab commentators note that his siblings also all have Arabic Muslim names. His sister is called Oumah, Arabic for "the community of the faithful. His older daughter, Malia, bears the name of a daughter of the Caliph Othman, who commissioned the compilation of the first edition of the Koran. That Obama's stepfather was also a Muslim (from Indonesia) strengthens the empathy that many Arabs feel for him.

His sister's name is "Oumah"? Hilarious!

Update: Oumah, meet Uma (a Sanskrit name).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

Yoga fatwa:  No more "Downward Dog" for you, spandexed kafir!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:18 | link | comments

“The annihilation of the Jews in Palestine is the most splendid blessing for Palestine”: No, that’s not the slogan of the Duban II conference on "racism" (although it might as well be). They’re the words of a very holy personage--a righteous terror--from Gazastan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:10 | link | comments

Whassup with the holy terror?: Out of concern for President Ahmadinejad’s precarious, er, “health,” I perused some Iranian sites, searching for clues.

Hmmm. Looks like there’s nothing in the Tehran Times. Nothing, either, in Fars News. And, go figure, IRNA is keeping mum, too.

Three strikes, he’s out?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments

Coming today: A judge will announce the verdict in the Khawaja terrorism case. Stay tuned.

Update: Guilty!

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

Doe a dear: Liberal Canadians are dying to swoon for their very own Bambi, and Trudeau spawn Justin, who was just elected to his first stint in Parliament, suits them fine. According to a new poll, the untried, untested and undeniably vacuous M.P. (as one wag--okay, it was me--opined "he has his mother's looks and his mother's brains") is topping the list of Liberal leadership candidates: in its own distinctly northern way, an idea as gaga as handing the reigns of a superpower to an untried, untested and undeniably vacuous first-term senator.

There is one area in which Justin resembles Bambi, though--in the looks department. See for yourself. Here's Justin. And here's Bambi.

Dead ringers, no?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:23 | link | comments (3)

Head shot: Ron Rosenbaum, a writer I admire and whose books I have read, claims that Barack Obama has—wait for it—“a yiddische kop”. (For those unfamiliar with tribal lingo, that means he “thinks like a Jew”):

Excuse me for caring about what might seem a parochial issue, but you don’t have to be Jewish to believe that the survival of the most democratic state in the Middle East is important. And as editor of an anthology about anti-semitism Those Who Forget the Past:The Question of Anti-semitism (Random House, 2004), I feel some responsibility to address the question, since a number of my co-religionists have raised it. (I don’t believe in God, I’m an Isaac Bashevis Singer Jew–I believe against God) but I just love the Jewish people He’s constantly abandoning, and the beautiful culture they’ve created, and I think the people of Israel are in danger of suffering a second Holocaust, because soon those who believe they don’t have a right to exist will have the means to put them out of existence).

I wonder how many anti-semites claiming only to be “anti-zionists, will join the racists commenters claiming they’re bilious hostiity has nothing to do with skin color?

Anyway I came across what I think is the best answer to the question about Obama and the Jews in this essay by Rep. Howard Berman the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee in The Jeruselem (sic) Post.

I especially like the throwaway line about tough Chicago Jews knowing Obama. And I’ve always thought he had what my grandmother called a yiddische kopf (translation: savvy, nobody’s fool) to accompany what I earlier identified as the characteristic, most persuasive thing about him, his self-possession, the ability to think for himself regardless of who’s around him.

I wonder how many anti-semites claiming only to be “anti-zionist”, will join the racists commenters claiming they’re bilious hostiity has nothing to do with skin color?

I left the following comment on Ron’s site (by mistake I called him Roger, thinking of Roger L. Simon, another pajamas express writer, one who, thankfully, hasn't swooned):

The guy who, for twenty years, sat in a pew listening to the wild and occasionally antisemitic rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright has “a yiddische kop”? The guy who likes to hang out with the likes of rabid anti-Zionist/Arafatiste Rashid Khalidi has “a yiddische kop”?

Oh, Roger. I fear you have succumbed to the swoon, and, like many in that condition, you have substituted wishful thinking for rational thought. I hope I won’t be considered “racist” if I venture that you and all the other Jewish swooners concerned about Israel’s future are in for a mighty rude awakening.

Update: This Jew for McCain.

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

Troofer triumphant: Jonathan Kay’s concession that he feels daunted by the mountain of data assembled by those who believe someone other than al Qaeda (the Jews, the CIA, the Mossad, the FBI, the Trilateral Commission, Dick Cheney, the Jews, etc.) is behind 9/11 has prompted this “skeptic” to come out and have a good crow:

As Jonathan Kay notes, 9/11 skeptics have done their homework and what they read in the "official explanation for the 9/11 attacks" is what makes them skeptical. It's good to hear that Mr. Kay will be reading the 9/11 Commission Report, but it is obvious that he starts with a preconception when he calls the Popular Mechanics magazine report "authoritative" without having read it.

This is a good time to remember Mahatma Gandhi's words: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." With 39% of Canadians skeptical about the official version of 9/11, a win (full disclosure) for skeptics is on the horizon.

T. Trei, Toronto.

It is also a good time to remember the words of the Czarist police who confabulated the “troofer” tract of its day, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “The Jooos did it!” And let’s not forget the words of Mahatma Gandhi who, during the early going of what would become the Holocaust (a catastrophe inspired in no small measure by that troofer tract), urged the Jews to lie down and die, since “pacifism” is always better than combat.

Bearing that in mind, I think we can safely discount the “sceptics” (“true believers,” more like), no matter how much “proof” they manage to amass.

And anyway, I know for a fact that the imam with the ugly forehead icky planned the whole thing on a grassy knoll.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:04 | link | comments (1)

Talking to terrorists: Leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan have decided that things aren’t working out so well and that it’s time to “talk to the Taliban.” And you know what that means—you can shortly expect to hear calls for us to realize that our efforts to defeat the extremists will “Dolittle,” and it's time for us to talk to them, too:

If we could talk to the Taliban,

Just imagine it,

Chatting with jihadis in Pashto.

Imagine intellectual wrangles,

Discussing all the angles.

Who knows just how far it all could go?

 

If we could talk to the Taliban,

Sit and chew the fat,

Find a way to put ‘em off their game.

They could read stuff from the Koran,

You know it won’t be borin’.

In essence, isn’t everyone the same?

 

We could converse with clerics who despise us,

And they would curse our presence in their land.

If they should ask, “Do you like the caliphate?”

Say for the helluvit, “It’s grand!”

 

If we could talk to the Taliban,

Open up that door,

Think of all the thing we could discuss.

If we could talk to the Taliban,

Flock to the Taliban,

Jaw and squeak and squawk to the Taliban,

No way they’d flock and squawk and talk to us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:45 | link | comments (1)

The stealth jihad: Frank J. Gaffney explains yet again why we must remain on guard against the encroachments of sharia financing (and sharia in general). From FrontPage Magazine:

News item:  On Sunday, Arab News reported, “The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis, Robert M. Kimmitt, US deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a press conference held at the US Embassy here yesterday.”  The newspaper went on to note that “[Kimmitt] said that experts in the US Treasury Department are currently learning the important features of Islamic banking.”

As it happens, for the better part of a year, we at the Center for Security Policy have spent a fair amount of time trying to teach U.S. Treasury Department and other government “experts” about what is euphemistically called “Islamic banking,” but better known as Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF).  In meetings with Secretary Kimmitt and other top Treasury officials, my colleagues and I have presented them with all they really need to know about the “important features” of this growth industry.

Specifically, we shared with them a detailed legal memorandum written by one of our experts – David Yerushalmi, an attorney specializing in securities law who is deeply knowledgeable about the comprehensive theo-political-legal code that authoritative Islam calls Shariah.  Mr. Yerushalmi’s memo makes a compelling case that there is both civil liability and criminal exposure associated with SCF.

This is so because, at its core, Shariah is sedition: It explicitly espouses the violent overthrow of all secular governments and constitutions – including those of the United States – in favor of a global Islamic theocracy. The Yerushalmi memo makes clear that Shariah advisors – who play a central role in this industry as it falls to them to determine whether transactions are Shariah-compliant or not – and/or the companies that employ them appear to be involved in one or more of the following: racketeering, anti-trust violations, consumer and securities fraud or material support for terror...

No, no, no, sharia is love and peace and hearts and flowers and widows and orphans and raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and…Okay, let’s get real: there's no such thing as a "little bit" of sharia. When it comes to God's flawless law, it's pretty much an all or nothing deal. So as soon as we allow in a "little bit" of sharia--financial, family, ritual, what have you--you can be sure that, eventually, all the little bits are going to recombine into the totality (totalitarianism) that is the indivisible, unchanging whole. At that stage our own law (man-made, democratic, subject to change) will be vanquished, and become a relic of the past.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments (2)

And again: Ezra Levant has been SLAPPed with another lawsuit. This time he’s being sued by a legal eagle who works both sides of the street, offering his expertise to the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Jewish Congress.

What a guy!

Ezra claims to be as keyed up as ever, but I detect a sense of weariness in his latest post, if not at being the target of all these nuisance suits, then at having to put out his cap yet again and ask for help to defray the cost of defending them.

I left him the following mordant message:

You know what your trouble is, Ezra? You’re not a Somali. If you were a Somali, the CJC would treat you very well,  and might even be trying to “mentor” you.

Jews “mentoring” Somalis: this really is a multiculti Trudeaupia.

Update: Since the CJC and the CIC seem to be so sympatico these days, and since Canada's foremost Jewish advocacy group now feels the need to advocate on behalf of Somalis, I have a modest proposal. Why not merge the two groups into a new entity--the Canadian Jewish-Islamic Congress? Of course, given his supremacist proclivities, Elmo could insist that the "Islamic" come first, but given their proclivities, the Jews in question should have no problem with that.

Update: Welcome to the (crazy, mixed-up) World According to Farber (dar-al-Bernie)--a world in which Ezra is the enemy, but Somalis are our friends.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:39 | link | comments (7)

Coming soon to a multiplex near you: The "Redistributor". He robs from the rich and redistributes the wealth to the poor. It's Robbin' Obama--and he doesn't even wear tights.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:06 | link | comments

A video you'll probably never see: Bambi attending a 2003 Israel-bash (in the Durban sense of the phrase) in the company of "glancing aquaintances" Rashid Khalidi, that noted Arafatiste, and the radically chic Ayers-Dorns.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:58 | link | comments

Why wait till election night?: Let's imagine Bambi West Winging it in throught the corridors of the White House right now.

On second thought, let's not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:07 | link | comments

Jews flambé?:  Belgian broadcaster pulls Hitler-themed food show episode. It would have entailed the preparation of the Fuhrer's favourite dish.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:52 | link | comments

Lynching Palin: Some Halloween jesters have strung up an effigy of Sarah Palin.

One can do that, of course, to a white chick from Alaska and be thought "clever" and "edgy". The same would definitely not apply, though, were one to fasten a noose around the neck of a Bambi effigy.

Double effigy standards, I guess.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:36 | link | comments (1)

“Unity, duty, destiny”: That’s the motto of a group of Bionicles,  an ever-expanding army of spiny, spiky LEGO characters that my son has been obsessed with for several years: The army has “conquered” my rec room and is now threatening to take the upper floors. The slogan popped into my head when I read this Beeb report about how Bambi is calling for “unity” (in the wrong hands, a pretty terrying concept).

Hey, maybe he could “borrow” the slogan for his next campaign (like he “borrowed” “Yes, we can” from Sammy Davis Jr. and/or Bob the Builder for this one).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

Hamas calling the shots (it thinks): Hamas is against Israelis going to the polls just now (because it “means the peace process has failed”) but is calling for a swift election in the West Bank.

Who died and made Hamas king?

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

Abu Dhabi do: A story about some big concert in the emirate attended by Jeremy Irons. No biggie, really; I just wanted an excuse to say "Abu Dhabi do."

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

Guess Who?: Drudge has dredged up a tape of Bambi in 2001 telling a Chicago radio host how he longs to see a “redistribution of wealth”. Whereupon the host did not—but probably should have—played this old Guess Who number. (Is it just me, or does the 70s Burton Cummings kind of look like Ugly Betty sans the bangs, braces and specs?)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments

Coming soon?: A “landslide” for Bambi? Yikes. This is the only “Landslide” I care to contemplate on this chilly morn.

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

Mixed messages: This New York Times piece provides a lot more info about the hairy terror’s supposed “illness”. It seems, despite our fondest hopes for change, Ahmadinejad is not yet swimming with Big Pussy and the fishes. However, it does sound like he may be on the outs with the real powers in the land, and may never return. Could it be that the "illness" is the mullahs' way of trying to head off an impending attack by the Zionists? Guess we'll just have to stay tuned for further developements.

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

Winning hearts and minds in Hamastan: Globe and Mail stringer Carolynne Wheeler (Malarkey MacKinnon’s missus) reports from a “refugee camp” in Gaza (begging the question: how can you be a "refugee" in a land your own people control?), where one young Gazan is doing his darndest to influence the outcome of the American election:

NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — For every point that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama gains ahead of the Nov. 4 election, a young student in a sparsely furnished room an ocean away is taking enormous satisfaction.

For months, Ibrahim Abu Jayyab has been working through the night, telephoning American voters at random to plead in broken English that they support his favourite candidate.

Never mind that most of the people Mr. Abu Jayyab calls don't even know where the Gaza Strip is, much less understand why this man with heavily accented English crackling down the phone line should care about the U.S. presidential race.

"Obama is the best candidate. He has leadership qualities, he is charismatic. Once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world," Mr. Abu Jayyab says, his eyes heavy after another late night, already back at the computer that is his pride and joy in a life otherwise dominated by poverty. On screen is an enormous photo of Mr. Obama in a classic pose - which has, perhaps, inspired Mr. Abu Jayyab's recurring dreams, of Mr. Obama putting a hand on his shoulder and promising peace.

A media student at Gaza's al-Aqsa University, Mr. Abu Jayyab, 23, has chafed at the strict religious rule enforced since the Islamist Hamas organization took control 17 months ago. A heavy economic embargo, imposed by the international community after Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, has collapsed Gaza's economy and squelched any hope of finding a decent job after graduation.

Like most in Gaza and across the Arab world, the young man blames U.S. President George W. Bush for the mess, in part for his unwavering support of Israel. So when a young, black American senator emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primaries, he found himself hoping for change, even here in the never-changing Middle East.

Mr. Abu Jayyab, who speaks little English and at first left only practised messages on telephone answering machines, has since enlisted the help of 15 friends to use computer VOIP programs, including iCall, to randomly call U.S. telephone numbers. They frequently meet in a nearby Internet café, where they work in fear that Hamas forces or even more radical groups will burst in.

Of the dozens of calls they'll make each night between midnight and 4 a.m. - early evening in most of the United States - Mr. Abu Jayyab and his friends say they may only speak to one out of every 10 households. They've encountered answering machines, small children, and often people impatient with their Arabic-accented English.

But they press on, encouraged by small victories from people who promise to consider the request. Last week, they intensified their campaign, selecting area codes to target the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. "We think if Barack Obama wins, maybe he will make a difference here for the better," said Omar Tawil, 25, a friend and computer science student who set up the computer programs necessary for their nightly mission.

It's possible that their efforts - entirely volunteer and completely unsanctioned by the Obama campaign - may do as much harm as good. Mr. Obama's campaign team has publicly distanced itself from these campaign calls, after rival John McCain's charges that Hamas supports Mr. Obama.

And in neighbouring Israel, where the Democratic Party has had a difficult time selling a man named Barack Hussein Obama, the chairman of their Israel for Obama campaign cannot quite praise Mr. Abu Jayyab's earnest efforts.

"I suppose they can say what they like," Yeshiya Amariel said, before worrying out loud about the smear campaign insinuating that Mr. Obama had ties to radical Islam. "Most people will say a Palestinian endorsement will definitely be harmful."

Mr. Obama landed himself in hot water with the powerful American Jewish lobby last year when he told a small Iowa audience that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Since then, he has worked hard to court the pro-Israel vote….

Let me get this straight: a bunch of Palestinians in Gaza are phoning random Joe the Plumbers in Ohio and Pennsylvania and leaving “vote Obama” messages in heavily Arab-accented English? Yeah, that should really help boost Obama’s fortunes. Why, if one didn’t know any better, one might think that the “powerful American Jewish lobby”—or maybe even the Mossad—is actually behind these calls, since such efforts are far likelier to help “swing” these states for John McCain.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments

Quel bummer: "Peace process may be derailed by Israeli election."

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments

Twitter critters: Ezra Levant has a long blog post about the apparent implosion going on over at Jen Lynch’s “human rights” Stasi. In one part  he paints a poignant—dare one say pathetic?—picture of some Jews, still clutching their tattered security blanket even as the building disintegrates around them. As Ezra points out (and not for the first time), gone are the days when a Jew could feel “secure” by playing Whack-a-Nazi and getting the CHRC to get the whacked one to cough up mucho dinero to the Jews’ self-appointed proxy, He Who Must Not Be Named; such efforts have been rendered obsolete by the Internet, an entity as big as a tsunami and as impossible to control. By coincidence, not long after reading Ezra’s post I happened to come across this. It’s a story on CNet about Twitter, technology that allows people to communicate without ever being detected (even by a Stasi).

Micro-blogging tool Twitter could be used by terrorists to coordinate attacks, according to a purported draft Army intelligence report posted on the Web.

The report--present by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and posted to the Federation of the American Scientists Web site--examines the possible ways terrorists could use mobile and Web technologies such as the Global Positioning System, digital maps, and Twitter mashups to plan and executive terrorist attacks.

The presentation (PDF), which was first presented earlier this month, was reported Friday by Wired magazine's Noah Shachtman. A chapter titled "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter," presents general , introductory information on Twitter and how it works, the report describes how it was used to report details of a recent earthquake in Los Angeles and by activists at the Republican National Convention.

"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives. Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance. This could theoretically be combined with targeting. The report describes hacktivists as politically motivated hackers….

One more reason to drop the silly blankie, I’d say.

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

A novel suggestion: Canada is once again in the middle of an angst-fest re its role in sending Arab-Canadians to be tortured in Syria. Here’s the Ceeb on the subject, and, to add insult to injury, here’s Harpoon Siddiqui. In the midst of the hysteria (which, admittedly, isn't quite as over the top as it was during the Arar affair) there’s one still small voice of reason—Tarek Fatah—who suggests that instead of tearing out our hair and rending our garments over our supposed culpability, we blame the torturers.

Blame the people who actually did the torture? What a concept! I doubt it'll catch on, though, since there's nothing Canadians love more than being told they're "bigots" so they can take a good, long wallow in Lake Guilt.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:02 | link | comments (2)

Behold the alternate reality: spectrezine--an offiical publication of Europe's looniest moonbats.

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

Self-loathing in the Times: Having visited a number of vacation spots and witnessed first-hand the ugly spectacle of rude, vulgar, drunken, loutish Brits enjoying themselves a wee bit too much, I can understand the viewpoint of Times columnist Minette Marrin. She’s embarrassed and revolted by the behaviour of her two countrymen who defied sharia law when they almost-but-not-quite indulged in a shag on a Dubai beach:

…I have absolutely no sympathy for them but I do think that given the permissive culture of the country in which they grew up – they were born only a few years after 1968 – it is understandable, if depressing, that they themselves didn’t see much wrong with their behaviour.

From their perspective it is apparently quite normal for two strangers to meet at a hotel brunch, drink themselves silly and proceed to perform sex acts on each other in public. It is normal to insult a policeman who has the effrontery to caution them, regardless of the law, and to carry on. That is what Britons do at home and abroad. They belch, vomit, copulate, litter and barge their way through public spaces, dressed like hookers and louts, defying the police without shame or modesty. British expatriates are some of the worst: overpaid, oversexed and all over the place.

Palmer and Acors are appealing against their convictions. Yet by Palmer’s own admission, she was drunk and they were kissing and cuddling. “We didn’t have sex together,” she insisted. “I was lying on top of him.” This is rather to miss the point.

No one cares much whether DNA evidence proves that there was no exchange of bodily fluids. What went on was an affront to the standards and laws of Dubai, which all expatriates are well aware of. If you don’t like the law or the culture of another country, you should stay away. If you go there anyway, you should keep your views to yourself and when in Rome behave as the Romans.

That is not only common sense and a way of staying out of nasty foreign jails. It is more importantly an ancient moral obligation, which all healthy cultures have observed. As a guest, you must respect your host and his feelings. Everyone knows that Muslim cultures believe strongly in modesty and privacy; it is simply rude to go about half-naked or drunk and snogging and shagging in public in an Islamic country, an insult to the host culture as well as a disgrace to our own. I can’t help secretly sympathising with the senior prosecutor in Dubai who said he wished the couple had been given a longer sentence.

Is it surprising that so many Muslims around the world despise us for our decadence when we express our sympathy with British men and women who behave like this? There is something clearly despicable in the permissiveness and hyper-sexualisation of western culture; the result is broken families, unwanted children, sexual diseases and a state of agitation which drives the young into chaos and crime.

This might seem a long way from a fumble on a beach and certainly I would agree that many Muslim cultures take their modesty to extremes of repression. But the connection is there and Muslims, including British Muslims, are right to make it.

PC Plod in this country, however, does not make it. Last week a senior officer recommended that the police should turn a blind eye to sex in public, to avoid offending or distressing people seen doing so, and to protect the human rights of those who frequent open spaces to have sex, particularly those in pursuit of dogging and cottaging, who might easily be alienated or humiliated. His advice is contained in 21 pages of guidance on policing sex in public.

This is the kind of attitude that gives freedom a dirty name. No wonder so many Muslims here look down on the host culture and try to isolate their sons and daughters from its unthinking libertinism.

If we expect ethnic minorities here to respect the host culture, we should make sure it is worthy of respect. If we expect them to behave according to our standards (such as they are) when they are here, so should all British citizens respect their standards when over there.

The careless cultural imperialism of British expatriates abroad – their selfish, insensitive, sluttish behaviour – must be partly to blame for the cultural hostility and separatism that are growing among Muslim minorities at home here today. That is one good reason, among many, for not doing it in the road, either home or away.

I’ll grant that public displays of al fresco jiggery-pokery are icky no matter where they occur, and that it was foolish of those two Brits to comport themselves in that way in a land ruled by sharia. But surely there’s a happy medium between all-out drunken hedonism and forcing chicks to wear a burqa. Also, I find Ms. Marrin’s complete disdain for a culture that allows for such freedom—and her unquestioning admiration for one that doesn’t—to be more than a little disturbing. And if she thinks that "the careless cultural imperialism" of Brit expats is the reason for Muslims' "hositility," she knows squat about Islam, jihad and sharia. After all, it was the sight of a chaste dance in post-war America--and not drunken beach-snogging--that motivated Sayyid Qutb to turn against the kafirs once and for all and write the words that that would help spark the Islamic revival.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:04 | link | comments

Love’s young bomb: The Beeb has an interview with a wannabe shahida—a recent bride—who’s waiting for just the right time to transform herself and as many Zionists as possible into tiny bits of flesh and viscera:

There is a ceasefire in Gaza, but the BBC has found evidence of militant groups preparing for a return to violence. One group, Islamic Jihad, is training female suicide bombers.

Middle East correspondent Paul Wood went to meet a Palestinian woman who has volunteered.

The young, veiled woman was sitting quiet and still as the room bustled around her.

The black flag of Islamic Jihad was pinned on the wall behind her and two Kalashnikovs were carefully placed in camera shot. Her husband, an Islamic Jihad fighter himself, tied on her "martyr's" headband.

Umm Anas - not her real name - had just graduated from a programme to train female suicide bombers in Gaza.

Our meeting was a highly-orchestrated propaganda event laid on by Islamic Jihad. It was almost theatre - and certainly Israel accuses the Palestinian leadership of manipulating young women like 18-year-old Umm Anas.

Yet, although she nervously twisted her wedding ring, Umm Anas did not appear to be a cipher.

She was articulate - more so than the men staging the event - and she knew her own mind.

Secret ambition

When she spoke of becoming a suicide bomber, Umm Anas's voice was strong and steady: "This is a gift from God.

"We were created to become martyrs for God," she continued, her eyes burning behind the full face veil.

"All the Palestinian people were created to fight in God's name. If we just throw stones at the Jews they get scared. Imagine what happens when body parts fly at them."

The bomb belt which she hopes will end her life - and kill many Israelis - rested on the table next to us.

Her main motivation in becoming a suicide bomber appears to be religious rather than nationalistic - the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. Even getting married recently hadn't changed her mind.

"When my husband married me, he knew my way of thinking. He knew exactly who I am and based on this he decided to marry me. Marriage doesn't give me a second's doubt."

I asked if that would alter if she became pregnant.

"I would wait until I delivered the baby," she said. "I would give him to my parents and ask them to look after him... Then I would leave them and the baby would remain behind as a piece of me."

Her parents, brothers and sisters did not know.

"Martyrs - male or female - have to work in secret. No one can know about it. We have to be careful not to give our parents any sign of what we are about to do.

"Sometimes, maybe, they can tell and see on your face the signs of martyrdom. They are suspicious but they don't know for certain."

Ready for death

Umm Anas thinks she knows the manner of her death, but she doesn't know the timing.

She is waiting for the collapse of the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic movement which rules Gaza…

Must be a real beeyotch having to sit around and wait.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:08 | link | comments

See the “multi” become “unity”: The great thing about the social doctrine of multiculturalism is that it offers a little something for everyone. It allows guilt-ridden kafirs, burdened by wealth and a history of imperialism, to feel virtuous about being so tolerant and inclusive. At the same time, it provides Islamists the opportunity to introduce sharia into the lands of Dar al Harb—under the guise of tolerance and inclusiveness. So you see, everyone is happy—for now anyway. (Once sharia gains more traction, it isn’t as much fun for the kafirs, who find themselves changed into dhimmis.) Islam Online has a report about revellers—happy Muslims and happy dhimmis—who are happily attending a huge multicultural fete in London (my bolds):

CAIRO — Bringing together thousands from all around the world, Europe's largest Muslim event opened in Britain on Saturday, October 25, with the focus of promoting multiculturalism.

"Global Peace and Unity conference is by far the largest event of its kind in Europe and may be in the West as a whole," GUP Chairman Mohamed Ali told IslamOnline.net.

The two-day conference, held at Excel Conference and Exhibition Center, brings together luminaries and celebrity guests from around the world.

Leading among attendees are Danish Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, American Muslim scholar Yusuf Estes and British Muslim singer Yusuf Islam.

Also attending British Secretary of Justice Jack Straw, Muslim MP Shahid Malik and Lord Nazir Ahmed.

"We at the GPU do strive every year to have some addition, at spiritual level we are having one of the Imams of the holy mosque and the muezzin of prophet's mosque, and of course the Kiswah (curtains) of the Ka`bah, and the two models of the two holy mosques," said Ali.

"We are also expanding on awards especially friends of Islam awards and education awards."

The conference is organized by the free-to-air, English language, Islamic-focused Islam Channel for the fourth consecutive year.

Multiculturalism

Themed "Working Towards A Multi-cultural Society", this year's conference aims to promote peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims.

"It has a yearly theme this year being towards a multicultural society," Ali told IOL.

Organizers seek to make the conference a platform for an effective dialogue with non-Muslims.

A number of major interfaith groups have been invited to address the conference on promoting dialogue and building bridges across faiths, communities and societies.

"Our aim is always to build confidence among our Muslim Ummah and to be proud being Muslims," he said.

"We also want to engage with the wider society in a positive way."

The Muslim population in Britain is estimated at nearly two million.

"The Muslim community, so rich and diverse in itself, makes an enormously valuable contribution to our society," Straw said in a statement ahead of GUP opening.

"Those of us who are not Muslims but have the privilege of knowing and working with Muslims can testify to that.

"This event is a great opportunity to demonstrate this contribution, whilst challenging stereotypes and reasserting shared values. It is through unity that we will achieve peace."

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments (2)

Little Mahmoud swimming with the fishies?: There’s still no sign of the hairy terror, although a “close associate” says he isn’t ill, as has been previously reported, but is suffering from a bad case of exhaustion. From The Press Association:

A close associate of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Iranian president has fallen ill under the strain of his position.

Mohammad Ismail, a parliament member and close ally of the Iranian president, said Mr Ahmadinejad was sick "but will eventually heal".

The Iranian president reportedly works a 20 hour day and has not appeared in public since Tuesday.

State television said he participated on Saturday in the funeral ceremony for recently discovered remains of soldiers from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, but showed no images of him.

My take: Either he really is exhausted due to his punishing work sched and will re-emerge in due course, or the mullahs have sent him to visit Big Pussy, if you catch my meaning.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments

Standing pat: William Kristol explains why he will not be joining the putative right-wingers who have hitched a last-minute ride on the Bambi bandwagon, but agrees that the Bambi “narrative” is awfully compelling:

It's always darkest before it goes totally black. This is one of John McCain's favorite remarks, ascribed (apocryphally, it seems) to Chairman Mao. Well, with 10 days to go before the election, it's getting pretty dark out there.

Still, we hope for a McCain-Palin victory, for the sake of the country. And also for the pleasure of seeing the dejection of the mainstream media, the incredulity of the leftwing triumphalists, and the humiliation of the pathetically opportunistic "conservatives" who've been desperately clambering on board the Obama juggernaut. We're proud to stay off that juggernaut. We're proud, in our modest way, to stand with John McCain and Sarah Palin against it.

An Obama-Biden administration--working with a Democratic Congress--would mean a more debilitating nanny state at home and a weaker nation facing our enemies abroad. We, of course, have confidence that the nation would survive such an interlude, and we would even hope that a President Obama might adjust course from the path he's advertised, especially in foreign policy. But the risk of real damage is great, especially when compared with the prospect of a tough-minded center-right McCain-Palin administration that could lead the country sensibly through these difficult times.

Reading the endorsements of Obama in the liberal media should strengthen the determination of all believers in American self-government and greatness to fight this election campaign to the end. Time magazine's Joe Klein tells us that Obama "seems a grown-up, in a nation that badly needs some adult supervision." To the contrary, we are a nation of adults. We don't need the "supervision" of a conventionally liberal and totally untested junior senator whose most impressive lifetime achievement has been the construction of an effective narrative about himself…

I think I read that narrative. It was called What Makes Bambi Run?

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

Boo!: Just in time for Halloween, the Toronto Star’s Lynda Hurst raises fears about a terrifying spectre—crypto-bigots who may be messing with the pollsters and skewing their results:

It's the elephant that's been moving in and out of the room all year: To what extent will Barack Obama's skin colour affect the outcome of the U.S. election?

Ten days before the vote, the history-making black Democrat has a substantial lead in the polls. If he were white, victory would now be seen as likely, if not a sure thing. But no matter how good it looks, Obama's strategists aren't counting their political chickens just yet.

Only on the night of Nov. 4 will they know if the polls were inflated by white Americans lying about their voting intentions. Only then, how many Obama supporters got cold feet inside the polling booth, or how many young people, so vociferous in their approval of him, didn't bother turning out.

If Obama goes into election day significantly ahead of Republican John McCain and then loses, the reason almost certainly will be tagged as racism.

Sociologists say about 10 per cent of the U.S. electorate is out-and-out, unapologetically racist. Obama's staff has factored them into the equation. The Big Unknown, however, is the impact of voters who are closet racists and those who are subconsciously prejudiced.

Closet racists know who they are, but don't publicly admit it. "It's not cool to be racist," says Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at the University of California (Los Angeles). In post-civil rights America, discrimination keeps itself hidden – he calls it "racism without racists."

Conversely, subconscious racists have no idea they're anything of the sort and would vehemently deny the charge. Yet a mass of research suggests at least 50 per cent of Americans are unwittingly biased.

"Subconscious racism is a huge problem," says Goff, who, like Obama, is biracial. "No one knows the extent of it, not the social scientists, not the pollsters, not anyone. I'm talking about white liberals, well-educated people who've grown up in multiracial urban centres, the `some of my best friends' types."

Two leading U.S. researchers in the field coined the term "aversive" racism after a series of experiments showed how unconscious bias affects whites' decision-making in hiring and school admissions. When a black applicant has superior qualifications, aversive whites have no problem choosing him. But when a black and a white candidate are equally qualified, the white one is picked 76 per cent of the time.

"The outcome is exactly the same as old-fashioned racism, though the bias is more subtle," says Yale social psychologist John Dovidio. "Racism is like an old virus that has mutated into a new form."

Aversive racism doesn't mean hatred or hostility toward blacks, he says, but "uncertainty, doubt, anxiousness. People automatically identify with their own group or tribe; it's how we've evolved. Race, like sex, is a tribe marker."

Dovidio's co-researcher, Sam Gaertner of the University of Delaware, says aversives are "people who look at themselves in the mirror and think, `I'm a good guy.' They couldn't maintain their self-image if they thought they discriminated."

They may see Obama as the superior candidate, but at the back of their minds, they worry about the "black baggage" he might bring with him into the White House. The idea of controversial race activists such as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton getting jobs in an Obama administration scares them.

"You can see the fear existing in some people that he'll bring `other ones,' " says Gaertner…

Nothing like manufacturing a phantom menace—something we here in Canada know a lot about, what with all our “scary” basement Nazis. If by some chance Bambi loses, though, you just know you’re going to be hearing the words “aversive racism” over and over again.

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

Elmo AWOL?: There hasn't been a new entry on the Canadian Islamic Congress's website since August 22. Have the Islamists gone into hiding?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:59 | link | comments (1)

Binks’ query:  The enigmatic presence behind the freemarksteyn site asks

[Do] you know anybody remotely like Obama? I’ve been lucky to know and work with some fine politicians on the local and provincial level (and if you count Ezra, nationally, I suppose), but never came across anybody with such a scary past, and so many bad friends– (outside the Chretienites, but I didn’t know any of them). As somebody below asks, did Obama ever meet a bad idea or a creep that he said ‘No!’ to? It goes back to what I said a week or two ago: here’s a rootless, semi-unparented soul adrift, and picking up barnacles, and drifting into whirlpools. He needs therapy and supervision, not a Presidency.

That line about him being rootless and semi-unparented is one of the best—and probably the shortest—explanations of who and what Bambi is that I’ve ever read.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:33 | link | comments (4)

Same old song: Is there any significant difference between what's about to occur at Durban II, with its calumnies about the Jewish state, and age-old Judenhass which, in Medieval times, manifested itself as calumnies about "the Jews" contaminating the water supply? I--and Ms. Eydie Gorme--think not:

Seems they were the first

To have a single God.

As the idols fell,

Pagans thought it odd.

Afterwards came more

Confirmed monotheists,

And soon enough the Jews endured their fists.

 

Blame it on the Chosen People

With their magic spells.

Blame in on the Chosen People;

Poisoned all the wells.

Oh, it all began with just one little Abe

But then it ended up with lots of graves.

Blame it on the Chosen People

When all else fails.

 

Now, was it the Jews?

(Yes, yes, the Chosen People)

Or the irrational?

(Who slew the Chosen People)

Who had the most to lose?

(Yes, yes, the Chosen People)--

Scapegoat of choice.

 

Now I’m sad to say

Nothing’s changed at all.

They’re still blaming Jews.

Want ‘em all to fall.

Even though we shout:

“No, not e’er again.”

The crazies still all want to do us in.

 

Blame it on the Chosen People

With their magic spells.

Blame in on the Chosen People.

Poisoned all the wells.

Oh, it all began with just one little Abe

But then it ended up with lots of graves.

Blame it on the Chosen People

When all else fails...

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:00 | link | comments

Diametrically-opposed brunettes: The Sarah who was Miss Wasilla; and the Sarah who (maybe) misses Jimmy and who wants to shlep everyone’s Bubby and Zaidy away from the early-bird special to vote against MissWasilla.

I always get those two mixed up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:26 | link | comments

Have some sharia, m'dear?: Yes, please.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:08 | link | comments

Easier to swallow: Given a choice been the unpalatable and the uneatable, Mark Steyn opts for the latter:

Across the electric wires, the hum is ceaseless: Give it up, loser. Don't go down with the ship when it's swept away by the Obama tsunami. According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he's going to win.

In the words of Publishers' Clearing House, he may already have won! The battleground states have all turned blue, the reddest of red states are rapidly purpling. Don't you know, little fool? You never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality. Why be the last right-wing pundit to sign up with Small-Government Conservatives For The Liberal Supermajority? We still need pages for the coronation, and there's a pair of velvet knickerbockers with your name on it.

Yes, technically, this is still a two-party state, but one of the parties is like Elton John's post-Oscar bash and the other is a church social in Wasilla. As David Sedaris put it in The New Yorker:

"I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of s--t with bits of broken glass in it?'

"To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

Well, to be honest, I've never much cared for chicken...

I heard a “comedian” on Ceeb radio this morning describe it as being a choice between a handsome young dude and an ugly old “gargoyle”. No question as to who’s more appealing: I’ll have the roast gargoyle, please.

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

Not so easy peasy: According to the most recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate (some guy from Finland), it’s scandalous that the world has not yet managed to “solve” the Israel-Palestine problem. He attributes the lack of a resolution to a failure of “will”. From the Jerusalem Post:

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari said Saturday it is a disgrace that the international community has not managed to resolve the conflict in the Middle East, blaming the failure on a lack of political will.

In an interview with Swedish Radio, Ahtisaari said he was ashamed that neither Europe nor the US have been capable of reaching a solution yet.

"How can we, year after year, seriously say that we are trying to reach a solution when we aren't?" he asked. "I'm ashamed, I have to admit that."

The broadcaster also quoted him as saying he hoped the next US president would use his first year in office to try find a permanent solution in the Middle East.

"If the political will is there, we can solve anything. It is clear a Palestinian state is needed," Ahtisaari said, adding that the Israelis need to be guaranteed peace.

"If people would sit down and negotiate we would quickly reach a plan," he said.

A former Finnish president and an international peacemaker, Ahtisaari won the 2008 peace prize for three decades of working to resolve international conflicts around the world.

In the interview, Ahtisaari criticized the Western boycott of Hamas, and said it may soon be time to admit that "we have to speak with the Taliban" in Afghanistan instead of just sending troops to the country.

Now I’m hardly in the same category as this distinguished gentlemen, and will likely never win a Nobel Prize, but after years of investigation and cogitation I have arrive at the following conclusion which I am happy to share: there is no “solution” that will satisfy those both those who believe that the Jews are entitled to have their own state (the Muslims, after all, have 57) and those who want to see “justice” for the Palestinians. I would also note that “peace” means different things to Westerners and followers of Islam—perhaps the biggest impediment to arriving at a “solution”.  My message to the august—and intrusive—Finn: the “peace process,” to borrow a phrase from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, could definitely benefit from a period of benign neglect.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:29 | link | comments

Jewsical: Some years ago I penned what I assumed was an unproducable musical version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I called it Elders! After reading this timesonline article about a soon-to-open West End Holocaust musical, though, (it is not, you’ll be relieved to know, called Ovens!) I’m thinking seriously of shopping it around:

A few questions: can an unknown new musical with no big stars be a hit? Can an unknown new musical with no big stars be a hit as the West End in London copes with the recession? And, perhaps most importantly, can an unknown new musical – set in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 – with no big stars be a hit as the West End copes with the recession?

This is the challenge that the team behind Imagine This has embraced. In a small Southwark rehearsal studio the ensemble is going through an intense sequence set near the ghetto walls. Old furniture is piled up at the side of the room. About 20 blue plastic pistols litter the floor. The smell of sweat fills the air. If perspiration sold tickets Imagine This would be booking beyond the next Olympics. But, all things considered, they have a mountain to climb.

For the people behind the show this is clearly a labour of love. The director, Tim Sheader, is currently the artistic director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. After helming Gigi this is anything but a walk in the park, but he does not feel that the subject is particularly controversial.

“In terms of subject matter it starts from where Cabaret left off. We don’t go into Auschwitz, but we start with the incarceration. Cabaret was provocative and new when it opened, but since then there have been plenty of movies that have covered this area – Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Life is Beautiful – so we are following in the footsteps of commercial work.”

Stage, however, is very different from screen, as Liam Steel, the choreographer, acknowledges: “Theatre doesn’t have the luxury of film. We have to work really hard covering a very long time-span very quickly and still hit the gut. The very first song, The Last Day of Summer, starts with freedom in 1939 and ends in imprisonment in 1942.”

The action draws on Jewish history with the bulk of it taking place in a play-within-the-play. The ghetto inmates decide to act out the 2,000-year-old story of the siege of Masada, when 936 rebels committed mass suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. The resonances do not need to be spelt out. Meanwhile, a resistance fighter is hiding from the Nazis and a young woman falls for him. Can love bloom with tragedy looming?

Imagine This was due to be staged on Broadway in 2005 but a financial hiccup intervened. It had a brief run in Plymouth last year, when backers were impressed enough to finance this West End opening. Sheader is excited at the prospect of a meaty show. “I’m sick to death of seeing another rehash: Take That, Rod Stewart. Hen night theatre has its purpose but there is more to musicals than having a laugh.”

The team all cite Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables to argue that dark subject matter and massive success are not mutually exclusive. They may have a point. In Spain earlier this year an Anne Frank musical was a hit, while American Psycho: The Musical is Broadway-bound. But regardless of subject matter, Imagine This has its work cut out. When cash is tight theatregoers may opt for escapism. And there is no real bill-topper. The biggest name is Peter Polycarpou, who starred in Phantom of the Opera and can certainly belt out a tune, but who lacks a Michael Ball/Crawford fanbase.

Sheader is determined: “It’s a gamble, but it has to work on the strength and integrity of the piece. It is a celebration of the human spirit. I’d find it far more difficult to sit here and convince you that The Producers would be a hit,” he argues. “That kind of pastiche and irony is tougher, this is honest and on the nose.” But can being on the nose put bums on seats?..

Must. Resist. Temptation. To turn that delightfully skewed metaphor—“Can Being on The Nose Put Bums on Seats?”—into a “cheeky” show stopper.

Update: And now, a number from Elders! (Note: the penultimate verse is new):

Consider all historical calamity;

The war, the pain, the fear and insanity.

We like to claim, with no trace of vanity—

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Seven Years, Hundred Years, ev’ry duration

Of warfare and strife throughout ev’ry nation,

Conduct a little investigation—

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

Behind revolutions, both French and Russian,

Populations we’re fond of crushin’,

Wells that are poisoned and johns that ain’t flushin’

They’re ours, ours, ours!

 

Wars between States and ‘tween Roses—ours!

The Cold War we suppose is—ours!

Some war we can’t even disclose is—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

Unrest in southern Albania—ours!

The onset of mania in Spain-ia—ours!

The sinking of the Lusitania—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Trouble that’s murky and vague—ours!

Civil unrest in The Hague—ours!

A little old thing like the Plague—ours!

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

Turkish synagogue bombings—we plotted for hours.

Silence and subterfuge—part of our powers.

And somehow we toppled those big ol’ Twin Towers.

It’s ours, ours, ours.

 

Sub-prime mortgages that lured the unsuspecting;

A burst Wall Street bubble—Depress’ resurrecting;

Egregious greed is what you’re detecting.

It’s ours, ours, ours!

 

There’s nothing you can do to please us

Nothing that can e'er appease us

And don’t forget, we also killed Jesus.

He was ours, ours, ours!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:30 | link | comments

York warfare: Don't miss glossy, upscale mag Toronto Life's article about York University (a little piece of Gaza in the Hogtown 'burbs) and the fecklessness of its administrators in dealing with festering campus hostilities between the Arabs and the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:49 | link | comments

Life imitates me: Coming soon to a former superpower near you (maybe)--a "Department of Peace". (link via LGF)

Or as I called it "the Department of Hugs and Smiles" (to be headed up by Bambi-revert Colin Powell?).

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:39 | link | comments

The Beeb pussyfoots, obfuscates and makes things a whole lot worse:  PM’s Mike McNally writes about something that has been obvious for a long time but which has been conceded only recently—the Beeb’s inclination to tread extra gently when it comes to Islam:

The head of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has finally admitted what many of us have long known: that his organization treats Islam more respectfully than it does other religions. In a speech to a religious think tank, Thompson claimed the BBC has to treat Islam with greater sensitivity because Muslims are a minority in Britain and aren’t fully integrated into society.

The BBC’s “sensitivity” has for several years manifested itself in news reports that offer excuses for Islamist terrorism, most commonly by linking radicalization to British and American foreign policy. The failure of many Muslims to integrate, while acknowledged by Thompson, is invariably blamed by the BBC on poverty, injustice, and racism on the part of less enlightened sections of the British public. And the words “Muslim” and “Islam” are invariably omitted from stories about honor killings and forced marriages; such crimes are instead framed as issues for Britain’s “Asian community” to address, to the consternation of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim British Asians alike.

The BBC’s kid-gloves approach to all things Islamic isn’t limited to its news coverage — it informs the corporation’s fictional output too and stands in stark contrast to its apparent eagerness to offend Christians. So, while viewers are treated to Jerry Springer: The Opera and numerous shows in which Christians are portrayed as either idiots or villains, the producers of a popular hospital drama last year scrapped a storyline about a Muslim suicide bomber for fear of causing offense.

Few of the BBC’s critics would seriously suggest that the broadcaster should refrain from satirizing religion (the obvious solution for people who think they’re going to be offended by a program is not to watch it); they ask only that the BBC be as “fearless” in dealing with issues surrounding Islam as it is in its treatment of Christianity. But of course that’s not going to happen.

Thompson attempted to justify the BBC’s blatant double standard in his speech, telling his audience:

What Christian identity feels like it is about to the broad population is a little bit different to people for whom their religion is also associated with an ethnic identity which has not been fully integrated.

There’s no reason why any religion should be immune from discussion, but I don’t want to say that all religions are the same. To be a minority I think puts a slightly different outlook on it.

Thompson is certainly right to assert that Muslims are not “fully integrated” into British society. And one of the reasons why many Muslims feel no obligation to assimilate is that the BBC, along with other proponents of multiculturalism, has for years been telling them that they don’t have to integrate…

Kind of ironic, no? But then abject fear can often make one do some foolish things.

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

 The election isn’t over until the moose-hunting beauty pageant contestant sings: The Toronto Sun’s Salim Mansur is dubious about the polls and thinks “Middle America” will end up putting McCain and the Alaskan over the top:

…The only thing certain about the 2008 election, as with previous ones, is its close finish and the vote from Middle America again will be decisive.

Middle America is the last redoubt of freedom, protective of the first two amendments to the U.S. constitution, and egalitarian while rejecting the equality of the socialist ant heap.

Here Americans instinctively understand the words Thucydides put in the mouth of Pericles, the great Athenian hero, "Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."

Middle America in this 2008 election has the face of Joe the Plumber alongside Sarah Palin. Joe the Plumber has become the everyman of American politics and with his simple question to Obama he unmasked the Democratic nominee's hidden Marxian economic policy -- from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs -- to "spread the wealth around."

Middle America is the flyover country for the coastal left liberals. Here resides the vast silent majority that has witnessed for the past 40 years radical Americans such as the unrepentant terrorist and self-confessed anarcho-communist Bill Ayers trash their country. The New York Times on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 quoted Ayers, an associate of Obama, saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Middle America on its part has voted for the Republican ticket in seven of the past 10 presidential elections.

Joe the Plumber representing Middle America will not vote for Obama and his far left liberal views. He understands without prompting Obama's foreign policy is what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the highly respected Democratic senator from New York and a great patriot -- noted in referring to president Jimmy Carter's foreign policy, "Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has essentially adopted our enemies' view of the world."

Middle America watched the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1991 while extending the frontiers of freedom in distant lands.

ILLOGICAL

It is far fetched and illogical to expect Middle America to deceive itself to vote a candidate into the White House whose worldview acknowledges at a minimum the validity of Karl Marx's destructive ideology…

I’d say it all depends on who ends up heading to the polls on election day. If there are more Joe the Plumbers than Tinsel Town lefties; more NASCAR fans than Sarah Silverman/Tina Fey/Jon Stewart fans; more alter cockers than little green sprouts, then McCain has a shot. If not, then not.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments

Justice postponed: Omar Khadr’s day of judgement has been put on hold for now, and his family couldn’t be more pleased by the news. From CP via the Edmonton Sun:

TORONTO — Family members of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr said Friday that yet another delay in his war-crimes trial beyond the installation of a new U.S. president bodes well for him.

Reacting to news that a military commission judge hearing pretrial motions had set a start date of Jan. 26, 2009, Khadr’s mother expressed delight.

“Oh good,” Maha Elsamnah said from her home in Toronto. “His lawyers kept asking us to pray (for the delay).”

Both U.S. presidential candidates have said they would shut the prison at Guantanamo Bay if elected, though it remains unclear what might happen to Khadr if that happens.

Speaking from Parliament Hill where she’s on a hunger strike, Khadr’s sister Zaynab Khadr was upbeat about the delay.

“It’s a good thing,” she said. “The Bush administration is not going to be able to use Omar to justify their detention centre.”

Zaynab Khadr, 29, has been consuming only water and fruit juice for the past three weeks in an effort to press Prime Minister Stephen Harper to repatriate her brother.

Harper has steadfastly refused, saying the internationally maligned legal proceedings against Khadr, who was just 15 when captured by U.S. forces, have to run their course.

“I’m hoping (the delay) will give the Canadian people and government more time to do the right thing and bring him home,” Zaynab Khadr said.

 “If he has to be tried, it should be in a Canadian court.”…

Why? Did he allegedly kill a Canadian soldier? Does a Canadian court have jurisdiction over something a “Canadian” (by virtue of his passport, not his domicile or allegiance) is said to have done to an American over in Afghanistan? Of course not.  In any case, it appears that Sissy and Mama are pretty sure it’s never going to come to that since “President” Obama is going to spring the lad sans court time.

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

On censorship, blasphemy, Durban II and doggedly clueless Jews: The National Post has an interesting report about Durban II, the upcoming UN “racism” conference that dresses up the OIC’s eliminationist agenda (Israel’s demise being top of mind with these Muslims) in the sheep’s clothing of “human rights.” The most intriguing part of the piece—at least for someone like me who’s been disgusted by the Canadian Jewish Congress’s reaction to the Danish ‘toon controversy, its ongoing commitment to state censorship via HRCs, and its desire to “build bridges” with false friends like Harpoon Siddiqui—are these words by the CJC’s fearful leader (ever on the prowl for scary, cellar-dwelling Hitler-idolizers in small town Alberta):

…Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, says, "It is everything we had thought it was going to be, and more. What it proves is that the decision reached by Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper months ago to pull out of Durban 2 was a sound one. He was very much a man ahead of his game on this."

Different this time from Durban 1, which concluded only days before the 9/11 attacks, is the conference's focus on what delegates perceive as worldwide, endemic "Islamophobia ... and the worsening of the situation of Muslim minorities around the world" since 2001.

It labels "counterterrorism or national security" and "freedom of expression" in Western countries as "obstacles in hampering progress in the collective struggle against racism." The draft demands "binding international standards" to "take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols" and wants states to "encourage objective and balanced" portrayals of "people, events and history, especially in the media." It wants governments to adopt laws "preventing and punishing" intolerance in "public and private life."

"This is the new dimension of Durban 2, which in many ways makes it a greater threat than Durban 1," says Anne Bayefsky, a York University professor and human rights lawyer who attended last week's Geneva conference.

"It's really setting up a war of ideas, that has rough implications, between Islamic states and everybody else.... Durban 1 was called an assault on Israel; a demonization of Israel as racist and analogous to Apartheid South Africa." Durban 2 looks as if it will have all that, too, she says. "But in addition, Durban 2 is an assault on freedom of expression and other essential democratic rights and freedoms."

The irony, she says, is that Asian and Middle Eastern countries pushing for tougher restrictions are often the world's worst rights abusers. Even Mr. Farber, a vocal supporter of Canada's own hate-speech laws, calls the draft's speech codes "hugely troubling" as they appear to severely tilt the balance of rights; an "attempt to criminalize anything seen to be offensive."…

Tell me, Bernie, what will it take for you to have that “eureka” moment, that epiphany that hits you—kapow!—smack in the middle of the forehead so that the lights finally, finally, go on and you can see without a glimmer of a flicker of a doubt that what’s occurring at the international level is exactly the same as what’s happening here in Canada—i.e. that Muslims pushing the eliminationist agenda are endeavouring to shut us up because they want to be able to control the conversation? And, cleverly, they are doing so not by saying, “Hey, you dhimmis, knock it off with the blasphemy and let us, the true believers, take the lead”—because that would tip off even the most clueless multiculti bridge-builder to their totalitarian intentions. They are claiming that it's a matter of “human rights” (their rights, naturally) to force us to put a sock in it and to never, ever, take it out.

Get it? Capiche? Anybody home?

Now can we get rid of our “human rights” commissars and stop rewarding obsessive-compulsive “Nazi”-trolling weirdos?

Update: Kathy Shaidle 'splains it--think Gov. William Lepetomane in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (5)

Dief is the Chief: For all those who are stirred by John George Diefenbaker’s words about freedom in Canada pre-Trudeaupia, here’s Stingband’s immortal tribute to the old blue-eyed be-dewlapped Saskatchewaner. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can hear the entire song; if you want to follow along, these are the lyrics (it has bits that would now be regarded as being poltically incorrect, but that's part of its charm:

In nineteen hundred and fifty-seven,
When you was just a kid in school,
And Cassius Clay was an amateur,
Boxing down in Louisville,
Dief come out of Prince Albert,
And he said he was a man with a dream,
Now in seventy-four Clay's the champ once more,
And I know Dief will be the Chief again.

[Chorus:]
Dief is the Chief, Dief is the Chief,
Dief will be the Chief again,
Everybody's happy back in '57,
And nobody's happy since then,
There was law in the land, order in the home,
Swimming in the river back then,
But I know in my heart, that Dief will be the Chief,
And a dollar worth a dollar again.

Well he lost in '25, and he lost in '26
And '29, but he never lost heart,
He lost in '33 and he lost in '38,
And the '40s was mostly dark,
But in '53 he married Olive,
And together they ruled the land,
And with Olive by his side, the queen of his heart,
Deif will be the Chief again.

[Chorus as above]

Now we got a man up in Ottawa,
He got cold water in his veins,
You know that he don't give a shit about you,
And he don't hear when you complain,
But Dief come out of Prince Albert,
He was raised in the prairie grain,
And he always had a hand for the working man,
Dief will be the Chief again.

[Revised Chorus:]
Dief is the Chief, Dief is the Chief,
Dief will be the Chief again,
Everybody's happy back in '57,
And nobody's happy since then,
There's a famine in the land, a mortgage on the home,
And strikes without any end,
But I know in my heart, that Dief will be the Chief,
And a dollar worth a dollar again.

He's Chief Walking Buffalo to the people of the Sioux,
Honorary Chief Eagle to the Cree,
He's a customary colonel up in Saskatoon,
And a personal acquaintance of the Queen,
He's about to stand a Kinsman, a Kiwanis man too,
And he's 80 on September 18,
And he always had a hand for the working man,
Dief will be the Chief again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:09 | link | comments

False advertising: In 100% cotton:

Obviously, a t-shirt that has never encountered a Canadian "human rights" apparatchik.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:35 | link | comments

The usefulness of Grammy 'Bama: When he ran into a spot of bother about his "spiritual leader," he had no compunction about throwing the white woman who raised him under the wheels of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright express. (Grammy was described as being a "typical" white person in that she was expressed some hesitation about encountering large large African-American gentleman when she was out and about on her own (a trait her ever-loving grandson portrayed as evidence of the inherent racism of all light complected persons--which is kinda, sorta racist itself, when you think about it). Now that Grammy is ailing, Bambi is racing to be at her side in Hawaii (the state where he was raised), and the Bambi-besotted media is playing up the reunion for all its worth.

Here's hoping the old gal manages to stick around until her beloved grandson wins the White House, but if you go by the media, at the moment things are looking mighty grim for Grammy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:47 | link | comments

Virtual murder (revenge for virtual divorce): You knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. From the timesonline:

A Japanese piano teacher has been arrested for the murder of her virtual husband after an abrupt but messy online divorce.

The 43-year-old from Kyushu province in southern Japan faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail if she is found guilty of killing off her digital partner.

She is accused of hacking into the profile of a 33-year-old office worker from Sapporo 620 miles away, whose avatar on the Maple Story computer game was married to her character until he unexpectedly demanded a divorce.

The spurned make-believe wife was so angry at being jilted that she logged into the game using her partner’s password and destroyed the character that he had spent a year creating.

She was arrested at home in Miyazaki yesterday on suspicion of illegal access on a computer and manipulating electronic data, according to police in Sapporo where she is being detained. The woman has not been formally charged. If convicted she could be jailed or fined up to £3,100.

An official in northern Sapporo reported that she confessed to the crime when questioned, allegedly telling police: “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry.”

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said…

It could have been worse. Her real husband could have text messaged “I divorce you” three times.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:53 | link | comments

Poetry in motion: The Canadian Arab Federation cordially invites you to attend the Palestinian Film Festival. This year’s fête will feature the poetic stylings of the lovely and talented Suheir Hammad, a Hip Hip Emily Dickinson with a definite anti-Zionist vibe. Here’s some info about her:

Poetry has always been a big part of Suheir Hammad's life.

Born in 1973, Hammad was raised in a culture where the Quran was considered to be God's epic poem.

"As a child I had this sense that God was a huge poet," she said. "We can all be part of this larger narrative because of the scripture."

Hammad combined her cultural beliefs with the hip-hop influences of her hometown of Brooklyn to become a celebrated poet who has performed on HBO's Def Poetry Jam.

She was raised with traditional family values and the idea to keep "looking for the other side of the story" by her parents who are Palestinian refugees.

She grew up with family stories of grandparents owning roasted nut shops and selling candies in Palestine; stories of heartache about her pregnant grandmother forced to give birth in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after being expelled from her home in Lydda in 1948.

"I grew up with a sense of loss, that you can work generations to build something and suddenly lose it all," she said.

Her family's experiences come across in her writing, including her first two books, "Born Palestinian, Born Black" and "Drops of this Story," a memoir detailing her experiences growing up as a Palestinian-American. Hammad is known to tackle issues like sexism, violence and the challenges facing women in her writing.

Her post-9/11 work called "First Writing Since," received rave reviews for its chilling commentary and observations about a country changed overnight.

I do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
I have never been so hungry that I willed hunger
I have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.

The piece caught the attention of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons who signed Hammad to join the Def Poetry Jam. She read her words on tour in front of more than 15,000 people and across the airwaves of HBO for two years.

"Each step of the way my audience has surprised me," she said adding that "anytime a Palestinian American can get past the silencing of the dominant narrative about Israel" it is a success.

Hammad's work has since been read on the BBC World Service and National Public Radio. She was also the first Palestinian featured in a Broadway show and has read her work at universities and prisons across the country...

I can see why her  poem grabbed Russell—it’s so...heartfelt. Hmmm. Think I’ll have a go and see if it gets me any Def Poetry Jam action:

They hate my people ‘cause the Book says we’re apes.

They hate the Zionist entity--a case of sour grapes.

They want the Jew state gone; the UN’s been helping.

So they'll shake their keys and keep on yelping.

Hey, at least mine rhymes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:32 | link | comments

Hairy terror on the way out?: According to reports, President Ahmadinejad's "health" is said to be "deteriorating" and he may not make it, but he can't speak to the media about it because he's way too, um, "ill".

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:00 | link | comments

Pervy shahids: On the FrontPage magazine site, Stephen Brown writes about the disturbing—and ultra-creepy—correlation between the penchant for martyrdom-through-terrorism and the penchant for kiddie porn:

…Muslim extremists’ attraction to child pornography has been attributed to cultural factors. An Italian magistrate involved in the Milan mosque case said possession of child porn by Islamists did not necessarily indicate paedophilic tendencies, but rather was the result of cultural differences. Girls, he stated, often become wives in the Muslim world at age 11 and 12.

The Islamists’ interest in boys as sex objects is generally owed to their beliefs and social milieu. Their strict religious convictions do not allow them to be with a woman outside their own families, let alone touch one, before marriage. Moreover, in some Muslim countries, males can’t even catch a glimpse of the demonized female form because of the body-encompassing clothing she is forced to wear. In such a gender segregated environment, homosexual behavior develops, especially towards boys.

Even the Taliban, which executed homosexuals when it ruled Afghanistan, could not eradicate the sexploitation of boys, even in its own ranks. Among the 30 commands it issued to its fighters, Rule No. 19 forbid them from taking young boys without facial hair into their barracks. After the Taliban regime fell, a Fox news report indicated pederasty in Afghanistan returned to its previous place as an accepted social norm.

Sexual exploitation of boys in Muslim countries also has a long history. The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (an anonymous pseudonym), wrote in his column, Sufism, Sodomy and Satan, that, in the High Middle Ages, Sufism, Islam’s mystic branch, “is the only case in which a mainstream current of a major world religion preached pederasty as a path to spiritual enlightenment.” He then cites a German historian who claims this Sufi practice “persisted in many Islamic countries until very recent times.” The 2007 movie, The Kite Runner, located in Afghanistan, showed a “last vestige” of Sufism’s pederast side when dancing boys appeared in female dress.

Perhpas not altogether insignificant in this grotesque phenomenon is that the Koran itself promises to put pre-pubescent boys at the service of jihadi martyrs not interested in the female virgins awaiting them in paradise. The boys will be like “scattered pearls” of “perpetual freshness” (Suras 52:24, 56:17, 76:19).

The consequences of Islamist misogyny, gender segregation and sexual abuse of Muslim boys are far-reaching. Besides growing up to be sexual deviants who collect child pornography and may victimize other children, such sexually traumatized Muslim boys are predisposed to become involved in terrorism as a way of expressing their sexual rage. It therefore comes as no surprise that one anti-terror source told the Times: “A way of finding who the extremists and terrorists are is to go through the child porn sites.”…

Brown seems reticent to the mention an obvious “religious” factor: the example of Islam’s founder, who is said to have wed one of his wives when she was a child of six, but held off consummating the union until she’d matured to the more womanly age of nine.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:50 | link | comments (2)

Hyper-vigilant basement Nazi nabber draws raves: He Who Must Not Be Named (‘cause to name him is to defame him) gets a glowing tribute from the B’nai Brith’s Jewish Trib.

Barf.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:25 | link | comments (1)

Liberal loser as clueless as ever: After being the guy who led the Liberals to their worst-ever defeat since, well, since Canada first became a nation in 1867, Stephane Dion says he “detected not an inch of defeatism” in his caucus.

That’s because more than a few members of your caucus (Bob Rae, Iggy, Joe Volpe) hope to be the “victor” who’ll get to replace you, Stephane.

Meanwhile, the Ceeb, which is reporting the story, claims that Dion was done in by Conservative "attack ads." Yeah, I'm sure that's what did it, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Canadians didn't buy that preposterous Green Shift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:46 | link | comments

Dhimmi work: Foreign Policy has a fascinating photo essay about the Zabaleen—the lowest of the low in Egyptian society who collect Cairo’s gargantuan piles of garbage. The caption of the third photo explains

Zabaleen, most of whom are Coptic Christians, rank decidedly at the bottom of Cairo’s social hierarchy. They work with garbage and raise pigs, a forbidden food in Islam, rendering them to be considered unclean by many from Egypt’s Muslim-majority population. Here, men sift through one of the great trash pyramids of Cairo on Oct. 20.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:31 | link | comments

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: Victor Davis Hanson tries to unwrap the cipher that is Bambi. From RealClear Politics:

Lame-duck Republican President Bush's dismal poll ratings have descended to those of Harry Truman's when he left office. The Democratic majority in Congress will probably widen after the election. Republican nominee John McCain has not run a dynamic campaign. Gen. Colin Powell, George Bush's former secretary of state, has now enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama.

The country is in two unpopular wars -- amid the worst financial panic of the last 80 years. Not since prophet of change and newcomer Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford (post Watergate and the lost Vietnam war) have voters been so eager for a shake-up.

Why then is the charismatic Barack Obama not quite yet a shoo-in?

Easy. Voters apparently still don't know who Obama is, or what he wants to do -- and so are still not altogether sure that Obama is the proper antidote to George Bush. After more than a year of campaigning, he still remains an enigma.

Obama promised to be the post-racial candidate who would bring us together. But when asked in March 2004 whether he attended regularly Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama boasted, "Yep. Every week. 11 o'clock service."

The healer Obama further characterized the racist Wright as "certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for." And Obama described the even more venomous father Michael Pfleger as "a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely."

Obama can dismiss his past associations with Bill Ayers as perfunctory and now irrelevant. But why then did an Obama campaign spokesman say Obama hadn't e-mailed with or spoken by phone to Ayers since January 2005 , suggesting more than three years of communications -- in a post-9/11 climate -- after Ayers said publicly he had not done enough bombing?

Obama's campaign shrugged when legal doubts were raised about the sloppy voter registration practices of ACORN -- an organization that Obama himself has both helped and praised.

Yet Obama once was a stickler for proper voter documents. In 1996, he had all of his Democratic rivals removed from the ballot in an Illinois state primary election on the basis of sloppy voter petitions.

Many of Obama's surrogates, from congressional leaders like Rep. John Lewis to his running mate, Joe Biden, have suggested that the McCain and Palin candidacies have heightened racial tensions. Do such preemptory warnings mean that one cannot worry about Obama's 20-year relationship with Rev. Wright or long association with Father Pfleger?

It's also unclear exactly what Obama's message of "hope" and "change" means. The hope part turned a little weird when Obama, in prophetic fashion, proclaimed, "We are the ones we've been waiting for," and later put up Greek-temple backdrops for his speech at the Democratic convention.

If we didn't get that supernatural message, Obama also promised of his election that it would be the "moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

And change? Obama himself has changed positions on FISA, NAFTA, campaign public financing, town-hall meetings with McCain, offshore drilling, nuclear and coal power, capital punishment and gun control, his characterization of Iran, the surge in Iraq, and the future of Jerusalem. So change from what to what?...

From the U.S. to the EU, apparently.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments

Pound’s savage “racism”: Dick Pound, Canada’s man on the IOC (not to be confused with the OIC, a whole ‘nother bunch of chuckleheads) says he’s sorry if his French (which is not his first language) was misapprehended by sensitive First Nationers. From The Province:

Richard Pound said he was sorry for causing offence, but would not be stepping down as chancellor of McGill University or leaving the International Olympic Committee over controversial comments he made to a Montreal newspaper.

In an August interview with La Presse about the Olympics in China, Pound referred to Canada as "un pays de sauvages" 400 years ago.

Pound was responding to criticism about the IOC's involvement in China despite that country's checkered history on human rights.

Various First Nations organizations said they took offence to the comment because it implied that Canada was a land populated by savages before Europeans settled it. A native group, LandInSights, wrote the IOC's ethics commission calling for Pound's suspension over his comments.

The IOC, however, decided not to open a file on the complaint, said Pound, adding that the comments were misinterpreted.

Pound was surprised at the ferocity of some of the attacks directed his way. He said much of it has been based on a mistranslation of the French word sauvages into the English word savage.

"(Sauvages) is basically living free in what was to the Europeans a sort of large, unknown territory," said Pound.

"The IOC looked into it and my explanation of it and said it's not a racist comment as far as they are concerned they are not going to open a file," said Pound.

Pound also said he would not be stepping down from his position as chancellor because his comments had nothing to do with his role at McGill.

He is also considering legal action over some statements directed his way.

"I have no desire to make anything into a war. If it goes that way that is fine. If people are out there referring to me as a racist that is a little different," said Pound. "I can be inept, clumsy or wrong, but I am not a racist, I never have been, I never will be.

"I have been involved in more than half a century in the Olympic movement in which I have played a leading role in trying to cut down and attack discrimination based on politics and gender and I have a pretty good record on that."

Pound said he was "disappointed" with British Columbia Prime Gordon Campbell who also waded into the controversy Tuesday with a criticism of Pound's comment.

"The premier of a province, I think, has a special responsibility to make sure he knows, in this case, knowing this interview was in French and to understand that there is a huge difference between sauvages and savage," said Pound.

Pound said he has tried to get in contact with Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine and the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador Ghislain Picard, but received no response.

Might that be because they’re too busy filling in their complaint form about Pound’s “racism” to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droit de la jeunesse (Quebec's "human rights" body) and the BCHRT? Just speculatin’ (and jestin’).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:45 | link | comments

A clarification: Iran's Laranji says that, reports to the contrary, the idea that the mullahs are planning to be lenient on Israel is "a joke".

I'll say. There's nothing terribly lenient (or funny) about nuking the Jews (and any non-Jewish "collateral damage" that happens to be around at the time) to smithereens.

In other Laranji news, the speaker of Iran's parliament says his nation is pulling for Bambi to win the U.S. election because he's "more flexible and rational."

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:16 | link | comments

Feeble equivalency: 1) The Bambi campaign raises $15 mill in September to shill for THE ONE; the GOP spends $150 g’s on Sarah Palin’s “makeover. 2) Barack Hussein Obama is Muslim (not); Sarah Palin is Jewish. (That last one is currently making the rounds on the 'net.)

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

"Kunta Kinte" Powell: The former Secretary of State belatedly discovers his, er, roots.

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

The “human right” not to blaspheme Islam:  The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) applauds the Danes for putting that unfortunate “caricature” incident behind them and maybe even channelling their inner dhimmi (which he was certain was there all along); with the pivotal lines in bolds and italics:

The OIC Secretary General, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has paid a visit to Denmark to attend the international conference on the role of education for intercultural understanding and dialogue which was inaugurated on Tuesday, 21 October 2008 in Copenhagen. The Conference has been co-organized by the Danish Centre for Culture and Dialogue, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNESCO, the OIC General Secretariat, ISESCO, ALECSO, UN Alliance of Civilizations Secretariat, Anna Lindth Foundation and Council of Europe.

This follow up Conference was hosted by Denmark in continuation of the Rabat Conference of April 2005 and aimed at building upon the Rabat Commitments through special focus on the role of education, which is one of the core pillars of the Alliance of Civilizations project.

In his statement to the Conference, the Secretary General highlighted the initiative of the Danish government to host the Follow-up Conference in Copenhagen as being a constructive step in light of the ramifications of the caricature crisis. He expressed his belief that hosting the Conference by Denmark would serve as an effort at confidence building on the part of the Danish government and people towards dispelling the tension and mutual misunderstanding which snowballed into an amalgam of divisions and disagreements at the international level. He voiced his hope that the Copenhagen Conference would help usher in a new phase for collective efforts to promote inter-cultural and inter-religious understanding and constructive dialogue.

The Secretary General also touched upon the role of education in promoting human rights, and the role of non-violent conflict resolution in fostering a culture of peace, tolerance and mutual understanding and in diminishing misperceptions and intolerance among peoples of diverse religions, beliefs and cultural backgrounds. He emphasized that in the exercise of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, one should act with responsibility. He called for the development of an internationally accepted code of ethics within UNESCO, which would reflect a broad-based consensus and common understanding.

The Secretary General stated that the OIC General Secretariat was guided in its efforts by the existing international human rights documents and particularly the provisions requesting all governments to take measures against incitement to religious hatred. He clarified that the OIC has no problem with freedom of expression; on the contrary, it regards this freedom as a fundamental value and advocates it in the Muslim world within the new vision of the Organization. He underlined that the main argument of the OIC was that the abuse of this right should not be allowed in a way to contradict and violate the international human rights provisions. He called on the EU and OIC Member States to reach a consensus at the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in this regard.

In his meeting with the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Per Stig Moller, prior to the Conference, on Monday, 20 October 2008, the Secretary General conducted an exchange of views took place on various international issues and challenges as well as on the ways and means of cooperation with a view to fostering dialogue and mutual understanding…

“Fostering dialogue and mutual understanding”—sounds so much more appealing than grovel, grovel, scrape and bow.

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

Pearl the cherry-picker: In her authoritative whitewash of Canada’s “human rights” industry in the current issue of Maisonneuve magazine, “human rights” diva Pearl Eliadis quotes Mark Steyn as referring to Muslims as “sheep-shaggers”. That, she suggests, is merely one of the many, many “dangerous” utterances which prompted the Hosiery Three to launch complaints against Maclean’s Magazine with three of the nation’s “human rights” bodies. In my post about Pearl’s article, I commented that, if indeed Mark had written such a thing, I was certain it had been “cherry-picked”—i.e. taken out of context (like so many of those Meccan-era passages—“there’s no compulsion in religion” and the rest—that those who wish us to have only warm ‘n fuzzy feelings toward Islam often pluck, willy-nilly, from the Koran). Turns out I was right. Here’s the sheep-shagging comment in context--a Steyn column about Oriana Fallaci--which Pearl plucked like a ripe, "Islamophobic" cherry (I’ve taken the liberty of bolding the pertinent ovine passages):

…Signora [Oriana] Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam -- for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.

Kinky as this is, it has nothing on Fallaci's next circle of cultural diversity -- the weirdly masochistic pleasure European leaders get out of talking themselves down and talking Islam up. Beginning with the German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the 1983 Hamburg Symposium for the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Signora Fallaci rounds up a quarter-century's worth of westerners who've insisted that everything you know was invented by Islam: paper, medicine, sherbet, artichokes, on and on and on . . .

"Always clever, the Muslims. Always at the top. Always ingenious. In philosophy, in mathematics, in gastronomy, in literature, in architecture, in medicine, in music, in law, in hydraulics, in cooking. And always stupid, we westerners. Always inadequate, always inferior. Therefore obliged to thank some son of Allah who preceded us. Who enlightened us. Who acted as a schoolteacher guiding dim-witted pupils."

This, it seems to me, is the most valuable contribution of Oriana Fallaci's work. I enjoy the don't-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers.

So it appears that it was that late, great holy rollah, Khomeini, who brought up the subject of sheep-shtupping and whether or not, having had one’s way with lambikins, it was appropriate to then ingest him/her for lunch. The idea was not, as Pearl Eliadis would have you believe, something that suddenly popped into Steyn’s mind, “flagrantly Islamophobic” though she and the sockies may consider that mind to be. Steyn was merely riffing (and goofing) on the Ayatollah. In which case, maybe the Socky triad should consider hauling the late Ayatollah’s mouldering carcass in front of the HRCs, since, clearly, he’s the one who had the "dangerous" ideas.

Update: Mark Steyn comments on Pearl's cherry-picking, and on the way the humourless "human rights" types have set themselves up as the arbiters of comedy/satire/joking in the Great White North. (Wasn't it the perceptive Ayatollah Khomeini who once noted "there's no fun in Canada"? How right he was!)

Update: Further to Mark's comments, it occurs to me that Canadians are notoriously leery about putting weapons in the hands of regular folks--the reason we have gun-control and, now it seems, joke-control.

Update: Let's give credit where it's due. At least the Ayatolloh cleared up the vexacious matter of whether it's possible to have one's sheep and eat it, too.

Update: Exercising tremendous self-restraint, I have decided not to do a parody of a Marvin Gaye classic, the chorus of which would have gone "I heard it through the grapevine/That your concubine is ovine."

You're welcome.

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

Sharia on the march: A writer for Muslim World Today explains that the West's best attributes--tolerance, pluralism, freedom--are being used against it to enable sharia, a religious law that incorporates none of the above, to insinuate itself into our body politic:

Have you seen the little old lady who passes out Jehovah's Witness literature in your neighborhood? Some people stop and show interest. Others roll their eyes, and keep walking. But, would you ever expect anyone to threaten her? Call her a racist, and try to get her arrested?

Islamists would. And that is exactly what happened to two English Christian ministers who had the nerve to proselytize on a street corner in a predominantly Muslim immigrant area in the UK in 2007.

Such freedom of speech violations won't be an anomaly if the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has a permanent delegation to the United Nations, succeeds in passing a UN resolution against "Defamation of Religion" Noboby in a western country will be able to discuss the socio-political consequences of Muslim immigration, for fear of being labeled "Islamophobic" and slapped with a fine, or even jail time.

Islamists are increasingly using lawful Islamism, or non-violent and legal strategies to spread Sharia, (Islamic law) in the West, encroaching on non-Muslim life everyday. Other examples include:

1.    Sharia Finance;

2.    Islam in public schools;

3.    Violations of basic hygiene policy by Muslim medical staff;

4.    Workplace violations in the name of religious freedom;

5.    Censorship of literature.

Under the banner of "religious freedom," Islamists attack the very fabric of democracy in favor of Islam in the public sphere. The above examples are not examples of pluralism, but a violation of the separation of church and state doctrine meant to keep people of all faiths, or no faith, equal under the law. Liberals have forgotten that secularism is not a free-for-all, but has boundaries in order to remain meaningful…

In short: boundaries are good; "balance"--an in attempting to "balance" free speech vs. "hate" speech--is bad (in no small part because it is assisting the encroachment).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:28 | link | comments (1)

Israel's death wish: The Jews are sending clueless bumbler Shimon Peres to Egypt to discuss the Saudi "peace" proposal with Hosni Mubarak (a man who, according to reports, has been sending out feelers to Hellzbollocks' Nasty Nasrallah).

Way to go, Jews!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:52 | link | comments (2)

Troofers come out: They’re here; they’re weird; get used to it. From the National Post:

The spreading ripples of conspiracy to silence those dismissing the official version of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, got one ring larger recently: this newspaper was dragged into the subterfuge when an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories in the federal election campaign was delayed due to space limitations.

It did not take long for the missing story to add to an already complicated plot for a number of 9/11 skeptics who had been contacted for the story -- and who were already deeply mistrustful of the mainstream media.

"Who got to you?" one wrote to the reporter after the story was not in the newspaper the next day. He then suggested the reporter was never really working on a story but rather gleaning information on the movement for some unspoken purpose.

"It would not surprise me in the least if the article was pulled. The lid is nailed down very tightly on this topic," wrote another. A sympathetic skeptic simply said: "Thanks for trying."

That a reporter is simultaneously branded as both a perpetrator and a victim of a non-existent plot speaks to the complex passions and downright twitchiness of Canadian 9/11 skeptics and to the surprising reach of their circle.

When the Liberal party dumped a candidate in Winnipeg over writings that championed 9/11 conspiracy theories and an NDP candidate in B. C. was chastized for related statements, it was a bizarre and unexpected twist in the middle of a rather predictable election campaign.

While the 9/11 election scandals were short-lived, soon buried by the stock market meltdown, it served to ignite-- or perhaps reinvigorate -- a cross-country campaign to get 9/11 conspiracy theories on to the Canadian public's agenda. On newspapers' letters pages, on Web sites and in blogs, 9/11 skeptics burst out of the closet and urged others to follow suit, apparently convinced they formed a silenced majority.

"There is enough evidence across the board here to suggest there were more hands in the pot to stir it up than what meets the eye," said Andrew Moulden, a medical doctor and candidate for the Canadian Action Party in the Ontario riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming, when asked about 9/11 by the National Post.

"There are a lot of things that scream foul," he said. "There are too many holes and gaps in the middle and too many inconsistencies…. They needed a Pearl Harbor and it happened."

While that kind of talk gets you kicked out of the Liberal party, it brought Dr. Moulden more than a dozen campaign workers who travelled to North Bay on an outing organized by the Ottawa 9/11 Truth group. For 9/11 skeptics, it sent hope soaring.

"Success in this riding will bring the real issues into Parliament" organizers told supporters. "Enough shouting from the street corner, now we get into the government!"

Conspiracy theories of all sorts have long resonated in Western society…

In Eastern ones, too.

 

Update: I KNEW a Jew had to be behind it!

And I bet he got Ralph bin Malph and Potsie bin Webber to help.

Update: Now here's a conspiracy theory that's really a grabber--Somali pirates accentally give themselves radiation poisoning after hijacking an Iranian vessel and opening a "dirty bomb" intended for Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:23 | link | comments

Investing in sharia: There’s a good reason why capitalism is fated to fail: it is a man-devised system that lacks the, er, supernatural authority of an economy grounded in God’s law.  As such, it is subject to instabilities and fluctuations that do not affect Godly banking.  And don’t think that, in the wake of the latest capitalistic let-down, a kafir or two hasn’t noticed. From Islam Online:

LONDON — On a recent Friday afternoon, the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) branch in West London was bustling with a large number of customers, including non-Muslims.

At a time many conventional banks have gone bust in the credit crunch and financial crisis, the IBB is reporting a growth of 5 percent in customer numbers and 13 percent in customer financing.

The reason is that the bank "has been better protected from the credit crunch affecting mainstream banks," Sultan Choudhury, the commercial director at the IBB, told IslamOnline.net.

A financial crisis swept the US last month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank, and the financial woes of a number of Wall Street giants.

This triggered a domino effect across the world leaving conventional banks, lending each other on the money markets, short of credit.  

Western government have since pumped billions of dollars into their troubled banks to keep credit flowing and prevent a complete financial meltdown.

The British government recently unveiled a massive the £37bn bank bailout of taxpayer' funds to rescue Lloyds TSB, HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland from liquidity shortage.

Choudhury said the IBB does not take interest-based loans from other banks, and has high quality, asset-based investments.

"That means that the bank avoided the instability the other high street banks have suffered," he explained.

Islam forbids Muslims from usury, receiving or paying interest (known as Riba) on loans.

Transactions by Islamic banks must be backed by real assets -- not shady repackaged subprime mortgages.

Shari`ah-compliant financing deals resemble lease-to-own arrangements, layaway plans, joint purchase and sale agreements, or partnerships.

Investors have a right to know how their funds are being used, and the sector is overseen by dedicated supervisory boards as well as the usual national regulatory authorities.

Increasing

Choudhury cited a rise in the number of IBB’s customers "looking for a safer option for their money."….

Safer and Godlier—a win-win proposition.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:48 | link | comments

Come into the Turtle Bay parlor, Maude: Lefty yenta Maude Barlow has won a plum assignment. She’s been tapped to become the UN’s first water prima donna. From CP via the Ceeb:

Canadian activist Maude Barlow has been appointed as the United Nation's first senior adviser on water issues, a role she hopes to use to establish water as a human right and to convince Canada to "change its shameful position" on the issue.

Barlow, chair of the citizens' advocacy group Council of Canadians, will work with the current president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to advance a more democratic and transparent method of policy making around water at the global level than now exists," Barlow said in a press release. "Water is a commons, a public trust and a human right."

Barlow said there's "growing momentum" in the international community for water justice but will focus some of her attention on her home country.

"I also plan to take this opportunity to get the Canadian government to change its shameful position, and to finally join the international community in recognizing water as a human right," said Barlow.

D’Escoto extolled on Barlow’s ability to “combine humanitarian vision with a practical approach to problem solving” and has expressed support for her crusade, calling water a "human right as basic as the air we breathe."

Barlow holds six honorary doctorates and has written or co-written 16 books. She is also co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, a group that works to protect fresh water from trade and privatization around the world.

The United Nations estimates 42,000 people die every week from diseases related to bad water and poor sanitation.

Water and air as a “human right”? What an odd way to look at substances that are essential for life on planet Earth (surely they're also an "animal" and "vegetable" right, too). You can bet all five Great Lakes, though, that Maudie’s going to find a way to “internationalize” Canada’s water (of which he have scads) in the name of “water justice.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:03 | link | comments (1)

Balancing act: This talk is being offered during Toronto’s Holocaust Education Week (November 2-8):

HATE SPEECH VS. FREE SPEECH: FINDING THE BALANCE

To what extent do evil words lead to evil deeds? What is the responsibility of government to protect vulnerable communities from the effects of hateful speech? How can this responsibility be discharged while being mindful of the need to maintain freedom of speech as an essential element of our democratic society?

LEN RUDNER, Ontario Regional Director for Canadian Jewish Congress, will address these questions. Mr. Rudner represents the concerns of the Jewish community on issues, including antisemitism, war criminals in Canada, Holocaust denial, reasonable accommodation, and the manner in which the Internet is used to spread hate messages. He has worked with police services across Ontario on matters relating the security of the Jewish community and has helped develop strong relationships with major school boards in the area of anti-racism education and in the development of policies for the use of these materials in the classroom.

To “balance” the above I offer this, from Mark Steyn’s intro to THE TYRANNY OF NICE, the Kathy Shaidle/Pete Vere exposé of the human rights racket (a racket which Len champions and to which he genuflects on behalf of Canada’s supposedly “vulnerable” Jews):

[The] Canadian state no longer believes in freedom of speech. Instead, it increasingly believes in government-regulated speech, which (as we’ll see in the pages that follow) isn’t the same thing at all. In an important sense, Canada, one of the oldest constitutional democracies on the planet, is no longer a free society. Oh, I don’t mean there are jackboots goosestepping though Cornwall, and razor wire along the 49^th parallel. If there were, even the most lobotomized multiculturalist drone might notice. But I do mean that, in its determination to enforce a dubious government-mandated “niceness,” key elements of the Canadian state have taken a jackhammer to the cornerstone of a free society; freedom of expression, freedom of ideas, freedom of belief, freedom to engage in the whole messy rough’n’tumble of vigorous debate that distinguishes open societies from lesser, stunted, insecure ones…

What say we show up at Len’s talk clutching tattered security blankies and scales of justice weighted down on one side, and with duct tape over our mouths, to symbolize the lesser, stunted, insecure, un-free place Canada has become as a direct result of Len and his hyper-vigilant confreres?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:31 | link | comments

Don’t want to live like a refugee: A friend (h/t FH) sent me this, from “the Manitoba Herald”:

   A flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canda has intensified in the past weeks, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

   The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

   Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

   'I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,' said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota.

   'The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry.  He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken.

   'When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?'

   In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. 'Not real effective,' he said. 'The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so that much they wouldn't give milk.'

   Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border; pack them into Volvo station wagons; drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.
   
   'A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,' an Ontario border patrolman said. 'I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. 'They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.'

   When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives.  Rumors have been circulating about the McCain administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to shoot wolves
from airplanes, deny evolution, and act out drills preparing them for the Rapture….  

   …Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are
creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan
Sarandon movies.
   
   'I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just
can't support them,' an Ottawa resident said. 'How many art-history and English majors does one country need?'

The above may be tres amusing, but everyone knows that, since “mean” Stephen Harper pulled off a win (despite the best efforts of the media, especially the Ceeb, which claims that that “nice” Stephane Dion was done in by “Conservative propaganda”) and since it looks like the man who was shaped by friendships with such radicals as former Weatherguy Bill Ayers and Black supremacist Rev. Jeremiah Wright is all but a shoe-in come November, the story should really go something like this:

American borders have been flooded in recent days by Canadians attempting to escape the “mean” regime of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and reach safe haven in Barack Obama’s “nice” U.S. Since claiming victory in the November election, the President-elect has vowed to turn the  U.S., until now,the wallflower of world’s nations, into the most popular man on campus, that campus being Berkeley, California. That promise is attracting thousands of Canadians who like the cut of Obama's jib. Vegans, Green Shifters, zombies, starving artists, employees of the CBC who haven’t yet managed to land a job at al Jazeera, York University  professors,  “human rights” workers and others have all jumped at the chance to pull up stakes and move from “Meanland”—as they have come to describe their former home and native land—to “Shangi-L’O”—as they like to call Obama’s America.

“I couldn’t possibly continue to live in a country that balks at participating in a UN conference on racism,” said Clay Bernstein, a journalism professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University. “Why, that’s so…racist. Along with being imperialistic, colonialist and extremely hegemonic, to boot”

Rose Pushover, an active member of the Mennonite Church, would agree. “Stephen Harper is so mean. He would never have given Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a big hug, like that nice UN person did. We need to open doors and build bridges—and hugging people is an excellent way to start.”

Rose was convinced it was time to make the move when she heard that President-elect Obama would be establishing a new department—the Department of Hugs and Smiles—and that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had agreed to head it up…

“Oh sure, I’ll miss the Canadian brewski and my morning double-double at Timmie’s,” said Doug Thompson, a car mechanic from Windsor, who was persuaded to leave by his wife Fern, a yoga instructor. “But as long as I can get Hockey Night in Canada (that new theme song—sucks, eh!) on the rec room big screen, I’ll be okay.  Me? I don’t pay much attention to politics, but Fern says Stephen Harper thinks yoga is the Devil’s workout (or the work of the Devil, or he’s the Devil, or something), so when the missus said we had to go, we had to go.”…

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments

Zombie time: I’m something of a Grinch when it comes to Halloween. Not that I mind schlepping my kid around the neighbourhood to collect some teeny-weeny chocolate bars one night a year; he doesn’t like to eat them, but I sure do. And not that I don’t enjoy seeing the moppets gotten up as Little Mermaids and Batman (men?). It seems to me, though, that the whole season starts way too early—I spied Halloween paraphernalia in the Hallmark shop back in August—and that what should really be a kiddie event has been hijacked by grownups, many of whom are suffering from a clear case of arrested development. (I’ve noticed, too, that the festivities have become increasingly gruesome, in a Jeffrey Dahmer kind of way, and that the usual ghosties, witches, cobwebs and coffins are now accompanied by (and I’m not making this up, since I saw it with my own eyes at a “party” store) fake human internal organs packaged like grocery meat, and bloody, severed fingers packaged like McDonald’s fries. Gah-ross!

The Toronto Star has a story about some immature adults who are obsessed with Halloween and it's more grotesque aspects—and who seem to have styled themselves as a brand new victim group:

Yesterday the city of Toronto was taken over by zombies.

Cross-dressing zombies, vegan zombies, chef zombies, zombie babies, zombie dogs and zombies in love.

Zombies carrying rolling pins, heads of bloody cauliflower and signs that read, "I kissed a ghoul and I liked it," and "Zombies were people, too."

But if Toronto's annual zombie walk has any political statement to make, it is that, with a little fake blood and some creative accessories, anyone can reach beyond the political to a place where anything goes.

And (almost) anything did go as more than 1,000 undead Torontonians crawled out of Trinity Bellwoods Park and roamed the city yesterday afternoon.

"Here's the rules," a deep-throated zombie with a megaphone yelled, haltingly, over the crowd as departure time neared. "Given to us. By the Toronto. Police Department."

Boo!

"All zombies must stay on the sidewalk," continued Adam Pearson, a 1920s-era zombie with a brown fedora.

"If you're on the road. The cops. Are going. To be really mad. And send us back to our graves."

Ughh.

And out of the pit they stumbled.

Organizer Thea Munster expected a turnout of 2,000 to 3,000 for this 6th annual zombie walk.

But as she scanned the crowd leaving Trinity Bellwoods she counted roughly 1,000 zombies.

"Some of them are stuck in traffic," she said.

The zombie walk has become part of a bona fide subculture here in Toronto, where zombies roamed at Nuit Blanche, Evil Dead: The Musical took to the stage, and George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, is said to be filming his next zombie movie this fall.

Robin Frolic, a 28-year-old mother of two little zombies, thinks zombie culture is a way to confront the un-confrontable.

"You take something you're afraid of and it's not scary any more," she said.

What exactly are we afraid of?

Death, in general, and the possibility of an apocalyptic future where all social rules disintegrate, she said. "Dystopia."

Clutching a disembodied arm, a tea-party zombie named Julia Gordon has a similar outlook on zombies and the horror movies from which they've sprung.

"Becoming what you are afraid of is one way to come to acceptance," she said…

Wise words indeed, but, sadly, lost on one such as I since—confession time—I am a flagrant “zombiephobe.” I don’t care for the undead, the been-dead, or the living dead. My preference is for the alive and kicking—so complain to the thought cops about my zombie “hate” if you must, aggrieved zombies. It won’t change my mind about your flagrant immaturity and self-absorption.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:19 | link | comments (2)

Elites vs. the hoi polloi: The NYT’s token conservative pundit William Kristol endeavours to explain why the elitists so despise the vulgar, unwashed masses:

…Most of the recent mistakes of American public policy, and most of the contemporary delusions of American public life, haven’t come from an ignorant and excitable public. They’ve been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites.

Needless to say, the public’s not always right, and public opinion’s not always responsible. But as publics go, the American public has a pretty good track record.

In the 1930s, the American people didn’t fall — unlike so many of their supposed intellectual betters — for either fascism or Communism. Since World War II, the American people have resisted the temptations of isolationism and protectionism, and have turned their backs on a history of bigotry.

Now, the Pew poll I cited earlier also showed Barack Obama holding a 50 percent to 40 percent lead over John McCain in the race for the White House. You might think this data point poses a challenge to my encomium to the good sense of the American people.

It does. But it’s hard to blame the public for preferring Obama at this stage — given the understandable desire to kick the Republicans out of the White House, and given the failure of the McCain campaign to make its case effectively. And some number of the public may change their minds in the final two weeks of the campaign, and may decide McCain-Palin offers a better kind of change — perhaps enough to give McCain-Palin a victory.

The media elites really hate that idea. Not just because so many of them prefer Obama. But because they like telling us what’s going to happen. They’re always annoyed when the people cross them up. Pundits spent all spring telling Hillary Clinton to give up in her contest against Obama — and the public kept on ignoring them and keeping her hopes alive.

Why do elites like to proclaim premature closure — not just in elections, but also in wars and in social struggles? Because it makes them the imperial arbiters, or at least the perspicacious announcers, of what history is going to bring. This puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.

But as Gerald Ford said after assuming the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, ”Here the people rule.”…

One noticed much the same phenomenon during the Canadian election, when elitists, especially those in the media, tried to persuade the hoi polloi that Stephen Harper was a “mean” Conservative, and that his ""nice" leftist opponents, including Stephane Dion, whose campaign was in the dumpster, had a chance to make great gains, and maybe even unseat the meanies. Wishful thinking on the elitists’ part, a function of their inability to come to  terms with the idea of having a church-going Albertan as their Prime Minister: It simply doesn’t fit with their concept of who should be in charge---a smooth sophisticate like Barack Obama or Pierre E. Trudeau who knows which fork to use when dining with EUnuchs in Davos and who shares their Kumbaya-ish world view.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments (1)

Sony more afraid of offending Muslims than Christians: This isn’t the first time Sony has “apologized” for including an inappropriate religious reference in a video game. Last time it happened, though, an apology sufficed, and the company didn’t feel the need to withdraw the game and excise the offensive bits. From the Beeb (my bolds):

Entertainment company Sony has postponed the global release of a much-anticipated video game because of concerns that it may offend Muslims.

Copies of LittleBigPlanet are being recalled from shops worldwide after it emerged that a background music track contained two phrases from the Koran.

Sony says it apologises for any offence caused, and that a modified version is due to be released next month.

The game is expected to be a hit for the PlayStation 3 games console.

A contributor to an online games forum reported the presence of the phrases from the Koran, adding that mixing music and words from Islam's most holy text could be considered deeply offensive by Muslims.

'Sincerely apologise'

A statement on the LittleBigPlanet website said: "We're sure that most of you have heard by now that one of the background music tracks that was licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Koran.

"We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence this may have caused."

In June 2007, Sony apologised to the Church of England after setting scenes in a violent video game inside Manchester Cathedral. On that occasion the game was not withdrawn. ..

Manzoor Moghal, of the Muslim Forum think-tank, explained that words from the Koran should not be set to music because the words are seen to have come directly from God.

He added: "We must compliment Sony for taking decisive action by withdrawing these games immediately, and releasing a version that is not offensive to Muslims."

Obviously, Sony wasn’t worried that seething hoards of aggrieved Anglicans were going to set its headquarters on fire.

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

Turncoats: Victor Davis Hanson ponders the phenomenon of putative conservatives leaping onto the Bambi bandwagon:

This is becoming a very strange campaign.

On CNN recently both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the “old” noble McCain is gone — and a “new” nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops.

Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. New York Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a “cancer,” and he suggested that Obama’s instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well.

A couple of thoughts: the George Bush, Sr./Willie Horton campaign was far tougher; so were the Bush 2000/2004 efforts. If anything, McCain’s campaign is subdued in comparison to what we’ve seen on both sides in past years. Indeed, McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race.

Obama and his surrogates have repeatedly engaged in racial politics (as Bill Clinton lamented when in fury he denounced the “race card”). When there was never evidence that McCain was using race as a wedge issue, it was clear Obama most surely was — preemptively, on at least two occasions, warning Americans he would soon be the victim of opposition racial stereotyping.

His surrogates like Biden and those in the Senate continue to link legitimate worries about Obama’s past with racism. Second, for about 3 months all we’ve heard are references to McCain’s age, with adjectives and phrases like confused, can’t remember any more, disturbed, lost his bearings, etc.

Moreover, so far, McCain supporters have not broken into Biden’s email, or accused Biden of being a Nazi, or accused anyone of not bearing one of their own children, or photo-shopped grotesque pictures of Obama on the Internet (as in the Atlantic magazine case). I don’t think deranged McCain supporters in Hollywood or television almost daily are quoted as damning Obama in unusually crude terms. Nor are white racist ministers calling McCain a ‘messiah’ or McCain operatives fraudulently swarming voter registration centers. And on and on.

Instead I think what we are seeing again is an interesting phenomenon of the old nice/now mean McCain. A great many moderates and conservatives are worn out and tired of Bush and Bush hatred, the European furor, serial charges of racism and illiberalism, and finally, in their weariness, think that Obama will, in a variety of ways, just make all the ickiness go away — as if he will make all of us be liked abroad and end racial and red/blue fighting at home. They should ask themselves whether Jimmy Carter restored American popularity with his human rights campaigns, praise of left-wing dictators, dialogue during the hostage crisis (cf. “The Great Satan”), boasts of no more inordinate fear of communism, etc., or whether Obama, in his Trinity/Acorn/Pfleger years, brought racial healing and understanding to Chicago...

Silly turncoats. Don't they know that Bambi won't make the ickiness go away; he'll only bring on a whole new and entirely different kind of ickiness?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:38 | link | comments

 The Republican Jewish Coalition's latest ad: Those Jewish conservatives--they're so mean!:

 

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

Cool on “cold inserts”: A bunch of alleged jihadi-wannabes go on trial in New Jersey on Monday, and the L.A. Times, for one, disapproves of the tactic that landed them there:

…One of the original six defendants has pleaded guilty to lesser gun-related charges. Now, Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka, all in their 20s, potentially face life in prison, along with Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar.

All five are charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to murder military personnel [at Fort Dix], and all but Tatar also face weapons charges. They were arrested in May 2007 after two of the Duka brothers allegedly bought automatic weapons in a deal set up by Omar.

Legal experts say the trial will test the use of "cold inserts," informants who insinuate themselves into a group of suspects, usually for money or in exchange for making legal or immigration problems disappear. It is a controversial tactic that has been used with increasing frequency and some success since Sept. 11. Critics say it has the potential for far more abuse than the traditional law enforcement tactic of "flipping" someone who is already part of a conspiracy.

And if the cops had engaged in “flipping” (a tactic that’s unlikely to make much headway in cells comprised of ardent jihadi laddies) you can bet that “critics” would dub that tactic “controversial,” too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments (1)

Bambi’s moolah: He’s drowning in the stuff. From the Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama shattered, by a country mile, the record for dollars raised in a single month, pulling in $150 million in September, according to an e-mail the campaign sent out this morning.

"In the month of September, we raised over $150 million and added 632,000 new donors for a total 3.1 million donors to date," the campaign announced.

"The average donation for the month was less than $100."

The previous record, also set by Obama, was $67 million.

The number explains why Obama has been able to saturate the airwaves in swing states, and afford luxuries such as the half hour infomercials he plans to run later this month.

It also answers definitively the question of whether it was strategically shrewd to forgo public funds.

Republican National Committee officials have expressed concerns about the potential for abuse with small dollar fundraising on this scale. They have noted examples of fake names used to donate through the Internet. The Obama campaign has said it has vetted donations as fast as possible and would return any questionable contributions.

The number of questionable contributions identified at this point is tiny in the face of the kind of money the campaign reported today.

Plouffe describes the haul as evidence of the power of ordinary people.

"When Barack entered this race, he put his faith in the power of ordinary supporters like you coming together and building a movement for change from the bottom up," his e-mail said.

"That's exactly how we got this far -- and you should feel proud of all we have accomplished together."

Yeah, I’m sure it’s the “ordinary people” who dug deep into their pockets and sent Bambi the nickels and dimes that added up to the whopping $67 mill—ordinary Joes like, say, “Joe” Soros.

Update: And speaking of whopping, despite the oodles of shekels, Bambi's "whopping" lead has slipped to a scant three points. Time to hit up "Joe" Soros for some more cash, I think.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments

David Warren’s message to the power-hungry thought cops: Get your damn fool mitts off the Internet!:

The assault on free speech and press in Canada continues on many bewildering fronts. While our "human rights" kangaroo courts have suffered recent setbacks, from having overreached in their attempts to prosecute mainstream conservative journalists, their retreat is an illusion. In Ontario and other provinces, the system of "human rights" star chambers is being quickly expanded, along with the Kafkaesque investigative machinery that lies behind them. They continue their daily, quasi-legal work of undermining a free society, by suppressing "politically incorrect" thought, speech, and behaviour -- under the radar of the mainstream media.

"Human rights" tribunals have been, recently, the preferred means of the radical left to advance activist agendas by extra-democratic means. It is a way for them to get around the limitations of legitimate courts, in which their chosen victims still enjoy the ancient protections of the common law -- in which both laws and precedents are fixed and researchable, due process is honoured, the truth is a defence, and the very idea of "human rights" has not been inverted by Orwellian Newspeak.

But the method of using regulatory commissions to silence opposition to an activist agenda is hardly restricted to "human rights."

The latest power grab is through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the antiquated regulatory authority for broadcasting and telephony. It was established in its present form, with a social-engineering mandate to promote "Canadian unity," by the Trudeau government in 1976. Such decisions as its recent one to deny broadcast rights to two Ottawa-area Christian radio stations, 11 days after approving a new "Canadian-content" pornographic TV channel in Alberta, are typical of the commissioners' judgment.

This week, the CRTC announced its intention to break the promise made by its then-chairperson, Françoise Bertrand, in 1999: "Our message is clear. We are not regulating any portion of the Internet." In a "notice of consultation and hearing" on Wednesday, the commission suddenly gave Dec. 5 as its deadline for submissions about expanding the CRTC's jurisdiction into "new media."

That this announcement was made by the CRTC, rather than by Parliament, is an indication of the degree to which the CRTC is a law unto itself.

In the time-honoured, mealy-mouthed way, the CRTC will soon be explaining that its intentions are innocent, that it is merely trying to keep up with the convergence of broadcast and Internet technologies. Only a naive fool will believe that. The regulator has created a strict broadcasting environment in which Christian and all other views that do not conform to political correctness are effectively kept under siege. The left hungers for the ability to create a similar tightly regulated environment on the Internet, to bring the free reporting and opinions of bloggers and other citizen-journalists under its ideological jackboot.

The citizens' response to this imposture should be short and sharp: "We were not born yesterday. We know your game, we know where you are going with it. Do not try to insult our intelligence. This is Canada, this is a free country, and to keep it free we must stand on guard against commissars like thee. Take your filthy stinking hands off the Internet."…

Oh, and while you’re at it, “bite me.”

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

Video dhimmitude: Sony grovels after receiving complaints that its new game is blasphemous.  From Islam Online:

CAIRO — The world's giant video game maker Sony has withdrawn millions of copies of a new computer game after drawing fire from Muslims for mixing music with verses of the Noble Qur'an, reported The Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday, October 18.

"We sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused," Patrick Seybold, director of communications for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said.

Sony's LittleBigPlanet game, scheduled to hit the markets next Friday, features a mixture of a song with two verses of the Noble Qur'an.

The game Sony's most significant PS3 game till date.

In LittleBigPlanet, players control small characters nicknamed Sackboy, owing to their material and appearance, each of which can run and jump, as well as hang onto and drag objects.

Players use these abilities in a number of ways: to play and explore the environments that come with the game, which feature platforming elements such as jumping, pushing, grabbing and running.

To their own content, players place stickers into levels, as well as using the level editor to create, destroy, edit and manipulate levels and finally to share creations.

Offense

The new game has drawn fire from Muslims as offensive.

"We consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Qur'an deeply offending," a game player said on an Internet messageboard.

"We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately."

This is not the first time to withdraw a game from the markets for offending Muslims.

Japanese Nintendo has altered post-release shipments of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" after discovering the game featured Islamic chanting.

Last month, a computer game featuring an American hero sent to "wipe out the Muslim race" has sparked outrage among in Britain.

British Muslims were furious over a corporate war game in which men in camouflaged military gear battle an enemy distinguishable only by shemaghs, a traditional men headdress in several Arab countries.

Looks like the kafirs may be losing the virtual jihad, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:51 | link | comments

In defence of an ordinary Joe: The normally tongue-in-cheeky iowahawk suspends his rollicking satire for a moment in order to pen this cri de coeur:

First, a pre-emptive apology for the intentional non-humor to follow. I promise that all future non-humor will be strictly unintentional.

We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. --  obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's  right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's