scaramouche

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

A quote for New Year’s Eve: From Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A
biography of the First Amendment, by Anthony Lewis:

More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. They can criticize the White House or air the secrets of the bedroom with little fear of punishment. This extraordinary freedom is based on just fourteen words in our Constitutions: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.

Here in Canada, we deride those fourteen words, labouring under the delusion that we
can somehow “balance” free speech with “the thought we hate”—and that the
effort to do so makes us inherently more tolerant and virtuous than our American
neighbours.

As someone who has come to understand that free speech is the cornerstone of a free
society, and that all our much-vaunted “balance” has done is to give some people the
power to decide what others can and cannot say—the modus operendi in such unfree
jurisdictions as Saudi Arabia and Iran—I look upon those remarkable fourteen words
with a mixture of longing and awe.

Yes, that’s right, folks. I’m that peculiar type of Canadian who “suffers” from a bad
case of First Amendment envy.

And on that note, I'd like to wish all my readers a Happy New Year. When next we
connect, it will be ’09.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:08 | link | comments

Overrated: Noam Chomsky. Also, Harold Pinter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments

History maven hails Palestinian “nerve”: A “fan” of the Jews adds his two shekels’
worth in a letter to the National Post:

Irrationally, Palestinians first refused to give up their lands to create a homeland for Jewish refugees fleeing European anti-Semitism. Then they stubbornly insisted they were a "people" even when former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir informed them they were not. With preposterous temerity, Palestinian refugees then wanted to return home, and for decades refused to renounce their homeland or grant legitimacy to the state that usurped it.

And recently, these arrogant natives even held elections and expected the world to actually respect them. Now they are firing homemade rockets at the mightiest military machine in the Middle East, which is trying to starve them into submission.

Such intolerable chutzpah!

John Dirlik, Pointe-Claire, Que.

Reading John, an obvious history buff (of one particular version of history, anyway), the
word that springs to mind is “proportion”. As in, the Palestinians make up a tiny
proportion of an immense Islamic ummah—57, count ‘em, 57 nations strong; more
than one billion souls. The Jews, on the other hand, lay claim to a few puny acres,
a scant proportion of the vast expanse of Arab/Muslim lands in the region, and they've
been fighting—and dying—for those same few acres from the get-go. They’ve
been forced to do so because members of the ummah, including the Palestinians, cannot
bear the idea of Jews being sovereign over any piece of land, no matter how small
the proportion, if it's been previously earmarked for Allah (even if—and here’s where
history comes in again—the Jews were there first).

And, oh, yeah, John, forgive my intolerable chutzpah, but I would be remiss if I
didn’t point out that the Palestinian “people” already have a “homeland”. It’s called
Jordan.

Update: David Solway explains where John is coming from:

Most observers have been completely taken in, not only by British legerdemain during the Mandate period and United Nations jugglery, but by chauvinistic Arab propaganda like [Palestinian poet Mourid] Barghouti’s. The Palestinian narrative has also been promoted by the ignorance or duplicity of Western intellectuals, which helped fertilize the Palestinian identity in order to counter the historical thrust of Zionism, accomplishing its purpose by a cynical rewriting of history.

Update: Melanie Phillips cuts to the chase:

The issue of Israel sits at the very apex of the fight to defend civilisation. Those who wish to destroy western civilisation need to destroy the Jews, whose moral precepts formed its foundation stones. The deranged hatred of the Jews lies at the core of the Islamists’ hatred of America, the ‘infidel’ west and modernity, and is the reason why they wish to destroy Israel. Unless people in the west understand that Israel’s fight is their own fight, they will be on the wrong side of the war to defend not just the west but civilisation in general.

  Update: History maven Elmo bloviates, compares Jews to Nazis. (How original).
  (h/t: BCF)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments (1)

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Kooky Jim connects the (non-existent) Jewish dots: Aside from religion,
what does Israel cleaning out a nest of jihadi vipers have to do with abominable
Wall Street scammer Bernie Madoff? The answer: nada, squat, bupkes, rien.

Of course, crazy James Wolcott of glitzy advertising vehicle, Vanity Fair, sees it
otherwise. In his VF blog he hyperventilates that

In angry retaliation for the house arrest of Bernie Madoff, Israel has launched a hellacious air assault against Hamas in Gaza that errs so far on the side of disproportionality that its running up the fatality score may become self-defeating.

Yeah, I’m sure the whole Bernie thing must have been front and centre in the minds
of Israel’s military strategists when they were deciding on airstrikes. Or at least front
and centre in Walcott’s mind, anyway, when he heard about them and decided to
draw connections where none exist. (You can just see the cogs of his mind spinning
furiously: “Madoff is Jewish; Israel’s Jewish. Ergo, Must. Be. Related.”)

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:47 | link | comments

You want “proportionate”? You got it: On the JWR site Jonathan Mark
suggests some “proportionate” ways to deal with Hamas:

I condemn Israel's disproportionate attack on Hamas because, so far, it has only lasted four days and I would like to see a proportionate response that terrifies Hamas for seven years, the years that have filled Sderot and neighboring towns with nightmares, death, amputations and trauma coming from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.

Perhaps a proportionate response would have Gaza's leaders fearful of being killed every day for the next two years, as Gilad Shalit has been terrified of torture and death every day for the last two years in his solitary Gaza dungeon.

A proportionate response would have Hamas mothers and fathers as fearful for their children's lives as Shalit's mother and father have been fearful for Gilad's life.

A proportionate response would have Gaza's children crying for their mommies and daddies, the way at a Hamas pageant earlier in December a Palestinian actor dressed as Shalit got down on his knees, mock-begging in Hebrew for his Ima and Abba while the Gaza crowds laughed.

A proportionate response would so intimidate Hamas that they will grovel and, as a "gesture," send cocoa and jam into Sderot, the way Israel has groveled in response to rockets from Hamas, sending cocoa and jam into Gaza. Imagine Churchill sending cocoa and jam into Berlin as a humanitarian gesture after - during - the bombing of London.

A proportionate response would be one that will convince Hamas there is no military solution, no solution but surrender. They can then call surrender a "peace process," if they like, just as the mostly unanswered attacks on Jews have convinced some Jews that there is no military solution but surrender to any and all demands. They suggest a euthanasia by the euphemism of "peace process," that Israel become what some are already planning to call "Canaan," a non-Jewish state of all its citizens…

Let it be said to Israelis and Jews everywhere, in the words of Churchill: "You have enemies? Good. It means you've stood up for something." But remember: A war (and Hamas has repeatedly said this is war) is never won if you are disproportionately kind to someone who wants to destroy you and, failing in that, demands with indignation that you not destroy him.

Notice how the concept of “proportionality” never enters into discussions of, say, the
recent genocide (still in progress) of 2,000,000 people, largely at the hands of Arabs, in
Sudan. I guess since that number represents but a fraction of the entire Sudanese
population—a small “proportion,” if you will—the “proportionality” of it all is irrelevant.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:22 | link | comments (1)

And speaking of disproportionate chutzpah...: Rod Blagojavitch, the potty-mouthed thug who governs the state of Illinois (for now), is going name a replacement for Obama's senate seat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:14 | link | comments

Rosett on the "d" word: If anything's "disproportionate" in the Middle East at the moment, writes Claudia Rosett, it's Ahmadinejad's display of chutzpah:

If there’s anything “disproportionate” about violence in the Middle East these days, it’s the extent to which Iran’s regime stirs up big trouble and not only gets away with it, but casts itself as an aggrieved party. We saw it when Iranian-backed Hezbollah launched a war out of Lebanon against Israel in 2006 — and Iran blamed the conflict on Israel. We’ve seen it in recent years with Iranian-backed terrorism in Iraq — where Iran blamed America.

We’re seeing it again right now, in the fighting between Israel and Gaza. Iran abets the Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza, and who have been firing rockets by the thousands into Israel. Now that Israel is defending itself by fighting back against Hamas, Iran’s Fars News Agency reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israeli leaders hauled before the International Criminal Court. According to the Fars article, “leading Iranian lawyers” are to be enlisted in this effort, and “a special message” is to be sent to heads of “other countries” (presumably other countries inclined to cater to Iran’s mullocracy, such as Venezuela — currently one of the 18 members of the International Criminal Court bureau “elected” by the ICC’s assembly of member states).

Where did Ahmadinejad get the idea that such a stunt, proposed by his rogue, terrorist-sponsoring regime, might pay off?

Maybe he got it from the UN (progenitor of the ICC), where Iran is in violation of five Security Council resolutions meant to stop its nuclear bomb program, but is nonetheless allowed to sit on the governing boards of a slew of major UN agencies including the WFP, the FAO, UNEP, UNICEF and the flagship UN Development Program (more on this in my Forbes.com column earlier this month on “Iran’s Power at the United Nations“). Maybe Ahmadinejad was encouraged in his notions by the dingbat utterances of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who on matters such as Gaza and Israel is promoting a global order in which terrorist enclaves deserve more rights than their democratic prey. Such are the realms of genuine “disproportion.”...

Update: From bad to verse:

Few ideas are more subject to distortion

That the notion of Israel’s “disproportion”.

It appears to imply

That more Jews have to die--

A disgusting “proportion” contortion.

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

The matchmaker: Former U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony "The Dhimmi" Zinni is advising the President-elect to "engage Hamas".

And after the "engagement"--what? The shotgun wedding of jihadis and infidels? Don't virtually 100% of such unions end up in sharia courts?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:38 | link | comments

Jack’s balancing act: Canada’s self-righteous socialists, helmed by Little Jackie
Layton, issued the following statement re Gaza (my bolds):

Canada's New Democrats condemn the unacceptable escalation of violence in the Middle East causing death and injury to so many civilians in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

It is a tragedy that hundreds of civilians have again become the victims of violence in this conflict. The continuing airstrikes by Israel on civilians in the Gaza strip and the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are serving to compound the existing civilian disaster and further harm chances for a negotiated peace.

We call on the Government of Canada to immediately call for an end to the aerial bombing of Gaza, the blockade of aid to civilians and the indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel. Indeed, the government must urge both sides to agree to end the current hostilities immediately, reinstate the ceasefire and return to the peace process.

The Government of Canada should also work to ensure that medical and food aid is provided to the civilians of Gaza through U.N. agencies.

New Democrats believe that Canada must pursue a balanced approach to the Middle East crisis, in keeping with Canadians' deep desire for peace in the Middle East and are ready to work with the new administration in the U.S. towards a lasting peace in the region. This goal cannot be achieved while citizens in such large numbers are being killed and endangered.

On one side of the scale: the world’s one and only Jewish state, slated for annihilation
by Islam’s hellacious holy warriors. On the other side: the holy warriors.

On balance, Jack, you’re full of crap.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:44 | link | comments

Egyptian protester's "solution": Same as Adolf's--a final one (h/t Jihad Watch):

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

Go, Jews!: After the wimpitude, lassitude and general stupidtude of the Oslo era,
it’s heartening to find that, despite the best efforts of Israel’s delusion, suicidal,
self-loathing ”peace”-pushers (who convinced themselves without any evidence
whatsoever that endless concessions, appeasement and turning a blind eye to the
enemy’s true intentions was the way to go; see Kenneth Levin's The Oslo Syndrome
for a full account of Israel's betrayal by its own elites), the Jewish state still has some
balls. Here’s how contentions’ Peter Wehner sees it:

Israel’s overwhelming air assault against Hamas, which may be a prelude to a ground assault, is welcome news to those who support and deeply admire the Jewish state and who believe the way to defeat militant Islam is to confront it rather than to appease it.

Despite the fact that Hamas has provoked this response from Israel by directing rocket attacks against Israel, that Israel has shown almost super-human patience until now in not responding with force, and that Israel is now exercising her elementary right of self-defense, we have seen the ritual and stupid denunciation of Israel from the United Nations and parts of the Arab world, from France to Turkey to elsewhere. The Bush Administration, to its great credit, is focusing criticism where it belongs: on the aggression and malevolence of Hamas.

There are, I think, two things to take away from what is unfolding in Gaza right now that are contrary to conventional wisdom. The first, laid out in an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, is that the sine qua non of an authentic “peace process” is a decisive Israeli victory over Hamas. Israelis cannot be expected to pursue further steps for peace — and her efforts at achieving peace are by now almost too numerous to count — if Gaza remains a de facto enemy and terrorist state.

Events in Gaza also remind us that the popular Western emphasis on concessions leading to peace, is in many instances exactly the opposite of the truth...

Exactly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:47 | link | comments

Names in Britainistan: Nationally, “Jack” was the most popular name for baby
boys born in the UK this past year (followed by Oliver, Harry, Charlie and Alfie), but
regionally--for example, in the cathedral city of Peterborough--another name has
taken the lead:

TOPPING the charts as the most popular name given to bouncing baby boys born this year in Peterborough is Mohammed, a testament to the city's diverse cultural population.

The traditional Muslim name hit the number one spot for the second year running above names such as Jack, Thomas and Harry in the list compiled by Peterborough Register Office.

Mohammed, the name of the seventh century prophet who founded the Islamic faith, entered the national Top 20 chart for the first time in 2004 and continues to be a popular choice for parents naming their newborns.

Interim superintendent registrar Rosalind Yardy (53) said: "It certainly does demonstrate the diversity of the communities in the city. I think next year we're going to see different spelling variations highlighting the cultural percentage of the population in Peterborough, and I think we'll see more European names."

Clinching the title of favourite girls' name is Lily, a feminine name from the word for the white flower.

The girls' names in the top three spots were close contenders – Lily won by two and Isabelle pipped Grace to the second spot by three.

Ms Yardy said: "I think people are starting to prefer traditional names – I don't think they're being swayed so much by celebrity names.

"I imagine parents are thinking more about the child having the name not only as a babe in arms, but also as a child and going into adulthood.

"It shows less people are jumping on the celebrity bandwagon and are thinking more about their choices."

Dropping from the fifth position held for the last two years, the name Joshua has slid to 15th place in this year's charts.

Jon and Donna Sandall, from Werrington, Peterborough, fell in love with the name and gave it to their son born on October 3, after months of searching for the perfect name.

Press officer Jon (26) said: "We spent ages thinking about the name, buying books and speaking to people who'd had kids recently.

"Tradition wasn't a massive factor for us, nor were the Bible's religious connotations, we just liked the sound of it.

"Although it's sort of old-fashioned now, it seems to have come back into vogue."

He added: "It's a name he will have for the rest of his life, so picking it was quite a complex thing.

"We also liked the name Jack, but we knew it was an extremely popular name and didn't want him to go to school and be in a classroom with 10 other Jacks, so we settled with it as a middle name."…

I hear “Hussein” is quite popular.

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

Death cult’s triple play: Barry Rubin details the one, two, three stages of Hamas’s
strategy:

Option A: The Ceasefire

Hamas ends a ceasefire giving it the peace and quiet needed to build up its army and consolidate its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel would deliver supplies as long as there weren't attacks. From a Western-style pragmatic standpoint this is a great situation.

But Hamas isn't a Western-style pragmatic organization. Peace and quiet is its enemy not only because of its ideology--the deity commands it to destroy Israel--or its self-image--as heroic martyrs--but also because battle is needed to recruit the masses for permanent war and unite the population around it.

Hamas has no program of improving the well-being of the people or educating children to be doctors, teachers, and engineers. Its platform has but one plank: war, war, endless war, sacrifice, heroism, and martyrdom until total victory is achieved.

Thus, it ends the ceasefire.

Option B: The Rockets

And so Hamas ends the ceasefire and rains rockets down on Israel, accompanied by mortars and the occasional attempt at a cross-border ground attack. Israel does nothing.

Hamas crows: you are weak, you are confused, your are helpless. Come, people, arise and destroy the paper tiger! And so more people are recruited, West Bank Palestinians look on with admiration at those fighting the enemy, and the Arabic-speaking world is impressed.

Remember 2006, they say. It is just like Hizballah. Israel is helpless against the rockets. Why don't our governments fight Israel? Let's overthrow them and bring brave, fighting Islamist governments to power.

Option C: The Media

But then Israel does fight back. Its planes bomb military targets which have been deliberately put amidst civilians. If there is a high danger of hitting civilians, Israel doesn't attack. But there is a line below which risk that will be taken, and rightly so.

The smug smiles are wiped off the faces of Hamas leaders. Yet they have one more weapon, their reserves, they call up the media.

Those arrogant, heroic, macho victors of yesterday--literally yesterday as the process takes only a few hours--are transformed into pitiful victims. Casualty figures are announced by Hamas, and accepted by reporters who are not on the spot. Everyone hit is, of course, a civilian. No soldiers here.

And the casualties are disproportionate: Hamas has arranged it that way. If necessary, sympathetic photographers take pictures of children who pretend to be injured, and once they are published in Western newspapers these claims become fact.

Yet there is a problem here. Rockets and mortars may win wars; newspaper articles really don't. Of course, too, material damage is inflicted that sets back Gaza's material development.

Hamas doesn't care about that, but by acting in a way to ensure the destruction of their material base, Hamas does weaken itself. Precisely because Israeli attacks are focussed on military targets, Hamas is weakened…

I wonder how the war will affect Canada’s efforts to help plan Gaza’s infrastructure.
Seem to me we could go one of two ways: spend even more money on the jihadi
enterprise (since the infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, and will require lots
more “planning” if it’s to be rebuilt), or resolve to keep our shekels in our pockets
until such time as Gaza is no longer a festering nest of jihadi vipers.

Knowing how Canada’s international development agency, CIDA, views the world,
I’d have to put my money on the former.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

That damnable “d” word: Melanie Phillips disses “disproportionate”:

…If anything has been ‘disproportionate’, it’s been Israel’s refusal to take such action during the years when its southern citizens have been terrorised by rockets and other missiles raining down on them from Gaza. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands for so long in such circumstances. But whenever Israel defends itself militarily, its response is said to be ‘disproportionate’. The malice, ignorance and sheer idiocy of this claim is refuted here comprehensively by Dore Gold, who points out that Israel’s actions in Gaza are wholly in accordance with international law. This permits Israel to launch such an operation to prevent itself from being further attacked. Moreover, it defines ‘disproportionate’ force as when force becomes excessive if it is employed for another purpose, like causing unnecessary harm to civilians.

But Israel has demonstrably not been targeting civilians but Hamas terrorists. Despite the wicked impression given by the media, most of the casualties in this operation have been Hamas operatives. Even Hamas itself has admitted that the vast majority of sites Israel has hit were part of their military infrastructure. UNRWA officials in the Gaza Strip have put the number of deaths at 310, of whom 51 were civilians. The rest were Hamas terrorists.

Certainly, some civilian casualties are regrettably inevitable in any such situation – but particularly so in Gaza, since Hamas has deliberately sited its terrorist infrastructure amongst the civilian population.

Those who scream ‘disproportionate’ think – grotesquely -- that not enough Israelis have been killed. But that’s in part because Israel cares enough about human life to construct air raid shelters where its beleaguered civilians take cover; Hamas deliberately stores its rockets and other apparatus of mass murder below apartment blocks and in centres of population in order to get as many of its own people killed as possible as a propaganda weapon. Hamas is thus guilty of war crimes not just against Israelis but against the Palestinian people. Yet on this there is – fantastically, surreally – almost total silence in the west, which blames Israel instead. Historical resonances, anyone?

In any event, if by ‘disproportionate’ is meant merely an imbalance in the numbers who are killed on either side, this is actually inescapable if the infrastructure of aggression is to be defeated. Many more died in Afghanistan than in the 9/11 attacks; yet that war was necessary to destroy the Taleban. Many more died in Nazi Germany or Japan than in Britain or America during World War Two. Yet the scale of the Allied offensive was necessary to defeat Nazism and prevent yet more carnage amongst its designated victims.

The disgusting fifth column in the Gaza conflict, however, is – as ever – the western media. It was telling to witness the sight of British TV camera crews heading out to Israel on Saturday night. The point was that they weren’t already there – because their editors had not thought it necessary to send them to cover the resumed rocket attacks on southern Israel. Indeed, hardly anyone in Britain is aware that Israel is only now finally responding to some 6000 rocket attacks since 2001, with a fifty per cent increase after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. British journalists were only dispatched to the battle zone when Israel finally retaliated – because, appallingly, it is only Jewish violence that is ever the story.

As a result, Israel is painted – wholly unjustly and untruthfully -- as the aggressor…

My theory is that the Jewish people exist as a test to the world—a test of man's
humanity and forebearance—and this is yet another occasion on which much of the
world, and most of the media (more than 23,000 links, and counting, re Gaza on google
news this morning), get a failing grade.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments

Monday, 29 December 2008

Quote of the day: From Caroline Glick’s preface to her book The Shackled Warrior:

As the years have passed, I have repeatedly been struck by the double chains that shackle Israel and the free world in contending with the war being waged against us. We blind ourselves by refusing to recognize the nature of the war. And, once blinded, we deny ourselves the tools necessary to fight to victory.

Over the years, the image of Samson, the biblical judge, the unwilling, shackled, and ultimately blinded warrior, has often entered my mind. Samson wished to be seduced by his enemies and ignore his responsibilities to his people and to his God. And when he fought, although mighty, he was manacled and so his fight hurt him as well, and ultimately, led to his own demise. How different his life might have been, and how different the fate of the Children of Israel might have looked, had he not been so inclined toward denial!

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

The short-sightedness of playing Robin Hood: Charles Adler 'splains the nuances of redistributing the wealth from the productive to those who are sittin' around and collecting benefits (i.e. Obamanomics).

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:37 | link | comments

Not so magic: Here's my musical tribute to Iggy and the Stooges, to the tune of a 60s folk song about a boy and his mythical beast (or is it his LSD?):

Poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton: that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

Together they had grumbled that Harper was on top.

“He’s mean,” said they, “Let’s make him pay;

His leadership must stop!”

Dion went on the TV--he looked confused and weak.

Michaelle prorogued the Parliament when things were looking bleak.

Poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton, that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

A coalition lingers, but not so S. Dion.

One fine day we looked away and--poof!--Stephane was gone.

Ignatieff is waiting to see what lies in store,

And if the budget doesn’t please you’ll hear “Almighty” roar.

Oh, poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton, that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:06 | link | comments

Egregious anti-Zionism in the Globe: I thought the Globe and Mail’s man in the
Middle East, Mark MacKinnon, was unbelievably biased in favour of the Palestinians,
but his (one hopes temporary) replacement, Patrick Martin, is, if you can believe it,
even worse. Here’s Martin’s repellent article on the Gaza fracas, the lead story in
today’s paper. (“ISRAEL’S SHOCK AND AWE” screams the headline, while the
subhead adds, helpfully,“With its enemies emboldened and its doctrine of deterrence
in doubt, Israel’s siege of Gaza aims to reassert its power to intimidate”. My word.
Exactly when did the Globe and Mail turn into a clone of al Jazeera?)

And here’s the shock and awe of my angry retort:

Patrick Martin’s claim that Hamas’s “repeated rockets attacks posed no existential threat” to “powerful” Israel is risible, to say the least. The missiles, which for years have terrorized ordinary people living in southern Israel, are emblematic of the regional jihad, or Islamic holy war, that aims to wipe out the Jewish state. That effort is supported by Riyadh and Tehran—Gaza being the only place in the world where these bitter rivals have come together. Hamas’s ongoing bombardment, and the Israelis’ apparent lack of resolve to do anything of substance about it, sent a compelling message to supporters of the jihad that the despised “Zionist entity” had lost the will to defend itself, and it was only a matter of time before it would be defeated.

The Gaza attack is Israel’s way of sending the Hamas jihadis and their state sponsors an entirely different message--one that should serve to inspire everyone who cherishes Western freedom and democracy. The message: We refuse to let terrorists set the agenda, and if you push us, we will fight back.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments (3)

Gazans heart the jihad: Think the fact that the jihadis have goaded the Jews into bombing their territory has prompted the locals to have second thoughts about their leaders? Think again. "Ordinary" Palestinians still love their Hamas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments

Pro-jihadis rally in Toronto: It got a bit fractious yesterday afternoon as the seethers
mixed it up with the Zionists. From the Toronto Sun:

Hussein Mallah is only 14, but his display of outrage matched that of any adult.

The teen was one of 800 Palestinian supporters who rallied for hours in downtown Toronto to denounce this weekend's Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip that killed 280 people and injured hundreds more.

Flags, posters and insults were hurled outside the Israeli Consulate at Avenue Rd. and Bloor St. W yesterday afternoon as Palestinian supporters vented their anger about the Jewish state's air assaults.

"I could be at home playing video games, but this is more important -- innnocent (sic) people are being killed every single day," Mallah said.

"I was watching the news yesterday morning and my mom was crying and I asked her why she was crying ... she said, 'More than 200 are being killed'," he yelled, while tightly gripping his hand-made poster bearing the words: "Throw a shoe at Israel, too."

Many children, like Mallah, were seen in the crowd screaming their support for the Palestinian territory.

"They don't have food; they don't have any weapons; they don't have anything ... all our friends are there ... My family's from Palestine. I want them to stop killing," said Jenan Shalaby, 8, of Hamilton.

The Palestinian supporters greatly outnumbered pro-Israeli demonstrators who stood across the street from the consulate.

The two factions hurled insults until Palestinian supporters ran towards the pro-Israeli group. Participants from both sides engaged in face-to-face rows.

"I hate them and they hate us," said pro-Palestinian supporter Maha Elharake, 40, originally from Lebanon.

"I was in Beirut in 2006 when 5,000 people died from (airstrikes) ... all we have to defend ourselves there are stones," she said.

Demonstrators later marched to the American Consultate on University Avenue, at Armoury St.

"The last 48 hours, Israel attacked Hamas weapon depots, training camps and missile launchers. They have the right to defend themselves from terrorists," said York University student, Jonathan Jaffit, 24, who almost tossed his shoe at the crowd.

In Montreal, meanwhile, 300 protesters calling on the Canadian government to condemn Israel's actions. Another rally was held in Ottawa.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has made clear the federal government believes Israel has a right to defend itself.

Better keep your eyes on Mallah. He sounds like he could be shahid in the making.

Update: Some events the seethers are not protesting: Virgin-seeker in Afghanistan blows up self, slew of children; 300 Bangladeshis drown after fellow Muslims abandon them; Taliban prevent 40,000 girls from going to school.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments (2)

’09 will be divine: Victor Davis Hanson predicts that the coming year will be
qualitatively better than the one that’s wrapping up:

By July, we will come to feel that 2009 will be one of the most upbeat years in our history, as what used to be the news media∗ begins to get behind America and report on all the mysteriously wonderful things that are suddenly taking place.

All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that, by historical levels, unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. "Depression" will transmogrify into "recession" which in turn by July will be a "downturn" and by year next an "upswing" on its way to boom times.

Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President's neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.

As we watch the innocent die from natural mayhem, it will be due to the breakdown of local responders who now suddenly kill people, not federal inaction--except perhaps for an occasional few Bush federal holdovers that have not yet been rooted out. Human nature, of course, now will be seen more culpable, more selfish, as in needlessly resisting wise and caring federal interventions, rather than being inherently noble but shunned by an uncaring Washington. Yes, when dikes collapse and planes collide on crowed runways, it will be due to a cruel and unpredictable nature, or intrinsic design flaws, or improper local use and maintenance, or the past President's nefarious legacy, not current government policies. (But if you still must bash the government, it will be wise to do it in 1950s style of inattentive state and local officials, prone to regional and tribal prejudices, blocking the infinite wisdom of a caring federal government.)

Some military action abroad could be necessary--and necessarily reported on as measured and reluctant, rather than cowboyish and gratuitous. European whining will be a result of miscommunications or the Euros' unfair caricatures of Americans, not Bush's alienation of allies. If radical Islam strikes, it will be, well, radical again and sometimes even dangerous, not a figment of neocon pipe dreams…

Sounds wonderful. I can hardly wait.

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

Sunday, 28 December 2008

You can take your “proportionality,” dear world, and stick it in your….: Marty
Peretz on what works—and what doesn’t—when it comes to dealing with crazed
jihadis who refuse to knock it off with the rockets:

…The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn't seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness - as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian "liberation" movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews. At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. Within hours, Nicolas Sarkozy was already taking up the cudgel of French righteousness and pronouncing the actually quite sober Israeli response to the continuous war on its borders "disproportionate." Enough. What would be proportionate, oh, so so proportionate apparently, are those tried-and-true half measures to contain Hamas that have never worked. Remember that in 2005 Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians waiting and hoping that they would make something of a civil society of their territory, civil for their own and civil to their neighbors. It was not to be.

There is only small likelihood that Hamas has learned its lesson. These Sunni fanatics are still supported by the Shi'a fanatics in Iran. And they are also backed by the House of Saud which cannot be seen to be turning its back on Sunni piety. Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied. In both Lebanon and Iraq, they are the bankrollers (and more than bankrollers) of hostile sectarian forces engaged in killing each other. Thus, Hamas has still some rope with which to play. Cash, after all, is a great deluder.

The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."

“Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied”: So
touching. The jihadis should be thanking the Jews for bringing them together this way.

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

Typical: Just heard on local Ceeb radio that Palestinians in Toronto with be protesting the "genocide" taking place in Gaza. (Nothing on the Ceeb site about it, but here's a report from AM 640)

Yes, that's right: Jews finally doing what it takes to stop crazed jihadis from bombarding Israelis with rocket fire--3000 in the past year; 200 alone in the weeks following the end of what was laughably called a "ceasefire--is a "genocide".

Nice of the Ceeb to validate such deranged spin.

Update: The Ottawa protest, organized by a Palestinian organization that can't wait to howl and whinge about Israel's "war crimes," is going to convene in front of a human rights monument.

Kind of ironic, no, given that Hamas jihadis don't accord kafirs equal rights?

Update: Pro-Hamas forces who turn out to protest in Toronto today are going to have a bit of a challenge. The city has just issued a wind warning as wicked gales blow all about.

You don't suppose someone "up there" is trying to tell them something?

Update: Canadian Arab Federation news release--"Stop the massacres. Let Gaza live." Yes, Hamas, why don't you let Gaza live?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments (1)

How the Saudi press deals with “insolence”: It stifles it a.s.a.p., as per this post
on the MEMRI blog:

Abdallah bin Bakhit, Saudi liberal and columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, stated in an interview on Al-Arabiya that "the time has passed" for the Saudi religious police, and that it should be abolished.

He said that the organization employs extremists who reject cinema, resist women's driving, and encourage polygamy.

In response, Al-Jazirah banned Bin Bakhit from continuing to write for it.

Source: Alarabiya.net, December 24, 2008

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

More proof (as if any is needed) that the jihadi rotters care nothing about the lives of their own people: The Beeb reports that Hamas is refusing to allow the injured to cross over into Egypt for treatment. That's because their people are worth more to them dead than alive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:52 | link | comments

   Party poopers: Arab News reports that some chicks and kids were having fun in the
   Magic Kingdom—a big no-no in those parts—but the Wahhabi morality squad quickly
   put an end to it:

YANBU: The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice closed down the only women’s park in Yanbu on Thursday. The move resulted in the loss of 60 jobs for local women, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.

Suleiman Al-Hamadi, vice chairman of the commission’s Yanbu branch, said the reason for the closure was complaints by people in nearby houses that they were disturbed by the sound of music from the facility. “The commission closed the park with the permission of the local administrator as it received many complaints from local residents about loud music and singing from there,” Al-Hamadi said.

Local women frequented the facility, as it provided health and sports clubs meant exclusively for women.

Shaimah Al-Anazi, owner of the entertainment facility, told the daily that several policemen ordered women and children visitors out from the park and closed the facility without giving any reason for their act.

Muhammad Al-Balawi, chairman of Yanbu Municipal Council, had inaugurated the park last September. The opening function was also attended by Ata Allah Al-Nazawi, director of the General Organization for Social Insurance, and Ibrahim Al-Alouni, director general of Abdul Latif Jameel Social Services Program.

“I will approach the Madinah governor and the chief of the commission to find out the real cause of closing the park, which is the only outdoor entertainment facility for women in this city,” Al-Anazi said. “It was a small village that catered to women’s entertainment needs while conforming to the regulations and Saudi traditions.”

Al-Anazi said she did not get any notice or warning from the authorities before closing the facility in which she had invested SR2 million. She suspected that the commission might have been provoked by an allegation by some people that the facility violated religious regulations.

She said such allegations are baseless and, on the other hand, the facility used to hold frequent religious lectures for women. She added that some people also mounted pressure on the guards in the park to quit their jobs.

Umm Emad, a divorced woman who worked at the park, said she and her three children would have no income to support themselves if the park remained closed.

Well, maybe that’ll teach you all a lesson, Umm: fun is for infidels.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

   More same old, same old: In Ha’aretz, Bradley Burston lists and then rebuts the
   top five things those on Israel’s self-loathing /enemy-loving left will be saying about
   Gaza:

Leftist 1: Israel's true motive in bombing Gaza, is genocide against the Palestinian people and extermination of their right to statehood.

Israel's genuine interest in this campaign is strikingly similar to Hamas' interest in firing scores of rockets into Israeli population centers: Forcing a cease-fire on better terms than the one just ended.
For Hamas, this largely means easing Israeli economic sanctions against Gazans. For Israel, this centers on ending shelling by Qassam and Grad missiles and mortar shells. For both sides, this means a prisoner exchange, centering on Gilad Shalit and hundreds of jailed Hamas members.

Leftist 2: The Palestinians have no recourse but to defend themselves, and the makeshift rockets they fire are nothing compared to the world's most advanced warplanes and munitions, which the IDF is using against them.

The Human Rights Watch organization has been unequivocal in condemning the use of Qassam rockets as a direct violation of international humanitarian law and the laws of war. The firing of Qassams and mortars against civilian populations also
constitutes collective punishment
against hundreds of thousands of innocent Israeli men, women and children.

Moreover, the firing of Qassams began not as a response to the siege against Gaza, but as a marathon celebration by armed Islamic fundamentalist groups following Israel's withdrawal of its troops and settlers from the Strip. To purposely add insult to injury, Islamic Jihad and other organizations used the ruins of settlements as launch platforms.

Leftist 3: All that Hamas is asking, is recognition as the democratically elected government of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli economic embargo. Were they to attain these goals, there would be calm on both sides of the border.

It is both unrealistic and dangerous to believe that Hamas has abandoned its clearly stated and often reiterated goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in all of the Holy Land, including all land claimed, annexed by, or in any way occupied by Israel.

Beyond that, Hamas has strong alliances with the Egyptian opposition Muslim brotherhood, as well as working partnerships with the Iran-dominated Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Israeli restraint, when practiced, has been met with contempt and additional Hamas and Hamas-tolerated strikes against civilian populations.

Leftist 4: The Israeli blockade against Hamas is state terrorism and any means to fight it are legitimate.

There is every reason to believe that Israel's economic siege against Gaza is misguided, but not for an essential cruelty, rather because Hamas taxes collected on the influx of goods imported through tunnels from Egyptian territory have subsidized and cemented Hamas rule.

Leftist 5: The world overwhelmingly sympathizes with the Palestinians against Israel, and unreservedly backs their struggle for independence.

In an era of global revulsion against radical Islamic terror, Hamas' protracted program of suicide bombings, drive-by murders and shelling of civilian populations, coupled with its refusal to renounce violence, recognize Israel, or accept past peace agreements, coupled with its ideology of militant jihad, have drained the Palestinians of international sympathy and have, in fact, legitimized Israeli arguments of military self-defense.

Nothing has been more instrumental in harming the cause of Palestinian independence than Hamas, with its brutal take-over of Gaza in a war with brother Palestinians, and its frank efforts to build a large-scale regular army force in the Strip.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments (2)

A pox on “nice”: David Warren isn’t too thrilled with Stephen Harper’s efforts to
wussify the Tories:

…I think this is part of the "re-branding" of conservatism, that Mr. Harper is doing up here; what many urbane Republicans now call for, down south of the border. The idea is to take the "meanness" out of conservatism itself, to strip off the Christian or pro-life or "social-conservative" edge. The focus groups want "nice," we have heard. Down south, Bush Elder tried to deliver this with "kinder and gentler," his son with the word "compassionate." But electoral success may now demand more concessions!

The conservative view is founded in personal (as opposed to collective) responsibility; in actual independence and freedom, against a background of fixed moral principles (not relativism). That is the steel in it: why it works. Take away this steel, and replace it with fluff and padding, and presto, you have a much more saleable, "people-friendly" product. Add a few entitlements the competition hasn't thought of yet, and you are back on the road.

The product becomes interchangeable with every other off the shelf, to the clients of the Nanny State, but at least it is in the supermarket. It is useless in emergencies (as Bush Junior quickly found), but hey, it gets you through the happy times.

As ever, I argue we should move backwards: return to the old brand. Go out and sell personal responsibility; sell the manly virtues. This is rapidly becoming a survival issue, not a "positioning" thing…

   We tried “nice”. It gave us multiculturalism and human rights commissions and flaccid
   brains and spines. What we need in this era of galloping fascism (leftist, jihadist) is a
   little less “nice” and a lot more gumption.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments

   The unvarnished truth: The fearless Claudia Rosett (long may she rage) minces no
   words about the Gaza attack and the same old, same old reaction it’s eliciting—a truth
   you won’t read/hear/see in leftwing media outlets that are pleased to parrot Hamas
   propaganda:

Having served another round as a target range for Hamas, Israel finally attacks the rocket-firing terrorists in Gaza. Does the democratic world say “Thank You” to Israel for taking on the overlords of this nest of terror and repression? Not a chance.

Instead, here comes the usual Western group wallow in Palestinian terrorist propaganda.

We all know the script: Palestinian terrorists attack Israel, again and again and again — as in, Hamas firing some 3,000 mortars and rockets from Gaza into Israel over the past year, some 200 of these since the expiration last week of a six-month “ceasefire.” Finally, Israel strikes back, targeting the terrorists.

And the cogs of the middle-eastern cuckoo clock grind into action. Arab states issue denunciations of Israel. Diplomats lament the imperiling of the “peace process.” The despot-heavy UN takes time out from its day-to-day trashing of Israel to issue calls for “all parties” to end the violence. The U.S. officially backs Israel, but simultaneously undercuts Israel by issuing calls to rush humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, and then joins the gang of appeaseniks pressuring Israel into another “ceasefire” –which gives the terrorists a chance to regroup and attack again. From the media, out roll the articles and broadcasts lambasting Israel for use of “disproportionate force”; out come the photos and the fauxtography; and the further vilification of Israel proceeds under headlines such as this gem from the Washington Post: “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances.”

What a heap of hooey. What’s actually imperiling Obama’s “peace chances” in this sorry landscape is the presence of a terrorist haven operating in broad daylight right next door to Israel, in the form of the Hamas-run Gaza strip. And the continuing exaltation of terrorism by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. And another terrorist haven in the form of Hezbollah-infested Lebanon to the north. And yet more terrorist havens right nearby in the form of Syria and Iran, which harbor and help both Hamas and Hezbollah. And terrorist funders such as – according to the U.S. State Department – “private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states” (”benefactors” being a strange choice of word, though unfortunately a good indicator of the State Department mindset)...

   To the list of terrorist funders one must add, sadly, the government of Canada, which,
   through its foreign development agency, CIDA, gave taxpayer shekels to terrorism-
   enabling UNRWA, and helped fund the planning of infrastructure construction in
   Hamas’s Gaza.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:24 | link | comments

Saturday, 27 December 2008

Close but no cigar: Samuel Huntington, the gent who coined the phrase “clash of
civilizations,” has died. Here’s how Reuters reports his passing:

BOSTON (Reuters) - Political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose controversial book "The Clash of Civilizations" predicted conflict between the West and the Islamic world, has died at age 81, Harvard University said on Saturday.

Huntington, who taught for 58 years at Harvard before retiring in 2007, died Wednesday at a nursing facility in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, the university said on its website.

In his 1996 "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which expanded on his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Huntington divided the world into rival civilizations based mainly on religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism and said competition and conflict among them was inevitable.

His focus on religion rather than ideology as a source of conflict in the post-Cold War world triggered broad debate about relations between the Western and Islamic worlds, especially in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Despite criticism his thesis was simplistic or in the words of Middle East scholar Edward Said promoted the idea of "West versus the rest," Huntington told Islamica magazine in 2007, "My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."...

As it turned out, it wasn’t the “West versus the rest.” It was the West’s man-made law
versus Islam’s God-law.

   Of course, it would have been ridiculous to expect Said, the man who single-handedly
   engendered so much wrong-headedness in academia with his ideas about “Orientalism”
   (a wrong-headedness that continues to this day), to be willing or able to see it that way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:39 | link | comments

   CHRC justifies state censorship: Poking around on the Canadian Human Rights
   Commission site, I stumbled upon this—a whole page justifying Section 13. I
   particularly “enjoyed” reading this part, which explains how much better off Canadians
   are because we don’t have the free-for-all of American First Amendment protections:

Does Canada have an equivalent to the First Amendment?

No. Although many Canadians are aware of the United States First Amendment, the Canadian approach to freedom of expression issues is different.

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Jurisprudence of the United States’ courts, including the Supreme Court, severely restricts any state action to suppress free expression, including hate speech or propaganda. For example, in the case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-7675.ZS.html, the Supreme Court of the United States found that a municipal law prohibiting the burning of a cross was an impermissible restriction on the First Amendment. The effect of the decision was to allow the burning of a cross on the lawn of the first black family to move into an all-white neighborhood.

An article written by Mr. Justice Russell Juriansz, Ontario Court of Appeal, examines the U.S. approach to hate speech compared to that adopted by other countries, including Canada. The article was presented to a conference on hate on the Internet convened by the CHRC in December 2005. In his article, Combating Hate and Preserving Free Speech: Where is the Line? Justice Juriansz states:

It seems fair to say that the American view is becoming a minority one in the world. Canada is part of what appears to be growing global consensus, which observes that careful restrictions of some forms of speech are both desirable and necessary.

Canadian legislators and courts have tended to seek a balance between the protection of freedom of expression under the Charter and the harm caused by hate speech and propaganda.

In drawing the line between hatred and free expression, the Canadian courts have taken into account other Charter provisions, most importantly section 15, which provides for equality before and under the law and equal benefit and protection of law, and section 27 which provides that: "This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."

   Well, censorship is definitely part of the heritage of some cultures (hello, Communism;
   salaam, sharia), though why on earth we’d want to import such restrictions into our
   democracy, multicultural though it may be (and isn’t the U.S. home to just as
   many cultures?), beats the heck out of me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:50 | link | comments

   You aren’t what you eat: Remember when French-looking presidential candidate
   John Kerry and his Marie Antoinette-ish  missus tried to show how much like regular
   folks they were by swooping down on a Wendy’s with a full contingent of press in
   tow? (Mark Steyn captured it thus: "The photo-op didn't go smoothly.
   Kerry went over to say hi to some marines, who turned out to be Bush supporters and
   resented the interruption to their lunch. More telling was Teresa Heinz Kerry. She
   pointed to the picture of the bowl of chili above the clerk's head: 'What's that?' she
   asked. He explained that it was something called 'chili' and she said she'd like to try a
   bowl. The Senator also ordered a Frosty, a chocolate dessert. They toyed with them
   after a fashion, and then got back on the bus.”) Well, Caroline Kennedy, who’s
   reportedly worth $100 mill, and who’s looking to fill Hillary Clinton’s senate seat (she
   says 9/11 and Obama “inspired” her to want to serve the people) tried to
   pull a Tuh-RAY-zuh Heinz Kerry when she visited a New York City diner and
   ordered up a plate of grilled cheese n’ bacon and fries—making sure, of course,
   reporters were on hand to capture her eating her “just plain folks” meal.

   If I’m not buying it, I can’t imagine wised-up New Yawkers will either.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

   For the umpteenth time, it’s the jihad, stupid: Prior to raining down bombs on
   Gaza, Israel’s schlemiel-in-chief, Ehud Olmert, tried to appeal to the people of Gaza to
   reject Hamas and behave in keeping with the true spirit of their faith. Hugh Fitzgerald,
   an expert on Islam’s true spirit, demolishes the clueless Jew:

Ehud Olmert said this week to the people of Gaza: “Don't let Hamas, which is acting against the values of Islam, put you in danger. Stop them. Stop your enemies and ours.” Olmert did not have to say that Islam explains the endless hostility toward Israel. That would be asking too much, and at this point it would not be an intelligent thing to say. But it would be intelligent to grasp that truth, and to fashion policies based on that truth. He could, and should, in any statement have left Islam out of it. But he did something still worse. Olment mentioned Islam, and claimed, on the basis of no detailed knowledge whatsoever, to exculpate Islam.

In this respect he was not different from some others, such as Bush and Rice, or Blair, who keep thinking that they must say nice things about Islam even if they don't know what they are talking about, mainly because they know that Islam is a "religion," even "one of the world's great religions." (Why not for the word "great" substitute the more accurate word "major" and for the word "religion" substitute the ungainly but more accurate "belief-system"?)

And if it is "one of the world's major religions, with more than a billion adherents," so their thinking goes, it must be okay. Surely what it inculcates must be fine, for "religions" are fine, and they all mean pretty much -- don't they? -- the same thing, because, you see, People Are The Same The Whole World Over. Surely Islam cannot be the explanation for the intolerable aggression and violence and hostility and mendaciousness of so many Muslims, of which the main victims are the world's Infidels, though other Muslims have also been known to suffer.

And Olmert, pathetic, confused, desperate, blind, stupid, Olmert, is...just Olmert. The schlemiel as head of state. Even his corruption was pathetic: those expensive cigars, those occasional trips with stays in fancy hotels. A comical figure, pitiful but not to be pitied. Too many people far better than he died in Lebanon, and perhaps will die in the future, because of Olmert and the likes of Olmert.

Olmert refuses to learn a thing about Islam. It is all around him, all around and within Israel, in the mosques, in the sermons of imams, in the videocassettes and the audiocassettes, on the broadcasts and in the newspapers in Arab lands. But Olmert will not study Islam. He doesn't have the time. He's too busy making peace, he's too busy with the "peace process." He hasn't time to study the texts. He will not study the tenets. He will not understand that the war against Israel is a Jihad, a war to remove from the Arab and Muslim midst an Infidel nation-state. He does not understand this. He will not understand it. He does not understand that no tangible assets must be given up by Israel; he does not understand that no agreement by Muslims with Infidels will be kept, not because of the untrustworthiness of this or that leader, but because Islam itself offers the Example of the Perfect Man, Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil, who in his breaching of the treaty he made with the Meccans at Hudaibiyya in 628 A.D. gave his followers an example for treaties for all time.

That's Olmert…

Alas, that’s also most Western leaders, including the guy cooling his heels in Hawaii
before taking over the White House.

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

   Gaza attack: Israel has finally taken action against Hamas and, as expected, the
   MSM’s pity party has begun. Using Hamas as a reliable source, the Ceeb, obviously
   citing this AP report, claimed on a radio report at the top of the hour that 120 Gazans
   have been killed so far. And to make you feel extra sorry for the Palestinians and extra
   angry at the Jews, the Ceeb radio news reader made sure to mention, as per the AP
   story, that “the airstrikes took place as children were leaving school.”

   Mean Jews. Couldn’t they have timed their attack for when the moppets were back
   safe and snug at home? What’s that you say? It wouldn’t have made any difference
   since Hamas makes sure to set up shop in residential areas, so there will be maximum
   casualties when Israel, after a tipping point of provocation, deigns to strike back? How
   else would AP reporters named Ibrahim get to write stuff like this?

…One man sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building.

"My son is gone, my son is gone," saud Sadi Masri, 57. The shopkeeper said he sent his son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," Masri moaned...

   The loss of life is regrettable, but Hamas purposely brought this on its own people,
   whose lives it values not a whit. That being said, you know there is going to be hell to
   pay (“disproportionate response!” “Jenin, Jenin!”), as there always is when it’s a
   question of Jews fighting back against Arabs; it’s only when Muslims kill other
   Muslims—as they have by the millions in the past few decades—that the world yawns
   and looks the other way.

   Update: Ceeb news reader: "We begin in Gaza City. Sirens wail and women search
   frantically for their children..." Boo, Jews.

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

   How the UN stole Santa: Scourge of the feckless, self-important internationalists,
   Claudia Rosett imagines how, given the opportunity, the UN would deal with the
   rotund gift-giver. From Forbes:

Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus.

But that was before the United Nations got its claws into Santa, which, as history records, started to happen in 2009.

Back then, whatever the disputes over "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays," Santa was still a one-man symbol of individual enterprise and privately-based, Christian-affiliated good cheer.

Without apology, he preferred the North Pole over the South, ran a mono-cultural Elven workshop, dealt in environmentally unfriendly lumps of coal and on his appointed night flew a team of eight reindeer around the globe while buying nary a carbon offset.

His gifts were given with more regard to the wishes of children than to biennial planning cycles. And despite his global reach, he neither signed onto nor complied with a single U.N. treaty, convention or program.

All that might have been overlooked by the U.N., many of whose members don't bother to observe any of its requirements either. But, to the horror of almost the entire U.N. system, especially its Human Rights Council, Santa did something that could not be ignored. He engaged in religious and culturally judgmental gift-giving, unilaterally punishing the naughty children and rewarding the nice.

Reports began leaking out of assorted U.N. committees, hinting at the threats posed by Santa to the causes of fairness, neutrality and international consensus. He was blamed for religious frictions among civilizations, for trying to sneak Western values into other cultures and for jeopardizing the efforts of everything from the U.N. Environment Program to UNOOSA (the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs).

The capper was a study produced by the U.N.'s Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, announcing indisputable scientific findings (despite disagreements among the scientists themselves) that emissions from Santa's workshop up north were contributing to the melting of the polar ice cap. When mobs of protesters dressed in polar bear suits stormed UN Offices in Oslo, Karachi and Damascus, demanding that Santa be handed over, the secretary-general felt compelled to act.

Summoning all 192 member states to a resort complex in the South Seas, the U.N. convened its now-famous conference on "Santa Modalities." There, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77-plus-China, Cuba's envoy argued that Santa was an imperialist relic of the colonial order.

Pakistan's delegate, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, urged that the U.N. take immediate measures to end Santa's selectively religious and ''xenophobic'' overtones. Emissaries of Zimbabwe, Iran and Cameroon moved for emergency action. The secretary-general himself declared a Santa crisis and wrote a series of impassioned op-eds, explaining that the cause of world peace and progress required a U.N.-modified Multilateral Santa…

Poor old Saint Nick. Like Israel, he didn’t stand a chance.

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

Friday, 26 December 2008

Yes, Virginia, there is some vestigial santity in Old Blighty: The British government has condemned the TV channel that broadcast Ahmadinejad's "alternative" Christmas message.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:55 | link | comments

How to have fun on the other side of the fence: Dress up like Santa. Forget the padding, but remember to wear your "resistance" kefiyah. Hurl stones at the "apartheid wall" that's impeding you and your brothers from blowing up Jews in Israel. Don't forget to scowl for the AP camera:

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:46 | link | comments

   The Blago plot ~~sickens~~ thickens: The Messiah’s right hand (no, not Rahmbo; his
   other right hand) says that while it’s true that Blago was angling for a cabinet
   appointment even though he was already under a cloud of suspicion, there’s absolutely
   no truth to the suggestion that it was going to be a quid pro quo arrangement whereby
   he would became Secretary of Health and Human Services if the hopeychangers got to
   tap the person of their choice for Obama’s senate seat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:56 | link | comments

   A wallop of Trollope: Being of a literary bent, when I heard that a Jew, Bernard
   Madoff, was at the centre of a huge Ponzi scheme that had brought him and a lots of
   other folks crashing down, one name popped into my head: Augustus Melmotte.

Who he?

   Why, he’s the Jew at the centre of a giant scam in one of my favourite novels,
   The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope’s deliciously jaundiced look at parvenus,
   scoundrels and rapacity in his own society, late Victorian England. In Standpoint
   magazine, Pamela Neville-Sington explains what The Way We Live Now has to
   say about the way live now:

…The Way We Live Now reminds us that there will always be bubbles, boom and bust, swindlers, and also honest men who, Trollope explains, "reconcile themselves to swindling". There will always be mystifying commodities like Mexican railways, dotcoms and derivatives. Occasionally, there will even appear in our midst an attractive, gun-toting lady from west of the Rockies, like the hero's nemesis, Mrs Hurtle.

One might call Trollope, a keen observer of human nature present at the birth of our modern financial system, an early behavioural economist. He would recognise in our swindled (and swindling) bankers the poor gullible habitués of the much-lamented Beargarden, the club which offered so little propriety and so few "beastly rules". "Dear old place!" Lord Nidderdale sighs, "I always felt it was too good to last. I fancy it doesn't do to make things too easy," for, "by George, before you know where you are, you find yourself among a lot of blackguards."

But Trollope was at heart an optimist. "I think that men on the whole do live better lives than they did a hundred years ago," with more justice and charity abroad, says a kindly clergyman in The Way We Live Now. Barack Obama's election to the White House in 2008 is proof that humankind continues to advance, slowly but surely. In the words of Plantagenet Palliser, Trollope's champion of the decimal coinage, "a desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilisation comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray." Of course, greed is the easy part. As Lord Nidderdale says, "If one wants to keep one's self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other. I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam."

   I don’t know if I agree with the statement about Obama; I think his election, if it offers
   proof of anything, it is of the fact that charisma is awfully hard to resist, especially when
   it comes wrapped in such an appealing package (handsome candidate, pretty wife,
   adorable moppets, sugary hopey-changey message). I can get behind the rest of Pam’s
musings, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:06 | link | comments

   Shameless bias: The media’s bias is so blatant, so skewed in favour of the buff
   Messiah  and against the despised Bush that it shames the very concept of
   journalistic “fairness”. Consider this: How do you suppose the media would have
   reacted had the Bush administration conducted an internal review of, say, the Scooter
   Libby affair, and released a report absolving itself of any wrong-doing—and done so
   during the run-up to Christmas so as to try to have it fly under the media’s radar, as
   the hopeychangers did with their Blago report? And what do you suppose would
   have been the media response had an irate Arab hurled his shoes at a President
   Obama’s head?

The obvious answer: outrage and outrage, instead of crickets and jokes.

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

Very mature: Iranians toss shoes at Bush poster

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:27 | link | comments

Fool Britannia: Claudia Rosett lambastes the Brits for being receptive to
Ahmadinejad’s “alternative” Christmas message:

If Britons wish to spend part of their Christmas tuning in to Ahmadinejad’s oily talk of a “joyful, shining and wonderful age,” so be it — though one might have hoped they’d learned their lesson about this sort of thing back in the late 1930s. But broadcasting this kind of performance inflicts its worst damage in places like Iran itself, where the problem is not Ahmadinejad’s message to people of Britain, but Britain’s message to the people of Iran: For those in Iran who aspire to freedom, it can hardly be encouraging that in Britain a free people would so demean themselves as to give this preening thug his own special slot on the air — let alone as an alternative, in any capacity whatsoever, to their Queen. This is not an issue of free speech, but of fools at Channel 4 indulging in a stunt that ought to earn them not higher ratings, but a one-way ticket to Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Delivers Christmas Message On British TV

Update: The Corner's Michael Rubin on the free speech thing:

The irony of Britain's channel 4 giving Ahmadinejad the pulpit in the name of free speech is that as he was speaking, Iranian authorities raided and closed down the BBC's Tehran offices and, separately, in the spirit of goodwill to man, ordered Christmas trees banned from Iranian kindergartens...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments

Up, up and away: The Toronto Star has an article about some women in the Arab
world who have found a degree of freedom in an unlikely place—up in the sky:

…Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.

The Etihad flight attendants' dormitory here looks much like the city's 1970s-style office blocks. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Flight attendants are routinely admonished to be mindful of Etihad's reputation. Those who try to sneak a man back to one of the two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.

In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, Gulf states like Abu Dhabi – which offer freedoms and opportunities nearly unimaginable elsewhere in the Middle East – have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the experience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.

Despite the increasing numbers of women moving to the Gulf countries, the labour migration patterns of the last 20 years have left the Emirates with a male-female ratio that is more skewed than anywhere else in the world; in the 15 to 64 age group, there are more than 2.7 men for every woman.

Etihad flight attendants are such popular additions to Abu Dhabi's modest bar scene that their presence is encouraged by "ladies' nights" and cabin-crew-only drink discounts. It is almost impossible for an unveiled woman in her 20s to go to a mall or grocery store in Abu Dhabi without being asked if she is a flight attendant.

An Egyptian flight attendant for Etihad said some young women cope with their new lives away from home by becoming almost nunlike, keeping to themselves and remaining very observant Muslims, while others quickly find themselves in the arms of unsuitable men.

"With the Arabic girls who come to work here, you get two types," the woman said. "They're either very closed-up and scared and they don't do anything, or else they're not really thinking about flying – they're just here to get their freedom. They're really naughty and crazy." Many of the young Arab women working in the Gulf take delight in their status as pioneers, role models for their friends and younger female relatives.

Rania Abou Youssef, 26, a flight attendant for Emirates, a Dubai-based airline, said when she went home to Alexandria, Egypt, her female cousins treated her like a heroine. "I've been doing this for four years, and still they're always asking, `Where did you go and what was it like and where are the photographs?'"

Freedom’s just another word for coffee, tea or me?

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

   The madness of succouring the enemy: They’re shooting rockets galore from Gaza
   into Israel, trying to goad the Jews into taking action, but before Israel gets around to
   fighting back it wants to show the international community that it’s been “nice” to the
   folks firing the rockets (as if that’s going to head off the international outrage that will
   follow any Israeli incursion). From AP:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel renewed its transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Friday despite continued rocket and mortar fire from the coastal strip and rising expectations of a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Gaza militants.

The military said approximately 90 trucks will deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife as well as more than 105,000 gallons of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas, the military said.

Israel's Defense Ministry agreed to open its cargo crossings into Gaza as part of its policy of avoiding a humanitarian crisis there. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the decision came after consultations with defense officials as well as calls from the international community.

Israel had originally agreed to open the cargo crossings with Gaza on Wednesday but it shut the passages when militants began pummeling southern Israel with more than 80 rockets and mortars. The barrage was the heaviest since before an Egyptian-mediated six-month-long truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers took effect in June.

The army said more than 10 rockets and mortars were fired toward Israel early Friday. One home was struck but no injuries were reported.

Pressure has been mounting in Israel for the military to strike forcefully against Gaza militants and Israeli leaders have been voicing strong threats in recent days. But on Friday, military officials said the army was planning a routine replacement of its troops along the Gaza border in the coming week. That, coupled with current wintery weather conditions, made an imminent operation seem unlikely.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to discuss military strategy publicly.

Israel has maintained a strict blockade of Gaza since the June 19 cease-fire began unraveling six weeks ago, allowing in only small quantities of essential goods. Egypt has also sealed its border crossing with the territory, which is Gaza's main gateway to the outside world...

Memo to the Defense Minister: You can’t kill ‘em with kindness. You can, however,
kill yourselves that way.

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

From the "they blow up so fast" dep't: MEMRI has a snapshot of what is hands down the sickest pathology in the Islamic world--turning moppets into martyrs. Here are reports about kids being trained to go ballistic--in Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

Two competing world views: Hopey-changer:

Mopey-danger:

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments

Thursday, 25 December 2008

   Pinter passes: The Brit who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature as much for
   his vituperative and unhinged rants about Bush and America as he was for his body of
   work consisting of plays populated by nasty characters and replete with very long,
   pseudo-profound pauses has…

…

...died.

   To give you a taste of Pinter’s unique brand of nuttiness, here’s a paragraph from
   his Nobel Prize acceptance speech wherein he offers himself up for the job of
   Bush’s speechwriter, and writes in what he imagines to be the president’s voice:

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

Such a talent. So insightful. No wonder they gave him the prize.

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

Penance for airheads: Guilt-ridden passengers flying out of San Francisco will soon
have a way to atone for their sin of air travel, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

Environmentally conscious travelers flying out of San Francisco International Airport will soon be able to assuage their guilt and minimize the impact of their air travel by buying certified carbon offsets at airport kiosks.

The experimental program, scheduled to start this spring, would make SFO the first airport in the nation - possibly the world - to offer fliers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets.

"We'd like people to stop and consider the impacts of flying," said Steve McDougal, executive vice president for 3Degrees, a San Francisco firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments and is teaming up with the airport and the city on the project. "Obviously, people need to fly sometimes. No one expects them to stop, but they should consider taking steps to reduce their impacts."

San Francisco's Airport Commission has authorized the program, which will involve a $163,000 investment from SFO, but is still working out the details with 3Degrees. Because of that, McDougal said, he can't yet discuss specifics, such as the cost to purchase carbon offsets and what programs would benefit from travelers' purchases.

But the general idea, officials said, is that a traveler would approach a kiosk resembling the self-service check-in stations used by airlines, then punch in his or her destination. The computer would calculate the carbon footprint and the cost of an investment to offset the damage. The traveler could then swipe a credit card to help save the planet. Travelers would receive a printed receipt listing the projects benefiting from their environmental largesse.

The carbon offsets are not tax deductible, said Krista Canellakis, a 3Degrees spokeswoman.

"While the carbon offsets purchased at kiosks can't be seen or touched, they are an actual product with a specific environmental claim whose ownership is transferred at the time of purchase," she said…

It brings to mind the moral of that Aesop's fable: An eco-fool and his money are soon
parted.

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

Mahmoud rants; Brit Jews not amused: Oh, those Jooos. Always causing
problems. From the timesonline:

Jewish groups were up in arms today when it was revealed that Channel 4's "alternative" Christmas Day broadcast is to be delivered by President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Mr Ahmadinejad's speech will go out at 7.15pm, four hours after the Queen's traditional Christmas Day message is broadcast on the main channels. His message is a spiritual one but includes some more nakedly political elements - including the implicit claim that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would oppose US hegemony.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers,” Mr Ahmadinejad will say in a speech to be shown in Farsi with English subtitles.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over. If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime.”

It is no the first time that the broadcaster has courted controversy since Quentin Crisp delivered Channel 4's first alternative Christmas message in 1993. In 2006 a fully-veiled British-born Muslim woman used the message to attack Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, for his criticism of the niqab (face veil) earlier the same year.

Stephen Smith, director of the Holocaust Centre, said Mr Ahmadinejad's message should be treated with caution. The Iranian President has repeatedly called the Holocaust a “myth” and called for the annihilation of Israel.

Mr Smith said: “Many of his political and historical views are very dangerous and do not uphold the views in his message. I think this benign message is deception. People need to be alert to the fact that this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Henry Grunwald QC, president of the Board of Deputies, added: "The appearance on our television screens of a man whose prejudices are so well-documented and who has openly called for the eradication of another member country of the United Nations is an affront to decency.

"To invite him to deliver a Christmas message, even a so-called alternative one, fills me with disgust. Whatever he may say in his 'message', his words on other occasions and his actions towards minority groups in Iran should have disqualified him from filling this television spot."

But Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs, defended the choice. "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad’s views are enormously influential," she said. “As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."…

   A “world view” which sees the extirpation of the Jewish presence as being redemptive
   for all mankind: surely we’re only all too familiar with that particular Weltanschauung,
   Ms. Byrne.

Update: Following his "alternative" address, President Ahmadinejad was caught
singing an old Christmas standard--using his own "alternative" lyrics, of course:

Rid the world of awful Jewry.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Hate them all for all their usury.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Gonna push a nuclear button.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Grill the Jews like legs of mutton.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

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

Understating the case: A line in this AFP report about the Ayatollah's hairy sock thingy's Christmas address on British TV made me chuckle: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a controversial figure for his anti-Israel stance--was to deliver an alternative Christmas message on British television to rival the queen's address, broadcaster Channel Four said."

"Controversial" is he? In the same way, I suppose, that Adolf Hitler was "a controversial figure" for his anti-Jewish stance.

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

Reindeer games: Ezra Levant posts a cheeky satire published in the Globe and Mail. It's written in the form of an HRC report dealing with a discrimination complaint lodged by one R. Reindeer (who suffers from a pronounced facial disfigurement) against a company owned and operated by an S. Claus. Ezra notes the serious message behind the japery--that we are making headway "denormalizing" these previously sacrosant bodies. What follows is me doing my part to make them look ridiculous (not that they need much help in that area)--to the tune of the seasonal song in question:

The “human rights” commissions

Had a very scary role.

Wanted to enforce “niceness”

From the 49^th to the North Pole.

None of the rights commissions

Hewed to any Common Law.

Powers of search and seizure

Stuck in all free speechers’ craw.

Then one fateful year (oh eight)

Ezra dared to say,

“Apparatchiks aren’t so wise.

High time to ‘denormalize’”.

Then how free speechers perked up

As they shouted out with glee,

“Those ‘human rights’ commissions,

They will soon be history!”

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

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

   No big O in Israel: No, not a thwarted visit from the Messiah (he’s too busy
   taking off his shirt in Hawaii). There’s not going to be a mass orgy in Tel Aviv
   organized by the Raelians. You remember the Raelians, don’t you? They’re those loopy
   cultists who, a few years back, claimed to have been the first to clone a human being.
   YNet has all the silly, not-so titillating details about the Raelian orgy that never
   was:

After weeks of preparations for the largest sex event of its kind in Israel, organizers were forced to cancel it this week due to public pressure and threats exerted on the owner of the venue where the sex fest was to take place.

The event in question, which was scheduled to take place on "International Orgasm Day," aimed to bring together some 250 participants seeking to promote world peace through multiple orgasms reached by masturbation or sex.

The orgy was organized by the Raelian movement, a UFO religion whose followers believe humankind was created by aliens. The group's spokesman, Kobi Drori, said that the orgy was meant to include straights, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, all of them over 18.

"The purpose of the event was to try and bring world peace through mass orgasm, this by experiencing consensual sex and natural, uninterrupted pleasure. It was important to make love without feeling guilty or shy," he explained.

Drori protested the fact that nowadays the words "war," "violence" and "murder" have become more legitimate than "sex," "orgasm" and "pleasure."

"It should be the other way around. Several years ago an Iraqi boy whose limbs were amputated was shown on TV and everybody treated this as if it was okay, but when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Superbowl the American nation was appalled.

"We wanted to put into practice the saying 'make love, not war'."

'Society based on self-fulfillment'

According to Drori, the orgy was just the first in a series of events dedicated to promoting this objective. On January 22 the movement will hold a conference on sexuality and masturbation with experts and writers in the field.

He also vowed that the cancelation of this year's orgy would not deter the Raelians from setting up another sex fest next year.

The Raelian movement has several hundreds followers in Israel and some 70,000 members worldwide.

"We don't believe in demons, ghosts and gods," said Drori. "The group's primary goal is to inform humanity, without attempting to persuade, regarding scientific messages that deal with the origins of life on earth.

The second goal is to expedite the establishment of a society based on the principles of non-violence, solidarity, self-fulfillment and pleasure. To establish one global currency, one global government and harness science to the service of humanity, and not against humanity," he concluded…

Great, just what the planet needs--more utopian One Wordlers. At least these ones
aren’t as explosive and controlling as the Islamists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:36 | link | comments

Gaza’s underground economy: Literally underground. From Bloomberg:

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Inside one of hundreds of white tents on a sandy wasteland in the Gaza Strip, a black pipe snakes its way down a 60-foot shaft and through a quarter-mile tunnel under the border with Egypt.

The other end is connected to a diesel tanker on the Egyptian side -- a source of smuggled fuel for a market so parched some Palestinian drivers run their cars on oil used to fry falafel.

The beehive of tunnels beneath the tent city has become a vital lifeline for Gaza, giving its 1.4 million residents a way around an Israeli blockade that has choked off supplies of gasoline, fresh meat and consumer goods ranging from washing machines to iPods. It may also turn into a bombing target for the Israeli air force following the expiration of a six-month cease- fire with the Hamas leaders who rule Gaza, Israeli strategists say.

“There is hardly any economy left in Gaza without the tunnels,” says Omar Shaban, an economist who runs a consulting group in Gaza City. “It is distorted to have an economy that is so completely dependent on the black market, but it’s a natural result of the borders being closed.”

Ninety percent of all products entering Gaza each month --as much as $40 million worth of contraband -- comes through the tunnels from Egypt, Shaban says. The underground network is also a crucial source of revenue and weapons for the militant Islamic Hamas movement, which charges a one-time digging fee of 11,000 shekels ($2,750) for each tunnel…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:35 | link | comments

Merry Christmas, Baby: From me, Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee to you and yours. (Don't know why this one never became a holiday standard.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:30 | link | comments

Thriving on conflict: The truce (such as it was) is kaput, writes contentions’
Noah Pollak, because Hamas needs crisis in order to survive:

The crisis in Gaza is related to the fundamental problem Hamas has faced since it took power in Gaza: It is very difficult to rule over a territory simultaneously as a resistance group and as a political party. Each ambition interferes with the other, and for Hamas, resistance has always been the fundamental interest. The cease-fire with Israel required Hamas to stop its offensive, which it only did marginally — throughout the calm there were sporadic mortar and rocket attacks on Israel — and to cease weapons smuggling and negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit. The first requirement was workable because it took external pressure off Hamas that allowed it to focus on solidifying its control over Gaza, but the latter two were tantamount to Hamas concretely repudiating the reason for its existence and the ideological platform on which it rose to power.

For Hamas, the absence of open conflict could not continue for long, because living conditions in Gaza have been worsening and Hamas has never been interested in or capable of governing outside the context of war. At various times over the past six months, Hamas attacked transfer points between Israel and Gaza. This was done in order to force their closure and exacerbate the food and fuel shortages that encourage the narrative, so popular in international quarters and among journalists covering the crisis, of Gaza’s victimization not at Hamas’ hands, but at Israel’s. The cultivation of this narrative is doubly useful, because victimhood also justifies resuming open war against Israel.

The paradoxical bottom line for Hamas is that crisis, both humanitarian and military, is necessary for legitimacy and survival...

   You might say that crisis is their lifeblood (that along with, of course, the blood of
   real, live Jews). For that reason, any attempt to bring these vampires into the
   “peace process” (such as it is) is an exercise in cluelessness and futility.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:24 | link | comments

Faux tidings of comfort and joy: Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi (who apparently knows bupkes about Islam) tells Der Spiegel that he thinks the monotheists' common ancestor, Abe, is a good jumping off point for interfaith understanding; and the New York Times shills for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is attracting the jaded young uns in "moderate" Jordan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:51 | link | comments

   All the rest are second best: George Jonas, a man who knows a thing or two
   about living under oppression, writes that there’s only one “human right” that counts—
   freedom:

We were a scruffy lot of ex-students and vagabonds landing in Canada a few weeks after the defeat of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. The papers referred to us as “freedom fighters.” It was Christmas, and at the West Lodge Refugee Centre there was a package for us under the Christmas tree. Made by local children, it had sketches of stick-figures extending their hands and saying things like “This is my dog” and “Will you have some popcorn?” One bold stick-figure said: “Fighters, welcome to freedom.”

I wish I had kept it. Notice it said: Welcome to freedom, not welcome to “human rights.” Now it would be a memento of the days before we traded one for the other.

It was a con. Freedom is the only human right. The rest — to be housed, hired, admitted to a club — are human ambitions. In the Ponzi scheme of “human rights” the state feeds A’s ambition by trading some of B’s freedom for it, then pays for C’s ambition in the coin of A’s freedom, until the gold of freedom is exchanged for the inflationary paper of ambitions and privileges renamed “rights,” printed and doled out by the authorities.

Lip service to liberty, power to the government: That’s the deal. Oppression has the bad press; freedom has the rough ride.

We’re all for freedom in the abstract. We don’t mind others being at liberty to do or say whatever they like, unless they say or do something we think they shouldn’t. If they do, staunch lovers of liberty promptly call for legislators, mayors, school boards, censors, shrinks, dogcatchers or human rights commissars to intervene.

We’re ready to liberate the world, which is nice. But freedom is like charity. It begins at home…

And here at home, as we know, we don’t have freedom; we have human rights
commissions.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:04 | link | comments

Long lost twins?: Libyan waxwork/addlepated potentate Moo Moo Gadafi...

...and formerly handsome has-been actor/now slated to win an Oscar for The Wrestler Mickey Rourke.

Or is it that everyone starts to look more or less the same after too much bad plastic surgery and subcutaneous facial filler?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:40 | link | comments

“Accept Islam or pay us our jizya, wicked infidels”: UK TV is giving a nutty jihadi
a chance to send his season’s greetings. From the timesonline:

President Ahmadinejad of Iran could upstage the Queen when he delivers an "alternative" Christmas message tomorrow on British television.

Mr Ahmadinejad will give a speech which will go out at 7.15pm on Christmas Day on Channel Four.

The message is a spiritual one but includes some more political elements - including the implicit claim that Jesus Christ, were he alive today, would oppose US hegemony.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers,” Mr Ahmadinejad will say, according to a transcript of the speech.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime.”

"The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises can be found in following the Prophets -- they were sent by the Almighty, for the happiness of humanity."…

   If they were sent for the happiness of humanity, why are so many of Ahmadinejad’s
   ilk so gawdamned cranky?

   Update: You're not going to believe how the dhimmi Beeb refers to it--
   Ahmadinejad to give a "festive address."

   About as "festive" as a hunk of coal in your Christmas stocking, I'd say.

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

No prezzies from Santa for you, Roddy: Blago named naughtiest politician of '08.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:35 | link | comments

Those aren't endorphens making you high: The Toronto Star reports on a most novel way to try to smuggle cocaine--in a shipment of Guyanese hot sauce.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments

How annyoying for him: Blagojevich questioning takes up Obama's time.

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

   Not looking good: For all those delusional Jews who think that having a Rahmbo in
   the White House will be good for Israel, think again. Daniel Pipes offers this sobering
   preview of coming distractions:

…Unsurprisingly, Bush's critics excoriate his Middle East record. Fine, but now that they are almost in the driver's seat; exactly how do they intend to fix America's Middle East policy?

"Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President" offers defeatist policy recommendations.

One preview is on display in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, a major study issued jointly by two liberal lions, the Brookings Institution (founded 1916) and the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921). The culmination of an 18-month effort, Restoring the Balance involved 15 scholars, 2 co-editors (Richard Haass and Martin Indyk), a retreat at a Rockefeller conference center, multiple fact-finding trips, and a small army of organizers and managers.

This reader is struck by two major deficiencies. First, while the book covers six topics (the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Iraq, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and political and economic development), its specialists have almost nothing to say about Islamism, the most pressing ideological challenge of our time, nor about the Iranian nuclear buildup, the most urgent military danger of our time. They also manage to bypass such issues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab rejectionism of Israel, the Russian danger, and the transfer of wealth to energy-exporting states.

Second, the study offers defeatist policy recommendations. "Bring Hamas into the fold" advise Steven A. Cook and Shibley Telhami, arguing that the terrorist organization be included in a "Palestinian unity government" and be urged to accept the ill-fated Abdullah Plan of 2002. It is hard to imagine a single more counterproductive policy in the Arab-Israeli theater…

“Bring Jihad into the fold” more like. In which case, rots of ruck with that one,
hopeychangers.

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

Happy warriors: Michael Ledeen throws up his hands at Bush’s obtuseness:

In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel published a truly fascinating interview with President Bush. Oddly, his most revealing remark on the war came not in a discussion of Iraq, but when he spoke about his (excellent) commitment to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.

He said, “freedom includes freedom from disease, because (terrorists) can exploit hopelessness, and that’s the only thing they can exploit.”

At which point one can only throw one’s hands in the air and sigh. Because this means he doesn’t understand terrorism. At all. Terrorists aren’t recruited because they feel hopeless. Quite the contrary; they feel inspired, galvanized, heroic and saintly. They are revolutionaries, they are seeking to change the world, and their actions are not one last desperate throw of the dice. Theirs are acts of hope and optimism, certainly not of despair. They think they’re part of a victorious army, not isolated individuals crushed by misery.

I think once upon a time he knew this, back when he talked about evil. But it seems that, over the years, he listened to too many social science types, too many vulgar marxists, who fed him the silly slogan that to defeat terrorism you have to eliminate the “root causes,” which, according to many of the advocates of the conventional wisdom, are poverty and Israel.

I wish someone would shake him gently, and say, “but those men who came to kill us here on 9/11 were well off, they came from good families, they were upwardly mobile, and if there is a single word that totally misdescribes them, that word is ‘hopeless’.” And then say “Remember Osama bin Laden, the scion of one of the richest families on the planet?”…

The scary thing is that the guy who's about to replace Dubya at the top sees it as a
matter of "hopelessness," too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

What are the odds?: A report written by the Obama team has cleared team mate Rahm Emanuel of any wrong doing re his recent communication with the egregiously corrupt Illinois governor.

Quel relief!

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:57 | link | comments

Reviving the Islamic Spirit: Islam Online touts the "Islam revival" in Toronto.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:59 | link | comments (2)

From the "better late than never" dep't: Dean Martin, who died Christmas Day 1995, is going to get a Grammy award for "lifetime achievement".

Well, I guess everybody does love somebody sometime, right Deano?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:20 | link | comments

Mo a myth?: A Muslim scholar named Sven (who spoke to Toronto Star religion scribe Tim Harpur) thinks so.

A noted Muslim scholar has provoked a huge controversy in Europe by openly questioning the existence of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Islamist at the centre of the storm in Germany over whether Muhammad ever existed as an historical figure says he is simply following the conclusions of many years of rigorous research.

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, 42, the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Muenster and whose duties include training teachers for the rising number of Muslim students in German high schools, has created a furor by stating that in all probability Muhammad was a mythical creation.

He told the Star in a recent phone interview that his research leads him to believe that the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have mythical origins.

German police worried about a possible violent backlash have told the professor to move his offices to more secure premises. But Kalisch says there have been no specific threats and he is far from being "in hiding" as some bloggers and other rumour-mongers have claimed.

However, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany to which the four largest organizations of the country's 3 million-strong Muslim community belong, has stopped its co-operation with the university's Centre for Religious Studies over the professor's stand.

A spokesperson for the council, Ali Kizilkaya, has said if the Prophet Muhammad didn't exist then the Qur'an doesn't exist.

"This would mean that we would have to abolish the religion altogether," Kizilkaya said. "We are convinced the Prophet did indeed exist and that the Qur'an is the word of God."...

Fatwa in five, four, three...:

Update: No Myth

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:08 | link | comments (1)

The madness (and death wish) of Israel's leadership: After twiddling its thumbs for three years and allowing Hamas to become even stronger and sassier--and seeing how poorly it's playing with an electorate weary of seeing rockets fired into Israel's south--Ehud and his cadre of nincompoops have decided to take action. But, as Caroline Glick writes in yet another clear-eyed assessment of the depressing situation, the government doesn't want to crush Hamas. It only wants to slow it down long enough for someone else to ride to the Jews' rescue (my bolds):

...Since it abandoned Gaza in September 2005, the government has more or less stood down and allowed Hamas to build its armies and terror arsenals unchallenged. But with the February 10 general elections swiftly approaching, and with public anger at their abandonment of the South daily rising, on Sunday Olmert's ministers decided that the time has come to launch a military offensive into Gaza.

To prepare the ground for the promised offensive, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has ordered the diplomatic corps to build international support and understanding for the planned military action. Of course, as Likud Knesset candidate and former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon pointed out on Israel Radio Monday morning, the very fact that Israel today lacks international support for defending the country against Hamas's illegal terror offensive shows how empty pledges made by Livni and Olmert on the eve of the 2005 surrender of the Gaza Strip truly were.

At the time, Livni, Olmert and their colleagues promised that after Israel left the area, if the Palestinians dared to attack the country, Israel would have full international backing to defend itself. Now, with an Iranian proxy in control of its southern border, Israel finds itself condemned for every action it takes to secure its citizens from murder.

At any rate, the cabinet decided whenever Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Olmert feel comfortable with the international climate, the IDF will gradually escalate its currently anemic operations in Gaza. Currently the IDF is not even going after Hamas targets, just Islamic Jihad ones. And on Monday morning Barak announced that every additional operation will require prior approval by the government.

While the government is congratulating itself on its willingness to defend the country after three years of negligence, the fact is that its strategic aim is not to defeat Hamas. This fact was made clear in the summary of the government's decisions reported in the media on Sunday afternoon. The government made clear that the aim of both the diplomatic and military offensives is to pave the way for the "international community" to intervene in Gaza to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorism...

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

NYT gets "punked": The Gray Lady printed a bogus e-mail from the Mayor of Paree purporting to throw cold eau on Lady Caroline's senate bid. From the timesonline:

Anyone reading the New York Times yesterday would have been surprised to see a letter from the Mayor of Paris, of all people, attacking Caroline Kennedy's bid for a Senate seat.

The note, signed with the name of Bertrand Delanoe, Paris' Mayor, vilified Ms Kennedy's bid for Hillary Clinton's seat in the Senate, describing it as "appalling" and "not very democratic".

But if American readers of The Times were surprised at the letter, that's nothing to how it was regarded by Parisian government officials.

After an urgent phone call from Paris to the offices of The Times, the newspaper had to admit that it had fallen for a less than elaborate hoax.

Just hours after printing it, the paper was forced to publish an editor's note on its website on Monday afternoon stating: "Ihis letter was a fake. It should not have been published."

The letter, sent by email, asked what title Ms Kennedy had "to pretend to Hillary Clinton's seat" and went on to say: "We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling ... can we speak of American decline?"

In a humiliating apology, the New York Times admitted that publishing the letter: "Violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers."

Times staff, it admitted, ignored the paper's procedure of verfiying the authenticity of every letter before printing.

"In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

"We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed," the newspaper admitted..

"We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers," it added.

The newspaper said it would review its procedures for verifying letters to avoid a repetition of the incident.

Mr Delanoe's press office in Paris confirmed that the text was a hoax...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:25 | link | comments

Have Yourself a Scary Little Jihad: Another seasonal standard, revised for our times:

Have yourself a scary little jihad,

Strap your vests on tight.

Next year lots more kafirs’ll be out of sight.

Have yourself a scary little jihad.

Why not throw your shoes?

It’s a way to show that you refuse to lose.

Once again as in storied days

Wondrous glory days of Mo.

Warriors fight for Allahs’ way--

It’s the only way to go.

Someday soon the world will be so peaceful,

If the faith’s allowed.

Until then sharia’ll get spread somehow.
So have yourself a scary little jihad now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:07 | link | comments

Dick’s diplomacy: Richard Haass, a former denizen of Turtle Bay (‘nuff said), writes in the Globe and Mail that Obama must must use his powers of persuasion to encourage the mullahs to set aside their nuclear dreams and schemes (since the cost of the other two options—“living with a nuclear Iran or attacking it”—is way too high):

…The best outcome would be one in which Iran was persuaded to freeze or suspend its nuclear efforts or, better yet, give up an independent capability to enrich uranium. It is conceivable that Iran could be allowed a symbolic "right" to enrich, but any such program would have to be extremely small so as not to pose a threat. It would also need to be subject to highly intrusive inspections, so the world could be confident that Iran was not secretly enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons.

What would it take to essentially eliminate Iran's uranium enrichment effort?

To begin with, it would entail putting together a diplomatic package that offered Iran access to nuclear energy but not physical control over nuclear materials. Economic sanctions could be eased. Security assurances could be provided and normal diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington could be established.

There is no guarantee that Iran would accept such an offer. But it might, especially now that the price of oil has fallen below $50 a barrel, a level that leaves the Iranian economy in worse shape than ever.

What would also help would be to make clear that Iran would face additional sanctions, including constraints on its ability to import refined petroleum, if it refused to accept a fair and reasonable compromise. Persuading Russia and China to support a package of requirements, incentives and penalties would be important. In addition, the odds Iran would accept such an offer might increase if the details were made public. The Iranian people may well choose leaders in next June's election who can deliver a much higher standard of living over those who would run the country into the ground.

But it is possible that Iran will reject any diplomatic compromise, even one put forward directly by the Americans. Mr. Obama and the world would then have to choose between tolerating an Iran with nuclear weapons (or the ability to produce them quickly) and using military force to prevent this outcome. It is the worst sort of choice, as neither option is attractive. For that reason, it is all the more important that diplomacy be recast and given one last chance.

Good thinking there, Neville. My letter:

Richard Haass, formerly with the U.S. State Department, thinks “talking” to the mullahs is the best way to deal with a nuclear Iran. I have no doubt that the mullahs--who for years have been open to “talking” to Western diplomats, since it afforded them the time and the opportunity they needed to enrich weapons-grade uranium right under the diplomats’ noses--would concur.

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

Hamascapades:

The jihadis who work for Hamas

Are a regular pain in the as.

Their talk of a “truce”

Is yet one more ruse

That’s intended to further their cause.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments

Monday, 22 December 2008

A light in the darkness: Every lighting of the Hanukkah menorah is meaningful, but this one is especially meaningful. From AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — The father of the rabbi who was killed along with his wife in the Mumbai terror attacks will lead a Hanukkah ceremony at the Statue of Liberty.

Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg will be joined by leaders of national Jewish organizations at the menorah lighting ceremony Tuesday, the third night of Hanukkah.

Holtzberg's son, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife, Rivka, were among scores killed last month in a rampage by suspected Islamic militants. The couple ran a Chabad Lubavitch center in the Indian city of Mumbai.

The Tuesday ceremony is part of a nationwide "Unite the Lights" campaign to mourn the victims of the Mumbai attack while promoting acts of kindness.

Nachman Holtzberg and his wife, Frida, attended a memorial ceremony for their son and daughter-in-law on Sunday in West Hempstead. Holtzberg called on the 200 mourners to help strengthen the Jewish presence in Mumbai by building a bigger Chabad center there.

"You don't need to fight against darkness," he said. "A little light spreads."

Tuesday's menorah-lighting ceremony will take place at 5:15 p.m. at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

I disagree. You do need to fight against darkness, because if you don’t the darkness can engulf you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:19 | link | comments

People of the shoe: The forbes.com opinion editor assesses the shoe kerfuffle :

…The Arabs, who once upon a time boasted Averroes and Avicenna, are now reduced to eulogizing a boorish act of agitprop as a heroic achievement. America gave us Martin Luther King; South Africa gave us Mandela; India gave us Gandhi; the Arab world gives us ... Muntader-al-Zaidi. A people who invented the zero are now reduced, themselves, to zero. Only a people who live under the boots of their rulers celebrate the throwing of a shoe at a guest.

Muntader's Arab celebrants have fellow-travelers in the West, of course--chiefly among the anti-Bush mass on the left; but the latter's reaction to the shoe-throwing has been one of vitriolic glee, not self-congratulatory jubilation. The Western liberal's hatred of Bush is an ideological hatred; it may be as potent as the hatred of Bush in Arab breasts, but at least it is a hatred that has its origins in the mind, in differences of opinion. The Arab reaction, by contrast, has been damningly, disturbingly emotional and visceral. A vast swath of people, from Morocco to Iraq, have found cultural and tribal, even civilizational, catharsis in a 20-second display of theater comprising the hurling of shoes--and of that most beloved of Arab epithets, "dog."

It makes one want to yelp: Is this the best they can do? Is this how their heroism is now defined? To me--to many--this is alarming proof of the depth of Arab impotence, of the Lilliputian self-image that drives Muslim Arabs to take to terrorism, to assault that which they cannot comprehend. The irony that has been lost on them is the fact that in the entire Arab world, only in Bushified Iraq could such an act of protest be possible…

The reference to “the Lilliputian self-image” recalls that memorable line uttered by Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia: “Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.” In that respect, it seems not a lot has changed since Lawrence's time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:09 | link | comments

No ho ho: Ugly Santa brawl reported in Norwich.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:54 | link | comments

Old friends:

Nancy & Sluggo:

Barack & Blago:

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:48 | link | comments

Clueless clergy enabling sharia: At a time when sharia is rapidly making inroads in the West, one might expect Christian and Jewish clergy to be in the vanguard of warding off a religious law inimical to their interests. But noooo! As Tom Trento, an evangelical Christian working to alert Americans to the threat of Allah's law, explains to FrontPage Magazine’s Jamie Glazov, our clergy is too busy kissing up to Muslims at “interfaith” sessions sponsored by wily Wahhabis to notice that anything’s amiss:

FP: Your thoughts on the attitude of Jewish and Christian clergy in dealing with this crisis?

Trento: But for a handful of courageous Jewish and Christian clergy, Jewish and Christian leaders have been silent or worse yet, complicit with Muslim extremists, thus expediting the eventual destruction of America.

FP: Why this fear about Jewish and Christian clergy to take a stand on Islamic jihad?

Trento: No guts. Lack of courage. Weak-minded. Historically, clergy have been on the fore-front of social action and public policy construction. Sadly, as an evangelical Christian (with degrees from a Bible College and Seminary) over the past 25 years I have seen many religious leaders do all they could to avoid any confrontation even on benign social or political issues.

If these men of God can’t find their mouth on cultural issues that pertain primarily to America, does anyone in their right mind think these folks will stand up to Islamist jihadi warriors, who have already reconciled themselves to martyrdom?

To make matters worse, the Islamists (like the spider with little Miss Muffet) are inviting Jewish and Christian clergy to “interfaith” kumbaya dialogues, so that the three Abrahamic faiths can understand, appreciate each other and work together. Though that sounds great on the surface, the fact is that the Islamists are simply constructing their foundation (by disarming Jewish and Christian leaders) to build their system of Sharia law into the American way of life and the Jewish or Christian leader does not have a clue!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments (1)

If the name fits...: Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein has a list of real people whose names are in keeping with their circumstances. For instance, how perfect is it that the name of the egregious Ponzi schemer is Bernard Madoff--since Bernie Madoff with the cash?

By the same token, the state apparatchik in charge of squelching free speech in Canada has a moniker befitting her occupation: Lynch. (There's a study to be written on the extent to which one's name is self-fulfilling--like, say, the I. Alter who decides to become a tailor and the little Foreskin who grows up to be Dr. Foreskin, the moil.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

Caroline’s caché: Isn’t it interesting that when Sarah Palin, a woman with actual political experience who has run an entire state, was tapped for veep, the media clicked into collective freak-out mode. But when Caroline Kennedy, a woman who has never run for anything, and whose organizational skills run to arranging play dates for her kids, announces she wants to be appointed senator of the great state of New York, the media fawn over her as though she were, well, a Kennedy. (I actually heard CNN pundit Bill Schneider explain yesterday that the reason sweet Caroline should win the nod is because—wait for it—she’d be able to raise a lot of money when election time rolled around two years hence. Yeah, because as Governor Rod Blago has recently demonstrated, “fundraising” is both an art and a science.) Victor Davis Hanson thinks much of the fawning has to do with the cult of celebrity, but, perceptively, he notes that it’s also a “class” thing—that a moose-hunting mama from the boonies with an accent straight out of a trailer park has absolutely no caché, while the daughter of Camelot couple John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline (rhymes with "queen") Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, has caché coming out the ying-yang:

George Bush, we were told ad nauseam was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple. But when it comes to Ms. Kennedy, her liberal lineage and assumed charisma weirdly nullified the same tired media charges of entitlement that have been customarily leveled against almost every affluent, well-connected Republican politician from Mitt Romney to George Bush.

There were also several liberal media complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin, most prominently three—that she lacked experience for high federal office; that she avoided the media whenever possible; and that she either would not or could not opine on world affairs.

But Gov. Palin had been an elected official for some sixteen years, winning and losing elections until assuming the governorship—always at odds with an entrenched male hierarchy that had run Alaska for years. Through it all, Palin mothered five children without either capital or connections. She endured at the very beginning of her national run a vicious press as interested in ridiculing her as a rube in fancy store-bought clothes as it is catching a glimpse of Caroline’s glitzy labels.

We know in our hearts that Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, who mercilessly grilled pro-life, Christian Sarah Palin with the poor white twang, would pull in their talons—if given the chance to dialogue with Caroline. Yet there is no evidence that Caroline Kennedy knows any more about Waziristan than did Sarah Palin; there is a great deal of evidence that it is far more difficult for a nobody mom of five to make it through the electoral process into national politics from Alaska than it is for a Kennedy daughter of a President to be appointed from the Upper East Side to fill a liberal New York Senate Seat.

Caroline Kennedy is no doubt a fine individual who by all accounts has led an exemplary life. But her proposed appointment to the US Senate is a rare reflection of ourselves—the glittering of the aristocracy in the left’s vision of an otherwise egalitarian America, the notion that blue-chip certification conveys status and wisdom rather than proven excellence through the life-school of hard knocks, and the ethical bankruptcy of the media that has no principled notion of disinterested inquiry, but now serves as an fawning appendage of the Left.

In short, appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate from New York tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does even her.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:06 | link | comments

Heh:

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:16 | link | comments

Pretty please can we stop the crazed jihadists from trying to kill us?: These days when it's under assault, Israel isn't allowed to actually fight back. First it has to send out diplomats to "smooth the way" for self defence.

As if that's going to silence the uproar that is bound to ensure when Hamas gets its just desserts. (Can't you just hear it now? "Disproportionate force!" Collective punishment!" "Jenin! Jenin!"...)

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

Sunday, 21 December 2008

“Nice” won’t stop the jihad: “American Thinker” Bill Warner blows a big, wet raspberry at “niceness”:

After the Mumbai jihad there was a response of "Do good deeds." The Jews of Chabad (the sect that had its members tortured to death) asked for Jews to do "mitzvahs," good works. A yoga group that had some of its members killed believes that love will triumph. Then Deepak Chopra weighed in with his "think good thoughts" campaign. Chopra's effort has the "magic" of if a million people pledge to think good thoughts the world will change for peace. All of these efforts may be summarized by one phrase: Be Nice.

I have nothing against being nice. Who does? But is that enough? What happened at Mumbai was evil. Any response must be aimed at preventing it from happening again. How can Being Nice prevent evil from recurring?

There is a strain of New Age, hippy, pacifist, and utopian thought which believes just that. Cue the Beatles, All We Need is Love. The Be Nice theory raises a question: if good deeds and good thoughts will prevent another Mumbai, then does that mean that the rabbi and his pregnant wife, who were tortured to death, had just not done enough mitzvah, good works? Is a 9-year-old girl who is raped just not nice enough?

Pacifists say that you should never respond to violence, because that just creates more violence. We should never use pain to correct. War is never the answer. These theories don't seem to take into account that learning how to avoid pain usually consists in remembering what lead to the pain, so we don't do that again. Pain can and will change people's behavior. Pain works.

But, the first step in resisting jihad is not violence or war, but education. The Be Nice people deny that Islamic jihad even exists. Therefore, there is nothing to learn. The Be Nice people will never even use any language that would point towards Islam. Be Nice people are doctrinal deniers. The real Islam has nothing to do with jihad, and therefore there is nothing to learn.

When the Be Nice people speak they never refer to any Islamic doctrine or history. If they speak of doctrine it is about American foreign policy. Internal motivation is missing from the "gunmen." It is as though they only respond to us. They don't have an ideology, just reactions. Or maybe they were poor, economically impoverished.

The reason that the Be Nice people do not want to learn about political Islam is that they have too many suspicions about the truth and know that they don't have the courage to face the reality. So it is better to deny that an Islamic doctrine exists and ignore it. Then when the history and doctrine are pointed out, they hint that we are bigots, we are worse than the jihadists, that such talk is offensive and should not be tolerated. To quote Islamic doctrine has been defined as bigotry and not nice.

Being nice, in and of itself, is not wrong. What is wrong is the lack of balance. Being nice is feminine. We need both compassion and wisdom. Compassion by itself leads to idiot compassion. There are some things that love can't do. We must have an approach that it practical and includes wisdom…

Amen to that, Bill. But I think there’s more to it than that. Consider the Canadian Jewish Congress’s “niceness,” for example. The CJC’s various efforts to be “nice”—condemning the Danish newspaper that published the Mo cartoons;“mentoring” Somalis; applauding King Abdullah’s winsome twinners, etc.—are actually attempts by Jews to ingratiate themselves with Muslims. Futile attempts, one must add. And by now it should be crystal clear that, despite the Jews’ good intentions—no, scratch that; because of the Jews’ good intentions—there is virtually no difference between the CJC’s “niceness” and abject dhimmitude.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments (1)

Creepy news story of the day: The power that’s preparing to nuke the Jewish state in anticipation of its messiahs’ return (he can’t show up until all the Jews are toast) has, to much fanfare, donated a book to the Japanese city incinerated by the A-bomb. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The Cultural Center of Khorramshahr Sacred Defense has donated an illustrated book on the resistance of Khorramshahr residents and the liberation of the city to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Released by the Foundation for the Preservation and Publication of Sacred Defense Works and Values, the book contains photos taken during 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war in this southwestern Iranian port.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum will present a collection of photos of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Cultural Center of Khorramshahr Sacred Defense in near future.

“Iran will issue a series of postage stamps on the anniversary of the crimes the United States committed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as in the interval between the bombings. Stamps will also be issued to commemorate crimes committed by Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and on the anniversary of the liberation of Khorramshahr in 2009. Copies of the stamps will be donated to Hiroshima museum,” the head of center Nader Daryaban told IRNA.

An official of the Hiroshima museum, Miki Nagahira, praised Iran’s donation and declared the book a precious work of art.

In his book Explaining Hitler (which really seeks to explain Hitler’s explainers), Ron Rosenbaum writes that one manifestation of Hitler’s evil—the trait that, in fact, makes him more evil than other evil leaders—was the malicious glee that he and his regime took not just in tormenting and butchering the Jews, but in teasing them in the process (for example, by placing the words “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”—works makes you free—at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp). I can’t help but think that the above is a manifestation of the same kind of evil, and that the mullahs’ are having a good laugh about giving a book to a Hiroshima museum as they get set to pull a Hiroshima on the Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:37 | link | comments

Kipling, anyone?: Claudia Rosett revises Kipling’s “If”, the poem trotted out by a politician who obviously does not understand its message. (See, Blago, it was meant to commend maturity, not thuggery.)

My stab at it:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are calling for your resignation now.

If you can stall when all are trying to rout you,

And ev’ry revelation disavow.

If you can flog a senate seat at auction

And shake down a children’s hospital with sang froid.

If you can fabricate a great concoction

Of bilge to hide the way you shunned the law…

If you can fill the unforgiving airwaves

With sixty seconds of a Rudyard Kipling show.

You’re more out of touch than anyone could even imagine,

And what is more, you’re outta here, Blago!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:28 | link | comments

Hot times in a cold country: I suppose we should be grateful that here in Toronto they're only lobbing invective and shoes. As Mark Steyn notes, over in Malmo, Sweden, flaming youths of no particular background (as the dhimmified Beeb characterizes them) have set portions of the city on fire. Here's a youtube video showing some of the incendiary hijinks.

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

Lively (if not very well-attended) gathering of anti-American shoe shuckers: Some members of the tribe, along with some tribal wannabes, got together in Montreal and Toronto yesterday to show their solidarity with a shoeless Arab “journalist”. From CP via the Globe and Mail:

MONTREAL — Anti-war protesters held symbolic shoe tosses Saturday in Montreal and Toronto in support of jailed Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi.

About 40 protesters in both cities braved the cold to let fly in front of their respective U.S consulates and celebrate Mr. al-Zeidi's actions.

Demonstrators in Montreal pelted a black-and-white presidential photograph with boots, shoes and slippers and denounced the U.S. war in Iraq and the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, before marching to a downtown Canadian Forces recruiting station.

“Today is an act of humour in a sense but it's also a profound situation and context,” activist and journalist Stephan Christoff told the Montreal crowd.

“We're talking about a situation where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in Iraq. It is George Bush who holds a direct responsibility for the devastating, horrific situation of occupation and imperialism in Iraq.”

Organizers also urged local journalists to ditch their veneer of objectivity by lobbing footwear at the image.

“We want to break this ideal that journalists stand in this world of objectivity, stand in this world where opinions don't exist,” said Mr. Christoff…

You can keep your loafers on, boys. Journalists in the MSM ditched their veneer of objectivity some time ago, and journalists in the Arab world never had one. That Stephan Christoff sure is one smooth talkin’ activist, though. I foresee a career in Canadian politics, p’raps standing shoulder to shoulder with Smilin’ Jack Layton. Either that or a career with one of our “human rights” constabularies.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:01 | link | comments

Two-faced MPAC: The Muslim Public Affairs Council was instrumental in helping organize Wahhabi King Abdullah’s Bamboozle the Jews Project, a.k.a. the weekend that “twinned” congregations of clueless Reform Jews with mosques (so everyone could sit around, eat hummus and discuss their common ancestor, Abe). When it comes to the Juden of Israel, however, MPAC has something far less convivial in mind, as Damian Thompson writes in a Telegraph blog (my bolds):

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) is one of the media's favourite Muslim organisations - radical and outspoken but not extremist, we're led to believe. One of its spokesmen, Asghar Bukhari, is a particular favourite of the BBC, whose Asian Network describes how he has "set up Media response workshops to educate and engage Muslims about dealing with the media" .

So I was interested to see how Bukhari would "deal" with me when I rang him to ask about an interesting discovery by The Centre for Social Cohesion, in my opinion the most formidable of the think-tanks monitoring Islamic extremism, which has been rooting around Facebook discussions.

In one recent thread, Bukhari says: "Muslims who fight against the occupation of their lands are 'Mujahadeen' and are blessed by Allah. And any Muslim who fights and dies against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise ... There is no greater oppressor on this earth than the Zionists, who murder little children for sport."

Well, Bukhari didn't evade the question. He confirmed that the Facebook discussion was authentic, and said: "I stand by that [his comments], and I think any Muslim in the world stands by that ... if you think I'm going to tap dance for you and say 'These Muslims are really bad and should sort their own house out', then I'm not going to."

Indeed, he added, if that was my view then I could "p--- off"…

What are the odds—that’s exactly my message to MPAC, King Abdullah all the winsome twinners: p—s off.

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

Murder in Somalia: The Toronto Star has a harrowing, horrifying story about the brutalities inflicted upon Asho Duholow. Asha, a 13-year old Somali girl, was born in a Kenya refugee camp but fled to her homeland, where she was raped and then stoned to death.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:01 | link | comments

The Mona Blago: A Chicago artist has painted a portrait of scandal-ridden Gov. Rod Blago—and it isn’t a pretty picture. From the Chicago Tribune:

A nude portrait of the governor, by artist Bruce Elliott, is nearly complete and will hang on the wall of Elliott's wife's bar, the Old Town Ale House, next to his infamous depiction of a naked Sarah Palin. It is the next installment in what Elliott loosely calls his "nude governor series."

Elliott cites many sources of inspiration for the painting, which shows the governor, who was arrested last week on corruption charges, preparing for a potential first day of incarceration. Among them: the extent of the governor's alleged misdeeds and the artist's desire to respond to criticism from Republicans and women about the Palin portrait by painting a Democrat in the buff.

"I was stunned when I found out what that criminal complaint [outlined]," Elliott said as he examined the painting in his Old Town studio. "Hopefully, someone is going to find this irreverent."

Irreverent hardly begins to describe it. The scene imagines Blagojevich handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit pulled down to his knees.

Among the onlookers is a guard, with a look of grim determination, pulling on a rubber glove.

The painting, which is taking Elliott a little over a week to finish, is titled: "The Cavity Search."

Okay, I think I just lost by breakfast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments

"They're just some souls whose intentions are good/Oh Lord, please don't let them be misunderstood": Jimminy "Cricket" Carter praises the put-upon leaders of Hamas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:32 | link | comments

Merry Kvetchmas: The holiday season is upon us and you know what that means—time for the annual media whinge-fest about how Israel is wrecking Bethlehem’s Christmas. Here’s a fairly typical report on the subject, from Islam Online:

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Despite chocking (sic) Israeli restrictions, preparations are in full swing in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, to celebrate Christmas.

"We want to bring joy to the hearts of our people," Bethlehem municipal chief Victor Batarsa told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, December 20.

"We are trying to create a favorable atmosphere for the pilgrims and tourists and draw a smile on the faces of the residents of the occupied city."

The city of 185,000 has put on its Christmas best to welcome the pilgrims and tourists.

Garlands of flickering lights, synthetic pine trees, fake snow and other Christmas favorites give a festive feel to the city.

Souvenir sellers carved Nativity scenes, crosses, rosaries and other religious items, set up inflatable Santas and blow-up snowmen outside their stores.

"Every year, we celebrate Christmas to preserve our heritage and history," Yusuf Goukman, a bizarre owner, said.

Christmas is the main festival on the Christian calendar. Its celebrations reach its peak at 12:00 PM on December 24 of every year.

Christian pilgrims flock to Bethlehem every year in this period to join Christmas at the historical Nativity Church, built on the site where Jesus is said to have been born in a stable.

Restrictions

But the Christmas joy is marred by the crippling Israeli restrictions in the occupied city.

"The Israeli occupation is determined to destroy our celebrations," Batarsa said.

"The city is suffering under siege with Israeli checkpoints installed at the city's entrances.

"There are also daily incursions, settlement expansion not to mention arrests and house demolitions."

The separation wall Israel is building is also adding to the suffering of Bethlehem residents.

The barrier, a mix of electronic fences and concrete walls, isolated the city from Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem), confiscated farm land, uprooted olive trees, and helped to quicken emigration and keep unemployment at more than 50 percent.

However, Bethlehem residents are maintaining their Christmas joy.

"This land is ours. Our ancestors were born and lived in this city. This is a holy land," said Goukman, the bizarre owner…

Bizarre alright, since the security fence has given pilgrims the peace of mind they didn’t have during periods of unrest, and as result they have made their way to the town in record numbers. Just think of what Bethlehem would be like if there were no fence—or if the Muslims, and not the Jews, had sovereignty over the land. Goukman the bizarre owner would undoubtedly have a lot more to whinge about then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:19 | link | comments

If the shoe fits…: Salim Mansur sheds light on the “tribalism” behind the shoe-flinging incident. From the Toronto Sun:

The television pictures of an Iraqi journalist hurling shoes at President George W. Bush standing alongside the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a Baghdad press conference have ricocheted across the world to the hysterical applause of many members of the Arab-Muslim audience and their usual supporters.

Hurling shoes at someone, we are told, is the worst insult in Arab culture.

A few years ago the world witnessed when Baghdad was liberated by American soldiers and Saddam Hussein's statue in the centre of the city was pulled down. A cheering crowd of Iraqis gathered to kick and slap the broken image of the fallen tyrant repeatedly with their footwear, displaying contempt for a man whose shadow only weeks earlier would have frozen them in fear.

What are non Arabs to make of the shoes hurled at an American president in an Arab capital to the cheers of an Arab audience?

It is not a surprise that more Arabs loathe President Bush than approve of him. This being the case, the incident is more revealing of Arabs and their culture than of President Bush arriving as a guest in an Arab capital.

Much of Arab culture is tribal culture, and Arab nationalism is tribalism dressed in the political garments borrowed from Europe. Arab modernity is often a charade, and Arab states are typically, in the memorable words of Tahseen Bashir, an Egyptian diplomat, so many "tribes with flags."

Tribal mentality

The collectivist tribal mentality frowns upon the idea of individuals asserting their rights as free people. Freedom is subversive to a culture that insists on tribal identity and this is why many Arabs, as tribes, remain fearful of modernity and democracy…

No wonder the shoe-lobber is such a hero to his tribe (and no wonder Salim Mansur, a man who consistently dares to speak the truth, is at the centre of a well-orchestrated campaign by the tribally-inclined to get him fired from the Sun).

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

Winnipeg’s mausoleum of “human rights”: Despite the fact that in our time the term “human rights” has been hijacked by those who believe in their right to snuff out our freedom, plans to erect an edifice in tribute to this Orwellian concept continue apace. From the Winnipeg Sun:

It will be the first of its kind in this country, but the Canadian Museum for Human Rights might not stand head and shoulders above other like-minded institutions around the world.

While Winnipeg's national museum will be a grand monument to peace, understanding and goodwill, it's not like this hasn't been done before. At least to some extent.

The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Elsternwick, Australia. The Robben Island Museum in South Africa, examining apartheid and the banishment and imprisonment which existed in its region between the 17th and 20th centuries. Then there's the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England.

They shine a spotlight on much the same kinds of themes -- and are apparently pretty cool, too.

"We know there are museums that focus on tolerance, that focus on ideas, that focus on issues like that," said Patrick O'Reilly, chief operating officer of Winnipeg's splashy complex soon to begin taking shape at The Forks.

"American civil rights institutions tend to focus on race issues. There are other ones, of course, like the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. that are focused more around the Holocaust and the Second World War. There's a slavery museum being developed in Great Britain right now. There are castles in Ghana that are set up as slavery museums at the place where slaves were gathered before bringing them to North America."

BROADER STROKE

The difference, O'Reilly said, is the Winnipeg museum will illustrate human rights with a broader stroke.

"This, we believe, will be the first one that's really encompassing," he said. "One can never know of every little museum in the world, but certainly this one is going to take it broader than the ones we've seen."

Museums exploring American civil rights appear plentiful in the southern U.S.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., stands around the former Lorraine Motel, where black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a sniper in 1968.

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum is in development at the Greensboro, N.C. former F.W. Woolworth store where four black college students made a historic statement in 1960 by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter.

Just how many major rights-based museums are operating internationally is difficult to nail down, O'Reilly said.

Let me nail it down for you: too many.

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

Only human: Victor Davis Hanson says that, despite all his hopeychangey blather, Obama will inherit—and continue—policies he inherited from Bush, who inherited policies from Clinton. As a result, the Messiah will shortly reveal himself to be a regular homo sapien:

…Many of our unpopular policies concerning terrorism, energy and finance are of long duration. They resulted from collective decisions by Congress, past administrations — and us, the people, in our daily lives. They were no more the fault of George Bush than they can be easily solved by Barack Obama.

We should remember that fact in 2009, when the once-messianic Obama will become all too human, as he is overwhelmed by structural problems of terror, war and money not all of his own making — and the once-demonized but now retired George Bush will seem downright competent.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:19 | link | comments

Global warming up the wazoo: Could someone please knock it off with the global warming already? There are honking humungous piles of fluffy, white global warming everywhere I look, and the weatherpundit says more global warming is on the way today.

Grab a shovel, Al, and come help us dig out 'cause the carbon credits we've purchased from your Cozy Carbon Credit Emporium don't seem to be having a salutary effect on our climate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments

Saturday, 20 December 2008

Lobbing soft balls at the Big O: That reporter who was admonished by Mr. Inclusive not to “waste” his question on Blago talk heeded the advice. His next question—the one he didn’t “waste”—was more to the prez-elect’s liking. He asked him who he thought had the better jump shot—Obama, or the guy he’d just nominated as his secretary of education.

Talk about yer hard hitting queries from a hard bitten cynics of the Fourth Estate. (Are there any hard-bitten cynics left in journalism, in The Front Page mold? Or has the lefty sludge so infested the corridor of mainstream journalists’ brains such that, to a man and woman, they are all a bunch of squishy, Oprahfied wusses?

Jay Nordlinger’s wry comment: “Do you get the feeling that media treatment of this president is going to be different from media treatment of President Bush?”

Let’s think about that for a moment. Supposing it was a Republican governor who was under a cloud of suspision; who had been caught on tape by the FBI trying to “sell” a senate seat to the highest bidder; who was seeking a kickback from a children’s hospital--a children's hospital!--and, when it was not forthcoming, who tried to cancel promised funding. And suppose that Bush’s chief of staff had been in direct contact with this governor, perhaps to offer suggestions as to who Bush would next like to see filling the Senate seat. Can you think of any scenario in which the press corp would, following an admonition not to "waste" a query, lay off the tough questions and instead ask the President about, say, how his golf swing was going? Why, there would be outrage! High dudgeon! And relentless and detailed probing of the chief of staff to determine exactly what he knew, and precisely when he knew it.

It should seem obvious--but, apparently, it isn't--that this kid glove approach, which makes reporters look like they’re working for Pravda covering Stalin in his heyday, is ill-becoming, nay, an insult to professional journalists in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Even worse, it is an insult to their readers, who depend on reporters to do their jobs and who, when they don't, have to wade through their hope-changey pieces o' crap.

My advice to the ladies and gentlemen of the press: If, like Chris Matthews, you find yourself on the verge of orgasm whenever you're in Obama’s presence (Chris admitted to experiencing a tingle when sitting with The O) it’s a clear indication that you are incapable of reporting on him in any even half-way effective or legitimate manner.

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

Just asking: So as I understand it, the president has given the Big Three auto makers a "loan" that they're supposed to repay by March.

Um, I'm no economist (although I do live in a home with a paid-off mortgage), but isn't that partly how the country got into such a huge mess in the first place--by extending credit to people who had no way of paying it back?

Update: Steyn decries throwing good capital away on fatally under-capitalized auto makers (a "Bailoutistan")

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:36 | link | comments

RIP Conor Cruise O’Brien: Writer/Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien has died at the age of 91. O’Brien was that rare breed—a man of the left who didn’t kowtow to the sophistries of political correctness, and who esteemed the Jewish state. (He became fond of it when, as Ireland's ambassador to the UN, he sat between Iran and Israel in the General Assembly; he later penned an articulate, impassioned book about Israel and Zionism, The Siege). A paragraph in the Telegraph’s obit offers a snapshot of the man:

When Naim Attallah, the Palestinian businessman and writer, suggested that many of O'Brien's countrymen had come to regard him as a British stooge, O'Brien was unconcerned. "For 'a lot of people' read the IRA and their stooges, some of whom you have clearly been talking to. Give them my regards."

He will be missed.

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

Not normal: Hard lefty journalist/failed politician Judy Rebick (so hard and so left that she, a Jew, has participated in that annual campus Zionhass fete, Israeli Apartheid Week) pens a missive to the G & M:

Toronto -- In Preston Manning's partisan appeal to Canadians dressed up in non-partisan clothes, he suggests we lobby Liberal MPs to dissolve the Liberal-NDP coalition, failing to mention it was the formation of the coalition that forced Stephen Harper to back down for the first time in memory (Here's How We Fix Canada's Political Mess - Dec. 19). Make no mistake that as soon as the coalition is dissolved, so is the threat to bring down the Harper government. No doubt Mr. Harper will go back to his old ways.

I agree with Mr. Manning on one thing: Now is the time not only to talk to your MP but to your friends and family - to explain that a coalition government is a normal part of most parliamentary democracies.

My letter:

Judy Rebick claims that coalition governments are a “normal” part of parliamentary democracies. “Normal” isn't exactly the word that springs to mind to describe a power grab by a trio of Harper-haters. Brazen, outrageous, contemptuous--yes. But it is hardly “normal” for the opposition leader who led his party to its most ignominious defeat ever to presume to become the prime minister, thereby thwarting the peoples’ will, and to do so by making common cause with a leader who wants to usher his province out of Confederation.

Anyone who thinks that’s “normal” ought to have his/her head examined.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:46 | link | comments (2)

Censorship gets CPR from CJC: Canadian Human Rights Commission appointee, Professor Richard Moon, unexpectedly called for the repeal of Section 13—that part of the federal human rights code that allows complaints to be brought because of “hate speech”. Unwilling to drop its security blankie, and seemingly incapable of wrapping its head around such a surprising call (since, clearly, it had been counting on the professor to see things its way), the Canadian Jewish Congress keeps trying to reanimate the moribund steed:

Dec 18, 2008 - The Ottawa Citizen
'Fence of protection' need not impair freedoms

Re: Democracy suffers when equality is threatened, Dec. 11.

Jane Bailey is to be commended for her eloquent and cogent defence of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) that critiques Richard Moon's report for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

She correctly notes that the state in a democratic society has a fundamental obligation to protect vulnerable minorities in their midst from hate and vilification and that, if done properly, this "fence of protection" need not be regarded as an undue impairment of free expression.

Nor can we depend solely on criminal law to rid society, and now the Internet, of hate propaganda. The Criminal Code exists to punish crime and should not be relied on to regulate discriminatory behaviour or prevent the spread of web-based hate. The parallel civil remedy in the CHRA is necessary to protect targeted groups from exposure to hate and to bolster core Canadian values of pluralism, civil discourse and respect for diversity.

In focusing the thrust of hate laws on the promotion of violence, Mr. Moon underplays the serious inherent effects of hate speech on vulnerable communities and the corrosive consequences of hate on those fundamental Canadian values.

Mr. Moon acknowledges that amendments to section 13 could revitalize its role in combating Internet hate. This is the correct approach: rather than abolish the section, let's find creative ways to make it work more fairly and effectively for the benefit of all Canadians.

Eric Vernon,

Ottawa

Canadian Jewish Congress

Tell me, Eric, what part of “repeal” (repeated 11 times) don’t you understand?

Meanwhile, there’s nothing on the CJC site about the CHRC giving the go-ahead to a hateful imam to spew/rant/bloviate to his heart’s content about Jews, gays and other of Allah’s undesirables. Guess that’s because our “advocates” are too busy trying to endear themselves to Muslims (through cockamamie “twinning” and “mentorship” schemes) and hunting down scary Nazis to notice who the real scary ideologues are (i.e. the thought cops and the Islamists they’re so keen to protect).

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:07 | link | comments (1)

Friday, 19 December 2008

And the winner of the most surreal moment on TV 2008...: No contest—it's Illinois' caught-red-handed-trying-to-flog-a-senate-seat (among other goodies) Gov (for now) Roddo Blago. After asserting his COMPLETE and TOTAL INNOCENCE hair today, gone tomorrow Rod launched into a few lines from"If". Yes, that "If", by famous Chicago versifyer Rudyard Kipling.

Nice recitation there, Rod, but maybe you should have gone with your second choice—some Rodgers and Hammerstein karaoke.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:31 | link | comments

An iron veil descends on the UN: The UN, which takes its marching orders from its largest voting bloc, the 57-member strong Organization of the Islamic Conference, has once again condemned “defamation” of religion—and more specifically, defamation of what the OIC considers to be the one and only valid religion. From Reuters:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly condemned defamation of religion for the fourth year running on Thursday, ignoring critics who said the resolution threatens freedom of speech.

The non-binding resolution, championed by Islamic states and opposed by Western countries, passed by 86 votes to 53 with 42 abstentions. Opponents noted that support had fallen since last year, when the vote was 108-51 with 25 abstentions.

The seven-page text urges states to provide "adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general."

Critics said its provisions strike at basic rights of free expression and opinion. One clause states that exercise of those rights "carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations."

The resolution only specifically mentions Islam. It deplores ethnic and religious profiling of Muslims since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and says Islam is often and wrongly associated with terrorism.

Islamic states say such resolutions do not aim to limit free speech but to stop publications like the Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed that sparked bloody protests by Muslims around the world in 2005.

Russia and China joined Arab and some African states in voting for the resolution.

This year's resolution drew attention because of reports that Islamic states aim to include a similar call against religious defamation in a key U.N. document on racism…

The Islamic states can say whatever the heck they want about the point of these anti-“defamation” exercises, and the clueless hacks who staff Western news agencies such as Reuters can pretend that such bogus claims may indeed be valid. But anyone with a semblance of a scintilla of an iota of clue knows that what we have here is 99 44/100th% pure, unadulterated sharia. You know it, I know it, and no doubt the Russians and Chinese know it, too. The thing is, the authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing are so keen to best the West that they’re prepared to close their eyes and swallow the OIC sharia—for now, anyway. Everyone knows that when these two decide to clamp down on the restive Islamists in their midst—as they inevitably will—they will give nary a thought to the UN, the OIC, or anyone else.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:48 | link | comments (1)

Falk the flake: Ron Radosh, an old hand at deflating leftist pretentions, does just that to UN “human rights” apparatchik/capo Dick Falk:

It is something of a joke that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has appointed Richard Falk, Milbank Prof. Emeritus at Princeton University as its “Special Rapporteur” on investigating human rights violations in the Palestinian territories. Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.

But even for the UN, whose concern for human rights seems to extend only to abuses supposedly undertaken by Israel alone, the appointment of Falk is a mockery of any pretensions to objectivity. Falk made his views on the situation in the Middle East well known years before his current appointment. Writing in The Nation in 2002, he explained that the state terrorism he believes Israel is engaged in is not only the moral equivalent of Palestinian terrorism, but is in fact greater. Israel, he writes, is engaged in “state sponsored terrorism,” while what many people consider actual terrorist acts by Palestinians- such as the suicide bombings that regularly occurred in Israel before it built its protective wall-were called by Falk “reactive and understandable” responses. When the Palestinians blew up a private Passover celebration at Netanya, Falk called it “horrifying,” but Israel’s response was “the equally horrifying Israeli incursion…throughout occupied Palestine.”

Falk argues that Palestinian acts like suicide bombings took place only after their cadre “ran out of military options” in response to the Israeli occupation, “and suicide bombers appeared as the only means still available by which to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that the struggle could go on.” So way back in 2002, Falk was already declaring that such barbarism by Palestinian extremists were a just response to Israeli defensive actions. It is, he writes, simply “the right of resistance…enjoyed by an occupied people,” which “would seem to legitimize some armed activities.”

A few days ago, Falk was turned back at Ben Gurion airport and denied entry into Israel. Given his writing, the Israeli charge that his UN mandate was, as an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said, “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative,” was completely justified.

Reading a more recent Falk article, “Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” provides even more evidence for Falk’s lack of impartiality. In this now famous screed Falk writes that he is “compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel” as itself a “holocaust.” Is this, he rhetorically asks, “an irresponsible overstatement?” Falk’s answer: “I think not.” He calls the situation in Gaza- from which Israel withdrew and handed the area over to the Palestinians-a “deliberate intention on the part of Israel…to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty.”

Falk continues to argue that the Western powers as well as other Arab states are associated in a “pattern of criminality” akin to those who let Hitler oppress the Jews in the 1930’s. As to the withdrawal by Israel from Gaza and the dismantling of Israeli settlements, Falk argues they were but a “sham” in which 300 Gazans were killed since Israel’s “supposed physical departure.” Somehow, no words appear anywhere in Falk’s account of the continued Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, the concurrent Hezbollah incursions against Israel, or their refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist . In his lexicon, it is only Israel who attacks the Palestinians, and only Palestinians who respond in self defense.

As for Hamas, Falk attacks those who castigate it “as a terrorist organization” when in fact, he assures his gullible audience, that Hamas always “was ready to work with other Palestinian groups” like Fatah and to “move toward an acceptance of Israel’s existence.” The trouble is caused only by Israel, which “seems more determined than ever to foment civil war in Palestine.” Falk concludes, before any investigation he was to carry out for the UN commission, that Israel has brought Gaza to “the brink of collective starvation,” imposing a “sub-human existence on a people” by “collective punishment.” All this, he concludes, is “indeed genocidal.”

This is the man who supposedly was to conduct an investigation into Israeli abuse of human rights. As if this was not enough, Falk recently reiterated his view that the Al Qaeda attack of 9/11 is not a “closed book.” Referring to conspiracy theorists of the so-called “9/11 Truth Movement” like David Ray Griffin, for whose book Falk wrote an introduction, Falk writes that “it is not paranoid…to assume that the established elites of the American governmental structure have something to hide, and much to explain.” Indeed, he calls the view that the conspiracy theorists have- that the Bush administration brought down the twin towers to find an excuse to go to war-as a “convincing counter-narrative.”

Falk, in other words, reveals himself to be a plain vanilla nutcase…

Surely not vanilla. More like Half Baked.

Imagine Whirled Peace?

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

Wahhabi Bubba: The New York Post suggests that Bill Clinton deck his head in yards of shmatta (since his, er, foundation pockets so much loot from the Saudis):

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:06 | link | comments

Islam Online takes a stand against historical misrepresentation in textbooks: The Wahhabist website has no problem with the historical misrepresentations in these textbooks, of course, since they are aimed at eliminating Jewish sovereignty, a concept anathema to Islam. However, IO is most upset about insufficiently reverent textbooks in the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan, where Islamists want to wrest control from the Russia-backed government:

DUSHANBE — Tajik textbooks are misinterpreting the Islamic teachings and Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him), a top Muslim scholar and lawmaker said, Radio Free Europe reported on Thursday, December 18.

"(Textbooks' authors have taken an) unprofessional, irrational, and sometimes insulting and offensive stance toward Islam and Islamic values," Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda said in an open letter to the Ministry of Education.

He said textbooks portray Prophet Muhammad as the creator of Islam, not a messenger of God, and that the pillars of Islam were his suggestions.

"Among many others issues, there are three major matters in Islam that were divine revelation and they include the status of the holy city of Makkah as the center of Islam, the status of the Ka`bah as the most sacred site in Islam, and making the hajj the fifth pillar of Islam."

The MP cites a book for the sixth-grade students, "The History of the Middle Ages", which says the three issues were the fruits of a political deal between the Prophet and Makkah tribal leaders.

"Even Soviet-era textbooks, which were openly atheistic, didn't deny historical facts like our current authors do."

The Education Ministry has not yet officially responded to the Muslim MP's letter.

Education Minister Abdujabbor Rahmonov earlier said that his ministry has been planning to "rewrite some of the textbooks".

"We're going to revise [the textbooks], but not now, because we have other priorities at the moment. All in good time."…

In other words, don’t call us, Islamists, we’ll call you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments

How the Taliban tried to steal Christmas: They’re like Scrooge—with explosives. From the Guardian:

Taliban insurgents have blown up a lorry packed with Christmas turkeys bound for British troops in Afghanistan. The frozen turkey roll breasts were destroyed in an explosion on the route from Pakistan to Camp Bastion.

The consignment, weighing 325kg, was intended for troops in Helmand Province, where up to 3,000 soldiers will spend the festive season. But the Christmas dinner will go ahead as planned after the Ministry of Defence flew out replacement birds, ensuring soldiers will not miss out on their special meal.

Regimental Catering Warrant Officer Nick Townley, who is in charge of organising Christmas dinner for British troops in Afghanistan, said: "Unfortunately one of our Christmas wagons got taken out so a lot of turkeys had to be flown in especially."

The 33-year old-from High Wycombe has been preparing for Christmas since the summer, ordering everything needed to feed the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that will be at Bastion as well as the 2,000 others stationed around Helmand.

On Christmas Day soldiers will be able to tuck into the replacement turkey rolls as well as 135kg of roast pork, 424kg of gammon and 67.5kg of beef, topped with 200 jars of cranberry sauce. Brussels sprouts will not be left off the menu - chefs will prepare 62 boxes, weighing a total of 148.8kg. There will also be 300kg of roast potatoes and 120kg of carrots.

And there will be 222 Christmas puddings, 37 Christmas cakes, and one mince pie and one After Eight mint each. The total cost of feeding the troops in Bastion's four dining rooms is £10,265, or just £3.42 each. But there will be no brandy for the Christmas sauce, with Camp Bastion a dry area. "It wouldn't have made it in there anyway," Townley joked.

As is traditional in the army, senior officers will serve the junior ranks first to show their appreciation. The 35 chefs at Bastion, who never have a day off, will prepare most of the food on Christmas Eve so they are not rushed off their feet on the day. "The plan is for the guys not to slog their guts out on Christmas Day," Townley said. "If guys get days off it means the others have to work even harder."

Special meals are also being sent to the 10 Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) where there are 35 chefs. Townley said: "The only blokes who won't get it are the ones in the PBs (patrol bases) but the idea is to rotate them through the FOBs. They will all get their Christmas dinner at some stage, it just might not be on Christmas Day."

All together now: Bah, humbug!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments

Islamo-fashionistas: Considering the constraints within which they are forced to labour, Iran’s small band of clothing designers are doing the best they can. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The secretary of the fashion and costume design festival has said that the event will give a boost to efforts to promote Islamic costume designs.

The festival has been organized to introduce people to costume designs that are appropriate for our Islamic Iranian culture, Abolfazl Mohammadkhani told reporters at a press conference on Monday.

Iran’s first fashion and costume design festival will be held at the Tehran Permanent International Fairground from December 22 to 26. It will have several sections: male, female and children clothes, and subsidiary textile industries.

He pointed to Iran’s rich historical background in textile design and technology saying that although it has regressed during recent years, the industry can still be promoted in Iran.

A section of the festival is dedicated to costume designers, researchers of professional journals and related software. Also, several workshops will be held on the sidelines of the festival, he added.

Sets of ornaments and jewelry will also go on display at the festival. It is a trend that unfortunately has been neglected in Iran for years, Mohammadkhani added.

A fashion show will also be held during the gala in which Iranian costumes will go on display. The show will have one interval for women and two intervals for men each day. There are fewer intervals for women than men since there are not many brands for women in Iran, he mentioned.

Turkey, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan and some Southeast Asian countries will also take part at the festival.

“One can not expect a perfect festival since this is the first experience we have with it in Iran. We do need sponsorship from the private sector and also from government to promote it. We aim to make it an international event and to introduce it to world,” he mentioned.

“We are not authorized to sell anything specifically at the festival, but marketing is permitted and producers can take orders. Also, photography or filming is prohibited at the gala,” he mentioned…

So they have to design more for men than for women, and photos at fashion shows are strictly verboten. Kind of hard—not to mention well nigh impossible—to get a fashion industry off the ground on that basis, even with private and public sponsorship.

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

Songs of the season: Here are three new parodies, plus one of my personal favourites from seasons past:

Power Play

(Tune: “Mary’s Boy Child”)

A short time ago in Ottawa

On a strange and fateful day

Three unwise men they hatch a plot

And make a power play.

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

Dion he make a video.

The whole thing it a botch.

The lights too low; the man can’t speak.

It embarrassing to watch.

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

They go make Iggy leader;

It seem kind of Soviet.

They ask Bob Rae if it okay.

He dare not answer, “Nyet.”

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

Now, what you know?

Prorogue a go.

The country breathe a sigh.

But who can say how it will end--

Will the coalition fly?

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

Stay tuned and see if unwise men

They continue power play….

Oh Come all Ye Faithful

(tune: Ditto)

Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.

Oh come be, oh come be a senator.

Come and bid for it ‘fore it’s off the market.

Obama doesn’t need it, Obama doesn’t need it,

Obama doesn’t need it—he’s pre-eh-si-dent…

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Jihad

(tune: “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas”)

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had

Ev’rywhere you go.

Take at look at it in Mumbai.

In Gaza the rockets fly.

And if they claim it’s not the same

You know it’s all a lie.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had;

Terrorists galore.

But the scariest sight to see is the way that the sharee-ya

Is creeping in the door.

Hamas and Hezbollah holler loud and proud in the Middle East.

Afghanistan has the Taliban who wage their brand of “peace”.

And Obam’ can hardly wait to talk to 'Mahdinejad the Beast.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had

Ev’rywhere you go;

There’s Jew-hate in the OIC, nutty as it can be,

And soon enough at Durban II they’ll torch that “entity”.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had;

Infidels'll bleed.

‘Cause when kafirs let down their guard

That’s the time they’ll be hit hard

By a confident sha-heed,

By a confident sha-heed.

Building Up the Mullah’s Arsenal

(tune: “Winter Wonderland”)

In Iran if you’re lookin’

Yellow cake is still cookin’.

They’re makin’ some nukes

Despite our rebukes,

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

They’ll say, “Hey, glad to see ya,”

As they practice taqiyaah.

And tell Mo ElBee

There’s nothin’ to see

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

Underground is where they’ll put the bombs now,

Then pretend it isn’t what we think.

They will tell us lies with such aplomb now.

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

Later on they’ll conspire,

Say they plan to retire.

They’ll sing us a song,

And string us along,

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal…

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

Thursday, 18 December 2008

Season’s gruntings: A member of the masthead of NOW Magazine, Toronto’s insufferable hard lefty freebie rag, invites readers to have an “inclusive” holiday:

Don't say Merry Christmas to me!

The War on Christmas is better known as being inclusive

Susan G. Cole

Tell me something: Does anybody think Irving Berlin's estate needs another infusion? No, right? So why do the malls start piping in Berlin's hit White Christmas alongside all those other Christmas chestnuts starting as early as November? We get the same 17 songs for six weeks. Where's the creativity here?

Speaking of which – creativity I mean – what's going on in stationery stores this time of year? Just try getting a card that's not holiday-related. For that matter, just try to find a card that celebrates the season without all the father son holy ghost stuff. "Peace On Earth" would be just fine for me but I have to be all religious if I want to send anyone a holiday greeting.

Speaking of which – please greet me with the phrase, Happy holidays, not Merry Christmas. I don't celebrate Christmas and fully half of the people in Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in the world, don't. I take these days off because they're statutory holidays not because I believe in Jesus. I actually am a believer in Jesus the man, not Jesus the son of God but the radical thinker who believed in change and challenged the ascendency of greed in the halls of the temple.

Speaking of which – Jesus would be grossed out if he were to witness the present-day consumer binge that happens around this time of year. It makes those pagan Romans look positively progressive by comparison.

Speaking of which – all the best aspects of Christmas are based in pagan ritual. The tree, for example, is a symbol that pre-dates Jesus. The accent on light and candles is shared by other cultures. Both Dwali and Hanukkah, which my family celebrates, centre around the miracle of light. If those three kings did make that trip to Bethlehem, they did it during the winter solstice, a major pagan celebration that happens this time of year.

All of which is to say – we're all in holiday mode together.

So, be inclusive. Say Marry (sic) Christmas only to people you're absolutely sure celebrate that holiday. Play it safe with the rest of us.

Happy Holidays,

SGC

The “G” in her name, apparently, stands for Grinch. Or ghastly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments (2)

AP’s oddly skewed query: In anticipation of his wife becoming the next Secretary of State, Bill Clinton has finally come clean on the donors who are keeping his foundation flush with lucre. The list shows shows that the oily Wahhabi royals—state sponsors of Hamas and other dubious anti-Zionist enterprises—coughed up a gusher of cash, but that’s not what perturbs news agency AP the most—or at all. No, what’s got AP’s goat is the Clintons’ perceived connection to, er, India:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton laid out a list of big-ticket donors to his foundation Thursday that is heavy with foreign governments and business interests sure to have a stake in the policies that Hillary Rodham Clinton carries out as secretary of state.

Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments gave at least $46 million, while corporate donors included the Blackwater security firm that protects U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

The contributions went to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts to reduce poverty and treat AIDS. President-elect Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state contingent on her husband revealing the foundation's contributors, to avoid questions about potential conflicts of interest.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the foundation, and other government donors included Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica. The Dutch national lottery gave $5 million to $10 million.

The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Five Blackwater guards have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.

The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money. While the list is loaded with international business leaders and billionaires, some 12,000 donors gave $10 or less.

Clinton agreed to release the information after concerns emerged that his extensive international fundraising and business deals could conflict with America's interests if his wife became the nation's top diplomat. The foundation has insisted for years that it was under no legal obligation to identify its contributors, contending that many expected confidentiality when they donated.

The list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, a connection that could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighboring Pakistan in a region where Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership...

Yeah, wouldn’t it be awful if the world’s foremost democracy was seen to be favouring the interests of the world’s largest democracy? That would really piss off the failed state of Pakistan, whose loose cannon security forces sponsor terrorist exploits in India and elsewhere. Fortunately (that's sarcasm, in case you were wondering), those Saudi shekels which pour in every year to Clinton coffers will likely help offset the "imbalance".

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

When is a psychological/mental “sickness” a genuine sickness and not merely the product of prevailing cultural trends?: That’s the question psychiatrists are grappling with as they prepare for a new edition of the master text of human psychological maladies. From the New York Times:

The book is at least three years away from publication, but it is already stirring bitter debates over a new set of possible psychiatric disorders.

Is compulsive shopping a mental problem? Do children who continually recoil from sights and sounds suffer from sensory problems — or just need extra attention? Should a fetish be considered a mental disorder, as many now are?

Panels of psychiatrists are hashing out just such questions, and their answers — to be published in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — will have consequences for insurance reimbursement, research and individuals’ psychological identity for years to come.

The process has become such a contentious social and scientific exercise that for the first time the book’s publisher, the American Psychiatric Association, has required its contributors to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The debate is particularly intense because the manual is both a medical guidebook and a cultural institution. It helps doctors make a diagnosis and provides insurance companies with diagnostic codes without which the insurers will not reimburse patients’ claims for treatment.

The manual — known by its initials and edition number, DSM-V — often organizes symptoms under an evocative name. Labels like obsessive-compulsive disorder have connotations in the wider culture and for an individual’s self-perception.

“This is not cardiology or nephrology, where the basic diseases are well known,” said Edward Shorter, a leading historian of psychiatry whose latest book, “Before Prozac,” is critical of the manual. “In psychiatry no one knows the causes of anything, so classification can be driven by all sorts of factors” — political, social and financial.

“What you have in the end,” Mr. Shorter said, “is this process of sorting the deck of symptoms into syndromes, and the outcome all depends on how the cards fall.”…

I dunno, it doesn’t sound very scientific to me—or, at least, it sounds about as “scientific” as earlier shrinks who had a whole category of female patients described as “hysterics,” and those who asserted that children became autistic as a direct result of their “cold” mothers.

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

Charity (and jihad) begins at home: Islam Online has a piece wherein dhimmis bemoan the crackdown on an Islamic “charity”:

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani Hindu and Christian minorities are angered by the government's crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), crediting the charity with helping the country's poor and needy irrespective of religion or caste.

"I would say, this is not a ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, but it is against the poor people of Pakistan, who were being assisted by the charity," Kamran Michael, a Christian sanitary worker from the northeastern city of Lahore, told IslamOnline.net.

Hundreds of members of Pakistan's Hindu and Christian minorities demonstrated in the southern city of Hyderabad on Tuesday, December 16, in solidarity with the JD.

The Muslim charity was banned by both Islamabad and the UN Security Council last week over alleged links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT), the outlawed group India blames for the bloody Mumbai attacks.

Along with the ban, Pakistan closed down hundreds of JD-run schools, hospitals and clinics across the country, where services are provided to the poor free of charge.

"The government has failed to provide us health and education facilities. Now, they have banned those who had been providing us these facilities," Michael said.

"Let’s see what will the government do? But I have little hopes."

For Naresh Kumar, a Hindu farmer in the historic town of Hala, the ban and the crackdown are unjustifiable.

"My family was being provided with monthly ration (food) and free medical treatment for my children and parents by the JD for months," said Kumar.

"I am a poor laborer. I could not afford that, if the JD would not be able to help me."

Headquartered some 30 kilometers north of Lahore, JD has established itself as one of biggest charity organizations in the South Asian Muslim country, where 34 percent of the total population is living below poverty line...

Sounds very humanitarian, no?

Well, no:

...India has accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of other attacks on Indian targets in recent years, including the 2001 attacks on parliament in New Delhi and train bombings that killed 180 in Mumbai in 2006.

The United States and Britain listed it as a terrorist group in 2001.

After Pakistan banned the group in 2002, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means the Army of the Pure, is believed to have resurfaced under a new name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, according to the U.S. and intelligence experts.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa says it focuses on charity work and publicly insists it has no links to Lashkar, which it says operates only in Kashmir, where an Islamic separatist insurgency against Indian rule has left more than 60,000 people dead since 1989.

Militant groups such as Lashkar want a Kashmiri merger with Pakistan, as Islamabad is also demanding. Some separatist groups want independence from both countries...

Nice try, IO.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:47 | link | comments

Leftesse oblige?: I realize that the Greater Toronto Area (or GTA, as the locals call it) consists of an ever-expanding urban sprawl, but who knew it had sprawled as far as…Botswana? Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Anne Levy has the bizarre details:

While Mayor David Miller's regime was busily dreaming up new ways to tax Torontonians in April, 2007, a Global Aids Prevention fund was quietly approved by council to fund AIDS projects overseas.

A total of $200,000 from that city-sponsored fund has so far gone to create a youth centre for the South East District Youth Empowerment League (SEDYEL) in Ramotswa, Botswana and to initiate preventative AIDS measures for young women both in Botswana and Nairobi, Kenya.

This special $100,000-a-year fund is over and above the more than $1.5-million in grants given to 47 projects this year to undertake HIV/AIDS prevention education programs in Toronto.

The money was handed over the past two years to Schools Without Borders -- a Toronto-based community agency. A report to the board of health in May, 2007 notes that this agency is "well-positioned to help support and implement a range of initiatives pertaining to youth engagement in Botswana, Kenya and Toronto."

Councillor Kyle Rae, chairman of the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program, could not be reached for comment. A staff member in his office told my Sun colleague Bryn Weese that the councillor is away on city business.

"He's not in Canada," said the woman staffer, refusing to say exactly where he is.

The city's Botswana project co-ordinator, Barbara Emanuel -- a senior policy adviser in public health -- said the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has funded an HIV/AIDS "capacity building" partnership between Toronto and the South East District of Botswana since 2002. That funding is separate from the $200,000 provided by Toronto.

Emanuel said the new city-funded Global AIDS initiative -- in place for the past two years -- was a commitment made by the mayor and Rae when Toronto hosted the International AIDS conference in August, 2006…

Let me get this straight. Our ice rinks are closed and our roads are crumbling, but our “virtuous” hard left local officials have hundreds of thousands to squander in far-off Botswana (whose citizens, correct me if I’m wrong, don’t get to vote in our municipal elections).

Quel idiocy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:26 | link | comments (2)

Buh bye, pirates: The totally useless UN has just passed another one of its totally useless resolutions, this one designed to clamp down on Somali pirates currently wreaking mayhem on the high seas. Fortunately, China has stepped up and announced that it will put an end to the watery crimes.

Gee, you would think they would at least offer to "mentor" them first.

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

Shoe sham: In his latest tirade, Harpoon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star’s resident shill/apologist for the Islamist perspective, explains why a shoe-flinger in Iraq became an instant folk hero to Arabs this week, whereupon he launches into another round of Victims R Us:

…At least 100,000 Iraqis are dead. More than 2 million are refugees in Syria and Jordan. Another 2 million are internally displaced. Infrastructure has been wiped out.

The military surge that Bush hailed in Baghdad as "one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military" is a success only in that Iraqis are dying just in the dozens, not hundreds, every day.

The sectarian massacres let loose by the occupation have been stopped only by the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and other cities. Gone are the mixed Shiite, Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods that were a model for the Middle East. Scared people now live in religious and ethnic ghettoes behind barricades, walls and checkpoints.

The surge is a success if it is defined as buying off, at $300 a month, nearly 100,000 Sunnis, half of them insurgents or sympathizers of the insurgency, whose commitment to peace will only be known once the trough is taken away.

The Iraqi democracy that Bush praised features, post-Abu Ghraib, two U.S.-run jails with 15,000 Iraqi detainees, few of whom have been charged and, of those who have been, only 10 per cent convicted.

For a Canadian take on the Iraqi pulse, I emailed Greg Hansen, a B.C. consultant working in Iraq since 2004. He sent this back yesterday:

"The Iraqi journalist seized an opportunity that many Iraqis would wish for themselves.

"Consider years of subjugation to a hated occupier. Living daily with trigger-happy security contractors bullying their way through the streets. Think of innumerable checkpoints, walls, curfews and road closures. Your front door being kicked in for searches. House-shaking overflights by Blackhawks that make your children tremble.

"Add the violence, the ever-present threat of it and the inescapable fear. Add also the collapse of services and mass unemployment.

"For those living and dying through all this, the shoe-guy chose the ideal target at the perfect moment, when Bush himself is signalling the U.S. departure."

Tossing shoes at a visitor, like shoving a pie in a politician's face, is a minor misdemeanour compared to the countless crimes committed by Bush and his gangs in Iraq.

Harpoon is right to point out that Muslims are victims. However, he neglects to mention that, more often than not, they are the victims of other Muslims.

Update: Robert Spencer offers his two shekels worth on the shoe-flinger and other Muslim heroes:

The Islamic world’s latest hero is Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the reporter for Cairo’s Al-Baghdadia TV channel who threw his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Iraq on Sunday. Hasan Muhammad Makhafa, a wealthy Saudi, went on Dubai’s Al-Arabiya TV to call al-Zeidi’s shoes “a symbol of freedom not just footwear. They represent a victory for those who have disgraced the Arabs by occupying their lands and killing innocent people.”

Makhafa was so enthusiastic about this grand gesture of freedom that he offered to plunk down a cool $10 million for the heroic dress shoes. (Makhafa, by the way, is an elementary school teacher. How many elementary school teachers in America have ten million dollars to spend on a pair of shoes? Your gas money at work, folks!)

The less well heeled were just as jazzed by al-Zeidi’s Wing-Tip Jihad. In Damascus, a street banner proclaimed, “Oh, heroic journalist, thank you so much for what you have done.” In Beirut, a Hizballah-affiliated journalist, Ibrahim Mousawi, exulted: “It’s the talk of the city. Everyone is proud of this man, and they’re saying he did it in our name.” Ali Qeisi of the Jordan-based “Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq” declared: “All US soldiers who have used their shoes to humiliate Iraqis should be brought to justice, along with their US superiors, including Bush.” And the querulous Lebanese-American professor Asad Abu Khalil, who calls himself “The Angry Arab,” thundered that “the flying shoe speaks more for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets with during his travels in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, according to news reports, “thousands of Iraqis” demonstrated in three cities -- Baghdad, Basra and Najaf -- to hail al-Zeidi as a hero and demand his release from prison, where he has been held since the attack. There hasn’t been this much excitement in the Islamic world over anyone since…Osama bin Laden, whose ascetic visage could be found after 9/11 gracing t-shirts, visors, cigarette lighters, children’s toys and more.

These days, only President-elect Obama’s popularity rivals that of al-Zeidi in Muslim countries. Right after the election, Achmad Sobry Lubis of a virulently anti-American jihadist group in Indonesia called the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), said of Obama that “we are now very hopeful that he can restore peace in the world.” Another jihadist, Eid Kabalu of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines, declared that Obama “has to reduce U.S. involvement in war, which, in effect, will make global peace reign under his administration.” Ahmed Yussef of the jihad terror group Hamas said that Obama’s election gave the U.S. a “chance for a change, after his predecessor, George W. Bush destroyed relations with the external world.”

It may seem odd that the three most popular people among Muslims worldwide today would be the President-elect of the United States, a mass-murdering jihad terrorist, and a somewhat comical shoe-hurling journalist -- but anti-Americanism makes strange bedfellows. And that is certainly the common element in the popularity of all three. Many in the Islamic world believe or hope that Obama will be the anti-Bush, and will craft a foreign policy more to their liking than Bush’s -- that is, one involving concessions and appeasement...

Harpoon, no doubt, would be jiggy with that type of craftiness.

Update: My letter to the Star:

Haroon Siddiqui paints a picture of the Utopia that supposedly used to exist in Iraq—Shia, Sunni and Kurd living harmoniously side by side—before the Americans under President Bush rushed in and all hell broke loose. What he fails to mention is that a pre-democracy Iraq was about as far from Utopia as you could get; that it was ruled by a brutal dictator who thought nothing of executing his enemies by inserting them into plastic shredders; that this dictator forced Iraqis to become embroiled in a war with neighbouring Iran that resulted in massive loss of life on both sides; and that this tyrant, or one of his loathsome sons, would likely still be in charge had the Americans not forcibly deposed him.

Conveniently, Siddiqui also neglects to point out that the vast majority of casualties in the Muslim world are the result of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. Of course, were he to do that, it would be far more difficult to portray Muslims as the perpetual victims of aggressive Americans and/or Israelis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Child abuse in Joisey: One of the drawbacks of naming your son after the Fuhrer who masterminded the Final Solution is the reluctance of some to validate your awful judgement. Case in point: three-year-old moppet, Adolf Hitler Campbell, whose parents, Heath and Deborah, had to scramble to find him a birthday cake. From JTA:

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A New Jersey supermarket refused to print the full name of a 3-year-old boy named Adolf Hitler on a birthday cake.

The boy's parents, Heath and Deborah Campbell, are upset that a ShopRite would not print the name and are accusing the store of being intolerant, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

"They need to accept a name. A name's a name," said Heath Campbell, who eventually purchased the cake in nearby Pennsylvania. "The kid isn't going to grow up and do what [Hitler] did."

Twelve people showed up to Adolf’s birthday party, including several children of mixed race, the AP reported.

"If we're so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?" Heath Campbell asked.

The couple has two other children: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, 1, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

Hinler? Surely not.

I hear they also have a German Shepherd named Goebbels, who, you guessed it, has no balls at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments (1)

The unfairness of “fairness”: Consider the meaning of the word “fairness” when it’s placed beside the word “doctrine”. Like the word “rights” when appended to the word “human,” it actually means the opposite of what it’s supposed to. On the contentions blog, J.G. Thayer explains that there is nothing at all fair about forcing broadcasters to reinstitute a “fairness doctrine”:

Well, it’s now out in the open: Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA — is that any surprise?) is officially calling for a return of the “fairness doctrine.” And not just the old one, that covered radio and television: she wants it to apply to cable and satellite programming, as well.

This could be a bit problematic. According to the original Fairness Doctrine, radio and TV broadcasters’ use of public airwaves made them guardians of a public trust. As such, they were obligated to the government to promote what was deemed the common good. Cable and satellite companies are, by definition, not broadcasters, and therefore don’t fall under the same presumed obligations.

The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to grant equal time to opposing points of view. For example, if a host spent an hour railing against kicking dogs, the station would be obligated to offer an hour to someone extolling the virtues of puppy-punting.

For all the high-minded rhetoric behind the return of the Fairness Doctrine, the underlying goal is the same: to rein in talk radio, where conservatism has found its greatest popular success. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Jerry Doyle, Dennis Miller, are monumental success.

Conversely, liberals on the radio have been utter failures. Air America still limps along, but its market share has continually diminished and it has never made a single dime. Indeed, at some points it had to resort to shady (if not downright illegal) practices to stay solvent.

So, under a revived Fairness Doctrine, a station that aired Rush Limbaugh’s entire three-hour show would be obligated to air three hours of counterpoint. Fair is fair, right?

Wrong.

The station that airs Limbaugh does so because it is profitable for them to do so. Its advertisers are willing to sponsor Limbaugh’s show: that ’s how it gets on the air.

Who will buy ads on the anti-Rush show? A lot fewer people. In fact, it’s entirely possible that not enough sponsors will be found to cover the expenses of the anti-Rush show. So the station will have to decide whether or not they wish to continue to subsidize the anti-Rush show. But should they cut back (or cut out) the anti-Rush, then they have to cut back (or cut out) Limbaugh as well.

No, it’s not the stated goal, but this will cripple talk radio. Given the potential headaches, most stations will simply get rid of political talk entirely.

As the saying goes, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

If this seems a bit familiar, it should: it’s another example of the principle of “equality” not being applied to opportunity, but to results. As seductive and idealistic as that may sound, it never works, because it ends up punishing success and rewarding failure. If the same result arises no matter how hard you try (or don’t try at all), why try hard?

Liberal talk radio has just as much of a chance to succeed as conservative talk radio. That it has failed is not the fault of conservative talk radio, and conservative broadcasters should not be punished for simply being more popular.

Conservative talk shows arose in the first place because the left had a lock on the mainstream media and there was no outlet for dissenting voices. The grossest unfairness about the “fairness doctrine” is that it will likely dismantle one sector of the media—the conservative one—while leaving the MSM and its inherent biases/sophistries intact.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:03 | link | comments

Ba da bing, ba da Blago: Here's my poem for the corrupt gov of what is arguably the most corrupt state in the land:

A governor-cum-thug, Blagojevich,

Was hardly an altar bojevich.

A devil-may-care

With extremely good hair

He even dishonoured Illinojevich.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:36 | link | comments

Free speech for some, not all: Our ideologically-driven federal "judiciary" has made official something that free-speechers figured out a while ago--that if you're an anti-gay white, male Christian clergyman, you can be prosecuted by the state and silenced for the rest of your natural born days. However, if you're a Muslim clergyman with similar views (as well as many other "colourful" opinions about non-believers), you are free to bloviate away to your heart's content.

All those who believe in the inequities of sharia law (since they emanate from an entity even more powerful than Jennifer Lynch) owe the CHRC a debt of gratitude. It has brought a little bit of sunny, sandy Saudi Arabia to our snowy, frozen shores.

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

Shoe foolery: Catch the action in Gaza as a throng of masked brothers burn the U.S. flag and the visage of Bush, and generally glorify an Arab shoe-flinger; also, for hours of fun play the online game.

There hasn't been this much kerfuffle over a Muslim's footwear since Richard Reid was wrestled to the ground by fellow air travelers before he could detonate his Adidas. Update: More shoe foolery, from the Ceeb:

Jokes are flying as fast as footwear over an Iraqi journalist's hurling his shoes at outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday.

With video of the Baghdad incident aired repeatedly by news organizations around the globe and circulated on the internet, the incident has become fodder for comedians everywhere in the past few days.

The popular Afghan comedy and satire show Zang-i-Khatar (Alert Bell) will feature a skit Wednesday evening reconstructing last weekend's news conference, but with one difference: the actor portraying Bush will actually get hit in the face. In reality, the U.S. president managed to avoid both of journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi's tossed shoes.

"The aim of the program, besides making people laugh ... is to convey solidarity with the people and journalists of Iraq," producer Hanif Hamgaam told Agence France-Presse.

The flying footwear incident was also a popular opening monologue topic for U.S. late-night talk show hosts this week.

Tonight Show host Jay Leno joked about Bush's aptitude for dodge ball and questioned why the Secret Service didn't "at least [jump] in front of the second shoe?"

On The Late Show, Dave Letterman also praised Bush for his quick reaction time, quipping that the president "hasn't dodged anything like that since, well, the Vietnam War."

For his part, Late Night host Conan O'Brien, mentioned that al-Zaidi has been hailed a hero by many in Iraq and added that the journalist would one day be "be greeted in heaven by 72 podiatrists."...

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

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

The Jew-hater’s Xmas prezzie: Stick him in a box and tie it up with a big blue and white bow—it’s Bernie Madoff, the Jew on every slavering antisemite’s wish list. From Ha’aretz:

For the true anti-Semite, Christmas came early this year.

The anti-Semite's new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater's wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this:

The former chairman of Nasdaq turns out, also, to be treasurer of the board of trustees at Yeshiva University and chairman of the university's business school. Rich beyond human comprehension, he handles fortunes for others, buying and selling in a trading empire that skirts investment banks and other possible sources of regulation. He redefines avarice, knowingly and personally bilking charities and retirees in the most classic of con games.

Even better, for those obsessed with the idea that Jews control finance, entertainment and the media, is the idea that Madoff's greed was uncontrollable enough that he targeted fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors, some of them his own friends, as well as Israeli companies who insured Jews, including Holocaust survivors.

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