scaramouche

Thursday, 29 January 2009

One more before I go: This youtube video--How to Make a Hamas Hero--is for Sid, Judy, Naomi, the New York Times, the Toronto Star, the Beeb, the Ceeb, and all those who glamourize, romanticize and idolize the explosive Volk of Gaza.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:33 | link | comments (1)

Beach? Blanket? Bingo!: I'm taking a break from all the, ahem, global warming here in southern Ontario (where the snow is as high as an elephant's eye). I hope to be back at the laptop on Saturday, Feb. 7. See y'all then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Well, shut yo’ mouths: A fundamental tenet of Islamic law requires that no one, and I mean no one, be allowed to say anything negative about Islam. With the passage of a (non-biding) resolution calling for a halt to “defamation” of religion, the United Nations, which supposedly adheres to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has quietly sidled over to—and signed up with—the competing “universalism” of sharia. Nat Hentoff writes about the betrayal for JWR:

On Inauguration Day, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in a New York Times ad ("An Invitation to a New Partnership"), told "Dear President OBAMA" that Muslims "have compelling strategic and moral reasons to cooperate and peacefully co-exist with the United States in particular, and with the West in general."

Many Muslims here and elsewhere want that partnership; but some, jihadists in the name of Islam, disagree violently. In its address to our new president, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has permanent status at the United Nations) made no mention of its own strategic skills that resulted, on Dec. 18, in the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of a nonbinding resolution (with strong advice to its members) that condemns "defamation of religion," especially Islam.

In a 83-to-53 vote, with 42 abstentions, the U.N. General Assembly urges nations to provide "adequate protections" in their laws or constitutions against "acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general."

Only Islam and Muslims are specifically named in this resolution against religious defamation sponsored by Uganda — on behalf of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference — with co-sponsors Belarus and Venezuela. In the opposition were the United States, a majority of European countries, Japan, India and a number of other nations.

Those voting in favor say they do not want to limit free speech but do intend to stop such expressions as the 2005 Danish cartoons disrespecting the Prophet Muhammad that ignited violent protests by Muslims around the world…

“We don’t want to limit your freedom of speech. We just want to limit your freedom to say anything critical of Islam (because that’s what sharia calls for, and because we’re hoping sharia can take the lead globally with minimal opposition).”

Update: Johann Hari, a columnist for the Independent, decries the shushing:

The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism – giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds – are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we "respect" religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten – to put him on the side of the religious censors.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". It was a Magna Carta for mankind – and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it "Western", Robert Mugabe calls it "colonialist", and Dick Cheney calls it "outdated". The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it – but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".

In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.

Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN's Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech – including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets". The council agreed – so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.

Anything which can be deemed "religious" is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah "will not happen" and "Islam will not be crucified in this council" – and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.

Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.

To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's – or their oppressors'?

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: "The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom."

Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this...

Hey, Johann, maybe it's time to acknowledge that the organization you passionately support is in the hands of the shushers, and is thus not worthy of your passion any more.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:11 | link | comments

Hopeychange fan: Guess who's onside with Obama's "change" agenda? I'll give you a hint: He's short, hairy and has a very ballsy wife.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:44 | link | comments

Swine in the sky: This one definitely qualifies as a flying pig moment--Egypt slamming Iran and its terror protegees, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:37 | link | comments

Swooners as king-makers: In an interview on the FrontPage Magazine site, media critic Bernard Goldberg says that the media’s collective swoon for a sonorous-voiced, slim half-Black dude (the topic of his new book A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.), is the reason why Hillary Clinton is not in the White House:

Q: What’s your 60-second synopsis of your book?
A: This is not a book about the same old media bias. This time journalists cross a very bright line. This time they stopped being witnesses to history and they were intent on helping to shape history. They moved from media bias to media activism. In my whole life I have never seen the media get on board for one candidate the way they did this time around and -- this is very important -- they did it without even a hint of embarrassment.

It isn’t just conservatives that feel this way. Lots of people feel the media was in the tank for Barack Obama. They were because he was young, because he was cool, because he was black and because he was liberal. There’s no way in the world we would have seen this kind of slobbering if we would had just inaugurated the first black president who was conservative and Republican.

Q: You’re not talking about opinion writers and pundits, you’re talking about news coverage?
A: I’m talking about two things. In terms of news coverage, forget about what I say. There are polls conducted by nonpartisan groups that said the media was way, way more positive in its Obama coverage than its McCain coverage. In other words, everybody has seen what I’ve seen. I’m not the only one. The media who were on Obama’s team, they didn’t just put a thumb on the scale; this time they sat on the scale.

But we’re talking about lots of supposedly hard-news reporters, but even in opinion -- and this is an important point that I’m glad you brought up -- I think opinion has to be relatively intelligent. I mean, Chris Matthews saying he had “a thrill running up his leg” when he heard Barack Obama speak. And Matthews said, "You’re not an American if you don’t cry when you hear Obama speak."

This isn’t political commentary. This is a man crush. This is embarrassing. He is by far the most embarrassing commentator on television. I want to make it clear -- commentators are allowed to comment. I get that. But the commentary has to have a semblance of intelligence to it, and Chris Matthews has become the single biggest embarrassment in all of the media in terms of this campaign coverage.

Q: So, is he the most egregious example –
A: Let me give you two. Chris Matthews is the most egregious example of media slobbering I have ever seen...Chris Matthews is an embarrassment of the first order. But I’ll tell you something else -- and this is the single most embarrassing sentence I have ever seen in The Washington Post. This is a story on Christmas morning, Page 1, Washington Post, about Barack Obama’s exercise regimen. I’m going to read you the line and I don’t blame you if you think I am making it up. I swear to God I’m not: “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weight-lifting sessions each week and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”

Let me tell you something. If there has been a more embarrassing sentence ever published in The Washington Post, please, somebody tell me what it is. You’d read something like this in a romance novel with Fabio on the cover. This is the kind of slobbering I’m talking about. This is not the same old, same old. They jumped the shark this time. They really took sides and they didn’t care who knew it. That’s different from anything that happened in the past.

Q: You already knew the way the media tilts, so were you just waiting for this to happen or did it shock even you?
A: That’s a very interesting question. It’s the latter. I figured it was going to be the same old thing. Of course they were going to root for the Democrat. They always root for the Democrat, the more liberal the better. That I expected. And believe me, I wasn’t going to sit down and write a book about that. But the more I looked at it, the more I watched, I said, “I can’t actually be seeing what I am seeing. I can’t believe I’m reading what I’m reading.” What pushed me over the edge in terms of wanting to write a book about it was the incredible lack of concern for what anybody thought. Even Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post recently said it’s not just conservatives who think the media rolled over for Barack Obama -- and they better change.

Q: Hillary Clinton has to be pretty annoyed at the media.
A: She’s the biggest single loser in all of this. If the media had done its job early on, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee for president of the United States and probably elected president of the United States.

Oh, well. At least she got a lovely parting gift—Turtle Bay (while we get 4-8 years of a
president who's made "outreach" to the Muslim world his priority.)

A Slobbering Love Affair by Bernard Goldberg: Book Cover

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

Auschwitz museum to close?: Auschwitz may be a wildly popular tourist destination, but there’s news it could close if Poland and other countries don’t come through with the cash to keep it open.

I have mixed feelings on the subject. I believe that it is vital to educate people about the Holocaust, particularly at a time when more and more seem determined to deny it. At the same time, though, I am disturbed that many in Europe are keen to commemorate dead Jews (out of guilt, and because dead Jews have the advantage of being both harmless and virtuous) even as they reject Israel and its living Jews; wilfully or through their silence, they are assisting those who would launch a second Shoah.

So, yes, let’s keep Auschwitz open. But do so in the awareness that a look to the past won’t be enough to put the brakes on a potentially horrific future.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:45 | link | comments

She’s come a long way, baby: If you think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a loudmouthed, Jew-hating, religious crank, wait’ll you get a load of the Iranian who may even outdo him in sheer zaniness—Mrs. Ahmadinejad. From pajamas media:

Since becoming president in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become one of the most widely known Iranian politicians. In direct contrast, his wife has been one of the most discreet spouses in Iranian political history. The world got its first glimpse of her in 2005, after she accompanied her husband on a trip to Malaysia. However, she did not speak any words and has hardly ever appeared in front of cameras since then. What was even more mysterious was her identity. She was only referred to as Mrs. Ahmadinejad in the very few reports which mentioned her. Her real identity was strongly protected.

But on January 18, 2009, the world suddenly met Azam Al Sadat Farahi, who until that day was known as Mrs. Ahmadinejad. The encounter was brought about by a letter she wrote on behalf of Gazans to Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In it she wrote:

The people of Gaza have been subjected to aerial, ground and sea attacks and have been living under siege for a long time. Witnessing the bombardment of mosques, hospitals and houses and the mutilation of women and children brings pain to the heart of any human being. …I ask you to do whatever is in your capacity to help the people of Gaza and to help them from the oppression that they are suffering from, so that your name is placed alongside the name of worthy and peace seeking women.

One could doubt whether Mrs. Ahmadinejad’s letter would have any impact, because these days Egypt is trying its best to isolate Iran. This was seen by the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on several occasions asked for Mubarak’s help. Nothing ever came of it.

Nevertheless, the symbolic value of the letter should not be ignored. Many people around the world believe that Iranian women, especially conservative ones, are confined to the boundaries of the kitchen. This may be true about wives of conservative clergy. However when it comes to non-clergy conservatives, the opposite is true. Quite a few are very vociferous in their political thinking and beliefs...

In this dynamic pairing, Mister Ahmadinejad is the pretty one, while Missus Ahmadinejad has the bigger balls.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:58 | link | comments (1)

When special victim groups collide: Now here’s a conundrum for the human rights types—what happens when a Muslim doctor, out of religious conviction, refuses to treat a pair of lesbians, and the lesbians complain about it to the local human rights constabulary? Whose “rights” take precedence—the Muslim’s, or the chicks’? Here’s the story on the Ceeb site (strangely, it’s listed under the heading of "health"):

A lesbian couple claims a Manitoba doctor refused to accept them as patients because of their sexual orientation.

Andrea Markowski says she and her partner were stunned when a Winnipeg doctor told them treating lesbians violated her religious beliefs.claims a Manitoba doctor refused to accept them as patients because of their sexual orientation.

Andrea Markowski says she and her partner were stunned when a Winnipeg doctor told them treating lesbians violated her religious beliefs.

Markowski says the foreign-trained doctor, from Egypt, also said she had never treated lesbians before.

"I said, is there a problem with our sexual orientation in terms of your ability to care for us? Markowski told CBC News. "And she said, yes, there is a problem. She said that it's against her religion, and in fact she's never provided any kind of care to lesbian or gay people before."

The couple of 18 years has lodged a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission and the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Markowski says the college needs to take more responsibility to ensure foreign-trained doctors are ready to practice in Canada.

She says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures no one can be denied health care on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Indeed a puzzler, one which has the potential to make a sensitive thought cop’s head explode.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:30 | link | comments (9)

More sharia, please: CAIR-CAN founder and occasional Globe and Mail columnist Sheema Khan makes another pitch for Canadians to let down their guard and grant Islamic law the legal credence she believes it so richly deserves:

[According to a 2006 Environics survey] 44 per cent of Canadian Muslims believe Canada should accommodate their traditional beliefs, while 81 per cent of the general population thinks immigrants should adopt mainstream Canadian beliefs. In particular, 53 per cent of Muslims think sharia law should be recognized as a legal basis for settling family disputes, while an overwhelming majority of the general population disagrees. Of those surveyed, 55 per cent of Muslim women and 59 per cent of Muslims aged 18 to 29 indicated their preference for sharia law. Remember, this survey was conducted one year after the Ontario sharia controversy.

These numbers suggest that the use of sharia in Canada is by no means a dead issue, even if sharia arbitration courts have been deemed illegal in many provinces. Just look at Britain, where the government has been grappling with the role of sharia in family law. The popularity of informal "Islamic courts" - which have no standing in British law - has been growing steadily. Most cases involve women seeking divorce. Since these "courts" are outside the legal system, there is no accountability, review or transparency of the judgments, and no formal standards or training for the judges, who are exclusively male. Some have received training in Saudi Arabia, where a conservative form of Islam is prevalent.

In domestic violence cases, Islamic scholars have hesitated to dissolve abusive marriages, leaving wives too intimidated to pursue charges. In one case, a judge declined to grant a divorce to a victim of domestic violence. Her father then came forward in support, at which point the judge reversed his decision, highlighting the central role of the family patriarch in such proceedings.

The British situation illustrates that if sharia is driven underground, quasi-courts will proliferate in response to demand, without the necessary checks and balances. Given the growing affinity to sharia here, there will be future debates on this topic. Instead of the hysteria of 2005 in Ontario, we will need to engage in rational discourse about the flexibility of sharia; identities in flux; the role of religious belief in family law; and the balance between religious freedom and gender equality. In spite of reassurances by proponents, traditional Islamic law contradicts gender equality in inheritance and divorce.

Underlying this is the question: Why the growing affinity to sharia? Since 9/11, Canadian Muslims have felt increased discrimination. This has a direct impact on identity and how a minority perceives its acceptance by the majority. With the raucous, sometimes racist, nature of the Ontario controversy, many Muslims were forced to focus on sharia as a component of identity, resulting in a plurality wishing to abide by Islamic principles in matters of family law.

Making Islamic arbitration illegal will not make it vanish. Without proper oversight of informal sharia courts, we risk ending up with the mess in Britain.

My letter:

Sheema Khan claims that a spike in “discrimination” faced by Muslims post-9/11 caused them to feel rejected by the wider society and more eager to embrace sharia, Islamic law. She goes on to say that when Ontario nixed sharia tribunals, it exacerbated the sense of rejection, and that these hurt feelings can only be ameliorated by reversing that decision. In other words, if more Muslims want to see sharia set up shop here in Canada, it’s largely because of the actions of non-Muslims.

I fear she is giving us way too much credit--and giving far too little to sharia’s enduring appeal, as well as its newfound blossoming around the globe, the result of a great Islamic revival.

Then again, if I wanted to see sharia --a law that is antithetical to Western law in that it makes no distinction between church (or mosque) and state, and enshrines religious and gender inequities--gain a toehold here in Canada, I might harp on “racism” and “discrimination,” too: making people feel guilty can often be the most effective means of getting them to agree to something that is in your interest, but definitely not in their own.

Update: A tip o' my touque to the commenter who advised me to check out this comment re: Khan's piece on the G & M site:

Dr. Khan is famous for her promotion of the Islamist agenda in Canada as founding chair of CAIR-CAN, deemed to be an unindicted co-conspirator by the US Department of Justice for funding Hamas and whose US members have been found guilty of supporting terrorism by US courts.

This article is no different from her actions to promote the Islamist agenda.

Dr. Khan's assertion that Muslims have been choosing Sharia because of post 9/11 discrimination is an exercise in great Islamist spin. According to Dr. Khan, Muslims are not adopting Sharia because of the vast flow of Saudi money into Canada, or the pressure from the Saudi trained imams, or the radicalisation that is taking place at mosques and Islamic schools (that saw Islamists murder Aqsa Parvez last winter) or the new immigration of Islamists from Arab countries - no - Muslims are choosing Sharia because you and I are making them do it. As she says - "many Muslims were forced to focus on sharia as a component of identity" - a direct result of Ontario's rejection of Sharia Law.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Khan is given space in this national newspaper to propagate her Islamist agenda to Canadians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments (8)

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Besotted by Obama: Rabbi Reuven Bulka, co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, was paying close attention to the American inauguration last week, and damn if he didn’t like what he saw. From the Ottawa Citizen:

…The most indelible impression I am left with from that memorable January day was not anything Mr. Obama said. It was what he did.

After the conclusion of the ceremony, he, his wife, Vice-President Joe Biden and his wife, escorted former president George W. Bush and his wife to their waiting helicopter, the first leg of their return home to Texas.

While the ceremony has become tradition, the extent of the sendoff was reportedly like no other president has done.

This is the same team that literally tore Mr. Bush apart during the campaign, that held nothing back in their unrelenting attack on almost everything he did as president. The way that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden accompanied the Bushes was a sight to behold. They were quipping with each other, they embraced just before alighting, and then the Obamas and the Bidens, not content with merely taking the former first family to the helicopter, waited on the White House steps for the helicopter to take off, and waved to it as it rose into the clouds.

They had a full day of activity ahead of them. The inaugural ceremony had already run late, there was pressing business to address, not to speak of the move into new abodes, literally myriad ready excuses. Instead, they walked the walk, in this case very much the extra mile. They showed that in the big tent, you can vehemently disagree, but remain not merely civil, but also very respectful.

Obama’s plea to work together, to transcend self-interest in being devoted to the larger community, was inspired as it was spoken, and eloquent as it was lived in this walk.

If the Obama-Biden team does nothing more than instill this atmosphere of respect in the interactional discourse, political and otherwise, that will make this presidency most worthwhile. With respect comes dignity and honesty. With honesty comes responsibleness. With responsibleness comes the energy and the desire to faithfully address the pressing issues.

After that, a large dose of wisdom, good fortune, Godly blessing, and the world is transformed. This mix of ingredients — respect, honesty, responsibleness, and wisdom, belongs in politics, in the workplace, in the home, in the schools, yes even in the sports arenas. This is an inaugural, more precisely a renewal, we can all be part of — Americans, Canadians, anyone and everyone.

"Responsibleness"? I don’t think that’s a real word, Rabbi. But leaving that aside for now, it think it would behove you and the rest of the “tikkun olam” types at the Ceej to get a clue about The Transcendent One. He is not the paragon you make him out to be. In fact, at this very moment he’s pretending 9/11 never happened even as he goes on bended knee, tugging his forelock, and performs a mega suck up to the tyrants, despots, thugs, theocrats, and theo-thugocrats who comprise the leadership of the Muslim world. But maybe you’re so used to the CJC’s culture of ingratiation (“twinning” with mosques; “mentoring” Somalis; linking arms with the likes of Syed Soharwardy and Harpoon Siddiqui) that you can’t recognize the old dhimmi two-step (first step: bow; second step: grovel), even when it’s going on before your eyes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:09 | link | comments (1)

R.I.P. John Updike: The American author has succumbed to lung cancer. I didn't much care for his novels, but his literary criticism was awesome.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:40 | link | comments

Does identity trump safety?: Maybe. The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is hearing the complaint of Sikh who was told he’d have to remove his turban and wear a hard hat if he wanted to retain his job with Home Depot. From Canoe:

TORONTO -- A Sikh security guard who was asked to trade in his turban for a hard hat by a Home Depot manager presented his case of alleged discrimination before a human rights tribunal yesterday.

Deepinder Loomba, 50, testified he was commissioned to patrol a Home Depot site under construction in Milton and on Dec. 6, 2005, the assistant manager supervising the site asked him to replace his turban with a hard hat.

When he refused, Loomba said the manager and other workers ridiculed and humiliated him. After two hours, Loomba said he could not handle the humiliation and left the site. He subsequently filed a complaint with Home Depot and the Ontario Human Rights Commmission. He's seeking $40,000 in damages.

THREAT ALLEGATIONS

At one point, Loomba alleged the manager threatened his employment if he didn't put on a hard hat.

Loomba said the company was investigating the matter but he did not hear of the outcome.

Home Depot acknowledged the Sun's request for comments, but did not provide one before press time.

In his testimony, Loomba explained how Sikhs who adopt the turban are not supposed to cut or expose their hair in public. In their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, a Sikh's hair is to be treated as a gift from God and acceptance of the faith.

"My hair has been unshorn since birth," Loomba told the tribunal, adding the only time he removes the turban is when he sleeps and bathes.

"It's a part of you. It's part of your identity," said his son, Roopjyot Loomba, 20, who is waiting for his grandfather to come to Toronto for his turban ceremony…

Couldn’t someone devise a reinforced turban that satisfies safety requirements? And, until then, couldn’t the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal throw out cases such as this which waste its time and our money (since this so obviously has nothing to do with "discrimination" but is about wanting to abide by construction safety codes)?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:50 | link | comments (6)

Up to his neck in oily shekels: Quel dommage! George Mitchell may never get to be U.S. envoy to the Mideast again. His ability to act as an “honest broker” may have been compromised by his law firm’s precipitously one-sided associations in the region. And don’t get me started on that case of the Dubai boy camel jockeys... From Bloomberg via Yahoo (my bolds):

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s special Middle East troubleshooter, was chairman of a law firm that was paid about $8 million representing Dubai’s ruler in connection with a child-trafficking lawsuit.

The DLA Piper law firm did legal and lobbying work on the case, which alleged that Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum and another official used children kidnapped from other countries to ride as jockeys in camel races. The firm lobbied federal agencies, members of the U.S. House and about two dozen Senate offices, including those of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2006 and 2007, according to Justice Department foreign-agent disclosures.

Mitchell, 75, who isn’t a registered lobbyist, didn’t lobby either on this issue or for Dubai generally. DLA Piper partner Bill Minor said in an e-mail that Mitchell, a former Democratic senator from Maine, mainly focused on growth and management at the firm of almost 4,000 attorneys and 65 offices worldwide, and high-profile projects such as an investigation of steroid use in Major League Baseball.

Mitchell’s firm had extensive lobbying clients and offices in the Middle East ranging from the leader of Dubai to a Kuwait construction firm contracting in Iraq. The firm also has offices in Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi and has an affiliation with a law firm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Mitchell traveled to Dubai and spoke to the press there about the issue.

Suit Thrown Out

The camel-jockey suit was thrown out after the U.S. Justice Department notified a Miami federal judge that it planned to intervene and argue that al-Maktoum was immune from the suit as a foreign leader.

“That he was such a key figure in the firm himself certainly gives the appearance that probably any of the clients that solicited help from the firm may have had a business relationship with him as well,” said Craig Holman, who lobbies for tougher governmental ethics rules for Public Citizen, a Washington-based advocacy group.

In a Jan. 24 telephone interview, Mitchell said he “was generally aware of the case but I had no involvement in it.”

“I visited Dubai. I did not discuss the case with the Sheikh. I had nothing to do with bringing it in,” Mitchell said. “I was merely chairman when it occurred.”

No “the buck stops here” for our Georgie—‘specially when there are oodles of shekels to be made off oily Arabs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:15 | link | comments (1)

Memo to Jewish useful idiots—you’re expendable: FrontPage Magazine’s David Solway has a message for all those anti-Zionist Jews who are assisting our enemies—your loyalties (or, rather, your disloyalties) aren’t going to exempt you from their wrath:

…Given the virulent anti-Zionist advocacy of so many prominent Jewish self-haters, one remains skeptical of ever achieving collective assent or reasonable consensus. Masking the syndrome of self-contempt as a quest for “justice,” these Jewish turncoats seek redemption in a denial of both history and genealogy. Diagnostically speaking, it is not so much a mental illness or clinical aberration we are witnessing, but a sickness in the soul supple enough to contort itself into a spurious idealism, a simulacrum of ideological nobility.

Few of these people, I suspect, have ever been viciously targeted and physically assaulted merely for being Jewish. Very few have ever lived under the constant threat of military invasion, of suicide bombers wreaking carnage in their public spaces and of randomly incoming missiles on their towns and cities as a matter of everyday existence. They hail largely from among the privileged who have been spared the traumatic experience of confronting the bloody and unflinching enmity of their antagonists. They have jobs, salaries, leisure, prestige, comfort and security. They are bubbled in their groups and organizations. Their children do not live in Sderot where an entire generation of Israeli youngsters, growing up amidst the relentless shelling of their homes and playgrounds, suffers from acute PTSD and severe psychological regression.

This state of fortunate exemption has allowed them the luxury of sanctimonious censure of those who are on the receiving end of all they have managed to avoid. Our renegades would do well to read George Steiner’s Language and Silence. Steiner writes: “If Israel were to be destroyed, no Jew would escape unscathed. The shock of failure, the need and harrying of those seeking refuge, would reach out to implicate even the most indifferent, the most anti-Zionist.”

But of course, it is not only a question of Israel. “Somewhere the determination to kill Jews,” Steiner continues, “to harass them from the earth simply because they are, is always alive.” Those Jews who affect otherwise are living in a fool’s paradise. Just as many Hasidic and Haredi Jews, who reject the existence of Israel and seek asylum in their sacred texts, will one day discover there is no safety in Numbers, so will Jewish anti-Zionists—or their children—eventually learn the hard way that they too will be targeted and cast out when their useful idiocy is no longer needed.

At the end of the day, it really is that simple. And the end of the day, let us also remember, is the beginning of the night.

See you on the cattle car, Naomi, Noam, Norman, Judy, Avi, Jason, Abe...

Update: More cattle car riders.

Update: Melanie Phillips on 'the Jews of the gathering night.'

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:40 | link | comments (2)

“Smart” messiah hastens our doom: As I sat at a family gathering listening to yet another “dumb George W. Bush” joke uttered by a family member whose world view I don’t share, it occurred to me that one good thing about the arrival of the happy hopeychangers—those brainiacs—is that it should put an end, once and for all, to such “humour.” Not that it will, given that that crowd won’t be able to poke fun at the messiah—he’s sacrosanct—and will thus likely resurrect the “dumb Bush” shtick just so they’ll have something to laugh at.

Anyway, the fact is that the “dumb” guy may not have fully understood the nuances of Islam—he did, after all, call it a “religion of peace”—but he did “get” that some of those who practised it were “evil-doers”. The “smart” messiah, on the other hand, is an utter dunderhead who thinks you can defuse a jihad with hugs and kisses and lots and lots of chatter. And, in the new spirit of “inclusiveness,” he has given first dibs on a TV interview to Arab TV.

Eat your heart out, Barbara Walters.

From ABC News (my bolds):

President Barack Obama on Tuesday chose an Arabic satellite TV network for his first formal television interview as president, delivering a message to the Muslim world that "Americans are not your enemy."

The interview underscored Obama's commitment to repair relations with the Muslim world that have suffered under the previous administration.

The president expressed an intention to engage the Middle East immediately and his new envoy to the region, former Sen. George J. Mitchell, was expected to arrived in Egypt on Tuesday for a visit that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy," Obama told the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel.

Obama said the U.S. had made mistakes in the past but "that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."…

20 or 30 years ago—oh, you mean when Jimmy Carter betrayed America’s ally the Shah and allowed religious nutjob Khomeini to set up shop in Tehran? Yeah, those were the days.

It seems clear that the “smart” president gets Islam and the Arab mind not at all. Allow me to clue you in, genius. They’re going to laugh at you, Mr. President. They’re going to utter honeyed words to your face and diss you behind your back. They’re going to interpret your overtures as weakness. They’re going to dismiss you as a wimp, a pushover, who won’t stand in the way as sharia takes the lead.

This “smart” messiah—really dumb!

Update: More stupidity--Obama tells Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.

Update: The New York Times has more:

…In a transcript published on Al Arabiya’s English language Web site, Mr. Obama said he believed “the most important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away” and that he had told his envoy to “start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating.”

“Ultimately, we cannot tell either the Israelis or the Palestinians what’s best for them. They’re going to have to make some decisions,” Mr. Obama said. “But I do believe that the moment is ripe for both sides to realize that the path that they are on is not going to result in prosperity and security for their people. And that, instead, it’s time to return to the negotiating table.”

Shortly after the interview, an explosion on the Israel-Gaza border on Tuesday killed an Israeli soldier. A Palestinian farmer was shot dead, according to Palestinian witnesses, in retaliatory gunfire. The incidents were the first known fatal incidents since the Gaza fighting ended 10 days ago.

Mr. Obama said Israel “will not stop being a strong ally of the United States and I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.”

He also said he believed it was “possible for us to see a Palestinian state — I’m not going to put a time frame on it — that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, that allows for trade with other countries, that allows the creation of businesses and commerce so that people have a better life.”

He’s right. Unfortunately, the “contiguous state” he’s talking about is currently called "Israel," a place that doesn’t exist on any Palestinian map. (I think this would be as good a time as any to say “told you so” to all the clueless Jews who voted for this panderer to Islam. Thanks, Jews.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:46 | link | comments

Monday, 26 January 2009

Happy hopeychangism in Toronto: Introducing DiverseCity (get it?) a project which aims to put power in the hands of Toronto's "visible minorities" by training them to become "leaders" (i.e. more "mentoring" Somalis and similar malarkey).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:46 | link | comments (2)

What's wrong with the Ceeb?: What's wrong with Canada's public broadcaster is exactly the same as what's wrong with the Beeb, here nailed and impaled by the great Melanie Phillips:

The worst of it is that even senior BBC executives can’t grasp the problem because they, too, share the same way of looking at the world and view their own Left-wing position as the centre ground.

Intrinsically unable to correct itself, the BBC thus embodies a frighteningly closed thought system.

In fact, not unlike the closed thought system of those who heed sharia and who want to
see it prevail.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:33 | link | comments (2)

Happy hopeychangism: Obama's m.o., argues this article in Commentary, is actually the return of Carterism (only without the peanuts and the passel of toothy, meeskite relatives).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:20 | link | comments

Cojones-ectomy in Washington: The Obama White House is planning to ~~hand its testicles to the mullahs on a silver platter~~ engage in “vigorous diplomacy” with Tehran. From the Jerusalem Post:

US President Barack Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed US ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are US officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But US Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet UN Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.

"The dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council. And its continuing refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase," she told reporters during a brief question-and-answer session.

Her comments, reflecting Obama's signals for improved relations with America's foes after eight years under former US president George W. Bush, came shortly after she met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on her first day on the job.

Iran still considers the US the "Great Satan," but a day after Obama was sworn in, it said it was "ready for new approaches by the United States." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country would look into the idea of allowing the US to open a diplomatic office in Teheran, the first since 1979.

Rice said the US remains "deeply concerned about the threat that Iran's nuclear program poses to the region, indeed to the United States and the entire international community."

"We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran," she said. It would include "continued collaboration and partnership" with the other four permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, France and Russia - along with Germany, Rice said.

"And we will look at what is necessary and appropriate with respect to maintaining pressure toward that goal of ending Iran's nuclear program," she said…

To paraphrase the Bard: Oh, what fools these happy hopeychangers be.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:10 | link | comments

Idle minds are the devil’s workshop: There haven’t been any classes at York
University, Toronto very own Gaza U, for going on three months now; teaching
assistants and other Ontario CUPE members (the union helmed by witch hunter/
Jew-hater Sid “Vicious” Ryan) are on strike. That means York’s student
government has plenty of time on its hands to craft demented poison pen letters
to the Jewish state—like this one, a motion it passed mere days ago:

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN GAZA
MOTION 2009-01-21: 03
a. Whereas the York Federation of Students works to defend the basic human right to an accessible system of post secondary education for all, regardless of race, colour, creed, sexual orientation, ability, class status, nationality, place of origin , or personal or political beliefs;
Whereas on the 27th of December, 2008, the Israeli state launched a mass military attack against Gaza, code-named "Operation Cast Lead" and as of January 19, 2009 over 1200 Palestinians have been killed and infrastructure including hospitals, schools and civilian homes have been destroyed, and

Whereas the state of Israel's military have attacked educational institutions in Gaza including: on Saturday the 27th of December, 2008 an air missile hit the Gaza Training Centre in downtown Gaza City killing 8 students and wounding 19 and on Monday December 29 an F-16 fighter plane bombed the Science Laboratory and Library of the Islamic University in Gaza, just a few hours before some of its 20,000 students were to enter the campus to conduct exams. A few days later, on the 3rd of January a jet levelled the private 'progressive' American school in Gaza, killing its security guard and denying some 200 students their education for the foreseeable future. Later the same day, the Agricultural School in Beit Hanoun was damaged by 4 artillery shells, and 4 more schools were damaged throughout the Strip, and on January 10 reports of two direct air strikes of Gaza's education ministry, and

Whereas this recent attack is the single largest massacre in Gaza, and despite the current cease fire, Israel's current occupation of Gaza has dramatic negative implications on how Palestinian youth and their families access basic human rights including, but not limited to, clean water, food, health care and education;
Whereas this humanitarian crisis requires an international call from students to demand that we work towards building an environment free of systemic societal oppression including one that is free of military occupation and war, therefore

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the York Federation of Students issue a public statement of its condemnation of the Israeli attacks on civilian, humanitarian targets, Universities, United Nation Schools, and Academic infrastructure in Gaza that have lead to the bombing and mass destruction of educational institutions and caused over a 1,200 civilian deaths, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the York Federation of Students show support and solidarity with the people of Gaza by calling upon the Canadian government to pressure the government of Israel to adhere to its' international legal obligations to end attacks on civilian infrastructure and to allow unimpeded access for all Palestinians to their educational institutions, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the York Federation of Students support the call from Human Rights Watch for an unbiased, independent investigation of human rights violations and any violations of the Geneva conventions that occurred during the conflict, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the York Federation of Students affiliate to the RIGHT TO EDUCATION campaign which provides information on the need to protect and ensure access to education for all students in Palestine and any student living under war and or occupation.

Got that? The York student government stands foursquare with Hamas, jihadi
terrorists, backed by Iran’s mullahs, who have dedicated themselves to a genocide
of Israel’s Jews—and who’d like to extend the killing to include every Jew, everywhere.

Way to go, coalition of useful idiots/fellow travelers and crazed jihadis!

Anyone sickened by this Judenhass masquerading as humanitarianism can contact
York’s craven president, Mamdouh Shoukri, at mshoukri@yorku.ca

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:04 | link | comments (1)

Use it or lose it: Free speech, that is. Here are two of the world’s most vocal “Islamophobes”—recently indicted Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Muhammad biographer Robert Spencer—writing about how free speech, our most precious freedom, is being squelched by Muslims. From NRO:

Wednesday, January 21, was a black day for freedom, and the beginning of an all-out assault on free speech in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders (one of this article’s co-authors) for his statements about Islam. To participate in public debate is now a dangerous activity. This is the Netherlands today—and it could be the entire Western world tomorrow.

The prosecution of Wilders was unexpected, though in retrospect one can see that something like it has been in the offing for a while. The year 2008 marked 60 years since the United Nations first promulgated its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet instead of celebrating this notable anniversary by reaffirming human rights, the world in 2008 saw certain fundamentally important human rights nearly disappear under intense pressure from Islamic countries that oppose freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the equality of all people before the law. Islamic efforts to create exceptional privileges for Muslims in the area of human rights have been advancing for quite some time, and they made great strides in 2008. Now, with the Amsterdam court’s judgment, we see the outcome of such efforts.

The Islamic bloc has been on record for two decades as opposing free speech. In 1990, foreign ministers of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), currently the largest voting bloc in the United Nations, adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. It states clearly that Islamic law—sharia—is the only true source of human rights. Few analysts in 1990 understood that this was tantamount to declaring the legitimacy of institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and signing the death warrant of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience as well. And not just in Muslim lands: The OIC and allied organizations have been aggressively pursuing efforts to extend elements of sharia into the West, though few people realize it even today.

Due to the relentless efforts of the OIC, passage of a resolution on combating defamation of religions is now a yearly ritual in the United Nations. First introduced in the General Assembly in 2005, the resolution has been adopted with landslide votes every year since. While this resolution is non-binding, the OIC has declared its intention to seek a binding resolution—one that would require UN member states to criminalize criticism of Islam, as the OIC defines such criticism. This is a clear indication of the progressing Islamization of the United Nations.

On March 28 of last year, the UN hit rock bottom. Its Human Rights Council—whose members include such stalwart defenders of freedom as China, Cuba, Angola, and Saudi Arabia—adopted a resolution that severely modified the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. Instead of simply reporting on cases in which the right to free expression is being violated, the special rapporteur will now also have to report on cases in which that right is being “abused”—including when individuals use their freedom of speech to criticize Islam, or the particular elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and Islamic supremacism. In essence, this means that the function of the special rapporteur has changed 180 degrees—from safeguarding the rights of individuals who hold unpopular or controversial ideas, to trying to limit the freedom of individuals to express such ideas.

As the Canadian delegation noted, “instead of promoting freedom of expression the Special Rapporteur would be policing its exercise.” This is fundamentally inconsistent with the very foundation of the human-rights tradition, as are measures combating “defamation of religions.” Such measures aim to protect institutions and ideas from criticism, instead of protecting individuals from the consequences of criticizing them. The very concept of freedom of speech has thereby been turned on its head.

Now the full force of this initiative has been directed against those who are sounding the alarm about the Islamization of the West. How could this have happened? Where was the opposition from Western nations? The silence in Europe has been deafening. Only recently did the French ambassador finally speak out, on behalf of the European Union, against the UN initiative to outlaw defamation of religions. He stated that the EU would not accept integration of the notion of defamation of religions into the framework of human rights, since the primary purpose of human rights is to protect people, not religions.

Still, talk is cheap. If we want to preserve our universal human rights, we have to show determination in 2009 to defend them from the OIC’s attempts to erode them…

Hear, hear. But can we, will we, in an era of touchy-feely Obama “inclusiveness”? Well, I will, and I know lots of other who will, too. But we’re all “Islamophobic” conservatives. I have no sense that liberals (ie. most Canadians) have any awareness that A) their freedom is being eroded by the OIC, or B) any awareness that the OIC has twisted, corrupted, our most cherished values—freedom of thought, speech, and religion; human rights—and is using them against us. And very successfully too, one must add.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:33 | link | comments (1)

It’s the demography (and the cowardice), stupid: Why did it take Calgary authorities three whole weeks to clamp down on an angry mob of Jew-haters who kept congregating at a mall in a Jewish area? (The mob was led by none other than Islamic Supremo Syed Soharwady; so much for trying to “rehabilitate” your image, Syed.) Ezra Levant reveals all:

…Why were local politicians silent about this display of bigotry, week after week?

Why did the Calgary Police Service permit this unruly mob onto private property in the first place? Why were trespass charges not laid against them weeks ago? Why did the police do nothing when a pro-Israel counter-protester had a shoe thrown at him, and when a rabbi was spat at? Why were assault charges not laid against them?

The answer is obvious: local politicians have done their math. There are only 8,000 Jews in Calgary, and more than 75,000 Muslims. Denouncing anti-Semitic bigotry is fine for politicians when the bigots are politically powerless neo-Nazi skinheads. When they're radical Muslims, funded by Saudi Arabia, the politicians fall silent.

Same for Canada's Orwellian human rights commissions. They claim to be against "hate". They're awfully brave at taking on Christian clergy who preach the Bible's "hateful" Book of Leviticus. But notice their cowardly silence in the face of mass hate marches in the streets. Jennifer Lynch is probably off on some other five-star junket to study how Cameroon keeps their people so free.

The police aren't much better: it's easier to tell a handful of pro-Israel supporters to leave than to tangle with 200 angry Muslim radicals. It's not only the politically correct thing to do, it's just plain easier. I mean, really: who's more likely to throw a molotov cocktail at you, or stab you -- a few middle-aged Jews, or some just-off-the-plane radicals from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, here to promote sharia law?...

All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is…multiculturalism?

Update: Using quotes from the bible, Syed calls on "good Christians" to join Muslims and do something to stop the Jews. Give that man an Order of Canada!

Update: Anything on the CJC site about the Calgary fracas? Don't be silly. The last Ceej utterance was a full ten days ago, when it acknowledged Raoul Wallenburg Day. Kind of appropriate, actually, since, given what been going on in our snug, smug Trudeaupia of late, the Jews are probably going to need a few Wallenburgs. (As an aside, Syed Soharwardy is one of the Muslims with whom, not too long ago, the Ceej was trying to "build bridges," applauding his Muslims Against Terrorism racket because it was, um, against terrorism. Quel ironie!)

Update: Some "protesters" do a number from Cabaret:

The Jews in the mall drink their lattes and shmooze

While Gaza’s reduced to mere dust.

But gathered together for sha-ree-ah

Tomorrow belongs to us.

The green flag of Islam waves proud in the breeze.

The tanks of the Jews will all rust.

And our days of glory will soon return;

Tomorrow belongs to us.

Now Allah, oh, Allah, we know you’ll come through.

The infidels’ fear is a plus.

And one sunny morning we’ll wake to find

Tomorrow belongs to us…

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments (2)

It’s mullah time!: You would think that, at some stage, the Palestinians would twig to the fact that they are being used—and not in a good way—and that many of their brothers who weep oceans of crocodile tears for their plight care about them as living, breathing human beings not in the least. Case in point: the mad, bad, dangerous to know mullahs. The theo-thugocrats are delighted to sponsor those kooky hotheads, Hamas, but not because they give a hoot about the people of Gaza. They do so, of course, for jihad, jihad, jihad. But they’re also looking to score points against their age-old rivals, the Arabs. How’s that working for the holy rollahs? Not so well, according to Michael Ledeen:

Iran’s always tyrannical and sometimes apocalyptic mullahs have certainly been busy of late. They’ve been spinning faster than a champion dervish, trying to convince the gullible, at home and abroad, that their Hamas proxies in Gaza won a signal victory against Israel, and that Iran was the reason for their success. Meanwhile, they’ve called for the assassination of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, and organized mass rallies against President Obama, complete with ritual burning of his photo.

Some of it shows the regime’s comedic skills at their highest pitch, such as the offer of a million dollars to anyone who killed Mubarak. That is a generous reward the mullahs know they’ll never have to pay off, since anyone who actually murdered the Egyptian president would hardly be in a position to collect. At the same time, Tehran provided us with one of their favorite bits of street theater: seventy thousand screaming citizens demanding to be sent to Gaza on suicide missions. There, too, the offer was cost-free, since Iran doesn’t send its own citizens to blow themselves up. They use the despised Arabs for such things. Nobody’s seen an Iranian suicide bomber since the fall of the shah in 1979.

The battle of Gaza showed at least two important things about the Iranians:

–They are totally ready to fight to the last…Palestinian;

–When push comes to shove, not even the most faithful proxy can count on Tehran for assistance.

No sooner had the fighting started, than top Iranians flew to Damascus to tell Hamas’s “leaders” (who never left Damascus; no battlefield ribbons for them) that they had better not stop fighting. No cease fire until the Israelis had been defeated. This produced the entirely predictable result of increasing casualties in Gaza (both Hamas terrorists and innocent civilians), and a clear victory by the Israelis.

The mullahs obviously couldn’t permit that result to stand, and so they declared victory. Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Majlis (Parliament) delivered the official version: “In Gaza, Israel for the first time succumbed to the resistance of the Palestinian people in its alleged territories and Gaza was actually liberated in this war…Gaza is the beginning of Israel’s serious downfall…”

Oh well, they still have their ace in the hole—their nukes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:17 | link | comments (1)

Sunday, 25 January 2009

Is Islam at odds with the Ontario Human Rights Code?: The OHRC outlines the religious “rights” we here in Ontario enjoy:

Religion and Human Rights
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, discrimination because of religion (creed) is against the law. Everyone should have access to the same opportunities and benefits, and be treated with equal dignity and respect, regardless of theri religion.

Religion includes the practices, beliefs and observances that are part of a faith or religion. It does not include personal moral, ethical or political views. Nor does it include religions that promote violence or hate towards others, or that violate criminal law…

My question: How does that second paragraph square with Islam, which makes no provision for separating the religious from the political (since it acknowledges the validity of only one law—Allah’s); which, in keeping with its founder’s example, calls upon the faithful to “promote violence” against non-believers until they feel themselves to be subdued; and whose religious texts (the Koran, the Hadiths) are chock full of “hate towards others” (apes ‘n’ pigs ‘n’ all that jazz)?

Who’d like to field that one? Babs? Raja?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:36 | link | comments (2)

It's like the Patty Duke Show, only with Arabs: How's this for freaky? There's a Canadian Mohamed Boudjenane, who heads up the Canadian Arab Federation, and who writes articles in which he pimps for Hamas. And there's a UK Mohammed Boudjenane--same name, but with an extra "m" in his Mo--who was put away for life in Londonistan because he conked his neighbour on the noggin, sawed off his head, and, much to the chagrin of his co-passengers, carried it around with him on a bus before finally discarding it (the head, not the bus) in a canal. Cue the 60s TV show theme song: "But they're Mohameds/Identically named Mohameds all the way/Two guys who share the same name/Diff'rent as night and day..."

Update: Mister Ed, anyone?

Update: Gidget?

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

Victims R Us: The Canadian Arab Federation, which helped organize the pro-Hamas rallies in Toronto, and which vocally champions the genocidal jihadis in their “resistance” against the Jews, posts a report by the American Arab anti-Defamation Committee (ADC) detailing the “discrimination” and “Islamophobia” faced by Arabs in the U.S. Here’s a brief excerpt:

…The [American Arab anti-Defamation Committee] ADC received an average of 120 to 130 reports of ethnically motivated attacks or threats each year between 2003 and 2007, a sharp decrease from the 700 violent incidents it documented in the weeks following the 2001 terrorist attacks. But that figure is still higher than the 80 to 90 reports it received in the late 1990s.

The report said that discrimination at airports based on stereotyping, over-zealousness or prejudice by airline personnel or even other passengers is now one of the main sources of discrimination facing Arab-American air travelers. "Arab-American travelers face serious issues with border crossing detentions and delays, especially on the U.S.-Canada border."

Arab-American students continue to face significant problems with discrimination and harassment in schools around the country, said the ADC report. "Arab-America students and faculty have faced increased levels of discrimination and political harassment campaigns, especially involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and efforts by right-wing groups to stifle debate on U.S. foreign policy in academia."

The ADC report finds that defamation in popular culture and the media a very serious problem facing the Arab-American community. "In spite of a far better record from the film and television industry in 2003-2007, defamation spread wildly in the non-fiction world of television, magazines, radio, newspapers and websites. A campaign of relentless vilification against Muslims and Islam has been the single biggest contributor to the collapse in American public opinion of Islam during this period."

The report pointed out that "Islamophobia" and "anti-Muslim intolerance" is on the rise in the United States and highlights the mushrooming of the so-called "terrorism expert" as a cottage industry with the Arab and Muslim-American communities often in its crosshairs…

No mention, of course, that Arab (and Canadian) Arabs are often on the other end of “ethnically motivated attacks,” harassing, threatening and throttling Jews. Nothing about the reason behind the heightened scrutiny at airports—ie. Arabs who are keen to blow up large airliners full of infidels as a bloody offering to Allah. Rien about how Arabs (and the usefully imbecilic leftist academics who back them) have made North American university campuses hotbeds of Judenhass such that Jewish students don’t feel welcome, and often fear for their safety. Bupkes about the mainstream lefty media’s ongoing hostility toward Israel and e’er burgeoning love affair with jihadist “fighters”. And nada about how, every day, the hard and soft jihads are hastening the time when, in the words of a famous cover story in an “Islamophobic” periodical by infamous “Islamophobe” Mark Steyn, the future belongs to Islam.

But then, anyone expecting the CAF and its poor, victimized retinue to engage in sober self-reflection is either stupid or deranged—or both.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:37 | link | comments

A mountain of bias goes unnoticed: When I read Canada Israel Committee communications director Paul Michaels’ assessment of the Canadian media’s (including the Ceeb’s) coverage of Gaza—he says that, on the whole, it has been fair—I literally gasped. Clearly, Michaels has not been paying much attention to Ceeb radio—as I do most every day. If he had, he would have heard the pro-Hamas propaganda emitting like a sonic assault of toxic sludge. The little melodramas about Gaza moppets and the cruel Jewish bloodhounds, snapping at their innocent backsides, recounted in a still, small voice by Ceeb drama queen Margaret Evans. Anna Maria Tremonti’s seemingly endless interviews with Hamas flaks detailing Israeli infamy, usually with no rebuttal from the other side. The frequent airing of the thoughts of anti-Zionist Jews, like the repellent Judy Rebick. And this morning, in what may be the ultimate Ceeb Israel-bashing piece—the pièce d’Islamiste résistance, if you will—helium-voiced former NDP politico Sharon Carstairs, waxing lachrymose over the plight of a few Hamas “fighters” incarcerated in Israeli prison.

Well, boo flaming hoo, Sharon. What about Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas, the better to tease and torment Israel and his poor, long-suffering parents? What about the fact that your Hamas “fighters” are fighting to annihilate the Jewish state for the greater aggrandizement of Islam? What about the angry mobs of pro-Hamas “protesters” in Canadian cities screaming “Death to the Jews” and itching to take out their “frustration” over “injustice to Palestinians” on some local Juden. (During the last “protest” in Toronto, police could barely contain the mob, urging counter-protesters to flee before “protesters”—seething, raging—could get to them.) Funny how Sharon and her like-minded Ceeb sob-sisters don’t seem to be expending any angst over those issues.

Michaels’ evaluation of Ceeb coverage appears to be predicated on one—count it, one—lone interview with Yossi Klein Halevi on Ceeb radio show Sunday Morning. But that’s a mole hill compared to the Everest of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel items on Ceeb radio. So is it that the CIC can’t see the mountain? Or is it that, because the sheer size of it is so daunting, so depressing, it prefers to pretend it isn't there?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:07 | link | comments (4)

Gitmo “morality”: Sure, you can occupy the moral high ground by, say, springing
Guantanamo lunatics from their palmy asylum (someone should tell “boy soldier”
Omar Khadr it’s 30 frikkin’ below in Toronto; he might think twice about coming
“home”), but what happens once the zanies are back out in the world? The Ottawa
Citizen’s David Warren considers the ramifications of repatriating the prison’s inmates:

…It is right of the law to prohibit torture. It is right in almost every circumstance to obey the law (and accept the consequences in any other). There will, however, always be tight corners where "the law is a ass," and to pretend this were never the case is to assume a disingenuous posture. Moreover, as when Guantanamo opened, there are circumstances in which no existing law has been written or can be applied, and yet the principle of retribution remains: that the innocent will be vindicated, that the guilty will be punished.

And: that the defenceless will be protected against serial killers. To set any of the Guantanamo inmates free, on some jurisprudential technicality, is to smear one's hands with the blood of their victims when they return to their trade. This is not a hypothetical proposition: for while the numbers are disputed, a proportion of "low risk" inmates already freed from Guantanamo have returned to action.

This is why families of 9/11 victims were outraged by the executive orders. It is why Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who lost 17 of his men in the attack on the USS Cole (at Aden in 2000), said of the order, "It demeans their deaths." For among the apparent beneficiaries of President Obama's "symbolic" measure is a "suspect" in the Cole attack.

It is why American and allied soldiers, whose lives are on the line against Islamist terrorists not yet captured, must necessarily feel demoralized. Conversely, it gives them a powerful motive to overlook the niceties when another of the enemy falls into their hands.

Barack Obama is not a complete fool, and the measures he has ordered are likely to prove cosmetic. Paradoxically, many of the prisoners at Guantanamo may well now suffer worse fates than if they had remained on location untried, or been processed through the military tribunals. For they will have to be sent somewhere. No country, whose citizenship they may nominally carry, is eager to receive them. Dump them on the authorities in, say, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, and I daresay their prison conditions will not improve.

The liberal mind -- now fully restored to power in the United States -- is in love with symbolic gestures. It is not much enamoured of the hard prudential reasoning that is involved in choosing between two or more evils. The mystery, to me, is the consistency with which it chooses to ignore the greater evil, in order to address the lesser.

Actually, I don’t know that the liberal mind is even capable of perceiving genuine evil.
With its sanguine view of humanity (it’s a small, cuddly world, after all), it is much
more inclined to disavow the existence of evil and seek “balance”—as the Toronto Star
did yesterday when it placed comments about Hamas and Gaza by Mohammed
Boudjenane, CAF chief, and Amir Gissin, Israel’s consul-general to Toronto, side by
side under one heading. That, I think, is the liberal mind’s greatest failing—its infatuation
with a bogus “fairness,” its allegiance to moral relativism, and, above all, the sheer
mush-brained cluelessness that enables evil to blossom right under the sanctimonious
liberal’s nose. And just when the liberal feels most comfortable, ensconced in his
Laz-E-Boy on the moral high ground, it is then that evil comes around and slices off his
head or blows him up for Allah.

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

Saturday, 24 January 2009

Go, jihadis!: The Canadian Arab Federation’s Mohammed Boudjenane makes no
bones about it—he’s a big fan of Hamas, and he thinks Canadians should be, too.
From the Toronto Star:

…Israel's attempts to "teach the Palestinians a lesson" have mainly failed. On the contrary, every time Israel escalates the attacks, it gives newer generations of Palestinians more reasons to hate it.

What other feelings could normal people have for a state that has pounded their area – less than half the size of the city of Toronto – with 1,500 tons of explosives?

In the short term, the assault seems to have achieved the opposite results: The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), does not seem to have lost much of its operational capacity, its chain of command seems to be intact, and its popularity is skyrocketing, both in the Palestinian street and the Arab street. This comes at the expense of the West-supported chair of the Palestinian Authority and PLO, Mahmoud Abbas, whose way of handling the whole issue was met with contempt and dismay by Palestinians.

Hamas has also attained a new level of international standing. During the last days of the war, Qatar called for an emergency Arab League Summit meeting to discuss the issue of the war on Gaza. Because of political pressure – presumably from Israel, the U.S. and the European Union – Abbas refused to attend the meeting.

Since it is inconceivable to hold talks to discuss a Palestinian issue without the presence of a Palestinian representative, Hamas was invited, and they did represent the Palestinians in that forum. This is a blow to the PLO, which has fought for decades to achieve the title "the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

In Canada, this war has again exposed the biases and the unprincipled ways of the Conservative government (supported by the Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff), which made statements that not only placed Canada to the right of the United States bu also managed to alienate most Palestinian and Arab Canadians.

Canadian media were all willing to buy into the Israeli propaganda machine and parroted its lies.

The rubble in Gaza will be removed, buildings will be rebuilt, streets will be paved again, but we are yet to see if the scars this war left on the souls of the children of Gaza will ever heal.

We are also yet to see if Canada is still a country that lives up to its stated support for human rights and universal values. On the other hand, a number of thing are clear: Hamas has emerged more powerful and more popular, Israel has shown once again its ability to unleash excessive force against civilians, and Canada cannot claim anymore that its foreign policy is fair and balanced.

My letter:

From the way the Canadian Arab Federation’s Mohammed Boudjenane describes Hamas--as a wildly popular “resistance” movement that has “attained a new level of international standing”--you would think it was some sort of respectable outfit, the Islamist equivalent of, say, WW2’s French Resistance. The truth, of course, is vastly different. Hamas is a terrorist enterprise--on Canada’s list of terrorist groups--whose Charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Israel’s Jews: The only thing it is “resisting” is Israel’s right to exist. Hamas is supported by and beholden to the mullahs of Iran, a regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. And if you think Hamas has it in for Israel’s Jews, if anything, it treats its Arab brothers even worse. Just ask Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah members were brutalized and murdered by the score following the recent ceasefire.

It is deeply disturbing that Boudjenane and his organization would act as cheerleaders for this gang of thugs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:02 | link | comments

Kah-vetch, kah-vetch, kah-vetch: Muslim scholars have itemized their manifold
grievances—and issued a clear warning—in a letter to the new leader of the free
world. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — A galaxy of Muslim scholars thinkers, political activists and academics have penned an open letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to begin his reign by remedying injustices inflicted on Arabs and Muslims for peace to prevail and America to restore its image.

"Civilization cannot flourish and peace and security cannot be enjoyed by the world unless justice prevails on the ground and dominates international relations," said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by IslamOnline.net.

It listed the injustices that need to be alleviated in order to end hostilities and promote peace in the world.

"No other nation in history has suffered injustice like the one inflicted upon the Palestinian people," the Muslim leaders wrote.

"This fact might have been ignored by the US in response either to some financial, political or media pressure or to ideological illusions, legends or electoral ambitions."

The signatories include Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), Rashid Al-Ghanoushi, Secretary General of Al-Nahdha Movement in Tunisia, Qazi Hussein Ahmad, leader of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami, and Ali Sadruddin Al-Bayanoni, head of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.

The letter affirms that normal relations with Arabs and Muslims can not be reached "unless the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian nation" is lifted and "unless the Iraqi and Afghan sovereignty is retained."

Obama, who was sworn-in as America's 44th and first black president on Tuesday, January 20, has vowed a new start with the Muslim world.

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," Obama said in his inauguration speech, watched by millions around the world.

US Image

The Muslim leaders regretted that a large part of the injustices in the world today was either perpetuated or ignored by the US.

"Although America is the country which calls for freedom and respect of human rights more than any other country in the world, we believe that the governments of America, in practice, are the ones which violate the human rights most, and confiscating others’ freedom," they said.

"Furthermore, it has shown the lion's share in supporting dictatorial regimes, conspiring against growing democracies, planning military coups, and disregarding the international organizations."

The letter warned that attempts to impose an American model by force and pressure would only backfire.

"The first affected by this method is America itself."…

Relax, aggrieved galaxy. The president has already announced his intention to take
“the moral high ground,” which means he’s likely to be much more of a pushover than
was his predecessor.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:42 | link | comments (2)

Welcome to al Reuters’ Bizarro World: Palestinian youngsters are indoctrinated
in all sorts of hair-raising, stomach-turning Judenhass—it’s in their textbooks, on
their TV, and in their mosques—but according to al Reuters, if “peace” is
more of a distant dream than ever, it’s because of the Jews and their hatred:

Schools reopened in Gaza on Saturday after Israel's devastating three-week war, and peaceful coexistence seemed further than ever from the traumatised minds of young Palestinians.

"Good morning! Still alive?" excited teenage girls asked each other as their class, all in white headscarves, lined up in the yard shortly after dawn at Beach Preparatory School.

School starts early in the Gaza Strip because there is not enough classroom space for all the children, so there must be two shifts a day.

The pupils were seeing their teachers for the first time since Israel bombs began falling on Gaza on December 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed, over half of them civilians.

Critics warn that the violence of Israel's offensive, which followed the collapse of a six-month truce, can only reap a harvest of greater militancy from a newly radicalised generation. According to one Gaza website, 3,500 Palestinians were born during the 22-day war.

"Israel hates Palestinians, hates Arabs, hates Muslims, hates Islam," said one girl in Nuha Abdulati's English class, as her schoolmates nodded in agreement.

Israel lost 10 soldiers in the fighting and three civilians killed by rockets or mortars fired from Gaza by the Islamist Hamas militants who control the enclave.

The girls did not seem to be aware, or to take seriously, that it was Hamas which declared an end to the truce in late December, and that Israel's stated reason for attacking was to eradicate the threat of rockets which began to pepper southern towns. Scores exploded in one day before its forces struck.

Older Gazans who want compromise with Israel regret the high price of this "resistance." But in the classrooms at Beach Prep, any suggestion of making peace now was dismissed.

Asked if the current cease-fire would endure, most girls said they did not think so. Asked if there could be peace with Israel one day, most said there could not. None said it was possible…

Well, the moppets got that part right, at least. “Peace” as they understand it precludes
Israel’s existence and will only come about once Israel (and all other kafir nations) are
where Islamic supremacists (such as Hamas, Gaza's rulers) believe they’re supposed to
be—under Islam’s thumb.

Update: Another tug-from-heartstrings piece about Gaza moppets returning to school
(after their, er, education was so rudely interupted by child-murdering Jews),
this one from the New York Times.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:11 | link | comments

Hold your tongue (and turn off the camera), kafirs: The grotesquely misnamed
UN Human Rights Council has been up to its old tricks—trying to remove the human
right of kafirs to question or criticize Islam (a human right the OIC, the organization that
calls the shots at the UN, describes—and derides—as “Islamophobia”). A documentary
film crew, which had been trying to capture the inner workings of this most ridiculous
of UN bodies, has discovered to its dismay exactly how “free speech” and “human
rights” are understood by the world’s guardian of those concepts (i.e. not unlike how
they are understood according to the terms of sharia). From expatica:

Geneva -- A television production crew was expelled Thursday from a United Nations meeting discussing freedom of expression and defamation of religions.

Two journalists from the French-German cultural channel ARTE were asked to leave a meeting room at the UN's European headquarters during a public session of a human rights body preparing for a racism conference in South Africa later this year.

The journalists were working on a documentary on how the issue of human rights is debated at the United Nations.

According to a diplomatic source, the expulsion announced by the chairman of the session, Russian representative Yuri Boychenko, was requested by the Organisation of Islamic Conference and by the African group of states.

"It is regrettable that he was not informed of the procedures that allow a public session to become a private one," Marie Heuze, chief spokeswoman at the UN in Geneva said.

The expulsion took place when the debate was raging on freedom of expression and the defamation of religions, two issues which are proving particularly sensitive in a proposed declaration for the conference in Durban, South Africa.

According to Muslim participants, human rights should take into account defamation of religions, while the Europeans are opposed to its inclusion.

A British delegate said any mention of this concept in the resolution "damages the prospects" of a successful conference in Durban.

According to a diplomatic source, at least three European countries -- Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands, have threatened to boycott the conference if the resolution is accepted.

The United States, Canada and Israel have already said they would not attend the event, which is scheduled to take place April 20 to 24.

The earlier 2001 Durban conference on racism, held just a few days before the September 11 attacks on the United States and against the backdrop of the second Palestinian intifada, ended in acrimony amid accusations of anti-Semitism.

It “damages the prospects” of a successful conference? Who’s he kidding? Durban II
  is shaping up to be every bit as deranged as Durban I, the conference that set the
  standard for UN lunacy—another rip-roaring fiesta of Judenhass with Israel, once
again, as the designated piñata. (Israel’s absence won’t diminish the frenzy one iota,
since, as everyone who understands Judenhass knows, Jews don’t have to be
physically present for the Jew-haters to stew--no, luxuriate--in their loathing.)

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

So far, so bad: Obama--the first 100 hours.

Update: AP headline--Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisive stands.

No doubt about it: we're doomed.

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

Flying while Jewish: Since political correctness is de rigueur while racial profiling
is sooo George W. Bush (didja hear the news?—the war on terror is finito) airport
security is working hard to ensure that middle aged Jewish chicks who write articles
countering the jihad don’t try to sneak explosives onto planes. Phyllis Chesler, the
middle aged Jewish chick in question, describes her run-in with the scrutinizers:

…So there I was: Gratefully confined to the airline’s wheelchair, when I was told that both my companion and myself had been randomly selected for an extra-special, super-duper security search.

I kid you not: At least two men of Middle Eastern descent (who could have been FBI agents for all I knew), breezed right on through as I sat there. Two people did a slow-and-careful search of our carry-on luggage; they examined my computer millimeter by millimeter. Special chemicals were involved. And much time.

My patient companion was put in a radiation/x-ray chamber and radiated. We took off our shoes, coats, jackets, and jewelry. (If they could, they would have had me remove my bright shiny new hip too). I was physically patted down in every imaginable place–and had to try very hard not to laugh when the security attendant told me that she would “also have to search my wheelchair.” “Please do,” I said, “but it is not mine, it belongs to the airline.” She nevertheless searched it vigorously, especially below the wheelchair seat while I was still seated in it.

Two of the security guards were weather-beaten, angry-looking prison warden-like women with whom one does not wish to make eye contact. Three more were milder sorts but all were “just following orders.” As I sat there I wondered: What if they were border guards in a war-zone? What if my life depended on whether I made this flight? How exactly does one “sweet-talk” such self-important bureaucrats?

And thus, does terrorism–and our need to defend ourselves from attack–impinge more and more upon our lives. Airports are no longer any fun, all the glamor and excitement are gone, one waits on long lines to be searched, as we must, we must.

I would like every passenger to remember why. These burdensome and necessary procedures are not due to American foreign policy or to Israel’s precious existence but to death-eating Muslim terrorists. As I’ve written many times: Not all Muslims are terrorists–absolutely not–but these days, all terrorists seem to be Muslims.

For saying true things like this, as is our right to do in free democracies, Mark Steyn was tried for committing “hate crime speech” in Canada and now Geert Wilders will be tried for it in Holland. Taslima Nasrin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, all live in hiding because they spoke out about Islam. Which of us will be next?

I say: All of us must be next and we must keep on speaking the truth until we roundly defeat the jihadists on all the fields of battle.

North American airport security people (some of whom, no doubt, have received
“sensitivity training” from some Islamist organization, so they won’t needlessly hurt
Muslim feelings during the course of their work) would probably search Geert,
Taslima, Ayaan and Wafa, too.

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

The great Washington suck-up scheme: As part of his hopey-changey agenda, Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world.

If he really wants to get on their good side, he should find a way to "solve" that pesky Jewish sovereignty problem, pronto, if you catch my drift.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:50 | link | comments

Friday, 23 January 2009

Nuts!: One definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting
a different result each time. A propos of that, Obama’s opening gambit for the Middle
East, is, simply put, bleeping bonkers. Caroline Glick, no happy hopey-changer she,
unpacks the lunacy:

It is a fundamental truth that while history always repeats itself, it almost never repeats itself precisely. There is always some measure of newness to events that allows otherwise intelligent people to repeat the mistakes of their forbearers without looking completely ridiculous.

Given this, it is hard to believe that with the advent of the Obama administration, we are seeing history repeat itself with nearly unheard of precision. US President Barack Obama's reported intention of appointing former Senator George Mitchell to serve as his envoy for the so-called Palestinian-Israeli peace process will provide us with a spectacle of an unvarnished repeat of history.

In December 2000, outgoing president Bill Clinton appointed Mitchell to advise him how to reignite the "peace process" after the Palestinians rejected statehood and launched their terror war against Israel in September 2000. Mitchell presented his findings to Clinton's successor, George W. Bush in April 2001.

Mitchell asserted that Israel and the Palestinians were equally to blame for the Palestinian terror war against Israelis. He recommended that Israel end all Jewish building outside the 1949 armistice lines, and stop fighting Palestinian terrorists.

As for the Palestinians, Mitchell said they had to make a "100 percent effort" to prevent the terror that they themselves were carrying out. This basic demand was nothing new. It formed the basis of the Clinton administration's nod-nod-wink-wink treatment of Palestinian terrorism since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994.

By insisting that the PLO make a "100 percent effort," to quell the terror it was enabling, the Clinton administration gave the Palestinians built-in immunity from responsibility. Every time that his terrorists struck, Yassir Arafat claimed that their attacks had nothing to do with him. He was making a "100 percent effort" to stop the attacks after all.

After getting Arafat off the hook, the Clinton administration proceeded to blame Israel. If Israel had just given up more land, or forced Jews from their homes, or given the PLO more money, Arafat could have saved the lives of his victims.

Mitchell's plan, although supported by then secretary of state Colin Powell, was never adopted by Bush because at the time, terrorists were massacring Israelis every day. It would have been politically unwise for Bush to accept a plan that asserted moral equivalence between Israel and the PLO when rescue workers were scraping the body parts of Israeli children off the walls of bombed out pizzerias and bar mitzvah parties.

But while his eponymous plan was rejected, its substance, which was based on the Clinton Plan, formed the basis of the Tenet Plan, the Roadmap Plan and the Annapolis Plan. And now, Mitchell is about to return to Israel, at the start of yet another presidential administration to offer us his plan again.

Mitchell of course, is not the only one repeating the past. His boss, Barack Obama is about to repeat the failures his immediate predecessors. Like Clinton and Bush, Obama is making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda.

Obama made this clear his first hour on the job. On Wednesday at 8 a.m., Obama made his first phone call to a foreign leader. He called PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. During their conversation, Obama pledged his commitment to Palestinian statehood.

Fatah wasted no time responding to Obama's extraordinary gesture. Wednesday afternoon Abbas convened the PLO's Executive Committee in Ramallah and the body announced that future negotiations with Israel will have to be based new preconditions. As far as the PLO is concerned, with Obama firmly in its corner, it can force Israel to its knees.

And so, now the PLO is uninterested in the agreements it reached with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. For Israel to enjoy the privilege of negotiating with the PLO, it must first announce its willingness to expel all the 500,000 or so Israeli Jews who live in Judea, Samaria and the neighborhoods in east, south and north Jerusalem built since 1967 as well as the Old City and then hand the areas over, lock, stock and barrel to the PLO.

This new PLO "plan" itself is nothing new. It is simply a restatement of the Arab "peace plan" which is just a renamed Saudi "peace plan" which was just a renamed Tom Friedman column in the *New York Times*. And the Friedman plan is one that no Israeli leader in his right mind can accept. So by making this their precondition for negotiations, the PLO is doing what it did in 2000. It is rejecting statehood in favor of continued war with Israel.

What is most remarkable about the new administration's embrace of its predecessors' failed policy is how uncontroversial this policy is in Washington. It is hard to come up with another example of a policy that has failed so often and so violently that has enjoyed the support of both American political parties. Indeed, it is hard to think of a successful policy that ever enjoyed such broad support.

Apparently, no one in positions of power in Washington has stopped to consider why it is that in spite of the fervent backing of presidents Clinton and Bush, there is still no Palestinian state…

Yeah, that one’s a real head-scratcher. Could it be that the reason there’s no
Palestinian state—and I may be going out on a limb here—is because the only
Palestinian state that interests the Palestinians is the one currently occupied
by the Jews?

I offer you that insight gratis, Beltway boychiks.

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

Seeing is believing: I recall that at the Combating Hatred conference in November,
’07, a number of emissaries from Canada’s designated victim groups said something
along the lines of, “I don’t know if I can define ‘hate,’ but I know it when I see it.”
Well, I know how to define anti-Zionism, the hate directed at the Jewish state that
rebounds onto the Jewish people—it’s Judenhass, pure and simple. And I have seen
it on display in all its ugliness and hysteria—it’s a kind of madness, no?—at the
pro-Hamas rallies in this, the best of all possible multiculti Trudeaupias, my own
hometown of Toronto. A letter-writer to the National Post has seen it, too (h/t WM):

Re: Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism, letters to the editor, Jan. 21.

Why don't your letter writers come and tell their analytical garbage to my son's 20-year-old friend, who last week ended up in hospital after being beaten up in Toronto? His "crime"? He was wearing a Magen David (the Jewish, not Zionist, Star of David). As he fell to numerous blows, his attackers shouted, "Jewish [not Zionist] scum. Let's see how strong you are without your army now!"

The police were most helpful: "We will lay charges only if we know who they are."

Do readers know what hurts Jews most? Not the fists and iron clubs; we're accustomed to those. Instead, the betrayal from within is always the most painful.

Yoseph Barrett, Toronto.

Nice, eh? I'm expecting the CJC, which springs into action whenever a satirical 'toon
of Islam's founder is published by a Danish newspaper or a Muslim gravestone is
toppled in France, to immediately issue a news release condeming this attack as being--
what did it call the 'toon publication again?, oh, yeah--"inexcusably provocative". Also,
inexcusably hateful. (Just kidding. Of course, I expect the Ceej to do no such thing.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:38 | link | comments (3)

NIMBY Continentals: From his self-satisfied perch on the moral high ground,
the president is preparing to release the inmates of Gitmo back into the world.
Oddly enough, though, AP reports that the EUnuchs, who for many years have
been occupying the same moral high ground, seem less than thrilled at the prospect
of having to reabsorb these hardened jihadis:

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Across Europe, President Barack Obama's decision to shut the Guantanamo Bay prison has raised an awkward question: Which EU states that railed against the camp will offer new lives to released prisoners?

The U.S. Defense Department says about 50 of the 245 prisoners awaiting freedom cannot go home again on security or political grounds, raising the need to find an alternative place to send them. But European Union members long critical of Guantanamo shied away Friday from any firm commitments to help.

Ireland has joined Portugal, France, Germany and Switzerland in saying it probably would participate in an EU-organized plan that might take shape at a summit of foreign ministers Monday in Brussels.

But it already appears likely that Europe will leave some of Guantanamo's inmates in limbo behind a policy of: No terrorists please.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said European Union members should agree on terms and conditions for housing at least some of the 50 "as a logical consequence of our arguing for the closure of Guantanamo."

He emphasized, however, that "no one is talking about terrorists or anything like that coming to EU countries. We're talking about non-combatants — people who clearly have no history of any terrorist activity."

Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said in a written statement to The Associated Press that all EU countries thinking of taking ex-prisoners "will have to have regard to difficult security issues which arise." He declined an AP request to explain what those concerns were and how EU leaders could overcome them.

Ahern said in his prepared remarks he expects the Brussels talks to promote "a united and positive response at EU level to any request made by the new U.S. administration for help in bringing about the closure of Guantanamo."

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said the Obama administration was carrying on diplomatic contacts begun on Bush's watch with "allies and partners, including a number of European countries," about the transfer of some detainees. He declined to discuss any specifics.

Diplomatic and security officials across Europe acknowledge that in the Obama era their nations risk exposure of double standards — complaining of American injustice, but presuming that ex-Guantanamo prisoners are too hot to handle themselves. Most nations in the 27-country bloc remain in the position of waiting for an EU request that they might prefer never comes…

See how easy it is to claim the moral high ground—which is often a realm of cowardice,
cluelessness and amorality—when someone else is doing your dirty work?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:09 | link | comments (1)

Religion repackaged?: James Taranto of Opinion Journal notes that the Zionist Organization of America is concerned that Obama may be signalling that "Judeo-Christian" is about to be superseded by "Christian-Islamic":

The Zionist Organization of America has a question for President Obama, concerning the statement in his Inaugural Address that "we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus--and nonbelievers":

What is the reason President Obama chose this sequence when listing these four religions?

Throughout its history, the United States has always been known as a nation based on Judeo-Christian values and heritage.

Moreover, surveys show that there are some 5-7 million Jews living in the United States. Most surveys show that there are 1.8-2.8 million Muslims living in the United States.

In contrast, in President George W. Bush's Inauguration Speech on January 20, 2001, he said the following, "Church and charity, synagogue and mosque, lend our communities their humanity, and they will have an honored place in our plans and laws."

Hmm, why did he choose that order? It couldn't have just been random, seeing as how Obama cares so much about words. Let's consider the possibilities:

He's not going by number of adherents, as the ZOA statement points out, since there are more Jews than Muslims in America (although curiously the group omits a count of American Hindus). Muslims vastly outnumber Jews world-wide, but then so do Hindus.

He's not going chronologically, the idea behind "Judeo-Christian" (though come to think of it, one imagines there were nonbelievers before there were Jews). And if he were trying to rhyme, he'd have done something like "Christians, Hindus / Muslims 'n' Jews."

When in doubt, alphabetize: That's the advice an editor gave us when we were young. But Obama doesn't seem to have followed it. "Jews" is ahead of "Muslims" in the alphabet; and while "Islam" does come before "Judaism," "Hinduism" precedes them both.

Wait, we've got it! He is going alphabetically--not by the name of the faith or what its adherents are called, but by the name of the central figure in each: Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Vishnu.

Oh yeah--and Zilch!

I wouldn’t read too much into it. After all, as a few e-mailers have pointed out to me,
Obama has beaucoup de Jews in his administration, which means we have nothing to
worry about re his preferences, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:35 | link | comments

Bow, scrape, grovel; repeat: Bruce Bawer, who lived in the Netherlands for a
time, and who authored While Europe Slept, a study of Europe’s capitulation to
Islamists, casts a baleful eye at the Iron Veil that has descended on his former
domicile:

…In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlands—a nation once famous for being an oasis of free speech—has now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what [Geert] Wilders has argued all along: that fear and “sensitivity” to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.

Can we honestly say that things are any different here in Canada?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments (1)

Oh frabjous day!: Jihad's over, saith The One. Time for the "healing" to begin.

Update: Dubya's "war on terror" is toast. The way ahead, saith The One, is to "reclaim the moral high ground." Memo to Obama: do that, and your moral high ground is going to be littered with the bodies of dead Americans, the victims of jihadis who could care less about your "morality," and who have no qualms about engaging in whatever savagery it takes to come out on top.

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

Today’s spin--heartless Jews murder the innocent: In its weekly Friday digest,
the Canadian Islamic Congress posts this report, from UK rag The Guardian,
about the immense loss of life in Gaza, much of it comprised of children. The piece’s
headline is a mini maudlin masterpiece: “They’ve killed us; me, Amal and Soso.
They’ve gone to heaven.” What follows is insidious anti-Zionist propaganda,
something at which both the Guardian and the CIC excel:

Four-year- old Samer Abed Rabbo lay half-covered by a blanket yesterday in
her hospital bed, as she tried to explain the bullets that crippled her and killed her two sisters.

Samer was hit by a bullet in the back that damaged her spinal cord and left her arms and legs paralyzed, probably permanently. Her sisters Amal, aged two, and Suad, eight (nicknamed Soso), were killed outright when their house in northern Gaza came under attack from an Israeli tank last week.

"They killed us," Samer said. "We're dead. Me, Amal and Soso. They've gone to heaven " The Jews destroyed the house and I don't want to go back there. I love Amal and Soso."

Israel's military says it does not target civilians and blames Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, for the high civilian casualty toll, because it fights from within urban areas. The Israeli military is in turn accused of using its immense firepower indiscriminately in built-up areas packed with civilian families trying to shelter from the fighting. More than half of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are children.

The extraordinary number of civilian deaths " particularly among children -- is for many a defining and shocking feature of this brutal offensive, which began in force on December 27. Today (mid- January) some 1200 and at least one-third of them are children. Up to 5,000 Gazans of all ages are among the injured, again at least one-third (and likely up to half) of them children. Many of the children have injuries that will leave them permanently disabled, facing more operations and months or years of rehabilitation therapy " both of which are very hard to come by in the impoverished Palestinian territories…

I can’t say for sure whether Amal and Soso have indeed gone to heaven (and if
they have, may they rest in peace), or whether their deaths were fabricated for
propaganda purposes. However, it seems clear that, as per usual, the Palestinians
have, for obvious reasons, inflated the number of deaths. An Honest Reporting alert,
citing a YNet News report, casts doubt on the veracity of Hamas’s figures:

…“The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article....

A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"

These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper…

Not that for Zion-haters accuracy and the truth make a bit of difference, since the Big
Lie is so much more effective in making their case.

Update: What really happened to the Amals and Sosos.

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

Situation normal all fouled up: An IHT headline informs us that, with the ceasefire holding, Gaza is "edging back to normalcy." I guess the IHT's definition of "normal" is broad enough to include a terrorist entity beholden to crazed Shiacrats; one that is funded entirely by international largesse such that there is no industry (save for digging tunnels through which to smuggle weapons and supplies, and cooking up "homemade" rockets) and no incentive to start any industry, since the rationale for this entity's existence is the eliminatation of Jewish sovereignty in Israel, and, ideally, the extermination of world Jewry in toto; and which contains a large "refugee camp" even though the "refugees" hold the reigns of power in their own territory.

If that's "normalcy" then the world is serioulsy f**ked.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments (1)

Thursday, 22 January 2009

Black masks and Black Death: We've become accustomed to terrorists who fall victim to, er, jihad-related work "accidents" (i.e. would-be shahids who never quite make it to Paradise because they 'splode before they're supposed to). Well, here's a report about a far more disturbing terrorist misfire--40 al Qaeda members who bought the farm after accidentally dosing themselves with the Bubonic plague.

No worries, though. Once President Obama and his hopey-changers clean out Gitmo and do away with that nasty waterboarding, I'm sure al Qaeda will be so impressed by their empathy and humanitarianism that they will immediately drop plans to revisit the glorious 14th Century, when a third of Europe's population succumbed to this incredibly revolting disease.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:51 | link | comments (1)

Same old, same old: Hope? Change? 'Tis to laugh. President Obama's first order of business for the Middle East is to try to reinflate the fortunes of a tapped out kleptocrat who's been given the heave-ho by his own people, and thus has the support of no one save the foolish kafirs who insist on keeping him in the game. The president's second order of business is to fly in--wait for it--George Mitchell (remember him?) so he can try to get the two sides together to, you know, talk, and find a way to resolve their differences.

Not exactly what anyone would call a quantum leap forward, Mr. President.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:28 | link | comments

UN to the rescue: What Israel knocketh down, the anti-Zionist internationalists
vow to rebuild. I think that merits a song:

Nothing’s impossible for those who wait

To ‘liminate

The Jewish state.

They’ll pick Hamas up,

Dust Hamas off,

Start the jihad again.

Don’t lose your confidence if Jews fight back.

Just wait until the next attack.

And pick Hamas up,

Dust Hamas off,

Start the jihad again.

Hate like a soul inspired

By a Prophet from long ago.

Who cares if they bomb and blast you

When UN gives you more dough?

Don’t you remember the famous japes

That Jews are all pigs and apes?

So pick Hamas up,

Dust Hamas off,

Start the jihad again.

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

Tough love: An Australian imam has told the menfolk in his flock that, as per
instructions in the Koran, it's okay to force your wife you have sex with you and hit
her should she balk, so long as you're careful not to draw blood. From the Herald Sun:

EXCLUSIVE: A MELBOURNE Islamic cleric has told his male followers they can force their wives to have sex and hit them if they are disobedient.

Coburg's self-styled cleric Samir Abu Hamza said despite Australian rape laws it was impossible for a man to rape his wife even if she refused to have sex with him.

In a recorded lecture entitled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage", delivered to his male worshippers but now broadcast on the internet and viewed by several thousand people, Mr Hamza said Islamic law allowed men to hit their wives as a last resort, but they were not to make them bleed or become bruised.

He said under Islamic law, as described in a koranic verse, it was a man's right to demand sex from his wife whenever he felt like it.

"If the husband was to ask her for a sexual relationship and she is preparing the bread on the stove she must leave it and come and respond to her husband, she must respond," Mr Hamza told his male followers on the video sermon.

He then mocked Australia's criminal laws, which required consent for sex to be lawful.

"In this country if the husband wants to sleep with his wife and she does not want to and she hasn't got a sickness or whatever, there is nothing wrong with her she just does not feel like it, and he ends up sleeping with her by force . . . it is known to be as rape," Mr Hamza said. "Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?"

In the contradictory sermon, delivered in Melbourne or Sydney about 2003 but posted late last year, Mr Hamza initially instructs his listeners "don't hit your wife".

But he goes on to say exactly how men should hit their wives, according to his interpretation of Islamic teachings.

He said Islam cursed "those people who hit the animal on the face, (but) what about hitting your wife?"

"First of all advise them," he said. "You beat them . . . but this is the last resort...

And that "resort" is part of what you might call an all-inclusive package, with
instructions governing every single aspect of life, down to the most picayune.

All I can say is that when it comes to doling out marital advice, this guy is
no Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:28 | link | comments (2)

Buh bye free speech; salaam sharia: In an interview in FrontPage Magazine,
Robert Spencer discusses the ramifications of Geert Wilders’ prosecution for “hate
speech”:

FP: Geert Wilders is being put on trial by the Dutch Court of Appeals in Amsterdam for making anti-Islamic statements. Tell us what this charge is about and the ramifications if Wilders loses.

Spencer: The charge is essentially that he has insulted Islam and Muslims, and engaged in hate speech. Hate speech, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and hate speech laws are tools in the hands of the powerful that they can use to silence the powerless and crush dissent.

And make no mistake: even though the Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West present themselves as embattled victims of racism and "Islamophobia," that is exactly what is going on here: this is just one part of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference's efforts to silence speech that they deem critical of Islam -- including "defamation of Islam" that goes under the "pretext" of "freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security."

If they succeed in doing this, we will be rendered mute, and thus defenseless, in the face of the advancing jihad and attempt to impose Sharia on the West -- in fact, one of the key elements of the laws for dhimmis is that they are never critical of Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur'an, so this initiative not only aids the advance of Sharia in the West, but is itself an element of that advance.

FP: So if this attempt to silence the truth about Islam succeeds, who exactly, at this stage, “will be rendered mute”? If the totalitarians get their way, who will be silenced? Tell us what boundaries this affects.

Spencer: Well, when the Organization of the Islamic Conference specifies that they consider defamatory even speech about Islam that goes under the rubric of "counter terrorism or national security," they are trying to stop counterterrorism analysts from studying and discussing the motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists. The ones who will be rendered mute will be the ones who we most need to speak: those who understand why the jihadists are attacking us, what they hope to accomplish, and what kind of society they envision.

Since the answers to all those questions and others lead back again and again to core texts and teachings of Islam, the only ones who will benefit from our remaining in ignorance about those answers will be the jihadists themselves, who will be able to continue their work unimpeded by interference from those who understand them and can thus formulate effective ways to oppose them.

The enemies of free speech who are trying to destroy Wilders at this point also wish to silence any critical discussion about Islam in the public square, in accord with Sharia norms. If they get their way here, it will come through the UN, and through President Obama's determination to work closely with the UN and build bridges to Islamic countries.

FP: And free speech in the United States?

Spencer: There will still be free speech in America in much the same way as Henry Ford used to say that you can have any color car you want, as long as it's black: free speech will still be a constitutional right, but "hate speech" will be specifically exempted from its protections, and "hate speech" will be defined to encompass speaking honestly about the actual texts and teachings of Islam that contain exhortations to violence and assertions of supremacism -- unless one is referencing such material approvingly as a believer.

FP: All Wilders did was point to what Islam teaches. This means that it will be illegal to say the truth about what is in Islamic theology, correct?

Spencer: Yes, when these truths are enunciated by non-Muslims in a spirit of opposition to Islamization.

FP: If this process continues, when and how will these forces try to silence you? Will you be willing to go to jail for telling the truth?

Spencer: I do think this will come down the pike eventually, but I expect that there will be some major challenges to efforts to extinguish free speech in America before it happens. And maybe enough Americans will recover a sense of what made this country great, and why free speech is important, to roll back the attempt to restrict freedom of speech here. There looms a battle over the Fairness Doctrine, which is essentially an attempt to muzzle political dissent, and how that comes out will reveal a great deal about what opponents of Islamization stateside can expect next. But anyway, certainly, of course I'm willing to go to jail for telling the truth, or to die for telling the truth. Life lived by lies or sustained by lies is not worth living.

FP: Now trials such as these produce a great opportunity for defendants to tell the truth right? Wilders can use the trial and the publicity surrounding it to expose Islamic theology and to crystallize the hatred in its texts, right? Someone like you can come as a witness for the defense to show that Wilders is correct theologically, etc., right?

Spencer: I would be glad to do this or to help him in any way. This has been done before, in a case in Australia's Victoria State a few years ago. However, it may be that truth is no defense, as was declared in one of the Mark Steyn show trials in Canada last year. After all, for cases like this to proceed, truth must not be a defense -- otherwise the case could not be brought in the first place. Prosecutors will never be able to sustain a case that Wilders has misrepresented the Qur'an, so the only thing they will be able to do is to assert that he had some evil ulterior motive, or hurt the feelings of Muslims by stating these truths.

In any case, yes, one thing that could happen -- as it did in Steyn's case -- could be that much about the Islamic supremacist agenda is brought to the attention of the public. That possibility could make a trial of Wilders a great victory for free speech and for the general defense of the West against Islamization.

FP: What might happen to Gilders himself if he is found guilty? Might he go to jail?

Spencer: I'm not familiar with Dutch laws regarding "hate speech" and any prescribed penalties that come from engaging in it, but I do believe that is a possibility.

FP: Wilders is being prosecuted for, among other things, comparing Islam to Nazism. The problem is, however, that Islamic theology is filled with Jew-hatred, myriad Islamic leaders have called out, and continue to call out, for another Holocaust, and in the present-day anti-Israel demonstrations we see calls for genocide against Jews – and they are articulated in the cause of Islam. Can you comment on this phenomenon?

Spencer: Yes, what you're saying is true, and let us not forget the enthusiastic support that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, gave to Hitler during World War II, or the present-day alliance between European neo-Nazi groups such as the National Democratic Party in Germany, a neo-Nazi party, and Islamic jihadists. Yet no official notice is taken by the European Union or any other entity in Europe of this long-standing and recurring phenomenon, and instead here again Wilders is penalized for stating manifest truths…

Nor is much official notice being taken of how Nazi Judenhass has morphed into
Judenhass that targets the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters. But that’s because
officials are craven wimps who find it easier to ignore or placate the scary “enthusiasts”
instead of dealing with the ugly reality of the new Judenhass—the Judenhass of those
who, no surprise, are likely to be screaming the loudest about “Islamophobia”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments (2)

Koo koo Moo Moo strikes again: If nothing else, the Gaza incursion will be remembered for breathing new life into some wacky, anti-Zionist schemes. For one, there's Ontario union boss, Sid "Vicious" Ryan, and his witch hunt of Israeli academics (a particularly loopy ideas since many if not most of said academics, being die hard Lefties, are likely to see things exactly as he does). For another, there's kooky Libyan potentate/waxwork Moo Moo, he of the variously spelled last name, and his "one state solution"--"Isratine." The nutty, Hamas-promoting New York Times has thoughtfully provided Moo Moo with precious space to refloat his lead balloon of an eliminationist scheme (for there's no getting around it: a "one state solution" would effectively solve the problem of Israel's existence, allowing that final one per cent of Mideast land to "revert" to its "rightful" Muslim "owners").

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

He can't dance, don't ask him: President Obama, who is clearly smitten with his statuesque wife, lauded her attributes by citing a famous quip about Ginger Rogers, of the Astaire-Rogers dancing duo. Michelle, said Barack, "can do everything I can do, only backwards and in heels." Whereupon, with the eyes of the world upon him, he swept up his Ginger in his arms...and did the lamest, gauchiest, nerdiest turn around the floor ever.

How gauche was it? Well, let's just say "the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire" (to quote Cole Porter) was nowhere in evidence.

The obvious conclusion: he may be God, but this deity can't dance.

Were I metaphor-minded (and I am, I am), I would say that this does not bode well for all the dancing he'll have to do with jihadists, despots, theocrats and the e'er graceful diplomats who can execute pliees, grand jetees and entrechats galore while appeasing/sucking up to all of the above.

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

Wednesday, 21 January 2009

Wilders charged with ‘hate speech’: Canadians, take note. If we continue to speak
out against the jihad and sharia in this, a Trudeaupian realm of “good thoughts” that
comes equipped with a bureaucracy especially empowered to police them, this is bound
to be our fate, too. From the Beeb:

A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.

Mr Wilders said the ruling was a "black day for me and for freedom of speech".

"I am shaken. I had absolutely not expected it," he told the Dutch news agency, ANP…

That was his—and our—first mistake. He—and we—should not only expect it, we
should count on it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:35 | link | comments (1)

Reserving judgement: The new prez has extended a hand of friendship to the
Muslim world, so it’s reportedly going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see
~~whether or not he’s willing to kowtow to them~~ how this “friendliness” plays out.
From al Reuters:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Arabs and Muslims gave the benefit of some doubt on Wednesday to U.S. President Barack Obama's offer of "a new way forward" with the Muslim world, but many said it would take deeds rather than words to convince them.

After eight years of President George W. Bush, who invaded two Muslim countries and gave strong support to Israel, Arabs and Muslims watched Obama's inaugural speech on Tuesday closely for any sign that U.S. policy toward them will change.

With some exceptions on the fringes, a clear majority said they welcomed a new tone from Obama, who promised relations based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

"This is a speech that reflected a new spirit of dialogue, reaching out and working together. This is a new direction that is certainly not what the Bush administration has been pursuing," said former Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut, noted Obama's reference to Muslims as a significant part of the patchwork of the United States, an attitude not common in U.S. political discourse.

"The fact that he mentioned Muslims means a lot. This is a symbolic gesture to the Muslim world that they are part of the world. He's inclusive," he said…

Ah, yes, “inclusiveness.” Islam is nothing if not “inclusive,” since it wants to “include”
Dar al Harb in Dar al Islam. But Obama’s a smart guy. I’m sure he knows all about it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:02 | link | comments (3)

A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a concentration camp....: Those chuckleheads in Iran who, despite their outwardly dour demenour, do like to have a good laugh now and then, are about to release a book that pokes fun at--wait for it--the Holocaust. From the Daily Times:

TEHRAN: A student-linked Iranian publisher plans to launch English and Arabic language versions of a book of caricatures and satirical writings about the Holocaust, a semi-official news agency reported on Sunday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused outrage in the West and Israel for saying in 2005 the state of Israel should be wiped off the map and for a Tehran conference in 2006 that sought to cast doubt on the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. The book deals with the ‘big historical distortion’ of the Holocaust and the English and Arabic editions would be published at a ceremony in Tehran later this month when a message from Ahmadinejad would be read out, Fars News Agency said.

It appeared to be translations of a book, which official media in September said had been published about the ‘fiction’ of the Holocaust. Details could not immediately be confirmed.

Ceremony: “The presentation ceremony will be held on January 27 with the attendance of a number of government officials,” said Muhammad-Mehdi Hemmati, who is involved in the project...

Hey, maybe the Ceeb, which already has a hugely successful shill-com designed to "put
the fun back in fundamentalism," could turn it into a mini-series.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:34 | link | comments (2)

Ban channels his inner Kofi (and Boutrous Boutros and Kurt, etc): Those UN
Sec’y-Gens are all cut from the same cloth, aren’t they? Witness the latest guy, on a
visit to a now somewhat defanged viper’s nest in Gaza. Does Ban say boo about how
poor victimized, virtuous Gazans have turned schools and hospitals into torture
chambers in order to torment and murder their own? Don’t be silly. That would be
completely out of character for one of these UN popinjays. As per usual, he’s most
lachrymose about only thing—what Jews have done to Arabs.
From the Wall Street Journal:

…United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in Israel and Gaza Tuesday, criticized Hamas for firing rockets into Israel. But he reserved some of his harshest words for Israel, lashing out again at Israeli's attack against a U.N. facility inside the territory.

"I am not able to describe how I'm feeling. Everybody can still smell the burning," he said at a press conference in Gaza, adding that the attack was an "outrageous and totally unacceptable attack." Israeli officials said their soldiers responded to fire in the vicinity and officials are investigating.

The U.N. boss said he was in Gaza "to demonstrate my solidarity with the population of Gaza," and he condemned Israel's "excessive use of force."...

The population of Gaza is jihadist, eliminationist and sitting comfortably in the back
pocket of the Ayatollahs. If he’s “solid” with them, he’s solid with the enemies of
Western civilization (hello, OIC), in which case, why would anyone who lives in a
democracy listen to anything this wretched man, this tool of tyrants, has to say?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments (2)

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

Broken Ban: Surveying the devastation in Gaza, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who's there on a visit, called it "heartbreaking". This one's for you, Ban, to help you mend:

I can think of other wars

That Jews have had to fight

When the UN got behind Jews’ enemies.

We could always see tomorrow

And know it would be bringing pain and sorrow.

And…

How can you mend Ban’s broken heart?

How can Jews stop missiles from raining down?

How can we stop the crazed Jew-haters

Running amok thru town?

And how can you mend this broken diplomat?

How can jihadis ever win?

UN’ll mend

Hamas in Gaza

So it can fight again.

I can still hear the chorus

Of “Jews use white phos-phor-us”

And other such like lies and calumnies.

The MSM paints Jews the villain

Because of all the Hamas blood that’s spillin’

And…

How can you mend Ban’s broken heart?

How can Jews stop missiles from raining down?

How can we stop the crazed jihadis

Running amok thru town?

And how can you mend this broken diplomat?

How can Islamists ever win?

UN’ll mend

Hamas in Gaza

So it can fight again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:51 | link | comments (2)

Talking to Hamas: While much of the Arab world continues to give Hamas the cold shoulder, great-statesman-in-his-own-mind Bashar Assad tells a Der Spiegel interviewer that he knows for a fact that the Eurodhimmis are open to chatting with the jihadis, and that he's most delighted to facilitate the "dialogue":

...SPIEGEL: No Western politician wants to sit at the same table with Hamas.

Assad: That's not true at all. Many European officials have sought a dialogue with Hamas, especially recently.

SPIEGEL: With your mediation?

Assad: The Europeans have learned from experience. That's why they are now talking to the Hamas leadership here in Damascus -- not publicly, of course. I don't want to mention any names. But I do think it's telling that they include people who are especially critical of Hamas in their speeches. We try to help where we can.

SPIEGEL: The key Hamas representative abroad, Khaled Mashaal, was granted asylum in your country. He is at the very top of the Israelis' hit list. Many consider him to be far more radical than the Hamas leadership in Gaza. Are there any conditions to your hospitality?

Assad: Mashaal has changed. He already mentioned the borders of 1967 in 2006. What does that mean? It means that he accepts a two-state solution. Besides, a few months ago he also said that he would sign anything that the Palestinian people see as the right thing to do.

SPIEGEL: That's a very broad interpretation. In our view, it is little more than indirect recognition.

Assad: Talking about the 1967 borders means more than indirect recognition. We Syrians see it this way: We do not recognize Israel and Israel is still our enemy -- it occupies part of our country, the Golan Heights. If the Israelis withdraw from Golan, we will recognize them. First comes peace, then recognition -- not the other way around. We have been grappling with our relationship with Israel for more than 30 years now. With Hamas, the process began only three years ago. You have to exercise patience...

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

Become an icon in your own mind: Can you do it? Yes, you can.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments

Legoland Inaugural: The Telegraph has a photo gallery of today's swearing in ceremonies as imagined by the creative folks of Legoland, California. (I happen to live in Legoland, Toronto, courtesy my brick-besotted youngster.) My favourite: the Aretha Franklin Lego lady. She's a dead-ringer for the real thing.

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

He really is the Saviour: Over at Hamas House (a.k.a. Ceeb radio) some revelers were singing "Obama" (that's it, just "Obama") to the tune of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful".

This is going to be a loooong day.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:25 | link | comments

Poem for a tortured soul: Is Maher Arar laughing all the way to the bank? Could be:

Remember when Maher Arar.

Became a big media star?

He was paid lots of dough

For his sad tale of woe

Which--oh, looky!--now needs c.p.r.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments (2)

Monday, 19 January 2009

Heh: Canada tells former Weatherman and current Obamamigo Bill Ayers, "We hear you knockin', but you can't come in."

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:28 | link | comments

Identity theft: In the grip of a pathological delusion that they are the "new" Jews, while the Jews are the "new" Nazis, the Palestinians invite you to come visit the Palestinian Holocaust Museum.

Exactly when, you might ask, did this so-called "Holocaust" take place? Apparently, it began with Israel's founding (a.k.a.. the Naqba, the Catastrophe) and has been ongoing ever since.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments

Brits' true colours (i.e. green, like the Hamas flag): Melanie Phillips reports on the spiraling Judenhass in the U.K., spurred on by the Gaza invasion. What is particularly upsetting about it, she writes, is how the country's "senior politicians" have failed to condemn it. She has especially harsh words for that hypocrite extraordinaire, Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

...Repeatedly, Gordon Brown has said, as here, that ‘too many innocent people’ have died in Gaza without acknowledging these crucial points: that while all deaths of innocents in war are to be much regretted, the vast majority of those killed have been Hamas operatives; that Hamas deliberately falsify these figures by classifying terrorists as civilians; and most crucial of all, that Israel has gone to extreme lengths to avoid killing innocent civilians – lengths to which the British and Americans most certainly are not going in Afghanistan. For Brown to avoid stating any of this, and instead to lend credence to the libellous claims about Israel’s behaviour which have incited this wave of anti-Jewish bigotry and violence makes the British Prime Minister effectively an accessory to that bigotry and violence.

Let us not hear any more pieties from him about his great love of Israel and the Jewish people. The hypocrisy is simply nauseating.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:40 | link | comments (1)

Oily royal sheds crocodile tears for the jihad's cannon fodder: The latest Wahhabi to head up the House of Saud has pledged $1 billion to help Hamas rebuild its devastated infrastructure. The unctuous monarch says that "one drop of Palestinian blood" is more valuable than all the money in the world.

Of course it is. If not for their communal concern about "Palestinians" (about whom they care as a symbol of Arab "resistance," but not as actual human beings, since they insist they remain "refugees" until such time as Israel disappers) how else would Arabs stay united? Futher, if not for the Palestinians, Arabs might notice--and rebel against--their own despicable, despotic, misery-engendering regimes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:23 | link | comments (1)

The rapture: Wake me when it's over--please (to the tune of "Yankee Doodle"):

Barack Obama’s swearing in

Now captivates the nation.

The hagiography is thick

And so’s the adulation.

Nice lookin’ chap;

The family’s cute;

But ‘pon further reflection

The notion he can “save the world”

Seems based on his complexion.

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

Home truths: Pajamas Media contributor Leon de Winter (a Dutch writer) uses
the metaphor of Israel being a house (previously “owned” by an Arab grandpa) in
a hostile Arab/Muslim/Islamist neighbourhood to describe the Palestinian mindset
re Jewish sovereignty (my bolds):

…Our neighbor, the dog, wants us to leave him alone. We can’t. His death is our ultimate ambition in life. We live in our hovel, we grow nothing in our garden, and we leave our schoolbooks on the shelf because we dream of returning to our grandfather’s house and work solely towards our neighbor’s collapse. Nothing is allowed to distract us from that.

Our neighbor claims that when he bought the house, it was just a wooden hut on a piece of barren land that he turned into a palace. He claims he planted a fertile vegetable garden — that’s a lie. It was an estate with fertile soil and the bathrooms had gold taps; our grandfather told us so himself, we even keep the key to his house in a sacred place. If we had still been living in our grandfather’s house then we would have had all those freezers in which our neighbor keeps his food. The family of monkeys and pigs never lived there before; our neighbor’s existence is based on clever lies and forgeries.

We keep challenging him and when we’ve insulted him enough and managed to wreck some part of his house, he marches angrily into our place. We can’t stop him and we have no idea how long he’ll stay in our hovel, until one day he leaves. Then we lick our wounds in satisfaction and survey in intense pleasure all the destruction he left behind, and we show it to the world. Our scars prove to us and to the world that our cause is just. We know he doesn’t harm us when we leave him alone, but we want him to harm us. If he wouldn’t, the world would think he is just an ordinary guy. Which he isn’t. That’s why we provoke him. Without him harming us, we wouldn’t exist.

We want to kill him, but we don’t have the right weapons. He has the means to kill us all, but he doesn’t, the coward. If we had the weaponry he has, we would have killed him long ago. And the fact that he doesn’t kill us, although he could, is a sign of his unbearable arrogance.

Some, who don’t live in our neighborhood and who don’t know how things work around here, occasionally ask us, “Why do you keep provoking him when you know that he’ll hit back so ferociously?”

This question proves they are ignorant about our neighborhood. We do it because that’s what our life is about. Our neighbor, who’s a murderer of prophets, humiliates us just because he is there. That’s why we can’t think about anything else. Our grandfather’s honor is worth risking our own lives and those of our children and grandchildren. We have no future as long as our neighbor lives in peace and plenty. None of us in the neighborhood can build as long as his house remains standing…

Here’s how I have come to think of it: the Jews came out of the fire of Europe’s
Holocaust and landed in the sizzling frying pan of statehood in the Middle East. The
change of venue has given rise to the same old obsessions, lunacies, rancours, and
calumnies, only this time focused on the Jewish state, and—who would have ever
thought it possible?—amped up to an even higher level of frenzy.

No doubt about it: something about “the Jew” brings out the crazy in some people.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:25 | link | comments (2)

Sunday, 18 January 2009

Jews (and friends of Jews) 4 Israel: Kathy Shaidle has some photos of the pro-Israel rally held in Dundas Square this afternoon. Although it had been snowing steadily since the previous evening, and was still snowing during the rally (and is still snowing now, more than four hours since it wrapped up), there was a very respectable out. I was glad to see that the crowd skewed mostly young. That's understandable, since Hillel, the Jewish university students' association, helped organize the event. I was also pleased to see--and hear from--an Indian, just back from India, and a Cuban, one of several non-Fidel types who turned out to support the only democracy in the Middle East. Also, some of my Christian buds were there--Kathy, Wendy, Chris, Joanne; baruch Hashem for all the Christian Zionists who manage to turn out for practically every pro-Jew gathering around. Across the street, there was a fairly skimpy counter-protest by anti-Zionist Jews, including those carrying a banner declaring they were "JEWS IN SOLIDARITY WITH GAZA." In other words, JEWS FOR JIHAD. Or, had this been the 1930s instead of the two thousand oughts, JEWS IN SOLIDARITY WITH BAVARIA. Or something like that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:27 | link | comments

"End the Occupation" (of the Zionist entity by Zionists and by Juden/Zhoos of their, er, living, breathing bodies): Judenhass--it's all the rage, encore.

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

If only he were as thick as Judy, Naomi, Jack and all the other useful idiots: In what they obviously consider the ultimate diss, "protesters" who gathered outside Peter Kent's office yesterday to tell the ardent Israel supporter that "Israel must be put in its place" (i.e. supine, under Islam's thumb), called the Tory Cabinet Minister "an egghead."

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments

Spilling blood in Iran, again: Rest assured, (or Ashura'd), it's only for the sake of ritual:

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

Just occurred to me...: "Hamas" is an anagram for "a sham."

Very fitting, no, considering that it's a sham "resistance movement" comprised of holy warriors hell-bent on installing sharia uber alles?

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

"Dhimmis United Against Dhimmitude": Now, that's the kind of "interfaith dialogue" I can really get behind.

Update: An even better name would be "Kafirs United Against Dhimmitude," don't you think?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:22 | link | comments

Harpoon’s doing his happy dance: The Toronto Star’s resident apologist for the
Islamist viewpoint is thrilled to bits that Obama is being sworn in this week. And why
not? All this “out with the old, in with the new” cannot help but benefit those who
favour the apologist/appeasement perspective:

In two days, George W. Bush will be gone, not a moment too soon. Out the window will go his policies.

The resounding victory of Barack Hussein Obama was a reaction to the war on terror, war on Iraq, war on Afghanistan, war on the American constitution and the Geneva Conventions, and war on regulations of the financial markets.

This is not to take anything away from Obama's historic achievements. Overcoming the racial barrier was only one of them.

In going from being a black candidate to one who happened to be black, he transformed America. There's no more talk of the White House becoming a Black House with a cabbage patch, but rather of the first black family moving into the house built by slave labour.

Obama is a highly educated man of rare talent, who has put intelligent debate back at the heart of American democracy that had made a virtue of ignorance.

He is calm, dignified and full of grace, even to his tormentors, including John McCain and Hillary Clinton (who claimed that she, not he, represented "hard-working Americans, white Americans.")

But Obama cannot possibly fulfill the expectations he has raised, in America and abroad. He cannot walk on water. Nor are all his prescriptions perfect. But he has indeed ushered in an era of hope.

WAR ON TERROR

Obama hopes to convene a conference of Muslim leaders to tell them America is not at war with them and to ask their help to "defeat the terrorist threat that's there" from Muslim sources.

As well intentioned as it is to try to reconcile Islam and the West, the premise is wrong, writes Olivier Roy, French author and expert on Islam. "It's a false notion that `Islam' and `the West' are distinct entities." To say so is to concede Osama bin Laden's point and paradoxically that of Islamophobes in the West.

Muslims are a diverse lot, as are Muslim nations. `Islam' is not the cause of terrorism, wars and insurgencies. Oppression, occupation, separatism and geopolitics are. Religion is only a banner to rally support or to rail against the U.S., Israel and others, just as it is for those among us who've been whipping up hysteria against Islam.

The war on terror was ill conceived and has only increased terrorism, as David Miliband, British foreign secretary, noted Thursday.

As U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said: Address the causes, not the symptoms of terrorism…

MIDDLE EAST

Too many people are in denial that the decades-long Israeli-Arab conflict is the most burning issue in many parts of the world, as Tony Blair has said.

Obama has promised to be "actively engaged" – "from the minute I'm sworn into office."

But he won't succeed unless he is prepared to depart from the unspoken but most obvious premise of Israeli/American policy, which is, sadly, now also Canadian policy: placing a different value on Israeli lives and Palestinian lives – the first matter, the second do not.

This is a racist, neocolonial construct. The subject race is dehumanized and demonized, subjected to relentless repression and collective punishments.

Israel has a right to security and peace. So do the Palestinians. One is not possible without the other.

It's clear that the policy of isolating Hamas has failed. The Gaza offensive has only strengthened it and weakened Fatah. If it is all right to talk to Iran, Hamas's patron, about curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions, why is it heresy to talk to Hamas about peace?...

First, it is pointless to “talk to Iran.” Second, the only “peace” that Hamas and all other
jihadis are interested in is the kind that no infidel could possibly find palatable—i.e. the
“peace” that will follow once infidels accede to primacy of sharia.

Third, all this talk of “collective punishment” is hogwash. It is meant to blow smoke so
folks won’t notice that

A) Like Hitler, Hamas was elected by the people, and remains wildly popular with the majority of them (so much for separating out “the people,” who are supposedly innocent and virtuous, and Hamas, which is supposedly riding roughshod over them);

B) Hamas’s raison d’etre—like Fatah’s—is the extirpation of Jewish sovereignty in Israel (it says so, right in both groups’ charters);

C) Hamas cares not a whit for the lives of the people, purposely and purposefully putting them in harm’s way so that their deaths will inflame outrage against Israel; and

D) Israel is the miner’s canary. Its death will presage the demise of Western civilization as a whole.

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

Saturday, 17 January 2009

"What a country!": Remember Yakov Smirnoff, the immigrant from the U.S.S.R. who for a time built a comedic career out of his wry observartions about the differences between Communist Russia and the U.S.? (Sample quip: "In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.") Every so often Smirnoff would underscore his delight at having found refuge in the Land of the Free with what became his tagline: "What a country!" Only in America, as another comedian used to say, could a Ukrainian with a thick accent rise to play comedy shows in Vegas. (He has since gone on--no joke--to a career in academia.) Similarly, only in America would a chick who's acknowledged to be part of the Wahhabi lobby (lahhbi?), and who as such pledges allegiance first and foremost to Allah's--and not to man's--law, be invited to participate in a key Obama inauguration event. From the American Thinker:

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Cathedral during the National Prayer Service on January 21st. The event is part of the festivities for the inauguration of Barack Obama, which occurs January 20. A convert to Islam, Mattson directs the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.

ISNA has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group, and was named an un-indicted co-conspirator in U.S. v Holy Land Foundation, a case that uncovered covert financing of the terrorist group Hamas. Since her election as ISNA president in 2006, Mattson's apologias for the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam have gained a much wider audience.

Daniel Pipes has written that, under Mattson's leadership, ISNA is "a key component of the Wahhabi lobby."…

What a country! Better they should have asked Smirnoff.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:16 | link | comments

“Terrorism” explained—and whitewashed: A Canadian Islamic Congress official
takes a stab at explaining a word that Islamists and UN diplomats find so evanescent,
so hard to pin down, that for years they’ve tried--and failed--to arrive at an acceptable
definition. As Imam Dr. Zijad Delic sees it, though, there are two kinds of “terrorism”:
“official terrorism,” which is apparently something infidel nations perpetrate on Muslims,
and Israel inflicts on Palestinians; and “unofficial terrorism,” for example, the terrorism
that occurred on 9/11. The latter terrorism, being “unofficial,” wasn’t conducted under
the auspices of an “official” state sponsor, however the imam is open-minded enough to
leave room for those doubters who espy the hands of sinister Zionists lurking and
working behind the scenes. One thing these two kinds of terror do have in common,
according to the imam: “religion” is never, ever involved. (My bolds):

…There exists, however, a critical division among the perpetrators of terrorism, which must be taken into account: this is the separation of terrorism into official and unofficial categories.

Official terrorism - by far the most dangerous - comprises all intentionally violent or oppressive acts supported by an internationally recognized nation, country, sector, or state, whether carried out by the army of the given state, by individual governmental elements, or in the form of designated operations designed to benefit only the state or entity in power. Recent examples include: the devastating attack by Serbia on Bosnia and Herzegovina; the U.S. invasion of Iraq (reportedly resulting in the deaths of up to 1 million within five years); the American-led campaign against Afghanistan (resulting in about 6,000 civilian deaths during 2007 alone); and now Israel’s brutal targeted offensive on Gaza, where the death toll during only two weeks (at the time of writing) already surpassed 900.

Unofficial terrorism should not be underestimated either. The catastrophic events of 9/11 and 7/7 have not been traced (so far) to any predetermined and/or premeditated governmental conspiracy. Nor have they revealed any credible evidence of conscious religious motivation. As noted, an act of terrorism can be perpetrated by a government, an army, a group, or an individual, using direct or indirect means of violence. Here again, it is a grave mistake to associate such terrorist acts with any religion -- even when we hear claims of responsibility (after the fact) by those who desire the fame or notoriety of being supposed agents for religious goals. Their acts and/or claims do not speak for the true adherents of any religion.

Terrorism is terrorism, plain and simple. We can help stop it by calling it what it is and by understanding what it isn’t.

Agreed, so here goes: What is it? It’s the jihad. What do we need to “understand” about
it? It aims to turn Dar al Harb—that’s us—into Dar al Islam—that’s them. Plain and
simple, that’s all we really need to know.

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

The Ballad of the House of Saud: There's news that the economic downturn has cost the oily Arab states plenty of dough-re-mi. But as Elly Mae used to say to Jed when she was bringing another critter to play near the see-ment pond, "Don't worry, Pa, there's plenty more where this came from." Here's the Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song, revised in "homage" to a family of slick--and still filthy rich--Wahhabi sheiks:

Come and listen to my story ‘bout a house named Saud.

A poor desert tribe that hooked up with old Wahhab.

And then one day, kickin’ back and playin’ Euchre,

When up through the ground seeped some bubblin’ lucre.

Oil, that is.

Black gold.

Arabian tea.

Well, the first thing you know Sauds were gazillionaires.

Their kinfolk spent like a bunch of drunken sailors.

They spread their faith via masjids and madrassahs

While scores of Princes sit around on their fat asses…

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:31 | link | comments

On fire: In these tough economic time, it's good to know there's at least one sector that can count on doing a booming business--the folks who manufacture Israeli flags.

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

The brothers from another planet: And speaking of the delusional, the Tehran
Times high-fives a bunch of L.A. tribe members (including some who hail from
far-out asteroid Neturei Karta) who are helping further Mahmoud and the mully-
bullies’ Jewlimination scheme:

Early Thursday morning, Jewish activists in a historic first in Los Angeles, chained themselves to the entrance of the Israeli Consulate and blocked the driveway to the parking structure, blocking all traffic in and out of the building. ""We sent a clear message to the world that LA Jews are part of the global majority in opposition to the Israeli siege of Gaza,"" said Lenny Potash a 72-year old protester who was cuffed to eight other activists, blocking the driveway to the consulate.

The activists were joined by 50 other supporters and who chanted ""LA Jews say, End the Siege of Gaza"" and ""Not in Our Name! We will Not be Silent!"" Protesters also held up signs reading ""Israeli Consulate: Closed for War Crimes.""

""We succeeded today in letting Jews and other Americans of conscience know that it is safe to speak out against the policies of the Israeli government and that the Israeli lobby does not speak for everyone,"" said Robin Ellis, a registered nurse who also risked arrest to block the consulate entrance.

""We are committed to escalating non-violent activities in the future to end the siege and win justice for Palestinians,"" Ellis said.

The group of activists were an ad-hoc, multi-generational group of LA Jewish residents, including members of the recently founded International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. They shared a commitment to ending the Israeli siege on Gaza and an end to Israeli apartheid.

The demonstration will kick off a wave of demonstrations across the United States uniting Palestinians, Jewish people, and other Americans outraged by the siege.

""We are shocked and outraged at Israeli's latest act of violent aggression against the Palestinian people. Killing over 1000 people, including 250 women and children, bombing schools and mosques and then calling it self-defense—that is the worst kind of hypocrisy. It also amounts to war crimes,"" said Hannah Howard, a local member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

""We shut down the Israeli consulate today because as Jewish people we cannot allow business as usual while violence is being done in our name.""

Action participants also spoke out against the U.S. government's unconditional support for Israel's siege and its ongoing war against the Palestinian people.

""While U.S.-funded F16's rain down bombs on the people of Gaza, our elected officials locally and nationally offer unqualified support."" said Marsha Steinberg, a retired union representative.

""Our government must stop sending billions of dollars in military and economic aid to the Israeli war machine,"" Goldberg said. In the coming week, concerned Americans from all backgrounds will call on the new presidential administration to make a 180 degree change in policy.

""While the end of the siege on Gaza is our most immediate priority, this is only the latest chapter in Palestinians' 60 plus year experience of occupation and ethnic cleansing. Peace and justice in the region will only come when Palestinians have freedom and control their own destiny,"" said Lisa Adler, a community organizer in Los Angeles and another member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

""Even before the siege began, Israel's inhumane months-long blockade of Gaza created a major humanitarian crisis. We must end the siege. And we are building a nonviolent international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions that brings an end to Israel's policies of occupation and apartheid and advances the Palestinian struggle for justice,"" said Adler.

Earth to Adler, Earth to Adler, come in, Adler…

Too late. Ms. Adler and the others are apparently lost in space.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:36 | link | comments (1)

On talking bears and non sequiturs : Prefacing his National Post column with
an anecdote about an Albanian chap who shot and killed a Kodiak bear at a Toronto
zoo because he thought he overheard it and the other bears plotting (in Albanian) to
take over the world, George Jonas divides today’s pundits into two categories: the
delusional, and the sane but clueless. Into the former category he places the malign
Ms. Klein, who, like the Albanian bear-killer, is in the grip of a powerful delusion,
hers re the Israeli, not the ursine. Into the latter category he places the New York
Times' unaccountably well-regarded analyst, Thomas L. Friendman, who has some
thoughts on the way ahead vis a vis Gaza's implaccable jihadis:

…It was Naomi Klein's column calling for the boycott of Israel --a piece that also caught Jonathan Kay's attention earlier this week -- that reminded me of the Albanian-speaking bears. A writer friend sent it to me with a note, saying: "Meanwhile, from planet Klein..."

Ms. Klein's column in The Nation did read like a message from another planet but, just like the bear-killer's delusion, it did have a certain internal logic. A bear that conspires to take over the world may have to be shot, and a political system "infinitely worse than apartheid" may have to be boycotted.

That the Jewish state is "infinitely worse than apartheid" is the opinion of South Africa's Minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, quoted with approval by Ms. Klein. We, in this solar system, may find the parallel daunting, but those who inhabit Ms. Klein's universe could conclude, as she does, that "[t]he best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa."

I think equating Israel with apartheid makes a person as certifiably delusional as hearing Kodiak bears converse in Albanian. However, if Israel were what delusional critics think it is, what they suggest would make sense. It's eminently sane people who often come up with the worst non sequiturs in their articles, opinion pieces and letters on the Middle East.

Such sane critics agree that Israel has a right to exist and that any nation is entitled to defend itself. They also agree that deliberately launching rockets against civilian targets is terrorism, and that terrorism is wrong. They agree that using civilians as human shields is a war crime, which belligerents such as Hamas commit whenever they try to hide behind their non-combatants, effectively turning their own wives and children into hostages. They dismiss Marxist-socialist-Arab-nationalist-Muslim-militant calumnies about racist or white-colonial Zionism as vile fantasies.

Yet if the Middle East narrative is the way they tell it, responding to it the way they suggest is a series of non sequiturs. Are non sequiturs worse than delusions? No, but like rusty hinges, they squeak more.

Some critics of Israel's policies grate on the ear big time. Take those who urge Israel not to respond "disproportionately" to Hamas because, although terrorism is wrong, so is wartime civilian suffering. "Two wrongs don't make a right."

True. Two wrongs don't make a right. But if terrorism is the first wrong, the second wrong isn't resisting terrorism, but not resisting it. A proportionate response to terror is whatever stops it. So far, the rockets keep coming from Gaza.

Other critics warn that winning a shooting war is useless if Israel loses the public relations war. But Israel literally can't afford another PR victory. Having won the mother of all PR victories against the anti-Semites of Europe, the Jewish people haven't another six million lives to spare to win one against the anti-Semites of Asia as well.

Finally, there's Thomas Friedman. Thinking aloud in The New York Times, Mr. Friedman appears to conclude that Israel should respond to the extent necessary to educate rather than to eradicate a foe whose stated aim is to eliminate it…

Good thinking there, Tom. Along the lines of, say, telling the Allies at the height of WW2
to stop their shooting war and “educate” the Nazis.

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

Hamas's greatest hits: Now for a limited time you can still llisten to MEMRI's compilation of Hamas sound bites, a thrilling assortment of deranged rants shreiked by members of one of the most famous jihadi terrorist groups on the planet. Snap your fingers in time to "Death to the Jews!" Mambo to the sultry Latin rhythms of "Death to America!" Just try to resist succumbing to the delectable ear candy of "Allahu Akbar!" You've seen it on the streets of Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. Now be the first on your block to hear it live, direct from the chanting, ranting capital of the Middle East, Gaza City...

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments (1)

Lloyds of Londonistan: Have some “dirty” money from a disreputable, terror-funding
totalitarian source that needs laundering? Why not use Lloyds, a financial institution with
years of experience in that area? From the Weekly Standard:

"Londonistan" is the nickname given to the UK capitol in 1995 by France's counterterrorism service, partly out of frustration over the safe haven that the city offers to radical Islamist groups that have been exiled from their home countries and/or other EU nations. The year 2009 began with a story that offers a whole new dimension as to how that nickname fits better than most of us would have imagined.

This past week one of the major UK banks, Lloyds TBS Group, paid $350 million to New York State and U.S. Federal authorities in an out-of-court settlement. The fine was paid over charges that Lloyds obscured the fact that billions of dollars that had passed from its office and then through U..S banks and finally on to other foreign destinations had originated in Iran, Libya, and Sudan in violation of U.S. sanctions on those nations. It is the largest fine ever paid in the history of the Manhattan DA's office.

In all, some $300 million from Iran are believed to have transferred on to American financial institutions via Lloyds, and another $20 million from Sudan. Both nations are accused of financing numerous terrorist organisations, and it appears that the Iranian money may have been used to purchase materials that were used in that nation's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development programs. Lloyds activities in acting as a laundering agent in this manner date back as far as 1995, according to the U.S. Justice Department…

Hmmm. I wonder if, as an added service, they’ll launder your funds in a sharia-compliant
way?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:20 | link | comments

Friday, 16 January 2009

Hamas’s Kampf: Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick, Sid Ryan: just a few of the folks who
hate Israel and see it as being more or less equivalent to—and maybe even a good deal
worse than—Hamas, an organization which takes its cues on genocide and Judenhass
from the Third Reich. Ron Rosenbaum is sickened by the whole sorry, sanctimonious
lot of them, and isn’t afraid to say so:

Sorry, but I’m not going to let up on this. It’s become the Big Lie of our time, subscribed to by those who want to make a moral equivalence arguent (sic) about Israel and Hamas. The Big Lie is that Hamas is some kind of Palestinian rights organaization (sic), just a little more extreme and religiously based, when in fact it is an exterminationist anti-semitic death cult with its roots in Nazi ideology.

No, it doesn’t yet have the power of the Hitlerites at their peak to murder millions, but they would if they could, and all it takes is a suitcase nuke and then they can. Giving support of any kind to the “struggle” of Hamas is like giving support to the Nazi Party, to Hitler’s “struggle”, just before or just after it came to power. It was still weak, the Nazi Party’s Germany, but it was no less evil. Should we have sympathized, temporized with Hitler’s party then because it was weak or because the Germans lost a war they started that killed millions and felt really oppressed by the consequences? Or should we have rooted Hitler’s party out when we had a chance?

Hamas are the ones who have caused the recent suffering of the Palestinian people they have led into this horrible situation; they got Gaza and look what they did with it. The first thing, the only thing they cared about was using it to kill Jews.

For those who still willfully blind theselves to the true nature of Hamas, here’s more about the Nazi culture that gave rise to Hamas from the invaluable (non-Jewish) leftist German historian Matthias Kuntzel. (I mention his religion just so those who seek that as an out won’t find it).

Read it or continue to live in ignorance of the Big Lie. Those who support the exterminationists of Hamas in any way, such as pretending that “both sides” are at fault, are like those who gave aid and comfort to the Nazis and sought to find an excuse to blame the Jews for the death camps. Were “both sides” at fault in the war against Hitler’s Germany? Sorry to have to put it that way, but you can no longer plead ignorance for your shame, Jews especially, however “well-meaning” you think you’re being in trying to sympathize with “both sides”. An exterminationist party is an exterminationist party and as so they are unequivocally evil.

Oh, Ron, there you go again “demonizing” the, er, demons. Don’t you know that all the
cool kids think that Israel is the unequivocally evil one? As one comment following the
Ottawa Citizen editorial (see post below) puts it

Never mind hatemongers what do you call it when people, including children, are rounded up, put in a building and then bombed. Until the killing of innocent people is stopped hate will rise to the top and spill over. If the actions of the Israeli military is not hateful what is it?

Hard to argue with that impeccably daft/ignorant logic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:16 | link | comments

What's that smell?: You would think that the sight of angry mobs of Jew-haters
on the streets of Canadians cities channelling angry mobs of Jew-haters in, say,
Medieval Saxony would elicit a degree of consternation in the media and other
quarters. And, indeed, it has raised a few eyebrows; why, even the Ceej took
a break from hunting down virtual Nazis and ensuring that Canadian bathroom stalls
remain swastika-free to ride on the coattails of others and steal unearned props for
“exposing” the virulent hatred on display. But, as this editorial in the Ottawa Citizen
demonstrates, it’s going to be awfully hard to come to grips with the reality of this
hatred, since the natural Canadian inclination, us being so “nice” and multicultural and
all, is to want to impute it to a radical “fringe,” thereby making it seem far less
threatening than it really is. The dirty little secret (that’s not so secret), of course, is
that radical it may be; “fringe” it most definitely is not:

…Some scary things have been happening at pro-Palestinian rallies. These are not so much rallies in support of Palestinians, or even rallies against Israel, as they are rallies against Jews, no matter where they live.

On Wednesday the Canadian Jewish Congress released a video of scenes from recent anti-Israel demonstrations in Canadian cities. Some protesters are heard repeating the medieval anti-Semitic libel that Jews drink blood. One woman is seen yelling, "Jewish child, you're going to f***ing die, Hamas is coming for you." At a rally in Calgary, men were photographed giving the Nazi salute.

And yet at pro-Israel rallies across Canada, speakers consistently express not just support for Israel but sorrow for Palestinian suffering. At an event in Ottawa last week, organized by the local Jewish community, Rabbi Zischa Shaps made sure to include innocent Palestinians in his prayer for all those caught in the conflict.

Meanwhile, back at a pro-Palestinian rally on Jan. 10 in Montreal, people chanted, in Arabic, "Palestine is ours, the Jews are our dogs."

We can only hope that the hatemongers represent the fringe and not the mainstream of pro-Palestinian activists.

Wake up and smell the Judenhass, Citizen editorialist. The “mainstream” in
attendance—which is pushing hard for one final ethnic cleansing of Jews in the
Middle East—reeks to high hell of it.

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

The most depressing article I've read all week: Read it and weep, for yea, verily, Israel 'tis indeed alone.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:01 | link | comments

The eyes have it: Today's song is dedicated to an odious union boss, with apologies to the Eagles:

Sid, old boy, just seems to keep on ragin’

‘Bout the infamy of Is-ra-el.

He want to punish it for just existin’.

He wants the whole Jew state to go to Hell.

Lately he’s been showin’ up at rallies.

Firin’ up a crowd that thinks like him.

Claims he don’t hate Jews;

He just wants “justice.”

He hopes the Jew state’s future’s lookin’ grim.

So he tries revivin’ efforts meant to “boycott”.

He wants those “Zionists” to pay a price.

Whate’er you do, don’t call him “anti-Semite”

‘Cause if you do, it isn’t very nice.

You can’t hide your Ryan eyes.

And your smile is a thin disguise.

Despite your claims we realize

What really lurks behind your Ryan eyes…

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

Meeting of minds: Hirsute jihadi Mahmoud Ahmaninejad says Israel's continued existence is not "feasible".

Slick mainstreamer TIME Magazine concurs.

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

Grab some Gravol: Obamamania is making me nauseous.

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

Heads up on the “apes ‘n’ pigs” thing: For anyone still confused by the matter,
Mark Steyn posts this clarification:

At last year's trial at the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal, I was accused of peddling a view of Islam as one identical, homogeneous mass. So I was very struck by the interesting interpretative differences that emerge here:

We had been discussing a passage of the Koran that suggests that God turns a group of impious Jews into apes and pigs. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among others, has deployed this passage in his speeches. Once, at a rally in Beirut, he said: “We shout in the face of the killers of prophets and the descendants of the apes and pigs: We hope we will not see you next year. The shout remains, ‘Death to Israel!’”

Mr. Rayyan said that, technically, Mr. Nasrallah was mistaken. “Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce,” Mr. Rayyan said. “So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.”

Gotcha. So you Jews should quit being so uptight: We're not saying your great-great-great-grandfather was a pig, only your childless great-great-uncle. This guy may be the moderate "partner for peace" Israel has been looking for.

I think Mark may have come up with a good working definition of a “moderate”:
a Muslim who doesn’t think that, for Jews, being an ape and/or pig is necessarily
inherited. J

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:18 | link | comments (4)

More bogus claims: Sinister Jews employing "white phosphorous"?

Nuh uh.

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

Horrid Jews: I can kind of, sort of, understand why Arabs and other Muslims who've been raised to despise Jews and the Jewish state would proceed to do just that. What I can't understand--what I'll never understand--are the Jews who side with the enemies of the Jewish people, and who add fuel to fire of Judenhass. Do they really think their behaviour means they won't get put on the same cattle cars as the rest of us, or that the suicide bomber, prior to detonnation, will take the time to separate them, the "good" Jews, from the "bad" Jews, the Zionists? Consider the British MP in this Jerusalem Post story, for example. With Jews like him, who needs hairy, scary Shias?

Gerald Kaufman, a governing Labour Party British Member of Parliament, declared Thursday that Israel was taking advantage of the guilt many non-Jews feel over the Holocaust to ruthlessly press ahead with its offensive in Gaza.

Kaufman, a frequent critic of Israel who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, sharply criticized Israel in a House of Commons debate on Gaza, saying that "The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

The MP also commented on the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants, saying that "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants," he said.

Kaufman urged the British government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:11 | link | comments (1)

Lunatics running the asylum: Guess who's just been handed the plum assignment of chairing the UN's lead agency? Why, it's that bunch of Shia thugo-theocrats who deny the Holocaust, sponsor jihadi terror groups to the north and south of Israel, and have vowed to wipe the Jewish "blot" off the otherwise pristine Islamic landscape.

Not even Orwell or Kafka at the peak of their inventiveness could have concocted this stuff.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:40 | link | comments

Thursday, 15 January 2009

The “context” of Judenhass: In “the Canadian context” at the moment, the Jew-haters
are massing on city streets and calling for the extirpation of the Jewish state and the
extermination of the Jewish people. In London, meanwhile, they’ve stepped it up a
notch, and are partying like it’s 1933. In Berlin. Melanie Phillips has more:

A second Starbucks has been attacked in London by Islamist thugs. The first was smashed up during last weekend’s violent demonstration in Kensington near the Israel embassy. The second, in Whitechapel, was firebombed in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The East London Advertiser reports:

A fire bomb was hurled into the premises of a cafe and coffee bar in London’s East End in the early hours of this morning. It was one of a series of ‘hate’ incidents in Whitechapel which have included anti-Semitic graffiti, believed to be linked to protests over Israel’s operations in Gaza. The thugs hurled the petrol bomb through the front glass door of Starbucks in Whitechapel Road, 300 yards from Brick Lane, at 1am. The manager was trapped in the office at the back and saw the intruders smashing their way into the premises on the CCTV and had to stay hidden.

But why, you may well ask, should the Islamists target Starbucks? The ELA supplies the answer:

Starbucks, whose American chief executive Howard Schultz is Jewish...

Not Israeli, note. Just a Jew…

And in the ignoble tradition of Medieval Jew-haters in Europe, who torched entire
Jewish communities; and Islamic Jew-haters in North Africa, who murdered Jews for
being iniquitous infidels; and Cossacks in Czarist Russia, who sliced and diced their
way through Jewish shtetls; and Nazis, who on Kristallnacht smashed synagogues and
other Jewish premises, the prelude to the pan-European orgy of murder, being “just a
Jew” is just enough to set off those who lust for Jewish blood.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:33 | link | comments

Lay off, Ms. Smarty Pantsuit: Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given us a preview of the hopey-changers' foreign policy. It's something called "smart power"--a shmancy way of referring to the same old ineffectual "diplomacy/appeasement" that largely marked her tubby hubby's term in office. "Smart power," obviously, is a back-handed swipe at what the h.c.-ers consider to be the previous administration's employment of "dumb power," i.e. its recourse to the military. (Lest we forget, Bill Clinton also used the military--for example in Bosnia--although he did nothing to stop the jihadis who had attacked Americans and American property time and time again, and whose last laugh at his "smart power" came on 9/11.) Hillary's first order of business, natch: "solving" that intractable Israel-Palestinian problem.

The heart sinks, the mind reels, and a voice in the wilderness screams out that the situation, in the memorable words of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (referring to another intractable problem) could well benefit from a prolongued period of "benign neglect."

David Solway, on the FrontPage Magazine site, elucidates why Hillary and the all the other peace-mongers should back the hell off:

Under existing conditions, the best the Middle East can hope for is a long cold peace and even this is probably an Arcadian notion. We must learn to live with the situation as best we can, just as people who are afflicted with serious illness must take the proper measures in order to survive, stick to their medications, expect relapses and seek treatment no matter how stopgap. There's no point wondering what might have been had they not contracted their infirmity by having acted differently in the past or expecting that somehow the disease will be pacified and magically disappear by some sort of “talking cure.” The Middle East is sick with an incurable disease; all it can strive for is occasional remission and approximate recovery after yet another malign episode. This is what Reality is telling us; pious hopes only make things worse, as the last sixty years should have made clear by this time.

In the real world there are some “problems” for which there are no satisfactory solutions. To believe otherwise, to assume that negotiation, dialogue and diplomacy can eventually resolve even the most intractable predicament or standoff, that it is only a matter of time until belligerents of whatever stamp or provenance can be made to see the light, and that all peoples desperately want nothing more than peace, prosperity and equitable arrangements between them, is a utopian delusion of the first magnitude. Its effect can be catastrophic and frequently is.

The Middle East has been ailing for 3000 years and will not be healed tomorrow, next year, or even next century, if we get that far. One thinks of Irving Kristol’s insightful remark that “Whom the gods would destroy they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.”…

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:15 | link | comments (1)

Two of a kind: An American Thinker invites us to play that old party game--Spot
the Loony:

The following remarks are from commentaries on the Israel-Hamas war by [sanctinonious far-left PBS pundit Bill] Moyers and by the world's best-known Nazi/Klansman, David Duke. Can you tell which is which? (The answers appear at the end.)

1) All you have to do is the look at the resolution recently passed by the House of Representatives (HRES 34 EH) with only 5 dissenting votes.... It condemns Hamas and the people of Gaza as terrorists but has no mention of the decades long Israeli occupation and strangulation of the West Bank and Gaza.

2) America has officially chosen sides. We supply Israel with money, F-16s, winks and tacit signals.

3) [People killed in Gaza] are the casualties and victims of Israel's decision to silence the rockets from Hamas terrorists by waging war on an entire population.

4) For over 40 years Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza, imprisoned and walled off its people.

5) Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults, and the onslaught in Gaza.

6) By the blockades of food and medicine, by the checkpoints and by the mass bombing and resulting slaughter, Israel is endeavoring to make life so horrible for the Palestinians, that they simply leave Palestine ...

7) By killing indiscriminately -- the elderly, kids, entire families by destroying schools and hospitals -- Israel did exactly what terrorists do...

8) ...Israel has bombed and terrorized the people of the region for years, and ...will not recognize the government the people of Gaza voted for in free elections.

9) ...one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression.

10) It is time for the United States and all EU nations to completely cease all economic and military aid to Israel.

11) As if boasting of their might, Israel defense forces even put up video of the explosions on YouTube for all the world to see. A Norwegian doctor there tells CBS, "It's like Dante's Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage."

12) Our political elites show neither independence nor courage by challenging the consensus that Israel can do no wrong. Although one recent poll found Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive by a 24-point margin, Democratic Party leaders in Congress nonetheless march in lockstep to the hardliners in Israel and the White House. Rarely does our mainstream media depart from the monotonous monologue of the party line.

13) A tremendous array of media personal attacks and political sabotage both in influence and monetary will descend on the hapless [politician who opposes Israel] The same thing is true in media...

14) But those who raise questions are accused by a prominent reform rabbi of being "morally deficient."

15) Go to the Book of Deuteronomy. When the ancient Israelites entered Canaan their leaders urged violence against its inhabitants. The very Moses who had brought down the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" now proclaimed, "You must destroy completely all the places where the nations have served their gods. You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place"....So God-soaked violence became genetically coded.

(Answers: Bill Moyers: 2,3,5,7,9,11,12,14,15; David Duke: 1,4,6,8,10,13)

How did you do? If it was difficult to tell the difference, we might have found PBS a replacement for Moyers when he retires.

I didn't do so hot. How about you?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments (1)

“Toilet warriors”: Mark Steyn is less than impressed (an understatement of epic
proportions) by the CJC’s belated response:

I got a press release from the Canadian Jewish Congress today, and what struck me immediately was the weirdly insecure boastfulness of the headline:

CJC Exposes Incitement To Hatred And Violence At Pro-Hamas Rallies

What a strange angle to prioritize. Not the "hatred and violence", but the fact that the great CJC has taken the lead into bringing it to public attention.

Er, no, you didn't. In fact, Bernie Farber and the rest of the CJC honchos have been so hors de combat these last two weeks that their retiring nature has been remarked upon by commentators at home and abroad. There was even a phrase applied to Bernie & Co - the "Jews of silence" - and a song written for them. One charitably assumed they were unable to take time out of their hectic schedule of deciding whether to give Richard Warman or Warren Kinsella the CJC Greatest Hero of the Century award, and then someone said, "Well, maybe we should upgrade it to Greatest Hero of the Millennium", and you know how these meetings can drag on.

But just for the record the CJC did not expose the "hatred and violence". For one thing, Bernie, Warren & Co didn't bother going to the Hamas rallies. Kathy Shaidle did, and Girl on the Right did, and Point de Bascule did, and Kate McMillan and others spread the news about what they saw. Bernie Farber said nothing. Even the great Nazi Hunting Toilet Warrior lui-meme was silent.

What's interesting about that group is how many of them - Kate, Kathy, Ezra - are being harrassed by Richard Warman, the guy Bernie Farber thinks is the greatest Nazi hunter of all time. The cardboard hero gets garlanded by the CJC, the real friends of Canadian Jews get sued. Ezra makes a sharp point:

The problem with Burny and Freiman is that they don't actually know how to fight real anti-Semites, because they've been fighting Internet anti-Semites for so long. It's like the difference between playing Guitar Hero really well, and then being asked to play a real guitar. They only know how to fight "hate" on the Internet, like a video game.

Indeed. The Section 13 fetishists are the go-to guys if you think Marc Lemire and whoever drew the lonely swastika at knee height in that public toilet are the real threat to the peaceable kingdom. But, if your priority is mobs marching through the streets making explicitly genocidal, eliminationist threats, then the Toilet Warriors are no use…

Our Jewish leadership has long claimed that it needs its security blankie—Section
13 censorship provisions—for the sake of the community’s “psychological well-being.”
Well, how’s that “psychological well-being” withstanding the sight of frenzied
“protesters” shouting "Death to the Jews" in Downtown Montreal and Toronto? Not
so well, I’d venture. If nothing else, the recent “protests” should prove once and for all
that censorship is not the way to go, that it empowers anti-Zionist groups such as the
Canadian Arab Federation (one of the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s honoured
“stakeholders”), and that, at best, it affords Jews a false sense of security. After all, you
can’t run to an HRC to complain about an angry mob.

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

CAF scrambles to get the media back on message: Another group perturbed
by the Canadian Jewish Congress’s news conference yesterday: the Canadian Arab
Federation, one of the many Muslim organizations with which the Ceej had
endeavoured to “build bridges”. When you’re on the same page about wanting to
combat “discrimination” through state censorship, that’s not a problem. However,
when one side supports Israel and the other side helps organize angry mobs of
“protesters” who burn Israeli flags and chant “Death to the Jews,” there’s bound to be
a parting of the ways—at least in the short term. What really galls the CAF’s
executive director is that all this exposure of actual, tangible Judenhass in the streets
of Toronto threatens to expose the truth, i.e. that the stuff about “the Occupation”
being the bone of contention is a crock, and that anti-Zionism is Jew-hate—the
Jew-hate of our era. From the National Post:

...Mohamed Boudjenane, who is executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation, said he found the images and video clips offensive but that organizers had "nothing to do with it."

"Was there a deliberate attempt by the organizers to encourage hateful messages and permit and facilitate hateful demonstrations? Were there any attempt in the speeches to attack the Jewish faith and demonize the Jewish community?

"To those questions, 'No, no, no.'" "We would never support hateful activity. We would never use these types of message and slogans toward the Jewish communities because at the end of the day ... this is about occupation. That is the issue we should be debating."

Organizers of rallies in Toronto to oppose the action in Gaza said parade marshals did not witness any improper behaviour.

Members of the Aryan Guard appeared at a Calgary march but organizers asked them to leave.

Yesterday, about eight people protested on the sidewalk in front of the hotel arguing that the Canadian Jewish Congress's press conference detracted from the issue and "demonized the opposition."

Well, if the horns and tail fit, wear ‘em.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments (2)

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Lie down with Jew-hating pro-Hamas dogs, get up with Hamas fleas: A group of anti-Zionist Jewish "protesters" are so upset that the Canadian Jewish Congress actually condemned the hatred on display at pro-Hamas, er, "protests," that they forked over whatever the going rate is on newswire these days to make sure the wider media is apprised of their "outrage":

TORONTO, Jan. 14 /CNW Telbec/ - Activists and concerned community member are voicing outrage that, in the context of an ongoing Israeli military assault which has killed more than 900 Palestinians, wounded more than 4,000 and destroyed essential civilian infrastructure in the already devastated Gaza Strip, the Canadian Jewish Congress is seeking to smear those who have protested these atrocities.

At 1:30pm on Wednesday January 14, some of these concerned community members will assemble in front of Toronto's Sutton Place Hotel (955 Bay Street at Wellesley) to denounce the CJC's attempts to distract people from ongoing Israeli crimes, and to provide information regarding the CJC's connection to the propaganda campaign accompanying the latest Israeli assault.

Judy Deutsch, a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV)-Canada and one of the eight Jewish women who recently occupied the Israeli consulate in Toronto to protest the Israeli attack on Gaza, emphasizes that the real scandal is the whitewashing of Israeli crimes as they transparently unfold. "The disinformation from Israel is transparently dishonest and shameless and is a travesty to all civilians caught up in this needless invasion," Deutsch says. "There is no excuse for these distortions of the facts as there is such reliable information from numerous human rights and medical witnesses to the atrocities."

Dan Freeman-Maloy, a graduate student at York University who researches Canadian-Israeli relations, notes that the CJC is directly connected to Israel's system of wartime diplomacy. "It is well known that Israel has established a National Information Directorate to justify its invasion of Gaza before world opinion, involving representatives of the IDF, key government ministries and the Jewish Agency," Freeman-Maloy explains. "The CJC, like the Canada-Israel Committee, is part of an advocacy system closely associated with the Jewish Agency, and its shameful apologetics for Israeli crimes amount to crass and cynical diplomacy."

Andy Lehrer, a member of the IJV-Canada steering committee, adds that CJC smearing of anti-war demonstrations is wrought with hypocrisy. "Such charges are aimed at suppressing legitimate protest against Israeli war crimes,"asserts Lehrer. "Ironically, the CJC has ignored repeated requests that they distance themselves from a bona fide hate group, the Jewish Defence League (JDL), which has had a high profile within the Jewish community, including at CJC-sponsored events. In addition, the JDL has engaged in verbal abuse and intimidation at Gaza solidarity events," Lehrer explains. "Last Thursday we held a vigil across the street from the CJC's own pro-Israel rally and were subjected to a barrage of hate speech and vitriolic abuse from the JDL, who had come out to support the CJC rally. Among the things they yelled were 'you're not Jews, you're shit,' 'you're rats' and 'blow yourselves up.' The next day I talked to Farber and asked him to publicly denounce the JDL. He refused."

Foreign journalists have recently been barred from entering Gaza, multiple news offices within the Strip have been damaged by IDF attacks, and numerous journalists working from Gaza have been killed by IDF forces. While Israel wishes to see international perceptions shaped by its diplomats and their associates, Canadian journalists can hopefully adopt a more critical attitude.

Hopefully, not. (Aw, did the big, scawy JDLers huwt youw tendew feewings,
"pwotestews"? Tell it to Babawa Hall.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:38 | link | comments (5)

Ingenius--and demonic--use of dead Juden: Time was when Jew-haters used Jews to make lamp shades and soap. But that's soooo 1940s. Today's Jew-haters are far more hip and eco-minded. They want to use Jews as, er, "fossil fuels."

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

Brrrrr: Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going to push hard for the U.S. to sign a climate change treaty because otherwise, she says, there could be wars and stuff due to global warming.

Global warming? Is she frikking kidding me? It's thirty flipping below outside. I think we could use a few more of those greenhouse gas emissions, to act as insulation.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:04 | link | comments

Ryan in the doghouse: CUPE Canada has scolded CUPE Ontario's Sid "Vicious" Ryan for being such an a-hole (actually, for seeking to revive his witch hunt of Israeli academics). From the Toronto Star:

CUPE's national president has rebuked the union's Ontario leader over his call for a boycott of Israeli academics.

On Jan. 2, Sid Ryan, head of the provincial office of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in a news release "... we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the (Islamic) university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general."

Jewish groups condemned the proposal and, yesterday, they were joined by Paul Moist, president of CUPE's national office.

"I believe such a resolution is wrong and would violate the anti-discrimination standards set out in the CUPE Constitution," Moist said in a release.

"I will be using my influence in any debates on such a resolution to oppose its adoption."

In an interview, he added: "We don't discriminate against people based on their nationality."

Yesterday, Ryan, whose union is autonomous from the national office, insisted he and Moist are "on the same page" and that he changed his proposal more than a week ago to focus on Israeli institutions, not individuals.

"In the process of examining academic boycott initiatives by other organizations around the world ... it has become clear that the position is not banning individuals," Ryan said in a CUPE statement yesterday.

"Rather, an academic boycott should focus on issues of investment, partnership, fundraising and joint projects."

Ryan told the Star such a boycott could include asking pension plans to stop investing in Israel's post-secondary education system, and ending partnerships between Canadian and Israeli universities.

"If we're saying that we're not going to be funding universities in Israel, that's not impinging on anybody's academic freedom," Ryan said.

Ryan had initially defended his original proposal, saying "Academic freedom goes both ways."

He did apologize last week for comparing the bombing of Islamic University in Gaza to the actions of the Nazis.

Apologize, did he? Big whoop. Let me know when he "apoligizes" for keeping
company with lunatics who want to "kill "f***king Jewish children" and who think
Hitler didn't do a good enough job.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments (5)

Another country heard from: A tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, who apparantly has Blu-Ray in his Waziristan cave, allowing him to keep tabs on current events (hey, it's a possibility), 'invites jihad' for Gaza.

Um, isn't it already there, big fellah?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments

Hairy, scary guy: Mark Steyn notes the passing of Tom O'Horgan, who, for one brief shining moment during the 1960s enjoyed great renown for his "tribal musical," HAIR. In honour of his passing, I am reviving the theme song from HAIRAN, my "Shia Tribal Musical":

We asked him why.

Why he’s a scary guy.

He’s scary noon and nighty night.

Nukes are a fright.

He’s scary through and through.

Don’t know what he

Is gonna do.

It’s all for the jihad

That he’d kill for God,

Sez Mahmoud--

“Give me a land with nukes,

Strong, beautiful nukes,

Shining, gleaming, streamin’ into action.

Though you think we’re kooks

Nukes

Give us lots of power.

Here, Georgie; there, Ehud,

Show you our cojones with our

Nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes nukes, nukes, nukes.

Grow ‘em, throw ‘em, long as I can blow ‘em

My nukes.

Let ‘em land with a heave

Aimed straight at Tel Aiv

So Jews’ll feel the fury of my nukes.

The Jews our Prophet hated

Had ‘em all eliminated.

Sharia rules!

Kafirs are fools!

You all will soon be humbled by our

Nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes.

Grow ‘em, throw ‘em, long as I can blow ‘em

My nukes.

I like ‘em long, strong, deadly, dreadful,

Flashy, brashy, and panachey,

Shiny, loaded, ‘sploded,

Rushing, crushing, hushing,

Streaming, striking and tobbaccied:

Kafirs’ll get smoked and Nagasaki’d.

‘Oh Say Can You See’ is Great Satan’s theme song

Not for very long.

Down they fall,

Kill you all,

Have a ball

When you’re blown to Hell.

(Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo)

I seem ga-ga in some fora

When I mention my green aura,

An aura worn by Ahmadinejad.

My nukes, now I adore ‘em

Though I know you all deplore ‘em.

When my bombs are flyin’ up above me

I know my Mahdi loves me.

Nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes.

Grow ‘em, throw ‘em, long as I can blow ‘em

My nukes.”

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

The Ceej takes action: I just heard on CFRB that the Canadian Jewish Congress is finally going to be saying something about the crazed Judenhass that's been on display at al fresco Gaza protests.

'Bout time, guys.

Update: Ezra Levant comments, brilliantly:

After averting its eyes for a week, the Canadian Jewish Congress has grudgingly acknowledged that there is anti-Semitism in Canada that is not perpetrated by ageing Indian chiefs or teenagers on Internet chat sites. They've called a press conference for Wednesday to talk about the bigoted pro-Hamas rallies that have been raging across Canada.

According to a release, the CJC's press conference will be staffed by Bernie "Burny" Farber, Mark Freiman and Sara Saber Freedman.

Burny, as we all know, has a section 13 fetish. He has become Canada's loudest defender of censorship -- which is why I've changed the spelling of his name to Burny. He's the 21st century equivalent to a book-burner.

And that's a problem. Because it's one thing to use the law to bully a single political offender for "promoting hatred", and grind him through years of punitive legal hassles, with the final result being the removal of a single website on the Internet (how pitiful). But what do you do when there's 10,000 people who have engaged in hateful acts on the city's streets, and they're looking forward to doing it again next week?

Try taking 10,000 people to a human rights commission. (Oh, the commissions would love it, though, wouldn't they? Bigger budgets; a bigger sense of self-importance; more control over more peoples' lives.)

But you can't use section 13, actually, because it only applies to hate spread over phone lines and the Internet.

And the Criminal Code provisions require an enormous standard of guilt -- what we saw in those rallies, with the possible exceptions of the support for terrorist groups, is likely below the standard of a criminal conviction. Shouting "kill all the Jews" isn't specific or imminent enough to be taken as a real death threat. It might breach the criminal code provisions against hate speech. But how do you apply that to a mob of hundreds or thousands chanting their Jew-hatred, often in Arabic, often with masks hiding their identities?.

Mark Freiman is a lawyer who has worked on the CJC's section 13 cases, and is a defender of those laws. Not encouraging.

The problem with Burny and Freiman is that they don't actually know how to fight real anti-Semites, because they've been fighting Internet anti-Semites for so long. It's like the difference between playing Guitar Hero really well, and then being asked to play a real guitar. They only know how to fight "hate" on the Internet, like a video game...

"Guitar Hero Burny"--heh. Ezra's post points to an unpleasant truth. Even here in
multishmulti Canada, a Trudeaupian realm of virtue and politeness where Jews "twin"
with mosques and "mentor" Somalis, where "bad" speech is policed by government
bureaucrats, and where we pride ourselves on "diversity" and "inclusiveness," the
veneer of civility is very thin. Stip it away--as Gaza "protesters" have done--and you
can see the festering Judenhass (Muslim, Leftist) that lies just below the surface.

Update: Last week on TVO's The Agenda, Ontario 'human rights' Czarina Barbara
Hall was 'splaining her new mandate. Prior to this year, she told host Steve Paikin, the
OHRC acted as a "gatekeeper," fielding complaints, arranging for mediation between
the two parties,and, if mediation failed, deciding which complaints should be sent off
to the "human rights" tribunal for adjudication. Now that the new year is here, Babsy's
brigade is going to leave all that small stuff to the tribunal, and set off on a quest to
work on the "bigger" picture. The aim: to pre-empt "discrimination" in Ontario before
it gains traction, and "change" the behaviour of errant Ontarians.

Tell me, Babs, how are you going to "change" the behaviour of throngs of crazed
Jew-haters? Is the OHRC planning to take time off from, say, hassling "ageist" strip
club owners to try to pre-empt a pogrom on Bloor Street?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments (2)

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Boneheaded Damsel, Shut-up?: Since the hated Bush is shuffling off centre stage
to make way for the Messiah-in-Chief, one had thought that the initials BDS--Bush
Derangement Syndrome, the phrase coined by Charles Krauthammer--could
also be retired. But nooo. It seems there's a new BDS out there, and it has to do
with another Leftist derangement. Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media explains:

It has become increasingly evident that The Nation magazine , still the most influential journal of the supposedly moderate and responsible Left in America, is becoming the organ committed first and foremost to the destruction of Israel. This time, its prescription for dealing with the Hamas inflicted war on Israel comes from Naomi Klein, this generation’s Noam Chomsky in women’s designer suits. Klein, with her demonic hatred of Israel, makes your average run-of-the mill self-hating Jew sound balanced.

In an article entitled “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction,” (BDS) Klein calls “for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.” She endorses a 2005 program put forth by a “huge coalition of Palestinian groups.” Each day “Israel pounds Gaza,” she writes, “brings more converts to the BDS cause.”

Klein does not even purport to show any concern, indeed any awareness of, Hamas’ self-proclaimed goal to destroy Israel, its Islamist ideology that calls for permanent war against all Jews, or its continued and sustained rocket attacks on Israel. She does not even attempt to declare a J-Street type phony “moral equivalence” that equates Israel’s defense of its citizens with Hamas’ rockets. In her eyes, there is only one guilty party: the State of Israel…

BDS: Bitch Doth Spew (Judenhass). Bollocks, Dumb Shrew.

Bad Diabolical Slut?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:43 | link | comments (5)

Condi’s shame: Can’t say that I’m looking forward to an Obama White House.
Then again, can’t say that I’m sad to say buh bye to the calculating, cunning,
clueless Condi Rice. Al Reuters, a news agency so brazenly anti-Israel that it isn’t
even aware of the flagrant bias it has larded into this story, reveals that it was only
due to the last minute machinations of Ehud Olmert that Condi was forced to
abstain on an anti-Israel resolution she herself had cooked up:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a telephone call he made to U.S. President George W. Bush last week forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain in a U.N. vote on the Gaza war, leaving her "shamed."

Pouring on political bravado in a speech late Monday, Olmert said he demanded to talk to Bush with only 10 minutes to spare before a U.N. Security Council vote Thursday on a resolution opposed by Israel calling for an immediate cease-fire.

"When we saw that the secretary of state, for reasons we did not really understand, wanted to vote in favour of the U.N. resolution ... I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech," Olmert said.

"I said, 'I don't care. I have to talk to him now,'" Olmert said, describing Bush, who leaves office on January 20, as "an unparalleled friend" of Israel.

"They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not familiar with the phrasing.'"

Olmert said he then told Bush: "'I'm familiar with it. You can't vote in favour.'

"He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it -- a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged," Olmert said.

Fourteen of the Security Council's 15 members supported the resolution, which has failed to halt Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip and Hamas's cross-border rocket fire.

Abysinnia, Condi. Don’t let the Turtle Bay front door hit your benighted keester on the
way out. (Not that I expect Hillary to be any improvement.)

Update: Joseph Klein of FrontPage Magazine sheds more light on what he calls a
"contemptible resolution:

The United Nations has been working especially hard in recent days to bail out the Hamas terrorists from the prospect of a devastating defeat at the hands of Israel.

Hamas caused the present conflict by its unprovoked firing of hundreds of rockets deeper into Israel, targeting Israeli civilians for death and terrorizing its women and children. Hamas, not Israel, unilaterally decided against extending the six month ceasefire that had expired in mid-December 2008, which Hamas had been violating anyway. After clear warnings to stop the rocket fire which went unheeded by Hamas, Israel responded with military force in self-defense pursuant to Section 51 of the UN Charter.

Nevertheless, under pressure from the Arab bloc, the UN Security Council adopted a contemptible resolution on January 8, 2009, which calls for an “immediate” ceasefire, “leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza”. Hamas’s provocation for the Israeli military action is not mentioned even once. There is not a word stating that the rocket attacks on the Israeli civilian population must stop completely as a condition for such withdrawal of Israeli forces. Indeed, the resolution places no onus on Hamas at all for the present situation, much less imposing any obligations on the mini-terrorist state it is running in Gaza. Although Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and would never have tolerated a Hamas-led government if it had stayed instead, the UN resolution is based on the premise that Israel still effectively controls Gaza and thus is fully responsible for the welfare of the Palestinian civilian population living under Hamas rule. This is truly a heads-Hamas-wins, tails-Israel-loses setup.

Shamefully, the United States decided to abstain, rather than use its veto power to block this one-sided, anti-Israel Security Council resolution.

The resolution emphasizes “the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings.” While calling on member states to “intensify efforts” to prevent “illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition”, nothing is said about destroying the remaining tunnels built by Hamas or removing the rocket parts and other arms from the terrorists’ hands that have already been smuggled into Gaza. There is no provision for an effective international monitoring force to stop any further smuggling.

The resolution “condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism”. Since Israel is singled out elsewhere in the resolution for its military presence in Gaza and the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are not mentioned at all, the spin artists accusing Israel of ‘crimes against humanity’ will have a field day. They will interpret the resolution as condemning only Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians and equating Israel’s acts of self-defense with ‘state terrorism’. No accountability for using Palestinian women and children as human shields – a deliberate tactic of Islamic terrorists – is laid at Hamas’s doorstep. Since Hamas is not mentioned even once in the resolution, the Islamic propagandists will surely argue that neither Hamas’s assaults on Israeli civilians, or Hamas’s deliberate use of civilians as human shields, were intended to be included within the definition of acts of terrorism. This fits into the Islamic fictional narrative that Hamas militants and other Islamic terrorists are not really terrorists at all – they are legitimate resistance fighters.

The resolution recognizes “the vital role played by UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] in providing humanitarian and economic assistance within Gaza.” It actually asks for additional contributions to UNRWA...

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:26 | link | comments

Oily royal altruist strikes again: Such a selfless humanitarian, that Wahhabi king.
When he isn’t busy arranging conferences where dhimmis and true believers can hook
up and discuss their common denominator—old Abe—he’s offering to assist young
Gazans who’ve been maimed during the Israeli offensive. Al Reuters has more on one
of the world’s most compassionate souls:

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Palestinian girl who lost her legs and a boy who was blinded in Israel's attack on Gaza are amongst Palestinians receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi minister said on Tuesday.

"(King Abdullah) saw you on television and was extremely affected," Health Minister Hamad al-Manei told the girl, Jamila, at a meeting of Arab health ministers in Riyadh.

Saudi state media have carried prominent coverage of several dozen wounded Palestinians brought to the country for treatment in Saudi hospitals. A precise figure of those being treated was not available.

"I was playing when this accident happened. I didn't have a bomb or a weapon for them to do this to me. I was on the roof and suddenly I found myself in hospital," Jamila, in a wheelchair, told the Saudi minister in front of television cameras at the meeting.

"I asked 'what's going on?' and they said I was in a coma and my legs had been amputated, and my cousin's too. My sister was killed and another cousin as well, God have mercy on them."

The meeting of health ministers will discuss Israel's offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 900 Palestinians and put Arab leaders under public pressure to act.

The story of Jamila and Luay Sobh, who was blinded, was shown earlier this week on Al Jazeera television, which has carried extensive coverage of civilian casualties inside Gaza. It was not clear how old the two children were.

Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, has asked the 22-member Arab League in Cairo to hold an emergency Arab summit on Friday.

Arab countries closely allied to the United State such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been cool to the idea of a summit, despite two weeks of popular protests around the region demanding government action.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak was expected in Riyadh on Tuesday for talks with King Abdullah. Egypt has blamed Hamas for the assault on Gaza, which Israel began on December 27 saying it wanted to stop rocket fire into neighboring Israeli towns.

The Saudi government, which sees itself as the leader of mainstream Sunni Islam, has refrained from explicitly blaming Hamas for the offensive, but some writers in Saudi media have attacked Hamas for aligning itself with Shi'ite power Iran.

Saudi Arabia has organized an aid campaign for Palestinians that has gathered over $27 million, but the government has prevented efforts to organize demonstrations in its main cities of Riyadh and Jeddah.

Um, to whom are they planning to hand over the aid money—their enemy’s proxy,
Hamas? Highly unlikely, I’d say. Sounds to me like this “charity” is likely to remain at
home, at least for the time being.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:01 | link | comments

Yiddish word of the day: The word is "shlecht," one of those words that cannot quite fully be translated into English, because to do so loses the juice and the pith of the Yiddish. As best as I can translate it, "shlecht" means super-duper rotten. Here, I'm put it in a sentence: Those nations which failed to stand with Canada against the UN "Human Rights" Council's absurdly one-sided anti-Israel motion ("Canada votes alone for Israel"--the Toronto Star's oddly worded headline; shouldn't it be "Canada alone votes for Israel"?) are "shlecht". And for that matter, the motion was "shlecht" too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:47 | link | comments (4)

Tribute to a fallen soldier: I received this via e-mail, from the Shalem Center:

Israel is a small country, but when it goes to war, the front is extraordinarily broad. On Sunday of last week, it reached “Gan Dalia,” the kindergarten my five-year-old son David attends in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. That morning, officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) came looking for veteran head teacher Dalia Emanuelof. She was off that day, so they continued searching elsewhere, ultimately waiting outside her home in the nearby suburb of Givat Ze’ev until she returned that afternoon.

The news the officers brought was unbearable: Her 22-year-old son, Dvir, had been killed in Jabalya, making him the first Israeli casualty of the ground campaign in Gaza. Fighting there as a staff sergeant in his infantry unit, the elite Golani brigade, he was felled by Hamas mortar fire. Though Israel has a conscript army, Dvir did not have to be in Gaza, as he had received high marks as instructor of a squad leader course, was asked to go to officer school, and would still have been in training had he accepted; he deferred, however, saying he would not be fit to command until he had first fought alongside his comrades. In fact, Dvir did not have to be in any front-line position: His father Netanel had died of cancer at age 46, shortly before Dvir’s service began; as an only son in a single-parent family, Dvir was exempt under IDF rules from combat duty. Before accepting him to Golani, his commanding officer visited Dalia and asked if she acquiesced in her son’s opting for a dangerous path he was not obligated to choose. Her answer: “If this is how Dvir wants to serve his country, then this is what he will do.” Two days before entering Gaza, Dvir had called home and said: “Mom, I have to fight. I have to be there.” He went, and he fought—and was buried on Sunday night in the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem.

A few days later, I was thinking about Dvir as I prepared to speak at an Israel solidarity rally at the Ramaz high school in Manhattan. I opened by talking about Dvir’s words to his mother, and then explained why he had to fight—that is, why Israel had no choice but to wage war to stop Hamas from firing missiles at homes and schools in Sderot and other cities in the country’s south. After describing Israel’s war aims, I addressed the issue on the minds of these morally sensitive young people: How we could be sure that, in the pursuit of moral ends, Israel was using moral means? I stressed the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect Palestinian civilians, and contrasted it with Hamas’s systematic strategy of using non-combatants—women, children, even hospital patients—as “human shields,” to prevent the Israeli army from attacking its fighters or to saddle the Jewish state with the blame for the civilians who are killed.

Afterwards, I fielded questions from seniors in one of Ramaz’s honors classes, of which the most difficult was posed by an earnest young woman named Julie. She accepted that Israel was right to launch an offensive and was fighting in accordance with the dictates of morality, but was deeply concerned about the outcome: If Hamas was eager for Palestinian non-combatants to be killed, while the IDF did its best to prevent such casualties, how could Israel hope to win? Either the Israeli army would be deterred from landing the blows needed to defeat Hamas, or Israel would end up killing large numbers of civilians and be forced by international pressure to accept a cease-fire prematurely—which would be perceived as a Hamas victory, on the model of Hizbollah’s “triumph by surviving” in the Second Lebanon War. She offered a chillingly apt understanding of the statement made in 2004 by Hizbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and later echoed by many Hamas leaders: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable….We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.” Nasrallah had meant that the Jews loved their own lives while Muslim radicals embraced death in the pursuit of jihad, but in Gaza, it turned out that Jews also cared more for the lives of Arab civilians than did the leaders of Hamas. I answered, haltingly, on the level of tactics, pointing out that the IDF’s detailed intelligence and precise execution enabled it to limit the bulk of Palestinian casualties to Hamas fighters, and that international condemnation of Israel has been kept in check by widespread revulsion at the use of human shields.

The question was still on my mind when I landed at Ben-Gurion Airport the next morning and headed to a shiva visit at the Emanuelofs. The first floor was overflowing with well-wishers, some sitting and most standing, centered around Dalia, her three daughters, and the general in charge of Israel’s ground forces, Avi Mizrahi, who in an extraordinary gesture of respect was making a condolence visit in the midst of war. Due to his rare combination of gentleness and determination, he became, with Dalia, the center of attention, and the two engaged in a dialogue interspersed with occasional comments from Dalia’s eldest daughter, Hadas, who got married less than a year ago and was visibly pregnant with the family’s first grandchild

From this dialogue, an extraordinary portrait emerged of Dvir—a modest, idealistic young man who was a leader in the Bnei Akiva youth movement, delighted in taking his friends on hikes throughout Israel, and could never be found without his trademark smile, which radiated out from his sparkling eyes and lit up everyone around him—a point amply attested to in the photos displayed in the Emanuelofs’ home. He loved life, with a passion, but was willing to risk his own because he felt a sense of mission to protect Israelis living in the country’s south. Dalia, too, was heroic in her own, quiet way. On her face and in her voice one could discern profound sadness, but also pride in her son and the army in which he served, and resolve that Israel must continue to fight until victory. One could also detect a spirit of hope, bordering on faith, that her people would triumph—and that, as Jews traditionally say, Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker, the Eternal One of Israel will not fail us.

Equally extraordinary was the picture Dalia painted of the support her family had received. She spoke of two teenage girls who came to her home, and when asked how they had known Dvir, answered that they had never met him but identified with the family’s tragedy and wanted to give whatever comfort they could; of a middle-aged man who said only, ‘I’m a citizen of Israel, and I came to be with you, as a representative of all of Israel’s citizens;’ of an elderly gentleman who walked in leaning on a cane, and declared: “I heard that a Golanchik (young Golani soldier) in your family was killed; I fought in Golani in the War of Independence in 1948, and have come to offer my condolences.” She described a phone call from a woman she didn’t know, who had just had a grandson and wanted permission to name him Dvir. Dalia assented, but urged that he be given a second name, as Jewish tradition says that in calling someone after a person who has suffered an unfortunate fate, one should make this change to symbolize the hope for better fortune. The grandmother answered that the boy’s name would be Dvir Chai—“Dvir lives.” And Dalia concluded the story: “A few days after my son had been killed, I could already say again, ‘Dvir lives.’”

At one point, Dalia turned to General Mizrahi and asked why Israel could not fight in Gaza the way coalition forces have in Iraq and Afghanistan—bombing aggressively against enemy fighters in populated areas. There was no bitterness in her voice at the IDF for having endangered her son’s life by its regard for Palestinian civilians, nor any desire for revenge—only the concerned tones of an Israeli mother anxious to protect the sons of other Israeli mothers. The general answered thoughtfully, but without hesitation, that the IDF had gone to greater lengths to protect its soldiers in Gaza than in previous conflicts, citing the week-long air campaign that preceded the ground invasion. He added, however, that the IDF’s strength is integrally tied to maintaining its humanity and morality. Soldiers are united in part because they know that regardless of religious or political differences, they share a common moral code. Alluding to the widely-held view that Hamas’s military leadership is hiding under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, he said that he wouldn’t give an order to bomb the hospital from the air, because there are certain things one simply doesn’t do. This is an obligation, he stressed, that the IDF has as a Jewish army. From the reactions in the room, it was clear that while everyone identified with Dalia’s question, they accepted the answer—and were impressed that the officer used this opportunity to reinforce the Jewish values binding all of us together.

As I left to return home before the start of the Sabbath, I understood the answer to the question I had been asked by a young woman 6,000 miles away. Yes, on the tactical level it can be a handicap to love life when your opponent loves death. But in the end, it is that love of life that will enable us to prevail. We will defeat those who love death, because we love life so much that we Israelis—from teenage girls to senior officers in wartime—know how to give comfort to those who have lost a loved one, and to say, “We are with you.” Our love of life enables us to confront tragedy, and emerge with the pride and resolve, the hope and the faith, that Dalia showed.

We love life so much that we educate our children to love life, though surrounded by enemies who hope, pray, and work for our deaths. It is this love of life that enabled the Jews to return to our homeland and rebuild a state after 2,000 years, and it is the sense of mission stemming from this love that will sustain the Zionist dream long into the future. We love life so much that we refuse to have our sense of morality dulled by enemies who seek to force us to kill women and children in order to defend our families. Though our principles limit the IDF’s effectiveness, they provide us with intangibles that more than compensate—the confidence and the strength to pursue our aims secure in the knowledge we are acting justly, and the unity that comes from a society acting in accordance with its most cherished values. And yes, let no one err, we will win because we love life so much we are willing to brave death, if necessary, to ensure that our people can lead free lives in the country we have established against all odds. In the end, it is this love of life that will enable us to prevail—not only in the war in Gaza, but in all the challenges we face in the years and generations to come.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:13 | link | comments (1)

"Racism" verboten; Judenhass okey-dokey: "Youts" and other anti-Zionist louts rampaging through the streets, burning cars and smashing windows--the Brit press gives that story a shrug and a sigh. But the heir's spare referring to one of his Afghanistan regiment mates as a "Paki"---mass freak out.

Well, they do hate their "racists," don't they.

Update: Now the British press are upset because the heir and his lads call an Asian polo-playing mate of theirs by the politically incorrect nickname "Sooty". I dunno. Maybe they weren't referring to his skin shade.Maybe it was a reference to a bear on a popular Brit TV kiddie show. Maybe. In any case, "Sooty" is pretty mild compared to "Kill all the Juice."

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:04 | link | comments

Same old song: The UN is warning of a--wait for it--"refugee crisis" in Gaza, as thousands are forced to flee their homes to find makeshift accommodations.

Um, how does that work, exactly, since Gaza is a wholly-owned and operated Palestinian enterprise, and since, despite that fact, there is still a UN "refugee camp" there? Are these new refugees from the old refugee camp, and if so does that make them double refugees, or refugees squared?

Update: Now it's "a 'torrent' of refugees." What next, a tsuanami?

Update: "Nowhere is safe for trapped Gaza residents: UNRWA."

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:53 | link | comments (1)

Monday, 12 January 2009

Building bridges (and mentoring Somalis) over troubled waters: My blogging amiga BCF asked me to write a parody of "Sound of Silence" for all the "Jews of silence"--official Jews who freak out over a swastika in a public loo, but are strangely silent about overt Leftist/Islamist Judenhass in the streets of Toronto. Happy to oblige, Blazes:

Hello, Bernie, hello, Len.

I’ve come to talk with you again.

Because a rally full of hate and ire

Seems poised to set off an almighty fire

And the vision of Jew-hatred we thought dead

Fills me with dread,

How ‘bout you Jews of silence?

In restless dreams you all seem lost

Thinking your thoughts of Holocaust.

Searching for Nazis under basement rugs.

Meanwhile ignoring the Islamist thugs.

Then our ears were stabbed by

“Jew child you're gonna f***king die,”

Made me cry.

How ‘bout you Jews of silence?

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more.

“Protesters” rioting in London town,

Burning cars and mowing people down.

Will Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam write a refrain

‘Bout a Peace Train

For all the Jews of silence?

“Fools,” said I, “You silent Jews.

Hunting for Nazis--that’s old news.

Speak up now or fore’er hold your peace.

Jihadi hatred isn’t going to cease.”

But their words don’t ever seem to come.

Seems they’re numb.

How come they’re Jews of silence?

And the people seethe and yell,

“Kill Juden; Down with Is-ra-el.”

And the crowd flashed out its warning

With all the venom that it was forming.

But the Ceej said,

“The words of the Nazis are written on some bathroom walls.”

It’s what appals

And frightens Jews of silence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:19 | link | comments (4)

Word play: When some freedom-loving Danes dared to publish some satiric
cartoons in a newspaper, the Canadian Jewish Congress flew into action.
Fumed the Ceej (my bolds),

The decision by all those who chose to publish the cartoons is inexcusably provocative, insensitive and disrespectful of Muslim believers.

Quite the hissy fit, no?

But when a high profile Canadian Jew-hater, who has made the witch hunt of Israeli
academics his personal mission and whose animus toward the Jewish state is such
that he hopes to one day see it disappear, compared Israel to the Nazis, the Ceej

expressed frustration that Sid Ryan continues to call for a boycott of Israeli academics, undermining the value of his apology for making an offensive Nazi analogy.

Whoa, calm down there, fellahs; you’re going to pop a vein.

The question must be asked, so I shall ask it: Why does the Canadian Jewish Congress
seem to reserve its strongest language, its highest dudgeon, to defend the rights and
interests of Muslims?

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