scaramouche

Thursday, 30 April 2009

All aboard: A friend who thought I’d be interested sent me info about this upcoming conference:

On June 1st and 2nd 2009, the Government of Canada and the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada will host a unique conference entitled The St Louis Era: Looking Back, Moving Forward. This seminal event will bring together a diverse body of experts from across the country and abroad: academics, government officials, educators and civil society, in a discussion of the many complex themes that flow from Canada’s restrictive immigration policy during the Second World War. It will commemorate a time in Canadian history when this country excluded refugees seeking sanctuary from the Nazi death machine, as in the case of the M.S. St. Louis. The discriminatory policies and practices of that dark era will be examined in terms of how best to educate future generations, not just about the Holocaust and its linkages to Canada, but also about the dilemmas facing society today as we continue to see mass human rights violations in all corners of the globe.

This two-day conference, which marks the 70th anniversary of the voyage of the St. Louis, is made possible by funding from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. With the academic partnership of the Holocaust Literature Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario and a variety of partners in the field of Holocaust research, education and remembrance, it is the signature event that will support Canada’s full membership in the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. The event is the liaison project under this international task force and reflects the partnership between the Government of Canada and the U.S. Department of State, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Mémorial de la Shoah. It will also mark the launch of the League for Human Rights’ three-year National Task Force, which will enhance Canada’s efforts in this area.

Now, I have no problem with people getting together to analyze how the whole world, including democracies like Canada, did dirt to Jews who, way back when, were trying to escape the conflagration in Europe. But I fear that in framing it as a matter of “human rights” instead of Judenhass, and in failing to explore the ramifications of our social doctrine of multiculturalism and how we now offer “sanctuary” to many thousands of refugees who curse democracy and would like to see it replaced by sharia, this conference is on course to, you should pardon the expression, miss the boat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:14 | link | comments (1)

Unabashed worship: How besotted are the media with Obama? So besotted that when the president puts in a performance that is, shall we say, less than dynamic, the media claim it was intentional--"Obama works to avoid being exciting," in the words of a Yahoo headline.

Yeah, being boring is such hard work.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

Half-baked: President Obama, who co-opted the slogan “Yes We Can” from a one-eyed Jewish Ratpacker, has now co-opted the slogan “Never Again” from post-Holocaust Jewry. Here’s how Obama (mis)used the phrase in a speech he gave on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

We find cause for hope as well in Protestant and Catholic children attending school together in Northern Ireland; in Hutus and Tutsis living side-by-side, forgiving neighbors who have done the unforgivable; in a movement to save Darfur that has thousands of high school and college chapters in 25 countries and brought 70,000 people to the Washington Mall, people of every age and faith and background and race united in common cause with suffering brothers and sisters halfway around the world.

Those numbers can be our future, our fellow citizens of the world showing us how to make the journey from oppression to survival, from witness to resistance and ultimately to reconciliation. That is what we mean when we say “never again.”

Got that? To the happy hopeychanger, “Never Again” isn’t about preventing another Hitler, a leader with an irrational and unhealthy obsession with “the Jews,” from endeavouring to wipe out the Joooos for the world’s—and his—own good; in Obama’s Kumbaya-ish reveries, real live Jews, like the ones in Israel, and their real live enemies, like Iran’s Ahmadinejad, don’t seem to factor into things. If they did, Obama wouldn’t, he couldn’t, have claimed that “Never Again” is defined as the leap from “resistance and ultimately to reconciliation,” since, more than six decades after Israel’s founding, its enemies have not reconciled themselves to its existence, nor, because of Islamic dogma, is such a “reconciliation” even forseeable.

But no matter. As long as Obama can reach out to Israel’s enemies and show them how un-Bush-like he is; as long as he can mouth empty, vapid words about “tolerance” and “reconciliation”; as long as he can play President Feelgood, dispensing comforting bromides to the adoring masses; as long as doesn’t actually have to lift a finger to deal with the current existential threat posed to the Jewish state that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust as a living embodiment of “Never Again,” then, hey, who are we lowly naysayers to complain?

Here’s how Mark Steyn puts it:

The French thinker (if you'll pardon the expression) Alain Finkielkraut says that "Never again" to a European means "Never again power politics. Never again nationalism. Never again Auschwitz" - which sounds like a slightly different order of priorities from yours. And over the decades the revulsion against any kind of "power politics" has come to trump whatever revulsion post-Auschwitz Europe might feel about mass murder. That's why in the early Nineties the EU let hundreds of thousands die on its borders in the Balkans rather than act to prevent it. Indeed, they "acted" only to prevent the Americans coming in and doing something about it, because they found it easier to tolerate the murder of their fellow Europeans than the idea of American military action to stop it.

It's interesting how easily the Obama definition of "Never again" fits that kind of passivity. Two of the three "causes for hope" the President cites - Rwanda, Sudan - are textbook "Never again" scenarios that roll around again and again and again. In fact, Darfur is still ongoing, so to congratulate yourself merely because some American highschoolers have formed "Save Darfur" chapters looks at best like moral preening and at worst like the kind of feeble passivity that enabled the Holocaust first time round. It's grand to be a member of the Grade Ten "Save Darfur" campaign, not so good to be back in Darfur wondering when the actual saving's going to start. If "Never again" now means "Bake sales against genocide", we're all doomed.

Chocolate chip Holocaust cookies, anyone?

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

Wednesday, 29 April 2009

Mothers’ “rights” in the Magic Kingdom: Arab News has an update on the story of the Canadian woman whose hubby won’t let her to leave the wacky Wahhabi kingdom with their kids, and whose mother has been lobbying the Canadian government on her behalf. Apparently, the husband has been abusing his wife and oldest son in a desperate bid to get back into Canada (my bolds):

JEDDAH: Despite recent reports that Nathalie Morin is living happily with her husband and their three children in the Kingdom, Morin’s mother Johanne Durocher is still fighting to bring her daughter and three grandchildren back to Canada while accusing her son-in-law of being “abusive and manipulative.”

Durocher, who spoke to Arab News recently by telephone from her home in Longueuil, a city near Montreal, described her daughter’s situation saying: “She is sequestrated, locked in the house, has no friends or family there and rarely has enough food in the house to feed herself and her children.”

Speaking candidly, Durocher also said that it is hard to reach her daughter with her only contacts being rare e-mails and the mobile phone number of her son-in-law, Saeed Al-Shahrani.

“I am very careful in what I ask her and say because I know if he suspects I am getting or giving her information, then I know Saeed will beat her up again,” Durocher said.

These are accusations that Al-Shahrani denied in a November interview with Arab News.

“Nathalie went back and forth (from the Kingdom to Canada) on her own will many times,” he said, adding that their life was happy and normal until Nathalie’s mother came to visit in December 2005.

“My mother-in-law did not approve of our customs and lifestyle, and she started to turn her daughter against our life.” But Durocher maintains that her daughter is in an abusive relationship, and has been sequestered by her husband.

“If she were happy with a husband from Saudi Arabia, Italy, or France, I would be happy for her and visit her often,” she told Arab News.

“It is true that I have done all I can to get Nathalie out of Saudi Arabia after I visited because I saw what she is going through. He hit her in front of me and calls her ‘stupid’. I have gotten e-mails from Nathalie in the past complaining of having no food, being locked in the house and being abused.”

Durocher also claimed that the beatings began in May 2005 even before she visited. She further said that Al-Shahrani was deported from Canada and would do anything to return.

“He took pictures of the bruises and abrasions on Nathalie and told her to call me and say that a taxi driver tried to rape her and beat her up and that I should call the Canadian media and complain to ask Nathalie come back to Canada, but only with her husband,” she said.

“This is why I believe that he started abusing Nathalie and has begun hitting my eldest grandson, Samir. He wants to cause the Saudi government and human rights organizations there to allow him to travel to Canada freely, claiming he wants his rights as a father if he allows them to return to Canada.”…

And since the Saudi government and “human rights” organizations adhere to sharia law, his “rights as a father” preclude Nathalie having any rights as a mother.

That’s “human rights” sharia-style, folks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:25 | link | comments

Happy talky won’t stop the Big Bangy: In a freaky convergence, today marks both Israel’s 61^st birthday and the happy hopeychangers’ 100^th day at the helm. Of course, on such an occasion Obama felt obliged to mouth the requisite empty blather, prompting these observations by contentions’ Jonathan Toobin:

Today is Israel’s 61st Independence Day and President Obama issued the following statement to commemorate the occasion:

On behalf of the people of the United States, President Obama congratulates the people and government of Israel on the 61st anniversary of Israel’s independence. The United States was the first country to recognize Israel in 1948, minutes after its declaration of independence, and the deep bonds of friendship between the U.S. and Israel remain as strong and unshakeable as ever. The President looks forward to working with Israel to advance our common interests, including the realization of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, ensuring Israel’s security, and strengthening the bilateral relationship, over the months and years to come.

This is entirely appropriate and this is a day for Israel’s friends throughout the world to reflect on the miracle of the state’s birth and the country’s impressive accomplishments over the course of its short history. But, nice words notwithstanding, here are a few questions for Obama to answer in the coming “months and years” of his presidency:

• While a “comprehensive peace” is an intrinsic good that both countries desire, how can it be achieved while the party with which Israel is expected to make such a peace is led by two factions — Hamas and Fatah — neither of which actually support the idea of real peace with a Jewish state?

• What sort of pressure are you prepared to put on the Palestinians in order to force them to cease support for terrorism and the fomenting of hatred against Israelis and Jews (hint: they already pledged to do this in the Oslo Accords and several follow-up agreements, but never made good on the promise)?

• While the United States is open in its desire for Israel to make more territorial withdrawals in the West Bank, what assurances can you possibly give the Israelis that this land will not be used as a launching pad for further terrorist attacks — as has been the case with the Gaza Strip since Israel left in 2005?

• Most importantly, what, other than making statements that the Iranians consider a sign of weakness and irresolution, are you prepared to do in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — something that you promised to do during your campaign for the presidency — with which they can threaten both Israel’s existence and the stability of every Arab regime in the region?

After 100 days in office, it’s hard to argue that Obama and his foreign policy team have formulated any coherent answers to these questions. Other than a desire to placate the Islamic world in general (and Iran in particular), as well as an obvious distaste for Israel’s current prime minister, it isn’t clear that Obama has anything in mind that can be described as a policy. Among the chattering classes who applaud everything Obama does it is the fashion to dismiss the existential threat to Israel from Iran. But Israelis and the vast bipartisan majority of Americans who support the Jewish State don’t think the Iranians are kidding about their desire to wipe it off the map. And that includes the majority of Jews who voted for Obama last year and will expect their president to do more than talk, once the genocidal threat to Israel’s population is no longer in doubt…

Trouble is once the “genocidal threat…is no longer in doubt,” Israel could be a smouldering pile of rubble. Not that that would stop the Jews from voting for Obama again in ’12.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:43 | link | comments (1)

JanNap's lame name game: U.S. Homeland Security dumbkopf, JanNap, the woman who thinks Islamic terrorists are "man-caused disaster" causers, it busily euphemizing again. Jan wants to get rid of the "swine" component of the brewing pandemic's name--too un-p.c. you see--and refer to it instead by the more accurate yet cryptic name, H1N1 flu. ("Aitch One En One"? It doesn't exactly sing, does it?)

Alternatively, we could call it "Divine flu," since at least one true believer thinks it's Allah's way of punishing the infidel U.S.

Update: The Jew flu? Or is it the Bushalihitlerburton flu?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:32 | link | comments (1)

He also loved stroking fluffy white kittens and helping little old ladies cross the street: A National Post reader rushes to the defence of a much-maligned figure:

In defence of Muhammad

Re: Don't Fall For Iranian Assurances, letter to the editor, April 28.

Contrary to the claims of this letter-writer, there is ample historical evidence that Mecca was conquered by forces loyal to the prophet Muhammad only after a tribe loyal to the Meccans broke a truce. The city was defeated without any bloodshed. The city's residents expected vengeance, but the Prophet proclaimed a general amnesty. In their relief and surprise, the whole population of Mecca hastened to swear allegiance. This was consistent with the noble character of the Prophet who was a statesman, politician, husband, father, commander-in-chief, compassionate person and realist.

Rizwan Jabbar, Toronto.

Kind of makes him sound like the 7^th Century Tony Blair, no?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:47 | link | comments (1)

The CHRC looks for transnational cred: In the face of ongoing assaults on the legitimacy of Canada’s many human rights bodies, the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s Commissar (or should that be Czarina?) in-chief, Jennifer Lynch, looks to the international community for support and succour. Here are the brief remarks she delivered at an international gathering of “human rights” wonks held mere days before—and in the same EU city as—Durban II. (Gee, I wonder how much putting Jen and her posse up in a shmancy hotel in one of Europe’s most expensive cities ended up costing Canadian taxpayers):

Excellency,

Distinguished representatives,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to this workshop on the role of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in international human rights mechanisms.

I thank Dra. Gabriela del Mar Ramirez Perez, Regional Chair of the Americas and Defensora de Venezuela for chairing this event.

I also thank our distinguished panelists for sharing their wisdom and insights with us today, as well as the speakers and facilitators from various national institutions.

Special words of gratitude are due to Cynthia Gervais from Rights and Democracy and all those who contributed to preparing and delivering this valuable workshop.

The UPR, Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures present valuable new opportunities for NHRIs.

Mechanisms such as the UPR, Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures present valuable new opportunities because they help NHRIs promote and protect human rights.

National institutions have engaged energetically in the UPR process over the last year. This has already allowed us to develop best practices that have meaningful impacts in our home countries. Many NHRIs, for instance, integrate UPR recommendations in national action plans and annual reports; some also use web casts and facilitate consultation processes in the preparation of their UPR submission.

There is great potential for NHRIs to develop synergies and linkages with international human rights mechanisms, such as the UPR, Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures. We will explore this potential during our workshop.

It is impressive to see how much the influence of NHRIs on international human rights mechanisms has grown in the last years. Treaty bodies, for instance, have adopted general comments on the role of NHRIs, amended rules of procedures and working methods to facilitate NHRI participation, and invited NHRIs to reporting sessions. National institutions are asked to contribute their expertise to Special Procedures and Mandate Holders during country visits and make numerous presentations to the Human Rights Council. They are also recognized as an important opportunity for monitoring the implementation of recommendations from international human rights bodies.

Collaboration is our hallmark

This is only the beginning, a glimpse of the potential afforded by international human rights mechanisms. Our ability to take full advantage of these mechanisms depends on the level of collaboration between NHRIs, NGOs, States and other actors such as the OHCHR at the international and regional levels.

Last year, the ICC helped organize the first in a series of regional workshops here in Geneva. This was followed by workshops focused on Asia, Africa; and today, the Americas. Each ICC region has particular experiences to contribute to our common understanding of the potential offered by these mechanisms. I very much look forward to learning more about the experience from my colleagues in the Americas, where we also find an important Inter-American human rights system.

The ICC will use the results of our various workshops to develop practical guidelines for NHRI involvement in human rights mechanisms. We will continue to encourage opportunities for NHRIs and other partners to exchange best practices and to share their knowledge and experiences through international, regional and local networks.

I wish you a very successful workshop and look forward to the outcome of your deliberations.

Okay, so it was hardly Churchillian (or even Obamaesque) in phrasing, comprised of the clunky, jargon-laden, uneuphonious locution that’s the lingua franca of folks in her field. (I speak with some authority here, since I used to be a professional speechwriter.) Nevertheless, I find the thought of apparatchiks from hither and thither—the Jen Lynch equivalents from, say, Venezuela and Nigeria and Spain—acting as each other’s sounding boards, cheering each other on, and collaborating on transnational “human rights mechanisms” to be utterly, immensely terrifying.

Posted by: scaramouche at 01:04 | link | comments (3)

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Brits aligned with Arabs sh*t on Jews: A group of Israeli singers, who like all able-bodied Israelis serve in the IDF, has been banned from appearing at the London theatre (the IDF being implicated in Gaza “war crimes,” and all). From This Is London (my bolds):

A group of young Israeli soldiers turned singers are at the centre of a censorship row after their central London performance was cancelled.

Five soldiers, aged 19, from the Israeli Defence Force had been due to perform a medley of national songs at the Bloomsbury Theatre as part of a sell-out family show to celebrate their country's 61st anniversary.

But the show has been shelved after the venue, owned by University College London, claimed the content was "political". The organisers, the Zionist Federation, denied the claim, saying the songs do not have any military content and accused UCL of censorship.

It has been moved to a secret "north London venue" and is due to be watched today by hundreds of theatre-goers.

The Zionist Federation, which supports the integration of Jews in Israel, says the new venue has already been inundated with complaints and the soldiers' routine, the Israel 61 Family Show, could be pulled altogether.

The show also features school choirs, dancing and appearances by radio presenter Nick Ferrari and stand-up comedian Mark Maier.

The organisers say the soldiers - Loren Benjamin Peled, Shaylee Atary, Noga Erez, Reut Raz and Menachem Liav Ben David - have never seen active service and come from the defence force's education unit, which entertains at bases and on the frontline. But human rights groups rejected the idea the show was "a bit of fun" and accused the IDF of committing war crimes in Gaza.

A Zionist Federation spokesman said: "The Bloomsbury Theatre has decided they should impose censorship on what people should be allowed to see. We agreed to remove the soldiers' act from the bill but even then the theatre was against the whole thing." He added it was hypocritical that other London theatres staged pro-Palestinian productions. Peter Cadley, director of the Bloomsbury Theatre, said: "We took the booking on the understanding it was going to be an entertainment event.

"We received assurances to that effect and then we spotted on the website about the IDF. This was against the spirit of the agreement so we decided to cancel." Mr Cadley agreed "in some regards" their decision could be seen as censorship. There were also concerns anti-Israel protesters would turn up. A show at Bloomsbury last Wednesday with Israeli musician Idan Raichel went ahead as scheduled.

Chris Doyle, chairman of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: "We should not be permitting a dance troupe from an army under a UN investigation for possible war crimes to be coming to the UK."

Lior Ben Dor, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy, said: "It is an artistic event, not a political one."

Oh, Lior, you naïf. Don’t you realize all Islam is “political”—which is why Arabs and other OIC members cannot countenance sovereign Jews in Dar al Islam. And sovereign Jews who defend themselves with tanks and aircraft—why, that’s sure to drive those seeking Arab-British understanding absolutely berserk.

Here are the faces of the singers/war crime committers:

Loren Benjamin Peled, Shaylee Atary, Noga Erez, Reut Raz and Menachem Liav Ben David

Don't they look eee-vil?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:43 | link | comments

"Racial profiling" in Glasgow: An “Asian” jewellery store is clamping down on customers walking in unannounced wearing niqabs after being robbed by two thieves so attired. From the Daily Mail:

Muslims wearing traditional veils have been banned from entering an Asian jewellery shop.

The move is a precaution against crime after the store was recently robbed by two men who covered their entire face apart from their eyes.

The men struck at ATAA Jewellers in the west end of Glasgow, wearing full Muslim female dress, including the Niqab headscarf, and were carrying handbags.

Owner Rukhsana Sadiq said the staff who were in the shop at the time of the raid were so shaken they have taken the drastic move to make staff feel safe.

Ms Sadiq was in the shop at the time and spent hours showing what she thought were the two women gold, but she never saw their faces.

'We didn't realise how tall they were until we got attacked and the pepper sprays came out.

'They know us by face, but we don't know who they are. I mean they can even walk by the shop, we don't even know it's them and it's really, really frightening.

'It will just help if the community gets together and does something solid, for these women to know. It is our safety that matters as well at the end of the day.

'God forbid anything like this happening to anyone else.'

Rukhsana's brother Mohammed Amin Sadiq said it was not the first time that a veil's been used as a disguise in the area as two people wearing veils tried to steal money from another shop.

He told the BBC Asian Network they are planning to get a sign which says anyone covering their face will be banned from entering the shop.

If Muslim women wearing the Niqab want to come into the shop they will be able to do so if they phone up in advance and there is a female member of staff present to identify the shopper.

Sounds reasonable to me, though not to some:

But the move is set to come up against criticism. Madihah Ansari, a 19-year-old student in Glasgow, said a sign banning the veil was not the solution.

Madihah wears a Burkha and always has her head and body covered. Sometimes she chooses to wear a Niqab as well, meaning her face is covered.

She said: 'I just really don't like that idea. It is like prejudice about one type of person.

'Just because two guys did a crime and they were dressed up in that kind of outfit you can't prejudice everyone else.

'There'll be loads of people who just want to go in and buy gold and come out. To prevent them kind of reminds me of when they had signs saying 'no blacks'.'

Sorry, I’m a bit confused. When did “blacks” ever put on Niqabs to pull off jewellery heists? I must have missed that part of the Martin Luther King documentary. Also--I’m pretty sure if the store had been robbed by, say, someone wearing a George Dubya Bush rubber mask, the owner would have clamped down on Dubya rubber mask wearers (since this is clearly about robbers using disguises, and not the type of disguise, or the religious provenance of the disguise, being used).

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:11 | link | comments (1)

A hanging offense: A Palestinian Authority court—you know, the purported “moderates” on the Palestinian scene—has sentenced a man to hang. His crime? No, not murder or anything violent. The poor man made the mistake of selling some property he owned in the West Bank property to Joooos. Arutz Sheva has the details:

A Palestinian Authority military court on Tuesday sentenced a Hevron Arab to death by hanging for the crime of selling land to Jews in Judea and Samaria, the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency reported. The three-member judicial panel heard the case last week and handed down its verdict and conviction on Tuesday.

Dozens of Arabs have been executed in the past for collaborating with Israel by selling land to Jews, but the court’s ruling is the first time the PA officially has handed down a guilty verdict of treason for the crime. Previous summary executions with the approval of the PA have been met with outcries from human rights organizations.

Jews have spent millions of dollars the past few years to buy land from Arabs in an effort to eliminate all claims against Jewish rights to the land. The PA began fighting the sales in the 1990s, announcing in 1996 that the death penalty would be imposed for selling land to Jews.

Seven Arabs were executed in the same year for “collaborating,” and the PA later admitted that it was responsible for the murders. More executions took place the following years, and one Arab, Mohammed Abu al-Hawa, was tortured and murdered in 2006 for allegedly selling an apartment building in Jerusalem to Jews.

The Human Rights Watch organization protested to then-PA leader Yasser Arafat at the time, declaring that statements by officials who encouraged punishment for selling land to Jews were ''casting grave doubt on your government's commitment to human rights and the rule of law.''

The PA law was based on a law ordered to be passed by King Hussein in 1973, prohibiting the sale of land in Jordan or in Judea and Samaria by a Jordanian to Israelis. A relatively more moderate law replaced it in 1995 but still effectively barred the sale of land to non-Arabs…

Well, how else are “moderates” going to be able to make Judea and Samaria Judenrein, as the “moderate” Hashemite-ruled Palestinian state of Jordan has been for decades?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:16 | link | comments

Muslim brothers and their “vision” quest: Islam Online notes the passing of a “visionary” American Muslim:

CALIFORNIA — American Muslims are mourning Dr. Hassan Hathout, a renowned leader who passed away this weekend after a long life in serving the Islamic faith.

"We have lost today a luminary of Islam in North America," Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, Chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, told IslamOnline.net.

"He has been a voice of wisdom, clarity and compassion for Islam for over thirty years in Southern California."

Dr. Hathout, 84, died Saturday in Pasadena, California after a long period of sickness.

"It is with deep sadness we have learned of the sad demise of Dr. Hassan Hathout this afternoon," the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California said in a statement.

"May he be blessed with Jannah al Firdaws and may his family be granted with patience for their irrevocable loss."

A physician by profession, Dr. Hathout, of Egyptian origin, came to the United States in 1989 with the goal of making da`wa to the American people.

He was a co-founder of the International Organization of Medical Sciences, designed with the goal of dissemination of God-guided medical ethics.

Additionally, he was the co-founder of the Interfaith Council of Southern California

Dr. Hathout was the keynote speaker at the first Christian-Muslim celebration at the White House in 1999.

He was also an active member of the World Health Organization (WHO) committee on ethics of human reproduction, and a close affiliate to the Vatican.

In addition to being a scientist and ethicist, Dr. Hathout was a bicultural and bilingual poet, speaker, thinker, and writer.

"To me personally, Hassan was more than a brother, a friend, a teacher, a leader and a pioneer," Dr. Maher Hathout, the deceased's younger brother, told IOL.

"He was the only person I saw in my life who never hated, and relentlessly represented Islam in his own behavior as well as in his expression and writings."

Visionary

The umbrella Muslim organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Dr. Hathout has been an inspiration for many American Muslims.

"He was a visionary person and a scholar at the same time," CAIR executive director Nihad Awad told IOL.

"He inspired so many of us with his understanding of Islam and his dedication to Islamic work in general."

Muslim leaders praised contributions Dr. Hathout has made in serving Muslim issues in the US and around the world.

"He had a special charisma as a well-educated intellectual Muslim, in addition to his high level of professionalism and great experience," Dr. Kamal Hilbawi said.

"He concentrated on reshaping the future and addressing the crisis of Muslim mind.

"Many Muslim generations will continue to benefit from his great legacy."

The prominent Muslim leader has received many awards from interfaith and humanitarian communities, including the Jewish Christian Muslim Olive Branch award for his efforts in making peace and harmony between people of different faiths…

Sounds like a righteous individual, no? Worthy, perhaps, of a Nobel Peace Prize, or at least a Saul Hayes Award for Human Rights. But a FrontPage Magazine article from last fall offers another perspective (i.e. an infidel one) on the brothers Hassan and their, er, “vision”:

Founded in 1986 under the name “Political Action Committee” as a spinoff from the Wahhabist Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC), the organization was retitled the Muslim Public Affairs Council two years later when it received its 501(c) 3 status from the Internal Revenue Service. From the very beginning MPAC has been dominated by Maher and Hassan Hathout, two Egyptian siblings who appear to have immigrated to the United States for the purpose of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood’s radical ideology. Indeed, Hassan Hathout is reported by his admirers to have been a devoted disciple and companion of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.

According to research performed by the Investigative Project, MPAC President Maher Hathout defended H. Rap Brown (a.k.a. “Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin”) at a dinner raising funds for the convicted cop-killer. Speaking before the trial, Hathout declared: “There are two stories for this case. One story, told by our brother Imam Jamil Al-Amin; the other story is a different one, told by the police of Atlanta. It just happened that we believe the story of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and we don't believe the story told by the
police of Atlanta.”

Consistent with Brotherhood practice, Hathout has long pushed the U.S. government to support so-called Muslim “reformers” who are in fact extremists. The publication Minaret reported as follows on a 1997 speech he gave at the State Department on emerging Islamic trends: "In [Hathout’s] view the reformists, represented by leaders like Jamaluddin Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, Mohammad Iqbal, Hassan al-Banna and Maududi, Ghannoushi, Erbakan and Turabi, have advocated a pluralistic society that would work for peace and justice for all. They have, however, according to Dr. Hathout, been ignored, despite the fact that they represent the masses and speak their language."

In fact, these are anything but reformers working for “peace and justice for all” – except as part of a violently imposed Islamist world order under Shariah. For example, al-Banna was a fierce proponent of Jihad, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that has given rise to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical Sunni movements. Rashid Al Ghannoushi was the head of Tunisia's banned Islamic fundamentalist Al-Nahda Party and was convicted by a Tunisian court of responsibility for a bomb blast that blew the foot off a British tourist. Sayeed Abul ala Mawdudi is the founder of the virulently Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan.

Given such leadership, it should be no surprise that the Muslim Public Affairs Council has, since its founding, engaged in political activities and propaganda that serve Shariah and radical Islam…

Oh dear. The late leader sounds like quite the “interfaith” bamboozler. I wonder--can a Jewish Christian Muslim Olive Branch award be revoked posthumously?

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

Exquisitely sensitive; supremely stupid: Israel’s Deputy Health Minister wants to ix-nay the ig-pay in the name of the brewing pandemic because Jews and Muslims revile the porcine. From AP via Yahoo:

JERUSALEM – The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.

Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products...

True enough, but only Islam considers Jews unclean because you-know-who transformed them into swine (‘n’ apes). If we want to be really sensitive, maybe we should call it "man-caused disaster" flu.

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

Meet Obama’s new “advisor”: Islam Online interviews Dalia Mogahed,

a hijab-clad American Muslim, (who) has made history being the first Muslim woman appointed to a position in President Barack Obama's administration.

She sets on a newly-formed interfaith advisory board the administration hopes will improve relations with Muslims in the US and across the globe.

The Egyptian-born American heads the Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies, a research center that produces studies on Muslim public opinion worldwide…

As a pollster, Ms. Mogahed is well-positioned to opine on “the rising Islamophobia in America” (I.O’s inelegant way of putting it):

Islamphobia in America is very real. Gallup finds that Muslims are among the most unfavorably viewed groups in the US and only a little over a third of Americans say they have no prejudice against Muslims. This presents a grave danger to America as a whole. The disease of racism, by definition, is a bias in judgment. This means that racism clouds sound judgment and leads people to make irrational decisions. It also divides a nation and prevents the full utilization of its intellectual and cultural resources. Racism is wasteful. Racism is a strategic disadvantage. I am very proud of the progress America has made in fighting this problem as it relates to the relationship between blacks and whites. In 1956 only 4% of Americans approved of a marriage between whites and blacks. The marriage that produced our president was illegal in Virginia when he was born. Today 80% of Americans approve of marriage between blacks and whites. Last year, Barack Obama became the first Democratic Presidential candidate in decades to carry Virginia. We are a stronger and smarter nation because of this growth. Our next growth spurt will be in ridding our society of anti-Muslim prejudice.

She’s comparing prejudice against blacks in pre-Civil Rights-era America to legitimate criticism of Islam and its inherently supremacist doctrines (because critical discussion of Islam and how it is practised is what “Islamophobia” mostly boils down to)? Apples and kumquats, Ms. Mogahed; apples and kumquats. And how, pray tell, is the “next growth spurt” going to rid society of “anti-Muslim prejudice”? By putting “limits” on free speech, like they do in Saudi Arabia and Canada?

Great choice there, Obama.

Update: Another "sagacious" Obama advisor.

Update: In an interview last year, Mogahed explains Muslims' "nuanced" views about the West.

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

“Defensive” jihad argument sways Brit jury: Despite loads of circumstantial evidence, the prosecution has failed to persuade a jury that a trio of lads from Leeds was involved in the ’05 London bombings. From the Beeb (my bolds):

…At the heart of this prosecution was the allegation that the three Leeds men went to London on 16 December 2004 to scout for bomb targets.

The police's suspicions began in the days after the attacks, when detectives pieced together a picture of the lives of the four dead bombers.

The remains of Mohammad Sidique Khan's phone, found amid the wreckage of his Edgware Road blast that killed six people, included a number tagged "SHAXMOB" - attributable to Mohammed Shakil. Another entry, "SADS", referred to Sadeer Saleem.

Then they had statements from the trio themselves, confirming they knew the bombers.

Later, forensic tests on the bomb factory linked the trio to items found inside the Leeds flat.

In late 2006 police officers mapped the movements of the defendants' mobile phones.

The men had been together in London in December 2004, alongside bomber Hasib Hussain and, for part of the day, another of the 7/7 attackers, Germaine Lindsay.

Prosecutors told the trial their movements bore a "striking similarity" to the sites eventually attacked.

But there was one problem - and the defendants exposed it the moment they took to the witness box.

Invading armies

The men all freely admitted having visited London - but said it was to allow Mr Ali to say goodbye to his sister. He and Mr Saleem were heading to a mujahideen training camp in Pakistan - following Khan and fellow bomber Shehzad Tanweer, who had already left.

Each of the defendants in turn said they had visited militant camps. But they said their trips were nothing to do with al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism.

The men went to these training camps because they believed that Muslim men in the UK should fight to defend Islamic lands from invading armies.

In each case, the trio convinced the jury that their support for violent jihad did not mean they supported suicide bombings in the UK...

And the dumb jury actually bought that feeble argument? Why didn’t the prosecution present evidence from a historian/scholar of Islam who could have refuted the malarkey?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:01 | link | comments

Using the Holocaust for leftist purposes: Something about this—a brief report in the current issue of Canadian Jewish Congress newsletter AMCHA—doesn’t sit right with me:

Windsor Jewish Federation's Student Social Justice Forum a Smashing Success

One of the premier programs of the Windsor Jewish Federation is the Annual Student Forum called "Together We Can Make a Difference," a long-time dream of the Windsor Holocaust Education Committee. The Committee had the expertise to develop and coordinate the workshop but lacked the necessary resources. Hence, a few members reached out to some community organizations such as the Centre for Studies for Social Justice and the Canadian Auto Workers Local 200, and a partnership was born. On February 19th we held our fifth annual workshop with a record-setting 137 students participating.

Local schools are invited to send two Grade 8 students with an interest in social justice. This year the interactive workshops focused on the Holocaust, poverty and homelessness, refugees, promoting respect for diversity and inclusion and the environment. An art workshop incorporated the overall themes as well.

Because of their participation in the conference, students realize that they are the agents for change in their schools and their communities. Students leave the conference feeling that they have the tools they need to foster social justice.

Students are then expected to return to their schools and share the information with their peers and develop a project that enriches their school or the greater community.

This program was recognized by the United Way for its outreach to youth and the collaboration of the partners. The Windsor Jewish Federation has also had significant media coverage over the five years. For the Windsor Holocaust Education Committee, it is an exhilarating and effective way to make the world a better place.

It is? I suppose it wouldn’t occur to these folks that six million Jews didn’t die in order to provide object lessons in “poverty, homelessness, refugees, promoting respect for diversity and inclusion and the environment” and other Trudeaupian mush, and that using the Holocaust in this way is unconscionable—an insult to those who were slaughtered. I’d be far happier if the Annual Student Forum helped Eighth Graders develop critical thinking skills so they could withstand the anti-Israel indoctrination they’ll receive in university. That way they could rebut the arguments of their professors and others who would unleash what amounts to a second Holocaust, this time on the Jewish state, for the sake of “social justice” for poor, "excluded" Palestinians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:03 | link | comments (5)

Monday, 27 April 2009

As seen on TV: Here's the theme song of a famous 70s TV show that starred the late Bea Arthur, the spinoff of another famous show, All in the Ummah:

Ayatollah Khomeini was a bit of a zany.

He didn’t care if the whole world croaked.

Jimmy Carter helped to get him started--

Said holy rollah ought to go for broke.

Twelfth imam don’t know where he came from--

Ain’t ya glad he’ll return?

And when Barack is reachin’ out his hand

That’s the time that we’re gonna burn.

And then there’s ‘Moud.

And then there’s ‘Moud…

Kooky, nukey, his success ain’t nothin’ flukey,

Bite me, ‘Moud.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:59 | link | comments

Insensitive photo-op: An Obama administration-approved low-flying flight freaked out some residents of the Big Apple, for whom memories of 9/11 remain fresh. From Reuters:

One of President Barack Obama's official planes and an Air Force fighter jet flew low over the Statue of Liberty on Monday in an approved photo opportunity that reminded some startled New Yorkers of the September 11 attacks.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was "furious" and criticized the federal government and his own administration for failing to warn the public, which was rattled by the image of a jumbo jet flanked by an F-16 flying near the World Trade Center site.

"The good news is it was nothing more than an inconsiderate, badly conceived and insensitive photo op with the taxpayers' money," Bloomberg said.

New Yorkers remain sensitive to any incident evocative of the 2001 attacks, which involved hijacked airliners that destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Many people fled buildings, and stock prices extended losses at the time.

The U.S. Air Force, which operates the president's plane, said the "aerial photo mission" involved an F-16 fighter jet escort and one of the Boeing 747s designated as Air Force One when the president is aboard. Obama was not on board.

Police said federal authorities told them not to disclose the information ahead of time and to direct any inquiries to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA called it "an approved military photo op." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he was unaware of the exercise and would consult with the military about what happened.

You do that, Bob.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:22 | link | comments (1)

Grand idea: According to Reuters, FMs from Afghanistan, Pakistan and—wait for it—flipping Iran are going to get together on a monthly basis to help stabilize the region:

KABUL, April 27 (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan will meet once a month as part of efforts to fight terrorism and stabilise Afghanistan, the three nations said on Monday.

Iran and Pakistan border Afghanistan. The United States has said it wants to increase its engagement with both countries as part of a more regional approach to tackling the growing strength of Taliban-linked militants across the south and east of Afghanistan.

But the cooperation is not guaranteed to be in line with U.S. aims.

"Our countries have come together to strengthen our relationship and cooperation. We decided that we will meet in Islamabad, Kabul and Tehran," Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told a news conference.

Spanta said the next meeting will be in Tehran in May but would not give a date.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said he had arrived in Kabul with a draft framework for cooperation, which the three ministers agreed on the sidelines of a meeting in Tehran and aims to look for local solutions.

"We have common problems ... indigenous solutions will be more likely to succeed and will be more sustainable," Qureshi said.

Pakistan was stung by criticism last week from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said its government had abdicated to the Taliban by agreeing to Islamic law in part of the country and the nuclear-armed nation was a "mortal threat" to world security.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country was ready to throw its considerable diplomatic weight behind stabilising Afghanistan and the wider region, but has not yet decided on cooperation with the United States.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has mustered all its power and is willing to put it to work to find a regional joint solution and we will implement it with enthusiasm," he said...

No doubt.

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

The whole ball o’ wax: Ever read Wahhabi website Islam Online’s description on Google? I hadn’t either until just now and, it’s kind of, well, freaky:

At IslamOnline (IOL) we strive to provide you with all the information you need about Islam and its civilizations, the universe and its elements, ...

Pretty comprehensive, no?

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

It’s official!: Obama is bad for the Jews. From the L.A. Times:

Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration, already on treacherous political ground because of its outreach to traditional adversaries such as Iran and Cuba, has opened the door a crack to engagement with the militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid.

But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

The aid measures may never come into play. Power-sharing negotiations between Hamas and its rival, the U.S.-backed Fatah faction, appear deadlocked. The two have been bitterly divided since 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Fatah controls only the West Bank.

Nevertheless, the move has alarmed congressional supporters of Israel, who are watching for signs that the new Democratic team at the White House might be more sympathetic to Palestinians than was the Bush administration.

The administration's proposal is akin to agreeing to support a government that "only has a few Nazis in it," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a House hearing last week.

Maybe Rahm can help Barack track down some “moderate” Hamas.

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

More bad news: Porcine vectors and zealots who kill/If the flu don't getcha then demography will.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:49 | link | comments

Rum punch: One of the strangest episodes in the annals of antisemitism has to be the Canadian Jewish Congress’s efforts in the 1960s to build up Canada’s Nazi Party from a big fat zero into a going concern. Ezra Levant mentions the bizarre affair in his book Shakedown. That elicited a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen written by Bernie Farber and signed by Rabbi Reuven Bulka claiming that the CJC did nothing of the kind, and that its support for the Nazis amounted to nothing more than Canada’s foremost Jewish advocacy organization buying the Nazis “a bottle of rum.” (These days, yo ho ho, Canadian Jews don’t buy people rum; they do, however, “mentor” non-piratical Somalis.) Bulka is therefore requesting that Ezra correct this misimpression should his book go into a second printing.

Ezra is having none of it—including the rum—and recounts the whole creepy Jews-boosting-Nazi-fortunes story in a piece in the Ottawa Citizen:

In 1965 and 1966, the Canadian Jewish Congress helped organize the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party. That sounds crazy, but it's true, and I wrote about it in Shakedown, my new book about Canada's human rights commissions.

In a letter to the editor in the Citizen last week, the CJC's current co-president, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, called my book's description of the CJC's role "fiction." He said all the CJC did for the Nazis was buy them a bottle of rum.

It's true that the CJC did buy drinks for Nazis in the 1960s. That's pretty strange in itself, and I'd like to hear more of Rabbi Bulka's thoughts on spending Jewish charitable donations that way. But the CJC did a lot more than that: they hired an ex-cop named John Garrity to go to work for the Canadian Nazi Party.

Garrity helped organize that rag-tag band of losers, though they never amounted to anything except for fodder for the press.

There were only a dozen active Nazis when Garrity joined them and they weren't really a political party. He called them "harmless misfits," and they were -- their leader, John Beattie, was a nervous, gaunt, unemployed 24-year-old clerk who spent much of his time dodging angry Jews who tried to beat him up. (One of Garrity's jobs was to help Beattie escape street fights.)

Garrity brought more than just rum to the Nazis. He brought with him pretty much the only organizational talent the group had. They put him in charge of membership. Garrity called himself the "Heinrich Himmler" of the party, and a "Nazi leader for the Jewish Congress."

I'd like Rabbi Bulka's thoughts on that, too.

Of course, Garrity helped his paymasters at the CJC, too, giving them information about the names of party members and donors. And when Garrity finally quit the Nazis, he wrote a tell-all about his adventure in Maclean's magazine.

Garrity larded that report with personal insults toward Beattie and the Nazis. But he did acknowledge that they had never done, or even contemplated doing, anything illegal. All of the violence he witnessed was directed at Beattie, usually by Jewish vigilantes. "Sadly, it is the ... anti-Nazi extremists who, in their attempts to destroy Beattie, provide him with most of the publicity he craves. If it weren't for the riots and the assaults and the public protest meetings they hold, there'd be no real news in Beattie," Garrity wrote.

And that is the importance of this story and why I put it in my book about human rights commissions. Beattie hadn't done anything illegal. He was just a loser who believed in a discredited ideology. But the CJC wanted to bring in political censorship laws and I believe they needed to build up the threat to persuade Parliament to abridge Canada's freedom of speech.

Garrity puffed up a group of Nazi nobodies into a national menace, first through organizational support and then through spectacular media publicity. And, sure enough, Parliament enacted section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which censors offensive speech…

The irony, of course, is that instead of “protecting” Jews from harm, Section 13 (and its provincial siblings) has now been turned against Jews—witness the B’nai Brith’s Kafkaesque run-in with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission—and is quite possibly the single most damaging piece of legislation ever passed in the history of our Dominion, since it seriously undermines (and devalues) our most crucial freedom, free speech. And what really sticks in the craw is that one has the sense that the CJC has nary a regret—about boosting the fortunes of Nazis; about championing state censorship—and that, if it had a chance to do the whole rum ‘n’ Nazis intrigue all over again, it would do exactly the same lame-brained thing.

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

Porcine pandemonium: What's shaping up to be worse--the possibility of a global swine flu pandemic? Or media hysteria about the possibilty of a global swine flu pandemic?

At the moment, it appears, the latter.

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

Age of rage: Since Mark Steyn's Song of the Week is "Aquarius," it seemed like a good time to revive my own version of the tune, from the show Hairan: A Shia Tribal Musical:

When Mahmoud is on his seventh spouse,
And Iran’s allied with Hezbo and Hamas,
Then war will guide the planet
And jihad cause a ruckus.
This is the dawning of the age of A-scary-us,
Age of A-scary-us,
A-scary-s, A-scary-us.

Disharmony and tons of seething.
Bullying and hate abounding.
Lots of falsehood and taqiyah,
They will bait and then deceive ya.
You won’t know what to believe.
A-scary-us,
A-scary-us.

When Mahmoud waits for the 12th imam,
He knows just where the man is coming from.
Last seen decamping down a well.
Soon Jooo-ooos’ll fry in Hell.
This is the dawning of the Age of A-scary-us,
Age of A-scary-us.
A-scary-us,
A-scary-us.

Let the nukes rain,
Let the nukes rain,
Let the nukes rain
The nukes rain down…

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:30 | link | comments

Israelis “mentor” Somalis: Some Somali pirates were in for a rude awakening when, in a bid to commandeer a cruise ship, they encountered some stiff-necked resistance. The Globe and Mail has the AP account:

NAIROBI -- The small white skiff approached the Italian cruise ship Melody after dinnertime as it sailed north of the Seychelles, the pirates firing wildly toward the 1,500 passengers and crew on board.

What the pirates didn't expect was that, in the darkness, the crew would fire back.

In a new twist to the increasing scourge of Somali pirate hijackings, the private Israeli security forces aboard the MSC Cruises ocean liner fired on the pirates with pistols and water hoses, preventing them from clambering aboard, the company's director, Domenico Pellegrino, said.

"It was an emergency operation," Mr. Pellegrino said. "They didn't expect such a quick response. They were surprised."

Passengers were ordered to return to their cabins and the lights on deck were switched off. The massive vessel then sailed on in darkness, eventually escorted by a Spanish warship to make sure it made it to its next port.

"It felt like we were in war," the ship's Italian commander, Ciro Pinto, told Italian state radio.

None of the roughly 1,000 passengers were hurt in the Saturday incident and by yesterday afternoon they were back out on deck sunning themselves, Mr. Pellegrino said.

But analysts say the unprecedented use of weapons by the ship's security force could make things worse in the pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa, where over 100 ships were attacked last year by Somalia-based pirates. In nearly all the hijackings, the crews were unharmed and were let go after a ransom was paid.

"There is a consensus in the shipping industry that, in the vast majority of cases, having an armed guard is not a good idea. The No. 1 reason is that it could cause an escalation of violence and pirates that have so far been trying to scare ships could now start to kill people," said Roger Middleton, an expert on Somali piracy at London-based think tank Chatham House.

Other experts disagree, saying piracy off the coast of modern-day Somalia is unique in that the pirates are most interested in human cargo…

And isn’t that Israel’s—and the West’s—situation—in a nutshell? You can either stand tough and defend your property from "pirates". Or you can allow the pirates to take what’s yours—and try to deal with the “root cause” of piracy—because “experts” insist that fighting pirates only encourages them.

Fight or cave: the choice is ours.

Update: It's good to be the pirate king.

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

Sunday, 26 April 2009

Transgressive progressives: The current UNHRC diva, Navi Pillay, is delighted by the “progress” made during Durban II. From the Toronto Star:

The UN anti-racism review conference was held in Geneva last week and the world did not stop turning, as the conference's detractors wanted us to believe. In fact, the world might be a better place now that the conference approved by consensus a document that builds on the commitments made in Durban eight years ago to combat racial discrimination and intolerance.

Yet for well over a year, a number of voices had advocated a boycott of the review conference, long before a single word was put to paper. This opposition was for the most part based on fears that the Geneva meeting would trigger a repetition of the virulent anti-Semitic activities of some non-governmental organizations at the margins of the 2001 conference in Durban.

Ten UN member states, including Canada, Israel, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and five of the 27 EU countries, decided to stay away from the Geneva gathering, which the UN General Assembly had called to review the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, the final document of the 2001 conference.

The absence of these countries loomed large when, on the first day of the conference, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech attacking Israel, the U.S., and other western States, effectively using this UN forum for partisan political rhetoric.

However, such a divisive stance was roundly rejected the following day with the adoption by consensus of a document that is the final word of the conference. Member states showed their determination, spirit of compromise and respect for diversity to move as one on a common and very urgent cause. This agreement will hopefully have lasting beneficial effects for the countless victims of racism, discrimination and intolerance worldwide.

In the document, states undertook to prevent manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, especially in relation to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. States also agreed to promote greater participation and opportunities for people of African and Asian decent, indigenous peoples and individuals belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. They committed to ensure that discrimination would not overtly or covertly hamper access to employment, social services, health care and participation in other spheres of life. Multiple forms of discrimination will also be tackled.

The document reaffirms the fundamental importance of freedom of expression and stresses its compatibility with existing international law that prohibits incitement to hatred. This should help bridge the artificial divide on sensitive issues related to religions which could fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy of clashes of civilization.

Moreover, the outcome document represents an important recognition of the injustice and atrocities of the past and proposes means to prevent their recurrence. These include a commitment to prohibit violent, racist and xenophobic activities by groups that embrace supremacist ideologies…

Excluding the supremacist ideologies embraced by many of those who want to shut down free speech because it leads to “Islamophobia,” of course. My letter:

I concur with UN high commissioner for human rights that great progress was made at Durban II--but not the kind she means. The conference, organized by Iran, Libya and other authoritarian regimes which have a completely different understand of the concept of ‘human rights’ than the free world does, was supposed to be a repeat of the first Durban conference. That event, held mere days before the 9/11 attacks, had little to do with human rights per se, and was mostly an opportunity for the UNHRC to vent its anti-Western slant and its unhealthy obsession with Israel, a state which, much to the dismay of many of that body’s members, continues to defend its right to exist.

Durban II was shaping up to be a rehash of the first conference until Iran’s president, a notorious Holocaust denier, delivered exactly the same over-the-top, hate-suffused address we have heard many times before--twice under the auspices of the UN. This time, however, it was received with the kind of reverence--or rather, irreverence--it deserved, as two French Jewish students wearing clown wigs heckled his speech while pelting him with red sponge clown noses.

It was a brilliant and thrilling display of agit-prop that took the wind out of the pumped-up Jew-hater’s sails--and the entire conference. As a result, it’s far less likely that the free world will have to suffer through the charade of a Durban III. Now that’s what I call progress!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments (3)

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Malcolm X’s daughter decries “psycho Zionists” at Durban II: You know the Jews are making headway when the Jew-haters start to wail. From JTA:

GENEVA (JTA) – Three groups were expelled from the Durban II conference for disruptive behavior, and Malcom X’s daughter complained of “Zionist agitators” at the conference.

The United Nations in Geneva announced late Thursday that it had expelled three organizations for disruptive behavior at the Durban Review Conference: the Union of Jewish Students of France, the London-based interfaith group Coexist and an Iranian group called the Neda Institute for Political and Scientific Research.

On Friday, Malcolm X’s daughter, Malaak Shabazz, sent a letter of protest to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay complaining of how young “Zionist agitators” had treated her at one event.

“They were juvenile, nasty and aggressive,” Shabazz told JTA.

Shabazz, who was in Geneva advocating for slave reparations, expressed concern that the students who filmed the incident might post it online. “They’re putting my likeness out there for any psycho Zionist to do something,” she said.

Large contingents of Jewish students frequently made noise during the conference. One rainbow-wigged French student rushed the podium during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech, tossing a rubber nose at him. Others shouted “Racist!” during the speech.

Pillay’s office said it also intercepted efforts by French students trying to mount disturbances in the hallways, where students chanted slogans, blocked entrances and tried to confront critics of Israel.

“After examining the types of conduct, and patterns of conduct, as well as the risk of possible disruptive behavior during the remainder of the conference,” Pillay said, she revoked the accreditation of the three groups.

The United Nations said two women from the Iranian delegation distributed “inciting materials” and that Coexist had shared entrance badges with some French students after theirs had been confiscated.

Another student group, the European Union of Jewish Students, learned on Tuesday that its accreditation was pulled after some members had yelled insults at Ahmadinejad from the gallery…

As the piece de resistance, too bad they didn’t throw something whipped and gooey in his hideous punim. And from the sounds of it, Shabbaz and Pillay could have used a nice banana cream facial, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:41 | link | comments

Prior claim: The Jews are to Israel what the First Nations are to Canada, writes Allen Z. Hertz on the JTA site:

For over sixty years, there has been a bitter dispute over the unwillingness of most Muslims and Arabs to accept the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as an independent Jewish State in the Middle East. In this connection, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have denied that the Jews are a People within the context of the modern political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples. However, there is an enormous body of archaeological and historical evidence demonstrating that the Jewish People -- like the Greek People or the Han Chinese People -- is among the oldest of the world's Peoples.

Thus, it is well known that the Jewish People has more than 3,500 years of continuous history, with a subjective-objective national identity that, in each century, has kept a link to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. For example, the Jewish Bible, the Christian Gospels and the Koran all specifically testify to the connection between the Jewish People and its historic homeland.

Like other Peoples, the Jewish People has a right to self-determination. Though the self-determination of the Arab People is expressed via twenty-one Arab countries, Israel is the sole expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People, which of all extant Peoples, has the strongest claim to be considered aboriginal to the territory west of the Jordan River.

Thus, the Jewish People is aboriginal to Israel in the same way that, in Canada, certain First Nations are deemed aboriginal to their ancestral lands. And, it is noteworthy that the Supreme Court of Canada has decided that, where aboriginals maintain their historical connection with the land, aboriginal title can survive both sovereignty changes and influx of new populations resulting from foreign conquest.

In this regard, it is essential to recognize that the Middle East has always had a significant Jewish population, including some Jews who, in each century, continued to live west of the Jordan River. Today, many of the sons and daughters of these Middle Eastern Jews are citizens of Israel, where they have been joined by Jews from many other countries. Though some Western thinkers are now uncomfortable with the idea of a nation-State as the homeland of a particular People, that is no reason to target Israel, because the overwhelming majority of modern States are the homeland of a particular People, e.g., Japan, Italy, or the twenty-one countries of the Arab League…

Well, that’s the rational explanation. The irrational caveat to that is the once a piece of land, no matter how minute, has been snagged and tagged for Allah, as far as the twenty-one countries of the Arab League and the rest of the Muslim states that make up the 57-member strong (very strong) OIC are concerned, there’s no going back.

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

Best fake name ever: No, it's not Rufus Leaking or Robyn De Cradle.

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

Et tu, John?: John McCain defends his fellow Arizonan's bone-headed contention that some of the 9/11 attackers--sorry, man-caused disaster causers--came into the U.S. through Canada.

Just 'cause she 's from your state, John, doesn't mean the chick isn't thick as a brick.

Update: JanNap's theme song.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:58 | link | comments

Civilizational exhaustion: In a blistering attack on Western wimpishness and ennui,
the Toronto Sun’s Salim Mansour calls on the free world to buck up and defend
itself:

In a brilliant account of medieval Europe, William Manchester provided a glimpse in A World Only Lit By Fire of how nearly six centuries of what is known as the Dark Ages engulfed a continent.

Rome, as the proud city of the ancient world, was not simply overwhelmed by the swarming hordes of barbarians from the east, but a civilization long in the making swiftly was ruined. It was undone from within by a population that lost its sense of purpose while forgetting its history, and a ruling elite corrupted by self indulgence beyond repair.

The West, as was ancient Rome, is besieged, and those encircling the West at present make no pretence of their intent to tear it down as reparation for past sins that occurred in the making of the modern world.

But the swarming hordes of the anti-West axis -- unlike those that overran Rome and its empire -- do not gather at the frontiers of the West. Instead they assemble within the modern day temple of rank hypocrisy, the United Nations, and from there launch their assault against the civilization whose wonders they greedily seek, as did their barbarian predecessors invading Rome.

The UN conference on racism in Geneva, Switzerland is the modern day effort of an increasingly supine West at negotiating the price for being left alone by the rapacious thuggish leaders of failed and rogue states of the Third World.

It is the weakening of the West's moral centre -- the abject unwillingness to defend its history which on balance has given the longest lease on freedom and prosperity to the world -- that was on display in Geneva.

The spectacle of several European diplomats walking out of the conference hall in Geneva as Iran's President Ahmadinejad delivered his vile anti-Semitic anti-western rant, illustrated the pathetic disarray of Europe's frantic diplomacy to negotiate a face-saving agreement with the world's worst human rights violators.

The West ironically needs reminding itself of Marx's words, "the country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future." And in Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels celebrated the advance of capitalism over all previous systems of economic activity.

Instead of hosting such fraudulent conferences as Durban II in Geneva, it is time the West demonstrated its moral authority by demanding from the likes of Ahmadinejad and his anti-West allies to answer why they have denied their people freedom to fully embrace the proven model for prosperity that is the West.

In respect to Israel, it is a beacon of modern enlightenment restored to its ancient home and a reflecting mirror in which the Arab-Muslim world sees daily its appalling failure as a civilization that once merited respect…

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

How terrifying!: The final ~~solution~~ document of Durban II is little more than a recipe for spreading the influence of sharia and shutting the lights in Israel and the rest of the free world. From Xinhua (my emphasis).

Among other things, the 18-page document emphasized the need to address with greater resolve and political will all forms and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, in all spheres of life and in all parts of the world, including all those under foreign occupation.

It reaffirmed the Durban Declaration and Program of Action and acknowledged the need to enhance the effectiveness of the mechanisms dealing with or addressing racism with a view to achieving better synergy, coordination, coherence and complementarity in their work.

It also urged countries that have not yet done so to consider ratifying or acceding to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Through synergy, coordination, coherence and complementarity (is that even a word?), the scourge of racist Zionism and “Islamophobia” can finally be eradicated. Sieg heil!

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

Where’s the outrage?: Here’s an interesting—and revealing—statistic, courtesy the RoP site:

Pakistan is one of at least five Muslim countries in which the number of Muslims deliberately murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in the past year exceeds the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the Hamas conflict with Israel. In the last 12 months, Islamists killed over thirty Muslims for every civilian casualty of Cast Lead.

But who cares about such ephemera while the Joooos continue to occupy “Palestine”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:04 | link | comments

Friday, 24 April 2009

Clarkson shills for Bethune: Canada's former Governor General wants us to be more adoring of a Canadian whom the Communist Chinese--you know, the Maoists who pulled off the mass murder of 50 million people--consider to be a martyr to their cause.

Blow it out yer nose, Adrienne.

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

Same old Judenhass that’s brand spanking new: The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee puts Ahmadinejad’s speech in the proper context—i.e. on the unending continuum of pathological Jew-hate:

..It is tempting to shrug this (Ahmadinejad’s hateful words in Durban) off as the raving of a loon - Mahmoud I'm-a-nut-job, as Jay Leno calls him. The French students who tossed red clown noses at Mr. Ahmadinejad in Geneva caught the right tone of ridicule. But when the loon has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and his country has nuclear ambitions, his drivel takes on a more sinister cast.

Montreal MP Irwin Cotler says Mr. Ahmadinejad represents a new kind of anti-Semitism that, masking itself under the banner of human rights and anti-racism, attacks Jews collectively. It's more than just ignorance and prejudice that motivates people like him to question indisputable historical facts. Their intent is to delegitimize the state of Israel in the same way the Nazis sought to dehumanize the Jewish people. In the past, anti-Semites sought to make the world Judenrein (free of Jews). Now, said former Swedish politician Per Ahlmark at a recent conference that Mr. Cotler cites, the most dangerous anti-Semites seek to make it Judenstaatrein (free of a Jewish state).

That puts a different complexion on the quest for Middle East peace. Israel's critics have always said that its rule over the occupied territories was the source of much of the fury and violence directed against it and that a peace deal leading to the rise of an independent Palestinian state would draw the sting from that outrage. There's no doubt that such a deal is in everyone's interest.

But the casual acceptance Mr. Ahmadinejad finds for his vile theories suggests that a deeper source of this decades-long impasse lies in an ideology that demonizes Israelis as sinister interlopers in the Arab and Islamic homeland - much as Jews were demonized in Christendom. Until the Islamic world rejects that ideology, the hopes for real peace are faint.

Faint? More like non-existent.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:28 | link | comments

Boo hoo: The cry babies are throwing a tantrum because their hate-fest was “sabotaged” by irreverent Juden. From Islam Online:

…Participants lament that the debate over the fight against racism worldwide was hijacked by other topics, mainly Israel.

They say pro-Israel groups in the conference are waging a fierce campaign to silence Tel Aviv critics and fend off condemnation of its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"They are interested in making Israel the focus of the conference and everything else is sidelined," Kali Akuno, of the US-based Malcolm X grassroots movement, told IOL.

"Israel becomes the issue not the suffering of the Palestinian people."

The French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) and their French allies Coexist had both been banned from the conference, Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, confirmed earlier Thursday.

A statement said the activists were behind "unacceptable disruptive behavior" and "orchestrated efforts to disrupt the conference."

The UEJF admitted they were responsible for Monday's protest, which saw three people dressed as clowns ejected at the start of a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Poland had boycotted the conference fearing criticism of Israel.

The US and Israel had walked out of the 2001 Durban conference which equated Zionism with racism.

Many NGOs and activists believe there are attempts by Israel allies to sabotage the Geneva gathering.

"The mechanisms being adopted at this conference are attempts to reverse the Durban Declaration of 2001," says Munadel Herzallah of the US-Palestinian Committee Network.

"They boycotted the conference and now want to sabotage it."

Send in the clowns—don’t bother, they’re here (and hurray for that, since it means free speech is still alive and well despite the OIC’s best efforts to shut it down for good).

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

History repeats: David Solway says the world is setting up the Jews for a
fall--again. From FrontPage Magazine:

At the infamous Evian Conference that met on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1938, the Jewish victims of Nazi oppression were betrayed by Western leaders, who protested against the Nazi atrocities but steadfastly refused to help the growing number of Jewish refugees. Today, once again on the shores of Lake Geneva, another international conference has been convened, ostensibly against racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, but as everyone knows its principal purpose is to shield the real abusers of human rights from censure while vilifying and scapegoating the Jewish state. Same approximate venue, same approximate agenda.

Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered his defamatory anti-Israeli speech at the Palace of Nations on Monday of this week, the general reaction was to be expected. It was unanimously deplored by duly offended European leaders, but the underlying reality was very different. Many walked out but, when it came to the conference itself, most walked straight back in.

Though properly scandalized, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner downplayed Ahmadinejad’s virulent remarks as “predictable” and opined that the conference was “not a failure at all but the beginning of a success” (Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2009). Neither was the European Union much disturbed beneath its veneer of practised indignation, releasing a statement to the effect that it had “no outstanding difficulty of substance” with the Durban II draft document. It then committed itself, with the exception of a sprinkling of member states, to participate fully in the proceedings.

This capitulation was both as shameful and as “predictable” as Ahmadinejad’s malignant speech, and betokened, to adjust Kouchner’s rhetoric, not the beginning of a success but a careening failure of will, nerve and intelligence, shared by the West as a whole. Our political leaders, the majority of our public intellectuals and the mainstream media have not realized, or myopically refuse to realize, what is at stake as the historical drama in which we are implicated unfolds—a drama in which Iran and Israel are the central actors...

In other words, Durban II is paving the way for the Holocaust II--an eventuality that
Israel cannot and will not allow.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:04 | link | comments

Thanks, nutjob: UN scourge Claudia Rosett says we owe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a debt of gratitude, since his appearance at Durban II ended up scuttling the hate-fest (it officially ends today). From Forbes:

GENEVA -- As I write this, the United Nations Durban Review Conference on "racism" is still officially in session, stumbling toward the close, on Friday, of its five-day run at the U.N.'s palatial offices on the shores of Lake Geneva.

But after the opening fireworks, provided Monday by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a strange torpor hangs over the proceedings. Apart from the shuffling of paper, droning of sparsely attended speeches and clack of heels on marble floors, the main action among those still in attendance seems to center on cultural diversions and U.N. snack bars.

By U.N. lights, this conference--almost two years in the planning--was supposed to be a grand affair, gathering state delegations and nongovernmental organizations from around the globe. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon flew in to deliver the keynote remarks Monday morning, celebrating the conference opening as offering vistas of "a new day, a move in a new direction, all nations together as one," etc., etc.

And then, for the U.N., something went very wrong. But what?

Reality, that's what. The despot-heavy U.N. General Assembly designed this Durban Review conference from the start as a vehicle for anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and an array of other U.N. campaigns targeting free societies--such as a global gag on free speech about Islam.

Ultimately, this drew two big responses. President Barack Obama's administration, to his credit, confirmed last week that the U.S.--chief sugar-daddy to the U.N.--would join Canada, Israel and a handful of other nations in boycotting the conference.

And Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad exercised his U.N.-given right to fly in from Tehran to take the stage. The U.S. decision to skip the festivities appears to have put a damper on high-level attendance. Ahmadinejad was the only head of state to show up. At the U.N., where procedure routinely trumps morality, protocol dictated that after the opening niceties, Ahmadinejad should get the first speaking slot of the main program.

Thus did Ahmadinejad, top speaker in the lineup, hop aboard the U.N.'s elaborately fashioned Durban vehicle with such glee that he blew out the tires.

Does this mean there won’t be a Durban III? We can only hope and pray. The bad news is that the perma-Durban, the UNHRC, keeps rolling along and may soon have a new first-time member—the U.S.

Update: I feel a song coming on:

Perma-Durban, that perma-Durban

It don’t want Zion to keep on flyin’.

It just keeps rollin’, it keeps on rollin’ along.

It don’t fight racists, it don’t fix problems,

And the Jew-haters--it just absolves ‘em.

That perma-Durban, it just keeps rollin’ along.

Iran and Syria, Libya too

Tell the world what it should do:

“Blame the Jews; fight their state.”

Claim that it’s for “justice” when it’s age-old hate.

We get weary of their agenda.

Annihilation’s what they defenda.

And perma-Durban, it just keeps rollin’ along.

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

Be afraid. Be very, very, afraid: Despite the fact that there's a distinct possiblity that the Taliban could overun Islamabad and the entire Punjab, Pakistan's president insists there's no way the jihadis can get their hands on the nation's nukes.

Israel, for one, begs to differ.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:00 | link | comments

Must see TV: Don't miss Rex Murphy skewering Janet "From Another Planet" Napolitano, the U.S.'s dumb-as-a-box-of-hair Homeland Security Secretary.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:52 | link | comments

Just asking: The Tamil casualties in Sri Lanka are staggering--6,432 killed by government forces within the last few days. So where, oh where, are the Sid Ryans, the Naomi Kleins, the George Galloways, to decry the brutality and call for everyone to immediately boycott, divest from and sanction Sri Lanka?

Funny how their high dudgeon tends to be so selective.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:48 | link | comments

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Puppy kafuffle: The four-legged Obama, Bo, is proving to be something of a handful. From the NY Daily News:

…"Oh, he is a crazy dog," says First Lady Michelle Obama of their Portuguese water pup Bo, the new canine in chief.

"You know, he loves to chew on people's feet."

Obama fielded a number of questions about Bo, the 6-month old pooch who joined the family this month, from kids visiting the White House Thursday.

The First Lady said the fluffy fella, a gift to First Daughters Malia and Sasha from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), is taking up a lot of her free time - and keeping her up at night.

"I'll tell you a story about Bo last night," she told the visiting children.

"It was like 10:00 p.m. at night, everybody was asleep, and we hear all this barking and jumping around, and the President and I came out and we thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo," she said.

"He was playing with his ball. And it was like there was another person in the house," Obama continued.

"He's kind of crazy. But he's still a puppy, so he likes to play a lot."…

Um, they thought somebody was out there—and they didn’t call security? Also—shouldn’t Americans be concerned that the First Dog is keeping the president up nights, thus preventing his being bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning when he has to deal with pirates and other challenges of his office?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:37 | link | comments

Toppling an icon: A few weeks ago on TCM I happened to catch Teacher’s Pet, a 1959 comedy starring Clark Gable and Doris Day. The premise of the flick: Clark is a hard-bitten New York newspaper editor who has no patience for the idea that reporting can be taught in school. As he sees it, it’s a trade, pure and simple, and the only way you can learn it by doing it—starting at the bottom. Doris, who is much younger, teaches journalism to wannabe reporters at a night school. She hasn’t had much on the job training per se, but her late father, whom she and many others revere, was famous for running and writing for a small town newspaper and once won the Pulitzer Prize. Through a series of implausible but amusing circumstances, Clark enrols in Doris’s class and, for obvious reasons, quickly becomes her star pupil; they also embark on a May-December romance. Anyway, on the night it seems they may voe-dee-oh-doe for the first time, Clark happens upon a room in Doris’s apartment—a shrine to her father and his paper. Clark knows the man by reputation, and is bowled over that Doris is his daughter. Feeling guilty about his subterfuge—and insecure about his lack of a formal education—a deflated Clark sneaks out while Doris is preparing them a late-night snack. But wait—through another series of circumstances, this time involving Gig Young, his younger, much more intellectually accomplished rival for Doris’s affections, Clark comes to read the famous man’s paper. And, whadya know?, it turns out it was awful. Rambling articles that never, ever got to the point Tedious accounts of small town goings-on. And, worst of all as far as Clark, an editor with an eye perennially on the bottom line is concerned, next to no advertising.

In other words, it was a pile of humbug, a big fat nothing, the hobby of a man who was coasting on a posthumous reputation that was unearned and, despite the fluke of having won the Pulitzer (for an editorial), largely undeserved.

I mention all this by way of introducing Martin Peretz’s blog post about I.F. Stone, an icon of the left who is most famous for operating a small newspaper replete with his curmudgeonly ruminations and perorations—I.F. Stone’s Weekly. The paper was around from 1953 to 1971, when Stone's angina made it impossible to continue. Here’s how the paper is written up on the official I.F. Stone site, a description that reminds me of how Doris Day’s dad is first described in Teacher’s Pet:

In a journalistic poll to determine the “Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century.” I.F. Stone's Weekly was rated 16th. And this was the second highest rating accorded any sustained print journalism in the entire century (i.e., fourteen of the fifteen higher-ranked works of journalism were books or related to radio or TV journalism). By contrast, Murray Kempton’s columns were ranked 49th and Walter Lippmann was ranked 64th for “Early essays for the New Republic. 1914.”

What the official Stone site doesn’t mention—but the New Republic’s Martin Peretz does—is that all the while that I.F.—Izzy to his friends—was offering up his crusty opinions on the politics of the day, he was also doing his utmost to help Uncle Joe prevail over Uncle Sam:

I.F. Stone Lied for Tyrants

I suppose there are still readers of The New Republic who remain fans of I.F. Stone. Of course, his death 20 years ago limits that nostalgic cohort to the middle-aged and older. And, of course, only to a small cohort among them. But every so often at some party off Brattle Street or on Central Park West--the last time it happened actually was in Bel Air--someone hears that I (only sort of) run TNR and goes into a fervent turmoil about how there are no Izzy Stones left. I point out that Stone was only on our staff for a very short time and, at that, long long ago. He did his real service, such as it was, on the Nation (where his Stalinist politics were very congenially received and still would be) and PM, the dreamy New York afternoon paper that expired for lack of ads (unwanted) and lack of readers (getting more savvy by the day).

In any case, I.F. Stone has been at the center of controversy for all the years after he went to the righteous judge. The original question was: was he a communist, a matter that probably did not interest the almighty? Who knows anyway whether he was a card-carrying party member? Maybe someone. But that he lied for the tyrants is unquestionable. In 1952, he published a sheer piece of invention entitled The Hidden History of the Korean War, which was about how Chiang Kai Shek wanted to make a killing in soybean futures. This ruined his reputation for honesty but even that would not trouble the comrades. With the Vietnamese war, he became something of a hero. He looked like someone who couldn't hurt a fly, sort of like Lavrenti Beria, if you remember his ghost. If you don't it's all right.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed and, mirabili dictu, the records of the all of the intelligence bureaus and the different organs of the secret police begin to open. It is from such sources that we know definitively about the guilt of Alger Hiss, of Julius (and Ethel) Rosenberg, and all the other big fry and small fry who preferred Stalin's perfect tyranny to the imperfect governance by F.D.R. and Harry Truman. As it happens, these communist sympathizers knew that they were on the right side of history and that the mere liberals would be thrown into its dustbin.

Among the people who surfaced in these subterranean documents was I.F. Stone. He had climbed the ladders of respectability. Harvard even awards annual prizes (the source of the cash for which is unknown and unknowable) in his name. But he did espionage for Stalin. John E. Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev are about to publish a book called Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America with Yale University Press. I've not read the galleys completely. But I've read the 20-odd pages on Stone. They are devastating. Poor Izzy! He will always have attached to his adopted name his code-name, "Pancake." (His real name was Feinstein.)…

Another leftist icon bites the dust.

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

What internal squabble?: Diana West weighs in on the OIC’s failure to raise the least bit of objection to the installation of sharia in a wide swath of Swat:

Remember that "war within Islam" we're always hearing about? You know, the war between the "moderates" and the "extremists" that is far, far more important -- indeed, that cancels out and replaces -- any suggestion that a war, or even clash of civilizations, between Islam and the West is taking place? Well, the war's over.

I am referring, of course, to the capitulation of Pakistan to Swat Valley jihad, which scholar and author Andrew Bostom has pointed out occurred basically without a shot despite Pakistani leader Ali Zardari's recent boast of having "150,000 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan — far more troops than NATO has in Afghanistan." It also occurred without any assistance to Pakistan from any of the 56 other nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Funny how the OIC doesn't seem to have any stake in this big-deal war within Islam .... Or do they? That is, the OIC failure to lift a proverbial finger against such quote-IslamIST-unquote movements the world over should show us (as if we didn't know) their sympthies lie with the jihadis…

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:22 | link | comments

Torture in the context of sharia: While the happy hopeychangers are obsessing over the previous administration’s adventures in waterboarding, a video has captured some of the livelier interrogation methods in the UAE. From ABC News:

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country's royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim's arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man's wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

In a statement to ABC News, the UAE Ministry of the Interior said it had reviewed the tape and acknowledged the involvement of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the country's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed.

"The incidents depicted in the video tapes were not part of a pattern of behavior," the Interior Ministry's statement declared.

The Minister of the Interior is also one of Sheikh Issa's brother.

The government statement said its review found "all rules, policies and procedures were followed correctly by the Police Department."

Well, as long as they followed the rules I guess everything’s okey-dokey.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:42 | link | comments

Multiculti delusions: It’s official. The city of Bradford has been tapped as one of the most “Englishy” burgs in Old Blighty. From the Guardian:

The famously multicultural city of Bradford has emerged as one of the three most "English" places in England for patriots to spend St George's Day.

The Yorkshire manufacturing, tourism and university centre comes second only to the coastal town of Scarborough and the Cornish district of Penwith for traditional English activities per head of population.

Curries may win it more headlines, but Bradford has one of the country's highest ratios of fish and chip shops to people, and an astonishing number of cricket clubs and leagues.

It also scores exceptionally well for Morris dancing troupes, tea rooms and even holiday camps, with a cluster of small centres for children and families in the district's outlying areas around the Bronte village of Haworth and Ilkley Moor.

The city, which beat apparently more iconic English centres such as Westminster, Blackpool and Brighton in the data analysis, will celebrate today by reviving its St George's Day parade, which will be led by the lord mayor, Howard Middleton, plus a dragon.

Concern in recent years that the English flag might appear jingoistic or excluding have been eased by the popularity of the St George's Cross in football competitions, and its enthusiastic endorsement by the archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

He called yesterday for the country "to recognise collectively on St George's Day the enormous treasure that sits in our cultural and spiritual vaults". The archbishop, who will spend the day with flag-waving schoolchildren in York, said: "The truth is that an all-embracing England, confident and hopeful in her own identity, is something to celebrate."

Bradford's events will pick up the theme, with the 50 England cricketers who played in the main Bradford cricket league balanced by 50 who went on variously to play for Pakistan, Australia, India, the West Indies and New Zealand.

The area's most famous tea shop, Betty's in Ilkley, is the product of an international marriage between a Yorkshirewoman and a Swiss confectioner.

The Conservative leader of Bradford council, Kris Hopkins, said: "This is an opportunity for people from across the district to join together to celebrate England's national day. The emphasis will be on having fun and I hope we will have a large turnout."

The bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev David James, said: "The legends surrounding St George express values that are not exclusive to England, but they have made England and Bradford good places to live."…

If your test of Englishness is the number of fish ‘n’ chips joints and Morris dancers there are in the Potemkin village, it’s all pip-pip-cheerio in Bradford—and the rest of Britain. But once you get past the facade, it's a different story. From JTA:

BRADFORD, England—Ishtiaq Ahmed, who works as a spokesman for the Bradford Council for Mosques, lives with three generations of his family in a luxurious British home built by his father, a successful Pakistani-born businessman.

After the July 7, 2005 public transit bombings in London, which killed 52 people, Ahmed woke up, looked around his neighborhood and was troubled by what he saw. Three of the four bombers were from nearby Leeds and, like him, they had Pakistani backgrounds.

"There is a growing section of Muslim young people 16 to 25 who are increasingly becoming alienated, disillusioned and angry about a host of issues, such as unemployment, racism and British foreign policy," Ahmed said.

Many of these young people, he said, believe the British government is against them.

"They see the government is willing to spend millions of dollars fighting Muslims in Iraq but not help them with their problems at home," Ahmed said.

That can make them ripe for recruitment by Islamic extremists. Even if only an estimated 3 percent to 4 percent of Muslim youth become extremists, Ahmed said, "that is still far, far too many."

The London bombings, like the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 and foiled terrorist plots elsewhere in Europe since, have forced Europe to focus on homegrown Islamic radicalism. Beyond implementing security measures needed to prevent terrorist attacks, Europe is trying to understand the sense of fury and alienation many Muslims feel that in a few rare cases might lead them to try to murder their neighbors.

To be sure, the number of European Muslims engaged in terrorism is minuscule compared with their overall numbers. Of the roughly 17 million Muslims living in the 27-country European Union, 242 were charged with terrorism-related crimes from 2001 to 2006, according to a study by the Netherlands Institute for International Relations.

Support for terrorist attacks, however, appears to be far more widespread…

Oh well. As long as people can watch those goofy Morris routines while scarfing down their fish ‘n’ chips, I guess they can pretend there’ll always be an England.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments (1)

Quick now--who's the most incompetent happy hopeychanger (aside from the HHC-in-Chief)?: No contest. It's Janet "From Another Planet" Napolitano.

A propos of the above nicname, the great Van Morrison was once married to a hippy-dippy beauty named Janet Planet (at least, that's what she called herself; hey, it was the '60s). She's the one who inspired this, and many other, songs.

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

What's even more disgusting than Ahmadinejad addressing Durban II?: Hamas's Meshaal addressing the British parliament.

Sic transit gloria Britannia.

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

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Sticking us with the tab: Just because the U.S., Canada, Germany and others didn’t show up at the UN’s Cirque de Judenhass doesn’t mean they don’t have to pay for the sucker. From the Jerusalem Post:

…The gathering, dubbed "Durban II," has cost $5.3 million, including preparatory conferences, spokesman Ramu Damodaran told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

About $1.6m. of that has come from direct donations from individual countries, but the lion's share - $3.7m. - was funded from the regular budget of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Damodaran said.

The US, which as the largest single contributor to the UN covers 22 percent of the UN's overall budget, has specifically withheld funding for the Durban conference from its UN dues payments. But because of the way the budget process works, individual nations have little or no control over how their dues are ultimately spent, experts said.

"It's more of a symbolic thing - there's no way to direct the withholding to whatever you're trying to do," said Brett Schaefer, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Washington.

"There's no way the US can prevent the UN from taking the money from elsewhere in the budget," Schaefer said…

I’d send the bill to the OIC, since it’s really its conference. Oh, wait—looks like some of its members have already coughed up some dough:

UN officials did not release a complete list of direct donations to this week's conference, but UN Watch, an affiliate of the American Jewish Committee that is based in Geneva, reported on its blog that Russia had provided $600,000 for the gathering. The group claims Saudi Arabia gave $150,000, Kuwait $100,000, and the Palestinian Authority $1,700.

Wow, a whole 1700 samolians from the P.A., eh? That’s gotta put a serious dent into the multi-millions it’s getting from Obama.

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

Aw, you shouldn't have: Palestinian worshippers gift Pope Benedict with keffiyeh.

The word "gift" should be in scare quotes, of course.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:07 | link | comments

Paging Mr. Chamberlain...: The news keeps going from bad to worse as Pakistan, a nuclear power, is on the verge of falling to the Taliban. Proving yet again (are you paying attention, Obama?) that trying to appease implaccable totalitarians intent on power--as Pakistan did when it agreed to allow the Taliban impose sharia law in Swat--is not the way to go.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:59 | link | comments

The usefulness of statelessness: Do the Palestinians really want their own state? Why would they, when the state of statelessness is so empowering? From the Jerusalem Post:

Statehood is no longer a goal, he [Johns Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel] writes. Many stateless groups "do not aspire to have a state," for they are more capable of achieving their objectives without one. Instead of actively seeking statehood to address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness as a source of power.

New communication technologies allow people to achieve virtual unity without a state, even as new military technologies give stateless groups a lethal capacity that in former decades could be attained only by states. Grygiel explains that it is now "highly desirable" not to have a state - for a state is a target that can be destroyed or damaged, and hence pressured politically. It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in the Gaza Strip that made it easier for Israel to bomb it. A state entails responsibilities that limit a people's freedom of action. A group like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the author notes, could probably take over the Lebanese state today, but why would it want to? Why would it want responsibility for providing safety and services to all Lebanese? Why would it want to provide the Israelis with so many tempting targets of reprisal? Statelessness offers a level of "impunity" from retaliation.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:29 | link | comments (1)

Gee, ya think?: Poll suggests Israeli-Palestinian peace a long way off.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments

Obama’s perilous statesmanship: Peter Wehner of Commentary sums up what’s
wrong with Obama’s “love—and apologize to—thy enemies” approach:

What troubles some of us about President Obama isn't a single apology here or a single handshake there; it is evidence of a particular cast of mind. For Obama's foreign policy gambit to succeed, it isn't enough for him to "listen" and sit passively by as America is castigated by the Daniel Ortega's of the world. He also, and most importantly, needs to press reluctant allies and our enemies for concessions and actually get a few. Helping orchestrate new mood music is the easy part; winning substantive concessions from Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Omar al-Bashir is far more challenging. It may even be impossible to achieve. But it is what Obama promised to do.

The salient question: What’s the point of being popular if you're perceived to be a
pushover?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments (1)

Shia power play: A day after Ahmadinejad was slaying ‘em in Geneva, another equally disturbing though far less publicized conference convened in Iran. The second one, though, is inextricably tied to the first, as both use the vehicle of “human rights” to propel Islamic (dare I use the word?) hegemony. From the Tehran Times (my bolds):

TEHRAN - Iranian Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi has proposed that an international Islamic tribunal should be established for trying cases of serious crimes committed against Muslims or Islamic states.

Ayatollah Shahroudi made the proposal at the international conference of Islamic prosecutors, which opened in Tehran on Tuesday.

Over 200 legal experts from Islamic states are attending the conference.

The conference is being held to document the war crimes the Zionist regime committed against Palestinians during the 22-day Gaza war, for which there is abundant evidence.

The Islamic prosecutors will hold negotiations to determine a way to file a legal suit against Tel Aviv for its human rights violations…

Relentless, aren’t they?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments

Crunching the numbers: The stats tell the story--"61 percent of the Koran talks ills of unbelievers or calls for their violent conquest and subjugation, but only 2.6 percent of it talks about the overall good of humanity."

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

Perez Hilton for HRC commissar!: If campy gossip blogger Perez Hilton ever gets tired of dishing the dirt in Tinsel Town, he might consider coming north and joining one of Canada's many human rights bodies. The way he trashed Miss California for giving a politically incorrect answer to his query while "judging" the Miss USA Pageant--when asked about gay marriage, the statuesque blonde said that while she had no problem with gay partnerships, but believed that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman (wrong answer, Miss C.)--proves he has the right stuff and the same bent of mind as Jen, Babs and the rest of the northern Savonarolas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments (3)

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Les Miserables: Here's a musical tribute to the miserable UN, its miserable secretary-general, the miserable delagates of the miserable conference, and the miserable bastard who spoke, fittingly enough, on Hitler's birthday. A pox on them all:

Bastard in the house,

Doling out the harm.

Ready with some lies to raise the world’s alarm.

Tells an age-old tale, Jews are a disease.

Delegates appreciate his joie de vive.

Glad to do the world a favour,

Finish what Hitler began.

‘Cause the Mahdi ain't returning

Until this rogue enacts his plan.

Bastard in the house, sets the Durban tone.

Five whole days, Geneva is a Jew-hate zone.

Ban Ki-Moon sits there.

Doesn’t utter “boo”.

He’s complicit in the psychopathy, too.

Everybody loves a winner.

Mullahs got a winning team

Bastard gets asked out to dinner.

Jeez! Wish it were just a dream...

Bastard in the house, isn’t worth our spit!

Deceiver, true believer, and he's full of sh*t.

Cunning as a fox, regular Haman.

Thinks he’s quite the orator; my G-d, what scum!

What an awful trick of hist’ry landed us with such a louse?

Thanks to Jimmy and Brzezinski we’re living with this bastard in the house!

Bastard in the house.

Got himself a bomb.

And it seems there’s plenty more where it came from.

Gonna nuke the Jews, launch a genocide.

Palestinians’ll go ‘long for the ride.

Everybody curse the bastard

Who wants to send the Juden raus!

Everybody raise a glass,

(Raise it up the bastard’s arse),

Everybody raise a glass to trash the bastard in the house!

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:50 | link | comments

Aye caramba!: This one goes out to Ahmadinejad and all the Jew-haters at the UN
(a very large group):

The Durban II summit should elicit our loathing

Because it decks out all the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Supposedly, it’s meant to examine global “racism”--

The full gamut;

The whole enchilada.

In reality, it’s another fiesta of Judenhass,

With Israel as the piñata.

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

Liberty! Fraternity! Insanity!: Even though the splenetic Shia was allowed to get up and do his Hitlerian comedy routine, prompting France, among others, to walk out, the French are chiding the U.S. for its non-attendance. From CNN:

PARIS (Reuters) - France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner criticized the United States Tuesday for boycotting a United Nations conference where Iran's president launched a verbal attack on Israel.

France, which has strong diplomatic and business ties with the Middle East, had joined a walk-out of delegates in Geneva after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel cruel and racist in a speech Monday, but then returned to the meeting.

Kouchner said it was wrong of the United States to shun the conference after announcing it was open for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

"It's paradoxical -- they don't want to listen to Iran in Geneva but they are ready to talk to them," Kouchner told French radio Europe 1. "More than a paradox, that could really be a mistake."

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has worked hard to mend ties with the United States after a rift over the war in Iraq, and was eager to show off his good relations with U.S. President Barack Obama at this month's NATO summit in Strasbourg.

But France has also been keen to maintain close relations with Arab governments, who have supported the conference.

Kouchner said France would continue to work on the draft text prepared for the Geneva meeting and expected a result later Tuesday, adding that the declaration would condemn anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

"It will be a defeat for Ahmadinejad because there will be, I hope by tonight, this declaration. But the politics of the empty chair is easy. You leave and you shout at the others," Kouchner said.

The United States, Canada, Australia and a number of European governments stayed away from the conference on fears it would be hijacked by critics of Israel…

Like you had to be a Greek oracle to predict that one.

Update: Now that the keynote address is out of the way, the conference is "back on track." From the Beeb:

An anti-racism conference in Geneva is "back on track", a UN spokesman says, after an opening day blighted by boycotts and a walkout.

An address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he branded Israel "racist" sparked protests and a walkout by EU delegates on Monday.

Several countries were already boycotting the talks because of the Iranian leader's presence.

But a UN spokesman expressed hope that the talks would now return to normal.

"In the drama of yesterday, everyone forgot what the conference is actually about," said Rupert Colville.

"I think we are back on track now."

His optimism was echoed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said the meeting is "not at all a failure but the beginning of a success".

Well, a success for the bad guys, anyway.

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

Pirate in drydock: The pirate survivor of the team that was holding an American ship’s captain (his three cohorts were picked off by sharpshooting Navy SEALs) has been brought to New York for trial. From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The pirate suspect arrested in the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama was all smiles on arriving in New York City late Monday, escorted by a phalanx of law enforcement officers.

None of the officers would confirm his identity, but his arrival for trial in the United States had been widely expected.

The suspect arrived at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building in Manhattan, which is linked to a federal detention facility where he was expected to be held pending an appearance in federal court. The timing of that appearance was not immediately available. He was walked through the rain, surrounded by media, as well as officers from federal and New York City law enforcement agencies.

The suspect wore a dark jumpsuit and handcuffs, and what appeared to be a bandage on his left hand.

Members of the media urged him to comment, but it was not clear whether he understood. He smiled broadly and laughed.

He had been handed over to federal authorities by the U.S. military in Djibouti, defense officials said.

The suspect, known in official documents as "Pirate Defendant," was brought to Djibouti aboard the USNS Walter S. Diehl, a refueling ship that was with the warship USS Bainbridge at the scene of the failed hijacking on April 8 that turned into a hostage ordeal 350 miles off Somalia.

Three pirates who were holding the Maersk Alabama's captain in the ship's lifeboat were killed by Navy SEALs four days later.

The survivor had surrendered and was aboard the Bainbridge when the captain, Richard Phillips, was rescued, officials have said. From the Bainbridge, he was transferred to the USS Boxer for medical treatment.

Phillips was wounded when crew members of the Maersk Alabama took him hostage in the early hours of the pirate attack on the cargo ship, according to the military.

The crew members had hoped to exchange him for their captain, but the pirates did not release Phillips when the crew returned their captive.

"I'm mad because, you know, I could have been dead right now," Ken Quinn, the Maersk Alabama's navigation officer, told CNN Radio on Monday. "But at the same time he's just a little skinny guy, you know, from Somalia where they're all starving and stuff."

Poor pirate. No doubt three squares a day in an American hoosegow will help fatten him up (just ask those Gitmo chubsters, who are now too fat and out of shape to wage jihad).

Update: The "fishy" Canadian approach to piracy--i.e. "catch and release."

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments

Geneva circus: From his perch in Jerusalem, the Globe and Mail’s Patrick Martin reports on the hell that broke loose yesterday in Geneva. (The Globe headline, unhelpfully, puts scare quotes around the word ‘hateful’—Iranian leader’s ‘hateful’ tirade causes chaos at UN summit—as if there’s some dispute as to the tirade’s true nature):

JERUSALEM -- Iran's outspoken President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a UN conference on human rights into chaos yesterday as he branded Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime," and described the Holocaust as a "pretext" for Jews to "render an entire nation [Palestinians] homeless."

The remarks sent a collective shiver down the spine of Israelis as they prepared to mark Holocaust Memorial Day beginning at sundown last night.

Representatives of 23 European nations walked out of the Geneva conference as Mr. Ahmadinejad, the only head of state at the meeting, spoke first.

"He ascribed all the problems relating to racism in the modern world to Israel and the Jewish state, and that was enough for me to walk out," British Ambassador Peter Gooderham said.

The 23 countries joined eight others, including Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, that had chosen to boycott the conference from the start.

But though the walkout and boycott were dramatic, their collective effect may well be small.

No sooner had the United States condemned Mr. Ahmadinejad's remarks, when it quickly added that it still wants to continue the dialogue with Iran it recently announced it sought.

"This is hateful rhetoric," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "It's, I think, one of the reasons why you saw the administration and the President determined that its participation in this conference was not a wise thing to do."

However, "from a larger foreign policy framework, doing things the same old way is not likely to bring about the change we need in our foreign policy," he said. Hence the dialogue is to go ahead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just three weeks into the job, spoke to Israelis in a bitter broadcast carried on every Israeli TV and radio channel last evening: "In our generation, only a few dozen years after the Holocaust, new forces arise, clearly and openly stating their intention to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the Earth. And the response of the civilized world? Instead of a firm denunciation, at best, we hear a faint voice."

Even before the Iranian leader's speech, the diplomatic fallout from Mr. Ahmadinejad's presence in Geneva was spreading. Israel recalled its ambassador in protest at the Swiss President's decision to meet the Iranian leader - Mr. Ahmadinejad's first formal meeting with a Western head of state since taking office in 2005.

Israel's Foreign Ministry also criticized United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for meeting Mr. Ahmadinejad, saying it was regrettable that he "thought it advisable to meet the greatest Holocaust denier who heads a UN member state."

"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite," Mr. Ban said in a statement. "This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve."

He said he had met with Mr. Ahmadinejad to counsel the Iranian leader to avoid dividing the conference…

Funny how “the greatest Holocaust denier” (I’m not sure--is that an insult or a compliment?) wasn’t at all moved by Ban’s advice.

Update: The Ahmadinejad speech was "toned down." Apparently, the original version--hard to believe--was even worse.

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

Monday, 20 April 2009

Clowning around: Nothing like a trio of Jewish clowns to puncture the hyper-inflated pomposity of a Jew-loathing thug. From the Jerusalem Post:

The three 'clowns' that interrupted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in Geneva on Monday just as he was taking the podium gave the first cue to an appearance that was punctured by heckle calls. At its (anti-) climax, delegates from 23 EU countries left the hall.

The rainbow-colored wig-wearing youngsters were Rafael Haddad, Jonathan Hayoun and Jeremy Cohen, three Jewish French students from L'Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UFJ), the union of Jewish French students.

They positioned themselves at opposite ends of the hall when Ahmadinejad took the stage, and as he uttered his first words whipped out the clown wigs from their pockets and yelled 'racist' at the Iranian president.

The students said they wore clown outfits in order to "show that this speech and the entire conference is a circus." One of the students expressed satisfaction that EU delegates left the conference once Ahmadinejad's speech turned to focus on Israel.

The students were promptly escorted out by security personnel. They managed to gain entrance in the first place because they were registered as participants on the part of NGOs. They were released by UN security personnel shortly after being removed from the premises.

Later in Ahmadinejad's speech, Israeli students shouted "you are the racist" from the balcony of the conference hall. Boaz Toporovsky, head of the Israeli Student Organization and two female students succeeded in infiltrating the hall from one of the balcony doors after being refused entrance at the main floor. Toporvosky said that he and his colleagues were advised by the Foreign Ministry not to stand out, so they decided to shout at Ahmadinejad from the balcony rather than waving an Israeli flag in the main hall, which was their original plan.

Ahmaindejad made eye contact with the Israeli students, who continued to shout at him to the sound of roaring applause.

Agit-prop at its very best—a bracing display of the time-honoured Western tradition of taking the piss out of the self-important, and, as such, the very antithesis of the Islamic tradition of banishing sass and cheekiness. (Recall the words of the Ayatollah Khomeini: "There is no humor in Islam.") I say we nominate the clown trio for a Nobel Peace Prize!

Update: Here's the video.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments

HRW gets it backwards: Human Rights Watch claims that Western no-shows will "undermine" the UN racism conference.

Puh-leeze. The UN racism confab undermines Western freedom, more like.

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

UN Watch does a “gotcha” on Geneva racists: Kudos to UN Watch for pulling this off:

Today Iranian President Ahmadinejad — the world’s leading Holocaust denier — will be in Geneva to address the U.N.’s “anti-racism” conference, known as Durban II. The U.N. gathering claims to be about fighting racism and discrimination, but in fact it’s organized by the world’s worst perpetrators of racism, discrimination and human rights abuses, and was designed to scapegoat Israel, America and the West. A representative of Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi, Mrs. Najjat al-Hajjaji, chaired the Durban II Preparatory Committee for the past two years, and today was elected chair of the Durban II Main Committee.

In an unprecedented coup, the rank hypocrisy of Durban II was exposed before the world this week when UN Watch surprised the Libyan chair — by bringing a victim of Qaddafi torture to confront her on Libya’s brutal torture and scapegoating of five Bulgairan (sic) nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The video clip has been broadcast around the globe.

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

“Gems” from a racist: Here’s a selection of quotes uttered by would-be genocidaire/"great statesman" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

· There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world, ...

· The fighting in Palestine is a war between the (whole) Islamic nation and the world of arrogance, ... Today, Palestinians are representing the Islamic nation against arrogance.”

· "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets."

· "We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them."

· "The real Holocaust is what is happening in Palestine where the Zionists avail themselves of the fairy tale of Holocaust as blackmail and justification for killing children and women and making innocent people homeless."

· "The West claims that more than six million Jews were killed in World War II and to compensate for that they established and support Israel. If it is true that the Jews were killed in Europe, why should Israel be established in the East, in Palestine?"

· "If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel. Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?"

· "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."

· "Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations."

· "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

· "If the West does not support Israel, this regime will be toppled. As it has lost its raison d' tre, Israel will be annihilated."

· "Israel is a tyrannical regime that will one day will be destroyed."

· "Israel is a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated in one storm."

· "We are ready to hold dialogue with all countries of the world except for the Israeli regime."

Such a silver-tongued devil. No wonder he was invited to give the keynote address in Geneva.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments (1)

“Queen” Rahm?: The leader of Israel’s National Union party is calling upon White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to channel his inner Queen Esther. From the Jerusalem Post:

National Union chairman Ya'acov "Ketzele" Katz sent a letter to White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel last week admonishing him not to forget his Jewish and Israeli origins.

Katz's missive came in response to a reported verbal exchange between Emanuel and an unidentified American Jewish leader.

Katz claims that in a private meeting with the unnamed leader, Emanuel said, "In the next four years, there will be a peace agreement with the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it does not matter to us who is the prime minister."

In the letter, a Hebrew version of which was provided to The Jerusalem Post by Katz's parliamentary aide, Katz wrote: "For many Israelis, this report is a cause for worry because it reveals a condescending attitude toward our prime minister and Israeli public opinion. This is an attitude that Israel does not expect from a real friend such as the US, and all the more so from an Israeli Jew who has succeeded in being appointed White House chief-of-staff."

Katz went on to compare Emanuel to the biblical Esther, who ended up at using her influence with Persian King Ahashverosh to intervene on behalf of the Jews of the Persian Empire.

"For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" Katz wrote, quoting from the Book of Esther (4:14).

Katz was hinting that Emanuel should use his influence to protect Israeli interests, which, he believes, are best served by preventing the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Emanuel was born in Chicago in 1959. His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician, was a member of the IZL (Irgun).

Rahm Emanuel and his brothers attended summer camp in Israel. Emanuel and his wife, Amy Rule, are members of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel, a modern Orthodox congregation in Chicago. They have a son and two daughters; the older two attend the same Conservative day school Emanuel himself attended as a child.

During the Clinton administration he directed the details of the 1993 Rose Garden signing ceremony for the Oslo Accords, down to the choreography of the handshake between prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

In November, Emanuel said US President Barack Obama did not need his influence to "orientate his policy toward Israel."…

Rahm Emanuel is, first and foremost, a die-hard leftist ideologue. If the Jewish people and the Jewish State have to depend on him for survival, we might as well call it a day right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments

For shame: France and the U.K. are attending--and are thereby validated--Durban II.

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

What he said: A fundamentalist imam confirms what should be obvious to all—that sharia and democracy are incompatible. From the Times of India:

ISLAMABAD: Hardline cleric Sufi Muhammad, who played a key role in enforcing Islamic law in Pakistan's restive northwestern Swat valley, on Sunday said there is no room for democracy in Islam and it contravenes the Quran.

Addressing a gathering of thousands of people at Mingora, the main city in Swat district, the chief of the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Muhammadi (TNSM) described democracy as an un-Islamic system.

The existing political system in the country contravenes Islam and the Quran, he claimed.

Asserting that there is no room for democracy in an Islamic system, he accused Pakistan's rulers of appeasing the West by thrusting the system of 'kafirs' or infidels on the people of the country.

Muhammad said many years of struggle for implementing Shariah or Islamic law in Malakand division, which includes Swat, were now bearing results. He claimed all un-Islamic laws will soon be abolished in Malakand.

The radical cleric, who set up Qazi or Islamic courts in Swat even before President Asif Ali Zardari ratified a controversial law to enforce Shariah in the region, said no appeal could be made against a decision by a Qazi court in civil courts.

Such decision could be appealed only in Darul Qaza, or superior courts in the Shariah system, he added.

Sharia uber alles—in Swat and at the UN.

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

Swiss amiss: Here's an awful way to start the day--by looking at a photo of Switzerland's president greeting Iran's president. The Swiss prez seems absolutely tickled to be greeting such an august personage--the keynote speaker at the Geneva Jew-bash--and is gripping both his hands. Meanwhile the object of his affection, looking similarly delighted, has the biggest, most evil-looking smile that creases his entire face. May they both consume some rancid cheese fondue and be laid up with severe gastro-intestinal distress for the duration of this despicable event--and, ideally, for a lot longer.

Update: And speaking of revolting handshakes...

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

Sunday, 19 April 2009

Hezbo on the cutting edge: The Toronto Star’s Lynda Hurst touts the crackpot theories of someone named Joshua Cooper Ramo, a chap who you know is way off base because he insists that fighting terrorism results in more terrorists. (Using that sage reasoning, the net effect of fighting the Nazis would have been to create more Nazis.) Ramo is particularly impressed by Hezbollah, an organization which, despite its reputation for looking backard to the “perfect” age of Islam’s prophet and his first few successors, is exceptionally saavy about employing 21^st Century technology to further its ends (i.e. putting sharia in effect everywhere):

The interview hasn't even begun before a Sony tape recorder that won't stand upright sets Joshua Cooper Ramo off and running.

"Sony was built on innovation," he says, "and then they lost it. Over time, all big companies lose their ability to innovate."

True, as the recession has made clear, of the major carmakers and, courtesy of the Internet, traditional media as well. But, chillingly, it's also the case with governments when they don't realize the world's script and cast of actors have radically, irrevocably changed.

The actors especially: Who would have anticipated the return of pirates on the high seas?

Ramo, author of The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It (Hachette Canada), says we're still using anachronistic ideas to hold together a global order that no longer exists. A revolution is in progress where the unthinkable all too readily becomes the inevitable.

The result? More – and more dangerous – reversals of intent and outcome.

"What's happening today is that our intentions don't just fail, they backfire on us," says the Beijing-based geo-strategy analyst. "We deliver the opposite of what we intend because we so misunderstand the way the system now works."

The "war on terrorism" creates even more terrorists. The attempt to build a risk-proof financial system produces more risks than anyone is able to foresee. The bid to spread capitalism across the globe widens the chasm between rich and poor. The effort to contain nuclear proliferation leads to rogue states such as North Korea and Iran playing gimme-gimme games (or maybe not) with the final option.

Think Mikhail Gorbachev setting out only to reform the Soviet Union, but instead triggering its downfall, which in turn leads the U.S. to conclude its values have won the Cold War. Not so, Ramo says. Or George W. Bush reckoning he can inject democracy into Iraq and, presto, out comes peace: "Absurd in the extreme."

Make no mistake: The old rules of power vs. survival no longer apply.

And the new ones?

They're still being formed. But Ramo says they will be based on one central premise: countless variations in the scheme of things will continue to occur at warp speed, and adapting to them equally as quickly will be crucial.

The former Time foreign editor (the youngest ever at 26) says it'll break his heart if the venerable newsmagazine fails to adapt to the changes affecting it. "But if the Pentagon and State department aren't successful, it terrifies me."

The unpredictable demands of constant newness can immobilize institutions, however, not just individuals. It can blind them to unsprung traps, freeze once-honed navigation skills. The book dryly notes the structure of the U.S. State Department has barely changed since the end of World War II.

Governments can't prepare for everything in the future, but they can build resilience into their systems. They're going to have to, he says, because from here on in, real power will be the ability to come back strong after an unexpected shock. That will mean persistently assessing the big picture, not just its component pieces – a skill, he notes, China already excels at.

Immobilized is the one thing no one can be: "We have to change the way we function, we have to psychologically readjust. We have to keep up with the world – or the world will devour us."

He likens it to Silicon Valley: "Apple doesn't produce a computer and say, `That's it, we're done.' It's in a process of constant, relentless innovation."

That goes for the future of the planet, and what will be "a race between good innovation and bad."

An example closer to peoples' panic buttons is the ever-adjusting terrorist groups, al Qaeda, Hamas et al., which have done more to undermine the West's sense of security than anything else (so far) in this century.

Though it holds true of them all, Ramo specifically cites Lebanon-based Hezbollah as a "hot cell for innovation ... as much a terror lab as a terror group." Highly adaptive management skills allow it to change how it acts, and reacts, to fast-moving moving events.

"We look at Islamic fundamentalists as backward, pre-modern," he says. "They're not.

"Spend time with Hezbollah, and you see it's possible to run the most sophisticated cellular network and be willing to blow yourself up. We have to accept that and not think that if we make people modern, we make them Western. That's not the case at all."…

Spend time with Hezbollah? If it’s all the same to you, Ramo, I’d rather not.

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

A song for Durban II: Macca and his post-Mop Top crew sing:

Stuck inside Geneva.

Got a cracked agenda.

Never sayin’ nothin’ nice at all

‘Bout Jooooos,

Moo Moo,

Joooooos,

Ban Ki,

Joooooos.

If they ever do have their way
"Defamation" will go, they say.

Islamophobia

Impedes Utopia.

If they ever do have their way…

Well, the news exploded with a mighty roar--

The U.S. ain’t gonna go

‘Cause the Muslim states intend to dominate

The whole entire show.

‘Ban on the run.

Durban on the run.

And Ahmadinejad

Who’s barking mad

Will rant and snort and grunt

At the ‘Ban on the run.

Durban on the run…

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

How silencing a Jew-hater led to Canada’s “big chill”: James Keegstra and Ernst Zundel were two Jew-hating non-entities who gained immense notoriety when they were prosecuted for their seamy views. Keegstra, a high school teacher from Nowheresville, Alberta, had been sharing all sorts of, ahem, colourful insights about “the Jews” with his students. Zundel, a German national, had the hots for Hitler, and wasn’t afraid to say so via a publishing enterprise and, later, on a Web site.

Keegstra was convicted of a hate crime, much to the delight of Official Jews, who viewed him as a grave threat to the psychological well-being of Canadian Jewry. Unfortunately, that had the unintended consequence of seriously undermining the most crucial right of all Canadians—the right to free expression. That right is one of five supposedly inviolable rights guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, because of Keegstra, what amounted to an asterisk was placed beside the Charter right affirming our free speech. Ever since, the asterisk has provided the legal basis for HRC commissars to silence and punish those whose opinions they find distasteful (for example, Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Stephen Boisson and many others).

Zundel's case, oddly enough, turned out completely differently. After initially being found guilty, his conviction was overturned on appeal based on the judge’s assessment that the conviction violated Zundel’s Charter-enshined right to free speech.

So what gives? Why was Keegstra convicted and Zundel’s conviction tossed out?

The answer can be found on the Canadian Human Rights Commission site, which offers the two cases as “milestones” in the evolution of Canadian “human rights”:

…The law is a very precise thing. In this case, Zundel was charged with spreading false news under s. 181. In the previous case, Keegstra was charged with promoting hatred against an identifiable group persons of a common religion under s. 319(2). These are different crimes. Section 319(2) violated the right to freedom of expression under the charter, but it was saved by section 1 as a law that could be justified in a free and democratic society. The same would not be true in this case.

The Supreme Court ruled as follows: Section 181 of the Criminal Code infringes section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees the right to freedom of expression - as long as the expression is not violent. The court found Did Six Million Really Die? to be non-violent.

Section 181 of the Code - unlike s. 319 in the Keegstra case - can't be justified under section 1 of the charter. The specific and important purpose of s. 319 was to fight false and hateful statements that could fracture Canadian society. Although it was argued that section 181 was trying to do the same thing as s.319, the Supreme Court did not agree. It found section 181's attempt to censor all expressions "likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest" unjustifiable since many acceptable expressions could fit that description.

In a bittersweet victory for freedom of expression, Ernst Zundel's conviction was overturned.

To be clear, I think that the views of both Jew-haters are equally loathsome. But think of how different Canada would be in 2009—how much more freedom we’d have; how our HRCs would have far less power to mess with what we say and write, and, indeed, far less power, period—if Keegstra had never been convicted.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:15 | link | comments

Iran cocks a snook at the happy hopeychanger: Not once, but twice.

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

"Peace" in the Hitlerian sense of the word: An Islamic cleric who participated in The World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace is calling for the extermination of world Juden.

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

U.S. spurns Durban II—again: The purpose of the UN conference on racism is to use racism as a smokescreen in order to heap aspersions on the Jewish state, a nation whose existence is an insult to and irreconcilable with Islamic dogma, and further empower Muslim nations and Islam’s God-law (a law that brooks no back-talk--what we in the West like to call free speech). Thankfully, this agenda proved too revolting even for the happy hopeychangers, who have been looking to get closer to the UN. For a second—and final—time, Obama has nixed attending the bash. Here’s the AFP report on the U.S. decision (notice how the French news agency manages to get in an anti-Israel zinger at the end):

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel slammed on Sunday a controversial UN conference on racism where the president of arch-foe Iran was due to speak on Hitler's birthday and meet his Swiss counterpart.

Calling the UN meeting a "tragic farce," Israeli foreign ministry spokeman Yossi Levy said: "Officially it is aimed at denouncing racism, but it has invited a Holocaust denier who has called for the destruction of Israel."

Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz is due to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a dinner for conference participants on Sunday ahead of its opening on Monday.

"We are going to try to convince the Swiss president not to meet with Ahmadinejad, the most prominent invitee of this conference, who will give a speech on Holocaust Day and Hitler's birthday," Aharon Lechnoyaar, the Israeli representative at UN institutions in Geneva, told public radio.

Ahmadinejad is due to address the conference on April 20, the anniversary of Hitler's birth. Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 21, with ceremonies also being held after sundown on Monday.

Israeli Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog said the conference was "a cynical spectacle manipulated by the Iran-Libyan-Pakistan axis."

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told army radio that the conference "had but one goal -- to slander the state of Israel."

Ahmadinejad's attendance has sparked fears that the five-day meeting could end in acrimony, as did the previous racism conference held eight years ago in Durban, South Africa.

The Iranian president, who is so far the only prominent head of state due to attend the Durban Review Conference, has stirred outrage by repeatedly calling the Holocaust a "myth" and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Negotiators in Geneva said on Friday that Western and most Muslim states had agreed on a declaration that ironed out the most controversial issues relating to religious discrimination, Israel and the Middle East.

But on Saturday, Israel's staunch ally the United States said it would not join the conference because its final declaration still included language Washington was "unable to support."

The United States, along with Israel, walked out of the World Conference on Racism in Durban in 2001 after a row with some Muslim states about anti-Semitism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Yes, those Muslim states are always so concerned about Israel’s “treatment,” even though they themselves would never think of granting these “refugees” citizenship to ease their plight. (In other words, they could care less about “Palestinians” as real people; they only care about their utility in erasing the Jewish blot from the Islamic map.)

One group that’s mighty peeved off about the shunning—the Congressional Black Caucus. According to CNN

the Congressional Black Caucus said it was "deeply dismayed" by the decision made by the nation's first African-African president, saying it was inconsistent with administration policies.

"Had the United States sent a high-level delegation reflecting the richness and diversity of our country, it would have sent a powerful message to the world that we're ready to lead by example," the statement said. "Instead, the administration opted to boycott the conference, a decision that does not advance the cause of combating racism and intolerance, but rather sets the cause back."

They have a point about leading by example. Had the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or the Rev. Al Sharpton or the Rev. Jesse Jackson been in charge, they’d have insisted the U.S. attend. (Obviously, the Congressional Black Caucus hasn’t a clue about what’s really going on, and is keen to participate in what amounts to a show of strength by Muslim states, a shariafest, because the word “racism” is featured in the conference’s title.)

Update: Geneva has already been host to an "anti-Durban" conference (the one where Ahmadinejad was not invited to give a keynote address on Hitler's birthday):

GENEVA (JTA) -- An alternate Durban conference was held in Geneva.

The Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy was held Sunday, the day before the opening of a controversial United Nations-sponsored conference to review progress on combating racism and discrimination.

Organized by the American Jewish Committee-affiliated U.N. Watch, in cooperation with more than a dozen other human rights organizations, the conference featured presentations from rights activists and political dissidents.

Opening the conference, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, an Iranian-born human rights activist and co-founder of Stop Child Executions, issued a broadside against the Islamic Republic and its president, who is scheduled to address the U.N. conference on Monday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khameini "do not represent the people of Iran," Afshin-Jam said, "but represent a regime of intolerance and the most brutal human rights violations one could imagine."

Irwin Cotler, a Canadian parliamentarian and former justice minister, opened a session on genocide by noting that it is "astonishing" that, 60 years after the adoption of the U.N. genocide convention, such crimes still take place.

"These genocides occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of a state-sanctioned incitement to genocide," Cotler said. "It was this teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins."

Cotler said Ahmadinejad's Iran is an "epicenter" of such incitement, with its "toxic convergence" of anti-Semitism and threats against Israel.

Update: Some human rights groups have noticed that Ahmadinejad's Iran isn't exactly a paragon of "human rights".

Update: Just 'cause he balked at going to Durban II doesn't mean Obama is good for Israel. Far from it, in fact.

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

Saturday, 18 April 2009

They’re not pirates. They’re…eco-warriors: The National Post’s Craig Offman reports on those unfortunate underdogs, the Somali pirates:

Using a successful formula of shooting, kidnapping and extortion, seafaring bandits off the Somali coast are causing panic in the Gulf of Aden. But as the international community scrambles to deal with the high seas hijackings, a contrarian view of the story is emerging told by maritime experts and one of Somalia's most famous exports, a Canadian rapper.

They say the pirates are reacting to an influx of Asian and European ships that are taking advantage of Somalia's lawlessness to plunder its fish stocks and despoiled its waters with toxic waste.

"This provoked the local people to respond," Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan told the National Post, adding the world community and the United Nations have repeatedly brushed off complaints about dumping and overfishing.

"I don't know what other options there are for Somalis."

While the Mogadishu-born musician said he doesn't condone these attacks, he has maintained dumping is a more heinous crime than piracy.

"There is very little violence with way [the pirates] operate -- at least thus far. But think about the deaths -- 300 deaths that have linked with toxic-waste dumping -- and the environmental damage and the future damage."

Although some of K'naan's recent comments on the crisis have proved controversial, many regional experts would agree.

Somalia is a freewheeling breeding ground for piracy of all kinds. Except for a few blinking moments of stability, the impoverished African country has been unhinged since 1991, when several armed factions refused to recognize the government, a crisis that dissolved into civil war, anarchy and rampant starvation. Eventually it became home to Islamist movements, al-Qaeda and a continuing humanitarian disaster.

In the absence of a strong government and centralized law enforcement, trawlers from Spain, France and Portugal arrived in search of its abundant tuna, dolphin fish and shrimp.

But inhabitants of one of its poorer coastal regions, the semi-autonomous state of Puntland, took matters into their own hands. Rather than sit around, the unemployed fishermen turned to crime.

Bandits from the area formed naval groups that extorted money from fishing boats, a practice that now reaps an estimated $18-million to $30-million a year.

Although the proceeds usually go to the pirates' family and the rest to dealers, bosses and government officials, the bandits portray themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods.

"I'm not a pirate. I'm a saviour of the sea," one told the BBC.

As late as 2006, Somali fishermen complained 700 foreign ships were casting their nets along the country's roughly 3,300 kilometres of coastline, essentially vacuuming up one of its few means of subsistence, an industry worth at least $100-million to which they had shrinking access.

"There is illegal fishing going on, and these are legitimate grievances" said Ken Menkhaus, a former special advisor to the UN operation in Somalia who teaches at North Carolina's Davidson College.

"But this ceased being an issue about fishermen long ago. It's essentially a Mafiosi activity."

In 2006, militias from the short-lived government of the Union of Islamic Courts helped curtail piracy, a crime it made punishable by execution. But after the UIC fell to Ethiopian forces, the pirates returned to sea.

So did the polluters.

The coast remains an easy dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste…

I left this mordant comment:

I don't know who's doing the pirates' P.R., but they're doing a superb job of getting the pirates' "side" out (i.e. "they're not blood-thirsty, cut-throat brigands, they're misunderstood 'youts' and victims of pollution"). Maybe Israel should hire them (the pirates' flaks, not the pirates).

Someone who probably isn't shedding too many tears for these poor blighters--Raymond Ibrahim, who weighs in on the age-old tradition of the aqueous jihad in these benighted parts.

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

Iraq a hell for gays: Iraq is now a “democracy,” but that’s small comfort to its homosexual population, which is being persecuted like crazy. From the Beeb:

…Gay activists believe the campaign emerged as police, militias and tribes took their cue from the clerics.

But officials in all categories deny that they support the persecution or killing of gays.

"The Interior Ministry has no policy of arresting gays just for being gay," said Brigadier Diah Sahi, head of the Iraqi police's Criminal Investigation Department.

"There's no law to justify it, unless they commit indecent acts in public."

"It's a psychological problem in any case. Arresting people and putting them in jail isn't going to change anything," he added.

A Shia cleric in central Baghdad's Kerrada district, Shaikh Sadeq al-Zair, said he saw many young men dressing more effeminately than women.

"It's a phenomenon which has to be combated, but through treatment," he said.

"If these people are sick, they should be given therapy. But violence is rejected by all religions, especially by Islam, which is a religion of mercy."

A spokesman of the Sadrist movement - followers of the militant young cleric Moqtada Sadr whose Mehdi Army militia used to rule Sadr City - also said that there was nothing in Islam to say that gays should be killed.

But they are being killed, and the Shia militias are among the most oft-cited suspects…

The cleric is dissembling for an infidel audience, I fear, since he well knows that “merciful” Islam calls for practising homosexuals to be stoned to death.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:46 | link | comments

Demonizing Obama-balkers: Who says the happy hopeychangers don’t have their act together? Why, just the other day they released a report identifying the biggest threat to national security. No, it’s not incendiary homo sapiens of the jihadist persuasion; that “threat” has been downgraded from terrorism to a “man-caused disaster.” Nor is it the creeping/galloping sharia currently sweeping the planet. According to the report, the clearest, most imminent danger is posed by those dangerous “extremists” who dare to balk at Barack. One such “extremist”—Diana West—roars her indignation:

I've got it.

After reading and rereading the surreal Department of Homeland Security intel report on "right-wing extremism" that clearly designates conservative political dissent as part of the threat, I finally figured out why it all seems so familiar.

First, there's the report's leading villain, the "military veteran" returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the "potential lone wolf" terrorist with the lethal capabilities. That could raise goose bumps in anyone, right?

Then there are the "white supremacists" well known for their "longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, interracial crime and same-sex marriage." (I don't get the connection either.) According to the government, we just might see a growing movement of similarly pro-life, pro-law-and-order, pro-marriage ... "white supremacists." Enough to make anyone hyperventilate, of course.

And what about the "right-wing extremist" who "adopts the immigration issue as a call to action"? Or the "many right-wing extremists" who "are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived" -- perceived? -- "stance on a range of issues" including immigration, expanding government programs and gun control? According to the report, such "right-wing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment." Sounds like a GOP voter drive to me. Cue up "Psycho"-strains of shrieking violins.

The fact is, we've seen this cast of characters before -- many times before -- in all of the schlock Hollywood movies that year after year harvest a diseased crop of villains from the American heartland, endlessly returning them to the screen as the "crazed veteran," the "religious zealot" and the anti-immigration "Nazi." These are the stock villains -- all racist, naturally -- who are now similarly demonized in the government's report.

This fantastic worldview that sees the country imperiled by military heroes, traditional values and even border security meshes perfectly with the also-official flip side to such paranoid liberal fantasy: namely, the harmlessness of the Islamic brand of "extremism," which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently renamed, and with a straight face, "man-caused disasters." Hollywood, of course, doesn't touch such "extremism" either, sticking with right-wingers-gone-wild to the very last reel.

But Hollywood-fantasy-turned-Washington-reality isn't simply crummy entertainment. It presents a grave menace to political discourse in this country. "We want to move away from the politics of fear," Napolitano declared last month to explain her new secretary-caused euphemism for Islamic terrorism.

But not too far. That is, Napolitano, who supports the DHS report, is plenty content to deal in the politics of fear -- just not fear of Islam. Fear of conservatism, however, is OK by her…

To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is sharia itself. Or, to put it in verse:

A security chief, Napolitano,

Is going mana a mano

With “scary” folk on the right

Who hide in plain sight.
What a whopping load of bat’s guano!

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:23 | link | comments

Friday, 17 April 2009

Required (but depressing) reading: Caroline Glick analyzes the disaster brewing in Pakistan--read it and weep.

Update: The number of Pakistanis reportedly killed in terrorist attacks last year--1,400.

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

Moor or less: The Telegraph’s Gerald Warner excoriates clueless, self-loathing (and need it be said, leftist) Spaniards who are demanding their nation apologize for—wait for it—expelling the Moors 400 years ago:

Another wimpish demand for a Western "apology" for long-past historic events, abetted as usual by le trahison des clercs - the insatiable appetite of modern soi-disants intellectuals to disparage their own civilisation and grovel to others. This time, Spanish writers are demanding that their government should apologise to Moors for King Philip III's expulsion of the Moriscos (Islamic "converts" resident in Spain) from the kingdom in 1609. The claim is they were so badly treated in the process that "hundreds" died.

In case the virulently anti-Hispanic prime minister who afflicts Spain at present - José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, recently dismissed by Nicolas Sarkozy as "dim" - should be tempted to indulge in any such masochistic exercise, how about taking it chronologically? Let's start with the massive Islamic invasion of Spain by Arabs, Syrians and Berbers in 711, which conquered the entire country by exemplary brutality within five years. Would Morocco like to start the ball rolling by apologising to Spain for that?

Then there was the little incident at the Battle of Tours on October 10, 732 when Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor-general of al-Andalus, the Muslim kingdom of Spain, was finally stopped in his tracks by Charles Martel, 12 miles north of Poitiers - not what you would call a traditionally Islamic area. The signs are these chaps were not going to stop even at the Watford Gap, unless somebody took drastic action. How about an apology to France for that incursion?

It took the Christians of Spain 800 years to recover their country in the bloody and relentless campaign known as the Reconquista, completed only with the fall of Granada in 1492. During those centuries, along with such atrocities as salting dissidents' decapitated heads as trophies for the Caliph, the Mediterranean populations were dragged in their hundreds of thousands to the slave markets of North Africa. Any apologies on offer?

Today, Osama bin Laden is urging Muslims from North Africa to migrate to Spain in the largest possible numbers to re-establish the Islamic state of al-Andalus. This campaign is boosted by tales of Moroccans who still hold the keys to houses in Granada, as well as by the fatuity of Spanish and other Western "intellectuals" afflicted with a masochistic, "my country/religion/civilisation always wrong" mentality. Historical apologies were an absurdity made fashionable in the 1990s; it is time to forget about such nonsense.

Maybe the Granada key-holders can get together with the “Palestine” key-holders and do a key exchange—you know, like an Arab “victim” timeshare arrangement.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:54 | link | comments (1)

U.S. nixes Arar entry: Despite the fact that Sheema Khan, the Ceeb and the NDP hold him up as a model to be emulated, Maher Arar still isn't allowed to cross the border into the U.S.

I'm sure many Canadians, who coughed up a gibungous payoff to compensate the gent for his months of torture in Syria, want to know what the U.S. has on him that makes him persona non grata.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments (1)

Thursday, 16 April 2009

Claudia Rosett's modest proposal: Send the Navy Seals to negotiate with North Korea.

Update: Even better, send Olga.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:45 | link | comments

Afghan women fight for their rights: Uppity chicks in Afghanistan were pelted with rocks when they protested the Shia law sanctioning marital rape. From the Ceeb:

Afghan women protesting against a new law that severely undermines women's rights were pelted with stones in the country's capital Wednesday, say reports.

About 300 mostly young women gathered in Kabul to show their opposition to a recently passed law that forbids women from refusing to have sex with their husbands and requires them to get a male relative's permission to leave the house.

The demonstration, organized by women's rights activists in the country, occurred in front of a Shia mosque recently built by a cleric who helped craft the law. Critics of the law say it effectively legalizes rape within marriage and is a return to Taliban-style rule.

About 1,000 people opposed to the protest surrounded the women and threw gravel and small stones as police struggled to hold them back. The group of counter-protesters included both men and women.

Some shouted "Death to the slaves of the Christians."

"You are a dog. You are not a Shia woman," one man shouted to a young woman in a headscarf holding aloft a banner that said, "We don't want Taliban law."

There were no reports of injuries.

Sima Ghani, a women's rights activist, said everyone at the protest is united against the law.

"No matter what religion we belong to, what sect we follow, we all stand against this law and want a reform of the law," she said.

Jeremy Starkey, a reporter with The Independent newspaper who was at the demonstration, said he saw men pelt the women with stones.

"I saw the men surging forward on a number of occasions," he said.

"Female afghan police officers joined hands to form a human chain around the women to try to protect them."

The law, which applies only to the minority Shia community, received widespread international condemnation.

The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said the law will be reviewed and won't be implemented in its current form.

Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon, said earlier this month Afghan officials had assured him they would delete "contentious clauses" from the legislation.

The Afghan constitution guarantees equal rights for women, but also allows the Shia to have separate family law based on religious tradition.

The Afghan constitution says that Afghanistan is an Islamic nation that adheres to sharia—a law that considers women to be like a field (a “tilth”) that can be plowed at will by their husbands. It’s heartening to see Afghan women protesting for their rights in this way—more than 100 Canadian soldiers have given their lives to enable them to do so—but still the question must be asked: why are we fighting to preserve a law that’s inimical—and poses a direct threat—to our own law?

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

Problem solved: There is a two state solution. It’s called Israel and Jordan. Any other solution, since it would require Arabs and other Muslims to accept the existence of a sovereign Jewish dhimmi nation on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah, can never and will never come to pass. But, hey, don’t tell the Americans, ‘kay? It would so disappoint them. From CNN:

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- U.S. envoy George Mitchell was in Israel on Thursday for his first visit since right-wing politician Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister.

It is Mitchell's third visit to the region since President Obama appointed him as special envoy for Middle East peace.

Mitchell plans to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians Thursday, as well as Palestinian leaders -- including President Mahmoud Abbas -- in the West Bank and Jerusalem on Friday.

The former senator and seasoned diplomat has not been shy in articulating the U.S. desire to see a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has led to speculation that the new Israeli government and the Obama administration may find themselves on a collision course.

Netanyahu has indicated he wants serious negotiations with the Palestinians to continue, but he has not explicitly stated his support for Palestinian statehood.

Questions about the new Israeli government's commitment to a negotiated peace process came up when the new foreign minister, nationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman, declared the Annapolis process "null and void." The Annapolis process, launched by the Bush administration in 2007, paved the way for the resumption of Israeli and Palestinian talks after they stopped earlier in the decade.

After meeting Lieberman on Thursday morning, Mitchell said he had reiterated the U.S. stance.

"U.S. policy favors, with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a two-state solution which would have a Palestinian state living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel," Mitchell said. "We look forward also to efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace throughout the region."…

And I look forward to watching swine do loop-de-loops in the sky, a prospect that’s about as likely as the U.S. effecting a regional peace.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:57 | link | comments

Noam “Quisling” Chomsky ‘splains it (and gets it wrong, of course): The Great One tells a receptive audience at the Tehran Times that the reason America has a problem with Iran is because it’s too much of a rugged individualist:

….Q: What are the obstacles blocking the establishment of direct talks between Iran and the U.S.? Does the Israeli lobby really have such a great influence over the U.S. corporatocracy?

A: The Israeli lobby has some influence, but it is limited. That was demonstrated in the case of Iran, once again, last summer, during the presidential campaign, the time when the influence of lobbies is at its peak. The Israeli lobby wanted Congress to pass legislation that came close to calling for a blockade of Iran, an act of war. The measure gained considerable support, but then suddenly disappeared, probably because the White House made it clear, quietly, that it was opposed.

As for the actual factors, we do not yet have adequate internal records, so it is necessary to speculate. We do know that a large majority of Americans want to have normal relations with Iran, but public opinion rarely influences policy. Major U.S. corporations, including the powerful energy corporations, would like to be able to exploit Iran’s petroleum resources. But the state insists otherwise. I presume that the main reason is that Iran is just too independent and disobedient…

Yeah, that—and not the fact that Iran is just too nutso and totalitarian—must be it.

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

Lifestyles of the oily and Wahhabi: You know times are tough when an egregiously wealthy Saudi sheikh is forced to tighten his belt (metaphorically speaking) by selling off a prime piece of real estate. From This is London:

THE Savoy Hotel may soon be put up for sale because of huge losses suffered by its billionaire Arab owner.

Industry sources say that Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia is looking for a buyer for London's most famous hotel, which could be worth more than £200million.

The Prince, who is ranked 22nd on the Forbes magazine list of billionaires, has suffered huge falls in the value of his investments since the start of the credit crunch.

His personal wealth is said to have gone 'from $21billion to $13billion in the past year. The most painful loss came on his five per cent stake in American banking giant Citigroup, which has collapsed in value by more than 90 per cent.

The 54-year-old prince - dubbed the Warren Buffet of the Gulf because of what were seen as astute investments - also has big holdings in Songbird Estates, the majority owner of Canary Wharf, Euro Disney and News Corporation.

One analyst said: "He's having a very challenging time. He's definitely a seller rather than a buyer. He'd sell just about anything at the right price, although finding buyers able to fund such deals is the challenge."

News of the possible sale comes as a £100million refurbishment of the 120-year-old Strand institution approaches completion. The 268-room hotel is expected to reopen towards the end of the summer after an 18-month refit.

But industry observers fear that the five-star Savoy could struggle to attract guests to its £350-a-night rooms in the current economic climate.

If the hotel is sold, the new owners will be the fifth in little more than a decade. It was bought from its long standing British owners in 1998 by American private equity house Blackstone.

In 2004 it was snapped up by a group of Irish investors who sold it on to the prince's Fairmont hotels group eight months later for an estimated £250million. The prince is also said to be selling another of his most famous hotels, Raffles in Singapore, for up to £300million.

I wouldn’t feel too bad for Alaweed, though. Even with the tanking economy, he isn’t likely to show up at the local soup kitchen any time soon:

The prince lives an immensely lavish lifestyle, owning a 282ft yacht, with an even bigger one on order, 300 cars and a private jumbo jet.

He is also believed to have ordered an Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft for delivery next year, making it the biggest private jet on the planet.

Alwaleed and his children live in a $100million sand-coloured palace whose 317 rooms are adorned with 1,500 tons of Italian marble, silk Oriental carpets, gold-plated faucets and 250 TV sets.

Can’t wait to see it on Cribs.

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

Debunking the latest "threat": All those unwanted ads for Viagra, penis enlargers and replica designer watches that richochet through the ether and end up in your e-mail inbox--sure they're annoying, but do they also cause global warming?

This guy is dubious.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:49 | link | comments

Transgendered in a twist: Is it a “human right” to compel the taxpayer to foot the bill for your gender-reassignment surgery? Some transgendered Albertans seem to think so. More than a few of them have reacted to the news that the province will no longer pay for transgender er, transitioning by filing complaints with the local “human rights” constabulary. From Canada.com:

CALGARY — Nearly two dozen transsexuals filed human-rights complaints against the Alberta government Wednesday, saying the province must reverse its decision to stop funding sex-change operations or prepare for a lengthy legal battle.

Eleven Calgarians and another 12 people in Edmonton launched complaints at the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, eight days after the province said it would no longer pay for the surgeries as part of an effort to reduce spending.

"Today was about letting the minister and cabinet know the people going through this can't be ignored," said Calgary resident Jordenne Prescott, who is currently waiting for the procedure.

"They are talking about the complete elimination of the only option (for us)."

The Alberta government has said it will save about $700,000 annually by not funding the surgeries.

Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert said the issue is one of several difficult decisions facing government in tough financial times.

The province has said it will still cover the costs for people on the surgical waiting list and for those taking hormones in preparation for surgery.

But members of the province's transgendered community said the move will still leave many without the surgery.

"This (complaint) is for everyone who came before and after us," said April Friesen, who has undergone the surgery.

Ontario reinstated funding for gender-reassignment surgery last year following a human-rights ruling on the issue.

Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett said Wednesday the Ontario decision could influence Alberta's human rights commission, but said Alberta has a "slightly different process."

"Since most of the people in our commission are from Alberta they may look at it a little differently than Ontarians do. But I don't want to prejudge that."

Observers who have studied human-rights tribunals said the Ontario ruling is not binding in other jurisdictions, but will factor into any decision made in this province…

It’s obvious that Minister Blackett (who, by coincidence, has a terrific first name for a transgendered person, since it works for both guys and dolls) isn’t a regular reader of Ezra Levant’s blog. If he were, he’d know that those who sit on our august HRCs, whether in Ontario or Alberta or anywhere else in our glorious Trudeaupia, are what you might call hacks of a feather. He’d also know that “his” human rights body, which once ordered a Christian pastor to remain mum on the subject of homosexuality for the rest of his life, is probably the most Draconian in the land.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:21 | link | comments (2)

Somali refugees bamboozle the Dutch: The Netherlands is planning to get tough with Somali asylum seekers, a number of whom have been successfully scamming the Dutch for some time. From NRC Handelsblad:

Whenever the sun comes out the residents of the Ter Apel centre for asylum seekers immediately emerge from their barracks. Many of them are from Somalia. The women wear long flowery dresses and bright-coloured headscarves. Some carry babies on their hips or wrapped to their chests.

The Netherlands are a popular destination for asylum seekers from Somalia. There were almost 4,000 of them last year - almost a third of all asylum seekers in the Netherlands. In the first two months of this year some 850 Somalis applied for asylum here, making them the second-largest group after the Iraqis.

People from central and southern Somalia benefit from what is known as "categorical protection": these parts of Somalia are so dangerous that its entire population is considered at risk. Somalia has been involved in a civil war since 1991 and there has been no effective central government since. As a result, several European countries - the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Hungary and Luxembourg - made asylum for people from Somalis virtually automatic.

Filing fingertips

Until now. In early April, Dutch deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak (Labour) announced a review of the categorical protection programme for Somalis. There has been too much abuse, she wrote to parliament.

Some Somalis have taken to filing off their fingertips to escape registration. Since 2003 all asylum seekers in Europe are fingerprinted to prevent so-called "asylum shopping". Asylum seekers are supposed to apply in the country of first arrival, but some people prefer to travel to another European country if they think they have a better chance of being accepted there, or after having been turned down in the first country.

There is also the matter of Somali foster children. After asylum has been granted, the refugee has the right to bring his spouse and children to the Netherlands. After DNA tests were introduced to verify blood ties there was a sudden peak in the number of Somali foster children. One Somali family claimed to have no less than 41 foster children.

Aybarak now wants to make Somali asylum seekers register any foster children immediately upon arrival. The children will only be admitted if the asylum seeker can prove that the foster children were an integral part of the family back in Somalia.

But according to Shamsa Said of the federation of Somali associations in the Netherlands (FSAN) there is no such thing as foster children in Somalia. There is no such thing as family either, at least not as we know it. Said is from Somalia and has lived in the Netherlands since 1993.

Group thinkers

"Here a family lives in one and the same house and it is the parents who raise their children. In Somalia children belong not to the parents but to the entire family. Children are often raised by people other than the parents. Your sister's child is just as much yours as it is hers. Your uncle's child is your responsibility too," according to Said.

Somalis are group thinkers, she says. "I have lived here so long but I still find it difficult to think about myself. The first few years I still said 'we' when I was talking about myself."

But asylum lawyer Loes Vellenga says Somalis are now also being punished as a group. She compares Albayrak's new measures to a schoolteacher who punishes the whole class because of one pupil's mischief. "A few people have committed fraud and the entire population is punished," she says…

Yeah, what’s up with that? Here in Canada, home to an untold number of Somali refugees (with or without their fingertips, who the heck knows?) we are much too enlightened to do such a thing.

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

Pirate apologist: The Reverend Al Sharpton--no Thallasoharpaxaphobe, he--says we should think of Somali pirates as a sort of ad hoc Coast Guard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:52 | link | comments

Campaigners: Sheema Khan, CAIR-CAN founder and occasional Globe and Mail columnist, continues her campaign to persuade gullible infidels that we have nothing to fear from sharia. In today’s piece, she says Canadians should take a page from the Saudis, who have develped a program to "re-educate" violent radicals:

…Established in 2004, the program has been adopted by the U.S. military in Iraq, along with several countries in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. It is not offered to those convicted of terrorism-related murder charges. Thus far, the recidivism rate is about 10 per cent. Since January, however, nine graduates have been rearrested for joining terrorist groups, while one is now an al-Qaeda chief in Yemen. These graduates underwent truncated rehabilitation for only a few months.

A central feature of the program is the recognition that traditional security measures cannot be used alone to fight extremism. The state must also engage in a "war of ideas" to combat the ideological justifications of violence. The Saudi government asserts its interpretation of Islam in which loyalty and obedience to the state are paramount. In the propaganda war, extremists are delegitimized for lacking both religious authority and religious understanding. The prison rehabilitation program includes art therapy and theological debates between scholars and prisoners. Ironically, there is more intellectual freedom inside prison; outside, art is frowned on and theological debate is forbidden.

The Saudi model also adopts the view that prisoners are primarily "victims," "well-intentioned individuals" seeking to do "good works," who have been misled by a deviant ideology due to a lack of religious understanding. Those who graduate from the prison rehabilitation program are helped by the state to obtain an education, employment and even a spouse - as a means to pre-empt extremist recruiters from filling the void. Families of graduates also work with the state to help the individual reintegrate into society.

Given that a number of Canadian Muslims are incarcerated on terrorism-related charges, a Canadian-based model of rehabilitation and reintegration will be required. As with the Saudi model, individuals with sound religious understanding, the ability to deconstruct al-Qaeda ideology, and a semblance of religious authority will be needed to counsel these prisoners away from extremist ideologies.

But what type of Islam should be an alternative? The strict Saudi interpretation cannot, and must not, be presented as the only alternative to extremism in Canada. Prisoners should be engaged in a framework that finds common ground between Islamic and liberal-democratic principles.

The Saudi presumption of prisoners as "victims" is dubious, for this implies a lack of responsibility for one's actions. What is to prevent recidivism if the fault lies with the ideology and not the individual? But one can build on the idea that these are young men who seek change in a misguided way.

While Saudi Arabia offers no political alternative to dissent, liberal democracies offer empowering means to disagree with, and change, government policies. A Canadian rehabilitation program should include education about civics, the justice system, and the Charter of Rights. Individuals, such as Maher Arar, can be called on to share their experiences in striving for change through principled, non-violent means...

Yes, let’s do ask that nice Mr. Arar to help “re-educate” the violent ones—to fuggedabout blowing up major infrastructure and empower themselves in other ways, say by joining the NDP. Meanwhile, I, impudent kafir that I am, intend to keep up my campaign to cut through the multishmulti bafflegab and expose the reality of sharia:

I agree with Sheema Khan that were should look beyond the Saudi effort to deprogram terrorists and seek “a framework that finds common ground between Islamic and liberal-democratic principles.” Unfortunately, that’s going to be a lot easier said than done. Islamic principles are predicated on the primacy of Islam’s universal law—sharia—a law decreed by God that is fixed for all time and imposes inequities of gender and religion. Democratic principles, on the other hand, are man-made and give rise to a law that is subject to change and that insists on the universality of freedom and equality for all.

Finding “common ground” between these two competing and antithetical systems is as problematic—and as pointless—as searching for “common ground” between oil and water.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:30 | link | comments (2)

A clarification: In our multiculti Trudeaupia of Canada, one never need fear the kirpan, the ceremonial dagger worn by male Sikhs, because it’s a sacred religious symbol and would never be deployed in a threatening manner. However, the non-ceremonial, non-sacred Sikh hairpin (a long, thin strip of metal—like a bobby pin with a major thyroid condition), is another story. From the Globe and Mail:

MONTREAL — A Sikh teen won't have a criminal record after he was granted an absolute discharge on a conviction on one charge of assault with a hairpin.

The local Sikh community expressed relief Wednesday that the judge in the case also acquitted the 13-year-old on two other assault charges — including one that stemmed from the alleged use of a ceremonial dagger on a classmate in Montreal last September.

Youth court Judge Gilles Ouellet said there was enough reasonable doubt created by contradictory testimony for the acquittals.

That came as a relief to community members who have seen the dagger, known as a kirpan, come under increased public scrutiny in recent years.

“The community is happy in the sense that the case has nothing to do with the kirpan,” said Ishan Singh, a community member and friend of the accused's family.

“A kirpan has never been nor will it ever be a threatening weapon. A kirpan is a religious object and it is sacred to the culture and the religion and in that case (the ruling is) a relief to the community.”

But Judge Ouellet said there was “technically” enough evidence to convict on the single assault charge.

However, Judge Ouellet said he gave the unconditional discharge because it is time for everyone involved to move on.

That means the youngster will not have a criminal record.

The pin, which is not a religious object, is used to tuck loose strands of hair into a turban.

The spat took place off school grounds in Montreal last Sept. 11 and stemmed from a tale of jealousy over the friendship of a mutual schoolyard chum.

The two victims were angered that a friend preferred to play with the accused instead of wanting to hang around with them.

They alleged that the Sikh teen assaulted them by threatening them with the hairpin and one of them said he was poked with the kirpan, which was wrapped in a cloth and worn by the accused near the waist under clothes.

The accused had received the kirpan only days before the alleged incident after being baptized.

In his ruling, Judge Ouellet said the case would have been better served by the mediation process and that it may not have ended up in court had all the parties come from the same background.

Defence lawyer Julius Grey agreed.

“I think the boys came from different millieus and the parents didn't understand each other and they did not have the way open to them to sit down and work it out amongst themselves,” Mr. Grey said.

But the Crown questioned the timing of Judge Ouellet's remarks.

“I don't think those comments were appropriate ... especially given the evidence the judge saw,” said Sylvie Lemieux, adding her office will review the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

The kirpan was returned to the teen Wednesday but the hairpin was ordered destroyed…

Quel relief!

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:26 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Out of order: More than a few Jews I know were kvelling over Obama's White House seder: You probably won't be surprised to learn I wasn't one of them. Given that this is the same mush-brained president who is trying to reach out of Iran's mullahs and the entire Muslim world by acting like an abject dhimmi (thereby ushering the Western world into slavery), the seder seemed, at best, an empty gesture by a leader who specializes in optics. (Too bad Bo 'bama--i'n't he cute?--arrived on the scene too late to search for the afikoman.) At worst, it seemed like a travesty of the meaning of Passover and the Passover story.

Blogger Yid With Lid goes even further, viewing Obama as Pharaoh--and Pharaoh, obviously, has no business hosting an annual event celebrating the Jews' freedom from bondage.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:42 | link | comments

Dumb and dumber: Dumb is the chick from Quebec who followed her partner to Saudi Arabia and is now demanding that the Canadian government “rescue” her and her kids. Dumber is her mere, who says she’s going to “sue” the government if it doesn’t drop everything and “help” them come to Canada. From the National Post:

A Quebec woman says she and her children are being held in Saudi Arabia against their will because her partner will not allow them to return to Canada. Nathalie Morin moved to Saudi Arabia with her son in 2005 so they could live with the boy's father. Four years later, the 24-year-old woman now has three children, and her mother, Johanne Durocher, says she is being held there against her will. In a tearful telephone conversation recorded by her mother, Ms. Morin pleads for help in returning home to Canada. "I know I put myself in this situation, but I want to come back to Canada as soon as possible with my children," a tearful Ms. Morin told Ms. Durocher during the taped conversation on April 6. Under Saudi law, the children's father has the final say over whether the children can leave. Ms. Durocher, who played the tape for reporters yesterday at a news conference in Montreal, said Montreal lawyer Julius Grey is planning to launch a lawsuit against the federal government unless Ottawa acts quickly to help her daughter.

Under “Saudi law,” Morin (who doesn’t even appear to be married to her kids’ dad) is a lowly woman who has no maternal rights. I doubt if Ottawa can make any headway in altering that reality. If Morin wants to come home, it will probably have to be without her kids (unless she can somehow pull off a rescue a la Not Without My Daughter). Her story does serve to warn, us, however, of what can happen when one takes one’s rights for granted, and willingly puts oneself under the ambit of Allah’s law (a lesson another foolish Canadian chick, ex-Bev Giesbrecht, has also been forced to learn).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments (8)

Contextualizing pirates: While the Huffington Post and a few others urge us to consider the pirates’ point of view (they’re “misunderstood”; they come from a “failed state,” poor saps), Andrew McCarthy dares to place them in the proper context:

…Though it’s not de rigueur to make such an observation, “Muslim terrorists” is the right way to put it. The “terrorist” part is easy enough. Piracy is conduct so heinous it has been regarded for centuries as a violation of civilized norms; pirates may be excluded from civilization’s legal carapace. The same is true of international terrorism. Because terrorists flout the laws and customs of civilized warfare, they may be denied both the privileges of honorable combatants and the legal sanctuary of criminal defendants. Leftist academics carped throughout the Bush years that denying terrorists defendant status was to create a “legal black hole,” betraying our commitment to the rule of law. It is the terrorist, however, who turns his back on civilization. The black hole is of his own making. It betrays the law’s humane goals to hold that the law, not the terrorist, must yield.

Pointing out that the pirates are Muslims also makes eminent sense. Our chief security challenge the past two decades has been radical Islam, and much of the problem threads through East Africa. Al-Qaeda was involved in training the Somali jihadists who battled U.S. forces in the bloody “Black Hawk Down” incident in 1993. Somalia remains a failed state, with such jihadist elements as the Islamic Courts Union fighting for control. In the wake of Somalia’s collapse, terror cells sprouted throughout the region, American embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and American naval vessels were targeted in the Gulf of Aden until, finally, the U.S.S. Cole was struck and nearly sunk in 2000.

This is the environment in which piracy has revived and grown to be more than a $100 million business. Information tying pirates to specific jihadist organizations is scarce, and some militants — such as the Islamic Courts Union — have purported to ban piracy as an offense against Islam. Still, there have been reports (like this one from the Voice of America’s Alisha Ryu) of an understanding between pirate bands and al-Qaeda–affiliated factions: an entente that permits and protects the piracy as long as a goodly chunk of the booty finds its way to the jihadists. It would be foolish to make policy on the assumption that piracy and terror are severable, or to ignore the fact that the pirates and terrorists are co-religionists. The Islamic Courts Union claimed credit for curbing piracy in 2006. Piracy is resurgent now, and that can only be because radical Islam is benefiting from it…

Oh, Andrew, you’re such a piratophobe.

Update: Fear of pirates="Thalassoharpaxophobia."

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

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Tribal, shmibal, it’s the sharia, stupid: In a piece in the Globe and Mail, Irshad Manji inists that the problems in Afghanistan go a lot deeper than the Taliban and a sharp-dressed (but feckless) Pashtun statesman:

There was a time when I believed. With every fibre of my feminist Muslim being, I believed in our Afghanistan mission. No longer…

…But now I must ask: Exactly what are our soldiers falling for? Shortly after Afghanistan held its first free election, Mr. Karzai faced an elemental test of democracy: defending freedom of worship for an Afghan convert to Christianity who found himself charged with apostasy. Mullahs called for his execution and judges obliged them — hardly surprising since the constitution Afghanistan of proclaims sharia law supreme.

What shook me is that Mr. Karzai didn't publicly question their retrograde interpretation of Islam. He needed only to quote from the Koran, which states "there is no compulsion in religion."

Ditto for the 2008 death sentence given to a 23-year-old Afghan journalism student. He'd downloaded and distributed an Internet article criticizing how the Koran treats women. The mullahs got their day in court. The student didn't even get a lawyer. He's still alive - in jail.

Since then, the suave and sophisticated Mr. Karzai has stayed mute about several more penalties inflicted in the name of tribal honour, from widespread gang rapes of women to acid attacks on schoolgirls.

Why would a president, routinely described as a "moderate," hand so much power to feudal warlords? Geopolitical strategists tell me it's because Mr. Karzai has to avoid carnage at all costs. But does violating innocents to pre-empt further violence makes sense?

Sadly, yes, and not just because the strategists say so. Culture is among the most obstinate forces anywhere. In societies influenced by Arab culture, a massive motivator of action is asabiyya or tribal solidarity…

Oh, Irshad, Irshad, Irshad. How can you of all people trot out that old chestnut
about there being no compulsion in religion when you know that

A) the penalty for anyone daring to leave the faith is death, and

B) the punishment for those who refuse to embrace the faith is an eternity of torment in Hell?

Tell me, what’s more “compelling” than the promise of a date with a religious decapitator and a five-alarm afterlife?

My letter:

Surveying the scene in Afghanistan, Irshad Manji concludes that “tribalism” and not the Taliban or feckless leadership may be at the heart of the problems. But how does that square with the Afghanistan of the 1970s, when the country was no less “tribal,” but had a progressive government and was an oasis of calm?

What’s happened over the past few decades has little to do with “tribalism” and everything to do with the Taliban’s insistence on instituting sharia—a law that both enshrines and engenders backwardness. Even though the Taliban are no longer officially in charge, sharia remains the law of the land. Until that changes, the problems will persist, and Afghanistan will remain chained to its “tribal” past.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:39 | link | comments (1)

Down with love: The Taliban—sticklers for sharia—have exacted a harsh punishment on a pair of insolent elopers. From the Beeb:

The Taleban in Afghanistan have publicly killed a young couple who they said had tried to run away to get married, officials say.

The man, 21, and woman, 19, were shot dead on Monday in front of a mosque in the south-western province of Nimroz.

Nimroz is an area where the Taleban have a strong influence.

Governor Ghulam Dastageer Azad told the AFP news agency the killings followed a decree by local religious leaders and were an "insult to Islam".

Dangerous region

Mr Azad said: "An unmarried young boy and an unmarried girl who loved each other and wanted to get married had eloped because their families would not approve the marriage."

Officials said the couple were traced by militants after they tried to go to Iran. They were made to return to their village in Khash Rod district.

"Three Taleban mullahs brought them to the local mosque and they passed a fatwa (religious decree) that they must be killed. They were shot and killed in front of the mosque in public," the governor said.

He said there were some reports that the families of the young couple could have links with the Taleban. The Taleban could not be immediately reached for comment…

None of them could be reached for comment? Not even any “moderates”? Too busy with all their other responsibilities, I guess.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:09 | link | comments

Clueless. Utterly clueless: What else can you say about Rabbi Mark Schneier, the delusional dreamer, the winsome twinner, who knows diddly about Islam, thinks “antisemitism” is equivalent to “Islamophobia,” and who believes that the wacky Wahhabi potentate may hold the key to interfaith amity? From YNet News :

He has a dream

Prominent US Jewish spiritual leader, Rabbi Marc Schneier believes Jews and Muslims must join hands in the fight against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. 'There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and 14 million Jews so this is a critical challenge,' he says

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – Rabbi Marc Schneier, who was included on Newsweek's list of America's 50 most influential rabbis, is the founder and president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU). As part of this endeavor Schneier is leading an initiative to develop dialogue between Jews and Muslims in the US and across the world.

Last November Rabbi Schneier twinned between 50 synagogues and 50 mosques across the US and Canada for a day of joint prayers, with rabbis and imams speaking out against hate.

In November 2009 he hopes to expand the initiative to Europe.

Schneier, a prominent author and lecturer on interfaith dialogue, spoke to Ynet of his vision of bringing Jews and Muslims closer: "We have opened up a network of positive inter-religious dialogue over the past 50 years with the Christian community.

"The major challenge of the 21st century is to find ways to reduce the divergent opinions between Muslims and Jews. There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and 14 million Jews so this is a critical challenge."

The rabbi said he was optimistic regarding the prospects of this challenge. "We are beginning to witness pockets of more moderate voices in Islam and there is a conflict between the moderates and the extremes. This is the work with which we’re involved. We were very successful with the program we arranged in November and in the coming November we plan to bring this to England. We are in touch with the Jewish leadership in South Africa and Australia to see if they are interested in such a program."

Rabbi Schneier had attended meetings with Saudi King Abdullah in Madrid last July and a dinner with President Shimon Peres, the Saudi king and the heads of Muslim states in the UN headquarters in New York in November. Schneier believes that public appearances with the king, who is responsible for Mecca and Medina – the most sacred sites for slam – could have a positive effect on Muslim-Jews relations…

Earth to Rabbi Schneier—as custodian of Islam's two holy mosques, the Wahhabi
monarch is willing to accept any Jew…who knows and accepts his lowly place under
Allah’s law. (No wonder he’s so fond of you.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments

The bookstore as microcosm: Richard Klavan makes a good case for bookstore (and societal) assimiliation:

My copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is old and so, increasingly, are my eyes. It was a strain for me to make out the small print on the yellowing pages so off I toddled to my nearest bookstore to find a fresh copy. I looked in the literature section thinking the book would be there because it’s literature. Silly me. When I asked a salesgirl for help, she took me—but of course!—to the “African-American Section,” because Ellison and the protagonist of his novel are black.

What a great idea! Putting all the novels about black people in a single section! Why didn’t I think of that? But wait—wait—how many of the characters have to be black before the novel does go into that section? Does just one black character make the whole novel black or is there a special section for mulatto novels with characters of both colors? And if all the novels about black people are in the black section, does that make the Literature section the white section? Why don’t we call it that then? I’m confused.

And hey, what about The Adventures of Augie March—do I find that in the Jewish section? No, don’t be an idiot. Important novels about Jews trying to find their place in America go in the Literature section, of course. What are you, an anti-semite? Only important novels about blacks trying to find their place in America go in a special section of their own. Anything else would be hateful. Got it now?

You know, every now and again, I meet a conservative individual who is an avowed racist, and that’s too bad. But leftism is racism. Leftism, which sees people as victim groups rather than individuals, which sets us one against another according to the color of our skins rather than distinguishing us by the contents of our characters, which is so eager to manipulate our guilts and grievances in order to form bases of support for an ever-expanding state, has derailed the natural American movement—the natural human movement—toward assimilation and unity and replaced it with ghettoizing multi-culturalism and infantilizing “diversity.”…

Victim groups…manipulating guilt and grievances…ever-expanding state…ghettoizing multi-culturalism? That’s old hat in our glorious HRC-ridden Trudeaupia—but the New Deal in the rapidly evolving Barackopia to our south. Alas.

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

Is the U.S. going to Durban II?: Maybe. From the Jerusalem Post:

The United States welcomed changes made to the draft document for the United Nations' anti-racism conference starting Monday in Geneva but indicated they were not sufficient for the US to change its position and attend the event, according to a statement released late Monday.

"Substantial improvements have been made, including shortening the document, removing all language that singled out any one country or conflict, and removing language that embraced the concept of 'defamation of religion' and that demanded reparations for slavery," said State Department Acting Spokesman Robert Wood in the statement, referring to earlier objections including undue focus on Israel. "There remain, however, elements of the current draft text that continue to pose significant concerns."

The statement, however, held out the possibility that the United States could "re-engage the conference process with the hope of arriving at a
conference document that we can support" if additional changes were made.

These include dropping its reaffirmation of the "flawed" document that resulted from the first such UN World Conference Against Racism, held in
Durban, South Africa in 2001. Israel has been particularly troubled by the reaffirmation of the earlier document because of language singling out and criticizing the Jewish state, though all other language that referenced Israel has now been removed from the 2009 text.

The wrangling over the contents of the draft outcome document for the Durban review could continue throughout the week, leaving the US presence up in the air until right before the conference begins.

My advice: Yankee stay home. Even if they remove all the offending language, you know it’s still going to devolve into another fiesta of Judenhass—with Israel as the piñata.

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

Monday, 13 April 2009

Handling the pirates: The first mate of the American merchant ship that tussled with Somali brigands (and whose captain was just rescued by American Navy sharp-shooters) is imploring Obama to defeat the pirates.

Whoah there, fellah. You know what happens when you try to defeat pirates--you end up spurring more young men to take up a life of piracy. Next thing you know there's an even bigger pool of potential pirate recuits, and all the pirate wannabes are logging onto pirate websites and trading info about the latest innovations in gunpowder and peg legs and walking the plank.

Fighting pirates breeds piracy: remember that, bucko!

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:50 | link | comments

Euphoria at the train station: Who knew that Julie Andrews trilling "Do-Re-Mi" could have this effect on people?

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

Another "no": Australia probably won't be going to Durban II (even though organizers are promising it will be a paean to "tolerance").

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

Big on brigands: Back when Britannia ruled the waves, it rid the seas of the pirate scourge. Today, of course, such power plays would never do, and Britannia, a mere shadow of its former self, is more concerned about ensuring that pirates receive their full share of “human rights”. From the timesonline:

THE Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.

The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

In 2005 there were almost 40 attacks by pirates and 16 vessels were hijacked and held for ransom. Employing high-tech weaponry, they kill, steal and hold ships’ crews to ransom. This year alone pirates killed three people near the Philippines.

Last week French commandos seized a Somali pirate gang that had held a luxury yacht with 22 French citizens on board. The hijackers were paid off by the boat’s owner and then a French helicopter carrier dispatched 50 commandos to seize the hijackers and the ransom money on dry land.

Britain is part of a coalition force that patrols piracy stricken areas and the guidance has troubled navy officers who believe they should have more freedom to intervene.

The guidance was sharply criticised by Julian Brazier MP, the Conservative shipping spokesman, who said: “These people commit horrendous offences. The solution is not to turn a blind eye but to turn them over to the local authorities. The convention on human rights quite rightly doesn’t cover the high seas. It’s a pathetic indictment of what our legal system has come to.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “There are issues about human rights and what might happen in these circumstances. The main thing is to ensure any incident is resolved peacefully.”

The guidance is the latest blow to the robust image of the navy. Last year 15 of its sailors were taken prisoner by the Iranians and publicly humiliated.

In the 19th century, British warships largely eradicated piracy when they policed the oceans. The death penalty for piracy on the high seas remained on the statute books until 1998. Modern piracy ranges from maritime mugging to stealing from merchant ships with the crew held at gunpoint.

And that, my friends, is one of the reasons why the sun has set on the Brits.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

Iran’s plans: Shimon Peres is sounding the alarm about the mullahs and their ambitions, but slips up on a significant detail. From Ha’aretz:

President Shimon Peres said on Monday that a clash between Iran and the Sunni nations of the Arab world was "inevitable."

"The collision between the Middle East, which is Sunni Arab, and the Iranian minority that seeks to take it over, is inevitable," said Peres.

The president's comments came amid a diplomatic spat between Egypt and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. Iran was reportedly behind the plotting of attacks against Egyptian targets by a group of alleged Hezbollah agents Egypt arrested last week.

Peres added: "Sooner or later, the world will discover that Iran has the aspiration to take over the Middle East and that it posses (sic) colonial ambitions."…

“Colonial ambitions”? Only in the sense that it wants to “colonize” the globe. Surely the better, the more accurate, word is “totalitarian”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:45 | link | comments

Sunday, 12 April 2009

The CAF’s “Silence the Zionists” campaign: Canadian Jews have been refusing to lie down and tolerate the hatred masquerading as concern for “oppressed” and “occupied” Palestinians, and the Canadian Arab Federation, which has been in the forefront of shovelling the anti-Zionism manure (and which, until recently, could depend on the government to fund its efforts), doesn’t like it one bit. Here’s how the CAF and its leftist fellow travellers are fighting back:

Freedom of Expression Campaign:

Defend the right to speak, educate and organize for Palestinian human rights

There has been a massive attack on freedom of expression in Canada including:

• The cutting of funds for settlement programs and language services at Canadian Arab

Federation

• The ban of George Galloway from Canada,

• The removal of Israeli Apartheid Week posters from Ontario universities

• The targeting of students and faculty doing public education on campuses

• Discussion of Israel/Palestine at Toronto District School Board threatened.

Attend this launch and hear testimonials, support the campaign, and learn how to get active in

your organization or community

When: Wednesday, April 15

Time: 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Where: The Bahen Centre, Room 1160 (40 St. George Street - north of College Street),

University of Toronto

Moderator: Sherene Razack (SESE)

Speakers from: Canadian Arab Federation, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Teachers for

Palestine, Faculty for Palestine, Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and more.

Sponsored by:

* Canadian Arab Federation

* Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (OISE-University of Toronto)

I love how they're rallying against Israel under the banner of free expression, when what they really want to do is continue to tell lies about the Jewish state and drown out the voices of those who support it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:48 | link | comments (1)

Runaway twain: East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet, right?

Wrong, writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Jerusalem Post. Rosenbaum points out that the issue of Israel seems to have brought the twain together:

Jewish eschatology contains numerous references to an alliance between Esau (Rome, the West) and his father-in-law Ishmael (Islam) against the Jewish people toward the end of history. Frankly, I've always had a hard time imaging such an alliance between clashing civilizations. Perhaps my mistake lay in imagining a sort of updated Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

What we are witnessing instead today is Western appeasement and submission to Islam. In both the United States and Western Europe an effective double-standard has been carved out for Islam. Scorn for traditional religions and their adherents is fine, even praiseworthy, as long as it is confined to Judaism or Christianity. But toward Islam, we must show respect.

The lesson that Europeans learned from the Danish cartoons episode was that it is not wise to rile Muslims. Noting Islam's unlovely propensity for producing adherents eager to kill in its name inevitably triggers murderous riots that prove the point being protested.

Britain's recent refusal to permit Dutch parliamentarian Geerts Wilder into the country and the criminal prosecution against him in his own country provide a classic example of anticipatory compliance. The fear that showing of Wilder's movie Fitna, consisting primarily of quotes from the Koran, to a group of British parliamentarians would trigger riots trumped traditional Anglo-Saxon support for freedom of thought and argument.

THE WEST'S astounding passivity in the face of Iran's racing nuclear program is the most consequential form of appeasement. In three months in office, the Obama administration's sole initiative on the Iranian front has been a video from President Barack Obama full of paeans to the great Persian culture, for which he received mostly spittle in return.

By contrast, the administration has been hyperactive on the Palestinian-Israeli front. The president's first foreign policy initiative was to appoint a special Mideast envoy, who has already visited the region several times. The president and his secretary of state constantly stress the urgency of the "two-state solution" and the unsustainability of the status quo. The Arab-Israeli conflict, we keep hearing from Washington, holds the key to all Middle East conundrums.

That inversion of priorities makes no logical sense. The possession of nuclear weapons by an ideologically expansionist power sitting atop or adjacent to a large percentage of the world's oil supply and serving as a patron of terrorist groups around the world would permanently change the world in ways too painful to contemplate. Sunni leaders know this and repeatedly told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Iran constitutes a far bigger threat to regional stability than Israel.

On the other hand, an imposed "two-state solution" would change little in the Middle East. Arab countries would continue to be plagued by high rates of illiteracy, second-class citizenship for women, lack of scientific or technological training, and the absence of civil liberties even in the unlikely event of peace with the Palestinians. The only consequence of such a "solution," particularly if it left Israel uninhabitable after a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, would be to strengthen the narrative of Islamic ascendancy and whet the jihadist appetite…

To paraphrase Churchill, Esau is feeding Israel to Ishmael the crocodile in the hope it will eat him last. No such luck, Esau. First they came for the Jews. Next they’re coming for you.

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

“Democracy” in Afghanistan: That fraud that Afghanistan is a “democracy” is exposed by a leading cleric, who is more than happy to use the kafirs’ lingo (“government by the people for the people”) as long as at the end of the day women in his land submit to men, and everyone submits to sharia. From the Ceeb:

A controversial law in Afghanistan that includes a provision making it illegal for a Shia Muslim woman to refuse to have sex with her husband cannot be changed, one of the drafters of the legislation said.

The comments by Mohammad Asif Mohseni, a top Afghan cleric, seem to contradict the message from Canada's foreign minister, who said Afghan justice officials were going to delete contentious clauses.

Mohseni told reporters in Kabul on Saturday that the legislation cannot be changed because it passed by both houses of parliament and was signed by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.

But last week, Lawrence Cannon said the legislation is under review by the Department of Justice in Afghanistan and that assurances for the changes came from Afghanistan's foreign and interior ministers.

Karzai himself said the law will be studied and may be sent back to parliament.

The law says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse, and regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone. The legislation has sparked international outrage.

Mohseni said that women and men are not equal in Afghanistan and shouldn't be treated as equals, arguing that men are the breadwinners and that rural women are illiterate, making it difficult for them to provide financial support to the family.

"It is not possible for all women to pay the same amount of money as men are paying. For all these expenses, can't we at least give the right to a husband to demand sex from his wife after four nights?" he said.

Mohseni defended the legislation, saying a woman can refuse sex with her husband if she is fasting for Ramadan, preparing for a pilgrimage, menstruating, or has just given birth.

But he stressed that "it is essential for the woman to submit to the man's sexual desire."

"If she is not sick, and if she does not have another problem, it is the right of a man to ask for sex and she should make herself ready for it. This is the right of a man," Mohseni said.

He suggested that those who support democracy in Afghanistan should allow it to prevail, even if they don't like the outcome.

"The Westerners claim that they have brought democracy to Afghanistan. What does democracy mean? It means government by the people for the people. They should let the people use these democratic rights," he said.

What does democracy mean? It sure as hell doesn’t mean adherence to sharia, a law that’s the antithesis of democracy. The imam knows this. Too bad we Westerners have yet to figure it out.

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

A pretence of antiquity: The flipside of Israeli tolerance and civility—Palestinian intolerance and incivility—is on full display in a Toronto Star article by Oakland Ross. It’s a piece that deals with “law and order, Palestinian-style,” a gory and cutthroat affair based on “tribal law”—the only ‘law’ in effect in the effectively lawless West Bank. Of course, this being the Star, the whole thing is validated and lent undeserved gravitas by referring to “the ancient Palestinian justice system,” even though there were no ancient Palestinians, and the “tribal law” in question is really sharia, Islam’s universal (though hardly “ancient”) law.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments

Open to Bach: The New Republic’s Martin Peretz explains why Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” can get a hearty reception in Jerusalem but won’t in, say, Cairo:

I've written recently about the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and its great performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto and Bloch's "Schelomo" with Yo-Yo Ma. As president of the orchestra, I returned to Jerusalem about ten days ago for a board meeting and stayed to hear Maestro Leon Botstein conduct the J.S.O. in Bach's epic and threnodic "St. Matthew Passion." Imagine hearing any ensemble playing any of Bach's religious masterpieces in any Arab or, for that matter, any Muslim city. Well, you can't imagine it, can you?

You'll get an insight into this lamentable truth if you read Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still? It is a learned book by Dan Diner, a professor at Leipzig and Jerusalem, leftish in his views but right there to confront the progressive orthodoxies about Islam and its relationship to the cultures of others. The book's central chapter focuses on the Muslim panic after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, a panic that still continues in the ongoing terror in Islam of foreign phenomena generally.

Diner's scholarship dissents a bit from Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (also available as a Kindle Book) but extends the argument further, as well. Politically, it starts off with the first United Nations Arab Report on Human Development, an intellectually liberating departure but predictably stopped in its tracks, stopped dead in its tracks, as it happens. In a way, it examines some of the evidence and conclusions that Arab scholars were loathe to put forward.

By the way, I once made the observation about Bach and other composers of Christian religious music not being especially welcome in Arab cities, and I was reproached by a know-it-all Jewish lady informing me that there was an annual Bach Festival in Bethlehem. Assuming her certainty to mean she was right, I apologized for my misinformation. Then, coming home at night, I looked the festival up on google and found that, indeed, there was one in Bethlehem but it wasn't the holy city in historic Palestine but the one in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to which German immigrants flocked in the 19th century.

(I suspect -but do not actually know, although I have checked- that Daniel Barenboim's youth ensemble, the West-East Divan Orchestra composed of Israeli, Palestinian and not exactly publicized but many-more-than-you're-supposed-to-think European youngsters, also does not have it in its repertory, out of deference to the Muslim musicians, any religious music, certainly not by Jewish composers and also not by Christian composers either. I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.)

In any case, here's a Jerusalem Post review by Ury Epstein, the music critic of the newspaper. Epstein writes that the performance "did full justice to the monumental work." And more. Of course, the scheduling of the St. Matthew was no accident. Put on the calendar just before Passover, Good Friday and Easter, it expressed all of the emotions evoked by the passion itself, the terror and the yearning, the hope for salvation. This, in a mostly Jewish city with only a relative handful of Christians (less than 14,000), where among the Jews there is a considerable portion of ultra-orthodox who do not step out of their little universe except if their rabbis allow them to use the computer for business.

But there were many religious men with skull caps on their heads and religious women with skirts inordinately below to the knee so identifying them as pious was easy. The Crown Auditorium was full, which means 800 attendees in Jerusalem (plus almost 3000 in much more secular Tel Aviv later in the week.) In fact, two large and professional vocal groups sang in performance, one the New Vocal Ensemble and the other, the Kibbutz Artzi Choir, some of them with kipoth on their heads. Epstein observes their effectiveness "in the frenzied outcries of the fanatic mob:" "Let him be crucified."

So why did the Jerusalem (and Tel Aviv) audience attend and give the performers a long, very long and resonant ovation? Because, despite what you read in the cliche mongering press about Israel being close-minded and intolerant, phobic and repelling of difference, it is an exemplary instance of western liberality and openness. Maybe too exemplary for its own safety. But that's their decision, and the dye is cast…

Um, I think he means the “die” (plural of dice) is cast. Casting dye is a far messier proposition, at least at the outset.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments

Louts of Arabia: You would think that being encased head-to-toe in a black shroud would protect a Saudi chick from the unwanted glances of horny young men (at least that’s what those who want women to cover up in public always argue). But as Arab News reports, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.

JEDDAH: Women in the Kingdom on a daily basis experience harassment on roads, and in malls and public places. As there is no law against men pestering women, some youngsters have launched a campaign, entitled “If she were your sister,” to combat the problem.

The campaign was started by a group of young men and women a couple of weeks ago with the launch of a Facebook group.

“We want men and women alike to understand its negativity and vulgarity,” said one of the campaign’s founders, Hashem Daghestani, 21.

Harassment often takes place on the Kingdom’s roads where men often try to get the attention of women seated in cars. The harassment also involves tailing their cars, waving phone numbers through eye-catching tactics, or mumbling words to gain attention in shopping malls.

“‘Ya mozza,’ which is Egyptian slang for ‘beautiful girl,’ is one of the most common words young men say to girls in public,” said Sara Al-Ahmadi, 19.

Al-Ahmadi went on to describe how men d

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