scaramouche

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

 

The guys can’t help it: As over-exuberant “youths” continue to set vehicles ablaze in France, and an Australian cleric explains that unveiled women are responsible for provoking rapes, and thousands of seethers take to the streets in Pakistan, burning American flags to protest the hit by Pakistani authorities on an alleged Al Qaeda madrassa, it strikes me that there’s one common denominator here. In two words: impulse control. Or, to be more specific, the lack thereof. The youths can’t help but give in to their impulse to torch cars. Muslim men, says the Aussie cleric, can’t help but give in to their overwhelming sexual appetites. The Pakistani seethers can’t help but go bananas and rampage through the street.

Supporters of a religious political party Jamat-e-Islami during a protest in Multan against the madrassa air strike (EPA)

 

Or can they? It seems to me that it’s not so much that they can’t control their impulses as it is that they chose not to control them. Most people as they mature and begin to think rationally and comprehend the world around them have the ability to put the brakes on their impulses. That’s why, for the most part, toddlers tend to have tantrums and adults can usually control the impulse to flip out (though, of course, not all adults, and not all the time).

 

Conversely, these males with the hair-trigger tempers can usually be brought to heel by their religious leaders, which suggests that someone else is in control of these impulses, and can turn them “on” or “off” as desired.

 

For the purposes of scaring the infidel and giving him/her the sense that events are slipping out of control (those fiery lads! the Arab street!), there’s nothing more effective than a good chaotic rampage (aside from an exploding martyr, of course).

 

As for a man’s inability to curb his animalistic lust in the presence of an uncovered woman, we have laws against that sort of thing, ones which, thankfully, aren’t nearly as chauvinistic, archaic and unfair as the ones the Aussie cleric seeks to impose on the larger society.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:32 | link | comments |

 

Wearing the niqab is bad for your health: So says a letter in the Globe and Mail. (Sorry, no link):

 

In the controversy over Moslem woman and the veil, no one is addressing the possible health consequences for women wearing the niqab. Perhaps they missed Grade 11 biology.

 

In Saudi Arabia and in Afghanistan, women wearing excessive covering suffer from back problems and osteoporosis, a condition characterized by bone loss with resultant weakening of the skeleton and bones that fracture easily.

 

Human beings have an inherent need for sunlight. Many chemical reactions in the human body are mediated by sunlight. Tryptophan, an amino acid, is light sensitive and in daylight converts to “feel-good chemical serotonin, lack of which can cause depression and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

 

Ultraviolet light is also necessary for the synthesis of the D vitamins that promote the proper metabolism of calcium and phospherus, the two major constituents of bone. Lack of vitamin D3 causes the aforementioned osteoporosis.

 

The eyes, which are exposed by niqab wearers, are the very things that should be shielded from ultraviolet light, which is a factor in the formation of cataracts and in macular degeneration.

 

So, ladies, wear you niqab if you wish, but protect your health by vitamin D supplements and by consuming food high in vitamin D…Otherwise, down the road, you will be making the manufacturers of walkers and wheelchairs very happy.

C.E. REYNOLDS, Toronto

 

On the plus side, women who wear the niqab are less prone to malignant melanoma and other skin cancers. Also, women in Saudi Arabia don’t need a male chaperone to drive a wheelchair.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:59 | link | comments |

 

Shedding light on an unknown (and appalling) episode: Walter Reich, former director of the Holocaust Museum, has a letter in today’s Washington Post. In it he recounts how, post-Oslo, pre-Wye, the Clinton Administration shamelessly tried to use a visit by Yasser Arafat as a photo op in an effort to bamboozle American Jews:

In his Oct. 19 letter, "Arafat and the Holocaust Museum," Afif Safieh, head of the PLO Mission to the United States, claimed that "on an official visit to Washington in 1998, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed a strong desire to visit" the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "but his request was rejected by the museum." I was the director of the museum at the time and feel obliged to correct Mr. Safieh's misstatement of those events.

Yasser Arafat didn't request a visit to the Holocaust Museum. Before he came to the United States, he was invited by White House and State Department officials -- who were also presidentially appointed members of the museum's board of trustees -- with the agreement of the board's presidentially appointed chairman but without my knowledge.

When I learned of the invitation, I objected that the museum shouldn't be used as a prop for a photo op. The invitation was, in my judgment, aimed at convincing American Jews, who mistrusted Arafat because of his support for terrorism during the years after the Oslo accords, that he genuinely felt the pain of the Jewish people and could be trusted to keep any word he would give in his upcoming negotiations with President Bill Clinton. I said that exploiting the memory of the Holocaust victims to sway public opinion in the service of achieving diplomatic objectives was unconscionable. I pointed out that Arafat had been invited to Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to and museum about the Holocaust, but hadn't been interested in going there -- even though he was living in nearby Gaza.

The invitation to the Holocaust Museum was withdrawn. However, following pressures from the administration, Arafat was reinvited by the chairman of the museum's board -- again without my knowledge. But the day Arafat was scheduled to come, he canceled the visit. The Washington press corps, including the photographers, had decamped to the White House to cover the breaking Monica Lewinsky scandal. There would be no photo op.

Given this history, anyone saying that the planned Arafat visit was a product of his request and his "strong desire" to see the Holocaust Museum is trying to fool either himself or everyone else.

Nice guy, that Bill.

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

 

Centre points: If you place yourself at the centre of the solar system, you’re a solipsist. It you place Jews at the centre of a cosmic conspiracy, you’re a “Jewcentric.” From JWR:

 

"Jewcentricity" is a word that sounds like it was coined by an embittered anti-Semite. But it's actually the inspiration of Adam Garfinkle, a Jew, writing in The American Interest magazine to call attention to a phenomenon that has roots in anti-Semitism and runs from the silly to the sublime: " . . . the idea, or the intimation, or the subconscious presumption . . . that Jews are somehow necessarily to be found at the very center of global-historical events."

 

"Jewcentricity" is most evident in the recycling of "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a fictitious text commissioned by the czar's secret police for a Russian audience at the end of the 19th century, describing a fanciful cabal of Jews who plan to take over the world. Some critics of the neoconservatives, some of whom are Jewish, cite the protocols, so called, in their accusations that Jews have hijacked American foreign policy. Others, critical of Israel, hyperventilate over the power of the "Israel lobby."

 

"The Protocols" have naturally become a best seller in several Muslim countries, including Turkey and Egypt, where they were turned into a television series. ("Semitic Sex in the City," however, it was not.) "The Protocols" were featured on the Iranian stands at last year's book fair in Frankfurt "to expose the real visage of this Satanic-enemy," along with an abridged edition of Henry Ford's literary thriller, "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem" (which never made it to the screen). "The grip of the Jewish parasitic influence," asserts the preface of the new edition, "has been growing stronger and stronger ever since [Henry Ford's time]."

 

Serious examples of "Jewcentricity" are reflected in the media obsession with Sen. George Allen's Jewish mother, who was born in Tunisia and barely escaped the Holocaust, and before that, with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Jewish roots in Czechoslovakia. The national newspapers and television networks spent considerably more time investigating the senator's "blood" parentage and its likely effect on his re-election campaign than the blood being spilled in Darfur. "Why?" asks Adam Garfinkle. "Because . . . Jews is news and there are no Jews in Darfur." That doesn't slow down the conspiracy theorists in other countries, with or without Jews, from obsessing over the myth of sinister Jewish power.

 

Germany's Jewcentricity is of a completely different order. No negative slur against Jews goes unanswered in the law courts or in the court of public opinion. This has hardly eliminated prejudice against Jews. In an anti-Semitic prank with echoes of the Third Reich, a high-school student in eastern Germany was forced by bullies not long ago to wear a sign around his neck in the school yard: "In this town I'm the biggest swine because of the Jewish friends of mine." The teacher reported it, the chief of police was firm in his outrage, and the state minister of the interior promised an investigation. Germany does not tolerate public exhibition of Nazi symbols.

 

But the strain of anti-Semitism that many thought would vanish after the horror of the Holocaust has again risen again in the Middle East and among European fellow travelers of the Islamists, whose rhetoric targets Israel in a way that Hitler would readily recognize. Israel is the euphemism for the demonized Jew. The Jews become, as Jonathan Rosen observed in The New York Times, "interchangeable emblems of cosmic evil."…

 

It is possible to be a solipsistic Jewcentric. But I’m pretty sure they have therapy for that.

posted by: scaramouche at 19:13 | link | comments |

 

The Liberal record: Stephen Harper’s suggestion that most of those vying for the leadership of the Liberal party were “anti-Israel” resulted in howls of outraged from aggrieved members, including the contenders. Why, you’d have thought he’d up and called them something really awful, like “Islamophobic.” But as this piece by Calgary Sun columnist Paul Jackson recounts, Liberal animus toward Israel is deeply engrained and goes waaay back.

Jackson rightly skewers the governments of Jean Chetien and Paul Martin for their woeful track record re UN anti-Israel resolutions. The dynamic duo (who, go figure, despised each other) didn’t shoot down a single one. (The official count: 117 resolutions comprised of 78 ayes, 39 abstentions). Not until the Harper Conservatives came to power did Canada have the stones to break from the pack of international jackals and vote against some (though not all) of these suckers (the resolutions, not the jackals).

And then there’s the saintly Pierre Elliott Trudeau, still revered as the maestro of multiculturalism, the Ayatollah of human rights. According to a new biography about his formative years, Pierre wasn’t too fond of les maudit Juifs, a sentiment which followed him into public life:

…Let's look at the revered 'Great Helmsman' of the party, Pierre Trudeau.

He certainly didn't have much time for Jewish people.

In a just published book by Max and Monique Nemni, Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, 1919-1444 (McClelland and Stewart) it is revealed as a young man Trudeau was openly anti-Semitic, and admired Adolf Hitler and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Here we should note the Nemnis are admirers of Trudeau, not detractors.

Yet, did Trudeau change his opinions later in life?

Hardly. As prime minister, when Jewish men, women and children were fighting against discrimination in the Soviet Union, trying to practise their religion unhindered and emigrate to Israel, rather than defend them he regarded them as "hooligans." One of those supposed "hooligans" was the admired Natan Scharansky, who spent years in labour camps and is now a cabinet minister in Israel…

Our Pierre may not have thought too highly of Jewish hooligans. But he definitely had a pronounced soft spot for certain Cuban and Palestinian ones.

But perhaps it's best to keep it on the q.t. for now. Otherwise, offended party members may feel compelled to write Stephen Harper another one of those “open letters.”

posted by: scaramouche at 18:32 | link | comments |

 

Nobody’s gonna rain on his parade: Moo says, “Back off, infidels. I’m going nuclear no matter what.”

 

Or words to that effect.

 

From the Jerusalem Post:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that United Nations Security Council sanctions over Iran's nuclear program would only serve to further "motivate" the Iranian nation.

"We have been under sanctions for the last 27 years and these things will therefore have no impact, but just lead to more motivation of the Iranian youth," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Varamin, south of Tehran.

The president was referring to scheduled UN Security Council sanctions against the Islamic state for having violated resolution 1696 calling on Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.

Reiterating that Iran would not retreat from the country's right to pursue nuclear technology, the ultraconservative president said: "The Iranian nation will stay united against any discrimination and give a very decisive reply to any actions trying to limit its rights."

Ahmadinejad accused the United States and Britain of having opposed Iran for over 50 years and said the two states wanted to exploit the country's oil, and "they want to deprive us of our own natural resources (uranium)."

"Wherever these two countries get involved, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon or Palestine, the situation gets worse," he added...

“Ultraconservative.” I like that. Completely inaccurate and Orwellian, but quite amusing nonetheless.

 

The JPost report doesn’t mention that after uttering these words, Moo immediately burst into one of his favourite Broadway show tunes. It’s from that Babs Streisand hit, Funny Girl:

 

Don’t tell me not to nuke,

Just sit and sizzle.

Life’s useless,

Just a lot of fog and drizzle.

Gotta bring a mushroom cloud

For Mahdi’s big parade.

 

Don’t tell me not to kill.

I simply got to.

If someone summons Mahd’

It’s me and not you.

Gotta bring a great ‘shroom cloud

For Mahdi’s big parade.

 

I’ll march my gang out

With little tubes.

And they’ll all hang out

And seethe about Great Satan.

How he’s

The one that they’re most hatin.’

 

But whether I’m a loon

Or simply evil

There’s gonna be a frikkin’ big upheaval

That’s gonna usher in the final days on Earth.

I gotta  fry ‘em.

I gotta die ‘em.

Chicken potpie ‘em, right, sir?

Ooo, life is pointless.

Death will anoint us.

Eternity awaits, sir.

 

Get ready for me, death,

‘Cause I’m a “comer.”

I simply gotta nuke,

How ‘bout next summer?

Gonna bring a mushroom cloud

For Mahdi’s big parade…

 

It goes on, but I think that’s about all any infidel can bear at one sitting.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:27 | link | comments |

 

Girls seldom make passes at boys in madrassas: Especially this one, which is now extinct. From NDTV:

 

In a pre-dawn strike, Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships bombed an Islamic school, being used as a terrorist training camp, killing about 80 people in a northwestern tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

Initial estimates, based on intelligence and local sources, indicate that the missile attack on the seminary located north of Khar, the headquarters of Bajur tribal agency, killed up to 80 persons, army spokesperson Major General Shaukat Sultan said.

"There were casualties as between 70 to 80 people were present at the madrassa when the security forces conducted the operation," he said.

"The attack was launched after confirmed information was received that the inmates were involved in terrorist training," he said adding that the seminary was being observed for the past few days.

"Gunship helicopters were used and most of the targets eliminated," he said.

It is the second major attack on Bajur in less than a year.

Banned group

According to reports, among the dead was Liaquat Hussain who ran the madrassa and is believed to have been sheltering al-Qaida militants.

Locals said the madrassa was targeted as Hussain belonged to the banned group 'Tanzeem Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi' (TSNM).

Locals protested the shelling saying that the dead were mostly students back from the Eid festivities. (PTI)

 

I’m not sure of the theology here. Do these casualties qualify for martyrdom? If so, at least they can expect lots of posthumous attention from non-corporeal babes.

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

 

A taste of “Obsession”: For those who haven’t yet had a chance to see the entire documentary, here’s a 12 minute clip from “Obsession”—the movie that dares to connect the dots of the global jihad.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:43 | link | comments |

 

Lord of the Flies, French-style: The French are expressing relief that the torching of a Marseilles bus with a female passenger still inside hasn’t led to an unacceptable spike in the nightly violence. As long as the tally remains more or less stable at 200 torched vehicles per diem and doesn’t climb into the quadruple digits—at it did during last year’s intifada—the French public seem prepared to live with it.

 

And authorities are working to remedy the situation, what with their renewed emphasis on education and job-creation schemes designed to give the disaffected and marginalized a shot at gainful employment. From the Toronto Star:

 

…Residents of the housing projects, most from Arab or African backgrounds, face unemployment and school dropout rates far higher than the national average. But the government has done little to change things in the past year, community leaders say.

 

"Everyone wants to work and everyone wants to integrate," said Dhaou Meskine, imam of the mosque at Clichy-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb. "But if we don't reduce the number of young people dropping out of school, nothing will get done."

 

Suburban schools filled with the most challenging students are in the hands of inexperienced teachers, while experienced ones teach affluent students in central Paris, said Samuel Thomas, vice-president of the SOS Racism group. The reverse should be the case, he said…

 

Yeah, those “experienced” teachers can make all the difference. Of course, that’s only possible if the “youths” do indeed want to gain a stake in French society instead of continuing to live free and unfettered in what amounts to sovereign no-go bits of Dar-al-Islam inside France.

 

The National Post’s Lorne Gunter throws some eau froid on French integration plans. He notes that the “youths,” who’ve been whipped into a frenzy by radical local imams, have demographics on their side, and authorities lack the will and the ability to contain the violence:

…In recent months, an average of 20 officers have been injured each day in what police themselves are calling an intifada. In early October, Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the Action Police trade union, said police and rioters were "in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists."

Daily, police are stoned by groups of angry, balaclava-wearing Muslim youth standing behind barricades. "You no longer see two or three youths confronting police," explained Mr. Thoomis. "You see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."

France is Europe's canary-down-the-mine on Muslim integration. At nearly 9%, Muslims are a greater portion of the French population than they are of the population of any other European state.

If France can't manage to incorporate Muslims into its societal mainstream, there is little chance any nation can.

Funny how that Toronto Star article didn’t mention anything about the youths being “Muslim,” or their being incited by “radical Islamists.” Guess it must have been an oversight.

Welcome to your future, Europe (and, perhaps down the road, Canada). It’s looking pretty grim.

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

 

Rats!: Charlie Brown has “reverted” to Islam.

 

I guess this means Snoopy is “haram.”

posted by: scaramouche at 21:31 | link | comments |

 

Swiss cheesiness: Just when you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps, along comes Claudia Rosett to brighten up your day:

Remember how the UN earlier this year reformed its so-called Human Rights Commission? The UN replaced it with the re-labeled Human Rights Council, the promise being to put an end to such perversions as Libya three years ago chairing the meetings. Well, in some ways, Libya never left. From a Geneva-based monitoring group, UN Watch, comes a reminder of the Libya connections of the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food — Swiss socialist, Jean Ziegler. While serving as a UN eminence on food, Ziegler has exalted terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, and urged boycotts of Israel (here is some background on his 2004 letter to Caterpillar, Inc.). But the punch-line is, Ziegler serves as vice-chairman of an outfit that hands out — get ready for this — the lucrative “Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize.” According to UN Watch, this prize was set up by Libya’s dictator in 1989, “with Mr. Ziegler’s help,” and winners have included Louis Farrakhan, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. …Ummm, where were we before this tale of UN human-rights endeavors defaulted to the twilight zone? Oh yes, Ziegler is in New York this week to offer the UN General Assembly his expertise on who deserves free food.  

You mean to tell me there’s actually a “Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize”? And that the Swiss guy involved with the UN Human Rights Council helped set it up?

That’s hysterical!

Maybe he can establish a “Kofi Annan Prize for Most Feckless UN Secretary-General.”  

First winner, no contest: Kofi Annan.

posted by: scaramouche at 19:38 | link | comments |

 

Teens with torches: I love this AP story (on the Fox News site—what’s up with that, Republican tools?) about those restive “youths” over in France. In today’s report, the “youths” have become “teens,” some of whom burnt a bus in Marseilles with a woman passenger still inside, and you have to read a full nine paragraphs to discover just who they are and what’s gotten them so worked up.

 

Wait for it:

 

1. MARSEILLE, France  —  France's interior minister sent extra riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, seriously burning a young passenger.

2. French police have braced for a surge of violence this weekend, as Friday was the first anniversary of the start of riots in poor neighborhoods where many immigrants and their French-born children live.

3. In scattered violence Saturday, 46 people were taken into custody, most of them in the suburbs around Paris, and two police officers were slightly injured. The most serious violence was the bus attack in Marseille, which shocked France with its brutality.

4. Three or four young people burst onto the bus and tossed in a bottle of flammable liquid before fleeing, police said, citing witnesses' accounts. A fire started, seriously injuring a 26-year-old woman who suffered second- and third-degree burns on her arms, legs and face.

5. The woman was breathing Sunday with help from a respirator, the Marseille hospital system said. Doctors were deeply worried about lung damage from smoke. Three other people also were treated for smoke inhalation, police said. The bus was destroyed, and bus service was suspended in Marseille.

6. President Jacques Chirac telephoned the woman's family, ensuring them that France would "do everything to find the assailants and punish them with the greatest severity," his office said.

7. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a meeting for Monday on public transport safety, while Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's office said he was sending two extra companies of riot police to Marseille.

8. Though youths have burned other buses during flare-up of violence, passengers have generally been able to escape before the vehicles went up in flames. Another bus was burned Saturday in the Paris suburb of Trappes, but its passengers fled unharmed, police said.

Bingo!

9. The three weeks of rioting last year were fueled by anger at France's failure to offer equal chances to many minorities — especially Arabs and blacks — and France's 5 million-strong Muslim population…

But have no fear. Les Gendarmes have matters well in hand:

For the anniversary, national police said about 4,000 extra police and riot officers were deployed across the country to cope with a possible resurgence of violence. Some 7,000 police are at the ready on an average night in France, and bands of youths typically set fire to 100 cars a night.

France used to be the country of haute cuisine. Today it’s the land of the Renault flambée.

posted by: scaramouche at 18:07 | link | comments |

 

Scary Fox: An alarming article in the IDEAS section of the Sunday (Toronto) Star. Apparently, Fox News has the power to turn people into, quel horreur!, Republicans:

 

…This kind of opinionated exuberance surely makes for interesting television. But does it have other consequences?

 

The authors of a soon-to-be-published study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggest so. They claim, using empirical data, that Fox News's overt conservative-Republican bias actually influenced people to vote for the Republican Party in 2000, and to turn out in greater numbers to do so. They call it "The Fox News Effect."

 

"Fox didn't have an effect only for (electing President George W.) Bush, but in general in voting for Republicans," explains the study's co-author, Stefano DellaVigna, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. "So one can infer that people didn't just listen and say, `Oh, Bush sounds good from the coverage on Fox.' It seems that Fox changed their ideological beliefs."

 

The Fox effect is pervasive enough that one can't discount it as the U.S. nears the Nov. 7 mid-term elections. As well, the authors say, it has implications on both sides of the border when it comes to concentration of media ownership.

Previous studies have shown that Fox News is to the right of both most other media and of elected members of Congress.

 

A 2004 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press also showed that, while more Democrats watched CNN, more Republicans watched Fox.

 

Fox's salty-tongued chief, Roger Ailes — a former Republican political operative — has always called CNN "boring" and scoffed at accusations of a conservative bias on his network.

 

He recently told the Associated Press that simply presenting different viewpoints made Fox stand out from all the left-leaning coverage.

 

Despite this — and despite the channel's slogan, "Fair and balanced" — viewers will often see anchors Sean Hannity or John Gibson literally screaming at guests who don't share their conservative views, or keying on stories that, unlike its other mainstream competitors, highlight the liberal-conservative and, especially, secular-religious divide.

 

It is this premise of conservative bias that the study, done for the non-profit, non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research, begins with. Because the Fox News Channel was introduced to the U.S. in 1996 and adopted by cable companies on a town-by-town basis, the researchers had a perfect opportunity to compare the effect on voting in towns with access to Fox to those without, leading up to the disputed 2000 presidential election...

 

Luckily, the trend is largely offset by those who watch CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS, read the New York Times, the Washington Post and other mainstream papers and who listen to NPR.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:48 | link | comments |

 

Iowahawk on the Meatman: The always-hilarious blogger iowahawk has thoughtfully posted a piece called “ASK THE AUSSIE IMAM.” Here’s an excerpt:

Islamic Advice from Imam Yahu al-Zirius
Spiritual Leader, Fostaz al-Vegimita Mosque
Lakembabongabinga, Sydney, NSW

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali of Mullagangabanga, NSW asks:

Some of the cobbers at my local mosque spotted some sheilas who weren't wearing their hijabs, so they naturally had a go at raping them. For some reason the coppers loaded them off to gaol! I ask you: if you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

This is a very interesting question. With respect to cats, the Q’ran in Surah 12:45.1(c) states that, “the cat always lands on its paws.” However, Surah 3.14e-9 says that “pita bread always lands hummus-side down.”

Of course, the crafty infidel will see this as a contradiction: what if a believer were to glue a hummus-laden pita to the back of a cat, and hurl it from the local prayer tower? No matter how it hits the ground, the crafty infidel will say it invalidates Q'ranic infalibility! This is where the meat comes in. The key is to first put the uncovered meat between the cat and the pita, in a sort of cat-meat-pita sandwich. As it plummets from the tower, the cat will eat through the glue to get at the delicious uncovered meat, thereby freeing the pita to land hummus side down, and the meat-refreshed cat to land happily on its paws. In this way you may demonstrate to the crafty kuffar the eternal perfection of the sacred Word of Allah, as revealed through His Prophet (peace be unto him).  Also, if the crafty kuffar is an uncovered woman, don't forget to rape her…

I think I finally understand what the sheik was talking about.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:31 | link | comments |

 

Kooks with nukes: The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a lengthy cover story about the “nuances” of Shias and Sunnis getting their hands on nuclear weapons.

 

If you don’t have the time to read the entire article—and, let’s face it, who does?—I can boil it down as follows: Islamists with nukes; bad idea.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:22 | link | comments |

 

The “nuances” of the jihad: Rami Khoury, a Palestininan who edits Lebanon’s The Daily Star, occasionally offers his comments in pages of the Globe and Mail. Oddly enough, the Globe didn’t pick up this piece, in which Khoury lambastes American media for missing the “nuances” of Hamas and Hezbollah, groups which he says are about so much more than terrorism. (link via Martim Kramer):

One of the depressing aspects of reading, viewing and listening to the mass media in the United States on an extended trip, as I am doing these days, is to suffer the very superficial and often ideologically skewed coverage of important movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas. For various reasons, directly or indirectly related to American government support for Israel over Arab parties, such groups usually are referred to simply as terrorist groups.

It is possible - and desirable - that such accusations of terrorism be determined in a fair court of law one day, because any group or government that engages in terrorism needs to be held accountable for its actions. Yet such a process would only have validity and credibility if it also held accountable other groups or governments - including Israel, the United States, and some Arab regimes - for the accusations of war crimes and other atrocities that have been made against them in turn. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, because of the laws of imperial power and transnational hypocrisy that define our world, where the powerful write their own rules.

So, here in the United States one hears of Hizbullah and Hamas described in the public realm almost always only as terrorist groups. The problem with this one-dimensional focus on the anti-Israeli resistance and military aspects of these groups is that it ignores everything else they represent. The recent war between Hizbullah and Israel, in part a proxy battle between the United States and Iran, revealed that Hizbullah taps into sentiments and political forces across the Middle East that are very much wider and deeper than only its successful quest to drive Israel out of  Lebanon.

Whether one likes or dislikes Hizbullah, or admires or fears it, it seems abundantly clear now that its wide support throughout the Arab-Islamic Middle East and other parts of the world reflects its ability to tap into a very wide range of forces, sentiments and political movements. This is noteworthy for two reasons: Such forces and movements have never before come together as they did in the support that Hizbullah enjoyed in recent months, and collectively they represent a significant new posture of resistance and defiance of the United States and Israel that continues to reshape politics in the region…

I can see where Khouri is coming from. It’s so disheartening when infidels fail to see the “nuances” of  genocidal jihadist groups whose raison d’etre is the destruction of the sovereign dhimmi ape-pig state that has the