...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
“Moderately” speaking: While I was away, I missed this Newsweek interview with Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister of “moderate” Islamic nation
Here’s how a “moderate” pro-democracy reformer views the problems in Dar al-Islam and the strained relationship between it and the
…How difficult is it to get leaders in
It is more difficult to get the
And the Bush administration isn't?
They think they have all the answers. It's very difficult to get them to appreciate that [Muslim] people are not inherently anti-American.
Why are governments with poor democratic credentials so entrenched in the Islamic world?
It's partly due to the connivance of the West. This is an issue that has to be dealt with by these countries, but the international community could use some moral suasion. The bottom line is money. All is tolerated as long as [repressive regimes] can do business.
Does Islam lend itself to democracy?
It's a very loaded question. Do you consider an Islamic state to be one controlled by religious scholars? I don't. It is a question of going back to the essence of Islam. Its higher objectives must be spelled out: freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, the sanctity of life and of property and respect for the dignity of men and women. That doesn't seem to be in contravention of Western ideals.
There seems to be a strong sense of victimhood in the Muslim world. Do you agree?
The vast majority of Muslims feel that they're victims of the international order, from
Ah, yes. It’s all our fault for subjecting Muslims to “profiling” indignities at airports, and, further, doing our utmost to prevent that miniscule minority of the faithful from blowing up notable landmarks and the people inside them. If only we were nicer and not so scrupulous in our security efforts, everything would be copacetic.
Isn’t it remarkable how well “moderate” thinking and “radical” thinking on the subject seem to jibe?
Process server: Saeb Erakat, aficionado that he is of process, says the negative report about Olmert’s preparedness for the war in
Really, Saeb? I thought the process was on indefinite hold because your people are ruled by a bunch of lawless thugs who aim to ethnically cleanse all the Jews out of
But, hey, that’s just me.
Hell, no, he won’t go: Begging the question, why the hell not?
“Chatty” mullahs: The New York Times reports that
An intriguing idea, no doubt, given that the Khomeinists (along with the al Qaedists) are responsible for fomenting most of the violence there. Kind of like inviting Hitler to a regional conference during WW2 to discuss violence in
And maybe pigs will sprout wings and Ahmadinejad will up and marry Britney Spears.
The selling (and buying) of “green”:
“Green, green, it's green, they say
On the far side of the hill.
Green, green, I'm going away
To where the grass is greener still.”
--lyrics from 1960s pop song
It’s easy, though, to understand the allure of the green. Caring about the environment, after all, is the ultimate motherhood (or Mother Earth) issue. And although I don’t like to advertise it (because, really, who cares?), I happen to have a teensy carbon footprint. Maybe a size 5 1/2, medium width. I don’t drive. I don’t eat red meat. I love vegetarian food, provided it’s ethnic and highly seasoned. I even reduce, reuse and recycle. (I don’t ration my toilet tissue a la Sheryl Crow, but aside from a few nuts in
Thus, I think I have the perfect credentials to weigh in on a show that draped itself in an environmental cloak of virtue, but was actually trying to sell me lots of stuff. Here are some of the things I didn’t buy:
Also on prominent display were various exhibits bought and paid for by the
How true. And yet, how banal.
Finally, I will leave you with another provincial pronouncement, one that, like the above quotation, plumbs new depths of nauseating banality, and which I think sums up the entire show: “Every day is Earth Day.”
Indeed. Especially since every day more and more people are jumping on the Gorecycle (the Suzukimobile?) and are itching to live a life of virtue by forking over mucho dinero for mung
Now if they could only make the coffins out of hemp…
Revolting invitation: During the opening days of the 2004 Olympic games in Athens, a wrestler from the Islamic dystopia (the Shia one) demonstrated the kind of competitive spirit one might expect of a country that has Holocaust denial as a linchpin on its national policy: he refused to compete with an athlete from the sovereign ape ‘n’ pig entity.
The penalty for this egregious display of unsportsmanlike behaviour was…well, actually, there was no penalty and the wrestler was allowed to proceed in the competion.
That was bad enough, but as we Jews like to say (or at least, as this particular Jew likes to say), but wait, it gets worse. From MEMRI Blog:
The
This is considered a step toward improving the
[Readers may remember the
Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat,
As they say in Chinese: Sick. En. Ing.
Hear them roar: I’m far from the first person to point out that, as far as Western sensibilities are concerned, Islam’s treatment of women is its Achilles heel. And that fact has not been lost on Muslims living in the West, some of whom are becoming alarmed that the reality of female oppression is causing a number of people, many of them women, to raise their voices against it. From German publication Sight and Sound:
On May 2, German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble will convene the second Islam Conference in Berlin (more on last autumn's conference here). The meeting is meant as a forum for exchange and understanding between the state and German Muslims - not only those in official organisations. One representative is Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu. In an interview Michaela Schlagenwerth, he criticises female critics of Islam such as Necla Kelek and Seyran Ates as one-sided: "The biggest bulwark against fundamentalism is formed by devout members of Muslim associations. If you start attacking these people for their piety and belief, and if you never tire of calling on them to join the forces of reform, you end up not arguing factually at all, but just fomenting riot. Feminism and a right-wing attitude aren't mutually exclusive. And it can't be the case that reformed 68ers, right-wing conservative populists and right-wing feminists join hands and set themselves up as the defenders, the foot-soldiers of Western civilisation."
Sounds like Feridun--who, as per usual among his ilk, tries to discredit the nay-sayers by referring to them as members of the sinister "right"-- wants to shut down these defenders before they break the magic spell of the multiculturalists’ purple Kool-Aid. We can only hope and pray that these uppity females are brave enough to defy all the Feriduns and keep up the ruckus
The blonde leading the blind: Hillary Clinton is leading Jewish Democrats down the garden path, and they’re delighted to go along for the ride. From the Jerusalem Post:
All seven major Democratic presidential candidates addressed the National Jewish Democratic Council this past week, but only one had two supporters introduce her. Hillary Clinton also received the most applause and ovations before, during and after her speech.
Even those NJDC activists who aren't backing
The NJDC, which describes itself as the country's only organization of Jewish Democrats, counts top political donors and activists among its members.
The other top two Democratic contenders - former vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Senator Barack Obama - had substantial support at the NJDC and some backers could be found for just about everyone.
As go the Jews, so goes the Democratic Party. Or perhaps it's the other way around.
"She [Clinton] didn't deliver the knockout she wanted to deliver at the beginning of the campaign," said Ken Goldstein, the Mosse visiting professor of political sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "She wasn't able to land a knockout blow with Jewish Democrats either."
"The
But Virginia-based pollster Frank Luntz, who has worked with Republican candidates in the past, said
Luntz also said that when it comes to the Jewish community,
In other words you clueless Jews, you can trust this two-faced woman about as far as you can throw the President who sponsored the Oslo Accords and whose good intentions help pave the road to our current Hell.
Torn between two pundits: The optimist in me says Mark Steyn’s line on
Bandar goes bust: For many a moon,
Then came 9/11, and the realization that despite the friendly relations with Bandar, there were some Saudis—like Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 attackers—who weren’t too fond of America. Bandar had some ‘splaining to do, not only about the Saudi role in the attack, but also about the embarrassing revelation that his own wife had issued a check that found its way into terrorist coffers. Quicker than you could say “Wahhabi,” Bandar was cashiered and summoned back to the
WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.
Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider’s insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.
Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.
For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.
American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with
Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in
Since the
“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
Of course it is ultimately the king — and not the prince — who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the
The Times makes it sound like it was only the Bushes, pere et fils, who fell under Bandar's spell, but he also sprinkled his oily pixie dust on a good number of Democrats, including Bill Clinton. (When he and Bandar were in the same room, the collective unctuousness must have been unbearable.)
I am reminded of a line I once read in a novel by Laurie Colwin: “She had an idea of the way things should be and edited reality heavily to conform to it.”
That, alas, seems to describe the Bush administration, with its heavy reliance on unreliable people who keep telling it exactly what it wants to hear.
Mooky’s demon: Choleric cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has emerged from whatever cesspool he’s been hiding in since he decamped from
BAGHDAD, April 28 (Reuters) - The powerful Iraqi cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr called President George W. Bush the "anti-Christ" on Saturday and urged him to heed calls by the opposition Democrats to withdraw from the chaos of Iraq.
Sadr, whose ministers quit Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government this month, renewed his demand for a
Calling Bush "the greatest evil," Sadr said in a letter read out by a Sadrist MP in parliament that an eventual
"Here are the Democrats demanding that you withdraw at least with a timetable and you are stubborn against them," said Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia fought two uprisings against
"You are like the one-eyed anti-Christ. You look with one eye and refuse to look with the other," he told Bush…
Sorry, Mooky. You’ve got the wrong guy. But there’s another leader who’s a far likelier candidate for the demonic post.
Marketing to the fastest growing sector in the country: From the New York Times via Islam Online:
CAIRO — Reaching out to the fast-growing Muslim customers in the United States, major consumer companies and advertisers are adapting their products to fit the taste of the sizable Muslim minority, reported The New York Times on Saturday, April 28.
"
Many retailers are now looking into providing Muslim-like products like conservative skirts and pork-free food stuffs and drinks.
Companies in the
McDonald's, the world's largest chain of fast-food restaurants, is now serving halal chicken McNuggets for Muslim customers in the area.
Walgreens, a convenience pharmacy chain, has also Arabic signs in its aisles.
Ikea, a home products retailer, is also touring local homes in the suburb of
It is also planning to sell decorations for the holy fasting month of Ramadan in September and is adding halal meat to its restaurant menu.
Catalogs in Arabic are also being planned, and hijab-wearing Muslim employees will be offered Ikea-branded hijabs.
"People would flock to it," said Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a nonprofit group based in
"They would say ‘I can’t believe I’m being validated by Macy’s. I can’t believe I’m being validated by Whole Foods.’ "
There are between 5-8 million Muslims customers in the
They spend about $170 billion on consumer products and are expected to grow rapidly as the population expands…
Reid it and weep: One of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s communications flaks has a foul and vitriolic comment piece in the Toronto Star. The article by Scott Reid is essentially a personal attack on the character of the current Prime Minister. Here’s about as much of it as I can stomach reading in one sitting:
At the risk of angering the acolytes of conventional wisdom, it's time someone pointed out the obvious: Maybe Stephen Harper isn't so damn smart after all.
Of course, in
Remarkably, it's not just the Conservative caucus who seem captivated. Media and political observers describe Harper with a blend of terror and admiration previously reserved for cinematic bogeyman Keyser Soze. Even members of the opposition parties sermonize on Harper's shrewd, strategic brilliance.
To a degree, you can forgive the Liberals and the NDP. In politics, it is wise to never underestimate your opponent. At the same time, it is equally important to not overestimate his advantage.
In truth, there is plenty of evidence that Harper's political strategy is crude, over-calculated and fundamentally schizophrenic. One thing more: It's not working.
A spate of recent polls show support for Harper's Conservatives once again in retreat, leaving the political class in a twitter. How can this be? Isn't Harper's triumph inevitable?
The inability of the Prime Minister to march confidently into majority territory has left official
Except it's not so shocking. The reasons for Harper's difficulty are not impossible to spot.
First, he isn't remotely likeable. That, alone, isn't necessarily fatal. Pierre Trudeau, for example, was loathed by whole chunks of the electorate.
But Harper is different. He has a mean streak, a thin-skinned nastiness that he can't even be bothered to conceal. Never before has a prime minister sought to serve as his own hatchetman. Yet, Harper revels in the role.
He spitefully labels his political opponents Taliban sympathizers or child pornographers. Small wonder that Canadians haven't warmed to him. The guy's miserable. And with this week's debacle surrounding Afghan detainees, he can't even continue to claim the mantle of competence…
Unlike, I suppose, that paragon of competence, Scott Reid’s former boss.
Here’s the letter I sent the Star:
It’s no surprise that Scott Reid, Paul Martin’s former communications director, would want to paint Stephen Harper as a "movie villain"; it is in the interest of his party—currently out of power and desperately unhappy about it—to do so. Still, his article about the source of the current Prime Minister’s supposed “unpopularity” and his assertion that Mr. Harper resembles movie villain Keyser Soze was a particularly nasty piece of business that amounted to little more than an ad hominen attack.
If Mr. Reid hopes to persuade Canadians to return his party to office, he and his cohorts are going to have to do come up with something a lot better than this type of ugly character assassination.
Out of their flicking minds: George Jonas, in glorious high dudgeon, on the madness of the crowd. From the National Post:
Human beings live in worlds of their own making. This is true of individuals as well as nations -- even entire periods. I suppose a person couldn't help being born in the Dark Ages, but it was still people who created the Dark Ages and people who ended them. They weren't cosmic events.
If we recreate the Dark Ages in the 21st century, it will be our own doing, too. Nobody is making us. None of our Evil Empires came from outer space. The red cancer of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism may have gone into remission, but the malignancy of tyranny comes in many colours. From the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s, it came in Fascist black and Nazi brown. If it were to flare up again in green--Islamist green, environmental green, it doesn't matter --it would still be as homemade as apple pie.
What triggered this tirade? The news, needless to say. Almost any item makes one wonder about the sanity of the world, especially on or near the front page. Glancing at a photograph from
But for nuts we don't need to go all the way to
“Eco-fascists”—that one’s a keeper.
Task master: Remember when those irascible lads from
The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.
Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.
They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.
Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain…
Such a busy little supremacist. Let’s hope he can look forward to a long stretch of “retasking” in a British prison.
Flicking idiot: Those Ontario Liberals under Dalton McGuinty are just so…I think the word the young people like to use these days is “hep.” Or is it "groovy"? In a misguided attempt to be edgy and cool, the McSquinty gang have launched a campaign designed to convince Ontarians to minimize their carbon footprints. The campaign, featuring buttons, t-shirts and other paraphernalia, all funded, natch, courtesy the
Way to go, McSquinty. Thanks for setting such a good example for
The Premier, of course, is shocked—shocked!—that people are taking offence to the campaign. As far as he’s concerned, the real obscenity is global climate change, and he insinuates that irate taxpayers can just, um, go flick themselves.
Right back atcha, McSquinty.
There’s more:
A Premier named Dalton McGuinty,
Stood his ground, and was firm and quite flinty
When some people did scoff
When told to “Flick off."
He’s a bit of a dim bulb, i’n’t he?
A man who “gets it”: Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney told an audience at
You can read excerpts from the speech here.
A broad-based desire for primacy: The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, yet according to a just released poll, they, like their more violent brethren, share a common desire: to see the Caliphate restored so it can lord it over the planet.
Jihad expert Andrew Bostom analyses this ominous trend. From the American Thinker:
Writing in 1916, C. Snouck Hurgronje, the great Dutch Orientalist, underscored how the jihad doctrine of world conquest, and the re-creation of a supranational Islamic Caliphate remained a potent force among the Muslim masses:
...it would be a gross mistake to imagine that the idea of universal conquest may be considered as obliterated...the canonists and the vulgar still live in the illusion of the days of Islam's greatness. The legists continue to ground their appreciation of every actual political condition on the law of the holy war, which war ought never be allowed to cease entirely until all mankind is reduced to the authority of Islam-the heathen by conversion, the adherents of acknowledged Scripture [i.e., Jews and Christians] by submission.
Hurgronje further noted that although the Muslim rank and file might acknowledge the improbability of that goal "at present" (circa 1916), they were,
...comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms...
Thus even at the nadir of Islam's political power, during the World War I era final disintegration of the
...the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future. The political blows that fall upon Islam make less impression...than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul [
Nearly a century later, the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a "fringe minority"-desired this outcome (i.e., "To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate"), including 49% of "moderate" Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition "To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country."
Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim "advocacy" groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari'a as promulgators of "a peaceful and just society" , the findings from the
To say the least.
Today’s doggerel:
A Bollywood starlet named Shetti
Consumed platefuls of yams and spaghetti.
But she got in some heck
When a Gere found her neck—
An encounter she’s bound to regretti.