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

The implacable spirit of jihad: It’s them vs. us, and it looks like they just may have the will to defeat us. By Kenneth Blackwell in the New York Sun:

"There are two powers in this world, the sword and the spirit. Over time the spirit will always prevail."
— Napoleon

The merciless monsters who constitute Al Qaeda and its terrorist movement are equal opportunity killers.

They will use anyone — man, woman, pregnant mother, child — in acts of suicide to kill anyone: Spanish commuters, Sudanese Christians, Indian train travelers, London Tube-riders and tourists, or Americans working at their desks on a clear September morning.

They will kill by any means: videotaped beheadings, homemade bombs packed with nails, explosive chlorine tanks, and, of course, jetliners loaded with fuel — and people. Their terrorism is an asymmetric form of warfare that seeks to attack the human spirit.

In their minds and through their methods, evil has assumed a hideous new shape. The human spirit reels at such enormities, because the boundaries the jihadists cross are the bare minimums of civilization. It's difficult for us to conceive of such hatred. That may be one reason why we are so ready to believe such hatred has faded, or will soon fade, from the scene. But this battle will be long and, much of it, spiritual in nature.

For now, it appears Congress has given up on the plan for a legislatively imposed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but there is the sense that what the liberal majority really yearns for is a holiday from history. Facing the immensity and durability of the jihadist threat, a threat that has raged now for decades, the congressional majority pins its hopes on a change in us rather than the decisive defeat of those who attack us. The political games in Washington are weakening the will of the nation.

In psychological terms, the political Left is like the battered spouse picking through her own faults to find the reason why she is being terrorized. America is being attacked for the values we hold and the freedom to which we are so dedicated. We didn't provoke the attack of 9/11, the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the 1998 bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The problem is not American imperialist greed, but a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and their state sponsors that is determined to steal our freedom and dominate us.

The answer to the Left's enabling is realism: America did not cause radical Islam. Smiling more and meeting with dictators will not cure it. The jihadists are zealots filled with equal-opportunity hatred for both the best and the worst of Western civilization…

You mean Nancy Pelosi’s shmatta-wearing exercise in Syria was a complete waste of time and, more to the point, was counter-productive because it lent credibility to a regime that is chin (or, in this case, chin-less) deep in the promotion of regional terrorism?

I’m not surprised. The fact of the matter is that anyone who expects “realism” to seep into the consciousness of the American Left is at best a cockeyed optimist and at worst a total lunatic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:44 | link | comments

What are the odds?: Another bizarre and ironic co-incidence—and on the same day as the Norwegian one.

Honest Reporting’s Media Backspin notes that “On the same week that British University and College Union voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions, students at Sderot’s Sapir College were cleared to resume classes—in fortified classrooms.”

An irony that is no doubt lost on the British boycotters.

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

Quel surprise!: Syria, Hezbollah condemn UN vote to establish Hariri tribunal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:12 | link | comments

Bizarre—and ironic—co-incidence of the day: On the same day that Norway resumes sending direct aid—10 million smackeroos—to a regime led by Hamas, it is announced that the Norway has been designated the most peaceful nation in the world. 

So, if I have this straight, Norway is an exceptionally peaceful nation that has absolutely no qualms about funding a bunch of genocidal terrorists.

 

I’m sure somewhere down in Hades Vidkun Quisling is shepping naches.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:41 | link | comments

Harpoon uncoils his latest attack: The Toronto Star features a particularly nasty piece of venom by that old Islamism snake-oil salesman, Harpoon Siddiqui. Today’s hiss-y fit deals with all the dirt the infidels are doing to the true believers (specifically, in Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan), and how it has chased them into the arms of extremist militias.

Yeah, it’s all our fault.

 

Harpoon waxes especially eloquent about Israel’s iniquity in, well, in continuing to insist on its right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state when such existence keeps the Palestinians, poor dears, isolated in separate “cantons.”

 

I suppose we should be thankful he didn’t call them “Bantulands”:

The crises in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan are the inevitable outcome of treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

Gaza: Israeli bombing won't bring peace any more than previous military crackdowns. American-Israeli help to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces won't stop Hamas from acquiring more rockets to hurl at Israel. The Saudi-sponsored unity government between Fatah and Hamas won't end their internecine warfare.

"The problem is Gaza itself," writes Fawaz Turki, author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile, who lives in Washington.

"Israel may have evacuated its miserable colonists and soldiers from Gaza but it continues to control its airspace, offshore maritime access and its borders, determining the flow of goods, produce and people ...

"The cumulative impact of sustained economic hardship, coupled with living under the thumb of a foreign occupier can be devastating to an individual's psychological, even cognitive and social functioning ...

"Communities made inert by repression, social immobility or economic deprivation, will build up an inescapable drive towards war, towards an assertion of identity at the cost of mutual destruction."

The World Bank, too, recently criticized the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank, the latter cut up into "ever smaller and disconnected cantons."

Neither the Palestinian civil war nor the breakdown of the months-long ceasefire with Israel should have come as a surprise…

No surprise to me, Harpoon. I knew that, stuck as they are in the rut of Judenhass and victimhood, there was no way the Palestinians could get their shite together.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Star:

 

It’s remarkable that those “miserable colonists”—author Fawaz Turkis’s description of the Israelis who were forced to vacate Gaza when the Israeli government voluntarily disengaged from the area—were able to make a go of things. During their relatively brief time in the area, they transformed the land on which they lived into a rich agricultural sector which produced a wide array of fruits and vegetables, and which had been serving as Israel’s breadbasket. One of the first actions the Palestinians took after the Israelis departed was to smash all the greenhouses—greenhouses they could have used to feed their own people.

 

But then, Israelis have a lot of experience at taking a small piece of desolate land and making it bloom. The Palestinians—not so much.

 

Instead of complaining about the “miserable colonists,” perhaps the Palestinians should realize it’s in their best interest to take a cue from them.

 

Then again, they may hesitate to do so if their real intention is to not actually build a state of their own, but to tear down the flourishing Jewish one next door.

 

Gee, you think the Star will print it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments (2)

Buying into sharia law: Not long ago an alliance of Muslim women, non-Muslim feminists and secular Muslims successfully turned aside an effort to bring sharia tribunals into Ontario. These tribunals would have been legally empowered to adjudicate family and some other civil issues for Muslims in the province. A great victory, indeed, for those who believe in keeping the religious and the legal domains separate, and who know that sharia law, with its Eighth Century mindset and repressive strictures, has absolutely no place in 21^st Century Canada.

Well, it seems that when one door closes, another one opens. While sharia law as it pertains to family matters is a non-starter for the time being, sharia law for financial matters may be about to become a fait accompli.

 

Money talks, as they say.

 

For those who’d like to learn more about the exciting and lucrative world of sharia banking, the Globe and Mail invites you to submit questions to an attorney who’s an expert in the field:

Islamic finance is one of the fastest-growing areas of financial services in the world. Global banks are scrambling to start offering products that conform to sharia law, just as billions of dollars from oil-rich countries in the Middle East look for places to invest.

Canada's not immune to the trend. Most of the big banks are contemplating offering sharia-compliant products to expand their reach among Canada's fastest-growing immigrant population. Products range from mortgages to mutual funds, car financings and bonds.

Sharia-compliant services are similar to any other type of so-called socially responsible investing. In this case, they tend to meet three criteria: no explicit interest; transactions can't be in such areas such as gambling, pork or pornography; and can't be deemed too high risk.

Several articles written in the Globe and Mail have sparked a lively online debate over the growth in such services, the line between faith and finance and what it means to be Canadian.

Walied Soliman, a lawyer at Ogilvy Renault, will join us to take your questions. He acts for clients in a wide range of industries, including mining, energy and pharma and has also helped develop numerous Islamic-finance structured products. He's been seconded to the legal group of CIBC and to the Ontario Securities Commission's enforcement branch.

He'll be online on Thursday at noon EDT to discuss the demand and potential for sharia-compliant financial services in Canada and its rise around the world.

You can join the conversation by submitting a question ahead of time by clicking here.

My question for Mr. Soliman: Since we aren’t prepared to make room for sharia law in the area of family law (because, clearly, such law is not a good fit with our own), why should we be prepared to make accommodations for sharia law in the financial sector? And, once we’ve allowed it into this area, won’t it be more difficult to argue that it should be kept out of other areas—like family law?

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

Celebrating Dossa: In the letters section of today’s Globe and Mail, a St. Francis Xavier University student named Miles Tompkins rushes to defend the institution’s most notorious academic:

Antigonish, N.S. -- I take exception with Ed Morgan, Irving Abella and Abraham Foxman (The Professor And The Critics - letters, May 30). Denying the Holocaust deniers the publicity they crave seems to be the crux of the issue. We should be exposing and challenging the David Dukes, David Irvings and Avigdor Liebermans of the world with all the knowledge we have in our possession. If universities can't dig down to the roots of misconceptions, we can hardly expect it to occur in the political arena. We will find ourselves led by those who have their own agenda, be it neo-Nazis, revisionist Zionists or Islamic extremists.

I want wisdom from my university, not oracles. St. Francis Xavier himself, and the founders of the Nova Scotia university, never sat idly by waiting for wisdom to be served to them on a white tablecloth.

Mr. Foxman says Shiraz Dossa was the only scholar from a mainstream Western university to attend. The fact that he went that distance to come away calling the deniers the idiots they are should be something to celebrate, not condemn.

A most “nuanced” missive, I’d say. So nuanced that it hardly makes any sense at all. (He wants wisdom and not oracles but doesn’t want this wisdom served on a white tablecloth? What the heck does that mean?)

My response, on the other hand—not so nuanced:

Miles Tompkins has apparently bought Professor Shiraz Dossa’s claim that he had little in common with the unsavoury types who attended a Holocaust denial conference in Iran, and urges us to “celebrate” him for traveling this vast distance in order to expose the other attendees for being the “idiots that they are.”

 

He’s kidding, right? I know that, having been caught in such disreputable company, Professor Dossa has felt compelled to do some serious back peddling. But it should be clear to anyone who has read his writings, which are vituperatively anti-Zionist and which obsessively explore the link between the Holocaust and the founding of Israel with the aim of undermining the Jewish state, that the Professor was not the odd man out at the conference; in fact, he was right at home.

 

Given that, I suggest we hold off on any “celebration” for the moment.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:20 | link | comments (1)

World War Four, encore: Norman Podhoretz has been saying for some time that, whether or not we’re prepared to admit it, we’re at war with Islamic fascism—a war he calls WW4 (WW3 being the Cold War). He repeats this assertion in Opinion Journal, and says that unless we acknowledge the reality of Ahamdiejad’s seemingly loopy plans and take steps to derail them, it’s game over for Israel and perhaps the entire West:

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what Sept 11, 2001, did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the Cold War was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II. Like the Cold War, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated first in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of communism; it is global in scope; it is being fought with a variety of weapons, not all of them military; and it is likely to go on for decades.

What follows from this way of looking at the last five years is that the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran. As the currently main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11, and as (according to the State Department's latest annual report on the subject) the main sponsor of the terrorism that is Islamofascism's weapon of choice, Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its effort to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all.

The Iranians, of course, never cease denying that they intend to build a nuclear arsenal, and yet in the same breath they openly tell us what they intend to do with it. Their first priority, as repeatedly and unequivocally announced by their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is to "wipe Israel off the map"--a feat that could not be accomplished by conventional weapons alone.

But Ahmadinejad's ambitions are not confined to the destruction of Israel. He also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. If he acquired a nuclear capability, he would not even have to use it in order to put all this within his reach. Intimidation and blackmail by themselves would do the trick.

Nor are Ahmadinejad's ambitions merely regional in scope. He has a larger dream of extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe, and this too he hopes to accomplish by playing on the fear that resistance to Iran would lead to a nuclear war. And then, finally, comes the largest dream of all: what Ahmadinejad does not shrink from describing as "a world without America." Demented though he may be, I doubt that Ahmadinejad is so crazy as to imagine that he could wipe America off the map even if he had nuclear weapons. But what he probably does envisage is a diminution of the American will to oppose him: that is, if not a world without America, he will settle, at least in the short run, for a world without much American influence.

Not surprisingly, the old American foreign-policy establishment and many others say that these dreams are nothing more than the fantasies of a madman. They also dismiss those who think otherwise as neoconservative alarmists trying to drag this country into another senseless war that is in the interest not of the United States but only of Israel. But the irony is that Ahmadinejad's dreams are more realistic than the dismissal of those dreams as merely insane delusions…

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments

And speaking of dizzy…: My head is spinning after reading this piece in the Tehran Times which claims that the U.S.—and more specifically, the CIA—is behind Fatah al-Islam, the nutso Islamist outfit battling Lebanese authorities at that “refugee camp” in Lebanon:

…The Fatah al-Islam movement was founded last year by Shaker al-Abssi, a Jordanian born in Palestine who has Salafist leanings and is close to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

With the help of Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Abssi assassinated U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan in 2002.

Later a Jordanian court tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death, but U.S. and Jordanian forces never attempted to apprehend al-Abssi.

He was then arrested in Syria and spent one year in prison, but after the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, he headed to Iraq together with al-Zarqawi and organized Al-Qaeda of Iraq.

Assassinating prominent Iraqi Shia figures and carrying out suicide bombings at Shia shrines are some of the goals of the organization.

After al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, al-Abssi, along with his 140 troops, entered Lebanon through Jordan and then Syria’s borders and took up residence in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp.

Of course, al-Abssi should have been arrested and punished by U.S. and Jordanian forces, but he managed to freely enter Lebanon through Jordan and Syria with all his military equipment.

The series of bombings in Beirut’s Ashrafieh and Ein Alaq districts that killed many Lebanese civilians were carried out by the Fatah al-Islam terrorist group.

Documents obtained by the Lebanese security services that were later publicized show that Fatah al-Islam planned to assassinate 36 prominent Shia leaders in Lebanon.

Honest analyses show that the movement was established by the CIA with the objective of confronting the Lebanese Hezbollah and preparing the ground for the disarming of the group.

Most of the accounts of Fatah al-Islam, which receives financial support from a group of rich Arab Salafists, are in U.S. banks. Yet, how is it that the U.S. freezes the bank accounts of many Islamic movements, but does not freeze bank accounts of Fatah al-Islam?

Moreover, when al-Abssi quit the Fatah al-Intifada movement, which is led by Colonel Abu Musa, and founded the Fatah al-Islam organization, the New York Times printed a detailed interview with him and the U.S. media extensively focused on him.

Other measures by the United States, including recent shipments of weapons to resupply the Lebanese Army, are part of the new U.S. plot to reenter the stage in Lebanon in order to eliminate Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s illegitimate government has become extremely shaky since the publication of the Vinograd report, and this new plot has been devised to help it regain its former standing.

Hence, through attempts to create tension in Lebanon and clash with Hezbollah, Fatah al-Islam is trying to prepare the ground for the U.S. Marines to return to Lebanon. But will the U.S. succeed? Surely not!...

To review: The U.S. is backing a terrorist organization associated with al Qaeda, meanwhile shipping arms to the Lebanese Army so it can fight the terrorists, in order to bolster the Olmert government and provide a pretext for the American army to invade Lebanon and wipe out Hezbollah.

 

What evil genius! No wonder they call it Great Satan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:46 | link | comments

Dubad: In the topsy-turvy world of Human Rights and its dizziest practitioner, the UN Human Rights Council, bad is good, there’s no jihad, and granting recognition to a genocidal terrorist outfit is an essential component of “peace.” From the International Herald Tribune:

GENEVA: An independent human rights expert called Tuesday for the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union to fully recognize the Palestinian government — including Hamas members — as an "indispensable requirement" to peace.

John Dugard, the U.N. Human Rights Council's investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the Mideast Quartet has to treat both sides equally if it wants to broker a successful peace agreement.

Israel has consistently rejected Dugard's reports and statements as one-sided. In March he compared the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians to apartheid — comments that drew strong criticism from Israeli officials, who called them "inflammatory and inciteful."

"In order to prevent another season of violence and to protect human rights in the region, the Quartet must intervene immediately in a fair and evenhanded manner," said Dugard, a South African lawyer. "This means the recognition of both Hamas and non-Hamas members of the Palestinian Government of National Unity."…

So Dugard wants the Quartet to treat both sides equally, yet he himself displays a marked preference for the Palestinian side.

 

Dugard as he says and not as he does?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:18 | link | comments

Laggardly UN: President Bush took a bold step today in announcing sanctions against the genocide-promoting regime of Sudan.

Not surprisingly, in the face of such boldness the UN reiterated its utter fecklessness. From AP via the Houston Chronicle:

KHARTOUM, Sudan — The Sudanese government condemned a new set of U.S. economic sanctions aimed at pressuring it to halt the bloodshed in Darfur, describing them Tuesday as "unfair and untimely" and calling on the rest of the world to ignore them.

President Bush announced the United States was enforcing sanctions that bar 31 Sudanese companies owned or controlled by Sudan's government from the U.S. banking system. The sanctions also prevent three Sudanese individuals from doing business with U.S. companies or banks.

"We believe this decision is unfair and untimely," Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ali Sadiq, told The Associated Press.

His call found support in China, Khartoum's top diplomatic ally and a key business partner, which defended its investment in Sudan. Trade and investment are "helpful for the development of Sudan's economy and will fundamentally help Sudan to address the conflicts and wars in Sudan," China's envoy, Liu Guijin, told reporters in Beijing.

However, the European Union said it was prepared to consider tougher measures to push Sudan to finally allow a large U.N. peacekeeping mission into Darfur. "In principle, we are open to consider that," Javier Solana told the AP.

Sadiq defending Sudan, saying it accepted a first batch of 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers in April to reinforce the overwhelmed African Union force already deployed in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in four years of fighting between Sudanese forces and rebels.

"These American measures come at a time when Sudan is actively discussing peace in Darfur and working on the hybrid force," of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers, Sadiq said. "We invite the international community to ignore and condemn these sanctions."

Officials said Chris Hill, the U.S. nuclear negotiator with North Korea, was heading to China on Wednesday and planned to raise Darfur with the Chinese.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations has been drafting a resolution for broader U.N. sanctions against Sudan that is expected to face resistance in the Security Council because of China's opposition and questions over its timing.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he needs more time to promote negotiations and persuade the Sudanese government to accept more peacekeepers.

Asked whether the U.S. sanctions would complicate his job of getting Sudan to agree to a larger U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, Ban said: "We will have to see."…

Yeah, no point in rushing into things while some Darfurians are still alive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:40 | link | comments

Islam makes inroads in Germany: Violent jihad is only one prong of the Islamic onslaught. The others include the money weapon (always highly persuasive), demographics (i.e., overwhelming the infidels through sheer numbers) and Dawa— proselytizing in an effort to persuade kafirs to “revert” to the one true faith.

The German school system seems to be in the grip of a major Dawa effort. In the name of integration and inter-cultural harmony, of course. From the Muslim News:

 

German politicians often raise the issue of Islam in the educational system when they discuss the integration of migrant youths. Now, there may be progress in making Islam a regular course in German schools.

More than 700,000 Muslim students attend school in Germany, but nowhere does the religious curriculum deal with Islam in the same way as Christianity.

The problem is that most schools rely on their local mosque for guidance, which means there can be large discrepancies in the content and quality of instruction.

That is why German state governments and Muslim organizations alike are looking to create a more standardized approach to teaching Islam.

It is not an easy task, however.

About two-and-a-half million of Germany's Muslims belong to the Sunni denomination of Islam. But the rest are mainly Shiites, Alevis or followers of the south Asian Ahmaddiyya movement.

With such a broad spectrum of beliefs among them, Islam expert Michael Kiefer said creating a single combined course would be difficult.

"We've seen in Austria, for example, that the concept of one course for all Muslims is controversial, because the smaller denominations are left out," he said.

That is why authorities in the German state of Baden-Württemberg have decided to offer with two courses: one for Sunni and Shia students, and another for Alevis. So far, it looks like a number of other states will base their systems on this model as well, he said.

The states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Lower Saxony, however, are still looking for ways to create one standard curriculum with the help of various Muslim groups.

In Lower Saxony, for example, a number of Muslim organizations have come together to form a "shura," or council, to help authorities define the fundamental principles to be included in courses on Islam.

State education minister Heidemarie Ballasch says the body's recommendations have been put to the test in a pilot project at 21 schools since 2003.

"One of the political goals of the trial is to promote integration instead of parallel social structures," Ballasch said.

"Another is to help school students learn about their Islam and other religions, so that when the time comes, they're in a position to declare their faith," she added...

 

When the time comes? Exactly when might that be? When the demographics are such that it looks like a better bet for the majority to make common cause with the burgeoning minority?

 

I don’t know about you, but that’s the scariest thing I’ve read all day.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:09 | link | comments

Wonders never cease: Be still my beating heart—a piece in the moonbat Mothership, the New York Times, that actually seems to “get it” about the malign mullahs and their nuclear intentions:

IN the United States and in Europe, there is a widespread belief that the Bush administration has failed to engage Iran diplomatically. Among the advisers to the Iraq Study Group, of which I was one, most believed that the Bush administration, not the mullahs’ regime, was the most culpable party in foreclosing dialogue between Washington and Tehran after 9/11.

Iran’s American-educated longtime ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, has tirelessly suggested that the administration missed opportunities for improving relations and is tone-deaf to his country’s peaceful intentions.

Yet it ought to be clear that just the opposite is the case. The clerical regime today is no more interested in reaching a peaceful modus vivendi with the United States than it was in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright all but begged President Mohammad Khatami of Iran to just talk to them.

Case in point: Haleh Esfandiari, an American citizen and the director of the Middle Eastern program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, has been jailed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since May 8. For years, she has been an articulate and determined advocate of better relations between her homeland, Iran, and her adopted country.

Just as the former Representative Lee Hamilton, the head of the Wilson Center and the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, has advocated a “diplomatic offensive” toward Tehran, Mrs. Esfandiari has assiduously practiced micro-diplomatic soft power, using the Wilson Center as a bully pulpit for reconciliation. Suspicious, cynical, hawkish and religiously oriented analyses of the Islamic Republic — my school of thought — have not been commonly heard at the Wilson Center under Mrs. Esfandiari and Mr. Hamilton.

In Iran, too, Mr. Hamilton and his Iraq Study Group co-chairman, James Baker, are seen as America’s über-engagement proponents. Mrs. Esfandiari had traveled to Iran frequently in recent years and was, on a smaller scale, viewed in a similar way. By arresting her during a visit to her 93-year-old mother, the clerical regime sent a blatant message to Mr. Hamilton about the effectiveness of engagement. He responded with a private letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to allow her to leave the country. Instead, she is behind bars, described by Tehran as an agent of regime change, an “American-Zionist” spy.

It is undoubtedly the Hamilton connection and her marriage with an Iranian-born Jew — a sin under Islamic law for a Muslim woman — that made Mrs. Esfandiari such an irresistible target for a regime fond of taking hostages to intimidate its enemies…

You know the world is seriously askew when the New York Times seems to “get it” and the Bush administration seems to be seriously at sea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:52 | link | comments

Moo’s mephitic metaphors: A few days before the U.S. and Iran held official talks for the first time since the cranky Shia with the eyebrows took over, the lit’ler Hitler prophesized what he sees in store for Great Satan. From MEMRI blog (metaphors highlighted, just for fun):

Ahmadinejad: "Let me tell you that with the help of God, they are done for. Like a battery about to run out, they muster the remainder of their power but Allah willing, nothing will happen. We've passed that. Wait one month, two months, three months... Allah willing, as soon as possible, we will pass that. Their situation is much worse than one can imagine. Their foundations are shaking."

A worn-out battery and a shaky foundation. Sheesh. Great Satan better get a tune up—fast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:32 | link | comments

Vomitous biopic: Move over Farfur. It seems Palestinian TV is getting set to bring another rodent to life. From Al Bawaba:

Palestine's Ma'an News Agency (MNA) is reportedly in the process of producing a TV drama series on Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader.  The drama will be directed by Feisal Az-Zobi and focus on the different stages of the Palestinian struggle and Arafat's contributions to it, recent press reports have indicated. MNA believes that the drama will be ready in time for Ramadan 2008, the hottest season for TV ratings. 

 

Quoted by an Arabic newspaper, Feisal Az-Zobi said: "This is a huge job and it is an ethical one before it is an artistic job. Through it, we will show the [future] generations the suffering of the Palestinian people and their struggle in all forms against the Israeli occupation.  The Israeli occupation has become a real genocide act against the Palestinian people.  Arafat was an inspiration his people and the Arab people in general.  He was something unique in history."

 

Many Arab and foreign channels have started to make contacts that would allow them to broadcast the drama, in which many Arab actors will participate.  The drama has an unprecedented budget and will be made as perfect as possible, the reports suggest.

Nearly two years after his death, Arafat's spirit remains alive.  He is a glorious banner and inspiration to the Palestinian people.  Arafat embodied their hopes and dreams for the achievement of an independent Palestinian state. So the interest in the new TV production is understandable.

 

In any case, like during his life, controversy surrounds Arafat even after his demise. Asked to comment on the news about the expected TV drama, senior Fatah officials – the movement Arafat established and led until his last day – were surprised and claimed they know nothing on the issue.

 

It seems that we should all wait for next Ramadan…. 

 

Can’t hardly wait. One question, though. If Israel has been perpetrating a “genocide” of the Palestinians, why has their population been going up, up, up instead of down, down, down?

 

Looks like the Jews haven’t quite mastered the nuances of being on the giving end of genocide.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:12 | link | comments

The rehabilitation of Moo Moo (and Tony): Once upon a time, Libya was ruled by an addlepated potentate who styled himself as the arch enemy of the West, especially the U.S. Now, of course, things are completely different. The potentate no longer pounds his chest, proclaiming his to be the biggest phallus on the world scene. Far from it. A shadow of his former self, he is now content to be the warm up comedy act at Arab League confabs and offer cockamie suggestions for “solving” the Israel/Palestinian problem, namely a little entity he likes to call “Isratine.” 

And since Moo Moo has inched over to the right side, is it any wonder that outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be eager to pay him a visit? From the Times Online:

Tony Blair set off for a surprise visit to Libya today with Colonel Gaddafi, the latest world leader to receive a farewell visit from the outgoing Prime Minister.

To coincide with Mr Blair's talks with the Libyan leader in Tripoli, BP was preparing to announce that it would be resuming operations in the former pariah state.

Libya is the first stop of Mr Blair's 'legacy' tour of Africa: he is also due to travel to Sierra Leone, where British intervention halted a brutal civil war in 2000, and South Africa, where he may be received by Nelson Mandela.

The valedictory feel of the itinerary was reinforced by a clutch of documentary film-makers and magazine journalists among his travelling press entourage. Rules have also been relaxed to allow television crews to film inside his aircraft.

Libya was not long ago was a notorious state sponsor of terrorism, among the countries he will call on during his final weeks in office; in the 1980s it was shipping arms to the IRA.

But the Prime Minister counts Britain's role in persuading Colonel Gaddafi to renounce terrorism and dismantle his nuclear programme as among his foreign policy triumphs. Mr Blair's spokesman said: "This trip is all about showing that we need to keep engaging with Africa as a whole."

The spokesman also predicted that other countries would announce increases in their aid budgets to Africa before next month's G8 meeting of leading industrial powers in Heiligendamm, Germany, to be hosted by the Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

"Between now and the G8 others will step up to the plate," the spokesman said. "We are going to meet our aid targets we set at Gleneagles."

The twin items topping the agenda at the G8, of Africa's development and climate change, were those put on the agenda when Britain hosted the G8 at Gleneagles two years ago when they were thought "quixotic", he said, but now they are central themes of international politics.

Although Libya is a leading player in the African Union, and Mr Blair's talks with Colonel Gaddafi will include a discussion of Britain's demands for tougher sanctions against Sudan to stop the humanitarian disaster in Darfur, the chief reason for today's visit it clear...

Brilliant idea! If Tony can get Moo Moo onside against Sudan’s genocidal Islamists, maybe some lives can be saved before the Janjaweed machetes their way through the entire Darfur populace.

 

Then again, there’s no reason to expect that Moo Moo will agree to side with infidels over Arabs.

 

But even if Tony fails, you can see where he’s going here. He’s trying to buff up his tarnished legacy by claiming credit for putting African development and climate change at the top of the international agenda. Won’t work, Tony. Sir Bob and Bono’ll get credit for the Africa stuff, and the "Goracle” has already run off with the global warming blue ribbon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:55 | link | comments

In other news, dog bites man and the Ayatollah Khomeini was one nutty Islamist: There's been little progress in talks between Great Satan and the most wicked arm of the Axis of Evil.

Go figure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:00 | link | comments (3)

Half-baked (and extremely nauseating) cake: I have read a lot of stomach-turning things in the Globe and Mail in the past year, many of them the work of the Globe's tag-team of Israel-bashers, Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon and his wife, Caroline Wheeler, but this piece of dreck wherein Michael Valpy justifies Professor Shiraz Dossa’s attendance at the lit’ler Hitler’s Holocaust denial conference takes the cake:

A Canadian political scientist excoriated for attending what was widely labelled a Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran has retaliated with a blistering published attack on his university president and his colleagues for being illiterate Islamophobes.

Writing in the influential Literary Review of Canada, Shiraz Dossa, a tenured professor at Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University, said that his academic integrity and academic freedom were grossly impugned by the university administration, an assault on his reputation that he said has yet to be remedied.

He accused the president and chancellor of authorizing a "small Spanish Inquisition" to denounce him - a campaign he said was initiated by two Jewish professors and the Christian chair of the political science department.

Prof. Dossa also wrote that the attack on his reputation was launched by The Globe and Mail's editorial board and by columnists John Ibbitson and Rex Murphy, whom he described as being "intellectually just a cut above the Trailer Park Boys" and ignorant of the Middle East.

James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, likened the treatment of Prof. Dossa to the 1950s McCarthy period in the United States when academics and others were subjected to intense pressure not to attend events that were unpopular.

This is the first time Prof. Dossa has spoken out since the storm erupted over his attendance at the Tehran conference in mid-December.

His two-page essay appears in the issue of the LRC that will be posted today on its website, http://www.reviewcanada.ca. Although the monthly publication's circulation is small, it is widely read in the academic, journalistic, political and public-service communities.

In an interview, Prof. Dossa said he wrote the essay because he wanted to set the record straight and because he still hasn't received an apology from either St. FX president Sean Riley or chancellor Raymond Lahey, the Roman Catholic bishop of Antigonish where the university is located. He also said he has refused to speak to his department chair, Prof. Yvon Grenier, since December.

He wrote that the university administration uncritically accepted the Holocaust-denial label "concocted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center [a Jewish human-rights organization] and the [U.S.] Jewish Defence League and peddled by media outlets such as The Globe and Mail."

Prof. Dossa, a Muslim, teaches political theory and comparative politics at St. FX. His focus as a scholar has been on the Holocaust and its aftermath. He abruptly dismisses any suggestion that he is a Holocaust denier. Rather, he said, his interest has been in what use of the Holocaust has been made to promote Zionism - the right of Jews to a national homeland - and to support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

In both his essay and in a telephone conversation, he makes a compelling case for why he attended the two-day Tehran conference, titled "The Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision."

It was a conference for scholars in the global South, said Prof. Dossa, who wanted to examine the Holocaust and its significance unrestrained by the lenses through which it is viewed by the West, and "to devise an intellectual [and] political response to Western-Israeli intervention in Muslim affairs."…

In other words, to rewrite history to suit their own purposes—which Valpy apparently sees as a legitimate pursuit so long as it has some "intellectual" heft behind it.

 

Pass me a barf bag: I’m about to lose my breakfast.

 

It goes on in the same revolting vein for many more paragraphs, but I suggest you read the remainder in small doses, so as to not lose your appetite for the rest of the day.

 

Here’s the letter I sent the Globe:

 

Let me get this straight: Professor Shiraz Dossa is pleased to attend a Holocaust denial conference hosted by an Iranian President who has announced his intention to complete Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and when criticized for what, at the very least, was an unfortunate lapse in judgement, he complains that his critics are bigots and demands an immediate apology.

 

I’d be tempted to say the Professor has a great deal of “chutzpah,” but under the circumstances, perhaps using a word in a language that was largely wiped out by the Nazis is not exactly appropriate.

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

George’s obnoxious answers: Avuncular British politician George Galloway (avuncluar if your uncle happens to be Oswald Mosley, that is) responds to friendly questioners on the Islam Online site:

Name	Ahmed Alam    - Netherlands
Profession
Question	Thanks a lot for this chance. George Galloway is someone for whom I have great respect. You are the kind of the political leaders we need to fight against injustice. Can we say that U.S is now defeated in Iraq? How do you see the future of the U.S as a superpower? And how likely is it the British withdrawal from the Iraq after the period of Mr. Blair? What about the crimes that are committed in Iraq by Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush? Thanks. Ahmed
Answer	The US has been defeated in Iraq. This is acknowledged in the public sphere, in opinion polls and privately by the main leaders of the Democratic Party. No one can win the Democratic nomination without promising to swiftly end the war and John McCain is trailing badly for the Republican nomination because of his continued support for the war. This is epoch-making. What started as an attempt to terrorise the world with American power has instead emboldened opponents of US hegemony from Caracas to Cape Town. Unless Gordon Brown is a fool he will accelerate British withdrawal from Iraq. If he does not, he will have inherited the premiership just in time to lose it.

 

Name	Yasin Yusuf From Somaliland    -
Profession	Computer programmer
Question	Hello, my question is: how Mr Brown will be different from Blair in term of foreign policy specially Islamic world and particularly in East Africa where Ethiopia try to colonize Somalia?
Answer	Mr. Brown and Mr. Blair are two cheeks of the same backside! Let to his own devices Mr. Brown will support imperialist policies and the Zionist state all over the world. However, he will not be left to his own devices. He knows his predecessor has been swept from office three years prematurely because of these policies - especially Iraq and Lebanon - thus change is possible and we will be fighting for it.

 

Name	Muse Ali    - Belgium
Profession
Question	How Mr. Blair will live knowing the crimes he committed in Iraq? How will he live knowing the destruction he caused to the Iraqi poeple?
Answer	Like the swan, Blair appears to glide serenely across the bloodbath. But he must be paddling furiously beneath the surface. He knows Iraq is chiselled on his political tombstone and he will answer for it if not in this life, then in the next.

 

Name	mona    -
Profession
Question	How do you see the future of the Muslims in Europe?
Answer	Islamophobia is the other side of the coin of making war on Muslims abroad. To combat it I commend the British model - an alliance of progressive people with the Muslims. In the UK we have built a movement of millions on that basis whereas, for example, in France, where the twain rarely meet each is weaker as a result.

 

Name	khaled ALi    -
Profession
Question	Do you anticipate any change in Britain's foreign policy after Blair?
Answer	Dear Khaled, please see the previous answer. You can always find more on www.georgegalloway.com

 

Name	Abu Huzaifa    -
Profession
Question	How would you describe the British society after Blair?
Answer	Blair is leaving having more than halved the membership of his party, having lost 4 million votes, and with New Labour at its lowest point in public opinion for 25 years. The war and the lies may yet overwhelm the party he has left behind. Alas, our political system means that tweedeldum is replaced by tweedledee. The conservatives will be no better. That's why we are trying to build real alternative in Respect - the Unity Coalition. The anti-war movement continues - even to disrupt Mr. Brown's coronation. We are determined that Brown will be unable to drag us into any new war even if he were stupid enough to try.

 

Name	Afsar    -
Profession
Question	How about the anti-war movement. Is it still gaining support? Can you give details?
Answer	See above - and look out for our next major demonstration on the 24th June in Manchester outside the New Labour conference.

 

Name	Debauch    -
Profession
Question	If the situation is so terrible in Iraq and it seems it will continue like that unless the invaders leave, why do you think the British are not so strong to change the policies of their government?
Answer	Well, the British people are. That's why Blair is leaving three years before he said he was.

 

Name	Aisha    -
Profession
Question	Can you shed light on the future of Muslims in UK especially in light of recent challenges in UK?
Answer	New Labour has made war on Muslims at home as a concomittant to war on Muslims abroad. But we are fighting each and every manifestation and successfully too. We have 22 councillors elected in Britain (in just three years) and - 20 of them are Muslims. Some of our leaders like Cllr Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham are now national, even international figures. There are those siren voices on the fringe of the Muslim community in Britain who wish to lure young Muslims onto the rocks of separatism and self-annihilating violence. We are their antidote. We say to young Muslims: you are right to be angry, but the best way to be angry is to make common cause with the non-Muslim majority who feel the same way.

 

Name	Batool Anabulsi    -
Profession
Question	Britain has always been a comfortable and peaceful place desired by so many Muslims. In the past few years, things have slightly changed. Do you think this is because the war in Iraq or the policies of the current government. Can the situation in France ( i.e. banning the hijab, etc.) be replayed in Britain? Why and why not?
Answer	It cannot because of the aforementioned Muslim/progressive alliance. But you are viewing Britain through rose-tinted spectacles common amongst Arabs. The scorpion stings because it's a scorpion. Britain is an imperialist country whose delusions of empire have not yet been fully broken. The relative freedom and liberty in Britain was hard won and never secure - the product of a dialectic involving the ruling elite and its opponents…

Dialectic, shmialectic. George just wants the testy British Muslims to see him—and not the local freakazoidal imam—as their ticket to ride. He may find, however, that in seeking to lead the aforementioned Muslim/progressive alliance, it spins out of his control, and he ends up getting stung by this scorpion (because, duh!, it’s a scorpion).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments (1)

One more time: David Warren writes about the sickening repeat of history now occurring as, once again, the West fails Lebanon and, once again, Palestinian terrorists will likely be allowed safe passage, enabling them to regroup and strike again in due course. From RealClear Politics:

…The West failed Lebanon, and indeed, the Reagan administration failed her in 1983, when focused instead on the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union. In that light, Lebanon appeared to be a side-issue. In response to heavy casualties from the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks, troops sent to restore order in Lebanon, and back the legitimate government, were withdrawn. The Baathist Syrian regime refilled the power vacuum, and for the quarter century since, Lebanon has been directly or indirectly under its murderous thumb.

The mistake the West made was two-fold. For 1982 had been the year when the Israelis had Yasser Arafat's PLO "fedayeen" trapped, in Lebanon, and were in a position to annihilate it. Succumbing to world opinion, including pressure from American allies and European false friends, the Israelis negotiated free passage for this terrorist force, and the late Arafat was able to set himself up in style in Tunisia. The mistake was compounded by the Madrid and Oslo conferences, of 1991-93, wherein the fatuous "roadmap to peace" was conceived and executed. Israel then accepted the relocation of this terrorist force to the West Bank and Gaza; and Arafat was able to establish the regime of thugs that brought Israel intifadas and the suicide bombers.

Though it beggars belief, the Western diplomatic view remains that it is better to negotiate with psychopaths than fight -- even when we have them cornered. This has been consistently the official Western approach, everywhere but in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will be there, too, if Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and company eventually prevail, politically, in the U.S. (This week, they finally agreed to resume funding the U.S. military effort in both countries, without specifying a withdrawal schedule. President Bush waived his veto in return for allowing the Democrats to lard the spending bill with an extraordinary amount of domestic pork.)

We are likely to watch history repeat itself at the Nahr al-Bared camp, where pressure from the world to "avoid civilian casualties" will be the leverage with which the terrorists holding the camp's civilians hostage live to fight another day. A previous generation of Lebanese politicians had already negotiated away the very right of the Lebanese police and military to enter the camp, thus turning it over to the rule of the psychopaths.

Verily, the entire Palestinian population, both within Israel's proximity and far away from it, remains perpetually hostage to the political ambitions of Arab and Persian tyrants claiming to champion their cause -- and are about as far from grasping whom their real friends might be, than they have ever been in history. Their worst enemies will, for the indefinite future, continue to be Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrians, the Iranians, and munificent oil sheiks in Arabia…

 

To paraphrase the famous line by Pogo, they have met the enemy and he is them.

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

Correspondence: Letter to the editor of the Toronto Star by Ali Manji of Thornhill, Ontario:

From the start, the democratically elected, Hamas-led Palestinian Authority was never given a chance to succeed. Canada, the United States and other Western nations immediately cut foreign aid, and Israel refused to transfer tax funds owed to the new Palestinian government. The Palestinian Authority could not deliver much-needed social services to its citizens or pay its civil-sector employees.

The Western nations, along with Israel, punished the Palestinians for exercising their democratic right even while there was a lull in violence and a ceasefire in place.

The responsibility for the plight of the Palestinian refugees lies with Israel's never-ending illegal occupation of Palestine and not with an undermined Palestinian Authority. Israel and the international community need to understand that justice is a prerequisite for peace, and not the other way around.

My response:

 

Ali Manji writes that “justice [for the Palestinians] is a prerequisite for peace and not the other way around.” Maybe so, but the question must be posed: who gets to define “justice,” and is the definition truly “just” for both sides? For example, Manji seems to think that justice was not served when the West decided to cut funding to a Palestinian government led by Hamas. However, since Hamas is an Islamist organization that remains committed to Israel’s destruction, from the West’s perspective it is difficult to discern any “justice” in propping up such an intransigent regime, even if it did come to power through a democratic process.

 

Then there is the issue of blaming “Israel’s never-ending illegal occupation of Palestine for the plight of the Palestinian refugees.” If by “Palestine,” Manji means the West Bank and Gaza, they were not illegally occupied. They were occupied as the result of a pre-emptive war intended to liquidate Israel that was launched by her neighbours in 1967. And Israel had every intention of handing back the West Bank—as it handed back Gaza—had the Palestinians not decided to use Gaza as a launch pad for missiles instead of as a launch pad for statehood.

 

If, however, “Palestine” refers to all of Israel, then, clearly, we have a problem. Despite what Israel’s detractors may say, there is no justice to be had in destroying a thriving, vibrant Jewish state—the only one in the world—and turning it over to Arabs. Justice for both sides demands another solution. The question is whether the Palestinians will be able to stop the blame game long enough to see that a sovereign Palestine existing in peace beside a sovereign Israel is their best—indeed, their only—shot at a decent future, or whether they will continue down the deadly path of chaos, recrimination and self-destruction.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (1)

Bibi’s investment in divestment: The U.S. is getting set to sit down and “talk” with Iran in an effort to convince the ambitious Shiafascisti to tone down the violence in Iraq.

Yeah, that’ll work.

 

Here’s how Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s once and future Prime Minister (pretty please with sugar on top) would deal with the wily, pint-sized Hitler and his enrichment scheme. From Opinion Journal:

 

How to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat has proved a conundrum for America and the West, including Israel. Mr. Netanyahu acknowledges that military strikes would pose "complications and difficulties" and thus "should be a last resort." But diplomacy has been tried for several years with scant results.

 

Mr. Netanyahu proposes a third way. The Iranian regime, he argues, is economically vulnerable. He is in America to urge state and local pension funds to divest from foreign companies that do business in Iran (U.S. law already keeps American firms out).

 

"This could be very effective," he tells me, "because Iran is in desperate need of new investments for its sagging oil industry. It's curtailed its oil production by 7%, I think, in each of the last three years. It's running unemployment to a rate of close to 20%, and Ahmadinejad is continuously being criticized from rivals within the regime and outside the regime for failing to deliver on economic problems."

Divestment "could stop Iran dead in its tracks," Mr. Netanyahu argues. "We're talking about several dozen companies . . . that are propping up the energy sector in Iran and a few other relevant sectors. They are eminently susceptible to stock prices. Their chief executives are compensated by stock prices. Divestment depresses stock prices and immediately forces reconsideration." This in turn would squeeze "Iranian economic elites," who Mr. Netanyahu says are motivated by money, not ideology. "That elite funds and finances a lot of politicians, and when they see their own holdings and their own businesses endangered, they'll put pressure to either block the nuclear program or to change the regime."

 

Mr. Netanyahu believes Americans across the political spectrum could unite behind the principle that "a regime that promotes genocide cannot receive American taxpayers' savings . . . through European intermediaries." And the idea is catching on.

 

Last year Missouri's treasurer, Sarah Steelman, established a terror-free mutual fund and spearheaded a move to divest the $6.9 billion State Employees Retirement System from companies that do business in Iran and other terror-supporting nations. Earlier this month Florida's Legislature unanimously approved a bill mandating divestment from companies with ties to Iran or Sudan. On Capitol Hill, Sens. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) and Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) have introduced the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which would create a federal list of investors in Iran and shield fund managers from lawsuits if they disinvest.

The big prize, of course, is California, whose $247 billion pension fund is the nation's biggest. "I spoke to Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger on this a few weeks ago," Mr. Netanyahu says. "He said he'd look into it. I'm going to call him, possibly before I leave tonight." On Tuesday an official from the Israeli Embassy in Washington emailed me that Mr. Netanyahu "did get in touch with Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday. . . . The Governor was aware of the divestment bill and said that it may get passed by the end of the summer."

 

Sounds like a plan, but considering that Iran’s nuclear program is now being fast-tracked (even nuke-watcher extraordinaire, Mo ElBaradei says so), I’m not sure divestment will work in time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments

Referendum day in Syria: Well, not so much a “referendum” as a forced vote for the chin-challenged despot in charge. From Al Bawaba: 

Referendum on a new constitutional term for President Bashar al-Assad started on 7 a.m. of Sunday in all governorates, SANA reported.

With parliament unanimously approving the candidature of the 41-year-old president for a second term, the referendum will inevitably approve Assad as president until the year 2014.

 

The ruling Baath party has called on voters to give a resounding "yes" to a new mandate for Assad, who it said "will express the hopes of the people and the expectations of the nation".

 

Sunday's referendum, in which about 12 million Syrians are eligible to vote, is the second involving Bashar al-Assad.

 

Lawyer Hassan Abdel-Azim, spokesman for six banned parties operating under the umbrella National Democratic Rally (NDR), said that "for there to be real elections", there should be other candidates standing. "The NDR will boycott the referendum because no one has asked the opposition for its opinion. Our claims for an amendment to the electoral law have not been taken into account," he said, according to AFP.

 

In July 2000, Assad was the sole candidate to succeed his father Hafez who had died the previous month. The official result then showed that Bashar received 97.29 percent of voter support.

 

Wow. That’s almost as high as the near unanimous vote to boycott Israel at a CUPE Ontario convention.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

Eco-imbeciles: The Toronto Star has an article about eco-tourists who are overwrought about impending climate doom (and flush with disposable income to spend on exotic eco-vacations). They have been traveling in increasing numbers to a small town in Greenland where the effects of climate change are immediately apparent—thus hastening the climate change they supposedly so abhor.

If they really care about the environment, maybe they should stay home and purchase carbon credits from Al Gore instead

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:56 | link | comments (2)

So much for ‘Never Again’: It’s bombs away in Sderot, as the war to liquidate the Jews continues apace. By Steve Feldman on the American Thinker site:

…It is May, 2007, and for many Jews in the Jewish state of Israel it must seem more like the Warsaw Ghetto or London circa 1942.

 

One of the reasons that Israel was re-established in 1948 was to ensure that no Jews would ever have to be subjected to such attacks or live in fear. After all, we were promised, "Never Again!"

 

Well, I guess someone forgot to tell the Muslims.

 

The Palestinian-Arabs, joined by Muslims throughout the world, proclaimed that no Jews were allowed to live in an area called the Gaza Strip. It was a barren land that Israelis had made bloom and flourish after 1967 and which Jews have - at minimum - a biblical claim to.

 

If the Jews left, the Muslims told the Israelis -- with the E.U., U.N. and even the United States agreeing -- the missiles would stop. So in August, 2005, the Israeli government dragged every Jew (including those interred at cemeteries) out of the Gaza Strip and handed that land -lock, stock and barrel - to the Palestinian-Arabs so that they could develop a state of their own and demonstrate that they would be good neighbors.

 

Yet the rockets have kept coming.

 

Fired at will into Israel.

 

When the warning system works, civilians have 20 seconds to find shelter, though unfortified houses, schools and businesses have hardly been a haven.

 

About a dozen Israelis have been killed by these Kassam rockets, including a32-year-old woman last week, with scores more physically injured and thousands psychologically scarred.

 

The Palestinian-Arabs lied.

 

Again.

 

A variety of Palestinian-Arab groups, including the ruling Hamas and the so-called "military-wing" of Fatah, as well as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the aptly named Popular Resistance Committees are variably claiming credit for the missile attacks.

 

The Palestinian-Arab president, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen to his terrorist pals) of Fatah, who is always described as a peaceful man who abhors terrorism by American officials and a "moderate" by the media, has an army numbering anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 troops at his disposal. They have not lifted a finger to stop the missile attacks aimed at Israeli civilians. In fact, some of them are no doubt responsible for the missile-firing.

 

Mind you: It is Israeli civilians who are the targets of these barrages, and the missiles are being launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

 

The Israeli Army, reluctant to send ground forces into the Gaza Strip for a variety of reasons (including warnings not to from the United States, and concern about heavy military casualties from a well-armed and heavily fortified assortment of thousands of Palestinian-Arab terrorists), have tried pinpoint air strikes to try to stem the missile attacks. They have only slowed down the terrorists - who use densely populated civilian areas to launch missiles at Israel.

 

So it does not seem like the residents of Sderot and its environs will be able to live at ease anytime soon. Meanwhile, other Israelis north of the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon (home to more than 110,000 people, plus chemical plants that store potentially dangerous substances, and major electrical grids) are within missile range and have already tasted a little of what missile barrages can do to the body and spirit.

 

And of course it was just last summer that the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizballah fired 4,000 missiles at Israel's northern cities and towns, killing more than 100 people.

 

So, now you know what tens of thousands of Israelis who truly want to live in peace are facing every moment of every day.

 

You may now return to your comfort zone. If you can

 

Unfortunately, lots and lots of folks are entirely comfortable with the scenario wherein the Palestinians, using missiles and any other weapon at hand, get to “reclaim” their “stolen land” from those nasty, apartheid-practicing Jews. For the sake of justice and fairness, of course.

 

For those who care for a reality check, here’s a superb—and succinct—summary of historical events (the real ones, not the Arab rewrite) by intrepid truth-teller Melanie Phillips.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:38 | link | comments

Heigh ho: Under sharia law, women always seem to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop (to quote Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot). And even when the extremist sisters are accorded the one equal opportunity allowed to them—the opportunity to strap on a bomb and blow themselves up to, I believe the phrase used by the Pew pollers is “to defend Islam”—the rewards of becoming a female martyr are, shall we say, a bit on the skimpy side, especially compared to the bordello-with-panting-re-virginizing-virgins deal their brothers are promised.

Here’s how Mark Steyn explains it:

 

Item One: In Gaza, Islamic Jihad is planning to send waves of female suicide bombers into action against the Zionist Entity. Asked by an Israeli reporter whether self-detonating ladies enjoy the same 72-virgin deal as the lads, an Arab scholar said no, but that the gals will be served in Paradise by "dwarfs." Snow White got seven dwarfs, but it's unclear whether Blow White will get the full 72: Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, etc., all the way down to Incendiary, Non-Alcoholic and Anti-Zionist.

 

Now, that’s what I call getting short changed.

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

Who benefits from chaos in Gaza?: The jihadists and Syria, that's who.

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

Blue moon/frozen Hades/airborne swine moment: I started reading this article in Arab News about the European Commission on Intolerance and Racism’s annual report detailing rampant racism in Europe, expecting it to be the usual boo-hooing about “Islamophobia” and a whitewash of Muslim involvement in racist activities against Jews. Well, I was half right. The stuff about Islamophobia was there—and, as expected, way off base. (“Islamophobia is a difficult term. Whereas anti-Semitism clearly denotes hostility, prejudice and discrimination aimed at people of a specific race, Islamophobia confuses hostility toward Islam as a religion and hostility toward Muslims as individuals. It is an all-encompassing term that describes not only a hatred toward Islam but a view of Islam that — to my mind — is directly derived from the deranged teachings of Al-Qaeda et al.” Wrong. Jews are not "a specific race." And “Islamophobia” is the misperception that non-believers' legitimate concerns about Islam's jihad imperative and those who heed it somehow constitutes “hatred” of Muslims. It is a term intended to summarily shut down all criticism of any aspect of what believers consider to be a perfect—and thus unassailable—faith.) But to my astonishment, the writer, Iman Kurdi, comes clean about Muslim hatred of Jews, and urges her co-religionists to knock it off:

…This is particularly the case with respect to anti-Semitism, which ECRI reports is also on the rise in Europe. This fact is supported by the growing incidence of violence and desecrations of Jewish targets such as synagogues and cemeteries, something I deplore. It is also supported by a recently released survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that looked at attitudes toward Jews in five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. It found an increasing prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes, such as the belief that Jews have too much power in business and finance and the belief that Jews talk too much about the holocaust (sic).

 

And if you dear reader also adhere to these beliefs, I ask you to question not only where they come from but also the role they play in propagating an ever-increasing cycle of hate between Muslims and their Semitic cousins. The truth is that many Arabs and Muslims like to believe in a view of the world where Jewish interests control everything from the media to the planes that crashed into the twin towers on 9/11.

 

They like this view because it focuses the blame for everything that is wrong in the Arab and/or Muslim world on dark Israeli forces. The State of Israel has much blood on its hands, and the Israeli lobby is indeed powerful in international relations, but it is a gross simplification to credit the Israelis with more power than they have. It is also a gross simplification not to differentiate between Israeli and Jew. Supporting the plight of the Palestinians should not be discredited by resorting to anti-Semitism. It is morally wrong and it does not help the Palestinian cause. It is no different in principle to those who think all Muslims are terrorists. If you want to fight Islamophobia, the first step is to start clearing your own closet of racial prejudice…

 

Okay, so she used a lower-case "h" for Holocaust, and she's not quite there in her understanding of Israel, and her desire to distinguish between Israelis and Jews is somewhat problematic. However, you have to admit that it's heartening to read something like this, instead of something like this, for a change.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:07 | link | comments

Reading the numbers: Americans are still pinching themselves at the good news, as revealed by a Pew poll this week, that most American Muslims are thrilled to bits to live in the good old U.S. of A., while only a miniscule fringe of mostly younger American Muslims are thrilled when "martyrs" blow themselves to bits in order to—I believe the phrase used in the survey was—“defend Islam.” 

Kathleen Parker suggests Americans hold off on the celebrations, at least until they take a second look at the numbers. From RealClear Politics: 

What a relief to read in a new Pew Research Center study that Muslims in America are "largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world."

Phew. Praise Allah. No more worries.

On the other hand, the study's findings may depend on how you define "largely."

Here's another way of putting the Pew results: While a majority of older U.S. Muslims have largely assimilated, more than a few younger Muslims think suicide bombings are justified.

Having trouble remembering where you put those pompoms? Stick around. Despite the upbeat treatment of the Pew study -- and headlines that conveyed a positive message -- the devil in the details is less reassuring.

In fact, the survey found that though a majority of the 1,050 surveyed (a fraction of the Pew's estimated 2.35 million Muslims in this country) are prospering, a significant minority are not assimilating and sympathize with radical Islam.

There is good news among the survey results, to be sure, especially if you're Muslim. In classically American fashion, 71 percent think that one can get ahead by working hard and 78 percent report being happy. In delightful news, those who report being happiest are young Muslims ages 18-29, who also comprise 30 percent of the total U.S. Muslim population.

In less happy news, these young Muslims are also more accepting of Islamist extremism. Add to that disconcerting note the following:

Sixty percent of the young group consider themselves Muslim first, American second. Among all young Muslims, 26 percent think that suicide bombings are justified often, sometimes or rarely. Another 5 percent said they "don't know" or refused to answer.

Don't know? To kill civilians or not to kill civilians is not a tricky question.

If 26 percent are fine with suicide bombing and another 5 percent probably are, then we may reasonably conclude that 31 percent of young American Muslims -- or roughly 219,000 -- support murdering innocents in the name of Islam. Peachy. Given that 9/11 was a supersized suicide bombing, it would seem we have a problem.

In another finding of Muslim American disconnect, fewer than half of all American Muslims believe that Arabs engineered the 9/11 attacks. Another third expressed no opinion or refused to answer.

That means that the vast majority of Muslims in America think ... what? That the U.S. attacked itself? That Israel did it?

While a majority of Muslims of all ages view al-Qaeda "very unfavorably" (58 percent), an alarming number seem to be ambivalent. A whopping 27 percent said they didn't know how they felt toward the terrorist organization or refused to answer the question. An immigrant population that does not recognize the enemy of its adopted country cannot be said to have assimilated.

Nevertheless, the Pew study authors tell us that compared to Europe, we're in good shape. Yes, sure, "there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others," concede the authors. " ... Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world."

In other words, presumably, we should be grateful that only 200,000 or so local Muslims support terrorism. In Europe, where many young Muslims are unemployed and alienated, things are much worse. True, but seldom does America measure success according to a things-could-be-worse standard.

Not so great is bad enough for reasoned alarm.

Another reason to hold off on the hoopla: Parker says the survey may not be accurate since the precise number of Muslims in the U.S. is far from definitive:

All of the study's conclusions depend, meanwhile, on whether one trusts its population figures, which Pew warns should be interpreted with caution. Since this was a telephone survey using only landlines -- and given that 48 percent of Americans age 18-29 use cells phones exclusively -- the number of young Muslims could be much higher than estimated. The truth is, no one knows how many Muslims live in the U.S. because the Census Bureau doesn't ask about religious identity. Muslim organizations put the figure at closer to 7 million based on mosque attendance.

If there are 7 million Muslims in the U.S., 30 percent of whom are young, 31 percent of whom do not forswear suicide bombings, then that could mean that as many as 651,000 young Muslim Americans sympathize with radical Islam and terrorism.

All things considered, it may be too soon to celebrate Muslim assimilation. Let's do hold the fireworks.

And, at the same time, let us pray that authorities are able to put a damper on any upcoming fireworks being plotted by the miniscule fringe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:14 | link | comments

Rosie’s Big Lie: Dubunked, courtesy Roger Aronoff of Accuracy in Media:

The Rosie O'Donnell-Elisabeth Hasselbeck battle is big news. In a modern female version of CNN's old Crossfire show, these panelists on ABC's "The View" let the rhetoric fly on issues like the Iraq War. But there is more at stake than a clash of media personalities. Whatever happened to the media's responsibility to get the facts right?

On May 17, Rosie implied that U.S. Government officials -- and U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- were terrorists, saying, "I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?" When Hasselbeck incredulously repeated Rosie's statement, "Who are the terrorists?...Who are you calling terrorists?" Rosie attempted to clarify, saying, "I'm saying that if you are in Iraq and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?" She later attempted to distinguish between supporting the troops while opposing the government that sent them to Iraq.

But where did this figure of 655,000 come from?

It's based on a study released last October by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for the British magazine Lancet. The figure is said to be "excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war." But this study was shown to be wildly off base, as I pointed out in a column last November.

From the political backgrounds and agendas of the authors of the study, to their methodology, to their ignoring the evidence that would suggest that in fact there has likely been a substantial saving of lives through better hospitals and medical care and a vastly increased average life span, this report was badly flawed and misrepresented in the media. Incredibly, the study gives the number of 655,000, but with a plus or minus 250,000. If such a study were accurate, it would suggest that in the 1,300 or so days between the start of the war and the release of the report, an average of over 500 "excess Iraqi deaths" were occurring every day, seven days a week. This is preposterous.

There have been some days when civilian deaths numbered in the hundreds, and these make big news. For example, after the Golden Mosque in Samarra was blown up in February, 2006, it set off what has widely been called the worst week of sectarian violence in the entire war, and the estimated figure was that 1,300 died in that week.

The figure of dead Iraqis is probably closer to 50,000 than 650,000. How many of them were terrorists? And of those civilian dead, a significant number, probably a majority, was killed by insurgents or jihadists.

Rosie makes no such distinctions, blaming the U.S. for deaths carried out by anti-American terrorists. It's obvious that she has a visceral hatred for the American attempt to bring democracy and stability to Iraq and the Middle East. It may stem from her personal animosity toward Bush. Rosie has said publicly that she despises Bush because he opposes gay marriage.

This kind of propaganda from Rosie about the war does have an impact, especially on the millions of women watching the show. Of course, using misinformation as a weapon is what people like Rosie accuse Bush of doing. Bush is held accountable, as evidenced by the hostile questions at his Thursday news conference. But why isn't Rosie being held accountable? Is it because she is assumed to be a know-nothing who utters nonsensical things for entertainment purposes only? Unfortunately, we can't assume that's the case. She may believe what she's saying, and some who listen to her may believe it, too…

 

The truther shall set you free? Fat chance.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:44 | link | comments

When the going gets tough, The View’s truther beats a hasty retreat: Hard on the heels of her angry exchange with token Conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O’Donnell exits, stage left, a little earlier than expected.

I wouldn’t count Rosie out, though. Her repellent views put her well within in Leftie mainstream, and, considering her popularity, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the Democrats trying to persuade her to run for office. Who knows? She could become a fat, lesbian Nancy Pelosi, high-fiving the Baathists and showing off photos of her kiddies to Islamic terrorists (who, according to Rosie, are just ordinary moms and dads, same as us).

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

Malevolent do-gooders: Ralph Peters has nothing but withering contempt for the self-righteous Human Rights weenies of Amnesty International. From the New York Post:

…Each year, Amnesty International releases what purports to be an objective global survey of the state of human rights. Sounds like a great idea, but the report has long since degenerated into an effort to protect terrorists and mass murderers from justice - and bash America.

In its latest report, Amnesty International denounces the United States again. This time, it seems we're the foremost global abuser of human rights.

Oh, if you keep reading, rogue states such as Zimbabwe, China, Sudan, Russia and Iran get tut-tut mentions, although North Korea just sounds like a weight-loss spa. Except for our democratic ally, Colombia, only the United Kingdom appears remotely as savage as the United States.

Reading about American heartlessness made me want to move to Saudi Arabia, where women never see their rights abused and believers of every faith are free to worship. And if I want a beer, I can hop over to Venezuela, where everything's free.

The sad truth is that the misnamed "human-rights community" just may be the worst enemy of human rights without a country of its own. There are real human-rights tragedies unfolding every day, from Harare to Havana, but activists don't give a damn about the average Joe or Miguel or Ali…

Bingo! They only care about advancing the internationalist agenda which--what are the odds?--happens to go hand in glove with the Islamist agenda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:57 | link | comments

Poor, poor pitiful them: A clueless editorial in Toronto Star champions the cause of the Palestinians--and their victimhood:

Scattered by war across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other countries, the world's 9 million Palestinians are a people without a state of their own. Nearly half are refugees. More than 1 million live in squalid camps.

Yet despite these appalling conditions which have lasted almost 60 years, a Palestinian leadership has emerged to press their cause.

In the West Bank and Gaza, President Mahmoud Abbas presides over an elected government that rules 3.8 million people and has a strong security force. Even in chaotic Lebanon, home to 400,000 refugees, the Palestine Liberation Organization has a representative, Abbas Zaki, and an armed militia.

In both places, however, Palestinian leaders have allowed extremists to run riot, with catastrophic results.

From Gaza, Hamas militants have fired 200 rockets at Israel in a week, provoking fierce Israeli reprisals, including yesterday's arrest of 33 Hamas leaders. And in Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, gunmen from the Al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam faction have established a foothold, triggering fighting with the Lebanese army that has sent thousands fleeing for their lives.

This violence is self-defeating, as Abbas indicated yesterday when he said, "No violence is going to resolve any problems."

The causes of these crises differ.

In Gaza, rivalry between Abbas' Fatah camp and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas has led to near civil war. Hamas is trying to sabotage Abbas as he lobbies for peace talks. In Lebanon, Syria has been blamed for encouraging Fatah al-Islam to destabilize the elected but shaky Beirut regime to restore Syria's sway.

Whatever the rationale, Palestinians undercut their cause by ceding areas under their control – Gaza or the Lebanese camps – to extremists.

Israel and the Palestinians came closest to peace under the Oslo Accords, which were based on the premise that Palestinians would obtain control of the West Bank and Gaza, provided those areas did not become launch pads for attacks. And in Lebanon, the Beirut government agreed to keep its troops out of the refugee camps, on the proviso that Palestinians police themselves.

Both deals unravelled, and Palestinians are paying a high price, besieged by Israelis and Lebanese.

Palestinians deserve a state. But as Abbas understands, they must maintain order in areas they already control. Gaza's rocket launchers and Nahr al-Bared's outlaws are poor advertisements for self-rule.

Got that? They’re refugees. They live in squalid conditions. They’re besieged. And despite all the setbacks, their leadership which has risen to press their cause and get them what they deserve—their own state.

 

How admirable.

 

Too bad the leadership emerged for one reason and one reason only—to divest the Jews of their sovereignty—and that Mahmoud Abbas is no better, if somewhat less fanatically devout, than his Hamas rivals. And too bad that the leadership has proven itself incapable of running a dog pound, much less anything that remotely resembles a viable state. And let’s not mention the fact that there’s already a large Palestinian state in the vicinity—Jordan.

 

No, let’s cling to the myth that, with just a little more retooling of a “peace plan,” the Palestinians will be willing to living alongside sovereign Jews in two separate states. Even though by now it should be clear to everyone—even clueless Star editorialists—that a one state solution—one sans Israel—has been and always will be the goal.

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

He's baa-aack: After cooling his heels in Ayatollahville for the past few months, the choleric cleric has returned to incite maynhem in Iraq.

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

Past imperfect: Sanctimonious gasbag Jimmy Carter got in hot water recently for calling George W. Bush the worst President ever—a veritable pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment. But as Times columnist Gerard Barker points out, there’s bad, and then there’s Jimmy Carter bad, and frankly, we ain’t there yet:

…For the younger reader, perhaps already infused with a nostalgia that recalls the 1970s as a time of peace and prosperity, a brief reminder of the golden era of Carter is in order. It wasn’t all disco and flared trousers and sex without condoms. Also fashionable in those days were unemployment, inflation and communism.

The US jobless rate was more than 10 per cent. Inflation touched 15 per cent. Soviet troops marched unmolested into Afghanistan. America watched helpless as its diplomats were held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries for 444 days. In the rest of the world, from Latin America to Asia, American power yielded to the communist advance; economically, America was being bested by Japan and Germany.

And then there was the moment when the US President was almost felled by a killer rabbit. It struck one day in 1979 when Mr Carter was in the presidential dinghy on a fishing trip in Georgia. A large, evidently amphibious animal with big floppy ears and protuberant teeth swam boldly up to the President’s boat and had to be smacked away with a paddle (a nice metaphor in many respects: the President may have been up the creek but at least he still had his paddle).

Mr Carter’s defenders say: very well. Not our finest hour. But at least people liked us. Better to be pitied than despised. And laugh if you will about killer rabbits, at least Mr Carter’s near-death experience came at the furry paws of an animate creature; Mr Bush’s main brush with mortality in the White House was with a pretzel.

For many Americans, the Carter critique rings true. They wonder whether, finally, this is it for America. Whether two terms of George Bush may have done for the superpower what the Great Depression, fascism, communism and Jimmy Carter failed to do: sow the seeds of its destruction.

The country is in the grip of an unrelieved gloom about its condition. The Iraq war rolls on, sapping self-confidence. In the broader Middle East the war that was supposed to turn history in America’s direction seems to have done the opposite. Iran is emboldened. Syria is throwing its weight around again.

Farther afield, of course, America is despised as never before. Its much-vaunted soft power, the appeal of its freedoms, its lifestyle, its economic opportunities, is tarnished. It is not just Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but the very American system itself – its thirst for oil, its healthcare, its inequalities – that is now so readily maligned.

Americans read every day that their economic supremacy is in its last days. This week a delegation from Beijing has been in Washington for economic talks. In the pictures of the event, the Chinese leaders, smiling beneficently on their hosts, looked like nothing so much as a kind of memento mori, a chilling reminder for Americans that the future does not belong to them.

Meanwhile, an immigration debate rages on. Right and Left are furious with a compromise Bill in Congress. The nativist Right, egged on by latterday Goebbelses on TV and radio, thinks America is being overwhelmed by sub-literate Hispanic immigrants, armed with lawnmowers and cleaning brushes, ready to roll in and sweep them away. The bleeding-heart Left thinks that, in allowing an amnesty for only 12 million illegal immigrants, America is inflicting unimaginable cruelties on another 30 million family members who will not be allowed to come into the US.

Steady on. Once Americans get into a funk, there really is no stopping them. It’s an old truth that things are never as good or as bad as they seem and so it is now…

I dunno, Gerard. Things seem pretty bad, and not in the 70s sense of disco music and stagflation (which, incidentally, is my favourite word from that decade). I’d feel a lot better if “the bleeding heart Left,” of which Jimminy is now a revered Patriarch, weren’t so damned clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:40 | link | comments (1)

Romancing the stone cold killer: True to form, the Globe and Mail’s Mark “Malarkey” MacKinnon romanticizes a brutal jihadist. But really, how could he resist? To those who see things through the Malarkey lens, it’s a reflex, like slamming Israel, and the beleaguered “underdog” will always cut an appealing figure, even if—minor technicality—he does happen to be a bloodthirsty thug.

SHATILA REFUGEE CAMP, LEBANON -- The man leading the fundamentalist Fatah al-Islam group in its six-day-old battle with the Lebanese army is a fanatically devout former Libyan air force pilot who is almost certain to choose death over surrender in the standoff at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, former comrades-in-arms say.

Even before he founded Fatah al-Islam last year, Shakir al-Abssi was a well-known militant who grew up fighting in the refugee camps of Jordan and Lebanon and dreaming of "liberating" the Palestinian territories. The last place he lived before he established his base at Nahr al-Bared is testament to that: a grungy three-room building furnished only with bunk beds, uncomfortable chairs and a messy desk in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut.

A single bare light bulb hangs from the ceiling, illuminating a wall decorated with a Palestinian flag, paintings of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher hanging by its shoulder strap from a nail.

The building's front door is plastered with pictures of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Mr. al-Abssi, who returned to Lebanon last summer after a prolonged absence, lived in these Spartan accommodations for several months after being assigned by Fatah Intifada chiefs in Syria to take over the local leadership of the Syrian-backed group dedicated to violent resistance against Israel.

Shortly afterward, he founded the breakaway Fatah al-Islam, the radical Salafist group now locked in the deadly showdown with government forces at Nahr al-Bared in the north of the country. The fight has already left at least 90 people dead, and many more casualties are feared with thousands of Palestinian refugees still trapped inside as sporadic fighting continues, and emergency workers are unable to reach most of the besieged camp.

The 51-year-old Mr. al-Abssi is remembered on these grimy, narrow streets as a physically fit man with greying hair who wore a mustache and, occasionally, a short beard. He was a popular and respected figure, renowned for his religiosity.

"He is modest and forgiving. You can do anything you want to him and he will forgive you, but if someone insulted God in his presence, he might kill them," said Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, the security chief for Fatah Intifada in Shatila…

Also, no doubt, courteous, brave and thrifty. A regular jihad scout leader who’s helping the lads work on their final merit badge: martyrdom.

 

My letter to the Globe:

 

It sounds like there’s a lot to admire about Shakir al-Abssi, the “militant” who founded Fatah al-Islam. He’s stalwart, “staring down Lebanese troops.” He’s a man of vision who dreams of “‘liberating’ the Palestinian territories.” He’s “modest and forgiving,” except of course if you have something negative to say about his beliefs, in which case, being so incredibly “devout,” he’s apt to take offence and do you grievous personal harm.

 

All in all, he sounds rather appealing—Robin Hood by way of Che Guevera, with a jihadist twist.

 

Alas, unless it's Errol Flynn in an old Warner Brothers movie, the “romance” of the dashing outlaw is lost on me. As a devotee of reality and not legend, you’ll understand if I prefer to see Mr. al-Abssi for what he really is: a dangerous, fanatical brute.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:54 | link | comments (2)

Palestinian death wish: Youssef Ibrahim in the New York Sun poses one of the most confounding questions of our era: why, time after time, do the Palestinians back the wrong horse and act against their own best interests?:

…Mayhem is always to be expected from Syria, but why are the Palestinian Arabs offering themselves up as tools of Syria, destroying whatever sympathy is still left for their cause, and turning themselves into pariahs in the Arab world? And why do they keep doing it over and over?

In 1990, some 400,000 Palestinian Arab residents of Kuwait cheered on, and even collaborated with, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army during his invasion of the Gulf state; when the Gulf War liberated Kuwait a year and a half later, the Kuwaitis threw all their Palestinians out.

Twenty years earlier in Jordan, armed Palestinian Arab gangs waged the so-called Black September Civil War in an effort to overthrow King Hussein and take over the country.

Both episodes cost the Palestinian Arab cause dearly. Those in Kuwait lost some of the best living standards they ever enjoyed. In Jordan, after killing some 7,000 Palestine Liberation Organization fighters, Hussein threw the rest out along with their leader, Yasser Arafat, who had found his way to Lebanon by 1971.

Within a decade, Arafat and his PLO gangs had brought turmoil to Lebanon, in effect triggering the 1975 Lebanese Civil War and, in 1982, inviting an Israeli invasion of the country. Those travesties got the gangster leadership of the PLO evicted once again, this time to Tunisia, leaving behind some 350,000 Palestinian Arabs holed up in refugee camps of Lebanon, which quickly became 12 cesspools of radicalism. They are where Syria and Al Qaeda went to recruit the newest gang of mercenary Palestinian Arabs, Fatah al-Islam.

All of this invites the question of what makes our Palestinian Arab brethren gravitate constantly toward such lowest possible denominators and end up as the prime losers…

In a word: Judenhass. It makes you stupid.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:30 | link | comments

F-A-R-F-O-U-R-M-O-U-S-E: The American Thinker has a piece about the ugly little rodent in the Palestinian living room, and why the Disney Corp. and the leftoids are so loath to acknowledge it:

Hamas, the Islamofascist party that now controls half the Palestinian population, is giving the world an important object lesson on civilization; or rather, on the crucial difference between civilization and barbarism. In a West that has dulled the edge of its moral sense after years of "all cultures are equal" propaganda, it is high time for us to learn again what seemed so simple and obvious to previous generations: That civilization is better than bloody, vengeful barbarism, both in war and peace.

 

If we fail to understand the morality of our cause with the greatest intellectual clarity, we will not have the psychic strength to win this struggle. The moral lessons of what we see  in the news every day must be pointed out, over and over again. In a previous age, the mainstream media did that job.  Today, only the new media are willing to do it.

 

Annette Funicello wouldn't approve, and neither would Walt Disney, but nonetheless the world has been introduced to the Mickey Martyr Club (Music please, Maestro!). Here come the kids marching in. Palestinian toddlers are being taught the glories of suicide-killing the Jews of Israel, using a Mickey Mouse rip-off on Hamas TV. Walt Disney's cartoon mouse is now Mickey Martyr, on his way to paradise-after-death in a thousand bloody shreds. This is not the wholesome land of Disney.

 

So far, the Disney Company isn't suing to protect its copyright, simply just hoping that this insanity will go away.

 

Now in a sane and decent country this sort of brainwashing of innocents would be called child abuse. If American liberals knew about little kids being told to commit suicide-murder anywhere in the United States, wouldn't they explode with righteous rage? So ... where is their moral outrage?...

 

It’s otherwise engaged trying to unravel conspiracy plots about 9/11 and consumed by a pathological hatred for George Bush and American “war crimes” in Iraq. Also, the lefties are so heavily invested in the Palestinians=helpless victims equation that they are incapable of perceiving the truth.

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

Jenin! Jenin!: Oh, sorry. It’s only Arabs killing other Arabs. Move along, now. Nothing to get excited about.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:59 | link | comments

They were here just a minute ago…: Some red faces today at Scotland Yard as it has had to account for the disappearance of three alleged fertilizer of peace plotters. Seems under current terror laws, police didn’t actually have enough on them to keep them locked up, but has sufficient evidence to require them to show up their local police station once a day. The alleged jihadists took that as an invitation to vamoose to parts unknown. From the Times Online:

The Home Secretary lashed out in frustration this morning after two brothers of a man convicted of involvement in the fertiliser bomb plot were found to have absconded from a control order imposed on them under terrorism laws.

Scotland Yard said they are anxious to trace Lamine Adam, 26, and Ibrahim Adam, 20, and a third man, Cerie Bullivant, 24, who went missing this week. The Adams are the brothers of Anthony Garcia, 25, who was jailed for life last month after being convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiring to commit a terrorist attack in Britain.

In a statement outside 10 Downing Street, a visibly furious John Reid blamed the limited power of the control orders for the breach. “We are doing absolutely everything we can, the police and the Government, with the limitations placed upon us by Parliament, by the courts and by the law,” the Home Secretary said.

“I admit that sometimes it feels as though we are having to fight with one hand tied behind our back. Not least because some of those who are the first to complain are also the first in the queue to stop us getting the powers we need, the strength and powers we need.”…

Oh, pshaw, Home Secretary. That would only get you a severe tongue lashing/finger waggling from Amnesty International about how the state has gone all xenophobic and is depriving the ammonium nitrate boys of their inalienable “human rights.” And no one should have to endure that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

More good news: There’s no jihad. None whatsoever. So saith the seers over at Amnesty International, who have slammed Western efforts to counter Islam’s holy warriors as ‘the politics of fear.’ As A.I. sees it, there are only two things we have to be afraid of: fear itself, and the refusal of certain Western nations, including Canada, to lie down and die. From the Toronto Star:

In its most sweeping statement to date, Amnesty International has condemned the "politics of fear" that it says has polarized the world and allowed appalling violations of human rights to burgeon.

"Fear thrives on myopic and cowardly leadership," said Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan, introducing the London-based group's annual report, released yesterday.

She accused politicians worldwide of "short-sighted ... policies and strategies that erode the rule of law and human rights, increase inequalities, feed racism and xenophobia, divide and damage communities and sow the seeds for violence and more conflict."

Canada has not been immune, Khan said.

It is one of a number of Western countries whose fear of terrorism has caused them to "collude" with the U.S. government's "unlawful transfer" of suspected terrorists to countries that routinely violate human rights, she added.

"Nothing so aptly portrays the globalization of human rights violations as the U.S. government's program of `extraordinary renditions,'" Khan said.

"Investigations by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and a public inquiry in Canada have provided compelling evidence confirming ... the complicity, collusion or acquiescence of a number of European and other governments – whether democratic like Canada or autocratic like Pakistan."

Alex Neve, who heads Amnesty's office in Canada, said that the case of Maher Arar, which sparked the public inquiry, "points to where we went terribly wrong, and emphasizes that when we do stray from the path of human rights there can be desperate human costs."

The U.S. State Department dismissed the Amnesty report as a "political document" and said it was trying to make Washington "an ideological punching ball."…

So you see the great sin of our times, at least according to A.I., is straying from the clearly demarcated path of international “human rights.”  Never mind that there are countries, like democratic Canada, where people are free and have rights and countries, like autocratic Pakistan or theocratic Saudi Arabia, where people have limited or no rights, and, in the case of the Magic Kingdom, where they are forced to submit to brutal police who seek to propagate virtue and prevent vice. Never mind that there's a religious totalitarianism which threatens to engulf the planet. That’s irrelevant—and anyway, in the wacky world of moral relativism, democratic Canada and autocratic Pakistan are exactly the same. What really matters is that everyone—and that means you, America, Canada, and Israel—get with the internationalist agenda and genuflect to the great empty God of “human rights.”  Except, of course, for the jihadists. They only prostrate themselves before Allah.

 

The immense irony here: were we to do as A.I. demands, Islamism will prevail and the only “rights” anyone will have are the ones enshrined in sharia law.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:48 | link | comments (1)

Say it loud, they’re "submissive" and proud: An interesting stat lost in the shuffle of the Pew poll—a quarter of American Muslims are “reverts.” From the Christian Post:

Not much was formerly known about the Muslim American population in terms of their attitudes and opinions, but the new survey by the Pew Research Center found that Muslim Americans, in comparison to the rest of the world, have the unique feature of consisting of a relatively large number of converts to the religion – nearly a quarter. Almost all conversions are native-born (91 percent) and almost three-fifths (59 percent) of converts to Islam are African American.

Most converts to Islam gave as reasons for their conversions: the appeal of Islam’s teachings, the belief that Islam is superior to Christianity, or that religion “made sense” to them.

Only 18 percent of converts said family reasons, such as marrying a Muslim, was reason for conversion…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:27 | link | comments

Fashion police: Cox & Forkum on the mully-bully version of a popular TV make-over show:

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:29 | link | comments

The dark side of looking on the bright side: Over at the Corner, Mark Steyn responds to Jonah Goldberg’s observations about the relentlessly upbeat coverage of the Pew poll:

Jonah, it's true that that poll of US Muslims is less bad news than equivalent polls in Britain and Europe. But the net effect is the same: If 26% of America's "Muslim youth" (and the age of 30 isn't all that youthful) believe suicide bombing can be justified, that provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to operate in.

And saying, well, most of the 26% just have the jihad fever in a purely rhetorical sense - they may sound off about Jews and infidels and whatnot when they're with their pals, but they're not going to act on it - only makes it harder for the broader community to distinguish between pseudo-jihad machismo and the real thing. Judging from the media coverage, America is as anxious to normalize that 26% as Sweden's Chancellor of Justice was when he closed down an investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm on the grounds that calls to go forth and kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" - i.e. you know who - were part of what he called "the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict". In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, it will be seen as part of your vibrant rich cultural tradition - and, by definition, we're all cool with that. That provides very useful cover for serious mischief makers.

Also, note the same trend as in Europe: second and third generation Muslims, the ones born or at least raised in the west, the ones most at ease with pop culture et al and with no real memory of life in Yemen or Pakistan, are the ones most prone to radical pan-Islamist ideology. And what went unasked in the poll is how many sympathize not with the jihad's means but with the end: that is, how many of them wish ultimately to live under Islamic law in an Islamic States of America. In Britain, depending on how the question's phrased, 40-60% want to.

On the other hand, I was heartened to discover that 40% of US Muslims think there were no Arabs involved in 9/11. You couldn't hold the number down that low if you polled American college faculties. 

Too true. I guess the glass is half full.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:09 | link | comments

Useful idiots: An editorial in the New York Sun criticizes Amnesty International for what amounts to nothing less than chronic idiocy:

For many journalists, diplomats, and political activists, Amnesty International is considered to be a highly reliable and objective source of information and analysis on human rights around the world. But the halo that surrounds its reports and campaigns is beginning to fray, as the evidence of political bias and inaccuracy mounts.

Recently, the Economist, published in Britain, noted that "an organisation which devotes more pages in its annual report to human-rights abuses in Britain and America than those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia cannot expect to escape doubters' scrutiny." Other critics, including law professor at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, and the U.S.-based Capital Research Center, have been more pointed, providing evidence of Amnesty's systematic bias and reports based largely on claims by carefully selected "eyewitnesses" in Colombia, Gaza, and Lebanon.

As Amnesty releases its annual report on human rights for 2006, amid highly choreographed public relations events, and repeating the familiar condemnations of Israel and America, NGO Monitor has also published a report on Amnesty's activities in the Middle East. The result is not a pretty picture for those clinging to the "halo effect."

Using a detailed and sophisticated qualitative model for comparing relative resources devoted to the different countries, this report clearly shows that in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights.

During the year, Amnesty issued 48 publications critical of Israel, compared to 35 for Iran, 2 for Saudi Arabia, and only 7 for Syria. Many of the attacks directed at Israel took place during the war with Hezbollah, but this terror group and state-within-a-state also got relatively little attention from Amnesty.

Furthermore, as Amnesty has almost no professional researchers, many of the "factual" claims in these reports were provided by "eyewitnesses," whose political affiliations and credibility can be only guessed. And the language used in these reports also reflects an obsessive and unjustified singling out of Israel, with frequent use of terms such "disproportionate attacks," "war crimes," and "violations of international humanitarian law."

And while Amnesty International was founded to fight for the freedom of political prisoners, the officials in charge of this organization failed to issue a single statement calling for the release of the Israeli soldiers that were kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas, and who have not been heard from since their illegal capture…

Amnesty International—the Human Rights Council of NGOs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:40 | link | comments

Beyond the fringe: Michelle Malkin weighs in on the miniscule fringe of young American Muslims who believe it’s okey-dokey to ‘splode folks, so long as it’s to “defend Islam”—and how the mainstream media have chosen to play down the poll’s disturbing results. From NRO:

If we believe the spin of Associated Press headline writers, there’s little cause for concern about a new Pew poll of American Muslims. “Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings,” the AP headline writer blithely reports.

But the details of the poll show that the always-downplayed tiny minority of jihadi sympathizers in America is cause for big concern…

…The poll focused particular concern on jihadi sympathy among young Muslims and black Muslims…

“It is a hair-raising number,” Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, told the AP. Indeed. The numbers should be a wake-up call, not another excuse for the mainstream media to downplay the threat of homegrown jihad.

The poll comes on the heels of the Fort Dix jihadi terror bust involving young, American-raised Muslims and the conviction this week of Muslim doctor Rafiq Abdus Sabir — born in Harlem, based in Florida — who had pledged loyalty to al Qaeda and vowed to treat injured al Qaeda fighters so they could return to Iraq to kill Americans. A Brooklyn bookstore owner and a Washington, D.C., cab driver also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison in the case. The tiny minority of jihadi sympathizers aren’t just sitting around stewing harmlessly about their beliefs. They are recruiting, proselytizing, plotting, and growing.

I’m reminded of a similar poll conducted in Indonesia last fall. One in ten Indonesian Muslims was found to support bombings in defense of Islam. They took the news a little more seriously in “moderate” Indonesia. One in 10 in Indonesia, you see, equals 19 million Muslims for violent jihad. That’s just Indonesia.

Recent polling in Britain found that 13 percent of British Muslims believe the London subway bombers are righteous “martyrs,” and 7 percent approve of suicide bombing attacks on civilians in Britain in some circumstances.

Now, add that to the 16 percent of French Muslims, 16 percent of Spanish Muslims, 7 percent of German Muslims, 28 percent of Egyptian Muslims, 14 percent of Pakistani Muslims, and 46 percent of Nigerian Muslims who told Pew last summer that “violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam” can be justified “often/sometimes.”

A few fringe jihadists here, a few fringe jihadists there, and soon you’re talking about bloody real numbers.

Bloody well right.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:06 | link | comments

Confidential info: Shhh! Don’t tell anyone—because UN nuclear watchkitty, Mo ElBaradei would prefer to keep it on the q.t.—but  it looks like the lit’ler Hitler’s nuclear project may be ready for blast off even sooner than expected.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:28 | link | comments

 First Nations Jew: Graham Greene, now wowin’ ‘em as Shylock during previews of The Merchant of Venice at Stratford, sees a lot of parallels between Jews and First Nations Canadians. From the Ceeb:

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is often slammed as anti-Semitic, but actor Graham Greene — who stars as the Jewish moneylender Shylock in the Stratford Festival’s new production, opening June 1 — sees his character as a victim, not a villain.

“Shylock, he’s the one who gets boned, big time,” says a gruffly affable Greene, who is a master of the pithy summary. “He loses everything — his daughter, his money, his house. He’s completely reduced to nothing and forced to convert to Christianity on top of it.”

The Venetian Christians, meanwhile, who preach to Shylock about mercy and forgiveness when he insists on his pound of flesh for an unpaid loan, wind up with his riches. “Even [Shylock’s] rotten son-in-law Lorenzo doesn’t care about his wife anymore when he finds out he gets the inheritance from Shylock,” says Greene, suddenly erupting into one of his huge, cackling laughs. “They’re an ugly bunch of characters — brutal. This play makes Christians look like complete animals. It just cracks me up.”

Greene, 55, is sitting for this late-morning interview backstage at the Festival Theatre, where, apart from some sniffles due to spring allergies, he’s appearing fit and relaxed. He’s clad in a chill-out ensemble of sweatpants, T-shirt and black leather vest, but this evening he’ll don a grey businessman’s suit for his role in director Richard Rose’s semi-modern-dress Merchant, as well as acquiring a yarmulke and prayer shawl, or tallit.

The idea of having Canada’s best-known First Nations actor play Shakespeare’s Hebrew antihero is an inspired stroke of casting. Sadly enough, if you’re trying to put the marginalized, ghetto-confined Jews of Renaissance Italy into a Canadian context, this country’s aboriginal people immediately spring to mind. “Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity is not unlike the First Nations people being forced into Christianity,” notes Greene, an Oneida who was born on Ontario’s Six Nations Reserve.

And the fundamental misunderstanding between Shylock and his Christian clients brings to mind such ongoing disputes as the continuing Caledonia land claim dispute in southern Ontario. “There are a lot of parallels there,” says Greene…

Greene dons a yarmulke and prayer shawl for his role as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. (David Hou/Stratford Festival of Canada)

 

So you mean all that stuff in the play about Jews being greedy, vindictive, cannibalistic, demonic, blood-thirsty Christ-killers; all the Judenhass here and elsewhere which helped form the fertile seedbed of hatred that was ultimately “harvested” during the Holocaust—Greene sees “a lot of parallels there” with the First Nations experience?

 

Fascinating.

 

I wish the Bard were still around so he could explain to everyone that his “comedy” about a villain getting his much-deserved comeuppance is not a plea for universal tolerance. It is his version of Borat’s “running of the Jew,” a crowd-pleaser intended to sate an audience that had thrilled to the recent real-life hanging, drawing and quartering of the Queen’s physician, a converso accused of plotting against the Crown. To try to turn this sow’s ear of anti-Semitism into a silk purse of mutual understanding in which the Christians--the Christians!--are the villains is more than a gross misreading of the play; it is, quite simply, absurd.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments

Hole-y poll: Good news! According to a just-released survey, only 20 per cent of American Muslims think human bombs have a right to blow themselves up “to defend Islam.” And since there are only 2.35 million American Muslims, far lower than previously reported, that leaves a pool of 470,000 or so—call it a miniscule fringe—who could give a hearty thumbs up to exploding shahids. And of them, only around 200,000 actually do so. Or at least, are willing to ‘fess up to such convictions to intrusive infidel pollsters.

The worse news, as always, is buried several paragraphs down:

The survey found that Muslim Americans under age 30 are more religiously observant and accepting of Islamic extremism than other Muslims.

Oh, really. And what percentage of the overall Muslim population do they comprise? The poll doesn't say. And how quickly is this segment of the population growing? The poll doesn't say. And how do these young Muslims understand the jihad imperative as set out in Islamic teachings--as an individual's internal struggle to submit to God's strictures, or as a communal call to take up arms against non-believers? The poll doesn't say. And do they accord Israel the right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state? The poll doesn't say. And are they actively working to help Dar al-Islam subborn Dar al-Harb? The poll doesn't say.

What does the poll say? Among other things that:

• • The majority of American Muslims -- 63 percent -- lean Democratic.

• • Sixty-five percent of adult U.S. Muslims were born elsewhere; most are Arab immigrants.

• • The majority believe they should adopt American customs.

• • Muslim-American income and education levels generally mirror those of the general public.

• • Seventy-one percent believe most people can get ahead in the United States if they work hard.

• • Slightly more than half agreed their lives are more difficult since Sept. 11.

• • Most believe the government targets them for surveillance and monitoring.

As for those unposed and unanswered questions mentioned above, I guess we’ll have to extrapolate from available information.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:36 | link | comments (1)

Close encounters of the Third Reich kind: Now playing at the Cairo multiplex and in living rooms across America—stupefying, puke-inducing Judenhass. By Nonie Darwish in FrontPage Magazine:

The anti-Semitism of the Arab news media is a well-documented phenomenon.  Less well known in the West is the extreme hatred of Jews that saturates much of the Arab entertainment world. Consider the Egyptian film, “A Girl from Israel” (“Fataah Min Israeel” in Arabic), which was shown earlier this month on Arab television.  Featuring a cast of Egyptian movie stars, it is one of the vilest and most hateful examples of Arab anti-Semitic propaganda I have ever seen.

A jumble of anti-Semitic tropes, the film revolves around a conspiratorial plotline: A Jewish family vacationing in the Sinai hides the fact that they are Israeli, while at the same time conspiring against Egyptians.  Each of the family members plays their respective sinister role.  Thus, the sexually promiscuous daughter seduces “good” Egyptian young men, while the son rapes the fiancé of an Egyptian.  The father, who is made to look like a pimp, works to further Israel’s interests.

Opposite the Israeli family is an Egyptian family.  Where the Jewish family is constantly scheming against Egyptians, the devout Egyptian family represents all that is good. The Egyptian father and mother are conservative Muslims trying to protect their children from the immoral Jews, who, they claim, are “all liars, untrustworthy and [who] infiltrate good Egyptian families to cause divisions and friction.”

The theme that the Israelis are evil foreigners who do not belong recurs throughout.  The Egyptian parents constantly refer to the Sinai as “our land,” and the mere presence of Israelis in Egypt, even as tourists, is portrayed as a form of invasion or occupation.  When one of the Egyptian girls discovers that her Egyptian boyfriend has befriended the Israeli young man, she confronts the latter. “Are you Israeli?” she demands. When he answers that he is, she shoves him, telling him to “get lost.”  Similarly, the Egyptian mother and father slap their adult children in the face for making friends with Jews.  When an Egyptian businessman attempts to do business with the Israeli father, the outraged Muslim mother voices her disapproval.  Business with Jews, she says, is “treason.”

The Muslim father is particularly disgusted by the Israelis.  In the film’s most dramatic scene, for instance, the Egyptian family discovers the true origins of the Israelis.  As a sinister, “Jaws”-like theme plays, the Egyptian father washes his hands in the bathroom.  Previously, he had shaken hands with one of the Israelis, and he now imagines they are dripping with blood.  On another occasion, the Egyptian father confronts his Israeli counterpart.  “Jews have no honor, are sexually permissive, distrustful, conspirators and want to control us,” he says.

In keeping with the film’s theme that Jews are not to be trusted, the Israeli father is shown trying to shake hands with Egyptians, while talking about peace and the normalization of relations.  The Egyptians, however, regard him with utter disgust, rejecting his extended hand. In this way, the Israeli father is understood to be insincere in his quest for peace. In a final act of Jewish treachery, the film ends with the killing of the Egyptian young man, the only character to befriend Jews, at the hands of his Israeli friend! T he message of the movie could not be clearer: Those who befriend and trust Jews end up getting killed by their Jewish friends.

Tasteless as such anti-Jewish propaganda is, it cannot be dismissed as insignificant or unusual.  With even Israeli tourists portrayed as enemies of Arabs and Muslims, it is no wonder that terrorist attacks target Israeli visitors in the Sinai, and that Arab anti-Semitism, aided by today’s technology, is rapidly spreading.  Equally worrisome is that such anti-Semitic fare is now offered, through Arab satellite channels, right here in America…

Luckily for the hate-mongers, the Judenhass is only available via satellite, and is thus out of the FCC’s jurisdiction.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:38 | link | comments (1)

History bites: There was a story making the rounds some weeks ago that schools in the U.K. were dropping the Holocaust from the curriculum for fear of offending certain students who had been taught at home that A) Holocaust stats have been drastically overstated so that the Jews could set up their illegitimate colonialist entity on Arab land; and that B) Jews aren't so much human as they are porcine and simian—it says so in the Koran. Well, you can’t imagine the outrage that the story occasioned, as various Brits (including a number of Jewish ones) insisted that the Holocaust was still very much on the agenda, and that it was an insult to the British educational system and to Her Majesty’s scepter’d realm to suggest otherwise.

 Mark Steyn, always a welcome voice of reason, offers some much needed perspective on the matter. From The Western Standard:

…Over in London the other day, there was an interesting story in The Mail On Sunday, which began as follows:

"Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons--such as the Holocaust and the Crusades--because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found . . . Some teachers have even dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class."

Indeed. This was from a study for the Department of Education, which reported: "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned. Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

I felt vaguely I'd read this story before, and I had: different country, same discreet closing of the door on awkward corners of the past. In the Netherlands, schoolteachers are reluctant to discuss the Second World War because "in particular settings" pupils don't believe the Holocaust happened, and, if it did, the Germans should have finished the job and we wouldn't have all these problems today.

When these stories crop up in the papers, official spokespersons rush to reassure us that no formal official decision has been made. The Holocaust remains on the national curriculum, no plans to change anything, nothing to worry about. It's just isolated schools here and there where it's become a subject more honoured in the breach, and only in the interests of "avoiding causing offence." Which, let's face it, is what most of us want to do, because if you're "causing offence" it can get pretty exhausting. In the Middle East, for example, I'm like those British and European schoolma'ams: on the whole, I avoid bringing up the Holocaust--in part because in the Muslim world it's a subject impervious to reason, but also because it's very disheartening to meet folks who are bright, witty, engaging, perceptive and then 40 minutes into the conversation you mention the Jews and discover that your bright, witty, engaging, et cetera companion is, at a certain level, nuts.

That's the problem a lot of European teachers are facing. If a large percentage of your class has a blind spot, it's easiest just to move on to something else. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a prominent voice among European Muslims, tells its adherents that "the Jews are a people of slander . . . a treacherous people" and that Islam commands believers to "kill them wherever you find them." Last year, a poll found that 37 per cent of British Muslims agreed that British Jews are a legitimate target "as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East." Who wants to argue with that every time you mention the Second World War? Best just to drop the subject…

A “European” problem? If only. As Muslim critical mass builds on this side of the pond—see my first post of the day—the truth is likely to become more of a “problem” here too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments

Taking the fall: Pakistan’s Minister of Tourism has been forced to resign because of what wrathful clerics viewed as a grievous religious impropriety. From the Times Online:

The Pakistani Tourism Minister resigned yesterday after hardline Islamic clerics accused her of obscenity for hugging her instructor after a charity parachute jump.

Nilofer Bakhtiar was photographed in brightly coloured jumpsuit and hugging her instructor after a tandem jump to raise money for child victims of the earthquake that struck Pakistan in October 2005.

The images provoked the wrath of clerics in Islamabad, who accused Ms Bakhtiar of posing in an obscene manner and violating the Islamic moral norms.

A religious court set up by the clerics at a radical mosque in Islamabad issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against Ms Bakhtiar when the photographs appeared in local newspapers last month. They urged the Government to punish her and dismiss her from the Cabinet. Ms Bakhtiar failed to win the support of Cabinet colleagues and the Government appeared to cave in to the demands of the militants.

As she announced her intention to resign yesterday, Ms Bakhtiar complained of a campaign of intimidation against her. This month she was sacked as head of the women’s wing of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

Ms Bakhtiar denounced the fatwa against her, saying that it had no legal, religious or moral authority. The photographs showed her being congratulated for making the jump at a charity event in France and that the allegations of immoral behaviour were baseless, she said. She had no regrets and would do it again happily if it helped the people of Pakistan…

With wrathful clerics calling the shots, the people of Pakistan may be beyond help.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:36 | link | comments

 He is heavy, he’s my brother: Ralph Peters has a must-read column on the Palestinians’ “slow suicide” and how it has been facilitated by other Arabs. From the New York Post:

May 22, 2007 -- TERROR in Tripoli. Havoc in Gaza. Palestinians assassinating the innocent and blaming it on their own victimization.

Sounds a lot like 1982. Except that yesteryear's political hit-men are now fanatics. And the Palestinians have blown yet another chance - to the relief of their fellow Arabs.

No Arab potentate wants the Palestinians to build a successful, rule-of-law state that co-exists with Israel. Nor does a single Arab ruler like democracy in Lebanon.

The Lebanese army's siege of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Tripoli is an act of desperation. Forced to accept the autonomy of Palestinian bastions on Lebanese soil, a succession of Beirut governments has had to watch the growth of Islamist radicalism as rich Arab states played up the Palestinian cause - and ignored flesh-and-blood Palestinians.

The camp under fire (by the way, the shelling isn't indiscriminate - the Lebanese gunners just aren't very good shots) has 32,000 registered residents. The real number may be closer to 50,000, all crammed in a ghetto where poverty reigns and ignorance rules - exactly the kind of situation in which Saudis, Syrians and Gulf Arabs like to keep Palestinians.

The destitute camp - really, an urban slum - would seem to be a perfect recruiting ground for fanatics. Yet most of the local refugees, who have lived in Lebanon for a full generation, are siding with the Lebanese government. They don't like being shelled, but they want the terrorists gone. For their part, the terrorists hope the fighting will spread to other camps.

And who are these terrorists whose actions brought the Lebanese army down on their heads?

Fatah al-Islam is one of those countless splinter groups right out of Monty Python's "Life of Brian" - except for its murderous bent. Aligned with al Qaeda and backed by Syria, its immediate mission is to make Lebanon ungovernable.

So the bodies pile up as the buildings burn.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian try at self-government in Gaza is an even greater shambles. When Israel withdrew its forces in 2005, Palestinian leaders had an unprecedented chance to prove that they could govern competently. With aid in the pipeline (from the West, of course) and goodwill abounding, they could have given the people they ruled a chance.

Instead, they gave them anarchy, economic collapse, rampant criminality, a return to "honor killings" and a society broken by blood feuds and internecine hatred.

Last week, the Gaza fighting spun out of control, and Fatah forces, whose leadership now quietly leans on Israel for support, proved tougher than the Hamas thugs expected. With newly trained security-forces in play, Fatah threatened to seize the local initiative.

Hamas responded by launching waves of missiles against civilian targets in Israel. By week's end, the Hamas barbarism had become intolerable. Israel responded by killing dozens of Hamas terrorists - including senior figures - with stand-off weaponry.

The result? A fragile truce to which Fatah had to agree in the name of Palestinian solidarity. But the Pal-on-Pal fighting will resume soon enough. After winning the last election, Hamas outed itself as a pure-terrorist organization obsessed with killing Israelis and grabbing power for itself - not a party dedicated to improving the lives of the people.

Average Palestinians would like to get on with the shabby lives left to them. And some are staging a quiet rebellion against Hamas: A significant number of the targets Israel struck over the past several days were identified via Palestinian tip-offs.

Arab societies have a genius for self-destruction (look at Iraq), but President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party may prove readier to deal sensibly with Israel than any Palestinian faction in the past. Abbas recognizes that, today, the greatest danger comes from within, not from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem…

Ironically, one of the greatest dangers to the Jewish state comes from within, too. (The other great danger, as we know, emanates from outside its borders.) But Peters strays off course when he suggests that the "secular" Abbas is capable of "sensible" dealings with Israel. Oh, he may be perfectly capable of masking his true intentions--something which, give credit where it's due, Hamas refuses to do--but he is every bit as devoted to Israel's disappearance as his former boss was.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:57 | link | comments

No mouse in the house:

Palestinian parents who were depending on Farfur Mouse to entertain their children in his own inimitable manner are going to be disappointed today. According to Carl in Jerusalem, Farfur is off the air for now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:28 | link | comments

Lies, damned lies, and damned lying statistics: I was fascinated to learn, courtesy the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (I can’t help it—that name always elicits a chuckle), that history has been blackened by many Muslim “holocausts.” For instance, did you know that “More than 5 million Muslims have been killed/displaced in Palestine since 1948?”

Wow. That’s less than one million shy of the 6 million Jews who were murdered during Europe’s Holocaust. Or so they say…

 

I’m not sure how the Supremes arrived at this figure; nor is it clear what portion of the 5 million were “killed” and what portion “displaced.” Not that, for the purposes of this list, it really matters.

 

For obvious reasons the list fails to include the “holocausts” perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims (or by Muslims against infidels). But I guess were those “holocausts” included, the fatalities from the listed “holocausts” would seem far less impressive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:09 | link | comments

Big old mosque near the Prairie: Calgary, the Texas of Canada, home of oil, Tories and an annual rodeo known as the Stampede, is also home to a sizeable Muslim community—65,000 and counting. As Globe and Mail Colin Freeze scribe reports, the community is “surprisingly large and united.” At the same time, though, there seem to be perturbing divisions between young’uns, some of whom are eager to take their devotion that extra step by waging violent jihad against the infidel, and their elders, who are still hoping that their cooler heads (and interpretation of Islamic doctrine) will prevail. Unfortunately, a Calgary physician was unable to dissuade his son, a “computer whiz” named Sohail Qureshi, from rushing off to find adventure overseas. The son now sits in Kabul jail, accused of plotting to deploy a human bomb in Afghanistan. (It’s unclear from the article whether he was hoping to be the bomb or whether he was using his technological acumen to equip other shahids):

…Calgary remains a place where you could paint a two-by-four Tory blue and it would win a seat if put up for election, quips Nagah Hage, the chairman of the MCC [Muslim Council of Calgary]. But the Lebanese grocer, a former Liberal candidate, says consensus among Muslims is much tougher to build.

He works at it on a daily basis. He's been at it for more than 25 years.

And that, not Mr. Qureshi, is the real story about the Calgary Islamic community, the grocer says. Muslims from all corners of the world pray together, he says, just as he sells his halal meat to everyone from pakool-capped Afghans to the snazzily dressed sons of Pakistani diplomats.

His council guides much of what's said and what's taught in the city. In other cities, each imam can be an island inside his own mosque. Yet the MCC has hired five full-time imams, and vets applicants for suitable education and disposition. One, Sheik Alaa Elsayed, a young preacher was recently brought in from Ontario, partly for his knack of working with the youth.

Last year, after the arrests of 18 young Muslims in Toronto, the plainspoken Mr. Elsayed said Muslims must address the problem of extremism. "We have no choice," he told a reporter. "We must put forward a game plan and educate our youth, so they do not fall into brainwashing."

But months after saying that he found out just how hard it can be. A few months ago, a man called him, beseeching him for help in turning around a son who was announcing plans to fight the jihad in Afghanistan.

Mr. Elsayed arranged a meeting with the family, counselling the young man that the Koran prohibited the plan - and even phoned the police. Yet today, he fears, none of this dissuaded a youth "brainwashed" by the Internet.

The imam has never named names, but there is no longer any doubt he is talking about Mr. Qureshi. The shadow cast by the detainee made many headlines last week, at least until the MCC asked Muslims to stop talking about Mr. Qureshi to the press…

The great irony of this article is that it largely aims to show how benign and multicultural it is to have a large, unassimilated community in one’s midst. Instead, it demonstrates that this community is no better equipped than any other Muslim community in North America to handle the truth about its excitable young people, and the true source of their “brainwashing.” Young people like “Muslim student activist Dina Dabash,” who thinks far too much of a fuss is being made about “youth extremism” which, according to her, “must be taken with a grain of salt.”

 

Sorry, Ms. Dabash. Somehow I don’t think that’ll do the trick.

 

Ms. Dabash herself seems to have consumed copious amounts of sodium, as when she praises a recent conference sponsored by Muslim Students Associations:

Ms. Dabash argues that a lot of good is done by Muslim Students Associations, like the one she presides over at college. The MSAs keep students out of the bars. Members can compare notes on how they're dealing with their parents.

The posters she made for the recent weekend conference had a radical chic quality to them - showing a silhouetted youth in hip-hop clothes, under the banner "Muslim Youth: Dealers of Islam." They created some buzz about the event.

"We're sort of the dealers of Islam, right? We're the ones that spread the message, talk about it. It puts the idea in people's heads," said Ms. Dabash.

The conference had some glitches. There was one guest she had to un-invite.

Upon reflection, she found it prudent to ask writer Yamin Zakaria, who lives in Mumbai, not to come to Calgary. His tracts - with titles like Seven Good Reasons to Nuke the United States - are controversial.

Critics argue the writer treads too closely to endorsing terrorism. Ms. Dabash say the provocative writings amount to satirical takes on issues like the folly of U.S.-led pre-emptive war. Still, she concedes, the writer's arrival in Canada could have caused "a big fuss" if border guards read the titles of the essays too literally…

Yeah, it’s always a concern when infidels take things literally and read too much into tracts like Seven Good Reasons to Nuke the United States. I’m sure the Mumbai-based jihadist, er, author, was just joshing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments

It's the jihad, Dad: Strife in Gaza; strife in Lebanon—someone in the media finally connects the dots. From the New York Sun:

…The alleged bandits are tied to the Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist group Fatah al-Islam, which distinguishes itself among the Palestinian factions by its declared adherence to al Qaeda. In retaliation, Fatah al-Islam members opened fire on a Lebanese army patrol killing four additional soldiers. By the end of the weekend, the toll had risen to 48 dead, including 23 soldiers and 19 terrorists.

The terrorist group was already on the Lebanese army's radar screen following a pair of bus bombings last February that targeted Christians. The flare-up of violence in Lebanon came only a few days after the latest discussion in the United Nations Security Council on a resolution to forge ahead with a judicial tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The tribunal is opposed by Damascus, because the preliminary investigations point to top level Syrian involvement.

The Lebanese strife, however, is also part of a wider struggle against the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis on the one hand and against Sunni extremism on the other. Down the coast in the Gaza Strip, other Palestinian Sunni extremists, organized under the Hamas banner, have been firing rockets into Israeli towns and cities and battling Fatah forces loyal to the president of the Palestinian Arab authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The government in Jerusalem, after months of restraint, finally gave a green light to the air force to pound Hamas positions, including but not limited to rocket sites. Ground forces also crossed over into northern Gaza to help pinpoint targets…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:51 | link | comments

Malicious “militias”: Rousing itself from somnolence, the “international community” is condemning the violence in Lebanon. From Naharnet:

The international community on Monday strongly condemned renewed fighting in Lebanon, with warnings of a humanitarian crisis and calls by some for Islamic militiamen to be disarmed.

The United Nations voiced concern about an unfolding human crisis in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon where the army was locked in battle with Islamist extremists.

The German presidency of the European Union condemned the bloodshed and called for the disarmament of Islamic militia fighters.

The calls followed serious concern expressed by Russia on Sunday. "Such an upsurge of violence in an already tense situation in Lebanon gives rise to deep anxiety," the Russian foreign ministry said.

Lebanese troops pounded Islamist militiamen in a Palestinian refugee camp on Monday, the second day of the bloodiest internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war that has now killed at least 55 people and raised deep concerns about Lebanon's fragile security.

Richard Cook, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said the fighting in and around Nahr al-Bared camp was distressing.

"We are deeply concerned about the developing humanitarian crisis, particularly the danger to civilian lives," he said in a statement.

"Once a ceasefire is called, UNRWA will ensure essential care, food and water will be provided to the inhabitants of the camp as well as evacuating the injured and killed," he said.

In Berlin, a foreign ministry spokesman said Germany viewed the fighting with very great concern, and "condemns the attack on the Lebanese security forces in the strongest terms."

The renewed violence "reminded us how urgent it is that militia in Lebanon are disarmed."…

 

Interesting how, during the summer war of ’06, the “international community” failed to recognize how urgent it was to disarm Hezbollah.

 

As for the “deeply concerned” Mr. Cook, he needs to be informed that the current situation had a great deal to do with his wretched organization. UNRWA has done its utmost to ensure that the Palestinians would be kept in state of limbo, and has nurtured the festering hatred in its camps, with the results we see today

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

Pelosi’s puerile patter: It is utterly terrifying that a clueless naïf is but a couple of beating hearts away from being the commander-in-chief. From AP via the San Francisco Chronicle:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday that young people around the world are "weary of war" and hold the greatest hope of forging peace through dialogue.

Pelosi addressed about 250 graduates of the University of San Francisco's McLaren College of Business in her home district, where she was introduced to thunderous applause from students and their families.

Without directly mentioning President Bush or the impasse with Democrats over an Iraq war spending bill, the Pelosi criticized "some world leaders" who question the value of "constructive dialogue."

"The young people I have met on my travels are weary of war," Pelosi said during the commencement speech at St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco.

Using the latest technological tools, from blogs to instant messaging, she said, young people are reaching out across borders to forge understanding through communication.

"Words, not weapons, are the tools of the new civilization," Pelosi said…

‘Cept, of course, if you’re a young jihadist, in which case weapons are still the way to go.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments

A growing market: Corporations are scrambling to serve the needs of a large and growing segment of consumers in the U.K. From the Times Online:

McDonald’s has been testing halal chicken burgers at its diner in Southall, West London. Boots is running a trial of halal baby food in 30 stores. Tesco, which, like other supermarkets, sells meat certified by Islamic organisations at some stores, is looking to include new products, such as ready meals. All are chasing what could be, according to the advertising agency JWT, Britain’s biggest untapped niche market.

A survey commissioned by JWT, believed to be the first of its kind to focus on the needs of two million Muslim consumers in the UK, says that businesses should strive to understand Islam and how the religion influences its followers’ spending habits.

The agency argues that the Muslim market in the UK is certain to grow: it comprises 3 per cent of the population, is Britain’s second-largest faith group and has the youngest age profile. Although Muslims are among the most deprived groups in Britain, collectively they have an estimated spending power of £20.5 billion. There are also more than 5,000 Muslim millionaires holding assets worth at least £3.6 billion.

JWT’s study, Marketing to Muslims, comes as retailers and consumer goods companies are stepping up their efforts to woo Muslim customers. Nestlé, the world’s biggest producer of halal food, is eyeing the UK market. Last year, the Swiss group exported more halal products from Malaysia to Britain than ever before.

“A lot of the big multinational players in the food industry are going halal,” said Nordin Abdullah, of KasehDia, a Malaysian consultancy that organised the second World Halal Forum in Kuala Lumpur this month. “What they are starting to realise now is in the UK and Europe there are these identifiable Muslim markets.”

To be considered halal, products have to be free of alcohol and pork and animals must be slaughtered according to Islamic law.

JWT claims to be the first global agency to identify Muslims as a consumer group and compares it to the Hispanic market in America. Marian Salzman, the chief marketing officer of JWT, said: “Twenty years ago, if you said ‘Hispanic’ I’m not sure people would even know what you meant. Today it makes up about 15 per cent of American consumerism.”

Ms Salzman, a New York-based trendsetter who helped to popularise the terms “metro-sexual” and “singleton”, said that some companies were wary of targeting Muslims or including them in their advertising campaigns for fear of being labelled “Muslim brands” or offending the mainstream population, especially after the September 11 and July 7 attacks. Yet many others were showing greater interest in Muslim consumers and JWT is encouraging clients, including Unilever, Nestlé, HSBC, Esteé Lauder and Johnson & Johnson, to develop strategies to reach them.

“Before the project, we wondered whether strong religious faith might mean that Muslims would be less materialistic,” she said. “That may be true for some, but we’ve found that being a good Muslim doesn’t stop people from being enthusiastic participants in consumer society.”…

Absolutely. And coming soon to a mega-mall near you: no liquor outlets, no bratwurst at the food court, no Bikini kiosks, and a darling little chain of shops called Hijabs ‘R’ Us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

A truer word was never spoken: The White House calls Jimminy “Cricket” Carter, anti-Zionist gasbag and self-anointed conscience of the world, “irrelevant.”

Dry Bones thinks he's being unduly self-effacing:

At least Farfour Mouse and Mo Elmasry still love him.

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

Another “no go” zone: Sarko may be the new prez, but it seems some of his countrymen are no better disposed toward the U.S. of A. now than they were prior to his election victory. From Breitbart:

A Paris festival celebrating US music and culture has been called off following a series of anti-American threats, organisers said on Sunday.

Called "Three Days in America", the festival featuring country and gospel concerts, line-dancing, sales of US paraphernalia and a tribute to Elvis Presley was to take place from May 26 to 28 in Saint Cloud, southwest of Paris.

Organisers issued a statement saying they were forced to postpone the event following "persistent pressure and threats of an anti-American nature".

"At first we thought it was a joke when we received a letter with a mixture of threats, mentioning Al-Qaeda and full of spelling mistakes," said Chantal Tenot, the festival's press officer.

But after several threatening phone calls the organisers decided Friday to file a police complaint and call off the event.

Paris anti-terrorism investigators have been alerted and the festival organisers are to meet foreign ministry officials on Monday to discuss the situation, Tenot said.

She said the organisers hoped to reschedule the festival -- which last year drew 15,000 visitors -- in the autumn.

Yeah, things should be much calmer by then.

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

The way of the world: Here’s how it works—if in the course of fighting Jihadists who seek to wipe the Jews off the map Israel happens to kill some civilians who are being used as human shields, you can expect to hear an uproar in the media and at the UN that sounds like the bellows of a mortally wounded behemoth; useful idiots may even use the fatalities to argue that it’s time redouble efforts to impose a boycott on Israel.  If, however, in the course of fighting Jihadists, Lebanese security forces “lay siege” to a Palestinian “refugee camp," killing a whole slew of civilians, you can expect to hear…crickets, bupkes, a deafening silence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:01 | link | comments

Kid stuff: Once upon a time, back in the heyday of the Oslo Accords (when fairies dwelt in the land, and a Jewish leader, urged on by an American leader, somewhat reluctantly extended his hand to a rheumy-eyed genocidal Palestinian kleptocrat on the White House lawn) there was an Israeli version of “Sesame Street” called “Rechov Simsum.” It featured American celebrities—some Jewish, some not—and incorporated most of the same elements of the American show adapted for Israeli—and it was also hoped, Palestinian—audiences. Letters. Numbers. Muppets. Even beloved Streeter icons Ernie and Bert made regular appearances. (For those who may be interested, “put down the duckie” in Hebrew is “sim et barvazi.”) Alas, boys and girls, Oslo fell apart, and the Palestinians launched an intifada and sent youngsters not much older than Rechov Simsum’s target audience to become human bombs, and there were no longer any sunny days on the street.

Now, however, the situation is much different. The Jews have left Gaza. Fatah is fighting Hamas, and Hamas is waging a jihad in order to “wipe the Jews off the map”; many Muslims in the region, including Iran's lit’ler Hitler, are devoted to the strict maintenance of ethnic hygiene.

 

Yes, now seems the perfect moment to relaunch “Rechov Simsum”. From the Ceeb:

JERUSALEM (AP) - "Puppet regimes" are back in the Middle East. Once again, they're promoting peace, diversity and the importance of brushing your teeth.

New episodes of "Sesame Street" are going on TV in Israel and the Palestinian territories, producers said Sunday, years after the original versions signed off because of a lack of funds. As with the popular U.S. program - designed to enhance basic educational content for youngsters - producers tailored the Mideast casts and story lines to the fit the audiences.

"Rechov Sumsum," the Israeli version, features a Muppet of Arab origin for the first time. Arab puppets have been used in other versions of the show elsewhere around the world.

New human actors on the Israeli version include Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, communities that have faced ill treatment from some veteran Israelis.

The Palestinian counterpart, "Shara'a Simsim," seeks to offer positive role models to boys in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"It's really about respect and tolerance," said Gary Knell, president of Sesame Workshop, the New York-based nonprofit group behind Sesame Street programming worldwide. "We know that television teaches - the question is, 'What does it teach?"'

Knell said the goal is to counter negative influence of society, because children as young as 3 can begin to demonstrate prejudice.

"They're not born with this," he said. "They're learning it from their parents, from the community, from friends."

In co-ordination with the re-launching of the shows, officials announced the distribution of Muppet-themed educational kits to children throughout Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

"It opens up a new way to deal with issues of conflict," Yuli Tamir, Israel's minister of education, said at a ceremony in a Jerusalem kindergarten. "Just teaching children how to live together, how to work together with each other despite their differences."

The ceremony followed more than a week of meetings Knell had with top political figures in the region, seeking funding and support for local Sesame Street productions.

"There's a desire of the political leaders to change the endless debate that seems to be passed down from generation to generation," he said.

The new show's first Israeli-Arab Muppet, Mahboub, speaks both Hebrew and Arabic.

Tensions have long existed between Israel's Jewish and Arab communities. Arabs make up about one-fifth the country's population and, while officially equal with Jewish residents, have long complained of treatment as second-class citizens…

Notice how, even in a positive story about Israel, the Ceeb can’t resist getting in a backhanded swipe against the Jewish state?

Farfour Mouse, the Jihad rodent, says: “Rechov Simsum (as well as Ceeb) producers should watch my show if they want to see the kind of stuff Palestinian moppets are being carefully taught by their peers, elders and community.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:28 | link | comments

Moo Moo on the tube: Channel-hopping on TV just now, I happened upon a most bizarre sight. There on BBC Canada was Moo Moo Khadaffy, speaking from home turf on a screen set up in what appeared to be a church somewhere in England, and fielding questions from such far-flung locations as Israel. Khadaffy, who, despite recent reports to the contrary appears to be alive if not exactly kicking, seems to have hooked up with Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon. As a result, the top half of the Libyan potentate’s face no longer matches up with the bottom portion, the entire visage having been puffed up, distorted and attenuated to such an extent that at first I wasn’t sure that it was actually Moo Moo. My confusion was compounded by the fact that instead of being draped in his usual desert sheeting—move over, Rudy Valentino!—he was wearing a blindingly white suit that looked to be a good choice for a purveyor of ice cream, but seemed singularly unsuited for the desert grime. Beneath the jacket he sported an emerald green shirt, open-collared, co-ordinated with what I took at first to be a floppy matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. On second glance it turned out to be a decal of the continent of Africa. Way to make a fashion statement, Moo Moo! And even though I wasn’t sure at first if this peculiar looking creature was who I thought he was, my uncertainly was dispelled when he hauled out and waved a copy of his “book”—really, a lunatic tract of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion variety—calling for the creation of an Israelo-Arab nation called “Isratine.”

I don’t know the name of the Beeb program. I don’t know what the heck Moo Moo was doing on it. I don’t know why anyone in his/her right mind would want to pose questions to someone who looks like an  escapee from Frankenstein’s laboratory. I don’t know why anyone—and I and I mean you, solemn-faced Brit in the audience who nodded in agreement at Moo Moo’s deranged responses—would want to give this crackpot the time of day.

 

If anyone could fill me in on any of the above quandaries, I would be most appreciative.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:33 | link | comments

What a revoltin’ Development this is: One "good" thing about the Wolfowitz imbroglio over at the World Bank (something to do with his girlfriend getting an overly-generous severance package, apparently)—it helped divert attention away from the skulduggery occurring at one of the UN’s most heralded bodies, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Claudia Rosett of Oil-for-Food fame has the scoop on an operation whose financial dealings are about as opaque as mud, one which seems never to have encountered a corrupt, despotic regime it wasn’t willing to throw gazillions of shekels at, few if any questions asked. From the Weekly Standard:

Such outrages [giving pay-offs to Kim Il Jong, upgrading Syria’s national airline, funding anti-Israel propaganda in Gaza, etc.], are the natural result of the UNDP's ever expanding mission to plan every developing economy on the planet. UNDP programs are crammed with new-age U.N. jargon about "capacity building," "national partners," and "millennium development goals." What they're really talking about is old-style, top-down central planning, done by UNDP-ocrats in cahoots with their high-level counterparts in client governments. What the Soviet Union called five-year plans, the UNDP calls "Multi-Year Funding Frameworks."

Especially pernicious are the UNDP policies known as "country ownership" and "national execution." Under these arrangements, which account for the bulk of its projects worldwide, the UNDP turns over resources and on-site responsibility to client governments (charging "cost-recovery" fees in the process). The idea is that the UNDP, by encouraging client governments to design and run their own "development" projects, will persuade the likes of Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, or the Burmese military junta to shape up. Too often, especially in the most corrupt and repressive countries, the result is that the UNDP rolls over, shoveling money and materials into the hands of national officials, taking a cut for its services, and slapping on top a UNDP seal of good housekeeping. The specifics of many of these projects are shrouded from public view under such stock labels as "Energy and Environment," or "Capacity Building for Development Cooperation" (the name of the UNDP project that in January covered the $12,000-plus business class airfare for a North Korean official to attend a UNDP board meeting in New York).

For an outsider, following the more than $5 billion that flows yearly through the UNDP system is like tracking Osama bin Laden through the caves of Tora Bora. Headquartered in New York, across the street from the landmark U.N. complex, the UNDP serves as the U.N.'s main development shop and coordinating network around the globe, employing 7,355 staff plus a host of consultants. The UNDP has offices in 135 countries, programs in 165; and in many capitals its resident representatives have long doubled as emissaries of the U.N. secretary general. (That's why a UNDP mission chief in Ghana was able to help Kojo Annan, son of former Secretary General Kofi Annan, clear a Mercedes duty-free through customs in 1998 under false use of his father's name.) In dispensing funds worldwide--currently $3.7 billion annually for its own projects, and $1.5 billion on behalf of other U.N. agencies--the UNDP handles more than one-quarter of the entire U.N. system's $20 billion annual budget.

To raise money, the UNDP relies not only on "core" donations from member states, but according to its comptroller also operates more than 600 trust funds, some thematic, some country specific, some project specific. None are particularly transparent. There are so-called public-private partnerships, in-kind donations, collaborations and cooperative arrangements with other U.N. outfits, NGOs, and foundations. In effect, the UNDP offers itself as a black box into which donors with almost any aim can contribute money from almost anywhere and have it used under the UNDP label for almost anything they might want to earmark, as long as the UNDP agrees--and apparently it often does. For instance, last year's jaunts abroad for North Korean arms experts were pet projects of the UNDP, the North Korean government, and donors in Sweden and Germany.

Murk pervades this maze. The UNDP does not make its internal audit reports available even to the 36 member states on its own executive board (which mixes democracies such as the United States and Britain with a gang of thugocracies currently including Algeria, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Guyana, and Belarus, as well as, of course, North Korea). What does seep out is not promising. The U.N.'s largely toothless "external" Board of Auditors, in a report released last year, expressed generic concern at "the increase in project expenditure not audited," and noted that among the nationally executed projects in 2004 and 2005 that were audited, reports for some $1 billion worth of spending were submitted late. As of mid-2006, more than one-quarter of these audit reports had yet to be submitted at all.

The UNDP's country offices have websites on which they post generic lists of "sustainable" goals and programs, but stunningly little is disclosed in the way of project details, and almost nothing about spending. At the UNDP's New York press office, staffers can be pleasant and work long hours, but often appear to have trouble obtaining information themselves. In response to pointed queries, the UNDP provided some documentation for two of the 30 projects underway last year in North Korea--including the "disarmament" project described above--then suddenly found it impossible to lay their hands on any more. The UNDP provides no regular press briefings. This month, the UNDP finally announced a financial "disclosure" policy. It is modeled on Annan's farcically empty measures introduced last year for the U.N. Secretariat, in which there is no requirement to disclose anything to anyone outside the U.N…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:19 | link | comments

‘Nuff said: In a column about Republican “fringe” candidate Ron Paul, Jeff Jacoby manages to crystallize the essential difference between the two major American political parties:

Paul helps illustrate what may be the most significant difference between the two major parties today: Republicans who don't take the threat of radical Islam seriously are marginalized. Democrats who don't do so constitute their party's mainstream.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:46 | link | comments

Another country heard from: Don’t look now, but rival factions of Arabs, one of which consists of “Islamic militants,” are fighting for supremacy in another key area. From USA Today:

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) — Security forces fought Islamic militants with alleged links to al-Qaeda in the northern city of Tripoli and an adjacent Palestinian refugee camp early Sunday, and at least five members of the security forces were killed in fighting that involved tank and grenade fire, security officials said.

TV stations said at least three of the militants were also killed.

Residents in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp said at least 12 civilians were killed or wounded in the shelling, but that figure could not be confirmed by Lebanese authorities, which has no presence there. [What you might call a "no-go zone"?--ed.]

The violence, the worst to hit Tripoli in over 20 years, adds one more destabilizing factor to conflict-ridden Lebanon, which is buffeted by its worst political crisis between the Western-backed government and pro-Syrian opposition since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

It was the worst fighting in Lebanon's second-largest city in over two decades, security officials and witnesses said.

The clash between army troops surrounding the Palestinian refugee camp and fighters from the Fatah Islam militant group began after a gunbattle raged in a neighborhood in close by Tripoli, witnesses said.

The militant group is an offshoot of the pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising. Fatah Uprising broke from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 80's and has headquarters in Syria…

No problemo then. Everyone knows Fatah is “moderate.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:05 | link | comments

Fashionistas: As the latest lull, er, ebb, er, brief cessation in hostilities, or whatever the current phrasing is takes hold—or doesn’t—in Gaza, the only thing keeping the Palestinians going is their hope that Israel will invade. Should that happen, the femikazes will be able to rally flagging Palestinian spirits by showing off the latest in incendiary fashions. From YNet News:

Islamic Jihad's military branch released a warning Sunday morning that dozens of women were ready to defend the Palestinian people if the IDF invaded the Gaza Strip.

The organization said it was fully prepared to retaliate "if the Zionist enemy committed foolish acts against Palestinians in the Strip."

"The enemy's threat to act in the Strip will not be fruitful and their goals will not be achieved. The Palestinian organizations are at high alert to handle a Zionist attack in the Strip," the statement said.

Islamic Jihad also released a video clip in which a high-ranking Jihad official said that his organization has prepared dozens of female suicide bombers who were eager to blow themselves up along with IDF infantry troops if Israel was to enter and operate in the Strip.

One of the women in the clip said that she would like to be the first to commit suicide on behalf of the Palestinian resistance against Israel.

 

She said that she was jealous of the suicide bombers who "received Allah's help in fulfilling successful missions, and we wish to follow in their footsteps. The enemy will be defeated if it invades the Strip."

 

An Islamic Jihad official told Ynet that the army of suicide bombers was only one of the "surprises" prepared for Israel, along with heavy barrages of longer-range rockets and suicide attacks inside Israel. "We have said, and we will repeat – an invasion into the Gaza Strip will be no walk in the park."…

 

Of course it won't, especially since they're going to have to step around the mess left by exploding shahidas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:53 | link | comments

The destiny of manifest idiots: We have the misfortune to live at a time when far too many of the world’s “intellectuals” are out-and-out idiots. Or, as Vladimir Illich Lenin liked to call them, “useful idiots.” As this article in Foreign Policy points out, there’s been an especially nasty breakout of idiocy in Latin America, a region historically prone to such infestations:

…Latin American Idiots have traditionally identified themselves with caudillos, those larger-than-life authoritarian figures who have dominated the region’s politics, ranting against foreign influence and republican institutions. Two leaders in particular inspire today’s Idiot: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chávez is seen as the perfect successor to Cuba’s Fidel Castro (whom the Idiot also admires): He came to power through the ballot box, which exonerates him from the need to justify armed struggle, and he has abundant oil, which means he can put his money where his mouth is when it comes to championing social causes. The Idiot also credits Chávez with the most progressive policy of all—putting the military, that paradigm of oligarchic rule, to work on social programs.

 

For his part, Bolivia’s Evo Morales has indigenista appeal. In the eyes of the Idiot, the former coca farmer is the reincarnation of Túpac Katari, an 18th-century Aymara rebel who, before his execution by Spanish colonial authorities, vowed, “I shall return and I shall be millions.” They believe Morales when he professes to speak for the indigenous masses, from southern Mexico to the Andes, who seek redress of the exploitation inflicted on them by 300 years of colonial rule and 200 more of oligarchic republican rule.

The Idiot’s worldview, in turn, finds an echo among distinguished intellectuals in Europe and the United States. These pontificators assuage their troubled consciences by espousing exotic causes in developing nations. Their opinions attract fans among First-World youngsters for whom globalization phobia provides the perfect opportunity to find spiritual satisfaction in the populist jeremiad of the Latin American Idiot against the wicked West.

There’s nothing original about First-World intellectuals’ projecting their utopias onto Latin America. Christopher Columbus stumbled on the shores of the Americas at a time when Renaissance utopian ideas were in vogue; from the very beginning, conquistadors described the lands as nothing short of paradisiacal. The myth of the Good Savage—the idea that the natives of the New World embodied a pristine goodness untarnished by the evils of civilization—impregnated the European mind. The tendency to use the Americas as an escape valve for frustration with the insufferable comfort and cornucopia of Western civilization continued for centuries. By the 1960s and 70s, when Latin America was riddled with Marxist terrorist organizations, these violent groups enjoyed massive support in Europe and the United States among people who never would have accepted Castro-style totalitarian rule at home.

The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason…

In the words of one of my favourite intellectuals, Bart Simpson, “Aye carumba!”

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments

Quality service in the Magic Kingdom: As someone who toiled for a time in the trenches of marketing/communications, I am familiar with the lingo that’s associated with corporate and NGO strategies. Still, there is something particularly Orwellian about hearing it employed by an outfit whose mandate is the strict enforcement of a totalitarian religious system. From Arab News:

MADINAH, 20 May 2007 — Offering quality service to pilgrims visiting the holy city was the goal of a seminar organized by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Madinah yesterday, said Sheikh Suleiman Al-Tuwaijri, director general of the commission’s Madinah branch.

 

In his opening address at the three-day meeting, which is being held at the Haram Hotel, Al-Tuwaijri said the commission aims to achieve a qualitative shift in its style of functioning that mainly focuses on teaching pilgrims about correct religious practice when visiting historically significant places.

 

Madinah Gov. Prince Abdul Aziz ibn Majed and the Commission’s President Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith will attend the final session of the seminar tomorrow.

Al-Tuwaijri said the seminar also aims to discuss ways to strengthen methods of cooperation with other agencies that serve pilgrims.

 

Sheikh Ali Al-Obaid, president of the commission’s Madinah branch, read the event’s first working paper and discussed obstacles that hamper the commission’s activities.

 

Al-Obaid said shortage of field workers was a major problem faced by the commission. He said that there are only 50 men to work at 20 locations, while the visitors number more than two million.

 

The official said the commission’s field workers were entrusted to guide pilgrims to historic sites that they are allowed to visit and explain to them lawful and unlawful actions when they visit such locations as graveyards.

Another speaker at the event, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Turki, a senior commission official, shed light on the various shortcomings of field workers and suggested ways to rectify them. He also warned commission workers that they were accountable like other government officials.

 

Several senior officials of other branches of the commission will lecture at the conference and participate in discussions today and tomorrow. The conference is part of the commission’s continual efforts to improve its services by identifying negative aspects of its work and adopting better strategies…

 

A very high-falutin’ way of saying, “step out of line, pilgrim, and we’ll chop off your noggin.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:34 | link | comments

The human side of a Nazi puppet: A museum in Norway is featuring an exhibit about the life and times of the nation’s most notorious traitor, and as Aftenposten notes in what is no doubt an unintentionally droll bit of understatement, “It’s not being entirely well-received.”

Hmmm. I wonder why not:

"I don't quite see the exhibit's point," one of the Telemark Museum's own board members, Arnulf Rafgård, told newspaper Aftenposten. He thinks the exhibit has an unnatural personal focus, and that it's not critical enough about Quisling himself.

 

Quisling, born in Fyresdal in Telemark in 1887, once carried out humanitarian work for Fridtjof Nansen's organization in Russia, but went on to form Norway's nationalist party (NS) in 1933. He met Adolph Hitler in 1939 and was eventually tapped by the Nazis to lead the country's puppet government after the German invasion of 1940.

 

His betrayal of fellow Norwegians was so profound that his very name became an international synonym for traitor. The much-hated Quisling surrendered after Norway's liberation in May 1945, and was executed five months later.

 

Hilde Fiskum, project leader behind the exhibit, claims the exhibit has received good reviews and that it doesn't overlook Quisling's victims. "We present many of those who were sentenced to death by Quisling, along with the deportation of Jews and arrests of teachers," Fiskum told Aftenposten.

 

Museum officials started discussing a Quisling exhibit back in 1999, and knew it would be controversial. It features information about different phases of Quisling's life, displays of his personal belongings and films in which he took part. "One of the points with this exhibit is to portray the man Vidkun Quislling, not just his well-known negative side," Fiskum said…

 

Don’t tell me. He loved to play fetch with his beloved Norwegian Elkhound, Blondie. And they say was very good to his dear Mama.

 

Banality of evil, anyone?

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

Unexpected guest: If the most perfect human being who ever trod the planet were to suddenly knock at your door, would you hide the porn and put out the prayer rug? That’s the question posed by a piece of inspirational verse on the Islam Online site:

…Would you hide your worldly music,
And instead take out Hadith books?
Could you let him walk right in,
Or would you rush about?

And I wonder...if the Prophet (saw) spent, a day or two with you,
Would you go on doing the things you always do?
Would you go right on and say the things You always say?
Would life for you continue
As it does from day to day?

Would your family conversations,
Keep up their usual pace?
And would you find it hard each meal,
To say a table grace?

Would you keep up each and every prayer?
Without putting on a frown?
And would you always jump up early,
For Fajr at dawn?

Would you sing the songs you always sing?
And read the book you read?
And let him know the things on which,
Your mind and spirit feed?

Would you take the Prophet with you,
Everywhere you plan to go?
Or, would you maybe change your plans,
Just for a day or so?

Would you be glad to have him meet,
Your very closest friends?
Or, would you hope they stay away,
Until his visit ends?

Would you be glad to have him stay,
Forever on and on?
Or would you sigh with great relief,
When he at last was gone?

It might be interesting to know,
The things that you would do.
If Prophet Muhammad came,
To spend some time with you.

Whatever you do, don’t offer him a Crantini.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:35 | link | comments

And speaking of empty, frivolous lifestyles…:The New York Times “Frugal Traveler” section has a piece about the seemingly impossible search for tourist bargains in—wait for it—Dubai:  

IN many ways, this brunch was like a million others I’d had before: poached eggs with hollandaise sauce, fresh orange juice, coffee, buttered toast. The sun was glowing somewhere over the comfy outdoor sofas, and no one seemed in a hurry to finish up and get home.Skip to next paragraph

But here at Shakespeare and Company, a cozy cafe in Dubai’s Village Mall, there were a few vital differences from my usual Sunday-morning routine. First of all, it was Friday, the Muslim Sabbath in the United Arab Emirates. Second, on a nearby couch, a mustachioed, white-robed Emirati man and a woman (in black garb that concealed everything but her gorgeous face) were on a date, chatting and flirting far from the eyes of their families — a testament to Dubai’s liberal attitudes. Finally, there was the sand. A dust storm had been kicking all day, blowing grit in from the desert just a few miles away. It coated my hollandaise like finely ground black pepper.

But even in the world of Friday brunches, Shakespeare and Company’s stood out — because it was cheap. My friend Samira Mesbahi, a curly-haired actress from Paris, and I had spent just 113.12 dirhams, or $30.82 at a fixed exchange rate of 3.67 dirhams to the dollar.

The typical Dubai brunch, by contrast, is an affair of ritualistic excess, held in the restaurant of a five-star hotel, with an all-you-can-eat buffet of gravlax, coddled eggs, a foie gras bar, and tuna belly sliced by an eighth-generation sushi chef from Osaka. Such indulgence can easily run 300 dirhams a person, not including the unlimited-Champagne surcharge.

Of course, this shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s ever heard the word Dubai. The emirate is synonymous with over-the-top artifice: the “seven-star” hotel, the skyscrapers rising from what moments before had seemed to be only tracts of sand, the man-made island chains, the indoor ski area. Frankly, I wondered how I’d afford anything at all. My wallet held only $500, or 1,835 dirhams, for the weekend, and while a host of budget options — easyHotels, a low-cost-airline terminal — are set to open in the near future, none had broken ground by mid-March, when I visited. Even the cheapest stopover deals offered by Emirates, the flag carrier, would have eaten up more than half my budget.

But searching the Web, I found a fabulous deal: Villa 08. Owned by a pair of European expatriates, the three-bedroom house is in Arabian Ranches, a gated community on the distant southern edge of Dubai. On one side of the fence are swimming pools, a supermarket, a country club and rows of nearly identical villas in the style of Arabian forts. On the other side, the vast desert and burgeoning dust storm.

Villa 08’s cheapest room was $60 a night, but since there were no other guests, I was given the master suite and the run of the house. Ah, the expat life!...

Ah, yes, the expat life. So pleasant. So deliciously self-indulgent.

 

So clueless.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments

Bores in Hollywood: The Telegraph has a profile of eco-shrew, Laurie David. Laurie’s husband Larry is dizzyingly rich courtesy his share of syndication shekels from The Seinfeld Show, which he co-created. Laurie got tired of her empty, frivolous lifestyle of endless partying and shopoholism and decided to fill her gaping spiritual void with God. She now worships at the Church of Global Climate Change where she has elevated herself to the rank of high priestess. As a result, she and Larry have an inside shot at being voted the “most boring couple in Hollywood”:

…'If Larry were here, he would be taking 45 minutes to tell you about his journey from the airport,' she says. 'Which route he took, what the diversions were, how long he had to wait at the traffic lights. Me, I'd cover that stuff in five seconds.'

But she can talk about global warming until - she tells me she can be a bore on the subject at dinner parties, if she is not careful.

'We like to socialise a lot in LA and guests can get caught with me. But when they ask me about global warming, I can't stop myself. It consumes me. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing at night.'

I am reminded of something Larry wrote about her in the introduction to her book. When he first met her she was 'a materialistic, narcissistic, superficial, bosomy woman from Long Island. She read People magazine, watched hours of mindless television and shopped like there was no tomorrow. Finally, I had met someone as shallow as me.'

Then he sensed something had begun to change. 'She started peppering her conversation with words like "ozone layer", "sustainable forestry" and "toxic runoff". I began to notice new people hanging around the house, people who were not in showbusiness and wore a lot of tweed.'

When I mention this Laurie says: 'Yeah, look what he ended up with. I guess I always wanted to be running a Hollywood studio, but when your husband has the most successful comedy show on television, where do you go from there? How do you compete?'

It is a telling comment…

It’s a good thing these two have a lot of money. Otherwise, no one would hang around them.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:03 | link | comments

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy: There’s an old biblical proverb that goes, “Those who cannot take the measure of their enemy are doomed to be defeated by them.”

Okay, I just made that up. But I sure wish it were in the bible so that some one could quote it back to the Israelis who are apparently labouring under the misconception that their enemy, Fatah, is “moderate.” From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel has considered giving military support to Fatah in its power struggle with Hamas, the Daily Telegraph reported on its Web site Saturday morning.

According to the report, even though Fatah was closely connected to Palestinian terorists with a long record of attacks against Israel, Israel was beginning to embrace the movement as a means of foiling Hamas.

The latest week of Palestinian infighting ended with nearly 50 fatalities, and in the last few days, IAF helicopters and jets have carried out multiple attacks on Hamas targets, especially sites connected with the manufacturing or launching of Kassam rockets.

Internecine violence in Gaza was at its highest since the March signing of the Mecca unity accords, which established a Palestinian Authority unity government.

"We believe that time is working against the moderates," a member of the Israeli cabinet was quoted by the Telegrpah as saying Friday. "Time is of the essence when it comes to the influence of Hamas in the Gaza Strip - to sit and do nothing, not even while we're being attacked but afterward, is something we cannot afford."

"The bottom line of the confrontations is, you can see most of the casualties are from Fatah," a military source said. Options for Israel include air strikes, limited ground operations, or a large-scale operation that could take "months."

Assistance to Fatah-loyal security services in Gaza is not new. Trainers from the UN and Western nations have worked closely with Fatah guards at Gaza's only cargo terminal at the Karni crossing, which came under assault from Hamas forces on Wednesday.

Also this week, 500 policemen who had been training in Egypt were permitted to return through the Rafah pedestrian crossing into Gaza, a procedure requiring the permission of Israeli officials.

But there were fears that Israeli interference to bolster Fatah could backfire. "Practically, what they do strengthens Hamas, because they are attacking Hamas and they are the occupying force," said the Palestinian information minister, Mustafa Barghouti. "This makes Hamas more popular on the Palestinian street," he said.

It’s more than a little alarming when the Palestinian information minister makes more sense than a member of the Israeli cabinet.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:36 | link | comments

Federal cover up: The good news is that Shakira (or Aisha or Zanaib or whomever) won’t have to display her face in public while casting a ballot in a federal election. The bad news is…ditto. From the National Post:

After months of uncertainty surrounding new federal election laws, Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, has clearly stated that new photo-identification requirements mean that Muslim women can keep their faces veiled at federal polls…

But the policy choice itself is not so laudable. From the standpoint of security it may be tolerable; a piece of identification has some value in discouraging electoral fraud even if the embedded photograph is not useful. Under the system we are replacing, voters were required to do little more than present some evidence of an address in the riding, and almost anything would be an improvement on that.

But the religious exemption means that those of us who do not have some Godly excuse for obscuring our faces will essentially be subject to a layer of security that others escape. This impinges on the vital principle of equality before the law, a principle that ought to be near and dear to Conservatives, and it may be untenable as a general policy. Will someone who shows up at a voting station in a ski mask be allowed to insist that he is a Balaclavarian? Perhaps the idle pranksters of the Edible Ballot Society, or some of the goofballs who throw pies at politicians, could be persuaded to try the experiment at our next general election…

Anyone might claim to be a Muslim, at any rate, so a policy of "no checking of photo identification for self-described Muslims" is tantamount to a policy of "no checking of photo identification at all," at least as far as women are concerned. This leaves us little further ahead on security than we were, but it still carries the cost of making it more difficult to vote -- and at a time when electoral bureaucrats and politicians of all parties profess to have their underwear in a knot over turnout figures. In this context, what can be so terrible about the alternative of allowing Muslim women to uncover their faces in private in front of a neutral female poll worker -- especially since the veil is supposedly a cultural accoutrement (often defended as a "personal choice") rather than a religious one anyway?

A Balaclavarian, huh? Isn’t that another name for a member of Hamas?

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

Kindred spirits: Theodore Dalrymple has a fascinating essay on the parallels between the political thought of two of the most influential thinkers of modern times—the Godless Karl Marx and the Allah-worshipping Sayyid Qutb. The similarity in their thinking goes a long way toward explaining why Islamists and Marxists are so compatible, as evidenced by the recent convergence of the two groups at the Marxism conference held in Toronto. (Hilariously, it was billed as “a festival of resistance”, as if the gloomy gusses/Judenhassers in attendance were there to take part in some Mardi Gras-style revelry.) From The New English Review:

Curiously, though, Qutb’s thought has many parallels with Marxism. Where Marx has Historical Inevitability, Qutb has God‘s Law. Marx, you remember, envisages a time when the state will wither away and history will end. In Marx’s vision, political power will have dissolved, and the exploitation of man by man will have ceased, to be replaced by the mere administration of things. (How anybody of minimal intelligence could have believed such a thing beats me.) In Qutb’s vision, all political power will have dissolved, replaced by man’s spontaneous obedience to God’s law. Just as the administration of things in Marx’s utopia will not confer power on the administrators, presumably because everything will be so plentiful that no one will be tempted to appropriate more than the next man, so in Qutb’s utopia no one will have to interpret the law and gain power from doing so. God’s law will be as evident as thing will be abundant in Marx’s classless society.

 

In both Marx and Qutb, the idea is expressed that, under the new dispensation, man will become more human, less animal. Personally, I have always found this kind of thought an appallingly arrogant slur on all the people who have lived before the thinker of it: does humanity really have to wait for Marx and Qutb before it becomes truly human?         

          

Marx understood that the classless society could not come about by merely preaching socialism, as if it were merely an ethical demand or theory. Violence would be necessary. Similarly, Qutb denies that the world will become Islamic merely by preaching the word of God. He refers to Mohammed’s Meccan period, when the Prophet did not resort to arms. This, he says, was merely tactical; it would have been impossible in practice to impose his rule by force. But when he went to , he had no hesitation in fighting his enemies, including those who simply did not accept his message. Medina

 

Just as Marx says that a showdown between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is inevitable, leading to the triumph of the former and the subsequent establishment of a classless society, so Qutb thinks that a showdown between believers and infidels is inevitable, leading to the victory of Islam, which will eliminate all religious conflict. Is this Marx or Qutb speaking:
   [there] is a natural struggle between two systems which cannot
   co-exist for long.

It is Qutb; but it could have been taken from the writings of thousands of followers of Marx, if not from Marx himself, including Mao Tse-Tung.

 

The violent imposition of a socialist and Islamic society is justified in the same way in Marx and Qutb: if people were really free, that is to say suffering from neither false consciousness not jahilliyah (ignorance of divine guidance), they would accept the socialist or Islamic state not merely without demur, but joyously, as being for their own good freely chosen. True freedom in both Marx and Qutb is the recognition of necessity. Everything that prevents people from seeing the truth of their messages is an enemy of real, as against merely apparent, freedom.

 

There is very little that is specifically spiritual in Qutb’s book: it is a political rather than a religious manifesto. And like Marx, he insists that Islam is not so much a body of doctrine or theory or facts, but a method. His notion is uncommonly like the Marxist one of praxis, of a dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Here is what he says about the Islamic society to come:
   Only when such a society comes into being, faces various
   practical problems, and needs a system of law, the Islam initiates
   the constitution of law and injunctions, rules and regulations.

Over and over again he insists, just like Marx, that Islam is not doctrine, but a unified theory and practice.

 

Qutb insists that the triumph of Islam is the only way that what he calls the lordship of man over man will be abolished, just as Marx and Marxists insist that the triumph of Marxism is the only way that the exploitation of man by man will cease. 

 

Marx believed that man once lived in a state of primitive communism which ended with the division of labour. Qutb believes (much less excusably or plausibly) that the first generations after Mohammed lived in a perfectly functioning Islamic society. He doesn’t ask himself, at least not in this book, why it was, then, that three of the four supposedly rightly-guided caliphs were brutally murdered. This is a very odd kind of perfection, to say the least. But, just as the division of labour came and spoiled primitive communism, so did Greek philosophy and other innovations come and spoil the perfect Islamic society. Why perfection should fall apart because of outside influences - could perfection be as imperfect as that? - is a question Qutb does not ask himself.

 

I say perfection is highly overrated, and, as evidenced by the belligerent perfectionists who serve the deities of Marxism and Islamism, the cause of far too much bloodshed. What this world needs is a lot less worshipping at the shrine of perfection and a lot more acceptance of man as a flawed, imperfect and unperfectable creature.

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

Olmert fiddles while Iran weaponizes uranium: As a leader and a military strategist, Ehud Olmert is an utter numbskull. But at political manoeuvrings, he’s an absolute master. More’s the pity because, as Caroline Glick writes, unless he’s given the old heave-ho a.s.a.p, this “master politician” is likely to finesse the Jewish state into a state of oblivion.  From JWR:

Monday, the New York Times reported that in just a few weeks, Iran will be capable of building nuclear bombs. The Times report, which was largely substantiated by the Chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency Muhammad el-Baradei, means that in just a matter of months, Israel is liable to find itself in danger of being wiped off the map.

This grave development was barely noted by the Israeli media. They were busy with other matters.

There was the soccer championship this week. And that sudden rainstorm in Jerusalem that forced the government to cancel the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the capital's liberation was a very big deal. Then, of course there is the Palestinian onslaught against southern Israel which has turned Sderot into a ghost town.

But the primary reason that the Israeli media is ignoring the rapidly gathering mushroom cloud is because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a master politician.

Two weeks after the Winograd Commission's interim report found Olmert responsible for Israel's defeat at the hands of Iran's army in Lebanon last summer, almost no one seems to remember there was a report. Olmert has removed his incompetence from the pubic agenda…

For the love of God and everything decent on this benighted planet of ours, GET RID OF THIS ABOMINABLE STATESMAN NOW!

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:52 | link | comments

A brief history of our time: If a Martian had just crashed his flying saucer in my backyard and I wanted to give him a summary of what’s going on in the world, I would read him this presentation by Melanie Phillips. Blessed with clarity of vision and the ability to express herself plainly, Melanie can cut to the chase as well as—if not better than—anyone writing today:

First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.

By liberalism I mean the commitment to a free society, founded above all on the separation of secular government from religious worship — from which follow the concepts of equal respect for all people, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the rule of law.

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle.

Liberalism is the creed of modernity. The driving force behind the Islamic jihad is the fight against liberalism and modernity. All the iconic conflicts — Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Chechnya, Sudan —are secondary to the fundamental aim of the jihad to prevent liberalism and modernity from destroying Islam.

The founding ideologue of modern Islamism, Syed Qutb, made clear in his writings that at the core of the salafi interpretation of Islam was opposition to the separation of religion and temporal power that resulted in liberalism and democracy. His governing impulse was the fear that the instinct for liberty was so powerful it would spread to and infiltrate the Muslim mind unless it was checked by the most repressive possible form of Islam.

The Big and Little Satans themselves, America and Israel, are proxies for liberalism and modernity. That’s why Islamism says they must be destroyed. Qutb famously went to America and concluded from seeing men and women dancing at a church hop that America was one giant brothel. And much of the bitter hostility to the Jews who started returning to Palestine in the 1920s was because the women wore shorts and were sexually free.

The Islamist goal is to destroy the virus of freedom and modernity before it infects the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam. That is the core of the profound threat it poses to the west, a threat mounted through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover…

I highly recommend the above in its entirety for Earthlings, too.  

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:32 | link | comments

Rosett’s good idea: Now that the banshees have had their way and Paul Wolfowitz has been hounded from his post at the World Bank, Claudia Rosett (a reporter who knows a thing or two about international financial malfeasance, having been the journalist who single-handedly kept the UN Oil-For-Food scandal on the front burner) has a few thoughts about who should succeed him:

So, with Paul Wolfowitz ejected by the ethicists of the World Bank, who should be the next president of this beachhead of multilateral morality?

Kofi Annan’s ever-helpful former speechwriter has suggested Tony Blair, which is a terrible idea because the man’s a socialist — and anyway, America has to stick up for its traditional right to pick the head of the Bank.

Some have suggested Paul Volcker, which is an even worse idea for a number of reasons — but to name just one, because Volcker’s former business partner, James Wolfensohn, served as World Bank President for a decade prior to Wolfowitz, and in that position did plenty to foster a lot of the muck at today’s Bank. It could be —dread words — a conflict of interest.

So who? Well, the best solution would be to simply dismantle the Bank and convert its capacious main building into a hotel, convenient to the White House and other Washington attractions. But since that’s unlikely to happen, here’s another thought. While it’s doubtful that Paul Wolfowitz enjoyed his recent experience, the Bank’s fury to oust him did have the salutary effect of attracting enough attention to the institution itself so that all sorts of longstanding sleaze within the Bank was at least beginning to be exposed.

Why stop now? There’s a whole roster of patriotic Americans who would have a similar effect, and as we have just seen, they don’t have to actually do anything wrong. The Bank will arrange that for them. In that spirit, if they are willing to sacrifice for the good of our country, and indeed, the good of the world, how about we send John Bolton, followed by Don Rumsfeld, followed by …. well, you get the idea.

“Ethicists”—heh.

 

It would be worth raising the idea of Bolton and Rumsfeld at the bank just to get to savour the bellows of outrage from the multilateral moralists.

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

The Luddite and the technologically adept atavists: When it comes to the internet, the jihadists are definitely up to speed. They use the net to chat with each other, view decapitation and other inspirational videos, and share tips for how to build and deploy fertilizer-of-peace and rucksack bombs. Some of the judges who have to weigh the evidence against these alleged terrorists, however, haven’t got a clue about the newfangled technology that, ironically, these young’uns are using to help propel the world back to the Dark Ages. From the Times Online:

A judge overseeing the trial of three alleged Muslim “cyber-terrorists” has been given a basic lesson in the internet – after admitting that he did not know what a “website” was.

Mr Justice Peter Openshaw, who is conducting the trial at Woolwich Crown Court, stunned prosecutors when he said: “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.”

His remark looks destined to join a list of comments by judges that are forever trotted out in support of the legend of judicial ignorance.

Yesterday, the judge paid close attention to a Powerpoint presentation on the world-wide web. The first slide displayed by Professor Tony Sams, a computer expert, showed a yellow cloud labelled “internet” connected by blue lines to two computers.

Professor Sams told the judge: “The internet is a complex communication system. What you need to do is log into the system either through a telephone cable or perhaps through a television cable.”

The professor then explained the terms “dial-up” and “broad-band”, adding: “It is how fast you can communicate.”

He said that each computer on the internet was given a unique IP address, which could be accessed by a domain name such as www.sainsburys.co.uk.

The professor added: “You type in the domain name into your web browser to go there. Your computer has to go to a domain name server. As a user types in a domain name the browser first of all goes to a server and that server tells it what the actual IP address of that domain name is.”

All judges are now provided with computers and many of them use them extensively, including a judicial “intranet” or chat forum.

But one or two remain wedded to the tried and trusted methods of writing up their notes and judgments by hand.

The defendants – Younis Tsouli, 23, Waseem Mughal, 24, and Tariq Al-Daour, 21 – are accused of helping to distribute Islamic propaganda over the internet in support of al-Qaeda…

Here’s my Powerpoint presentation: The first slide shows a yellow cloud labelled “global jihad” connected by blue lines to thousands of different locations around the world.

 

I’d explain: “The global jihad is the result of a simple religious ideology. What believers do is log into the system either locally through a zealous and charismatic imam, through the internet, or perhaps through a satellite hook-up to one or more Arab TV networks.”

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

Reason and reasonability: TIME Magazine offers an excerpt from the latest gaseous exhortation of one Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. It seems Al is what my late Bubbie, a woman who had a colourful way with the English language, would have called “cockcited”—her way of saying all wound up.  He is profoundly unsettled by the detour America has taken of late, and warns of the perils that lie ahead if Americans don’t return to the straight and narrow—a belief in the power of  “reason”:

…It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack…

Interesting. Does that include the significant portion of the American public, including has-been chat show bloviator, Rosie O’Donnell, which still believes that 9/11 was pulled off by George W. Bush and his nefarious rat pack of neo-Cons?

 

I am always amused by the likes of Gore and Christopher Hitchens who insist that the cure for all our ills is “reason.” “Reason,” need we be reminded, is what brought us such societal catastrophes as the “science” of eugenics, and Social Darwinism, and Marxism and, a bit further down the road, Arbeit Macht Frei and Zyklon B gas employed for human population control.

 

Me, I’m not so impressed by “the power of reason” because I know that all too often it is merely a cover for someone’s political agenda and that, generally speaking, it usually boils down to a matter of “those who believe as I do are 'reasonable'; everyone else is not.” As well, far too frequently this “rational” agenda also includes an unhealthy preoccupation with purported Jewish perfidy (and/or its latest offshoot, Zionist perfidy), always an effective instrument for rallying the hoi polloi.

 

No, I think we’d be much further ahead if we appreciated the huge part that irrationality has always played in the human psyche and mass psychology, and were mindful of how easy it is to manipulate people who are ignorant, stupid, fearful and hopelessly naïve.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

Arab hypocrites shed crocodile tears: With the exception of the Hashemites, who have a large Palestinian population, the Arabs won’t allow the Palestinians to become citizens, and have kept them angry, abject and living in squalor lo these many years in order to use them as their proxy pit bulls in their dog fight with the Zionists. But now that Gaza is on its way to collapse, the Arab world is said to be “in despair” about the civil disharmony between the Palestinians.

Yeah, it sucks when your dog has the mange and distemper. From the Jerusalem Post:

Arab governments appeared at a loss Thursday over how to stop the stunning wave of bloodshed in Gaza, which threatens to wreck their already faltering efforts to resume the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The fighting sparked despair among Arabs watching television footage of what looked like open warfare between Palestinians. "May God curse you all," renowned Egyptian columnist Ahmed Ragab wrote, referring to the Palestinian factions.

The chaos is a heavy blow to US Arab allies, who have tried for months to mediate an end to the disputes between the religious Hamas movement and the more secular Fatah faction led by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia has stayed silent about the clashes in Gaza since they began five days ago - a sign of its anger at the two sides and its reluctance to get involved.

The kingdom put its political clout on the line in February when it hosted a summit between Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal aimed at ending a previous bout of fighting between them. The summit in the holy city of Mecca ended with a deal on a Palestinian unity government that Saudi Arabia touted as a major breakthrough - and that now is threatened with collapse.

"It is hard to see Saudis or anyone else expending political capital and sticking their neck out for the Palestinians while gunmen controlled by Hamas and Fatah turn Gaza into a homegrown killing field," Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper said in an editorial.

Some observers said the fighting underlined how the power-sharing deal only papered over Hamas and Fatah's disputes. "The Mecca agreement didn't get into the deep-rooted divisions between Hamas and Fatah," Khalid al-Dakhil, a Saudi writer said.

Those who signed onto the deal at Mecca knew it faced opposition from extremists on both sides, said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor in chief of the London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. Hamas's military wing was not happy with a freeze in attacks on Israel, while Fatah hard-liners wanted "to topple the agreement because they don't want a partner (Hamas) or the national unity government," he said.

Other Arab leaders have been able to do little else but call for an end to the fighting. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who mediated between Abbas and Mashaal during a meeting in Cairo last month, spoke by phone with Abbas on Thursday, telling him, "Palestinian blood is sacred."…

But not sacred enough to actually let them become citizens of Egypt, right, Hosni?

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

Boo, Moo: Today’s song for the lit’ler Hitler reprises an Old Blue Eyes and Harry Connick Jr. favourite:

It had to be Moo.

It had to be Moo.

They voted him in

The ghoul with the grin

Now, what’ll we do?

Like Hitler before

He’s waging a war,

And he’s building bombs

Without any qualms

‘Bout what’ll ensue.

 

Khomeini, it seems

Kick-started his dreams

Of Mahdi’s return

And how Jew’ll burn.

He’ll relish their screams.

Now too many folks

Are under his spell.

And our good intent’s

Pave our road to Hell.

It had to be Moo;

Horrible Moo.

It had to be Moo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:29 | link | comments

It’s fundamentalism: The Ceeb’s Little Mosque on the Prairie was feeling kind of lonely, what with its being the only Muslim-themed comedy on North American TV. But now it looks like it will be joined by another show about the amusing disconnect between wacky submissives and suspicious kaffirs. From, where else, the Ceeb:

CW, the U.S. network formed by the merger of WB and UPN, is adding a comedy about a Pakistani Muslim teen who comes to live with a U.S. family as an exchange student to its fall lineup.

Aliens in America will be the first attempt by a U.S. network to draw laughs out of the Muslim experience in the U.S…

Hmm. A comedy about about a teen from a poor place coming to live with richer folks—sounds familiar.

Maybe they should call it The Fresh Prince of Karachi.

Here’s my pitch for a comedy show about the Muslim experience in the U.S.: Two ostensibly friendly Albanian brothers living in an upscale New Jersey neighbourhood use their father’s pizzeria business as a front to hide their jihadist activities and plan an attack on a local fort.

Laugh, I thought I’d cry.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:58 | link | comments

Lull-aby in Gaza: When Hamas isn’t pointing a finger at the outside world, it’s busy pointing the finger at Fatah. And vice versa, as recounted in this AP report about an Israeli air strike and gunfire erupting at a Palestinian funeral:

…Gunfire erupted at a Hamas funeral procession earlier Thursday, killing two people and wounding 14 others, Palestinian medical officials said. It was unclear who fired the bullets, but the unrest threatened to unravel a lull in the fighting.

Meanwhile, Hamas said one of its men was kidnapped and executed by security forces loyal to the rival Fatah movement.

The funeral was for two Hamas fighters killed during the latest wave of Palestinian factional violence. Witnesses said members of the procession were firing their weapons into the air—a common practice at Palestinian funerals—when unknown assailants began shooting at them.

In local radio broadcasts, Fatah and Hamas officials accused each other of violating the latest cease-fire meant to halt this week's factional fighting in Gaza…

That line about the unrest threatening to “unravel a lull in the fighting”—hilarious! Tell me, Mr. AP hack, how long a “lull” was it? An hour and a half? Twenty minutes?

How short a time frame are we looking at before AP no longer considers it a lull?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:13 | link | comments

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!: Sorry, Chicken Little. That isn’t the sky. It’s a massive chunk of marble, and it’s fallen off a downtown Toronto skyscraper. So stay away from King Street for now, ‘kay?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments (2)

Hamas lays blame: Who’s to blame for the internecine squabbling between rival factions of the Palestinian “unity” government? The Jews. The Arabs. The international community.

In other words, everyone except the thugs themselves.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to life an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday.

The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, came as fighting renewed between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza early Wednesday when Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official in Gaza City, killing five bodyguards inside, Palestinian security officials said.

The attack comes after a brutal day of factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah rivals in Gaza that killed 15 people. Four days of intense Palestinian infighting in Gaza have killed 41 people.

"The international community and Arab countries shoulder part of the responsibility for the current events due to their attitudes toward the national unity government," Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press by telephone in Damascus. "The continued financial and political siege has pushed matters to this simmering tension."

He also blamed Israel and Arab apathy toward the economic sanctions for the fighting.

"The Israelis are behind all these events," Abu Marzouk said. "It's illogical that the Arabs stand idle watching the Palestinian arena while it's on the verge of explosion under the siege. ... This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion."

Abu Marzouk singled out Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, for criticism. "He was one of the main instigator for these events because he is continuing his siege of the Palestinian people and had boycotted Palestinian elections," the Hamas official said...

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:40 | link | comments

Tick…tick…tick…: As the U.S. gets set for face-to-face (but not mano a mano) talks with Iran—a fat waste of everyone’s time—former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold says the lit’ler Hitler may be only a year away from putting the finishing touches on his A-bombs. From YNet News:

…He [Gold] was responding to a statement released Tuesday morning by the International Atomic Energy's Director (IAEA), Mohamed El-Baradei, who said Iran had made massive progress in creating uranium enrichment centrifuges, so much so the world should consider it a 'fact that Iran can enrich uranium independently.

Gold said the information revealed by El-Baradei undercut previous estimates of when Iran could weaponize its nuclear process.

He answered a number of questions submitted by Ynetnews readers, and said Iran was also busy developing ballistic missiles that can reach central and Western Europe.

"If all Iran wanted to do was destroy the State of Israel, it would simply invest in the 1300 kilometer range Shihab - 3 missile, which which it already has," Gold said, adding that Iran was however developing North Korean missiles with far great ranges…

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments

Asleep at the switch: It’s bad enough when anti-Israel venom is spewed on Arab and Muslim-owned TV networks, but now you can find it on a satellite station funded by—wait for it—the American government. From FOX News:

WASHINGTON —  Overseers of the United States government's Arabic-language satellite television network say a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was not screened for anti-Israel content before broadcast because no supervisor spoke Arabic.

"Mistakes were made," Joaquin Blaya, of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, told the House Middle East subcommittee Wednesday, referring to the broadcast last December and others by the network, Al-Hurra, that he said "lacked journalistic or academic merit."

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, a Democrat, said in several instances Nasrallah used the U.S. government's satellite television network as a platform for inciting a crowd to violence against Israel.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia which is considered a terror group by the State Department but a legitimate political movement by many Arab governments, fought a war with Israel in Lebanon last summer.

In another Al-Hurra broadcast, Ackerman said, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh lent support to the Iranian assertion that the World War II Holocaust against European Jews was a myth.

Why are American taxpayer dollars used to spread the hate, lies, and propaganda of these nuts, when our goal was to counter them?" Ackerman asked.

Focusing especially on the Nasrallah speech, Ackerman said the Hezbollah leader spoke for more than 30 minutes live on the U.S. network inciting violence against Israel.

"Doesn't anybody watch the broadcasts?" he asked...

Yes, they do Mr. Ackerman. But they’re sitting in their living rooms listening to this Arabic-language poison—and very likely agreeing with it.

 

Memo to the “overseers”: if you happen to see a friendly rodent chatting with a hijab-clad Palestinian moppet on your TV screen, it is not, I repeat, not, Walt’s little pal, Mickey.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:40 | link | comments

Upcoming pogrom in Pakistan: As we all know, there is absolutely no compulsion in religion. However, about 500 Christians in a town in Pakistan are facing a deadline—a literal one—unless they accede to Taliban demands and “revert” to the one true faith. From FOX News: 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan  —  Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence.

About 500 Pakistani Christians in Charsadda, a town in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, received letters earlier this month telling them to close their churches and convert by Thursday or be the target of "bomb explosions."

Several Christians, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country, have fled town and others are living in fear, community leaders said.

Some complained that police were not taking the threat seriously.

"Police say someone is joking with us by writing these letters," Chaudhry Salim, a Charsadda Christian leader, said during a news conference in Islamabad. "They have deployed only two policemen at our churches ... this is the kind of security we are getting now."

Shahbaz Bhatti, a prominent Christian leader and head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, said the provincial government, which is controlled by a coalition of pro-Taliban religious parties, would bear blame for attacks after the deadline...

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:11 | link | comments

Al Qaeda tries—and fails—to add fuel to the fire: Remember back after 9/11 when it was revealed that the supposed motivation behind the Al Qaeda attacks was the presence of American soldiers defiling holy Saudi soil with their infidel cooties? Well, it seems that Al Qaeda—the big hypocrites—may have been trying to finagle Americans troops to return to the Magic Kingdom, so the jihadists would have a pretext to broaden the holy war. From Arab News:

JEDDAH, 16 May 2007 — The Al-Qaeda network had plans to carry out massive terrorist operations in the scale of 9/11 attacks targeting oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, according to captured militants whose confessions were published in the local media yesterday.

Abdullah Al-Muqrin, one of the militants who were involved in planning the foiled attack on the Abqaiq oil refinery on Feb. 24, 2006, said militants, on the directives of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, carried out the suicide bombing. “Targeting the main oil facilities and areas, such as Ras Tanura and Jubail, was how the idea started,” said Muqrin in confessions aired by Saudi Television late Monday night.

Ras Tanura is the Kingdom’s biggest oil export terminal and Jubail is its biggest industrial complex. Both are located on the Gulf coast. Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest oil producer and exporter, supplying about seven million barrels per day.

“We started planning (the attack) but were told to wait for direct instructions from Osama Bin Laden. I asked how we would receive a signal from him; I thought he was in some mountains. They said it would take from six to seven months to get his approval,” Muqrin said.

Another suspect, identified as Khaled Al-Kurdi, said the Al-Qaeda leadership in Saudi Arabia told them that the attacks on oil facilities would be tantamount to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

“They said it would be a huge operation, equal to the September strike ... and its impact would be on a global level,” Kurdi said in his statement. “They said attacks would affect oil prices,” he added.

Saudi security sources said the two men were involved in providing logistic help to the attackers who tried to storm the Abqaiq oil facility, in which two suicide bombers were killed. Saudi Arabia arrested about 170 suspects after the attacks.

The attack on oil installations was planned to lure US forces into the Kingdom. “It was all about luring in America to intervene, irrespective of the expected high loss of human life or economic damage,” Muqrin said…

Something tells me that, despite the arrests, Al Qaeda is not going to drop this plan. As was demonstrated on 9/11—lest we forget the second attack on the World Trade Center—the jihadists’ motto might well be “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:50 | link | comments

Farfour's folly: Dry Bones has an amusing take on what it takes for the American media to finally sit up and take notice of the jihadist indoctrination of youngsters being broadcast on Palestinian TV:

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

Ensler’s equivalent vagina monologues: Eve Ensler wrote an extraordinarily popular play called The Vagina Monologues which consisted of various women speaking in public about their private parts. But according to this article in the Weekly Standard, this champion of the vagina, being a standard issue lefty feminist, is much given to moral relativism, even when it comes to her favourite topic:

Eve Ensler takes this line of reasoning to equally ludicrous lengths. In 2003 she gave a lecture at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University in which, like Pollitt, she claimed that women everywhere are oppressed and subordinate:

"I think that the oppression of women is universal. I think we are bonded in every single place of the world. I think the conditions are exactly the same [her emphasis]. I think the nature of the oppression--whether it's acid burning in one country, or female genital mutilation in another, or gang rapes in the parking lots in high schools of the suburbs--it's the same idea. . . . The systematic global oppression of women is completely across the globe."

Though Ensler's perspective is warped, her courage and desire to help are commendable. She went to Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban and smuggled out now-famous footage of a terrified woman in a burqa being executed at close range by a man with an AK-47. Ensler has firsthand knowledge of the unique horrors of Islamic gender fascism. But her "feminist theory" obliterates distinctions between what goes on in Afghanistan and what goes on in Beverly Hills:

"I went from Beverly Hills where women were getting vaginal laser rejuvenation surgery--paying four thousand dollars to get their labias trimmed to make them symmetrical because they didn't like the imbalance. And I flew to Kenya where [women were working to stop] the practice of female genital mutilation. And I said to myself, "What is wrong with this picture?""

A better question is: What is wrong with Eve Ensler? These two surgical phenomena are completely different in both scale and purpose. The number of American women who undergo "vaginal labial rejuvenation" is minuscule: There were 793 such procedures in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. By contrast, a World Health Organization 2000 fact sheet reports: "Today, the number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM."

The women who elect laser surgery, moreover, are voluntarily seeking relief from physical irregularities that cause them embarrassment or inhibit their sexual enjoyment. The practitioners of genital mutilation, in countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, believe that removing sensitive parts of the anatomy is the best way to control young women's sexual urges and assure chastity. Genital cutting causes great pain and suffering and often permanently impairs a female's capacity for sexual pleasure. Thus, the intentions of the handful of American adults who choose labial surgery for themselves are exactly the opposite of those of the African parents and elders who insist on cutting the genitals of millions of girls.

Given her capacity for conceptual confusion, it is perhaps not surprising that Ensler cites "gang rape in a suburban high school parking lot" to show how women in America are menaced. Yes, that is an atrocity. But it happens rarely, and America's allegedly "misogynist" culture reacts to it with revulsion and severe punishments.

On my wish list of things that will probably never be written: a review of The Vagina Monologues by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:44 | link | comments

S.O.S.: A new report says we have a scant five years to save our planet.

From the lit’ler Hitler’s nuclear annihilation program?

 

Don’t be such an Islamophobic alarmist. From the looming  “climate change catastrophe,” of course.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:24 | link | comments

NIMBY-tude or anti-dhimmitude?: Parents of children who attend two New York schools which the city wants to share space with a new Arabic culture public school public school aren’t too keen about the idea. From the New York Sun:

Parents of children who attend two Boerum Hill schools, which the city has proposed share space with a new Arabic culture public school, told officials last night that they don't trust the Department of Education to keep its promises to improve the school building to accommodate the extra students.

The city already abandoned initial plans to put the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for a Lebanese philosopher, at P.S. 282, a Park Slope elementary school, after parents there protested that their building is already overcrowded.

Officials heard similar complaints from parents at the new location in Boerum Hill, where the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and a middle school, the Math and Science Exploratory School, share a campus.

The head of the education department's new schools office, Garth Harries, promised that the Arabic school would be moved out after two years, that the entire campus would receive added security, and that "the highest levels" at City Hall would make sure the promised building construction is completed.

If parents had philosophical misgivings about the new school's Arab-culture curriculum, few criticized it publicly for its core mission at last night's emergency meeting.

A few did oppose it on philosophical grounds.

The Arabic school's principal, Debbie Almontaser, rose to assure the crowd that her public school would teach Arabic as well as prepare students for college by teaching math, reading, science, and art.

The mayor's top education aide, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, said he found it "unfortunate that this school is being singled out," noting that there are dozens of other specialized language schools in the city.

Sounds to me like these parents are too p.c. to voice their “philosophical misgivings” and are using the excuse of insufficient accommodations to help scuttle the proposal. If I were one of these parents I’d have plenty of misgivings but only one key question: why is the city of New York using public dollars to finance an Arabic culture school?

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

 A novel approach: Mohsin Hamid, a London-based novelist and author of acclaimed (at least in certain quarters) novel, The Reluctant Fundamendalist, offers a Ceeb interviewer his take on the current scene:

…Q: How do you feel when you are called on to talk about the Muslim world?

A: [I have tried to] separate religion from politics, in a way. Changez’s experience in America is not primarily a racially defined one. He hasn’t really encountered heavy racism, maybe a little here and there. Nor is it a religious one. He’s not particularly religious, actually. It’s a very personal and political story, and [I tried to] separate the religious aspect … this is not about Islam; it’s not about Christianity, either. It’s about very real political differences. We tend to confuse the idea of religion with people’s very real and pragmatic struggles, and so I try to move away, really, from the conversation about religion.

If we want to talk about religion, we should talk about, how does one live one’s life in a just way, which is what religion is about. How does one make sense of the fact that one will die one day? How does one negotiate the relationship with God, and feel closer to the divine? Those are religious questions. But those are the things we are never talking about when we talk about Islam.

 

Q: Do you consider yourself a political novelist?

A: Some artists say the art and the political must not mix. That strikes me as a very peculiar concept, and it often feels very rooted in a Western, middle-class world, where perhaps politics is not that important. In much of the world, politics is life and death. How you live a life without politics is like saying, “How do you live without eating?” If politics means your house will be bombed by some other country and your parents will be dead, to say that your art won’t reflect that seems absurd. So for me, it’s impossible to write without thinking politically, even in the most quietly, non-political sort of settings.

Q: What do you hope readers will get out of this novel?

A: Well, if you get nothing else, I think the idea one should get is that things are complicated, and we have been living in a world where a belligerent simplicity is deployed. It’s us versus them. There’s an axis of evil. It’s Islam versus Christianity or the West. All of these things are absurd. We’re not talking about conflict between peoples or conflict between religions. We’re talking about simple politics and billions of people with differences of perspective running around inside it. What the novel tries to do is hold up a mirror to the reader and say, “Look, you’re complicated. The way you are reading this is complicated. And the characters are complicated. That is the world.”

It appears that Mohsin is such a reluctant fundamentalist that he’s reluctant to acknowledge that it’s Islam that divides the world into us versus them, believers versus non-believers, Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb. But his phrase “belligerent simplicity” is just about the perfect way to describe the jihad and the mindset of the jihadists. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:59 | link | comments

Lewis pontificates: Esteemed scholar Bernard Lewis was one of the pundits who was instrumental in persuading the Bush administration to undertake its “light unto the Muslim nations” project in Iraq. The jury’s still deliberating on how that one’s going to turn out, but as the great man notes in a piece in OpinionJournal, things ain’t exactly coming up roses:

…From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

 

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

 

Or, as the Great Man (Lewis, not Osama) said in accounting for why, after having been turned back twice before by infidels—first by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 and second at the gates of Vienna in 1683—the Islamic supremacists have proven so successful during this, their third stab at world conquest: “Third time lucky?”

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

And speaking of the nakba…: Sight and Sound has a round-up of what’s on tap in various international publications. Here, for example, is what you can find in the current issue of Egypt’s Al Ahram Weekly (the bolds are Sight and Sounds’, not mine):

In an interview with Amira Howeidy, literary scholar (and nephew of Edward Said) Saree Makdisi discusses the difference between Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives: "Such Israeli narratives of 1948 - which insist that there was always a Jewish land, that the Arabs were a minority, and Palestinians were killed by accident, not because of systematic Zionist massacres - contrasts sharply with the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba, which Makdisi describes as 'raw'. It is personal, spontaneous and in the case of Ghassan Kanafani, for example, 'intimate'. And this might be the difference, he explained, between 'myth' - propagated by Zionist and Israeli narrative, and 'reality' - expressed in the Palestinian narrative."

 

What 'systematic Zionist massacres'? The only Zionist massacres that occurred are the ones fabricated in the fevered imaginations of Jew-hating Arabs. Time to get a grip, Ghassan. It’s a sovereign Jewish state—has been for almost 60 years. That’s ‘reality’.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Mean Jews: Glutton for punishment that I am, I couldn’t help but check out Islam Online to see if it had a story about Jerusalem on the occasion of 40 years of reunification. Indeed it did. It’s all about how the Jews, quel surprise, aren’t doing nearly enough to bend over backwards and do cartwheels for Arabs, most notably, Israel's refusal to remove a fence that makes it harder for Palestinian terrorists to get to Jews so they can blow them up.

Those Jews—always thinking of themselves and never considering the needs of shaheeds.

 

Also on I.O.: a story about how the infighting between Fatah and Hamas is a “second Palestinian nakba.” (Seems the Palestinians are gluttons for punishment, too.)

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

40 years of a reunified Jerusalem: Forty years ago today the city of Jerusalem was reunified, and the Jews finally had access to the holiest site in their religion, the Western Wall of their ancient temple. That access had been denied them while that part of the city remained under Jordanian control after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. In those few years, the Arabs displayed their contempt for the historical Jewish presence by destroying every synagogue in the Jewish quarter, allowing ordure to accumulate and toppling Jewish gravestones to use them to pave a road to a latrine. But despite their efforts to expunge, revile and defecate on the Jewish presence, the Jews prevailed and, 40 years on, Jerusalem is the incredible city it is today—a city which welcomes pilgrims from around the world; a city where members of the three monotheisms have access to their holy sites.

Today, on Yom Yerushalayim, I can’t help but recall a question I asked myself during my recent visit to Jerusalem: What kind of city would Jerusalem be if Israel hadn’t reunified it in 1967? And then I shuddered, because I didn’t even want to imagine the ignominy that would have been wrought on the dhimmi portions of the city that the Arabs, employing a name that sounds like a grunt, call Al-Quds.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments

A letter to Sarko: Islam Online posts an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy written by “Nazia Chothia, a French Muslim of Indian origin…(who) studied political science at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris, at which she is currently studying for a postgraduate degree in comparative politics.” Nazia has much food for thought for the president-elect to chew on, including some suggestions about how to tackle the Israel-Palestinian contretemps:

...Mr. President, you should give your attention to the horrible situation in the Middle East and the awful consequences it has on the local population.

 

Let's first stress that the conflict between Israel and Palestine should stop now, for the sake of both populations who have already suffered too much.

 

The events that have been taking place for almost 60 years now in Israel are simply unacceptable. The United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and the whole world have been unable to help these countries solve the conflict and put an end to these terrible fights so far.

As the new president of France, you have a duty to take a more important part in the resolution of the conflict and find a fair and honest solution.

 

France has always had a great impact on diplomacy and international relations. French diplomacy should get involved again in this area and take more responsibilities as one of the most important European countries.

 

Palestinian people are forbidden the basic right to live and work properly in their own land. Every day Israeli soldiers shoot at Palestinian civilians without consideration of age or gender. One often repeated claim is that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism. Today, the fight against terrorism is used to excuse all kinds of aggression of the Israeli army.

 

But one should be honest and fair: Children throwing stones at soldiers holding sophisticated arms are not terrorists at all!

 

Israel can't prevent more than three million people from having a country, citizenship, and rights. This has happened for too long now and must change.

 

Palestine must now become an independent state, with its own capital (East Jerusalem for example) and its own government and leadership. All Israeli settlers and army must leave the Palestinian territories. Palestine must now get the right to exist and develop next to the Israeli state.

France and Europe should now clearly state that Israel has overridden the Palestinian rights for too long.

 

France and Europe should now recognize that the situation in the Middle East is a shame and a denial of basic human rights.

 

France should now get involved and affirm its role as the country of human rights.

 

Lastly, France should now influence the decisions of the United Nations and make sure that they are applied properly.

 

Well, Nazia, I hope you won't mind if I put in my 2 shekels' worth. It seems to me that “France and Europe” have been far too involved for far too long, and have lavished unrequited love and untold bazillions in jizya on the Palestinian people. And what has it gotten them? Nothing but grumbling about how it's not nearly enough. At the same time, the Palestinian people have taken the opporunity afforded by democratic elections to vote in a bunch of Islamists who remain committed to what Farfour Mouse would call Allah's promise to Mo--a world in which the House of Islam rules uber alles. The "unity" government that was supposed to persuade the infidels to restart the flow of Euros hasn't yet had the desired effect, and now the disharmonious factions have taken to taking literal pot-shots at each other, with mounting fatalities on both sides. Given the strife between the two rival factions of thugs, Nazia might want to ask herself how people who are riven by such irreconcilable differences and who can't even make a go of Gaza could ever possibly operate a viable Palestine that took in all of Israel. But I digress…

 

Nazia concludes her impassioned missive with the following words:

 

France can be a "friendly country" for Muslims all over the world.

 

France can also be a good host for its Muslim community. It now has to prove it.

 

Au contraire, Nazia. France has already proven to be “a good host”—the best host. The kind of host who says, “C’mon in and make yourself at home,” and who then proceeds to give his “guests” the living room, dining room and the entire attic. It is the ungrateful guests who decided to turn these chambres into "no go" zones.

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

Shabazz’s agenda: If you’re in the neighbourhood today, you might want to drop by Ryerson University (my alma mater) to hear the inspiring words of a renowned racist and anti-Semite. From Macleans:

An American black leader accused of promoting hatred is scheduled to speak at Ryerson University Tuesday. Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz is the leader of the New Black Panther Party, which is listed as a hate group by at least one American human rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Centre. A Jewish advocacy group is calling for the event to be cancelled.

Shabazz will speak at an event organized by a student group called the United Black Students at Ryerson (UBSR). The UBSR is a club recognized by Ryerson’s students’ union.

He has also been invited by the group Black Youth Taking Action to be the keynote speaker at a rally at Queen’s Park entitled, “Education not Incarceration.” The rally is being organized to push a “Black youth agenda” in advance of the provincial election in Ontario. The group wants to see the abolishment of the Safe Schools Act, among other demands.

B’nai Brith Canada has called on the provincial and federal governments to deny Shabazz a platform for “spewing his dangerous hatred here in Canada.” They have also urged Ryerson University to step in and cancel the event. They also want the groups organizing the event to withdraw their invitation.

At a 1998 Harlem rally, Shabazz was quoted as saying, “The only solution any time there is a funeral in the black community, is a funeral in the police community.” Although he has denied this and other controversial comments that have been attributed to him, many have accused the activist of anti-Semitism, extremism, and inciting violence.

“The New Black Panther Party has a well known history of employing dangerous, violent tactics and poisonous hate-filled rhetoric to press its message,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith executive vice-president. “Citizens and politicians alike must band together to ensure the integrity of our community, free from a radicalized agenda of violence and hatred.”

Shabazz is also known to be aligned with the Nation of Islam. “The Jews have taken the entire state of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza, all of that is stolen territory," Mr. Shabazz said on a U.S. TV news program last year. "And they are the reason that someone else would blow themselves up. It is not the Palestinians' fault. It is the fault of the Zionists."

However, Black Youth Taking Action said that B’nai Brith had inaccurately described the purpose of Shabazz’s visit. "With the myriad of issues facing the Black community,” said president Nkem Anizor, “it would be a waste of our time and resources to invite a guest speaker for the purpose of slandering Jewish people, police or any other group."

"The idea that Black people must seek approval from the Jewish or any other community when addressing our own issues reflects just how deep the roots of White Supremacy and systemic racism run in Canada." Anizor also said.

Despite the criticism, Ryerson University does not have plans to block the event. “The Ryerson administration attempts to maintain a forum for free thought and free expression,” said Janet Mowat, manager of public affairs...

 

Nice recovery there, Nkem. You’ve learned that in our mulicultist Trudeaupia, the best way to turn aside criticism that a racist Black leader is a racist is to accuse those leveling the charge of being racists.

 

I’m all for free thought and free expression, but it seems on most campuses these days there is a tolerance for the sorts of views expressed by Shabazz, and a marked distaste for and disinclination to tolerate the free expression of those who support Israel and refuse to march in lockstep with prevailing opinion.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:44 | link | comments (2)

Alive and kickin’: Here’s a guy who, unlike some timorous Disney executives, isn’t afraid to sue Palestinian media. From the Beeb:

The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has said he will sue a Palestinian news agency for making false claims about his health.

The news report on Monday quoted an unnamed European source, saying that Col Gaddafi was in a coma in a hospital in the coastal town of Benghazi.

Speaking to journalists in Tripoli, he appeared well and blamed members of the Arab world for the error.

The news agency has apologised for the mistake, blaming an unreliable source.

The Libyan leader looked well and far from being in a coma as he stepped out for cameras outside a banqueting hall in a hotel where he hosted the Ghanaian President, John Kufuor.

The media was clearly invited to dispel earlier reports alleging that Col Gaddafi was in a coma after suffering from a blood clot in his brain.

The Libyan leader was visibly annoyed with the false claims as he pointed the finger at the Arab world and demanded legal justice.

"The Arabs and those who control them are behind this. But we are going to sue this news agency. From now on, no-one will lie and get away with it. They should face justice.

"We should fire at those who fire at us and we should consider ourselves the enemy of those who say they are our enemy," he said…

Oh, Moo Moo—you’re still the dulcet-toned devil you’ve always been—a regular Gadaffi Duck. Speaking of which, maybe Farfur could use a sidekick…

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

Sharia law in action: Here’s a cautionary tale for you. If you’re Canadian citizens of Palestinian origin with young’uns, don’t move the mishpacha to the Magic Kingdom (you know which one I mean). From the Globe and Mail:

WASHINGTON — For the past four months, home for Mohamed Kohail has been a filthy prison cell in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he says he has been pushed, slapped and abused, and forced into signing a confession for a murder he did not commit.

In a country where capital punishment by beheading is still the law of the land, the 22-year-old Canadian citizen says he fears the worst from the Saudi judicial system, which has accused him of killing a Syrian youth in a vicious schoolyard brawl. His 16-year-old brother also is being held in relation to the death.

“It's going to be death for now,” Mr. Kohail told The Globe and Mail Monday in an extraordinary interview on a friend's cellphone from inside the prison. “That is what the investigators asked from the court.”

“I'm afraid of everything,” he continued in accented English, saying he never wanted to return to Saudi Arabia after spending five years in Canada. “I really want to go back to Canada now. I like everything in Canada.”

Until last year, Mr. Kohail was pursuing English-language courses at Montreal's Concordia University, living with his family in the West Island suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux.

But his older sister became ill and the family decided to return to Saudi Arabia, where they had all been born.

Because the Kohails are Palestinian, they never were given Saudi citizenship and were legally stateless until they were granted Canadian citizenship in 2005. Yet their Canadian status has not stopped Saudi authorities from meting out their particular form of justice to the two brothers.

On their return to Jeddah last year, Sultan, who's 16, began studying at Edugates International School, a school frequented by non-Saudi Arabs in a posh suburb of Jeddah. It's there on Jan. 13 that both brothers ran into trouble.

According to accounts from the family and others, Sultan was accused of insulting a Syrian girl named Raneem. Sultan was told that friends and relatives of the girl were coming to school to kidnap him and teach him a lesson. So he called Mr. Kohail, who came to the school to defend his little brother along with a friend.

There are differing versions of what happened next.

According to an account in the Arabic newspaper Okaz, a brawl ensued at the school involving 14 young people, with Palestinians facing off against Syrians. “As the physical attack intensified, one of the Palestinians grabbed a Syrian boy named Monther, punched him violently and hit his head against the school yard fence. Monther fell on the ground and died instantly.” The dead youth has since been identified as Munzer Haraki.

Mr. Kohail said, “I didn't touch anyone. There were 13 people who were beating me up. … They used knives and sticks and bricks.” He said he suffered injuries to his shoulder, ribs and eyes, and broke his front teeth.

Yet, as he was being treated at hospital, Mr. Kohail said, he was arrested by police and transferred to Salamah police station.

He said the police slapped him, pushed him and spat on him until he agreed to confess to punching the Syrian boy. “There was a policeman who told me, you have to sign, because if you sign the papers, you will get out” of prison.

Mr. Kohail said the policeman insisted that Mr. Kohail was risking very little in admitting to punching the Syrian youth, because he was still alive. But as soon as Mr. Kohail signed the confession, he was told that the boy had died and he was going to be charged with murder.

Contacted in Saudi Arabia, the boys' father, Ali Kohail said Sultan had also been coerced into confessing. “They were both forced to sign.”

The father said that the health of both of his sons has deteriorated in prison and that Sultan had suffered a broken leg when he was thrown down some stairs by his interrogators.

He said he was convinced “100 per cent” that his sons had not killed anybody.

The Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa has confirmed “the arrest of two Canadian citizens in Saudi Arabia” and said that consular officials are following the case and have been granted “several consular visits” to the brothers. A spokesman refused to comment further, citing privacy laws…

Here’s the letter I sent the Globe:

 

Mohamed Kohail and his brother could be living in freedom as citizens of Canada. Instead, their parents chose to leave Canada and move to Saudi Arabia where they had no rights, their Canadian citizenship was not recognized, and they were compelled to live under an extremely rigid version of Islamic law.

 

While one can’t help but feel sorry for these two brothers who ran afoul of the Saudi legal system and its Draconian penalties, one cannot help but think that things might have turned out dramatically differently for them had their parents thought through the ramifications of choosing Saudi Arabia over Canada.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Disney’s uncharacteristic silence: The Mouse House, a.k.a the Disney corp., is known to be quite litigious when others partake in what Disney sees as copyright infringement; in one instance, it was about to sue a stonemason in the U.K. for putting Winnie the Pooh on the headstone of a stillborn baby until it decided to drop the complaint after negative publicity. Yet Farfour the Jihad Mickey continues to make a mockery of Disney’s most famous character on Hamas TV with nary a word of any planned lawsuit. Heck, Disney hasn’t even publicly criticised the misuse. Could it be that the company that's so quick to protect its turf doesn’t want to tangle with folks who have a tendency to take out their anger on others by blowing them up?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:53 | link | comments

Sarkozy hurls a giant loogie at Israel: Israel and her supporters who had thought that the election of Nicolas Sarkozy had the potential to mark a new era in France’s foreign policy had a rude awakening today. The Jerusalem Post reports that the President-elect has announced that his candidate for Foreign Minister is a Socialist who’s hot for the Palestinians. That’s a huge slap in the face and an immense disappointment for those—like moi—who had seen Sarkozy’s election as a positive sign.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:39 | link | comments

Islam’s place: For a gift of a mere $100 dollars or more, donors to Mo Elmasry’s Canadian Islamic Congress can select one of five books, including Jimminy Carter’s anti-Israel screed, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (The book is described thus: “Most U.S. writers dealing with Middle East issues have skirted around any overt criticism of Israel's Apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, fearing accusations of "anti-Semitism" by the powerful American pro-Israeli lobby. Carter's best-selling book, however, is a rare exception…")

Also included at no additional charge, a map showing Islam’s exact position on the planet, at least according to Mo and other CIC supporters:

 

BONUS (given with any book) MECCA AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD

This new map was designed especially for the Canadian Islamic Congress by University of Waterloo (Canada) professor, Dr. Len Guelke.

"A conventional map contains distortions because the world is round and a map is flat," explains Prof. Guelke. "Such maps can give a very inaccurate idea of the direction and distance to Mecca from other places in the world. On this new world map, the direction of Mecca and the shortest distance is easily measured as a straight line ... It is amazing that Mecca is approximately the centre of the land mass of the world." (Bold added.)…

 

In your dreams, Mo.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:06 | link | comments (1)

Bakht to the future: The Taliban have named a successor to now-dead-as-a-doornail Mullah Dadullah. And guess what? He’s none other than the dead mullah’s younger brother, who, unlike his late older sib, seems to be in possession of all his limbs. (Dadullah was missing a leg, a deficiency incurred during jihadist combat.) From the Ceeb:

The Taliban in Afghanistan says the younger brother of a top military commander killed over the weekend will take over as chief military strategist for the movement.

The Taliban named Mullah Bakht to succeed Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged fighter who was killed on Saturday in Helmand province in a joint operation involving British and Afghan troops and U.S. Special Forces.

Dadullah's damaged body was put on display in Kandahar on Sunday, covered by a pink sheet.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement that Dadullah's death means "the insurgency has received a serious blow," but the Taliban moved quickly to name a replacement. His brother, however, is said to have less combat experience.

ISAF said in the statement that Dadullah, whose full name was Dadullah Akhund, was a notorious figure.

"He has been responsible for the deaths of many Afghans through many means to include the suicide bombers he has trained in his sanctuary and subsequently deployed into Afghanistan," it said.

A Canadian Forces official, meanwhile, said Dadullah's death was "great news."

Maj. Steve Graham, commander of Reconnaissance Squadron with the Royal Canadian Dragoons, said the death is a relief for the coalition but may not make any difference over time.

Graham, in charge of a reconnaissance operation near the border town of Spin Boldak in southeast Afghanistan, added the news travelled quickly on the weekend.

"They texted it straight to my cellphone," Graham said.
 
According to the CBC's Derek Stoffel, the death has raised tensions in southern Afghanistan…

Of course it has. You don’t expect the Taliban to be pleased about the kaffirs picking off one of their leaders, do you Derek?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:45 | link | comments

Poem for a dead mullah: Dadullah is gone, but the siren call of holy war lingers on (and on, and on, and on…):

An Islamist named Mullah Dadullah

Didn’t raise a protective umbrullah.

So now he’s a corpse,

But the jihad still warps

Taliban and Hamas and Hizbullah.

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

Three on Oz: Amos Oz, one of the founders of EU-funded Capitulation Now (alternate names: Peace? How? and Peace? Kapow!), had a commentary in the Saturday Globe and Mail in which he insisted that, since Israel created the problem of Palestinian refugees, Israel should “apologize” post haste and figure out a way to “solve” the problem. (Sort of like a “you break it, you take it” approach.) Here are the two letters about Oz’s piece that appear in today’s paper under the heading “Peace in Palestine” (a nation which has yet to be officially declared, but which Canada’s national rag has apparently already accorded the status of statehood): 

1.    By MICHAEL DIAMOND 

Monday, May 14, 2007 – Page A16

Toronto -- Amoz Oz clearly longs for peace, and in this, he is not alone. However, his efforts to achieve peace are rooted in fundamental flaws in thinking. He suggests that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian problem is the refugees and that peace will not be achieved without resolution of that problem.

However, Mr. Oz overlooks the fundamental fact, so evident from what we hear regularly from Israel's neighbours -- the belief that Israel has no right to exist. The attempt to ensure the return of the refugees -- who, under the auspices of the United Nations, have swelled in numbers from approximately 600,000 to well over 2 million in the last 50 years -- is simply an attempt to eliminate Israel demographically.

There is a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem that would be in the interests of peace. Like every other refugee group in history, the solution is settlement in a host country so as to ensure that those refugees become citizens. That is what the Jews did when they were expelled from Arab lands in 1948 and have done through history when expelled from various other lands. That is what has taken place under the auspices of the United Nations in countless other refugee situations.

2.      By HUGH G.W. SWANDEL 

Monday, May 14, 2007 – Page A16

Centreville, N.S. -- Reading the Amos Oz article, No Right Of Return, But Israel Must Offer A Solution, (Comment, May 12), I kept thinking of the school bully who wants to make peace with his schoolmates but at the same time wants to hold on to the treasures he's taken from them. Mr. Oz, founder of Peace Now, has some way to go in his thinking about peace in Palestine. He is obviously a concerned and sincere person but he is trapped in a Zionist mindset.

There will never be peace in Palestine until Zionism acknowledges its responsibility for the great wrong it has done to the Palestinians and asks to share the land with them as fellow human beings. The Palestinians must be brought back to their homes and villages. Then there will be a state that will be an example to the world. We might call it a Judaic state, a place where the justice and truth the ancient prophets sang of, rule in the hearts and minds of the people.

And here’s a letter by yours truly, which was not published:

 

Amos Oz is right when he says the issue of Palestinian refugees must be settled for “moral reasons,” but he is incorrect in assigning Israel sole responsibility for resolving it. If, almost six decades after Israel’s independence, there are refugees languishing in appalling conditions in camps operated under the auspices of the United Nations, it is because, with the single exception of Jordan, a nation with a large Palestinian population, Arab nations have denied them citizenship. In Lebanon, for example, there are at least 400,000 “refugees”--refugees from Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, their children and their children’s children. That Lebanon and other Arab nations—of which there are more than 20 in the world—refuse to embrace three generations of their brothers and sisters, and prefer they remain abject, rootless and deprived of basic rights has nothing to do with Israel’s “morality”; that morality was clearly demonstrated when Israel welcomed and offered citizenship to the almost equal number of Jewish refugees who were expelled from Arab lands.

 

In the event, isn’t there something absurd about talking about “refugees” from a war that occurred back before the middle of 20^th Century? At some point—say, maybe, after ten or twenty years—shouldn’t a statute of limitations on refugee status kick in?

 

Mr. Oz seems to think that the Palestinians can be assuaged with an apology (“sorry about that ‘catastrophe’”) and that the onus is on Israel to come up with a solution. There is one immense fly in that ointment. As far as the Palestinians and the Arab League are concerned, there is only one solution: Israel must be forced to absorb four million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were not even around in 1948. Obviously, it would be impossible for Israel to do so and retain its Jewish character. In other worlds, the Arabs seek to do through political means what, so far, they have been unable to achieve militarily or through terrorism: an end to Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

 

If he wants to talk about “morality”—or rather, the lack thereof—I suggest that that’s the most appropriate place to start.

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

Fabricated weapon: As many—but not nearly enough of us—know, a veil is more than a veil. It is a symbol of a Muslim woman’s submission to the strict dictates of Islam, a faith which accords her second-class status. As Youssef Ibrahim points out in the New York Sun, it is thus a bitter irony that a woman from a Muslim country would take a stand for feminism and bravely decide to shed the veil, which a supposed feminist, the most powerful woman politician in America, would decide to put one on. The message sent by the bare-headed woman and the covered woman is all too clear: One woman is prepared to submit to Islamists; the other one is not:

The new minister of education for Kuwait is a brave woman now famous across the Islamic world for a landmark moment: The day she walked up to the podium of Parliament, despite the catcalls from Islamist lawmakers, and took her oath of office without wearing a veil to cover her hair or face.

Her April 2 act of defiance placed Dr. Nouriya Al-Subeeh on the front line of the growing ranks of Muslim women leaders who are denouncing the veil as a symbol of female oppression. But on the following day, April 3, America's Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the very first woman to hold that position, meekly donned a veil during a visit to a popular market in downtown Damascus, sending the exact opposite message to tens of millions of Arab women.

After her precedent-setting episode, Dr. Subeeh explained her stand in an interview with the Egyptian weekly Rose El Yousuf: "A woman who wears the veil out of belief, which must be respected — just as the belief of a woman who does not want to wear a veil must be respected. The essence of democracy," she said, "is to respect and accept the opinions of others."

Ms. Pelosi made a similar choice — but in the opposite direction. Anxious to curry favor with the male rulers of the Middle East, she failed to comprehend that as an American woman, a symbol of Western democracy and secularism as well as a guardian of women's rights, her agenda should have rested elsewhere.

I have no doubt Ms. Pelosi, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, is a progressive feminist. But her decision to visit Damascus has proved counterproductive on many levels. Aside from giving the appearance of legitimacy to a rogue regime, photos of the unveiled and defiant Dr. Subeeh juxtaposed with a visibly diffident, veiled Ms. Pelosi are circling the Internet, an image that is taking a toll at a time when jihadist Islamists rely on the imposition of the veil as a weapon in their cultural war to the same degree as they utilize suicide bombers in their terrorist campaigns…

And sometimes the jihadists are able to marry the two weapons, as when, on occasion, a veiled woman dons a semtex vest and becomes a human bomb (even though for her, lowly woman that she is, there is no equivalent pay-off of panting virgins up in Paradise).

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

Dhimmified Tory: Unlike Canadian Tory leader, Stephen Harper, who “gets it” about the threat of global jihad, U.K. Tory leader, David Cameron is a clueless, dhimmified invertebrate who is doing his level best to placate the angry crocodile on his scepter’d isle. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — Spending a weekend with a British Muslim family with a Pakistani background has changed many of the misconceptions the UK's Tory leader had developed from "hearing" and "reading" about the sizable Muslim minority.

"No Muslim I've ever met is offended by Christmas, or supports its replacement with 'Winterval'," Conservative Party leader David Cameron wrote in The Guardian on Sunday, May 13.

The Tory leader spent the weekend with Abdullah Rehman, a grocery store owner, his wife Shahida and their three children in Birmingham, the city known as a center for religious and ethnic minorities.

As part of his learning experience he discovered that the family's three children were attending a Jewish school.

"My obvious question to Abdullah – why do you, a practicing Muslim, send your kids to a Jewish school? – does not get just the obvious answer: good discipline and good results," he recalled.

"On top of that, the very fact that the school has a faith and a strong ethos is seen, at least by Abdullah and his family, as a positive advantage."

Cameron, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, accompanied the Muslim family everywhere they went - shopping, going down the local pub or seeing the kids off to school.

He said the two-day experience debunked the myth that British Muslims are not willing to engage with other communities in services and social activities.

"As I found in Birmingham, this is something they naturally want to do, and local institutions - including religious ones - provide the opportunity."

Cameron said he was overwhelmed with the hospitality of the Rehmans who, like most of Britain's nearly 2 million Muslims, are "decent, hard-working and committed to their communities."

"It’s been a fascinating couple of days," the opposition leader wrote on his website.

The majority of the multi-ethnic Muslim minority has Indian, Pakistani and Bengali backgrounds. Others have Arab, Mideast or African origins.

Bigotry

The Tory leader recognized that the Muslim minority is subject to bigotry.

"You can't even start to talk about a truly integrated society while people are suffering racist insults and abuse, as many still are in our country on a daily basis."

Attacks on Muslims, ranging from verbal abuse and vandalism of mosques to physical assaults, soared in the days after the 7/7 attacks in 2005.

Figures collated by London's Metropolitan Police showed 303 attacks in London in July 2005, up from 82 the previous month.

A Guardian/ICM poll has showed that one in five Muslims said they or a family member have faced abuse or hostility since the terrorist attacks.

Cameron also regretted how the government and the media link the Muslim faith to terrorism.

"Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them, confirming to many impressionable young Muslim men that to be a 'good Muslim', you have to support their evil campaign."

A recent British study showed that the media and film industry were perpetuating Islamophobia and prejudice by demonizing Muslims.

Muslims in Birmingham have criticized the sensational and unfair media coverage in the wake of recent high-profile police raids that saw nine Muslims arrested on suspected terror links.

The Tory leader asserted that his stay with the Rehmans made him more aware of the wrong path the government pursues on integration.

"We cannot bully people into feeling British: we have to inspire them."

Cameron said integration should rather be accomplished through making the country "lovable."…

And if we can’t “inspire them” or make ourselves “loveable”--and heaven knows that's never going to happen--we may as well roll over on our backs like submissive canines and show them we have no problem allowing them to be the “top dog.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (1)

Dubai adores the lit’ler Hitler: Dubai is supposed to be one of the “moderate” Muslim nations. A modern emirate awash in oil wealth and chock-a-block with skyscrapers, it can be counted on to see through the lunacy of atavistic Islamism and side with the capitalist U.S., right? At least, that’s the line that was handed out last year when the Americans wanted to give a Dubai-based company the contract to unload ships at American ports.

Looks like nixing that deal was a wise decision. From AP via YNet News:

 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led a raucous anti-American rally in the United Arab Emirates a day after a low-key visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney there in an attempt to counter Tehran's influence in the region.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering Dubai crowd Sunday that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth. ''Every time your name is mentioned, hatred builds up,'' Ahmadinejad said of the United States to a crowd of thousands, mostly Iranian expatriates. ''Go fix yourself. This is Iran's advice to you. Leave the region... The nations of the region can no longer take you forcing yourself on them.''

Some “moderate”; some “friend.”

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

Nothing changes: The Continent that divested itself of Jews during Hitler’s Holocaust project still seems to harbour deep-seated suspicions about the Juden—even though there are far fewer of them around than there used to be. A new poll reveals that, more than 60 years after the destruction of a culture that had added immeasurably to Europe and the world, and even with all the Holocaust education and monuments dedicated to dead victims (who, being dead and incinerated, are no longer perceived as a threat), Europeans remain firmly in the grip of the same kind of delusions about “the Jews” (booga booga) that helped till the soil for the Shoah. From YNet News: 

A large number of Europeans continue to be infected with anti-Jewish attitudes, holding on to the classical anti-Semitic canards and conspiracy theories that have dogged Jews through the centuries, according to a new poll released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Monday.

 

A survey of five European countries revealed that a plurality of Europeans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their country and that they have too much power in business and finance.

 

The opinion survey of 2,714 adults – slightly more than 500 in each of the five countries – found an increase in negative attitudes toward Jews, or in some instances no change, from its 2005 findings.

 

As to attitudes regarding Israel and the Middle East, the poll showed mixed findings. For example, sympathy for the Palestinians over Israel continues but strong attitudes against Iran and Hamas were evidenced.

Asked about Iran’s nuclear development, a majority believe Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and strongly support sanctions against Iran.

A majority identified Hamas as a terrorist organization and supported the European decision not to provide foreign aid to the Palestinian government until Hamas renounces terrorism, and agrees to recognize Israel and agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

'Attitudes Toward Jews and the Middle East in Five European Countries' is a survey of France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland, conducted between March 21 and April 16, 2007 among the general public.

More evidence that, like diamonds and cockroaches, Judenhass is forever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:18 | link | comments

Opposites detract: In this crazy, mixed-up world, up is down, freedom is submission, and “unity” is a bunch of thugs from rival gangs shooting it out to see who will reign supreme over one of the most wretched spots on the planet. From the Ceeb:

Gunmen of the rival Hamas and Fatah movements traded fire Monday, killing two Fatah fighters and wounding at least 10 people despite an Egyptian-brokered agreement to end the violence that is jeopardizing a power-sharing deal between the two sides.

The latest clashes erupted in several locations in the coastal strip and brought the toll to six dead and three dozen wounded in less than 24 hours.

Among the dead were two employees of a Hamas-affiliated newspaper who were shot after being pulled out of a taxi at a Fatah roadblock Sunday, according to the Hamas account. If confirmed, this tactic would mark a further escalation and likely provoke more execution-style killings.

Israel's security cabinet, meanwhile, decided to hold off for now on a major military operation in Gaza. In a meeting Sunday, the ministers were weighing a response to intensifying rocket fire from Gaza and the army's warnings that Hamas is stockpiling weapons smuggled into the strip.

Instead, the army was given permission to step up targeted attacks against those firing the rockets, said Defence Minister Amir Peretz.

Agreement to withdraw forces on Sunday

"The decision to go into Gaza, to occupy Gaza is one that can be taken at any time but we have to understand its significance," Peretz told Israel Radio. "We, the government, need to examine what are the consequences of each and every action and … [whether] we want to play into the hands of those extremists who are interested in bringing about escalation."

In Gaza, an Egyptian security delegation brought Hamas and Fatah together Sunday night and got them to agree to withdraw their forces and exchange captives.

But hours later, Fatah said Hamas attacked one of its offices in Gaza City, firing automatic weapons and hurling hand grenades. Hamas said Fatah men attacked a roadblock manned by its militiamen.

Hospital officials said two Fatah men were killed and 10 people wounded, from both sides.

Hamas and Fatah set up a coalition government in March, with the goal of ending months of bloody clashes between forces loyal to the two sides.

But a new round of violence followed last week's deployment of 3,000 police in Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas, over Hamas objections…

And over Abbas’s objections—supposedly—Hamas keeps broadcasting its own version of American icon, Mickey Mouse. The Hamas mouse is the anti-Mickey (“submission” Mickey), a rodent who tells Palestinian moppets that it is a small world after all—a small Islamic world—and there is no room in it for Jews who presume to reign over Allah’s chosen.

There's more...: Submission Mickey sings:

 

It’s a world without laughter,

A world of fears,

It’s a world where ka-ffirs cry salty tears.

When Islam is supreme

It will not be a dream.

It’s Allah’s world, after all.

 

It’s Allah’s world, after all.

It’s Allah’s world, after all.

It’s Allah’s world, after all.

It’s Allah’s world, after all.

 

It’s a world of dawa,

Taquiyah, too.

It’s a world that we hope

Will be rid of the Jew.

And to help it along

We will all sing this song,

It’s Allah’s world, after all!

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:31 | link | comments

The name game: A little quiz for you: Of the following names, which is the odd one out?

• Quick Draw McGraw

• Ralph Malph

• Jack Black

• Mullah Dadullah 

The answer: Mullah Dadullah, because unlike the others he’s never been featured on American screens (big or little). Also, because he’s a vicious jihadist. (The Taliban leader was fond of separating the heads of less devout Afghans from their bodies—so he might have had a career in horror films had he wanted one.) And now, thankfully, he’s the best kind of vicious jihadist: a dead one.

 

The Christian Science Monitor, which, as I’ve noted before is neither Christian nor scientific nor particularly insightful, seems kinda morose about the Mullah’s sudden demise. In a story headed “Death of Taliban chief leaves void,” the CSN says that “The killing of charismatic Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah on Sunday in a US-led operation may cripple the Taliban, which relied on him as a unifying force.”

 

So sad for the Taliban to lose a charismatic unifying force, especially one that was so adept at decapitation.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments

Le mot Proust: In honour of Mother’s Day—and because I happen to be reading Kate Taylor’s novel Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen for my book group—I’ve written the following limerick:

While the word is said “joust” and not “joost,”

The writer’s not “Proust,” it’s said “Proost.”

The surname is Gallic,

His (sexual) preference was phallic,

And his Jewish maman ruled the roost.

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

The Jewish play: When I heard that the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival would once again be mounting The Merchant of Venice—it last produced the play in 2001—and that Graham Greene, an actor who is a member of Canada’s First Nations would be playing Shylock, I knew it was going to be, as they say, bad for the Jews. However, my fear was that, in keeping with the recent Michael Radford version of play, the movie which featured Al Pacino in that role, the character of Shylock would be offered up as an example of the universal suffering of the marginalized “other.” Ron Rosenbaum, who has an exceptionally astute chapter about Merchant in his book The Shakespeare Wars, wrote a review of the Radford film, a version of Merchant in which much of Shakespeare’s more unpalatable anti-Semitic dialogue was expunged or rewritten by the director (who presumptuously shared a writing credit with the Bard). Rosenbaum memorably described Pacino playing Shylock “like a grumpy Tevye” in a movie that might have been called “Userer on the Roof.” I knew that Graham Greene was unlikely to play him that way, but I had visions of him reprising the noble aboriginal role he played in the Kevin Costner flick—a “Dances with Jews,” so to speak.                  

Well, it looks like I couldn’t have been more wrong. Those artistes at Stratford have decided to de-emphasize the Judenhass and play up the comedy—such as it is. Anyone who has ever studied Merchant knows that such comedy as there is seems to consist of the “hilarity” surrounding Portia’s suitors, some double entendres about rings and vaginas, and Gobbo, the Clown, who’s sort of like an Elizabethan Borat and given to the same fears as the 21st Century Khazak. (In one scene, for example, Gobbo’s hysteria about the Jews is reminiscent of the scene in the Borat film where Borat and his fat producer become terrified when they learn that the gentle souls who run the bed and breakfast they’re staying at are Jewish.) Nonetheless, those who prefer to ignore the Jewish pachyderm in the room—the play’s obvious anti-Semitism—are apt to play up the comedy, and pretend that the play is Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Jew,” and just as rollicking as the comedy about the shrewish Kate. (Funny, she didn't look shrewish).

 

The artistes have also decided not to try to sanitize Shylock—a good move, in my opinion, since if you’re going to produce the play, I say show it warts and all, and don’t try to “gentle” it into something it is not. And then, have the courage to say “Look at this piece of overt anti-Semitism written by the greatest writer in the English language, perhaps in any language, the man whom Harold Bloom credits with ‘the invention of the human.’” There’s a reason why Adolf Hitler loved this play so much—it was produced more than 50 times while he was in power—and it has nothing to do with that impassioned but misunderstood (by us) speech about a Jew being human, like everyone else (a speech intended, in fact to show the exact opposite—that despite having outward similarities with other humans, a Jew is actually a demonic being who feigns humanity and will, at the end of the day, demand to extract his pound of flesh, just like “the Jews” did way back when to Jesus). It has everything to do with Shakespeare making Shylock into exactly the kind of Jewish stereotype one could find in the pages of Der Sturmer—cruel, calculating, greedy, bloodthirsty, parasitic.

 

In the Toronto Star, Anna Morgan has a column about the Stratford production, and she’s very concerned that the play hasn’t been sufficiently sanitized—as if that’s even possible. (Once could argue that with sufficiently judicious excisions, one could transform The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into an homage to Jewish ingenuity. Even so, it would be a mighty challenging task. And anyway, what’s the point? Then again, there’s always my musical version—Elders!—which I guarantee has a lot more yucks than Merchant.)

 

Did William Shakespeare intend The Merchant of Venice to be a racist play or an exposé of bigotry and anti-Semitism? Debate over this question has become so heated at times that some Shakespearean professors have removed the play from their repertoire.

But not the Stratford Festival.

This season's production, the seventh presented at Stratford, uses juxtapositions – the actors wear modern and Renaissance clothing, Shakespearian English is spoken but the background music is electric and contemporary – to make the play a more relatable and memorable experience.

In addition, Graham Greene, an actor known for his performance in Dances with Wolves, stars as Shylock. As an Oneida from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Greene no doubt understands marginalization and discrimination. There are certainly analogies to be made between 16th-century Venetian Jews and First Nations peoples in Canada as both have experienced the pain of living on the edges of mainstream society.

Yet the analogies are left for the audience to interpret because Shylock is not presented here as a sympathetic character. In fact, what makes the play so troubling is that without the help of Shakespearian experts, the more nuanced levels of the plot are unattainable.

Some scholars point out that The Merchant takes place in an era when Christian merchant ships were participating in the colonization of South America, Africa and India. With this knowledge, Antonio, the merchant of the play, takes on a more villainous role in today's terms, because his ships were engaged in the spice and gold "trades," meaning that they were plundering and stealing from unsuspecting lands.

Another historical point only mentioned obliquely in the play is that Christians in Venetian society are barred from charging interest on loans. Jews are, therefore, left to become the moneylenders.

As a result, Venetians learn to despise the Jews who live among them and the Jews, as portrayed by Shylock, become embittered and vengeful. It is in this context that Shylock lends 3,000 ducats to Antonio with the condition that the merchant forfeit a pound of his own flesh if he cannot make repayment.

Of course, these things and many others can be learned by anyone interested in a deeper understanding of The Merchant of Venice. However, this production targets not so much the intellect or the historical curiosity of the audience as it does its emotional responses.

For one thing, director Richard Rose has chosen to emphasize the comedic aspects of the play.

By using contemporary music and dress, together with a campy male chorus that follows the characters around, Rose draws the audience into Shakespeare's Venetian world. Slowly, but effectively, the audience begins to empathize with Gratiano, the most caustic and anti-Semitic of Shakespeare's characters.

All of this culminates at the end of the famous trial scene, when Shylock is grovelling on the ground after having lost his daughter and his wealth and forced to abandon his religion. As one of the characters throws money at the fallen Shylock, Gratiano mocks him with a Jewish style dance and the familiar music of Hava Nagila. The audience, to my dismay, ate it up…

Don’t you see what’s happened? The director probably intended people to be appalled by Gratiano’s “Jewish style dance.” Instead, it backfired, and the audience is eating it up with great relish. Yum yum. Such tasty Judenhass. And good for you, too, because it’s Shakespeare.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:22 | link | comments

Amateurs and pros: A while back I attended a lunch time lecture sponsored by the UJA Federation. The featured speaker, the National Post’s Jonathan Kay, assured the assembled that there was probably no need to worry about those excitable lads who like to watch decapitation videos and do-it-yourself fertilizer bomb construction over the Internet because said youths—including the 17 arrested in Mississaugua—were, in his words, “amateur hour.”

From his weekly perch in the Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Steyn weighs in about the Brothers Duka, the illegal immigrants from Albania who were arrested for plotting an attack on Fort Dix, and other “amateur” jihadis:

Most terrorists seem like bumbling losers if they're caught before the act: That's certainly true of the Fort Dix jihadists who took their terrorist training DVD to the local audio store to be copied. It was also true of the Islamists arrested in Toronto last year for plotting to behead the prime minister, one of whose cell members had a bride who wanted him to sign a prenup committing him to jihad. The Heathrow plotters arrested while planning to blow up U.S.-bound airliners included a Muslim convert who'd started out as the son of a British Conservative Party official with a P. G. Wodehouse double-barreled name and a sister who was a Victoria's Secret model and ex-wife of tennis champ Yanick Noah.

But then Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 gang would have seemed pretty funny if you'd run into them in that lap-dance club they went to before the big day where the girls remembered them only as very small tippers. Most terrorists are jokes until the bomb goes off.

So, when we're fortunate enough to catch them in advance, it's worth pausing to consider what they tell us about the broader threat we face. According to genius New York Times headline writers, "Religion Guided Three Held In Fort Dix Plot." You don't say. Any religion in particular?

Well, the trio were Muslims, but Albanian Muslims -- i.e., they weren't Arabs and didn't have names like Mohammed and Abdullah (though their accomplices did). Even if Amer- ica were minded to profile, it's harder to profile against chaps with names like "Shain Duka" (Fort Dix) or "Rich- ard Reid" (the shoebomber) or "Jer- maine Lindsay" (a July 7 Tube bomb- er) or "Muriel Degauque" (a Belgian lady who self-detonated in a suicide attack on U.S. forces in Iraq) or "Jack Roche" (an Australian arrested for plotting to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra)…

In jihadist terms, an "amateur" is someone who hasn't yet managed to pull off a successful attack. That designation is immediately bumped up to "professional" once the semtex vest or rucksack bomb has been deployed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:12 | link | comments

Diary of a young girl: She was young German girl on the cusp of womanhood who found her life derailed by World War 2, and she set down her thoughts and experiences in a diary? 

Anne Frank?

 

Nope, a German girl named Hilke (last name unmentioned), who, in an astonishing feat of moral equivalence Times scribe Matthew Parris compares to Anne Frank:

 

She was 12, and she has just started a diary, probably her first. “To this diary I will entrust both my joys and my sorrows,” she writes, with shy excitement. A month later it is the sorrows she confides: “Today I have been away from home exactly eight months and one day. I am missing Mummy and Daddy desperately.”

But there are joys too: “Today a letter arrived from Mummy, in which she announced her first great victory over Daddy in table tennis. I was glad about that, and Mummy is so proud.” She is agog when Uncle Herbert and Aunt Erika take her to the deer park. “The deer and roebucks, including a pure white one, were eating out of my hand!”

The diary conveys a young girl’s sweet balance of slight formality with sudden rushes of childish feeling. “My [school] report is as follows: Arithmetic 4; Geography 4; Gym-apparatus-work 4 (about which I am very disappointed); English 4; Handwriting 3 . . .”; “It was so lovely [in the mountains]. We found many mushrooms . . . Such dark fir trees! Lovely!”

Her name is Hilke and she is staying — an enforced stay — with a grumpy uncle and aunt, and missing home very much. “Aunt Erika is very busy and we are not allowed to go into the Christmas room. So I am very aware that Christmas at home with my parents is much more lovely than here.” Her older brother, Carl, is hoping to join the armed forces.

She finds three baby hares. “The mother was gone and a hawk was circling over the nest. We took [them] home. One died on the way, and I put it under a fir tree. The two others we took back . . . As they could not drink by themselves, we had to take a straw and pour milk down their throats. After three weeks the second one died. The third one we called Heidi. Now Heidi is big enough to drink on her own.”

One day there is an outing to the zoo. Hilke is so disappointed not to be able to go too, but, as she explains in her diary entry for September 28, 1941: “I was on duty with the Hitler Youth Group.”

Like most girl’s diaries, Hilke’s has never been published, but it was shown to my brother in Warwick recently by his (originally German) neighbour, Hilke’s sister, who has translated it. The diary runs from July 27, 1940 to August 4, 1945…

Yeah, Anne was one of the few “lucky” ones in that respect. Unlike Hilke, the girl whose people were respsonsible for forcing Anne and her family into hiding, provoking WW2, and were the driving force behind the mass slaughter of Europe’s Jews, Anne’s account of her early adolescence actually made it into print. Too bad she never got to enjoy the acclaim it elicited, but unfortunately, German police stormed her hiding place, arrested all those in hiding, and Anne, starving and lice-ridden, died of typhoid in Bergen-Belsen.  Hilke, on the other hand, “escaped the bombers. Later, she married an Englishman and came to Britain. She was killed in a car crash.”

In sum: the only similarity between Anne and Hilke is that they were both female and were exact contemporaries who kept a daily journal for a time during the same war.

And, aside from the circumstances of their deaths, there is one glaring difference between them. Anne Frank was a born writer, a keen observer of the human condition even at such a tender age. In comparison, Hilke's prose, as least in the excerpts offered by Paris, was utterly pedestrian, banal and superficial--like reading a World War II diary as penned by one of the girls on The Hills, my nominee for the most banal program on American television.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:28 | link | comments

A Hitch to his pitch: Christopher Hitchens, who is flogging a polemic in which he claims that almost everything bad in the world springs from religion, sort of “gets it” about Islamism. Then again, he sort of doesn’t. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with the Savanarola of atheism in July’s Vanity Fair:

A London police official went on television after the July 7 bombings to say that the words "Islam" and "terrorism" do not go together. Is he misunderstanding the threat?
The reply to this fatuous remark was published in an Arab magazine. It said that it is not true that all Muslims are terrorists, but it is true that almost all terrorists are Muslims. We have to face this problem. Blair is quite firmly convinced that by making concessions on almost every front to Islamist demands, this will reduce the terrorist population. He thinks it's amenable to reason, in other words, and to reform. And I like his mind, in a way. But I doubt it very much. When the soft Blair-ites say the problem is not Islam, or the problem is not religion, I have to say very firmly, "To the contrary. It is an absolutely identical fit between the two."

Between terror and Islam?
Yes.

Even though the Koran doesn't advise murder and intolerance? Or does it?
The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. I was not there, but I will take my oath that it is not the word of the archangel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad obeying the word of god. And like all the other holy books, the Koran is replete with contradiction and incoherence.

What is it with pundits like Hitchens and George Jonas not bothering to actually open a Koran and investigate what’s inside? What’s with pretending that the many, many passages that “advise murder and intolerance” are irrelevant? Is it sheer laziness, or could it be that Hitchens, who reviles all religion, and Jonas, who admits he is not in the least metaphysically inclined, cannot comprehend that religious doctrine as it is writ could actually be driving the jihadists?

 

More to the point, is anyone other than me sick to death of the balderdash (to which Hitchens apparently subscribes) that Judaism and Christianity also contain passages in their holy books which, if “cherry-picked” by their true believers, could prompt them to act like jihadis?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:32 | link | comments

The risible Ms. Rice: The peripatetic Secretary of State is pointedly avoiding Israel and the P.A. during a trip to the region next week. Ms. Rice says it’s because of the current instability in Israel’s body politic, but an editorial in the New York Sun suggests it’s really because, of late, Condi has been channelling Jimbo “Eff the Jews” Baker, and she’s in a snit because the Jews in question have been giving an icy reception to her latest “Peace In Our Time” proposal. It’s some cockamamie scheme involving “benchmarks” (how original!):

…If Ms. Rice's decision looks like a "punishment" meted out to Mr. Olmert for his political weakness, it is also a rebuke for Jerusalem's lack of enthusiasm for the latest American plan, the "Acceleration Benchmarks for Agreement on Movement and Access as well as on the Gaza Security Situation." In the face of continued anomy in the Gaza District, the AMA seeks to open transport and the flow of goods into and out of Israel.

This would be logical were there guarantees that the expedited vegetable trucks would not be delivering explosives. Instead, the AMA states that its goal is for " Israel [to] allow the passage of convoys between Gaza and the West Bank to facilitate the movement of goods and persons, with appropriate security arrangements" and "To reach mutual agreement on a plan for facilitating movement of people and goods within the West Bank, and to minimize disruption to Palestinian lives by reducing the number of obstacles to movement to the maximum extent possible."

In theory, the "appropriate security arrangements" will rest on establishing "normal and continued coordination between the IDF, Presidential Guard, and other internal security organizations … " In fact, the failure to produce such arrangement has bedeviled a decade and a half of diplomacy with the Palestinians. The whole AMA in other words, is but another pie-in-the-sky scheme that is based on such a failure to appreciate the nature of the war being levied against Israel that it seems almost disingenuous.

Ms. Rice's cancellation of the prescheduled visit smacks of the Secretary of State Baker's notorious Congressional testimony back in 1990 when he gave out the White House's telephone number and, in a stern rebuke to Israel's leaders, said: ‘‘When you're serious about peace, call us." Mr Baker's underlying thesis was that it was principally Israeli intransigence on the issues of the day which was preventing diplomatic progress towards a resolution of Israeli-Arab conflicts.

It happens that the cancellation of Ms. Rice's visit was announced as the World Bank Technical Team released a report "Movement and Access Restrictions in The West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy." The report maunders on about how limited is freedom of movement and how the Oslo Accords — of all things — were based on the principle that normal Palestinian economic and social life would be unimpeded by restrictions. Only in the perfervid imagination of a multi-lateral institution could one people make war against another and expect unimpeded restrictions through their territory.

***

So what to make of the State Department's renewed impatience? Israel's defensive tactics in the face of continued terrorism can hardly be the source of any deadlock, and it's a shame Ms. Rice has gotten involved in all this. But we're not losing sleep over the fact that the secretary is skipping Israel. These columns have long been against this, or any, American administration playing what is often called an "honest broker" role in the search for a Middle East peace. What we need to be doing in respect to the war between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish state is not brokering, but backing Israel. And more broadly, we need to avoid dwelling on modalities for peace before we have found a victory in the war.

Hear, hear, amen, and, furthermore, Halleluiah!

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:10 | link | comments

Pathetic fallacy: In a piece about the Left’s terror of being terrorized by “Christian fundamentalists”—according to the lefties, such Christians pose a threat on par with or greater than the one posed by Islamic fundamentalists—Ted Byfield writes about the seismic shift in the Canadian media, and how certain lefties don’t like it one little bit. From the Western Standard:

…Nevertheless, in Canada, you can already discern a distinct resentment as in, for example, Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin's grudgingly backhand tribute to Conrad Black, on trial in Chicago. Despite Black's "bucks and swagger and arrogance," he complains, despite his "avarice and self-confidence," Black had single-handedly transformed Canada, more than any one man--even Pierre Trudeau.

He did so, says Martin, by founding the National Post, thereby allowing the "misfit views" of conservative commentators to reach the public, and spoiling the liberal paradise that Canada was becoming. Though Martin doesn't say so, many of these "misfit views" come from conservative Christian and Jewish columnists, presumably the very kind of people apt to blow up children in school buses just like the Muslims.

We stand for reason against faith, claims the liberal left. Do they, now? Perhaps they should re-examine their reasoning here. All those prone to terrorism are devout believers in God, they say. Christian "fundamentalists" are devout believers in God. Therefore Christian fundamentalists are prone to terrorism. In logic, I think this is called the "first fallacy." It's like saying, "All cats are animals. My dog is an animal. Therefore my dog is a cat." In truth, liberals have at best an extremely shaky hold on reason. Maybe they should try faith instead.

I think they already have. They have unwavering faith in the infallibility of their own cherished beliefs. And they are both offended and astonished that “misfits”—those who either never drank the purple Kool-Aid of socialism, multiculturalism and all the rest of the cant, or who, having drunk it, have managed to awaken from its spell—would have the chutzpah to dare challenge them.

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

Arab speaks with forked tongue: Lebanon’s Prime Minister says that the Arab nations have no intention of “wiping Israel off the map”—and I can’t tell you what a relief that comes as. According to Faud Sanora, all the Arabs are looking for is what the Jerusalem Post describes as “a comprehensive solution based on the Arab peace initiative.”

Oh, you mean the one that calls for Israel to retreat to borders that would render it indefensible and to guarantee the Palestinian “right of return”? Yeah, no map-wiping going on there.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:14 | link | comments

Anarchy in Bytown: By day he was a clean-cut civil servant with an animus toward the Conservative government. By night he was an anarchist who played drums in a punk rock outfit called “The Suicide Bombers”; his band’s edgy but “cute” logo shows a cartoon airplane (it has a face) about to plow into the House of Commons Peace Tower. Attend the tale of Jeffrey Monahan, a cautionary account of what can go wrong when a scruffy anarchist dresses up in bureaucrats’ clothing.  From the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA–The man arrested for allegedly leaking the Conservative government's environmental plan was a temporary employee, a self-described anarchist and drummer in a punk band that sings an angry screed against the Prime Minister and the "rise of the right."

The website for the band, the Suicide Pilots, depicts an airplane flying into the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.

Those are just a few of the details that emerged yesterday about Jeffrey Monaghan, 27, who was taken away from his Environment Canada workplace in handcuffs Wednesday morning by two RCMP officers.

He is under investigation for potential breach of trust, an offence that could land him five years in prison, but has not been charged with any crime.

Monaghan said he has been working with the federal government for the last four years, employed through a local human resources firm.

For his job at Environment Canada's offices in Gatineau, Que., he began at 5 o'clock each morning and read about 48 newspapers a day to summarize daily coverage.

He also managed the department's internal communications website.

He said that in his job he was the "lowest ranking temp employee in the department, possibly the entire government."

It is unclear how he could have come into contact with a secret draft of the document.

At a news conference yesterday, Monaghan, his voice shaky and nervous, launched into a diatribe against the Tory government's public relations strategies. He also spoke in favour of decisive and immediate action on the environment, leaving little doubt where his sympathies lie in the matter even if he is cleared of any wrongdoing.

"I have not been charged with a crime," he said.

"What I can tell you is that the proposed charges against me pose a profound threat to the public interest.

"They are without precedent in their disproportionality, they are vengeful, and they are an extension of a government-wide communications strategy pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

The police investigation is looking into who sent a copy of Environment Minister John Baird's climate change plan to some media outlets and to environmental organizations on April 16, one week before the government was to release it publicly. Environmentalists said the document was faxed to them from a machine that they were able to identify as belonging to a Staples business centre.

They also received an email version of the document from what they said was a generic Staples email address.

Along with the leaked documents was a sort of manifesto from the source of the leak, saying that it was an act of protest against the "secrecy of the Harper government, its continuous PR campaign and the abandonment of international standards for (greenhouse gas reductions)."...

Oooo—a manifesto. He’s a regular Sacco and Vanzetti (allegedly), rolled into one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments (2)

Bad smell at Queen’s Park: Bowing to opposition pressure, Premier Dalton McGuinty has called in the auditor to make sure that the millions of dollars that were handed out no questions asked to immigrant groups were kosher and completely above board. When it was pointed out to the Premier that an Iranian-Canadian Community Centre that had recently scored major coinage for an, ahem, cultural project, had as one of its directors the Liberal candidate for Richmond Hill, and that the centre’s address and the office address of the president of Richmond Hill’s Liberal riding association were one and the same, McShifty had a few—very few—words. “We can do better,” he said.

Better at doling out free shekels to Liberal supporters, or better at requiring transparency (or at least paying lip service to it), so the issue doesn’t arise again? I guess that’s something for the auditor to sort out.

The Premier insists that despite calling in the auditor, the engineer of this bountiful gravy train, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Mike Colle, doesn’t have to resign.

Of course he doesn’t, because to cut him loose at this stage would be an admission that there was something fishy about the slush (fishy slush—ew) and McGuinty is waiting for the auditor’s report before he has to own up to the reality that Colle is one dead flounder.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:47 | link | comments

Ontario slush: I belong to a group—not mentioning any names—that’s been trying to get a grant from a Federal Government body to further our efforts to counter racism and antisemitism. And you wouldn’t believe the bureaucratic hoops we’ve been forced to jump through. Scads of paperwork. Untold hours of labour by our tireless leader. And weeks after complying with every last requirement, we have yet to hear back from the bureaucrat assigned to our file. And should he happen to give our project his thumbs up, our obligation to his government body won’t end there. It will entail untold hours of analysis and follow-up on our part in order to determine—if such a thing can even be quantified—whether our efforts are paying off.

Recalling the whole elaborate rigamarole—which, as you can imagine, hasn’t exactly been a stroll in the park—I could only cackle bleakly when I heard that my provincial government, the one which just spent scads of taxpayer cash to tell my kid to “eff off”, the one which is convinced that the cause of minimizing climate change can be well served by getting Ontarians to “hug a tree”—literally (as it did at the recent Green Living Show)—has been squandering, er, assigning its money in another creative way. It has been handing out large sums of cash to immigrants groups, no tedious paperwork necessary and no further follow-up required. Some of these groups are supporters of the Liberal party and/or have members associated with prominent Liberals, leading opposition parties to query whether what we have here qualifies more as a slush fund than as a cultural fund. Of course, Premier Dalton McGuinty defends the grants because, after all, who better to be on the receiving end of Liberal largesse than identifiably Liberal voters? From The Toronto Star: 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that immigrant aid grants have gone to groups with Liberal sympathies, Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested today while defending his government in the “slush fund” scandal.

His comments came as today’s Toronto Star revealed $200,000 went to an Iranian group last year whose board of directors includes a former policy advisor to Health Minister George Smitherman.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that if you were to knock on doors around the province, which (sic) are loyal supporters of liberalism, generally, small-L liberalism, you’ll find, generally, those people tend to be supportive of immigration services,” McGuinty told reporters.

Opposition parties are crying foul over $32 million in funding that went to 110 groups - including several with Liberal connections - in the last two years from Citizenship and Immigration Minister Mike Colle without a formal application process.

One of those groups, the Chinese Professionals Association of Canada, got $250,000 in March. A former director of the group is a policy advisor to Colle, who has refused opposition demands for his resignation.

“I will continue to work as I have been working…I have a job to do and that job is not over yet,” Colle said today…

...without any apparent trace of irony.

 

Darn tootin' there, Mike. Consider your job done when there isn't a drachma left to hand out as, well, let's just call it "added incentive" for "small-L liberal" voters.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:29 | link | comments

Plum tuckered out: One of the key conclusions of the Winograd Commission is that Israel’s current leadership blundered into Lebanon they were war-weary. By Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe:

…How could Israel have been so complacent? What could have accounted for such lethargy in the face of a deadly menace that was growing more dangerous by the day?

The answer, says the Winograd Commission, is that too many of "the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars." Unlike their forbears, who understood that the Jewish state would never have peace until its enemies decided to lay down their arms, today's Israeli leadership imagines that it can achieve peace by means of restraint and retreat.

 

"Since Israel did not intend to initiate a war," the report concludes, senior officials decided that Israel "did not need to be prepared for 'real' war." And that being the case, "there was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel's overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize . . . all its resources -- political, economic, social, military, spiritual, cultural, and scientific -- to address the totality of the challenges it faces."

 

Fed up with fighting, aching to live normally, Israelis lulled themselves into a stupor. They shook hands with Yasser Arafat and ran away from Lebanon and expelled the Jews from Gaza. They blamed themselves for their enemies' hatred and turned the other cheek to suicide bombings and Kassam rocket attacks. They tried to be Athens, one Israeli commentator wrote last year. But to survive in the Middle East, even Athens must sometimes act like Sparta.

 

"We are tired of fighting," Olmert moaned in a 2005 speech. "We are tired of defeating our enemies." But those who grow tired of defeating their enemies generally end up being defeated by them…

 

Too true. If Israel hopes to survive through the decade, Israelis are going to have to turf out their current bunch of inept somnabulists and find some leaders who yet possess the will to fight on—and the ability to inspire the Jews of Israel to do the same.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:41 | link | comments

Buh bye, Tony B.: As Sarkozy prepares to step onto centre stage, Tony Blair is getting set to depart it. The Times Online has a good video wrap up of the Blair years, the highs (which came mostly at the beginning, when he presided over the nationa