...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Flaming “Asian” in terrorist attack: That miniscule fringe of jihadists is on the move again, trying to pull off the next big kaboom on British soil. So far they’ve had three major failures in the past 24 hours, the latest being a car that was driven into a terminal at the
One can only speculate on the how many more angry “Asians” are getting set to blow.
Speaking of things in flames, I’ve never had a “
1 ½ ounces sake
3 ounces lichee juice
¼ tsp. grated ginger
Squeeze of lemon
6 ounces liquid Semtex.
Directions: Gently—and I mean really gently—combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Add ice. Stir. Strain.
I’d go easy on the Semtex, though. I hear it’s a real gut-buster.
Sheema shills for the shmatta: Sheema Khan, founder of CAIR-CAN, the Canadian branch of the Hamas-supporting Muslim American lobby group, has another of her delightful “let down your guard, little infidels, Islam is swell” comment pieces in the Globe and Mail (available in its entirety to subscribers). Today Sheema wants us to know that a hijab is just a head scarf, a small piece of cloth, and that even though the French appear to be all hot and bothered about it and won’t allow it in their public schools--and it now looks like the province of Quebec may follow suit—wearing the hijab is simply a matter of accepting and allowing for cultural differences in a multicultural society. In her defence of the hijab, she goes into great detail about “France’s peculiar brand of liberty” (as the headline describes the hijab ban), throwing in everything from “the French concept of laïcité” to “the legacy of French colonialism” to Jean-Jacques Rousseau: She would likely have also tossed in the kitchen sink, only she probably didn’t know how to say it in French.
Sheema is extremely concerned because
…In
Given a similar discourse in
I have to give Sheema credit. She has managed to turn the wearing of a hijab, the outward expression of a Muslim woman’s allegiance to a totalitarian Islam, into something that has to do with the Catholic Church. A brilliant bait and switch!
My letter to the Globe:
There is no doubt that France has made a lot of mistakes in its dealings with its Muslim immigrant communities, but the decision to ban female students from wearing head scarves in public schools is not one of the them. The French understand that the head scarf is not called for in classic Islamic doctrine. It is of much more recent currency, and only became popular in the wake of the Islamic revolution in
That
Actually, I know that since Canadians worship at the
Nelson’s column still stands—for now: The last time
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- British police found explosive material in a second car in
That car was ``clearly linked'' to a car found earlier today outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub near Piccadilly Circus that was dismantled by police bomb experts, Clarke told reporters at Scotland Yard. The second car had been towed because it was illegally parked and was later found to contain the explosives, Clarke said.
The discovery of the second car is ``obviously troubling and reinforces the need for the public to be alert,'' Clarke said. ``We are doing everything possible to protect the public.''
NBC News, citing unidentified
Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate to revise a schmaltzy ballad that helped see the Brits through the last Blitz:
That fateful day
That Brown took pow’r
There was jihad and rage in the air.
There were seethers plotting homegrown plots
And a bomb didn’t blow in
I may be wrong,
I may be right,
But I’m perfectly willing to swear
That al Qaeda’s implicated here.
Though a bomb didn’t blow in
The two bombs found today in
Were stuffed with nails, to make folks frown.
Oh, why they would try it’s not so hard to ‘splain,
And you can bet they’ll try again.
The streets of town
Were full of cops.
There was not a policeman to spare
As they searched the joint for jihadis.
And a bomb didn’t blow in
Oh, no, they’ve killed Farfour: Tragic news--Farfour Mouse, the “adorable” Hamas rodent, is no more. He has kicked the bucket. He has bought the farm. He has shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the bleeding vermin choir invisible. He is an ex-Mouse.
Farfour was “martyred” in the final episode of the jihadist kiddie show on which he starred, the victim of an Israeli “terrorist” who was trying to steal Palestinian land.
A more honest depiction, of course, would have had Farfour being flung off a rooftop by a member of Fatah, and, once his sorry carcass hit the ground, being mutilated by other frenzied Fatah-niks.
But that might be a bit too true-to-life for those sensitive Hamas moppets.
“Funny” business: “Satire,” as American comic playwright George S. Kaufman once said, “is what closes on Saturday night.” I haven’t watched Ceeb satiric news show This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes in a dog’s age (literally—I think my previous dog, who’s been dead for four years, was alive the last time I saw it) but when, intrigued by the caption "Harper Youth," I clicked on this link on the Ceeb site, I couldn’t help but recall Kaufman’s quip—and note that it might have been best had this Ceeb satire closed on a Saturday (or another) night about six or seven years ago.
It’s not that I care if the Ceeb mocks the Prime Minister du jour; heck, if a satire show didn’t do that, it wouldn’t be doing its job. It’s just that, more than a year into Harper’s governance, the Ceeb is still harping on Harper’s supposed “scariness” (booga booga). Before Harper was elected, his scariness rested on what fear-mongering Lefties liked to call his “hidden agenda.” What was the agenda? Hard to say; it was hidden. The implication, though, was that it incorporated all sorts of “scary” right wing Conservative measures, like, say, stripping women of their rights and forcing them to retreat, barefoot and preggers, into the kitchen. (Oh, wait. I think I’m mixing it up with the Islamist agenda—about which the Ceeb evinces far less fear ‘cause that would be “Islamophobic.”) Anyway, now that Harper’s been around a while, and none of the scary stuff has materialized, this scariness now rests mostly on his reaffirmation of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.
Oooo, scary!
The 22 Minutes snippet revolves around Conservative youth at a Conservative conference. And since they’re big “C” and little “c” conservative youth, they’re dweeby, sexless, and decked out in matching uncool outfits—unlike that mega-cool Ceeb hipster-host George Stomboulopoulous, who has visible piercings, and who only wears tight black shirts and jeans. And since they’re “conservative” youth, they’re actually little more than well-scrubbed fascists—Harper Youth; Hitler Youth: same diff, right? And since they’re “conservative” youth, they’re so lame and out of synch with the zeitgeist (to coin a phrase) that they’re like a throwback to one of those ungroovy four-part harmony groups from the late 50s/early 60s—the kind SCTV used to lampoon as the Five Neat Guys.
The four neat Harper Jungen in the clip croon several “amusing” songs, including one to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” that culminates in the witty observation: “Scarily, scarily, scarily, scarily/Life’s a Tory dream.”
Nuh uh. Scarily, scarily, scarily, scarily, life’s a taxpayer-funded “satire” that’s emblematic of the Ceeb’s general cluelessness, witlessness and idiocy.
The two Abdullahs: There’s the Saudi Abdullah—he’s the absolute ruler of a
The Saudi leader and his delegation received an unprecedented welcome from
Both kings later held a meeting and discussed major regional and international issues. Their talks covered the outcome of the four-party summit meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh and the efforts to achieve a just
In an interview with
Memo to gullible Westerners: Remember, as far as the Abdullahs are concerned, it’s all about the Ummah.
The Saudi Abdullah has a message for the Palestinians, whose “unity” he tried—and, ultimately, dismally failed—to broker:
King Abdullah blamed
The Saudi king called upon the Palestinian leaders to shoulder their responsibility toward their people. “The present situation (fighting between Fatah and Hamas) should not be allowed to continue as it will serve the usurpers of Palestinian territory and harm the just Palestinian cause. It will also destroy the hope of setting up an independent Palestinian state with
There’s that Ummah fixation again.
Film follies: In my considered opinion, few phrases are as vacuous—or as cringe-inducing—as “human rights.” Case in point: the 18th annual Human Rights Watch film festival, run in conjuction with the Film Society of Lincoln Center. While some of the films on display here deal with “human rights” in the earlier sense of, say, late Cold War-era Russian dissidents, the vast majority fall under the rubric of “things that aren’t really about human rights, unless you happen to be a clueless, Israel-bashing Lefty.” By Bari Weiss in OpinionJournal:
…From an artistic perspective, the festival has been highly impressive. Riveting archival footage of the searing destruction wrought by the atomic bomb on
But the point of this specific festival is not to satisfy the film buffs who frequent the Walter Reade Theater. It is to highlight "the world's most pressing human rights issues," and it is on this count that the festival falls short.
In choosing the two weeks' worth of films for the festival, director Bruni Burres views between 500 and 600 candidates. When I asked Ms. Burres how she and her committee decide what human-rights issues are most crucial to highlight, she told me, "We never rate any films or any issues as more important than another film or issue." Later in our conversation, she reiterated: "We never declare one human-rights issue more important than another."
Such a theoretical standard is troubling, and helps explain how certain documentaries made it into the festival. Take Marco Williams's film "Banished," for example. Narrated by Mr. Williams, "Banished" tells the story of three American communities--Forsyth County, Ga.; Pierce City, Mo.; and Harrison, Ark.--as they struggle with the knowledge that racial cleansings occurred there in the period right after the Civil War. Several descendants of the blacks who were banished form the moral center of the film, as they articulate their desire for retribution.
Though "Banished" illuminates an important political issue--what is white
The same goes for two features that focus on environmental issues. "Everything's Cool," a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is about global warming, while "The Unforeseen" investigates the impact of real-estate development on the environment in
Judging by the audience's reaction to the films, it seemed that many in attendance were also failing to make the sorts of difficult distinctions necessary in human-rights advocacy--namely, which wrongs are more wrong than others. During the Q-and-A period following "Banished," an audience member praised the film as a universal--rather than American--story, arguing that what's going on in
Following Sunday night's screening of "Cocalero," a sympathetic portrayal of
Vlad Lenin’s “useful idiots”—in the flesh.
Hilarious!: Islam Online has managed to dredge up a picture suggesting where "peace" envoy Tony Blair's true allegiance lies:
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What, couldn't they find one of him eating some potato latkes and gefilte fish?
Pelosi hangs far-left: There appear to be some among the tin-foil hat brigade who are concerned about what they perceive to be a right-ward drift by Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has been quick to reassure them that there has been no drift, and she remains firmly in their camp.
Phew. What a relief!
From TheHill.com:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is working hard to make sure that the fiery liberal wing of the Democratic Party remembers that she is one of them. She is also going out of her way to reassure opponents of the war that she is on their side.
Her efforts are taking place in speeches and interviews off Capitol Hill and away from the constraints and compromises inherent in running the House. Liberal lawmakers and activists accuse Pelosi of being too cautious.
Now, with Congress’s approval rating plummeting following its passage of an
In recent speeches and interviews, Pelosi has acknowledged the left’s frustration with the war and asked it to work with congressional Democrats to help alter the political climate.
“Unless we make our own environment, we’ll be wedded to incrementalism,” Pelosi told a group of college students on Tuesday at a conference hosted by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank…
And who wants to be wedded to incrementalism when you can be married to Islamism?
Deflating Blair: Just as Tony Blair is chomping at the bit, eager to get started on his new job as Middle East Peace in Our Time Envoy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gives him a not-so-gentle tug on the reigns. Just so he knows who’s boss. From Forbes:
BERLIN (Thomson Financial) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that Tony Blair's mandate as the new Middle East envoy would be limited and that he would report to the international 'Quartet' and not the other way round.
Merkel, whose country is outgoing president of the European Union, which is part of the Quartet working to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict along with the
When asked about complaints by some Quartet members that Blair was pitched as envoy by
'The whole Quartet -- including the European Union -- agreed to Tony Blair becoming the Quartet envoy,' she told reporters after talks in
'Tony Blair is a man with great political experience and I believe that in working with the Quartet he can make a meaningful and important contribution if he brings that experience to bear in trying to solve the Middle East conflict.
'But the political burden here will remain on the shoulders of the Quartet.”…
So don’t get all pumped up about your own grandiosity, Tony, because Angela, for one, is quite willing to stick a pin in it.
Update: An interview with historian Bat Ye-or (link via Atlas Shrugs) outlines the real obstacles to "peace"--the EU's collusion with the Arabs, and the Muslim desire to dhimmify the non-Muslim world:
André Darmon - Is not the juridical conflict between shari'a law and European laws a slow-ticking bomb?
Bat Ye'or - It is true that we use the same words: justice, peace... But in shari'a, the law of Muslims, peace means submission, above all. Therefore Arab countries will not be able to envisage peace until Israel is subjugated. The concept of women's rights, of simply Human Rights, is different. There is a real antagonism between the two cultures for which I see no solution. Everything in the non-Muslim world is founded on separation of powers and democracy while in shari'a it is first and foremost the primacy of religious law. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a drop in the bucket in the aims of the of the organization of the Islamic Conference that seeks universal Islamization and the establishment of a planetary caliphate. The subversion of the universities, of the media, of the churches, the politics of compromise, of concessions will eventually result in the United States following the lead of Europe in the submission to Islam.
Update: "Eventually"? How about "right now"?
Spy story: I hate to use an old cliché, but truth really is stranger than fiction. As proof I would offer the following story, which reads like something out of John Le Carré (who, at one time, in another life, I used to read and enjoy). From The Australian:
Police said Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser, had fallen from the fourth-floor balcony of his home overlooking St James's Park.
Police were treating his death as suspicious. Friends of Dr Marwan said he had feared assassination after being named four years ago as an Israeli agent during the Yom Kippur war.
Dr Marwan's link to the Mossad was publicly revealed four years ago by Israeli researchers and confirmed this month in a Tel Aviv judicial proceeding in which the head of Israeli military intelligence in 1973, now retired Major General Eli Zeira, was found to have leaked Dr Marwan's identity to journalists and others.
His death will send shockwaves across the Middle East and among some of
If found to be murder, his death will carry echoes of last year's assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent.
Dr Marwan's access to wealth and power stemmed from his marriage to the favourite daughter of
Dr Marwan began dabbling on his own in arms deals. In 1969, he entered the Israeli embassy in
Despite deep initial scepticism about his motives and fears that he was a double agent, the Mossad soon found him to be supplying priceless political and military information from the heart of the Egyptian establishment, some of which could be confirmed from other sources.
Although he demanded and received large payments, Israeli officials believed his motivation lay more in the psychological realm than greed.
Two days before the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, Dr Marwan, in Cairo, telephoned his Mossad handler in London and let drop a code word for imminent war. He asked to meet with the then Mossad head, Zvi Zamir.
Mr Zamir flew to
Dr Marwan revealed that the Egyptian and Syrian armies would attack the next day.
The warning, passed on by Mr Zamir, reached
This would prove sufficient for the first reservist tank units to reach the
In desperate battles, the Israelis stopped the Syrian army and then pushed it back.
Dr Marwan subsequently became a high-flying businessman based in
Despite the allegations in recent years about his Mossad connection, he continued to visit
But not prominent enough, it seems, to forever forestall an encounter with a vengeful assassin.
Something for Sir Salman Rushdie, another "traitor" with a price on his head, to keep in mind.
Harpooning Blair: You may not believe it, but Harpoon Siddiqui and I actually agree about something. We both think that tapping Tony Blair to be the new
Wow, that’s quite a wide divergence there, Harpoon. Which sources are you depending on: the al Qaedist ones or the Khomeinist ones? In any case, aren't those the same sources responsible for most of the bloodshed, what with their virgin-seeking martyrdom operations and their demolishing of ancient mosques?
Harpoon is also critical of the appointment because of Blair’s “track-record of backing George W. Bush’s solid support of
But wait. According to Harpoon, there is even more reason “to be sceptical about the Blair mission":
He is to mobilize donors, promote economic development and help build Palestinian institutions.
But given the Quartet's decision to isolate Hamas and help Fatah, he can only help half those institutions. The initial Russian reservation about him was based precisely on this "divide and conquer policy," as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it. "A divided
Many supporters of Israel, including myself, share this judgment.
Come again? I’ve been reading Harpoon’s perorations twice-weekly for a long time, and never once have I seen any evidence that he counts himself among
As such, I’d hold off on hitting him up for a donation to the JNF just yet:
Blair's far greater problem is that he mischaracterizes the Arab-Israeli dispute, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and other conflicts afflicting the Muslim world, as mere manifestations of an ideological battle between Islamic "reactionaries" and "moderates."
As real as that battle is, proffering it as the only, or even the main, explanation for the crisis of our age is to divorce it from the reality of wars, brutal or botched occupations, mass killings and endless humanitarian disasters, and to wash our hands of the West's major culpability in the mess.
In adopting this Bushian logic, Blair has been disingenuous or dishonest. The former is understandable for a politician with a lot of Arab and Muslim blood on his hands, but the latter is inexcusable for one who is promising them peace.
Blair has been disingenuous? Now that's the Harpoon I know and loathe: bumptious, belligerent, determined to pretend that there’s no jihad, no jihadism, and blind to the ocean of infidel blood that has been spilled down through the ages—and that continues to be spilled today.
Unfinished story: The big Middle East story today—Tony Blair’s appointment as “peace” envoy—is so big that you may not have noticed a much bigger story: how fighting continues to rage at a “refugee” camp in Lebanon. This despite the insistence of
Another reason you may not have noticed this big story is that, ever since that premature announcement of victory, the story has fallen off the MSM’s radar. From the Daily Star:
"When we get intelligence that militants are using a certain building as a snipers' nest, we shell it; when we get information that a building is booby-trapped, we send the tanks in to blow it up," the army source told The Daily Star.
An army statement Wednesday urged Palestinians inside the camp to take a "courageous and responsible stance" and confront the terrorists to convince them to end "their futile and purposeless fight." The statement said the remnants of Fatah al-Islam were confiscating humanitarian aid from camp residents and launching attacks from inside residents' homes.
The army postponed the burial of 16 dead Fatah al-Islam militants Wednesday after requests from several foreign embassies for time to verify the nationalities of the deceased fighters.
Fatah's commander in
Reports on the number of dead militants have ranged from 60 to 300, while 84 soldiers have been killed and over 150 wounded in the conflict...
Massacre! Outrage! Pass a resolution! Just a few of the things you would now be hearing if Israeli and not Lebanese soldiers were involved in this anti-terrorist action (which, if Israelis were taking part, would be said to involve “militants,” “radicals,” or “extremists”).
Tony, retitled: Claudia Rosett, a women blessed with clarity of vision and a saucy tongue, says Tony Blair’s new role as Mideast “peace” envoy has been mislabled:
...“Peace” — ? We are talking about the region that has been saturated for years in “peace talks” “land for peace” “seeds of peace” the “roadmap to peace” and especially the mother of all peace labels, the “peace process.” Hamas and Hezbollah snatch Israeli soldiers and attack Israeli civilians,
As Joshua Muravchik wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak.”
Do we want peace? You bet. But it won’t come by way of sending another “peace” envoy whose title alone implies that we will do nothing but jaw-jaw in response to acts of war. Tony Blair carries one credential that may not earn him much in the West these days, but might still command respect amid the wars of the
Labels may not be remotely enough to change the equation in the
War Envoy—much better.
Poe and the
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year... I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher...With the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit...
Thus, Edgar Alan Poe began his remarkable 1839 short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher." Similar feelings beset me in contemplating the fall of the house of Yasser, the collapse of the PLO, of Fatah, and of Palestinian nationalism as a movement.
I won't go into that history of disaster in detail, but suffice it to say that what is happening now fits completely into that pattern.
Put your finger into the wine and flick one drop onto the plate for each item: 1948 war; 1967 war; failed West Bank guerrilla war; September 1970 in Jordan; terrorism; Lebanese civil war; intransigence; internal anarchy; the murder of the first moderates; corruption; incitement to terrorism and intransigence; throwing away the opportunity at Camp David; throwing away the opportunity of 1988 dialogue with the United States; the 1990s' peace process; and the second intifada. Forgive me for leaving out even more such examples.
Is there a pattern? Yes:
• By seeking everything, get nothing. Having as one's goal the destruction of
• Glorifying violence and terrorism brought death and destruction on the movement and its followers.
• Embracing extremism, incitement, and demonization of
