...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
A delectable rant: As a connoisseur of totalitarian propaganda and bafflegab—the two usually go hand in hand—I found the following overheated condemnation of Tiny Hitler’s cool reception at Columbia to be especially yummy. From the Tehran Times:
Columbia school of scandal
By Ismail Salami
TEHRAN (Press TV) -- It is widely believed that a university is the bastion that houses the best and the greatest of minds and that which produces future leaders.
Yet, the belief was ruefully shattered on Monday September 24 when Mr. Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University proved to the world that a prestigious institute of higher education like Columbia can harbor a man of crooked mindset as the president who can be easily used as a puppet in the hands of those who dictate to him what he should or should not say.
Bollinger, a U.S. Constitution scholar who has led Columbia since 2002, said the university encourages free speech and said bald-facedly, “Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President. You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” Had he invited the president with the intention of lambasting him? Was the invitation not a mockery of his own rhetoric of free speech? Or was it a mockery of American democracy and free speech?
Was he talking as a world leader to another leader who represents a nation? Did he really contemplate the consequences of his affront and contumely? Did he know that his insult to the president would not only target him but recoil against an entire nation whom he represents?
The fact that Bollinger had invited President Ahmadinejad required him to treat the president with respect and hospitality. However, his attitude was a far cry from hospitality. Instead, Bollinger was discourteous and boorish in manners. In fact, he had an opportunity to show to Iranian people, their president and the whole world what American democracy and free speech really meant. Yet, he squandered the excellent opportunity and helped further tarnish the image of Uncle Sam.
Mr. Bollinger's vitriolic and uncalled for introduction could have been a prelude to further insults if President Ahmadinejad had not shown a great degree of composure and magnanimity.
As a sophisticated person, Bollinger could have used a softer tone and said, “Mr. President, we welcome you here. You represent a land with a great civilization and culture. You come from the land of Cyrus the Great who formulated the first charter on human rights. Since we have some questions on our minds to which we fail to find convincing answers, we beg your permission to let us ask the questions which have long been lingering in our minds. We really hope you will answer them.”
Poor Mr. Bollinger actually played more the part of a neocon than president of a distinguished university did. He was surely put under a lot of pressure by the propagandists and thought police of the American right wing. The plain truth is that an invited Muslim leader was affronted by an academician in a Christian land where love and respect are considered as the most sublime values. This is the way the values are tailored to suit the interests of a police regime.
Brainwashed by the American thought police, he leveled an improper, indecent and unprofessional attack on the Iranian president. The New York Times even praised Bollinger as a paragon of democratic values for his impertinent behavior, writing that he “defended the event as in the best tradition of America's free speech.” American free speech indeed!...
And by “American free speech” the splenetic Shia is obviously referring to the “freedom” to act like a sycophantic toady—just like they do over there in Iran.
Talk is cheap: Mark Steyn, a man who’s much too smart to be a politician or a New York Times pundit, explains the essential difference between democracies and Ahmadinejad—the former are talkers; the latter’s a doer. From the OC Register:
…Lots of prime ministers and diplomats accepted invitations to meet with Hitler, and generally the meetings went very well – except for one occasion when Lord Halifax, the British foreign secretary, was greeted by the little chap with the mustache, mistook him for the butler, and handed him his coat. But even that faux pas is a testament to how normal thugs can appear in social situations. Civilized nations like chit-chatting, having tea, holding debates, talking talking talking. Tyrannies like terrorizing people, torturing people, murdering people, doing doing doing. It's easier for the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then for the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.
As witness this last week. Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, was evidently taken aback by the criticism he got for inviting Ahmadinejad and so found himself backed into what, for a conventional soft-leftie of academe, was a ferocious denunciation of his star guest, dwelling at length on Iran's persecution of minorities, murder of dissidents, sponsorship of terrorism, nuclear ambitions, genocidal threats toward Israel, etc. For a warmup act, Bollinger pretty much frosted up the joint. The Iranian leader sat through the intro with a plastic smile, and then said: "I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment." He offered many illuminating insights: There are, he declared, no homosexuals in Iran. Not one. Where are they? On a weekend visit to Kandahar to see the new production of "Mame"? Alas, there was no time for follow-up questions.
And afterwards Bollinger got raves even from the right for "speaking truth to power." But so what? It's like Noel Coward delivering a series of devastating put-downs to Hitler. The Fuhrer's mad as hell but at the end of the afternoon he goes back to killing, and dear Noel goes back to singing "The Stately Homes Of England." Ahmadinejad goes back to doing – to persecuting, to murdering, to terrorizing, to nuclearizing – and Bollinger cuts out his press clippings and puts them on the fridge.
The other day, National Review's Jay Nordlinger was musing about our habit of referring to some benighted part of the world's "humanitarian needs" and wondered when we'd stopped using the term "human needs," which is, after all, what food, water and shelter are. And his readers wrote in to state the obvious: That "humanitarian" label gives top billing not to the distant, Third World victim but the generous Western donor – the "humanitarian" relief effort, the "humanitarian" organizations, the NGOs, the Western charities: It's about us, not them. Bill Clinton's new bestseller on charity is called "Giving" – because it's better to give than to receive, and that's certainly true if the giver is busying himself with some ineffectual feel-good "Save Darfur" fundraiser while the recipient is on the receiving end of the Janjaweed's machetes. The Sudanese government appreciates that, as long as we're allowed to feel good about ourselves and to participate in "humanitarian relief," the killing can go on until there's no one left to kill. Likewise, Ahmadinejad knows that, as along as we're allowed to do what we do best – talk and talk and talk, whether at Columbia or in EU negotiations – his regime can quietly get on with its nuclear program.
These men understand the self-absorption of advanced democracies. The difference between Winston Churchill and Ward Churchill, another famous beneficiary of "academic freedom" who called the 9/11 dead "little Eichmanns," is that for Sir Winston talking was a call to action while for poseurs like professor Churchill it's a substitute for it.
The pen is not mightier than the sword if your enemy is confident you will never use anything other than your pen. Sometimes it's not about "freedom of speech," but about freedom. Ask an Iranian homosexual. If you can find one.
Like finding a needle in a haystack, since, in der Shialand, friends of Dorothy are being tortured and exterminated, ruby slippers and all.
Speak for yourself, Tom: The New York Times’s pundit di tutti pundits, Thomas L. Friedman, opines that 9/11 made us stupid.
Au contraire, Tom. 9/11 woke up lots of folks but, sadly, not those (like you) who've made a choice to remain in the dark about the existential threat posed by the ardent souls who heed the eternal, seductive call of the jihad imperative:
...I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.
Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.
I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?
We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.
Poor Tom. Still stupid (and a really crappy writer) after all these years.
I heart John Bolton: A great man, Churchillian in his vision, but one who could never be a politician in our era because he is compelled to tell the unvarnished, unshaded, unadulterated truth. From the Guardian:
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.
Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was "pushing out" and "is not receiving adequate push-back" from the west.
"I don't think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don't know what the alternative is.
"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."
He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Mr Ahmadinejad.
"If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."
The fact that intelligence about Iran's nuclear activity was partial should not be used as an excuse not to act, Mr Bolton insisted.
"Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction." He asked how the British government would respond if terrorists exploded a nuclear device at home. "'It's only Manchester?' ... Responding after they're used is unacceptable."
Mr Bolton, now a fellow at the conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a forthcoming book called Surrender is Not an Option, was applauded by delegates when he described the UN as "fundamentally irrelevant".
Defending the decision to invade Iraq, he mocked the Foreign Office's "softly softly" approach to Iran's imprisonment of 15 British sailors accused of straying into Iranian waters in April this year.
They were released after Mr Ahmadinejad announced he was making a "gift" to the British people. "They [Iran] got no response from the UK or the US. If you were the Iranian leader, what conclusion do you draw?"
Mr Bolton said he did not really want "to get into the specifics of your own internal politics here" and made no comment on David Cameron's foreign policy. But he said that Gordon Brown's performance under pressure had not been tested and he hoped that Britain would not withdraw from Iraq.
"There is too much of a view in Europe that you have passed beyond history," Mr Bolton told delegates. "That everything can be worked out by negotiation ... Democrats or Republicans, we [Americans] don't see it that way."
However, he praised the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his forthright criticism of Iran in recent weeks.
Raising the spectre of George Bush's "axis of evil", Mr Bolton said that Kim Jong-il's regime in North Korea was akin to a "prison camp" and that he would "sell anything to anyone".
Those who thought North Korea would give up its nuclear capability voluntarily were wrong, he said.
The regime had made similar promises during the past decade. Only reunification between North and South Korea could resolve the problem. That could be achieved "if China were to get serious" and cut off fuel supplies to Mr Kim, but the country feared a reunited Korea.
Mr Bolton told an inquiring delegate that he was not and had never been a neoconservative: "I'm not even a Reagan conservative. I'm a [Barry] Goldwater conservative. They [neocons] have somewhat - I would say excessively - Wilsonian views about the benefits of democracy."
However, the threat to world peace did not come from neoconservatives but from the perception that "we have passed beyond history", he said…
If John Bolton’s a Goldwater conservative then, by gum, so am I.
Deadly fairy tales: The always perceptive Diana West describes what happens when people succumb to the soothing pieties of moral relativism: the clueless idiots think the Three Bears’ point of view is as equally valid as Goldilocks’s--and may, in fact, be more valid, since Goldilocks hails from an imperialist, coloniolist, Zionist hegemon. From the Washington Times:
Some years ago, when our teenagers were tots, my husband and I took them to a puppet version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Or was that "The Three Bears and Goldilocks"? Turns out, we were seeing "the other side" of the old story. Here, Goldilocks was no wandering lass improbably meeting up with an even more improbable household of bears, but a human interloper vandalizing the home of her fellow mammals.
When the bears came home from their walk, happened upon Goldilocks' mischief and chased her out of the house, they were acting in fright, not anger, and had no thought of, say, devouring the heroine — which is often the conventionally climactic possibility in this and other such fairy tales. The puppets made it clear that the whole incident resulted from a lack of communication. Everyone — bears, children — should listen to one another because, as the puppets sang in conclusion, "there are two sides to every story."
This really burned me up, naturally. First, the kids in the theater were too young to have their Goldilocks narrative down pat and, therefore too young to have it messed with. And who did these puppeteers think they were injecting a dose of moral relativism into age-old tales? It's not that Goldilocks is a rallying figure exactly, but there's a disconnect here. For kids still grappling with moral absolutes known as right and wrong, it's very confusing to contend with the "alternate" message: essentially, that there is right and right again. For the preschoolers in the audience, this was just the beginning of their postmodern education.
It's no coincidence that this anecdote comes up in the aftermath of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's obscene caper across New York City — from Columbia University (with a threatened detour to Ground Zero), to the United Nations and to the Intercontinental Hotel where he hosted a dinner for 50 American guests from academia and the media. The same childlike ethos of right and right again — moral relativism — of the PC puppet show was the institutional rationale that permitted Mr. Ahmadinejad's terrible PR triumph over America. I fear it has only convinced him that he can win more.
He came, he raved, he hosted the media. Question: Couldn't cable stars Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour and Time magazine's Richard Stengel and whoever else supped with Iran's jihadist-in-chief have told him, if not where to go, that they had to wash their hair? Alas, no. No one in charge, not the president, not the State Department, not Columbia, not the media, could think of a single reason to say no to this thug — this sworn enemy of our country fighting a covert war against U.S. troops in Iraq, this largest sponsor of terrorism in the world, this Holocaust-denier seeking the nuclear tools for another Holocaust —and deny him an American showcase on the world stage.
That's because they don't know a single reason. Decades of multiculturalism, positing that all cultures are equally valuable, except, of course, for Western culture, which is the pits, have undermined our ability to make distinctions, to understand that being open to everything — like Mr. Ahmadinejad — is not the same as preserving a tolerant society. "If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant," Karl Popper wrote, "then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them."…
Wake us up before you blow blow: After a disasterous performance at the MTV Awards, flabby has-been slattern Britney Spears is trying to get her self-torpedoed career back on track (to mix a metaphor). Here she is singing a new version of the hit that propelled her to fame all those years ago. To appeal to the largest possible audience, Britney's words reflect the mindset of the clueless, craven, appeasing majority:
Oh, Mahmoud baby
How were we supposed to know
That something wasn’t right here?
Oh, Mahmoud baby
We shouldn’t have let you crow.
We shoulda been much brighter.
Show us that you are a threat now
Make us all regret how we ignored it.
Because…
Our cluelessness is killing us.
And you don't seem so ominous.
IAEA’s ElBaradai says, “Show me a sign.
Nuke me, Mahmoud one more time.”
Oh, Mahmoud baby
You’re petty, short and ‘foonish
So you don’t really scare us.
Oh, Mahmoud baby
Although you’re kinda goonish
We’ll let you rant and dare us.
Shake us out of our deep slumber
Make us take a number
While your boys prepare for "five, four, three, two, one..."
'Cause..
Our cluelessness is killing us.
And you don't seem so ominous.
The MSM, most all of them, say, “Give us a sign.
Nuke us, Mahmoud one more time.”...
A seemingly solitary voice of reason: Back in the days of the seeth-a-thon following a Danish newspaper’s publication of Prophet ‘toons, I had a heated exchange with a high-ranking member of the Canadian Jewish Congress executive. I was seething myself because the CJC had seen fit to issue a media release condemning the rampage, but condemning, too, the Danish paper. As I recall, the CJN criticised it for being “unduly provocative,” or something along those lines. It seemed to me that the CJC had no business weighing in on the matter—unless it was to support the fundamental Western value of free expression. Since it didn’t, and since it seemed to be acting in a dhimmified manner for no good reason, I sent an e-mail to this exec to express my horror at the CJC’s action. It took one, two, three emails before he finally revealed what was at the bottom of this dhimmitude: a desire to—I believe his words were “march arm-in-arm”—to Queen’s Park with his Muslim “buddies” to persuade the government to fund their religious schools.
Fools! Knaves! Short-sighted nincompoops! Jews incapable of seeing past their own short-term self-interest and making common cause with those who, given their druthers, would get rid of Western freedom altogether and replace it with sharia law.
I have repeated the same refrain—fools, knaves, etc.—during the current election campaign, the one in which Jews and Muslims, in convincing Conservative leader John Tory to take up their cause, will in all probably cost him the election. By and large, however, mine has been a minority voice among those who fork over mucho dinero to send their kids to non-Catholic religious schools, the vast majority falling in lockstep with the CJC and Bnai Brith on this issue.
I was thus thrilled to read a commentary in the Canadian Jewish News by someone who has the same doubts as I do about climbing into bed with Islam:
As the Ontario provincial election draws closer, the push for funding faith-based schools will no doubt intensify. And so it should. The cause is just and, with fees at most Jewish day schools at an all-time high – and way beyond what many families can afford – the timing couldn’t be more crucial. Proponents of such subsidies need to maintain their momentum and do whatever seems practical to sway Ontario voters toward supporting a redress of the current system.
That the Jewish community leadership of Toronto has opted to join up with Armenian, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim groups with like-minded objectives is probably a good strategy. Interfaith cohesion on issues of common interest plays well in the public domain and carries with it a certain respectability that may have other positive spin-offs as relationships develop and dialogue becomes more comfortable.
However, we in the broader Jewish community need to be extraordinarily vigilant that we do not compromise our values and loyalties as we engage in coalition-building of this sort. We need to be clear on who our partners are and what view of us they bring to the table. It might reasonably be argued that it’s not acceptable to include as part of such a group those who, under other circumstances, might wish us harm – individually or collectively – by actively promoting anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist positions.
It is, therefore, a matter of great concern when one reads in the September issue of the Hamilton Jewish News that a Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) memo has been sent to federations in Ottawa, Windsor and London “asking them to build interfaith partnerships on the Hamilton model to support the Jewish community on this important matter” (i.e., school funding).
There is no reason to doubt Congress’ good intentions, but what really is the “Hamilton model”? Well, unlike the multicultural Toronto coalition, the Hamilton “dialogue” comprised only Muslims and Jews. Before expanding – to primarily focus on the funding issue – the group, aside from UJA Federation of Hamilton, had just three other “partners.” Of these, one has gone on public record expressing contempt for Israel during the Lebanon war and praising “Hezbollah’s resistance,” while another helped to sponsor a local rally just over a year ago where Israel was venomously attacked and the Hamilton Jewish federation was itself accused of “endorsing the killing of Lebanese”.
Yet such “partners” continue to be part of the ongoing Hamilton dialogue, and the Hamilton community leadership persists in according them credibility and public affirmation.
So if this is the prototype that other small communities across Ontario are being encouraged to emulate, a plea for caution is needed. We can certainly do better.
Hear, hear. Fortunately, the majority of Ontarians have no taste for funding madrassahs (Bigotry! Islamophobia! shriek the media), and, come Oct. 10, will give the Tory Tories a big ole thumbs down.
The sight and sound of pure evil: Tiny Hitler came a-calling this past week, and for the most part our mainstream media outlets—as per usual—buried the lede. (The Toronto Star and The Glib and Mewl, for two, concentrating on how “petty” and “buffoonish” he is). Luckily, we have Caroline Glick to offer clarity, and to audaciously state the obvious that the MSM obviously and willfully missed. From RealClear Politics:
During his visit to New York this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked every basic assumption upon which Western civilization is predicated. Ahmadinejad offered up his attacks while extolling his vision of Islamic global domination.
Refusing to note his existential challenge to the Free World, the Western media concentrated their coverage of his trip on his statements regarding specific Western policy goals. His rejection of the UN Security Council's authority to take action against Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program; his championing of the Palestinian cause and Israel's destruction; his denials of Iranian support for terrorism, and his attacks against the US were widely reported. So too, his insistence that Iranian women enjoy full rights and that there are no homosexuals in Iran received banner headlines.
Ahmadinejad gave two major addresses this week - at Columbia University and at the UN General Assembly. He devoted both to putting forward his vision for global Islamic domination. And while the Western media sought hidden meanings and signals for peaceful intentions in his words, the fact is that on both occasions, Ahmadinejad made absolutely clear that his vision of Islamic domination cannot coexist in any manner with Western civilization. Consequently, Ahmadinejad's statements were not negotiating stances. They were the direct consequence of the world view he propounds. As such, they are non-negotiable.
At Columbia University, Ahmadinejad devoted the majority of his speech to a discussion of the role of science in human affairs. While most coverage surrounded his refusal to renounce his call to annihilate Israel, his central message, that he rejects the right of people to be free to choose their paths in life, was ignored. His remarks on the issue were dismissed as "weird" or "unintelligible." Yet they were neither.
Speaking as "an academic," Ahmadinejad said that from his perspective, the role of science is to serve Islam and that any science that does not serve Islamic goals is corrupt. As he put it, "Science is the light, and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interests of humanity." Elaborating on this notion, he argued that Western scientists serve corrupt governments who reject the pure and pious path of Islam and therefore are used as agents for corruption.
Tellingly, Ahmadinejad moved directly from his assault on non-Islamic scientists and regimes to a defense of Iran's nuclear program. The message was clear: Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is done in the name of Islam and therefore it is inherently legitimate. As far as he is concerned, refusing to allow Iran to pursue nuclear weapons is tantamount to an assault on God.
IN HIS address at the UN, Ahmadinejad laid out his case for Islamic supremacy. He claimed that all of the world's problems are the consequence of two things. First, by his reading of history, after the Second World War, "The victors of the war drew the road map for global domination and formulated their policies not on the basis of justice but for ensuring the interests of the victors over the vanquished nations."
The second cause for the world's woes is the world powers' rejection of Islam. As he put it, "The second and more important factor is some big powers' disregard of morals, divine values, the teachings of prophets and instructions by the Almighty God... Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of God!"
Thankfully for Ahmadinejad, this "corrupted" world order will soon be swept away. Either the "corrupted" powers will "return from the path of arrogance and obedience to Satan to the path of faith in God," or "the same calamities that befell the people of the distant past will befall them as well."
Concluding his UN remarks Ahmadinejad pledged, "Without any doubt, the Promised One who is the ultimate Savior... will come. In the company of all believers, justice-seekers and benefactors, he will establish a bright future and fill the world with justice and beauty. This is the promise of God; therefore it will be fulfilled."…
Tiny Hitler plans to nuke the Jews so the “Promised One…will come” and Shia Islam with rule the planet.
Try as I might, I fail to see anything “petty” or “buffoonish” about that.
Proceeding from a false premise to a false conclusion: The Globe and Mail, an ardent multiculti organ, has a lead editorial which, unbeknownst to the editorialist, points to the basic flaw in our national social doctrine—that it makes no distinction between cultural practices, and, in the name of “tolerance” forces us to tolerate the intolerable:
The liberal societies of the West are increasingly faced with cultural practices from abroad that subjugate women. This week, a young Muslim woman who had been beaten and sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant announced through the Ottawa Hospital's sexual-assault unit that she had not been raped, so as to preserve her chances of finding an observant Muslim husband.
The announcement is a disturbing one, even if, on balance, the hospital acted appropriately. Liberal and multicultural societies such as Canada's do not need to declare all cultural ideas equal. Far from it. They need to insist on equality before the law. Treating rape victims as ruined for marriage is a pernicious form of discrimination. It's a life punishment doled out to the victim. Victims fearing this punishment will not come forward for justice. They are therefore denied equal protection of the law.
Why, then, was the hospital's action defensible? Because it would be wrong to put the principle ahead of the individual, and thus make the 24-year-old pay the very price that society wishes to save women from. The hospital's immediate duty is to care for its patients, and therefore to help the woman avoid a serious harm arising from the sexual assault. All the hospital did, in a sense, was correct what appears to have been a factual error in some news reports about the notorious incident, which happened after midnight in a chemistry lab at Carleton University, as the academic year began.
But there's a risk in making such an announcement based on a highly vulnerable victim's say-so. If a victim believes that to be raped is to destroy her life chances, should the onus be on her in effect to press charges? Of course not. The onus is on the police to ascertain the evidence.
When the 24-year-old told the hospital a few days after the assault that she was not raped, the hospital checked with the police, and the police confirmed her story. Still, can that story be trusted? When she arrived at the hospital she was in shock and not fully conscious. Shouldn't the hospital, having done a medical check according to its protocols, know the answer? “When we do a sexual-assault examination, it's very hard to determine if someone was raped. It's not like on CSI,” Christine Baker, a nurse with the Ottawa Hospital's sexual-assault unit, said yesterday. “If I thought she was denying it to save herself, there's no way I would say anything.” Fair enough, but it's a dangerous precedent. Imagine a case where a woman was raped and a hospital or counselling centre declared on the basis of a victim's request that no rape occurred. It would be impossible to bring the culprit fully to justice.
There's another risk, too. The hospital may have inadvertently reinforced the very stigma that causes so much harm to sexual-assault victims. That stigma is linked to a growing problem in Europe. In Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography Infidel, the Somali-born former Dutch politician writes of Somali women in the Netherlands who have been raped and live in fear of their family or clan finding out. “Honour killings” in the West are rare, but they happen.
It is not as if Canada and other liberal societies can claim to be above shaming and stereotyping sexual-assault victims. “Distrust and contempt for the unchaste female accuser was formalized into a set of legal rules unique to rape cases,” a legal observer wrote about past practices in the West. It's fair to say, though, that at least since 1983, when Canada rewrote many of those legal rules, it has made advances toward equal treatment.
This country needs to ensure that all women benefit from these advances. In some Muslim villages, people “despise the person who has been a victim of rape, even if it is their own daughter,” says Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Ottawa Muslim Association. “But it is not like that here. People are more educated.” Canada needs to make sure it does not become like that here…
The editorial wants to have it both ways: criticize a backward, primitive, misogynistic, duplicitous practice, but allow it to continue so as not to “punish” the individual—even though it isn’t the individual’s “rights” which are being upheld here, but the “right” of the group to keep her in line (the essence of multiculturalism, which considers the group over the individual). And, of course, call for “education” and “equal treatment,” hoping to change the group, little realizing that the group has virtually no incentive to adapt to Canada when Canada bends over backwards to adapt to them—and, by social fiat, keeps them locked away (out of sight out of mind?) in ethnic ghettos.
Luxuriating in victimhood; blaming the Jews: An editorial in the Muslim News (U.K.) interprets Tiny Hitler’s mixed reception in the U.S. as a sign that another Muslim country is about to become the “victim” of American “belligerence.”
The war drums are sounding yet again. Needless to say, the threat is being made against more Muslims and the country being named, Iran, is nothing new. The belligerent tone has come not only from the US but now from France following the election of new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is reportedly seeking to improve relations with Washington by filling the vacant role left by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, after his retirement. It also coincides with attempts to blame Iran for the failure of the Iraq war.
The supposed justification goes back more than three years after it was realised that the US-led regime change wars in Afghanistan and Iraq altered the balance of power in the region in favour of Iran. The demand is that Tehran permanently closes down its development of uranium enrichment, even though they are entitled to this development under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is based not on any evidence but mere suspicions - which draw eerily uncanny similarities with the pretext of invading Iraq - that Iran may be seeking to develop a nuclear weapon capability. The discrimination is being made in contrast to 40 years of silence regarding Israel’s proven stockpile of nuclear weapons, which Britain has helped to develop.
The renewed saber-rattling comes after Iran reached an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on a work plan to clear any outstanding issues on its nuclear programme. It led IAEA Secretary General, Mohamed ElBaradei, to warn against talk of war. “There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons,” the Egyptian diplomat said.
Although the IAEA is the UN agency responsible for implementing the NPT treaty, the US supported by the UK made it a political matter by referring Iran’s case to the Security Council, but two years on it has reached a stalemate.
Reports have spoken of Washington running out of patience and intensifying plans for mass air strikes against Iran amid difficulties in reaching a consensus with Russia and China to impose more sanctions. To this end, the Bush Administration is being zealously egged on by Israel, which hopes to be the main beneficiary by boosting its military domination in the region. Yet it appears the US has learnt nothing from the debacle of the Iraq war and its sole reliance on brute force as the world’s only remaining super power. Instead of attempting to clear up the mess Washington has caused in the Middle East, it is threatening to create more havoc…
Not nearly as much havoc as the prospect of mullahs with nukes.
Intrepid truth teller: Alan Dershowitz, debunker of the Mearslimer-Walt blood libel, debunks Tiny Hitler's demented Holocaust fantasies.
The nutty professor(s): Bristling with pride and disdain, and in the grip of the same dementia as Professors Mearshimer and Walt, an Iranian academic pens a condemnatory missive to an American academic. From the Tehran Times:
Mr. Lee Bollinger, The President of Columbia University Dear Sir,
I wish to register my deepest regret in regard to your remarkably discourteous introductory remarks to President Ahmadinejad. Your class act as an arbiter at the University of Columbia was nothing short of disgrace. It lacked professionalism especially given the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad had not even been given the chance to speak. And it clearly undermined your repeatedly made claim that the event upheld free speech. Fortunately, this age, despite all its cruelty and barbarity, is an age of transparency, which is why not even liberals can hide themselves behind their usual covers these days.
What happened yesterday (Monday, Sept. 24) merely displayed utter conceit and petty politics showing who it was that really lacked civility. Trying to humiliate an invited guest, an elected President of a sovereign country, before an international media only reflects the culture of an insular and bigoted society. One wonders if your reaction had anything to do with the donors threatening to withdraw funds from Columbia. It is incredulous that a respected American university chose to turn this meeting into a show trial of Iranian policies. So much for academic integrity and intellectual honesty.
Your crass, ill-mannered and duplicitous greeting of President Ahmadinejad amounted to a crude planned ambush. It is just unbelievable that someone who is simply questioning elements of the U.S. foreign policy and refuses to be a U.S. client should be submitted to such a systematic harassment.
If anybody wanted any proof that the Israeli lobby controls U.S. foreign policy, media, academia, etc., he has found plenty of evidence today. It has been noted that the protests against Iran at the UN and at Columbia were primarily made up of Israeli advocacy groups. Obviously there is nothing wrong with that, but it highlights, among other things, AIPAC’s influence not only on U.S. foreign policy but also in the mainstream academia.
One could be forgiven for thinking that what happened yesterday (Monday, 24) at Columbia University represents the typical mindset of the present American ruling elite: delusionally arrogant, insolent and insensitive to the rest of the world. A sad spectacle since they have become so politically isolated that they are even incapable of learning from their past experience.
It is extremely dishonest and manipulative to call into question the Iranian president’s integrity when in reality it is the USA that is responsible for the misery and death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and total destruction of their country. America is the same country that installed a medieval Shah with its secret Savak police after removing the democratically elected government of Dr. Mossadeq which in turn led to the hundreds of thousands of Iranians being killed and tortured by an Israeli trained police force. Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been subject to countless destabilizing attempts by the U.S. But it has thwarted them all. The 8-year-old war with Iraq, when all Western countries were helping their then good old chum Saddam, failed to bring this country to its knees. We do not think that the current drive towards waging a new war on Iran will stand a better chance of success.
In any case, yesterday (Monday Sept. 24) was an opportunity to show the world that the USA is an open country that will challenge its opponents with appropriate compassion and honest debate. Instead, your decision to gather all Zionist- manufactured anti-Iranian appellations, pile them up on the stage, and throw them shamelessly at your invited guest, will become the black page of’ ignominy in Columbia University’s history.
With regards,
M. J. A. Larijani President Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM)
“It is incredulous”?“All Zionist-manufactured anti-Iranian appellations”? “The black page of ignominy”?
Quite the silver-tongued rhetoritician, that President Larijani—a trait he shares in common with the tyrant to whose rescue he has raced.
A clarification: There are political figures who are described as "clowns," the better to downplay the threat they pose.
Then there's London's mayor Ken Livingstone:
Loony “virtuous” lefties assist jihadis, undermine
Imagination. Creativity. Inspiration. Three words to stir the soul crown the towering windows of Toronto’s flagship Indigo bookstore. At ground level, shoppers pass in and out of wood-framed glass doors, navigating planters and benches intended to create a friendly, front-porch sort of welcome. They take little notice as, on the sidewalk beyond, two women unfurl an off-white canvas banner. Printed on one side are another three words, less poetic perhaps than the store’s motto, but the intended effect is just as moving: Boycott Chapters/Indigo.
No, the protest is not a last-ditch attempt by independent booksellers to draw the literate back into their fold. Rather, the activists—11 have turned up on this Friday in April, the fi rst truly warm day of spring—are taking a page from a much larger book. They are members of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), a network of Palestinian rights, Jewish peace and socialist groups doing their part to promote an international boycott campaign against Israel. They compare themselves to the early voices against South African apartheid, and history, they believe, can repeat itself: If international pressure could help rescue South Africa from apartheid, the same can be true for Israel.
Indigo picketer and Holocaust survivor Suzanne Weiss greets approaching pedestrians at the corner of Bloor and Bay streets, “Have a bookmark.” Weiss is handing out rectangular pieces of cardstock. Printed on each are the logos of Chapters, Indigo and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with the words “Partners in Apartheid” beneath. Flip it over and a short statement explains why Indigo Books and Music is the coalition’s fi rst and most prominent target: Two years ago, the chain’s founder and CEO, Heather Reisman, and her husband, Gerry Schwartz, chairman and CEO of Onex Corporation, launched the Heseg Foundation for lone soldiers. About 6,000 lone soldiers-so-called because they have no family living in Israel-serve in the Israeli army. Heseg (Hebrew for “achievement”) awards 100 scholarships each year to those who, after completing service, want to remain and study in Israel. Reisman and Schwartz donate $3 million a year to the cause.
The impetus behind such generosity? “We are a family,” Schwartz announced to the scholarship’s first recipients in December 2005. “As Jews who live outside of Israel, I can tell you that family extends to so many nations around the globe... and you’re here not just for yourself, or just for the State of Israel, you are here protecting the freedom of Jews around the world.”
Schwartz, Reisman and the lone soldiers share a deep commitment to political Zionism—a variant of the Jewish religious doctrine advocating pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Born of hundreds of years of anti-Semitism, the 19th century doctrine holds that only a nation-state, Israel, can guarantee Jews freedom from persecution. It follows then, that for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, an attack on Israel, whether physical or ideological, is tantamount to an attack on the very right of Jews to exist.
Outside Indigo, the protesters—mostly older Jewish peaceniks and socialists—could not be easily mistaken for anti-Semites. And although one participant, jazz composer Charnie Guettel, says she senses “a turning point in consciousness,” she acknowledges some passersby are contemptuous and hostile. Most people, however, ignore them. Fair enough. Eleven protesters on a downtown Toronto sidewalk doesn’t look much like a revolution, but they are part of a broader movement gaining momentum and commanding attention on the world stage…
For those disinclined to wade through the remainder of this bilge, I can sum it up as follows: a bunch of loathsome lefties/moral solipsists have bought into the fraudelent concept of Palestinan victimhood/Israeli iniquity and want to punish—through boycotts, protests and other measures—those Jews who continue to have chutpah enough to support Israel.
‘Twas ever thus: Jews helping the enemies of Jews do their dirty work.
Tiny's Star champion: Someone who’s as equally off the wall as Rick Salutin—Harpoon Siddiqui. The Toronto Star’s very own revered Order of Canada recipient would no doubt see my missive to the Globe (posted below) as being unduly “alarmist." Like Columbia U's Lee Bollinger, Harpoon wants us to downgrade Tiny Hitler from "evil" to "petty"—a puny, innocuous blowhard:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questions the Holocaust and wants
The city thought that his sinful presence would desecrate the site of 9/11. "The evil has landed," screamed a tabloid. A TV pundit called him "a foul-smelling fruit bat." A councillor likened him to the "snakes slithering through the streets of
The president of
But was the petty politician from
The president of
Yet the
The latter would pave the way for a possible war on Iran (not likely, given the quagmire in Iraq) or the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, its oil installations as well as military and civilian infrastructure (highly likely).
This makes Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, "shudder." The
Demonizing Ahmadinejad fits in this bigger picture. Not all those angry at him want war with
Either he's the fool we think he is or he's playing to his constituency of poor Iranians who he promised economic gains but failed to deliver. Lobbing rhetorical bombs at the
Go back and read everything that holy rollah Khomeini—Tiny Hitler’s mentor and inspiration—had to say on the subject, Harpoon. It’s not a diversion; it’s the main event. And soon enough the mully-bullies will have real nukes to lob along with their rhetorical ones.
Sounds painful: Hillary flip flop on torture inspired after meeting generals--New York Daily News headline.
Youch! I hope she got some physio for that.
Make ‘em laugh: The Globe and Mail’s battiest moonbat, Rick Salutin, insists that, contrary to all appearances and the impression conveyed by the media, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a buffoon. The real buffoon, writes Salutin, is, drum roll, please…Chimpsky McHaliburtonrovecheneyhitler, a.k.a., well, I don't think I have to spell it out for it.
Since I was shocked to find myself agreeing with even a portion of a rootin’-tootin’-Salutin piece, I felt compelled to write the Globe’s editor to tell him:
It isn’t often that I agree with Rick Salutin—the phrase “once in a blue moon” leaps to mind—but I must concur with his assessment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad, the front man for a bunch of brutal, ambitious theocrats who aim to dominate their region and, ultimately, the Muslim world, is definitely not “a buffoon.” I’m prepared to go even further and say there is nothing the least bit “buffoonish” about him. It is comforting to view him that way, however, since it makes his statements about wanting to wipe Israel off the map and the Holocaust and the presence of homosexuals in Iran both being “myths” far easier to
We have been gulled by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s physical appearance—a short man with an ever-present grin (or smirk) on his face—into perceiving him as clownish, and thus, as not all that threatening. But look behind the puckish demeanour and you can see a man who is deadly serious about solving his region’s Jewish “problem”.
An eerily familiar visage, I’d say.
I think Smokey Robinson said it best: Well if there’s a smile on my face/It’s only there tryin’ to fool the public…