...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
It’s the crude, dude: Janet Levy on the American Thinker site says Libya’s black gold has allowed former terror rogue Moo Moo Ghadafi to rehabilitate his image and buy his way onto the UN Security Council:
On Tuesday, the United Nations, with at least tacit U.S. approval, elected the former terrorist state, Libya, to serve a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council. The prospect that Moammar Gaddafi, once the target of U.S. and U.N. sanctions, would participate in the U.N. Security Council decision-making process is part of the charade that relations between Libya and the U.S. are, in the words of Libyan diplomat Giadalla Ettalhi, "back to normal." In truth, the acceptance of oil-rich Libya on the international body charged with maintaining worldwide peace and security, reveals how the need for oil can cleanse even the most heinous of atrocities committed by terrorist states and nullify the suffering of its victims.
With oil and gas prices climbing, Libya's plentiful oil and gas resources, have provided incentives for foreign investments. Energy firms worldwide have been anxious to do business with Libya and the governments of many European countries acted several years earlier to remove economic restrictions placed on Libya because of its past actions. U.S. companies have also pressured the U.S. government to normalize relations to stay apace with their European rivals. The U.S. desire to explore alternative sources for oil and gas may well have influenced the decision to normalize relations and paved the way for Libya to serve on the Security Council.
With Libya on the U.N. Security Council, the stage is truly set for a theater of the absurd. That's because the Security Council is charged with maintaining international peace and security, which Libya has a well-known history of violating. Under the provisions of its charter, the Security Council can investigate any conflict that may lead to international friction and take a full spectrum of actions ranging from recommendations and political pressure to deploying peacekeeping forces or authorizing military action. The council may also choose to institute economic sanctions, sever diplomatic ties or refer cases to the International Criminal Court for arbitration.
Five permanent members sit on the Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- and have veto power over resolutions. Ten temporary members serve for two-year terms. The office of the president, responsible for setting the council's agenda and overseeing crisis situations, rotates monthly among all of the member countries.
Thus, in an abundance of irony, it could potentially fall to Libya to oversee a world crisis, the very country which has been anti-American since 1969 when Gaddafi came to power and which was responsible in 1988 for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 189 Americans. The Lockerbie bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack against the United States until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
As a result, Libya until recently was under U.S. and U.N. sanctions that hindered its ability to develop its energy sector. In 2003, when Libya announced that it would dismantle its program for weapons of mass destruction, the United States and the European Union agreed to restore diplomatic relations. At the time, the Libyan government ratified a series of nominal, human rights treaties.
But these actions were instituted purely for political expediency and didn't reflect the situation on the ground, according to an investigation by Amnesty International, a far left-leaning, non-governmental organization known for selective criticism of human rights violations. Amnesty International found that significant numbers of Libyans were being incarcerated for non-violent political activities and the death penalty was in place for cases of political dissent. Publicly, Colonel Gaddafi denounced capitol punishment and denied human rights violations but, according to Amnesty International, death sentences, unfair trials and the use of torture to extract confessions continued to be reported by Libya's Internal Security Agency…
Who cares if the new Moo Moo’s not all that different from the old Moo Moo, so long as his gushers are flowing.
Trick or treat: In honour of Halloween, here’s an updated version of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” as sung by Mahmoud “Adolf” Ahmadinejad and the Maniacal Mullahs:
I was down at the reactor late one night
When my eyes beheld a wond’rous sight.
For my mahdi from his watery grave did rise
And suddenly to my surprise
He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash,
It was a Shia smash.
He did the mash,
It made a great big splash.
He did the mash.
He did the mahdi mash.
He said, “From the blue Med sea to Tehran’s skyline
I see a lovely vista that’s Judenrein.
Thought I, now’s the time to come again ‘n’
Help you launch that Armageddon.”
He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash
It was a Shia smash.
He did the mash,
It made a great big splash.
He did the mash,
He did the mahdi mash.
The Shias were rockin', all were digging the sounds.
The mullahs were kvelling, baying like hounds.
They’d finally got revenge, you see
For the dirt that was done to their man, Ali.
They played the mash,
They played the mahdi mash.
The mahdi mash
It was a Shia smash
They played the mash.
And they had such a bash.
They played the mash
They played the mahdi mash.
No one was more thrilled than me, 'Madinejad.
‘Cause I knew all along I wasn’t mad.
It’s just that I'd a special job to do—
To usher in the you-know-who.
It's now the mash.
It's now the mahdi mash
The monster mash
And it's a Shia smash
It's now the mash.
It's caught on in a flash
It's now the mash
It's now the mahdi mash
That old apes and pigs thing, again: The speaker of the Palestinian legistlative council uses an all-too familiar reference from the Koran to describe how he and other members of his faith view the Jews.
Personally, I think it's time for Jews to take custody of the whole ape 'n' pig slur--in the same way that African-Americans have taken ownership of the "n" word--and thereby remove its sting. To that end, I'm thinking of creating a line of merchandise--t-shirts, calenders, mugs and stuffed animals--featuring an adorable cartoon ape and pig.
My only quandry: should I call the line "ape 'n' pig" or "pig 'n' ape"?
What gives?: Accused Madrid bombing mastermind acquitted. Even though he had boasted about his role in the terror attack which snuffed out 191 lives, his lawyers successfully argued that he'd been mistranslated.
Looks like a major setback for the War on Terror.
Refugees heart Israel: It’s such an embarrassment when refugees from places like Sudan and Eritrea attempt to bypass Egypt and high-tail it into the Zionist entity. No wonder Egyptian authorities are trying to clamp down on the practice. From the Jerusalem Post:
Egyptian authorities detained eight Eritreans and two Sudanese early Wednesday in two separate incidents as they tried to make their way to Israel, a security official said.
The Eritreans were caught trying to take a boat across the Suez Canal to the Sinai Peninsula, to reach the border with Israel in northern Sinai, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
An Egyptian human trafficker was arrested along with the eight Eritreans, the official said.
In a separate incident, two young Sudanese refugees from the war-torn western Darfur region were arrested early Wednesday as they tried to sneak into Israel south of the official Rafah border crossing point, according to the official.
The Sudanese said they were seeking political asylum in Israel.
Israel estimates that 2,800 people have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt in recent years searching for jobs. Most have come from Africa.
Hmm. Now why do you suppose they’d want to get into Israel, a tiny Jewish nation, when there are so many wonderful Arab and Muslim ones in the region to choose from? Don’t they know that the Zionist entity is ee-vil?
Abdullah’s defenders: Some true believers upset with a report linking Saudi Arabia to extremist literature found in U.K. mosques are dismissing it as “a PR stunt.” From Asian Image:
An Islamic organisation has condemned the opportunist release of a report by the Policy Exchange.
It has been reported agencies linked to the Saudi government have distributed extremist literature to mosques and Islamic centers in Britain.
The Policy Exchange said the material expressed a deep-rooted antipathy toward Western society, calling for violence against enemies of Islam, including women and gays who demand equal rights.
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS)hit back however claiming that whilst the report is an important contribution to the academic literature on Mosques it Britain, it is actually nothing more than a PR stunt aimed to gain publicity on the back of the controversy surrounding the visit of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Faisal Hanjra, spokesman for FOSIS, said, "It is severely reprehensible for any organisation to attempt to gain short-term publicity at the expense of damaging community relations in the UK.
"The Policy Exchange document does nothing more than present single sentences, from often large documents, out of context.
"The report also fails to adequately define the term extremist literature' instead applying this label to anything outside of the authors' own personal realms of social acceptability.
"Finally, the report arrives at the illogical conclusion that this literature is in part responsible for terrorism, something not supported by the actual contents of the report."
He further added, "For the release of a year-long research report to coincide with the arrival of King Abdullah into this country is certainly suspicious…
Not “suspicious.” Propitious.
More than skin deep: Ever wonder why Marxists are so riddled with self-loathing? Well, it could be because their guru, Karl Marx, had really bad skin. From Reuters via the Globe and Mail:
LONDON — Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.
Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands – found mainly in the armpits and groin – become blocked and inflamed.
"In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem," said Dr. Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.
"This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing."
While HS is linked to boil-like lumps, the painful condition also causes more widespread infection, swelling, skin thickening and scarring.
It could also explain a number of Marx's other complaints, not previously linked, such as joint pain and a painful eye condition that often stopped him working.
Dr. Shuster based his diagnosis on an analysis of Marx's extensive correspondence, in which he wrote to friends about his health and described his skin lesions as "curs" and "swine."
"The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day," Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867…
And we have, we have. One can only imagine how different the planet might have been had old Karl been carbuncle-less and blessed with a complexion as smooth as a baby’s behind.
Wahhabi Judenhass: Melanie Phillips is appalled by what she calls the “grovel-fest” now taking place in London. She quotes a post by blogger David Conway, who describes some of the revolting Saudi-produced fare that’s been polluting Arab airwaves:
On May 7, 2002, wearing her customary body-length robe and fashionable head scarf, Doaa Amer -- a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA-TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world … based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – announced to her viewers that she had a special guest. Broadcasting from Egypt, she beg[a]n: “Our report today will be a little different, because our guest is a girl, a Muslim girl, but a true Muslim.”
‘The camera pans slowly down and to the right as Ms Amer greets her guest who turns out to be a small child. [Their conversation goes thus:]
Amer: Peace be upon you.
Child: Allah’s mercy and blessing upon you.
Amer: How old are you?
Child: Three and a half.
Amer: Are you a Muslim?’
Child: Yes
Amer: Are you familiar with the Jews?’
Child: Yes.
Amer: Do you like them?
Child: No
Amer: Why don’t you like them?
Child: Because…
Amer: (prompting): Because they are what?
Child: They’re apes and pigs.
Amer: Because they’re apes and pigs. Who said they are so?
Child: Our God.
Amer: Where did he say this?
Child: In the Koran.
Amer: Right, he said that about them in the Koran…. Did they love our master Mohammed?
Child: No.
Amer: No, what did the Jews do to him?
….
….
Child: There was a Jewish woman who invited the Prophet and his friends. When he asked her, "Did you put poison [in my food]?” she said to him, “Yes.” He asked her, "Why did you do this?" and she replied: “If you are a liar – you will; die and Allah will not protect you: if you speak the truth –Allah will protect you.”
Amer: And our God protected the Prophet Muhammad, of course.
Child: And he said to his friends: “I will kill this lady.”
Amer: Of course, because she put poison in his food, this Jewess.
Child: Oh.
Amer: (speaking directly into the camera):
Basmallah [the girl’s name], Allah be praised, Basmallah, Allah be praised. May our God bless her. No one could wish Allah could give him a more believing girl than she… May Allah bless her and her father and mother. The next generation of children must be true Muslims. We must educate them now while they are still children so that they will be true Muslims.’
‘Shortly before this programme aired on IQRAA-TV, the station’s owner, Prince al-Waleed bin Talil [a Saudi royal] contributed $27 million to a government-organised telethon in Saudi Arabia that raised $109 million for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Saudi King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdallah [now King] each contributed $1 million, with their wives kicking in separate cheques of close to $1 million. …
‘The telethon was hosted by a prominent Saudi government cleric named Sheikh Saad al-Buraik, who took the opportunity of the live television coverage to …[tell] his audience: “I am against American until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment. I am against America even if stone liquefies…. She is the root of all evils and wickedness on Earth… Oh Muslim Ummah, don’t take the Jews and Christians as allies… Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy. Neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take. Legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?”
‘Like the al-Ibrahim brothers, whose Middle East Broadcasting Network aired the telethon, Sheikh al-Buraik is closely tied to Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, the king’s youngest son. The sheikh hosts a regular show on MBC and the government’s Channel One called Religion and Life.’
[Kenneth Timmerman, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), pp. 117-120 passim]
Melanie’s comment: “Just remember this when you look at the pictures of Britain’s Royal Family, Prime Minister and higher establishment bowing and scraping today to the House of Saud.”
Will do, Mel.
Saudi mischief: As the unctuous Wahhabi royal (accompanied by Bush family fave Prince Bandar, no less) continues to be feted by British dhimmis, a new report reveals the malign influence the Saudis continue to exert over U.K. mosques. From Malaysia Sun:
…Meanwhile, new research by think-tank Policy Exchange has found that hate literature calling for jihad, beheading of apostates and stoning of adulterers is freely available in several important mosques in Britain.
The research, published Monday in a report titled 'The Hijacking of British Islam', is based on visits to nearly 100 places of 'important Islamic religious institutions', including leading mosques, in various parts of Britain.
The report has been criticised by Muslim groups who fear that it will further contribute to the spectre of Islamophobia evident in Britain after the Sep 11 terror attack and July 7 London bombings.
The Policy Exchange report said: 'Extremist literature enjoys a potency through its availability in prestigious sites of Islamic religious instruction across the UK. This makes it a major impediment to efforts by Muslims to integrate into mainstream British society.
'On the one hand, the results (of the research) were reassuring: in only a minority of institutions - approximately 25 percent - was radical material found. What is more worrying is that these are among the best-funded and most dynamic institutions in Muslim Britain - some of which are held up as mainstream bodies.
'Many of the institutions featured here have been endowed with official recognition. This has come in the form of official visits from politicians and even members of the Royal Family; provision of funding; 'partnership' associations; or some other seal of approval.
'Much of the material is (thus) infused with a strident sectarianism, in which many Muslims - particularly the very large number of Sufis in this country and around the world - are placed beyond the pale.
'More widely, Muslims are urged to separate themselves from people and things that are not considered Islamic; a separation that is to be mental, emotional, and at times, even physical.
'Western society, in particular, is held to be sinful, corrosive and corrupting for Muslims. Western values - particularly concerning the position and rights of women and in the realm of sexuality generally - are rejected as inimical to Islam.'
Criticising the report, Iqbal Sacranie, a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain said: 'The majority of Muslims will totally dismiss this because it is written by the Policy Exchange, who have an agenda to denigrate the mainstream of Islam in this country.
'If there is any material which falls foul of the law, then the law should take its course. We cannot accept messages of hate - there is zero tolerance on that. But it is irresponsible to target religious texts and take them out of context. These texts can be found not just in mosques but in ordinary bookshops - the report overlooks that.'
The research found that 'most of the extremist literature is published and distributed by agencies linked to the Saudi Arabian government'. It recommended that 'there needs now to be a proper audit of the costs and benefits of the Saudi-UK relationship'.
The report recommended that the hate literature be immediately removed, and that Islamic religious institutions should be subject to greater regulation aimed at establishing a 'gold standard' for genuinely moderate Islam.
The report recommended: 'Islamic organisations to which the 'offending' institutions are currently linked - notably groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) - must categorically repudiate the extremist, separatist and often sectarian material uncovered in this report and exert pressure for change.
'Women in Muslim and other minority communities must have their human rights upheld; consideration should be given to what steps can be taken to ensure this. British Muslim women cannot be consigned to a position of inequality. Nor should the British government fail to act against the oppression of a segment of its population - whether this is 'justified' on religious grounds or otherwise'.
Porous borders: According to Sheila Fraser, Canada’s Auditor General, the nation’s borders are as leaky as a sieve. From the Canadian Press:
OTTAWA - Weaknesses at Canada's border agency allowed many potentially dangerous people and goods to slip into the country earlier this year, says the federal auditor general.
In a report Tuesday, Sheila Fraser said border officers failed to take a closer look at numerous travellers and shipments flagged as possible risks on watch lists.
Overall, the auditor found the Canada Border Services Agency's threat-assessment systems "are not satisfactorily supporting" its efforts to manage entry to the country.
In other chapters of her latest report, Fraser found that the military has failed to validate the medical licences of its doctors and nurses; that government secrets have been allowed to fall into the hands of private contractors who lack security clearances; and that a major native land-claims deal has been shoddily administered.
But the most damning finding in this fall's report to Parliament is the lax security at the border.
Each year, the Canada Border Services Agency's officers allow 96 million people into Canada - tourists, immigrants and refugees, business people and returning Canadians. They also approve entry of more than $400 billion in goods.
The agency uses lookouts, or electronic notifications, based on intelligence information, past customs seizures, immigration violations and national security risks.
The auditor found that an average of 13 per cent of customs lookouts and 21 per cent of immigration lookouts from January to March of this year were not referred for further examination.
The border agency investigated some missed lookouts and has acknowledged that improved training of its officers was necessary, the report says.
"The agency does not have consistent monitoring in place to know the extent to which this is happening and take remedial action."
Agency officials said some lookouts may be missed or admitted to Canada at primary inspection because of incorrect matching of the lookout to a traveller or shipment.
Furthermore, the report says policies and procedures for creating lookouts vary considerably, and the agency is currently developing a new formula.
This would meet a recommendation of the federal inquiry into Maher Arar, the Ottawa engineer shipped to a Syrian prison by the United States after Canada mistakenly labelled him an Islamic extremist.
Fraser said the agency must do spot inspections. "They are focusing all of their inspections now on cases that they identify as high risk, and the only way to really ensure the system is effective is if you do these random checks."
The auditor general also noted that while the agency has created programs intended to speed the passage of low-risk people and goods across the border, these initiatives rely mainly on voluntary compliance at many border points.
Further, an internal agency evaluation recently concluded that limited screening of applicants leaves pre-approval programs potentially vulnerable to infiltration by criminals - a finding with which Fraser agreed.
Fraser also found:
-No electronic document readers at land ports of entry considered high risk.
-The agency could not provide assurance it conducts risk assessments of all air and marine cargo in advance of arrival.
-Border officers see weaknesses in new automated screening systems and therefore continue to rely more on their own analysis and judgment to select shipments for examination.
Fraser said weaknesses in the agency's data prevent it from confirming which risks are most important. "The agency has not established its desired levels of border openness and security and, as a result, cannot know whether it is achieving them."
The agency accepted the auditor's recommendations, adding it faces "considerable resource constraints" as it tries to fulfil its mandate.
In other chapters, Fraser said:
-Secret government information is leaking out to private contractors who do work for Ottawa but have not been given proper security clearances...
Doesn’t exactly inspire a feeling of confidence in the government’s ability to protect us from the bad guys, does it?
The Wheeler version: Carolynne Wheeler, of the MacKinnon-Wheeler tag-team of married Israel-bashers, has a double header in the Globe and Mail. In piece #1 she expounds on the subject of Ehud Olmert’s prostate cancer, and the impact it may or may not have on the upcoming peace blather in Annapolis. She goes on to examine the situation in Gaza, which as everyone knows, pretty well sucks and blows. As Carolynne sees it, the reason why things are so dire is because Israel is up to its old tricks—being mean and bloody-minded for no particular reason. Here, for instance is how she describes Israel’s most recent dealings with Gaza:
…The Israeli government is also intensifying its campaign against Gaza, which it last month declared a hostile entity. On Sunday, officials made good on threats to cut the strip's fuel supply, reducing shipments of benzene and diesel and causing lineups at Gaza's gas stations. Israeli officials have said the cuts will be up to 14 per cent of the regular weekly allotment, while Palestinian officials said shipments were down as much as 50 per cent and likely to affect the fuel supply for Gaza's only power plant.
Israel's Attorney-General told the government yesterday it could not cut electrical power to the Gaza Strip as part of its sanctions against the Hamas-controlled territory, as it had planned to do, although he did approve other measures, Reuters reported.
Israel's supreme court has told the government to explain its planned actions against Gaza. Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz said that the plan to reduce power to Gaza needed further scrutiny because of the possible impact on the population.
The Sufa cargo crossing into Gaza, used for humanitarian shipments of food, fuel and medicines, has also been closed, leaving just one cargo crossing capable of handling about 55 supply trucks a day, down from 100 to 120 daily.
Got that? For some unknown, unmentioned reason, Israel has decided to “intensify its campaign in Gaza” and seems to be antagonistic toward an entire region, which it has declared “a hostile entity.” Why, it’s almost as if, to Wheeler, there’s no Hamas bent on exterminating the Jews of Israel and raining down a relentless volley of mullah-supplied rockets on the folks of the Negev and Sderot; almost as if Israel is acting out of sheer spite.
Wheeler’s second article is equally biased. In this one, her object of sympathy is Fatah, Hamas’s rival over in the West Bank. Stout-hearted men that they are, Fatah higher-ups are doing their level best to restore law and order to the lawless town of Nablus. At the moment, though, it’s unclear if they’ll be able to fulfill their goal since Israel has put up all sorts of roadblocks that are making it well nigh impossible:
…Welcome to Nablus, population 170,000, once known as the Palestinians' economic engine and a cosmopolitan centre of architecture and poetry. Today it's a city with an economy largely cut off by Israeli checkpoints and a population demoralized by unemployment; it is also subject to frequent raids by Israeli soldiers, who see it as a hotbed of terrorism.
Now, with crime rates skyrocketing, gunfire in the streets and vigilante justice rampant, Nablus poses a critical test for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who is under heavy pressure to prove that his forces are in control of the West Bank ahead of an anticipated peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next month.
In the four months since Hamas wrested control of Gaza, Mr. Abbas's forces have clamped down on Islamist movements in the West Bank; his Preventative Security troops have been criticized by Amnesty International for arresting more than 1,000 suspected Hamas members, many of whom Amnesty said were tortured in prison.
But that campaign has now been extended to a general effort to impose law and order, starting here, by cracking down on car theft, armed robberies and other gangland-style crimes. For the first time since most people can remember, the region's estimated 3,000 police officers are flagging cars, checking documents, seizing weapons and arresting wanted men.
"We have to create a positive atmosphere for our political leaders," said new Nablus police chief Colonel Ahmad Sharkawi, a long-time associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who was installed here shortly after Hamas's takeover of Gaza.
"We had to start with Nablus ... because we believe strongly that if Nablus is under control, this will be positively reflected in other places," he said.
To boost their efforts, the U.S. security co-ordinator for the Palestinians, Keith Dayton, visited Nablus last week, calling the security plan a "first real test" for a future Palestinian state.
But the task ahead is daunting: Nablus is a strong base for the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent organization that claimed full or shared responsibility for 22 suicide attacks against Israeli targets between 2001 and 2006.
There are also dozens of criminal gangs and family clans, all of them having amassed large quantities of guns.
Already there are stumbling blocks. Israel granted approval more than a month ago for the deployment of an additional 500 police officers in Nablus to help bring its chaotic streets under control. But their arrival, now expected within the next 10 days, has been delayed in part by a shortage of equipment.
More alarming, the optimism surrounding a program of amnesty for nearly 200 men wanted by Israel, mainly gunmen with the Martyrs Brigades, is also fading. The program, announced in July to much fanfare, required each man to surrender his weapons and remain in informal Palestinian Authority custody for three months on a promise of being removed from an Israeli wanted list.
But three months on, an al-Aqsa member waiting furtively on a street corner for a journalist says he is unconvinced that his name has been cleared, and is again packing a pistol on his hip. He is not the only one to rearm, he said.
"For the last three months we have committed ourselves to law and order, we have not used our weapons in any way. And Israel has not responded," said the gunman, identifying himself only as Sari…
Still, these first steps are giving the ordinary residents of Nablus, who have dared not stir out of doors at night for fear of being robbed or shot, hope that some sense of normalcy will return.
Hey, who doesn’t want that, Sari?
Now, I’m no ace reporter for Canada’s newspaper of record, but even I can see that Sari is taking the credulous Ms. Wheeler, who’s already predisposed to think ill of Israel, for a ride in the dumb dhimmi bus. Does she really believe that this “gunman” (Wheeler-speak for “terrorist”) has been sitting around for three months waiting for the Jews to take him off some list? I don’t think so. More likely he picked up a gun again at the first opportunity, as resolved as ever to kill as many Jews as is humanly possible so that the map can be restored to its pristine, pre-Israel condition.
Rolling out the red carpet for an oily royal: A blistering exposé of British hypocrisy in—of all places—lefty rag the Independent:
This week, Gordon Brown and David Cameron will welcome the leader of one of the world's most vicious dictatorships to Britain. Both men will embrace King Abdullah al-Saud, who heads a regime in which, according to Amnesty International, "Fear and secrecy permeate every aspect of life. Every day the most fundamental human rights of people in Saudi Arabia are being violated."
In his Labour Party conference speech last month, the Prime Minister declared that he would oppose dictatorship everywhere: "The message should go out to anyone facing persecution from Burma to Zimbabwe ... human rights are universal." He has refused to even attend the same summit as the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, on the grounds that "there is no freedom in Zimbabwe, and there is widespread torture and mass intimidation of the political opposition." David Cameron has also just promised to put "human rights" at the heart of his "foreign policy vision".
Yet both political leaders refuse to make a commitment to even mention human rights to the king. Instead, he will ride in a golden carriage with the Queen, and be guest of honour at a Buckingham Palace banquet. It is the start of a three-day state visit, funded by the British taxpayer. The decision to lavish large sums and the rare prestige of a state visit on King Abdullah has attracted severe criticism in Westminster. The Liberal Democrats' acting leader, Vincent Cable, has refused to attend the banquet. The Labour MP John McDonnell said: "We are feting this man because Saudi Arabia controls 25 per cent of the world's oil, and because we sell him billions of pounds' worth of weapons. It is an insult to everything Britain stands for to put these geopolitical concerns ahead of the rights of women, trade unionists and all Saudi people."
While King Abdullah is cheered by our political leaders, many of his victims will be protesting outside. Sandy Mitchell, 52, went to Saudi Arabia to work as an anaesthetic technician at a hospital in Riyadh more than a decade ago – and got a rare outsider's glimpse into how the king maintains his power. He explains: "One day in 2000 I was getting out of my car at the hospital when I was pounced on. I was battered to the ground, a hood was put over my head, and they manacled my hands and feet. I thought – I'm being kidnapped."
He woke up in the Madhethe interrogation centre, where the Saudi police demanded he confess to being a British spy ordered to plant bombs in the country. He told then the bombs were obviously the work of Saudi Islamists – a view now accepted to be true – so they hung him upside down and began to beat his feet and buttocks with an axe handle for eight days. All the while, he could hear his friend Bill Sampson being gang-raped in the next room.
Mr Mitchell was eventually released after 32 months, when he was swapped for several Saudi citizens being held in Guantanamo Bay. But he warns: "The torture chambers in Saudi weren't created for me. These rooms were like a human abattoir. There was years' worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean. It was all over the walls. We were lucky we survived, but there are countless Saudi people who we never hear about who don't survive those chambers." Mr Mitchell will be joined at the protests by many refugees who have narrowly escaped this fate, including the trade unionist Yahya al-Faifi.
But life in Saudi Arabia is worst of all for women. While King Abdullah offers praise for Britain's female head of state, in his country all women are kept in effect under house arrest. They are banned from driving, from leaving the house without a male guardian, even in a medical emergency, or from holding a passport. Whenever women try to struggle free from these rules, the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" – a posse of uniformed thugs who stalk the streets – beat them with batons.
There was a rare glimpse into how this system of gender apartheid works last year when a female Saudi writer called Badria al-Bisher authored a plea for change. She wrote: "Imagine being a woman, and being subject to harassment, beating, or murder, then when your picture is published in local newspapers, along with the criminals' in all their murderousness, there will still be those who ask if you, the victim, were veiled ... Imagine being a woman whose nose, arms, and legs are now broken by your husband, and when you submit a complaint to a judge saying: He beats me! He'd casually reply by saying: Yes? What else? ... Imagine being a woman, and this "guardian" of yours is your 15-year-old son."
The website on which this appeal appeared has since been shut down. The House of Saud's dysfunctions are not contained within the Arabian peninsula; they are burning their way out across the world – and backfiring on Britain.
In order to appease their own internal Wahabbi-Islamist extremists, the Saudi dictatorship is handing them tens of billions of oil-dollars to promote their vision across the globe. As the dissident ex-CIA agent Robert Baer says: "Never forget that it is the al-Saud who sign the cheques for these extreme mosque schools all over the world. It's hush money to divert Muslims' attention from the [activities of] the al-Saud [royal family]." The Saudi dictatorship is slowly poisoning global Islam, ensuring the most austere and fanatical desert vision liquidates the softer, more mystical strands – and we are already seeing this backfire on to the streets of London and New York.
Privately, government ministers claim King Abdullah is slowly reforming the kingdom. They contrast him to the Interior Minister, Naif al-Saud, who blames the September 11 attacks on the Israeli security services and is even more hard line. But Human Rights Watch says that under King Abdullah, "reform has been more cosmetic than real". For example, two of the country's leading liberal reformists, Abdullah and Isa al-Hamid, are currently awaiting trial. Their "crime" was to support a totally peaceful protest organised by mothers of men who have been seized without explanation by the Saudi state and held for years, without contact, lawyers or trial. Their names will not be uttered by Brown or Cameron this week.
The truth is that the British Government – and all Western societies – are so addicted to Saudi Arabia's oil that they feel they can't speak back. They are terrified of seeing the petrol that lubricates our economy (or the arms deals that butter it) being turned off, as it was in 1973 oil crisis. It is only by making a rapid transition away from our dependence on fossil fuels that this depraved relationship with a tyranny can be unpicked – but the Government shows no sign of doing this, preferring to stick to the old exchange of sycophancy, arms deals and crude oil.
As The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it: "Addicts don't tell the truth to their dealers." That's why this week the torturer will be inside Buckingham Palace, and his victims left outside, alone…
You know things are getting way too surreal when the wife of the president who’s spearheading the War on Terror dons a hijab, while the Independent offers clarity on the subject of the Wahhabis.
Humaniterrorism: It may have resulted in a hung jury, but as Steve Emerson writes, the trial of the Holy Land Foundation clearly exposed the organization’s terrorist roots. From the New York Post:
October 29, 2007 -- THE trial of four key figures with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended last week with a hung jury. Holy Land's defenders and allies are trumpeting the mistrial as a huge victory. Yet the defendants remain in legal jeopardy, with a new trial almost assured - and the prosecution has, at a minimum, closed a lucrative funding channel for the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
Prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas deserve praise for bringing this case in the first place. The trial record conclusively demonstrated that Holy Land and several of its unindicted co-conspirators - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - grew out of Hamas. Moreover, it showed that they spent the better part of 15 years deceiving government agencies and the media, hiding their true goals under a mask of work for charity and civil rights.
To be sure, the mistrial was portrayed as another in a series of setbacks for the government's anti-terror prosecution strategy. Notably, several jurors seemed to discount the testimony of an Israeli security expert, testifying under an assumed name, apparently on the belief that Israelis cannot be trusted on Palestinian matters.
Some jurors may even have bought the defense argument that anti-Israel terror isn't truly terrorism, but merely "resisting the occupation." One juror told the Dallas Morning News of his difficulty in describing Hamas as a terrorist group, stating, "Part of it does terrorist acts, but it's a political movement. It's an uprising."
The highly technical nature of some evidence likely also played a role. Whatever the reasons, prosecutors failed to persuade the jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Holy Land and its officials deliberately routed money to Hamas through a set of Palestinian charities. But the jury was also unable to fully exonerate the defendants, and the government has announced its intent to retry the case.
Moreover, the trial uncovered numerous ugly secrets of Holy Land and its leaders. For starters, it exposed as lies their oft-made claims to not be supporting Hamas. The evidence clearly linked Holy Land and CAIR to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the hard-line Egyptian Islamist umbrella group and godfather of every Sunni terrorist group from Hamas to al Qaeda…
Knight moves: Here’s Claudia Rosett, deliciously scathing, on the subject of the benighted Kofi Annan receiving a knighthood.
Yup, you read correctly. The silly-ass Brits up and knighted the blighter:
Yes, in the giddy afterlife of his departure from the UN Executive Suite, Kofi Annan has now received an honorary knighthood. In a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace, he was made an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. We are at least spared the prospect of referring to him as “Sir Kofi.” Unlike Annan’s former deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, who is now both “Sir” and “Lord,” it seems that Annan, not being British, is not entitled to be a “Sir.”
But honestly, who can keep up? Regardless of performance, UN high officials — past and present — seem to move these days through an endless shower of prizes and awards, Nobels and knighthoods, accolades and directorships (Annan has also just joined the board of Ted Turner’s UN Foundation).
Why? Annan by the account of the UN’s own investigation into Oil-for-Food turned in a substandard performance in his administration of the biggest relief program the UN had ever run — failing to blow the whistle on a global gala of corruption that reached multi-billion dollar proportions on his watch (and was reaching its peak right about the time he accepted his 2001 Nobel Prize). Annan failed to acknowledge his own responsibilities, failed to exercise adequate oversight when questions were raised about the UN-related business activities of his own son, and in a series of so-called sweeping “reforms” during his decade in the executive suite, he failed abysmally to reform the UN — bequeathing his successor a minefield of scandals still going off, and leaving U.S. federal prosecutors to sift through assorted cases of UN-related bribery, money-laundering and fraud which inadequate UN oversight and poor management had (to put it generously) failed to stop.
Were there awards for such behavior as bureaucratic passivity in the face of genocide (Annan as head of peacekeeping during the Rwanda slaughter), or hypocrisy in lecturing the world on good governance (Annan’s “Global Compact”), or evasion and obfuscation (how did the family of Kofi Annan’s brother end up with the lease on Kofi’s spacious old NY-state-taxpayer-subsidized apartment?), there might be arguments for an endless cascade of trophies. That might sound less desirable than the current bonanza of decorations and awards, but the way these UN door prizes keep piling up regardless, I’m not sure the prize-winners, or for that matter, the prize-givers, could tell the difference. By now, it’s all part of the ritual.
Idiotic confab: Melanie Phillips weighs in on the assininity of Annapolis:
…So much is dismally obvious from the most casual acquaintance with the facts of this conflict over the decades. Yet the Bush administration, Europe, Britain and Olmert himself (to what extent this is because he is under the American cosh is unclear) insist on behaving as if Fatah can and will make the peace. While they persist with this lethal fantasy, they guarantee the persistence of the conflict. By ignoring the fact that Abbas has not complied with one single precondition for negotiations laid down in the ‘road map’, namely that he must dismantle the infrastructure of terror and indeed has refused point blank to combat Hamas, they only ensure that terror will grow.
This is not, as they imply, a fight between two parties equally responsible for a terrible conflict. It is a war to exterminate the Jewish state that is being waged by Arabs and Islamists with differing strategies and agendas on the same continuum of annihilation – and with not one single credible interlocutor on their side who genuinely wants to live in peace with Israel. The western refusal to acknowledge this inconvenient truth gives this conflict its surreal dimension, in which a country that has been under exterminatory attack for the past six decades is expected to make reparations to its assailants and reward them with a state of their own even while they continue with their war against it; to provide food, power and other supplies to its attackers in Gaza in order that they can continue their murderous assault upon it; and to treat a leader who refuses to stop the war as an apostle of peace simply because no-one can think of a better idea.
Well here’s a better idea – fight and defeat terror and aggression by all possible means, economic, political, diplomatic and military, and exclude all those who promote it from the community of civilised nations until they renounce it forever. The alternative approach – appeasement – not only doesn't work but it ensures that the violence and aggression will only increase. As has happened everywhere this doctrine has prevailed.
This above all else is the reason why the Israel/Arab conflict seems to resist all attempts to bring it to an end. It is because, from the early years of the last century ownwards, the western world has consistently shown that it is all too willing to give terror its victory.
Once again the Jews are left to chirp furiously in the coal mine as the forces of darkness get set to take down the entire Western world.