...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Alphabetic review: My favourite political cartoonist, the National Post’s Gary Clement, has an amusing 2007 A-Z that takes up nearly the entire front page of today’s paper. It inspired me to have my own alphabetic go at the year that ends at the stroke of midnight:
A is for Annapolis, which was supposed to be dramatic.
B is for Bush, who’s become so “pragmatic.”
C is for Condi, who hasn’t got a clue.
D is for democracy—for me and for you.
E is for effective—what the War of Ideas being waged against us has been.
F is for Foggy Bottom, where bad thinking is alive and well, and which you can always count on to come up with some loopy, dhimmified “spin.”
G is for Gitmo, where some zanies are still imprisoned.
H is for hidden—what Conservative P.M. Stephen Harper’s agenda was supposed to be, but clearly isn’t.
I is for Israel, the despised ‘Zionist entity.’
J is for Jerusalem, at the core of Jewish identity.
K is for ka-ching, the sound of Abbas counting up his mega-takings.
L is for lucrative, as in “it’s lucrative to be a two-time loser, so long as you’re willing to play along with the charade that peace is something you’re making.”
M is for mullahs, Iran’s ruling “clarse.”
N is for the NIE report, which, if there’s any justice, should be inserted—very slowly—up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s arse.
O is for Obama, Oprah’s beamish boy.
P is for Pakistan, which the religious zanies are attempting to destroy.
Q is for Queen Elizabeth. I’m kind of fond of the old broad.
R is for reality. If people finally managed to grasp it, wouldn’t it be odd?
S is for superpower, what the jihadists long to destroy and hope to become.
T is for the truth. It’s there if you care to see it, old chum.
U is for “Umbrella,” that unbearable, hiccoughing Rhianna hit.
V is for Viagra, the subject all the infernal SPAM, which, even with a filter, somehow manages to get through and makes me want to spit.
W is for Wahhabis, who want to make us “submit.”
X is for X-ray—of the late Benazir Bhutto’s skull. CSI Islamabad (for those who care to see it).
Y is for yesterday, what the jihadists hope to turn back the clock to.
Z is for zanies—and all the zany places (Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Up-the-Wazooistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) where zanies come from and like to flock to.
And with that, I bid you all ta-ta until 2008!
Rampant absurdity: An editorial in the Jerusalem Post lashes out at Condi Rice’s absurd analogies and the international community’s ridiculous backlash against the “checkpoints” which save Israeli lives:
The story of the murder of Ahikam Amichai and David Rubin, two off-duty soldiers on a hike, is a reminder of the bloodthirstiness of our enemies. It is a story of terrorists who look for any opportunity to kill Jews, regardless of who or where they are.
As it happens, Amichai and Rubin were soldiers, but there is no reason to doubt that the Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists who killed them would have been equally eager to kill Israeli civilians, as well.
It is this context that a reported comment from a closed meeting at Annapolis comes to mind: "Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
But, according to the Washington Post, Rice's recollections as a African-American child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, also made her understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.
"I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," she said. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness... There is pain on both sides. This has gone on too long."
At first glance, Rice's reported ecumenical empathy may seem entirely natural and appropriate for America's top diplomat. Indeed, empathy for the suffering on both sides of a conflict is warranted. But a second moment's thought reveals part of Rice's comparison to be terribly misplaced and no guide for policy.
Just imagine, for example, that Rice were to express even the faintest degree of understanding for the barbaric killing of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, as being the result of "humiliation and powerlessness." Plainly, that would be absurd and unconscionable. But so, too, is to suggest that checkpoints cause terrorism, rather than that terrorism necessitates checkpoints.
Checkpoints, the security fence and targeted killings are all security measures that some in the West consider humanitarian atrocities and have even branded as "apartheid." The Russian foreign minister, displaying just one of his government's disqualifications for any moderating role, recently called Gaza a "gigantic prison."
It is extremely disturbing that Rice, even in the context of "balanced" sympathy for Israelis, would pile on to this libel of Israel by injecting a racial element into her criticism of such security measures.
What Rice should be saying is that Palestinian terrorism victimizes both sides: Israelis directly and Palestinians indirectly, but necessitates defensive Israeli actions that would automatically cease if terrorism were to end.
If there is analogy to darker days in the American South, it is to the fear that African-Americans had of being lynched if caught alone in the wrong place, and to the complete lack of confidence that local authorities, if they bothered to catch the killers, would bring them to justice.
While the Palestinian Authority has claimed to have arrested suspects in this latest murder case, we have seen how this revolving door works. What credibility do such arrests have, moreover, when the same PA leadership bitterly condemns Israel for killing terrorist kingpins in Gaza, issues posters of Palestine encompassing all of Israel, and continues to broadcast songs describing Israeli cities such as Haifa, Acre and Jaffa as part of "Palestine?"
Either the Palestinians are struggling to eliminate Israel, or to build a state alongside Israel. How is Rice encouraging the Palestinians to build rather than destroy when she paints Israeli security measures as "racist?"
There is a way to empathize with both sides without resorting to libel against Israel. President George W. Bush did so constructively in his famous speech calling for a new Palestinian leadership in June 2002: "I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people," he said. "For decades, you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict. Your interests have been held hostage to a comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come, as your lives get worse year by year. You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy. You deserve a life of hope for your children."
Israel is more than ready to do its part to fulfill this vision. The international community has pledged billions to pay for it. What is necessary is to stop helping the Palestinian leadership make excuses for not doing its part.
Stop helping it? How can they do that when they keep propping up that sly fox/excuse-maker Mahmoud Abbas by sending him gazillions in jizya?
Totalitarian blow job: President (Ahmadinejad) felicitates Sudan on National Day.
Oh, wait. He's felicitating Castro, too.
Poor deer: Poor Bilawal Bhutto. Thrust into the international spotlight at far too tender an age—he’s a wet-behind-the-ears 19—he has the stunned expression of a Bambi caught in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck. (Which is, in fact, exactly what he is.)
Be afraid. Be very afraid: Reza Aslan urges us to be wary of clueless wishful thinkers—like the Democrats’ clean favored and imperially slim presidential contender, Barack Obama. From the Washington Post (link via Martin Kramer):
Every time I hear about how Sen. Barack Obama is going to "re-brand" America's image in the Middle East, I can't help but think about Jimmy Carter's toast.
When the idealistic Democrat came to Iran in 1977 to ring in the new year with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country's much-despised despot, throngs of young, hopeful Iranians lined the streets to welcome the new American president. After eight years of the Nixon and Ford administrations' blind support for the shah's brutal regime, Iranians thrilled to Carter's promise to re-brand America's image abroad by focusing on human rights. That call even let many moderate, middle-class Iranians dare to hope that they might ward off the popular revolution everyone knew was coming. But at that historic New Year's dinner, Carter surprised everyone. In a shocking display of ignorance about the precarious political situation in Iran, he toasted the shah for transforming the country into "an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world." With those words, Carter unwittingly lit the match of revolution.
It's just this sort of blunder -- naive, well-meaning, amateurish, convinced that everyone understands the goodness of U.S. intentions -- that worries me again these days. That's because a curious and dangerous consensus seems to be forming among the chattering classes, on both the left and the right, that what the United States needs in these troubling times is not knowledge and experience but a "fresh face" with an "intuitive sense of the world," and that the mere act of electing Obama will put us on the path to winning the so-called war on terror.
The argument usually goes something like this: Imagine that a young Muslim boy in, say, Egypt, is watching television when suddenly he sees this black man -- the grandson of a Kenyan Muslim, no less! -- who spent a small part of his childhood in Indonesia, taking the oath of office as president of the United States. Suddenly, the boy realizes that the United States is not the demonic, anti-Islamic place he's always been told it was. Meanwhile, all around the Muslim world, other young would-be jihadists have a similar epiphany. "Maybe Osama bin Laden is wrong," they think. "Maybe America is not so bad after all."…
Mind you, Republican wishful thinkers—like George W. Bush and his campaign to win “hearts and minds” by sending Karen Hughes galumphing across the Mideast with all the finesse of an elephant suffering from lumbago—haven’t done a whole lot better in that department.
Word to the un-wised up: it's not about "re-branding" the U.S. It's about "de-fanging" the jihadists.
The bravest woman in Canada : Her name is Homa Arjomand. She’s the Iranian-born woman who spearheaded the anti-sharia campaign that prevented the Ontario government from giving legal teeth to Islamic law. She has put herself in the crosshairs of all the zanies who don’t like uppity women or critics of sharia, and who would no doubt like her to keep her mouth shut. Here she is being interviewed by FrontPage magazine:
FP: You are originally from Iran . Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you ened up leaving Iran ?
Arjomand: I was born and raised in Iran . At the age of 17, I started my social/political activities with a group of medical students and became a dissident against the Islamic regime. I studied in England with the sponsorship of the National Iranian Oil Company. I returned back to Iran and worked as a teacher in various colleges and universities.
In the winter of 1989, I fled Iran through the mountains because my life was endangered by the Islamic Regime. I have lived in Canada since 1990 and have attended and organized countless meetings, international conferences, panel discussions and forums on issues related to women’s, children’s and gay and lesbian rights. I did many interviews with leading newspapers and TV programs in Europe and North America defending secularism.
When the Ontario Arbitration Act allowed family disputes to be resolved by faith-based arbitrations, as an advocator of secularism I formed the International Campaign against Sharia Court in Canada to oppose Sharia Court and the restrictions that political Islam was imposing on women and children and all other faith-based arbitration.
In Toronto, I ran a social talk show on Rogers Cable which dealt with such issues as children’s rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights and elder abuse. Right now I am working as transitional counselor for women experiencing domestic violence.
FP: Tell us about the International Campaign against Sharia Court in Canada .
Arjomand: While living in Iran I saw the rise of political Islam and with it the application of Sharia law.
The rise of Political Islam pushed back the women’s liberation movement in Iran and lowered the standards of that society by legalizing gender apartheid and by enforcing religious family laws that openly discriminate against women and children.
As the power of political Islam grew in Iran , I witnessed the execution of all my fellow activists for their belief and work in human and women’s rights issues in Iran .
I know for a fact that discrimination and gender-based persecution in areas of marriage, divorce, child custody and so on are reasons why many women flee the societies which are ruled by Political Islam and seek refuge in Canada and the West.
For the past 12 years I have worked as a transitional counselor for abused women in Canada . Many of my clients come from so-called “Muslim communities.” I help these women and children to escape abusive and often dangerous family situations and to start a new life in a safe and secure home.
In my work I often see the unfair treatment of women and children when they use faith-based arbitration. Most of these women receive very little in the way of financial support and often have no right to see their children. Sometimes after a divorce, the father will send his children -- particularly the girls -- back to his home country to be raised by a family member and then push them to marry at a very young age even though they are Canadian Citizens.
On October 23rd, 2003 , Mr. Syed Mumtaz Ali, President of the Canadian Society of Muslims, announced the opening of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice. In his announcement, Mr. Ali said that to be a ‘good Muslim’, you must use Sharia law for family legal matters. This political statement was not only coercive but also a direct threat to devout Muslims who prefer to use Canadian laws.
Mr. Ali’s statement shocked me because his proposal had nothing to do with someone’s personal belief; it was in fact very political. He claimed his legal authority was based on Ontario law. Through my work as a transitional counselor, I was well aware that faith-based arbitrations were occurring. However, I had wrongly assumed it was being practiced illegally, behind closed doors.
At the time I did not believe that Canada would permit arbitration of family legal matters based on religious laws. However, when I investigated further, I discovered that in the Arbitration Act of 1991, Article 32, Conflict of Laws, did indeed permit family arbitrations to be based on religious laws. This discovery saddened and worried me and other activists. To us, as experienced defenders of women and children’s rights, the Arbitration Act of 1991 provided a green light for political Islam to widen its reach and tighten its grip on the lives of Muslims living in Canada . We felt it was our duty to inform the Canadian public of this threat to their freedoms.
All of us were motivated by a common concern that political Islam was trying to expand in Canada by promoting the use of family arbitrations based on Sharia law. We were sure that the rise of Sharia court in Canada was not just a coincident. It was part of a global move of political Islam.
Our campaign started in Toronto on October 30th, 2003 with a handful of supporters, and today it has grown to a coalition of 183 organizations from 14 countries with over a thousand activists, who volunteer their time and skills.
FP: Your thoughts on the recent tragic honor killing of Aqsa Parvez?
Arjomand: Aqsa Parvez is obviously another victim of honor killing. She has been tried and sentenced to death by her family’s belief, for not honoring the backward culture and traditions which are promoted and guarded by religious movements -- in particular Islamic movement globally.
Honor killing is a punishment for the women who act not according to the religion, tradition and culture imposed on them. To be more precise it is a punishment for the ones who desire to run their own lifestyle and choose their own partner. The victims are women and young girls who have thirst to be free and are not willing to compromise for less than a modern and humane life style.
The death of Aqsa Parvez at the age of 16 is just a tip of the iceberg in Canada , where respect of backward cultures and religions comes before women’s and children’s rights, where cultural ghettoes have become an ideal heaven to crush any desire in women to be free.
In the case of Aqsa Parvez, a brave girl who put herself at the forefront of the struggle for a well deserved human life, the Islamic groups that promote Islamic law and Islamic schools and are looking for more shares in power should be held responsible the most. They are the ones who push for enclosed and regressive communities in the heart of Canada and have created little Irans , Afghanistans , Somalias and Pakistans . They are the ones to blame for convincing families and individuals to accept the barbaric rules and regulations, and for not having any mercy for their own children and family members.
This cruelty to our children and women should not be tolerated and must be condemned strongly. Harsh punishment must be considered for those who abuse or victimize children and women under so-called Islamic action.
FP: What is the nature of the Islamic regime in Iran ?
Arjomand: The Islamic regime of Iran by nature is Islamic based on Islamic ideology. It is well known as anti-freedom, anti–women and anti-secularism. Its brutal laws represent anti-modernism and anti all progressive social values. This regime is founded on the principles of terror, imprisonment, torture, execution, and stoning.
FP: Share with us some more of your thoughts on political Islam.
Arjomand: Political Islam as a movement is very active in politics and is after its own state and its share of power. Other aspects such as culture and laws serve its political desire and its political needs. This movement rides on the mass of people who are oppressed and isolated. They are the ones who are out of patience with discrimination and oppression and have no hope for social improvement by parties in power and have no hope for modern and progressive alternatives. This movement appears as anti-Western, not necessarily anti-‘western government’, but rather anti ‘western values and standards'. It is misogynistic and goes against modernism. It is extremely anti-secular.
This is a movement that will not hesitate to do anything in order to push back its oppositions and gain recognition by the states in the West. This is sometimes done through terrorizing people by implanting bombs in the busiest streets, cinemas, subway stations, hospitals and schools. This creates a parallel power structure within the surrounding societies. This movement will do anything to penetrate the Legal system, whether it uses a bad piece of legislation such as the Ontario Arbitration Act 1991 or by taking the law into its own hands by imposing a completely different structure of human relations within society. This is done by removing civic culture where citizens are free and equal and replacing it with ethics laid down in Sharia.
This movement has no actual economic or social plan, but it is aware that any form of democracy in countries such as Iran , Iraq , Pakistan and Egypt would end up in a mass secular uprising and the growth of labor movements. Even in Saudi Arabia no Sheik can survive more than a few days if true democracy were allowed to exist…
That’s why the Wahhabis are doing their utmost to subvert democracy around the world, funding, among other anti-freedom endeavours, what Walid Phares calls The War of Ideas. The aim: to “restore” the caliphate and establish the primacy of Allah’s law world-wide.
For 2008, the goal of all those who love freedom and bristle at the thought of having to live under the yoke of totalitarian sharia: find some way to break through the Salafis’ smoke and mirrors and our own social doctrine of multiculturalism which helps keep it in place (the self-loathing and self-abnegation at the core of the environmental movement also gives it a boost) and get out the message to as many people as possible. That’s the only shot we have at turning back the tide (more like a tsunami) that threatens to wash us away.
A very Happy and Free New Year to all!
The Academic jihad: I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard someone comment about Israel’s pathetic and inadequate “P.R.” If only the Jews, who, after all are supposed to be so clever, could figure out a way to make Israel “look good” in the media and more effectively make its case, the problems, supposedly, would melt away. (The Canada Israel Committee apparently buys this idea because it emails me an intriguing Israeli achievement on a regular basis—part of its campaign to persuade people to like Israel because it does such good things.)
How naïve these P.R.-advocates are. As Walid Phares writes in The War of Ideas, Israel hasn’t stood a chance against the Wahabi oil dollars, which have essentially bought up great swaths of Western academia, thus turning it into the whore of the jihad:
From the early 1990s, considerable Wahabi money was made available for the “academic jihad.” Both government and independent emirs offered money to be invested in the West to “teach about Islam, correct the image of it, and better explain the real problems in the Middle East.” There benign initial offers couldn’t be refused by academic institutions and think tanks hungry to better educate students and better inform them public about this complex region of the world, form which many civilizations emerged. At first sight, the “nice,” philanthropic packaging of these “grants,” in an environment stripped of the capacity to see through the ruse, enabled the subtle assault to penetrate defences smoothly. From coast to coast in North America, and from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, a wave of oil funding hit university after university, college after college, and research center after research center, as well as public libraries, museums, and other places of learning. The offers were coated as strictly “academic”—neutral, balanced, and inclusive. On the donor end, however, the objectives were fully ideological: further the cause of Islam as they envisioned it, support the Palestinian cause as the sole issue in the Middle East, and plant the seeds of the concept of the illegitimate West. This real agenda by the donors merged with the anti-American, anti-Western, and in some cases anti-Semitic elements of the extreme left and extreme right in America and other Western societies.
That mention of Wahabi money infiltrating libraries goes a long way toward explaining why, not long after 9/11, I happened upon a little video gem in the kiddie section of my local library. There, among the Disney flicks and Barney the Dinosaur tapes was a title that leapt out at me because it seemed so out of place. Its title: Osama bin Laden, a non-threating profile. I was able to trace the film back to an outfit in Boulder, Colorado. Run by former denizens of Hollywood, Bunny and Norman Strasser, the company seemed quite legit, producing films for the likes of Shell Oil and other corporate stars. I had a mostly friendly email exchange with Bunny at the time, but she would never reveal who had commissioned such a bizarrely-titled film (which, fulfilling its non-threatening mandate, made Osama look like a Muslim Robin Hood). At the time I had a hunch that Wahabis might have been involved; I have seen no reason, in the ensuing years, to amend my initial assumption.
Steyn on the "line": From NRO:
It’s worth noting that Muslims next door in India are antipathetic to jihad. Yet they are ethnically and religiously indistinguishable from the fellows in Islamabad wiring up one-year old babies as unwitting suicide bombers. The only reason one’s an Indian and the other’s a Pakistani is because of where some British cartographer decided to draw the line in 1947. Since then, Indian Muslims have been functioning members of a modern pluralist democracy, while Pakistani Muslims have been mired in incompetence, backwardness and dictatorship, and embraced jihadism as the most viable escape route. Reversing that pathology would have been beyond Benazir Bhutto’s pretty face.
Maureen Dowd, New-Age wackjob: Newsbusters deconstructs La Dowd's embrace of crystals, tribal shamanism, rolfing and other New-agey ephemera.
Straight shooting from Newt: Who knew that a man I used to revile (back in those living-in-a-bubble days when I was a clueless lefty) could talk such sense? Here’s part of a speech he recently gave to a Jewish organization. I found it on the CCD’s public message forum:
…Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose policy is inadequate being opposed by a political left whose policy is worse, and you have nobody prepared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world. Because we have refused to be honest about the scale of the problem.
Let me work back. I'm going to get to Iran since that's the topic, but I'm going to get to it eventually. Let me work back from Pakistan. The dictatorship in Pakistan has never had control over Wiziristan. Not for a day. So we've now spent six years since 9/11 with a sanctuary for Al-Qaida and a sanctuary for the Taliban, and every time we pick up people in Great Britain who are terrorists, they were trained in Pakistan.
And our answer is to praise Musharraf because at least he's not as bad as the others. But the truth is Musharraf has not gotten control of terrorism in Pakistan. Musharraf doesn't have full control over his own government. The odds are even money we're going to drift into a disastrous dictatorship at some point in Pakistan. And while we worry about the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon, the Pakistanis already have 'em, So why would you feel secure in a world where you could presently have an Islamist dictatorship in Pakistan with a hundred-plus nuclear weapons? What's our grand strategy for that?
Then you look at Afghanistan. Here's a country that's small, poor, isolated, and in six years we have not been able to build roads, create economic opportunity, wean people off of growing drugs. A third of the GDP is from drugs. We haven't been able to end the sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. And I know of no case historically where you defeat a guerrilla movement if it has a sanctuary. So the people who rely on the West are outbribed by the criminals, outgunned by the criminals, and faced with a militant force across the border which practiced earlier defeating the Soviet empire and which has a time horizon of three or four generations. NATO has a time horizon of each quarter or at best a year, facing an opponent whose time horizon is literally three or four generations. It's a total mismatch.
Then you come to the direct threat to the United States, which is Al-Qaida. Which, by the way, we just published polls. One of the sites I commend to you is AmericanSolutions.com. Last Wednesday we posted six national surveys, $428,000 worth of data. We gave it away. I found myself in the unique position of calling Howard Dean to tell him I was giving him $400,000 worth of polling. We have given it away to both Democrats and Republicans. It is fundamentally different from the national news media. When asked the question "Do we have an obligation to defend the United States and her allies?" the answer is 85 percent yes. When asked a further question "Should we defeat our enemies?" - it's very strong language - the answer is 75 percent yes, 75 to 16.
The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values complaint.
When asked whether or not Al-Qaida is a threat, 89 percent of the country says yes. And they think you have to defeat it, you can't negotiate with it. So now let's look at Al-Qaida and the rise of Islamist terrorism.
And let's be honest: What's the primary source of money for Al-Qaida? It's you, recirculated through Saudi Arabia. Because we have no national energy strategy, when clearly if you really cared about liberating the United States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the survival of Israel, one of your highest goals would be to move to a hydrogen economy and to eliminate petroleum as a primary source of energy.
Now that's what a serious national strategy would look like, but that would require real change.
So then you look at Saudi Arabia. The fact that we tolerate a country saying no Christian and no Jew can go to Mecca, and we start with the presumption that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowardice that is stunning.
It's not complicated. We're inviting Saudi Arabia to come to Annapolis to talk about rights for Palestinians when nobody is saying, "Let's talk about rights for Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about rights for women in Saudi Arabia."
So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.
You keep pumping billions of dollars a year into countries like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, and you are presently going to have created people who oppose you who have lots of money. And they're then going to come back to your own country and finance, for example, Arab study institutes whose only requirement is that they never tell the truth. So you have all sorts of Ph.D.s who now show up quite cheerfully prepared to say whatever it is that makes their funders happy - in the name, of course, of academic freedom. So why wouldn't Columbia host a genocidal madman? It's just part of political correctness. I mean, Ahmadinejad may say terrible things, he may lock up students, he may kill journalists, he may say, "We should wipe out Israel," he may say, "We should defeat the United States," but after all, what has he done that's inappropriate? What has he done that wouldn't be repeated at a Hollywood cocktail party or a nice gathering in Europe?
And nobody says this is totally, utterly, absolutely unacceptable. Why is it that the No.1 threat in intelligence movies is the CIA?
I happened the other night to be watching an old movie, To Live and Die in L.A., which is about counterfeiting. But the movie starts with a Secret Service agent who is defending Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the person he is defending Ronald Reagan from, is a suicide bomber who is actually, overtly a Muslim fanatic. Now, six years after 9/11, you could not get that scene made in Hollywood today.
Just look at the movies. Why is it that the bad person is either a right-wing crazed billionaire, or the CIA as a government agency. Go look at the Bourne Ultimatum. Or a movie like the one that George Clooney made, which was an absolute lie, in which it implied that if you were a reformist Arab prince, that probably the CIA would kill you. It's a total lie. We actually have SEALs protecting people all over the world. We actually risk American lives protecting reformers all over the world, and yet Hollywood can't bring itself to tell the truth, (a) because it's ideologically so opposed to the American government and the American military, and (b), because it's terrified that if it said something really openly, honestly true about Muslim terrorists, they might show up in Hollywood. And you might have somebody killed as the Dutch producer was killed.
And so we're living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we're sleepwalking into a nightmare...
Indeed. As I read that line, a quote by Shakespeare popped into my head: “The coward dies a thousand times before his death. The valiant never tastes of death but once.”
Teeny torah: Israelis scientists, who apparently have a lot of spare time on their hands, have managed to shrink the complete Hebrew bible, vowels and all, to the size of a speck. From the Ceeb:
Scientists have succeeded in writing a full version of the Hebrew Bible — including vowel points — in a space smaller than the size of a pinhead.
Using a scientific device called a Focused Ion Beam, scientists in Israel wrote the 300,000-word tome onto a 0.5-square-millimetre chip.
Tiny particles of gallium ions were beamed onto a silicon surface covered with a thin layer of gold (20 nanometres thick) to create the etching — similar, they said, to using a stream of water to carve into soft soil.
The nano-Bible project was developed by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute as part of an educational program that asked: "How small can the Bible be?"
The project looked at how to store information using small DNA or other bio-molecules, as well as how to create nanometric structures and imaging.
"The nano-Bible project demonstrates the ability of miniaturization at our disposal," said Ohad Zohar, the institute's scientific adviser for educational programs, in a recent press release.
The team is now trying to photograph the nano-Bible using special technology in order to enlarge it 10,000 times for display on a giant wall.
"In this picture, which will be seven metres by seven metres, it will be possible to read the entire Bible with the naked eye. Near this picture, the original — the nano-Bible itself, which is the size of a grain of sugar — will be displayed," Zohar said.
The mad miniturizationists better not try that with a Qur’an—if they know what’s good for them, that is.
Hail the conquering (but dead) hero: A tiny minority of Jordanians, citizens of a “moderate” Arab nation, got together yesterday to honour the passing of one of their heroes. From AP via the IHT:
About 2,000 Jordanians demonstrated in the capital on Saturday to commemorate former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on the one-year anniversary of his execution.
Some supporters in Amman's commerical downtown district waved black, white, green and red flags of Saddam's ruling Baath party and distributed a party newspaper, "al-Wahda," meaning unity, bearing Saddam's picture on the front page.
The protestors, including Jordanian Baathists, leftists and other opposition groups, shouted allegiance to the Baath party, which ruled Iraq under Saddam. The demonstration ended peacefully.
Saddam, toppled by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, was executed on Dec. 30 after being convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in a 1982 crackdown on the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.
But he remains revered by sympathizers of his regime and among some, mainly Sunni Arabs, who see his downfall as the start of the chaos in Iraq.
More than 700,000 Iraqis have fled to Jordan to escape the turmoil in their homeland, part of a wave of some 2.5 million Iraqi refugees across the region. But Saturday's protest was made up of Jordanian sympathizers.
Hasta la vista, '07: Some valjeans for the year that was: Amy Winehouse, one must stress, What a talent; what a mess. Go to rehab? Yes, yes, yes. Rosie O, on a show, Shot her mouth off, had to go. Do we miss her? A thousand times, no. Mohammed Bear, Khartoum stuffie, Though very cute and really fluffy Made Sudan zanies all hot and huffy. That Condi Rice, she means so well. Wants “peace” and “justice,” you can tell. Meanwhile paves our road to Hell. Al Gore, go figure, is now a god. Al-lah Gore—how very odd. While some bowed down, some just guffawed. Osama bin Laden natters on and on. Holy war, encore. It’s such a yawn. Am-scray, you bore. Vamoose! Begone! Ahmadinejad, though kind of kooky, Hasn’t got a single nukey. So saith the NIE. How spooky! King Abdullah, compassionate dude, “Pardoned” a gal for too much ‘tude. The world approved—he’s got the crude.
George W. Bush started out fine. Had some gumption and a spine. Now he’s Mr. Palestine. Israel’s still here, to much dismay. They’d hoped that it would go away. Oh, well. Tomorrow’s another day.
Conventional wisdom: Some 15,000 Muslims have gathered in Toronto this weekend for the annual Reviving the Spirit of Islam convention. This year, the convention focuses on “the family,” but don’t expect the attendees to gain much insight into why a Mississauga teenager was murdered recently by her father. From the sounds of if, they remain firmly committed to the mass denial that is such a prominent feature of Islamic discourse. From the Toronto Star (where denial--in the name of multicultural "sensitivity"--is also rife):
The sound of the faithful rising to their feet echoed through the hall like a small wave reaching the sand.
The collective movement marked the end of Friday afternoon prayer for thousands of primarily Muslim youth at the opening of the annual Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
In its sixth year, the three-day conference, run primarily by youth, expects 15,000 to attend to hear Muslim and non-Muslim scholars discuss world issues. This year features a topic that recently set Toronto – one of the world's most multicultural cities – on edge: the slaying of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez.
"I think some cultural factors played into that in a very significant way, but at the end of the day I think it's an issue of domestic violence that got out of hand," said visiting scholar Imam Zaid Shakir, who spoke at the convention opening and will co-lead tonight's presentation "For the Love of our Children."
The strangled teen's father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was charged with her murder. Her friends told reporters that she was unhappy about her family's conservative Muslim lifestyle and resisted the order to wear a hijab.
"I think it's very important to understand, in Islam there is no such thing as honour killing," said Shakir. "Muslims are not immune from many of the problems that afflict and affect other communities, and sadly, domestic violence is one of them."
For women to wear a headscarf is, in his belief, a religious obligation, but not one that someone can be forced to comply with. Modest dress is mandated for both sexes, he said.
"One of the contradictions in our community sometimes is that some men demand women to dress excessively modest ... (while) they are wearing skin-tight jeans and muscle shirts," he said.
"Those sorts of contradictions also have to be addressed and resolved."
Resolving cultural impasses in the home fits into the overall theme of the conference, "Family: The Basis of a Civil Society."
Discussions will take place on such issues as bridging the generation gap in Muslim families, preventing violence against women, Muslim divorce rates, the definition of marriage, online dating, fighting within families and the reconciliation of power between men and women within the home.
Past guests have included Mayor David Miller and Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk. A speaker this time is Pamela Paul, U.S. investigative author of Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families.
The convention will also include fundraisers to sponsor orphans around the world and a massive drive for the Daily Bread Food Bank.
In the crowd yesterday were two female cousins attending the conference for the first time.
"Do you see repressed women?" asked Nour Younis, 19, gesturing toward the crowd and pointing out many wearing trendy outfits.
Younis, born in the United Arab Emirates, is studying in Ottawa. She does not wear a hijab but has thought about it. The death of Parvez had nothing to do with her religion, she said. "As a Muslim, I despise that man."
Her cousin Leen Younis, 24, said, "I think parents should try to show their children the right path but shouldn't be extremists."
She does wear a hijab, a decision she calls a personal choice, saying the hijab loses its value as a religious symbol if it's not worn voluntarily. She does think Parvez should have respected her parents' wishes.
The hijab, she feels, is not something a person can wear part-time. "I don't respect people who do that," she said.
Her cousin agreed. "They are not being true to themselves. ... Why do something you don't want to?"
Both agreed that for some young people, the decision to wear a hijab can be held off simply because the idea of taking it off, and what that implies, is too daunting...
Yeah, it can be quite “daunting” to be roughed up or killed by your Dad for refusing to submit to his divinely-decreed authority, even if you know that it’s merely a domestic, and not a religious, matter.
Power play: The UN General Assembly recently passed a resolution which aims to combat “defamation of religion.” Not surprisingly, it was brought forward by the 57 nations which comprise the Organization of Islamic Conference. The OIC has been most perturbed about those who defame their faith, especially in the wake of 9/11, when there have been so many opportunities to do so. Ostensibly, the resolution pertains to all religions, but Islam is the only one mentioned specifically. It thus seems clear that the purpose here is not to clamp down on nasty comments being made about, say, Jews (because that would be well nigh impossible, since it would entail editing a perfect text which refers to Jews as being “apes and pigs”). The true intent is to stop the kafirs from commenting on certain problematic aspects of Islam (like, for instance, the jihad).
In his most recent book, The War of Ideas, Walid Phares sheds light on why many Muslims brook no criticism of their religion:
The radical Islamists do not tolerate the principle of intiqad (criticism), of any aspect of religion, from theology to practice. Because there is not concept of civil freedom in Salafi or Khumeinist thinking, religious critical thinking is nonexistent as well. Muslims and non-Muslims alike may not argue with the core beliefs of religion, and would be sanctioned if they raised these matters. Such a “frozen” attitude of the jihadi dogma is reminiscent of the Christian Middle Ages. But, ironically, back in the tenth century, Baghdad was illumination not only with oil lamps, but also by Muslim minds looking forward and evolving their culture and sciences, in advance of the end of the Dark Ages in Europe (much like China’s eary superiority in technology). Surprisingly to many observers of the movement, twentieth-century jihadists chose to follow twelfh-century Ibn Taymiya’s narrow thinking rather than the even earlier thinking of the Arab enlightenment of the ninth and tenth centuries. An analogy can be drawn with Fascism and nationalsocialism, which opted for recent authoritarian ideologies rather than for previous (but weaker) democratic ideas. Insecure elites seeking power prefer totalitarian doctrines with intellectual rigidness over open thinking and its risky path toward pluralism. Thus a comprehensive analysis of the jihadist mind leads us to see in the Salafists and Khumeinists a move by formerly marginal segments of society who, thanks to their reviving of archaic models, have built their power base on a rigid ideology that are fully in control of. Their reliance on the purity of the doctrinal body ensures their power over it, hence their rejection of any form of criticism of their interpretation of religion. In other words, the rejection of criticism is not essentially about the core belief system as much as it is about their control of this system. The real battlefield for radicals is the tight control of the instrument of power—in this case, ideologically protected religious laws…
So you see folks, it’s all about power and control. And even though many of the 57 OIC nations are neither Salafist nor Khumeinist, but are considered “moderate,” the Salafists and Khomeinists, being the “purest,” carry the most weight. In any case, there being strength in numbers, this powerful block is seeking to control the international agenda. And all the silly kafirs are either so clueless or so fearful—or both—that they’re allowing it to do so.
A James Frey in the making: Does the end ever justify the means? Certainly not in the case of a 6-year-old girl who used “the means” of a lie—she falsely claimed in an tug-from-the-heart-strings essay that her father had been killed in Iraq—in order to justify “the end” of winning some Hannah Montana tickets. From the Houston Chronicle:
GARLAND, Texas — A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay that falsely claimed her father died in Iraq won't be going to the show after all.
The contest's sponsor, Club Libby Lu, withdrew the prize on Saturday and awarded it to another unnamed winner.
"With this decision, we hope to revive the intended spirit of the contest, which was designed to make a little girl's holidays extra special," Club Libby Lu chief executive Mary Drolet said in a statement Saturday.
Officials with the Chicago-based chain surprised the girl on Friday at a Club Libby Lu store in a suburban Dallas mall. Club Libby Lu sells clothes, accessories and games for young girls.
The girl won a makeover that included a blonde Hannah Montana wig, as well as the grand prize: airfare for four to Albany, N.Y., and four tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert on Jan. 9.
The opening line in the essay was: "My daddy died this year in Iraq."
But the girl's mother admitted later Friday that the essay and the military information she provided about her daughter's father were untrue.
"We did the essay and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win," Ceballos said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW on Friday. "But when (Caulfield) asked me if this essay is true, I said, `No, this essay is not true.'"…
Way to teach you kid values, Ms. Ceballos. On the other hand, if your daughter keeps it up, she has a good shot at guesting on Oprah someday.
Harpooning Musharraf: Harpoon Siddiqui really wants to see an end to Musharraf. Which leads me to believe that it might be a good idea for him to stick around right now, at least so things can calm down some and the religious zanies don't get to seize control of the 90-nuke nation.
What’s in a name?: Ceeb talking head Wendy Mesley has an interview with Syed Sowahardy about Benazir Bhutto. Sowahardy appears in his capacity as the founder of Muslims Against Terrorism. Nowhere is he identified in his more familiar guise—as the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, of which M.A.T. is a sister organization; you may also remember him as the guy who complained to Alberta’s Human Rights Commission when the Western Standard published those “insulting” Mo ‘toons. The magazine has since ceased publication, and been forced to submit to the ISCC yet again, apologizing for comments that appeared on its blog.
As a rep for Muslims Against Terrorism, Sowahardy sounds most reasonable. But when he’s wearing his other chapeau as head of the ISCC, here’s what he stands for:
Islamic Supreme Council of Canada was founded in Calgary on June 18, 2000 with the following mission and objectives. Presently, its head office is located in Calgary, Alberta. ISCC members are from all the denominations of Islam. ISCC believes that the Muslims should not be divided based upon their schools of thoughts. ISCC encourages healthy difference of opinion among its members and follows the Islamic decision-making process, which is more democratic than the western democratic principles. ISCC is a Canadian organization, which is based upon one common belief, " There is no God but Allah and Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his (last) Messenger" and provides nonsectarian environment to its members. ISCC members exhibit this unity through their behaviour.
Mission Statement
To be the leading Muslim organization in Canada helping the government, media and the people of Canada to understand the teachings of Islam and issues of Muslims. To contribute positively in building the Canadian society for the 21st century and beyond. To provide guidance to the Canadian political, social, Judicial, financial and economical institutions on the issues related to the Muslims in and outside Canada, which may impact the Canadian society. To help Canada in developing better political, trade, social, academic and cultural relationships with the Muslim countries. To organize the political strength of Muslim voters in Canada in order to achieve leading place for Canadian Muslims in Canadian politics.
Major Objectives
1.