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

Fitting metaphor: Roger Waters’ giant swine balloon—the one he releases at the end of his concerts, the one which, in its current incarnation, urges folks to mark their ballots for Obama—came unmoored, post-concert, and flew off to parts unknown. It is now, to paraphrase that Monty Python skit, an ex-piggy.

Not to read too much into the fate of an unfortunate inflatable, but it seems, I dunno, kind of spooky that the Bambi balloon burst around the same time Jeremiah Wright arrived back on the scene and attempted, once and for all, to burst the candidate’s presidential hopes.

Coincidence? If you say so.

The lyric currently running through my brain is from Comden and Greene’s wistful ballad “The Party’s Over”:…”They’ve burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away.” Oh, sure, they can try and refloat another pig, but it won’t be same pig, and it won’t change the fact that karma seems to have spoken.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:59 | link | comments (1)

Cancel the celebrations: As I suspected, all the hoopla about the Canadian Islamic Congress being on the cusp of withdrawing its complaints about the "offensive" Maclean's cover story was a wee bit premature. Mo and Co. haven't moved an inch.

Feisty chick, Kathy Shaidle, was at the news conference, though, oddly enough, the man who got the ball rolling, 'Slammin' Mo, was a no-show.

It appears that the push to dhimmify Canada via the convenient smokescreen of "human rights" is still full systems go.

Update: Mo's demands are set out in this news release. Apparently, empowered by that Maoist Miss Manners, Barbara Hall, and her extra-judicial guilty "verdict" (for a hearing that never took place), he's still hoping to comandeer an issue of Maclean's, his condition for dropping his complaints with the BC HRC. In Islamic terms, he wants to force Maclean's, Canada's flagship periodical, into dhimmitde.

Sharing bed space with a bloody horse's head is easy-peasy compared to the prospect of having to face these sanctimonious thought cops. Unwittingly (at least one presumes it's unwitting) these terminally nice, confoundingly clueless bureacrats are serving as sharia's handmaidens.

Update: RightGirl, the blogger who attended the new conference with her sister-in-outrage, Kathy, adds an interesting detail. The lawyer for Elmo's sock thingys (who RightGirl says reminded her of Huggybear from Starsky and Hutch) had a letter of support from none other than confoundingly clueless Socialist, Jack Layton.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:34 | link | comments (1)

The bark and the bite: Now that Trinity United’s pastor has been, er, put out to pasture, it has looked to a new, young preacher—Reverend Otis Moss III—to pick up where Reverend Wright left off.

Here’s Reverend Moss defending his church and his predecessor from the pulpit. The sermon’s spin: the many remarkable accomplishments of both have been overlooked and unfairly reduced to a “sound bite”. (Moss starts out rather tentatively, but gains momentum as he goes on. Still, for those used to the over-the-top stylings of the previous pastor, Moss’s sermons must be something of a let-down.)

Meaning no disrespect, Reverend, but Wright's words were a lot more than sound bites. They were lengthy, leisurely, rambling fulminations in which many, many obnoxious "sound bites" were strung together to create one poisonous, repellent whole. But if you and your flock prefer to look at it as a question of "sound bites" being taken "out of context," so be it. Realize, though, that a lot of people are going to have a hard time getting past “sound bites” of an obnoxious bigot God-damning "the U.S. of K.K.K." and ranting about how the American government brought on 9/11 and infected black people with AIDS—and receiving a rapturous reception from a congregation which apparently welcomes such toxic views.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:34 | link | comments

The dhimmi dance: When America’s enemies were godless Fascists or Commies, no one worried about offending their “religious” sensibilities. Now that America’s enemy is affiliated with one of the world’s Great Religions, the government has decided it has to tap dance around that affiliation, lest it “insult” the supposedly sacrosanct.

Is that any way to win a war? Patrick Poole on the American Thinker site thinks not:

Imagine that following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, that FDR had prohibiting the use of the terms "Nazi" or "Japanese Imperialism" due to pressure brought to bear by German and Japanese-American lobbying groups. Or at the height of the Cold War that the US government had determined to ban the use of "Soviet" or "communism" for fear of offending the sensibilities of Russian-Americans or European socialists.

Yet that is precisely what has happened following the revelation last week by the Associated Press that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security has issued guidelines banning the use of "jihad", "mujahedeen" and other Islamic terminology with reference to Islamic terrorism. This move lays bare the ideological prison house of political correctness in which our top policymaker's reside. The strictures are so ridiculous that even President Bush can't help himself in violating the guidelines.

No one can claim in defense of this move that it has been rooted in years of serious study and assessment of the issue at the highest levels of government. If so, where might these studies and assessments be found? What series of government publications outlines the strategic threat doctrine of our enemy in the War on Terror, similar to that prepared on Soviet doctrine in the early years of the Cold War? What comprehensive doctrinal assessment may our military and political leaders consult to inform themselves on the tactics and strategy of our enemy? Such does not exist, and the adoption of the government's new "lexicon" is an admission that such a strategic threat assessment of our enemy will not be done. This new effort means that in essence we have chosen to fly blind in the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

The categorical failure of our political leadership nearly seven years after 9/11 to engage in even the slightest effort to assess exactly who the enemy is and how they propose to attack and defeat us borders on treason. What could possibly represent the complete abdication of responsibility by our political leaders than deliberately avoiding addressing this pressing, and for our men and women in uniform a life-and-death, issue?

So on what basis have our public officials made this recent decision? This new effort is being driven by politics, not public safety, as demonstrated by the fact that such pandering measures adopted by the British government which the State Department guidelines appear modeled after have completely failed to abate the terrorist threat there. And it reveals that our national security policy is being determined more by public affairs officials driven by political correctness than sober reflection by our nation's intelligence, military and law enforcement personnel…

I fear it is being driven by more than political correctness. It is a function of officials remaining profoundly ignorant about a “religion” that is actually an all-encompassing political system. If followed to the letter, this system, which considers itself to be the be-all and end-all of all political systems, is arguably even more oppressive than anything dished out by the godless.

Ignorance may be bliss, but only in the short term. In reality, ignorance amounts to dhimmitude--and, ultimately, will lead to defeat..

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

The tenor of betrayal: An Irish classic, dedicated to a now-defunct relationship:

Oh Bambi boy

Rev. Wright, Rev. Wright is raving.

He’s sabotaged his youthful protégée.

For twenty years you trusted and looked up to him.

Oh Bambi boy how could he treat his “son” that way?

 

It’s all because you criticized his hatefulness.

The loopy words which made him sound quite mad.

Now see what happens when you diss a demagogue?

Oh, Bambi boy, no one can shaft you like your “dad”.

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

Definitive definition: Bush says Palestinian state can be defined during his term.

With all due respect, Mr. President, it's already been "defined". Due to your "democritization" efforts, it's a genocidal terrorist entity: "Hamastan."

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

Wright’s revenge: Isn’t that what it’s really all about—a father figure getting a bit of his own back at the “son” who got too big for his britches?

If the bombastic bigot had wanted his protégée to win, he would have kept his head down until after election day. The fact that he didn’t shows that he’s more concerned about promoting himself and his own image than he is about boosting Bambi’s fortunes. He thus had no compunction about inflicting maximum damage.

A true demagogue, through and through.

Update: Bambi strikes back. Looks like the Fauxbamas and the Wrights won't be exchanging Christmas cards this year.

Update: Black Panther praises Wright's speechifying.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:36 | link | comments (1)

CIC offer in the offing: Mo and the kids are getting set to make Maclean’s “an offer” (it can’t refuse?). Link via steynonline:

THE CANADIAN ISLAMIC CONGRESS
PRESS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

April 29, 2008

ISLAMIC CONGRESS AND LAW STUDENTS TO MAKE PUBLIC SETTLEMENT OFFER TO MACLEAN'S ON HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINTS

TORONTO - The Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of law students who recently filed human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine for publishing Islamophobic content, are planning to present a public offer to the magazine's management to settle the matter.

Details of this offer and more information regarding the background of the above-mentioned complaints will be provided to those in attendance.

When:
10:00 a.m.: Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Where:
Fairmont Royal York Hotel, The Quebec Room, 100 Front Street West, Toronto ON

Present at the media conference will be:
- Faisal Joseph: CIC legal counsel, former Federal and Provincial
   Crown Attorney, and former Chair of the Criminal Section of the Canadian
   Bar Association (Nova Scotia).

- Muneeza Sheikh, Naseem Mithoowani and Khurrum Awan: Three of the law students/graduates who were original complainants against Maclean's
   magazine.

For more information contact:
Faisal Joseph: (519) 672-4510

Let’s see: Previously, Mo and Co. “offered” to commandeer an entire issue of Maclean’s and fill it with their “truth.” When the magazine’s editor told them to take a hike, they did—all the way to several of the country’s Miss Manners’ etiquette emporia.Word is they’re prepared to back off the HRC complaints—but at what price? And is it a price that any self-respecting, freedom-loving kafir will be willing to stomach?

All will become clear tomorrow.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:59 | link | comments (2)

Sighting the salesman: By Wesley Pruden in the Washington Times, 4/29:

Sen. Obama is actually the Willy Loman of presidential politics, the iconic salesman of the Arthur Miller play whose success on the road was fashioned with a smile and a shoeshine. Hillary Clinton, the inevitable nominee when the new year dawned, was rendered all but insensible when the Obama frenzy rolled over her after Iowa, and now Sen. Barack Obama is equally stunned as his magic begins to wane.

 

By me, 4/25:

In the early days, when Americans didn’t know who he was, he could coast on his good looks, soothing voice and piffle about “change”. (Another American salesman, Willie Loman, coasted on “a smile and a shoeshine,” until he, too, was done in by his own character flaws.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:20 | link | comments (3)

 The jihad’s useful idiot: Hillel Halkin on the abominable Mr. C. From the New York Sun (my bolds):

…Had Mr. Carter been minimally informed, he would have known that Hamas has for years been ready to "accept" a Palestinian state subject to certain conditions — which is what it means when it says that this state must be approved by a Palestinian "referendum" (to be torpedoed by Hamas if its conditions are not met) or a Palestinian "elected government" (ditto). These conditions, which Mr. Carter did not get Hamas to retreat from one iota, are, firstly, that Israel pull back to its 1967 lines with Jordan, including those that divided Jerusalem, and, secondly, that Israel admit all descendants of 1948 Palestinian refugees who wish to live within its borders.

What Hamas has not been ready to accept, is still not ready to accept, and has never told Mr. Carter is that it is ready to accept is the state of Israel itself. At the most it is willing to agree to a hudna, an Islamic truce, with Israel. And as any student of Islam knows, a hudna is by definition temporary. It can be for a longer time or a shorter time, but it is basically a breather separating one round of confrontation with the infidel from another.

To put it in plain language: Once Israel agrees to surrender half of Jerusalem, uproot hundreds of settlements and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers from disputed territories beyond the 1967 lines, and grant residence rights to possibly millions of Palestinians who have never lived in it before, Hamas will call off its campaign for the Jewish state's destruction for X number of years, after which it will be free to resume hostilities.

By then, of course, there will be little left of a Jewish state to destroy, the influx of Palestinian refugees having eliminated the country's Jewish majority. These are the "concessions" that Mr. Carter, with his self-vaunted skills as a negotiator, has managed to extract from Hamas and is now trying to peddle as a significant achievement.

Mr. Carter has been taken — not for the first time in his career, it must be said — for a ride. Were he alone in the delusion that Hamas can be brought into Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as a constructive partner, this would not matter very much. In the three-ring circus of Middle Eastern diplomacy, he simply would be one more clown balancing bowling pins on his nose or pedaling a unicycle backwards.

But the delusion is more widespread. It is being voiced today from more and more quarters. Without Hamas, the argument goes, no Israeli-Palestinian process is possible; ergo, Hamas must become part of the process for it to succeed.

Now, the first half of this argument is certainly correct. Hamas is politically and militarily strong enough today, not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank as well, to thwart any agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that it does not approve of. It is just that the "ergo" does not follow, for the simple reason that Hamas cannot and will not approve of any agreement that could possibly be acceptable to Israel. It does not have the ideological leeway or flexibility to do so, and no one can say that it has not been ideologically consistent over the years.

Does this mean that no Israeli-Palestinian peace process can succeed at the moment? Alas, this is precisely what it does mean. Some of those who, like Mr. Carter, find it impossible to live with this truth will go on making fools of themselves in order to deny it. Let's just not let them make fools of us.

Are you listening, Condi?

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

Run, Bambi, run: Obama adds to distance from pastor and opinions.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:44 | link | comments

Pure, unadulterated evil: With its agenda of appropriating the term "anti-Semitism" and affixing it to "racism" against Muslims (because, heaven knows, "Islamophobia" isn't nearly enough to cover it), Holocaust denial, delegitimizing Israel, and ignoring outrageous violations of "human rights" in Iran and Libya--the countries in charge of pre-conference preparations--Durban II is on track to make Durban I look like a hay ride.

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

Bayefsky in Rightsland: Reading Anne Bayefsky’s account of her visit to the UN’s zaniest body, the Human Rights Council, I couldn’t help but think of Alice’s disorienting adventures in Wonderland. All that was missing was one or more of the mad malevolent members crying, “Off with the heads of those who insult Islam."

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:40 | link | comments

IHT claptrap: Daniel Pipes is only one of many pundits who has pointed out that Islamic law is making great inroads here in the West--without anyone having to set off any explosives. The International Herald Tribune, for one, is hoping Pipes will shut up, already, since according to that noted expert, John Esposito, Islam’s as sweet and benign as a boxful of kittens:

…Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.

"It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia," Pipes said. "It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam."

Pipes refers to this new enemy as the "lawful Islamists."

They are carrying out a "soft jihad," said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee of the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil Gibran school.

Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to distort the truth and play on Americans' fear of terrorism. They say the campaign is also part of a wider effort to silence critics of Washington's policy on Israel and the Middle East.

"This is a political, ideological agenda," said John Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University who has been a focus of Pipes's scrutiny. "It's an agenda to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem… 

Islam's the one with the political, ideological agenda, John. I believe it's called sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:15 | link | comments

That's his (insane) story and he's stickin' to it: Fauxbama's pastor stands by his position that the U.S. government gave black people AIDS.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:48 | link | comments

Dark side of the moonbat: Geriatric rocker Roger Waters capped off a concert by releasing a giant hot air piggy. The gaseous porker was Roger’s way of bashing America and demonstrating his support for his guy, Fauxbama. From NME (my bolds):

Roger Waters closed out the final night of the Coachella Festival (April 27) by performing Pink Floyd's landmark 1973 album 'Dark Side Of The Moon' and unleashing a giant inflatable pig into the sky.

The legendary performer drew a massive crowd for his main stage headlining set, which featured two parts.

The first half of Waters' nearly three-hour set featured solo and early Pink Floyd material, while the second half saw him performing 'Dark Side Of The Moon' in its entirety as well as Pink Floyd hits from 1979's 'The Wall'.

A large inflatable pig emerged onto the stage as he played 'Pigs' from 1977's 'Animals'. Graffiti scrawled on the pig said, "Don't be led to the slaughter" and "Obama" with checked ballot box next to it. It also contained illustrations of Uncle Sam holding a cleaver.

The pig was released into the night sky at the end of Waters' first set…

Didn’t we see that in Spinal Tap?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:17 | link | comments

Arrogant, malicious, Jew-hating nincompoop: None other than Jimminy "Ain't My Nobel Peace Prize Purty" Carter.

Update: The unctuous one sings a song from--what else?--Grease:

Look at me I’m Jimmy C.

Lousy with sanc-tim-ony.

Wear my Nobel prize

As a brilliant disguise.

It works for Jimmy C.

 

I was the prez when Khomeini came

And things have never been the same.

Don’t say, “Oy gevalt!”

‘Cause it wasn’t my fault.

Not me, not Jimmy C.

 

I’m fair (hah!)

And true (ho!)

Unless you’re a Jew (ew!)

Get ill from that there “apartheid”.

“Peace” is my mission

So go to perdition

If you think that I’d ever takes sides.

 

As for the concept of “jihad”

It really isn’t all that bad.

Just bow and submit.

See--it don’t hurt a bit.

Say I, says Jimmy C.

 

Hugged a thug--

A loving start.

I’ve only lusted in my heart.

Won’t leave the scene

Till I’m pushin’ up green.

Hey, piss off! I’m Jimmy C.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:09 | link | comments

 CHRC’s dizzying spin: If I were to tell you that there were “courts” in Canada where there is no presumption of innocence, the usual rules of evidence don’t apply, and only one side, the “defendant,” is on the hook for legal costs, would you think that was a good thing or a bad thing? Well, chillingly, such “courts” do indeed exist, and it should be obvious to all Canadian that it’s a very bad thing. Here’s how the granddaddy of our kangaroo courts, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, tries to justify this outrage, attempting (and failing) to spin the dross into gold. It comes from the CHRC brochure, “Tribunal Hearings,” which outlines the two-part complaint process—the CHRC fields the complaints; the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hears them (my bolds):

What does the Tribunal do?

The Tribunal is much like a court. It conducts public hearings into complaints of discrimination filed with the Commission. However, because it is an administrative tribunal, it has more flexibility than regular courts. As a result, people who appear before it can explain their case more fully, without having to follow strict rules of evidence.

I must have missed something in all the happy talk about “flexibility” because I thought the presumption of innocence and “strict rules of evidence” were the foundation of Western jurisprudence.

Silly moi.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments (2)

Popular Shias: You know those efforts to "isolate" Iran? Don't seem to be working out too well.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments

Pro-active supression: Starting at the end of June, the Ontario thought cops are going to take a more “pro-active” approach to gathering “hate” complaints. They plan to fan out into the community, and, operating like our very own virtue/vice committee, will keep their ears to the ground for the least little hint that someone is thinking impure, socially unacceptable thoughts.

Hey, if it works in Saudi Arabia, there’s no reason it can’t work here, right?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

Wright still wrong: Fauxbama’s pastor doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. See, as a member of a group that, historically, has been on the receiving end of egregious racism, he’s allowed to spew racism from his pulpit and not have it be considered racist: Victimhood does have its privileges. The ranting rev explained his position to a receptive crowd at an NAACP dinner where he was the keynote speaker: From the Beeb (my bolds):

…Speaking at the fund-raising dinner, Mr Wright suggested critics had taken his remarks out of context to embarrass him and Mr Obama.

 

"We just do it differently, and some of our haters can't get their heads around that. I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and we march on the picket lines," Mr Wright said.

 

"The African-American tradition is different. We do it in a different way."

 

He added: "I am not one of the most divisive black spiritual leaders... the word is descriptive."…

 

Sorry, rev. Racism is racism, no matter how “differently” it’s done. It’s the content, not the packaging, that makes it racist.

 

The good folks of the NAACP, of all people, should be able to see that (and should never have invited you in the first place).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:49 | link | comments

Washington grovels: Terrorism expert Steve Emerson on the U.S. government’s pathetic capitulation to sharia. From JWR:

This is a memo to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Hizballah (the Party of G-d), the Islamic State of Iraq, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and others:

Please consider changing your names to something a tad less religious sounding. Where you infuse your theological thought into radical politics and violence, things might get a little awkward for us. You see, if we point out that you identify yourselves with a religion, we might offend someone. That's the new policy of the U.S. government. It advises agencies to avoid using some of the same words that make up your very names.

All we're asking is that you meet us half way.

The Associated Press confirms what Robert Spencer reported Tuesday on Jihad Watch, that federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. embassies say words including "jihadists," and "mujahedeen" are off limits. In addition, references to Islam and Muslims are frowned upon, too:

The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

For example, while Americans may understand "jihad" to mean "holy war," it is in fact a broader Islamic concept of the struggle to do good, says the guidance prepared for diplomats and other officials tasked with explaining the war on terror to the public. Similarly, "mujahedeen," which means those engaged in jihad, must be seen in its broader context.

U.S. officials may be "unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims," says a Homeland Security report. It's entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims."

Apparently the report does not say which American Muslims offered the recommendations. But it is virtually identical to a long campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamist groups (Check out the examples we cited in our series on CAIR, then go back and read the AP report). So the U.S. government is taking its cues from a group that emanated from a secret Muslim Brotherhood operation in America, one with a stated goal of being "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

According to the AP, the government report says "even if it is accurate to reference the term, it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have and damages relations with Muslims around the world."…

In other words, the U.S. government has officially submitted and made dhimmitude its modus operendi. In which case, why even bother trying to implant “democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan?

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

The apostate and the refusenik: The Sunday New York Times had a piece examining the different approaches of—and gaping divide between—Ayaan Ali Hirsi and Irshad Manji:

…“The most important explanation for the mental and material backlog we Muslims find ourselves in,” Ms. Hirsi Ali has said, “should probably be sought in the sexual morality that we were force-fed from birth.” Her first book, a collection of essays, was entitled “The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam.” In the Netherlands, she devoted herself to helping Muslim women, in her words, “develop the vocabulary of resistance,” and she continues the fight from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, where she is a resident fellow.

Ms. Manji, too, sees feminism as the linchpin for Islamic reform. “Empowering women,” she says, “is the way to awaken the Muslim world.” But she is not only a committed feminist (bad enough in the eyes of Muslim conservatives). She is also an open lesbian — a rebel twice over. The difference between them “really is between those outside of a faith and those still within it,” says Ms. Manji’s friend the writer Andrew Sullivan. “Hirsi Ali has abandoned faith for atheism. Irshad has taken the harder path, I believe.”

The two women have known each other for four years, since Ms. Hirsi Ali interviewed Ms. Manji for a Dutch newspaper, and they discussed their continuing relationship in e-mail interviews. They immediately bonded — understandably enough. “I could not believe she was not an atheist,” Ms. Hirsi Ali says, “and she could not believe that I had become one.” When Time magazine named Ms. Hirsi Ali one of its “100 most influential people” for 2005, it was Ms. Manji who wrote the comment on her. Ms. Manji admires Ms. Hirsi Ali’s determination to speak truth to power, saying that “Ayaan’s defiant distrust of Muslim authorities can help generate debates that move us closer to honesty.”

But, inevitably, the differences between them create tensions since, in their eyes, what is at stake is nothing less than the future of Islam. Ms. Hirsi Ali says, “Irshad is the most admirable person I know who is trying to achieve change from within,” but she agrees with Mr. Hitchens that “from an intellectual, logical perspective,” Ms. Manji’s religious faith and her own secularism can’t be reconciled. Mr. Hitchens himself believes that it’s a self-defeating exercise for a declared lesbian to try to bring about an Islamic Reformation.

Ms. Manji detects a certain incoherence in Ms. Hirsi Ali’s views: “She wants Muslims to reform, but she also seems to believe that Islam is inherently retrograde.” Ms. Manji says her own position “is that Muslims can reform while remaining faithful precisely because the Koran has the raw materials to be thoughtful and humane. It’s we Muslims who must develop the courage to change.”

For her part, Ms. Hirsi Ali replies, “I make a distinction between Islam and Muslims.” That is, “I picture the defeat of Islam as large swaths of Muslims crossing the line and accepting the value system of secular humanism. This is not a matter of one religion defeating another, it’s a matter of value systems which cannot coexist.”…

Manji detects a certain incoherence? Is there anything less coherent than the attempt to “reform” a religion which considers its scripture and prophet to be perfect, and which invariably “reforms” by looking backward?

It is Manji who is incoherent and whose efforts, at the end of the day, are futile and, even worse, counter-productive. Hirsi Ali is the one who “gets it,” the one whose ideas must be understood and assimilated if we hope to stop the creep and gallop of sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments

Acceptable and unacceptable polygamy: If you’re a foreign-born immigrant with a “harem” of wives, Canada has no problemo with your polygamy: heck, if you can’t support your “lifestyle,” the state will even offer you a helping hand. If, however, you’re an FLDS polygamist with a passel of wives who have the fashion sense of Holly Hobby, well, sir, you’re just plum out of luck.

Only one thing left for those Mormons to do: “revert”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:23 | link | comments

I resemble that comment: I try to resist the temptation to pick up a copy of NOW magazine—Toronto’s hard left freebie rag that considers itself cutting edge on matters cultural and political. It’s not that I have a hard time taking seriously a publication that stays afloat by accepting a plethora of ads from the sex trade. It’s just that I know that when I pick it up, there’s a good chance there’s going to be another article/snippet/off the cuff comment bashing Israel (for being a brutal colonialist, imperialist, racist interloper—occupying the sacred land of those saintly victims, the Palestinians). And, whadya know? After months of ignoring it, I happen to open it up and find this "charming" piece: “Extremist JDL resurfaces in Bathurst synagogue with Likud pol in tow.”

The “pol” in question is Moshe Feiglin, a Likudnik who thinks the Palestinians can be bribed into leaving the West Bank and Gaza. (In its own way, as cockamamie an idea as following a road map to “peace”, since both fail to consider that the real impediment to a “two state solution. I’ll give you a hint. It starts with “I” and ends with “slam”.)

I won’t go into the details of the article; suffice it to say that it is offensive on many levels. I feel compelled, though, to mention this closing bit:

Michael Neumann, a Trent University philosophy professor and the author of The Case Against Israel, also warns against getting diverted by fears of JDL ultranationalism.

“Hell, if I’m going to be concerned about violent or extremist Jews, I’ll be concerned about the Israel Defense Forces. By far the greatest threat to peace are the lobbying efforts of impeccably well-behaved, well-connected Zionists and the decent but fence-sitting Jews who allow these lobbyists to speak in their name.”

Speaking as an impeccably well-behaved, well-connect Zionist, I take great umbrage at that remark. The greatest threat to peace was, is, and will always be the inability of Israel’s Arab/Muslim neighbours to come to terms with the concept of Jewish sovereignty. That’s the reason, by the way, why there is an IDF: Had the surrounding nations not been so intent on obliterating the Jewish state instead of living with it, there would have been no need for a Jewish army.

As for those decent but fence-sitting Jews, I suggest they get off the fence and speak up—now—if they want to see Israel reach its next milestone birthday. We impeccably well-behaved Zionists need all the help we can get if we want to put the brakes on the effort to delegitimize and destroy Israel—an effort which is being helped in no small measure by useful idiots in academe and the media.

Michael Neumann is in the front ranks of the idiotic, waving his pom poms and cheering maniacally for Israel's demise. Honest Reporting quotes him as having written the following:

My sole concern is indeed to help the Palestinians, and I try to play for keeps. I am not interested in the truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves that purpose...I would use anything, including lies, injustice and obfuscation, to do so. If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews don't come to light, I don't care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism or reasonable hostility to Jews, I don't care. If it means encouraging vicious racist anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the State of Israel, I still don't care.

So nice of the NOW magazine hack to go out of his way to quote the likes of this rabidly self-loathing, traitorous Jew. What, Ilan Pappe was busy that day?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:53 | link | comments

Wishful thinking: Bambi Fauxbama, the guys who worships at a church committed to black liberation theology and whose mentor pals around with NOI scallywag, Louis Farakhan, says race is not an issue in the U.S. election.

Dream on, Fauxbama.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:52 | link | comments

“They” are the problem: Victor Davis Hanson skewers Bambi and the missus for blaming all the bad stuff on an amorphous “they”. Who are “they”? That depends entirely on who Bambi or Mrs. Bambi happen to be speaking to at the time. From NRO:

Recently Barack Obama got into trouble by explaining to an affluent San Francisco audience why the cash-strapped, mostly white, working classes in Pennsylvania and the Midwest do not logically vote for his brand of economic populism, but instead cling to issues that sophisticates can see are extraneous to their economic plight.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

That sentence has been analyzed to death. But a single word struck me — who are Obama’s distant they?

Are they basically decent people, without a lot of education, who turn to religious and national superstitions like guns and church, or to primordial passions like racism and xenophobia, in lieu of Obama’s nostrum of “hope” and “change”? “They,” then, turn out to be the nice, but deluded folk — and yet sometimes dangerous people when riled by immigrants and other races that don’t look like them?

But the bitter, they can’t be the same they that Obama also said are jacking up the cost of his condiments in the store?

“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

Perhaps this nebulous and ever changing they evokes the same forces that Michelle Obama says are now thwarting her husband’s phenomenally successful campaign. Sometime they seem to be politicos, or media pundits, or hostile rule keepers who do all they can to sabotage the Obamas: “They tell you to raise money, you raise money. “They tell you to build an organization, and you build an organization.”

But at other times they for Michelle Obama can apparently also mean faceless government officials who likewise conspire against the American public as soon as it makes any progress — perhaps like achieving the Obama’s 2007 $4 million annual income, or $1.6 million home: “We live in a nation where they set the bar and you try to get over the bar and they move the bar.”

On rarer occasions, Michelle Obama becomes somewhat more specific with her they, and so names them as “folks.” But who and where these folks are, we are never told: “Folks set the bar, and then you work hard and you reach the bar — sometimes you surpass the bar — and then they move the bar!”

The multifarious use of they tells us a great deal about the Obamas. In one of the many manifestations of they, there is a sort of resentment here, the evocation of someone or something to blame when it is time to buy high-priced arugula or send the kids to summer camp or explain why you will lose Pennsylvania. This whiny they serves a psychological need, and relieves them of any introspection like, “Buy lettuce at Safeway instead of arugula at Whole Foods.” Or “Try harder to appeal to the working classes of Iowa and Pennsylvania by spending more time out of, rather than in, Whole Foods and San Francisco mansions.”…

One thing Bambi and Michi know for sure: whoever “they” are, “they” suck.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:42 | link | comments

A new edition of the inquisition: A news release from earlier this month trumpets the bold new changes on tap for the Ontario Human Rights Commission (my bolds):

QUOTES

"Ontario has been a national leader on human rights since its creation of the first human rights code in Canada in 1962," said Attorney General Chris Bentley. "By creating a new, stronger human rights system, we are continuing our national leadership on this issue. The new system will address the underlying causes of discrimination and ensure the speedy resolution of human rights cases."

"This funding is an important part of ensuring the long term success of Ontario's new human rights system," said Michael Gottheil, Chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.  "It will help us construct new, state-of-the-art, accessible facilities, including human rights hearing and mediation rooms.  In addition, by developing a new case management system, we'll be able to process cases in a timely way, and monitor and report on the performance of the new system."

"We're building towards an enhanced new mandate for the Commission, with a focus on proactive systemic work that seeks to address the underlying causes of discrimination," said Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.  "These new resources will allow us to begin that exciting change on June 30th."

QUICK FACTS

·         Ontario has increased funding for human rights every year since 2003.

·         There are an average of 2,500 discrimination cases filed every year in Ontario.

·         Right now, it can take four to five years for a human rights complaint to be resolved. Under the new system, a direct access and streamlined complaints process will be created.

So as I understand it, the eloquent Babs Halls (“a focus on proactive systemic work…”—why, it’s positively Churchillian) was kvetching that Ontarians weren’t being nearly hateful enough (a mere 2,500 cases, sniffed Ms. High Commish—an embarrassment for a province as “diverse” as ours), when her commission wasn’t even capable of handling those complaints in a timely fashion.

I predict that the new system won’t “streamline” anything. It will result in lots more complaints being filed (since the OHRC is going to be “pro-active” and go out into the community to drum up business), and people will end up having to wait more or less the same time as before to have their cases “resolved.” Thus the changes won’t benefit the “people” at all. They will, however, be a boon to intrusive Commissars, who will have vastly expanded power to poke around in our lives.

Thanks for nada, Dalton.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:36 | link | comments

The hellaciousness of good intentions: To review: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring puts the kibosh on the use of DDT. The result: the mosquito population in Africa skyrockets, and thousands die needlessly from malaria. More recently, eco-hysterics get governments to turn away from food production so that what used to be food can now become fuel. The result: there’s not enough food to go around, and mass starvation looms. And don’t get me started on the bio-degradable plastics…From the Guardian:

The worldwide effort by supermarkets and industry to replace conventional oil-based plastic with eco-friendly "bioplastics" made from plants is causing environmental problems and consumer confusion, according to a Guardian study.

The substitutes can increase emissions of greenhouse gases on landfill sites, some need high temperatures to decompose and others cannot be recycled in Britain.

Many of the bioplastics are also contributing to the global food crisis by taking over large areas of land previously used to grow crops for human consumption.

The market for bioplastics, which are made from maize, sugarcane, wheat and other crops, is growing by 20-30% a year.

The industry, which uses words such as "sustainable", "biodegradeable", "compostable" and "recyclable" to describe its products, says bioplastics make carbon savings of 30-80% compared with conventional oil-based plastics and can extend the shelf-life of food.

Concern centres on corn-based packaging made with polylactic acid (Pla). Made from GM crops, it looks identical to conventional polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) plastic and is produced by US company NatureWorks. The company is jointly owned by Cargill, the world's second largest biofuel producer, and Teijin, one of the world's largest plastic manufacturers.

Pla is used by some of the biggest supermarkets and food companies, including Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Del Monte. It is used by Marks & Spencer to package organic foods, salads, snacks, desserts, and fruit and vegetables.

It is also used to bottle Belu mineral water, which is endorsed by environmentalists because the brand's owners invest all profits in water projects in poor countries. Wal-Mart has said it plans to use 114m Pla containers over the course of a year.

While Pla is said to offer more disposal options, the Guardian has found that it will barely break down on landfill sites, and can only be composted in the handful of anaerobic digesters which exist in Britain, but which do not take any packaging. In addition, if Pla is sent to UK recycling works in large quantities, it can contaminate the waste stream, reportedly making other recycled plastics unsaleable.

Last year Innocent drinks stopped using Pla because commercial composting was "not yet a mainstream option" in the UK.

Anson, one of Britain's largest suppliers of plastic food packaging, switched back to conventional plastic after testing Pla

in sandwich packs. Sainsbury's has decided not to use it, saying Pla is made with GM corn. "No local authority is collecting compostable packaging at the moment. Composters do not want it," a spokesman said.

Britain's supermarkets compete to claim the greatest commitment to the environment with plant-based products. The bioplastics industry expects rising oil prices to help it compete with conventional plastics, with Europe using about 50,000 tonnes of bioplastics a year.

Concern is mounting because the new generation of biodegradable plastics ends up on landfill sites, where they degrade without oxygen, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. This week the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration reported a sharp increase in global methane emissions last year.

"It is just not possible to capture all the methane from landfill sites," said Michael Warhurt, resources campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "A significant percentage leaks to the atmosphere."

"Just because it's biodegradable does not mean it's good. If it goes to landfill it breaks down to methane. Only a percentage is captured," said Peter Skelton of Wrap, the UK government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme. "In theory bioplastics are good. But in practice there are lots of barriers."…

Well, isn’t that the problem in a nutshell? In theory, it’s always a good idea, but since no one has bothered to think it through, in practice, it turns out to be a disaster.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:49 | link | comments

Activist queen: Jordan’s babelicious queen wants to “empower” Muslim women. Oh, not by giving them any power per se—that would contravene basic principles of sharia. No, Rania wants chicks to become technically adept at using the ‘Net, so they can log on and tell everyone how “liberated” and educated they are. That will help dispel unfortunate stereotypes about Muslim women being unliberated and uneducated. And if need be, Rania is quite prepared to grovel to the oily Royals who force chicks to wear black pup tents in public and who won't allow women to drive. From Arab News:

JEDDAH, 27 April 2008 — Jordan’s Queen Rania yesterday called for a global dialogue to dismantle stereotypes of Muslims on the one hand and of the suppression of women in the Arab world on the other.

“It is through a global dialogue that such stereotypes of Muslims can be dismantled, and it is through women’s sustained education and progress that such misconceptions can be removed,” the queen said in her keynote address at the sixth annual symposium of Effat College on learning and technology at the Jeddah Hilton.

She termed “Cyber Citizenship: Vistas and Visions” as the apt theme for the two-day symposium at a time when the World Wide Web and the Internet are progressing by the day.

Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, who is also a member of the Effat College board of trustees, in his opening address, said that in today’s world of technology (cyber world) there is a huge lot of information and knowledge that is easily available.

“It is our responsibility to make maximum use of it and see that progress is achieved coupled with human development,” he said, adding that the Kingdom is committed to achieve its goals with all possible means and tools.

Princess Loulwah Al-Faisal, vice chairman of the board of trustees and general superviser of Effat College, in her welcome remarks said, “It is a great honor to me and to Effat College to see Queen Rania here.”

Education in Saudi Arabia has received constant support from all of its kings, she said, adding that Saudi women were competent and able learners.

Queen Rania said, “Stereotypes like women are being suppressed and that they are not educated should be answered by Arab and Muslim women themselves with the help of the Web and the Internet. Efforts are already being made by women to dismantle such misconceptions and much more needs to be done through a sustained campaign.”

She added, “Effat College, which has a rich history of 50 years in educating girls, is one of the examples of how women are graduating in large numbers. I wish they (the West) see what is happening in Effat College... It is not only happening in Effat College but all over the Kingdom. Historically, Arab countries realized that women needed to be educated. After all, they (women) are the pillars of any society and its development.”

Emphasizing that technology was important in today’s world, she said, “But this era is not of technology alone. Our era is one of vision, wisdom and innovation...When I talk of empowering women, it does not mean giving up our traditions and culture, and emulate the West. Our faith has honored women from the Prophet’s time. It is also our belief that when you educate one woman you educate an entire society.”

You just know the Saudis want to stick her in a burqa and make her shut up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments

Nuts!: State moves to ban fake testicles on vehicles.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:01 | link | comments

Same old blame game: How many gazillions of shekels have been squandered on the money pit known as "Palestine"? And what have "investors" received for their moolah? Zilch.Squat. Nada. And just whom to you suppose the money men blame for this state of affairs? Yasser Arafat, the con man/kleptocrat who helped himself to a lion's share of the investment? 'Tis to laugh. Hamas, the genocidal terror arm of the Muslim Brotherhood? Of course not. The Arabs and their lackies on the international scene, intent on using the Palestinians as a battering ram to destroy the Jewish state--an effort historian Bat Ye-or has dubbed "Palestinianism"? Don't be silly. Those responsible for the Palestinian economy's stasis are--I hope you're sitting down--the Jews.

Wow. We are powerful.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:34 | link | comments

Can the jihadis win?: Yes they can, says Lee Harris, author of The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West. Bruce Thornton reviews the book on the private papers site, and outlines the four factors that Lee says could well put the jihadis on top:

The first is the demographic explosion of Muslims in Europe, all the while Europeans do not reproduce even at replacement levels. Thus a potential jihadist fifth column is spreading in the heart of the West. Second is the naïve idealization of democracy, the spread of which in Muslim countries will not create cultures of “rational actors” but “will end by empowering those who are most opposed to the very modernization that the West wishes to bring about in Islamic culture.” Third, the West has abandoned the idea of “cultural protectionism,” instead seeing pride in one’s own culture and its superiority as a species of benighted intolerance rather than as a necessary defense mechanism. This self-loathing has been institutionalized in multiculturalism, which encourages Westerners “to feel ashamed of their own cultural traditions” as racist, exploitative, and intolerant, not to mention inhibiting the individual’s desire to pursue his own happiness according to his own desires.

Finally, Western cultural decadence weakens our defenses and gives traction to the jihadist hatred of the West. Living off the accumulated cultural capital of our more hardy, realistic, and brutal ancestors, we moderns are “intensely individualist, absorbed in the present moment, hostile to all forms of traditional religion and authority, champions of materialism, consumerism, and hedonism.” As such, we believe nothing is worth killing and dying for, leaving us weak in the face of a fanatic enemy, for “an intolerant ethical code will always end by trumping a carpe diem ethical code.” Given that we in the West have demonized “high-testosterone alpha males” and have institutionalized contempt for Western civilization, the West is obviously vulnerable to radical Muslims who “encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless,” and who teach their children “to be willing to die to keep their traditions alive.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:23 | link | comments

In the nick of time:  Speeding into the type of action for which he's famous, Mo ElBaradei and his ever-vigilant IAEA watchdogs are going to put on their Inspector Clouseau costumes and try to determine whether there's any truth to the rumour that Syria was building a nuclear installation.

I believe the Jews have already dealt with that "minkey," Inspector.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:03 | link | comments (1)

By George, it's sharia: In the course of doing some research, I came across a pronouncement made by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. To wit: "defamation of religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression"

Got that? Speaking freely and the right to speak freely are inconsistent (well, that’s the way it works under the terms of sharia, anyway—ed).

Yikes! Who writes their Orwellian material— Barbara Hall?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:53 | link | comments (2)

Hug a tree; starve a peasant: Mark Steyn on the biofuels debacle. From NRO: 

…So what happened?

Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and introduced some of the “wartime measures” they’ve been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from “biofuels” by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The U.S. added to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a five-fold increase in “biofuels” production by 2022.

The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you’ve suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it’s not “you” who’s got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.

Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothing for the planet in the first place. That tree the U.S. Marines are raising on Iwo Jima [on TIME magazine's cover last week] was most likely cut down to make way for an ethanol-producing corn field: Researchers at Princeton calculate that to date the “carbon debt” created by the biofuels arboricide will take 167 years to reverse.

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death…

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:06 | link | comments

Waiting game: At the moment, writes Melanie Phillips, everything is more or less on hold pending a decision to do something about Iran:

Everyone is waiting. In Israel, they are waiting for the 60th-anniversary celebrations to be over and for President Bush to have visited and returned home. Then, they say, the IDF will make its long-anticipated major incursion into Gaza. Then at last the problem of the ever-intensifying attacks by Hamas will be dealt with.

Across the world, everyone is waiting for the interminable US presidential election to be over. Then, many believe, the paralysis over Iran will end. Then, they think, the prospect of a military strike on Tehran will either swiftly be realised or permanently be laid to rest (depending on who actually wins).

And meanwhile the hallucinatory Middle East appeasement process meanders ever onwards, accompanied by dark rumblings about a secret backstairs sell-out Israel deal being cooked up between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas and enlivened by the Israel-phobic Jimmy Carter, fresh from paying homage at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, announcing the prospect of peace in our time with Hamas.

But waiting comes with a heavy price tag. It provides alibis for putting off what needs to be done quickly; it results in the slaughter of yet more innocents; and it gives the advantage to the player for whom time is crucial. That player is Iran.

The reason Israel hasn’t done what it needs to do in Gaza is not because of anniversaries or official visits. It is because of Gilad Shalit, the IDF soldier who is now in his twenty-second month of captivity by Hamas.

Israel will not invade Gaza because of fears that Shalit will then be killed. Shalit is being used by Hamas as a hostage to prevent Israel from wiping it out. The result is that other Israelis are being relentlessly attacked and murdered. And the puppeteer pulling Hamas’s strings is Iran.

The West tends to put the various Middle East conflicts into boxes marked ‘Israel-Palestinian dispute’, ‘Iraq’, ‘Lebanon’, ‘Hamas’, ‘al Qaida’ and ‘Iranian nuclear threat’. The fact is, however, that all roads lead to Iran.

Iran is simply the centre of strategic gravity in the region and in the war against the free world. It has encircled Israel through Hamas in Gaza and through Hizbollah in Lebanon, where it has also all but snuffed out the Lebanese democracy.

In Iraq, Iran is the central player. The Petraeus surge may have been successful. And the Iraqis recently surprised many by deciding to fight the Iranian-backed supporters of Moqtada al Sadr in Basra, causing Iran to beat a strategic retreat. But the fact is that, in Iraq, Iran has suborned government, insurgent and religious leaders.

As for al Qaida, the idea that Shi’ite Iran would never ally with Sunni terrorists is a lethal illusion. Iran has had working arrangements with al Qaida for years, as it has with other Sunni terror groups in their common cause against the West.

And although the West may not realise it, Iran has spread there too. In Britain and Europe, it has a sleeping army composed of Hizbollah cells and Iranian intelligence which uses western Iranian embassies as explosives stores. If Iran is attacked, Tehran will respond by unleashing Iranian terror in the West.

The prerequisite for stabilising all these hotspots — including ‘Israel/Palestine’ — and dealing with global Islamic terror is regime change in Tehran. The question is how…

I have some suggestions:

·         Serve the mullahs cyanide-laced backlava;

·         Put arsenic in the fabric softener they use to keep their robes fluffy soft;

·         Whoopy cushions under their prayer mats—make ‘em sound ridiculous and inspire an uprising;

·         Use “fauxtography” to fabricate shots of the Ayatollahs in a variety of compromising homosexual positions, and let sharia take its course.

And last but certainly least

·         Send Bambi Obama to Tehran so everyone can hug and “talk it over”.

 

On second thought, scratch that last one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:54 | link | comments

A brave man: Salim Mansur tackles an issue that is virtually unmentionable in our multicultist Trudeaupia—whether unlimited immigration is a good idea. To even raise the possibility that it isn’t contravenes our most basic assumptions, and will likely get you branded a “racist” or “Islamophobe”. That’s why Mansur’s raising it is an act of defiance and courage. From the Toronto Sun:

…During the past 40 years British society and others in the West have changed greatly due to immigrants arriving from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

In Canada, for instance, the numbers of foreign-born residents in Toronto -- including some suburban areas such as Markham -- are now more than half of the population.

As the profiles of western societies are altered by immigration, the concern or fear expressed by Powell has become more real in the post-Sept. 11, 2001 world of Islamist terrorism.

Immigration in general is a touchy subject given the West's history of overseas colonies and empires, and any discussion of the linkage between immigration and terrorism is surely of an explosive nature that politicians will avoid.

The politics of multiculturalism is also unhelpful by penalizing those politicians -- Powell being the most notable -- willing to probe the negative effects of immigration.

But the link between immigration and terrorism needs examining and public discussion, not denial. Immigration policy that gets to be viewed as undermining security will lose public support.

Since 9/11, however, discussion of immigration policy merely in terms of the demographic needs of the West -- with an aging population and a shriveled birthrate -- without addressing concerns of public security is increasingly untenable.

Migration of people from their native homes to foreign lands is an old phenomenon. Its contributions have been mostly positive in the making of our hugely vibrant world.

There is nevertheless a negative side to migration when movements of people have adversely affected politics, worsened conflicts, inflamed bigotry, magnified fears of aliens and increased cultural tensions among ethnic communities…

Someone get Salim some purple Kool-Aid—pronto. The voodoo isn’t working. Drink some down quickly, Salim, so you’ll be able to think those happy thought about every ethnic community being equally wonderful, with each having something equally fantabulous to add to our vast, multicultural tableau.

It is a small world, after all, and here in Canada, we embrace it—the whole kit, caboodle and sharia.

Update: A cautionary tale from the U.K.

Update: A cautionary tale from our own backyard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:10 | link | comments

Three of a kind: Is Reverend Jeremiah Wright's word view--i.e. that America is run by "rich white people" who are inherently racist by virtue of their being white--really any different from the mindset of Canada's human rights commissions and their blather about powerful, inherently racist white "hegemons"?

For that matter, aren't Bambi's ideas about white folks--his white granny is "racist" because she's a "typical white person"--in line with this type of thinking; thinking which, in making sweeping judgements about one particular race, is, in effect, racist?

Or am I taking things "out of context"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:26 | link | comments

Supernatural sabotage:R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. in the New York Sun has an explanation for why Bambi’s campaign seems to be running into trouble--it’s the fault of pranksome spirits:

Anyone who has followed politics studiously over the years is aware that there are gifted politicians who, for whatever reason, eventually find their campaigns haunted. I do not mean haunted by accidental events or by a clod or two at campaign headquarters. I mean haunted. I mean visited by the weird, by supernatural pranksters, by what our Islamic friends call djinni.

Clearly, after months of suave upward mobility, Senator Obama is now in this unfortunate condition. The bizarre is his companion. The paranormal is a constant possibility. Though the members of the press are too stuffy to mention it, recent setbacks to his campaign are not normal.

The gifted young senator appears in San Francisco amongst his fellow moral and intellectual colossi. For an instant he lets down his guard. In this closed meeting he blurts out what he really thinks, and somehow his remarks are taped.

A “friendly” Web site posts his remarks, and all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden every politically alert American knows that in San Francisco (of all places) Mr. Obama explained that religion is the opiate of the gun nuts, who have been out of work and living angrily in jerkwater for “twenty-five years.”

How did that tape ever get out, and why would Mr. Obama’s friends at that Web site not recognize its potential for ruin?

Or consider a more recent and even more bizarre interlude. Senator Obama is having breakfast in Scranton, Penn. A reporter asks for his reaction to President Carter’s meeting with the thugs of Hamas, and Mr. Obama waffles.

Perhaps, that is not so surprising, for he has waffled along the campaign trail. But now comes the paranormal part. The wretch waffled while actually eating a waffle — reportedly a Belgian one.

Weirder still, Mr. Obama acknowledged his waffle, exclaiming to the reporter: “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” and “Just let me eat my waffle.”

Now, after the Pennsylvania primary, I suspect Mr. Obama’s odd occurrences will multiply. There will be freakish moments as there have been with other ill-starred leaders, reminiscent of Jimmy Carter being attacked by an amphibious rabbit in 1979 or Richard Nixon photographed while strolling along a sandy beach wearing wing-tip shoes before impeachment was even contemplated…

I have another explanation for the "gotchas": Bambi's character flaws.

That and plenty of bad karma, of course.

Update: Jimmy Carter and the "killer bunny"--a story I had completely forgotten about.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:56 | link | comments

Bad for the Jews: The Coen brothers are teaming up with anti-Zionist novelist Michael Chabon to bring his book, The Secret Policeman's Union, to the screen. The novel posits the non-existence of Israel and the existence of a crummy Jewish entity in Alaska.

In other words, the same kind of arrangement Ahmadinejad has called for.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:30 | link | comments

Many unhappy returns: The cover of the current issue of the Atlantic poses the timely question: “IS ISRAEL FINISHED?”

By the same token, the cover of this week’s Maclean’s promises to explain “WHY ISRAEL IS FINISHED”.

Is it just me, or do you sense a trend developing for coverage of Israel’s 60th?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:02 | link | comments (1)

How's this for lunacy?: The eco-fiends have assuaged their consciences about climate change by driving cars that use fuel made from corn. As a direct result, the Earth is now facing mass starvation.

Talk about your unintended consequences. Why not find a way to run cars on fuels of which there's an inexhaustible supply--like, say, poopy, or liberal guilt?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:30 | link | comments (2)

No direction Homi: Confession-time. I loathe, despise and abominate the lingo of academe—that high-falutin’ and impenetrable writing that is an insult to clarity and the magnificence of the English tongue. Roger Kimball has an acerbic post about one such academic language-mangler, a most esteemed “perfesser”:

Many of my readers, being sensible souls, will be innocent of the name Homi K. Bhabha. The former Chester D. Tripp Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago is now the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard as well as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at University College, London. Pretty impressive, eh? Professor Bhabha made his name as an exponent of “post-colonial studies,” i.e., a reader-proof species of anti-Western multicultural claptrap that even now makes many graduate students salivate. In case you believe that “reader-proof” is unkind, allow me to introduce you to this snippet from his much-admired essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”:

 

Within that conflictual economy of colonial discourse which Edward Said describes as the tension between the synchronic panoptical vision of domination—the demand for identity, stasis—and the counter-pressure of the diachrony of history—change, difference—mimicry represents an ironic compromise. If I may adapt Samuel Weber’s formulation of the marginalizing vision of castration, …

Well, let’s draw a veil over Mr. Weber’s “marginalizing vision.” You get the drift. And the amazing thing is that Professor Bhahba can keep it up over the long haul. The whole essay is just like that. Here, for example, are his concluding observations

 

In the ambivalent world of the “not quite/not white,” on the margins of metropolitan desire, the founding objects of the Western world become the erratic, eccentric, accidental objets trouvés of the colonial discourse—the part-objects of presence. It is then that the body and the book loose [sic] their representational authority. Black skin splits under the racist gaze, displaced into signs of bestiality, genitalia, grotesquerie, which reveal the phobic myth of the undifferentiated whole white body.

I first read those words back in the 1980s and knew instantly that its author was destined for academic stardom. And so it has come to pass. Homi K. Bhabaha has it all: exotic name, correct ethnic background, impeccable left-wing political opinions, and a prose style that you’d need dynamite to penetrate. Professor Bhabha spends most of his time emitting anti-Western and especially anti-American sentiments for his admiring colleagues and students. What better place to dispense wisdom about the depredations of the West than Harvard University, that great friend of the wretched of the earth?...

What better place? Well, there’s always a spot next to Bambi. He seems to be highly receptive to that sort of blather.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:07 | link | comments

Not meaning to toot my own horn or anything but...:  I won.

Well, maybe a little toot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:47 | link | comments (2)

Bambi the Vampire Slayer: Today's unintentionally amusing headline comes from the Los Angeles Times: Barack Obama to meet unconditionally with dreaded 'Fox News Sunday.'

Scary! He'd better take some garlic and a wooden stake, just to be safe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:09 | link | comments

The Wizard of Ob: Charles Krauthammer has a deliciously caustic piece about how Bambi has been the architect of his own misfortune. In the early days, when Americans didn’t know who he was, he could coast on his good looks, soothing voice and piffle about “change”. (Another American salesman, Willie Loman, coasted on “a smile and a shoeshine,” until he, too, was done in by his own character flaws.) As the days went by, though, voters gained a clearer understanding of who Bambi was—and there was a gaping chasm being the image and the reality. He was not, as he claimed, someone who transcended matters of race; his 20-year long mentorship by that that acist rogue, Jeremiah Wright, proved that that was a bunch of hogwash. He was not a “new” kind of politician; he was merely new on the scene, and thus very inexperienced. He was not the great “unifier”; being of the hard left, someone who contemptuously dismisses the great unwashed as being “bitter” (because they don’t think like him), he is probably the most divisive of the three candidates. It also didn’t help that he hangs out with the likes of Bill Ayers. In his former life, Ayers was a rich, Weatherman who displayed his loathing for America by bombing American; currently, he’s a rich university professor who displays his loathing for America by poisoning the impressionable minds of its youth: a lateral move which seems to have troubled the Bambino not in the least.

As Krauthammer notes, Bambi dubbed all these unpleasant revelations, each one seemingly another nail in the coffin of his presidential hopes, “distractions”. But as Krauthammer makes clear, they weren’t “distractions.” They were the main event.

I’d compare Bambi to the Wizard of Oz. At first, when we didn’t know him, he was like “the great and powerful Oz”—mysterious, awesome, compelling. With every “distraction,” though, the true nature of the “Wizard” became clearer, until we found out that he is not the commanding presence we thought he was and that he pretended to be. He is actually a funny little man standing behind a curtain, frantically pulling some levers in a futile bid to maintain the illusion. But it's too late. The mask has slipped. And without the benefit of the special effects, it turns out he really isn’t impressive at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:54 | link | comments

Rick’s Procrustean effort: The Globe and Mail’s resident aging hippy-dippy Socialist, Rick Salutin, weighs in on the matter of free speech:

Free speech, if you can afford it

Case 1: The Ontario Human Rights Commission has declined to rule on a complaint brought by Arab and Muslim groups against Maclean's and writer Mark Steyn. The OHRC said its mandate doesn't cover such things but added, like a consolation prize: "Freedom of expression should be exercised through responsible reporting." This is clearly wrong. Freedom of expression is exercised through irresponsible reporting - or what some people see that way. That's when the need to protect it arises.

The interesting part of the case is that the complainers asked not for an apology or correction - but for the right to reply, unedited, in Maclean's. Maclean's refused. I think this clarifies the stakes on both sides. For Maclean's owner Ted Rogers, what counts is not his right to free expression but his right to distribute massively what he chooses (through those he hires) to express. It's the reverse of the freedom to sleep under a bridge, which is available to rich and poor alike. The other guys are free to publish magazines, too. But the complainers demanded the right to express themselves with the same reach that Ted Rogers provides to Mark Steyn. Call it the right to equal amplification of free expression. That doesn't sound unreasonable, but it turns a legal issue into an economic one. How you respond to that in a society where money controls media, I have no idea…

With Rick, that old Marxist, it’s always about the money—even when it isn’t. And he’s determined to make everything fit into the frame of “economics” no matter what.

My letter:

Rick Salutin makes it sound as though those who complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission about a Mark Steyn cover story in Maclean’s were at an “economic” disadvantage because the magazine is owned by Ted Rogers. In fact, the three law students and the Canadian Islamic Congress had the definite advantage here. They didn’t have to pay a single penny to have their complaints considered the human rights commissions (and they complained to several, with only Ontario’s being dealt with so far). Those on the receiving end of the complaints are mostly private individuals like Ezra Levant, who have to foot their own onerous legal bills. And when found “guilty”, as is inevitable in such “hate speech” cases, they will also have to pay a sizeable fine.

As for the supposed “unfairness” of the law students and the CIC not being able to reach as wide an audience as Maclean’s, their comment pieces and letters to the editor were published in many newspapers across the country. As such, they can hardly complain that they didn’t have a chance to air their views.

Finally, Mr. Salutin, as is his wont, frames this as a matter of “economics”—rich Mr. Rogers vs. the poor “little guy.” It should be clear, though, that this isn’t about money, it’s about freedom—the right of people in a free society to say things that others may find insulting or offensive. And in this battle, with the HRCs on their side, it’s the "little guy" who is calling the shots.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:58 | link | comments

For Pete's sake: One reason I am the way I am is because one of my formative influences was the folkie protest song. Yes, it's true: lefties like Pete Seeger made me. One of Pete's most stirring numbers was an English-language version of a German song, Die Gedanken Sind Frei--"Thoughts are Free." And you know what? It holds up very well in the age of human rights commissions and "submit you kafirs, or else."

To give you a taste, here's Pete (with Arlo Guthrie on backup) performing a short version of the song circa 1978.

And here are the lyrics--still stirring, still inspriring:

Die Gednaken sind frei

My thoughts freely flower

Die Gendanken sind frei

My thoughts give me power

No scholar can map them

No hunter can trap them

 

No man can deny

Die Gedanken sind frei

 

I think as I please

And this gives me pleasure

My conscience decrees

This right I must treasure

My thoughts will not cater

To duke or dictator

No man can deny

Die Gedanken sind frei

 

Tyrants can take me

And throw me in prison

My thoughts will burst forth

Like blossoms in season

Foundations may crumble

And structures may tumble

But free men shall cry

Die Gendanken sind frei

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

Just shoot me: Bush assures Abbas Palestinian statehood a "high priority."

Update: A selection from the Andrew Lloyd Weber songbook that was not featured on American Idol this week (from the beloved ALW musical "Dubya and the Amazing Oxymoronic Sharia-Democracy"):

I closed my eyes to the Jew-hatred,

Said it was fated:

Not one state but two.

So what if one

Is genocidal

And Jews’ll bridle?

Any “peace” will do.

 

My legacy on “peace” is riding.

My time I’m biding; Condi Rice is, too.

The NIE has tied my hands now.

It understands now

Any “peace” will do.

 

A mushroom cloud, a sound so loud.

The mullahs’ nukes make them so proud.

The Jewish state reduced to ashes

In a flash of light.

 

May I return to 9/11?

Folks sent to heaven

By a crazy few.

I told the world

You’re with or ‘gin us.

Now I’m the menace--

Any “peace” will do.

(Any “peace,” any “peace” will,

Any “peace,” any “peace” will do.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:50 | link | comments

The U.K., then and now: In the 1960s, it was the “mods” vs. the “rockers”. Today, it’s the “mods” (i.e. moderate Muslims) vs. the “fans” (the religious fanatics). Yasmin Alibhai-Brown—a “mod”— surveys the current scene. From This Is London:

[Glamazon, “revert” to Islam] Jemima Khan was born into boundless wealth, handed exquisite looks, glides in and out of parties in gorgeous dresses, is resented (and yes, envied) by ageing social democrats like me. We have nothing at all in common - except we do, as it turns out.

A connection unexpectedly came to light on Tuesday at the British Museum at the launch of an enlightened new Muslim think-tank - the Quilliam Foundation, set up by Ed Husain, who wrote a best-selling book, The Islamist, about his journey to and back from Islamicist jihadism. Khan spoke from her heart about her respect for Islam and also her worries about hardliners and young Muslims - her sons included.

It was moving and personal. Millions of us live that complexity, traversing between worlds, refusing to be owned by authoritarian " leaders". She also said she had received death threats for expressing her views. Such intimidation is par for the course when you challenge Islamic Stalinists - Muslims may flock to vote, but many have yet to grasp the meaning of intelligent argument.

This is why some of us are launching British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) at the Royal Society of Arts on 1 May. We are starting with a debate on the compatibility of secular democracy and Islam.

Sparks will fly, no doubt. We want younger Muslims to make choices for themselves. For far too long British Muslims have lived in a democracy but have not matured into autonomous democrats. The expectation is that communities take direction from community leaders and deliver block votes to political parties as if they are cash-and-carry sacks of rice. Some Muslim leaders have, for example, ordered their flocks to vote for Ken. Disgraceful, yes, but this is how it is on the Indian subcontinent and in Arab lands.

A Muslim child is taught never to question and to follow instructions from adults, fathers, grandparents, teachers, mullahs and political manipulators. Respect for elders is admirable, but this excessive culture of obedience is stunting the development of Islamic communities.

Khan, Husain and BMSD reveal to Muslims their entitlement to be liberated and enlightened. And suddenly many more seem to be listening. Tuesday felt full of hope. But my fear is that fanatics see that and may yet blow it away.

Um, isn’t a sense of “entitlement” part of the problem? Also, I’m pretty sure that, according to the lexicons of both the National Counterterrorism Centre and the EU, the phrases “Islamicist jihadism” and “Islamic Stalinists” are strictly verboten.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:06 | link | comments

Watch your tongue: The National Counterterrorism Centre, which describes itself as “the primary organization in the United States Government (USG) for integrating and analyzing all intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism,"  has issued some guidelines for discussing the war on terror. They boil down to this: you can say the word “terrorist”; you can talk about totalitarianism; but whatever you do, don’t you dare mention anything to do with Islam. From AP:

• Don't use the term "jihadist," which has broader religious meanings beyond war, or "mujahedeen," which refers to holy warriors.

• Do say "violent extremist" or "terrorist."

• Don't use the term "al-Qaida movement," because this makes al-Qaida seem like a legitimate political movement.

• Don't use "Islamo-fascism" and other terms that could cause religious offense.

• Do use the term "totalitarian."

• Don't label groups simply as "Muslim."

• Do use descriptive terms to define how a group fits into society. For example: South Asian youth and Arab opinion leaders.

• Don't use "caliphate" when explaining al-Qaida's goals, as this has positive implications.

• Don't use "salafi," "Wahhabist," "sufi," "ummah" and other words from Islamic theology unless you are able to discuss their varied meanings. Particularly avoid using "ummah" to mean the Muslim world, as it is a theological term.

Using “caliphate” has “positive implications”? Maybe for “salafis,” Wahhabists,” "the al-Qaida movement" and other “Muslim groups” who make up the “ummah,” but surely not for the U.S.

That being said, the above lexicon should find favour with two key sectors: those (clueless, politically correct dhimmis) looking to be “sensitive” to the feelings of others; and those looking to ensure that public discourse is sharia-compliant.  As someone who belongs to neither sector, I think it's like something out of Orwell--or a ruling by one of Canada's exquisitely sensitive human rights commissions.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:31 | link | comments

Satire update: The remarks by Libya's UN ambassador (see post below) inspired me to update a cheeky WW2-era ditty:

Ahmadinejad has only one left ball.

Nasrallah has two but they are small.

Arafat--hung like a gnat.

And poor old Mashaal

Has no baalls at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:08 | link | comments

They blow up so fast: Court sees 7/7 bomber grooming baby daughter for terror. 

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments

Axis of evil outreach project: The North Korean pipsqueak with the boring wardrobe and the Elvis 'do was helping Syria's chinless Baathist eye doctor go nuclear.

Until the Jews went and spoiled the fun, of course.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:32 | link | comments

Dhimmis draw the line: Usually the dhimmi diplomats at the UN are quite content to fall in line with their Arab/Muslim overlords. On rare occasions, though, an Arab will go too far, and the dhimmis will muster the wherewithal to object. That’s what happened Wednesday, when Libya’s UN ambassador compared Israel to the Nazis. From the Jerusalem Post:

The United States, Britain, France and other members walked out of a closed meeting of the UN Security Council late Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II, council diplomats said.

The walkout was a rare protest by diplomats on the UN's most powerful body against one of their own members. Libya is the only Arab representative on the council.

Council members were meeting privately late in the afternoon to discuss the possibility of issuing a press statement following a briefing on the situation in the Middle East. Assistant Secretary-General Angela Kane had reported on the escalation in violence and growing humanitarian plight in Gaza as well as rocket attacks against Israel.

According to several diplomats, Libya's deputy UN Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi ended a long speech about the plight of the Palestinians by comparing the situation in Gaza to the concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews. Some 6 million Jews and between 220,000 and 500,000 Gypsies were killed during the Nazi Holocaust.

Immediately after Dabbashi mentioned the concentration camps, diplomats said, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, US deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff, Britain's deputy ambassador Karen Pierce, Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke and Costa Rica's deputy ambassador walked out of the council's consultation room.

South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the current council president, then ended the meeting.

"We support the South African presidency's decision to close the meeting," Britain's Pierce said in a statement. "A number of council members were dismayed by the approach taken by Libya and do not believe that such language helps advance the peace process."…

“Dismayed,” were you? That’s why you’re a diplomat and I’m not. The word I would have used is “sickened”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:23 | link | comments (1)

Buddhists? Wiccans? Seventh Day Adventists?: Some unknown arsonist has torched a Chabad synagogue in Miami.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:04 | link | comments

The 600-lb. gorilla in the war room: It's Iran, a nation that is waging a war on the U.S in Iraq, whether or not the U.S. is prepared to admit it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:52 | link | comments

Fairy tales: Here’s a heart-warming story about a cultural exchange involving kiddies and drawfs, from mullah mouthpiece the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- A play based on the Brothers Grimm classic fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was staged by a group of German and Iranian schoolchildren at Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan on April 22.

They also took part in a workshop on the tale, which was turned into an animated film by Walt Disney in 1937.

Iranian children also entertained the German group with a theatrical adaptation of the Iranian folk tale “Mah-Pishuni”.

The three girls and seven boys from Germany and a number of their teachers were invited to Iran by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.

They will be visiting a number of monuments in Isfahan as well as handicrafts, carpet-weaving, and pottery workshops.

Officials will try to familiarize the German children with some aspects of the people’s culture during their three-day sojourn in the city which has been dubbed “half the world”.

The teachers said that Iran is the first non-European country the German students have ever visited.

Isn’t that precious? I wonder if the kids had time to take in that other “entertainment” in Mullahville: stringing up homosexuals. It’s a regular Cirque de Dead-Gay.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:43 | link | comments

Monumental demise: John Podhoretz visits Washington's "Newseum"--a massive tomb for the daily press--and pens an elegy for a dying medium.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments

Why "peace in our time" is fated to fail: I can name the reason in four words--because Arabs hate Jews.

P. David Hornik on the FrontPage site uses a few more than that to arrive at the same conclusion.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments (2)

Solitary epiphanies: Melanie Phillips comments on a provocative article that appeared in the Guardian:

I am following with no little fascination the controversy over David Edgar’s article in the Guardian last Saturday, which has upset certain left-wing folk by suggesting that writers such as Christopher Hitchens, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Andrew Antony, Martin Bright, David Mamet and Ed Husain are but the latest to have deserted the left and moved to the right. Oh -- and me…

Phillips' words reminded me of one of my favourite quotes. It was made in the mid-19^th Century by Charles Mackay, author of a book with one of my favourite titles—Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The quote:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!

Too true. The problem being that if Western civ. hopes to survive the 21^st Century, we’re going to have to find some way to hasten the wake-up process.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:43 | link | comments

Oddly enough: Here's a rather macabre news item obviously intended to elicit a few yucks, courtesy those wacky Wahhabis over at Arab News:

RIYADH, 23 April 2008 — Two men who prepare dead bodies for burial got involved in a fight in front of the Death Affairs Office here, the Al-Riyadh daily reported. A man, whose relative had just died, approached the two men asking them which one would like the job of washing the dead body. The two began to fight over who would wash the body and each one began pulling the man toward his side. In the tussle, they somehow managed to rip the official burial papers. The man expressed his disgust at the two people saying that they did not put into consideration his feelings on losing a relative and were only concerned with making money. Lucky for him, there were police officers nearby who came and arrested both of men.

Oh ho, such a slapping on the knees! (Wasn't that a Beastie Boys song: "You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Bury"?) The Reuters story about the stolen penises was much funnier, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments (1)

Jew-hatred, unpacked: Hillel Halkin explains that, paradoxically, the hatred has nothing to do with and everything to us. From the New York Sun:

…The first explanation [for Jew-hatred] holds that political anti-Semitism has little to do with who Jews are in themselves. Anti-democratic political movements, it is said, need scapegoats and Jews have always been handy targets, in part because they are a small and politically vulnerable people, in part because long centuries of Christian and Muslim prejudice against them have made it easy to stir up feelings against them. If it weren’t the Jews, it would be someone else — but it often is the Jews, because no one else is as convenient.

The second explanation holds that anti-Semitism has a great deal to do with who Jews are in themselves. There is, it is said, something about them that rubs certain kinds of people the wrong way. Although what this “something” is, is debatable — it has been variously defined as Jewish non-conformism, Jewish innovativeness, Jewish curiosity, Jewish clannishness, Jewish aloofness, Jewish stubbornness, Jewish skepticism, Jewish cosmopolitanism, Jewish intelligence, Jewish commercial skills, Jewish competitiveness, and Jewish proteanism, to name but a few qualities that have been associated with Jews — it has invariably been perceived as a threat by all those who believe in closed, regimented societies that seek to impose monolithic standards of thought and behavior on their members.

Which of these explanations is the right one? Probably, both. They are not, after all, mutually exclusive. Jews are easy to scapegoat and Jews have had, historically, qualities that many people find annoying. What Jews can take comfort in is the thought that, for the most part, the people most annoyed by them are those who tend to be most rigidly opposed to anyone who doesn’t think or act the way they do. Jews have always been a good litmus test of a society’s tolerance for difference.

It is no fun having enemies, especially if they are the kind given to proclaiming their intention to destroy you and if they may be capable one day of acting on their intentions. But it is nothing to be ashamed of, either. “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” is an old adage. Enemies are every bit as good an indicator.

As a Jew, I wouldn’t count too much on God’s promises. We’ve been let down by them before. But a sober gaiety in the face of our enemies is perhaps not such a bad attitude. We’ve had to deal with Ahmenidjads and Nasrallahs in the past and we’ll presumably have to deal with them again in the future. Whether through no fault of our own or through some feature of our being, they’re attracted to us. The thought of us gives them no peace. We should take it as the honor that it is.

I’m very “honoured”. Now please knock it off.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:25 | link | comments

Can't wait to try the Moqtada al-Sadr amazing flying carpet ride: Disneyland comes to Baghdad.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:43 | link | comments

She said/he said: She (Condi) says she told him not to meet with Hamas. He (Jimminy) says she did no such thing.

Someone's fibbing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:37 | link | comments

Today's nutty alarmist headline: Penis theft panic hits city.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:33 | link | comments

A: Libya, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Pakistan: Q: Who’s going to be organizing the 2009 anti-Fiesta of antisemitism in Durban? Claudia Rosett has more on the preparations:

 They all have seats on the 20-member preparatory committee which has just begun a two-week meeting in Geneva to plan for this Durban II pow-wow —which now looms as a reprise of the anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-American 2001 conference that was Durban I. This round, Libya is chairing the preparations. Cuba gets to send not one, but two officials to the planning party; one to plan and the other to act as rapporteur.

 

From a number of democracies, including Canada, the U.S. and Israel, there has been enough protest over this farce so that even UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour has interrupted her grieving over the 2007 execution of Saddam Hussein to note that there are concerns surrounding Durban II “which if not squarely confronted and resolved, may ultimately jeopardize a successful outcome of the process.”

 

Give us a break, Louise. The “process” here has patently nothing - zip, zero, nada — to do with fighting racism. It has everything to do with assorted thug states draping themselves in the mantle of the UN and abusing the vocabulary of genuine human rights, the better to attack democratic societies — starting with Israel and proceeding to the rest of the hit list maintained by the thugocracies of Libya, Iran, Cuba & Co. Thanks to UN sponsorship, their perverted “process” is thriving. Durban II is a gross insult to anyone genuinely fighting racism. In the propaganda wars of the UN, this conference is a coup for the club of thugs.

 

Would it be too much to ask that as plans roll ahead for the “Durban Review Conference” — as it is called —the U.S. State Department land a counter-punch on the side of truth, human dignity and genuine human rights? How about America introducing a resolution at the UN to give this conference and its preparatory committee an honest name — say, “Thugs R Us” —?...

 

Personally, I prefer Judenhassapalooza. But “Thugs R Us” would be my second choice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:11 | link | comments

The audacity of opacity: The IAEA says that Iran has promised to "to clarify" its nuclear intentions.

In other words, to further muddy the waters so the watchkittens'll back off again.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:39 | link | comments

Calling all kafirs: It's the dhimmitude, stupid.

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

CIJA's slap: Groucho Marx once said that he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. That’s something the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy might want to consider as it makes its pitch to be allowed into the UN’s Fiesta of Judenhass, Durban II. The umbrella for Canada’s Jewish advocacy groups, including the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith, CIJA is begging Iran, of all countries, for permission to join the club (and thus the Jews' clubbing)—an action that amounts to a slap in the face of the Harper government, which has refused to show up at this odious event.

Oh, well. It wouldn’t be the first time the Jews were their own worst enemy.

Here’s Olivia Ward’s article in the Toronto Star about CIJA’s “battle”.

And here’s the letter expressing my disbelief at the pointless bravado:

I’m not entirely sure why the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy wants to attend the upcoming Durban II conference on “racism”. Canada has already sent its regrets, since that event is likely to be a reprise of Durban I—an excuse for the Arab and Muslim states to unleash a torrent of abuse on the one nation they have unfairly branded as being the most “racist”—Israel. Why participate in—and thereby validate—such a farce? And why beseech Iran, the nation that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, to be “allowed” to attend?

The Israel-bashers are going to have their little hate-fest no matter what. It makes far more sense to stay home and jeer at it from a safe distance.

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

Well, shut yo' mouth: The mullahs' hairy sock-thingy promises to "slap the mouth" of anyone who has negative words about the nuclear Mahdi-summoning project.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:09 | link | comments

Softening the blow: CAIR-CAN founder Sheema Khan is up to her old tricks, trying to persuade the Globe and Mail’s gullible readers that the Koran doesn’t say what it clearly does say. Today she wants us to know that, despite what we may have heard, the holy book does not, I repeat, does not, sanction wife-beating:

…Finally, there needs to be an honest examination of the Koranic passage - Chapter 4, Verse 34 - that supposedly sanctions wife-beating. The verb in question, "dharaba," is invariably translated as "to beat," even though it also means "to leave." The Prophet Mohammed - who is the example for all Muslims to follow - never struck any of his wives. He admonished those who did.

Yet, many translations and classical Koranic commentaries counsel striking one's wife. Mawlana Mawdudi, an influential figure from South Asia, wrote that some women were actually in need of a beating. Some scholars temper this approach by saying the beating should be administered with something as "light" as a twig. With so many religious authorities advocating beating in one form or another, is it any surprise that Muslim men - and women - also believe it to be true?

Thankfully, there are exceptions. During a recent Friday sermon, Imam Abdurrahman Alhejazy of Ottawa spoke forcefully against domestic abuse, reminding congregants of the Prophet's example. Egypt's Grand Mufti, Sheik Ali Gomaa, has said "hitting one's wife is totally inappropriate." More voices are speaking out.

Not everyone agrees with this approach. Last year, the Canadian office of the Islamic Society of North America threatened to ban a new English translation of the Koran that advocated a man "leave," rather than "beat," his wife. It was overruled by Ingrid Mattson, the Canadian head of ISNA.

But there is a larger question for Muslims to consider. Are women inferior, or worthy of the same treatment as men?

Good question, Sheema, but, first things first, let’s see what the Koran and Hadith have to say about wife-beating.

Now, getting back to your question, according to your Prophet, who, after all, was merely taking dictation via an angel from the Big Kahuna himself, the answer would have to be yes, women are inferior to men.

My letter:

I can understand why Sheema Khan would want to “soften the blow” of the passage in the Koran (4:34) which calls on men to “beat” their uncooperative wives: The words may have played very well to a 7^th Century audience in the Arabian subcontinent, but these days they are decidedly antiquated. Nonetheless, for untold numbers of women around the world, the passage validates the harsh treatment meted out every day by spouses who believe that such behaviour is good and proper.

If that is to change, this passage and others teachings pertaining to women must be confronted head on. To pretend that they don’t exist or have been “mistranslated” will serve only to perpetuate the suffering.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:01 | link | comments

Camp Chubby Jihadi?: You send your kid to summer camp to lose a few, and he ends up being trained for the jihad.

Don’t you hate when that happens?

From the Toronto Star:

So was it simply a fat camp for Muslim boys?

Or was it a jihadist training camp where attendees were encouraged to wage war on Canada because of its military presence in Afghanistan?

Those are some of the questions that remain after a video was played in a Brampton court yesterday, in which a police officer questions a youth charged with belonging to a homegrown terror cell.

"These guys were like religious people who just wanted to practise, y'know, their faith," the then-18-year-old is seen telling RCMP Sgt. John Tost, the day after a police swoop resulted in the arrests of the so-called Toronto 18. "I don't think they were planning to do something towards Canada or anything.

"Basically we were just chilling, reading the Qu'ran," the teenager recalled of the activities at the 12-day camp that took place in December 2005 near the town of Washago, Ont. "Some guys are lazy, y'know, they're gaining weight. For two weeks we just kind of worked out."

The workouts, he said, included playing around in the snow, chopping down trees, playing with paintball guns and jogging. He also admitted to shooting a gun, which he said was primarily handled by someone whom the officer reveals to be an informant.

The young man, who was charged as a youth and cannot be identified by law, goes on to explain that some in attendance were "very intelligent" so why would they "ruin their lives trying to attack something?"

During the 75-minute interview, Tost points out to the teenager that hundreds of officers would not have been part of a multi-million dollar investigation spread over thousands of hours if the group was simply on a winter camping trip.

In the video, the officer describes the teen as "respectful," "well-raised" and "a nice young guy" who was reeled in by an adult co-accused who is "manipulative" and "gets other people to do his dirty work for him."

"You got caught up and led into a situation," Tost tells him. "It might have been exciting, but it's overtaken things and right now it's a very, very serious matter. We've seized bomb-making chemicals. We've got people here under arrest we believe were going to commit attacks against buildings and people here in Canada."

The teen disputes being manipulated and appears surprised by the alleged seizure, saying: "Hold on, hold on, before you go on, bomb-making, we, we?"

Tost portrays the camp to him as a breeding ground where one of the alleged ringleaders "planted the seeds" to commit violent acts.

"It all got its start at the camp in Washago ... but then it took on a life of its own and just got worse and worse and worse. And nobody put the brakes on," the RCMP officer tells him…

From the sounds of it, more like a death of its own:

Hello Mummy, hello Daddy,

Here I am at Camp Jihadi.

Camp is full of flabby chappies

But we’re trying to work it off by gettin’ scrappy….

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:55 | link | comments

"Culture" in "Palestine": Here's what passes for "entertainment" in Hamastan--the Hamas "culture minister" (tee hee) appears on Hamas TV and reads excerpts of that riveting fabrication, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

With or without the puppets?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:55 | link | comments (1)

God-law on the march: At both the local level—through our self-righteous thought cops—and the international level—through the UN’s Human Rights Council (a supposedly reconstituted “commission” but actually same old, same old)—“human rights” is the smokescreen the enemies of freedom are using to systematically spread sharia. Here’s the great Ibn Warraq on how it’s being done at the UN. From New English Review:

The central issue, of which we should not lose sight, of the Fitna Affair is not whether the film by Wilders is good, bad, blasphemous, or offensive to Muslims, but rather freedom of expression. Human Rights begin with freedom of thought, and expression; democracy depends on it. Sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, a noble document whose articles 18 and 19 guarantee freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom of opinion and expression, Islamic countries on 28 March, 2008 managed to kill it.

The 57 Islamic States with support from China, Russia and Cuba succeeded in forcing through an amendment to a resolution on Freedom of Expression. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this freedom. Theo van Gogh, the Danish cartoonists and Geert Wilders, and anyone criticising Islam, or the Sharia will now be deemed to have "abused" the freedom of expression. In other words, instead of protecting freedom of expression, the amendment will now be limiting freedom of expression.

The nations that created the United Nations, and promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 were committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law. In the last fifteen years, the UN has been taken over by the Islamic States, whose record on human rights is abysmal, and who have a very shaky notion of what constitutes democracy, and whose allegiance is to a seventh-century worldview defined exclusively in terms of man’s duties towards Allah. The Islamic States have been supported by those nations with a hatred of the United States of America, and those countries who see their future economic and political interests as being best served by their alliances with the Islamic States.

The Human Rights Council [HRC] replaced the old Commission on Human Rights in June 2006 following criticism that the latter was too selective and too politicised. However, the HRC is equally selective and politicised as it has failed to condemn human rights abuse in the Sudan, Byelorussia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China, for example, while constantly reprimanding Israel and Israel alone. The HRC is now dominated by countries that think that you should be killed for changing your religion, a clear violation of article 18 of the 1948 Declaration; quite clearly it is incapable of fulfilling its central role, that of promoting and protecting human rights. And yet, the western delegates instead of voting against the amendment abstained. The West blithely, complicitly, slides to its self-immolation...

Burn now; pay later.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:25 | link | comments

Shilling for Bambi: John Kerry’s brother encourages the Jews to vote O: (Warning: reading the following may cause your head to explode.) From JTA:

BOSTON (JTA) -- As I traveled the country for my brother John Kerry, speaking with Jewish groups and other communities in 2004, I learned that the most powerful way to show you have listened and understood is to bring the stories you have heard to wider audiences. As one African-American woman in Seattle put it, "I want to hear you call my name."

When Barack Obama delivered his remarkable speech on race in Philadelphia, I felt as a member of the Jewish community that he was calling my name. Speaking with moral clarity about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he said a view "that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam," is "profoundly distorted."

Sen. Obama was calling my name in Ramallah in 2006 when, under tough questioning from students at Bir Zeit University, he told them flat out that the United States will always stand by its commitment to Israel's survival.

He was calling my name from the pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church earlier this year when he challenged anti-Semitism among African Americans. Contrary to "King's vision of a beloved community," he said, "the scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community." He was saying the same things even before he entered politics, telling an interviewer in1995 that "anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up."

These words speak like actions, because they represent moral choices to stand up for Israel and against anti-Semitism when silence would have been easy.

As Obama's candid acknowledgement "of our old racial wounds" recognizes, the sometimes uneasy alliance of Jews and African Americans has been strained in recent decades. But at times this alliance, born in the common narrative of slavery to freedom and the common enemies of oppression and bigotry, has been a powerful force for social change.

Early in the 20th Century, W.E.B. Dubois co-founded the NAACP with Jews, and Jack Greenberg succeeded Thurgood Marshall as legal director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. And the Anti-Defamation League was founded in response to the lynching in Georgia of Leo Frank; in addition to fighting anti-Semitism, it also aims "to secure justice and fair treatment of all citizens."

The alliance had its apotheosis with King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching arm-in-arm in Selma, Alabama. For me as a young man, the picture of them across the front page of the newspaper imprinted a powerful image of Jewish commitment to social justice that undoubtedly influenced my later decision to become a Jew by choice.

In today's world, we need African Americans who will stand arm-in-arm with the Jewish community in advocating for Israel and standing up to anti-Semitism -- not only within the black community but also among Africans, Europeans and Muslims across the world. Jews everywhere have good reason to worry when anti-Semitism is widely accepted in much of the world and Israel faces an existential threat such as it has not seen since the early days of independence.

Barack Obama has shown -- by speaking out rather than staying silent -- that he will be such an advocate. His words bear witness to what he called this week his "kinship" with the Jewish community. And he has shown by the power of his words how forceful an advocate he can be…

Yo, Kerry bro’: never mind the “power of his words”. What about the “power” of his kinship with his nearest and dearest—Big Daddy Jeremiah Wright and good bud’ Rashid Khalidi?

Nice try, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:50 | link | comments (1)

Polygamy style watch: Unibrows, frumpy granny dresses and hair-dos that look like challahs.

Eat your heart out, Tinsel Town.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:19 | link | comments

The fixer of broken souls: Caroline Glick warns Americans about Bambi’s fascist proclivities. From RealClear Politics:

Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls."

She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. Obama can do what his opponent in the Democratic race Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot do. He can heal his countrymen's broken souls. He will redeem them.

But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won't place the whole burden on her husband. He'll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

At base, Mrs. Obama's statement is nothing less than a renunciation of democracy and an embrace of fascism. The basic idea of liberty is that people have a natural right to live their lives as usual and to be uninvolved and uninformed. And they certainly have a right to expect that their government will butt out of their souls.

IN CONTRAST, fascist societies, as Jonah Goldberg notes in the latest issue of National Review, are all about the notions of "unity" and "change" and melding our broken souls into a fixed, united will for change that Obama has made the core theme of his campaign. Goldberg compared "unity" with "patriotism," and explained that while the latter connotes the willingness to defend the moral values of a society, unity is bereft of any moral content. "The only value of unity is strength, strength in numbers - and... that is a fascist value. That's the symbolism of the fasces, the bundle of sticks that in combination are invincible."…

Another thing fascist societies have in common: fascist leaders.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:00 | link | comments

Muslim endeavors to turn back time: Literally.

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

 "My, what big teeth you have, Hamas." "The better to eat you with, Mr. Carter":

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:07 | link | comments

Hillary not pilloried: Hillary Clinton told ABC’s Good Morning America that if Iran considers nuking Israel while she’s president, the U.S. would have no recourse but to “attack Iran” and “totally obliterate” it.

She's allowed to say such things, of course, because she's a Democrat. Were a Republican contender to talk that tough, we'd never hear the end of it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments (1)

Ask Ayman: The zealot with the unsightly prayer icky (a.k.a. the Islamic stigmata) is taking questions again. From CNN:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al Qaeda still has plans to target Western countries involved in the Iraq war, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy warns in an audiotape released Tuesday to answer questions posed by followers.

The voice in the lengthy file posted on an Islamic Web site could not be immediately confirmed as al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri's. But it sounded like past audiotapes from the terror leader, and the posting bore the logo of As-Sahab, al Qaeda's official media arm

The two-hour message is billed as the second installment of al-Zawahiri's answers to more than 900 questions submitted on extremist Internet sites by al Qaeda supporters, critics and journalists in December.

Responding to a question of whether the terror group had plans to attack Western countries that participated in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and subsequent war, al-Zawahiri said, "My answer is, yes. We think that any country that joined aggression on Muslims must be deterred."

In a question signed by the Japanese news agency Kyodo asking if Japan remains a target because it once had troops in Iraq, al-Zawahiri said Japan provided help "under the banner of the crusader coalition" and "therefore it participated in the crusader campaign against the lands of Islam."

"Our Islamic faith urged us to resist the injustice and aggression even if they were the most powerful on Earth. Should Japan take a lesson from this?" he said. ..

The zealot also wanted to clear up that rumour, beloved of troofers, that the Jews were behind 9/11:

Al-Zawahiri also denied a conspiracy theory that Israel carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., and he blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al Qaeda's achievement.

Al-Zawahiri accused Hezbollah's al-Manar television of starting the rumor.

"The purpose of this lie is clear -- (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

"Iran's aim here is also clear -- to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq," he added.

Iran cooperated with the United States in the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban, an al Qaeda ally.

The comments reflected al-Zawahiri's increasing criticism of Iran, which al-Zawahiri has accused in recent messages of seeking to extend its power in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and through its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. Until recent months, he had not often mentioned the Islamic republic.

Al Qaeda has previously claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks...

Looks like that longstanding squabble between the Arabs and the Persians is heating up again. Which would be a good thing save for the fact that one or both sides may soon get them hands on some nukes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:31 | link | comments

A tale of two butchers: Only one of them deals in meat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments

The difference between Pakistan and Canada: In Pakistan, they riot over Danish 'toons and other "insults" to Islam. In Canada, they riot over...hockey.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments

Funny, it's had that effect on me for a long time: BBC news relaunch leaves viewers 'feeling sick".

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:41 | link | comments (1)

Busy little devils: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Iran is "hell-bent" on acquiring nukes.

"Hell" being the operative word here.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:35 | link | comments

Pompous gasbag’s “breakthrough”: Oh frabjous day! Hamas is ready to deal with Israel, says Carter (the headline in the Globe and Mail).

Consider me dubious:

Freelance busybody, former president Carter,

Neglected to read the Hamas Charter.

Its reason to be:

Push Jews into the sea.

Which kind of makes any “peace” a non-starter.

 

The Toronto Star's headline is essentially the same: Hamas open to peace with Israel, Carter says.

 

My letter, begging to differ:

 

Jimmy Carter’s hearing must be failing. Hamas never said it would be “open to peace” with its despised enemy, Israel. How could it be, when it remains committed to a charter calling for Israel’s destruction? What Hamas said was that, under certain unrealizable conditions--including a withdrawal to borders which would fatally weaken Israel--it might be prepared to discuss the possibility of a ten year “truce”.

Some breakthough.

I suggest Carter consult an audiologist as soon as possible. Ideally, at some locale far removed from the Middle East, where the freelance busybody’s “good intentions” threaten to make a bad situation even worse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:29 | link | comments

New-fangled Amis: Pre-9/11, novelist Martin Amis was a die-hard lefty, as inclined as any of that ilk to champion the Palestinians and kvetch about Israel. Since then he’s made a remarkable volte face—i.e. gotten a clue or two. His conversion is documented in his new book about the impact of Islamic terrorism. Quel surprise, the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic—who are not Islamophilic so much as they are hyper-sensitive to charges of Islamophobia—believe the book signals that something is seriously amiss with Amis: well, they would, wouldn’t they? Here’s a bit of City Journal’s review:

..His initial response to September 11, Amis acknowledges, suffered from naive rationalism, a need for an explanation, a justification. He even came close to embracing the confused doctrine of moral equivalence that so many on the left have signed on to. America must have deserved it, must have had it coming for killing people in the Gulf War or for ignoring the sufferings of distant peoples. How else to explain Islamic rage?

But as the War on Terror proceeded, Amis—like his friend Christopher Hitchens and French thinkers André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, but unlike most other left-leaning writers—took the measure of what free societies were up against. “The most extreme Sunni Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Sunni Islamists; but every rank-and-file jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or execution,” he writes.

Enough with moral equivalence, Amis concluded. Whatever the relative sins of the West, the paranoid, irrational, death-loving, freedom-hating Islamic ideology—“horrorism,” he dubs it—was pure totalitarian evil, a “maximum malevolence,” and had to be called such and resisted. He now bristles at the charge (often directed at him) of Islamophobia. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear, and it’s not irrational to fear something that seeks to exterminate you.

Along with the human bombs and the severed heads, the post-9/11 world has also brought with it numbing tedium. Not just a normal, everyday boredom, but a “superboredom, rounding out and complementing the superterror” of what Amis calls the “suicide-mass murderer.” Long airport lines and random knapsack searches are only the surface reflection of this monotony, a future in which riding a city bus could become “like flying El Al.” On a deeper level, the boredom reflects “the nullity of the non-conversation we are having with the dependent mind.” Just contemplate the Islamic utopia for a moment, Amis says—a bleak world, absent variety and women, “where the sole entertainment is the public execution.”

Engaging with this dead zone of the human spirit appears to be our fate for a long time to come, which certainly doesn’t inspire the intelligence or the heart. The Left’s victimology now sickens Amis. “Naturally one would be reluctant to question the cloudless piety of the Palestinian mother who, having raised one suicide-mass murderer, expressed the wish that his younger brother would become a suicide-mass murderer too,” he writes, sarcasm dripping. “But the time has come to cease to respect the quality of her ‘rage’—to cease to marvel at the unhinging rigor of Israeli oppression—and to start to marvel at the power of an entrenched and emulous ideology.” It’s painful to stop believing in the pure spirit of the underdog, Amis admits. And it’s painful, too, “to start believing in a cult of death, and in an enemy that wants its war to last for ever.” But intellectual and moral responsibility requires just such a conversion.

Amis opposed the Iraq War, seeing it as a wrong move in the global struggle against Islamic fanaticism, but he sympathizes with Tony Blair, who as British prime minister had to shoulder the burdens of that war. And he is withering toward those (again, mostly on the left) who want America and its allies to lose in Iraq. “There are vast pluralities all over the West that are thirsting for American failure in Iraq, thirsting for regional conflagration, for a Fertile Crescent bridle-deep in gore—because they hate George Bush,” Amis observes. “Perhaps they don’t realize that they are co-synchronously thirsting for an Islamist victory that will dramatically worsen the lives of their children.”…

Actually, I believe they do realize it, but don’t care because they think the West is so wicked it deserves such a fate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:50 | link | comments

CSM query: Will Carter's Hamas foray bear fruit?

Yes, bitter, rancid, putrid ones.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:35 | link | comments

First and foremost: Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a Johnny-come-lately in the rights game. According to the Islamic  Supreme Council of Canada (a name that, tee hee, always brings a smile to my face) there’s an ur-Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one that predates our Trudeaupian document by many, many centuries.

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

Rest in peace: Peace monger/mischief maker Jimminy Carter says Hamas and Syria are open to peace.

Well, of course they are. Unfortuntately for the Jews it's the kind of "peace" that comes when Islam's in the driver's seat.

The Jews want peace, not dhimmitude; the Arabs want dhimmitude and/or death for the Jews--part and parcel of the Islamic vision of "peace".

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:37 | link | comments

Unlikely pundit: British P.M. Gordon Brown is going to ask that well known pedagogical expert, gyrating Colombian pop tart Shakira, to advise him on the best way to teach school kids a vital “lesson”. From the times online:

Fresh from authorising a £50 billion debt swap to shore up the British banking system, Gordon Brown was preparing today to discuss Third World education issues with Shakira, the Colombian pop star.

The Prime Minister is due to hold telephone talks this evening with the sultry Latin singer, whose hits include Hips Don’t Lie.

When he was setting out his stall for the premiership last year, Mr Brown famously said: "I don't believe politics is about celebrity."

But he appears to have changed his tune since then, inviting George Clooney to Downing Street earlier this month to mull over the Darfur crisis, before appearing on the American Idol talent show to pledge Britain's support for the eradication of malaria.

Tonight’s event is one of a series organised by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), to highlight a pledge by world leaders that every child will have access to quality primary education by 2015. Some 72 million children are still missing out, according to the coalition of charities and teaching unions.

Shakira, who has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, has her own educational foundation in Colombia and is also a Unicef goodwill ambassador.

On Wednesday, hundreds of schools around the UK are set to take part in the World’s Biggest Lesson, which will see pupils from 120 countries taught the same subject simultaneously.

Oh, well. If she’s a Unicef goodwill ambassador, I guess she must have a handle on things. It’s not like the UN chooses its goodwill ambassadors solely on the basis of their good looks, right?

What next? Soliciting Lindsay Lohan's advice on teaching kids about the perils of sluttishness and substance abuse?

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

Shudder!: President Obama and a nuclear Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:30 | link | comments

Come again?: Hamas won't recognize Israel but will accept its right to exist.

That's a new one on me--"I accept your right to be, but refuse to recognize it." Makes sense in nutty Hamastan, I guess.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:55 | link | comments

UN Catch-22—or is it?: Speaking in front of General Assembly, Pope Benedict decried how power at the UN is concentrated in the hands of, ahem, “a small number,” but went on to say that the “world's problems call for collective interventions by the international community”—which is all but impossible when power is concentrated in the hands of a small number.

Given the gridlock, isn’t it pointless to look to the UN to be a force for good in the world since it is in the pocket of the “small number” (actually, quite a substantial number—57 to be exact, the largest block in the joint) who put their own interests well ahead of the international community's?

Or is this the Pope’s subtle way of suggesting it’s time to strip the “small number” of their power?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments (1)

“Rights” amok: Melanie Phillips describes the lunacy of “human rights”—you are obliged to put your own safety at serious risk in order to preserve the “human rights” of those who are actively trying to kill you:

How al Qaeda must be gloating. What would any sane country do if it discovered that living among it was Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man, who was wanted by his own country on terrorism charges? It’s a fair bet that it would deport him to that country as fast as it could.

What does Britain do in those circumstances? Declare that extradition would be a breach of his human rights and prepare to release him from jail under indefinite house arrest, courtesy of the British taxpayer, to the tune of some £1,000 per month in welfare benefits.

This is the surreal situation following the Appeal Court judgment this week on Abu Qatada, who is currently in jail fighting deportation to his native Jordan where he was convicted in his absence on terrorist charges in both 1999 and 2000.

The judgment, which overturned a ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission that Abu Qatada should be deported, ruled instead that he could stay because, if Jordan prosecuted him, the evidence against him might have been obtained through torture and thus be in breach of human rights law.

In a separate but simultaneous judgment, the court cleared two Libyan terrorist suspects to remain in Britain for the rest of their lives because it did not believe assurances by Libya that it would not torture them if they returned.

One of these men had been found with a map marked with the flightpath to Birmingham Airport. The other was said to be involved with an Italian terror cell which was poised to launch a terrorist attack in Europe.

As a result of this second ruling, the Home Office has been forced to abandon deportation cases against a further ten Libyan suspects.

Between them, these judgments have left the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy in ruins. Despite Tony Blair’s declaration after the 2005 London bombings that ‘the rules of the game have changed’ and that terrorist suspects would henceforth be thrown out of the country, not one such suspect has been deported.

In the case of Abu Qatada, this notorious godfather of terrorism who turned Britain into the European hub of al Qaeda — causing foreign security services to dub it ‘Londonistan’ — has now made a monkey of us yet again.

How on earth have we got ourselves into such an insane position?

The reason is the way the judges have interpreted the European Convention on Human Rights. In cases in 1989 and 1996, the European Court of Human Rights extended the scope of the Convention’s prohibition against torture, making it impossible to deport suspected terrorists to any country thought to be abusing human rights.

And the English courts applied this ruling far more zealously than those in any other country.

This meant that, even if people turning up at immigration control presented a clear danger to this country, Britain let them all in if they claimed they would be ill-treated if they were sent back home. And by the same absurd reasoning, once they were in the courts wouldn’t allow them to be sent back.

This is precisely what happened with Abu Qatada. He turned up in 1993 and successfully claimed leave to remain on the basis he had been tortured by the Jordanians.

Maybe this was true. But Britain accordingly decided he should be allowed to live here even though — as it was repeatedly warned — he was a threat to the entire Western world.

Of course torture is a terrible thing, and it is right that Britain should not be involved in its practice. But this fine principle has been progressively stretched to ever more ludicrous lengths.

It is simply perverse in the extreme to require a country ever to put its own security at risk. Indeed, the Geneva Convention gives countries an explicit right to return any refugee who can reasonably be regarded as a danger to society.

Yet the English courts have laid down that Britain must accommodate people posing just such a risk — if there is a possibility that torture might be employed not in Britain but in another country altogether…

In the words of English historian Arnold Toynbee,“Civilizations die through suicide, not murder.” And it should be clear by now that "human rights" is our poison pill.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:02 | link | comments

Another UN gangbang: Can’t hardly wait for the next round of the UN’s favourite pastime—shtupping the Jews at the behest of the Muslims. From JTA:

The upcoming U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Geneva is likely to single out Israel for criticism.

Observers expect next week's forum, strongly influenced by Islamic countries, to once again gang up on Israel, the latest effort to isolate the country on the international stage.

“Demonization and de-legitimization of Israel happens daily at the U.N. Human Rights Council, so I can't see how this will be any different,” one Jewish analyst said this week.

This two-week event, chaired by Libya, is actually a “preparatory conference” for a global gathering that will take place in 2009. The last such event, in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, became so politicized while singling out Israel for the worst violations of international law, that both the American and Israeli delegations walked out.

This time around, while the Jewish state will almost surely receive disproportionate attention, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference is expected to renew its campaign to curtail freedom of speech and expression in order to counter “Islamophobia” and “blasphemy” – as epitomized by a series of Danish cartoons in 2005 and a Dutch film earlier this year, which were both seen as defaming Islam itself.

Blasphemy “would turn the clock back a few hundred years, so we’re obviously opposed to that,” said Ronald Eissens, of the Dutch watchdog ICARE/Internet Center Anti-Racism Europe. “This conference could be interesting or boring, depending on if the African countries go along with the OIC, and if the Europeans show their teeth”.

Among the Jewish groups likely represented at the Geneva event will be UN Watch, the European Union of Jewish Students, B’nai Brith, Hadassah, and others.

Which begs the question: why? Why are these groups bothering to show up at this farce? It's like missionaries willingly showing up at the cannibal cook-out. Wouldn’t it be far more effective to slip 'em the bird and skip this UN Wannsee Conference, making sure to issue a statement explaining why they were refusing to participate, as Canada did when it spurned Durban II? In any event, I don’t know why the UN even bothers to maintain the pretence that such conferences are “against racism” when everyone knows they’re really an excuse to eff-you-see-kay Israel. Do the Muslims and their UN lackeys think we’re stupid or something?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:50 | link | comments (2)

The meaning of the hijab: Here in North America we are often told that wearing the hijab is a feminist statement and a question of "human rights". Over in Egypt, though, an Egyptian author has a much different interpretation. She says it often symbolizes men’s fear of and contempt for a woman’s intelligence. From MEMRI:

There are women who wear the hijab whom I appreciate, and there are women who do not wear the hijab whom I do not appreciate. It depends on their character. But I am against the hijab in the sense that... What does it mean for a woman to wear the hijab? What does it mean to consider women's hair to be 'aura [body parts that are forbidden to expose]? What does it mean to cover the head? The head is the most important part of the human being. The head contains the brain. When the brain stops working, our life comes to an end. When our brain works, we do great things. Human beings use their brains to create everything we see - airplanes, missiles, medications, books, plays, and films. All these great things are produced by the brain.

So why do they cover the head? Because it is a symbol. It symbolizes the assumption that women have no brain, no head, and that the man, her husband, is her head, her brain. I oppose this symbol, which, in my opinion, is against women and is inappropriate."

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:59 | link | comments

Et tu, India?: I had expected better from the world’s largest democracy. From Arab News:

NEW DELHI, 21 April 2008 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit India toward the end of this month. The announcement was made yesterday by National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan during a discussion at International Institute of Strategic Studies-Citi India Global Forum. Ahmadinejad will visit India on his way to Sri Lanka.

The visit will take place at a time when Iran is facing UN sanctions and isolation from several countries. India has always advocated diplomacy toward Iran. “In dealing with Iran, we are better poised and better placed than anyone else, but we do not necessarily have to be part of a compact of certain countries,” Narayanan said.

Citing caution exercised by India in not getting involved into “conflict diplomacy,” Narayanan appealed to the international community: “Please do not treat Iran like any other nation. It is a big country, it is a major country with tremendous influence. You need to deal with it diplomatically.”

Ahmadinejad’s two-day state visit to Colombo begins April 28. He is expected to be in Delhi in the last weekend of April. While in Colombo, the Iranian president will launch a hydropower project in Wellawaya in Monaragala district and sign an agreement for modernizing the Sapugaskanda oil refinery.

This would be Ahmadinejad’s first visit to India. The last Iranian president to visit India was Mohammad Khatami when he was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in 2003. The last Indian prime minister to visit Teheran was Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2001.

While Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee visited Teheran last year in February, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari was here in September and Iranian Minister of Economy and Finance Davoud Danesh Ja’fari came here in January.

India has diverged from the US-led move to impose sanctions on Iran as in Delhi’s opinion Iran has the right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, while fulfilling its international obligations. India favors an institutionalized dialogue with Iran on the issue.

“Sanctions or military action is not a lasting solution. They will only exacerbate the situation. We need to evolve something that involves Iran,” according to Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.

Clarifying India’s stand on Iran’s nuclear policy, Menon said: “Ultimately it is whether or not it (Iran) is implementing the obligations it undertook. It depends on technical assessments which are best done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”

Drawing attention to the need for a change in how the world looks at nonproliferation, Menon favored a new international consensus on the issue. As sanctions and military action will only “exacerbate” the situation, “we need to have in place a system to which Iran is party,” Menon said.

Notwithstanding the reservations voiced in various international circles against Iran’s nuclear policy, Indo-Iran ties have continued to progress. Railroad officials of the two countries recently signed a memorandum of understanding. One of its aims is to increase cooperation with International Union of Railways and start work on an India-Iran-Russia railroad.

To give the two countries an insight into each other’s rich heritage and civilization, an Iran Cultural Week will be held here in late April, while an Indian cultural event in Iran has been planned for late May. Organized by Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, the Iran week will run from April 29 through May 6.

Iran’s strategy: keep the Hindus focused on handicrafts and other tchotchkes while the mullahs proliferate like mad.

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

By their Passover greetings shall ye know them: NYT token right winger William Kristol decodes the not-so-hidden meaning of the candidates’ holiday wishes:

Every presidential campaign has to produce a stream of appropriate statements for religious holidays, patriotic commemorations, and the like. Campaigns don’t expect to win votes with these messages. They produce them because there’s a risk of giving offense to some group or other if they don’t.

And candidates do it because it looks presidential. After all, a substantial portion of any White House’s output consists of official messages recognizing various national milestones, group anniversaries and dignitaries’ birthdays.

So, last week, in the midst of the excitement over the pope’s visit, the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaigns found time to issue Passover greetings. They were of course staff-produced, and somewhat formulaic. Still, differences among formulaic statements can be revealing.

The Clinton statement is the most personal of the three. She claims she has “always been inspired by the enduring words of the Haggadah: ‘In every generation, each of us must see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt.’ ” Indeed, she affirms, “I am deeply moved by this timeless cry to stand up to oppression, tyranny and discrimination — wherever they are found.”

Now let’s grant that as first lady and senator from New York, Hillary Clinton has probably experienced more Seders than your typical non-Jewish politician. It may therefore be true that she has been inspired by those words of the Haggadah.

The trouble is that, as so often in her campaign, her greater experience hasn’t given her anything interesting or distinctive to say. The lesson she draws from the story of Exodus is that “it’s through remembering the past that we become strong and effective advocates for all who suffer the indignity and pain of servitude and injustice.”

The sentiments are conventional. But Clinton does manage to convey the impression that she’ll “stand up” and “advocate” in a “strong and effective” way — unlike, presumably, her allegedly all-talk-but-no-action rival, Barack Obama.

Sure enough, the Obama statement is talkier than Clinton’s. For Obama, Passover is a learning experience: “The Seder, with all its rich traditions, has much to teach us all.” Indeed, “its emphasis on teaching children, and letting them demonstrate their knowledge through the traditional asking of questions, embodies the great Jewish traditions of family and education.”

Now, there’s truth to Obama’s emphasis on the Seder as a teaching moment for those involved. But he’s not satisfied with that. The whole country has to listen up.

After all, as Obama says, “American Jews have always played a vital role in our national conversation.” So, Obama urges, “let us continue to engage in dialogue, and to ask ourselves and each other how the Passover story challenges us to question the world as it is, and to seek a future that is more just and more peaceful for all.”

Hillary Clinton’s statement sounds as if it were written by a serious and slightly old-fashioned Reform rabbi, full of the spirit of earnest liberal advocacy. Obama’s message has the feel of a slightly New Age, somewhat hip, multicultural, dialogue-friendly, college-town pulpit.

Not John McCain. He understands Passover as a time for reflection about sacrifice: “As families gather together for Seders, members of the Jewish faith reflect upon the painful sacrifices made by their ancestors, the joys of freedom, and the triumph of inherent goodness over evil.”

Sacrifices for the sake of freedom, the triumph of good over evil — if John McCain was at a Seder this past weekend, he surely would have liked this passage: “In all ages they rise up against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands.”

McCain’s statement is also the only one to mention current assaults on Jews. He asks us to reflect on three young Israelis — Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser — who were kidnapped in the summer of 2006 by Hamas and Hezbollah, and “who will celebrate this occasion, once again, in captivity.” McCain recalls his meetings with the families of two of these men in December 2006, reiterates his commitment to seek their swift release, and urges others to do the same.

So if Clinton’s Passover message is liberal, and Obama’s is multicultural, one might call McCain’s Zionist. There’s a clear choice of worldviews here — and not just for Jews, but for all Americans…

I’d feel much better about McCain if he hadn’t vowed to take a “hands-on” approach to “solving” the Israel-Palestinian problem. The best approach would be the opposite of the current one—“hands off” the peace mongering and "hands on" the mullahs in order to halt the Mahdi-summoning project that may shortly reduce both Israel and “Palestine” to a smoking pile of cinders.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:06 | link | comments

Crunching the numbers: Maclean’s caught heck for featuring a portion of Mark Steyn’s book about the baby boom/bust in Europe that is transforming the nature of that continent. A pundit on the FrontPage Magazine site has calculated the “critical mass” required to precipitate the change—and, go figure, only a tiny minority of extremists is required (my bolds): 

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called 'religious rights.'

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to 'the reasonable' Muslim demands for their 'religious rights,' they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris --car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam - Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons...

No, no, you don’t understand. It’s not “blood lust.” They’re just really upset about Israel and the great injustice that’s being done to their beloved Palestinian brothers. If we get rid of the Zionist entity, they will fall instantly into a group hug (until the jubilation wears off shortly thereafter, of course).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:30 | link | comments (1)

Today’s essay question: Jimminy Carter—stupid, insane, or just plain malevolent? Discuss. From CNN:

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that Hamas is prepared to accept peace with Israel if the Palestinians approve any agreement negotiated with Israel.

Carter's comments came after controversial meetings Friday and Saturday in Damascus, Syria, with exiled militant Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal.

"If President (Mahmoud) Abbas of the Palestinians and Prime Minister (Ehud) Olmert reach an agreement for peace, and if it is submitted to the Palestinians and the Palestinians approve it... Hamas will accept it," Carter said in a Monday interview with CNN.

Carter's series of meetings with top Hamas officials this past week have drawn condemnation from the U.S. and Israeli governments for engaging in diplomacy with a group they consider a terrorist organization.

Carter's tour of the Middle East has also included a meeting in Cairo with two senior Hamas politicians before his meetings with Meshaal.

"I'm not a negotiator, I'm just trying to understand different opinions and communicate, provide communications between people that won't communicate with each other," Carter said Tuesday at the beginning of his trip.

Most Israeli officials have refused to meet Carter during his trip, angry over his insistence that Israel should talk to Hamas. Many Israelis dislike Carter's observations about Israeli policies toward Palestinians in his recent book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

U.S. and Israeli officials believe Carter's meetings with Hamas will achieve little, and could actually harm the Middle East peace process.

"Regrettably, Hamas will try to take political advantage of this," Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch told CNN on Friday. However, he added, "I think President Carter's sincere, this man worked hard on peace."

Later Friday, at a State Department briefing in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack said, "I don't think people are going to confuse the efforts of a private citizen ... with the very clear policies of the United States government."

"We think it is not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings with Hamas," said U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

For the Israelis, a military solution is an elusive one -- but reaching out to Hamas, Israel insists, will not bring peace.

"Hamas is conducting war against the citizens of Israel," said Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to Britain. "What do you say to people who say: 'Why don't you talk, try and talk, and not to shoot'? It sounds very good but the question is, at what stage do you do that?"

And McCormack said Friday: "We find it very odd that one would encourage to have a conversation between the Israeli government and Hamas, which doesn't even recognize the right of the Israeli government to exist. So how can you have -- is that really the basis of a conversation?"

Carter, the man who helped broker the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s, has said he's simply on a "study mission" to support peace, democracy, and human rights in the region.

"It's my dream and my hope, that someday in my lifetime, hopefully this year, we'll see a major breakthrough," Carter said…

It is my dream and my hope that this clueless old gasbag (the word “taqiyah” ring a bell, Jim?) will make like an old soldier and just fade away. Hopefully this year. Now that would be a major breakthrough.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:06 | link | comments

"Hate" in Ontario: According to Barbara Hall, queen bee of the OHRC, Ontarians lodged a mere 2,500 complaints with her organization last year, and she thinks we can do much better (worse?) than that. Now that her organization’s mandate has been expanded, and OHRC busybodies will soon be able to go out into the community and look for people to complain about, instead of sitting back and waiting for the complaints to come to them, I’m sure she’s right. (Hey, that pro-active thing seems to work really for the Saudis and their Preventing Vice/Promoting Virtue HRC.)

Meantime, you can get your high dudgeon in gear next month at an event organized by the Canadian Arab Federation and bought and paid for by you and moi under the auspices of our provincial Attorney General. It’s called “The Hate Crimes Victims Provincial Support Network Workshop” and is intended to “build awareness of challenges facing Canadian Arabs in Ontario, stemming from negative stereotypes,  racism and hate crimes.”

Be there or be rhomboid.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:35 | link | comments (2)

Hot under the blue collar: Hillary leads in Pennsylvania, including among bowlers, gun owners.

Heh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:42 | link | comments

Today’s scary excerpt: Things are pretty much under control, seder-preperation-wise, so I thought I'd post this--the Ontario Human Rights Commission's definition of “racism”:

“The Ontario Human Rights Commission describes communities facing racism as “racialized.” This is because society artificially constructs the idea of “race” based on geographic, historical, political, economic, social and cultural factors, as well as physical traits, that have no justification for notions of racial superiority or racial prejudice.

Racism is a broader experience and practice than racial discrimination. It is an ideology that either directly or indirectly asserts that one group is inherently superior to others. Racism can be openly displayed in racial jokes and slurs or hate crimes, but can also be more deeply rooted in attitudes, values and stereotypical beliefs. In some cases, these are unconsciously held and have evolved over time, becoming embedded in systems and institutions, and also associated with the dominant group’s power and privilege.” 

Yikes. Reading this lefty tripe I am instantly transported back to university, where I am listening to some dishevelled sociology prof whinge about “blaming the victim” and the hegemony of whites.  

So racism is an “ideology,” is it? Does that include an “ideology” that clefts the world in two and that is itching to install a caliph in order to “racialize” (i.e. dhimmify) one part of the planet and dominate the whole enchilada by virtue of the powers and privileges embedded in its inflexible, inequitable system of God-law?

No? I thought not. Allow me to hang my head in shame and offer profuse apologies in advance lest I be convicted of a Maclean’s-type though crime.  

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

One Mo before I go: Israel's 60th is looming and you know what that means--time to spoil the party. Here's Mo Elmasry--one of the foremost champions of human rights, or at least, of Human Rights Commissions--in Canada explaining to the CIC website's faithful readers that Zionism is riddled with hatred for Palestinians.

Wrong again, oh Sock Puppet-master. True, over the years, the Palestinians and other Arabs haven't done a lot to endear themselves to the Jews of Israel--it's kind of hard to feel warm and fuzzy about people who rig up their kids in plastics explosives to blow you up--but it's clear that, as always, Mo is suffering from a bad case of projection.

To add insult to injury, just below Mo's sage insights, the CIC features the words of noted crackpot academic, Ilan Pappe (whose surname, I've been told, is pronounced as though there's an accent at the end as in: Ilan Pappé is full of crappé).

Mo and Ilan: a toxic twofer just in time for Pesach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:27 | link | comments (1)

Passover break: There's a slab of raw beef and sundry other uncooked comestibles beckoning me to come and transform them into something delectable, so I'm signing off until Monday. For those of the tribe, Chag sameach. For everyone else, weekend sameach.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:10 | link | comments (1)

There are none so blind…: Ezra Levant reports that even die-hard HRC booster, Dr. Dawg, has seen the light. Sort of. Alas, Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress still lingers in the dark. Here’s Bernie’s letter in the Toronto Star:

Alan Borovoy has set up a straw man in his arguments against the Canadian Jewish Congress. Citing excerpts from Mark Steyn's book, as reprinted in Maclean's magazine, Borovoy states, "Whatever a tribunal or a court might ultimately decide, how can the congress fault those human rights commissions for taking up such complaints? After all, the Steyn article falls squarely within the Jewish group's view of the commissions' mandate."

Our position is, in fact, the opposite: Steyn's observations are not actionable under the law and the complaints against them fall outside the mandate of human rights commissions. Borovoy ignores the salient passages of the Supreme Court of Canada's 1990 decision in the John Ross Taylor case, which upheld the constitutionality of the Canadian Human Rights Act's anti-hate provisions. In so doing, the court established guidelines for hate-based complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Most relevant, the court noted that "hatred or contempt" refers "only to unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification."

The commission's investigation of Steyn shows it has lost sight of the legislation's original purpose and the narrow fence it establishes against truly discriminatory speech. Such speech violates core Canadian values and has been upheld as a reasonable limitation of free expression precisely because of that incompatibility.

So by all means, let's tweak the law to eliminate some of its discretionary elements. Amendments could call for an ombudsperson to adjudicate objectively if the complaints meet the high threshold for action, or cost consequences for applicants who bring frivolous complaints.

But the Canadian Jewish Congress supports the act as it was originally intended: to protect minorities in Canada from speech that truly vilifies or discriminates.

Funny thing about HRCs supposedly protecting the Jews from “vilification”—apparently, the Jew-haters didn’t get that memo. Perhaps because HRCs afford only an illusion of protection and not the real McCoy? And it seems Bernie, poor chap, didn't get the memo about the thought cops becoming way passé. (Bernie's heart's in the right place; wish I could say the same for his head.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:03 | link | comments

The latest word: Dr. F. Icky is up to his old tricks, trying to stir up trouble for Great Satan. In his latest communiqué, al Qaeda’s Number 2 is urging the faithful to turn Iraq, now somewhat confusingly incarnated as a sharia democracy, into a “fortress of Islam.”

Like there aren’t enough of those in the world.

At the same time, Dr. Icky is somewhat confused about the United Nations and its role on the global scene. He complains that the UN “is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimised the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands,” whereas everyone knows that with it’s overwhelming 57-member voting block, Muslims are calling the shots at the UN. Sure, the UN may have had a momentary lapse 60 years ago—the result, no doubt, of lingering guilt over the murder of 6 million European Jews—but it’s been striving mightily to undo “damage” of Jewish sovereignty ever since.

Do the UN’s HRC, UNRWA and the Israel delegitimizing conferences on “racism” in Durban mean nothing to him?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:57 | link | comments

They’re everywhere: Youssef Ibramim on the current crop of Islam’s useful idiots. From Pajamas Media:

…Today’s Islamist Lawrences are being cultivated among a broad swath of political analysts, scholars, anthropologists, pundits, missionaries, and even spies dissecting militant Islam and Islamofascism. While most carry out illuminating and necessary work, the fish they bait ends up ensnaring many.

A few recent catches: the archbishop of Canterbury urging the introduction of Sharia law in Britain; Harvard University, a bastion of secular scholarship, shutting its gym to men to accommodate Muslim women; authorities at Minneapolis’s international airport negotiating for months with 700 Somali Muslim taxi drivers who refused to pick up passengers carrying liquor or depending on guide dogs.

Then there was President George Bush launching his Muslim initiative last June from the Islamic Center of Washington, a Saudi institution distributing educational material instructing Muslims to segregate themselves from other Americans.

Among other things, the Saudi-funded publications admonish Muslims in America “to dissociate from infidels, hate them for their religion, never to rely on them for support, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.” The question: how was it that among the estimated five million Muslim Americans with hugely varied institutions, the president’s advisors picked a Saudi Islamofascist ghetto as a venue?

This cluelessness is spreading into the academy and the arts too.

Witness the Guggenheim Museum of New York and the Louvre of Paris, along with Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, and multiple U.S. institutions, rushing to open branches in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, where laws institutionalize bigotry against women, Sharia bans images, and the government condones grievous violations of human rights for millions of expatriates of other religions.

Imagine the contortions of folks at Yale, Stanford, or Oxford when they have to explain founding campuses in Riyadh where women are not allowed or can participate only via closed circuit TV.

Useful idiocy reaches a higher plane among Western pundits who propagate the Saudi view of reverse progress, namely that Islamic societies have “particular requirements” and are evolving as “different models,” of which we should not be “‘judgmental.”

Fundamentalist creep is engulfing bastions of respectability in Western media too. At the start of Turkey’s slide away from secularism last May, the Wall Street Journal glossed over Prime Minister Erdogan’s aggressive Islamization, criticizing his secular opponents instead. The Economist argued his policy is tolerable, “even if it means enduring a bad, ineffective, corrupt, or mildly Islamist government.”

Last April a major New York Times Magazine article by James Traub argued fervently on behalf of “Islamic democrats” singing the praises of a reborn Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This was followed by a major essay in Foreign Affairs, a weighty establishment publication, by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke titled “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” The piece declared the fundamentalist group acceptable, among other things, as some of its leaders were interviewed in English, appeared reasonable, listened to classical music, and knew of Shakespeare. The article was so lacking in inquisitiveness it merited being posted on the Muslim Brotherhood website — ikhwanonline.com — as part of their propaganda.

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, a recent book authored by respected Mideast analyst of the New Yorker Steve Coll, presents the human side of Osama bin Laden, who adopted modern technology in his terror and whose wealthy contracting father employed Christians and other infidels in his business.

We should come back to reality.

Mild Islamism is an oxymoron. Sharia law, which sanctions beating of wives and stoning for adultery, is irreconcilable with human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood founded Hamas, calls suicide bombings a good thing, and is the 21st-century version of the organized fascism of Hitler and Mussolini in the last century.

If “mild Islamism” is an oxymoron, then so, too, is the sharia-“democracy” of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:28 | link | comments

Ken Livingstone's "Jewish problem": The mayor of Londonistan's animus goes waaay back.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:14 | link | comments (1)

Hamas for Obama: The genocidal jihadis obviously know a good thing when they see it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:09 | link | comments

Omar's sentence: "Self-styled" cleric Omar Brooks (as he was described by a letter-writer critical of Mark Steyn in yesterday's Globe and Mail), the acolyte of "self-styled" cleric Hooky Hamza who last year told an audience in Dublin that Muslims "drink the blood" of their enemies, has been sentenced to a good long stretch in a British hoosegow, and may never see the light of day again.

Update: So much for "self-styled". The Guardian describes him as "high-profile".

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:05 | link | comments (1)

Battered but unbowed: Jonathan Tobin urges us to include a prayer for the children of Sderot—the Israeli town that’s become a symbol of the nation's resilience—during our Passover seders. From JWR:

…(I)n spite of the failure to halt the attacks, the town is beginning to take on the aspect of a symbol of Israel's resilience as more visitors come to to express solidarity. Sderot is becoming, perhaps in spite of itself, Israel's Verdun. And like the World War I French fortress town that the Germans could not conquer, perhaps the Palestinians have started a process that they also cannot control here.

Rabbi Dovid Fendel, the head of a Hesder yeshiva in the town where students mix army service with Torah study, says young religious couples are moving there out of Zionist sentiment to show the Palestinians that they cannot succeed in making the place a "ghost town."

"For every kassam, we will build," the American-born Fendel pledges. "They should see we are not afraid."

But that bravado notwithstanding, the children of Sderot are still preparing for a Passover celebration which they know may be disrupted by the kassams.

This weekend, take a moment at your own seder. Look at the children around your table and imagine what you would feel like if they faced what the children of Sderot must live with every day.

As you do, say a prayer for the children of Sderot. Pray, as they do, for quiet. That no kassams will fall. That no "Tzeva Adom" will be heard in the town. Pray that there be peace for all of Israel and let those prayers be heard around the world. Amen.

Will do, Jonathan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:51 | link | comments

Hill goes in for the kill: Who can blame her, since the revelations about Bambi’s dubious associations just keep on coming? From the New York Sun:

Hillary Clinton is adding fuel to the firestorm about Senator Obama's links to his former pastor and to a member of the Weather Underground, suggesting last night that they would present easy targets for Republicans to exploit in the fall.

In a 90-minute debate in Philadelphia, Mrs. Clinton carefully but assertively sought to fan the flames that have nipped at Mr. Obama for weeks, citing her work representing New York to take fresh offense at statements by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, blaming America for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She also questioned his ties to a former member of the radical Vietnam-era group the Weather Underground, William Ayers, who was quoted on September 11 as defending the group's bombing of the Pentagon and the Capitol in the 1970s.

"It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to," Mrs. Clinton said, after earlier pointing to what she called Mr. Wright's "intolerable" comments after the terrorist attacks, when he said: "America's chickens are coming home to roost." She added: "You know, these are problems. And they raise questions in people's minds."…

Enquiring minds want to know, Bambi—whassup with your being such a chronically poor judge of character?

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:42 | link | comments

Take a hike, Jimminy:  Better old off on that second Nobel Peace Prize--the old gasbag has called off his visit to Gaza.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:36 | link | comments

A snapshot of mass psychosis: Those Arabs—they’re nuts.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:20 | link | comments (2)

Bambi’s lapse: The Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein comments on Obama’s off-the-cuff remark:

…Obama, one of the most liberal senators in America, was simply expressing, accurately, the condescending and patronizing liberal world view toward anyone they consider unenlightened.

Since that's how liberal politicians think, why be surprised when one of them occasionally slips up and admits it?

Hillary Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, was hypocritical and hilarious in characterizing Obama's comments as elitist. Clinton, like Obama, sees herself as one of the liberal "anointed."

As conservative writer Thomas Sowell describes such politicians in The Vision of the Anointed, they consider it their special burden to lead the great unwashed toward enlightened, "correct" thinking -- meaning their thinking.

The danger for Obama is not Clinton's self-righteous attacks leading up to next week's Pennsylvania primary, but that his own words cast doubt on his sincerity, dating back to the moment he entered the American political consciousness at the 2004 Democratic convention.

There, Obama delivered his famous speech that America was more than a collection of red Republican states and blue Democratic ones perpetually at war with each other.

"The pundits ... like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States," Obama declared as Democrats cheered, "but I've got news for them ... We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

INSPIRATIONAL

This was inspirational stuff, giving Americans weary of partisan infighting a momentary vision of a new kind of government that would reject partisanship, respect opposing viewpoints and unify Americans toward the common good.

Now, with a few revealing words in San Francisco describing non-Obama supporters as "bitter" rural hicks who must be guided toward enlightenment, Obama hasn't just shot himself in the foot.

By revealing what he really thinks, he has shot the most inspiring part of his political message in the heart.

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Bambi already told us how he feels about “typical” white people, like those in small town America, when he trashed his Granny during the recent Wright kerfuffle.

Wonder if Granny’s feeling kind of “bitter” these days, too.

Update: The honeymoon is over.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:16 | link | comments

Why the Religious Left hates Israel: The Religious Right—at least, much of the Christian, evangelical portion of it—is one of Israel’s biggest boosters. The Religious Left, on the other hand, despises Israel and is hoping (and sometimes actively working) to see it get its “just desserts”. Dr. Earl Tilford, an expert on the subject, tells FrontPage Magazine’s Jamie Glazov what’s up with the Left's loathing.

...FP: Can you touch on the Religious Left’s growing Jew-Hatred?

Tilford: As for Israel, the Religious Left fears religion. Religion is repugnant to their egalitarian ideals because it is not value neutral. Religion affirms the existence of definitive Truth (God as a sovereign and unchanging entity) and recognizes the presence of evil as a real force in the world. Religion demands moral righteousness in personal behavior in ways that run counter to the hedonism attendant to homosexual or bisexual practice. Christianity and Judaism both value life. This contrasts sharply with the Religious Left where values are relative, evil does not exist and as for personal behavior, if it feels right it must be right. Israel is a state built on values inimical to the Religious Left.

Israel recognizes the evil that confronts it--terrorism--and worse, from the perspective of the Religious Left, it takes decisive military action to thwart that evil. In addition to religion, the Religious Left fears power and success. Israel is both militarily powerful and economically successful. Israeli economic prosperity, in the minds of the Religious Left, must flow from exploitation because all economic prosperity, from their Marxist perspective, issues from exploitation. Obviously then, the Israelis are well off because they have exploited the Palestinians. So, the New Left has two things they require: an oppressor and a victim. If there is evil, that explains it. That keeps terrorists like Yassir Arafat from being simply evil men.

It is not so much that the Religious Left is anti-Semitic as that it is anti-Israel because Israel, not unlike the United States, stands for things the Neo-Religious Left cannot stand: power, success and unilateral boldness. Israel uses its military forces to strike at terrorists unabashedly and unapologetically. That drives the wimps of the Religious Left up the proverbial wall...

Jews with tanks--a sight that 's bound to drive ‘em batty. But, clearly, there's also a religious angle. All those poor, suffering Palestinians remind them of how Jesus suffered, as well all the "stiff-necked" Jews of the New Testament--who, fast forward to today, apparently haven't changed a bit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments (2)

 Jimminy’ s folly: A letter-writer in the Toronto Star gives the decrepit old gasbag a hearty thumbs-up. (The letter is headlined, deplorably, “Carter is a man of conscience”):

Kudos to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter for a genuine and inclusive Middle East peace initiative. There are those who would shun Hamas, a legitimately elected government of the Palestinians, while clamouring for democracy. Such are the double-faced Western powers, whose foreign policies around the world, and in the Middle East in particular, have been a complete failure. There is more global terrorism than ever before.

Carter expounds wisdom. The only way for peace is to talk to all stakeholders, reach consensus and thereafter follow through sincerely with any pledged actions.

Without Hamas, the "road map to peace" will lead nowhere. Carter understands this well enough to ignore the pressures of his government and deserves to be commended for his brave initiative.

Way to go Jimminy! My response:

Mohamed M. Jagani commends Jimmy Carter for his “wisdom” in wanting to include Hamas in “peace talks”. I have another word for it: “arrogance.” It is sheer arrogance for the former president to think that he alone can succeed where others have failed, and persuade Hamas, an organization whose raison d’etre is the elimination of the Jewish state (it says so right in its Charter), to “talk” about a future that includes Israel.

Sure, he managed to get Begin and Sadat together at Camp David--but only because Sadat could see that pursing a military route to getting rid of Israel was leading Egypt nowhere; Hamas, which is enjoying great success with its military policies, and which, unlike Sadat, is aligned with a wider jihadist movement, would never arrive at the same conclusion. But apart from Camp David, Carter has a woeful record of diplomacy--it was on his watch as president, after all, that the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic “revolution” swept though Iran and the American embassy was besieged--and nothing in it suggests he’s up to what amounts to a mission impossible. Moreover, he has shown himself to be consistently biased in favour of the Palestinians, and thus could never be considered an honest broker by the Israelis. As such, there’s only one way to characterize his overtures to Hamas: a total waste of time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:08 | link | comments (4)

Three cheers for the OHRC!: The attorney for Elmo’s sock puppets is jubilant about their “vindication” by Babsy Hall's outfit. From the Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

The four law students from Osgoode Hall Law School together with the Canadian Islamic Congress, decided to launch human rights actions against Maclean’s magazine for its article "The Future Belongs to Islam," they did so because they believed Maclean’s had acted in a fundamentally un-Canadian manner.

It was felt that Maclean’s decision to publish this article, in a string of over 19 others – all of which painted a highly exaggerated, stereotypical, crude portrait of Muslims – while categorically refusing my clients’ proposal to allow the Muslim population a chance to respond in kind to a column thousands of words long, did nothing to advance the fair, two-sided discussion that Canada was known for.

Rather, it appeared to us that Maclean’s was actively promoting an atmosphere of tension and fear by manipulating its readers into accepting a one-sided account of the evil motives and characteristics of a clearly targeted group. While that sensationalist misrepresentation may sell magazines, it does nothing for the health of a society that has been applauded for its commitment to enlightened multiculturalism and fairness.

On Wednesday April 9, the Ontario Human Rights Commission vindicated our position, despite stating that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear our complaint. The commission stated that while it would have had jurisdiction to hear the complaint if the Maclean’s article thesis had been displayed on a sign or poster, a gap in legislation would not allow the OHRC to consider the identical content when presented in the form of a magazine article.

Rather than quietly accepting this clearly dissatisfactory finding, the commission felt so strongly about our concerns that it took the unusual step of releasing a public statement. The commission felt this was an appropriate situation in which to exercise its "broader mandate … [to] speak out on events that are inconsistent with the spirit of the Code." In essence, the commission felt that Maclean’s behaviour was so far off-side that it deserved public condemnation for its actions.

The commission unambiguously indicated that the articles in question went far beyond the realm of legitimate criticism and debate on Muslims and Islam in the West. These articles were instead an "explicit expression of Islamophobia" in their portrayal of "Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to the West." This material, said the commission, serves only to perpetuate and promote prejudice.

The commission was also clear that racism is not mitigated because it comes from a corporate media source, rather than an individual or workplace, since it should be "possible to challenge any institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions."

The commission further echoed my clients’ position with its acknowledgment that while freedom of expression, as a "cornerstone of a functioning democracy," is deserving of a high level of respect, it should not be "used a guise to target vulnerable groups and to further increase their marginalization and stigmatization in society."

Critics of the OHRC statement have since complained that the commission made its findings without having first allowed Maclean’s to present its side of the story. This, they allege, is unfair. Ironically, it was Maclean’s editorial management that precipitated our human rights action when they would not allow for a representative response from the Muslim community, a chance to "present their side of the story," if you will, after Maclean’s published Mark Steyn’s ludicrous allegations that Muslims are engaged in a global conspiracy to take over the West in a "bloody" civil war, to colonize the West in the same way that the "white man" did to "Injun" land. This decision by Maclean’s management was upheld by the same individuals who are now critical of the OHRC statement as being in line with freedom of expression.

More importantly, these critical individuals have missed the true importance of the OHRC statement. While it is disturbing that a magazine of national stature would allow itself to deteriorate to the point where it is openly criticized as "Islamophobic," "destructive," "xenophobic" and "promoting prejudice," the true message of the OHRC’s statement does not lie with the public chastising of Maclean’s for its publication of Islamophobic material…

Who’s zoomin’ who, Mr. Joseph? That’s exactly where it lies.

My letter:

Faisal Joseph, counsel for the four budding attorneys who took offense to the Maclean’s cover story about booming Muslim demographics in Europe, sees the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s statement as a “vindication.” In fact, the OHRC, you should pardon the expression, had no right to weigh in on the matter, since, according to its mandate, it can only consider complaints about a “service,” and the complainants’ impressions to the contrary, a periodical does not fall into that category.

One can sense the OHRC’s great disappointment at being deprived of its day in court, but, obviously, it wasn’t going to allow a little jurisdictional conflict deny it the satisfaction of rendering judgement. As in all such Section 13 cases, it's a foregone conclusion—guilty of a thought crime, in this case “xenophobia” and “Islamophobia.”

In so doing, the only thing the OHRC has “vindicated” is a Maoist-style system in which people who don’t think "acceptable" thoughts are forced to participate in the farcical proceedings of a kangaroo court. To its discredit, the OHRC has managed to out-Mao the Maoists, eschewing the actual court, and skipping right ahead to the verdict.

A “vindication,” perhaps, for those who believe in curbing free expression, but a dark day indeed for those who cherish it as a cornerstone of Western democracy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:29 | link | comments

Love's young dream: This ain't it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:55 | link | comments

A match made in Hades: Hitler and the Grand Mufti, a gruesome twosome who had a common goal--making the world Judnerein.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:49 | link | comments

Dancing in the dark: Bruce Springsteen--"the Boss"--endorses Bambi O's bid for the presidency.

Guess he figures Bambi was "born to run." (Sorry.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:34 | link | comments (3)

See no evil, hear no evil, speak out against no evil: That’s our abashed Bambi. From the American Thinker:

…Obama has found a comfortable spot straddling the fence on any potentially controversial issue. At a town hall in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Obama, was asked about U.S. policy toward Tibet and Darfur (the site of ongoing genocide against the Christian population), especially in light of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer. He equivocated, "It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong...And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China." Obama never once mentioned Tibet or China's relationship with Sudan.

This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), "In light of Hamas' continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision." Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.

Obama, stunningly, declined to take a moral stance and instead chose silence. He said it was not his place to criticize former President Jimmy Carter... "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with," Obama (Reuters April 11, 2008)

If Obama wants to be President of the United States, it is his place to speak out for what is true, what is in the interest of the nation, and what is morally right (even if it costs him a few votes). It is called leadership.

C’est impossible, since to Bambi and his elitist, Po-Mo-Foucaultian ilk, what’s right and moral is all relative.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:25 | link | comments

 The Pope’s spine: These words, part of the speech the Pope delivered today at the White House, encourage me to believe that he “gets it,” and isn’t prepared to take the demise of Western civilization lying down, dhimmi-style:

…Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience – almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24). Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation", and a democracy without values can lose its very soul (cf. Centesimus Annus, 46). Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.

The Church, for her part, wishes to contribute to building a world ever more worthy of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26-27). She is convinced that faith sheds new light on all things, and that the Gospel reveals the noble vocation and sublime destiny of every man and woman (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 10). Faith also gives us the strength to respond to our high calling, and the hope that inspires us to work for an ever more just and fraternal society. Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation.

For well over a century, the United States of America has played an important role in the international community. On Friday, God willing, I will have the honor of addressing the United Nations Organization, where I hope to encourage the efforts under way to make that institution an ever more effective voice for the legitimate aspirations of all the world's peoples. On this, the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever, if all people are to live in a way worthy of their dignity – as brothers and sisters dwelling in the same house and around that table which God's bounty has set for all his children...

Unsaid but implied in the speech is the fact that the UN’s largest voting block--a Heinz 57 of Muslim states--subscribes not to the UN's Universal Declaration, but to the Cairo Declaration, which acknowledges the primacy of God-law, the sharia, and all the “rights” and requirements contained therein.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:12 | link | comments (1)

"Crime" rhyme: Welcome to Stalinist (or is it Maoist?) Ontario, where you can be judged guilty of a thought crime--"xenophobia" and "Islamophobia"--for speaking some unpleasant truths about spriraling demographics. Come to think of, we've actually gone way beyond those old-fangled totalitarians, since Barbara Hall, head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, has concluded that the OHRC is no longer required to even pay lip service to impartiality during a hearing, and can now skip right ahead to the verdict--guilty. Hey, why bother with the time and expense of an actual show trial when you already know how it's going to turn out?

Here's my limerick for the "righteous" Ms. Hall:

A “human rights” broad, Babsy Hall,

Has made an immoderate call.

She has rendered a ruling

While eschewing the grueling

Matter of holding of any hearing at all.

 

Update: "Frankenstein" takes time out from stomping on villagers to sing a cowboy classic:

 

Oh, give me a land

Where the thought cops command

And where “insults” are way out of line.

Where never is heard

Any “scurrilous” word--

At least not from Levant or Mark Steyn.

 

Be “nice,” I must stress.

If you aren’t, you’ll be forced to confess.

And if you can’t obey

Well, what more can I say

Than it’s time you move to the U.S.?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:31 | link | comments

Nowhere man: Frank Gaffney, Jr. on the wreath-laying, jihadist-hugging dude’s legacy. From FrontPage Magazine:

In the final analysis, Jimmy Carter will be best remembered by history as a man whose time in and out of high public office was almost unblemished by success. Notwithstanding a Nobel Peace Prize (given by an awards committee avowedly anxious to rebuke President Bush) and assorted good works on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, his role as a tyrant-enabler will be an object of scorn and derision rather than the vindication he so transparently, and desperately, seeks.

"Umblemished by success"--heh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

Monster mash: Ezra Levant notes the Frankenstein HRC-monster's latest bit of mischief--weighing in on a McDonald's employee's "human right" to not wash her hands (because doing so gives her a "skin condition". Begging the question--can't she bring her own soap?)

I suggest that it's only fair that the restaurant alert patrons to the change in its hygeine policy with a sign in the window reading: "By order of the British Colombia Human Rights Commission, this is a hand-washing optional establishment."

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:47 | link | comments (2)

A ‘real’ Muslim writes: Mark Steyn’s letter in yesterday’s Globe and Mail elicited the following letter from a Mr. Tauseef Hassan of Oakville:

By way of background, "scurrilous" is defined in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary as "grossly or indecently abusive."

Please note that the claim by Omar Brooks, a self-styled sheik and a radical extremist Muslim, that "Muslims believe in drinking their enemies' blood" was immediately repudiated by "real" Muslims at the very debate Mark Steyn refers to in his letter (In The Matter Of 'Scurrilous' - April 15).

Mr. Steyn omits the fact that these remarks have no foundation in the Koran, or in centuries of Islamic scholarship and, indeed, fall outside basic Islamic dietary restrictions.

Mr. Steyn's use of these remarks to allow for the mischaracterization of the Muslim community, and the overall tone of the Maclean's articles, are the epitome of scurrilous.

“The epitome of scurrilous”—high praise indeed. Steyn can add it to the CIC’s endorsement--“flagrantly Islamophoic”. Here’s CNN’s account of the debate at which the “self-styled” cleric appeared; the “self-styled” cleric’s Wiki entry (seems he was actually "styled" by Hooky Hamza at that mosque with a quintessentially English name that sounds like something out of Dickens or Conan Doyle—Finsbury Park); and, oh yeah, my "self-styled" letter to the Globe (which you can expect to see in print--never):

I wasn’t present at the Dublin “debate” in January, 2007, so I didn’t get to hear Sheikh Omar Brooks, a British-born extremist, tell the crowd that the Prophet Mohammed’s message to nonbelievers is “I come to slaughter all of you” and that Muslims “drink the blood of the enemy…That is Islam and that is jihad”. (I’m pretty sure the “blood drinking” was meant metaphorically, given “the basic dietary restrictions” Tauseef Hassan mentions in his letter.) However, reading accounts of the event, it seems that some in attendance--the ones Mr. Hassan characterizes as the “real” Muslims--did indeed object to these provocative comments.

Without perhaps intending to, Mr. Hassan has pointed to the “real” problem: a radical imam relays a violent message that has its source in core Islamic texts, and rather that dealing with that reality and finding a way to negate those teachings, “real” Muslims brand as “scurrilous” the words of those like Mark Steyn who dare to shine a light on them.

What’s “scurrilous”--i.e. “grossly or indecently abusive”--are the original words, not those of the reporter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments

Falk off: The UN arose in the wake of WW2, an organization whose raison d’etre was the prevention of another genocide along the lines of the Holocaust. Fast forward to ‘08, and the UN, under the malign influence of its largest voting block—57 Muslim nations strong—is actively pursuing policies that are designed to justify a second round of the Final Solution. Times online pundit, David Aaronovitch, looks at one of the Shoah, Part II’s, prime movers and shakers. And here’s the kicker—he’s a Jew:

I would define a moment of double respect as being when, say, the Pope addresses both Houses of Congress, or - as happened again last week - when that great institution the BBC quotes an expert from that even greater institution, the United Nations. The “official” in question was also the Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Richard Falk, and his chosen subject was Israel, so I bowed slightly, turned the tap off and put down my razor to hear what he had been saying.

The gist of it was this: whereas Professor Falk's outgoing predecessor as investigator into Israeli conduct, on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, had only compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, the new man had gone one better, and compared it to Nazi Germany. Actually he'd done this some time ago, before being appointed, but now, of course, his view mattered more. “UN expert stands by Nazi comments” was the headline on the BBC News website.

For various reasons Israelis take badly to being compared to the people who attempted to eradicate Jewish life in Europe, and I understood Falk's remarks to have been provocative, as he himself admitted. He had made them, he explained, to wake America “from its torpor”. Speaking about Gaza, Falk said that only the sensitivity of Jewish people prevented the parallel being observed more widely.

“If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese Government was dealing with Darfur,” he said, “I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison.”

In international terms, this is odd. The body for whom Falk will soon begin work (work that is hardly necessary since he already knows exactly what he thinks before undertaking a moment's UN-authorised monitoring) is famous for its excoriation of Israel and its comparative silence over Tibet and Darfur. Kofi Annan criticised them for it before his departure, Ban Ki Moon criticised them for it on his arrival. All to no avail. The council's website begins with a page entitled “Highlights”, on which only one country's “human rights violations” are mentioned by name. And it isn't Andorra.

So, what did the 40-plus members of the Council see in the professor? As far as I can tell his attraction lies in the following. He is American; he is Jewish; and more deliciously in light of the first two, he blames Israel for just about everything - as opposed to those who (rightly, in my opinion) blame it for quite a lot. This, for example, is Falk in 2002, on the second intifada: “Palestinian resistance gradually ran out of military options, and suicide bombers appeared as the only means still available by which to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that the struggle could go on.”

There are three problems with this analysis. The first is that suicide bombing began in Israel in 1994, when Hamas saw the Oslo peace process as threatening to succeed. Secondly, the suicide bombs were obviously utterly counterproductive in terms of procuring peace, and indeed helped to destroy the Israeli peace movement. And thirdly, other “resistances” (Tibet, Darfur?) seem to have avoided the “only means” of suicide bombing aimed at civilians - family restaurants, buses, schools, discos, and groups of teenagers, to be more specific.

For Falk “Israel was mainly responsible”. It was transparently this political position that led to him being appointed to his job, not his expertise, nor his open-mindedness. Nor, we now know, was it his common sense. In my library of conspiriana are several books by the American theologian David Ray Griffin, intellectual guru of the “Bush blew up the twin towers” movement. Griffin believes that no plane hit the Pentagon (despite hundreds of people seeing it) and that the World Trade Centre was brought down by a controlled demolition. There isn't a single point of alleged fact upon which Griffin's barking theory hasn't itself been demolished. And there isn't a single volume of Griffin that doesn't carry Falk's endorsement…

A troofer. A far-left academic. A kapo diplomatique. No wonder the UN HRC scooped him up—he’s got the perfect C.V.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:30 | link | comments (1)

Where there's a (George F. )Will...: ...there's a superb critique of the Bambi "bitterness" comment. Here's the money quote:

Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:34 | link | comments

Hilarious!: Mark Steyn is promoting the paperback version of his book America Alone by using the CIC's words--"Flagrantly Islamophic"--as an endorsement.

I can't tell you how much it tickles me, Elmo, that your organization has been drafted to help Steyn flog his book.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:32 | link | comments

Takes one to know one: Loathsome gasbag and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimminy Carter, has placed a wreath at the tomb of another loathsome N.P.P. winner—Yasser Arafat.

Excusez-moi. I have to go barf.

Update: Hamas's useful idiot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:18 | link | comments

“Bitterness,” dissected: Thomas Sowell remarks on Bambi’s contempt for “the little guy.” From RealClear Politics:

…Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Senator Obama's own statements in San Francisco.

People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.

However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.

Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings…

 Or, in the words of cartoonist Charles M. Schultz, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

Sauteed in a little olive oil with oregano and garlic, perhaps?: An Italian voter was so fed up with his country's politics that he protested in the only way he could think of: by eating his ballot.

That'll show 'em.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments

Money buys loyalty: Taking a page from his jihadist conferes, Hamas and Hezbollah, repellent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadist is currying favour with the folks in Iraq by, well, bribing them. (That’s my characterization. Reuters puts a more Robin Hood/Mother Theresa kind of spin on it):

BAGHDAD, April 15 (Reuters) - The anti-U.S. movement of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is now Iraq's main humanitarian organisation helping needy Iraqis, a relief group said in a report that is certain to cause concern in Washington.

In the report published on Tuesday, Refugees International said Sadr's Mehdi Army militia as well as other Shi'ite and Sunni Arab militias were expanding their influence by providing food, shelter and other essentials to Iraqis left destitute by war.

The findings underscore Sadr's mass appeal ahead of provincial elections in October and will cause concern for U.S. officials who see reducing the influence of the militias as one of the Iraqi government's key challenges.

Sadr's political movement will compete for the first time in the local polls and is expected to make gains at the expense of other Shi'ite parties supporting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Sadr, once an ally of Maliki, has split with the prime minister.

The Washington-based Refugees International said the Sadrist movement was operating on a similar model to Lebanon's Hezbollah, a group sponsored by Shi'ite Iran that provides a range of humanitarian services in Lebanon.

"Through a Hezbollah-like scheme, the Shi'ite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country," said the report.

"This sustainable programme provides shelter, food and non-food items to hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites in Iraq."

Refugees International said it visited many locations inhabited by displaced families throughout Baghdad.

It said that as part of the Sadrist's assistance programmes, the Mehdi Army "resettles" displaced Iraqis free of charge in homes that belong to Sunni Arabs. The militia also provided stipends, food and heating and cooking oil.

Such humanitarians, those Sadists. No wonder they’re so beloved.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

An amusing letter in the Calgary Herald: I found it amusing, anyway:

Canada's human rights commissions remind me of Frankenstein's monster. Created with the best of intentions, the "monster" has become aware of his awesome power, and is now running amok and scaring the villagers.

It remains to be seen who will prevail: the monster, who wants to put an end to free expression, or the people, who demand their right to speak freely, even if their words happen to insult and offend.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:26 | link | comments

Half-baked: Daniel Pipes, who is famous for his insight that “the cure for radical Islam is moderate Islam” (although, go figure, he hasn’t expressed it recently), claims that God-law and man-made law can be made compatible. How? In the midst of an Islamic revival now sweeping the globe, Muslims must somehow be persuaded to jettison a goodly (i.e. a Godly) portion of their inviolable text.

Good plan, Dan. It’s far more likely, however, that the world will continue to unfold in the current manner, with God-law standing its ground, and democracy twisting itself into a pretzel to accommodate it.

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

An eye opener: The National Review’s Katherine Jean Lopez and Andrew McCarthy look at the West's Willful Blindness (the title of McCarthy’s new book) and where it’s leading (my bolds):

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Do I have the sides right? They say “Aallahu Akbar!” we say “Imagine the liability!”

Andrew C. McCarthy: Unfortunately, that’s exactly right, and you’ve hit on the key difference. They are a religious ideology reveling in a mission for which, far from making any apologies for their brutality, they exude a zeal found only in people convinced they are both right and justified. You won’t ever hear from them the slightest misgiving — no careful references to Infidelo-fascists so as not to offend the all the wonderful moderate infidels out there.

We, on the contrary, are an odd combination of diffidence, self-loathing and arrogance: doubtful we are worth the trouble to defend; apt to figure that if people hate us, we must deserve it; and sure that it is within our power to satisfy their grievances, even though we didn’t cause them, by dialogue, political processes, sensitivity-training, and, of course, buying them off — which simply confirms them in their suspicion that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.

Remember when the Israelis built their security fence and reduced Palestinian suicide bombings by about 95 percent? Prompted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the U.N.’s Court of International Justice promptly pronounced the fence — a passive, life-saving defense measure — to be a shameful violation of international law. In a nutshell, that’s where we’re headed: Ruled by a delusion that, in a world full of lawless savages abetted by rogue regimes, legal processes will save rather than enervate us.

Lopez: Who most damningly has been Willfully Blind?

McCarthy: Well, it’d be easy to say, “Why, the government, of course.” But government is heavily influenced by the media and the commentariat, and those elites will not abide the notion that there just might be a connection between Islam and Islamic terrorism. I think most people are more sensible than that. The more extensive government gets, though, and the more dependent on it we all become, the less will the public has to demand a governmental course correction. Absent some hair-raising event like 9/11, we go along…

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:59 | link | comments

Son of a gun: A flailing Bambi has struck back at his opponent by telling her she’s “no Annie Oakley.”

Indeed, not. But the Bambi/Hillary rivalry has been sounding an awful lot like a song from Annie Get Your Gun.

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

Looks deceive: My sister has a phrase to describe those fancy Passover desserts—the ones that look so good with all the meringue and frosting, but turn out to be somewhat lacking in the taste department. She says they’re “matzah in disguise.”

I’ve decided to tweak the phrase to describe the “human rights” movement/mania now sweeping the globe. "Yooman rights" looks good on the outside, but upon closer examination it’s actually sharia in disguise.

Melanie Phillips describes the toll the movement is taking on the U.K.: It has helped transform a once mighty giant into a gelded mouse:

…The government is going to the barricades to force through its proposal to extend the period terrorist suspects may be held before charge to 42 days. Yet at the same time the ‘human rights’ obsessed English judiciary is continuing to make Britain a magnet for Islamist terrorists who know they can rely on the English courts to offer them greater protection than anywhere else on the planet, while the British government is actively conniving at the radicalisation of yet more British Muslims in its deluded belief that Islamist terror -- and, it would seem, the Islamic law from which it is so keen to protect Somalian pirates -- has nothing to do with Islam.

The country which was once a by-word for policing the world is now surely the weakest link in the defence of freedom. This is where a liberal society disappears up its own backside. Britain was the cradle of Enlightenment reason -- but Londonistan is where the age of reason is now in full retreat.

Bye bye “reason”; ahoy “revelation”.

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

A G&M exchange: Yesterday, Mo Elmasry’s Number #2 had this defamatory/laudatory missive in the Globe and Mail. (It defamed Mark Steyn; it lauded the OHRC):

Canadian Islamic Congress -- In your editorial Unproven 'Racism' (April 11), you denigrated the Ontario Human Rights Commission for objecting to 22 anti-Muslim articles published by Maclean's magazine between January of 2005 and July of 2007. Your dismissal of the OHRC ignores the scurrilous content of these articles - particularly that of Mark Steyn's The Future Belongs to Islam - that allege that "enough" Muslims share the goals of terrorists; that Muslims believe in drinking their enemies' blood; that contemporary Islam condones sex with minors and animals; and that some Muslims are "sheep-shaggers."

The OHRC properly exercised its mandate to advance human rights by expressing "serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's magazine and other media outlets." In this context, its report said: "Freedom of expression should be exercised through responsible reporting and not be used as a guise to target vulnerable groups and to further increase their marginalization or stigmatization in society."

The OHRC should be commended for taking a brave stand against Islamophobia by Maclean's and other media organizations.

Mark Steyn responds in today’s paper:

In his letter, Imam Zijad Delic of the Canadian Islamic Congress suggests that, in my Maclean's columns, I "allege" that "Muslims believe in drinking their enemies' blood" and that "contemporary Islam condones sex with minors and animals."

Er, no (Thank You, OHRC - April 14). It was not I who "alleged" that. The latter "allegation" was made in the 1980s by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, a quite famous Muslim in his day, and the former "allegation" was made by Sheik Omar Brooks, a British Muslim, in a well-reported debate at Trinity College, Dublin, the oldest debating society in the world.

Imam Delic says these articles were "scurrilous." If by "scurrilous" he means "the crime of accurately quoting prominent Muslims," then I plead guilty - though I confess I am surprised to discover this is apparently a crime in Canada. But if the Imam disputes these and other characterizations, he should surely take them up with the Islamic scholars who made them, rather than trying to eliminate the middle man.

Incidentally, perhaps I might take this opportunity to extend an invitation to Imam Delic and his boss, Mohamed Elmasry, to be my guests at this year's World Press Freedom Awards in Ottawa on May 2.

Wouldn’t it be a hoot if they took him up on it and showed up?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:48 | link | comments

CIC to Babsy, “Good going”: The CIC applauds the Ontario Human Rights Commission for overstepping the bounds of its mandate in order to fall in line with sharia, er, decrying the “xenophobic” “Islamophobic” and “destructive” excerpt of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone, published as cover story in Maclean’s magazine (my bolds):

The Canadian Islamic Congress welcomes a statement just issued by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) in response to two sets of complaints filed against Maclean's Magazine -- one by law students Muneeza Sheikh, Naseem Mithoowani, Khurrum Awan and Ali Ahmed; another by CIC president, Dr. Mohamed Elmasry -- in April 2007.

Both complaints refer specifically to an October 2006 Maclean's article titled: "The Future Belongs to Islam," but in its statement the OHRC also expressed "serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean's magazine and other media outlets."

Referring to articles published by Maclean's, the Commission noted that "[t]his type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Canadians" and further noted the "serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole."

Referring to the Commission's opinion that it should be "possible to challenge any institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions," law student Muneeza Sheikh said, "The Commission's recognition of the prejudicial impact of Maclean's targeting of Muslim Canadians and the importance of establishing viable avenues to challenge racism in the media has vindicated our concerns."

Naseem Mithoowani was also encouraged by the OHRC findings, saying, "We couldn't agree more with the Commission when it wrote: ‘Freedom of expression should be exercised through responsible reporting and not be used as a guise to target vulnerable groups and to further increase their marginalization or stigmatization in society'."

Legal Counsel Faisal Joseph added; "The fact that the Commission recognized in strong and clear language that Maclean's is part of the racism and Islamophobia that exists in the media against Canadian Muslims, should be cause for shame and embarrassment. Maclean's should now try to solve the problem, not escalate it."…

 

In other words, time for the other kafirs to do the dhimmi tango like Babsy Hall and her OHRC underlings: i.e. grovel, bow, shuffle, scrape, submit.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:49 | link | comments (1)

You knew it was coming: Islamic world calls for boycott of Dutch products because of Wilder's film.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:21 | link | comments (1)

Hot Queen launches YouTube channel to promote dialogue and counteract negative stereotypes: And I don't mean Liz.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:07 | link | comments (1)

Bye bye Bambi?: Looks like a condescending, off-the-cuff remark about small town "bitterness" may well do what revelations about Reverend Wright's many bitter sermons could not: stop the Bambi bandwagon dead in its tracks.

If that's the case, it would indeed be poetic justice--the second time in recent weeks that an arrogant Democrat who is not what he appeared to be got hoist on his own petard (so to speak). At least this time, though, we'll be spared the sight of the wronged helpmeet, in pearls and a chic suit, trying to hold it together while the cad stands at a podium and confesses his wrong-doing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments

The mouth that roared (but did little else): During a talk at a Toronto synagogue last night, Michael Ignatieff apologized for his despicable (my adjective, not his) comments about Israel during its summer war with Hezbollah. The Toronto Star has more:

Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff came to Holy Blossom Temple last night to apologize for having said as a leadership candidate that Israel had committed a "war crime."

After being introduced as "a potential future prime minister of Canada," Ignatieff described the 2006 episode as "the most painful experience of my short political career, and it was an error."

He said he's been reaching out to parts of the Jewish community to establish a dialogue since making the comment during an appearance on a Quebec talk show, Tout le monde en parle.

At last night's lecture sponsored by the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, Ignatieff stressed he doesn't believe recent "strange" media reports the Jewish community is going to vote en masse for the Conservatives in the next federal election. The Etobicoke-Lakeshore MP doesn't believe there is a homogeneous Jewish community in Canada.

Ignatieff is still touted as a successor to leader Stéphane Dion's problematic tenure, although he has stressed his loyalty.

Last night, he cited his own bona fides with Israel, talking about his father George's history as a diplomat at the United Nations and his own as a former journalist and human rights professor.

"My personal ties run deep," he said, pointing out he had written a book about "liberal Zionist" Isaiah Berlin, the person who, "next to my father, I love most dearly and (who had) the greatest effect on my thinking."

In defending the Liberal record, Ignatieff said: "I tell you, Liberals stand with you, they always have and they always will." Ignatieff added that Jewish Canadians could count on a Dion government.

"All hell immediately broke loose" after his 2006 remark, said Ignatieff, which accurately describes the reaction to his comment about Israel's bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana and the deaths of dozens of civilians during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

The remark, he said, led to charges of "intellectual anti-Semitism" and cost him personally. It also cost allies in the Liberal party, although he said he scoffed at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's assertion it was another example of Liberal indifference to Israel.

"Politicians can't expect to hold the trust of citizens unless they own up to things we've done wrong," he said.

Ignatieff suggested, instead of using the term "war crime," he might better have noted Israel "may have failed to comply with the Geneva Convention of the laws of war."

Or, he said, he might have said Israel "has the right to defend itself but had to avoid civilian casualties."

Coalition president Alistair Gordon – who suggested Ignatieff could be a future prime minister – said all political parties should support Israel, "a modern, tolerant free society born from the ashes of the Holocaust."

Before Ignatieff spoke, University of Toronto professor Aural Braun laid out the threats to the state of Israel from terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah who "have as their goal the extermination of the Israeli people."

Professor Aurel Braun (who spoke at one of those lunch ‘n’ learn thingys I attended not long ago) “gets it”; Ignatieff: “gets it” when it suits him—like when he wants to curry favour with Jewish voters. (No need to work so hard, Michael. The clueless Jews are going to vote Liberal despite your weasel words and your party’s sorry record re Israel.)

My letter:

Much as I admire Michael Ignatieff for his intellect and his way with words (his biography of British philosopher Isaiah Berlin is a special favourite of mine) I could never support his bid to become Prime Minister. Why? Because he belongs to a party which, when fishing for votes, likes to boast about how much it supports Israel and the Jewish people, but which, when push comes to shove, always fails to come through.

Canadian Jews who support Israel--and, indeed, all Canadians who see Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy in a hostile sea of tyranny--need more than soothing talk: They need action. And in refusing to participate in a second “racism” conference in Durban--really, little more than another excuse to gang up on and bash Israel--Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has shown himself to be a leader who is prepared to act out of principle, and not because he thinks it’s going to garner him votes come election time.

When the Liberals convince me that they’re prepared to translate their words into actions, maybe I’ll think about changing my vote. Until then, I’ll stick with the only party that, in matters pertaining to Israel, is determined to do more than just talk.

When I attended CJPAC’s recent scarf  ‘n’schmooze (a fancier, evening version of a lunch 'n' learn), I had occasion to converse with several politicians, both Conservative and Liberal. One of the Liberals I spoke to was Joe Volpe, my M.P. After a few minutes of amiable chit-chat, I put my hand on his arm and said, “Joe, you’re a good guy, a friend of Israel and the Jewish people, but I can’t vote for you because you’re a Liberal.”

Talk about your conversation-stoppers!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:18 | link | comments

Defending the indefensible: The Jew-hating gasbag who was once president of the U.S. (a really crappy one) is “defending” his talks with Hamas—something at which even than the current Democratic contenders draw the line (at least while they’re still looking for votes).  From the New York Daily News (my bolds):

WASHINGTON - Former President Jimmy Carter Sunday defended his upcoming meeting with Hamas leaders, saying "at least someone" should talk peace with the extremists.

"I think that it's very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel," Carter said on ABC's "This Week."

A political firestorm erupted when Carter said he would talk with Hamas, which turned from terror tactics to politics and won a majority in 2006 parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories. The U.S. still considers Hamas a terrorist group.

Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each said they would never meet with Hamas, and the White House also criticized Carter.

"We think it is not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings with Hamas," chided President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley.

The controversial meeting will take place during a swing through the Middle East, where Carter hopes to "promote peace in the region."

The Georgia Democrat won the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace efforts during his presidency in the 1970s, and has met several times with Hamas in the past.

Note that while Bambi claims he’d never meet Hamas, he has no such hesitation about chatting it up with Ahmadinejad.

As for Jimminy’s “hopes,” like his cricket namesake he’s wishing on a star—but hasn’t got a prayer.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:48 | link | comments

Running on empty: I was wracking my brain, trying to figure out what Bambi’s condescending words about church-going, gun-toting, small town Americans reminded me of. And then it hit me: it’s a song on my iPod—Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender.” The song (which I continue to love despite its rather appalling message) sneers at those who dare to “settle,” as Browne sees it, for an ordinary suburban life; a far-leftist dirge for Joe Lunchpail, an object of both sympathy and derision who’s “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.” Here are the words to the first part of the song:

I’m going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
Im going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
Ill go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
Ill get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
Ive been aware of the time going by
They say in the end its the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
Youll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there…

Like Bambi, Browne arrives at conclusions that are informed by ignorance, not reality—snobbery of the first order. Ironically, it’s Bambi—the faux post-racial candidate; the guy who was supposed to exemplify “hope” and “change” but who’s actually an Al Sharpton with a Harvard gloss—who’s the real “pretender.”

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

Why is this man smiling?: Caroline Glick knows why.

Riddle me this: What's the difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a purple hyena?

Duh! A purple hyena is, well, purple. Ahmadinejad's "aura" is green.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:19 | link | comments

Jimminy’s japery: The Georgia crackpot/busybody/Saudi muppet says he’s planning to “talk to Hamas,” even though the State Department advised him in no uncertain terms to lay off.  From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said in remarks to air on Sunday that his upcoming visit to the Middle East probably would include a meeting in Syria with leaders of the militant group Hamas.

"I've not confirmed our itinerary yet for the Syrian visit, but it's likely that I will be meeting with the Hamas leaders," Carter said, according to a transcript of his interview on ABC News' "This Week."

The Bush administration and close U.S. ally Israel oppose the meeting, which would take place during Carter's nine-day trip to the Middle East that begins on Sunday.

U.S. policy has been to isolate Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June, and to bolster pro-Western President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules the West Bank and is in U.S.-sponsored talks with the Israelis.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who sought Carter's counsel on his own previous Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts ahead of a U.S.-hosted Middle East conference in Annapolis last November, called Hamas a "terrorist organization" on Friday.

"I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process," said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

"I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative," he added…

Oh, you mean like promising that America will withdraw its support for Israel and allow Hamas and the rest of the jihadis free reign to get on with their genocide project? Yeah, that should do the trick.

Jimminy conversing with Torak, one of his many imaginary extraterrestrial friends

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:50 | link | comments (1)

Hardly a rare sighting: Clueless Jew in the Toronto Star.

My letter:

I can understand why Diana Ralph of the Alliance of Concerned Canadians is so upset that many Jews continue to defy the received “wisdom” of the international community and support the Jewish state: she feels more comfortable siding with the “bash Israel” majority.  For the life of me, though, I can’t figure out what she has against the Jewish ritual of circumcision. Hasn’t she heard that, apart from any religious connotations, male circumcision is the first line of defence against the spread of AIDS?

Ms. Ralph may feel the urgent need to “debate” the matter, but, really, it’s much ado about a foreskin. At a time of resurgent global anti-Semitism and the ongoing existential threat to Israel in this, its sixtieth year, the Jewish community has far more pressing concerns on its plate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:34 | link | comments

Gotta love it: An editorial in the Toronto Sun calls Canada's human rights commissions "wacky"--twice.

What a difference some publicity makes. A year ago, HRCs, if considered at all, were sacrosanct--one of our Trudeaupia's holy bovines. Now they're thought of as "wacky." And it's all due to "jadewarr," the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, and the Canadian Islamic Congress.

We owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude, guys. (But, first things first, we have to help your targets pay off their onerous legal bills.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:36 | link | comments

A sight for sore eyes: Thirty naked pensioners at Ground Zero.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments (2)

Armchair traveler: A scribe for the Lonely Planet series of travel books has admitted to using his imagination as the basis of a lot of his “research”. From The Age:

Popular guide book giant Lonely Planet has suffered a severe blow to its credibility, with one of its authors admitting to plagiarising and making up huge slabs of his books.

Thomas Kohnstamm, who worked on more than a dozen guide books for the publisher, has even admitted that he didn't visit one of the countries he wrote about, saying he worked on the book about Columbia from his US home.

"They didn't pay me enough to go (to) Columbia," News Ltd newspapers reported him saying.

"I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate.

"They don't pay enough for what they expect the authors to do."

He also claimed to have accepted free travel, breaking the publisher's policy aimed at maintaining the independence of its authors.

Mr Kohnstamm's confession is a severe blow to Lonely Planet, considered a bible to travellers all over the world.

Sounds more like “a koran”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:11 | link | comments

“Ethnic cleansing” in '48 and after: Rachel Neuwirth elaborates on this non-event. From the American Thinker:

When I wrote that "[Israel] did not expel the Palestinian Arabs," I did not mean that no Israelis have forced any Arab residents of Palestine to evacuate their homes at any place or at any time during the past sixty years. Rather I meant that there was never any mass expulsion of the Arab population as a whole from Palestine/Israel, or from any region or part of Palestine/Israel, either during the Israeli War of Independence in 1947-49(the usual time-frame given by the anti-Israel "revisionist" or "new" historians for the alleged expulsion) or at any other time, and that it was never the policy or objective of Israel's government to make Israel or Palestine "Arab-free," or of "ethnically cleansing" the country of Arabs. If there ever was such a policy, then it would be impossible to explain how 1.4 million Arabs live in what is now sovereign Israeli territory today -- many more than lived in the same territory before the state of Israel was founded. Just before the outbreak of first major Arab-Israeli war on November 30, 1947, a few months before Israelis declared their independence, there were at most 900,000 Arabs living in this same area.

 

Today there are large Arab populations in every region of modern-day Israel -- the Galilee region in the north, the central coastal plain, the Judean hills, the "Shefela" or foothills region, and the Negev desert in the south. Arabs are at least 20 per cent of Israel's present-day population. Arabs are half the population of two Israeli cities, Ramla and Lod, from which the Arab residents were, according to many historical accounts, expelled by Israeli soldiers during the War of Independence.

 

Naturally, I am skeptical of these accounts, since they don't explain why there are more Arabs residing in these two cities (which were only small towns in 1948) than there were before the Arabs were allegedly expelled from them. Akko, another Israeli city, still has an Arab majority, just as it did in 1948, before Israeli soldiers gained control of it. There are large Arab communities in Israel's three largest cities, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa, as well as in the city of Beersheva, which was a tiny village in 1948, but now has a combined Jewish and Arab population of over 100,000 people.

 

Over 100 of the Arab villages that were in what is now Israel before the nation was reestablished in 1948 are still in Israel today; some of them, such as Umm-el-Fahm, Nazareth, and Sakhnin, have grown into all-Arab cities over the past sixty years. The Israeli government has also built new towns for its Arab citizens at locations that were previously uninhabited, and provided new homes and land to the Arab "settlers" in these communities at little or no cost to them.

 

And all of this Arab population is additional to the Arab inhabitants of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza region, who now number (depending on which population estimate you choose to believe) somewhere between 2.4 and 3.6 million people. This makes for a total present-day Arab population of what had been the territory of western Palestine under the British mandate of somewhere between 3.6 and 5 million people -- about three times the total Arab population of this territory right before the War of Independence, and seven to ten times the Arab population in 1891. And if we include what is now the Kingdom of Jordan in "Palestine," which we should, since it was the eastern section of the original British Palestine Mandate territory, then the total Arab population of Palestine has risen for about 1.7 million immediately before Israel became independent to perhaps eight million today. Some expulsion!

 

As for the more specific and limited question of whether the Israel Defense Forces expelled some Palestinian Arabs from their homes in some villages, and possibly one town (Lydda or Lod, then with a population of 15-30 thousand people) during the Israel War of Independence sixty years ago, the answer is, "yes, but only because the Israelis were compelled to carry out these measures in self-defense." The Israeli soldiers, in some places and at certain times in the course of the war, had no other way to repel a massive armed offensive by a coalition of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Palestinian Arab guerilla-terrorist "civilians," acting in concert with tens of thousands of guerilla "volunteers" and regular army soldiers who poured into Palestine from six Arab states, but to remove the Arab inhabitants, or some of them, from certain villages that served as bases of operation and sources of recruits for the Palestinian and other Arab  guerilla-terrorists.  

 

The Israeli forces were extremely reluctant to take any measures against their Palestinian Arab neighbors, whom most of the Israeli or Palestinian Jews regarded with respect and even affection. But the Israeli soldiers were sometimes forced to take such measures because many of these same Arab neighbors, acting on instructions or orders from their political leadership, had launched a violent, sustained attack on the Jewish population of Israel-Palestine.  If the Israel-Jewish defense forces had not undertaken some harsh counter-guerilla measures in some localities, the Palestinian-Israeli Jewish community, which then numbered only 650,000-750,000 people, and which was interspersed among nearly twice that many Arabs, might easily have suffered complete annihilation.

 

The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence strongly indicates that it was Arab, not Israeli, actions that were the primary cause of the displacement of Palestinian Arabs during the war.

 

The war was begun not by Israel, but by the Palestinian Arab leaders and by the governments of the Arab states, in an effort not only to strangle the infant Jewish state in its crib, but also to exterminate its Jewish inhabitants...

You have to say this about the Jews—worst ethnic cleansers ever.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:42 | link | comments (1)

Their loss: The speaker of Iran’s parliament has called on the Muslim world to boycott any nation that “blasphemes” Islam. Jihad Watch’s Hugh Fitzgerald thinks that’s a smashing idea:

Muslim societies and states are, despite being the recipients of the most fantastic transfer of wealth in human history -- some ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone -- economic failures, dependent still on oil and on the rentier economy of those whose rulers, and the well-connected courtiers of those rulers, have seized large amounts of that national wealth. Two generations have been raised with that vast wealth, and what has come of it? Saudi Arabia itself is still completely dependent on a vast and multifarious army of wage slaves. What art has come, what contributions to science, what signs of cultural life, other than the gold souk, and the jewelry souk, and the every-possible-kind-of-luxury car souk, and the Hediard-and-Fauchon deliveries of Parisian delicacies, and the private 747s, and the Maybachs in every other driveway of every other sheik? What? I keep quoting the observation of a Franco-Armenian architect who spent years in Saudi Arabia: "Money can buy everything, except civilization."

And they will not have to examine either the reasons for their economic failure, and cultural stasis, and penchant for despotism, if they are constantly allowed to find whatever they need -- medical care, access to education -- in the West.

It appears that no matter what funds are spent to conduct the Jihad that, while "non-violent," in the end there is a more dangerous weapon of Jihad, the Money Weapon. It is deployed against us through the funding of mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and pay for the armies of Western hirelings. These are ex-diplomats, ex-CIA agents, journalists, businessmen, even "scholars of Islam" of the MESA-Nostra esposito-feldman apologist type. Some MESA Nostra members may even have had the shamelessness to show up at a dinner of a group named for a great scholar of Islam, Joseph Schacht, the one held in Rm. 7 at the Harvard Faculty Club this past Saturday, as if the noah-feldman sammy-glicks of this world would ever have been given the time of day by the likes of Joseph Schacht.

Every member of the ruling elites all over the Muslim world devoutly wishes to send their children to schools in the West. They recognize the wretched state of "Muslim" education. Even within their countries, they try to send their children to Christian, usually Catholic, schools -- Baghdad College, for example, where Allawi and Chalabi both were students, or Victoria College in Egypt, where the Egyptian-"Palestinian" Said went, or the Catholic school in Pakistan that Bhutto went to. Her father attended a school in pre-partition Bombay, where not only Christians but Jews from the Iraqi diaspora were among his classmates. Imagine that you, and your children, are condemned to the solitary confinement of the Islamic world, that you can no longer travel to the West. Even if, as a ruler or propagandist or an editor at Al Jazeera, you spend all your time denouncing that West and blackening its name, you want to send your children to that West. Even the sinister Sheik Al Qaradawi, apparently the one whose words on Al Jazeera have become a murderous fatwa against Wafa Sultan (who has gone into hiding), has two daughters in school in England. This does not have to be.

Nor does Western medicine, the fruit of Western science and technology, and of ways of thought inimical to Islam (which discourages free inquiry), have to be made available to Muslims who are waging war against the West. Imagine if you were suddenly told that if you didn't change your behavior, you would no longer have access to Western doctors, Western hospitals. Such a threat would get your attention, wouldn't it?

Finally, there are those rich Arabs who regard the West as one big fun-fair, a place to send their black-robed wives and dozens of children shopping in well-guarded herds, while the menfolk enjoy themselves with paid ladies and every conceivable debauch. Les Arabes du Golfe en goguette -- the rich Gulf Arabs on a spree -- is not a pretty sight, as those with their eyes pealed in London or New York or Paris know perfectly well.

Boycott? An excellent idea. No access to education, medical care. And the arms that we sell them? Don't. Or if they are sold, let them be sold with the kind of fabulous markup -- fifty times the price of production -- that the Gulf producers enjoy in selling their oil. And make sure that the computer systems have been cleverly set so that if these airplanes, and other equipment, are ever employed against certain Infidels, in certain directions, if planes for example, pass into certain latitudes and longitudes, then their systems will go haywire, or possibly even self-destruct…

Sounds good to me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments

Shalom, “chaver”: Zev Chavets says Israel’s “friend,”  George W. Bush, has let it down, and the Jewish state has no other option but to go it alone against the nuclear mullahs. From the New York Times:

THE failure of diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program became obvious this week, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed the installation of 6,000 new centrifuges at the country’s main uranium enrichment complex. His announcement was accompanied by the now customary assertion that outsiders can do nothing to stop Iran from fulfilling its nuclear destiny.

Once, not so long ago, this kind of boast would elicit clear American declarations that Iran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Everything, President Bush would say ominously, is on the table. This time he has been quiet. I wish I believed that it is the quiet before a storm of laser-guided action. It seems more likely that it is the abashed silence of an American president whose bluff has been called in front of the entire world.

Washington’s performance should concern anyone who cares about long-term American influence in the Islamic world. But for Israel (and Israel’s supporters), this is an urgent problem. It is Israel, after all, that has been set by the Iranian leadership as the target for annihilation.

In response to the news from Iran, some supporters of Israel have started to suggest that the failed efforts at prevention be replaced by assured American deterrence: any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the United States. Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post columnist, recently referred to this as “the Holocaust doctrine.”

From Israel’s perspective, the thought is tempting — but it’s not realistic.

In 1981, Israeli planes destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. The world’s reaction was harshly critical. Even the Reagan administration, usually a close ally, denounced the operation.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin was undaunted by the fury. At a press conference in Jerusalem he announced that he felt obligated to do anything in his power to stop Israel’s enemies from getting their hands on means of mass killing.

Begin mentioned the Holocaust; it was never far from his mind. But his primary focus was strategic, not historical. Israel was no different from any other country. It would bear the ultimate responsibility for its own security.

Begin was right. Here’s why:

First, in exchange for assistance, Washington would naturally (and rightly) demand a very strong say in Israeli policies. A misstep, after all, could embroil it in a nuclear exchange. Within a very short time, Israel’s sovereignty and autonomy would come to resemble Minnesota’s. This is not a bad thing if your country happens to border Iowa. It works less well in Israel’s neighborhood.

I’m not questioning American friendship. But even friendship has practical limits. Presidents change and policies change. George W. Bush, the greatest friend Israel has had in the White House, hasn’t been able to keep a (relatively easier) commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is a good thing that Israel didn’t build its deterrence on that commitment.

What’s more, it is fair to say that Israel is not a weak country. It has developed a powerful set of strategic options. In the best case, it would be able to act on its own to degrade and retard the Iranian nuclear program as it did in Iraq (and, more recently, Syria). In a worse case, if the Iranians do get the bomb, Iranian leaders might be deterred by rational considerations. If so, Israel’s own arsenal — and its manifest willingness to respond to a nuclear attack — ought to suffice.

If, on the other hand, the Iranian leadership simply can’t resist the itch to “wipe Israel off the map” — or to make such a thing appear imminent — then it would be up to Israel to make its own calculations. What is the price of 100,000 dead in Tel Aviv? Or twice that? The cost to Iran would certainly be ghastly. It would be wrong for Israel to expect other nations to shoulder this moral and geopolitical responsibility.

Don’t misunderstand. It would be a noble thing for the United States to support Israel’s efforts to stop an Iranian bomb or, if it comes to that, to back Israel’s response to an attack. But no country can rely on the kindness of others.

Next month Israel celebrates its 60th Independence Day. Sovereignty comes with a price. Israel’s willingness to pay it is the only Holocaust doctrine that it can really rely on.

With "friends" like George, who needs Ahmadinejad?

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

Three decades of cluelessness: Thirty years of Peace Now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments

Heh: Snob-ama slight a big-time error.

Oops! Looks like someone’s halo has slipped even further.

Update: Contentions' Jennifer Rubin takes note of the canny way Hillary has capitalized on Bambi's blunder:

Barack Obama is now in full scale damage control. On Friday and again on Saturday he struggled to explain that he was merely expressing sympathy with the poor folk who have been left aggrieved and, yes, bitter by the heartless government. There really are two problems, neither of which is going to go away.

First, Mr. Hope thinks the little folk are bitter. Even Chris Matthews remarked last night “Nobody wants to be called bitter.” The little folk, Hillary Clinton says, are not bitter and don’t like being told they are. I suspect Pennsylvanians are going to side with Hillary on that one.

Second, there is no escaping his academic analysis of working class Americans: they irrationally cling to guns, religion and antiquated views because the government had done them wrong.

As to the latter even Hillary could see the problem:

You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream. . . The people of faith I know don’t “cling to” religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich. Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.

That is probably the smartest thing she’s said in her entire political career...

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:42 | link | comments

The “beauty” of submission: Pack up all your cares and woe/Here I go, bowing low/Bye bye freedom. From Arab News (my bolds):

JEDDAH, 13 April 2008 — The strident smear campaign against Islam and Muslims following 9/11 in the US encouraged many American men and women to study and embrace Islam, Yusuf Estes, a leading Islamic scholar and preacher from Texas, said on Friday night.

“They are doing the job for us,” Estes, himself a convert, said while delivering a lecture on “The Beauty of Islam” at the Saudi German Hospital Auditorium in Jeddah. However, he reminded Muslims of their big responsibility in spreading the message of Islam among others.

Hamoud Al-Shimimry of the Islamic Education Foundation also highlighted the importance of dawa work. “If a person embraces Islam as a result of your work, it is better than any other achievement in this world,” he told the participants, quoting Qur’anic verses and Sayings of the Prophet (peace be upon him). He said a Filipino had helped 25 fellow nationals to learn and embrace Islam.

Estes said having peace of mind is the ultimate beauty of Islam. “Wealth and luxuries cannot provide the ultimate happiness to human beings. But the peace of mind we obtain through the faith in God and engaging in righteous deeds makes us happy,” he said.

Total submission to God and His will is also the beauty of Islam, he explained. “Amazing is the case of a believer. If anything good happens, he thanks God; while if anything bad befalls him, he remains patient,” he said quoting a Saying of the Prophet. “If any calamity, such as the death of a beloved person, occurs a Muslim says, ‘We are from God and to Whom we all return.’ This is the beauty of Islam.”

Estes described the Holy Qur’an as an amazing book, adding that millions of Muslims around the world have memorized it. “No other book, including the Bible, has been memorized by so many people,” he added.

Estes ridiculed those who make false propaganda that Muslim children are learning how to make bombs at Islamic schools. “Muslims are the first enemies of terrorists,” he said.

He said many people were not embracing Islam not because of the lack of knowledge but because they don’t care. Asked whether he would invite US President George W. Bush to Islam, he said: “We pray to God that He may guide him to Islam. Islam gives us the right direction and it removes our blindness about the mystery of this universe. I am very happy to be a Muslim and part of the 1.5 billion-strong world of Islam,” he said…

Islam asks you to park your brain and your sense of curiosity at the mosque door, and too many of the 1.5 billion-strong ummah are only too delighted to oblige.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Jihad through procreation: Don’t tell Mark “It’s the Demography, Stupid” Steyn about this. He might include it in his next book, which could lead to another cover piece in Macleans and a whole new round of HRC interrogations. From YNet News:

"The Palestinian reproduction machine works 24 hours a day," Hamas' political leader Khaled Mashaal declared this week during his daughter's wedding in Syria.

London-based newspaper al-Hayat reported extensively Sunday on the wedding of Mashaal's daughter, Fatma to Tarek Irshid, a Palestinian residing in Syria. The event, which was schedule to take place in Damascus, was moved to a secret location at the last minute due to security concerns.

The wedding was reportedly attended by many high-ranking Syrian officials, including Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, senior army officers, head of the Palestinian factions residing in Damascus, Islamic Jihad head Ramadan Salah and Arab countries' ambassadors.

According to al-Hayat, the bride's happy father entertained his guests with a "cheerful and amusing" speech. The Hamas leader claimed that the fact that his daughter, the offspring of 1967 refugees, was marrying his brother-in-law Tarek, whose family left Israel in 1948, meant that their children would be able to return to Israel, because "the sacred right of return includes the return of refugees to all the territories occupied in 1948."

Mashaal also expressed his hope that the couple would soon create a "new generation of liberation" that would succeed the old "generation of resistance."

The "Palestinian reproduction machine," Mashaal continued, "works 24 hours a day." To prove his point, he noted that he himself had seven children, while Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had no fewer than 18 children, "who could form a government all of their own."

Mashaal also used the festive opportunity to thank Syria for continuing to stand by the Palestinians and support their struggle.

“Their struggle.” I.e. their “Kampf.” I.e. their jihad.

Those genocidal Arab supremacists sure know how to throw a bang-up soiree. I bet more than a few of the guests gave the kids some semtex as a wedding present—you know, for the “new generation.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:24 | link | comments (1)

Bomb blast at Iranian mosque: The reportage tells us more about the news sources than it does about the story. Reuters implies the U.S. and the U.K. could be behind it; Fox suggests it was al Qaeda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:36 | link | comments (2)

The Oprah effect: Dear Bambi: Despite what the heavyweight chick with the touchy-feely chat show may have told you, talk show “therapy” cannot be transferred to the world stage. From the American Thinker:

The going theory in the world of media psychology is that people need to confront their demons and talk over problems in order to repair relationships. The next logical step is to conclude that what works on the personal level can be applied to the political and that by dialogue, international relations can be brought to a peaceful resolution. So everyone is talking about talking.

Barak Obama promises to launch "a surge of diplomatic talks" and going with the healing relationship theme, the candidate told General David Petraeus that America should "embrace talks with Iran." Talks without preconditions take a page out of the Neville Chamberlain playbook. Chamberlain may have felt that opening his soul to Hitler in Munich cleared the air. On the other hand, Hitler, emboldened by Chamberlain's naiveté invaded Czechoslovakia. Ignoring the historical reality that talks without preconditions lend legitimacy to one's adversaries, that others who have spoken with Tehran were left empty-handed and deceived, and that meeting with no preconditions will leave an American president little to put on the table, Obama persists in his faith in the healing art of conversation.

 

Obama isn't the only one seeking therapy for the American psyche through engagements with terrorists and thugs. His loyal supporter, Jimmy Carter has never been able to stop talking long enough to take a breath and think. Using his status as former President, he attacks the U.S. while he is overseas, rewrites the Oslo Peace Process to reflect his own prejudices against Israel, rushes to Gaza to sanctify the Palestinian election of Hamas, and now announces he is planning to meet exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus. Hamas, labeled as a terrorist organization by the United States, has a clearly stated mission of international jihad, the total destruction of Israel, and Islamic dominion over the world.  Although it is not clear whom Carter thinks he is representing in the negotiations, there will certainly be some photo opts for the less than photogenic Meshal and doddering ex-President.

 

Carter, the dangerous Dr. Phil on the terror circuit, has also provided those emboldening opportunities for other declared enemies of the U.S. such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Carter has even spoken to Hamas before at the behest of former PLO leader Yassir Arafat. Other than undermine U.S. policy and embarrass the sitting president, Carter's conversations with thugs and terrorists have produced no positive results…

 

No positive results? You must be joking. The “conversations” got the old gasbag a frikkin’ Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking of Oprah’s moustachioed protégée, he did give us a phrase that seems appropriate to put to Jimminy re his efforts to “talk” to jihadists (something at which he's very experienced): “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:25 | link | comments

Pirates!: And I don't mean Keef or Johnny Depp.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:58 | link | comments

Fatal performance art: An Italian woman who wanted to publicize “peace” by putting on a wedding dress and hitchhiking from Italy to Israel has been found strangled to death in Turkey. From the times of india:

ANKARA/TURKEY: Police have found the body of an Italian artist who went missing while hitchhiking in Turkey dressed in a wedding gown to appeal for peace, officials said Saturday.

A man suspected of killing the artist, Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, has been detained, the governor's office for northwestern city of Gebze said.

The woman was last seen on March 31 in the mainly industrial city of Gebze, while hitchhiking to Israel in the wedding dress as part of her "Brides on Tour" project aiming to plead for peace in conflict areas. She disappeared after using her credit card around noon.

Police found her naked body hidden in bushes in a forest area near Gebze, after questioning the suspect late Friday, the governor's office said.

The artist, also known as Pippa Bacca, was hitchhiking to the Palestinian territories with a friend, who was also wearing a wedding gown.

The two left di Marineo's hometown of Milan on March 8 and hitchhiked to Turkey together. They separated in Istanbul shortly before di Marineo went missing, with the aim of reuniting in Beirut, Lebanon.

Police tracked down the suspect when he switched on di Marineo's mobile phone, having inserted his own SIM card, an Italian Embassy official said. The official asked not to be named because he was not authorised to give information on the police investigation.

Media reports suggest that the woman had been strangled.

The Italian Embassy official would not confirm the reports, saying an autopsy was under way.

The suspect, identified only by his initials M K, had previously been convicted for theft, Anatolia reported.

He was being questioned in police custody and no charges had been filed.

One of di Marineo's sisters, who was in Turkey to search for the artist, identified the body.

"Her travels were for an artistic performance and to give a message of peace and of trust, but not everyone deserves trust," another sister, Maria, said in Milan.

"We weren't particularly worried because she had been hitchhiking for a lot of time, and thus was capable of avoiding risky situations," she said. "She was a determined person when it had to do with working for art."...

 

Ah, yes, the “art”. Not meaning to blame the victim or anything, but you would have thought she’d have seen that one coming (Italian chick, white gown, alone, thumbing rides, Turkey: an obvious recipe for disaster). Then again, the hapless artiste was a clueless peacenik.  

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:47 | link | comments (1)

HRC-sick: Here's a Beatles' tune for he who shall not be named--Canada's foremost fan of Section 13. (He musn't be named 'cause if you do you're liable to find yourself in the same boat as Levant, Shaidle, et al):

For the benefit of Mr. W.

There will be a lot of trouble

In kangaroo court.

The Nazi creep is in the dock.

Inquisitors will probe and squawk.

It’s quite a sport!

Over free traditions

Inquisitions

Run roughshod, spit on, balk at, trample and tread.

Soon enough free speech as we know it will be dead!

 

The celebrated Mr.W.

His efforts now will now redouble.

It’s a crusade!

The CJC thinks it’s so swell

And where it leads we know darnn well.

He’s got it made.

Since no matter what the verdict--guilty--

Is simply something that is a sure bet.

And you’re toast if you get caught in an HRC net!

 

The "trial" begins at ten to eight

So please be sure that you aren't late

Or you’re in heck.

Your words are proof of your contempt.

From punishment you aren’t exempt.

They’ll have your neck.

A chill descends on speaking free;

Democracy takes a back seat to nice thoughts.

And of course free public discourse will forever be lost.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:54 | link | comments

Too close for comfort: Last summer, a tiny cabal of “extremist” doctors and engineers came incredibly close to causing a bloodbath in Londonistan. But for a minor technical glitch, they would have pulled it off. From thisislondon:

The full details of how hundreds of clubbers escaped death in the West End last summer were revealed at the Old Bailey today.

Two car bombs packed with explosives and gas cylinders failed to go off only because of a technical failing.

One was positioned outside the Tiger Tiger club filled with 556 clubbers and dozens of staff and a second farther down Haymarket. The court heard how bombers tried to trigger the devices with their mobile phones but the fume-filled cars failed to ignite.

Today, Sabeel Ahmed, 26, an Indianborn doctor of Liverpool, pleaded guilty to failing to disclose information relating to an act of terrorism. Hewas sentenced to 18 months imprisonment but, because of time served since his arrest, he will be released for immediate voluntary repatriation to India.

Sabeel's brother Kafeel, who had a doctorate in engineering, had planted the bombs and also led an attempted car bombing at Glasgow Airport the day after the Haymarket attack.

Kafeel died of his injuries after he drove his car bomb into the airport terminal building. Once again a technical fault prevented a huge loss of life.

Two other doctors, Mohammed Asha and Bilal Abdulla, are alleged to have been responsible for all three car bombs and will stand trial in October.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, told the court today that Kafeel and others had planned bomb attacks across Britain, at "clubs and places of entertainment where the devastating effect and loss of life would be the greatest".

The bombers used two Mercedes bought in Warrington and Sheffield and constructed the homemade devices in a bomb factory in Paisley, Scotland.

This involved a combination of fuel, gas bottles, electronic equipment and circuitboards fitted to a timer operated by mobile phone. The cars were driven south, arriving in central London in the early hours of 29 June.

The green Mercedes was parked close to Tiger Tiger but was spotted after staff had called an ambulance for an unrelated incident at about 1.40am.

"The lights were on but nobody was with the vehicle," said Mr Laidlaw. "A club door supervisor and the general manager approached the Mercedes and looked into the front nearside window. Gas vapour appeared to be venting and billowing up inside.

"The ambulance staff looked into the vehicle and with considerable presence of mind the manager arranged... to contact the police and begin the process of clearing the street and area around the club. Arrangements were made to evacuate the club by the rear emergency door and complete evacuation was achieved in 10 minutes."

The bomb squad was called and the device was disarmed…

Words fail.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:20 | link | comments (2)

And again: Throughout their history, the Jews, for various reasons, have been a lightning rod for the world’s craziness. It continues today, with the Jewish state standing in for the Jewish people (and the craziness then rebounding onto Diaspora Jews). Hugh Fitzgerald of Dhimmi Watch offers his thoughts on the matter:

Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh recently asserted "the fact that the West does not tolerate any criticism of Israel.”

Not only does "the West" tolerate constant criticism of Israel, but Israel also -- this mighty empire about the size of Connecticut, hard to discern on a map of the world -- about one-third to one-half of the total debates and resolutions at the U.N. and many of its subsidiary bodies. Whole conferences seem to veer inexorably into the subject of Israel's perfidy and the greatest tragedy in the history of the world, that of the "Palestinians" -- whether it be a conference on racism at Durban, or on women in Cairo. And the Western world not only tolerates it, but sometimes joins in. Israel has been left virtually alone, save for a handful of states.

And as for the Western press, a drip-drip-drip of anti-Israel venom now courses through the veins of so many in the West because the good doctors of The Guardian and the BBC and Le Monde and Agence France Presse and Reuters and a cast of thousands, with Robert Fisk in the lead but hardly alone, have misrepresented everything. They have caused everything to be taken out of context. They have promoted the notion of the "Palestinian people." They have caused collective amnesia about the reason, and terms of, the Mandate for Palestine. They have rewritten or ignored the true demographic history and the cadastral history of that tiny sliver of land in dusty Asia that had fallen into ruin and desolation, and that would still be in ruins if the Jews had not returned. That includes the Jews of the Middle East (the Jews of the Middle East whom we are supposed to forget about, as if they never existed) as well as the Jews whose mistreatment in Europe had its final apotheosis in Mr. Hitler and the still-unbelievable events of 1933-1945. Those who belonged to the most persecuted tribe in human history returned -- though some had never left, for there was a continuous Jewish presence, always, in Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and even in Hebron until the Arab Muslim massacre of 1929). They returned, and reestablished, for the second time in 2000 years, a Jewish commonwealth. The incredible accomplishments in Israel, the magnanimity it has shown as well to its mortal enemies, have both been systematically ignored.

One may or may not agree with the celebrated Italian journalist and historian Indro Montanelli, who, a few years before his death in 2001 at the age of 90, wrote that the reestablishment of the State of Israel was "the greatest thing, possibly the only good thing, to have come out of the twentieth century." Montanelli could say this because, though not Jewish, he -- like Churchill -- understood what that meant, in world-historical terms, what it meant to the West.

This has been forgotten in that same West, the West where we are told by this crazed Muslim observer that criticism of Israel is not tolerated. Though the least deserving of criticism, in the West, as elsewhere, Israel has become an object of hysterical and ahistorical criticism, criticism that is spread and finds favor with two kinds of people: the usual group, some 10-20% of the population in any given Western country, that exhibits signs of that mental pathology we call antisemitism (and for whom Israel provides an "acceptable" outlet for their low-level hostility or hatred) and those who simply do not know, are ignorant of, the history of Israel, of the Mandate period, of the Mandate itself, of the rules of territorial adjustment after wars, of the history of the Middle East, of the history of Islamic conquest, of the demographic and cadastral history of the area that became modern Israel, of the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics, of Islam.

And the less you know of these things, the more likely it is that you will credulously accept and pass on to others the inaccurate and at times horrifically and sinisterly unjust reporting on events, and "making sense" of events, that takes place in the popular press and in broadcasting…

A little learning is a dangerous thing--and so is the relentless drip-drip-drip of Zionhass. It is help setting the stage for genocide of Israel's Jews in exactly the same way that the relentless Judenhass set the stage for the Shoah.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments

Irony, eh?: Buddies in Bad Times, a gay Toronto theatre troup, participate in a kind of "Gaza strip" that could get them killed in the real deal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:38 | link | comments (3)

Reptile guile: Man acquitted of smuggling iguanas from Fiji into U.S. inside hollow prosthetic leg.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments

Bambi in doo doo: Campaigning in Pennsylvania, the sharp-dressed man said that the state’s small town hoi polloi are “bitter” and apt to “cling to guns and religion”—remarks, say critics, that show he’s a flagrant “elitist.”

I disagree. His words aren’t “elitist”; they’re condescending. And you can be sure Bambi would never dare condescend in the same way to the big city Trinity United crowd, even though it is every bit as “bitter,” religious and gun-crazy.

Just goes to show that this much-vanted "man of the people" is not particularly comfortable among those who are not his people.

Update: Bambi says, "I didn't say it as well as I should have."

No guff. Then how can the American people trust you'll know what to say to the likes of that cunning Armageddonist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:55 | link | comments

Good intentions gone awry: Are you worried that former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and other celebrated Muslims want to blow you up? No? Me neither. But, apparently, the idea that young'uns who don't know any better might harbour such fears inspired two well-meaning authors to come up with a colouring book intented to counter negative sterotypes of Muslims. Its title: the unintentionally hilarious I Don't Want to Blow You Up. From the Ottawa Citizen:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the basketball sensation who converted to Islam and assumed an Arabic name, does not want to blow you up.

Neither do Iranian-American space tourist Anousheh Ansari or Swiss Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan.

Such is the message of a new children's colouring book, provocatively titled I Don't Want to Blow You Up, that aims to teach tolerance through drawings and descriptions of people whose names or appearance -- think head scarves and turbans -- might evoke fears of terrorism in youngsters.

"The inspiration comes from living in this post-9/11 world, looking around and seeing racial profiling happening all around us," says co-author F. Bowman Hastie.

The entry for well-known rapper Nas, born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, reads: "When he made his first hip-hop record ... people said he 'blew up!' That means he became popular very quickly. But he doesn't want to blow you up."

The latter refrain appears at the end of each person's mini-biography.

Although the book is only available to Canadians online (blowyouup.com), its first run of 1,000 copies is nearly sold out, with plans for a second edition in the works. The publisher also has just released a teaching guide for educators and parents.

"It's not the type of book you hand to a kid and just tell him to go colour in," says Ms. Hastie who, like co-author Ricardo Cortes, lives in Brooklyn, New York.

While the colouring book has generally been well-received since its February release, some experts questions its effectiveness.

"We applaud and support any initiative that can help people understand each other better," said Mohamed Boudjenane, executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation. "But quite frankly, terrorism happens everywhere. Why is it portrayed in this book as being unique to Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians?"

Thomas Butko, an expert on terrorism and the Middle East, believes the authors' positive intentions are undercut by the negative assumption that children immediately suspect all Muslims wish to cause them harm.

"I understand what they're trying to do, but it almost could exacerbate the situation," says Mr. Butko, a political science professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He also argues that most children aren't kept awake at night by fears of terrorism.

Child psychologist Leora Kuttner suggests the biggest misstep may be the book's phrasing -- from the continued use of "don't," a word children often misinterpret or ignore altogether, to the "dicey and controversial" name on the cover.

"Wanting to grab the headlines with a catchy title, the authors messed up their message," says Ms. Kuttner, a professor at the University of B.C. "There will be many children who will not be comforted by this book."

Representatives of Mr. Abdul-Jabbar have contacted the publisher to protest over the unauthorized use of the basketball legend's image in a book his manager says he "does not endorse."

I dunno. I kind of like the title “I Don’t Want to Blow You Up.” It’s catchy, descriptive, and certainly gets right to the point. In future though, guys, you might want to try something cuddlier. I know: How about “Sharia is for Sharing” or “The Amazing Adventures of Muhammad the Khartoum Teddy”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:06 | link | comments (2)

Relatively speaking: In an interview in the Spectator, Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses got the whole “behead those who insult Islam” ball rolling, comes out four-square in support of free speech:

…‘We have to get thicker-skinned. If we end up going on being this thin-skinned, we’re going to kill each other. So we need to have the ability to hear unpalatable stuff. What would a “respectful” cartoon look like? The form itself requires disrespect — so you either have the form, or you don’t… I think we’re being extremely wimpish at the level of ideas. People must be protected from prejudice against their person. But people cannot be protected from prejudice against their ideas — because otherwise we’re all done.’

And who, exactly, is being ‘wimpish’? Well, for one, ‘the idiotic Archbishop [of Canterbury] who says there can’t be one law for everyone. That slide into cultural relativism is very, very dangerous. This is supposed to be a really intelligent man. Yet that was a schoolboy mistake. How could anybody who knew the history of this country seriously offer the thought that there should not be one law for everyone, that people would not be equal before the law? It seems to me that the basic principles on which any free society is based are freedom of expression and rule of law — that’s it. If you have those, then you have the foundations of a free society and if you don’t have those, you don’t. So to say “we will voluntarily give up one of those pillars” and not to see that it brings the whole house tumbling down is stupid.’...

Well, not so much "stupid" as "suicidal". Despite his hearty defense of free expression, though, Rushdie can't resist taking a dip in the swamp of relativism himself:

 ‘I’m less optimistic, actually. Firstly I think the level of hostility and distrust in the world is much greater than it used to be, mutually. Whether it is Arab newspapers saying that Americans knocked down the Trade Center themselves in order to make possible an attack on the Arabs, or whether it is the reflex bigotry that can happen in the West, I think we are further from each other than we have been for a long time — and we are badly led, we have been very badly led for a very long time. I was talking to my older son last year, and he said he didn’t see this age of violent terrorism ending in his lifetime. I thought, “What a sad idea that is.” I hope he’s wrong — because if not we’ve really screwed up the world for our children.’…

Only a true relativist could equate deranged Arab conspiracy-mongering with faux reflexive “bigotry” (a.k.a. “Islamphobia”). I guess Rushdie has decided to hedge his bets so he can retain his paid-up membership in the chattering classes. (Unlike Martin Amis, whose decision to ditch moral relativism and embrace his inner Steyn got him unceremoniously cast out of the club.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:02 | link | comments (1)

Meeting of minds: Quick now: who said the following?

The problem is that they want to open a debate on whether Islam is true or not, and on whether Judaism and Christianity are false or not. In other words, they want to open up everything for debate. Now they want to open up all issues for debate. That's it. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief…They want freedom of everything. What they want is very dangerous.

Was it Ontario Human Rights Commission chief Barbara Hall? Aging human rights apparatchnik, Max Yalden? Former UN Human Rights Council diva Louise Arbour?

Nope. They’re the words of Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid. Like the inestimable Mr. Yalden, Muhammad is worried about “anything-goes” free speech and where it might lead. Max is concerned that such unbridled freedom could pose a threat to “human rights”; Muhammad thinks it could lead to “freedom of belief.”

Which—go figure—kind of amounts to the same thing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:27 | link | comments

A choice of genocides: Novelist Michael Chabon is a Jew who doesn’t give a toss about Israel, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t very concerned about genocide—in Darfur. From JTA:

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Tibet was on the minds and signs of most of the thousands of demonstrators who turned out to protest Chinese human rights abuses as the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco on its way to Beijing.

But for several hundred green-shirted activists, including several Jewish luminaries, it was an opportunity for the Save Darfur Coalition to speak out against China’s complicity in the ongoing mass killings in Sudan.

Among those in the crowd Wednesday with something to say about Darfur were novelist Michael Chabon and Ruth Messinger, the president of the New York-based American Jewish World Service.

"It’s extraordinary that all the groups that have concerns about the human rights policies of China are together in a city with a great tradition of protest to bring the message,” Messinger said. “You can’t have an Olympics in a country that violates human rights of people all over the world unless you tell that country to change its policies.”

Messinger said China is complicit in the ongoing slaughter because it is the biggest supplier of munitions to the Sudanese government and buys most of its imported oil from Sudan.

Agents of the Sudanese government are responsible for the death and displacement of millions of Darfuris, she said.

“China has become an enabler of this genocide,” Messinger added.

For four years, Messinger's organization has supported multiple projects in Darfur and Chad, from health clinics to maternity labs to rape counselors.

With their banners and balloons the Darfur protesters -- including about a dozen Darfuri refugees -- made their way to Embarcadero Plaza, just north of Market Street, to join hundreds of chanting pro-Tibet protesters lining police barricades along the torch route.

Film actress Maria Bello (“A History of Violence”) stood with them. She became active in the Darfur movement because of her Holocaust education in college.

“I became obsessed with the idea of genocide and how people could let this happen,” she said. “I felt from then on we were all complicit in World War II, and now we’re complicit in genocide in Darfur by not speaking up. It’s my duty as a human being to do so.”

Rabbi Lee Bycel, the executive director of the Western region of AJWS, has been active in the Darfur movement for years and frequently travels to the region. He marked two of the past three Yom Kippur holidays in Chad refugee camps.

“I always tell people I meet there that I work with a Jewish organization, and everyone hugs me and says ‘we love the Jewish people,’ ” said Bycel, referring to the Muslims of north-central Africa. “People in a refugee camp see a white face, and then they know the world cares.”

Chabon, a Berkeley novelist, says he has long been an ardent admirer of both the Olympic Games and Chinese culture. But he couldn’t give China a pass on its abuses.

“As a Jew, I’m passionately committed to the principle that there shouldn’t be any more genocide,” Chabon said while waiting for the torch to pass his location. “As part of a people that experienced the worst genocide the world has ever seen, my sense of outrage [over Darfur] was immediate.”

Though the world has done little to stop the slaughter in Darfur, Chabon said China was uniquely complicit.

“In that region they are the world power,” he said. “They said they would put a stop to it. They publicly committed to ending the genocide, and it’s still going on. We need them to live up to their promises. They can stop it, and it wouldn’t be that hard.”

Tell me, Michael: As a Jew, how do you square your outrage over the Darfur genocide with your utter lack of outrage at the possibility of a genocide being perpetrated against the Jews of Israel? You lefty Jews seem awfully selective in your genocide concerns.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:00 | link | comments

Sharia “freedom”: The Globe and Mail weighs in on the Ontario thought cops’ latest outrage. Denied the, um, "right" to adjudicate the matter of the CIC vs. Maclean’s, the Ontario Human Rights Commission lashed out extra-judicially by branding the Steyn cover story, an excerpt from his book American Alone (now out in paperback; don’t miss it), “racist”:

When is a decision not a decision? The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) performed just such a deft manoeuvre on Wednesday, announcing there would be no hearing on whether Maclean's magazine and Mark Steyn had violated human rights. Nonetheless, the commission concluded in a press release that they were both guilty of racism.

In 2006, Maclean's published an excerpt, "The Future belongs to Islam," from Mr. Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, in which he argued that Muslims jihadists could exploit their co-religionists' high birth rate to conquer the West.

His demographic projections were dubious, but the magazine and he were engaging in legitimate free speech.

The Canadian Islamic Congress demanded not only an opportunity to reply, but also equal space in Maclean's with full control over the editing and front-cover promotion. When this was reasonably refused, the CIC complained to the human rights commissions of Canada, Ontario and British Columbia. The CIC is a conspicuous organization that frequently exercises its right to free speech.

Correctly, the OHRC found that the complaint could not go ahead to a tribunal hearing, because a magazine is not a service, so there had been no discriminatory denial of a service.

Though the commission is fond of issuing press releases, this one is highly unusual. Invoking its role of addressing and alleviating tension and conflict, it declares, without having heard evidence or arguments, that the excerpt was an instance of "Islamophobia," which itself is a variety of racism, and that Muslims "are increasingly the target of intolerance."

This looks like a shot over bows, in anticipation of the commission's new role. Starting on Canada Day, 2008, it will no longer vet complaints, which will go straight to tribunals. Instead, it will be able to hold inquiries not tied to alleged violations of specific rights, with alarmingly wide powers of search and seizure.

One of the most basic maxims of justice is Audi alteram partem: Listen to the other side. By pronouncing Maclean's and Mr. Steyn to be racist, the commission has violated that fundamental principle. This is a worrying harbinger for its coming inquisitorial role.

“A worrying harbinger”? Quel understatement. That’s like calling the Black Death “a little bug”. My letter:

I find it odd that the Canadian Islamic Congress considers it a “human right” to be able to commandeer an entire magazine when it disagrees with something in it. But not nearly as odd as the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which had no jurisdiction to consider the CIC complaint, essentially concurring by labelling the article in question “racist”. “Racist” it clearly was not; critical of political Islam and its agenda it most definitely was.

Under the terms of sharia, Islamic law, non-Muslims are not allowed to criticize any aspect of Islam. Ironically, in seeking to defend the “rights” of Ontarians and guard against “Islamophobia”, the OHRC has shown itself to be in synch not with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but with the most repressive, restrictive set of laws on the planet.

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

Is that why they're so stupid?: Cognition-enhancing drugs common among academics.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:03 | link | comments

Putting the “con” in “context”: A true believer affronted at the way Geert Wilders took passages of the Koran out of context has retaliated in the best way he could think of—by taking passages of the Christian bible out of context. From Arab News:

JEDDAH, 10 April 2008 — A Saudi blogger has made a six-minute video entitled "Schism" by portraying texts from Christian sources out of context, similar to the way Dutch MP Geert Wilders made his recently-released anti-Qur'an film entitled "Fitna."

In his film, Raid Al-Saeed, 33, shows verses of the Bible that call for war and illustrated them with clips of extremist Christian groups that preach violence.

"I made it in less than 24 hours. In 'Schism,' I have used the same methodology that Wilders has used and that involves taking texts out of context," he told Arab News, adding that he made the film to prove that it is incorrect to judge Islam by watching "Fitna."

This is a point that he writes at the end of his short film. "It is easy to take part of any holy book out of context and make it sound like an inhumane book. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather supporters for his hateful ideology. To create 'Schism,'" he wrote.

Al-Saeed does not believe religious books call for violence and bloodshed. He said "Fitna" is "based on hate" and that Wilders has abused the "freedom of expression that he enjoys." He added that Wilders' movie reflects "his racism and hatred."

When Al-Saeed first posted his clip on YouTube on March 1, the video was removed within 12 hours with a message from the site that the clip violated its terms.

Al-Saeed wrote back to YouTube, asking why the movie was removed while "Fitna" remained available. He uploaded the film again and added a message for the site's administrators advising them to view Wilders' film before deleting the film.

His video has been viewed over 1,800 times and has been on YouTube since March 2. It is also available for viewing on Google.

Al-Saeed insists that his aim is not to spread hate but to tell the world that you cannot judge a religion or an ideology by taking things out of context.

You mean there’s a way to “contextualize” jihad for the purposes of conquest, dhimmitude, Islamic supremacism and Jews being transformed into gorillas and swine by a man with a direct pipeline to the divine? Do tell.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:34 | link | comments

Troubling friendship: Bambi and the missus are really tight with Israel-bashing academic Rashid Khalidi and his missus—a relationship which does not bode well for the still-Jewish state should Bambi win the White House. From the Los Angeles Times via Campus Watch:

CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.

"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."

Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.

Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.

"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."

No need for him to demonize Israel. He can leave that to his “spiritual leader” and his Palestinian pal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:18 | link | comments

More mind-numbing numbers: While Harpoon gives us the poop on the census (see post below), B’nai Brith has revealed another set of figures—the spike in Judenhass occasioned by Quebec’s public inquiry into how far it should go to accommodate sharia law, er, newcomers from a different and completely innocuous culture. Not surprisingly, those don’t much fancy such discussion have taken out their “frustrations” in a time-honoured way. From the Montreal Gazette:

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Quebec outside Montreal last year almost quadrupled to 42 from 11 during 2006, according to an annual B'nai Brith compilation, issued yesterday.

It linked the increase to Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor commission hearings last fall on reasonable accommodation.

Across Canada, the number of harassment and other incidents in which Jews were targeted reached 1,042, the report said, an increase of 11.4 per cent.

The Quebec spike was most evident during November, the lobby group added. Of 143 reported anti-Semitic incidents across Canada that month, it said, 99 took place in Quebec.

B'nai Brith, a Jewish advocacy and community service organization, could not say how many incidents took place in Montreal and how many outside the city.

The organization counted some individuals' remarks to the Bouchard-Taylor commission as anti-Semitic incidents, Steven Slimovitch, national legal counsel to B'nai Brith, said in an interview. The organization could not say how many, specifically.

"The controversy erupting over the reasonable accommodation debate has unleashed latent feelings of anti-Semitism amongst Quebecers, as illustrated in the open-mike hatred often expressed at the commission hearings," Allan Adel, national chairperson of the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, said in a statement.

That echoed one passage in the report, which said the increase in incidents outside Montreal "would seem to indicate a groundswell of latent ill-feeling toward Jews that only needs an opportunity like the commission to crystallize and erupt."

The figures "suggest an obvious link" to the hearings, the report pointed out.

"The public format ... and the laissez-faire attitude of the commissioners until relatively late in the proceedings," it added, "meant that bigots were given a virtually unrestricted public platform and unlimited free publicity to disseminate their prejudices and petty grievance(s) against many different minorities, including Jews."

Hmmm. I wonder from which particular strand of our glorious multiculti tapestry these "bigots" emanate.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:09 | link | comments

The right of might: Harpoon Siddiqui’s column in today’s Toronto Star is a mind-numbing snore-fest about “census-data”. But look behind the numbers and you’ll find Harpoon’s not-so-thinly veiled threat to the Harper government: get in line with “urban” voters, whose numbers are soaring, and who don’t much care for the government’s new bill which places certain, ahem, restrictions on immigration, or face the unwelcome consequences:

…Despite having 80 per cent of the population, urban Canada has only 68 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.

In the last election, the Tories did not win seats in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. They have responded by wooing selected groups, such as the Jewish and Hindu communities, and also shovelling funds into ridings they want to win.

But it is doubtful if the tactics will work. Voter preferences are dictated by a host of issues. For example, foreign policy is very important to urban voters, a majority of whom strongly oppose Harper's.

Immigration and pluralism now define Canada to the world. This has been achieved by adhering to a non-partisan immigration system and the core principle of equality of all immigrants.

Both are at risk in the Harper government's proposal to run immigration by ministerial fiat.

As we know, this government can be excessively partisan. Second, it has been on record in the past as preferring European immigrants. Third, it wants more temporary workers (which can lead to a two-tier society, like Germany's, with debilitating long-term effects).

This is such a fundamental issue that the Liberals, New Democrats and others should welcome an opportunity to defeat the government and go to the polls.

I’d say that deserves a poem:

 

A pundit of note, Harpoon S.,

Has enjoyed a great deal of success.

He shills for Islam

With enormous aplomb

And astonishing skill and finesse.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:05 | link | comments

Cold front: Maxwell Yalden, a Canadian Human Rights apparatchtnik from way back, advises the National Post to “cool its attacks on the Canadian Human Rights Commission” because “Human rights are more important than anything-goes free speech.”

Chilling words, indeed.

 

Here’s the e-mail I sent maddening Max in response:

 

“’Human rights’ are more important than anything-goes free speech”? Well, the enemies of freedom certainly seem to think so. That’s why, cleverly, they’ve figured out that hiding behind a smokescreen of ‘human rights’ is the most effective means of getting people to fall in line with their way of thinking. Look behind the smokescreen, though, and you’ll be able to see what’s really going on--an effort to establish the primacy of Islam’s God-law--sharia--over our godless man-made law.

 

Like it or not, Mr. Yalden, that’s what’s happening. Both locally and globally, human rights bodies are seeking to clamp down on free speech--especially speech that criticizes Islam, since that’s one of sharia’s big no-nos. And well-meaning fools, who can’t see the sharia forest for the human rights trees, keep urging them on.

 

We cede our free expression, the foundation of our free society, at our peril, knowing once we do, we can kiss our cherished freedoms and way of life goodbye. Sorry, Mr. Yalden, but no one who values Western democracy should ever renounce unfettered free speech, even the "anything-goes" type that some deem “offensive”.  Indeed, the right to offend is and must remain our most fundamental right, our most sacred value, because it is what makes and keeps us free. That right is afforded by only one set of laws--man’s law. God-law is entirely different, with inequities and limits on free expression built right in.

 

If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Yalden, I’ll take my chances with man’s law and its unfettered loudmouths. It’s the only kind of law under which I care to live.

 

Update: A poem for Max:

 

“Human rights” apparatchnik, Max Y.,

Thought he’d give it the old HRC try:

“Letting freedom ring’s

An American thing

Which will come to an end, by and by.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments (2)

Beat it: Ezra Levant links to this brief Reuters dispatch in the Toronto Star:

VANCOUVER–A B.C. man who claims he was discriminated against as a pagan who practises a form of sadomasochism will get to take his complaint to a human rights tribunal.

An appeal court rejected a bid by Vancouver police yesterday to block a hearing on whether Peter Hayes's rights were violated when an officer refused to grant him a permit for a chauffeur's job. Hayes complained to B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal that he was discriminated against, partly because he practises a "BDSM lifestyle" – bondage, discipline, submission, sadism and masochism.

Police argued laws to protect sexual orientation did not extend to types of sexual practices.

Well, why the heck not? If we were truly “diverse,” we would protect the rights of all pervs—including those who get turned on by dressing up like stuffed critters and those getting their kicks through auto-erotic asphixiation.

Bent people have rights, too!

Ezra claims he’s not a creative enough writer to imagine an average day at an HRC office and having to field such complaints. Me neither. I can, however, imagine the B&D driver (or his partner in pain, since it isn’t clear if Pete’s the giver or the receiver in his “lifestyle”) singing this song from Guys and Dolls:

Whip me, whip me,

Go ahead, kick me.

I love it.

Truss me, truss me

Spit on and cuss me.

I love it.

Alright, already,

I need a good bleeding.

Alright, already,

It’s fun. So hon--

So flay me, slay me.

Scorch and flambé  me.

I love it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:54 | link | comments

The enemy is us: Moshe Feiglin is an Israeli politician with such “radical” ideas that the Brits (currently embroiled in difficulties with a different kettle of “radicals”) recently sent him a letter requesting the pleasure of his absence. Radical, shmadical; it’s nice to hear an Israeli who offers no apologies for being a Jew and a Zionist because, frankly, the squishes are bowing and scraping their way to our demise. Here’s Feiglin being interviewed in FrontPage (my bolds):

…Feiglin: What happened when (the late Israeli PM Yitzhak) Rabin shook the hand of the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the leader of an organization that exists to liberate every piece of land that the Jews have and give it to the Arabs?

Let’s assume somebody comes into your house and tells you that your house is actually his. You are just sitting in your living room and he tells you the whole house is his. By shaking his hand, what signal are you sending? The natural human reaction would be to scream, yell, kick him out, call the police – anything you need to do to get him out of there. You do that so everyone understands this claim is false and you are not accepting it. The minute you shake his hand you lost your house. You have conceded to his claims. Maybe you will come to some sort of compromise on the house itself, but that will only happen if this good guy agrees to it. But you see what has happened? All of a sudden, you became the bad guy and he is now the good guy. And this is exactly the type of situation we got ourselves into in 1993 when Yitzhak Rabkin shook Yasser Arafat’s hand.

But something much worse happened in Gush Katif (Gaza). The Israeli military actually went into Jewish villages in Gush Katif and kicked Jews out. Israel went into the homes of people, who actually believe that this land belongs to the Jews, and kicked them out of their homes and abandoned their synagogues to the Arab mobs and their torches. And this was broadcast to the entire world. Every country had their media present as this was happening. I was there; I saw all the microphones and cameras. There is not anyone in the world that did not see what the Jews were doing to themselves. With these actions, the Jews showed the world that the entire land of Israel did not belong to the Jews, but to the Arabs. And now we are the bad guys and the Arabs are the good guys. And this applies to every single Jew in the world, whether we like it or not, because Israel is the land of the Jewish nation and we are all represented by the state of Israel. The history of the Jewish people, all of us, is being written today in Jerusalem, not in New York or Toronto, but in Israel. And to everyone watching we have become the bad guys.

Everyone agrees that it is not nice that the Palestinians – I mean the Arabs of Gaza, since there is no such thing as “Palestinians” – shoot rockets and missiles at civilians. The world knows it is not nice, but they accept it anyway. You know why Dan? Why does the world stand by and accept that they are killing civilians? They accept it because, after all, it is their land and we took it away from them.

Many nations have had to fight for their rights and killed civilians. The Americans killed thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The British did the same in Dresden. But everybody understood then and still understands today, who the good guy was and who the bad guy was in those conflicts.

For Israel, we can only respond to these attacks under the very narrow frame of self-defense. If someone is shooting at us, we can shoot him down, exactly at that moment. But not the guy to his left, the guy to his right, or the women whose skirt he is hiding behind when he shoots at us. Heaven forefend that we should try to limit the amount of fuel or water or electricity with which we supply them. Of course, under such circumstances, there is no way that we can win this war or stop these attacks.

Rabkin: The way you spell it out, Israel is in serious trouble today. What needs to be done to turn things around?

Feiglin: The problem is much more than Olmert not giving the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) an order. Not that I like Ehud Olmert, believe me, I am not one of his fans. But the problem is much bigger. The problem is our mentality. Since Rabin’s handshake, the entire state of Israel marched into a state of mind of pragmatism and non-spirituality.

The only way we can solve this problem is not by getting more weapons from the United States. We don’t need more F-15s and F-16s. That is not our problem. What we need is to march back into the right state of mind. And for that we need leadership. True, authentic leadership based on Jewish values. A leadership for Israel that believes in the God of Israel.

Look at Olmert and many of the other leaders of Israel today. They can’t even explain to their own kids why we established the State of Israel to begin with. Olmert’s kids are not in Israel (Olmert’s son Shaul lives in New York and has been associated with anti-militaristic left-wing groups. His other son, Ariel, studies French Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris). The same thing is true about many of our other current leaders.

What we need is a Jewish Revolution to take back the leadership and it has already begun. We are growing stronger every day. Last August the Likud held primaries, a race that was not only going to define the leader of the Likud party, but also the next Prime Minister of Israel. Every fourth Likudnik, your regular blue-collar guy who represents the average Israeli, put my name down. And you know what my slogan was in that race? “Feiglin – Because He Has a God”. A couple of years ago, even one year before, it would have been impossible for me to finish second to Netanyahu for the leadership of the Likud and the entire State of Israel.

And let me tell you something else - in the next primaries I will win. I say this because this concept of Jewish Leadership, leadership that will lead the State of Israel in the name of God, leadership that will lead the State of Israel with Jewish values, leadership that knows where it comes from and where it is going, real Jewish leadership, is picking up steam and cannot be stopped. This totally new concept, which is being attacked from all sides, is gaining more and more popularity. And believe me Dan, this will continue. We cannot lose, we cannot stop going in this direction, because without this there is no hope. No hope for Israel and no hope for the entire Jewish Nation.

I say the entire Jewish Nation because whatever happens in Israel immediately reflects back on all Jews worldwide. When these Jews in Gush Katif were pulled from their homes, what happened to the level of anti-Semitism worldwide? It went up of course. Israel did what the world expected of us and anti-Semitism went up. When we defied the world and did what we had to do in 1967, the level of anti-Semitism dropped. Suddenly every Jew on the streets of Toronto and New York was proud to be a Jew. So you see, what happens in Israel immediately affects all Jews worldwide. A proud Israel with real Jewish faith, that knows what it stands for, impacts Jews tremendously.

So you see Dan, the problem isn’t with the Arabs; the problem is with the Jews themselves. …

Exactamundo! The problem is that too many Jews don’t “get” Islam, want the world to like them, have no belief in the God of Israel, and couldn’t care less whether the Jewish state lives or dies. At this stage, though, I have little faith that Israeli “defiance” would have a positive influence on these Jews; indeed, it would more likely have a negative one, since that defiance would come at the cost of precious Palestinian lives.

That being said, I certainly think Feiglin’s modus operendi has a better shot at saving us than Olmert’s does.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:25 | link | comments (2)

Her humps, her humps, her lovely lady lumps: Dubai’s crown prince has shelled out almost $3 million bucks for a female camel.

She’s the perfect companion: a real beauty, low maintenance, and always ready to do the prince’s bidding with no back talk.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:34 | link | comments

Bambi's plan: He's calling for a "diplomatic surge" that includes Iran.

Lots of luck making any headway with the Ayatollahs, Bambi. They don't call them the mad mullahs for nothing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:24 | link | comments

Log-rolling in the Christian Science Monitor: Joseph Richard Preville, an academic who teaches at the American University in Kabul, offers warm praise for Harvard academic Noah Feldman’s (obviously delusional) predictions of a nimble, new “democratized” sharia (my bolds):

…"In both symbolic and practical terms," Feldman asserts, "the Islamic state died in 1924."

Ever since, the call for a revival of the Islamic state has been strong, persistent – and often militant. Yet radical Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Feldman points out, offer grandiose slogans but few realistic options.

It is abundantly clear that fresh models of governance in some Muslim nations will be required to build genuine consensus, afford legal justice, and guarantee peace and security. These are ambitious objectives, but necessary for the survival of fragile segments of the world today.

The need for new systems

Feldman predicts success for those countries which can "develop new institutions that would find their own original and distinctive way of giving real life to the ideals of Islamic law. This could be an Islamically oriented legislature, infused with the spirit of a democratized sharia; or it could be a court exercising Islamic judicial review to shape and influence laws passed in its shadow."

Feldman commends the new Constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan because they are both Islamic and democratic. The Constitution of Iraq, for example, states that "no law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established." It also makes clear that "no law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established." The Constitution of Afghanistan states that "no law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan." But, it also permits freedom of worship and endorses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). These are promising legal developments, but their ultimate success is difficult to predict.

Noah Feldman deserves considerable praise for his diligent effort, but fastidious readers will notice his excessive use of the phrase "the Muslim world." Muslims do not inhabit a separate planet, and they do not all live on the same block on this planet. This flaw, however, does not detract from his overall accomplishment in writing a persuasive and readable book on a complex topic. "The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State" will have a broad and eager audience.

Um, the may not inhabit a separate planet, but as they see it, they do inhabit a separate world: Dar al-Islam. Surely someone who lives and works in Afghanistan must have come across the concept at some point.

It’s not surprising that Feldman would tout the new Constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, he helped write those cockamamie, internally-contradictory, unworkable documents.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:12 | link | comments (1)

Mental cases: The WHO sez: Climate change can make you crazy.

Well, we already knew that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:51 | link | comments

IgNoble  motives?: The Jewish York University prof who complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission that his employer’s 30-year-old policy of closing down on the Jewish High Holidays was “discriminatory" is the featured guest on Ceeb radio’s local noon-hour phone-in show. As I write, Dave is regaling host Rita Celli with his insights on the subject. He says it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with “power”.

Now, I happen to agree with Dave that it doesn’t make sense to close Gaza U for Jewish holidays—or any religious holidays, for that matter. But I look at it from the standpoint of someone who wants a distinct separation between church and state, especially at a time when sharia-advocates are looking to make inroads in our society. It appears that the professor, with his concerns about “power,” comes at it from a somewhat different perspective—i.e. from the tail end of a dog. Confused? Dave’s Wiki entry has the scoop:

Tail that Wags the Dog

In his broad-based critique of what he views as an academic-industrial system, Noble has questioned Israel's strategic role in Western institutions on a broad basis.

In late November 2004, at York University, Noble garnered controversy for handing out flyers entitled "The York University Foundation: The Tail That Wags the Dog (Suggestions for Further Research)" at a campus event. The information sheets alleged that the Foundation, York University's principal fund-raising body, was biased by the presence and influence of pro-Israel lobbyists, activists and persons involved in pro-Zionist Jewish fund-raising agencies, whom he identified as the "tail", and that this bias affected the political conduct of York's administration in important ways, through their power to "wag the dog". In particular, Noble (who is of Jewish descent himself) claimed that there was a connection between alleged "Pro-Israeli influence" on the York Foundation and the university administration's treatment of vocal pro-Palestinian campaigners on campus and to a later-scuttled project to build a Toronto Argonauts football stadium on the campus.^[2]

Noble and York University again appeared in the news in October, 2005 with regard to his vocal opposition to and York senate appeal of the university's policy, adopted in 1974, of cancelling classes during the three days marking the Jewish High Holidays.^[3] Noble stated he would defy the policy and hold classes nonetheless, instead pledged to cancel his classes on religious holidays observed by any student in the class, and ultimately elected to cancel classes on all Muslim holidays.^[4] In April 2006 Noble lodged a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, alleging that cancellation of classes during certain Jewish holidays constituted discrimination against non-Jewish students; the complaint was still pending at this writing.^[5] He later launched a $25 million libel suit at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against a series of individuals and of York University, Jewish, and Israeli organizations for defamation and conspiracy, accusing them of having improperly criticized his "Tail That Wags the Dog" campaign as antisemitic.

Do I sense a gig with Al-Jazeera in the offing?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:37 | link | comments

Boychick in the Arab 'hood: Ceeb radio's Shelagh Rogers interviewed the odious Avi Lewis this morning. Rogers sounded like she was bursting with pride at Lewis's "remarkable" accomplishment (really, a lateral move): scoring a cushy job with the Ceeb of Qatar, Al Jazeera.

The interview, which included a snippet from one of Avi's hard-hitting al-Jazeera exposes, inspired me to revise a beloved childhood poem. With profuse apologies to A.A. Milne:

Little boy gleefully runs to Al-J.

Mothercorp’s protégée has lots to say.

Hark! Hark! Hear him obsess.

Little Lord Haw Haw derides the U.S.

 

Goddamn, Dubya, I know that’s right.

Went to Iraq and got into a fight.

The U.S. is awful--sez me and the Missus.

Which is why it elicits our boos and our hisses.

 

If I open my eyes a little bit more,

I’d still see the folks I despise and deplore:

Right-wingers, Zionists, Evangelicals--all three.

Harper, Sarkozy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

 

Oh! Thank-you, Al-J., for this fabulous chance

To upbraid the U.S. with my rage and my rants.

And thanks go to Daddy and Mommy, too

For raising a self-loathing--and popular--Jew.

 

Little boy toils for the Jews’ enemies.

Knows how to suck up and succour and please.

Hark! Hark! Hear him obsess.

Little Lord Haw Haw derides the U.S.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:40 | link | comments (3)

No dice, Rice: The name Condi Rice is being run up the flagpole as a possible McCain running mate (the thinking being, I guess, that she’d offer some much needed, ahem, colour to the ticket). A really rotten idea, since, as Washington Times columnist Diana West explains, Condi is gripped by the delusion that Gaza is a dead ringer for the American South of her girlhood:

I wonder if Condoleezza Rice was surprised by the headlines over her comment to The Washington Times that America suffers from a national "birth defect" — namely, the practice of slavery at the time of the nation's founding.

 

Make that the first founding. She said she considers the civil-rights movement to be the nation's "second founding." The secretary of state made another point. She said that "one of the primary things" that attracted her to the candidacy of President Bush "was not actually foreign policy." Really? Rather, she explained, "it was No Child Left Behind." She continued: "When he talks about 'the soft bigotry of low expectations,' I know what that feels like."

 

Miss Rice has actually said all of this before, including more emphatic remarks on "soft" bigotry. "I've seen it. Okay?" Miss Rice said in 2005 to the New York Times. "And it's not in this president. It is, however, pretty deeply ingrained in our system and we're going to have to do something about it." Miss Rice offered as an example her own high-school teacher who suggested she was junior college material.

 

Maybe someone should inform the secretary of state that being underestimated, turned down or shunted aside is, alas, part of the human experience, not the exclusive function of race. But it's probably too late for that. As secretary of state — not, say, secretary of education — Miss Rice has long been doing "something about it" on the world stage. Instead of different states and school systems, she's been working with different countries and belief systems. Suddenly, things about the Rice Doctrine — better, the No Country Left Behind Doctrine — begin to fall into place.

 

I've written before about how Miss Rice makes faulty comparisons between the evolution of democratic principle (all men are created equal) in the United States and the introduction of democratic procedure (ballot boxes) to the Middle East, always ignoring both the miracle of our 18th-century Constitution, which contained the blueprint for abolition, and the dispiriting reality of 21st-century Islamic constitutions, which charter Shariah states where freedom of conscience (among other things) doesn't exist.

 

I've written also about how she sees the transformation of her once-segregated hometown of Birmingham, Ala. as the blueprint for democratizing the Islamic world. Hers is a worldview personal to the point of autobiographical, as when she explains how, as a daughter of Birmingham (or "Bombingham," as she has called it), she can relate both to Israeli fear of Palestinian bombs, and Palestinian "humiliation and powerlessness" over Israeli checkpoints, which she sees as a form of segregation. What she never seems to realize is that such "segregation," far being the sort of prejudice she remembers, is actually an Israeli line of defense against the ultimate prejudice of Palestinian bombs.

 

Considering her remarks about America's "birth defect" — an egregious term for any secretary of state to use about a nation that has brought more liberty to more races, colors and creeds than any in history — I am struck anew how deeply Miss Rice's vision of race in America, or, perhaps, in segregated Birmingham, affects her vision of America in the wider world. It is as if Miss Rice sees American influence as a means by which to address what she perceives as disparities of race or Third World heritage on the international level…

 

It is me, or is Condi seeming more and more like the female Bambi?

 

Update: Rice nixes the idea.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:16 | link | comments (2)

NYT perfidy: The New York Sun stands with the people of Sderot—something which, tellingly, the New York Times refuses to do (my bolds):

The mayor of the Israeli town of Sderot, Eli Moyal, stopped by the editorial rooms of the Sun yesterday to bring us up to date on the travail of his town of 23,000 that, in the past few years, has been hit by what is now 7,000 Qassam rockets fired from neighboring Gaza. The mayor walked in to the Sun’s office just as we were sitting down to write an editorial on the refusal of the New York Times company to air on its radio station, WQXR, an advertisement that is part of the series that the American Jewish Committee has been airing on hundreds of stations around the country. The ad the Times turned down was about precisely the rain of rockets that has been directed at the civilian population of Sderot.

It turned out that the mayor hadn’t heard about the contretemps over the advertisement — or about the rationale the Times gave for turning it down. According to the American Jewish Committee’s president, David Harris, the Times’s radio station manager, Tom Bartunek, wrote to the American Jewish Committee that the ad might be “misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions.” Mr. Harris called that explanation “stunning.” Wrote Mr. Harris: “In other words, according to Bartunek’s logic, the only way to broadcast the plight of Sderot’s residents over the airwaves is to equate Israel’s right of self-defense with Hamas’s and Islamic Jihad’s right to strike Israel at will.”

So we found ourselves trying to explain to the mayor of Sderot that this is the Kafkaesque situation faced by the Jewish defense agencies in today’s politics. When Poland, on whose soil so many millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust, canceled a talk that was to be held at its consulate in New York by a professor named Anthony Judt, who feels the creation of the Jewish state was a mistake, the politically correct intelligentsia voiced angry protests. We’ll see whether Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, and Mr. Judt and their ilk protest the refusal of the New York Times to air the ad on Sderot.

It’s not, incidentally, that the New York Times is unaware of the situation in Sderot. It issued over the weekend a front page story on how the city was emerging as a new symbol of the war. The people of Sderot are nothing, however, if not hard-headed about their situation. The message from their mayor is that New Yorkers should understand that the people of Sderot are not being attacked by the Palestinians. They are being attacked by international terrorist organizations. “People still believe that we’re fighting Palestinians, but we’re not,” he said. They are being attacked by Iran and Syria and their proxies. Why any radio station or newspaper in New York would not want to stand proudly with Israel and the people of Sderot is just beyond us — and, we’ve no doubt, most New Yorkers.

Permit me to explain: The New York Times stands proudly with the left's darlings, the Palestinians. It thus cannot stand with--and cannot stand--the Jewish state.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments (1)

The windmills of their paranoid minds: In the overheated, BDS-ridden corridors of the Ceeb, a Trojan Horse is not multiculturalism, the wooden beast in whose belly sharia has hitched a free ride into Canada; it’s a “troofer” miniseries. An editorial in the Globe and Mail—Fun, verging on paranoia—comments on this tax payer-funded dreck:

If someone had written down a large number of items of folklore about American politics on little pieces of paper, thrown these up into the air, randomly reassembled them and added a Canadian angle, the result would have been very like the four-hour CBC miniseries The Trojan Horse, which concluded on Sunday. Paul Gross is the co-writer (with John Krizanc) as well as the star who plays the title role, as the horse: a Canadian elected as the president of the United States.

Voting machines rigged by untraceable software, a sinister Kissinger-like presidential adviser, a staged assassination in Texas with a Lee Harvey Oswald-like "patsy," Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton figures, a wicked media mogul, a heroic investigative journalist, an evangelical Christian incumbent president (a closeted homosexual), a great thirst for Canadian water and consequently for annexation of this country, American hostages in a Middle Eastern desert, a celebrity evangelist who hangs out with the rich and powerful and baptizes a seemingly resurrected assassination victim, a U.S.-engineered Islamic terrorist attack to provoke a war for oil, the threat from China as an emerging superpower, a White House aide named Lewinsky (this one male, though) and a telltale stain on a blue shirt - all this, and much more, can be found in The Trojan Horse.

Though the multiple plot lines are dizzying, the miniseries is enjoyable in its very preposterousness. Sadly, however, the script takes its semi-paranoid theories seriously. Mr. Gross showed in Due South that he could successfully parody Canadian anti-Americanism, but viewers get a strong impression that The Trojan Horse is no mere satire of our own chauvinism.

On the contrary, Mr. Gross made clear in an interview with The Globe and Mail before the miniseries aired that he thinks the plot is not far-fetched, that the invasion of Iraq, the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California and the current primary campaign are all events as bizarre as those in The Trojan Horse.

The miniseries comes disturbingly close to countenancing the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government connived at, or even instigated, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Canadian broadcasters should not be lending comfort to scandalous nonsense.

My letter:

Reading your editorial about the CBC’s conspiracy-ridden “satire” The Trojan Horse, was certainly a lot more fun than actually watching the show. Personally, I found it to be a ridiculous, poorly-written, over-the-top exercise in anti-Americanism--unsubtle, unfunny and just plain daft. It didn’t just “verge” on paranoia; it took a good, long wallow in it--par for the course at the CBC these days.

It disgusts me that Canadian taxpayers had their pockets picked to pay for this drivel. On the other hand, maybe we can recoup some of our losses when the CBC sells this “satire” to broadcasters that share its world view. Say, al Jazeera?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments

One liner: Melanie Phillips explains in a single sentence why sharia financing (“jihad with money”) is so insidious (my bolds):

Of all the manifestations of the Islamisation of the west (see this piece by Dan Rabkin on the acceleration of Londonistan) sharia finance is perhaps the most deadly, because it effectively sells the west to Islam, and the most difficult to stop — because for the financiers and politicians in the west who are thus selling it, all they can see are the trillions of dollar and pound signs being dangled enticingly before their eyes.

They see oodles of moolah: I see Islam’s Iron Veil descending thrice and for all on the greedy, gullible, guileless West.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:16 | link | comments

Martin’s successors: Christopher Hitchens is less than impressed with the gaggle of con men, hucksters and racists who presume to wear MLK’s mantle. From Slate:

…On the same weekend as I was reading Nicholson Baker, I also absorbed a news item about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the recently retired pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. Here is the form that the reverend's "retirement" will take: a $1.6 million home, purchased in the name of his church and consisting of more than 10,000 square feet, in a gated community in Tinley Park, a prosperous white section of the city. There used to be a secularist line about fat shepherds and thin sheep, but the joke here is not just at the expense of a man who never pretended to be much more than a hustler. The joke is on those of the "flock" who tithed themselves to achieve this level of comfort for a man who must be pinching himself when he wakes up every day.

 

But, then, so must the Rev. Al Sharpton, routinely described by the New York Times as "the civil rights activist," be pinching himself each morning. By evening, after all, several limos will have arrived to transport him to several studios where he will be flattered and taken seriously. And this enviable existence is watched with avaricious jealousy by more junior practitioners, like the raving Rev. James Meeks of Chicago's Salem Baptist Church, who may not yet be quite ready for prime time, and by the members of Louis Farrakhan's racist and sectarian crew, who affect to think that Christianity is a slave religion and that white people are the products of a laboratory experiment gone wrong.

 

The thing that this gaggle of cranks and parasites has in common is the extreme deference with which it is treated by the junior senator from Illinois. In April 2004, Barack Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks, and Father Michael Pfleger—for a change of pace, a white Catholic preacher who has a close personal feeling for the man he calls (as does Obama) Minister Farrakhan. This crossover stuff is not as "inclusive" as it might be made to seem: Meeks' main political connections in the white community are with the hysterically anti-homosexual wing of the Christian right. If Obama were to be read a list of the positions that his clerical supporters take on everything from Judaism to sodomy, he would be in the smooth and silky business of "distancing" from now until November. And that is why he hopes that his Philadelphia speech, which dissociated him from everything and nothing, will be enough. He seems, indeed, to have a real gift for remaining adequately uninformed about the real beliefs of his "mentors."

 

This is a lot sadder, and a lot more serious, than has been admitted. Four decades after the murder in Memphis of a friend of the working man—a hero who was always being denounced by the FBI for his choice of secular and socialist friends and colleagues—the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists who hope to franchise "race talk" into a fat living for themselves. Far from preaching truth and brotherhood, they trade in cheap slander and paranoia and in venomous dislike of other minorities…

The entitlement of victimhood: you get to slam racism while simultaneously purveying it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:04 | link | comments

What might have been: China cracking down on uppity Tibetans. Tibet up in arms (in a non-violent, Dalai Lama kind of way). The Olympic torch relay disrupted by protesters. A possible boycott in the offing.

Wonder if Olympic organizers are regretting their decision to award the games to Beijing and not to quasi-peaceful Toronto, a model of multicultural amity?

Wonder if China's regretting it, too?

Update: Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Daily Mail asks whether its time to douse the flame:

What happened in London on Sunday was one of the most shameful and humiliating spectacles this country has witnessed for many years.

It was bad enough to see the Metropolitan Police in riot gear forcibly tearing Tibetan flags and T-shirts away from demonstrators.

Even worse was the presence of uniformed Chinese goons intimidating people who tried to protest against wicked injustice.

Plenty of comparisons have been made between this summer's Beijing Olympics and the "Nazi Games" held in Berlin in 1936, but at least detachments of the Gestapo and SS weren't sent here then to keep us in our place.

It would be a little hard to blame Gordon Brown personally for the excruciating sight of Downing Street cordoned off under a canopy of clattering helicopters while the Olympic torch - that wonderful symbol of goodwill and the sporting spirit - was forced toward No10 by a phalanx of security guards.

The Prime Minister hadn't himself planned this dismal event, and it would be nice to think that he hated every moment of it.

And yet those sights were not only horrifying, they were entirely predictable.  

Ever since this year's Games were awarded to Beijing, they have been fraught with potential danger, and the intolerable problems and dilemmas we now face could have been foreseen from the outset.

Maybe the bitter truth is that the Olympic Games are now beyond redemption. I say that with a heavy heart, as a passionate sports-lover who sympathises with the young men and women for whom the quadrennial event is the object of years of dedicated training.

But when they look at Sunday's events, or yesterday's in Paris, even athletes must wonder whether the Olympics should continue at all. Haven't they passed their useful lifespan, to the point when the Olympic flame might better be extinguished for good?...

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:09 | link | comments

Sandy's sordid story: Ezra Levant has a--well, the only word I can think of that accurately describes it is "gobsmacking"--post about Sandra "Sandy" Kozak. Name not ring any bells? Sandra is the Canadian Human Rights commissar assigned to tackle the sticky case of Elmasry vs. Macleans. Prior to her cushy gig with the CHRC, she had been drummed out of an Ottawa-area police force for having an improper (and well-publicized) relationship with an incarcerated serial-murderer. Lucky for her the CHRC didn't consider canooding with a killer to be a bad career move, and snapped her up post haste.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:34 | link | comments (1)

 Lefty delusions: According to a smarty-pants in the London Review of Books (a house organ of the chattering classes), Muslims in the U.K. are the "new" Irish.

Actually, a lot of Muslims in the U.K. are old--really old (think Mo and his first four successors)--Muslims. Which is kind of the problem.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:09 | link | comments (1)

Preparing for the Apocalypse: It's a-coming, but, really, can one truly be ready for it?

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:37 | link | comments

Stop the presses: Diana's drunken chauffer (an employee of Mo Al-Fayed, whose playboy son, Dodi, was Di's main squeeze at the time) and the paps who were in hot pursuit of her car caused her death.

You mean it wasn't the Liz and Phil? Go figure.

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

We’re not worthy: Jonathan Rosenbaum skewers the way the spineless Olmert government has grovelled before “world opinion,” thereby colluding in Israel’s demise. From JWR:

Whenever I speak abroad about Israel's security situation, I'm invariably asked: Why doesn't the Israeli government ignore world opinion and do what it must to stop the terrorism? I always answer by pointing out that Israel does not manufacture F-16s or most of her other major weapons systems. Second, Israel's economy is dependent on trade with other countries, chief among them the European Union.

Yet deference to world opinion has been taken way too far by our current government to the point that Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it. That campaign led by the unholy of trinity of NGOs, the United Nations, and major Western media outlets, the BBC chief among them, was the subject of a day-long symposium, featuring an impressive array of experts, sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs last week.

Not discussed, however, was the impact of Israeli government policy on the delegitimization of Israel. Since the first Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have adopted the position that Israel's security is better served through diplomacy than by ensuring that Israel maintains defensible borders.

Yet those diplomatic efforts and the various attempts to subcontract our defense to outside parties — to Yasir Arafat under Oslo, to the U.N. in Lebanon, and to Egypt in the Philadephi Corridor — have only harmed our international standing, which is demonstrably lower today than at the start of the Oslo process. Any fleeting good will generated by such actions as the Gaza withdrawal is soon lost — and then some — when Israel is forced to respond to the consequences of its concessions.

Whenever Israel acts out fear of becoming a pariah state by exercising greater restraint or making further concessions, it only convinces its critics' that even Israelis know that they are the villains in this piece. For example, this week's decision to remove 45 West Bank roadblocks and checkpoints, in response to pressure from Secretary of State Rice, gave credence to Palestinian claims sthat the purpose of those roadblocks was to imprison Palestinians, not protect Israeli civilians. (It was only 15 minutes before the first Israeli civilian was attacked by a knife-wielding Palestinian just beyond a recently dismantled roadblock.) For knowingly endangering its own citizens, all Israel received from Secretary of State Rice was the frosty message, "We'll be watching you."

Israeli's tend to observe Prime Minister Olmert's antic efforts to remain in power with a certain bemused fascination, and to view as a harmless fantasy his negotiations with the Palestinians over a "shelf agreement," which will not be implemented until such time as the Palestinians actually do something to stop terrorism and incitement against Jews. That, however, is a mistake…

Our obsession with "peace" treaties with our neighbors — treaties for which the purchase price is always further territorial concessions — has blinded us to the larger strategic threat facing us — i.e., Iran's emergence as the leading regional power and the noose of Iranian proxies closing around our necks. Consider the absurdity of Israel sending Syria twenty peace feelers, at the very time that half the members of the Arab League were boycotting a Damascus summit Syria because of Syria's continued obstructionism in Lebanon and close ties with Iran.

Finally, Olmert is undermining Israel's still strong support in the United States. One cannot expect Americans to be more supportive of Israel than the Israeli government. President Bush has repeatedly said that he is only pushing for the "final" agreement Israel says it wants. When he talks to Bush, Olmert is like a little kid afraid to rat on a bullying older sister (Condoleeza Rice) for fear of being pounded later if he does.

A SELF-RESPECTING ISRAELI STANCE would begin by pointing out that twice in the past century the world community affirmed the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute its ancient homeland in the Holy Land. It would counter every discussion of Palestinian refugees with a discussion of the equal number of Jewish refugees from 1948. It would seek the right for Jews to live in security in a future Palestinian state just as Arabs live as citizens with full rights in Israel. It would scoff at the concept of international law that applies to only one country in the world. And it would never tire of pointing out the double standard inherent in the world's lack of concern with the execution of 100 Buddhist monks in Chinese-occupied Tibet, or the deliberate extermination of hundreds of thousands of black Muslims in Darfur.

But our leaders are incapable of making this case, for they are not truly convinced that we Jews have any real claims in the Holy Land or that we should not be happy with whatever the Arabs grant us. They are products of an educational system that Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover described recently as failing to provide its products with any reason to live here: "We have . . . attempted to copy, unsuccessfully, the developed countries of the West, in an effort to be like every other nation."

When David Ben-Gurion was asked from where the Jews derived the right to live in the Holy Land, he would hold up Bible. He conducted a Bible study group in his home. How absurd to imagine today, observes Ciechanover, "that one of this country's leaders would study and teach the Bible in his home. . . "

If Israel’s leaders have no sense of why the Jewish state is “different,” and cannot say with enthusiasm “Vive la difference!,” then, clearly, Israel cannot survive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:34 | link | comments

Fiery protest: Folks took to the streets in Paris to protest the arrival of the Olympic torch, but Gendarmes on rollerblades managed to quickly control the crowd.

Well, it’s not like Tibet supporters were going to torch cars, or anything.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments

 Don't look a gift bear in the mouth ('cause it might blow up):

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

An endless capacity for audacity: The American left's long, strange ride with utopianism.

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

Worst. Idea. Ever.: V.P. Condi Rice?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments

Semitic semantics: A Lebanese novelist advises kufirs, for the sake of inter-cultural harmony, to either stay away completely from using the Arab word for “God,” or use it whenever referring to God. From the L.A. Times (my bolds):

…Allah means God.

In Arabic, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians all pray to Allah. In English, however, Christians and Jews pray to God, and Allah is the Muslim deity. No one would think of using the word "Allah" to talk about any other religion. The two words, "God" and "Allah," do not mean the same thing in English. They should.

This isn't about political correctness; it isn't about language distortion. Altered or incomplete usage of words is natural, even amusing. "Confetti" in its original language means little bonbons or small sweets. And incomplete usage is at times explainable and logical. The words "beef," "pork" and "mutton" arrived with the Norman invasion. They refer solely to the meat, never to the animal, whereas in the original French they refer to both (mouton is both sheep and mutton). That is primarily because French was integrated into the language of the upper classes, which ate the meat, and less so that of the farmers, who raised the animals.

God, however, is a big deal. The word for God matters quite a bit more than what lands on one's table for dinner at night. We never say the French pray to Dieu, or Mexicans pray to Dios. Having Allah be different from God implies that Muslims pray to a special deity. It classifies Muslims as the Other. Separating Allah from God, we only see a vengeful, alarming deity, one responsible for those frightful fatwas and ghastly jihads -- rarely the compassionate God. The opening line of every chapter in the Koran is "Bi Ism Allah, Al Rahman, Al Rahim": In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. In the name of Allah. One and the same.

The separation is happening on all sides. This year, the Malaysian government issued an edict warning the Herald, a weekly English newspaper, that no religion except Islam can use the word Allah to denote God. No such edict, or fatwa for that matter, is needed for the New York Times: a quick search through the archives shows that Allah is used only as the Muslim God.

In these troubled times, creating more differences, further parsing so to speak, is troubling, even dangerous. I suggest we either not use the word Allah or, better yet, use it in a non-Muslim context.

Otherwise, the terrorists win.

One nation under Allah?

No thanks.

“Allah” is your--not my--God,

Though the faithful consider it odd.

Just as Mo is your prophet,

Not mine--so get off it.

You and all the folks back in Riyadh.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments (1)

Winner, hands down, of the booby prize for "Most Repellent and Revolting Self-Loather on the Planet":  Avi Lewis (a.k.a. Mr. Naomi Klein), the dauphin of cluelessness.

His parents must be proud.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:50 | link | comments (3)

Have no fear, sharia's here: CAIR-CAN founder Sheema Khan, a Globe and Mail staple, beseeches the gullible kafirs to submit to the inevitability of sharia-compliant financing—a harmless and helpful system:  

Islamic financing is the latest target of self-declared vanguards against so-called sharia creep. They warn that sharia-compliant financial products are tools to sneak Islamic law through the back door into countries like Canada. This drumbeat of fear was used during the debate over faith-based arbitration in Ontario. The shrill language reduced the issue to: "You're either with us or with the Islamists." The furor obscured any pragmatic approach to the use of Islamic principles by Canadian Muslims in settling family disputes.

Muslim reliance on faith-based principles can also extend to personal finance. The New York Times reported last year that about 300 Islamic financial institutions around the world hold a total of more than $500-billion in assets, an amount increasing by about 10 per cent a year. The biggest Islamic banks are in the Gulf states, but there are untapped markets in Turkey, North Africa, Indonesia and Europe.

The topic is also being explored by academics. In 1998, Harvard Business School published a landmark study on Islamic law and finance in conjunction with Harvard Law School's Islamic legal studies department. Soon after, Harvard's Islamic Finance Project took flight.

The Koran clearly prohibits usury, as do the Torah and the Bible. Aristotle denounced it, while the early Christian church prohibited charging high interest rates to lend money, the Times noted - Western theologians eventually distinguished interest from usury, and reintroduced it during the Renaissance.

In Islamic financing, the financier is required to share the borrower's risk. Deals are akin to lease-to-own arrangements, layaway plans, joint purchase-and-sale agreements or partnerships. Proponents say risk-sharing reduces the types of abuses at the heart of the subprime mortgage fiasco.

It's possible to purchase a home this way, without engaging in a conventional interest-based mortgage. In 1975, the first Islamic home-financing agreement was drafted in Halifax. A group of Muslims pooled their money to buy a home, which was rented at market value to a buyer-tenant. All owners paid maintenance costs and taxes, received rental income and owned shares in the house.

After a year, the house price and rent were reappraised. The buyer-tenant obtained a little more home equity by buying back shares from the other owners. She paid rent, but received a portion thereof as a co-owner. With increasing home equity, her monthly payments were reduced each year until she owned all the shares.

The arrangement was flexible - payments could be accelerated, allowing outright home ownership in a shorter period of time, or slowed, in case of financial difficulties. The investors and the buyer shared in any of the home's gain or loss in value. The first purchase spanned a period of three years, and the total amount paid for the house was less than it would have been with a conventional mortgage.

Toronto-based Ansar Co-operative Housing Corp. uses a variant of this model. Since 1981, it has sold 700 homes across the country, with a near 100-per-cent success rate. Ansar's chair, Pervez Nasim, believes that maximizing profit is not the most important aspect of the business. "Charity and social responsibility are part and parcel with the bottom line," he says. When one of the co-op's customers died in a car accident, fees were waived for four months to allow his widow to grieve.

There are wrinkles. Ansar requires customers to provide a 20-per-cent down payment, making the service unaffordable for many first-time home buyers. One solution would be to transfer from a conventional mortgage to the co-op once 20 per cent of home ownership is achieved. Another drawback is that Ansar currently offers its services to Muslims only. When the Ottawa Citizen ran a story on Ansar in 2002, the co-op was inundated by queries from many non-Muslim Canadians, who were turned away.

As the number of Canadian Islamic financing institutions grows in response to demand, greater regulation will be needed. In addition, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has commissioned a study on the practice, part of its mandate to understand all aspects of the country's housing system. For this, it was pilloried for facilitating sharia creep.

Last month, The Globe and Mail reported housing affordability across Canada was at its lowest level since 1990. In Vancouver, renting is more affordable than owning a home. Doesn't it make sense to explore alternative means of home financing? Why not an Islamic financing model, available to all Canadians?

Why not? Because, like all Islamic models, it leaves no room for the alternative model—ours—and means, eventually, to supersede it. Because anything that extends sharia’s reach here in the West is bad for us and good for the sharia-shilling supremacists. Because when sharia comes a-knockin’, we need to know that it’s a total (and totalitarian) package—financial, familial, political—and that sharia-compliant banking is but the thinnest edge of one very nasty wedge. Because Islamic financing aims to conquer and destroy capitalism, Western freedom, and the Western way of life.

That’s why not.

Update: Back in January, Tarek Fatah offered an opposing viewpoint.

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

There goes rhymin' Simon: If Elton can do Hillary, then Paul (and Artie) can do Bambi:

The Grama Obama, African lass,

Had a place back there in Kenya.

Mo said, “Submit, it won’t hurt a bit.”

Then he said it again and again ya.

 

You better heed the law.

You better heed the law.

Law without a flaw.

You better heed that law.

 

The Obama Grama,

B.'s mama’s mama,

Born on the plains of Kansas.

If there’s a “typical white”

Who’s ‘tude is pure “fright”

Then Bambi says his Gran’s is.

 

Well, he’s on his way.

He knows just where he’s goin’.

He’s on his way.

Ain’t takin’ his time

‘Cause he’s in a rush.

Goodbye, Hillary.

Hasta la vista!

Seein’ B. Obama

Smile for the cam’ra.

 

Oh, for a couple of weeks

The candidate freaks

Ev’ry time Wright’s name gets mentioned.

Since that radical preach’

Is a history teach’

Who has sown a whole load o’ dissension.

 

Well, he’s on his way.

He knows just where he’s goin’.

He’s on his way.

Ain’t takin’ his time

‘Cause he’s in a rush.

Goodbye, Hillary.

Hasta la vista!

Seein’ B. Obama

Smile for the cam’ra…

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:13 | link | comments

Elton John to sing Hillary Clinton's praises: A story that all but jumped up and shrieked "song parody":

Goodbye, Hillary

Though it seems we knew you so long

You had the guts to stand your ground

When folks told you to flee.

Obam' came outta nowhere

To run off with your prize

With his dazzle and audacity

And his nifty way with lies.

 

And it seems to me you lived your life

In the shadow of your man.

Always thinkin’ if you were patient

You'd fulfill your plan.

And it seems oh so unfair that things

Just haven’t gone your way.

And you can’t hold a candle now

To Bambi O, they say.

 

Bill’s infidelities were tough

But, Hill, you toughed it out

Ambition made a thick, hard shell.

And you tried to hide your pain.

But looking in your eyes

Oh, we saw the flint inside.

All the years of suffering--

It seemed like something there’d already died.

 

And it seems to me you lived your life

In the shadow of Bill C.

Always waitin’ for the day

To have your primacy.

And it seems oh so unfair that things

Just haven’t gone your way.

And you can’t hold a candle now

To Bambi O, they say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:27 | link | comments

Say your prayers: The following “Prayer for the State of Israel” is usually recited every Shabbat at Conservative and Reform synagogues in North America (although for some unaccountable reason, not yet at the one my family attends):

Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the first manifestation of the approach of our redemption. Shield it with Your lovingkindness, envelop it in Your peace, and bestow Your light and truth upon its leaders, ministers, and advisors, and grace them with Your good counsel. Strengthen the hands of those who defend our holy land, grant them deliverance, and adorn them in a mantle of victory. Ordain peace in the land and grant its inhabitants eternal happiness. Lead them, swiftly and upright, to Your city Zion and to Jerusalem, the abode of Your Name, as is written in the Torah of Your servant Moses: “Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers.” Draw our hearts together to revere and venerate Your name and to observe all the precepts of Your Torah, and send us quickly the Messiah son of David, agent of Your vindication, to redeem those who await Your deliverance.

Manifest yourself in the splendor of Your boldness before the eyes of all inhabitants of Your world, and may everyone endowed with a soul affirm that the Lord, God of Israel, is king and his dominion is absolute. Amen forevermore.

Does that sound overly “trimphalist”, “militaristic” and “political” to you? If so, then you’d likely feel right at home at Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Altshul, where folks are looking to “tweak” the prayer in keeping with their politics. From JTA:

On a gray afternoon in early February, some 20 members of the Altshul, a lay-led minyan in Brooklyn, gathered to discuss congregants’ objections to the community’s recitation of the prayer for the State of Israel.

The minyan, which is egalitarian but otherwise hews to a traditional liturgy, had recited the prayer since its founding in 2005. But some members had begun to express misgivings about the prayer, which describes Israel as the "first flowering of the redemption" and asks God to deliver to Israel's military forces victory over their enemies.

Congregants at the meeting also challenged the prayer's conflation of religion and politics, its tone of Jewish triumphalism and exclusivity, and its seeming denigration of Diaspora Jewry.

"Expecting everyone to stand and recite, in unison, something so political clearly sends a message: If you don't identify with the vision of Israel that is expressed in this prayer, then you are wrong," Alana Alpert, the Altshul member who initiated the meeting, told JTA. "The prayer is just one more way that American Jews are given a litmus test on their Israel politics, determining who is inside and who is outside the Jewish community."

First published by Israel's Chief Rabbinate shortly after the founding of the state 60 years ago -- some credit Israeli Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon with actual authorship -- the prayer is recited in the vast majority of American synagogues. But in recent years, a number of communities have begun to question its place in the liturgy and search for ways to pray for the Holy Land in a manner more consistent with local sensibilities.

The Newton Centre Minyan in suburban Boston, an egalitarian group that like the Altshul mostly follows traditional liturgy, is re-evaluating the Israel prayer after members expressed concerns similar to those voiced at the New Yorkers' meeting. And at the Shtibl Minyan in Los Angeles, a similar egalitarian congregation, the prayer was dropped when the community formed in 2000. It was later reinstated in a revised form at the urging of some members.

Alpert says the prayer should account for the consequences of Israel's creation for the land's other inhabitants. At the February meeting, she cited a Jewish legend that describes how God reprimanded the angels for celebrating along with the Israelites as the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea.

"Why do the Israelites get to rejoice and the angels do not? The angels have perspective -- they can see implications and consequences," Alpert told JTA. "I would like to think that we can be more like the angels. I feel such triumphalism in the face of the conflict in Israel and Palestine is irresponsible."

"Strengthen the hands of those who defend our holy land, grant them deliverance, and adorn them in a mantle of victory," reads the Israel prayer. "Ordain peace in the land and grant its inhabitants eternal happiness. Lead them, swiftly and upright, to Your city Zion and to Jerusalem, the abode of Your Name."

Aviva Bock, a member of the Newton Centre Minyan who teaches psychotherapy at Harvard University, says there is something problematic about simply reciting this formula.

"The prayer should be a reflection of our hopes and prayers in the context of today rather than something that feels to me like it was written at a very different moment in time," she said.

Of all the objections to the prayer, the declaration that Israel's founding heralds the dawn of the messianic age is the passage deemed most problematic across Jewish denominations.

Fervently Orthodox, or haredi, Jews, have long eschewed the prayer -- most of them because of its messianic component, but a minority because of their principled opposition to the state. That minority believes the restoration of Jewish sovereignty must await the coming of the Messiah.

"I think the essential problem with it from a haredi viewpoint is it seems to project the establishment of the State of Israel as a monumental movement forward towards the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people," said Rabbi Avi Shafran, the public affairs director for the fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America. "While we may hope that it might play that role, by no means is that self evident."

At the Altshul, remedies proposed for the Israel prayer included eliminating it to cutting its most controversial passages. Some communities have supplemented the prayer with other readings, like passages from Israel's Declaration of Independence or Israeli folk songs.

At the Shtibl Minyan, a sort of hybrid solution was reached: Worshipers can recite no prayer or one of several alternatives, including one authored by one of the minyan's founders, Aryeh Cohen, a professor of rabbinic literature at the American Jewish University. His prayer describes Israel as cause for "tears and jubilation, celebration and grief," according to a translation from the Hebrew.

"It's actually a moment of religious cacophony," said Cohen, who lived in Israel for 12 years and served in its army. "Everybody says the prayer that they want to say."

Among the established denominations, some version of the prayer remains in widespread use. Both the Reform and Conservative prayer books include it in a truncated form, eliminating certain passages both for reasons of length and because they speak of the ingathering of the exiles -- a notion that some consider insulting to non-Israeli Jews.

The main edition of the ArtScroll siddur, the most common Orthodox text, does not include the prayer, but a special edition published by the Rabbinical Council of America does.

Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, who leads the Conservative congregation Anshe Chesed in Manhattan, told JTA some "tweaks" were made to his synagogue's version of the prayer as a byproduct of a larger discussion about prayers with nationalistic overtones.

Kalmanofsky himself recommended an alteration of the passage that speaks of Israeli soldiers achieving "victory," substituting instead a verse from Isaiah asking that they return in peace.

"We're not neutral here. We certainly hope that the Israeli state thrives," Kalmanofsky said. "But certain formulations in Siddur Sim Shalom" -- the standard Conservative text -- "were not entirely satisfactory. We wanted something a bit less militaristic and that prayed for peace for the Palestinians, too."…

Me? I think the prayer is just fine as is. My hope is that Israel’s neighbours and the Palestinians knock-it off already with their militaristic triumphalism (a.k.a. the jihad), and that North American Jews refrain from being such clueless mush-brains.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:49 | link | comments (1)

Isn't that special?: Officials confirm Iran's role in brokering truce between Iraqi government and Shiite cleric.

Begging the question: Who's calling the shots in Iraq, Maliki's "democratic" government, or the mully-bullies next door?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:06 | link | comments

The Star’s pity party: I must be a hard-hearted Hannah, because Toronto Star scribe Thomas Walkom’s emotionally manipulative piece about the families of the lads arrested in the Mississauga terror plot leaves me as cold as the granite countertop in my kitchen.

Here’s my favourite part of the soap opera, recounting how one devoted, distraught mater has reacted to her son’s incarceration:

…She cooked all of his meals, sending him off to McMaster each week with 18 individually prepared and packaged breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

She did his laundry each weekend when he came home. She phoned him every day at university and routinely eavesdropped on his telephone conversations at home.

"Until he marries, I am his mother," she shrugs. "This is my job."

Ironically, given the government's assertion that Saad was involved in a religiously motivated conspiracy, his arrest has caused Beenish to draw closer to Islam. The only thing that makes sense of this madness, she says, is the Qur'an, with its message that people must struggle against adversity.

She says she now looks forward to the day when she will have enough courage to brave popular prejudice and don an Islamic headscarf.

"I call myself a Muslim and I call myself a Canadian," she says. "What is my country? Canada is my country, even though it is treating me like a second-class citizen. I'm not Pakistani. I'm Canadian. I plan to stay here and work here and marry here and raise kids here.

"I take pride in being a Canadian. What's going to happen if this (the treatment of the 18) becomes the norm?"

Rukhsana's hopes are simpler. She just wants her life and her son back.

"I have nothing to hide," she says. "My son did nothing wrong. We are an average Canadian family. We are normal."

Cooked all his meals; did his laundry; phoned him every day; eavesdropped on his calls: sounds to me, Rukhsana, like your mothering may have been a bit, well, smothering. When the time comes for my son to go off to university, bad mother that I am, I'm not planning to cook his food, do his washing, or listen in on his calls. But, hey, that's me. Rest assured, though, that had anyone else’s son been nabbed in a terrorism dragnet—be he a Tamil, Hindu, Christian, Jew, Serb, Thai, Kosavar, Papua New Guinean or member of any other ethno-cultural group—he would have been subjected to exactly the same laws as your “normal” son. And this being Canada, where sharia law is not yet in effect and where, prior to trial, there is a presumption of innocence (except, of course, in Canada’s Stalinist HRC “courts,” where the usual regulations do not apply), we are required to give your lad the benefit of the doubt until such time as the Crown proves its case against him. Count your blessings that your son isn’t being tried in, say, Saudi Arabia, where he would have been severely tortured while in prison and faced a sentence of flaying or decapitation--like those poor Kohail boys. If you want to feel better about things, I suggest you talk to their mother.

As for your concerns about donning a headscarf: no worries, you can put it on right away. Whenever I'm out and about, I usually see dozens of women in various types of Islamic attire--everthing from a hijab to the full body shroud--and it never elicits a comment or even a second glance.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:23 | link | comments (3)

Who’s your daddy?: Bambi O, a candidate whose resume has a gaping hole where his foreign policy experience should go, and whose statements on the subject make him sound like a Jimminy Carter with even less testicular fortitude, rejects claims that he’s a foreign policy wuss. Hilariously—and audaciously (well, we know he’s good at that)—he says that, foreign-affairs-wise, the former president he most resembles is—wait for it—muscular “realist,” Bush père. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

…What would Obama have done differently in the first gulf war from what he claims he would have done in 2002 had he been in the Senate at that time? In 1990, Saddam was deemed a threat by the first Bush administration. Senior administration officials threatened military action while working toward a diplomatic solution. Congress was ultimately faced with a vote to support the president's approach. Some Democrats, including then-Sen. Al Gore, voted with the administration, while a majority voted against.

Obama claims that an antiwar speech he made while running for state Senate in the most liberal district in Illinois is proof of his superior intuitive judgment. But if Obama had been in Washington at that time, participating in the national debate, he would have come face to face with Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who, as Gen. Powell, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the first Bush administration, the one Obama wishes to emulate.

Powell would have told him, as he told the other senators he briefed at that time, including Sen. Clinton, that the president wanted to use the Authorization for the Use of Military Force resolution not to go to war but, rather, as leverage to go to the United Nations to secure intrusive inspections. George W. Bush repeated this claim publicly.

<