...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
If you thought Ceeb shill-com Little Mosque on the Prairies was excruciating...: This Ceeb "reality" show is even worse.
Not coming soon to a public broadcaster near you: a reality show called "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?" Here's a bit of the theme song:
...How do you solve a problem like sharia?
How do you keep the people all in line?
How to define the law that is sharia?
“Intrusive” and “harsh,” “Draconian” and “Divine”?
Many a thing you know it wants to tell you.
Many a thing with which you must comply.
But how do you keep it at bay,
And keep it from having its way?
How to remain a kafir by and by?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like sharia?
How do you solve sharia, me, oh, my?...
Re the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision: It is of inestimable value to have the right to bear arms if you want to prevent someone from taking away your right to bare arms.
Tarring fundamentalists with the same brush: The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown points to a disturbing trend—the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the U.K. However, since it would be, you know, prejudiced to single out one religious group, she insists that Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are equally dangerous. With no evidence to speak of, she makes the outrageous claim that all three fundamentalisms are plotting together:
…Go into any British university and you see huddles of manifestly Muslim men and women sitting apart from others, including Muslims who refuse to cover up or live separate lives. You never saw this before because, until a decade back, there wasn't this distorted Islamicisation of Muslim life. An evocative film to be broadcast in July on Channel 4 on the Qu'ran examines this alarming spread across the world. More Muslims hate this reactionary Islam than do outsiders. Our thoughts tend not to matter to people like Odone.
The reason so many Muslim girls are abused, denied education and pushed into early marriages is because the community and family patriarchs and matriarchs violate their human rights. Proportionately more Muslim girls and boys run away from home than do the children of other Britons. Are they trying to escape the freedom of British society, or trying desperately to find it? Our state needs to protect these girls, not hand them over to their oppressors.
Odone praises one school where girls, covered up completely except for the face, are kept apart from boys. An "elegant Arabic-style courtyard with a fountain" is the barrier. That's fine then. What about those young girls so swathed and swaddled they constantly fall over in playgrounds? These shrouds sexualise them as much as boob tubes do the daughters of the "infidels". Both see young females as objects of unhealthy desire.
The report disapproves on our behalf of state education which offers "mixed gym classes or art classes where they are asked to draw a human body". Ya Allah. What next? Maybe science books, fiction with male and female characters falling in love, poetry? You want our children to go to hell like yours?
A bigger game is being played here. Some ardent Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims are rising, collaborating to demolish secularism in the UK, which has always been weak and too loosely committed to the separation of faith and state. So the Archbishop of Canterbury ruminates fondly about Sharia family law and his conservative bishops plot to gain moral supremacy. Some from this devious coalition briefed against the nascent British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Ed Hussein's Quillam Foundation. They condemn gay rights, liberal principles and personal freedom…
Ms. Alibhai-Brown is a bit confused. The Archbish’s ruminations aren’t a function of some fundamentalist plot to demolish secularism. They are a sign of the cleric’s fear that Islam is in ascendance while Christianity is in decline—thus his rush to be one of the first on his block to publicly embrace what he sees as an all but inevitable dhimmitude. Christian and Jewish by-the-bookniks may not exactly be thrilled with modernity, but it’s absurd and dangerously wrong-headed to claim that they’re in cahoots with the Islamists. Muslim fundamentalists want to foist dhimmitude on all Christians and Jews, regardless of the intensity of their religious beliefs and level of discomfort with modernity.
Who knew?: The Hulk is a Jew.
Traitors: The Jews have Neturai Karta, hateful anti-Zionists who have hooked up with today’s Nazis to bring about the demise of the Jewish state. The Americans have senescent old gasbag Gore Vidal, who's been uttering many a discouraging word about the U.S. since Eisenhower was in office. (In the senescent old gasbag sweepstakes, American division, Gore is neck-and-neck with Hamas aficionado Jimminy Carter.) Here he is (ga-ga Gore, not Jimminy or Ike) in conversation with one of the mullahs’ minions on Iran TV:
...Press TV: You have often written about the United States’ superpower status in terms of the history of previous superpowers. Do you think we’re witnessing the end of U.S. power as some suggest. Will the White House be seen like Persepolis?
Gore Vidal: Well it won’t make such good ruins, no. It’ll be more like the tomb of Cyrus nearby. They managed to destroy the United States -- why? Because they’re oil and gas people and they’re essentially criminals. I repeat that this is a criminal group that’s seized control of the country through what looked like an ordinary election. But there’s some very nice films and documentaries about what happened in the year 2000 when Albert Gore won the election for president and they saw to it that he couldn’t serve. They got the Supreme Court -- which is the Holy of Holies ordinarily in our system - to investigate and then accuse the thieves of being absolutely correct and the winners -- Mr. Gore and the Democrats -- of being the cheaters. It’s the first law of Machiavelli, whatever your opponent’s faults are, you pick his virtues and you deny he has them. That’s what they did when Senator Kerry ran a few years ago for president. He’s a famous hero from the Vietnam War. They said he was a coward and not a hero. That’s how it’s done. When you have a bunch of liars in charge of your government you can’t expect to get much history out of that. But later on we’ll dig and dig… and we will dig up Persepolis.
Press TV: Senator Obama talks about change but of course he has courting Wall Street as well as the Israeli lobby -- do you see any prospect of change with him as president?
Gore Vidal: Not really. I don’t doubt his good faith, just as I do not doubt the bad faith of Cheney and Bush. They are such dreadful people that we’ve never had in government before. They would never have risen unless they were buying elections as they did in Florida in 2000, as they did in the State of Ohio in 2004. These are two open thefts of the Presidency. When I discovered that this did not interest the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of the press of the country I realized our day was done. We are no longer a country we are a framework for crooks to go in and steal money. Knowing that they’ll never be caught and they’ll be admired for it. Americans always take everybody on his own evaluation. You say I’m a state and they say “oh, yeah yeah yeah, he’s a state, isn’t that great.” And you accuse the other people of your crimes before you commit them. It’s an old trick which was known to Machiavelli who wrote about it in his handbook, the Prince.
Press TV: Finally that issue which is exercising so many minds in the Middle East and beyond. You, yourself have written about so many Imperial wars of the United States. Do you think Bush and Cheney would risk another war in what Mohammad ElBaradei of the IAEA calls a fireball?
Gore Vidal: They are longing to but they have spent all of the money. They have got it in their own private companies like the Vice-President and a company called Halliburton which is stealing more money and should be on trial sooner or later before Congress. But perhaps not, who knows? But it’s well known in Washington, these people are leaking away the money of the country. Well there’s no more money. They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies.
The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don’t stop. When the public that’s lied to 30 times a day it’s apt to believe the lies, is not it?
Iran no threat? Vidkun Vidal seems to be off his meds (or is it his rocker?) again.
Marxism by any other name still stinks: An article in the Toronto Star outlines some of the changes we can expect when Ontario human rights apparatchinks’ “new” and expanded powers kick in today. I’ve taken the liberty of fisking the sucker (in italics):
While it remains to be seen whether a new human rights system that takes effect in Ontario today will be an improvement over its predecessor, people with discrimination complaints probably won't have to worry about hiring a lawyer. (An improvement? Are you kidding? Was the UN’s Human Rights “Council’ and improvement over its Human Rights Commission? This kind of stuff never “improves.” It only gets more overweening, more intrusive, more ridiculous.)
Nearly two dozen lawyers and paralegals have been hired for a new human rights legal support centre that's been set up in Toronto to provide free legal advice to complainants as well as representation before a tribunal. (Two dozen, huh? How much is that going to set us back? I would point out that this merely reaffirms the unfairness of the process—offering “free” legal services to the complainant, but leaving the person being complained about to shoulder his own legal costs.)
Raj Anand, who heads the board of the new centre, believes it delivers a complete answer to critics who were afraid people complaining of human rights violations would be left on their own to battle employers or government agencies in discrimination cases. (It looks like the apparatchniks have too much time on their hands, Ontarians being insufficiently hateful/bigoted/discriminatory, and are trying to drum up some more business to justify their unnecessary existence.)
The new system revolves around the concept of giving complainants "direct access" to an adjudicator. Under the old system, the Ontario Human Rights Commission would first launch an investigation into a complaint before deciding whether it deserved a hearing. Cases were often stuck in the bureaucracy for years. (“Direct access”—wow, makes it sound so fair and “democratic.” I have a much better solution for unsticking those cases that get stuck for years on end—do away with the entire bureaucracy. )
If they did make it to a tribunal, commission lawyers would present the case.
But Anand said it's a myth commission lawyers were acting on behalf of complainants. In fact, their role was similar to that of a Crown attorney; they didn't answer to complainants and could proceed as they saw fit, he said. (Crown attorneys—that’s a laugh and a half. How can you act as a Crown attorney in a setting which abjures British Common Law and replaces it with a mixture of feel-good mush and Marxist gobbledygook?)
"I can tell you, some of the greatest battles I've had while representing complainants has been with the commission" lawyers, said Anand, who once headed the human rights commission and is now in private practice.
If complainants want to hire their own lawyer, they still can. But one notable feature of the new support centre is that it isn't restricted to serving only those with low incomes, which is generally the case with legal clinics funded by the province, as the new support centre is. There is no financial eligibility criteria, Anand said. (Why would complainants want to hire their own lawyer when they can get a freebie? Since the odds are already weighted so precipitously in their favour, they don’t exactly need a Clarence Darrow in this setting.)
But while the support centre may satisfy those who worried complainants would be left to represent themselves, it may not do much for those who say the deck is stacked against employers under the new system. (Stacked against them under the “old” system, too. Stacked against anyone on the receiving end of the complaint.)
Some law firms who represent employers began holding workshops more than a year ago, to prepare corporate managers for the new human rights regime. At one, Robb Macpherson, a lawyer at McCarthy, Tetrault, a big downtown Toronto law firm, predicted it will be "a field day" for complainants. In addition to state-funded legal counsel, they gain more bargaining power under the new system. (Do you get the feeling that the “human rights” apparatus has it in for business and capitalism? Why not call it what it is—stealth Marxism.)
One reason is that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal plans to schedule hearings within about three months of receiving a complaint. That means employers will be under more pressure to work out a quick settlement with workers who've filed a human rights complaint – or they'll find themselves before a tribunal, facing the prospect of having a more severe penalty imposed. (Bad for businesses; good for “the worker” and the human rights wonks.)
Lawyers who act for respondents – those accused of human rights violations – expect to see an increase in complaints, not only because it's supposed to be easier for individual complaints to get before a tribunal, but because third parties such as unions and community groups will be able to launch complaints on their behalf. (Oh. My. Gawd. Get set for an inundation of complaints that will keep the apparatchniks busy for years—and, I predict, result in exactly the same kind of inertia as before, necessitating the hiring of even more employees to service the ever-expanding behemoth.)
Courts will also gain new power to hear human rights complaints and will be able to order employers, in the context of these cases, to reinstate workers who were wrongfully dismissed from their jobs. (As I said, stealth Marxism, as the workers and their advocates get to boss around the bosses.)
The tribunal has only been hearing about 150 cases a year, but it will likely have to deal with several thousand more than that once complaints start getting sent there directly under the new system. (Arrrrgh!)
As a result, many cases are expected to be resolved through mediation... (To the advantage of the complainant, of course, and the disadvantage of the employer.)
Workers of Ontariostan unite! You have nothing to lose but your...well, actually, you have nothing to lose. (No wonder we’re in decline.)
Update: A story in the London Free Press (not so "free" as it turns out, what with the current chill on free speech) crunches the numbers:
Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley says the current backlog of 4,200 cases and delays of up to five years to get to a tribunal for a decision are unacceptable.
Today, the government is implementing some of the changes designed to eliminate the backlog and cut wait times at human rights tribunal to less than one year.
The long delays in the system are making it futile for anyone to file a complaint, Bentley said.
"Whatever damage is done is forgotten or, even worse, it has been ongoing," said Bentley, MPP for London West.
The overhaul will cost the government about $31.7 million, including $14 million for the immediate changes.
As of today, anyone with a human rights complaint will go directly to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, instead of going through the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). About 2,500 complaints are filed every year.
"This eliminates a big step and greatly speed things up," Bentley said.
Bentley said the human rights tribunal, which hears and makes decisions on human right complaints, became bogged down because there were only a few full-time adjudicators. The number of full-time adjudicators is gradually being boosted to 20, with another 25 part-time adjudicators.
The tribunal will also get better facilities with more meeting rooms in Toronto...
Not just "better"--"state-of-the-art." What an unconscionable waste of time and money. We are beyond imbecilic for tolerating this toxic blossom.
Husseiniacs: In honour of their favourite fast change artiste, Bambi Fauxbama, a buncha knuckleheads have adopted his middle name.
Terrifying insight: Obama's America is Canada.
In that case the West may as well call it a wrap right now.
Les maudits Francais: The Weekly Standard has a superb analysis of the al-Dura affair--a latter day Dreyfus case that demonstrates that, when it comes to Jew-hatred, the French--especially the ones French media--are in the front ranks.
It's the temporary marriage, stupid: The irresistible "secret weapon" that may Islamize the West (supposedly).
Unassailable hatred: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-freedom apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:
…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.
Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.
In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword...
Any thoughts on that, Barbara/ Heather/ Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?
Tammy?
(As an aside—sort of—here’s a bit of info I hadn’t come across before. I found it on babbling Babsy’s Wiki entry:
At a meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation on the day after the British Columbia Human Right Tribunal heard the complaint, Hall served on a panel along with Khurrum Awan, one the student lawyers who helped file the complaint who testified for at the BC Tribunal against Macleans, and Haroon Siddiqui, editor emeritus of the Toronto Star. Hall joked to the audience that she can finally speak freely with her co-panellist Mr. Awan about his complaint. Awan praised Hall's condemnation of Maclean's, stating that he had difficulty developing support until Ms. Hall called Maclean's Islamophobic, and then "everyone wanted to be our uncle.”
That’s our Babsy—the Louise Arbour of Ontario.)
Unassailable hate: There is one type of “hate speech” that Canada’s anti-free speech apparatchniks would never, ever, in a million, billion years weigh in on nor, Heaven forefend, think of curtailing—the type on display in Islamic scripture. In a review of Andrew Bostom’s devastating examination of the sources of Islamic Jew-hated, The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, sums up said hatred as follows:
…What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.
Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics.
In short, were Israel to disappear tomorrow — indeed, had it never been founded — Jews would still, according to the eternal words of Islam, be deemed "corrupters," "exploiters," "pigs," "swine," et. al., who, along with Christians, must live in submission to Islam. (It is amazing that this latter point is seen as being lenient on Jews; "polytheists"— like Hindus and Buddhists, for example — must either convert or be put to the sword.)…
Any thoughts on that, Barbara/Heather/Jennifer (a few of our nation’s more or less interchangeable “human rights” apparat-chicks)?
Tammy?
Tick...tick...tick: The former head of the Mossad says Israel must stop Iran within the next year--sooner if Bambi is elected--or it's toast.
The Aussie way: As evidence that we don’t need authorities to mediate and ameliorate hurt feelings, I offer Exhibit A—Tim Blair’s account of what happened when he posted those offensive Mo ‘toons on his site. What happened—or, more to the point, what didn’t happen? Well, let’s just say it didn’t involve an Islamic supremacist scrawling out a complaint in chicken scratch citing passages from the Koran in order to punish a brazen ‘toon-publishing Jew. Nor did it involve a five day show trial convened in a windowless, airless bunker:
…Because papers and magazines were a little shy, I put the cartoons – none was so bold as that Gold Coast kid’s T-shirt – on my personal website. Reaction was interesting. The Sydney Morning Herald ran an item on it, which of course required an accompanying image. Rather than display one of the cartoons, they ran a shot of me.
There was some hilarious bending and twisting from commentators who’d previously defended religious insults. ``We need to understand the value of artistic freedom,’’ wrote the Herald Sun’s Jill Singer in 1997, standing up for the Australian display of Andres Serrano’s ``Piss Christ’’, which depicted a crucifix in a vial of urine.
In 2006, though, Singer denounced those far milder Mohamed cartoons: ``Who wants a totally uncensored media run by those devoid of judgment, taste or social responsibility?’’
The ABC was forbidden – forbidden – to run even a singlecartoon.
Police called, offering a safe house until the heat died down. I declined, figuring the heat wouldn’t be all that great. And it wasn’t. I think I received two emails from Islamic readers taking issue with my decision, but politely so.
All in all, a much better way of going about it, because the freedom to debate, denounce and offend remains intact.
The Calgary Herald nails it: High five’s all ‘round at the news that the CHRC has declined to hear the CIC’s complaint against Maclean’s, right? Not so fast, says a wise editorial in the Calgary Herald. The decision doesn’t mean the that the human rights apparatchniks have any intention of folding up their tents. It is merely an indication that they have no taste for a battle with the moneybags behind Maclean’s. How comes? Well, first off, it wipes away the complainants' financial advantage in that the people they’re hassling can well afford the fight. Second, since the process—years of being strung along with no end in sight; years of struggling under the burden of onerous legal bills—is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment, the punishment doesn’t have nearly as much sting when the defendant is rich. Lastly, taking on a high profile complaint at a time when the feds are breathing down their necks would garner them unwanted public scrutiny, and these beetles function much better in the shade, under a rock, where they can get away with—or used to be able to get away with—grinding down the poor and obscure.
Anyway, here’s what the Herald had to say:
So, Maclean's and Mark Steyn walk. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided there's not enough evidence to support a complaint from Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, that an article by Steyn was "likely to expose" Muslims to hatred or contempt.
A win for free speech, then?
Yes and no. Yes, in the obvious sense that by declining to prosecute, the CHRC concedes what was published violated no laws.
No, because if you need pockets as long as Maclean's to wring that concession out of them, free speech is only for the rich.
Fact: It costs nothing to complain. Then, if an HRC takes it on, it will be prosecuted on the taxpayers' dollar. It's amazing there aren't more cases like Steyn's. Maclean's, on the other hand, is into this for big bucks, and sadly, there are limits to what even the boldest publishers can afford on a point of principle.
This is how these things work. Let a citizen of modest means utter a politically incorrect thought: He will be crushed, and a precedent thereby created with which to crush others.
But, confronted by strength, (and just now in the CHRC's case by awkward public relations issues,) and they back off.
It is called chill. When a citizen must count the cost of putting his money where his mouth is, he is not free. Ottawa must do the right thing: Defang this censor.
Hear, hear.
Big mosque in the Rockies: A new prayer facility is getting set to open in Calgary, and it's a beaut.
Ka-vetch, ka-vetch, ka-vetch: You think Mo Elmasry, Faisal Joseph and the socks like to whine? They’re pikers compared to the folks of Dearborn, Mich., “America’s Arab capital.” Toronto Star scribe, Michelle Shephard visited the 'burb and recorded some of its residents’ gripes:
DEARBORN, MICH.–In a time before 9/11, this town – home to the nation's largest population of Arab Americans – was one of George W. Bush's stomping grounds.
He spoke of the indignities of racial profiling and the use of secret evidence and the plight of Palestinians. And he appealed to the largely conservative nature of the population on issues such as abortion.
That was 2000, and many Muslims here had Bush bumper stickers.
Now, this Detroit suburb of 100,000 – often cited as a bellwether for America's 6 million Muslim voters –provides a study on the effects seven years of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies have had on a religious and ethnic group.
Sharpen the focus further and enter the Shatila bakery on Warren Ave. on a busy afternoon. Every patron has a story about feeling like an outcast in the country where many of them were born or have lived for most of their lives.
Dr. Nazem Alhusein is a 46-year-old pediatrician who came here 21 years ago from Syria.
"In 2000, I voted for Al Gore," he says proudly, his Michigan baseball cap resting on a table inside the bakery. "Ninety-nine per cent of my friends voted for George Bush. Eventually, after we had him for two administrations, everyone felt I did the right thing."
Alhusein's wife is Canadian and his sisters live in Toronto, which means he drives north about once a month and endures repeated questioning at the border – something that didn't happen before 9/11, he says.
Syrian-born Ayman Saleh has a similar story.
"We feel like we're watched and held to a higher standard in every way," he says of travelling with his family.
The Shatila bakery is on a stretch of Warren Ave. that blends the Middle East with Middle America.
Signs here for halal meat shops, bakeries and grocery stores are mainly in Arabic – until McDonald's, KFC and Taco Bell logos mark the unofficial end of Dearborn's Arab strip.
West on Warren and it's a dismal row of auto-repair shops, liquor joints and dry-cleaning operation called Happy Cleaners, which looks neither happy, nor clean.
Dearborn's Arab community traces its roots to 1927, when hometown boy Henry Ford opened his car plant and Lebanese immigrants took advantage of his generous $5 a day wage for assembly-line work.
When immigration reform began in the 1960s and '70s, Muslim Iraqis, Yemenis, Palestinians and Syrians joined the Lebanese community, which had been predominantly Christian.
By the 1990s, Dearborn had a larger Arab population than any other U.S. city.
It's been called the Muslim capital of America, though its population certainly isn't representative of America's Muslims – since it is predominantly Shiite and there is no South Asian Muslim presence. Still, this is where politicians come to take the pulse of Muslim voters.
Last month, Barack Obama held a private meeting with Imam Hassan Qazwini, the Iraqi American who heads the Islamic Center of America, which boasts the largest mosque in North America, and is a favourite contact for world leaders.
Ushering a Toronto Star reporter into his impressive office for a recent interview, Qazwini offered tea and chocolates as he spoke of every Muslim American's "moral duty" to get involved in the November presidential election.
What unites U.S. Muslims, he said, is their fear of the erosion of civil rights and a "war on terror" that is really a campaign against Islam.
Qazwini related his own problems with profiling, saying he undergoes at least two hours of interrogation when he travels internationally.
"I'm someone who meets with presidential nominees, with the Pope and at least five times with President Bush since 2000 and I'm a well-known moderate leader in this country," Qazwini said.
"If this happens to me, what happens to the other six million Muslims in this country?"
Ironically, profiling was what he talked about with Bush eight years ago – when it was a problem that paled in comparison to what some Muslim and Arab Americans face today…
Tell me, Mr. Qazwini: Who’s to blame for the “profiling” (i.e. hyper-vigilance aimed at thwarting jihadi terrorist attacks)? George Bush? Or the jihadi terrorists?
Take your time mulling that one over.
A shared future: Just returned from a trip to the EU, Diana West outlines some American-EU differences and commonalities, and warns of the bumps ahead:
…Such differences [EU socialism vs. U.S. capitalism] have helped turn Europe into the European Union, a nation-destroying behemoth both driven and empowered by the infantilizing machinery of the welfare state. Indeed, so shockingly totalitarian is the orientation of the EU, it strikes me that President Bush's misguided effort to democratize the Islamic Middle East might well have been better aimed at liberating the hostage peoples of the Brussels-dominated supra-state.
That said, it's crucial to recognize the precious common ground between the United States and Europe. While on a different plane from those fallow battlefields of the Ardennes, it is also sacred soil. I refer to our shared cultural and historical progressions as civilizations whose ideals are founded on liberty. Such liberty is once again under threat and from an ideological enemy -- the ideology of Islam, which, as spread by a massive influx of Islamic immigration over the past several decades, promises, as historians and writers from Bat Ye'or to Mark Steyn have copiously explained, to transform all of Europe into an Islamic continent.
And what do our presidential candidates think of the strategic ramifications of an Islamic Europe? Who knows? The likely but not inevitable civilizational shift is so far off the U.S. radar screen (with our government keeping it there, what with its recommended lexicon discouraging all terror-related references to Islam) it is invisible. American tourists -- those flush enough to pay their way with Euros, that is (and I didn't see many) -- can still visit the old Europe of gingerbread towns and Gothic cathedrals without noticing much more than a few hijabbed women, signs of Islamization that usually fail to register more than a multicultural nod.
Of course, even many (most?) residents are blind to the staggering changes in progress. This is something I discovered, to take one example, in conversation with a conservative British MEP (Member of European Parliament), who, after nine years of representing a sector of southern England in Brussels, both doubts the existence of "no-go zones" in Britain -- despite the writings on the subject by the Bishop of Rochester -- and has never visited the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. A stone's throw from the ritzy EU environs in which we sat, this Islamic enclave more closely resembles a bustling outpost of the umma than the so-called capital of Europe.
"You ought to get out more," I suggested…
I recommend a visit to Canada, where the politician can see for himself what happens when political correctness is allowed to metastasize in the body politic. It should prove to be a real eye-opener.
Today's Der Sturmer, er, sorry, Arab News 'toon: As per usual, the subject is Jewry.
A sign that the Apocalypse is nigh: The same Harpoon Siddiqui screed--the one in which he gives a shout out to Barbara Hall and Tammy Farber--appears on both the CJC and the CIC sites.
Can Pestilence, War, Conquest and Death be far behind?
Shot down: CIC attorney Faisal Joseph is mighty disappointed that he's not going to get a change to present his case against Maclean's to Canada's federal kangaroos. He told the Canadian Press he's quite certain the 'roos would be swayed by "the compelling evidence of hate and expert testimony" of the, er, experts he was planning to call--the same bunch who shared their pearls of wisdom at the B.C. show trial.
I have to say I'm kind of disappointed too. I was hoping to hear yet again from the Queen Latifah/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Islamophobia scholar. Anyone who can meld such diverse interests into a field of study is worth listening to at least twice.
Rice's "realism": In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice expatiates on, well, on just about every frickin thing on the planet (though not, alas, on totalitarian courts prosecuting thought crimes in her neighbour to the north)—and a mighty soporific slog it is. Here she is ‘splaining that pesky Israeli-Palestinian situation:
…A third challenge is finding a way to resolve long-standing conflicts, particularly that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Our administration has put the idea of democratic development at the center of our approach to this conflict, because we came to believe that the Israelis will not achieve the security they deserve in their Jewish state and the Palestinians will not achieve the better life they deserve in a state of their own until there is a Palestinian government capable of exercising its sovereign responsibilities, both to its citizens and to its neighbors. Ultimately, a Palestinian state must be created that can live side by side with Israel in peace and security. This state will be born not just through negotiations to resolve hard issues related to borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem but also through the difficult effort to build effective democratic institutions that can fight terrorism and extremism, enforce the rule of law, combat corruption, and create opportunities for the Palestinians to improve their lives. This confers responsibilities on both parties.
As the experience of the past several years has shown, there is a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Palestinian society -- between those who reject violence and recognize Israel's right to exist and those who do not. The Palestinian people must ultimately make a choice about which future they desire, and it is only democracy that gives them that choice and holds open the possibility of a peaceful way forward to resolve the existential question at the heart of their national life. The United States, Israel, other states in the region, and the international community must do everything in their power to support those Palestinians who would choose a future of peace and compromise. When the two-state solution is finally realized, it will be because of democracy, not despite it.
This is, indeed, a controversial view, and it speaks to one more challenge that must be resolved if democratic and modern states are to emerge in the broader Middle East: how to deal with nonstate groups whose commitment to democracy, nonviolence, and the rule of law is suspect. Because of the long history of authoritarianism in the region, many of the best-organized political parties are Islamist, and some of them have not renounced violence used in the service of political goals. What should be their role in the democratic process? Will they take power democratically only to subvert the very process that brought them victory? Are elections in the broader Middle East therefore dangerous?
These questions are not easy. When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections -- largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.
Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.
The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression…
“Problematic,” you say? “”Standards,” you say. Oh, Ms. Condi, don’t you know your “standards” are never going to “deradicalize” jihadis committed to redressing what they see as a cosmic wrong—i.e. Jewish sovereignty on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah’s “chosen”? Don't you know that the Palestinians who, after all, voted these lunatics into office, love their Hamas? And isn’t is wishful thinking of the “I have in my hand a piece of paper signed by Herr Hitler” variety to think a “democratic alternative” is going to magically appear in a place that harbours the same kind of hate-on for Jews that the Nazis did?
Strange kind of “realism” you got going there, Ms. Rice.
Update: The real realism--whether Iran gets to unleash its Final Solution for the Jews.
Coren throttles Corrie: That execrable piece of pro-Palestinian useful idiocy, My Name is Rachel Corrie, got a semi-favourable write-up in the Canadian Jewish News the other week. Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun, on the other hand, has a far less, ahem, nuanced review:
…The play was created by two writers, Katherine Viner from Britain's relentlessly liberal and viciously anti-Israel Guardian newspaper and, wait for it, Alan Rickman. Yes, the man from Harry Potter and Robin Hood. He of frighteningly extended vowel sounds. Yes, the guy who can turn you into a newt or torture you in a dungeon.
And being an actor he obviously knows all about the Middle East and the geopolitics of Israel and Palestine.
So the play is just as you would imagine. There is no context or balance. Corrie is a saint, the Palestinians are lovely and the Jews -- and this is highly significant -- are faceless, anonymous creatures representing something vaguely dark and persecuting. Bad guys. Rather like how we depicted Nazis until it became trendy to do otherwise.
Some, but very few, critics remarked on this when the play ran in Britain. It was lauded in a media that is too frightened to condemn Islamic extremism, but routinely lambastes Israel.
Nobody suggested, for example, that partly because of Corrie's obstruction of the Israeli army, guns were smuggled to terrorists who then murdered Israeli children. Nor did they mention the meeting that took place between her allegedly "peaceful" organization and British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif.
There is also another screaming, bleeding absence in all of this. Just a few days after the fanatic Corrie lost her life in an accident that she had caused, an Israeli child was blown to mangled flesh and smashed bone by a suicide bomber. This little girl was not allowed even to cross the road by herself, let alone find the time and money to travel halfway across the world to support the latest cause.
Pro-peace
Her Israeli parents were children of Holocaust survivors and extremely pro-peace and compromise. Unlike Corrie, they understood the situation because they lived there. They identified their child by her teeth. Her baby teeth.
There is no play written about her and no fatuous leftists are championing her story. It could be called "My name is."
That's right, they don't know, because they don't care. My name is hypocrisy, my name is cruelty, my name is racism.
He forgot my name is clueless.
Words of wisdom: Prime Minister Stephen Harper decries the "election" in Zimbabwe as "an ugly perversion of democracy."
Funny, that's exactly what I say about the HRCs.
Even cheesier than the original: "Dutch Jimmy Carter" accuses Israel of terrorism.
Scant attention: While the National Post continues to follow “the” Canadian story—the appropriation of our free speech in the misbegotten name of “human rights”—and has an editorial on the subject today (see my comments in the post two below), here, in toto, is all the Globe and Mail, which considers itself to be our nation’s newspaper of record, could muster on the subject—an “IN BRIEF” that lives up to its name:
The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint against Maclean's magazine over a controversial article on the future of Islam, magazine officials said yesterday.
Meanwhile, a decision from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the same issue isn't expected for several months.
The Canadian Islamic Congress launched the dual complaints over an article by Maclean's journalist Mark Steyn. The article, The Future Belongs to Islam, came under fire by Muslim critics who claimed it spreads Islamophobia.
Earlier this month, closing arguments were made before B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal over the article, which appeared in Maclean's in October, 2006.
C’est tout. Given the magnitude of the issue, a bit on the skimpy side, I’d say.
Update: Robert Spencer's response to the line about the claims of Muslim critics: "When the truth spreads 'Islamophobia,' maybe it's time for a bit of introspection."
Robert, of all people, must know that charging people with thought crimes is easy; introspection is hard.
A “tribal” crime: A father and his son stand accused of murdering a young woman—their daughter and sister—because she balked at the father’s authority and refused to wear a headscarf: One of those “honour killings” we’ve heard so much about, whereby the family considers that its “honour” resides between the legs of its female members, and the family’s men folk are moved to “defend” their “honour” by offing any uppity chicks. Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington weighs in on an (alleged) local honour killing, as does an imam, who insists it is “tribal” and has nothing to do with religion:
…"This is not Islam, this is barbarism," Stephen Rockwell, host of Saturday's national TV show Call of the Minaret on Vision TV, said of the strangulation murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez that many believe is a cultural honour killing.
"Dishonour killings," is how blogger Ellen R. Sheeley describes these homicides.
"There should be no discussion of this honour business," writes in Ron Date. "If these people want to maintain their 'honours' customs, they really should return to their homeland."
It's a hot topic and Peel police should be commended for recognizing honour killings have gotten out of control in some countries, like in Germany last year where a Kurdish man from Iraq received a life sentence for killing his 24-year-old wife for leaving him. "He was proud of his evil deed," said Stephen Brown, a columnist for Front Page Magazine which covers this subject matter extensively. "Only three hours after his wife had successfully divorced him in 2006, he ambushed her, stabbed her 12 times and then poured gasoline over her, burning her alive. He told the court she had betrayed him and 'my religion and culture forbid that.' "
However in all the reaction I received from yesterday's front page showing the arrest of Aqsa Parvez's brother on first-degree murder charges, I did not get one Muslim writing in defending this homicide of the Applewood Heights 11th grader on Dec. 10, 2007. Or any homicide.
Actually it was the contrary - many believing it should be up to an individual if she wants to wear a traditional head scarf and/or embrace western traditions. Perhaps a proper, open and non punitive discussion with Muslim women will emerge out of this with real dialogue on whether they want to continue wearing the Hijab and if they are concerned for their safety should they not want to.
Either way, the Syrian-born Rockwell and many e-mailers said that debate should never end up with a homicide.
"Teen Aqsa was innocent in the sense that irrespective of 'Hijab' or 'no Hijab,' she had equal right to live in this world," writes Qasim Abbas. "No fundamentalist or otherwise have any authority to force any one to follow any act of Muslim religion in accordance of teaching in Muslim Scripture."
Rockwell, the spiritual leader of The Downtown Mosque on Bond St., agrees, "if they want to leave, they will leave. You can't stop them and you can't persuade them."
Nor should you. "Verse 256 of the second chapter in the Koran," said Rockwell. "Let there be no compulsion in religion. It is ridiculous. You can't legislate religion down somebody's throat."
Having said th