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

No mercy: If you’re a Christian pastor or a stand-up Guy who says something that hurts the feelings of gays and lesbians such that a complaint is lodged with one or more of Canada's Virtue Enforcement bodies, it's a safe bet that you’re going to get chewed out and forced to publicly "repent" for your anti-social utterances. If, however, you’re an aggrieved gay or lesbian and you complain to the body that oversees Canadian broadcasting because during the course of the Ceeb shill-com about an adorable wee mosque one or more of its cuddly characters happens to say much the same thing as the minister and the comic, it's a whole 'nother ball game. As the Ceeb explains re a CRTC decision

The Canadian Radio and Television Commission reviewed a complaint about the Season One episode "Traditional Mother" -- in which the characters Fatima, Baber and Fred voiced disapproval of homosexuality and same-sex marriage -- and decided that the episode did not constitute abusive comment about gays and lesbians.

The CRTC ruled that Little Mosque wasn't promoting anti-gay views but was portraying them as they exist in parts of Canadian society.

Read more about the case at CRTC Finds No 'Abusive Comments' in CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie at broadcastermagazine.com. Link

Memo to Rev. Stephen Boisson and Guy Earle: time to pack up and move to Mercy, Saskatchewan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:59 | link | comments

Sex in a cold climate: It was the rakish Pierre E. Trudeau who once famously defined a Canadian as someone who “knows how to make love in a canoe.” Having never attempted the feat myself (because, let’s face it, who, save for PET, ever has?), I can foresee canoe-canoodling as one of many possible plotlines if and when Canada’s very own porn channel—Northern Peaks—ever comes to fruition. (The channel is awaiting final approval, which hinges largely on a willingness to include a certain amount of “Canadian content”; the broadcasting powers-that-be apparently believe that our national identity will be better served if porn actresses can fake an orgasm in two official languages.) Here are a few other suggestions for Northern Peaks productions:

·         The Friendly Giant: He’s really “friendly,” if you know what I mean. 

·         Candy Does Kamloops: Also, Stacy Does Saskatoon; Wendy Does Winnipeg; and Annie Does Attawapiskat. 

·         Anne of Blue Gables: Fairly self-explanatory, I’d say. 

·         Michelle, Michelle: A young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Moncton to Moose Jaw.

·         Emily of New Moons: Small town gal travels to the big city for a caboose enhancement; post-recovery, hijinks ensure.

·         Come-By-Chance: The story of how residents of a small Newfoundland town attempt to overcome their sexual ineptitude. (Hint: a visit to the town of  Dildo helps.)

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

How some Pakistani faithful deal with uppity chicks: They murder them, of course. From AP via the Toronto Star:

Women buried alive in 'honour' killings

ISLAMABAD–A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.

"These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.''

The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.

They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists, who said their only "crime" was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing

Zehri told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.

Many stood up in protest, saying the executions were "barbaric" and demanding that discussions continue Monday. But a handful said it was an internal matter of the deeply conservative province.

"I was shocked," said lawmaker Nilofar Bakhtiar, who pushed for legislation calling for perpetrators of so-called honour killings to be punished when she served as minister of women's affairs under the last government.

"I feel that we've gone back to the starting point again," she said. "It's really sad for me.''

The incident allegedly occurred one month ago in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.

They were said to have been abducted at gunpoint by six men, forced into a vehicle and taken to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot and then buried alive, it said, accusing local authorities of trying to hush up the killings.

One of perpetrators was allegedly related to a top provincial official, it said.

To describe this crime as having anything to do with “honour” is beyond revolting.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:33 | link | comments

Just in time for Ramadan: A woman reporter from the Telegraph goes undercover to get the scoop on what the faithful are being exposed to at London’s most famous mosque:

In a large balcony above the beautiful main hall at Regent's Park Mosque in London - widely considered the most important mosque in Britain - I am filming undercover as the woman preacher gives her talk.

What should be done to a Muslim who converts to another faith? "We kill him," she says, "kill him, kill, kill…You have to kill him, you understand?"

Adulterers, she says, are to be stoned to death - and as for homosexuals, and women who "make themselves like a man, a woman like a man ... the punishment is kill, kill them, throw them from the highest place".

These punishments, the preacher says, are to be implemented in a future Islamic state. "This is not to tell you to start killing people," she continues. "There must be a Muslim leader, when the Muslim army becomes stronger, when Islam has grown enough."

A young female student from the group interrupts her: the punishment should also be to stone the homosexuals to death, once they have been thrown from a high place.

These are teachings I never expected to hear inside Regent's Park Mosque, which is supposedly committed to interfaith dialogue and moderation, and was set up more than 60 years ago, to represent British Muslims to the Government. And many of those listening were teenage British girls or, even more disturbingly, young children.

My investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches came after last year's Undercover Mosque, which investigated claims that teachings of intolerance and fundamentalism were spreading through Britain's mosques from the Saudi Arabian religious establishment - which is closely linked to the Saudi Arabian government.

In response, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia denied it was spreading intolerance, while Regent's Park Mosque, which featured in the film, urged all mosques to be "vigilant" and monitor what was taught on their premises.

So earlier this year, dressed in a full Islamic jilbaab, I went back to Regent's Park Mosque to see what was being taught there. As a woman, I had to go to the main female section, where I found this circle preaching every Saturday and Sunday, eight hours at a time, to any woman who has come to pray.

The mosque is meant to promote moderation and integration. But although the circle does preach against terrorism and does not incite Muslims to break British laws, it teaches Muslims to "keep away" and segregate themselves from disbelievers: "Islam is keeping away from disbelief and from the disbelievers, the people who disbelieve."

Friendship with non-Muslims is discouraged because "loyalty is only to the Muslim, not to the kaffir [disbeliever]".

A woman who was friendly with a non-Muslim woman was heavily criticised: "It's part of Islam, of the correct belief, that you love those who love Allah and that you hate those who hate Allah."

One preacher even says Muslims shouldn't live in Britain at all: "It is not befitting for Muslims that he should reside in the land of evil, the land of the kuffaar, the land of the disbelievers."

Another, Um Saleem, says Muslims should not take British citizenship as their loyalty is to Allah.

"Some conditions can take you into disbelief, to take the British citizenship, whether you like it or not, for these people, you are selling your religion, it's a very serious thing, it is not allowed to give allegiance to other than Allah."

Their teachings shocked me. This was not the Islam that I and many other Muslims in the UK were taught as youngsters, nor is it a version that most Muslims follow.

I was amazed at how many young British women seemed to find this version of the faith attractive. One young girl told me that when she first attended the circle, she was dressed in jeans and that she had many non-Muslim friends. She now loves only those that are around her - "other sisters in the circle" - and only engages with non-Muslims to try to convert them. Many of the sisters had the idea of living as a separate community - a concept alien to me and many other Muslims I know…

Not surprisingly, the mosque is deeply committed to bamboozling the kaffirs, er, interfaith dialogue:

Regent's Park Mosque has a major interfaith department, which arranges visits from the Government, the civil service, representatives of other religions and thousands of British school children a year.

I watched as an interfaith group was brought in to meet the mosque's women's circle for a civilised exchange. But when the interfaith group wasn't there, the preacher attacked other faiths, and the very concept of interfaith dialogue.

One preacher said of Christians praying in a church: "What are these people doing in there, these things are so vile, what they say with their tongues is so vile and disgusting, it's an abomination." As for the concept of interfaith live-and-let-live: "This is false. It does not work. This concept is a lie, it is fake, and it is a farce."

Like many of the other women at the circle, I was soon invited to private sessions in houses around London, to "learn more" about Islam - or their version of Islam….

By now it should be abundantly clear that “their version of Islam” is pretty much the real deal.

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

Clueless in Toronto: The Toronto Star has a simple explanation for the appallingly high rate of infant mortality in Afghanistan—it’s a function of “poverty”. (Hey, isn’t it always?) Others— for example, Reuters—have a different explanation:

HONG KONG (Reuters) - High child mortality rates in conservative Afghanistan are linked not just to war but to mothers being uneducated and having little or no say when their children need medical help, a study has found.

Child mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world, and one out of every five Afghan children (or 191 out of every 1,000 live births) will not survive beyond age five.

The study of 2,474 children from 1,327 households in Kabul province found that diarrhoea (32.5 percent), acute respiratory infection (41 percent), emaciation (12.4 percent) and stuntedness (39.9 percent) were among the most common health problems, said the article published in the latest issue of BioMed Central Public Health.

"As in other countries, the primary caregivers of small children in Afghanistan are their mothers; however, in this country, mothers are subject to a number of restrictions in the decision-making process regarding child healthcare," said the article published by a team of Afghan and Japanese researchers.

The researchers said they interviewed mothers of the children and found the problems correlated most closely with mothers not having any autonomy (79.1 percent) and education (71.7 percent).

Up to 18.3 percent of the mothers also delivered their first child before they were 16, which meant they were married when they were still children, the researchers wrote.

A shortage of basic material needs was also observed in 59.1 percent of the households….

Notice how the lefty Star bumped up “a shortage of basic material needs” to top of the list (since the numero uno reason—lack of female education and power in sharia-ridden Afghanistan—doesn’t jibe with its multishmulti mindset).

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

Hope ‘n’ change, “interfaith”-style: Gullible dhimmis take heed. The real aim of “interfaith” outreach is revealed in this Islam Online article (my bolds):

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the spirit of Ramadan and the need for change, the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA) kicked off its annual convention with a joint "2008 interfaith build" in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity and several Jewish and Christian organizations.

 

"We collaborated this effort with Habitat for Humanity because we believe that housing can be a means for elevating poverty," Mohamed Elsanousi, ISNA Director of Communications and Community Outreach, told IslamOnline.net.

He added that the efforts falls in line with the spirit of this year convention's theme, "Ramadan – A Time for Change."

"We always encourage people that Ramadan is an opportunity to change, but if we can continue to keep up with the spirit of Ramadan for the betterment of the society then that’s wonderful."

ISNA invited Habitat’s CEO Jonathan T.M. Reckford to come and address its convention, which kicked off on Friday, August 29, and run through September 1.

"They (ISNA) were going to focus on poverty and of course housing goes along with that," Danielle Turnage, the Special Events Manager for Habitat for Humanity, told IOL.

"We are advocates for making sure that everyone has simple basic shelter and so it was a natural fit for us to be involved."

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing organization building simple, decent, affordable housing in partnership with people in need.

Among those present for the interfaith event was Reverend. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, which represents some 45 million members from 100,000 local congregations.

He was accompanied a group of about twenty VIPs representing the three monotheistic religions on this interfaith build project.

Representatives from most of the national Muslim organizations also took part in this humanitarian project.

Timely, Fitting

Tamima and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Sarah, traveled all the way from New Jersey to attend the ISNA conference.

They believe this year's theme was "very fitting" and "gives us a little perspective on how to start our month."

"I think again it is very time appropriate since Ramadan is about to start and with the whole election coming up and the whole change thing," notes Tamima, who has Pakistani backgrounds.

Pamela Wilcoxson, a recent convert who attended last year's ISNA convention in Chicago, is accompanying her friend Barbara Pouros, who is attending ISNA for the first time.

Both are excited about the conference and its theme.

Nelly, who currently lives in the United Arab Emirates with her husband, feels the theme reminds her of the Democratic National Convention because of the emphasis on change.

Robert Engel, a convert to Islam, believes the theme indicating a need for change in the spirit of Ramadan fits well with ISNA’s efforts to reach out to followers of other faiths and work towards a common goal of ending poverty.

"Since I used to be a Christian, I like the interfaith work that they offer."

You gotta hand it to these guys. Piggy-backing on Habitat for Humanity, a cause that’s right up there with motherhood and the environment, is a brilliant way to rope in the guileless dhimmis—and maybe even persuade a few of them to opt for “change”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:10 | link | comments (1)

Beware the insidious swoon: Phyllis Chessler has some thoughts on the rapture of Denver:

…What frightened me about the evening [when “The One” gave his acceptance speech] was this: Each of the average American citizens who spoke, including two former Republicans who are now voting for Obama, had clearly been rehearsed in the Saul Alinsky-style of Method Acting. They spoke as if they were at a left political rally on a soapbox or in the street, gesturing largely, speaking loudly, grandstanding, repeating slogans and gestures over and over again. “Yes we Can.” None spoke “naturally,” or from the heart.

This canned performance coupled with one other reported fact troubled me. Several newscasters said that people openly wept when Obama began to speak. And kept on weeping. I myself saw some weeping faces: Young girls, older African-American men, middle aged white women, the Hollywood celebrities. Even Oprah was quoted as saying that “Nothing compares” (to this evening). The tears, plus the largeness of the choreographed event (85,000 people were in Invesco Field) brought to mind other large political rallies where leaders have held their people spellbound, often for hours.

No, I am not going to compare Obama to Hitler, Castro or Khomeini; that would simply not be true or fair. And yet, these are very dangerous times. People need to keep their heads about them, not lose them in a swoon. A Cult of Personality will not save America…

Of course it won’t, but the swoon is like a drug that causes feelings of elation and euphoria, and for plenty of people looking for a quick “fix” (in both senses of the word), it’s awfully hard to resist:

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:48 | link | comments (1)

Moon watchers: Despite the technological advancements of the 21^st Centry, espying the orb that signals the start of the Muslim holy month in still an inexact, er, science. From the Washington Post:

…The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference even proposed to launch a satellite to monitor the moon for Ramadan.

Science has also allowed precise tracking of the moon and the sun, allowing astronomers to know in advance that the crescent moon starting Ramadan will be visible in the Middle East no sooner than Sunday.

In the parking lot and in most of the Middle East, technology deferred to religion. Astronomers went through the motions, at least, of looking for the crescent.

"It's a matter of Islamic law we have to be here. But it's 100 percent sure we're not going to see it today," Faleh Mohammed, head of one of Egypt's government astronomy institute, told the al-Jazeera reporter.

A rumor went through the crowd that Libya had announced the start of Ramadan -- different countries often pick different days for the start and squabble over each other's decisions.

Mohammed scoffed. "What do they see in Libya that we don't see with our telescopes?" he asked.

Mohammed Yousuf, an astronomer in his eighth year of moon-watch duty, rose from another telescope.

The last time a member of a moon-watch committee thought he had spotted a crescent moon at this point in the lunar month was in 1991, Yousuf said. Other members of the committee were able to convince the man he had seen light glancing off a bird's wings, and error was averted, Yousuf said.

Even in Muhammad's time, Yousuf recounted, a man who believed he had spotted the crescent moon was about to announce Ramadan to the world -- until a friend leaned in and removed a stray eyelash from the man's eye.

At the next telescope over, astronomer Ahmed Mohem Fathi grumbled at Cairo's pollution, thick enough to veil any moon.

By 6 p.m., Mohammed was speeding off, rushing toward a news conference in Cairo with some of Egypt's top religious and government officials to announce the findings.

The word of Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, would be: No moon Saturday, therefore the moon's appearance Sunday was inevitable, and Ramadan would start Monday…

 Can’t hardly wait.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:32 | link | comments

“Compensation” or jizya?: Italy is forking over molto lira to Libya because once, some years ago, it occupied it in a colonial manner. From the Ceeb:

Italy agreed Saturday to pay Libya $5 billion US as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country, which ended in 1943.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi signed a memorandum pledging a $5 billion US compensation package involving construction projects, student grants and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served with the Italians during the Second World War.

"It is a material and emotional recognition of the mistakes that our country has done to yours during the colonial era," Berlusconi told reporters at the airport on his arrival. "This agreement opens the path to further co-operation."

In return, Italy wants Libya to crack down on illegal migrants turning up on Italian shores, and Italy will fund $500 million US worth of electronic monitoring devices on the Libyan coastline.

Gadhafi received Berlusconi under a big tent in Benghazi where they discussed the agreement over lunch. The Italian leader said $200 million US of the package would be for infrastructure projects over the next 25 years, including a coastal highway stretching across the country from Tunisia to Egypt.

The two leaders exchanged gifts, with Berlusconi giving Gadhafi a silver inkstand, sculpted in the form of a lion's head, with two pens inside with which to sign the agreement. The Libyan leader gave Berlusconi a linen suit.

Berlusconi's office said in a statement that the premier would also hand over to Gadhafi the Venus of Cyrene, an ancient Roman statue taken in 1913 by Italian troops from the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast.

Relations between the two countries have warmed over the last few years, with Italian leaders meeting Gadhafi several times. However, it has taken years of negotiations for the two sides to reach a deal on compensation for Italy's rule over Libya from 1911 to 1943.

Libya named Aug. 30 Libyan-Italian Friendship Day.

Not much of a “friendship” if you have to pay for it. More like the tax that dhimmis are obliged to pay their overlords—and/or a bribe to induce Libyan officials to keep their nationals from flooding into and occupying the former “colonizer”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:22 | link | comments

Lennon's useful idiots: This one's for the B'nai Brith, the organization that wants to accomplish the impossible--a useful "overhaul" of Canada's state censorship system:

You say you want to use the censors

Well, you know

We all wanna shape the land.

You say that curbing “hate” defends us

Well, you know

It’s not in “all thy son’s command.”

And when you want to curb our freedom

Don’t you know that you can count me out?

 

Don’t you know ain’t gonna be

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

 

You say you’ve got a real solution.

Well, you know

It’s a cockamamie plan.

You say it’s made a contribution

Well, you know

Frank Dimant says it’s very grand.

But if you participate in the whole national farce

All I can say is that it's gonna bite your arse.

 

Don’t you know ain’t gonna be

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

 

You say you’ll “tweak” the legislation.

Well, you know,

Ain’t no point in doin’ that.

You’ve come up with a calculation.

Well, you know

It’s gonna fall so fla-a-a-at.

And if you go citing the thoughts of Pierre Trudeau

Ain't never can get where we need to go.

 

Don’t you know ain’t gonna be

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

Alright?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:55 | link | comments (1)

French candour: We’re awfully quick to criticize France for its profound cluelessness. It is, after all, the land of countless “no go” zones and pyromanical lads from les Bainlieues. But ask yourself this: Could the novel du jour in France, which depicts how Nazism and Islamism intersect and overlap, find a publisher in North America? Here’s the City Journal review:

Boualem Sansal, Le village de l’Allemand: ou le journal des frères Schiller (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 264 pp., 2008)

While Americans and their elected officials do everything they can to avoid even the appearance of criticizing Islam or using such words as “Islamist,” the French public seems to suffer from no such inhibitions, at least not in the area of fiction. For example, it has embraced Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal’s Le village de l’Allemand (The Village of the German), a plainspoken masterpiece that boldly uncovers the affinities between Nazism and Islamism. In March, the novel won the RTL-Lire 2008 prize, which is awarded by a jury of 100 readers chosen by 20 bookstores throughout France. One wonders how an American readership might receive such a book.

The German of the title is a former SS officer who serves in a number of extermination camps during World War II. After the war, he is smuggled out of Germany to Istanbul and then Cairo. From there, the Egyptian government dispatches him to Algeria during its war of independence in the 1950s. His job: to support the insurrection by training Front de Libération Nationale fighters. He subsequently settles down in a remote village, where he soon becomes the highly respected sheikh.

Sansal slowly reveals the German’s story through the eyes of his two sons. Half German and half Algerian, they are sent as boys to live in France. Their discoveries begin when the elder brother, Rachel (an amalgamation of “Rachid” and “Helmut”), returns to his native village in the mid-1990s after terrorists murder his parents. Clues among the dead sheikh’s possessions lead Rachel on an increasingly agonizing search to reconstruct his father’s life in places like Auschwitz. Devastated by what he learns about the Holocaust, the son commits suicide to atone for his father’s sins.

The second son, Malrich (from “Malek” and “Ulrich”), is a creature of the banlieues, French suburbs that have become violent Muslim ghettos. His common sense has already helped him reject an attempt by the local Islamist imam to recruit him, but he continues to drift along with little hope for the future, among friends with similarly bleak prospects. Malrich learns about his father by reading the diary that Rachel has left behind. His reaction is to fight back—not against the Nazis, who are in any case long dead, but against the Islamists, whom he sees as essentially of the same ilk.

Malrich realizes that the Islamists are immeasurably more determined, stronger, and better organized than he and his little band of friends. The Islamists also have the implicit support of the French authorities, who are primarily concerned with keeping things quiet. The only weapon available is the power of the word: Malrich is determined to warn others of the danger, regardless of the risks he faces. His final interview with the local imam is heavy with threats.

The novel is rooted in reality. During his travels in Algeria, Sansal came across an actual village de l’allemand by accident. He then researched the headman’s story, learning along the way that it wasn’t unusual. An estimated 2,000 former Nazis settled in Egypt after World War II. They included Johannes von Leers, formerly Goebbels’s favorite propagandist of annihilation, who under Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was responsible for anti-Jewish propaganda. Other former Nazis organized police forces or, like Sansal’s headman, served as military trainers.

The sons’ ignorance of the Holocaust is similarly based on sad truths of history. Sansal, in an interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, stresses that the Holocaust is never mentioned in Algeria: “The fact is that never, until today, has Algerian television shown a film or a documentary on the subject, never has an official breathed a word about it nor, as far as I know, has an intellectual written on the theme.” Though Rachel and Malrich grow up in France, not Algeria, their knowledge of the Holocaust is also rudimentary. And indeed, with growing resistance among Muslim schoolchildren to any history lessons about the Holocaust, the level of knowledge in many French schools may soon resemble that of their Algerian counterparts.

The intertwining of the hatred that once led to extermination of the Jews and the potential of radical Islam is the book’s deliberate theme. According to Sansal, “the border between Islamism and Nazism is very slim.” Or as Malrich comments: “When I see what the Islamists do here and elsewhere, I tell myself that they will exceed the Nazis if one day they come to power.” In Malrich’s eyes, the Islamists are already taking over the Muslim banlieues, running them like concentration camps. The inhabitants do not know how to react. “We are like the deportees back then,” Malrich reflects. “Caught up in the machinery, rendered immobile by fear, fascinated by evil, we wait with secret hope that docility will save us.”…

Sounds like the type of expression that could get an author hauled in front of a Canadian “human rights” “court” to account for—and be forced to recant—his/her “Islamophobic” tendencies.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:00 | link | comments

“Peace” on their terms: Once you understand that Islam’s conception of “peace” (i.e. the “peace” that will--that can only--prevail once sharia rule does, too) and the West’s conception (i.e. the permanent cessation of hostilities between nations; the end of any totalitarian drive to make others submit to your authority) are diametrically opposed to one another, the following story from an Iran news site about that nation’s and Islam's “peaceful” intentions makes perfect sense (my bolds):

TEHRAN, Aug 30--A senior Iranian military commander has warned that any US or Israeli attack on the Islamic republic would start a world war III, the state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.

"Any aggression against Iran will start a world war III," Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces for Cultural Affairs, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, said in a statement carried by the agency.

He reiterated that the so-called leading countries are falling and the world will soon witness great developments. He said that Islam and the Islamic Republic call for international peace and co-existence.

"Teachings of Islam and the aspirations of the Islamic Revolution uphold peace and tranquility throughout the globe and are totally against war and escalation of tension being stirred by the US and Zionism, the Brigadier General said.

Jazayeri underlined the need for promotion of peace and stability in the world. "It is evident that if such a challenge occurs, the fake and artificial regimes will be eliminated before anything," he said, without naming any countries.

The extremist and expansionist policies of Washington and Tel Aviv which have been manifested in Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and recently in the Caucasus, have endangered the entire world.

The United States and its staunch ally the Zionist regime, the region's sole nuclear armed regime, allegedly accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons.

Iran has repeatedly denied the allegations, insisting its nuclear drive is aimed solely at providing electricity for a growing population when its reserves of fossil fuels run out.

And if, during the course of Islam’s pursuit of “international peace and co-existence,” a little bit of taqiyaah about the true purpose of Iran’s “nuclear drive” is called for, well, a Mahdi-obsessed mullocracy’s gotta do what it’s gotta do (like, say, wipe out that pesky Jewish entity that's both an insult and rebuke to everything Islam holds dear).

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:36 | link | comments

The Beeb soft-peddles rape: A Canadian woman was raped while poking around one of France’s lesser known “no go” zones—a camp where illegal immigrants help smuggle other illegal immigrants across the channel to the U.K.—but the Beeb wants us to know how nice these illegals are, and how rarely such crimes occur (my emphases):

…[Vice-prosecutor] Mr Muller said there was a strong possibility that the rapist was a people smuggler or a migrant and had since left the country.

 

"We fear he may well have already gone, possibly to England or to another French port. It is also possible he has gone to Belgium or the Netherlands," he said.

 

Mr Muller said detectives had traces of the attacker's DNA and also his fingerprints.

 

The camp, in Woodland near the Calais ferry terminal, is one of several where illegal immigrants wait for the chance to smuggle themselves across the English Channel.

 

Many pay hundreds or even thousands of euros to trafficking gangs to get them across.

 

Mr Muller said the attacker had told his victim he wanted to show her something and led her into one of the makeshift shelters. That was where the attack took place.

 

The victim - who has lived most of her life in the UK - is said to be still in shock and is being helped by the Pas-de-Calais Victim Support Association.

 

A police spokesman said: "You have to be very careful when entering these camps.

 

"The people there, mostly men, have an illegal status, they have no job and no home. The Jungle is a dangerous place and it's not safe to go there."

 

Father Jean-Pierre Boutoille, of the French refugee charity C'Sur, said it was not certain the attacker was an immigrant.

 

"The prosecutor said he can't say whether the rapist was an illegal immigrant or not but they do know he spoke fluent French," he said.

 

Inhumane conditions

"This suggests he was therefore not actually an illegal immigrant but someone else who was in the wood at that time as most of the illegal immigrants don't speak French."

 

He said that in six years of working with refugees he had never heard of such an attack by any of them.

 

"The immigrants in these camps are very respectful people and many are practising Muslims. The conditions they live in here are inhumane," he said.  

 

In 2005 a group of migrants was reportedly implicated in the rape of a resident of Oye-Plage near Calais but such cases are said to be rare.

 

Yeah, I’m sure these folks are real salt of the earth types. And on the rare occasions when such attacks do occur, no doubt they are due to “discrimination,” “desperation” and “poverty”.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:07 | link | comments

More useless "tweaking": Last November I had occasion to see the anti-hate industry in all its glory at the Combating Hatred Conference. That was back in the days when my understanding of the human rights system and how it was proscribing our most precious freedom--free speech--was, shall we say, less than complete. One of the speakers who made a particular impression on me, though, was B'nai Brith Canada's David Matas. What struck me at the time was that, for reasons I couldn't then fathom, he went on and on about Jew-haters past (Keegstra, Ross et al) and the BB's role in silencing them via our nation's anti-hate mechanisms. It sounded like very old news to me, and I couldn't help but wonder why on earth he would dredge it up, thereby preventing these pipsqueaks from fading back into their much deserved obscurity. Now, in the fullness of time, I understand the reasoning: it's so that Canada's Jews can retain their false sense of security by employing the power of the state to play Whack-a-Mole with local "Nazis".

One of my free-speecher colleagues (h/t BCF) was kind enough to send me the B'nai Brith's plan for overhauling our anti-hate system. The document shows that the BB "gets it" re the OIC and its "sharia first" agenda, but remains doggedly blind to the damage that civic censorship inflicts on a free society. Ironically, it's the censorship itself that will allow the OIC agenda to slip in through the doors marked "Human Rights" and "Islamophobia". Would that the BB, an organization that has played the victim card so successfully for so long, could see that censorship is the problem, not the solution; would that it had a clue that its rennovation scheme--preventing one designated victim group (the one trying to shut down the discussion about the jihad and sharia) from availing itself of the system while allowing another designated victim group (the one fighting the "Nazis") unfettered access to it--is a non-starter. The way it works here in multishmulti Kanuckistan is that either everyone gets to kvetch to the Thought Cops, or no one does.

How long must we wait before the BB "gets" that?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:15 | link | comments (1)

Reflections on the DNC: Our northern aerie had satellite, so I was able to catch a bit of the Democrats' Mile High City Hope 'n' Change Salvation Show (a bit being about all I could stomach). My thoughts, in verse:

The Bush years have caused such a panic

That they long for an age Messianic.

Is Obama “The One,”

Both Father and Son?

Or will he sink like a human Titanic?

 

The latter, one hopes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:53 | link | comments

Our tax dollars in action: It isn’t enough that Canadian taxpayers are funding the planning of Hamas infrastructure in Gaza via a CIDA initiative; we’re also on the hook for this--a Canadian Arab Federation/Heritage Canada project designed to “illustrate the contributions and accomplishments of Arab Canadians in Visual Arts, Music & Dance, Literature and Film.”

Who wants to bet that at least some of these “contributions” involve hyping Palestinian “oppression” and bashing that pesky Jewish entity that persists in, er, existing?

Don't miss the "Mission" link, a classic of multishmulti victim-group-speak.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:16 | link | comments (3)

Freaky “tweaking”:  Just blew back into town after a week away, and had to respond to this piece of blithering idiocy in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. Here’s my letter:

I don’t know what’s more alarming: the fact that Ontario’s Human Rights Commission has been “tweaked” such that it is an even bigger drain on taxpayers and has been granted even greater powers of search and seizure than it had before, or the fact that the “tweaking” involves searching for even more know-nothing censors to sit in judgement over what Ontarians ought not to say.

Let’s call it a toss-up and pray that “famously antagonist right-wing author” Mark Steyn, who’s been on vacation ever since his encounter with the British Columbia censors back in June, gets back to excoriating our nation’s thought police A.S.A.P.; his voice has been sorely missed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:26 | link | comments

One more before I go: Don't miss this “Islamophobic” report from the Daily Mail about the hard-to-nail-down provenance of potential terrorists:

Potential Islamist terrorists in Britain are not religious extremists or illegal immigrants, a leaked MI5 report warns.

The internal study of hundreds of known and suspected radicals says it is difficult to identify those most likely to commit atrocities as they often have well-paid jobs and families and are 'demographically unremarkable'.

The Security Service report concludes that the vast majority are British nationals or in the country legally.

Slipping under the radar: The July 7 bombers arrive at Luton station to head for London for their suicide attacks. Future terrorists may be no easier to identify, MI5 warns

It says half are born here. The rest includes people who originally came to study or to join family or for economic reasons, as well as asylum-seekers who had fled oppressive regimes or violence. Many of these only became radicalised years after arriving.

Very few have come from highly religious households and most only practise their faith occasionally. The proportion of converts is above average.

Some are even known to have taken drugs, drunk alcohol and visited prostitutes.

But they are not especially prone to mental health problems or pathological personality traits.

They come from ethnic backgrounds as diverse as Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian.

Most have become radicalised in their early to mid-20s but a significant minority have not done so until later. Those over 30 are just as likely to have a wife and children as to be loners with no ties.

Radical clerics are also playing less of a role now in radicalising future terrorists, according to the 'restricted' briefing note, published in the Guardian today.

The research was carried out by the security service's behavioural science unit and involved analysis of several hundred people linked to violent extremism through activities ranging from fundraising to planning suicide bombings in Britain.

Overall they are 'a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism', the study says.

In other words, they emanate from what you could call "a broad strata of society."  And here's the impossible to swallow kicker:

MI5 praises mainstream Islam, stating there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.

Riiiight.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:31 | link | comments

Even cowgirls get a break: It's that time of year again--my annual end-of-August break. Barring the unforseen, I plan to be back in the saddle on the 30th. Happy trails to y'all until then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:24 | link | comments

Still clutching the blankie: Ezra Levant calls this Canadian Jewish News article about the HRC controversy “a surprising story” (since the CJN, an official mouthpiece of Official Jewry, is usually disinclined to wade into this type of controversy). I don’t know that I’d call it “surprising”; given the uproar over HRCs and how heavily invested the Jewish alphabet agencies (CIJA, CJC, CFSW, etc.) are in the system, it would be more “surprising” if the CJC failed to cover the kerfuffle (since it would end up calling its journalistic integrity into question). Also not “surprising”: despite their feeling the heat of exposure and calling for the anti-hate sections of the system to be revamped so that the likes of Elmo and his sock thingies don’t get to censor us, the Jewstablishment still refuses to drop their tattered security blankie—the “anti-hate” provisions that enable Jews to censor decrepit, incontinent Nazis and Aryan bloggers.

Two out of the three Jewish organizations most closely identified with the anti-hate system (the CJC and the B’nai Brith) have adopted what amounts to a Bob the Builder approach (“Can we fix ‘em? Yes, we can”) But one Official Jew—Wiesenthal’s Leo Adler—is adamant that the rickety apparatus must remain more or less as is:

…Leo Adler, director of national affairs for the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, agreed the federal human rights legislation could be improved, but he argued Canadians have chosen to adopt a European model of restricted free speech and not the more open American model.

Asked to comment on Levant’s argument that the process in itself is the punishment given the costs needed to defend against a complaint, Adler replied, “We live our entire lives under ABCs – agencies, boards and commissions – that govern different aspect of our lives.” Lawsuits, police investigations and other legal matters might require an individual to incur costs by hiring a lawyer, he said.

He said that every genocide, including the Holocaust, started with words. “We don’t want words that have the potential for causing these catastrophes.”…

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Holocaust didn’t “start” with words; rather, the “words” were harnessed to a specific political agenda by a megalomaniac who was obsessed with “the Jews” and how they were befouling the planet, and who took it upon himself to rid the world of the "scourge" so that the “pure” people—his people—could gain global power and rule for at least a millennium.

You would think someone who claims to be an expert in the Holocaust would know that.

But maybe what’s going on here isn’t merely a desire to “stop” the “words” that “start” the genocides. Maybe it’s also about someone whose bread and butter is the anti-hate industry and all the delightful perks that come with it (the accolades; the cushy government appointments; the lavish conferences both here and abroad, etc.) being bound and determined to hang on to what he believes are his entitlements.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:09 | link | comments

Fishy finding: I’m not sure how much cyanide it takes to kill oneself; certainly, far less than the one quart bottle of the stuff found in the Denver hotel room of a late gentleman from Ottawa. And I’m not sure why a Somali Canadian would travel all the way to Denver, of all places, for the express purpose of offing himself; surely it's easier for all concerned to kill yourself at home. And I’m not sure why he would need such a large amount for the job—which could conceivably also be employed to kill vast numbers of people in, say, a jihadi terrorist attack—when a mere fraction would do. And I’m not sure if he bought the cyanide in Denver, or brought it with him across the border, since no one is saying. What they are saying is that there is not a shred of evidence that the dead guy was up to any mischief of the terrorist variety, especially none that might possibly involve the upcoming Democratic National Convention—so you can banish that thought from your suspicious mind right away. As the 29-year-old’s family back in Ottawa tells it, the purposeful cyanide-inhaler had no terrorist inclinations whatsoever, but was an, er, “schizophrenic”. That explanation was readily accepted by the Denver coroner, who has ruled that suicide was indeed what was going on here; the coroner is apparently persuaded that toting around vast quantities of cyanide for the purpose of committing suicide is something “schizophrenics” do.

Sounds plausible to me.

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

Selective vision: An editorial in the Toronto Star castigates the Taliban for promulgating “The Big Lie”:

Adolf Hitler knew that some people are quicker to swallow a big lie than a little one. So do the Taliban. In an "open letter" to Canadians this week, they claim we "came to Afghanistan to kill and torture the Afghans."

Really? When Canada first sent special forces into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, we went in self-defence.

The World Trade Center in New York was still smouldering from Osama bin Laden's strikes, and the Taliban were still playing host to Al Qaeda. Canadians were among the nearly 3,000 people who died. We deployed troops to help prevent another such strike.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right to dismiss the Taliban letter as propaganda that won't affect Canadian policy.

Canadian troops and aid workers are in Afghanistan under a lawful United Nations mandate that declared the Taliban a threat to peace, to freedom, to the rule of law and to human rights. We are there at the request of Afghan leaders who, unlike the Taliban, were elected.

And while Canada and 40 allies are taking casualties – the Taliban killed 10 French troops yesterday in the worst allied loss in years – the Taliban are in no position to turn Afghanistan back into a state sponsor of terror. And that suits most Afghans, who suffered their misrule.

So the Taliban have turned to murdering unarmed Canadian aid workers and others in cold blood, and then blaming the victims. What was their crime? Bringing schooling to Afghan women and children? Building homes? Delivering medical care? Fresh water?

What part of Canada's aggression is our $1.3 billion aid program?

If the Afghan people decide Canada's presence is more trouble than it is worth, they are free to say so, through their leaders or opinion surveys. We will not stay a day longer than we are wanted.

But Canadians would betray the UN, the Afghan people, and our own principles, by being cowed by murderers, or seduced by their Big Lie.

Odd how the Star can see “The Big Lie” as it applies to Canada, but continues to embrace the stinking load of manure (Israel’s “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,”  “land theft,” Jew as the “new" Nazis; Arabs as the “new” Jews, etc., etc., etc.) that Palestinians and their supporters keep shovelling. You would think that at some point even the clueless Lefties would twig to the fact that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban are essentially one and the same, and that, as kafirs, Canadians and Israelis share space in the same crowded, leaky canoe.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:17 | link | comments

The dawa's the thing: An Islam Online reader seeking guidance asks whether it’s okay for her daughter to take part in a school play. The reply: By all means let her participate, as long as she realizes she's not just play-acting, she's a girl with a mission:

…In the case you are discussing, a drama class monologue can be directed either way. A young woman can choose between acting a decent monologue that would be of use to herself and to her audience, or between staging for an act that would spread lust and convey corruption.

 

On a personal basis, and I am not giving a scholarly fatwa here, I am of the opinion that the young girl should go for it. But, what she would need to fix here is her intentions.

 

She would be of great benefit to herself and to her audience if she intents her act as a service of God. In this case, she does not necessarily need to preach or speak of religious matters. Just have her deliver a positive reforming message. She can dedicate her monologue to convey a social message, a moral message, a global message, and so on.

 

She would be greatly rewarded by Allah if she was able to touch hearts and change paths through a monologue about equality, brotherhood or Palestinians' rights to maintain their lands and dignity.

 

Maybe she can present the Palestinian cause from A to Z through her act. The same would be if she devotes it to the criticism of Western chaotic family system, out-of-marriage sex (depends on her age), or the disadvantages of drinking alcohol. Everything is possible…

 

Says someone who has obviously never sat through a kafir school play. It’s awfully hard to insert a discussion of Palestinian land rights and criticism of the Western family into, say, High School Musical or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:42 | link | comments

“Healer” on hold: Has-been crooner Chris de Burgh, who claims to be able to heal the afflicted with a mere touch of his hands, has been trying to bring his healing powers to one mighty afflicted area, the Middle East. Too bad for him he’s been rebuffed by the mullahs, who have some very different ideas about how to “heal” the region (i.e. by excising the “cancer” of Israel). From the timesonline:

Chris de Burgh’s ongoing campaign to take his brand of schmaltzy love songs to the people of the Middle East hit a hurdle today.

His much-touted plan to play a live concert in Tehran has come unstuck with Iranian officials claiming they have yet to be consulted.

The Irish crooner, best known for his middle-of–the road classic Lady in Red, sparked amused headlines last year when he announced he had permission to become the first major Western artist to perform in the country since the 1979 revolution.

Pity he forgot to tell the Iranians.

According to a report from Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, the country’s ministry of culture is still waiting for De Burgh to request a performance permit. As a result, it said, he does not have permission to perform there.

The Iran concert, planned for a 12,000-seater stadium in the capital, would have been the latest episode in De Burgh’s recent love affair with the Middle East.

In May he released a Farsi reworking of his song The Words ‘I love you’ with Iranian band Arian. He has also now recorded a duet with a young Lebanese singer, Tina Yamout, who he discovered last year.

A spokeswoman for De Burgh was today looking on the bright side, pointing out that although permission has not yet been granted, it has also not yet been denied.

Hamas, Hezbollah, ayatollahs and the lugubrious song stylings of Chris de Burgh—that’s far too much for any one region to have to handle.

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

Why Israel is doomed: There’s no way you can survive when you reject your own narrative (and the truth) and embrace the narrative (and lies) of your enemy. From the Jerusalem Post:

The government took Ze'ev Jabotinsky out of the schoolbooks and inserted the [Palestinian] Nakba instead," Opposition leader and Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday in a special Knesset session during the summer recess.

Netanyahu was referring to Education Minister Yuli Tamir's decision to remove the writings of Jabotinsky from the curriculum.

Jabotinsky was the founder of the revisionist movement in Zionism before the establishment of the Jewish State, which advocated a greater Israel and in recent years has come to be seen as an overly 'hawkish' version of Zionism.

The Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic, is the term used by Palestinians to describe the defeat Arab armies suffered at the hands of Jewish paramilitary organizations during Israel's War of Independence…

Leftist Jews and their delusions are paving the way for Israel’s demise—a true “Nakba” for Jewry and all mankind.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:14 | link | comments

Useless UN: A New York Sun editorial comments on the UN’s haplessness re the Russia-Georgia conflict:

…Mr. Ban, according to his spokesmen, has been working the phones, although he could only talk to actors with cameo roles in the drama, such as President Halonen. It took Mr. Ban a week to get Mr. Saakashvili on the blower, by which time the Georgian had accommodated any American television anchor that would have him on. United Nations spokesmen say that Mr. Ban has yet to receive an audience with any Kremlin decision maker, though he did merit a meeting with the Kremlin's ambassador in Turtle Bay, Vitaly Churkin.

Marginalization at a time of war is nothing new for Turtle Bay, its champions say. The organization is mostly needed when it is time to reach and preserve peace. As Russia has demonstrated so far, it is planning to allow that time to come only once its military and diplomatic objectives are achieved, and even then it is sure to veto any resolution that would include even a comma that may indicate there is anything wrong with those objectives.

As Mr. Sarkozy's chances of sealing a deal that Russia would implement — rather than merely saying it accepts — dimmed, Europeans yesterday circulated to Security Council members a short resolution proposal. It demanded an immediate compliance with Mr. Sarkozy's ceasefire agreement, and specifically a Russian withdrawal to the lines it held prior to the onset of the hostilities. It also called to affirm Georgia's "independence and territorial integrity."

Our Turtle Bay sources say that early on European diplomats were prepared to water down such wording to accommodate Moscow, while their American counterparts quietly proposed a tough resolution containing red lines that would force a Russian veto. Such a veto would help Washington to present the Kremlin as intransigent and uncooperative. It now seems that the Europeans, who are clearly frustrated by Moscow's unfulfilled promises, are ready for a Security Council confrontation, in lieu of a real one on the ground. At best, the council will now become a public relations instrument — a small achievement for a body aspiring for a real role in world affairs.

* * *

What it all adds up to is a lesson in world government: It's a chimera. Anyone who hopes that the United Nations would carry the day is either too complacent to chart an American policy or simply willing to let the Russians off the hook for a war. Let it be an instructive moment in respect of Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Burma, to name but a few crises that are not going to be solved on the shore of the East River. Anyone assigning the job of confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions to diplomats who would negotiate for years and then produce an unreadable and ineffective Security Council resolution is simply allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb. No wonder Mr. Obama has, at least for now, dropped the council from his list of tools to handle Georgia.

I disagree that world government is a chimera. What’s chimerical (also comical) is the idea that the UN can be a force for good in this world. The prospect of a world government governed by Islamic law—as the UN is governed by the OIC, its largest voting block—is, alas, all too real.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:00 | link | comments

Fatah’s blinkers: Tarek Fatah is undoubtedly a brave man, a Muslim who speaks out against the imposition of sharia, and who has been denounced and threatened with death on numerous occasions because of it. And yet, despite his bravery, this most moderate of Muslims has several blind spots, as David Solway points out in his review of Fatah’s book for FrontPage:

…Fatah’s well-intentioned but problematic distinction between Muslims and Islamists, between a “state of Islam” (good) and an “Islamic state” (bad) and his belief that “Islamists…have ridden roughshod over Quranic principles and the Prophet’s message of equality” are not persuasive. All one has to do is read the Koran to put paid to his claim. His notion that “Equity and social justice run through every fibre and gene of the Muslim psyche” is a piece of untenable hyperbole that is deflated by Fatah himself when he later writes that “So deeply ingrained is the idea of replicating the so-called Golden Age of the Rightly Guided Caliphs that few are willing to consider the implications of what they are asking for,” or when he bemoans “the permanent gash in the Muslim psyche, a festering wound” brought on by the struggle for power. Which is it, deeply ingrained error or enlightenment?

One is puzzled by the contradiction inherent in his admonition that Muslims “stop chasing an Islamic State” on the one hand and his evident approval of the “Palestinian struggle for an independent and sovereign state,” which would be nothing if not Islamic, on the other. Also troubling is his appreciative quotation from a Pakistani historian who speaks of “the solemn averment that Islam spread peacefully in India” when the carnage visited upon the subcontinent by the invading Islamic armies is an order of magnitude higher than the Holocaust itself.

Fatah’s animus against the United States also seems rather facile and not altogether thought through. When he writes that “The invasion of Iraq was manna from heaven for Al-Qaeda,” it is clear that he has not been following the course of events or the evening News—nothing has weakened al-Qaeda more than the Iraqi conflict and it is now, as the Press has it, “on the run.”

For Fatah, the US is no different from the Mongol hordes led by the savage Hulagu who in 1257 invaded Baghdad and “pitt[ed] the Shia population against the Sunni caliph.” The fact that the “Sunni caliph” of 2003 was Saddam Hussein, himself a contemporary Hulagu, is a matter of no consequence. Nor am I sure what he is getting at when he denounces American fundamentalism equally with bin Laden’s species of fundamentalism; I cannot see even the faintest semblance of an equivalence between the two nor can I understand how American fundamentalism, whatever that may be, “poses a threat to Western civilization.”…

Moderates like Fatah are in a real bind. In order to retain their faith, they have to twist themselves into pretzels trying to account for its obvious internal contradictions, which entails an outright refusal to recognize the truth about Islam and its founder (as, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has done—the reason she is no longer Muslim). Fatah is in a double bind, since, unlike that other notable moderate, Salim Mansur, he wants to retain his “street cred” with Leftists and Muslims, and thus refuses to see the pivotal role the U.S. and Israel are playing in foiling the jihad and the advancement of sharia. So, yes, kudos to Fatah for standing up to the seethers and for “getting it," sort of, about sharia; would that he “got” the rest of it, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:23 | link | comments

Soldiering on: The lawyer for alleged terrorist Momin Khawaja, the Ottawa lad currently on trial in London, has come up with an interesting defence. He says his client hoped to be an old-fangled holy warrior in a battlefield setting, not an urban one. From the Globe and Mail:

OTTAWA -- Momin Khawaja was interested only in waging jihad against Western soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan, not attacking civilian targets in London, his defence lawyer argued yesterday in a long-shot effort to have terrorism charges against the Ottawa software engineer dismissed.

Lawrence Greenspon said he concedes that a remote detonation device - dubbed the Hi-Fi Digimonster - was found in Mr. Khawaja's home, and did not dispute what the device can do. However, he added that Mr. Khawaja's intention was to use it as a remote detonator in Afghanistan. Mr. Greenspon attempted to explain his client's actions as those of a would-be soldier, not a terrorist.

"It's not okay," Mr. Greenspon said of his client's desire to fight in Afghanistan, "but it's not terrorism."

The final phase of Mr. Khawaja's trial kicked off yesterday. He faces seven charges under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act - he is also the first Canadian ever charged under the act. The 29-year-old is accused of trying to build a remote-controlled detonation device for a British terrorist cell.

However, his lawyer is trying to persuade the judge in the case, Mr. Justice Douglas Rutherford, to dismiss the charges on the basis that there isn't enough evidence to uphold them.

It was in that context that Mr. Greenspon claimed yesterday that his client was focusing his energies on Afghanistan, and had no knowledge that his alleged co-conspirators were planning an attack in London.

Last year, five people were convicted in England of plotting to bomb targets including a shopping complex and a nightclub.

Mr. Khawaja has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Judge Rutherford is hearing the case without a jury. If the judge accepts Mr. Greenspon's argument, he could conceivably drop all the charges and set Mr. Khawaja free.

In arguing that Mr. Khawaja was only interested in fighting Western troops in Afghanistan, Mr. Greenspon said his client should be dealt with in the same way as any soldier in a war.

Mr. Greenspon has repeatedly said that the conversations among Mr. Khawaja's alleged co-conspirators were significantly different when Mr. Khawaja was around. He said that while a London bomb plot - of which he claims his client was unaware - is sufficient to base terrorism charges on, "wanting to be a soldier in Afghanistan is not."

Coincidentally, Mr. Greenspon's claim that his client's only interest was fighting Western soldiers in Afghanistan came immediately after one of the bloodiest days in that country's ongoing conflict. Insurgents ambushed and killed 10 French troops outside the capital of Kabul in an attack that caused the largest combat loss for international forces in Afghanistan in three years…

I’m sure we can all rest easier knowing that the likes of Momin restrict their warfare to far-away battlefields. (And if you buy that, I have a razed site formerly occupied by two giant towers to sell you.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:47 | link | comments (1)

Shaggy beast story: The news that the hairy remains of a creature reputed to be Bigfoot is really a hoax—and a rather maladroit one at that—should come as no great surprise. Except, of course, to those folks (you know the type) who refuse to let a little thing like truth get in the way of their firmly-held convictions. From the Ceeb (my bolds):

The website that promoted the finding of the supposed remains of the legendary Bigfoot has confirmed what most people suspected: the body was nothing more than a rubber sasquatch costume.

An investigator with Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., the group that promoted the discovery, reported the confirmation on Tuesday, just four days after a circus-like news conference in which two Georgia men claimed they had bagged the dead body of the mythical man-ape.

Georgia residents Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer claimed at the news conference Friday in Palo Alto, Calif., that they had stumbled across the corpse in the woods of northern Georgia.

But Steve Kulls, a self-described sasquatch hunter, wrote on the company's website that once the body arrived for examination, it became obvious that it wasn't real.

"As the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot," he said.

Kulls wrote that sasquatch promoter Tom Biscardi, who runs the Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. website and appeared onstage with Dyer and Whitton to defend their find, "informed us that both Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer admitted it was a costume."

Even before the admission, skeptics had already noted that one photograph released — that of a hairy corpse stuffed in a freezer — looked suspiciously like a Halloween costume available at retailers.

And the evidence presented at the news conference — including a blurry photo of teeth and inconclusive DNA samples — had done little to sway public opinion…

Today’s essay question: The psychology/psychopathology of those who believe in Bigfoot is akin to the psychology/psychopathology of those who believe in blood libels and that 9/11 was an inside job. Discuss.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:01 | link | comments

Where are the 'roos?: The summer is winding down and there's still no sign of the B.C. 'roos. The marsupials retired apres the June show trial to consider the case of the CIC vs. Maclean's--a mere blink of the eye, it's true, compared to the 900 days it took the Alberta commissars to deal with the Levant complaint. And since the process is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment, and since at the end of the day they may dismiss the whole thing (because it's too high profile and too much of a hot potato) and not get to mete out any actual punishment, I can understand why they would want to drag it out. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that this novelty tune from a summer long past will encourage them to move things along:

They were afraid to come back from vacation.

They were as nervous as all get out.

They were afraid to come back from vacation.

They were afraid that somebody would shout.

 

Four, three, two, where, oh where are B.C.’s ‘roos?

 

They’ll make an itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling

Based on words of some “experts” in “court”.

An itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling,

That’s the verdict they long to report.

 

Two, three, four, stick around for what’s in store…

 

They were afraid to come out in the open.

So a blanket of silence they wore.

They were afraid to come out in the open.

So they dragged the thing out a bit more.

 

Six, seven, eight, kangaroos deliberate…

 

They’ll make an itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling

Based on words of some “experts” in “court”.

An itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling,

That’s the verdict they long to report…

 

From the puppets to Elmasry,

From Elmasry to the ‘roos.

Freedom’s hanging in the balance

Thanks to lawyers, Libs, and Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:09 | link | comments

“Sexy” skater: The latest singing harlot to offend “moderate” Malaysia’s sense of decorum—Canada’s very own skater girl, Avril Lavigne. From AP via CTV News:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia's Islamic opposition party has urged the government to cancel a concert by Avril Lavigne, saying the Canadian singer's on-stage moves are "too sexy," an official said Monday.

Lavigne, a Grammy-nominated rock singer who burst to fame with her 2002 debut album "Let's Go," plans to start her monthlong Asia tour with a performance in Kuala Lumpur on Aug. 29.

The youth wing of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party said Lavigne's concert would promote wrong values ahead of Malaysia's Aug. 31 independence day.

"It is considered too sexy for us. ... It's not good for viewers in Malaysia," said Kamarulzaman Mohamed, a party official. "We don't want our people, our teenagers, influenced by their performance. We want clean artists, artists that are good role models."

Kamarulzaman said he sent a protest letter to the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry and the Kuala Lumpur mayor last week, calling for the concert to be canceled.

An official from the Culture Ministry's department that vets all foreign artists said the government has not given permission for the concert yet. The department is to meet Tuesday to decide on the organizer's application, which was received last week.

The official declined to be named because she is not authorized to make public statements.

A spokesman for the concert's organizer, Galaxy Group, denied that Lavigne's show had any "negative elements."

The spokesman, who declined to be named citing protocol, said his company was confident of receiving the permit as feedback from authorities so far had been "very positive."

Malaysia requires all performers to wear clothes without obscene or drug-related images and be covered from chest to knees. They must also refrain from jumping, shouting, hugging and kissing on stage…

Standing stock still dressed head-to-toe in a black sack, though, is bound to earn you the Malaysian "opposition" seal of approval. My poem for Avril:

The way you pronounce it’s “Levine”

(Which sounds Jewish, if you know what I mean).

But their stated abhorrence

Is re her performance

Which they claim isn’t wholesome or clean.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:54 | link | comments

The UN’s moral bankruptcy: Once again demonstrating its true colours  (green, green and more green, with a wide streak of cowardly yellow), the UN ululates in collective grief at the passing of Mahmoud Darwish, the Yasser Arafat of poetry. By Joseph Klein in FrontPage Magazine:

The Palestinian ‘national poet’ Mahmoud Darwish passed away on August 9, 2008.  Regarded by the Palestinians as the “poet of the Palestinian wound,” he was given the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank.  Only the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, with whom Darwish served in the PLO, had ever received such an honor. 

As Aljazeera reported, Darwish’s “grave faces the outskirts of Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to create the capital of a future state which Darwish had yearned for in poems imbued with the agony of exile and loss.”

In life, Darwish spent his considerable writing talents as an apologist for the Palestinians’ self-inflicted wounds.  He wrote the veiled threat that Arafat spoke at the United Nations in 1974: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

In death, senior United Nations officials joined a chorus of admirers in raising Darwish to the iconic level of a “universal” voice of “justice,” “dislocation” and “alienation” for all the suffering people of the world – except, of course, for the Jewish people whose more than 2000 years of exile and persecution Darwish and his UN admirers have conveniently ignored.

In sending her condolences last week to the Palestinian people following Darwish’s death, for example, the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Karen AbuZayd, issued a statement, saying that Darwish was “the poet of exile, the refugees’ poet” whose “universal language of dislocation and alienation will be heard for many years to come.”  These encomiums should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with AbuZayd and her agency.  She has sided with the Palestinians against Israel time and again, no matter what atrocities were committed by the Palestinian terrorists against innocent Israeli civilians.  UNRWA itself has been complicit in such terrorist acts.

King Solomon wrote long ago in Proverbs that "death and life are in the power of the tongue."  The Talmud teaches us that words can kill.  Darwish used his poetry to give voice to those who reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in its ancient homeland.  He called himself a “weapon” and wrote that “my words were stones.”  Truth had no place in his poetry.

Darwish helped to popularize the blood libel in the Arab world that referred to the creation of the state of Israel as al-Nakba or “Catastrophe.”  UNRWA’s Chief of Public Information quoted Darwish in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the “Catastrophe.”

Even before Israel ever occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, Darwish was busy spinning his militant poetry into language of anti-Israel propaganda.  He wrote the following in 1964:      

            I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks.
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!

Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper's flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!
<!--[endif]-->

This was supposed to be a protest against the ‘forced’ exile of Palestinians from their families’ lands into a semi-permanent refugee status.  The sad truth that Darwish could never acknowledge was that the Palestinians themselves and their Arab neighbors - not Israel - were largely responsible for the decades in which Palestinians have lived as stateless refugees…

Yeah, it’s a bitch when your people have sovereignty over a scant 99.99 per cent of a region's land. Lucky for Darwish and the other “exiles” they’ve had the UN around to try rectify the grievous wrong done them all those decades ago—and in the years intervening—because the Jews won't lie down and die.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments (1)

“Racist” Harper races to young Canadian Muslims’ defense: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, branded as “racist” by CIC Grand Poobah-for-life Mo Elmasry for failing to intercede with American authorities on Omar Khadr’s behalf (Elmo claimed that Harper’s hesitations were due to Omar’s being “brown-skinned”), is acting all, er, bigoted again. Wahhabi rag Arab News has the details (my bolds):

RIYADH: The case of two Canadian brothers charged in connection with the death of a teenager during a schoolyard fight in Jeddah has taken a new turn after a court threw out an earlier judgment and ordered the retrial of one of the brothers in an adult court.

If tried as an adult, Sultan Kohail, 18, may face a stiffer punishment or even death for his role in the killing. Sultan’s elder brother, Mohammed Kohail, 23, has already been found guilty and sentenced to death. That ruling is currently being appealed.

Although Mohammed has been in prison for the last 18 months, Sultan has been living with his family. In April this year, a juvenile court in Jeddah sentenced Sultan to 200 lashes and one year in prison. This ruling has now been thrown out.

Abdul Rauf, the youths’ uncle, confirmed the retrial but refused to discuss the matter further. “It is hard for the family at this time, we are all praying... We don’t know what will happen,” he said.

In an official statement, the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh said Canada would continue to pursue all avenues to assist Mohammed and Sultan Kohail. Canadian officials, during their recent visits to Saudi Arabia, have raised the case at top levels.

“The Canadian consular officials are actively providing assistance and support, and remain in regular contact with the Kohail family and their legal counsel... Due to the Privacy Act, we cannot comment further on specific details of the case,” the statement said.

Following news of the retrial, Liberal Canadian MP Dan McTeague, who has been following the case, has called on the Conservative government “to make sure the pair receive due process.”

The Canadian government has asked for clemency.

The Kohail brothers are Canadian citizens of Palestinian origin. They moved to Canada in 2000 from Saudi Arabia and settled in Dollard des Ormeaux, only to return to the Kingdom later. In January 2007, Sultan became involved in a schoolyard brawl and called for the help of his brother and friends.

A Syrian youth, Munzer Haraki, 19, died during a fight, and Mohamed was charged with murder.

Yup. “Racism” in action. The most unintentionally amusing aspect of the saga: Liberal MP Dan McTeague’s call for “due process.” Clearly, the clueless McTeague is unaware that “due process” under sharia is the last thing he should be requesting, since it will likely result in the public spectacle of the lads’ heads being detached from their bodies with less than surgical precision by a man wielding a large sword. Whereas in Gitmo, home these last few years to another young Canadian awaiting “due process,” you may be forced to lose some sleep, but at least you get to keep your head.

Let’s ask Omar Khadr which variety of “due process” he prefers to face, shall we?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:35 | link | comments

The most popular American in Paris: Here’s a hint—it’s not Jerry or Woody, and it’s unlikely any self-respecting cultural snob would cop to having such plebeian tastes. Here’s another hint— that snippy Ms. Klein would definitely not approve.

Posted by: scaramouche at 02:28 | link | comments

Little boy blew (up): Well, not quite. He longed to martyr himself for Allah and be rewarded with his own personal hutch of heavenly virgins, but British authorities put an end to that dream.  The Guardian has more on the widdlest jihadi (“schoolboy extremist," in Guardian-speak) this side of Omar Khadr:

A schoolboy recruited into a cell engaged in a "worldwide conspiracy" to kill non-Muslims yesterday became Britain's youngest convicted terrorist.

Yorkshire teenager Hammaad Munshi, who was 16 when he was arrested, downloaded terrorist materials including guides for making napalm and grenades.

Now 18, Munshi was found guilty with two other men of possessing or making documents promoting terrorism. Material found in their possession included guidance for making lethal weapons, manuals on how to carry out assassinations and personal details of members of the royal family.

During a three month trial at Blackfriars crown court in London, the prosecution accused the three of involvement in an al-Qaida-inspired conspiracy to attack the west.

Munshi was leading a double life when he came to the attention of Leeds counter-terrorism unit. By day the teenager from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, whose grandfather is a respected Muslim scholar, was studying for his GCSEs at Westborough high school.

But at home, stashed beneath his bed, he kept handwritten notes about his desire for martyrdom including the claim: "One who is not taking part in the battle nor has the sheer intention to die is in the branch of hypocrisy."

It was a small find compared to the hoard of terrorist material police discovered he had accumulated through the internet. He had collected notes on the manufacture of grenades and napalm, and his PC contained videos and audio clips showing mujahideen fighting and al-Qaida propaganda.

Co-defendant Aabid Khan, 23, a former burger bar worker from Bradford, recruited Munshi when he was 15 and served as his mentor. Described as the "Mr Fix-it" of the cell, he had links to proscribed terrorist groups and ran an "online extremist support network" through which he hoped to recruit "a group of at least 12".

In one exchange he wrote: "What I want to do is cause trouble for the kuffar [non-believers] with hit-and-runs everywhere, cause fear and panic in their countries, make them nervous so they make mistakes."

He and Munshi phoned each other, swapped documents about "black powder explosives" and during an online chat discussed how to smuggle a sword through airport security.

Khan was detained when returning from Pakistan in June 2006. A routine stop and search of his luggage at Manchester airport yielded the largest library of computer files promoting terrorism seized by police. Video footage in his suitcase suggested he had visited the Balakot mountains, site of a Jaishe Mohammed terrorist training camp.

Anti-terrorist officers also found handbooks on explosives and poisons, information about transport systems in the UK and the US, guidelines for "beating and killing hostages" and planning assassinations. They also found he had personal details and addresses of members of the royal family including the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Princess Royal, and the Earl and Countess of Wessex.

Khan led officers to Munshiand the third defendant found guilty yesterday. Sultan Muhammad, 23, Khan's "right-hand man", worked nights as a post office sorter and was found in possession of terrorism-related materials.

He and Khan, his cousin, talked regularly about killing non-Muslims and purchasing explosives.

Simon Denison, prosecuting, told the court that material found by police showed the three were motivated by a "common cause".

"The material in their possession promoted extreme ideology, most notoriously of Osama bin Laden of al-Qaida, as well as groups in various countries that adopted it."

The three were convicted of eight Terrorism Act offences committed between November 23 2005 and June 20 2006…

So sad when young ambition is stifled by inconsiderate grownups.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:55 | link | comments

How I know I’m completely out of synch with the Zeitgeist: This man, according to the New York Times, is said to be “the most trusted man in America.”

Me? I don’t trust him and his perpetual smirk as far as I can spit. Here’s my pick for most trustworthy. If only he had his own daily show.

Update: My pick for most trustworthy tells is like it is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:37 | link | comments (2)

Taliban atrocities: Is seems there are real ones occurring all the time in Afghanistan, unlike the fake ones occasionally trumped up by Jew-haters in order to cast aspersions on the Zionist entity via the gullible useful idiots of the international media. From an editorial in the Halifax Chronicle Herald:

…According to Sarah Chayes, a journalist, published author and the founder of a soap-making co-operative in Kandahar, "the most important constraint on aid work is the risk it poses to Afghans. Many villages in Kandahar have been refusing development assistance for several years now. They are afraid that the mere acceptance of these projects will transform their homes into targets."

In an opinion piece published by the Globe and Mail, she goes on to describe Taliban atrocities committed against anyone accepting foreign aid or collaborating in ensuring its delivery. "The Afghans do not support this so-called insurgency," she concludes. "They are its primary targets."

There might be less ambivalence on the home front about this war if we knew more of what Ms. Chayes knows or saw more of what our soldiers see. Those who have served a tour of duty in Afghanistan, either as a civilian or a soldier, often come back more convinced than ever that their presence spells help and hope and that a pullout would be a crime – against humanity, no less.

For the media, it is difficult to gauge how welcome we really are among the general population because speaking out against the Taliban merely invites swift retribution. Those who disparage foreign forces, however, have free rein.

Nor are the cameras rolling when the Taliban hang a 16-year-old by his feet and shoot him for the crime of being an apprentice truck driver whose job is to bring humanitarian food shipments to Kandahar.

Anyone heard so much as a peep of condemnation from those who screamed bloody murder when a Palestinian lad was supposedly offed by the wicked IDF? No? Me neither. I’m sure it’s an oversight and that we’re bound to hear some genuine outrage real soon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:59 | link | comments

Puppetry of the pinheads: If you think that Holocaust denial  and world-devoid-of-Jewry conferences comprise the sum total of cultural life in Ayatollahville, think again. They also have an annual puppet competition. One that doesn’t involve mullahs putting words in the mouth of a hairy sock thingy named Ahmawhoozits, I mean. The Tehran Times (another sort of puppet) has a run-down of this year’s winners. Here’s a partial list (and, no, I’m not making any of this up):

* Best stage designer: Bahareh Nozad-Moqaddam for the play “Don’t Tell Anybody”

* Best puppet designer: Foruz Hashemi “Awaiting Spring”

* Best puppeteer: Mohammad Molaii “Gallows and Circle”

* Best theatrical idea: Javad Tulami “Mobarak and the Black Demon”

* Best director: Siamak Baniani “Fairy Cockroach”

The winners of the international competition section are as follows:

* Best puppet designers: Erika Schmitzer, Werner Hierzer, and Christian Hierzer “Johann Strauss” from Austria

* Best puppeteer: Luca Runga “Pulcinella with Four Hands”

* Best stage designer: Ezzio Antonelli “Alice in Mirror” from Italy

* Best playwright: Davud Fat’hali-Beigi “Story of Fortune” from Iran

You mean to tell me no one assayed a puppet version of Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? And, hey, where’s that delightful Neturei Karta entry, The Sound of Maniacs (“High on a hill was a lonely nutbar/Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo”)? Oh, well, there’s always next year.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:19 | link | comments

There’s no Fox like an old fox: Islamic supremacist Syed Soharwardy has been trekking across Canada with one aim in mind—to remake his image. Syed has grown tired of the bad PR he garnered when he complained to the local human rights authorities that Ezra Levant has bruised his tender sensibilities by printing some purportedly scurrilous Mo ‘toons. The gentleman behind both the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (a title which, sorry, Syed, always gives me the giggles) and Muslims Against Terrorism (in which capacity he‘s earned the approval of assorted useful idiots) has sought to put all the unpleasantness behind him via his perambulation across the nation. He might have done so, too, if he hadn’t lost his cool and lobbed new threats at Levant when the two were brought together recently on a Toronto radio program—thereby tipping his hand that it was more or less the same old Syed. The sound of Syed avowing that Ezra would “soon pay” should have dispelled any illusions that he had become a new man. Some, however, like clueless Calgary Herald scribe Naomi Licorice, are determined to look for the good in the man no matter what. Here’s la Licorice, wildly cheering on the imam who would be Terry Fox (my bolds):

…What Terry did, what Soharwardy is doing, what all these people who run, cycle, walk or otherwise travel the Trans-Canada Highway for a particular cause do, is called tikkun olam in the Jewish faith.

Tikkun olam means mending the world and Jews believe everyone has a duty to do this. It's an obligation to do constant mending to keep the world from falling into greater disrepair -- to put good back in, to fill the spaces where pain, injustice and other evils might otherwise take root.

"We can't eliminate violence, but we can reduce it," Soharwardy said. He was a few kilometres west of Winnipeg when he heard about the killing of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus just ahead on the Trans-Canada, near Portage la Prairie. Someone asked him if he was embarrassed by the irony of his walk against violence being in proximity with this terrible crime -- didn't it prove the fruitlessness of his venture?

"I was not embarrassed. I felt despair and hope. The killing of this young man strengthens my resolve," Soharwardy said. He sees it like this: When we say or do nothing, when we simply absorb violence out of fear, as when the victims of domestic abuse are afraid to expose their abusers, then we are enabling more violence.

"To stop violence, to not accept violence -- one person has to stand up and speak against it," he said.

In one aspect, Soharwardy agrees with the letter writer. "We're not able to change the whole world," he said. But he feels that if he's changed one person, enabling that individual to say no to whatever form of violence he or she may be personally experiencing, then his walk is a success. That's tikkun olam. You do what you can. As Ming Jiing Hsieh told the weekly Stonewall Argus about his disaster relief cycling tour: "If I can help people, that's happiness."

Where else but Canada does an imam walk across the country, practising a tenet of the Jewish faith? Some days, it seems like peace may not be such an impossible dream after all.

Oy vey. Could someone please tell the tikkun olam-beffuddled Ms. L. that the imam is doing no such thing. What he’s actually doing is practising an age old tenet of Islam, i.e. taqiyaah, i.e. pulling the wool over the eyes of easily gulled, let’s-all-join-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya types like Naomi. If he wants to “tikkun” (Hebrew for “repair”) the “olam” (Hebrew for “world”) it's so that the "olam," as per Allah’s promises to “the seal of prophets,” will one day be in the hands of "olum" al-Isam. She, of all people, should recognize fabrications when she sees them. After all, she did get her start concocting fairy tales for skeevy supermarket tab the National Examiner.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:38 | link | comments

The remarkable Dr. Makow: The street corner Der Sturmer’s popular columnist, Henry Makow, has what can only be described as an incredible CV, as detailed on Wikipedia (my bolds):

Henry Makow, Ph.D., (born November 12, 1949 in Zürich, Switzerland) is a Canadian conspiracy theorist, inventor of the board game Scruples, and the author of A Long Way to go for a Date, the story of his courtship and marriage to a young Filipina. (He has since divorced and remarried.)

As a baby, he moved with his family to Canada, settling in Ottawa. At the age of 11 he began to write the syndicated advice-to-parents column “Ask Henry.” The column ran in 50 newspapers in the early 1960s. This led to appearances on the Jack Paar Show (the forerunner to the Tonight Show), What's My Line and To Tell the Truth.^[1] In 1984, he invented Scruples, a game of moral dilemmas which was translated into five languages and sold seven million copies worldwide.

He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 1982, and lives in Winnipeg. His critique of feminism as an attempt to destabilize society and his explanation of how heterosexuality works have been collected in a book Cruel Hoax: Feminism and the New World Order.^[2]

Many of his articles cite evidence of a hidden hand shaping modern history according to a long-term occult (satanic) agenda. He associates this force with the "-isms" :Zionism, Communism, Liberalism, Secularism, Neo-Conservatism, Fascism, Nazism and Feminism. He argues that democracy today is a charade and serves as an instrument of social control; the mass media generally stifles information and channels thought; and popular entertainment diverts the audience from what it is happening and degrades us. The occult force, which operates through Freemasonry, is empowered by the London-based central banking cartel which must bring about world tyranny to defend its monopoly on credit (money creation.) Using the pretext of war, the goal is depopulation and ultimately, the enslavement of mankind, mentally and spiritually, if not physically.

Makow is Jewish^[3] and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust. He criticizes using the Holocaust as a PC club, the denial of crimes by the communists and by Turks against the Armenians.^[4]

To Tell the Truth? Scruples? Freemasonry? Folks, you can’t make this stuff up (although as Dr. Makow demonstrates, you can confabulate and/or expand upon plenty of other piffle; hey, maybe "Piffle" can be the name of the good doctor's next board game).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments

All the news that makes things fit: A National Post editorial expounds on the subject of the street corner Der Sturmer, the rag flogged by homeless Torontonians. The paper has been purveying calumnies, canards and conspiracy theories about "da Jews" for nigh on a decade:

…On principle we are in favour of his right to publish nonsense, and to have a proper hearing in a courtroom when his copy crosses the line and incites violence, as the paper apologized for doing when columnist Henry Makow called for the deaths of "Jew bankers." But the Street News seems to have a problem with plagiarism, and it appears to be backtracking on its apology for the outbursts, claiming in the latest issue under the headline "Zionists controlling the media" that it was "no longer permitted" to run Makow's column because the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Toronto Police Service are "controlled by people with alien loyalties." So where does Fletcher really stand on the issue of lynching "Jew bankers"?...

I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t oppose it, were the issue ever to arise in public. My question for the “columnist”: where does he stand on sharia financing--one of the genuine overt "conspiracies" aimed as gaining traction for Islamic law in the West?

Also, it never seems to occur to these loopy conspiracy types to ponder this glaring contradiction: if “Zionists” with "alien loyalties" truly controlled the media, then why do they consistently get such bad press?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments

On hatred, the homeless and HRCs: Even though I'm en vacance, I've been ruminating about that piece in the National Post yesterday revealing that homeless people in Toronto have been flogging a newspaper full of antisemitic crapola. The old Scaramouche,the one who didn't know wasn't fully up on the infamy of the the anti-hate industry and how seriously it compromised our freedom, might have said and done what the CJC has done--i.e. worried about the hatred, lodged a complaint with an HRC and waited for the thought cops and/or  'roos to, at some point, depending on how quickly it got to it (in Ezra Levant's case, it took a whopping 900 days), either dismiss the matter or adjudicate it in a "quasi-judicial" framework, and mete out the requisite punishment to the offender. At the end of which there would be high fives all around and immense satisfaction that another hater had been squashed, and Canadian Jews have been made "safe".

That's the old Scaramouche. The new Scaramouche says, "Hold on a minute. In the annals of Judenhass, this has to be one of the most pathetic stories ever. Here you have a pathetic old cancer-ridden Jew-hater who's in the grip of the same old pathetic delusions about "the Jews" controlling the global monetary supply pushing that line in pathetic "newspaper" flogged on downtown street corners by pathetic homeless people. Will I as a Jew feel "safer" if the whole sorry lot of them are "punished" by commissar Barbara Hall's wacky, Orwellian "court"? Not on your life."

You see, it's not the free floating Judenhass that alarms me--the pathetic chatter in the pathetic Stormfront chat rooms that Tammy and Co. labour so hard to shut down. As a student of history I have come to understand that free floating hatred is a permanent feature, a given given Judaism's place in the pecking order of monotheism. The free floating hatred--that's everywhere, all the time. (One example: recently, my 10-year-old son was told by some kids at the yacht club where we have our modest sail boat that they could tell he was Jewish because he "had a Jewish nose." The thing is, my son is adopted, and has the button-nose of his Kentucky forebears. Obviously, these kids had heard that "the Jews" are noted for their probosci--even, it seems, the Jews who don't have even a trace of Jewish blood in them.) It's the Judenhass that's tied to political agenda we have to worry about; the hatred on display in Arab newspapers that's tied to an agenda of obliterating the Jewish state in the same way that the hatred in Nazi newspapers was tied to an agenda of liquidating the Jews of Europe.

That being said, how sad is it that the only way a homeless person can make an "honest" buck is by purveying this tommyrot? And why has it taken so long for the contents of this loathesome rag to be exposed?

As well, one must note the disparity in the way Commissar Hall reacted to this instance of hatred versus her reaction to the case that got away--Mark Steyn and Maclean's. Babsy, as you'll recall, never got to adjudicate that matter since, alas, it didn't fall within her purview. Deprived of the opportunity to conduct a B.C.-style show trial, she worked herself up into a frenzied--one might even say hysterical--state, declaring Steyn and Maclean's "guilty" of flagrant "xenophobia" and "Islamophobia". Compare that to her reaction to the homeless rag, which really is vile and hateful (as opposed to the Maclean's pieces, which were truthful about, albeit criticical of, the jihad). Babsy's low-key reply: Ho hum; no biggie; wake me up when someone says something nasty about a Muslim so's I can spring into action.

Dare we call that the commissar's "disproportionate response"?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:44 | link | comments (2)

The Globe's blood libel:  I meant to post this one the day I saw it, but never got around to it. It's a Glib and Mewl editorial 'toon showing Iran--you know, the nation that is in the process of enriching the uranium that will enable it to, as promised, fulfill Hitler's Final Solution--morphing into a delectable pear, and teensy Israel, cannibalistically, taking a big bite out of it.

Any conflation of this image with those age old canards about Jews feasting on the blood of juicy gentiles is....purely intentional.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:58 | link | comments (1)

Gone fishing: Blogging will be light to non-existent from now through Sunday. I hope to be back at it full throttle on the 18th.

T.t.t.t. (ta ta 'til then).

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:05 | link | comments

On sale now: Superbambi:

Wait a sec--I thought he was Jesus.

Update: Oops! Looks like we're too late. The Super B tee is plum sold out. If you hurry, thought, you can still get the shirt showing Dubyula sucking the life out of the Statue of Liberty--a surefire way to garner a laugh or two in moonbat quadrants (like, say, the upcoming convention in Denver) .

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:18 | link | comments

No shrouds allowed: Mona Eltahawy, one of those brave women who consistently speak out against the repressions of sharia, poses a timely question: Where are Saudi Arabia's female athletes?

The query, obviously,  is rhetorical, since it's difficult to compete in an athletic event looking like this. Which I guess is the point.

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

National angst: The country is in the grip of semi-hysterical embarrassment and self-reproach over our paucity of medals at the Smoglympics. Our medal count so far: nada, diddly, goose eggs, a tally which puts us below such athletic powerhouses as, er, Togo.

Me? I could care less about being medal-less. Like some letter-writers to the National Post, I’m far more agitated about being free speech-less.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Dead poet society: An unfond farewell to the object of the Ceeb's and other useful idiots' veneration, Mahmoud "The Voice" Darwish:

The Ceeb says the poet’s divine

Since his “homeland” is Palestine.

It cannot resist

A “nationalist”

Even one whose intent was malign.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:46 | link | comments

Unlikely story of the day: It has just been revealed that Julia Child, the rather slapdash French chef with the high-pitched voice, was once a spy. Blogger Vanity Fairest recalls comedian Dan Ackroyd's impersonation of Julia back in the early days of Saturday Night Live:

The whole scene was not unlike that Saturday Night Live sketch my dad loves so much — the one where Dan Ackroyd impersonates Julia Child as she “cuts the dickens” out of her finger and blood is spurting everywhere as she tries to make a tourniquet with a chicken bone while still lecturing the audience about salvaging the liver because it makes a nice paté. Except my dad remembers the words differently so that whenever anyone mentions having cut himself he starts hopping around clutching his thumb and yelling in a gravelly high-pitched British accent, “I’ve cut the PISS out of my fingah!” with extra emphasis on the “PISS.”

I don't believe it was a British accent--more like a high-toned New England one, as if she were speaking with a couple of marbles in her mouth. I guess she was more adroit at espionage than she was in the kitchen, though (since we hadn't heard about her covert career until now).

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:28 | link | comments

Realpolitik: The U.S. casts Israel adrift, leaving it to twist slowly, helplessly, in the wind.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:09 | link | comments

More Ceeb shtick: Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s funding the Ceeb—Canadian taxpayers or Saudi Arabia. This evening, for example, the Ceeb frames the ruckus in China as being a matter of Muslim “separatists” desiring to, um, separate (so much easier to wrap one's noggin around than the reality of its being one of dots in the larger global scheme). And in another instance of useful idiocy, the Ceeb has gone into paroxysms of grief over the death of a Palestinian poet probably few Canadians had ever heard about before his untimely demise. (He died in the U.S. following heart surgery.) We know the death of Mahmoud Darwish, a “nationalist” chased out of his “homeland” by the Jews, must be a big deal,  since it elicits lengthy coverage, including a report from the scene of his funeral. On Ceeb radio news, Middle East correspondent Margaret Evans is using her soft voice, the one with the catch in it, the one she reserves for the discussion of poor, put upon Palestinians chased away from their homes by dastardly Jews—so you can tell she’s really broken up. And as if Maggie’s soggy, lachrymose reflections aren’t enough, there’s a whole new round of lamentation for the Great One on radio show As It Happens.

My word. From the way the Ceeb is going on, you would think Leonard Cohen had bought it or something.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:04 | link | comments (1)

Today's protest song: With apologies to one hit wonder/original raging granny, Malvina Reynolds:

Little thought cops, little thought cops,

Little thought cops on the HRCs.

Little thought cops, little thought cops

And they all think just the same.

There’s a tall one and a short one

And a fat one and a skinny one

And they all get put on HRCs

Where they all think just the same.

 

They hold hearings,

They make rulings,

And they punish miscreants

Who have said something impolite

And who may not think just the same.

They are censors; we’re defenceless,

And they’re riding roughshod over us.

Know what’s best for us--

That’s what’s stressed to us

So we’ll all think just the same.

 

They’re so earnest when they spurn us

And tell us to put a sock in it.

Their advice is: “Opt for niceness

So we’ll all think just the same.”

It’s so chilling that we’re willing

To bow down and kowtow to them.

Where’s our gumption when th’assumption

Is we must think just the same?

 

And the people in this country

Aren’t free like we used to be

‘Cause of thought cops on the HRCs

Who insist we think just the same.

There’s a tall one and a short one

And a fat one and a skinny one

And they all get put on HRCs

‘Cause they all think just the same.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:50 | link | comments (2)

Unwelcome company: I had a chance to visit Petra, Jordan, last year when I was in Israel, but declined to do so. My reasoning: even though Jordan made “peace” with us back in 1994, the Hashemite entity is officially Jundenrein; under the terms of Jordanian law, only one people are barred from ever becoming citizens—the Jews.

So, on principle, I saved my shekels and decided not to take in the glorious ruins. There are plenty of Jews, though, who don’t share my hesitations.YNet News reports on some of them—folks who went to visit Jordan, but who were told they could only get in if they left anything identifying them as a Jude behind:

Dozens of Israelis who have passed through the Arava border crossing during the last few days were given a choice, either turn over all items that carry Jewish symbols or be denied entry into Jordan.

The reason? According to the Jordanians it is nothing more than a security precaution.

 

"The Jewish symbols will make it easier on terrorist elements to identify Israelis" a Jordanian official explained.

 

For the past year the Jordanians have been meticulous when checking Israelis, especially orthodox Jews, who wish to enter Jordan. Last week authorities reiterated their advisory that "Jewish paraphernalia" that could risk the lives of the tourists, must be left at the border checkpoint.

'No anti-Semitic sentiment'

On Tuesday, for example, a group of 30 religious Israelis had to cancel their planned trip to Petra, after Jordanian authorities' confiscated their Jewish paraphernalia.

"The Jordanians confiscated everyone's prayer books and even seized one members' copy of a book by (Shmuel Yosef) Agnon", mentioned Trix Richter, a member of the group.

 

According to Richter, the Jordanians claimed that this was being done for security reasons. "It sounded a little far-fetched', said Richter, "I hate to think what would happen if the State of Israel would confiscate copies of the Koran from Muslim tourists or copies of the New Testament from Christian tourists; the rest of the world would be upset."

The foreign Ministry has confirmed that the Jordanians had in fact increased security regarding Jewish paraphernalia. "They claim that it has to do with security measures," a source inside the ministry said.

"They believe tourists we can be recognized as Jews would be easier target for terrorists," he said. We told them that it seemed a bit much, and that generally, Jews pray and put on tefillin in private, such as in a hotel room, but their concerns are about Jews praying in public and drawing attention to themselves."  

Following the increase in complaints both the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli embassy in Amman plan to appeal to the Jordanian authorities in order to ease the restrictions

 

"It must be understood that this decision stems from a genuine desire to keep the Israeli tourists safe", said a source in the ministry. "There is no anti-Semitic sentiment (behind the decision), just the desire to protect tourists the best that they can". 

 

Riiight. Memo to clueless Jews: Next time you have an itch to visit the Hashemite hot spots, stay home.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:17 | link | comments

The necessity to whup the kafir is the mother of jihadi invention: Dissatisfied with the pace of Continental Islamization (it’s not going nearly fast enough for his taste) a true believer offers a “brilliant” suggestion for speeding it up. From MEMRI:

On August 9, 2008 a member of the Islamist forum Al-Boraq proposed poisoning the water systems of major European cities. The forum member began his message by reminding "monotheists [i.e. Muslims] who yearn to support the Prophet" that Ramadan is coming, and explained that poisoning the water systems of major European cities is just one of many options - some of them "more powerful and more damaging" - but that his posting is meant to "prompt the mind [to generate] innovative [ideas]."

Oh, those “innovative” holy mass murderers—always coming up with new ways to push the death envelope.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:39 | link | comments (1)

Mosque promotion: Canada’s public broadcaster/training ground for al Jazeera invites us to put our “love for Little Mosque [on the Prairies] to the test” by answering some skill-testing questions. There are prizes galore for aficionados of the shill-com (currently on summer hiatus but back for more side-splitting hilarity come fall) who have been paying close attention.  

In another instance of mosque promotion, the other day Ceeb Radio treated listeners to a heart-tugger about a new “little” mosque going up in northern British Columbia. Any similarity between the way that story was reported and how it might have been reported by, say, Muslim Brotherhood Media (an entity I just made up) is purely co-incidental.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments (1)

Lip synch scandal: The news that the angelic-looking-and-sounding moppet who sang the national anthem at the opening ceremonies of the Smoglympics did not in fact do her own singing (the honour went to a snaggle-toothed, less telegenic moppet) is an apt metaphor for the entire event. After all, "performance enhancement" features prominently in the athletic competition, too.

My thoughts: There are over a billion people in the People's Republic. You mean to say in all the country they couldn't locate a cherub who was both good looking and could sing? Barring that, why didn't they go with the less-angelic looking kid? She's kind of cute, in her own snaggle-toothed way. And that lip-syncher--I don't know about you, but her performance (youthful perfection married to impassioned true belief) gave me the willies.

Update: Maybe after the games are over the two moppets can get together and go on tour. Suggested name for the duo: Milli and Vanilli, of course.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments

Propane desecration: The buck-passing continues in the wake of the propane explosion, with the city blaming the province, and vice versa. While most of the residents in the neighbour adjacent to now devastated propane site have returned home to varying scenes of damage, some have been told they cannot yet return due to concerns that there's asbestos in the air. (It's unclear to me why the asbestos, being airborne, wouldn't affect the entire neighbourhood.) No answers are yet forthcoming from Sunrise Propane,  the company that went up in a fireball, but  after issuing a brief statement through a lawyer, the owners have gone underground. Local residents of this working class area, home to many eldery residents, are already talking about a class action suit, but there's no talk, as yet about a class action suit by others affected by the explosion--those of us who have family buried in the Jewish cemetary across the road. The cemetary, the last resting place of my father, grandparents and other close family members, was heavily damaged, and may never open again.

At the moment, I don't know who's to blame. All I know is that it's not too much of a stretch to see that a combination of apathy, greed and incompetence are to blame.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:47 | link | comments

Playing the victim canard—on the taxpayers’ dime: The Canadian Arab Federation is well versed in playing the victim game—and in getting the provincial government to underwrite it. In two days, victims and non-victims alike will be able to participate in a government-funded workshop in order to hear some gripes and come up with ways to counter the “stereotyping” (which, we’re assured, is at the root of Canadians’ groundless fears about Arabs.) Here’s what's on tap:

Hate Crime Victims Provincial Support Network Workshop

An initiative of the Canadian Arab Federation, with funding from the Ministry of the Attorney General, the HateCrime Victims Provincial Support Network is hosting a forum to continue building awareness of the challenges facing Canadian Arabs in Ontario, stemming from negative stereotypes, racism and hate crimes. Working together to understand these issues, we will explore methods for countering and addressing the impact of such challenges.

 

When: August 14, 2008 at 7:00 PM

Where: University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), Council Chambers-Room 3130, South Building. 3359 Mississauga Road North...

Come out to share your experiences and learn from others. This forum is free and open to the public. The event includes refreshments and a Question and Answer period.

Guest Speakers:

Raja Khouri

Raja Khouri is managing consultant at The Knowledge Centre, a Commissioner with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and a member of the Toronto Committee of Human RightsWatch and the Ontario Hate Crimes CommunityWorking Group.

 

Nouman Ashraf

Nouman is Director of the Anti-racism and Cultural Diversity office at the University of Toronto and was

appointed by the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario to serve on the Community Hate Crimes Response Grants Selection Committee in September 2007.

 

Mohammed Ashour

Mohammed Ashour is the current President of the Muslim Students' Association (MSA) at the University of Toronto, Mississauga Campus. Having served on the executive level for three consecutive years, he has witnessed a pattern-less fluctuation of Islamophobia on campus. Convinced that most Islamophobic sentiments are the progeny of misinformation and lack of awareness, he and the MSA are committed to dispelling such ignorance with wisdom and intellectual fortitude.

 

Hate Crimes Investigative Unit Representative

Speakers will discuss:

· What you can do when faced with an incident of hate, racism or a hate crime

· How the Arab and Muslim communities have been affected by hate post 9/11

· Incidents of hate crimes and racial tensions at university campuses

· The legal context of hate crimes and what your rights are

· Freedom of expression of the press vs. hateful speech

Sounds like a blast. The Muslim Student’s Association, by the way, is the progeny (to borrow a word) of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization of Islamic supremacists dedicated to putting Islam on top, as per Allah’s promise to the faith’s founder. For obvious reasons, that didn't make it into the MSA prez's bio. (Query for the prez during Question and Answer Period: What is a "pattern-less fluctuation of Islamophobia," and how does it differ from a patterened fluctuation of the same?)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:26 | link | comments

Elmo’s afeared of “Nazis,” too: The CJC, as we know, is obsessed with the Nazi threat, and is thus engaged in a relentless battle to pursue and punish decrepit, incontinent Nazis and White Power pishers wherever they are hiding. Taking a page from the Jews’ playbook, the Canadian Islamic Congress’s Grand Poobah-for–life is also promoting the Nazi theat—and the “new” Jews he sees in its crosshairs:

…On July 4, 2008 the Independent newspaper reported that Martyn Gilleard, a Nazi sympathizer in East Yorkshire, England, was jailed for 16 years. "Police found four nail bombs, bullets, swords, axes and knives in his flat. Gilleard had been preparing for a war against Muslims. In a note at his flat he had written, ‘I am sick and tired of hearing nationalists talking of killing Muslims, blowing up mosques and fighting back only to see these acts of resistance fail. The time has come to stop the talking and start to act’."

The Independent headlined the above-quoted report by journalist Peter Oborne as "The enemy within? Fear of Islam: Britain's new disease." The article observed that "Suspicion of the Muslim community has found its way into mainstream society - and nobody seems to care."

In fact, the Gilleard case went all but unreported. Had a Muslim been found with an arsenal of weapons and planning violent assaults, it would have been a far bigger story.

"There is a reason for this blindness in the media," Oborne continues. "The systematic demonization of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed."

Commenting on Canadian Prof. Sherene H. Razack’s new book "Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law & Politics," Dr. Ghassan Hage, Prof. of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, observed: "Hannah Arendt argued that Holocaust history shows that Jews were perceived and treated by German society as marginal and expendable long before their extermination was acted out. [This book] shows the complex ways in which Muslims in the West are slowly being driven to become today’s exterminables ... It is worth remembering that the Holocaust was not a historical inevitability. Those struggling against the dark forces of extermination can succeed."

Memo to Elmo: No need to fret. Nazis and Muslims are long-time natural allies, united by a desire to exterminate the same old “exterminables”—the Jews. Nice try at purloining the Jews’ identity and horrific history, though. Were the CJC actually awake and in possession of a clue, your remarks should, once and for all, put the kibosh on your beautiful friendship.

As for the notion that the West is "casting out" Muslims--'tis to laugh. In fact, it is Islamic law, now making a big push to gain a foothold in the West,  that "evicts" and marginalizes non-believers. But I have a feeling that the Professor and Elmo are both well aware of that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments

Hamas summer camp: It's a day packed with fun and excitement at Camp KilltheJews. Indocrination, martial arts, military drills, semtex A&C--no wonder the kids collapse into bed, exhausted, each night.

Plans are already underway for a camp reunion, but if all goes well, some of the campers hope to be otherwise engaged.  (h/t Carl in Jerusalem)

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

Overlords and lackies: The Wahhabis are praising their foremost dhimmi factotums—Spain—for hosting that Wahhabi-sponsored interfaith conference, and helping to make it such a roaring success: In another act of obeisance, the Spanish dhimmis have recently issued arrest warrants for some pesky Jews.

Looks like the Wahhabis’ al Andalus  reclamation project is right on schedule.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:11 | link | comments

Censorship makes strange bedfellows: What does the dictatorship of Egypt have in common with the “democracy” of Canada? Both are determined to censor unacceptable speech on the Internet. From al Jazeera (my bolds):

The Egyptian government is in the early stages of preparing a new law on audio-visual media that critics say is aimed at cracking down on dissent.

The proposed legislation, should it pass into law unchanged, will set the standard for other governments in the Arab world seeking to silence opposition voices on televisions and computer screens across the region.
 
The draft bill, which was leaked to the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm on July 9, requires journalists and broadcasters to avoid damaging "the social peace", "national unity", "public order" and "public values".
 
Those who contravene such rules, the draft suggests, could face imprisonment for periods ranging from one month to three years, along with suspension or cancellation of broadcasting licenses, the confiscation of equipment, and fines ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,800 - $9,000).

Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, sees the proposed law as a cynical attempt at strangling the burgeoning democracy movement in Egypt.

"Television and the internet have been giving the government a hard time for the past four years," he said.

"These two media have played a big role in the escalating movement asking for democracy. They are two important parts of the movement, so the government is trying to put more restrictions on them."…

How interesting: in Egypt, the censorship is aimed at curbing unacceptable speech that advances the agenda of Muburak’s disloyal opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood (advocates of a one-time only “democracy” that would permit the populace to put it in office; once firmly ensconced, “democracy” would be jettisoned and a sharia state would rise); in Canada, the censorship is aimed (in part) at curbing unacceptable speech that criticizes that same agenda.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:47 | link | comments

Fun with names: You may or may not recall that the reason I started calling the Toronto Star’s resident shill for Islam Haroon Siddiqui, “Harpoon”. It’s not a name I came up with. Rather, it’s his spell-check suggested name. (In a feat of logic that is opaque to all save Spell-check, the grammarian recommends “Sodium” as the correction for “Siddiqui”—but I think “Harpoon Sodium” is a tad too much, even for me). The first time the suggestion popped up, I was so amused that I decided to use it from them on—a cheeky riposte to a guy who’s so solemn, serious and sober-sided, and who writes with not a whit of wit, that he’s the journalistic equivalent of Lunesta.

Now onto another amusing moniker. It has come to my attention via a comment in Ezra Levant’s blog that “Lakritz,” the surname of the clueless Calgary Herald pundit who thinks Ezra’s a drama queen and that we’re not being nearly nice enough to Muslims, is German for “licorice.”

Naomi Licorice—how absolutely perfect for a gal whose ideas are sticky, sickly sweet, non-nutritious, and woefully lacking in heft. From here on in, she will be known by that name to me.

And wouldn’t Harpoon and la Licorice be ideal collaborators on a book justifying their beloved thought cops?  Maybe they could get Harpoon’s pal Tammy to pen the intro.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:39 | link | comments (2)

Insightful essay, circa 1998: Idling away an hour before a doctor’s appointment, I happened to poke around in the bargain bins in front of a a nearby pre-owned book emporium. One of the intriguing books I came across (I ended up buying three for the grand total of $4) was one entitled The Ethics of War and Peace. A collection of scholarly essays published in 1996 by Princeton University Press, it’s an examination of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and secular perspectives on the subject. It cost me a whole buck—my bargoon of the week. If I could, I would post the entire essay by Bassam Tibi (described in the "Contributors" page as “professor of international relations at the Georg-August-University in Gottingen, where he also heads the Center for International Relations…”). Since I can’t find it online, here’s the conclusion, which offers a fairly good summation. Remember, it was published in 1996, back when many of us—moi included—hadn’t a clue about Islam and its imperatives (my bolds):

     In discussing the basic concepts of the Islamic tradition of war and peace, and their understanding by Muslims at the present, my focus has been on Muslim attitudes toward war. The ground for war is always the dissemination of Islam throughout the world. And in conducting war, Muslims are to avoid destruction and to deal fairly with the weak. Muslims do not view the use of force to propagate Islam as an act of war, given their understanding of the da’wa as an effort to abolish war by bringing the entire world into the “house of Islam,” which is the house of peace. For this reason, as we have seen, Islamic conquests are described by Islamic historians not as wars (hurub) but as “openings” (futuhat) of the world to Islam.

     Despite the universal religious mission of Islam, the world of Islam was a regional, not a global, system. The only global system in the history of mankind is our present international system, which is the result of the expansion of the European model. As we have seen, this modern international system has placed strain on the ethics of war and peace in Islam, generating the divergent responses of conformism and fundamentalism.

     Islamic war/peace ethics is scriptural and premodern. It does not take into account the reality of our times, which is that international morality is based on relations between sovereign states, not on the religions of the people living therein. Though the Islamic states acknowledge the authority of international law regulating relations among states, Islamic doctrine governing war and peace continues to be based on a division of the world into dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. The divine law of Islam, which defines a partial community in international society, still ranks about the laws upon which modern international society rests.

     The confrontation between Islam and the West will continue, and it will assume a most dramatic form. Its outcome will depend on two factors: first, the ability of Muslims to undertake a “cultural accommodation” of Islamic religious concepts and their ethical underpinnings to the changed international environment; and, second, their ability to accept equality and mutual respect between themselves and those who do not share their beliefs.

Looks like in the twelve years since the book was published—years that saw al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa; two attacks on the World Trade Centre; the coming to the fore of Mahdi messianism in Iran and the mullahs’ support for Hamas and Hezbollah, jihadi organizations committed to a genocide of Israel’s Jews—“cultural accommodation” and “mutual respect” have been put on the back burner. That’s largely a function of the house of Islam, feeling ever more powerful due to the cravenness and cluelessness of the house of war, along with the self-confidence that comes from being awash in oil. Both globally and in Western locales, the house of Islam has been insiting that others do the accommodating, upon pain of being labelled insensitive, racist or Islamphobic should they fail to comply. Obviously, the essayist hadn’t even a inkling of the way things were going to pan out when he we wrote his thoughts in the downy, hedonistic days of the Clinton era. Was it only a mere ten years ago that we thought the most pressing crisis in America revolved around an avoirdupois intern who had a nifty way with a cigar?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:52 | link | comments

Morocco in transition: If you have a yen to visit sunny Morocco, you’d better do it soon. It looks like this most modern of Muslim countries may be in the process of becoming far less hospitable to tourists and their foreign ways. From AP via the Toronto Star:

RABAT–The muezzins' calls echo well before daybreak, summoning the Muslim faithful to daily prayers and reminding foreign tourists in the Moroccan capital how far they are from home.

But the rising decibel level is deepening fault lines between a government drive to modernize and a wave of rigorous political Islam.

Morocco, a country of 33 million people, gets more than 7 million tourists a year, and there are worries some may be put off by the five heavily amplified calls a day, each lasting five minutes, to "hasten to the prayer, hasten to the prayer."

Muslim purists counter that authorities are compromising religion to please Westerners and the country's liberal elite.

The frictions are happening in a country that is considered moderate on matters of religion and is a U.S. ally at a time when there are fears that Al Qaeda is establishing itself in North Africa.

Morocco has lately been shaken by two different cases in which the government, or wealthy Westerners, have been accused of plotting to force down the volume on the muezzins who make the call to prayer…

Nouzha Skalli, the minister for family and social affairs, is accused of seeking legislation to lower the volume on muezzins in tourist zones. Newspapers have asked whether Skalli, a feminist and former Communist, is trying to curb Islam and impose secularism on Morocco's overwhelmingly Muslim society. Some hard-line imams have cursed her during public sermons.

"It made huge waves, even a tsunami," Skalli said…

Still, Mohammed Darif, a Moroccan political scientist and expert on Islamism, says hardliners increasingly are depicting the tourist influx as a threat to Muslim values. The wealthy may support the government's pro-Western and liberal values, he says, "but the Morocco of poverty, backward countryside and urban slums is increasingly averse to tourism and the internationalized elite."

He says some Moroccans complain of walled-off resorts that make them feel unwelcome.

"It's discrimination by wealth, and tourism is highlighting the sore," he said.

Olivier Roy, French author of Globalized Islam, says the tensions are a new phenomenon, and that the former French colony has "a history of cohabitation" in which Western hippies of the 1960s and '70s were welcome visitors.

Roy says louder calls to prayer are a product of Salafism, a rigorous strain of Islam imported from Saudi Arabia. Also, he said, audio technology used for prayer calls has improved, and imams are in competition to fill their mosques.

Islam is the state religion in Morocco and the king is the "Commander of the Believers." The state trains and appoints all imams, but tends to avoid dictating standards of public behaviour.

Miloud al-Atifi is an imam who doubles as the muezzin in his small mosque in Sale, a poor suburb of Rabat. He takes a benign view of the muezzin uproar.

"The prayer cleanses the soul, it's fundamental," he explained, but loudspeakers are simply a technical aid and can be toned down if, for instance, they're near a hospital.

As for tourist zones, the imam doesn't think there's a debate because, "If there are only non-Muslims around, it makes no sense to even have a call for prayer."

Sure it does—if you want to ensure that the non-Muslims know who’s in charge. AP thoughtfully provides a translation of the muezzin’s call, so everyone can see how peaceful, spiritual and innocuous it is:

God is great, God is great.

God is great, God is great.

I bear witness there is no divinity but God.

I bear witness there is no divinity but God.

I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

Hasten to the prayer, hasten to the prayer.

Hasten to success, hasten to success.

God is great, God is great.

There is no divinity but God.

“Hasten to success,”eh? No doubt a reference to an individual’s successful personal struggle to heed God (virgins not included).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:40 | link | comments (3)

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A "youth" gets shots by police, sparking rage, rioting, looting and torched cars.

Paree, fall '06? Nope, Montreal, last night.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments

Walking imam's bio: The cleric who’s a favourite of the CJC (since they both want to “build bridges in the Canadian context” and despise Ezra Levant, whom they see as an impediment to their interfaith construction project) has quite the impressive C.V.:

Prof.  Imam Syed B. Soharwardy was born in a very highly respected religious family in Karachi, Pakistan. His father and Murshad (spiritual guide), Allama Syed Muhammad Riazuddin Soharwardy (May Allah shower His blessings upon him) was a great Islamic scholar and the Imam of a famous mosque in Karachi, Jamia Bughdadi Masjid, Martin Road, Karachi, where he established Dar-ul-Aloom Soharwardia. Syed B. Soharwardy's grandfather, Allama Syed Muhammad Jalaluddin Chishty (May Allah shower His blessings upon him) was the Grand Mufti of Kashmir (Baramula). Allama Jalaluddin Chishty later migrated to Amritser (India) where he served as the head of Dar-ul-Aloom Nizamiah Sirajiah and Imam of the Mosque.

Imam Soharwardy received his early Islamic education from his father in the traditional Islamic Madrasah at Bughdadi Masjid. Later, he graduated from Dar-ul-Aloom Soharwardia, Karachi. Mr. Soharwardy also earned Bachelor of Arts degree in Islamic Studies from University of Karachi. Beside his Islamic education, Mr. Soharwardy earned Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) from N.E.D. University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi, Master of Science in Management Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA and Master of Engineering in Project Management from University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. He is a certified Project Manager from Project Management Institute, USA

Syed Soharwardy was appointed as a teacher at Dar-ul-Aloom Soharwardia where he taught various subjects of Islamic studies. Later, he also served as an assistant Imam and Kahteeb at Jamia Bughdadi Masjid, Martin Road (1971- 1979).

Syed Soharwardy has lectured in Pakistan, USA and Saudi Arabia at various universities and institutes for over 12 years.

Prof. Soharwardy is the founder of Muslims Against Terrorism. He founded this organization in January 1999. He is also the founder and the national president of Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. He has authored several papers on Technology issues, Information Technology Management, Islamic beliefs, Challenges for Muslims in western world, conflicts within the Muslim community, Intra and Inter religion conflicts.  Mr. Soharwardy has addressed hundreds of gatherings in Pakistan, USA, UK and Canada on various topics of Islamic faith.  He is the head of the first ever Dar-ul-Aloom in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where he teaches Islamic studies. Prof. Soharwardy lectures in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, Brampton, Richmond Hill, Markham, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver on monthly basis.

Mr. Soharwardy is a strong advocate of Islamic Tasawuf and believes that the world will be a better place for everyone, if we follow what Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) has said, " You will not have faith unless you like for others what you like for yourself." He believes that the spiritual weakness in human causes all kinds of problems. Mr. Soharwardy can be contacted at Soharwardy@shaw.ca OR  Phone (403)-208-7148

An engineer (like Elmo and Atta) and a strong advocate of Islamic Tasawuf (a.k.a. Sufism)? Kewl. Now that we have his e-mail and phone number, maybe we should contact this professional, spiritual soul and urge him not to follow through on his threat to the bane of his and the CJC’s existence.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments (1)

Feel the love: In a review of Andrew Bostom’s recent book, Bruce C. Thornton gets at the “root cause” of Islamic Judenhass. From City Journal (my bolds):

…Islamic anti-Semitism begins, as do all things in Islam, with the Koran—the immutable, infallible, timeless words of Allah dictated to the Prophet—in which Jews are cursed with “abasement and humiliation” and are “deserving of Allah’s wrath” because they rejected Mohammed. Jews are further characterized as corrupt, treacherous rebels and infidels whose destiny is to be the enemy of the true believers. The debased status of Jews is communicated most starkly in the Koranic verse (5:60) referring to their transformation into “apes” or “apes and swine,” a motif repeated in the early Muslim biographies of Mohammed: just before he executed the adult males of the Banu Qurayza, a Medinan Jewish tribe, Mohammed called them “brothers of apes” or, in another version, “brothers of monkeys and pigs.” This odious phrase recurs repeatedly in Muslim writings right up to the present: in a 2002 radio broadcast, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir called for jihad against the Jews, “those apes, pigs, and worshipers of calves.” And Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning and theology, likewise has called Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs.” As the Tantawi example shows, such characterizations of Jews are not limited to fringe writers or marginalized extremists, as they are with present-day Christian anti-Semitism.

Further, Jew-hatred has been voiced over the centuries by the most respected theologians, jurists, and Koranic commentators, such as al-Tabari, Baydawi, and ibn Kathir. In the sixteenth century, the Moroccan sheikh al-Maghili’s voluminous diatribes against the Jews of the Touat oasis—“Love of the Prophet requires hatred of the Jews,” he wrote—culminated in a massacre of Touat’s Jews and the destruction of their synagogue. Closer to our own times, this tradition can be found in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and prolific Koranic commentator, who was the most important theorist for modern jihadists. Qutb linked his call for a fundamentalist return to Islam to the Jews, whose “wicked nature . . . is full of hatred for Islam,” and whose defeat would come about only at the hands of Muslims who “implement Islam completely in their lives.” And modern terrorists have accompanied their murders of Israelis with similar justifications that refer to the Koran and Koranic exegetes, as in a 1968 Cairo conference that called repeatedly for forcing the Jews to return to their proper status of permanent abasement, humiliation, and wretchedness.

Like the Koran, the deeds and sayings of Mohammed collected in the hadith justify Muslim hatred of Jews. Mohammed repeatedly defines the proper behavior of Muslims by contrasting it with the customs and practices of the Jews. In the hadith, Jews are treacherous, envious, and spiteful. They alter the sacred scriptures to remove references to Mohammed; cast evil spells on Muslims; poison Mohammed; and reject spitefully Mohammed’s revelation and status as “seal of the prophets.” This alleged Jewish hostility toward Muslims justifies Muslims’ obligation to subdue and humiliate Jews. A seventeenth-century Yemenite ruler, Imam al-Mahdi, desired to fulfill Mohammed’s deathbed charge, as recorded in a canonical hadith, that “two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs,” so he exiled the Jews of Yemen to the desolate plain of Tihama, destroying synagogues and desecrating Torah scrolls. Only 1,000 of the original 10,000 Jews survived the ordeal.

In traditional biographies of Mohammed, the Jews appear as rivals to the new faith who must be conquered and displaced in order for Islam to advance. According to the eighth-century biographer ibn Ishaq, the Jews of Medina harassed Mohammed “out of jealousy, envy, and malice because Allah Exalted had conferred distinction upon the Arabs by choosing him as His messenger.” In point of historical fact, the Medina to which Mohammed repaired after leaving Mecca was home to three Jewish tribes whose rejection of Mohammed impeded his ambitions and whose ridicule of his exegesis of Jewish scripture aroused in him something akin to Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence”—a humiliating reminder of how much of the Koran was plagiarized from Jewish sacred writings. What followed was a campaign of assassinations of Jewish poets and leaders—ibn Ishaq quotes the Prophet as saying, “Kill any Jew that falls into your power”—and raids on Jewish caravans. This escalating aggression culminated in an attack on the Banu Qaynuqa tribe, whose members were despoiled and expelled from Medina. Next was the turn of the Banu Nadir, who were also expelled, their property distributed to Muslims. The last tribe, the Banu Qurayza, held out for a while behind their fortifications; when they finally surrendered, 600 to 900 men were beheaded, their women and children were sold into slavery, and their possessions were distributed, again, to Muslims. Subsequent Islamic exegetes (Abu Yusuf and al-Mawardi, for example) pointed to the extinction of the Banu Qurayza as a model for Muslim treatment of infidels who stand in the way of Islam’s ambitions by refusing the call to convert.

Bostom links this tradition to Muslims’ later treatment of Jews in Palestine, Spain, Turkey, and Iran. The doctrine of jihad is crucial to the story, for it links the goal of conquest to the protocols for treatment of Jews and Christians, who as dhimmi must live at the sufferance of their Muslim overlords, subjected to humiliating restrictions on their lives and payment of a poll tax. Contrary to the apologists and their fantasies of ecumenical tolerance in historic Islamic states, Bostom’s history is filled with massacres, enslavement, dispossession, and plundering of Jews, all justified by the Koran and Mohammed’s own behavior. This pattern extends to the present. Yasser Arafat, for example, appeared to the West in the guise of a secular nationalist, but his “core ideology,” Bostom writes, “remained . . . rooted in jihad.” Thus Arafat wrote to the Ayatollah Khomeini, “I pray Allah to guide your step along the paths of faith and Holy War in Iran, continuing the combat until we arrive at the walls of Jerusalem.” After the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, which provided the Palestinians with a golden opportunity to realize their goal of an independent state—the presumed motive for their violence against Jews—Arafat said, “The jihad will continue.” And Hamas, of course, continues the long tradition of Jew-hatred and jihad today…

The above summary, as well as Bostom’s book, should be required reading for every Jew endeavouring to build bridges with Islamic supremacists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:48 | link | comments

A question:  Why was a propane facility allowed to move into a residential Toronto neigbourhood five years ago, with apparently little or no consultation with the locals?

Who on Earth thought that was a good idea?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:48 | link | comments

Extry, extry: UN remedies endemic, systemic  Judenhass; appoints Israeli Jew to exalted position. From Arutz Sheva:

(IsraelNN.com) For the first time in the history of the organization, the Postal Operations Council of the United Nations' Universal Postal Union elected the Israel Postal Service to serve on its professional decision-making body.

Israel has been a member of the Universal Postal Union since December 1949.

The Postal Operations Council makes decisions relating to international postal services, financial issues and setting standards in quality of service. Israel will serve on the council for four years.

According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the election of Israel to international organizations is virtually impossible due to the anti-Israeli atmosphere generally prevailing in the United Nations institutions. Thus, every vote won is the result of a complex process of bilateral negotiations in the multilateral context.

Itzhak Levanon, Israel's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said: "This is a significant achievement for Israel in the framework of UN institutions. We do not enjoy many such events, and this success leaves us hopeful for the future. I hope that this will herald further Israeli achievements at the UN institutions in Geneva."

Israel's election by almost 90 votes is the result of almost two years' work, and of cooperation between the Israel Foreign Ministry, the Israel Postal Company and the Ministry of Communications.

The 24th Congress of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) began in its home country of Switzerland July 23 and will conclude on Tuesday. More than 1,500 delegates representing the 191 member countries of the organization, as well as observers, are attending the sessions.

We’re supposed to be excited because Israel gets to have a say on the flipping “Postal Operations Council”? Get a grip, Jews. It’s not like they got rid of the UNRWA or gave us a say in the running of the UNHRC.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:32 | link | comments (1)

Sharia creep or sharia “reform”?: You be the judge. From the Asian News:

EXPERTS are divided about the impact of a proposed new Muslim marriage contract being launched today in London with the backing of Ann Cryer MP, that would, claims one, give recognition to shariah law.

The new contract, drafted by the Muslim Institute, launching at the City Circle, would provide women with written proof of their marriage under Islamic law.

But discrimination barrister Neil Addison says it would mean shariah law by the 'back door.'

‘With government members approving it, it gives pseudo-legitimacy to Islamic marriage and to shariah by the back door, without giving any real reason why this contract is necessary and what’s wrong with civil marriage.’

Up to now, Muslims, alone among all religious groups, do not register their religious buildings in order to perform marriages that conform to English law. The new contract encourages registration.

The nikah is not recognised by the British courts  and as s a result, Muslim women who face talaq – Muslim divorce - could be left with no financial redress and become outcast, suffering loss of honour, status and social and financial support.

Dr Ida Glaser, a Director of the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies, and an expert on women’s issues, told Lapido Media: ‘It can be an unbelievable nightmare, so what is proposed is absolutely revolutionary.

‘It’s advocating recognition of the woman’s role in marriage both in English and Islamic law. It’s a very, very egalitarian interpretation of Islamic law. It’s not outside of Islamic law, but it’s a much more modern interpretation of Islamic law and one to be greatly encouraged.’

MP Ann Cryer has also endorsed the contract, describing it as ‘an excellent piece of work’.

She said: ‘I feel confident in recommending its findings to women (and men) of the Muslim faith contemplating marriage. The advice contained will, I am sure, help thousands of young people.’

The contract is the work of Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Founder Director of the south London-based Muslim Institute, who since 1994 has been working to persuade leading Muslims in Britain including the Muslim Council of Britain and others to reform the written contract that forms the basis of the nikah.

He said: ‘Now they are realisng the need for this. I think partly they were living in their own ghettoes.

‘Many young people thought marriage through an imam was acceptable. Now if the marriage breaks down, it is only then that the woman realises she has lost everything.’

The reforms in the contract include:

·         removing the requirement for a ‘marriage guardian’ (wali) for the bride, who, as an adult, can make up her own mind about whom to marry.

·         enabling the wife to initiate divorce and retain all her financial rights agreed in the marriage contract.

·         forbidding polygamy whether formally or informally in the UK or abroad

·         encouraging mosques to register to perform marriages

Dr Siddiqui said the contract would bring Muslim marriages in Britain into line with positive developments in Muslim family law ‘across the Muslim world.’

Sounds like a step in the right direction—a way to “update” sharia, right?

Wrong (my bolds):

It did not however have the support of the salafist UK Islamic Shari’ah Council – or Muslims who are against shariah recognition of any kind…

The Shari’ah Council knows that “God’s law” is perfect, and it thus blasphemous for mere mortals to presume to tamper with it. Meanwhile, some non-believers point to different problems:

Other British lawyers were sceptical about the contract. Discrimination lawyer, Neil Addison author of Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law described it as ‘an encouragement to illegality.’

‘Though I can see that the intention behind this contract is good, it continues the unfortunate trend of separating Muslims from the general community in Britain.

‘The Contract will still permit Imams to perform Muslim Marriage ceremonies when the couple are not married in accordance with British Law; indeed the existence of such a ‘model’ contract endorsed, as this is, by lawyers and MPs gives the seal of approval for the continuation of marriage ceremonies which have no legal legitimacy under British law.

‘It is in fact an encouragement to illegality.’

He said Jews, Catholics, Sikhs, Hindus and Quakers all carried out marriage ceremonies in accordance with British law either by insisting that the couple had a civil ceremony before the religious ceremony, or by registering for marriages and incorporating the legal requirements for marriage into the religious ceremony.

‘Muslim organisations are the only religious group encouraging their members to ignore the British law of marriage, and that is harmful to Muslims because it deprives them of their legal rights under British law.

He added there was nothing in civil marriage that was contrary to Islam.

Aside from the niggling detail that it’s part of kafir law, not Allah’s, that is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:15 | link | comments

On second thought...: Alan Borovoy, civil liberties activist/attorney and one of the key architects of Canada's calamitous HRC system, is upset that his creation is now running amuck. 

How very Victor Frankenstein of him. In light of Borovy's "regrets," I thought this snippet from the Wikipedia entry about the famous monster's ambitious creator was intriguing:

It has been argued that Frankenstein himself is the monster, because of his savage rejection of the being he created. Although Victor has very few pangs of conscience regarding his duty towards the creature he brought to life, it is his undeserved neglect that causes the creature to turn to evil. In a moral, if not actual sense, it is indeed Victor who is the monster.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:44 | link | comments (2)

A poet worthy of his people: If there were such a position as Poet Laureate of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish would have filled it. Unfortunately for him there isn’t, and he’s dead. The Beeb, for one, is waxing poetic about the demise of this giant of Palestinian literature:

 Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has died after surgery at the age of 67, hospital and Palestinian officials say.

 

He suffered complications after undergoing open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas, said a spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Mr Darwish was the most recognised Palestinian poet in the world, using his words to try to draw attention to the Palestinian cause.

 

He also delivered harsh criticism of the infighting by Palestinian factions.

 

During a reading in 2007, Mr Darwish denounced the violence in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah, describing it as "a public attempt at suicide in the streets".

 

He said that the two warring factions had made the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state far more unlikely.

 

Poet of conscience

Mr Darwish is famous throughout the Middle East and is regarded as the Palestinian national poet.

 

He is said to have given voice to the Palestinian dreams of statehood, crafted their 1988 declaration of independence and helped to forge a Palestinian national identity.

 

"He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience," said Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi, quoted by AP news agency.

 

"He embodied the best in Palestinians... even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being."

 

His poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages, and he has won many international prizes for his work.

 

Here’s an example of it, a poem entitled “The Seige”:

 

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.

***
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory:
No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
In the darkness of cellars.

***
Here there is no "I".
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

***
On the verge of death, he says:
I have no trace left to lose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.
Soon I shall penetrate my life,
I shall be born free and parentless,
And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

***
You who stand in the doorway, come in,
Drink Arabic coffee with us
And you will sense that you are men like us
You who stand in the doorways of houses
Come out of our morningtimes,
We shall feel reassured to be
Men like you!

***
When the planes disappear, the white, white doves
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

***
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel
Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

***
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again…

It’s just so beeyootiful. No wonder he was so acclaimed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments

Supreme dreams: One of the pamphlets available for downloading on the Young Muslims of Canada site advises young‘uns on how best to respond to the Palestinian situation. Among the helpful hints (sentence bolded by me):

Make Dua (supplication) – pray for the Muslims who have died and are suffering. Pray for Allah to help the families of the deceased and those who are injured. Pray that those who have died are granted Jannah (Paradise). Pray for the Help of Allah so that Muslims may be victorious against the enemies of Islam all over the world. The Prophet (peace be upon him) told us that “none of you truly believes (is a Mumin) until he wishes for his brother/sister what he wishes for himself.” So include them in your prayers, and make Dua for them as you make for yourself, surely Allah will reward you and is sufficient for all of us.

 

“Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be the Paradise. They fight in Allah's Cause, so they kill (others) and are killed. It is a promise in truth which is binding on Him in the Torah and the Injeel and the Quran. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? Then rejoice in the bargain which you have concluded. That is the supreme success. (The believers are those) who repent to Allah, who worship Him, who praise Him, who go out in Allah's Cause, who bow down, who prostrate themselves, who enjoin (people) for Al-Maruf (all good) and forbid (people) from Al-Munkar (all evil and injustice), and who observe the limits set by Allah. And give glad tidings to the believers.” [9:111-112]

 

In other words, think globally but act locally against the uppity Jews of the Zionist entity in order to restore them to their proper place (i.e. on their knees, grovelling before their Islamic superiors or, barring that, dead and roiling in H-E-double hockey sticks).

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:25 | link | comments (2)

Iranian Olympic spirit: It’s right in line with the spirit of the Third Reich, as an Iranian swimmer refuses to get in the same pool as a Jew.

Guess he didn't want to come in contact with any of those dreaded Jew cooties.

Demonstration event at the 2012 Tehran Olympics: Jews hide behind Gharqad trees; sharp-shooters compete to see who can kill the most.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments (1)

The jihad heats up: Jihadis, er, Muslim "seperatists", are at it again in China. Just think--if they're able to "separate," that would boost the OIC (a.k.a. the Dar al-Islam) tally to 58.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:37 | link | comments

His own worst enemy: I sort of feel badly for Syed Soharwardy.  Here he’s gone to all the trouble to try to reposition himself—from Islamic supremacist/HRC complainant to gentle interfaith perambulator/peacenik—and he goes and blows his cover. Long a favourite with the Official Jews in his capacity as head of “Muslims Against Terrorism,” Syed  lost his cool and told Ezra Levant that he would “soon pay”—a threat he was foolish enough to make on Toronto radio.

Kind of makes the whole “Walking Man” thing seem rather pointless now, no?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:23 | link | comments

Explosions rock North Toronto: Shook us out of bed just before 4 a.m. (it sounded like a lightening bolt had scored a direct hit on the house.) Huge billow of smoke in the sky. Details still sketchy at this stage, but there's a report that a propane depot in the Keele and Wilson area has blown up.

Update: Photos of the explosion.

Update: "Large-scale evacuation"...

Update: More, from CP:

TORONTO - A series of explosions at a propane depot early Sunday forced police to evacuate a residential area in the city's northwest.

"It was just a tremendous explosion and blew all the windows out of the house, just blew the house up, and I just managed to get out of there in time," said Robert Helman, who lives across the street from the facility, which he identified as Sunrise Propane.

Helman, who was covered in cuts and bruises, said when he went outside, he saw a "huge fireball" followed by "multiple explosions."

He said when he ran a "wave of a heat" followed him.

The first explosion sounded like a loud thunderclap and could be heard at least seven kilometres away.

It was followed by a series of more muffled explosions.

Clouds of black smoke could be seen billowing hundreds of metres into the air.

An emergency worker with Bombardier, which has a facility in the area, said he saw houses on fire. The worker, who did not want to be identified, also said he saw propane tanks dropping from the sky.

Police brought in buses to take residents out of the area to the Yorkdale shopping centre southeast of the scene of the explosions. It was not immediately known how widespread the evacuation was or how many residents were involved.

Some people moved away from the danger zone were wearing masks because the air was foul.

It was unclear whether there were any casualties.

Scores of police and emergency vehicles were on the scene trying to keep people out of the danger zone.

Update: The Ceeb is hot on the trail of the story...of the Olympics.(Well, it did pay a heap o' cash for the TV rights.)

Update: Video of explosion.

Update: All hell breaks loose and nearly two hours later the Ceeb is still asleep.

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

Levant case makes waves abroad: The repercussions of the ABHRT dismissal are being felt as far afield as Old Blighty—and beyond. From the National Secular Society:

…In the light of this decision, and the controversy surrounding it, Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, has written to Trevor Philips of the UK’s own fledgling Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is currently considering its own future strategy.

Mr Porteous Wood has counselled strongly against the UK following the Canadian model and pointed out that this latest case should be seen as forming part of a wider and growing assault on freedom of expression by Muslim or Islamist bodies – depending on the definition employed. These bodies certainly include the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has been so successful curtailing freedom of expression in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) itself, as Keith can testify from personal experience.

Keith highly recommends this article as background, from Maclean’s magazine, which has itself been subjected to an assault by Islamists seeking to censor it.

Reference is made in the Maclean's article to the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s lonely and noble fight at the UNHRC, and the NGO speaker referred to is NSS life member Roy Brown, whose bravery and determination is a shining example to us all.

Keith Porteous Wood commented: “Ezra Levant should also be lauded for his single-minded determination to win, and congratulated for doing so. But Ezra Levant only did so by paying a huge personal price: financially (and without any compensation); emotionally; and the disintegration of his personal and professional life. I hope that our Canadian readers — and we know there are some very influential ones — will point to these examples and seek to change the law in Canada to prevent any repetitions.

“These victories should not however blind us to the massive and continuing threats to freedom of expression. The publicity fall out over the years from Ezra’s case, the murders in the Netherlands, the death threats over Rushdie, the Danish cartoons to name but a few examples, all conspire to create a growing climate of self-censorship that is so poisonous to those seeking to maintain (yes, we are on the defensive) an open democratic and fair society.

“And one of the greatest dangers to such a society is the OIC, pressing ever harder for defamation of religions legislation to be instituted worldwide, as mentioned in Newsline before. Such legislation would be much more far reaching than blasphemy law and could be expected to render religious bodies, doctrines and spokespeople, activities and misdeeds all-but immune from adverse comment.”

True enough. We must remind ourselves that what’s happening been in Canada is merely a local manifestation of a much larger global agenda intended to stifle free speech along with all our other freedoms.

Posted by: scaramouche at 00:29 | link | comments

And speaking of seething cauldrons of hatred…: The Toronto Sun’s Peter Worthington takes a look at the dissatisfied employees of the Ceeb:

If almost half of the CBC's 10,000 employees show signs of high-level psychological distress and job unhappiness, think of what we CBC listeners and viewers go through.

As reported by Sun Media, a "wellness" survey at the CBC shows massive job dissatisfaction, despite CBC employees getting better pay, better pensions, more job security than colleagues in private-sector media.

Some 33% of those participating even indicated they intended to quit their job -- but that's likely empty rhetoric, because they're unlikely to get as good a deal on the competitive job market these days. Especially media jobs.

Poor dears, some 12% of CBC types said they were treated rudely and meanly by fellow employees and their bosses. Some even were "hated" and got death threats. Their only recourse was to take sick days.

Unhappy campers indeed. Try taking too many sick days in the private sector when you're not really sick, and see how long you last.

The survey is enlightening as it is startling, because the CBC is sort of socialism personified.

Job satisfaction is low because there is no accountability.

Public taste or preference is irrelevant at the CBC, which does its own thing without regard to what the public wants.

The Mother Corp. knows best. It forcefeeds listeners and viewers with what it thinks they deserve. If the public doesn't like it, let them write letters or phone Rex Murphy on CBC Radio Sunday afternoons.

That's quintessential socialism.

Bitching by those who work in the media tends to be a normal fact of life. But in the private sector, unhappiness is more often related to being unable to do the job in a way that the individual finds rewarding.

In the newspaper business, it's tradition for reporters to grumble if their story is spiked: "Damn editors wouldn't know a good story if it jumped up and bit them on the butt," is the refrain. When editors play the story big, the reporter praises their judgment.

At the CBC, no one gives a hoot. They live on public money -- money the rest of us pay in taxes. The job satisfaction ratio has to be low when it's only the bosses and not the public who need to be pleased...

Now we know why Avi Lewis and the rest were so eager to decamp to that placid workplace, al Jazeera.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:01 | link | comments

No clue: As you’ll recall, Ontarians gave a mega-thumbs down to the idea of paying for any more religious schools in the province—an idea brought to the fore by the Jewstablishment and foolishly picked up by the Conservatives, who lost the last election, big time, as a direct result. But since the ‘stablisment can’t seem to let go any of its bad ideas—hullo, thought police—it’s still running with that deflated football. Here are two members of the team in a recent letter to the Toronto Star:

Religious school funding deserves a full, public debate, Comment Aug. 4

While we welcome Michael Prue's initiative in opening a full debate on the funding of faith-based schools in Ontario, we reject his suggestion that there are only two options - fund every religious school or fund none of them. That is a gross simplification of a complex issue.

The fact that different provinces have pursued a variety of options is ample proof that the issue of school funding is hardly black and white. In other parts of Canada we see cultural schools that teach traditional values without manifestly religious practices, cash subsidies for private day school tuition and faith-based schools that are part of the local public or Catholic board. There's plenty from which to choose.

Why not start by consulting with Ontario's faith communities and the organizations which represent them? Mr. Prue might find that these communities have important ideas on how they can contribute to the overall quality of education in Ontario in a fiscally responsible way. We remain committed to a solution that is respectful of the diversity of all communities and the needs of all students and will work with all parties to achieve this end.

Len Rudner, Canadian Jewish Congress, and Ted Sokolsky, Ontario UJA Federation of Greater Toronto

Why not start by consulting with Ontario’s faith communities? Let me spell it out for you,, fellahs. There’s no point in consulting with anyone at the moment because people in Ontario don’t want to fund madrassahs.

Mind you, I’m sure that’s because Ontario is a seething cauldron of hatred, and not because people are uncomfortable with the type of instruction the students in such schools receive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:16 | link | comments

"Free speech" in Bangladesh: There isn't any, which is why a journalist there is on trial and facing a death sentence for the "crime" of advocatiing closer ties with Israel.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:31 | link | comments

Blind, batty Babsy embraces sharia: Here’s another “gem” retrieved from the interior of my “Combating Hatred” binder—Barbara Hall’s truly terrifying explication of “human rights” that appeared in the Globe and Mail in October, '07 (scroll down to #11 in the link to read it all; my emphasis):

The values embodied in human-rights laws hold a special place in the minds of Canadians, who believe that tolerance, mutual respect, and diversity are fundamental to the nature and success of this country.

Looking at some of the recent debate in Ontario about funding for religious schools and the ongoing consultation in Quebec on reasonable accommodation, I believe that this is a time to remember and promote those values. It is certainly not time to turn away from them.

There has been recurring public discussion about the relationship between human rights and religious faith. Many religions include detailed codes of conduct prescribing what followers can eat and wear, for example. In an ever more diverse society, we will inevitably face challenging questions. What is the role of religion in the public sphere? Are there limits to accommodation? And how can we reconcile the sometimes competing demands of various groups?

Sadly, I believe that some of the recent public discussion has been motivated by stereotypes, discriminatory attitudes and fear of the unknown. Prejudices and stereotypes should never be the basis for making fundamental changes to human-rights laws. There are real and legitimate issues at stake, but we must remember that it is dangerous to react in haste on the basis of fear and anger. It is sobering to remember that the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians and the establishment of residential schools for native Canadians were perceived as necessary actions in their time. In seeking solutions, it is important to remember, on the one hand, the real, serious and ongoing oppression and marginalization experienced by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. There are deeply felt concerns that hard-won advances towards equality could be reversed, and that discrimination against these groups could be legitimized. On the other hand, it is equally important to recognize the very difficult experiences of many faith-based communities in Canada, and particularly those of the Muslim community, which since Sept. 11, 2001, has suffered from high levels of open and covert hatred, fear and discrimination.

Human-rights laws exist to protect us all equally from discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, creed, race and other grounds, and these protections remain vital.

Some have suggested that the tension between religious rights and other rights can be resolved by creating a formal, legal hierarchy of rights, with religious rights subordinated to the rights of others. This would be a mistake. I think a better approach is to recognize that all rights are equally important, and that a balancing of rights may be necessary in some circumstances. To adopt a hierarchy of rights would certainly be a radical departure from fundamental international human-rights principles, which have recognized individual rights as indivisible and interdependent.

If I read her correctly, she’s making a pitch for sharia to be accorded equal weight under Canadian law. No wonder she’s the darling of Canadian Islamists from coast to coast. She’s their kind of gal: a useful idiot in a powerful position who has absolutely no awareness of how she’s helping them advance their agenda. When her term of office as head of the Ontario wing of the Inquisition comes up for renewal this fall, I suggest we point that out to those who might otherwise be so foolish as to allow her to continue.

As for those “fundamental international human-rights principles,” apparently Babsy hasn’t heard that the OIC hews to some other “fundamental principles,” ones inimical to the ones she’s referencing.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:08 | link | comments

Adios, Espana: I was thinking of going to Spain. Think I’ll have to think again since it’s doing its utmost to help facilitate the final Final Solution. From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel is battling hard to overturn a Spanish court's decision to issue arrest warrants against six current and former politicians and senior military officials, a source in the Attorney-General's Office told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Late last month, Audiencia Nacional, the National Court of Spain (the highest Spanish judicial council), issued arrest warrants against the six - Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Doron Almog, Moshe Ya'alon, Dan Halutz, Giora Eiland and Mike Herzog - accepting a petition from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that suggested they were guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002.

At that time, Ben-Eliezer was serving as defense minister; Ya'alon was IDF chief of General Staff; Eiland headed the National Security Council; Halutz was commander of the IAF, Almog was OC Southern Command and Herzog was a senior Defense Ministry official.

The plaintiffs claimed that Ben-Eliezer personally oversaw the killing of Hamas commander Salah Shehadeh, a Palestinian terror chief who was responsible for killing of dozens of Israelis, in which 14 civilians also died. Israel subsequently apologized for the civilian deaths.

The Foreign Ministry has said only that the matter is being taken care of. However, the Post has learned from a source in the Attorney-General's Office that active negotiations between Madrid and Jerusalem were taking place to overturn the warrants.

This is not the first time that PCHR has filed suit against high-ranking Israeli military commanders, but if the court's decision is not reversed it will set a disturbing precedent in international law, said Ofer Zalzberg, co-chairman of YIFC (Young Israeli Forum for Cooperation), an organization that promotes relations between Israel and the European Union.

Zalzberg recalled a 2005 incident in which Almog, travelling to London to raise funds for handicapped children, stayed in his plane upon arrival in London rather than risk arrest. Shortly thereafter, a British warrant for his arrest was revoked.

"This time," Zalzberg said, "we are talking about several people and a very significant and drastic step. It might also cause a shower of law suits from various groups and individuals in Europe against various Israeli officials."

Almog told the Post that he believes the warrants issued against him, first by the British and now by Spanish courts, are not directed at him personally, but at Israel and its right to defend itself.

"Some elements with very clear motives and intentions use these lawsuits as a weapon against Israel. The combat between Israel and terrorists continues on different scenes, and the legal scene is just one of them," he said. "I don't think the decision of the Spanish court indicates a crisis in Israel-EU relations, but it seems that these elements exploit the law in these countries to act against the State of Israel."…

Feed that crocodile, Spaniards. You’re still going to end up as one of the ingedients in its tasty paella.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:51 | link | comments

If at first you don't succeed, sue the P.M.: Since releasing the video of poor Omar being "harassed" by a nasty CSIS official weren't enough to get him sprung from Gitmo, his lawyers have come up with another tactic. He is now "suing" Stephen Harper, demanding "repatriation". (The word is in scare quotes because, although he was born in Canada, Omar has never lived here, which makes the idea of "repatriating" him to what is essentially a strange country for which he and his family feel absolutely no patriotism rather absurb.)

Why stop there? If they can make Omar's ordeal sound sufficiently horrific, maybe his lawyers can squeeze the government for multi-millions in compensation, a la that other torture victim, Maher Arar.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:33 | link | comments

Why we need the Conservatives to stay in power: We need Conservatives in office so they can get rid of preposterous efforts like PromArt, a government-funded “cultural” program that doled out mucho dinero so that leftists could hobnob with other leftists in exotic settings on the taxpayers’ tab. The National Post details—and slams—the lunacy:

The majority of the grants awarded under the federal government's $4.7-million PromArt program -- which was cut by the Conservatives on Friday -- were tiny and uncontroversial: $1,000 to an independent filmmaker to show his short documentary at a European film festival; $750 to a novelist to read excerpts from her book at a store in New York City; $2,000 to help an Aboriginal artist transport some of his works to an exhibition in New Zealand. Most of the awards wouldn't raise the eyebrow of the average Canadian.

But some would absolutely curl their hair.

Why, for instance, is it the duty of Canadian taxpayers to fly left-wing anti-war journalist Gwynne Dyer -- who is a resident of Britain-- to Cuba to hobnob with that country's opinion leaders and give them a "greater awareness and appreciation of Canadian foreign policy, values and models"?

Camilla Gibb, the novelist -- who, like Mr. Dyer, lives in London -- was given $10,000 last year "to travel to the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to participate in public diplomacy activities in support of Canada's dialogue with Muslim communities." Again:Why?

Barbara Willis Sweete of Rhombus Media received $2,000 from the program to allow her "to present her production Five Days in September -- The Rebirth of an Orchestra at the 2006 Sydney Film Festival in Australia." That seems OK. But why should ordinary working Canadians give former CBC activist Avi Lewis, who now has brought his anti-American schtick to al Jazeera, $5,000 to attend film festivals in Australia and Argentina? Why should they underwrite his jet-setting travels when they are having trouble saving up a few hundred dollars for a summer camping vacation of their own?

Alexander Mair was given $4,200 "to participate in seminars in Helsinki, Finland and Trondheim, Norway on cultural exportation in the sound recording industry." If he wants to fly thousands of miles to hear a Finnish academic drone on about business models for alternative rock bands, so be it. But PromArt paid for several other Canadians to attend the same seminars, then added several thousand more dollars to subsidize the conference itself.

Many of the recipients weren't even Canadian and had very little connection to Canada. A group called Peru 2021, for instance, received nearly $30,000 from Canadian taxpayers "to organize a one-day conference on corporate social responsibility," while nearly $44,000 was doled out to the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency to "host a two-day conference on Pakistan's national Elections in 2007 and possible political scenarios for the region."…

B-b-b-but it’s important for us Canadians to support Peruvians and Pakistanis. Isn’t that what being multishmulti is all about?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:01 | link | comments

Drop the blankie, boys: George Jonas—scathing, blistering—explains why Tammy, Frank and Leo can’t keep their security blankie (because its retention means that the officious, nit-witted commissars get to continue sitting in judgement over us):

…Whoa, just a sec! Hatred? Excuse me, but what is hatred? The Muslim complainants thought that what Levant and Steyn published or wrote was hatred.…

Oh, complainants, what do they know? Entre nous, they're just a bunch of Jews, Muslims, homosexuals.  We're officials. We know. Anyone above the rank of obergruppenfuhrer at the Federal or Provincial Human Rights Commissions knows. We're trained to tell the good cholesterol "offensiveness" from the bad cholesterol "hate." It's a skill you acquire in human-rights school.  You sit for an exam and get a framed diploma for the wall.

We, by the Grace of Progress, the Referees of Democracy, the Linespersons of Constitutional Rights, the Arbitrators of the Limits of Free Speech, the Omnipotent State, Greetings: Know by this Present that Chief Human Rights Commissioner Jennifer Lynch, Q. C., being able to Smell Odium from Two Miles Upwind, has been Admitted to the Order of Big Nurses and is Qualified and Authorized to Draw A Line for Writers, Dead or Alive, Including but Without Being Limited to, Homer, Aristophanes, Mark Steyn, Stephen Leacock, Alexander Solzhenityn …

Sorry. Got carried away there. Attribute it to age and experience…

Also to having a clue, unlike Tammy and the rest of the blankie boychiks.

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

“Hatred” warriors: I was dipping into my binder from the COMBATING HATRED IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Conference last night—the first time I’ve done so since the event was held last November. (The theme of the conference, an all day fête put on for the anti-hate community by the legal industry that has nurtured and sustained it for so long, said it all: “BALANCING RIGHTS, FREEDOMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES”.) The binder is a treasure trove of “human rights” mishegas which, like the conference, casts a very wide net for “hatred” and, not surprisingly, catches a lot of fish. What do the anti-“hate”warriors consider to be “hatred”?  Apparently, it’s what’s experienced by a Muslim at a homeless shelter when pork shows up on the lunch menu. It’s society’s exclusion of the “Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered/(Two-Spirited)/Intersexed community.” (My knowledge of alternate sexuality only goes so far. Up to “Transgendered” I get. But“Two-Spirited” and “Intersexed”?  Is that the fancy p.c. locution for, er, hermaphrodites?) It’s what a “differently-abled” person faces when a location is insufficiently accessible.

In other words, “hatred” is everywhere and can be experienced by everyone—unless, of course, you happen to be white and Christian. If you are, and people hate you because of it, well, sir, you’re just plum out of luck.

One of the items in the binder was written by that former confabulator for a skeevy supermarket tab who now writes for the Calgary Herald. Yesterday the women weighed in on l’affaire Levant, pretty much accusing Ezra of being the architect of his own misfortune. Par for the course. Back in 2007—the binder inclusion—she insisted http://www.montrealmuslims.ca/module-pagesetter-viewpub-tid-7-pid-1982.html  “It’s us who created the xenophobia”:

If an us versus them mentality is growing in Canada towards minorities, it's us who created it, not them. The xenophobia marinating in that slimy little euphemism of "reasonable accommodation" which originated in Quebec, is a symptom of what's wrong with our mindset, not theirs.

 

Fifteen or 20 years ago, the idea arose that minorities were offended by Christmas and other overt displays of majority Canadian culture. This did not come from minority Canadians, but from self-proclaimed progressive middle-class whites. These people thought it was the height of liberalism to declare their own cultural and religious traditions offensive to others and to fight to have those traditions hidden away, much as the Victorians covered the legs on their pianos in the cause of prudery. Schools rushed to rip down Remembrance Day displays of white crosses.

Christmas was relabelled a "winter festival," venomous battles were fought over public displays of creches featuring -- ironically -- the infant who grew up to be the ultimate preacher of brotherly love, and spruce trees festooned with glass balls, tinsel and angels were renamed holiday season trees.

In all that time, no member of a minority was quoted as claiming to be offended by any majority Canadian ritual. In fact, people who said they were Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims wrote letters to the editor stating that not only were they bewildered that all this was being done on their behalf, but that they didn't mind being wished a Merry Christmas and always returned the greeting. (A few years back, when I received a Christmas card from Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai, I could joke with colleagues that when a Hindu MP sends a Jewish person Christmas greetings, we have reached the acme of multiculturalism).

The same crusaders who misread Pierre Trudeau's vision of multiculturalism, and who thought it meant that minority traditions had to be elevated at the expense of their own squelched one, enthusiastically organized festivals for other cultures and prattled ceaselessly about "tolerance." Until one day, in this post-9/11 era, the sight of a peasant skirt whirling in a folk dance at a festival began to take on sinister connotations. Just how much were we going to put up with from these people?

So we began zeroing in on the very traditions we had once avidly promoted. A woman wearing a head scarf was suddenly no longer a proud Muslim enjoying the freedom of religion this country offered her, but an oppressed soul to be liberated. She must be stripped of this symbol of oppression by others who, treating her in the same white-man-knows-what's-best-for-you manner, once scorned as the domain of right-wing bigots, took it upon themselves to decide what was best for her.

What has surfaced here in Canada since 9/11, and what has led to the ominous talk about "reasonable accommodation," is a variation on the same xenophobic theme that saw Japanese- and Ukrainian-Canadians carted off to internment camps during the two world wars.

It's fear, pure and simple. Fear of The Other is spawned when someone of a certain religion, skin colour or culture commits some heinous and hostile act.

Then, heretofore "tolerant" folks in Canada begin looking askance at their fellow citizens of that religion, colour or culture. Ignorance -- the kind of ignorance that sees a Muslim who fled persecution and mass murder in Srebrenica as no different from a Muslim with links to al-Qaeda -- feeds that fear of The Other…

 

“Fear of The Other is spawned by a minorities’ heinuous and hostile act”? Nuh-uh. Millennia of Jew-hatred have had absolutely nothing to do with anything the Jews have done but, rather, with who the Jews are—i.e. the folks who got in on the ground floor of monotheism, and who thus had to be discredited and often liquidated by successive (and often insecure) monotheists seeking to validate their own doctrines. “The Jews” did not, as did Mo Atta and his crew of virginizers, hurl large airliners full of passengers into American landmarks, thereby spawning quite legitimate “fears” that other Muslims, gripped by a similar passion for Allah and death, might be inclined to act out in a similar way.

The tabloid-trainee—clearly clueless and profoundly ignorant about history—mistakes irrational hatred of “The Other” with valid concerns about people who pose an actual threat to us and our way of life, i.e. those who are doing their level best, both through violence and non-violently, to make inroads for sharia. That, madam, is the reality of life in the Twenty-First Century, but it requires a paradigm shift (an expression I loathe)—away from the model that sees every minority as being a “victim” of prejudice and stereotyping to a new awareness that some (though by no means all) Muslims are working day and night to ensure sharia’s primacy—to grasp it. And since the anti-hate biz is in love with its current paradigm which, after all, is its bread and butter, don't expect a shift to come any time soon, or, indeed, ever.

Given this woman’s breathtaking ignorance there’s only one thing left to do: give her a seat on the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Better yet, with her qualifications she deserves to be the chief!

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

The Globe’s S.O.S.: In an editorial that will likely not sit well with its in-house Islamists and Lefties (Rami  Khouri, Sheema Khan, Rick Salutin, etc.) the Glib and Mewl, er, Globe and Muslim, er, Canada’s newspaper of record calls for the repeal of the nation’s Draconian “freedom from speech” provisions:

The dismissal of a human-rights complaint by a Muslim group against the Western Standard magazine is a good development in the series of such proceedings across the country. Even so, human-rights commissions should not be in a position to pass judgment on whether media reports and commentary are "likely to expose a class of persons to hatred or contempt," as the Alberta statute in question puts it, much as its several equivalents do elsewhere in Canada.

Controversy over the role of Islam in world politics is looming over the age-old debate on freedom of speech and its limits. In this case, the Western Standard had republished the Danish cartoons of 2005 depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a symbol of militant Islamism.

The complaint was made in May, 2006, and dragged on far too long. But Alberta is rather better off with its human-rights legislation than some other provinces; an ambiguous nod to freedom of expression has been fairly interpreted as an "admonition to balance."

The Alberta Human Rights Commission's investigator, who recommended against sending the complaint on to a panel for a hearing, took into account that admonition, observing that the Danish cartoons were newsworthy and a matter of public concern, and that the Western Standard had published them with commentary, and then showed some balance by publishing letters of varied opinions on this subject.

These considerations are healthy, since other human-rights statutes in Canada are lacking in protections for news reporting and fair comment, a point that was vigorously raised in the defence against a similar complaint against Maclean's magazine at the B.C. Human Rights Commission - a case in which judgment has been reserved since June.

Both the Alberta and the federal commissions in the recent sequence of complaints have rightly cited a Supreme Court of Canada judgment which held that, to comply with the Charter, the hate-speech sections of human-rights would have to aim only at genuinely virulent hatred.

In the end, though, human-rights commissions should advise their respective legislatures to repeal these dangerously vague sections, so that those who exercise the freedom of speech and press are no longer harassed by such complaints.

In the end, though, it’s not enough to repeal Section 13 and its provincial and territorial equivalents; the entire cockamamie apparatus must be torn down. But, realizing that the nation is so heavily invested in its Inquisitions, and thus likely incapable of bidding them adieu all at once, stripping them of their power to censor us is a good—and essential—first step. Alas, expecting them to ask "their respective legistlatures to repeal these dangerously vague sections" is, well, ridiculous; nobody gives up that kind of power willingly and without a fight.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:18 | link | comments

Clueless in Calgary: Former writer for skeevy supermarket tab the National Examiner (current gig: Calgary Herald columnist) accuses Ezra Levant of dragging out the punishing 900-day HRC "investigation" that ultimately resulted in the second 'toon case being tossed out. She also thinks HRCs are doing a bang up job, and contends there's no need to overhaul them since the system has plenty of "checks and balances" built into it.

Whatever the Herald is paying this women her "insights," clearly, it's far too much.

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

Faster. Higher. Stronger. (Cough. Sputter. Choke): What would a Smoglympics be without athletes sporting festive face masks during opening ceremonies? Under the circumstances, maybe they should give out medals for such new events as “highest lung capacity” and “strongest respiration”.

Update: Anyone else creeped out by the opening ceremonies--the totalitarian aspect of the spectacle, I mean? Sure it's exquisite. Certainly it's breathtaking. But the sight of hundreds (thousands?) of anonymous moving parts in one ginormous printing press, for example, or drummers as far as the eye can see filling the entire TV screen, all banging away in lock step precision, or soldiers in dress uniforms unfurling the flag and then doing that ever-popular, all-too-familiar fascist goose step whilst those in attendance sing the national anthem and raise their arms in a modified Hitler salute--sorry, it's all a bit too Leni Riefenstahl for my taste.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:07 | link | comments (3)

Winners and losers: On Reason magazine’s HIT & RUN blog, Jacob Sullum explains who really won when the Alberta Human Rights Commission dismissed the second ‘toon complaint against Ezra Levant:

…Yasmeen Nizam, a director of the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities, which brought the complaint, told the National Post:

We thought this was a good way to bring our concerns to the attention of the public. Obviously we didn't want this to continue, so [another goal was] perhaps to discourage people from further maligning our prophet and our religion... We wanted this to have a deterrent effect.

Presumably the "this" she does not want to continue is speech that offends Muslims, and she may get her wish. Even without a hearing or a formal penalty, this sort of investigation, which costs the target time, effort, and money, is indeed apt to "have a deterrent effect." 

In Canada, as in Saudi Arabia, we don’t have freedom of speech; we have "freedom"  from speech. Under such a system, most people become used to censoring themselves, so they’ll never have to tangle with the state’s Torquemadas: Just knowing the censors are there is usually enough to make you hold your tongue.

Update: Syed Rahman of Edmonton, a gentleman whose name has become familiar to regular readers of the National Post's letters to the editor, lauds Canada's "freedom" from speech system (my bolds 'n' italics):

We are very fortunate to be living in a society that values freedom of speech. But thank God there are also laws that protect people and religions from being vilified by individuals or groups of people who let their actions be governed by the twisted state of their minds. To publish very distorted cartoons of Muhammad in the name of freedom of expression serves no other purpose than to hurt the feelings of Muslims and to incite them to retaliate.

Mr. Levant should be thankful that the complaint launched against him was dismissed. Rather than mending his ways by contributing to Canadian society, he now rants about how badly he's been treated and how unfair the system is, making him look more like a high school bully than a respectable journalist.

If he believes freedom of speech gives him the right to hurt, insult and demean anybody, he should also remember there is a system in place that prevents these things from happening.

Kind of impossible to forget such a thing, Syed, now that Mark Steyn and Ezra have awakened us to the awful truth about the unfair system--which is why so many people want these "loud mouths" to shut up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:47 | link | comments

Cry babe: The lawyer defending one of the alleged fertilizer-of-peace bombers says his client never had any intention of engaging in actual violent acts. How could he, when he was a mere “babe in the woods”? From the Toronto Sun:

BRAMPTON -- A young man was more a babe in the woods than a terrorist plotting mayhem in Canada, a trial heard yesterday.

Defence counsel Mitchell Chernovsky described his client as "naive" and "not street smart" about terrorist activities that were a "jihadi fantasy" of the group's leader.

The court has heard the accused attended two camps that are alleged to have provided terrorist training to several young men in rural areas near Washago in December 2005 and outside of Guelph in May 2006.

But Chernovsky argued there is nothing to indicate his client, who was 17 at the time, knew anything about any grand plots to explode bombs on Parliament Hill or blow up RCMP or CSIS headquarters.

"(The leader) made an extreme effort to keep them in the dark, keep them on the down low," Chernovsky told Superior Court Justice John Sproat in his closing argument. "They deliberately kept him out of the loop." …

I hope the Crown points out that the “babe in the woods” argument doesn’t really work for alleged jihadis, since these “babes,” being immature and impressionable, are often the ones who are most easily persuaded to strap on a bomb and martyr themselves for Allah (thinking that the payoff is going to be endless sex with hot, heavenly chicks—a horny male "babe's" dream come true). In our day, alas, the woods are strewn with the bodies of self-detonated “babes” and their victims.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:05 | link | comments

Bleeding for Darfur; turning a blind eye to the humungous problems at home: Two of the Canadian Jewish organizations which are doing Jews and other Canadians a grave disservice by continuing to champion anti-free speech laws and Canada’s anti-democratic quasi-judicial system (which is wholly rotten) have come to the aid not of Jews, not of Canadians, but of folks in “war-torn” Darfur. From Reuters:

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) and B'nai Brith Canada announced today that the two organizations have come together to support a shipment of medicines valued at $338,400 to Sudan's war-torn Darfur.

 

 The medicines were delivered to Darfur this month to meet the urgent

medical needs of refugees in camps across Darfur. This humanitarian

initiative is in response to the deteriorating situation on the ground

and the growing need for basic medical supplies by the population of the war-torn region. The conflict in Darfur has left more than 200,000 dead from violence and disease, and as many as 2.5 million people displaced.

 

 "No one must turn a blind eye to the atrocities occurring in Darfur,"

said Walter Arbib, member of the FSWC and B'nai Brith Canada Boards of Governors. "We are proud to do our part in coming to the aid of those in need in this war-torn region and provide basic medical supplies vital to their ongoing survival."

 

"While 'never again' was supposed to be the watchword and lesson learned from the Holocaust, genocide and ethnic cleansing continues unabated in Darfur," said Avi Benlolo, President and CEO of FSWC. "At FSWC we support projects that promote tolerance, justice and human rights, and hope that by taking action and leading by example, we can encourage other organizations to do the same."…

Orders of Canada and Nobel Frikkin’ Peace Prizes all around for the benevolent Jews. Would that their determination to “lead by example” entailed their getting a clue and cleaning up the mess they created in their own backyard.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:54 | link | comments

Angry Muslim: He's angry about being labelled angry by another Muslim.

I can see his point. After all, wasn't it only yesterday that Palestinian journalist Rami Khouri explained to Globe and Mail readers that those responsible for Arab rage aren't the Arabs, but the Jews?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

Another Khadr heard from: Omar's big bro Abdullah wants out on bail. Abdullah has been in slammer, awaiting trial on a number of jihad-related charges, since mid-December 2005. An Islamic centre has vouched for the lad, offered him gainful employment, and is hoping he'll be able to wear one of those ankle-thingys at his grandfolks' abode (since, clearly, pushing for him to return to the loving arms of his Taliban mere et soeur is a non-starter) while awaiting his day in court.

What are the odds that Abdullah will get to embark on some light janitorial duties at imam Aly Hindy's Salaheddin Centre? I put them at zilch to nil.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:52 | link | comments

Sifting through the ashes of the Levant dismissal: The second—and final—HRC ‘toon complaint against Ezra Levant has flamed out. For a number of reasons, Ezra’s not so thrilled about it. He doesn’t believe the commissar involved  has any right to sit in judgement over his words and deeds. He knows that, for the target of an HRC complaint, the seemingly interminable process is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment—and he’s been punished plenty. He sees it as a sign that these HRCs are feeling the heat of public scrutiny in this highest of high profile cases, and that, structurally at least,nothing whatsoever has changed.

You got that right, Ezra. In fact, the Calgary Herald quotes two fans of the anti-hate industry who see the dismissal as vindication for the system as it is. The first,

Kathleen Mahoney, a law professor who specializes in human rights issues at the University of Calgary, said the decision is an example of the system working as it should, arguing that human rights commissions are a vital part of a free and democratic society.

"Freedom of speech is not absolute," said Mahoney. "There's nothing absolute. We have to balance freedom of expression with other people's freedom from speech. Otherwise, we'd have absolutism running roughshod over other people's freedoms."

Americans have the first amendment enshrining an individual’s right to free speech; Canadians have a court-decreed loophole in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrining a group’s right to “freedom from speech.” Which is why Americans still have free speech and Canadians, alas, do not.

The second anti-hate fan,

David Taras, a U of C professor writing a book on the media in Canada, said he doesn't believe human rights commissions are jeopardizing the ability of news outlets to publish controversial stories and images.

"We have an extraordinary amount of freedom in the country," said Taras. "People in Quebec can openly advocate for Quebec to leave the country. The boundaries are very wide.

"There is the traditional media, but there is also the blogosphere and this thing called the Internet, which Canadians participate in in the millions. There's a lot of freedom in Canada."

Not if  Leo, Frank and Tammy have anything to say about it. They and other anti-hate types are engaged in a quixotic quest to corral the blogosphere and banish the hate.

So what does this latest dismissal bode for the future of the anti-hate industry? Well, it’s looking more and more like the BCHRT, currently deliberating the complaint against Maclean’s and Mark Steyn, will take a page from their confreres in Alberta, Ontario and Ottawa, and fight its natural inclination to punish the defendent. For the moment, anyway, complaints by Muslims about “hate speech” in the media are going nowhere fast, and those so inclined to curtail any and all criticism of what they see as unassailable will have to find another way to compel people to shut up. But does that mean that the Jewstablishment will still be able to run to the commissars when they espy a swastika on a White Power website or in a loo? Hard to see how they’ll be able to do so with the same regularity, since Muslims, seeing complaints by other Muslims being shot down, will decry the “double standard” that allows Jews, but not Muslims, to seek redress for “hate speech.”

As for the system as a whole, clearly, it’s still reeling from all the exposure, and hoping desperately to retreat back into the shadows so it can continue its business as usual—i.e. hassling businesses, making ridiculous rulings, sucking up vast quantities from the public trough, and operating as a de facto Marxist (and therefore subversive) entity within the Canada’s democratic body politic. There’s no going back to its former obscurity, though. Too many of us have now spotted the beast in its lair, and, knowing how dangerous it is, are determined to engage it in what will undoubtedly be a battle to the death—it’s, or ours.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:22 | link | comments (1)

The Globe and Muslim: Yesterday, we had Palestinian journalist Rami Khouri railing about how Israel is “a Zionist foe whose predatory territorial aims are anchored in the ugly soil of 19^th Century imperialism and colonialism”; today, we get CAIR-CAN founder Sheema Khan whinging about how Canada has “two-tier citizenship” since Prime Minister Stephen Harper got a white chick, Brenda Martin, sprung from a Mexican jail but won’t do the same for little Omar in Gitmo or a guy named Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan: Don’t look now, but the Ed Greenspon-helmed Globe and Mail seems to have turned into Elmo’s wet dream. Here’s a bit of Sheema, having a good old wallow in fetid swamp of victimhood:

…Furthermore, the contrast between the government's treatment of Mr. Khadr and Mr. Abdelrazik with that of Brenda Martin leave many wondering about the existence of two-tiered citizenship. Or, as Mr. Abdelrazik explained his detention: "The Canadian government has a racist mind. It is because I am black and Muslim."

Conservative supporters will counter with the federal government's stand on Huseyin Celil, a Canadian Muslim imprisoned in China. But this has more to do with the governing party's dislike of Beijing. If the Conservatives acted on principle, rather than politics, they would not distinguish among Mr. Celil, Mr. Khadr and Mr. Abdelrazik, and safeguard their human rights equally.

The spectre of discrimination was also raised last year in an open letter to Mr. Harper by Joe Clark, Lloyd Axworthy, Flora MacDonald, Bill Graham, John Manley and Pierre Pettigrew, who wrote: "The quest for genuine human security must be rooted in international human-rights standards: basic and hard-won standards for the just treatment of all people, everywhere, all the time and under all circumstances - no exceptions. This is especially true in times of danger and public anxiety when governments use so-called 'necessity' to justify the abuse of some people, often those who are already the targets of discrimination." We should uphold these noble principles by also demanding the just treatment of Mohamed el-Attar, an Egyptian-Canadian imprisoned in Egypt on espionage charges. Mr. El-Attar claims he was tortured into providing a confession.

Exacerbation of racism at times of public anxiety is not new. Our own history is replete with episodes of abuses in which the collective rights of identifiable groups were trampled in the name of security. During both world wars, the government interned Canadians of various ethnicities. With the operation of the War Measures Act, hundreds of innocent Quebeckers were rounded up on suspicion of indépendentiste leanings. And since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims and Arabs have come under suspicion - especially if they oppose American and/or Canadian foreign policy.

By all means, let's be vigilant about our security. Yet, in a manner that is consistent with values of basic human decency. Let's not repeat the mistakes of our past, remembering that government excesses cannot be left unchallenged. Canadians of good conscience must join together to fight for basic human dignity of their fellow citizens. With each fresh revelation about human-rights violations perpetrated in the name of security, we must heighten our vigilance against abuses of power, and demand due process for those who are detained or exiled unjustly.

Um, I could be wrong here, but I thought that the Maher Arar affair resulted in an expensive inquiry (in which Arar did not have to provide medical evidence that he’d been physically tortured), coast-to-coast angst and a big payoff for the torturee; there was even a move to try and get his wife, whose travails were covered by an adoring media, to run for Parliament. Is that evidence that Canada is “racist”? I think not. All indications are that we’re still in the grip of our multishmulti delusions, the Kindergarten philosophy that holds every kid in the class is as sweet and as special as every other kid (let’s all join hands, children, for circle time). What Sheema seems to be complaining about is the fact that some Canadians appear to be waking up from the spell and have noticed that a few of kids want to see sharia making strides both at home and abroad--not a pleasant prospect for those of us disinclined to bow and scrape. But you can see why Sheema would want to play the race card. Up till now, it’s been highly effective in deflecting attention away from the jihad by making lefties feel mega-guilty about the West’s success--and the modern Islamic world’s distinct lack thereof.

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

Religion of peace?: Not according to the Arab media, who are having conniptions over reports that a Jew is distorting the message of the noble Koran by subjecting it to a kinder, gentler, altogether more Jewish interpretation. From Israel Today (h/t Bill Narvey):

Arab media around the Middle East this week reacted hysterically after learning that a Jewish professor at Haifa University is using verses from the Koran to teach Arab Muslim psychology students how to treat their future Muslim patients.

Professor Ofer Grosbard developed the Quranet course using specially chosen verses from the Muslim holy book to help students reinforce in their patients concepts like respect, responsibility, honesty, dignity and kindness.

Grosbard realized the need for the special course after one of his Muslim students complained that traditional Western psychology would be ineffective on Muslim patients who hold tightly to superstitious beliefs.

Despite the fact that the Quranet course was developed together with 15 Muslim students and was reviewed by three Islamic clerical figures, Muslim authorities around the Middle East denounced the project because it was overseen by a Jew.

Speaking to Gulf News, Dr. Abdullah Al Mutlaq of the Senior Ulema Board in Saudi Arabia insisted that all Jews hate Islam, and that Prof. Grosbard's efforts to emphasize the Koran's few lessons in human dignity and kindness would give Muslims the wrong impression of their religion.

Dr. Manae Abdel-Halim Mahmoud, professor of Koranic sciences at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, told an Egyptian newspaper that the Israeli project "aims to tarnish the image of Islam by giving wrong interpretation of the noble Koran."

Palestinian Authority officials also blasted the project, stating that the current prevalent interpretation of Islam that has led to so much regional death and destruction is the correct interpretation, and that Prof. Grosbard's kinder, gentler selection of Koranic verses is misleading.

Okay, okay, have it your way. The Koran is fierce.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:33 | link | comments (1)

Oops!: Bambi’s Muslim outreach coordinator has resigned because of reports that he’s been, er, reaching out to Muslim “radicals”. From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — An attorney who volunteered to help Barack Obama improve his relationship with Muslim and Arab-Americans has resigned from the campaign amid questions about his connection to a fundamentalist imam.

Mazen Asbahi started as the campaign's outreach coordinator on July 26, and he resigned in a letter to the campaign Monday. He said he was stepping down "to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."

Asbahi, an associate at the Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin, said in his letter that he served on the board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund for a few weeks, but resigned "as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board."

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the other board member during Asbahi's tenure in 2000 was Jamal Said, imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois. The Justice Department named Said as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fundraisers. The case ended in a mistrial. The newspaper said the connections were first exposed by an Internet newsletter.

Obama, who is a Christian, has been fighting false Internet rumors that he is a Muslim. Asbahi, in a post on the Obama campaign blog last week, said that had created "added sensitivities" between the campaign and the Muslim community, and he encouraged Muslims and Arab-Americans to get involved.

The campaign previously conducted outreach to the community through its interfaith outreach program and the Muslim American outreach desk at the Democratic Party. Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign is searching for a new volunteer coordinator to replace Asbahi.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Michigan chapter, said Asbahi was a victim of Internet rumors.

"This incident just shows how Islamophobic the political climate is right now," Walid said. "Baseless smears about a Muslim with a very good reputation was used to marginalize not only him but the community from the political process.

"If someone like Mr. Asbahi can't be vetted to work for the Obama campaign, then who can?"...

Good point.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:56 | link | comments

Cirque du Lune?: The oily emirate of Dubai has bought a 20 per cent stake in Quebec-based spectacle company, Cirque du Soleil. It'll be interesting to see how the female aerialists are going to do their act while wearing a burqa.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:40 | link | comments (1)

Rethinking the ads: In light of a beheading on one of its buses, Greyhound has decided to scrap its new ad campaign. From AP via the Guardian:

TORONTO (AP) - Greyhound has scrapped an ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel after one of its passengers was accused of beheading and cannibalizing another traveler.

The ad's tag line was ``There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'''

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said Wednesday a billboard and some tunnel posters near a bus terminal in Toronto are still up and would be removed later in the day.

``Greyhound knows how important it is to get these removed and we are doing everything possible,'' Wambaugh said. ``This is something that we immediately asked to be done last week, realizing that these could be offensive.''

Vince Weiguang Li, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2004, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean. He has yet to enter a plea.

Thirty-seven passengers were aboard the Greyhound from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as it traveled at night along a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. Witnesses said Li attacked McLean unprovoked, stabbing him dozens of times.

As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed McLean's head, displaying it to some of the passengers outside the bus, witnesses said.

A police officer at the scene reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim's body and eating them, according to a police report.

Wambaugh said the ads only appeared in Canada and that some in Ontario and western Canada have already been removed. About 20,000 inserts of the Greyhound ads were scheduled to be put into an Alberta Summer Games handbook but they stopped the presses

“There’s a reason you’ve never heard of bus rage”? Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

Update: The deranged animal rights activists of PETA are comparing the bus beheading to "the slaughter of animals." Well, they would, wouldn't they?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:15 | link | comments

Here comes the (child) bride: In keeping with the example of the most perfect human being ever, a gent who had a penchant for marrying 'em young, boychicks in the Wahhabi ‘hood are said to be getting married before they're even old enough to shave. Saudi officials purport to be shocked—shocked!—by the preteen nuptials. From the Toronto Star: 

RIYADH–An 11-year-old Saudi boy gave out invitations to his classmates for a big event his family was planning this summer – and it wasn't his birthday party.

It was his wedding to a 10-year-old cousin.

Muhammad al-Rashidi's marriage is on hold, his father said, after pressure from the governor of the northern province of Hail, who considered the elementary school student too young to marry.

The case is among a recent spate of marriages involving the very young reported in the media and by Saudi human rights groups. They have been denounced by activists, clerics and others who say such unions harm children and trivialize the institution of marriage.

"We are studying this issue so we can put an end to this phenomenon," said Zuhair al-Harithi, board member of the Human Rights Commission, a Saudi government-run rights group. "These marriages violate international agreements the kingdom has signed.''

One girl, 15, was married off by her father, a death-row inmate, to a cellmate also sentenced to die. The father was beheaded July 21 for killing another man.

Pictures of the wedding, held in the men's prison in Taif, appeared in several newspapers.

The groom, Awad al-Harbi, and his bride were allowed to spend two nights together in a special prison quarters after the wedding, according to Al-Watan daily. Al-Harbi told another newspaper, Al-Madina, recently that his wife is pregnant.

But the phenomenon is not new, said Sheik Muhammad al-Nujaimi, a strong opponent of the marriages. He and other clerics, activists and writers have pushed the government for a law setting a minimum age for marriage and to resolve differences among religious authorities over the issue.

"There are different (religious) opinions regarding the marriages, which is why we need the government to settle the issue through legislation," said al-Nujaimi.

Such marriages occur elsewhere including Yemen, where an 8-year-old girl recently sought a judge to help her divorce a man nearly four times her age.

Activists say the numbers in Saudi Arabia are not so high. They say the girls are given away in return for hefty dowries or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

Muraiziq al-Rashidi, the 11-year-old boy's father, said he has delayed, not cancelled, his son's marriage.

"God willing, we will hold the wedding next year," he said.

A bit disingenuous of the Saudi “Human Rights Commissioner” (heh), I’d say, given that a certain infallible messenger of God, whom the faithful are instructed to emulate, married one of his favourite wives when she was aged six, and consummated their union when his bride was 11 (which, when you think about it, is even creepier than that Elvis-Priscilla thing).

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

Two perspectives on Syria: There’s Shimon Peres' clueless, squishy one, and then there’s Barry Rubin's wised-up, shrewd one.

Barry wins it by an entity mile.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:55 | link | comments

Rare event: Has the moon turned blue? Are piggies flying? Has Hades developed permafrost? The only reason I ask is because Rami Khouri, the Palestinian who serves as editor-at-large for Lebanon’s The Daily Star and occasional columnist for the Globe and Mail, has written a piece in which he—gasp—actually holds the Palestinians accountable for their own haplessness (sort of):

…Fatah and Hamas are both slowly relinquishing their once respectable standing among fellow Palestinians. As they fight it out in village streets and refugee camp alleyways, they make it ever more difficult to wage a principled and credible struggle against Israeli expansionism.

At an international level, the Palestinian cause is the longest running anti-colonial movement of its kind, which is one reason it generates so much support around the world. Ordinary people understand that Palestinians fight against a Zionist foe whose predatory territorial aims are anchored in the ugly soil of 19th-century European imperialism and colonialism.

The Palestinians have continued to struggle for the integrity of their community and their national rights for over a century, but they have lost at every decisive moment. The poor quality of Palestinian leadership has always been one reason. Political immaturity, reflected in fighting within the community, is another constant. Israeli oppression has also helped fracture Palestinian society and turn some of its groups into desperados who fight one another to maintain a modicum of control over their increasingly restricted and empty lives. Disarray and weakness among Arab supporters has also been a problem at times. The international community's virtual indifference to the consequences of Israel's harsh policies makes the entire regional context more conducive to such irrational and self-destructive Arab behaviour.

Yes, this is a dark day for the Palestinians. But they will eventually find better leadership to help them regain their cohesion and credibility - and their self-respect. From the rubble of their own criminal attacks against their own people, the Palestinians will recognize that living in a tree house is exciting for a nine-year-old child, but is very unbecoming a national political movement.

Way to look on the bright side, Rami, but I doubt your prediction will come to pass. More likely Hamas will gain control over the West Bank, and Iran will be the only “leadership” calling the shots. You see, that’s what happens when “a national political movement” isn’t a “movement” at all, but part of the larger jihad against the West.

On second thought, call off the search for airborne swine. It turns out that Rami's engaging in the same old kvetching--blaming the Jews for the Arabs' "irrational and self-destructive behaviour." Nice try, Rami, but that one's never going to fly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:17 | link | comments

Joking through adversity: The search for comedy in the Muslim world ends here—meet Ahmadullah Mujajo, the funniest man in Kandahar. From the Globe and Mail:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The most famous comedian in Kandahar, Ahmadullah Mujajo, stares at a flickering light bulb. Then he grabs a man by the neck and shakes him furiously, brandishing a shotgun.

"The power turns off, then on, then off," he screams, pointing his gun at the man's head. "Where is the man responsible for this? Where is the director of electricity? I'll track him down!"

In other places, it might be a frightening threat. In Kandahar, it's popular evening television. Mr. Mujajo, 32, is the nearest thing to a celebrity entertainer in a city better known for war than comedy. From his early years struggling to sell his jokes on audio cassettes in refugee camps, to his current status as a local television star, the goofy little trickster with an elastic face has built a career by discovering laughter amid the harshness of southern Afghanistan.

At times, he behaves like a court jester in a city where dissent is dangerous. Ordinary people lower their voices and whisper conspiratorially when discussing the latest rumour, and journalists are regularly threatened by both sides of the conflict. The Committee to Protect Journalists issued its latest of many statements about Afghanistan on July 29, expressing alarm at the arrest of an Afghan television reporter who was detained by intelligence officers one day after airing a documentary that criticized cabinet ministers.

Mr. Mujajo says he tries to avoid similar problems during his daily recording sessions at Hewad TV, a small private station hidden behind high walls in a relatively quiet downtown neighbourhood.

"We don't take sides," he said. "We don't push too hard against the Taliban or the government." But with a mischievous grin, he admits that his job occasionally allows him to get away with bold commentary. Alongside his harmless word play, funny misunderstandings between husbands and wives and off-key musical routines by performers wearing silly costumes, Mr. Mujajo talks about difficult issues.

"We say general things, to avoid trouble: 'Security is not good, electricity is not good, people are moving away from Kandahar, the municipality does nothing about the garbage in the streets.' But we don't say anything about specific leaders."

Still, the barbs are pointed. In a recent sketch-comedy routine, Mr. Mujajo played a reporter throwing questions at a man dressed like a warlord. The warlord character, portrayed with sneering arrogance by a 19-year-old actor wearing a fake mustache and surrounded by an arsenal of weapons, was revealed to be a government minister. It was a reference to the discomfort many Afghans feel about former militia leaders taking senior government jobs.

"Why aren't you building factories to employ our young people?" asked Mr. Mujajo, playing the journalist.

"If we make factories for young people, who will fight? How will I get my money from foreign governments?" responded the minister, waving a pistol for emphasis.

In another sketch, a news broadcaster delivered mock bulletins.

"A tree fell on a taxi, injuring the driver," the newsreader said. "Authorities have blamed Pakistan." A ripple of laughter went through the editing room at Hewad TV, where a dozen of Mr. Mujajo's friends had gathered to show off their work.

Afghan officials reflexively blame Pakistan for so many problems that adding a fallen tree to the list seemed like a witty flourish.

"In economic news," continued the broadcaster, "Everything is more expensive now. Even spoiled Pakistani fruit is selling for high prices. The NGOs try to help by giving us wheat, but people steal it and smuggle it out of the country." Again, snickers of amusement filled the room.

Afghans have a history of laughing at their own misfortune. Prisoners smile as they describe suffering torture, and policemen crack jokes as they tell stories about escaping insurgent attacks. A profile of the Pashtun ethnic group, published in 1947 by the poet Ghani Khan, describes the way a quintessential Pashtun handled a lifetime of hardship: "He always covered his sorrow with a smile, and his pain with a joke."…

Funny, we Jews have been doing the same thing for centuries. Here’s one:  A Jew is sitting on a train in the early days of the Third Reich, reading the Nazi rag, Der Sturmer. An acquaintance, another Jew, enters the compartment, and registers shock upon seeing what the Jew is reading.

“Why are you reading that trash, that filth?” asks the new arrival.

“Why?” replies the first Jew. “Because I see all around me how our people are suffering—how they beat us and spit at us and steal from us, and how we’re powerless to stop them. But I read in here how we control everything—the press, the banks, foreign governments and the entire world—and I feel much better.”

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:00 | link | comments

Big Brother and the Witholding Company: This one goes out with jeers and raspberries to our HRCs and Ts, as sung by the late, great Janis Joplin:

Busted flat in Vancouver,

Headin’ fer a fall.

Feelin' like the country’s gone insane.

Elmo threw the gauntlet down:

End the “blasphemy”.

His philosophy’s “no pain, no gain.”

I read that Harpoon in a Toronto daily paper.

He’s goin’ on about the CJC.

Now the blogosphere's a-buzzin’ ‘bout how Canada ain’t free;

Canada’s just like a tyranny.

 

Freedom’s ‘bout the only word for what he have to lose.

Life ain’t worth a dime if it ain’t free.

Speakin’ out was easy, Lord, before we got p.c.

But speakin’ out’s not possible, amis,

As long as we ain’t free of our HRCs.

 

From the rocky coast of Newfoundland clear ‘cross to B.C. shores

In ev’ry province, territory, too,

The thought police dictate what’s “fair”

And push us all around.

There’s not a lot that we can say or do.

 

They want us all to be “polite”

And never criticize,

Sit still as that old Iron Veil descends.

We’ve traded all our liberty for bogus promises.

And now we're stuck here listenin' to lies.

 

Freedom’s ‘bout the only word for what he have to lose.

Life’s not worth a dime if it ain’t free.

Speakin’ out was easy, Lord, before we got p.c.

But speakin’ out’s not possible, amis,

As long as we ain’t free of our HRCs…

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:19 | link | comments (3)

C'mon down: Those wacky un-p.c. funsters of MadTV (cruising for a beheading a la Theo Van Gogh) reimagine perennial TV game show The Price is Right done up al Jazeera-style. (The tag line, as always: "Death to America!").

Little Mosque on the Prairie it ain't.

Update: What passes for cutting edge humour on the Ceeb.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:58 | link | comments

The JDL takes action: No doubt fed up with the fecklessness of the Jewstablishment (which is so engrossed in the search for phantom Nazis that it is ignoring the very real and present danger), the JDL has taken it upon itself to shake people awake. From the Intellectual Conservative blog via DhimmiWatch:

Defiant chants of "Condemn Muslim Terrorism Now" and "Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap" could be heard in the streets of downtown Toronto, on Thursday afternoon, July 31st, as 30 members of Toronto's Jewish Defense League staged an angry demonstration in front of the offices of the Canadian Arab Federation. Responding to the dramatic rise in anti-Semitic attacks on Jews by Muslims in the Toronto area, Meir Weinstein, director of the JDL in Toronto, said, "The abject silence on the part of the Canadian Arab Federation in the face of vitriolic attacks on Jews by Muslim perpetrators is tantamount to tacit approval of anti-Semitism and gives a green light to others who would entertain the notion of attacking Jews."
 
Weinstein was specifically referring to an attack that occurred on November 3, 2006, when a Jewish teenager and her three friends were viciously assaulted at a Toronto train station by Mustafa Taj, 21, who was recently sentenced to one year in prison by provincial court Judge Bill Cummings, who ruled that the attack was racially motivated.
 
According to a report in the Canadian newspaper, The Calgary Sun, dated July 24, 2008, on November 2, 2006, "Taj approached the group (of teenagers) around 10:45 pm, and asked 'who's Jewish.' Nichola Cordato, then 16, stated 'me' and Taj grabbed her and said, 'I'm Muslim and hate Jews.'" The report continues: "He then slapped her in the face and pullled her hair before her friends, Jessica Motta, Kayla Hungle and Daniel Ball attempted to intervene. Hungle attempted to prevent Taj from further attacking Cordato and was punched in the face by him. Motta then intervened and was punched in the face, pulled to the ground by her hair and kicked in the stomach and ribs. When Ball tried to stop the assaults, he was thrown onto the C-Train tracks where he fell onto his back and was spat upon by Taj. During the melee, Taj called Cordato a 'Jewish piece of (crap).'"
 
Prosecutors Ken McCaffrey and Inayat Jetha had sought a sentence of up to two years for the hate crime. Prior to sentencing, McCaffrey called into evidence a similar assault perpetrated by Taj a year earlier when he approached a black male at an LRT station and assaulted him.  
 
"The Canadian Arab Federation has not only not uttered one word of condemnation for this horrific attack, but they have remained silent in the face of arson attacks in Canada directed against shuls and Jewish community centers and violent attacks on Jewish students on local university campuses," said Weinstein. He also noted that yet another anti-Semitic attack occurred as recently as Friday, July 18th, 2008, when "a Jewish camp in northern Ontario was attacked. No one was hurt but property was smashed and tires slashed, sending a clear message. The camp staff was told by the town that Jews were no longer welcome in their stores."
 
According to Weinstein, the Canadian Arab Federation holds the dubious distinction of being an organization that has lent its support and succor to the forces of Islamic terrorism and has worked assiduously to promote both anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment. He charges that members of the CAF attended a Cairo conference last year sponsored by the notoriously anti-Israel organization, The Muslim Brotherhood, that featured speakers who were high-ranking members of Hamas and Hezbollah, and that the CAF justifies the terrorist acts that these organizations engage in. He adds that, "Jewish businesses in Canada are picketed by groups supported by the CAF, claiming these businesses support 'Israeli Apartheid.'"…

Shhh. Don’t tell the Tammy and Leo that the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk are the threat. It’s not like anyone can complain about those guys to an HRC (and as long as the Jewstablishment has its HRC security blankie and a warm cup of cocoa, it can still get to sleep at night).

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:44 | link | comments

For the love of “victims”: Once again the mush-brained Jew-haters open a vein and gush copious amounts of blood  for Palestinian “victims”. From the Jerusalem Post:

A person grows up and believes there are perpetrators and victims. He sees a person assaulted or hears about a rape or someone being abused, and he believes that in each incident there is a person who perpetrates the crime and a person who is the victim. Then one becomes more "enlightened" and learns that the victim is not as interesting as the perpetrator. The perpetrator's life story and mental state are deemed important in order to understand "why" he or she committed the crime.

Then one grows even older and wiser and comes to learn that when there is a crime, the actual victim is the perpetrator's ethnic or religious group, which will be viewed negatively because of what he did. In the end, one learns that the real victim in every crime is the wider society - particularly the group the criminal came from. This is how one grows up in modern Western society. In this world the "victims" of World War I, far from being all the soldiers or civilians killed, were the Germans because, as the aggressors, they were punished by the Versailles Treaty. The victims of the Holocaust were not the Jews who died but the Palestinians who saw the survivors sent to their homeland. The victims of the three recent acts of terrorism by Muslims from east Jerusalem are not the 11 dead and 70 wounded Jews, but the Palestinian Arabs who might lose work because of the actions of their countrymen.

I REMEMBER the first time I learned how this "true victimhood" works. I was a college student in Tucson, Arizona. Along with everyone else, on September 11 I awoke to news of the terrorist attacks. But a day later, when I began to read the local papers, I was astonished to learn that the true victims were not the 3,000 dead Americans but the nation's Muslims, because after 9/11 they would face increased scrutiny and perhaps even hate crimes.

There were soon marches in my city, not to condemn terror or support the families of the victims, but to reassure Muslims. Muslim human rights groups became wealthy off the notion that Muslims were victims.

As if to reinforce this notion, the BBC published a story on July 24 by Heather Sharp entitled "Palestinian workers fear backlash." There was no story about fears by Israelis of more bulldozer attacks; the only people who were truly victimized, it seems, were Palestinians. The story relates how Palestinian face "widespread discrimination" and how they "fear revenge attacks. They say stones were thrown at them as they worked near a right-wing neighborhood." (What exactly constitutes a "right-wing" neighborhood, according to the BBC, is not clear.)

It turns out, according to the BBC, that "in both attacks using construction vehicles, the motives of the attacker remain a mystery - local press reports suggested that the attackers had previous involvement with crime and drugs, and no links to militant groups have emerged."

There is no mention of the fact that both attacks were directed at Jews and Jews only…

Why would the Beeboisie ever let the facts get in the way of a riveting narrative about their beloved “underdogs”?

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:18 | link | comments

Eco-warriors: They're kind of like holy warriors, only without the "religious documents".

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:57 | link | comments

Idiots deterred: The useful idiots continue to wail about “the Naqba” and “the Occupation,” but their cries are becoming even more ludicrous due to the ongoing discord between Gazans and West Bankers. One of the unforeseen benefits of the squabble: some u.i.-ers have momentarily had to back away from their plans. From JTA:

Pro-Palestinian activists have delayed plans to sail to the Gaza Strip in a bid to break Israel's blockade on the territory.

The Free Gaza Movement announced last week that 40 of its members would set off in a boat from Cyprus toward Gaza, whose waters have been closely patroled by the Israeli navy since a Palestinian terror campaign began in 2000.

The Free Gaza Movement's mission was originally scheduled to begin Monday but was postponed, likely to the weekend. Organizers said they planned to bypass Israeli naval vessels non-violently.

Pro-Palestinian activists accuse Israel of using its "siege" of Gaza's coast and land crossings to try to starve support for Islamist Hamas, which took over the territory in an armed coup last year.

Jerusalem officials said they were aware of the planned mission but gave no immediate word on how it might be handled.

Once the fracas dies down—as it undoubtedly will—I’m sure they’ll be back.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:41 | link | comments

Dicey security: Were I a member of the Israeli Olympic team, I might think twice about participating in the Beijing Smoglympics, given that Chinese officials don't seem to have a handle on the jihad, and that, a la Munich, my team would likely be the first in the holy warriors' line of fire.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:29 | link | comments

Normalizing genocide:  The usual suspects are defending one of their own—Sudan’s Butcher of Khartoum.  At the same time, the butcher is looking to favourable optics from the Beijing Olympics to divert attention away from the ongoing butchery. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — Training barefoot in the hot sand and borrowed spikes, Sudan's Olympians, half of them from war-torn Darfur, hope to take their country into international limelight, rising above the lingering Darfur conflict.

"We see this as an opportunity to bring us together and lift up the country," runner Abdullah Nyala told the Washington Post on Monday, August 4.

"We have all tribes on the team, and there is no problem."

Nyala, whose parents are from Darfur, was wearing slick black Nike gear when he qualified for the 1,500-meter Olympic competition.

When he finished, thousands of jubilant fans in Khartoum's half-crumbling stadium chanted "Sudan's on top! Sudan's on top!"

The Darfuri runner hopes to hear the enthusiastic chants in the Beijing Games, to start on Friday, August 8.

But his hopes and those of his teammates are being overshadowed by the Darfur conflict.

"People ask you about the troubles," said runner Nawal El Jack, a shy 19-year-old woman who qualified for the 400-meter competition.

"They'll ask what's the reason behind the fighting."

The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the Khartoum regime accusing it of discrimination.

The UN estimates some 300,000 people have died in the conflict, while Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.

No independent field-research accounts are available to date.

One Sudan

Half of the Olympians from Darfur and two of them hail from warring tribes.

Abubaker Kaki Khamis, considered a gold medal contender in the 800 meters, is from the Misseriya tribe.

Ismail Ahmed Ismail, who reached the finals in the 800 meters at the 2004 Athens Games, is Fur, one of the most victimized tribes in the conflict.

But this seems irrelevant and they hope their presence at the Beijing Olympics will project a unified Sudan to the whole world…

Well, as long as you can project a unified Sudan without actually having to be a unified Sudan, I guess you’ve done your job.

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

Not on sale at Roots: Black face masks for Olympic athletes--a fashion forward trend.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:12 | link | comments

Redefining marriage: Remember how certain “alarmists” were poo pooed when they said gay marriage would open the door to polygamy? Seems they may have been on to something. Susan Drummond, a law prof at York U’s Osgoode Hall (the alma mater of Elmo’s sockthingys) makes a pitch for polygamy—or at least, turning a blind to it—in the Globe and Mail: (and indulges in a bit of alarmism of her own, raising the spectre of state interference).

There is a general rumbling afoot in Canada about laying polygamy charges against individuals within certain religious communities across Canada. But there are some things Canadians need to know about our Criminal Code's "Offences Against Conjugal Rights" before we can be sure we really want to open that particular Pandora's box. One thing to ask may be whether you, or anyone you care about, has committed one of these indictable offences carrying liability of up to five years in prison. In the spirit of the poem "They came first for the communists...," let me say that I have committed polygamy.

How is it that a Canadian professor of family law violated a very grave criminal prohibition - and yet remains on the lam; teaching the law, no less?

The first thing to know is that Canadians are not a morally squeamish group when it comes to sex - or sex and marriage. Group sex, the Supreme Court of Canada has held, even group sex in swingers bars in downtown Toronto, does not offend Canadian moral sensibilities. Nor does it offend the institution of marriage. For a divorce based on adultery, neither spouse can have condoned the other's extramarital sex - and swinging with your spouse at Ménage à Quatre almost certainly constitutes condonation. Swingers who want a divorce have to wait out one year's separation like the rest of us.

The second thing to bear in mind is that the polygamy provision has been invoked exactly once in the past century - in 1937. A man was charged with polygamy because he had an adulterous affair. The court held that adultery is not inconsistent with monogamy - and both he and the rest of our society have been free thereafter to have adulterous affairs with criminal impunity. Since the Divorce Act of 1986, spouses also have been free to commit adultery without consequence to determining child custody, support or division of property. Canadian law has left the adulterous to little more than the wrath of their spouses.

The third thing to know is the actual definition of both bigamy and polygamy in the Criminal Code. Amongst other elements, the offences include everyone in Canada who, being married, goes through a form of marriage with another person (bigamy) and everyone who enters into any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not this conjugal union is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage (polygamy).

Religious marriage (Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish etc) is a "form of marriage." Canadians can be civilly divorced and yet remain religiously married. The state, having no place in the religions of the nation, carries out only civil divorce. All Canadians, regardless of religious background, have equal access to the Divorce Act that allows for divorce on the grounds of the breakdown of the marriage (established by living separate and apart for one year, or by the adultery or cruelty of the other spouse). Catholics can never divorce religiously - and yet they can (and do) divorce and remarry civilly. Those who have done so (along with other Canadians who have not put an end to their religious marriage before remarrying civilly) are both in multiple conjugal unions and multiple forms of marriage. So, should the state decide to sweep up all those polygamists, many of us might be astonished at how many of our acquaintances and loved ones would be carted away…

Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. Here in multishmulti Kanuckistan, our credo seems to be “the more the merrier.’

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman": Er, sorry, wrong disclaimer. My mistake.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:43 | link | comments

Mookie does a Hezbo: Since that holy war thing isn’t working out too well for him, radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to go the Hellzbollocks route and set up a social services division. That way he can play “good cop/bad cop”—good cops building hospitals for widows and orphans; bad cops serving as Iran’s hired killers—and bamboozle influential kafirs (like ingenious social theorist Naomi Klein). (h/t noshariaincanada)

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:34 | link | comments

Newfound calm: I used to get upset when guys like this one bashed Israel via letters to the editor. (The individual in question is one of those self-loathing types who thinks the jihad doesn't apply to him because he's such a useful kapo--and he may, in fact, be right.) Now I'm thrilled to see their names in print because I know that if they can speak, I can speak. Free speech for all in the free-for-all: it's the only way to live.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:19 | link | comments

They love him in Gaza: Some Hamasniks aren’t letting a little thing like donation limits prevent them from giving their all to Bambi, a guy who they’re certain is on their wavelength, Zionist entity-wise. From israelinsider:

Americans who want to contribute to their presidential candidate of choice are strictly constrained in giving no more than $2300 per candidate election. But the same limits apparently don't apply in practice to foreigners who want to help Barack Hussein Obama get elected, although the Federal Election Commission clearly does not agree.

The brothers Edwan -- Monir and Hasam -- hail from Rafah, GA. That's GA as in Gaza, not Georgia. As first revealed by the Atlas Shrugs blog and further developed in World Net Daily, they contributed a whopping $29,521.54 to Senator Obama's campaign, more than 13 times the legal limit that applies to American citizens.

The Edwans' donations are listed in FEC filings and election filing websites.

The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters, according to WND. The two brothers praised Obama and admitted giving the money online to his campaign. They said they are not U.S. citizens or green card holders but are citizens of "Palestine."

They said the money they gave to the campaign was to buy T-shirts, even though the Obama sells them for about $20/each and the going price for T-shirts in Gaza is less than a 10th of that price. In an interview with WND's Aaron Klein, the brothers reportedly changed their story repeatedly.

"My brother Hosam and I knew that Obama will be a big hit even before he became a candidate. We knew the guy would be a celebrity in Gaza so we decided to invest the amount of $29,000 to buy Obama T-shirts from his website and sell them in Gaza," Monir Edwan told WND. "I know on the back of this story Obama rivals will present our business as a donation and they will try to use this story to let Obama fall, but I'm telling you, we bought T-shirts," Edwan maintained.

An amusing interchange catches the Edwans hemming and hawing about what a profitable deal the brothers made buying and selling the T-shirts to fashion-conscious Gazans and how he was able to break the Israeli closure with the purported important of what had to be thousands of Obama T-shirt. Perhaps through the tunnels along with the RPGs?

"We don't want to cause any damage to Obama's campaign," was Edwan's reply. "Not just the people in Gaza but people from all over the world are rooting for this great man," he told WND.

Obama's campaign did not return WND phone calls or e-mail queries.

That the Edwans were able to contribute to Obama's campaign from Gaza raises questions about the lax methods used by the presidential candidate's website to vet online donations. The website donation form only asks each donor to affirm that he or she is a U.S. citizen above the age of 16. It requires no proof of citizenship status, such as a passport or social security number.

The form further requires the donor to affirm the contribution is not coming from a corporation, political action committee or lobby group. Wonder if Hamas qualifies.

Not yet, anyway.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments

Overlooking the holy war: Can’t anyone at the Ceeb spell J-I-H-A-D? To the purple Kool Aid-imbibing PoMo multishmulti types, the narrative is always about indigenous peoples rising up and throwing off the shackles of oppression, and hardly ever about Dar al Islamists trying to prevail over the kafir (my bolds):

Two men who carried out a deadly attack in northwestern China, killing 16 police officers just days before Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics, were carrying documents calling for a holy war, Chinese authorities said Tuesday.

Reuters reported an official in Xinjiang province as saying that 18 "foreign agitators" have been arrested following Monday's attack in Kashgar that also injured 16 other officers.

Police confirm the two men who killed the officers were Uyghurs, members of a significant Muslim minority in the northwestern province, CBC Radio's China correspondent Anthony Germain reported.

The minority group has waged a sporadically violent rebellion against Chinese rule.

Police also clarified that rather than attacking a police station, the two suspects targeted a group of about 70 police officers who were out jogging, Germain said.

Police said the two men used homemade explosives, rather than grenades as initially reported. One attacker's arms were blown off shortly after he lit a fuse.

After subduing the attackers, police found the religious documents, as well as a firearm and 10 more bombs, authorities said…

Religious “documents” found along with firearms and bombs, huh? What are the odds?

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

Lebanon’s government green-lights the jihad: If Hellzbollocks wants to go ahead and fire any or all of its tens of thousands of mullah-supplied missiles at the Zionist entity, it’s okey-dokey with Beirut. From the Telegraph via the New York Sun:

BEIRUT — Lebanon's new government has recognized Hezbollah's "right" to fight Israel, a move that politicians fear could pave the way for war.

Hezbollah, the self-styled "resistance movement" which America and Britain consider a terrorist organization, could effectively receive official approval for its weaponry in southern Lebanon.

This may total about 30,000 missiles. The new weapons will be held in readiness to strike Israel, possibly in retaliation for any American attack on Iran, Hezbollah's chief paymaster. Such a move breaches United Nations resolution 1701, which ended the last war with Israel in 2006 by demanding Hezbollah's disarmament.

Once again the UN demonstrates its usefulness in the region—aiding and abetting those plotting the Holocaust, Part 2 (the final Final Solution).

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

Influencing youth: Two speakers of note are slated to speak this coming weekend at the Islamic Society of Toronto’s Youth Tarbiyah Conference—Harpoon Siddiqui and Imam Zaid Shakir. You all know who Harpoon is. He’s the Order of Canada recipient who, from his bully pulpit in the Toronto Star champions the likes of Robert Mugabe, the mullahs and the CJC’s Tammy Faber, and bashes the likes of Israel and its supporters (Harper, Bush, etc.) The latter name is probably less familiar. According to FrontPage Magazine, he’s "Yale University's former Muslim chaplain who has expressed his desire to see the United States eventually become 'a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.'"

Tickets for the event are said to be going fast, especially since organizers are offering iPods as prizes. Be there or be kafir.

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

Totalitarian “eloquence”: Years ago I was hired to write a speech for a provincial cabinet minister. I wasn’t familiar with the minister’s speaking style, or for that matter, with the minister, who was rather obscure and hailed from some rural Ontario hamlet. His communications director wasn’t too forthcoming, but I got the impression that the minister wasn’t exactly a paragon of eloquence.

“So I take it the minister’s no Winston Churchill,” I said, trying to get a fix on things.

“Winston Churchill? He’s not even Andy Griffith,” replied the flak.

I only ever wrote that one speech for that politician, whose name I don’t recall, and who ended up leaving politics and returning to his Mayberry. (I’m pretty sure his decision had nothing to do with my speech.) As challenging as that assignment was, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to compose the clunky totalitarian claptrap the comes out of the mouths of the supreme mully-bully and his chinless Baathist acolyte. All I can say is that some Andy Griffith-style folksiness would be a definite improvement. Here’s the Tehran Times’ report on the latest Dr. Evil/Mini-Me confab and its supposed utterances:

TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei assessed as successful on Sunday the status of Iran and Syria at regional and international level.

“Syria and Iran have achieved good successes on regional and international issues,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with Syrian President Beshar Assad.

The Leader also described the relations between Tehran and Damascus as very good, saying, “The late Hafiz Assad (ex-Syrian president and father of the current president) laid a firm basis for Iran-Syria relations and the relations are still going on well despite great efforts (by enemies) to disrupt them,” the Leader remarked.

“You have also continued the same approach of late Hafiz Assad and the current good relations of the two countries is the result of continuing that path,” the Leader told Beshar Assad.

The Leader also expressed hope that Assad’s trip to Tehran will lead to a promotion of ties between the two countries in all areas.

Assad, for his part, described Tehran-Damascus ties as firm and strategic.

“I am extremely happy that this meeting is held at a time that on the one hand we observe great achievements of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon and a consolidation of the status of Hamas in Palestine, and on the other hand our enemies are in a much shakier position than before,” the Syrian president noted.

Sounds to me like the mullahs are putting words in the Boy’s mouth.

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

Shoring up support: Dr. Evil visits his Baathist Mini-Me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:39 | link | comments

The Islamo-Leftist Inquisition: For those who miss the captivating antics of the Spanish Inquisition, there's a modern-day version—the totalitarian “rights” types who will be getting together to bash Israel and the West at Durban II. From Europe News (h/t the CCD public message board):

For a short time The United Nation's Council of Human Rights once again came into focus. At the Council's June session, and on behalf of a NGO, the British historian David Littman intended to read a statement protesting the stoning of women and forced marriages of girls in countries where Shari'a law is practised.

It did not go well because the delegates of Pakistan and Egypt obstructed him by shouting about protocol: "It is an insult to my people's faith to discuss the Shari'a in this forum", said the Pakistani envoy. And his Egyptian colleague seconded: "The Shari'a isn't a matter of discussion here". The Council's Romanian President finally cut off all further discussions of the Islamic "law enforcement" by declaring it irrelevant when debating human rights.

"So, religious feelings can wind up like this", commented Henryk M. Broder about the procedure. "Plainly, one can talk about a 'sneaking Islamization' into public life if it not an insult that one has to restrict oneself in order to live in peaceful coexistence between cultures". But what apparently should be tolerated, says Broder, are "various acts of barbarism to be practiced, such as the stoning of adulteresses, the public hanging of homosexuals and early marriages with child brides, everything seemingly quite in line with the Sharia". And the Council's view is apparently to respect all this "under the label of religious freedom"

The UN Human Rights Council - a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, which does not impose sanctions, but can make recommendations - in June 2006 relieved the 60 years previously established Human Rights Commission of the UN, following increasing criticism : Its resolutions, even the most gory violations by member states and their allies were not rejected or convicted. The former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan finally wanted a replacement for the Commission and facilitated the emergence of the Council. Since its establishment it is in session a bit more frequently and has a few less members, but strongly resembles the former in terms of agenda and procedures.

Officially, the admission criteria are more restrictive, its members should be accountable to human rights of "highest standards" and endorsed by a two-thirds majority and clearly recognizable from "the black sheep". But the majority of council members do mostly what their predecessors already did in the previous model: They are obsessed with Israel, last year alone on 120 occasions and thus twice as often as every other country. In the end its convictions always wind up against the Jewish state.

And now the Council organizes another Durban Review Conference, this time in Geneva, April 2009, some sort of a remake of the badly renowned UN-Anti-racism conference, which took place in the South African city of Durban, September 2001. There - only a few days prior to the 9/11 attack - Israel should be condemned as "a racist apartheid state" - or so was the intention of the participating Islamic countries. The French essayist and author Pascal Bruckner remembers: "They condemned Zionism as equal with Nazism and Apartheid, but also with the 'white rage' which had attempted to 'create a Holocaust of human trafficking, slave trade and colonization in Africa. Israel should disappear completely, its politicians should appear in a Nuremberg-style court and be punished. Anti-semitic caricatures were handed out, copies of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' were distributed along with ' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Under a photo of Hitler one could read that Israel never existed and that the Palestinians would not have payed with their blood if he had been victorious. Some delegates were threatened with violence and some shouted 'kill the Jews'. The climax of this farce was the Sudanese Minister of Justice, Ali Mohamed Osman Yasin, demanding damages for the slave trade, while at the same time his own country shamelessly enslaves people."

They figured out that In the upcoming spring the remake of this tragic comedy will be organized by the Tehran Mullah regime, appointed by the UN. A "Durban 2" conference thus doesn't need to fear the eyes of NGO scrutinizing the UN: with the appointment of Iran to prepare the conference racists will become UN-spokespersons against racism".

The spokeswoman Anne Bayefsky said almost a year ago: "The leading exponents of anti-semitism - be they against individual Jews or the Jewish state as such - are once again given a global platform by the United Nations." The same applies to Libya which holds the preparatory responsibility for the conference: its Qaddafi-prize was given to an outspoken Holocaust-denier like Roger Garaudy.

"It would be a farce - if it wasn't so tragic" wrote Pascal Bruckner, and he added: "Anti-racism in the UN has become the ideology of totalitarian movements meant to advance their own agenda. Dictatorships or notorious half-dictatorships (Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Algeria, Cuba, Venezuela and so on) adapt to a democratic language and formal legislative standards to counter democracies without questions about themselves." A 'new inquisition' has materialized, according to Bruckner, "which endorses the idea of 'religious defamation' in order to suppress any doubt, especially in Islamic countries."

Dare we say they demand submission to their global agenda?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:57 | link | comments

Full of it: The Ceeb as a rule never fails to put a negative spin on stories about Israel. Take, for instance, the one about Israel letting in and treating members of Fatah who were injured in an altercation with their Hamas “brothers”. Here’s how it was reported in the New York Times, a publication not exactly noted for being pro-Israel:

JERUSALEM — The worst intra-Palestinian violence in more than a year left nine people dead and scores injured in Gaza on Saturday as the ruling Hamas party cracked down on a clan loyal to its rival, Fatah. Israel stepped in to help Fatah by allowing 180 of its men into Israel and treating and hospitalizing two dozen of its wounded.

A spokesman for the Hamas police in Gaza said that among the dead were two Hamas policemen and seven members of the clan, but other reports said another Hamas police officer had been killed as well. The Hamas spokesman put the number of wounded at 90, including at least a dozen children.

Witnesses reported a day of fierce street fighting in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, although by nightfall quiet had been restored.

The clashes involved grenades and mortars around the home of the Hilles clan, which Hamas blamed for a beach bombing that killed five Hamas gunmen and a girl a week ago. The clan is allied with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, which is based in the West Bank. Fatah denied any role in the bombing, saying it resulted from internal Hamas tensions. The clashes on Saturday started when Hamas tried to arrest members of the clan and lasted most of the day.

A spokesman for the Israeli Army said it had brought about 180 members of Fatah into Israel, including 22 wounded. The clan leader, Ahmed Hilles, was among them, he said. Mr. Abbas phoned Mr. Hilles to express support and condemned the Hamas campaign, according to a statement from Mr. Abbas’s office. The Fatah men may go to the West Bank but spent the night at an Israeli military base, the spokesman said.

The Israelis had received a request for the men to enter from Mr. Abbas and from Egypt. The Israeli first aid group Magen David Adom moved a number of wounded Fatah men from the Gaza border to a hospital in Beersheba.

A Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman said the police had arrested dozens of gunmen, including four it believed were behind the beach bombing. He said explosives and arms were confiscated…

On Ceeb radio news at 8 a.m., the story was turned on its head and spun as something that Israel did wrong--i.e. it refused entry to 30 Palestinians.

As far as the Ceeb is concerned, when it comes to Israel, the glass is always half empty—because the Jews stole and drank the water.

Update: Just who were those 30 Palestinians Israel turned away? Reuters explains (my bolds):

The 30 men sent back to Gaza are pro-Fatah members of the Helles clan, who were criticised by Fatah officials in the West Bank for failing to resist Hamas's takeover in June 2007.

A spokesman for Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Abbas had asked Israel to send the Fatah fugitives back to Gaza. The spokesman said the wounded would stay for treatment in Israel and the rest would be returned to the Gaza Strip.

Oh, so you mean the Jews weren't being horrible after all? Go figure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments

Meeting of minds: The Canadian Arab Federation has thoughtfully included the following announcement in its most recent newsletter:

3-Call for Abstracts

Scholars and advocates are invited to submit abstracts that examine any aspect of the racistand colonial logics of the hegemonies of our time, including but not restricted to the following: de-colonization or re-colonization: old and new forms of colonialism in Indigenous and/orAboriginal communities; race, class and gender in security discourses; race and economic insecurity; race politics in the city; race and the university; new imperialisms; Orientalisms; attacks on anti-imperialist and anti-globalization transformations in Latin America and the Caribbean; masculinities, femininities and sexualities in empire and neoliberal globalization; antiracism action – local and global. These papers are to be submitted ahead of the 8th annual

Critical Race and Anticolonial Studies Conference of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality (R.A.C.E.) which will be held at Ryerson University from November 7 – 9, 2008. Please send abstracts to Dr. Sedef Arat-Koc at saratkoc@politics.ryerson.ca; deadline is September 15, 2008.

 

Ladies and gents, I give you the insidious Leftist-Islamist convergence, in all its jargon-laden glory.

Update: Jonathan Kay has already answered the call, and offters to submit a scholarly paper on "Angus burgers" (one of his passions).

Update: You probably won't be surprised to learn that last year's R.A.C.E. conference was all about "rights"--who has 'em and who needs 'em:

THE 7TH ANNUAL CRITICAL RACE STUDIES CONFERENCE
OF RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS OF COLOUR FOR EQUALITY (R.A.C.E.)
MAY 3-4, 2007 The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto

TRANSNATIONAL RACISM AND "THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS"

From First Nations, to migrants and refugees, Muslims and Arabs detained as terror suspects, Palestinians, Haitians, Iraqis, Afghanis, homeless groups, youth of colour and many others, today's neoliberal world marks many groups as excluded from humanity. Such groups are also evicted from political community. They become communities of people without "the right to have rights" (Arendt) and live in areas where violence may be directed at them with impunity. All such excluded groups are racialized, that is, understood as being a lower form of humanity than people of European origin.

Palestinians? Haitians? The homeless? Talk about yer cockamanie inclusiveness which mushes together all sorts of issues that have nothing to do with each other. Thus does academia's delusions and distortions continue from year to year, and get passed on to impressionable students.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:05 | link | comments

House dhimmi: Tony Blair, whose understanding of Islam seems to have come from the likes of John Esposito and Karen Armstrong (and is thus woefully inadequate) wants to bring the three “Abrahamic faiths” together so they can, you know, all get along. The former P.M. has announced a modest new effort designed to tackle religious enmity, global poverty, communicable diseases, and maybe even get Britney Spears’s flagging career back on track. From Islam Online:

KUALA LUMPUR — Former British prime minister Tony Blair is planning a series of centers in major world capitals to promote inter-faith dialogue and highlight common essentials between the Abrahamic faiths.

 

"I think we start with one (first)," Blair told the Bernama news agency in an interview on Saturday, August 2, referring to the one to open in central London soon.

The proposed Abraham House will bring together followers of the major religions to discuss means of promoting understanding between different faiths.

It will also feature a standing exhibition and museum for members of the Abrahamic faiths; Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Blair, who is on his first visit to Malaysia to give a lecture on the Rule of Law at the 22nd Sultan Azlan Shah Law Lecture,  said the House will be a place for followers of different faiths to discover their commonalties and tackle their differences.

"That's the beginning and in time I think it would be good to have such centers in all the main places, including in this part of Asia as well," he said.

The Abraham Houses are part of efforts by the Blair Faith Foundation to promote inter-faith understanding.

Launched in May, the foundation says it aims to promote respect, friendship and understanding between the major religious faiths.

It also wants to make the case for faith as a force for good and encourage inter-faith initiatives to tackle global poverty and conflict.

A practicing former Anglican, Blair converted to the Roman Catholic Church, to which his wife, Cherie, belongs.

He has admitted that religion was of major influence during his decade in power.

His close friends described him as a very devout Christian, who takes a Bible with him wherever he goes…

Explain to the jihadis and Islamists how the meek shall inherit the Earth, Tony. I’m sure they’ll be most receptive.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:45 | link | comments

Bambi fans jump the shark—and the gun: American balloting is still three months away, but Bambi and his supporters aren’t waiting for first Tuesday following the first Monday in November to declare victory. From an L.A. Times blog:

The Ticket needs to apologize because apparently we missed something -- like the next three months and election day.

Sen. Barack Obama walked into a town hall meeting in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last week. The crowd was enthusiastic, ready to see and cheer him.

But, before listening to his usual stump speech, the crowd, perhaps spontaneously, had something to do for their guy, according to the From the Road blog of CBS News' Allison O'Keefe. The nominee-to-be's fans sang "Happy Birthday." On Monday, Obama will turn 47.

But the happy crowd did not sing "Happy birthday, Sen. Obama."

It confidently sang "Happy birthday, Mr. President."

And Barack Obama looked very pleased to hear it...

How sweet would it be if those already counted chickens never hatched?

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:23 | link | comments

Harpoon, the abridged version: As a public service to my readers, I will once again condense Harpoon Siddiqui’s Sunday Star screed into a few short sentences: Blah, blah, blah, Harper bad. Blah, blah, blah, Bush really bad. Blah, blah, blah, Guantanamo. Blah, blah, blah, torture. Blah, blah, blah, Abu Ghraib.

There. Now you don’t have to read the sucker (unless you're a glutton for punishment, that is).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments

Superficial “diversity”: Are you a Canadian who’s ABW (anything but white)? Well then, amigo, you may have a future with the Ceeb. The National Post’s Jonathan Kay has the scoop on the Mothercorp’s latest recruitment drive:

A friend of mine just flipped me a rather astonishing email he received a few weeks ago from a CBC producer who was looking to book expert guests for a high-profile news program on CBC's main TV channel. The email expressed some interest in my friend coming on to the show. But then, in the next paragraph, the producer declared that what he really wanted was someone who would fulfill the CBC's "diversity" mandate.

A "diverse" guest, the CBC producer helpfully explained is someone who is "ethnic" or female. The producer then asked: Did my friend know anyone who met this description? (My friend, sadly, is white and male — though with a 2-week vacation tan, he might be able to pass as Mediterranean. I'm not sure if that counts.)

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the email here, as it would reveal the identity of all involved. But I did speak on the phone with my friend about it. He told me that he actually did know someone "ethnic" who would be quite perfect for this particular CBC gig — a total expert on the subject under discussion, who happens to be quite telegenic. But he decided not to pass on the name, as he felt it would be interpreted as an insulting gesture along the lines of "Hey, you're ethnic – I've got a great affirmative action gig for you. Yeah, it's the CBC. They're on a diversity kick. They'll put anyone ethnic on the air – even you."

The Ceeb is all for ethnic “diversity”. Diversity of opinion, though—more specifically, the views of those on the non-leftist end of the political spectrum—well, that’s another story. Should those out of step with the Ceeb mindset (one-worlder squish; multishmulti mush) happen to stray into the Sanctum Sanctorum of Canadian broadcasting, they can count on being treated with bewilderment at best, scorn and alarm at worst.

In other words, Conservative “ethnics” need not apply.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:56 | link | comments

The China syndrome: The HRC system was established back in the days when one could silence a White Power creep by, say, shutting down his anti-Semitic phone message; one could then pat oneself on the back for a job well done (because, the thinking went, if you didn’t extinguish his brushfire of hate, who knows, it might well turn into a raging blaze). These days, however, the existence of the Internet makes putting out such brushfires a far trickier—one could even say an impossible—proposition, as the censors in China are discovering to their dismay. From informationweek:

Free people and journalists everywhere are expressing outrage today on the heels of news that 34-year-old Chinese Hu Jia will be jailed for another 3-1/2 years (in addition to the year that he's already spent in prison) for broadly distributing his views on democracy and criticisms of Chinese policies via the Internet. In this day and age of the Internet, did China get way more than it bargained for when it lobbied to bring the Olympics to Beijing?

For a government that's betwixt and between business globalization pressure from Taiwan and Hong Kong, the spotlight on Tibet, and the growing tide of dissidence amongst its own citizenry, the Internet has proven to be a difficult beast to tame.

Never before has the world gotten a better insider's look at the lengths to which the Chinese government will go to preserve its impositions on freedom as well as the will of the Chinese people to effect change.

China wants it both ways. Its rulers want to tap into the lucrative trends of globalization. But as willing as it is to import cash from the free world, it prefers to silence the democratic baggage that comes with that cash as well as any internal dissidents who are willing to receive that baggage (and amplify it). Before the Web and the Internet, the Free World didn't even know who those dissidents were or how many of them were out there. But now, thanks to their Internet tenacity, dissidents like Hu Jia are getting their much-needed 15 minutes of fame.

The Internet already was an unwanted thorn in the Chinese government's side. Life styles of the rich and famous (commonly associated with democracy) leaks in, while news of what really goes on behind closed doors leaks out. Armed with the sort of information it never had before, the Free World has been able to apply more leverage than ever on the Chinese government in an effort to bring about change. In some cases, like with Tibet, much to the despair of freedom advocates (and mostly to that of the People of Tibet), that leverage sometimes feels as though it's not working.

But look again.

Thanks to the Internet and Jia's 15 minutes of fame on the world stage, he is being silenced in a very different way (jail) than he might have been during the pre-Web era. The Chinese government knows that the lines it crossed before simply can't be crossed now. The Free World, particularly the parts where elected officials rely on the support of their constituents, won't stand for it. It's not that the Free World should accept the jailing of free thinkers and speakers like Jia. it's just that China knows exactly where the line currently is and how to gingerly walk it. Today, that line isn't exactly where some of us would like it to be. But in terms of who can really apply leverage on China (e.g., the U.S. government), it is where it is…

If the Chinese, who are masters at censorship, can’t get a handle on the Net, what makes Canada’s Jewstablishment think it can? And if it can’t “control” the World Wide Web (and, clearly, it can’t) what’s the point of using censors to stomp out brushfires in Canada via “human rights” cops and courts? Isn’t it senseless, not to mention dangerous, since clamping down on “hate” (which, these days, often isn’t “hate” at all, but rather criticism of the global jihad and sharia) comes at the cost of our most precious, our most vital freedom—free speech?

Some food for thought, not that I expect the Jewstablishment will soon chew on it.

Update: The censorious Jewstablishment sings a tribute to its favourite state censors:

The way you curb the hate.

The way you stop the fuss.

The way you validate.

No, no, they can’t take that away from us.

 

The way you gives us “cred”.

The way you're like a truss.

The way you quell our dread.

No, no, they can’t take that away from us.

 

We may never, ever figure out what we truly have to fear.

So we’ll always, always keep that blankie near.

 

The way you end the harm.

The way we drive your bus.

The way you're our luck charm.

No, no, they can’t take that away from us.

No, they can’t that that away from us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments (2)

How it’s done:  A link on the site of this weekend’s sharia financing seminar in Toronto outlines the process a person must go through in order to get the sharia seal of approval for his/her financial service/product: 

Our clients send us a brief “premise document” describing the objectives, proposed contracts, methodology and economic impact of the services to be developed for initial review. 

IFAB prepares a Preliminary Shariah Assessment Report (PSAR) that identifies Shariah issues, weaknesses and strengths using a traffic light system of the proposed product and methodology.

The clients take the appropriate actions making revisions and amendments to their proposal ensuring Shariah compliance through addressing the concerns raised in the PSAR.

Once the document is revised by the client, it is discussed with the Board that scrutinizes it further to ensure that the product and its methodology is completely Shariah compliant. An Interim Shariah Report (ISR) is produced at this stage with comments from the advisors.

Once the Board gives a green light, the clients prepare legal documentation required for product development. After the legal documentation is completed, it is submitted to the Board for final approval. 

The final stage involves approval of the completed product and its structure by the Board that issues a Legal Ruling (Fatwa) on the basis of the information provided by the client.

The product is now ready to be introduced into the market with the necessary and complete documentation including the fatwa ensuring its compliance.

Audit

The Board undertakes the audit of Shariah-compliant service providers to ensure continued compliance over the life of the product.  The audits are conducted by specialized professionals and Shariah scholars either on a periodic basis, or on a per request basis.  The Board also partners with public accounting firms to provide audit of financial institutions under the guidelines issued by Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI).

In future, the Board plans to develop a process of enforcement – audit of organizations and products with alleged non-compliant practices and products. (My emphasis)

Sounds like these guys are resolute, well-organized and have done their homework, and that the future of sharia-compliance in Canada is looking bright.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:51 | link | comments

Walk on the mild side: The Ceeb has a report about Syed Soharwardy—formerly, Ezra Levant’s nemesis; currently, the Islamic Terry Fox—and his perambulation across the nation:

"Walking is a very good exercise, and that is exactly what I am doing for my physical and spiritual well-being."

With those words, Syed Soharwardy began his Multi-Faith Walk Against Violence in April 2008. What makes this walk different is that it is 6,800 kilometres long and stretches five time zones across Canada — from Halifax, N.S., to Victoria, B.C.

It also appears to be a deeply personal journey. An active member of Calgary's interfaith community, Soharwardy is not soliciting support or donations for any particular cause as he makes his way across the country.

A married father of two teenagers, he has remortgaged his Calgary home to help pay for this adventure, and all he seems to be seeking out along the way are like-minded people with whom to share his views and talk about their commonalities.

"My grandfather was a mufti (high priest) in Kashmir, and my father was a religious leader in Pakistan," Soharwardy says. "Though I have never faced persecution, I have personally witnessed so much violence in these two regions, and I have made it my mission to stop violence everywhere, be it in school, bullying, gangs, child abuse, elder abuse, domestic violence or terrorism.

"This walk is my physical and spiritual journey in an attempt at uniting Canadians against all forms of violence."

As of July 27, he had crossed the Ontario-Manitoba border and was closing in on Winnipeg.

Walking for change

The seeds of this journey began about 14 years ago. Having settled in Calgary, Soharwardy says, he gradually grew "upset at the way the Islamic world was publicized by the media, just as one monolithic mass. The diversity in Islam was not recognized simply because people did not know enough about us to form an opinion.

"So, I realized the best way to go about it is to start a group and talk about the similarities that all religions have instead of the differences."

A volunteer imam at Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre, where he often helps organize celebrations of Jewish holidays, Soharwardy was the driving force behind the group Muslims Against Terrorism, which was conceived in 1998 and now has 13 chapters all over the world.

A key factor in Soharwardy's decision to organize the walk, according to long-time friend Linda Zachri, was the December 2007 slaying of a 16-year-old Mississauga girl, allegedly by her father and brother, following what was said to be a dispute over wearing traditional Muslim headdress.

"Syed went on a long fast as a protest not only against what had happened but how the entire Muslim community was being painted with the same brush," said Zachri, who helps Soharwardy with his website.

"He wanted to highlight the fact that people within his community do not seek outside help. It was an intergenerational problem gone awfully wrong, and it was then that he decided to bring an end to all violence front and centre, and what better way than to walk against it."…

An end to violence, sure, but what about an end to doctrinally-decreed supremacism? Oddly enough, Syed has yet to renouce that particular aspect of his faith. And lest we forget amid all the heart-warming blather about interfaith outreach, there’s still a “supreme” in his organization’s name, and its website continues to tout Muhammad's farewell address as "The World's First Ever Charter of Rights & Freedoms" (as if Mo were some proto-Trudeau, and the 7th Century Arabian subcontinent some proto-Trudeaupia).

Someone named Jeff Wilson left this droll comment about Syed’s sea-to-sea stroll. It pretty much sums up my view as well:

Too easy!

He should take his walk to muslim countries, especialy to his birth place; Kashmir, where people are being slaughtered in the name of his religion; Islam, as opposed to walking around Canada; the place he ran away to, rather than take a stand to make his birth-place a place of hope and opportunity... like Canada.

Do you get my meaning?

Maybe he could take a stroll through Saudi Arabia... with a dog.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:29 | link | comments

The bin Hatfields and the bin McCoys?: The “feud” (as the Christian Science Monitor calls it) between Fatah and Hamas is heating up again:

Tel Aviv – The worst week of internal Palestinian conflict since Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip last year ended with fresh escalation as the Islamic militants on Friday arrested senior political leaders of the secular Fatah party in the coastal enclave.

A Hamas spokesperson said the arrests were a retaliation for round-ups of its political figures in the West Bank by officers of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority.

Amid the tit-for-tat detentions, spokesmen for the rival parties stepped up their rhetorical attacks on one another, with Hamas spokespeople making open threats to repeat their Gaza takeover in the West Bank. The acrimony is complicating recent attempts by Arab mediators to convene Hamas-Fatah talks aimed at reconciling the 13-month rift.

“It will continue to escalate. Maybe they are negotiating by arresting each other before the real talks,’’ says Hissam Jaberi, a Gaza-based reporter for the Al-Ayyam newspaper. “As long as we don’t have a national program accepted by all the parties, we will continue to fight.’’…

Just a few months ago, negotiators from Hamas and Fatah appeared to have reached a compromise in talks hosted by Yemen, but the agreement was quickly renounced by both sides.

Fatah has demanded that Hamas apologize for the use of violence and relinquish control of Palestinian Authority buildings. It also wants the Islamic militants to recognize and honor the accords it signed with Israel.

Hamas wants commitments from Fatah to get representation in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the umbrella institution of Palestinians in the occupied territories and diaspora.

After the recent Arab summit in Damascus, Mr. Abbas said he would negotiate without preconditions, and talks were supposed to have opened in Cairo. Even though the Egyptians have sent questionnaires to both sides to hammer out some common ground ahead of the talks, the current clashes have dimmed chances for dialogue for now.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Palestinian expert Reuven Paz said that recent violence demonstrates that the year-old rift between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is solidifying into a reality of two separate states.

I doubt it. Hamas has the upper hand and will undoubtedly use it to trounce its rival once and for all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:04 | link | comments

Something in common: In totalitarian Myanmar, a comedian who expresses “anti-social” views can be apprehended and punished by authorities.

In Canada, too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:54 | link | comments

Rat people: Why cousins shouldn't marry cousins.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:41 | link | comments

Two too many: Four wives—that’s okey-dokey.  Six wives—that’s pushing the envelope (and not in a good way), buster. From Arab News:

JIZAN: Prince Muhammad bin Nasser, governor of Jizan province, has ordered an inquiry into whether a 56-year-old member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice violated Islamic law by marrying six women. For its part, the Jizan branch of the commission has said it has already begun internally investigating the case.

According to media reports, the man, whose name and position within the religious police has not been divulged, has three Saudi women listed on his family ID card. The other three women that he is allegedly married to are Yemeni, but only one of them has legal status. The man has admitted to marrying all six women, but maintains that he was already divorced to his fourth and fifth wives vocally and in the presence of the women’s families, a claim the families of these women refute.

Islamic tradition states a man may separate from his wife through vocal declarations of divorce in the presence of witnesses. It is forbidden for a man to be married to more than four women.

The fourth wife gave birth to a child three months ago. The fifth wife moved back to Yemen, but her family claims the father still owes them half of the SR20,000 dowry he agreed to pay for the woman. The sixth wife, who is 22, says she was unaware of the man’s marital status at the time she agreed to marry him.

Sheikh Saad Al-Shuthri, a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (the Ulema), told Al-Watan daily that for this man to have been abiding by Islamic law he could not at any time have been married to more than four women, and that exceeding this number is a major sin.

Unless, of course, you’re the founder of the faith, in which case the more the merrier.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:14 | link | comments

Oh, those nefarious Jews: There they go again, saving the lives of Palestinian babies. The racists!

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

Going gently into that good night: Diana West writes about U.K.’s apparently blasé attitude toward the onrush of sharia:

Strange, the apparent lack of public alarm in Britain over an extensive new poll showing that significant minorities of Muslim students at some of Britain's better colleges and universities embrace the most threatening aspects of Islam. These include the conviction that killing in the name of religion can be justified (32 percent), belief that men and women shouldn't mix freely (40 percent), support for Sharia (Islamic law) in Britain (40 percent), and support for a global caliphate (33 percent) based in Sharia, among other repressive tenets.

Of course, the poll, conducted by the online research company YouGov and commissioned by the conservative Centre for Social Cohesion, came out just this week. Still, having recently visited England and interviewed a string of political, media and religious figures, I'm going to guess that these horrifying numbers -- and they are indeed horrifying, despite the emphatic disclaimer that the majority of polled Muslim students support secularism and democratic values -- will kick up little cultural dust. After being plastered across a news cycle's worth of papers, they will be regarded as so much political wallpaper that people gaze upon without seeing -- or, at least, without reacting.

Fear or outrage would be considered Islamophobic, of course, and isn't there a law against that? Concern for British common law would be called nationalistic, and that's got to be a crime against multiculturalism. Calling for any action would be labeled xenophobic-slash-mean-spirited. Better to read and weep, silently…

Personally, I think it’s a far better idea to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”—but then, I’m not a big fan of multi-shmulti mush, nor of sitting back silently, nor of the requirements of Islamic law, especially as it pertains to us wicked Jews.

Update: More "gentleness"--the 7/7 trial collapses.

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:54 | link | comments

Belated security concerns: These days you'd be hard pressed to pass through airport security carrying roll-on deodorant. But hop aboard a Greyhound bus while concealing a Rambo-eque knife on your person--hey, no problemo.

Up till now, that is.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:52 | link | comments

Head games: The Toronto Star wants us to think that wearing a hijab, the head covering that proclaims “I’m a woman who submits,” is nothing more than another fashion option—and a mighty stylish one at that:

As fall's oversized fashion bibles begin landing on magazine stands with a thud, a major trend will be conspicuously absent.

And that's fine by Jana Kossaibati, a 19-year-old medical student in London, whose new blog, Hijab Style, is filling the void for Muslim women around the world. Billed as Britain's first style guide for "Muslimahs," the site has inspired knockoffs and is proving to be an invaluable resource for fashionistas who are becoming more adventurous than ever with their hijabs.

"Forget London, Paris or New York, the Arab Gulf is where glamorous hijab is at," Kossaibati writes in a post about her favourite headscarf style. "And boy do those Khaleeji girls know how to rock their shaylas."

Adopting and adapting hijab styles from all over the Muslim world is a relatively new tradition. For centuries, Muslims typically wore a headscarf reflective of their heritage. Today, while most older women still do, that custom is fading.

Kossaibati's fashion views, which were aired in an article in the British daily The Guardian this week, have caused a stir among readers who have since flocked to her blog.

"Some people, both Muslim and non-Muslim seem to find the notion of `hijab fashion' (and my blog is about style for goodness sake, not fashion), a contradictory concept," she writes on her blog.

"Apparently, modesty dictates that you look as `blah' as possible. Apparently, wearing hijab means you should shun all worldly notions of `style' and `looking good'" she adds. "There is nothing wrong with having a personal sense of style. Islam does not dictate to us which colours to wear or which hijab wrap is the best."

Blogger Imaan, a 21-year-old Norwegian Muslim who launched The Hijab blog last month, says she favours the Spanish style.

"You see it all over Cairo," says Imaan, who didn't want her surname published. The style, which goes on like a bandana and is tied at the back of the head, has sparked some controversy since it leaves the neck exposed. Imaan plays it both ways by sporting a turtleneck with the headscarf.

"I think it's very good to be creative with the hijab," she says in a telephone interview. "When my non-Muslim friends and colleagues see me, they get very excited. They want me to teach them how to tie the different styles."

She believes experimenting with the hijab invites more positive interest in Islam from outsiders "than if you're wrapped in a burka."

Sobia Malik, a psychology student at York University, started experimenting with new ways to wrap her hijab after she started wearing one a few years ago. She wanted a style that would help boost her confidence and not look out of place with her fashionable Western clothes.

After a few months of trial and error in front of the mirror, she perfected a technique that has turned heads and garnered compliments from strangers.

A couple of weeks ago, she was in line for the Psyclone at Canada's Wonderland when two young Muslim women standing behind her asked about her hijab. Malik invited the women to a public washroom and showed them, step by step, how to tie their own rectangular pashminas. When the lesson ended, Malik said the girls were surprised at how easy and comfortable it was.

Malik, who buys her scarves from H&M, Costa Blanca and Suzy Shier, said she doesn't know if the style has a name.

"I call it `My Way.'"

I call it “sharia”. I'd like to ask Aqsa Parvez what she'd call it, but I can't since her male kinfolk allegedly killed her when she balked at wearing a 'My Way' (which, in her case, might more properly be called 'Their Way').

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments (3)

Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Pooches: Oh, those wacky Wahhabis. Now they’re trying to clamp down on the sharia-flouting practice of using adorable canines to troll for chicks (the killjoys). From the Toronto Star (although it does read like something from the Onion):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia–Every single man knows that walking a dog in the park is a sure babe magnet.

Saudi Arabia's Islamic religious police, in their zeal to keep the sexes apart, want to make sure the technique doesn't catch on here.

The solution: Ban selling dogs and cats as pets, as well as walking them in public.

The prohibition went into effect this week in the capital, Riyadh, and authorities in the city say they will strictly enforce it – unlike previous bans in the cities of Mecca and Jiddah, which have been ignored and failed to stop pet sales.

Violators found outside with their pets will have their beloved poodles and other furry companions confiscated by agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the official name of the religious police, tasked with enforcing Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic code.

The commission's general manager, Othman al-Othman, said the ban was ordered because of what he called "the rising of phenomenon of men using cats and dogs to make passes at women and pester families" and "violating proper behaviour in public squares and malls."

"If a man is caught with a pet, the pet will be immediately confiscated and the man will be forced to sign a document pledging not to repeat the act," al-Othman told the Al-Hayat newspaper.

"If he does, he will be referred to authorities." The ban does not address women.

So far, the prohibition did not appear to have any effect in Riyadh.

It's extremely rare, anyway, to see anyone in the capital walking a dog – much less carrying a cat in public – despite the authorities' claims of flirtatious young men luring girls with their pets in malls.

Sales clerck at a couple of Riyadh pet stores said yesterday they received no orders from the commission banning the sale of pets.

Cats and dogs were still on display.

The religious police prowl streets and malls throughout the kingdom, ensuring unmarried men and women do not mix, confronting women they feel are not properly covered or urging men to go to prayers.

They also often make attempts to plug the few holes in the strict gender segregation that innovations bring.

In 2004, for example, they tried to ban cameras on cell phones, fearing that men and women would exchange pictures of each other – though the prohibition was quickly revoked.

The prohibition may be more of an attempt to curb the owning of pets, which conservative Saudis view as a sign of a corrupting Western influence, like the fast food, shorts, jeans and pop music that have become more common in the kingdom.

Although it has never been common to own pets in the Arab world, it's becoming increasingly fashionable among the upper class in Saudi Arabia and other countries such as Egypt.

In Islamic tradition, dogs are shunned as unclean and dangerous, though they are kept for hunting and guarding.

In large cities around the Middle East, stray dogs are considered pests.

The ban on cats is more puzzling, since there's no similar disdain for them in Islamic tradition.

One of the Prophet Muhammad's closest companions was given the name Abu Huraira, Arabic for "the father of the kitten," because he always carried a kitten with him and a number of traditional stories of the prophet show Muhammad encouraging people to treat cats well.

“The father of the kitten”?  And what about the Prophet Muhammad's other companion, “the uncle of the bunny”?

Well, they do say it’s a warm ‘n’ fuzzy religion.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments (1)

BB late to the party: The National Post’s Jonathan Kay wonders why the B’nai Brith has belatedly decided to criticize the HRCs—an apparatus it has championed from the beginning:

…The fact that the group is wading into the issue only at this late stage suggests that its real goal is saving a beleaguered censorship policy that has become sacrosanct to the human-rights industry and its acronymed Jewish allies. B'nai Brith, in particular, has had a key role in propping up this industry: Its overwrought surveys on anti-Semitism are Exhibit A in the spurious effort to portray Canada as a seething hive of Jew hatred — a portrayal that, in turn, is cited as evidence that we need heavy-handed human-rights laws.

When it comes to ideological censorship, B'nai Brith has been part of the problem for years. It strikes me as unconvincing when it suddenly declares itself to be a champion of free speech.

You mean Canada isn’t a seething hive of Jew (and other kinds of) haters? In that case, could someone please tell our ginormous anti-hate industry that its services are no longer required?

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments