scaramouche

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

A quote for New Year’s Eve: From Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A
biography of the First Amendment, by Anthony Lewis:

More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. They can criticize the White House or air the secrets of the bedroom with little fear of punishment. This extraordinary freedom is based on just fourteen words in our Constitutions: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.

Here in Canada, we deride those fourteen words, labouring under the delusion that we
can somehow “balance” free speech with “the thought we hate”—and that the
effort to do so makes us inherently more tolerant and virtuous than our American
neighbours.

As someone who has come to understand that free speech is the cornerstone of a free
society, and that all our much-vaunted “balance” has done is to give some people the
power to decide what others can and cannot say—the modus operendi in such unfree
jurisdictions as Saudi Arabia and Iran—I look upon those remarkable fourteen words
with a mixture of longing and awe.

Yes, that’s right, folks. I’m that peculiar type of Canadian who “suffers” from a bad
case of First Amendment envy.

And on that note, I'd like to wish all my readers a Happy New Year. When next we
connect, it will be ’09.

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

Overrated: Noam Chomsky. Also, Harold Pinter.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments

History maven hails Palestinian “nerve”: A “fan” of the Jews adds his two shekels’
worth in a letter to the National Post:

Irrationally, Palestinians first refused to give up their lands to create a homeland for Jewish refugees fleeing European anti-Semitism. Then they stubbornly insisted they were a "people" even when former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir informed them they were not. With preposterous temerity, Palestinian refugees then wanted to return home, and for decades refused to renounce their homeland or grant legitimacy to the state that usurped it.

And recently, these arrogant natives even held elections and expected the world to actually respect them. Now they are firing homemade rockets at the mightiest military machine in the Middle East, which is trying to starve them into submission.

Such intolerable chutzpah!

John Dirlik, Pointe-Claire, Que.

Reading John, an obvious history buff (of one particular version of history, anyway), the
word that springs to mind is “proportion”. As in, the Palestinians make up a tiny
proportion of an immense Islamic ummah—57, count ‘em, 57 nations strong; more
than one billion souls. The Jews, on the other hand, lay claim to a few puny acres,
a scant proportion of the vast expanse of Arab/Muslim lands in the region, and they've
been fighting—and dying—for those same few acres from the get-go. They’ve
been forced to do so because members of the ummah, including the Palestinians, cannot
bear the idea of Jews being sovereign over any piece of land, no matter how small
the proportion, if it's been previously earmarked for Allah (even if—and here’s where
history comes in again—the Jews were there first).

And, oh, yeah, John, forgive my intolerable chutzpah, but I would be remiss if I
didn’t point out that the Palestinian “people” already have a “homeland”. It’s called
Jordan.

Update: David Solway explains where John is coming from:

Most observers have been completely taken in, not only by British legerdemain during the Mandate period and United Nations jugglery, but by chauvinistic Arab propaganda like [Palestinian poet Mourid] Barghouti’s. The Palestinian narrative has also been promoted by the ignorance or duplicity of Western intellectuals, which helped fertilize the Palestinian identity in order to counter the historical thrust of Zionism, accomplishing its purpose by a cynical rewriting of history.

Update: Melanie Phillips cuts to the chase:

The issue of Israel sits at the very apex of the fight to defend civilisation. Those who wish to destroy western civilisation need to destroy the Jews, whose moral precepts formed its foundation stones. The deranged hatred of the Jews lies at the core of the Islamists’ hatred of America, the ‘infidel’ west and modernity, and is the reason why they wish to destroy Israel. Unless people in the west understand that Israel’s fight is their own fight, they will be on the wrong side of the war to defend not just the west but civilisation in general.

  Update: History maven Elmo bloviates, compares Jews to Nazis. (How original).
  (h/t: BCF)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:15 | link | comments (1)

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Kooky Jim connects the (non-existent) Jewish dots: Aside from religion,
what does Israel cleaning out a nest of jihadi vipers have to do with abominable
Wall Street scammer Bernie Madoff? The answer: nada, squat, bupkes, rien.

Of course, crazy James Wolcott of glitzy advertising vehicle, Vanity Fair, sees it
otherwise. In his VF blog he hyperventilates that

In angry retaliation for the house arrest of Bernie Madoff, Israel has launched a hellacious air assault against Hamas in Gaza that errs so far on the side of disproportionality that its running up the fatality score may become self-defeating.

Yeah, I’m sure the whole Bernie thing must have been front and centre in the minds
of Israel’s military strategists when they were deciding on airstrikes. Or at least front
and centre in Walcott’s mind, anyway, when he heard about them and decided to
draw connections where none exist. (You can just see the cogs of his mind spinning
furiously: “Madoff is Jewish; Israel’s Jewish. Ergo, Must. Be. Related.”)

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:47 | link | comments

You want “proportionate”? You got it: On the JWR site Jonathan Mark
suggests some “proportionate” ways to deal with Hamas:

I condemn Israel's disproportionate attack on Hamas because, so far, it has only lasted four days and I would like to see a proportionate response that terrifies Hamas for seven years, the years that have filled Sderot and neighboring towns with nightmares, death, amputations and trauma coming from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.

Perhaps a proportionate response would have Gaza's leaders fearful of being killed every day for the next two years, as Gilad Shalit has been terrified of torture and death every day for the last two years in his solitary Gaza dungeon.

A proportionate response would have Hamas mothers and fathers as fearful for their children's lives as Shalit's mother and father have been fearful for Gilad's life.

A proportionate response would have Gaza's children crying for their mommies and daddies, the way at a Hamas pageant earlier in December a Palestinian actor dressed as Shalit got down on his knees, mock-begging in Hebrew for his Ima and Abba while the Gaza crowds laughed.

A proportionate response would so intimidate Hamas that they will grovel and, as a "gesture," send cocoa and jam into Sderot, the way Israel has groveled in response to rockets from Hamas, sending cocoa and jam into Gaza. Imagine Churchill sending cocoa and jam into Berlin as a humanitarian gesture after - during - the bombing of London.

A proportionate response would be one that will convince Hamas there is no military solution, no solution but surrender. They can then call surrender a "peace process," if they like, just as the mostly unanswered attacks on Jews have convinced some Jews that there is no military solution but surrender to any and all demands. They suggest a euthanasia by the euphemism of "peace process," that Israel become what some are already planning to call "Canaan," a non-Jewish state of all its citizens…

Let it be said to Israelis and Jews everywhere, in the words of Churchill: "You have enemies? Good. It means you've stood up for something." But remember: A war (and Hamas has repeatedly said this is war) is never won if you are disproportionately kind to someone who wants to destroy you and, failing in that, demands with indignation that you not destroy him.

Notice how the concept of “proportionality” never enters into discussions of, say, the
recent genocide (still in progress) of 2,000,000 people, largely at the hands of Arabs, in
Sudan. I guess since that number represents but a fraction of the entire Sudanese
population—a small “proportion,” if you will—the “proportionality” of it all is irrelevant.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:22 | link | comments (1)

And speaking of disproportionate chutzpah...: Rod Blagojavitch, the potty-mouthed thug who governs the state of Illinois (for now), is going name a replacement for Obama's senate seat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:14 | link | comments

Rosett on the "d" word: If anything's "disproportionate" in the Middle East at the moment, writes Claudia Rosett, it's Ahmadinejad's display of chutzpah:

If there’s anything “disproportionate” about violence in the Middle East these days, it’s the extent to which Iran’s regime stirs up big trouble and not only gets away with it, but casts itself as an aggrieved party. We saw it when Iranian-backed Hezbollah launched a war out of Lebanon against Israel in 2006 — and Iran blamed the conflict on Israel. We’ve seen it in recent years with Iranian-backed terrorism in Iraq — where Iran blamed America.

We’re seeing it again right now, in the fighting between Israel and Gaza. Iran abets the Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza, and who have been firing rockets by the thousands into Israel. Now that Israel is defending itself by fighting back against Hamas, Iran’s Fars News Agency reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israeli leaders hauled before the International Criminal Court. According to the Fars article, “leading Iranian lawyers” are to be enlisted in this effort, and “a special message” is to be sent to heads of “other countries” (presumably other countries inclined to cater to Iran’s mullocracy, such as Venezuela — currently one of the 18 members of the International Criminal Court bureau “elected” by the ICC’s assembly of member states).

Where did Ahmadinejad get the idea that such a stunt, proposed by his rogue, terrorist-sponsoring regime, might pay off?

Maybe he got it from the UN (progenitor of the ICC), where Iran is in violation of five Security Council resolutions meant to stop its nuclear bomb program, but is nonetheless allowed to sit on the governing boards of a slew of major UN agencies including the WFP, the FAO, UNEP, UNICEF and the flagship UN Development Program (more on this in my Forbes.com column earlier this month on “Iran’s Power at the United Nations“). Maybe Ahmadinejad was encouraged in his notions by the dingbat utterances of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who on matters such as Gaza and Israel is promoting a global order in which terrorist enclaves deserve more rights than their democratic prey. Such are the realms of genuine “disproportion.”...

Update: From bad to verse:

Few ideas are more subject to distortion

That the notion of Israel’s “disproportion”.

It appears to imply

That more Jews have to die--

A disgusting “proportion” contortion.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:13 | link | comments

The matchmaker: Former U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony "The Dhimmi" Zinni is advising the President-elect to "engage Hamas".

And after the "engagement"--what? The shotgun wedding of jihadis and infidels? Don't virtually 100% of such unions end up in sharia courts?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:38 | link | comments

Jack’s balancing act: Canada’s self-righteous socialists, helmed by Little Jackie
Layton, issued the following statement re Gaza (my bolds):

Canada's New Democrats condemn the unacceptable escalation of violence in the Middle East causing death and injury to so many civilians in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

It is a tragedy that hundreds of civilians have again become the victims of violence in this conflict. The continuing airstrikes by Israel on civilians in the Gaza strip and the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are serving to compound the existing civilian disaster and further harm chances for a negotiated peace.

We call on the Government of Canada to immediately call for an end to the aerial bombing of Gaza, the blockade of aid to civilians and the indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel. Indeed, the government must urge both sides to agree to end the current hostilities immediately, reinstate the ceasefire and return to the peace process.

The Government of Canada should also work to ensure that medical and food aid is provided to the civilians of Gaza through U.N. agencies.

New Democrats believe that Canada must pursue a balanced approach to the Middle East crisis, in keeping with Canadians' deep desire for peace in the Middle East and are ready to work with the new administration in the U.S. towards a lasting peace in the region. This goal cannot be achieved while citizens in such large numbers are being killed and endangered.

On one side of the scale: the world’s one and only Jewish state, slated for annihilation
by Islam’s hellacious holy warriors. On the other side: the holy warriors.

On balance, Jack, you’re full of crap.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:44 | link | comments

Egyptian protester's "solution": Same as Adolf's--a final one (h/t Jihad Watch):

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:29 | link | comments

Go, Jews!: After the wimpitude, lassitude and general stupidtude of the Oslo era,
it’s heartening to find that, despite the best efforts of Israel’s delusion, suicidal,
self-loathing ”peace”-pushers (who convinced themselves without any evidence
whatsoever that endless concessions, appeasement and turning a blind eye to the
enemy’s true intentions was the way to go; see Kenneth Levin's The Oslo Syndrome
for a full account of Israel's betrayal by its own elites), the Jewish state still has some
balls. Here’s how contentions’ Peter Wehner sees it:

Israel’s overwhelming air assault against Hamas, which may be a prelude to a ground assault, is welcome news to those who support and deeply admire the Jewish state and who believe the way to defeat militant Islam is to confront it rather than to appease it.

Despite the fact that Hamas has provoked this response from Israel by directing rocket attacks against Israel, that Israel has shown almost super-human patience until now in not responding with force, and that Israel is now exercising her elementary right of self-defense, we have seen the ritual and stupid denunciation of Israel from the United Nations and parts of the Arab world, from France to Turkey to elsewhere. The Bush Administration, to its great credit, is focusing criticism where it belongs: on the aggression and malevolence of Hamas.

There are, I think, two things to take away from what is unfolding in Gaza right now that are contrary to conventional wisdom. The first, laid out in an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, is that the sine qua non of an authentic “peace process” is a decisive Israeli victory over Hamas. Israelis cannot be expected to pursue further steps for peace — and her efforts at achieving peace are by now almost too numerous to count — if Gaza remains a de facto enemy and terrorist state.

Events in Gaza also remind us that the popular Western emphasis on concessions leading to peace, is in many instances exactly the opposite of the truth...

Exactly.

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

Names in Britainistan: Nationally, “Jack” was the most popular name for baby
boys born in the UK this past year (followed by Oliver, Harry, Charlie and Alfie), but
regionally--for example, in the cathedral city of Peterborough--another name has
taken the lead:

TOPPING the charts as the most popular name given to bouncing baby boys born this year in Peterborough is Mohammed, a testament to the city's diverse cultural population.

The traditional Muslim name hit the number one spot for the second year running above names such as Jack, Thomas and Harry in the list compiled by Peterborough Register Office.

Mohammed, the name of the seventh century prophet who founded the Islamic faith, entered the national Top 20 chart for the first time in 2004 and continues to be a popular choice for parents naming their newborns.

Interim superintendent registrar Rosalind Yardy (53) said: "It certainly does demonstrate the diversity of the communities in the city. I think next year we're going to see different spelling variations highlighting the cultural percentage of the population in Peterborough, and I think we'll see more European names."

Clinching the title of favourite girls' name is Lily, a feminine name from the word for the white flower.

The girls' names in the top three spots were close contenders – Lily won by two and Isabelle pipped Grace to the second spot by three.

Ms Yardy said: "I think people are starting to prefer traditional names – I don't think they're being swayed so much by celebrity names.

"I imagine parents are thinking more about the child having the name not only as a babe in arms, but also as a child and going into adulthood.

"It shows less people are jumping on the celebrity bandwagon and are thinking more about their choices."

Dropping from the fifth position held for the last two years, the name Joshua has slid to 15th place in this year's charts.

Jon and Donna Sandall, from Werrington, Peterborough, fell in love with the name and gave it to their son born on October 3, after months of searching for the perfect name.

Press officer Jon (26) said: "We spent ages thinking about the name, buying books and speaking to people who'd had kids recently.

"Tradition wasn't a massive factor for us, nor were the Bible's religious connotations, we just liked the sound of it.

"Although it's sort of old-fashioned now, it seems to have come back into vogue."

He added: "It's a name he will have for the rest of his life, so picking it was quite a complex thing.

"We also liked the name Jack, but we knew it was an extremely popular name and didn't want him to go to school and be in a classroom with 10 other Jacks, so we settled with it as a middle name."…

I hear “Hussein” is quite popular.

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

Death cult’s triple play: Barry Rubin details the one, two, three stages of Hamas’s
strategy:

Option A: The Ceasefire

Hamas ends a ceasefire giving it the peace and quiet needed to build up its army and consolidate its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel would deliver supplies as long as there weren't attacks. From a Western-style pragmatic standpoint this is a great situation.

But Hamas isn't a Western-style pragmatic organization. Peace and quiet is its enemy not only because of its ideology--the deity commands it to destroy Israel--or its self-image--as heroic martyrs--but also because battle is needed to recruit the masses for permanent war and unite the population around it.

Hamas has no program of improving the well-being of the people or educating children to be doctors, teachers, and engineers. Its platform has but one plank: war, war, endless war, sacrifice, heroism, and martyrdom until total victory is achieved.

Thus, it ends the ceasefire.

Option B: The Rockets

And so Hamas ends the ceasefire and rains rockets down on Israel, accompanied by mortars and the occasional attempt at a cross-border ground attack. Israel does nothing.

Hamas crows: you are weak, you are confused, your are helpless. Come, people, arise and destroy the paper tiger! And so more people are recruited, West Bank Palestinians look on with admiration at those fighting the enemy, and the Arabic-speaking world is impressed.

Remember 2006, they say. It is just like Hizballah. Israel is helpless against the rockets. Why don't our governments fight Israel? Let's overthrow them and bring brave, fighting Islamist governments to power.

Option C: The Media

But then Israel does fight back. Its planes bomb military targets which have been deliberately put amidst civilians. If there is a high danger of hitting civilians, Israel doesn't attack. But there is a line below which risk that will be taken, and rightly so.

The smug smiles are wiped off the faces of Hamas leaders. Yet they have one more weapon, their reserves, they call up the media.

Those arrogant, heroic, macho victors of yesterday--literally yesterday as the process takes only a few hours--are transformed into pitiful victims. Casualty figures are announced by Hamas, and accepted by reporters who are not on the spot. Everyone hit is, of course, a civilian. No soldiers here.

And the casualties are disproportionate: Hamas has arranged it that way. If necessary, sympathetic photographers take pictures of children who pretend to be injured, and once they are published in Western newspapers these claims become fact.

Yet there is a problem here. Rockets and mortars may win wars; newspaper articles really don't. Of course, too, material damage is inflicted that sets back Gaza's material development.

Hamas doesn't care about that, but by acting in a way to ensure the destruction of their material base, Hamas does weaken itself. Precisely because Israeli attacks are focussed on military targets, Hamas is weakened…

I wonder how the war will affect Canada’s efforts to help plan Gaza’s infrastructure.
Seem to me we could go one of two ways: spend even more money on the jihadi
enterprise (since the infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, and will require lots
more “planning” if it’s to be rebuilt), or resolve to keep our shekels in our pockets
until such time as Gaza is no longer a festering nest of jihadi vipers.

Knowing how Canada’s international development agency, CIDA, views the world,
I’d have to put my money on the former.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

That damnable “d” word: Melanie Phillips disses “disproportionate”:

…If anything has been ‘disproportionate’, it’s been Israel’s refusal to take such action during the years when its southern citizens have been terrorised by rockets and other missiles raining down on them from Gaza. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands for so long in such circumstances. But whenever Israel defends itself militarily, its response is said to be ‘disproportionate’. The malice, ignorance and sheer idiocy of this claim is refuted here comprehensively by Dore Gold, who points out that Israel’s actions in Gaza are wholly in accordance with international law. This permits Israel to launch such an operation to prevent itself from being further attacked. Moreover, it defines ‘disproportionate’ force as when force becomes excessive if it is employed for another purpose, like causing unnecessary harm to civilians.

But Israel has demonstrably not been targeting civilians but Hamas terrorists. Despite the wicked impression given by the media, most of the casualties in this operation have been Hamas operatives. Even Hamas itself has admitted that the vast majority of sites Israel has hit were part of their military infrastructure. UNRWA officials in the Gaza Strip have put the number of deaths at 310, of whom 51 were civilians. The rest were Hamas terrorists.

Certainly, some civilian casualties are regrettably inevitable in any such situation – but particularly so in Gaza, since Hamas has deliberately sited its terrorist infrastructure amongst the civilian population.

Those who scream ‘disproportionate’ think – grotesquely -- that not enough Israelis have been killed. But that’s in part because Israel cares enough about human life to construct air raid shelters where its beleaguered civilians take cover; Hamas deliberately stores its rockets and other apparatus of mass murder below apartment blocks and in centres of population in order to get as many of its own people killed as possible as a propaganda weapon. Hamas is thus guilty of war crimes not just against Israelis but against the Palestinian people. Yet on this there is – fantastically, surreally – almost total silence in the west, which blames Israel instead. Historical resonances, anyone?

In any event, if by ‘disproportionate’ is meant merely an imbalance in the numbers who are killed on either side, this is actually inescapable if the infrastructure of aggression is to be defeated. Many more died in Afghanistan than in the 9/11 attacks; yet that war was necessary to destroy the Taleban. Many more died in Nazi Germany or Japan than in Britain or America during World War Two. Yet the scale of the Allied offensive was necessary to defeat Nazism and prevent yet more carnage amongst its designated victims.

The disgusting fifth column in the Gaza conflict, however, is – as ever – the western media. It was telling to witness the sight of British TV camera crews heading out to Israel on Saturday night. The point was that they weren’t already there – because their editors had not thought it necessary to send them to cover the resumed rocket attacks on southern Israel. Indeed, hardly anyone in Britain is aware that Israel is only now finally responding to some 6000 rocket attacks since 2001, with a fifty per cent increase after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. British journalists were only dispatched to the battle zone when Israel finally retaliated – because, appallingly, it is only Jewish violence that is ever the story.

As a result, Israel is painted – wholly unjustly and untruthfully -- as the aggressor…

My theory is that the Jewish people exist as a test to the world—a test of man's
humanity and forebearance—and this is yet another occasion on which much of the
world, and most of the media (more than 23,000 links, and counting, re Gaza on google
news this morning), get a failing grade.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:53 | link | comments

Monday, 29 December 2008

Quote of the day: From Caroline Glick’s preface to her book The Shackled Warrior:

As the years have passed, I have repeatedly been struck by the double chains that shackle Israel and the free world in contending with the war being waged against us. We blind ourselves by refusing to recognize the nature of the war. And, once blinded, we deny ourselves the tools necessary to fight to victory.

Over the years, the image of Samson, the biblical judge, the unwilling, shackled, and ultimately blinded warrior, has often entered my mind. Samson wished to be seduced by his enemies and ignore his responsibilities to his people and to his God. And when he fought, although mighty, he was manacled and so his fight hurt him as well, and ultimately, led to his own demise. How different his life might have been, and how different the fate of the Children of Israel might have looked, had he not been so inclined toward denial!

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:15 | link | comments

The short-sightedness of playing Robin Hood: Charles Adler 'splains the nuances of redistributing the wealth from the productive to those who are sittin' around and collecting benefits (i.e. Obamanomics).

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:37 | link | comments

Not so magic: Here's my musical tribute to Iggy and the Stooges, to the tune of a 60s folk song about a boy and his mythical beast (or is it his LSD?):

Poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton: that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

Together they had grumbled that Harper was on top.

“He’s mean,” said they, “Let’s make him pay;

His leadership must stop!”

Dion went on the TV--he looked confused and weak.

Michaelle prorogued the Parliament when things were looking bleak.

Poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton, that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

A coalition lingers, but not so S. Dion.

One fine day we looked away and--poof!--Stephane was gone.

Ignatieff is waiting to see what lies in store,

And if the budget doesn’t please you’ll hear “Almighty” roar.

Oh, poof!--the coalition went up in smoke.

It foundered when three unwise men all tried to go for broke.

Little Jackie Layton, that rascal wanted power.

But now his hopes of gaining it are waning by the hour.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:06 | link | comments

Egregious anti-Zionism in the Globe: I thought the Globe and Mail’s man in the
Middle East, Mark MacKinnon, was unbelievably biased in favour of the Palestinians,
but his (one hopes temporary) replacement, Patrick Martin, is, if you can believe it,
even worse. Here’s Martin’s repellent article on the Gaza fracas, the lead story in
today’s paper. (“ISRAEL’S SHOCK AND AWE” screams the headline, while the
subhead adds, helpfully,“With its enemies emboldened and its doctrine of deterrence
in doubt, Israel’s siege of Gaza aims to reassert its power to intimidate”. My word.
Exactly when did the Globe and Mail turn into a clone of al Jazeera?)

And here’s the shock and awe of my angry retort:

Patrick Martin’s claim that Hamas’s “repeated rockets attacks posed no existential threat” to “powerful” Israel is risible, to say the least. The missiles, which for years have terrorized ordinary people living in southern Israel, are emblematic of the regional jihad, or Islamic holy war, that aims to wipe out the Jewish state. That effort is supported by Riyadh and Tehran—Gaza being the only place in the world where these bitter rivals have come together. Hamas’s ongoing bombardment, and the Israelis’ apparent lack of resolve to do anything of substance about it, sent a compelling message to supporters of the jihad that the despised “Zionist entity” had lost the will to defend itself, and it was only a matter of time before it would be defeated.

The Gaza attack is Israel’s way of sending the Hamas jihadis and their state sponsors an entirely different message--one that should serve to inspire everyone who cherishes Western freedom and democracy. The message: We refuse to let terrorists set the agenda, and if you push us, we will fight back.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:19 | link | comments (3)

Gazans heart the jihad: Think the fact that the jihadis have goaded the Jews into bombing their territory has prompted the locals to have second thoughts about their leaders? Think again. "Ordinary" Palestinians still love their Hamas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:33 | link | comments

Pro-jihadis rally in Toronto: It got a bit fractious yesterday afternoon as the seethers
mixed it up with the Zionists. From the Toronto Sun:

Hussein Mallah is only 14, but his display of outrage matched that of any adult.

The teen was one of 800 Palestinian supporters who rallied for hours in downtown Toronto to denounce this weekend's Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip that killed 280 people and injured hundreds more.

Flags, posters and insults were hurled outside the Israeli Consulate at Avenue Rd. and Bloor St. W yesterday afternoon as Palestinian supporters vented their anger about the Jewish state's air assaults.

"I could be at home playing video games, but this is more important -- innnocent (sic) people are being killed every single day," Mallah said.

"I was watching the news yesterday morning and my mom was crying and I asked her why she was crying ... she said, 'More than 200 are being killed'," he yelled, while tightly gripping his hand-made poster bearing the words: "Throw a shoe at Israel, too."

Many children, like Mallah, were seen in the crowd screaming their support for the Palestinian territory.

"They don't have food; they don't have any weapons; they don't have anything ... all our friends are there ... My family's from Palestine. I want them to stop killing," said Jenan Shalaby, 8, of Hamilton.

The Palestinian supporters greatly outnumbered pro-Israeli demonstrators who stood across the street from the consulate.

The two factions hurled insults until Palestinian supporters ran towards the pro-Israeli group. Participants from both sides engaged in face-to-face rows.

"I hate them and they hate us," said pro-Palestinian supporter Maha Elharake, 40, originally from Lebanon.

"I was in Beirut in 2006 when 5,000 people died from (airstrikes) ... all we have to defend ourselves there are stones," she said.

Demonstrators later marched to the American Consultate on University Avenue, at Armoury St.

"The last 48 hours, Israel attacked Hamas weapon depots, training camps and missile launchers. They have the right to defend themselves from terrorists," said York University student, Jonathan Jaffit, 24, who almost tossed his shoe at the crowd.

In Montreal, meanwhile, 300 protesters calling on the Canadian government to condemn Israel's actions. Another rally was held in Ottawa.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has made clear the federal government believes Israel has a right to defend itself.

Better keep your eyes on Mallah. He sounds like he could be shahid in the making.

Update: Some events the seethers are not protesting: Virgin-seeker in Afghanistan blows up self, slew of children; 300 Bangladeshis drown after fellow Muslims abandon them; Taliban prevent 40,000 girls from going to school.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:16 | link | comments (2)

’09 will be divine: Victor Davis Hanson predicts that the coming year will be
qualitatively better than the one that’s wrapping up:

By July, we will come to feel that 2009 will be one of the most upbeat years in our history, as what used to be the news media∗ begins to get behind America and report on all the mysteriously wonderful things that are suddenly taking place.

All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that, by historical levels, unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. "Depression" will transmogrify into "recession" which in turn by July will be a "downturn" and by year next an "upswing" on its way to boom times.

Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President's neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.

As we watch the innocent die from natural mayhem, it will be due to the breakdown of local responders who now suddenly kill people, not federal inaction--except perhaps for an occasional few Bush federal holdovers that have not yet been rooted out. Human nature, of course, now will be seen more culpable, more selfish, as in needlessly resisting wise and caring federal interventions, rather than being inherently noble but shunned by an uncaring Washington. Yes, when dikes collapse and planes collide on crowed runways, it will be due to a cruel and unpredictable nature, or intrinsic design flaws, or improper local use and maintenance, or the past President's nefarious legacy, not current government policies. (But if you still must bash the government, it will be wise to do it in 1950s style of inattentive state and local officials, prone to regional and tribal prejudices, blocking the infinite wisdom of a caring federal government.)

Some military action abroad could be necessary--and necessarily reported on as measured and reluctant, rather than cowboyish and gratuitous. European whining will be a result of miscommunications or the Euros' unfair caricatures of Americans, not Bush's alienation of allies. If radical Islam strikes, it will be, well, radical again and sometimes even dangerous, not a figment of neocon pipe dreams…

Sounds wonderful. I can hardly wait.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:02 | link | comments

Sunday, 28 December 2008

You can take your “proportionality,” dear world, and stick it in your….: Marty
Peretz on what works—and what doesn’t—when it comes to dealing with crazed
jihadis who refuse to knock it off with the rockets:

…The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn't seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness - as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian "liberation" movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews. At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. Within hours, Nicolas Sarkozy was already taking up the cudgel of French righteousness and pronouncing the actually quite sober Israeli response to the continuous war on its borders "disproportionate." Enough. What would be proportionate, oh, so so proportionate apparently, are those tried-and-true half measures to contain Hamas that have never worked. Remember that in 2005 Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians waiting and hoping that they would make something of a civil society of their territory, civil for their own and civil to their neighbors. It was not to be.

There is only small likelihood that Hamas has learned its lesson. These Sunni fanatics are still supported by the Shi'a fanatics in Iran. And they are also backed by the House of Saud which cannot be seen to be turning its back on Sunni piety. Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied. In both Lebanon and Iraq, they are the bankrollers (and more than bankrollers) of hostile sectarian forces engaged in killing each other. Thus, Hamas has still some rope with which to play. Cash, after all, is a great deluder.

The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."

“Gaza is the only place in the Middle East where Tehran and Riyadh are allied”: So
touching. The jihadis should be thanking the Jews for bringing them together this way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:04 | link | comments

Typical: Just heard on local Ceeb radio that Palestinians in Toronto with be protesting the "genocide" taking place in Gaza. (Nothing on the Ceeb site about it, but here's a report from AM 640)

Yes, that's right: Jews finally doing what it takes to stop crazed jihadis from bombarding Israelis with rocket fire--3000 in the past year; 200 alone in the weeks following the end of what was laughably called a "ceasefire--is a "genocide".

Nice of the Ceeb to validate such deranged spin.

Update: The Ottawa protest, organized by a Palestinian organization that can't wait to howl and whinge about Israel's "war crimes," is going to convene in front of a human rights monument.

Kind of ironic, no, given that Hamas jihadis don't accord kafirs equal rights?

Update: Pro-Hamas forces who turn out to protest in Toronto today are going to have a bit of a challenge. The city has just issued a wind warning as wicked gales blow all about.

You don't suppose someone "up there" is trying to tell them something?

Update: Canadian Arab Federation news release--"Stop the massacres. Let Gaza live." Yes, Hamas, why don't you let Gaza live?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:41 | link | comments (1)

How the Saudi press deals with “insolence”: It stifles it a.s.a.p., as per this post
on the MEMRI blog:

Abdallah bin Bakhit, Saudi liberal and columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, stated in an interview on Al-Arabiya that "the time has passed" for the Saudi religious police, and that it should be abolished.

He said that the organization employs extremists who reject cinema, resist women's driving, and encourage polygamy.

In response, Al-Jazirah banned Bin Bakhit from continuing to write for it.

Source: Alarabiya.net, December 24, 2008

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:30 | link | comments

More proof (as if any is needed) that the jihadi rotters care nothing about the lives of their own people: The Beeb reports that Hamas is refusing to allow the injured to cross over into Egypt for treatment. That's because their people are worth more to them dead than alive.

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

   Party poopers: Arab News reports that some chicks and kids were having fun in the
   Magic Kingdom—a big no-no in those parts—but the Wahhabi morality squad quickly
   put an end to it:

YANBU: The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice closed down the only women’s park in Yanbu on Thursday. The move resulted in the loss of 60 jobs for local women, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.

Suleiman Al-Hamadi, vice chairman of the commission’s Yanbu branch, said the reason for the closure was complaints by people in nearby houses that they were disturbed by the sound of music from the facility. “The commission closed the park with the permission of the local administrator as it received many complaints from local residents about loud music and singing from there,” Al-Hamadi said.

Local women frequented the facility, as it provided health and sports clubs meant exclusively for women.

Shaimah Al-Anazi, owner of the entertainment facility, told the daily that several policemen ordered women and children visitors out from the park and closed the facility without giving any reason for their act.

Muhammad Al-Balawi, chairman of Yanbu Municipal Council, had inaugurated the park last September. The opening function was also attended by Ata Allah Al-Nazawi, director of the General Organization for Social Insurance, and Ibrahim Al-Alouni, director general of Abdul Latif Jameel Social Services Program.

“I will approach the Madinah governor and the chief of the commission to find out the real cause of closing the park, which is the only outdoor entertainment facility for women in this city,” Al-Anazi said. “It was a small village that catered to women’s entertainment needs while conforming to the regulations and Saudi traditions.”

Al-Anazi said she did not get any notice or warning from the authorities before closing the facility in which she had invested SR2 million. She suspected that the commission might have been provoked by an allegation by some people that the facility violated religious regulations.

She said such allegations are baseless and, on the other hand, the facility used to hold frequent religious lectures for women. She added that some people also mounted pressure on the guards in the park to quit their jobs.

Umm Emad, a divorced woman who worked at the park, said she and her three children would have no income to support themselves if the park remained closed.

Well, maybe that’ll teach you all a lesson, Umm: fun is for infidels.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:45 | link | comments

   More same old, same old: In Ha’aretz, Bradley Burston lists and then rebuts the
   top five things those on Israel’s self-loathing /enemy-loving left will be saying about
   Gaza:

Leftist 1: Israel's true motive in bombing Gaza, is genocide against the Palestinian people and extermination of their right to statehood.

Israel's genuine interest in this campaign is strikingly similar to Hamas' interest in firing scores of rockets into Israeli population centers: Forcing a cease-fire on better terms than the one just ended.
For Hamas, this largely means easing Israeli economic sanctions against Gazans. For Israel, this centers on ending shelling by Qassam and Grad missiles and mortar shells. For both sides, this means a prisoner exchange, centering on Gilad Shalit and hundreds of jailed Hamas members.

Leftist 2: The Palestinians have no recourse but to defend themselves, and the makeshift rockets they fire are nothing compared to the world's most advanced warplanes and munitions, which the IDF is using against them.

The Human Rights Watch organization has been unequivocal in condemning the use of Qassam rockets as a direct violation of international humanitarian law and the laws of war. The firing of Qassams and mortars against civilian populations also
constitutes collective punishment
against hundreds of thousands of innocent Israeli men, women and children.

Moreover, the firing of Qassams began not as a response to the siege against Gaza, but as a marathon celebration by armed Islamic fundamentalist groups following Israel's withdrawal of its troops and settlers from the Strip. To purposely add insult to injury, Islamic Jihad and other organizations used the ruins of settlements as launch platforms.

Leftist 3: All that Hamas is asking, is recognition as the democratically elected government of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli economic embargo. Were they to attain these goals, there would be calm on both sides of the border.

It is both unrealistic and dangerous to believe that Hamas has abandoned its clearly stated and often reiterated goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in all of the Holy Land, including all land claimed, annexed by, or in any way occupied by Israel.

Beyond that, Hamas has strong alliances with the Egyptian opposition Muslim brotherhood, as well as working partnerships with the Iran-dominated Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Israeli restraint, when practiced, has been met with contempt and additional Hamas and Hamas-tolerated strikes against civilian populations.

Leftist 4: The Israeli blockade against Hamas is state terrorism and any means to fight it are legitimate.

There is every reason to believe that Israel's economic siege against Gaza is misguided, but not for an essential cruelty, rather because Hamas taxes collected on the influx of goods imported through tunnels from Egyptian territory have subsidized and cemented Hamas rule.

Leftist 5: The world overwhelmingly sympathizes with the Palestinians against Israel, and unreservedly backs their struggle for independence.

In an era of global revulsion against radical Islamic terror, Hamas' protracted program of suicide bombings, drive-by murders and shelling of civilian populations, coupled with its refusal to renounce violence, recognize Israel, or accept past peace agreements, coupled with its ideology of militant jihad, have drained the Palestinians of international sympathy and have, in fact, legitimized Israeli arguments of military self-defense.

Nothing has been more instrumental in harming the cause of Palestinian independence than Hamas, with its brutal take-over of Gaza in a war with brother Palestinians, and its frank efforts to build a large-scale regular army force in the Strip.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments (2)

A pox on “nice”: David Warren isn’t too thrilled with Stephen Harper’s efforts to
wussify the Tories:

…I think this is part of the "re-branding" of conservatism, that Mr. Harper is doing up here; what many urbane Republicans now call for, down south of the border. The idea is to take the "meanness" out of conservatism itself, to strip off the Christian or pro-life or "social-conservative" edge. The focus groups want "nice," we have heard. Down south, Bush Elder tried to deliver this with "kinder and gentler," his son with the word "compassionate." But electoral success may now demand more concessions!

The conservative view is founded in personal (as opposed to collective) responsibility; in actual independence and freedom, against a background of fixed moral principles (not relativism). That is the steel in it: why it works. Take away this steel, and replace it with fluff and padding, and presto, you have a much more saleable, "people-friendly" product. Add a few entitlements the competition hasn't thought of yet, and you are back on the road.

The product becomes interchangeable with every other off the shelf, to the clients of the Nanny State, but at least it is in the supermarket. It is useless in emergencies (as Bush Junior quickly found), but hey, it gets you through the happy times.

As ever, I argue we should move backwards: return to the old brand. Go out and sell personal responsibility; sell the manly virtues. This is rapidly becoming a survival issue, not a "positioning" thing…

   We tried “nice”. It gave us multiculturalism and human rights commissions and flaccid
   brains and spines. What we need in this era of galloping fascism (leftist, jihadist) is a
   little less “nice” and a lot more gumption.

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

   The unvarnished truth: The fearless Claudia Rosett (long may she rage) minces no
   words about the Gaza attack and the same old, same old reaction it’s eliciting—a truth
   you won’t read/hear/see in leftwing media outlets that are pleased to parrot Hamas
   propaganda:

Having served another round as a target range for Hamas, Israel finally attacks the rocket-firing terrorists in Gaza. Does the democratic world say “Thank You” to Israel for taking on the overlords of this nest of terror and repression? Not a chance.

Instead, here comes the usual Western group wallow in Palestinian terrorist propaganda.

We all know the script: Palestinian terrorists attack Israel, again and again and again — as in, Hamas firing some 3,000 mortars and rockets from Gaza into Israel over the past year, some 200 of these since the expiration last week of a six-month “ceasefire.” Finally, Israel strikes back, targeting the terrorists.

And the cogs of the middle-eastern cuckoo clock grind into action. Arab states issue denunciations of Israel. Diplomats lament the imperiling of the “peace process.” The despot-heavy UN takes time out from its day-to-day trashing of Israel to issue calls for “all parties” to end the violence. The U.S. officially backs Israel, but simultaneously undercuts Israel by issuing calls to rush humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, and then joins the gang of appeaseniks pressuring Israel into another “ceasefire” –which gives the terrorists a chance to regroup and attack again. From the media, out roll the articles and broadcasts lambasting Israel for use of “disproportionate force”; out come the photos and the fauxtography; and the further vilification of Israel proceeds under headlines such as this gem from the Washington Post: “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances.”

What a heap of hooey. What’s actually imperiling Obama’s “peace chances” in this sorry landscape is the presence of a terrorist haven operating in broad daylight right next door to Israel, in the form of the Hamas-run Gaza strip. And the continuing exaltation of terrorism by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. And another terrorist haven in the form of Hezbollah-infested Lebanon to the north. And yet more terrorist havens right nearby in the form of Syria and Iran, which harbor and help both Hamas and Hezbollah. And terrorist funders such as – according to the U.S. State Department – “private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states” (”benefactors” being a strange choice of word, though unfortunately a good indicator of the State Department mindset)...

   To the list of terrorist funders one must add, sadly, the government of Canada, which,
   through its foreign development agency, CIDA, gave taxpayer shekels to terrorism-
   enabling UNRWA, and helped fund the planning of infrastructure construction in
   Hamas’s Gaza.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:24 | link | comments

Saturday, 27 December 2008

Close but no cigar: Samuel Huntington, the gent who coined the phrase “clash of
civilizations,” has died. Here’s how Reuters reports his passing:

BOSTON (Reuters) - Political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose controversial book "The Clash of Civilizations" predicted conflict between the West and the Islamic world, has died at age 81, Harvard University said on Saturday.

Huntington, who taught for 58 years at Harvard before retiring in 2007, died Wednesday at a nursing facility in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, the university said on its website.

In his 1996 "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which expanded on his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Huntington divided the world into rival civilizations based mainly on religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism and said competition and conflict among them was inevitable.

His focus on religion rather than ideology as a source of conflict in the post-Cold War world triggered broad debate about relations between the Western and Islamic worlds, especially in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Despite criticism his thesis was simplistic or in the words of Middle East scholar Edward Said promoted the idea of "West versus the rest," Huntington told Islamica magazine in 2007, "My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."...

As it turned out, it wasn’t the “West versus the rest.” It was the West’s man-made law
versus Islam’s God-law.

   Of course, it would have been ridiculous to expect Said, the man who single-handedly
   engendered so much wrong-headedness in academia with his ideas about “Orientalism”
   (a wrong-headedness that continues to this day), to be willing or able to see it that way.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:39 | link | comments

   CHRC justifies state censorship: Poking around on the Canadian Human Rights
   Commission site, I stumbled upon this—a whole page justifying Section 13. I
   particularly “enjoyed” reading this part, which explains how much better off Canadians
   are because we don’t have the free-for-all of American First Amendment protections:

Does Canada have an equivalent to the First Amendment?

No. Although many Canadians are aware of the United States First Amendment, the Canadian approach to freedom of expression issues is different.

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Jurisprudence of the United States’ courts, including the Supreme Court, severely restricts any state action to suppress free expression, including hate speech or propaganda. For example, in the case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-7675.ZS.html, the Supreme Court of the United States found that a municipal law prohibiting the burning of a cross was an impermissible restriction on the First Amendment. The effect of the decision was to allow the burning of a cross on the lawn of the first black family to move into an all-white neighborhood.

An article written by Mr. Justice Russell Juriansz, Ontario Court of Appeal, examines the U.S. approach to hate speech compared to that adopted by other countries, including Canada. The article was presented to a conference on hate on the Internet convened by the CHRC in December 2005. In his article, Combating Hate and Preserving Free Speech: Where is the Line? Justice Juriansz states:

It seems fair to say that the American view is becoming a minority one in the world. Canada is part of what appears to be growing global consensus, which observes that careful restrictions of some forms of speech are both desirable and necessary.

Canadian legislators and courts have tended to seek a balance between the protection of freedom of expression under the Charter and the harm caused by hate speech and propaganda.

In drawing the line between hatred and free expression, the Canadian courts have taken into account other Charter provisions, most importantly section 15, which provides for equality before and under the law and equal benefit and protection of law, and section 27 which provides that: "This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."

   Well, censorship is definitely part of the heritage of some cultures (hello, Communism;
   salaam, sharia), though why on earth we’d want to import such restrictions into our
   democracy, multicultural though it may be (and isn’t the U.S. home to just as
   many cultures?), beats the heck out of me.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:50 | link | comments

   You aren’t what you eat: Remember when French-looking presidential candidate
   John Kerry and his Marie Antoinette-ish  missus tried to show how much like regular
   folks they were by swooping down on a Wendy’s with a full contingent of press in
   tow? (Mark Steyn captured it thus: "The photo-op didn't go smoothly.
   Kerry went over to say hi to some marines, who turned out to be Bush supporters and
   resented the interruption to their lunch. More telling was Teresa Heinz Kerry. She
   pointed to the picture of the bowl of chili above the clerk's head: 'What's that?' she
   asked. He explained that it was something called 'chili' and she said she'd like to try a
   bowl. The Senator also ordered a Frosty, a chocolate dessert. They toyed with them
   after a fashion, and then got back on the bus.”) Well, Caroline Kennedy, who’s
   reportedly worth $100 mill, and who’s looking to fill Hillary Clinton’s senate seat (she
   says 9/11 and Obama “inspired” her to want to serve the people) tried to
   pull a Tuh-RAY-zuh Heinz Kerry when she visited a New York City diner and
   ordered up a plate of grilled cheese n’ bacon and fries—making sure, of course,
   reporters were on hand to capture her eating her “just plain folks” meal.

   If I’m not buying it, I can’t imagine wised-up New Yawkers will either.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

   For the umpteenth time, it’s the jihad, stupid: Prior to raining down bombs on
   Gaza, Israel’s schlemiel-in-chief, Ehud Olmert, tried to appeal to the people of Gaza to
   reject Hamas and behave in keeping with the true spirit of their faith. Hugh Fitzgerald,
   an expert on Islam’s true spirit, demolishes the clueless Jew:

Ehud Olmert said this week to the people of Gaza: “Don't let Hamas, which is acting against the values of Islam, put you in danger. Stop them. Stop your enemies and ours.” Olmert did not have to say that Islam explains the endless hostility toward Israel. That would be asking too much, and at this point it would not be an intelligent thing to say. But it would be intelligent to grasp that truth, and to fashion policies based on that truth. He could, and should, in any statement have left Islam out of it. But he did something still worse. Olment mentioned Islam, and claimed, on the basis of no detailed knowledge whatsoever, to exculpate Islam.

In this respect he was not different from some others, such as Bush and Rice, or Blair, who keep thinking that they must say nice things about Islam even if they don't know what they are talking about, mainly because they know that Islam is a "religion," even "one of the world's great religions." (Why not for the word "great" substitute the more accurate word "major" and for the word "religion" substitute the ungainly but more accurate "belief-system"?)

And if it is "one of the world's major religions, with more than a billion adherents," so their thinking goes, it must be okay. Surely what it inculcates must be fine, for "religions" are fine, and they all mean pretty much -- don't they? -- the same thing, because, you see, People Are The Same The Whole World Over. Surely Islam cannot be the explanation for the intolerable aggression and violence and hostility and mendaciousness of so many Muslims, of which the main victims are the world's Infidels, though other Muslims have also been known to suffer.

And Olmert, pathetic, confused, desperate, blind, stupid, Olmert, is...just Olmert. The schlemiel as head of state. Even his corruption was pathetic: those expensive cigars, those occasional trips with stays in fancy hotels. A comical figure, pitiful but not to be pitied. Too many people far better than he died in Lebanon, and perhaps will die in the future, because of Olmert and the likes of Olmert.

Olmert refuses to learn a thing about Islam. It is all around him, all around and within Israel, in the mosques, in the sermons of imams, in the videocassettes and the audiocassettes, on the broadcasts and in the newspapers in Arab lands. But Olmert will not study Islam. He doesn't have the time. He's too busy making peace, he's too busy with the "peace process." He hasn't time to study the texts. He will not study the tenets. He will not understand that the war against Israel is a Jihad, a war to remove from the Arab and Muslim midst an Infidel nation-state. He does not understand this. He will not understand it. He does not understand that no tangible assets must be given up by Israel; he does not understand that no agreement by Muslims with Infidels will be kept, not because of the untrustworthiness of this or that leader, but because Islam itself offers the Example of the Perfect Man, Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil, who in his breaching of the treaty he made with the Meccans at Hudaibiyya in 628 A.D. gave his followers an example for treaties for all time.

That's Olmert…

Alas, that’s also most Western leaders, including the guy cooling his heels in Hawaii
before taking over the White House.

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

   Gaza attack: Israel has finally taken action against Hamas and, as expected, the
   MSM’s pity party has begun. Using Hamas as a reliable source, the Ceeb, obviously
   citing this AP report, claimed on a radio report at the top of the hour that 120 Gazans
   have been killed so far. And to make you feel extra sorry for the Palestinians and extra
   angry at the Jews, the Ceeb radio news reader made sure to mention, as per the AP
   story, that “the airstrikes took place as children were leaving school.”

   Mean Jews. Couldn’t they have timed their attack for when the moppets were back
   safe and snug at home? What’s that you say? It wouldn’t have made any difference
   since Hamas makes sure to set up shop in residential areas, so there will be maximum
   casualties when Israel, after a tipping point of provocation, deigns to strike back? How
   else would AP reporters named Ibrahim get to write stuff like this?

…One man sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building.

"My son is gone, my son is gone," saud Sadi Masri, 57. The shopkeeper said he sent his son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," Masri moaned...

   The loss of life is regrettable, but Hamas purposely brought this on its own people,
   whose lives it values not a whit. That being said, you know there is going to be hell to
   pay (“disproportionate response!” “Jenin, Jenin!”), as there always is when it’s a
   question of Jews fighting back against Arabs; it’s only when Muslims kill other
   Muslims—as they have by the millions in the past few decades—that the world yawns
   and looks the other way.

   Update: Ceeb news reader: "We begin in Gaza City. Sirens wail and women search
   frantically for their children..." Boo, Jews.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:40 | link | comments

   How the UN stole Santa: Scourge of the feckless, self-important internationalists,
   Claudia Rosett imagines how, given the opportunity, the UN would deal with the
   rotund gift-giver. From Forbes:

Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus.

But that was before the United Nations got its claws into Santa, which, as history records, started to happen in 2009.

Back then, whatever the disputes over "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays," Santa was still a one-man symbol of individual enterprise and privately-based, Christian-affiliated good cheer.

Without apology, he preferred the North Pole over the South, ran a mono-cultural Elven workshop, dealt in environmentally unfriendly lumps of coal and on his appointed night flew a team of eight reindeer around the globe while buying nary a carbon offset.

His gifts were given with more regard to the wishes of children than to biennial planning cycles. And despite his global reach, he neither signed onto nor complied with a single U.N. treaty, convention or program.

All that might have been overlooked by the U.N., many of whose members don't bother to observe any of its requirements either. But, to the horror of almost the entire U.N. system, especially its Human Rights Council, Santa did something that could not be ignored. He engaged in religious and culturally judgmental gift-giving, unilaterally punishing the naughty children and rewarding the nice.

Reports began leaking out of assorted U.N. committees, hinting at the threats posed by Santa to the causes of fairness, neutrality and international consensus. He was blamed for religious frictions among civilizations, for trying to sneak Western values into other cultures and for jeopardizing the efforts of everything from the U.N. Environment Program to UNOOSA (the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs).

The capper was a study produced by the U.N.'s Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, announcing indisputable scientific findings (despite disagreements among the scientists themselves) that emissions from Santa's workshop up north were contributing to the melting of the polar ice cap. When mobs of protesters dressed in polar bear suits stormed UN Offices in Oslo, Karachi and Damascus, demanding that Santa be handed over, the secretary-general felt compelled to act.

Summoning all 192 member states to a resort complex in the South Seas, the U.N. convened its now-famous conference on "Santa Modalities." There, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77-plus-China, Cuba's envoy argued that Santa was an imperialist relic of the colonial order.

Pakistan's delegate, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, urged that the U.N. take immediate measures to end Santa's selectively religious and ''xenophobic'' overtones. Emissaries of Zimbabwe, Iran and Cameroon moved for emergency action. The secretary-general himself declared a Santa crisis and wrote a series of impassioned op-eds, explaining that the cause of world peace and progress required a U.N.-modified Multilateral Santa…

Poor old Saint Nick. Like Israel, he didn’t stand a chance.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:44 | link | comments

Friday, 26 December 2008

Yes, Virginia, there is some vestigial santity in Old Blighty: The British government has condemned the TV channel that broadcast Ahmadinejad's "alternative" Christmas message.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:55 | link | comments

How to have fun on the other side of the fence: Dress up like Santa. Forget the padding, but remember to wear your "resistance" kefiyah. Hurl stones at the "apartheid wall" that's impeding you and your brothers from blowing up Jews in Israel. Don't forget to scowl for the AP camera:

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:46 | link | comments

   The Blago plot ~~sickens~~ thickens: The Messiah’s right hand (no, not Rahmbo; his
   other right hand) says that while it’s true that Blago was angling for a cabinet
   appointment even though he was already under a cloud of suspicion, there’s absolutely
   no truth to the suggestion that it was going to be a quid pro quo arrangement whereby
   he would became Secretary of Health and Human Services if the hopeychangers got to
   tap the person of their choice for Obama’s senate seat.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:56 | link | comments

   A wallop of Trollope: Being of a literary bent, when I heard that a Jew, Bernard
   Madoff, was at the centre of a huge Ponzi scheme that had brought him and a lots of
   other folks crashing down, one name popped into my head: Augustus Melmotte.

Who he?

   Why, he’s the Jew at the centre of a giant scam in one of my favourite novels,
   The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope’s deliciously jaundiced look at parvenus,
   scoundrels and rapacity in his own society, late Victorian England. In Standpoint
   magazine, Pamela Neville-Sington explains what The Way We Live Now has to
   say about the way live now:

…The Way We Live Now reminds us that there will always be bubbles, boom and bust, swindlers, and also honest men who, Trollope explains, "reconcile themselves to swindling". There will always be mystifying commodities like Mexican railways, dotcoms and derivatives. Occasionally, there will even appear in our midst an attractive, gun-toting lady from west of the Rockies, like the hero's nemesis, Mrs Hurtle.

One might call Trollope, a keen observer of human nature present at the birth of our modern financial system, an early behavioural economist. He would recognise in our swindled (and swindling) bankers the poor gullible habitués of the much-lamented Beargarden, the club which offered so little propriety and so few "beastly rules". "Dear old place!" Lord Nidderdale sighs, "I always felt it was too good to last. I fancy it doesn't do to make things too easy," for, "by George, before you know where you are, you find yourself among a lot of blackguards."

But Trollope was at heart an optimist. "I think that men on the whole do live better lives than they did a hundred years ago," with more justice and charity abroad, says a kindly clergyman in The Way We Live Now. Barack Obama's election to the White House in 2008 is proof that humankind continues to advance, slowly but surely. In the words of Plantagenet Palliser, Trollope's champion of the decimal coinage, "a desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilisation comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray." Of course, greed is the easy part. As Lord Nidderdale says, "If one wants to keep one's self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other. I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam."

   I don’t know if I agree with the statement about Obama; I think his election, if it offers
   proof of anything, it is of the fact that charisma is awfully hard to resist, especially when
   it comes wrapped in such an appealing package (handsome candidate, pretty wife,
   adorable moppets, sugary hopey-changey message). I can get behind the rest of Pam’s
musings, though.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:06 | link | comments

   Shameless bias: The media’s bias is so blatant, so skewed in favour of the buff
   Messiah  and against the despised Bush that it shames the very concept of
   journalistic “fairness”. Consider this: How do you suppose the media would have
   reacted had the Bush administration conducted an internal review of, say, the Scooter
   Libby affair, and released a report absolving itself of any wrong-doing—and done so
   during the run-up to Christmas so as to try to have it fly under the media’s radar, as
   the hopeychangers did with their Blago report? And what do you suppose would
   have been the media response had an irate Arab hurled his shoes at a President
   Obama’s head?

The obvious answer: outrage and outrage, instead of crickets and jokes.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:17 | link | comments

Very mature: Iranians toss shoes at Bush poster

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:27 | link | comments

Fool Britannia: Claudia Rosett lambastes the Brits for being receptive to
Ahmadinejad’s “alternative” Christmas message:

If Britons wish to spend part of their Christmas tuning in to Ahmadinejad’s oily talk of a “joyful, shining and wonderful age,” so be it — though one might have hoped they’d learned their lesson about this sort of thing back in the late 1930s. But broadcasting this kind of performance inflicts its worst damage in places like Iran itself, where the problem is not Ahmadinejad’s message to people of Britain, but Britain’s message to the people of Iran: For those in Iran who aspire to freedom, it can hardly be encouraging that in Britain a free people would so demean themselves as to give this preening thug his own special slot on the air — let alone as an alternative, in any capacity whatsoever, to their Queen. This is not an issue of free speech, but of fools at Channel 4 indulging in a stunt that ought to earn them not higher ratings, but a one-way ticket to Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Delivers Christmas Message On British TV

Update: The Corner's Michael Rubin on the free speech thing:

The irony of Britain's channel 4 giving Ahmadinejad the pulpit in the name of free speech is that as he was speaking, Iranian authorities raided and closed down the BBC's Tehran offices and, separately, in the spirit of goodwill to man, ordered Christmas trees banned from Iranian kindergartens...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:21 | link | comments

Up, up and away: The Toronto Star has an article about some women in the Arab
world who have found a degree of freedom in an unlikely place—up in the sky:

…Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.

The Etihad flight attendants' dormitory here looks much like the city's 1970s-style office blocks. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Flight attendants are routinely admonished to be mindful of Etihad's reputation. Those who try to sneak a man back to one of the two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.

In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, Gulf states like Abu Dhabi – which offer freedoms and opportunities nearly unimaginable elsewhere in the Middle East – have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the experience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.

Despite the increasing numbers of women moving to the Gulf countries, the labour migration patterns of the last 20 years have left the Emirates with a male-female ratio that is more skewed than anywhere else in the world; in the 15 to 64 age group, there are more than 2.7 men for every woman.

Etihad flight attendants are such popular additions to Abu Dhabi's modest bar scene that their presence is encouraged by "ladies' nights" and cabin-crew-only drink discounts. It is almost impossible for an unveiled woman in her 20s to go to a mall or grocery store in Abu Dhabi without being asked if she is a flight attendant.

An Egyptian flight attendant for Etihad said some young women cope with their new lives away from home by becoming almost nunlike, keeping to themselves and remaining very observant Muslims, while others quickly find themselves in the arms of unsuitable men.

"With the Arabic girls who come to work here, you get two types," the woman said. "They're either very closed-up and scared and they don't do anything, or else they're not really thinking about flying – they're just here to get their freedom. They're really naughty and crazy." Many of the young Arab women working in the Gulf take delight in their status as pioneers, role models for their friends and younger female relatives.

Rania Abou Youssef, 26, a flight attendant for Emirates, a Dubai-based airline, said when she went home to Alexandria, Egypt, her female cousins treated her like a heroine. "I've been doing this for four years, and still they're always asking, `Where did you go and what was it like and where are the photographs?'"

Freedom’s just another word for coffee, tea or me?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:51 | link | comments

   The madness of succouring the enemy: They’re shooting rockets galore from Gaza
   into Israel, trying to goad the Jews into taking action, but before Israel gets around to
   fighting back it wants to show the international community that it’s been “nice” to the
   folks firing the rockets (as if that’s going to head off the international outrage that will
   follow any Israeli incursion). From AP:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel renewed its transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Friday despite continued rocket and mortar fire from the coastal strip and rising expectations of a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Gaza militants.

The military said approximately 90 trucks will deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife as well as more than 105,000 gallons of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas, the military said.

Israel's Defense Ministry agreed to open its cargo crossings into Gaza as part of its policy of avoiding a humanitarian crisis there. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the decision came after consultations with defense officials as well as calls from the international community.

Israel had originally agreed to open the cargo crossings with Gaza on Wednesday but it shut the passages when militants began pummeling southern Israel with more than 80 rockets and mortars. The barrage was the heaviest since before an Egyptian-mediated six-month-long truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers took effect in June.

The army said more than 10 rockets and mortars were fired toward Israel early Friday. One home was struck but no injuries were reported.

Pressure has been mounting in Israel for the military to strike forcefully against Gaza militants and Israeli leaders have been voicing strong threats in recent days. But on Friday, military officials said the army was planning a routine replacement of its troops along the Gaza border in the coming week. That, coupled with current wintery weather conditions, made an imminent operation seem unlikely.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to discuss military strategy publicly.

Israel has maintained a strict blockade of Gaza since the June 19 cease-fire began unraveling six weeks ago, allowing in only small quantities of essential goods. Egypt has also sealed its border crossing with the territory, which is Gaza's main gateway to the outside world...

Memo to the Defense Minister: You can’t kill ‘em with kindness. You can, however,
kill yourselves that way.

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

From the "they blow up so fast" dep't: MEMRI has a snapshot of what is hands down the sickest pathology in the Islamic world--turning moppets into martyrs. Here are reports about kids being trained to go ballistic--in Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:50 | link | comments

Two competing world views: Hopey-changer:

Mopey-danger:

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments

Thursday, 25 December 2008

   Pinter passes: The Brit who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature as much for
   his vituperative and unhinged rants about Bush and America as he was for his body of
   work consisting of plays populated by nasty characters and replete with very long,
   pseudo-profound pauses has…

…

...died.

   To give you a taste of Pinter’s unique brand of nuttiness, here’s a paragraph from
   his Nobel Prize acceptance speech wherein he offers himself up for the job of
   Bush’s speechwriter, and writes in what he imagines to be the president’s voice:

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

Such a talent. So insightful. No wonder they gave him the prize.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:10 | link | comments

Penance for airheads: Guilt-ridden passengers flying out of San Francisco will soon
have a way to atone for their sin of air travel, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

Environmentally conscious travelers flying out of San Francisco International Airport will soon be able to assuage their guilt and minimize the impact of their air travel by buying certified carbon offsets at airport kiosks.

The experimental program, scheduled to start this spring, would make SFO the first airport in the nation - possibly the world - to offer fliers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets.

"We'd like people to stop and consider the impacts of flying," said Steve McDougal, executive vice president for 3Degrees, a San Francisco firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments and is teaming up with the airport and the city on the project. "Obviously, people need to fly sometimes. No one expects them to stop, but they should consider taking steps to reduce their impacts."

San Francisco's Airport Commission has authorized the program, which will involve a $163,000 investment from SFO, but is still working out the details with 3Degrees. Because of that, McDougal said, he can't yet discuss specifics, such as the cost to purchase carbon offsets and what programs would benefit from travelers' purchases.

But the general idea, officials said, is that a traveler would approach a kiosk resembling the self-service check-in stations used by airlines, then punch in his or her destination. The computer would calculate the carbon footprint and the cost of an investment to offset the damage. The traveler could then swipe a credit card to help save the planet. Travelers would receive a printed receipt listing the projects benefiting from their environmental largesse.

The carbon offsets are not tax deductible, said Krista Canellakis, a 3Degrees spokeswoman.

"While the carbon offsets purchased at kiosks can't be seen or touched, they are an actual product with a specific environmental claim whose ownership is transferred at the time of purchase," she said…

It brings to mind the moral of that Aesop's fable: An eco-fool and his money are soon
parted.

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

Mahmoud rants; Brit Jews not amused: Oh, those Jooos. Always causing
problems. From the timesonline:

Jewish groups were up in arms today when it was revealed that Channel 4's "alternative" Christmas Day broadcast is to be delivered by President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Mr Ahmadinejad's speech will go out at 7.15pm, four hours after the Queen's traditional Christmas Day message is broadcast on the main channels. His message is a spiritual one but includes some more nakedly political elements - including the implicit claim that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would oppose US hegemony.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers,” Mr Ahmadinejad will say in a speech to be shown in Farsi with English subtitles.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over. If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime.”

It is no the first time that the broadcaster has courted controversy since Quentin Crisp delivered Channel 4's first alternative Christmas message in 1993. In 2006 a fully-veiled British-born Muslim woman used the message to attack Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, for his criticism of the niqab (face veil) earlier the same year.

Stephen Smith, director of the Holocaust Centre, said Mr Ahmadinejad's message should be treated with caution. The Iranian President has repeatedly called the Holocaust a “myth” and called for the annihilation of Israel.

Mr Smith said: “Many of his political and historical views are very dangerous and do not uphold the views in his message. I think this benign message is deception. People need to be alert to the fact that this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Henry Grunwald QC, president of the Board of Deputies, added: "The appearance on our television screens of a man whose prejudices are so well-documented and who has openly called for the eradication of another member country of the United Nations is an affront to decency.

"To invite him to deliver a Christmas message, even a so-called alternative one, fills me with disgust. Whatever he may say in his 'message', his words on other occasions and his actions towards minority groups in Iran should have disqualified him from filling this television spot."

But Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs, defended the choice. "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad’s views are enormously influential," she said. “As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."…

   A “world view” which sees the extirpation of the Jewish presence as being redemptive
   for all mankind: surely we’re only all too familiar with that particular Weltanschauung,
   Ms. Byrne.

Update: Following his "alternative" address, President Ahmadinejad was caught
singing an old Christmas standard--using his own "alternative" lyrics, of course:

Rid the world of awful Jewry.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Hate them all for all their usury.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Gonna push a nuclear button.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Grill the Jews like legs of mutton.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

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

Understating the case: A line in this AFP report about the Ayatollah's hairy sock thingy's Christmas address on British TV made me chuckle: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a controversial figure for his anti-Israel stance--was to deliver an alternative Christmas message on British television to rival the queen's address, broadcaster Channel Four said."

"Controversial" is he? In the same way, I suppose, that Adolf Hitler was "a controversial figure" for his anti-Jewish stance.

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

Reindeer games: Ezra Levant posts a cheeky satire published in the Globe and Mail. It's written in the form of an HRC report dealing with a discrimination complaint lodged by one R. Reindeer (who suffers from a pronounced facial disfigurement) against a company owned and operated by an S. Claus. Ezra notes the serious message behind the japery--that we are making headway "denormalizing" these previously sacrosant bodies. What follows is me doing my part to make them look ridiculous (not that they need much help in that area)--to the tune of the seasonal song in question:

The “human rights” commissions

Had a very scary role.

Wanted to enforce “niceness”

From the 49^th to the North Pole.

None of the rights commissions

Hewed to any Common Law.

Powers of search and seizure

Stuck in all free speechers’ craw.

Then one fateful year (oh eight)

Ezra dared to say,

“Apparatchiks aren’t so wise.

High time to ‘denormalize’”.

Then how free speechers perked up

As they shouted out with glee,

“Those ‘human rights’ commissions,

They will soon be history!”

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

   No big O in Israel: No, not a thwarted visit from the Messiah (he’s too busy
   taking off his shirt in Hawaii). There’s not going to be a mass orgy in Tel Aviv
   organized by the Raelians. You remember the Raelians, don’t you? They’re those loopy
   cultists who, a few years back, claimed to have been the first to clone a human being.
   YNet has all the silly, not-so titillating details about the Raelian orgy that never
   was:

After weeks of preparations for the largest sex event of its kind in Israel, organizers were forced to cancel it this week due to public pressure and threats exerted on the owner of the venue where the sex fest was to take place.

The event in question, which was scheduled to take place on "International Orgasm Day," aimed to bring together some 250 participants seeking to promote world peace through multiple orgasms reached by masturbation or sex.

The orgy was organized by the Raelian movement, a UFO religion whose followers believe humankind was created by aliens. The group's spokesman, Kobi Drori, said that the orgy was meant to include straights, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, all of them over 18.

"The purpose of the event was to try and bring world peace through mass orgasm, this by experiencing consensual sex and natural, uninterrupted pleasure. It was important to make love without feeling guilty or shy," he explained.

Drori protested the fact that nowadays the words "war," "violence" and "murder" have become more legitimate than "sex," "orgasm" and "pleasure."

"It should be the other way around. Several years ago an Iraqi boy whose limbs were amputated was shown on TV and everybody treated this as if it was okay, but when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Superbowl the American nation was appalled.

"We wanted to put into practice the saying 'make love, not war'."

'Society based on self-fulfillment'

According to Drori, the orgy was just the first in a series of events dedicated to promoting this objective. On January 22 the movement will hold a conference on sexuality and masturbation with experts and writers in the field.

He also vowed that the cancelation of this year's orgy would not deter the Raelians from setting up another sex fest next year.

The Raelian movement has several hundreds followers in Israel and some 70,000 members worldwide.

"We don't believe in demons, ghosts and gods," said Drori. "The group's primary goal is to inform humanity, without attempting to persuade, regarding scientific messages that deal with the origins of life on earth.

The second goal is to expedite the establishment of a society based on the principles of non-violence, solidarity, self-fulfillment and pleasure. To establish one global currency, one global government and harness science to the service of humanity, and not against humanity," he concluded…

Great, just what the planet needs--more utopian One Wordlers. At least these ones
aren’t as explosive and controlling as the Islamists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:36 | link | comments

Gaza’s underground economy: Literally underground. From Bloomberg:

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Inside one of hundreds of white tents on a sandy wasteland in the Gaza Strip, a black pipe snakes its way down a 60-foot shaft and through a quarter-mile tunnel under the border with Egypt.

The other end is connected to a diesel tanker on the Egyptian side -- a source of smuggled fuel for a market so parched some Palestinian drivers run their cars on oil used to fry falafel.

The beehive of tunnels beneath the tent city has become a vital lifeline for Gaza, giving its 1.4 million residents a way around an Israeli blockade that has choked off supplies of gasoline, fresh meat and consumer goods ranging from washing machines to iPods. It may also turn into a bombing target for the Israeli air force following the expiration of a six-month cease- fire with the Hamas leaders who rule Gaza, Israeli strategists say.

“There is hardly any economy left in Gaza without the tunnels,” says Omar Shaban, an economist who runs a consulting group in Gaza City. “It is distorted to have an economy that is so completely dependent on the black market, but it’s a natural result of the borders being closed.”

Ninety percent of all products entering Gaza each month --as much as $40 million worth of contraband -- comes through the tunnels from Egypt, Shaban says. The underground network is also a crucial source of revenue and weapons for the militant Islamic Hamas movement, which charges a one-time digging fee of 11,000 shekels ($2,750) for each tunnel…

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:35 | link | comments

Merry Christmas, Baby: From me, Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee to you and yours. (Don't know why this one never became a holiday standard.)

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

Thriving on conflict: The truce (such as it was) is kaput, writes contentions’
Noah Pollak, because Hamas needs crisis in order to survive:

The crisis in Gaza is related to the fundamental problem Hamas has faced since it took power in Gaza: It is very difficult to rule over a territory simultaneously as a resistance group and as a political party. Each ambition interferes with the other, and for Hamas, resistance has always been the fundamental interest. The cease-fire with Israel required Hamas to stop its offensive, which it only did marginally — throughout the calm there were sporadic mortar and rocket attacks on Israel — and to cease weapons smuggling and negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit. The first requirement was workable because it took external pressure off Hamas that allowed it to focus on solidifying its control over Gaza, but the latter two were tantamount to Hamas concretely repudiating the reason for its existence and the ideological platform on which it rose to power.

For Hamas, the absence of open conflict could not continue for long, because living conditions in Gaza have been worsening and Hamas has never been interested in or capable of governing outside the context of war. At various times over the past six months, Hamas attacked transfer points between Israel and Gaza. This was done in order to force their closure and exacerbate the food and fuel shortages that encourage the narrative, so popular in international quarters and among journalists covering the crisis, of Gaza’s victimization not at Hamas’ hands, but at Israel’s. The cultivation of this narrative is doubly useful, because victimhood also justifies resuming open war against Israel.

The paradoxical bottom line for Hamas is that crisis, both humanitarian and military, is necessary for legitimacy and survival...

   You might say that crisis is their lifeblood (that along with, of course, the blood of
   real, live Jews). For that reason, any attempt to bring these vampires into the
   “peace process” (such as it is) is an exercise in cluelessness and futility.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:24 | link | comments

Faux tidings of comfort and joy: Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi (who apparently knows bupkes about Islam) tells Der Spiegel that he thinks the monotheists' common ancestor, Abe, is a good jumping off point for interfaith understanding; and the New York Times shills for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is attracting the jaded young uns in "moderate" Jordan.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:51 | link | comments

   All the rest are second best: George Jonas, a man who knows a thing or two
   about living under oppression, writes that there’s only one “human right” that counts—
   freedom:

We were a scruffy lot of ex-students and vagabonds landing in Canada a few weeks after the defeat of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. The papers referred to us as “freedom fighters.” It was Christmas, and at the West Lodge Refugee Centre there was a package for us under the Christmas tree. Made by local children, it had sketches of stick-figures extending their hands and saying things like “This is my dog” and “Will you have some popcorn?” One bold stick-figure said: “Fighters, welcome to freedom.”

I wish I had kept it. Notice it said: Welcome to freedom, not welcome to “human rights.” Now it would be a memento of the days before we traded one for the other.

It was a con. Freedom is the only human right. The rest — to be housed, hired, admitted to a club — are human ambitions. In the Ponzi scheme of “human rights” the state feeds A’s ambition by trading some of B’s freedom for it, then pays for C’s ambition in the coin of A’s freedom, until the gold of freedom is exchanged for the inflationary paper of ambitions and privileges renamed “rights,” printed and doled out by the authorities.

Lip service to liberty, power to the government: That’s the deal. Oppression has the bad press; freedom has the rough ride.

We’re all for freedom in the abstract. We don’t mind others being at liberty to do or say whatever they like, unless they say or do something we think they shouldn’t. If they do, staunch lovers of liberty promptly call for legislators, mayors, school boards, censors, shrinks, dogcatchers or human rights commissars to intervene.

We’re ready to liberate the world, which is nice. But freedom is like charity. It begins at home…

And here at home, as we know, we don’t have freedom; we have human rights
commissions.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:04 | link | comments

Long lost twins?: Libyan waxwork/addlepated potentate Moo Moo Gadafi...

...and formerly handsome has-been actor/now slated to win an Oscar for The Wrestler Mickey Rourke.

Or is it that everyone starts to look more or less the same after too much bad plastic surgery and subcutaneous facial filler?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:40 | link | comments

“Accept Islam or pay us our jizya, wicked infidels”: UK TV is giving a nutty jihadi
a chance to send his season’s greetings. From the timesonline:

President Ahmadinejad of Iran could upstage the Queen when he delivers an "alternative" Christmas message tomorrow on British television.

Mr Ahmadinejad will give a speech which will go out at 7.15pm on Christmas Day on Channel Four.

The message is a spiritual one but includes some more political elements - including the implicit claim that Jesus Christ, were he alive today, would oppose US hegemony.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers,” Mr Ahmadinejad will say, according to a transcript of the speech.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime.”

"The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises can be found in following the Prophets -- they were sent by the Almighty, for the happiness of humanity."…

   If they were sent for the happiness of humanity, why are so many of Ahmadinejad’s
   ilk so gawdamned cranky?

   Update: You're not going to believe how the dhimmi Beeb refers to it--
   Ahmadinejad to give a "festive address."

   About as "festive" as a hunk of coal in your Christmas stocking, I'd say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:24 | link | comments

No prezzies from Santa for you, Roddy: Blago named naughtiest politician of '08.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:35 | link | comments

Those aren't endorphens making you high: The Toronto Star reports on a most novel way to try to smuggle cocaine--in a shipment of Guyanese hot sauce.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:31 | link | comments

How annyoying for him: Blagojevich questioning takes up Obama's time.

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

   Not looking good: For all those delusional Jews who think that having a Rahmbo in
   the White House will be good for Israel, think again. Daniel Pipes offers this sobering
   preview of coming distractions:

…Unsurprisingly, Bush's critics excoriate his Middle East record. Fine, but now that they are almost in the driver's seat; exactly how do they intend to fix America's Middle East policy?

"Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President" offers defeatist policy recommendations.

One preview is on display in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, a major study issued jointly by two liberal lions, the Brookings Institution (founded 1916) and the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921). The culmination of an 18-month effort, Restoring the Balance involved 15 scholars, 2 co-editors (Richard Haass and Martin Indyk), a retreat at a Rockefeller conference center, multiple fact-finding trips, and a small army of organizers and managers.

This reader is struck by two major deficiencies. First, while the book covers six topics (the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Iraq, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and political and economic development), its specialists have almost nothing to say about Islamism, the most pressing ideological challenge of our time, nor about the Iranian nuclear buildup, the most urgent military danger of our time. They also manage to bypass such issues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab rejectionism of Israel, the Russian danger, and the transfer of wealth to energy-exporting states.

Second, the study offers defeatist policy recommendations. "Bring Hamas into the fold" advise Steven A. Cook and Shibley Telhami, arguing that the terrorist organization be included in a "Palestinian unity government" and be urged to accept the ill-fated Abdullah Plan of 2002. It is hard to imagine a single more counterproductive policy in the Arab-Israeli theater…

“Bring Jihad into the fold” more like. In which case, rots of ruck with that one,
hopeychangers.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:22 | link | comments

Happy warriors: Michael Ledeen throws up his hands at Bush’s obtuseness:

In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel published a truly fascinating interview with President Bush. Oddly, his most revealing remark on the war came not in a discussion of Iraq, but when he spoke about his (excellent) commitment to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.

He said, “freedom includes freedom from disease, because (terrorists) can exploit hopelessness, and that’s the only thing they can exploit.”

At which point one can only throw one’s hands in the air and sigh. Because this means he doesn’t understand terrorism. At all. Terrorists aren’t recruited because they feel hopeless. Quite the contrary; they feel inspired, galvanized, heroic and saintly. They are revolutionaries, they are seeking to change the world, and their actions are not one last desperate throw of the dice. Theirs are acts of hope and optimism, certainly not of despair. They think they’re part of a victorious army, not isolated individuals crushed by misery.

I think once upon a time he knew this, back when he talked about evil. But it seems that, over the years, he listened to too many social science types, too many vulgar marxists, who fed him the silly slogan that to defeat terrorism you have to eliminate the “root causes,” which, according to many of the advocates of the conventional wisdom, are poverty and Israel.

I wish someone would shake him gently, and say, “but those men who came to kill us here on 9/11 were well off, they came from good families, they were upwardly mobile, and if there is a single word that totally misdescribes them, that word is ‘hopeless’.” And then say “Remember Osama bin Laden, the scion of one of the richest families on the planet?”…

The scary thing is that the guy who's about to replace Dubya at the top sees it as a
matter of "hopelessness," too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:08 | link | comments

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

What are the odds?: A report written by the Obama team has cleared team mate Rahm Emanuel of any wrong doing re his recent communication with the egregiously corrupt Illinois governor.

Quel relief!

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:57 | link | comments

Reviving the Islamic Spirit: Islam Online touts the "Islam revival" in Toronto.

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

From the "better late than never" dep't: Dean Martin, who died Christmas Day 1995, is going to get a Grammy award for "lifetime achievement".

Well, I guess everybody does love somebody sometime, right Deano?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:20 | link | comments

Mo a myth?: A Muslim scholar named Sven (who spoke to Toronto Star religion scribe Tim Harpur) thinks so.

A noted Muslim scholar has provoked a huge controversy in Europe by openly questioning the existence of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Islamist at the centre of the storm in Germany over whether Muhammad ever existed as an historical figure says he is simply following the conclusions of many years of rigorous research.

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, 42, the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Muenster and whose duties include training teachers for the rising number of Muslim students in German high schools, has created a furor by stating that in all probability Muhammad was a mythical creation.

He told the Star in a recent phone interview that his research leads him to believe that the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have mythical origins.

German police worried about a possible violent backlash have told the professor to move his offices to more secure premises. But Kalisch says there have been no specific threats and he is far from being "in hiding" as some bloggers and other rumour-mongers have claimed.

However, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany to which the four largest organizations of the country's 3 million-strong Muslim community belong, has stopped its co-operation with the university's Centre for Religious Studies over the professor's stand.

A spokesperson for the council, Ali Kizilkaya, has said if the Prophet Muhammad didn't exist then the Qur'an doesn't exist.

"This would mean that we would have to abolish the religion altogether," Kizilkaya said. "We are convinced the Prophet did indeed exist and that the Qur'an is the word of God."...

Fatwa in five, four, three...:

Update: No Myth

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:08 | link | comments (1)

The madness (and death wish) of Israel's leadership: After twiddling its thumbs for three years and allowing Hamas to become even stronger and sassier--and seeing how poorly it's playing with an electorate weary of seeing rockets fired into Israel's south--Ehud and his cadre of nincompoops have decided to take action. But, as Caroline Glick writes in yet another clear-eyed assessment of the depressing situation, the government doesn't want to crush Hamas. It only wants to slow it down long enough for someone else to ride to the Jews' rescue (my bolds):

...Since it abandoned Gaza in September 2005, the government has more or less stood down and allowed Hamas to build its armies and terror arsenals unchallenged. But with the February 10 general elections swiftly approaching, and with public anger at their abandonment of the South daily rising, on Sunday Olmert's ministers decided that the time has come to launch a military offensive into Gaza.

To prepare the ground for the promised offensive, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has ordered the diplomatic corps to build international support and understanding for the planned military action. Of course, as Likud Knesset candidate and former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon pointed out on Israel Radio Monday morning, the very fact that Israel today lacks international support for defending the country against Hamas's illegal terror offensive shows how empty pledges made by Livni and Olmert on the eve of the 2005 surrender of the Gaza Strip truly were.

At the time, Livni, Olmert and their colleagues promised that after Israel left the area, if the Palestinians dared to attack the country, Israel would have full international backing to defend itself. Now, with an Iranian proxy in control of its southern border, Israel finds itself condemned for every action it takes to secure its citizens from murder.

At any rate, the cabinet decided whenever Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Olmert feel comfortable with the international climate, the IDF will gradually escalate its currently anemic operations in Gaza. Currently the IDF is not even going after Hamas targets, just Islamic Jihad ones. And on Monday morning Barak announced that every additional operation will require prior approval by the government.

While the government is congratulating itself on its willingness to defend the country after three years of negligence, the fact is that its strategic aim is not to defeat Hamas. This fact was made clear in the summary of the government's decisions reported in the media on Sunday afternoon. The government made clear that the aim of both the diplomatic and military offensives is to pave the way for the "international community" to intervene in Gaza to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorism...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:42 | link | comments

NYT gets "punked": The Gray Lady printed a bogus e-mail from the Mayor of Paree purporting to throw cold eau on Lady Caroline's senate bid. From the timesonline:

Anyone reading the New York Times yesterday would have been surprised to see a letter from the Mayor of Paris, of all people, attacking Caroline Kennedy's bid for a Senate seat.

The note, signed with the name of Bertrand Delanoe, Paris' Mayor, vilified Ms Kennedy's bid for Hillary Clinton's seat in the Senate, describing it as "appalling" and "not very democratic".

But if American readers of The Times were surprised at the letter, that's nothing to how it was regarded by Parisian government officials.

After an urgent phone call from Paris to the offices of The Times, the newspaper had to admit that it had fallen for a less than elaborate hoax.

Just hours after printing it, the paper was forced to publish an editor's note on its website on Monday afternoon stating: "Ihis letter was a fake. It should not have been published."

The letter, sent by email, asked what title Ms Kennedy had "to pretend to Hillary Clinton's seat" and went on to say: "We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling ... can we speak of American decline?"

In a humiliating apology, the New York Times admitted that publishing the letter: "Violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers."

Times staff, it admitted, ignored the paper's procedure of verfiying the authenticity of every letter before printing.

"In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

"We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed," the newspaper admitted..

"We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers," it added.

The newspaper said it would review its procedures for verifying letters to avoid a repetition of the incident.

Mr Delanoe's press office in Paris confirmed that the text was a hoax...

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:25 | link | comments

Have Yourself a Scary Little Jihad: Another seasonal standard, revised for our times:

Have yourself a scary little jihad,

Strap your vests on tight.

Next year lots more kafirs’ll be out of sight.

Have yourself a scary little jihad.

Why not throw your shoes?

It’s a way to show that you refuse to lose.

Once again as in storied days

Wondrous glory days of Mo.

Warriors fight for Allahs’ way--

It’s the only way to go.

Someday soon the world will be so peaceful,

If the faith’s allowed.

Until then sharia’ll get spread somehow.
So have yourself a scary little jihad now.

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

Dick’s diplomacy: Richard Haass, a former denizen of Turtle Bay (‘nuff said), writes in the Globe and Mail that Obama must must use his powers of persuasion to encourage the mullahs to set aside their nuclear dreams and schemes (since the cost of the other two options—“living with a nuclear Iran or attacking it”—is way too high):

…The best outcome would be one in which Iran was persuaded to freeze or suspend its nuclear efforts or, better yet, give up an independent capability to enrich uranium. It is conceivable that Iran could be allowed a symbolic "right" to enrich, but any such program would have to be extremely small so as not to pose a threat. It would also need to be subject to highly intrusive inspections, so the world could be confident that Iran was not secretly enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons.

What would it take to essentially eliminate Iran's uranium enrichment effort?

To begin with, it would entail putting together a diplomatic package that offered Iran access to nuclear energy but not physical control over nuclear materials. Economic sanctions could be eased. Security assurances could be provided and normal diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington could be established.

There is no guarantee that Iran would accept such an offer. But it might, especially now that the price of oil has fallen below $50 a barrel, a level that leaves the Iranian economy in worse shape than ever.

What would also help would be to make clear that Iran would face additional sanctions, including constraints on its ability to import refined petroleum, if it refused to accept a fair and reasonable compromise. Persuading Russia and China to support a package of requirements, incentives and penalties would be important. In addition, the odds Iran would accept such an offer might increase if the details were made public. The Iranian people may well choose leaders in next June's election who can deliver a much higher standard of living over those who would run the country into the ground.

But it is possible that Iran will reject any diplomatic compromise, even one put forward directly by the Americans. Mr. Obama and the world would then have to choose between tolerating an Iran with nuclear weapons (or the ability to produce them quickly) and using military force to prevent this outcome. It is the worst sort of choice, as neither option is attractive. For that reason, it is all the more important that diplomacy be recast and given one last chance.

Good thinking there, Neville. My letter:

Richard Haass, formerly with the U.S. State Department, thinks “talking” to the mullahs is the best way to deal with a nuclear Iran. I have no doubt that the mullahs--who for years have been open to “talking” to Western diplomats, since it afforded them the time and the opportunity they needed to enrich weapons-grade uranium right under the diplomats’ noses--would concur.

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

Hamascapades:

The jihadis who work for Hamas

Are a regular pain in the as.

Their talk of a “truce”

Is yet one more ruse

That’s intended to further their cause.

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

Monday, 22 December 2008

A light in the darkness: Every lighting of the Hanukkah menorah is meaningful, but this one is especially meaningful. From AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — The father of the rabbi who was killed along with his wife in the Mumbai terror attacks will lead a Hanukkah ceremony at the Statue of Liberty.

Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg will be joined by leaders of national Jewish organizations at the menorah lighting ceremony Tuesday, the third night of Hanukkah.

Holtzberg's son, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife, Rivka, were among scores killed last month in a rampage by suspected Islamic militants. The couple ran a Chabad Lubavitch center in the Indian city of Mumbai.

The Tuesday ceremony is part of a nationwide "Unite the Lights" campaign to mourn the victims of the Mumbai attack while promoting acts of kindness.

Nachman Holtzberg and his wife, Frida, attended a memorial ceremony for their son and daughter-in-law on Sunday in West Hempstead. Holtzberg called on the 200 mourners to help strengthen the Jewish presence in Mumbai by building a bigger Chabad center there.

"You don't need to fight against darkness," he said. "A little light spreads."

Tuesday's menorah-lighting ceremony will take place at 5:15 p.m. at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

I disagree. You do need to fight against darkness, because if you don’t the darkness can engulf you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:19 | link | comments

People of the shoe: The forbes.com opinion editor assesses the shoe kerfuffle :

…The Arabs, who once upon a time boasted Averroes and Avicenna, are now reduced to eulogizing a boorish act of agitprop as a heroic achievement. America gave us Martin Luther King; South Africa gave us Mandela; India gave us Gandhi; the Arab world gives us ... Muntader-al-Zaidi. A people who invented the zero are now reduced, themselves, to zero. Only a people who live under the boots of their rulers celebrate the throwing of a shoe at a guest.

Muntader's Arab celebrants have fellow-travelers in the West, of course--chiefly among the anti-Bush mass on the left; but the latter's reaction to the shoe-throwing has been one of vitriolic glee, not self-congratulatory jubilation. The Western liberal's hatred of Bush is an ideological hatred; it may be as potent as the hatred of Bush in Arab breasts, but at least it is a hatred that has its origins in the mind, in differences of opinion. The Arab reaction, by contrast, has been damningly, disturbingly emotional and visceral. A vast swath of people, from Morocco to Iraq, have found cultural and tribal, even civilizational, catharsis in a 20-second display of theater comprising the hurling of shoes--and of that most beloved of Arab epithets, "dog."

It makes one want to yelp: Is this the best they can do? Is this how their heroism is now defined? To me--to many--this is alarming proof of the depth of Arab impotence, of the Lilliputian self-image that drives Muslim Arabs to take to terrorism, to assault that which they cannot comprehend. The irony that has been lost on them is the fact that in the entire Arab world, only in Bushified Iraq could such an act of protest be possible…

The reference to “the Lilliputian self-image” recalls that memorable line uttered by Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia: “Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.” In that respect, it seems not a lot has changed since Lawrence's time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:09 | link | comments

No ho ho: Ugly Santa brawl reported in Norwich.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:54 | link | comments

Old friends:

Nancy & Sluggo:

Barack & Blago:

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:48 | link | comments

Clueless clergy enabling sharia: At a time when sharia is rapidly making inroads in the West, one might expect Christian and Jewish clergy to be in the vanguard of warding off a religious law inimical to their interests. But noooo! As Tom Trento, an evangelical Christian working to alert Americans to the threat of Allah's law, explains to FrontPage Magazine’s Jamie Glazov, our clergy is too busy kissing up to Muslims at “interfaith” sessions sponsored by wily Wahhabis to notice that anything’s amiss:

FP: Your thoughts on the attitude of Jewish and Christian clergy in dealing with this crisis?

Trento: But for a handful of courageous Jewish and Christian clergy, Jewish and Christian leaders have been silent or worse yet, complicit with Muslim extremists, thus expediting the eventual destruction of America.

FP: Why this fear about Jewish and Christian clergy to take a stand on Islamic jihad?

Trento: No guts. Lack of courage. Weak-minded. Historically, clergy have been on the fore-front of social action and public policy construction. Sadly, as an evangelical Christian (with degrees from a Bible College and Seminary) over the past 25 years I have seen many religious leaders do all they could to avoid any confrontation even on benign social or political issues.

If these men of God can’t find their mouth on cultural issues that pertain primarily to America, does anyone in their right mind think these folks will stand up to Islamist jihadi warriors, who have already reconciled themselves to martyrdom?

To make matters worse, the Islamists (like the spider with little Miss Muffet) are inviting Jewish and Christian clergy to “interfaith” kumbaya dialogues, so that the three Abrahamic faiths can understand, appreciate each other and work together. Though that sounds great on the surface, the fact is that the Islamists are simply constructing their foundation (by disarming Jewish and Christian leaders) to build their system of Sharia law into the American way of life and the Jewish or Christian leader does not have a clue!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments (1)

If the name fits...: Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein has a list of real people whose names are in keeping with their circumstances. For instance, how perfect is it that the name of the egregious Ponzi schemer is Bernard Madoff--since Bernie Madoff with the cash?

By the same token, the state apparatchik in charge of squelching free speech in Canada has a moniker befitting her occupation: Lynch. (There's a study to be written on the extent to which one's name is self-fulfilling--like, say, the I. Alter who decides to become a tailor and the little Foreskin who grows up to be Dr. Foreskin, the moil.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

Caroline’s caché: Isn’t it interesting that when Sarah Palin, a woman with actual political experience who has run an entire state, was tapped for veep, the media clicked into collective freak-out mode. But when Caroline Kennedy, a woman who has never run for anything, and whose organizational skills run to arranging play dates for her kids, announces she wants to be appointed senator of the great state of New York, the media fawn over her as though she were, well, a Kennedy. (I actually heard CNN pundit Bill Schneider explain yesterday that the reason sweet Caroline should win the nod is because—wait for it—she’d be able to raise a lot of money when election time rolled around two years hence. Yeah, because as Governor Rod Blago has recently demonstrated, “fundraising” is both an art and a science.) Victor Davis Hanson thinks much of the fawning has to do with the cult of celebrity, but, perceptively, he notes that it’s also a “class” thing—that a moose-hunting mama from the boonies with an accent straight out of a trailer park has absolutely no caché, while the daughter of Camelot couple John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline (rhymes with "queen") Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, has caché coming out the ying-yang:

George Bush, we were told ad nauseam was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple. But when it comes to Ms. Kennedy, her liberal lineage and assumed charisma weirdly nullified the same tired media charges of entitlement that have been customarily leveled against almost every affluent, well-connected Republican politician from Mitt Romney to George Bush.

There were also several liberal media complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin, most prominently three—that she lacked experience for high federal office; that she avoided the media whenever possible; and that she either would not or could not opine on world affairs.

But Gov. Palin had been an elected official for some sixteen years, winning and losing elections until assuming the governorship—always at odds with an entrenched male hierarchy that had run Alaska for years. Through it all, Palin mothered five children without either capital or connections. She endured at the very beginning of her national run a vicious press as interested in ridiculing her as a rube in fancy store-bought clothes as it is catching a glimpse of Caroline’s glitzy labels.

We know in our hearts that Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, who mercilessly grilled pro-life, Christian Sarah Palin with the poor white twang, would pull in their talons—if given the chance to dialogue with Caroline. Yet there is no evidence that Caroline Kennedy knows any more about Waziristan than did Sarah Palin; there is a great deal of evidence that it is far more difficult for a nobody mom of five to make it through the electoral process into national politics from Alaska than it is for a Kennedy daughter of a President to be appointed from the Upper East Side to fill a liberal New York Senate Seat.

Caroline Kennedy is no doubt a fine individual who by all accounts has led an exemplary life. But her proposed appointment to the US Senate is a rare reflection of ourselves—the glittering of the aristocracy in the left’s vision of an otherwise egalitarian America, the notion that blue-chip certification conveys status and wisdom rather than proven excellence through the life-school of hard knocks, and the ethical bankruptcy of the media that has no principled notion of disinterested inquiry, but now serves as an fawning appendage of the Left.

In short, appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate from New York tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does even her.

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

Heh:

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

Pretty please can we stop the crazed jihadists from trying to kill us?: These days when it's under assault, Israel isn't allowed to actually fight back. First it has to send out diplomats to "smooth the way" for self defence.

As if that's going to silence the uproar that is bound to ensure when Hamas gets its just desserts. (Can't you just hear it now? "Disproportionate force!" Collective punishment!" "Jenin! Jenin!"...)

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:08 | link | comments

Sunday, 21 December 2008

“Nice” won’t stop the jihad: “American Thinker” Bill Warner blows a big, wet raspberry at “niceness”:

After the Mumbai jihad there was a response of "Do good deeds." The Jews of Chabad (the sect that had its members tortured to death) asked for Jews to do "mitzvahs," good works. A yoga group that had some of its members killed believes that love will triumph. Then Deepak Chopra weighed in with his "think good thoughts" campaign. Chopra's effort has the "magic" of if a million people pledge to think good thoughts the world will change for peace. All of these efforts may be summarized by one phrase: Be Nice.

I have nothing against being nice. Who does? But is that enough? What happened at Mumbai was evil. Any response must be aimed at preventing it from happening again. How can Being Nice prevent evil from recurring?

There is a strain of New Age, hippy, pacifist, and utopian thought which believes just that. Cue the Beatles, All We Need is Love. The Be Nice theory raises a question: if good deeds and good thoughts will prevent another Mumbai, then does that mean that the rabbi and his pregnant wife, who were tortured to death, had just not done enough mitzvah, good works? Is a 9-year-old girl who is raped just not nice enough?

Pacifists say that you should never respond to violence, because that just creates more violence. We should never use pain to correct. War is never the answer. These theories don't seem to take into account that learning how to avoid pain usually consists in remembering what lead to the pain, so we don't do that again. Pain can and will change people's behavior. Pain works.

But, the first step in resisting jihad is not violence or war, but education. The Be Nice people deny that Islamic jihad even exists. Therefore, there is nothing to learn. The Be Nice people will never even use any language that would point towards Islam. Be Nice people are doctrinal deniers. The real Islam has nothing to do with jihad, and therefore there is nothing to learn.

When the Be Nice people speak they never refer to any Islamic doctrine or history. If they speak of doctrine it is about American foreign policy. Internal motivation is missing from the "gunmen." It is as though they only respond to us. They don't have an ideology, just reactions. Or maybe they were poor, economically impoverished.

The reason that the Be Nice people do not want to learn about political Islam is that they have too many suspicions about the truth and know that they don't have the courage to face the reality. So it is better to deny that an Islamic doctrine exists and ignore it. Then when the history and doctrine are pointed out, they hint that we are bigots, we are worse than the jihadists, that such talk is offensive and should not be tolerated. To quote Islamic doctrine has been defined as bigotry and not nice.

Being nice, in and of itself, is not wrong. What is wrong is the lack of balance. Being nice is feminine. We need both compassion and wisdom. Compassion by itself leads to idiot compassion. There are some things that love can't do. We must have an approach that it practical and includes wisdom…

Amen to that, Bill. But I think there’s more to it than that. Consider the Canadian Jewish Congress’s “niceness,” for example. The CJC’s various efforts to be “nice”—condemning the Danish newspaper that published the Mo cartoons;“mentoring” Somalis; applauding King Abdullah’s winsome twinners, etc.—are actually attempts by Jews to ingratiate themselves with Muslims. Futile attempts, one must add. And by now it should be crystal clear that, despite the Jews’ good intentions—no, scratch that; because of the Jews’ good intentions—there is virtually no difference between the CJC’s “niceness” and abject dhimmitude.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:37 | link | comments (1)

Creepy news story of the day: The power that’s preparing to nuke the Jewish state in anticipation of its messiahs’ return (he can’t show up until all the Jews are toast) has, to much fanfare, donated a book to the Japanese city incinerated by the A-bomb. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The Cultural Center of Khorramshahr Sacred Defense has donated an illustrated book on the resistance of Khorramshahr residents and the liberation of the city to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Released by the Foundation for the Preservation and Publication of Sacred Defense Works and Values, the book contains photos taken during 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war in this southwestern Iranian port.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum will present a collection of photos of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Cultural Center of Khorramshahr Sacred Defense in near future.

“Iran will issue a series of postage stamps on the anniversary of the crimes the United States committed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as in the interval between the bombings. Stamps will also be issued to commemorate crimes committed by Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and on the anniversary of the liberation of Khorramshahr in 2009. Copies of the stamps will be donated to Hiroshima museum,” the head of center Nader Daryaban told IRNA.

An official of the Hiroshima museum, Miki Nagahira, praised Iran’s donation and declared the book a precious work of art.

In his book Explaining Hitler (which really seeks to explain Hitler’s explainers), Ron Rosenbaum writes that one manifestation of Hitler’s evil—the trait that, in fact, makes him more evil than other evil leaders—was the malicious glee that he and his regime took not just in tormenting and butchering the Jews, but in teasing them in the process (for example, by placing the words “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”—works makes you free—at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp). I can’t help but think that the above is a manifestation of the same kind of evil, and that the mullahs’ are having a good laugh about giving a book to a Hiroshima museum as they get set to pull a Hiroshima on the Jews.

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

Kipling, anyone?: Claudia Rosett revises Kipling’s “If”, the poem trotted out by a politician who obviously does not understand its message. (See, Blago, it was meant to commend maturity, not thuggery.)

My stab at it:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are calling for your resignation now.

If you can stall when all are trying to rout you,

And ev’ry revelation disavow.

If you can flog a senate seat at auction

And shake down a children’s hospital with sang froid.

If you can fabricate a great concoction

Of bilge to hide the way you shunned the law…

If you can fill the unforgiving airwaves

With sixty seconds of a Rudyard Kipling show.

You’re more out of touch than anyone could even imagine,

And what is more, you’re outta here, Blago!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:28 | link | comments

Hot times in a cold country: I suppose we should be grateful that here in Toronto they're only lobbing invective and shoes. As Mark Steyn notes, over in Malmo, Sweden, flaming youths of no particular background (as the dhimmified Beeb characterizes them) have set portions of the city on fire. Here's a youtube video showing some of the incendiary hijinks.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:17 | link | comments

Lively (if not very well-attended) gathering of anti-American shoe shuckers: Some members of the tribe, along with some tribal wannabes, got together in Montreal and Toronto yesterday to show their solidarity with a shoeless Arab “journalist”. From CP via the Globe and Mail:

MONTREAL — Anti-war protesters held symbolic shoe tosses Saturday in Montreal and Toronto in support of jailed Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi.

About 40 protesters in both cities braved the cold to let fly in front of their respective U.S consulates and celebrate Mr. al-Zeidi's actions.

Demonstrators in Montreal pelted a black-and-white presidential photograph with boots, shoes and slippers and denounced the U.S. war in Iraq and the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, before marching to a downtown Canadian Forces recruiting station.

“Today is an act of humour in a sense but it's also a profound situation and context,” activist and journalist Stephan Christoff told the Montreal crowd.

“We're talking about a situation where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in Iraq. It is George Bush who holds a direct responsibility for the devastating, horrific situation of occupation and imperialism in Iraq.”

Organizers also urged local journalists to ditch their veneer of objectivity by lobbing footwear at the image.

“We want to break this ideal that journalists stand in this world of objectivity, stand in this world where opinions don't exist,” said Mr. Christoff…

You can keep your loafers on, boys. Journalists in the MSM ditched their veneer of objectivity some time ago, and journalists in the Arab world never had one. That Stephan Christoff sure is one smooth talkin’ activist, though. I foresee a career in Canadian politics, p’raps standing shoulder to shoulder with Smilin’ Jack Layton. Either that or a career with one of our “human rights” constabularies.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:01 | link | comments

Two-faced MPAC: The Muslim Public Affairs Council was instrumental in helping organize Wahhabi King Abdullah’s Bamboozle the Jews Project, a.k.a. the weekend that “twinned” congregations of clueless Reform Jews with mosques (so everyone could sit around, eat hummus and discuss their common ancestor, Abe). When it comes to the Juden of Israel, however, MPAC has something far less convivial in mind, as Damian Thompson writes in a Telegraph blog (my bolds):

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) is one of the media's favourite Muslim organisations - radical and outspoken but not extremist, we're led to believe. One of its spokesmen, Asghar Bukhari, is a particular favourite of the BBC, whose Asian Network describes how he has "set up Media response workshops to educate and engage Muslims about dealing with the media" .

So I was interested to see how Bukhari would "deal" with me when I rang him to ask about an interesting discovery by The Centre for Social Cohesion, in my opinion the most formidable of the think-tanks monitoring Islamic extremism, which has been rooting around Facebook discussions.

In one recent thread, Bukhari says: "Muslims who fight against the occupation of their lands are 'Mujahadeen' and are blessed by Allah. And any Muslim who fights and dies against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise ... There is no greater oppressor on this earth than the Zionists, who murder little children for sport."

Well, Bukhari didn't evade the question. He confirmed that the Facebook discussion was authentic, and said: "I stand by that [his comments], and I think any Muslim in the world stands by that ... if you think I'm going to tap dance for you and say 'These Muslims are really bad and should sort their own house out', then I'm not going to."

Indeed, he added, if that was my view then I could "p--- off"…

What are the odds—that’s exactly my message to MPAC, King Abdullah all the winsome twinners: p—s off.

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

Murder in Somalia: The Toronto Star has a harrowing, horrifying story about the brutalities inflicted upon Asho Duholow. Asha, a 13-year old Somali girl, was born in a Kenya refugee camp but fled to her homeland, where she was raped and then stoned to death.

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

The Mona Blago: A Chicago artist has painted a portrait of scandal-ridden Gov. Rod Blago—and it isn’t a pretty picture. From the Chicago Tribune:

A nude portrait of the governor, by artist Bruce Elliott, is nearly complete and will hang on the wall of Elliott's wife's bar, the Old Town Ale House, next to his infamous depiction of a naked Sarah Palin. It is the next installment in what Elliott loosely calls his "nude governor series."

Elliott cites many sources of inspiration for the painting, which shows the governor, who was arrested last week on corruption charges, preparing for a potential first day of incarceration. Among them: the extent of the governor's alleged misdeeds and the artist's desire to respond to criticism from Republicans and women about the Palin portrait by painting a Democrat in the buff.

"I was stunned when I found out what that criminal complaint [outlined]," Elliott said as he examined the painting in his Old Town studio. "Hopefully, someone is going to find this irreverent."

Irreverent hardly begins to describe it. The scene imagines Blagojevich handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit pulled down to his knees.

Among the onlookers is a guard, with a look of grim determination, pulling on a rubber glove.

The painting, which is taking Elliott a little over a week to finish, is titled: "The Cavity Search."

Okay, I think I just lost by breakfast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments

"They're just some souls whose intentions are good/Oh Lord, please don't let them be misunderstood": Jimminy "Cricket" Carter praises the put-upon leaders of Hamas.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:32 | link | comments

Merry Kvetchmas: The holiday season is upon us and you know what that means—time for the annual media whinge-fest about how Israel is wrecking Bethlehem’s Christmas. Here’s a fairly typical report on the subject, from Islam Online:

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Despite chocking (sic) Israeli restrictions, preparations are in full swing in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, to celebrate Christmas.

"We want to bring joy to the hearts of our people," Bethlehem municipal chief Victor Batarsa told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, December 20.

"We are trying to create a favorable atmosphere for the pilgrims and tourists and draw a smile on the faces of the residents of the occupied city."

The city of 185,000 has put on its Christmas best to welcome the pilgrims and tourists.

Garlands of flickering lights, synthetic pine trees, fake snow and other Christmas favorites give a festive feel to the city.

Souvenir sellers carved Nativity scenes, crosses, rosaries and other religious items, set up inflatable Santas and blow-up snowmen outside their stores.

"Every year, we celebrate Christmas to preserve our heritage and history," Yusuf Goukman, a bizarre owner, said.

Christmas is the main festival on the Christian calendar. Its celebrations reach its peak at 12:00 PM on December 24 of every year.

Christian pilgrims flock to Bethlehem every year in this period to join Christmas at the historical Nativity Church, built on the site where Jesus is said to have been born in a stable.

Restrictions

But the Christmas joy is marred by the crippling Israeli restrictions in the occupied city.

"The Israeli occupation is determined to destroy our celebrations," Batarsa said.

"The city is suffering under siege with Israeli checkpoints installed at the city's entrances.

"There are also daily incursions, settlement expansion not to mention arrests and house demolitions."

The separation wall Israel is building is also adding to the suffering of Bethlehem residents.

The barrier, a mix of electronic fences and concrete walls, isolated the city from Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem), confiscated farm land, uprooted olive trees, and helped to quicken emigration and keep unemployment at more than 50 percent.

However, Bethlehem residents are maintaining their Christmas joy.

"This land is ours. Our ancestors were born and lived in this city. This is a holy land," said Goukman, the bizarre owner…

Bizarre alright, since the security fence has given pilgrims the peace of mind they didn’t have during periods of unrest, and as result they have made their way to the town in record numbers. Just think of what Bethlehem would be like if there were no fence—or if the Muslims, and not the Jews, had sovereignty over the land. Goukman the bizarre owner would undoubtedly have a lot more to whinge about then.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:19 | link | comments

If the shoe fits…: Salim Mansur sheds light on the “tribalism” behind the shoe-flinging incident. From the Toronto Sun:

The television pictures of an Iraqi journalist hurling shoes at President George W. Bush standing alongside the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a Baghdad press conference have ricocheted across the world to the hysterical applause of many members of the Arab-Muslim audience and their usual supporters.

Hurling shoes at someone, we are told, is the worst insult in Arab culture.

A few years ago the world witnessed when Baghdad was liberated by American soldiers and Saddam Hussein's statue in the centre of the city was pulled down. A cheering crowd of Iraqis gathered to kick and slap the broken image of the fallen tyrant repeatedly with their footwear, displaying contempt for a man whose shadow only weeks earlier would have frozen them in fear.

What are non Arabs to make of the shoes hurled at an American president in an Arab capital to the cheers of an Arab audience?

It is not a surprise that more Arabs loathe President Bush than approve of him. This being the case, the incident is more revealing of Arabs and their culture than of President Bush arriving as a guest in an Arab capital.

Much of Arab culture is tribal culture, and Arab nationalism is tribalism dressed in the political garments borrowed from Europe. Arab modernity is often a charade, and Arab states are typically, in the memorable words of Tahseen Bashir, an Egyptian diplomat, so many "tribes with flags."

Tribal mentality

The collectivist tribal mentality frowns upon the idea of individuals asserting their rights as free people. Freedom is subversive to a culture that insists on tribal identity and this is why many Arabs, as tribes, remain fearful of modernity and democracy…

No wonder the shoe-lobber is such a hero to his tribe (and no wonder Salim Mansur, a man who consistently dares to speak the truth, is at the centre of a well-orchestrated campaign by the tribally-inclined to get him fired from the Sun).

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments

Winnipeg’s mausoleum of “human rights”: Despite the fact that in our time the term “human rights” has been hijacked by those who believe in their right to snuff out our freedom, plans to erect an edifice in tribute to this Orwellian concept continue apace. From the Winnipeg Sun:

It will be the first of its kind in this country, but the Canadian Museum for Human Rights might not stand head and shoulders above other like-minded institutions around the world.

While Winnipeg's national museum will be a grand monument to peace, understanding and goodwill, it's not like this hasn't been done before. At least to some extent.

The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Elsternwick, Australia. The Robben Island Museum in South Africa, examining apartheid and the banishment and imprisonment which existed in its region between the 17th and 20th centuries. Then there's the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England.

They shine a spotlight on much the same kinds of themes -- and are apparently pretty cool, too.

"We know there are museums that focus on tolerance, that focus on ideas, that focus on issues like that," said Patrick O'Reilly, chief operating officer of Winnipeg's splashy complex soon to begin taking shape at The Forks.

"American civil rights institutions tend to focus on race issues. There are other ones, of course, like the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. that are focused more around the Holocaust and the Second World War. There's a slavery museum being developed in Great Britain right now. There are castles in Ghana that are set up as slavery museums at the place where slaves were gathered before bringing them to North America."

BROADER STROKE

The difference, O'Reilly said, is the Winnipeg museum will illustrate human rights with a broader stroke.

"This, we believe, will be the first one that's really encompassing," he said. "One can never know of every little museum in the world, but certainly this one is going to take it broader than the ones we've seen."

Museums exploring American civil rights appear plentiful in the southern U.S.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., stands around the former Lorraine Motel, where black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a sniper in 1968.

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum is in development at the Greensboro, N.C. former F.W. Woolworth store where four black college students made a historic statement in 1960 by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter.

Just how many major rights-based museums are operating internationally is difficult to nail down, O'Reilly said.

Let me nail it down for you: too many.

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

Only human: Victor Davis Hanson says that, despite all his hopeychangey blather, Obama will inherit—and continue—policies he inherited from Bush, who inherited policies from Clinton. As a result, the Messiah will shortly reveal himself to be a regular homo sapien:

…Many of our unpopular policies concerning terrorism, energy and finance are of long duration. They resulted from collective decisions by Congress, past administrations — and us, the people, in our daily lives. They were no more the fault of George Bush than they can be easily solved by Barack Obama.

We should remember that fact in 2009, when the once-messianic Obama will become all too human, as he is overwhelmed by structural problems of terror, war and money not all of his own making — and the once-demonized but now retired George Bush will seem downright competent.

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

Global warming up the wazoo: Could someone please knock it off with the global warming already? There are honking humungous piles of fluffy, white global warming everywhere I look, and the weatherpundit says more global warming is on the way today.

Grab a shovel, Al, and come help us dig out 'cause the carbon credits we've purchased from your Cozy Carbon Credit Emporium don't seem to be having a salutary effect on our climate.

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

Saturday, 20 December 2008

Lobbing soft balls at the Big O: That reporter who was admonished by Mr. Inclusive not to “waste” his question on Blago talk heeded the advice. His next question—the one he didn’t “waste”—was more to the prez-elect’s liking. He asked him who he thought had the better jump shot—Obama, or the guy he’d just nominated as his secretary of education.

Talk about yer hard hitting queries from a hard bitten cynics of the Fourth Estate. (Are there any hard-bitten cynics left in journalism, in The Front Page mold? Or has the lefty sludge so infested the corridor of mainstream journalists’ brains such that, to a man and woman, they are all a bunch of squishy, Oprahfied wusses?

Jay Nordlinger’s wry comment: “Do you get the feeling that media treatment of this president is going to be different from media treatment of President Bush?”

Let’s think about that for a moment. Supposing it was a Republican governor who was under a cloud of suspision; who had been caught on tape by the FBI trying to “sell” a senate seat to the highest bidder; who was seeking a kickback from a children’s hospital--a children's hospital!--and, when it was not forthcoming, who tried to cancel promised funding. And suppose that Bush’s chief of staff had been in direct contact with this governor, perhaps to offer suggestions as to who Bush would next like to see filling the Senate seat. Can you think of any scenario in which the press corp would, following an admonition not to "waste" a query, lay off the tough questions and instead ask the President about, say, how his golf swing was going? Why, there would be outrage! High dudgeon! And relentless and detailed probing of the chief of staff to determine exactly what he knew, and precisely when he knew it.

It should seem obvious--but, apparently, it isn't--that this kid glove approach, which makes reporters look like they’re working for Pravda covering Stalin in his heyday, is ill-becoming, nay, an insult to professional journalists in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Even worse, it is an insult to their readers, who depend on reporters to do their jobs and who, when they don't, have to wade through their hope-changey pieces o' crap.

My advice to the ladies and gentlemen of the press: If, like Chris Matthews, you find yourself on the verge of orgasm whenever you're in Obama’s presence (Chris admitted to experiencing a tingle when sitting with The O) it’s a clear indication that you are incapable of reporting on him in any even half-way effective or legitimate manner.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:02 | link | comments

Just asking: So as I understand it, the president has given the Big Three auto makers a "loan" that they're supposed to repay by March.

Um, I'm no economist (although I do live in a home with a paid-off mortgage), but isn't that partly how the country got into such a huge mess in the first place--by extending credit to people who had no way of paying it back?

Update: Steyn decries throwing good capital away on fatally under-capitalized auto makers (a "Bailoutistan")

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

RIP Conor Cruise O’Brien: Writer/Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien has died at the age of 91. O’Brien was that rare breed—a man of the left who didn’t kowtow to the sophistries of political correctness, and who esteemed the Jewish state. (He became fond of it when, as Ireland's ambassador to the UN, he sat between Iran and Israel in the General Assembly; he later penned an articulate, impassioned book about Israel and Zionism, The Siege). A paragraph in the Telegraph’s obit offers a snapshot of the man:

When Naim Attallah, the Palestinian businessman and writer, suggested that many of O'Brien's countrymen had come to regard him as a British stooge, O'Brien was unconcerned. "For 'a lot of people' read the IRA and their stooges, some of whom you have clearly been talking to. Give them my regards."

He will be missed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:10 | link | comments

Not normal: Hard lefty journalist/failed politician Judy Rebick (so hard and so left that she, a Jew, has participated in that annual campus Zionhass fete, Israeli Apartheid Week) pens a missive to the G & M:

Toronto -- In Preston Manning's partisan appeal to Canadians dressed up in non-partisan clothes, he suggests we lobby Liberal MPs to dissolve the Liberal-NDP coalition, failing to mention it was the formation of the coalition that forced Stephen Harper to back down for the first time in memory (Here's How We Fix Canada's Political Mess - Dec. 19). Make no mistake that as soon as the coalition is dissolved, so is the threat to bring down the Harper government. No doubt Mr. Harper will go back to his old ways.

I agree with Mr. Manning on one thing: Now is the time not only to talk to your MP but to your friends and family - to explain that a coalition government is a normal part of most parliamentary democracies.

My letter:

Judy Rebick claims that coalition governments are a “normal” part of parliamentary democracies. “Normal” isn't exactly the word that springs to mind to describe a power grab by a trio of Harper-haters. Brazen, outrageous, contemptuous--yes. But it is hardly “normal” for the opposition leader who led his party to its most ignominious defeat ever to presume to become the prime minister, thereby thwarting the peoples’ will, and to do so by making common cause with a leader who wants to usher his province out of Confederation.

Anyone who thinks that’s “normal” ought to have his/her head examined.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:46 | link | comments (2)

Censorship gets CPR from CJC: Canadian Human Rights Commission appointee, Professor Richard Moon, unexpectedly called for the repeal of Section 13—that part of the federal human rights code that allows complaints to be brought because of “hate speech”. Unwilling to drop its security blankie, and seemingly incapable of wrapping its head around such a surprising call (since, clearly, it had been counting on the professor to see things its way), the Canadian Jewish Congress keeps trying to reanimate the moribund steed:

Dec 18, 2008 - The Ottawa Citizen
'Fence of protection' need not impair freedoms

Re: Democracy suffers when equality is threatened, Dec. 11.

Jane Bailey is to be commended for her eloquent and cogent defence of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) that critiques Richard Moon's report for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

She correctly notes that the state in a democratic society has a fundamental obligation to protect vulnerable minorities in their midst from hate and vilification and that, if done properly, this "fence of protection" need not be regarded as an undue impairment of free expression.

Nor can we depend solely on criminal law to rid society, and now the Internet, of hate propaganda. The Criminal Code exists to punish crime and should not be relied on to regulate discriminatory behaviour or prevent the spread of web-based hate. The parallel civil remedy in the CHRA is necessary to protect targeted groups from exposure to hate and to bolster core Canadian values of pluralism, civil discourse and respect for diversity.

In focusing the thrust of hate laws on the promotion of violence, Mr. Moon underplays the serious inherent effects of hate speech on vulnerable communities and the corrosive consequences of hate on those fundamental Canadian values.

Mr. Moon acknowledges that amendments to section 13 could revitalize its role in combating Internet hate. This is the correct approach: rather than abolish the section, let's find creative ways to make it work more fairly and effectively for the benefit of all Canadians.

Eric Vernon,

Ottawa

Canadian Jewish Congress

Tell me, Eric, what part of “repeal” (repeated 11 times) don’t you understand?

Meanwhile, there’s nothing on the CJC site about the CHRC giving the go-ahead to a hateful imam to spew/rant/bloviate to his heart’s content about Jews, gays and other of Allah’s undesirables. Guess that’s because our “advocates” are too busy trying to endear themselves to Muslims (through cockamamie “twinning” and “mentorship” schemes) and hunting down scary Nazis to notice who the real scary ideologues are (i.e. the thought cops and the Islamists they’re so keen to protect).

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:07 | link | comments (1)

Friday, 19 December 2008

And the winner of the most surreal moment on TV 2008...: No contest—it's Illinois' caught-red-handed-trying-to-flog-a-senate-seat (among other goodies) Gov (for now) Roddo Blago. After asserting his COMPLETE and TOTAL INNOCENCE hair today, gone tomorrow Rod launched into a few lines from"If". Yes, that "If", by famous Chicago versifyer Rudyard Kipling.

Nice recitation there, Rod, but maybe you should have gone with your second choice—some Rodgers and Hammerstein karaoke.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:31 | link | comments

An iron veil descends on the UN: The UN, which takes its marching orders from its largest voting bloc, the 57-member strong Organization of the Islamic Conference, has once again condemned “defamation” of religion—and more specifically, defamation of what the OIC considers to be the one and only valid religion. From Reuters:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly condemned defamation of religion for the fourth year running on Thursday, ignoring critics who said the resolution threatens freedom of speech.

The non-binding resolution, championed by Islamic states and opposed by Western countries, passed by 86 votes to 53 with 42 abstentions. Opponents noted that support had fallen since last year, when the vote was 108-51 with 25 abstentions.

The seven-page text urges states to provide "adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general."

Critics said its provisions strike at basic rights of free expression and opinion. One clause states that exercise of those rights "carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations."

The resolution only specifically mentions Islam. It deplores ethnic and religious profiling of Muslims since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and says Islam is often and wrongly associated with terrorism.

Islamic states say such resolutions do not aim to limit free speech but to stop publications like the Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed that sparked bloody protests by Muslims around the world in 2005.

Russia and China joined Arab and some African states in voting for the resolution.

This year's resolution drew attention because of reports that Islamic states aim to include a similar call against religious defamation in a key U.N. document on racism…

The Islamic states can say whatever the heck they want about the point of these anti-“defamation” exercises, and the clueless hacks who staff Western news agencies such as Reuters can pretend that such bogus claims may indeed be valid. But anyone with a semblance of a scintilla of an iota of clue knows that what we have here is 99 44/100th% pure, unadulterated sharia. You know it, I know it, and no doubt the Russians and Chinese know it, too. The thing is, the authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing are so keen to best the West that they’re prepared to close their eyes and swallow the OIC sharia—for now, anyway. Everyone knows that when these two decide to clamp down on the restive Islamists in their midst—as they inevitably will—they will give nary a thought to the UN, the OIC, or anyone else.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:48 | link | comments (1)

Falk the flake: Ron Radosh, an old hand at deflating leftist pretentions, does just that to UN “human rights” apparatchik/capo Dick Falk:

It is something of a joke that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has appointed Richard Falk, Milbank Prof. Emeritus at Princeton University as its “Special Rapporteur” on investigating human rights violations in the Palestinian territories. Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.

But even for the UN, whose concern for human rights seems to extend only to abuses supposedly undertaken by Israel alone, the appointment of Falk is a mockery of any pretensions to objectivity. Falk made his views on the situation in the Middle East well known years before his current appointment. Writing in The Nation in 2002, he explained that the state terrorism he believes Israel is engaged in is not only the moral equivalent of Palestinian terrorism, but is in fact greater. Israel, he writes, is engaged in “state sponsored terrorism,” while what many people consider actual terrorist acts by Palestinians- such as the suicide bombings that regularly occurred in Israel before it built its protective wall-were called by Falk “reactive and understandable” responses. When the Palestinians blew up a private Passover celebration at Netanya, Falk called it “horrifying,” but Israel’s response was “the equally horrifying Israeli incursion…throughout occupied Palestine.”

Falk argues that Palestinian acts like suicide bombings took place only after their cadre “ran out of military options” in response to the Israeli occupation, “and suicide bombers appeared as the only means still available by which to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that the struggle could go on.” So way back in 2002, Falk was already declaring that such barbarism by Palestinian extremists were a just response to Israeli defensive actions. It is, he writes, simply “the right of resistance…enjoyed by an occupied people,” which “would seem to legitimize some armed activities.”

A few days ago, Falk was turned back at Ben Gurion airport and denied entry into Israel. Given his writing, the Israeli charge that his UN mandate was, as an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said, “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative,” was completely justified.

Reading a more recent Falk article, “Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” provides even more evidence for Falk’s lack of impartiality. In this now famous screed Falk writes that he is “compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel” as itself a “holocaust.” Is this, he rhetorically asks, “an irresponsible overstatement?” Falk’s answer: “I think not.” He calls the situation in Gaza- from which Israel withdrew and handed the area over to the Palestinians-a “deliberate intention on the part of Israel…to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty.”

Falk continues to argue that the Western powers as well as other Arab states are associated in a “pattern of criminality” akin to those who let Hitler oppress the Jews in the 1930’s. As to the withdrawal by Israel from Gaza and the dismantling of Israeli settlements, Falk argues they were but a “sham” in which 300 Gazans were killed since Israel’s “supposed physical departure.” Somehow, no words appear anywhere in Falk’s account of the continued Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, the concurrent Hezbollah incursions against Israel, or their refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist . In his lexicon, it is only Israel who attacks the Palestinians, and only Palestinians who respond in self defense.

As for Hamas, Falk attacks those who castigate it “as a terrorist organization” when in fact, he assures his gullible audience, that Hamas always “was ready to work with other Palestinian groups” like Fatah and to “move toward an acceptance of Israel’s existence.” The trouble is caused only by Israel, which “seems more determined than ever to foment civil war in Palestine.” Falk concludes, before any investigation he was to carry out for the UN commission, that Israel has brought Gaza to “the brink of collective starvation,” imposing a “sub-human existence on a people” by “collective punishment.” All this, he concludes, is “indeed genocidal.”

This is the man who supposedly was to conduct an investigation into Israeli abuse of human rights. As if this was not enough, Falk recently reiterated his view that the Al Qaeda attack of 9/11 is not a “closed book.” Referring to conspiracy theorists of the so-called “9/11 Truth Movement” like David Ray Griffin, for whose book Falk wrote an introduction, Falk writes that “it is not paranoid…to assume that the established elites of the American governmental structure have something to hide, and much to explain.” Indeed, he calls the view that the conspiracy theorists have- that the Bush administration brought down the twin towers to find an excuse to go to war-as a “convincing counter-narrative.”

Falk, in other words, reveals himself to be a plain vanilla nutcase…

Surely not vanilla. More like Half Baked.

Imagine Whirled Peace?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:32 | link | comments

Wahhabi Bubba: The New York Post suggests that Bill Clinton deck his head in yards of shmatta (since his, er, foundation pockets so much loot from the Saudis):

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:06 | link | comments

Islam Online takes a stand against historical misrepresentation in textbooks: The Wahhabist website has no problem with the historical misrepresentations in these textbooks, of course, since they are aimed at eliminating Jewish sovereignty, a concept anathema to Islam. However, IO is most upset about insufficiently reverent textbooks in the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan, where Islamists want to wrest control from the Russia-backed government:

DUSHANBE — Tajik textbooks are misinterpreting the Islamic teachings and Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him), a top Muslim scholar and lawmaker said, Radio Free Europe reported on Thursday, December 18.

"(Textbooks' authors have taken an) unprofessional, irrational, and sometimes insulting and offensive stance toward Islam and Islamic values," Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda said in an open letter to the Ministry of Education.

He said textbooks portray Prophet Muhammad as the creator of Islam, not a messenger of God, and that the pillars of Islam were his suggestions.

"Among many others issues, there are three major matters in Islam that were divine revelation and they include the status of the holy city of Makkah as the center of Islam, the status of the Ka`bah as the most sacred site in Islam, and making the hajj the fifth pillar of Islam."

The MP cites a book for the sixth-grade students, "The History of the Middle Ages", which says the three issues were the fruits of a political deal between the Prophet and Makkah tribal leaders.

"Even Soviet-era textbooks, which were openly atheistic, didn't deny historical facts like our current authors do."

The Education Ministry has not yet officially responded to the Muslim MP's letter.

Education Minister Abdujabbor Rahmonov earlier said that his ministry has been planning to "rewrite some of the textbooks".

"We're going to revise [the textbooks], but not now, because we have other priorities at the moment. All in good time."…

In other words, don’t call us, Islamists, we’ll call you.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:03 | link | comments

How the Taliban tried to steal Christmas: They’re like Scrooge—with explosives. From the Guardian:

Taliban insurgents have blown up a lorry packed with Christmas turkeys bound for British troops in Afghanistan. The frozen turkey roll breasts were destroyed in an explosion on the route from Pakistan to Camp Bastion.

The consignment, weighing 325kg, was intended for troops in Helmand Province, where up to 3,000 soldiers will spend the festive season. But the Christmas dinner will go ahead as planned after the Ministry of Defence flew out replacement birds, ensuring soldiers will not miss out on their special meal.

Regimental Catering Warrant Officer Nick Townley, who is in charge of organising Christmas dinner for British troops in Afghanistan, said: "Unfortunately one of our Christmas wagons got taken out so a lot of turkeys had to be flown in especially."

The 33-year old-from High Wycombe has been preparing for Christmas since the summer, ordering everything needed to feed the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that will be at Bastion as well as the 2,000 others stationed around Helmand.

On Christmas Day soldiers will be able to tuck into the replacement turkey rolls as well as 135kg of roast pork, 424kg of gammon and 67.5kg of beef, topped with 200 jars of cranberry sauce. Brussels sprouts will not be left off the menu - chefs will prepare 62 boxes, weighing a total of 148.8kg. There will also be 300kg of roast potatoes and 120kg of carrots.

And there will be 222 Christmas puddings, 37 Christmas cakes, and one mince pie and one After Eight mint each. The total cost of feeding the troops in Bastion's four dining rooms is £10,265, or just £3.42 each. But there will be no brandy for the Christmas sauce, with Camp Bastion a dry area. "It wouldn't have made it in there anyway," Townley joked.

As is traditional in the army, senior officers will serve the junior ranks first to show their appreciation. The 35 chefs at Bastion, who never have a day off, will prepare most of the food on Christmas Eve so they are not rushed off their feet on the day. "The plan is for the guys not to slog their guts out on Christmas Day," Townley said. "If guys get days off it means the others have to work even harder."

Special meals are also being sent to the 10 Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) where there are 35 chefs. Townley said: "The only blokes who won't get it are the ones in the PBs (patrol bases) but the idea is to rotate them through the FOBs. They will all get their Christmas dinner at some stage, it just might not be on Christmas Day."

All together now: Bah, humbug!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:02 | link | comments

Islamo-fashionistas: Considering the constraints within which they are forced to labour, Iran’s small band of clothing designers are doing the best they can. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN -- The secretary of the fashion and costume design festival has said that the event will give a boost to efforts to promote Islamic costume designs.

The festival has been organized to introduce people to costume designs that are appropriate for our Islamic Iranian culture, Abolfazl Mohammadkhani told reporters at a press conference on Monday.

Iran’s first fashion and costume design festival will be held at the Tehran Permanent International Fairground from December 22 to 26. It will have several sections: male, female and children clothes, and subsidiary textile industries.

He pointed to Iran’s rich historical background in textile design and technology saying that although it has regressed during recent years, the industry can still be promoted in Iran.

A section of the festival is dedicated to costume designers, researchers of professional journals and related software. Also, several workshops will be held on the sidelines of the festival, he added.

Sets of ornaments and jewelry will also go on display at the festival. It is a trend that unfortunately has been neglected in Iran for years, Mohammadkhani added.

A fashion show will also be held during the gala in which Iranian costumes will go on display. The show will have one interval for women and two intervals for men each day. There are fewer intervals for women than men since there are not many brands for women in Iran, he mentioned.

Turkey, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan and some Southeast Asian countries will also take part at the festival.

“One can not expect a perfect festival since this is the first experience we have with it in Iran. We do need sponsorship from the private sector and also from government to promote it. We aim to make it an international event and to introduce it to world,” he mentioned.

“We are not authorized to sell anything specifically at the festival, but marketing is permitted and producers can take orders. Also, photography or filming is prohibited at the gala,” he mentioned…

So they have to design more for men than for women, and photos at fashion shows are strictly verboten. Kind of hard—not to mention well nigh impossible—to get a fashion industry off the ground on that basis, even with private and public sponsorship.

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

Songs of the season: Here are three new parodies, plus one of my personal favourites from seasons past:

Power Play

(Tune: “Mary’s Boy Child”)

A short time ago in Ottawa

On a strange and fateful day

Three unwise men they hatch a plot

And make a power play.

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

Dion he make a video.

The whole thing it a botch.

The lights too low; the man can’t speak.

It embarrassing to watch.

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

They go make Iggy leader;

It seem kind of Soviet.

They ask Bob Rae if it okay.

He dare not answer, “Nyet.”

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

And Harper live to fight again

Despite the power play.

Now, what you know?

Prorogue a go.

The country breathe a sigh.

But who can say how it will end--

Will the coalition fly?

Hark, now hear the Governor-Gen

She go prorogue they say.

Stay tuned and see if unwise men

They continue power play….

Oh Come all Ye Faithful

(tune: Ditto)

Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.

Oh come be, oh come be a senator.

Come and bid for it ‘fore it’s off the market.

Obama doesn’t need it, Obama doesn’t need it,

Obama doesn’t need it—he’s pre-eh-si-dent…

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Jihad

(tune: “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas”)

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had

Ev’rywhere you go.

Take at look at it in Mumbai.

In Gaza the rockets fly.

And if they claim it’s not the same

You know it’s all a lie.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had;

Terrorists galore.

But the scariest sight to see is the way that the sharee-ya

Is creeping in the door.

Hamas and Hezbollah holler loud and proud in the Middle East.

Afghanistan has the Taliban who wage their brand of “peace”.

And Obam’ can hardly wait to talk to 'Mahdinejad the Beast.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had

Ev’rywhere you go;

There’s Jew-hate in the OIC, nutty as it can be,

And soon enough at Durban II they’ll torch that “entity”.

It’s beginning to look a lot like jee-had;

Infidels'll bleed.

‘Cause when kafirs let down their guard

That’s the time they’ll be hit hard

By a confident sha-heed,

By a confident sha-heed.

Building Up the Mullah’s Arsenal

(tune: “Winter Wonderland”)

In Iran if you’re lookin’

Yellow cake is still cookin’.

They’re makin’ some nukes

Despite our rebukes,

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

They’ll say, “Hey, glad to see ya,”

As they practice taqiyaah.

And tell Mo ElBee

There’s nothin’ to see

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal.

Underground is where they’ll put the bombs now,

Then pretend it isn’t what we think.

They will tell us lies with such aplomb now.

If we buy them we all need to see a shrink.

Later on they’ll conspire,

Say they plan to retire.

They’ll sing us a song,

And string us along,

Building up the mullahs’ arsenal…

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:43 | link | comments

Thursday, 18 December 2008

Season’s gruntings: A member of the masthead of NOW Magazine, Toronto’s insufferable hard lefty freebie rag, invites readers to have an “inclusive” holiday:

Don't say Merry Christmas to me!

The War on Christmas is better known as being inclusive

Susan G. Cole

Tell me something: Does anybody think Irving Berlin's estate needs another infusion? No, right? So why do the malls start piping in Berlin's hit White Christmas alongside all those other Christmas chestnuts starting as early as November? We get the same 17 songs for six weeks. Where's the creativity here?

Speaking of which – creativity I mean – what's going on in stationery stores this time of year? Just try getting a card that's not holiday-related. For that matter, just try to find a card that celebrates the season without all the father son holy ghost stuff. "Peace On Earth" would be just fine for me but I have to be all religious if I want to send anyone a holiday greeting.

Speaking of which – please greet me with the phrase, Happy holidays, not Merry Christmas. I don't celebrate Christmas and fully half of the people in Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in the world, don't. I take these days off because they're statutory holidays not because I believe in Jesus. I actually am a believer in Jesus the man, not Jesus the son of God but the radical thinker who believed in change and challenged the ascendency of greed in the halls of the temple.

Speaking of which – Jesus would be grossed out if he were to witness the present-day consumer binge that happens around this time of year. It makes those pagan Romans look positively progressive by comparison.

Speaking of which – all the best aspects of Christmas are based in pagan ritual. The tree, for example, is a symbol that pre-dates Jesus. The accent on light and candles is shared by other cultures. Both Dwali and Hanukkah, which my family celebrates, centre around the miracle of light. If those three kings did make that trip to Bethlehem, they did it during the winter solstice, a major pagan celebration that happens this time of year.

All of which is to say – we're all in holiday mode together.

So, be inclusive. Say Marry (sic) Christmas only to people you're absolutely sure celebrate that holiday. Play it safe with the rest of us.

Happy Holidays,

SGC

The “G” in her name, apparently, stands for Grinch. Or ghastly.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:06 | link | comments (2)

AP’s oddly skewed query: In anticipation of his wife becoming the next Secretary of State, Bill Clinton has finally come clean on the donors who are keeping his foundation flush with lucre. The list shows shows that the oily Wahhabi royals—state sponsors of Hamas and other dubious anti-Zionist enterprises—coughed up a gusher of cash, but that’s not what perturbs news agency AP the most—or at all. No, what’s got AP’s goat is the Clintons’ perceived connection to, er, India:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton laid out a list of big-ticket donors to his foundation Thursday that is heavy with foreign governments and business interests sure to have a stake in the policies that Hillary Rodham Clinton carries out as secretary of state.

Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments gave at least $46 million, while corporate donors included the Blackwater security firm that protects U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

The contributions went to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts to reduce poverty and treat AIDS. President-elect Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state contingent on her husband revealing the foundation's contributors, to avoid questions about potential conflicts of interest.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the foundation, and other government donors included Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica. The Dutch national lottery gave $5 million to $10 million.

The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Five Blackwater guards have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.

The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money. While the list is loaded with international business leaders and billionaires, some 12,000 donors gave $10 or less.

Clinton agreed to release the information after concerns emerged that his extensive international fundraising and business deals could conflict with America's interests if his wife became the nation's top diplomat. The foundation has insisted for years that it was under no legal obligation to identify its contributors, contending that many expected confidentiality when they donated.

The list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, a connection that could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighboring Pakistan in a region where Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership...

Yeah, wouldn’t it be awful if the world’s foremost democracy was seen to be favouring the interests of the world’s largest democracy? That would really piss off the failed state of Pakistan, whose loose cannon security forces sponsor terrorist exploits in India and elsewhere. Fortunately (that's sarcasm, in case you were wondering), those Saudi shekels which pour in every year to Clinton coffers will likely help offset the "imbalance".

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:00 | link | comments

When is a psychological/mental “sickness” a genuine sickness and not merely the product of prevailing cultural trends?: That’s the question psychiatrists are grappling with as they prepare for a new edition of the master text of human psychological maladies. From the New York Times:

The book is at least three years away from publication, but it is already stirring bitter debates over a new set of possible psychiatric disorders.

Is compulsive shopping a mental problem? Do children who continually recoil from sights and sounds suffer from sensory problems — or just need extra attention? Should a fetish be considered a mental disorder, as many now are?

Panels of psychiatrists are hashing out just such questions, and their answers — to be published in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — will have consequences for insurance reimbursement, research and individuals’ psychological identity for years to come.

The process has become such a contentious social and scientific exercise that for the first time the book’s publisher, the American Psychiatric Association, has required its contributors to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The debate is particularly intense because the manual is both a medical guidebook and a cultural institution. It helps doctors make a diagnosis and provides insurance companies with diagnostic codes without which the insurers will not reimburse patients’ claims for treatment.

The manual — known by its initials and edition number, DSM-V — often organizes symptoms under an evocative name. Labels like obsessive-compulsive disorder have connotations in the wider culture and for an individual’s self-perception.

“This is not cardiology or nephrology, where the basic diseases are well known,” said Edward Shorter, a leading historian of psychiatry whose latest book, “Before Prozac,” is critical of the manual. “In psychiatry no one knows the causes of anything, so classification can be driven by all sorts of factors” — political, social and financial.

“What you have in the end,” Mr. Shorter said, “is this process of sorting the deck of symptoms into syndromes, and the outcome all depends on how the cards fall.”…

I dunno, it doesn’t sound very scientific to me—or, at least, it sounds about as “scientific” as earlier shrinks who had a whole category of female patients described as “hysterics,” and those who asserted that children became autistic as a direct result of their “cold” mothers.

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

Charity (and jihad) begins at home: Islam Online has a piece wherein dhimmis bemoan the crackdown on an Islamic “charity”:

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani Hindu and Christian minorities are angered by the government's crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), crediting the charity with helping the country's poor and needy irrespective of religion or caste.

"I would say, this is not a ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, but it is against the poor people of Pakistan, who were being assisted by the charity," Kamran Michael, a Christian sanitary worker from the northeastern city of Lahore, told IslamOnline.net.

Hundreds of members of Pakistan's Hindu and Christian minorities demonstrated in the southern city of Hyderabad on Tuesday, December 16, in solidarity with the JD.

The Muslim charity was banned by both Islamabad and the UN Security Council last week over alleged links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT), the outlawed group India blames for the bloody Mumbai attacks.

Along with the ban, Pakistan closed down hundreds of JD-run schools, hospitals and clinics across the country, where services are provided to the poor free of charge.

"The government has failed to provide us health and education facilities. Now, they have banned those who had been providing us these facilities," Michael said.

"Let’s see what will the government do? But I have little hopes."

For Naresh Kumar, a Hindu farmer in the historic town of Hala, the ban and the crackdown are unjustifiable.

"My family was being provided with monthly ration (food) and free medical treatment for my children and parents by the JD for months," said Kumar.

"I am a poor laborer. I could not afford that, if the JD would not be able to help me."

Headquartered some 30 kilometers north of Lahore, JD has established itself as one of biggest charity organizations in the South Asian Muslim country, where 34 percent of the total population is living below poverty line...

Sounds very humanitarian, no?

Well, no:

...India has accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of other attacks on Indian targets in recent years, including the 2001 attacks on parliament in New Delhi and train bombings that killed 180 in Mumbai in 2006.

The United States and Britain listed it as a terrorist group in 2001.

After Pakistan banned the group in 2002, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means the Army of the Pure, is believed to have resurfaced under a new name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, according to the U.S. and intelligence experts.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa says it focuses on charity work and publicly insists it has no links to Lashkar, which it says operates only in Kashmir, where an Islamic separatist insurgency against Indian rule has left more than 60,000 people dead since 1989.

Militant groups such as Lashkar want a Kashmiri merger with Pakistan, as Islamabad is also demanding. Some separatist groups want independence from both countries...

Nice try, IO.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:47 | link | comments

Leftesse oblige?: I realize that the Greater Toronto Area (or GTA, as the locals call it) consists of an ever-expanding urban sprawl, but who knew it had sprawled as far as…Botswana? Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Anne Levy has the bizarre details:

While Mayor David Miller's regime was busily dreaming up new ways to tax Torontonians in April, 2007, a Global Aids Prevention fund was quietly approved by council to fund AIDS projects overseas.

A total of $200,000 from that city-sponsored fund has so far gone to create a youth centre for the South East District Youth Empowerment League (SEDYEL) in Ramotswa, Botswana and to initiate preventative AIDS measures for young women both in Botswana and Nairobi, Kenya.

This special $100,000-a-year fund is over and above the more than $1.5-million in grants given to 47 projects this year to undertake HIV/AIDS prevention education programs in Toronto.

The money was handed over the past two years to Schools Without Borders -- a Toronto-based community agency. A report to the board of health in May, 2007 notes that this agency is "well-positioned to help support and implement a range of initiatives pertaining to youth engagement in Botswana, Kenya and Toronto."

Councillor Kyle Rae, chairman of the AIDS Prevention Community Investment Program, could not be reached for comment. A staff member in his office told my Sun colleague Bryn Weese that the councillor is away on city business.

"He's not in Canada," said the woman staffer, refusing to say exactly where he is.

The city's Botswana project co-ordinator, Barbara Emanuel -- a senior policy adviser in public health -- said the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has funded an HIV/AIDS "capacity building" partnership between Toronto and the South East District of Botswana since 2002. That funding is separate from the $200,000 provided by Toronto.

Emanuel said the new city-funded Global AIDS initiative -- in place for the past two years -- was a commitment made by the mayor and Rae when Toronto hosted the International AIDS conference in August, 2006…

Let me get this straight. Our ice rinks are closed and our roads are crumbling, but our “virtuous” hard left local officials have hundreds of thousands to squander in far-off Botswana (whose citizens, correct me if I’m wrong, don’t get to vote in our municipal elections).

Quel idiocy.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:26 | link | comments (2)

Buh bye, pirates: The totally useless UN has just passed another one of its totally useless resolutions, this one designed to clamp down on Somali pirates currently wreaking mayhem on the high seas. Fortunately, China has stepped up and announced that it will put an end to the watery crimes.

Gee, you would think they would at least offer to "mentor" them first.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:51 | link | comments

Shoe sham: In his latest tirade, Harpoon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star’s resident shill/apologist for the Islamist perspective, explains why a shoe-flinger in Iraq became an instant folk hero to Arabs this week, whereupon he launches into another round of Victims R Us:

…At least 100,000 Iraqis are dead. More than 2 million are refugees in Syria and Jordan. Another 2 million are internally displaced. Infrastructure has been wiped out.

The military surge that Bush hailed in Baghdad as "one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military" is a success only in that Iraqis are dying just in the dozens, not hundreds, every day.

The sectarian massacres let loose by the occupation have been stopped only by the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and other cities. Gone are the mixed Shiite, Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods that were a model for the Middle East. Scared people now live in religious and ethnic ghettoes behind barricades, walls and checkpoints.

The surge is a success if it is defined as buying off, at $300 a month, nearly 100,000 Sunnis, half of them insurgents or sympathizers of the insurgency, whose commitment to peace will only be known once the trough is taken away.

The Iraqi democracy that Bush praised features, post-Abu Ghraib, two U.S.-run jails with 15,000 Iraqi detainees, few of whom have been charged and, of those who have been, only 10 per cent convicted.

For a Canadian take on the Iraqi pulse, I emailed Greg Hansen, a B.C. consultant working in Iraq since 2004. He sent this back yesterday:

"The Iraqi journalist seized an opportunity that many Iraqis would wish for themselves.

"Consider years of subjugation to a hated occupier. Living daily with trigger-happy security contractors bullying their way through the streets. Think of innumerable checkpoints, walls, curfews and road closures. Your front door being kicked in for searches. House-shaking overflights by Blackhawks that make your children tremble.

"Add the violence, the ever-present threat of it and the inescapable fear. Add also the collapse of services and mass unemployment.

"For those living and dying through all this, the shoe-guy chose the ideal target at the perfect moment, when Bush himself is signalling the U.S. departure."

Tossing shoes at a visitor, like shoving a pie in a politician's face, is a minor misdemeanour compared to the countless crimes committed by Bush and his gangs in Iraq.

Harpoon is right to point out that Muslims are victims. However, he neglects to mention that, more often than not, they are the victims of other Muslims.

Update: Robert Spencer offers his two shekels worth on the shoe-flinger and other Muslim heroes:

The Islamic world’s latest hero is Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the reporter for Cairo’s Al-Baghdadia TV channel who threw his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Iraq on Sunday. Hasan Muhammad Makhafa, a wealthy Saudi, went on Dubai’s Al-Arabiya TV to call al-Zeidi’s shoes “a symbol of freedom not just footwear. They represent a victory for those who have disgraced the Arabs by occupying their lands and killing innocent people.”

Makhafa was so enthusiastic about this grand gesture of freedom that he offered to plunk down a cool $10 million for the heroic dress shoes. (Makhafa, by the way, is an elementary school teacher. How many elementary school teachers in America have ten million dollars to spend on a pair of shoes? Your gas money at work, folks!)

The less well heeled were just as jazzed by al-Zeidi’s Wing-Tip Jihad. In Damascus, a street banner proclaimed, “Oh, heroic journalist, thank you so much for what you have done.” In Beirut, a Hizballah-affiliated journalist, Ibrahim Mousawi, exulted: “It’s the talk of the city. Everyone is proud of this man, and they’re saying he did it in our name.” Ali Qeisi of the Jordan-based “Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq” declared: “All US soldiers who have used their shoes to humiliate Iraqis should be brought to justice, along with their US superiors, including Bush.” And the querulous Lebanese-American professor Asad Abu Khalil, who calls himself “The Angry Arab,” thundered that “the flying shoe speaks more for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets with during his travels in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, according to news reports, “thousands of Iraqis” demonstrated in three cities -- Baghdad, Basra and Najaf -- to hail al-Zeidi as a hero and demand his release from prison, where he has been held since the attack. There hasn’t been this much excitement in the Islamic world over anyone since…Osama bin Laden, whose ascetic visage could be found after 9/11 gracing t-shirts, visors, cigarette lighters, children’s toys and more.

These days, only President-elect Obama’s popularity rivals that of al-Zeidi in Muslim countries. Right after the election, Achmad Sobry Lubis of a virulently anti-American jihadist group in Indonesia called the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), said of Obama that “we are now very hopeful that he can restore peace in the world.” Another jihadist, Eid Kabalu of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines, declared that Obama “has to reduce U.S. involvement in war, which, in effect, will make global peace reign under his administration.” Ahmed Yussef of the jihad terror group Hamas said that Obama’s election gave the U.S. a “chance for a change, after his predecessor, George W. Bush destroyed relations with the external world.”

It may seem odd that the three most popular people among Muslims worldwide today would be the President-elect of the United States, a mass-murdering jihad terrorist, and a somewhat comical shoe-hurling journalist -- but anti-Americanism makes strange bedfellows. And that is certainly the common element in the popularity of all three. Many in the Islamic world believe or hope that Obama will be the anti-Bush, and will craft a foreign policy more to their liking than Bush’s -- that is, one involving concessions and appeasement...

Harpoon, no doubt, would be jiggy with that type of craftiness.

Update: My letter to the Star:

Haroon Siddiqui paints a picture of the Utopia that supposedly used to exist in Iraq—Shia, Sunni and Kurd living harmoniously side by side—before the Americans under President Bush rushed in and all hell broke loose. What he fails to mention is that a pre-democracy Iraq was about as far from Utopia as you could get; that it was ruled by a brutal dictator who thought nothing of executing his enemies by inserting them into plastic shredders; that this dictator forced Iraqis to become embroiled in a war with neighbouring Iran that resulted in massive loss of life on both sides; and that this tyrant, or one of his loathsome sons, would likely still be in charge had the Americans not forcibly deposed him.

Conveniently, Siddiqui also neglects to point out that the vast majority of casualties in the Muslim world are the result of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. Of course, were he to do that, it would be far more difficult to portray Muslims as the perpetual victims of aggressive Americans and/or Israelis.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:39 | link | comments (1)

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Child abuse in Joisey: One of the drawbacks of naming your son after the Fuhrer who masterminded the Final Solution is the reluctance of some to validate your awful judgement. Case in point: three-year-old moppet, Adolf Hitler Campbell, whose parents, Heath and Deborah, had to scramble to find him a birthday cake. From JTA:

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A New Jersey supermarket refused to print the full name of a 3-year-old boy named Adolf Hitler on a birthday cake.

The boy's parents, Heath and Deborah Campbell, are upset that a ShopRite would not print the name and are accusing the store of being intolerant, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

"They need to accept a name. A name's a name," said Heath Campbell, who eventually purchased the cake in nearby Pennsylvania. "The kid isn't going to grow up and do what [Hitler] did."

Twelve people showed up to Adolf’s birthday party, including several children of mixed race, the AP reported.

"If we're so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?" Heath Campbell asked.

The couple has two other children: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, 1, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

Hinler? Surely not.

I hear they also have a German Shepherd named Goebbels, who, you guessed it, has no balls at all.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments (1)

The unfairness of “fairness”: Consider the meaning of the word “fairness” when it’s placed beside the word “doctrine”. Like the word “rights” when appended to the word “human,” it actually means the opposite of what it’s supposed to. On the contentions blog, J.G. Thayer explains that there is nothing at all fair about forcing broadcasters to reinstitute a “fairness doctrine”:

Well, it’s now out in the open: Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA — is that any surprise?) is officially calling for a return of the “fairness doctrine.” And not just the old one, that covered radio and television: she wants it to apply to cable and satellite programming, as well.

This could be a bit problematic. According to the original Fairness Doctrine, radio and TV broadcasters’ use of public airwaves made them guardians of a public trust. As such, they were obligated to the government to promote what was deemed the common good. Cable and satellite companies are, by definition, not broadcasters, and therefore don’t fall under the same presumed obligations.

The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to grant equal time to opposing points of view. For example, if a host spent an hour railing against kicking dogs, the station would be obligated to offer an hour to someone extolling the virtues of puppy-punting.

For all the high-minded rhetoric behind the return of the Fairness Doctrine, the underlying goal is the same: to rein in talk radio, where conservatism has found its greatest popular success. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Jerry Doyle, Dennis Miller, are monumental success.

Conversely, liberals on the radio have been utter failures. Air America still limps along, but its market share has continually diminished and it has never made a single dime. Indeed, at some points it had to resort to shady (if not downright illegal) practices to stay solvent.

So, under a revived Fairness Doctrine, a station that aired Rush Limbaugh’s entire three-hour show would be obligated to air three hours of counterpoint. Fair is fair, right?

Wrong.

The station that airs Limbaugh does so because it is profitable for them to do so. Its advertisers are willing to sponsor Limbaugh’s show: that ’s how it gets on the air.

Who will buy ads on the anti-Rush show? A lot fewer people. In fact, it’s entirely possible that not enough sponsors will be found to cover the expenses of the anti-Rush show. So the station will have to decide whether or not they wish to continue to subsidize the anti-Rush show. But should they cut back (or cut out) the anti-Rush, then they have to cut back (or cut out) Limbaugh as well.

No, it’s not the stated goal, but this will cripple talk radio. Given the potential headaches, most stations will simply get rid of political talk entirely.

As the saying goes, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

If this seems a bit familiar, it should: it’s another example of the principle of “equality” not being applied to opportunity, but to results. As seductive and idealistic as that may sound, it never works, because it ends up punishing success and rewarding failure. If the same result arises no matter how hard you try (or don’t try at all), why try hard?

Liberal talk radio has just as much of a chance to succeed as conservative talk radio. That it has failed is not the fault of conservative talk radio, and conservative broadcasters should not be punished for simply being more popular.

Conservative talk shows arose in the first place because the left had a lock on the mainstream media and there was no outlet for dissenting voices. The grossest unfairness about the “fairness doctrine” is that it will likely dismantle one sector of the media—the conservative one—while leaving the MSM and its inherent biases/sophistries intact.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:03 | link | comments

Ba da bing, ba da Blago: Here's my poem for the corrupt gov of what is arguably the most corrupt state in the land:

A governor-cum-thug, Blagojevich,

Was hardly an altar bojevich.

A devil-may-care

With extremely good hair

He even dishonoured Illinojevich.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:36 | link | comments

Free speech for some, not all: Our ideologically-driven federal "judiciary" has made official something that free-speechers figured out a while ago--that if you're an anti-gay white, male Christian clergyman, you can be prosecuted by the state and silenced for the rest of your natural born days. However, if you're a Muslim clergyman with similar views (as well as many other "colourful" opinions about non-believers), you are free to bloviate away to your heart's content.

All those who believe in the inequities of sharia law (since they emanate from an entity even more powerful than Jennifer Lynch) owe the CHRC a debt of gratitude. It has brought a little bit of sunny, sandy Saudi Arabia to our snowy, frozen shores.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:42 | link | comments

Shoe foolery: Catch the action in Gaza as a throng of masked brothers burn the U.S. flag and the visage of Bush, and generally glorify an Arab shoe-flinger; also, for hours of fun play the online game.

There hasn't been this much kerfuffle over a Muslim's footwear since Richard Reid was wrestled to the ground by fellow air travelers before he could detonate his Adidas. Update: More shoe foolery, from the Ceeb:

Jokes are flying as fast as footwear over an Iraqi journalist's hurling his shoes at outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday.

With video of the Baghdad incident aired repeatedly by news organizations around the globe and circulated on the internet, the incident has become fodder for comedians everywhere in the past few days.

The popular Afghan comedy and satire show Zang-i-Khatar (Alert Bell) will feature a skit Wednesday evening reconstructing last weekend's news conference, but with one difference: the actor portraying Bush will actually get hit in the face. In reality, the U.S. president managed to avoid both of journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi's tossed shoes.

"The aim of the program, besides making people laugh ... is to convey solidarity with the people and journalists of Iraq," producer Hanif Hamgaam told Agence France-Presse.

The flying footwear incident was also a popular opening monologue topic for U.S. late-night talk show hosts this week.

Tonight Show host Jay Leno joked about Bush's aptitude for dodge ball and questioned why the Secret Service didn't "at least [jump] in front of the second shoe?"

On The Late Show, Dave Letterman also praised Bush for his quick reaction time, quipping that the president "hasn't dodged anything like that since, well, the Vietnam War."

For his part, Late Night host Conan O'Brien, mentioned that al-Zaidi has been hailed a hero by many in Iraq and added that the journalist would one day be "be greeted in heaven by 72 podiatrists."...

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:56 | link | comments

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

The Jew-hater’s Xmas prezzie: Stick him in a box and tie it up with a big blue and white bow—it’s Bernie Madoff, the Jew on every slavering antisemite’s wish list. From Ha’aretz:

For the true anti-Semite, Christmas came early this year.

The anti-Semite's new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater's wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this:

The former chairman of Nasdaq turns out, also, to be treasurer of the board of trustees at Yeshiva University and chairman of the university's business school. Rich beyond human comprehension, he handles fortunes for others, buying and selling in a trading empire that skirts investment banks and other possible sources of regulation. He redefines avarice, knowingly and personally bilking charities and retirees in the most classic of con games.

Even better, for those obsessed with the idea that Jews control finance, entertainment and the media, is the idea that Madoff's greed was uncontrollable enough that he targeted fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors, some of them his own friends, as well as Israeli companies who insured Jews, including Holocaust survivors.

The beauty part, for the anti-Semite: Madoff's machinations, which could have been put to use for the sake of humanity, have directly harmed Jewish welfare and charity institutions.

He has managed to harm contemporary Jewry in ways anti-Semites could only dream about. He has sapped the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles of 11 percent of its assets, or some $18 million. In the words of prominent educator Avraham Infeld, he "obliterated" long-standing charitable foundations for Jewish causes in Israel, Eastern Europe and North America.

Along the way, Madoff assured the story enormous play, not only with the scale and the impudence of the scheme, but with his A+ roster of celebrity victims, among them Stephen Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, and billionaire real-estate tycoon, media mogul, commentator and former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Mort Zuckerman. A senior U.S. senator is one of his client-marks, as well as present and past owners of professional football and baseball teams.

Then there was the betrayal of old friends like philanthropists Carl and Ruth Shapiro, megadonors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Brandeis University and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

"The scandal rippled far beyond the multimillion-dollar private foundation run by Madoff that channeled money into hospitals and theaters," Reuters reported, "and swept up charities large and small, directly and indirectly, along with wealthy Jewish investors Madoff personally advised."

Adding the element of clannishness, The New York Post was more direct.

"Working the so-called "Jewish circuit" of well-heeled Jews he met at country clubs on Long Island and in Palm Beach, and through his position on the boards of directors of several prominent Jewish institutions, he was entrusted with entire family fortunes.

"The guy was totally respected. He was a heymishe Jewish guy. He had sweet old ladies and he let their children in," said a Manhattan lawyer who invested with Madoff.

"This guy was dealing with all the rich Jews in Roslyn and the rich Jews in Palm Beach. This was passed down from family member to family member because he wouldn't open up to new people."

It remains to be seen how far we've come from the days of the frank Jew-hate and genteel anti-Semitism of the likes of Henry Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald. We can only hope that the Meyer Wolfsheim Effect remains dormant, the Great Gatsby heritage of "the man who fixed the 1919 World Series."

" ... If I had thought of it at all, I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain," Fitzgerald's narrator confides. "It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

In the meanwhile, Bernard Madoff, you've made the days of uncounted devout Jew-haters. This year, all they want for Christmas, is you.

“Santa Baby, put a Madoff under the tree/For me/I’ve been an awfully good white supremacist…”

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:37 | link | comments

Sharia naysayers: Better late than never, the Brits are trying to roll back sharia—a law antithetical to their own—after, foolishly, granting it legal status. From FrontPage Magazine:

Last year, the UK began backing up Sharia judgments with the full force and authority of British civil courts. Now, a campaign has been launched to end the operation of all religious courts in Britain --- especially those operating under Islam.

Dubbed “One Law for All”, the campaign commenced not coincidently on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Promoters of the No Sharia Campaign wanted to highlight the contrast between human rights and Sharia law.

In 2007, Sheik Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi discovered a clause in the Arbitration Act of 1996 that he rightly believed he could take advantage of. Under this Act, Sharia courts could be classified as arbitral tribunals. Rulings issued in arbitration are binding by law so long as both parties consent. Siddiqi now heads the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, which runs the British Sharia courts.

To date, British Sharia courts have heard over 100 cases issuing legally enforceable judgments. They deal with disputes involving divorce, inheritance and other civil issues as well as “small criminal cases” such as domestic violence. There is a network of five Sharia courts that have been conferred the full power of the judicial system through the county or high courts. Two additional such courts are planned. However, there is evidence that there are many more Sharia courts operating in the UK than those which have been publicly acknowledged.

Sharia courts have operated in Britain for years. But previously they relied on voluntary adherence to rulings and their judgments were not legally enforceable. Enforcement of Sharia court judgments took effect one year after the Archbishop of Canterbury caused a major controversy by declaring that formal recognition of Sharia law “seemed inevitable.” Numerous politicians have expressed concern that the formal backing of Sharia courts marks the beginning of a parallel legal system based on Sharia law, such as exists in Lebanon. Dominic Grieve, shadow home secretary, made clear that he considers the court enforcement of Sharia judgments to be illegal. He emphatically declared that British law is absolute and must remain so. Others agree that Sharia judgments should not be encouraged or enforced by the British courts.

There are numerous problems posed by the official backing of sharia judgements. First, arbitration is permissible only when both parties consent. Evidence shows that in some families and within the Islamic ummah (community), many women are intimidated into submitting to Sharia arbitration and are not truly there based on free will.

Second, the Sharia courts treat men and women very disparately. For example, in inheritance cases, they award the sons twice as much as the daughters. By contrast, British courts award sons and daughters equal amounts. Indeed, the enforcement of Sharia courts was defeated in Canada by Muslim women who complained that they came to Canada to escape the oppression of Sharia meted out in their countries of origin.

Third, the UK has been unsuccessful at integrating Muslims into mainstream society. Sharia courts undermine the efforts of moderate Muslims to assimilate, and make it more difficult for them to come to an understanding of Islam that is tolerant and pluralistic.

Finally, a Civita study demonstrates a correlation between Sharia courts and honor killings. While there is no evidence that the courts have ordered murders or beatings, the fact that men are given extreme rights and power over their wives and daughters creates a strong risk that the legitimized control contributes to the exercise of that control through violence…

The Brits failed to learn a lesson from Ontarians (who, a few years ago, balked at the prospect of government-sanctioned sharia tribunals)—refuse to validate Allah's law in the first place.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:21 | link | comments (2)

Soul brothers: If they don’t want to use semtex—which is hard to conceal and necessitates extensive clean up post-deployment—the impotent and enraged in the Arab world can express their contempt in a less explosive manner: by deploying their footwear (as an obscure journalist, now famous throughout the world, did when he flung his faux-Florsheims at the reviled American president). The Ceeb’s Nalah Ayed has more:

…To his credit, Bush took the bizarre send-off in stride — some here grudgingly admitted his ducking was flawless — and said it was no different than someone flipping him the finger.

But here in the Middle East, it is so much more than that.

Remember what some Iraqis did the instant Saddam Hussein's statue fell in 2003. They beat it with their shoes.

"For a man to be executed a thousand times is better than being insulted with one pair of shoes," wrote someone by the name of Safwan.

Jokingly, someone suggested the shoes were clandestinely smuggled over the border from Syria (often accused of providing passage to anti-American insurgents). Others made allusions to them as weapons of mass destruction.

The Iraqi government, however, was not amused and condemned al-Zaidi's act as "barbaric" and shameless.

At the same time, though, many Iraqis, sympathetic to al-Zaidi's opinion of Americans, protested his imprisonment by taking to the streets and hailing his slight to the man they believe is responsible for all their misfortune. Some even hurled their shoes at a passing American convoy. Al-Zaidi may have started something.

He also appears to have firmly ended any quarrel that Bush is the region's most hated U.S. president, ever….

We’ve long been told it’s a matter of winning their hearts and minds, but, go figure, it turns out to have more to do with their feet.

Update: The shoes are falling, the shoes are falling!

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:50 | link | comments

Falk off: The Jews tell the capo who’s the titular head of the UN’s most reprehensible agency to hit the road, Dick. From Arutz Sheva:

A United Nations envoy who has accused Israel of treating Palestinian Authority Arabs in Gaza the way Nazis treated the Jews during World War II was denied entry to Israel at Ben Gurion International Airport on Sunday night.

Professor Richard Falk was put on a plane headed back out of the country early Monday morning after officials said he had failed to first coordinate his visit to the Jewish State with the government. Falk was scheduled to meet with PA officials in Ramallah this week, despite the fact that Israel had made it clear that he would not be allowed to enter the country.

"It is indeed rare that Israel bars entry in this manner," acknowledged Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Simona Helprin, "but we cannot accept a situation in which an envoy arrives about whom it is known in advance that he will not carry out his role properly."

Falk had arrived for his first visit as the UN’s Human Rights Council’s special investigator on the conditions of Arabs in the PA territories. He will report his findings in a document to be submitted to the United Nations in March 2009.

Last Tuesday, the envoy slammed Israel in a statement in which he accused the Jewish State of “wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life” that he said were causing a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. He said Israel was “allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease.”

Falk also accused Jerusalem of a policy of “collective punishment” for what he referred to as “political developments within the Gaza Strip” – presumably the landslide victory at the polls in 2006 of the Hamas terrorist organization, as well as its continued popularity in Gaza.

I say we inflict some of that “collective punishment” on Dick and the other revolting lunkheads who run this thuggish “rights” body.

Update: Channeling the late Brother Ray, the "Zionists" inside Israel sing:

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

(What we say)

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

Whoa Richard, oh Richard, you self-loathing Jew

The UN Jew-loathers are countin’ on you.

You think if you say so

We’ll have to pack it all up and go. (No way!)

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

(What we say)

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

Now capo, listen baby, we’re used to your likes--

The self-hating kind that sees Jews as K*kes.

Our hist’ry’s replete with you cats.

Got more than nine lives

And always, always slink back.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

(What we say)

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now

Right now, right now, right now.

Hit the road, Dick,

And do it real quick right now.

Do it real quick right now.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:47 | link | comments (1)

Monday, 15 December 2008

Jewish sharia: Caroline Glick has a devastating critique of the Israeli legal system and its enforcers. In brief: it seems there’s one in Israeli society that has been demoted to second class status, while another has been granted privileges that others clearly don’t have. Only, in this Orwellian nightmare (“all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”), the second class group is Jewish, while those who have been deemed superior are Muslims—making for a situation which mimics the terms of sharia law in a Jewish land:

People who are concerned about maintaining the rule of law in Israel have great reason for worry these days. The sine qua non of a society ruled by law is the principle of equality under the law. In a society governed by the rule of law, individual citizens can trust that the state's law enforcement arms will treat them in the same manner as their fellow citizens.

When instead, a society's law enforcement arms determine how a citizen will be treated on the basis of his or her political convictions, religious orientation or any other extraneous factor, then the rule of law is trampled. The principle of equality before the law is replaced by the tyranny of law enforcement arms.

Disturbingly, both recent events and empirical data indicate strongly that today Israel is not ruled by law. Instead, and to an alarming degree, Israel has become a society ruled by politicized law enforcement bodies that selectively enforce the law based on an individual's political affiliation and ethnic origin.

Last week, a government-appointed committee charged with assessing the phenomenon of massive illegal seizures of state lands in the Negev by Israeli Beduin submitted its recommendations to Housing Minister Zev Boim. The committee, chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg, recommended "legalizing" 50,000 illegal buildings constructed on state-owned lands and giving legal recognition and state funding to 42 illegal settlements constructed over the past several years by Beduin on state-owned land.

Boim enthusiastically accepted the Goldberg Committee's recommendations and pledged to bring them before the government for a vote before the February 10 elections.

Both the Goldberg Committee's report and Boim's embrace of its findings are stunning. They represent a complete capitulation of state authorities to criminality of unprecedented dimensions. This lawless behavior, in which vast tracts of the Negev have been stolen from the state, has been actively abetted by the state itself - and particularly by its legal bodies.

The Supreme Court, in response to petitions on behalf of the Beduin lawbreakers submitted by far-Left organizations, has repeatedly prohibited the government from taking any action against the land thieves. And the state prosecution has refused consistently to open criminal investigations or file indictments against the Beduin, not only for their illegal seizure of land, but for their massive criminal activity which spans the spectrum from polygamy, to agricultural theft, extortion, racketeering, drug trafficking and treason.

Responding to the Goldberg Committee's report, right-wing members of Knesset called for the government to legalize all the Jewish Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria that were built without proper authorization over the past decade. Their reasoning is clear and sensible: If the state has decided to ignore the law with relation to the Beduin, then it must also ignore the law as it relates to Jews.

BUT THAT'S the thing of it. The non-enforcement of law towards Israeli Arabs and indeed towards Palestinian Arabs is one side of the coin of the politicization of law enforcement by Israeli legal officials. The other side of the coin is over-enforcement of the law against right-wing Israelis who reside in Judea and Samaria and their political supporters throughout the country…

Begging the question: What’s the point of having a sovereign Jewish state when Jews elevate the Muslims in their midst, and voluntarily turns themselves into dhimmis?

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:52 | link | comments

Quote of the day: By Cynthia Ozick, from her brilliant essay “The Modern ‘Hep’!” :

The melancholy encounter with anti-Semitism is not, after all, coequal with Jewish history; the history of oppression belongs to the culture of the oppressors. The long, long Jewish narrative is in reality a procession of ideas and ideals, of ethical legislation and ethical striving, of the study of books and the making of books. It is not a chronicle of victimhood, despite the centuries of travail, and despite the corruptions of the hour, when the vocabulary of human rights is too often turned ubiquitously on its head. So contaminated have the most treasured humanist words become, that when one happens on a mass of placards emblazoned with "peace," "justice," and the like, one can see almost at once what is afoot—a collection of so-called anti-globalization rioters declaiming defamation of Israel, or an anti-Zionist campus demonstration (not always peaceful), or any anti-Zionist herd of lockstep radicals, such as ANSWER, or the self-proclaimed International Parliament of Writers, or the International Solidarity Movement, which (in the name of human rights) shields terrorists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:57 | link | comments

Get out an EpiPen: Liberal backroom boys are allergic to democracy.

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

Caroline in the city of Albany: I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy, my exact contemporary. But, really, aside from her redolent last name, what makes her and anyone else think she's qualitfied to govern the state of New York?

Shouldn't a candidate for that position have, oh, I dunno, actual hands-on political experience?

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:08 | link | comments

Not-so-merry shoe prankster gets his 15 minutes in the spotlight: The media are having an awfully good time transforming the Iraqi who lobbed his shoes at President Bush's head into a combo of Abby Hoffman and Nelson Mandela. However, it will be interesting to see how they react when Muslims start hurling projectiles at Saint Obama--and I predict they will start hurling projectiles at Saint Obama. I bet their reports won't be nearly as suffused with mirthful Schadenfreude--and, in fact, much outrage will ensue--when that occurs.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:46 | link | comments

Paging Dr. bin Freud: You think that Jewish shrink with the weird ideas about little boys wanting to woo their mommies and displace their daddies a la Oedipus invented psychotherapy? Don’t make me laugh. As Dr. Wahida Valiente, Elmo’s #2 at the Canadian Islamic Congress explains, psychotherapy (like algebra) is actually a Muslim invention:

It is said that psychotherapy as we know it today is a phenomenon of Western society and the 20th century. But more than a phenomenon, it is a cultural institution of this society, deriving its roots from -- and in turn affecting and transforming -- the soul of the era in which it thrives. This, of course, is an extremely ethnocentric and one-sided view of psychotherapy cultivated over many centuries by Western scholars. Either through willful neglect, or sheer ignorance of the wider history of psychotherapy, they have failed to acknowledge any Islamic contribution to the foundations of contemporary psychology, psychotherapy and the behavioral sciences.

Psychotherapy is not the exclusive invention of one ethnic group or tribe; it is a long, continuous evolutionary process comprising humanity’s struggle against spiritual and mental diseases, disturbances, maladjustments or any other emotional and behavioral difficulties. Rizvi (1989) sums it up in these words: "... psychotherapy has been practiced since time immemorial, to be more precise since the first creation of Insan (human being, or Adam)."

From ancient times to the present day, the concept of treating mental disorders through mental suggestions has been found in all parts of the world. Whether through Stone Age cave-dwellers’ symbols, or the writings of Chinese, Egyptian, Greek and Hebrew doctors, we can trace a long route of traditional knowledge about the human psyche. (Rizvi, 8) In fact the Qur’an itself predates most European thinking by advocating scientific ideas regarding the relevance of history, natural laws and theoretical concepts, as well as offering explanations about human nature, relationships, cognition, and behaviour towards oneself, others, society and the world. More than 1400 years ago, the Qur’an emphasized that ideas and ideologies bred in ignorance lead to a social disorder that is contrary to the natural society determined by our Creator. Sharif notes: "Modern philosophical thought really began with the speculation of Descartes (17th Century). Muslim philosophy had penetrated deep into the West much before Descartes’ time, and most of the work of Al-Ghazali had been translated into Latin before the middle of the twelfth century; since then, he exercised a considerable influence on Jewish and Christian scholasticism."

He continues; "... There is no acknowledgment by Descartes of his indebtedness (direct or indirect) to any Muslim thinker and yet it is difficult to believe that he did not know Al-Ghazali’s general position and was not influenced by it through the Latin scholastics. [Al Ghazali was an 11th-century Muslim psychologist, psychotherapist, philosopher, and doctor] ... This most amazing resemblance between the two works makes George Henry Lewis say in his Biographical History of Philosophies (1845-46), that 'had any translation of ... (Al Ghazali’s treatise) Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal [Saving Oneself from Going Astray] existed in the days of Descartes, everyone would have cried out against the plagiarism'." (Sharif, 1966)…

I think some Official Muslim needs to get her head examined.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:39 | link | comments (1)

Fascist blather: The Tehran Times reports on the truly demented—yet, to my ears, unintentionally enjoyable—musings of Iran’s holy rollah-in-chief. (The word “hegemony” and variations thereof are used three times in a single speech—a new record!):

TEHRAN – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called on Iranian students to protect the system’s Islamic identity in the face of enemy plots.

The most important duty of the Iranian youth is to protect the true identity of the Islamic system, which is based on justice, equality, morality, and fighting against the enemies’ conspiracies, Ayatollah Khamenei told students of the University of Science and Technology in a meeting on Sunday.

“If the nation and officials protect the Islamic system’s identity, no enemy can undermine this country,” the Leader asserted.

Ayatollah Khamenei said the system’s identity is its soul, without which its legal structure would not survive. The longevity of the system depends on the protection of its Islamic identity, he added.

“If we forget justice and Islamic ethics… if officials forget about serving the people… if weakness dominates officials’ international and political relations, the identity of the Islamic Republic will be lost,” he stated.

Ayatollah Khamenei said Muslim countries respect the Islamic Republic because supporting Muslim nations, including the oppressed nation of Palestine, is part of the Islamic system’s identity.

He said the Islamic system will never stop fighting the global hegemons and their efforts to oppress other nations, the major powers’ interference in the affairs of other countries, and moral secularism.

The Islamic Republic has been able to make enemies surrender by defying the hegemonistic powers, he added.

Ayatollah Khamenei said the United States’ plans in the Middle East have failed, whereas the Islamic Republic has made progress.

The Leader also called on students to redouble their efforts to help the country accelerate its scientific and economic development in order to foil the enemies’ plots.

Iran’s scientific efforts should have the goal of turning the country into the world’s scientific center, and this great objective will be achieved through the efforts of Iranian scientists and students, he advised.

The Leader said history shows that students have always fought against hegemony, domination, and dictatorship and have always sought justice.

He also urged students to make every effort to strengthen national unity and to more actively participate in Iran’s struggle against the enemies’ plots.

Come, Mr. Hegemon, hege me banana. Daylight come and me wanna throw up.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:48 | link | comments (1)

Meow!: Clinton feline Socks the cat reportedly has cancer, and isn't expected to live much longer.

I think I speak for tons of folks when I say, "You mean Socks the cat is still alive? What is he, like 150 in cat years?"

socks at the podium

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

Balking at talking: Amir Taheri explains why Obama’s Muslim outreach endeavour—all talk, no action—is likely to be a non-starter with many Muslims. From the New York Post:

Barack Obama has been toying with the idea of dialogue with the Islamic world for two years now - but he has yet to approach the idea of actually saying anything meaningful.

At one point, his advisers talked of convening a White House summit with Muslim leaders. When that scheme was exposed as fanciful, they recommended that he attend the Islamic Summit Conference, convened once every three years. But that, too, has turned out to be problematic - so now they talking of plans for "a major address in an Islamic capital."

But what does Obama wish to say in this dialogue?

"The message I want to send is that we will be unyielding in stamping out the terrorist extremism we saw in Mumbai," Obama told The Chicago Tribune last Tuesday.

Note that the American president-elect mentions Mumbai - and not the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington or scores of others carried out by Islamic terrorists against Western targets.

Note also that he talks of "terrorist extremism," not "Islamic" or even "Islamist" terrorism.

The reason, of course, is his desire not to ruffle Muslim feathers. And herein lies the fundamental weakness of his position.

If the terrorism we saw on 9/11 and many other occasions has nothing to do with Islam, then why bring up the issue with Muslim leaders rather than Buddhist monks? Alternately, if this type of terrorism does have Islamic roots, why not give it its proper designation?

In fact, Islamic feathers need to be ruffled if we are to defeat Islamic terrorism. Muslims should be told that they've been too complacent in recognizing the threat.

To be sure, not all Muslims are terrorists. But virtually all terrorists are Muslims. Nor do they live on another planet: They are recruited, trained and sheltered in Muslim countries. Individual Muslims and Islamic charities finance them; Islamic governments provide them with passports and safe havens. The media regimes in most Muslim countries (often state controlled) propagate the very themes that sustain the terrorist ideology in its different versions.

What Obama ignores is that Islamic terrorism isn't limited to suicide attacks against the "infidel"; it also comes in the form of terrorizing ordinary Muslim citizens into conformity with rites and rules that should have no place in a civilized society.

The vast majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. They would resent an American leader who tries to ignore or relativize the broader reality of Islamic terrorism in the name of political correctness…

Well, yes, but isn’t it kind of a no-win situation for whoever heads up Great Satan: if you try to do something, a la Bush, you get shoes hurled at you; if you do nothing, as Obama seems poised to do, you earn the resentment of the vast majority of those targeted by Islamic terrorism?

A case of getting damned no matter what, eh?

That being said, I think it’s vastly better to do something rather than nothing (especially when an Iranian nuke is involved).

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

Wilders in Yerushalayim: Andrew Bostom posts a transcript of the Dutch politician’s remarks in which he notes that there’s one global jihad, indivisible, and that Israel, unfortunately, finds itself situated on its frontlines:

It’s a privilege for me to be here in this beautiful city Jerusalem, the capitol of the only democracy in the entire Middle East. When I was a teenager I lived some years here in this city and after that I visited Israel more times than I can count. Israel: the only country in the region with a functioning parliament, a rule of law and free elections. The only country in the region that shares the values of our Western societies, in fact is one of the foundations of our Judeo-Christian identity.

We are here to voice our concern over the growing Islamisation of the West. We do this in this city, the city of David. The city that, together with Rome and Athens, symbolizes our ancient heritage.

Perhaps a few of you may be new to Jerusalem, yet, Jerusalem is not new to any of you. We all carry Jerusalem in our blood, in our genes. We all live and breathe Jerusalem. We talk Jerusalem, we dream Jerusalem. Simply because, the values of ancient Israel have become the values of the West. We are all Israel, and Israel is in all of us.

This city is the capital of a democracy under threat. Israel is under siege, like the Jewish community in the Land of Israel is under siege for over a century now. Israel with all its glory and splendour is unique, and its history unparalleled. Yet, Israel’s security situation is not unique, and neither is its enemy.

Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, just like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way of the Islamic advance. Just like West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other places to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Therefore, the war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Thanks to Israeli parents who see their children go off to join the army and lie awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and have pleasant dreams, unaware of the dangers looming.

At present the front-line of jihad runs not just through the streets of Tel Aviv and Haifa, but through the streets of London, Madrid, and Amsterdam as well. Jihad is our common enemy, and we better start Facing Jihad before it is too late.

Therefore, if we voice our concern over the Islamisation of the West, we have to do it here, where our civilization borders on Islam. Where jihadists fire Qassams into civilian homes in Sderot and Ashkelon, and where a doctor like Aryeh Eldad is characteristic of our civilization by treating terrorists the same way as he treats the Israeli victims. I salute Professor Eldad for his work for humanity, and for his patriotism. And I thank him for hosting this conference in this great city. Aryeh I am proud to be your friend.

I will say a few things about the Islamisation of Europe and my film Fitna. I will use some examples from the Netherlands, because they are indicative for the situation on the continent.

The mass migration to the Netherlands continues full-speed ahead. Currently, a staggering number of new immigrants arrive every year, many of them Muslim, often uneducated, if not illiterate. Bringing along with them the local customs of the mountains and deserts of backward Islamic countries. Thousands and thousands of Muslims arrive in the Netherlands every year, while already one million Muslims are living in our tiny country.

There are many problems concerning this massive influx: immigrants are overly represented in social benefits and crime statistics and the overall costs are staggering. The financial costs of mass immigration in the Netherlands exceeds 100 billion euro’s.

But what we have to fear most is the creeping Islamisation, the stealth jihad. Because every Islamic neighbourhood, every Islamic shop, every mosque, every Islamic school, every burqa, every veil is regarded by many Muslims as building blocks towards a larger goal, towards domination…

I guess Geert hasn’t heard that there can’t possibly be an Islamic effort to dominate the globe, since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a patent fraud. (Isn’t that the argument that apologists and other sneaks like to proffer?)

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments

Carbon penance: Feeling guilty because, in the words of Fats Waller, your (carbon) feets too big? Looking for a way to atone for your hoggish over-consumption? Look no further than the New York Times, which lists an instrument for self-chastisement—the eco-weenies’ version of penitential whips and crowns of thorns—as one of its new ideas of 2008:

We all contribute to climate change, but none of us can individually be blamed for it. So we walk around with a free-floating sense of guilt that’s unlikely to be lifted by the purchase of wind-power credits or halogen bulbs. Annina Rüst, a Swiss-born artist-inventor, wanted to help relieve these anxieties by giving people a tangible reminder of their own energy use, as well as an outlet for the feelings of complicity, shame and powerlessness that surround the question of global warming.

So she built a translucent leg band that keeps track of your electricity consumption. When it detects, via a special power monitor, that electric current levels have exceeded a certain threshold, the wireless device slowly drives six stainless-steel thorns into the flesh of your leg. “It’s therapy for environmental guilt,” says Rüst, who modeled her “personal techno-garter” on the spiked bands worn as a means of self-mortification by a monk in Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code.” (Brown de-rived the idea from the bands worn by some celibate members of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei.)

Rüst built her prototype while working at the Computing Culture group of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also designed the band to punish wearers if they don’t spend enough time talking to their carbon-fixing houseplants. But first Rüst may have to address a more mundane matter. When the spikes dug in, Rüst says, she noticed that the device “doesn’t hurt that much.”

Then what good is it? No pain, no gain, as the eco-masochists like to say.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:20 | link | comments

Wall-eyed: I’ve lost count of the number of times the Toronto Star’s man in the Mideast Oakland Ross has written about “the wall.” Let’s just say it’s become something of a fixation with him, even though one Ross wall piece is pretty much the same as another Ross wall piece. In today’s story, Ross, who always strives to pay lip service to balance, quotes unnamed “detractors” who claim that the barrier separating Israelis from Palestinians is “racist,” and “observers” who aren’t convinced that the barrier is responsible for the nearly 100 per cent reduction in the incidence of ‘splodiating martyr attacks.

My letter:

So terrorist attacks on Israeli soil are down by 92 per cent since the construction of the security barrier, but some “observers” are wondering whether in fact the barrier has anything to do with the drop, or if it’s purely coincidental?

I don’t know who these “observers” are, but apparently they are incapable of observing the obvious correlation between making it more difficult for human bombs to cross over into Israel, and the reduction in the number of people being blown to bits.

Of course, in order to observe the self-evident, one must first open one’s eyes, something which these “observers” are obviously not prepared to do.

What I wanted to write was that in order to see the self-evident, one must first remove one’s head from one’s anal sphincter, but I thought that would likely reduce the chances of the letter getting in the paper by, oh, at least 92%.

Update: Another Palestinian preoccupation--"the Occupation".

Update: A frustrated shahid-wannabe sings:

Oh, give me land, Jewish land,

From the river to the sea.

Don’t fence me out.

Wanna woo a whole slew--

72 up there for me.

Don’t fence me out.

I got a vest full of semtex to explode some Jews,

And folks’ll hear about it on the evening news.

I’m asking you politely so you can’t refuse.

Don’t fence me out.

Just tear it down and you’ll frown

When your viscera’s eviscerated now.

Without a fence I’ll commence

A campaign to maim and terrorize--and how!

I’m gonna rant “it’s apartheid!” so they’ll weep for me-ee

And get rid of Zion through diplomacy-ee.

I can’t stand to see Jews have their sovereignty-ee.

Don’t fence me out!

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:54 | link | comments (2)

Goat time: Remember My Pet Goat, the book Bush was reading to some moppets when Mo Atta and his jubilant jihadis struck on 9/11? Upon being alerted that something awful was occurring in New York, the president didn’t immediately drop the narration and race from the classroom—a “lapse” for which he was ever after derided by the likes of Michael Moore; call it Goat gloat. Well, the latest man to sit in the Oval Office hasn’t even set up shop yet, and, according to a Chicago Tribune columnist, he’s already had his caprine—i.e. Goat—moment. (Not that I’m gloating, of course):

"I was appalled and disappointed by what we heard in those transcripts," Barack Obama said Thursday about the documented misconduct of the governor of Illinois. That's right. He was appalled. And it only took him 48 hours to realize it.

If the U.S. attorney is to be believed, we had Rod Blagojevich talking about auctioning off Obama's old Senate seat. We had him trying to extort a newspaper. We had him trying to parlay a tollway project into a $500,000 contribution from a highway contractor. We even had him trying to shakedown a children's hospital.

The reaction from fellow Illinois Democrats was swift and severe. Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn demanded that the governor step aside. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin urged the legislature to call a special election to fill the Senate seat. Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan proposed to ask the Supreme Court to disqualify the governor from carrying out his duties.

But Obama had a "My Pet Goat" moment, freezing up in the face of the shock. "I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time," he said. "It's a sad day for Illinois." You'd have thought the Bears had failed to make the playoffs.

That was the first day. The second day he was only slightly less tepid, with his office issuing a statement saying, "The president-elect agrees with Lt. Gov. Quinn that under the current circumstances it is difficult for the governor to effectively do his job and serve the people of Illinois."

Would it be "difficult" for Blagojevich to serve the people? Yes, kind of like it was "difficult" for the Titanic to continue its voyage. Understatement is one thing. What Obama exhibited was more like lockjaw…

Apparently, eloquence is the first casualty of such egregious corruption.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments

Sunday, 14 December 2008

No "I do" in Dhaka: Through the intercession of British authorities, a National Health physician behind held captive by her parents in Bangladesh (they wanted her to marry the groom of their choice—no ifs, ands or buts) has been freed. From the Press Association:

An NHS doctor freed by the courts after being held captive by her family in Bangladesh is due to land back in Britain on Monday afternoon.

Dr Humayra Abedin, 33, from east London, was being held by her parents against her will in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka and was put under pressure to marry against her will.

Her lawyer representing her in the UK, Anne-Marie Hutchinson, said: "She is currently on a non-direct flight from Dhaka and should land early tomorrow afternoon."

After speaking to Dr Abedin before take-off, Ms Hutchinson said: "She's fine, but obviously exhausted and was anxious to leave before people changed their mind."

Dr Abedin came to the UK six years ago to study for a Masters degree in public health at Leeds University. She had hoped to become a registrar at a GP surgery in east London in August but, after receiving news her mother had taken ill, returned to Dhaka where she was then held captive.

Judge Syed Mahmud Hossain refused to reveal the testimony of Dr Abedin because the closed door hearing contained some "objectionable elements", however, he branded the parents' actions "not acceptable".

He said: "She requested the court not to put her parents in trouble because of what they did to her. But I am saying what you (the parents) have done to her is not acceptable. If there's any further problem you will be in big trouble."

Ms Hutchinson said: "My understanding was her parents, even if they did not wish to force her into marriage, were not to give her a choice in the matter."

While in captivity Dr Abedin sent an email to a friend requesting help.

The British High Court issued an order on December 5 under Britain's new Forced Marriage Act - the legislation allows British courts to prevent someone from being forced into marriage.

Good law.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:57 | link | comments

Shoe fly, don't bother me: In Baghdad, an irate Iraqi journalist hurls one shoe, then the other, narrowly missing a visiting President Bush.

A shoe hasn't features this prominently in diplomatic news since the U.S.S.R's Nikki took off his loafer and banged it on a desk.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:42 | link | comments

Royal nepotism: From Guinness World Records 2009, p. 267:

LARGEST ROYAL FAMILY

The house of Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia had over 4,000 royal princes and 30,000 royal relatives in 2002. The kingdom was established in 1932 by the patriarch, King Abdul Aziz, who had 44 sons by 17 wives, four of whom have ruled the kingdom since the king’s death in 1953.

Saudi Arabia is the country with the most siblings in government—a total of six. The king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, is also prime minister and commander of the Saudi National Guard. Between them, his half-brothers hold the positions of crown prince, deputy prime minister, defense minister, interior minister, deputy minister of defense, governor of Riyadh, and deputy minister of the interior.

Nothing like keeping it in the family.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:28 | link | comments (1)

Quote of the day: "Islam is benign only to the extent that Muslims are able to shun or ignore the core Islamic teaching requiring that everyone--Muslim and non-Muslim alike--accede to the primacy of sharia."

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:18 | link | comments (1)

Clairol Nice 'n' Easy? Superior Preference by L'Oreal?: How does the jihadi keep his beard so red? (Apparently, it's with henna).

Pakistan, Islamic charity, Mumbai attacks, U.N., Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, LeT, militant group, terrorism, Jamaat-ud-Dawa

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:28 | link | comments

The George Clooney of smelly, mass-murdering thugs: The Reason Magazine blog has a post about the enduring appeal of Che Guevara (who would be a mere footnote in history had he not been so goshdarned attractive; when was the last time you saw a Hollywood celeb romanticizing, say, Nikita Kruschcev?).

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:17 | link | comments

In other news…: A woman in Belgium sold her newborn twins to pay for liposuction. From the timesonline:

A mother has been accused of selling newborn twin boys for £9,000 to pay for cosmetic surgery. Sonia Ringoir, a 31-year-old restaurant worker from the Belgian tourist haven of Ghent, was arrested and charged last week after the allegations were made by her estranged husband.

Marc Poppe, 48, told an undercover reporter for Dutch television that Ringoir had sold the babies to a friend to fund liposuction, the fat removal procedure. He said the couple had searched the internet to find a quick way of making money: “It was financially attractive to us. Of course we wouldn’t do it for nothing.”

Since Belgium has no law banning the sale of children, Ringoir has been charged with “degrading treatment” of the twins. She has also been charged with fraud after a Dutch couple alleged she had conned them by falsely offering to be a surrogate mother. If convicted, she could face between one month and five years in jail.

After spending five days in jail, Ringoir was released last Wednesday to await the results of police inquiries. She denied the allegations, claiming she gave her babies away for free last March to a friend who could not have her own child because of a weak heart.

Last week the shutters were down at Ringoir’s large family home in the pretty village of Lovendegem, eight miles from Ghent. The only sign of life was her new boyfriend, Mitch, who stood smoking by the back door. He refused to comment.

In an earlier interview with a local newspaper he had claimed that her husband had “put her under pressure to have her body rebuilt”, saying: “Sonia never had debts before she met Marc.”

In the end she had a gastric band fitted to reduce her appetite rather than liposuction, he said. Ringoir, who has five other children aged between three and 13 by two different fathers, was a “good mother”…

If she sold a few of them, she could probably get her whole fat carcass suctioned, tucked and lifted.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:56 | link | comments

Let our Hooky go!: MEMRI has photos of a London protest by some followers of Abu Hamza beseaching authorites to let their cleric off the er, hook.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:33 | link | comments (1)

Apartheid in Australia: Some Aussie Muslims are looking for ways to voluntary isolate themselves from the kafir mainstream. From Islam Online:

CAIRO — An Australian Islamic council is planning a Muslim-only complex to preserve Muslim customs, drawing fire that the move would block Muslim integration into the mainstream society.

"It's ideal for any ethnic group because you can deal with each other in an easier way," Abdul Jalil Ahmad, a religious advisor to the Islamic Council of West Australia, told The West Australian on Saturday, December 13.

"In South Africa, because of apartheid, all different communities were set up and it worked well. It kept people separate. We can be together in terms of our contribution to the wider community."

The Council plans to build a 10-million-dollar complex in Rivervale in the western city of Perth.

The complex would include a six-storey housing development, a recreational facility and an underground parking lot.

It will also include a hall for wedding and religious activities and an educational venue for Muslim students.

Spokesman Rahim Ghauri said the venue will be used to teach Muslim youth how to be good Australian citizens...

“Be a good citizen by sticking with your own kind,” as per the instructions of the Koran?

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

Yes, please: It's time to stop Peres (before he persuades Israelis to succumb to another round of Oslo delusions).

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:16 | link | comments

Toxic first aid: An Iranian Red Crescent vessel is speeding to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance—and a whole lot more. From the Jerusalem Post:

An Iranian Red Crescent vessel due to set sail for Gaza this week carries a "hidden agenda," providing cover for an attempt by Teheran's al-Quds Force to spread its influence and possibly ferrying intelligence agents, an American expert warned on Saturday.

Iran's Red Crescent Society announced on its Web site last week plans to dispatch the ship with 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid.

"The Iranian Red Crescent ship sailing to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is an example of Teheran's effort to gain political influence through social aid programs, subvert societies with intelligence agents acting as charitable officials, and encourage the Sunni Muslim street to believe that the Iranian regime is on their side, despite its Shi'ite face," Prof. Raymond Tanter, president of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee, told The Jerusalem Post.

"The hidden agenda of the Red Crescent is to spread the Iranian conception of Islam to the Sunni Arab heartland, including Gaza," Tanter said. "Teheran spends millions of dollars per month on 'charities,' coordinated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force."

The IDF Spokesman's Office said the military was aware of media reports on the ship and that the Foreign Ministry had final say on vessels seeking to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Ministry officials declined to comment.

The Iran Policy Committee is made up of former White House officials, high-ranking military figures and academics who believe that Iranian opposition movements should be bolstered by the West.

Iran's Red Crescent Society and other Iranian charities, such as the Imam Relief Committee and the Persian Green Relief Institute, were all "agents of the Iranian regime to carry out its subversive activities, Tanter said. "In Iraq, the Red Crescent operates as a cover for the Quds Force. While appearing to conduct charitable operations, the Red Crescent in Gaza is probably a way for the Quds Force to get closer to Jerusalem," he added.

"Because all missions of the Quds Force are designed to export the Islamic Revolution, Israeli citizens should be wary of the approach of an Iranian Red Crescent ship toward the coast of Gaza, ostensibly carrying humanitarian goods," he said…

Beware of Persians bearing bandages and tongue depressors?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:12 | link | comments

How shocking is Blago's corruption?: Even Chicago crooks are appalled.

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

Rahm the fall guy?: That was the speculation 'round our dinner table Friday night. And with reports like this one from the NYT, it's looking more and more like Rahmn may be forced to take a bullet for the team.

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

Take three: Harpoon Siddiqui, resident Toronto Star shill for the Islamist viewpoint, lauds the government of India’s fecklessness and inaction (“India keeps its integrity amid terror”). Meanwhile, the Toronto Sun’s Salim Mansur has an entirely different take on the subject:

The nature of the terrorist strike on Mumbai implicates Pakistani authorities, despite ritual denials of the present civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

This attack could not have been launched without large scale planning and logistics support, and these could not have been provided without a secure base of operation in the knowledge of Pakistani authorities.

David Pryce-Jones, an astute observer of the Middle East, wrote a long time ago that any Arab-Muslim dictator possessing a "nuclear weapon would be in a position of being able to enforce his ambitions upon any neighbour or rival without equivalent response." Furthermore, nuclear weapons "would place the tyranny of custom once and for all beyond the reach of reform or modernization."

Pakistan is such a country. With history of nasty dictators and a broken culture, while being at odds with the modern world, it has been a spawning ground and haven for Islamists.

But Pakistan also is ideologically an anti-Hindu and anti-Semitic state.

The forceful partitioning of British India by the proponents of Pakistan was driven more by the animus towards the majority Hindu population than any positive vision of what it might eventually be as a Muslim majority state.

The subsequent history of Pakistan, established as a home for Muslims to be free of the feared Hindu majority rule, soon became one long nightmare of ethnic and sectarian blood letting, civil war and military dictatorships.

PAKISTAN'S FAILURE

Pakistan's failure to be a normally functioning state when contrasted with the relative success of India as a working democracy has been a bitter pill for the ruling elite.

Moreover, the wars launched by Pakistan against India and defeats suffered have been deeply humiliating to a people brought up on the belief of belonging to a superior martial race of warriors.

Since Pakistan declared itself a nuclear weapon state following India's testing of nuclear weapons in 1998, the military has been ready to use the threat of nuclear blackmail as a cover to launch its repeated overt and covert aggression against India.

In 1999 the Kargil fiasco revealed the extent to which the Pakistani military was prepared to push India into a war over Kashmir.

And while that war was averted by the urgent diplomacy of the Clinton administration, the message was clear: Pakistan would not make peace since tensions with India served well the domestic needs of the military elite in a devil's pact with fundamentalist religious parties and Islamist groups linked with the network of al-Qaida.

New Delhi cannot afford to be lacking a military response. India's failure to demonstrate her military resolve undermines her security and economic progress, and makes a mockery of her claim as an emerging global actor deserving permanent membership in the Security Council…

And then there’s the Sun’s Eric Margolis, who never fails to leave the dots unconnected, thus rendering himself incapable of seeing the larger picture of the global jihad. Margolis attributes the Mumbai attacks to the local squabble in Kashmir. As if.

Update: A fourth pundit argues that Pakistan's holy warriors are "the most dangerous."

Update: Pakistan is linked to 75% of UK terror plots, according to the British P.M.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:48 | link | comments (1)

Saturday, 13 December 2008

HRCs more powerful than CSIS: Welcome to Canada, a country where the political correctness constabulary (a.k.a the HRCs) can enter your home without warning or a warrant, cart off whatever they want, and use it against you in a “court” which does not adhere to the most basic rules of Western jurisprudence. Extraordinary powers, to be sure, ones which CSIS, Canada’s version of the FBI, does not possess (because that would be an obvious infringement on our civil rights). How do I know about CSIS’s, er, limitations? Because the Canadian Arab Federation tells me (and concerned Arab Canadians) so (see number four on the list):

What is CSIS?

The Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS) is a government agency. The purpose of CSIS is to collect information about the “threats to the security of Canada” and report it to the government. CSIS can also provide this information to the police and to foreign states. CSIS IS NOT THE POLICE! CSIS does not have the same powers as the police. CSIS only has the power to intercept communications (i.e. wiretap) and seize documents or records with a valid warrant. CSIS does not have the power to:

1. ask you who you are, question you or compel you to speak;

2. stop you or search you;

3. charge you or arrest you;

4. enter or search your home;

5. detain you or deport you.

Recently CSIS has been interviewing and monitoring many members of the Arab community. When CSIS comes calling, you do not have to answer. CSIS often comes to your home or workplace unannounced – they do not have the legal right to do this. Unfortunately, CSIS has not always acted responsibly towards Arabs and Muslims. That is why it is important for you to know your rights and to assert your rights. Arabs and Muslims have the same civil rights as all Canadians

– DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS!

No problem if CSIS comes a-knockin’. But what do we do if the henchmen of an all-powerful Babs Hall or Jen Lynch come rushing through the front door? What “rights” can we exercise then?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:05 | link | comments

The Meat-eater vs. the Brain: Displaying the kind of unabashed political bias for which it is famous, the Toronto Star calls Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff super-smart, but describes his rival, Prime Minister Stephen Harper as being "carnivorous". (Oooo, scary!)

As if barracuda Iggy were some mellow little herbivore.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:32 | link | comments

An order of schadenfreude, please, and don’t skimp on the expletives: Jonah Goldberg has an awfully good time dining out on the foul-mouthed shakedown artist who yet manages to cling to power in Illinois. From NRO:

There are so many things to love about the Rod Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

Wait. That’s not right. There are so many bleeping things to love about this bleeping-bleep Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

For starters, the folks at the Chicago Tribune are Christmas Pony Happy because Blago tried to strong-arm the Trib’s owners to fire members of the editorial board. Instead, Trib editors will get to have a big tailgate party outside Blago’s cell window.

Newspaper people love that sort of thing.

For the more historically minded, it’s a time for nostalgia. The past comes alive as Chicago’s grand tradition of corruption is sustained for another generation. As the Chicago Tribune once wrote, “corruption has been as much a part of the landscape as corn, soybeans and skyscrapers.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, as of 2006 — when Blago’s predecessor, George Ryan, was sent to prison for racketeering — 79 elected officials had been convicted of corruption in the past 30 years. Among the perps: 27 aldermen, 19 judges, 15 state legislators, three governors, two congressmen, one mayor, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a stolen pear tree. Especially in this holiday season, it’s so very important to keep traditions alive for the kids. In a sense, Blago did it for the children.

For partisans, there’s the schadenfreude that comes with watching the Democrats — self-proclaimed anti-corruption zealots in recent years — explain why Blagojevich shouldn’t be lumped in with Congressmen Charlie Rangel (cut himself sweetheart deals), William Jefferson ($90,000 in his freezer) and Tim Mahoney (tried to bribe an aide he was sleeping with not to sue him — and you thought romance was dead) as part of a new Democratic “culture of corruption” storyline.

There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.

Obviously the list doesn’t end there. Blago’s hair not only appears bulletproof but seems to confirm reports that he is the human model for Playmobil action figures…

A Playmobil action figure—that’s it!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:18 | link | comments (1)

Dirty dancing: Guess who "choreographed" that infamous photo op--the handshake on the White House lawn between Yassir Arafat and Yitzchak Rabin? It was none other than Obama pit bull Rahm Emanuel, a die hard champion of the (now thoroughly discredited) Oslo Accords.

Emanuel says he's dying to have another chance to participate in another such "peace" parlay, and if he doesn't end up being a casualty of Blagogate/WhiteBlagowater, who knows, he may even get his wish.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:03 | link | comments

Friday, 12 December 2008

Prepare to be Obama’d, Zionists: One would have thought that the worst economic crisis ever would keep the new administration focused on, well, the economy. But as Caroline Glick writes, it seems to have another priority. From JWR:

The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy towards Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, US president-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to apply massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime minister used his prize ceremony to call on US president-elect Barack Obama to make contending with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his first year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded that the West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.

People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with his transition team since last month's elections, Obama's people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

The source reports that General Jim Jones, Obama's designated national security advisor is Israel's most outspoken critic. The source, who held a two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates that Jones is keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US forces to Judea and Samaria.

Jones's plan, which is vociferously opposed by the IDF, would make it impossible for the IDF to carry out counter-terror operations in the areas. As a practical matter, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens in who live in the areas would be imperiled. Just as Hizbullah has used UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon as a shield from the IDF behind which it has rearmed and reasserted control over the border zone, so too a NATO force would facilitate the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah which would unify, arm and organize free from the threat of IDF counter-terror operations.

Jones's plan is not new. In a 2002 interview, Samantha Power — who has served for years as one of Obama's closest foreign affairs advisors and now serves as a member of his transition team for the State Department — called for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria in what she referred to as "a mammoth protection force" to protect the Palestinians from Israel which she claimed was guilty of "major human rights abuses."

Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls which show that Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu is favored to win the upcoming February 10 general elections by a wide margin.

In anticipation of Likud's expected electoral victory, they have been piling on against Netanyahu and Likud. This was most recently evident at last week's Middle East policy conclave in Washington organized by the pro-Obama and post-Zionist Saban Middle East Forum at the Brookings Institute. There, both secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton's surrogate, former president Bill Clinton, and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice castigated Netanyahu's assertion that peace must be built from the bottom up through the liberalization of Palestinian society rather than from the top down by giving land to terrorists.

Netanyahu foresees Palestinian liberalization coming about through economic development in what he refers to as an "economic peace process." Both the former president and Rice attacked his plan claiming that it is antithetical to the sacrosanct "two-state solution." As far as they and their many colleagues are concerned, the only thing that remains to be discussed is when Israel will vacate Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The fact that there is no significant Palestinian constituency willing to peacefully coexist with Israel is irrelevant.

In light of the incoming Obama administration's palpable hostility towards Israel, and particularly towards Israel's political realists, the results of Likud's primaries this past Monday were especially significant. In selecting the party's slate of candidates for Knesset, Likud members favored sober-minded politicians who use their common sense to guide them over those with records of support for the fraudulent "peace processes" so favored by the local media, Kadima, Labor, and the international jet set…

So much for hope ‘n’ change.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:09 | link | comments (1)

He's gone home with Bonnie Jean: R.I.P. Van Johnson.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:56 | link | comments

Iranians bereft over Gazans' plight: Those lackeys of the mullahs--they're such mushballs. From the Tehran Times:

TEHRAN - Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets across the country after Friday prayers to show their anger over the miserable conditions in the Gaza Strip.

About 1.5 million Gaza residents have been suffering as Israel have blocked all food, medicine and fuel shipments to the coastal territory.

Iranian demonstrators blasted international bodies such as the UN, human rights organizations and the Islamic states especially Arab countries for failing to act in the face of Israel's inhumane behavior.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshipers in Tehran that the UN Human Rights Council was established to defend human rights.

Criticizing the UN rights body for being inactive, he asked: “Are 1.5 million people in Gaza not humans?

Releasing statements and expressing regret does not solve any problem, Khatami noted.

The cleric called on 57-strong Organization of the Islamic Conference to mobilize Muslims against Zionists.

Majlis speaker Ali Larijani who had joined the protestors along with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the silence of the Arab countries on the agonies of Palestinians would “hurt” these countries as he said political and religious activists are losing their patience over the inaction of their governments toward Israel.

“If the leaders of these countries remain silent, they in a sense have expressed their illegitimacy,” Larijani told ISNA…

Nothing that one well-aimed nuke can’t fix.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:29 | link | comments

Hasta la vista, Somalis: They’re leaving the U.S. in droves to help fight the holy war back home. From FrontPage Magazine:

The funeral for Shirwa Ahmed last week in Burnsville, Minnesota, punctuated a growing national security threat metastasizing inside the U.S. — one Homeland Security and law enforcement authorities have quickly taken note of. Ahmed, who killed himself in a suicide bombing attack in Somalia in October, is just one of up to 40 men from the Twin Cities area who have disappeared and are feared to have returned to their homeland for training with the al-Shabaab terrorist group to wage jihad.

The FBI is investigating similar disappearances in other major Somali communities in Columbus, OH, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, and Seattle. There are even reports coming from Europe, recently from Denmark, of Somali men returning home to fight with al-Shabaab and other terrorist organizations.

ABC News also reports that a Somali from Boston, Tarek Mehenna, a U.S. citizen, was arrested last month on his way to Somalia to wage jihad after being in contact with Daniel Maldonado, a Muslim convert currently in federal prison after pleading guilty to training at a Somali terror training camp after being captured in Kenya with a Somali terrorist cell.

Predictably, Somali leaders in many of these cities are claiming surprise and shock that anyone from their communities and mosques would be leaving the U.S. for jihad. But as Daveed Gartenstein-Ross explained in a Fox News report, there exists an active recruiting and transportation network in the U.S., including Minneapolis, for Somali-run terrorist training camps, many of which have recently reopened. In many instances, these same Somali leaders purporting ignorance and innocence for the local media are not only aware of these recruiting operations, but have actively participated in them…

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:12 | link | comments (1)

Serendipitous juxtaposition: The letters page of the National Post features this letter by the head of a supposedly apolitical organization:

Re: Whatever Happened To 'Responsibility To Protect'?, Michael Ignatieff, Dec. 10.

Kudos to [Liberal leader] Michael Ignatieff for reminding us, on International Human Rights Day no less, that the world must urgently commit to revitalizing the collective approach of the Responsibility to Protect. "R2P," a very Canadian concept, must be a priority focus of Western democracies -- repressive regimes must be held accountable and we in the West must protect the fundamental rights and security of humanity.

As Mr. Ignatieff notes, "We are not done with evil, and so we are not done with humanitarian intervention." More's the pity that he is correct. As silence is not an option in the face of hate, so too is inaction in the face of tyranny.

Bernie M. Farber, CEO, Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto.

This written by a chap who would throw free speech under the wheels in order to silence a few basement Nazis—thereby enabling the Islamists to silence us.

Directly following that windy missive is this letter by smart cookie, Laura Rosen Cohen:

Re: Never Again?, Irwin Cotler, Dec. 11.

The oft-repeated so-called "lesson" of the Holocaust is "Never Again." As Irwin Cotler rightly points out, there have been genocides since the Holocaust, so in reality the phrase means very little. The most important lesson of the Holocaust is perhaps that Jews need their own state, heavy arms and their own nuclear weapons.

As for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incitement to genocide, I am sure he is absolutely terrified of getting an anti-genocide memo from the UN. Calling in the lawyers to solve the problem of Iranian nuclear pursuits is a fantasy that only academics or liberals could dream up. Sadly, and pathetically, it is now also the public position of a Jewish Liberal MP.

Thankfully, Mr. Cotler is a Member of the Canadian Parliament, rather than a Member of the Israeli Knesset whose life might actually depend on the preposterous notion that the UN will protect and defend the Jewish state. Let Mr. Cotler trust in the UN. I'll trust Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces.

Advantage: Rosen Cohen.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:40 | link | comments (1)

“Scary” Nazi sidelined by CJC honouree: Big play today on the front page of the Globe and Mail for Colin Freeze’s article about “a prominent Canadian anti-hate campaigner” (He Who Must Not Be Named by naysayers) and how he sidelined “one of the most-vicious anti-Semites of his day”—a heretofore obscure “neo-Nazi chief” named Bill White; a large, full-colour photo of the neckless White decked out in his Nazi gear accompanies the story.

My letter:

“Never Again” is the cri de coeur of the Jewish people, determined to prevent the recurrence of the Holocaust. But, as a Jew, when I read about Bill White, the American “neo-Nazi chief,” who was indicted in the U.S. because of the efforts of “a prominent Canadian anti-hate campaigner,” all I could think was “So What?”

If anyone seriously believes that Jews will be protected by silencing this insignificant kook—ironically, snatched from obscurity and given a much higher profile because of the “anti-hate campaigner” and his cheerleaders—they have derived the entirely wrong lesson from history. The next Holocaust, should it come, won’t be the handiwork of pathetic dress-up Nazis like Bill White. It will occur because there are those who manifest the same kind of pathological obsession toward “Zionism” and Israel that Hitler manifested toward “the Jews” and because, like Hitler, they have been handed the power to put their genocidal agenda into practice.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:18 | link | comments (2)

Thursday, 11 December 2008

If Indians behaved like Israelis: Steven Plaut does a darkly amusing riff on the different ways Israeli officials and Indians officials respond to terrorism. From the Jewish Press:

…It is amusing to imagine what was going through the minds of Israel's leaders as they watched the news coverage of the Mumbai barbarism. Were they thinking how primitive those Indian politicians and military leaders are?

After all, the Indians dealt with the terrorists by shooting them down like dogs. The terrorists were not read their rights before being arrested, assigned public defenders, and granted long drawn-out trials. The family members of the terrorists were not granted survivor benefits from India's social security system, such as those granted by Israel to families of murderers.

The Indian press did not lecture the country about how the terrorism was their comeuppance for being insensitive and selfish. Indian politicians did not pontificate about how one can only make peace with one's enemies, and that there is no military solution to the problems of terrorism. They did not issue calls for talks with the terrorists or for granting them funds and arms so that they can suppress the "real" extremists.

Indian professors did not lead marches of solidarity with the terrorists. Indian poets and writers did not take out ads in the papers endorsing the demands of the terrorists. Conferences were not held on Indian campuses demanding that Punjabi Muslims be granted a "right of return" to homes they once had on Indian soil.

Hindu academics did not insist that Muslims inside India be granted the right to set up their own new sovereign Muslim state on Indian land, nor did they demand that all Hindus be expelled from Muslim areas. In the land of Ghandi, no one was demanding that India respond to the atrocities by turning the other cheek because retaliation would escalate the cycle of violence.

In short, Israeli politicians were no doubt wondering why the leaders of India had not chosen to emulate Israel's Oslo strategy of seeking peace with Islamofascism through endless appeasements and goodwill concessions…

On the other hand, post-9/11 India hasn’t done a whole lot to protect itself against terrorism (the result being numerous attacks and much loss of life), and Muslims in India have been allowed to govern themselves according to at least some if not all aspects of sharia law—so it’s not like India has its act together either.

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

Mideast racists: What are the odds—the folks who condemn Zionism as racist turn out to racist themselves. In the IHT, an Arab shines a light on the Arab world’s “dirty little secret” (one which you likely won’t hear much about at the UN’s upcoming anti-racism/Zionism conference):

I was on my way home on the Cairo Metro, lost in thought as I listened to music when I noticed a young Egyptian taunting a Sudanese girl. She reached out and tried to grab the girl's nose and laughed when the girl tried to brush her hand away.

The Sudanese girl looked to be Dinka, from southern Sudan and not the northern Sudanese who "look like us." She was obviously in distress.

I removed my headphones and asked the Egyptian woman "Why are you treating her like that?"

She exploded into a tornado of yelling, demanding to know why it was my business. I told her it was my business because as an Egyptian and as a Muslim who was riding the Metro, her behavior was wrong and I would not stay silent about it. I knew she was Muslim because she wore a scarf.

I told her that the way she was treating the Sudanese girl made the scarf on her head meaningless. Her mother asked me why I didn't cover my hair and I replied that I didn't want to be a hypocrite like her and her daughter.

As distressing as I found that young woman's behavior, I was even more distressed that the other women in the Metro car watched and said nothing. They made no attempt to defend the Sudanese girl nor to defend me when I confronted the Egyptian woman.

After the Egyptian woman got off at her station, I asked the other women why they didn't do anything. One woman said she stayed silent because the racist woman would've yelled at her. So what, I asked? If enough of the women had confronted her, she would have been outnumbered.

I apologized to the Sudanese girl for the Egyptian woman's behavior and she thanked me and told me "Egyptians are bad." I could only imagine other times she'd been abused publicly.

We are a racist people in Egypt and we are in deep denial about it. On my Facebook page, I blamed racism for my argument and an Egyptian man wrote to deny that we are racists and used as his proof a program on Egyptian Radio featuring Sudanese songs and poetry!

Our silence over racism not only destroys the warmth and hospitality we are proud of as Egyptians, it has deadly consequences.

What else but racism on Dec. 30, 2005, allowed hundreds of riot policemen to storm through a makeshift camp in central Cairo to clear it of 2,500 Sudanese refugees, trampling or beating to death 28 people, among them women and children?

What else but racism lies behind the bloody statistics at the Egyptian border with Israel where, since 2007, Egyptian guards have killed at least 33 migrants, many from Sudan's Darfur region, including a pregnant woman and a 7-year-old girl?

The racism I saw on the Cairo Metro has an echo in the Arab world at large, where the suffering in Darfur goes ignored because its victims are black and because those who are creating the misery in Darfur are not Americans or Israelis and we only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly.

We love to cry "Islamophobia" when we talk about the way Muslim minorities are treated in the West and yet we never stop to consider how we treat minorities and the most vulnerable among us...

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

Hope ‘n’ change ‘n’ same old, same old: Obama and his pit bull get sucked into the Chinatown vortex. (Dare we call it Blagogate?) From the IHT:

WASHINGTON: When Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, began exploring whether she might fill Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate, she called Rahm Emanuel. They served in the House together and, more important, he had just become chief of staff to the newly elected president.

But Emanuel was uncharacteristically circumspect. If Obama had a favorite, Emanuel was not saying. And to Schakowsky, he seemed wary about Governor Rod Blagojevich, who would be making the appointment. "Rahm always has good intelligence," she recalled. "In this case, he really didn't. It was not clear to him what the governor was going to do, or at least he didn't share it with me."

For the Obama team in the days after his election to the presidency, the question of who would succeed him in the Senate was a sensitive one. With a new administration to build and a financial crisis worsening by the day, Obama and his advisers had bigger issues on their plate. Moreover, they wanted to keep their distance from Blagojevich, who was already known to be under federal investigation into possible corruption. But many still assumed that Obama's voice would be critical if he chose to weigh in.

Exactly what role he or his team played will be a focus of intense scrutiny in the weeks to come after the arrest of Blagojevich on accusations that he was plotting to trade or sell the Senate appointment. In that sense, the furor could be the first test of the Obama team's ability to manage a burgeoning scandal in an era when intense media scrutiny and partisan attack machinery can escalate any flap into a serious political problem.

Obama said on Tuesday that he never spoke with the governor about the seat, and prosecutors said neither Obama nor his advisers have been implicated. At the same time, Obama's team has declined for two days to answer questions about what discussions they had about the seat and whether intermediaries had any contacts with Blagojevich's advisers.

Republicans have raised questions about Obama's refusal to say more and about his past ties with the main characters. Even if Obama remains untouched by the investigation, it shines a light on the corrupt politics of the state he emerged from and takes attention away from the agenda of change he would rather emphasize.

"This is a huge distraction at the worst possible moment," said Lanny Davis, a former White House special counsel who did damage control for President Bill Clinton.

And it can grow if not handled properly. "It's like the whirlwind," said Chris Lehane, another veteran of the Clinton teams. "You get pulled into the vortex more and more."

Obama stayed out of sight Wednesday, calling for Blagojevich's resignation through an aide and only after other Democrats had already done so. Aides were told by transition lawyers not to comment. But Obama plans to hold a news conference Thursday on health care during which he presumably will be asked about the investigation.

By the account of several Democrats close to him, Obama did not try to insert himself into the selection of his successor, at least partly because of his own strained relationship with Blagojevich and partly because he had long since grown restless with the Senate. He discussed it with allies, like fellow Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, but not with some others involved.

Schakowsky, one of many interested in the Senate seat and probably not a frontrunner, said she never talked with Obama about the seat. Likewise, the president-elect never brought it up with another potential candidate, Tammy Duckworth, the director of veterans' affairs in Illinois, when the two participated in a Veterans Day ceremony, an aide to Duckworth said.

Neither Obama nor Durbin was invited by Blagojevich to offer advice, the Democrats said. "We all have varying levels of cooperation with the governor. Mine was extremely limited," Durbin said in an interview. "I believe President-elect Obama could say the same." He added: "I knew there was a process in place in the governor's office, but I had no idea what it involved."

Emanuel was among the few people in Obama's circle who occasionally spoke to Blagojevich. He declined to answer questions Wednesday, waving off a reporter who approached him as he walked across Capitol Hill…

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:18 | link | comments

On second thought…: After reading what Harpoon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star’s resident shill for the Islamist viewpoint (which more often than not dovetails with the leftist viewpoint) has to say about Iggy, maybe he’s not so bad after all:

Set aside the debate over whether the Liberal party has been as cynical and undemocratic in the pursuit of power as King Stephen (Harper) or just agile enough to respond well to the extraordinary developments of the last 10 days.

Ignore that Michael Ignatieff's coronation was engineered with the same ruthless methodology used by Paul Martin – elbowing out a leader by taking control of the party machinery. Time will tell if Ignatieff's manoeuvre works any better in the long run than Martin's.

Rather, consider this:

While Americans have turned to Barack Obama to thoroughly repudiate George W. Bush's agenda, Canadians are saddled with a Prime Minister and now his potential replacement as well who have both been Bush cheerleaders.

Arguably, the Liberal leader has been even more so than his Conservative counterpart.

As is well-known, Ignatieff supported the war in Iraq, a position he only semi-retreated from last year, in Year 4 of the botched occupation. Even then, he argued that he had been wrong for the right reasons (saving the Kurds from Saddam Hussein), while opponents of the war may have been right for the wrong reasons (ideological opposition to Bush).

He also supported the use of such harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects as sleep deprivation and hooding, even while saying he opposed torture.

He was also an advocate for American exceptionalism in defiance of international law.

Ignatieff's supporters argue that he was merely thinking aloud as a public intellectual.

That won't wash. He was an active participant in the American public debate both preceding and following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was among those liberals – a professor of human rights at Harvard, no less – who provided intellectual cover for Bush's neo-conservative policies.

Ignatieff's positions were the exact opposite of where a majority of Canadians stood on issues that are a point of differentiation between Canada and the U.S.

Yeah, that American exceptionalism really sucks. Let’s have more of that King Abdullah-sponsored internationalism/interfaith/anti-defamation bushwah, the kind that is sure to bring an enduring peace and quiet.

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

It’s the naked lust for power, stupid: The Ceeb would have us believe that its beamish boy Iggy is a reasonable chap, when, truth be told, he plans to scuttle the Harper government just as soon as the budget is handed down (since, in order to satisfy the soft and hard lefties of the coalition, the budget would have to be the kind of tax-and-spend frenzy they couldn’t possibly not back—which ain’t going to happen). Here’s a bit of the Ceeb’s Iggy spin:

Newly appointed interim Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he had a "short" and "businesslike" conversation with Stephen Harper on Wednesday night, adding he would be willing to meet with the prime minister ahead of next month's federal budget being tabled.

In an interview with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, Ignatieff said the prime minister also asked to meet him to talk about "parliamentary business."

"Those are appropriate subjects for us to talk about, but I made it clear that I don't want to get into secret negotiations or back-door deals," said Ignatieff, who was appointed by the Liberal party's national executive on Wednesday to replace Stéphane Dion.

"I'm there to listen to the prime minister because he's the prime minister of Canada, and then we'll decide what we have to do from there."

Ignatieff said he is prepared to vote out the Conservatives and enter into a governing coalition with the NDP if the budget isn't in the country's best interest, but also suggested he is open to a compromise for the sake of the country's interests.

"I've made it clear to the caucus and to the country that if Mr. Harper has put us in this situation, he's lost the confidence of the House of Commons, and it's up to him to find a way to regain that confidence, and we've seen no evidence that he can or will," Ignatieff said.

"But, as a responsible politician, I have to try and serve the national interest here. And if we can have productive discussions … not negotiations in secret, but if he can come forward with a budget that serves the national interests of our country, then there might be something to talk about here."

Ignatieff urges Tories to 'come clean' on fiscal position

The coalition, formed in protest over the government's fall economic update, was set to topple the Conservatives in a no-confidence vote scheduled for last Monday and form a new government, with Dion as prime minister and members of the NDP in cabinet, with the support of the Bloc Québécois on all confidence motions....

Responsible politician…national interest…productive discussions…blah…blah..blah. Iggy’s only been leader for a day, and already he’s boring beyond words.

As for the hogwash about the coalition springing up all of a sudden in reaction to the economic update, Senator Bert Brown sets the record straight in a letter to the National Post:

All evidence indicates that NDP leader Jack Layton conceived a scheme to overturn Canada's last election results, possibly before the election was held or immediately after the votes were counted.

A leader whose party was rewarded with 9% of the seats in Parliament, a leader who pranced about saying he was running to be prime minister of Canada, swallowed so much of his own bath water that he began to believe he should be prime minister and went about concocting a plan to make it happen…

It appears Canadians have no other option but to throw Layton and the whole farkakteh coalition out with the bath water before we all drown in it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:13 | link | comments (2)

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

A Canadian chick in Gaza:Toronto Star scribe Oakland Ross profiles a southern Ontario gal who for some unaccountable reason moved to Hamasville:

JERUSALEM–For more than two years, the face of the Gaza Strip, presented to the world via television, belonged to a 30-something political science graduate of Ontario's Brock University.

That rendezvous with fame is over for now – cut short last year by a sudden spasm of fratricidal warfare – but former TV anchor Amani Abu-Ramadan, now 33, remains a proud resident of Gaza. However, a part of her still pines for St. Catharines and probably always will.

"I miss the freedom," she says, speaking with an accent that's as Canadian as a pair of sensible winter boots. "I miss the trees. I miss the seasons. I miss the people."

And don't forget the caffeine-based beverages purveyed by a certain nationwide franchise operation specializing in the sale of deep-fried pastry products and coffee.

Or, as Abu-Ramadan puts it: "I miss Tim Hortons."

She remains Canadian – a Canadian in Gaza.

Life is a strapped and challenging affair for all of the Palestinian territory's 1.5 million inhabitants, and Abu-Ramadan – the former English-language news anchor for Palestinian television in Gaza City – is no exception.

But her trials are more cultural than purely economic, and they revolve around the task of balancing a Canadian identity with a Palestinian address, in a corner of the world that is vastly poorer than the land where she grew up, incomparably less secure, and considerably less respectful of individual rights.

Unlike most Muslim women in Gaza, for example, Abu-Ramadan refuses to cover her head with a scarf when she is out in public.

This is no minor act of defiance in a territory ruled since June 2007 by the Islamist militants of Hamas, who govern with a strict religious ideology that favours hijabs for women and beards for men, among many other conservative tenets.

"Everybody is afraid and covers their heads," says Abu-Ramadan. "The pressure is very high."

But she goes about bare-headed.

"It's like I'm taking a stand."…

Good luck with that, Amani. Let’s hope it doesn’t get you a rendez-vous with the cranky religious constabulary who might be inclined to turn an uppity chick like you into Tim-Bits.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:02 | link | comments (2)

It’s official! Canada is a laughingstock. From the Ceeb:

Canada's parliamentary crisis is now fodder for jokes south of the border.

On Monday night, comedian Jon Stewart addressed our current problems in Ottawa on his satirical news show, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, saying Canadians are facing the biggest political challenge since the "controversial decision to reshape bacon."

Stewart appeared incredulous that a coalition of opposition politicians tried to oust Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Force him from office? You can do that?" he asked. "Because we've had no confidence in our guy for quite some time now, and he's taking forever to leave."

He also seemed puzzled by the crisis in light of Harper's numbers in political polls.

"I mean, this guy — his approval rating is 46 per cent and they're trying to kick him out," he said. "You know what we call a 46 per cent approval rating down here? President Clinton."

Canadian voters were also the butts of Stewart's jokes. He showed video footage of a protester shouting, "What are you afraid of, sir?" at Harper.

"Sir?" Stewart said. "You're heckling him. It's not a job interview! Do you Canadians save all your obnoxiousness for hockey games?"

And he wondered aloud why Americans should care about Canadian politics, noting that Canada isn't a nuclear state and our chief export is "jokes that they are the butt of."

If Stewart thinks our parliamentary crisis is funny, wait’ll he hears about Section 13.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

The “Chinatown” taint: Try as you might, you can’t wash it off. From ABC News:

A little more than a month ago, the entire world stared transfixed and mostly starry-eyed at a park in Chicago where the city's most famous son -- who had done as good as a local boy can do -- declared victory in the presidential election.

Heady days followed for a city that if not for Barack Obama, would have made headlines this year primarily for its growing rate of gun violence. President-elect Obama headquartered his transition team in Chicago's Kluczynski Federal Building, the mayor ordered thousands of banners with the president-elect's likeness hung all over town, and all the attention buoyed the city's collective hopes of winning the bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.

Despite -- or more likely because of -- the first family's residence in the Second City, much of Chicago's recent and, much less celebratory, news has also made national headlines.

Last week workers protested upcoming layoffs by taking over a local window factory on the city's North Side. On Monday, the parent company of the Chicago Tribune, the city's oldest and most storied newspaper declared bankruptcy. And Tuesday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested and charged with corruption, completing the economics-culture-politics troika of bad news.

To be fair, Blagojevich works from the state capital in Springfield, but according the Chicago Sun-Times in the past 30 years no less than 79 local elected officials have been convicted of a crime, including three Illinois governors, one Chicago mayor, and 27 of the city's aldermen.

For some Chicagoans, this week's news is the little anticipated hangover to an Election Night high, changing the mood of the city from hopeful to downtrodden. But for many other locals, a corrupt politician and struggling economy is par for the course in the Windy City…

Gramabama should have said, “Don’t go there, Barry. It’s Chinatown.”

Update: "Jake" Obama's attempt to clean up Chinatown indirectly led to the gov's fall: NYT.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments

Out of our league: It’s the 60^th anniversary of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, but Mark Steyn is in no mood to celebrate. That’s because, thanks to Canada’s censorship provisions and the bureaucracy that upholds them, our nation operates in direct violation of a document it supposedly upholds. How do our Human Rights Commissions (one for every province and territory, plus a federal one) contravene the Declaration? Steyn counts the ways:

Article 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Not in Canada. Chief Commissar Barbara Hall of the Ontario "Human Rights" Commission pronounced Maclean's and me guilty without troubling herself to hear from the accused or to allow us to appear before her "court".

Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

Not in Canada. Under Section 13, wealthy lawyers such as Richard Pieman and lavishly endowed lobby groups can sue penniless nonentities unable to afford any legal representation at all, while the plaintiffs get their tab picked up by the taxpayers.

Article 8
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Not in Canada. There is no "effective remedy" for Section 13's sustained violation of the supposed constitutional right to free expression.

Article 10
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal...

Not in Canada. The "human rights" tribunal is not impartial but a de facto subsidiary of the "human rights" commission, which is why there has never been a single Section 13 case to come before the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal in whivh the defendant has been acquitted.

Article 11
1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

Not in Canada. Under Section 13, there is no presumption of innocence. Indeed, there is a presumption of guilt, and truth is no defence. Nor has a defendant any of "the guarantees necessary for his defence". There is no due process at all. The rules are abitrary and, as I saw first-hand in Vancouver, improvised on the spot to favour the plaintiff.

Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Not in Canada. In Ontario, the law attacks your "honour and reputation", as Commissar Hall did when, despite being too gutless to hold a trial, she declared me and Maclean's to be racist and "Islamophobic". Furthermore, under the new powers foolishly granted to her by the Government of Ontario, Commissar Hall's stormtroopers have the right to enter your premises without a warrant, seize "any document or thing" (as the relevant legislation puts it), including correspondence, and hold it for as long as they want.

Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought...

Ha! Tell it to Reverend Stephen Boissoin, ordered by the Province of Alberta to make a public statement recanting his thoughts on homosexuality, and prevented by law from ever expressing them again even in private e-mails.

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Not in Canada. You have the right to government-regulated opinion and expression, which isn't the same thing at all.

Article 21
2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

Not in Canada. The Dominion's "human rights" regimes service a select number of favoured "stakeholders" and ignore those who don't meet their approved criteria. In effect, the CHRC runs a restricted admission country club.

Article 27
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Not in Canada. At the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal, not only does the law not protect the "moral and material interests" of the author, it puts them on trial and accords itself the right, if necessary, to criminalize his work.

To be sure, Canada's breaches of the Universal Declaration are not as egregious as Sudan's or North Korea's. But is that really the league you want to play in?...

I believe much of that league subscribes to a different “universal” declaration—a declaration of the “universal” rights accorded by sharia law. It seems Canadians have been traded to the other league without their even realizing it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:08 | link | comments

Bogus fear and foolish kafirs: The centrepiece of the wily Wahhabi monarch’s “twinning” scheme was a full page ad in the New York Times announcing the weekend of Judeo-Islamic shmoozing, and equating anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia”. A writer on the FrontPage site explains why the custodian of Islam’s holiest pieces of real estate is so keen to make us swallow this fabricated hatred (which isn’t a hatred at all, merely the natural inclination of the free to bristle at tyrannical, supremacist doctrines and those who would foist them upon us):

Saudi King Abdullah has been urging the United Nations to pass a universal law prescribing imprisonment for criticizing Islam. Some skeptics, including myself (notwithstanding that I twice enjoyed the King's generous hospitality in Riyadh), have suggested he start instead by establishing religious liberty in his own country, where all religious observance other than Wahabi Islam is banned. Two events occurring last week -- the hideous carnage in Mumbai, accompanied by shameful proceedings at the U.N. -- convinced me it is urgent for His Majesty to radically alter his plans.

Since the U.N. actions were less publicized, let me begin there. A key U.N. committee passed by 85-50 the King's "Islamophobia" resolution, criminalizing any "defamation of religion," especially Islam. The General Assembly is expected to soon approve this measure. Governments will be directed to amend their criminal codes accordingly; the resolution will be incorporated into amorphous "customary international law," which liberal Supreme Court justices are relying on, notwithstanding that much of this "law" springs from anti-democratic sources. While "defamation of religion" conveys a sonorous label, Islamic countries consider "Islamophobic" any expression linking Islam to such subjects as 9/11, terror attacks, honor killings, suicide bombings, beheadings, executions by stoning, persecution of homosexuals, fatwas against authors, death threats to cartoonists, etc. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has decreed that even "hostile glances" are Islamophobic.

Conspicuous omission

As I surveyed reportage about Mumbai, I wondered if the Islamophobia resolution, had already become universal law, perhaps quietly ratified by our Congress, while I wasn't looking. Most coverage was so infested with political correctness that the words Muslim, Islamic and terrorists were never linked. The most egregious offender (guess who?): the New York Times. In its summary articles, you must read to the seventh paragraph before finding a word as strong as "militant" (a despicable misnomer bequeathed by the lexicon of political correctness) used to describe the terrorists. The Times -- echoing its deliberate nearly invisible under-reporting of the Holocaust -- lied on the last day of the siege by saying "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen or was an accidental hostage scene." CNN was equally terrified of offending terrorists. Most of the media refused to say that the killers were Islamic radicals; one might have thought they arrived from an un-named planet. Mehul Kamdar, a Chicago-based Indian writer, complained online "how extreme political correctness in the Western media keeps key information from being reported through self-censorship."

While full investigation must be awaited to identify the murderers definitively, it was apparent from the outset that the terrorists (I beg forgiveness for using that harsh word) were Islamic extremists. Who else, pray tell, would indiscriminately slaughter Hindus, Christians and Jews, i.e., anyone who was not Muslim, while shouting "Allahu Akhbar" (according to eye-witnesses)? If the media had used in 1941 the truth-avoiding restraints practiced today, Pearl Harbor would have been reported without using the word "Japanese." To erase all doubt, the terrorists told Indian TV during the attacks that they were protesting "mistreatment of Muslims." Notwithstanding, Britain's respected Channel 4 falsely claimed the "militants" showed "wanton disregard for race or creed." Turkish hostages were spared when they screamed "We are Muslims." Christians next to them were executed.

Alas, the media reflect unwillingness of society -- from the top down -- to face candidly the menace of Islamic radicalism. Messrs. Bush and Obama ritualistically condemned the attacks. Neither named the perpetrators. Bush misled us for years with the jargon "war against terror," instead of specifying the enemy. Obama spoke elliptically of combating "hateful ideology" without identifying it. Both leaders, like the media, gave us Pearl Harbor sans the Japanese. If we are to defeat the terrorists, we must name and understand them. And before I am hauled before the World Court on charges of Islamophobia, note I have not said the enemy is Islam. It is Islamic radicalism.

It is unacceptable racism to suggest that all Muslims support terrorism; nonetheless, it remains legitimate to ask why support for terrorism is widespread among Muslims. Palestinians danced in the streets on 9/11 and widespread approbation of the atrocity was found among Arabs (before the U.S. invasion of Iraq). Last week also brought the Dallas federal jury verdict finding the Holy Land Foundation -- America's largest Islamic charity -- guilty of funneling more than $12 million to support Hamas terrorists. A Chicago federal appeals court ruled significantly this week that it is unlawful to funnel money to an organization engaged in terrorism even if there is an effort to earmark the donation for nonviolent purposes.

King Abdullah, who once explained in my presence that his financial support of an infamous Hamas sheikh was merely "gifts to a sick old man," should tell us whether criticizing support of terrorists amounts to Islamophobia…

Islam’s founder spread the faith through force; the king is spreading it through diplomacy and charm as winsome twinners and other gullible kafirs project their own goodwill onto him (the suckers!). Who knows? If the founder were around today, he’d probably go with the king’s strategy.

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

Tuesday, 09 December 2008

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown: Remember that quote from the Jack Nicholson flick? The film in which he gets his nostril slashed by sinister troll Roman Polanski (who also directed)? The one where Faye Dunnaway does that “she’s my sister/she’s my daughter” thing? That line—describing a place of such irredeemable iniquity that it’s too far gone to even try to clean up—is what popped into my head re the state of Illinois when I read this ABC report about the governor’s arrest. The gov, who sounds like a cross between Willie Stark and Tony Soprano, is said to have been involved in all sorts of graft and corruption; a certain slim young senator, whose name escapes me, was instrumental in helping him get elected.

This is the Chinatown, the swamp, from whence the prez-elec has sprung. No doubt in coming days he will do his utmost to distance himself from it by doing to the sleazy gov what he did to Rev. Wright—i.e. throw him under the wheels of the oncoming hopeychangey chariot.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:50 | link | comments

The Durban II Two-Step: Step One—equate Zionism with racism. Step Two—prohibit all criticism pertaining to Islam. Repeat. From the WSJ:

One of Colin Powell's best moves as Secretary of State was to pull out of the United Nations' 2001 conference in Durban against racism once it became an anti-Semitic rant. One of the best moves the new U.S. Administration and Europe could make is to stay away from the follow-up meeting altogether.

"Durban II," planned for April in Geneva, promises to be an encore of the same old Israel-bashing. The draft declaration says Israel's policy toward the Palestinians amounts to no less than "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security." We'll spare you the rest.

Israel will be the main obsession, but it's not the only target. The draft declaration also goes after the West's freedom of speech and antiterror laws under the guise of protecting religion (read: Islam) from "defamation." The entire West will be in the dock for allegedly persecuting Muslims. "The most serious manifestations of defamation of religions are the increase in Islamophobia and the worsening of the situation of Muslim minorities around the world," the draft reads. "Islamophobia" is a term used to brand any criticism of Islam as a hate crime.

The Islamic terrorists who have killed hundreds of thousands of their co-religionists get a free pass. Instead, the draft calls for a media code of conduct and "internationally binding normative standards . . . that can provide adequate guarantees against defamation of religions." If this sounds like censorship, that's because it is.

The conference is being organized by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which, like its discredited predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, has been taken over by the world's main abusers of human rights. The Organization of Islamic Countries, the most powerful voting bloc at the U.N., put Libya in charge of preparing Durban II, assisted by such other pillars of the international community as Iran and Cuba.

If the Durban II drafters have their way, any challenge of Islamic teachings, including teachings used to justify violence, would be taboo. Reprinting the Danish Muhammad cartoons, exploited by Muslim agitators in 2006 to incite riots around the world, would be a criminal offense. Even gross human-rights violations in Islamic countries -- such as stoning adulterers in Iran -- could be immune from criticism…

Isn’t it time we give the UN “human rights” body a more accurate name? Like, say, the UN Sharia Promotion Council?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:57 | link | comments

Don’t know much about history, don’t know much geography…: The dumbing down of Brits continues apace. From the Daily Mail:

Traditional subjects such as history and geography are to be axed in the biggest overhaul of primary education for 20 years.

Timetables will instead be arranged around six 'areas of learning' that merge subjects into general themes.

Pupils will also spend more time learning how to deal with 'deep societal concerns' such as violence, drug abuse, obesity, teenage pregnancy and debt.

Children are becoming computer literate in primary school. Six-year-old Rajaei Sharma, pictured, was the youngest child to sit a GCSE - in information technology

The blueprint was drawn up by former Ofsted chief Sir Jim Rose following a request from Children's Secretary Ed Balls.

It amounts to the biggest shake-up of primary schooling since the Tories introduced a national curriculum in 1988. The national curriculum was organised around 11 subjects - an arrangement that has broadly continued to this day.

The Conservatives last night warned the plans, likely to come into force in 2011, would lead to a 'further erosion of standards'.

They pointed to similar 'child-centric' reforms of the Sixties and Seventies which experts say led to a collapse in literacy and numeracy.

Tory education spokesman Michael Gove said: 'In adopting this throwback to the 1960s, the Government is denying the highest quality of education to children in the state sector. The experiment with this kind of ideology - moving away from facts, knowledge and rigour - failed 40 years ago and will fail again.'

Under the plan, history, geography and religious education will be merged into 'human, social and environmental' studies.

Other areas cover communication (English and modern languages), science and technology, maths, physical health and wellbeing, and the arts…

Obesity? Wellbeing? What utter bilge!

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:41 | link | comments

Hellzbollocks rebuffs Jimminy: The geezer’s angling for another Nobel ~~War~~ Peace Prize, but Iran’s flying monkeys don’t seem to want to help him out. From Reuters:

Leaders of the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah have turned down a request to meet former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit to Lebanon that began on Tuesday, a Carter spokesman said.

Carter had requested a meeting with the Lebanese political and military movement as part of a visit to assess whether his Carter Center will monitor a legislative election next year.

"I understand that some of the leaders of Hezbollah have said they were not going to meet with any president or former presidents of the United States," Carter said upon his arrival at Beirut airport, adding that he would meet other leaders.

A Carter spokesman confirmed a meeting had been requested with Hezbollah, whose guerrilla army fought a 34-day war with U.S. ally Israel in 2006. "They said they were not able to meet," Carter spokesman Rick Jafculca said.

Hezbollah, which is also backed by Syria, has a strong following among Lebanese Shi'ites and is represented in parliament and government. Lebanon is expected to hold a parliamentary election by June.

Carter's Lebanon visit will be followed by a trip to neighbouring Syria, where he caused controversy in April by meeting leaders of the Palestinian Hamas.

The meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal angered the Israeli government and its ally-U.S. administration. Carter, who tried to mediate between Israel and Egypt, has also described iIsrael's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories as "a system of apartheid".

Carter's agenda in Syria includes a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, whose ties with the United States remain strained despite a recent thaw in relations with Western states including France and Britain.

Carter’s agenda includes so weakening Israel that its existence is no longer viable.

Update: Reuters calls it a "thaw"; Melanie Phillips calls it "sucking up".

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:14 | link | comments

A clash of meanings: FrontPage Magazine has a useful glossary of terms which mean one thing to us and something else entirely to Islamists:

Peace - The state of cessation of all resistance to Islam. Peace only exists when Islam rules politically and religiously, and all Islamic principles are established as the law of the land.

Freedom – Freedom exists when Islam and its principles attain complete dominance and constitute the entirety of religious belief and political rule.

Justice – The state when Sharia law is the law of the land, and all judicial decisions are based on it and it alone. Justice exists when non-Muslims have no standing before a court, and when the testimony of two Muslim women is equal to that of one Muslim man.

Equality – Equality is achieved when Muslims are the only leaders of society, and are given their rightful place as the best of men, leading all institutions, political and religious. This does not extend to non-Muslims or apostates.

Tolerance – The state when non-Muslims are properly subdued and subservient to Muslim rule, agree to their second-class Dhimmi status, and duly pay the Jizya to their Muslim overlords.

Truth – Truth is the accepted Islamic version of events, as laid out in the Koran and the Sunna. Anything beyond that is merely hearsay, and in many cases blasphemy. (see Lies).

Democracy – The state when Islam is the absolute law and religion, and all peoples conform to Islamic law and customs. (see Freedom).

Freedom of Speech – Freedom of speech is achieved when Muslims, and only Muslims, are free to espouse their beliefs, and non-Muslims are prohibited from commenting on or criticizing anything Islamic.

Just Society - A society ruled by Muslims under Islamic law.

Koran - Allah’s final word, perfect and un-altered, superseding all others and the true and only guide for mankind in religion, law and politics.

Oppression - The rule of a state by non-Islamic law; actions of resistance to implementation of Islamic law and Muslim rule.

Racism - The state where anything Islamic or any Muslim is criticized or rejected.

Infidel – Any and all non-Muslims. Subject only to conversion, subjugation, or death under Islamic law.

Slavery – The rightful and lawful status of any infidel captured in battle against Islam.

Treaty – A non-binding and temporary agreement between Muslims and non-Muslims, valid only until such time as the Muslims have the power to achieve by force or other means what they have momentarily failed to achieve.

Lies – The act of hiding the truth, permissible by Islamic law for a Muslim when in fear for his safety or when it advances the cause of Islam.

Better study up, ‘cause there’s going to be a pop quiz on it real soon.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:26 | link | comments

Rae does Porter: To urge himself on in his hopeless quest to become the Liberal's top chien, once and future socialist and amateur composer Bob Rae sings himself the appropriate Cole Porter number:

I’m the top!

I’m the CN Tower.

I’m the top!

I’m like solar power.

I’m a heavyweight who is fated to go far.

I’m a concertina,

I’m Brangelina,

I’m caviar.

I’m the Seine.

I’m the falls Niagara.

I’m the Zen.

I’m just like Viagra.

You’re an also-ran, a ne’er began, a flop!

But if, Iggy, you’re the bottom,

I’m the top!

I’m Manolo Blahnik.

I’m the top!

I am supersonic.

I’m the Purple Rain

Of a Prince refrain they play.

I am baked Alaska, I’m Athabasca,

I’m Laurier!

I’m sublime,

I’m a roulette wheel-a

I’m the lime when you drink tequila.

You’re a fellah who will do a belly flop

But if, Iggy, you’re the bottom

I’m the top!...

Update: Rae to call it a day.

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

Three strikes yer out: Melanie Phillips does an excellent job of demolishing the “human rights” culture:

‘Human rights’ culture has done serious and fundamental damage to traditional English liberties. This is for a number of reasons.

1) The ‘rights’ that that it claims are universal are nothing of the kind. Because they are balanced by competing rights they are highly contingent on the whims and prejudices of individual judges to decide which of them comes out on top. This gives enormous power to unelected judges to wade into issues where public opinion is divided, and which therefore should properly be the province of politicians. One such is the issue of privacy, where judges are hell-bent on creating a law precisely because politicians have chosen not to do so. But who gave unelected judges the right to say they know better than Parliament what laws should be created in the public interest? Human rights law is thus fundamentally undemocratic and leads to the politicisation of the judiciary.

2) ‘Human rights’ has changed over the decades following World War Two from a doctrine protecting the individual from the state to a doctrine requiring the state to accede to the proclaimed ‘rights’ of groups. As a result, enforcing group demands has become a judicial weapon in the hands of every minority group under the sun to beat up on the majority culture, turning rights and wrong and common sense itself on their heads and producing a culture of creeping illiberality and coercion. Thus evangelical Christians, for example, find themselves arrested or sacked for upholding their Christian beliefs about homosexuality. Their right to practise their religion is struck down. As the former lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham candidly declared in 2005, since the European Human Rights Convention existed to protect vulnerable minorities who were sometimes disliked, resented or despised, it followed that it was an ‘intrinsically counter-majoritarian’ instrument. It should come as no surprise, he added, that decisions vindicating their rights ‘should provoke howls of criticism by politicians and the mass media, because they generally reflected majority opinion.

3) Most fundamental of all, the very idea of setting down in statute what rights we have runs absolutely counter to the foundational principle of English common law and the unique principle of liberty it enshrines – that everything is permitted unless it is expressly forbidden. Human rights law turns that into ‘only what is codified is to be permitted’ – which is deeply illiberal.

Deeply illiberal—the reason it meshes so well with sharia.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:27 | link | comments

Monday, 08 December 2008

Islam positioned to win: That’s the holy rollah’s triumphalist message on the occasion of the annual pilgrimage. From the Tehran Times (my bolds):

TEHRAN – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Sunday a bright future is awaiting the Islamic Ummah and Muslims will overcome problems with faith, hope, jihad, and patience.

In a message to hajj pilgrims, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “Once again the Land of Revelation has gathered believers from all over the world. In the birthplace of Islam and the Holy Quran, eager hearts are now performing rites which indeed show part of the eternal lessons of Islam and the Holy Quran to mankind.

“The aim of this great lesson is eternal salvation and glory of mankind by training righteous people and creating a righteous society,” the leader stated.

“The principles of such personal and social training are incorporated in the Hajj. Going into ihram and leaving individual distinctions behind, abstaining from many earthly joys and desires, circumambulating around the symbol of monotheism and praying in the Place of Ibrahim, the Idol-breaker and the Self-Sacrificing, devoting one’s heart and soul to God the Almighty, stoning the satanic symbols, and feeding the poor…are all training and practicing.

In this perfect ritual, sincerity, purity of heart and disentanglement from materialistic engagements, intimacy and seclusion with God, unity, concordance, homogeneity, adorning the soul and heart, committing the heart to solidarity with the great body of the Muslim Ummah, humility before the Ultimate Truth, firmness against falsehood, soaring in the desire for the hereafter and the firm resolution to adorn the world are all constantly practiced.”

That is how the Honored Kaaba and the Hajj rituals contribute to the resilience and the uprising of human societies and are filled with benefit and enjoyment for all mankind:

Today, Muslims from all countries and races should appreciate the value of this great ritual more than ever, because the horizon is brighter than ever for the Islamic Ummah and the hope for reaching the goals Islam has envisaged for individuals and societies is greater than ever. If, in the last two centuries the Islamic Ummah fell apart in the face of Western materialistic civilization and the atheist schools of thought, today it is the economic and political theories of the West that have been paralyzed.

Today, Islam has entered a new phase of prosperity and glory thanks to the efforts of Muslims to get back their identity and to learn justice, spirituality, and monotheism.

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

Holocaust musical closes in London: I guess that “Arbeit Macht Frei” production number really was a show-stopper. (Just kidding.) From the Guardian:

So Imagine This has announced that it will close at the New London Theatre on December 20, the latest musical casualty in a West End year rife with them. In this case, the wonder truly is that the production, set in the Warsaw ghetto among a Jewish community apparently willing to put on bad Vegas-style floor shows on their way to extermination, lasted as long as it did.

At least Marguerite, another misfire that closed early, had a substantial pedigree of talent - although its Third Reich backdrop further suggests that the musical theatre might want to quit for a while when it comes to Nazis. And Gone With the Wind was, well, gone with the wind.

I can appreciate the frustration expressed by producer Beth Trachtenberg in earlier radio interviews and today's press release announcing the show's demise. But the daring subject matter of groundbreaking musicals such as Cabaret or Sweeney Todd in a stroke disproves Trachtenberg's attack on what she perceives, according to the release, to be "a narrow-minded critical belief that musicals are limited in their emotional impact and ability to deal with meaningful subject matter in a powerful and sensitive manner".

Moreover, one could argue that the very success of something like Cabaret - which, after all, deals with the emergence of Nazism – shows up the conceptual cheesiness of Imagine This. All we are left with at the New London are lots of anodyne lyrics to the effect that, "Somehow, we'll be free to love." Gee, thanks.

More worrying is Trachtenberg's claim, which runs as follows: "Fundamentally I do not think the critics should be making a moral judgement over the subject matter." But isn't one of the very aims of criticism to assess work not just aesthetically but morally, particularly - though by no means exclusively - when the topic is as immense as the Holocaust? The films Life is Beautiful, its trophies notwithstanding, and Robin Williams's 1999 entry Jakob the Liar are just two examples of works that polarised spectators, many of whom felt the Holocaust was being co-opted to legitimise and lend cachet to deficient art…

Well, Imagine This could always produce Elders!, my very tasteful, very artistic musical rendering of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:51 | link | comments (2)

Hope ‘n’ change ‘n’ fascism ‘n’ sharia: In FrontPage magazine, David Solway shows how the left’s agenda (which aims to control an individual’s life through rigid rules of thought and behaviour, i.e. political correctness) meshes with the Islamist agenda (which aims to control every aspect of an individual’s life via rigid religious laws), and why the West’s intelligentsia finds the jihad so darn sexy:

…In the context of the liberal-left, I believe it is fair to state that while hope is sometimes for the better, change is generally for the worse. Hope, however, was the last element remaining among the contents of affliction-laden Pandora’s box, leading to the much-touted question of whether it is a blessing or a curse. And change in its dirigiste, top-down version, which qualifies as “fascism” in its most pejorative aspect, embodies the tyrannical authority of old age. This is the clue to understanding the power of all collectivist social projects. They are not an expression of vitality, of real hope and change, but a sign of dotage, of the desire to put affairs in rigorous order and preserve that order by dogmatic fiat. They imply the parsimony and command associated with advancing years. There is something static and and even testamentary about them.

Let us look to the current political moment. The mantra of “hope and change” that America has taken to its heart belies the reality of a society that has made a Faustian bargain with its own bedevilled future. This is only another way of saying that America has elected the Eurabian candidate and that the reconciliation between the two continents is now well under way, to the grave detriment of the former. Europe is growing enervated and varicose, unable even to reproduce itself; the model it provides for both the American leadership and electorate will only induce America to age before its time. Renewal, so far as it is possible, then becomes a function of immigration, whether legal or illegal.

I will be told that the new American President is a young man, which is true; what is also true is that a fresh face is the best possible mask for a moribund ideology. The recycling of hack advisors and stale officials from a previous administration is only further proof of what can be done to avoid innovation in thought and policy under the mandate of change and the rhetoric of hope.

Here in America, the sad reality is that we are now taking our cues for political change from “old Europe” and our hope for group solidarity, or asabiyah, from the example of Islam. But this is nothing more than galloping cultural sclerosis. The truth is, I’m afraid, that under all the hype something rather dismaying is happening. It is as if we are becoming a community of old men who wear fedoras and drive Buicks, a klatch of old women who glitter in bling and gladrags. We have become, in effect, the vanguard of a civilization on the wane.

And this sorry state of affairs may account in part for one of the most acerbic ironies of our so-called intellectual culture. It may help to explain why the jihadists in all their vigor and violence are admired and defended by so many Western liberals. Though Islam in itself may be regarded as an ideological relic, an Ancient of Days, its terrorist warriors are seen as enterprising, flamboyant and dynamic. They appeal to those among us who have already capitulated and grown superannuated. As such, they represent the revival of a failing consummation. They are the antidote to civilizational senescence. They are Viagra for the impotent…

Couldn’t the impotent just take some of the real stuff, and maybe watch Lawrence of Arabia?

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:52 | link | comments

Where’s the haj?: A Toronto Star reader is greatly affronted by the paper’s purported slight to one of the five pillars of his faith:

Muslim rally all but ignored

Your paper insulted its Muslim readers in two ways: through an act of omission by not giving prominent front-page coverage with photographs to a peaceful gathering of 3 million people converging in Mecca; and through an act of commission by choosing to bury the news in a one-inch report on page A17, the obituaries page.

You did give prominent coverage to events like forgery of degrees and would-be drivers shopping for easy road-test sites. If this was oversight, it is poor judgment; if it was deliberate, it is brazen display of disregard for world Muslim events.

Gul Sheikh, Mississauga

Yeah, what’s wrong with you, Star editor? The “rally” got tons of coverage in the Arab press.

Update: It's not on the front page (bad kafir editor!) but this AP report does appear in today's WORLD section:

MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia–Creating a sea of white robes, nearly three million Muslims converged on a rocky desert hill outside Mecca yesterday to perform the ritual of forgiveness, marking the climax of the annual hajj.

Chants of "At thy service, my God, at thy service" reverberated through the valley as pilgrims stood to pray for God's forgiveness in the most spiritual moment of the pilgrimage.

Most pilgrims spent the day praying and reading Islam's holy book, the Qur'an.

Thousands of others – mostly Iranians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Bahrainis – rallied inside their tents to denounce the United States and Israel.

An Iranian-sponsored anti-U.S. protest, called the "disavowal of pagans ceremony," is held annually at the hajj, bringing a whiff of politics into what is otherwise an entirely religious event.

In 1987, the rally led to clashes with Saudi security forces; 402 pilgrims, mostly Iranians, were killed.

Saudi Arabia warned before the start of the annual pilgrimage that it would not tolerate any anti-U.S. demonstrations, but the rally apparently was permitted because it stayed inside the tents.

"Pilgrims should not raise any slogans other than that of Islam," said Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, the Saudi grand mufti.

Iranian cleric Mohammad Tabadkani said the rally was Islam's response against U.S. government brutality and oppression. Many Iranians want opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq and Israeli policies to be heard during hajj.

"The disavowal of pagans ceremony is based on Qur'anic verses," Tabadkani said. "The rally here is not against any specific country but against policies of specific governments that seek to dominate Muslims or treat them unjustly."

Many pilgrims prefer the pilgrimage to be an entirely spiritual experience between the worshipper and God.

"During the hajj, the priority is to perform the rituals and not politics," said Ahmed Malek, a pilgrim from the Maldives who did not participate in the rally.

The Saudi grand mufti used the day's ritual to warn Muslims extremism could lead to terrorism. He urged the faithful to show "the bright face of Islam" and spread teachings calling for "forgiveness, peace and love."...

"The bright face of Islam"--a.k.a.the Wahhabi charm offensive. Much more effective than terrorism.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:35 | link | comments

Sunday, 07 December 2008

Indoctrination, not education: Victor Davis Hanson laments the decline of the classical university education and its replacement with the mush, sludge and cotton batten of political correctness and moral relativism. From City Journal:

Over the last four decades, various philosophical and ideological strands united to contribute to the decline of classical education. A creeping vocationalism, for one, displaced much of the liberal arts curriculum in the crowded credit-hours of indebted students. Forfeiting classical learning in order to teach undergraduates a narrow skill (what the Greeks called a technê) was predicated on the shaky notion that undergraduate instruction in business or law would produce superior CEOs or lawyers—and would more successfully inculcate the arts of logic, reasoning, fact-based knowledge, and communication so necessary for professional success.

A therapeutic curriculum, which promised that counseling and proper social attitudes could mitigate such eternal obstacles to human happiness as racism, sexism, war, and poverty, likewise displaced more difficult classes in literature, language, philosophy, and political science. The therapeutic sensibility burdened the university with the task of ensuring that students felt adjusted and happy. And upon graduation, those students began to expect an equality of result rather than of opportunity from their society. Gone from university life was the larger tragic sense. Few students learned (or were reminded) that we come into this world with limitations that we must endure with dignity and courage rather than deal with easily through greater sensitivity, more laws, better technology, and sufficient capital.

Political correctness, meanwhile, turned upside-down the old standard of inductive reasoning, the linchpin of the liberal arts. Students now were to accept preordained general principles—such as the pernicious legacy of European colonialism and imperialism and the pathologies of capitalism, homophobia, and sexism—and then deductively to demonstrate how such crimes manifested themselves in history, literature, and science. The university viewed itself as nearly alone in its responsibility for formulating progressive remedies for society’s ills. Society at large, government, the family, and religion were hopelessly reactionary.

As classical education declined and new approaches arose to replace it, the university core curriculum turned into a restaurant menu that gave 18-year-olds dozens of classes to choose from, the easiest and most therapeutic usually garnering the heaviest attendance. The result, as many critics have noted, is that most of today’s students have no shared notion of education, whether fact-based, requisite knowledge or universal theoretical methodologies. They either do not know what the Parthenon is or, if they do, they do not understand how its role as the democratic civic treasury of the Athenians was any different from—much less any “better” than—what went on atop the monumental Great Temple of Tenochtitlán. Most likewise could not distinguish Corinthian from Doric columns on their venerable campuses, or a frieze from a pediment on their administration buildings. For a brief four-year period, students inherit a now-foreign vocabulary of archaic terms, such as “provost,” “summa cum laude,” and “honorarium,” which they employ but usually do not understand. While the public may not fully appreciate the role that classical education once played, it nonetheless understands that university graduates know ever less, even as the cost of their education rises ever more. Any common, shared notion of what it means to be either a Westerner or an American is increasingly rare.

The universities apparently believed that their traditional prestige, the financial resources of their alumni, and the fossilized cultural desideratum of “going to college” would allow them to postpone a reckoning. But by failing in their central mission to educate our youth, they have provoked the beginnings of an educational counterrevolution. Just as the arrogance and ideological biases of the mainstream media have made them slow to appreciate technological trends and the growing dissatisfaction of their audience, so, too, are universities beginning to fragment, their new multifaceted roles farmed out to others that can do them more cheaply and with less political sermonizing…

The universities have indoctrinated students to despise Western civilization and have failed to equip them with critical thinking skills: a sure-fire recipe for civilizational disaster.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:13 | link | comments

Syed “‘splains” it: Syed Soharwardy, who launched, then dropped, an infamous complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission re Ezra Levant, has decided to give that free speech stuff a tumble. The brains behind both the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and Muslims Against Terrorism has gone and created yet another entity to head up (where does he get the time?)—Calgary’s Freedom of Speech Centre. As Soharwardy explains to a Canwest reporter, the new body will be dedicated to his own totally incoherent take on free expression:

…As for Soharwardy, the imam's change of heart took time - and included spending a while looking down the barrel of a human rights complaint that was aimed squarely at him.

Soharwardy was accused of discriminating against several women at his mosque.

"I understand the pain that people go through when they face a complaint at the human rights commission," he said. "If a frivolous complaint has been filed, then the defendant is still on the hook to defend himself."

But he insists it wasn't the complaint against him but his concerns about his religious freedom that prompted him to turn his back on the process.

"Freedom of religion is very dear to me," he said, explaining he worries that restricting speech could lead to limits on his right to express his religious beliefs.

Soharwardy said he believes the federal government needs to do a better of educating newcomers to Canada about freedom of speech, as well its consequences, both good and bad.

"People in any Muslim country people will not make fun or should not make fun of any religions," he said.

"Here, people go on air and make fun of Jesus Christ. . . . That is a very shocking thing for a Muslim. People are not used to this kind of freedom."

He said he believes freedom of speech is about more than just public discourse - it's also about how different generations relate within families.

He points to family violence, some of which is the result of tensions flaring between immigrant parents and their western-raised children.

Freedom of speech is crucial so that everyone's voice is heard, he said.

"That freedom will save a family from destruction," he said. "We can resolve domestic violence, we can resolve women abuse, child abuse."…

Come again?

Update: Guess who's coming for latkes?

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:07 | link | comments (1)

Nuclear watchkitty's priorities: Never mind about those nuclear mullahs, sez Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mo ElBee, how about finding a cure for AIDS?

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:03 | link | comments

Life imitates art, or vice versa: Claudia Rosett writes about another UN endeavour gone horribly wrong:

Too rich. Less than a month after the UN threw a big party to celebrate the completion of a $23 million ceiling for a single meeting chamber in Geneva, that ceiling “artwork” is peeling away from its moorings. Jose Guardia at Barcepundit has the story, with photos.

Whether this is life imitating art, or vice versa, I’m not sure. But that ceiling of mulitcolored “melting” stalactites, with its over-the-top tab, 100 tons of paint, and dysfuntional design, is a superb metaphor for the UN itself. For this I can quote as an authority none other than Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who came to the ceiling’s inaugural party in Geneva, and said: “The design itself might be thought of as a metaphor for our work.”

In that same statement, Ban said a great deal more — in a most ironically apt summary of the moral relativism that is the oily underpinning of today’s UN:

The colours look different depending on where you are seated. That reminds me of the old saying about politics, “where you stand depends on where you sit”.

The correlation to multilateralism is clear. Countries and people have different perspectives on the challenges we face. As they discuss these matters, they can come to appreciate the different dimensions of a problem. And just as we might need to spend some time in this room, and look at the design from different angles in order to see it completely, so must we have a full range of views if we are to properly address global challenges.

Ban was lauding a UN universe in which right and wrong are slathered so thick with diplo-speak that they stop meaning anything; a world in which democratic values are just one more slant to be pondered alongside the “angle” of the Iranian mullahs, or the Syrian Baathists, or the despotic interests of regimes such as those of Cuba, Libya, China or Vietnam.

Usually, when reality intrudes on this universe, it is in the form of polysyllabic reports about such matters as genocide, peacekeeper rape, corruption, incompetence – in which the real victims dwell outside the lavishly furnished chambers of the UN.

There’s a certain poetic justice, then, that the delegates to the UN “Human Rights” Council, having applauded the $23 million ceiling for their own meeting chamber, must now worry that chunks of it might fall on their own heads.

I dunno. Maybe the falling chunks will knock some sense into these lunk heads.

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

It's a Marshmallow World: No, not the Mark Steyn version; the one where Frank snaps his fingers, Dean flubs the lyrics, and both have a ring-a-ding-dingin' swingin' old time.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments

Coming soon: Jimminy “Cricket” Carter, gasbag extraordinaire/self-appointed conscience of the planet, has gone and written another book about the fraught situation in the Middle East. Its’somewhat less than compelling title: Can We Bring Peace to the Holy Land?

In answer to your query, Jimbo: no, you cannot bring peace to the Holy Land. Like the Wahhabis who send your foundation oodles of oily lucre each year, you can only add fuel to the Zionhass fire.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:18 | link | comments

Some clarity from David Warren: The Ottawa Citizen pundit cuts to the chase:

…The issue today is not whether you like Stephen Harper. I don't like him, I might even think his measure to cut off public subsidies to political parties, which triggered the opposition insurrection, was tactically foolish. For as George Jonas wrote in the National Post, you do not take a bone away from three rottweilers without expecting them to bite.

But the argument over whether we like Mr. Harper is irrelevant. If the opposition parties want to force an election on any issue at all, they are in a position to do so. If they wanted to run as a coalition in that election, they could do so. But they are not prepared for another election, they fear the possible result, and so they are demanding power without an election.

We might argue till the cows come home about whether the majority of Canadians actually voted against Mr. Harper in the last election, and whether he might have lost had a hypothetical coalition of soft socialists, hard socialists, separatist socialists and eco-socialists been running as a united bloc. They weren't, so that discussion is also irrelevant.

Canada's voters did not choose to put an alternative ministry in power. We in fact voted to give the Liberal party under Stéphane Dion its worst whipping in Canadian history. And that is the party and the man now trying to form a new ministry, with the support of parties to the farther and separatist Left, on the assumption that a Liberal-appointed Governor General will be complaisant.

This is an absolute outrage against the Canadian constitutional order. But it is also an outrage against the current electorate, who needed a government to deal with an economic crisis, and chose Mr. Harper as the most reliable leader from the available alternatives. We have an opposition that has, even before succeeding in its putsch, created a constitutional crisis that can only distract from the economic crisis…

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:50 | link | comments

Is Pakistan with us or agin' us?: Both, apparently.

Update: "Militants" (Ceeb locution) in Pakistan go on a rampage, burn U.S., NATO vehicles.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:43 | link | comments

Last rites: Realizing they’re going nowhere fast while Stephane Dion—a man who has all the appeal of cold poutine and who speaks the English language as if he had cold, congealed cheese curds lodged in his gullet—is still top chien, the Grits are planning to cashier him post haste.

Quel surprise.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:37 | link | comments

Oh, Canada: The Canadian prime minister may be a ballsy chap, showing genuine courage in telling the UN “human rights” vultures of Durban II to take a hike. However, official government policy on issues pertaining to Israel and the Arabs remains a muddle of lefty/internationalist amorality. For example, this past year Canada forked over $15 million to UNRWA, the UN agency that ensures Palestinian “refugees” are kept angry, abject and itching to push Jews into the sea; we may as well have handed the cash over directly to Hamas. Canada is also involved in developing a super-infrastructure plan for Gaza, even though Hamas, which Canada considers a terrorist organization, has a hammerlock on that benighted territory; again, why bother with the middle man when you can fund Hamas directly? And here, from the Jerusalem Post, is another disturbing instance of Canada’s inconsistency, this time involving those loveable Wahhabis:

The Canadian government has come to the defense of Saudi Arabia, telling The Jerusalem Post that the desert kingdom's policy of barring entry to Canadian citizens whose passports bear an Israeli visa or border stamp is "accepted practice."

According to the Web site of Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, "Canadians have been denied entry into Saudi Arabia because their passports bore: a) an Israeli visa; b) an Israeli border stamp; or c) an Egyptian or Jordanian border stamp issued by an office bordering Israel (such a stamp would indicate the traveller entered from Israel)."

Contacted via e-mail by the Post, Department spokesman Lisa Monette was asked how the Canadian government views the Saudi policy. Monette refused to criticize or condemn the practice, instead asserting that, "it is the sole prerogative of each country or region to determine who is allowed to enter."

When pressed further on the matter and asked if Canada had raised the issue with Saudi officials, Monette once again reiterated the right of every country to impose such rules, describing it as the "accepted practice within the international community."

Contacted by the Post, a leading Canadian Jewish organization expressed outrage over Saudi Arabia's policy and said they would raise the matter with Canadian government officials in Ottawa.

"We will ask the Canadian government to make every effort to ensure that Canadian citizens are not discriminated against by the human-rights abusing regime of Saudi Arabia," said B'nai B'rith Canada Executive Vice President Frank Dimant. "The issue goes well beyond Canadian passports and is a matter for all democracies in the world to deal with," he added.

Barring Jews from universities and depriving them of rights was once “accepted practice”, too (in Nazi Germany). Ganging up on the world's only Jewish state in international fora is "accepted practice". Just because something is “accepted practice” doesn’t make it right. But I guess one has to choose one’s battles. Canadian soldiers being blown to bits in roadside bombs so that Afghanis can live under sharia-lite instead of sharia-hardcore: that’s our battle. Complaining when Saudi Arabia acts like Nazis: not so much.

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

Saturday, 06 December 2008

The Goldberg variation: A nutty Toronto Star reader named Abe Goldberg (a made up name, perhaps?) applauds the interfaith efforts of some “ultra-Orthodox” Jews:

As a Jew, I appreciated the column by Rabbi Dow Marmur who welcomes Jewish-Muslim dialogue. He wrote that "Islam and Judaism have influenced each other through the ages." Indeed, the Hebrew Bible had an impact on the Qur'an, which in turn influenced the sages of the Talmud.

I would like to add to Marmur's article that a prominent ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization, Neturei Karta – a non-political group of non-Zionists – has led the way in promoting kinship between Jews and Muslims.

My letter:

There’s only one possible response to Abe Goldberg’s bizarre assertion that Neturei Karta, a group on the extreme fringes of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, “has led the way in promoting kinship between Jews and Muslims”: Oy vey!

The only “kinship” Neturei Karta has promoted is one with the likes of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Like him, this group—which regularly shows up for photo ops with the Iranian president and is pleased to consort with other rabid anti-Zionists—has it in for the Jewish state. The difference being that, while Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map because he sees it as a “tumour” poisoning the region, the Neturei Karta want to see the end of Israel because they believe Jews should have held off on establishing a sovereign Jewish state pending the arrival of the Messiah.

A “kinship” of sorts, I suppose, but definitely not the kind to be desired or admired.

Posted by: scaramouche at 16:15 | link | comments

Poor soul: Remember the line in the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” from the musical West Side Story—“Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived”? Well, that's the Toronto Star’s line of thinking re one of the Mumbai butchers (a “gunman” to the Star):

LAHORE, Pakistan–An incomplete but arresting picture is emerging of the young, disillusioned Pakistani man who was arrested last week for the terrorist bombings in Mumbai that killed 174 people, including two Canadians.

Muhammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, has been identified in photos and television footage firing a gun blindly in the main Mumbai train station. After two stray bullets caught him in both arms, Kasab and another man fled the train station. Eight of their terrorist partners were killed by police following a 60-hour shooting rampage in India's financial capital, which included attacks at two elegant hotels popular with tourists and a Jewish cultural centre.

Mumbai police managed to chase down Kasab and his partner as they fled the train station. They killed the partner but only wounded Kasab. In hospital, Kasab began telling police details of the terrorist group he had joined, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its plot to create havoc in Mumbai.

According to news reports, Kasab was born in Faridkot in southern Punjab. With a population of about 2,000, the village has intermittent water supplies and no gas connections. Children run around barefoot and the solitary school for boys goes up to Grade 8. The lush potato fields and dusty mud enclaves house a single mosque.

Reporters who have visited the village in hopes of locating Kasab's family have been unable to find anyone who knows him, strange in a rural community where everyone knows everyone else. Also, his name is not on the voters list.

But a militant fighter for Lashkar-e-Taiba, who spoke to the Star on condition of anonymity, said this didn't surprise him.

"All those who join these organizations are given Arabic names like Abu Hunza," he said. "Sometimes to make them less conspicuous they're given non-Arabic but purely Muslim names. Additionally, it's normal practice in these organizations to change the names of their fighters every six to eight months."

Kasab told Indian police his childhood memories are those of poverty and hunger. His father provided for him and his four siblings by selling snacks at the shabby market in Faridkot, which hosts a grocery store and a tire shop. Kasab initially went to the boy's school but like many of Faridkot's youth, he dropped out in fourth grade.

He left Faridkot for Lahore, a path followed by many youngsters who are unable to find employment in the village populated by potato farmers and labourers who work in nearby cities for daily wages.

On arriving in Lahore in 2005, the accounts of Kasab's life vary.

One account says the poverty-stricken and confused boy scraped together enough money for a train ticket to Lahore, capital of Punjab province. On arriving at the grand railway station located near the famed Sufi shrine, Data Darbar, Kasab would probably have been overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Pakistan's second largest city.

Most probably, he would have made his way to the Data Darbar where free food is served to visitors and worshippers.

"Sufistic shrines and mosques are usual meeting grounds for young boys," said the anonymous Lashkar-e-Taiba militant. "Often boys meet at these mosques and become friends. Then if one of the friends start becoming religious, he convinces the others to follow suit."

Oh, so you mean if he hadn’t been so poor, he would have never have been drawn into jihad? Then how do you account for “poor” Mo Atta and the “poor” British lads who bombed the London tube—jihadis who were not poor at all; who, truth be told, were actually rather well off?

How many people have to die before the jihad ideology/imperative/mentality, and not economics or something else, gets the blame (and that "It ain't just a question of misunderstood/Deep down inside him he's no good")?

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:26 | link | comments

Pakistan’s president “punked” during Mumbai seige: From the L.A. Times:

Reporting from Islamabad and New Delhi -- A hoax caller claiming to be India's foreign minister spoke to Pakistan's president in a "threatening" manner during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks, prompting Pakistan to put its air force on its highest alert for nearly 24 hours, a Pakistani news report said today.

Meanwhile, authorities in India reported the first arrests since the end of the siege in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people. Two men in the city of eastern city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, were detained by police and accused of providing the mobile phone cards used by the attackers.

The hoax call and subsequent air force alert reported by the English-language Dawn newspaper underscored the volatile atmosphere between the nuclear-armed neighbors during the 60-hour rampage by gunmen in India's commercial capital that began the night of Nov. 26.

The report also seemed certain to raise new questions about the competence of Pakistan's civilian government, elected less than a year ago. The civilian leadership has already been criticized for initially promising to send the chief of its main spy agency to help in the Indian probe, then hastily reneging after objections from the political opposition and the security establishment.

The newspaper's account said it took intercession by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats to establish that the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had not made the call to President Asif Ali Zardari on the night of Nov. 28.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Lou Fintor, said he was not aware of any such incident having occurred, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq, referred calls to the Information Ministry, which said it would be making a statement later on what it described as the "so-called" hoax.

However, a Western diplomat and a Pakistani security official confirmed the broad outlines of the Dawn account…

On the whole, phony phone calls are pretty innocuous (not that I've ever been a particular fan of them). But a crank call to someone who has the ability to press a button and deploy a weapon of mass destruction is definitely not innocuous. In fact, it's potentially catastrophic.

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:58 | link | comments

False memory syndrome: Oh, no. According to reports, political rallies are threatening to overshadow this year’s memorial for the “Montreal Massacre.”

All I can say is that it’s about time something overshadowed this annual anti-male-bash. For 19 years we have been commemorating the wrong thing—the male gender’s general abuse of and antipathy toward the female gender—instead of seeing this event for what it was: the deranged act of a pathetic loser who had been horrifically abused by his father, an Algerian immigrant who also abused his young daughter and wife.

If the Ecole Polytechnique murders are to stand for anything, it should be the ramifications of child abuse. Barring that, why can’t we simply remember those who were killed without forcing them to be a symbol?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:24 | link | comments

Some thoughts post-prorogue: Yes, I know, I know. What sparked the political crisis in Canada this past week was Stephen Harper’s overweening “arrogance” (or so I’ve been told). Sorry to be devil’s advocate (heh), but I can’t help thinking that

A) the “coup” had been in the works for weeks, awaiting an opportune pretext to reveal itself;

B) the lefties in the House suffer from an advanced case of Harper Derangement Syndrome, a debilitating malady which renders them incapable of putting the nation’s interests ahead of their own unslakeable lust for power; and

C) BARACK OBAMA, A MAN WHO SHARES THEIR WORLD VIEW, IS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT SOON, AND HE’S GOING TO BE SPENDING TAXPAYERS’ SHEKELS LIKE HE'S MICHAEL JACKSON ON A SPREE IN A VEGAS ANTIQUES EMPORIUM. And, dagnabit, they want to be able to spend, spend, spend, too—something they won’t get to do with Harper in charge.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:44 | link | comments

The best defence is to feign vulnerability: Mark Steyn’s latest OC Register column highlights a curious cause and effect—kafirs getting butchered by jihadis prompts Muslims to feel more “vulnerable”

Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The Sydney Daily Telegraph's columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline:

"British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing."

Indeed. And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims "found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion".

Oh, I don't know about that. In fact, you'd be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was "linked" to any religion, least of all one beginning with "I-" and ending in "-slam." In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations – "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists" – and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen," as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: "An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok."

Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.

The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution "practitioners." "Practitioners" of what, exactly?

Hard to say. And getting harder. For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Mumbai media coverage: The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

Hmm. Greater Mumbai forms one of the world's five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An "accidental hostage scene" that one of the "practitioners" just happened to stumble upon? "I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?"…

Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel "vulnerable." Au contraire, they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might: They're the world's fastest-growing population. A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels. If he's feeling "vulnerable," he's doing a terrific job of covering it up.

We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDS activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush's foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – "Allahu Akbar."…

In our squishy, I-feel-your-pain world (dar al Harb, the part of the planet not yet fully under Islam's thumb), even the jihad had been Oprahfied (or Choprafied), i.e. infidels are enjoined to feel sorry for Muslims—and Muslims feel sorry for themselves— whenever their co-religionists slaughter kafirs. Thus do the bad guys literally get away with murder.

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

Big oops!: The co-head of the Canadian Jewish Congress did something completely unacceptable "in the CJC context" this week—he spoke his mind. Luckily, he was immediately chastised for the unconscionable display of independent thought, and quickly forced to recant, grovel, scrape and bow (CJC’s bold):

Please see the statement below from Canadian Jewish Congress Co-President Rabbi Reuven Bulka clarifying remarks he made in his personal capacity about current Parliamentary politics.

Consistent with our non-partisan approach to Jewish advocacy, CJC takes no position on the events in Parliament. With a view to circulating this clarification most effectively, CJC is disseminating the statement to a broad list. Thank you.

CJC Co-President clarifies statement regarding a potential coalition government in Canada

Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) Co-President Rabbi Reuven Bulka takes this opportunity to clarify the statements he made yesterday regarding the possibility of a coalition government in Canada.

"When I spoke about the current political situation in Canada, my comments were made entirely in my personal capacity, not as Co-President of Canadian Jewish Congress, which is a strictly non-partisan organization. I regret I did not make this clear enough" said Bulka.

"I apologize for any inferences arising from my interview that would suggest that I have anything but respect and admiration for Parliamentarians and the Canadian political process or that would suggest that the Canadian Jewish Congress has a position on the current political situation in Parliament" Bulka added.

Rabbi Bulka has spoken with opposition party leaders Hon. Stephane Dion and Jack Layton. The conversations were cordial and very productive. They welcomed the Rabbi's call and have accepted his apology and his explanation of the events that transpired. Rabbi will be speaking with Gilles Duceppe this evening and will deliver the same message.

I’m sure Rabbi Bulka learned his lesson, and, in his capacity as head of this feckless organization, will never again display any gumption or express a “partisan” thought.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:22 | link | comments

Getting away with hatred: The Canadian Arab Federation gets to be a "stakeholder" in the fight against "racism" and "Islamophobia"; at the same time, it gets to purvey noxious, deranged hatred aimed at the world's only Jewish state, the type of lunacy fully in synch with the eliminationist agenda.

Of course, in "the Canadian context," you're allowed to hate "Zionists," and special victim groups are incapable of manifesting hatred toward others, and if they do, it's considered to be an immense social faux pas to point it out.

Ain't Trudeaupia grand?

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:03 | link | comments (1)

Friday, 05 December 2008

Number four with a bullet: Guess who's in the top five of Parade magazine's annual list of the world's worst dictators (and moving up every year)? Why, it's none other than that potentate of "peace," that anti-defamation dissembler, that brash bamboozler, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Guess none of the winsome twinners read Parade magazine.

Posted by: scaramouche at 23:44 | link | comments

I resemble that inference: Some delightfully fractured English, courtesy Shia news agency INRA:

Provisional Friday Prayers leader of Tehran said here Friday in his second sermon US administrations and power circles are unfortunately under supportive umbrella of Israel, which is highly previous for both.

According to IRNA Political Desk reporter, addressing thousands of Tehrani worshipers at central campus of Tehran University, Ayatollah Emami Kashani focused on recent global developments, adding, "As some analysts advise, regarding the United States we need to wait till the new government would take charge."

He added, "Some observers argue that the American people's vote for Mr. Obama had the message that they are fed up with the policies pursued by Bush and the Republicans and have taken refuge in the camp of the Democrats."

Ayatollah Emami Kashani said, "Electing of a black president was opening a new chapter in the history of America, since from among the black folks that had once no value in the United States there comes the first man of that country, which is the result of the wrong policies pursued by Bush both inside America and around the world." Member of the Leadership Experts Assembly posed the question whether the turning of this chapter in the political history of the United States would also lead to turning a new chapter in the mentality and spirit of America, or not, reiterating, "In order to find the correct answer to that question we need to wait and see." Addressing the majority of Americans who have with their votes ended the rule of the Republicans, Emami Kashani said, "You should demand your new government to abandon pursing the previous policies." This week's Friday preacher of Tehran added, "According to news dispatches, a group of US elites have sent a letter to President Elect Obama, asking him to heed certain points, including trying to create balance in the Middle East and to accept the fact that the only main player in the region is Iran."…

Create “balance” by tipping the scale precipitously in favour of Iran?

Kind of tough to argue with that kind of reasoning.

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

Death by karaoke: A lesson for us all--don't ever hog the mike in Malaysia. From the Guardian:

A Malaysian karaoke enthusiast hogged the microphone for so long that people set upon him and stabbed him to death.

Abdul Sani Doli refused to hand over the microphone at a coffee shop that doubles as a karaoke bar in the town of Sandakan, Borneo. Two men have been arrested on suspicion of murder after the altercation erupted a few minutes before midnight.

The town's police chief, Rosli Mohammad Isa, said initial investigations showed the victim had sung several numbers on Wednesday night. Other patrons fumed as Abdul Sani hogged the microphone, a scenario perhaps familiar to karaoke devotees the world over.

Three men on a neighbouring table confronted him on the pavement outside the coffee shop and witnesses saw a heated argument break out. It turned into a punch-up and Abdul Sani was killed.

Karaoke rage is not unheard of in Asia. There have been several reported cases of singers being assaulted, shot or stabbed mid-performance, usually over how songs are sung.

Frank Sinatra's My Way has reportedly generated such outbursts of hostility that some bars in the Philippines now no longer offer it on the karaoke menu. In Thailand this year, a gunman shot eight people dead after tiring of their endless renditions of a John Denver tune.

In Seattle last year, a woman with an apparent aversion to Coldplay attacked a singer who had just embarked on a rendition of Yellow.

Well, one can hardly fault an individual with such discerning musical taste.

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:32 | link | comments

Heh: "Future of coalition, Dion's leadership uncertain" saith the Ceeb.

That's despite the Ceeb's best efforts to make the idea of a loser coalition sound like a brilliant idea (et tu, Don Newman).

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:08 | link | comments

And again: How do you go about putting on a Final Solution? No sweat. First, demonize the Jews as an evil which must—must—be extirpated for the good of mankind. Then, go ahead and extirpate it. Oh, and don’t worry: your evil is certain to triumph since you can more or less count on good people to sit back and do nothing. Jeff Jacoby of JWR has more on the obsessive, irrational goings-on at the UN, cheerleader for and project manager of today's eliminationist agenda:

… [UN General Assembly president Miguel] D'Escoto's call for Israel to be shunned as a pariah and strangled economically came on the UN's Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an annual occasion devoted to lamenting the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the 20th century, denouncing the national liberation movement — Zionism - that made that rebirth possible, and championing the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. The event occurs on or about Nov. 29, the anniversary of the UN vote in 1947 to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. There are impassioned speeches, in which Israel's sins are enumerated and condemned, and the statelessness of the Palestinians is bewailed. Unmentioned is the fact that Palestine's Arabs would have had their state 60 years ago had they and the Arab League not rejected the UN's decision and chosen instead to declare war on the new Jewish state.

Like so much of what takes place at the UN, the obsession with demonizing Israel and extolling the Palestinians is grotesque and Orwellian. More than 1 million Israeli Arabs enjoy civil and political rights unmatched in the Arab world — yet Israel is accused of repression and human-rights abuse. Successive Israeli governments have endorsed a "two-state solution" - yet Israel is blasted as the obstacle to peace. The Palestinian Authority oversees the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich, and wants all Jews expelled from the land it claims for itself - yet Israel is labeled an "apartheid state" and singled out for condemnation and ostracism.

Make no mistake: In likening Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, the UN is engaged not in anti-racism but in anti-Semitism. In the 1930s, the world's foremost anti-Semites demanded a boycott of Jewish businesses. Today they demand a boycott of the Jewish state.

"No good German is still buying from a Jew," announced Hitler's Nazi Party in March 1933. "The boycott must be a universal one . . . and must hit Jewry where it is most vulnerable." Seventy-five years later, the president of the General Assembly urges the world to throttle Israel's 6 million Jews with "boycott, divestment, and sanctions." There is no significant difference between the two cases — or the animus underlying them.

When the UN adopted its odious "Zionism is racism resolution" in 1975, US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan minced no words. "The United States," he declared, "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act." Where is such a voice of moral outrage today?

Bueller? Obama? Sarkozy? Anyone?

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:49 | link | comments

Precedenting ahead: It's a toss-up as to who's thirstier for power--hard lefty Smilin' Jack Layton or somewhat softer lefty Bob "the Builder" Rae. With Stephane Dion's poor showing this week--alternately apoplectic (when facing Harper in the House) and pathetic (when facing Canadians via a Boogie Nights-style video on TV)--and with Liberal leader-in-waiting Michael Ignatieff appearing to recoil from the coalition, Bob has decided to go for it. His current talking point: The Prime Minister getting the Governor General to prorogue Parliament sets "a dangerous precendent". Why from now on, "reasons" Rae, any time a P.M. faces a vote of non-confidence, he/she will want to go out for a prorogi (very yummy with fried onions and sour cream on top) rather than take his/her licking.

Actually, Bob, most Canadian seem far more alaramed about another "dangerous precedent"--the precedent of a mishmash of House lefties grabbing power from minority Tories in defiance of the peoples' will.

Hasta la vista, Bob. You're written your own political death warrant.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:59 | link | comments (2)

Axis of equine patooties: Years ago there was a joke making the rounds speculating as to the title of the most boring book ever written. The winner: “Canada, Our Northern Neighbour.” Sure, that merited a hearty har-dee-har in days past, but given recent tumultuous events, Canada ain’t such a snore anymore. Here’s Mark Steyn giving Hugh Hewitt a snapshot of the slapstick:

Well, what happened is that they had an election six weeks ago. And Stephen Harper’s conservative party was returned to power with an increased minority. That’s to say they don’t have a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, but they were the biggest party. So by convention, the governor general, who is the vice regal eminence who represents the Queen, invited the leader of the largest party to form the government. Now six weeks later, there’s been a backroom deal between the liberals, who are sort of the soft left party, the New Democratic Party, who are the hard left party, the socialists, and the Bloc Québécois, who are the secessionist party, to in effect remove the government from the Tory Party, and install themselves as what I called a pantomime horse comprised of three rear ends, which is the problem here. I mean, you’ve got an incoherent, soft left, socialist, secessionist coalition that would be attempting to run the country, and would do very little, actually, except divert billions of dollars in patronage appointments to their own particular obsessions.

I’d say that about sums it up. My prediction: the plot will end up backfiring—big time—and Stephen Harper will be returned with a majority government by ordinary Canadians disgusted by the horse’s arses and their unbridled lust for power.

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

The newest established temporary gloating crap shoot on the Hill: The putschers have been told to chill for a few weeks, but that doesn't mean they're going to knoch it off with the plotting. Their dilemna: where, oh where, to convene:

The GG took the wind from our sails

But that don’t mean that the coup’s off the rails.

And we think it’ll turn out just fine

By the time we see two ought ought nine.

There’s the tool shed behind Stornoway

But Mrs. Dion she ain’t a good scout

And things being how they are today

Michael Ignatieff’s office is out.

So the Layton/Chow place is the spot

Where we plotters can keep plottin’ our plot.

Why it’s good old reliable Layton,

Layton, Layton, Layton’s our boy.

If you’re looking for action you know he’ll be game

And when he gets in power things’ll never be the same.

Not with good old reliable Layton

It’s the triumph of a strong will

And the newest established temporary gloating crap shoot on the Hill.

There are total sleazeballs everywhere, everywhere,

There are total sleazeballs everywhere.

And a Sep’ratist who’ll lay off if his province gets a payoff there.

(Give Quebeckers lots of lucre

And you won’t hear a rebuke or care.)

Oh, it’s good old reliable Layton,

Layton, Layton, Layton’s our guy.

If the Swedes are your model

You think their land’s swell.

Jack’ll help you pave the way to that kind of hell.

A Valhalla sanctioned by Layton

‘Cause you know Utopia’s a thrill

And the newest established temporary gloating crap shoot on the Hill.

Where’s the action; Where’s the coup?

(Gotta have a coup, gotta see it through.)

It’s the newest established temporary gloating crap shoot on the Hill.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:32 | link | comments

Thursday, 04 December 2008

B.C."rights" apparatchiks strike again: Another less than Solomonic ruling from those geniuses in B.C. From the National Post:

VANCOUVER - A British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal panel was accused of "pervasive bias" and illogic after deciding yesterday that a company building Vancouver's rapid transit extension discriminated against a group of temporary workers from Latin America, even though they were paid at a rate comparable to their Canadian colleagues.

In a 71-page ruling, the rights panel decided 30 temporary workers -- from Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica--are entitled to millions of dollars in adjusted salary compensation, plus $10,000 each for unspecified "injury to dignity."

A construction workers' union that brought forward the discrimination complaint "has established that the race, colour, ancestry and place of origin of members of the complainant group were factors in the adverse treatment they suffered," the panel found.

The workers were treated for two years as though they were "worth less and less worthy than other employees because they were Latin American," the tribunal said.

Hardly, says the Vancouverbased lawyer who represented SELI Canada Inc. and SNCLavalin Constructors (Pacific) Inc., partners in the joint-venture company building the 19-kilometre Canada Line rapid transit extension in Greater Vancouver. Due to be completed next year, the Canada Line will connect downtown Vancouver to the city of Richmond and to the Vancouver International Airport.

Peter Gall denies that the 30 workers suffered any indignity on the project. On the contrary, he says, they were all well treated and well compensated.

The union that took the employment discrimination complaint to the human rights tribunal did not even represent the Latin Americans in the workplace. The 30 men had voted to remove themselves from the Construction and Specialized Workers Union, Local 1611 (CSWU) in 2006.

Regardless, the union was allowed to proceed with its human rights complaint...

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:57 | link | comments

GG prorogues the House: Such a funny word, "prorogue"--the parliametary equivalent of a hudna, i.e. a break in the action, knowing full well that hostilies will undoubtedly break out again, often sooner rather than later (in this case, toward the end of January).

During the proroguement, it remains to be seen whether the country will be pro-rogue, or anti-rogue.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:27 | link | comments

Cast of Little Mosque on the Prairies drops by T.O. for some wholesome "twinning" fun: What's that you say? It isn't the cast of the Ceeb shill-com; it's a bunch of King Abdullah's winsome twinners? Awfully hard to tell the diff, if you ask me. From the Canadian Jewish News:

TORONTO — Enthusiasm and goodwill pervaded a lively gathering of 100 Jews and Muslims, who met for an interfaith dialogue on Abraham and his place in their respective religious traditions.

Pictured are the organizers of the recent twinning of Temple Emanu-El and the Noor Cultural Centre. In the back, from left, are Rabbi Debra Landsberg, spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El; Shahid Akhtar, co-chair of the Canadian Council of Jews and Muslims (CCJM); and Prof. Timothy Gianotti, Noor Fellow at York University. In the front row are, Samira Kanji, left, president of the Noor centre, and Barbara Landau, CCJM co-chair. [Barbara Silverstein photo]

The Sunday-morning brunch hosted by the Noor Cultural Centre in Don Mills capped a weekend of joint events held by the Noor centre and Temple Emanu-El in North York. Members of both groups had also attended Friday afternoon worship at the Noor centre and Kabbalat Shabbat and Shabbat services at the synagogue.

The program was part of a North American-wide initiative held on the weekend of Nov. 22, when the parshah of the week spoke of Isaac and Ishmael, the two older sons of Abraham, coming together for their father’s burial.

Some 50 synagogues and 50 mosques in cities in Canada and the United States participated in a weekend of twinning initiated by Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

Other twinnings of Islamic and Jewish institutions in the GTA included Solel Congregation and the Islamic Centre of Canada, in Mississauga; Temple Har Zion and the Jafari Cultural Centre, both in Thornhill; and Beth Torah Congregation in Toronto and the Lote Tree Foundation in Brampton. As well, Hamid Slimi of the Canadian Council of Imams spoke at Beth Tzedec Congregation on Shabbat.

The discussion of Abraham at the Sunday brunch at the Noor centre was co-lead by Prof. Timothy Gianotti, Noor Fellow at York University – he gave the Islamic interpretation – and Rabbi Debra Landsberg, spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El.

According to Rabbi Landsberg, Abraham understood that God could never be controlled, so he introduced prayer as a way of engaging in a relationship with God.

She said Abraham brought God into the world through actions or mitzvot. “The connection between the religion of Abraham and Moses is that Abraham observed all the laws that were revealed at Sinai.”

Gianotti noted that the Qur’an encompasses writings attributed to both Abraham and Moses. “The Qur’an makes reference to divine commandments.”

He said the prophet Muhammad descended from a group of monotheistic desert dwellers believed to have descended from Ishmael. “There was some kind of Abrahamic religion alive in the desert.”

Followers “engaged in fasting and gave alms to the poor,” he said. “Some Abrahamic tradition is at the core of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.”

Gianotti said that in the Qur’an, Ishmael rather than Isaac was the son who was set to be sacrificed by Abraham. “Ishmael was a willing participant.”

Rabbi Landsberg pointed to parallels between this interpretation and some talmudic commentary that says Isaac was willing to be sacrificed. “Isaac knew what was going on. He said, ‘Bind me tightly father.’”

She also said that some talmudic scholars contend that Qetura, the woman Abraham married after Sarah’s death, was actually her former servant Hagar, the mother of Ishmael.

Samira Kanji, president of the Noor centre, was pleased about the outcome of the weekend. “The response from the two communities has been overwhelming. We needed a catalyst like the twinning program.”

Gianotti was equally enthusiastic. “This weekend surpassed our expectations. We feel like family. We’re like-minded with similar values.”

Shahid Akhtar, co-chair of the Canadian Council of Jews and Muslims, called the weekend a “dream come true.” He noted that the council, established in 1996, was the first organization in North America to bring Jews and Muslims together.

His Jewish co-chair, Barbara Landau, said the weekend re-energized their group.

“I loved this weekend. It just shows that conflict can be resolved if we appeal to people’s best instincts.”

What say you to that, oh custodian of the two holy mosques? That appealing to people's best insticts thing certainly seems to be working for you.

Here’s my missive to the CJN’s editor. Read it here, ‘cause you won’t be reading it in the paper:

I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about the “enthusiasm and goodwill” engendered during the weekend of “twinning” were it not for the giantelephant in the interfaith parlour. I’m referring, of course, to Israel, the Jewish state the gives rise to so much friction between the two groups, the “elephant” that had to be ignored at all costs so that the warm feelings could blossom. Call me a sceptic, but while many Canadian Muslims and Jews saw this weekend as a unique opportunity to build bonds and bridges between their communities, I’m afraid I couldn’t help but see it as something else: an attempt by a clever Saudi king to drive a wedge between North American Jews and the Jewish state .

I say that because this “twinning” project is part of King Abdullah’s larger “interfaith” scheme. At the international level, it consists of hosting conferences and lobbying the United Nations to prohibit “defamation” of religion (so no one will be able to say anything critical about his religion); in North America it consists of this twinning effort, a way for Muslims and Jews to “get past” the primary impediment to their building a relationship--that pesky Jewish state. And, ultimately, that’s precisely what the Saudi king aims to do--get past Israel, i.e. consign it to the past. The reason he’s so keen for it to be gone: for someone with his world view, Jewish sovereignty in Israel is an insult to Islam and its doctrines. Of course, not too many Jews would be willing to partake of his hospitality were he to make his intentions so bald. For that reason, he has had the good sense to make them more palatable by dressing them up in the sheep’s clothing of “peace” and “interfaith dialogue” and “our common Patriarch, Abraham”.

In its sixty years of existence, Israel has withstood every military offensive its enemies have thrown at it. With well-intended but dangerously naïve North American Jewsbacking it, however, the Wahhabis’ “charm” offensive may yet succeed where tanks, intifadas, aerial bombardment and suicide bombers have failed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:12 | link | comments

Desperados: With apologies to Don, Glenn and the boys:

Desperados,

Why don’t you come to your senses?

Tried to build a consensus for so long now.

Oh, you’re so angry.

But we know, it’s ‘cause Steve’s in power.

It’s makin’ you glower and not backin’ down.

Don’t you push Dion upon us, boys,

He can’t get out a sentence.

Better send him to ESL to take a course.

Now it seems to us forgiveness

Is contingent on repentance

But we can’t forgive till ya’ get off your high horse...

Desperados,

You know that time is a-wastin’,

You’re gonna get a right pastin’, so pack up yer hate.

It may be rainin’

If so, please get and umbrella

We don’t want your kind of fellah

(Want your kind of fellah)

You better get some other fellah before it’s too late.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:04 | link | comments

Sha-wing!: Did you see the Usurper Dion's taped address to the nation last night? Not only was it delivered to the networks half an hour behind schedule, compelling the TV pundits to riff and tap dance long after Stephen Harper's brief speech, it was shot with all the finesse of a grainy 1970s porno. It was kind of like watching Wayne's World, only without the high quality production values.

And these guys want to direct the country? Quel joke!

Posted by: scaramouche at 14:13 | link | comments

It's official: The Ceeb is in bed with the Islamists.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:51 | link | comments

Wednesday, 03 December 2008

It's ba-ack!: The return of Hitler's missing cojone.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:30 | link | comments

From humility, self-effacement and a stiff upper lip to public obnoxiousness, an immense sense of entitlement and puking all over one's shoes: One of my favourite essayists, the writer who goes by the non de plume of Theodore Dalrymple, documents the tragic decline and fall of the English character.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:21 | link | comments

Are you with us or agin' us?: A question Jews need to be asking the people of India, who, post-Mumbai, seem to be siding with the wrong folks. From the Wahhabi website, Arab News:

NEW DELHI: India yesterday reiterated its strong concern over Israel’s months-long blockade of Gaza Strip, saying there could be “no justification for the denial of essential supplies, including food and fuel, to the civilian population” in the territory.

“We remain concerned with the isolation of Gaza and the recent upsurge of violence there. We also remain concerned at the adverse effects of the closure of access points into the strip on the prevailing humanitarian situation,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at the inauguration of the Indo-Arab Cooperation Forum, a cultural event being held to celebrate the relations between India and the Arab world.

The Forum was launched here yesterday with its theme as “Partnership Through Culture.” Mukherjee and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who was here as chief guest, inked the accord on setting up the Forum in the presence of envoys from Arab countries.

“We are taking an important step in our relations with the launch of the India-Arab Cooperation Forum. We believe that this Forum will emerge as a mechanism to strengthen and diversify our relations in various fields including, culture, trade, energy and human resources,” Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee and Moussa also inaugurated a weeklong cultural festival, which is marked by the presence of around 190 artistes from Arab nations, who are here to exhibit their paintings, handicrafts, music, dance and other cultural activities.

Reiterating India’s continuous support for the Palestinian cause, Mukherjee said: “We are concerned about lack of progress in the peace process. India has constantly supported the quest of the Palestinian people for a homeland in line with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 calling for a negotiated solution resulting in a sovereign, independent, viable and united state of Palestine living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel.”

Describing the Arab peace initiative, India “wholeheartedly supported” as a significant move, Mukherjee said, “Annapolis process needs to be taken forward.”

“There does not seem to have been much progress. We, however, remain convinced of the need for continued dialogue,” he said. “India and the Arab League should increase cooperation, as they have similar aspirations,” Moussa said.

Later at another function, Moussa said: “Indo-Arab relations have entered a new phase today as the Forum has opened several avenues of cooperation.” Dismissing the hype raised about clash of civilizations, Moussa said: “I believe that this does not exist.”

The function was organized by Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) in cooperation with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). “The world today does not need a clash of civilizations but a harmony of civilizations,” ICWA acting director general Ashok Kumar said.

During his address, Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed said: “A pluralistic society such as ours which stands for idea of composite culture and unity in diversity can never accept the concept of clash of civilizations.”

He did not add, but not doubt was thinking, that "we do however accept ideas such as jihad, dhimmitude and the validity of sharia, the one true law because it was given to man by Allah."

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:35 | link | comments

Quote of the day: It comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and seems very au courant:

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection. (2.1.63)

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:23 | link | comments

The madness of Stephane Dion: I don't know about you, but watching the Usurper Dion in the House of Commons yesterday in the throes of what can only be described as hysterics (the man looked like he was about to blow a gasket), I couldn't help but think that someone suffering from such an advanced case of Harper Derangement Syndrome is completely unsuited for the job of prime minister.

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

Deriving the wrong lesson from the Holocaust—again: Hate speech did not cause the Holocaust. The Holocaust could only have happened in Hitler’s Germany, and can only happen again if those who harbour an irrational obsession with the Jews are granted the power to put their eliminationist agenda into practice.

Someone want to give Len Rudner a little history lesson? In his letter to the Windsor Star, he’s got it all wrong:

'Like flowers, evil can take root anywhere'

Re: The Holocaust, Lessons We Must Remember, Nov. 24 editorial.

As Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks noted, the horror that befell the Jewish people during the Shoah could have happened to anyone.

It therefore falls to us to ensure the lessons of this dark period are not forgotten. The commitment to memory and to memorialization which we see in the ongoing work of Holocaust education committees across the country springs from a desire to ensure the words "never again" are infused with true meaning.

Years ago, I stood in a space between the barracks at Madjanek. My eyes were drawn to the wildflowers that grew between the blades of grass; flowers so similar to the ones that grew in my own garden. I remember thinking that evil, like these flowers, can take root anywhere.

We must be vigilant. We must remember.

Len Rudner
Ontario Regional Director
Canadian Jewish Congress

Hate for break it to you, Len, but the evil has already taken root again—in the Arab League, the OIC, the UN, and around the world under the auspices of the global jihad. If you could stop watching the grass grow and trying to “build bridges in the Canadian context,” maybe you’d be able to notice it.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments

Maggie's kid: What would Pierre E. Trudeau, the Canuck Obama of his time and a die-hard federalist, have to say about the Liberals climbing between the sheets with skanky Separatists? Well, according to Trudeau spawn and newbie M.P. Justin, cher papa would have thought it a grand idea.

One must cut the poor boy some slack. After all, he did inherit his ditzy mama's brains.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:09 | link | comments

Songs for the silly season:

(God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen)

Goddamn ye, scary gentlemen

Your chutzpah’s a disgrace.

Your putsch to steal the country’s

Like a hard slap in the face.

But people are so angry that they’ll

Put you in your place.

Oh, tidings of punishment to you,

You are so through.

Oh, tidings of punishment to you.

(Frosty the Snowman)

Stephane the green guy

He was given a heave-ho

By the voters who were not impressed

By his tepid kind of show.

Stephane the green guy,

Ineffectual and bland

Yet he thinks he has a mandate now

To be ruler of the land.

It must have been Jack Layton

Who thought up this crazy scheme.

Stephane’s his Faust who’s made a pact

To fulfill his wildest dream.

Oh, Stephane the green guy

As P.M.--it’s such a joke.

And our fondest wish

Is the coalish’

Very soon goes up in smoke.

(Good King Wenceslas)

Gilles Duceppe’s a happy chap.

Likes the coalition.

Canada is breaking up--

Sov’reigntists’ ambition.

Quebec’ll count its shekels

As the fed’ralists all bicker.

There’s but one way to drown it out--
Lots and lots of li-i-quor.

(Jingle Bell Rock)

Coup d’etat, coup d’etat, coup d’etat rock.

Coup d’etat time and coup d’etat crime.

Rantin’ and ravin’ on Parliament Hill

Never seemin’ to get their fill.

Giddy up lefty creeps

Off your high horse.

Your argument’s such a crock.

Fume and a-fumble in a mad power grab.

That’s the coup d’etat, that’s the coup d’etat

That’s the coup d’etat rock.

Posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments

Tuesday, 02 December 2008

When the going gets tough, the tough write song parodies: At least, that’s my way of coping with really crappy news, like the (so far) bloodless coup d’etat by arrogant, opportunistic losers currently underway (and undermining the Parliamentary system) in Ottawa.

Parody #1: Our national anthem

Oh, Canada,
Can you believe the news?
Got a P.M.
That people didn't choose.
He was forced on us
By some ruthless men
Who were desperate for power.
What a shameful act!
So contemptuous!
The taste it's left is very sour.
God keep our land
Glorious and free-ah.
Don't let Jack Layton institute Shariah.
Don't let Jack Layton institute Shariah.

Parody #2: The Banana Boat Song

Coup-oh!
Coup-oo-oo-oo-oh!
Daylight come and me wanna wake up.
Coup, it’s a coup, it’s a coup, it’s coup-oo-oo-oh.
Daylight come and me wanna wake up.

A nightmare come from a coalition.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)
They ruthless men full a' blind ambition.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)

Come, Mister Layton man, lay off on the smug now.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)
Libs, Bloc and Socialists act like a bunch of thugs now.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)
Last six months, seven months, eight months, tops.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)
Last six months, seven months, eight months, tops.
(Daylight come and me wanna wake up.)

Coup-oh! Me say coup-oo-oo-oh!
Daylight come and me wanna wake up.
Coup, me say coup, me say coup,
Me say coup-oo-oo-oh!
Daylight come and me wanna wake up…

Parody #3: It’s a Marshmallow World

It’s a coalition land that we live in.
See the Bloc snuggle up to the Libs.
It’s the time for spin, turning loss to win.
I can’t bear to hear all the fibs.

There are coalitition clouds looming darkly,
As the ‘conomy slumps in a heap.
And big government is a monument
To the arrogance of these creeps.

The world is their oyster, see how they smarm,
Full of false charm, raising alarm.
The world is their oyster, at least for a spell.
You know it won’t end up well.

It’s a crum-crummy land full of lefties
Who can’t bear to let someone else lead.
It’s a brazen play, takes your breath away,
Its aim--to make S. Harper bleed.

The world is their oyster, see how they smarm,
Full of false charm, raising alarm.
The world is their oyster, at least for a spell.
You know it won’t end up well.

It’s a crum-crummy land full of lefties
Who can’t stand to let someone else lead.
It’s a brazen play, takes your breath away,
Its aim--to make S. Harper bleed.
Its aim--to make S. Harper bleed.
Its aim--to make S. Harper bleed.

Posted by: scaramouche at 20:32 | link | comments

Monday, 01 December 2008

Ruthless people: The thing about lefties is that they don't like to take turns. Case in point: their refusal to allow Stephen Harper and his Tories to govern, as per the will of the Canadian people. Instead they decided--arrogantly, outrageously, unbelievably--that "the country" (and by "the country," of course, they mean they themselves) would be better served were it to revert to its default setting of lefty Lib. Thus we are now confronted with the bizarre sight of a coalition comprised of Liberals, the party of Pierre Trudeau and "let's do everything in our power to keep Quebec from decamping," in bed with the, um, decampers. Oh, and let's not forget the third member of this troika of loons, Smilin' Jack Layton, friend to Islamists hither and thither. The whole thing is about as unpalatable a spectacle as has ever been seen in these parts, one which has no doubt left the late architect of bilingualism and "the Just Society" spinning furioiusly in his crypt.

Go figure--for years now the lefties have accused "mean" Harper and his "mean" Tories of harbouring a "hidden agenda" when all along it was they who were really hiding one.

Posted by: scaramouche at 22:48 | link | comments

“Bris” bliss: From Der Spiegel’s “Europe’s weird ways” section—there’s a Muslim community in the Balkans for whom male circumcision en masse is an excuse for four days of revelry.

The southern Balkans region is notorious for its history of vicious ethnic bloodletting. But it's also home to one ethnic group that has traditionally preferred bloodletting of a rather more peaceful sort.

Indeed, when the former communist conglomerate of Yugoslavia crumbled over the course of the 1990s, the Gorani -- a small Muslim ethnic group scattered across present-day Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania -- weren't among the groups clamoring for a nation-state to call their own. They just wanted enough freedom to maintain their cultural traditions. For those living in the mountain villages of Donje and Gornje Ljubinje in southern Kosovo that meant, above all, the quinntenial celebration of Sunet, the festival of mass circumcision.

The modest circumstances of the Kosovar Gorani may not seem to justify celebration: the 3,000 residents are poor, even relative to their Albanian and Serb neighbors. But, the mass circumcision is a tradition that goes back centuries and locals feel it helps differentiate them from the myriad neighboring ethnic groups.

"This is why we are not the same as the others, even when it does not help us," Arif Kurtishi, a member of the Gorani diaspora who returned to Donje Ljubinje last year from Sweden for the festival, told the AFP.

At last year's Sunet, 130 boys from 10 months to five years -- some brought from abroad -- were circumcised by 70 year old Zylfikar Shishko, a barber from the nearby town of Prizren who has been performing the role for the last 45 years. "It has been so long, that I don't even know the number of boys I've circumcised in the Prizren area, maybe 15,000 or 20,000 or more," he said last year while making the rounds from home to home, likewise speaking to the AFP.

No one can recount the origins of the festival, but some speculate it was intended, centuries ago, to serve as a cost-saving measure: wholesale, rather than retail, circumcision…

Or rather, a cost-cutting measure (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:27 | link | comments

Adam and Steve?: Gay version of the bible angers Christians.

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:11 | link | comments

India’s failed modus operendi: India tried to opt out of the War Against Violent Jihadis (a more accurate name for the War on Terror), but as Arthur Herman writes on the NRO site, the violent jihadis keep opting India back in:

…Islamic terrorists don’t want justice or respect for their beliefs, or restoration of some imaginary homeland. They want violence and death. The duty of every government is to make sure that terrorists get them before they can deal them out. Pakistanis will never know peace, or peace with their neighbors in Afghanistan and India, until they finally and ruthlessly root out the terrorists in their midst.

The same goes for India. That was the second illusion that died in Mumbai: that democratic nations can somehow opt out of the war on terror. India has largely operated on that assumption since 2001, even though it is home to the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia, and wedged between two neighbors — Pakistan and Bangladesh — where Islamic terrorist groups operate in relative freedom.

The media here and in India seem to have forgotten that this was not the first round of mass death in Mumbai. Bombings rocked the city back in the summer of 2005, killing more than 200, followed by bloody attacks on Jaipur and India’s high-tech capital, Bangalore, earlier this year.

In spite of this, India’s record on counterterrorism is abysmal, almost deliberately so. The government in New Delhi steadfastly maintains a wall of separation between law-enforcement agencies like the one that used to separate the FBI and CIA before the Patriot Act, and keeps counterterrorist units underfunded and undermanned. It has repeatedly given way to the demands of Islamic radical groups and fundamentalist lobbyists in the name of “cultural sensitivity.” India was the first non-Islamic country to ban Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses back in 1988.

India has no preventive detention laws; no laws to protect the identity of anti-terrorist witnesses; and no laws to allow domestic wiretapping without court order. In 2004, the new Congress Party government revoked India’s version of the Patriot Act, even as the Indian media was loudly condemning the U.S. for “torture” at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

In short, the Indian government has waged the war on terror in much the same way that liberals and many Democrats have been urging the U.S. to carry it out. The result is that more than 4,000 Indians have died in attacks since 2004 — more than any other nation in the war on terror besides Iraq…

You can try to ignore the hard jihad all you want. Sooner or later, it’s going to blow up in your face (and Jews and others will die a horrible death).

Posted by: scaramouche at 21:00 | link | comments

David Pryce-Jones lays it all out: “It” being the meaning of the Bombay seige, the Islamists’ goals, and the infamy of the disgusting, revolting, sick-making New York Times. From NRO:

The attack on Bombay seems to have much in common with 9/11. Another group of young men have been prepared to kill and to die. On both occasions, the intention was to leave as many victims as possible. The captured terrorist says that in Bombay they intended to kill 5,000, which would have been an atrocity on a wartime scale.

A lot of planning and premeditation went into the attack. The terrorists had been trained professionally. They had also prepared the ground. The targets were carefully selected. In the big hotels and the café they could be sure to kill infidel Westerners. In the station they knew they would find local Hindus to murder. In Nariman House, the Jewish center, they captured, tortured and shot Jewish hostages. The New York Times suggests that this last outrage was an “accidental hostage scene.” The thinking behind that phrase is as bad as the grammar, but then the New York Times is more often ridiculous in its commentary than not. The terrorists were out to make a clean sweep of Christians, Hindus and Jews, and they succeeded in that.

Islamists are out to confront the whole world. Iran believes it will master and subdue the United States. Al-Qaeda believes likewise. Hamas and Hezbollah aim to destroy Israel. Assorted Islamists seek bases in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, here, there, and everywhere They are in the grip of fantasy, of course, and therefore it is pointless to argue with them about the nature of reality. The Muslim world is sinking in distress and failure, taking with it as many as it can.

What ought to happen now is a reaction on the part of those Muslims who realise what is happening, and do not wish to be taken down by fellow Muslims. Repudiation of Islamism is requisite on the part of the Kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, the ever-voluble Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh Qaradawi, anyone and everyone with a voice in the Muslim world. As it is, President Asif Zardari of Pakistan is pleading with India not to go to war. The Bombay killers wanted such a war in the evident belief that Allah is with them and they would win it. Intelligence services are warning of other similar attacks in the offing. If Muslims themselves do not manage to control and contain Islamists, there is bound to be a great deal of reality enforcement, and very tragic that will be.

Surely we can count on good King Abdullah, the potentate who wants to bring “interfaith dialogue” to the fore (and banish religious “defamation” globally, forever) to condemn the attackers. He’s such a peace-loving chap.

Update: A limerick for the oily royal and his loyal Jewish dupes:

King Abdullah set out to bamboozle

Some Jews, who eschewed a refusal.

He shmoozes and woos ‘em.

The Jews let him use ‘em--

An act for which there’s no excusal.

Posted by: scaramouche at 15:00 | link | comments

Elmo the psychic: Found this Nostradamus-like prediction nestled in a post-election Elmo op-ed piece:

Jack Layton’s NDP gained seats, and credibility, as never before in this latest election. Looking ahead to the next general election (and it might be closer than we expect), an interesting hypothesis would be an NDP-Green collaboration, strengthened by small-g "green" Liberals, which could pack enough clout to be an effective governing coalition - or a formidable official opposition.

Hmmm. How oddly—dare one say eerily?—prescient.

Posted by: scaramouche at 13:11 | link | comments

Everything old is prez again: Given that the entire hopey-changey thing has turned out to be a giant scam (since the only “second coming” on the horizon is that of the has-been Clinton crew), cheeky blogger iowahawk puts forth a modest proposal:

WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.

"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."

Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.

"I am gratified that the President-Elect has entrusted me with this important responsibility," said Clinton. "I'm looking forward to getting back behind, and under, the Oval Office desk again. As I have told the President-Elect, I pledge to do whatever I can to serve his historic administration by making sure that none of that bullshit he talked about during the campaign will ever see the light of day. Americans can rest assured that he will be safely confined to the East Wing, as far away as possible from any potentially dangerous office equipment or nuclear buttons."

The long anticipated naming of Clinton to head Obama's Oval Office team comes after a week that saw Obama appoint dozens of Clinton associates to his transition team including John Podesta, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hundreds of other Clinton Administration holdovers are rumored to be in line for remaining appointments, including Bill Richardson, Janet Reno, Webb Hubbell, Chelsea Clinton, zombie Vince Foster, and zombie Socks the cat.

"Let's face it, it's obvious I'm in way over my head here," explained Obama. "Anyone paying attention knows I am a disaster waiting to happen, and who can blame them? I mean, just look at the stock market. That's why I think it's in the best interest of the country that I hand over the reins to people who, whatever their ethical shortcomings, at least have a faint clue about what they're doing. Come on, man. I've got a 401-k, too."…

Hey, what about the Clintons’ hyper-exuberant late chocolate lab? If zombie Socks gets an appointment, zombie Buddy should get one too.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:58 | link | comments

It's the jihad, stupid kafirs: While letters like this one, insisting there’s no need to add “the word ‘Muslim’ to certain acts of terror” (because "bad apples exist in all cultures"), keep showing up in Canadian newspapers (and the Ceej, among others, falls in line with such thinking) Andrew Bostom has the temerity to set everyone straight. From the American Thinker:

Sixty hours of jihadist terror depradations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai -- during which nearly 200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded -- apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism -- perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") -- consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics.

The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." …

40 times, you say. But surely at least some of those times referred to that personal, internal struggle to lead the kind of life Allah would approve of, right?

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

Power play: One of the delightful advisors neophyte Obama has chosen to surround himself with is the lovely and talented Samantha Power. Sam, as you may recall, was forced to go on hiatus during The One’s leadership race when she made some catty remarks about Hillary C. Now Ms. Power is back from her brief stay in the political wilderness, and, as Melanie Phillips warns, getting set to do dirt to the Jewish state:

Looks like as well as walking on water Barack Obama also resurrects people from under the bus where he’s thrown ’em. His erstwhile foreign affairs adviser and close friend Samantha Power was fired from his campaign after she called Hillary Clinton 'a monster'. But now we learn that Power is back (as she herself predicted all along) on Obama’s transition team advising the Prez-elect on matters relating to the State Department – where Hillary is apparently to be appointed imminently as Secretary of State.

Quite apart from the interesting future dynamics of this relationship, it means that Power will be bringing her views to bear upon State employees and Obama’s foreign policy. As I wrote here previously, those views include not only advocating the ending of all aid to Israel and redirecting it to the Palestinians, but also the need to land a ‘mammoth force’ of US troops in Israel to protect the Palestinians from Israeli attempts at genocide (sic) – although she subsequently claimed not to remember nor understand what she had said on that occasion -- and her complaint that criticism of Barack Obama all too often came down to what was ‘good for the Jews’.

Isn’t the new centrist Obama so very reassuring!

And for those who are counting on Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s pit bull, to come to Israel’s defence (because he’s Jewish and because his Israeli dad once belonged to the Irgun), you can knock it off right now. According to former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, a gent who has spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill and who has had a couple of up-close-and-personals with the Chief of Staff-designate, Rahm is a leftist ideologue who, were he living in Israel, would probably be a member of Peace Now. (Mr. Ettinger, a charming, articulate man, spoke in Toronto last week, and a few of us had the privilege of dining with him the evening before his talk.)

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

Titanic political crisis: Remember when Canada used to be as solid and stable as the Continental Shelf, and Canadians had the luxury of twittering at countries like, say, Italy, which seemed to have a new slew of feckless political opportunists in charge every few months or so?

Et bien raise your berets to those Canaan days.

Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, for one, wants to halt the coalition lunacy before it sinks us:

We must take back our country right now from the power-crazed, political hacks in Ottawa who are rolling the dice with Canada's future.

Doing so for their own selfish ends, while our economy burns and hundreds of thousands of Canadians either have lost or are about to lose their jobs.

In that context, there are two questions we must demand answers to from all federal politicians today.

The first is to Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, his would-be successors and NDP Leader Jack Layton, and it is this: What is the secret deal you're negotiating with Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois, separatists committed to the destruction of Canada, to win their support and take power next week without an election?

The second is for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, since he was basically prepared to do the same thing in 2004, although it never went that far, and it is this: "Are you prepared to offer, or have you offered, anything to the separatists to win their support for your government and if so, what?

Yesterday's allegation by the Conservatives that Layton had boasted to his caucus that he and Duceppe had reached an agreement "a long time ago," along with NDP denials and countercharges the Tories broke the law by listening in on their caucus deliberations, is a sideshow to the real issue.

Whatever happened, of course the Liberals and NDP are making clandestine offers to the separatists in order to obtain power. It wouldn't be beyond the Conservatives to do the same.

Our very sovereignty is at stake.

For the first time, a party dedicated to the political destruction of Canada, operating contrary to the wishes of the majority of Canadians outside and inside Quebec, holds the balance of power between competing federalist forces in a minority Parliament. That alone could reignite western separatism and tear Canada apart.

It's un-Canadian and we must demand all these scheming federalist politicians stop selling us out to the Bloc.

They have no right to play Russian roulette with Canada.

Time to start singing Nearer My God to Thee, I think, ‘cause this ship of state is sinking fast.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:48 | link | comments

Fugue for Tinpots: Well, guys and dolls, it looks like Canada's three lefty leaders--one a big loser, another a power-mad Socialist, the third a creep who wants to usher his entire provence out of Confederation--cannot abide the idea of the Tories at the helm during these dark economic times. They are conspiring like a bunch of lean and hungry Romans to seize the reigns of power and put themselves in control for the next two and a half years. If you're very quiet, you can listen in on their harmonious discussions :

“Greenly Greenly” Dion:
I’ll set the course right now,

That’s if you’ll both allow,

And we three will give Steve H. a cow.

Can do,

I say that the left can do.

Who sez that Dion is through?

Can do, can do….

Gilles the Pill:

It’s like a coup d’etat.

The folks will go,“Rah, rah!”

And we’ll celebrate like it’s Mardi Gras.

Bon chance! Bon chance!

The people will say bon chance!

Tho’ some look at us askance,

Bon chance! Bon chance!...

Smilin’ Jackie:

We’ll write Steve’s epitaph

In just a paragraph

And then we’ll sit right down and we'll have a laugh.

Big threat, big threat,

The Tories posed a big threat.

But now it’s a surefire bet

No threat, no threat...

The three tinpots:

Epitaph; coup d’etat; both allow…

We’ll set the course right now!

Update: "Cassius" Ignatieff for P.M? Well, he is the leanest, hungriest looking Lib in the land.

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