scaramouche

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

It’s the sharia, stupid lesbian: An irate Jewish lesbian responds to Lauren Posen’s letter to the Toronto Star:

As a Jewish lesbian in Toronto involved in human rights work (I lead the human rights campaign at Pride this year focussing on LGBT abuses in Jamaica), I want to elucidate some of the comments made by Lauren Sarah Posen, who was affronted by signs that said "Down with Israeli Apartheid" at Toronto Pride.

While Posen sings the praises of Israel's record on gay rights, she seems to ignore the rest of the human rights violations that it perpetrates daily. Let us be clear about one thing: Israel has a good record on gay rights – if you are Jewish. The same cannot be said for their record on human rights in many other categories.

Israel has been engaged in an illegal occupation that has contravened UN resolutions; they have built a wall that the International Court of Justice has denounced and deemed illegal in its appropriation of (yet more) Palestinian land; and Israel has sanctioned the mistreatment of prisoners in interrogation condoning what has been classified as torture.

When making my feature documentary film Zero Degrees of Separation (NFB), about gay and lesbian Palestinian and Israeli couples, I worked with an Israeli queer group called Black Laundry. Despite being banned from the Tel Aviv Pride parade, they marched nonetheless with their sign: "No Pride in the Occupation."

They understand – as many other gays, lesbians and progressives do – that oppressions are indeed connected and that gay equality does not cleanse governments of other crimes.

So clever, those "progressives". My letter:

Elle Flanders isn’t swayed by Lauren Posen’s arguments about gays in Israel being accorded rights they don’t have elsewhere in the Middle East since, according to Flanders, “gay equality doesn’t cleanse” Israel of the “crime” of “occupation”.

Ah, yes, “the Occupation.” No point in harping on genuine rights available in a genuine democracy--and the fact that gays in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Gaza are apt to be stoned to death or hanged for their “crime” of being gay--when the West Bank (though not Gaza)  remains under Israeli control. That might divert attention away from “the Occupation”--the all-purpose excuse Arabs and their supporters use to account for the problems in the Middle East, delegitimize Israel and let Islamic regimes off the hook.

“The Occupation” is like Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor (a chap who, it should be pointed out, would have fit right in at Toronto’s Pride Parade). No wonder Flanders is upset that Posen, in a roundabout way, has exposed the naked truth about it.

For progressive types like Ms. Flanders, a pre-occupation with "the Occupation" covers a multitude of Arab sins.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:52 | link | comments |

Too little, too late: Netherlands bars Iranian students from nuclear studies.

As if that's going to put the brakes on the Big Kaboom.

posted by: scaramouche at 12:24 | link | comments (1) |

One-tiered freedom is nowhere near free enough: A variety of media outlets— the Ceeb,  the Calgary Herald, the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail—are touting the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision which supposedly affirms Canadians' ability to iterate the offensive. The case involved a radio talk show host who said some nasty things about a Christian opponent of gay rights on the air, including comparing her views to the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan. The woman sued for defamation, lost, won on appeal, and lost again at the Supreme Court. In the words of Justice Ian Binnie, who wrote the SCOC decision: "We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones."

Well, yes. In the context of the regular court system—where Lady Justice is blind and truth and fair comment are considered—someone suing for “defamation” is going to have a much tougher time proving a case. In the context of the human rights “courts” however, the truth and fair comment are irrelevent, and because of the way the law is worded, a defendant who has said something untoward is always—I repeat—always guilty.

Of course, a Christian like the woman who sued for defamation could never bring suit in the p.c. judicial system because, given the mindset of those in charge, someone like her is only ever on the receiving end of complaints and never the complainant. Just ask the Rev. Stephen Boissoin, who has been forced, Soviet-style, to utter a fake apology and has been barred for life from ever saying anything offensive about homosexuals again.

So while freedom of speech has been upheld by one tier of our judicial system, as long as that other tier is around to hound us, free expression in Canada is, to borrow one of our judicial expressions, a faint hope.

On the other hand, since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is suing Ezra Levant, the National Post’s Jonathan Kay and a few bloggers in a real court, this precedent bodes well for the free-speechers.

posted by: scaramouche at 12:17 | link | comments |

Freedom, without loopholes: Americans are free because it says so right there in their Constitution’s First Amendment. Canadians aren’t free because, while our freedom is supposedly enshrined in our much vaunted Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s Supreme Court hobbled our most vital freedom—free expression—when if affirmed that the “right” to not be exposed to and offended by “hate speech” trumps the freedom to offend. On the occasion of America’s birthday, an editorial in the Dallas Morning News celebrates the singularity of American freedom:

On the Fourth of July, the day we celebrate America's liberty and independence, it's worth contemplating how much more free America is than most other nations in the West.

Why? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. How very much depends on these 45 words:

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.

"The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world," says writer Mark Steyn, who's learning it the hard way. Mr. Steyn and Maclean's, the top-selling Canadian magazine, have faced human rights charges in British Columbia. Their alleged offense? Maclean's published a Steyn essay critical of Islam, which prompted Muslim activists to file formal charges accusing the writer and the magazine of violating Canada's hate-speech laws.

Last Friday, the national Human Rights Commission dismissed the charges, but they're still pending in front of a provincial panel. The victory is less than what it appears. For one thing, defending against the charges cost the magazine hundreds of thousands of dollars. For another, it is frightening to think that a human rights panel has the right to decide what can and cannot be published in a free country.

It's not just Canadian critics of Muslims whose speech is under attack. The Alberta Human Rights Commission ruled that the Rev. Stephen Boissoin had broken the country's hate-speech laws by criticizing homosexuals. Last month, the panel ordered the minister to pay damages, apologize and desist from criticizing homosexuality for the rest of his life.

Similarly, the Ontario Human Rights Commission recently ordered a large Christian social service ministry to abandon its statement of faith as discriminatory against gays and to send its employees to diversity training.

Free speech also is in trouble in Europe. Last month, a French court fined actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot $23,000 for violating hate-speech laws. Complaining about Islamic sheep-slaughtering customs, Ms. Bardot had said Muslims were "destroying" France. In May, British police arrested a teenager for calling Scientology a "cult" at a peaceful demonstration.

Also that month, police in The Netherlands arrested Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot on suspicion of incitement to hatred and discrimination for cartoons alleged to be anti-Muslim. The Dutch police, who have established a branch to investigate cartoons, recently brought in proprietors of a Website critical of multiculturalism to explain comments left on the site.

None of this could have happened in the United States, where the right to say what's on your mind, no matter whose feelings it may hurt, is considered vital to the self-government of a free people. The First Amendment means that in our liberal democracy, we have to tolerate speech many of us find obnoxious or offensive. But it affirms that enduring hateful or distasteful oratory is far less dangerous than giving taboos on controversial speech the force of law.

It is not too much to say that all of our freedoms depend on the First Amendment, for if we cannot speak and worship freely, we are on the road to tyranny. On Independence Day, and every day, we must be grateful for the foresight of the Founders, who understood as no others in their position had before or have since, how sacred freedom of speech is…

How tragic, how sickening, and at the same time how typically Canadian, that our Supreme Court couldn’t muster the same kind of wisdom.

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

They don’t call ‘em useful idiots for nada: Now that Communism is a thing of the past, Western intellectuals and dummies inclined to self-loathing and enemy-worship have signed on with a new—and yet very, very old—batch of totalitarians. Daniel Pipes has the details:

"Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist," said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Che Guevara's son Camilo, who also visited Tehran last year, declared that his father would have "supported the country in its current struggle against the United States." They followed in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, who in a 2001 visit told his hosts that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." For his part, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ("Carlos the Jackal") wrote in his book L'islam révolutionnaire ("Revolutionary Islam") that "only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States."

It's not just Latin American leftists who see potential in Islamism. Ken Livingstone, the Trotskyite former mayor of London, literally hugged prominent Islamist thinker Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general, visited Ayatollah Khomeini and offered his support. Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, visited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and endorsed Hezbollah's keeping its arms. Ella Vogelaar, the Dutch minister for housing, neighborhoods, and integration, is so sympathetic to Islamism that one critic, the Iranian-born professor Afshin Ellian, has called her "the minister of Islamization."

Dennis Kucinich, during his first presidential campaign in 2004, quoted the Koran and roused a Muslim audience to chant "Allahu akbar" ("God is great") and he even announced, "I keep a copy of the Koran in my office." Spark, youth paper of Britain's Socialist Labour party, praised Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British suicide bomber who attacked a Tel Aviv bar, as a "hero of the revolutionary youth" who had carried out his mission "in the spirit of internationalism." Workers World, an American Communist newspaper, ran an obituary lauding Hezbollah's master terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh.

Some leftists go farther. Several — Carlos the Jackal, Roger Garaudy, Jacques Vergès, Yvonne Ridley, and H. Rap Brown — have actually converted to Islam. Others respond with exhilaration to the violence and brutality of Islamism. German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen termed 9/11 "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos," while the late American novelist Norman Mailer called its perpetrators "brilliant."

And none of this is new. During the Cold War, Islamists favored the Soviet Union over the United States. As Ayatollah Khomeini put it in 1964, "America is worse than Britain, Britain is worse than America and the Soviet Union is worse than both of them. Each one is worse than the other, each one is more abominable than the other. But today we are concerned with this malicious entity which is America."…

Dennis Kucinich? Ramsey Clark? Noam Chomsky?  Karlheinz flipping Stockhausen? Yikes. A veritable Who’s Who of oh-so-clueless loons.

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

Defending the indefensible: What kind of guy is CIC chief and “human rights” booster Mo Elmasry? He’s the kind of guy who thinks odious thug Robert Mugabe hasn't received a fair shake.

This one’s for you, Elmo:

A despot named Robert Mugabe

Had a not-so-unusual hobby:

He stole without shame.

“The West  is to blame!”

Says Elmo to account for the robb’ry.

posted by: scaramouche at 20:33 | link | comments |

How the mighty have fallen: It’s official. The U.K.—or should I say Britainistan?—has become a quasi-sharia state. From the Daily Mail (link via Diana West):

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: 'Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.

But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.

Tories said that legal equality must be respected and that rulings incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.

Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams suggested Islamic law could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.

The Lord Chief Justice said yesterday of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes'.

He added there is 'widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law'…

The “misunderstanding” being the widespread belief that, basically, it's innocuous--just another kind of law, only more “religious.”

posted by: scaramouche at 18:53 | link | comments |

The Crown’s loose cannon: Much of the Crown’s case against the alleged Toronto jihadis revolves around the testimony of an imam who was paid a whack of dough to infiltrate a jihadi summer camp and snitch on the miscreants. As Dr. Phil might say, “How’s that workin’ for you, Crown? As the Crown would be forced to reply under the circumstances—the circumstances being that their star witness has turned out to be an untrustworthy buffoon—"Not so good." From the Globe and Mail:

An RCMP mole and star witness in a terrorism case defiantly warned prosecutors against attacking him at the coming trials of the 10 key "Toronto 18" suspects.

Police informant Mubin Shaikh said yesterday that he was "nobody's shill." Two weeks earlier, the Crown pounced on him at the trial of a youth on terrorism charges for contradicting statements he had made at a previous hearing.

His warning to prosecutors came outside a Toronto court minutes after he pleaded guilty to threatening a pair of 12-year-old girls in April, 2007, in his Etobicoke neighbourhood.

Mr. Shaikh, a devout Muslim who was paid $300,000 by the RCMP to infiltrate an alleged terrorist cell, said a group of preteens had "swarmed" his two children, and when the group did not back off at his request, he threatened two girls.

Mr. Shaikh pleaded guilty to telling the girls, "Do you know who I am? I'm going to chop off your legs!"

Outside the court, he said the pair had called him "Taliban boy" and "Osama bin Laden" based on his "overtly Islamic appearance" - a prayer cap, long beard and traditional clothing.

"I hear Osama bin Laden a lot, but I'm half the height of Osama bin Laden, so I don't know why people mistake me for him," he said.

The judge gave him a conditional discharge and two related charges of assault were dropped.

After leaving the courtroom, Mr. Shaikh said he was pleased the whole matter was behind him before the trial of the adults accused in the terrorism case begins.

"Everything's cleared, now I can just focus on the adult trial," he said.

In May, 2007, Dennis Edney, defence attorney for the alleged ringleader of the terrorist group, told The Globe and Mail he would consider using the threatening charges to question Mr. Shaikh's integrity as a witness.

Although he testified for five days at the trial of the youth, now 20 years old, last month, the incident was never raised in cross-examination.

The most aggressive questioning he faced came from Crown prosecutor John Neander, who grilled Mr. Shaikh about how much the youth knew about the alleged terrorist plot.

Mr. Shaikh also clarified some of his testimony from the terror trial, saying that the youth and other minors were asked to clean up shell casings and litter at an alleged terrorist training camp to hide evidence, but had been told by the leaders of the group that it was to protect wildlife.

He maintained throughout his testimony that the leaders had "nefarious" intentions, but the youth on trial was kept in the dark about the alleged plot. He said the cross-examination by the Crown caught him off guard.

"... I'm kept in a room and they don't tell me anything. I can't be expected to stick to some script," he said.

"I'm not bought and paid for," he said. "The only script I follow is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. If the Crown has a problem with that, they can take it up with God."…

Good thinking. At this stage it sounds like God may be the only one who can get their case back on track. Maybe next time authorities should think before taking up a “helpful” imam's offer to lend a hand.

posted by: scaramouche at 14:44 | link | comments (4) |

Madness, with piano: In honour of America's birthday, Sir Elton John has agreed to tweak one of his favourite songs (the one which happens to be my own personal Sir Elton favourite):

And now we know

“Allahu akbar” is something that jihadis like to shout.

Six years ago

We shoulda known

Democracy won’t  grow in Gaza City.

 

Until we see the worst can all come true

We’ll stand at the brink 'til Iran sparks Shoah, Part 2.

And I pray to the lord there’s people out there who see.

I pray to the lord there’s people out there who see.

 

While Condoleezzas and mad mullahs,

Tons of nutters, tons of liars,

Work so hard for the demise of Is-ra-el.

For unless it’s all stopped now

A nightmare looms, and how!

How far it all will go, well, who can tell?

 

This jihad’s got
It's got a lot of folks to kill.
If we “got” the truth we might wise up.

Hope we “get it” soon.

Like, say, today at noon?

Lest they blow up some more of New York City.

 

Subway's no place for a shahid to explode.
Kafirs should ride in peace and not in pieces.
And I thank the Lord for those who foil the jihad plots.
I thank the Lord for the foilers of jihad.

 

While Condoleezzas and mad mullahs,

Tons of nutters, tons of liars,

Work so hard for the demise of Is-ra-el.

For unless it’s all stopped now

A nightmare looms, and how!

How far it all will go, well, who can tell?

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

The two faces of Islam: Once again the Globe and Mail opens its editorial page to CAIR-CAN founder, Sheema Khan. And once again Sheema tries to persuade us ignorant kafirs that, aside from a few blips, all is copacetic with the one true faith. In today’s piece of shillery, Sheema explains the difference between “hirabis”—“barbarians” like Osama who “evoke the Mohammed’s name but...rarely cite his example” and who “cloak their murderous intentions in the mantle of jihad to provide legitimacy for their terror”—and regular Muslims, like her, who abhor such violence:

…It is public disclosure of information that offers the best arguments against these one-sided views. As evidence is presented and rebutted, a more complete picture emerges, thereby challenging assumptions and awakening people to the blood lust of those professing jihad, to the hate of humanity pervading chat rooms, to the contempt that these young extremists have for their fellow Muslims.

One can oppose foreign policy through existing democratic channels without resorting to violence. This path requires patience and justice – like that displayed by the Prophet.

As Peter Bergen noted in The New Republic, the real, battle-hardened jihadis are beginning to confront the hirabis on their own turf with the stark immorality of their nihilistic visions. But every Muslim has a responsibility to confront the hate espoused by these hirabis. Silence is not an option.

A few blocks from the Ottawa courthouse where Momin Khawaja faces terrorism charges, Parliament Hill played host to a symposium on Cosmopolitan Identity in the Islamic World. The meeting's purpose was to create dialogue between Western policy-makers and Muslim thinkers, counteract misperceptions and facilitate Muslims' contributions to their societies, based on the rich history of Islamic thought.

The contrast between the two events could not have been starker. Each represents a metaphor for the vision of Islam offered by disparate groups. One involves engagement, dialogue and confidence in universal paradigms rooted in Islamic thought. The other presents a totalitarian vision rooted in hate, death and destruction. The choice couldn't be clearer.

In other words, why resort to bloodshed when you can spread the “universal paradigms”— ones which, sorry, Sheema, are every bit as “totalitarian” as the “hirabis’,” grounded as they all are in the same “Islamic thought”—in a far less messy way? A spoonful of da’wa makes the medicine go down, eh?

Sheema’s right about there being “two stark visions for Canadian Muslims,” though. There’s the CIC vision, which entails making Canadians shut up about Islam, as per the requirements of  sharia law. And then there’s the Tarek Fatah vision, which entails speaking out against creeping/galloping sharia insinuating itself into Canada's body politic—and eliciting lots of hate mail and death threats because of his outspokenness. Here’s his letter in the Globe responding to yesterday’s threatening communiqué from the CIC:

Toronto -- Zijad Delic of the Canadian Islamic Congress refers to "the denigration of Muslims in the pages of Maclean's magazine" (Muslims And Maclean's - letters, July 3). Wrong.

Maclean's has never attacked Muslims, but has also not shied away from critiquing Islamism as a political ideology. It is ordinary Muslims who are fed up with Islamists using Islam as a political tool. For exposing the Islamist agenda in Canada, "Thank you, Maclean's."

posted by: scaramouche at 12:37 | link | comments (3) |