Musharraff: Canada's Losses Trivial

According to CBC News, Musharraff has told Canadians that this is war and they must toughen up. Harper is silent.

No doubt, Pakistan's military ruler is right. The losses are not only tiny, they are nearly nonexistent compared to the 1,500 Taliban our troops have taken out.

I wonder what the death count looks like for Canada in traffic accidents in the same period of time.

But it does put Harper on the spot. I wonder if that was the plan.

Unhappy? We'll Kill You! (for a fee)

See CQ for: Assisted Suicide: It's Not Just For The Ill Anymore. Many comments are mind-bogglingly stupid (except mine, of course).

What A Post!

From a reader at DanielPipes.com in response to "Finding Allah in Unlikely Places." He calls himself, believe it or not, Chayim Yenkel! My grandmother would've loved that! It is response to Pipes' story about Muslims getting Nike to recall Nike Air sneakers because "offended Muslims" claimed to see the name "Allah" where "Air" is written. Pulled out of the air indeed. I have a few posts there too. The whole string is interesting. But here is Chayim Yenkel's brilliant post:

Submitted by Chayim Yenkel, Sep 13, 2006 at 11:24

God alone is holy. Not His name, not His prophets, but God alone. Holiness that spreads from God first to this great prophet, then to this lesser one, thus to this king or this cleric, this teacher, this imam to this promising student to that student's beloved gerbil in his cage is a primitive and corrupt debasement of all that is holy.

Nothing is holy but God. Put his name in the bottom of your sneakers, write it with ketchup in a urinal! God is still holy no matter what. His holiness is independent of ours. We can choose to come near or to stay away. It's our decision, our loss, our gain. This Nike complaint is all irrational primitive gibberish. Worship the Haram al Sharif or the Temple Mount, worship the bones of the saints, worship the images of your prophets: you are all idolaters locked away from God with no way in to His presence. Submit to God, not to His creatures or any representation of God or His creatures! God's name defiled on a Nike? What nonsense!

Isn't that glorious!

Tokyo Rose Redux

At The Muslim Question, Lance has an interesting comparison between WW2 Japanese propagandists and Democrats. Here's a quote from David Horowitz:

"During World War II, the Japanese...gave their psychological warfare script to their famous broadcaster 'Tokyo Rose' and every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale. What was that
demoralizing message? It had three main points:

• Your President is lying to you.
• This war is illegal.
• You cannot win the war."

—David Horowitz

Thank God For Fools

because without them we wouldn't have excellent arguments like that provided by Joel Pollak, who has had his article, "Kasrils and South Africa: apologists for Iran" published in the Mail & Guardian. Pollack responds to Kasril's shrill denunciation of Israel on September 1, titled "Rage of the Elephant"

Pollack chastised Kasrils for his stupid catagorization of Israelis as "Nazis."

Kasrils is right to invoke the Nazi era; however, he has got the labels the wrong way round. Like Hitler’s Germany, Iran is bent on regional domination at any cost, and is imprisoned by an official ideology of anti-Semitic hatred. (The very name "Iran" means "Aryan" and was bestowed on the country in 1935 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, an ardent admirer of Hitler and his racial theories.)

Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is determined to pick up where Hitler left off. Not only does he wish to destroy Israel, he also yearns for the collapse of what he calls "liberalism and Western-style democracy." Israel is playing the role of Czechoslovakia, circa 1938: a lone, vulnerable democracy encircled by hostile, totalitarian powers. Like Czechoslovakia, Israel is at risk of being abandoned by fellow democracies, such as South Africa, for short-sighted reasons.

And what are those reasons?

Lately, South Africa has become the chief apologist for Iran in the democratic world. During the war, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad attempted to deny the fact that Iran has been funding and supplying Hizbullah. Worse, our government has tried to shield Iran’s nuclear programme from action by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council.The minister’s contribution is to paint "the axis of Hizbullah, Hamas, Syria and Iran" as benign forces, merely seeking to restore a regional balance of power.

These are the primary sources of violent instability in the Middle East today, which have long sponsored terror in the region and across the globe. In Africa, for example, Hizbullah has been blamed for fuelling bloody civil wars in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kasrils, predictably, condemns Israel’s response to Hizbullah. We should not, however, indulge the self-righteousness of a man whose human rights record is indelibly stained by association with Quatro and the Bisho massacre. Last year Kasrils signed an intelligence and defence pact with Zimbabwe in the wake of Operation Murambatsvina, which saw about 700 000 Zimbabweans forcibly removed from their homes by their own government. That is roughly the same number of Palestinians who became refugees during the 1948 war, but Kasrils has nothing to say about the tragedy on South Africa’s doorstep. And while Kasrils professes sympathy for the displaced Palestinians, he fails to mention that Lebanon imprisons these refugees and their descendants in Apartheid-style separation from the rest of Lebanese society. [my emphases]

Sounds like a combination of guilt and ambition sans moral scruples. Please read the whole thing here.

Like Terrorism

Bloor and Ossington area, in front of a sports bar, less than an hour ago I witnessed a brutal assault and battery on a defenseless man whose friends did nothing but watch. I also did nothing but called the police when they were at a safe distance. I have medical reasons but I guess everybody does.

The suspects, all in their twenties:

1) a fat black guy with a blue baseball cap, dark pants and jacket, white t-shirt, about 230 pounds, mid-brown complexion;
2) a tall man, mid-brown complexion but redder, smooth long oval face with prominent dark eyes and cornrow hair, about 6 ½ feet tall;
3) a short black girl with a mid-brown complexion tending toward the grey, about five feet to 5’2", a triangular shaped face, no more than 120 pounds, wearing dark boots, jeans and a jean jacket.

The victim: about 55 years old, white and grey hair, paunchy, white roundish face.

The victim, so far as I could see, did nothing provocative but then I came on the scene when they were at the eyeballing phase. But I saw no provocation. The taller man delivered at least two or three vicious blows without the slightest look of any kind of feeling. The blows were in no way defensive but were intended to cause injury. When the man was good and down, the young "lady" ran up and kicked the man three times, once landing with her boot in his face. A last kick stomped his face from above. The fat guy went back for his knapsack waving his hands in defence, showing he meant nothing aggressive. In fact, I did not see him participate in the battery.

More Muslim Rage

Third Party and Independents debates the pope and politics.

Dawn posted this, among other things (but read the whole thing):

The man was discussing something that happened in the past.He is trying to understand how Islam works.He is not the only one who wants to know how people who claim Islam is peaceful, can also say that it is their duty to slit someone's throat in the 'name of Islam'.

David Remer answered:

Words have meaning, and those meanings conjure images of past events and experience, and words too, can be swords of their own. At this sensitive time between Muslims and Islam and the Western cultures, any leaders who proclaim to represent large numbers of the world’s population should discharge their words with forethought and acknowledgement of how those words may be perceived.

The Pope speaks to a wide audience. The first rule of public speaking is to identify who your audience is, and speak to their level of understanding to establish a bond, before seeking to change their minds and preconceptions.

The Pope screwed up, in this regard, just as Bush did when calling the war a Crusade. Such words have meaning, and those meanings conjure images of the past and experience. All words point to the past. Anyone who fails to understand this, will not be an effective public speaker capable of guiding public opinion.

Can he really be suggesting that a pope, speaking to German Catholics, should consider how a Muslim in Saudi Arabia would feel? Does he really suggest that the pope has some kind of interest or responsibility to "guide public opinion" in Islam and that they would acknowledge his leadership? Wow!

Paul Siegel wrote this:

I have no idea what the Pope’s intentions were. The first rule for a speaker is to know his audience. Yes, he was speaking directly to Germans. But he knew very well that what he said would be heard all over the world. The entire world was his audience.

If the Pope had thought about this at all, he would have known that Muslims would be offended. But he said Muslims were prone to violence anyway.

The Pope has a failing the vast majority of us have: we are sure we are right and everybody else is wrong. And, do you realize that what he said pushes many Muslims toward terrorism?

It may help a lot if the Pope apologizes to all Muslims for his remarks.

I posted this response:

People who absolve Muslims of responsibility for their violent actions do them no favours nor pay them any compliments. Muslims aren’t machines like guns whose responses can be “triggered” (to use the words Khatami’s spoke at Harvard) by this and that trivial word or image. To suggest so is to imply they are not human but some unstable chemical compound in our clumsy hands; to argue that they are above responsibility is to suggest a Muslim supercessionism that insults the rest of us. Those who excuse the behaviour of others that they would not tolerate in their neighbours and friends are nothing beneath their fine talk and polished principles but cowards.

Theocracy+Fascism=Peanut Butter Cups!

The Liberals sent Canadian troops but they just meant it for show. Now that troops have died they wanted to bring them home: the pretense is over. I guess a couple of dozen troops is what Canada's vaunted rights and freedoms are worth. I guess those women in Afghanistan will just have to stay indoors for the rest of their lives. So much for the deeply caring Left. I get it: these rights are for us, not them; to them we just increase foreign aid, buy them off, seat endless committees whose purpose is to show off our purported concern. What repulsive hypocrites!

Just because Harper isn’t duplicitous he’s insulted. As for Layton, who a lifelong (2nd generation) NDPer told me the other day is a buffoon, he wants to negotiate with a theocratic fascist terrorist party! What on earth makes him think they want to negotiate with him?

Layton's duplicity is especially striking. Don't socialists claim to be opposed to theocrats and fascists? Oh, I guess not. As I've said before: theocracy=yuck! fascism=yick! but together they're mm-mm-GOOD!

Canada's Weird War

What a way to fight a war! Report all the deaths and none of the victories! See this commentary by David J. Murrel. Hat tip to Dan.

THE GREAT FISKING

Terrific post at Augean Stables: An Open Letter to Jostein Gaarder. The very finest post about European anti-Zionism and its many roots deep in anti-Semitic supercessionist fantasies.

Ground Kofi Dumped

Kofi Annan was left hanging in the wind by the president of Iran, that blessed man who talks to the hidden imam (though he's been dead—oops: in "grand occulation"—since 941) and dreams of a chaos great enough to bring him back and end history. Captain's Quarters has it here. Amedinijad was asked not to go on about Holocaust denial (there's an exhibition in Teheran with cartoons to belittle Jewish suffering) and the nutter went to the mic and announced a new conference to "study" the "exaggerations."

Well it looks good on him! Any useful (if not treacherous) idiot who says Syria will guard the Syrian-Lebanese border to ensure weapons don't get to Hiz'b'allah, deserves to be snubbed and publicly humiliated. He also deserves it for saying "I believe the Holocaust is a fact..." He believes? It's a matter of belief? He's already well on his way to Amedinijad's position anyway. And look at the result: he gets stranded there because he didn't come all the way. Anyone thinking compromise is possible with such as he is deluded.

Khatami Insults Muslims

Jihad Watch has some of Khatami's speech last night in Chicago. Here's the business end:

"Public opinion can be rescued from the grips of ignorance and blunder and the domination of arrogant, warmongering and violence-triggering policies will end," said Khatami,...

Muslim are guns? we hold them to our heads and fire them? Is he really telling us Muslims have no free will? that they are machines and not human? that their actions are "triggered" by our actions, as if they were some unstable explosive compound in our clumsy brutish hands? Has any Islamophobe ever said a more insulting thing about Muslims?

Mental Illness Epidemic

Captain's Quarters blogs that "[t]he State Department and the National Institue of Stantards and Technology both released reports this week to stem the tide of conspiracy theorists eager to deny they are targets of terrorism and the whole thing is George W. Bush's fault. Terrye posted this:

I think fear drives a lot of this, After all if it is Bush and a few other dangerous people, then all of this will be over when he is gone. It is safe to go after Bush.

I kind of agree with Terrye, who says a lot of this is just fear, though I would call it cowardice. It's a lot like Holocaust denial. Part of that is the sheer terror that someone could just drag you and your family to a death camp because you were fool enough to pick your mom's womb to gestate in.

Of course, this falls hard on reality even with a cursory glance. As the NYT points out, it would take many thousands of explosives to bring the towers down by design, especially if one rejects the science behind the heat of jet-fuel fires and its effect on steel girders. When exactly were these explosives planted, and how did they get planted with no one's notice? And if the building was primed for demolition in this manner, how did the explosives keep from detonating at impact, or at least in the heat of the jet-fuel fire? For that matter, why design a demolition from the top down when building demolitions always take place from the ground up?

Conspiracists refuse to believe Americans were targeted because they are Americans, Israelis because they're, well, Jews actually, and that Death stalks us all just because we are alive which is true, though the characterization of Death as a personnage is, not so much crazy as a necessary imaginative tool. What do their imaginative tools tell us about the conspiracy theorists? What are those tools supposed to help them face? Well, nothing - they are shovels to dig themselves a hole to hide in so as not to face reality. In those holes they'll die, stalked by their terrors. If that ain't insanity, I don't know what is!

But is mental illness communicable? I'd say so! After all, my neighbor watched Michael Moore and "believes in it," to quote her, and believes capitalism is evil 'cause of a documentary ("The Corporation") she saw. "I believe in it," she says again. Are these shades a substitute for the religious mumbo-jumbo they reject as "irrational" and "controlling?"

Is this funny or tragic? and where is the W.H.O. when you need 'em?

CBC's Peanut Butter Cups!

IAEA finds highly enriched uranium! CBC turns and coughs!

Why is it that, when there is a real news story out of Iran, the CBC would rather publish this questionable piece of pro-Iranian propaganda? Note the ridiculous (even if it were true) assersion of the reason for the crash:

While air crashes are infrequent in Iran, Tehran says U.S. sanctions against the country have prevented it from buying new aircraft parts to repair their American or European-built planes.

CBC, seeing the sanctions-against-Iran-writing on the wall, is quickly taking its default anti-American position. Why is it that so many on the Left who profess to despise fascism and theocracy separately seem to think that, together, they're better than peanut butter cups?

Annan Must Go!

Fox to guard henhouse. See here.

Anti-Semitism and its causes

Captain's Quarters has an link to a der Spiegel interview with Charlotte Knobloch, who survived the Holocaust and became head of the German Jewish Council. More evidence that anti-Zionism is the acceptable (and legal) way of expressing anti-Semitism. Scroll down for my post, in which I write:

Lots of people have armies and defend themselves. There's a reason why Israelis, under attack constantly since the founding of their state, are perceived, not as defensive but "militaristic." There's a reason why the Israeli is seen as a persecutor of the innocent.

These reasons are at the very basis of our culture and acts of defence by Israelis (Jews have long had self-defence restrictions in both the West and Islam) reverberate so powerfully. Arafat and others since have succeeded in portraying the Isreali as the persecutor and the Palestinian as Christ (he even went so far as to suggest that Jesus was not a Jew but a Palestinian) because it's an image that lies at the core of Western culture. That core is a Christendom long denied in order to pursue internal peace.

Everyone bought the fraud that a missile was fired right through the center of the red cross on the roof of an ambulance ("in Qana, where Jesus turned water into wine, and now it's blood," as the helpful CTV news anchor said), thus proving how effective Muslim propaganda plays in Christian lands.

The blood libel against the Jew starts at the cross and it flows down to our day. The armed Israeli is perceived as the Jew with a spike and hammer, standing at the foot of the Cross.

No, you don't have to be anti-Semitic to be anti-Israeli but it sure helps. The interview with Knobloch, I think, proves that, or at least gives powerful evidence.

Hopes of Peace Dashed?

Those of us hoping for a moderate Islam to use muscle against radical Islamic fascists must be dismayed by the babblings of Miss England. See also here.