What's With the Pope Bowing to Jordan's Queen?

If he's trying to be courtly, he should knock it off.

Obama's Confounding 180 on Syria

Yesterday, John Kerry made it sound as though an American attack on Syria was imminent. Today, in a dramatic about-face, Obama says that he first has to run it by Congress for its approval. In other words, Operation Alka Seltzer (the U.S. response to bad Syrian gas) is off, likely for good.

The question is, of course: what gives, Mr. President? And what aren't you telling us about why you seem to have changed your mind? (Okay, that's two questions, but who's counting?)

I, Kim Jong-Un?

A rather bizarre piece on the National Geographic site places the pudgy despot in the company of such historical rulers as Claudius (of I, Claudius fame) and Henry XIII (of "I'm 'Enery the Eighth I Am" fame).

Just think--if Kim hadn't gone and executed his former squeeze, he'd never have found himself in such august company.

Losers: Roger Waters and His BDS Posse

It's been an epic fail for the Zion-loathers:

As unpalatable as this may be for Roger Waters’s digestion, the plain truth is that the BDS movement has failed. Its original aim was to replicate the massive outcry against South African apartheid during the 1980s, when songs like “Free Nelson Mandela” and “(I Ain’t Gonna Play) Sun City” ruled the airwaves. Instead, it has remained a fringe movement, a minor irritant that has had precious little impact on Israel’s economic life and garners media attention only when someone like Waters decides to shoot his mouth off.

Giving the Recent Baathist Gasing, a Most Unfortunate Headline

It's the Beeb's "Damascus residents 'hold their breath' as strike looms."

Sarah Palin: "So We're Bombing Syria Because Syria is Bombing Syria and I'm the Idiot?"

Yup. See how much better things work out when the "smart people" are in charge?

Update: Mark Steyn comments:

I see the Obama “reset” is going so swimmingly that the president is now threatening to go to war against a dictator who gassed his own people. Don’t worry, this isn’t anything like the dictator who gassed his own people that the discredited warmonger Bush spent 2002 and early 2003 staggering ever more punchily around the country inveighing against. The 2003 dictator who gassed his own people was the leader of the Baath Party of Iraq. The 2013 dictator who gassed his own people is the leader of the Baath Party of Syria. Whole other ball of wax. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”

No need to worry about that (the mocking, I mean). It isn't like they're dumb rednecks like Sarah Palin, or anything. Steyn goes on to say:

For a quarter-century, from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kandahar, the civilized world has gone to war only in order to save or liberate Muslims. The Pentagon is little more than central dispatch for the U.S. military’s Muslim Fast Squad. And what do we have to show for it? Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.

Meanwhile, your only real friend in the area--Israel--is likely to  feel the wrath of the Baathist and his bombs as a way of lashing out at you.

Obama's "Shame" As a Casus Belli?

Charles Krauthammer writes:

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian president Bashar Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus. 

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action. 

Or more accurately, shamed into action. Which is the worst possible reason. A president doesn’t commit soldiers to a war for which he has zero enthusiasm. Nor does one go to war for demonstration purposes...

What's the biggie, Chuck? So he'll lob a few Tomahawks and maybe topple some infrasctructure. Hey, it's worth it if it helps boost his self-esteem, right? ('Cause, you know, if there's one thing he's lacking, it's that.)

Update: It seems like only yesterday that then-SOTUS Mrs. Clinton called Assad "a reformer."

Update: Melanie Phillips opines:

What kind of Commander-in-Chief publicly announces in advance details and targets of his proposed strike? A Commander-in-Chief who is going to war not to defeat an enemy but, cynically and opportunistically, to win plaudits at home.

Update: Meet al Nusra, the most effective "rebel" force in Syria, al Qaeda's Syrian branch that's backed by the Saudis and other oily Gulf fundamentalists (making this a proxy war between Wahhabis and Khomeinists).

Update: It's all about him:

Today, The Hill is reporting the latest leak, one that completely gives away the game, quoting a “U.S. official” that “the White House is seeking a strike on Syria ‘just muscular enough not to get mocked.’”  Whether the strike does any good (or does ill, for that matter) doesn’t matter. The risk that Obama might be mocked is all that counts.

Nice Haul, Hill!

Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz gave Hillary Clinton diamond-and-ruby-encrusted jewels worth half a million dollars last year

Headliner at "MuslimFest" a Former Heart-Throb Who Became a Real Hard-Liner

Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan decries the Mississauga festival's sharia-compliant entertainers:

The festival is being held this weekend, with more pomp and razzle-dazzle than ever. Songs, theatre, poetry and fun fairs are all meant to project the softer side of Islam. It will even prove that there can be such a thing as Muslim comedy. However, one group will be barely visible on the stage: Muslim women. 

Check out MuslimFest’s Facebook page, where its 2013 poster displays a sole female performer among several male artists. All festival performances must be sharia-compliant, which means that the songs will be sung a cappella. This is not surprising, as MuslimFest sponsors SoundVision and Dawanet espouse an orthodox brand of Islam. 

Among the predominantly male artists, one stands out. Like last year, organisers have lured Pakistani superstar Junaid Jamshed to attract an even larger crowd to MuslimFest this year. Jamshed, a rock star turned mullah, these days prefers to sing the praises of the prophet Mohammad. 

This man has an interesting past. Once a heart-throb for westernized Pakistani women, he has now converted to the kind of fundamentalist Islam that demeans women.
This formerly secular actor, singer, songwriter, fashion designer and renowned pop star now lives a fully Islamic life, preaching piety through his hymns and sermons over television and radio. 

He once displayed a passion for music. He now considers it haram — or prohibited — a stern view held by only the most orthodox and fundamentalist Muslims. This is how Jamshed must be judged, as he justifies musical expression only in the form of devotional singing. 

Jamshed’s conservative views go far beyond music, and have become public knowledge in Pakistan. He decries women’s aspirations for freedom and equality. For example, he disapproves of women driving cars. Even worse, he would have women confined to the house or allowed to leave only with the permission of their husbands. On the Pakistani TV show Good Morning Pakistan on January 18 this year, Jamshed admitted that he forbids his wife to leave the house because he cannot trust her.

I'd trust the wife. What I don't trust is the razzle dazzle da'wa. Oh, and the sharia, too.

Dear Official Jews: Instead of Kvetching About the "Shrinking Palestine" Transit Ad, Why Not Think Strategically and Run Your Own Ads to Counter It?

Official Jewry is up in arms about a transit ad running in Vancouver. The ad, paid for by a bunch of Zion-loathers, shows that (gasp!) Palestine has been shrinking while Israel has supposedly been growing like gangbusters. Understandably, pro-Israel Official Jewry isn't too fond of the ad, and has broadcast its objections to the media, thereby making Jewry look bad for seeking to curb free expression. My solution: pull a Pamela Geller and buy your own ad. In this case, I'd suggest one showing eensy-weensy Israel nestled amongst its humoungous--and hugely tyrannical--neighbours. That would shoot down the absurd idea of a "shrinking Palestine" pretty quickly.



Update: This one works too (though I doubt that any transit authorities would give it the go-ahead):



Update: Israel, lone light in a dark region


Miley Cyrus: So Untalented She Wouldn't Make It Through an American Idol Audition

Re the herky-jerky twerker, Andrew Klavan writes that he

was grateful to Miley Cyrus for providing me with some big laughs this week. Listen, I didn’t even know the girl couldn’t sing, so I was very impressed to find out she can’t dance either. Always amazing to see a young person so multi-untalented.

Can't Wait for the Exhibit in Canada's "Human Rights" Mausoleum ;)

In the latest instance of the morally repugnant moral inversion that is Zionhass, BDS is now being positioned as a "human rights" movement.

Update: South African BDSers sing "shoot the Jew." This line leaps out:

Despite the hateful rhetoric, Muhammed Desai, coordinator of BDS South Africa, rejected the notion that anti-Semitism played a role in the group’s protest, telling Wits Vuvuzela that “the whole idea [of] anti-Semitism is blown out of proportion.”

It's a Gas!

Israeli bloggers deal with their war jitters in a typically Jewish way (i.e. via mordant humor).

Brampton Imam Who Sez Souls of Gays, Adulturers are "Purified" Via Sharia-Decreed Stoning Is Very Interfaithy

Can't say that I'm at all surprised to learn that the apparently well-respected cleric

served on the Government of Canada Interfaith Committee, the Province of Ontario Multifaith Council, and the City of Brampton Multifaith Committee. 

He is also the President of the Islamic Forum of Canada, Vice-President of the Islamic Council of Imams of Canada, and a member of the al-Shura Muslim Consultative Council.

Mr. "Popularity"

"They like Zuhdi (Jasser) less than Nidal Hassan. Revealing!"

"The Current One" Is Full of Crap

If you think the Canadian media's giddy gushing over that dimwit Justin Trudeau is more than a little de trop (here's but one example), wait'll you hear how a Turkish newspaper describes old Artie:

Although Erdogan’s name appears to have lost most of its glitter in Turkish and world opinion, the limitless flattery of his partisans at home gains momentum. 

But none of that flattery reached the level of what appeared in the daily Takvim of Aug. 26 that insinuated Erdogan “was dispatched by Allah” and was full of tributes that could only be used for prophets. This is what Takvim, a newspaper of the media group whose flagship is the daily Sabah, said about Erdogan: 

"At the beginning of each century, one of them is tasked from the realm. He makes up for whatever is missing in the country, solves problems, arranges everything, kneads like dough. They were sent at the beginning of the 1900s and 2000s perhaps without even knowing that they were dispatched on such a mission. They were sent to be among mortals, sent to the front lines to ensure the existence of the country until the next century, given a seat and were laden with intense, sacred duties. Those who had returned to where they come from after completing their tasks are remembered with gratitude. The current one is wished a long life with feelings of appreciation.” 

The current (Turkish) one is a power-crazed Zion-loather. The current (Canadian) one is a power-crazed panderer--with good hair.

Not a Good Move

Man attempts suicide by power drill.

50 Years On, MLK's "Dream" Hobbled by "Progressives" Whose Good Intentions Have Engendered a "Nightmare of Dependence"

Listening to all the Democrats yesterday natter on (and on) about how the government hasn't done nearly enough to help fulfill Martin Luther King's dream, I couldn't help but think: where are the black Republicans? Where is, say, Dr. Ben Carson? Where's Thomas Sowell? Where is Allen West?

We know where they were. At work. Getting on with it. Refusing to join the victimist chorus of carpers, kvetchers and cavilers.

Where's Allen West? Here he is, delivering a message that no Democrat ever could or would:

Dr. King postulated that, "the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." 

There can be no doubt that we have highly successful blacks in all walks of life, but when we examine the state of America's inner cities we must all be appalled; shall I say Detroit? 

We have fought to break the chains of physical bondage, but today the chains of economic bondage are even worse. This is not about social justice but about ensuring that the economic opportunities of America can resurrect small business entrepreneurship in the black community. Our economic, tax, and regulatory policies must promote free market growth, investment, innovation and ingenuity to enable self-reliance. 

We need to promote the growth of our small community banks in order to provide the capital for those in our inner cities with an idea in their heads and determination in their hearts. The Reagan administration proposed such an initiative – urban economic empowerment zones. 

Dr. King stated that, "America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds." Today, the government is issuing electronic benefits transfer cards and even recruiting for enrollment. The government is issuing free cell phones. This is not the dream King wanted, the nightmare of dependence...

Exactly. But you'll never hear Oprah or Obama or Al Sharpton or Bill Clinton any other "progressive" utter that truth. No, their "cure" for the problem is more--much more--of the specific actions which propagated the nightmare.

"Time Is Running Out. Turn to #Allah Before the End"

Qaradawi's onIslam site tweets an ominous message. Whatever could it mean?

Gays and Adulterers Could Benefit from a Righteous Stoning: Brampton Muslim Cleric

Sure, they'd be dead, but they'd please Allah, and that's what's most important, right?:

Oyez, oyez, let’s all watch as Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak of Brampton takes his death by stoning show on the road and brings it to a neighborhood near you.

Oh, yes!

Oh, no.

Have a look at the YouTube video and you will have some insight into a man who truly believes that `sinners’, as defined by his own interpretation of Islamic law, can truly benefit from a jolly good stoning.

Listen as he explains that a Muslim who is sentenced to death by stoning actually benefits from this gruesome capital punishment as his or her soul is being purified even as the stones rain down on their head. 

Fun guy.

Piers Morgan and Morgan Spurlock ("The Morgans") Think Miley Cyrus's VMA Raunchy Twerkorama Was Just Swell

The Morgans can't understand what all the fuss is about, really.

Pathological Zionhass Takes Root in Europe Despite Decades of Holocaust Remembrance and Memorials to Dead Jews

Hillel Halkin writes:

...the influence of the Holocaust on European attitudes toward Jews and Israel has been double-edged. On the one hand, horror at the Nazi genocide, and guilt for the widespread complicity in it of many European governments and peoples, initially encouraged sympathy for its survivors and support for a Jewish state. On the other hand, the desire to get rid of this guilt has grown with time—and psychologically, there are few better ways to get rid of guilt than accusing the accuser of the crimes one is accused of. The reversal of roles whereby Israelis are now cast as the Nazi aggressor and the Palestinians as their helpless victims has been a wonderful salve for the European conscience. It has enabled Europe to say: “By what right do you Jews blame us? You are doing to others what Hitler did to you.” There is no other way to account for such facts as the one cited by Gurfinkiel that 48 percent of all Germans and 63 percent of all Poles now believe the insane charge that Israel is waging a “genocidal war” against the Palestinians.  This is not just mass psychology. It is mass psychopathology.

Did Ban Ki-Moon Really Channel His Inner Lennon and Say "Give Peace a Chance"?

Yup. And if that's the best he can come up with under these dire circumstances, the world's in deep doo doo (yeah, yeah, yeah).


An oldie but a goodie--much better than Ban's.

Nat Hentoff Asks: Where are the Protests Against the Murder of Christians?

Great question, Nat. Jews who ask, "How could the world have stood by and done nothing as Jews were being murdered in Europe?," now have an answer. Nothing was done because it was easier to do nothing, and because there was a built-in animus toward Jews. Can we honestly say it's any different today vis-à-vis Christians in Egypt?

Three Time Losers in Wars Against Israel, Syria Embarked on Chemical Weapons Program: Expert

I think there's a Darwin Award in there somewhere given that the Syrians ended up turning the weapons on themselves and not the hated Joooos.

Update: Let's not forget that the Syrians tried to go nuclear, only to be foiled by the dastardly Zionists.

Update: Syria was coddled--hence today's problems:

International attorney Richard D. Heideman said that massacres in Syria, including the recent use of deadly gas by the government against its own citizens, are a result of the constant and consistent protection from responsibility which the Syrian regime has enjoyed in the international community. 

“The Syrian state violence, not just of recent days, but stretching back two years, are the direct result and byproduct of the ongoing impunity enjoyed by the Syrian Arab republic while conducting terrorist activities stretching back decades,” said Heideman, the lead counsel on behalf of American victims of Syrian terrorism, who has received on behalf of his clients the highest judgments awarded by US Federal Courts against the Syrian Arab Republic as a state sponsor of terror. “The world didn’t care when it assisted in the hijacking of planes, when it helped and assisted terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and acted as a conduit for Iran to smuggle weapons to Lebanon to be used against Israel, and it still doesn’t seem to care when it kills 100,000 of its own people.”

Even Vogue magazine played a part, portraying mass-murderer Assad and his Missus as the last word in chic.

“uncle google we say hi from palestine to remember you that the country in google map not called israel. its called Palestine”

Google's primary search domain for "Palestine" gets hacked by an "avuncular" Zion-loather.

The Biggest "Elephant in the Room" Isn't the Hijab. It's the Bogus Islam Versus Islamism Construct

I agree with Tarek Fatah when he says that "Quebec has made the Sikh turban and the Jewish kippa their sacrificial lambs." However, in an effort to shield his holy book from criticism he also says

For the record, the hijab and the niqab are not religious attire. The Qur’an instructs Muslim women to cover their breasts, not their heads or faces.

Both the hijab and niqab are symbols of servitude and misogyny imposed today by the worldwide, anti-western Islamist movement. Both pieces of cloth are the flags of political ideologies that have no basis in the Qur’an.

No basis in the Qur'an, eh? For the record, the Qur'an says this:

Quran (33:59) - "Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them..." 

Quran (24:31) - "And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need (of women), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known."  The woman is not only supposed to cover herself, except with relatives, but to look down, so as to avoid making eye-contact with men. 

Qur'an (33:55) - "It shall be no crime in them as to their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their woman, or the slaves which their right hands possess, if they speak to them unveiled"  A woman is only allowed to present herself unveiled to family and slaves.

"Let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms." Meaning let them cover their heads and their breasts. If chicks were allowed to go bare-headed but had to cover their bosoms the garments would be called, well, bosom-coverings, wouldn't they? 

Nice try though, Tarek.

NYPD Designates Mosques Terrorist Organizations

It's the only way to keep tabs on the sort of radical preaching that stimulates acts of jihad, say the cops, but the claim has the usual suspects up in arms (metaphorically speaking).

Chief of Re-Named CAIR-CAN Tried (and Failed) to Intimidate Markham Hotel Where Geller/Spencer are Booked to Speak by Playing the Might-Is-Right Card

The Jewish Tribune's Joanne Hill reports that the Islamist tried to strong arm the hotel manager a la Inspector Ricky Veerappan and a certain York Region rabbi:

In his letter [to the hotel's manager], [executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims Ihsaan] Gardee described the American authors and bloggers as “notorious xenophobic activists” and invoked the displeasure of the “1 million-strong Canadian Muslim community and indeed the 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide” should the hotel not cancel the event.

So Gardee thinks he speaks for one million Canadian Muslims as well as the entire Muslim population of the world, does he?

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

Obama Tells His Peeps to Push Obamacare for the Sake/In the Name of "Civil Rights"

The man is utterly shameless:

When President Barack Obama met with African-American religious leaders at the White House Monday in advance of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, he had a request: He asked for their help in the final push to implement the federal health care law. The president hosted representatives of major African-American denominations in the Roosevelt Room, where they discussed “how civil rights and equality are closely tied to voting rights and closing the gap on education, unemployment, and access to health care,” the White House said in a written statement.

Spaghetti Strainer: A Religious Head Covering That Would Be Banned in Pauline Marois' Quebec?

Jackass wore a metal colander on his head for his driver's license photo, claiming to be a Pastafarian. If the Quebec premier has her way, such religious signifiers would be outlawed for those offering public services in la belle province.


No colanders--or kippahs!

UN Watch Condemns "Falk Talk"--to No Avail

From the site:

GENEVA, August 26, 2013 – The British Academy is supporting a lecturer who has been strongly condemned for racism by British Prime Minister David Cameron and by the Foreign Office's anti-discrimination division, reported UN Watch.

The Geneva-based non-governmental human rights group today urged the head of the British Academy, Lord Stern of Brentford, to immediately remove all support for the scheduled September 11 Canberra appearance by Richard Falk, a UN Human Rights Council official recently denounced by world leaders for suggesting that the Boston bombings were the fault of the U.S. and Israel.

Falk was condemned by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, and by the US, UK and Canadian governments, for blaming the Boston terrorist attack on “the American global domination project” and “Tel Aviv.”

The Sept. 11 timing of the conference is doubly offensive because Falk was condemned by the UN chief for 9/11 conspiracy theories...

The Sept. 11 timing is in fact triply offensive because it's a conference dealing with "Human Rights in Palestine," and on the day of the 9/11/01 attacks, Palestinians, upon hearing the news, celebrated like crazy. 

NYT Editorial Board Called for U.S. to Manage the Jews' "Emnity" Towards Hitler

Not really. But it is calling for the U.S. to manage Israel's "enmity" towards Iran, which is pretty much the same thing.

Update: Speaking of enmity, Iran is promising that Israel will be the first casualty of a U.S. military operation in Syria.

"Canadians Hurrying to Syria in Record Numbers to Help Rebels"

Here's the deal: if you run off to join the jihad in Syria, you should not be allowed back into Canada. Period. End of story.

Barry's Deadly Hugs Meant Egypt's MuBros Days Were Numbered

The sad/funny thing is, writes Daniel Greenfield, that Obama still can't figure out how it happened:

Obama played beautifully into the opposition’s hands by denouncing Morsi’s overthrow and urging the release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. It was a plan that made sense in Washington, which reflexively thinks in terms of issuing orders, but in Cairo it looked like the puppet master demanding the return of his puppets. 

The Egyptian military had stepped in as a response to a national emergency dealing with foreign intervention in Egypt’s political system. The more Obama denounced the military’s actions, the more he was demonstrating that the Egyptian military had been correct to step in. 

Despite his years in the Muslim world and his family connections, Obama had not really understood how Egypt worked. And his associates understood it even less. If they had, they would have pulled out Anne Patterson once she became a target and openly criticized Morsi for not listening to the demands of the protesters, while privately conveying a message of support. 

Instead Obama hugged Morsi to death. And he’s still hugging Morsi to death.

Update: Obama was a man with a grandiose plan--one which gets a big fat F:

The plan was simple but elegant: The U.S. would work with moderate Islamist groups like Turkey's AK Party and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to make the Middle East more democratic. This would kill three birds with one stone. First, by aligning itself with these parties, the Obama administration would narrow the gap between the 'moderate middle' of the Muslim world and the U.S. Second, by showing Muslims that peaceful, moderate parties could achieve beneficial results, it would isolate the terrorists and radicals, further marginalizing them in the Islamic world. Finally, these groups with American support could bring democracy to more Middle Eastern countries, leading to improved economic and social conditions, gradually eradicating the ills and grievances that drove some people to fanatical and terroristic groups.  

Hey, it worked out about as well as Obama's other schemes. At least he didn't try to foist Obamacare on 'em.

Indonesian Clerics to Miss World Competition: Nice Little Beauty Pageant You Got There. Be a Shame If Anything Happened to It

Some Indonesian clerics want Miss World organizers to take their pageant elsewhere:

"We are not Sharia police, we are not law enforcers," Shaberah said, referring to authorities who enforce Islamic law. "But we suggest the government cancel it." 

Adjie S. Soeratmadjie of RCTI, the official broadcaster and local organizer of the event, said the concerns were being heard and that some adjustments were being made to make the pageant more appropriate for Indonesian culture and more like other beauty contests held in the country. 

"We understand the position" of the council, Soeratmadjie said. "But the show must go on … we call on the protesters to avoid anarchy and we are sure authorities can maintain security." 

He added that Miss Israel had dropped out of the competition, but declined to give the reason. Indonesia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations. 

The reason? Well, it could be that she has a stomach bug. But I think it's probably because she fears for her life in "moderate" Indonesia.

Lee Daniels' The Butler: Lemme Guess--All the Democratic Presidents are Kindly, Charming and Lovable. All the Republican Presidents are Shifty, Stiff and Creepy

Just a hunch, mind you. Not that I plan to see the critically-acclaimed flick, but it's nice to see that at least one critic has declined to take part in communal swoonathon:

The movie itself is schematic, it’s nonsensical, it’s hysterical, it conflates eras and political moments, it has 60-year-olds playing 30-year-olds and 35-year-olds playing 15-year-olds. It has Robin Williams playing Dwight Eisenhower. By any conventional reckoning of what a good movie is, Lee Daniels’ The Butler is just awful. And yet there’s no denying it—this atrocity is an enormous crowd-pleaser and is going to be a huge hit.

Robin Williams as Ike? For reasons of hirsuteness alone, surely he'd have made a far better Nixon.


Robin Williams as Ike? He was more convincing as an elderly English nanny.

Kindergarten Jihad--With Real Guns

Lads as young as aged five train for jihad with real weapons in the wilds of Waziristan.

Just Ix-Nay the Ionism-Zay, 'Kay?

During a "dialogue," young Jews and Muslims bond over a shared sense of victimhood:

With each conference, Sichrovsky and his team of more than 30 volunteers hone their focus. 

July’s gathering in Bosnia — the first held in a Muslim country — featured six content themes: conflict transformation; anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in cinema; hate speech and its influence on public opinion; introductions to Judaism and Islam; gender and religion; and education and the effects of historical narratives.

 

“We create a safe platform for young members of both communities to talk to each other instead of about each other,” Sichrovsky said. “We’re bringing together young change-makers and creating a project incubator for their ideas.” 

For most MJC participants, the experience is both intellectually and emotionally challenging. During the 2011 Kiev conference, participants visited and prayed at Babi Yar, where the Nazis and their collaborators murdered more than 33,000 Jews in two days. 

Last month, participants visited Bosnia’s Srebrenica massacre site, where more than 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces. Following the tour, participants offered prayers for the lives lost — the Muslim prayer, Sura al-Fatiha, was recited, followed by the Jewish prayer of Mourner’s Kaddish. 

“The wounds are still raw, and people are still burying their dead,” said MJC participant Alexis Frankel. As director of the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) ACCESS program for young adults, Frankel accompanied a delegation of Jewish leaders to the conference. 

“MJC is about Jews and Muslims talking to each other as peers and human beings,”  

Frankel said. “Our generation has a lot of value to add to the conversation, including through social media and informal ways of interacting with each other.” 

In response to critics of Muslim-Jewish dialogue projects, Frankel references AJC’s work in Germany following World War II. Although some Jews reacted with outrage when AJC opened a Berlin office, the early groundwork was pivotal for Jewish-German relations and Germany’s ties to Israel, said Frankel. 

“With Muslim-Jewish dialogue, we’re thinking of the long-term future of the Jewish people,” Frankel said...

I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if topics such as Zionism, jihad, sharia and historical dhimmitude were also being discussed. Without a rigorous understanding of and willingness to air those subjects, this "dialogue" strikes as little more than an exercise in vanity, backslapping and vapid feel-goodism.

rabble Rouser Wants Us to Build a Monument to the "Victims of Capitalism"

Which tells you practically everything you need to know about this radical website and its Marxist worldview.

The Sadism of Affirmative Action: A Case Study

The poor, unsuspecting--and profoundly mediocre--student, the "beneficiary" of an Africentric high school education, never stood a chance:

A counselor in the campus psychologist’s office urged him to scale back his academic ambitions. “Maybe he didn’t have to be the straight-A kid he’d been in high school anymore,” the counselor advised him. This “be content with mediocrity” message is hardly a recipe for future success, but it sums up the attitude that many a struggling affirmative-action “beneficiary” has adopted to get through college.

Is Anne Frank Responsible for the Scourge of Moral Relativism?

This essay argues that she is (via FFF):

Since the 1960s, every single even slightly educated American schoolchild has read Anne Frank’s luminous diary. During the Anne Frank lessons, most teachers spend an inordinate amount of time reiterating Anne’s most famous words, written on July 15, 1944, exactly two years after she and her family went into hiding to escape the Nazis:

It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. [Emphasis mine.]

Thanks to those words, Americans accept that “people are truly good at heart.” This belief creates a syllogism, one that sees Americans claiming that it must be a lie when someone dares to claim that another group doesn’t meet certain moral absolutes. How can there be moral absolutes when all “people are truly good at heart”?

The problem with this post-1960s syllogism is that Anne Frank was completely and totally wrong.

Agreed. But don't blame it on Anne. Blame it on those who derived the wrong message from her diary. The brilliant author and critic Cynthia Ozick nailed it in 1997, I think, when she wrote this:

Her extraordinary diary, published in 1947 as "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl," which records the time Anne spent in hiding from the Nazis, is a self-aware work of youthful genius. But its reputation for uplift is nonsense. The diary has been bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, reduced; it has been infantilized, Americanized, sentimentalized, falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatently denied. Among the falsifiers have been dramatists and directors, Anne's own father, Otto Frank, and the public, both readers and theatregoers, all over the world. The diary is not a song to life-- rather it reveals the easy destructibility of the human spirit; it is the vehicle that has accomplished mankind's almost universal obtuseness about the dark lessons of Auschwitz. The diary's keen lens is helplessly opaque to the diarist's explicit doom--and this opacity, replicated in young readers, has led to shamelessness. The sentimentalists say that the children of the world own Anne Frank, but is that right? One can look at the astonishingly embarrassing 20-year correspondence, published in 1995 under the title "Love, Otto," between Cara Wilson, a Californian born in 1944, and Otto Frank. Wilson's simplistic identification with Anne reduces the meaning of Anne's life and work. And Otto is complicit in this shallowly upbeat view of history. If Anne Frank has been made into an "icon," it is because of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play derived from the diary--a play that rapidly achieved worldwide popularity, and framed the legend even the newest generation has come to believe in.

Spot On Analysis by Egyptian Ex-Pat in the Toronto Sun

Simon Kent elicits these insightful remarks from Rami Bassily, an Cairo-born engineer now living in Mississauga:

“The ideology espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood is the same one of tyranny that you find in Hamas and the Taliban and al-Qaida,” Bassily said. “They just incite hatred with the very clear belief that ‘Jihad is our way and dying for jihad is our way to God.’ 

“They have extracted the killing excerpts from the Qur’an which have supported this, and they have used these excerpts to brainwash their followers with a hatred of personal freedom. 

“That is why the ancient Coptic Christians who have been part of Egypt for centuries are paying such a price. 

“Anybody opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s politics is an enemy ... an outsider. Don’t forget the first thing former president Morsi did was replace 17 provincial governors with Muslim Brotherhood members and he also gave Islamists control of key government ministries. 

“Morsi did not look at the interests of all the people and the standard of living of the poor; he gave advantage to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were only interested in a form of democracy that helped them to the exclusion of all others.”

I consider Bassily to be the anti-Harpoon--and the antidote to his venom.

Passions and Debauchery Explode

Last night at the VMAs? Nope. Sodom and Gomorrah.


Is that you, Gaga?

115,520 Janitors in the U.S. Have College Degrees

The stat sounds much better if you call them "sanitation engineers."

Update: Another disconcerting statistic--59% of the "tuna" Americans eat isn't tuna. Apparently, much of it is "escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable, oily anal leakage." Ick!

"Who Is Ali Khamenei?"

I read the entire article and I still don't know.



Update: Local Khomeinist Zafar Bangash is a Sayyid Qutb fan, same as the current Grandiose Ayatollah.

PBS Whitewash of Islam's Founder Includes Interviews With "Vicious Anti-Semites"

Hardly a shockeroo. It would be helpful if some investigative reporter could suss out who funded this sucker. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some wacky Wahhabis were behind it.

Infidels Are Nationalists; Islamists are Supranationalists

Roger Scrunton explains why drawing new borders in the Middle East following the end of WWI didn't work out so well:

People often explain the relative absence of democracy in the Middle East by arguing that the carving up of the region into territories bears no relation to the pre-existing loyalties of the people.

In a few cases it worked. Ataturk, general of the Turkish army, was able to defend the Turkish-speaking heart of the empire and turn it into a modern state on the European model. Elsewhere, many people identified themselves primarily in religious rather than national terms. Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, told his followers that bringing together the world's Muslims in a supra-national Islamic State, a Caliphate, should be a top priority.

The result of imposing national boundaries on people who define themselves in religious terms is the kind of chaos we have witnessed in Iraq, where Sunni and Shia fight for dominance, or the even greater chaos that we now witness in Syria, where a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites, has maintained a monopoly of social power since the rise of the Assad family.

By contrast Europeans are more inclined to define ourselves in national terms. In any conflict it is the nation that must be defended. And if God once ordered otherwise, then it is time he changed his mind. Such an idea is anathema to Islam, which is based on the belief that God has laid down an eternal law and it is up to us to submit to it: that is what the word Islam means: submission...

Makes perfect sense to me.

"Life Is Life of Jihad"--WOW, Indeed

Get set for yet another Islamist revival meeting in our parts, this one called "Words of Wisdom" or WOW. The "conference" is sponsored by the Abu Haraira Center. The words quoted above (must be referring solely to that internal, personal struggle, right?) can be heard in the event's promotional trailer.

 

Updated: In this YouTube video, one of the event's radical preachers, Abdur Raheem McCarthy, explains that in Egypt there are only two sides: the side of Islam and the side of the kuffar. I'm sure you can figure out which side he's on.

Ah, Yes, the Old Spoon-In-Your-Knickers Trick

Girls in the U.K. who don't want to be shipped "home" and forced into marriage with some old a-hole have been given a piece of useful advice:

Forced marriages are becoming so common in Britain that the government has put the country’s airport workers on watch for signs of the problem among young women and men. A charity for victims of abuse and forced marriages has found a creative way for victims to escape such a fate, one that takes advantage of the fact that the forced marriages rarely happen within the country. 

The U.K.-based charity Karma Nirvana is urging victims of forced marriage to put a spoon in their underwear before they go to the airport to be flown off to their family’s homelands to meet their new spouses. The spoon will cause metal detectors at the airport to beep; victims will be taken away from their parents to be searched, giving them one last chance to alert airport authorities that they are being forced into marriage. 

Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvana’s operations manager, said that tricks like the spoon in the underwear are essential to help victims avoid arranged marriages because it is often impossible for them to safely stand up to their families...

My question: What happens after the spoon sets off the alarm? Couldn't these young women become victims of "honour" crimes for defying their parents' wishes?

CNN Posts "99 Must-Reads on Income Inequality"

Leaving out the most crucial one, of course (the one that gives rise to a political system that is inimical to freedom): Karl Marx's Das Kapital.

Folie à Deux: France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius as Epicly Clueless as John Kerry

A la Monsieur Ketchup, the French dude, too, thinks that "solving" the Israel-Palestinian stalemate is the key to "fixing" the broken Middle East.

Why Were Two Pro-Hamas Canadian "Leftists" Arrested in Egypt?

The New York Times claims it's because Egypt's military has "widened" the definition of Islamist to include them:

Ten days ago, the police arrested two left-leaning Canadians — one of them a filmmaker specializing in highly un-Islamic movies about sexual politics — and implausibly announced that they were members of the Brotherhood, the conservative Islamist group backing the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi.

If the NYT finds it "implausible" for a gay filmmaker to, if not be an official member of the MuBros, to at least be in synch with its thinking vis-à-vis "Zionism," it has obviously never heard of the entity called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

It's Nice That "Female Genital Mutilation" Is Included in a List of "Gender-Based Violence" the TDSB Won't Tolerate, But How Is That Going To Work, Exactly?

From the TDSB's "Gender Violence Policy" (the link to which can be found here):

DEFINITIONS
Gender-based violence is any aggressive action that threatens safety, causes physical, social or emotional harm and denigrates a person because of his or her gender identity, perceived gender, sexual identity, biological sex or sexual behaviour. 
Gender-based violence includes, but is not limited to, the following:   

• Sexual assault (perpetrator aged 12 years and over)   

• Inappropriate, problematic and intrusive sexual behaviour (perpetrator under age 12 years)   

• Sexual exploitation (perpetrator an adult employee/victim a student)    

• Sexual misconduct   

• Sexual harassment   

• Sexist discrimination   

• Domestic violence   

• Emotional abuse   

• Psychological abuse   

• Forced prostitution   

• Homophobia   

• Transphobia   

• Harmful gender-based social practices, e.g. female genital mutilation

Gender-based violence operates on a societal imbalance of power and control based on social constructions of sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender, perceived gender and sexual behaviour.  This imbalance may manifest in multiple forms as aggressive and discriminatory behaviours and expressions of hatred. 

Good to know. It seems to me, though, that including FGM here amounts to little more than paying lip service to opposing it. I could be wrong, but because of the provenance of girls who are subjected to it (i.e. Egypt, Somalia, etc.) and because Islam is often used to justify the repellent "social" practice, I have a hard time believing the TDSB, home of the world famous mosqueteria, is serious about doing much of anything to prevent it.

Rocky Racoon Checked Into His Room Only to Find Gideon's Bible--But Maybe Not in Ontario, Where Our "Human Rights" 'Roos Have Sided With an Atheist and Given Gideon's the Shaft

Well, they would, wouldn't they? My only comment is that you'll never see the same thing happen with, say, folks who like to hand out the Koran. First, because "atheists" would never complain about it (either being they're too afraid to or because they see Muslims as a victim group and therefore above criticism). Second, even if an atheist did complain, the "human rights" 'roos would never stick it to Muslims in the same way that they've done to Christians (for the reasons already mentioned).

How Did I Miss This One--Phyllis Chesler Identifies Jonathan Kay's Blind Spot

Chesler wrote this back in February:

Like me, Kay is a feminist and a civil libertarian. However, unlike myself, he is unable and unwilling to see how much anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism (today the two are twinned), is emanating from left-liberals: Western intellectuals, academics, artists, and journalists whose “politically correct” racism i.e. anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism has made common cause with Islamist forces who very clearly desire the extermination of one state only: The Jewish state, and who are at war with women and with Western values.

The above helps explain Kay's "courageous" bollocks.

As a bonus, here's Chesler's latest article.

The Ceeb's Nalah Ayed: Does Mubarak's Release Spell the End of the MuBros "Revolution"?

Sorry, sweetie, but yes; yes it does. Nalah, who writes the following elegy about the MuBros downfall, may well need therapy to help her deal with the new reality:

For Mubarak supporters, this is also payback time. It's the undoing of what they see as two years of wrongs since he was ousted. 

However, for the Brotherhood and its supporters — as for many in the international community — what is underway in Egypt right now is simply a coup, and the accompanying crackdown, a bloodbath. The Brotherhood especially calls it the return of the police state. 

For many onlookers, it all smells strongly of counter-revolution. The tragic finale of the so-called Arab Spring that's repeatedly been declared dead almost since the moment it was born.

With the Muslim Brotherhood lurking in the background, looking for its shot at power after decades of waiting in the wings, the so-called Arab Spring was dead on arrival.

The Latest Fad on American Campuses: Fake Hate

There's plenty of genuine hatred on American (also Canadian) university and college campuses these days--hatred of "Zionism" (Zionhass), hatred of the West, hatred of wicked capitalism, etc. All of which, go figure, are a function of the so-called "progressive" worldview and being indoctrinated/marinated in its sophistries of victimhood and grievance. Alas, for students who fall into this kooky category, there isn't nearly enough of the bad kind of hatred--hatred aimed at certain designated victim groups, that is--in evidence. For that reason, some progressive kidz, with only the best of intentions, of course, have taken it upon themselves to, well, fabricate the hate:

Fake hate crimes, which occur primarily on college campuses, are a peculiar feature of American life. Hoaxers operate on a bizarre premise: If evidence to support their political claims isn’t available when they need it to be, well then, they’ll just have to “find” some. Deep down, the hoaxer knows that his fellow citizens are racist and terrible; he knows that the downtrodden are suffering at the hands of people unlike him; and he knows that there is “so much more work to do.” And so, if his campus isn’t beset by the disgraceful bigotry of which he knows everyone is secretly guilty, then he’ll have to invent some against which heroically to fight. 

Oh, those kidz. They're so gosh-darned inventive.

Update: Meet the privileged, Obama-supporting white kids who perpetrated the cruel Oberlin hoax. Er, thanks, but I'd rather not.

Group Behind Mississauga's MuslimFest a MuBros Offshoot

"Young Muslims of Canada"--it sounds so fresh-faced and idealistic, doesn't it? And why wouldn't a group of young Muslims want to back MuslimFest, the annual event held in Mississauga which also bears the imprimatur of Festivals & Events Ontario (FEO), an organization funded in part by the Ontario government?
 
But back to Young Muslims of Canada, one of the three organizations behind MuslimFest. (The other two are DawaNet, which bills itself as "a community empowerment, engagement and education organization, based out of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada," and SoundVision, a company whose motto is "helping tomorrow's Muslims today.") According to its Wiki entry, YMC

has its roots originally in the global Islamic movement that takes its ideology from Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Hassan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Khurram Murad, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others. Young Muslims Canada aims to instil (sic) hope, self-esteem, confidence, and civic responsibility in Muslim youth by embracing the Islamic values of integrity, excellence, and compassion.

Being that it's Muslim Brotherhood through and through, there's one "value" that, oddly enough, has been left out: supremacism.

Is Iranian Hacking Collective "Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam" Behind Yesterday's NASDAQ Outage?

It's unclear as yet, but you must admit the Khomeinists engaged in the electronic jihad have a mighty snazzy name (one that pays tribute to the same dude whose name adorns the infamous Hamas missile).

Artie Erdogan's Zionhass: Fundamentally Mental

One of Artie's factotums tries (and fails) to put his boss's revolting Jew-hate into context:

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu claimed late on Wednesday that anti-Israel remarks made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been misunderstood and taken out of context, and that he rejected censure by a White House spokesman, Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported. 

Speaking on Turkish private broadcaster Kanal 24, Davutoğlu said Erdoğan was referring to a “mentality” in his comments claiming that Israel was behind the recent military coup in Egypt. 

“He gives an example from a meeting of two years ago [in his speech.] He explains a mentality,” the foreign minister said...

No, he explains his mentality. Which is pathological (i.e. completely mental).


Cuckoo ca-choo, Mr. Erdogan...

Indonesia's Committee for the Presevation of Unruptured Hymems Wants to Start Work in the Nation's High Schools

Fun times for young chicks (not):

An educational agency in Indonesia -- perceived to be a moderate Muslim country – has plans to conduct virginity tests on 16-18 year old girls as part of its senior high school admission requirements. 

H.M. Rasyid, the chief of Prabumulih’s Education Agency, said that increasing instances of premarital sex and prostitution among female students prompted the move. 

"We’re planning on conducting virginity tests for senior high school students," Rasyid said. "We have proposed it in the 2014 regional budget. If it is possible, the virginity tests will be carried out next year." 

"This is for their own good," Rasyid said. "Every woman has the right to virginity … we expect students not to commit negative acts." 

The plan – which would require each student to have her hymen examined every year of high school – was supported by local politicians as a way to decrease what is viewed in this conservative country as “rampant” promiscuity in the area...

Perverts!

UNRWA's Summer Fun Camp Brainwashes Palestinian Moppets on the U.S. Taxpayers' Dime

Most fun activity--Capture the Jooo:

Palestinian children as young as 5 are being taught to hate Jews, glorify martyrs and support jihad, and a U.S.-funded United Nations agency is helping to underwrite the effort, according to a controversial new documentary. 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency hosts summer camps in which Palestinian children are allegedly being indoctrinated, in scenes captured in “Camp Jihad: Inside UNRWA Summer Camp Season 2013.” In addition to learning hateful phrases, the children are taught that Israel belongs to them by birthright, according to the film by the Center for Near East Policy Research.

“The children learn the names of many villages – not just the names of big cities like Jerusalem” says Amina Hinawi, identified in the documentary as a UNRWA camp director in Gaza. “This way every child will be motivated to return to their village.  

UNRWA finances this summer camp. I’m very, very appreciative of UNRWA because the children of Palestine and Gaza need this.” 

Indoctrination of young Palestinian children is nothing new, but the documentary has raised the ire of Israelis largely because of the UN role. According to UNRWA’s own website, the United States is the single-largest contributor to its work and in 2012 gave more than $232 million, ahead of the European Commission ($204 million), and the United Kingdom ($68 million). 

Interspersed with sack races, arts and crafts and snack time, are scenes of instructors imparting the message that Israel belongs to Palestinians, and they must take it back by force... 

 

Vanity Fair's List of Power Dogs

They put Jiggy way down the list at #24? I'm steamed!