US mainstream media ran over 6000 stories on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and they’re still coming up with new ones. But nine days after pictures from an Al Qaeda torture manual were released, the silence is deafening.
(In the) nine days since the material was released, neither ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times nor The Washington Post has run a story with the photos of this shocking evidence of al-Qaeda’s barbarism.
A Muslim professor at Nova Scotia’s St. Francis Xavier University was criticized for attending Iran’s disgusting Holocaust denial “conference” in Tehran, featuring all the superstars of the international antisemitic blight.
Because if you don’t hate Jews with a blind unreasoning passion, you must be Islamophobic. And if you criticize someone who does hate Jews, and doesn’t even try to hide it, you’re just like Joseph McCarthy.
The Bush administration is perilously close to jumping the tracks. I’ve supported the President through the long course of the war that began on September 11, but it’s starting to look like he’s simply getting tired; he won’t defend his administration against attacks, he won’t defend the country against illegal immigration, he won’t do anything to stop the media leaks that cripple our national security ... and now this: U.S., Iran end 27-year diplomatic freeze.
The Bush Administration in the past have blamed Iran for directly training the forces who kill our troops in Iraq. They have also blamed Iran for bunding Hizballah and Hamas. They have also targeted Iran for it's threats against the state of Israel, and for its complicity with the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad who was under investigation for the assassination of the Leganese President.
Now, we're ending our 27-year long diplomatic freeze?
If this isn't some sort of Corleonesque trick (Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer"), then George Bush's legacy may end up being worse than that of Jimmy Carter.
One has to wonder why the headline is phrased in such a manner. The Associated Press makes it sound as if George Bush, unilaterally, got in an uproar and, like the dictator they portray him to be, levied sanctions on the poor defenseless Sudan.
WASHINGTON - President Bush ordered new U.S. economic sanctions Tuesday to pressure Sudan's government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur that the administration has condemned as genocide.
"I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world," the president said.
The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan's oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the violence in Darfur. "For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians," the president said. "My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide.
"The world has a responsibility to put an end to it," Bush said.
The conflict erupted in February 2003 when members of Darfur's ethnic African tribes rebelled against what they considered decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. Sudanese leaders are accused of retaliating by unleashing the janjaweed militia to put down the rebels using a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and plunder — a charge they deny. The fighting in Darfur has displaced 2.5 million people.
Bush had been prepared to impose the sanctions last month, but held off to give U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon more time to find a diplomatic end to the four-year crisis in Darfur where more than 200,000 people have been killed.
Beyond the new U.S. sanctions, Bush directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed U.N. resolution to strengthen international pressure on the Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir.
"I call on President al-Bashir to stop his obstruction and to allow the peacekeepers in and to end the campaign of violence that continues to target innocent men, women and children," Bush said. Bush said delaying sanctions to allow more time for diplomacy had not been effective.
Maybe the reason for the strange headline is that the AP agrees with the Chinese "troubleshooter" sent to deal with the Sudan genocide:
Meanwhile, Liu Guijin, China's new troubleshooter on Africa, defended Chinese investment in Sudan Tuesday as a better way to stop the bloodshed rather than the sanctions advocated by the U.S. and other Western governments.
Fresh from his first trip to Sudan since his appointment this month as a special government envoy, Liu said he saw no desperation in refugee camps in Darfur last week and found that international and Sudanese groups were working together to solve humanitarian problems there.
"I didn't see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger," Liu said at a media briefing. Rather, he said, people in Darfur thanked him for the Chinese government's help in building dams and providing water supply equipment.
“You gotta see this!” Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves…
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable… What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots — such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman’s experiment — that have been around for a very long time.
The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize — even experience vicariously — what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago…
Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has found that people all over the world process moral questions in the same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think about morality much like language, in that its basic features are hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on that framework in much the way children in different cultures learn different languages using the same neural machinery.
The potential for moral thinking is hardwired. I have always believed that. (Romans 2:15 suggests that the "law" is written in our hearts.) However, clearly, it is not true that "people all over the world process moral questions in the same way." There is an element of rational analysis that goes into making moral decisions. I would be willing to wager that multiple areas of the brain are involved in moral thinking. Sure, some things tug at our heartstrings, and cause us to make certain moral decisions on a very base level. For instance, most everyone responds to cuteness by wanting to protect.
But, such a moral decision is not nearly on the level of the kinds of moral thinking we are required to do in modern, post-tribal society.
The story of the Good Samaritan from the Christian Bible is the kind of moral thinking I am talking about here. Check it out:
25 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 26And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" 27And he answered, "(AG)YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." 28And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; (AH)DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." 29But wishing (AI)to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" The Good Samaritan 30Jesus replied and said, "A man was (AJ)going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31"And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32"Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33"But a (AK)Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35"On the next day he took out two [a]denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.' 36"Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?" 37And he said, "The one who showed mercy toward him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same."
This kind of moral thinking demands that we look beyond the allegiances of family and tribe. The Samaritans were among the most reviled of people in the society in which Jesus lived. Jesus' point, in teaching this story, was to tell us that decency, and goodness, can be found among all the tribes, and that we must look to such people as examples. Additionally, the question posed here was "Who is my neighbor?", and Jesus' answer is to tell us that the neighbor is defined as is the person who does good, and that we all ought to be concerned with doing good above tribal allegiance.
If such moral thinking were hardwired into the human brain, then atrocities such as the Holocaust, or the ongoing genocide in the Sudan, could never have occurred. All one has to do to know that we should step in in such circumstances, is do a calm, rational, analysis of the facts on the ground.
In other words, we need to add thinking from the analytical part of the brain, not just the "moral thinking" part of the brain which these scientists are studying.
But, honestly, we are too busy thinking with exactly that "moral thinking" part of our brain to be bothered with the man lying bleeding along the road.
Just A Tiny Minority Just A Tiny Minority Just A Tiny Minority ...
The other day a Pew Poll came out which told us that 24% of young American Muslims believe that suicide bombings are ok, and that nearly 40% of all American Muslims believe that Islam can not coexist with modern culture.
That is frightening, right?
Not to our friends at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Watch this video and see how CAIR spins the results of the Pew Poll.
If you don't believe what they say, they will make you write "It's just a tiny minority of extremists" on the chalkboard 1000 times.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line president warned Israel on Thursday that other nations in the region would "uproot" the Jewish state if it attacked Lebanon in the summer.
"If you think that by bombing and assassinating Palestinian leaders you are preparing ground for new attacks on Lebanon in the summer, I am telling you that you are seriously wrong," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the city of Isfahan.
"If this year you repeat the same mistake of the last year, the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will uproot the Zionist regime."
Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the U.S. can make it if they are willing to work hard.
The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.
A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government “singles out” Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.
Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.
Media Spins/Spikes Disturbing Finding That Quarter of American Muslim Young Men Support Terrorism
Personally, I'm a little bit more worried about the 26% of young Muslim males who want to kill me, but it's good to know that "most Muslims" seek to adopt the "American lifestyle." (Which may or may not involve killing Americans.) Representative quote:
"This is a very positive story for the vast majority of Muslims," says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "They're highly assimilated, and the largest proportion of their friends are not Muslims."
Terrific.
The survey "clearly shows that the American Muslim community is well integrated in our society," says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C. "The overwhelming majority of American Muslims reject terrorism and religious extremism."
"Overwhelming majority." 26%-69% on the terrorism justified vs. never justified question amoung young Muslim American males.
Again, I was more hoping for something like a "unanimity."
I ask of Mr. Hooper: Would he feel relieved if I told him right now 69% of young non-Muslim males opposed, but 26% supported, killing you and fellow Muslims due to our anger at their foreign policy?
I don't think so. I think he'd call that "hatred" and "backlash."
"A Mighty Heart," Angelina Jolie's film about the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, had its first screening Monday morning at the Cannes Film Festival. Simply put, the Michael Winterbottom film is an exceptional piece of work, deeply affecting and filmmaking of the highest order.
In purely Hollywood terms, the film is a certain Oscar nominee. Everyone involved in "A Mighty Heart" — from Winterbottom to Jolie as Pearl's widow, Mariane, to Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl — can be proud of a job very well done.
Based on the book by Mariane Pearl, the film follows the pregnant Mariane as she searches for her husband following his disappearance in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. At the time, Daniel Pearl was writing a story about shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Winterbottom's cinema verité-style only adds to the immediacy of the Pearl tragedy. This director has done a remarkable job.
And it’s not just Jolie and Futterman who shine. The entire supporting cast including Irfan Khan, who has already had a hit this year with "The Namesake," and the always reliable Will Patton as a CIA agent, makes the back-stories of the film eminently watchable, too. But ultimately it’s Winterbottom’s achievement with screenwriter John Orloff (“Band of Brothers”) in making “Mighty Heart” an ensemble piece.
Jolie, who’s probably the hottest celebrity right now and covered by every tabloid in the world, could easily have become outsized in a story with many elements. Instead, she is quite tempered here, and becomes a team player whether she likes it or not.
It’s easy to forget what a fine actress she can be. But her understanding of Mariane Pearl is unusually touching. For most of the movie, Mariane seems a little cool, distant and brittle as she absorbs the news that her husband has been kidnapped.
Jolie, however, finally shows the human side of this strong woman when she learns that her husband is actually dead. She lets loose with shrieks of anguish that are all too real. They are almost like animal cries, and I guarantee you, audiences will be pulling out the Kleenex at this moment.
Winterbottom also punctuates the film with lots of jump-cutting, nonlinear plotting and flashback, all of which help add to the tension. He and Orloff flesh out Daniel Pearl, too, a hard task since he could have vanished after the kidnapping. But working with Futterman they create a very real man who met a tragic and untimely death.
Tackling "stereotypes" and "misconceptions" at a Philosophy Tea at Buena Vista University in Iowa. "Jihad and human rights," by Jennifer Yeske for The Tack Online of BVU:
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, Americans have strived to put together some understanding of why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
While doing this some Americans have developed stereotypes and wrong ways of thinking about Islam.
On Tuesday, Wood's House hosted a Philosophy Tea entitled, "Jihad and Human Rights" held by senior Amy Servantez and junior Courtney McGarry. Their goal was to clarify any misconceptions that people had about the Islam religion.
"What we really wanted people to get out of our Philosophy Tea was that Islam is not a violent religion. There is nothing in the Qur'an that violates human rights. It is the interpretation and the governments that use Islam as a blanket to cover their crimes and violations," Servantez said....
"There is nothing in the Qur'an that violates human rights."
Rather than regarding women as human beings equal to men, the Qur'an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).
The Qur'an also declares that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282).
It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).
It rules that a son's inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11).
The Qur’an tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them" (4:34).
It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).
And of course it counsels Muslims to make war against Jews and Christians until they submit to Islamic authority and pay a special tax: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (9:29).
And it says that those who "make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land" -- an elastic term that could mean almost anything -- should be punished by crucifixion, double amputation, or exile: "The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land" (5:33).
Now, in light of all that and more, please don't tell us that "there is nothing in the Qur'an that violates human rights." We can read, and at face value passages like these are clearly in violation of numerous human rights norms. Now, it may be that these passages and others like them are interpreted in some benign way in mainstream Islam, although that is often asserted and seldom buttressed with any evidence. In that case, it would be more honest to acknowledge that there are many problematic passages in the Qur'an, but that mainstream Islam has spiritualized them, or rejected their universal validity, or some such.
But if you just deny they're there at all, Ms. Servantez, you give the impression that you are either uninformed or dishonest. And I'm sure you don't want that.
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
"After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Tell me, how does one compromise with such a group of people? They are absolutists. They are racist at base. They seek the destruction of a whole race of people. One can not split the difference with such people.
Lord Phillips is insane, and so is anyone who seeks a middle ground with Hamas.
If you loved America, if you were a proud American, why wouldn't you want to help fight the war against our mortal enemy. In CAIR's case, it's because they are the enemy.
U.S. attorney will lead parlayArab-Americans and Muslims concerned about FBI efforts to recruit them as informants and other tactics designed to prevent terrorism plan to meet today with U.S. Attorney Troy Eid.
Why wouldn't any good American want to help prevent terrorism?
Among issues they say they want addressed:
FBI pressure on Arab-Americans and Muslims to work as informants - reporting what friends say and do.
"Pressure"?
Federal authorities' intervening in local court cases against people with Mideast and South Asian ties.
Clear criteria for placing people on government terrorist watch lists and removing names in case of mistakes.
"We try to say: 'You are in America, a different society from the one you came from that had secret police who could take you away,"' said Djilali Kacem, executive director of the Colorado chapter of the Muslim American Society and imam at a Northglenn mosque.But visits by FBI agents and alleged random security searches at airports leave newcomers from the Mideast and elsewhere skeptical, Kacem said.
"They tell (immigrants): 'If you will help us, we will help you get the green card."'
When FBI agents visited Palestinian-American Zuhair Mahd, a computer programmer who moved to the U.S. as a teenager, "They put the pitch: 'There are bad people in the community. Sept. 11 was a bad thing. Would you be willing to serve as a source for us or report to us about suspicious or bad people in the community?"' Mahd said.
Sounds mighty reasonable.
Mahd, now 33, refused, telling the agents, "I don't like to fill in the blanks when I don't know the full story," he said. Now he reckons his refusals are "a driving factor" in FBI delays approving a security background check that has stalled his otherwise-approved citizenship application. (MORE)
"A British stand-up has been accused of spreading `racist hate speech' in California. Pat Condell has faced a barrage of criticism after links to his anti-Muslim monologue on YouTube were circulated to commissioners in the city of Berkeley.
In the five-minute video, Condell condemns Islam as a religion of war and its prophet Mohammad as `some rambling ancient desert nomad with a psychological disorder'. He attacks fundamentalist men as `primitive pigs whose only achievement in life is to be born with a penis is one hand and a Koran in the second' and accuses women who wear veils of their own will of being `mentally ill'.
....Commissioner Michael Sherman said Condell's views were `stunning' because of his `stereotyping and bigotry of the tone and the language'. And commissioner Elliot Cohen called the tape `insulting, degenerating and racist'.....Condell, an atheist, has released a number of monologues on the internet, criticising all religions. The anti-Islamic video has been seen almost 16,000 times on YouTube and more than 190,000 times on another file sharing site, LiveLeak.
Reut Cohen has lots of coverage of the ongoing madness at UC Irvine, where the Muslim Students Union is finishing up a week of Holocaust denial and support for terrorism, enabled and permitted by a university administration that shares the responsibility for this outrageous hate speech.
One rabbi has hit on a creative way to protest the MSU’s hatefest, a technique against which the radical Islamists have no defense: mockery.
Well, of course they are. You wouldn't expect them to be on the side of American law and order would you?
An unbelievable story from the University of California Irvine, where the Muslim Students Union is holding a virulently anti-Israel hate week, and at the same time trying to claim victimhood: FBI actions at UCI questioned.
The OC Register says the “FBI” is being questioned. But notice—the students not only tried to detain the agent, they threw a cinderblock at his car.
...he noticed a silver Ford Taurus with blackened windows following him. Ahmed said he stopped the truck in view of other campus observers and stood in front of the Taurus, trying to look through the blackened windshield and asking the driver to identify himself. When he would not speak, Ahmed said he tried to take a photo of the car’s license plate with his camera phone. “He could have just rolled down his window and said, ‘I’m an FBI agent,’ and that would have been the end of it,” Ahmed said. “There was nothing improper going on.”
Instead, according to Ahmed, the driver revved his engine threateningly and began pushing him backward with the car’s front bumper. Ahmed said he then began calling for help, and dozens of other students ran over to assist. ... Regarding the allegations that an FBI agent endangered a student, Eimiller said, “The fair thing to do is to let the cops investigate it.” She added that a student threw a cinderblock at the agent.
The agent did not violate any policy by refusing to identify himself, Eimiller said, because he was not conducting an arrest.
On Thursday, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Anaheim, said his office “has received many calls from students and parents at UCI expressing extreme concern about the safety and privacy of their students on campus” since Monday.
“The calls came all day yesterday and today,” Ayloush said Thursday. “It’s understandable that law enforcement might sometimes need to verify certain tips, but the problem in this situation was the manner in which it was conducted.”
Check out these two Aussies as they mock the "Uncovered Meat" Sheikh (courtesy Atlas Shrugs).
Australian Mufti Taj Din Al Hilaly, the 'Cat Meat Sheik' gets some good advice. Known for many utterances of dangerous absurdity, like these:
“If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”
“Satan sees women as half his soldiers. You’re my messenger in necessity, Satan tells women you‘re my weapon to bring down any stubborn man. There are men that I fail with. But you’re the best of my weapons.”
“…The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place.”
In this episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl and his friends hit the bar early one day to find that their "Cops" is on TV; meaning the episode of Cops which featured their arrests is on.
I’d like to dwell on one aspect of Western culture that tends to be downplayed, but is quite important: We are the only culture in the history of mankind to develop realistic, faithful depictions of beings and matter in our paintings and sculptures, rather than merely stylized depictions. We are also the only culture to invent a way to depict three-dimensional subjects in a two-dimensional format. A similar perspective was lacking in all other types of early art, be that Chinese or Japanese, Indian, Mesoamerican, African or Middle Eastern. This could conceivably be because the Western man has perceived space and spatial relationships in a different way than other men. Westerners are different, from a very long time back.
What does this mean for our civilization? We need to understand why the West is so different from all other human cultures, and why it has produced so many different results.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led a raucous anti-American rally in the United Arab Emirates a day after a low-key visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney there in an attempt to counter Tehran's influence in the region.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering Dubai crowd Sunday that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth. ''Every time your name is mentioned, hatred builds up,'' Ahmadinejad said of the United States to a crowd of thousands, mostly Iranian expatriates. ''Go fix yourself. This is Iran's advice to you. Leave the region... The nations of the region can no longer take you forcing yourself on them.'' (AP)
Find me an Arab Islamic nation that is not backward thinking, and anti-American, and I will gladly take it all back. But, the evidence just keeps piling up higher day by day.
It is my opinion that many Muslims and organizations, media outlets, and academic institutions which represent the Islamic community are not peaceful, though they almost always insist they are. Instead, they are very skilled at adopting the rhethoric of "peace and justice" which has been developed by the Western left.
Here's an example of a Muslim for whom the adoption of such rhetoric didn't go so well in a time of need. In fact, he was on trial on terrorism charges:
When he began testifying at his own trial this week, a Florida doctor accused of pledging to support al-Qaida hoped to convince a jury that the FBI had it all wrong: He was a man of peace.
If that was the plan, then Rafiq Abdus Sabir had a disastrous day on the witness stand Friday. Under cross examination, the Columbia University-trained physician was forced to acknowledge a history of family violence, a fascination with weapons and a belief that good Muslims should engage in armed jihad, or holy war.
U.S. Attorney Victor Hou asked Sabir about an audio tape, found at his house, in which a religious lecturer said God would “destroy the disbelievers.”
“That’s God’s word. I have to believe in it,” Sabir said.
They also discussed passages from religious books. One said Jews should be expelled from the Arabian peninsula. Another said Muslims are obligated to obey an imam who declares war against nonbelievers. Hou asked Sabir whether he agreed with both passages, and he said yes but added that Muslims are only required to follow such instructions from a legitimate religious authority.
Hou pressed him further: “You believe that you must participate in armed jihad, if you get a chance to?”
“Yes,” Sabir answered, but said only in a legitimate conflict.
Everyone take note, because this is the same thing that CAIR (the Council of American-Islamic Relations) does. It is the same thing Hamas, Fatah, Hizbollah, and the Muslim Council of Britain do as well.
Indeed, it is the same thing all Muslim governments do. Oh yes, and all Muslim media outlets, political organizations, and academic institutions of any appreciable size.
Like Sabir said, when asked if he believed God would destroy the unbelievers:
"That's what God said."
God said it, Muslims, in general, believe it, and that settles it.
The Globalization Of Islamofascism: A Leftist Critique Of Islamic Extremism
Ali Eteraz - a Muslim apologist/reformist who used to be a cohort of mine over at the Infidel Bloggers Alliance, until my fellow Infidels chased him away with their persistent belligerence - has written an interesting piece over at the leftie blog, The Huffington Post.
In this article Eteraz states his admiration for Noam Chomsky and his "theory of dissent", which as far as I can tell consists of nothing more than laying the blame for all the problems of the world squarely on the United States government. But, my disagreements with Chomsky are neither here nor there.
Instead, the reason I call your attention to this article from Eteraz is because, in it, he is calling for the left to expand their notion of dissent to include the criticism of extremist Islam. Check it out (hat tip to Pamela at Atlas Shrugs):
I am writing to say that the theory of dissent which has so long served Professor Chomsky, and allowed him to cast such a shadow upon the world, though still necessary, is no longer sufficient.
It is not true what his critics say. He does not dissent too much. Rather, if Professor Chomsky will accept a rejoinder from a meager youth: he does not dissent enough.
I cannot deign to list his contributions because their importance can be assumed by simply asserting that they exist.
Yet, the fact is that today, globalization, which Chomsky always said was the handmaiden of neo-liberalism, and a construction of powerful Western governments, has an equally sordid evil twin, and this is the globalized monstrosity of extremely extreme extremist Islam. By the way, when I talk about extremists, I am not referring to terrorists alone. Would it were that this globalized undercurrent of violence was merely political!
There exists today a form of globalized lifestyle and cultural extremism galvanized and organized and idealized by millions. This extremism, where it is not suffocating art, scholarship, freedom and love, it is murdering, killing, and beating to death. It must be identified and spoken out against with the same gusto reserved for neo-imperialism and corporatism. Dissent against all three is not inconsistent as they each mutually feed one another and leave vast numbers of human beings without a voice, without life.
I just read that in Kurdistan a Yezidi girl was stoned to death with bricks to her head because she loved a Sunni boy; meanwhile security forces watched and people made videos on cell phones. I just read that Egyptian hardliners hold parties where the works of jurists like Abu el Fadl - who writes about the Search for Beauty in Islam - are burnt. I just read that the Taliban "Book of Rules" contains exhortations to kill school-teachers, which is usually accomplished by disemboweling. I just talked to a police officer from a Muslim country who recalled to me instances of boys raped upon stacks of Qurans by heads of religious institutions. I spoke with small business owners in a Muslim country who are regularly extorted by their religious leaders. I just read that Hezbollah is now operating in South America (quite distant from Lebanon, no?), recruiting and drug-running like common thugs, and we have known this since 2002. I just read of "ninjabis" in Pakistan - veiled women who with sticks and rage beat brothel owners, music store owners and video store clerks. I just read of Iranian police officers who kick and beat women for daring to wear earrings. I just read that in some places (Saudi Arabia) women are being beaten so they will wear the veil; in other places women are being beaten (Mogadishu) so they will not wear the veil.
Reliapundit left a comment at my blog about this story which I think covers my theory of why we are seeing a big push for global warming taxes. [Emphasis added]
the political schmucks running agw crowd are NOT dumb.
they KNOW we are near the end of this warming cycle, and that's EXACTLY why they are pushing so dang FURIOUSLY HARD to get agw taxes and regulations in place ASAP ASAP ASAP - because in a few years it will be cooling --- they want to hamper capitalism/free markets / industrialization/globalization --- it's always been the left's long term goal - and they KNOW that it's NOW OR NEVER!
And now the rest of the story. NASA says the solar conveyor has slowed. The solar conveyor speed predicts the sunspot level two cycles in advance, about 20 years:
What does all this have to do with the climate on earth? Let us look at the climate when sunspot levels were low:
...the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima coincide with the colder periods of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1820. More recently it was discovered that the sunspot number during 1861-1989 shows a remarkable parallelism with the simultaneous variation in northern hemisphere mean temperatures (2). There is an even better correlation with the length of the solar cycle, between years of the highest numbers of sunspots. For example, the temperature anomaly was - 0.4 K in 1890 when the cycle was 11.7 years, but + 0.25 K in 1989 when the cycle was 9.8 years. Some critics of the theory of man-induced global warming have seized on this discovery to criticize the greenhouse gas theory.
Anti-war activist Martin Gilbertson thought he’d found people of like minds, when he started working in the Muslim community of Beeston. He produced anti-western propaganda videos, and helped to secure websites and encrypted emails for Muslims at the Iqra Bookshop—and for 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.
His multicultural anti-war fantasy had become a jihad nightmare, and he tried to alert the police—but he never heard back from them until after the London bombings.
The Media Attempts To Ignore The Jihad Mickey Mouse
Why is it that, so often, the cartoon stories are among the biggest when it comes to Muslims? Banning Piglet, the Danish Mohammed Cartoons, and now the Palestinian Mickey Mouse who calls for death to the Jews, and for Islam to take over the world.
In this CNN clip video, they challenge the Memri translation of what is said, based upon CNN "translators".
The context doesn't fit the CNN "translation". Mickey Hamouse asks the girl on the phone : "what do we want to do?"...and her answer is "annihilate the Jews"...which fits the context of the question.
"Mickey" asks "What do we want to do (to liberate Al Aqsa)
Girl on camera says: ahna bidna... we want to)
and the girl on the phone (off camera) answers: harad al yahood (annihilate the Jews) I got this translation from an Arabic speaking Israeli.And as I said, CNN's translation doesn't fit the context of the question asked of the girl on the phone.
Per CNN (who does not dispute the question "Mickey" asks);
"Mickey" : What do we want to do...?Girl on phone: "Jews are killing us" ( CNN "translation") That makes no sense.
She's absolutely right.
Today, we find the Agence French Press (which is one of the three largest news distribution outlets in the world) is attempting to spin the Jihad Mickey story. Check this out:
There isn’t a single word in this article about the Islamic supremacist messages that are a huge part of this show. They’re teaching children that Islam is going to take over the whole world, and the mainstream media are covering it up.
A Hamas-run television station defied Israel and the Palestinian government on Friday by continuing to air a controversial children’s puppet show with a Mickey Mouse lookalike preaching resistance.
Israel and Jewish groups have slammed the Al-Aqsa programme over calls made by the copycat mouse named Farfur and by a little girl for resistance against Israel and the United States, and for its overtly Islamist message.
Complete with Islamic songs and calls for cities in Israel to return to Palestine, Friday’s episode apparently sought to prepare children for their end-of-year examinations — with Farfur being told that cheating is forbidden.
Asked why by an Al-Aqsa television reporter, he looked left and right to see what his friends were writing and answered: “Because the Jews destroyed my home and I left my books and notes under the rubble.”
“I’m calling on all children to read more and more to prepare for exams because the Jews don’t want us to learn,” Farfur then said after being told he had failed the test.
On Thursday, the chairman of the board of Al-Aqsa television, Fathi Hamad, refused to bow to pressure to cull the “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” programme or to doctor its content.
“This campaign of criticism is part of a plan orchestrated by the West and the occupying power to attack Islam on the one hand and the Palestinian cause on the other,” he said.
We must ask ourselves, why is our media so intent on ignoring the facts of this case?
US Vice President Dick Cheney warned Friday from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf that the United States will not let Iran get nuclear weapons.
"We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region," he told thousands of sailors on the nuclear-powered USS John C. Stennis as it cruised roughly 240 kilometres (150 miles) from Iran.
Cheney, who spoke as five warplanes stood arrayed behind him, said the US naval presence in the region sent "clear messages to friends and adversaries alike."
His comments came as he visited the United Arab Emirates on a Middle East tour to ask Arab allies to step up their efforts to help war-torn Iraq and to curb Iran's growing regional influence. He spoke ahead of the arrival of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday in the first visit by an Iranian head of state to the close US Gulf ally since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran.
US President George W. Bush in January ordered a second US aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and announced the deployment of a Patriot missile defense battalion to the region to protect allies against potential strikes.
ABOARD USS JOHN C. STENNIS (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney issued a warning to Iran while aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf on Friday, saying the United States would join allies to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons "and dominating the region."
With two U.S. carrier groups now in the region, the vice president declared, "We're sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike. We'll keep the sea lanes open."
With Nicolas Sarkozy's decisive victory as the new president of France, the French have produced their first pro-American ruler since Louis XVI.
In celebration of France's spectacular return to Western civilization, I bought a Herve Leger dress on Monday, and we're having croissants for breakfast every day this week. This delicate French pastry, by the way, is in the shape of a crescent to commemorate the Crusaders' victory over Islam. Aren't the French just peachy?
"Sarkozy the American," as he is known in France, called Muslim rioters "scum." Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
He explained his position on Muslim immigrants in France, saying: "Nobody has to, I repeat, live in France. But when you live in France, you respect its rules. That is to say that you are not a polygamist. ... One doesn't practice female genital mutilation on one's daughters, one doesn't slit the throat of the sheep, and one respects the republican rules."
Sarko never issued an apology or entered rehab. To the contrary, he said: "I called some individuals that I refuse to call 'youth' by the name they deserve. ... I never felt that by saying 'scum' I was being vulgar, hypocritical or insincere."
Is there a single American politician who would speak so clearly without then apologizing to Howard Dean?
It looks like the Democrats are going to have to drop their talking point about Bush irritating the rest of the world. Evidently not as much as Muslim terrorists irritate the rest of the world. The politicians who hate Bush keep being dumped by their own voters. At the Democratic presidential debate a few weeks ago, B. Hussein Obama carped that Bush had "alienate(d) the world community" and vowed that he would build "the sort of alliances and trust around the world that has been so lacking over the last six years."
Democrats are terrific at building alliances. Remember how Jimmy Carter won the love of the world by ditching our ally the Shah of Iran, allowing him be replaced by a string of crazy ayatollahs? Since then, we haven't heard a peep from that area of the world.
The smartest woman in the world sniped that she would "create alliances instead of alienation." Yes, it was spellbinding how her husband charmed North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung and his sociopathic son Kim Jong Il by showering them with visits from Jimmy Carter and gifts from love-machine Madeleine Albright. And that was that: No more trouble from North Korea! As I understand it, the center of the supposedly America-hating world is France. But now it turns out even the French don't hate America as much as liberals do.
Au contraire! (We can say that again!) Our Georgie is the most popular American with the French since Jerry Lewis.
All over the civilized world, voters are turning terrorist-coddling liberals out of office and voting for politicians friendly toward Bush, the world's sworn enemy of Islamic fascism.
Those foreign leaders so admired by Democrats for hating George Bush and loving Saddam Hussein are being replaced by rulers who pledge their friendship to the United States.
Retrospectively, B. Hussein Obama's answer about our most important ally being "the European Union" may eventually become true, thanks to Bush's ceaseless ally-making.
In Germany, pro-American Angela Merkel crushed the mincing anti-American chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2005.
Last year, conservatives swept Canada, making Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper the prime minister. I haven't loved Canadians this much since the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is both the longest-serving Australian prime minister and -- by his own account -- the most conservative. As The New York Times rooted for his defeat in 2004, claiming Australians were furious with him for his support of the Iraq war, he won a historic third term.
Along with Howard, Bush's staunchest ally in the war on terrorism has been Britain's Labor Party leader Tony Blair. He's about to leave office -- only to be replaced by a leader from the even more pro-American Conservative Party.
Only Spain remains a nation of women. As long as Spain exists, it will not outlive the shame of its gutless capitulation to terrorist bombings in 2004. It is worse than Sweden's neutrality toward Hitler.
But France! Until this week, France seemed a less likely place to find someone who supports America than a meeting of Democrats.
Apparently, even the French prefer Western civilization to clitorectomy-performing, car-burning savages.
The Democratic Party is now officially the only organization on Earth that does not take the threat of Islamic fascism seriously. Between the Democrats and the media, America has gone from its usual position as the world's last hope to radical Islam's last hope.
I read the news today, oh boy 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire And though the holes were rather small Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
The women in this video (about the Islamic takeover of Blackburn, Lancashire) shrouded in their black burqas, look like black holes left where humans used to be.
Watch this video and understand that this is what happens wherever Islam reigns.
Is this the kind of society you would want to live in?
I was reading the latest issue of Time Magazine. I was taken aback by their recent article entitled “How to Prevent the Next Darfur”.
Whao!! I said to myself. Time Magazine has awakened to the Muslim threat in the Sudan? Do they have a formula for preventing Radical Muslims from killing thousands of non-Muslims in Darfur? Or perhaps they’ve discovered ways to make sure that the humanitarian aid sent to Darfur is not being stolen by the war lords? Or perhaps a way to make Muslims speak out and do something about the killing of women and children and the starvation of tens of thousands of Darfurians? I read the subtitle of the article with baited breath. Would the solution to future Darfurs be finally exposed by the liberal media?
You’re right. Of course not.
The way to prevent the next Darfur is… ready? Drum roll please…"STEP ONE: GET SERIOUS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE!"
That’s right folks. Not the civil war. Not radical Muslims attempting to purify the land of non-Muslims. Not the defeat of the war lords who control the countryside. Global warming is the culprit and the reason for the thousands of deaths in Darfur.
How simple. How intelligent. Why haven’t we thought of that before? After all global warming is responsible for many of our problems. The solution? For liberals who have their new hammer of global warming, every problem looks like a nail.
Go read the whole thing.
If I had a hammer, I had hammer the brains out of their stupid liberal heads over there at Time Magazine. Good thing I don't have a hammer. Good thing all I have is a computer.
Palestinian militants opened fire at a sports day at a United Nations-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a bodyguard of a local Fatah leader and wounding seven other people, medical officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Muslim extremists had earlier visited the al-Amareya primary school in Rafah, warning authorities not to hold the event, UN and security officials said.
Local residents said the gunmen, whom they described as Muslim extremists, arrived at the school and warned through loudspeakers against letting boys and girls participate in the sports day.
The gunmen said the event “taught children immoral values.”
He's a Palestinian immigrant. Yeah, it's great to have people immigrate from countries where the national television station is brainwashing for genocide against Americans and Jews. That's very smart of us.
Oh yes, and if you don't know, I'm being sarcastic:
In the original documents charging Abuelawi, Sumad is quoted in a meeting with Abuelawi and a government informer as saying that "he wants to buy as many explosives as possible because, 'we're going to war.'"
Eight men have been indicted on charges that they were involved in two conspiracies to buy and sell fully automatic weapons, a Claymore anti-personnel mine and other explosives, the U.S. Attorney's office said today.
Seven more people have been charged in a case involving the buying, selling or hiding of automatic weapons, an anti-personnel mine and other explosives.
The charges, unsealed in a federal indictment Tuesday, say it was a crime for profit but do not specify who the ultimate customers would have been. One of the newly accused men told a Post-Dispatch reporter in an interview three months ago that it had been part of a plan to sell weapons to local street gangs.
The first person implicated in the case, Mousa M. Abuelawi, 22, was originally arrested Dec. 29 and charged with three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun, and conspiracy to violate machine-gun statutes. He has since moved to Creve Coeur from St. Charles.
The superseding indictment in U.S. District Court in St. Louis names Abuelawi and seven others on charges including machine-gun violations, conspiracy, lying to the FBI and other firearms charges.
Infidelsrus first posted on this disturbing story back in February here.
I found this article about a palestinian in St. Louis who was buying machine guns, Claymore mines and hand grenades.
Mousa M. Abuelawi, 22, of Franjoe Court, was arrested Dec. 29 and charged on complaints accusing him of three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun and conspiracy to violate machine gun statutes.
Yeah, I heard St. Louis was a dangerous city, but mines and hand grenades?
Abuelawi told the informer, “this is not my first time dealing with this (expletive),” according to the affidavit.
What a crime to be accused of. Joshua played jazz and the whole world rejoiced. We can't have that. Anyway, Jazz Crimes is the name of this song by Joshua Redman and his trio consisting of he, Sam Yahel on Organ, and Brian Blade on Drums.
Sunday, May 6, marks the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn was nine days away from an election from which he was expected to emerge as Dutch prime minister. As he walked out of a radio studio near Amsterdam, a left-wing activist named Volker van der Graaf pumped five bullets into his back. Fortuyn died almost instantly.
The killer would later explain that Fortuyn's views on Muslim immigration made him a "danger." It was the Netherlands's first political assassination in over 300 years.
Fortuyn had been an active politician for only a few months but had already shaken things up dramatically. Before him, Dutch politics had been essentially a closed club whose members shared broadly similar views on major issues and abhorred open conflict.
Then along came Fortuyn, a writer and sociology professor who'd grown increasingly concerned about the rapid Muslim influx into the Netherlands — and about the fact that while the Dutch government lavishly subsidized immigrant families, schools, mosques, and community centers, it made little effort to integrate newcomers and refused to challenge the patriarchal, often brutal values that held sway in Muslim enclaves.
Fortuyn recognized the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Europe as a menace to democracy. And he said it straight out — eloquently, forcefully, fearlessly. Back in 1997 he'd published one of the first books anywhere to sound the alarm. Only days before September 11, 2001, he wrote that communism's role as a threat to Western freedom "has been taken over by Islam."
But instead of recognizing him as a prophet, Dutch leaders saw him as a threat. On September 11, Dutch Moroccans gathered in the streets to cheer. But the interior minister, Zaken De Vries, ignoring these enemies within, warned instead that counterintelligence services would "pay sharp attention to persons who want to … conduct a cold war against Islam." Meaning Fortuyn.
In November 2001, Fortuyn became head of a new party, Livable Netherlands, only to be tossed out three months later for being too outspoken. So he started another party. The more he spoke out, the more journalists and politicians smeared him — an openly gay man and life-long liberal — as a right-wing extremist, a racist, a new Mussolini or Hitler.
Yet millions of his countrymen knew better. Accustomed to leaders who shunned controversy and spoke in empty formulas, Dutchmen were stunned and delighted to hear Fortuyn say things they'd long been thinking themselves. Voters from all over the political map became his ardent supporters. He seemed poised not only to transform the Netherlands but also to lead the way for all of Western Europe.
And then, suddenly, he was dead. Van der Graaf's explanation of his motives read like a précis of every lie that had ever been told about Fortuyn. Dutch citizens were justifiably outraged at the journalists and politicians who'd told those lies. Feeling the heat, the Dutch parliament reformed immigration law — to an extent. It overhauled integration policies — somewhat.
Leading the way in advocating these policy changes were two admirers of Fortuyn's — filmmaker Theo van Gogh and Parliament member Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But by early 2007 they, too, were out of the picture.
In November 2004, an Islamist murdered van Gogh. In 2006, in a crisis that brought down the government, Ms. Hirsi Ali was hounded out of Parliament by colleagues desperate to unload this troublemaker. When she moved to Washington, D.C., last year, polls showed that many Dutchmen wouldn't miss her. The elite, it seemed, had reasserted its power, and the Dutch people, tired of conflict, had embraced the status quo ante.
This was confirmed by the March 2006 elections, in which immigration — incredibly — was a minor issue. Five years ago, Fortuyn inspired widespread hope and determination. Today, all too many Dutch citizens seem confused, fearful, and resigned to gradual Islamization. No wonder many of them — especially the young and educated — are emigrating to places like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Yes, some politicians, notably Parliament member Geert Wilders, are carrying on Fortuyn's battle. But momentum has given way to malaise. Politicians and journalists who once kept mum on Islamization now openly defend it as preferable to culture clash: Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen has called for "accommodation with the Muslims," including toleration "of orthodox Muslims who consciously discriminate against their women."
Only last week, Mr. Wilders was called in by Dutch intelligence and security officials who, he said, "intimidated" him by pressuring him to tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Fortuyn's brief shining moment seems very long ago.
Many political assassinations leave behind haunting questions. How would Reconstruction have gone under Lincoln? Could the Vietnam debacle have been avoided if President Kennedy had lived? Five years after Fortuyn's murder, it can feel as if Volkert van der Graaf robbed Europe not only of a brilliant champion of liberty, but of its one great chance to save itself before it's too late.
Journalists are often accused of bias. Rarely do journalists level that charge against themselves. But the 35,000 members of Britain’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have done exactly that. Call them prejudiced, call them unprofessional. You can’t say they aren’t candid. The NUJ has declared a boycott against the usual suspect: Israel. Just say no! to Israeli oranges, lemons and melons, they demand.
The NUJ has not declared a boycott against Sudan -- despite the fact that the Khartoum regime is committing genocide against black Muslims in Darfur.Nor have they called for a boycott against the Syrian and Russian regimes that regularly murder their critics; the Iranian mullahs who torture reporters; the Palestinian Authority which is complicit in the kidnapping of correspondents; or the many Middle Eastern regimes that trample human rights day in and day out.
No, the NUJ targets what is indisputably the freest and most democratic country in the Middle East, the one nation in the world with neighbors so hostile they vow to wipe her off the map.
The simple explanation is anti-Israelism -- the 21st century’s most fashionable form of anti-Semitism. The NUJ is not quite candid enough to say that. Instead, the union cites what it calls the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel."
You may be thinking: But didn’t last summer's conflict begin when Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon at villages inside Israel? Didn’t Hezbollah commandos cross the border into Israel and kill three Israeli soldiers and kidnap two more (who are to this day still in captivity, deprived of the most basic rights to which POWs are entitled)? Weren’t those acts of war to which Israel had a right to respond?
Also, you might wonder why the NUJ is so blithely unconcerned about Hezbollah’s use of Lebanese civilians and, in some cases, entire villages, as human shields. Though there was little press coverage during last summer’s war, after the conflict U.K. Foreign Office Minister Kim Howell investigated and reported to a parliamentary committee that Hezbollah had extensively hidden caches of arms in schools and mosques, and rockets in homes and apartment blocks.
“What I saw out there begs many questions about the way we try to define what constitutes a war crime,” Howell said. “Every time the Israelis responded [to a missile attack] and smashed a building down, every picture of a burnt child and every picture of a building that had housed people [where] there was now pancake on the ground was propaganda for Hezbollah.”
Propaganda that many journalists were more than willing to distribute globally (as Marvin Kalb, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, documents in a recent report: “The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict"). But that’s the luxury that bias affords: You can ignore war crimes by those you favor while, deriding as “savage” attempts at self-defense by those against whom you are prejudiced.
The British journalist, Toby Harnden, who has worked in the Middle East and who opposes the NUJ action, writes in the Telegraph that the NUJ has “a childish fixation with trendy-Leftie causes,” of which anti-Israelism is merely the most pronounced.
He notes, for example, an NUJ motion that "applauds the advances made by the Venezuelan people and government in redistributing the country's wealth" since Hugo Chavez came to power and turned that country into a bastion of anti-Americanism and an ally of Iran’s rulers.
Ironically, even as the NUJ is bashing Israel, Alan Johnston, the Gaza correspondent of the BBC is being held captive (and may have been killed) by Palestinian militants. Or maybe that isn’t ironic. Johnson’s kidnapping, the abduction and forced conversions of Fox journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, the video-taped decapitation of Daniel Pearl -- these and other atrocities are intimidating a growing list of journalists.
With this as backdrop, perhaps the NUJ boycott against Israel should be seen less as bias and more as a kind of tribute -- a sacrifice of journalistic integrity in the hope it may appease the editors who matter most, those who cut not with red pens but with butcher knives, those who produce not packages for the evening news but snuff videos for the Internet.
“The use of media as a weapon [has] an effect parallel to a battle," Hezbollah commander Nabil Qaouk has declared. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, has observed that more than half of the Islamists' war "is taking place in the battlefield of the media."
That Britain’s National Union of Journalists has now surrendered any pretense of balance and neutrality in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be a source of enormous encouragement to such men.
Here’s a photograph of a lovely display in the window of a bookstore in Amman, Jordan, featuring the latest bestsellers in Arabic: Jimmy Carter’s “Apartheid” book, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Read this short news article from Science Daily and really think about the implications of the information it is presenting. (Thanks to Joe Citizen for sending this over).
PHILADELPHIA, May 1 (UPI) -- New evidence is emerging that clinical death doesn't begin a few minutes after a human heart stops pumping and can take as long as hours to occur.
Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and also the director of the school's new Center for Resuscitation Science, told Newsday in its April 7 edition current resuscitation attempts to keep oxygenated blood moving to the brain could actually make death irreversible.
He said biologists are learning cells don't begin dying as quickly as thought but suspend themselves for hours. Worse for current treatment, flooding them with oxygen kills them, the report said.
Among tests being done are lowering the body temperature of a heart attack victim, deliberately suspending heart activity and using a heart-lung machine to keep the brain supplied with oxygen, he said.
A study at four hospitals, published last year by the University of California, showed 80 percent of just 34 heart attack patients who got such new treatment regimens left the hospital alive, the report said.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
Ok, if I am not mistaken, what is going on here is that Doctors have found that they are able to bring patients back to life after their brain waves have shut off.
Think about that! That means that when the brain shuts off it is like a computer which can be turned back on.
If I am not mistaken, the common scientific assumption has been that brain death occurs when brain waves cease to be active. This new study seems to refute that idea. If that is true that means that the information which we call our personality, or our mind, or our spirit, or soul, is actually in our brain software and only needs brain waves to flow through the body's nervous system.
The information (soul/spirit) is in the brain.
In my opinion, this would mean the beginning of the end of the idea of the duality of the mind and body.
It also would imply that that information could likely be reacessed and downloaded into another system (body or computer).
Mikko is due to have a hearing in the local Police department and I believe he is about to face an investigation for incitement against a group of people (hets mot folkgrupp). So far, no charges have been pressed.
A followup to yesterday’s report: I just got a note from Vasarahammer, with his summary of Mikko Ellilä’s situation. Mr. Ellilä is a Finnish writer and blogger who has been summoned by the police for a hearing under Finland’s “incitement against groups” law.
Several commenters have expressed the opinion that this whole business is likely to amount to nothing, and that Mr. Ellilä’s case will be dismissed when he goes in for his hearing on Monday. But we’re not going to take that for granted. A little international pressure will help concentrate the mind of the Finnish government and make it realize its mistake in harassing Mikko Ellilä. I suggest a two-pronged plan:
1. If you are a blogger, publicize this on your blog. If you are Finnish, and have additional information on Mikko Ellilä, send it in to us or to other blogs to add to the publicity. In particular, a photo would help — I couldn’t find one.
2. Contact the Finnish authorities. For our American readers, the Finnish embassy has a handy US map with state-by-state contact information here.Here’s the main contact info for their embassy in Washington:Embassy of Finland 3301 Massachusetts Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 U.S.A Tel. +1-202-298 5800 Fax: +1-202-298 6030 E-mail: sanomat.was@formin.fi Homepage: www.finland.org
Don’t be shy: remind the Finnish authorities how highly-regarded free speech is in their country. It seems that they may have forgotten that.
Busting bloggers for the crime of opinion aint cool.
As I always say at the beginning of my radio show:
We the people have declared ourselves to be the paralell government of the entire world. All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born endowed by our Creator the same unalienable rights; and these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick heads, then regime change will be necessary.
Palestinian Legislative Leader: Kill Americans And Jews
Dr. Ahmad Bahar (acting Speaker, Palestinian Legislative Council):
“This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our people was afflicted by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation… Be certain that America is on its way to disappear, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine… Make us victorious over the infidel people… Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies… Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.” [PA TV, April 20, 2007]
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