GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Galloway on uniting the left and the jihad....

A rather scary interview with the crazy British MP George Galloway.
M.B.H.S.: You often call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces globally.

How far is it possible under current situation?

Galloway: Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries.

They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization whichis intent upon homogenizing the entire world turning us basically into factory chickens which can be forced fed the American diet of everything from food to Coca-Cola to movies and TV culture. And whose only role in life is to consume the things produced endlessly by the multinational corporations. And the progressive organizations & movements agree on that with the Muslims.

Otherwise we believe that we should all have to speak as Texan and eat McDonalds and be ruled by Bush and Blair. So *on the very grave big issues of the day-issues of war, occupation, justice, opposition to globalization-the Muslims and the progressives are on the same side.

But they now do have some other differences and they are nonetheless important. These are the very big issues that divide progressive organizations and Muslims. But they are fewer than people imagine and the more they want work together as I am doing and have been for many years with Muslims organizations and sincere as well as devout Muslims the fewer the differences are and the less the gap there seems to be.

It's necessary because if we to use in English colloquialism "If we don't hang together we will all hang separately." *Our enemies are very powerful and they are currently ruling the world and if we don't stop them they will finish both of us and they will be the new tyrants, new emperors of the world for a very long time to come if we don't stop them. So it's necessary to unite these two great forces.

Thirdly it's already happening in Britain and the anti movement. That precisely in London we did move millions of people the biggest demonstrations Britain has ever seen which was made up of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in UK and hundreds of thousands, more than a million other from the non Muslim population, hand in hand, black and white, Muslim-non Muslims, old and young, rural and urban all forged into one mighty mass-movement. They said "*/No war on Iraq/*” and "*/Freedom for Palestine/".*

Now as the organizer of those demonstrations and as the leader of the anti war movement I would be bound to say to you that this is the best model constructed anywhere in the world in my opinion.

And if you compare for example the French situation where the French Left and the French Muslims who are 8 million strong are completely separate. This allowed Jacque Chirac to come along and tear the Hijaab of the young girls in France and nobody did anything about it!

The left is weaker and the Muslims are weaker because they are not together. Had they worked together Chirac would never dare. I tell you one thing Tony Blair would never dare to take away the Hijaab from the young girls in Britain. He won't try to do it because the unity between the Muslims and the progressive forces in Britain is too important and too strong.

Gays in the US military...

Max Boot, a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the conservative Weekly Standard, has changed his stance on gays in the military.
I also don't see why we are still barring all gays and lesbians from serving openly. Between 1994 and 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office, the military discharged 9,488 homosexuals, including 322 with badly needed knowledge of such languages as Arabic, Farsi and Korean. In other words, the fight against gay rights is hurting the fight against our real enemies. That's a compelling reason to change the law, even for those of us who used to be supporters of the gay ban.

In 1993-94, when the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy was promulgated, I was persuaded by the warnings of Colin Powell and other generals that opening the door to gays and lesbians would hurt morale and cohesion. But in the intervening decade, society has become more accepting of homosexuality.

In a survey of the military last year, 42% of respondents said gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly; 50% said they should not. Among junior enlisted personnel the figure was 50% in favor of acceptance. In the rest of the population, it's 79%. I suspect that in a year or two, attitudes will tilt even more in the pro-gay direction, making the existing policy unsustainable.

It may still make sense not to assign gay personnel to ground combat units, where they might have trouble fitting in, but why kick out gay translators or technicians? Sooner or later, the U.S. military will follow the example of Australia, Britain and Israel and lift its ban on openly gay service members. In the struggle against Islamic fanatics, we can't afford to turn volunteers away.

Liberals forking over needless cash...

Main headline in the National Post today on proposed settlement of abuse in Indian residentiall schools.
The government of Canada signed an accord with the Assembly of First Nations yesterday that appears to commit Ottawa to a multi-billion-dollar payment to former students of Indian residential schools.
What is really horrible about this proposed settlement is that ALL students would receive money, as opposed to those students who could demonstrate they suffered abuse.

I believe that dollars should only be given out in cases where extreme hardship can be proved.

Sharansky on Amnesty International..

Natan Sharansky was interviewed in Time magazine....and here's what he said about Amnesty.
I have very serious criticisms of Amnesty. There is no moral clarity. It doesn't differentiate between what I call fear societies and free societies. In the democratic world, there are violations of human rights, but they are revealed and dealt with. In a fear society, there are no violations of human rights because human rights just don't exist. All citizens are deprived of those rights. Amnesty International says it doesn't support or oppose any political system, so it ends up with reports that show a moral equivalence between, for example, Israel and the terrorist regimes that attack it.

Snow packs in California...

Just a small indicator on global warming...
In the United States, California’s Yosemite National Park has had an unusually long, wet winter. Snow packs in the Sierra Nevada mountains are around 180% of their average. This has brought a spectacular spring snowmelt; waterfalls are beyond capacity and are quite a spectacle for tourists.
As one reader pointed out to me, this is not really indicative of anything regarding global warming, but of El Nino and precipitation. Which is why not every glacier that is retreating is a sign of global warming.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Chinese detain foreign journalist...

They are a might touchy on the subject of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
A JOURNALIST considered the doyen of China correspondents has been held in Beijing and could be charged with stealing state secrets after he tried to obtain a copy of interviews with Zhao Ziyang, the Communist leader who was purged after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong national who works for The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper, would be the first reporter for a foreign publication to face charges in China.

His wife, Mary Lau, said: “He told me that he expected to be shut up for a long time. It seems they suspect him of stealing state secrets.” Mr Ching, 55, was detained in the southern city of Guangzhou on April 22. He had been trying to obtain a copy of interviews with the late Zhao, who opposed the use of military force to suppress the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

No racial profiling by Kingston police

Last night, I downloaded the study that purported to show that the Kingston police had used racial profiling. The study shows no such thing.

Here are some of the numbers from the study:

If you divide the population into white and non-white, you'll find that non-whites accounted for 7.45% of all stops, compared to being 7.26% of the population. Pretty close, huh? Whites were 92.7% of the population, and 92.6% of the stops!

However, if you look at the individuals who were stopped, the figures are even more interesting. Individual non-whites were stopped 7.04% of the time, compared to being 7.26% of the population.

How on earth does this indicate bias?

It's only when you dig deeper into the non-white category do things happen. For, instance, the only group that gets stopped more than whites is blacks. Asians, South Asians, Hispanics and even Natives get stopped less than white. West Asians are just slightly higher than whites.

And, if you dig deeper into the black category, you'll find that most of the stops were of the 15-24 age group. This begs the question - what is exactly happening within that group. Shouldn't we have some non-qualititive answers here? The study really points in one direction - and that this small group of people are either being targeted (I doubt it), or there is certainly something to investigate.

Here are the numbers: Out of a population of 100 blacks between the age of 15-24, 41 have been stopped by the police; Out of a population of 585 blacks that are not 15-24, only 62 have been stopped by police - a difference of 300%.

And, many of the black 15-24 year olds are getting stopped more than once.

I think the study is pointing in a clear direction - and it isn't in the direction of racial profiling.

A reprieve....but for how long?

Who knows how long till these guys are executed?
A Palestinian Authority (PA) minister said today he is delaying the execution of about 25 Arabs who have been convicted of helping Israel fight terrorism. Sufyan Abu Zaydeh, the minister who oversees Arab prisoners, said the PA is "not in a position to carry out such sentences" at this time. Human rights groups have severely criticized the PA for its policy of executing people who have tried to prevent terror.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Violence is up in the Middle East - but by whom?

Here's a typical CBC story on an Israeli missile attack on a Gaza refugee camp. The Israelis were targeting terrorists who had just lobbed shells at a jewish settlement.

Of course, the title of the CBC report is "Israel strikes Gaza refugee camp" with no reference to who started the violence. But, how about these paragraphs?
However, after a lull that followed the ceasefire announcement, violence has started to climb, including on Sunday, when:

* One Hamas militant was killed in southern Gaza when a rocket-propelled grenade he was trying to fire at a Jewish settlement exploded prematurely.

* Two militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades died in Gaza City when they set off the explosives they were handling.
Couldn't the CBC, just once, be honest and indicate who was violating the truce?

French say no...will the EU listen?

Very good news....but, somehow, I believe the EU will work around this..perhaps a second vote..
EUROPEAN leaders desperately played down Europe’s biggest crisis in 50 years as voters in France overwhelmingly rejected the European constitution.

They pledged to push ahead and to find a way to get the treaty ratified, although EU analysts say that the French “non” is almost certain to kill off the treaty, bring to a grinding halt decades of “ever-deeper integration” and kill off Turkey’s chances of becoming a member.

The size of the “no” vote, and the high turn out, will make it far more difficult for EU leaders to push ahead with the constitution.

They also fear that the rejection by France will make it far more likely for the Dutch to say “nee” in their referendum on Wednesday, which would almost certainly be a fatal blow to the treaty.
Let's hope the Dutch say NO as well.

Petty anti-americanism at the BBC...

No secret - the BBC is incredibly biased against the US.
In a truly amazing display of anti-Americanism and bias, presenters of BBC Radio Scotland's "Off the Ball" football coverage are heard denigrating the US Senators who recently questioned George Galloway and at one point referred to them as "American twats".

The presenters were all over themselves sucking up to Galloway. They even tried to show how it was impossible for Galloway to have taken millions of barrels of oil from Saddam. Repeatedly asking him where he could store all those millions of barrels. Galloway responding by saying he would be the richest man in Britain if he had sold all those barrels at $25 a barrel.

What these idiots failed to grasp is that Galloway is not charged with taking possession of the barrels or getting the entire price for selling each barrel. He is charged with receiving vouchers for the oil which entitled him to a fraction of the price of each barrel.
You can listen to the show here.

Just the type of candidate we need...

If the Conservatives really want to make some headway in Ontario (and in other urban centres), then they might want to look closer at the candidacy of Keith Fountain in Ottawa-Centre.

I had coffee with Keith last week, and I was duly impressed. I like the fact that he is very much a libertarian. I think the Conservatives need more libertarian views, particularly to offset the 'social engineering' of the Liberals and NDP.

Keith is also for smaller, more efficient government...and his main priority is lower taxes.

And, he's got some terrific experience, having been posted to Pakistan, Poland, and Malaysia, and he helped open our embassy in Afghanistan (He is currently the Deputy Director for Afghanistan at Foreign Affairs).

Lastly, Keith also supports same-sex marriage. In fact, Keith is anxious to reach out to the gay community. I'm sure there are lots of gay people anxious for a serious alternative to the Liberals.

If you want to know more about Keith, please visit his web site, and read his blog.

I sure hope that Stephen Harper is paying attention.

And, yet more nonsense...

You really have to wonder where people get the energy for this crap...
The PC Police have struck again, and the latest victim is Stonehill College in nearby Easton [Massachusetts].

On May 4, the college announced that "Skyhawks" would replace "Chieftains" as the nickname for all 20 of its athletic teams beginning next season. The school's board of trustees had already deep-sixed the `` Chieftains'' nickname under pressure from the NCAA, which has, in turn, been prodded by Native American special-interest groups to discourage the use of nicknames that supposedly disparage their culture.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hogwash!

There is nothing about the word "Chieftains," or what it represents, that disparages Native Americans -- who, in a lot of instances, don't seem at all reluctant to call upon similar stereotypes when they're trying to promote the casinos they run with the intent of separating the rest of us from our wampum. Been to Foxwoods lately?

Political correctness at high schools...

Everybody knows how dangerous a play can be.
A high school rendition of the musical "Big River," based on Mark Twain's incomparable treatise on the injustice of slavery, Huckleberry Finn, featured a black student as Huck and a white one as the runaway Jim, apparently using political correctness to once again distort the meaning of what many scholars believe is the greatest of American novels.

In the Washington suburb of Loudon County, Va., a female student's one-act play about a gay football player brought instant response from high school authorities and has kicked off a nationwide debate about what is appropriate for high school drama production. The county's school board has taken up the matter of the play, "Offsides," amid cries for banning any drama that not only mentions that there is homosexuality abroad but also touches on any subject considered unhealthy for teenagers to consider.

Since then a production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" at the same school was edited to eliminate what the drama teacher regarded as potentially offensive. Instead of singing about a dress being "tres sexy," as written, the actress was instructed to say "tres lovely," and the boss's nephew no longer stepped outside for a "smoke" but for a "soda." Apparently several lines in the play that portrayed sexual tension in the workplace also were eliminated.

Zarqawi has fled Iraq...

And, he might be in Iran.
Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had fled the country after being seriously injured in a U.S. missile attack, a British newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting a senior commander of the Iraqi insurgency.

Al-Zarqawi has shrapnel lodged in his chest and may have been moved to Iran, The Sunday Times newspaper reported, adding his supporters may try to move him on to another country for an operation.

The paper quoted an unnamed insurgency commander as saying the Jordanian-born militant was wounded three weeks ago when a U.S. missile hit his convoy near the northwestern Iraqi city of al Qaim.

"Shrapnel went in between the right shoulder and his chest, ripped it open and is still stuck there," the commander said, adding a second piece of shrapnel penetrated Zarqawi's chest but exited from his back.

"There was concern about spinal injuries," the commander said. "But his ability to move eliminated that fear."

The Sunday Times said Zarqawi, accused of masterminding many of the worst insurgent attacks in Iraq, was carried from his vehicle after the missile strike and given basic first aid in a hideout.

When he became delirious with fever four days later he was taken to hospital in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, it said. The paper did not say when the commander was speaking but said the source had proved reliable in the past.

Mohathir causes more trouble..

Once again, the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia is spouting incredible nonsense.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has told state television in Sri Lanka that he believes the United States intends to encourage Israel to launch an attack on Iran.

"I think they (the United States) will encourage Israel to attack Iran, bomb Iran, rocket Iran," he said in an interview conducted Friday night while on a two-day visit here. "After all, Americans are dying for Israelis. It's time that Israelis died for Americans in carrying out American policy," he said.
And, he wonders why he was not allowed into Israel a couple of weeks back.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Tsunami relief stuck in a quagmire..

It takes more than money to help people.
The generosity of millions of Britons who gave money to help the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami is being betrayed by Sri Lanka's army of bureaucrats.

They have reduced the international aid effort to "a complete and utter mess", The Daily Telegraph has established.

Five months after the tsunami struck, killing 40,000 and leaving 500,000 homeless in Sri Lanka, more than 100,000 of the poorest victims are still living in tents or crude temporary shelters.

Despite almost unlimited resources - the relief fund stands at more than £1.75 billion for Sri Lanka alone - victims are cooped up in camps waiting for news of progress that never seems to come.

Aid agencies keen to press on with rebuilding are being frustrated at every turn by the tangled and all-embracing bureaucracy of the central government. Shipping containers remain stuck at ports, vital building plans await approval and incompetent officials ignore the advice of specialists.

This week, as the first monsoon rains arrived, agencies were striving to move thousands of people out of their tents and into solid shelters before camp sites turned into quagmires.

After months during which the situation has deteriorated and no one has spoken out for fear of upsetting the highly sensitive government, the World Bank finally broke cover this week.

Praful Patel, its vice president, said: "There is impatience on the part of everybody, including the government and the donors, about the pace at which things are moving.

"The pledges that were made and the money that was made available are not moving fast enough."

A charity boss described the situation as "a complete and utter mess" which will deteriorate further if swift action is not taken to improve the flow of aid.

The case of Merlin, the charity backed by Telegraph readers, is typical of the daily frustrations that aid agencies encounter. Despite signing an agreement two months ago to rebuild seven health facilities, the government-appointed committees required to give the final say-so have yet to meet for the first time.

Going stark raving mad at a University...

This University seems to have gone mad.
A push for more diversity is causing a stir at the University of Oregon. Department heads across campus have castigated an early draft of a five-year plan, which would tie raises and promotions to "cultural competency" -- the ability to successfully work with people from all backgrounds -- and would give funding priority of new positions to departments that adhere to the university's diversity goals.

Oregon's plan calls for hiring up to 40 faculty members by 2012 to teach courses in a "cluster" of diversity-related topics, including race, gender, gay and disability studies as well as setting aside more financial aid for minority undergraduates and graduate students from ''under-represented'' backgrounds.

The critics wonder where the money will come from, and worry about the weight placed on political correctness in determining tenure.

"Many people were upset with the content in different ways; the plan was sort of an Orwellian, totalitarian plan," said Michael Kellman, a chemistry professor.
Whatever happened to teaching the great masters of western civilization? And, they talk about under-represented backgrounds? What about a course on Hasidic reggae? Sometimes, I really despair that political correctness is just taking over our lives.

Fallaci accused of defaming Islam...

Oriana Fallaci, a firm defender of Israel, faces charges in Italy of defaming Islam.
A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.

The decision angered Italy's justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work "La Forza della Ragione" (The Force of Reason).

Fallaci lives in New York and has regularly provoked the wrath of Muslims with her outspoken criticism of Islam following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities.

In "La Forza della Ragione," Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom."

State prosecutors originally dismissed accusations of defamation from an Italian Muslim organization, and said Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech.

But a preliminary judge in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutors advice at a hearing on Tuesday and said Fallaci should be indicted.

Grasso's ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci's words were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith."

Let's hope the Lebanese force Hezbollah to disarm..

It's time for the Lebanese to do what's right.
Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon in compliance with a U.N. Security Council resolution has led to growing support for the second part of the resolution — a demand that the Hezbollah militia give up its arms.

With parliamentary elections to begin this weekend, both politicians and citizens are questioning whether Hezbollah should be left with the sole responsibility for 'resistance' against Israel.

"We can't let Hezbollah decide alone whether there will be peace or war in Lebanon. They have to consult with the other Lebanese factions," said Massoud Ashkar, a 47-year old Christian businessman.

And, they call it a truce...

How many times does this have to happen before anybody notices?
A young Palestinian man who allegedly planned to launch a suicide bomb attack inside Israel was arrested by IDF forces in the Nablus area Friday afternoon.

The Palestinian approached the Beit Iba checkpoint near Nablus carrying an explosives belt hidden in a bag under a pile of clothes.

Why Amnesty International disgusts me...

Hard to believe this was in the Toronto Star, but it echoes my beliefs. Shame on Amnesty for their incredible bias against the US.
It speaks volumes that Amnesty International, in its 308-page annual report for 2005 — formally released on Wednesday — cannot bring itself to mention terrorism or the war on terrorism without hanging cautionary quotation marks around those words.

This unsubtle, mocking gesture — a hyper-neutrality — suggests terrorism is not a quantifiable fact in our lives and that the war on terrorism is somehow a duplicitous objective, perhaps a conspiracy hatched in the Pentagon rather than a global response to a legitimate threat already unleashed in widespread atrocities, from 9/11 to the bombings in Madrid and Bali.

Terrorism is thornier to define these days than necessary. The United Nations has grappled with it. In its narrowest interpretation, a consensus exists that terrorism is intentional violence against civilians (noncombatants), intended to intimidate or instill fear.

But Amnesty International, once a respected advocate for the human rights of political prisoners around the world, has been so deeply compromised by the relativist exculpation for slaughter and abuse that it can, without a hint of shame, and in the same paragraph, segue from the Sudan to the United States, from the colossal brutality in the Darfur region to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The Sudan and the U.S. are two countries mentioned most notably by the organization's secretary general, Irene Khan, in her forward to the report.

There are 153 countries canvassed in the Amnesty tome, including the most reprehensible of totalitarian regimes. Yet the brunt of the editorial scourge — in the passages most widely cited in news reports — is reserved for America, not just for its rightly condemned mistreatment of suspected terrorists, including the abhorrent torture that was inflicted on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but for generically and systematically "thumbing its nose at the rule of law and human rights." Such alleged disdain for the rule of law and the preeminence of human rights has, Amnesty contends, provided a green light for tyrants around the world, who need only to cloak their abuse of power within the rubric of the war on terror. As if dictators ever needed the thumbs-up from Washington to oppress their own populations.

This amoral equivalency would put the U.S. on a par with, oh, Haiti and North Korea.

Amnesty International may be loath to validate the "so-called war on terrorism," hence its careful expression of language. But there's no such restraint in its rhetorical assaults on the U.S.

Guantanamo Bay, as an example, "has become the gulag of our times.''

The American military base in Cuba may indeed be a rotten place where mostly Muslim detainees have been ill-treated and humiliated. But a gulag? As in the Soviet forced labour camps, which some 20 million miserable souls passed through during the Stalinist era, their existence not even acknowledged, their fate largely unknown?

Racial Profiling hysteria...

Coming soon to your community, the horrors of racial profiling. Yesterday, a report was released on racial profiling by police in Kingston.
Yesterday the analysis of that data was released, revealing great disparities:

Blacks were stopped by police about three times as often as whites.

More than 40 per cent of black males between the ages of 15 and 24 were stopped during the year, compared to 11 per cent of their white counterparts.

About 10 per cent of the stops involving a black person resulted in an arrest or charge, compared to 6 per cent of the stops involving whites.
But, what percentage of crimes were committed by the various groups? Perhaps there's a reason why more blacks were arrested when stopped than whites.

I believe racism is wrong, for sure. But, let's not be blind to the fact that certain communities committ more crimes.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Why can't they take NO for an answer?

What does this say about democracy in Europe when they can't take no (regarding the EU constitution) for an answer?
In Brussels and some national capitals, officials are exploring ways to circumvent the “no” votes and continue the drive for ever closer union. The first plan is to find a way to bypass the French and Dutch rejections, and ratify the treaty anyway — either through renegotiating it or resubmitting it for a second vote.

After the French result on Sunday evening, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, which holds the rotating EU presidency, and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, plan to lay out the course ahead at the Commission’s Brussels headquarters.

Mr Juncker will declare that the ratification process must continue, and that countries such as Britain must not abandon their referendums.

Mr Juncker insisted this week: “The countries that have said ‘no’ will have to ask themselves the question again.”

The latest scare...

You can count on at least one huge scare per day.
A leading scientist warned yesterday that the avian flu virus is on the point of mutating into a pandemic disease and says that current estimates that such a pandemic could cause 7.5m deaths may understate the threat.
I think it's a bit early for such predictions.

Hitchens on abusing the Koran...

As usual, Hitchens has some wise words about tolerance, or should I say intolerance.
For whatever it's worth, I know and admire both John Barry and Michael Isikoff, and I can quite imagine that—based on what they had already learned about the gruesome and illegal goings-on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib—they found it more than plausible that the toilet incident, or something like it, had actually occurred. A second allegation, that a whole pile of Qurans had been stepped upon at Guantanamo, is equally credible. But mere objectivity requires us to note that this is partly because every prisoner is given a Quran, and that thus there are a lot of them lying around, and that none of this "scandal" would ever have occurred if the prison authorities were not at least attempting to respect Islamic codes. Do Christian and Jewish prisoners in Muslim states receive Bibles and Talmuds? Do secular detainees in Pakistan petition with success to be given Thomas Paine's Age of Reason? Isikoff told me recently that he'd been out to see the trial of a madrasah student in Virginia who was accused of terrorist recruitment and propaganda, and he had been somewhat shocked at the virulence of the anti-Jewish teachings on offer at that school. The school is almost certainly paid for by Saudi money. A Wahhabist version of the Quran, containing distortions of the original and calling for war against "unbelievers" of all sorts, is now handed out by imams in our very own prison system! Do we demand in return that Saudi Arabia allow churches and synagogues and free-thought centers on soil where the smallest heresy is punishable by death? No, we do not. Instead, we saturate ourselves in masochism and invent the silly, shallow term "Quran abuse."

AUT overturns boycott

Some common sense, at last.
British Lecturers overturned their decision to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities in a vote on Thursday.
No details yet on the vote count...

The NDP wants to go on a shopping spree....

Uh, oh, it looks like there might be a whole lot of spendin' going on...
The New Democrats hint the minority Liberals' struggle to hold onto power could ease a bit if Paul Martin is willing to provide more concessions to the NDP.

The NDP, which has already won $4.6 billion in new federal spending in exchange for propping up the government, said yesterday it might be willing to support the Liberals in any future confidence votes if the government were to do more for some of the party's key causes, including electoral reform and environmental protection.

"We're going to talk to caucus and see if we can come up with a list of things that we would like some action on," said NDP strategist Jamey Heath. "Once that is done, then we will see if there is any interest from the government."

Larry Elder on Al Sharpton...

One of the more despicable characters around in the US is Al Sharpton, who never fails to find racism wherever he looks.
A voice for justice? Let's go to the videotape.

Remember how Sharpton burst onto the national scene? He falsely accused then-district attorney Steven Pagones of raping Tawana Brawley. Brawley claimed a white man abducted and raped her, scrawling racial epithets on her body with feces! A grand jury later determined that Brawley made everything up to avoid punishment for staying out too late. Pagones received death threats and threats against his child. A unanimous jury found Sharpton liable for defamation, but it took Pagones over two years to collect Sharpton's judgment. Apparently, Sharpton transferred his assets to his wife's name, paying Pagones only when Sharpton's friends ponied up the money. To this day, Sharpton refuses to apologize.

A voice for justice?

In 1991, Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, was killed in a Crown Heights (Brooklyn) traffic accident, when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. Sharpton turned it into a racial incident, leading 400 protesters — one holding a sign reading, "The White Man Is the Devil" — through Crown Heights' Jewish section. Sharpton called Jews "diamond merchants," and later said, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." During four nights of rock- and bottle-throwing, a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded by a mob shouting, "Kill the Jew!" and stabbed to death. A hundred others were injured.

A voice for justice?

In 1995, a Jewish storeowner in Harlem was accused of driving out a black storeowner and sub-tenant by raising his rent. Sharpton helped to make it racial. At one rally meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton said, "[W]e will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Following a demonstration three months later, one protestor, an armed black man, stormed Freddy's Fashion Mart, screaming, "It's on now! All blacks out!"

The man also set fire to the building, eventually killing himself and seven others. At first, Sharpton denied any moral responsibility, after all, claimed Sharpton, he never spoke at any protest rallies, and therefore could not be held responsible for the climate. But tapes surfaced, showing Sharpton did, indeed, make at least one provocative speech. Sharpton then said, "What's wrong with denouncing white interlopers?" Eventually, he apologized — for saying "white," not "interloper."

A voice for justice?

In 1983, the FBI filmed Sharpton with an undercover agent discussing a cocaine deal. On the videotape, Sharpton asks, "What kind of time limit are we dealing with?"

"Coke?" the agent asks.

"Yeah." Sharpton says.

The phony dealer says, "Could be about the same time we have 4 million coming to us."

Sharpton: "End of April?"

Agent: "End of April. . . . Is that a good time you think?"

"Probably," Sharpton replies.

The undercover agent offers Sharpton a fee, saying, "I can get pure coke for about $35,000 a kilo. . . . Every kilogram we bring in, $3,500 to you. How does that sound?" Sharpton nods in response.

Sharpton later said that, since he did not know the men with whom he was discussing the drug deal, he was play-acting "out of fear."

A voice for justice?

This bigoted, mean-spirited, anti-Semitic, race-card-playing incendiary regularly appears on cable news shows, where, incredibly, few seem to question his moral authority.

Ann Coulter on Bill Moyers...

OK, I can't help myself....Ann has a devastating column on Bill Moyers, that pompous liberal on PBS.
When Ken Tomlinson, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, suggested that PBS was maybe a smidgen left of center, Moyers began his lengthy public nervous breakdown. Already well-known as an insufferable jerk, it turns out Moyers is also a crazy megalomaniac, too.

In a recent speech to the the National Conference on Media Reform – a conference dedicated to increasing liberal representation in the media from 94.6 percent to 99.8 percent – Moyers responded to his critics by reading from his fan mail, reading favorable news articles about himself, and comparing himself to Jesus Christ or, as he put it, "one of our boys." If it were possible that he actually believed in God, PBS would be doing a special report on Moyers after a remark like that.

He said his critics were "obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate" – almost as control-obsessed as 45 senators trying to tell 55 senators which judicial nominees are acceptable. The threat is: Provide balanced programming or stop expecting subsidies from the U.S. taxpayer.

Moyers also noted that his critics were the ones behind the bin Laden-like attack on Iraq in order "to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil." (And that's why gasoline is so cheap!) Yep, it's all right there on the Project for a New American Century's agenda: (1) invade Iraq, (2) somehow get Bill Moyers' PBS show canceled, (3) invade Syria, (4) invade Iran ...

Moyers has clearly reached the next-to-last stage of the megalomaniac's life cycle: the persecution complex. We'll know Moyers has reached end-stage megalomania when he begins to exhibit an inordinate fear of germs.

According to Moyers, the reason these right-wing radicals focused on him despite the fan mail he gets – to say nothing of favorable write-ups in the mainstream media – is that he "didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism." (That and the giant piece of tinfoil on his head.)

These contemptible "rules of Beltway journalism" apparently consist of reporters completely ignoring important conspiracy theories regularly featured on Moyers' program and instead functioning as "government stenographers" – as Moyers called one reporter for the New York Times, no less.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Does this sound like a good deal?

I'm skeptical this is going to achieve anything...
The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany persuaded Iran on Wednesday to continue its freeze on nuclear activities, averting a diplomatic crisis that could have led to punitive international measures against Iran.

In exchange, the Europeans offered to present Iran with detailed, step-by-step proposals by early August at the latest on how to move toward consensus on the shape of Iran's nuclear program. Last November in Paris, Iran agreed to suspend all of its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities while it negotiated the economic, nuclear, political and security benefits it would receive.

Despite the progress on Wednesday, the Europeans and the Iranians remain far apart on their ultimate goals. The Europeans want to prolong the freeze in Iran's enrichment activities until it becomes permanent, doling out trade, political, economic and security rewards, including access to nuclear energy, along the way.

The Iranians, by contrast, insist the freeze is only temporary. Iranian officials have pointed out that they are not required under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to freeze these activities and are doing so on a voluntary basis to show good will.
The Iranians know how to string along the Europeans...

An appalling story...

How's this for a miscarriage of justice?
A man who spent 25 years in jail for the attempted murder of a nine-year-old boy had his conviction overturned yesterday.

Paul Blackburn, dressed in a T-shirt bearing the legend "Free at Last", stood on the steps of the High Court and said he planned to "just get drunk" after serving one of the longest terms for a conviction found to be unsafe.

He was 15 when he was jailed for the attempted murder of the boy, who was kidnapped, stabbed and sexually assaulted. Mr Blackburn served 25 years in 18 prisons, but always insisted on his innocence.

The Court of Appeal did not address the issue of his guilt or innocence yesterday, but Lord Justice Keene, sitting with Mr Justice Newman and Mr Justice Walker, accepted that he did not receive a fair trial at Chester Crown Court in 1978 and that his conviction was therefore unsafe.

Mr Blackburn's lawyer, Glyn Maddocks, said it was a major miscarriage of justice. "It is a disgrace. How can this happen in a civilised society?

"The trial judge said Paul should serve six to 10 years. Well, he was still there 16 years later. He got lost in the system. It is appalling."

The war was lawful...

An important interview with the Attorny-General of the UK, Lord Goldsmith.
The Attorney General yesterday launched a passionate defence of his advice to Tony Blair that the war against Iraq was legally sound.

He dismissed as "fantasy" widespread claims that Government colleagues had "leant on" him to justify their invasion plans.

Breaking his silence on the affair in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Lord Goldsmith said: "I stand by my conclusion that military action was lawful. That was a judgment I had to reach. I reached it and I stand by it.

"And I want to reject the suggestions that I was leant on, or that this somehow was not my genuine opinion. These suggestions that this was not genuinely my view - these are fantasies and they need to be seen as such."

We sure hope so...

Insurgents said Wednesday in interviews and statements on the Internet that the leader of the group al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was struggling with a gunshot wound to the lung. One of Zarqawi's commanders said the Jordanian guerrilla was receiving oxygen, heightening suspicion that the groundwork was being laid for an announcement of his replacement or death.

Hezbollah must be disarmed...

This is truly an alarming report.
The leader of Hizbullah, under international pressure to disarm, vowed Wednesday to fight anyone who tries to take away its weapons - which include more than 12,000 rockets capable of hitting northern Israel.

"They (the Israelis) want to take this power away from Lebanon," Sheik Hassan Nasrallah told tens of thousands of supporters in his southern Lebanese stronghold near the Israeli border.

"All of the north of occupied Palestine, its settlements, airports, seaports, fields, factories and farms is under the feet and hands of the Islamic resistance," he said.

Nasrallah stressed that the weapons in Hizbullah's possession are needed for the defense of Lebanon. Hizbullah is willing to discuss the status of its weapons, Nasrallah added.

"There is talk about disarming the resistance. I say any thinking of disarming the resistance is madness," he said.

"We are among the biggest proponents of peace, stability and national unity. We don't seek to attack anyone and we will not allow anyone to attack Lebanon. But, listen to me, if anyone thinks - anyone - of disarming the resistance, we would fight them until martyrdom."
These terrorists needs to be tackled.

More craziness from Mohathir...

Mohathir is the ex-prime minister of Malaysia who has repeatedly accused the Jews of anything you could imagine.
Former Malaysian Premier Mahatir Mohammad said Israel sought to cover up the atrocities it perpetrated against the Palestinians when it prevented him from entering the West Bank city of Jenin during his recent visit to the area.

Mahatir said in a statement that the Israeli arrogant, extremist government denied him access to Jening (sic) just to hide its killings of civilians and destructions left behind by its occupying troops.
Of course, there was no massacre at Jenin!

This is going too far...

Is Carolyn Parrish coming back to the Liberals?
Mississauga MP Carolyn Parrish, tossed from the Liberal caucus last November for caustic comments about the United States and Liberal "backroom boys," says Prime Minster Paul Martin has left the door open for her to rejoin the minority government.

Martin dropped the hint after last Thursday's confidence vote on the budget, which the Liberals barely survived thanks in no small part to Parrish's support.

"He gave me a big hug and a kiss. One of my colleagues said `Isn't it time for her to come back to caucus?' He said `Whenever, you're ready,'" said Parrish (Mississauga-Erindale).

Chavez wants to work with Iran...

In this blog, we're now going to start paying more attention to Hugo Chavez, the anti-American ruler of Venezuela
Mr. Chavez, who is given to needling the United States and making other provocative comments during a weekly TV program, said after a meeting with Iranian company officials on Sunday that he was interested in pursuing a partnership for atomic and solar energy projects.

"We are interested and should begin working in the nuclear field with Brazil, Argentina and other countries," said Mr. Chavez, who asserted that Iran has no nuclear weapons ambitions.

"We want to initiate nuclear research and ask for help from countries like Iran," he said.

The real story about sexism and Belinda Stronach...

A few harsh words about Belinda and there are huge cries about sexism. Barbara Kay, in today's National Post, has a great op-ed about the real sexism behind Belinda.
Had Belinda been Frank Stronach's son, she would have been groomed for the succession. Instead, she received a symbolic pass of the curry comb. A son would have acquired a degree in engineering or automotive design and an MBA, not a year at business school. His father would have treated him as a peer -- a real heir, not a paper one.

How many men would have been made CEO, as Belinda was in 2001 to position her for a political future, without scrutiny of his actual business acumen and past management skills? How many would have submitted to being publicly packaged, like Belinda, as a figurehead, with a father making it clear he was still in command in order to reassure investors that the new title was purely symbolic?

Would any man never before active in politics be taken seriously as a Conservative leadership candidate? Would any man with genuine leadership ambitions have shrunk from public debates? Would any man of mediocre intellect, however wealthy, have been considered a worthy leadership contender with no French, no rhetorical skills, and no history of consequential leadership or meaningful civic service? No, no and no.
Ouch!

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Another case of rape that never happened...

Can little girls lie about rape?
Police called the rape which a primary schoolgirl had described in vivid detail as "every parent's worst nightmare" and launched a huge manhunt.

They issued an artist's impression of the supposed attacker to every force in England and Wales, and considered carrying out mass DNA testing to capture the man who had apparently assaulted the girl as she slept in her bed during a sleepover party.

But yesterday Essex police revealed that the girl, who is aged under 10, had made up the story, and said that no crime had been committed.

The police denied that their reaction to the allegation, which left the community terrified that a sex attacker was in its midst, had been over the top. A spokesman said officers had had to take the girl's account at face value, and would do the same again in a similar situation.

The girl had given a detailed account of the supposed attack at her home in Basildon on March 23. She claimed the attacker crept into her family house on the Craylands estate and made his way to her bedroom, where she was sleeping with two friends. As her mother and siblings slept in a nearby room she claimed she was raped.

The girl gave a striking description of a young man with scruffy hair and dirty teeth who wore loose striped trousers with a metal loop or chain hanging from the belt. She even described a distinctive gold ring which she said had the word "Boys" or "Boyz" written on it, a detail which led police to wonder whether the attacker was a gang member.

A police artist produced an impression of the alleged attacker which was circulated to the 43 forces in England and Wales. At the height of the inquiry 40 officers were involved.

A week after the alleged attack 300 motorists were stopped and asked for information. Officers spoke to parents at the girl's school and a number of men who seemed to fit the description.

Prompted by the huge publicity drive, hundreds of people rang a hotline and offered information.
I guess they can.

Moderate muslims...

A nice op-ed piece from teh Washington Times.
Though met by modest crowds, the recent first-ever Free Muslims March Against Terrorism could be considered a success in one key respect: It further exposed the unwillingness of most major Muslim groups to condemn the radicals that have come to dominate their religion.

It also further cemented the growing reputation of organizer Kamal Nawash, head of the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC), as one of the only genuine moderate leaders of a national Islamic organization.

While most Muslim groups gripe about being expected to condemn every Islamic terrorist attack — they aren't directly responsible, they reason — Mr. Nawash wastes no opportunity to do so. To him, the problem is one shared by all Muslims, even moderates, because most Muslims have allowed the extremists to take control of the religion, more or less without a fight.

Thus his inspiration for the rally against terror. Speakers at the event, which drew roughly 150, were clear in condemning the real root cause of terrorism: radical interpretations of Islam.

Groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have a track record of condemning — but only targets like the Fox television show "24," which they blasted earlier this year for having terrorists who were Muslims.

Never mind that CAIR officials have refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah when asked to do so by The Washington Post and others, describing questions about the terrorist groups as a "game." And MPAC maintains, for example, that the Hezbollah murder of 241 Americans in Lebanon in 1983 was not a terrorist attack.
Last month in Ottawa, there was a concert against suicide bombers, held in a synagogue. Several gospel choirs sang, a klezmer band, and a poet from Iran...but, there were no mainstream Muslim groups present.

More scaremongering...

Just about every day, there is an environmental scare story. Here's todays.
More than half of Europe's plant species will be at threat or classified as vulnerable by 2080 as a consequence of global warming, a study published on Monday said.
Yeah, right. Of course, the authors of the report won't be around in 2080.

Is this really necessary?

The Canadian government is throwing more money at aboriginals...
Canada intends to fund a $5 million study to combat murder and rape of aboriginal women and help shape laws, police procedures, social services and public education, a native women's group announced on Monday.

More than 500 aboriginal women have disappeared or been killed in the last 20 years. While only three percent of female population in Canada, they represent 29 percent of women inmates in federal prisons, Canadian rights groups estimate.
I don't think we need to spend $5 million to understand what is going on in aboriginal communities. I know that 500 aborginals in 20 years is a tragedy, but it just 25 people per year.

Yet, thousands of males commit suicide every year in Canada. There has yet to be one significant government study on male suicide.

Al-Zarqawi wounded...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and Washington's most wanted man in the country, has been wounded, a web posting said on Tuesday as it urged his followers to pray for him.
Let's pray for him all right...let's hope he doesn't make it.

Nonsense from Buzz Hargrove...

Buzz Hargrove has an op-ed in today's National Post on Sexism. Here's the key quote:
A clear barometer of the democratic deficit is the gross under-representatioin of women in elected public office. Women make up 52% of the population, but hold only 21% of the seats in the House of Commons."
What Hargrove misses is that this 52% of the population could elect as many women as they want - but, in fact, women vote for competence, not for gender. And, it's a canard that you must proportionately have the same amount of women (or any ethnicity) in the House as in the population. The plain fact of the matter is that each riding must either have a man or woman...and they must represent both halves of the population.

Monday, May 23, 2005

More hostility to gays in Saudi Arabia...

This deserves more attention.
Despite international condemnation Saudi Arabia continues mass arrests of men suspected of being gay. On the weekend Saudi heavily armed security forces burst into a building in Riyadh and arrested 92 men.

Al-Wifaq news, which has close links to the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry, quotes officials as calling the venue a "deviants' party" - a term frequently used in describing gays.

The paper also says the men were drunk and had taken drugs.

Homosexuality is illegal in the Saudi kingdom and punishable by by flogging, lengthy prison terms or death under Sharia Islamic law. Use of alcohol or drugs is also illegal.

Al-Wifaq reports that some of the men were foreign nationals - from Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon.

It also says that some were dressed in women's clothes. It is not known if they were men in drag or transsexuals.

In March month, 110 men were arrested at what was described as a "gay wedding" in the city of Jeddah.

About eighty men were later released. The remaining men were sentenced to prison and floggings.

Four of the men (two Saudi Arabians, a Jordanian and a Yemeni) were sentenced by a court in Jeddah to 2,000 lashes and two years' imprisonment, and 31 others to 200 lashes and six months to one year in prison.

Is Greenpeace going to go after chinese restaurants?

The latest target for Greenpeace is Disneyland.
Disneyland was attacked by enviornmental groups yesterday after it began advertising that it would serve shark's fin soup, a traditional Chinese delicacy, at its new theme park in Hong Kong.
Now, I'm hungry!

This has got to make you nervous....

Why are men just viewed as walking wallets?
The genesis of the case is a decade-old deal between ex-lovers, Joel L. McKiernan, now of Mt. Lebanon, and Ivonne V. Ferguson, now of New York. He agreed to provide sperm for babies she wanted and she agreed to absolve him of responsibility for their progeny.

Through in-vitro fertilization, she bore twins and raised them alone for five years. Then she sued McKiernan for child support in Dauphin County.

The Common Pleas Court judge there acknowledged that the couple had a binding verbal contract that released McKiernan from the normal responsibilities of fathers. But he decided the contract was invalid because the two had wrongly bargained away rights of the twins, particularly their right to child support from two parents.

Then the court ordered McKiernan to pay $1,500 in support a month. He appealed. Last July Superior Court said the lower court judge was right. That's what got McKiernan before the Supreme Court this week.

Another case of child abuse...

Lots of child abuse in the Palestinian territories.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested a Palestinian teenager with a bomb belt tied around his waist at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, the IDF said.

Troops manning the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus became suspicious of a Palestinian teenager passing through Sunday evening, an army spokeswoman said.

"The teenager was asked to lift up his shirt and it revealed a bomb belt containing two pipe bombs tied around his waist," she said.

The youth apparently intended to detonate the bombs at the checkpoint by igniting a crude detonator with a cigarette lighter, the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian residents identified the youth as 15-year-old Ahmed al-Nadi from the Askar refugee camp. He was taken for questioning and his bomb was defused by IDF sappers.

The army spokeswoman said it was the 14th time in the past two months that a Palestinian teenager had attempted to detonate a bomb or smuggle arms and explosives through a military checkpoint despite a de facto truce declared in February.

Al-Qaeda and WMD...

FrontPage has a story from the New York Times on Al-Qaeda attempts to build WMD.
Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.

The operatives were not immediately able to obtain a sample of the deadly anthrax strain that they wanted to reproduce in their laboratory, according to the letters.

The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.

The letters, recently made public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room" with thousands of samples of biological substances.

The scientist tried to buy anthrax vaccines, which would be necessary to protect any Qaeda members working with the material. He also bought a sterilizer, a respirator and an air-contamination detector, one letter said.

"The conference was found to be highly beneficial for our future work," the letter said. "I finalized all the accessories required for the smooth running of our bioreactor."

Dershowitz vs. Finkelstein...

Norman Finkelstein is a pretty despicable character. He has gone after Alan Dershowitz with claims that his book (The Case for Israel) was plagiarized. Here's a nice comment from Dershowitz.
Finkelstein is a transient academic who describes himself as “in exile” at DePaul University because he has been—by his own account—“thrown out of every school in New York.”[6] He has been fired by Brooklyn College, N.Y.U., and several other schools for “incompetence,” “mental instability,” and “abuse” of students with politics different from his own, according to a high-ranking official at one of the schools. Finkelstein has admitted, “Never has one of my articles been published in a scientific magazine.”[7] And deservedly so, as Peter Novick, whose book The Holocaust in American Life Finkelstein has characterized as “the initial stimulus for [his] book,”[8] wrote: “As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein concerning reparations and restitution, and on other matters as well, the appropriate response is not (exhilarating) ‘debate’ but (tedious) examination of his footnotes. Such an examination reveals that many of those assertions are pure invention. […] No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.”[9]

Finkelstein has said that he “can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo”[10] and asserted that Israel’s human rights record is “interchangeable with Iraq’s” when it was ruled by Saddam Hussein.[11] He has said that most alleged Holocaust survivors—including Elie Wiesel—have fabricated their past, are “bogus,” and that those seeking reparations are “cheats” and “greedy.” Because of my support of Israel, he has compared me to “Adolf Eichman [sic],”[12] and accused me of expressing “Nazi moral judgments.”[13] When challenged to defend his frequent comparison between Jews and Nazis, he has responded, “Nazis never like to hear they’re being Nazis.”[14] He is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis; one, Ingrid Rimland, whose husband, the notorious Ernst Zuendel, wrote The Hitler We Loved And Why, even referred to him admiringly as the “Jewish David Irving” (“Jüdischer David Irving”)—a reference to the British Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer. The comparison is apt because Finkelstein has reportedly praised the Holocaust-denying Irving as “a good historian!”[15] and as having “made an indispensable” contribution to our knowledge of World War II.”[16]

A German writer has observed that “seldom has a Jew been more celebrated by brown propaganda that Finkelstein.”[17] Another writer aptly described him as a Jew who “supports anti-Semitism.”[18] Gabriel Schoenfeld has labeled his views as “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.”[19] His books do not sell in America, but they are best-sellers among the growing number of neo-Nazis in Germany.

How low can Amnesty go?

We've done several blogs on Amnesty - about their anti-Israel, anti-male reports. Now, they want to make an American deserter a 'prisoner of conscience.'
Prominent human-rights group Amnesty International has declared that it will adopt a young American war dodger as a "prisoner of conscience" if Canada deports him to the United States and he ends up in jail.

Amnesty says it considers Jeremy Hinzman a legitimate conscientious objector to the war in Iraq, even though Canadian immigration authorities have decided otherwise.

Hinzman, 26, fled to Canada in search of asylum just days before his Airborne Division unit was deployed to Iraq.

Hinzman, who considers the war illegal under international law, and feared he would be forced to commit atrocities, has said he didn't want to become a "killing machine."

Dozens of American soldiers are thought to have left for Canada.

His refugee claim was rejected in March by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Hinzman, who has filed a Federal Court challenge to the ruling in hopes of staving off deportation, faces a court-martial and up to five years in jail if he is returned to the U.S.

In a decision taken at Amnesty's international office in London, the organization said it considered Hinzman "to have a genuine conscientious objection" to serving as a combatant in Iraq.

"Accordingly, should he be imprisoned upon his return to the United States, Amnesty International would consider him to be a prisoner of conscience," the group said in a statement.
Let's grant Amnesty their wish, and send him back to the US as soon as possible.

The Red Cross' bias against the US....

A nice op-ed from the Opinion Journal about the Red Cross.
The first concerns a story we heard first from a U.S. source that an ICRC representative visiting America's largest detention facility in Iraq last month had compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany. According to a Defense Department source citing internal Pentagon documents, the ICRC team leader told U.S. authorities at Camp Bucca: "You people are no better than and no different than the Nazi concentration camp guards." She was upset about not being granted immediate access shortly after a prison riot, when U.S. commanders may have been thinking of her own safety, among other considerations.

A second, senior Defense Department source we asked about the episode confirmed that the quote above is accurate. And a third, very well-placed American source we contacted separately told us that some kind of reference was made by the Red Cross representative "to either Nazis or the Third Reich"--which understandably offended the American soldiers present.

We called the ICRC last Wednesday for its side of the story, and a spokesman in Geneva confirmed that "there was a serious misunderstanding between the ICRC's team leader and [Coalition] authorities during our last visit to Camp Bucca." The ICRC also confirmed that "the team leader subsequently decided to leave the Iraq assignment."

The spokesman added, however, that he "can categorically say that the team leader did not in any sense compare the detention regime in Iraq to what happened in the Third Reich." Pressed as to whether he could rule out those terms having been used, the spokesman declined, citing the ICRC's practice of confidentiality when it comes to relations with the governments with which it works.

However, a second episode later last week shows that the ICRC is only too happy to throw that same confidentiality rule out the window when it suits its ideological purposes. It did so in the wake of the false Newsweek report about the treatment of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay. The ICRC's Washington office volunteered to the world's media that it had given the Pentagon "multiple" reports from Guantanamo detainees about mishandling of the Quran, after which the detainee complaints had ceased. Pentagon officials confirmed the news, adding that the incidents had been both "minor" and "inadvertent."

In other words, the ICRC hides behind the confidentiality rule when being candid might embarrass its own officials. But it drops the same rule when it is in a position to embarrass the United States, however unfairly. News of the ICRC Quran reports last week came just as the U.S. was scrambling to undo the damage in the Muslim world from the discredited Newsweek story.

Hussein's underwear....

A nice little piece on the outrage at the pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear.
A British tabloid -- The Sun -- has published pictures of genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein in his underwear and the progressives around the world are aghast! Mind you, the reaction on the Arab street isn't outrage. In fact, many in Kuwait, Iran and Iraq think that humiliation and embarrassment are quite appropriate for the "Butcher of Baghdad." Those who are affected by the "outrage" are all about the perception. Political correctness -- this time hiding behind the Geneva Conventions -- exposes its absurdity once again.

The Sun and its Saddam Hussein pictureGranted, the use -- in this case The Sun's publication -- of photographs defaming prisoners of war is against the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions state that countries must protect prisoners of war in their custody from "public curiosity". This stipulation is in place for a good many reasons. It, and the Geneva Conventions in total, were written to adhere to a core belief in honor despite the barbarity of war.

Today's War on Terror is a different animal. It pits an organized group of traditional military forces against a rag-tag group of fanatical ideologues who adopt the dress of and hide among civilians. Those who are fighting to end a terrorist movement that murders indiscriminately -- and those regimes that sponsor and harbor them -- are battling clandestine forces that exploit the chilling effects of fear as they murder, rape, pillage and plunder in the name of a religion whose motives are in question, especially for their proselytization of violence toward non-believers.

So, when I hear that the International Committee for the Red Cross is aghast at the publication of pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear, when I hear that they want an investigation into how this "atrocity," this injustice, could have been allowed to occur, it makes me shake my head in disbelief. It also leads me to believe that an investigation should be launched into the motives of all those who have been abusing the word "atrocity."

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Immigration follies...

A nice piece by Caroline Glick on immigration follies in Israel. But, first, she outlines some of the intolerance shown by Muslim minorities in Europe.
In Sweden today, Pentecostal preacher Runar Sogaard is now under police protection after receiving death threats from Muslims angry that he referred to Muhammad as a "confused pedophile" during a sermon. Members of the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar el-Islam reportedly received a religious edict to kill him for his remarks.

Rather than rally to Sogaard's defense, in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Swedish Islam expert Jan Hjarpe, at the University of Lund, basically accused Sogaard of purposely stirring up trouble, saying, "It was a statement from an odd man in an odd sect but the effect is stronger antagonism between different groups. It becomes a pure religious polemic and is extremely unpleasant."

Reports from country after country in recent years have referred to entire neighborhoods where ambulances and fire trucks refuse to enter for fear of being attacked by Islamic immigrant gangs. Quite simply, the European response to this violence has been to pretend that it isn't happening as states exercise their sovereignty over decreasing areas of their territory.

The most discouraging cases of governmental passivity in the face of jihad-inspired local violence have occurred in France. On March 8, approximately 1,000 Muslim and black youths descended on tens of thousands of schoolchildren protesting against educational reforms in Paris. They beat them and taunted them, and according to a report in the Weekly Standard, "the general sentiment was a desire to 'take revenge on whites.'"

Also in France, at the end of March, Jean-Pierre Obin, the inspector-general of the French school system, submitted a report to the Education Ministry regarding religious expression in state schools. According to the Weekly Standard's write-up of the report, Obin found that schools attended by large numbers of Muslims are being systematically Islamized.

The most prominent victims of this trend are schoolgirls who, fearing violent attacks, have taken to wearing loose, long clothing to cover themselves, not only in schools but in the surrounding communities. Anti-Semitism has become so rampant that not only are Jewish children simply forced to study elsewhere, but the most popular insult that the schoolchildren now hurl at one another is "Jew."
And, now onto Israel....
This past Sunday the government approved a change in immigration regulations governing the conferral of Israeli citizenship on Palestinians from Judea, Samaria and Gaza. From 1993-2003, some 130,000 Palestinians received Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arab citizens. In 2003, after a number of these new citizens were actively involved in terrorism against Israel, the Knesset approved the government's temporary ban on all "family reunification."

Under the new regulation adopted on Sunday, Palestinian men over the age of 35 and Palestinian women over the age of 25 who marry Israeli citizens can again apply for Israeli citizenship and receive residency rights in Israel.

In so acting, the government paid no attention to the views of respected leftist Zionist legal scholars Profs. Amnon Rubinstein and Ruth Gavison. In an interview with Haaretz Rubinstein argues, "no country allows into its territory people who have attachments to the side that is fighting against the country during an armed confrontation." Rubinstein recommends that in any permanent immigration law, Israel should restrict the entry of nationals from enemy states into Israel.

For her part, Gavison, the former chairman of the leftist Association for Civil Rights in Israel, recommends that Israel demand that the person seeking citizenship integrate into the public culture and swear allegiance to Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Political Correctness goes after Nelson...

Hard to believe...but poltiical correctness just gets nuttier and nuttier...
ADMIRAL NELSON saw off the mighty Franco-Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafalgar but 200 years on, he has been sunk by a wave of political correctness.

Organisers of a re-enactment to mark the bicentenary of the battle next month have decided it should be between “a Red Fleet and a Blue Fleet” not British and French/Spanish forces.

Otherwise they fear visiting dignitaries, particularly the French, would be embarrassed at seeing their side routed.

Even the official literature has been toned down. It describes the re-enactment not as the battle of Trafalgar but simply as “an early 19th-century sea battle”.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Calls for Israel's destruction...

A protest in London has the usual call for Israel's destruction....
A central London rally organized by the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Saturday heard Respect Party MP George Galloway advocate a general boycott of Israel, as well as other speeches calling for Israel's destruction.

Dark gray clouds poured heavy rain on London's Trafalgar Square, as a crowd waving Palestine flags and anti-Israel banners filled the square to hear speakers shout vitriolic anti-Israel speeches. Demonstrators chanted Islamic slogans and flags calling for "victory to the intifada" were waved. Leading figures in Britain's anti-Israel coalition also lined up to attack Israel.

Andrew Birgin, of the Stop the War Coalition, urged the destruction of the State of Israel. "Israel is a racist state! It is an apartheid state! With its Apache helicopters and its F-16 fighter jets! The South African apartheid state never inflicted the sort of repression that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians," he said to loud applause. "When there is real democracy, there will be no more Israel!" concluded Birgin. "Allahu Akbar!" yelled several men repeatedly in response.
Scary, no?

Michael Moore is a big fat stupid white man...

The book is now out in paperback...only $10 at Amazon.

They've added a ton of new material on Fahrenheit 911...if you haven't read this book, here's your chance....strongly recommended.

Taiwanese reporters barred from conference...

Why does the world tolerate such poor behavior against Taiwan.
There is an upcoming meeting of the World Health Assembly, an adjunct of World Health Organization, a UN sub-agency. For years China has exerted its considerable influence within the UN to keep Taiwan out of all possible UN organizations including WHO, and that includes pushing them out of a WFA conference. This is a totally illogical position, especially from a country such as China, literally plagued both by SARS and a rural time bomb of influenza that has the potential of launching a global pandemic. Given the possible world health disaster that China could promulgate, wouldn’t it make sense to seek involvement of Taiwanese scientists and researchers as well as those from the rest of the developed world? Not to China, apparently, because it persists in using all of its influence and every subterfuge to exclude Taiwan from WHA.

It a move designed to lock in the Bully of the Month award, China has successfully convinced the UN to exclude Taiwanese reporters from even covering the World Health Assembly. In order to be accredited to the conference, the UN stipulated this year that reporters "must present a current passport from a state recognized by the UN." Since every state but democratic Taiwan is a member of the UN (including, of course, some that perpetrate the most horrific abuses upon their citizens, e.g., North Korea, Sudan, and China), the exclusion is clearly aimed at Taiwan’s press.
I guess money talks.

Norwegian exams....

We've seen several reports this year about anti-Israel attitudes in Norway. Here's another case...
Israel's embassy in Oslo expressed "surprise and shock" over the decision to include a poem about a Palestinian youth killed by Israeli soldiers in Norway's national junior high school final exams.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here

"The embassy is extremely upset over the decision to include a one-sided political poem in the background material provided for the Norwegian exam this year," the mission said in a statement.

"We call on the government to distance itself from this and to take the necessary measures to ensure a balanced approach," the statement added.

The poem written by Norwegian author Lillian Schmidt called "Nida al-Azzais - a Palestinian pupil" describes a 14-year-old girl killed in 2002 by Israel soldiers in a refugee camp in Bethlehem.

"... Nida, shot by Israeli soldiers, finally made me stop and see the violence. To take a stand. But how does that help her?" it concludes.

The poem figures among a number of texts on conflicts and misunderstandings, which Norway's senior junior high school students were expected to write about in their final exams.

"This comes dangerously close to controlling what young, easily influenced people should think about the Middle East conflict. The Embassy takes this very seriously," the mission said.

The suicidal tendency of the west....

An important op-ed by Bruce Thornton on Victor Davis Hanson's web site.
Hence, while we in the West anxiously monitor our words and deeds for even the slightest offense against Islamic sensibilities, we receive in exchange no such consideration; indeed, our eager protestations of respect merely excite more contempt. Thus even as we protest our respect for Islam, Jews continue to be vilified with anti-Semitic rhetoric redolent of Nazi Germany, Palestinian terrorists befoul one of Christianity's most sacred churches, the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem still sits on the site of the Jewish Temple, and in Istanbul Hagia Sophia, once one of Christendom's greatest churches, is still a mosque. Worse still, a whole revisionist history in which the intolerant, imperialistic conqueror is transformed into the tolerant, peace-loving victim of Western imperialism is propagated by self-loathing Westerners whose bigotry against their own culture confirms the Islamist view that we are indeed Godless heathens and spiritual cripples.

Just look at Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, a truly Orwellian reversal of history in which the fanatical jihadists are depicted as tolerant and civilized, the Christian believers are caricatured as either venal hypocrites or psychopaths, and the only good Europeans are those who have lost their faith. The mentality that would spend over a hundred million dollars on this historical lie is that of a psychological dhimmi, the non-Moslem who concedes Islam's superiority and hence right to rule him. That is, the world-view of those for whom appetite and pleasure are the highest goods, flabby tolerance is the camouflage of moral exhaustion, and respect for the culture of the "other" is merely an expression of disbelief in the value of one's own.

In short, like the hand wringing of the administration over an obvious lie only the irrational and ignorant would believe, this willingness to demonize the culture that created you and to extol as superior the culture that wants to destroy you can only be described as suicidal. Certainly the Islamist sees it that way, which is why he feels confident in predicting the ultimate triumph of his religion: he is willing to die and kill for his beliefs, whereas significant numbers of Westerners don't really believe that there is anything worth dying and killing for.

Increasingly we Westerners resemble the Eloi of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, beautiful, gentle, highly civilized hedonists whose fate is to be devoured raw by the brutal Morlocks. We are the beneficiaries of a culture created by those before us who forged European civilization in the fires of resistance to Islamic jihad: in Spain, in Sicily, in Eastern Europe, in Greece — the plunder, rape, slaughter, massacres, sacks, kidnapping, and enslavement perpetrated by the armies of Allah were for centuries fought by those whose names now most Westerners have forgotten or would be embarrassed to claim as their own. Don John, Charles Martel, Leo the Isaurian, Prince Eugene, Montecuccoli, Andrea Doria, El Cid, Sobieski, Charlemagne, Suvorov, Boucicaut,, Hunyadi, Fernando II of Castile, Alfonso I of Aragon, Guiscard, Harold Hardrada-who among us knows anything about the men who fought and killed so that Europe, and Europe's offspring America, today looks like Europe and America instead of looking like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Syria?

Because of the brutal violence of those warriors against jihad, we in the West today enjoy the luxury of cynicism, cheap irony, effete tolerance, and hedonism. We moral dwarves stand on the shoulders of those giants and spit on their heads, thinking our ingratitude is really an intellectual sophistication superior to the primitive superstitions and naïve ideals that have made our lives of freedom and prosperity possible. Meanwhile jihad by other means — demography, immigration, terrorism, the oil weapon — continues apace, at least until the time when a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon falls into the hands of a modern jihadist and we are returned to the sort of slaughter our ancestors suffered for centuries. Maybe then we'll wake up.

Maryland Governor vetoes gay rights bill...

The Republicans always claim that gay marriage shouldn't come from the courts. Well, the Governor of Maryland has overturned a gay rights bill passed by the legislature.
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Friday vetoed a measure allowing same-sex couples to make medical decisions for each other, overturning legislation passed earlier this year to the cheers of gay activists and over opposition from religious conservatives.
Common decency says gay couples should have the right to visit each other in hospital, and to make medical decisions for each other, no? The Republicans care little for common decency, sometimes.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Can anybody stop Iran?

Another alarming story.....and, I'm getting tired of European efforts to stop Iran.
Iran is circumventing international export bans on sensitive materials by smuggling graphite and a graphite compound that can be used in making both conventional and nuclear weapons, a dissident and a senior diplomat said Friday.

Graphite has many peaceful uses, including steel manufacture, but can also be used as a casing for molten weapons-grade uranium to fit it to nuclear warheads or to shield the cones of conventional missiles from heat.

With most countries adhering to international agreements banning the sale of such "dual use" materials like graphite to Tehran, Iran has been forced to buy it on the black market, Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh told The Associated Press - allegations confirmed by a senior diplomat familiar with Iran's covert nuclear activities.

Cuba expels foreigners...

More bad news from Cuba....
Cuba expelled six people from Poland as authorities continued to prevent outsiders from attending a meeting by opponents of President Fidel Castro.

The Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw said three journalists, a human rights worker and two students had been ordered out of Cuba Friday. As well, Spain's foreign minister announced two former Spanish senators were also told to leave Cuba.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (CP file photo)

The move comes a day after two European legislators were expelled. Czech Senator Karel Schwarzenberg and German legislator Arnold Vaatz were put on flights to Europe on Thursday.

"This is typical behaviour of a totalitarian state," said Schwarzenberg.

Another politically-incorrect term...

I think someone should publish a dictionary of politically-incorrect phrases...so, we all can know what not to say.
The British phrase "shipshape and Bristol fashion" should not be used because it is politically incorrect, a group of officials has been told.

A training firm told them the saying comes from the slave trade and described black people ready for sale, the Telegraph reported Friday.

But Bristol historian Gerry Brooke said it derived from the British city`s once excellent reputation for shipbuilding.

Brewer`s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable agrees: "The expression derives from the port of Bristol`s reputation for efficiency in the days of sail."

"I have used the term for 60 years and my family has, and there is no way it can be regarded as politically incorrect," Bristol Lord Mayor Peter Abraham said.

Fifteen district councilors from Kidderminster, Worcestershire, and some 70 council staff were warned off the phrase during a two-day "equalities and diversity" course this month.

Women's body held by animal rights activists

This story is indeed bizarre and it shows just how low so-called animal rights activists will go. Gladys Hammond, an 83 year old pensioner who died in 1997, has been snatched from her grave by activists. They are trying to force Hammond's family to stop breeding guinea pigs.
Animal rights groups allege the guinea pigs are ill-treated and should not be sold to laboratories. The grave desecration is the latest tactic in six years of attacks on the Halls (he daughter's family), their friends, family members, business associates and neighbours.

Some of the protestors' actions are so extreme that a judge recently described them as a "guerilla campaign" and a "form of terrorism"
The daughter's home has been vandalized, power lines cut to their home, rocks thrown threw windows, her water supply has been turned off, restaurants warned not to serve the family, etc.

Jonas on affirmative action...

A nice op-ed from George Jonas in today's National Post on affirmative action. Here's his six reasons why he is against quotas:
One, I dislike reverse discrimination for the same reason I dislike discrimination: It's unfair to individuals.

Two, I dislike affirmative action because it highlights the least important aspects of people's identities, ethnicity and gender. We don't go to the theatre to see a Danish male, we go to see Hamlet.

Three, I dislike preferential treatment programs because they perpetuate the myth that is the basis of prejudice, namely that some groups are inferior.

Four, I dislike remedial measures because, far from fostering social harmony between diverse groups, they have the potential of setting them against each other.

Five, I dislike "goal-oriented schedules of inclusivity" -- to cite the sort of euphemistic boilerplate that stands in for affirmative action -- because they lead to a debasement of standards in crafts, arts, and industry. They cause people to spend their energies on seeking the advantages for their ethnic or gender groups instead of striving to achieve their personal best in their chosen fields.

Finally, I dislike quotas by whatever name because they seek group parity rather than individula equality. They replace the worthy aim that any woman should have a chance to become a boilermaker with the bizarre idea that 50% of all boilermakers should be women. While the first goal can be realized in a free and fair society, the second can only be realized in a state of Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
Amen.

Respect is a two-way street...

Here's a good opinion piece by the director of the Saudi Institute in Washington on lack religious tolerance in Saudi Arabia.
The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated. (The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)

As Muslims, we have not been as generous as our Christian and Jewish counterparts in respecting others' holy books and religious symbols. Saudi Arabia bans the importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David or any other religious symbols not approved by the Wahhabi establishment. TV programs that show Christian clergymen, crosses or Stars of David are censored.

The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Is homosexuality a choice?

My friend Tony sent me this op-ed piece by Martha Doolittle from Underneath Politics.
Please excuse the language in the headline of this piece, but sometimes the Republican Party just burns me up. They say that homosexuality is a choice, that you aren’t born gay. That’s ridiculous! We can’t help whom we’re attracted to. I am not a heterosexual cause that’s what society says is acceptable behavior - I’m a heterosexual cause I really like to feel the touch of a man.

Let me ask one of you heterosexual conservative men a question: Are you attracted to specific things by choice? Did you choose to be a “breast man?” Did you decide you were going to like women with a little junk in the trunk - women who were a bit loose in the caboose? No, you can’t help it that you like to watch that ass wiggle and jiggle as you get your freak on.

Name anything you find sexy and ask yourself why. The answer will never be that you just decided. I just chose to like sex in the barn, I just chose to like whips and chains, or I just chose to like Latin men liking milk off my supple breasts as I bathe in the sweat of 10 young virgins.

Also, if we could just choose what we’re attracted to, then nobody would go dateless. Let me explain. You are a man in a room with a bunch of women who vary in physical attractiveness. You are automatically drawn to the most beautiful woman and pursue her, even though you know your chances are very slim that she will give you the time of the day. But if you could choose whom you’re attracted to, you could just say, “Well, I choose to be attracted to the ugliest girl.” That way your chances of going home with a little female companionship would increase greatly.

But you can’t choose to be attracted to the ugly girl. You want the pretty girl and it’s not because of choice, it’s because when you look at her you get a lump in your pants the size of Canada.

Please forgive my vulgarity in this column, but the only way to get Republicans to understand reason is to speak their language.

Al-Qaeda active in Gaza...

This is disturbing news...
A new Muslim terrorist group linked to al-Qaida has started operating in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Authority security officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Jundallah, or "Allah's Brigades," consists mostly of scores of former Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, the officials disclosed. They said Jundallah gunmen launched their first attack on IDF soldiers near Rafah earlier this week.

The IDF said four soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack.

Jundallah is a radical Muslim group that has close ties with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, said one official. "We know for sure that the group is especially active in the southern Gaza Strip," he added.

Another official said that, according to intelligence gathered by the PA security forces, Jundallah consists largely of Hamas and Islamic Jihad dissidents who were unhappy with their groups' ostensible pragmatism.

"They believe that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have become too moderate," the official said, referring to the two groups' agreement to temporarily suspend terror attacks on Israel.