Some Good News

Some good news from Iraq (which still doesn't have a government nearly two weeks after al-Sistani set a deadline of March 15 for the ruling coalition to elect a Prime Minister.) The Financial Times reports that Sunni Arab "insurgents" (those not associated with al-Zarqawi) are negotiating an "exit strategy.")

Islamophobia Watch

Laban Tall lets us know about a new UK-based blog called "Islamophobia Watch" which apparently is dedicated to "outing" all of us racist, bigoted, right-wing nutcases who don't exactly view all aspects of the Religion of Peace with a non-critical eye.

Spending some time on "Islamophobia Watch" I notice they link to Dhimmiwatch as a prime example of a racist "Islamophobe." They also invest a lot of time slamming anyone who dares to criticize Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the al-Jazeera fatwa-giver who's London Mayor Red Ken's great and good friend, and who also wants to execute gay people and murder Muslims who convert to other religions besides Islam. (You don't have to take my word for it -- you can find al-Qaradawi's pearls of wisdom all over the Internet if you do a quick google search on his name.)

I predict that "IslamophobiaWatch" will have a short life span, once they realize that their links to Dhimmiwatch et. al. are merely educating the more reasonable people on the left about the many examples of Islamically inspired religious racism, homophobia, and misogyny there are to be found all over the world today. Heck, if the good folks over at Islamophobia Watch want to link to me, I'll be more than pleased to point their readers to the Human Rights Watch report on the practice of sharia law in Saudi Arabia, which so memorably details the exact monetary "worth" of a non-Muslim woman like me (half that of my husband, who in turn is "worth" half that of a Muslim man.)

See, if you are going to go about accusing people of racism and bigotry because they criticize a certain ideology, it only works if the ideology you're protecting is as pure as the driven snow in the bigotry department. Stones and glass houses and all that, you know.

Bad Move

Declaring a reward for a "key ally" in the War on Terror, the Bush Administration has decided to sell advanced F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan. This is a foolish and dangerous decision, and hypocritical as well. The US can hardly wax indignant about the EU's proposal to sell arms to China so that it can threaten Taiwan, when we are willing to help belligerent Pakistan threaten democratic, non-Muslim India. Pakistan is a basket case and Islamic religious fundamentalism is the main reason; what's going to happen to those F-16s if /when our "great" ally Mush is no longer around?

Again, Bush makes an insane and self-destructive move, because no one in the Administration has bothered to really study Islamic culture, history and doctrine.

Tiananmen Square Relatives Castigate Chirac, Schroeder

Relatives of Chinese dissidents killed in the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 have lashed out at French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for their role in attempting to lift a European arms embargo against China.

Speaking in a telephone interview on Thursday, the 'Mother of Tiananmen', professor Ding Zilin, said that "China's government always names Chirac as a friend of the Chinese people, but for us he is only a friend to autocratic dictatorship." She said Schroeder should not follow Chirac's position, "otherwise the people will remember him like the people remembered Hitler". Both leaders would be remembered in history as "shameful", said the retired professor, whose son was killed in the bloody crackdown by Chinese troops in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

Malaysian Coalition Fights Religious Extremism

More here.

More UN "Peacekeeping" Follies

Aussie peacekeepers in East Timor have to defend themselves against their Jordanian "colleagues", after an Aussie soldier blew the whistle on the widespread molestation of young East Timorese boys by Jordanian peacekeepers.

Yup, the UN, the moral authority of the whole world.

A Muslim Woman Leads Prayer in NY

An American Muslim woman has dared to act as a prayer leader at a Friday service in New York, to make a point about women's alleged equality under Islam. I give her points for trying, but she's facing a long, long haul.

For example, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the so-called "liberal" Muslim who's the great-and-good friend of London's mayor Red Ken, says it's a no-no , because some man might be incited to shameful lusts due to prayer leader Amina Wadud's "body movements" during prayer sessions -- despite the fact that she dresses in what looks like 800 yards of curtain fabric.

Also, I'd be more impressed with Amina if she focused on the religious racism that's hard-coded into her faith and its culture.

Red + Islam = New World Order

A match made in heaven, as French Commie-turned-radical-Islamist Roger Garaudy proves. He's just burstin' to tell us all about the New World Order that Islam has in mind for all of us -- and Christians don't need to worry about it at all, even though they would have a political and social status under an Islam-ruled world approximating that of a black house-maid in 1920s Mississippi. Joe Bob says click on the link and this one too, and check it out!

Unfortunately for Rog, radical political Islam's two-timing him with another collectivist totalitarian political philosophy. Remember, they're polygamists!

Billionaire Boys Club

Comrade Fidelito is a demi-billionaire. (But, shhhh -- like most of the world's super-rich, he doesn't want anyone to know how much he's worth.) And millions of people in the West still believe in his blather about free universal health care and literacy. How stupid can people get?

Very, very stupid.

Murder of One

The state-sanctioned murder of Terry Schiavo has begun.

Infidel Hatred Starts Early

Infidel hatred starts early in a Moroccan enclave of the multicultural paradise formerly known as The Netherlands. How early? Kindergarten age, says the Dutch Report.

Religious Racism in Saudi Arabia

Gates of Vienna has a good post up about the epidemic abuse of Asian maids/domestic helpers in the Arabian Gulf countries, and an interesting link to a Human Rights Watch report detailing what can only be described as widespread, institutionalized religious racism in Saudi Arabia. Pay especial attention to the paragraph at the bottom of the HRW report which lists the precise schedule by which a human life is monetarily valued, according to the sharia:

The compensation provided in cases of unnatural deaths is determined by the gender and religion of the victim. Cases involving Muslim men receive the full compensation amount, while those involving Christian and Jewish men receive half of the amount. According to the U.S. government, legal heirs of
victims who practiced “polytheistic” religions – such as Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains – receive one-sixteenth of the total compensation amount. . . The Consulate General of India in Jeddah has reported that in cases of accidental death or murder, the maximum amount of financial compensation “generally admissible” is 100,000 riyals – about $26,690-- for male Muslims; 50,000 riyals for male Christians and Jews; and 6,666.66 riyals – about $1,778 -- for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and other polytheistic faiths. Compensation provided to the heirs of women victims of unnatural death receive fifty percent less than their male counterparts in each religious category.

Basically, you can get away with the murder of a "polytheist" woman, say a Buddhist from Nepal, in return for forking over the grand sum of $800 plus change, US.

Apologists like to pretend that this valuing of human life by religion (with Muslim men fetching top value, of course) and gender is some weird permutation of Wahabbi Islam exclusive to Saudi Arabia. It isn't.

Slippery Slope

The endless push for Muslim exceptionalism in the West, and therefore the Islamization/sharia-ization of our countries, took a great leap forward today at a Dell Computer factory in Tennessee:

Muslim contract employees at the Dell Inc. plant in Nashville reached a settlement with the company on issues related to a dispute over prayer in the workplace, a national Islamic civil rights advocacy group announced yesterday in
Washington.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the 31 Muslim employees, who left work last month in a disagreement over Islamic prayers, will be reinstated, receive back pay, and be granted religious accommodation.
Managers also will also receive additional training on existing religious accommodation policies and practices....

I predict that Dell and other US manufacturers will find that the troubles with their Muslim contractors are only just beginning, not ending. Next will come the demands for shortened days or full days off on Fridays; the demands for specially set-aside prayer rooms for Muslim employees only; halal food and separate eating utensils in the company cafeteria; gender-segregated break rooms; and in the fullness of time, gender-segregated offices and assembly lines. The extra costs and inconveniences associated with all these concessions will be paid for by the company and its shareholders, and by the company's non-Muslim employees, especially the female ones, who will have to do extra work and suffer the social discomfiture/inconvenience of segregated cafeterias and the like - and on and on, until, a few generations hence, their lives -- our lives -- will become little different from the lives of dhimmi minorities in the Dar-al-Islam.

Update: Mikkel, the Danish blogger over at Enough! had a great post awhile back that touched on the impossibility of true compromise being achieved between Islam (when lived as a "complete way of life" as many believing Muslims term it) and people of other cultures:

It's one sided, and it's wrong. In the leftists eager to do some good, the ordinary citizen is oppressed. The Muslims are "oppressed" if forced to look at pictures of pigs, but the ordinary people are oppressed if forced to take down their pictures! First pigs, then naked bodies, then what? They will in fact be
instilled with the feeling that they're less worth if having to change their long accustomed ways to suit some recently arrived newcomers. And when the counter reaction comes, it be in form of a hateful look in the bus or the land-slide victory of a right winged party, the outcry comes promptly: persecution!

Homelessness

Tim Worstall points to this story about life among the homeless underclass. It pertains to the UK, but could might as well be set in San Francisco, which has been plagued by a seemingly intractable homeless problem for years. The author of the piece, a homeless outreach worker, notes that unavailable housing is not the main cause of homelessness, but severe social and behavioral problems of people who, for some reason or other, just can't hack it in "normal" society anymore.

Bonfires of the Vanities

House organs of opposite sides of the Iranian opposition are reporting widespread disturbances in Iran as the traditional Persian New Year season begins this week. Both the pro-monarchist Daneshjoo and the pro-Rajavi Iran Focus say that customary Persian New Year bonfire celebrations (a pre-Islamic custom dating back several thousand years) are being turned into anti-government protest sessions.

Update I: Samizdata points to this New York Sun article detailing a rare meeting of the minds of Iranian exiles from most of the opposition factions. Predictably, the opposition leaders are less-than-thrilled with the Bush Administration's newfound willingness to engage in European-style "dialogue" with the mullahs.

"All of a sudden he just flip-flopped and was willing to work with Iran," Mr. Hashempour said. Asked if it was a mistake to try the
carrot-and-stick technique the Europeans have advocated, he answered, "Definitely, for any period, even for 10 seconds. ... Their approach not only didn't help, it was a disaster for the last 20 years."

"It's a bad decision.
It's a very bad decision because it loses time," Dr. Ramzara opined. "The Europeans are being used as a brake on freedom."

Update II: Activist chat has more photos of the fire-jumpers in Iran, including some of Iranians who are using the mullahs' photos as fuel for the bonfires.

Fat Euros

In some parts of the EU, obesity levels are greater than in the US. Take that, you fat Euros.

Hirsi Ali To The US?

Dutch-American PeakTalk has a short recap of Hirsi Ali's appearance on 60 Minutes last Sunday. PeakTalk thinks that Hirsi Ali's political career in Holland has hit a brick wall, and that she is angling for a spot at a US think tank to continue her work.

In other Hirsi Ali news, she's just beat back a court case that sought to keep her from making a sequel to Submission.

Hybrid Retrofit Kit Coming in Summer '05

I got an idea for hybridizing existing autos several years ago -- and now I find out that other people have been thinking along the same lines. A company called Sigma Automotive claims it will soon market a kit called the "Electrocharger" that can turn an existing vehicle into an HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) for an expected price of around $2,500. The company says that the device was developed in conjunction with the Texas A&M University. If this idea takes off, it could prove extremely useful in an era of ever-increasing petroleum prices -- not to mention the environmental benefits. The expected gas savings and decreased emissions would be for city driving only, though, according to the company.

Kurds, Shiites Reach Deal on Iraq Government

A coalition government to be announced on Monday will reportedly include an agreement that Iraq will not be ruled as an Islamic state. Al-Jaafari will be PM and Jalal Talabani, head of one of the Kurdish nationalist parties, will be president. This could be good news, keep your fingers crossed.

Spanish Fatwa

Much has been made in the blogosphere of this Spanish fatwa issued last week against Bin Laden, to mark the first anniversary of the Madrid train blasts that killed nearly 200 people. According to various news reports, the fatwa reads

"Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as
legal and try to base it on the Koran . . . they are committing the crime of'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims ortreated as such." The Arabic term 'istihlal' refers to the act of making up
one's own laws.

For me the fatwa, as reported, raises more questions than it answers, such as: Under what madhab (school of Islamic jurisprudence) was this ruling made? (There are five.) Does the ruling against Bin Laden include the usual admonition for apostasy (under some schools) which makes his blood "permissible to shed" by any observant Muslim? And why wasn't the fatwa issued a year ago?

Hirsi Ali On 60 Minutes This Sunday

Dutch MP and Islamic dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali will appear on the US television newsmagazine, 60 Minutes, this coming Sunday, to discuss the row over her protest film, Submission, and the subsequent murder of Theo Van Gogh. Although the Van Gogh murder has been reported in most major US newspapers, for many Americans, this will be their first exposure to Ms. Ali and the explosive cultural and political situation in Holland. Judging from this advance article from CBS, it looks like Hirsi Ali will be her usual politically incorrect self:

"By not making 'Submission Part II,' I would only be helping terrorists believe that if they use violence, they are rewarded with what they want," she tells Safer. (What -- no exhortions to "look for the root causes of terrorist anger"?-Ed.)

"[Mohammed, the Prophet] has said a few things that are not compatible with democracy," says Hirsi Ali.

100 Hydrogen Buses Headed for Long Beach

A Winnipeg newspaper reports that 100 hydrogen-electric buses, partially built in Canada, have been ordered for service in Long Beach. The article doesn't state the source of energy for creating the hydrogen, so I'm skeptical if this bus model really is as "green" as the article makes out. Still, it's a step forward. Eventually when we figure out how to easily make and store hydrogen from renewable sources like solar, vehicles like this will have provided the platform and knowledge to quickly move over to a clean and abundant source of transport energy. I can hardly wait!

The Gloomy Brits, Again

Melanie Phillips has another gloomy post up about the future of Islamizing Britain in which she highlights a British Hindu/Sikhs reader's email. The email was sent to Phillips in response to a typically fatuous article on Islamic radicalism by Timothy Garton Ash in -- where else -- The Guardian. Writes the reader:

'In today's Guardian Timothy Garton Ash explains why we should be sympathetic and kind to Muslims who consider Osama to be a hero and make statements like this:

'I ask another Muhammad ("just call me Muhammad"), a voluble 16-year-old,
about last year's bombings just down the road, at the Atocha station. Well, he
says, he doesn't like to see people dying "even if they are Christians and Jews". But in this case, because of what Aznar did in the Iraq war'.

"Even if they are Christians and Jews" tells you all you need to know about the mindset of many Muslims in Europe, as though Christians and Jews are lesser people, scum, like dogs or animals. The left in this country is unable and unwilling to face up to the fact that there is a deep poison in the ideology of many of its idealised and romanticised "oppressed" lumpen masses. It is unable to accept that no matter what they do, there will still be people utterly deranged by an ideology of hatred that no amount of wretched and pathetic self flaggelation will defuse.

'I have e-mailed you before and told you about the rancid, casual, rabid anti-semitism that I encounter on a regular basis amongst Muslims I meet in my life. Because I am Asian, have brown skin, they sometimes assume I am
Muslim, and even if they don't, they are freer to tell me their inner thoughts than they would to a white person. It is a level of hatred that is Nazi like in its extremity and virtually universal. I have met some brave Muslims who are
sickened by it, but they are a minority and would never challenge the status-quo hatred that persists amongst them, for fear of ridicule, contempt, and perhaps even violence.

Like any rational, normal-thinking person unblinded by the fashionable multicultural ideologies of the chattering classes, Ms. Phillips' commentator is disturbed by the casual supremacism voiced by the Spanish Muslim teenager in Garton-Ash's article: "Even if they are Christians and Jews. . ."

As one who has spent a lot of time lurking on Islamic talkboards, where deeply believing Muslims (rather than just the cultural kind of Muslim) post, I can testify that this type of supremacist attitude is hardly uncommon in Islamic circles -- even among supposedly more enlightened moderate Muslims living in the West. I would be more surprised if I didn't hear this sort of sentiment expressed by a Muslim regarding the victims of 3-11 (and of 9-11) than the opposite.

Imagine Garton-Ash's reaction to a statement by British National Party leader Nick Griffin, if Griffin had said, "It bothers me to see people dying, even if they are blacks and Asians."

But Garton-Ash repeats virtually the same sentiment in his article almost approvingly, as if he were presenting an attitude of enlightenment that should be applauded and encouraged. ("Look, a Muslim who says he even cares about the lives of subhuman kaffirs! How wonderful!")

It's extraordinary to see how far the Western leftist elite will twist themsevles into pretzels to avoid acknowledging the failure of their ideology, even to the point of applauding supremacist statements that relegate whole groups of people (as long as they are the "right" kind of people) to sub-human status.

And now for the gloomy bit. Ms. Phillips' correspondent concludes:

'Personally, I think that Jews, and to a lesser extent Hindus and Sikhs, face a future of marginalisation in Britain, caught in a pincer movement between the Islamist political game and the pandering of the left to every whim
of the Muslim community. Look at Ken Livingstone and his outrageous remarks all to court the Muslim vote. This is the future of Britain. It is a tragedy.'

Not exactly the happy-clappy rainbow diversity world promised by the multiculturalists, is it?

The Gloomy Dutch, Again

A Dutch government report shows increasing self-segregation between native Dutch and non-Western immigrants in the city of Amsterdam. Reports Expatica:

The situation in the centre of Amsterdam is thus becoming more and more like the other large cities in the Netherlands, such as Rotterdam, where distinct divisions in suburbs are noticeable. In years past, ethnic segregation in the Dutch capital was better than other large cities.

The Amsterdam Council report said the change was due to the failure to integrate immigrants into Dutch society, newspaper De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

City areas with large immigrant populations are the most unattractive places in terms of the housing market. Problems such as unemployment, social security dependence and school absentee rates are prevalent and contact with Dutch natives is infrequent.

"In education, segregation is more or less complete," the researchers said.

In Memorium

Franco at BarcePundit marks the one-year-anniversary of "Spain's 9-11" by listing the names of the dead. Franco also blogs about the recent "international terrorism conference" in Madrid and points out that some of the people most qualified to discuss Islamic terrorism were hardly made to feel welcome:

Looking at the list of other attendees you can see some interesting people (Bernard Koucher), but at the same time some "usual suspects"
(George Soros). At the same time, a Spanish online newspaper reports (link in Spanish) that people like MEMRI'S Yigal Carmon, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Bat Ye'or were initially invited, but then started receiving messages from the organizers telling them
what were the acceptable terms in their speeches (don't use "Islamic terrorism"
but "international terrorism), or telliing them that they wouldn't cover the expenses. Or in the case of Bat Ye'or, telling them that they couldn't provide any protection, a specially outrageous thing considering the Egyptian writer is
under constant death threats for their (sic) views. Naturally, they cancelled.

Afghan Warrior

Meet Afghanistan's only known blogger, Waheed of Afghan Warrior, a 20-year-old who works for the US Army.

Good News and Bad News

First, the good news. The Fed's latest Beige Book report says the economy is expanding nicely without too many inflationary pressures. The bad news: we get a "D" grade on the condition of our national infrastructure. And it's probably well-deserved, although I'm a bit skeptical at the claims of a group of civil engineers pushing a federal spending spree of $1.6 trillion to fix everything up nice and dandy.

This is an issue, particularly in the transportation field, which hits directly at our future competitiveness as an economic superpower. We might not need to spend $1.6 trillion, but judging from the conditions of some Interstate highways in my state, we do need to start spending a bit more than we do now.

It's time to get real and quit pretending that we can cut federal taxes by a huge amount, while simultaneously fighting a global war against terror and adding enormous new entitlement expenditures to the Medicare program. We can't continue spending and borrowing forever, G. W.

Now, the Real Car

Okay I got burned by LGF once on the Italian journalist shooting story -- thanks to an incompetent and confusing AP caption on a photo of another car used by the journalist pre-incident. But now LGF is posting photos from Italian telivision of the car that journalist Sgrena was riding in when the Italian secret service agent was allegedly deliberately shot at by US troops.

This car is even less damaged than the other one. Maybe a stray bullet entered this car at some point and killed the Italian secret service agent, but I'll be damned if you can tell that from these photos.

Clearly, this car did not receive 300/400 rounds of shots from US troops. I am starting to wonder if US troops even actually shot the guy at all.

UPDATE: 3/9/2005: In this BBC Online interview, Sgrena clearly states, "Our car was destroyed." :

Did the Americans continue to fire
when your car had come to a halt?

Our car was destroyed. And then the driver
got out and was shouting "we're Italian, we're Italian". So they came and they
saw what happened. But I was badly injured so I can't explain exactly what
happened after because I was waiting for 20 minutes on the road for a military
car to bring me to the hospital. (Editor's Note: Text copied in case of stealth edits later on.)

Hezbollah Roars Back

Hezbollah answers anti-Syrian protests with a massive rally of its own demonstrating support for Baby Assad and Syrian occupation of Lebanon. The Times of London did report that some of the protesters were bussed in from Syria:

Estimates of the crowd ranged up to half a million - one in eight of Lebanon's population - although Lebanese television reported that Syria was bussing in supporters to boost the numbers. The size of the rally highlighted the continuing divisions in Lebanon 15 years after the end of its long civil war.

But still it's a massive show of muscle from Lebanon's 1.5 million Shiites. Is another civil war brewing? And if so, what's the fall-out for the US in Iraq? Can the US simultaneously support Maronite Christian and Druze anti-Syrian agitators against Shiites in Lebanon while partnering with Shiites in Iraq? Will Syria turn increasingly fundie as it continues to back up Hezbollah and seek help from Iran?

The Middle East remains a Gordian Knot, the cutting of which could result in more problems than originally posed by the knot, IMHO. Daniel Pipes issues a warning note here:

Other than the sui generis Palestinian case, one main danger threatens to undo the good
news: that a too-quick removal of tyranny unleashes Islamist ideologues and
opens their way to power. Sadly, Islamists uniquely have what it takes to win
elections: the talent to develop a compelling ideology, the energy to found
parties, the devotion to win supporters, the money to spend on electoral campaigns, the honesty to appeal to voters, and the will to intimidate
rivals.

This drive to power is nothing new. Already in 1979, Islamists exploited the shah’s fall to take power in Iran. In 1992, they were on their way
to win elections in Algeria. In 2002, they democratically took over in Turkey
and Bangladesh. Removing Saddam Hussein, Husni Mubarak, Bashar Assad, and the
Saudi princes is easier than convincing Middle Eastern Muslim peoples not to replace them with virulent Islamist ideologues.

One other point: Islamists may be uniquely positioned, as Pipes notes, to assert their power in a democratic vaccum, but they are not particularly good at ruling once gaining power. The mess they have made in Iran, economically as well as politically, has done a lot to turn many Iranians away from Islam all together. (Underground Christian churches in Iran are flourishing.) In the end, the Islamist rise to power in Islamia may result in a full-scale revolt against the either political Islam, or Islam all together. The tricky part is managing that nasty phase in the middle, before the masses of people figure out that the Iutopia promised by the Islamists is no more viable than the Communist utopia promised by the Reds.

Why are people always so willing to trade away their essential freedoms for the promise of utopia, whether Communist, tranzi or Islamist?

Danish Muslim Women Fight Back

Danish Muslim women are fighting back against an imam preaching extreme fundamentalism, notes this article posted today on Fjordman's blog. (Fjordman gave a full report earlier on the imam's antics here.)

One woman told Danish media that the imam is trying to introduce measures like the ones used in the countries that they have fled.

The Gloomy Dutch

The Dutch Report reports that the Dutch are not in a good mood these days. Only 31 percent have faith in their government, and only 35 percent think "integration of immigrants" is going well. Considering the news coming out of Holland today, and the fact that 40,000 native Dutch fled from Holland last year, one wonders why the numbers are not even lower.

Red Letter Day in Blogdom

The White House admits its first blogger to a daily press briefing, one Garrett M. Graff of a blog called Fishbowl D.C.:

Garrett M. Graff, 23, writes Fishbowl D.C., a Web log about the news media in Washington. He decided to see if he could get a daily pass for a briefing after a recent controversy raised questions about White House access and who is a legitimate reporter. Graff said he got his pass after a week of asking.

"The briefing room ought to be an inclusive place," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. Historically, he said, the White House has admitted "the traditional media and the nontraditional media, as well as colorful individuals with certain points of view from the left and the right."

We be bookin', blogosphere!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

News and commentary from al-Beeb will be included in radio programming that will replace a current classical music program in the Washington, D. C. area, reports Northern Virginiastan.

As if Washington wasn't screwed up enough already, now they have to import "news" from the Pod People masquerading as journalists across the pond. Heck, we don't need to import European Pod People-scripted journalism -- we have enough of our own!

Vaccy vs. Zappy

How Zappy can look former Czech dissident Vaclav Havel in the eye and not blink, I'll never know. What a scumbag.

Thousands of Pakistani Women Protest Unjust Rape Verdict

MULTAN, Pakistan - Thousands of women rallied in eastern Pakistan on Monday to demand justice and protection for a woman who said she was gang-raped at the direction of a village council, after a court ordered the
release of her alleged attackers.

More here. As fundamentalism in Islamia cracks down harder and harder on women, I suspect that such demonstration scenes will become increasingly commonplace. At least, I hope so.

"Please Don't Say That Again, Or I Shall Have to Kill You"

Charles Moore of the Torygraph pens an excellent piece on the proposed incitement to religious hatred law in the UK (which some are calling the Protect Islam From Criticism Law). Moore writes effectively not just on the law, but also touches on a fundamental and (in this blogger's view) largely irreconcilable difference between Western and very religious Islamic worldviews:

The same minister told me that one day he handed out one of his pamphlets to a Muslim whom he describes as a "lovely, dignified, old gentleman".

The Muslim said to him that their two faiths essentially pointed in the same direction, but when the minister, as tough Protestants do, pointed out that there was a fundamental difference, because Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God, the old man said, quite seriously: "Oh, sir, please do not say
that again, or I shall have to kill you: it is such blasphemy."

And still the multiculturists blunder on, in Britain, in Holland, in Sweden, in Canada, and yes even in the USA, safe in their arrogant presumptions that if they only appease enough, appeal to reason enough, obliterate their own culture and traditions enough, shout down the concerns of their own people enough, destroy hard-won Western freedoms enough, censor and manipulate the MSM enough, they can negotiate some kind of compromise with this type of worldview, that will make everybody happy.

They are fools.

Saudi Princess Plumps for Women's Equality

Princess Sarah, a half-niece of King Fahd, has issued a remarkable call for women's equality in the holy sandbox:

In a rare gesture, a female member of the royal family slammed the ultra conservatives for being the cause of restrictions on women and
called on the kingdom's government to confront them in order to empower women.

"They (government) have to confront them," Princess Sarah bint Talal said, referring to influential conservatives in Saudi Arabia.

"The government has to recognise us as an equal half of society... This equal half has rights," Princess Sarah said.

Such rights go beyond driving and voting to include equal rights in "court, (especially) in
divorce cases, trade, and in making
schooling for women obligatory in every
village in the kingdom," she said.

Unfortunately I don't see how the Saudi government could incorporate Princess Sarah's notions of "equal rights in court, divorce cases, trade, etc." without getting rid of Islamic sharia -- a call that would be considered apostasy in her country. It's not the House of al-Saud that keeps women from having full legal equality under the law -- it's the Koran, which Saudi Arabia currently considers its constitution.

You've got a long way to go, baby.

Hezbollah Backs Syrians in Lebanon

The plot thickens.

Taiwan Protests China's Anti-Secession Law

Thousands of Taiwanese protested a proposed mainland Chinese anti-secession law setting the groundwork for forcing prosperous, democratic Taiwan back into Beijing's deadly grasp. Don't tell the EUropeans though, as they seem quite willing to help China rattle a few sabres at the little democracy that could.

Another "Honesty Malfunction" From the MSM?

On the forefront of exposing MSM b.s. yet again, LGF publicizes a photo of the car that the wounded Italian journalist and her enourage were riding in when US troops shot at it in apparent error and killed an Italian secret service agent. The MSM (led by the wretchedly inaccurate Guardian) are claiming that a US armored vehicle fired between 300/400 rounds of ammunition at the car.

If so, US troops are astoundingly bad shots. I mean, the car that got ambushed at the tollbooth in The Godfather had more holes in it that this one.

My contempt for the MSM, particularly some segments of the British MSM, continues to grow. MSM=license to lie.

UPDATE: False alarm. LGF now says that the car in the linked photo was not the one that ran the US checkpoint. But it still seems highly unlikely that US troops could have fired 400 rounds at the Italian journalist's car, as the Guardian claims, and only killed a single person.

Kuwaiti Women Fight for Voting Rights

Women activists and their liberal supporters plan to stage a rally outside parliament on Monday as the leader of the hardline Islamic
Salaf Alliance threatened to "fill" the streets with opponents of women's rights.

"If the government allows the (pro-women's rights) procession, we are prepared to fill up the Gulf Road (outside parliament) with people opposed to women's rights," Khaled Sultan al-Issa told an anti-women's rights rally late Saturday.

Issa and his group oppose women's rights on religious grounds, claiming that under their strict interpretation of Islam women have no political rights.

As is often the case throughout Islamia and the rest of the world, it's the stone-age-dwelling Salafists who are causing trouble. More here.

UPDATE: AFP article on women's progress in other Gulf/Middle Eastern countries here.

Ahnold's New Solar Legislation

Ahnold's new solar energy support plan is back, (yes, that should be spelled bb-ah-ah-ah-kkk) with a more concilatory attitude toward California's powerful home building industry. It looks like it has a good chance of passing.

Secular Iraqi Women Fear Islamic State

They have much to be afraid of.

Why is The Guardian So Crap? The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind

Scott Burgess at Daily Ablution blogs about Simon Tisdall at The Guardian, who apparently is in the habit of using old Bob Dylan lyrics as a substitute for good old-fashioned fact-checking. (You have to read the whole post as well as all the comments to "get it.") Just when you thought the Grauniad couldn't get any lamer. . .

Kurds To Shiites: Back Off On Islamic State

More here.

UPDATE: Shiite leader Al-Sistani tells everyone to get on with it and name a PM already.

Nanotech + Solar

James at AlternativeEnergyBlog blogs about an interesting project that combines nanotech growths with photovoltaic cells to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

MSM and The Copt Killings

It is interesting to note that now that non-Muslim suspects have been arrested in the Armanious family killings, the news is all over the MSM -- a distinct contrast to the way the story was ignored when the murders first occurred, and the prime suspects were Islamists carrying out a hate-killing against some uppity Christians who dared to criticize Islam on the Internet. (Heck, the story has even made al-Guardian -- which ignored the story when the murders were first discovered.) CAIR and other groups are trumpeting the arrests with "I told you so" smugness, but many, many questions remain about the murders and the subsequent investigation. Robert Spencer asks some of them here:

Early reports stated that Hossam Armanious regularly engaged Muslims in
discussion on the PalTalk website -- discussions that became so heated that one
Muslim threatened him: "You'd better stop this bull---- or we are going to track
you down like a chicken and kill you." This was reported in the New York
Post and attributed to an eyewitness who saw the threat on the site at the time.

What was done to investigate this threat? Did they find and question any Muslims who had had discussions online with Hossam Armanious? Did the Hudson County Prosector's Office question the man who asserted that it was made? Did they determine that the threat had not, in fact, been made at all? That seems
most likely. If that is the case, on what evidence did they arrive at that conclusion?

Whatever the case, note that the report of this threat came not from "hatemongers outside the state," but from a Coptic Christian friend of
Hossam Armanious.

2. If the motive was robbery, why was the family killed? Presumably to prevent them from identifying McDonald and Sanchez. But then we
are evidently to believe that McDonald and Sanchez made repeated trips to ATM's
to withdraw money -- with the quite visible ATM camera staring them in the face
each time. Maybe they are irredeemably stupid -- certainly there is a lot of
stupidity among petty criminals -- but it does at least raise eyebrows.

3. If the motive was robbery and the family presumably surprised McDonald and Sanchez
by being at home, leading the pair to murder them, why were the murders done
with such precision? Why was so much care taken to slit their throats in a
uniform manner? Why wouldn't these guys simply have killed them in the quickest,
easiest way possible?

4. Not long after the murders, I was contacted by a Coptic Christian who identified himself as a close friend of the Garas family
(Hossam Armanious's wife's family). He claimed to have detailed information
about the murders, and he gave it to me. His sources and his information
appeared to be solidly based and at very least worth investigating. Some of it
has been reported recently: a halal butcher whose daughter was converted to
Christianity planned the murders for several months in revenge for the
conversion. He fled the country shortly after the murders, but he planned them
along with three others who are still in the country. The Copt gave me the names
of all four, along with phone numbers and other details for two of them.

I had no idea whether or not the information I had been given was true, and I
never claimed that it was. But it warranted investigation. I passed it on to the
Hudson County Prosecutors Office. Neither I nor my source was contacted about
any of this information for three weeks after I filed the initial report. The
only time I spoke to an official there, he was unfailingly polite but
unmistakably condescending and clearly believed nothing that I had to tell him.
From what I understand the Copt who told me all this fared little better.

Meanwhile more information was coming from other sources, including
but not limited to relatives and other close friends of the victims, that seemed
to corroborate what I had already been told. When Edward DeFazio was asked about
all this, his answer was self-contradictory -- leading me to a few more
questions: Did his office make any attempt to find out if a halal butcher had
really gone missing in the Jersey City area? Did they make any attempt to
question the others named by the Copt? I happen to know that a reporter called
one of these men and asked him what he thought of the killings. He began
smoothly to speculate about robbery, drugs, etc. But when the reporter asked him
about the possibility that it was a revenge killing for a religious conversion,
his shock was palpable. His smooth veneer vanished and he suddenly began to
sputter and search for words. Did this happen when the police questioned him?
Did they question him at all? If not, was it because they had a presumption that
this information was worthless on its face? If they did, on what did they base that presumption?

If the MSM and the authorities played the coverage and investigative game about anything dealing with Islam more fairly, people like me wouldn't be so suspicious of their motives or honesty. That's what political correctness does to the mind over time.

Special Favors

The Dutch Report points to a story on an organ donation controversy in Holland, as reported by Expatica. It seems that Islamic demands for exceptionalism are once again causing resentment among the non-Muslim population in the small free-wheeling Orange Kingdom. The problem is that many Muslims want to take advantage of organ donations but, because of religious prohibitions on "mutilating" dead bodies, refuse to give them. This seems to me to be hugely hypocritical, as well as illogical; after all, if everyone were to convert to Islam as many Muslims hope, there soon wouldn't be any organ donations for them to benefit from anyways. They might as well get used to the idea of doing without them sooner or later.

Attempts to pass legislation in Holland to give first priority for organ donations to those willing to give them are being shouted down by the usual suspects, for the usual reasons.

Nudadism

Why Big Pharoah wants to attend British schools in the nude. Don't ask, just read.

They Ain't Waving The Tri-Colours. . .

Nor the EU flag. Some Lebanese protesters for democracy fly a familiar standard next to their own beautiful cedar tree flag. What the hell -- some day the Arabs, like our ex-enemies the Japanese, may be better allies of ours than the EUropeans. Via Johan Norberg.

Still Dickering

The Kurds and the Shiite alliance are still dickering over political appoinments in the wake of the January 30 Iraqi elections.

First The Good News. . .

The economy added 262,000 jobs in February. Unfortunately, that encouraged more jobseekers to enter the market, causing the unemployment rate to rise by 2/1oths of a percentage point.

British Cultural Suicide. . .Again

Christian religious artifacts have been removed from a chapel in a government hospital in Scotland to conform with multicultural poltical correctness dogma, reports the Torygraph. Also hitting the shitter in Britain this week was the right of publicly financed schools to tell young fanatical practioners of a certain religion that they have to wear school-approved uniforms.

UPDATE: 3/5/05: A reader points out that the hospital chiefs have relented and allowed the Christian artifacts to be returned to the hospital chapel.

UPDATE II: DumbJon fills us in on all the extra-special stuff about the Shabina Begum-jilbab case that al-Beeb didn't really want its audience to know about, including the fact that her suit was instigated by Hizbut Tahrir, the radical Islamist group that wants to take over the world and force everybody to live by sharia law. Hizbut has had its eyes on Europe as a likely place to start for a long time -- and why not? When you've got the wife of the Prime Minister of one of Europe's leading countries helping you out, Europe must indeed seem like a pushover.

Plots

Northern Virginiastan is keeping an eye on the Bush assassination plot (the confessed conspirator attended a madrassah in Northern Virginia) and the Jose Padilla "dirty bomber" cases. Read more about both cases here.

Saudi Shiites Enthusiastic

Upcoming local elections have encouraged Saudi Shiites to see the ballot box as a way of gaining improvements in their situation, the AP reports.

Saudi Shiites, who have long complained of discrimination, believe the elections will give them a voice and official channels to
communicate grievances in a country where the Sunni religious establishment follows a puritanical code that shuns them as religious deviants. The vote in Eastern Province, where the country's 3 million to 4 million Shiites are
concentrated, is the second stage of unprecedented municipal elections that some
see as a key step in opening up decision-making in this absolute monarchy. Voting also is being held Thursday in four regions of the south.

"Do Something!"

When I was in college some 25 years ago, American kids were told to learn how to speak German because there was no stopping the world's future economic superpower as ruled from Bonn. Well, no one's telling them to learn German now. (Today's smart American kids are being told to learn Chinese; 15 years ago, it was Japanese. In the intervening years, English has only strengthened its dominance as the lingua franca of the entire business world.)

Germany's unemployment figures are up drastically again, and finally a few Germans seem to be looking up from their ritual anti-Americanism to actually notice how un-rosy their collective future is looking right now. "Do Something!"screamed the headline of one of the largest Germany dailies, according to the BBC.

Do something indeed. If the US' official unemployment rate was 12.6 percent, there would be rioting in our streets. Well, the Germans have other ways of expressing their displeasure with their great leader Typhoid Gertie; neo-Nazi parties and Commies are making big gains in some parts of their electorate.

All of which could make an American laugh grimly out loud -- that is, if it we weren't so scared of history repeating itself. (After all, we know from experience that when Germany really starts to go off the rails, Americans eventually end up dying in great big numbers.)

While the Germans compare our president to Hitler, they are the ones who are actually voting for neo-Nazis. While the Germans brag about the superiority of the "European social model", they are the ones standing in the bread lines, not us.

For some reason, these days I'm often thinking of Gunter Grass's famous remark: "Europe is always warning that the US is on the verge of being overtaken by fascism, but when fascism comes, it always seems to miss the US -- and hit Europe."