It isn't only the American media that has been betraying their bias in favor of our jihadist enemies. Take a look at this worshipful coverage of the Taliban (or Taleban, in Britspell) by Dhimmi BBC boy-slave David Loyn, embedded with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Not since lefty American writers worshipped at the feet of North Vietnamese generals has the West been forced to endure such a disgusting display of treason. Yes, people, treason, because the Taliban are killing British soldiers, and Loyn was only just sorry he didn’t get to see a countrymen struck down so he could cover it. And this is in Afghanistan. You know, the war the left says it doesn't object to as immoral, illegal, and all the rest.
So why does the Beeb have a correspondent sending back reports from an enemy unit such as: "They have surprised the British by the ferocity of their fighting and their willingness to take casualties", and "The Taleban deny British claims that hundreds of their soldiers have been killed"?
After providing his readers with the status of Taliban morale, (up!), Loyn finishes off with this dramatic quotation: “The Taleban disappeared to the mountains after their defeat in 2001, and found it hard to recruit. Five years on they are back, and regrouping against an old enemy.”
That's a neat trick that "old enemy" reference. I’m betting Loyn’s editor had to snip the closing sentence:
“Five years on they are back, and regrouping against an old enemy, my homeland, Great Britain, that I HATE so much I am driven to write tracts for her sworn enemies.”
Is it any surprise, then, that the Daily Mail is now reporting that the BBC admits that most unjournalistic of sins: utter craven political cravenness, marked by a willingness to “throw into the dustbin” in front of TV cameras kosher food, the Bible, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. But never, never, NEVER the Koran. Why make an exception of the Koran? Answers our moral and intellectual superiors at the BBC, “for fear of offending Muslims”!
Okay, I know about how no really cool people respect kosher, or the Bible, or clergymen, and what-all these days. But what has me stumped is the bit about the Koran and Muslims. I mean, what could be easier to mock for educated, ironical intellectual types like Beeb correspondents than Taliban fighters, for God’s sake, cleaning their teeth with twigs? What would Monty Python have made of the game of goat-pull, for example? But, no, no, no, no, NO! Not the Koran! Why? For fear, they tell us! The BBC admits they are afraid.
So I have a question: Just exactly who is being occupied here? Where in history has there been such bootlicking, absent martial law and the daily fear of the gallows or the firing squad or the gas chamber? Who ever volunteered to be a quisling or a turncoat without at least his life being at stake? Is there even a moral category that can measure this low?
All of which brings to mind one particular speech by Winston Churchill, (undoubtedly broadcast by the once-great BBC), that he delivered to the U.S. Congress shortly after Pearl Harbor. In it, he defies the axis powers for their foolishness in underestimating the lasting enemies they had just made:
"What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realise that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they & the world will never forget."
It's that first sentence that always gets me. In the newsreels you can hear him almost hollering his Churchillian indignation: "What kind of people do they think we are?"
Maybe this week while you're watching CNN or reading the New York Times, or listening to the BBC or digesting any of the hundreds of other media analysts baying against this war aaginst jihad, you may try to remember that terrorist strategists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, are carefully reading and watching the same things.
Then imagine Churchill asking you: "What kind of people do they think we are?"
What kind, indeed.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Frankness From the Franks? May Allah Prevent It!
And in another turnabout for the global Jihad, a Danish court just tossed out the frivolous defamation lawsuit brought by Muslims against the Jyllands-Posten daily newspaper for printing the Mohammed cartoons with the “intention to harm our religion and our prophet.”
It’s no big surprise that the defamation lawsuit was thrown out, since, as one would expect from any rational Western court, even in decadent Denmark, “the drawings did not violate any laws.” Nor is it news that, right on cue, the Muslim spokesman for the plaintiffs said there would be an appeal, with the required threat that “he feared people around the world would be upset by the ruling.” Well, every ruling makes the losing side unhappy. But it hardly rates a headline that we must always expect violence from the highly upsettable Muslim population, as we learned recently during the Pope riots, the Cartoon riots, the Abu Ghraib riots, the Guantanamo Koran riots, and on and on and on. No, the real news is that right after “Arab politicians and intellectuals" threatened that the ruling “would widen the gap between Westerners and Muslims,” they immediately then went on to say that “mass protests were unlikely.”
Mass protests were unlikely? Is that even possible? It almost sounds as if these Arab politicians and intellectuals might actually have some idea when religiously-motivated violence by devout Muslims is, or is not, calendared to spontaneously break out. But how could that be?
It could be because, as we learned during the “Cartoon Jihad” of early this year, the spontaneous outburst of Muslims around the world were anything but spontaneous, since the faithful were told to keep their powder dry for months after the cartoons’ first appearance the previous September, right up until their puppetmasters signaled the moment was right in February.
So, on second thought, maybe it’s too soon to assume that Denmark and the rest of us won’t have to pay a price for the rejected lawsuits until a bit later on. But still there’s part of me that wonders if events of the last few weeks haven’t shown the West beginning to throw off some of its torpor.
First, we saw Jack Straw actually standing up to the self-segregation of the Islamic community in Britain by means of the veil.
Even the French are starting to talk back to their Muslims. Reuters, the anti-Western news agency that excised the word “terrorist” from its style manual, describes this sad development with a headline, “European Muslims worry about frank new Islam debate.”
But that headline is a bad joke, since Muslims have never tolerated any debate of any kind from nonMuslims in their host countries, frank or otherwise, so any debate about Islam would be new. Dilwar Hussain, head of policy research at the Islamic Foundation in Britain, summarized the article’s worried point of view this way: “With all the security concerns, people feel they can be more frank. The reaction from Muslims is to recede further and further into a sense of victimhood.” Oh, well, we wouldn't want people to feel they can be frank, because our frankness makes you a victim.
And as for victimhood, Muslims, (especially Muslim males), have had centuries of religious indoctrination regarding their spiritual superiority as Muslims, and that in France, or Britain, or Italy, or Spain, or elsewhere in the dar al Harb, the non-Muslims amongst whom they dwell are to be considered in the same category as “urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors, and 'the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things]'" (as declared in an edifying fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the supreme religious authority of Shiite Iraq). This being the case, it doesn’t seem logical that Muslims can actually see themselves victims of beings so inferior—except perhaps for strategic reasons having to do with the conquest of the little devils. And we all know Westerners instinctively feel for victims, which less merciful nonwestern enemies have managed to exploit more than once.
You can bet that when European Muslims, who have deliberately refused assimilation for decades, begin to complain that Europeans are starting to debate the wisdom of their decadent and self-destructive multi-culti suicide pact with Islam, it really means that Europeans are beginning to start talking out loud to each other about their growing sense of danger. From the Reuters article:
“There is a sense we are living in a different time. Intolerance is growing in Europe,” said Dalil Boubakeur, president of France’s Muslim Council, who saw the new mood as a response to security fears and the radicalisation of a small minority of Muslims who do not accept European values.”
In other words, when Muslim violence, unreasonable demands for accomodation, and adamant Islamic dismissals of all viewpoints but their own, force Europeans to think about their own security, the very logical place to start is by re-examining the whole diversity and tolerance regime. This re-examination Europe’s Jihadists cannot afford, which is why they always try to tamp down all discussion by screaming that “intolerance is growing.”
The problem for Jihadists in Europe, (at least, I hope it becomes a problem for them), is that this endlessly repeated complaint about not being tolerated is keeping before the minds of Europeans that indeed intolerance is growing—or rather, that the population of intolerant Muslims in Europe is growing--in the suburbs of Paris, in the mosques of London, in the no-go cities like Malmo, Sweden, in the law courts of Denmark, in the bloodied streets of Amsterdam, in the town squares of Florence.
Who knows that by some irony the aversions of Europeans for the intolerance of their Muslims will win out over their misguided weakness towards the Muslim cries of "victim!"
It’s no big surprise that the defamation lawsuit was thrown out, since, as one would expect from any rational Western court, even in decadent Denmark, “the drawings did not violate any laws.” Nor is it news that, right on cue, the Muslim spokesman for the plaintiffs said there would be an appeal, with the required threat that “he feared people around the world would be upset by the ruling.” Well, every ruling makes the losing side unhappy. But it hardly rates a headline that we must always expect violence from the highly upsettable Muslim population, as we learned recently during the Pope riots, the Cartoon riots, the Abu Ghraib riots, the Guantanamo Koran riots, and on and on and on. No, the real news is that right after “Arab politicians and intellectuals" threatened that the ruling “would widen the gap between Westerners and Muslims,” they immediately then went on to say that “mass protests were unlikely.”
Mass protests were unlikely? Is that even possible? It almost sounds as if these Arab politicians and intellectuals might actually have some idea when religiously-motivated violence by devout Muslims is, or is not, calendared to spontaneously break out. But how could that be?
It could be because, as we learned during the “Cartoon Jihad” of early this year, the spontaneous outburst of Muslims around the world were anything but spontaneous, since the faithful were told to keep their powder dry for months after the cartoons’ first appearance the previous September, right up until their puppetmasters signaled the moment was right in February.
So, on second thought, maybe it’s too soon to assume that Denmark and the rest of us won’t have to pay a price for the rejected lawsuits until a bit later on. But still there’s part of me that wonders if events of the last few weeks haven’t shown the West beginning to throw off some of its torpor.
First, we saw Jack Straw actually standing up to the self-segregation of the Islamic community in Britain by means of the veil.
Even the French are starting to talk back to their Muslims. Reuters, the anti-Western news agency that excised the word “terrorist” from its style manual, describes this sad development with a headline, “European Muslims worry about frank new Islam debate.”
But that headline is a bad joke, since Muslims have never tolerated any debate of any kind from nonMuslims in their host countries, frank or otherwise, so any debate about Islam would be new. Dilwar Hussain, head of policy research at the Islamic Foundation in Britain, summarized the article’s worried point of view this way: “With all the security concerns, people feel they can be more frank. The reaction from Muslims is to recede further and further into a sense of victimhood.” Oh, well, we wouldn't want people to feel they can be frank, because our frankness makes you a victim.
And as for victimhood, Muslims, (especially Muslim males), have had centuries of religious indoctrination regarding their spiritual superiority as Muslims, and that in France, or Britain, or Italy, or Spain, or elsewhere in the dar al Harb, the non-Muslims amongst whom they dwell are to be considered in the same category as “urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors, and 'the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things]'" (as declared in an edifying fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the supreme religious authority of Shiite Iraq). This being the case, it doesn’t seem logical that Muslims can actually see themselves victims of beings so inferior—except perhaps for strategic reasons having to do with the conquest of the little devils. And we all know Westerners instinctively feel for victims, which less merciful nonwestern enemies have managed to exploit more than once.
You can bet that when European Muslims, who have deliberately refused assimilation for decades, begin to complain that Europeans are starting to debate the wisdom of their decadent and self-destructive multi-culti suicide pact with Islam, it really means that Europeans are beginning to start talking out loud to each other about their growing sense of danger. From the Reuters article:
“There is a sense we are living in a different time. Intolerance is growing in Europe,” said Dalil Boubakeur, president of France’s Muslim Council, who saw the new mood as a response to security fears and the radicalisation of a small minority of Muslims who do not accept European values.”
In other words, when Muslim violence, unreasonable demands for accomodation, and adamant Islamic dismissals of all viewpoints but their own, force Europeans to think about their own security, the very logical place to start is by re-examining the whole diversity and tolerance regime. This re-examination Europe’s Jihadists cannot afford, which is why they always try to tamp down all discussion by screaming that “intolerance is growing.”
The problem for Jihadists in Europe, (at least, I hope it becomes a problem for them), is that this endlessly repeated complaint about not being tolerated is keeping before the minds of Europeans that indeed intolerance is growing—or rather, that the population of intolerant Muslims in Europe is growing--in the suburbs of Paris, in the mosques of London, in the no-go cities like Malmo, Sweden, in the law courts of Denmark, in the bloodied streets of Amsterdam, in the town squares of Florence.
Who knows that by some irony the aversions of Europeans for the intolerance of their Muslims will win out over their misguided weakness towards the Muslim cries of "victim!"
Australian Mufti Denounced For Preaching Baloney
Maybe they really do all live upside down in Australia. Otherwise how explain the picture of an Islamic cleric cornered and on the receiving end of “outrage”, and the citizenry baying for the Islamic cleric’s apology—and even his removal! We thought “outrage” was conceded as an exclusively Islamic option for responding to insults both real and imaginary, while only their clerics were authorized to demand apologies and the resignation--or preferably the violent execution--of offenders of Islam. But the Australians are really upset over leading Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali’s Ramadan sermon blaming women who don’t wear headscarfs as “uncovered meat,” who only have themselves to blame for being raped. Il-Hilali's translated remarks include this piece of wisdom: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?" Yes, it's a stupid thing to ask. But to me it is the furious Australian response that is the real man-bites-dog story.
And to make it even richer, the oh-so-conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, staunch coalition ally, and rare Western leader who gets it on the perils of Jihadism, even managed to get some kudos for calling on Australia’s Muslims to “adopt Australia’s liberal attitudes to women’s rights.” It’s a bit overreaching to suggest that it’s a liberal idea that just because they go out with heads uncovered women should not be rape victims. But the whole thing is a sign that the left and right in Australia may be drawing closer over how much more tolerance should be shown for the intolerable imposition of Sharia in a free society.
During his Ramadan sermon Al-Hilali went on to explain how rape is the inevitable result of a woman’s refusal to keep her head covered--and stay locked up in the house: “The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Australian reaction was so strong the Mufti actually had to apologize for offending nonMuslim women, (the Prophet will not be happy), and was even heard on Australian television crying "No, no, no," when asked if he was going to resign, just like any doomed politician caught with his pants down. Even Australia's Islamic leadership had to take some guff from the country's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, (also a woman), who wasn't about to stand for the usual nonsense about "context" or how Westerners are too ignorant to understand Koranic teaching: “It is time the Islamic community did more than say they were horrified," she said. "I think it is time he left.” The last time we heard this kind of moral denunciation, it was from Muslims worldwide howling against Pope Benedict, except that the Pope never said anything this stupid. This is almost as great as if Al Sharpton were actually forced to explain his racism for a change. Maybe things are starting to improve after all.
Al-Hilali is the senior cleric at Sydney’s largest mosque, and has “vowed” not to give up his post. But the mosque’s governing association says he won’t be preaching for a few months, probably so he can plumb some more wisdom out of the Koran. Al-Hilali got in trouble once before in 2004, when he preached that 9/11 was “God's work against the oppressors.” He later denied supporting the 9/11 attacks, or terrorism. But this time provoked Australians have figured out this guy stinks like week-old hamburger.
And to make it even richer, the oh-so-conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, staunch coalition ally, and rare Western leader who gets it on the perils of Jihadism, even managed to get some kudos for calling on Australia’s Muslims to “adopt Australia’s liberal attitudes to women’s rights.” It’s a bit overreaching to suggest that it’s a liberal idea that just because they go out with heads uncovered women should not be rape victims. But the whole thing is a sign that the left and right in Australia may be drawing closer over how much more tolerance should be shown for the intolerable imposition of Sharia in a free society.
During his Ramadan sermon Al-Hilali went on to explain how rape is the inevitable result of a woman’s refusal to keep her head covered--and stay locked up in the house: “The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Australian reaction was so strong the Mufti actually had to apologize for offending nonMuslim women, (the Prophet will not be happy), and was even heard on Australian television crying "No, no, no," when asked if he was going to resign, just like any doomed politician caught with his pants down. Even Australia's Islamic leadership had to take some guff from the country's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, (also a woman), who wasn't about to stand for the usual nonsense about "context" or how Westerners are too ignorant to understand Koranic teaching: “It is time the Islamic community did more than say they were horrified," she said. "I think it is time he left.” The last time we heard this kind of moral denunciation, it was from Muslims worldwide howling against Pope Benedict, except that the Pope never said anything this stupid. This is almost as great as if Al Sharpton were actually forced to explain his racism for a change. Maybe things are starting to improve after all.
Al-Hilali is the senior cleric at Sydney’s largest mosque, and has “vowed” not to give up his post. But the mosque’s governing association says he won’t be preaching for a few months, probably so he can plumb some more wisdom out of the Koran. Al-Hilali got in trouble once before in 2004, when he preached that 9/11 was “God's work against the oppressors.” He later denied supporting the 9/11 attacks, or terrorism. But this time provoked Australians have figured out this guy stinks like week-old hamburger.
Monday, October 23, 2006
How Many Are 95 Theses--Squared?
Nolan Findley’s Sunday column in the Detroit News, “Ex-jihadist seeks Islam’s Martin Luther,” is another example of how Findley hasn’t gotten the memo about saying only nice things about Jihadists. That makes him a rare creature indeed in this part of the country. He also gives a nice introduction to Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a physician and author who was taught by Ayman al-Zawahiri, but broke free and fled to the West. Hamid is still a Muslim, but he believes the religion needs to be “reformed.” According to Findley,
“Hamid believes a reformation will lead to the more enlightened practice of Islam, as it did with the Christian and Jewish reformations. The essential ingredients of reform, he says, are rejection of the principles that apostates must be killed; women can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and Islam can be spread through violence.”
If Islam can be reformed, that would be great. But I have to take issue with the notion going around that Islam's need of reform is somehow comparable to what history has come to know as the "Reformation" of the 16th Century. Neither Christianity, nor Judaism, ever had to experience “reforms” in order to be freed of notions that apostates must be killed, women enslaved, and the worship of God must be spread by violence. The Church never held such notions. Nor did Judaism.
And as I’m sure both sides of the Lutheran/Catholic debate would agree, even if we could agree on little else, the religious struggles of the 16th Century had nothing to do with turning a barbaric, belligerent, and intolerant religion into something more people-friendly, tolerant, and “open to secular pleasures.” Remember that the Sermon on the Mount was first preached, not in the mid-20th Century by Daniel Berrigan and William Sloane Coffin , but in the early 1st Century, (and so much better), by Jesus of Nazareth.
By the time Islam began its violent spread out of Arabia in the 7th Century, all of the great Christian creeds had been developed, the Church was far along in laying down the foundations of Western civilization, and the world had already been blessed with the brilliant lives of Jesus, the Apostles, Athanasius, Augustine, and Leo the Great, while Gregory had perfected chant, and Benedict had perfected his rule for Christian monasticism. Before the “Reformer” Luther was even born Christianity had already nurtured Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi and Clare, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas รก Kempis, Chaucer, Dante--and Europe had seen the beginning of the Renaissance.
It will be objected that Christians fought wars, too, called the Crusades. We did indeed fight those wars, to save our civilization from, and deliver our kingdoms from, if we could, a fanatical faith that held apostates must be killed; women and defeated populations can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and the truth of Allah can be spread through violence. In the 16th Century neither Pope nor reformer would disagree about Islam, and all parties in the religious struggles of that time were more enlightened on the matter than most churchmen seem to be these days.
My only point being that, if Christianity was not always perfect, it was never unenlightened, and never needed the kind of reform that Islam is going to require in order to be made safe now. But could Islam ever be reformed? Would a reformed Islam still be Islam?
“Hamid believes a reformation will lead to the more enlightened practice of Islam, as it did with the Christian and Jewish reformations. The essential ingredients of reform, he says, are rejection of the principles that apostates must be killed; women can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and Islam can be spread through violence.”
If Islam can be reformed, that would be great. But I have to take issue with the notion going around that Islam's need of reform is somehow comparable to what history has come to know as the "Reformation" of the 16th Century. Neither Christianity, nor Judaism, ever had to experience “reforms” in order to be freed of notions that apostates must be killed, women enslaved, and the worship of God must be spread by violence. The Church never held such notions. Nor did Judaism.
And as I’m sure both sides of the Lutheran/Catholic debate would agree, even if we could agree on little else, the religious struggles of the 16th Century had nothing to do with turning a barbaric, belligerent, and intolerant religion into something more people-friendly, tolerant, and “open to secular pleasures.” Remember that the Sermon on the Mount was first preached, not in the mid-20th Century by Daniel Berrigan and William Sloane Coffin , but in the early 1st Century, (and so much better), by Jesus of Nazareth.
By the time Islam began its violent spread out of Arabia in the 7th Century, all of the great Christian creeds had been developed, the Church was far along in laying down the foundations of Western civilization, and the world had already been blessed with the brilliant lives of Jesus, the Apostles, Athanasius, Augustine, and Leo the Great, while Gregory had perfected chant, and Benedict had perfected his rule for Christian monasticism. Before the “Reformer” Luther was even born Christianity had already nurtured Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi and Clare, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas รก Kempis, Chaucer, Dante--and Europe had seen the beginning of the Renaissance.
It will be objected that Christians fought wars, too, called the Crusades. We did indeed fight those wars, to save our civilization from, and deliver our kingdoms from, if we could, a fanatical faith that held apostates must be killed; women and defeated populations can be subjugated and enslaved; Jews are subhuman, and the truth of Allah can be spread through violence. In the 16th Century neither Pope nor reformer would disagree about Islam, and all parties in the religious struggles of that time were more enlightened on the matter than most churchmen seem to be these days.
My only point being that, if Christianity was not always perfect, it was never unenlightened, and never needed the kind of reform that Islam is going to require in order to be made safe now. But could Islam ever be reformed? Would a reformed Islam still be Islam?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Appeasement 101
David Zucker, the genius behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun, (yeah, I know, and how many hit movies have you made?) created a campaign ad for the GOP that is apparently too hot for them to run. It’s been running anyway on the Internet, and you can see it here.
What's Hip, Colorful, and Annoys Judges?
The Detroit Free Press’s lightweight weekend insert, Twist featured a cover story on “Hip Hijab: A Blending of Faith and Fashion.”
Being the Free Press, what should have been a light fashion feature story had to do some duty as a propaganda piece for the progress of Jihad. Twist writer Patricia Montemmuri quotes Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, telling us that “Muslim women…aim to command respect for their faith by wearing the hijab.” In this context, this is rather a poor choice of words. It’s that “command to respect” their faith that is causing all the problems, both here and more and more in Europe.
Still, I don’t expect Professor Abdulhadi to see it that way. As an academic she’s all about “structural inequalities,” and fostering “tolerance” and “fairness.” This is why she sees the hijab not only as “an assertion of identity ... a sign of distinction and definition,” but also “sometimes a sign of defiance.” Naturally, we can only wonder whom it is Muslim women are trying to defy, because the article doesn’t say—or ask. It’s a safe bet they aren’t trying to defy their husbands.
I have no particular problem with women wearing veils. Until the sixth grade I lived under the violent regime of Dominicans in very unhip veils, and, though I still don’t care for nuns much as a class, they don’t actually scare me now that I’m bigger than they are. Whatever their problems were, they weren’t caused by veils, which they've long since ditched, anyway. Nor do ladies in designer hijabs worry me much. If Muslim women find a way to make then fashionable and hip, good for them.
Yet what always strikes me as odd is how something as intentionally harmless and noncontroversial as a fashion piece about headscarves has to be offered as a challenge to the nonMuslim community as a “command for respect," “a sign of defiance.” Why is it so hard to understand that this continual goading of nonMuslims is causing the very dislike for their religion Muslims claim they regret so much?
As another example, the Free Press ran another story on Sunday about a Hamtramck judge, Paul Paruk, who dismissed a small-claims lawsuit when the female plaintiff, Ginnnah Muhammad, refused his request to remove her niqab while she testified before him in his courtroom. The niqab is a scarf and veil that show nothing but a woman’s eyes, as seen in the Free Press photo above of Ms. Muhammad. For those of you out-of-towners, Hamtramck is Dearborn's sister city in dhimmitude.
Judge Paruk apparently feels that being able to see the face of a witness, and not just hear her voice, is a critical element in fulfilling his fact-finding role. This makes sense, since appellate courts, even when they have trial transcripts to review, routinely defer to the trial court’s findings as to witness credibility. After all, it is the judge or jury who actually see the witness live as he or she testifies, and can better read the witness’s demeanor.
But naturally, poor Judge Paruk will not be let off that easy. The Free Press framed the lead by citing how Ms. Muhammad felt “a judge forced her to choose between her case and her religion.” Of course, there is nothing in the story to suggest that Judge Paruk ever demanded that Ms. Muhammad had to renounce her faith in exchange for hearing her case, nor is there anything to suggest that removing her veil would result in automatic excommunication. All signs are that this was simply one of those instances where a Muslim woman felt compelled to use her covering as “a sign of defiance.” It just so happened that in this case the Judge had the power to defy Ms. Muhammad right back. Maybe that's why the Free Press thinks it's news.
Of course, Dawud Walid, spokesman for the U.S.-based terrorist organization CAIR, was asked to comment for the article. He said the usual inapposite things about Ms. Muhammad’s civil rights and the need for “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” that is, the growing number of Muslim immigrants. You know, the usual yada-yada.
But I could sense Walid’s heart wasn’t in this one. Maybe that’s because it was only a small-claims case, rather than a terrorist trial where the freedom of a genuine homicidal menace was at stake. And besides, Ms. Muhammad is only a woman. Under Sharia law, her testimony would only count for half that of a man’s, anyway. (But she would get to keep her veil on!)
Still, Walid just has to raise the issue of “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” so I have to mention that every single resident of “that municipality,” Hamtramck, regardless of race, creed, sex, age, or health condition, must be subjected five times daily, (starting at dawn), to the Muslim call to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers. Now that’s what I call a “structural inequality.”
Anyhow, the loudspeakers were turned on in 2004, when the al-Islah mosque began the broadcasts in defiance of the city noise ordinances, then got the city council to knuckle under, as dhimmi city councils tend to do. The residents held a referendum to stop it, but lost on a very low voter turnout. It didn’t help that the president of the city council admitted they wouldn’t stop the practice anyway, even if the majority population didn’t approve. And the secretary of the mosque, who may or may not have been wearing a hijab when she said it, defiantly said the broadcasts wouldn’t have stopped regardless of the outcome of the vote.
I have no idea if Judge Paruk happens to live where he is awakened each morning by the muadhdhin reminding him that Allah is the Greatest, (or rather, reminding the ummah, since Judge Paruk is an infidel and cannot expect any help from Allah). If he is awakened each morning this way, then when it was time to hear Ms. Muhammad's case he might well have been grumpy from lack of sleep, or chafing from the insensitivity of the growing Muslim populace of Hamtramck toward the majority nonMuslim residents.
Or maybe he just wanted to gaze for himself upon the defiant face of Hamtramck’s future.
Being the Free Press, what should have been a light fashion feature story had to do some duty as a propaganda piece for the progress of Jihad. Twist writer Patricia Montemmuri quotes Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, telling us that “Muslim women…aim to command respect for their faith by wearing the hijab.” In this context, this is rather a poor choice of words. It’s that “command to respect” their faith that is causing all the problems, both here and more and more in Europe.
Still, I don’t expect Professor Abdulhadi to see it that way. As an academic she’s all about “structural inequalities,” and fostering “tolerance” and “fairness.” This is why she sees the hijab not only as “an assertion of identity ... a sign of distinction and definition,” but also “sometimes a sign of defiance.” Naturally, we can only wonder whom it is Muslim women are trying to defy, because the article doesn’t say—or ask. It’s a safe bet they aren’t trying to defy their husbands.
I have no particular problem with women wearing veils. Until the sixth grade I lived under the violent regime of Dominicans in very unhip veils, and, though I still don’t care for nuns much as a class, they don’t actually scare me now that I’m bigger than they are. Whatever their problems were, they weren’t caused by veils, which they've long since ditched, anyway. Nor do ladies in designer hijabs worry me much. If Muslim women find a way to make then fashionable and hip, good for them.
Yet what always strikes me as odd is how something as intentionally harmless and noncontroversial as a fashion piece about headscarves has to be offered as a challenge to the nonMuslim community as a “command for respect," “a sign of defiance.” Why is it so hard to understand that this continual goading of nonMuslims is causing the very dislike for their religion Muslims claim they regret so much?
As another example, the Free Press ran another story on Sunday about a Hamtramck judge, Paul Paruk, who dismissed a small-claims lawsuit when the female plaintiff, Ginnnah Muhammad, refused his request to remove her niqab while she testified before him in his courtroom. The niqab is a scarf and veil that show nothing but a woman’s eyes, as seen in the Free Press photo above of Ms. Muhammad. For those of you out-of-towners, Hamtramck is Dearborn's sister city in dhimmitude.Judge Paruk apparently feels that being able to see the face of a witness, and not just hear her voice, is a critical element in fulfilling his fact-finding role. This makes sense, since appellate courts, even when they have trial transcripts to review, routinely defer to the trial court’s findings as to witness credibility. After all, it is the judge or jury who actually see the witness live as he or she testifies, and can better read the witness’s demeanor.
But naturally, poor Judge Paruk will not be let off that easy. The Free Press framed the lead by citing how Ms. Muhammad felt “a judge forced her to choose between her case and her religion.” Of course, there is nothing in the story to suggest that Judge Paruk ever demanded that Ms. Muhammad had to renounce her faith in exchange for hearing her case, nor is there anything to suggest that removing her veil would result in automatic excommunication. All signs are that this was simply one of those instances where a Muslim woman felt compelled to use her covering as “a sign of defiance.” It just so happened that in this case the Judge had the power to defy Ms. Muhammad right back. Maybe that's why the Free Press thinks it's news.
Of course, Dawud Walid, spokesman for the U.S.-based terrorist organization CAIR, was asked to comment for the article. He said the usual inapposite things about Ms. Muhammad’s civil rights and the need for “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” that is, the growing number of Muslim immigrants. You know, the usual yada-yada.
But I could sense Walid’s heart wasn’t in this one. Maybe that’s because it was only a small-claims case, rather than a terrorist trial where the freedom of a genuine homicidal menace was at stake. And besides, Ms. Muhammad is only a woman. Under Sharia law, her testimony would only count for half that of a man’s, anyway. (But she would get to keep her veil on!)
Still, Walid just has to raise the issue of “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” so I have to mention that every single resident of “that municipality,” Hamtramck, regardless of race, creed, sex, age, or health condition, must be subjected five times daily, (starting at dawn), to the Muslim call to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers. Now that’s what I call a “structural inequality.”
Anyhow, the loudspeakers were turned on in 2004, when the al-Islah mosque began the broadcasts in defiance of the city noise ordinances, then got the city council to knuckle under, as dhimmi city councils tend to do. The residents held a referendum to stop it, but lost on a very low voter turnout. It didn’t help that the president of the city council admitted they wouldn’t stop the practice anyway, even if the majority population didn’t approve. And the secretary of the mosque, who may or may not have been wearing a hijab when she said it, defiantly said the broadcasts wouldn’t have stopped regardless of the outcome of the vote.
I have no idea if Judge Paruk happens to live where he is awakened each morning by the muadhdhin reminding him that Allah is the Greatest, (or rather, reminding the ummah, since Judge Paruk is an infidel and cannot expect any help from Allah). If he is awakened each morning this way, then when it was time to hear Ms. Muhammad's case he might well have been grumpy from lack of sleep, or chafing from the insensitivity of the growing Muslim populace of Hamtramck toward the majority nonMuslim residents.
Or maybe he just wanted to gaze for himself upon the defiant face of Hamtramck’s future.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Andrew McCarthy on the Defense of Liberty
Former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy , the man who put the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in jail for life, has some useful suggestions on how we can still win the war against radical Islam. Here's a sample:
“Activist efforts to limit America's free marketplace of ideas -- such as the tactic of slandering commonsense criticism as ‘Islamophobia’ -- are contrary to the very foundation of democratic governance.”
For those of you wondering, McCarthy got the Sheikh convicted without benefit of the BRIDGES program.
“Activist efforts to limit America's free marketplace of ideas -- such as the tactic of slandering commonsense criticism as ‘Islamophobia’ -- are contrary to the very foundation of democratic governance.”
For those of you wondering, McCarthy got the Sheikh convicted without benefit of the BRIDGES program.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Why Not Just Flip a Coin?
Dearborn Press & Guide editor Tim Powers wrote a couple weeks ago in a brief editorial, (October 8,“Spotlight on a problem”), that between Israel and Hezbollah, he doesn’t “pretend to know the truth or who is on the right or wrong side of the recent round of war”. He also thinks there has been “very little press about the plight of the people of southern Lebanon.” I find both statements puzzling.
As far as Mr. Powers’s knowledge gap is concerned on “the truth or who is on the right or wrong side,” I would think a confession like that would disqualify him from printing an editorial on the subject, let alone one purporting to shine a “spotlight on a problem.” A spotlight implies light shining in darkness, not just darkness.
Besides, why can’t Mr. Powers just rely on the facts printed in his own newspaper? As editor he has presided over the publication of thousands of words of pro-Hezbollah articles since the beginning of July, and may even have written their headlines. Headlines that all by themselves can tell a story like, “Conflict raises concern for relatives, friends trapped in Lebanon” (July 16), “Prayer vigils mark concerns,” (July 16), “American Jews feel despair over conflict,” (August 9), “UM-D students urge divesting from Israel” (October 8), "Protesters demand peace at City Hall rally," (July 30) , and my favorite example of straight news reporting, "No war," (July 23).
Just recently Mr. Powers has run at least two front-page stories about the return from Lebanon of a publicity tour of local officials sponsored by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, stories running under headlines such as, “Destruction in Lebanon.” (October 15). And both the Detroit Free Press and the News have also given the aftermath of the war (the Lebanese side of it , anyway), lots of coverage, as we at DU have remarked elsewhere. That is, we have remarked on how anti-Israel they are.
So it seems odd that Mr. Powers can’t manage to come to an opinion. Almost without exception articles in the Press & Guide are quite clear that Israel is the bad guy, and that Hezbollah, when it gets mentioned at all, are only in Lebanon to help out, like the Red Cross or the Mennonites.
If Mr. Powers would simply read his own paper, he would soon qualify as an expert on who is on the right or wrong side. Unless he doesn’t believe what gets written in his own paper. Which might explain the merry glint in his eye that you can see in his byline photo.
Then again, as editor of Dearborn’s major newspaper Mr. Powers may feel that the demographics of his market make neutrality the better part of valor. But if that’s the case, he should avoid commenting on his position at all, instead of pleading rather incredibly that he doesn't have one. He may have taken his cue on how to be neutral from U.S. Representative John Dingell, who also stood for a Congressman’s right not to choose, so he wouldn’t have to decide between Israel, America’s faithful ally, and Hezbollah, America’s sworn enemy, officially recognized terrorist army, and war provocateurs. Nobody believes Dingell, either.
I believe the object of Mr. Powers’s editorial comment was sincerely to help the people of southern Lebanon get much-needed assistance, regardless of who started the war. But I’m afraid by refusing to take sides, he is merely playing into the hands of the Hezbollah liars and con men who brought this upon Lebanon in the first place, and will do so again. And that is the problem that needs a spotlight.
As far as Mr. Powers’s knowledge gap is concerned on “the truth or who is on the right or wrong side,” I would think a confession like that would disqualify him from printing an editorial on the subject, let alone one purporting to shine a “spotlight on a problem.” A spotlight implies light shining in darkness, not just darkness.
Besides, why can’t Mr. Powers just rely on the facts printed in his own newspaper? As editor he has presided over the publication of thousands of words of pro-Hezbollah articles since the beginning of July, and may even have written their headlines. Headlines that all by themselves can tell a story like, “Conflict raises concern for relatives, friends trapped in Lebanon” (July 16), “Prayer vigils mark concerns,” (July 16), “American Jews feel despair over conflict,” (August 9), “UM-D students urge divesting from Israel” (October 8), "Protesters demand peace at City Hall rally," (July 30) , and my favorite example of straight news reporting, "No war," (July 23).
Just recently Mr. Powers has run at least two front-page stories about the return from Lebanon of a publicity tour of local officials sponsored by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, stories running under headlines such as, “Destruction in Lebanon.” (October 15). And both the Detroit Free Press and the News have also given the aftermath of the war (the Lebanese side of it , anyway), lots of coverage, as we at DU have remarked elsewhere. That is, we have remarked on how anti-Israel they are.
So it seems odd that Mr. Powers can’t manage to come to an opinion. Almost without exception articles in the Press & Guide are quite clear that Israel is the bad guy, and that Hezbollah, when it gets mentioned at all, are only in Lebanon to help out, like the Red Cross or the Mennonites.
If Mr. Powers would simply read his own paper, he would soon qualify as an expert on who is on the right or wrong side. Unless he doesn’t believe what gets written in his own paper. Which might explain the merry glint in his eye that you can see in his byline photo.
Then again, as editor of Dearborn’s major newspaper Mr. Powers may feel that the demographics of his market make neutrality the better part of valor. But if that’s the case, he should avoid commenting on his position at all, instead of pleading rather incredibly that he doesn't have one. He may have taken his cue on how to be neutral from U.S. Representative John Dingell, who also stood for a Congressman’s right not to choose, so he wouldn’t have to decide between Israel, America’s faithful ally, and Hezbollah, America’s sworn enemy, officially recognized terrorist army, and war provocateurs. Nobody believes Dingell, either.
I believe the object of Mr. Powers’s editorial comment was sincerely to help the people of southern Lebanon get much-needed assistance, regardless of who started the war. But I’m afraid by refusing to take sides, he is merely playing into the hands of the Hezbollah liars and con men who brought this upon Lebanon in the first place, and will do so again. And that is the problem that needs a spotlight.
Friday, October 13, 2006
For What It's Worth (Part II)
Paranoia strikes deep, into your lives it will creep; it starts when you’re always afraid…
Qualifying as an Islamophobe is easier than just taking certain public stands or political actions, but involves even the barest acknowledgment, (even all to yourself in private, let alone to others), that you do indeed have a feeling of growing unease about the gathering cultural and military threat from Islam.
Consequently, those frightened of being called that name find it most practical to refuse to think about it at all. You aren’t just being silenced at the ballot box, and the townhall, or at church, now you can’t even open your mouth at your own damn dinner table, or else the shrieking Man is right there condemning you for what, according to him, you are.
I tell you, those PhDs at Berkley and Columbia are smart. They know the best way to stop you from saying something is to scare the hell out of you first from even thinking it. And one good way to keep from thinking something is to train yourself to always think the opposite. And that is exactly how the American public thinks about Jihad and Islam. Against every evidence, we think it is the benevolent worldwide advance of the Religion of Peace.
I believe there are a significant portion of the population who, if they permitted themselves just thirty seconds unfettered analysis of the predicament of the West in relation to the global Jihad, the appeasement, and the campaign of lies pouring out of the Jihadist collaborators who control the media, people would immediately seek one another out, close ranks, and stand up to this death-through-diversity once and for all.
But it’s as if the same Reds who burned out Laurence Harvey’s brain in The Manchurian Candidate got the whole country under the hot lights, fixing us so no matter how many times we’re shown the flashcard that says “2+2”, our mind refuses to visualize the numeral “4.” (“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. Oh, and the word ‘Islam’ means ‘peace.’”)
Oriana Fallaci, who just passed away last month, had this to say in her book, The Force of Reason, about how good people in Europe once lost their way under totalitarianism, and are losing it again now from fear of Islam:
Europe burning into torpor like the city of Troy has renewed the disease that last century made Fascists even the Italians who were not Fascists, that made Nazi even the Germans who were not Nazi, that made Bolsheviks even the Russians who were not Bolsheviks, and that now transforms in traitors even those who would not like to be traitors. It is a deadly plague, the fear. A disease which, fed by opportunism and conformism, hence cowardice, leads to more deaths than cancer. It is a disease which unlike cancer is contagious and strikes all those who are along its road. The good and the bad. The intelligent and the stupid. The honest and the dishonest. I have seen terrible things, in the nowadays of Eurabia, caused by fear. Things much uglier than those I’ve seen in war where in fear we live and die. I’ve seen leaders who used to pose as Braggarts and who out of fear hoisted (and hoist) the white flag. I’ve seen liberals who called themselves champions of secularism and who out of fear sang (and sing) the glory of the Koran. I’ve seen friends, or alleged friends who (though cautiously) have sided with me and whom out of fear have done an about-turn. They have surrendered and now they are openly against me. But the most terrible thing I’ve seen has been the fear of those who should protect the freedom of thought and of speech: the journalists, the teachers, the so-called intellectuals.
As proof regardng the teachers and intellectuals on our side of the ocean, check out these attacks on free speech rights here.
This may be painfully obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: just because people call you a name doesn’t mean you are that thing. It’s just a name, and they’re liars. (If it’s any help with the fear, those folks call you those names behind your back anyway even when you try to give them what they want, because folks like that really are hate-filled bigots, and they despise and insult you for your weakness when you give in like that.)
Brother, are you often afraid? Sister, do you lie awake nights sick at soul from trying to puzzle out what you did to make bin Laden hate you?
My friends, there is deliverance tonight. You can do something about this. There are steps you can take to get back your freedom of thought and speech. You can practice reciting your own views into the bathroom mirror until you can recognize the sound of your own voice again. Then boldly start speaking up in more dangerous settings, like your own dinner table or in you den.
Maybe the next time someone tries to tell you “of course, most Muslims are very peaceful people and most all of them denounce terrorism,” try looking at them with buggy eyes and exclaiming, “The hell you say! Where’d you ever come up with that?” (Of course you already know they're just terrified of stepping out of line from fear of the Man).
The Man isn’t going to like it when you speak with your own mind. But he hates a vaccum, and if you won’t think with it, he’ll be glad to do it for you. And then if he can’t shut you up he’ll try to divert your attention, and get you thinking that a melting ice cap a millenium from now is a lot bigger threat to your family than Iran with a Bomb in 3 years. Or that you and other decent people are at risk of losing your freedom because a terrorist’s lawyer in Dearborn can’t talk on the phone to his murderer client in a Pakistani cave because Homeland Security might be listening in.
Why not try telling a friend what you really think? (Better make it a friend you can afford to lose). If he or she calls you a bigot and you don’t immediately die and go to Hell, try writing a letter to the next reporter who insults your intelligence by transcribing an activist’s talking points and calling it news reporting. I promise you, you aren’t going to have to wait long.
And then let’s all start sticking it to the Man.
Qualifying as an Islamophobe is easier than just taking certain public stands or political actions, but involves even the barest acknowledgment, (even all to yourself in private, let alone to others), that you do indeed have a feeling of growing unease about the gathering cultural and military threat from Islam.
Consequently, those frightened of being called that name find it most practical to refuse to think about it at all. You aren’t just being silenced at the ballot box, and the townhall, or at church, now you can’t even open your mouth at your own damn dinner table, or else the shrieking Man is right there condemning you for what, according to him, you are.
I tell you, those PhDs at Berkley and Columbia are smart. They know the best way to stop you from saying something is to scare the hell out of you first from even thinking it. And one good way to keep from thinking something is to train yourself to always think the opposite. And that is exactly how the American public thinks about Jihad and Islam. Against every evidence, we think it is the benevolent worldwide advance of the Religion of Peace.
I believe there are a significant portion of the population who, if they permitted themselves just thirty seconds unfettered analysis of the predicament of the West in relation to the global Jihad, the appeasement, and the campaign of lies pouring out of the Jihadist collaborators who control the media, people would immediately seek one another out, close ranks, and stand up to this death-through-diversity once and for all.
But it’s as if the same Reds who burned out Laurence Harvey’s brain in The Manchurian Candidate got the whole country under the hot lights, fixing us so no matter how many times we’re shown the flashcard that says “2+2”, our mind refuses to visualize the numeral “4.” (“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. Oh, and the word ‘Islam’ means ‘peace.’”)
Oriana Fallaci, who just passed away last month, had this to say in her book, The Force of Reason, about how good people in Europe once lost their way under totalitarianism, and are losing it again now from fear of Islam:
Europe burning into torpor like the city of Troy has renewed the disease that last century made Fascists even the Italians who were not Fascists, that made Nazi even the Germans who were not Nazi, that made Bolsheviks even the Russians who were not Bolsheviks, and that now transforms in traitors even those who would not like to be traitors. It is a deadly plague, the fear. A disease which, fed by opportunism and conformism, hence cowardice, leads to more deaths than cancer. It is a disease which unlike cancer is contagious and strikes all those who are along its road. The good and the bad. The intelligent and the stupid. The honest and the dishonest. I have seen terrible things, in the nowadays of Eurabia, caused by fear. Things much uglier than those I’ve seen in war where in fear we live and die. I’ve seen leaders who used to pose as Braggarts and who out of fear hoisted (and hoist) the white flag. I’ve seen liberals who called themselves champions of secularism and who out of fear sang (and sing) the glory of the Koran. I’ve seen friends, or alleged friends who (though cautiously) have sided with me and whom out of fear have done an about-turn. They have surrendered and now they are openly against me. But the most terrible thing I’ve seen has been the fear of those who should protect the freedom of thought and of speech: the journalists, the teachers, the so-called intellectuals.
As proof regardng the teachers and intellectuals on our side of the ocean, check out these attacks on free speech rights here.
This may be painfully obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: just because people call you a name doesn’t mean you are that thing. It’s just a name, and they’re liars. (If it’s any help with the fear, those folks call you those names behind your back anyway even when you try to give them what they want, because folks like that really are hate-filled bigots, and they despise and insult you for your weakness when you give in like that.)
Brother, are you often afraid? Sister, do you lie awake nights sick at soul from trying to puzzle out what you did to make bin Laden hate you?
My friends, there is deliverance tonight. You can do something about this. There are steps you can take to get back your freedom of thought and speech. You can practice reciting your own views into the bathroom mirror until you can recognize the sound of your own voice again. Then boldly start speaking up in more dangerous settings, like your own dinner table or in you den.
Maybe the next time someone tries to tell you “of course, most Muslims are very peaceful people and most all of them denounce terrorism,” try looking at them with buggy eyes and exclaiming, “The hell you say! Where’d you ever come up with that?” (Of course you already know they're just terrified of stepping out of line from fear of the Man).
The Man isn’t going to like it when you speak with your own mind. But he hates a vaccum, and if you won’t think with it, he’ll be glad to do it for you. And then if he can’t shut you up he’ll try to divert your attention, and get you thinking that a melting ice cap a millenium from now is a lot bigger threat to your family than Iran with a Bomb in 3 years. Or that you and other decent people are at risk of losing your freedom because a terrorist’s lawyer in Dearborn can’t talk on the phone to his murderer client in a Pakistani cave because Homeland Security might be listening in.
Why not try telling a friend what you really think? (Better make it a friend you can afford to lose). If he or she calls you a bigot and you don’t immediately die and go to Hell, try writing a letter to the next reporter who insults your intelligence by transcribing an activist’s talking points and calling it news reporting. I promise you, you aren’t going to have to wait long.
And then let’s all start sticking it to the Man.
For What It's Worth (Part I)
It starts when you’re always afraid—Buffalo Springfield
“Step out of line,” warned Stephen Stills in For What It’s Worth, “the Man comes and takes you away.” Back then we all knew who the Man was, or at least most of his shape-shifting forms: he was the Chicago Police Department, or the draft board, or the Military-Industrial Complex, or the Nixon administration, or the parents who were paying for your university educations and then wouldn’t let your girlfriend sleep over on Thanksgiving.
Almost all of us stepped out of line, but somehow none of us ever managed to get taken away to any Gulags, except a tiny fraction who had it coming, and they weren't in jail long. Meanwhile, a lot of the clever stage managers of all the sit-ins, love-ins, teach-ins, be-ins, f***-ins, and campus riots of those days stayed in school, got their PhDs, and took over the universities they once accused of irrelevance. And then they became the Man themselves. Or worse than the Man, with a multifold increase in lust to repress, silence, and punish that made the 60s Man seem like a Boy. Instead of the Chicago PD, who wielded their nightsticks on unprotected heads and handcuffed wrists with no real driving ideas behind their violence, the new Man knew how to bash heads from the inside, with poisonous lies about multiculturalism, moral equivalence, self-hatred, and diversity.
And then they taught the rest of us what it really means to be afraid.
Any dictator will tell you that the most effective program to imprison a population is to convince the inmates to voluntarily lock themselves into their own cells. Just think of the savings on turnkeys’ salaries and guard towers! Better yet, if you can get people, in the privacy of their own homes, to be so afraid to say aloud certain words, to express, or even to think certain ideas, because they’re so scared of provoking the incessant voice inside their heads that shrieks, “Say that, or even think it, and it makes you a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, an Islamophobe.”
This is the power that makes it seem normal to hear professional liars compare Israeli and American heroes to Hitler on national television, but forbids you to use the word “colored” in your own basement workroom without first looking over your own shoulder.
Now this shriek you hear is not the voice of conscience, which doesn’t shriek, nor the voice of the Holy Ghost, Who doesn’t either shriek or lie, nor the voice of whomever taught you basic manners, if you were lucky enough to be taught any, because any well-mannered person would have more sense.
That shrieking is none other than the Man. We're learning to recognize him inside our heads because we can match his voice against all the recordings we have of him shrieking outside our heads: in his college lectures, in his opinion pieces, in his phony documentaries, and in his insane legal opinions. His voice has that unmistakeable rising pitch, the outrage and intolerance that spits when you try not to listen, and that never wants to reason with your brain--instead always just threatening your soul with the horrible punishment of being called a name.
And being called any kind of bigot is the primal fear of most 21st-Century Americans.
“Step out of line,” warned Stephen Stills in For What It’s Worth, “the Man comes and takes you away.” Back then we all knew who the Man was, or at least most of his shape-shifting forms: he was the Chicago Police Department, or the draft board, or the Military-Industrial Complex, or the Nixon administration, or the parents who were paying for your university educations and then wouldn’t let your girlfriend sleep over on Thanksgiving.
Almost all of us stepped out of line, but somehow none of us ever managed to get taken away to any Gulags, except a tiny fraction who had it coming, and they weren't in jail long. Meanwhile, a lot of the clever stage managers of all the sit-ins, love-ins, teach-ins, be-ins, f***-ins, and campus riots of those days stayed in school, got their PhDs, and took over the universities they once accused of irrelevance. And then they became the Man themselves. Or worse than the Man, with a multifold increase in lust to repress, silence, and punish that made the 60s Man seem like a Boy. Instead of the Chicago PD, who wielded their nightsticks on unprotected heads and handcuffed wrists with no real driving ideas behind their violence, the new Man knew how to bash heads from the inside, with poisonous lies about multiculturalism, moral equivalence, self-hatred, and diversity.
And then they taught the rest of us what it really means to be afraid.
Any dictator will tell you that the most effective program to imprison a population is to convince the inmates to voluntarily lock themselves into their own cells. Just think of the savings on turnkeys’ salaries and guard towers! Better yet, if you can get people, in the privacy of their own homes, to be so afraid to say aloud certain words, to express, or even to think certain ideas, because they’re so scared of provoking the incessant voice inside their heads that shrieks, “Say that, or even think it, and it makes you a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, an Islamophobe.”
This is the power that makes it seem normal to hear professional liars compare Israeli and American heroes to Hitler on national television, but forbids you to use the word “colored” in your own basement workroom without first looking over your own shoulder.
Now this shriek you hear is not the voice of conscience, which doesn’t shriek, nor the voice of the Holy Ghost, Who doesn’t either shriek or lie, nor the voice of whomever taught you basic manners, if you were lucky enough to be taught any, because any well-mannered person would have more sense.
That shrieking is none other than the Man. We're learning to recognize him inside our heads because we can match his voice against all the recordings we have of him shrieking outside our heads: in his college lectures, in his opinion pieces, in his phony documentaries, and in his insane legal opinions. His voice has that unmistakeable rising pitch, the outrage and intolerance that spits when you try not to listen, and that never wants to reason with your brain--instead always just threatening your soul with the horrible punishment of being called a name.
And being called any kind of bigot is the primal fear of most 21st-Century Americans.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Joshua's Trail
If you live in the Detroit area you should check out Joshua’s Trail on WDTK, radio 1400 AM on Saturday mornings at 9:00 a.m. The program features commentary on politics and culture by three African-American ministers, led by Elder Levon Yuille, Pastor of The Bible Church in Ypsilanti. The special mission of Joshua’s Trail is to challenge the unquestioning loyalty of the Black community to the Democrat Party. Elder Yuille provides plenty of history showing how it’s the Democrats who were the party most closely associated historically with slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, segregation--and it was the Democrats who fought against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As Elder Yuille and his colleagues explore each week, Black Christians tend to be social conservatives, but are loyal to pastors who’ve been telling them for years they have to vote only for Democrat candidates—in spite of Democrat support for homosexual marriages, abortion, anti-patriotism and other things odious to their parishioners.
Joshua’s Trail is fighting back and providing a forum for many free-thinking African-Americans who’ve been silenced by their civil-rights “leaders,” and the Democrat agenda those leaders are forcing down their throats. It’s a breath of fresh air.
As Elder Yuille and his colleagues explore each week, Black Christians tend to be social conservatives, but are loyal to pastors who’ve been telling them for years they have to vote only for Democrat candidates—in spite of Democrat support for homosexual marriages, abortion, anti-patriotism and other things odious to their parishioners.
Joshua’s Trail is fighting back and providing a forum for many free-thinking African-Americans who’ve been silenced by their civil-rights “leaders,” and the Democrat agenda those leaders are forcing down their throats. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Cover Your Eyes, General Marshall
It is no slander on the average Detroit News reader to say that, reading this weeks series on the aftermath of the Israeli war against Hezbollah, he would assume that Nasser Beydoun and other members of the Dearborn delegation to Lebanon are merely exemplar Lebanese-Americans mourning the bombed-out remains of their relatives' homes in Bint Jbail, and the other villages of their youth. But if the reader falls for it, he will have been played.
Because Beydoun, Ali Bazzi, and Ned Fawaz are all longtime Arab activists, Beydoun being one-time executive director of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce, which Fawaz founded. Beydoun also runs a development corporation targeting southern Lebanon, the Bint Jebail Development Corporation, that pre-dates the July-August war, and thus he stands to directly benefit from redevelopment bucks pouring into Lebanon. And the Arab American Chamber of Commerce isn't just about helping Dearborn business--they're in the foreign policy business, too.
In other words, Beydoun, Fawaz, Bazzi, and the other delegates don't just show up in Krupa's articles as victims/witnesses to the destruction of Bint Jbail houses, but as ringers put forward, once again, to criticize Israel, and pass over in the utterest silence the role of the genuine villain—Hezbollah. Whether or not Beydoun is an ardent supporter of Hezbollah, (though there is evidence that he is), or merely needs to make nice with them so they can let him profit in peace from his redevelopment schemes, is not clear.
I have nothing against rebuilding Lebanon. And participating in a building and development company certainly is not a crime. But what I can’t stand is the sloppy and dishonest news coverage that carefully avoids disclosing that a character like Beydoun has any interests in Lebanon beyond his heartfelt patriotism for his suffering homeland. Especially when the delgation's stated purpose is to return to lobby in America for a change in American foreign policy.
And it is comical that Beydoun and his fellow Lebanese should fret that the corrupt Lebanese government should “abscond” with the redevelopment funds, since almost certainly the corrupt Hezbollah thieves and murderers will have their bloody paws on it first, as noted elsewhere here at DU. After all, wasn’t the lesson of the whole UN fiasco that the Lebanese government can't control southern Lebanon because of Hezbollah’s occupation?
But for Beydoun and his pals in the Dearborn delegation, the pressing problem in southern Lebanon isn't Hezbollah, which is no problem at all, but that US development money isn’t getting there fast enough, even if it's Hezbollah that gets to pass it out or buy arms with it.
America invented the genius of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and bolster democracy—including our enemy Germany—after the last world war. But part of the genius of the plan was that the cash didn’t start pouring in until after the enemy was defeated, the Nazi bunkers were cleared, the swastikas were pulled down, and the surviving Nazis were either disarmed, executed, or given gainful employment in the newborn American missile program. In other words, there was no chance that our foreign aid was going to be used by the Third Reich to build bombs to drop on us or our allies.
But the plan in Lebanon seems to be just to give money to the country even as our sworn enemy, and the enemy of our ally Israel, is still openly operating with impunity all over southern Lebanon. The money pipeline will soon be open full blast where Hezbollah can, and will, easily divert money to buy more rockets to fire against Israel, and to prepare for yet another, and much more destructive war in which Lebanon once again will be the battlefield. And then all those new houses Nasser Beydoun plans to build will be destroyed all over again.
The theme that Beydoun and the rest of the Lebanese delegation are striking, (and reporter Krupa, who has shown remarkable bias on this subject), is that Hezbollah, when it manages to get mentioned at all, is mentioned only as a social services organization, a partner in redevelopment, maybe a “resistance group,” or maybe as “the real protector of Lebanon," but never as what it actually is: a terrorist militia bent on destroying Israel and its Jews, and perfectly willing to get Lebanese killed in the process. My hypothetical Detroit News reader is supposed to be more informed about the rehabilitated Hezbollah after reading commentary like this from little ten-year-old villager Wael Shahimi, "urged forward by his mother," who, thanks to Hezbollah, is getting over his nightmares of the war:
"'I think everything is getting better,' he said. 'I think the Hezbollah can help us get better by using their money and stuff like that. I think they are going to help Lebanon look better.'"
Awww. And isn't that bit about Hezbollah "using their money and stuff like that" just precious?
When you're done vomiting you should remember that the Dearborn delegation will be working to change American opinion, (already pretty badly misinformed), and American foreign policy, hammering these two bullet points: up with support for Hezbollah, and down with support for Israel. They've already shown us how effective they can be at it. Look how easily they got their propoganda into these articles? Look for ten-year-old Wael Shahimi on this Sunday's Meet the Press.
And then plan to hear a whole lot or chatter real soon about why it's necessary to recognize the murderous terrorist organization, Hezbollah, either as the legitimate Lebanese government, (“the real protector of Lebanon,"), or else as the partner with whom the legitimate government must deal. And what's stopping it, after every government on Earth has gone on record committed to a refusal to disarm them or make them get out?
The bottom line will be the same. Hezbollah, filled with hate, armed, and determined to destroy Israel and kill Jews, stays unmolested in southern Lebanon where it can plot and prepare its next war moves. And we help pay to put up the new buildings where they’ll hide their rockets--and that will someday have to be knocked down again by the IDF.
Because Beydoun, Ali Bazzi, and Ned Fawaz are all longtime Arab activists, Beydoun being one-time executive director of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce, which Fawaz founded. Beydoun also runs a development corporation targeting southern Lebanon, the Bint Jebail Development Corporation, that pre-dates the July-August war, and thus he stands to directly benefit from redevelopment bucks pouring into Lebanon. And the Arab American Chamber of Commerce isn't just about helping Dearborn business--they're in the foreign policy business, too.
In other words, Beydoun, Fawaz, Bazzi, and the other delegates don't just show up in Krupa's articles as victims/witnesses to the destruction of Bint Jbail houses, but as ringers put forward, once again, to criticize Israel, and pass over in the utterest silence the role of the genuine villain—Hezbollah. Whether or not Beydoun is an ardent supporter of Hezbollah, (though there is evidence that he is), or merely needs to make nice with them so they can let him profit in peace from his redevelopment schemes, is not clear.
I have nothing against rebuilding Lebanon. And participating in a building and development company certainly is not a crime. But what I can’t stand is the sloppy and dishonest news coverage that carefully avoids disclosing that a character like Beydoun has any interests in Lebanon beyond his heartfelt patriotism for his suffering homeland. Especially when the delgation's stated purpose is to return to lobby in America for a change in American foreign policy.
And it is comical that Beydoun and his fellow Lebanese should fret that the corrupt Lebanese government should “abscond” with the redevelopment funds, since almost certainly the corrupt Hezbollah thieves and murderers will have their bloody paws on it first, as noted elsewhere here at DU. After all, wasn’t the lesson of the whole UN fiasco that the Lebanese government can't control southern Lebanon because of Hezbollah’s occupation?
But for Beydoun and his pals in the Dearborn delegation, the pressing problem in southern Lebanon isn't Hezbollah, which is no problem at all, but that US development money isn’t getting there fast enough, even if it's Hezbollah that gets to pass it out or buy arms with it.
America invented the genius of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and bolster democracy—including our enemy Germany—after the last world war. But part of the genius of the plan was that the cash didn’t start pouring in until after the enemy was defeated, the Nazi bunkers were cleared, the swastikas were pulled down, and the surviving Nazis were either disarmed, executed, or given gainful employment in the newborn American missile program. In other words, there was no chance that our foreign aid was going to be used by the Third Reich to build bombs to drop on us or our allies.
But the plan in Lebanon seems to be just to give money to the country even as our sworn enemy, and the enemy of our ally Israel, is still openly operating with impunity all over southern Lebanon. The money pipeline will soon be open full blast where Hezbollah can, and will, easily divert money to buy more rockets to fire against Israel, and to prepare for yet another, and much more destructive war in which Lebanon once again will be the battlefield. And then all those new houses Nasser Beydoun plans to build will be destroyed all over again.
The theme that Beydoun and the rest of the Lebanese delegation are striking, (and reporter Krupa, who has shown remarkable bias on this subject), is that Hezbollah, when it manages to get mentioned at all, is mentioned only as a social services organization, a partner in redevelopment, maybe a “resistance group,” or maybe as “the real protector of Lebanon," but never as what it actually is: a terrorist militia bent on destroying Israel and its Jews, and perfectly willing to get Lebanese killed in the process. My hypothetical Detroit News reader is supposed to be more informed about the rehabilitated Hezbollah after reading commentary like this from little ten-year-old villager Wael Shahimi, "urged forward by his mother," who, thanks to Hezbollah, is getting over his nightmares of the war:
"'I think everything is getting better,' he said. 'I think the Hezbollah can help us get better by using their money and stuff like that. I think they are going to help Lebanon look better.'"
Awww. And isn't that bit about Hezbollah "using their money and stuff like that" just precious?
When you're done vomiting you should remember that the Dearborn delegation will be working to change American opinion, (already pretty badly misinformed), and American foreign policy, hammering these two bullet points: up with support for Hezbollah, and down with support for Israel. They've already shown us how effective they can be at it. Look how easily they got their propoganda into these articles? Look for ten-year-old Wael Shahimi on this Sunday's Meet the Press.
And then plan to hear a whole lot or chatter real soon about why it's necessary to recognize the murderous terrorist organization, Hezbollah, either as the legitimate Lebanese government, (“the real protector of Lebanon,"), or else as the partner with whom the legitimate government must deal. And what's stopping it, after every government on Earth has gone on record committed to a refusal to disarm them or make them get out?
The bottom line will be the same. Hezbollah, filled with hate, armed, and determined to destroy Israel and kill Jews, stays unmolested in southern Lebanon where it can plot and prepare its next war moves. And we help pay to put up the new buildings where they’ll hide their rockets--and that will someday have to be knocked down again by the IDF.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Dearborn Minister Unwittingly Sides with Countrymen
In the Thursday installment of the Detroit News series on the rebuilding efforts in Lebanon, “Wait for funds stalls recovery,” readers were edified by remarks of clergyman Rev. Julius Delpino, of First United Methodist Church in Dearborn, undoubtedly intended to make Americans feel bad for, um...oh, what difference does it even make what we're supposed to be feeling bad for? Behold:
“As he surveyed the damage and imagined the depth of human suffering in the battles and bombardment that occurred here, [Rev. Delpino] recalled passages from the Bible. He said, "'All of us, whether Arab or Jew or gentile, no matter what part of the world we come from, the heart of the matter is to care even for those that hate you.'"
Which is well-deserved, but I'm sure unintended praise indeed for us Americans, who are so often maligned for failing to live up to our heritage as a "so-called 'Christian' nation."
Because Hezbollah and all their willing supporters certainly hate us, yet look how well we take care of them!
“As he surveyed the damage and imagined the depth of human suffering in the battles and bombardment that occurred here, [Rev. Delpino] recalled passages from the Bible. He said, "'All of us, whether Arab or Jew or gentile, no matter what part of the world we come from, the heart of the matter is to care even for those that hate you.'"
Which is well-deserved, but I'm sure unintended praise indeed for us Americans, who are so often maligned for failing to live up to our heritage as a "so-called 'Christian' nation."
Because Hezbollah and all their willing supporters certainly hate us, yet look how well we take care of them!
Monday, October 02, 2006
Assistant Prosecutor Threatens Action Against Critics on Web Forum
Assistant Wayne County prosecutor, and failed Dearborn mayoral candidate Abed Hammoud, issued an implied threat of criminal investigation on Friday against posters on a popular Dearborn web forum, “Russ Gibb at Random.”
In his post, Hammoud expressed frustration that the political organization of which he is past president, the Arab American Public Affairs Council, (AAPAC), has been widely criticized by Dearborn residents as suspicious for terrorist sympathies. For the record, candidate for governor Dick deVos recently gave the go-by to an AAPAC meet-and-greet dinner because its current president, The Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, gave a rip-roaring hip-hooray to Hezbollah in the wake of the recent conflict between Israel and the terrorist militia still occupying southern Lebanon.
Hammoud was angry about what he called the “smear” by an anonymous poster on the Russ Gibb forum stating that the president of the Life for Relief and Development charity, Khaleel Jassemm, was an AAPAC member. The Life for Relief organization was recently raided by the FBI.
It was unclear who Hammoud felt was being “smeared” by the statement about Jassemm's alleged membership, whether it was Jassemm, Life Relief, AAPAC, or terrorism in general, but Hammoud denied that Jassemm was ever an AAPAC member. In any event, Hammoud, in his September 29th posting on Russ Gibb at Random went on to express his low opinion of posters who chose to remain anonymous, (I wonder why?) before finishing up with this threat:
“I do however like to remind everyone that we all live under the law and that writing and posting falshoods (sic) can be punished. We also know that the great technology that allows people to smear others while they hide under screen names allows us to find out who they are if there is a need for a legal action. Thank you.”
Hammoud did not specify who “we” are, but since he is an assistant Wayne County prosecutor, he has access to law enforcement resources the average Dearborn resident does not, so it's a fair inference that he is talking about using those government resources to hunt down and punish people saying things he doesn’t like. If he didn’t mean that, then he was certainly reckless to leave the possibility open.
Bear in mind that Hammoud is part of an extremely vocal community of Arabs, including AAPAC, the ADC, and the Arab-American News, who are stridently demanding that federal law enforcement obtain prior concurrence on all investigations, arrests, or raids on suspected terrorists connected in any way with the Muslim community, including the recent raid on the Life Relief charity. It is not clear that when Hammoud made his threat on Russ Gibb at Random whether or not he planned to clear any of his own threatened investigation efforts ahead of time with the target community--concerned Dearborn citizens expressing themselves on an opinion forum.
So don’t you just love it that the only lawman left in southeast Michigan who's unapologetic about using police powers aims to use them to punish free expression, rather than terrorism?
In his post, Hammoud expressed frustration that the political organization of which he is past president, the Arab American Public Affairs Council, (AAPAC), has been widely criticized by Dearborn residents as suspicious for terrorist sympathies. For the record, candidate for governor Dick deVos recently gave the go-by to an AAPAC meet-and-greet dinner because its current president, The Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, gave a rip-roaring hip-hooray to Hezbollah in the wake of the recent conflict between Israel and the terrorist militia still occupying southern Lebanon.
Hammoud was angry about what he called the “smear” by an anonymous poster on the Russ Gibb forum stating that the president of the Life for Relief and Development charity, Khaleel Jassemm, was an AAPAC member. The Life for Relief organization was recently raided by the FBI.
It was unclear who Hammoud felt was being “smeared” by the statement about Jassemm's alleged membership, whether it was Jassemm, Life Relief, AAPAC, or terrorism in general, but Hammoud denied that Jassemm was ever an AAPAC member. In any event, Hammoud, in his September 29th posting on Russ Gibb at Random went on to express his low opinion of posters who chose to remain anonymous, (I wonder why?) before finishing up with this threat:
“I do however like to remind everyone that we all live under the law and that writing and posting falshoods (sic) can be punished. We also know that the great technology that allows people to smear others while they hide under screen names allows us to find out who they are if there is a need for a legal action. Thank you.”
Hammoud did not specify who “we” are, but since he is an assistant Wayne County prosecutor, he has access to law enforcement resources the average Dearborn resident does not, so it's a fair inference that he is talking about using those government resources to hunt down and punish people saying things he doesn’t like. If he didn’t mean that, then he was certainly reckless to leave the possibility open.
Bear in mind that Hammoud is part of an extremely vocal community of Arabs, including AAPAC, the ADC, and the Arab-American News, who are stridently demanding that federal law enforcement obtain prior concurrence on all investigations, arrests, or raids on suspected terrorists connected in any way with the Muslim community, including the recent raid on the Life Relief charity. It is not clear that when Hammoud made his threat on Russ Gibb at Random whether or not he planned to clear any of his own threatened investigation efforts ahead of time with the target community--concerned Dearborn citizens expressing themselves on an opinion forum.
So don’t you just love it that the only lawman left in southeast Michigan who's unapologetic about using police powers aims to use them to punish free expression, rather than terrorism?
Sunday, October 01, 2006
1-800-DIG-THIS
For years in Michigan we’ve had the Miss Dig program, a one-call service for homeowners to help protect accidentally striking gas lines or other buried utility lines when excavating in their yards. If you think you’d like to dig a nice hole and plant a fish pond, or lay a trench from the house to wire your garage, call Miss Dig first and the utility companies will come out and plant some flags in your lawn to indicate where the underground lines are running. Public service ads went up on buses and on TV with the slogan “Call Miss Dig.” The program has been a huge success, boasts being the first 24-hour call center in history, and is the only government program in the free world immune from criminal prosecution for using the female honorific, “Miss.”
Anyway, something similar to Miss Dig is now being attempted in Southeastern Michigan federal law enforcement, namely the “Call Mr. Dig” campaign. Only, instead of targeting homeowners getting ready to do some serious spadework, the program is aimed at federal law enforcement officials digging up information anywhere in the vicinity of Arab Americans. Ads advising feds to “Call Mr. Dig” have been plastered up in every interrogation room and donut shop for miles.
It works like this: If special agents have a hot lead on some possible terror-related activity that may involve a raid, an arrest, or a search of some suspicious organization in any way involving the Arab American community, the feds first have to call Mr. Dig to make sure the potential investigation or arrest is not going to make the Muslim community unhappy.
The agents simply show Mr. Dig all their evidence in advance, and then Mr. Dig will tell them whether or not it’s a good idea—not based on the evidence of suspicious activity, but based on the more important effect it will have on the feelings of the Arab community. So far, Mr. Dig has tended to respond to most calls with the “trust, don’t bust” approach to law enforcement, and invariably orders: “STOP DIGGING.”
The main administrator of the Mr. Dig program (also known as the BRIDGES program). is the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, (ADC). The man behind the Mr. Dig persona is the Regional Director of the Michigan ADC, Imad Hamad, though sometimes ADC President, Hon. Mary Rose Oakar can handle calls.
She did so recently when she chided the FBI for raiding the highly suspicious Life for Relief and Development Charity in Southfield, without first calling Mr. Dig. Even after the ADC had to admit a premature media claim was wrong that the charity had been “cleared” of all wrongdoing, it still felt a sense of injury that the FBI raided the organization at all. According to an ADC press release in this Sunday's Dearborn Press & Guide, the ADC held a conference call with the FBI demanding a full accounting of an ongoing FBI investigation of suspected illegal activity at the Life and Relief Charity.
President Oakar said the conference call also was used to complain to the FBI that it should have held a meeting with the ADC first to review the evidence and discuss the timing of its raid, just before Ramadan, and reiterated that:
“the FBI should hold such meetings ahead of any raids in order to assure the communities of the FBI’s intent and provide a venue for the communities to express their concerns.”
In other words, Judge Oakar feels quite reasonably that criminal investigation and arrest decisions deserve at least as much public notice, discussion, and input as the decision to grant a variance to expand a dry-cleaners parking lot. And to think that not so long ago the feds used to think that a town hall meeting to air people’s “concerns” about an upcoming surprise arrest might act as a warning to the suspect—who then might get away or destroy incriminating evidence.
But since the BRIDGES program, the local FBI are getting very good at walking on a lead. (In fairness, they did actually go ahead with the raid on the charity. But the real news in this story isn't that the ADC made one more bullying phone call demanding what they aren't entitled to--they're always demanding what they aren't entitled to--but that the FBI didn't hang up on them. I'll bet if I called demanding more concern for my feelings they'd hang up on me.)
And that's what ADC's call was all about this time--getting better obedience from the feds next time.
So we should just be thankful we now have the “Call Mr. Dig/BRIDGES” program in place. Even if it causes vital terrorism investigations to grind to a halt and lets bad guys operate unmolested, you can rest assured no effort is being spared towards building trust between the federal government and the Muslim community.
And isn't that worth much more to you than national security?
Anyway, something similar to Miss Dig is now being attempted in Southeastern Michigan federal law enforcement, namely the “Call Mr. Dig” campaign. Only, instead of targeting homeowners getting ready to do some serious spadework, the program is aimed at federal law enforcement officials digging up information anywhere in the vicinity of Arab Americans. Ads advising feds to “Call Mr. Dig” have been plastered up in every interrogation room and donut shop for miles.
It works like this: If special agents have a hot lead on some possible terror-related activity that may involve a raid, an arrest, or a search of some suspicious organization in any way involving the Arab American community, the feds first have to call Mr. Dig to make sure the potential investigation or arrest is not going to make the Muslim community unhappy.
The agents simply show Mr. Dig all their evidence in advance, and then Mr. Dig will tell them whether or not it’s a good idea—not based on the evidence of suspicious activity, but based on the more important effect it will have on the feelings of the Arab community. So far, Mr. Dig has tended to respond to most calls with the “trust, don’t bust” approach to law enforcement, and invariably orders: “STOP DIGGING.”
The main administrator of the Mr. Dig program (also known as the BRIDGES program). is the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, (ADC). The man behind the Mr. Dig persona is the Regional Director of the Michigan ADC, Imad Hamad, though sometimes ADC President, Hon. Mary Rose Oakar can handle calls.
She did so recently when she chided the FBI for raiding the highly suspicious Life for Relief and Development Charity in Southfield, without first calling Mr. Dig. Even after the ADC had to admit a premature media claim was wrong that the charity had been “cleared” of all wrongdoing, it still felt a sense of injury that the FBI raided the organization at all. According to an ADC press release in this Sunday's Dearborn Press & Guide, the ADC held a conference call with the FBI demanding a full accounting of an ongoing FBI investigation of suspected illegal activity at the Life and Relief Charity.
President Oakar said the conference call also was used to complain to the FBI that it should have held a meeting with the ADC first to review the evidence and discuss the timing of its raid, just before Ramadan, and reiterated that:
“the FBI should hold such meetings ahead of any raids in order to assure the communities of the FBI’s intent and provide a venue for the communities to express their concerns.”
In other words, Judge Oakar feels quite reasonably that criminal investigation and arrest decisions deserve at least as much public notice, discussion, and input as the decision to grant a variance to expand a dry-cleaners parking lot. And to think that not so long ago the feds used to think that a town hall meeting to air people’s “concerns” about an upcoming surprise arrest might act as a warning to the suspect—who then might get away or destroy incriminating evidence.
But since the BRIDGES program, the local FBI are getting very good at walking on a lead. (In fairness, they did actually go ahead with the raid on the charity. But the real news in this story isn't that the ADC made one more bullying phone call demanding what they aren't entitled to--they're always demanding what they aren't entitled to--but that the FBI didn't hang up on them. I'll bet if I called demanding more concern for my feelings they'd hang up on me.)
And that's what ADC's call was all about this time--getting better obedience from the feds next time.
So we should just be thankful we now have the “Call Mr. Dig/BRIDGES” program in place. Even if it causes vital terrorism investigations to grind to a halt and lets bad guys operate unmolested, you can rest assured no effort is being spared towards building trust between the federal government and the Muslim community.
And isn't that worth much more to you than national security?
Saturday, September 30, 2006
This Is a Dialogue?
Dearborn Underground is not a Catholic group, but we at the Clancy household are Catholics who respect our Archbishop, Adam Cardinal Maida. So we cringe when we read things like this in the Detroit News, where our Archbishop is describing the “great discussion taking place in the world…between Catholics and Muslims.” As always, Cardinal Maida was meeting his Islamic co-discussionists on their turf, so Muslims would not demean themselves appearing in an equal position with dhimmis.
As to the great worldwide discussion, “an organization of 56 Islamic nations” were still demanding the Pope to apologize (submit) for having offended Muslims, according to an article in World News Daily.
One “prominent Gaza strip preacher” was interviewed, sharing some great discussion points for the great Catholic-Muslim dialogue:
“Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really ‘Crusader conspiracies’ to subjugate the Islamic faith and force ‘Christian-Zionist’ worldviews upon Muslims, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview.
Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a ‘puppet’ for ‘that Crusader George Bush.’
The Gaza imam said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which ‘all religions agree to convert to Islam.’”
As usual, Imam Hassan Qazwini, spiritual leader of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America dismissed all those crazy rioters and extremists as “fringe groups [that] do not represent the faith or the genuine teachings of the prophet Muhammad.” Right. Remember, that fringe group demanding Benedict's submission are Islamic groups from 56 nations.
And, as usual, and tragically, a Catholic spokesman, in this case our own Cardinal Maida, repeated the same old thing about how the official Church teaching is that we respect Islam as worshipping the same one God as Catholics do. Pay attention to how you will never hear an Islamic teacher saying, “we respect Christians because we all worship the same God.” That's because they hate our God, and they hate Christians as polytheists. But, other than that minor point of difference, and the demands we all convert to Islam, it's been a grrrreat dialogue so far!
This is dhimmitude, folks. Get used to it. Or fight back.
As to the great worldwide discussion, “an organization of 56 Islamic nations” were still demanding the Pope to apologize (submit) for having offended Muslims, according to an article in World News Daily.
One “prominent Gaza strip preacher” was interviewed, sharing some great discussion points for the great Catholic-Muslim dialogue:
“Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really ‘Crusader conspiracies’ to subjugate the Islamic faith and force ‘Christian-Zionist’ worldviews upon Muslims, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview.
Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a ‘puppet’ for ‘that Crusader George Bush.’
The Gaza imam said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which ‘all religions agree to convert to Islam.’”
As usual, Imam Hassan Qazwini, spiritual leader of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America dismissed all those crazy rioters and extremists as “fringe groups [that] do not represent the faith or the genuine teachings of the prophet Muhammad.” Right. Remember, that fringe group demanding Benedict's submission are Islamic groups from 56 nations.
And, as usual, and tragically, a Catholic spokesman, in this case our own Cardinal Maida, repeated the same old thing about how the official Church teaching is that we respect Islam as worshipping the same one God as Catholics do. Pay attention to how you will never hear an Islamic teacher saying, “we respect Christians because we all worship the same God.” That's because they hate our God, and they hate Christians as polytheists. But, other than that minor point of difference, and the demands we all convert to Islam, it's been a grrrreat dialogue so far!
This is dhimmitude, folks. Get used to it. Or fight back.
Like a Bad Neighbor, Hezbollah Is Still There
An article in Wednesday’s Dearborn Press & Guide, “Businessmen organizing funds to rebuild Lebanon,” announced how local Lebanese-born philanthropist and executive Yousif Ghafari, has joined with three other American executives to create the U.S. Lebanon Partnership Fund. The fund is meant to provide resources to assist in the reconstruction in Lebanon following the recent conflict. Joining with Ghafari and his company, Dearborn-based GHAFARI, Inc., are leaders of Intel Corporation, Cisco Systems, and Occidental Petroleum Corporation. The fund complements $230M in U.S. taxpayer funded aid already going to Lebanon by means of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Naturally, there are already a significant amount of private charities contributing to Lebanon, many of them from right here in Dearborn.
Mr. Ghafari, whose motives seem genuine, has been known to support President Bush’s Middle East policies, and is no apologist for terrorism, expresses a desire the fund would help “re-establish an economically strong, democratic Lebanon that has hope for a bright future.” Executive John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco, also stated the Partnership’s hope to focus on “long-term solutions” in Lebanon.
But there are two big problems not addressed by Mr. Ghafari’s press release, both having a bearing on long-term solutions and whether or not there can be a bright future in Lebanon.
The first problem with the aid pouring into Lebanon from public and private sources around the world is Hezbollah. Every dime of it passes through the hands of this murderous terrorist organization.
As the Washington Times reported in a September 2 editorial, President Bush’s man running the $230M USAID program to Lebanon, administrator Randall Tobias, was unable to rebut reports that all government and private assistance, including funds from the Red Cross, actually goes to Hezbollah.
Tobias outlined a program whereby USAID would have to “work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to distribute U.S. aid. The problem is that in Hezbollah-dominated regions of the country -- including southern Lebanon, Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon -- it is virtually impossible to find NGOs that are not beholden to Hezbollah.” And, quoting a dispatch from Lebanon appearing in the New York Times, “Groups like UNICEF and Mercy Corps are having trouble trying to help civilians with[out] aiding or going through Hezbollah.”
Nor do I see any reason to believe that the same channeling of funds to Hezbollah isn’t going to happen with Ghafari’s partnership contributions, as well. Nor, for that matter, why it won’t happen to the many local Dearborn charities and fundraisers that are sending money, much of it well-intentioned, (much of it not) for the rebuilding of Lebanon and assistance to family and friends there.
And so what is the harm if the money does go to Hezbollah? Hasn’t it turned out that Hezbollah are the now good guys, having morphed from a terrorist army into a charitable organization as soon as the cease-fire with Israel (to which Hezbollah refused to be a party) was signed? Hezbollah is now being widely described not for its terrorist identity, but for being a social services agency looking after the poor and dispossessed of southern Lebanon.
One report, from Bint Jabail in southern Lebanon, “Hezbollah takes lead in rebuilding south Lebanon,” describes how Hezbollah, through its Struggle for Reconstruction wing, Jihad al-Bina, is handing out up to $13,000 per house, and locals are impressed that Hezbollah got there faster than other aid groups, and are less bureaucratic. The report describes one bombed-out resident, Jumaa, beginning to rebuild his business:
“Already he has made a start, and Jumaa says it is the very Shi'ite group that sparked the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid that is now helping get him back into business.
"’Hezbollah turned up very quickly after the war,’" said Jumaa. "’They saw my wrecked truck, machinery and tools in need of replacing and my house in ruins.’"
This reads just like the voiceover on an Allstate commercial I saw on CSI last night. I half expect Jumaa to smile into the camera as he shakes hands with green-helmet guy in a gold blazer and says, “Those bombs really did a number on my plumbing shop. But once the dust settled my local Hezbollah fighter was there, and he couldn’t have been more friendly and professional!”
The article doesn’t need to mention that Hezbollah, (which has never registered anywhere as an insurance company), can afford to be generous when it gets to control funding from USAID, and the Red Cross, and any of the other organizations that never made a decision for Hezbollah to be their agency in charge of distribution. (Nor is it remarkable that Hezbollah showed up so fast after the Israeli withdrawal, since they had orders to rush back into their former villages to inventory their remaining weapons caches. ) But what are you going to do? The reality is that Hezbollah still runs southern Lebanon.
But how can that not cast a shadow over Mr. Ghafari and his partners’ optimistic efforts on behalf of Lebanon? I can’t imagine they think they can come up with any long-term solution for rebuilding Lebanon that doesn’t even address the long-term problem of Hezbollah.
Which leads to the other problem of philanthropy aimed at Lebanon relief--the problem that also happens to be Hezbollah.
It seems that Hezbollah’s murderer-in-chief, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, (known to far too many in Dearborn simply as “Our Leader,”) was staging a victory rally last Friday at the very moment Mr. Ghafari and others were rushing rebuilding aid to Lebanon. Nasrallah made some telling remarks that weren't exactly expressing gratitude for all the international help repairing the damage:
Hezbollah's leader said Friday his guerrilla force would not give up its weapons until Lebanon was "strong," demanding changes in the government as he spoke at a rally of hundreds of thousands of supporters in a defiant challenge to Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah made his first public appearance since Israel launched its massive offensive against Lebanon on July 12, leading the "victory over Israel" rally in front of a sea of cheering supporters waving yellow Hezbollah flags in the bombed-out southern suburbs of Beirut.
The black turbaned cleric said Hezbollah possesses more than 20,000 rockets even after firing nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel during the 34 days of fighting, and he vowed that the U.N. peacekeeping force deploying in the south and helping guard Lebanon's borders from new weapons shipments will not affect the guerrillas' arsenal.
"No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands," he said.
Now doesn’t this speech coming from Lebanon's leading social services organization sound promising for Lebanon's future peace and reconstruction?
Nasrallah is wrong, anyway, that no army can disarm him. Any army of greater than 10,000 trained fighters, allowed to do so, could disarm Hezbollah within days, though civilian casualties would be high, thanks to Hezbollah’s devilish tactic of using Lebanese civilians instead of sandbags for their bunkers. Certainly the Israeli Defense Force could have disarmed Hezbollah, had it been let to do so. But at this moment, Israel is so jumpy it isn’t even willing to whack Nasrallah when he’s in Beirut in their crosshairs, bravely out of hiding in the broad daylight, not even disguised in his hijab and blonde wig.
But I expect Israel to recover from its momentary indecision, and then we’ll see something.
Instead of bragging that no army in the world would be able to make them drop their weapons, Nasrallah would have been more accurate to simply brag that no army in the world is currently willing to make Hezbollah drop them. And that includes the Lebanese army, the IDF, the UN forces, the U.S. Army, nor anyone else.
But I can’t imagine how anyone who cares about the people of Lebanon can receive a boast like that as good news for Lebanon, when it is obviously very, very bad news for Lebanon. It's bad news that Nasrallah feels strong enough to call for change in the government, defying Prime Minister Saniora, which is a guarantee of further instability and strife. It's bad news because it means that Hezbollah hasn’t changed a whit since July 12, and that Nasrallah is already looking forward to Round Two with Israel, which will be the Last Round for Hezbollah, but devastating to innocent Lebanese forced by Hezbollah into the crossfire.
In spite of all those dollars flowing into Hezbollah coffers, some portion of which is being diverted from weapons-buying solely to help purchase loyalty from local property-owners, none of those new buildings is ever going to be safe enough to qualify for insurance coverage as long as Hezbollah is controlling things. A still-armed armed Hezbollah is going to start firing rockets into Israel again as sure as night turns into day, because destroying Israel and killing Jews is the only mission Hezbollah ever had, or ever will have. And Israel’s response next time, after letting herself be uncharacteristically fooled into withdrawal before victory by the liars in the capitals of the world, will respond to Hezbollah’s next attack by making the July invasion look like a mugging in the park. And poor Jumaa’s business is going to be knocked flat again. But don’t try blaming it on Israel this time, Jumaa. You can thank green-helmet and the Jihad al-Bina for it.
But this could all be prevented, of course, if the rebuilders of Lebanon, the fund raisers, those who champion the safety and security of the people of Lebanon, start the rebuilding off right, by doing a proper demolition job of clearing Hezbollah out of there once and for all.
By demanding, when they send aid, that what’s left of the legitimate government of Lebanon start shaming the international community into helping Lebanon disarm and neutralize Hezbollah for good, as promised, but as no one is even pretending to do now. And as no one is demanding, including Lebanese patriots in Dearborn.
And you can finally stop misplacing blame onto Israel, especially those of you from southern Lebanon, (living there and by the thousands here in Dearborn), who know that region has been used for decades by people who don’t care about Lebanon, first by Arafat’s PLO, then by the Syrians, and now by Hezbollah, to stage their infernal, unnecessary wars against Israel.
If you can’t stop blaming Israel, and blame the real invaders and destroyers of Lebanon—Hezbollah—shame on you. Who can protect you from yourselves?
Many of us nonMuslims and nonArabs, have hearts that go out to the suffering victims in Lebanon. But we aren’t willing to see our charitable funds and giving misued paying for missiles so the same Hezbollah killers that caused all this can kill more Israelis, our allies, and draw down more destruction on Lebanese villages in the process--the villages Hezbollah lyingly claim to be defending. Lies too many of you insist on believing.
Hezbollah can defend Lebanon best by leaving, or better yet, by dying.
You are not in good hands with Hezbollah.
Mr. Ghafari, whose motives seem genuine, has been known to support President Bush’s Middle East policies, and is no apologist for terrorism, expresses a desire the fund would help “re-establish an economically strong, democratic Lebanon that has hope for a bright future.” Executive John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco, also stated the Partnership’s hope to focus on “long-term solutions” in Lebanon.
But there are two big problems not addressed by Mr. Ghafari’s press release, both having a bearing on long-term solutions and whether or not there can be a bright future in Lebanon.
The first problem with the aid pouring into Lebanon from public and private sources around the world is Hezbollah. Every dime of it passes through the hands of this murderous terrorist organization.
As the Washington Times reported in a September 2 editorial, President Bush’s man running the $230M USAID program to Lebanon, administrator Randall Tobias, was unable to rebut reports that all government and private assistance, including funds from the Red Cross, actually goes to Hezbollah.
Tobias outlined a program whereby USAID would have to “work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to distribute U.S. aid. The problem is that in Hezbollah-dominated regions of the country -- including southern Lebanon, Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon -- it is virtually impossible to find NGOs that are not beholden to Hezbollah.” And, quoting a dispatch from Lebanon appearing in the New York Times, “Groups like UNICEF and Mercy Corps are having trouble trying to help civilians with[out] aiding or going through Hezbollah.”
Nor do I see any reason to believe that the same channeling of funds to Hezbollah isn’t going to happen with Ghafari’s partnership contributions, as well. Nor, for that matter, why it won’t happen to the many local Dearborn charities and fundraisers that are sending money, much of it well-intentioned, (much of it not) for the rebuilding of Lebanon and assistance to family and friends there.
And so what is the harm if the money does go to Hezbollah? Hasn’t it turned out that Hezbollah are the now good guys, having morphed from a terrorist army into a charitable organization as soon as the cease-fire with Israel (to which Hezbollah refused to be a party) was signed? Hezbollah is now being widely described not for its terrorist identity, but for being a social services agency looking after the poor and dispossessed of southern Lebanon.
One report, from Bint Jabail in southern Lebanon, “Hezbollah takes lead in rebuilding south Lebanon,” describes how Hezbollah, through its Struggle for Reconstruction wing, Jihad al-Bina, is handing out up to $13,000 per house, and locals are impressed that Hezbollah got there faster than other aid groups, and are less bureaucratic. The report describes one bombed-out resident, Jumaa, beginning to rebuild his business:
“Already he has made a start, and Jumaa says it is the very Shi'ite group that sparked the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid that is now helping get him back into business.
"’Hezbollah turned up very quickly after the war,’" said Jumaa. "’They saw my wrecked truck, machinery and tools in need of replacing and my house in ruins.’"
This reads just like the voiceover on an Allstate commercial I saw on CSI last night. I half expect Jumaa to smile into the camera as he shakes hands with green-helmet guy in a gold blazer and says, “Those bombs really did a number on my plumbing shop. But once the dust settled my local Hezbollah fighter was there, and he couldn’t have been more friendly and professional!”
The article doesn’t need to mention that Hezbollah, (which has never registered anywhere as an insurance company), can afford to be generous when it gets to control funding from USAID, and the Red Cross, and any of the other organizations that never made a decision for Hezbollah to be their agency in charge of distribution. (Nor is it remarkable that Hezbollah showed up so fast after the Israeli withdrawal, since they had orders to rush back into their former villages to inventory their remaining weapons caches. ) But what are you going to do? The reality is that Hezbollah still runs southern Lebanon.
But how can that not cast a shadow over Mr. Ghafari and his partners’ optimistic efforts on behalf of Lebanon? I can’t imagine they think they can come up with any long-term solution for rebuilding Lebanon that doesn’t even address the long-term problem of Hezbollah.
Which leads to the other problem of philanthropy aimed at Lebanon relief--the problem that also happens to be Hezbollah.
It seems that Hezbollah’s murderer-in-chief, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, (known to far too many in Dearborn simply as “Our Leader,”) was staging a victory rally last Friday at the very moment Mr. Ghafari and others were rushing rebuilding aid to Lebanon. Nasrallah made some telling remarks that weren't exactly expressing gratitude for all the international help repairing the damage:
Hezbollah's leader said Friday his guerrilla force would not give up its weapons until Lebanon was "strong," demanding changes in the government as he spoke at a rally of hundreds of thousands of supporters in a defiant challenge to Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah made his first public appearance since Israel launched its massive offensive against Lebanon on July 12, leading the "victory over Israel" rally in front of a sea of cheering supporters waving yellow Hezbollah flags in the bombed-out southern suburbs of Beirut.
The black turbaned cleric said Hezbollah possesses more than 20,000 rockets even after firing nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel during the 34 days of fighting, and he vowed that the U.N. peacekeeping force deploying in the south and helping guard Lebanon's borders from new weapons shipments will not affect the guerrillas' arsenal.
"No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands," he said.
Now doesn’t this speech coming from Lebanon's leading social services organization sound promising for Lebanon's future peace and reconstruction?
Nasrallah is wrong, anyway, that no army can disarm him. Any army of greater than 10,000 trained fighters, allowed to do so, could disarm Hezbollah within days, though civilian casualties would be high, thanks to Hezbollah’s devilish tactic of using Lebanese civilians instead of sandbags for their bunkers. Certainly the Israeli Defense Force could have disarmed Hezbollah, had it been let to do so. But at this moment, Israel is so jumpy it isn’t even willing to whack Nasrallah when he’s in Beirut in their crosshairs, bravely out of hiding in the broad daylight, not even disguised in his hijab and blonde wig.
But I expect Israel to recover from its momentary indecision, and then we’ll see something.
Instead of bragging that no army in the world would be able to make them drop their weapons, Nasrallah would have been more accurate to simply brag that no army in the world is currently willing to make Hezbollah drop them. And that includes the Lebanese army, the IDF, the UN forces, the U.S. Army, nor anyone else.
But I can’t imagine how anyone who cares about the people of Lebanon can receive a boast like that as good news for Lebanon, when it is obviously very, very bad news for Lebanon. It's bad news that Nasrallah feels strong enough to call for change in the government, defying Prime Minister Saniora, which is a guarantee of further instability and strife. It's bad news because it means that Hezbollah hasn’t changed a whit since July 12, and that Nasrallah is already looking forward to Round Two with Israel, which will be the Last Round for Hezbollah, but devastating to innocent Lebanese forced by Hezbollah into the crossfire.
In spite of all those dollars flowing into Hezbollah coffers, some portion of which is being diverted from weapons-buying solely to help purchase loyalty from local property-owners, none of those new buildings is ever going to be safe enough to qualify for insurance coverage as long as Hezbollah is controlling things. A still-armed armed Hezbollah is going to start firing rockets into Israel again as sure as night turns into day, because destroying Israel and killing Jews is the only mission Hezbollah ever had, or ever will have. And Israel’s response next time, after letting herself be uncharacteristically fooled into withdrawal before victory by the liars in the capitals of the world, will respond to Hezbollah’s next attack by making the July invasion look like a mugging in the park. And poor Jumaa’s business is going to be knocked flat again. But don’t try blaming it on Israel this time, Jumaa. You can thank green-helmet and the Jihad al-Bina for it.
But this could all be prevented, of course, if the rebuilders of Lebanon, the fund raisers, those who champion the safety and security of the people of Lebanon, start the rebuilding off right, by doing a proper demolition job of clearing Hezbollah out of there once and for all.
By demanding, when they send aid, that what’s left of the legitimate government of Lebanon start shaming the international community into helping Lebanon disarm and neutralize Hezbollah for good, as promised, but as no one is even pretending to do now. And as no one is demanding, including Lebanese patriots in Dearborn.
And you can finally stop misplacing blame onto Israel, especially those of you from southern Lebanon, (living there and by the thousands here in Dearborn), who know that region has been used for decades by people who don’t care about Lebanon, first by Arafat’s PLO, then by the Syrians, and now by Hezbollah, to stage their infernal, unnecessary wars against Israel.
If you can’t stop blaming Israel, and blame the real invaders and destroyers of Lebanon—Hezbollah—shame on you. Who can protect you from yourselves?
Many of us nonMuslims and nonArabs, have hearts that go out to the suffering victims in Lebanon. But we aren’t willing to see our charitable funds and giving misued paying for missiles so the same Hezbollah killers that caused all this can kill more Israelis, our allies, and draw down more destruction on Lebanese villages in the process--the villages Hezbollah lyingly claim to be defending. Lies too many of you insist on believing.
Hezbollah can defend Lebanon best by leaving, or better yet, by dying.
You are not in good hands with Hezbollah.
Friday, September 29, 2006
CHOMSKY’S CHUM’S Local Professor Honors Those who hate America
"I walked away feeling great despair," she said and her feelings were based upon the rhetoric used at the rally as well as the strong language displayed on the signs. One of the signs Shapiro said, read "
Shapiro said she found it insulting that the organizers of the rally brought in two people from an anti-Zionist group to represent the Jewish community. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesperson for Neturei Karta International-Jews against Zionism was one of the attendees. He also attended a press briefing at the Lebanese American Heritage Club that week wearing an Israeli flag with a slash through it.
Shapiro decided to attend the rally as part of her ongoing work to promote relationships between different religious groups.
Shapiro said she thinks the Arabic community should be doing all they can to build up the Lebanese government because, as she points out, Hezbollah does not just call for "death to
Here is a response from Dr. Nabeel Abraham, HFCC. It doesn’t actually address the complaints of Ms. Shapiro, but uses her words to spread more propaganda on a wide variety of subjects.
The Dearborn Press & Guide – Be Our Guest
Sunday, August 13, 2006 for full article click here
“ One has to turn to the alternative press to discover that leading intellectuals and writers, many Jewish, issued an open letter blaming Israel for escalating the conflict in the Middle East as part and parcel of a sinister policy of eliminating the Palestinian nation, the real crux of the Middle East conflict. Among the letter’s signatories are Nobel Prize winner, Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize laureate Jose’ Saramago, American authors Russell Banks and Gore Vidal, and world famous linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky”.
by Nabeel Abraham, Honors Program Director - HFCC
You really have to pity Ms. Shapiro and welcome her to
Hate Bush + Love Hitler = Dead Jews but, BUSH = HITLER? You can rewrite history but, not this fast. Try again.
Why bring this up now? It is several weeks in the past. Well, I though of Ms Shapiro and her indignation when American’s reacted similarly last week to Hugo Chavez. I recalled a “Be OUR GUEST” editorial by
The visual picture of Chavez clutching Chomsky’s book reminded me of Mr. Abraham who wields “Chomsky speak” as a weapon of mass distraction. It is used only on special occasions when the spotlight hits Islamic ugliness and there is no where for it to hide. This is curious behavior for well educated agnostic intellectuals. Is it possible he is not as irreligious as he purports?
If you found yourself shocked by Chavez’s boldness you can empathize with Ms. Shapiro. But, don’t dismiss him as a half cracked nut. His views are very similar to the views of Abraham al HFCC professor and many Islamic leaders who seem to live in an alternate universe where history has been rewritten to accommodate their religious and political agendas. Ms. Shapiro was shocked but, she should not have been.
Where do our fellow citizens get all this information? Have you seen the number of satellite dishes in
We all need to be critically evaluating what is said. There are many inconsistencies and a hidden agenda. Allies in strange places are working toward a movement of rallying the masses against
The war of words – they are rallying the masses by satellite TV. It is the only way they can rationalize the horrific behavior of jihad and terrorism. It’s a propaganda war and the only way to win is by defeat. If 10,000rally/protesters were out and shouting
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Misguided Muslim Groups
| This article posted and recommended by Darby Shaw Dearborn Underground |  |
| |
| Focus should be on extremists' war against the West. On Aug. 10, British police arrested 24 Muslim suspects in a plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound jetliners over the Atlantic. If successful, the attack would have killed thousands of people. The terrorists were motivated by religious extremism. Rather than just condemn the plot and address the scourge of Islamic extremism, Muslim groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) sought to both legitimize terror and portray Muslims as victims. Do these organizations really represent Muslims in the West? Hardly. It is their apologia of Islamic extremism, rather than discrimination or religious hatred in Western society, which most victimizes American Muslims. The basic narrative of these self-described civil-rights groups is twofold: The United States provokes terrorism because of its foreign policy, and Muslims in the West face a backlash in the wake of terror. On July 31, for example, Salam al-Marayati, executive director of MPAC, penned an op-ed piece in the Denver Post arguing that "we should not be surprised" when Islamist extremists "respond with belligerence to their continued humiliation and not-quite-human treatment by the international community." He made no mention of the Saudi religious schools that indoctrinate generations of children into a philosophy of hate and violence. After law enforcement stopped the mid-Atlantic massacre, Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, warned, "We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslim." He called on Muslims to step up security at mosques and community centers to counter negative backlash to news of the plot. But does such a backlash exist? According to the 2004 FBI hate-crimes report, the latest published, there were 156 incidents of anti-Muslim hate crimes; in comparison, there were 95 anti-Christian, and 954 anti-Jewish attacks in the United States. Rather than fear American freedom, most Muslims embrace it. At more than $42,000, average income for Muslim families is higher than the American average. Rather than help Muslims in America, most Muslim organizations hinder them. Self-appointed representatives downplay religious extremism and focus more on the image of Muslims rather than on the loss of innocent life. They remain silent on the assault waged on liberalism by Islamists. Most Muslims in America, though, fled the Middle East for the liberal values of their adopted country. On Aug. 7, Bush condemned this extremist assault on liberal values, defining it as "Islamo-fascist" in nature. He chose his words carefully. For most Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. But rather than side with these Muslim victims, MPAC criticized Bush for saying that the British plot was a "stark reminder" the United States is "at war with Islamic fascists." Edina Lekovic, MPAC spokeswoman, issued a statement saying, "The problem with the phrase is it attaches the religion of Islam to tyranny and fascism, rather than isolating the threat to a specific group of individuals." It is not Bush's wording that makes this attachment, though, but the 24 terrorists in Britain and the imams who instructed them. Parvez Ahmed, CAIR chairman, sent an open letter to Bush: "You have on many occasions said Islam is a 'religion of peace.' Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism." But what would Ahmed suggest calling people who intend to blow themselves up in commercial airplanes, taking thousands of innocent lives with them? Flying angels? Kamikazes? If these organizations wish to represent American Muslims, they should be at the forefront of defending both Muslims and non-Muslims against Islamic extremists who hate moderate Muslims almost as much if not more than Western governments. Terrorists deny the legitimacy of Western Muslims, arguing that their Western co-religionists just sit placidly while they, the true Muslims, are "waging jihad against infidels and crusaders." It is wrong to argue so much over terminology and image that we lose sight of the real threat: Extremists who find motivation in religion to preach intolerance and wage war against Western values and peoples. This is the nonsense that causes Muslims to flee the Middle East. We should not defend its emergence here. Posted Thu., August 31, 2006 Omran Salman (omrans80@yahoo.com), a Bahraini journalist, is editor in chief of www.aafaq.org. | |
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
London BRIDGES
Local Arab leaders would have just cause for envy of the considerable attention being paid, at least by the small community of us who give a damn about such things, to the decision by London police announced this past Sunday. Police there have agreed to willingly hobble future investigations and raids by an agreement to submit all such decisions to a non-government group of Muslims, the Muslim Safety Forum, MSF, drawn from the target population. According to the Sunday Times, Azad Ali, chairman of the MSF, said the group will provide "independent scrutiny of intelligence.” And this within a few days of the brilliant success of the British in foiling the airline terror plot. It was nice while it lasted.
Dearborn, or more specifically the entire region under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Detroit, has had this kind of bad deal for years. It goes by the name of BRIDGES, an acronym for Building Respect In Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity. It is one of the least reported programs going. If you don’t believe me, try finding anything out about it on the Internet.
Co-chair of BRIDGES is Imad Hamad, local boss of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC, and able to appear for comment to so many media outlets at once he is believed to possess the powers of bi-location. Hamad is a vocal supporter of Hezbollah, and an embarrassed FBI narrowly missed giving him an achievement award named to honor an airline attendant who behaved heroically before dying on Flight 11 on 9/11. You can read about him here.
If you want to know what kind of weight he throws around with the feds, he recently predicted the arrest of three Texas Muslims in Caro who were purchasing a suspicious number of cell phones, throwing away their chargers, and carrying suspicious photos of the Mackinac Bridge, would not result in terror charges, because “federal officials haven't told him about this case, indicating to him that it's not a serious terrorism case.”
In other words, if it were a serious terrorism case, he gets first look. And if it were a serious case, what are the odds he'd back off and say, "do your duty. boys"? Kind of like the London MSF, who are now providing the kind of “independent scrutiny of intelligence” formerly reserved under both British and American legal systems for judges or other accountable government officials.
The co-chair of BRIDGES with Hamad is US Attorney Stephen Murphy, who, (along with Hamad), is in charge of all federal law enforcement for the Eastern District of Michigan, such as it is. If Murphy were paid on commission, he'd be holding a cardboard sign by the Lonyo exit ramp off I-94.
Another key member of BRIDGES is CAIR, a group so entwined with terrorists even liberal senators like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin had to admit as much.
These are the people who are doing to American law enforcement what the MSF in Britain plans to do to British law enforcement: chill it so cold its heart slows almost to a stop. I honestly don't understand how, if you're a cop faced with the alternatives of 1) busting terrorists who want to kill your family, or 2) chasing good relations with the Muslim community, any cop would choose 2). At least 1) is doable, as the number of terrorists must be finite. But soothing Muslim feelings is a rank impossibility, and only leads to heartache and depair.
And federal agents are getting discouraged. It has recently been reported that federal terror prosecutions are below 9/11 levels. Christopher Hamilton, former FBI terrorist investigator and senior fellow for terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, explains why: "Terrorism cases are a whole lot of work, and the likelihood of getting a conviction is very low." I wonder if having to get a sign-off from the likes of Imad Hamad makes the FBI's job any harder?
I can’t believe but that we have the BRIDGES program to thank in part for the refusal of the feds to take seriously the two Arab-American males arrested in Ohio after lying to police about what they were doing with $10,000 in cash, and for local charges having to be dropped against 3 Texas-Arab-Americans arrested in Caro. Local authoriites can't prosecute terrorism. If the feds don't show up, guys like this go free.
As for Britain, until now they always had one advantage we lacked here in the USA—the Official Secrets Act--wuich makes it a crime for public officials to leak classified information. So isn’t it strange that the Muslims, who are given high intelligence clearances in order to act as watchdogs over British law enforcement, were not required to sign the Act? That means they are immune from prosecution if they leak classified information from investigations they’re allowed to snoop into. Between this and losing Tony Blair, I wouldn't give tuppence for British security in a couple years.
But what am I so worried about? BRIDGES here in Michigan has proved to be a huge success! Under it, hardly any one is ever actually charged with terrorism, and no one is convicted. And that must mean there really aren’t any terrorists, right, only racists, profilers, and Islamophobics who imagine terrorists?
Right?
Well, am I right?
Dearborn, or more specifically the entire region under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Detroit, has had this kind of bad deal for years. It goes by the name of BRIDGES, an acronym for Building Respect In Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity. It is one of the least reported programs going. If you don’t believe me, try finding anything out about it on the Internet.
Co-chair of BRIDGES is Imad Hamad, local boss of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC, and able to appear for comment to so many media outlets at once he is believed to possess the powers of bi-location. Hamad is a vocal supporter of Hezbollah, and an embarrassed FBI narrowly missed giving him an achievement award named to honor an airline attendant who behaved heroically before dying on Flight 11 on 9/11. You can read about him here.
If you want to know what kind of weight he throws around with the feds, he recently predicted the arrest of three Texas Muslims in Caro who were purchasing a suspicious number of cell phones, throwing away their chargers, and carrying suspicious photos of the Mackinac Bridge, would not result in terror charges, because “federal officials haven't told him about this case, indicating to him that it's not a serious terrorism case.”
In other words, if it were a serious terrorism case, he gets first look. And if it were a serious case, what are the odds he'd back off and say, "do your duty. boys"? Kind of like the London MSF, who are now providing the kind of “independent scrutiny of intelligence” formerly reserved under both British and American legal systems for judges or other accountable government officials.
The co-chair of BRIDGES with Hamad is US Attorney Stephen Murphy, who, (along with Hamad), is in charge of all federal law enforcement for the Eastern District of Michigan, such as it is. If Murphy were paid on commission, he'd be holding a cardboard sign by the Lonyo exit ramp off I-94.
Another key member of BRIDGES is CAIR, a group so entwined with terrorists even liberal senators like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin had to admit as much.
These are the people who are doing to American law enforcement what the MSF in Britain plans to do to British law enforcement: chill it so cold its heart slows almost to a stop. I honestly don't understand how, if you're a cop faced with the alternatives of 1) busting terrorists who want to kill your family, or 2) chasing good relations with the Muslim community, any cop would choose 2). At least 1) is doable, as the number of terrorists must be finite. But soothing Muslim feelings is a rank impossibility, and only leads to heartache and depair.
And federal agents are getting discouraged. It has recently been reported that federal terror prosecutions are below 9/11 levels. Christopher Hamilton, former FBI terrorist investigator and senior fellow for terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, explains why: "Terrorism cases are a whole lot of work, and the likelihood of getting a conviction is very low." I wonder if having to get a sign-off from the likes of Imad Hamad makes the FBI's job any harder?
I can’t believe but that we have the BRIDGES program to thank in part for the refusal of the feds to take seriously the two Arab-American males arrested in Ohio after lying to police about what they were doing with $10,000 in cash, and for local charges having to be dropped against 3 Texas-Arab-Americans arrested in Caro. Local authoriites can't prosecute terrorism. If the feds don't show up, guys like this go free.
As for Britain, until now they always had one advantage we lacked here in the USA—the Official Secrets Act--wuich makes it a crime for public officials to leak classified information. So isn’t it strange that the Muslims, who are given high intelligence clearances in order to act as watchdogs over British law enforcement, were not required to sign the Act? That means they are immune from prosecution if they leak classified information from investigations they’re allowed to snoop into. Between this and losing Tony Blair, I wouldn't give tuppence for British security in a couple years.
But what am I so worried about? BRIDGES here in Michigan has proved to be a huge success! Under it, hardly any one is ever actually charged with terrorism, and no one is convicted. And that must mean there really aren’t any terrorists, right, only racists, profilers, and Islamophobics who imagine terrorists?
Right?
Well, am I right?
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