Turkey's foreign policy

The latest go around between Turkey and Israel has Turkey calling for an apology from Israel for the May 31 raid on the Turkish-flagged vessel, pay compensation, agree to a U.N. inquiry into the incident and lift the blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza Strip. In return for all of this Turkey offers not to “cut ties”.

The amount of compensation is unclear, the make-up of a U.N. inquiry is unclear, the nature of the ties to be cut is unclear and the wholesale lifting of the blockade will ensure an “armed to the teeth” Gazan militia.

In an earlier time, Turkey’s actions in all of this would likely constitute an act of war.

Fortunately, Turkey is dealing with a nuclear-armed state that shows remarkable constraint in the face of provocations. The U.S. asked Israel to stay out of the Gulf War and despite the rocket bombardment of Israel by Saddam Hussein, it complied with the request. One wonders if the charlatan in the White House who appears determined to set Israel adrift to appease the Muslim world would have the same success with Israel in a similar circumstance.

Anyway, it ought to be Turkey apologizing to Israel and having to explain why it permitted a ship load of Islamic radicals, bent on martyrdom to leave port for the sole purpose of provoking a military response from Israel. The only conclusion one can come to is that Turkey has long planned its break from Israel and the flotilla raid is the fig leaf it needed for legitimacy.

Turkey’s foreign policy should not be surprising to any student of the history of that country. It is best summarized by this: “Who is winning, go with them.”

At the outbreak of the First World War, Turkey wanted to sit on the sidelines in glorious neutrality until it figured out who was going to win and then it would join that side in the hope of sharing in the spoils. However, German diplomacy, in the face of British perfidy, indifference and arrogance caused the Turks to join the German and Austro-Hungarian Axis.

Had Turkey stayed out of the conflict there never would have been a disastrous Gallipoli campaign, Churchill would not have had to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty, Lawrence of Arabia would have been an obscure Arabist, Saudi Arabia would never have been born, and Britain and France may never have ended up with the League of Nations mandate over Syria, Iraq and Palestine.

What a difference all of that might have made for the Near and Middle East.

Turkey learned from its experience and managed to stay out of the Second World War, despite pressure from Germany, until the closing months when it joined the Allied side.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey embarked on a modernization program, reforming its governmental institutions and its cultural norms to make it more “Europeanized”. It saw modern, industrial Europe and the United States as the models of the winning side and it endeavoured to be one with them.

Now Turkey has slid away from that Western embrace and is courting the Islamic world it once dominated. Having taken the measure of the results of the 40 years of Arab-Euro dialogue on the fate of Europe and Israel, having seen the United States squander its political and economic capital on mostly fruitless wars in Islamic countries, having taken the measure of Muslim-leaning Barack Hussein Obama, Turkey has decided that the winning side is an Islamic world and it wants to join it, for the spoils.

It is just a blatant attempt to sap world anger

Boy, they don't even bother trying to hide it.

In response to Israel's announcement that it is easing the blockade of goods moving into Gaza and making the list of banned goods public, Hamas had this to say:

"Hamas rejects this decision. This is an attempt to sap international anger over the blockade on the Gaza Strip,” Hamas official Ismail Radwan told Reuters by phone from Gaza.

The important delegitimizing of Israel will be derailed if Hamas cannot continue to stir the global hatred pot against the little Jewish state, and, of course, that is the most important thing of all.

Now we know why Swiss cheese is full of holes

Whatever happened to Switzerland?

In a craven exhibition of kowtowing, it has secured the release of an innocent Swiss engineer, Max Goeldi, who has been held hostage by Moammar Gadhafi for two years in return for “normalization” of its relations with Libya.

Switzerland has been the subject of Gadhafi's call to jihad that started with the Swiss arrest of Gadhafi’s son and daughter-in-law on assault charges in 2008, and escalated when the Swiss people voted to ban the building of further minarets earlier this year.

The Gadhafis bought off the maid who made the assault complaint and charges were dropped. But, apparently, the police mug shot of his son got circulated on the Internet. So, in addition to getting the release of the hostage the Swiss government is also paying about $1.5 million in compensation to Gadhafi’s son.

It is hard to believe that 70 years ago this was the same country that Hitler was afraid to invade. He was prepared to invade Great Britain and he had no problem invading Russia and the rest of Western Europe and North Africa. He declared war on the United States. But Switzerland gave him pause.

Switzerland is an economically successful state with a mixed economy and few natural resources bolstering its high GDP.

Libya is a two bit little country with nothing but oil propping it up, but the triumph of Islam marches on, as another successful holy war is brought to a satisfactory conclusion with the Swiss paying the jizya and being permitted to continue their dhimmitude.

It also appears that Switzerland had help from the other weak-kneed European states in bowing before the barbarous Berber of the Barbary Coast, as this news story indicates.

It is Libya that launched the United States' navy to combat Muslim sea-going commerce raiders who were capturing American seaman and enslaving them. When the Muslim potentate of the day refused to be bought off, Congress approved a naval bill and the U.S. marines were sent to Tripoli (they still sing about it).

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has forgotten the words of the Marine Corps' anthem (actually, I think he calls it the Marine Corpse in what is perhaps a freudian slip). An American diplomat who mildly commented that declaring holy war on Switzerland might not be the best option was made to apolgize for this insult to Gaddafi.

And, as events have shown, what did he know anyway?

.....................................................................................

Geert Wilders

Everybody who believes in free speech should read these short essays.

And watch this video.

Governments, when they are not doing it for you, they are doing it to you

Having worked in government, I must say I am not a big fan. To me, governments at all levels leave a lot to be desired. They are necessary evils and should be treated as such. They should be compelled to do only what is absolutely essential for good government and not a thing more.

In the City of Toronto, the councillors met late at night for a semi-secret vote (the media had all departed the council chamber) to grant funds to one of their own who had libeled a rival candidate during the election and had been successfully sued by that candidate. The amount was some $65,000 with an added amount of nearly $30,000 to compensate for the taxes on the base settlement. The city’s own solicitor told the council this was illegal. Now a citizens’ group has formed to take all of the councilors who voted for this to court.

This year is an election year. Let us hope the normally butt-headed voters in that city decide it is time for some new blood at the council table and get rid of these “well past their due date” troughers.

In France, the French government is introducing a law that would criminalize domestic arguments between spouses or quasi-spouses, known as the “yelling at your wife” law. It was a former Prime Minister of Canada, who had sponsored new liberal sex laws and divorce legislation, in his former role as the Minister of Justice, who coined the phrase, “The State has no business in the bedrooms of the Nation.”

The proposed French law expands the role of the state to the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms and hallways of a person’s home, and probably the driveway and garden, for that matter.

That brings us to Canada, where the current Conservative government is taking some heat from the columnists and readers of the Toronto Star for proroguing Parliament until the beginning of March. It was due to commence its session on January 25.

I say good on P.M. Stephen Harper. There will be no opportunity for more stupid legislation in the intervening months, and, when it does come back to order, all the bills will have to be re-introduced. In fact, I will bet there will be an election late this year and so those bills will also likely die on the order paper.

Imagine, a whole year in which the government can do absolutely nothing. Could anything be sweeter?

I think it was Belgium that went for an entire year with no legally elected government and nobody missed it.

Obama has his "classroom moment" without Michael Moore's twit comments

It appears that U.S. President Barack Obama has had his epiphany and discovered at last what it means to hold this job.

It is not about letting “no crisis go to waste”, about transforming the United States into a mini-me European state, about propping up banks, or telling the car industry how to do its business, or even helping Big Pharma remain Big Pharma. The single most important job of the President is to keep America safe and Americans secure. Because, if you can’t do that, the rest doesn’t really matter very much.

I think that lesson has now sunk in.

Film maker Michael Moore made much mockery of a video of former President George W. Bush appearing stunned in a children’s classroom for about seven minutes after being told of the 9/11 attacks. He further made cracks about Bush always seeming to be on vacation.

Now his favourite President waits three days on his golfing vacation before commenting directly on the near catastrophe at Detroit airport and the complete catastrophe in the world-wide anti-terrorist net. Then Obama comes out sounding very much like Bush, talking about tracking down those responsible. And for the second day in a row he has now spoken publicly about fixing the security mess and actually sounding as if he were really angry about it – like it might matter to him.

I checked Michael Moore’s website this morning before writing this. He has a big open letter to the President telling him not to send more troops to Afghanistan and to fire his generals. He was some silly twitter comments about the Detroit incident, saying how the troop surge didn’t prevent the terrorist boarding the airplane. But he has nothing to say about Obama being on vacation and taking nearly 72 hours to show a public reaction to the terrorist threat.

Hey Michael, how about some even-handedness? Why don’t you comment on how Obama is handling this failure in American security the way you were so ready to do with GWB?

A Bronx Cheer for the big guy at the end of the aughts

It is customary at the end of a year to reflect on the events of that year and what we might have learned from them, for better or for worse. The same sort of exercise applies to the end of a decade. Often media writes these reflections up as the most “newsworthy” stories, etc. Since media claims to be the gatekeeper of news, this is kind of a poor man’s Academy Award show, where industry insiders pat themselves on the back for their picks.

I am a blogger, so screw MSM. I’ll sort my way through the decade.

With respect to the past year, I would say that climate science gets the top billing.

First, we had the Copenhagen conference, two years in the planning, which was supposed to set the stage for an embryonic world government to deal with planetary resources. By any measure it completely failed. It was probably the last gasp of something Maurice Strong put in motion 30 years ago.

Many of the same sad bunch will meet in Mexico City next year, but it won’t hold a candle to the promise that was to be Copenhagen.

Second, we had the leaked or hacked e-mails from the climate science top dogs who admitted to themselves, if not to us, that the science is anything but settled. Leaving aside the career jealousies and the attempts to control the peer review process that were evident in these 2,000 pages of e-mails, they puzzled over the hiatus in warming for the past decade, had no explanation for it, admitted it did not fit the theory, and began to doubt their own analysis and the data behind it. They clearly demonstrated that they had really no idea why the world of the past warmed or cooled, having dismissed ice core samples as being imprecise and having trouble making tree ring data fit the theory as well.

I am told relentlessly by fans of AGW that the medieval warm period is irrelevant, and in any case, we don’t know enough about it, and that all that matters is the dramatic rise in the past century of CO2. This is unprecedented they tell me.

How do we know, I say, when we don’t anything reliable about the past? Logic fails here for reasons I get into later.

What also fails to knock these folks off their game is that the temperature and the CO2 have not been consistent. For periods in the past century, including the last decade, the temperature has not been inexorably rising as the AGW says it should since the CO2 has been unalterably rising.

I would say that many more people believed the AGW hypothesis than disbelieved it at the beginning of this decade and, at the end of the decade, these numbers have reversed, with more disbelieving it than believing it. This will have political consequences.

During this decade, I would say religion was the most important driver in world affairs. And by that I mean religion in its broadest sense, including the religion of global warming.

We started the decade believing a new era of reason, science and rationalism would prevail. Not more than a year passed and we saw religious zealots of Islamic persuasion carry out audacious suicide attacks on the cities of New York and Washington.

One of the fallouts from these attacks was the new stringent security rules that air travelers were subjected to before they could board airplanes. At the end of the decade, yet another in a long line of Islamic attempts at murder by aircraft in Detroit has led to even more onerous impositions on air travelers.

So, on behalf of all civilian aviation, let’s give Mohammed a big Bronx cheer.

One of the things that began to dawn on western societies during this decade was the impact of Islam, not just in Islamic countries, but in the heart of western civilization. We have not yet found a way to effectively deal with this foreign political-religio philosophy and I expect the next decade will see us increasingly absorbed by that issue.

One of the things that has become clearer near the end of the decade, however, is that, like the doubts that have begun to permeate over the certainty of climate science, the rose-coloured lenses that viewed Islam as “one of the world’s great religions” and a “religion of peace” have cracked and fallen away.

In Europe, the people are either voting with their feet, leaving for non-European western nations, or are organizing populist political parties that take aim at Islam as a menace. The political establishment in Europe is on shaky ground having spent its political capital during the decade appeasing and propping up Muslims while simultaneously suppressing nascent European nationalism. Its cupboard is nearly bare and I would expect to see the old guard swept away in future elections by those who do not wish to see the Islamification of Europe. After all, there are still many more Europeans who vote than Islamists and they know they will have to act politically soon while they still can.

The outcome will not be pretty.

Australia has shown some muscle in dealing with the issue, but Canada appears to be still very much asleep at the switch.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Americans have elected an anachronism to the highest office. Just as the rest of the world begins to march down a different path opposing Islam, President Obama runs around the planet praising the religion to the skies, misrepresenting it in the process, and promising to defend the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab, ignoring the right of Muslim women not to wear the hijab.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that his efforts are viewed by the Islamic world as weakness, and by even some of the jellyfish European politicians as foolish, and by the American public as misguided.

The day after the Fort Hood massacre, Obama cautioned the public not to jump to conclusions. Three days after the attempt to blow up the airplane in Detroit he has not said anything to the American public. Air travel in the United States is in complete turmoil, but not a word directly from the President. Perhaps if the news stories had been framed, not as another Muslim terrorist at it again, but as white people arresting a black man on board an airplane, he would be inclined to be more loquacious.

Unless he shifts ground within the next year, he will probably suffer the worst fate a President can endure; he will lose his moral authority to govern.

Lockerbie bombing revisted

In August of this year an international flap arose over the release on alleged compassionate grounds of convicted Lockerbie aircraft bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to his home country of Libya. Supposedly he was due to die within three months from cancer.

As of this past Wednesday he was still alive.

At the time, I did not buy into the compassion part of the story. There was some scuttlebutt that it was done because of some commercial deal in the offing between the U.K. and Libya, but I thought the truth lay more in that fact that al-Megrahi was appealing his conviction, that the case against him at trial was shaky, that he might well have succeeded on the appeal and it would embarrass the government.

When he arrived in Tripoli he was greeted as a conquering hero.

During his trial the defense portrayed him as a lowly airline employee.

New information has now been revealed that was not available at his trial.

Al-Megrahi was sitting on a Swiss bank account containing nearly three million U.S. dollars in today’s currency. Furthermore, he was involved in the purchase of development of chemical weapons for Libya and he attempted to purchase 1,000 letter bombs from Greek arms dealers, while he employed as a Libyan intelligence officer.

So far, the Scottish government has declined to make his medical records available for public scrutiny.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that he was the Lockerbie bomber, but it does suggest he was anything but a lowly airline worker, and in terms of international terror activities, certainly not an innocent man.

Two steeples good, four minarets bad

I have been pondering the meaning of the Swiss vote on banning further construction of minarets, a proposition which passed by 57.5% of those who voted. The website, Gates of Vienna, has an excellent summary of official reaction to it, both in Europe and in Muslim countries.

One thing that has struck me observing the European scene for the past couple of years is how out of touch the ruling elites, political and media, are with the sympathies of the European people they are supposed to represent or understand. The rising election fortunes of political parties whose mandate is to stop further Islamization of Europe in several EU countries is one sign. Now this direct and unfiltered vote from what is normally considered Europe's best example of a peaceable state puts another nail in the coffin of disconnect.

Each time something that might upset Muslims happens the elites fall all over themselves rushing to ensure Muslims that they are still valued. This is followed sometimes by the condemnation of "the people" for being xenophobic.

Given the chance to express themselves by a direct vote like this or by a representative vote for an extremist party the proletariat is telling the elites that they do not wish to see their European heritage and culture replaced by an Asian one. Moreover, the more the elites push multiculuralism on the people as a policy which allows the Asian culture to grow, the more the Europeans push back. There is evidence that many pockets of Islam in Europe do not desire to integrate and accept European norms. Likewise, there are many Europeans who do not wish them to integrate. The multicultural experimentation of the European elites is running into serious trouble.

Seventy years ago the Europeans turned their backs on another religio-culture, the Jews. Nobody had done more to try to integrate themselves into European culture and society, and to make themselves visibly indistinguishable from the majority, than the Jews. In no sense did they represent a competing culture and religion. Yet, they were rejected by Europeans when the political atmosphere became charged and extremist and European identity was in play.

Here you have a competing religion and culture that, to a large extent, does not waste its time trying to become European in the sense of embracing European values, customs or clothing.

The elites need to do more to ensure the proles that they have an answer to the perceived threat from the morlocks, and worry less about assuring the morlocks that the proles are under control.

Who are the deniers now?

PROFESSOR ROSS McKITRICK

UPDATE: Here are a couple of the more interesting takes on this scandal, one from the Wall Street Journal which agrees with my view that the most serious charge to be laid against Jones and Mann, et al. is the manipulation of the peer review process to deny an opportunity for contrary research to be published, and one from a statistician in the National Post who plows the same soil previously tilled by McKitrick and thinks that the only international agreement that is required from Cophenhagen is an agreement that compels scientists to reveal their data for review by others.

The reverberations from the disclosure of e-mails obtained by a hacker and published on the Internet of the doings of the top AGW climate scientists still continue to reverberate around the globe.

The allegation that they cooked the global warming data to fit the AGW theory is not new and doesn’t require confirmation from these e-mails. It was first exposed about six years ago in the book: Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming by Ross McKitrick and Christopher Essex. That exposé was followed up by official investigations and other research that confirmed the conclusions of McKitrick and Essex.

The real devastation to the catastrophic climate change side comes in under the rubric of “integrity”.

I once made a statement to a friend who is a robust advocate for drastic measures to combat climate change and a committed believer in human caused global warming that environmentalists (i.e., people like him) can do harm. He was astonished that anyone would think that a “right-minded, altruistic” environmentalist could cause harm.

Right now, over a 100 countries are meeting in Denmark to plot a course that will ultimately result in shocks to the economies of many developed countries. This is all based on a 15-year successful campaign by global warm mongers to scare the snot out of politicians and to mobilize public opinion to further cause them angst.

Other scientists and researchers have been casting doubt on the entire premise on which this is based; i.e. that humans are largely responsible for climate change. Those dissenters have been vilified as dishonest because they are allegedly being paid off by energy industries who want to derail public policy based on global warming, and they are characterized as being irrelevant for the sin of being retired, and, in the final insult, they are dismissed as unimportant because they have not contributed research papers to respected scientific journals to be “peer reviewed”. In short, unlike the pro global warming crowd, the others lack integrity.

I am always suspicious of people whose first, and seemingly only, line of defence is ad hominem attacks on their critics.

There is a special label the AGW crowd has attached to the dissenting group, which, in normal science parlance (i.e. science unpolluted by politics) would be called skeptics. They are called deniers in the hope that the opprobrium that attaches to Holocaust deniers will trickle down and discredit these people. Consistent with that below the belt tactic are statements made by a number of AGWers that such deniers should receive criminal consequences and jail terms.

Now we find that the AGW group conspired to try to prevent research that did not conform to their published views from being “peer reviewed” in scientific journals.

They have become the deniers and perhaps they should be the ones looking at criminal consequences. Their integrity is shot, even if the science of climate change muddles on.

'Nuff said

NATO dhimmis -- time to go home

The traditional relationship between Muslims, when they controlled a territory, and the non-Muslims, was that the latter could continue to live and go about their business provided they openly acknowledged their dhimmi status (second class citizenship) and they paid protection money to the Muslims for the privilege of being permitted to stay alive.

If you were any doubt about the waste of time that has become the war in Afghanistan it has to be the news that has surfaced that money is being paid to the Taliban not to kill NATO troops. Canada has denied it does this, as do the French and the Italians. But the British are doing it and it appears the Americans may be doing it also. Here and here and here and here.

Paying Muslims so they won’t kill you. How Islamic can it get?

Time to get out.

The value, or otherwise, of trying Islamist murderers in Western courtrooms

In today's Toronto Sun, legendary journalist, Peter Worthington, who is about 80 years old and who usually pulls no punches, writes about the value of having a trial for Major Hasan. Unfortunately, like so many mainstream media types who really don't know anything about Islam, he purveys the concept that Major Hasan's actions were a "perversion" of his religion.

This is the equivalent of writing a story about Major Hasan, if he were a Christian and had been caught distributing blankets and food packages to the homeless, claiming that this was of perversion the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Why do they invent this stuff? if you know something about the religion you would not say this. If you don't know about the religion then you should just shut up and not mislead the public.

There are something like 123 suras in the Koran that talk about fighting and killing non-Muslims in the name of Allah. Major Hasan believed these commandments from God. How is that a perversion? Here is a discussion of those suras.

Speaking of trials, Pat Buchanan asks some strong and searching questions about the value of a trial in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In praise of bigots

Carrie Prejean, Famous California Bigot

What follows is one of the more interesting responses to my recent blog postings that I have received in a while. I have set it out in italics and my reaction to it is posted below in normal font.

Anonymous writes:

This blogger (a Canadian?) is a closet Islamic bigot, hiding behind a facade of social consciousness (women's rights/homosexual rights, and protecting apostates, etc.)...substituting 'Muslim' for 'Nazi' (in his whimsical retelling of the Ft. Hood new story) really betrays this fact.

Islam is not Nazism, not even close (the write has never met a Nazi, I believe, and very few real followers of Islam). If one is calculating body counts, Christianity (which has also historically encouraged a "holy war' mentality) is at least as murderous as Islam, taken as a whole. Christianity is also anti-female, anti-homosexual (though the church has been a haven for homosexuals for centuries), and, of course, intolerant of apostates and dissenters (remember the Holy Inquisition?)---until the present age, at least (but I note the current Pope's declaration that the "true enemy" of monotheism is "secularism"--perpetuating the martial mentality towards the perceived "other").

While I do agree with people like David Brooks (recent op-ed about choice and evil)...I temper my "conditioned prejudice reflex" with (what I hope is) a deeper sense of cultural understanding. The non-judgmental "reaction" by leaders following the shooting is a sign of how far we have come as a nation from the days of instantaneous scapegoating (of the "other)...the blog writer would seem to prefer (under the guise of a word substitution exercise) that we mentally replace the foreigner term (Muslim or mole) with the modern era's most evil label (Nazi).

Here's my "whimsical" response to the "dead reckoning" blogger's post:

Yes, that's right, let's stop giving people with foreign names and beliefs the benefit of the doubt anymore...Let's encourage out political leaders to "shoot first, ask questions later"...let's foster public cries for retaliation (a slippery slope once you use the term "Nazi")...let's return to the 19th Century!...and then go through the bloody socio- evolutionary process once again...until maybe we wake up and learn and truly progress...

The blog writer routinely generalizes Islam and makes statements like "Islam is the only religion that preaches destruction of Western civilization" etc....Not distinguishing between Islamic teaching and Koranic teaching, and, in the context of discussing what the Koran preaches, he conflates the two...leaving the reader with the impression that the Koran says these things.

Here is a quote from the Koran (Sura 5, verse 13, I believe): "Be ye steadfast witnesses for Allah in equity, and let not hatred of other people blind you, that ye deal not justly."

As Dick Cheney has shown us, it is simple (minded) to "cherry pick" this or that passage to justify this or that prejudice (the bible was used to justify slavery; "All are welcome at my father's table...master and slave...." etc.)

Like most monotheistic, religious holy books, there is much content that is a reflection of the historical epoch in which the writing came about...often containing prejudices and misunderstandings...but also, admonitions like the foregoing Koranic quote (it's rough equivalent in the West: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you")...

Again, the blog writer, in my opinion is a bigot. His efforts seem little different from when Laura Bush noted the oppression of women in Afghanistan (as an additional moral justification for occupying the land)...as if she were a defender of women's rights (!)

...By the way, the FBI investigation into Hasan’s communication with al-Awlaki (American born, Yemeni cleric) was deemed to be related to Hasan's PTSD research (professional duties), and did not exhibit any "warning signs" or pose any threat...thus the investigation did not lead to any termination or suspension of Hasan's duties.

The recent admonition by Obama (and others) not to rush to judgment...was the ethically and socially correct thing to do.

I agree that there is such a thing as evil in the world (though I disagree with its commonly judged causes) ...but also, that we should not rush to judgment of someone based upon his/her cultural practices and beliefs. WE ALL KNOW THIS ALREADY. It is possible to believe both, despite what the pundits amongst us try to argue in favor of (this way or that, never both).

The war 'over there" has hit home once again...did you think that we were immune? Apart from the geo-political strategic reasons for occupying two Islamic nations (and a third being Saudi Arabia, with 20 K US troops stationed there)...we are fighting against extremism in all its forms (religious, social, political, economic)...our side has equally as many religious fanatics willing to kill or cry "holy war" (or "culture war")....this is the only enemy (same as it ever was)...let's find some concrete ways to combat it.....hmmm, maybe starting with
"love thy neighbor as thyself"....?

Navigator (aka bigot) replies:

Normally I am not one to dwell on the ideological language employed by the left wing and the right wing. I am more interested in the actual arguments advanced by the parties, but this piece is chock-a-block full of such leftist politico-babble that I simply could not resist commenting on that aspect of it. Is there a school somewhere that teaches the correct form for the articulation of leftist conceits 101, because they all seem to follow a common format?

We have the obligatory accusation of racism or Islamophobia; take your pick, which must always appear at the beginning of such a piece so that there is no shadow of a doubt that the subject of the accusation has no legitimacy. In this case the accusation is that I am an Islamic bigot, but not an ordinary Islamic bigot, I am a closet Islamic bigot (almost like a secret society bigot).

But the writer (who I shall hereafter designate in the masculine gender) has unmasked me, ripping away my guise of being concerned about such leftist-owned causes as women’s rights, homosexual rights and concern for apostates, to show that none of these really matter to me because I am just an Islamophobe and therefore have nothing useful or reliable to offer on any of those subjects.

We have the usual accusations of false argument, which the writer immediately employs on his own behalf with no shame of hypocrisy. For example, Anonymous wags a finger at me for the evil of “cherry picking” to bolster my argument (without identifying the example, mind you) and then proceeds to do exactly that by quoting some single sura from the Koran that fits his theme.

Likewise, it seems to Anonymous that I ought to know a Nazi or a Muslim before I write about them. He does not offer us his credentials in that respect, but is quite comfortable launching into a discussion of these matters anyway. Why do leftists feel that they command the public stage and they can play on it without abiding by the rules they seek to impose on others. The arrogance of that posture is breathtaking.

Anonymous fallaciously sets up a straw man that he attributes to me and then proceeds to knock him down (the body count thing).

The babble part is the business about the “other”. If only we didn’t think in terms of the “other” then there would be no “other” and we would have no problems, it all comes down to us to stop thinking there is an “other”. I have always thought this line is claptrap. Just because I don’t want to think there is a wolf at my door is not going to determine whether or not there is one.

But enough on the structure of Anonymous’ attack. Let me deal with the substance.

Anonymous seems to have missed the point of my satire. It was not driven by a desire to compare Islamism with Nazism. It was to compare the current climate of political correctness in speech and thought with that which prevailed amongst the military and government authorities in my father’s generation. The key to the piece was that the statements were taken as if they had occurred in the early 1940s, during a war with Germany, and, fairly looked at in that historical sense, they seem ludicrous.

I am not, by any measure, a “closet Islamic bigot”. I make no bones about the fact that I do not like Islam. Read my blog, I have almost nothing positive to say about it. If I am in a closet on that subject, it is one with three walls and a door all made of glass. Nor does the appellation of bigot stick, since by definition a bigot is an unreasonably intolerant person. I a reasonably intolerant person, or, put another way, a person who is intolerant for good reasons.

I am an atheist. I have acknowledged that fact repeatedly on my blog. I do not hide my bias. I don’t like any religion: a pox on all your holy books, as it were. But I have deep concerns about Islam above the others and for good reasons, which I will elaborate hereafter.

I don’t think it is sufficient for Anonymous to simply assert, as if it were an obvious fact, that Islamism and Nazism are “not even close”. He should at least be intellectually honest and make the case for that proposition. Otherwise it is merely a conclusion in search of a premise.

Anonymous should explain why he thinks that Islam and German National Socialism differ on the key issues – just the ones that would concern us in a pluralistic, liberal democracy. I am referring to matters such as triumphalism, the will to power, racism, treatment of Jews, treatment of non-Nazis and non-Muslims and so on. I would be curious to see how Anonymous parses the differences, if he can actually identify them.

Anonymous failed to mention that I credited Geert Wilders with the proposition that there are similarities between Nazism and Islamism, but I won’t hide behind that because I do believe there are some disturbing similarities: the hatred of Jews being one, the claim to super status in the world being another, and the idea that women are primarily breeders for the perpetuation of the race, being just another example. The list goes on.

Ah, then we have the old “Christianity is just as bad or worse” moral relativism argument. I have heard better arguments: Stalin and Mao were atheists and they killed a lot more people than all the mainline Abrahamic religious people ever did.

So what? How does that excuse Islam’s atrocities? Just because Al Capone killed more people than John Dillinger doesn’t exonerate Dillinger from his crimes or cause us to think more highly of him.

I am no apologizer for Christianity, as I have made clear in the foregoing, but it is not Christians who are blowing up and shooting non-Christians in the name of their religion. That might have been the case long ago, or perhaps not so long ago, if one considers Northern Ireland, but in the 21st century that activity is now a near monopoly of the Muslims, and it is the here and now that concerns me, not the long history of this activity.

And it also concerns me that it is not confined to only Muslim lands; would that it were, because that would be an easy out, but it is worldwide. Neither the IRA nor the Tamil Tigers ever threatened my safety and security in Canada. The same cannot be said for some of the followers of Islam.

When I must run a gauntlet of oppressive security measures at airports, have my passport checked 5 times between the checked-luggage kiosk and stepping aboard the airplane, having my ass and balls grabbed by some bored security agent, and have to partially disrobe in public, it is not because Christians have been previously caught with weapons or bombs hidden in their Bibles or shoes.

Rest assured, Anonymous, that if Christians start down this same road, I will be as equally concerned and as equally harsh about them. At my core, you will be able to say with confidence and pride that you know me to be an equal opportunity bigot.

I don’t think Anonymous’s case is helped much by laying the distinction at my door that I failed to make; i.e., what the Koran says versus Islamic teaching. This accusation would make sense if the Koran contained nothing but verses of love and kisses for all, and Islamic teaching was something quite different.

In fact, the Koran contains many suras that talk about fighting and killing non-Muslims. Additionally, the Hadith (the best example of the Muslim life as referenced by the way Mohammed lived his and what he had to say about it) is another source of Islamic religious duty, law and precedence. The world is not a better place as a result of the massacre Mohammed visited upon the Jews who rejected him as a prophet of God.

These are the sources Islamic leaders cite when they pronounce death sentences against novelists, cartoonists, publishers, movie makers, screen writers, translators, and even duly elected members of legislatures, none of whom live in Muslim lands, authorizing any Muslim in the world to kill these people. It is the source material for the justifications cited by al Qaeda leaders and their acolytes for their murderous activities and the source of justification offered by ordinary Muslims who take it upon themselves to visit death and destruction on non-Muslims.

These violent suras are no less authentic and authoritative than the sweetness and light one that Anonymous cherry-picked.

Anonymous betrays his own faulty reading skills. At no time did I make the claim, direct or implied, that the Koran teaches the destruction of western civilization.

In fact, the idea that Islam is the only religion at war with western civilization was not my proposition at all. It came from a Pakistani-born, Canadian Muslim, Tarek Fatah, who has written a book about Islam, which was the subject of another one of my blog postings.

Now I am beginning to get a sense of what Mark Steyn must have felt when he faced human rights complaints about what he had written and the Muslims were, in reality, not complaining about his viewpoint, but the fact that he merely reported what other Muslims had said.

Anonymous seems to assume I am a war-monger with respect to Islam. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

I have stated previously on my blog that I think the Afghanistan effort is wasted, that we should bring our army home when our commitment expires in 2011, and we should avoid mucking around militarily in Muslim lands in the future. I was opposed from the outset to the American invasion of Iraq. So I don’t really know how I got “conflated”, to borrow his word, with the likes of Dick Cheney and Laura Bush.

I don’t want to fight Islam; I just wish to protect my liberal-democracy society from that ideology. I am looking for an effective shield, not a sword. Is there a problem with that?

Well, there is when the top soldier in the United States professes to be more concerned about backlashes against Muslims than the future safety and security of non-Muslims. If the military cannot protect its own, perhaps it should take a leaf out of the playbook of one of the Scandinavian police forces that hired a private security firm to protect the police. And if the military cannot even safe-keep its own, then what hope is there for the rest of us on civvy street?

I am aware of the public details of the investigation by the FBI of Major Hasan’s communications with the radical Islamist in Yemen and that the investigation was suspended because the investigator concluded it was not terrorist related. It is interesting to note the response of that al Qaeda recruiter to Major Hasan’s 10 minutes of mayhem:
Anwar al-Awlakid posted a blog entry titled 'Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing' on his web site. In the post, Awlaki calls Hasan a 'hero’, and writes:

"[Hasan] is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges. Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."

President Obama referred to Hasan’s “twisted logic”. So much for the non-judgmental leaders Anonymous so admires.

There is nothing twisted about Hasan’s understanding of his religious duty. In fact, Major Hasan had suggested early on that all Muslim soldiers in the U.S. military should be granted conscientious objector status as long as U.S. soldiers were being deployed for combat in Muslim countries. That was a most sensible and logical solution to this problem. It is unfortunate that nobody took him seriously enough to follow through with it.

I make no claims about the existence of good and evil as some sort of cosmic force, I will leave the proof of that one for Anonymous. I can only distinguish actions that I would be inclined to call good from those that I would likely brand as evil. What Major Hasan did was evil, and praising what he did is evil.

Finally, a word about love thy neighbour.

In Christianity this is supposed to apply to everybody. In Islam it is restricted to only Muslims. This is a distinction Mr. Obama failed to note in his Cairo speech.

Three cheers for the Right Honourable Stephen Harper

It is not often I find something coming out of my country that makes me want to stand up and cheer, but our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper’s, principled decision to boycott the appearance of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, before the United Nations’ General Assembly is one of those occasions. I could not say it better than Harper said in this video today.

What's this war for?

In a recent column by Tarek Fatah in The National Post, he says we have lost the war in Afghanistan, we should acknowledge defeat and we should bring home our troops now before any more of them are killed.

I don’t agree with him.

I normally have a lot of time for Fatah. He is one of a handful of Muslims who calls for the reform of the religion. For his efforts, he and his family have been threatened with death by other Muslims.

Fatah is the author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, a book that has been reasonably well-received by the public and was a runner-up in the 2009 Donner Prize for the best books on Canadian public policy. The book discredits the notion of a world-wide Caliphate from an historical perspective.

However, this column is the most defeatist I have ever read. If he had written this kind of thing in 1942 about the war with the Axis Powers, he probably would have been locked up for sedition.

Fatah says:

We have lost the war. The Islamist jihadis have won it. We must acknowledge defeat and bring our troops home.

In a war between those who desire death and those who treasure their RRSPs and IRAs, the outcome is predictable. Canadian soldiers are professional, but mission-less armies have never fared well on the battlefield. American soldiers, who enlist primarily with the objective of obtaining a college degree, will never be able to defeat their counterparts, who view their freshman year as starting in paradise on the banks of rivers of milk and honey surrounded by 72 virgins.

This is hyperbole, of course, because there are many Americans who did not enlist for a free ride into college, but to avenge 9/11 and to do what the American military exists to do; i.e., keep the country secure.

We are told that we are involved in an “asymmetrical” war and that different strategies and tactics need to be employed if we are to “win” it. Asymmetrical is just a fancy name for guerrilla warfare and guerilla wars have been won; the British in South Africa, Kenya and Malaya, as examples. The more recent one is the defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the government of Sri Lanka.

However, those conflicts were carried out in confined geographical territories, where the combatants on the other side did not have easy access to outside material support, or had little room to maneuver, and where the victorious party could effectively bottle them up in less and less defendable territory.

The problem with the war against radical Islam is that it recruits its “soldiers” from everywhere, including our own country, and it can supply them from a bottomless armory of small arms and explosives, available mainly through the helpful manufacturing and distribution by the very governments who send their armies to fight these zealots.

So, just as the military needs to think differently about how it combats non-state agents of a death cult, we, the people, need to consider redefining what we mean by defeat and victory. Sometimes a victory is merely keeping somebody at bay.

Did we experience a victory over the Soviet Union like we did over Germany and Japan? Clearly not. But we defeated it just the same. We contained its expansion and it eventually imploded.

That is how we need to think about victory with respect to radical Islam. Keep it off balance, bottle it up, interdict it wherever it appears, and discredit it at all times. As long as Islam lives, the death cult will never go away, but it can be contained and its harmful effects minimized.

I agree with Fatah that we should bring home the troops, but only when our commitment to Afghanistan ends in 2011. The Islamists will crow about it, but we accomplished what we set out to do which was to disrupt al Qaeda and chase away the Taliban government.

In the future, we should not set ourselves lofty goals of bringing democracy to these backwater Islamic states. We should just interfere enough to derail any emerging threats and then let them sort out their own messes. The strategy is containment and successful containment is a victory. Had we identified this goal early on, we would have withdrawn from Afghanistan long ago and not found ourselves in the current quagmire of endless warfare.

Israel employs such a strategy with its neighbours. It fights them when necessary, inflicts a military beating, without complete conquest, and then goes back to the status quo. It is instructive that Lebanon’s belligerent Nasrallah declared war on Israel in 2006 in support of Hamas’s dustup with the Jewish state and got such a bloody nose from that encounter that he stayed well away from its re-run in 2008.

Although I disagree with Fatah about claiming a defeat and running home now, I do agree with this sentiment.

In the U. S., a bumbling President who knows the threat of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood ideology very well still bends over backwards and welcomes the bearers of this doctrine into his inner circle.

Imagine fighting the U. S. S. R. without confronting the ideology of Stalinism. Could we have won? Not a chance. Today we are fighting Islamist jihad-ism, yet neither Obama nor the British PM nor Harper or Ignatieff dare utter one word against the ideology that attacked us all on 9/11. So what is this war for?

We have to have a clearer idea of the enemy we are fighting and who our real friends and allies are in the Islamic world.

Pop goes the weasel

They say you are not supposed to speak ill of the dead. They usually say that when the dead person has a lot of dirty laundry that just never got washed.

The late Senator Edward Kennedy ought never to have been in political life after the night of July 18, 1969. That was the night of the infamous “Chappaquiddick incident”, as it has become known.

Funny word, “incident”.

For Mary Jo Kopeckne and her family it was the Chappaquiddick tragedy. But, for Ted Kennedy it really was just an incident. She lies in a grave and he went on to fame, a long life and the enjoyment of his considerable family fortune. In fact, for Kennedy the real problem was that the “ghost of Chappaquiddick” prevented him from gaining the highest office in the land.

The American novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald once commented to his fellow American novelist, Ernest Hemingway that, “The rich are very different.” Hemingway replied, “Yes. They have more money.”

Fitzgerald was right and he immortalized that difference in his novel, The Great Gatsby. What we saw were wealthy characters, steeped in their own pleasure, and indifferent to the pain and suffering they inflicted on others.

That is always how I have viewed Ted Kennedy, through an F. Scott Fitzgerald filter.

We know from his history that he was a boozer and a womanizer. Was his nature and were his inclinations any different on July 18, 1969? Does it seem reasonable with his record that they would be?

There have been a number of eulogies about Senator Kennedy, but I haven’t seen a recent compilation of the story of Chappaquiddick. So I am going to give one.

At the time of her death, Mary Jo Kopechne was 28 years of age and single. Ted Kennedy was 37 and married. She and Kennedy were attending a party on Chappaquiddick Island. Kopechne was staying in a hotel on the mainland.

At 11:15 p.m. Kennedy offered to drive her back to her hotel. He took a road called Dyke Road that led to a one-lane bridge and his car went off the bridge into the water. The car was sitting on the bottom, upside down. Three windows were smashed. Kennedy, who was six feet, two inches tall, escaped from the car. Kopechne, who was five feet, two inches tall, did not.

The water was not very deep, approximately seven feet. Kennedy claimed he couldn’t remember how he got out of the car, but he did remember diving several times to free Kopechne without success. He then walked back to the party. Sometime after midnight, he enlisted the aid of two cousins to go back to the scene to get Kopechne. They were unsuccessful.

Since the ferry was then shut down, Kennedy said he decided to swim back to the mainland – not an easy swim because of tides and currents. The next day, he reported the mishap to the police. However, by this time the police had already recovered Kopechne’s body.

Here is the dirty laundry list:

1. Why did Kennedy drive down Dyke Road.? It was going in the opposite direction to where he was supposed to be going

2. Why did Kennedy claim his problem was that he was unfamiliar with the road? He had quite good knowledge of Chappaquiddick and had passed over the road twice before that very day.

3. Police estimated he was doing about 55 kilometers an hour when he approached the bridge and jammed on his brakes 5 meters from the bridge, which effectively locked his brakes and caused his loss of control. Why was he doing an unsafe speed? He had no explanation.

4. Why did Kennedy walk back to the party instead of seeking assistance from an island resident who lived only 135 meters from the bridge?

5. Kennedy was reported as being relaxed and even jovial the following day. He took the ferry back to Chappaquiddick with his two cousins and then reported the accident by telephone. Unexplained behaviour.

6. The coroner said the death was by drowning, but the undertaker said it was by suffocation. The police diver who recovered the body said it was too buoyant to be full of water.

7. Unfortunately, Kopechne’s family (she was an only child) did not give permission for an autopsy, apparently afraid the autopsy would disclose that she was pregnant. In 1969, it was still socially scandalous to have a daughter who was pregnant without being married, even if she was well into her adulthood. So we are not sure what she died from.

8. Kennedy informed Kopechne’s parents of her demise, but did not tell them he was driving.

9. It was also unusual since Kennedy normally had his chauffeur drive (no doubt because of his drinking), but on this occasion took the keys from the chauffeur.

10. Kennedy claimed that he had consumed no more than a quarter of a glass of beer, but other evidence was offered that suggested he had been drinking rum and cokes well before the start of the party.

When Kennedy finally made a public address about the matter a few days later he offered this slimy version:

There is no truth, no truth whatsoever, to the widely-circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been levelled at my behaviour and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or any other occasion - the same is true of the other girls at that party - that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character. Nor was I driving under the influence of liquor.

In short, how dare anyone accuse Miss Kopechne of immoral conduct -- I would never be in the company of a woman of low moral virtue!

Most of his tributes have called him “the lion” of the Senate. But in July, 1969, he was definitely a weasel. This behaviour disqualified him from the presidency, but apparently is acceptable conduct for a U.S. senator since he continued to be re-elected quite easily for the next 40 years.

I also completely discount all this bullshit about what a great liberal senator he was and how he will be missed in that role. Politics is like nature, it abhors a vacuum. And if Kennedy hadn't been there to occupy the liberal space, some other senator, probably a better representative, surely would have.

Breaking News: Paula Abdul to be judge on Iranian Idol

PAULA ABDUL

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network, is about to announce a big coup. After weeks of intense negotiation, Al-Jazeera has arranged with Iranian authorities to televise the trials of the 100 Iranian dissidents as a reality talent show, called Iranian Idol, generally copying the format of the immensely popular American Idol.

Instead of singing or dancing, which are frowned on by pious Muslims, the aspiring talents will be asked to write poems, the great Iranian art form, extolling the virtues of secular democracy and why it is better than an Islamic Republic.

The judges were originally to comprise five old, bearded clerics of profound Islamic learning, but as a belated sop to women, the Iranian government decided to include one female. However, as no females have any authoritative religious standing in Islamic society, Al-Jazeera cast around for a woman with both judging capabilities and experienced with talent. To their great good fortune (or perhaps the intervention of Allah), Paula Abdul announced that she would no longer be a judge on American Idol.


TYPICAL TYPE OF OLD BEARDED IRANIAN CLERICS TO JUDGE ON IRANIAN IDOL

An inside source claims she has signed a one year contract with Al-Jazeera, subject to some conditions.

She is not to discuss politics, religion or any other weighty subject on the show, basically a no-brainer for Ms. Abdul. Her role is simply to critique the poems on their artistic merit. She will also be required to wear suitable Islamic attire, covering her body from head to toe, leaving only her eyes completely stark naked. And lest the clerics prove to be not as old as they look, she will be given a separate seat and table, just behind them, a little to the left, so that she can still be seen by the cameras and the live audience, but not by the ayatollahs.

Just like the other talent shows in the West, the Iranian public will be permitted to vote, but its vote will not override the vote of the clerics and Ms. Abdul should it differ.

The winning poem will grant the successful dissident a swift execution, likely by beheading, but possibly by hanging. The details have not been worked out. The two runner-ups will receive life sentences in a jail to be yet determined, but the inside scoop is it will be the one with the most up-to-date torture facilities in Iran. All other contestants will be given 10-year sentences in a jail of their choosing, and all entrants will receive a free gift of 100 lashes.

With the addition of Abdul, Al-Jazeera is now contemplating syndication of the show in worldwide markets.

The poorly performing economy of Iran is alleged to be behind the decision of the authorities to co-operate with the talent show. The state receives an undisclosed share of the revenues from the international television broadcast rights. Al-Jazeera is hoping the show will prove as popular in the Islamic world as American Idol and its offshoots have in the western world

An official joint announcement is expected shortly. Telephone calls to Ms. Abdul’s manager have not been returned.

Look up the definition of narcissistic personality

Seven out of ten Republicans have answered a national poll by saying they would vote for this chowder head in 2012. Only in America is ignorance raised to the level of virtue. She resigned her governorship of Alaska to start her presidential campaign. Here is a well-researched Vanity Fair article on Ms. Palin, appropriately entitled, It Came from Wasilla.

Does she like photography? Candid, eh? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. Pee Wee's great Russian adventure.

I love these two pictures, they really do say more than a 1,000 words. They follow on from pictures of Obama's controversial bows to Middle Easter potentates. I doubt Putin or Medvedev are much into the bowing business.

Here is Obama shaking Medvedev's hand at the podium while the Medeved looks like he is preoccupied with considering what is on the menu for lunch, or wondering whether it is time to take a bathroom break.


Notice Putin waiting patiently for Obama to pull up his socks. Boy if that doesn't just capture the power relationship, I don't know what could.

It is reported that Putin sent birthday greetings to GWB just before his meeting with Obama praising Bush's openess and honesty; how thoughtless of Bush to have a birthday on the day Obama shows up to spread the oil around. Could those Republicans stoop any lower than this to steal the headlines from the great one?

Apparently, Obama was not greeted with adoring crowds and fawning media -- something new for him.

Although, I hear he declared the age of empire over, in case you, or anybody else in the world missed it. Perhaps you were distracted by those falling sea levels since he took office.