QUETTA: At least 56 people were killed and about 160 others injured here on Friday when a suicide bomber struck a procession brought out to mark the Al Quds day.
Soon after the blast some armed men in the procession started firing into the air, triggering chaos and panic. People fled or lay on the ground to avoid the gunfire. All shopping centres and business establishments shuttered down in no time after an angry mob set on fire several vehicles and ransacked some shops. They also attacked DSNGs of different TV channels and fired at the Aaj van, killing its driver. Three policemen were injured.
Calling from an undisclosed location, a spokesman of the banned Lashkaar-e-Janghvi, claimed responsibility for the attack and warned that the group would “carry out more attacks if Shias continue to take out processions and hold gatherings”. A spokesman identified the bomber as 22-year-old Arshad Muavia. But according to a report from tribal areas, a spokesman of the Tehril-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Imamia Students’ Organisation had organised the rally that started from Islam Imambargah, located on the Prince Road, soon after the Friday prayers to express solidarity with the Palestinian people. Hundreds of people joined the rally as it moved towards the centre of the city.
“Police tried to stop the rally near Mali Bagh and asked the participants not to proceed any further, owing to security concerns. However, nobody listened to us,” said City police Station House Officer (SHO) Muhammad Asif, adding that the participants did not follow the route that had been approved by the police. “We had earlier told them that no officers were deployed in Mezan Chowk and they should follow the given route. But they did not follow the instructions,” he said.
A number of young men, who were at the head of the procession, removed police barricades and continued to march forward. When the procession reached Mezan Chowk, the suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest. As result of the huge blast, 25 people were killed instantly, and human limbs were scattered everywhere. A number of motorcycles parked nearby caught fire, sending up plumes of black smoke.
“It was a suicide attack,” Balochistan home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told Dawn. He said that organisers of the procession had been alerted to the threat. Bomb disposal squad officials said the device packed 15 kilograms of explosives. The impact of the blast smashed windows of a number of shops and buildings.
Police found limbs of the bomber and sent them for forensic tests. Police later found the head of the suspected suicide bomber, who was said to be between 25 to 30 years of age.
Who owns Kabul Bank? And where has its money gone? Last night, after Obama had finished his speech about how we were sort of almost done in Iraq but still had a lot of lives to lose and money to spend in Afghanistan (see Anderson, Osnos, and Packer for more on that), the Washington Post put a story on its Web site about how the Afghan Central Bank was moving to replace the management of Kabul Bank. This is the bank that handles the payroll for Afghan soldiers and schoolteachers. From the Post:
Kabul Bank’s wayward lending practices, real estate speculation in Dubai and weeks of venomous feuding between major shareholders have threatened to wreak economic and political havoc.
U.S. officials have long worried that Kabul Bank, because of its size and unorthodox practices, could trigger financial mayhem, a prospect that would leave Afghan security forces without pay, threaten unrest by angry—and often armed—depositors and undermine President Obama’s Afghan strategy.
Our war in Afghanistan may be compromised by a bank? And, again, whose bank—who are the major shareholders involved in “venomous feuding?” The Post includes a helpful chart; they all seem to have ties to Karzai, his election campaign, and his cabinet. One is his brother, Mahmoud Karzai. He is in a better position to come out of this well than the depositors who were heading to the bank to get their money out this morning; there is a fair amount of confusion at the moment about who’s in control, what the central bank’s role will be, and, most of all, where all the money has gone. (Some seems to have funded an airline owned by the chairman of the bank.) Are American taxpayers going to end up bailing this bank out, because it’s so entwined with the Karzai government that it’s considered crucial to the war effort? Is there such a thing as a bank that’s too corrupt to fail?
The Wall Street Journal, in a follow-up, described “a massive portfolio of off-the-books loans by the bank’s chairman to himself and to other politically connected Afghans.” The bank has also, according to the Journal, used hawala, a less-than-regulated money-exchange system, “to clandestinely transfer almost $1 billion out of Afghanistan in the past few years.” It was mixed up with New Ansari, a firm that, as the Journal put it, “allegedly helped Afghan politicians, drug barons and even the Taliban move billions of dollars out of the country.” (Karzai recently intervened to get one of his aides, who was accused of taking a bribe to stop an investigation of Al Ansari, out of jail.) The Times said that Kabul Bank and its chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, were “at the heart of the political and economic nexus that sustains—and is sustained by—the government of President Hamid Karzai” and “provided millions to Mr. Karzai’s campaign.” Then there are its business dealings:
First among the beneficiaries was Mr. Farnood himself, the officials said. He invested about $140 million of the bank’s money in the real estate market in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, said Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother and a Kabul Bank shareholder. Among those properties were more than a dozen multimillion-dollar villas in Mr. Farnood’s name, some of them on Palm Jumeria, an island off Dubai’s coast, Mr. Karzai said.
A lot of that value was lost when the Dubai real-estate market fell (assuming, of course, that the transactions were real). More from the Times:
It is not clear what Mr. Farnood did with all the properties he purchased, but he made at least some of them available to his friends and allies. One of them was Mahmoud Karzai, who owns about 7 percent of the bank. Speaking in an interview from Dubai, Mr. Karzai said he had rented one of Mr. Farnood’s villas for the past year and a half.
Mr. Karzai said the bank’s troubles—and Mr. Farnood’s opaque dealings—had made him decide to vacate soon.
“I want to move to a different house,” Mr. Karzai said. “I want to cut this out.”
So President Karzai’s brother has been living in a villa in the Emirates that constitutes a questionable investment by the bank he partially owns; but he might move. The Wall Street Journal said that a U.S. official had tried to make the case that the removal of bank officials was “a sign” that Karzai was getting a little bit serious about corruption. But, the Journal noted,
An Afghan banker with knowledge of the situation offered a less optimistic view, saying the move may have more to do with shifting political and business alliances among the country’s small, clubby elite.
Mahmood Karzai, for example, has recently forged stronger links with the owners of Afghan United Bank, a competitor of Kabul Bank. Afghan United Bank’s chairman owns a 20% stake in a housing development that Mahmood Karzai is building outside the southern city of Kandahar, where U.S. forces are making a major push against the Taliban.
So what is Mahmoud Karzai's new preferred bank like?
Afghan United Bank is owned by the founders of New Ansari, the hawala that is being investigated. U.S. officials say the bank’s owners still control the hawala, although the bank’s owners say they have cut ties to the money-transfer business.
Moving the money from one bank to another, or the President’s dubiously wealthy brother moving himself from one villa to another, doesn’t really count as doing something about corruption. Or, if it does, then we have a long way to go in Afghanistan. It’s a bit like moving soldiers from one war to another, and calling it victory.
So, should U.S. taxpayers bail out Kabul Bank because it is considered so vital to the war effort?
Were that all our foreign policy decisions were so easy.
Of course, non-Muslim academics have been known to engage in similar abuses of power, as regards their female students. But cases of sexual misconduct by Muslim men resident in the West, toward vulnerable non-Muslim women - for example, the rape of intoxicated young women by Muslim cabbies - do seem to be very, very common.
Two reports from the ABC news online.
First: 'Student hotline set up after sex pest leaves'.
'Students at Curtin University [in Perth, Western Australia] say they are satisfied with the institution's handling of misconduct complains against a former academic.
'A WA Corruption and Crime Commission report has found Nasrul Ali attempted to pressure overseas students into sex in return for higher marks, while he was working at Curtin's Business School last year.
'None of the students submitted to the demands' [Good on them - CM].
'The CCC report revealed that Dr Ali targeted young, vulnerable female students who were being financially supported by their families, needed to pass their units, and were at risk of losing their student visas.' (In a report from a Perth newspaper, I discovered that two of the girls were from mainland China, and one was from Malaysia - so it seems likely they were non-Muslims; many non-Muslims from Malaysia, of Chinese and indian ethnicity, come to Australia to study because they are denied access to universities in Muslim-dominated Malaysia - CM).
'The University has since ended Dr Ali's contract, apologised to the students, and partially refunded their fees. It has also established a committee to improve professional standards and a support hotline for students..."
"Dr Ali's new employer, Murdoch University [also in Perth, Western Australia] says it only became aware of the allegations yesterday. The academic is now on leave while the university considers the findings."
Second instalment in the saga: Murdoch U. drops Dr Ali like a hot potato.
'Academic sacked over pressuring students for sex'.
'Murdoch University in Western Australia has sacked an academic accused of trying to pressure female students into sex for higher marks while working at WA's Curtin University.
'A Corruption and Crime Commission Report found Nasrul Ali asked four international students for sexual favours in return for better grades while working at Curtin's Business School last year.
"Dr Ali was sacked after Curtin received the students' complains in mid-2009, and he was then hired by Murdoch.
'The university has issued a statement saying it only became aware of the CCC investigation yesterday and has now moved to terminate Dr Ali's contract. Murdoch says it is disappointed it was not told of the allegations sooner..."....
More details may be found here, in the 'West Australia Today' report:
including the piquant information that Dr Nasrul Ali is 'the son of high-profile academic and Islamic spokesman Ameer Ali' (how *embarrassing*) and that two of the students whom he attempted to inveigle and threaten into his bed were Chinese...and that as a result *China* had taken an interest in the case.
I quote: 'Professor Martin [the Murdoch U Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor] said news of the misconduct had spread across the world yesterday and some of the University's Chinese partners had expressed concerns". I'll bet they did.
What an *interesting* pickle for Murdoch U to be in: they hire a Muslim lecturer, son of a prominent and plausible Muslim spin-doctor, and said lecturer is promptly discovered to have been, at his previous place of academic employment, pressuring female *Chinese* overseas students for sex...poor Murdoch U, caught between a rock (the Ummah, which we are not supposed to offend) and a hard place (the 'concerns' of the Chinese, who are much bigger, and richer, and more powerful, than the Ummah).
'Man charged after pulling plug on mosque loudspeaker'.
'Indonesia authorities have arrested an American man for blasphemy after he pulled the plug on a loudspeaker at a mosque because it woke him up, police said.
'Luke Gregory Lloyd, 64, was taken into custody after he disrupted a nightly Koran reading session near his home on Lombok Island which was being broadcast over the mosque's loudspeaker during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
'The incident happened on August 22 and Lloyd has been under police guard at a hotel ever since, pending further investigations.
"He got angry as the Koranic reading woke him up. He scolded people in the mosque before pulling out the loudspeaker's cable", police officer Lalu Mahsun told reporters.
'He could face five years in jail under the mainly Muslim country's blasphemy laws'.
- Hmm. So if you get angry about having your sleep disturbed by broadcasts from a mosque, and publicly express that anger, you are committing 'blasphemy'?? In modern, moderate, democratic Indonesia.
- If Mr Lloyd did in fact do what he is said to have done, his approach - angrily telling off the offenders, and pulling the plug - is rather reminiscent of the usual *Muslim* method of expressing disapproval of something. Spot it and stop it. Command right and forbid wrong. Muslims do it all the time in non-Muslim lands - every time a Muslim male on Cronulla beach or a Gold Coast beach threatens and harasses a non-Muslim woman whom he deems insufficiently covered; and I seem to recall at least one case of a Muslim in Britain marching into a church during the service to demand that the volume of the singing be reduced because it was annoying him (and that in broad daylight; not in the small hours, as when this Indonesian incident is supposed to have happened). Muslims feel entitled to lay down the - Muslim - law to non-Muslims on non-Muslim turf, but woe to the unwary infidel who forgets himself and rebukes Muslims on Muslim turf! One wonders how long Mr Lloyd has lived in Indonesia, and whether he was brave, or foolish, or simply driven beyond reasonable endurance. There is no mention of how close he lived to the mosque, nor what decibel level was issuing from the loudspeakers. - C. M.
'Police also said Lloyd's visa had expired in 2006.'
- There may be more to this story than meets the eye. It is, indeed, possible that the whole dramatic tale of the angry, blasphemous American Infidel storming into the mosque and pulling the plug on the loudspeakers in the middle of a Koran reading, may be a fabrication, perhaps intended to test whether the USA is willing to let Muslims do as they will to an American citizen. We have seen, in many reports from Pakistan, accusations of 'blasphemy', whether made against Muslims or non-Muslims, that were completely false. And, for that matter, the statement about the visa should not necessarily be believed, either. I would like to hear Mr Lloyd's version of events, before drawing any final conclusions.
I have not heard any more about this case as yet; will keep an eye open. - C. M.
A poster at Jihad Watch once wrote, "It [Israel] clearly has a death wish, so why even bother?"
Here are some reasons why one should bother:
1. Israel the country does not have a "death wish." It has had a series of leaders who have exhibited an ignorance of Islam and an unwillingness to grasp the nature of the menace, or all the ways in which that menace could be dealt with beyond mild military measures. Israel has never inflicted, and has never been allowed to inflict by the outside world, the kind of military defeat on the Arabs that would be a salutary lesson. In 1973 Nixon and Kissinger prevented Sharon, for example, from destroying Egypt's Third Army that Sharon's troops had trapped. Stupidity of leaders, and of many in the press and television, does not constitute a "death wish."
The same might be said, with greater force, about the peoples of Western Europe. The Israelis had Muslims already surrounding them, and within their country (where they did nothing to discourage them, of course). The ruling classes, political and business and intellectual, did nothing to prevent the large-scale settlement of Muslims within England, France, Germany, and other countries; they did nothing to educate themselves about Islam; they refused to listen to the handful of those who warned them (e.g., Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, Jacques Ellul, Jacques Soustelle). Does that mean that all of Europe has a "death wish" and we should wash our hands of it, forget about it? Sweden, with its awful ruling class? Norway, with its awful ruling class? Italy, with its awful ruling class (though not quite as awful)? France, with only the hope of so far so-so Sarkozy and Philippe de Villiers? England with -- England with whom, exactly?
2. The destruction of European Jewry by the Germans and by many other collaborators who enthusiastically joined in, pitching in to help with the killing or with the all-important rounding-up. Take, for example, the Rumanian Iron Guard, whose members hung Jews from hooks in the windows of kosher butcher shops, or the ordinary Germans who pitched in to go on "Jew hunts" if some had escaped from trains or camps. Think of the French police: how empty Drancy would have been like without the raffle of the Vel d'Hiv, without all they did, those police, in the Marais. Germans also aided in the looting of Jewish assets everywhere -- by gangs and by neighbors, who often turned people in so as to be able subsequently to help themselves to what was left behind. After the war, this could not be confronted. It was too terrible. It took decades for a slow thaw -- a civilizational thaw -- to cause people to begin to realize, to see, to stare in the face, the whole thing.
That did not last long, for it was too awful to contemplate. Fortunately for so many, and for the Arabs, the victory of Israel in the Six-Day War promptly provided a reason to depict Jews as villains, not victims. This found an eager audience of Europeans, who were already eager for psychological reasons to find fault with Jews so as to avoid thinking unduly about the behavior of many European peoples and states during the war. They were hardly wishing to believe -- it would not do -- that Jews were again victims, and they, the Europeans, were again not taking their side but abandoning them. But who had the oil? Who had the contracts? Who could pay for that army of Western hirelings? Who had the plausible if completely manufactured narrative that ignored the history of the Middle East and of historical Palestine, but that played on the notion of linking an invented "Palestinian people," supposedly unique, with a virtual "Palestine" that never existed in Arab or Muslim history?
The damage done to the morale of Europe because of the destruction of European Jewry has been great. If Western Europe, or the West generally, were after all that has happened to permit Israel to go under, Europe would not recover. This is true whether or not Israel’s leaders and most of those who fashion public opinion in that country remain unbearably and obstinately innocent of the real situation. Olmert is only the latest and the worst of those who have risen high; he is hardly alone.
3. The loss of Israel would fill the Arabs and Muslims with such triumphalism that their Jihad in Western Europe and elsewhere (including the Americas) would receive a gigantic boost. Some believe that if only they are thrown a sop, they will be content and go home. Not at all. The Qur'an and Hadith and Sira do not tell us that Muslims somewhere have read "be content with the Land of the Jews and leave the other Infidels alone." No. The duty is to make sure that Islam covers the globe; that Islam dominates, and Muslims rule.
The Infidels owe a terrific unacknowledged debt to Israel. Why? Because before the OPEC oil revenues and the complete end to colonialism (the French left Algeria in 1962; the British garrisons left the Persian Gulf sheikdoms in 1971), and before those OPEC trillions and before millions of Muslims were permitted to settle in Western Europe, the main Jihad that attracted the world's attention was the Lesser Jihad against Israel. In the West, Islam was seen -- especially by the Dulles brothers but also by their successors -- as a "bulwark against Communism." No one noticed what was happening within Muslim or Arab countries. In Lebanon, the Muslim war against the Christians was depicted as something else, and the Christians, massacred at Damur and so many other places, were referred to with the Homeric epithet "right-wing." Those "right-wing" Christians. It was a stupid adjective, stupid and misleading. But how soothing to the Western world not to have to comprehend that the Maronites of Lebanon, who had lived there before the Muslims arrived, before Islam was invented, were under assault, and would lose control of the last sure Christian refuge in the entire Middle East.
Similarly, the assorted versions of pan-Arabism -- Nasserism, Ba'athism -- were seen as alternatives to Islam, when in fact they were not alternatives at all. They merely displayed, for quite specific and local reasons, an emphasis on "Uruba" or Arabdom that was explicable given the impoverished state of the "Islamic world" and the fact that there were local stumbling blocks to pan-Islamism (including the lack of financial wherewithal). In Turkey Kemalists were in control; in Iran there was the Shah, trying in his maladroit way to emphasize the pre-Islamic past. Pan-Arabism was a version of pan-Islamism, a subset, which at the time seemed to be as much as one could hope for. Nasser or Saddam Hussein could dream of being King of the Arabs, but the idea of a much bigger operation, especially since for both Nasser and Saddam Hussein the most dangerous political opposition was mosque-based (the Muslim Brotherhood for Nasser, the Shi'a clerics for Saddam Hussein), was out of the question.
So until the early 1970s, the Lesser Jihad against Israel took up the time, attention, and money of the Arabs. Now that they have so many more resources, now that they have received ten trillion dollars from OPEC, and have seen millions of Muslims settle deep behind what Muslims regard as enemy lines, and have seen also how the inventions of the West -- audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet -- can be harnessed for the dissemination of Islam and for Jihadist propaganda (beheadings of Infidels, that sort of thing that is apparently an inspiring recruiting tool), the Lesser Jihad against Israel can be seen, correctly, as only one part of a worldwide phenomenon. (Of course, it is still the part that gets far too much attention.) All during that period until about 1973, the local Jihads within countries against non-Muslims continued, but without either Western support or sympathy or even comprehension for what those non-Muslims were enduring.
How often did any Western power protest the persecution of Hindus or Christians in Pakistan or of Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh? Ever? How many Western countries extended diplomatic recognition to the Christians of Biafra, as they tried to fight against what Col. Ojukwu correctly described (in the Ahaiara Declaration of 1969) as a "jihad" by the Muslims? How many Western reporters noted the steady pressure on Christians in what was always depicted as easygoing Indonesia, all batik and gamelans, when that was really Bali with its Hindus they were talking about, and not Aceh, not much of Java and Sumatra, where the fiercest Muslims lived?
Meanwhile, Israel's failure to identify its real problem was the product both of innocence on the part of many and calculation on the part of others. The Israelis knew no more about Islam than did most Westerners in, say, August of 2000. And after all, Israel hoped to find friends in the Muslim world, and it did, making alliances with Iran, which ended when the Shah fell, and more recently, an even briefer one with the army and secularists, but not the government or real Muslims, of Turkey. This did neither Israel nor the peoples of Western Europe any good. Had Israel all along understood that it faced a Jihad, albeit one disguised in all sorts of ways after 1967, it might have behaved very differently. (That Jihad was disguised by Arafat's use of islamochristians, who are always useful to disguise the essentially Islamic nature of the Arab refusal to accept Israel as a permanent presence, and by the invention of the "Palestinian people" with their supposedly "nationalist" cause.)
Now that some in Western Europe are coming to their senses about Islam, they will inevitably begin to realize that the steady suffusion of their media with anti-Israel propaganda has created a situation that imperils not only Israel, but themselves. And they will begin to see things differently.
Will a sufficient number of Israelis begin to see things differently, and become disgusted with many of their journalists, their unimaginative politicians, and their insensate holier-than-thou or terminally naive figures, such as Shimon Peres?
Whether they do or not, Israel cannot be allowed to commit suicide. To take and apply the phrase that used to be used by such committed haters of Israel as George Ball, Israel "must be saved in spite of itself." For its own good. For the good of the Western world's morale, and for continued access by Christians as well as Jews to the Holy Land -- which would not happen if Israel could no longer protect all the holy places and they fell under Muslim control. For that Muslim control today would not be the kind of lackadaisical control that was exercised by an indifferent Ottoman regime until World War I, when Mandatory Palestine was put under British, i.e. Christian, control. If the Muslims ever got control of the Holy Land again, that would be it. Perhaps the world's Christians do not care sufficiently, or do not realize all the reasons why they have a stake in supporting Israel to the hilt -- but they should understand this one.
There's more one could say, but that will have to do as a brief and preliminary answer to the question, which one hopes was merely rhetorical: "if [Israel] has a death wish, why even bother?"
For every conceivable reason under the sun -- for our own mental and moral stability, our physical and civilizational survival. That's why.
Richard King On Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- And Tariq Ramadan
In "The Australian":
The idiocy left behind
Illustration: Paul Newman Source: Supplied
FROM where on the ideological spectrum do you imagine the following sentence derives?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has brains and beauty and is a gift to those of us who like our prejudices confirmed.
No, it's not some snarly ex-Trot sounding off on Spiked.com, or some male-chauvinist cleric putting Hirsi Ali in her place for daring to criticise Islamic dogma. It is, in fact, the impeccably liberal writer and publisher Hilary McPhee, writing in The Age in July. And McPhee goes further, describing Hirsi Ali as disturbing and delusional and more than implying that if she didn't exist, we in the West would have to invent her. Even her books, McPhee suggests, wear their single-word titles like brand names.
McPhee is not the only liberal to attack the Somali tractarian and memoirist in this tone of scorn and insinuation; the insinuation being, of course, that her views fall all the more easily on the ear for the fact she is so easy on the eye.
In 2006, Timothy Garton Ash -- normally a font of good sense -- wrote the following: "It's no disrespect to Ms Hirsi Ali to suggest that if she had been short, squat and squinting, her story and views might not be so closely attended to." "It's no disrespect" seems a strange way to preface a statement of such staggering condescension.
Garton Ash has since apologised for his comments about Hirsi Ali's looks and, indeed, for labelling her an Enlightenment fundamentalist. But many commentators on the liberal Left continue to regard her askance and some are even openly hostile. My guess is that they see Hirsi Ali as a sort of useful idiot of the anti-immigration Right and of those who seek to spin the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a moral crusade.
Perhaps they have the ghost of a point. Everyone, after all, is someone's idiot.
Take, for example, writer Paul Berman, a man in whom the noble tradition of leftist self-criticism finds its pedantic apogee. He was once called a useful idiot by the late historian Tony Judt on account of his support for the invasion of Iraq. He is, however, an astute observer of Islamic terrorism and left-wing trends and of the interface between the two.
In his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, he turns the charge of useful idiocy on those within his own constituency who criticise the likes of Hirsi Ali while indulging apologists for fundamentalism such as Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan. It's an odd book, but one of no small value.
While Hirsi Ali is sometimes described as a latter-day, or African, Voltaire, Ramadan is a committed Muslim who, in 1993, was loudly campaigning against the staging of Voltaire's play Fanaticism, or Mahomet. Long a celebrity in the Francophone world, he has recently entered the Anglosphere as the go-to man for a progressive take on questions of Islamic doctrine. This entry was facilitated by British-Dutch writer Ian Buruma, whose profile of Ramadan in The New York Times is the starting point for Berman's book and a perfect example (in Berman's view) of the way in which liberal intellectuals tend to retract their bullshit antennae when faced with this seemingly affable character. For Berman, Buruma's profile was a travesty, the more so since its author had written so brilliantly about fanatical ideologies in the past.
Berman accuses Buruma, with some justice, of misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nature of Ramadan's salafi reformism, which is not a watered-down version of Islam but a species of fundamentalism in which foundational Islamic texts are read with one eye on the modern world. This approach goes back to Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ramadan's maternal grandfather. For Berman, Ramadan's modern rhetoric -- sometimes he sounds like an anti-globalist, sometimes like a liberation theologian -- is just a cover for his religious views, and it is always his religious views that come first. (Challenged by Nicolas Sarkozy to condemn the practice of stoning for adultery, Ramadan recommended a moratorium -- a position Buruma managed to defend.) He is, in short, a traditionalist whom everyone seems to have mistaken for a rebel.
As those who have read his books will know, Berman is an ideology wonk who is peculiarly alive to the battles of the past, especially the battle against fascism. In this book, he traces the points of contact between al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood, of which al-Qa'ida is a schismatic offshoot, and German National Socialism. For Berman, the controversial coinage "Islamofascism" is justified and necessary. The war on terror is the latest phase of a conflict that began in the 1930s.
Berman's book began life as an essay ("Who's Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?") published in The New Republic. Even then it seemed a little long and much of the additional material, though fascinating from a historical perspective, does not advance the case against Ramadan or his liberal admirers.
For while his tendency to dismiss his critics as Zionists and members of the Israel lobby is not an especially healthy sign, no one, not even Berman, is suggesting Ramadan is a Nazi sympathiser. Perhaps the space would have been better used in a detailed analysis of Ramadan's books, in which there is plenty of evidence, not only of his double discourse but of his moral casuistry. (His latest book, What I Believe, is exemplary in this regard.)
The style is the man and Ramadan's style shows all the signs of a man who is floundering. But Berman's style is scarcely less irritating, swinging as it does from the needlessly exhaustive (the footnotes rise up through the text like damp) to the irresponsibly hyperbolic. Writing in the latter mode, Berman suggests that Salman Rushdie has metastasised into an entire social class. It's a nice line, designed to catch the eye, but it's also a hysterical claim.
Neither does Berman help his case by focusing so closely on Buruma's profile of Ramadan in The New York Times, the effect of which is to make him seem obsessive and even a little unhinged.
The title The Flight of the Intellectuals is clearly a nod to Julien Benda's 1927 pamphlet La Trahison des Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals). But whereas Benda took a general approach to intellectual dishonesty, Berman seeks to particularise, eschewing the telescope for the microscope when really he needs to make use of both. It's as if Raymond Aron had decided to base The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) on a single article by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Berman's underlying point, however -- that certain liberal intellectuals are guilty of equivocation in the face of Islamic radicalism -- is surely not to be seriously doubted. Indeed, I think he's right to suggest that a sort of cultural masochism has interfered with the liberal Left's traditional priorities on this occasion and that some liberal commentators need to rethink allegiances.
Certainly a little solidarity with a woman who daily risks her life to bear witness to spectacular misogyny and religious intolerance would not go amiss.
After all, and unlike her single-word titles, those bodyguards are not part of Hirsi Ali's brand.
Judea Pearl More Than Beginning To See The Light, Not Of, But About, Islam
Judea Pearl, who after his son Daniel died was full of interfraith goodwill, has slowly but surely been educating himself on the matter of Islam. It must be, for him, especially painful. He is not quite there yet. He describes Muslim animus as "anti-American." He does not realize that that animus is anti-Infidel; we are Americans, we are Infidels. The same animus can be found among Muslims all over Europe, directed at their most generos host countries, and their Infidel hosts, the taxpayers who have so trustingly been funding their large families,and allowing them to demand, and get, every possible benefit -- free health care and free education at a level impossible to find in any Muslim country, no matter how (undeservedly) rich, free or greatly subsidized housing, and a great deal more. The animus comes from what Islam inculcates, comes that is from Islam itself. Will Judea Pearl reach that level of understanding, and be willing to express that understanding publicly? Could be.
For now, and possibly surprisingly given his earlier naivete, he has now come out against the "Cordoba" Mosque:
I have been trying hard to find an explanation for the intense controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative, whereby 71 percent of Americans object to the proposed project of building a mosque next to Ground Zero.
I cannot agree with the theory that such broad resistance represents Islamophobic sentiments, nor that it is a product of a “rightwing” smear campaign against one imam or another.
Americans are neither bigots nor gullible.
Deep sensitivity to the families of 9/11 victims was cited as yet another explanation, but this too does not answer the core question.
If one accepts that the 19 fanatics who flew planes into the Twin Towers were merely self-proclaimed Muslims who, by their very act, proved themselves incapable of acting in the name of “true Islam,” then building a mosque at Ground Zero should evoke no emotion whatsoever; it should not be viewed differently than, say, building a church, a community center or a druid shrine.
A more realistic explanation is that most Americans do not buy the 19 fanatics story, but view the the 9/11 assault as a product of an anti- American ideology that, for good and bad reasons, has found a fertile breeding ground in the hearts and minds of many Muslim youngsters who see their Muslim identity inextricably tied with this anti-American ideology.
THE GROUND Zero mosque is being equated with that ideology. Public objection to the mosque thus represents a vote of no confidence in mainstream American Muslim leadership which, on the one hand, refuses to acknowledge the alarming dimension that anti-Americanism has taken in their community and, paradoxically, blames America for its creation.
The American Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad.
Evidently, however, a sizable segment of the American public is not convinced that this leadership is doing an effective job of confidence building.
In public, Muslim spokespersons praise America as the best country for Muslims to live and practice their faith. But in sermons, speeches, rallies, classrooms, conferences and books sold at those conferences, the narrative is often different. There, Noam Chomsky’s conspiracy theory is the dominant paradigm, and America’s foreign policy is one long chain of “crimes” against humanity, especially against Muslims.
Affirmation of these conspiratorial theories sends mixed messages to young Muslims, engendering anger and helplessness: America and Israel are the first to be blamed for Muslim failings, sufferings and violence.
Terrorist acts, whenever condemned, are immediately “contextually explicated” (to quote Tariq Ramadan); spiritual legitimizers of suicide bombings (e.g. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar) are revered beyond criticism; Hamas and Hizbullah are permanently shielded from the label of “terrorist.”
Overall, the message that emerges from this discourse is implicit, but can hardly be missed: When Muslim grievance is at question, America is the culprit and violence is justified, if not obligatory.
True, we have not helped Muslims in the confidence-building process. Treating homegrown terror acts as isolated incidents of psychological disturbances while denying their ideological roots has given American Muslim leaders the illusion that they can achieve public acceptance without engaging in serious introspection and responsibility sharing for allowing victimhood, anger and entitlement to spawn such acts.
The construction of the Ground Zero mosque would further prolong this illusion.
If I were New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I would reassert Muslims’ right to build the Islamic center and the mosque, but I would expend the same energy, not one iota less, in trying to convince them to put it somewhere else, or replace it with a community-managed all-faiths center in honor of the 9/11 victims.
Fellow Muslim Americans will benefit more from co-ownership of consensual projects than sole ownership of confrontational ones.
King K’inich Kan Bahlum II reigned in Baalak from 685 AD to 702 AD. Like his father, the great K’inich Janaab Pakal, he was responsible for many of the most glorious architectural and artistic achievements of Mayan civilization’s “classical period;” it was he who oversaw the completion of the great pyramidal Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, on one of whose walls he left a legend predicting that his dynasty would last until 21 October 4772.
I have to say, I’ve always been impressed by the absolute precision of these old Mayan prophecies: never any vague predictions of nameless catastrophes occurring at uncertain hours—“In the time of great sorrow, when the moon is in the third house and the curlew’s nest is empty, a dark fortune will descend upon the house of Tarquinio” or anything like that—but only exactly dated auguries of specific events. Admittedly, I would be considerably more impressed if, in addition to their precision, they occasionally exhibited some tendency toward accuracy, but you can’t ask for everything.
As it happens, Kan Bahlum’s dynasty died out some time in the early ninth century. There’s no need to quibble over four millennia here or there, though; what makes Kan Bahlum’s prophecy interesting is that it refers to an event scheduled to occur exactly 2759 years and ten months after 21 December 2012, which is supposedly the day on which, by the reckoning of the Mayan long calendar, the current “Great Cycle” of 5125 years will reach its end.
We have recently entered a period of popular fascination—which will become more intense over the next thirty-six months or so—with this date, or at least with the year 2012. Any number of recent books, articles, television programs, and viral videos, as well as one particularly bad film, tell us that this is date that the classical age Mayas predicted would end the world, or at least inaugurate a cataclysm of such enormous proportions that the vast majority of life on earth will perish. And yet here was Kan Bahlum, ever the sunny optimist it seems, confidently asserting that his family’s reign would continue on for better than twenty-seven centuries beyond that mark.
There’s no mystery here, really. The truth of the matter is that the ancient Mayas understood 2012 as the terminal year not of the cosmos or the planet, but of a calendrical rotation. There is clear evidence that they did indeed regard every transition from one Great Cycle to another as something quite momentous, with some greater mystical or cosmic significance, but they certainly did not see it as ushering in the end of time. In fact, they do not seem to have had any concept of the end of time.
Rather, they had an insatiable predilection for large numbers arranged in magnificently intricate mathematical schemes, as well as an equally insatiable fascination with astronomy; and these two appetites in combination produced marvelous and fantastical myths and monuments and vaticinations, all embraced within a vision of time as a kind of endless epochal spiral, rather like Yeats’s system of “gyres,” but on a far greater order of magnitude. There could scarcely be a more drastic confusion of categories, therefore, than the application of eschatological themes to what is in essence a mythology of perpetual periodic regeneration within natural time.
It is probably an inevitable mistake for modern Westerners, of course, or for any people raised in a culture shaped by one of the “Abrahamic” faiths. For us, it seems perfectly natural to think in terms of a catastrophic or redemptive conclusion to the narrative of history and nature as we know them. And even many of those systems of thought with which we are most likely to be familiar and which involve some idea of eternal recurrence, like Stoicism or certain schools of Hinduism, presume periodic annihilations of the cosmos.
Some sense that “time must have a stop” is part of the common conceptual property of the whole “Indo-European world.” And that perhaps goes some way towards explaining the popular fascination with an imminent end of days. It does not, however, explain everything.
There is a question here worth pondering, I think. Why are apocalyptic fantasies such inexhaustible sources of popular entertainment? What is it that draws a great many of us to the idea of a world shattered and scorched and whelmed by the seas, or of civilization reduced to savagery in a single day? More importantly, why is the prospect of that day’s imminence one of the most tantalizing elements in these fantasies?
Admittedly, they probably would not entertain us very much at all if we really found them credible. But, still, there’s been such an abundance of post-apocalyptic novels, films, television stories, and so forth over the past five or six decades that the whole genre seems now to enjoy the sort of perennial appeal that once belonged to westerns. And it would be difficult to exaggerate the popularity of books, magazine articles, or “documentaries” that pretend to warn of the impending cataclysm in earnest.
Moreover, it is a market that crosses almost every cultural demographic boundary, albeit with significant variations. For some, the eschatological genre is simply a subcategory of the horror genre, and has no grander function than to inspire little macabre thrills of unease or Schadenfreude. For the more morally serious, it has a graver, minatory purpose, and should apprise us (ponderously) that nuclear war, environmental devastation, genocidal pandemics, swarms of omnivorous nano-robots, and dangerous experiments on subatomic particles are very bad things that ought to be avoided on most occasions. For certain Christian fundamentalists, “end times” fantasy is a kind of licit pornography, absorbed with an altogether unhealthy relish.
And so on. But I suspect that, underlying all the superficial differences, some essentially uniform impulse of the imagination—or collection of impulses—is at work, some species of shared desire or fear.
Not to say that I have any clear notion of what it is. It might simply be the result of history. The latter half of the twentieth century being what it was, it may be that our shared visions of the impending eschaton are nothing more than memories of the recent past allegorically inverted into fabulous premonitions of the near future. That, however, explains only the element of collective therapy in these fantasies, not the great pleasure they seem to afford.
Emmanuel Rath, an esteemed teacher in a local Gymnasium, falls heavily for Lola Lola, and in the end is ruined. In the original movie he is played by Emil Jannings and the fatale femme, the demi-mondaine meuf, by Marlene Dietrich..
Many remakes of that movie are made every day, all over the world. I can think of one or two right now.
In one such current remake, the part of Emmanuel Rath is played, and rather comically too, by the American painter Julian Schnabel. The role of Marlene Dietrich is played by a very goodlooking Arab girl, Rula Jebreal, a "Palestinian," who does a wonderful job in promoting anti-Israel views. I think she should be grateful to all those kidnapped and enslaved Circassian and Georgian beauties in her background who contributed more than their mite to her mixture. Schnabel, smitten and playing the Professor Rath role to the grim hilt, has recently been in Israel making what was to be more propaganda for the cause -- Jebreal apparently leads him around by the nose. Or some equivalent thereof. And he can do so much for her, as sugar daddy and movie maker. I wonder if he ever has second thoughts.
Lola Lola and Professor Rath can be found at the Venice Film Festival here.
Then there is Vittorio Sgarbi with Vittoria Risi at the same festival. But Sgarbi is not Lionello Venturi, and Vittoria Risi is not Moana Pozzi. I knew Moana Pozzi. Moana Pozzi was a friend of mine. And Vittoria Risi, you are no Moana Pozzi. And besides, Sgarbi of course is just clowning for the cameras, and in any case, whatever he's doing or not doing with her, there are no nauseating propagandistic consequences of which we need take note.
Hasard du calendrier ? Multiplication des agressions liées à la religion ? Horreur devant les condamnations, dans la théocratie iranienne, d’une femme à la lapidation et de jeunes gens accusés d’homosexualité à être pendus (1) ?
Je ne sais, mais la réalité laisse pantois – et pleins d’espoir – ceux qui luttaient il y a encore peu contre le politiquement correct. On a assisté ces dernières semaines à une levée de bouclier sans précédent contre l’islam et ses pratiques contraires aux droits de l’homme et de la femme. Dans les journaux, sur le net ou à la télévision, des gens différents, le plus souvent issus de l’immigration, parfois même des convertis à l’islam, se sont levés pour dire, avec force, leur indignation et leur peur.
Même Le Monde, journal plutôt voué aux gauchos-bobos a osé publier un texte (2) d’Abdennour Bidar, pourtant musulman déclaré. "La lapidation, preuve extrême de la logique de violence de l’islam" où il ne se contente pas de fustiger la lapidation (qui fait consensus, même Martine Aubry a signé la pétition en faveur de Sakineh (3) c’est dire !) mais, de façon et très originale et très juste, dénonce la violence inhérente à l’islam "Si en effet la pulsion totalitaire de la religion islamique trouve là l’une de ses expressions les plus inhumaines, il faut y voir simplement l’une des formes les plus radicales d’une logique générale qui a pris, au fil des siècles, le contrôle de la vie spirituelle des musulmans du monde. Hélas !, la religion islamique entière se nourrit de violence".
Dans cette logique il fait un rapprochement inédit entre lapidation et ramadan, dénonçant une pratique qui n’a rien d’anodin et qui réclame à ceux qui le pratiquent des efforts surhumains : "Jeûner toute la journée, sans avoir même le droit de boire un peu d’eau, et ce pendant un douzième de l’année, constitue un exercice de privation radical et relève d’un ascétisme religieux de haut niveau que rien ne justifie d’ordonner à l’ensemble d’une communauté". Et il précise les conséquences à en tirer quant aux caractéristiques de cette religion cruelle et barbare : "Mais force reste à la loi totalitaire qui ne reconnaît aucun droit au choix personnel : seul est reconnu comme vrai musulman celui qui jeûne. L’orthodoxie d’institution - les dignitaires - et l’orthodoxie de masse - le corps communautaire - exercent là sur les comportements une double surveillance et censure." A RL, on s’est fait qualifier de racistes par les Sifaoui et consorts pour bien moins que cela !
Ailleurs on trouve encore l’article (4) d’un journaliste koweitien, "Un jour on regrettera l’Europe" qui s’effraie de ce que les musulmans veulent faire de l’Europe : "Les ghettos musulmans prolifèrent autour des grandes villes européennes, le voile s’y est banalisé, le niqab y progresse jour après jour et les mosquées y attirent plus de monde que les églises. Il y aurait quarante cinq millions de musulmans en Europe, ce qui ne serait pas si grave s’ils voulaient vraiment s’intégrer. Or beaucoup soutiennent le principe des attentats, les crimes d’honneur sont courants et les femmes se voient souvent traitées par leurs familles comme si elles étaient encore dans leur pays d’origine. C’est effrayant de voir que ceux qui ont fui les dictatures politiques, militaires ou religieuses voudraient transformer l’Europe en quelque chose qui ressemblerait à ce à quoi ils cherchaient à échapper." Dont acte. C’est lui qui le dit.
Et puis, je vous conseille cette superbe video (5), tirée d’une émission d’Arte de mardi dernier, avec une Malika Sorel et une Serap Çileli éblouissantes, alarmées, appelant à un sursaut des politiques français et allemands, parce que trop de femmes musulmanes subissent un sort infâme sous prétexte religieux. Pour la première fois, Malika Sorel, qui, habituellement, ne parle pas d’islam mais de République et d’intégration a eu un discours alarmiste "la situation se dégrade et personne n’en parle pour ne pas stigmatiser", "nous devons en parler", "les Français ont été dépossédés de leur liberté, ils ne peuvent plus dire ce qu’ils ressentent". Le duo de ces deux femmes issues de l’immigration, qui ont connu au plus intime de leur être ce que signifie être musulman pour une femme ont été véhémentes pour dénoncer les 70.000 jeunes filles qui, en France, sont menacées de mariage forcé, le nombre des violences faites aux femmes qui a augmenté de 30% entre 2004 et 2009, nombre qui , en Seine Saint Denis, est trois fois plus élevé que la moyenne nationale…
Pire encore, Serap Çileli nous a expliqué que les Allemands eux-mêmes, par effet de contagion et d’entraînement, se mettaient eux aussi à être violents avec les femmes, pour ne pas être en reste, pour paraître des hommes, dénonçant une "crise de la masculinité chez les hommes occidentaux" mais elle a aussi pointé la responsabilité des femmes elles-mêmes qui transmettent les traditions et donc la discrimination dont elles sont victimes, parce que "la liberté individuelle n’existe pas en islam,", "il n’y a que la culture de groupe, avec un fonctionnement tribal…"
Alors, la question, essentielle de Malika Sorel devrait être écrite en ligne de feu sur le front de ceux qui nous gouvernent et des gauchistes qui ne voient pas plus loin que le bout de leur nez : "Pourquoi avons-nous laissé s’installer tout ça" ? "Je l’ai vu en Algérie". "Que les politiques laissent s’installer ÇA en France, c’est la page de la honte".
Qu’ajouter à ces témoignages ? Que dire devant ces femmes au bord des larmes, désemparées et révoltées, qui n’en croient pas leur yeux, qui se sont battues toute leur vie pour échapper au sort terrible que l’islam réserve aux femmes et qui assistent, désespérées, à la résurgence de leur plus hideux cauchemar en Europe ? N’est-ce pas la preuve que les discours de Khadafi appelant à une Europe musulmane ne sont pas les propos d’un fou égaré ?
Que dire encore ? Rien. Je pense à ceux qui nous insultent, qui nous traitent de fascistes et de racistes, parce que, comme eux, comme elles, nous nous battons pour que nos enfants, nos filles notamment, échappent à l’enfer. Ils sont les complices, impardonnables, de ces crimes. Ils méritent un stage gratuit de quelques années en Iran. Histoire de comprendre… Je veux bien payer la première place d’avion du premier collaborateur qui sera condamné à l’exil.
En attendant, que faire ? Résister, combattre, de toutes nos forces, tous ensemble, sans nous laisser intimider. D’autres voix que les nôtres commencent à s’élever. Par exemple celles des députés membres du collectif la droite populaire, dont fait partie Jacques Myard, qui viennent de lancer un mot d’ordre "Restaurants Hallal, non à la ghettoïsation !".
Quant à nous, bien sûr, nous sommes plus que jamais déterminés à faire barrage, de toutes nos forces ! Rendez-vous tous samedi à 18 heures à l’apéritif républicain qui dit non à la charia. C’est vital.
Paris, place de la Bourse.
Bordeaux, attention, changement de lieu. Devant le 1, Cours Xavier Arnozan (Angle du Cours Xavier Arnozan et du Quai des Chartrons) - Et non plus place Gambetta comme prévu.
Lyon, place Bellecour, à côté de la statue de Louis XIV
Strasbourg, Parc de l’Orangerie (face au Conseil de l’Europe)
Toulon, place de la Liberté
Toulouse, Prairie des Filtres (Près du Pont-Neuf et du Cours Dillon).
Notez bien les lieux, il y a eu changement de lieu (demandé au dernier moment par la Préfecture) à Bordeaux, mais les Préfectures ont donné leur autorisation aux six manifestations.
Pour Paris, Aix, Lyon et Strasbourg (en spécifiant dans l’objet de votre message la ville concernée), Francis Néri à Strasbourg, Lucien Oulahbib à Lyon, Danièle Lopez à Toulon, Christine Tasin à Paris apero0409@yahoo.fr
Following speculation about an "inappropriate relationship" with twenty-five-year old special adviser Christopher Myers, William Hague has the support of leading Tories. David Cameron, in particular, is right behind him.
On August 28, 2010 we joined other progressive reporters who infiltrated Glenn Beck's rally in Washington in order to observe, take compromising pictures, and manufacture a plausible Current Truth, so that our sophisticated readers would know what to think.
Like many media organs, we had reserved a template page for the most ridiculous protest signs. All we needed was to photograph those signs and fill in the blanks to match our pre-approved hilarious captions. But the untrustworthy Beck preempted our planning by forbidding all signs. It forced us to revise our talking points. The new and improved Current Truth states: the lack of hand-written signs means that the rally lacked a discernible message. It can also mean that none of Beck's followers can read or write, and that these illiterate home-schoolers have never mastered the essential skills of holding a crayon or finger-painting.
~ In contrast, the signs and chants of public-school-educated counter-protesters contained deep, mutually exclusive messages, cleverly calculated to confuse their opponents and create enough cognitive dissonance to send them running away in panic, scratching their heads to the bone and rolling their eyes out of their skulls.
The most common method was to place Martin Luther King's face next to some far-fetched random statement about things he never knew existed - allegedly in order to prevent Dr. King's legacy from being hijacked or trivialized. Other tricks included waving "peace" signs and symbols while chanting "no justice, no peace," or carrying pre-printed, patriotic-looking "one nation" placards and Black separatist insignia simultaneously.
Organized by Rev. Al Sharpton, labor unions, and the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, they were a shining example of what a real grass-roots spontaneous mass protest looks like. One might even call it a very, very shining example - in part, due to the abundance of glossy mass-produced placards, cameras and other electronic devices, as well as sparkly chains and other jewelry carried by the oppressed, protesting masses.
Considering that Al Sharpton's counter-rally was in every way superior to Glenn Beck's meager showing of illiterates, this is what this report will be focused on.
Let's start in chronological order with the anti-progressive rally, whose attendants began to arrive as early as sunrise in order to reserve seats - a silly thing to do since, as you can see in this picture, only several dozen of them showed up.
"Australian" jihadist calls for the beheading of Geert Wilders
At the time of the Channel 4 Dispatches programmes entitledUndercover Mosques I remarked about one preacher whose "voice wobbled with near lust as he said the word jihad." He had an Australian accent. I now know that he is one Feiz Muhammad. Here he is this week calling for Geert Wilders to be beheaded.
This video footage was posted on a Jihadi website and is from an article in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaph. Feiz Muhammad is speaking in English with Dutch subtitles. I don't know any Dutch but it is similar enough to German and English that I can hazard an educated guess as to the meaning of the accompaning article. For example I am 90% certain that Haatprediker means preacher of hate but the many lingists who read this site will assist in due course, I am sure.
This video I have embedded below is from Youtube where Muhammad's rant was put up for our (workers of the counter jihad) easier access by a member of the edlforum, to whom I am indebted for the hat tip, and this later link, which contains a translation into English.
According an article in the dutch newspaper "de telegraaf" the Australian radical jihad-ideologist Feiz Muhammed has made an appeal on a protected website for Jihadists to behead Geert Wilders. The newspaper claims to have images on tape. The Dutch intelligent services (AIVD) also has a copy of this tape.
The leader of the PVV is compared with the devil and called a dirty politician. "We see the devilish dirt of the human kind like this dirty Dutch politician. Everyone who insults our theory, laughs about Islam and lowers it, must be killed, chop off his head!" Geert Wilders is very shocked by this serious threat. Wilders also wants to know why the AIVD and NCTB (Dutch Coordination point for Terrorism) did not tell him anything about it and wants to know what could be the consenquences. "Horrible" was his reaction Friday morning.
After reading the textual description that Hugh posted, you may be interested to see interviews with and footage of the characters, from the brave Larisa Kudziyeva to the jihadi Ali.
It Costs A Fortune To Even Attempt To Educate The "Difficult" Students
In France, everyone knows who those "difficult" students are, and what a hell they have made of so many classrooms, for so many teachers, and so many students.
The story (in French) is here:
15 350 euros pour scolariser un "dur-à-cuire"
02.09.10 | 14h49
Scolariser les élèves "les plus durs" coûtera à l'Etat le double de ce qu'il consacre aux autres enfants. Les tout nouveaux établissements de réinsertion scolaire (ERS) que l'Education nationale ouvre cette année pour scolariser ces collégiens très perturbateurs représentent un choix politique onéreux : 15 350 euros par élève, selon nos informations.
A titre de comparaison, en France, la dépense moyenne par élève ou étudiant est de 7 470 euros, soit la moitié moins. Un élève du premier degré ne "coûte" que 5 350 euros, un collégien 7 930 euros, un lycéen 10 490 euros, un étudiant 8 970 euros. Même un élève de classe préparatoire est plus "économique" : 13 880 euros.
"CELA COÛTE TRÈS CHER, C'EST VRAI"
Les ERS accueilleront "pour une durée d'au moins un an", de quinze à trente élèves âgés de 13 à 16 ans. Ces jeunes suivront une scolarité adaptée, feront du sport, seront familiarisés au monde du travail tout comme aux codes sociaux et bénéficieront d'un "encadrement très renforcé".
"Cela coûte très cher, c'est vrai", reconnaît Eric Ciotti, président UMP du conseil général des Alpes-Maritimes, qui ouvre aujourd'hui le premier ERS de France, à Tende, petite ville de la vallée des Merveilles dans le massif du Mercantour. D'autant qu'à ce coût de scolarisation s'ajoute celui des locaux. Celui de Tende représente un investissement de 3 millions d'euros pour le département. Mais, justifie M. Ciotti, "il s'agit de faire en sorte que la violence ne s'installe pas au cœur de l'école et de donner une seconde chance à ces élèves".
C'est en effet l'objectif de ces internats, dont la création a été annoncée en mai par Nicolas Sarkozy. Le chef de l'Etat en a promis une vingtaine d'ici la fin de l'année scolaire. L'idée est d'accueillir ces élèves qui "rendent la vie impossible" dans les collèges où ils sont scolarisés et "dont personne ne veut", selon les expressions de Nicolas Sarkozy.
Thilo Sarrazin, an intelligent and consequently a worried man, and until today a board member of the German central bank, has just published a book about the future of Germany, and the effect on German society of large numbers of Muslims who are breeding much faster than the indigenous non-Muslims, or than trhe non-indigenous non-Muslims. Because he praised Jews, and dared to discuss such things as the average I.Q. of Jews (whom he said Germany should welcome as immigrants) such papers as the New York Times, in their surpassing dishonesty, presented him as an anti-semite, when he is clearly a philo-semite. They did this, and put it at the beginning of their story about him, in order to confuse readers and make sure they turned against him even before they were informed about what home truths he had to say about Turks and other Muslims in Germany.
Now he has been fired from his job. And politicians are cravenly falling all over themselves as they run far, distancing themselves from him. But most people understand what he is saying, and they agree. His book will now sell very well, and he may, with his Center- Left political background, help to form and lead an intelligent, resistance to Islamization, one that will not be off-putting by hysteria and shrillness.
Those who think I may be unfair to the New York Times coverage should look at Judy Dempsey's article, with its dishonest title, and its first sentence that incorrectly describes Thilo Sarrazin's supposedly "disparaging remarks" about Jews (there were none) and Muslims, here.
Signs in Arizona warn of smuggler dangers - Washington Times
The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state. more here.
And Obama is suing the State of Arizona and reporting it (a state in his own country - is the US really his country?) to the UN Human Rights Council (which spends its days and nights condemning Israel).
Who needs borders? Let there be one world, just like John Lennon sang, nothing to live or die for, just .... nothing.
Like Eurabia - let 'em in, anyone specially those with an ideology of world conquest and world rule.
That is Obama, he wants to replace the "system," to "change" it, to "fundamentally transform" it but has nothing to replace it with but some mumbo jumbo Marxist Black Liberation Theology. Sounds like he is a nihilist. He is pathetic, but he is extremely dangerous.
To have him in charge with Iran gunning towards nukes is a calamity.
And I've heard people in England say "oh but I wouldn't feel comfortable with Sarah Palin"!
While The American Military Is Engaged In Iraq And Afghanistan Helping Muslims, In Arizona....
From The Washington Times:
The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.
The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.
They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.
"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.
"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."
He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government's "continued failure to secure our international border," saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.
In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them "an outrage" and telling President Obama to "Do your job. Secure our borders."
BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.
"We were perhaps naive in setting the signs up," he said. "The intention of the signs was to make the public aware that there is potential illegal activity here. But it was interpreted in a different light, and that was not the intent at all."
He said there should be "no sense that we have ceded the land," adding that no BLM lands in Arizona are closed to the public.
"I kind of liken it to if I were visiting a city I were not familiar with and asked a policeman if it were safe to go in a particular area," Mr. Godfrey said.
Rising violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody campaign against powerful cartels, yesterd
In contrast, the signs and chants of public-school-educated counter-protesters contained deep, mutually exclusive messages, cleverly calculated to confuse their opponents and create enough cognitive dissonance to send them running away in panic, scratching their heads to the bone and rolling their eyes out of their skulls.