From The Jerusalem Post

	In a midnight ceremony at the Kissufim checkpoint, the IDF sealed the Gaza Strip to incoming Israeli civilian traffic for a final time, marking the beginning of the end of a 38-year presence.
	A barrier was lowered bearing two red signs – one in English and one in Hebrew – stating that entry into the Gaza Strip “is forbidden by law.”

…

	Over the past few weeks, the IDF has built a large gate at the Kissufim site. At midnight the IDF, with only the smallest amount of pomp, closed it.
	For two days, until Wednesday – when evacuation forces begin removing those settlers that have remained in their homes – the gate will remain open to traffic leaving Gaza only.

…

…

The sealing of Gaza comes under the terms of the Disengagement Implementation Law. According to the law, Gush Katif and northern West Bank settlers have until Wednesday to leave their homes.

The next move belongs to Palestine. Let’s see what they do with it.

God bless Roger Simon. He comes up with the most intriguing little tidbits. One has to wonder what websites he visited to stumble upon this particular morsel.

I will be the first to admit that I’ve wondered sometimes what Saudi women wear while swimming(you deal with your fantasy life, I’ll deal with mine). Hard as I tried, I couldn’t envision anything but large, floating tents that you swam under and they somehow moved along with you. Even google was no help on the subject, though that was some time ago; perhaps Saudi swimsuits are a seasonal thing, thus allowing Roger to find this catalogue offering in August.

So here she is, Ms. Wahhibi at the seashore. The hotel pool? As one of Roger’s commenters said, this may be why Arab women don’t win medals at the Olympic swim meets. He’s on to something there.

On the other hand, this woman is never going to get skin cancer from too much exposure to the sun. She might die of heat stroke decked out in all that gear, but she’ll die with nothing showing.

Dymphna’s aunt was a Franciscan sister for sixty years and some of Celine’s time was spent as the Mother Superior of a small convent in Tybee Beach, Georgia. Believe me, they never got that covered up. In fact, compared to this woman, they were downright licentious in their black, one-piece, longish boxer-shorts type bathing suits and their white latex bathing caps. But from a distance they passed for your regular, Western-type woman out for a swim.

If this is a must-have for your late summer wardrobe — say for Labor Day at the old swimming hole — go here. You have a choice of the six colors shown, but it doesn’t say if the whole ensemble includes the flip-flops. Surely flip-flops are infidel fashion? Toes are a real turn on for some men, but maybe that doesn’t apply to Wahhabis.

Come to think of it, sooo much of what passes for normal behavior in the 21st century doesn’t apply to Wahhabis that the world has taken to looking on in bemused horror at their attempts to meld their beliefs and their contact with modernity. This particular effort is higher on the bemusement scale than, say, their current project of bulldozing Mecca.

UPDATE: Cutler’s Yankee Station has an eerie comparison of the swimsuit photo with another picture, this one from the last presidential campaign. As Malvolio says, “some have greatness thrust upon them.”

 
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows the concept of taqiyya. It’s Arabic, and basically it means “lie like a rug and make a fool of your opponent while you go ahead and do what you say you’re not doing.” It’s how Muslims negotiate and it has Mohammed’s blessing. Prevarication in the name of Islam is considered lawful and legal and even to be admired. How do you think Mohammed managed his initial victories and the capture of Medina via slaughter without setting up his victims first with an “agreement”?

So does this latest treachery by the Iranians surprise anyone except the useful idiots who sat at the negotiating table with them?—

	An Iranian foreign policy official has boasted that the regime bought extra time over its stalled negotiations with Europe to complete a uranium conversion plant.
	In comments that will infuriate EU diplomats, Hosein Musavian said that Teheran took advantage of the nine months of talks, which collapsed last week, to finish work at its Isfahan enrichment facility.

Mr. Musavian fairly gloated over his smooth lies:

	Thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year in which we completed the [project] in Isfahan,” he told an Iranian television interviewer.
	Mr Musavian also claimed that work on nuclear centrifuges at a plant at Natanz, which was kept secret until Iran’s exiled opposition revealed its existence in 2002, progressed during the negotiations.
	“We needed six to 12 months to complete the work on the centrifuges,” said Mr Musavian, chairman of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council’s foreign policy committee. He made his remarks on August 4 – two days before Iran’s foreign ministry rejected the European Union offer of incentives to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.

The Telegraph noted that the United States was always pessimistic about the chances for success of the negotiations…

Yesterday President George W Bush refused to rule out using military force to press Iran into giving up its nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is a front for weapons-making. “All options are on the table,” Mr Bush told Israeli television.

What do those Euro-duds need to convince them they are dealing with Muslims and that Muslims lie, lie, lie? And they hedge, prevaricate, stall and circumvent. It’s all legal, it’s all in the Koran.

What they can’t do in this country is beat around the Bush. George has their number. Let’s hope he’s willing to play it.

 
Be patient. It will take awhile to establish these links. Just about as long as it took the link between smoking and lung cancer to be admitted, accepted, and then established as fact. Once upon a time, a researcher could get fired for finding a link between lung cancer and smoking. Remember the days when doctors endorsed Luckies? Hey, I’m old enough to remember smoking in my living room with our family doctor when he came by on a house call to see my ailing son. We both smoked in front of this child who was sick with a respiratory ailment.

But times have changed because our available information has changed. From universal tobacco smoke wherever you went, smoking is now rated right up there with social disease. Just to take a random example, what do you want to bet that they frown on smoking at NARAL meetings while touting the moral neutrality of partial birth abortion? Aside from a few furtive hold-outs, cigarettes are becoming the albatross only of the underclasses.

Meanwhile, here’s a news report from the Brussels Journal. Warning: the material is bizarre, inhuman and painful to read.

It seems that Sabine H., a thirty nine year old woman has had nine children in the last twenty years. Or rather, nine babies, since they never grew up. After each birth she killed the baby and buried it in a flower pot. The news report doesn’t say whether or not she used a fresh flowerpot for each baby but for some strange, no doubt hormonally-driven reason, I want each baby to have had his very own flowerpot.

Of course, eveyone is shocked, shocked I tell you. The interior minister announced that everyone must ask themselves how this “unbeleivable crime remained hidden all these years.” I’m sure he meant to say “crimes” since there were nine of them. Then, upon reflection, Mr. Schoenbohm suggested that “one of the causes of this horrible crime might have been the “proletarisation” of the former GDR.”

You see, the GDR was East Germany, and as we all know East Germany was a Communist dictatatoship. Perhaps, the interior minister (a man with higher political ambitions) suggested, it was living in such an amoral climate that had been the root cause of Sabine H.’s murders and flower pot burials:

Schoenbohm had opined that the compulsory collectivisation of farms 50 years ago in the largely rural state had led people to lose their sense of personal responsibility, which in turn had led to a decline of moral values in society. “This is one of the fundamental reasons for both the disregard of and the readiness to resort to violence,” he said, blaming communism and the “deliberate proletarisation” of the country by the former SED regime.

You can bet that this kind of moral conjecture brought the wrath of…well, not of God, perhaps, but the wrath of the German politicos, which is probably worse.

Schoenbohm was immediately criticised by the German Left Party (the “post-communist” successor to the SED), the Greens, the Socialist SPD, and the Liberal FDP, while even his own party leader Angela Merkel called him to account.

There were calls for his resignation and indignant claims that he had insulted East Germans. The Speaker of the German Parliament, a socialist, angrily retorted that he was not going to accept any blame that saw the GDR as “the root of all evil.”

However, as the Brussels Journal points out, the interior minister has hit a sensitive nerve.

A number of German academics and intellectuals, however, stress that Schoenbohm’s explanation should not be rejected out of hand. Crime expert Christian Pfeiffer pointed out that according to official statistics the risk of being killed by their parents is three times as high for children in East-Germany as for those in West-Germany. The historian Hubertus Knabe, who researched the archives of the former East-German secret police Stasi, said Germans ought to reflect on the causes of Sabine H.’s behaviour, though he stressed that obviously not all East-Germans are child murderers.

And then the Brussels Journal makes its case, here:

Sabine H’s case, though horrendous in its scope, is not an isolated one. Over the past years there were 17 cases of child murder in East-Germany, with a total of over more than 40 victims.

Further, the author proposes an analogy, one which you will hear more of in the coming years re various acts and their unintended consequences both for the actor and for the larger community in which she lives:

The situation can be compared to that of a smoker who is dying of lung cancer after having smoked two packets of cigarettes a day for 30 years, and who claims that his cancer has nothing to do with his smoking habits, ignoring the fact that thousands of heavy smokers develop lung cancer.

In a final entreaty to reason, they plead for recognition of the obvious:

Surely the fact that the loss of morals due to communism may have something to do with this spectacular rate of infanticide must be taken into consideration. That socialists and post-communists alike feel uncomfortable about this is understandable, but one wonders why Angela Merkel should call a party member to account for stating the obvious, namely that a regime that robs people of their sense of personal responsibility also robs society of its moral values.

Good summation of this moral conflict and self-questioning, but the real parsing of the problem was made in the beginning, by the interior minister:

…the compulsory collectivisation of farms 50 years ago in the largely rural state had led people to lose their sense of personal responsibility, which in turn had led to a decline of moral values in society.

In other words, the right to private property is the source of liberty. Frédéric Bastiat said it was the primary source of liberty and was God-given. Where men take it away by force, they also rip asunder and eventually cause to atrophy a multi-layered, dense and highly contexted individual morality. Morals are not about being good. They are body-based, visceral understandings of how the world operates and on what it hinges. Morality is the deep understanding that all actions have consequences and that we can never know ahead of time absolutely every ramification of our behaviors.

Socialism in all its forms destroys the very idea of personal responsibility, leaving in its place a vapid and vacuous sense of license.

What a gyp.

 
Welcome a new friend to the blogosphere! Longtime Gates of Vienna commenter Krishna Kirti has started his own blog, Indus Valley Rising, in which he will examine the issues of the Great Islamic Jihad from its Hindu front. A sample:

I named this blog Indus Valley Rising because India is gradually becoming a world power. Of all the other civilizations that are rising in the World, I think it is in the best interests of the world–particularly the West as well as India, of course–that India prevails over others such as China to its East and Islam from its innards to the West. India retains an historical and linguistic kinship with Britain and the rest of the Anglosphere, so from a purely political and cultural point of view the rise of India as a super-power is in the best interests of the West. The West does not want China nor Islam to get substantially more powerful than they are. That will be a mutual disaster for both the West and India. In order to revive culture and peace in the world, the depopulating West is unlikely to do it without the help of a friendly civilization that has still retained the idea of a future worth creating. I believe that civilization to be centered within India, and that civilization is the Hindu civilization.

It has long been my assertion that Hinduism is compatible with the Judaeo-Christian world, and that India is a natural ally with the West in its confrontation with the Third Wave of the Great Islamic Jihad. It seems that Krishna Kirti agrees.

Keep an eye on his blog.

 
So much for Tancredo’s option. In a short while there won’t be anything to nuke. The Saudis, those Wahhabist preservers of antiquities, are in the process of reducing thousands of years of antiquities to rubble. Remember when their Afghan Taleban adherents blew up the Buddhist statues near Bamiyan? Same general principle.

Islam is a hard concept to get your mind around, but the Wahhabi version is the strangest of them all. Had it not been for petroleum, we’d never have heard of their austere nihilism. They could be dismantling Mecca and Medina and we’d shrug and go about our business. Unfortunately we get to witness this pathological destruction up close.

How must it feel for other Muslims, those who care deeply about their pilgrimages to the Holy Places, to have these sites eradicated in the name of some punitive and destructive theology that abhors history, reverence for the past, and love of place?

Writing in the Independent (subscription required) Daniel Howden describes the unprecedented destruction of a holy place by its own people:

	Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.
	Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.
	Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

According to Sami Angawi, an expert on regional Islamic architecture, the last days of Mecca and Medina are imminent. There are fewer than twenty structures left that date back to Mohammed’s time, and those which remain are set to be bulldozed, too.

This strange Wahhabi visionary annihilation in the name of holiness descended on Saudi Arabia with the victory of the al- Saud tribe in the 1920’s. They are fanatics — as we have witnessed in their clinging to slavery, the slaughter of those who fail to adhere to the Wahhabi tenets, and their world-wide dissemination of money to fund the teaching of Wahabbi Islam from Afghanistan to Indiana.

Thus they destroy their history in order to prevent idolatry. Pilgrims making their way to Mecca or Medina might unwittingly worship the place and not the god, Allah. From this theological mistake could arise polytheism, tolerance, and who knows what else?

So Medina and Mecca must go.

As John R. Bradley notes in his new book Saudi Arabia Exposed, the practice of idolatry in the kingdom remains, in principle at least, punishable by beheading. And Bradley also points out this same literalism mandates that advertising posters can and need to be altered. The walls of Jeddah are adorned with ads featuring people missing an eye or with a foot painted over. These “deliberate imperfections” are the most glaring sign of an orthodoxy that tolerates nothing which fosters adulation of the graven image. Nothing can, or can be seen to, interfere with a person’s devotion to Allah.

The Wahhabi answer to the threat of history is a bulldozer and concrete.

For once, though, this is not America’s problem. It is an Islamic problem. What’s your guess as to how it will be solved?

Hat tip to Jeff in the comments section of the Lebanese Political Journal blog

 
After their recent meeting in Laos, the ASEAN foreign ministers issued a Joint Communiqué (via the Vietnam News Agency):

1. We, the Foreign Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), met formally on 26 July 2005 in Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), for the first time since the Vientiane Action Programme (VAP), the successor to the Ha Noi Plan of Action (HPA); the ASEAN Security Community (ASC) Plan of Action; and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) Plan of Action were adopted at the 10th ASEAN Summit in November 2004 in Vientiane. It was also the first time that Lao PDR hosted our regular annual meeting where we reviewed regional and international political, security, and economic developments, and intra and extra-ASEAN cooperation, including cooperation with our Dialogue Partners as well as wide- ranging issues as we move towards the establishment of an ASEAN Community in 2020 as envisioned in the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II) adopted in October 2003 in Bali, Indonesia.

And so it goes, with 94 more numbered items of diplospeak boilerplate. But an alert and dedicated reader might find his way to the “Counter-Terrorism” section and item #20:

20. We reiterated our strong condemnation of all acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and emphasised the need to address the root causes of terrorism. We continue to reject any attempt to associate terrorism with any race, region, nationality or ethnic group. In this context, we are fully committed to enhance our cooperative efforts to combat international terrorism at national, regional, and international levels. We looked forward to continuing our determination to enhance coordination and cooperation with the international community in combating international terrorism. We believe this will ensure peace and stability, create an environment conducive to our efforts to attain sustainable development, progress and prosperity in ASEAN. We also reaffirmed that the fight against terrorism should be conducted in accordance with our obligations under international law and in respect of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

Let’s engage in a little counter-terrorism fisking here.

…strong condemnation of all acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations…

This is the little door that usually opens into “the terrorism practiced by the Zionist entity on our Palestinian brothers” routine. It is also popular for introducing “state terrorism as practiced by America”.

… need to address the root causes of terrorism.

Ah, yes, we know this one. Time to hand out the Yankee dollars to those poor starving Saudis; otherwise they might blow themselves up in Sydney or Taipei.

We continue to reject any attempt to associate terrorism with any race, region, nationality or ethnic group.

Why would that be? Is there some race, region, nationality, or ethnic group that predominantly commits terrorism is the 21st century?And if you disregard that group, is there any terrorism being committed in the world? Oh, yes, those vicious Norwegian Lutheran suicide bombers…

We believe this will ensure peace and stability, create an environment conducive to our efforts to attain sustainable development, progress and prosperity in ASEAN.

“Sustainable development” is a popular code-phrase for burdening private enterprise with elaborate environmental regulation and shaking down corporations so that they cut the green NGOs in on a slice of the pie. Cue the UN one-world music…

But the most interesting thing about this is a textual variant. The full communiqué excerpted above is from the Vietnam News Agency, but excerpts posted in other sources differ on the wording. The Kazakh Information Agency and the Maylaysian National News Agency both agree that

“several of the ministers emphasised the importance of avoiding the identification of terrorism with any particular religion or ethnic group or nationality.” [emphasis added]

What religion might that be? Perhaps it is The Religion That Must Not Be Named. Presumably also The Religion of Peace.

 
Guess what? Germany thinks it ought to have a Muslim public holiday. Here’s the idea:

“A substantial fraction of Germany’s government — and if polls are to be believed, the German people — believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists.”

Does this seem familiar? Oh, yeah… now it comes back:

Jack:	(gingerly moving Giant’s thumb from his own Adam’s apple) Giant, sir, I was thinking. If you don’t eat me (speaking fast and enthusiastically), why I could go back down the beanstalk and get the King to make you a saint. They’d canonize you and everything. You’d be known in the whole kingdom as “Saint Giant.” Or…wait a minute (strking thoughtful pose while bunched in Jack’s fist), how does “Giant, the Saint” sound? That’s a little more cool, huh? What do you say? Think of relics, processions, statues…“Giant, the Great” — how’s that? Better?
Giant:	Eh… Saint? Hmm. Let’s talk about it after dinner… heh.
	Chomping sound off camera… Fade to black.

Hat tip: Oh, come on. How do you hat tip Mark Steyn — buy him a mink baseball cap?

So you complain about American politics? Hey, try Pakistan.

A man running for office there offered his eleven year old daughter as a bribe to his opponent in order to induce him to stand down. This father wanted to run unopposed for election as administrator in a small town a hundred miles or so north of Islamabad.

	“He wished to get elected unopposed … that’s why he also paid him (Noor) Pakistani Rs.200,000 ($3,358),” the official told the newspaper.
	In Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal regions and rural Punjab province, girls are also given away in marriage in the settlement of disputes though the custom has been declared illegal by the judiciary.
	Meanwhile, tribal elders and politicians have barred women from contesting the elections in some conservative districts of NWFP.
	“It doesn’t suit our traditions and culture,” Ayaz Khan, a provincial cabinet minister, said after signing an agreement banning women’s participation in elections as candidate.

Of course it doesn’t “suit” their traditions. Their traditions are tribal, primitive, and fourth world. Women don’t run for office in the fourth world, they run for their lives.

It is difficult not to make comparisons with some of the shenanigans that go on amongst the Progressives in this country. Now there’s a tribal group for you. One has only to watch the head of the DNC to understand primitive and regressed.

But this story from Pakistan this might explain the New York Times bizzare background check on John Roberts’ children. Perhaps they thought he was going to offer one of them in exchange for a Supreme Court position? Great minds think alike and all that.

It is difficult not to make comparisons, but not impossible. In fact, it’s fun.

Hat tip: My Pet Jawa

 
The Sanskrit word dharma appears frequently in Hindu and Buddhist devotional writing, but its meaning is hard to pin down. Here is a list of definitions culled at random from the internet:

1. A divinely ordained code of proper conduct.

2. From the Sanskrit – dhar for ‘hold’, ‘uphold’. There are involved entries for its meaning amongst Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists.

3. Righteousness, justice, law, duty.

4. Right action, truth in action, righteousness, morality, virtue.

5. a) The teachings of the Buddhas (generally capitalized in English); b) duty, law, doctrine; c) things, events, phenomena, everything.

The last one is the real clincher: “everything”. But, generalizing from the different sources, the meaning of “dharma” might be approximated by “religious duty”. It does not necessarily consist of actions required by the believer’s religion. Like Christian charity, it is the behavior which flows naturally when one’s religious faith is strongly and sincerely held.

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who is on the road to enlightenment, but remains in the world until all the others around him have also awakened. Thus, all the actions he performs while he remains in samsara (the cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth) constitute dharma. Dharma is simply what an enlightened person does.

The analogue in Christianity might be “service” or “ministry”. Once again, here are some definitions of “ministry” culled from the Web:

1. Gospel-inspired activity (generally referring to an individual rather than a group), with an emphasis on the attitude and approach brought to it.

2. A service recognized, approved, and institutionalized by the Church for the [building] up of the Body of Christ.

3. Service to God rendered by the church and by individuals through the power of the Holy Spirit. All the faithful participate in ministry by virtue of their baptism.

4. Ministry is the use of a person’s gifts and talents, time and energy, in the service of others. It involves the exercise of roles designated by the Church to fulfil its mission in different works of service, such as in worship, teaching, leadership, the sacraments, welfare, and stewardship.

One of the longstanding arguments within Christianity concerns “salvation though works” versus “salvation through faith”. The former asserts that it is the performance of his religious duty, i.e. his ministry, which saves a man’s soul. But the latter insists that salvation occurs by the grace of God via the Holy Spirit, and ministry is simply what a spirit-filled Christian does.

So what would be the analogy in Islam? What word best describes the Muslim’s religious duty? Browsing the internet turns up the following definitions of the word jihad:

1. Arabic for “Holy war”, that is, a war based on the clash of ideologies.

2. The struggle to establish the law of God on earth, often interpreted to mean holy war.

3. Mostly used in Muslim writing to denote ‘holy war.’ However, in mystical literature, this term was interpreted in its root sense of ‘exertion’ and came to mean an inner struggle for purification.

4. From the verb jahada, to struggle. Effort or striving in God’s path. When it refers to the individual effort to conquer himself or passions, it is called greater jihad. When it refers to the communal effort at a defensive war against the enemies of Islam, then it is called lesser jihad. A person who wages jihad is called a mujahid.

5. A striving for perfection, frequently used within Islam. Usually, the term refers to an internal struggle that a person has with their imperfections. The term is also used to refer to a defensive war. Some radical Fundamentalist Muslims and the Western media often interpret the term as a synonym for an aggressive “holy war.”

6. Is an Arabic word that means “striving in the way of God.” This striving can take a number of forms, including the daily inner struggle to be a better person. However, jihad is often used to refer to an armed struggle fought in defense of Islam.

7. (Arabic): Islamic holy war Just for laughs, go check out the MSA version, which, by the way, is a form of taqiyya*. Jihad is primarily the offensive spread of Islam and/or expansion of its territorial borders through violent force of arms. This is called jihad al mubadahah (offensive jihad). It is sanctioned in the Qur’an*, in the hadith*, and in Islamic law. It is utilized when the peaceful offer of conversion to Islam is refused. Jihad is incumbent on all able-bodied Muslims, and to die in jihad as a shahid*, fighting the infidels in God’s name, is regarded as the highest honor.

Notice the dhimmified definitions from Religious Tolerance and PBS (#5 and #6), which repeat the taqiyya that jihad prescribes a defensive war only, and that anything else is a Western “misinterpretation”. Somehow, in crashing jetliners into the Twin Towers, Islam was only defending itself.

In any case, jihad is the religious duty of every faithful Muslim. The Buddhist or the Hindu or the Christian is compelled by his faith to perform good works, but the Muslim is required to take up the sword and shed the blood of unbelievers for the sake of his faith.

It would be an interesting exercise in comparative religion to determine how the different faiths arrived at their diverse conceptions of what sacred duty entails. Islam arose in a harsh and unforgiving desert culture, and so became a harsh and unforgiving religion. Yet Judaism arose in almost the same environment, and from it came Christianity. Christianity and Buddhism flowered in completely different environments, and yet arrived at the idea of compassion as the duty of the faithful.

One presumes that new converts are drawn to Hinduism or Christianity if their hearts are already inclined towards compassion, whereas Islam would have more appeal for the disaffected, the brutalized, and the marginalized. It is no surprise that Muslim converts in America are made more readily in prison than anywhere else.

Jihad is the natural behavior flowing from the faithful of Islam. It is simply what a good Muslim does.

 
If you’re looking for self-immolation — not to mention self-parody — what better place to go than academia? And if you want the ultimate flagellation, go north, all the way across the border into the Land of the Loons.

Now that Tony Blair and Londoners seem to be getting a backbone, the University of Toronto has decided to sub for them. According to The Globe and Mail the law school has hired two professors to teach…to teach Shar’ia Law. According to the acting dean of the law school this is “part of a push for a more global focus that students are embracing.” Give.me.a.break. Can you hear the breathless quality of the dean’s statement?

“The early indications are that students are going to be beating down the doors, and it’s a testament to the timeliness of it, with Islamic fundamentalism in the news abroad and of course the sharia debate in Ontario just this last year bringing these issues close to home,” Mr. Sossin says.

Poor Canada. Stupid law school.

However, there’s hope. Canada has its own International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada, and they’re agin it. Big time. Not only that, but the ICASC is supported by the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. I’ll bet they are! Who knows better than Muslim women what a crock Shar’ia Law is? Inspired by a misogynist and viciously enforced by some of history’s truly evil bigots, Shar’ia is not about law, it’s about obedience. What part of submission do those law students need to understand?

If they’re really going to go through with this farce, then the Code of Hammurabi ought to be a prerequisite for the Shar’ia classes. At least the students will get some real “global focus.”

Meanwhile, Ontario is still grappling with their Shar’ia Court. Some naked emperor was assigned to do a study and he came up with the brilliant idea that “why not…as long as you provide safeguards for the women and children…” No, I’m not making that up. Here’s the summation by the Globe:

Marion Boyd, a former Ontario cabinet minister who works as a mediator, spent six months researching the issue before recommending that religious law keep a place in family arbitration as long as safeguards are built in to protect women and children.

Wanting to reassure the kaffir that Shar’ia Law is on the up and up, one of the University of Toronto Law School’s new hires had this to say:

	The Boyd solution can work, according to Mr. Emon, who believes Islamic law is more open to interpretation than many realize…
	“Islamic law is not just about these rules about cutting hands off thieves or discriminating against women. It’s a living tradition in which jurists are trying to embrace and engage in active acts of interpretation,” Mr. Emon says.

Well, that’s a relief. Aren’t you feeling better knowing that Islamic law is not just about cutting off hands or stoning women? It also has some interesting provisions for divorce, not to mention one-day convenience marriages so you don’t have to violate Islamic law by engaging in adulterous behavior. In fact, you can be nice and pay an agreed-upon sum to your comfort wife.

Look on the bright side: if this guy is teaching he’s less likely to be out bombing things. Just squint your eyes until you can see this correctly.

Hat tip: Eurabia Update

 
The divide between Right and Left in this country is becoming a chasm. It is a divide across the spectrum of problems facing the country as we gear up to confront what is to be done about terrorism, immigration, the hazards of our poorly policed borders, and the immense work of integrating functional new citizens into our culture.

The Left ought to be closed for repairs. All their wonderful theories, put into practice to address unfairness and inequality, have metastasized into monsters which they can no longer treat, remove, or contain. Persevering on, they draw up proposals full of outmoded solutions to address their invented “issues.” Meanwhile the band plays on as they ignore the failed results of their previous bungled attempts at social and economic engineering.

The Left never met a difficulty they couldn’t transform into an eternal entitlement or a national threat.

The Left is guilds and unions and tenure. It is playing by rules that were made up by children in the 1960’s — children led by anarchists and charlatans from the wastelands of the 1930’s. Those overgrown kids who aren’t dead due to overindulgence or self-inflicted wounds are riding the rails explaining why they weren’t wrong and why this is Vietnam redux.

Due to its many failures, the Left has become exquisitely sensitive. This is the result of their ongoing experience of incompetence. To fail repeatedly is to live in shame and the only rememdy is to isolate with others of similar background. Shame, in turn, dulls curiosity and leaves one less open to the novel or the untried. The capacity for uncertainty atrophies. It is here you can spot the similarity they have with terrorists and other borderless people.

Thus, weaving a thin veneeer of “inclusiveness” the Left makes the rules for membership within its ivoried towers all the more stringent, narrow and dogmatic. Truth is not reality-based. Rather, what is true is what feels right. The belief in victimization, the certainty of being superior due to one’s uniqueness, and fidelity to the concept of Utopia are all necessary qualifications for membership.

The Left does not act; it thinks and then it acts against. Absolute in its certainty about global warming and the industries that it claims promote catastrophe, the Left distrusts business, especially successful, large corporations. Walmart is evil. The military is primitive; it chews up and spits out minorities and the marginalized. Rumsfeld is evil. Government is despicable except when addressing social or economic unfairness or raising the necessary monies to do so.

Peace is lack of conflict; peace is “understanding.” Pursuing peace would never entail vigorous action in the face of aggression. In fact, aggression — except in mass demonstrations that lead to nothing but narcissistic catharsis — is among the mortal sins of the Left. And so Bush is evil. Passive aggression, on the other hand, is cool and acceptable. Lying down in front of a tank, for instance, is an act worthy of canonization. Ghandi would curl his lip at their self-indulgent histrionics.

Above all, the Left is afraid. It preached a global famine that failed to materialize. Nuclear Holocaust was a poison fruit nurtured for decades only to vaporize like a city in one of the prevailing “morning-after” disaster stories. Even the Population Bomb proved to be a dud. And the prediction of the end of fossil fuels timed to coincide with the millenium, as intoned by Jimmy Carter? That myth ran out of gas, too. Every piece of dogma that the Club of Rome, the Greens, and the Leftist nay-sayers repeated to the point of insensibility — every page is at the bottom of the canary cage, including the benefits society would reap from giving money to single mothers.

But now the most beloved of all their myths is disintegrating. Women’s bodies are not their own. They thought they were, they wanted this to be so, and thus because it felt right, it was true. “Anatomy is destiny” was an evil Freudian lie. Freedom to choose; abortion on demand; I have my rights: what could be more American, more feminist? And in that, they are absolutely correct. We are all free to choose.

However, there is a caveat and it is usually written in fine print somewhere in the middle of the page. Choose what you will, but always look under the bed for the corollaries. Choices have consequences.

One of the consequences of abortion is an increased risk of breast cancer. The highest risk groups are girls 18 and under and women over 30. In each category, where there is a family history of breast cancer, the increase in risk of breast cancer for these two groups is more than 100 %.

Oops–[NOTE and hat tip to the mathematically literate: this is a one hundred percent increase in risk. There will be an updated post later outlining the actual risk table for young girls with the BRCA gene who have never carried a pregnancy to term and who undergo abortion]. Meanwhile, certain subsets of the female population who have electively interrupted abortions have an increased risk more than two hundred per cent higher than the female population at large. Thus, thank you Shrinkwrapped and Solomon2, et al. for the needed correction in language and understanding.

How does the Left confront this disturbing news? Suppression. Refusing to look at it or to let others know about it. Denial is one of the strongest of the defenses used by this group to manage unpleasant truths. And since the gatekeepers of the media are largely Leftists, the information simply doesn’t see the light of day. Or it is “refuted” by large segments of the abortion industry and the breast cancer business.

In many doctors’opinions the media cover-up and silence in the face of the consequences of abortion is going to have far-reaching effects on the cohort of boomers who have widely used and promulgated abortion as a “right” — almost as a holy obligation to the creed of the unfetttered and free.

One scientist who questions this cover-up has the credentials to do so. Joel Brind, Ph.D., is a professor of human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York and president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. He has taken on the politically correct received opinions of the feminist abortion/breast cancer consortium.

Brind dismisses two highly-publicized sources which deny any ABC connection. One is a study by Oxford University scientists published by the Lancet in 2004; the other is the stand the National Cancer Institute has taken on the issue. Both the study and NCI make strong claims for the contention that there is no link between abortion and an increased risk for breast cancer.

Wrong, says Brind:

	“The trouble is, to accept this conclusion, one needs to dismiss almost half a century’s worth of data which do show a significant link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer…”
	“[D]enial of the ABC link has become the party line of all major governmental agencies (including the World Health Organization), mainstream medical associations (including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) and the most prestigious medical journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine).”

Brind presents his refutation with a list of studies, beginning with one in Japan in 1957 which found a threefold increase in breast cancer in those women who had had abortions. In 1979, the World Health Organization sponsored a Harvard study, the results of which showed, in perfect Science-speak, a disturbing trend “in the direction which suggested increased risk associated with abortion – contrary to the reduction in risk with full-term births.”

The WHO Bulletin was ignored — eventually even by WHO itself. So was a subsequent study two years later at the University of Southern California. Here, women who had an abortion before carrying a child to term increased their risk of breast cancer by 2.4 fold over those women who did not abort.

Brind has further points to make, points we didn’t hear — and won’t hear if the mandarins in charge of the abortion clinics continue to hold sway:

	Brind points out that the connection went beyond statistics. Scientists were conducting laboratory research on reproductive endocrinology. They documented the incredible rise of estrogen and progesterone in the first trimester of pregnancy. Further, they studied the short-lived rise of these same hormones in spontaneous abortions (miscarriages). According to Brind, these findings explained why miscarriage did not correlate with an increased risk of breast cancer: During the 1980s and 1990s, Brind asserts that study after study – in Japan, Europe and the U.S. – continued to report significant increased breast cancer risk in women who had an induced abortion.
	“By 1994, six epidemiological studies out of seven in the United States, on women of both black and white ethnicity, had reported increased risk with induced abortion,” he writes.
	Then in 1994, Janet Daling and colleagues of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle published a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showing a 50 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer among women who had chosen abortion. It also showed an increase of more than 100 percent for women who had an abortion prior to the age of 18 or after age 30. The risk was compounded for those who had family histories of breast cancer.

So what happened? Were we out of the room when the MSM was blasting the headlines? Did we not buy the newspaper that year? Did we let our Ms. magazine subscription expire? Well…not exactly. According to Brind when the study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the editor took the unusual step of sandbagging the study. Dr. Lynn Rosenberg, a radical supporter of abortion on demand for minors said, among other things, that:

“… the overall results as well as the particulars are far from conclusive, and it is difficult to see how they will be informative to the public.” Rosenberg even speculated the study may have been faulty because of “reporting bias” that generated false positive results.

Brind warns that the only remedy for the cover-up, denial, and downright dissembling of the abortion industry and the breast cancer business is an independent media. Without that the public will never be allowed to know about the significant and increasing evidence piling up against abortion as a healthy choice, now or ever. There will be no opportunity to learn of the links between abortion and subsequent premature births in later pregnancies, not to mention the frequent occurrence of cerebral palsy in these babies. Brind again:

“Many adjectives may be used to properly describe induced abortion, but ‘safe’ is assuredly not one of them,” he concludes. “The day will surely come when this is common knowledge, and for every day sooner that this happens, thousands of lives may be saved.”

This is America, after all, so we know the likely ending. Litigation. Lawsuits over and over again until the abortion industry finally throws in the bankruptcy towel. To get the flavor of the story, think tobacco companies.

Meanwhile, here is a rent in the curtain: in Portland, Oregon, a clinic settled out of court rather than face the publicity a trial would have brought to bear on current abortion practices. The young woman whose case was heard in January 2005, was fifteen at the time of her abortion; she had indicated on her medical history that there was breast cancer in her family. No one ever gave her any information about the ABC link. Her chances — i.e, her increased risk –of getting breast cancer went up to the point that she will no doubt choose to do what many women in her situation are doing: undergo elective double mastectomy and an oophrectomy to avoid cancer of her reproductive organs. How’s that for a future at the age of 18?

Another Utopian dream — woman freed of her anatomic destiny — is going to vanish in death and indignity. In fact, given their penchant for finding victims and bad news, this twist in the tale is particularly ironic for the believers themselves.

But for as long as they continue their death grip on the media, for that long more women will be set up to die for someone else’s dogma. Eventually, though, Roe v. Wade will go the way of Dred Scott and Mao’s Little Red Book. It will be made irrelevant by reality.

The old bugaboo of the Left always has been reality.

The Council Winners are, as usual, deserving of their success. Problem is, so much of what is presented for consideration each week is thought-provoking and intelligent. How does a person choose? By favorite subject? By excellence of of style? By sheer effort? It’s enough to make a voter lie down with a cool cloth on her forehead…

So anyway, this week’s winners:

First place in the council section went to Right Wing Nuthouse for his treatment of the coming avian flu epidemic. Or as he so aptly puts it, The Coming Catastrophe.

	The reason Bird Flu has flared up in Asia is because of the close proximity of people and birds. This closeness has been seen throughout history as a prerequisite for viruses making the jump from animals to humans.
	What has international health officials especially worried is that this particular flu’s mortality rate doesn’t moderate once it makes the jump to humans. Where the disease might have a mortality rate of 70% in birds, that number would be expected to fall precipitously once making the jump to humans, dropping to less than 10%. The reason is the simple evolutionary strategy of the bug. In order to survive it must keep infecting humans. To do that, it has to keep the host alive long enough to infect someone else. This gives our own body’s defenses time to marshall its immune forces to do battle with the invader.
	However, this strain of Bird Flu has shown a 34% mortality rate. And while there’s a chance that figure will go down in any pandemic, compared to the 1-3% mortality of ordinary flu worldwide the numbers would still be catastrophic.
	As for the economic effects, there would not be a parallel in American history. The reason goes to the heart of what globalization means to our economy and how economic activity in the United States is truly the engine that drives the economies of the world.
	If the kinds of draconian quarantine measures contemplated by the government were initiated, the economy would deflate like a punctured balloon.

On my to-do list this week? Tami-flu and bottled water plus several cases of white beans or similar C-rations. We have a well. I wonder if I ought to look into generators? It’s a thought.

The Counterterrorism Blog was first in the non-council category with The American Islamic Leaders’ “Fatwa” is Bogus:

American Islamic leaders held a press conference to announce a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against “terrorism and extremism.” … (CAIR) organized the press conference, stating that several major U.S. Muslim groups endorsed the fatwa.

In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad… it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate.

For those who aren’t familiar with the mind-set described here, there’s an Arabic word you need to learn: “taqiyya.” If you google it, you’ll get thousands of hits and a painful education in Islamic treachery. It’s disturbing.

So those were the winners. But that is not to say the contenders weren’t amazing. E-claire didn’t make it this week, but her post was — to me — fall-down hilarious. It’s her “tootise from the country” pose and prose that makes me laugh so hard. Simple, indeed. That woman has a steel-trap mind.

And The Glittering Eye has a stunning idea:

So here’s what I propose: let’s see if we can come up with the critical success factors for a terrorist attack on the United States. The level of abstraction we’re seeking is something between the level that Vanderleun went after (quantities of explosives, maps of the subway, etc.) and the level that the root causes discussions have taken (poverty, human nature, the will of God). We’re only looking for real critical success factors—factors that are really necessary.

Let’s see: you could go over to The Education Wonks and get yourself really mad over the freedom of speech problems teachers have. Remember the good old days when female teachers weren’t allowed to marry and when they did, they had to retire? Sounds like Draconia is back: teachers who blog can bring the wrath of parents down on their heads. Gimme a break.

Speaking of education, if you want to learn about enumerated rights, a la the Constitution, wander over to New World Man:

Ed writes that “the entire purpose of the bill of rights was to protect liberty from democracy – to insure that no majority, no matter how large, could violate the rights of individuals.” I think the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect democracy from democracy — most every provision operates to guarantee access to the political process against hamfisted majorities. It’s when “majority” and “democracy” become dirty words that we forget those are the things that are, at the root of the constitution (and Declaration of Independence and Federalist Papers and whathaveyou), supposed to be the way we govern ourselves. It’s not easy and can be easily abused, but it’s preferable to almost any alternative.

Ummm…I think I have some homework to do. How about you?

Everything — and much more — is over at The Watcher’s Council.

Don’t forget to look at Michael Totten’s pictorial refutation of Juan Cole and the utterly amazing family story on Chez Goodman. You won’t soon forget it, nor will you want to.

Boy, I’m fortunate to be on this council. I get to read things I’d never see otherwise. Go you and do likewise.

 
Samuel Huntington has famously stated, “Islam has bloody borders.” One of the bloodiest ones is the border between India and Pakistan. The region known as Jammu and Kashmir is contested by both countries, and has been the scene of border clashes and frequent Islamist terrorist attacks .

In an article in today’s Greater Kashmir entitled ‘From Palestine to Baghdad, Kabul to Kashmir, occupation must end’, Riyaz Masroor writes about the first anniversary of the foundation of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat Kashmir (THK) party:

Srinagar, Aug 7: City’s uptown lanes surged with roaring crowds on Sunday as a Tata Sumo vehicle with Syed Ali Shah Geelani sitting atop crawled through the packed audience onto the dais in a sprawling yard near his Tehreek-e-Hurriyat Kashmir (THK) headquarters at Hyderpora. The ailing Geelani unfurled THK flag to mark the first foundation day of the party he had floated last year following differences with his parent organization Jama’at-e-Islami. Amidst sky rending slogans and gushing cheer he held out two fundamentals for his cadres. One: “to challenge Indian occupation come what may,” and the other not to rally behind pro-Indian leaders and those subscribing to bilateral talks with New Delhi.

Seen as more impressive than the recent splurge by both mainstream as well as separatist forces, Geelani’s rally appeared clouding even the conglomerate he himself heads.

Geelani made explicit the comparison between Muslim Kashmiris and the most famous oppressed Muslims in the world, the Palestinians:

Spelling out the key goals of THK Geelani maintained that his party would pursue the agenda of right to self-determination for the people of J&K with Islam, Independence and unity amongst Ummah (world Muslims) forming its basis. Seeking to connect Kashmir issue with the occupations of Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq THK chief demanded end to “all sorts of occupations across the globe”.

“Occupation”, of course, means, “the requirement that Muslims live peacefully under forms of government which they do not control, and which do not use sharia as the basis of law.” And he followed Dr. Zawahri’s lead in blaming the terrorist attacks in London on the British government:

While condemning recent blasts in London Geelani held Britain responsible for promoting state terrorism in Muslim regions. He cited British aid to Israel in 1958 for the latter’s nuclear capacity building program. “Also, Kashmir dispute owes its genesis to the British state that decolonized the subcontinent incompletely leaving behind the boiling cauldron called Kashmir,” averred the 76-year-old separatist who also heads a faction of Hurriyat Conference.

However, Geelani used temperate words in calling his fellow Muslims in Kashmir to action (Note: azadi means “independence” or “autonomy”):

Stating that he stood for peaceful means of resistance Geelani exhorted his cadres to support and promote THK and guaranteed them Azadi if they followed his plea. “Our martyrs chose the path of jihad consciously. We support their commitment and valor. But we stand for peaceful means of resistance and would continue with this principle until the fundamental goal of Azadi is achieved.”

But Geelani has become disenchanted with the democratic process:

Regretting his earlier experiment with the Indian democratic set up Geelani dismissed the electoral process as a way out of the problem faced by J&K.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight:
1. Muslims must be put in charge of Kashmir.
2. They will achieve their ends peacefully.
3. But they will have no truck with democracy.

Does anybody else sense a disconnect here?

When their peaceful exhortations fail to produce the result they want, and they refuse to take to the ballot box, what will the Kasmiri Muslims resort to? Given their identification with the brave jihadis of Palestine, one anticipates the imminent arrival of the suicide bomber and the car bomb, the preferred vectors of political action for Muslim activists the world over.

If the Islamists of Kashmir are the new Palestinians, that sets up the Sikhs and Hindus of India as the new Jews. But with an important difference: There are 150 times as many Hindus and Sikhs in India as there are Jews in Israel.

Perhaps they will not be so easy to drive into the sea.