כּנור דוד

Christian Aravim

2006-09-09T19:29:00.000+09:30

Read this.

In Lebanon there is a strong Christian community that can act as a bridge for peace. The pilgrims to the holy places, when they come in great numbers, are also helpful to the local populations. I also have an idea that I have already proposed to the Vatican authorities: that of creating a task force with representatives from the three religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – who would travel throughout the various countries of the Middle East spreading a message of reconciliation, in order to sensitize and mobilize those who sincerely desire peace, and separate them from extremist and violent groups.

But in the meantime, the Christian minorities living in the Middle East are largely hostile toward Israel.

But they are still more afraid of Hezbollah and Hamas. And they are fleeing from all of the Arab states: it is only in Israel that Christians are growing in number. The future of the Christians in the region is intertwined with the future of our state. An Israel living in security and peace with its neighbors is thw only guarantee for the future of the Churches of the Middle East.

Asaf Namir

2006-07-29T15:40:00.000+09:30

And:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion,

Et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem

Exaudi orationem meam.

Ad te omnis caro veniet...

Asaf Namir was one of our best men. May light etertnal shine upon him; may he rest in peace.

Canada

2006-05-21T12:40:00.000+09:30

BYF writes:

For too long, Canada has been like New Zealand - content to wallow in self-serving high-taxing native-bribing welfarism, confident that its bigger neighbour's armed forces would protect it in case anything goes wrong. Like all welfarist countries, it would not shoulder the burden of being grown up and looking after itself, leaving the maligned bigger neighbour to be fiscally reponsible and save money for defence. Time was when NZ and Canada were part of the muscular Anglosphere, ready to send troops the kick the arses of tyrants anywhere - they then turned in the immature ingrates of Kipling's Burden. Canada might be back on track.

Happy Birthday, Your Majesty

2006-04-23T13:17:00.000+09:30

American and Israeli readers might be surprised that I return to blogging with a tribute to Her Majesty the Queen.

She has been my Queen for all of my life, and I have a great deal of respect for her. I swore allegiance to her as a legal practitioner, and I take that oath seriously.

I voted "no" when our government asked us whether we would like to become a republic.

So, happy birthday, Your Majesty!

Cartoon Jihad IV

2006-02-07T09:02:00.000+10:30

As the Cartoon Jihad claims its first lives, BYF points out that, as always, other Moslems are among the first victims of Islamism. I like the Kipling quote, too, Toby!

Tim Blair has published two readers' emails; the first argues:

It is also not a matter of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of respect. Displaying cartoons of our beloved prophet is the same as insulting Muslims. Is anyone allowed to insult a race, religion, or group of people on the media? Why is that not allowed? Because it is wrong. You cannot argue that it is a matter of freedom of speech.

He also "argues" that Zionists are baby-killing, sister-raping monsters, and that that's the only thing he has against Jews. I'll leave that to one side, for the purposes of this post.

Consider this. Many pious Moslems refer to their deity as Allah (SWT). The letters "SWT" are the acronym for the Arabic "Subhanahu wa Ta'ala" meaning "Allah is pure of having partners and He is exalted from having a son.". Now, that seems to me to be a deliberate repudiation of Christian trinitarian theology. Is it not, in its implicit abasing of Christian theology (note the references to 'purity' and 'exhaltation') a deliberate insult to Christians? A minority of fundamentalists might think so. So let's ban references to "Allah SWT", "Allah Ta'ala" and the like as anti-Christian insults. What about the Muslim claim that Jews and Christians have "falsified" their scriptures? This is a core Islamic belief. No doubt it is offensive to Jews and Christians. Let's ban it.

On the other hand, let's not. Because, as, "Amanda" (who says she is Jewish, and as such a member of the most "provoked", "offended" and persecuted people on the face of the Earth):

There are many things in the media which are unfavorable to Jews (and Christians, etc.), but as far as I’m concerned, one needs to cop it sweet, and respond with intelligence and dignity (or not at all), rather than with unjustifiable violence.

If there's one thing the Moslem world needs, it's a lot more intelligence and dignity.

Finally, there is this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. I think that the quote attributed to David Penberthy is noteworthy. The editor of the Daily Telegraph, said that publishing the images could have "nasty consequences", especially given racial tensions in Sydney. Be that as it may, as Professor Alan Dershowitz argued in a different context in his book The Case for Israel, to hold back on that basis is to allow a "stonethrower's veto"; it is a mark of a mature democracy that insults, provocations and affronts are met with arguments, not bombs and bullets. That is the essence of the whole dispute, and that is what much of Islam needs to learn and accept. In liberal democratic countries, indeed, in the modern world, citizens are not supposed to kill people and destroy property because they feel insulted, or religiously belittled. We are not in seventh-century Arabia now, chabibi.

Moreover, Islam is a belief system, nothing more, and like liberalism, capitalism, communism, fascism, or whatever, it ought to be subject to free criticism in a democratic society.

Having criticized Penberthy for his craven submission to a bunch of atavistic reactionary thugs, I should just like to say that of the haraam cartoons, this is my favourite:

The Cartoon Jihad III - Jihad Comes to Australia

2006-02-06T15:20:00.000+10:30

Sheik Fehmi El-Imam, the general secretary of the Board of Imams of Victoria has warned the Australian media not to publish those infamous characatures of you-know-who.

Of course, that inspired Paul & Carl to publish the cartoons under the most politically incorrect heading I have seen in a long time. I won't quote it; readers can follow the link. Suffice to say "reactionary" and "atavistic" are the nicest things they have to say about the Islamic community...

If you really want to offend 1.3 Billion people, it's hard to go past this effort by SobekPundit; western bien pensants have been slavering all over "artists" who do this sort of thing to crucifixes and images of the Virgin Mary for years, but as Mark Steyn recently said, "if you're going to be 'provocative', it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.". At least SobekPundit apologised to those Moslems who are offended by his photoshop but who don't want to kill him for it.

Less provocatively, Tim Blair highlights the all-too-obvious point made by the cartoon in my last post, namely that:

Far from being against hate-speech, many Muslim spokesmen seem to be aggressively for it; until, of course, someone contemplates publishing harmless drawings of an old beardy guy.

...then they call for beheadings and start with the Embassy-burnings. Given the content of my last three posts, if anyone wants me, I'll be seeking refuge at the Israeli Embassy...

The Cartoon Jihad II

2006-02-06T11:22:00.000+10:30

The above is courtesy of Filibuster Cartoons.

Cardinal Silvestrini (see Cartoon Jihad I) is doubless familiar with Dante's Inferno. I hope that linking to Canto XXVIII is not a mortal sin in his Koran-kissing interpretation of Catholicism!

At Ceperano where all the Apulians
Turned traitors, and those too from Tagliacozzo
Where old Alardo conquered without weapons,

And those who show their limbs run through and those
With limbs hacked off — they all could not have matched
The ninth pocket’s degraded state of grief.

Even a cask with bottom or sides knocked out
Never cracked so wide as one soul I saw
Burst open from the chin to where one farts.

His guts were hanging out between his legs;
His pluck gaped forth and that disgusting sack
Which turns to shit what throats have gobbled down.

While I was all agog with gazing at him,
He stared at me and, as his two hands pulled
His chest apart, cried, "Look how I rip myself!

"Look at how mangled is Mohammed here!
In front of me, Ali treks onward, weeping,
His face cleft from his chin to his forelock.

"And all the others whom you see down here
Were sowers of scandal and schism while
They lived, and for this they are rent in two.

"A devil goes in back here who dresses us
So cruelly by trimming each one of the pack
With the fine cutting edge of his sharp sword

"Whenever we come round this forlorn road:
Because by then our old wounds have closed up
Before we pass once more for the next blow.

What the heck! I'll even illustrate the Canto! Here's William Blake's depiction of Mohammed in Hell:

The following picture is a detail from an early Renaissance fresco in Bologna's Church of San Petronio, created by Giovanni da Modena and depicting Mohammed being tortured in Hell. This is the fresco that Islamists plotted to blow up in 2002.

Zombietime's Mohammed Image Archive has an excellent catalogue of depictions of Mohammed over the last 1400-odd years, from Islamic and Medieval Christian paintings, to South Park and the courageous Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Have a look, while it's still legal.

The Cartoon Jihad I

2006-02-06T10:35:00.000+10:30

Chip decries the lack of freedom to satirize Muhammad in the United States, and explains the Shari’ah of “picture making” and blasphemy for the benefit of the news media. BYF applauds the decision of the European media to thumb their noses at Islamists (for once). Liz has a good survey of attempts to draw the Catholic Church into what she terms the “cartoon trap”, and points out that Cardinal Achille Silvestrini’s recent comments condemning the “deliberate mockery of religious belief” seem to overlook, if not ignore, this sort of filth served up by the Arab world on a distressingly regular basis. Of course, they are Arabs, so, as with children who have not attained the age of reason, we cannot expect them to behave decently. She also points to this and this, as recent examples of serious persecution of Christians by Moslems in, respectively, the Philippines and Pakistan.

So Moslems are killing Christians, while half the world is up in arms about a dozen (pretty unremarkable) cartoons.

Melanie Phillips has this excellent post, about the whole fiasco, highlighting the Foreign Office’s (and, indeed the US State Department’s) typically craven submission to the savage exigencies of political Islam, and commending a comment by, of all people, the French foreign minister, who said in the Telegraph that:

‘It is not normal to caricature a whole religion as an extremist or terrorist movement.’ But the extreme reaction to the cartoons ‘would suggest the caricaturists were right,’ he added.

Indeed. Ms Phillips continues:

The madness of this protest deepens when one considers that the claim at its heart, that pictorial representations of the Prophet are forbidden in Islam, is not true. Like so much else, it is all a matter of interpretation; but the fact remains that there have been many representations of the Prophet in Islamic art over the centuries.

This quote from Charles Moore is also apposite:

There is no reason to doubt that Muslims worry very much about depictions of Mohammed. Like many, chiefly Protestant, Christians, they fear idolatry. But, as I write, I have beside me a learned book about Islamic art and architecture which shows numerous Muslim paintings from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and so on. These depict the Prophet preaching, having visions, being fed by his wet nurse, going on his Night-Journey to heaven, etc. The truth is that in Islam, as in Christianity, not everyone agrees about what is permissible. Some of these depictions are in Western museums. What will the authorities do if the puritan factions within Islam start calling for them to be removed from display (this call has been made, by the way, about a medieval Christian depiction of the Prophet in Bologna)? Will their feeling of 'offence' outweigh the rights of everyone else?

Obviously, in the case of the Danish pictures, there was no danger of idolatry, since the pictures were unflattering. The problem, rather, was insult. But I am a bit confused about why someone like Qaradawi thinks it is insulting to show the Prophet's turban turned into a bomb, as one of the cartoons does. He never stops telling us that Islam commands its followers to blow other people up.

Indeed, the whole article, titled “If you get rid of the Danes, you’ll have to keep paying the Danegeld” is worth reading in it’s entirety.

Finally, there is David Conway's 3 February article on Civitas. Conway points out that the Chairmanship of the Security Council will have passed to Denmark just as the question of Iran’s ~~Armageddon~~ I mean nuclear weapons programmes comes before the Council. Coincidence? I hope so.

The Saudi Hillbillies

2006-02-04T11:25:00.000+10:30

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his fam'ly fed,
Then one day he was a-shootin' at some food,
And up through the ground came a-bubblin' crude!
Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea!

Well the first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire,
Kinfolk said "Jed, move away from there!",
Said "Californy is the place you ought to be!";
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools, movie stars.

A YOUNG SAUDI man is receiving psychiatric treatment in hospital after his family forced him to marry four women in six months:

A Saudi man is in hospital after his divorced parents forced him to marry four times within six months.
The battle began when the father insisted the boy should marry a girl from his side of the family.
The mother retaliated by ordering him to wed a girl from her side, reports Arab News quoting Al-Watan daily.
But the father wasn't happy with the balance of power and insisted on a third wife from his side, to show who was boss.
The mother, not to be outdone, then demanded that her son include another wife from her side of the family.
The son has now been admitted to a hospital for psychological treatment. He is refusing to see his parents or his wives [Now, that's a surprise! - Ed].

Can you imagine the consequences of Jed Clampett falling in with a fanatically evangelical, supremacist religious cult, and then finding a goodly proportion of the world's petroleum resources? Well, that's basically all you need to know about "modern" Saudi Arabia....

Well now its time to say goodbye to Jed an' all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer' kindly droppin' in.
You're all invited back a-gain to this localiteee
To have a heapin' helpin' of their hospitality!
Hillybilly that is. Set a spell, Take your shoes off....

Y'all come back now, y'hear?.

Munich I

2006-01-24T09:41:00.000+10:30

Steven Speilberg's Munich opens in Australia on Thursday. Professor Dershowitz's review is in the Jerusalem Post today. I am reserving judgment, but having seen his review (and others), I have to say that I am concerned about the sort of ersatz morality and playing fast and loose with the truth that Speilberg seems prepared to entertain.

Galloway Sinks to New Low?

2006-01-24T09:31:00.000+10:30

Readers with the stomach to see Jihadi "Respect" MP George Galloway's antics in a red leotard can click on this link. His former friends in the ummah are not amused.

Abu Hamza's Defence to put Koran on Trial

2006-01-21T15:43:00.000+10:30

Readers may remember this decision in which the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal adjudicated a complaint by the Islamic Council of Victoria under that State's new Religious Vilification legislation alleging that two Christian evangellists had incite[d] hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, Muslims on the basis of religious belief. The Tribunal held that views attributed to the Islamic faith:

...represented the views of a small group of fundamentalists, namely, Wahabbists, who are located in the Gulf states and who are a minority group, and their views bear no relationship to mainstream Muslim beliefs...

Now, a British terror-sympathizing Imam on trial for inciting hatred against (guess who!) the Jewish people, for inter alia citing the famous hadith in which the trees call out to the Muslims to kill the Jews hiding behind them, defends himself thus:

Edward Fitzgerald, QC, for the defence, said that Abu Hamza’s interpretation of the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims to do jihad and fight in the defence of their religion. He said that the Crown case against the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque was “simplistic in the extreme”.

He added: “It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself.”

Mr Fitzgerald cited two verses of the book that Abu Hamza would rely on, among many others, as theological justification for the words that had led to him being charged. They were Chapter 2, verse 216 and Chapter 9, verse 111. He said that all the great monotheistic religions had scriptures that contained “the language of blood and retribution”.

That should get the Courts turning intellectual somersaults.

Mr Fitzgerald's comments are here. His final coment about monotheistic religions is half right. Some scriptures (like the book of Joshua) contain such language in the form of history. Some, like the Christian Gospels generally reserve blood and retribution as the prerogative of the Almighty. Islamic holy texts (namely the Koran and ahadith) differ from the Jewish and Christian Bibles in that they positively encourage believers to shed blood and exact retribution. So, come and get me Islamic Council of Victoria!

In the seemingly far-off days before so-called "Human Rights" statutes, the law was simple; and the limits of free speech were comparatively clear. However, in the last 30 years, western governments, in various outrageous attempts to appease religious minorities (and it would be remiss of me to omit that in Australia, the Jewish community has used such statutes enthusiastically to deal with perpetrators of Holocaust denial and anti-semitism generally) have made a right pig's breakfast of the concepts of freedom of speech and of conscience. The UK prosecutes an Imam for preaching Jew-hatred; but if one attributes such views (which have plenty of support in the Koran and ahadith) to anything but a "minority" one is inciting hatred against Muslims, under Victorian law. Oh Allah!

Good Luck, Senator Hill

2006-01-21T11:20:00.000+10:30

Australian Defence Minister, Senator Robert Hill recently announced his retirement from the government and is expected to be appointed Australia's next Ambassador to the UN. This blog wishes him well in his new career as our Ambassador to the usless, corrupt and positively malign of the world, and notes with interest this article in today's Weekend Australian:

He has, slowly but methodically and comprehensively, turned the defence doctrine established under Beazley and unchallenged until Hill's tenure, on its head, cementing a new paradigm of forward engagement for the Australian Defence Force.

He has also secured massive new resources for Defence, a commitment to a real increase of 3 per cent a year for all of this decade, a commitment that John Howard foreshadowed in December would be pushed out until at least 2015.

Hill towers over Howard's other defence ministers, the inconsequential Ian McLachlan, the bumbling John Moore, and Peter Reith, who, though a capable politician, made his chief mark in defence in the children overboard fiasco.

Hill has, according to Sheridan, been instrumental in saving Defence from one of the most foolish policy fads of the 1980s and 1990s:

One of his most important achievements was in breaking the straitjacket of the Beazley-era defence of Australia doctrine. This held that the ADF should be structured purely for the defence of Australia, and that this structure would allow some flexibility for token commitments abroad.

One of the many debilitating consequences of this doctrine was a shocking neglect of the army, even though it was the army that was continually deployed abroad. The crippled nature of the army was evident in East Timor, where cobbling together a force of only 5000 soldiers almost stretched the ADF to breaking point.

Hill's philosophy of defence was evident in the main equipment decisions on his watch. The turning point was the purchase of 59 Abrams main battle tanks for the army. But similarly the commitment to two huge amphibious ships to transport the troops and three air warfare destroyers to protect them from missile and air attack while they are being transported, also gave effect to Hill's strategic doctrine.

Over the years, Hill became more confident in rejecting the old paradigm, commenting that the sea-air gap to our north was not a moat behind which Australia sheltered but a highway down which we travelled.

One of Labor leader Kim Beazely's most commonly-cited positive traits is his "credibility" on defence matters. One suspects that this is only because he liked being photographed with millitary hardware and talking about the American Civil War.

Thank you, Senator Hill, and good luck for the future.

O Little Town of Bethlehem...

2005-12-23T13:30:00.000+10:30

As Christmas approaches, Gunmen Seize Bethlehem's City Hall:

Palestinian gunmen disrupted Christmas preparations in Bethlehem on Tuesday, briefly taking over the municipality building across from the Church of Nativity, leading clergy to close the ancient shrine for several hours.

It was a scene that has played itself out in other West Bank and Gaza towns. Gunmen, some linked to the ruling Fatah Party of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, want him to carry out his promise to give them government jobs.

Oh dear. What a wonderful State "Palestine" will be!

But this was Bethlehem less than a week before Christmas, with thousands of tourists expected to arrive, encouraged by the downturn in violence since last Christmas, largely because of a February truce.

More because of a security fence than a non-existant truce. But who am I to ask Yahoo News to tell the truth. The west (and, most shamefully, Christian organizations) have ignored the persecution of Bethlehem's Christians by Palestinian Muslims since Oslo, so what harm's a little bit more "civil disorder" going to do?

Whilst we are visiting the Holy Land, you might be interested in reading about Yasser Abbas in WSJ.com.

On the very day that five Israelis were murdered and over 60 injured outside a shopping mall in the coastal city of Netanya earlier this month, the official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had approved fresh financial assistance to the families of suicide bombers. The family of each “martyr” will now receive a monthly stipend of at least $250 — a not inconsiderable amount for most Palestinians. Altogether, the families of these so-called martyrs and of those wounded in terrorist attempts or held in Israeli jails might receive $100 million, according to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. [but what about the "truce"? - Ed]

Around 30% of the Palestinian Authority budget comes from international donations, including a hefty amount from the European Union. If an Arab government funded stipends to the families of the London or Madrid bombers, it would probably be pretty big news. But this is the Palestinian Authority, and no matter how little it does to discourage terrorism, or to educate its people to coexist with Israel, it can rely on excuses being made on its behalf by an army of sympathizers throughout the West — in the press, on college campuses and, most disturbingly, in foreign ministries.

For over a year now, since Mr. Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat, his boss of 40 years, many in the West have done their utmost to “explain” or ignore Mr. Abbas’s failings. But if Americans and Europeans are genuinely interested in promoting Palestinian-Israeli peace, it is time for them to take a realistic look at his record. Some Western commentators were quick to emphasize his condemnation of the Netanya attack. But did they really listen to what he actually said? True, Mr. Abbas condemned the Netanya suicide bomb — but only in the Palestinian Authority’s usual inadequate and half-hearted terms. He said that it “caused great damage to our commitment to the peace process” and that it “harmed Palestinian interests.” But he could not bring himself to say that murdering people is simply wrong. [Now there's an idea!]
His outright refusal to confront and disarm terrorists, in violation of the Road Map, hardly registers anymore in the Western media and where it does, it is usually excused and attributed to his relative political weakness. However, the media also give very little idea of the extent to which the Palestinian Authority continues to glorify terrorists.

The Second Draft: Muhamed Al-Durah

2005-12-18T12:07:00.000+10:30

The Second Draft has an excellent re-examination of the 2000 Muhamed Al-Durah incident, in which Gaza Arabs allege a young boy was shot dead in a hail of Israeli bullets at the Netzarim Junction. The site examines a large amount of raw and video footage of the incident and examines the arguments for and against five possible explanations of the incident:

the IDF shot al-Durah on purpose,
the IDF shot him accidentally,
Palestinian gunmen shot al-Durah accidentally,
they shot him purposely,
the whole event was staged for propaganda purposes.

The site concludes that of the five scenarios above, the most likely is that the incident was staged by Palestinians for propaganda purposes, but invites visitors to decide for themselves.

Jihadis Want "Little Johnny" Dead

2005-12-17T14:38:00.000+10:30

So somewhere in his youth, or childhood...
He must have done some-thing good!

It's all over the news at the moment; alleged Jihadis plotted to kill Howard. You know, we might just have a small holy-warrior problem in Australia at the moment.

I've read a couple of dozen letters to the Editor in the print media this week blaming Howard for the Sydney lawlessness of the past few days. Apparrently the PM "demonizes" Muslims. It's got to the stage that one suspects such sufferers from Howard Derangement Syndrome are quite comfortable with this line of reasoning:

"For example, if John Howard kills innocent Muslim families do we ... do we have to kill him and his family ... (and) his people, like at the football?" asked Mr Merhi. Mr Benbrika allegedly replied: "If they kill our kids, we kill little kids."

"We send a message back to them," Mr Merhi allegedly said.

"That's it, an eye for an eye," Mr Benbrika replied.

Obligatory Sydney Riots Post

2005-12-15T13:36:00.000+10:30

Naturally enough, a lot has been said over the last few days about the causes of the recent trouble in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia. This is one of the more sensible opinion pieces I have read on the topic, by the Australian journalistic left's favourite bete noir Janet Albrechtsen:

Racism was on the streets last weekend. No doubt about it. White supremacists alleged to have links to neo-Nazis admitted they brought in more than 100 people to join the rampage at Cronulla. Young men used their bodies as billboards to read: "We grew here, you flew here". This is racist and it's wrong. Vigilantes bashing young men and women is criminal. But grabbing hold of Hansonism every time racism rears its ugly head and tarring the whole crowd with the same racist brush gets us nowhere.

Her conclusion?

Recognising human nature means that multiculturalism, though a fine sentiment, can only work if we unite behind a core set of values. Unfortunately though, that policy has become a licence for rampant cultural relativism. We are loath to criticise any aspects of cultures (except our own) for fear of sounding terribly judgmental and unfashionably un-multicultural.

Instead, culture is talked about only as an excuse for abhorrent behaviour so that the offender becomes the victim. Last week, a convicted gang rapist claimed he assaulted a 14-year-old girl because she was not wearing traditional Muslim dress and he thought she was promiscuous. Pointing to cultural differences, the 27-year-old Pakistani-born man said: "I believed at the time I committed this offence that she had no right to say no. I believed I'm not doing anything wrong." A month ago his lawyer told the court his client was a "cultural time bomb".

If this view, that culture can be used as an excuse, represents the views of even a subset of Muslim youth, then we have a problem. If we are not talking openly about egregious aspects of some cultures (except as an excuse), we have only ended up with a bigger problem. And, to date, we have not been talking. Multiculturalism has been synonymous with a rights agenda - addressing minority grievances - rather than a framework for talking about responsibilities. The violence that has been brewing in Cronulla, culminating in the disgraceful rampages in recent days, is a pointer that if we're serious about social cohesion, it's time we all demonstrated social responsibility.

Lapkin Lambasts Hicks' Legal Strategy

2005-12-15T13:20:00.000+10:30

As the United Kingdom grants Muhammad Dawood (aka David Hicks) British citizenship, and a potential "get out of Guantanamo free card", Ted Lapkin points out a few pertinent issues:

The Blair Government previously demanded the release from US custody of British subjects who were captured in Afghanistan while fighting for Osama bin Laden. The Hicks legal team will doubtless argue that its client should benefit from similar treatment. But it is worth noting that the discharge of those Britons from Guantanamo transpired before the 7/7 London suicide bombings. It remains to be seen whether the legacy of home-grown jihadist terrorism in the English Midlands has dampened Whitehall's enthusiasm for springing Islamic holy warriors from detention.

Reviewing the tactics deployed by Hicks' legal team, Lapkin opines:

Moreover, it is Hicks's own cunctatory lawyers who bear the primary responsibility for the length of their client's incarceration without trial. With all the chutzpah of a patricide who appeals for mercy on account of orphanhood, advocates for Hicks complain about the glacial pace of American military justice.

But in a deliberate strategy that seems governed more by politics than legal considerations, Hicks's lawyers have drawn out the judicial process through repeated requests for postponements. And while in US courtrooms his solicitors employ every delaying tactic in the book, in the courtroom of public opinion they shed crocodile tears over their client's predicament.

Lapkin then makes a plausible case that Hicks's supporters are guilty of hipocrisy in their criticism of the Guantanamo Military Tribunal system:

Thus the only plausible reason why the Hicks legal team is playing for time is so they can have their cake in the courtroom while eating it in the public relations arena. Because they realise the evidence against their client is overwhelming, they understand that political pressure to short-circuit the trial is his only chance to escape a serious prison sentence.

A similar sort of politically motivated dishonesty plagues other forms of criticism that have been directed towards the military commission process. Rules of evidence that permit the introduction of hearsay evidence are often indignantly denounced as a travesty of justice by the tribunal's opponents. Yet this same evidentiary procedure was employed by the Nuremberg tribunal after World War II, and is used today by other war crimes proceedings which no one thinks to challenge.

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia admits hearsay testimony that is deemed to be pertinent by the presiding judges. But other than neo-Nazis, rabid Serb nationalists and John Pilger, there are few voices complaining that Herman Goering and Slobodan Milosevic were the victims of kangaroo justice.

The most vociferous assailants of the US military commission process are often ardent supporters of the UN and its work. Thus for many critics of US foreign policy, what's good for the ICT goose is not good for the Guantanamo gander. Hearsay evidence is fine for the UN, but it is an abomination for the US.

UN Day of Solidarity with Suicide Terrorists, Part III

2005-12-09T08:42:00.000+10:30

Eye on the UN has pictures of the UN's recent terror orgy. In the first picture, we see the UN and Palestinian Flags on either side of a map of "Palestine".

Of course, to put the imaginary "State of Palestine" on the map, they had to obliterate the map of a long-standing UN member state (even the 1947 UN Partition Lines, which pre-date this map are not marked on the map of "Palestine"):

In the third picture of this series we have the Suicide Bombers' Commemoration, as (from left to right), Nasser Al-Kidwa, "Foreign Minister" of the Palestinian Authority, President of the UN Security Council Andrey Denisov, President of the UN General Assembly Jan Eliasson, Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People Paul Badji, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, (and two others) stand in response to these words from the chair "I invite everyone present to rise and observe a minute of silence in memory of all those who have given their lives for the cause of the Palestinian people and the return of peace between Israel and Palestine.". "Return of peace between Israel and Palestine"? That's a good one! There has never been an independent entity called Palestine (and even the notion of a "Palestinian People" is a comparatively recent development in response to Zionism, and the creation of Israel), moreover, the Arabs of the region have been indiscriminately killing Jews since before the first Aliyah.

If the US is serious about defeating terrorists, this immoral gang of racists and despots standing around shedding tears over murderous, self-immolating shahids and suicide terrorists would be a good place to start. A visit from the Special Forces might do the UN a world of good...

Speaking of the UN's "glorious dead", in a sure-fire vote-winning move, Hamas has named a mother of three shahids as a candidate in the upcoming PA elections; three of her sons have been killed either preparing or participating in attacks on Israeli civillians, and she glories in their "martyrdom". That said, Ms Farhat does still have three sons who have not yet managed to get themselves killed for Allah's Palestine. But insh'allah...

This woman is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with this depraved "society". Indeed, the "my sons are dead terrorists" part of her CV is not merely incidental to her election campaign, it is her election campaign:

"Vote for me, and you too can lose half your family to glorious 'martyrdom' for the cause of genocide! Allahu Akhbar"!

UN "Not really useful in solving actual problems" - Bolton

2005-12-04T11:04:00.000+10:30

As the UN General Assembly rejoiced in the purity of the utterly impotent by passing a veritable orgy of anti-Israel resolutions to mark the 58th Anniversary of the UN's Partition Resolution of 1947, US Ambassador John Bolton had this to say about the impotent raging of the despots, bigots, and bien-pensants of the General Assembly:

``These resolutions are purely symbolic,'' Bolton told reporters at the UN. ``It is one reason why many people say the UN is not really useful in solving actual problems. We have been making enormous progress toward solutions in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that progress has benefited from UN participation, but it does not benefit from needless repetition of meaningless resolutions in the General Assembly.''

Bolton, who has pressed UN member governments to reduce the number of General Assembly resolutions, said it was up to them to ``decide they want to do things that are relevant.''

Speaking on behalf of Australia at the General Assembly, Andrew Southcott MP said:

...that his delegation was concerned that a number of resolutions taken up by the Assembly this year had been unbalanced in their criticism of Israel. The singling out of one side for blame in the current situation was very unhelpful. Australia remained concerned by the high level of United Nations resources allocated to anti-Israeli activity, including the Division for Palestinian Rights and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

Celebrate the UN's International Day of Solidarity with the PLO Arabs!

2005-11-29T09:03:00.000+10:30

As I stand on this rostrum, the long and proud history of my people unravels itself before my inward eye. I see the oppressors of our people over the ages as they pass one another in evil procession into oblivion. I stand here before you as the representative of a strong and flourishing people which has survived them all and which will survive this shameful exhibition and the proponents of this resolution.

The great moments of Jewish history come to mind as I face you, once again outnumbered and the would-be victim of hate, ignorance and evil. I look back on those great moments. I recall the greatness of a nation which I have the honor to represent in this forum. I am mindful at this moment of the Jewish people throughout the world wherever they may be, be it in freedom or in slavery, whose prayers and thoughts are with me at this moment.

I stand here not as a supplicant. Vote as your moral conscience dictates to you. For the issue is neither Israel nor Zionism. The issue is the continued existence of this organization, which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a coalition of despots and racists.

Chaim Herzog, Ambassador of the State of Israel to the UN, on the UN's infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution.

Caritas: Catholic Jew-Baiters?

2005-11-29T08:49:00.000+10:30

Is the appellation "Catholic Jew-Baiters" a harsh calumny of an estimable charitable organization? Read Liz's Post and decide for yourselves.

Israel and the Cause of Freedom

2005-11-27T19:24:00.000+10:30

Charles Moore asks readers of the Daily Telegraph how we have forgotten that Israel’s story is the story of the West. He begins with an examination of the career of Ariel Sharon that sees the Israeli PM’s career as emblematic of the struggles of the Jewish State:

If you had followed the British media, particularly the BBC, with average attention over the past 25 years, you would have concluded that Sharon was an intransigent, murderous, semi-fascist. So you would have been perplexed by his sudden announcement this week that he is to leave the "Right-wing" (favoured Western terminology) Likud party and form a "centrist" party of his own. Suddenly, Sharon becomes visionary, peace-seeking. Little would have prepared you for it.

And that is the trouble. Little prepares the post-Christian European audience to understand Israel. By "understand", I partly mean sympathise with, and partly, just comprehend.

Sharon's career is a good place to start, because it spans the history of the Jewish state. He was 20 when it began in 1948, and had been serving in the Jewish Haganah militia since the age of 14. He fought in the War of Independence, and in 1956, and in the Six-Day War of 1967, and in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when he crossed the Suez Canal and, effectively disobeying orders, advanced to cut the supply lines of the Egyptian Third Army. He became a popular hero.

Then Sharon entered full-time politics. As defence minister, he masterminded the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which succeeded in breaking up the PLO infrastructure there. On his watch, Lebanese Christian Falangists entered the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps. There they massacred several hundred people: Sharon was officially condemned for this, and forced to resign.

He bounced back, however. As housing minister, he built settlements. Later he was foreign minister, then leader of Likud. In 2001, he became prime minister, swept to power by fear of the new intifada. He ordered the assassination of many Palestinian terrorists. He began the security wall that divides Israel from much of the West Bank. He also ordered Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip, the first unilateral withdrawal it has ever made. And soon he will contest elections as leader of a party he has just invented.

Moore thus compares Sharon to Caesar; Israel to Rome; an austere nation building itself up from next-to-nothing in the face of enemy neighbours. But, as Moore notes, there is one important difference; Israel’s wars have been about security, rather than conquest for its own sake. Israeli politics, Moore writes, “for the past dozen years has been the attempt to reconcile extrication from territory with security.”.

The story of the building, and continuing survival of the Jewish State, often against seemingly insurmountable odds is one that should appeal to the right and left alike:

In the history of the West, such a narrative used to command fascination and respect. Many could apply it to their own people. British people whose convict cousins had built Australia out of their barren exile could understand; so could Americans, who had overcome hostile terrain and hostile inhabitants, and forged a mighty nation. So could any country formed in adversity, particularly, perhaps, a Protestant one - with its idea of divinely supported national destiny and its natural sympathy for the people first chosen by God. The sympathy was made stronger by the fact that the new state was robust in its legal and political institutions, free in its press and universities - a noisy democracy.

Anti-imperialists and the Left also found much to admire. They admired people whose pioneer spirit kept them equal, who often lived communally, who fled the persecution of old societies to build simpler, better ones. If you read Bernard Donoughue's diaries, just published, of his life as an adviser to Harold Wilson in the 1970s (a much better picture of what prime ministers are like than Sir Christopher Meyer's self-regarding effort), one difference between then and now that hits you hard is Donoughue's (and Wilson's) firm belief that the cause of Israel is the cause of people who wish to be free, and that its enemies are the old, repressive establishments.

But then, almost overnight, a different narrative supervened.

Once upon a time, the word "Palestinian" had no national meaning; it was simply the description on any passport of a person living in British-mandated Palestine.

Indeed, Ariel Sharon himself used to carry a “Palestinian” passport.

During the 19 years to 1967 when Jordan governed the West Bank, the people there had no self-rule, and no real name. UN Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to leave territories it occupied in 1967, does not mention Palestinians; it speaks only of "Arab refugees". Palestinian nationality came along, as it were, after the fact, a nationality largely based on grievance…

…Israel, which was attacked, has come to be seen as the aggressor. Israel, which has elections that throw governments out and independent commissions that investigate people like Sharon and condemn him, became regarded as the oppressive monster. In a rhetoric that tried to play back upon Jews their own experience of suffering, supporters of the Palestinian cause began to call Israelis Nazis. Holocaust Memorial Day is disapproved of by many Muslims because it ignores the supposedly comparable "genocide" of the Palestinians.

I interpose that this is a depraved rhetoric, with its roots deep in hatred and contempt for the Jewish people. Why are the leaders of the Jewish State almost invariably compared to Hitler? It is not as though the 20th Century has thrown up a lack of military strongmen to whom one could more appositely compare Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin. Indeed, the fact that we are even discussing the Arab-Israeli dispute in 2005 is eloquent testimony to the historical bankruptcy of the comparison. Had it any validity, there would be no “Palestinians” for the UN and the assorted blowhards of the international community, and of the extreme right and left worldwide to wet themselves over. We should be quite clear about this; Hitler’s Final Solution called for nothing less than the extermination of every last Jew. After decades of terrorism, the Israeli State is still engaging in peace talks with a view to conceding Palestinian claims to land in the former Mandate.

Moore rightly links the fate of the Jewish State to that of western civilisation, as do many of the enemies of both:

In Iran, the new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes the link. The battle over Palestine, he says, is "the prelude of the battle of Islam with the world of arrogance", the world of the West. He is busy building his country's nuclear bomb.

If the western democracies facilitated, or even just turned a blind eye to an Islamic Republic with a plan to nuke 5 million Jews off the face of the earth, would we really have any moral claim to be treated any better when the jihadis came for us?

Canadian Liberals put the "Moon" in "Moonbat"

2005-11-26T15:04:00.000+10:30

This story reads like an April Fools' Day hoax. In summary, a former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on "exopolitics" - relations with advanced extra-terrestial intelligences. He's also worried that that crazy Texas neocon cowboy, George W Bush, is going to declare war on aliens. Talk about putting the "moon" in "moonbat".

Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."
Hellyer’s speech ended with a standing ovation. He said, "The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today."

Three Non-governmental organizations took Hellyer’s words to heart, and approached Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, to hold public hearings on a possible ET presence, and what Canada should do. The Canadian Senate, which is an appointed body, has held objective, well-regarded hearings and issued reports on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage and medical marijuana.

Controversial issues certainly, but they are nonetheless serious matters of public policy.

On October 20, 2005, the Institute for Cooperation in Space requested Canadian Senator Colin Kenny, Senator, Chair of The Senate Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, “schedule public hearings on the Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, so that witnesses such as the Hon. Paul Hellyer, and Canadian-connected high level military-intelligence, NORAD-connected, scientific, and governmental witnesses facilitated by the Disclosure Project and by the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium can present compelling evidence, testimony, and Public Policy recommendations.”

The Non-governmental organizations seeking Parliament hearings include Canada-based Toronto Exopolitics Symposium, which organized the University of Toronto Symposium at which Mr. Hellyer spoke.

The Disclosure Project, a U.S.– based organization that has assembled high level military-intelligence witnesses of a possible ET presence, is also one of the organizations seeking Canadian Parliament hearings.

Vancouver-based Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), whose International Director headed a proposed 1977 Extraterrestrial Communication Study for the White House of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who himself has publicly reported a 1969 Close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO, filed the original request for Canadian Parliament hearings.

The Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, presented by the organizations to a Senate Committee panel hearing in Winnipeg, Canada, on March 10, 2005, proposes that the Government of Canada undertake a Decade of Contact.

The proposed Decade of Contact is “a 10-year process of formal, funded public education, scientific research, educational curricula development and implementation, strategic planning, community activity, and public outreach concerning our terrestrial society’s full cultural, political, social, legal, and governmental communication and public interest diplomacy with advanced, ethical Off-Planet cultures now visiting Earth.”

I'm glad they have their priorities straight in the Great White North. Hellyer's speech received a standing ovation, so this isn't a story about the failure of state-run aged care or mental health systems. On the contrary, everyone knows that the real threats to Western liberal democratic civilisation is an American military determined to declare war on the Daleks, ET or the Emperor Palpatine. Seriously, this has given me an idea. Let's call a Canadian Senate inquiry into how the Mossad and George W Bush planned the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, 2001....

Heffer: Bring Back the Noose, or Lose Rule of Law

2005-11-24T15:29:00.000+10:30

Thus opines Simon Heffer in Britain's Daily Telegraph. Unlike some who have graced these pages, he doesn't want to hang drug traffickers or apostates from Islam, just murderers. He writes of his attendance at a criminal justice conference:

After a few hours in the company of probation officers, criminologists, a few prototypes of what we now know as the Politically Correct Senior Policeman and various others from the rehabilitation industry, I realised I would probably feel less out of place at a Tibetan religious festival. It may be uncouth, but I always feel pronounced prickles of discomfort when in the presence of those who devote themselves to making the lives of the downright wicked as comfortable as possible.
We waltzed into a plenary session about the need to curb serious crime - murder, rape, armed robbery, drugs trafficking, all those little things that make life in our inner cities so vibrant today. When I uttered the fact - not at that stage reinforced by an expression of opinion, but simply a fact - that the murder rate had quadrupled since the abolition of capital punishment, an embarrassed silence permeated the room. It was as if my personal hygiene had suddenly taken a turn very much for the worse.

Of course, there are other factors bearing upon the massive increase in the murder rate, but all the same, the absence of capital punishment cannot simply be dismissed out of hand as irrelevant. However, the expression support for the death penalty in educated company often results in much spluttering and spilling of drinks.

When Lord Stevens, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, argued on Sunday that his opposition to capital punishment had been overturned by the shooting of a policewoman in Bradford last week, he was joining that usually silent band of intelligent people who feel that society affords inadequate protection to the innocent. And, predictably, he has been vilified for it by a noisy minority who, in the security of their comfortable existences, feel that anyone even suggesting the restoration of a death penalty for murder in this country must be certifiably insane or a complete pervert.

I regret that Lord Stevens did not advocate this course when he still held his high office, for his opinion then would have counted for far more. After all, plenty of police officers were murdered on his watch while trying to do their jobs, like poor WPc Beshenivsky last week. I also disagree with him on one point: why argue for restoration purely for those who murder police officers?

Heffer points out that the State has not abandoned the right to kill. On the contrary:

For, be in no doubt, although we forfeited 40 years ago the right of the state to impose the capital sentence after a fair trial in a court of law, the state still reserves to itself the right to take life. Ask, for example, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead by agents of the state in July this year when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber.

However awful the consequences of such an error, the state must continue to have our power, as part of its duty of protecting us. Yet we have, since 1965, been in the ironic position of having outlawed execution with trial, but continuing to permit execution without trial. I suppose there is a logic there, but I can't see it.

He makes this prediction:

If, over the next few years, the supply of cheap and illegal arms from Eastern Europe and the bandit states of the former Soviet Union continues to grow at the rate it lately has, the practice of random, casual shooting will become a normal part of our lives. Our police will be armed, but that will only feed the appetite.

On the advice of their spin-doctors, the rhetoric of politicians will become more and more tabloid in its vehemence. Home secretaries, and even perhaps prime ministers, will attend funerals and utter profound words of condemnation.

Yet, in time, such murder will be so widespread that it almost ceases to be reported. And only then will some radical politician reluctantly admit that capital punishment is the alternative to scrapping the rule of law.

Although Heffer was talking about random acts of gangster-esque violence, Australians have recently come face to face with evil on this scale. Faced with such apparrently irremediable savagery, one could be forgiven for agreeing with Heffer.

Palestinian Christians Persecuted

2005-11-24T15:02:00.000+10:30

Townhall.com has this interesting piece on a recent book by Justus Reid Weiner a human rights lawyer, dealing with the persecution of Christian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. The guilty parties are terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, (for applying Islamic principles of dhimmitude and the capital punishment of apostacy) and the Palestinian Authority (for assisting them, and at the very least, turning a blind eye to anti-Christian violence).

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, both Palestinian Muslims and Christians tell visitors that there is no friction between them --that they live as equals under the P.A.

On the contrary:

Religious persecution is a widespread problem that is felt in different ways, Weiner said. "Some people are accused of collaboration with Israel. Some people are accused of moral offenses. Some people are accused of trying to spread Christianity by giving out Bibles."

Weiner gives the example of Ahmad El-Ashwal, to whom he dedicated his book, who converted from Islam to Christianity. He was arrested and detained in PA gaols for "a couple of months", was tortured, and then:

El-Ashwal was beaten; his car was firebombed; and he was forced to close his successful falafel stand when his landlord wouldn't renew his lease because of his Christian faith. He ran an underground church from his home in the refugee camp and when he didn't return to Islam, masked men knocked on his door in January 2004 and shot him dead.

The Palestinian Authority, it may surprise readers to learn, did nothing about his murder. Little wonder:

The P.A.'s constitution, which has yet to be ratified, is based on Shari'a, the strict Islamic religious law, Weiner said. (Shari'a relegates non-Muslims to an inferior status and also prohibits conversion from Islam to any other religion.).

Moreover

Compounding the problem, church leaders -- long intimidated by P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat and now by the present P.A. leadership -- don't speak up on behalf of their communities, he said.

Weiner said he was baffled initially by the Church's silence over the mistreatment of its members."I think of Christianity as one of the largest religions in the world involving a billion adherents...and many of them being educated, affluent. Powerful leaders of many countries profess Christian identity and certainly come from Christian backgrounds," he said.

The Palestinian Authority has so intimidated the Christian leadership, that they go along with the Palestinian nationalist cause, said Weiner."They could be counted upon whenever Arafat would snap his fingers to put on their robes and vouch for the fact that the Christians and the Muslims were all Palestinians first and foremost, and they were all committed to Palestinian nationalism as their first priority," he said.

Of course, many Palestinian Christian leaders (the Latin Patriach of Jerusalem springs to mind), are quite comfortable with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes, even if they are not strapping on the suicide vests themselves. Be that as it may, supporters of the so-called "Palestinian Cause", within the churches and without, have for too long turned a blind eye to the fact that a corollary of the empowerment of Arab-Palestinian terrorist organizations (including the PA) is the persecution of non-Muslim minorities, gays and lesbians, and the brutalization of women in the name of "honour".

They should be ashamed.

JPost: Sharon to Leave Likud Today

2005-11-21T11:36:00.000+10:30

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon will announce on Monday his intention to leave the Likud to form a new centrist political party, and that Knesset elections are likely to be held on or before 28 March 2006. This all has a certain inevitability about it, and will finally seal one of the most remarkable transformations in recent political history.

Prepare yourselves for an endless argument as to whether Sharon is a prescient statesman with a vision for his nation, or an unprincipled, vain, corrupt and cynical politician only out to save his own ample backside.

For my own part, I am concerned that having evacuated Gaza, and last week given up control of the Philidelphi Road (a death wish, according to most security sources in Israel), Sharon now wants to bring more of the the "disengagement" process to the West Bank. That is something up with which the Likud will not put. A unilateral peace process will not work. Unless the Arabs stop basing their "nationalism" (such that it is) on genocidal Jew-hatred, giving up more land in return for...well...nothing but continued terrorism, will only result in more bloodshed.

The "Fascist" Cheap Shot

2005-11-21T11:06:00.000+10:30

Gregory Melleuish, showing more discernment than some of his more deranged colleagues in academe explains the basic differences between Liberalism and Fascism:

Fascists, like socialists, did not support the idea that individuals were the best judges of their own interest. Rather, individuals needed the state to organise them and to tell them what to do. Moreover the fascist state, what Mussolini called the ethical state, sought to bring every member of society under its control.

In fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, this meant bringing individuals under state domination by controlling the organisations to which they belonged. These included youth groups, leisure clubs and the organisation of industry through state-sanctioned corporations. In Germany, even cat lovers' clubs had to be Nazified.

There were two enemies. The first was liberalism and the autonomous individual who could exercise his or her conscience in deciding a proper course of action. The second was civil society, those voluntary organisations that individuals freely create to pursue their particular interests and that stand outside state supervision. In particular, fascism opposed the various churches. Fascist ideals and the worship of the state would form the core of people's religious beliefs.

Discussing the Howard government's proposed industrial relations reforms, he argues:

...there certainly is a paradox at work here. In order to sponsor legislation that increases individual autonomy, the commonwealth Government is indeed seeking to centralise more power in its hands. This is part of a wider trend of which university policy is another example. A similar criticism was made of Margaret Thatcher, who also sought to increase individualism through centralisation. Liberals recognise that this is a worrying trend. But the causes should be sought as much with the states as with the commonwealth. Their financial dependence on the commonwealth is matched by an apparent incapacity to act responsibly. One suspects that this situation would only be resolved if the states were forced to raise their own finances.

It is insulting to the memory of the victims of Fascism and Nazism that so many of the opponents of the current US administration, and of the current Australian government feel compelled to compare Messrs Howard and Bush to Hitler. If the comparison had any merit whatsoever its proponents would be dead or at the very least, being tortured behind barbed wire. In the case of the American President, it is ironic that many of the chief proponents of this ignorant, historically illiterate rhetorical device are often the first to deride George W Bush's alleged "stupidity".

Krauthammer takes on "Intelligent Design"

2005-11-21T10:25:00.000+10:30

The ever-perceptive Charles Krauthammer identigifies "Intelligent Design" as a phony theory, and certainly not science. He argues, correctly in my view, that its proponents are foolish to pit faith against evolution:

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?

He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Of course, as Charles Johnson at LGF notes, even the Vatican agrees that whatever "Intelligent Design" might be, it is not science. Religious faith and evolution are not mutually exclusive, but it is a mark of the insecurity, and plain lack of intellectual and theological rigour and subtlety of some religious denominations that they feel the need to invent bogus science to validate their faith.

Idiot Anglicans Again

2005-11-14T10:47:00.000+10:30

Joseph d'Hippolito at the Jerusalem Post explains, in the context of the Anglican apology to Saddam Hussein, Anglican ignorance of the fundamental opposition between Islam and the Judeo/Christian tradition:

...no concept of a covenant between God and humanity exists in Islam. Instead, Allah decrees his law "by means of a unilateral pact, in an act of sublime condescension [that] precludes any notion of imitating God as is urged in the Bible,"

Islam also rejects the Christian doctrines of original sin and the necessity of mediation between God and humanity. In the Koran, Jesus "appears... out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel," Besancon wrote.

Most importantly, Judeo-Christian and Muslim concepts of divinity revolve around one irreconcilable difference.

"Although Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing from the list, but central to the Jewish and even more so to the Christian conception of God, is 'Father' - i.e., a personal god capable of a reciprocal and loving relation with men," Besancon wrote. "The one God of the Koran, the God Who demands submission is a distant God; to call him 'Father' would be an anthropomorphic sacrilege."

The point?

IN THE quest for dialogue and reconciliation at any cost, liberal Christians fail to demand from Muslim leaders the same kind of scrupulous moral introspection they demand from themselves. When has any Christian leader challenged the sheikhs of Al-Azhar, Islam's most prestigious university, to issue fatwas against bin Laden, Zarqawi, al-Zawahiri, suicide bombers, Iranian theocrats, et al?

"The biggest weakness of the West right now," wrote Wolfgang Bruno, "is our inclination to blame ourselves for whatever happens, and for reaching out to 'win the hearts and minds' of people who profess to kill us and destroy our civilization."

No wonder their churches are empty.

Republic of Dunces?

2005-11-07T14:53:00.000+10:30

For another, and perhaps more insightful (and certainly more thoughful and original) view, check out evariste's view at Discarded Lies. I found two of his points to be of particular interest. The first:

The funny thing is that the rioters have learned from the French themselves, and surpassed them-urban terrorism is a time-honored French way to blackmail the state into succumbing to a special interest group's demands. They're just taking France's lawless culture of shameless blackmail to heart. In fact, you could say they're just extraordinarily zealous in their pursuit of a special rider to the standard French social contract. The "racial" angle is too simplistic, and the "Islam" angle is also has insufficient explanatory power. The truth is that this is just business as usual in France, only more so.

The second:

France's real problem with its immigrant population isn't their unwillingness to integrate. It's France's racism and unwillingness to integrate them. These young people aren't new immigrants, most of them were born in France to immigrant parents-they just can't get jobs because of their skin color, their names, and their addresses.

That has the ring of truth, to me. These people are simply not considered "French" no matter how longstanding their connection with the country. It's worth reading the whole piece, which concludes that, for various reasons, not least the government's response to the riots, political Islam will be greatly empowered by the last few days' events.

That Oo La La Inftifada Feeling...

2005-11-07T14:18:00.000+10:30

That's what Stephen Plaut is saying at Arutz Sheva. It's one great big "I told you so"!

The suburbs of Paris are now more dangerous than Jenin, and the French are getting their comeuppance for decades of snootiness, for anti-American and anti-Israel agitprop, for decades of cowardice, and especially for the repulsive French love of old Jerry Lewis movies.

Paris is now being targeted by violent rioting hordes. For years, the French accused American racism of having produced the race riots in the US in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King business. And the French are sure that only Jewish cussedness and just plain Israeli evil lie behind the behavior of the Palestinian pogromchiki.

Plaut goes so far as to prepare a set of "peace proposals" to bring the Intifada to an end.

France has much other stolen territory to return. It took Corsica from Genoa, Nice and Savoy from Piedmont. As the successor state, Italy must get back all these lands. By similar token, territories grabbed from the Hapsburgs go back to Austria, including Franche-Comte, Artois and historic Burgundy. The Roussillon area (along the Pyrenees) must be returned to Spain, its rightful owner. And Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine and Gascony must be returned to their rightful owners - the British royal family.

Not even this is enough for the sake of peace. Brittany and Languedoc must be granted autonomy at once, recognizing the Breton and Occitan liberation organizations as their legal rulers. This leaves the French government in control over the Ile de France (the area around Paris).

That, however, still does not solve the problem of the Holy City of Paris, sacred to artists, gourmets and adulterers. The Corsicans obviously have a historic claim to the Tomb of the Emperor Napoleon, their famed son, as well as the Invalides complex and beyond.

Droll as Plaut's proposals may seem to Israelis (and their sympathizers) tired of French politicians calling Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian Authority, and lecturing them about returning the Golan to Syria so that the Syrians can go back to shelling the Galilee, in a way, he misses the point of these riots.

The Germans have given up on Alsace Lorraine, the British lost Calais during the reign of Mary I, and don't really want it back. However, France, like Israel has a large, disaffected minority who, if asked, would demand root-and-branch changes to the foundational structures of the State.

For the radicals in both minorities, this or that piece of land will not really cut the mustard. If the French want peace, perhaps they should introduce shari'ah law.

War in France?

2005-11-07T10:50:00.000+10:30

Mark Steyn makes some observations on the recent riots in France:

For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

[...]

The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''

Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond.

Today, France shrinks from dealing firmly with its problems:

the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.

The European Union (and many of its constituent states, to the extent that they still survive), wedded as it is to socialism and welfarism, unwilling or unable to assimilate hostile minorities (but rather content to pander to bigotry, violence and Arab despotism) needs a fundamental change of world-view if it is to survive.

A few weeks ago, many Western bien pensants were smugly opining that the destruction of New Orleans represented all that was wrong with America. Well, the burning of France represents all that is wrong with Rumsfeld's "Old Europe". The difference is that a few hurricanes do not have the potential to rip apart the fabric of American society.

Perhaps the Israeli government could send the "French youths" a few billion shekels to set up 'democratic political institutions' of their own! It's only fair to return the favour, after all!

The Jihad of Abu Muslim al-Austraili / Mohammed Dawood

2005-11-03T13:13:00.000+10:30

The media call him “David Hicks”, but that’s not the name he’s chosen for himself.

I’ll get straight to the point: I’m only sorry that the US won’t hang the bugger.

Last Monday evening ABC’s Four Corners aired a documentary full of bleeding-heart sympathy for Adelaide’s own jihadi. Four years after his incarceration, with good reason to make things up, he now says that the US Army stuck things up his butt. As Foreign Minister the Hon Alexander Downer said: “Our officials have had many meetings with him ... and on no occasion has he ever raised such a concern,”.

By way of a brief aside, how many of those who bleat about the Geneva Convention understand that to be subject to Geneva, a combatant has to have (a) a commander who is responsible for his subordinates; (b) formal recognizable military insignia; (c) weapons that are carried openly, and (d) an adherence to the laws and customs of warfare? Islamist terrorists meet none of these conditions. To apply Geneva to such people would be to give an imprimatur to child murdering, head-hacking savages. Further, as Ann Coulter recently noted:

American soldiers make do with C-rations. Dinner on an America West flight from New York to Las Vegas consists of one small bag of peanuts. Meanwhile, one recent menu for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo consisted of orange-glazed chicken, fresh fruit crepe, steamed peas and mushrooms, and rice pilaf.

Returning to Abu M's allegations of unwanted suppositories, Law Council of Australia President John North whined, “All of his claims would need to be tested very carefully indeed because why otherwise has he been held for nearly four years without a proper court process? There must be something people are trying to hide,". Of course his claims should be tested carefully. The rest of his statement is getting into “Elvis killed JFK and lives in Adelaide / the Mossad planned 9/11 to bring about Jewish world domination” territory. To that extent, North is talking out of the same orrifice that Abu Muslim claims to have had penetrated.

I cannot say it better than BYF:

The US has not held him for so long because it is afraid he will tell the world it has tortured him, because:
it gave him a lawyer;
he has told the world anyway; and
if the US really was the sort of country that would do this, and render people to other countries, then why would it let him talk, rather than throwing him out of a plane into the ocean?

Now, as the loony left Sydney Morning Herald report points out [again, thanks to BYF, who obviously has a strong stomach for this particular newspaper]:

“Hicks admits aiding the enemy, waging war against the west and providing material assistance to those trying to kill Australian troops. He is an active member of a movement closer in international law to piracy than anything else. Yet somehow what he did is not that bad - because he did not manage to kill anyone?”

And since we are quoting BYF, this is wonderful:

The noble Lucius Junius Brutus executed his sons for treason. Hicks's father, rather than being embarrassed at the shame that his son has brought on the family, would rather parade stories on the TV about anal intrusions, in a sad attempt to raise the schoolyard excuse, "Well, my son may be bad, but the US is worse" - so my son should be excused from responsibility for his crimes. "He did it too!"

Hicks, for those who don’t know, is trying to obtain UK citizenship, in the hope that the Blair government will spring him from Guantanamo. After the UK's July experience with their Mohammedan citizens, one would hope their government would move heaven and earth to avoid picking this one up.

I remember Hicks senior standing in a cage outside SA Liberal party meetings. His son has, on his own admission, betrayed his country and its values, and we are supposed to cry and beg for his release?

In the Hicks propaganda film The President Versus David Hicks, his father:

reads out excerpts of David Hicks's letters, in which Hicks says that his training in Pakistan and Afghanistan is designed to ensure "the Western-Jewish domination is finished, so we live under Muslim law again". He denounces the plots of the Jews to divide Muslims and make them think poorly of Osama bin Laden and warns his father to ignore "the Jews' propaganda war machine.". Abu Muslim’s a Jew-hater. Quelle surprise.

said that his son seemed unaware of the September 11 attacks when they spoke on a mobile phone a few days after the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan began. Of course, he now says that but was horrified by the September 11, 2001, attacks and could not leave Afghanistan because the border was shut by the Taliban.

He should go the way of William Joyce.

Post Number 100 - A Reply to Chip

2005-10-31T16:12:00.000+10:30

Chip said in relation to my last post that "this is crazy", and said that the death penalty in the US is only applied for murder.

For the avoidance of doubt, I disagree with the Singaporen law, and to the extent necessary, apologise for what may seem, especially to American ears, like undue flippancy in the said post. However, I would like to make a few comments, if only to set a few things straight. Sorry, sometimes I can't help doing that!

Death Penalty for Rape and Other Offences in the US

Historically, the US has executed people for everything from sodomy to horse-thieving. In modern times, this has changed. During the period 1930-1967 (the latter being, coincidentally the last year that an Australian government, that of Victoria, actually carried out the death penalty) 455 prisoners (12% of the total executions) - ninety percent of them African American were executed for rape; 70 prisoners were executed for other offences. During the same period, the U.S. Army (including the Air Force) executed 160 persons, including 106 executions for murder (including 21 involving rape), 53 for rape, and one for desertion.

In 1977, the Supreme Court declared in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977) that applying the death penalty in rape cases was unconstitutional because the sentence was disproportionate to the crime. Coker resulted in the removal of twenty inmates - three Caucasians and 17 African Americans - awaiting execution on rape convictions from death rows around the country. That is, in 1977, there were 20 people on death row for committing the crime of rape; African Americans from south of the Mason-Dixon, were disproportionately likely to end up ridin' the lightnin' for rape.

Felony Murder, Poisoning, and Drug Trafficking

In addition to murder, there is also what has been called "felony murder", that is, broadly speaking, unintentional killing in the course of the commission of a crime of violence; I'm no criminal lawyer, nor do I know a great deal about the criminal law of the various US States, but if I am robbing a Texas convenience store, and I drop my gun, and it discharges, thus killing Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, then what might ordinarily be an accidental death, or an act of manslaughter, becomes a Capital Murder that could have me cooling my heels for 10-20 years on death row, with nothing to look forward to but a nasty injection at the end.

No doubt, if I knowingly sell you booze laced with arsenic, which, if used as the manufacturer (of the booze) intends, I am clearly guilty of murder if and when you die.

Conversely, consider my selling you heroin, knowing that it is of such uncommon purity, that it is therefore almost inevitably going to kill you by overdose when you use it in the intended manner. Of course, I know what you intend to do with it. Nobody's that stupid. What if death by overdose, or by poisoning by rat-poison (arsenic again!) with which the heroin has been "cut" is not "almost inevitable", but only "substantially probable" or merely "likely"?

The Singaporean death penalty only applies where intended supply to another is proven (or the rebuttable presumption of intended supply is not rebutted). That is, when caught with more than "x" grammes, the law presumes that you are intending to supply, and you have to prove that it's for personal use only; that's a common enough provision in anti-drug statutes. The Singaporean (and Malaysian, for Singapore is not alone in this) laws may be "crazy". I happen to believe that they are - even though there is some suggestion that they have a deterrent effect. Indeed, some criminologists have argued that the less likely clemency, the stronger the deterrant effect. However, the moral distinctions are not always as clear as they at first seem. Is the Texan convenience-store thief who accidentally shoots Apu any more morally culpable than the trafficker who flogs poison to addicts for money?

The point is, I suppose, that drug trafficking is not a "victimless crime", and by selling you drugs, I can kill you just as easily as by putting a bullet in your head. A reckless, or merely negligent thief can end up on death row, and yet, in many countries a trafficker with as guilty, or guiltier mens rea can get off comparitively lightly.

It's not an easy moral or policy question, is it?

Incidentally, the point that Latif raised (but articulated imperfectly) is that the arguments for clemency raised by some activists highlight all the race / nationality based capriciousness and inconsistencies that American anti-death penalty activists have raised for years. But he does so to enforce, rather than oppose the penalty. Ironic, eh?

Your comments are welcomed.

Inevitable that Australian will Die

2005-10-31T12:28:00.000+10:30

Just as it is inevitable that I will weigh into this controversy.

For those of you who are unaware, a Melbourne man of Vietnamese extraction is facing the noose in Singapore, for drug trafficing. He was not attempting to bring drugs into Singapore, he was simply passing through en route from Cambodia to Australia.

Now, Singapore is one of the most if not the most enthusiastic (per capita) neck-breakers in the world, and like Texas, it's practically impossible to get a reprieve once the appeals process is exhausted. Unlike Texas, the appeals process takes a couple of months, rather than a decade or more. His mother's latest ploy to secure a reprieve has been to write to Her Majesty the Queen. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of reprieves granted by the President of Singapore in the last few decades. I doubt a plea from the Queen could save Prince Harry from the noose, but full marks for trying.

Don't get me wrong, on balance, I'm against stringing people up for drugs charges. Just as I'm against the shari'ah that bans Cabernet Sauvignon throughout most of the Middle East (actually, perhaps if they had a tipple now and then, violent jihaad would be less the rage. Just a theory; but I digress). Were I to get caught in the Magical Kingdom "experimenting" with a good bottle of Australian red, or even a beer, I know that I would be in a world of trouble and I would have no-one to blame but myself. Incidentally, I'm well aware (before someone accuses me otherwise) that draconian Singaporean punishments like caning people bloody and breaking their necks are hang-overs from English Common Law, and have no basis in Islam.

Asad Latif argues on the basis of reasons of sovereignity and international comity, that the calls for Nguyen Tuong Van's reprieve are misguided. That is true, particularly when such calls are based upon his nationality, or the fact that the drugs were not destined for the Singaporean market. Such arguments either value Singaporean lives less than Australian ones, or they value them more. That's a fair point.

Nguyen Tuong Van's legal team, unlike some Amnesty International types, have based their appeals for clemancy on bases that might at least some chance of success. They argue that their client is able to give evidence against others in the drug trade. Of course, that will almost inevitably lead to more hangings. One would expect that to carry some weight with the notoriously authoritarian Singapore government. Naturally Amnesty International and others opposed to the noose on principle run a mile from that sort of argument!

Now, like Justice Scalia, I have no moral or religious objection to the death penalty; and unlike some enthusiastic opponents thereof, I can say with a clear conscience, that, for example, the Nurnburg Judgments were on the whole just (except, for example, to the extent that the indictments were based upon attrocities actually committed by the Red Army, but falsely blamed on the Nazis, such as the Katyn massacre). But that cannot excuse Auschwitz and Treblinka. I think the same about Israel's hanging of Eichmann; nor would I have shed any tears if Arafat ended up at the end of a rope instead of in a (no-doubt luxurious) French hospital.

Anyway, this biographical piece on the front page of last Friday's Australian, complete with semi-naked photo that could turn Andrew Sullivan straight, strikes me as ghoulish. Apparrently, he's a really nice chap. I won't re-print the photo, or excerpt from the story. Readers can satisfy their morbid curiousity by reading all about Mr Singh's life and his work at The Australian. But Mr Singh is credited with being the only executioner in the world to single-handedly hang 18 men in one day - three at a time. In his favour, he's tried to quit, and uses the British long-drop method of hanging, which almost invariably results in instant death.

Anyway, if The Australian can be ghoulish, so can David. Here's a picture of the gallows in my home town, last used in 1964, to hang a particularly nasty piece of work called Glen Sabre Valance, for shooting his boss, and raping his boss's wife amongst her husband's remains. Like I said; a nasty piece of work.

Vatican to Sup with The Devil

2005-10-31T11:55:00.000+10:30

It's not the Levantine Arabs this time. It's Beijing, as the Times of London and The Australian are reporting. This represents one of those particularly difficult moral condundra for the Holy See; what can be done to protect the rights of mainland Chinese Catholics, without:

ignoring the rights of Taiwanese Catholics, or
appearing to bless the Chinese Communist revolution (and let's face it, the Beijing government is almost as pro-Catholic / pro-religious freedom as the chaps in Saudi Arabia, and the Taipei government is arguably the legitimate goverment of China).

Glad I do not have to make the policy on that one.

On the "legitimate government" point, it is interesting to recall when various Latin American states were over-throwing their Spanish and Portuguese colonial administrators, the Church faced a similar dilemma. In those days, the Catholic Monarchies of Portugal and Spain appointed Catholic Bishops in their territories. The Church got around the problem by deciding that if the old regiemes of Spain and Portugal could re-establish authority on the ground within a reasonable time (in fact 15 years), then that was all well and good, and the old system of monarchial appointment could continue. Otherwise, the Vatican would take over the process and appoint its own Bishops.

Perhaps a sane way of bowing to the inevitable. Now that the Holy See appoints Bishops everywhere (I stand corrected if there is are one or two exceptions), is there really a problem with the Vatican appointing Taiwanese Bishops, even if they don't send a Nuncio to Taipei? That leaves the persecution of the Chinese Church as a major sticking block. Let's hope that in a few years' time, His Holiness is not pulling out the German-Chinese dictionary to translate Mit Brennender Sorge into Mandarin.

Piggy-Banks Banned in Britain

2005-10-29T09:48:00.000+09:30

LGF reports that piggy banks have been banned by some British banks, because practitioners of the Mohammedan faith might get offended. Rightasrain commented:

Religious Jews have avoided pork for thousands of years.
Jews have also worked in the banking industry.
We never went berserk over "piggy banks."
The UK really needs to think about this.

Chip, of Politics and Religion fame said:

Maybe you should rethink all that blending in and courtesy. If Jews issued fatwas, got offended when the wind blows, beheaded some innocent people, and blew stuff up, the world might trip over itself trying to appease you.

A fair point.

Australian Foreign Policy Becomes More "Independent"

2005-10-24T15:17:00.000+09:30

...but, as Greg Sheridan argues, in a way guaranteed to get the UN-loving, Israel hating bien-pensants of the commentariat foaming at the mouth. Now that's the kind of "independant foreign policy" I'll happily support.

Trafalgar, 200 Years On...

2005-10-22T17:01:00.000+09:30

As the United Kingdom celebrates the Bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, Tom Utley argues that Lord Nelson must be turning in his grave:

One of the new regime's first acts, apart from sending any organisers of resistance to the guillotine, would have been to sweep away the Common Law, and to establish in its place the Napoleonic Code. Like so many dictators - from the Roman emperors to Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot - Napoleon was a tidy-minded rationalist who believed in universal laws, applicable to all mankind. From a dictator's point of view, the trouble with Britain's common law is that it is an organic growth, based not on first principles, but on human nature and accumulated experience.
[...]

Unlike the earlier French revolutionaries, who thought that Italy should be governed by Italians and Spain by Spaniards, Napoleon was never a believer in nation states. He believed in centralised European government - one law and one authority for the whole of his empire. This was the fate from which Nelson and Collingwood saved the peoples of Britain, 200 years ago today.

[...]

If Nelson had lost at Trafalgar, Britain would have been locked into a centralised, protectionist Europe. Instead, his victory opened up the markets of the whole wide world to British enterprise. Two hundred years on, we could do with another Nelson.

The Inculcation of Mediocrity and Confronting Turbulant Priests

2005-10-22T11:39:00.000+09:30

Dr Kevin Donnelly writes yet again, about the pernicious fad of "outcomes-based-education" sweeping the Australian public education systems. He gives the example of a teacher trying to teach "the best way to drive from Melbourne to Sydney":

Based on OBE, not only are teachers denied a syllabus detailing the best way to Sydney, but children negotiate their own way in their own time, and as long as they eventually arrive, whether via Perth or Brisbane, all are considered successful.

Sometimes, I have to weep for future generations. That's ironic, because, in Tasmania, for example the essential "subjects" include such things as "[t]hinking, communicating, personal futures, social responsibility and world futures". Now that's the intellectual equivalent of masturbation. It may feel good to its practitioners, but it's ultimately sterile. Worse, it looks to me like a fig-leaf for the indoctrinaation of students into the kind of politically-correct shibboleths that reign supreme in the humanities faculties of too many Universities. But then, what does it matter if children cannot read, write or spell, so long as they know how to fight "Amerikkkan cultural hegenomy" and understand that the oeuvre of Michael Moore represents the highest achievement of western civilisation.

In the same newspaper, Christopher Pearson looks at mainstream Christianity's response to the Howard Government's proposed industrial relations reforms, and accuses the churches of adopting a neo-Marxist approach to politics that overlooks, if not ignores, firstly, the taxation and social security reforms of the last thirty years, and secondly, the needs of the unemployed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Uniting Church, having given up believing in God in favour of abstract notions such as "social justice" is the worst sinner:

Dean Drayton, the president of the Uniting Church, says the Fair Pay Commission's mandate "is to keep wages low rather than assess what workers need to live a decent life", which strikes him as "incompatible with Christianity. Christians are called to challenge systems and structures that breed hate, greed, oppression, poverty, injustice and fear. Anything less than this is a watered-down expression of our faith."

To which Pearson scathingly responds:

My guess is that this kind of quasi-Marxist rant doesn't cut much ice any more, even among Drayton's rapidly dwindling flock

No wonder the pews are empty. Pearson asks:

Why, in the name of abstract notions of wage justice, should the churches help to keep people locked out of the workplace and dole-dependent?

Why indeed?

The same abstract notions bedevil the Catholic Church's response to minimum wages. John Ryan, the executive officer of the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, has just written a paper, The Common Good and Industrial Relations. In it, he writes that "Catholic social teaching calls for the fixing of a wage that is based on the needs of a family, not the needs of a single person". This is offered as though it were one of the proverbial "laws of the Medes and the Persians, never to be repealed".

Yet Catholic social teaching changes and develops through time, responding to emerging circumstances. John Paul II overhauled the church's position on the role of the market economy, for example. It's hard to imagine the encyclicals Ryan has in mind were written in the era when a dual-income family was becoming normative and significant welfare transfers were broadly available to help support dependents.

Ryan's position is schizoid. On the one hand, he acknowledges the growing role of the public purse in providing for dependents of workers, including those on minimum wages. On the other, he continues to maintain that the Fair Pay Commission's preparedness to take into account the needs of families is the test by which it should be judged and, ipso facto, bound to fail.

Pearson's argument is not that wages for the borderline employable should be permanently low, rather that the taxation, industrial relations and social security systems can work together to give people the dignity of work and a decent standard of living. Its compassion is more sophistocated than the outdated red-rag lunacy of some church beaurocrats.

Waleed Aly Talks Sense on "Honour Killings"

2005-10-22T11:27:00.000+09:30

This blog is normally no fan of Melbourne Lawyer Waleed Aly, Executive Member of the Islamic Council of Victoria and sometime spokesman for pandering to Muhammadan sensibilities. But this article, makes a great deal of common sense:

VERY little of what I was taught in my second-year criminal law class remains in my memory, but I will never forget the day we encountered R v Dincer. This was a homicide case in which a man became so enraged with his daughter's premarital relationship that he killed her.
[...]
Dincer's lawyers implored the jury to consider how offensive his daughter's conduct would have been to her father. They argued that an ordinary Turkish Muslim might be provoked to execute their daughter in these circumstances, and that accordingly, his crime should be reduced from murder to manslaughter. Worst of all, it worked. A rotten exploitation of a rotten defence.

The Common Law doctrine of Provocation was used to justify obnoxious cultural practices that must be seen as simply wrong in any functioning society. Aly considers the recent case of MSK in which Senior Counsel for the convicted rapist blamed cultural and religious influences for his client's brutality. According to Aly:

It won't do. No law or moral code of decency, least of all an Islamic one, tolerates the deplorable murder or rape of people, irrespective of the culture or religion of the assailant. One must sink to the depths of egotism and immorality to lay the blame for their barbaric criminality at the door of a rich cultural tradition, or worse still, God.

Credit where credit's due. In this instance, Aly is right.

2005-10-19T04:49:00.000+09:30

Knee Deep in the Blood of his People

2005-10-18T10:00:00.000+09:30

Yet another homicidal maniac is lauded by the United Nations as his people cry out for freedom:

Reuters reports:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe denounced U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "unholy men" on Monday, comparing them to fascist leaders trying to dominate the world.

Speaking at 60th anniversary celebrations of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mugabe said the United States and Britain had illegally invadd Iraq and were looking to change governments in other countries.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed (an) unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?" Mugabe told the conference.

"The voice of Mr Bush and the voice of Mr Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq," he said.

Delegates attending the FAO conference applauded Mugabe at the end of his speech.

[...]

The European Union has already imposed a travel ban on Mugabe after accusations of vote rigging in parliamentary polls in 2000 and in Mugabe's re-election two years later.

However, he is allowed to travel to EU countries to attend U.N.-sponsored events.

Of course, Mr Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe has been a light unto the nations, and a model for UN-fellated despots everywhere, as this e-mail recently forwarded to me well demonstrates:

I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF. The darkest hour is always before dawn.

We are all terrified at what they are going to destroy next........I mean they are actually plowing down brick and mortar houses and one white family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything when 100 riot police came in with AK's and bulldozers and demolished their beautiful house - 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings - because it was "too close to the airport"..so we are feeling extremely insecure right now. You know - I am aware that this does not help you sleep at night, but if you do not know - how can you help?

Even if you put us in your own mental ring of light and send your guardian angels to be with us - that is a help - but I feel so cut off from you all knowing I cannot tell you what's going on here simply because you will feel uncomfortable. There is no ways we can leave so that is not an option. I just ask that you all pray for us in the way that you know how, and let me know that you are thinking of us and sending out positive vibes... that's all.

You can't just be in denial and pretend its not going on. To be frank with you, its genocide in the making and if you do not believe me, read the Genocide Report by Amnesty International which says we are IN level seven (level 8 is after its happened and everyone is in denial). If you don't want me to tell you these things then it means you have not dealt with your own fear, but it does not help me to think you are turning your back on our situation.

We need you to get the news OUT that we are all in a fearfully dangerous situation here. Too many people turn their backs and say - oh well, that's what happens in Africa. This government has GONE MAD and you need to publicize our plight or how can we be rescued?

You can't just say "oh you attract your own reality". The petrol queues are a reality, the pall of smoke all around our city is a reality, the thousands of homeless people sleeping outside in Celsius with no food water, shelter and bedding are a reality.

Today a family approached me, brother of the gardener's wife with two small children. Their home was trashed and they will have to sleep outside. We already support 8 people and a child on this property and electricity is going up next month by 250% as is water. How can I take another family of 4? And yet how can I turn them away to sleep out in the open?
I am not asking you for money, or a ticket out of here - I am asking you to FACE the fact that we are in deep and terrible danger and I want you to pass on our news and pictures and don't just press the delete button for God's sake. Help in the way that you know how. Face the reality of what is going on here and SEND OUT THE WORD. The more people that know about it the more chance we have of United Nations coming to our aid. [Sorry, the UN's on the other side]
Please stop ignoring and denying what's happening. Would you like to be protected from the truth and then if we are eliminated how would you feel? Surely you would say "if only we knew how bad it really was we could have helped in some way". I know we chose to stay here and so we "deserve" what's coming to us. For now we ourselves, have food, shelter, a little fuel and a bit of money for the next meal - but what is going to happen next? Will they start on our houses? All property is going to belong to the State now. I want to send out my Title Deeds to one of you because if they get a hold of those I can't fight for my rights.
We no longer have SW radio which told us everything that was happening because the government jammed it out of existence - we don't have any reporters, and no one is allowed to photograph. If we had reporters here they would have an absolute field day. Even the pro government Herald has written that people are shocked, stunned, bewildered and blown mindless by the wanton destruction of everyone's homes which are supposed to be "illegal but which a huge percentage of them actually do have licenses for. Please my children - have some compassion and HELP by sending out the articles and personal reports so that something can be DONE.?

How-diddly-doo Omar Shamshoon!

2005-10-18T08:10:00.000+09:30

Omar Shamshoon, is just like Homer Simpson, except, as David at Israellycool notes, he's not funny:

"Omar Shamshoon," as he is called on the show, looks like the same Homer Simpson, but he has given up beer and bacon, which are both against Islam, and he no longer hangs out at "seedy bars with bums and lowlifes." In Arabia, Homer's beer is soda, and his hot dogs are barbequed Egyptian beef sausages. And the donut-shaped snacks he gobbles are the traditional Arab cookies called kahk.

That's according to WSJ.com.

Some longtime "Simpson" fans who are Arabs are incensed over the Arabized version. "This is just beyond the pale," wrote As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, whose blog, angryarab blogspot, often touches on politics and the media. After viewing a promotional segment of "Al Shamshoon," Prof. AbuKhalil wrote, "It was just painful....The guy who played Homer Simpson was one of the most unfunny people I ever watched. Just drop the project, and air reruns of Tony Danza's show instead."

Tony Danza. Ouch.

Few shows have more obsessed fans than "The Simpsons," and their vast online community is worried about whether classic Simpsons dialogue can even be translated. One blogger wrote, "'Hi-diddly-ho, neighbors!' How the h -- are they going to translate that? Or this great quote: Mr Burns: Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese."

Given the popularity in Egypt of a certain television mini-series based upon the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I venture that al Shamshoon will translate the Stonecutters' Song into Arabic thus:

Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
Jews do, Jews do!

Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Jews do, Jews do!

Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
Jews do, Jews do!

Who robs gamefish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
Jews do, Jews DO!

Something Completely Different...

2005-10-18T08:01:00.000+09:30

Check out BYF's outback holiday photos.
This Discarded Lies guest post on "Sukkot; Symbols & Symbolism" is both interesting and informative.

Pakistan Accepts Israeli Aid (sort of...)

2005-10-17T10:45:00.000+09:30

Haaretz is reporting that Pakistan will accept Israeli aid after all, so long as it is channelled through third parties.

Of course, Haaretz being Haaretz, most of the article is comprised of editorial comment to the effect that Pakistan really has nothing against Jews or Israel, and implying that the whole mess was Israel's fault for denying the "palestinians" a state.

Odgers SC: Gang Rapes "Unavoidable"

2005-10-15T16:22:00.000+09:30

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

A violent gang rapist should have been given a lesser sentence partly because he was a "cultural time bomb" whose attacks were inevitable, as he had emigrated from a country with traditional views of women, his barrister has argued.

MSK, who, with his three Pakistani brothers, raped several girls at their Ashfield family home over six months in 2002, was affected by "cultural conditioning … in the context of intoxification", Stephen Odgers, SC, told the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday.

Traditional Muslim attitudes towards women? What about traditional Muslim attitudes towards alcohol?

MSK, 26, MAK, 25 and MMK, 19, are appealing against the severity of their sentences after they were found guilty of nine counts of aggravated sexual assault in company - a crime carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment - against two girls, aged 16 and 17, in July 2002.

MSK and MMK were jailed for 22 years, with a non-parole period of 16½ years, and 13 years, respectively, and MAK for 16 years (12 years non-parole).
Mr Odgers said "new evidence" showed MSK had a "mental disorder" at the time of the rapes and had stopped taking his medication - supplied by his father, a general practitioner.

He also said Justice Brian Sully had made a "clear error" in sentencing them to an extra six years on two counts, rather than one - referring to an act in which MMK withdrew his penis and took off the condom and then continued to rape one of the girls.
"It was the same victim, it occurred in the same location, there was no relevant difference in the nature of the act. The time gap between the offences was minimal," he said. Mr Odgers said a forensic psychologist, David Greenberg, had diagnosed MSK with "atypical compulsive obsessive disorder".

The latter submission simply beggars belief. Surely exposing the victim to the risk of sexually transmitted disease must aggravate the sentence; whether the withdrawal and removal of the condom is seen as a separate act of rape (and it is very strongly arguable that it is), or a factor tending to aggravation of the sentence. The report continues:

"The applicant was a cultural time bomb," Mr Odgers said. "It was almost inevitable that something like this would happen. His culpability is lessened because of that combination."

"Your Honour, my client couldn't help it. He's a Muslim, you see....". So much for treating Muslims as morally mature aldults, with a fully developed sense of right and wrong befitting one of the "world's great religions". Moreover:

The father, who said at the trials that he was with his sons on the night of the rapes, told the court he had diagnosed MSK with schizophrenia.
"He told me … Satan come to him and tell him different things. He told me that sometimes even the green grass whisper to him."

He refused to place his hand on the Koran when sworn in because he said he had not washed.

A spokesman for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, said he was unable to confirm whether the father would be charged with perjury over evidence he gave at the trials.

One of the most chilling aspects of these trials, apart, of course from the brutality of the crimes themselves, has been the wholesale retreat from moral responsibility and rush to blame everyone and everything but the perpetrators exhibited by the perpetrators and their supporters, and in particular, their parents. One might venture that this is a phenomenon familiar to those dealing with the victims of Middle Eastern "honour killings".

20,000 - 30,000 Dead, and Pakistan Snubs Israeli Aid

2005-10-10T10:43:00.000+09:30

Israel's offer of humanitarian aid to Pakistan has gone unanswered.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Despite a very public warming of Israeli-Pakistani ties over the last two months, things have still not heated up enough for Islamabad to publicly accept humanitarian aid from the Jewish state.

Even though Pakistani President Pervez Musharaf called for international assistance to help his country deal with the massive earthquake that hit his country Saturday, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told the cabinet Sunday that Israel's offer of humanitarian aid to both Pakistan and India has as of yet gone unanswered.

A spokesman for the Indian embassy in Tel Aviv said that Pakistan was hit far worse than India by the trembler, and that India has not asked for aid. Indeed, India has offered aid to Pakistan, its long-time enemy.
Foreign Minister spokesman Mark Regev said that although no formal channels of communication exist with Pakistan, Israel has let Islamabad know of its willingness to help. He did not provide any details about what type of aid was offered.

What "Advice and Consent" Means

2005-10-08T11:26:00.000+09:30

Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter excoriates President' Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee. Leaving to one side the somewhat shrill insults - for example comparing Meirs to Bush's dog Barney and accusing her of being unfit to play a Supreme Court Justice on The West Wing, Coulter has a point. She argues for an appointee devoted to what former Australian Chief Justice Dixon called a "strict and complete legalism". No doubt she would have agreed with Justice Heydon's 2002 Quadrant address Judicial Activism and the Death of the Rule of Law.

Those Supreme Court decisions of which Conservatives have been most critical - Roe v Wade, and restrictions on the death penalty, for example, could not survive such a legalistic approach. Indeed in my view, Roe is barely comprehensible, and certainly not intellectually credible, even if one supports the policy upon which it it based, and even if one takes the view that judicial activism is not necessarily a bad thing.

Coulter's fundamental argument is that if the measure of a good Judge is his "strict and complete legalism", then you want a "conservative nerd" who has mixed it with radicals in the best Law Schools. But President Bush does prefer to reward loyalty (or "cronies", as the cynics might say).

Australia has, with a few notable exceptions, had a history whereby important ethical and policy issues such as these were decided by the State and Federal legislatures, who, as Heydon J points out, are better equipped to properly deal with them. Perhaps in this regard the US could learn from us.

Cognitive Dissonance: Turkeys for Christmas and Queers for "Palestine"

2005-10-08T11:02:00.000+09:30

Zombietime lambasts "Queers for Palestine", otherwise known as "Queers Undermining Israeli Terror", pointing out that Israel, unlike the Palestinian Authority does not persecute homosexuals, and certainly does not punish gay sex with the death penalty. As he correctly points out, most queers in "Palestine" are desparately trying to escape to the "Zionist Entity", and it ain't for the gefilte fish. Zombietime concludes:

This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity.

I have heard such people justify support for the Arab cause on a number of bases; somewhat respectable ones, such as "Arab denial of gay rights does not negate the objective justice of their claims vis-a-vis land in the territories" and silly, factually false ones that verge on antisemitic, ones such as "Arab intolerance is a result of the harsh treatment of the PLO Arabs by the Jewish State".

That said, the last thing the world needs is another State with a Shari'ah-based legal system, that forces women to wear sacks, stay in the home and submit to marital beatings, and stones people for having sex in a non-Shar'ee way.

However, that sort of hellish theocracy represents a vision of a "shining city on a hill" for a large number of Yesha Arabs.

Appeasing Allah II: Teacher Told to Drop Star of David

2005-10-08T10:28:00.000+09:30

Norway's Aftenposten reports that a (non-Jewish) teacher in a municipal school has been ordered to stop wearing a Magen David pennant to avoid offending you-know-who.

A municipally employed teacher in Kristiansand has been prevented from wearing a Star of David around his neck. Kristiansand Adult Education Center, where the man works, ruled that the Jewish symbol could be deemed a provocation towards the many Muslim students at the school, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reports.
Teacher Inge Telhaug said he feels this is a violation of his freedom of speech.
"I can't accept this. It is a small star, 16 millimeters (0.6 inches) that I have around my neck, usually under a T-shirt. I see it as my right to wear it," Telhaug told NRK.
Telhaug teaches immigrants Norwegian language and culture at the education center. Telhaug is not Jewish.
"I see it as the oldest religious symbol we have in our culture, because without Judaism there would be no Christianity," Telhaug.
The principal of the school, Kjell Gislefoss, feels that the Star of David can also be interpreted as a political symbol for the state of Israel, and is afraid the star can provoke and offend students, for example immigrants from the Palestinian territories.
"The Star of David would be a symbol for one side in what is perhaps the world's most inflamed conflict at the moment. Many have a traumatic past that they have escaped and then we feel that if they are going to learn Norwegian then they can't sit an at the same time be reminded of the things they have traveled from," Gislefoss said.
Telhaug has hired a lawyer and refuses to give in.
The head of the Education Association in Kristiansand, Heidi Hauge Uldal, called the school's decision "unacceptable". Uldal said her group did not want to go the way of France and forbid all religious symbols in schools, a topic that is currently becoming relevant in Norway as well.

[Via LGF]. Of course Muslims are not offended by the existance of infidels who stubbornly refuse to say their shahada and convert to Islam. Like so many on the left, Gislefoss sees this as all about Israel's "occupation" of the territories. Little does he understand that, if Israel is provocative to Islamists, it is because it insists on existing as the Jewish State, and refuses to meekly submit to Arab/Muslim genocide. How dare they! As Golda Meir once said,

If we are criticized because we do not bow because we cannot compromise on the question ‘To be or not to be,’ it is because we have decided that, come what may, we are and we will be.

In my view, that is the characteristic of the Jewish State that most "offends" Islamists.

Appeasing Allah

2005-10-05T10:29:00.000+09:30

As Allah's "warriors" self-detonate for a second time in Bali, Hitchens exposes the leftist fraud that is the "peace movement".

Mark Steyn, as usual, says it well when he exposes the west's suicidal respect for the Mohammedan faith, in this article:

.....When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.

Moreover:

Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight. The Church of England bishops would probably agree with that if, in their own misguided attempt at Islamic outreach, they weren't so busy apologising for toppling Saddam.

And:

When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.

He asks the obvious question:

By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?

CNN is asking whether it is time to change the English Flag, to appease the Mohammedans.

The television news in Australia has been editorialising as to the "inexplicable" nature of terrorism. Wrong. Islamists kill for Allah; they want to kill "infidels" and establish the Caliphate. We need to ask ourselves how consistant with western civilisation that is.

Hence the Cox and Forkum cartoon.

Letter to the "Palestinians"

2005-09-29T11:59:00.000+09:30

I admit it, the quotation marks in that heading are mine.

This article by Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi is an absolute must-read. First, it highlights the difference between Israeli and Arab understandings and objectives with respect to the "peace process". Second, it highlights the Arab "culture of denial" which, it its mis-placed pride has done untold harm to the Arab residents of Eretz Israel. Third, it posits that main-stream Israeli society today, there is a widespread will for peace, together with a realistic understanding that there is no genuine desire on the part of the Arab world to accept Israel as a Middle Eastern nation and no will even try to understand the Israeli "national narrative"; hence, Halevi argues, Jerusalem will be lost to the Arabs, and Israel will find peace in its own way, behind the security barrier, maintaining those West Bank settlements that are essential to its security.

Thanks to cba for forwarding this to me.

Labor MP Gets Nazi

2005-09-27T16:46:00.000+09:30

Have a look at the following article from Monday's edition of The Australian.

Apparrently Australia's "influential Jewish community" is upset because Labor MP Julia Irwin has (yet again) demonized the Jewish State in a way calculated to hurt and offend Jews (and indeed, all people of genuine goodwill towards the Jewish people). She said:

"Gaza is now a Palestinian ghetto; a prison for its one million people. All flows of people and goods must pass through Israeli border controls, which has resulted in the World Bank's reporting that unemployment and poverty will rise in Gaza. Now Israel will rule Gaza like a walled ghetto, a giant penal colony, a concentration camp.

"We are witnessing the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Palestinian nation. The world must not allow this to happen."

The Australian's op-ed columnist describes this as "deliberately insidious stuff", and an "unconscionable speech". I suppose that is an obscure and somewhat innacurate way of saying "ranting, foaming at the mouth judenhass". Glenn Milne says "An understandably furious Australian Jewish community believes Irwin is engaged in dangerous moral relativism, putting forward the phony proposition that Israel is acting in the same way as Hitler. ", and he is partly right; that said, it's not only the Jews who are outraged. Why is it that when ethnic slurs are directed towards any other group, the newspapers report "community outrage" in generalized terms, but it's only Jews who ever get offended by so-called "anti-Zionist" Judenhass? Someone tell me, please.

Oh and as for East Jerusalem being the "heart and soul of the 'Palestinian Nation'" - oh puh-lease! If you believe that, I have a bridge and opera house to sell you...

Irwin has justly been forced to apologize to the Parliament for what she said.

The problem is that this hoary old hatred, in its re-vamped Islamist form, has become almost endemic within the left wing of the Australian Labor Party:

"This cowardly Government wants to hide behind another lie, the lie that Islamic fundamentalism is the root of terrorism."

That's Ms Irwin MP again.

Moreover:

Irwin is not alone. Inner Sydney city left-wing MP Tanya Plibersek has previously condemned Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal". Fellow left winger Anthony Albanese admits he cannot talk to Jewish ALP backbencher Michael Danby except through intermediaries. A happy bunch when it comes to the politics of Israel.

I'm sure that Mr Danby's Jewishness has absolutely nothing to do with Mr Albanese's attitude towards him.

As Milne says rhetorically to Opposition Leader Kim Beazley: "Over to you, Kim".

I provide the following links for the benefit of anyone who might like to exercise his or her democratic right to express an opinion (you can follow the links on these pages to the other MPs referred to in Milne's article):

Ability Hits the Mark Where Presumption Overshoots and Diffidence Falls Short

2005-09-27T11:19:00.000+09:30

Discarded Lies examines Ariel Sharon's survival of Benjamin Netanyahu's latest attempt to return to the Prime Ministership of Israel, quoting this 2002 Time article:

Not that Netanyahu would necessarily do things that differently from Sharon if he were faced with the realities of power. An editorial in Maariv suggested he doesn't even believe that a Palestinian state can be stopped. And Netanyahu's own record in power, moreover, suggests he knows the score: Elected as a fierce opponent of the Oslo accords, he was nonetheless forced, as prime minister, to observe it — by withdrawing from Hebron, for example — while Sharon snapped at his heels from the right.

I think I'm with Zulubaby when she says:

If Likud don't stop fighting within, they're going to hand Israel over to the moronic left and then we're really screwed.

On the other hand, Eurabian Times has this "Perfidious Columbia" piece, which gives lie to the arabist whine about American / "Neo-con" support for the Jewish State, and a more optimistic piece entitled "See what can be done with a little political will?". However, Matt makes the following observations, and asks the obvious question:

The pattern is familiar: terrorists attack Israel, Israeli government authorises what the IDF has been ready to do since the last attack, but the offensive stops. The terrorists regroup, and are successful sooner or later. Wash, rinse and repeat.

But here's a crazy notion. I'd bet good money that the list of targets the Israelis have is even longer than the one above. A lot longer. So why not keeping [sic] destroying infrastructure, killing leader [sic] and taking down cells until you have no more actionable intelligence?

Sullivan: Bush The Socialist

2005-09-26T11:10:00.000+09:30

Andrew Sullivan tells readers of The Times that George W Bush is a socialist, and uses Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter "the Michael Moore of the far right" to back him up:

Here’s Peggy Noonan, about as loyal a Republican as you’ll find, in a Wall Street Journal column last week: “George W Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?”

Here’s Ann Coulter, the Michael Moore of the far right, a pundit whose book on liberalism was titled Treason: “Bush has already fulfilled all his campaign promises to liberals and then some! He said he’d be a ‘compassionate conservative’, which liberals interpreted to mean that he would bend to their will, enact massive spending programmes, and be nice to liberals. When Bush won the election, that sealed the deal. It meant the Democrats won.

“Consequently, Bush has enacted massive new spending programmes, obstinately refused to deal with illegal immigration, opposed all conservative Republicans in their primary races, and invited Teddy Kennedy over for movie night. He’s even sent his own father to socialise with ageing porn star Bill Clinton.” Ouch.

His conclusion?

I believe in lower taxes. But I also believe in basic fiscal responsibility. If you do not cut spending to align with lower taxes, you are merely borrowing from the next generation. And if a Republican president has legitimised irresponsible spending, what chance is there that a Democrat will get tough?

This may, in fact, be Bush’s real domestic legacy. All a Democratic successor has to do is raise taxes to pay for his splurge, and we will have had the biggest expansion of government power, size and responsibility since the 1930s. What would Reagan say? What would Thatcher? But those glory days are long gone now — and it was a Republican president and Congress that finally buried them.

I thought (and think) that Sullivan's support for Kerry was a little disingenuous, and overlooked Kerry's evident weakness in the face of Islamic Fascism (although, in fairness to Kerry, many are less than impressed by the performance of Condi "Gaza is just the beginning [praise Allah!]" Rice since she became Secretary of State).

That said, there is arguably more than a whiff of the Aussie National Party about the Bush Administration - social conservatism, and barrels of pork for all our key constituencies!

Plus Ca Change...Arab Christians and Nostra Aetate

2005-09-19T15:18:00.000+09:30

Cardinal Franz Konig reflects on the Catholic Church's 40-year-old Decree on Other Religions, Nostra Aetate, thus:

And fourthly I come to Nostra Aetate, the briefest of all the council declarations but in my eyes one of the most, if not the most, important. This declaration on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions underlines that the Church “rejects nothing of what is true and holy” in other religions and stresses the importance of dialogue. The last three pages of Nostra Aetate, which concern the Church’s relations to Judaism, was one of the most disputed.

This briefest of declarations owes its existence to three people without whose determination, dedication and patience it would never have come about. They were Pope John himself, Cardinal Bea and Fr Johannes Österreicher, an Austrian priest and convert from Judaism who had fled from Austria to the United States before the Second World War. John XXIII was determined to put an end to accusations that the Church was anti-Semitic. He had done a great deal to help Jews when he was Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul in the Forties. Shortly after his election, he asked Cardinal Bea to consider how the Jewish question could be incorporated into the council. I was invited to join this small circle early on, and thus experienced at close hand the many crises and continual ups and downs the declaration went through. It is indeed almost a miracle that it was ever passed at all.

Rumours that a declaration on the Jewish question was on the agenda began circulating almost as soon as the council opened. The mere fact that the question was to be discussed at all immediately met with violent opposition from the Arab world, the Eastern Churches and from a small but vociferous conservative group of council bishops around Archbishop Lefebvre. I greatly admire Pope John, Cardinal Bea and Fr Österreicher for persevering despite fierce opposition, intrigue and sometimes outright slander.

Right up to the end of the council this opposition mobilised the mass media and evoked diplomatic protests from the Arab states. [really, you do surprise me! - Ed] I received sacks of letters, many of them from Christians in the Middle East, begging me to prevent a declaration on the Jewish question. Some of the pamphlets that were circulated were positively malicious and defamatory [surely no Middle Eastern Christian would stoop to that sort of thing! - Ed]. When the small group of council bishops which was so against any declaration on the subject saw that they could not prevent it, they tried to water it down and continually lodged complaints so that the drafts had to be changed at least three or four times. Finally, however, on 28 October 1965, Nostra Aetate was passed: there were 2,221 votes in favour, 88 against and three abstentions. It had taken four years to reach agreement on a few hundred words! For Karl Rahner, “the wording and inner dynamism” of Nostra Aetate was “unique”.

The Skaf Prosecutions & Their Context

2005-09-19T13:20:00.000+09:30

Ittay has correctly pointed out, in response to this post that "rape is rape, no matter who the perpetrator".

That proposition cannot be refuted. What can distinguish one rape from another are factors such as premeditation, and the additional injuries, indignities and humiliations inflicted upon the victim(s). That is a matter of law, and that was precisely the question considered by the Court of Appeal in the case in question. Was this "the worst kind" of rape? In my view, it certainly came close. These were, in my view, worse (warning, not for the weak of stomach), but the circumstances, the premeditated, "gang" nature of the rapes, the hunting of the women like prey, and the degradation, made these particularly heinous crimes.

Let us now look at the context of my post.

In the prosecutions of the Skaf brothers' gang, there was evidence that "Aussie pigs" and "sluts" were singled out by gangs whose members professed the Muslim faith, for rape and sexual humiliation - hence the "f-uck you Leb-style" comment. The Sydney Muslim community has been critical of articles that have appeared in the (left-wing) Fairfax Press, particularly the Sydney Morning Herald, saying that they constituted "Muslim bashing".

Typical of the impugned articles is a piece entitled Betraying the Rape Victims, by Miranda Devine.

So when Cunneen and McKay addressed the legal conference in February they were happy to report the good news about rape prosecutions: that the shame has now shifted to where it ought to be - onto the perpetrator, not the victim. It was a theme that should have been welcome but, instead, a "small but vocal group" in the audience angrily asserted that the gang rape cases were "nothing but racist prosecutions", that Skaf would not have received such a long sentence if he hadn't been Lebanese.

This is how an influential part of Sydney's legal and media circles thinks; many, to their eternal shame, are women, for whom a politically correct stance on multiculturalism is more precious than feminist principles or the safety of young women and girls. It makes them uncomfortable to acknowledge the fact that young Muslim men have been roaming around Sydney gang raping non-Muslim women, or as the rapists like to say, "Aussie pigs" and "sluts" who ask for it. Despite the evidence, they refuse to acknowledge it, and that this same pattern has been occurring in other Western countries, notably France.

There have been attempts to smear as racist, journalists or media outlets which present these facts to the public. In March, the Anti-Discrimination Board published a carefully concocted 123-page smear pamphlet Race For The Headlines, about "moral panic" and "anti-Arab, anti-Muslim" bigotry in the media. It was just one of many attempts by ideologues to diminish the real and lasting suffering of the brave young women who testified in court and ensured that at least some rapists were locked away.

Now, that was the context of my comment to the effect that reference to the rapists' religion was haraam. Why is any of this important? Devine's argument is as follows:

But the social problem behind the rapes hasn't gone away. Whatever makes a subsection of immigrant families in Sydney bring up their sons with such disregard for "Australian" or non-Muslim females remains. In a speech recently, former detective sergeant Tim Priest, the Cabramatta whistleblower, said he saw a pattern of denial about "Middle Eastern crime" similar to that which he experienced about drug crime in Cabramatta. He told of many instances of police "backing down to Middle Eastern thugs" in confrontations in what he calls the "Muslim-dominated areas" of south-western Sydney.

He cited a case in Auburn in 2001 when two uniformed police officers stopped a suspect car and found stolen property. The three occupants of the car threatened to kill the officers, and "f---" their girlfriends. When the police called for backup, so, too, did the thugs on their mobile phones, summoning 60 associates for battle. The response by police chiefs was to order the officers to retreat. And then, later, when the offenders drove to the police station, intimidating staff, damaging property and "virtually holding a suburban police station hostage," again the police did nothing. "By avoiding all confrontations with these thugs the police gave away the streets in many areas of south-western Sydney," Priest said.

That's the point. I apologise if my comments were misunderstood as a cheap-shot at those who profess the Muslim faith. They were not. The serious question here, is to what extent our society expects its citizens and residents to conform to a set of basic values, such as respect for women, the rights of gays and lesbians to live their lives unmolested, freedom of religion, of speech and of conscience.

In many places throughout the so-called western world, in London, Michigan, and Sydney, those who claim to speak in the name of the Mohammedan faith, loudly and aggressively assert the rights of their co-religionists to repudiate, reject and ignore those basic values.

Many on the left are willing to jettison their "feminist" "principles" and argue that journalists such as Devine are dealing in racial and religious prejudice, when they call for the severe punishment of gangs such as Skaf's. It was those people that I was intending to mock with my haraam comment.

But, as I venture to suggest is generally agreed, the relationship and tension between Islam, and customs (such as female genital mutilation) and attitudes (towards women, gays, Jews, and other infidels) which are either Islamic or or common in Islamic societies and liberal (in the John Stuart Mill sense) society, is a legitimate and important question for debate.

Back Again!

2005-09-16T11:40:00.000+09:30

I am back, and feeling better than I have in ages, and accordingly the ranting has resumed. Send me all your hate mail!

While you are at it, check out this entry on New Orleans. Sound common sense. I was tempted to try to work The Simpsons' New Orleans song into this post, but I decided that that would constitute incredibly poor taste.

Thank you very much to all of those who sent their best wishes.

Gang Rapist's Gaol Term Cut

2005-09-16T11:29:00.000+09:30

The Australian is reporting that Bilal Skaf, who was convicted of a series of Sydney gang rapes in 2000 has had his gaol term cut from 46 to 28 years. Readers may recall this individual and his description of his acts as "f-ck[ing] you Leb-style". Many commentators have said that it is haraam to mention his gang's religion. So I will not.

The "Swastika of Embrace"

2005-09-16T11:17:00.000+09:30

Mark Steyn will never win any awards for scholarly journalism, but his robust common sense and sense of irony often appeal to me. This recent article on the amazingly inappropriate proposed Flight 93 - September 11 memorial is an example.

Lutherans - the Leopards that Refuse to Change their Spots

2005-09-16T10:27:00.000+09:30

Christian Attitudes has this interesting piece on the Lutheran World Federation’s blast of invective in the direction of the Israeli separation barrier.

In a public statement adopted yesterday at the end of its week-long meeting in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the LWF council said that many of its members had encountered “the [Israeli] separation wall and found shocking its impact on the daily lives of Palestinians.”

Of course, not a word as to why they are building the thing - you know, the totally accidentally-exploding Arabs and the bullet-firing 100,000 year-old olive trees planted by Abraham, Jesus and Muhummad.

This is unfortunate, but what is to be expected from an ecclesial community whose revered founder (and yes, many devout Lutherans and Protestant Christians do revere Martin Luther as a quasi-Saint) wrote The Jews and their Lies in 1543.

If you can stomach it, read on [be warned, this is noxious, evil stuff from the founder of Lutheranism]:

Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them. ...

Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security. ...

Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?

Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie.

And then, Luther goes on with this prescription for the Holocaust:

I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all hristians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us.... .With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience.

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blaspemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted).

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Thoses villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.

This goes on and on and on, and I will not quote any more of it. You get the picture.

Lutheranism is one leopard that has not changed its spots.

On the other side of the Catholic / Protestant divide, Liz has this item on the upcoming meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Chief Rabbis of Israel. She also notes that Pope Paul VI, unlike his predecessor Pope John XXIII and his successor Pope John Paul II may have himself had some unpleasant attitudes towards the Jewish people. Read it yourselves.

Normal Service to Resume Eventually

2005-09-10T19:34:00.000+09:30

I will be taking a break from blogging for a while, while I spend a little time in Hospital. Needless to say, I'd rather be blogging, but there you go! Thank you to all who have read, linked to and contributed to this blog (in whatever way) over the last month or so. Hopefully I will be back within a week or two.

Krauthammer: Not Jews, Not Witches and Not "Global Warming" or "Iraq"

2005-09-10T18:53:00.000+09:30

Charles Krauthammer has this to say about the causes of Hurricane Katrina:

In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews).

A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush.

This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans, but that National Guardsmen in Louisiana did not get to New Orleans. As for the Bush tax cuts, administration budget requests for New Orleans flood control during the five Bush years exceed that of the five preceding Clinton years. The notion that the allegedly missing revenues would have been spent wisely by Congress, targeted precisely to the levees of New Orleans, and reconstruction would have been completed in time, is a threefold fallacy. The argument ends when you realize that, as The Washington Post notes, ``the levees that failed were already completed projects."

Let's be clear. The author of this calamity was, first and foremost, Nature (or if you prefer, Nature's God). The suffering was augmented, aided and abetted in descending order of culpability by the following:

I now paraphrase the rest of the article, with a recommendation that readers follow my original link to Mr Krauthammer's article, and read his arguments in full:

1. The mayor of New Orleans.

2. The Louisiana governor.

3. The head of FEMA.

4. The president.

5. Congress.

6. The American People.

So there we are. I do not feel particularly qualified to weigh further into the game of apportioning blame for the horriffic loss of life in the South. That article however, written by a normally sensible and reliable commentator seems to get it just about right.

כל עוד בלבב פנימה

2005-09-07T01:23:00.000+09:30

Today's Israel news:

Limor Livnat - Defy US and Build now in Yehuda, Shomron

"The great United States is our friend, but there are times when we have to say, even to the United States, that we will act in accordance with our interests,"

Bravo! And - as many others have said -

Perfidious Columbia Betrays Zion.

The ironies and contradictions in which Israel finds herself entangled today could be material for a Keystone Kops comedy if the results were not so tragic, the ramifications so gruesome.

The United States is fully mobilized fighting a global war on terror, and yet it is doing its utmost to create a terrorist utopia in the heart of Eretz Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and its only true ally in the region.
The US has been the driving force in the creation and sustaining of a twelve-year period of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, a process outrageously called a "peace process", that has claimed the lives of more Israelis to Islamic terror than at any other time in her history.
But justice is harsh, even if it seems slow in coming. Just as a man sows and reaps, so nations do the same. It would appear that those nations that insist Israel continually expose their civilians to the Islamic barbarians will themselves have their civilians exposed to the same. As former Secretary of States Albright and Christopher were smugly shuttling between the US and Israel, coercing Israel to sit and make destructive agreements with Islamic terrorists, written in Jewish blood, similarly motivated warriors of Allah were plotting mass casualty attacks against America itself

It is possible to use the words "Sean Penn" and "hole", without an intervening "ass."

2005-09-06T09:04:00.000+09:30

That wondeful line comes from that Ozraeli known as Israellycool, dealing with Sean Penn's "efforts" in the Southern parts of the United States.

In other miscellanea, non-Australian readers may be unaware of homocon blogger Billious Young Fogey. I cannot fathom how he finds the time to write as well as he does. His blog is well worth a look - allthough not all of it is "safe for work"!

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion

2005-09-04T15:34:00.000+09:30

Chief Justice Rhenquist has died at home. The Yahoo News obituary
includes:

Rehnquist, who championed states' rights and helped speed up executions, is the only member still on the court who voted on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion. He opposed that decision, writing: "Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."

He believed there was a place for some religion in government. He wrote the 5-4 decision in 2002 that said parents may use public tax money to send their children to religious schools. Two years later, he was distressed when the court passed up a chance to declare that the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is constitutional.

"The phrase 'under God' in the pledge seems, as a historical matter, to sum up the attitude of the nation's leaders, and to manifest itself in many of our public observances," he wrote.

Then there was this:

Rehnquist caused great amusement when he departed from tradition by adding four shiny gold stripes to each sleeve of his black robe in 1995. The flourish was inspired by a costume in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

This from a man opposed to his Court's decision to strike down laws criminalizing gay sex!

Read the whole obituary.

The fight over his replacement is bound to be nasty

In other legal obituaries, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, former Master of the Rolls, is also having a beer with Allah, as you read this! The London Daily Telegraph eulogized him thus:

The popular myth grew that Donaldson was biased in favour of the establishment. Yet many Conservative lawyers found him too brash, and his approach to civil liberties led one radical lawyer to observe in 1982 that "he has a passion for justice". His brisk and confident courtroom manner annoyed some barristers who thought him too quick on the uptake, but his demeanour stemmed from a deeply-felt commitment to sweep away delays in the justice system. He would deal directly with the press, which he skilfully used in his campaign for more judges.
His attitude towards politics was, he said, "much the same as a monk towards sex; nostalgic memories of youthful indiscretion, a frank acknowledgement of its attractions, an unshakeable conviction that I could do better than those currently engaged in it, but an acceptance that it will never be for me until I go to a far better world".

I couldn't resist that quote.

Nor this

In 1982 several of the judges whom Lord Hailsham sounded out were strongly opposed to Donaldson's appointment as Master of the Rolls, particularly in the Chancery Division, where they wanted an intellectual heavyweight. Mrs Thatcher was reputed to have said: "Fortunately, Lord Chancellor, your judges do not appoint the Master of the Rolls. I do."

Torygraph obituaries are always worth reading, so I suppose you should read this one, too!

No, Jerusalem is Not Holy to Muslims

2005-09-04T14:54:00.000+09:30

Of late, I have become increasingly annoyed by repeated claims in the media, that Jerusalem (and the Al-Aska Mosque, in particular) are Islam's "third holiest site". I guess New York, as the site of the former World Trade Centre comes in at number four.

Well, I'm posting this old article by Islamic Scholar, Dr Daniel Pipes, as evidence that such claims are, in the Australian vernacular, "a crock of shit".

Bottom line?

The similarities are striking. Jews pray thrice to Jerusalem, Muslims five times daily to Mecca. Muslims see Mecca as the navel of the world, just as Jews see Jerusalem. Whereas Jews believe Abraham nearly sacrificed Ishmael's brother Isaac in Jerusalem, Muslims believe this episode took place in Mecca. The Ka‘ba in Mecca has similar functions for Muslims as the Temple in Jerusalem for Jews (such as serving as a destination for pilgrimage). The Temple and Ka‘ba are both said to be inimitable structures. The supplicant takes off his shoes and goes barefoot in both their precincts. Solomon's Temple was inaugurated on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the year, and the Ka‘ba receives its new cover also on the tenth day of each year. If Jerusalem is for Jews a place so holy that not just its soil but even its air is deemed sacred, Mecca is the place whose "very mention reverberates awe in Muslims' hearts," according to Abad Ahmad of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey [...]

To back up this view, Palazzi notes several striking and oft-neglected passages in the Qur'an. One of them (5:22-23) quotes Moses instructing the Jews to "enter the Holy Land (al-ard al-muqaddisa) which God has assigned unto you." Another verse (17:104) has God Himself making the same point: "We said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Land.'" Qur'an 2:145 states that the Jews "would not follow your qibla; nor are you going to follow their qibla," indicating a recognition of the Temple Mount as the Jews' direction of prayer. "God himself is saying that Jerusalem is as important to Jews as Mecca is to Moslems," Palazzi concludes.

His analysis has a clear and sensible implication: just as Muslims rule an undivided Mecca, Jews should rule an undivided Jerusalem.

The article is old, long, and full of scholarly detail. Many readers will be well familiar with it. Those who are not should read it, before they get taken in by Islamist nonsense to the effect that Jerusalem is holy to the "three great monotheistic religions".

Oh G-d!

2005-09-04T10:24:00.000+09:30

It's Sunday here, so I thought I'd post a Christian bumper sticker! Oy vey!

By the way, I've had quite a bit of blog spam in the past couple of days. I've regretfully turned on word verification. Apologies to legitimate commenters!

The "Perfectly Balanced" BBC

2005-09-03T14:25:00.000+09:30

I'm linking to this new blog which takes the BBC to task for (surpise) anti-Israel bias.

It's well worth reading, and leads one to question (yet again) why western democracies even need public broadcasters.

Another Little Anecdote

2005-09-02T11:36:00.000+09:30

When I was graduating from Law at Adelaide, we were addressed by the Senator the Hon Amanda Vanstone. She was then the Federal Education Minister, accused by the left of "Americanizing", and cutting the guts out of University Education. She's since become the Immigration Minister responsible for locking up Unlawful Non-Citizens - incluing women and children) in camps in the desert (yes, that's what we do, until they can prove they are genuine refugees or be deported - friend of mine went to Ireland and told them that was our policy - and they were shocked that it was firstly, popular, and secondly in part responsible for the re-election of the Howard government in 2001 - we put up these posters with Howard saying "WE decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come!" - to rousing applause, I might add!).

Anyway, I've met her, and she has a heart of gold under this tough exterior the hard-line tough talking - (Vanstone bagging a LLL feminist "there's only room for one blonde in your party" - so the LLL Senators give a resounding "boo" - the response? "Not that thre's a problem with that, or else my colleage would not have had her hair so badly dyed that colour!!", or, when a male Senator called her fat - "I'd rather have a fat arse than shit for brains, Mr comb-over!" - he never insulted her again!). This was in Parliament, mind! I know most US Senators are too pompous to speak like that! She's also famous for spinnaker-sized Versace outfits! Returning to my anecdote, the best part of her speech was:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Now that's Teddy Roosevelt!

Zenit: Immoral Idiots

2005-09-02T09:13:00.000+09:30

Catholic news agency Zenit has this to say:

Not all Palestinians are suicide terrorists, and not all Israelis are prepared to kill a Palestinian because he is Palestinian.

Strictly speaking, that's true I suppose. A bit more Arab spontaneous combustion in the privacy of their own homes, of course, would save a lot of problems. That said, it's just that most of the Judea / Samaria / Gaza Arabs do want to destroy Israel one way or another:

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

Similarly, 80 percent of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the "right of return."

So the vast majority of Yesha Arabs remain committed to the destruction of the world's only Jewish State, either demographically or explosively. Great.

Until Zenit can produce evidence that a similar proportion of Israelis wants to go around indiscriminately killing Arabs, just for being Arabs, they stand accused of Jew-hatred.

On the other hand:

Purity of Arms - טוהר הנשק - "The IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property".

And:

Recently, a team of professors, commanders and former judges, led by Tel Aviv University head of Ethics cathedra, Professor Assa Kasher, developed a code of conduct which emphasizes the right behavior in low intensity warfare against terrorists, where soldiers must operate within a civilian population. Reserve units and regular units alike are taught the following eleven rules of conduct, which are an addition to the more general IDF Spirit:
Military action can only be taken against military targets.
The use of force must be proportional.
Soldiers may only use weaponry they were issued by the IDF.
Anyone who surrenders cannot be attacked.
Only those who are properly trained can interrogate prisoners.
Soldiers must accord dignity and respect to the Palestinian population and those arrested.
Soldiers must give appropriate medical care, when conditions allow, to oneself and one's enemy.
Pillaging is absolutely and totally illegal.
Soldiers must show proper respect for religious and cultural sites and artifacts.
Soldiers must protect international aid workers, including their property and vehicles.
Soldiers must report all violations of this code.
That's from this site.

"...not all Israelis are prepared to kill a Palestinian because he is Palestinian". Of course not. Obviously not. If they were, "Palestine" would have been de-populated of Arabs by about, say September 1967. Zenit is propagating Jew-hating lies. How else can this fairly be read?

But of course, the poor oppressed "stateless" (if you don't count Jordan, of course) Palestinians just want a State to call thier own. Herr Shickelgruber used to say something similar.

For Airforcewife

2005-09-01T23:39:00.000+09:30

On 31 October 1917, as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign during World War I, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade, under Brigadier General William Grant, charged more than four miles at the Turkish trenches, overran them and captured the wells at Beersheba. This is often reported as the last successful cavalry charge in history.

So that's my Great-Grandfather's contribution to Israeli history. And I'm proud of it, because he was just an Aussie farmer who went out to do what he saw was the right thing! And nobody ever dared called him a child - especaially when he lived to almost 98!

Cindy Sheehan, Mother Driven Mad by Grief, or Inheritrix of an Evil Tradition?

2005-09-01T22:18:00.000+09:30

A couple of weeks ago, LGF published this article., and then this one, and and of course, this one.Not to mention this.

That's a quick round up of "Mother Sheehan" and her motivations from this writer's point of view. Now men and women of good will ask ourselves , whether this woman is a loving mother driven mad by grief, or the Jew-hating Bitch of Crawford, in the tradition of llsa Koch and the so-called "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem". Stark raving bonkers is the nicest thing that can be said about her.

Make up your own minds. David knows what he thinks.

Jesus the Jew

2005-08-30T16:11:00.000+09:30

Airforcewife said this:

One of my biggest life revelations was understanding that Jesus was JEW- and he lived as one, spoke as one, and acted as one.

This very much remids me of Andrew Sullivan's comment that Jesus' wearing of a loincloth on the Cross (at least in Christian art) had a lot to do with two millenia of Christian hatred of the Jews.

UPDATE: One of the points that I was going to make before my computer crashed, was that this Altar piece by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich was criticised for its apparrent glorification of the natural world over Jesus sacrifice. That said, I can't help but be inspired by it; just as I like Wagner's Operas, while despising the man as an anti-semite.

Joseph, Cardinal Ratzinger

2005-08-28T15:13:00.000+09:30

Rightly or wrongly, I think that "Joe the Rat" is one of the good guys.

He teaches the Faith as Jesus did.

And I think he's a Chaver Tzion, who wears a kippah!

Rome and Jerusalem are friends again, too!

That said, this is a bit much!

Jews Poisoning the Land

2005-08-27T12:16:00.000+09:30

For a new twist on an old libel check out Israellycool - who links to this example of yet another insane Arab-Jew-hating conspiracy theory. The Arab world really needs to grow up.

Aliyah

2005-08-27T12:00:00.000+09:30

On a more positive note, Arutz Sheva has this photo essay.

The Stakes After Gaza

2005-08-27T11:39:00.000+09:30

Charles Krauthammer comments on demands for yet more Israeli concessions:

The Gaza menorah was carried off in a very remarkable and significant way, perched on a horizontal rod borne on the shoulders of men walking one behind, the other.

Seen in profile, that image has a shocking familiarity. If you go to the eastern entrance of the Roman forum today, you will see the huge triumphal Arch of Titus erected in the year 81 to commemorate the conquest of the Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state — Judea — in the year 70. One of the friezes shows the seven-branched menorah being carried out of the temple in Jerusalem — as booty and symbol of the conquest of Judea — perched on a long horizontal staff borne by Roman soldiers walking one behind the other.

Why is this significant?

What follows is the world saying, almost in unison, that the Gaza evacuation is just the beginning of a total Israeli retreat, one Dunkirk to be followed by many more. What follows is Condoleezza Rice declaring that "it cannot be Gaza only," a thrilling encouragement to the Palestinians jeering the Israeli withdrawal with chants of "Gaza today, Jerusalem tomorrow."

Remember, this is supposed to be one of Israel's friends. You know, the Great Satan that upsets the Islamic world with its "reflexive support for Israel", "irrespective of what Israel does".

This is a prescription for Israel's suicide. Or rather murder, because the Israelis are not prepared to march blindly into further unrequited concessions. The final concession will be getting into boats and sailing back to where?

Poland?

In his policy-setting Rose Garden speech of June 2002, President Bush explicitly endorsed a Palestinian state and said that to achieve it, the next step was up to the Palestinians. Since then the only thing the Palestinians have done is to bury Yasser Arafat, an act of reverence but not exactly an initiative.

In the interim, the Israelis have withdrawn from Gaza, destroyed four West Bank settlements to create geographic contiguity for Palestinian territory in the northern West Bank, and once again repeated their support of a Palestinian state. The Palestinian response has been Katyusha rockets into Sderot, promises of renewed terrorism and chants for total victory.

Krauthammer's conclusion?

What is at stake is whether the world, led by the United States, will demand Arab acceptance of that single Jewish state, or whether the United States will continue to push Israel from one concession to another until one day another arch is erected, this time in Jerusalem itself, commemorating the destruction of history's third and last Jewish commonwealth.

If the history of the Zionist movement has taught us one thing it is that if Jews don't take care of themselves, nobody else will. Contrary to what "anti-Zionists" will have you believe, Israel cannot rely on the Great Satan to back it up in a fight. Yet again, Israel will have to say "no" to the world. But, as Golda Meir once said, Israel will have its secret weapon. No alternative.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism

2005-08-25T15:23:00.000+09:30

Of course, crtiticism of the Israeli government is not necessarrily anti-Semitic. But James Lileks, looking at the US Presbyterians, points how it can be:

But they're not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don't you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they choose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it happens to be full of Jews.

The right and the left seem to take turns deciding who's going to be anti-Semitic. But for some time now, the hard left in the West has led the charge against the Jews -- or, as the sleight-of-hand term has it, the Zionists.These adolescent spirits love nothing more than a revolution, a story of a scrappy underdog rising up against a colonizing power, and the Palestinians, with their romantically masked fighters and thrilling weapon-brandishing, fit the bill. Plus, there's something so deliciously naughty and transgressive about calling Jews the new Nazis.

It doesn't matter that one side is a liberal democracy that grants rights to women and non-Jews while the other has thugs and assassins for rulers and sends its kids to summer camps where they learn the joys of good ol' fashioned Jew-killing. According to the hard left's script, Israel was created when some Europeans (hisssss) invaded the sovereign nation of Palestine, even though we all know the Jewish homeland is somewhere outside Passaic, N.J. Then for no reason Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza -- which for some reason had not been set up as New Palestine by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, but never mind -- and made everyone stand in line and get frisked. Those who joined the line in '67 are just getting through now. Evil Zionists.

Don't tell the Presbyterians about Tibet or Sudan. It would absolutely ruin their day.

The companies the church wishes to pressure include Caterpillar, which makes bulldozers purchased by the Israelis for the sole purpose of knocking down innocent homes of gentle lamb herders, and Motorola, which among other things sells night-vision goggles that give the Israeli Defense Forces an unfair advantage over people who want to smuggle in bombs to encourage the social-justice dialogue.

The church will probably get around to boycotting Cuisinart, if the imams suggest that Jews use Cuisinart products to grind up Gentile bones for Passover pastries. Of course it's not true, literally, but in the culture of the occupation and resistance, we must understand these things as potent metaphors. False, yes, but potent!

Next they can sue the company that sells buses to Israeli cities. All those tempting targets, packed with innocent people. How could an oppressed person resist killing them all? What sort of civilized nation would tempt them so? Especially because they don't have helicopters and night-vision goggles and tanks and missiles. Not that they'd use those devices against Israelis. That would risk a Presbyterian boycott.

Bitter? Clearly. Sarcastic? No doubt. Is it true? Unfortunately, it is.

There Is No Second Law

2005-08-25T13:29:00.000+09:30

According to Treasurer Peter Costello:

SYDNEY (AFP) - Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia, a senior government minister has said, hinting that some radical clerics might be asked to leave.

Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament, Treasurer Peter Costello told national television late Tuesday.

“If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” said Costello, who is seen as heir-apparent to Prime Minister John Howard.

“I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false.

“There’s only one law in Australia — it’s the law that’s made by the parliament of Australia and enforced by our courts. There is no second law."

“If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he replied: “Where a person has dual citizenship, it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship. That might be a live possibility.”

Makes sense. Moreover, it shows that Islamists have no reason to rejoice that Costello will take over from Howard. Quite the contrary.

Grief Curdled into Narcissistic Rage

2005-08-21T20:06:00.000+09:30

Mark Steyn writes about the “at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill”, Cindy Sheehan, and her attendant circus clowns camped out near President Bush’s Texas ranch.

On the infantilization of the military, Steyn says:

they’re not children in Iraq; they’re thinking adults who ‘made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country’. Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.
That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.
I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ‘of course’ they ‘support our troops’, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

And on Ms Sheehan herself? This just about sums it up:

The politics of this isn’t difficult: the more Cindy Sheehan is heard, the more obvious it is she’s a kook to whom most Americans would give a wide berth.
Don’t take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement: ‘The Sheehan family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq war and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.’

As Steyn argues, the glorification of Cindy Sheehan is symptomatic of the advanced state of delusion of the US Democratic Party.

Nazis & "Progressives" Love Muhummad Dawood

2005-08-21T15:33:00.000+09:30

Tim Blair has an interesting post on the support Adelaide Jihadi David Hicks (or Muhammad Dawood, as he prefers to be called) is receiving from the extreme right and the progressive left alike. The "Adelaide Institute" is an obnoxious Neo-Nazi, holocaust-denying "think-tank" (I hesitate to use the word "think" in connection with the Adelaide Institute) that has got into trouble for Judenhass before.

BYF links to this Gerard Henderson piece in the SMH giving a little of Mr Hicks' background and marvelling at the support that Hicks has received from some of the fashionable members of the professional classes. Henderson points out:

In testimony before a Senate committee on May 28, 2002, the former ASIO director-general, Dennis Richardson, said that "certainly Mr Hicks has received extensive al-Qaeda training". It is understood his training included such areas as weapons firing, landmines, marksmanship, ambush, intelligence, kidnapping techniques, assassination methods and surveillance. If the allegations are correct, this would mean that Hicks is one of the few Muslim converts of Anglo-Celtic background to train to such a high level with al-Qaeda.

Of course he deserves a fair and speedy trial. But all the same, with friends like these...

It's the Jews' Fault!

2005-08-21T14:46:00.000+09:30

Of course it is. Everyone knows that. Silly me.

Stephen Pollard recently (well, almost a month ago actually) reported on a Birmingham Reparatory Theatre Company / Edinburgh International Festival production that's right up there with the National Socialist cinema classic Jud Suss.

From the flyer (and this really deserves to be quoted at length):

A witty and provocative new play about multicultural life, commissioned by the Festival from the Scottish playwright Shan Khan.
There was a place, where The Christians and The Muslims existed in relative peace. Everyone was more or less happy, except for The Jews - who were few and had to be thankful to their Christian Overlords, for the little space they were accorded.
Then one day more Jews came, and it soon became apparent to them that they'd need their own space. So they got their own space - but at The Muslims' expense. The Muslims of course are fuming. The Jews feel they're perfectly within their rights. And The Christians are trying to take a back-seat and let the other two share the blame. This place is a multi-faith Prayer Room in a British college.

So the Christians and Muslims were more or less happy until those darned Red Sea Pedestrians came along, and ruined everything. No doubt they poisoned some wells, too. It is indicative of how bad the anti-Jewish climate has become (particularly, I venture, in Europe), that Jew-baiting can glibly be dismissed "witty and provocative" in the mainstream arts community. I am assuming that the playwright is Muslim, particularly because he or she has adopted a narrative of grievance against the Jews that is very common in Muslim communities today. I may be wrong. Assuming that I am right (as I almost invariably am), the silence of the British equivalent of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in the face of this Jew-baiting is yet another example of the moral infantalisation of the Muslim community by multicultural activists.

The play (and no, I didn't pop over to Edinburgh to see it) appears to itself infantilize Muslims. In the playwright's world view, they are spectators of their own destiny; the Jews spread discord and the Christians help the Jews at the Muslims' expense. What do the Muslims do? Nothing - they are simply victims, acted upon rather than acting. At the risk of sounding sickningly pompous, Muslims cannot continue to view history through that prism.

Thanks to Liz for pointing this flyer out to me!

The Pope Visits Cologne Synagogue

2005-08-21T11:40:00.000+09:30

In Germany for the 2005 World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI has visited the Cologne Synagogue.

The text of the Pope's address is here. His Holiness said:

Today too I wish to reaffirm that I intend to continue on the path towards improved relations and friendship with the Jewish People, following the decisive lead given by Pope John Paul II.

More importantly, from the point of view of Catholic teaching:

This year also marks the fortieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate, which opened up new prospects for Jewish-Christian relations in terms of dialogue and solidarity. This Declaration, in the fourth chapter, recalls the common roots and the immensely rich spiritual heritage that Jews and Christians share. Both Jews and Christians recognize in Abraham their father in faith (cf. Gal 3:7, Rom 4:11ff.) and they look to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. Jewish spirituality, like its Christian counterpart, draws nourishment from the psalms. With Saint Paul, Christians are convinced that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29, cf. 9:6,11; 11:1ff.). In considering the Jewish roots of Christianity (cf. Rom 11:16-24), my venerable Predecessor, quoting a statement by the German Bishops, affirmed that: “whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism” (Insegnamenti, vol. III/2, 1980, p. 1272).

Moreover:

We must come to know one another much more and much better. Consequently I would encourage sincere and trustful dialogue between Jews and Christians, for only in this way will it be possible to arrive at a shared interpretation of disputed historical questions, and, above all, to make progress towards a theological evaluation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. This dialogue, if it is to be sincere, must not gloss over or underestimate the existing differences: in those areas in which, due to our profound convictions in faith, we diverge, and indeed precisely in those areas, we need to show respect for one another.
Finally, our gaze should not only be directed to the past, but should also look forward to the tasks that await us today and tomorrow. Our rich common heritage and our fraternal and more trusting relations call upon us to join in giving an ever more harmonious witness and to work together on the practical level for the defence and promotion of human rights and the sacredness of human life, for family values, for social justice and for peace in the world. The Decalogue (cf. Ex 20; Dt 5) is for us a shared legacy and commitment. The Ten Commandments are not a burden, but a sign-post showing the path leading to a successful life. This is particularly the case for the young people whom I am meeting in these days and who are so dear to me. My wish is that they may be able to recognize in the Decalogue a lamp for their steps, a light for their path (cf. Ps 119:105). Adults have the responsibility of handing down to young people the torch of hope that God has given to Jews and to Christians, so that “never again” will the forces of evil come to power, and that future generations, with God’s help, may be able to build a more just and peaceful world, in which all people have equal rights and are equally at home.

This is significant. Particularly when some American mainstream protestant communities are falling under the spell of a false and pernicious "Palestinian Liberation Theology".

That's quite a good start your Holiness. Now, how about a visit to Israel?

The Patriachate of Jerusalem, Judaism and Catholic Doctrine

2005-08-17T10:29:00.000+09:30

Christian Attitudes has a series of posts on the terror-supporting, Arafat-praising Latin Patriach of Jerusalem.

I have often noticed, in online discussions between Catholics and Jews, that there is a great deal of uncertainty as to the modern Church's theological positions on anti-semitism and relations with the Jewish people. In saying this, I interpose that Liz from Christian Attitudes is much better informed on this subject than I am, and that in juxtaposing this observation with her compilation of articles on the Patriach of Jerusalem, I am in no way implying any uncertainty on her part!

In any event, a helpful place to start is this Statement, by Walter Cardinal Kasper, the President of the Church's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Antisemitism, a Wound to be Healed looks at Christian (and in particular, Catholic) antisemitism in the context of contempory Catholic theological approaches to relations between Catholics and Jews. The article is two years old, and couched in an idiom that may be unfamiliar to non-students of Vatican documents, but is worthwhile reading for those who seek to understand exactly what Church teachings on "replacement theology" and antisemitism actually are. Replacement theology has been explicity rejected by the Catholic Church:

Consequently, as a "messianic people", the Church does not replace Israel, but is grafted onto it, according to the Pauline doctrine, through adherence to Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, who died and rose; and this link forms a spiritual bond that is radical, unique and insuppressible for Christians. Although the contrasting concept - of an Israel once (olim) pre-chosen but later rejected by God for ever and now replaced by the Church - may have had widespread dissemination for almost 20 centuries, it does not in reality represent a truth of the faith, as can be seen both in the ancient Creeds of the early Church and in the teaching of the most important Councils, especially of the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium, n. 16; Dei Verbum, nn. 14-16; Nostra Aetate, n. 4).

Nostra Aetate is the Second Vatican Council's Decree on relations between the Church and other religions. Citing Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Kasper continues:

Dialogue and collaboration between Christians and Jews also implies that "acknowledgment be given to any part which the children of the Church have had in the growth and spread of anti-Semitism in history; forgiveness must be sought for this from God, and every effort must be made to favour encounters of reconciliation and of friendship with the sons of Israel"

Secondly, one needs to consider the Joint Declaration of the 18th International Catholic-Jewish Liason Committee (Buenos Aires, July 2005):

we take note of the many positive changes within the Catholic Church with respect to her relationship with the Jewish People. These past forty years of our fraternal dialogue stand in stark contrast to almost two millennia of a "teaching of contempt" and all its painful consequences. We draw encouragement from the fruits of our collective strivings which include the recognition of the unique and unbroken covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish People and the total rejection of anti-Semitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism as a more recent manifestation of anti-Semitism.[Emphasis added]

The text of the Joint Declaration is here

So where does that leave us?

First, the Church specifically rejects "replacement theology" and the "teaching of contempt" towards Jews, to a greater degree than many Orthodox Churches and protestant denominations.

Second, the Church unsurprisingly rejects anti-semitism.

Third, the Church rejects "anti-Zionism", as a form of anti-semitism.

But then we have the Latin Patriach of Jerusalem. I say, burn, heretic, burn! One of the great challenges faced by the Church today is to combat the vestigal attitudes of those within the Church who have not fully accepted the Magesterium's teaching on Jewish-Catholic relations. Against this, Arab Christians no doubt face persecution by their Mohammedan "bretheren", and are tempted to respond by "being more Arab than the Arab Nationalists". It is a shame and a disgrace that judenhass has become such an important component of Arab self-image.

Therein lies the moral challenge for the Church. It is a moral challenge for Catholics everywhere.

Nationalize Our Losses, Privatize Our Profits

2005-08-16T15:08:00.000+09:30

For a complete change of pace, have a look at this article by Alan Anderson in The Australian. For those non-Australians reading this blog, the National Party are often described as political conservatives by lazy media commentators. Whilst they are in coalition with the Liberal Party (whose own traditions are a mixture of classical liberalism and conservatism), the Nationals are really better described as socially conservative agrarian socialists. In other words, the Nationals hate welfare, and state intervention in the economy, except when the beneficiaries are farmers.

Anyway, the newest National Party Senator has made himself the poster-boy of the urban left, by espousing, of all things, Compulsory Student Unionism, a contemptible rort that basically involves the Federal & State Governments forcing students to fund extreme-left activism and unwanted student services by forcing them to join Student Unions.

A less charitable observer might be tempted to remark that the irony of the situation is that most National Party Senators, and indeed, many National Party voters, would have trouble spelling "university", let alone have any real experience of the sort of far left dreck that students are forced to pay for by this excreable legislation. But that would be beneath me.

Suffice it to say, the National Party has never been afraid of electing boobs, and to that extent, I suppose, Senator Joyce is part of a long and ignoble Australian tradition. It is distressing, beyond measure to see this man feted by urban leftists as some sort of folk hero, for his espousal of such an indefensible cause.

תשעה באב

2005-08-15T16:25:00.000+09:30

For the residents of Gaza. Yasher koach!

UPDATE: Thank you to CBA for pointing out the typo!

I'm Back!

2005-08-15T15:21:00.000+09:30

I've been away for over a week now, through illness, and I accordingly apologise to regular readers; anyway there are two interesting pieces in the Opinion section of today's The Australian:

First, Naftali Tamir's (Israeli Ambassador to Australia's) rather lame apologia for the Gaza Evacuation
Second, a characteristically gauche piece from John Stone, former Secretary to the Treasury and National Party Senator on The Case for Muslim Assimilation.

My criticism of the latter piece as gauche ought not be interpreted as a criticim of its substance, so much as it's style and expression. Indeed, the marvel of Australian and American Immigration policy, at least prior to the 1970's and 1980's fad of multiculturalism was their ability to incorporate all, respecting all differences, so long as they did not pose a threat to the national polity.

Bibi: Expulsion A Danger to the West

2005-08-06T14:40:00.000+09:30

Benjamin Netanyahu argues that the Gaza pullout will endanger the West

In A Ruined Country - Arafatism's Legacy

2005-08-04T09:38:00.000+09:30

This Article in the Atlantic Monthly examines the disastrous legacy of Arafat's rule in the Territories (via LGF).

I can think of some Christian leaders who ought to read it.

Melanie Phillips on Christian Anti-Semitism

2005-08-03T19:55:00.000+09:30

Melanie Phillips again takes up this dark topic, condemning a recent slimy Anglican attempt to paper over its functionally anti-semitic "disinvestment" resolution, and praising a recent statement by Clifford Longley, who attended the annual conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews in Chicago.

I describe the Anglicans' statement as "slimy" because it wraps Anglican contempt for Israel (and dare I say it, Jews) in what Melanie aptly describes as "stomach turning piety" on Christian / Jewish relations. The money quote:

So the ACC’s message to Jews is clear: we value you enormously, just as long as you don’t support Israel. If you do support it, we’ll treat you as a pariah. In other words, Jews are in one box, Israel is in another. This is to deny Jewish peoplehood. It is also to deny the anti-Jewish nature of its singling out of the Jewish state for pariah status.

Mr Longley's thoughtful statement is worthy of careful consideration by Christians tempted to get excited about that "shitty little country" in the Middle East:

‘Thirty years ago when I first started going to conferences like this there would have been many Jewish people there who had themselves survived the concentration camps, many Christians who had fought Hitler personally. It was a shared bond, not just psychologically but spiritually. That generation, united in seeing Israel as a Jewish refuge from persecution, has more or less passed. Christian responsibility for the pre-war rise in antisemitism no longer brings an automatic sense of shame, or colours how Christians see their duty towards the Jews. Good relations with Muslims, they would insist, are just as important as Christian relations with Jews.

‘Yes and No to that, I would say. It is too soon to forget what centuries of what is called the "teaching of contempt" towards Jews did to the Christian soul of Europe. It is a religious obligation - or to put it another way, it is what God wants - that Christians should try to undo the consequences of that dark tradition. That means denouncing anything that seems to call in question Israel's right to exist.’

Amen to that.

Melanie also worries that Benedict XVI is taking the Catholic Church backwards, in terms of its relations with the Jewish people, and cites the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and the Holy See as evidence for this.

Speaking for myself, I hope not, and shall remain vigilant.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

2005-08-03T19:39:00.000+09:30

Andrew Bolt catches the Australian public broadcasters acting as apologists for Islamism, and asks which, the ABC or SBS, is the more enthusiastic supporter of jihad? Read it all - it's all good.

More Vatican / Israel Unpleasantness

2005-08-02T11:11:00.000+09:30

More on the recent unpleasantness between the Vatican and Israel:

Liz has several updates and links to opinion pieces dealing with the Vatican / Israel dispute;
Arutz Sheva reports that at least one MK is interpreting the Holy See's recent comments as a return to pre-Vatican II attitudes to Judaism. For what it's worth, I think that this is an extreme, and probably incorrect view, but it is clear to me that there is at present a struggle within the Vatican between those curial prelates who are hostile to Israel and those who are not.
Ynetnews argues that the dispute is fuelled by "traditional Christian Antisemitism"; Yaakov Lappin omits to mention however, that the Catholic Church explicitly rejected the theology of Jewish deicide by Vatican II's decree on Other Religions. Lappin's basis for asserting that the Holy See's attitude to Israel has its foundation in theology rather than politics is thin, to say the least.

I do not believe that His Holiness is himself an antisemite. I suspect that the Holy See's approach is the result of a combination of residual Vatican anti-semitism (on the part of some curial prelates) and "diplomatic fudging" vis-a-vis anti-Israel terror. By "diplomatic fudging" I mean the sort of fudging that says the US can blow the living shit out of Islamists anywhere and everywhere, but when Israel puts a missile through Yassin's wheelchair, President Bush or the Secretary of State will "urge restraint" and voice their disapproval of "targeted assassinations". The Vatican's approach is somewhat analagous to that - the sort of nonsense that most governments regularly direct at Israel - "of course suicide bombings are bad, but we have to consider the 'legitimate aspirations' of the 'Palestinian people' to create a Terrorist Wonderstate and Genocidal Pyrotechnician's Paradise in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza".

It's amoral nonsense of course. But it is of a different order to "disinvestment". One can only hope that Israel's reaction will lead to the Vatican adopting greater moral clarity on Israel-related issues.

The irony is that diplomatic fudging by the Holy See in the perceived interests of Arab Christians ultimately strengthens the hand of the Islamist fundamentalists of HAMAS and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the "secular Arab Nationalists" of al-fateh, none of whom have the interests of the Christian community at heart; indeed, many Arab Christians legitimately fear Islamists much more than the much maligned Zionists.

But anti-Israeli activism's siren song remains fascinating for idiots the world over, and the Vatican beaurocracy is no exception.

Jews Are Poisoning The Bananas and King Fahd is Dead

2005-08-02T10:21:00.000+09:30

I have been quite busy over the past few days, and not been able to post as regularly as I would like. The paranoid superstition, primitivism and hatred described in this story in The Age, however is hard to top.

In other Wahhabism-related news, The Weekly Standard eulogises King Fahd:

Westerners should not be gulled by claims that Fahd was a saint, that the kingdom requires stability above all other things, and that Western critics, pluralist Muslims outside the kingdom, and reformers within it should quiet down. Indeed, the opposite is appropriate. With Fahd gone, the way may finally open for a transition to freedom in one of the world's biggest and most influential tyrannies.

J'accuse - Peretz Contra Anglicans, Presbyterians Et Al

2005-07-30T22:06:00.000+09:30

In The New Republic of 18 July 2005, Martin Peretz mounts a powerful argument that the "pro-disinvestment" Churches are guilty of judenhass. His conclusion:

So I come to an unavoidable conclusion. The obsession here is not positive, for one side, but rather negative, against the other side. The clerics and the lay leaders on this indefensible crusade are so fixated on Palestine because their obsession, which can be buttressed by various Christian sources and traditions, is really with the Jews. A close look at this morbid passion makes one realize that its roots include an ancient hostility for the House of Israel, an ugly survival of a hoary intolerance into some of the allegedly enlightened precincts of modern Christendom.

Read the whole thing.

An Extraordinary 10 Days For Australian Foreign Policy

2005-07-30T09:15:00.000+09:30

This morning's Weekend Australian contains an excellent article by Greg Sheridan:

In the past 10 days John Howard has spoken on terrorism to the largest global audience of any Australian PM in our history, in a trip in which he made global, regional and bilateral policy with the most powerful leaders in the world; we have joined an exclusive East Asian club for the first time without the US but with Washington's blessing, in part because we can help protect its interests there; and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has announced a new grouping of Asian giants plus the US in a huge global play that underlines that the Kyoto climate control protocol is a dead dog and the centre of gravity is shifting to the Asia-Pacific.

It's a heady brew, the most fascinating, complex and significant confluence of foreign policy strands. For the Howard Government it represents vindication on three fronts: Australia's participation in the war on terror has increased our global influence; our close alliance with the US does not damage our regional interests but enhances them; and rejection of Kyoto was not only sound policy but smart politics, hooking us up to new Asia where the economic and political dynamism resides and decoupling us from the statist, bureaucratic politics of old Europe at its worst.

It is a masterful synthesis by the Howard Government, for which Howard and Downer deserve primary credit. Howard has just returned from what must rank as one of the most successful prime ministerial trips of all time. In Washington he transacted much more business with George W. Bush than we first thought, securing Bush's support for our signing up to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in order to gain admission to the East Asia Summit in December, and finalising the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Just last week, an acquaintance of mine spent the best part of an hour in conversation with me, trying to denigrate the Howard Government's performance in general and in foreign policy terms in particular. As is distressingly common, his argument essentially comprised that reflexive delusion of the anti-Howard, anti-Bush (and dare I say it anti-American) left, that "Australia has no foreign policy, we just obey Washington".

Sheridan's article is well worth reading in full, because it comprehensively exposes the vacuity of that line of argument.

Here Comes That "Cycle of Violence", Again

2005-07-29T10:53:00.000+09:30

Liz, from Christian Attitudes, left the following comment on my last post dealing with Pope Benedict XIV's attitude to the State of Israel:

I think the Pope is generally one of the Good Guys, but with a few blind spots. Hopefully, he'll learn from this.

My instinct is to agree, but then news items such as this are disheartening. Leaving aside the dubious and opportunistic references to "International Law" (the Vatican, like most States, feels free to pick and choose those bits of "International Law" that it will recognise), is Israel the only State that retalliates against terrorism, and in doing so, sometimes makes mistakes? The family of Charles de Menezes would probably beg to differ.

As it happens, it is quite easy to condemn terrorist attacks and "urge restraint" by Jerusalem. The US does it all the time.

As an excuse, this is nonsense.

His Holiness Benedict XVI and the State of Israel

2005-07-27T22:39:00.000+09:30

Discarded Lies is carrying this link to a BBC News article dealing with a glaring omission from the Holy See's response to the terrorist attacks of the past few weeks:

Israel has summoned the Vatican's ambassador to explain why the Pope left the country off a list of those recently hit by terrorism.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday deplored attacks in "countries including Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain".

Israel said he had failed to mention a 12 July suicide bombing in Netanya that killed five Israelis.

The foreign ministry said it would be interpreted as "granting legitimacy to... terrorist attacks against Jews".

"We expected that the new Pope, who on taking office emphasised the importance he places on relations between the Church and the Jewish people, would behave differently," the ministry said in a statement.

The cynic in me says that such stories are difficult for the UK national broadcaster; when two favourite BBC sneer targets are at loggerheads, at which do they sneer first?

In addition:

Pope Benedict has accepted an invitation to visit Israel but has yet to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in public since taking office in April.

Well, I suppose silence is preferable to donning the keffiyeh as has recently become fashionable in some Protestant circles.

This leads me to a new blog dealing with Jewish / Christian interfaith issues, in particular where they relate to Catholicism, the State of Israel and Zionism - Christian Attitudes on Jews and Israel. This blog is well worth a look and is written by "RC Neo-Jew", who some may know as a long-time commentator on LGF and Discarded Lies.

RCNJ finds another Protestant ecclesial community donning the brown shirt and links to two other interesting articles:

First, this assessment of the first three months of His Holiness' pontificate - in which the author points out His Holiness' continuation of his predecessor's concern for Catholic / Jewish interfaith relations, and
more equivocally, this article in The Washington Times which reveals some of the difficulties and contradictions that inhere in the Church's relations with Judaism.

Here are Christian Attitudes' two quotes from the latter article. They are both important, and taken together, quite puzzling. On the one hand:

"In the Old Testament the special significance of this choice is emphasized again and again, in Deuteronomy, for instance. God says to the people through Moses: I did not choose you because were a great and numerous people, an important people, not because you possess this or that quality; but because I love you I have freely chosen you....

...He then takes up the question of 2,000 years of Jewish exile yet "their religion has not evaporated ... phenomenon still without parallel in the history of mankind," as the interviewer put it. Does world development have "some mysterious connection with the development of the Jewish people"..

The future pope replied: "God did not make His people into a great power; on the contrary, they became the people who suffered more than any other in the history of the world. But they always kept their identity. Their faith could never die. And likewise it is still like a goad in the very heart of Christianity, which sprang out of the story of Israel and is inseparably bound up with it. ... The great powers of that period have all disappeared. Ancient Egypt and Babylon and Assyria no longer exist. Israel remains -- and shows us something of the steadfastness of God, something indeed of his mystery."

And yet, on the other:

There is one puzzling section in this interview and that involved Cardinal Ratzinger and his view of the State of Israel or rather his nonview, when he said: "This tiny people, who no longer have any country, no longer any independent existence, but lead their life scattered throughout the world, yet despite this keep their own religion, keep their own identity; they are still Israel, the way the Jews are still Jews and are still a people even during the 2,000 years when they had no country; this is an absolute riddle."

Has His Holiness heard of what a French Diplomat infamously called a certain "shitty little country" in the Middle East? It's been in the news a lot for the last half-century or so.

Curiouser and curiouser.