World's First Automotive Easter Egg

The M3 has an easter egg to rev the engine to 5K rpm and pop the clutch. Cool!

EU Anti-Semitism Reporting

As usual, Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head.

[T]he European Union's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has decided to shelve its report on the rise of anti-Semitism on the Continent. The problem, as reported in The Telegraph, is that the survey had found that "many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups", and so a "political decision" was taken not to publish it because of "fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims".

Let's go back over that slowly and try not to get a headache: the EU's main concern about an actual epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could provoke a hypothetical epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims. You couldn't ask for a better illustration of the uselessness of these thought-police bodies: they're fine for chastising insufficiently guilt-ridden whites in an ongoing reverse-minstrel show of cultural self-abasement, but they don't have the stomach for confronting real racism. A tolerant society is so reluctant to appear intolerant, it would rather tolerate intolerance.

Statistic of the Day

SOTD: Amir Taheri in JPost:

The Muslim world accounts for some 80 percent of political prisoners in the world...Today, there are an estimated 30,000 political prisoners in Iran [alone].

Koch for Bush

Amazingly, Democratic former mayor of New York City Ed Koch comes out for Bush over the Democrats in the area of foreign policy and defense.

* I believe the Bush doctrine of "mak[ing] no distinction between the terrorists who committed [the September 11] acts and those who harbor them," rivals in importance and impact the Monroe and Truman doctrines.

* ...President Bush also was correct in refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol...The Senate was right to oppose the Protocol...

* ...President Bush's opposition to the International Court of Justice is also well grounded.

* ...President Bush also was right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

* ...President Bush, whom I do not agree with on a single domestic issue, has distinguished himself by his willingness to take on international terrorism. Most of his Democratic opponents who are running for president do not have the stomach to stand up to the bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of the world.

He sums up the Democratic problem in a nutshell.

Appeasement never works. It simply whets the appetite of aggressors, causing them to demand even more from the victim.

We're Out to Get You

Let's see...The Jews are going to buy the country and run it with the Americans and the Masons...Divide the Muslims...Pose as Al Qaeda to bomb Jordan...Worse than Saddam...Caesar was Jewish...The Romans were Jewish...The Americans are Jewish...Using the Coca-Cola logo to destroy Islamic culture...Rule the World...Provoke war among the nations of the world...Build brothels to look like mosques...

Wow! All in a day's work...

Three State Solution for Iraq

LESLIE H. GELB in the NYT proposes that one solution for Iraq may be to break up the country into 3 separate entities, a Kurdish north, a Shiite south, and a Sunni middle. The Sunnis would be left without the oil. Seems fitting.

Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly — with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might not win. American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences.

QOTD: GWB

QOTD: Thanks to RCP

Those in authority, however, are not judged only by good motivations. The people have given us the duty to defend them. And that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men. In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force.
-- President George Bush - London, England

Waking up to the Age of Terror

The Telegraph carries an editorial on what the Western World is facing in the Islamofascist terrorists.

In a commentary on the destruction of the synagogues, the British-based radical group al-Muhajiroun referred to the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924 and the supposed evils that had flowed from it. The goal of Osama bin Laden and his sympathisers is the re-establishment of the caliphate in the Middle East and the eradication of Western secular influence. This vision looks back to what is seen as a golden age of Islam in the centuries following the Prophet's death. And it seeks revenge for the perceived humiliation of Muslims in the Crusades, in Napoleon's defeat of the Mameluks in 1798, in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and in continuing Western influence in the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf.

It is a vision inspired by a deep-seated hatred of the fruit of the European Enlightenment – a belief in progress and the power of reason, and the separation of secular and religious power. In their reaction to this mode of thinking, the Islamists would take us back in time; in extreme cases, a flight to the supposed theocratic purity of the desert in the age of Mohammed. And their ultimate weapon is the suicide bomber - today armed with explosives, tomorrow, if the opportunity arises, with much more deadly nuclear, chemical or biological devices.

Once more, President Bush steps into the breach with a straight-to-the-heart-of-the-problem speech.

The President [George W. Bush] talked of great responsibilities falling once again, as during the Second World War and the Cold War, to the great democracies. Their task was to rescue failing states and curb weapons proliferation; in the last resort to restrain aggression and evil by force; and to commit themselves to the global expansion of democracy, a form of government in which the Middle East is notably deficient.

The President expounded at greater length on the last point in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington earlier this month. Dismissing the "cultural condescension" which assumes that Islamic traditions are incompatible with representative government, he referred to Muslims living in democratic societies in Turkey, Indonesia, Senegal, Albania, Niger, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, India, South Africa, the nations of Western Europe and the United States. "More than half of all Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments," he said. "They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of an individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government."

In the Banqueting House, Mr Bush challenged those in the West who would appease the Islamists in the hope of avoiding further retribution, a step which would simply confirm to the likes of bin Laden that the secular democracies were ripe for the plucking.

Israel Is Not An Apartheid State

Phyllis Chesler responds to a question about Palestinian women at a feminists' convention.

I took the question head-on. "If you're really asking about apartheid, let me talk about it. Contrary to myth and propaganda, Israel is not an apartheid state. The largest practioner of apartheid in the world is Islam which practices both gender and religious apartheid. In terms of gender apartheid, Palestinian women--and all women who live under Islam--are oppressed by "honor" killings, in which girls and women who are raped are then killed by family members for the sake of restoring the family "honor;" forced veiling, segregation, stonings to death for alleged adultery, seclusion/sequestration, female genital mutilation, polygamy, outright slavery, sexual slavery. Women have few civil, legal, or human rights under Islam."

I continued; "Islam also specializes in religious apartheid as well. All non-Muslims (Christians, including Maronites and Melkites, Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, Jews, Assyrians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, animists) have historically been viewed and treated as subhumans who must either convert to Islam or be mercilessly taxed, beaten, jailed, murdered, or exiled. The latest al-Queda attack in Saudi Arabia was primarily directed against Lebanese Christians and Americans."

I continued. "Today, the entire Middle East is judenrein, there are no Jews left in 22 Arab countries. And, the Arab leadership has backed the PLO strategy in which the 23rd state remains under constant and perilous siege. Historically in general, but specifically since 1948-1956, Arab Jews were forced to flee Arab Islamic lands. Most are living in Israel, the only Middle Eastern state in which Jews are allowed to live. Jews cannot become citizens of Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, for example and yet no one accuses those nations of apartheid."

It Takes Two to Partition

Summary curtesy of the newsletter of the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations (or whatever they're called).

It Takes Two to Partition - Yossi Klein Halevi (Jerusalem Post)

What we've learned about the conflict over this last bitter decade is that the Oslo-era notion of a comprehensive peace needs to be wiped from our lexicon. Instead, we should conceive not of resolving the conflict but of managing its intensity. A hudna isn't merely a means to an end but - at least for the foreseeable future, and possibly for this generation - the end itself.

One compelling reason why a comprehensive peace is now unattainable is the near-total absence, among mainstream Palestinians and the Arab world generally, of the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of this land is legitimate. In numerous conversations I've had with Palestinians from all levels of society, the consensus is that Israel isn't the expression of a people returning home but of a colonialist intrusion in the Middle East. The problem isn't Israel's policies but its existence.

Consider Gen. Nasser Youssef, arguably the most moderate figure in the Palestinian security apparatus, who recently lost a power struggle with Yasser Arafat. In the late 1990s, I participated in several long conversations between the general and several Israelis in his office in Gaza City. When we asked how he conceived of peace, Youssef replied that the Jewish people would be absorbed into the Arab nation to which it naturally belongs.

Even Gen. Youssef, then, is merely a tactical moderate, offering Jews protected minority status under a benign Muslim Arab majority rule. At best, the Palestinian leadership sees a two-state solution as an interim stage.

At every level of society in the Arab world generally, a "culture of denial" has taken root which denies the most minimal truths of Jewish history, from the existence of the Temple to the existence of gas chambers. In fact, only in the Arab world has Holocaust denial become part of mainstream discourse.

The strategic implications of that culture of denial is that Israel cannot, at this stage, contract itself into the vulnerable 1967 borders. An approximate return to the "green line" is conceivable only in a Middle East that has renounced its longing to eliminate Israel. And that is possible only if Israel receives recognition of its legitimacy - for now, inconceivable.

Centrist Israelis like myself are convinced that no concession will bring us peace, because the issue isn't discovering the precise point on the map that will satisfy Arab claims but the Arab rejection of any place on the map for a Jewish state.

QOTD: November 20, 2003

QOTD: Thanks to BOTW for this quote.

London's Guardian yesterday published a series of open letters to the president from various Englishmen and Americans. Many were hostile--the Guardian is a left-wing paper--but we like this one from novelist Frederick Forsyth (ellipsis in original):

"You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il . . . and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time."

Who Are the Anti-Bush Forces Protesting in England

Amir Taheri lays out clearly who opposes America's war on Islamo-fascists and other terrorists, currently protesting Bush's visit to Britain.

The demonstration is organized by a shadowy group called "Stop the War Coalition," part of the Hate-America-International, which has orchestrated a number of street "events" in support of the Taliban and the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein since 2001.

Is this just an anti-war group? Let's hear their answer.

When I called the coalition to ask whether the idea was to stop all wars, a spokeswoman assured me that this was not the case.

She referred me to the first article of the coalition's charter that states: "The aim of the coalition is simple: to stop the war currently declared by the United States and its allies against 'terrorism.'"

"We really want to stop Bush and Blair from going around killing babies," she said. "Our objective is to force the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan."

But what if a U.S. withdrawal means the return of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein?

"Anything would be better than American Imperialist rule," she snapped back.

Ahh, nostalgia for the Saddams of the world. But who, then, are they really?

The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard left groups: Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castrists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labour party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as "Watermelons" (Green outside, red inside). [emphasis mine]

Love that watermelon term!

He continues...

But why are these people taking to the streets?

One reason is that the parties, groups, and individuals involved have consistently failed to find a place in the normal institutions of British democracy.

The 60 or so leftist and Islamist groups involved in this odd enterprise have never managed to win more than one half of one percent of the votes in any British general election. Nor have they succeeded in winning a single seat in parliament or a majority in a single municipal council.

Those who can never win elections, always take to the streets. Street politics enables them to escape debate on complex issues that cannot be reduced to a few simplistic slogans.

Britain's participation in the war against terrorism was the subject of four exhaustive debates in the House of Commons in 2001 and 2002, each followed by a vote that Prime Minister Tony Blair won.

Street politics is for those who wish to abolish individual political judgment, the cornerstone of democratic life. Street politics encourages the irrational tendencies of crowds that could turn into hunting packs or lynch mobs. Power won in the streets produces only ochlocracy (rule by the worst).

An anti-democratic, pro-fascist crowd?

To make sure that no discordant voice is heard, the organizers of the demonstrations have announced that only "authorized" t-shirts, hats and other paraphernalia will be allowed. Only four slogans are permitted: "Stop Bush," "Stop Blair," " U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan," and " Bush Go Home!"

The demonstration's security force, made up of muscular Marxists and Islamists, has instructions to prevent any sign of pro-American sentiments. A group that has said it wants to take part in the demonstrations with t-shirts saying "Bush-Cheney: Four More Years!" has been warned of "dire consequences."

The London demonstration is planned and will be supervised in the best Stalinist traditions still in force in North Korea.

In countries that suffer under despotism, the street is, at times, the only space available to the opposition. This is why we hear so much about the so-called "Arab street." But do we need a "British street" that disdains the institutions of democracy, including mainstream political parties, and the parliament?

Christopher Hitchens knocks the craven Fiachra Gibbons on her ass concerning her article on the causes of the bombing of two synagogues in Turkey.

[T]he presses of the London Guardian were churning out the following paragraph, from someone named Fiachra Gibbons:

So when six die, as they did on Saturday morning when their blood mingled with that of their Muslim neighbors blown to bits by a suicide bomber outside the Neve Shalom synagogue, the heart should miss a beat and the world weep. For we are mourning the loss of souls who had learned to span a supposedly unbridgeable gulf that is being daily widened by George Bush and our own dear, deluded leader.

In a way, this effort doesn't quite meet the standard of moral cretinism that I had suggested. It actually fails to make any link at all between the actions of the murderers and the policy of Bush and Blair. Rather, it simply assumes that the victims are to have their deaths attributed in this fashion. The prevalence of this assumption, along with its facile appearance in the pages of a great liberal newspaper, is something worth noting. [bold emphasis mine]

As the author undoubtedly knows—she elsewhere demonstrates some knowledge of Turkish Jewry—and as I reminded readers yesterday, the Neve Shalom synagogue has been lethally attacked before. The last occasion was in the late 1980s. At that time, the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher governments had for some years taken a pro-Saddam Hussein "tilt" in the Iran-Iraq war. I can't remember what the excuse of the Jew-killers was on that previous occasion, but it most certainly wasn't their hatred for regime change. Maybe they didn't come up with an excuse, imagining that the action spoke for itself. Anyway, why bother with a justification when there are so many peace-loving and progressive types willing to volunteer to make the excuses for you?

Battle of the Liebermans

How ironic, a husband and wife named Joseph and Hadassah Lieberman write a book slamming the other more famous couple by that name.

Scary World

Jeff Dunetz scarily summarizes why its tough road ahead for world Jewry.

friend once told me that all Jewish holidays are based on the same premise, "they tried to kill us — we won — lets eat!" It is partially true, some very joyous holidays fit into that category such as Purim and Chanukah…. Then there are the others based on a totally different idea: They tried to kill us THEY won, and few of us survived by the grace of G-d. You know, observances such as Tisha B'Av and the secular Yom HaShoah.

Call me an alarmist but I am scared! Every time I open a newspaper or turn on the TV is becoming increasingly clear to me that we may be facing the early stages of one of those "They tried to kill us" periods.

A Woman's Choice

Emuna Braverman on Aish.com.

...the women's movement was inaptly named. It wasn't really feminism; it was careerism. It wasn't a recognition and celebration of the uniquely female contributions to society; it was a glorification of the job market.

Ignorance About Energy

Alan Caruba has another excellent article on the state of the energy industry and American energy policy.

...all kinds of Green snake oil salesmen will leap in to tell you that the US should be developing wind or solar power alternatives. Neither of these is viable, nor make the slightest sense at all, either in terms of the minuscule amount of energy they can produce, nor the costs involved. Both are largely sustained by government grants of one sort or another. Forget about hydrogen power, it is a myth.

We need to understand that we cannot "conserve" our way to energy use. Untapped energy resources is energy wasted. If this nation needs oil, it must encourage access to it. If this nation needs coal, it must encourage access to it. If we need natural gas, we need to encourage access to it. We are not doing this. Instead, a vast matrix of "environmental" laws make it difficult, costly, and often impossible to do this. What´s left? Hydroelectric power and the Greens are trying to shut that down as well!

Yes, there are ways to reduce energy consumption, but the issue is not consumption so much as it is being able to have energy when you need it! Energy literally fuels the engine of the American economy. And your home or apartment. Your workplace. And your car. Et cetera.

The United States of America, however, has enough coal for the next 250 years and, by some estimates, a 100-year supply of oil and natural gas. Around the world, new reserves are found every year.

If you remain ignorant about how energy is generated, you risk finding yourself without any. And most Americans are totally ignorant on the subject.

Required reading!

To Hell With Sympathy

Charles Krauthammer reveals the search for sympathy for the US to be false god that liberals worship to our country's regret.

It is pure fiction that... pro-American sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration. It never existed. Envy for America, resentment of our power, hatred of our success has been a staple for decades, but most particularly since victory in the cold war left us the only superpower.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration's hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism.

Moreover, it is unseemly, even pathetic, for the would-be leaders of a great power to pine for the pity gleaned on the day America lay bleeding and wounded. This is to carry into foreign policy a pathology of our domestic politics — the glorification of victimhood and the lust for its privileges, such as they are. It is not surprising that having set up at home a spoils system that encourages every ethnic group to claim even greater victimization than the next, the Democrats should lament the fact that we did not seize and institutionalize our collective victimhood of Sept. 11.

The world apparently likes the U.S. when it is on its knees. From that the Democrats deduce a foreign policy — remain on our knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the world.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool's bargain--3,000 dead for a day's worth of nice words and a few empty U.N. resolutions. The Democrats would forfeit American freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another nice French editorial? To be retracted as soon as the U.S. stops playing victim?

Sympathy is fine. But if we "squander" it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy.[Emphasis mine] The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence. The Europeans, Ajami astutely observes, disdain us for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990s we engaged three times in combat — in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans — to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all. And in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.; it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order.

The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing — by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar.

What Really Happened With the Sandinistas

Jeff Jacoby describes what happened after the Sandinistas seized power in Nicaragua.

After seizing power in 1979, the Sandinistas had quickly moved to take over Nicaragua's radio and TV stations, and to impose strict censorship on La Prensa, the leading newspaper. It arrested and tortured independent labor leaders. It vilified the Catholic church, persecuted the small Jewish community, and treated evangelical Protestants with particular viciousness. It expelled thousands of Miskito Indians from their homes, forcibly relocating them to government camps. With Cuban and Soviet aid, it launched a massive military buildup.

Like all communists, the Sandinistas were ruthless toward dissenters; by 1983, their prisons held more political prisoners than those of any Western Hemisphere nation except Cuba. The Sandinistas also produced what every communist regime produces: a flood of refugees. It was estimated in 1986 that one-10th of Nicaragua's population had fled from Sandinista repression.

The "Arab Street's" Concept of Freedom

Cal Thomas wonders if our attempts to persuade Arab countries to become democracies is doomed to failure.

[A]s former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted at a U.N. disarmament conference more than two decades ago, we in the West make a mistake when we "transpose" our morality on those who don't share it.

President Bush asked, "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty?" It depends on the meaning of liberty. What if the Islamic nations of the region define liberty differently from us? Suppose they see our liberty as something corrupting to faith and morals and our culture as something they do not wish to import, but oppose as inimical to a healthy life on Earth and an impediment to an afterlife?

...

Secular societies, even those presided over by an openly Christian leader like President Bush, risk lulling their people into complacency when they offer bromides instead of calls to civil defense and appropriate responses during war. As Giuseppe De Rosa, S.I. writes in the Italian publication La Civilta Cattolica: "all of Islamic history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands of Western E urope and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. Thus, through many centuries, Islam and Christianity faced each other in terrible battles, which led on one side to the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Bulgaria and Greece, and on the other, to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the naval battle of Lepanto (1571)."


That warrior spirit, or jihad, continues today. The president said there is "democratic progress in many predominately Muslim countries," such as Niger. He also said Muslim men and women are "good citizens" of a number of other nations, including South Africa, Western Europe and the United States. Would it be indelicate to note that Muslims do not (yet) direct the political destiny in those nations?


The president left out Nigeria, which borders Niger. Many regions in Nigeria have introduced Sharia as state law, which has been used to persecute thousands of Christians. Major attacks against Christians have occurred in the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, Java, East Timor and the Moluccas. In the northern Arab and Muslim portion of Sudan, genocidal war continues against the black and mostly Christian south.


To fundamentalist Muslims, liberty is not found in democracy. It is found in Allah and actions they believe please their god. The most extreme of them, who seem to be growing in number and influence, plant the idea in the minds of children (see a number of Palestinian videos and textbooks) that this life is nothing and that they should "seek Shahada" (martyrdom) and "ask for death," which they teach is true liberty.

...

In their sermons, in editorials in their state-owned newspapers and on television and in the actions of the most radical among them, their objective is clear — to defeat and subjugate all nations and all thinking to their religion and their way. To them, it is we who live in bondage and they who are ultimately free.

Arab Slavery A-OK?

Saudi Information Agency reports on leading Saudi cleric in favor of slavery.

The main author of the Saudi religious curriculum expressed his unequivocal support for the legalization of slavery in one of his lectures recorded on a cassette and obtained exclusively by SIA news.

Leading government cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan is the author of the religious books currently used to teach 5 million Saudi students, both within the and in Saudi schools aboard – including those in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

"Slavery is a part of Islam," he says in the tape, adding: "Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam."

Government spokesman Adel Al-Jubeir and other officials have repeatedly claimed religious curriculums are being reformed, but Al-Fawzan’s books continued to be used according to the minister of education’s statements published by Al-Watan daily September 14th, 2003.


Al-Fawzan is member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, a member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh, and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning in the country.

Al-Fawzan refuted the mainstream Muslim interpretation that Islam worked to abolish slavery by introducing equality between the races.

"They are ignorant, not scholars," he said of people who express such opinions. "They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel."

Al-Fawzan’s most famous book, "Al-Tawheed – Monotheism", is taught to Saudi high school students. In it, he says that most Muslims are polytheists, and their blood and money are therefore free for the taking by "true Muslims."

The Arab World Is Not Ready To Accept Israel After All

Former Iranian (yes, not actually an Arab country) foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, now a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader recently was quoted as saying the following.

"One of the elements of progress in a country is regional cooperation. Israel was created to prevent unity and cooperation between Islamic countries, that is why the existence of Israel is in contradiction with the national interests of Iran."

Let's Hear It for the Czechs

The Czech's understand the present situation in the Middle East better than anyone in Europe. Why?

Exactly two thirds of a century ago the British and French governments forced Czechoslovakia to give up territory that Germany considered to be "occupied." A few months later, Germany wiped Czechoslovakia entirely off the map.

British and French leaders thought appeasement would protect them from Germany's wrath, saving them from having to fight a terrorist state. Once he got this Czech territory, German leader Adolf Hitler explained, he would have no more demands and would get along just fine with the British and French. They believed him. They were wrong.

But they also justified their behavior in terms of human rights and charity to the weaker side. After all, the land Czechoslovakia was forced to yield was inhabited by ethnic Germans. Berlin's demand to rule those citizens could be portrayed as reasonable. Also, Germany had been humiliated a few years before, in World War I, so it was only trying to regain national pride and reacting against its mistreatment by the victors.

Obviously, the analogy with the current situation can be easily overdone and I certainly don't believe the outcome will be the same. Still, it might be useful if people thought through this comparison. Certainly, the Czechs have done so.

That is why the Czech Republic can be considered Europe's most pro-Israel state. After a half-century experience of Nazi and communist rule, Czechs don't evince romanticism toward radical ideologies, respect dictators, tolerate propaganda, or suffer from illusions about rationalizing terrorism.

They can tell the difference between a fence to stop terrorists and the Iron Curtain wall that not long ago crossed their own country where those trying to flee were shot down. They also know the consequences of inciting against Jews, no matter how such accusations are falsely glorified as progressive or dishonestly rationalized as deserved.

Their own capital, Prague, is more crowded than any in Europe with Jewish ghosts in its old, little-changed Jewish Quarter. They know, too, their country's best-known writer, Franz Kafka, was a remarkable voice for that people's unique situation. If you talk to a Czech about ignorant, craven leaders trading off the rights of a far-off land of which they know little, he recognizes this as a paraphrase of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's remark about their country when he was selling it out.

With Allies Like These Who Needs Enemies?

These are still allies? WP via Stone.

Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow. [Emphasis mine]

Conservative Judaism Head Rabbi Calls Sabbath-Driving Rule a "Mistake"

The Forward reports on a remarkable admission by the head of Conservative Judaism's leading seminary.

The head of Conservative Judaism's flagship institution is arguing that the movement made a "mistake" when it issued a landmark ruling a half-century ago permitting Jews to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, made his declaration last week in Dallas during a speech at the biennial convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. By sanctioning travel on the Sabbath, he said, the Conservative movement "gave up on the desirability of living close to the synagogue and creating a Shabbos community."

And what did others in the movement say?

Schorsch's argument was rejected by several other movement leaders who argued that it failed to take into account the inevitability of Jewish flight to the suburbs and was insensitive to those living outside of Jewish enclaves in the Northeast, such as the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Schorsch's institution is located.

If this is so, how have Orthodox communities outside the Northeast managed to build communities in the suburbs without driving?

Yavan Vs. Shem

QOTD: From the WSJ.

In July this year the newspaper Stochos interviewed the caricaturist Dimitris Kitsikis, who said, "It's a fact that the Jews are the Greeks' great rivals . . . The Jews and the Greeks are competing for who will reign over the planet . . . I'm sure we will beat the Jews."

State of Jews in Britain

Melanie Phillips writes in Ha'Aretz on the Tory selection of Michael Howard says anything positive about the state of anti-semitism in Britain.

The British Conservative party has elected Michael Howard as its first Jewish leader - and potential prime minister - since Benjamin Disraeli led the Tories in the 19th century.

This has occurred when much of the Jewish community in Britain feels besieged by an upsurge of anti-Jewish hatred. So how can a country whose deep vein of prejudice is once again open and flowing be sanguine about the possibility of a Jewish prime minister?

Some Jews see no problem in Britain - quite the reverse. Howard's rise demonstrates, they purr, that Britain has changed, that it has developed a new maturity, that British Jews have finally become truly accepted. From which Panglossian optimism, one can only marvel at the infinite human capacity for self-delusion.[Emphasis mine!]

For Britain is where the veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell claimed a "cabal" of Jews was controlling Tony Blair and George Bush - and was then promptly excused as a lovable eccentric. Where the following day, the BBC TV current affairs show "Newsnight" concluded that Dalyell had a case, and a "tightly knit" group of Jews really did control U.S. foreign
policy.

Where Israel is repeatedly dehumanised and delegitimised as an apartheid or Nazi state. Where almost two thirds of the public believe it is the biggest threat to world peace. Where attacks on Jews have increased. And where friendships between Jews and non-Jews founder over claims by the latter that the Jews are all-powerful, and that the establishment of Israel was a terrible mistake.

Europeans are worse than cockroaches

Mark Steyn levels the guns and fires with all guns blazing!

There is a Cold War between the US and the EU, says Mark Steyn, and it will
end with the collapse of Old Europe
by Mark Steyn

Here’s a round-up of recent items from the world’s press you may have
missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be
diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using
surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David
Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airline’s service to
Pearson International Airport might be ended.

Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up.
Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged
unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles
‘in pristine condition’, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket
tubes and assembly. In other words, they’re not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying
around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles
from the French rather more recently.

Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, ‘D’après un questionnaire de la
Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent qu’Israël est le pays le plus
menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.’

Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this week’s column on the mounting
American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: ‘Iraqis have one thing of which
they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an
opposition’.

On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the day’s events
would be the Western alliance: ‘The US taxpayer’s willingness to pay for the
defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of America’s
so-called “allies”, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators
and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.’
‘The West’ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month,
for everyone but America ‘the free world is mostly a free ride’. [Emphasis mine!]

Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators,
at least in the mainstream press, still don’t believe the relationship between
America and its ‘allies’ is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of
stories — and you can find equivalent items any week — illustrates why it can’t
be put back together.

One: Mr Collenette’s response to terrorists is to take it out on their
targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, we’ll get
rid of El Al. That’s a great message to send. How soon before similar threats
are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon
El Al won’t be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and
Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv — at least until a couple of
anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.

The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from
terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a
cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was
smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and
letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem:
you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government
agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr
Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first
anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet
Union because now there is nobody to check America’s ‘bullying’.

Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption;
Canada, like many other ‘allies’, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two
strategies are incompatible.

Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz.
One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American
differences over Iraq is that it’s an argument about the means, not the end. If
only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only
he’d been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought
the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a
very bad man.

Not the French and Germans. There’s too much evidence suggesting the main
reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that they’d already
signed on to the other team and they’d decided, in the sort of ghastly
vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. They’re
being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France
and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction.
It was never about the means, only the end.

Lesson: America and ‘Old Europe’ have different objectives in Iraq, and
those objectives are incompatible.

Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world
peace. Only 59 per cent? What’s wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, don’t
worry. In Britain, it’s 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent;
the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel won’t be a threat
to world peace much longer, at least not if Iran’s nuclear programme carries
on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for
all.

Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a
bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street
saying ‘Nukes? We Got ’Em! And You Won’t Believe Our Prices!’ The fact is
that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to
regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the
rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading
in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of
children in Holland — i.e., the population under 18 — will be Muslim. What do
you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent?
Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think it’s difficult getting the Continentals on
side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in
the coalmine.

Lesson: America’s and Europe’s world views have diverged significantly, and
those world views are now incompatible.

Four: Tariq Ali may not be the most representative political commentator, but
it’s still quite something to find the house journal of the United Kingdom’s
leftie establishment printing the assertion that Americans and Britons can
only envy the vigour of the Iraqi ‘opposition’. So that’s what Iain Duncan
Smith was doing wrong! He should have been loading up ambulances with rockets and
firing them into hospitals. That’s the way to draw attention to the problems
of the NHS.

The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within
minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that
evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldn’t say that. But Tariq Ali
and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike. In fact, T. Ali sounds more
Baathist than T. Aziz these days. When I was in the Sunni Triangle, I met many
Iraqis who were grateful to the Americans; some who wanted a more visible US
presence on the ground, a few who resented the infidel occupier — but not one who
was as gung-ho for the Saddamite holdouts and Syrian and Iranian opportunists
as Tariq Ali. For him, and for Mr Collenette, and for Goran Persson and Nelson
Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never
terrorism; the issue was always America.

Lesson: Washington and Europe do not agree on the problem, so they’re hardly
likely to agree on the solution.

Tariq and co. are right to this extent: in the scheme of things, it’s not
about Islamic terrorism. The Islamist goal is a planet on which their enemies are
either dead or Muslim converts. That’s not going to happen. But Islamism is
sufficiently disruptive to rupture permanently the old ‘Western alliance’. A
lot of things have been said on both sides, but what’s impressive about the
Europeans is the palpable desire for America to fail, and Bush to fall.

I can’t see that happening. On election day next November, the Democrats have
no chance of taking back the House of Representatives and they’re all but
certain to lose seats in the Senate. Bush is likely to be re-elected: with that
7.2 per cent growth in GDP, it’s hard even for the BBC to keep pretending
America’s in the middle of some sort of recession; and whatever happens in Iraq
it’s difficult to see the Democrats, running on a foreign policy of Cut & Run,
being the beneficiaries. But the trouble with a war on terror is that the
victories go unreported — the plotters who get foiled, the bombers who don’t make
it through. All you hear about are the defeats. Let’s say there’s a terrorist
attack in the US in the next 12 months and it kills several hundred people.
On the one hand, you could argue that this shows the soundness of Bush’s
judgment in making terrorism the priority of his administration. On the other, you
could argue that this proves he never learnt the lessons of the failures of 11
September. Knowing the American media, I’d bet on the latter line being the
one they settle on.

But other than that, the arguments over the next few years are going to be
between conservatives — between those who think it is worth pushing on with an
ambitious programme to bring the Middle East within the non-deranged world, and
those who figure that’s doomed to fail and we should settle for something
less. This project is in the national interest of the United States but, in the
end, the fate of the world’s hyperpower does not hinge on it.

Now let’s turn back to Europe. The Telegraph’s Adam Nicolson got irritated
the other day because Denis Boyles of America’s National Review had dismissed
the Europeans as ‘cockroaches’. Boyles is wrong. The Europeans are not
cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out
of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said
with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under
their own rubble.

Europe is dying. As I’ve pointed out here before, it can’t square rising
welfare costs, a collapsed birthrate and a manpower dependent on the world’s
least skilled, least assimilable immigrants. In 20 years’ time, as those Dutch
Muslim teenagers are entering the voting booths, European countries, unlike parts
of Nigeria, will not be living under Sharia, but they will be reaching their
accommodations with their radicalised Islamic compatriots, who like many
intolerant types are expert at exploiting the ‘tolerance’ of pluralist societies.

How happy what’s left of the ethnic Dutch or French or Danes will be about
this remains to be seen. But the idea of a childless Europe rivalling America
militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500
million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very
Muslim. That’s the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to. Japan
faces the same problem: in 2006, its population will begin an absolute decline, a
death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an
economic powerhouse if it’s populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Possibly. Will
Germany if it’s populated by Algerians? That’s a trickier proposition.

Last Sunday, recalling the US–Soviet summits that helped ‘ease the tensions
of the Cold War’, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman proposed we hold
regular US-Franco-German summits. Implicit in that analysis is the assumption that
France and perhaps other Continental countries now exist in a quasi-Cold War
with America. If that’s so, the trick is to manage the relationship until the
Europeans, like the Soviets, collapse. Europe is dying, and it’s only a
question of whether it goes peacefully or through convulsions of violence. On that
point, I bet on form.

The Crux of the Issue

Avi Shafran on abortion:

...the crux of the abortion issue is not "a woman's right to choose" at all, but rather to what extent to value the life of a fetus.

Quote of the Day

QOTD: Jonah Goldberg

America is the only nation out there willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for the sake of world peace. We are the engine for the global economy, we are the chief guarantor of global stability and security, and we are the model for countless nations in countless realms - from law to politics to education. More importantly, America understands - much like the British did in the 19th century - that such delicate machinery needs to be maintained as well as protected from saboteurs.