Friday, March 30, 2007
Our Wonderful United Nations At Work
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Left-Wing Historical Revisionism - Old Poison In New Bottles
Which Israeli Prime Minister in his youth was a member of an organisation that offered to collaborate with the Nazis at the height of World War II, because of their shared racial ideology of blood and soil? This question is answered by American civil rights activist and Anti-Zionist Lenni Brenner, the author of "Zionism in the age of the dictators".
The neo-Nazi right was delighted with Brenner's book. An article that Brenner originally wrote for the London magazine Middle East International was subsequently reprinted by the American neo-Nazi publication Spotlight. The Australian far right also approved. Eric Butler, Director of League of Rights, wrote a long letter quoting Brenner's work.
It would appear that in 1986 the neo-Nazi publishing house Noontide Press reprinted Brenner's book. Noontide Press specializes in hate literature. Amongst other books Noontide published include The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry by Arthur Butz and Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood. Noontide also publishes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's The International Jew, both of which claim that Jews are plotting to take over the world.
Michael Ezra, The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: The Far Right, the Far Left and the Middle East
Never in the history of nations has a society defined itself on the ruins of a neighboring democracy and never has such society sought sovereignty and international legitimacy while admitting its intent. Makdisi, for example, is not a bit embarrassed to argue for a Palestinian state on Israel's tomb while quoting from Orwell on language and morality.
The unique demand to recognize Israel's "right", not merely its "existence," reflects the general understanding among students of history that the core of the conflict and its resulting sufferings lies not in resource or border disputes, but in a deep ideological resistance by Palestinian Arabs to accommodate any form of a Jewish homeland in any part of Palestine since the end of World War I, accompanied by a persistent denial of any historical connection between the Jewish people and their national birthplace.
Sharia Law in Germany -- Well On The Way!
Germans are waking up to the dangers of multi-cultural tolerance,
towards those who are fully intolerant, and plan to eventually "take
over". Americans, Brits, Europeans, Canadians... especially women!
Read and learn. This is happening in your territory as well. J.D.
*Part 1: Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629,00.html
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores
the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a
growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are
helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is
welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists. ...
*Part 2: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-2,00.html
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islam expert from the central German
university town of Marburg, has a similar take on the matter. "Do we
already have Sharia here?" she asks, adding that the Frankfurt case
shows that "things are getting out of hand here." ...
*Part 3: Violating the Principles of Equal Treatment
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-3,00.html
For far too long, Germany's muslim immigrants were not asked to put
much effort into integrating. For decades, German judges essentially
paved the way for Islamic fundamentalists to form a parallel society.
They raised little opposition to the strategy employed by Islamic
groups to demand their supposed religious freedom in court until they
got it. But the judges must have known, argues Johannes Kandel, that
"giving preferential treatment to groups violates the principle of
equal treatment in a secular legal system. ...
*Part 4: Giving the Muezzin Free Reign
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-4,00.html
Muslims can also often count on the support of German courts when it
comes to building mosques. As far back as 1992, the Federal
Administrative Court ruled that neighbors must "fundamentally accept"
being woken before sunup. ...
*Part 5: The Camel Fatwa and other Letters from Absurdistan
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-5,00.html
This was an attitude that still prevailed in the minds of German
judges one year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. At the time,
the higher administrative court in the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia ruled that a female Muslim student in the 10th grade
should be permitted not to take part in a school trip. The family had
argued that Islam prohibits allowing girls to go on such trips
without being accompanied by a male family member. The family also
insisted that the girl was constantly worried about losing her
headscarf. The judges found that such fears were "comparable with the
situation of a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her
disability, can only travel with a companion." This assessment was
devastating because it accepted the rules of a camel drivers' society
in the modern age -- literally, because a few years earlier, an
Islamic legal opinion dubbed the "camel fatwa" had been added to the
professional literature. ...
*Part 6: "Integration Has Failed Here"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-6,00.html
Experiences in urban German schools show just how much integration
has suffered as a result of the decisions of timorous judges in past
years. At the Carlo Mierendorff School in Preungesheim, a Frankfurt
neighborhood, about one-third of students in the upper grades are
permitted to not attend class trips for religious reasons, says
Alexander Zabler, the school's principal. To prevent their daughters
from traveling with schoolmates, many Muslim parents have either
called the girls in sick or simply ordered them not to show up.
Zabler tried many approaches, including talking to the parents,
visiting them at home, offering special meals for Muslims during
travel -- but all to no avail. Finally he turned to the government
and asked the local school board for help -- also to no avail. He has
since resigned. ...
*Part 7: Forced Marriages and Servility
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-7,00.html
Of course, in many families there is no escaping the closeness
justified by Muslim traditions and rules. Women are brought up to
serve and obey. Boys are alternately spoiled and beaten, as custom
requires. According to a study conducted by the Lower Saxony
Criminology Research Institute, physical abuse of boys is more than
twice as common in Turkish families than German families. And "girls
from conservative families say that their fathers and brothers have
the right to hit them," reports Judith Gerling-Tamer, an educator at
the Elisi Evi Support Center for women and girls in Berlin's heavily
Muslim Kreuzberg district. ...
*Part 8: Europe at a Crossroads
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-8,00.html
Berlin attorney Seyran Ates says: "We are at a crossroads, everywhere
in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel
society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic
constitutional state?" ...
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Seminar on Reich, NYC, 28 April. Mark Your Calendar
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Truth About Islam
We hear so much folderol these days about Islam being a "peaceful
religion." The fact is that Islam is anti-human and anti-woman - the
most anti-human and anti-woman ideology on the face of the earth today.
We need merely repeat a number of quotes from the Koran itself in
order to prove these points. Anyone who claims the opposite is either
ignorant or willfully dishonest - and there are far too many people
making such erroneous or deceptive assertions.
Let's start with the idiocy that Islam is "peaceful." In the first
place, the record speaks for itself: Horrendous barbarism and atrocity
repeatedly carried out in the name of Islam, wherever it can be found
worldwide over a period of many centuries. Let us examine one of the
worst examples of modern history: The horrors perpetrated in
Bangladesh. No civilized human being could possibly participate in
such atrocities.
3 million deaths and 200,000 rapes - these are the fruits of a
Fast forward to the millions of foaming-at-the-mouth ranters killing
and threatening people worldwide over some cartoons - cartoons that
accurately lampooned this hideous ideology. These are the fruits of a
"peaceful religion?"
The list of atrocities done in the name of Islam is VERY LONG and
includes the ongoing torture of women. Let's proceed with the fallacy
that Islam is "peaceful." Here is a quote from the Koran that puts to
rest that lie once and for all:
"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal
rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate." Q 9:73
I repeat, anyone asserting otherwise is simply ignorant or a purveyor
of falsehood, to say the least.
The treatment of women within Islam is absolutely ABYSMAL - and is
contrived to be so, through the manmade set of "laws" found in the
Koran, a book with the psychotic qualities of the Bible but none of the
to chronicle the most atrocious concept of God ever developed. Here is
what the Koran says about women:
"Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to
the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good
women are obedient." Q 4:34
Please read the other quotes at:
This article ranks no. 1 in the world when "quotes from the koran" is
googled, along with a number of other keyphrases.
In my opinion, the spread of this fanatically violent and misogynistic
ideology is a great threat that we all need to take very seriously. It
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Hirsi Ali infuriates Muslims and discomfits liberals
BY JOSEPH RAGO
Saturday, March 10, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
NEW YORK--Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."
Statements such as these have brought Ms. Hirsi Ali to world-wide attention. Though she recently left her adopted country, Holland--where her friend and intellectual collaborator Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004--she is still accompanied by armed guards wherever she travels.
Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Mogadishu--into, as she puts it, "the Islamic civilization, as far as you can call it a civilization." In 1992, at age 22, her family gave her hand to a distant relative; had the marriage ensued, she says, it would have been "an arranged rape." But as she was shipped to the appointment via Europe, she fled, obtaining asylum in Holland. There, "through observation, through experience, through reading," she acquainted herself with a different world. "The culture that I came to and I live in now is not perfect," Ms. Hirsi Ali says. "But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."
Unease over Muslim immigration had been rising in the Low Countries for some time. For instance, when the gay right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn--"I am in favor of a cold war with Islam," he said, and believed the borders should be closed to Muslims--was gunned down in 2002, it was widely assumed his killer was an Islamist. There was a strange sense of relief when he turned out to be a mere animal-rights activist. Ms. Hirsi Ali brought integration issues to further attention, exposing domestic abuse and even honor killings in the Dutch-Muslim "dish cities."
In 2003, she won a seat in the parliament as a member of the center-right VVD Party, for People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. The next year, she wrote the script for a short film called "Submission." It investigated passages from the Quran that Ms. Hirsi Ali contends authorize violence against women, and did so by projecting those passages onto naked female bodies. In retrospect, she deeply regrets the outcome: "I don't think the film was worth the human life."
The life in question was that of Van Gogh, a prominent controversialist and the film's director. At the end of 2004, an Islamist named Mohammed Buyeri shot him as he was bicycling to work in downtown Amsterdam, then almost decapitated him with a curved sword. He left a manifesto impaled to the body: "I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go down," was its incantation. "I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go down."
The shock was palpable. Holland--which has the second largest per capita population of Muslims in the EU, after France--had always prided itself on its pluralism, in which all groups would be tolerated but not integrated. The killing made clear just how apart its groups were. "Immediately after the murder," Ms. Hirsi Ali says, "we learned Theo's killer had access to education, he had learned the language, he had taken welfare. He made it very clear he knew what democracy meant, he knew what liberalism was, and he consciously rejected it. . . . He said, 'I have an alternative framework. It's Islam. It's the Quran.' "
Ms. Hirsi Ali was forced into living underground; a hard-line VVD minister named Rita Verdonk, cracking down on immigration, canceled her citizenship for misstatements made on her asylum application--which Ms. Hirsi Ali had admitted years before and justified as a means to win quicker admission at a time of great personal vulnerability. The resulting controversy led to the collapse of Holland's coalition government. Ms. Hirsi Ali has since decamped for America--in effect a political refugee from Western Europe--to take up a position with the American Enterprise Institute. But the crisis, she says, is "still simmering underneath and it might erupt--somewhere, anywhere."
That partly explains why Ms. Hirsi Ali's new autobiography, "Infidel," is already a best seller. It may also have something to do with the way she scrambles our expectations. In person, she is modest, graceful, enthralling. Intellectually, she is fierce, even predatory: "We know exactly what it is about but we don't have the guts to say it out loud," she says. "We are too weak to take up our role. The West is falling apart. The open society is coming undone."
Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous."
The Muslim faith has many variations, but Ms. Hirsi Ali contends that the unities are of greater significance. "Islam has a very consistent doctrine," she says, "and I define Islam as I was taught to define it: submission to the will of Allah. His will is written in the Quran, and in the hadith and Sunna. What we are all taught is that when you want to make a distinction between right and wrong, you follow the prophet. Muhammad is the model guide for every Muslim through time, throughout history."
This supposition justifies, in her view, a withering critique of Islam's most holy human messenger. "You start by scrutinizing the morality of the prophet," and then ask: "Are you prepared to follow the morality of the prophet in a society such as this one?" She draws a connection between Mohammed's taking of child brides and modern sexual oppressions--what she calls "this imprisonment of women." She decries the murder of adulteresses and rape victims, the wearing of the veil, arranged marriages, domestic violence, genital mutilation and other contraventions of "the most basic freedoms."
These sufferings, she maintains, are traceable to theological imperatives. "People say it is a bad strategy," Ms. Hirsi Ali says forcefully. "I think it is the best strategy. . . . Muslims must choose to follow their rational capacities as humans and to follow reason instead of Quranic commands. At that point Islam will be reformed."
This worldview has led certain critics to dismiss Ms. Hirsi Ali as a secular extremist. "I have my ideas and my views," she says, "and I want to argue them. It is our obligation to look at things critically." As to the charges that she is an "Enlightenment fundamentalist," she points out, rightly, that people who live in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing one another.
And yet contemporary democracies, she says, accommodate the incitement of such behavior: "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place."
The most grievous failing of the West is self-congratulatory passivity: We face "an external enemy that to a degree has become an internal enemy, that has infiltrated the system and wants to destroy it." She believes a more drastic reaction is required: "It's easy," she says, "to weigh liberties against the damage that can be done to society and decide to deny liberties. As it should be. A free society should be prepared to recognize the patterns in front of it, and do something about them."
All of this is profoundly politically incorrect. But for this remarkable woman, ideas are not abstractions. She forces us back to first principles, and she punctures complacencies. These ought to be seen as virtues, even by those who find some of Ms. Hirsi Ali's ideas disturbing or objectionable. Society, after all, sometimes needs to be roused from its slumbers by agitators who go too far so that others will go far enough.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Hitler Youth and Palestinian-Muslim Youth
A must-see graphic video comparison between the upbringing of
children in both of these death-cult societies, Hitler's Germany and
modern Muslim society, particularly in "Palestine". Japanese youth
were also raised similarly under Hirohito, and like the Hitler youth,
taught bayonet-practice as well as how to throw hand-grenades and
shoot automatic weapons. This is NOT your typical National Rifle
Association skills contests in shooting 22-caliber shells at paper
targets, or the Boy Scouts doing good deeds, earning merit badges and
learning forestry skills. The Hitler Youth and similar foul
institutions adopt all those rational functions, but then add to them
the horrors of militarism and racism, with the explicit goal of
turning out kids who are filled with hatred, and ready to kill the
hated "other", and sacrifice themselves for the Gods of War. While
Nazified Germany certainly had a much more regimented organization of
its youth, the Islamic Pali Death-Cult has indoctrinated its children
in ways Hitler never could, to willfully and happily become
suicide/homicide bombers. (Old Christian Europe never could out-do
the Muslims in the promise of 72 virgins in paradise.) In the case
of Muslim Youth, like Hitler Youth, the kids are also indoctrinated
with a false history of victim-hood and racial superiority, with
other cultures denigrated as sub-human filth, inferiors deserving
only of extermination or subordination to slave status. And as Reich
instructed us, sex-repression and extreme obedience training are a
central part of this indoctrination, along with sexual demonization
of the intended victims. So the Jews "drink the blood of Muslim
children", and are "sexual beasts", just as are the Americans.
Muslims, by contrast, are pure and clean, their blood unsoiled --
just as Germanic blood was "pure", or the "racial lines of the
Japanese remains unblemished" as per Shintoist fanaticism. Different
cultures, but the same mold is being used over and over again. Raise
youth on such ideas, and the social explosion will be inevitable.
Wake up and smell the smoke.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24768_Then_and_Now_Part_2&only
Behead Those Who Insult Global Warming!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/ngreen211.xml
+++++++
Here's a video download of the interesting Program from the UK's
Channel 4 on "Global Warming", which stimulated the threats:
http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/global_warming_.html
And meanwhile, this scientist who was interviewed for Channel 4,
wishing to keep his head on his shoulders, has recanted: "I really
didn't mean all those bad things I said against Global Warming...
please, please forgive me!!"
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece
++++++++++
Well, Gawd, we could have predicted such PC nonsense would take over.
The universities and medical colleges have been purged of professors
who dissented from certain orthodox ideas for decades, and so long as
only a few were being thrown on the fires, and only their books being
burned, nobody raised a fuss about it. If you questioned orthodox
cancer treatments, or the HIV theory of AIDS, or if you advocated
pre-Columbian contact theory, or the non-biogenic origins of
petroleum, or advocated biological transmutations, or
solar-terrestrial effects upon life and weather, or questioned the
Einstein theory of relativity, or the Big-Bang Creationism, or
DNA-Creationism, or suggested life could arise from non-living matter
under the right conditions, even today, or that maybe the universe
does have some kind of "organizing principle" at work. Or heavens
forbid, if you dared openly mention the name "Wilhelm Reich" in
favorable terms, or the dirty word: "Orgone"... Speak about any of
that, over the last 50 years, and you could predict to be attacked on
the pages of "Skeptical Inquirer" with the most vicious character
assassination and distortions, and shortly afterward be dusting off
your resume for a new job, pronto! From personal experience, I know.
One expects political hacks to engage in cloak-and-dagger
"dirty-tricks" and smears, to "get" their opponents, but we don't
anticipate university professors to act this way. Surprise! This is
also typical of university professors and the medical establishment.
They often act quite miserably, and with enthusiasm to "get" their
opponents fired and censored, but being smarter than the average
politician, are much better at covering it up, putting it all under a
nice glossy facade.
In my time as a university student, it was liberal academics who were
under attack more generally by the conservatives, who wanted to toss
out the Libs. By the time I made it to professor, the tide had
turned. Today, the Libs have taken over, and it is the conservatives
who are often banished and forbidden to speak. The more things
change, the more they remain the same. Human character has not been
altered one little bit. Only the favored targets of abuse, and the
favored platforms from which the abuse is hurled, have changed. The
common functioning principle is, that people have lots of anger in
the guts, and lots of abuse to hurl, preferably at anyone who happens
to be a bit livelier and more intellectually honest than themselves.
J.D.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Chesler: Is it racist to condemn fanaticism?
Phyllis Chesler
Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai - nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.
When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. "Don't worry, it's just a formality," my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives - perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.
In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.
I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes - one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male "prison"-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).
Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous - but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: "Not even the British could occupy us." Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.
Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes - and that such "colourful tribal customs" are absolutely, not relatively, evil. Long before al-Qaeda beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and Nicholas Berg in Iraq, I understood that it was dangerous for a Westerner, especially a woman, to live in a Muslim country. In retrospect, I believe my so-called Western feminism was forged in that most beautiful and treacherous of Eastern countries.
Nevertheless, Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist "Islamophobe" for arguing that Islam, not Israel, is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West. I have been heckled, menaced, never-invited, or disinvited for such heretical ideas - and for denouncing the epidemic of Muslim-on-Muslim violence for which tiny Israel is routinely, unbelievably scapegoated.
However, my views have found favour with the bravest and most enlightened people alive. Leading secular Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents - from Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and exiles from Europe and North America - assembled for the landmark Islamic Summit Conference in Florida and invited me to chair the opening panel on Monday.
According to the chair of the meeting, Ibn Warraq: "What we need now is an age of enlightenment in the Islamic world. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical and intolerant and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and truth." The conference issued a declaration calling for such a new "Enlightenment". The declaration views "Islamophobia" as a false allegation, sees a "noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine" and "demands the release of Islam from its captivity to the ambitions of power-hungry men".
Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.
An Islamic Enlightenment?
By Phyllis Chesler
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 9, 2007
Is Islam the problem, or can it be part of the solution? Can Islam be reformed from within, or is Muslim violence and hatred due entirely to the teachings and history of the Qur'an? These were some of the major issues raised at the Secular Islam Summit in St Petersburg, Florida, this week.
A landmark event, the summit brought together such brave and eloquent defenders of freedom and conscience as the scholar Ibn Warraq (his nom de guerre); Iranian exile and activist Banafasheh Zand-Bonazzi; Austin Dacy of the Center for Inquiry; as well as many other Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents.
Most were incredible orators, some were entertainers, others were deep and mournful thinkers. They included:
* Egyptian-born Dr. Tawfik Hamid, who was once a "colleague" of Osama bin Laden's second in command, Al-Zawahiri.
* The Gandhi-like Dr. Shahriar Kabir, Bangladesh's leading human rights activist.
* Tashbih Sayeed, Pakistan's foremost opponent of radical Islam, a man of few, but fiery words.
* Dr. Afshin Ellian, an Iranian professor in exile in Holland, a close friend of Aayan Hirsi Ali, and a man of genial wit and wide-ranging knowledge.
* Egyptian-Palestinian-American author, Nonie Darwish, a warm but absolutely uncompromising thinker and speaker.
Indeed, there were so many excellent speakers that I cannot do them all justice here. For now, let me focus on only two. The opening speeches were delivered by Ibn Warraq, a consummate intellectual and committed secularist, and Irshad Manji, the best-selling author and a onetime master of the spunky sound bite who is now a bit more moderate and modest in tone.
Ibn Warraq spoke of the dangers that Muslims in the Islamic world face for speaking the truth about Islam, including prison, torture, exile and death. Proving his point was the fact that a number of invitees to the summit from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia did not attend after receiving one too many death threats or after being told that their families would be targeted if they chose to attend. Most writers have been stopped in their tracks by such Muslim-on-Muslim repression.
Warraq explained that he wants an Islamic "Enlightenment," a la John Stuart Mill, rather than a "Reformation," which he considers mere tinkering. He believes that Western values are universal, although he felt that most human rights initiatives within the West, including the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, are "hopeless" and will not push sovereign Muslim tyrannies toward reform. He mourned the fact that the West continues to "apologize for colonialism and racism" and that Turkey still "refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide."
A running theme of Ibn Warraq's remarks was the unjust treatment of Muslims in Islamic countries. For instance, he insisted that "protecting non-Muslims in Muslim societies" is crucial and can "lead to pluralism and tolerance for Muslims as well." He called for a "legal recourse" within the Islamic world for the widespread denial of freedom of speech. He "demanded the re-writing of anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish text-books, especially in Saudi Arabia and Egypt," adding that he considers such hatred "scandalous." Warraq also implored "women's groups in the West to defend Muslim women" under siege.
In this connection, he assailed the "inconsistency and hypocrisy of the "western multi-culturalists, including feminists" and stated that the "law of the western secular state must override religious law when religious law denies basic human rights." Some European police -- he mentioned Sweden in particular -- still return the victims of family violence to the families that will kill them. In his view, the "rights of women are central to Islamic reform." Warraq summed up his views on reform with the following credo: "No to female genital mutilation; no to forced and polygamous marriage; no to gender separatism."
Irshad Manji spoke next. She began with the wise observation that "courage is not the absence of fear but the recognition that some things are more important than fear." Manji, whose entourage included a young woman in hijab, described herself as a "person of faith but not a dogmatist." Manji found support for her moderation in a quote from the Qur'an, which "tells us to oppose your family" when the truth or true inner struggle is at stake. She pointed out that the "Qur'an says nothing about the proper form of government," which suggests that Islam should remain a private faith, not a political movement or a government.
In Manji's opinion, "this silence is deliberate and gives us room to experiment with a different form of government." Calling for "Muslim pluralism," Manji decried theocratic governments. In this regard, Manji commented that someone "should tell President Bush that he should not have empowered the theocrats in Iraq."
Finally, she made a point that I have made many times -- and which has gotten me demonized as a "racist" -- namely, that so-called western "anti-racists" are really acting as "racists" when they hold Muslims to lower standards out of some misguided notion of respect.
There was much more on offer at the summit. Other subjects of discussion included the war between Sunni and Shiia Muslims; the nature of jihad; and the Islamic Caliphate. It is worth noting that the tenor of the week was very different from what many have come to expect from conferences on Islam. Nearly every single speaker spoke up for Israel and for Jews, pointing out that both have been terribly abused by the Islamic world, as has the West in general. The conference also presented a declaration in English, Arabic, Bengali and Persian. which may be viewed in English at http://www.secularislam.org.
One might think that the western media would have flocked to the summit in droves. It's not every day, after all, that Muslim reformers and dissidents gather for a forthright discussion about the troubles of Islam and the Islamic world. Such was not the case. Both the Associated Press and NPR promised to come but did not show.
To be sure, there were some notable exceptions to the media blackout -- CNN's Glenn Beck devoted an entire hour to interviews with conference speakers; Bret Stephens covered it for the Wall Street Journal as did Jay Tolson for U.S. News and World Report and Christina Hoff-Sommers for The Weekly Standard -- but the various papers of record in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles were, to the best of my knowledge, missing in action.
Curiously, both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, not previously known for their support of Islamic reform, covered the conference, which aired live and in Arabic. It is an unhappy irony that these noble dissidents should face ostracism and grave danger in Muslim lands and only to be similarly ignored by the Western intelligentsia and media.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Additional Must-See Videos: Canadian Muslim Fanatic Take-Over
What the few authentic "moderate Muslims" and ex-Muslims (and all us
infidels) are up against.
Islamic Thugs Bully, Threaten to Murder Small Number of Moderates in
Take-Over of Canadian Mosques. This is why "Moderate Islam" never
gets a chance to develop anywhere. And it is all well-organized by
the mainstream Mullahs and Mosques. In 2 parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWPvuAg4HjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKgaVaNagfM
Watch it quick, as U-Tube has a habit to delete videos which make a
too-factual discussion of Islam. Religion of peace, and all of
that....
++++
And here's another to be aware of, soon to be available as a DVD:
Pierre Rehov: Suicide Killers
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NVHWIE/littlegreenfo-20
There's also a YouTube trailer on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwObamSagM
Already "flagged" by the "YouTube Community" (of Islamo-friends)
Here's an interview on CNN with filmmaker Rehov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkBlhSNpHXo
(not yet flagged)
St. Petersburg Declaration: Muslims try to change Islamic killing machine
"You cannot believe the hunger of Muslims to hear what we're saying right now," said Darwish, a native of Egypt and a founder of ArabsForIsrael.com. "At least 50 percent will tell us, you are right, but don't reveal my name. They are so scared to speak out. To live in the Middle East and say what we're saying is a death sentence."
Darwish was among the speakers at the two-day Secular Islam Summit in St. Petersburg, which culminated with the declaration. Warraq, who uses a pseudonym because of death threats that followed his book "Why I am not a Muslim," abandoned Islam and considers himself an agnostic. Manji, author of the bestseller "The Trouble with Islam," sees herself as both a committed Muslim and a free thinker.
In the statement, the signatories identify as "believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree."
"They don't speak for us," Darwish said in response during a question and answer session at the conference. "CAIR represents the best interests of radical Islam."
CAIR casts itself as a mainstream defender of the civil rights of Muslims, but critics point out the group was formed as a spinoff of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counter-terrorism chiefs as a front for Hamas in the U.S.
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and author of "The Truth About Muhammad," told WND he "wholeheartedly" applauds the declaration and wishes success for it and its sponsors.
"I do believe, unfortunately, that the prospects for its widespread acceptance among Muslims today are dim," he said.
Nevertheless, Spencer said the statement "gives Muslims who reject the ideology of Islamic supremacism something around which they can rally, and that may allow for larger movements for genuine Islamic reform than we have seen up to now."
Darwish believes the declaration will have a long life, growing "like wildfire" as "signature after signature" is added to it, but she acknowledged if there will be any change, it won't come soon.
"This is the infancy stage of a revolution in the Muslim world. To achieve our goal is going to take generations," said Darwish, whose father, the head of Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza, was assassinated in 1956 when she was 8 years old.
The declaration calls on the governments of the world to:
The declaration calls on "academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media."
"We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine; to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha'is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens; and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent."
The St. Petersburg Declaration
Released by the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit, St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5, 2007
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
We call on the governments of the world to
* reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
* eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women; protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
* reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;
* and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.
We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.
We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;
to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha'is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;
and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.
Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must chose for themselves.
Endorsed by:
Mona Abousenna
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Magdi Allam
Mithal Al-Alusi
Shaker Al-Nabulsi
Nonie Darwish
Afhin Ellian
Tawfik Hamid
Shahriar Kabir
Hasan Mahmud
Raquel Evita Saraswati
Wafa Sultan
Ibn Warraq
Mourad Wahba
Manda Zand Ervin
Bonafsheh Zand-Bonazzi
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims UK Documentary
'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.
The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world's poor.
Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.
Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn.
A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."
Controversial director Martin Durkin said: "You can see the problems with the science of global warming, but people just don't believe you - it's taken ten years to get this commissioned.
"I think it will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists - people with qualifications - are the bad guys.
"It is a big story that is going to cause controversy.
"It's very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.
"Al Gore might have won an Oscar for 'An Inconvenient Truth', but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round."
One major piece of evidence of CO2 causing global warming are ice core samples from Antarctica, which show that for hundreds of years, global warming has been accompanied by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
In 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' Al Gore is shown claiming this proves the theory, but palaeontologist Professor Ian Clark claims in the documentary that it actually shows the opposite.
He has evidence showing that warmer spells in the Earth's history actually came an average of 800 years before the rise in CO2 levels.
Prof Clark believes increased levels of CO2 are because the Earth is heating up and not the cause. He says most CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the oceans, which dissolve the gas.
When the temperature increases, more gas is released into the atmosphere and when global temperatures cool, more CO2 is taken in. Because of the immense size of the oceans, he said they take time to catch up with climate trends, and this 'memory effect' is responsible for the lag.
Scientists in the programme also raise another discrepancy with the official line, showing that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, when global temperatures then fell for four decades.
It was only in the late 1970s that the current trend of rising temperatures began.
This, claim the sceptics, is a flaw in the CO2 theory, because the post-war economic boom produced more CO2 and should, according to the consensus, have meant a rise in global temperatures.
The programme claims there appears to be a consensus across science that CO2 is responsible for global warming, but Professor Paul Reiter is shown to disagree.
He said the influential United Nations report on Climate change, that claimed humans were responsible, was a sham.
It claimed to be the opinion of 2,500 leading scientists, but Prof Reiter said it included names of scientists who disagreed with the findings and resigned from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and said the report was finalised by government appointees.
The CO2 theory is further undermined by claims that billions of pounds is being provided by governments to fund greenhouse effect research, so thousands of scientists know their job depends on the theory continuing to be seen as fact.
The programme claims efforts to reduce CO2 are killing Africans, who have to burn fires inside their home, causing cancer and lung damage, because their governments are being encouraged to use wind and solar panels that are not capable of supplying the continent with electricity, instead of coal and oil-burning power stations that could.
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore is shown saying: "Environmentalists have romanticised peasant life, but this is anti-human.
"They are saying the world's poorest people should have the world's most expensive form of form of energy - really saying they can't have electricity."
Gary Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, is featured in the programme, and has just released a book claiming that clouds are the real reason behind climate change.
'The Chilling Stars' was written with Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark who published a scientific paper, claiming cosmic rays cause clouds to form, reducing the global temperature. The theory is shown in the programme.
Mr Calder said: "Henrik Svensmark saw that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars - when there are more cosmic rays, there are more clouds.
"However, solar winds bat away many of the cosmic rays and the sun is currently in its most active phase, which would be an explanation for global warming.
"I am a science journalist and in my career I have been told by eminent scientists that black holes do not exist and it is impossible that continents move, but in science the experts are usually wrong.
"For me this is a cracking science story - I don't come from any political position and I'm certainly not funded by the multinationals, although my bank manager would like me to be.
"I talk to scientists and come up with one story, and Al Gore talks to another set of scientists and comes up with a different story.
"So knowing which scientists to talk to is part of the skill. Some, who appear to be disinterested, are themselves getting billions of dollars of research money from the government.
"The few millions of dollars of research money from multinationals can't compare to government funding, so you find the American scientific establishment is all for man-made global warming.
"We have the same situation in Britain The government's chief scientific advisor Sir David King is supposed to be the representative of all that is good in British science, so it is disturbing he and the government are ignoring a raft of evidence against the greenhouse effect being the main driver against climate change."
The programme shows how the global warming research drive began when Margaret Thatcher gave money to scientists to 'prove' burning coal and oil was harmful, as part of her drive for nuclear power.
Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London , who also features in the film warned the issue was too complex to be down to one single factor, whether CO2 or clouds.
He said: "The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect.
"The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be, or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.
"It's ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2C or 3C."
Mr Stott said the film could mark the point where scientists advocating the greenhouse effect theory, began to lose the argument.
He continued: "It is a brave programme at the moment to give excluded voices their say, and maybe it is just the beginning.
"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion and this is dangerous."
In the programme Nigel Calder says: "The greenhouse effect is seen as a religion and if you don't agree, you are a heretic.
By Al Webb
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published March 6, 2007
LONDON -- With a packet of claims that are almost certain to defy conventional wisdom, a television documentary to be aired in Britain this week condemns man-made global warming as a myth that has become "the biggest scam of modern times."
The program titled "The Great Global Warming Scandal" and set for screening by TV Channel 4 on Thursday dismisses claims that high levels of greenhouse gases generated by human activity causes climate change. Instead, the program suggests that the sun itself is the real culprit.
The documentary, directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin, is at odds with scientific opinion as outlined in a United Nations report in February, which blames mankind for global warming.
In his program, Mr. Durkin rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times."
The truth, he says, is that global warming "is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media."
Channel 4 says that the program features "an impressive roll-call of experts," including nine professors, who are experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, biogeography and paleoclimatology.
It also says the experts come from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and universities and other schools in London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Alabama, Virginia and Winnipeg, Canada.
"It's very rare that a film changes history," says Martin Durkin, "but I think this is a turning point, and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk," he says.
His program collides sharply with the premise outlined in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which presents a bleak picture of how a buildup in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide affects the global climate, with potentially disastrous consequences.
"Al Gore might have won an Oscar," says Mr. Durkin, in a preview of the documentary, "but the film is very misleading, and he has got the relationship between [carbon dioxide] and climate change the wrong way around."
One of the filmmaker's experts, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa, says that global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions, and that ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels.
Mr. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods.
"The fact is that [carbon dioxide] has no proven link to global temperatures," says Mr. Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit."
Scientists in the Channel 4 documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research, saying that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades.
Mr. Durkin's skeptical specialists view this as a flaw in the official view, because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle" also questions an assertion by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, published last month, that it was backed by some 2,500 of the world's leading scientists.
Another of Mr. Durkin's professors, Paul Reiter of Paris' Pasteur Institute, an expert in malaria, calls the U.N. report a "sham" because, he says, it included the names of scientists -- including his own -- who disagreed with the report and who resigned from the panel.
"That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he says. "It's not true."
Mr. Reiter says his name was removed only after he threatened legal action against the panel. The report itself, he adds, was finalized by government appointees.
Yet another expert in the Durkin documentary, Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is more circumspect.
"The [climate] system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on [carbon dioxide] production would be or, indeed, of continuing to produce [carbon dioxide]."
"The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start," Mr. Stott says, "because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect."
"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion, and this is dangerous," he says.
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