I've been remiss in not saying thanks to those who have sent along their well wishes, among them the Commissar, Michele, Charles, Roger, Michael Ledeen, Juliette, Kate, Joe, Jheka, Cameron, Ed, Clay, and especially Cecile Dubois, who sent me one of the sweetest e-mails I've ever received. What happened to those bratty, self-absorbed teenagers of yesteryear, I ask you? Ah well. Blame the parents.
Thanks again to all of them and to all the non-blogger readers who have written to give their encouragement. I really appreciate it.
Allah's been waiting for someone with a little moral credibility to step in and put this whole torture thing in perspective. Whew!
Say no to war crimes:
Vote for the war criminal
Allahu Akbar.
At long last, VDH sees the magnitude of the problem. Iraq, he says, has become a kind of proxy war:
We have been fighting two wars all along. The easier one was against the fascists in the Middle East, whom we demolished in Afghanistan in less than eight weeks and routed in Iraq in three—while rounding them up worldwide and preventing another 9-11 attack here at home. But the other challenge? Now that has been nearly impossible to win. For here in the West we are split into two widely divergent groups who disagree about almost everything that has transpired since September 11 . . . .[N]ow we come to the earthquake of Iraq, and the divide has become a gaping abyss. Yes, there is real controversy over troop levels, the mission and purpose of our stay, and the costs of reconstructing Iraq. But behind the conundrum rest very, very different views of what the West and indeed the world should be. This fight for the future of Iraq is turning out to be far more than a referendum on democracy in the Middle East, but rather a trial of our own culture here at home.
Proxy war. Or rather, civil war. Major battle coming up.
Allahu Akbar.
Number one with a bullet. But look out for A-double-lizzle's old school shit creeping up behind:
Dutch police don't know what to do with the case of the Turkish immigrant rapper zg r Korkmaz and his group NAG (Nieuwe Allochtone Generatie - New Immigrant Generation). In his song "F***ing Jews," Korkmaz warns the "f***ing Jews" that immigrants are "comin' to kill" them. After CIDI's director Ronnie Naftaniel filed a complaint against him, Korkmaz reported to his local police station. But the police, who probably couldn't decide whether these lyrics were an expression of genuine anti-Semitic feelings or just normal street talk, sent him away without even charging him. "I don't understand," Korkmaz said. "I was here to make a statement because I feel CIDI is right. My lyrics were completely over the top." Instead of singing "kill all Jews," he would have preferred to have sung "kill the Jews that are in Israel's government and are responsible for the slaughter of Palestinian babies."Korkmaz's song is a hit among Arab immigrant schoolchildren. He is obviously an idiot, but he was on to something when, in the course of complaining about being "unfairly singled out" by CIDI, he observed that "Holland is full of Jew-haters, and the Internet is full of songs like mine."
Read it all, kufr, especially the part towards the beginning about last year's Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies. How do you say "Pump the Jews full of gas" in Dutch, anyway?
Allahu Akbar.
Dhimmi that old time religion:
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers is a scandal offensive to God himself, the Vatican said, in its first public comment."Violence against people offends God himself, who made humans in his own image," the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said in a pre-recorded television interview due to be broadcast later on Friday. He condemned the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, made public last week, as "episodes of brutality, contrary to the most elementary human rights and radically contrary to Christian morals".
"The scandal is even worse if these episodes were committed by Christians," Lajolo said in the interview, due to be shown on Italian state television's TG2 news programme.
Allah congratulates the Pope for this glorious double standard and commends him for his principled----wait. Shhh! Quiet for a second.
Allahu Akbar.
Allah meant to blog this yesterday but he got sidetracked with Friedman's pants-shitting. Hidden away on the very same page was this little gem:
Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary.
Allah will spare you the disquisition on "censorship" and private entities and their interests in free expression as he assumes his readers already have a retarded five-year-old's working knowledge of the law. Besides, you get the larger point: Disney shouldn't have reneged on its contract to distribute Moore's film. Which is true. Except for one thing.
So anyway. When is the Times going to give Fisk a column?
First, our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera. Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash.
Allahu Akbar.
Imminent-Shiite-Uprising-Against-Al-Sadr Watch, Day 12. From Reuters:
Thousands of supporters of rebel Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr prayed in Sunni mosques in Iraq Friday, in what local leaders called a show of religious unity in the face of Iraq's occupiers.The gesture was the latest display of solidarity among Iraq's Muslims since U.S. forces besieged the Sunni town of Falluja west of Baghdad and faced off with Sadr's militia in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala to the south.
Sadr's popularity among Shi'ites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, seems to have soared since his uprising began a month ago, particularly among the young and the poor.
Someone call Tom Friedman; these guys could use an apology. And after all, everything's our fault:
Ahmad Hassan Taha, a Sunni cleric who led prayers at the mosque, said the presence of Sadr's followers was a message to U.S. forces who are massed around the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf in a bid to crush his insurgency. "They have tried to sow discord among us, as Sunnis and Shi'ites, and they have failed," he said, referring to the U.S. occupiers.
Yep, sounds like something we'd do. What could be better for America than a big, bloody, Iraqi civil war?
Allahu Akbar.
Random links for a glorious Friday afternoon:
Zionist women entice Allah into launching his long-range missile. Then, they shoot it down. The Times calls on those responsible for war crimes to resign. Per Iowahawk, John Kerry agrees/disagrees. Allah reader P. Ducey e-mails to ask when Bush plans on apologizing to al-Sadr. Too late, PD; the apology's been preemptively unaccepted. Too bad we lost the moral high ground, huh? Finally, Allah reader "konshtok" sees Bush comfort the daughter of a 9/11 victim and has an idea for a Photoshop which the creator of worlds is more than happy to realize.
Allahu Akbar.
One standard for Allah, one standard for the kufr, and never the twain shall meet. Soft bigotry of low expectations Akbar!
Allahu Akbar.
I thought about a new Friedman parody in response to today's column but I'm too disgusted to find the humor in it. At least when Dowd drops a stinkbomb by twittering on about Paul Wolfowitz's smile or whatever, you can comfort yourself with the thought that no one cares anymore what Bubblehead thinks. But Friedman? The guy hangs out with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He's arguably the most influential journalist in the world. And judging from today's column, he's also a full-blown wackaloon.
Before we get to the money quote, it's worth pausing to recall the words of another Jew-hating Saudi. December 13, 2001: "[W]hen people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Got that? Okay. Now here's Friedman from today giving us his idea of the strong horse:
Mr. Bush needs to invite to Camp David the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the heads of both NATO and the U.N., and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. There, he needs to eat crow, apologize for his mistakes and make clear that he is turning a new page. Second, he needs to explain that we are losing in Iraq, and if we continue to lose the U.S. public will eventually demand that we quit Iraq, and it will then become Afghanistan-on-steroids, which will threaten everyone. Third, he needs to say he will be guided by the U.N. in forming the new caretaker government in Baghdad. And fourth, he needs to explain that he is ready to listen to everyone's ideas about how to expand our force in Iraq, and have it work under a new U.N. mandate, so it will have the legitimacy it needs to crush any uprisings against the interim Iraqi government and oversee elections — and then leave when appropriate. And he needs to urge them all to join in.
And he also needs to fire Rumsfeld, says Friedman. Immediately, today, before he finishes writing the next sentence. And then he needs to flagellate himself and sing a chorus of "Mammy." And then, just maybe, slice his head open with a sword in one of those Shiite grief rituals. Why, you ask? Because of what happened at Abu Ghraib.
I want you to step back for a moment and imagine the president of the United States begging forgiveness from the leader of a country which picks up the check for Sunni terrorist operations all over the world; which has been working for decades to spread Wahhabism to mosques and madrassas on every continent; which itself engages in interrogation tactics far more draconian than the ones American troops are being accused of (a point Friedman acknowledges); which produced fifteen of the nineteen degenerates who knocked down the World Trade Center; and which, as recently as last week, blamed "Zionists" for its various chickens having recently come home to roost. Go on, imagine it. If you're having trouble, here's something from the MEMRI ticker to help make the picture a little more vivid:
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Sa'ud al-Faisal said regarding statements by Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah that Zionist hands were behind the May 1 attack in Yunbu': "It is not hidden from anyone that extremist Zionist elements are engaging in a vulgar campaign against the Kingdom by espousing and disseminating lies and incitement against the Saudi government . . . The terror operations taking place today serve the interests of the extremist Zionist elements, and this means that they [the perpetrators of the operations and the Zionist elements] share common interests." An Interior Ministry communique accused Israel of connections to Al Qaeda. (Al-Watan, Saudi Arabia, 5/5/04)
Still can't imagine it? What if you were personally acquainted with the leader in question, had dined with him on occasion, and were indebted to him for having laid on you a world-class scoop in the not-too-distant past? What if you had a high-paying gig as foreign affairs correspondent for the world's most famous newspaper and your career depended upon your maintaining access to all the major shithole tyrannies of the Middle East: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria--coincidentally, the very same countries whose shoes Tom wants Bush to shine? Can you imagine it now? Great. Oh, and can you also imagine largely ignoring all the bad stuff? Because troublemakers don't get invited onto the yacht.
It's not Friedman's Arab toadying that's so galling, though. Anyone who's read him over the past few years has long since gotten used to that. What's galling is his suggestion that a sufficiently humiliating apology for what happened at Abu Ghraib might actually have an effect on world opinion--as though anti-Americanism were something keyed to specific events rather than to broad differences in ideology. Friedman would have us believe there are teeming multitudes out there who want to like us, are trying to like us, but just can't get a leg over because we keep doing awful things to break their hearts. Luckily, they're so open-minded and forgiving that we might be able to win them back if we put the Friedman plan into action and have Bush give Hosni Mubarak a rim job. Which, of course, is horseshit. If anti-Americanism is as rational and fact-intensive as Friedman implies, why does it seem to be flourishing in places notorious for their violent, irrational prejudices? France is Europe's most anti-American country; to hear people who live there tell it, it's also on the verge of some kind of Nazi renaissance. What would Friedman's shame orgy accomplish in the minds of people like that except maybe give Le Monde's douchebag cartoonist the chance to draw Bush weeping tears that look like little oil barrels or something?
Same with the Middle East. The instruments of state power began cooking up outrage at imperialism and crusaders and the twelve Jews who live on the moon since before the first tank rolled across the border last year. With jihad already such an important part of that culture, what kind of reaction would you expect an apology from President Kufr to receive? Robert Spencer, whose controversial opposition to death cults has rendered him too hot for television, looks at the absurd spectacle of radical Muslims protesting against torture and puts it this way:
The Iraqi prisoners are just the latest pretext. If the stories of abuse had not existed, they would have had to be invented — as evidenced by their augmentation on the ever more frenzied Arab Street with footage from an old porn film depicting American soldiers raping an Arab woman. Many people believe that if we only made a few adjustments here, or there — Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan — the animosity toward America in the Islamic world would melt away. The demonstrators, for all their particular grievances, prove otherwise. They were from Al-Muhajiroun, the notorious pro-Osama radical Muslim group in Britain that has been wanting to “bomb London, bomb New York” long before these prisoners were abused — and long before there were even any American troops in Iraq.
It's the ideology, stupid, and groveling to the very same thugs our campaign in Iraq is designed to eventually eliminate isn't going to change that ideology in any way except possibly to strengthen it. Friedman would do well to read his own op-ed page on this point, as there's a piece in there today by a Muslim who lives in West Virginia that puts the lie to his whole argument. The leadership of her mosque was taken over by a bunch of Wahhabist shitheels. The author wonders why moderates like herself don't stand up to them and notes ominously that "Americans need not look elsewhere to hear hate-filled rhetoric preached by fundamentalists. It resounds in our own back yards." Yet Tom Friedman would have the president of the United States walk up to this same bunch of miscreants and tell them, "I'm so sorry about Abu Ghraib."
I do agree with Friedman that Bush owes someone an apology. I just don't think Bashar Assad--who, in addition to being a fucking Baathist, is about to become the subject of U.S. sanctions thanks to his support of terrorism--is the guy to whom it's owed. The only people who have given this project a fair shake from the start are Americans and Iraqis, so if Bush wants to invite Lt. Smash and Zeyad to the White House and beg their forgiveness, I'm down with that. Just leave Assad out of it. If he needs his shoes shined so bad, let him call Friedman. I'm sure Tom would be happy to do the job.
That Shiite anger toward al-Sadr that Allah's been hearing about should be ready to boil over any minute now, huh? Any minute now Sistani's going to ride to the rescue and spare U.S. troops from having to fight yet another battle with people screaming in their ear about staying out of the mosque's zoning code or whatever. Annnnny minute now . . . .
Allahu Akbar.
It's a full court press!
Fineman: Osama's winning!
Dickey: Run away!
Alter: Show us the bodies!
Photo gallery: "Anatomy of a quagmire!"
Having let Rushdie wriggle off the hook, Allah swears a sacred vow to reel this one in.
"One story that I can tell you," she says, "a story that I have the permission from the police to tell you, is that I was in an airport in North America recently and somebody at the airport recognised me. I had a conversation with them. While I was engaged in conversation with a very portly, very sweet fifty-something man and his wife, an Arab guy came up to my travel companion and said, 'You are luckier than your friend.' As a nice polite Canadian she asked, 'What do you mean?' and he didn't say anything. He turned his hand in to the shape of a gun and he pulled the make-believe trigger towards my head. She didn't know what to make of this, so she asked him to clarify his intentions. He said 'Not now, you will find out later,' and then he was gone."
The "I'm gonna blow your head off" gesture never fails to get the point across, does it? Allah uses it every chance he gets.
UPDATE: Manji's website is here.
Allahu Akbar.
UPDATE: Johnson versus Johnson.
UPDATE: Stalinsky versus Saud.
UPDATE: More on Bush's buck-passing from Venomous Kate, who notes that our fearless leader is taking a rather proactive role in making Rumsfeld out to be the bad guy here. Harry Truman you ain't, George.
Photoshop the creepy American prison guard!
UPDATE: Merde and Dorkafork chime in.
UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein takes care of business.
Allahu Akbar.
Republicans? Show tunes? Hey, they must all be ass-humping homos! Can I have a salary now, Mr. Denton?
Allahu Akbar.
Just consider for a moment what this bunch of giggling sadists has done, with its happy snaps and recreational cruelties: It has defiled one of the memorials of regime change. I was a visitor to Abu Ghraib last summer, and the stench of misery and evil was still palpable in those pits and cellars. It is as if British or American soldiers had not only executed German prisoners of war, but had force-marched them to Dachau in order to commit the atrocity.
* * *
While Saddam Hussein sits safely in his comfortable cell in Qatar or wherever else he is being held, Iraqi detainees are being put into the most humiliating and degrading conditions that can be imagined. While the guilty are free to wreak havoc, and take refuge in holy cities, the innocent are detained and mistreated for months without charges. But it seems like that is life.
* * *
Officials at the Defense Department are also said to be "livid," and well aware of the damage that has been done by the incident, according to NBC News' Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski. Speaking on the Imus in the Morning radio/MSNBC program Tuesday , Mr. Miklaszewski said he asked a Pentagon contact about the soldiers alleged to be involved, to which the Pentagon official replied, "You mean the six morons who lost the war?"
Also worth checking out: A left-wing guest poster at Zeyad's blog takes advatange of his host's unfamiliarity with the U.S. media by comparing Al Jazeera to Fox News. Compare this with the post that immediately precedes it. Way to make a mockery of Zeyad's Jazeera takedown, noble guest poster.
UPDATE: Whoops. Allah missed this one the first time around:
On the Arabic satellite channels, it's "all torture, all the time" - wall-to-wall coverage of the photographs, the graphic images flooding into homes across the region. "The situation has not changed in Iraq; only the prison warder is different," said one report on al-Arabiya.
Allahu Akbar.
A miracle from Al-Wajid to his readers: After forty-odd years of trying, Rall finally generates a good cartoon.
UPDATE: "Ah well. Every era has its Bill Mauldin. Every era has its Nast. And every era has its Rall. We just don’t remember them like we remember the Mauldins and Nasts. You know, the guys who were right. And could draw."
Allahu Akbar.
Allah's noticed something lately. Every time he accuses the Jew of eating babies or fabricating the Holocaust or whatever, someone yells "anti-Semite!" and suddenly everyone else starts hissing and calling Allah an asshole. And so Allah's been wondering: How can he make this work for him? Wouldn't it be glorious if the mujahedeen had a term they could invoke against people who use slurs like "suicide bombings are wrong" or "your religion seems to condone violence"? Ah, but which term? Alas, kufr, there are few words in the language that can match "anti-Semite" for sheer moral power or negative--heyyyyyyyy!
There are, in fact, two anti-Semitisms. One has historically found expression in the hatred and vilification of the Jewish people; the other has manifested itself in the equally odious hatred and vilification of Arabs and Muslims. . . . Historically, the animus of anti-Semitism directed against both Arabs and Jews has been the same. [Ed. - Absolutely.] It has been a largely Western Christian struggle against two Semitic civilizations – one that it found living within its midst and that it saw as an internal threat; the other that it confronted as an external challenge but that it similarly defined as a threat to its survival. . . . In the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism against Jews is now recognized for what it is — hateful prejudice. We have yet to learn this lesson when it comes to Arabs and Islam. . . .[T]here are some in the West who want to stretch the definition of anti-Semitism in an effort to silence legitimate political criticism of the policies in the State of Israel. They insist that any singling out of Israel is motivated by an anti-Jewish animus. Recent charges of anti-Semitism against UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Mary Robinson (the Nobel Prize winner) both of whom recently criticized Israeli occupation are examples of this terrible abuse of the anti-Semitism charge for political purposes.
In this context, Secretary of State Colin Powell was correct to note that “it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel, but the line is crossed when Israel’s leaders are demonized and vilified by the use of Nazi symbols or racist caricatures.” True enough — but the same yardstick should also be applied to the “other anti-Semitism” as well. All too often the language used to demonize Yasser Arafat is nothing more than vile, hate-filled bigotry. In other words, anti-Semitism.
Seriously. Arafat and Nazism? What possible link could there be? Listening to you kufr sometimes, you'd think everyone over there was reading "Mein Kampf". Get a fucking handle.
The terms of the debate having now been set, Allah is off to inform Ariel Sharon that he is, in fact, a raging anti-Semite.
Allahu Akbar.
Allahu Akbar.
Also in the Voice this week: Rick Perlstein frets that the world's most sinister major religion has achieved too much influence while Richard Goldstein identifies the threat women face from its practitioners. No wonder Americans United calls it "the single greatest threat to church-state separation in America." Allah, for one, is glad to see somebody finally waking up to the dangers posed by such a violent, hateful ideology.
P.S. from one of the Voice's fellow travelers: Stop existing, Jew!
Allahu Akbar.
Apologies for the lack of blogging. Allah did his Mother's Day shopping this morning and ended up having to choose between perfume and a new slave. He went with the perfume, despite the UN's recommendation. Ah well. If only there was some way for you anti-slavery kufr to register your dissent.
As for Iraq, Allah doesn't get it. Everything is breaking his way, so why is it that he and his godless Bolshevik ally feel so incredibly fucking depressed? Perhaps a donation to a truly glorious cause will restore his spirits.
UPDATE: "Atrocities," "defeat," "disgrace" - James Ridgeway wants it so bad he can almost taste it. Note too the photo; it's not every day that the Village Voice looks with disapproval at a pile of naked male ass.
Allahu Akbar.
His compulsive references to Vietnam having become a national joke, John Kerry throws away the playbook and strikes out in a bold new direction. Command Post has more.
Meanwhile, Suge recalls Lurch's taste in ski attire and sends along the link to an accessory the big guy's sure to want in case he ever goes ahead and has that sex change operation.
UPDATE: "Who was the last American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by his dishonest testimony before the Senate?"
Allahu Akbar.
Okay, now it's official. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.
UPDATE: Sounds like we don't know much about the new guy, either.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Najaf, looks like the plan is for us to continue to sit there and be shot at while al-Sadr hides inside the mosque. Spencer Ackerman said a week ago that Shiites in the city were "rapidly running out of patience" with al-Sadr, which must be true because you know how quickly they ran out of patience with Saddam. Look for them to turn on him any decade now.
UPDATE: Salaried Saudi stooge Linda Heard says the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been so ruinous that the only thing to do at this point is hand the whole thing over to Jew-hating U.N. diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi. Then, and only then, should the rest of the world help Iraqis out with money and "moral support." In fact, let Allah quote a few choice sentences to you from Linda's column; in light of the developing oil-for-food scandal, they really must be seen to be believed.
Arab leaders should put pressure on the US and Britain in any way they can to hand over the reins. The neoimperialists have had their turn. The task should now be left to those with courage and a sincere vision, rather than long-held political agendas and a thirst for both oil and global hegemony.
Uh huh. A U.N. spokesman said today that if security hasn't improved by January, you can just forget about them helping out with the elections. Like Linda said, "courage and a sincere vision."
Allahu Akbar.
The second naqba is at hand! Allah stands by for round-the-clock blogging in case glorious martyrdom is thrust upon Abu Ammar.
UPDATE: According to AFP, the soldiers are there to make "routine arrests" and have no intention of entering the compound. Hmmm.
Allahu Akbar.
He does look a little like Comic Book Guy, doesn't he? Just a little.
Now, who's going to break the news to the IMDB people?
Allahu Akbar.
Nice try. You almost caught Allah with his pants down. And you know Allah would rather have his fucking head blown off than be caught with his pants down.
Dhia al-Shweiri spent several stints in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule and once under American. He prefers Saddam's torture to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards, he said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press. . . .The 30-year-old al-Shweiri, who used to work in a fabric shop, is a die-hard fighter in the al-Mahdi Army, the fanatic militia of a Shiite Muslim cleric who has vowed to take on the Americans.
Al-Shweiri said that while jailed by Saddam's regime, he was electrocuted, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. "But that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked," he said. "Shoot me here," he added, pointing between his eyes, "but don't do this to us."
Speaking of head injuries, it's not really a Robert Fisk column unless there's a Hitler analogy at the end, right? Ah, kufr, you have Allah's sympathies. The rest of the world might hate you, but not A-double-lizzle. He knows who the real problem is.
Allahu Akbar.
Michele's having a contest. Allah's already got two entries in but you know how much he loves to 'Shop so here are two more.
By the way, did anyone else notice Wright's take on the Israeli separation fence tucked away toward the end of his little page of propaganda? Granted, it's hard to spot amid all the "John Ashcroft wants my uterus" material, but it's surely there. Six rows from the bottom, far right. Have a look, then compare it to the cartoon published by the Greek newspaper Ethnos as described in a recent op-ed in the Jerusalem Post.
In closing, an excerpt from Israeli minister Natan Sharanksky's address to the European conference on anti-Semitism delivered this past Thursday in Berlin:
This terminology of anti semitism is very dangerous – but at least very easy to identify. Today, the most sophisticated form of demonization is demonization of the Jewish State.For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz - comparisons which are heard practically every day within the “enlightened” quarters of Europe – can only be considered anti-Semitic. Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about the Nazi regime and Auschwitz or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern day Israel as the embodiment of evil.
Don't be too hard on Micah, though. It's probably the media's fault.
UPDATE: It's a small world after all:
Sometimes the scams were bigger. [Micah] wasn't the most diligent student (he was still there after I'd graduated), and I remember his chuckling to me one day in 1992 that he'd gotten out of a class in a very creative way. He was in an anthropology class that he hadn't been attending or doing any work for, and now it was too late in the sememster to withdraw, so he'd be stuck with an inevitable F. Well, instead, he went to the professor's office in his ROTC uniform, told the prof that the reason he hadn't been in class was that his ROTC unit had been deployed to Iraq for the Gulf War, and he'd only just returned. She thanked him for his service and immediately gave him and W (withdrawal) instead of an F. He crowed all afternoon at her gullability.
UPDATE: Best Micah hacks thus far? You know Allah's partial to the Sugar, although for laughs nothing tops Steve's "Pledge".
Allahu Akbar.
In honor of May Day, Allah dedicates this, the mother of all link dumps, to his fellow travelers in the struggle. Socialists and Islamists: united toward a common goal. Let's get to it.
Like Spinal Tap's speakers, Arab outrage at news that U.S. troops tortured Iraqis goes to 11. Colorful quotes abound in round-ups of reactions from Iraq (note the headline), the Kingdom (" 'What happened is the worst atrocity in human history and the perpetrators must be brought to justice,' said Uwe Preini, a visiting German travel industry executive"), the region as a whole, and, of course, the world. Displaying the level-headed, big-picture perspective that's become its trademark, the Arab News concludes its editorial on the subject thusly: In truth, the American behavior in Iraq could not have been more inept or more disastrous if George Bush had handed the planning of the occupation to Saddam Hussein himself. Ignorant, stubborn, naive and outstandingly stupid, the Americans have done pretty well everything wrong.The editorial goes on to note that Iran engages in the same sort of behavior all the time, but that it's okay there because some old fuck in a beard with a black turban on is doing it. Just kidding; of course it doesn't say shit about Iran. Anyway, I'm with John Hawkins.
Speaking of Iran, where crimes punishable by death include murder, rape, armed robbery and apostasy, former president Rafsanjani realizes something that George Bush doesn't. Bush had better realize it fast, says American Thinker correspondent Douglas Hanson, because we've only got three options left and none of them are very good. Meanwhile, fifty years after Americans first experienced UFO fever, Iranians catch the bug. In our case fear of little green men reflected paranoia about Soviet infiltration. One wonders, which strange, all-seeing enemy are Iran's martians acting as a proxy for? Hmmm. If you-know-who is cunning enough to fabricate the Holocaust, spread ideological "plagues" through the media, and, foist Barbra Streisand upon us, is it so hard to believe they've got flying saucers hidden somewhere in the Negev? Besides, Allah's warned you before about them and their robots. Those Zionists, always ahead of the curve.
Allah declares victory in Fallujah as the Marines pull out and one of Saddam's former generals takes over. Despite the best efforts of U.S. military brass to spin it their way, the troops on the ground know defeat when they see it: Many ordinary marines said they did not believe the initiative would work and it could endanger their lives when they had to revert to the "plan A" of a full-scale offensive to take Fallujah. "Honestly, I don't think they're going to be able to do it," said Cpl Elias Chavez, 28. "We had the insurgents cordoned off, they couldn't go anywhere, we had a chance to get them. Now they can flee wherever they want and we're still going to have to deal with them."He said the new force, largely made up of Fallujah residents, would be unlikely to apprehend or clamp down on anti-coalition fighters. By leaving without defeating the insurgents, their deployment since April 5, following the killing and mutilation of four US defence contractors, "was a waste of time, of resources and of lives. Everyone feels the same, especially those who know someone who was killed."
L Cpl Julius Wright, 20, said: "Now it's going to get worse. We pulled out when we should [have] gone in."
Naturally, Al Jazeera is having a field day with the story. Daniel Pipes reports that the U.S. government is finally starting to lean on Qatar to rein AJ in, more than two years after people like him suggested they might want to think about doing that. But then, feet-dragging seems to be par for the course with Bush: only Allah knows how much worse the situation in Iraq is now because of all the time spent fucking around before the war with the UN. In any event, not everyone in the Middle East prefers Al Jazeera. Some people downright hate it.
In jihad news, the Saudis ask terrorists please not to shit where they eat. So does a columnist for Al-Riyadh, who puts it this way: If there are people who want to wage jihad and fight the enemy, there are more than a thousand ways to do so. They might join the struggle to build their countries and nations or wage jihad against those who killed the Palestinian leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Dr. Abdelaziz Al-Rantissi, and those who, on a daily basis, are slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children. How can destroying your own country and killing your own people and instigating chaos be considered jihad? It is terrorism, pure and simple.In the West Bank, Europe's efforts to fight anti-Semitism leave Palestinians fuming. Because all Jewish issues require equal time for the World's Most Oppressed People, Arnold Schwarzenegger bows to pressure from Arab groups and agrees to stop off in Jordan after his visit to Israel to help dedicate a new tolerance museum in Jerusalem. Back home, a Muslim physician in Arizona holds a rally to denounce terror and finds that he's pretty much talking to himself. And in Portland, the mujahedeen at Indymedia prove that they're everything Pat Tillman was not: When they come under fire, they run.
A smattering of op-eds. The good: A Maariv columnist explains to Israelis why the time has come while the Daily Telegraph makes the case against the EU constitution in a powerful editorial that closes with these ominous words: Psychologically, the most powerful argument deployed by the advocates of the constitution is a familiar one: if Britain doesn't sign up to it, we shall be excluded or at least marginalised. The godfather of the constitution, Giscard d'Estaing, repeated it yesterday. His bluff should be called. It is untrue that Britain would be forced out if it voted No. But this resort to blackmail speaks volumes. The larger the EU becomes, the looser it needs to be. This constitution creates a tyranny that would imperil all that has been achieved since 1945. We should reject it: not just for the sake of Britain, but for the sake of Europe.The bad: Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis bemoans the fact that Bush's eyes still "twinkle" in the midst of war instead of watering over in a flood of lip-biting, Clintonian empathy. Read it all; so stricken does she seem by the president's failure to collapse in an orgy of grief ("I've also been watching how Bush walks—still that jaunty stride, I’m afraid"), it's really the least you can do to cheer her up. And finally, the ugly: Louisiana law professor Sarah Whalen writing about Danny Pearl for the Arab News in a column that's dripping with paranoia about Jewish influence. Quote:
[T]he courting of American Jewish voters for the upcoming presidential election is officially off and running. Of course, Bush must compete with Democratic candidate John Kerry, recently “outed” as being of Jewish descent. But the Jewish vote is miniscule [sic]. The real prize is what goes with it — Jewish money, Jewish editorial support, and Jewish insider schmooze. Ordinarily, these go to the Democrat. But Bush is determined to muster some Jewish muscle for himself. . . .Both Mariane [Pearl], of Jewish descent, and Attorney Kelner, Jewish, appeared on countless television programs trumpeting their cause [eligibility for payment from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund]. And never, not once, did either ever say that Muslim terrorists killed Danny because he was Jewish. But Bush does. Bush claims the “young reporter’s” throat was “cut...for being a Jew.” [Ed. - Bush is correct.] Are being an “American,” a “capitalist,” or a “Jew,” all now mutually, irrevocably interconnected? . . . [W]hat largely incenses Muslims all over the world should trouble everyone — Israel’s power to compel obedience from the most powerful nation on earth. Danny Pearl was killed not for “being” Jewish, but for what “Jewish” has come to mean, rightly or wrongly, in a part of the world that sympathizes and suffers with those the Israelis have dispossessed from land, from culture, from civil rights. Danny was killed not by powerful actors in service of some evil ideology, but by those powerless before Zionism. . . .
In other words, the "Jews" killed Danny Pearl.
Finally, because they didn't fit anywhere else: Howard Fineman handicaps the Kerry veepstakes; the Democrats aren't happy about that fake convention itinerary that's been making the rounds; having had success with the "Ambiguously Gay Duo" sketch on SNL, NBC decides to try it in prime time and make it a lot less ambiguous; and in Afghanistan, somebody took that Bert/Osama gag way, way too seriously.
Allahu Akbar.
