Saturday, October 28, 2006
AUSTRALIA PROTECTED
Senator Bob Brown at today’s Greens policy launch:
He says the Federal Government has failed to protect Australia against global warming.
Consider it done, Senator:
A fast-moving cold snap from the Antarctic has swept across south eastern Australia sending temperatures plummeting as snow and hail fell across three states.
LET THE TESTS BEGIN!
Our plot is exposed:
Harold Ford, a handsome 36-year-old from Tennessee, has become one of the sensations of the mid-term elections in the US and a reason why Democrats are a good chance of winning back control of the US Congress for the first time in 12 years.
But if Mr Ford, already a US congressman, wins his bid to become a more powerful senator, Australia had better watch out.
Because according to Mr Ford, Australia has an interest in nuclear weapons and is part of the broader nuclear threat to the US.
BOOK CLUB
Mark Steyn meets some influential types in DC. Also from Steyn:
What gives you a better grasp of the realities of Europe today? The front-page reports on the G8 and the U.S.-EU summit? The in-depth profile of Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin? Or the small space-filler about a French police lieutenant promoted to captain despite spending 12 of the last 18 years on “paternity leave,” in the course of which he wrote three books about the Beatles.
As a summation of contemporary Europe that could hardly be improved ...
Speaking of which:
Police deployed 4,000 reinforcements as marauding youths torched at least two public buses Friday, the anniversary of the deaths of two teenagers that ignited weeks of riots in largely immigrant housing projects across France ...
Thierre Ange, a 19-year-old witness, said four men attacked the bus, “made everyone get off, then they hit a woman and dragged out the bus driver by his tie” and torched the bus with a gasoline bomb in a bottle. The blackened carcass of another bus that was burned earlier stood across town in Le Blanc Mesnil.
Some 100 cars were torched nationwide overnight, half of them in the Paris region, police officials said. The figure was higher than usual - police say between 30 and 50 cars are set on fire during an average week, though some weekends the figure jumps to 100 ... Attackers forced passengers off four buses before torching them in recent days, besides the two buses reported burned on Friday.
Some specialist manufacturers don’t even build 50 cars per week.
Friday, October 27, 2006
PROTEST NOVEL PUBLISHED SOMEHOW
Gregory Day reviews Andrew McGahan’s Underground, a “protest novel written out of a sense of disgust with the political and moral direction of the Australian Government” featuring the characters Leo James (twin brother of the evil Prime Minister, Bernard James) and Aisha, a “fierce blonde strangeling” with terrorist organisation Great Southern Jihad:
They trigger a mass execution of Muslim refugees in the NSW outback, they are selflessly ferried across the Murray River at night by a female Aboriginal elder, they wind up in a walled compound for Muslims on Sydney Road called the Brunswick Ghetto - which is bombed by government aircraft - necessitating their flight through an underground tunnel. And from there they head to Canberra for what can only be described as the book’s mega-denouement.
It is a sickening indictment of the “coalition of the willing” era that that this fluorescently far-fetched plot is almost plausible.
(Via Tony Thomas)
UPDATE. Hanyu: “And why did I know Gregory Day would be a first-class compassionate head tilter?”
GORE CONSENSUS DISPUTED
Scientific consensus on the Al Gore Effect is in danger of shattering:
Al Gore, the two-term vice president and the White House nominee in 2000, was in Seattle on Tuesday ...
According to respected climatologist Dr Seth Adipose, of no fixed address, the manifestation of Gore in the pointless northwestern city should have generated localised cold snaps, snow, and sleep.
“Instead,” noted Adipose, “Gore caused a mere three-degree drop compared to average temperatures for this season. We may be witnessing a weakening of the Gore Effect as other long-term weather variables come into play. Although many people did, in fact, fall asleep during Mr Gore’s appearance. Including Mr Gore.”
That analyis is violently disputed by Professor Harley Ribbon, of Shreveport, La.’s respected Climatina Turner Advanced Colding Institute.
“Reckless talk from Gore denialists is funded by Big Tanning Oil and other sun-profit groups,” said the professor, whose many charts, statistics, and personally threatening manner make him a convincing advocate for his cause.
“Besides,” added Ribbon, “even if our knowledge of the Gore Effect is only half right, or a quarter right, it is the issue. Of survival!”
DUDE LOOKS LIKE HILALI
Sheik Hilali rocks out:
While the rest of the country expressed outrage at his comments, Taj Din al-Hilali enjoyed rock star status when he arrived at Lakemba Mosque yesterday.
He was smiling when he exited Sydney’s now infamous mosque, clearly buoyed by the backing he had received inside, where 5000 worshippers shouted their support during the midday service.
He was surrounded by more than 200 fervent supporters as he made his way to a waiting car.
Asked if he would resign, he said: “After we clean the world of the White House.”
Actually, that last quote has been tidied up. As J.F. Beck emailed, and television coverage proves, the Sheik actually said:
When asked whether he would resign he replied, “after they clean the world from the White House first”.
I’m on your side, Meatman. The sooner the White House cleans the world, the better. Meanwhile, you’ve read the sermon—now buy the t-shirt! Send a few to Lakemba mosque, where Hilalians yesterday heard their main imam deliver this speech:
Let me clearly state for the record, for the history, that rape in our religion, in our Islamic law, Islamic sharia, is considered a crime whose punishment is execution.
Yes—for the victims. Keysar Trad, weary of his usual “out of context” routine, now kicks it up a notch:
Sheik Hilaly’s spokesman, Keysar Trad, did not dispute the content of the translation yesterday, saying he had not heard the tape properly, but he offered a new defence.
He likened the quoting of Rafii to Pope Benedict’s recent citing of a Byzantine religious scholar who said that Islam had been spread by the sword.
Does that therefore justify non-Muslims attacking mosques and shooting Hilali’s followers, as happened post the Pope’s speech? Just askin’! It’d be interesting to hear Trad’s defence of this Hilali remark, from 1982:
The two cheapest things in Australia are the flesh of a woman and the meat of a pig.
Come a long way in 24 years, hasn’t he? From pigs to cats. Publication of those 1982 comments in a Lebanese Christian newspaper led to the incineration of the paper’s printing press. Manny C. caught an interview yesterday on 2GB with Tom Zrika, chair of the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), from which he reports the following:
1. The LMA has NOT, contrary to media reports, given the Mufti several months off from preaching sermons. Instead, in the words of the LMA, he has been given a three month holiday;
2. The LMA will not proceed with further action against the Mufti as a significant proportion of the board support him;
3. Zrika admitted that the Mufti has a sizeable and vocal following ;
4. The LMA does not want to do anything concrete in response to the Mufti’s sermon because it would tear the fabric of the community; and
5. Sydney Radio 2ME conducted an on-air survey in which a majority of Lebanese Muslims supported the Mufti’s comments ...
Hit Manny’s site for links in the above-quoted chunk. Hilali’s comments are now available in expanded form thanks to a more comprehensive translation from The Australian:
[The man] is the one who has to pay the rent, he is responsible for the alimony, he is responsible for feeding his children. Maybe circumstances forced him and Satan tempted him, and there is a woman like hell behind him; she never has enough. She wants to change the furniture, change the lounge every year. And behind every man who is a thief, a greedy woman. She is pushing him. Not our women in Australia, the women of Canada. The hall up there is full. They are the women of Canada and Mexico, the ones who encourage their men - to do what? Go! Get me! And no matter how much he brings her, she wants more.
She wants to change the car, and change ... Of course, the woman keeps demanding from her husband more than his ability. Either she will tell him to go and deal in drugs, or to go and steal. What’s more than that? Spend as much as you have! You know your husband, upside down! If you demand from your husband more than his ability, then what does that mean? Who is the one who would have to become a mafia? A gangster? And steal cars? And smash banks? And deal in the “blue disease” (drugs)? Who is the one who commits these crimes of stealing? Who? The man or the woman? It’s the man.
Sometimes it seems as though this religion isn’t exactly female-friendly. Or even human-friendly, as Caroline Overington writes:
When you cut the colour out of the mufti’s speech - when you drop the references to cats, to uncovered meat, and even to Satan - his message doesn’t become more palatable, it is horrific.
The Age’s Michelle Grattan is just as damning:
Hilali’s apologies mean nothing, nor do claims from his family and supporters that his words were misunderstood or taken out of context. Their general direction was devastatingly clear, and yesterday he added some political provocation to make things worse.
Still, the rockin’ Sheik has supporters beyond those chanting in Lakemba:
The chairman of the British Muslim Council of Great Britain, Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid, today said it appeared to him that the comments had been ...
Taken Out of Context™. Imam Abdul owes royalties to Keysar Trad.
“I know that he is one of the greatest Muslim scholars on Earth and Australia is blessed with him, and I know he went to Iraq to get released an Australian national [Douglas Wood] from the clutches of a heinous regime at the time,” Dr Sajid told the Nine Network’s Today program.
“We have to appreciate and give him the credit with the result [Mr Wood’s release] but I agree and take your point that he must communicate better.”
Sheik Hilali did not secure the release of Douglas Wood. Imam Abdul should communicate better. Among blog and non-blog reactions to Hilali’s speechifying:
* “Here’s what I want to know,” asks Pavlov’s Cat. “If the women are the meat and the men are the cats, then who are these cat-owners and neighbours? Is there some sinister extra dimension to this little fairytale that I’m not picking up? Or is it just incoherent as well as repulsive?”
* Angry Asian Female is angry.
* Sultan Knish shreds Hilali’s claim that he was refering to adultery rather than rape.
* And, in the Age, Melbourne’s Fatima Abdullatif sends an open letter:
Dear Sheikh Hilali. As a young Muslim woman, I have had to deal with the ubiquitous news reports that misquote Islam. I avoid trying to “make people understand” because I find reassurance in the belief that negative comments come from those who do not understand Islam.
However, I am deeply angered by your views, on one level because they are out of touch with even the most Neanderthal society; on another because they come from a man holding a high position. How sad that you used your platform to preach these ideas. How useless that you hid behind the Arabic language and used a translator to give a different meaning to your words. Those who speak Arabic cringed at this disgusting ploy.
Muslims face enough discrimination and misunderstanding. They need positive role models. You are not such a leader, and must resign immediately.
What she said. Previous Hilali posts here, here, here, and here.
FIGHTING TO THE END
Further evidence—as if any were required at this point—of the left-wing bias at Media Watch. I wonder how many similar “please explain” emails have been sent to Alan Ramsey, Phillip Adams, Traceeee Hutchison, Adele Horin, and other ABC pals? By contrast, if Andrew Bolt or Miranda Devine printed out all their Media Watch emails they could probably wallpaper Adelaide.
THUS BEGINS AN ARGUMENT WITH PROFESSOR JUAN COLE
(Via ioxymoron)
PIZZA RESERVES UNSUSTAINABLE
Environmentalist David Suzuki leaves public life as he entered it—whining like a straight-cut gearbox:
He expresses regret that most people still live out of step with nature.
“We are intelligent, so we create our own habitat and we don’t need nature except as entertainment or for the extraction of resources,” he said. “We still don’t get it, that the simple acts of eating a pizza reverberates around the world.”
Suzuki has written more than 40 books and made his first television program 37 years ago. His comments were recorded in Australia, which may have involved some air travel. Way to live, natureboy.
UPDATE. Environmental extremist Paco: “I don’t eat - and in fact, have never even tasted - pizza.”
ALERT! ALERT!
One year after the banlieue car-b-qs, they’re on maximum youth alert in doomed France:
France’s interior minister ordered police to go on maximum alert in at-risk areas around the country after several buses were torched in suburbs ahead of the anniversary of widespread rioting last year.
“I decided to mobilize all mobile forces at our disposal for the security of those who use public transport,” Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative frontrunner in next year’s presidential elections, said overnight Thursday.
Another alert is also in place:
Hamas has instructed its followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be on high alert following unconfirmed reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party are planning a coup against the Hamas government on Saturday.
Sources close to Hamas told The Jerusalem Post that the Islamic movement was taking these reports seriously and that hundreds of Hamas militiamen would be deployed in strategic areas in the Gaza Strip to foil any attempt to overthrow the Hamas government ...
On Thursday, a group of PA policemen in Ramallah and Gaza City said they were planning to torch the offices of the PA Finance Ministry if they did not receive their full salaries within the next 48 hours.
This is better than the World Series.
UPDATE. andycanuck points out re the World Series: “You can still have a rain delay at a car-b-q unless you go with a domed riot area.”
CASH WITHDRAWN
Reader blogstrop noticed something odd in a live cross from Lakemba during Thursday night’s ABC news:
[The reporter] hadn’t got far into his spiel when the camera panned downwards to the footpath. The screen went blank. There seemed to be some concern, with one voice calling to the other, a name like Daryl. Jacinta carried on, and the whole event was not mentioned again. The 7.30 Report is on strike (petulant bastards objecting to the bias affair?), so no follow up there either.
Here’s your explanation:
An ABC cameraman could face strife for going on strike - smack in the middle of a live news broadcast.
A cameraman, Dough Sleeman, downed tools last night, shortly after ABC the 7pm newsreader, Juanita Phillips, crossed live to the reporter John Stewart at the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney’s west.
Sleeman yanked the camera from the tripod shortly after Stewart had started his piece about a meeting over Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly’s controversial “uncovered meat” comments ...
A cut back to the studio revealed a bemused, but calm, Phillips, who asked Stewart a follow-up question.
Stewart was battling by this stage, and replied: “Yep ... ah ... they’ll be reviewing, they’ll be reviewing tapes of the speech ... ah ... and the 16 directors have one vote each ... if ... Doug! ... he’s um ... he’s just ...”
Sleeman’s name—Dough!—has since been corrected. More on the professionals at the ABC from Frank Devine.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
DIRECT FROM MULLAGANGABANGA, NSW
What would happen if a believer were to glue a hummus-laden pita to the back of a cat, and hurl it from the local prayer tower? Ask the Aussie Imam!
UPDATE. Looks who’s breathing without the aid of an oxygen tank:
After emerging from Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque today, Sheik al-Hilali was asked by a media pack whether he would quit over a speech in which he said scantily-dressed women invited rape.
“After we clean the world of the White House first,” the sheik said.
Supporters of the sheik cheered and applauded loudly at the comments, which were directed firmly at US President George W Bush.
“Someone left the cat meat in the rain ...” Sheik Hilali entertains his followers with a medley of Jimmy Webb hits. Hilali’s homies are determined to stand by their imam:
“Reaction from the grass roots is that we appreciate all the hard work the mufti has put in for the community,” Mr Trad said outside Lakemba Mosque, where more than 2,000 Muslims gathered for Friday prayers today.
“We’re certainly not going to pass judgment on the basis of one comment in which we know his intentions were completely different.
“The grass roots are behind him.”
FREE AL
The following email has been sent to all South Australian public servants:
Climate change presents a significant challenge to South Australia, and every South Australian needs to play a part in addressing this global problem.
• Warren McCann, Chief Executive of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, invites you to a special free screening of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
• Date: Thursday 2 November 2006
Time: 12.00pm to 2.05pm
Venue: Nova Cinema, 251 Rundle Street, Adelaide• This is a free event open to all State Government employees.
• “South Australia’s focus on renewable energy has made the State a world leader in the battle against global warming.” Al Gore former US Vice President.
• Please note that seating is limited. Drinks and nibbles will be available for purchase from the cinema’s candy bar.
• Click here to view the flyer.
That’s one way of pulling a crowd. And in other environmental news:
“For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth’s ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path,” WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF’s 2006 Living Planet Report.
“If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us,” Leape, an American, said in Beijing.
How many planets would we need if everyone lived like celebrity environmentalists?
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein delivered a lengthy, impassioned speech Wednesday about the need for this country, other nations and every individual to step up the fight against global warming.
Then she drove off in a gas-guzzling Lincoln Town Car.
“UNCOVERED MEAT IS THE DISASTER”
Sheik Sheik Sheik!
Sheik Sheik Sheik!
Sheik Hilali!
Shiek HiLAli!
—KC & The Sunshine Band of Decadent Western Dancing Unpeople Who Must Die
IS IT possible to Sheik and spin at the same time? It is if you’re Keysar Trad, senior context-explainer for Australian mufti Sheik Catmeat Hilali:
He said Sheik Hilali had attracted unfair criticism from media and politicians over the comments and insisted the cleric had long been a supporter of women’s rights ... Mr Trad said the mufti’s words must be taken in context ...
He said the speech did not translate well to English “so all I can say is, he was trying to say to men and women, don’t provoke sexual attention”.
“Obviously, there is a severe penalty for rape and there should be. He’s saying, ‘If you do this, if you behave in a sexual way, see how much trouble you can get into’,” Mr Trad said.
Two points: if the Sheik’s meat-themed speeches don’t translate well to English, perhaps he should learn the language; and Trad’s linkage of rape to merely behaving “in a sexual way” is stunning. So, let’s work through the Sheik’s speech, as translated by SBS:
Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast? Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time, for eternity. They are the worst in God’s creation.
Nick and Nora Charles, Christians, seem to have ended up on the Gold Coast. Word on the street is they’ve invented a new cocktail called “People of the Book.” Even atheists like it!
When it comes to adultery, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers.
What with all the shortening, raising, and lowering, Hilali sounds eerily like Futurama’s evil Brain Balls: “The elders tell of a young ball much like you. He bounced three metres in the air. Then he bounced 1.8 metres in the air. Then he bounced four metres in the air. Do I make myself clear?” Also, just like the Sheik, those balls “cannot condone bouncing of the seventh variety.”
Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.
Sheik Hilali is referencing a notorious gang-rape case—all sparked, he claims, by rampant “raising and lowering”.
But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it.
In the previous paragraph, Hilali slams a judge who jailed a rapist for 65 years. Next, he approvingly cites a ”writer” who would have rape victims jailed for life.
If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats eat the meat, you’re crazy. Isn’t this true?
I don’t know. I guess none of us will, until someone at Democratic Underground performs a scientific demonstration of the Cat-Plate Theory.
If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cat’s, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it.
But if the meat is outside the fridge, and the cats are inside the fridge, they won’t get it either. For a long, long, time. Trust me on this.
If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.
Except the disaster of someone being made a prisoner in her own house.
Satan sees women as half his soldiers. You’re my messenger in necessity, Satan tells women you‘re my weapon to bring down any stubborn man. There are men that I fail with. But you’re the best of my weapons.
Women—Satan’s minions!
The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place.
“Rakes.” Haven’t heard that one for a few centuries. Next: the Sheik denounces “bounders” and “cads”. Helpfully, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty identifies the major crucial issue arising from this whole controversy:
“if we are not careful, I think we risk raising a generation of Australians who will have a bias against Islam.”
UPDATE. A terrible punishment for Meatboy:
Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, the Muslim leader at the centre of a storm over comments blaming women for rape, will be giving no more sermons for several months at Lakemba mosque, senior Muslims say.
But no further action is to be taken against Australia’s top Muslim cleric for likening scantily dressed women to uncovered meat and saying they’re responsible for sexual attacks ...
The board of the Lebanese Muslim Association decided that Sheik Hilaly had been misinterpreted.
UPDATE II. In 1998, Detective John Doran visited the Sheik in his office:
I noted that the sheik had a Stars and Stripes Uncle Sam recruiting poster on the wall behind his desk, with a caption, ‘I want to murder your women and children’.
UPDATE III. The Toronto Daily News: “Muslim Cleric Is a Sick Man, Says Daughter.”
UPDATE IV. A view from the United Arab Emirates: “We predict a riot.”
BUSES COOKED
Torching cars is so 2005. Your fashionable French “youth” are now torching buses:
Vandals set three buses ablaze near French cities overnight, police said on Thursday, on the eve of the anniversary of riots that rocked France’s multi-ethnic suburbs.
Masked assailants torched buses in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre and the eastern suburb of Bagnolet but passengers fled before the flames engulfed the vehicles. Television footage showed the burnt-out wrecks.
An empty, parked private coach was set on fire in Venissieux, a suburb of the eastern city of Lyon, and three youths ordered passengers off a bus in Athis Mons, south of Paris, and tried without success to set it on fire.
In the Bagnolet attack, one assailant held a pistol to the head of the driver while others forced passengers to get off.
A pistol, you say? Well, that particular youth/vandal/assailant will soon answer to the mighty power of French police efficiency. Probably he’s been caught already. Brussels Journal has helpful advice for Europeans who wish to avoid being set on fire:
The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.”
Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. “I am too old,” he said. However, he urged young people to get out and “move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable.”
Australian emigration information here.
(Via reader Adrian)