Islam must always have the final word

Perhaps you have read much about the absurdities of the United Nations "Human Rights" Council. But there is nothing like seeing it in action to really appreciate how we can no longer take seriously, and must work to disband, an organization that refuses to allow any comments that touch on, and might be critical of, "religion", i.e. in this context, Islam.

It is a central belief in today's Islamic world that anyone who does anything that might lead Muslims to call into question their unquestionable faith in their "religion", or the declarations of its powerful representatives, must be silenced. There can be no God - no "human right", no campaign against violence against women - ever higher than the God of Islam. It is simply unthinkable.

Have a look and you will better appreciate why our relations to the Islamic world necessarily involve questions of war or surrender. June 2008 video, edited by vlad tepes
(follow link for additional information and texts) via Gil Bailie.

UPDATE: video currently unavailable (follow comments here for updates and see also full transcript of the video.)

Littman UN video rev 4 from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

Is antisemitism funny?

Is our inability, at first, to see why we are antisemitic, why we resent or fear the Jew among nations, funny? You be the judge, old man: J’Accuse!: The Frame-Up of Captain Israel by Major Dictatorships

Thursday Tourist

Contemplating what's around the corner, with a handful of stories drifting on the margins of a cloudy Thursday morning.

Renewal: A tantalizing article in the Wall Street Journal on a potential Second Renaissance, courtesy of advances in digital scanning technology. Tens upon tens of thousands of ancient documents are being digitized, and not just from the bulging collections of Western libraries and museums, but also from monasteries and private sources from around the world: "Recently, multispectral imaging has gotten much less expensive, allowing researchers to take their equipment into the field. The next frontier, researchers say, is using CAT scan and X-ray technology to read brittle scrolls without even unrolling them."

"This could be our only chance," says Daniel Wallace, executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the Texas-based center that is attempting to digitally photograph 2.6 million pages of Greek New Testament manuscripts scattered in monasteries and libraries around the world. The group has discovered 75 New Testament manuscripts, many with unique commentaries, that were unknown to scholars. Mr. Wallace says one of the rare, 10th century manuscripts they photographed was in a private collection and was later sold, page by page, for $1,000 a piece. Others are simply disintegrating, eaten away by rats and worms, or rotting.
A cascade of groundbreaking discoveries in the past decade, unleashed by new technology, has stoked the sense of urgency. Multispectral imaging -- originally developed by NASA to capture satellite images through clouds -- has proved remarkably effective on everything from ancient papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts that were scraped off and written over when scribes recycled parchment pages. Using the technique, which captures high-resolution images in different light wavelengths, scholars can see details invisible to the naked eye: For example, infrared light highlights ink containing carbon from crushed charcoal, while ultraviolet light picks up ink containing iron.
Researchers in Baltimore discovered a veritable library of ancient texts hidden in the pages of a single 13th-century Greek prayer book, including an unknown commentary on Aristotle and two missing treatises by the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

Decay: Maybe they have a different definition of "human rights" these days at the United Nations than I do...: [Hat Tip: Eye On The UN]

The United Nations General Assembly elected the members of its lead human rights body, the Human Rights Council, Tuesday in New York and among them are some of the world's worst human rights abusers.
Now in a position to give the rest of us advice on protecting human rights are Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Russia. In a slap in the face to President Obama, the United States was elected with fewer votes than either Belgium or Norway, the only two other states running for the three Western slots. Even a country like Kyrgyzstan received more votes than the United States.

Dirty: Another kind of stench in a small Indian village, where a man hasn't taken a bath in 36 years, following advice that he believes will allow his wife to give birth to a son. Pity his wife, and mother to their 7 daughters, when she says:

"I am his wife so I have to live with him but most of the villagers have stopped coming to our house..."

Pure: Jonah Goldberg on the sincerity of a dog's love for its owner:

Dogs don't pose in front of the mirror practicing their tail-wags like lines from a script so they can make it convincing. If it is true of any living thing, it is true of dogs: They are what they are. A happy dog can no more be faking his joy than a hungry lion could be faking his appetite.
Do we really want to live in a society in which love is a genetically mandated confidence game? Where will that argument take us?

Latest UN outrage

Guide to the Perplexed: 9/11 "truther" appointed by the UN "Human Rights" Council as its "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967". No time to comment now, but cry yourself and cry for the loss or reality that will only cost lives when UN officials give Palestinians reason to believe in their fantasies.

More attacks on free speech

The latest from Baron Bodissey: Defaming Islam is proposed as a new crime by the huddled masses at the UN.

The UN pumps out propaganda to suggest that it is out to protect Universal Human Rights. But when it comes to doing anything to enforce those rights, the oppressed masses of the world generally wait in vain, under the thumb of tyrannical governments that sit in council at the UN. The Gays of Iran, for example. A short answer for why this is so is that the UN, being ruled by the ideology of White Guilt, actually works to erode the power of sovereign and free nation states which might actually do something to advance their self-interest, not to forget the larger human interest, by insuring other nations become more free and democratically transparent so as to be more trustworthy as a negotiating parties, than is your average tyranny.

In the UN, the US and Israel are the perennial bad guys. A UN in which a quarter of the members are Islamic states, and many more are sympathizers with the Islamic claims to act as the head of the anti-American, anti-Jew forces, in opposition to the Yankee-Zionist conspiracy that supposedly controls the global economy and politics, is quick to pass motions trying to outlaw the "defamation of Islam". But the tyrannies that get together to pass such motions are places where Muslims and others are daily oppressed. Thus we get a lot of talk about human rights, while the only large political forces that might plausibly defend them in a sustained way - the free, Western-oriented, nations - are the perennial target of scapegoating from the world's disenfranchised, and the source of much guilt from their own citizens.

The UN needs to be replaced by a council of free nations as the leading forum for international affairs. When freedom is insured for all, few will pay Islam much attention in order to defame it. But until that happens, free bloggers and others will feel an obligation to keep putting up stories to suggest that Islam, and the tribal culture of which it is presently an integral part, can kill, and can threaten the freedom of those who want to talk about why.

Shake Hands With The Devil: The Movie

There's a new film out in Canadian theaters this week, based on the memoirs of Canadian Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, called Shake Hands With The Devil, that I want to bring to the attention of our international readers, in case they were not aware of it.

The book upon which the film is based, Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, relates General Dallaire's time as Commander of the United Nations Observer Mission in Rwanda in 1993-94. It chronicles the United Nations "response" to the machete massacres and other genocidal horrors of that period.

From the official website of White Pine Pictures, the production company behind the film, comes this reminder of the book's important message:

The General pulls no punches in his condemnation of top UN officials, expedient Belgian policy makers and senior members of the Clinton administration who chose to do nothing as Dallaire pleaded for reinforcements and revised rules of engagement.
Dallaire is convinced that, with a few thousand more troops and a mandate to act pre-emptively, he could have stopped the killings. His impotence, at a time of extreme crisis, preys on his conscience still.

Here's the official trailer for the film:

I also recommend visiting the movie's official website to learn more about this timely film.