Canada, loony bin

How much hate can a country of stoned death hippies "tolerate"? The story from Terry Glavin:

“Long live the Taliban” might seem an unlikely thing for a prominent anti-war figure to declare, but that’s today’s peace movement for you. Stranger still, the man who recently uttered those words, Azzam Tamimi, is a central figure in a new Toronto-based institute that is embarking upon what it describes as a national campaign to cultivate wholesome, faith-based civic virtues among Canada’s young Muslims.

The Al-Fauz Institute for Islamic Thought says its purpose is to teach young Muslims how to apply Islamic ideas to Canada’s pluralistic society and “prepare young minds that will take up the mantle of the Muslim community.” Tamimi is scheduled to launch the institute’s ambitious public-relations and proselytizing efforts in Canada with a July 24-27 Islamic history course at Ryerson University.

But Tamimi has loudly renounced democracy, explicitly praises suicide bombers, and he’s said he’d even be happy to blow himself up in Israel: “It’s the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity.” Tamimi distinguishes good Muslims from their adversaries this way: "We love death. They love life."

Tamimi recently proclaimed: “I don’t believe in democracy anymore,” and it was at an anti-Israel rally in Dublin only three months ago that Tamimi declared: “With regard to their attitudes to liberation, I say ‘Long Live the Taliban’.”

You’d never know any of this from the billing the Al-Fauz institute gives Tamimi. He’s presented as a Palestinian-born British academic and a “political activist.” His leading role with Britain’s Stop The War Coalition is noted. But nowhere does the institute mention that Tamimi is also high-ranking ideologue for Hamas, one of the deadliest organizations listed under Canada’s anti-terrorism laws.

Glavin also has a count of the Taliban's latest bombings and death toll.

Mail Minister Jason Kenney kennej@parl.gc.ca and his Communications Director Alykhan Velshi alykhan.Velshi@cic.gc.ca to ask that Canadian Border Services be informed on this guy so they can make the right decision on allowing him entry.

Friday Fare

As the gate swings shut on another week, we pause for some news before strolling into a pleasant weekend.

Unaware: Jonah Goldberg on President Obama's "shortcuts" comment from this week's press conference, about Churchill not using torture. "Churchill and Great Britain didn't quite take the firm stand against 'torture' that Obama and [Andrew] Sullivan suggest."

Unwelcome: Polish minister plans to extend law prohibiting the production of fascist and totalitarian propaganda so that it includes clothing and anything else that could carry an image related to an authoritarian system.

"The proposal, which could see the faces of some of the leading lights of communist history such as Lenin and Trotsky removed from t-shirts and flags, reflects a Polish view on communism far different from the rose-tinted and romantic images often found in the West.
After experiencing 40 hard years of communism, as well as the horrors of Nazi occupation, few Poles have qualms equating under law the inequities of Nazism and communism.
"Communism was a terrible, murderous system that claimed millions of lives," said Professor Wojciech Roszkowski, a leading Polish historian and member of the European parliament.
"It was very similar to National Socialism, and there is no reason to treat those two systems, and their symbols, differently. Their glorification should be prohibited.' "

Uncivilized: Media reform, taliban-style. "Any media personnel engaged in ‘anti-Taliban’ and ‘pro-western’ agendas will face dire consequences, according to the militants. After bombing schools, barbershops and CD stores — not to mention flogging and killing civilians — the Taliban have now announced their intention to ‘reform’ the media and make it ‘mend its ways’...
‘It is the duty of the media to give space and time to statements which have a positive impact on society.’ "

Unshackled: Students in 3 Washington state schools raise tens of thousands of dollars to free 120 slaves from bondage, through the International Justice Mission.

The teens in this well-to-do suburban area have learned about families working in brick kilns in India and brothels in Cambodia where children their own age — and even younger — are sold into slavery.
"I count my blessings, because they're in such a bad place," said eighth-grader Nellie Hoehl, one of Ensey's students at Pine Lake Middle School.
...
For 10 weeks this spring, about 50 students arrived at school early each Wednesday to paint signs, write letters, sell concert tickets and plan collection dates to raise money for the IJM. That work is going on right now, and ends May 14.
"Everybody talks about it, even when it's not fundraising time," said eighth-grader Angela Moran.
...
It's even changed the way they think about money when they go shopping.
"Every time I go to buy something," said eighth-grader Casey Kovarik, "I think there's something better I could do with the money."

Lauryn Oates on the fight for a little more freedom in Afghanistan

What do Muslims really believe? As I have argued here before, that is a question for which the Koran is at best a partial guide. What anyone really believes is really only revealed when push comes to shove, and choices must be made, in the context of a particular place and time.

Lauryn Oates who spoke in Vancouver on her work in Afghanistan, and whom we were pleased to watch give an intellectual beating to chief Rabble.ca nihilist, Derrick O'Keefe, a year or so ago, on the question of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, has a powerful column in the Ottawa Citizen which reveals to us something about what Afghans believe, something we could never have learned if Canada and other nations had not engaged that country and its people in the way we have. She also tells us something we have learned about Canadian nihilists:

Every year, all over South Asia, hundreds of women have acid sprayed in their faces for committing the offence of going to school, or for going to work, or for merely walking down a street without covering their faces. In Bangladesh alone, an average of 228 women are subjected to such acid attacks every year.

But there is an important and very specific lesson to be learned from the Kandahar incident.

More than a dozen of the young Kandahari women were seriously injured, two of them blinded, and the victims have all defiantly returned to their classes at the Mirwais Mena school. One of the girls who suffered severe eye injuries is 17-year-old Shamsia: “I will go to my school even if they kill me,” Shamsia said. “My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”

The lesson here is that millions of brave Afghan schoolgirls are dedicated to pursuing their studies, in sometimes perilous and hostile circumstances, and their devotion is heartfelt, homegrown and hardy. It has not been “imposed” upon them by the “West.”
[...]
Our focus should be on how we can do more, and better. Instead, a bizarre kind of cultural relativism has come to infect national debates about the Afghan mission, clouding our judgment and entirely obscuring the very meaning of universal human rights.

I first noticed it when I was in high school, in 1996, when I was circulating a petition to protest the Taliban’s brutal oppression of women. One of my teachers refused to sign the petition, saying, well, that’s their culture, and we have no right to interfere.

Two years ago I spoke on a panel organized by Carleton University’s Students Coalition Against War, in Ottawa. I was accused of exaggerating the suffering of Afghan women, but even if I had a point, it was an “internal cultural matter,” and certainly none of my business.

Human rights are culturally relative, the thinking goes, and the universality of human rights is some sort of western imperialist construction. It is as though girls have no right to read if their “culture” forbids it. It is a rarely scrutinized assumption, but it is ubiquitous in Canadian universities, and it reaches its most toxic concentrations in “anti-war” debates.

The result is that the once great cause of fulfilling the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is rendered merely a “Eurocentric” enterprise, and necessarily something shabby.

Years from now, when our own children look back on us, what will they make of how Canada, one of the richest countries of the world, lived up to the promise of universal human rights? In Afghanistan, where those rights are only now being extended to the people, and are still just nominally available to the women of that country, did we uphold our commitment?

Did we not see in the Afghan people our shared humanity? Did we recognize death-cult misogyny for what it really is? Did we have the courage to call fascism by its proper name, or did we excuse ourselves and retreat into the comfortable, false virtues of pacifist isolationism and cultural relativism?

Afghanistan is not just a theatre of war in the conventional meaning of the term. It is also a battleground of values. But it is not a clash between “western” and “eastern” cultures. The Afghan people want their girls to go to school. The Afghan people do not want the Taliban. But in Canada, it has nonetheless become necessary to point this out, over and over, and also to point out what it is that the Taliban actually do want.

Read it all... (HT: Terry Glavin)

French Kissing The Taliban

On August 18, 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush by Taliban jihadists in Afghanistan. The attack also left another 21 French soldiers wounded.

Last week, investigative reporters working for the French weekly news magazine Paris-Match tracked down the Taliban terrorists who participated in the slaughter, and... interviewed them.


The chilling interview reads like a chat between a sports journalist and the coach of a rival team at playoff time.


Translated from the original French: Exclusive: our journalists found the talibans who shot the ten French soldiers.

Eric de Lavarène met one of the attackers who set the fatal trap for the men of the 8th Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment on last August 18th, in Afghanistan.

The man who commanded one of the groups responsible for the terrible attack on the French soldiers is known as commander Farouki. He says he is from the [Afghan] province of Laghman. He is approximately 30-35 years old, as are the majority of his troops. There are more than 500 of them. The interview would last a few minutes. No one lingers, in these parts.

Paris Match: Why did you take on the French military?

Commander Farouki: They trespassed over the line by coming near here.The Uzbin valley belongs to us. It's our territory. A few days before, villagers had warned them: do not go beyond this zone, it's dangerous. They did not listen to them. So, we attacked them. It was a legitimate defense.

Paris Match: Had you obtained intelligence about this patrol, before the ambush?

Commander Farouki: The ambush was not planned. We had just been warned shortly before the attack of the presence of foreign soldiers in our territory. Then, we acted very quickly. It was not complicated. We have caches of arms almost everywhere and of course we are very familiar with the terrain. We were in position before they arrived. One hundred and forty well trained fighters. If night had not fallen, we would have killed them all.

Paris-Match: Did you torture the soldiers who had fallen into your hands?

Commander Farouki: No. These men are dead because of Bush and your president. We did not want to kill your husbands or your sons. We don't have anything against the French. If they leave, then all will be well. So long as you stay here, we will kill you. All of you.

Paris-Match: What will you do, in the future, if they return?

Commander Farouki: We'll do it again. With this attack, we wanted to show the French soldiers that they must stop helping the Americans.
And believe me, this was just a warning. The next time, we will attack them directly where they are holed up, in Tagab and elsewhere. And we'll strike against French interests all over the world. We have the means. We are not alone or isolated in these mountains.

Paris-Match: Do you have the support of the people:

Commander Farouki: The people do not really support us. We let them alone and they don't betray us. But more and more youth are joining us because of the NATO bombings. A bombed house, and it's a new fighter at our side. It's called the spirit of vengeance. It's normal. Especially here.

Paris-Match: Do you have the support of foreign groups?

Commander Farouki: We are all afghans. We do not need the others. We are defending our country. It's a war of liberation. That's all. But there are links between groups, right up to the frontier. Arms, money, fighters passing from one region to the other. From one country to the other. Easily.

Paris-Match: Would you be ready to negotiate with the authorities in Kabul?

Commander Farouki: No negotiations while the foreigners are on our territory. We will strike at your soldiers, we will strike at your humanitarian organizations. We will continue to defend our country. To the end. To the last man. You will have to kill us all to end our movement. And believe me, we are many.

In a related article, the maganize offers a video interview of Véronique de Viguerie, the mercenary photographer who helped set up the meeting with the Taliban jihadis. What a puff-piece. The probing questions include: How did you make contact with this group; Were you given guarantees for security during the meeting; In order not to be discovered, did the taliban set limits for the photography; Will you return to Afghanistan.


I won't bother to translate her matter-of-fact responses, it's just trivia: driving here, talking to this person about talking to that person... mind you, the banality of her amoral answers send as many chills down my spine as the jihadi's earlier cold-blooded threats of dying to the last man. And her eyes... these are the eyes that could look at a bloodied corpse and only wonder, what angle would offer me the best light...


I will translate one of her answers, the second-to-last one. At the 3:00 mark of the video, Mme de Viguerie is asked whether intelligence agencies tried to talk to her about this interview. She gives a gallic shrug of the shoulders as she purrs:

"Well... Let's just say... I imagine that... the secret service must know where these taliban are, it's... not that hard to discover. [softly] But this is not my line of work at all. As well, the fixer who brought me to see them, he is at Quitta [sp?], his family is at Quitta, the taliban know his family, so if in the following days, something should happen, it is he who will be held responsible for that, and it will be his family that will pay the consequences. Therefore... no."

[Hat Tip to Tiberge at GalliaWatch, who also translates a sampling of the French outrage at this unscrupulous approach to journalism.]

[UPDATE: A French journalist working for the left-leaning Liberation newspaper blogs that the taliban barbarians slit the throat of a wounded French soldier during the ambush in question. Maybe next time the Paris Match pretty people who walk between the raindrops can ask the taliban coach if slicing the throat open was the handywork of a new recruit from the farm team, or maybe that of a hot player picked up in an off-season trade...]