Sikh and Ye Shall Find

Multiculturalism: sure, it's all pretty colours and exotic outfits until the glorification of terrorists national heroes casts a pall over the proceedings. From the Ceeb:

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts says the city will review the status of the annual Sikh Vaisakhi parade after a controversial float was included in the event Saturday.

More than 100,000 people attended the religious parade and festival in the Vancouver suburb, but Watts said she was disappointed the parade included a float honouring Sikh separatist extremists as martyrs.

The float featured the flag of Khalistan, the independent Sikh state that separatists want to carve out of India's Punjab state.

There were also posters of men who founded what are considered terrorist groups and who played a role in assassinating Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, along with the slogan "They gave their today for our tomorrow."...

Very catchy. Almost ranks right up there with "jihad is the way, sharia is the goal," don't you think?

A Clarification

Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned in a "secret" memorandum to his boss and other top White House officials that the U.S. has no effective way to halt the mullahs' relentless march to nukedom. He wants everyone to know, however, that said memo was not--I repeat, was not--intended as a "wake up call."

Thanks so much for clearing that up, Bob.

My Muslimishe Mama

This one, in the NYT, has to be read to be believed. Were I to write it, the lede would have dealt with a young Muslim American who became radicalized, ran off to fight the jihad against America in Afghanistan (making sure to film one of those martyrdom videos prior to his departure), and who now sits with several other young Muslim American pals in a Pakistan prison. This being the New York Times, though, the piece becomes a sob story about the lad's ever-lovin' mama, who is "baffled" by this sudden turn of events, and who "cooked 100 percent American food on Thanksgiving"--as if turkey with all the fixings is somehow supposed to act as a protective shield against exposure to the ideology of Islamic supremacism.

For Jerusalem

The following, signed by Elie Wiesel, appears on a full page under the above heading in the Sunday New York Times; the emphases are his:

     It was inevitable: Jerusalem once again is at the center of political debates and international storms. New and old tensions surface at a disturbing pace. Seventeen times destroyed and seventeen times rebuilt, it is still in the middle of diplomatic confrontations that could lead to armed conflict. Neither Athens nor Rome has aroused such passions.

     For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture--and not a single time in the Koran. Its presence in Jewish history is overwhelming. There is no more moving prayer in Jewish history than the one expressing our yearning to return to Jerusalem. To many theologians, it IS Jewish history, to many poets, a source of inspiration. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city, it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother's lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and its joy are part of our collective memory.

     Since King David took Jerusalem as its capital, jews have dwelled inside its walls with only two interuptions; when Roman invaders forbade them access to the city and again, when under Jordanian occupation, Jews, regardless of nationality, were refused entry into the old Jewish quarter to meditate and pray at the Wall, the last vestige of Solomon's temple. It is important to remember: had Jordan not joined Egypt and Syria in the 1967 war against Israel, the old city of Jerusalem would still be Arab. Clearly, while Jews were ready to die for Jerusalem they would not kill for Jerusalem.

     Today, for the first time in history, Jews, Christians and Muslims all may freely worship at their shrines. And, contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims ARE allowed to build their houses anywhere in the city. The anguish over Jerusalem is not about real estate but about memory.

   What is the solution? Pressure will not produce a solution. Is there a solution? There must be, there will be. Why tackle the most complex and sensitive problem prematurely? Why not first take steps which will allow Israeli and Palestinian communities to find ways to live together in an atmosphere of security. (sic) Why not leave the most difficult, the most sensitive issue, for such a time?

     Jerusalem must remain the world's Jewish spiritual capital, not a symbol of anguish and bitterness, but a symbol of trust and hope. As the Hasidic master Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav said, "Everything in this world has a heart; the heart itself has its own heart."

     Jerusalem is the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul.

I don't know that I agree that Hamas and Hezbo and the rest of the irrational Israel-loathers have a heart. That said, however, this is much more than a cri de coeur. It is a slap in Obama's face for his wretched, his despicable, abandonment of the Jewish State.

Barack Hussein Obama Throws the Jews to the Pack of Slavering Jackals

Wesley Pruden remarks re Obama's, erm, interesting foreign policy.:

Barack Obama has come up with an interesting strategy for dealing with the evildoers of the world. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Surrender your friends, if necessary.

He wants to make Israel, our oldest and only reliable friend in the Middle East, the guinea pig to see whether the strategy works. What appeared to be a minor flap between old friends only a fortnight ago now looks like an exploitable opportunity for the man who learned about who's evil in the world from a crazy Jew-baiting preacher in Chicago.

The public scolding of Israel and the warning that it must make nice with those determined to "wipe it off the map" are now revealed to be tactics in the plan to make the Middle East over in a way to please the Islamic radicals. The observant among us have seen this coming. America's true friends - Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Norway and Poland in addition to Israel - have been getting the back of Mr. Obama's hand from the day he took his oath. The commitment to constitutional government and the ancient traditions of intellectual freedom that make up the cultural heritage of the West have been snubbed when not ignored, the natural allies of America lectured to when not insulted.

We're told that it's not nice, and maybe even racist, to notice that Michelle Obama, the elegant first lady who does so many things well, has cultivated her husband's talent for strategic snobbery. She once conceded that she only became proud of America when her husband got to the brink of the presidency, and in a remarkable video of a 2008 appearance that surfaced only this spring, she told of their visiting "his home country in Kenya." Unless she was conceding that she, too, is a "birther," she meant that Kenya is his ancestral and cultural home. This could explain a lot, and it certainly offers insights now into his determination to discard the Israelis in the affections of Americans and replace them with nations alien to the affections of most Americans. Why retain an emotional attachment to the sources of American law and literature when you could bow to the Saudi king and court the leaders of Iran, Syria and Venezuela?...

Didn't Michelle and Barack learn back in university that the Third Dar is ever so much more glam and virtuous than the "colonialistic," "imperialistic" First Dar? If Israel want to gain this president's "friendship," it's going to have to transform itself into a non-functioning despotic backwater, like the rest of the countries that have won Barack's heart. Can the Jews somehow bring back the festering swamps and barren desert that existed pre-'Naqba'?

Update: In much the same way that multiculturalism is a unicultural phenomon (there ain't a whole lot of multiculti in Saudi Arabia), Obama-love for places like Syria is a unicultural phenomenon (that is, there ain't a whole lot of--or, indeed, any--love flowing' from the Syrian side).

The 60s Bonfire of the Vanities

Peter Hitchens bemoans the self-derisive, politically correct version of history that's being shoved down the throats of kids in the U.K. these days. He blames the mush-brained revisionism on the decade when everything changed (and got all bollixed up):

Can we have our history back?

You know, the story we all used to have by heart, of how our liberties were founded by Magna Carta, of defeating the Armada, of the Civil War, the Restoration, the Glorious Revo­lution and the Golden Age that followed, of victory abroad and peace and prosperity at home?

There’s time enough in later life to find out that the reality is more complicated.

The basics are still true, the tale of an extra­ordinarily lucky country uniquely blessed by geography and nature, developing in two small islands one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen, based on individual liberty. Who wouldn’t be proud and pleased to be living in such a place?

And who – knowing these things – wouldn’t instinctively stand and defend those liberties against insolent authority, panic-mongering morons trying to make our flesh creep with exaggerated tales of terror, numbskull Ministers who can’t see why Habeas Corpus matters, wooden-headed coppers who want to be continental gendarmes, demanding our papers?

To be deprived of this knowledge is to be like the beneficiary of a generous will, whose wicked stepfather keeps him from knowing that this document, which could change his life for ever, is locked away in a safe.

I would have liked my own children to learn such proper history, except that by the time I found out the sort of confusing, demoralising trash that passes for history in today’s schools, it was too late.

As I gazed in disgust at the feeble, babyish pamphlets – designed in many cases to undermine the version I was taught – and scraps of photocopied paper which nowa­days do the duty of textbooks, I wondered what had become of the histories I had studied.

They had vanished in some vast ­Sixties bonfire, in many ways as bad as Hitler’s book burnings, part of the great destruction of knowledge and continuity that took place in that accursed decade...

To add my own 2 farthing's worth: My son, who attends a private Jewish school, had three "sections" in Social Studies this year: Canadian aboriginals, mapping and Vikings. Now, I realize the school is fulfilling provincial educational requirements, and no offence to aboriginals or Vikings, but, sorry, I do not get the rationale behind this particular curriculum. It's easy to see, though, that some refugees from the 60s likely had a hand in coming up with it.

Nuke Conference Pissing Match

Obama has a nuclear conference; A-jad has a nuclear conference. What can it mean? It means we're eyeball to eyeball with the other guy, and he ain't never going to blink. How can we tell? It's painfully evident from this interview with Iran's Nuke Czar (or, at least, the Nuke Czar's--i.e. the Ayatollah's--mouthpiece):

Press TV: Many thanks for being here with us on Press TV. Day one [or Iran's nuke conference] has now wrapped up. We've had lots of statements and speeches. ( This conference has been) downplayed somewhat in the Western media, what have you made of this conference so far? Has it been successful? Does it make a difference?

Salehi: You see, we are looking after the success of this conference but this is not the essential purpose behind this conference. This conference is being held in a very particular time which is very important; particularly in the sense that we have an upcoming review conferences in New York in about two weeks time which will review the NPT as a whole. This conference gives us the opportunity to the like-minded countries Iran and other countries, specifically the Non-Aligned Movement countries, to come up with some sort of common positions regarding the principles, the norms, the regulations and the procedures that constitute the body of the (nuclear) non-proliferation regime. We think after 40 years that has passed ever since NPT was born and came into force unfortunately there has been an imbalance between the essential pillars of NPT. You know we have three pillars: Disarmament that relates to those countries that have nuclear weapons; the peaceful use of nuclear energy this is another pillar and the third pillar is the non-proliferation.

Unfortunately, what we have noticed in the past 40 years is that most of the principles, most of the rules and regulations, most of the procedures or the procedural activities have been focusing on the non-proliferation and then on the peaceful use of nuclear energy and not on the disarmament. So, we have not seen any positive or hopeful steps in the disarmament issue.

Press TV: If I can just come in here to put in the other argument which is of course countries like the United States, in the last 48 hours we had the European Union's Catherine Ashton come out and say that Iran is the biggest threat to the world. I mean the US argument and many of these nuclear powers is that nuclear weapons are deterrent. In fact, they say that countries like Iran are the threat and they can't get rid of their nuclear stockpiles because of such threats in the world.

Salehi: You see this is the controversy. They have the nuclear bombs in their hands and they have used these nuclear bombs against their adversaries. And here comes a country which is a member of the NPT and a member of the IAEA that is committed to its entire commitments. That is seen in the safeguards agreements and all the agreements that Iran has signed. The only thing that Iran is looking for is to really look for its rights in accordance with the NPT and therefore what have we done wrong that the lady you mentioned her name comes up and says Iran is a threat if she has said so. I'm taking your words. I've not heard that but if that is the case what have we done wrong? We are a member of the NPT. Inspectors are inspecting our nuclear sites 24 hours per day either through camera or through real inspections. We have good relationships with the IAEA. We are committed to our commitments. We look for the integrity of the NPT. We are an active member in the review conferences of the NPT. We have attended the review conference of 2000, 2005 and now 2010. But what else do we have to do in order to prove that we are adherent to our commitments? What else do we have to do? What I have seen from their assessments and remarks is that Iran may have the intention to do something wrong in the future. But this is intention reading. International rules and regulations are not based on intention reading...

He seems eminently reasonable, doesn't he? For a functionary from a nutty theocracy that's vying for global supremacy and is getting set to nuke the Jews to kingdom come, I mean.