Benazir Bhutto [Mark Steyn]
Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I'm asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes.
Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.
As I said, she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.
I often highlight the faults and crimes of radical Islam on this blog. In an attempt to be fair, here's something from my own people. This happens every year. Every year. The fight in Jerusalem is also a yearly occurrence. Don't mess with the Orthodox, because apparently they carry iron rods around with them to church. Even Franciscans got into the mix a few years ago.
Very much highlights the necessity of everyone coming back to the fold of the Catholic Church, in my humble opinion. But that's a religious matter. In political terms, this kind of stuff highlights the very strong convictions that can lead to violence, even among a religion that explicitly asks its adherents to turn the other cheek.
Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus
View larger imageSeven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Following the Christmas celebrations, Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church, which is built over the site where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.
But the ladders encroached on space controlled by Armenian priests, according to photographers who said angry words ensued and blows quickly followed.
For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.
A dozen unarmed Palestinian policemen were sent to try to separate the priests, but two of them were also injured in the unholy melee.
"As usual the cleaning of the church afer Christmas is a cause of problems," Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh told AFP, adding that he has offered to help ease tensions.
"For the two years that I have been here everything went more or less calmly," he said. "It's all finished now."
The Church of the Nativity, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, is shared by various branches of Christianity, each of which controls and jealously guards a part of the holy site.
The Church of the Nativity is built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago after Mary and Joseph were turned away by an inn.
I was watching C-Span this morning, not ten minutes ago, getting ready to do a number on a peppermint pie leftover from Christmas. I love peppermint pie with something approaching unnatural strength. Some boring Senate thing was on the screen, but as I read the ticker I was shocked and appalled to read
The woman was a political entity before my time, surely. And she was pretty much fired and charged with corruption in absentia, but for a political leader to be assassinated in such a way is always a shock. These are the people who are positioned to keep things running, who are connected with the movers and shakers in any country. No matter their politics, when they are killed a country has lost a resource.
Pakistan's only hope to pull itself out of the muck of radical Islamic theocracy and into a stable constitutional state is that its political leaders are allowed to make their case without fear of being murdered. I don't believe Pervez Musharraf is responsible for this attack, but I do believe that this highlights just how much control the central government in Pakistan has. That is, not much. When (not if) this blows up into a riotous mob, Musharraf will be hard pressed to keep things from devolving into further bloodshed. He's managed to hold on so far, but now he's got a martyr on his hands.
This is big news. Big news.
Damn these people for their ignorance, and I thank God (not Allah, he's obviously been on vacation) that I live in the United States of America. Despite what its detractors say, the US doesn't kill political opposition, and we have the stability to maintain the rule of law even when the opposition is dangerously close to being John Edwards.
Update: Ha. I forgot. They have nukes, too!
That includes all the members of the Vox Neighborhood. Atheists, liberals, conservatives, and so on. I hope that you have a very pleasant Christmas, regardless of your beliefs.
Enjoy this article from National review, get pissed, and tell somebody. I think that even if you disagree with Steyn, you have to wonder at the audacity these Muslim groups have...and the complicity of this Canadian organization in stifling debate on the subject.
By the Editors
Our readers know Mark Steyn well. His witty and learned commentary appears in every issue of National Review, and in many other English publications across the world. What Steyn’s American readers may not know is that a Muslim advocacy group in his native Canada is doing its best to muzzle him.
On December 4, the Canadian Islamic Congress announced that it had filed a complaint with three of Canada’s “human rights commissions” over an October 2006 article that Steyn had published in Maclean’s, Canada’s leading news weekly. “This article completely misrepresents Canadian Muslims’ values, their community, and their religion,” said Faisal Joseph, an attorney representing the complainants, in a press release. “We feel that it is imperative to challenge Maclean’s biased portrayal of Muslims in order to protect Canadian multiculturalism and tolerance.”
The article in question was adapted from Steyn’s recent book America Alone, which argues that Western society may be irrevocably altered — and not for the better — by unassimilated Muslim immigration. It’s no surprise that this thesis is controversial, probably in part because Steyn makes his points so well. But the real threat to tolerance here is the CIC, which would have the state impose penalties on those whose writings it disagrees with.
In doing so it only provides evidence for Steyn’s thesis. Another group of Canadian Muslims — the Muslim Canadian Congress — has said as much, denouncing the CIC’s complaint for affirming “the stereotype that Muslims have little empathy for vigorous debate and democracy.” But at the moment, the CIC’s push for censorship advances. Of the three human-rights commissions to which it submitted its complaint, two have agreed to hear the case. (The third has yet to decide.)Since their founding, Canada’s human-rights commissions have done less to protect the rights of minorities than to undermine the liberties of everyone. To get an idea of what they’re like, consider the recent case of Stephen Boissoin.
Boissoin, a Baptist minister, learned that the Alberta Human Rights Commission was funding an initiative that described homosexuality as “normal, necessary, acceptable and productive.” Boissoin objected to this and wanted to make his views known. As he put it to a Canadian Internet publication: “[I] felt that as a taxpayer, and indirect funder of this initiative through my tax dollars, I had a right to communicate my opinion which is reflective of my religious beliefs. In an attempt to do so, I decided to potentially share my opinion at large by submitting letters to the editor in newspapers.”
The publication of one such letter brought a complaint from a “social justice” advocate, and Boissoin was dragged before the very body he had complained about — the Alberta Human Rights Commission. That was 2002. It took five years of anxiety-filled and expensive legal proceedings for the commission to rule against Boissoin. They determined that he had violated Alberta’s laws because there was, as one commission member put it, a “circumstantial connection” between the publication of the letter and an incident of gay-bashing. “Circumstantial connection” is of course another way of saying that Boissoin had nothing to do with it. One wonders in passing whether the same can be said of the Koran, and which side the commission would take if Maclean’s published a few choice Koranic passages on homosexuality.
Even if the human-rights commissions eventually rule for Steyn and Maclean’s, the proceedings will be costly, and will intimidate others who wish to express controversial views. To his great credit, one conservative Canadian cabinet minister, Jason Kenney, has spoken in defense of Steyn. Some of the Canadian press is coming to Steyn’s defense as well. We hope the chorus swells.
And we hope Americans raise their voices too. So far the U.S. media have paid little attention to the case, but it should matter to us. Steyn’s writings — even those in Canadian publications — have a large and influential American readership. We trust those readers prefer that Canada remain free.
Who do you want to be caught under the mistletoe with this holiday season?
Submitted by An Ebony Epicurean.
My wife! It's our first Christmas together. So far, so good!
But she doesn't go for all the mushy stuff.
Well, not one month after the Howard government of Australia lost out to the Labor party of Kevin Rudd, we have this charming bit of heroism. Apparently, the whales are in trouble! Japan is going to hunt 1000 whales this year, including the humpback. This just won't do, so:
Oh, joy. Get used to it folks. The more hysteria we see about global warming, the more militant the greenies will get. Drastic measures have to be taken, they will say. So now we will bring guns to the table!...the Australian government will be casting a different eye over the activities of the Japanese whalers in Antarctica - it plans to send a former P&O cruise ship, now converted into an armed vessel, to the region to monitor the hunting.
Never mind that if a conflict does occur, it will be because a foreign vessel interfered with the national sovereignty of Japan and its harvesting. Can't get around that just yet.
But whales are so beautiful, you might say. That they are, but they are not as beautiful as a human life, no matter how Japanese. Or greenie.
The crew is trained for polar conditions and they will use 'super-telephoto' lenses to record the whale slaughter.
In addition, the ship will have two .50-calibre machine guns manned by a customs boarding party should a clash of any kind with the Japanese vessels occur.
Australia's new Labour Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has accused the former John Howard government of doing nothing to save the endangered whales, adding that nobody took seriously Japan's claim that it was conducting scientific research.
The Hell you say, Kevin Rudd.
I have to say, the news is out there if you just look for it. Let's see, we had the honor killing in London a while back. Now it seems that Canada has joined the club. I anticipate that within the next two years we will have an instance of this in the United States. Maybe I just don't know about it.
Father killed daughter for not wearing hijab, her friends say
Dec 11 12:56 PM US/Eastern
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Muslim Man Kills Daughter For Not Wearing HijabFriends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab. Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from "a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter."
The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was "rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night."
Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in court Wednesday, said police.
The girl's friends, meanwhile, told local media she was having trouble at home because she did not conform to the family's religious beliefs and refused to wear a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.
"She wanted to go different ways than her family wanted to go, and she wanted to make her own path, but he (her father) wouldn't let her," one of her classmates told public broadcaster CBC.
"She loved clothes," another of her friends, Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, told the daily Toronto Star. "She just wanted to show her beauty ... She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person."
According to her friends, Aqsa had worn the hijab at school last year, but rebelled in recent months.
They said she would leave home wearing a hijab and loose-fitting clothes, but would take off her head scarf and change into tighter garments at school, then change back before going home at the end of the day.
The victim's 26 year-old brother was also charged with obstructing police in the investigation.
Want to know the problem of Radical Islam? It's that it can grow within communities of moderate or liberal Muslims. Some young fella, maybe second generation (or first, who knows) decides his parents aren't Muslim enough, he starts going to wacky websites and then he finds himself an imam who talks up hardline Islam, pretty soon he's a fairly solid fundamentalist, the type who would read the Koran and say,
"You know what, it's right to kill female members of my family if they cause me shame. Thanks Allah!"
It's interesting.
It can happen in other faiths as well. How many ex-hippies have Southern Baptist children? Difference being that Southern Baptists only rarely engage in strangulation.
Mitt Romney. In a move that surprised me somewhat, National Review (I realize that most of my posts have dealt with NR articles lately, I'm sorry but I like them) has endorsed Mitt Romney for President of the United States. Read the article here, or just read this paragraph:
This endorsement gives me pause. I had not seriously considered Romney, favoring Fred Thompson. But neither had I written him off completely. He needs to do a better job of making me take notice, but perhaps Romney would be a good President indeed. Old Fred just hasn't made it happen like I thought he would.More than the other primary candidates, Romney has President Bush’s virtues and avoids his flaws. His moral positions, and his instincts on taxes and foreign policy, are the same. But he is less inclined to federal activism, less tolerant of overspending, better able to defend conservative positions in debate, and more likely to demand performance from his subordinates. A winning combination, by our lights. In this most fluid and unpredictable Republican field, we vote for Mitt Romney.
Romney's Mormonism doesn't bother me overmuch. It's crucial that we don't dismiss it as irrelevant, because religion does still play a part in our country. However, I think it's fair to say that it is only as relevant as the faith of the other candidates. Mike Huckabee is casting himself as the evangelical choice, and seems likely to draw heavy support. But his record on taxes and so on makes him as polarizing as Rudy Giuliani is for his social stances. Read the article, it says it all better.
Victor Davis Hanson is one smart cookie. Here I will present an interview conducted by the Hoover Institute's Peter Robinson, and available at National Review Online. VDH, as he is known, is a strong voice for victory in the Middle East. In this video segment he discusses the initial victory in Iraq, the Surge, and the crap in between. Around 2:30 in, it gets really good.
VDH: ..the Sunni insurgents had to show the world they were not the cowards or the incompetents that surrendered in three weeks; that they were going to win, and they were going to defeat the Americans, and now that they have established a reputation that they didn't give up, they have restored their pride...and they lost...
PR: So this is a parallel to the argument that Sadat had to invade and lose, but he had to invade before he could make peace at Camp David.
