Another case of Islamophobia, no doubt.

Sania Mirza doesn't want to ruffle any more feathers.

After the controversy over her dress code, the 19-year-old tennis star has refused to pair up with Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe'er in the doubles tournament of the Dubai Open for fear of violent protests by India's Islamic community.

Mirza initially agreed to play with Pe'er, but later retracted, telling Pe'er that, "It's best that we don't play together this time to prevent protests against my cooperation with an Israeli. There is no reason to arouse the ire of the Indian Muslims."

Because offending Jews usually doesn't result in doesn't get anybody killed.....

OK - so I'm about 25 years behind, but I've finally gotten around to picking up "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".

Now I'm probably not the first person to pick up on this, but considering this book was written so long ago, some of these "predictions" are amazing.  From Chapter 3:

The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in fact and would have made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb - a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end (ed. - sounds kind of like an iPod shuffle);  he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice.


Wow.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was suspended for a month after refusing to apologize for making "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" comments to a Jewish reporter by comparing him to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

According to Norm, the interesting thing is that Livingstone's defense rested on whether or not the comments truly affected the repute of the office as opposed to whether or not the comment was appropriate.

Personally, I don't like thought police legislation that creates punishments for things people say in anger, even if truly derogatory words like k*ke and n****r are used.  Very different if you are a public offical though.  There's also an argument to be made that out in the open bias is a lot easier to confront than having those feelings pushed underground.

Here's a situtation where I do think it's appropriate to take someone out of their position of authority.  In Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas, the police chief  told a hiring committee that he wasn't going to hire any "gooks" when discussing an applicant of Asian descent.  He claimed his actions were a mental holdover from his service in Vietnam.   He retired immediately after 30+ years of service. 

There is no form of legal punishment that exists in Western society that would be cruel enough for the cretins who committed these heinous acts.

A Jew Is Tortured and Killed in Paris...But Is it Anti-Semitism? Mais, non!

According to Halimi's father, two of the previous kidnapping targets before his son were Jewish. And what's more, he told the media that, "When we said we didn't have 500,000 euros to give them they told us to go to the synagogue and get it," Rafi said. "They also recited verses from the Koran."

More here at Ha'aretz and here at the UK Times of London.

Kudos to the French police for quickly arresting suspected gang members. Jeers to them trying to diminish the fact that the gang seemed to be targeting Jews.

From a NY Times article by Caryn James on the political nature of this year's Best Foreign Film nominees:

A Palestinian about to carry out a suicide bombing in "Paradise Now" asks his partner, "Are we doing the right thing?" The film raises some of the same questions "Munich" does, but from the opposite side of the Middle East divide: what is the personal cost, and the effectiveness, of political assassination?

First of all, to call suicide bombing "political assassination" is about as Orwellian a turn of phrase as one can invent. Is this to say that attempting to kill a president or other government official is the same as blowing up a disco or a bus filled with kids?

Israelis trying to kill terrorists after they've committed murder and acts of war. Terrorists sent to kill innoent civilians including the elderly and children. Same thing.

Via Israellycool.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Not content with pelting European embassies with petrol bombs to protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, Iranians have decided to rename the "Danish pastries" relished by this nation of cake lovers (and Holocaust deniers - ed.).

From now on, the sweet, flaky pastries which dominate the shelves in Iran's cake shops will be known as "Roses of the Prophet Mohammad," the official IRNA news agency reported as pressure on Denmark over the cartoons took on a new dimension.

"No one is allowed to make fun of our beloved and respected Prophet," Hassan Nasserzadeh, a cake-shop owner in central Tehran, told Reuters.

I would like to suggest that Persian rugs now be called "Flying Floor Coverings of the Fanatic Fatwa Freaks". Perhaps we can just sent them back all our Persian cats too. I hate cats.



"Meow, meow, meow" = "I hate Americans, please send me back home."

One of the stongest statements I've seen against the Iranian President comes from a well-established Muslim cultural organization..... in Germany. Thank you Islam-Archiv-Deutschland.

A Muslim cultural institute in Germany on Monday criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for disparaging the Holocaust, daring him to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"In this place of horror he can again deny the Holocaust, if he has the courage," a spokesman for the Islam-Archiv-Deutschland Central Institute told the German Catholic press agency KNA.....

By denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad not only denigrated the Jewish victims of the genocide but also the 200,000 Roms and Arabs murdered in the "gypsy camp" of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps, the institute spokesman said.

Einstein may have been a genius, but I'll bet he wouldn't be able to come up with a scientific therory as to why this picture:



is worth $2.9 million dollars.

Soj at DailyKos has an article up on the Muslim cartoon rage that sounds positively neocon.

Who knew that there is a statue of Mohammed in the Supreme Court?

I imagine that this person wasn't happy with Al Gore's sucking up to the Saudis the other day.

Before the last Presdiential election, Democrats.com had this to say in their "Top 10 Reasons Why Al Gore Would Be a Better Wartime President Than George W. Bush".

Gore would not be holding back on criticising terrorist-coddling countries like Saudi Arabia, which have allowed millions of dollars to flow to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

I wonder if they were just wrong or if Gore is selling his political soul to the Saudis.

Lately, I've been suffering from a little bit of "Argentinitis" which is what my wife and I call how we feel when we really wish we could be in Argentina right away. The spanish pronunciation would be "Ar-hen'-tee-nee-tees". The best medicine for me is to tune in to one of the various Argentine radio or TV stations that are available live on the internet.

This morning I was listening to Radio Jai "pronounced "Chai" with the Hebrew guttural "ch" meaning "life") and there was an interview with someone who apparently plays in a Klezmer band who was going to be performing in Buenos Aires. It's hard me to concentrate super-well on the Spanish when I'm working, but I did hear something about "California" and "movie". At the end of the interview I was trying to catch the guy's name, but all I heard was "Gustavo". I figured, "how many Argentine klezmer musicians can there be in the world named Gustavo"?



So I did a search on the internet and it was obvious that the interviewee was Gustavo Bulgach of Klezmer Juice. He is Argentine-born and he plays clarinet for the band which is based in Los Angeles. As it turns out, it is his band that is on the soundtrack for "Wedding Crashers" with their version of Hava Nagila which is played when the two lead characters crash a Jewish wedding at the beginning of the film.

I just love that I was able to learn all of that just by accident.

Another interesting topic that they were discussing yesterday was that they didn't understand how the American Jewish community could stand for a production like "The Producers" in its handling of Hitler and the Nazis. The show is now playing on Av. Correientes which is Buenos Aires' version of Broadway and apparently it's more difficult for the Argentina Jewish community to talk about comfortably. I wanted to call to explain that here, the Nazis were everyone's enemy and can now be ridiculed comfortably and that the Jewish community feels no real physical threat, even from Neo-Nazis. Argentina, has a somewhat different history....

Today I attended the first of 8 weekly study sessions on The Kabalah of Time given by the Jewish Learning Institute, an affiliate of Chabad.

As I haven't actually taken any classes in a formal setting in so long I can't remember, I forgot to bring a pen, which I'm really sorry about now.  There were a lot of fascinating insights into Jewish beliefs about time that I would have liked to have written down - I'll need to see if I can get a tape of the class from the Rabbi. (I can't post anything too detailed here because it is a paid class and I wouldn't feel right about giving stuff away).

That being said, here are some interesting points mentioned in the class.

We all think of light and darkness as being defined by the sun and the moon.  Not accoridng to the first lines of Genesis!



1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

That's very interesting considering that it wasn't until the FOURTH day (and line 14) that the sun, moon and stars were created.

How could that be?  In fact, the order in which the purposes of these objects is also interesting...

14 And God said, "Let
there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens, to separate between
the day and between the night, and they shall be for signs and for
appointed seasons and for days and years.

15 And they shall be for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to shed light upon the earth." And it was so.

So the primary purpose of the sun, moon and stars is to mark time, not to provide light. After all, light (spiritual light) was created on the first day.  And why do we need to mark time?  Is it to make sure we get to our business meetings on time? Nooooo, it's to make sure we have at our disposal a constant reminder of the natural ebb and flow and rythyms of the natural world which G-d created.

There was an awful lot more than this in the class - the belief that time is a creation of G-d in the same manner that he created our concept of space - the belief that time is not just a gift from G-d, it is G-d - the belief that the way we in our finite bodies can affect things beyond the time we are here on this Earth by doing mitzvahs (good deeds) as outlined in the Torah.  Think of the nearest MLK Jr. Blvd in your city and you'll get the idea.

Here is some of the really mystical stuff - the name of G-d is written out by using four Hebrew letters represented in English by Y-H-V-H.  There are 24 permutations of this four letter name, each representing an hour of the day.  Just as we breathe in and out, flowers open and close, etc. G-d's energy comes to us in ebbs and flows that differ slightly over the course of those 24 hours.

As a side note, I know that some of 's readers have asked why we often times don't write out the full name of G-d.  The answer is basically out of respect for The Name, don't take it in vain, etc.  I just noticed in the recently issued Torah now used by much of the Conservative Jewish movement that there is a note that the movement no longer believes it necesssary to omit of the "o" anymore due to the generally academic nature of the word's use in english.  I'm going with tradition on this one. Can't hurt.

In the NY Times latest article on Reform Judaism's new efforts to make conversion attractive for non-Jewish spouses of mixed marriages, one Reform rabbi seems to not understand what the Lubavitchers' Chabad movement is all about.

It also clashes with a longstanding aversion among many Jews to anything resembling proselytizing. "I have the inherent Jewish struggle," said Rabbi Jeffrey J. Sirkman, leader of the Larchmont congregation. "It's that inner struggle of knowing that we want to reach out there as much as we can. At the same time, we don't want to appear to be the Lubavitch," referring to the Orthodox sect of Hasidic Jews known for its aggressive outreach programs, especially focusing on nonobservant Jews.

"I'm not going to be standing at the corner," he added, "asking people if they are Jewish."

Let me see if I understand - it's OK to let Jews marry non-Jews in the hopes that afterwards their non-Jewish spouses can be subtly convinced that they should change their entire belief system, but it's not OK for Jews to convince other people who are already Jews to become more observant. That sure makes a lot of sense.

(And they certainly wouldn't want those newly converted Jews to step-up their observance either I imagine.)

It's not to hard to find criticism of Hollywood from the Right (including myself) for fictionalizing historical events and putting a liberal slant on them. But why, oh why, do they need to liberalize liberal stories?

I really enjoyed Glory Road, the story of the 1966 Texas Western (now UT El-Paso) championship college basketball team which was the first to start five black players in the NCAA finals. The story is sort of formulaic and plays right into the hands of what I hope are most poeples' ideas of racial equality and justice.

However, in order to dramatize the racial problems of the time, and the indignities that the UTEP team no doubt suffered, terrifying events were made up out of whole cloth to make the viewer "feel the pain". Not only that, a real East Texas University is unfairly singled-out as the place where the worst racial attack takes place. Neddless to say, their community is upset.

In the movie, the black players come on to the court for a game at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M-Commerce) and are met with insults.

After the game, they find the rooms where they are staying vandalized, with racial slurs smeared in red across the walls.

Dr. McFarland said the incident never happened. In fact, after the movie's release, the university researched and confirmed that East Texas State traveled to El Paso that year, rather than the other way around.

"I felt almost like we were singled out," Dr. McFarland said. "I guess what also bothered me was our school integrated in the '60s without incident. And in fact, on that year when we played them [Texas Western University], we had three black players – that was early in integration."

Is it really necessary to make stuff up to dramatize the evils of that era? How much easier does it make it for racists/bigots to say, "that never happened, it's kikes making stuff up with their friends the n*****s to defame the white race". Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I didn't catch much about this among all the noise about Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest.

U.K. Jewry shocked by Anglican Church decision for divestment

British Jewry was stunned and outraged over a surprise decision on Monday by the Anglican Church's General Synod to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel in the
territories. The synod backed a call by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem to divest from "companies profiting from the illegal occupation," such as Caterpillar, which makes the bulldozers that Israel is using to build the separation fence.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday he was "ashamed to be an Anglican".

Ooh, was that a Christian cross in that flag those Palestinians are burning? How ungrateful.

So, Hillary goes on a stump speech in front of the UAW. A few interesting notes...

First she claimed that the Republicans were "going to keep playing the fear card." I don't disagree. But what exactly do you call it when you tell American auto workers that the Bush administration was "allowing U.S. manufacturing to wither away and that the only way for workers to protect those jobs was by electing Democrats". Isn't "protecting" a defensive maneuver? Something you do when you're fearful of your opponent/enemy? Does Hillary plan on helping out by designing a better Oldsmobile? No, she wants to attack the enemy, Thailand, which wants to import cheaper alternatives. All this talk about internal and external threats would make me fearful.

Secondly, she said, "You cannot explain to me why we have not captured or killed the tallest man in Afghanistan." Now, I don't know who that person might be, but I assume she's referring to Osama Bin-Laden who has been hiding in Pakistan for quite some time now. I don't think she'll be able to get him either if she doesn't know which country to look in. If you're a basketball player in Afghanistan, watch out for Hillary.

(OK, I admit that Alberto Gonzalez claiming that Geroge Washington used electronic surveillance was funnier).

Finally she said, "Don't come around any longer and say that, you know, if you wonder why
we're not more successful in Afghanistan or Iraq then somehow you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy." Well, at least she's starting with the belief that we HAVE had some success - perhaps it was a slip of the tongue. Sorry Senator, but that's not what others in your party are saying. There are some very vocal Democrats that strongly believe that "we can't win".

Those are the people conservatives are afraid of.

Jerry Seinfeld is famous for saying that his long-running sitcom was ultimately a show "about nothing". It seems like the Washington Post is trying to use that idea as the framework for their news reports.

Boehner Rents Apartment Owned by Lobbyist in D.C.

So new House Majority Leader Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has just found himself at the center of a mini-scandal. Has he done anything illegal? Has he even done anything that appears to be illegal? Watch how the WaPo contorts the English language in the hope they've got something on Representative Boehner.

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Ooh, that sounds so dirty and unethical!

The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings......

House members may not accept anything from lobbyists worth more than $50. If Boehner is paying market-rate rent, it would appear he is not violating that rule.

First of all, Boehner's rent either is or is not similar to other rentals in the area. We're dealing with hard numbers here. If he pays $1,600 and other rentals are $1,600 or between $1,400 and $1,800 per current newspaper ads, it is similar. If the average for the area is $2,400 a month, it's not. There's no "appears" when you're dealing with hard numbers. 2+2 does not appear to equal 4.

Then having declared that Boehner's rent appears similar (which I take to mean "is similar"), the paper expalins that it "appears" that the $50 rule is not being violated. Again, the rule either is or isn't being violated. And to be honest, if it's that unclear, it's just not that big a deal. Maybe they can get somone to calculate how much he's paying in rent per square foot compared to his neighbors in the hope that he's underpaying by $53.34.

So, to sum up, Rep. Boehner has not done anything wrong. I didn't even post the part of the article that says that he has not been the focus of any lobbying by the apartment's owners since he's had the apartment.

It's a news story about "nothing" - what a great idea! Republicans have their scary "L" word (liberal), and now Democrtas have theirs (lobbyist).

I find it hard to believe that those who lead Northwestern University find it either beneficial to their reputation as a center of learning or morally defensible to employ and support a professor who is an outspoken denier of the Holocaust.

Northwestern University President Henry Bienen said Monday that a professor's recent comments denying that the Holocaust happened are "a contemptible insult to all decent and feeling people" and an embarrassment to the university....

"While I hope everyone understands that Butz's opinions are his own and in no way represent the views of the university or me personally, his reprehensible opinions on this issue are an embarrassment to Northwestern," Bienen said in a statement to be e-mailed Monday night to all Northwestern students, faculty and staff.

Views? Opinions?!? There's no frickin' opinion on whether the Holocaust happened! An opinion is that the Jewish people benefitted in the long-term due to the creation of Israel. You can even debate that Jews deserved to be exterminated. But anyone who says the Holocaust just never happened is either a liar or mentally unstable or both.

There would have been no occasion for the University to be embarrassed had they fired this "gentleman" a long time ago. As Americans, free speech is a right that we are obligated to defend, but providing a platform and megaphone for the morally repugnant is not a part of that obligation.

I just can't help myself - this stuff fascinates me...

Video from Michelle Malkin - they are coming for you. Do not expect an apology.




Don't worry though - it's just a handful of extremists (yes these are from different events)....

I know I've been taking a very defensive tone against Muslims around the world demanding "respect" for their religious beliefs, but I have to mention one more attempt to curtail our freedom of speech - only it's not happening in Denmark, it's here in Dallas.

Last weekend, my parents invited about a half dozen couples from their Jewish seniors group to watch a PBS specialon the Middle East, "The Roots of War: The Road to Peace" at their home. When they turned on the TV, they got a biography of John and Abigail Adams instead. No expalanation. Why?

PBS Station Nixes Show On Terrorism

Now why would they do that - did any Muslims find the content offensive? Or am I being paranoid?

"The Roots of War: The Road to Peace" was scheduled to air on KERA-TV on Sunday, January 29, but the premiere was postponed by the station's managers after a local Muslim group alleged that the program contains inaccuracies and anti-Muslim bias. The documentary's producers, Niki and Dennis McCuistion, have defended their work; they have refused to make changes.

So now we can't watch TV without making sure that every Muslim agrees with the content. After all, we all know that Muslims are incapable of threatening, killing or otherwise ruining the lives of millions of innocent people (including "liberal" Muslims) in the name of Allah. Showing anything to the contrary would be wrong and a lie.

More here.

To me the word "appeasement" has always been symbolized by the history of Chamberlain and Hitler - giving in and surrendering to tyrants in the false hope of bringing about "peace in our time". Appeasement was a voluntary reaction based on hope....and fear.

In today's world - Muslims DEMAND appeasement.

Egypt's ambassador said Friday that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's response to the Muhammad drawings controversy has been inadequate, and that the country should do more to "appease the whole Muslim world."

Why not demand appeasement when there are some who will give in?

A South African court has granted a request by a Muslim group to bar publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which have caused outrage among Muslims worldwide, an editor's group said on Saturday.

Kneel before Zod!

When confronted with the despicable, disgusting, stomach-turning depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in the infidel press, what is a Palestinian parent to do to shield his children from such a terrible thing? Show them how to kill the infidel of course!



Children dressed in military fatigues, one holding a toy gun, crawl on
the ground during a parade, part of a rally by the Islamic group Hamas
against the publication of cartoons in European newspapers depicting
Prophet Muhammad, in Beit Lahiya in the northen Gaza Strip Friday, Feb,
3, 2006. (AP Photo / Hatem Moussa)

"Careful little brother - the sons of pigs and monkeys may be watching!"

In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.

They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv. Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, set to open in Turkey on Friday, feeds off the increasingly negative feelings many Turks harbor toward their longtime NATO allies: Americans...

The movie's American stars are Billy Zane, who plays a self-professed peacekeeper sent by God, and Gary Busey as the Jewish-American doctor.

Thanks, guys.

"I'm a patriot. That's why I made this film." - Billy Zane

"This is an important film. It should make Americans see why the world doesn't like them," said (moviegoer) businessman Sabahattin Can.

"This film shows the reality of the oppression in Iraq," said university student Emrah Adiyaman

We need more patriots like Billy Zane. Maybe the White House can hire him to do public relations in the Muslim world to replace Karen Hughes! I hope I get credit for that idea!

Remember when job creation was the one theme that John Kerry kept hammering away at during the 2004 presidential election campaign? They forgot the old Wall Street warning - "past results (ed. - or lack thereof) are not a guarantee of future performance".

Jobless rate falls to 4.7% in January

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 5-year low of 4.7% in January as 193,000 jobs were added to nonfarm payrolls, the Labor Department said Friday.



The January payroll figures fell short of expectations of a gain of 248,000, but with upward revisions to November and December of 81,000, the total payroll count was a bit more than expected."This report is much stronger than it first appears," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics.

"Despite the 'disappointing' headline, this is a strong report, with the theme again one of upward revisions," said analysts for Action Economics.

Payroll growth averaged 160,000 per month in 2005; it has averaged 229,000 in the past three months.

Muhammad Cartoon Gallery

They want to kill me anyway, fuck 'em.

If anyone deserves to be boycotted, it's the Muslim world. Two can play at this game.

''I mean, we've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money,'' Rumsfeld added. ''He's a person who was elected legally -- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally -- and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Catro and Mr. Morales and others.''



And Cindy Sheehan........

Is this really true?

An Energy Revolution

The world economy is currently running on a resource that is controlled by our enemies. This threatens to leave us prostrate. It must change—and the good news is that it can change, quickly.