First Past the Post

...or something.


How long do you need to consider action against Libya? What warrants action against another nation? Would North Korea qualify?


Jew-Hating Israel Apartheid Week has started up. One wonders about Arab Apartheid Week:

Today, March 7, begins an annual part of the global campaign to delegitimize Israel, as student groups and academics -- on campuses around the world -- hold events marking "Israel Apartheid Week" [IAW].

None of these groups is holding similar events protesting human rights abuses in any number of Arab and Muslim countries -- Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, the Sudan or Jordan -- where people are being jailed, tortured and often killed fighting for their human rights.

The IAW features a series of events, including lectures, films, demonstrations and other activities, which, according to organisers (http://apartheidweek.org/en/about), is aimed at "raising awareness about Israel's apartheid policies toward Palestinians and gathering support for the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign."

If Israel were an apartheid State, people like Arab Israeli Salim Jurban would not have been elected to Israel's Supreme Court and Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin Muslim, would not have been appointed an advisor to Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and then to the position of deputy Consul General of Israel in San Francisco. If Israel were an apartheid state, there would not be 5 different Arab parties and 14 Arab Israeli members of Knesset, some of whom are the most outspoken and harshest critics of Israel, including Haneen Zoabi who participated in the terrorist flotilla in June 2010, and Ahmed Tibi, currently one of the Deputy Speakers of the Knesset.

There are Arab parties in the Israeli Parliament; full Arab voting rights. Arabs are welcome as both physicians and patients in Israeli hospitals, and as both teachers and students in Israeli schools. The only national institution from which they are exempted is the military, so that, if necessary, they should not be required to fight against their own brothers. Israel is clearly not an apartheid state.

Attempts, therefore, to compare Israel, to white South Africa are at best uninformed; at worst, maliciously dishonest and anti-Semitic.

 
Perhaps we need to strip this debate down to its basic components. Universities should not be havens of leftist dogma. Indeed, there should be NO social or political groups on campus. Someone is spending money for their kids to be educated and emerge as useful, productive adults, not as impressionable would-be barristas who hate whatever it is the other guy hates. Secondly, there should be no union so powerful that it takes funds from cash-strapped students and uses it for its own ends without any accountability (oh, hi, pro-abortion student unions). Thirdly, why Israel? Of all nations one chooses to vilify, why Israel? How many Arab/Islamic nations are ruled by dictators, persecute religious minorities and are rife with violence and oppression? Does Pakistan not merit an apartheid week? Why not? Do the killings of a Muslim politician who opposed blasphemy laws and a Christian leader not count as acts opposite to values we embrace in the West or are these deaths and the reasonings behind them immaterial?


Sadly, there is no Burma Apartheid Week.


Curious George isn't a tool of hegemonic imperialism. He's just George.

(lousy haters....)

Don't hate me because I'm curious.

It's all said here and it's all said by Mark Steyn:

Speaking of the left’s willingness to provide cover for Islamic imperialism, the hippetty-hop mogul Russell Simmons was in Times Square this weekend to stand in solidarity with the Ground Zero mosque under the slogan “Today I Am A Muslim, Too“:

Some 300 people gathered in Times Square on Sunday to speak out against a planned congressional hearing on Muslim terrorism, criticizing it as xenophobic and saying that singling out Muslims, rather than extremists, is unfair.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the imam who had led an effort to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site were among those who addressed the crowd.

“Today I Am A Muslim, Too.” So, like, you can be a Muslim on a Sunday and something else on a Monday? Hey, that’s great! Who knew? Maybe Russell Simmons could pass the good news on to Said Musa? They didn’t get the memo on death row in Kabul, where he was imprisoned for converting to Christianity.

Kim Kardashian was unable to attend the rally but tweeted her support for it. Maybe Kim could jet in to the village of Soul in Egypt’s Helwan Governorate and personally pass on to the locals the exciting news that you can be Muslim just for a photo-op and then move on. I’m sure the girlfriend of Coptic Christian Ashraf Iskander would love to hear that, assuming she’s still alive:

A mob of nearly four thousand Muslims has attacked Coptic homes this evening in the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, and torched the Church of St. Mina and St. George…

This incident was triggered by a relationship between 40-year-old Copt Ashraf Iskander and a Muslim woman. Yesterday a “reconciliation” meeting was arranged between the relevant Coptic and Muslim families and together with the Muslim elders it was decided that Ashraf Iskander would have to leave the village because Muslims torched his house.

The father of the Muslim woman was killed by his cousin because he did not kill his daughter to preserve the family’s honor, which led the woman’s brother to avenge the death of his father by killing the cousin. The village Muslims blamed the Christians.

It would be a waste of bandwidth to question the intellectual credentials of celebrities so I won't. I will ask the obvious because it will kill me if I don't, even though the answer is stupidity and cowardice in no particular order. Why the rush to defend a group of people who, when not clamouring for death to the infidel, are constantly in victim mode waiting for bloody retribution that never happens because they are living in an ostensibly civilised society that tends to look down on burning down churches and beheading schoolgirls? As much as it would pain people (read: the left) to admit it, the bulk of the world's current cultural ills are the fault of Islam. They are. No, I don't mean the descent of the West into decadence and decay or greed or even the environment. I mean the things one reads about every day- the violence, the extremism, the assassinations, the beheadings, the brutal treatment of women and religious minorities, the suppression of ANY form of expression lest it incite not hurt feelings but uncontrollable rage. I mean that. Yes, there are good Muslim people out there but there really is no point in bringing that up as doing so only serves as a monkey wrench thrown into the machine. I'm not worried about some guy who works nine to five and whose biggest concern at the moment is rising gas prices. I'm worried about the million who think wiping Israel off the map and instituting a form of archaic and misogynist law should be the top priorities of ANY country they happen to inhabit.

Let's turn the argument over here: where is the support for the moderate Muslims, the majority some claim exists? There are good people everywhere, even in countries where theocratic dictatorships can order roving mobs to do their violent bidding. How many Muslims fled these countries and moved to North America or Europe? Do they want their new homelands to be reduced to the violent hellholes from which they escaped? So why aren't Russell Simmons and Kim Kardashian tweeting their support for them? Can the moderates ever speak out or effect change in their communities? No they cannot and certainly not if people bury their heads in the sand and pretend that some emotionally backward way of life is just as valid as any other way of life and it should be protected from phantoms they say are out to get them.


But I guess that is asking too much.


If Sarah Palin and Kathy Griffin were locked in the Octagon Cage, it's safe to say that Sarah Palin would squash Kathy Griffin's skull like a melon:

The public clash between conservative political superstar Sarah Palin and self-described "D-List" comedian Kathy Griffin gained momentum in recent days, with each taking verbal jabs at the other.

After Palin, a former Alaska governor and one-time Republican vice presidential candidate, called Griffin a "bully" over the weekend, the comedian's publicist made a dig at Palin by highlighting her starring role on last year's TV show "Sarah Palin's Alaska," rather than her political resume....

The feud between the two women goes back months.

Aside from joking about Palin, Griffin has also made fun of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate's daughter Bristol, 20, for gaining weight on TV show "Dancing with the Stars," and she slammed Palin's other daughter Willow, 16, for anti-gay slurs the teen made on the website Facebook.

The feud picked up again this past Saturday when Palin, a politician-turned-pundit, appeared on Fox News and, in response to an anchor's question, blasted Griffin.

"She's a 50 year-old, adult bully, really, is what she is, kind of a has been comedienne, and she can (make jokes about) me, I would just ask for respect to my children," Palin said.

I don't see why Mrs. Palin should be dragged into the mud with the likes of Kathy Griffin.


Don't panic but Japan is developing a stealth jet. I don't think it will end up badly like last time:

A senior military official says Japan is on track to test a domestically designed prototype stealth fighter in three years.

Lt. Gen. Hideyuki Yoshioka says the prototype will likely be rolled out for a test flight on schedule in 2014.

And now, glacial caves.