Mid-Week Post

What's inside the box?


Mediocre politician and philanderer Jack Layton gets a nation-wide celebration from a nation that didn't ask for it.

Does anybody remember this guy?

A mentally disabled child in Pakistan is accused of blasphemy and Christian homes and a church are destroyed. Meanwhile, in Germany, a crude cartoon attracts no bricks. Discuss.


International Idiot of the Day:

The artist behind the caricature, Mario Lars, likewise expressed surprise at the burgeoning debate. "It was not my intention to hurt the feelings of the faithful," Lars said. "I was just making a joke…. (The church) should stand aloof of such things and address more important problems. Such a large commotion over a small joke isn't good for the church."

I guess he thinks everyone except him is stupid.


Is there a Dresden joke that would be going too far?


Iran bars women from seventy-seven university courses because  “Some fields are not very suitable for women’s nature...". In the US, Democrats freak out over some manufactured outrage because they've backed a loser. Discuss.


For your reading pleasure, watch the meltdown and the realisation that the Democrats are not the adult party, after all.


Six out of ten Canadians don't want unrepentant terrorist Omar Khadr back:

Though Canada's chief ally wants to send Khadr back to the home and native land where he was born, six in 10 Canadians don't want him back, a new poll finds. ...

When asked if they support or oppose Khadr's transfer to Canada, 60% say they strongly or somewhat oppose it while just 24% say they strongly or somewhat support his return.

A majority in all parts of the country oppose the transfer though opposition is strongest in Alberta (69%) and Ontario (65%) and weakest in Quebec were 51% oppose the move.

And both a majority of those who voted for the Conservatives (79%) or the NDP (52%) in the last election don't want Khadr back.

It's a different matter for those who voted Liberal. A slim plurality of Liberal supporters (42%) oppose his transfer compared to 39% of Liberals who support his transfer back to Canada.

Religious statues are "idolatrous" in the new Egypt:

Youm-7, one of Egypt's popular secular media that was recently attacked by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, reports that at least seventeen Christian bookstores in Shubra, one of Cairo's largest districts, are under threat for selling Christian icons and statues. The storeowners, who are "in panic," say they received threat letters by mail demanding that they stop selling their "idolatry."

This filthy idol used to bring loads of revenue into Egypt.

Hijabs and the reasons for wearing them are deceptive:

Poorly written, speckled with faulty grammar and plagiarized clauses, Nusrat's piece presents a downright bizarre depiction of Western media and public opinion (among other things, she describes Western feminism as being defined by "a skewed perception of women's equality as the right to bare our breasts in public"). Nonetheless, her commentary places in full view of a wide public one of the biggest obstacles we face in combating the growth of Islam in the West, and, even more, of political, aggressively Islamist Islam as it masquerades as a faith – and a doctrine – based on justice and equal rights, slinking its deceitful, theocratic destructiveness into the secular humanism of the West.

And it is exactly that deceit which makes it all so dangerous, especially to young women struggling with their own body image and sexuality: what easier escape, what simpler coping mechanism, than to throw a sheet over your head before heading out in public, and convince yourself that no one either sees what you look like underneath, or cares? (Indeed, Dutch psychiatrist Carla Rus, who works closely with young Muslim women – including converts – notes that the ease of dress and discomfort with cultural emphases on appearance is behind much of the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam, and contributes to the radicalization of Muslim women in Western countries.)

But Islam is not about garments, any more than a hijab actually covers anything but a woman's hair. In fact, to the contrary, a hijab-wearing woman in the West attracts attention to herself merely by the fact of the scarf itself, and to the political statement it really represents: "I am not-you. I am Muslim. I am other, and I reject what is not me." It pronounces the "us" of "us and them" in a gesture of arrogance and isolationism, while ignoring the greater truth of any faith: that it exists in your heart and in your behavior, and no more. ...

Indeed, hijabs – those, that is, worn for allegedly religious, rather than political reasons – declare a submission to religious mandate (or rather, the belief in one: in truth, the Koran does not call for women to cover their hair, or even their faces and bodies). Nor, either, does it serve to desexualize women, as the high rate of rape in Muslim majority countries makes abundantly obvious. What it does do, however – and what burqas and nikabs especially do -- is dehumanize them, creating faceless beings, property to be sold into marriage, beaten, or battered to death with the pelting of a thousand stones against their heads.

And now, if I lived on a farm, I would drive this everyday.


(Thanks for the lot)