Monster mosque to be built next to Ground Zero

(The expression in the title borrowed from Atlas Shrugs blog.)
First, I am copy-pasting below most of the article Plan for mosque near World Trade Center site moves ahead, by Joe Jackson & Bill Hutchinson, published earlier this month in NY Daily News, but for the moment just follow the link and read.

"A proposal to build a mosque steps from Ground Zero received the support of a downtown committee despite some loved ones of 9/11 victims finding it offensive.
The 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center was unanimously endorsed by the 12-member Community Board 1's financial district committee.
The $100 million project, called the Cordoba House, is proposed for the old Burlington Coat Factory... just two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
"I think it will be a wonderful asset to the community," said committee Chairman Ro Sheffe.
Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks, said the project is intended to foster better relations between the West and Muslims...
Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and Cordoba Initiative board member, said the project has received little opposition.
"Whatever concerns anybody has, we have to make sure to educate them that we are an asset to the community," Khan said.
Khan said her group hopes construction on the project will begin by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Once built, 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims are expected to pray at the mosque every Friday, she said.
No one at last night's meeting protested the project. But some 9/11 families said they found the proposal offensive because the terrorists who launched the attacks were Muslim.
"I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque," said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches - whose son Jim, a firefighter, was killed on 9/11.
"If you ask me, it's a religion of hate," said Riches, who did not attend last night's meeting.
Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, Firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, called the project a "slap in the face."
"I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, who also did not attend the meeting.
"How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."

Frankly, I find it unbelievable. After some Muslims sacrificed their lives in order to destroy the Twin Towers together with the people inside, now other Muslims are keen to build a giant mosque almost on the cleared spot. As I wrote in my post about Samir Kuntar two years ago, "if we remove the fragile frame of civilization, what remains from the human? A Darwinian creature who will happily kill other people's children in order to make more space for his own progeny."
I am only slightly surprised that Muslims have come with such an idea. It is just the umpteenth piece of evidence about the nature of Islam. I am, however, surprised that the city is giving green light to this insanity.
The same NY Daily News page offers an opinion poll:

"Do you think it is appropriate to construct a mosque near Ground Zero?
- Yes, it will encourage tolerance.
- No, if the 9/11 victims' families are opposed.
- I'm not sure."

I cannot take part in such an opinion poll; I can just wonder at its authors' dhimmitude and stupidity. The first symptom of these is their priority of problems - regarding the intolerance to Islam as a more important problem than the deaths and suffering caused by Islam at Ground Zero and elsewhere. Following the same logic, we should build Nazi and Communist propaganda centers near the former extermination camps in order to encourage tolerance to these doctrines.
Second, I find it wrong beyond description that opposition to the plan is justified not with the need to regard Islam as the doctrine of supremacy, oppression and genocide it is, but with political correctness - not to hurt the feelings of 9/11 victims' families. So, if the Islamists had killed the whole families, there would be no problem at all, right?
I am outraged because the grieving relatives, instead of being allowed to devote themselves to the memory of their loved ones and the challenges of life, are now forced to fight against the trivialization of their loss and the planned building of an actual memorial to the murderers. We have observed the same in Bulgaria and other former Communist countries - the pressure put on the surviving victims of the regime, and on the relatives of dead ones, to put their hard feelings aside and embrace the Communists for the sake of "peace" and "reconciliation". It was wrong here, and it is wrong in New York now.
Another similarity is that Communists filled East-European cities with their landmarks and actively struggled for their preservation, because they knew the importance of architectural environment for shaping the collective mind. Russia successfully pressed Bulgaria to preserve the numerous memorials to Soviet occupiers. When a landmark of evil is standing, growing young people walk in its shadow and think, "How powerful they are - to kill so many of us, to do us so much evil and still to make us keep their monuments. We must always give them what they want, then they probably will leave us alive." The same is planned to happen in New York.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate any action against Muslims. I am against Islam, not against Muslims, as I am against AIDS, not against AIDS-infected people. And I do not like the fact that I feel obliged to include such a disclaimer. When I write against Nazism or Communism, I do not feel obliged to disclaim that I do not advocate any action against individual supporters of these doctrines.

Update from May 27: I voted with "no" in the above mentioned opinion poll, mainly to see the results. They are: 68% "yes", 31% "no", 2% "not sure".

NATO countries bullied by their "ally" Turkey

Image: a cartoon of Prophet Mohamed, by Kurt Westergaard, downloaded from the Mohammed Image Archive, originally published in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. It is inserted in this post as blog action against Islamism. I intended to abstain from publishing Mohamed cartoons out of respect to Anglo-Libyan, but an event of these days became the straw breaking the camel's back.

First, let me quote a report from Independent:

"Danish Prime Minister elected secretary-general
By Brian Brady, Sunday, 5 April 2009

One of the most troubling disagreements of the two-day summit was finally resolved towards the end of the gathering, when the Danish Prime Minister overcame Turkish opposition to become Nato's new secretary-general. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (pictured) was heavily backed by the biggest European powers, but his campaign to succeed Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was threatened when Turkey objected over his failure to ban Denmark-based Roj-TV, seen as the mouthpiece of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also complained that Mr Rasmussen had failed to sanction those responsible for a Danish newspaper's publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2005 (emphasis mine - M.M.). However, Turkish officials said Ankara dropped its objection after the US President Barack Obama answered Mr Erdogan's "objections" during a private meeting. Mr Erdogan told Turkish television that he had received "guarantees" from Mr Obama that one of Mr Rasmussen's deputies would be a Turk – and that Turkish commanders would be present at the alliance's command."

Daniel Pipes is more open about the concessions: "The Dane won the job only after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish president Abdullah Gül hosted by Barack Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdogan announced. Obama "gave us guarantees" concerning Turkish reservations about Fogh Rasmussen. The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara's support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment: "As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world." "

So much about the "secular", "civilized", "model", "democratic", "Westernized" etc. Turkey - as soon as you get down to real business, you find yourself confronting the ugly face of Islamism.

Nizo once commented on my blog that what is important is not the type of the dominating religion but the separation of religious institutions from the state, which has been achieved in the West but not yet in most Muslim countries. This is a serious opinion, but I think recent events prove it wrong and show that as long as you have Islamic background, you can separate as much as you wish and still, when the moment of truth comes, it will be to no avail.

When I ask what the hell is the benefit of having Turkey in NATO, people keep telling me that "it has the 2nd largest army in the alliance (after USA)". In my humble opinion, this is nonsense. What is the use of an army, big or small, if you aren't sure whether it is with you or with the enemy?

Now, what to do with NATO? Change its decision-making process from consensus to majority? Good idea, but it is exactly Turkey that would oppose and prevent it from happening. Dismantle it altogether? Maybe we'll have to, who knows... My sympathy to the people of Denmark, and also to the decent people of Turkey.

The definition of idiocy

"The (British) Home Office's own guidance issued to immigration officers concedes that Iran executes homosexual men but, unaccountably, rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians."
Quote from Independent, hattip Robert Spencer.

Model European state Belarus respects UN resolutions

Belarus, which has the "honour" to remain in history as the last European dictatorship, strictly keeps UN resolutions. In accord with a recent one against "defamation of religions", particularly Islam, a court in Minsk ten days ago sentenced Alyaksandr Zdvizhkou, former deputy editor of the weekly Zhoda, to three years in prison for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in a Danish newspaper (source: Spanish Pundit, hattip Hyscience). The same source continues, "He was found guilty of “inciting racial hatred”... It is highly likely that this was just a pretext for punishing an opposition journalist."
I also think that this must have been just a pretext, but the million-dollar-question is, why were Belarussian authorities given such a convenient pretext? If somebody has doubted that Muslim states are using UN as a tool to spread Sharia to non-Muslim states, I don't know what more evidence is needed.
And if you think that such things happen just in dictatorships, to obscure Slav people who don't matter much anyway, here is more food for thought: in Canada, journalist Esra Levant, who had also reprinted the (in)famous cartoons, has been summoned to Canadian HR Commission because "a Saudi-trained imam, who had called for sharia law to be introduced in Canada, complained to a human rights officer". Also in Canada, as Robert Spencer reports, "The Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal have begun proceedings against Mark Steyn, author of America Alone. They are responding to complaints from the Canadian Islamic Congress about an excerpt from the book." The text in question contained quotes from Muslim leaders revealing their expansionist agendas.
I wish to end with a citation from Spencer's article: "In a free society, people with differing opinions live together in harmony, agreeing not to force their neighbor to be silent if his opinions offend them... Wherever offensive speech is prohibited, the tyrant’s power is solidified."

Aqsa Parvez, the latest teen victim of "honour" murder in the West

Aqsa Parvez's Facebook photo (source: Michelle Malkin).

On Dec. 10, Aqsa Parvez (16) was strangled to death by her father Muhammad in Mississauga, Ont., Canada, "apparently after a dispute with her family over her refusal to wear the hijab" (source: Michelle Malkin).

"Friends of the teenager, a Grade 11 student at Applewood Heights high school, said Monday they were shocked by the attack on the outgoing, likeable girl, but said she had been threatened by her strictly religious family before.
Ebonie Mitchell, 16, a friend of the victim, said the conflict with her father over wearing Islamic dress came to a head at the beginning of this school year. “She just wanted to dress like we do,” she said. “Last year, she wore like the Islamic stuff and everything, the hijab, and this year she’s all western. She just wanted to look like everyone else."

Fellow students of Aqsa’s spoke to the National Post. Said one:
‘‘She wanted to live her life the way she wanted to, not the way her parents wanted her to. She just wanted to be herself, honestly she just wanted to show her beauty, and not be pushed around by her parents telling her what she has to be like, what she has to do. Nobody would want to do that.’’— Krista Garbhet"

Now, the public reactions. Robert Spencer comments at FrontPage Magazine:

"Aqsa Parvez is dead, and the main thing that many analysts want you to know about her death is that it had nothing to do with Islam. Aqsa Parvez was sixteen years old; her father has been charged with strangling her to death because she refused to wear the hijab. Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, declared: “The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour or creed.” Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario, agreed: “The bottom line is, it’s a domestic violence issue.” Nor was this denial limited only to Muslims. Lorne Gunter said in the Edmonton Journal: “I see nothing uniquely Muslim in her death. If, indeed, her father killed her, her death is his doing, not Islam’s.” "

Michelle Malkin is even sharper: "What is it with our craven mainstream media? They simply cannot give you the news straight when it comes to bloody sharia and bloody jihad. A Muslim girl was murdered over her refusal to wear a hijab, for crying out loud, and this is how it’s headlined: Canadian Teen Dies; Father Charged. Meantime, the Canadian press is pulling out its “Broad Strata” card again. Five Feet of Fury and Halls of Macadamia spotlight the press quoting spin doctor Mohamed Elmasry, President of the Canadian Islamic Congress, claiming it was a “teenager issue.”... Dhimmi journalists wield the whitewash brush over Aqsa Parvez’s dead body."

If you want another example of dhimmi Canadian journalism, check Antonia Zerbisias' commentary in The Star. She gives quotes from Bible about the inferiority of women, then writes, "Violent disagreements between parents and kids happen irrespective of race, religion or culture... It's a patriarchal world. Parvez was victimized in and by it. Patriarchy crosses virtually all religions... Make no mistake: Aqsa's murder isn't about Islam, except tangentially."

Zerbisias and the other appeasers of murderous doctrines are so busy to pat themselves on the back for being very enlightened and prejudice-free that they are unable to mention even the most glaring logical errors. Following their "logic", one could argue that Communism had no relation to Gulag because innocent people have been imprisoned also in non-Communist countries, and that Nazism had no relation to the Holocaust because Jews were persecuted also in other societies.

Unfortunately, Aqsa Parvez's murder is just the latest one in a row of "honour" murders of Western-born girls by their Muslim fathers and other family members. Here are some earlier ones which I have remembered after reading very brief notes about them in papers:

In 1993, Nazmiye Ilikpinar (15), a French girl of Turkish origin, was murdered by her family: "She did not wear a headscarf and swam in the local pool. She was the daughter of a factory worker, who had chosen a Turkish boy for her future husband. Nazmiye resisted her parents' wishes, because she was in love with a Moroccan boy. When her older brothers discovered the relationship, the parents’ reaction was violent. Nazmiye petitioned a social worker and a judge to place her in a children’s home for protection…[but] she missed her Moroccan boyfriend and returned...Soon after that she was found dead in a ditch. 'She had either been smothered or strangled,' [the newspaper] Le Monde reported. A year later, one of Nazmiye's brothers was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder, and the parents and a cousin received 20 years."

Again in France, "a young woman named Sohane Benziane was burned to death in October 2002" (source: Unknown Country).

Also in 2002, Sonay Mohammed (14), a Danish girl of Iraqi origin, was murdered by her father "because he found her lifestyle and behaviour too westernised. Sonay’s body, which bore marks of violent treatment, was found floating in Praestoe harbour, 100km south of Copenhagen... The prosecution compared Sonay’s killing to a recent case in neighbouring Sweden, where a Kurdish girl, Fadime Sahindal, was murdered by her father. " (source: KWAHK).

John Kim devoted a poem to Nazmiye and Sohane, let me quote a part of it:

"With One's Eyes Closing, Thousand's Open

Pull the vale over my eyes,

Wrap me in a sheet of lies,

Suffocate me in the bonding ties,

but I am determined. I will survive.

Hide me behind thick black thread,

Chain me to my marriage bed,

Dull the knowledge in my head,

butI will overcome. I have my own path to tread..."

I hope that, despite the attempts of Islamist and dhimmi propaganda to shut people's eyes, they will indeed open. This will help to prevent more precious young lives from being extinguished.

Update: I advise you to read this UT's post: Psychology of Men's Honour and Women's Sexuality, about the conflict of values in families of Mideast immigrants to Canada.

Don't forget Ilan Halimi

Ilan Halimi (photo copied from Wikipedia, original source AFP)

I intended to write here my next Bulgaria-centric post but a discussion at Highlander's blog changed my intention. Her Nov. 3 post The Patriot and the Racist: a tale of two citizens begins like that, "Israel is an ally of the US and is rewarded handsomely for it. They are there holding the front in the Middle East against the barbarians (that would be the Arabs - for those who don't know their 101 of the Middle East)." (Those my readers who don't know Highlander - don't rush to judge her based on this single quote, it was quite unlike her.)

I commented, "The mention of "barbarians" is interesting. By the way this was how Ilan Halimi's murderers (who were Muslims but not Arabs) called themselves..."

French commenter Nomad replied, "I am surprised you call yourself a scientist, because of this very sentence I can just see how your an adept of the "vagueness". There were no avered "arabs" in the gang who killed Ilian Halimi, the murderer is Ivoirian, his complices are white young surburbans from different EU origins... The only allegated "muslin" is the ivoirian, who is not practicing his religion though. In his mind it's more racism anti-whites than anti-semit."

So this post was called into existence.

"Ilan Halimi (1982 - 2006) was a young French Jew kidnapped by a gang of Muslim immigrants called the "Barbarians" and subsequently tortured to death over a period of three weeks." This is the beginning of his article in English Wikipedia. It specifies below, "Implicated in the crime are the members of a youth gang calling themselves "les barbares" (the Barbarians), many of whom were Muslim. The people so far arrested are mostly unemployed children of immigrants from African countries."

The same source describes Ilan's fate as follows: "On 21 January, Halimi, aged 23, was lured by an attractive 17-year-old French-Iranian girl to an apartment block in the Parisian banlieues (suburbs). There Halimi was overwhelmed by a youth gang and kept prisoner for twenty-four days. During that time, his kidnappers tortured him by stabbing him with knives, burning his face and body with cigarattes and beating him in order to try to extract a ransom of initially EUR 450,000 from his family. He was also kept naked and tied up and at one time, his kidnappers poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Reportedly, neighbors came by to watch and to even participate in the torture but no one called the authorities. On 13 February, Halimi was found naked, tied and handcuffed to a tree near a railroad track in the Parisian suburbs, with burns from acid covering 80% of his body..., with multiple stab wounds, as well as with one severed ear and toe. On the way to the hospital, he died from his wounds."

Let me comment the bit about the neighbours. I have spent all my life in apartment buildings. This sort of housing offers no privacy, let alone secrecy. If you play violin in your apartment, or if your child jumps around the way children do, neighbours come to complain. It is unthinkable that a person can be tortured to death in such a building without all inhabitants being aware. Each one of them could call the police from some pay phone and tell them what was happening without any risk to himself. Nobody did it. Some neighbours may have participated in the torture and some did not, but all of them wanted him tortured.

Let's look at the alleged kidnappers' list as given by Wikipedia. Youssouf Fofana, aged 25, the self-proclaimed "brain of the Barbarians", is regarded as Muslim even by Nomad. Indeed, she said he was non-practicing. I asked in reply, were Mohamed Atta & Co. practicing Islam while in the USA? In this context, "practicing" and "non-practicing" are terms of absolutely no importance.

The next gang member listed is "Christophe M-V aka "Moko", a 22-year-old French man". However, the corresponding French Wikipedia article gives an additional detail: "Christophe Martin-Vallet dit "Moko", martiniquais converti à l'islam". So those who make the effort to check French sources are rewarded with the information that the Barbarians' No. 2 was a convert to Islam. It is a strange coincidence that, disputing the term "racist", I had commented on the same Highlander's post, "I would also feel uncomfortable if flying with Arabs... It has nothing to do with racism. I would feel equally uncomfortable if I know that some of my white fellow passengers are converts to Islam. Because there have been many terrorist converts, regardless of their racial affiliation..."

The next person on the list is "Yalda, a seventeen-year-old French-Iranian girl who acted as a honeypot to lure Halimi into the gang's lair". It is well known which religion is dominant in Iran.

No. 4 in the list is "Samir" (Samir Aït Abdelmalek) - no details are given about his origin, the name sound like a Muslim one.

No. 5 is "Zigo" (Jean-Christophe G) - no details are given about his origin, the name doesn't sound like a Muslim one. Some Barbarians may have been non-Muslims. Would this change much? Non-Muslim useful idiots often assist Islamists in their crimes. A good example is the International Solidarity Movement.

No. 6 is "Giri", from the Comoros. Wikipedia says that this country "prior to 2002 was known officially as the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros", with as much as 98% of the population consisting of Sunni Muslims.

No. 7 is "Nabil", with Egyptian-French origins (remember Nomad's claim that not one of "the Barbarians" was Arab).

No. 8 is "Jérôme", a Portuguese. Perhaps he gave Nomad the excuse to call the gang members "white young surburbans from different EU origins", hardly an accurate description.

The Guardian, a source not known to have pro-Jewish and anti-Muslim bias, has published on Feb. 22, 2006 an article titled Brutal murder was anti-Semitic crime, says Sarkozy. It says, "The police, who found literature linking some of the suspects to Palestinian and Muslim groups, have insisted the murder was motivated by greed - the gang had demanded a ransom - and not religious motives. Mr Sarkozy told MPs: "The truth is that these crooks acted primarily for sordid and vile motives, to get money, but they were convinced that 'the Jews have money', and if those they kidnapped didn't have money, their family and their community would come up with it. That's called anti-Semitism by amalgam." He added that four of the six other people the gang had approached and tried to kidnap "were of the Jewish faith"... Police had earlier insisted the murder was not anti-Semitic, but the victim's mother Ruth Halimi accused them of ignoring this motive for fear of upsetting Muslim opinion."

Other, less politically correct sources paint even a bleaker picture. Media-Ratings reports in March 2006, "The media have been doing a lot of beating around the bush to avoid addressing the anti-Semitic nature of this crime. As soon as we found out that the victim of this crime was Jewish, that the gang’s other kidnapping attempts mainly targeted Jews, plus some additional facts Ilan Halimi’s family had revealed, there could be no doubt about its anti-Semitic motive. Yet the press held out until, first, the Israeli daily Haaretz published an interview of Mrs Halimi on February 20 2006, to the dismay of the French Foreign Office".

A Feb. 23, 2006 post by Tom Gross says, "Rafi Halimi, Ilan’s uncle, 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.” “The gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan’s tortured screams could be heard in the background.” The police found literature linking the suspects to extremist Muslim causes and also discovered that the gang had already tried to kidnap four other Jews in recent weeks. Yet, last week the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told French journalists that “no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action”. Following an outcry late last week by French Jews, the police have now admitted that there was an anti-Semitic component to this torture and murder... For days last week, when reports of the kidnapping and murder of Ilan Hariri were published in Le Figaro, Libération and Le Monde, there was no mention of the racist aspect of this crime. Only French Jewish media mentioned it.Following protests, French newspapers have now said that this was an anti-Semitic crime... In London, The Observer, the Sunday affiliate newspaper of The Guardian, in its report on the kidnapping and murder also failed to mention that the victim was Jewish. It is very unlikely that The Guardian of The Observer would report on an almost certain racial attack on a black or Asian Muslim without mentioning that it was a racial attack, or who the perpetrators and victim were."

Gross also cites a Wall Street Journal article reminding an earlier murder: "The murder of Ilan Halimi invites comparison with the November 2003 killing of a Jewish disc jockey, Sébastien Selam. His Muslim neighbor, Adel, slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, and gouged out his eyes with a carving fork in his building’s underground parking garage. Adel came upstairs with bloodied hands and told his mother, ‘I killed my Jew, I will go to paradise." In the two years before his murder, the Selam family was repeatedly harassed for being Jewish. The murderer, who admits his guilt, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and may be released soon. The initial response to the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi suggested a comparably selective ignorance."

Some months ago, a Libyan-American Islamist wrote in his blog (now deleted) a post about a young Muslim mother who was attacked by four or more young men in Glasgow and had to run away with her baby, leaving the pram behind (the case is described e.g. here).

If that blogger wanted to be more balanced in his reports about racially/religiously motivated crimes in Glasgow, he could also mention 15-year-old Kriss Donald, who in 2004 was abducted by men of Pakistani origin, stabbed 13 times, doused in petrol, set on fire and left to die. But this is another matter.

In his post, the Libyan-American said that the media reports didn't mention the religion of the attackers and that if Muslims were doing a crime, their religion would be mentioned. Highlander agreed with this in a comment. I disagreed and cited the 2005 Washington Times article about the Paris arsonists Rioters are Muslims, but don't say it.

Indeed, mainstreem media and politicians do all they can to cover up the hate crimes committed by Islamists. They prevented the murders of Kriss Donald and Sebastien Selam from receiving wide publicity, they tried to do the same with the murder of Ilan Halimi, they still manage to do it with the systematic gang-rapes of native European and other non-Muslim women by Muslims.

The question is, why do ordinary native Europeans like Nomad embrace this pernicious policy even in circumstances when they have no reason to fear for their own safety? One reason is the multi-culti charlatanism postulating that non-Westerners cannot do bad things. Another reason is the psychological phenomenon known as wishful thinking. With so many Muslim immigrants already in Europe and not intending to go anywhere, and becoming more numerous every year, it is so tempting to regard them as no worse than any other group of people. So Westerners prefer not to see the unpleasant truth, not to hear it and, above all, not to speak about it.

But the memory of the victims and the future of our children requires us to open our eyes and mouths. Because if we do not speak, who will?

Double standard

This post, to some surprise of readers who know me, will criticize the USA.

Look at the two photos above. Are they familiar to you? My guess: the first one is, the second one isn't.

The first one is among the numerous photos taken at Abu Ghraib and documenting abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards. The prisoner, named Jabar, was "hooded, positioned on a box, had wires attached to both hands and his penis and was told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off. The army claims, however, that the wires were not live and that the prisoner at no time faced actual electrocution, only the threat thereof. This was later contradicted by Jabar, who stated in an interview that the wires were electrified and had been used to give shocks. There is no way to substantiate the claims of either party" (Wikipedia).

The second photo is from an Aug. 20 article in Mother Jones magazine titled School of Shock, by Jennifer Gonnerman. It is about "the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten... Employees carry students' shock activators inside plastic cases, which they hook onto their belt loops. These cases are known as "sleds," and each sled has a photo on it to ensure employees don't zap the wrong kid."
These two examples of abuse of defenseless people received quite different media coverage. Abu Ghraib immediately was blown up to national and then international proportions. Judge Rotenberg Center didn't make its way into any of the major media. I read about it in some disability-related Web sites. I shan't be surprised if a US reader learns of it from this very post. And of course it continues to function. Disabled children are being shocked now as I am writing and most likely will still be shocked as you are reading.
While both cases of abuse are unacceptable from moral point of view, my opinion is that Judge Rotenberg Center is worse. Because it is worse to abuse children than adults and it is worse to abuse disabled people, because of their vulnerability, than non-disabled people. Especially if their disability is the reason for the abuse. Well, this is just my opinion. If you don't agree, let's say that the two cases are equally bad. Then, why did the US media, authorities and public apply such double standard? If the reaction was driven by mere moral indignation, we would expect the outcry in response to Judge Rothenberg Center to be at least as strong as that to Abu Ghraib. This isn't the case. So let's see what factor, besides moral indignation, drew additional sympathy to Abu Ghraib prisoners.
It is good to keep watch over what your government and your army are doing. In fact, it is a duty of the good citizen. It is good to stick to your moral principles when dealing with an enemy and to regard detained suspected enemy supporters as innocent until proven guilty. But when there is too much of these good things, they cease to be good. Moreover, they play directly at the hands of the enemy.
One of the most devastating events of the 20th century was the Vietnam War. It lasted for decades and ended with US defeat, mainly due to lack of decisiveness and popular support. The antiwar opposition was heterogeneous, including non-specific pacifists, communists, people not understanding the communist threat and people simply not wanting US lives and resources to be lost on some presumed long-term US interests abroad and/or helping unimportant small yellow people. It is noteworthy that, while mainstream antiwar protesters were speaking of the Vietnamese civilian victims only, a significand minority carried the logic to its end and marched under the banner of Viet Cong. Perhaps it was psychologically more acceptable for a US citizen to think that his army retreated from the battlefield for moral reasons than to preceive it as a military defeat. So the US troops became the bad guys while, correspondingly, Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army became the good guys.
The grim legacy of the Vietnam War is that what used to be regarded as treachery became mainstream behaviour in the USA. People are extremely suspicious to the justifications their government uses to take part in a war, and the war tactics. In particular, it is largely thought that wars could and should be carried out without losing soldiers, without killing and maiming civilians and without violating any human right of enemy combatants. When the US army falls short of these very high moral and technical demands, US public withdraws its support and gives it to the enemy instead. Let's face it: although it is not justified to abuse even the doer of the most despiceable action, the abuse at Abu Ghraib is regarded as so horrible because the victims are thought to be innocent. Not innocent for technical reasons or in the sense of "until/unless proven guilty", but precisely because they are thought to have taken part in the resistance. At the moment when the war in Iraq turned out not to be so quick, easy and popular as it was hoped to be, the US public started to doubt its moral grounds. Soon it looked forward for every piece of news supporting the idea that US army is "occupier" and Iraqi Islamist terrorists (plus all foreign jihadis who sneaked into Iraq to kill Americans) are patriots and freedom fighters.
The media of course contributed much to this unfortunate turn, as they had to the defeat in the Vietnam War. They happily broadcasted each (proven or unproven) report of misconduct by US troops or their allies, even when it was clear that it would harm the US cause. The publicity given to reports and photos of the abuse at Abu Ghraib resulted, among other things, in the kidnapping and beheading of innocent US businessman and humanitarian Nicholas Berg. I hoped in vain that Berg's death would lead to some soul-searching by US journalists and other opinion makers. I talked about it with my brother who lives in the USA. He said, "I couldn't name a single newspaper or TV channel which would decline to publish hot news because of care about vital US interests."
In this situation, prospects for the future don't look very bright. As a Turkish general once said, "the main problem with having the Americans as allies is that you never know when they are going to stab themselves in the back."

Mideast conflict: the dire consequences of a "deadly and disgusting bias"

On the evening of May 14, 1948 Israel declared independence. Therefore, May 15 is marked by Palestinians and other Arabs as Nakba (Catastrophe) day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day). This week, AngloLibyan wrote a post about it (http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2007/05/nakba-day.html). Libyan-British blogger Mani (currently occupying the prestigeous position of my favourite opponent) commented, "Besides the plights and inhumane suffering of everyone in the world, this issue is the only one in the world treated with such deadly and disgusting bias". With some envy to the power of his expression, I copied and reposted it as my comment to the same thread. Nobody caught my irony! So I decided, instead of trolling on other people's blogs, to sit down and write a post of my own.

I agree with Karl Popper that frankly stating where you stand is better than even the most sincere attempts to be objective, so let me say right now that I am strongly pro-Israel. It hasn't always been so: in my school years, even in high school, I was strongly pro-Palestinian. I felt sympathy to the plight of Palestinians, forced to live under occupation of newcomers on their land, as we Bulgarians were "occupied" by the Ottoman Turks centuries ago. I wondered why Palestinians weren't allowed to have their own little corner, their state in the West Bank and Gaza. I was outraged by the number of children killed and maimed in the conflict. Because Israel had statehood and democracy, I held ordinary Israelis more or less responsible for every action of their army, while at the same time I didn't hold ordinary Palestinians responsible at all for the actions of Palestinian terrorists, as I wouldn't agree to be held responsible for another person's crime just because he is Bulgarian like me.

Over years, my opinion gradually changed. I learned more about the rights of Israeli Arabs and of the actually quite benign treatment of Palestinians by Israelis even in the occupied territories. E.g. look at the first image above (copied from the cited AngloLibyan's post, original source unknown) - can you imagine a Chechen boy standing in a similar way near a Russian tank and a photographer allowed to make a shot? I acknowledged the autonomy given to Palestinians by Israel. I appreciated the abolitionist position of Israel on death penalty. But what actually changed my mind was not the behaviour of Israelis but that of Palestinians. As the proverb says, nobody can do to you (a thing as bad as) what you do to yourself. I saw wide-spread Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War; wide-spread support to terrorists, including terrorists specifically targeting children; using terrorist organizations as a substitute for political parties and electing their ringleaders; widespread and public joy after the deaths of innocent people at the hands of terrorists, mainly (but not exclusively) after Sept. 11; using their own children as mere weapons in the war against the Jews, if not conceiving children specifically for this purpose. I realized that Palestinians didn't actually want their own little corner in the West Bank and Gaza but a base from where to attack and eventually destroy Israel and its Jewish population.

Let me now, without claiming any expertise in history, try and write a brief historical overview of the conflict. I won't care to find and cite every source - it would take a month. Besides, it is not so important, because there is little real contradiction between the sources. They may seem as different from each other as Heaven is from Earth, but if you remove some adjectives and other emotionally charged words, the claims of Israeli and Arab historians and even propagandists turn out to be essentially the same. E.g. if you step across any gallery of Palestinians "heroes" and "martyrs" and show curiousity what they have actually done, you will reveal stories corresponding almost word-to-word to what Israeli sources say.

The conflict prehistory begins nearly two millenia ago, when after unsuccessful uprisings most of the surviving Jews were expelled from Palestine by the Romans. Eventually, their place was taken by Arabs, although this land until recently remained scarcely populated (small wonder - as Leo Taxil noted, there seem to be few territories as hostile to human habitation as the Promised Land). Although Palestine remained through centuries a dreamland for religious Jews and a special place even for secular Jews, during the 18th-19th century it seemed that most European Jews would be content to remain as minorities in the countries where they lived. However, at the end of the 19th century it became clear that a new powerful wave of anti-Semitism was on the rise (some authors say the landmark event was the Dreyfus Affair). An increasing number of Jews accepted the idea of a nation-state of their own in Palestine - the Zionism movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism). After Ottoman rule over Palestine was brought to an end by World War I, the Zionist idea of "a national home for Jews in that country" was accepted by the League of Nations. The British were given a mandate over Palestine in order to prepare the formation of an Arab state east of Jordan river (Transjordan, now Jordan) and a Jewish-majority state west of Jordan. The exact boundaries of this Jewish state were disputed "with conflicting and shifting British promises to Jewish and Arab interests" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine), but the important thing was that Jewish families were allowed to settle and buy property west of Jordan.

As you can guess, nobody asked the locals what they thought of the idea. They surely had hoped for a self-rule after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and, knowing the strengh of (pan)Arab nationalism, I can quite believe Palestinians when they say to have opposed the idea of Israel right from the beginning. Most Israeli sources say that Jewish immigrants in fact benefited the local Arabs by creating jobs, which attracted also many Arabs from neighbouring lands to Palestine. I find no contradiction between these claims. Why not let somebody else build a factory or a farm and organize the production, then dispossess him and take the factory or farm for yourself? In fact, this is in essence what socialism is about.

Anyway, during the 1930s the Palestinians were surely seeing the writing on the wall. So they began to seek allies to help them get rid of the Jews. Of course, this brought them to Nazi Germany. "Within weeks of Hitler’s coming to power in 1933, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem got in touch with the German consul general in Jerusalem, Doctor Heinrich Wolff, and offered his services" (Bernard Lewis, The New Anti-Semitism, http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/21832.html; this is a must-read article). I have myself seen a photo of German Army officers with their Arab allies in a World War II-dating newspaper. Nazi Germany was eventually defeated, but not before it managed not only to carry out the Holocaust but to infect the Arabs with the virus of the new anti-Semitism. Although the Koran demonizes the Jews, the Jewish minorities in Arab lands enjoyed considerable tolerance through the centuries, at least compared to the ruthless persecutions in Christianic Europe. According to Lewis, it was the Nazis who, after reviving the medieval Christian concept of the Jews as carriers of "cosmic, satanic evil", introduced it to the Arab world.

A characteristic and somewhat puzzling feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the readiness of non-Palestinian Arabs to get involved into it. When in 1947 UN approved a partition plan separating Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, it was rejected not only by Palestinians but also by Arab states. (I wonder why they rejected it; you can see the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan - the territory given to Jews is quite meager.) After the rejection, Israel declared independence in 1948 and was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Lebanon. In this war, Jews received about as much support from the world as they had received during the Holocaust. Still, they won. The real losers were those Palestinians who became refugees. Some of them were expelled by the Israeli army or forced to flee after finding themselves too close to the battlefields; but the majority were lured to leave by the invading Arabs so that to allow unrestrained campaign against the Jews. The large Arab minority of today's Israel proves that Arabs haven't been victims of true ethnic cleansing. An additional proof came in 2006, when Hezbollah commander Nasrallah warned Arab residents of Haifa to leave the city. Rejecting the idea, one of their leaders said, "The Palestinian people are especially unwilling to be refugees of any kind again" (http://themiddleeastnow.com/category/israeliarabs). However, while generally not expelling Arabs, Israel didn't allow the refugees to return. This shouldn't surprise anybody. By this time, it was clear that those Arabs who had fled, and too many even of those who had remained, were committed to the task of destroying Israel by armed struggle, terror and, let's say it, demographic stealing of the country from the Jewish majority by a birth rate typical for non-primate mammals. So it was a bingo for Israel that many of its Arabs escaped and I believe every Israeli statesman who would discuss their return should be sent to mental health counselling.

As I hinted above, the Palestinians were wronged by the creation of the Jewish state, facing the choice either to leave their historic land or to leave there as a minority. However, I think that sometimes justice isn't the most important thing and isn't even achievable for all sides. What is most important and achievable in all cases is life. I disapprove the fact that at the end of World War II millions of Europeans were forcibly expelled from their homes and driven to an exodus (the Germans from Sudetenland and East Prussia, the Bulgarians from Greece etc.) However, I tend to think that the victors, standing on the ruins of Europe, knew how to save the continent from an otherwise inevitable demise. They decided that it is better to do injustice to a minority by deporting it, rather than let it stay and be a potential casus belli in the future. Perhaps they were right.

However, soon after these mass deportations, in 1949, the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibited any future actions of this kind. In particular, its Article 49 states, "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." So, while European countries only years ago had conviniently deported populations regarded as security threat, Israel was not allowed to do so. In fact, as new states emerged in the post-colonial era, Article 49 was often violated. E.g. the number of Hindus forced to flee Pakistan is estimated by some to equal the entire Bulgarian population - 8 millions. But everybody turns a blind eye to such violations, unless Israel is doing them. The sense of collective guilt in Europeans after the Holocaust and the increasing power of Arab countries based on their oil reserves led to a special status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is regarded as different from, and more important than, any other conflict. Israel is scrutinized, its right to defend itself is denied, while Palestinians and their representatives are exonerated of whatever they do and meet no demands. This is indeed a "deadly and disgusting bias" - disgusting because it is deadly and deadly in the literal sense, because it has caused the death of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians and other human beings.

After losing the 1948 war, Arab countries expelled their Jewish minorities to Israel. While this wrong done to the Jews could not undo the wrong done to the Palestinians, it presented the opportunity to end the conflict in a relatively decent and respectful way for all parties involved. Let's sign a "population exchange" treaty, we take your unwanted Palestinian refugees, you take our unwanted Jews and everybody goes back to business. However, the Arabs didn't want it that way. While happy to get rid of the Jews, they refused to integrate the Palestinians and preferred to keep them in refugee camps for indefinite time as a weapon against Israel. I think this sad development is due to the famous Arab honour, more disastrous and lethal than any other honour known to me.

The United Nations Organization did what it could to make the matters worse (it is good at this, although hardly at anything else). Neglecting outrageous human rights abuses and outright genocides done by other countries, the UN produces one after another resolutions against Israel. In fact, Israel has a second-class status at the UN (http://christianactionforisrael.org/un/status.html). While refugees of other conflicts are cared for by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRA), which helps them integrate and find new homes when return to the old homes is impossible or undesirable, for the Palestinian refugees a special agency was created - UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Even if the claims that it has become heavily infiltrated by terrorist organizations aren't true, it is true that this agency does nothing to help Palestinian refugees integrate anywhere. Some of them are already a third generation of refugees.

I'm not going to describe in detail how the conflict developed over the years. The Palestinians seem to have very perverted ideas of how newcomers to a country should behave. After Jordan accepted them, they tried to take the power, Jordan expelled them, Lebanon accepted them, they tried to take the power again and this destroyed the democracy and prosperity of the country. Arabs continued making wars with Israel and after one of them, in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Those pro-Palestinian forces that don't dare to call openly for destruction of Israel insist that it returns within its pre-1967 borders. However, these borders are from military point of view indefensible - a fact which deserves more publicity and explains Israel's reluctance to withdraw from these territories. When Israel does withdraw, however, as in the recent disengagement from Gaza, it is not rewarded with peace. The Palestinians always use whatever land Israel gives away to them as a base for more terror.

I don't know what the collective Palestinian psyche was like at the beginning of the conflict, but now it seems even more degraded than this of the Nazi Germans. The latter at least made their living themselves while Palestinians are fed by UNRWA, by Arab countries, by the EU, by USA, by everybody. Nobody seems to think that Palestinians should make a living and raise their children on what they earn, like all normal people. Remember the discussion after the Hamas election victory: "Should we stop feeding the Palestinians to punish them for electing Hamas, or we should go on feeding them whatever they do?" In fact, the aid may be discontinued if Palestinians STOP doing things like electing Hamas (or al-Fatah - there is hardly much difference). Arabs pay Palestinians so that they continue their "freedom fight" (read: to finish what Hitler begun), while Westerners give money on the premise that Palestinians would become even worse if not fed, similarly to a friend of mine who, although very poor, always had a bisquit for her landlord's dog so that to bribe it into not attacking her. So the situation with the Palestinians is best described by the expression "Killing for a living" (the title of Animal Planet series devoted to predation). If they embrace peace, starvation is likely to follow.

With time, the problem is getting only worse, because the number of Palestinian refugees is growing (and also the number of Gaza and West Bank residents who are also committed to "freedom fight"). The 1948 war produced several hundred thousands of Palestinian refugees, now they are estimated to be about 4 million. Part of this unsustainable population growth is the direct result of unearned incomes: when people make a living on what they produce, there is no premium on reproduction and the size of the family is naturally limited; aid, on the contrary, is distributed based on the number of family members, so encouraging the least productive to have more children.

There is also another, more sinister reason behind the large Palestinian families: children are regarded as a means to achieve the society's major goal - destroying Israel; and alas, it is not only about outnumbering the Jews. Let me cite Leilouta, who is a witness rather than an Israeli supporter: "One of my mom’s Palestinian friends was in her early thirties at that time. She had 6 kids. She told me she was planning on having a few more. I looked at her with a surprised look thinking that she already had her hands full. She noticed my surprise and told me that she and her friends wanted to have as many kids as they could so they could go fight for their land" (http://leilouta.blogspot.com/2006/07/wein-el-malayeen_16.html). Another piece of evidence is the second image shown above - the so-called "Baby bomber" (copied from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2075072.stm, original source AP). This photo of a boy less than 2 years old dressed as a suicide bomber was found by Israeli troops searching a house in Hebron. The baby's grandfather said it was taken "just for fun". To me, it is scary. It means to tell the child, when he grows older, that Mom and Dad will be happy if he blows himself up among some Jewish pizza eaters.

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? I don't see it. At any rate, it is not the idea of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. These two small pieces of land, separated from each other, couldn't produce an economically viable state even if populated by educated and skilled workers, not by people whose only area of expertise is terror. They would suffer economic hardship, would blame guess whom and resume their attacks. In fact, Gaza already is an experiment of Palestinian self-rule and shows its failure (e.g. read what it means to be ale-less in Gaza). Nor is there any reason to lump together West Bank and Gaza residents in one nation - what is common between them and separating them from other Arabs, except that their anti-Semitism is really at an extreme level?

My personal opinion is that Israel must decide what parts of the West Bank it wants to keep for security reasons, the rest of the West Bank must go to Jordan and Gaza - to Egypt. Other countries must also help by donating funds and taking some Palestinians. Personally, although there is no group of people whom I like less than the Palestinians (and this post shows it), I would welcome several hundred of them as immigrants in my city. During the last year cartoon crisis, when masked Palestinian gunmen were showing muscles in the quarters of European institutions feeding them, I was very angry and thought that if it depended on me, I wouldn't let a single Palestinian set foot on European soil. But meanwhile the emotions have cooled and my intolerance has dropped back to its background level. So I realize, again, that principles must sometimes be put above interests and that, if we want a just and lasting peace, everybody must make some sacrifice or at least contribution.

The war aborted, and why not to trust Margarita Mihneva

(Caution: long post)
The war between Hezbollah/Lebanon and Israel I wrote about on July 29 was aborted. The enemy claims they won and Israel lost. In a sense, they are right: without finding the kidnapped soldiers, Israel agreed to a cease-fire and so used the simplest and most reliable way to lose - left the battlefield. Has Israel caught from old Europe the virus of unwillingness to survive?
However, it would be wrong to blame Israeli leadership alone. I cannot imagine the war led logically, i.e. spreading to Hezbollah sponsors Iran and maybe Syria, without the help of the USA. And instead of helping, the Americans were pressing Israel to step back. Somebody rightly described Bush as "all talk, no walk".
Of course it was just a stage in the ongoing global war and, as such, it produced some benefits: revealed the arsenal and capabilities of Hezbollah, the attitudes of key world players and the so-called world opinion (about the latter and how much it costs, read a good essay at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23635). However, this knowledge will be useful only if somebody really intends to resume the fight.
As for the Lebanese, it seems that what sympathy I had for them was largely undeserved and the support for Hezbollah actually is much stronger than I thought. I'm translating information by Netinfo: "The (Lebanese) government hasn't even considered disarming Hezbollah, which is one of the basic requirements in the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution... The pro-Syrian president Emil Lahud said it would be a shame to insist for disarming the national resistance (Hezbollah), the only force in the Arab world that stood against Israel..." (http://news.netinfo.bg/?tid=40&oid=923890).
Hezbollah ringleader Hassan Nasrallah became a hero of the Muslim world because of his successes in kidnapping soldiers and shelling Israeli cities and villages. These same Muslims who hail a thug for deliberate killings of civilians are angry when we say they are bad people... I recently commented on Highlander's blog, "Can the Muslim world reach a deeper point in moral degradation? I cannot imagine, but let's wait and see, every time when I think this is impossible they manage to make another step downward. If the Devil exists and makes list of the souls who belong to him, I pity the poor fellow, he must already have arthritis from the too-intensive writing or typing."
Or possibly I'm too pessimistic. Perhaps, when things become much worse, the civilized world will awaken from its lethargy and take care of itself. And at least our media will stop working as enemy PR. Last night, I watched the TV show "Neudobnite (The Inconvenient)". It's broadcasted by cable TV Channel 3 and its host is one of the best known Bulgarian journalists, Margarita Mihneva. She had invited two Lebanese who offered plenty of anti-Israel talk and put photos of killed Lebanese children under our noses (as if the Israeli children killed on Friday are expected, like Jesus Christ, to be alive again on Sunday).
I liked just one of the questions asked by Mihneva: what the ordinary Lebanese think about Hezbollah. The Lebanese guests said that the lack of support of Lebanese to Hezbollah is US media disinformation, in fact all Hezbollah fighters are Lebanese and the population supports them. Unfortunately, Mihneva offered no comment and no further questions to clarify this important issue.
All the time Mihneva was saying that she will present the Jewish viewpoint as well. Only during the last minutes we heard a Bulgarian Jewish intellectual, Jacob Dzherasi. However, he was not in the studio, his voice was taped. And he was not discussing the current conflict but something completely unrelated - the architecture and history of a particular house at Oborishte street in Sofia! She used him just to wash her hands. So much about the honest representation of opposite viewpoints.
Finally, let me quote a different Arab voice, like a beam of light in a realm of darkness: Libyan reformist writer Dr. Muhammad Al-Huni and his article "The lexicon of resistance", presented by MEMRI (http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD125306#_edn1):
"The word 'resistance' has come to be constantly used in the killing fields known as the Middle East... When Shi'ites kill Sunnis and Sunnis kill Shi'ites in Iraq merely for their [sectarian] identity, it is called 'resistance.' When Janjaweed gangs murder unarmed civilians in Darfour, it is called 'resistance.' When year after year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad extinguish any spark of peace which can end the suffering of the Palestinian people, it is called 'resistance.' When Hizbullah takes an entire people hostage and refuses to obey the elected [authorities], dragging Lebanon into destruction, it is called 'resistance.' The war which is being waged by the new global terrorism under the command of bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and Al-Zarqawi is called 'resistance'... What is common to these types of resistance is that they all present themselves as 'Islamic'... The project of these resistance [groups] has had its day in the Arab world. It made the most noise and the most bloodshed, and therefore its dreadful collapse is highly imminent. They betted on a wild horse, and have left not a single seed that can sprout, nor a single bud that can open. They are the murderers of the future, and therefore they have no future."
Read the whole text, it's worth it. I hope Highlander will see it, too, because it's by her fellow countryman not very likely to be published in Jamahiriya or any other Libyan newspaper. I hope his prognosis will come true.

Parental psychopathology

When I was 11 or 12, I so much wanted to understand human mind, and with so little success, that I read through an entire textbook of psychiatry. Later I learned that understanding humans comes naturally with experience. Now I'll try the other way round: to speak like an amateur psychiatrist on a subject which fully deserves the attention of professionals but seems neglected by them.
Highlander had quoted Libyan-American blogger Smokey Spice complaining a year ago about relations' attempts to arrange a marriage. I opened the blog to see what the situation is now, has the girl finally found her man, arranged or otherwise. But, as I have mentioned earlier, Arab blogs regarding Palestine and Israel and the current war resemble minefields and you can enjoy them only if you decide not to care when you'll step on a landmine. Eh well, I landed right onto a mine. You can see it at http://smokeyspice.blogspot.com/2006/04/mothers-voice.html. For readers who have a bad Internet connection and don't want to venture another link, I'll tell shortly what it is about. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli woman whose child was killed in 1997 at the age of 13 by a suicide bomber, speaks to the European Parliament on International Women's Day. She says a Palestinian woman must have been invited instead of her. Then she states that "state violence and army violence... are the lot of Muslim women today, not only in Palestine but wherever the enlightened Western world is setting its big imperialistic foot... The so-called free world is afraid of the Muslim womb... This in spite of the fact that the people who are destroying the world today are not Muslim. One of them is a devout Christian, one is Anglican and one is a non-devout Jew... Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan women are my sisters because we are all at the grip of the same unscrupulous criminals who call themselves leaders of the free enlightened world and in the name of this freedom and enlightment rob us of our children. Furthermore, Israeli, American, Italian and British mothers have been for the most part violently blinded and brainwashed to such a degree that they cannot realize their only sisters, their only allies in the world are the Muslim Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghani mothers, whose children are killed by our children or who blow themselves to pieces with our sons and daughters... My natural and civil rights as a mother have been violated and are violated because I have to fear the day my son would reach his 18th birthday and be taken away from me to be the game tool of criminals such as Sharon, Bush, Blair and their clan of blood-thirsty, oil-thirsty, land thirsty generals..."
Nurit Peled-Elhanan is not the first parent who, after losing a child at the hand of Islamists, champions their cause and spits on the leaders of the free world (not for failure to achieve victory, but for the very attempt to defend freedom). I know of two other such parents, both Americans. The first is Michael Berg whose son Nicholas (Nick), a humanitarian, was kidnapped and beheaded on video in Iraq. The second is Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey was killed as a soldier in Iraq. Upon reading Michael Berg's interview where he was accusing Pres. Bush more than the terrorists for his son's death, my mother said, "You mustn't blame the poor man for what he says, because a parent cannot be expected to remain sane after losing a child." I think she is right and Sandmonkey was too cruel when he called Cindy Sheehan "walking genetic waste" (though I understand him, too; she said e.g. that Sept. 11 was done by Americans themselves).
The above cited text is clearly also a product of a derailed mind. Reading it, I automatically sought some telltale particle, something fit for diagnosis, no matter how small. It is usually present in our opponents' writings. I think I found it here, too. Did you? The last of the cited sentences, where the mother said how afraid she was for her son. I immediately remembered that both Michael Berg and Cindy Sheehan have at least one surviving child.
Imagine you are a parent and lose your only child, or all of your children. The world ends for you. But it also means that you reach immunity. Because they have done everything to you, your enemies can do nothing more. Of course they can kill you as well, but you don't care. You are free and don't need to reckon with them or to appease them in any way.
Now imagine that you have two or three children and one of them is killed. You are hurt beyond healing, but you still have children to care and fear for. The war continues with no end in sight, the free world is in a difficult position, and to you it seems even bleaker than it actually is. The enemy claims victory at the battlefields and many fools in your own community take its side. I guess you'll be in the worst situation if you are religious. You begin to doubt your God who obviously cannot or doesn't want to help His people. Possibly He is powerless and the evil deity worshipped and offered human sacrifices by the enemy is the real God? If so, let's rush to pay respect to Allah, let's appease and praise His hordes, so that He spares your other children...
This is my explanation for the psychopathology shown by these three parents. Of course the truth may be different. What I am sure is that it is cruel and undignified for journalists and others to push microphones in the faces of these unfortunate parents and to expose to the crowd their minds, burned to red by pain.

Why I am reserved towards the European Union

I have mixed thoughts about the European Union, which Bulgaria is scheduled to join on Jan. 1, 2007. On one hand, our country is in such an abyss that it is likely to benefit from EU, at least we'll have more Western influence. (We'll also receive funding, but I don't think this will help - societies, similarly to the healthy adult individuals forming their backbone, rarely benefit from goods they haven't earned themselves.) On the other hand, you never know when the offsets will outweigh the advantages, and besides, by its rush to join EU and its future membership Bulgaria adds more undue legitimacy to this very dubious construction of political thought.
Why do I dislike the EU? It has too much bureaucracy, too much intervention of state into every affair, too much anti-American and anti-Semitic feelings. To form it, governments used blackmail. They first introduced myriads of sky-high tariffs and other barriers to free trade and movement, then told their peoples, "We'll let you have free trade and movement if you let us create united Europe, overlay a super-state onto the outdated nation states." The good old nation states of course were not perfect, but democracy in them was or at least could be functional. In the EU, the most important decisions are taken by people appointed by non-transparent procedures who are neither elected by anybody nor accountable to anybody. The elected body, the European Parliament, isn't much better because any decision concerning any country is taken by a majority assembled from other countries and hence incompetent in the situation (even Germany, France or Britain are a minority if taken isolated). In the United States, despite the common language and history, it is well known that New Yorkers know little of the life in Minnesota and vise versa, so states have much autonomy. In Europe, you have dozens of languages and cultures with long history of wars and no real wish to unify, yet the Eurobureaucrats know only how to centralize, centralize, centralize.
I first formulated these thoughts a year or two ago when talking with a British, who seemed surprised by my opposition to the EU. (He probably expected such opposition in Bulgaria to be rooted only in primitive nationalism and other anti-Western sentiments.) In that discussion, I didn't use one of the most important arguments against the EU - that it allowed itself to be transformed into what Bat Ye'or called Eurabia. Here I am pasting a June 1 post by Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey (http://www.sandmonkey.org/):

Supporting free speech proves danish intolerance
Oh man, my head hurts!
Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s the report on Denmarkreleased yesterday by the European Commission against Racism andIntolerance. And here’s the section — under the heading “vulnerablegroups” — on Danish Muslims. Quote (footnotes omitted):
"In September 2005, with the stated intention ofverifying whether freedom of speech is respected in Denmark, a widely-read Danish newspaper called on cartoonists to send in caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad; such drawings are considered to be offensive by many Muslims. This newspaper thus published 12 suchcartoons, one of which portrayed the Prophet as a terrorist. The issue has caused widespread condemnation and a protest march was organised in Copenhagen as a result. The fact that, according to a survey carried out regarding the publication of these drawings, 56% of the respondents felt that it was acceptable, is a testimony of the current climate in Denmark. ECRI considers that the goal of opening a democratic debate on freedom of speech should be met without resorting to provocative acts that can only predictably elicit an emotional reaction."
Here’s the poll I think they’re getting that number from. Via WorldPublicOpinion:
"A majority—56 percent—of Danes in the Feb. 3 Epinionpoll agreed with the statement “Respect for freedom of speech should be more important than the consideration of religious sentiment.” Only 37 percent agreed with the statement “Out of respect for the Muslim faith, the cartoons should not have been published even though this could be considered a limitation on the freedom of speech.”
Proof positive of a climate of intolerance. (End of Sandmonkey's post.)

Well, if the EU doesn't protect its members and the values of the civilization, what is the use of it? Just to keep legions of bureaucrats on payroll?
Danes were right to resist the EU. We older people remember that they said "No" on the first referendum whether to join EU. The government spent 3 years on pro-EU propaganda and then made another referendum. This time EU won by a very thin margin. Some Danes began street protests, the police used firearms against them and injured several people - a thing that hadn't happen in Denmark for many decades. So the Danish EU membership was baptized in blood.
Those street protests were neither violent nor even very numerous, so the use of force was unnecessary and just showed how easily the pro-EU politicians resort to nondemocratic means in order to enforce EU on the reluctant plebs. It is also notable that if the people say "No" to the EU, the referendum is periodically repeated until they say "Yes", after which it is never performed again. The national independence is lost forever. But is it really forever? We'll see.