The Civility of Islam, Religion of Peace

It is a religion based on a collection of writing. Held to be sacred. As the direct word of God, given to a human interlocutor.

Perhaps some of the utterances and proclamations of that virtuous and perfect spirit were misinterpreted when they were transcribed. Perhaps it was the inclination of a man steeped in the Bedouin way of life where tribal animosities and constant warfare and assassinations being the order of the culture and the heritage of the desert, to tinge the words of ineffable wisdom with the stirring battle cries of a warring people.

The out
cry to defend Islam from humiliation and insult and the spurning of its primacy as the pinnacle of religious righteousness and paramount positioning in a world where other communities of peoples have their own spiritual head-of-mission reigning in the wide blue heavens, remains of primary and paramount importance. Jihad is urged on the faithful, and martyrdom to the cause represents the highest order of human endeavour in the honouring of Islam.

It is a militant creed within a religion based on utter and total surrender of the inner and outer self. The sacred writings betray an unequivocal belligerence toward those who would oppose the first-place status of Islam. As for those who would be foolish enough to question the rights, priorities and values held within Islam, and the pedigree and purpose of its founder, the Prophet, woe betide them for they are destined to perish.

The final words they will hear in their fearful ears informing them they are doomed to death is Allahu Akbar! This frequent and deadly attention is purveyed not only toward infidels but also toward Muslims considered to be insufficiently dedicated to their religion's fundamentalist principles. It can be said of a certainty that the countries of the Middle East where Islam surfaced in the wake of Judaism and Christianity, remain broadly dysfunctional.

As the religion is one of a tyrannical spiritual ruler, so too are the theocratic and titular and totalitarian heads of state and governance of Muslim countries. As long as these remained somewhat closed societies with scant interaction with other, non-Muslim countries of the world on a population-to-population basis, the Muslim ummah seemed content to eke out their lives as their rulers saw fit for them.

With the advent of instant technological communication things appear to have gone awry; the people have become alert to the fact that other countries, particularly those of the West, given to democratic governance, do not subjugate their people. There is law and order and there is respect for peoples' rights and there are values that are fundamental to decent human behaviour and there are opportunities to be had elsewhere.

Why not where they live? So young, unemployed and educated Egyptians protested. As did Tunisians. Bahrainians. Yemenites. Syrians, Libyans, Iranians. In Egypt there is a transition government toward civil rule, and Egyptian Muslims mount attacks against Egyptian Copts. In Iran, the people no longer dare protest and remain simmeringly quiescent. In Yemen military forces fire at protesters.

In Libya, the dictator sends out his military forces to bomb and strafe residents of cities that have been taken by rebels, some of whom are Islamists, looking to profit through their fanatical al-Qaeda connections. In Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, Islamist fundamentalists calling themselves the scholars, are Talib who make a common pact with other Islamists and slaughter those Muslims who are insufficiently pious.

Afghan police and the Afghan national military practise sexual abuse and exploitation of young boys, because this is an age-old accepted practise, little spoken of but endemic in society, somewhat like the overwhelming incidence of base corruption and rapacious tribal war-lordism.
While in Syria its president is intent on putting down a popular insurrection much as his father before him did.

The uprising having begun with fifteen young Syrian boys writing graffiti on their school walls demanding the end of police rule - causing their arrest and incarceration, the first in a long line of some eight thousand arrested protesters some of whom have undergone torture and rape. And in Syria as well the military has been charged to fire with live ammunition upon the people.

Who is prepared to stand forward and make sense of this conundrum of a professed religion of peace inspiring so much 'misunderstanding' of what peace represents?

The Message is the Medium

Spiritual leader of well over a billion faithful of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI sought to appeal to humanitarian compassion in his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" blessing and speech. The time for lamentation and rejoicing as good a time as any to remind the faithful and the world at large that human beings have a practical and moral obligation to one another.

Pope Benedict must think in terms of human goodness as he gives his benediction to the waiting crowds. He must not submit to the reality that human goodness and compassion eludes too many in this world of warped entitlements and values. He remains for the faithful the embodiment of God's promise to humankind; that the faithful will be redeemed.

In his elevated station as the interceder between the Almighty and the people, it remains his obligation to instill hope and the need for kindness and consideration; to elevate the souls of his followers. He speaks of diplomacy and dialogue triumphing over conflict, that kind words are a worthy replacement for violence and arms.

This is the world that he lives within, but not the one that humanity struggles to endure. "In the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, may all citizens, especially young people, work to promote the common good." A noble sentiment, without one shred of doubt. But the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, particularly the young people, are extremely busy slaughtering one another.

Tribal antipathies, regional disputes; territorial boundaries; acquisition of natural resources; religious and sectarian, ethnic and clan hatreds thrive, helped by the greed of their totalitarian rulers, and the endemic poverty left as the lot of the people whose human rights have been violated. But the crucible of hatred and violence does not need the impetus of poverty to set it alight; hatred of the other will do very well.

Pope Benedict has little option, as the spokesperson for good in the world, relaying God's wishes for humankind, but to call for peace: "That the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence" in the Middle East. The 'inviolable right' to dignity and basic human rights is violated because it cannot be guaranteed.

Visceral distrust, hatred and violence sadly express humankind's ultimate degradation, one all too quickly resorted to with particular fervour in the Middle East, a brimming cauldron of resentment and paranoia.

Solve that and God will indeed have descended to Earth.

Influence, Respect, Humility

There is something endearing about even a programmed, obviously staged event where the most prestigious, respected religious authority figure in the world appears to be humbly presenting himself in a modest setting, to respond to the confusion in the hearts of his adoring public.

As the single most impressive and important representative of God on Earth Pope Benedict XVI made his august presence available for enquiry. At the televised question-and-answer session that took place on Good Friday, Pope Benedict responded to a question by a Japanese child by his admission that he does not have "the answers" to human suffering.

No one is too grand or too important to hold themselves above and apart from ordinary people. Particularly those people whose lives have been touched by God and who acknowledge their need to worship their Saviour during this time of his resurrection celebrated in a yearly ritual of mourning and joyfulness.

And Pope Benedict holds himself responsible for his vast flock, as must a pope do.

It is to his great credit that he has not shied away from the need to speak forcibly and without diplomatic guile to the modern-day forces of brutal violence expressed through the resentment of another, competing religion, against the followers of the Roman Catholic Church. He has pleaded repeatedly for Muslim countries to respect the human rights of Christians.

He has responded to the outrage of his own parishioners - for all those who worship at the altar of the Roman Catholic Church are his parishioners - against the depredations of parish priests and their superiors in violating the trust and the faith of children by sexually abusing them for decades. His response has been one of anguish - and of guilt.

"I am saddened", he said "that I can do so little". Referring without doubt, to the proclivities of human beings whose spirit and courage has not been equal to the demands placed upon them in the service of God. He is saddened, that though he reproves and protests against humankind's continual surrender to tribal, clan and religious destruction, passions are unabated.

He often enough - because, as the major representative as he would have it, of God upon this planet, he is infallible, and his decision is to be respected - infuriates both the faithful and those for whom his faith is not theirs. He seeks to be a unifying force for goodness yet he is often seen as a divisive force through his decisions.

Given his due, his is an impossible task. And even when tasks are possible there is the reality that no one can possibly ever satisfy all people all the time. He likely comes as close to that impossible goal as anyone may.

But then ... on the other hand ...

There's a Stretch

Smirking George Galloway is at it again. Things have been too quiet for him. He's ready again to raise a stink. Easily enough done in his presence; a baleful odour of malice emanates from his persona; it has the stink of righteousness in the mind of an anti-Semite. A natural enough alliance with groups who claim Jews represent the oppressors of the world, and Palestinians the perennial victims.

He admires and seeks to promote the vision of Hamas, a terror group outlawed in many Western countries, including Canada. While a sitting member of Britain's Parliament representing the Labour party, he took it upon himself to travel to Gaza and personally meet with the Hamas leadership. He defends Hamas as a responsible political group waging a war against the 'terrorists of Israel'.

Handing over cash and vehicles and other representative items of his great esteem for their purpose and their work, George Galloway proudly presents as a supporter of Hamas, an adversary of genocidal Israel whose military slaughtered untold numbers of innocent civilians to hear him tell it, during Israel's incursion into Gaza to halt rocket attacks against its population.

And now George has identified another adversary. The Government of Canada, and its Immigration Minister under the Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Jason Kenney, invoking his authority as a Minister of the Crown responsible for issuing visas, denied one to Galloway on the basis of his support of a terror group.

A decision which was later overturned by a Canadian federal court which insisted that it was too much of a stretch to label him a Hamas supporter merely because he delivered an 'aid convoy' and money to Gaza in care of Hamas. That the ban on permitting him entry to Canada to speak at an anti-Israel rally was unwarranted.

And thus, George Galloway has launched a lawsuit, suing Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney for defamation. Holding him responsible, through his Toronto lawyer, of being the cause, by alerting British media of Canada's barring of his entry to Canada, of his later loss of his seat through a failed re-election to Parliament.

The Blair government of which he was once a part, tossed him out in 2003 for opposing Britain's role in the Iraq war. And when he ran as a candidate in his riding for the left-wing Respect party in 2010, he was voted a remote third. Which proves that he is singularly unpopular in his riding, not that his refusal of entry to Canada a year earlier motivated voters to deny him his seat.

Obviously, his political antics, his vainglorious search for publicity, his identification with terror groups and his slander of Israel have not endeared him to that particular voting public. Unless we assume too much of the discriminating voters in the riding he sought to represent.

Vanguard Leadership Group

US Black Students Demand Arabs Stop Calling Israel Apartheid
by Maayana Miskin

The African-American student organization Vanguard Leadership Group is standing with Israel when it comes to use of the term “apartheid.” The term is “false and deeply offensive” when applied to Israel, the group said in advertisements published on Thursday.

The Vanguard Leadership Group spoke out in response to “apartheid” claims from the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Under an ad titled, “Words matter,” the group said, “We request that you immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“It is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis' record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa's,” the group said.

Students for Justice in Palestine “has chosen to manipulate rather than inform with this illegitimate analogy,” Vanguard Leadership said. “Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate mischaracterizations of Israel.”

Ceasing use of the term “apartheid” when discussing Israel would be a “first step toward raising the level of discourse,” the letter concluded.

Anti-Israel groups have long accused Israel of being an “apartheid state,” borrowing the term from South Africa, where for many decades a small white minority ruled the black majority by force. Racial discrimination was enforced by law, and black residents were denied citizenship, given inferior public services, barred from using white theaters, pools, churches, and other facilities, and judged under different laws.

In Israel, Arabs and other non-Jewish minorities are full citizens, with the same rights and obligations as any other Israeli. One exception is the fact that Arab citizens are not required to serve in the IDF, although they are allowed to do so, and a handful choose to enlist.

Palestinian Authority Arabs are not granted rights as citizens because they do not wish to become citizens, but rather, hope to create a new Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Similarly, Israelis have no rights under PA law, and in fact, are forbidden to own land or even to enter PA-controlled areas.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 11 April 2011

Humanity's Advance

Thoughtful people have without a doubt noticed this phenomenon; that educated, talented, intelligent people tend to have fewer children than people who live in ignorance and poverty. And in a world where we have learned to share, and to care and to assist others, more children born to poverty than ever are growing to adulthood. Some, if not most, destined to remain mired in poverty, where lack of exposure to educational and employment opportunities have not restrained them from having more children.

The intellectual elite plan their families. Those who will have none because they feel the world already struggles far too much to accommodate too many people. Those who relent, and have one or two, to whose physical and intellectual welfare they dedicate themselves to ensure they receive a good upbringing and education, prepared to take their responsible place in society. Theirs is a dwindling society; they barely replace themselves. So the pool of the genetically intellectually endowed is not growing apace, but stagnating.

On the other side of the equation is the immensely larger pool of the ordinary, non-cerebral drudges who perform menial duties or none at all if they live off social welfare. Amazingly, these are the people who manage to breed without a thought to the future. They are simply doing 'what comes naturally', and the outcome of what comes naturally is not necessarily a happy family with parents nourishing the bodily and mental/social needs of children. All too often the result is children growing up in a less than supportive environment, never realizing their potential.

We do have, within society, the example of a specific group of people of an ethnic, cultural, social and religious/historical background forced by a peculiar reality eliciting hostility from the greater community around them, to distinguish themselves as a matter of survival. Treated as inferiors by the commanding majority and unable to apply themselves to the usual course of employment available to others they sought alternate means by which they could support themselves.

The result was in a manner the survival of the fittest. Peoople who became by necessity more intellectually nimble, seeking out alternate means of livelihood. In the process another reality; Ashkenazi Jews who managed to distinguish themselves by their superior contribution to intellectual life, where that ethnic group representing a mere one-600th of the world's population has been enabled by their determination and DNA profile, to amass a quarter of the Nobel Prizes awarded to outstanding exemplars of human accomplishment and achievement.

Fascist Germany took the outsider status of habitually mistrusted and detested Jews to a greater more existential threat level than their predecessor anti-Semites who only slaughtered Jews in fits and starts through progroms. The Nazi regime sought to eradicate them en masse as inferior pests, portraying them as caricatures of decent human beings. The ultimate revenge upon a world that could not persuade itself to care enough, was to endure, and survive the onslaught.

And throughout human history there has always been, within any given human population those ordinary people of the masses, and among them a handful with superior mental endowments. It is not all that surprising, given the numbers then, that the majority will go on producing replicas of themselves, while the scant minority will look beyond themselves. Human advancement in the arts and sciences owes all to the few.

And they are becoming fewer.

Ultra-Orthodox

Religious orthodoxy can be fulfilling to the faithful. Religious fundamentalism responds to the baser of human instinctual needs to find fault with other groups and religions, and to maintain a rigidly inflexible belief in one's superiority and the exceptionality of one's religion. Religious fundamentalism seem to express the most intolerant of expressions of one group toward another, setting up indivisible barriers between people.

The ancient, rigidly encoded tribal mentality expressed in various exclusionary ways to satisfy the emotional needs of those who seem to naturally gravitate to viewing others as different, as somehow lesser endowed and incompatible with one's own tribe's values exemplifies fundamentalism.

It makes no difference which of the world's religions is involved, fundamentalism is inherently divisive and counter-productive to people living in a pluralistic way.

In Israel the ultra-Orthodox feel entitled to present themselves as closer to God than any others. They feel entitled to view other Jews as not representing the true nature of Judaism, that anything resembling secularism is an affront to them personally and a true blasphemy. It is they and their rigid and countless proscriptions that represent God's will and wishes.

Their total commitment to parsing and interpreting Holy Scripture is all-consuming.

The life of the religious, invested with doctrine, with no time to be set aside for the practical aspects of earning a living is represented by the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, representing a mere 6% of the population, but wielding a powerful influence in government through Israel's fractured political system of electoral representation and its plentiful political parties.

Israel was created as a secular state governed on behalf of the world's Jews for whom an open invitation to become citizens has always been extended, and diaspora Jewry have responded to a degree; some migrating to Israel, others content to remain where they have been citizens for hundreds of years, while supporting the concept of return or aliyah and sending financial support.

The Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox, have become so influential, despite their minority status, they have been successful in imposing restrictions on the majority secular population. Separation between men and women in synagogues, on public transit, in business enterprises have become an increasing irritant to a public that has good reason to resent the imposition on equality.

"How is it that as Jewish women, we are free in Berlin, in Rome, in Chicago and Toronto, while in Jerusalem, it is illegal and profane for us to read from the Torah?
"At the Wall, the question is whose Wall is it anyway? Is it really the holiest place for all the Jewish people? If it is the holiest place for all the Jewish people, you can't silence half the population.
"You can't criminalize what I am doing because what I am doing is what the Jewish world is doing.
"I am not the only woman wearing a tallith [prayer shawl] and holding a Torah scroll and praying out loud. I am one of many, many millions of women who are doing that. but in Israel, I am now facing criminal charges." Anat Hoffman, executive director, Israel Religious Action Centre, legal advocacy arm, Reform Movement, Israel

In Israel, the Haredi are excused from serving in the Israel Defence Forces. A majority of Haredi families exist on state welfare because the men study the fine points of Torah as perpetual students and engage in pilpul, leaving no time nor inclination for worldly pursuits like earning a living for their families. The women are seen and not heard, and are exhorted to enjoy a high birth rate.

Their schools do not teach core subjects; instead focus on religion, ignoring the need to teach science or language or mathematics. Their numbers among the general population are rising and will continue to rise. Their political influence and xenophobia will also continue to rise; they make up 20% of the country's poor.

Poor, devout, ignorant.

High Expectations, Absent Results

Haiti's anguish of dire straits shows no evidence of changing anytime soon. After the massive amounts of international aid pledged and the eagerness of the global community to do something positive for the ruined country's infrastructure and the misery of the displaced Haitians, the situation is at a standstill. With the massive amount of rubble left yet to be dealt with the business of getting on with construction and reconstruction cannot progress beyond vague planning without first clearing the sites.

Rubble still shatters the landscape. And there are many areas where rubble remains, covering thousands of corpses, where people were buried in the aftermath of building collapses during the devastating earthquake. The entire choir of the Roman Catholic cathedral was buried within the edifice, and remains there still, entombed in the rubble awaiting removal. There are no government agencies with the will and the equipment to launch a massive rubbish and rubble removal.

Rubbish, in fact, created each and every day through normal living even in these frenetic, frantic, miserable conditions, simply piles up alongside the rubble, with garbage strewn everywhere, a cesspool of unhygienic bacteria and viruses awaiting the opportunity to wreak more horrendous damage on the populace. The refugee camps with their squalid tents and stinking latrines where children play among the ruined landscapes sober the spirit already bruised with the assault of nature consolidating the neglect of the government.

A million people remain unhoused, although thanks to the presence of thousands of humanitarian groups representing various aid agencies, medical attention is now available where it had not been pre-earthquake. Potable water is trucked in daily to the refugee camps. Food is no longer liberally distributed and although 80% of the camp residents have no employment they must eke out sufficient resources through some miraculous fashion to find sufficient food for their families on a daily basis.

At night thugs roam everywhere and prey on women and children, violently assaulting and raping them. Hardly conducive to civilized normalcy, although violence and brutality always lurked in the shadows of the country whose government has never been capable of providing security let alone other normal civil services of a viably functioning country. The wholesale suffering of Haitians, the children languishing without opportunities to attend school, and men unable to find employment hardly fulfills the promise for a brighter future.

Haitians, after all, don't want all that much. They would like what most people in most decent and reasonable societies can count on: jobs, homes, education; above all security. Their sense of hope appears intact for the most part, since they remain loyal to their faith and attend church faithfully and joyously, praying, singing, celebrating life, as dreadfully hollow as theirs has been and continues to be. In a sense, their refusal to give up hope should serve as an inspiration. In a sense, it does.

But inspiration does not feed and clothe and educate a population. Unless it is backed by a resolute and trustful cadre of public servants dedicated to the task of making a better life for those dependent upon their governing capabilities. So far, the government of Haiti and its institutions has failed miserably on all indices of government initiative and responsibility. The international community has responded as best it can, but patience and hope wears thin there.

Which is why nine million Haitians continue to survive by some miracle of stubborn instinct to surmount all the difficulties and miseries that have blighted their lives generation after generation.

Assaultive, Insulting Censorial Insensitivity

"Celeste heard about the runaway Elias as she was eating the last of her ash cakes. She did not like Elias but she, too, was happy for him. What she herself could not have she always wished for someone else, so her food went down well that morning. After he got the word, after he ate his breakfast, Moses went up and told Henry, "Master, that new nigger's in the wind."

Moses had just told Henry that Elias was gone when they heard Robbins's voice and they both went around the side of the house to the front. Robbins had awakened that morning and not remembered the encounter with Elias the night before, that he had taken Elias back to his plantation and chained him to the back porch. His cook came in and reminded him at the breakfast table.

Robbins now said to Henry, "Good mornin. Sweet good mornin. Are you and Caldonia well?" Elias, chained, stood next to Robbins, only inches from his booted foot in the stirrup.

"Yessir, Mr. Robbins, we well enough," Henry said.

"I have something of yours," Robbins said, and he kicked Elias and the slave fell to the ground. "Picked him up on the road home last night. He has a wound somewhere in his leg, but it won't kill him and it won't amount to anything if you decide to sell him off one day. Less he had a very noticeable limp." He laughed, a little joke between them, because Robbins was even less inclined those days to sell a slave and that was what he always advised Henry. He had said once, "Niggers appreciate in value, so appreciate them."

Yes, that "N" word, prominent in the narrative of a compelling novel. A new novel, relatively speaking, published in 2004. By a black author, Edward P. Jones, whose "The Known World", from which the above has been extracted for the purpose of this blog entry was a New York Times 'bestseller' and acclaimed Book of the Year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Booklist, the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, People, Publishers Weekly, San Antonio Express News and USA Today.

Furthermore described as one of the New York Times Top 25 books of the last 25 years. This is the story of slave-owning Manchester County, Virginia in the mid-1800s. This is the story of a black man who was a slave and whose father bought him from his master, after he had previously bought his own freedom, that of his wife, and finally his son. The son, grown to maturity, dismayed his parents by himself becoming a slave-owner. Under the influence of his former master, he felt owning slaves, black men, women and children just like himself, was good business.

Where is the outcry from the black community, from the oh-so-politically correct white literary and academic community? There is none. There is praise for a book consummately well imagined and written. In language congruent with its times. Although it does, intriguingly, shift on occasion to the present time when discussing historical matters of concern and note. There is no one to censor what this remarkable book portrays, what its skilled author tells us in the language of 1840 slavery.

But censors have been busy-bodying about the legendary brilliance of a writer no longer among us and thus unable to protest that one of his most remarkable books has been tampered with. Samuel Clemens wrote another amazing book, titled The Misanthrope, a book that revealed his apprehensions about human integrity, intelligence and compulsion. As Mark Twain, the incomparable author of his time, his wry observational humour and cleverly capable genius as a writer paved the way for those who followed him.

Surely he deserves better than to have one of his most familiar books, Huckleberry Finn, expurgated of its 'offensive' nomenclature of Negroes in the slave-owning American South? His admiring public, the readers who valued his description of time, place and human activity certainly deserve better. What arrogance, academic and publishing, to mar his legacy by this underhanded manipulation. An apology is due and the insult to the integrity of Mark Twain's original work overturned.

Representing a rare instance when specific and very particular copies of a book might be considered to be destined for a blazing fireplace.

Keeping WikiLeaks Afloat

Dang! It can be so irritatingly inconvenient when you're famous. On the other hand, it can also be useful. A new cross-Canada poll taken at year-end seems to put Julian Assange top of mind when it comes to breaking news. That's certainly the opinion of those in the news business; reporters who, musing over Mr. Assange's runaway success in alerting the world to the secret lives of diplomats and politicians speaking what they really think, deem him their newshound hero.

Julian Assange finds himself in elevated company, with the likes of Justin Bieber and our own Prime Minister Stephen Harper for example, all three of whom have elevated the discourse, or demeaned it, depending on whose ox is being gored and your personal aesthetics. Discounting the amount of news and noise politicians are capable of mounting, consider those like Mr. Assange and Master Bieber whose bigger-than-life egos place them on a stage of their very own making.

Justin Bieber was relieved of personal responsibility in a dust-up between boys-will-be-boys, with the decision that he was not really the aggressor, simply the unfortunate recipient of a bit of jealousy-riven aggression - er - something of that nature. Julian Assange, on the other hand, has elevated muck-raking to the nth degree, in the honoured tradition of those who insist the truth must be told. And he's the one to do it, ta-dum!

Truth is also that it most certainly appears as though Sweden is distorting the reality of a few sexual encounters Mr. Assange enjoyed with several willing participants who had second thoughts and whom the authorities encouraged to have third thoughts about. Bedding down with a member of the opposite sex for the purpose of having sex can be a complicated matter in Sweden.

Celebrities enjoy their celebrity. They feel they have worked hard to attain that status. They also, notionally, feel they should be able to manage their celebrity. Sometimes that status takes on a life of its own and become unmanageable, but however the news media confounds what public relations dictates, all news is good news, even the perturbing kind.

Except when it reveals details that appear to the celebrity to be inconvenient at the time of their revelation. As, for example, really embarrassing tidbits one would far prefer to keep to oneself? But no mind, the revelatory details of purloined documentation that have titillated the world while revealing very little of real substance that hadn't been in the public realm previously are still viewed as enough of a threat to have Mr. Assange labelled a threat.

And, as a threat to confidentiality and private assurances in a world that has increasingly eschewed the private and the confidential, he may yet pay the price should push come to shove. On the other hand, the United States of America is not yet Russia which can and does with impunity arrange for assassinations of irritating newsmongers, and judiciary-supported jail terms for those who oppose the current political system.

Mr. Assange and his lawyers may be livid with indignation that details have emerged over his legal woes, but they are doubtless more than a trifle satisfied with the rather munificent $1.7-M book deal which Mr. Assange won "under duress", according to the Guardian. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to", moaned Mr. Assange.

In support of his brainchild, WikiLeaks, and of course his own recourse to self-defence in a politically hostile world that has officially held him to account by the outraged governments whose egg he has smeared all over the news media of the international community. Besides, it gives this painfully shy man the opportunity to write his autobiography, at an admittedly tender age, and get paid handsomely for it besides.

How Perfectly Jolly!

The worst of all possible worlds; Britain has long attracted and gone out of its way to support and give haven to individuals and groups whose brand of Islamism is ferociously out of whack with what its followers claim it to represent, as a religion of peace. The Islam that the mullahs and imams and other clerics who comfortably settled in Britain - to speak at its many mosques, in Arabic-speaking fiery speeches denouncing the very country that gave them haven, exhorting young Muslims to violent jihad - is the one front and centre in the world of terror today.

What is astonishing is the very fact that official Britain has been so avuncular about the presence of those ferociously fulminating clerics for so long. Long enough to ensure that more than one generation of Muslim men has been tainted with the compelling need to enlist as martyrs for the universal Islamist cause leading to the Caliphate they are so devoted to. Young Muslim men, born in Britain, educated there, seething with discontent and anger at the West and its values, sufficiently at home in the country to form university student unions recruiting for jihad.

These are young men who know the country fairly intimately. It has, after all, been the country of their birth, if not in the end the country of their birthright. That would only come to pass when Britain does truly succumb to Islamism and adopts universal sharia law. That's some atmosphere to be certain. That the country's counter-terrorism agencies are on constant guard now against the carefully determined plans by home-bred Brits whose religious conversion to deadly violence poses a threat to stability.

Given that Scotland Yard has admitted it is currently giving high-alert attention to one hundred terror cases, thirty of which are considered to be 'pressing', while approximately ten are classified as 'urgent' or 'imminent'. That's shaving it pretty close, isn't it? Islam4UK is kind of snappy too, is it not, as a hopeful sloganeering mantra of Muslim youth devoted to the downfall of the government of the country, determined to mount one of their own in due time, in tune with a new judiciary.

It is certainly instructive how fundamentally attractive men like Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden are inspirationally to bored young men avidly seeking the adventures of their lives. Exciting adventures are just what the doctor ordered to banish those insipid boredom-diversions of petty crime from the near horizon in favour of not-so-covert activities conducted right under the eyes of slow-moving intelligence agents.

The latest to be arrested in Britain, young men of Bangladeshi origin - if it's not of Pakistani origin; geographic neighbours withal - are said to have been influenced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They were affiliated with a banned group, which makes things all the more attractive, doesn't it? A Police Commission spokesman described the arrests as being "intelligence-led" on the suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.

Terrorism? Actually, not; holy war. As opposed to the kind of unholy war being waged in Afghanistan, for example, by British troops within the NATO command. These were young men accustomed to standing on street corners handing out leaflets promoting holy war. Furthermore, some of them fit right into their neighbourhoods. Neighbours spoke approvingly of them as "...a very nice family, the dad always says hello, he's very polite."

And at another house where arrests were made, observant neighbours had their own impressions to relay to the curious news media: "He has a lot of people coming and going in the early hours of the morning - it's very odd - and you can often hear religious chanting and singing coming from the house." So, they're quite jolly, quite British, quite stiff upper-lip about it all. After all, this is the land of eccentrics.

British terrorists? Just another brand of eccentric Brits.

"It's Been Awful For Her"

There are some news stories to which people are drawn as though to a magnet. These are the stories that defy human imagination, in outlining how people who appear on the surface to be perfectly normal harbour deep within them a malignancy so vividly evil that the disbelieving public reads all it can relating to the sordid events in an attempt to understand just how seemingly ordinary people can in reality represent the troublingly extraordinary.

In some societies malevolent psychopaths attain positions of power and wield that power to great effect, destroying peoples' lives and populations' hope for a decent future. Those are the malefactors of ill repute like dictators and tyrants who manipulate their societies to reflect their values, disentitling any who protest; arresting, incarcerating, torturing and murdering them. These are obviously not advanced civil societies, but backward, tribal societies.

In advanced, free and democratic societies we can usually weed out personalities who are overtly anti-social and prevent them from achieving high political office. In these societies people whose orientation happens to be sociopathic and who succumb to psychotic behaviour are the criminal class, although there are also those who have become skilled in successfully shielding their sociopathic tendencies from public scrutiny.

Those like mass murderer Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo and former Trenton base commander Russell Williams whose deep and fundamental downward spiral into the sadistic pleasures they derived from inflicting pain on helpless victims drove them to careers in multiple-murders, are thought to be just like anyone else until their arrogant carelessness betrays them and they are apprehended.

All of these men were married. All of these men, finally caught through incontrovertible evidence implicating them in merciless killings of helpless victims, lived seemingly normal lives on the surface, complicated by savagely distorted desires. In Bernardo's case, he was paired with a woman whose horrible fantasies complemented his own. In Olson's case, his wife seemed content to have her husband extort money on her behalf from the RCMP (taxpayers) to reveal where his victims' bodies might be found.

In the case of former Trenton commander Russell Williams, his wife appears on the evidence available, unwilling to allow her personal life to be too severely discommoded by her husband's revealed activities, and his subsequent murder sentence. What emerges from the brief public outline of Mary Elizabeth Harriman is a sketch of a not very engaged person. Is it even remotely possible for two people in a long-term intimate relationship not to know one another?

What emerges from what little public profile Ms. Harriman has allowed is a sketch of a very private person who hugely resents her private life made public. Any intrusion in the way of news coverage into her persona is unwelcome and understandably so. Yet there is an unmistakable outline of an entitled woman unwilling to proffer any public statement, and on the record inordinately concerned about her financial future.

This is not a woman who has been left bereft of a loving husband whose career supported her socially and financially. Ms. Harriman has her own career which is more than capable of sustaining her well into the future. The picture we have is that of a woman angry that her prize dream of a perfect home setting has been disturbed. In the police investigation that followed her husband's arrest for murder, she is irritated that scratches appear on the hardwood floors of her new home, insisting in tax-paid repairs.

A survivor of one of her predatory husband's horrible assaults on vulnerable women is in the process of suing her husband and by extension, herself. To protect her financial investments she colluded with her husband to transfer ownership of property to her name. She is now in the process of seeking a divorce from her life-sentenced husband, thus further separating their financial investments and shielding her from potentially being absorbed into the compensation that might arise from the lawsuit.

Her lawyer has requested of an Ottawa court that a sealing order be brought down to protect her client from the"voluminous" national media attention that revelations of a personal and financial nature as required by the proceedings for divorce may attract. Ms. Harriman's lawyer characterizes the proceedings as a "purely personal matter" between her client and her client's husband.

Appearing to overlook the reality that there is a consuming public interest in her husband, once a highly trusted member of the Canadian Armed Forces, on the fast-track to an elite command position at an even higher standing than his previous command. A man so highly respected that he was trusted discretely as an air force pilot to safely ferry diplomats and high-ranked politicians.

It is exceedingly difficult to have sympathy for Ms. Harriman's wish to be thought of as anonymous, for she is anything but that. Attention is given to her as the wife of a psychopathic murderer, someone who preyed savagely on woman and children for years. Perhaps it is possible for a woman to be oblivious to the inner mind and proclivities of her husband, but it is exceedingly curious.

So the "undue" interest that her lawyer alludes to her client having been subjected to is anything but undue, given the circumstances. And it is hardly surprising that a "lot of media has focused on her". And that it has "been awful for her", may be incontestable, but one has a tendency to focus rather on how awful it must have been for her husband's victims to plead for their lives unavailingly.

It is more than natural for people to muse on these circumstances and differences in those circumstances, and to feel that as a compassionate, concerned human being Ms. Harriman has come out looking quite wan indeed given her personal focus and seeming disinclination to demonstrate any manner of sympathy for her husband's many victims.

Laughing Ourselves To Death

There are some people who are simply invested in fomenting hatred against others. It is not hard to imagine they are anything but malevolently psychotic in temperament as evidenced by the ferocity of their vile imprecations against those whom they have identified as their hate objects.

Not surprisingly, given the history of Jews and their place in society from time immemorial, it is most often that group of people who have been singled out as different, invested with unspeakable traits that represent the target of racists.

It is more than likely that psychopaths who spend their lives destroying what others have built, who present as the very social dregs of abysmal human behaviour are simply fulfilling their purpose as human beings bereft from birth of normal human emotions leading to empathy and compassion for others.

Society is rife with sociopaths and psychopaths whose inability to construct emotional attachments to other people is legendary. These are people for whom normalcy in human relations is utterly foreign. Such individuals burn with an entirely different kind of passion than those whose genetic endowments have not short-changed them in the balance of emotions.

They are not merely people who have lost faith in humanity. These are people who do not recognize humanity as other than a great amorphous mass of people whose existence represents a nuisance to them personally. People readily disposed of should they become too great an impediment to whatever the desires of the psychopath happen to be.

From this psychically maladaptive cauldron of failed human beings come the haters, the cruel manipulators of humankind, the tyrants and the despots incapable of, and disinterested in caring about the well-being of others. From their distorted imaginations come visions of destruction on a mass scale.

These are the genocidal murderers of innocent populations, the volatile war-mongers who lay waste to civilization. When these individuals are identified for the monsters they are they have already committed their unspeakable crimes.

Some are called to the International Criminal Court to be judged on behalf of humanity, and they laugh derisively at the human construct that would hold them to account for their monstrous behaviours. Most of these monsters consider themselves impervious to human justice and indestructible in their power-hungry appetites.

Most, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, will become admired footnotes in history that their would-be successors make every effort to emulate. Many, like Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu, Omar al-Bashir and Osama bin Laden, damage society and eventually justice is seen to be done.

Their legions of admirers enlist in their deadly destructive games in an effort of social upheaval to reflect their chaotic values. There is nothing that society at large is able to do to extirpate their influences, to attempt to halt their progress, to limit the damage they inflict on society.

Now that the technological advances of the 20th Century gave birth to those of the 21st Century and accelerating rapidly to bring us to hitherto-unimagined levels of instant global communication, the messages that they convey and the ill deeds they promulgate appear to proliferate at lightning speed.

Web sites that declare their intention to annihilate great swaths of populations, and teach recruits how they may join in the conflagration abound. Representing in a viral way the genie that leaped out of the bottle that confined it when humankind first learned the skills of manipulating and controlling fire.

The fire that civilization is now learning to live with is that of incendiary hatred for one another. The divisions that separate us through ideology, politics, culture, religion appear to become wider, the gulf more dire between human connection than ever before.

The more readily we are able to communicate, the more incessant and dire the message: to reject and to spurn and to deride and to foster hatreds that will not be remedied by the good will of the hapless majority in fear of the unexpected that has proven to descend with no warning to stir terror in our hearts.

Nasty little viperous charlatans whose inability to adjust to societal norms strut about on the Internet in emulation of al-Qaeda's vile messaging. And the al-Qaeda offshoots take inordinate pride in their growing ability to initiate further contacts, encouraging others to promote terror.

Still there is hope.

A website that claims "Our web site does not advocate terrorism or genocide against any people. All information on this site is for informational purposes only" - when the site itself is totally given over to the hopeful destruction of Jews and the State of Israel, extending those good wishes further to include Western democracies such as Australia, Europe and North America as tools of the Jews - demonstrates that even monsters may possess a droll sense of humour.

And isn't humour both a weapon and a potentially useful emotion to be leashed for agreeable compromise? We may yet end up laughing ourselves to death.

A Christmas of Fear

"We love Christmas but this year it feels bitter. You sit somewhere and you're afraid; you go shopping and you're afraid; you go for a walk and you're afraid. Iraq has become a hell."

Christians, needless to say in the Middle East, long pre-dated the introduction of Islam. Yet within the Middle East, Christians have become an endangered species. Like Jews before them, Christians have lived in various countries of the Middle East for millennia. And Jews and Christians lived among Muslims, albeit as second-class residents, for an additional thousand years.

There are now scant few Jews living anywhere in Muslim-dominated countries of the Middle East, despite a heritage of Jewish life in Arab countries. With the creation of the State of Israel, Arab states disenfranchised their Jewish populations, and exiled them, first taking possession of their worldly goods.

A roughly equivalent number of oriental Jews were forcibly removed from Arab countries furious with the establishment of a Jewish state in their geographic midst, to those Palestinians who were convinced they should voluntarily and briefly leave 'Palestine', until the combined Arab armies vanquished the new state and returned the land to Arab Palestinians.

The culturally rich presence of Jews in Arab countries with their long histories and heritage was extinguished in a paroxysm of rage at the presence of a majority-Jewish state. Now, Christians within Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East have gradually been pushed to the edge of non-existence. They have been viciously targeted as 'infidels' for whom death is appropriate.

In Iraq death threats and violence and death itself has been visited calamitously on the half-million Orthodox Christian communities. Which represents half the number of Christians that existed there a decade earlier. Church congregations have suffered violent invasions by bomb-wielding Islamists who have splattered the walls of their churches with blood and gore, murdering priests, women, children and helpless men.

The Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk, in view of al-Qaeda-inspired threats against the country's Christian minority has stated: "The Christians of Kirkuk will not celebrate the feast of Christmas this year, except for masses, which will not be held at night but at 10 a.m., after myself and 20 other Christian personages received threats from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq."

The Christian Church in Iraq did not come to the defence of Iraqi Jews in their time of need. For those who could speak out and did not also viewed Jews as their enemies despite having lived alongside the Jews for thousands of years. Those who might have used their moral outrage did not because they felt no moral outrage.

Now the fate that transpired to overtake the destiny of Arab Jews in Iraq has turned in the direction of Arab Christians in Iraq. The lesson, however, is lost in the ephemeral shadows of history and humankind's inability to recognize its moral duty to one another.

"My Apple iPad"

What's new? Well, will another Islamic suicide bomber do? Tired old stuff? Perhaps in Iraq it is, in Afghanistan and Pakistan it is, but in Sweden, not so much. Surprising the kindly, forgiving Swedes no end. For they have welcomed a very large Islamic immigrant population into their midst, and this obviously is no way to repay that kind of warm and authentic generosity. Most Muslims living in Sweden would undoubtedly feverishly agree with that sentiment.

One man, however, did not. Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly whose parents brought him to Sweden from Iraq in 1992 to live a better life, a life of freedoms not quite available in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, somehow decided that Sweden was deserving of punishment. Mr. Abdulwahab, it is now being speculated, might have been an ordinary person with ordinary aspirations, until he was conscripted in Britain at Bedfordshire University where he was studying for a degree, to become a jihadi. A mujahadeen, he called himself, however.

Battling the infidel, the kuffar whose war against holy Islam was an affront to all that he believed in, as an observant Muslim. Who had, incidentally, married a Swedish woman, and with whom he had three very young children. He was, after all, only 28, and aspiring to be the proud husband of another (Muslim, piously religious) wife for whom he was actively advertising. It was a religious thing. He loved his Swedish wife and their three children, but Islam decreed he be fruitful and multiply.

Before he was able to conclude that additional chapter in his life, however, another kind of duty called. On the other hand, it might have been the Islamic Centre in Luton where Abdulwahab regularly attended Friday prayers where he might have been recruited. He had studied for a degree in physical therapy; unusual for a fervent Muslim; more generally speaking the academic degree is in engineering. Which might have suited his purposes better, since he seems to have miscalculated his explosives rather badly.

The vehicle bomb packed with gas canisters on a Stockholm street simply caught fire, without detonating and causing the kind of damage to passersby on the busy thoroughfare that he had anticipated. Was it a panic allied with determination and a perverted sense of honour and martyrdom-appeal that caused him to ignite himself a mere 300 metres away from the misfired vehicle? In any event, he caused harm to only two bystanders, while blowing his chest into a vacuum.

His message to the world at large: don't mess with Islam. His message to Sweden: the country erred unforgivably by not condemning the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Oh, and get those Swedish soldiers out of Afghanistan. Spain did, when it was attacked and an almost instantaneous change of government took place, with a change of heart, as a result, so Sweden too may take the message seriously.

Otherwise: "...your children, your daughters and your sisters will die as our brothers, our sisters and our children are dying." Except, boyo, who's killing them?

For this vile performance in honourable defence against "Islamophobia", Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt expressed his his considered opinion, UN-style, that the attack against his country and his countrymen was "unacceptable". Don't want to make too much of a fuss about a failed attempt at mass carnage, after all. He took particular exception to the fact that "this man was walking around with explosives in Stockholm." In Stockholm, by God...! That was some snappy press conference.

And don't, dear Swedes, panic. Don't even think jihad, and mass murder, and honourable jihadis. Or mujahadeen. Or terrorists. Or devoted martyrs. "...even if much evidence points to this...". Of course, the leader of the country's center-right coalition spilled the beans, that police were "treating this as a terrorist action", but people, relax, do not jump to "the wrong conclusions".

And do not, repeat, do not even think of suspecting any one of your neighbours, like the 450,000 Muslims who emigrated to your great, free, socialist country. "Openness is worth giving ourselves the time to get to the bottom of this."

Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly in the final analysis, was just like everyone else. He had the same likes and dislikes, loved his family, had ambition, planned a career, anticipated a biiiiig family with loooots of kids and had a Facebook page. Doesn't everyone? His explained to interested 'friends' that “I love my Apple iPad” and “Islamic caliphate state”. Oops, how did that get in there? A revelation, indeed. Sweden's free society just didn't cut it; the supreme Islamic nation would, though.

"I am looking mostly for religion", the comment made relative to his advertising for another wife. His religious duty to enjoy sex with more than one official partner; his religious duty to produce more offspring, as he also mentions hoping for MANY children. Alas, events entirely in his control swept that aspiration into the dustbin.

A Righteous Man

Those who honour the concept of freedoms and particularly the freedom to know what occurs behind the diplomatic and executive and administrative scenes of government activity would likely agree that the now-infamous Julian Assange does represent, as he claims, a champion of news-information freedom. Not at all an individual intoxicated by the power inherent in the threat of disclosure of confidential, secret and unclassified but not meant for public consumption documents of government agents and agencies.

Julian Assange clearly considers himself an honourable and courageous crusader for truth and justice. He is animated by the need to inform, to distribute information however it is formally classified for the titillation and education of the vast reading public. And Mr. Assange, that messenger of fairness and justice for all in the revelations that he and his WikiLeaks league unveils ceremoniously for the good of society, is now suffering for his dedication to the public weal.

The government of the United States is quietly, resolutely determined to impress upon its allies and neighbours in the global community that it can still be relied upon as a staunch good friend in the democratic ideal, irrespective of the revealed indiscretions of some of its representatives. It is also determined to demonstrate in no small measure that it will not sit idly by tolerating the disrespect to its institutions that has been evidenced by Mr. Assange's antics.

Mr. Assange, of course, despite having been universally (almost) denounced as harebrained in revealing documents which should never see public dissemination, is determined that nothing, no amount of harassment official or otherwise, will deter him from future such disclosures. As far as he is concerned, the disaffected young man awaiting trial for espionage is an "unparallelled hero", for passing purloined documents on to WikiLeaks.

Those documents, after all, represent WikiLeaks' lifeblood of performance. "For the past four years one of our goals has been to lionize the source(s) who take the real risks in nearly every journalistic disclosure and without whose efforts journalists would be nothing. If indeed it is the case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that the young soldier - Bradley Manning - is behind some of our recent disclosures, then he is without doubt an unparalleled hero." A delicate tightrope-walk there.

There are many who would dispute that point of view; most governments anywhere in the world, for one thing. And most responsible citizens of the world, as well. Along with most journalists, even those who ply their trade in Russia and who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their real journalist work in revealing the dread behind-the-scenes schemes of totalitarian-style governments. There is a need to discriminate between wholesale, meaningless revelations and those that represent misdeeds to be aired.

There are most certainly ample incidents of misadventure and deliberately misleading episodes relating to government decision-making and actions that are deserving of being revealed for the purpose of chastising government. But it is to no one's benefit, neither government nor the citizens whom they represent to reveal indiscriminately all manner of government documents relating to everyday exchanges between governments.

Mr. Assange is concerned, and perhaps with good reason, for his personal position with respect to the law, for he has been charged with indictable criminal offences having nothing to do with leaking government documents to the public. He warns, ominously however, that should anything gruesomely untoward occur to him, there will be a wholesale release of the purloined documents, handed over in encrypted form to trusted supporters.

"History will win", he has declared. "The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you", he gravely asserts. Portraying himself as a just and righteous man engaged in a just and needed pursuit of truth and freedom and liberty. On our behalf, no less. To observe that the man has a rather elevated view of his mission, and the value of his activities is to understate the obvious.

And we are being manipulated, when we are informed in this oblique manner that he acts as he does out of concern for the public good. Whatever he does, he does it all for us, the great public, deserving to know it all - and more. There is, in fact, much that we should know, that may be withheld from us, and in those instances we would want to know. The glut of unneeded dispatches represent little more than gossip, however.

A casual read of much that has been divulged tells the interested reader that there is nothing new, nor revelatory to be had out of the published cache. Embarrassing to the government to a degree, without doubt. But anything startlingly new, anything that hasn't been bruited about heretofore, or alluded to, guessed at - not really.

Dastardly Plots Happily Foiled

Depends on how you look at it. And there are enough who look at it rather askance. Yes, when terror plots geared to bring death and destruction to their targets are apprehended through sheer good fortune, or good investigative work, or good contacts imparting reliable information, there is reason to cheer. For no lives were lost, no huge damage incurred, no discernible waves of fear circulated within the target population.

Of course when the occasional terror plot has reached a successful conclusion what occurs is a collective rage of disgust and hatred toward the perpetrators. Whose respect for human life is acknowledged to be entirely absent in their dementedly dire dedication to wreaking carnage in the name of terror. A terror in service to a fundamentalist view of a world religion whose violent warriors have dedicated themselves to reap a harvest of corpses to place before the divine alter of Islam.

There is more than one way to strike terror into the minds of those whom jihadists despise. If blood cannot be shed because plans go awry, and buildings do not collapse because the bombs fail to ignite, it isn't quite true that some level of success has not resulted. For each of these attacks leaves behind its own residue of fear - of the prospect of future and further attacks that will strike when no one suspects they may.

Insecurity, uncertainty create an aura of destabilization invaluable to the plans of the jihadists. They take comfort from attacks that have not succeeded materially because they know they have succeeded on another, introspective, deeply-embedded level of inner consciousness. They celebrate each of these incidents as a success because incrementally they represent fear and terror resplendent in their favour.

The al-Qaeda-linked and -centered cells that promulgate hated, revenge, violence and death encourage any and all manner of attacks, from relatively modest single-combatant assaults to group efforts, as long as they are well planned, executed in a timely manner and the assailants are adequately armed to produce maximum effect.

Minimum effect will do, if all else fails. From the needfully enhanced security imposed upon the attacked parties, to the more elaborate and costly attempts to provide protection against those attacks, and the disturbed-mind syndrome that such attacks elicit from among the insecure, even failed assaults have their usefulness.

Hijacking Metaphors

Who could fault or suspect the motivations of groups insisting they abhor war and who mount public relations campaigns to demonstrate their commitment to bringing an end to war? And other groups who arrange for conferences to discuss world peace? Who could fail to support the selfless and altruistic motives of people going out of their way to sue for peace and to effect a public groundswell of support for an end to war?

Well, when the devil incarnate stands before the podium with a pacific smile in response to a swell of applause, when he explains that he is invested in peace and goodwill and does his utmost at all times to persuade all and sundry that violence and bloodshed reflects ill on humankind. That it is in the best interests of all concerned that they trust him, and leave it to him to find a way to achieve peace.

To trust and believe in him when he veers off on another tack and begins to fulminate about a single state which he accuses of exemplifying all the evil deeds committed between nations desperately harmful to the affairs of humankind. When he beatifically announces the convening of a conference to contest the allegations of horrendous crimes of genocide committed against the target nation.

This persuasively charming speaker just incidentally is the chief executive administrator of a country that presents on the world stage as a totalitarian state, a human-rights-abusing state, one that has committed itself to fanatically preying on its own nationals in the name of God, and in pursuing an agenda that includes amassing powerful atomic munitions to threaten neighbours.

He also sends his emissaries to other countries to spread his message of peace and goodwill, along with his anti-war commitments - and just incidentally to liberally sprinkle the pathology of hatred and racism where it may fester and grow as per plan. A conference that took place in Ottawa, staged by those calling themselves the Group of Four, deny accusations of anti-Semitism.

They are, they claim, committed brokers for a "just and sustainable peace" in the Middle East. And their invited guests just happened to include several Iranian academics, one of whom was Davood Ameri, of the Iran-based Islamic World Peace Forum, and Saeid Ameri, dean of the faculty of global studies at Tehran university. Whom The Simon Wiesenthal Centre identifies as a strident anti-Semite.

Their denunciation by Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, has so upset these good men that they have withdrawn their candidacies for the next federal election, to represent ridings in the Ottawa Area for the Green Party. Now, among others, Qais Ghanem, a medical doctor who has denounced Canadian-U.S. "imperialism" in Afghanistan, is an ex-candidate for Green party nomination.

Similarly, the StopWar group which has invited the infamously self-loving former British Member of Parliament George Galloway on a speaking tour of Canada, is intent on delivering its message of peace and fellowship. George Orwell would have chuckled with rank delight at the use of StopWar and dialogues for peace by groups busy peddling their versions of the right side and the wrong side of conflicts.

Although York University's administration and its president Mamdouh Shoukri feel confident that George Galloway represents a balanced, humanitarian view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict irrespective of the fact that Mr. Galloway is an ardently approving supporter of the terror group Hamas whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and felt no compunction at hosting him, hosts elsewhere are experiencing doubts.

The Reverend Gary Peterson of St.Andrew's-Wesley United Church in Vancouver appears to have heeded his conscience, choosing now to distance himself and his church from the talk scheduled to be mounted by StopWar, featuring George Galloway, on the dread predations of oppressor Israel on the suffering Gazan Palestinians. And David Suzuki along with a Vancouver-area member of the legislature have separated their names from the engagement as well.

These peace-loving, war-hating groups have much in common, besides their hijacking of the terms of identification that belie their true agendas. For they are all in the business of promulgating hatred against one very identifiable and vulnerable group representing history's perennial scapegoat.

And helping to set up an obfuscating screen in support of the wagers of enmity, hatred and violence. They are, alas, idiot-enablers who, once their usefulness has become stale, will be counted among the victims.

P.S. Thank you for your letter regarding Mr. George Galloway’s speaking engagement that occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 16, at York University, and regarding the letter sent by the University to Rabbi Hoch.

In my capacity as Vice-President University Relations, I would like to assure you that York University continues to be committed to freedom of expression and to academic freedom, we embrace that role and value our leadership position in welcoming and educating all of Canada’s many communities. At the same time, the University's priority is the safety of all its community members and guests.

With regard to the personal statements made publicly (and widely distributed) in a letter by Rabbi Hoch impugning President Shoukri’s reputation with “his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus”, the University considers the statement both untrue and harmful to the reputation of the President and of York.

York expects all member of the University community –- students, faculty and staff — to adhere to the boundaries of respectful discourse, and will not tolerate any actions or forms of speech that are racist in nature. Any such comments or actions will be prosecuted to the full extent of the University’s powers. And, in fact, the York Federation of Students’ (YFS) sponsored event on Tuesday occurred without incident or anti-Semitic remarks of any kind.



Regards,
Jennifer M. Sloan
Vice-President University Relations
York University

Professional Ethics and Jewish Sensibilities

Jewish Surgeon Walks Out on Nazi Patient
by Chana Ya'ar

A Jewish doctor walked out of an operating room in Germany last week after seeing a Nazi tattoo on his patient’s arm.

“I will not operate on your husband,” he told the patient’s wife. “I am Jewish.” The patient, a 36-year-old man, bore a tattoo of the Reichsadler, the Imperial Eagle, perched on a swastika.

The 46-year-old surgeon had another doctor finish the procedure, according to the daily Bild, which published an article Friday about the incident in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Paderborn.

Public display of Nazi symbols has been illegal in Germany since the end of World War II. Violation of the law carries a sentence of up to three years in jail.

Prior to the rise of the Third Reich, the eagle was a German national symbol, and continued as such following the war. Currently it is called the Bundesadler.

Responses to the article posted on the newspaper’s website were mixed, with several readers expressing views that the doctor was unprofessional for not being able to separate his own personal feelings from his work. Others observed that the doctor might well have placed himself at risk by continuing: “Imagine, if anything had gone wrong and he was accused of being influenced,” one reader pointed out.

“A good call,” opined a third, who added, “he was doing the right thing for the safety of the patient,” because it was possible that he “could not continue with the operation with full concentration because of the tatoo (sic).”

The doctor’s actions, and the article, also affected at least one reader’s perceptions of Jews as a result:

“I’m glad I read this, as I’m always falling out with an Israeli friend over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and I feared that I might be anti-Semitic,” he wrote. “I agree 100 percent with the doctor, given that he handed over to another surgeon. He didn’t do the guy any harm, but set (sic) a signal.”

Published online at Arutz Sheva, 14 November 2010

The Muslim World

In London, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a day that Western countries commemorate variously as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans' Day, with grave ceremony and sadly proud remembrance, some representatives of the Muslim community felt obliged to offer their contempt for this signal occasion by burning the symbol of the day, a red poppy.

That is the red poppy that is worn in remembrance over the heart, of people who remember the misery and dread atrocity of conflict, but still recognize the need to offer physical resistance to the would-be tyrants and aggressors on the world stage. And offer their emotional remembrance in the sacrifices of their countries' young who marched off to offer resistance to murderous totalitarian regimes.

Islamic protesters, some dressed in dark clothing, some masking their faces, carried banners, chanting slogans like "British soldiers: terrorists", confronting police officers whose presence was there to offer them protection against the outraged counter-protest by the English Defence League. For living in Britain, the Islamic protesters had the freedom to offer their opinion however outrageously, vindictively grotesque and culturally insensitive and blatantly counter to British values.

The Muslims, about thirty-five in number said they represented a group called Muslims Against Crusades: "The British soldiers you remember on this day are soldiers who have taken innocent lives in illegal occupations and unjust wars. Our aim is not violence but if people come to us with violence, Muslims will defend themselves."

Fair enough. They might wish to explain whether they also march in disgust and anger when sectarian Muslim atrocities occur, as they do with startling regularity. The news media are never idle in their incessant reports on vicious bloody attacks by Muslims against other Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan - and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The question must be asked, and deserves a thoughtful response: Why is it that the greater Muslim community - the ummah, does not stand up in righteous protest against the slaughter that Muslims perpetrate against one another? Why is it acceptable that Sunni Muslims can characterize Shia as 'apostates' and feel justified in murdering them?

Why are the lesser sects - in terms of size of their faithful - of Islam, like the Ismaelis and the Ahmadis not recognized as true Muslims and suffer huge intolerance of constant perpetration of murderous onslaughts while praying in their mosques? Mosques represent the ultimate place of refuge, do they not? Why are they continually being bombed, and those within slaughtered?

Why is it that it is the Western world that stands up in protest when Iran flogs and stones women whom they accuse of being adulteresses? Why is it that Saudi Arabia is able to sentence young men to be beheaded, without protest? Why is it that Afghanistan can declare a death sentence for a Muslim transferring allegiance to another religion? How is it that when a Pakistani court sentences a Christian mother of five to death for blasphemy it is acceptable?

And when the Pope speaks out finally on behalf of the Christians living in Muslim-dominated countries to plead for an end to car bombings, assassinations of Christian clerics, slaughter of their parishioners, destruction of their churches, not an iota of concern is heard emanating from Muslims complacent in their belief that Islam, as a religion of peace, can do no wrong.