Harry’s Place

Message from John Rees to Hamas.

Make sure the children say “Zionist”

To all who object to the phrase ‘death cult’ when applied to Islam/Islamism/Palestinian-freedom-fighting…what is this belief system, if not that?

Well, exactly.

Ah but it’s the Mossad run Zionest Memri TV, as Comrade Ken has told us…no doubt the translations are dodgy and these kids are in truth really talking about Harry Potter.

Yet much worse that this has been on PA TV all along.

They teach children to want genocide and suicide, and no here one ever reacts. Denial? Or approval. I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve lost all respect for morality, intentions and judgement of everyone in the Palestinian solidarity movement over this.

Can someone get word about this to John Rees of the SWP?

This is where HP enters the realms of delicious self satire. Whatever the issue of the kids in the territories, any relation to the totally obscure, virtually unknown Mr. Rees of the equally obscure and irrelevant SWP must be tenuous at best. How very odd.

Where ya been, Benjamin? Are you even a little disgusted by that clip? And why does every one of your comments look exactly like every previous comment from you?

Actually that’s not really Benjamin. He’s been training a young student to write Benjaminisms for him, to free up time for making tea. The replacement’s pretty good isn’t he? Just like the original.

Can’t you just imagine Benji teaching a Chinese kid phrases like “tempest in a teapot, old boy” and “how very odd”?

The replacement’s pretty good isn’t he? Just like the original.

Big deal. Who couldn’t imitate him?

Sorry to be amused with my own weak joke. Still I hear singing “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain”

Musical theatre, eh Josh? :-)

Re the clip, you couldn’t make it up. And Al-Aqsa are sometimes touted as moderates!

Still, why won’t Israel talk to these people, eh? Eh?

And people should read the thread on Gene’s original post from 2004. See how quickly a discussion about suicide bombing and the tactics of the “martyr” became a “look what Israel is doing” free for all.

I have been on a long business trip to the UK and Germany.

Nice to see Yorkshire again, and it was my first time to Germany. I stayed at Frankfurt and visited beautiful Heidelberg. I do like Germany, from what I have seen so far.

Rather bizarre moment in a German traditional restaurant (sausages, sauerkraut, beer etc) when my Chinese work colleagues drank too much apple wine and started getting all overly friendly with the locals (who were very accommodating, more than the British would be in similar circumstances) and started singing briefly - and bizarrely - the national anthem of the PRC. All rather amusing, in retrospect, although at the time I thought there was too much noise and too much red meat, and that Poland may be invaded at any minute.

…and that Poland may be invaded at any minute.

Invaded by Hong Kong?

No, it’s adaption of an old Woody Allen joke about Wagner. But anyway, apart from that very loud restaurant, I very much like Germany, from what I have seen.

Re the clip, you couldn’t make it up. And Al-Aqsa are sometimes touted as moderates!

Brownie, Al-Aqsa TV is run by Hamas. Although I suppose Abbas and the PA could put it off the air if they really wanted to.

Ah, so is al-Aqsa TV nothing to do with the Fatah Party? Is it just named after the mosque?

Global warming boy speaks….

I have been on a long business trip to the UK and Germany.

Oh dear.

Mike Clark

I advocated that much of it be done with teleconferencing, and fewer could have been sent to Germany (although some physical presence was needed in Germany.) I based this on cost and environmental impact, but got blank stares regarding the latter. But I did try.

Benji, why don’t you change your job to one that doesn’t help ruin the planet? Nobody is forcing you to work for a big polluting multi national company.

You seem to have strange priorities.

This is your second round the world trip in a year, is it not?

“They teach children to want genocide and suicide, and no here one ever reacts. Denial? Or approval.”

No. It’s the great exclusive pity of the radical left. The greater the moral monstrosity committed or evidenced in the mass suicide-murder mentality, the greater the impetus to coddle and commiserate with Palestinians. For sure there must be a reason why the souls of these people have thus been twisted out of human shape and that reason is Israeli occupation, oppression, checkpoints and apartheid walls, etc etc. The cosmic humiliation of it all.

I try to have sympathy for the Palestinians. The Israelis can be and have been harsh. But for fuck’s sake! After seeing this, is there any wonder why? What a disgrace.

Mike

Not quite. Second long haul in 18 months. I don’t work for a multinational company. Just one that aspires to be one.

I quite enjoy flying, although I hate airports, especially Heathrow, who seem to have employed a right bunch of little Hitlers to man the metal detectors and X-ray machines.

One gleefully confiscated my beloved red tub of Brylcreem despite my prostestations that I was not about to blow up a plane with a bit of pomade. All very odd.

Ah, it’s a hard task trying to prick the conscience of businessmen like yourself who enjoy flying around the world to maximize profit for their company and see making lots of money as their top priority in life.

Hopefully one day you will put the future of the planet first. I won’t hold my breath though.

If I had been responsible for releasing the same amount of C02 as you over the last few years, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror.

We’re just different types of people I suppose.

That wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. What do muslim women get when they explode in a pizza shop?

Can we please lay off this “the Palestinians” bullshit (for those that have employed the phrase). I know a number of secular, liberal Palestinians who would be as appauled as any other civilised human being by this clip. No ifs, buts or whatabouts.

I know a number of secular, liberal Palestinians who would be as appauled as any other civilised human being by this clip. No ifs, buts or whatabouts.

No doubt. So why do people with this idiotic mindset (HAMAS) get elected to run Palestinian affairs? I get the feeling that the assumed victims (Palestinians) are in fact the aggressors. I wouldn’t donate the sweat off of my ass to those fuckers.

And just to be fair, can anyone show me video of little Israeli kids saying similar shit on TV?

Mike

Making money is important, as I have bills to pay, stuff to buy, and might even want to put some aside for the future.

One can try to do all this in a more environmentally conscious way - such as teleconferencing, and reducing the numbers travelling, if travel is essential. I was needed on the trip, partly because of my English language skills, but at least one of the bosses did not need to come in my opinion, and one admin worker did not need to travel, surely, I thought. But they did not care for my suggestions to reduce the scale of the trip.

Making money is important

It’s this ‘greed is good’ culture that we have to get away from if we are ever going to save the planet. Nobody is stopping you from having a job, Benju, but shuttling around the world for the corporate greed of a company based in the fastest growing polluter in the world, is a choice you have chosen to make yourself. Nobody is forcing you to follow this career.

Excuses to make yourself feel better about supposedly making a little remark that was ignored, if your honest, just isn’t good enough.

Mike

My girlfriend flew off to Thailand and then Singapore at a ridiculously early hour today, curtailing my sleep. That is my feeble excuse for not realising that you are simply winding me up, old boy. As for my career, as I said to my boss, I don’t view myself as having one really, not in any distinct form anyway (that confused my boss somewhat in career obsessed Hong Kong…)

So, no master plan, I tend to follow my nose really. Take each day as it comes, and be thankful I have not yet got some dreadful ailment, laid up in some Godforsaken infirmary or darkened crevice.

Can we please lay off this “the Palestinians” bullshit (for those that have employed the phrase). I know a number of secular, liberal Palestinians who would be as appauled as any other civilised human being by this clip. No ifs, buts or whatabouts.

10 to 1 they emmigrated out of that hell hole decades ago. No sane person with any means would allow their children to be brainwashed by the barbarians who run Palestine.

Silence from some quarters…

This video is the definition of pornography and child abuse.

My girlfriend flew off to Thailand and then Singapore at a ridiculously early hour today,

Another one like you who travels the world in favour of big business profit making, huh? Your remarks here tonight have been very candid and have given us an insight. I’ve give you that.

“curtailing my sleep. That is my feeble excuse for not realising that you are simply winding me up, old boy.”

The reality of your big polluting, high carbon emssion, lifestyle you choose to lead of your own free will, is a serious point. I’m sorry you find the most pressing issue of our time all a bit joke, though this is often the attitude of multi nationals companies, so I am not surprised.

So, no master plan, I tend to follow my nose really. Take each day as it comes

That’s very nice, but it’s time to stop putting yourself and your company before the environmental damage your business trips and holidays around the other side of the globe are doing to the planet. Otherwise you have credibility problem on the global warming issues.

You have a lot to go away and thinking about tonight, Benji. No more excuses.

Mike, get off it. No one here gives a flying fuck how much petrol Benji used up on his trip. Jesus, how trivial can you get? If this is your idea of an important moral question then you have no life.

Mike

As I said I posited environmentally friendly suggestions to my company but they were rejected. But handing in my resignation over that issue would be an empty gesture, so I am not going to do that.

As I said, excuses to make yourself feel better, about supposedly making a little remark that was ignored, if your honest, just isn’t good enough.

It’s time to look at the big picture.

But handing in my resignation over that issue would be an empty gesture, so I am not going to do that.

How convenient.

ALEX ==> Can we please lay off this “the Palestinians” bullshit (for those that have employed the phrase).

Just as as soon as the self-defined Palestinian solidaritarists stop: a) raping the spirit of that word sideways; b) referring to the “Israeli response”, that is encompassing each citizen, Muslim or Jew or Christian, old or young; c) damning ‘Zionism’ as an intellectual con-trick and alienating the Zionist Left which is “as appalled as any other civilized human” at the actions in the OTs.

==> I know a number of secular, liberal Palestinians who would be as appauled as any other civilised human being by this clip.

Good for you. Now can you persuade them to express this disgust in public media? No ifs, not buts.

I’ve had overwhelmingly positive experiences when I’ve met Palestinians but, as Josh said, they’re the ones who’ve left the deep sickness displayed in this footage.

BOOGSKI ==> And just to be fair, can anyone show me video of little Israeli kids saying similar shit on TV?

The one about the dirt-poor war-displaced being encouraged to write messages on missiles doesn’t count, by the way. I expect to see an inverse proportionality of those who rushed to gloat (not condemn, gloat) over that and will now seek to deny this. As S O Muffin said a few days ago, this group doesn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about the Palestinians, who - like the Israelis - are simply ciphers in a grostesque morality play for their spiritual delaction.

Now come on, let’s look to our own society. You have to view videos like this in the context of the society they take place in. To us, they may seem strange and frightening, but I’m sure that a video of me singing Onward Christian Soldiers when I was a small boy at Sunday School would look bad when viewed outside of its particular social context.

Especially so when that is put alongside the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq, and let’s not forget that peer-reviewed Lancet study showing that we were all responsible for the deaths of 650,000 Muslims.

I was even a member of a Christian paramilitary unit, the Boy Scouts. That’s not far off the Hitler Youth really.

And as for making the child recite a poem about her Mother becoming a fire bomb, didn’t the UK recently have a song in the charts which all the kids were singing with the lyric “I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter”. Gene goes to far by suggesting these kids have been brainwashed into thinking killing Jews is good, they are merely expressing their culture’s prevailing norms, and ours are no better.

That took me in for almost ten seconds.

The one about the dirt-poor war-displaced being encouraged to write messages on missiles doesn’t count, by the way.

You mean the ones put up to that by reporters?

You mean the reporters from other ME states who were allowed to enter Israel? Stop agreeing with me.

Alec, how old are the children in this video? Teenagers who can write smart-assed messages on artillery rounds? Think about it. We’re talking about hatred that is taught from birth, jackass. How the fuck do you defend against that? Build a fence, maybe? Yes, I say.

Mike’s comments demonstrate teh truth that for many people environmentalism is a substitute for religion. Not least it delivers the opportunity to say “I am holier than thou”.

Of course, in the case of Mike it’s his arguments that are holier - i.e. full of holes. If he is so concerned about carbon emissions why on earth doesn’t he stop using his computer. My guess would be that running your computer (including the processes involved in manufacture and decommissioning) involve substantial carbon emissions. Or are some carbon emissions more reprehensible than others?

IF (and it is a big if) carbon emissions are the cause of global warming then I would suggest that there are only two effective ways of dealing with the problem: 1. Removing the emissions at source (with super efficient scrubbing techonologies or by susbtituting non-carbon fuels) or 2. Introducing processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere (several practical proposals have been put forward). Anything else is just one big moralising belch.

Boogski, Boogski, Boogski… I wasn’t speaking to you. I was addressing the same people you were addressing.

Sorry, Alec. Jumped the gun a bit. Apologies.

All feel free to shout if I’m drifting into Jenny Tongue territory… But I can’t help wondering, with that sort of brainwashing going on what chance have those kids got?

This all comes about because the Arabs have never truely tasted enough of a defeat to catalyse a period of self-examination - they’re still deluded into a German post-WW1 “one last push/we wuz stabbed in the back” mindset.

Welcome back, Crazy Morgoth, I was getting worried. How is life in your nice binary morality universe? Care to tell us why the progression of victories for your country and culture hasn’t affected your worldview for the worse?

Jon D, you have a long way to go. Whereas the implicit suggestion in your comment is that the situation the children are in is utterly poisonous, Little Miss Kaboom would see them as noble savages and such psychoses as being acceptable when combatting the greater evil… of her political career being killed stone-dead because of her moronic comments.

Boogski, you are history’s greatest monster.

esquared wrote: Especially so when that is put alongside the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq, and let’s not forget that peer-reviewed Lancet study showing that we were all responsible for the deaths of 650,000 Muslims.

Completely deranged or what!

So Iraq, with half the population of wartime Britain, has suffered more deaths than the 450,000 that the Brits did in the entire WW2, including all those killed in the years of the Blitz - some 40,000. As well as military casualties over 5 years of ‘total war’ on land, sea and air against the Axis powers….peer reviewed….pleeeeze!

Doing a full on deep throat job on an erect pachyderm is a trifle compared to swallowing that Lancet study.

Moonbattery of the first order.

That’s beside the issue of assigning culpability to those trying to stop the killing – horrific enough as it is - rather than those who are doing it. And how the sort of mindset you display is EXACTLY the gallery to which the killers are playing.

This sort of moonbattery is a pathology, it really is.

are you going to tell him, “esquared”, or should i?

It would be nice if the post could include a description of what the link points to exactly, for those readers of a deskbound persuasion. I can get away with reading HP at work, but watching videos would be overstepping the mark somewhat. Ta.

Someone put Nick out of his misery please

Dunno about the rest of ewes, but e^2 strikes me as a transcendentally beautiful number, unlike the irrationality of d^0.5.

Here’s the transcription from MEMRI:

Children of Palestinian Suicide Bomber Rim Al-Riyashi on Hamas TV: Mama Killed Five Jews and She Is in Paradise

The following are excerpts of an interview with the children of Palestinian suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on March 8, 2007.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP VISIT:http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1398 .

“How Many Jews Did Mama Kill?”

Interviewer: “Let’s talk with the two children of the jihad-fighting martyrdom-seeker Rim Al-Riyashi, Dhoha and Muhammad. Dhoha, you love Mama, right? Where did Mama go?”

Dhoha: “To Paradise.”

Interviewer: “What did Mama do?”

Dhoha: “She committed martyrdom.”

Interviewer: “She killed Jews, right?”

Interviewer: “How many did she kill, Muhammad?”

Muhammad: “Huh?”

Interviewer: “How many Jews did Mama kill?”

Muhammad: “This many… ”

Interviewer: “How many is that?”

Muhammad: “Five.”

Interviewer: “Do you love Mama? Do you miss Mama?

“Where is Mama, Muhammad?”

Muhammad: “In Paradise.”

Interviewer: “Dhoha, what would you like to recite for us?”

Dhoha: “In the name of Allah the Merciful the Compassionate: ‘When comes the help of Allah, and victory, and you see people entering the religion of Allah in troops, then celebrate the praise of your Lord, and ask His forgiveness, for He is ever ready to show mercy.’”

Interviewer: “What else would you like to recite? You have read the surah, ‘When comes the help of Allah, and victory.’ What would you like to recite for us now?”

Dhoha: “‘Mama Rim.’”

Interviewer: “Recite the poem ‘Mama Rim’ for us. Recite anything. What would you like to recite?”

“I Want to Talk About Kindergarten”

Interviewer: “Muhammad, do you know how to recite?”

Muhammad: “Yes.”

Interviewer: “Go on then, recite something for us. What would you like to recite?”

Dhoha: “I just remembered.”

Muhammad: “I am in kindergarten.”

Interviewer: “Are you doing well in kindergarten?”

Muhammad: “Yes.”

Dhoha: “I am in kindergarten, I want to tell.”

Interviewer: “Go on then, tell us. You’re in kindergarten too? Are you in kindergarten, Dhoha? In kindergarten or at school?”

Dhoha: “In kindergarten.”

Interviewer: “That’s great.

“One should talk about the innocence of children…”

Muhammad: “I’m in kindergarten too.”

Interviewer: “You’re in kindergarten too.”

Dhoha: “I want to talk about kindergarten, I want to talk.”

“Rim, You Are a Firebomb, Your Children and Submachine Gun Are Your Motto”

Interviewer: “What would you like to recite for us? Have you heard the poem ‘Mama Rim’? Go on then, recite it for us.”

Dhoha: “Rim, you are a fire bomb.”

Interviewer: “Go on, recite it.”

Dhoha: “‘Your children and submachine gun are your motto.’”

Interviewer: “Muhammad, go ahead and recite…”

Muhammad: “I’m in kindergarten.”

Dhoha: “That’s it, I’m done.”

Interviewer: “OK, do you want to go to Mama?”

Dhoha: “Yes.”

If only those pesky A rabs were brought up more like those peace loving Jewish Settler kids eh?

http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/06/toddlers_of_mas.html

John B, why don’t you discuss the footage in question, knitwit, instead of meanwhiling with the wackiest settler Jew you can find. Okay, I don’t like those piccies. You’re turn.

JohnB no”: While sadly I have no doubt that settler children do play soldiers in an unhealthily militarised environment, the link you post is still propogating the discredited legend of Muhamed el Dura.

If only those pesky A rabs were brought up more like those peace loving Jewish Settler kids eh?

One of the many differences, John B no2, is that such stuff is not glorified and encouraged in the Israeli media.

And yet, Gene, you support a Palestinian state.

Syllogism time:

Hamas are evil.
The Palestinians elected Hamas in free and fair elections.
Gene supports an independent Palestinian state.

Conclusion: Gene is moron.

And yet, Gene, you support a Palestinian state.

I support a Palestinian state that recognizes Israel’s right to exist in peace.

“such stuff is not glorified and encouraged in the Israeli media” - True. Taking about the Western media more generally, it is largely kept quiet, whilst your story is promoted all over the place, in order to prove a point about the inhumanity of the other. Standard hypocrisy.

Fact: that was shown on Palestinian TV.

Myth: TheIrie cares about Palestinians.

I need to point out that Nazi propaganda never stooped this low.

1. The Palestinians brainwashed a woman into murdering civilians and leaving their children orfans. 2. They composed a “poem” about submachine guns and killing Jews. 3. They taught the poem to the orphans. 4. They showed the orphans reciting the “poem” on TV, in the Channel of the party in the government. 5. They brainwashed TheIrie into thinking that is normal, and that other people have done the same, or that other things are more important than this.

But not even the Nazis did this.

The poem is about the children’s own mother, in case you didn’t noticed.

“Mother, Submachine Guns, Killing Jews, Paradise”. Repeat until the advertisings.

I think Irie has a valid point here. Even if a true reflection of the TV station and of the indoctrination of the children, to actually publicise this material as Gene has done has the very real effect of demonising the Palestinian people in order to make them appear inhuman.

However, this is a very complicated issue, and it is not enough to point out that glorifying a suicide bombing is inhumane. In actual fact, the small children in the video are obviously expressing love and admiration for their lost mother through the social and political context in which they are living. And it should be remembered that the context of that is set by the illegal occupation of their lands and the brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian state. In that light, what could be more humane than the love of a child for its lost parent?

At the same time, this blog does not focus enough on the rantings of right wing settlers in their own homes, which we do not have access to. Their stories are not told, or broadcast on Israeli media or put in Israeli text books for that matter, and therefore remains hidden from view, while the Palestinians’ so-called hatred is on full display, creating dangerous simulcras which can act as hate figures.

If you watch that video and view it as what it is, you are a racist - clear and simply. Others who look beyond the video to the historical and social contexts that led to creation of the circumstances that led to the video being made will understand who is to “blame” in reality.

Part of that blame surely rests with those “decents” who supported the war in Lebanon, and who are partly responsible for the deaths of 650,000 people in Iraq (as found by a peer-reviewed medical journal) because of their warmongering blogging in the lead up to the Iraq war. At least the child can only say that his mother killed 5 Jews (and remember that has not been verified by The Lancet - so is hardly conclusive evidence), a paltry number compared to the hundreds of thousands murdered in the name of Israel and their allies.

Anyone who denounces Western civilisations as sick and morally degraded should take at this. This is a culture in a state of moral collapse…

QUOTE: Nick.

“So Iraq, with half the population of wartime Britain, has suffered more deaths than the 450,000 that the Brits did in the entire WW2, including all those killed in the years of the Blitz - some 40,000. As well as military casualties over 5 years of ‘total war’ on land, sea and air against the Axis powers….peer reviewed….pleeeeze!

Doing a full on deep throat job on an erect pachyderm is a trifle compared to swallowing that Lancet study.

Moonbattery of the first order.”

***

You conservatives really hate science, don’t you?

It’s SO inconvenient when scientists come up with research that attacks your little paradigm isn’t it? It forces you to attack the science rather than deal with the consequences, and for all your bluff and bluster, you know that doesn’t make you look good.

[Incidentally, I wonder how long it will be before Harry’s Place gets sucked into the I.D. debate?]

The fact is that this was a top-class piece of work, published in a journal with one of the world toughest peer-review policies.

It so happens that my brother Mat is a Professor of Statistical Epidemiology at Michigan State, he tells me the science in that report is rock-solid, and that no one in the field has seriously questioned its findings.

Ironically, the method used in the study – cluster sampling - is the exact method for assessing death in conflict that the US Government has long recommended should be used.

Here’s a real science blog, written by real scientists, that demolishes the arguments of those who have attacked the study.

It’s called “Fly Paper for Innumerates”

Read it boys and girls, you might learn something.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/flypaper_for_innumerates.php

“Even if a true reflection of the TV station and of the indoctrination of the children, to actually publicise this material as Gene has done has the very real effect of demonising the Palestinian people in order to make them appear inhuman.”

This segment actually shows very graphically how the children’s sweetness and innocent humanity are being cynically and purposefully moulded and warped. How many of you have noted what the kids really want to talk about? They want to talk about kindergarten, but the interviewer does not let them. He presses upon them to recite, recite… He really needs to keep asking until they respond in the way he wants them to respond.

Dspquared wrote: Even if a true reflection of the TV station and of the indoctrination of the children, ….

Like there is any doubt! And it’s not as if this is at all isolated.

…to actually publicise this material as Gene has done has the very real effect of demonising the Palestinian people in order to make them appear inhuman.

Well they are - if anything at all is - ‘demonic’ actions by the adults concerned. But I’m not sure that dehumanising Palestinians is the only - or even the most parsimonious - explanation for Gene’s motives for bringing this clip to our attention; in fact I posit that this is exactly and completely to reverse the culpability here. Everything about this clip and the events surrounding it screams of the single minded hate filled imperative to demonise Jews and deny their humanity, in the best Koranic tradition of treating Jews as “descendents of apes and pigs”.

Others motives Gene or indeed Memri may have for bringing this clip to our attention, are seeking to expose the depravity and dysfunctional nature of much of Palestinian society to the world to effect pressure for change in that society. Yet another motive is to and appraise the World of the mindless anti-Jewish hate against which Israel and the wider Jewish diaspora are up against and counter some of the propaganda promulgated in the media - especially the Muslim media - that takes this anti Jewish, and anti Israeli tack.

You know… providing part of the feedback loop that is the stuff of the democratic process.

Dsquared is accusing those who simply bring it to our attention of the moral depravity that this clip gives us an all-too-clear insight into, that’s grotesque.

Dsquared would clearly rather such feedback loops - or at least those that reveal events that run contrary to his World view or preferred narrative - were suppressed. I find that rather Orwellian.

I’ll go further - I think that there is some morally repugnant ‘ferrous’ materiel throwing completely out the moral compass of Dsquared, and those that take the ‘culturally relative’, ‘reverse culpability’ view that his/her posts promulgate.

Dunno about the rest of ewes, but e^2 strikes me as a transcendentally beautiful number, unlike the irrationality of d^0.5.

Oh I agree, e is an absolutely beautiful number. Much more glamorous than that old warhorse, pi, and the flightly phi. And its a beauty to integrate and differentiate with as well, unlike those turncoats sin and cos, and their bastard offspring tan.

I support a Palestinian state that recognizes Israel’s right to exist in peace.

One already exists. Its called Jordan.

You conservatives really hate science, don’t you?

The Lancet Paper is the last thing that could be called science.

[Incidentally, I wonder how long it will be before Harry’s Place gets sucked into the I.D. debate?]

I’m the author of the TalkOrigins.Org FAQ on Supernova Remnants and Young-Earth Creationism“. Go fuck yourself sideways with a broom, sunshine.

It so happens that my brother Mat is a Professor of Statistical Epidemiology at Michigan State, he tells me the science in that report is rock-solid, and that no one in the field has seriously questioned its findings.

Hahahahahaha. You have the nerve to bring up the topic of science when the first thing you resort to is a totally-unscientific tactic of “appeal to authority”, one incidentally so beloved of creationists. Its not much wonder “liberal” is a dirty word when its adherents are the likes of you.

OK, I can’t stand it anymore. I’m pretty sure “esquared” is, as you Brits say, a piss-take on dsquared.

“The Palestinians brainwashed a woman into murdering civilians”

Rim’s story seems to have been more complicated. At the time of this sad episode I remember reading that she was found out for adultery and the option was given to her to clear her family’s name of the shame she had brought upon it by taking on this mission.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/3129.html

Its a beautiful one at that.

Yes, it’s distressing to see children, particularly bereaved children, exploited in this way. But we’re not exactly blameless ourselves. Anyone remember “little Ali”, the Iraqi boy who lost his whole family and several limbs to American airpower? He was flown to the UK for treatment (we’re so benevolent) and while he was recovering from his injuries he was interviewed by a number of journalists, several of whom tried to push him into thanking the UK and US for ‘liberating’ Iraq as though they were seeking a injured child’s benediction on the whole bloody mess.

I’m never very sure why the Palestinians, alone amongst history’s disposessed people, are meant to love their disposessors.

Ha, thanks “Esquared”. However, you’ve forgotten the effect of Feynman-Kac derivatives… and Vitenamese railway schedules…

The “simulcra” give it away.

Nick (of South Africa), can I suggest that if your screen was less spittle-flecked, you might be able to more accurately read posters’ names.

Some (most?) of us already know that, Gene. And are simply joining in the urination…

Morgoth, I’ve read some stupid stuff on a lot of stupid blogs this last couple of years, but that last post of yours rivals the crap I find on debbieschlussel.com or the Hannity & Colmes sites for out-and-out idiocy.

Please tell us exactly what qualifies you to asses the science of this paper or the quality of The Lancet.

Do you have such qualifications? Or are you just another playground bully, kicking and screaming when anyone has the temerity to challenge him?

Purple Cow,

Firstly I’m not conservate, I’m a classical liberal with centerist economic views. Secondly I don’t ‘hate science’, I think science is the best tool we have for parsing reality, I am virulently anti superstition of any type. I am also aware of critical thinking - the various types of bias.

As far as the Lancet study into Iraq casualties go. I can assure you that there is anything but any kind of consensus amoungst statiticians as to the integrity of the Lancet report, the underlying methodology, and it’s results. To argue that I am some kind of denier of scientific consensus or truth is to misrepresent me and the consensus surrounding this Lancet study amoungst specialists in statistics.

- have a squiz at the critiqe by the Iraq Body Count of the lancet study. This group is all but pro the coalition actions in Iraq.

It’s summariesed here.

That’s not the only critique, but it’s pretty comprehensive.

The Lancet study doesn’t even pass the smell test.

I strongly suggest you read up about ‘Selection bias’ and ‘Confirmation bias’; no doubt Google will throw up plenty.

“You conservatives really hate science, don’t you?”

Only Melanie Phillips and that’s because she’s a bit thick, bless her. Her stance on MMR still makes me giggle. On science, anyone who agrees with Mad Mel is correct, and everyone else is wrong. This is regardless of whether or not they’ve actually done any research. In fact, it’s preferable that they haven’t.

Morgoth, how lovely. Me like TalkOrigins.

*You* made the claim that the Lancet paper was beyond reproach because, wait for it, your brother says so, and then you have the sheer affrontery to accuse someone else of not being scientific! Science doesn’t work on the basis of appeals to authority, sunshine.

That last was addressed to Purple Cow, not the undoubtedly fragnant Mr Trellis. Aye, talkorigins.org is a lovely site. Shame the newsgroup itself is infested by leftist loons like PurpleCow.

For crying out loud! Are people taking the silly pills today? It’s a piss-take! Nick, it’s e not d, e^2. Sheesh.

THEIRIE ==> True. Taking about the Western media more generally, it is largely kept quiet, whilst your story is promoted all over the place, in order to prove a point about the inhumanity of the other. Standard hypocrisy.

I really am hard pressed at times to decide whose comments make my skin crawl more, yours or John Game’s. In the terms of your own logic, you are a pitiful moral coward: here we have what even you decline to deny is a grostesque abuse of childhood, yet you cannot bring yourself to condemn it for what it is and not deliver a sly reproach against Israel. Your argument is the impacted faecal matter in the rectum of the anti-war movement. As far as I’m concerned, “anti-Zionists” and their ideological buddies like yourself, are objectively antisemitic until proven otherwise. What you are certainly not are pacifists.

Every second fucking day last July and August we saw pictures of babies butchered by the evil Zionists. Of course it, or that stage-managed piccie of the “dirt-poor war-displaced”, are all over the place.

You are no different from the moral cowards who, 70 years ago, who sat in their coffee-houses or drawing rooms saying “yes, Mr Hitler goes over the top, but those Rosensteins are thugs”. Freaks basically.

And the same goes for SueC.

MORGOTH ==> One already exists. Its called Jordan.

Go and read up on some Jordanian history.

If people like Irie post their material in all seriousness, then satire is dead.

Go and read up on some Jordanian history.

I have. Seen the latest population figures from there?

If people like Irie post their material in all seriousness, then satire is dead.

They do. TheIrie has been posting his rancid monotonous sub-Chumpskyite crap for the last year or so. SueC is similar, though occasionally (on issues such as feminism) she shows signs of thinking for herself.

Sue C wrote: Nick (of South Africa), can I suggest that if your screen was less spittle-flecked, you might be able to more accurately read posters’ names.

Thanks for that SueC, I have a young, nubile and topless Zulu maid in a short grass skirt that comes into my office to do this 3 times a day. This, wipe my furrowed brow; oh and tend to other needs that arise from time to time.

“*You* made the claim that the Lancet paper was beyond reproach because, wait for it, your brother says so, ..”

Of course, I said absolutely no such thing.

“..and then you have the sheer affrontery to accuse someone else of not being scientific! Science doesn’t work on the basis of appeals to authority, sunshine.”

No, what I said was the the Lancet has a world-wide reputation for the quality of it’s peer review process, ( I have worked in the industry and I can tell you they spend up to €110,000 on the peer-review process for every article published). I asked what quaslifications you have for challenging the science in this paper, or the quality of the Lancet’s systems.

You haven’t answered yet.

Oh and don’t call me sunshine, cnut.

***

Nick, thank you for your civil response. Everything in that Iraq Body Count response has been dealt with and demolished in the Fly Paper article I posted above and the explanatory paper that was published alongside the original research article.

The .pdf is available on the web, I’ll find the address if you like.

If it’s true that you have an open mind you’ll find the Lancet study more than passes any smell test.

Nevermind Jordanian History, what about Jordanian present. They have had to accept about 1,000,000 million Iraqi refugees since the war (whereas the UK and US have accepted about 200 each). Is this country expected to pick up the human fallout of all Western imperialist adventures?

==> I have.

I’m talking about extended history, you’re talking about recent (past few decades) population movements.

==> Seen the latest population figures from there?

By that I assume you mean changing demographics with the arrival of individuals from the west of the river, *for* *whatever* *reason*. Kind of backs-up the displacement/refugee line, wouldn’t you say. You’re so keen to argue on the legality of the Israel’s founding by the UN; well, there were other territories, e.g. West Bank, which were set aside for the ‘Palestinians’.

“*You* made the claim that the Lancet paper was beyond reproach because, wait for it, your brother says so, ..”

Of course, I said absolutely no such thing.

So just what the fuck was:

“It so happens that my brother Mat is a Professor of Statistical Epidemiology at Michigan State, he tells me the science in that report is rock-solid, and that no one in the field has seriously questioned its findings.“?

You’ve managed to completely lie your arse off in a matter of 3 posts. Impressive.

I asked what quaslifications you have for challenging the science in this paper, or the quality of the Lancet’s systems.

You haven’t answered yet.

My qualifications are irrelevant (and yes, I have studied statistics at a professional level). What qualifications do YOU have?

Oh and don’t call me sunshine, cnut.

Perhaps “lying sack of shit” is more appropriate to you. But that would be offensive to sacks of shit, I deem.

Nevermind Jordanian History, what about Jordanian present. They have had to accept about 1,000,000 million Iraqi refugees since the war (whereas the UK and US have accepted about 200 each). Is this country expected to pick up the human fallout of all Western imperialist adventures

Predictably no mention of the Iraqi refugees from Saddam Hussein, I see.

==> Nevermind Jordanian History,

That speaks volumes.

==> what about Jordanian present.

One may exist in whichever venom-filled universe you reside, but not mine. Seriously, Andrew, stick to writing about chalk.

impacted faecal matter in the rectum of the anti-war movement. As far as I’m concerned,

Yuk! Brett had a word for that which rater put me off my beverage at the time, I made a point of not committing it to memory, I think it was Poloski or it could have been Biden.

Senator Smegma?

Whoops, that should have been whichever one exists… doesn’t exist in mine.

MORGOTH ==> Perhaps “lying sack of shit” is more appropriate to you.

I can imagine sacs of shit, but not sacks. Eugh.

Not that anyone cares what I have to say (no appeals to authority at Harry’s Place when quoting ME), but Rugrat, or whatever his name is, doesn’t know what the logical fallacy of the ‘Appeal to Authority’ is. It does NOT mean quoting someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

For example, say we are in a room and I am facing forwards and you can see what’s behind me. And you say ‘Look out! There’s someone behind you!’. Would it make sense to ignore you because of the ‘appeal to authority’? It would not, self evidently. In other words ‘appeal to authority’ (a fallacy) should not be confused with ‘appeal to someone who actually knows more than me about the subject in question’ which is, of course, not. In this case, ‘you’ can see what’s behind me, and I can’t. Ergo: no fallacy.

The Wikipedia is good about this, as always.

‘The first form of the appeal to authority is when a person presenting a position on a subject mentions some authority who also holds that position, but who is not actually an authority in THAT AREA’ (emphasis added). We have seen this a lot in the Lancet study where journalists, physicists, arts graduates, astronomers and so forth have waded in with their worthless opinions. To use these people as ‘evidence’ is fallacious as these people do not have a grounding in the subject: this, therefore, is the ‘appeal to authority’.

The second aspect of the fallacy is more subtle, and is to do with probability and, dare I say it, fuzzy logic. Most people nowadays accept that science does NOT deal with ‘true’ or ‘false’ but with ‘more or less likely to be true’ (following Karl Popper). So, the theory that the earth goes round the sun is very very very very very very very very very likely to be true (such that, in ordinary language, it’s perfectly acceptable to say ‘it’s true’), relativity is very very very very likely to be true, more recent theories (such as superstring theory eg.) are quite likely to be true (ipso facto, quite likely to be false) and so forth.

So it IS fallacious to argue that just because a theory is backed by an expert (or even all the experts) it is therefore ‘true’ (experts can be wrong). However it is NOT fallacious to accept the evidence of the experts in judging whether or not something is likely to be true.

So: does the fact that all RELEVANT experts (with one or two minor exceptions) say that the Lancet report is statistically ‘rock solid’ PROVE that it is true?

No.

Is the fact that almost all the relevant experts say that it is true (or ‘rock solid’) evidence that we should, ceteris paribus, provisionally accept its conclusions until more and better studies are carried out? (CF Tim Lambert on this, incidentally, who has also demonstrated that it is not true that the Lancet studies ‘contradict’ other studies. Actually a careful look at the data shows that the Lancet studies are backed up by other evidence: in science, corroboration and repeatability are powerful evidence for a theory’s essential accuracy although, again, they do not prove it is true).

Yes.

Incidentally, Mograt is quite quick to spot (non-existent) ‘appeals to authority’ but not quite so quick to spot the equally fallacious ‘appeal to personal incredulity’ (’it doesn’t pass the smell test’) rightly ridiculed by Richard Dawkins.

Senator Santorum? I thought the idea of felching was bad.

The Wikipedia is good about this, as always.

*chortle*

Alec - are you saying I’m wrong about Jordan having 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees?

Go back and read the totality of what I said. Didn’t comment on it.

You said something about Jordan not existing in your universe, which was pretty incoherent, so I’m asking you to clarify.

Discussion of Jordan is as off-topic as discussion of Benjamin’s carbon footprint.

==> You said something about Jordan not existing in your universe,

Did not.

… though distinctly less uncomfortable for some apparently. It wasn’t me who raised it BTW.

I mean more uncomfortable…

And it should be remembered that the context of that is set by the illegal occupation of their lands and the brutal Israeli oppression of the Palestinian state.

So why aren’t the Tibetans blowing themselves up?

“1,000,000 million Iraqi refugees”

Standing room only in Jordan, then, if it has to accommodate one (English) billion Iraqis.

“Of course, I said absolutely no such thing.”

Yes, you did. You said absolutely that thing.

Recent Times acticle on the (in)famous Lancet
Study.

Silly me, double million there. I mean’t of course one million Iraqi refugees, in a country with a population of about 5 million.

And the Lancet Report is off-topic too.

This kind of thing should be put on the TV news here. I reckon most people in the UK don’t realise quite how vile some Arab TV is.

Perhaps a backlash here might shame the Palestinians into stopping such obscenities.

I propose to get the ball rolling David T and Sunny do a joint article about this on CiF…

‘So why aren’t the Tibetans blowing themselves up?’

This strikes me as quite an interesting question and the answer is: the Dalai Lama. There are actually quite a lot of young people in Tibet who are pretty keen to engage in armed struggle with the Chinese, but the existing political forces in Tibet stop them.

The corollary of this: ‘why don’t they blow themselves up?’ is: perhaps they should. After all, peaceful resistance has got the Tibetans the grand total amount of fuck all in terms of their struggle for freedom, so perhaps suicide bombing WOULD be a good idea.

Discuss.

The corollary of this: ‘why don’t they blow themselves up?’ is: perhaps they should. After all, peaceful resistance has got the Tibetans the grand total amount of fuck all in terms of their struggle for freedom, so perhaps suicide bombing WOULD be a good idea.

Yes, just look at the wonderful position the Palestinians are in now thanks to suicide bombing.

The ‘smell test’ in the context in which I used it was not fallacious. I compared it to WW2 and UK deaths then, given the intensity of the saturation bombing and military operations using formations of millions of men against the Axis powers Vs the respective casualties in the Iraq war – a low intensity war.

These results would need to be triangulated repeatedly for me to believe it. After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And the Lancet study claiming that war deaths in Iraq exceed British war dead in WW2 very much cuts it as an ‘extraordinary claim’; at least in my book.

I’d lke to see another study group made up of slightly less tendentious individuals than the notably rabid stopper Dr Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet, use different but valid sampling techniques and produce similar results before I’d begin to take notice, given the outrageousness of the claims and what I know about death to injury ratios in war and all the problems with this study.

That’s informed and healthy scepticism. Nothing anti science about it - an entirely valid and informed ’smell test’. The Lancet studies claims are as outrageous to me as if you’d claimed you’d driven from London to Bristol in 10 minutes on an August bank holiday. I would take some convincing and ‘my brother said so’ really doesn’t cut it.

So meantime - the Lancet study is in the same metaphorical file in my mind as Intelligent Design.

GENE ==> Discussion of Jordan is as off-topic as discussion of Benjamin’s carbon footprint.

I disagree. It was broached with Morgoth’s inevitable Phoneystian remark. Jordan borders Israel, has been in active conflict with her, contains a large Palestinian population - of course she’s ob-topic. The corrosive sentiments displayed by Morgoth sadly exist (on both sides, just wearing different colours), and should be combatted as soon as they appear.

TheIrie’s reference to war refugees (question, which actors in Iraq are they fleeing from?) was off-topic and served this thread nothing except to preen his ego.

==> Silly me, double million there. I mean’t of course one mil

Try double at least 20 times.

‘Yes, just look at the wonderful position the Palestinians are in now thanks to suicide bombing.’

They are still, arguably, doing better than the Tibetans. It is, just, conceivable that the Palestinians might achieve their independence in the next 20 to 30 years, but the Tibetans are finished.

‘I am curious as to why anyone is bothering with this debate any more. Does anyone think at this late date that they are going to come up with a result that proves that the whole war and occupation has been really good for the Iraqis? Have they not noticed that this debate (and the one on global warming too) is a bit like the Berlin Wall – people are only going from one side to the other in one direction?’

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/03/09/i-used-to-be-amused-now-im-just-disgusted/

Hidari, a sub-Chekovian character analysing such intellectual matters as war and national hatred, and reducing them to games of Risk. Rather like Morgoth.

==> They are still, arguably, doing better than the Tibetans. It is, just, conceivable that the Palestinians might achieve their independence in the next 20 to 30 years, but the Tibetans are finished.

Have you stopped to consider that had it was such bellicose attitudes, from both sides, which killed peace efforts before? You appear to be saying that suicide-bombing (in Tel Aviv)/collective punishment (in Gaza) [1] is an acceptable method of recourse to opposing tactics which grew out of said behaviour. Surely you can see the flaw in this argument?

[1] Delete as appropriate.

SUEC ==> I’m never very sure why the Palestinians, alone amongst history’s disposessed people, are meant to love their disposessors.

As disengenuous a statement as claiming forgiveness requires one to forget the original misdeed. No-one here, not even Morgoth, is claiming that they should *love* the Israelis (he’s claiming them should crawl off, like insects, to Jordan), but to cease hating them to the cores of their being. And for provocateurs, safely esconced thousands of miles away to cease encouraging them to believe that, alone amongst history’s dispossed people, they are to consider their plight uniquely terrible and meriting endless justified sinning.

I am curious as to why anyone is bothering with this debate any more. Does anyone think at this late date that they are going to come up with a result that proves that the whole war and occupation has been really good for the Iraqis?

That presupposes that you know what the alternative would have been. A civil war with no occupation, quite possible and almost certainly bloodier or perhaps it would have been Sadam still indigafatably eating George’s Quality Street chockies, giving the occasional regal wave to the TV cameras, and indulging in just the occasional pogrom-lite. This whilst his lieutenants partake every few months in pleasant discussions with North Korea about rice yields and with Niger about goat farming, all supported by a little gentle endorsed on the QT by key UN members trading of oil for palaces with the Chinese, French and Russians. All with the backdrop of the bulk of happy Iraqis frolicking joyfully as in a Michael Moor (sic) montage.

“They are still, arguably, doing better than the Tibetans. It is, just, conceivable that the Palestinians might achieve their independence in the next 20 to 30 years, but the Tibetans are finished.” (Hidari)

If the Palestinians achieve independence without renouncing to terrorism and irredentism against Israel, that will be very bad for them, since they will have to buld a country on the only sq. km that won’t be burned to the ground by the ensuing total regional war.

But maybe, the Western spectators who pretend to care for the Palestinians will be delighted about this happening, since it will confirm that the Jews are demons. (It is me or we are passed that era in which people like TheIrie or SueC still had to pretend that they cared about both sides in this conflict?)

BTW, take a look at this.

Working to save the sorry asses of your grandkids in a city that is under the continuous iron rain of the Qassam rockets.

After all, peaceful resistance has got the Tibetans the grand total amount of fuck all in terms of their struggle for freedom, so perhaps suicide bombing WOULD be a good idea.

Suicide bombing has got the Palestinians international disgust, a fence, checkpoints, and the fleeing of business and investment – all of which has sacked the economy, lowered the GDP, and made the Palestinians poorer.

It is, just, conceivable that the Palestinians might achieve their independence in the next 20 to 30 years, but the Tibetans are finished.

They also want to drive the Israelis into the sea. No amount of suicide bombing is going to get them that.

How come the invocation to Allah the Wise etc ends up with an appeal to his ‘mercy’, when this is precisely the moral virtue or quality that the Islamicists appear to lack? Most strange.

“One of the many differences, John B no2, is that such stuff is not glorified and encouraged in the Israeli media.”

While we’re playing the “many differences” game Gene, it might be worth remembering that one of the many diffences between the Israelis and the Palestinians is that the the Palestinans are not occupying, starving, blockading, torturing, destroying the homes and olive groves of the Israelis. The woman who blew up those Israeli soldiers had every right to so. Its just a shame that she left her children motherless in doing so.

And while we’re on the subject of the abuse of Palestinian children, was there an HP post expressing moral outrage on this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6432133.stm

No. Thought not.

“the Palestinans are not occupying, starving, blockading, torturing, destroying the homes and olive groves of the Israelis.”

Come and live in Sderot, you idiot. What a self-righteous prick.

NEWS: Interpol approved the capture of Iranian officials related to the bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires

I don’t care what the justice of your case is. The video, if its contents can be verified, is sick.

As for the Palestinians themselves they have been are still being used by everybody to make some point or other.

Palestinans are not occupying, starving

Starving, eh? No money for butter, but plenty for guns.

Fabian - those who live by the sword die by the sword. You want peace? - you need to put pressure on your government to get the fuck out of Palestine.

I won’t pressure my government into doing something that will create ghost towns inside my own country, like Sderot. I did. I changed my mind. I prefer peace, but given no chance, I rather have Gaza city as a ghost town, than Sderot. And it will happen soon, with the Palestinians having chosen war.

And in case you forgot, you prick, I am a civilian. I DON’T HAVE TO die by the sword. Stop defending terrorism.

John B no2: Why can you not be honest like Hamas and admit when you say “get the fuck out of Palestine” that you really mean the destruction of Israel.

Fabian - those who live by the sword die by the sword. You want peace? - you need to put pressure on your government to get the fuck out of Palestine.

They’re already out of Gaza, from where the Qassams are launched. Or do you mean what Hamas defines as Palestine?

Give em Hell, Fabian. HURRZAH!

“Fabian - those who live by the sword die by the sword.”

So how much longer do you think Hamas will last then ? They are even putting the sword to other Palestinians now.

Lets hope its not much longer, eh ?

And in case you forgot: ‘Palestine’ for the Palestinians means my country. All of it.

And I ain’t going nowhere. Deal with it.

Well, ahem, actually I am going to the movies tonight. I want to see Pan’s Labyrinth.

Fabian, you are the citizen of terrorist state, you defend your government’s oppression of another people. Don’t expect peace.

Gene, regarding Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians have nothing to be greatful to the Israelis for:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8529

“And in case you forgot: ‘Palestine’ for the Palestinians means my country. All of it.”

No it doesn’t moron, it means giving back 28% the land you’ve nicked off the indigenous majority. In the interests of peace thats not to much ask is it?

“Silly me, double million there.”

And here we see The Irie demonstrate once again the Stoppers’ shaky grasp of sums. Perhaps it’s a Lacanian interpretation of arithmetic, where fact is a subjective quality of the observer.

‘… the Tibetans are finished.

They also want to drive the Israelis into the sea. No amount of suicide bombing is going to get them that.’

The Tibetans want to drive the Israelis into the sea? Well they definitely they don’t deserve their own state then.

noqa. You are quite right there is only one appropriate response to the video, one of uneqiuvocating moral horror.

It does represent the embodiement of Evil and I mean that in a direct non hyperbolic way.

Evil as a monstrous human construction, Evil that opperates even as the commentator speaks of the ‘innocence of children’ as he uses with a salacious delight, the propaganda value of those kids who are being told to recite, recite (while being reminded of their mother and that they are in kindergarten).

It made me weep

I clicked on the comments with a sense of dread at the moral emptiness I knew I would encounter from commenters unable to face the Evil before them feel the need to say yes but (SueC0.

Or Mike meanwhile (the new politics of misery and spite, posing as environmental concern, air travel_)

Or the great non sequiters of What about (Purple Cow).

Your comments about the dishonoured status of Mamma firebomb are interesting. This is neither the first nor will it be the last of suicide bombing as ’substitutionary honour killing’.

Robert Baer’s recent documentary looked at this issue in the case of a (failed) bomber who had been a prostitute, and appears to have been vulnerable to coercion because of it.

Of course where women’s honour is seen to be under the control of men and women may be used, or sacrificed, in order to reclaim honour, then the greater the Islamist character of palestinian ‘resistance’ then the more likely that women will be used in such ways.

Indeed the shift towards the use of women as sucide weapons correlates exactly with the growth of Islamist Palestinian politics.

As honour and shame in Palestinian (and more widely in traditional Arab and meditaeranean) culture is seen to be the property of families and groups not simply individuals, the conflict itself is characterised as one of honour.

Thus women can be used as trade items to redeam a families or group’s honour.

When Robert Baer asked Palestinian informers whether suicide bombing was acceptable differences appeared to be solely predicated on issues of honour.

One traditionalist woman stated that it would be unacceptable for a woman to be a suicide bomber in Israel because it would ‘dishonour the family for jews to see their naked daughters body’.

That the only thing that would be dishonourable about such an act of suicide mass/murder would be that unclothed bits of maimed and disfigured body parts of a Palestinian suicide bomber might be seen by ‘Jews’ tells us something intrinsic about the way this conflict is pursued and perceived is, needless to say, a fact that the meanwhilers and the ‘what abouters’, and the yes but’ chorus will as usual choose to ignore to mainatin their endless pursuit of personal moral purity.

JOHN B ==> No it doesn’t moron, it means giving back 28% the land you’ve nicked off the indigenous majority.

No mention of the non-Zionist eastern Jews who had their land nicked. Funny how they came to support Israel subsequently.

==> Fabian - those who live by the sword die by the sword.

Those who resort to violence shall suffer from violence.

What kind of denial are JohnB, Irie and Hidari in?

My goodness, just how much do you people despise Palestinians if you believe this is acceptable for them?

TheIrie is in denial; Hidari is a pompous prat; John B a thoroughly toxic sac of pus.

As he appears to be an erudite man, could Mettaculture answer a question that has been bugginh me and I have posed on several threads but never received a reply. What is the nature of Paradise for a female Muslim? I mean, we don’t want willing virgins or fountains of wine, so what does Islam hold out for us? (This is a genuine theological point.). By the way, I’m sure you’re perfectly correct in what you say about womens’ bodies being used in a a war of dishonour. I wonder what the Mohammed and Dhoba’s mummy had done to be pursuaded to blow herself up?

Sue, 72 raisins to cook for the male martyrs?

I believe it is to be the ‘madam’ of the 72 virgins.

“the land you’ve nicked off the indigenous majority. ”

An interesting concept, the ‘indigenous majority.’

In my city (Jerusalem), Jews were the ‘indigenous majority’ according to the first census taken, by the turks, in 1844. So presumably if we Jews were to secede today and declare an independent state of Jerusalem, you’d support us as the ‘indigenous majority’ against the interloping colonialist Muslims. Right?

Right?

Thought not. funny, that.

What is the nature of Paradise for a female Muslim?

72 credit cards.

That footage made me think about Kurtz’s inoculation monologue in Apocalypse Now ‘..it hit me like a diamond bullet’ etc. Gene mate, face it.. you’ll never beat an enemy that implacable.

We Will.

Not beat them, just hold your own.

No it doesn’t moron, it means giving back 28% the land you’ve nicked off the indigenous majority.

Indigenous - That’s an interesting argument - ergo ‘Wogs’ and ‘Pakis’ out of England?

Echoes of the ‘reverse’ racism in SA based on the supposed superior rights of the supposed indigenous, (and fuck the San and the Hottentots) the exact same thing with the ‘Brahmaputra’ in Malaysia (and fuck the Malay Aboriginals).

Like it’s not as if there have been Jews throughought the middle East throughout the last 2-3 millennia, not too many Synagogs in Mecca and Medina these days, in 1947 Baghdad had more Jews than Jeruselem….I could go on.

Really, really horribly ugly shit..

Indigenous majority. Excuse me, who are they? If your saying its because they are muslims, well obviously they are the descendents of converts. They like all the rest are obviously indigenous, together with all the others that settled the middle east. Just business as usual in the middle east, if I remember my bible stories correctly. Although of course the derivative Johnny come lately religion of Islam is having a malign influence on events.

What is the nature of Paradise for a female Muslim?

From http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/01/29/070129sh_shouts_martin

“Virgin No. 1: Yuck.
Virgin No. 2: Ick.
Virgin No. 3: Ew.
Virgin No. 4: Ow.
Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen!
Virgin No. 6: I’m Becky. I’ll be legal in two years.
Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry!
Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first?
Virgin No. 9: It was a garlic-and-onion pizza. Why?
Virgin No. 10: … so I see Heath, and he goes, “Like, what are you doing here?,” and I go, “I’m hangin’ out,” so he goes, “Like, what?” …
Virgin No. 11: First you’re going to have to show me an up-to-date health certificate.
Virgin No. 12: Hurry! My parents are due home!
Virgin No. 13: Do you want the regular or the special?
Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?
Virgin No. 15: Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Virgin No. 16: Even I know that’s tiny.
Virgin No. 17: “Do it”? Meaning what?
Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus.
Virgin No. 19: Somewhere on my body I have hidden a buffalo nickel.
Virgin No. 20: Don’t touch my hair!”

And the rest is at the above URL…

Highlights include:

“Virgin No. 38: I’m Zania, from the planet Xeron. My vagina is on my foot.”

“Virgin No. 64: Tonight, I become a woman. But until then you can call me Bob.”

“Virgin No. 65: They’re called “adult diapers.” Why?”

and

“Virgin No. 70: My name is Mother Teresa.”

According to Islam, most women are inherently evil and their ultimate destiny is Hell fire. Muhammad explained about one of his visions, “. . . I stood at the gate of the Fire [Hell] and saw that the majority of those who entered it were women.”

When a women asked Muhammad why there were more women in Hell than men, he replied, “You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.”

I see Interpal has had its Bank Accounts closed by Nat West.
Any chance of getting Galloways Big Brother phone in money back?

I see Interpal has had its Bank Accounts closed by Nat West.

Got a link for that, tim?

Virgin 40, pfft! No 50, wa-haha! Gene, did David T not run a piece?

Well, I think I’ll stick with my Cargo cult. You know, it’s rumoured that the Yanks will be making a delivery soon, supposed to be hairslides, tablecloth clips and plastic rain guages. Very exciting!!!

you’ll never beat an enemy that implacable.

I would hope to force open their culture, inject sane ideas and judgement and teach ever more of them to be ashamed of their evil culture.

Of course there is an easy answer too. It doesn’t matter how impacable a man was, if he’s dead.

to add to that, I think most other countries (other than Israel) if faced with an enemy like the Palestinians, would quickly get to the point where they’re willing to simply slaughter their enemies en-mass and end the war quickly. Middle eastern Muslims have been lucky to have picked the most moral enemy around. But that’s just setting them up for a fall when they try this on the rest of the world.

‘to add to that, I think most other countries (other than Israel) if faced with an enemy like the Palestinians, would quickly get to the point where they’re willing to simply slaughter their enemies en-mass and end the war quickly’.

Well that’s certainly what the Europeans did in Australia, the US, the Canary Islands, Tasmania, the Congo (under Leopold), German South West Africa….etc. etc. etc.

It is certainly not easy when you want to grab other people’s land, and they try to stop you. Indeed, The White Man spent quite a lot of time attempting to teach the natives about the horrors of their evil culture (I mean, some of the native Americans attacked white colonists and scalped them…can you imagine such barbarity?).

But even now the White Man’s sane ideas have not fully percolated through to what remains of the original inhabitants of these lands: yet more proof of their inherently barbaric nature.

And, indeed, it seems that perhaps even in a thousand years the Palestinians might not be completely ashamed of their evil culture: but I hope that the invaders and colonists are still teaching them that ‘it doesn’t matter how implacably you hold on to your own land, if you are dead’.

I know that Israel gets critisized as if she were unusually brutal… But halv of her critics are simply hypocrites who would parrot anything to ingratiate themselves with Arabs (who have oil) or for other reasons. But if they were in Israel’s position, phoney standards would fall away.

I used to think that France, known for neither morality nor consistancy, would do the slaughter thing too in such a circumstance, but as burning cars become Europe’s main source of toxic air polution I wonder. Still the internal situation is quite different in France than Israel’s wars are.

Ah, Siouxsie, you think there’s nothing evil at all in teach entire generations of young children to want genocide and suicide. There’s nothing wrong in insuring war and suffering continue, and vendetta lasts till everyone is dead.

We understand each other perfectly. And you are nothing but a hypocritical monster. Fuck off and die.

Implacibly yours, Josh

Just watched the video. It really is repulsive.

” this is a very complicated issue, and it is not enough to point out that glorifying a suicide bombing is inhumane. In actual fact, the small children in the video are obviously expressing love and admiration for their lost mother through the social and political context in which they are living” - esquared

How complicated would it be if the young children of a dead British soldier were put on TV and prodded to boast of the number of enemies he had killed? (Enemies identified by ethnic or national category, indeed: Jews, Arabs, Chinese….)

Would you find it hard to condemn? I wouldn’t. Neither would I whinge about it if foreign media organisations picked up on it, and people thought worse of Britain because of it.

“Well that’s certainly what the Europeans did in Australia, the US, the Canary Islands, Tasmania, the Congo (under Leopold), German South West Africa….etc. etc. etc.”

Well, that is certainly what they did in Argentina and all over Latinamerica (I am Argentinian). Over 500 years later, we just don’t celebrate with so much enthusiasm “El Día de la Raza” (the Day of the [Spanish] Race), falling every year on October 12, 1492, (the discovering of America by C. Columbus). But still, you can get a nice hot chocolate, and some traditional food from colonial times, and rodeos with horses and gauchos, and speeches about “Mother Spain”. And maybe we get a little sentimental about the poor indians. But our Founding Fathers killed them in sufficient numbers as not to be a problem anymore. They belong to the first pages of the History Manual for fourth grade. Diaguitas, Mapuches, Tehuelches, etc, etc, etc. Three pages and that’s it. Humans descend from m*onkeys but Argentinians descend from ships.

Now Argentinians think that they have a moral standing to accuse Israel of “genocide”. Ha ha.

Siouxsie*: Do you think that your Noble People of Color would act any different that us evil genocidal white people would do? Such evidence that exists suggest not. If anything such things as the Aztec Empire sacrifices indicates an equal or even greater level of brutality. Indeen as I recall the Sioux, who you claim to be a part of (*I am assuming that you really are Native American and not some priveleged, guilt stricken, Chomsky indoctrinated White college student) were quite imperalistic in their drive to dispossed various of the fellow Native American tribes such as the Crow. No Rosseauean Utopias in pre-White North America it would seem, either.
It would be hard for me to imagine any people, regardless of background putting up with the Palestinians the way the Israelis have without at least driving them across the Jordan River. (Not that would necessary solve things, Northern Ireland being leading example of this.)
Josh Scholar, you are very accurate about the hypocracy, to put it mildly, of Israel’s critics.

A Palestinian scholar, Dr. Nadir Sa’id of Bir Zeit University crticiizes the Palestinian cult of Death & Hatred. See http://pmw.org.il/bulletins_mar2007.htm#b150307 for the story.

xylo: Paradise for female Moslems, 72 credit cards
You are sssssooooooo bad, xylo! LOL!

magnetic north,

See my comment of 2:37 PM. I fear esquared’s parody was a little too convincing.

As I said, this is not the worst thing. TV shows, songs, poems, in school training and “paradise camps” that teach very young children to want genocide, to write suicide notes and how to carry out suicide attacks are much worse.

My last post was a response to magnetic north.

For Christ’s sake, Magnetic, not you as well.

JOSH SCHOLAR ==> There’s nothing wrong in insuring war and suffering continue,

What’s the premium for that? I agree with you about Siouxsie’s basic freakishness.

Gene,
Channel4 news may have something.
Related to legal threat to the bank from the US I think.

What is the nature of Paradise for a female Muslim?

I’m reminded of the fact that I read that martyrs actually get 100 horis not 72. The 72 usually quoted are just the females. Of course since the paradise myth is designed to entice men to kill and die, not women, those male sex objects are described as boys, not as full grown men.

I wonder if a female martyr is allowed somewhat more mature male horis, or if mortal women allowed sex in paradise at all.

Sue r. That is an interesting question and one that Robert Baer also addressed in that gripping series on the cult of the suicide bomber.

It is important to consider ‘lay’ views of religion as well as material and ‘cultural’ benefits to self-detonation.

Of course on the face of it it appears utterly irrational and insane, what is in it for the woman?

-Revenge. One woman an educated professional did it to avenge her brother.

-Money. In the occupied territories there is a stipend for the family, quite considerable when one considers the poverty and desperation in many of the camps as well as many other areas now.

-Honour, Fame and Glamour. Martyrdom to live beyond death, perhaps one of the oldest human aspirations. To have one,s name writ in tablets of stone.

Or at least graffitied on walls and painted in murals and to acheive videoglory with the sales of your martyrdom video. This is not all post-mortem either.

The martyrdom video is pre-exit production no. which boosts your personal popularity rating in the community (though the shadowy men who have weaponised you keep phoning you and tailing you telling you that ws just the dress rehearsal), which has the added role of ensuring compliance or else humiliation and ostracism will follow (there have been several cases of failed auto-bombs suiciding or dishonoured relatives volunteering to self-explode to regain honour)

One of the Palestinian failed suicide bombers interviewed by Baer female suicide bombers was a fantasist who had wished to be an actress. She had a nasty household ‘accident’ with some kerosene (it was not clear whether this was her own angry attention seeking or an issue of dishonour).

She nearly ddied after receiving 90% burns, however she was airlifted to an Israeli hospital whose specialist and dedicated staff saved her life and cared for her during the months of painfull plastic surgery and rehabilitation.

She strapped a suicide bodice to herself and on a follow up appoinment intended to blow up the ‘Jews’ (the Drs and Nurses who had cared for her and the other patients and their agonised relatives suffering from terrible burns as she had).

-Paradise. Many women claim that they too will go to paradise and get the family and friends special pass to Paradise too.

One failed female suicide bomber believed she would have got the 72 virgins as well (odd but she had not been particularly religious as a sex worker).

The theological view is that they are martyrs so they go to Paradise where they get to be ‘Queen of the Virgins’!. Quite a tempting title (if a little gothic/soft porn) and well worth a little auto-incendiarism I am sure.

Many women claim that they too will go to paradise and get the family and friends special pass to Paradise too.

All suicide bombers are told this. In Christianity, selling passes to heaven was trashed long ago. But Christianity isn’t based on building an empire through invasion and slaughter.

One of the Palestinian failed suicide bombers interviewed by Baer female suicide bombers was a fantasist who had wished to be an actress. She had a nasty household ‘accident’ with some kerosene (it was not clear whether this was her own angry attention seeking or an issue of dishonour).

I posted about that here and here.

‘ Christianity isn’t based on building an empire through invasion and slaughter… ‘

Finally ! Thank you ! A decent joke on HP. Its been a long time coming but was well worth the wait.

sorry, didn’t know/remember dsquared, so couldn’t deduce the parody. And, having come late to this thread, I confess to skimming and so missing Gene’s alert,

Thanks for that Gene before my time here. Did you see the Robert Baer documentary?

Incredibly good actually. Even the obvious stopper type would have hard going with the easy foormer CIA agent Islamophobic yada yada.

Not only is he clearly not Islamophobic, he speaks fluent Arabic,the subtlety of his questions and the gentleness and non-judgemental manner were a powerfull tool, ethnographic in quality at seeking genuine answers to the question ‘what drives a person to blow themselves up for God’?

he seemed to be a man on a genuine quest really trying to explain however difficult or complex the answer might be.

Compared to the ridiculously naive or reductionist simple one factor models we are used to seeing he explored every possible factor, not shying away from the poverty or the hardening experience of growing up in Gaza or the West Bank.

baer’s insistence in forensically unpicking the details of a bombers life to ask why this person why at that time.

He never failed to explain the general context from the role of Hamas, or the perceived Islamophobia of the Gulf War in the british 7/7 bombers.

Equally like a forensic historian he never settled for generalist explanations that did not tell us ech person’s story.

I think the episode on the Women was the most poignant as he showed how in a perversion of the media obsessed globalised world outside the suicide bomber is also a weapon, a bomb and a propaganda weapon to manufacture a media martyrdom product to function as entertainment and recruitment as well as the world of the internet agrieved looking for authentic heroes.

The fact that women traditionally incapable of the autonomy necessary to do this by themselves to themselves, have been emancipated just enough for self-immolation.

We see a case of the vengeful professional who also finds her life constrained and circumscribed by tradition and the unrealised promise of modernity.

WE see the orphan turned sex worker blackmailed by her clients and pimps to assist a bomber, and the dreamworld of a young woman dreaming of beeing a movie star realising her only route to video fame is explosive martyrdom.

And behind all of these we saw clearly the well oiled, sophisticated machine in Hamas to groom, select, train, deliver and aim weapon grade humans whose only value to these Evil cynical people lies in their gullibility and malleability is their.

In fact a key feature of all suicide bombing as a political strategy (this applies equally to Tamil seperatists) is that the shift to weaponising humans comes when there is a division and rivalry for political influence among terrorist factions.

Obviosly the low tech weapon is there but it appears that the whole suicide bomber as living martyr is the mechanism for factional ideological control over the community.

In that sense the child abuse we see is part of the fascistic political reality of existence of life as a death cult that is being propagated as an internal mechanism of control.

Anyone who is remotely concerned with the actual plight of palestinians should see that suicide bombing, far from being a regrettable but necessary and inevitable act of asymmetric warfare is in fact a deliberate act of psychological warfare its main function being the attempt to reduce an entire population to a hate driven organism that is morally indistinguishable from the weapon it becomes.

But then many of these people defend North Korea too

Thanks for that Gene before my time here. Did you see the Robert Baer documentary?

Haven’t seen it, but thanks for the recommendation.

The fact that women traditionally incapable of the autonomy necessary to do this by themselves to themselves, have been emancipated just enough for self-immolation.

I’m reminded of the words of the late Sheik Yassin.

Fatfish, Islamists and their supporters seem to be completely unaware that time passes.

If you’re deluded enough, you can equate modern Catholicism with Torqamada too. But I don’t find your ignorance of the present amusing.

Josh wrote: I’m reminded of the fact that I read that martyrs actually get 100 horis not 72. The 72 usually quoted are just the females. Of course since the paradise myth is designed to entice men to kill and die, not women, those male sex objects are described as boys, not as full grown men.

Just so. The Muslim ‘prophet’ Mohamed was careful to appeal to those thus inclined for heavenly reward…

Some Koranic quotes:

Koran 52:24
Round about them will serve, to them, boys (handsome) as pearls well-guarded.

Koran 56:17
Round about them will serve boys of perpetual freshness.

Koran 76:19
And round about them will serve boys of perpetual freshness: if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls.

Did Mo like to repeat himself, or does the same quote get recycled in the Koran?

Anyway if it’s the Koran that means the big Mo said it himself, doesn’t it?

Given those quotes, it’s funny that no one ever mentions that the big Mo was into boys.

Echoing Metta, my belief in God has been reinforced as I have seen evil.

I’m not sure that Mo was into boys, I suspect that he was just maximising the appeal of his death cult, the cult which became Islam.

The Koran is very repetative.

At last something positive - Mohammed was an equal opportunity employer! Hooray!

AS for the Koran being repetitive - you can say that again…and again…and again.

{/ariston}

boys of perpetual freshness

Did Right Guard have shares in Mohammed or something?

Alec, for someone so obviously fresh-faced (i.e. young), you do have a fair knack of picking up late 80s/early 90s cultural references. Do you spend your evenings watching UK Gold or something?

There is also a book, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers by Barbara Victor, which attempted to tell each woman’s story, whether with as much nuance and knowledge of Arabic etc, as Baer, I can’t say.

But what you regard as a virtue, Mettaculture, in your evaluation of Baer “Equally like a forensic historian he never settled for generalist explanations that did not tell us each person’s story.”, Jacqueline Rose regards as a criticism. In her lrb review of Victor’s book, she says:

“The Israeli reading of Jaradat’s motives should warn us that, whether or not what they attribute to her is accurate, personalising the female martyr can be a way of denying the abuses of the army .. and of silencing the Palestinian political case..The problem is that the more she tries to apply her analysis to all women in the culture, the more its power to explain individual cases declines: if life is unbearable for women under Islam, then why this particular woman? Slowly and painstakingly, Victor has turned these women from martyrs into suicides…Not one of these women is truly the political agent of her own life.”

It was this review, in which Rose quotes unquestioningly as fact the false historical account of Ariellah Atzmon to bolster her own views,(while being questioning and sceptical of sources in telling these women’s stories) that started me on a Rosewatch.

Having read back through the comments I see that Noqa says that Rim was accused of adultery (’found out’). If this is true and not just a rumour put around afterwards, it suppoets what Mettaculture said about female suicide bombers often being disgraced women. I remember reading about a case in Jordan last year where a female suicide bomber’s bomb-belt failed to detonate. She was part of a team blowing up a wedding party at one of the posh hotels in the capitol. She claimed in her defence that her husband had forced her to do it; he had actually successfully detonated his bombbelt. The court was debating whether to pass the death penalty on her or not. I don’t know what happened in that case. Does anyone know? I felt some ambiguity at the time because on the one hand she had been co-erced into wearing a bombbelt (according to her) and yet on the other hand she was planning to kill loads of people. Difficult ethical one that.

Ami, what’s an intelligent commentor like you doing in a blog like this?

>>boys of perpetual freshness

>Did Right Guard have shares in Mohammed or something?

There’s an ad campaign for you!

Josh, I would simper, but simpering is more the fragrant Ms Rose’s line

“simpering is more the fragrant Ms Rose’s line

along with claiming that those who disagree with her are mentally ill, making up quotes, committing factual errors which in any other context would be hilarious and for all that getting princeton university press to publish her bilious screed. Dear Jacqueline is certainly an operator, I’ll give her that.

Morgoth, although, mercifully, I’ll never be as old as you, I am not still in nappies. How about a discussion of the relative merits of Pigeon Street over The Flumps?

On a more skin-crawling note, last night I was on dial-up at home so took everyone’s word on the vid’s sheer repulsiveness. Looks as if I wasn’t wrong to do so. Not as chilling as the footage of Beslan gunmen moving through the burning school, but up there.

Regarding the fallen-woman hypothesis, such like was suggest about the Liliths recruited for Beslan and that theatre; widows who had no other option but social ostracizement.

SueR, she’s to hang.

ami. well spotted i am put on notice and rose i to be kept under Rosewatch. Explaining each story reduces their value as martyrs euch I want to puke.

Always better to see far away people as cyphers reacting collectively determined by oppresive forces that makes us feel there is still nobility and sacrifice in the world.

She sounds as bonkers and nasty (and racistly orientalising) as Mad Madelaines article on suicide bombing as an oriental act of pious self sacrifice unknown in the nasty individualist West (though apparently it had been common in her churches early life primitive nasty Catholic she is too)

I’m sorry, Metta, I cannot decipher your first paragraph. Are you put on notice *to* observe Rose; or are you under *her* observation?

Ami, is this an existing Rose-watch site? Linkipoos?

Paul F, can you point me to a suitable article on Ma’ Atzmon?

Incidentally I was in Sri Lanka in 1983 when the civil war broke out (and since) I have interviewed Tamil women drawn to the Tigers, my view was later confirmed by other work I have seen on the Black Tigers (the female bombs).

Most of the women I met would have looked forward to an arranged early marriage anda fairly bleak life as low cast women in a situation of rural indebtedness. Joining a cadre, marching training, learning and teachin (even if propagandist ideology) carrying weapons even being feared and admired, seemed to them and me like a much more glamerous existence.

War gives glamour and meaning and a massive shift in sexual roles for women.

Even a less extreme militant organisation of women can empower in some ways

Even the British Land Girls going into the countryside revolutionised British sexual relatioships post war women were not going back to the old ways.

Obviously Jihadi means of exit seem a little more one way, but many more women can identify with the cause and in doing so make space to apply some leverage for a recognised shift in their social status.

Islamism that is militant but non-jihadi can provide real tangible benefits for some women.

Like the high powered gobby hijab wearing british Barrister in the ‘Retreat’ she is anythin but the traditional shy flower of Islam.

She appropriates and use the power of modesty and the hijab as a portable screen masking her very real participation in the formerly excluded public sphere of men (this is why the increase in hijab and niqab in Muslim countries is associated with increasing rates of women at university and in the professions)

She can get away with the gob because of the in your face holier than thou modesty of the veil.

A superior social position for some pious Islamist women can be acheived at the expense of
a declining general position for most (characterised as deviant or lax in religious observations) women.

sorry Alec I am now on guard and Ros is under at least metaphorical watch. don’t know if she is being cyber stalked but I hope so for dark and disturbed thought passing as book reviews.

She may need thorazine or something. Is there a service that delivers hypnotic medication, as a public service to those considered to be ‘close to the edge’?

Ami, is this an existing Rose-watch site? Linkipoos?

Alec Macpherson- as Metta says, metaphorical Rose watch, which involved a confrontation in person with her at a public event about her lrb review, followed by a letter by me published in lrb exposing the falsity, a challenge to her during her talk at Limmud 2 years ago, which I commented on here- which comment was picked up by Melanie P and jewishrefugees blogspot, and which I expanded into a longer guest post there, and latterly, exposing her further in commments on her IJV post on CIF

But now that Lappin has done such a good job, I no longer feel the need to act like her mini nemesis quite so often.

Is it just me or has this comment thread left a nasty after taste?

I propose that TheIrie, JohnBno2, and any other cowards who’ve ducked the real issue in this thread - they should be banned from posting any other comment until they describe how watching this video makes them feel and why they think it’s acceptable for Palestinian children to be abused like this and the root cause of their racism.

The most disgusting thing is that TheIrie doesn’t realise what a vile racist he is.

Phomesy, it would be disappointing if no monsters came to call. Harry set up this blog to kick at the pricks… If we didn’t attract them, then who are we preaching at?

Phomsey, that was uncalled for! TheIrie is no racist. He doesn’t hate Israelis, just their brutal Asiatic ideology.

Josh, did Disney not enjoy bathing his pubescent daughter? Personally, I think the entire cooperation should be at The Hague for crimes against literature concerning Winnie the Pooh. Even Wodehouse wasn’t that cruel.

AMI ==> But now that Lappin has done such a good job,

Over at Engage? Cheers.

==> I no longer feel the need to act like her mini nemesis quite so often.

I bet you enjoy it.

Cooperation? Corporation!

Alec - re a decent article on Atzmon: David Hirsh is always a good place to start with this stuff, and his CIF article at
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_hirsh/2006/11/a_new_menacing_current_is_appe.html

also gets you to a number of good links with further information on silly little Gilad and his activities.

For those seeking the great man’s roots, here is a link to Gilad’s mummy’s site.

http://www.ariela.org/

Oh no, Disney jokes are being deleted!

You know I contracted for Disney for a short time, and the joke going around the company was Mikey Mouse’s divorce:

Judge: So Mr. Mouse, you say that you want to divorce your wife Minnie because she’s a bit strange?

Mikey: I didn’t say that Minnie was “a bit strange,” your honor. I said that she was fucking Goofy!