AbbaGav

Remember how I recently held the 14th spot in web searches for sexy israeli men? Well, an obviously admiring reader from Croatia was kind enough to point out to me yet another AbbaGav-Blog-Triumph by reaching me with his web search: STUPID ISRAELI PEOPLE.

I'm #4!!!

I'm just so flattered, I can't begin to tell you. Of course I'm happy even to have been nominated, and to have come so close to the bronze, well, I'm touched. And finishing behind noted Stupid Israeli Person Andrew Sullivan, who was number one, is in itself a great, great honor.

Thanks to all who voted for me or linked. Who knows, maybe if some of you link to this post, I can pull myself up to number 1!!! I know, I know, hubris kills, but can't I at least dream?

Whoa Nelly! Hold the phones! Late breaking development just as we were going to the Publish button.

I need to correct something. Since my original 14th place finish in the Mr. Sexy Israeli web search contest...(drumroll please)...Yes!!! I've moved up to NUMERO UNO!!! I am now number one among sexy israeli men.

Thank you all, so much! Sing with me: I'm, Too Sexy For My Blog...

technorati tags: sexy, israeli, man, stupid, israeli, person, thank you so much

Now that we are a few weeks into the Islamic Cartoon Riots, I think it is safe to say that as historians, we now have enough analytical space to step back three and a half paces and try to assemble an overview of the "Big Picture" -- the historical context of the Cartoon Crisis.

Timeline Graph of Mohammed Cartoon Heads Per Year


Let's take a closer look at some of the timeline graph's key dates in Cartoon History.

c. 500 BCE	Nobody here but us Jews. No prophetic drawings of the Muslim Prophet's head yet either.
560 CE	Birth of Mohammed. First drawing appears on birth announcement. While no copies are made in this pre-Xerox era, the one image alone should have been enough to trigger riots, but who knew?
632	Death of Mohammed. There is no record of his face being carved in a mountain memorial, ala Rushmore, or any such blasphemy.
633-939	Now and again, careless scribblers might accidentally draw something resembling the Muslim Prophet's head in these peaceful yet turbulent years as people start dying and fancy schmancy stuff starts getting invented that we won't know about for another 1000 years.
940	Two people draw an image of Mohammed's head in the same year -- a new record -- prompting the Mahdi, the 12th Imam, to throw himself down a well. The faithful forget to riot about the new precedent-setting level of desecration as they are too busy listening for splashing sounds at the well.
941 - 1884	Occasional drawings keep popping up, no big whup. People continue dying. Fancy schmancy stuff continues getting invented until the Jihad runs out of Mojo somewhere in southern Europe.
1885	Invention of the crayon. Sharp rise in blasphemous images -- to maybe 5 -- but it goes unnoticed as would-be rioters are too absorbed with the new technology's potential for scribbling informal fatwas and death threats.
2001	Low levels of not-for-profit Prophet drawings continue to go mostly unprotested, except perhaps in textbooks in more tolerant countries. Twin Towers destroyed, not much protest about that either.
Sep. 2005	Wow. 12 images of the Muslim Prophet are published in a newspaper but few seem to care, apparently momentarily still hung over from their recent Koran-in-the-Toilet binges.
Jan 2006	The head count is up to 15 as Imams looking to stir the pot have increased the ante with 3 new desecrations of their own invention. Response is only now slowly building.
Jan-Feb 2006	Riots. Burning embassies. Fatwas against cartoonists. Threats of a Real Holocaust..
Feb 2006	Quite probably more copies of the Muslim Prophet's image are printed and republished in this month than in any period in history as a response to the riots and threats. Well done.

So we see a pattern of very little cartoon desecration for about one thousand years. Even 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers just weren't quite enough to jump-start the Cartoon cottage industry.

But then the Islamist threats and riots and violence were finally enough to provoke the opening of the floodgates. Am I saying that if the extremists had merely written a few letters to the Danish editor, that the whole thing would have just melted away? That TONS of desecration could have been avoided, if that is what the Islamists had really cared about more than their own lives as they claimed? Yes.

Am I blaming the victim? Only if rampaging mobs who destroy embassies and threaten cartoonists' lives can be called victims.

Technorati Tags: prophet, cartoon protests, riots, timeline

Indeed, Islam's most "observant" women have borne a lot:

• Threatened with death should their actions -- or suspected actions, or imagined actions -- somehow threaten the family honor as viewed by any male relative. ?
  
• Forced forevermore to accept the shrouded smell of thick linen in place of the scent of fresh air. ?
  
• Vulnerable to early marriage at the family's whim to men who may already have other wives. ? ?
  
• Barred from sports. ?
  
• If raped, can instead be imprisoned on charges of adultery. ?
  
• In Saudi Arabia, forbidden to drive, forbidden to travel without a male guardian's permission, forbidden to walk without his accompaniment. ?
  
• And of course what greater glory can there be than raising sons as suicidal, sacrificial pawns to toss on Jihad's ever-growing pile. ?

Yes, they've borne a lot.

But this. This is the limit. The publication of a few cartoons has really pushed them over the edge.

One of religion's benefits to the faithful is helping keep basic priorities straight. Thank Allah for that.

To:	Border's Books Worldwide Corporate Offices
From:	Minister for Promulgation of Blind Obedience
Re:	Franchisee's Request to Open Iranian Borders

We hope this letter finds you in good health, and more importantly that Pervaz, your American-born prospective franchisee, is recovering well. The slightly overzealous response he received was unfortunately the result of a few of the Ministry's bad apples, whose sense of the expedient was as yet insufficient to take seriously your proposal for a Western-style Iranian bookchain. This has been rectified, believe me. We also pray, however, that you are still interested in cooperation, despite having received no response to your "opening Iranian Borders" request for so long -- I was unaware of the problem because all memos were initially mis-routed to the Ministry of Isolationism.

Contrary to the initial impression your franchisee's beating might have conveyed, the mutual brand-building opportunities afforded by your visionary offer really are of great interest to us. However, a few niggling details remain before we can involve the lawyers and accountants to close the deal.

First is the issue of the name. As we hope Pervaz was able to explain to you, the word "Borders" in this region has nothing but negative connotations associated with colonialist interlopers and tea-drinkers, who carved up our land like a drunken mathematician's Venn Diagram. So -- with nothing but your commercial interests in mind -- we must insist you utilize a different name for any stores you open here. May we take the liberty of suggesting one of the following:

• Contested Borders
  
• Border Skirmish
  
• Caliphate Without Borders
  
• Bowdlers

The last title was actually suggested by Pervaz during a brief moment of lucidity. We include it only to illustrate just how distasteful was his sense of humor regarding what is to us a very serious issue: the precise nature of the content we can allow to be sold within our Iranian State. Pervaz clearly overreacted when, near the end of his beating, he promised to sell nothing but copies of the Holy Koran and The Protocols of the Elder of Zion. While his subsequent dental troubles are most regretable, surely we can't be expected to ignore such slander. As a matter of public record we have a very robust book market, including many other top-sellers such as Mein Kampf, the auto-biography of Sheik Yassin, and the Michael Moore boxed-set, not to mention a brisk export of certain specialized and highly-technical how-to materials. So we are clearly open to books. We are a people of the book. It's just a question of which book and which pages.

Since I'm told Pervaz was not paying careful attention toward the end of his meeting, I'll reprint for your benefit a few section-by-section guidelines he might not have conveyed to you.

Children's section

We are well aware of the world-wide "Harry Potter" phenomena, and realize it would be to difficult ban the series entirely. We will, however, expect the series to be shortened from seven volumes down to a single book, which must be edited for our young readers' sensibilities and retitled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stoning."

The Zionist Dr. Seuss will obviously have to go, as will Shel Silverstein, the Berenstains, and any other author with a last name ending in 'stein' or 'stain' -- too inflammatory.

Curious George is fine; although, we would prefer the yellow-hatted colonialist to get a little more of what he deserves. Perhaps rabies from a monkey bite, or a light beheading?

Romance

While we are familiar with the "Harlequin" phonomenon, the so-called "bodice ripper," we feel this genre has little to offer the Iranian woman, who has no need to dream of Fabio replacing her Iranian man. We would suggest, therefore, that this section be stocked instead with cookbooks, since a bountiful dinner table is a sure way for the romantically-inclined woman to please her man.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

While we prefer to steer away from mainstream science fiction, on the grounds that such futuristic speculation might lead readers to question whether the body of all possible knowledge was perfected and freeze-dried early in the 8th century, we might be able to whittle a few of the classics down to acceptable pamphlets, as well as offering a few good Fantasy selections:

• Conan the Infidel
  
• The Lord of the Rings and Everything Else
  
• Fahrenheit 450 -- the Prequel: Just Hot Enough
  
• Flowers for Algernon Hiss
  
• Euromancer: The Next Frontier

Self Help

The Holy Koran. Hey, we let you have the rest of the bookstore, so give us a break here. Well, it's just that we haven't really seen much else we like. Perhaps we could get a few of our own enlightened writers busy, if you could promise publication:

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Imams
  
• Don't Sweat the Sharia Stuff -- and it's all Sharia stuff
  
• The Road Less Paved
  
• All I Really Needed to Know I Learned at Madrassa
  
• How To Control Friends and Intimidate People
  
• When Life Gives You Lemons, Build Lemon Launchers

Science and Technology

We'd prefer to focus on the technology here, and leave the science to the prophet. A few volumes we believe would be brisk sellers are:

• Military Grade 2048 bit RSA Encryption Technology Made Easy
  
• Ipods and Eggtimers -- Building Your Own Detonator
  
• Plutonium for Dummies
  
• 100 Simple Explosives You Can Mix in Your Own Garage
  
• Backyard Ballistics

Chick Lit

Obviously there has to be something for the grrrrls and chicks, to "empower" them. It shouldn't be too hard to take a classic and suck out all the sex and sinfulness until you can offer "Bridget Jones' Head Covering." We also expect "The Girls Guide to Shooting and Demonstrating" should sell well, with proper editorial guidance of course.

In Closing

If you feel you can construct a bookstore along these editorial guidelines, we believe there is a real chance that you could eek out a meager profit between riots and firebombings -- we recommend all construction and furnishings consist only of non-flammable materials -- all the while contributing to the overall impression that Iran is an open society. However, there are a few last little teeny-weeny itty-bitty points to deal with first.

We have a very minor requirement of your world-wide operations. While you might take the Islamophobic position of refusing our suggestion on the grounds that Sharia is not yet globally enforced, we believe that forward looking businesses like yours should consider the longer view. Do not forget, the world is filled with 1.2 billion potential readers, or potential rioters -- the choice is in your hands. In that vein, we strongly recommend your existing stores modify their policy of stocking the shelves with books with those inflammatory covers, which include images of women, often scantily clad, images of the human form, and that of animals, not to mention various and sundry prophets. Wouldn't it be much wiser to simply stock books in plain brown covers?

Eagerly awaiting your response, and etc.




POSTSCRIPT: In reality, there are already bookstores in Iran; although, there are indeed issues of censorship:

On the other hand, it is the very rare book written by an émigré author that can get published in Iran; it is hard enough for writers living inside to get their books accepted by the government censors.

The censorship even extends to Tintin:

It wasn't until a few years ago, nearly a quarter century after the revolution, that Tintin found its way back into Iran. This time, however, the publishers are unauthorized, and since there is no copyright in Iran no one can stop them.

This means they have "censored" a lot of stuff out of the Tintin stories. They have "islamified" Tintin, and had they failed to do so they probably would never have gotten permission to publish the books.

A lot of people, certainly those like me who have read the original editions, hate these new ones though. Imagine Captain Haddock drinking "lemonade" all the time instead of whiskey, or imagine Castafiore wearing stockings and long-sleeves, and then you will know why we hate them.

While it looks bad, there is room for hope that Iranians may someday enjoy the liberty they deserve too. But it won't happen by itself.

Technorati Tags: satire, borders, books, iran, censorship, bowdlerization

Daled Amos has done a great job bringing together the best of the week in the 59th edition of Haveil Havalim #59. A couple of my favorite posts:

Mensa Barbie has an important video showing how Pallywood creates fake news video that ends up airing on major news networks, perpetrating lies of Israeli atrocities that many end up believing. It's a link worth passing on.

Treppenwitz wants the world to stop infantilizing the Palestinians by excusing their continuing misdeeds as if they were two year olds, incapable of civil behavior.

I hope you'll find a few of your own favorites.

Third World County has an image that is definitely NOT the Muslim Prophet in a pink dress:


How do I know this is not a protestable, detestable image of said Prophet?

First of all, I'm utterly certain that the Prophet, good Muslim that he was, would never have allowed himself to be photographed drinking a Danish beer.

But I'm also pretty sure the Prophet never had legs like that. Plus, the Prophet never needed a lap-poodle. And I'm not aware of any literature suggesting any revered affinity for pink, or sequins for that matter.

Most importantly, it is a matter of the historical record that ballroom dancing did not exist as a competitive sport in the 7th century. It wasn't invented for another seven centuries, until an Islamic general documented the steps now commonly associated with ballroom dancing, but in an Islamic treatise on battlefield tactics and maneuvers. It was, I believe, the Jews who stole the idea and turned the whole thing into the foo-foo tux-and-sequins dance craze we know and revile today.

Pretty convincing? I hope so, after all, I'm not looking to get myself killed, or Google's servers burned in effigy for hosting the image. Can you believe huge mobs are threatening violence over cartoons showing the prophet, or showing them protesting the image of the prophet, or showing others being afraid of them protesting the image of the prophet? I, like most serious journalists, would quail at the thought of what would happen were such a realistic image of the Prophet and his poodle to be published.

And there is yet one more reason I'm pretty sure it's not real -- there is scarcely any likeness at all:


No fuse. No turban. The beard is just all wrong, not the way the Prophet's is imagined to be at all.

Seriously folks, let's get a grip now -- and by folks, I mean Rampagers of Peace who can't handle a carefully arranged sequence of pixels on the internet, and no, that is not all Muslims. This has gone on long enough. I, like most who have republished one or more of these images, do so not as a mockery of your Prophet, but as a statement of defiance. You demand, on threat of violence, that Western civilization submit its freedoms to 8th century censors. I refuse. Denmark has refused. I hope we will all refuse.

Once you understand that we refuse, maybe we can get busy solving the problem.

Time to grow up folks and either a) live peaceably in the world amongst others who are not like you, b) return to a life of isolation in your own private century, or c) live with the consequences of a Dark Ages army declaring war on the 21st century. You're on the clock.

Disclaimer (again): I'm sure many Moderate-Western-Muslims do not approve of the violence carried out by those who rampage in their name. But, moderate Muslims, you are on the clock too, just a different clock, and with a different choice. Great respect goes to those who stand up to their misguided kin, and show them a different path. That means, at the very least, counter-demonstrations that are peaceful and large. Speak up! Your freedom of speech has been bought and paid for. Use it.

"Right Hand...Red!"

It just warms my heart to see the Pakistanis having such fun and games...

Oh. Still protesting the cartoons? This has been going on longer than a lot of Broadway shows. Which gives me an idea...

Cartoon Protests -- The Musical!

How could it not get financed? It'll be a smash hit, what with all the free publicity. Eh. With my luck, come opening night, they'd probably stop protesting, just to spite me.

Technorati Tags: cartoon protests, prophet, broadway, musical, twister

Meryl Yourish has reports of the very latest Zionist outrage:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States and Israel on Thursday for the destruction of a Shiite shrine’s golden dome in Iraq, saying it was the work of “defeated Zionists and occupiers.”

Speaking to a crowd of thousands on a tour of southwestern Iran, the president referred to the destruction of the Askariya mosque dome in Samarra on Wednesday, which the Iraqi government has blamed on insurgents.

“They invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice,” Ahmadinejad said, alluding to the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

“These passive activities are the acts of a group of defeated Zionists and occupiers who intended to hit our emotions,” he said in a speech that was broadcast on state television. Addressing the United States, he added: “You have to know that such an act will not save you from the anger of Muslim nations.”

She adds some interesting comments on that particular incident, but this phenomenon is by no means limited to Iraq, and appears to be spreading globally. So, for the benefit of analysts and my readers, I thought I would just gather up in one place a roundup of the most recent attacks:

• A school bus in Pakistan had a flat tire last Wednesday, causing the children to miss the first five minutes of their morning recitation. The tire burst immediately after a child's offer of a drink was rejected by another with the words "I hate the juice." Authorities speculate that the bus windows were partially lowered, thus allowing Zionist spy-satellites to pickup the exchange and trigger the attack on the school bus.
  
• A devastatingly huge car bomb placed right next to a Mosque in Karballa last week failed to explode, due to Zionist interference; although, there was some speculation that this may have been the work of the occupiers instead. All agreed, however, that it was the Zionists who were the root cause of the outrageous breach of Iraqi sovereignty.
  
• A street vendor in Damascus found that an entire batch of felafel had been overcooked and had to be discarded. On further investigation, he discovered the timer had been set for an extra eighteen minutes too long -- the number eighteen widely known to be the Jewish magic number. The owner had set the time himself and, having no coworkers who could have tampered with it, he drew the obvious conclusion and went to the local newspaper. The resulting riots dispersed by nightfall.
  
• Iraninan President Ahmadinejad himself was not immune, noticing the Zionists had stolen his toothbrush when he tried to find it last night. When questioned how he could know it was the Zionists, when he had already admitted not having used it for two months, a time during which many people could have had access, Ahmadinejad pointed out, "Who stands to benefit most if the democratically elected leader of Iran does not find his toothbrush? Obviously it is the Zionists."

As of press time there has been neither denial nor apology from the Zionist governmental entity.

Technorati Tags: satire, pin the blame on the zionists

WorldGirl Rants has the scoop on the next cartoon crisis, and it is NOT satire.



Really.

As a new service to AbbaGav readers, we are pleased to welcome a new contributor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will be fielding your most challenging relationship questions. Not only is Mahmoud an expert at managing relationships and the art of working relentlessly to achieve your heart's greatest desire, but he also just so happens to be the President of his own country, so he should be well qualified to handle anything you're got to throw at him. Let's get started, shall we:

Dear Ahmadinejad:
I met this guy and we became friends right away. Around the fourth time of seeing and talking to him, my best friend told me that he has a girlfriend. So, months after that, I still remained his friend and was alright with the fact he had a girlfriend. Me and him became closer as time went by. He started telling me about what was going on in his life and he would tell me things that he wouldn't tell other people. We got to talking last week and things went great. Then he asked me if I could go out with anyone, who would it be. I wanted to tell him that it would be him (even though he still has a girlfriend), but I was just surprised by the question and I said I didn't know. I feel so bad inside, and so confused about things. I feel like all I am doing, is waiting for anything to happen. Should I tell him how I feel?
--Waiting in Wauwatosa

Dear Waiting:
Your question is a good one that has Ahmadinejad right between the proverbial Crushing Rock and the Stoning Place. On the one hand, this faithful servant of the Mahdi must counsel patience, the patience of a glacier willing to work for millenia if that's what it takes to slowly scrape a land off the map. Your time will come, Allah be praised, oh will it come, and then he'll be sorry -- for making you wait and frustrating you, that is. There will be no more of this "let's be friends" charade with you while he is meanwhile screwing the entire world, and they don't even realize it. No, patience, the day will come when this will all change in tens of nanoseconds, and then you will thank Ahmadinejad.

But on the other hand, Ahmadinejad is a man very much in touch with his feelings, and has always preferred to just let it all out, the rage, the anger, the righteous indignation or paranoid suspicions -- whatever it may be. You can't keep it in. If you want someone to come crawling to you on hands and knees, you have to let them know in excruciating detail exactly how you feel about them, and what your needs are. Sure, some people probably tell you it's better to "play the game" while you bide your time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. But there will never be a perfect moment until you are willing to act, ruthlessly if need be. So, well, you go girl, go make it happen, but patiently. Ahmadinejad is so happy he could help.

Dear Ahmadinejad:
I'm a newlywed and feel a little resentment over how my in-laws behaved at the wedding. Despite our wishes, his mother wore a black pantsuit. Most of his family failed to sign the guest book, no one sent a card/gift, and we have not received any kind of thank you note for the gifts we gave them. Someone from his family even drew a mustache on my husband's picture and wrote odd sentiments like "We won't embarrass you" and "You're on your own" on the beautiful picture mat, which is ruined now. His family did not contribute anything to the wedding. They even had us pay for the alcohol at the rehearsal dinner, which was not in our financial plan. I feel that some good manners are in order. I need some help in either biting my tongue or letting them have it. What can I do to solicit some good manners or even a simple thank you note? Can I wear white to a funeral to get even? Where did manners go?
-- Fuming Bride

Dear Fuming:
This is a setup right? Is Ahmadinejad being punk'd or something? Did Kofi's stoolie El-Baradei tell you to ask this? No? Well, ok, you have come to the right place. You have so many options, Ahmadinejad almost envies you. First of all, you are to be commended: wearing white to a funeral is an excellent idea -- there is something about funerals that Ahmadinejad simply adores. But you must think bigger than that, really. You must seek revenge. After all, did they not force you to have alcohol at your rehearsal dinner? The scoundrels deserve what they get! One clever way to go about this is to invite them all to a wonderful party -- you are permitted to tell them you will serve alcohol if they seem hesitant -- but then slip some U-238 into their food. This special party food, once ingested, will give off alpha and beta radiations which cause cell death and genetic mutations causing cancer in exposed individuals and genetic abnormalities in their descendents over the years, or so they say. Should you need any assistance bringing this about, please do not hesitate to contact the nearest Iranian consulate. This, by the way, is further proof that Uranium has uses other than nuclear bombs, so please have your friends write letters to their religious leaders or congressmen or whoever is in charge there and have them get that maniac Bush to just BACK OFF. Thank you.

Technorati Tags: advice, relationship, love, radioactive materials, ahmadinejad

(credit: questions scavenged from here and here.)

Linked to: Third World County, Quietly Making Noise, Basil's Blog, Uncooperative Blogger and Bullwinkle's Blog. And Happy Blogiversary to the funny fellows at Point Five -- go have a laugh at their expense!

The Carnival of Comedy is up at Conservathink. If you like to laugh, check it out. If you don't like to laugh, check it out anyway and focus on the posts that just aren't that funny.

That's all. This is a serious post, it's not a joke.

It appears I've been tagged by Scottage at Perspectives of a Nomad so I'll take it in the spirit intended and say neener-neener-neener right back at you, pal. But seriously...

1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?


2: What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?


3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium
for prerecorded music?


4: You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going … Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?


5: Seriously, what do you consider the world’s most pressing issue now?


6: How would you rectify the world’s most pressing issue?


7: You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?


8: You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?


9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole’ Opry –Which do you choose?


10: What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you’d like to solve?


11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?


12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky -- what’s the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?


Now I have to tag 4 more bloggers:

1. World Girl Rants
   
2. I Still See a Spark in You
   
3. Shallow Verb
   
4. Trilcat Goes Another Round

Does anyone actually read these meme things, or are they just blogfill?

8th grade, goofing off with a friend in the halls at school.

I was accidentally pushed into a bigger kid standing nearby. I suppose it's possible I mistranslated the ritually required "excuse me" since I didn't speak Goonish very well. I'm not sure how else to explain his failure to answer with the customary "no problem" -- unless shoving me and grunting "F*** you" is how they say that in Goonish.

So there we were, geek and goon facing off in a crowded hallway, and it was my move.

• Option 1, Full Appeasement: apologize profusely, then turn both cheeks and walk away, and live to flee another day.
  
• Option 2, Spinal Display: shove him back, so crowd and goon alike understand we geeks will not be pushed around, even if it means we will take a beating.
  
• Option 3, Fence Straddle: don't back away, but don't shove back -- instead, split the difference with a little witty banter or light repartee.

If you've been reading my blog at all, you can tell I didn't choose Option 1 -- would I dedicate a whole post to telling a story just to advocate appeasement of bullies? No.

Then again, I hadn't seen Karate Kid yet at this point in my life, so I didn't really have a Crane Kick, go-to move for taking down a charging HINO -- Human in Name Only. Or as my musically inclined wife might put it, I hadn't had enough vocal training to hit the HINO. I'll stop now, before I make you guys angry too.

So with Option 2 ruled out, my only remaining option was a valiant attempt at using humor to soothe the savage beast. I immediately realized my first job was to defuse that F-bomb the goon had so carelessly left lying around, so I furiously searched my brain for just the right calming formulation.

"Don't tell me you're the kind of guy who would want to, NTTAWWT."

I wish I could describe to you the look on his face when I said that, but his fist had me on the ground before I had a chance to check. I guess that was Appeasement Lesson One in this sordid affair: if you are going to appease at all, go all the way, because if you try to straddle the fence, the bully will eventually have to knock you off.

As I got back to my feet, all I can remember is his demanding in disbelief, "What did you just say to me?" Ok, at this point, I have to confess that Lesson 1 is really only so obvious to me now, in hindsight. Faced with a second chance at exactly the same options, I figured if my joke hadn't calmed him down the first time, it was probably because he hadn't understood it. So I tried again, slower this time.

"Well," I started, "you said to me 'F*** you', and then I responded by asking if that meant you were the kind of ---" Yeah, I was on the ground again, and technically this post is mistitled because unfortunately he hit me on the same cheek.

Before I had a chance to give it a third try, this time with added sign language, a bunch of teachers intervened -- totally unnecessarily, I felt, since I was really close to handling it myself. They dragged him away, threw him out of school, and I became known as the guy who got the goon tossed. And nobody gave me any trouble after that; although, I if it were me, I would have harassed me at least a little bit just for the entertainment value.

So now I've finished the story, and you're probably thinking I'll be forced to conclude that a little mealy-mouthed half-appeasement actually can work, and that the cartoon crisis -- nay, the entire Clash of Civilizations -- is therefore well on the way to being solved already. Perish the thought. Appeasement Lesson Two is that a little appeasement can work, as long as you have a bunch of big teachers ready to step in and toss the bully out of school for you when he doesn't reciprocate your humor and generous non-violence.

Turning the other cheek doesn't always work, especially when it's just a universal prescription for absolute-pacifism, for ceding control of the world and its innocent citizens to the winner of the Most Ruthless Would-Be Overlord Contest. On today's world stage, there are those who would bully us, and we have no strong authority backing up our well-meaning concessions to their demands. The UN is more like the crowd of kids standing around waiting to take bets on the winner when the fight goes all the way.

There are times where the goon has the geek alone in an alley on the way home from school, and that's a whole different ballgame. And If that were the situation I'd faced, I'm sure I would have popped that guy in the teeth so hard he'd have been able to chew his own tonsils.

Really. No, I mean it. What's that? Why don't you come over here and say that!?

Technorati Tags: appeasement, bully, story, turn the other cheek, let them eat tonsils

ArabNews has the story of a team from the Middle East's MBC satellite channel producing a program with the noble goal of reducing tensions around the caliphate's cartoon crisis -- I'm tired of calling it the Danish cartoon crisis, by the way, as if the violence is Denmark's problem.

But this is great. We've been waiting for stories of these "moderate Muslim" efforts to counter the damage done by the violence-prone among their co-religionists.

So how does this team of moderates go about calming the Islamic violence raging across the globe? It would obviously be a good idea to adress their rampaging brethren, to give them some sensitivity training about Westerners' most precious principles like Freedom of Expression, central to the West's much-resented success in recent centuries.

Wouldn't it be great if the Islamic street could be taught that Western freedom and prosperity are positives to be emulated, rather than a Zionist plot to be bloodily resisted? If angry Muslims could learn to interact with the West and its freedom-based lifestyle without rampaging in protest at every perceived insult, perhaps peaceful coexistence would indeed be possible, and that's what we all want isn't it?

But that's not how these moderates are going about it. Wrong message. Wrong audience. Wrong problem.

The team of Yallah Shabab, a popular program on the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) satellite channel, is visiting Denmark to present the true character of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) which was distorted by the recent cartoons.

Twelve cartoons first published by Denmark’s largest newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten, last September and then reprinted in several Western newspapers triggered sometimes violent protests by Muslims worldwide.

Apparently in their view, Islamic violence isn't the problem, the exercise of Western freedom that triggers it is. When the problem is framed that way, obviously the solution is to intensify the West's sensitivity training at once. Educating marauding mobs to appreciate another point of view would only delay the West's acceptance that some of their violence-provoking freedoms just might have to go, at least eventually -- but let's not get hung up on that point yet while there's still tolerance and reverence of the Muslim Prophet to be discussed.

At the same time, the team wants to convince the Muslim population that their protests should be through methods that the Prophet would approve and be proud of.

"There should be no more burning of embassies, stamping on flags and violence. We should use more sophisticated, legal and modern methods such as the European court system, educating the West about the Prophet and his message and launching a dialogue with them," said Khoja.

Here is where I am supposed to congratulate them for having the moral fiber to resist the temptation to join their fellow Islamists in the righteous bloodshed. We're required to laud these mere baby-steps, on the grounds that anything more just isn't realisitc. But as an Israeli who has listened to the moderates among Palestinian leaders condemn one suicide bombing after another on the grounds they weren't timed conveniently, I have lost my tolerance for this form of morality.

So they will address their rioting co-religionists, showing them how better to subvert the West's institutions against itself in the quest to globally enshrine Islamic belief as an objective standard by which to measure non-Muslim behavior. If the rioters are to cease burning embassies, threatening cartoonists and killing others, it is only because this is not the most effective way to go about this task. That is not a moral argument, it's tactics.

So what exactly is it that we in the West are supposed to further sensitize ourselves to this time? We've already got the part about not drawing the Prophet, and we've learned it's essential not to let terrorists flush their own copies of the Koran down the toilet so that violence inducing rumors get started. There's more?

"We want to ensure that they understand that the Prophet remains a role model for an ideal son, husband, father, diplomat, politician, general, imam and leader regardless of time and place," said Hani Khoja, one of the team members.

Wow, that's a big one. It's actually more than the rampaging mobs demand. They are just seething and slaughtering so that we don't draw bearded heads with turbans that can't clearly be identified as non-Prophet. Now we are supposed to actually internalize the Muslim religious belief that their prophet was basically perfect in every way, and not just perfect for a 7th century life of nomadic warfare and polygamy, but for a 21st century high tech world. Perfect across all time and space. Sounds kind of like God, but I'm sure I'm missing something here, since there is no God but Allah -- and they thought I wasn't paying attention!

So, assuming this part sinks in, what exactly is expected of us, short of immediate conversion or acceptance of legal dhimmi status and tax obligations?

Another purpose of the visit is to ensure that the Danes understand that the Prophet is more precious to Muslims than their own lives and that is the reason for the highly emotional protests against the cartoons denigrating him.

It's one thing to ask us to reshape our society around their belief that a centuries-dead human Prophet is more precious than their own lives. But until they stop training their mobs to believe their Prophet is also more important than OUR lives, I frankly don't care.

They are addressing the wrong audience, with the wrong message, about the wrong problem. Insensitive or offensive speech and cartoons will pop up from time to time in all but hermetically sealed totalitarian states. A society brainwashed to go berserk with each incident is going to remain a marginalized basket case. Anyone with aspirations to administer a global caliphate -- with all its complicated tax codes and requirements to account for all those body parts -- must be able to understand this obvious point.

On the bright side, I saved the best news in the whole article for last:

The entire trip will be filmed and translated into special episodes for Yallah Shabab and will be aired on MBC early next month. International satellite channels, such as CNN and BBC, as well as Danish television have expressed interest in the film.

Yup.

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Since the children are the future, I offer the following child-raising wisdom, for dealing with that troublesome future Jihad Warrior when he just won't behave:

1. Tell him that if he doesn't behave, you'll kill off Uncle Osama in tonight's bedtime story.
   
2. Suspend his "Islam's Funniest Goodbye Suicide-Videos" viewing privileges for a month.
   
3. Show him a picture of his attractive cousin, and a picture of his homely cousin, and explain that life is about choices.
   
4. Threaten to let his younger brother kill himself first.
   
5. No more riding shotgun with Daddy in the explosives truck at parades.
   
6. If he doesn't behave, explain that the next time his friends come looking for him, you'll be forced to tell them he's visiting a Jewish friend.
   
7. Make sure he understands how important his behavior is to the family's honor. Involve one of his sisters in the discussion if necessary.
   
8. Tell him he can forget about that coveted GI Yusuf doll with Kung Fu detonator grip and detachable brain pan (some internal organs sold separately, batteries not included)
   
9. Respect his understanding of the concept of consequences: if you can't count on him to behave now, how can you trust him with the important role of "corpse" in tomorrow's big funeral procession?
   
10. Negotiate. And lollipops. Important life lessons must be inculcated from the very first years.

technorati tags: jihad, hamas, top ten, discipline, child raising

Everybody take a deep breath and relax. It's all over. No more nuke worries. The Iranian Foreign Minister just cleared everything up. It was all just a big misunderstanding!

Iran's foreign minister denied on Monday that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map," saying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood.

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament.

"How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not legally recognise this regime," he said.

Oh, thank God. You see? He's so right! It's not like you can simply remove a country from the map with some sort of giant eraser or something!

And this great, great news comes not a moment too soon, what with growing indications of military plans for the US or Israel to bomb the stuffing out of them -- who knows how many innocent Ayatollahs could have been needlessly injured. It's such a relief to have the Iranians officially and unambiguously step forward like this and straighten this crazy mess out. Who knows what might have happened.

Even better, they only wanted to change the regime here! Just the regime! How bad could that be when half the Israeli population probably agrees with them! Oh man, I just feel like such a load has been lifted from my shoulders.

And those rumors that the map wiping was to be done with nuclear bombs? Nope. No, no, no. No nuclear bombs.

Iran says it is for energy production only.

And I'm sure those long range missile things are only for the parades. It all makes sense.

What about the Holocaust denial?

Mottaki also acknowledged the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany, despite Ahmadinejad saying in December that it was a myth.

He told the parliament's foreign affairs committee, speaking through an interpreter: "Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered. We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?"

And if they're going to be this darned reasonable about everything, then I agree, Isn't there some sort of Iranian charity for activities in Israel that we could fund? Or maybe we could think of something to withdraw from -- this really calls for an old-fashioned good-will gesture!

Ok, some of you killjoys out there are still skeptical. You're worried about the Hamas business, the new terrorist government eternally sworn to our destruction. Worried Iran is somehow supporting them, am I right?

The political leader of militant group Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections last month, was in Tehran on Monday for talks with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mottaki said it was natural such talks should take place, while making clear he rejected the West's labelling of Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction, as a terrorist group.

"We believe that those people who make efforts to free their countries should not be regarded as terrorists," he said.

Do you hear the man? They're not terrorists! Stop this unhealthy worrying, RIGHT NOW. You'll make yourself SICK. And the poor day laborers waiting in line at the checkpoints with their heavy winter coats year-round bulging in the middle, so threadbare they're held together with red and blue wires that stick out all over the place -- it's a travesty! How can we continue to subject them to this onerous "security" when they were never a terrorist threat to begin with? They just want to be free. A little liberty maybe.

He declined to speculate on how ties between a Hamas-led Palestinian government and Tehran would develop.

So we'll have no more of that sarcasm about ties developing over mutual commitment to the annihilation of Israel, nuclear or otherwise. It's all cleared up now. Peace in our time. Yippee!

Will Reuters like us now too?

Dr. Helen recently took a realistic psychological look at the ironic inclination to appease those who threaten:

"If you reward cruelty with kindness, with what do you reward kindness?"
--Hillel

You would think that governments as well as people in general would understand that appeasing and rewarding negative behavior doesn't work. It's basic psychology 101--but one that not even most psychology professors understand or put to use. And apparently, this concept is foreign to many of the politically correct persuasion outside the classroom as well--for them, their feeling of moral "superiority" trumps human nature and causes liberals to turn a blind eye to justice and acts of violence.

She illustrates her point with more than just the well-known historical examples -- I'm explicitly avoiding mention of Hitler because I don't want to run afoul of Godwin's Law before I've even gotten started. Dr. Helen points out the same dynamic is in force when Danes feel threatened by alienated immigrant Muslim populations, or even when welfare applicants bully the very staff on whom they depend.

It gets ironicker.

When I think of appeasement, I think of the weak trying to fend off the powerful. Kind of like it appears in the old Dr. Seuss cartoon that's making the rounds:


But in reality, oddly enough, in all these situations the candy is not being handed out by a frightened little guy to toothy, overgrown monsters. It is actually the party with the upper hand distributing the lollipops, feeding and strengthening the aggressive little guy, at least in the beginning. Strange.

Does the cat appease the mouse? Does the bird appease the worm? No. But the cat does not feel guilty for being a cat, nor the bird for eating a worm.

The modern West has lost its ability to wield power with a clear conscience. Just as America has become unable to wear khaki without tripping on Vietnam flashbacks, the West seems unwilling or unable to move beyond a sense of post-colonial guilt. As if cats and birds with any conscience should choose their own starvation. Even stranger, were the West to confidently stand for its own values and its own survival, it would require the death of no worm.

By no means am I advocating the immoral or even amoral exercise of power for its own sake, just because one has it. Nor do I call for the consumption of worms. But if careful introspection fails to turn up any core values that justify the use of power to preserve them, nothing can sustain the remaining hollowed out existence but a diminishing-returns game of appeasement.

When does the appeasement stop? When the appeaser finally finds a set of values worth fighting for -- or when the lollipops run out. Finding those values sooner rather than later keeps the battles simpler, and saves a lot of lollipops.

If cats and birds ever lose faith in the legitimacy of their own existence, turning to appeasement as a morally palliative diet plan, we may find ourselves living in a world run by worms and mice. Sometimes it feels like we might already be there.

Via Salon.com's gossip and entertainment column The Fix:

Populist firebrand Michael Moore is at work on his next film, to be called 'Sicko,' about the U.S. healthcare industry. And now he's asking for your stories: 'Have you ever found yourself getting ready to file for bankruptcy because you can't pay your kid's hospital bill, and then you say to yourself, 'Boy, I sure would like to be in Michael Moore's health care movie!'?' If so, he'd like you to e-mail him at michael@michaelmoore.com, and promises, 'I will read every single one' of the e-mails sent. (MichaelMoore.com)

So let me get this straight. Michael Moore, man of his word, has promised -- PROMISED -- to read every email that is sent to him on this topic? I've long suspected he was a bit of an idiot, but I didn't realize I was being overly generous.

Let's do some math. According to Technorati, there are about 28.3 million blogs. Let's say that half of those bloggers either love Michael Moore or hate him, while the other half are just fronting for pharmaceutical spam. Still, that leaves 13.5 million blogs that might be interested in helping promote Michael Moore's desperate plea for email. That is ssuming of course that they were to find out about his published plea -- which seems likely to me given the magnitude of Mr. Moore's... fame, and how he attracts bloggers like flies.

Even if he could read emails at the rate of one per second with each eyeball, it would take him at least 82 days to clear his inbox -- and that's with both eyeballs operating independently. And assuming only blog writers respond, not blog readers. And of course no sleeping.

Or time to eat.

Hmmm. He might never get to that next movie. What is this guy thinking?

He probably publicized this because he really only wanted one or two emails. Hopefully for Michael's sake, and the sake of his next movie, nobody else will find out about his request.

Seriously, don't just gratuitously spam Michael Moore's inbox, just because he invited you to. He's clearly looking for emails only from people who have health care stories, no matter how rambling, and who are interested in interjecting themselves into his movie making endeavour.

I was just doing the math that he probably should have, especially if the health care crisis is as deep as he obviously thinks it is, with nightmare emails idling in millions of sickly people's draft folders, just waiting for his invitation.

I'm just trying to point out that this guy is an idiot for posting his email and begging to be mail-bombed, all the while promising to read each email. Do not spam him. Ok?

UPDATE: Yael made a good point in the comments, reminding me to separate my opinion of Michael Moore from the issue of Health Care reform, which it was not my point to ridicule. I don't have a particularly well-informed opinion on Health Care reform either way -- it's a pretty complicated subject in which good intentions can produce bad results -- so please interpret this post only as teasing Michael Moore for publicly handing out his email address, and being an idiot in general, not as a vehicle of policy analysis.

Technorati Tags: michael moore, joke, satire, please do not spam

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Halal Hamasnikim, the new Hamas Blog Carnival.

Every post promoted here is guaranteed 100% Halal -- that's "Kosher" in NeoCon-speak -- relentlessly advancing the agenda of Hamasnikim -- what Zionists call the members of the Hamas kibbutz. This new carnival is my way of taking back the original blog carnival idea which the Jews stole from us and renamed Haveil Havalim in their pathetic attempts to erase historical FACTS. The first blog carnival, they would rather you didn't know, was actually invented by Muslim scholars in the 13th century -- a time when Islamic civilization was already deeply interconnected and flourishing, while the so-called Jews and Christians were still just savages in Brooklyn and Europe, limping along with only dialup access.

And now with Hamas finally leading Islam back to its rightful place at the head of the table, let the Halal feast begin:

Big news this week as IsraellyUncool opened nominations for the upcoming Blogs that Love Allah and Mohammed awards:

I am proud to open nominations for the 1st ever BLAMs in the hope that this contest will light a fuse for explosive growth in the Islamosphere and carry that energy outward with added nails and ballbearings to decimate the Jewish and Infidel blogging spheres. Let's get out there and nominate and vote so we can show the Jews how angry we are that they stole the idea of blogging awards from us for their so-called JIB awards ("Jewish" "Israeli" Blog awards). Nominations are being accepted in the following categories: Best Post by a Blogger No Longer With Us, Angriest Blog, Best Violent Resistance Advocacy Blog, [...]

Suicide Dad talks about living incognito in America's obscenely large homes, driving its neurotically clean streets and avoiding its gestapo police forces, and how much he misses the sound of gunfire at his children's birthday parties.

Gates of Al-Quds features an in depth look at how Islam will soon capture Al-Quds (known to infidels as Jerusalem, ptui) based on a detailed study of how we won every battle at the Walls and Gates of Vienna in 1683 and every other battle our brave forces have engaged in through the centuries.

Jihadlicious explores rumors about the favorite celebrities of the Jews (mbut, Meditteranean Be Upon Them). It appears Madonna and Ethel Merman never really believed all that pseudo-Judeo Kabballah crap and are presently enrolled in Introduction to Islam classes in Beverly Hills. Allahu Akbar Jihadlicious, you go!

The warriors at Free Dumb Fighters have a top ten list to make you laugh your head off -- the ten fastest ways to clear an Israeli mall. I'm still chuckling over classics like these:

7. Just set your backpack down for an innocent trip to the restroom and watch them panic like a bunch of frightened school children.
4. When no one is looking, scream "Allahu Akbar!" in the middle of a crowd. Try not to laugh too hard or they'll know it was you.
2. Sneak into the control room and announce on the loudspeaker, "For the next 5 minutes, clearance sale across the street on Matzahs made with the blood of Muslim children!" See how they run.

AbQutab seethes righteously about a racist, islamophobic, Zionist usurper, seriously unfunny Israeli blogupationist called "AbbaGav," noting that his bile is made of nothing but absolutely agonizing alliteration, idiotic irony, and satire that is nothing more than the same gimmick played over and over and over and over again -- mocking us and, by extension, our Prophet:

AbbaGav only writes things like "The Islamist idiots incessently, irrationally incinerate innocent infants. Killing kuffirs keeps Khaled calm." His posts are nothing but "Hamas blew this up for no reason, Hamas blew that up for no reason..." On and on. And by the way stupid AbbaGav, we DO have a reason. But do you care? Do you ever write anything about our charitable services? Our fleet of ambulences? Hot lunches for Junior Jihadis? No, to AbbaGav, Hamas is nothing but explosives and the uncompromising pursuit of "Israel's" destruction. But we are so much more than that.

Crossing the Jordan2 posts links to some great time wasters, including one called "Shoot the Veep's Zionist Masterminds in the Face." I played that one over and over.

Little Green Ballbearings this week notices 18 instances in which Reuters uses the term "Israel" without quotes and in response his hundreds of commenters have dashed off form letters of complaint and threats to burn down the agency's local offices.

Kalkilya's Funniest Imam has a great "Priest, Rabbi and an Imam" joke in which the Imam does all the talking and the Priest and Rabbi convert before undertaking martyr operations. Read the whole thing. He is so funny, that one.

PaleoPundit presents his weekly summary of Jewish riots and attrocities. Once again there weren't any riots, but things did get pretty nasty at the Bet Tzedek nursing home when they ran out of rice pudding for Tuesday's second dinner seating.

Instapologist answers the Jews' spurious accusations instantly, before they spook the European donors and non-aligned supporters. For instance, this week, Instapologist answers with a single word the Zionist charges that suicide bombings against Jewish civilian targets are terrorism. Heh.

Da'wa Report does another great job of da'wa, this week extending a warm invitation to all infidels to join the true faith, or else.

Jakeem Want's His Shack Back is guest-blogging at Hajira's Hijab, or is it vice-versa, but they're having a good time so it doesn't really matter.

Shattered Bones has a fantastic cartoon post illustrating the abject stupidity of Jewish bloggers' favorite phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword," noting they have apparently never tried sawing off an infidel's head with a felt tip marker. How does he keep coming up with this stuff?

Nazis Had Feelings Too checks in this week with his farewell post. We'll miss you, big guy, and bag one for me too.

Great-Great-Great-Grandpa's House has lost his refugee house-key and wonders where's the cheapest place to buy another.

One Billion CANNOT Be Wrong wants to know why the world makes such a big fuss about a few burned out embassies and death threats, while practically ignoring the West's continuing failure to venerate our Prophet.

Finally, the Zionists will never sneak anything past the ever-sharp and abrasive Arafat's Whiskers who this week exposes the shocking details of Zionist Death Rays emanating from imported toaster ovens. I smell a recall.

Next week's festivities will be hosted by The Red Wire -- get your entries in early!

Linked to noble blogs such as: third world county, Basil's Blog, The Uncooperative Blogger, The Real Ugly Great Satan, Customer Servant, Stop the ACLU (and the ADL, FBI, CIA, NSA and YMCA), Everyman Chronicles and Point Five (a famous number we invented)

Technorati Tags: hamas, blog, carnival, satire

Memo to Photographers,

Thank you for such a warm welcome to our new Hamas government. We'd like to take this opportunity to kick off our press relationship on the right boot. Toward that end, please accept some photograpy guidelines which we consider strictly voluntary on your part -- and please do not consider our knowledge of who you are and where your family lives as any sort of threat to coerce compliance with these wonderfully sensible suggestions.

Therefore, henceforth, there will be no more pictures of masked freedom fighters in menacing poses, unless it is for internal pamphlets or post-operational publicity. Instead, shots of older Brothers in suits and ties comfortable to the Western donor's eyes will be the norm -- we suggest, that is.

Further, you will make an effort to paint only the caring face of our party. For instance, we want the world to know that just as we swear eternal warfare and destruction for Zionists, we also kiss our happy future freedom fighters, just like that criminal Bush does.

You will stress our interfaith outreach with photos of brotherly love -- perhaps something like this photo, that could even be used for a "Gee, your beard smells terrific" shampoo advertisement:

You may have noticed that the Western media has done a subtle but effective job of painting incoming lawmaker Mariam Farhat as a less than compassionate mother for the exemplary job she has done dispatching three of her sons to the jihad pile. Nothing could be further from the truth. A few select photos emphasizing she still has more sons left in her quiver, photos delicately perched on that thin line between worship of motherhood and murder, could really help her achieve that coveted Ashrawi level of PR sexiness.

In short, your photos from here on should help create the picture of an idyllic Palestinian society led by the solid Islamic principles we embody. There is no dissent here. Everyone is happy and eager to begin pursuit of our unwavering national goals.

Ok, we're going to have to have a talk with Mr. Abbas. A long talk. Off camera.

technorati tags: hamas, media, government, palestinian, jihad

Soccer Dad has the new Haveil Havalim (#58) up and it's really worth a look. Here are a few of the great posts there that I might not have found otherwise:

Mensa Barbie contrasts two groups of four year olds separated by 60 years in time, a few miles in space, and the breadth of the universe in ideology.

Secular Blasphemy takes a hard look at some of those kids and their training too.

In case they needed any help, Meryl Yourish does a great job helping Hamas clarify what they're all about.

My Right Word shows that sometimes, the perfect retort is short and sharp.

And Treppenwitz helps us all avoid losing the hard reality behind the hypotheticals and theoreticals in our blogging.

Thanks to Soccer Dad's great synopses and organization, I'm sure you'll find some unexpected treasures if you take a look.

Next week's festivities will be hosted by Daled Amos. (Details on how you can join the party are at the bottom of Soccer Dad's post).

Of course condemnations from the new Palestinian government, on whose behalf Iran is recruiting this suicidal force, will be issued soon. Right after the UN speaks up.

I know, it's a cliched post, but I've been saving up interesting searches that landed on my blog for awhile, and I thought I'd dump them on you now.

First, there are a number of searches that showed me at or near the top of some unexpected categories I never really set out to dominate:

For instance, I'm #26 for young female suicide bombers in swimsuits.

But it gets better. #1 baby! I am looking for golden music of ABBA. Well you won't find it here.

Also #1 for how to moisturize flaked coconut for cooking. Do you think they bookmarked me?

Until a few weeks ago, I was the ONLY place (#1 without competition) for the phrase "night shift at costco". Unrivaled fame is one of the side benefits of blogging, but you've always got to watch your back. Now I'm #2.

A googler (or is that ogler) from Saudi Arabia checked in with women bikini fashion. This would barely merit comment -- aside from noting the irony of such a holy Islamic kingdom generating such obviously Zionist-inspired lewdness -- except I couldn't help noting the Saudi seeker actually browsed through 18 pages of results before clicking on my Israeli blog. That's a lethal combination of persistance and desperation, mixed with an unhealthy level of confidence in identity-cloaking proxy servers.

I'm also popular with Pakistani searchers, who found me in the #12 slot today for fat barest woman.com.

Here's one where I was top ranked a few months ago, and now I'm not even listed -- censorship? hmmm? emails of talented fish doctors in United Arab Emirates

Sometimes, I cannot for the life of me figure out what the searcher could have been looking for, or why they would have scrolled through 12 pages before clicking on me: pray wet owe online. Of course, I'm no longer listed on that page anymore, and I frankly don't care enough to bother checking whether I've moved up or down since then. I suppose if I was running google ads, I would have to follow that up and write some new content on the topic that is "rich in keywords" to help boost my value. I'm glad I'm not running ads.

Then there are some queries that just make me wonder:

experiment two dogs food starve to death equidistant Schrodinger I looked and Google has me at #1, but I'm sure that just by checking I ruined the experiment. (That's a physics joke, sorry).

site:blogspot.com circumcised piss dad. I pray this person found nothing here and never returns. Yuck. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Finally there is the category of searches that say something about me:

My site is listed #1 for Gav was killed by and I'm not too happy about it.

And then there is sexy israeli men. Hey! I'm number 14! Not too bad for a geeky engineer dad. I suppose. I told this to my wife and she laughed. I'm pretty sure she, like me, thought it was funny I wasn't ranked higher.

If it's not on the shelves already, I'm sure someone out there is already churning out a "Blogging for Dummies" tome. Oh well, that would have been fun to write. But on the assumption Blogging for Dummies is already taken, I'll just have to wander a little farther afield fo find other fresh forest I can strip mine for my next piece of blogging-based satire.

So, at the risk of beating a dead one trick pony, I turn yet again to that never-ending gob stopper of blogdom, the Danish Cartoon Crisis, and offer potentially life-saving advice to scared and confused bloggers in a long overdue post called:

Blogging for Dhimmies

The first and foremost rule of Blogging for Dhimmies is: If you have to ask, cover your ass. This one rule alone could someday save your life.

Let's say you're a dhimmie blogger, but you still remember the old days, before the sensitivity training and the fatwas. You decide to get tricky and merely IMPLY that a given graven character is the Prophet. Say for instance you show a picture of a man with a young girl, and you label the girl with the name Aisha, without explicitly naming the other character at all. It would be tempting to think you could get away with that. But please, for the love of God, use your head while you still have it. Remember rule one. And while it is marginally more clever to explicitly label the prophet-ish image "Definitely Not the Prophet," the conjunction with the conjugal Aisha means your sarcasm will not be overlooked.

With that said, let's look at some common questions Dhimmie Bloggers are likely to struggle with as they adjust to their new leash length.

1. Is the problem in the drawing of the Prophet, or in being offensive about it?

The answer here is BOTH. Bear in mind the main rule of dhimmie blogging: if you have to ask, cover your ass. In this case, obviously an offensive image of the Prophet would invoke the Ummah's wrath and lead to the destruction of the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet closest to your home, but even a seemingly innocuous image of the Prophet -- innocuous to your eyes -- is an affront to the Universal Principles of Religion shared by all people who wish not to be killed: do not draw, reprint, reproduce or otherwise retransmit an image of the Prophet without the express written consent of the Commissioner of Baseball, or something like that.

But the question really is a good one, because it goes beyond that. Not only must we avoid offensive images of the Prophet, we must avoid offensive expressions or images about the Prophet, or offensive images about the prohibition of publishing images of the Prophet, or saying anything about those who protest offensive images about them. (Here would be a good point to intone the main rule perhaps three or four times until it sinks in.)

2. What about images of other prophets?

Too risky, unless it's Joseph Smith or Tom Cruise, since they came after Mohammad officially declared propecy season closed. But images of Jesus and Moses and others of their ilk, you shouldn't even have to ask.

3. How do the faithful decide which images are of the Prophet and thus deserving of death?

I understand your concern, since presumably even the faithful have never met the Prophet, and it's inconceivable there would be any Muslim-made images of him lying around for comparison. So the decision can't be based on resemblence. You're right. It's based on intent, declaration, and of course convenient timing.

Drawing a picture intentionally creating the impression it is Muhammad, through context or ridicule -- especially ridicule -- is a very bad idea, unless your family really needs your life insurance money. Similarly, declaring an image to be the Prophet, no matter the resemblence, will only bring you headaches. Even if you've just drawn a frog, which you might think would be ridiculous to believe was really the Prophet. It is precisely that ridiculousness that is the problem. If it looks like the Prophet, you risk promoting worship of your image. And if it doesn't look like him, it could provoke mockery of the Prophet through your image.

But even if you've done your best to avoid the first two issues, there is the overriding factor: timing and political convenience. If "the street" hasn't been taken out for a walk in a few weeks and is growing restless, your picture of a bowl of fruit, if published at the wrong moment, could end up triggering mass riots, if they are convenient. It's all a matter of timing. If you want to draw something, or allow your children to color, it is best to do this an intermediate amount of time after the last riots. Too soon after and you risk inflaming the still angry crowd. Wait too long, and you could be the next convenient contestant on Let's Make a Big Deal.

4. What if I just add a disclaimer to every image?

Do you really think adding some fine print is going to soothe seething righteous anger? Please do not be naive. Sure, you could add a footnote: "no one in this picture is named Mohammad, and if they are, it's a different Muhammad, not THAT Muhammad." But the protest patrols are highly trained at sniffing out questionable intent, or even irrelevant irreverence. You don't want them wondering what you're hiding when theythinks thou dost protest too much.

5. What if I want to draw a teeny tiny dot -- could that accidentally be mistaken for an image of the top of the Prophet's head viewed from outer space?

Yes. So be careful.

6. How can I be careful? If even a dot could be the Prophet's distant head, every sentence I write ends with punctuational blasphemy that could get me killed!

You are overreacting. There are many solutions to your concerns; no one is being unreasonable here.

The most obvious thing you could do to avoid the risks inherent in periods is to end every sentence from now on with a comma, like this, which unfortunately will lead to a lot of runon sentences, but that shouldn't be too high a price to pay to avoid offending anyone, and if you really need to terminate a respectful but overlong string of commas you can always ask a question, can't you?

Of course, there are other ways.

A meritorious practice is to make a declaration of intent with the termination of each sentence. Say to yourself, "I hereby complete this sentence with the intention that this dot is not an image of the Prophet, and as compensation for the potential sin of this sentence, I further commit myself to make a donation to Hamas or Islamic Jihad." As long as you save your receipts for each sentence's donation, you might be able to talk your way out of trouble should the mob ever show up at your door.

(UPDATE: commenters James and Regina Clare Jane have correctly pointed out that question marks, and exclamation marks as well, carry with them the same blasphemous potential as periods. So please, use em-dashes instead -- or better yet, stick to the charitable method.)

7. Seriously, do I need to be afraid that every Muslim will react this way?

No, equally seriously, obviously not. Most Muslims, while they would prefer you not do this, and may even be annoyed a little by this very satire, are quite reasonable and will just talk to you about what bothers them, just as you or I would. But politicizing forces looking to leverage these and other complaints to organize one billion Muslims into a potent weapon for the advancement of their interests against freedom and the West are something else entirely. Those forces grow stronger the more we cower.

Technorati Tags: cartoon, protests, dhimmies, blogging, self-censorship, satire

Linked to: Quietly Making Noise and Third World County

Here's a quick round up of some snort-worthy posts from the JBlog-Sphere, or related to it, or at least from blogs I read. I'll provide some excerpts; all you have to do is click the link to laugh at the rest.

We'll start with the Onion's article explaining the new Hamas solution to the Israel problem:

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK: After his militant Islamic party took the majority in Palestine's recent elections, Ismail Haniyeh called for a "giant summit with all living Israelis" Monday, rekindling international hopes for peace in the war-torn region.

Haniyeh characterized the one-day summit as "the final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute," and invited every Jewish citizen of the world to attend. Haniyeh said he expects more than 5 million participants from Israel alone.

"It was foolish of us to think that a satisfactory resolution could be reached through small-scale aggression," Haniyeh said. "It will take more than the sporadic deaths of small groups of Israeli civilians to achieve our ends."

IMAO briefly reports on the moving celebration of the Palestinian skater at the Winter Olympics:

Mohammed el Zindimbulb of Palestine celebrates after winning the gold medal in the men's 666-metre speed skating event by ...

Iowahawk is back. What more need be said when there is comedy to be read:

Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.

Cartoon that shocked Midwest The spark igniting the latest tailgate hibachi of unrest: a Texas newsletter's publication of caricatures of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.

Van at Kesher Talk has found a Jewish cartton protest:

Asserting that "those imams are on to something," a radical fringe of Orthodox rabbis rampaged through Brooklyn demanding that married female cartoon characters observe "tohorat ha-mishpacha," These Jewish laws of family purity make couples refrain from sex during a woman's period and a week afterward.

And finally, an interesting point I noticed today: some people assume that conservatives and other right-leaning bloggers will only pick on the left or Islam or both. I offer the following great posts to show that when a target on the right is dumb enough to stick it's head up, it too will be shot down:

First up, raving right winger Buckley F. Williams and a sampling of his Top 9 Reasons Dick Cheney Shot His Hunting Partner:

3. He hadn't bagged his limit.
2. To bolster his sagging "street cred" ratings.
1. To show Muslim extremists that they don't have the market on crazy cornered just yet.

And then there is Potfry. This guy is dangerously funny. If you want to clear your sinuses with a carbonated beverage, check out his Dick Cheney post:

A video made of this weekend’s hunting trip in which Vice President Dick Cheney shot fellow hunter Harry Whittington shows the ever-practical Vice President felt the best course of action would be to euthanize his 78 year old fellow hunter.

The tape was shot by a VP staffer who records all of Cheney’s hunting trips. The video is edited into a compilation reel called "When Dick Strikes," which the Vice President likes to show at family Christmas gatherings.

Read the rest, it's not optional.

Feel free to send me some funny stuff. If I get enough funny stuff, I'll keep doing these. And if what you send me doesn't get included, then send more.

They can't seriously expect these guys...


... to stop these guys...


...can they?

"As soon as he snaps the picture, RUN!"

While Western inventors still busy themselves with the quest for a better mousetrap, Palestinian leaders demonstrate they've already designed, built, tested and patented the perfect concession trap:

A senior Fatah official said Wednesday that the Palestinian militant movement Hamas does not need to recognize Israel immediately as a condition for forming a government, hinting it could use recognition as a bargaining chip in the future.

Oh, I get it. If we bought their recognition once, then we'd probably be willing to buy it again -- a bargain at the price, I'm sure. A brilliant strategy. I wonder how many times they think they can resell the same pile of manure:
















One last point about Fatah's famed recognition of Israel:

But Jibril Rajoub - a top security aide to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas - underlined that Fatah would not join a Hamas-led government unless it recognizes peace agreements with Israel and drops Muslim fundamentalist elements from its political program.

I know I'm missing something here, but how can Hamas recognize peace agreements with Israel, while not recognizing the Jewish State's right to exist that is written into those very documents? I'm starting to think the word "recognize" might not mean very much in the Middle East, at least when used in contexts outside of the recognition of various Palestinian rights.

If it's a good thing to have your enemy underestimate you, then boy oh boy are we in luck. Honestly, how stupid do they think we are? We've already repeatedly extended our hands in peace, only to be rebuffed for not offering our necks instead.

That stuff only works so many times before you lose your head.

The great Islamic lovers of liberty, Hamas, are offering Israel lessons in Democracy:

'Hamas officials are the representatives of the Palestinian nation, and Israel must recognize the new reality,' Dr. Abed al-Aziz Duaik, a Hamas moderate slated to head the new Palestinian Legislative Council said Wednesday. Duaik, who will be sworn in Saturday, told Israel Radio that Israeli threats to impose what he terms an 'economic embargo' on the Palestinian Authority are undemocratic.

Ok. So let's get this straight. Israel refuses to fund an entity sworn to the eternal pursuit of it's elimination, and this is considered undemocratic -- some sort of International Right to the Free Pursuit of Genocide I've never heard of? But when the suicide bombers of Hamas declare they will never ever ever ever... ever agree to even recognize it's neighbor's right to exist, this is the height of democracy.

How long do they think Israel and the world will sit still for just half a democracy lesson? Yeah, probably right.

Via LGF:

TEHRAN - The general secretary of the Iranian press association called Sunday for action over a football cartoon printed in a German newspaper showing the Iranian national team standing in a World Cup stadium with bomb belts strapped to their jerseys.

Manuchehr Sandi called the cartoon, which was printed in the Friday edition of Berlin's Tagesspiegel, a 'dirty joke' and in an interview with the ISNA news agency demanded the German Embassy in Tehran give an 'appropriate reaction' to it.

The Iranians are scandalized, and properly so, by the hideous implication of an Iranian affinity for suicide bombing. As if every Iranian publically answered their government's call for suicide bombers. Right! So far, it's only fifty thousand:

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 17 (2005) – Fifty thousand Iranians have signed up for “martyrdom-seeking operations” and 1,000 of them have already been organised into operational units, Mohammad-Ali Samadi, the spokesman for a government-orchestrated campaign to recruit suicide bombers told an Iranian news agency.

And how many of these civic-minded Iranians are actually on the soccer team? Clearly, this cartoon is grossly exaggerated and boorishly insulting, not to mention technically inaccurate.

Further, while I can't explain exactly how, I'm sure the cartoon is also a punishable affront to the Prophet. The idea of insinuating that decent, Allah-fearing Iranians want to strap explosives to their bodies, just because they volunteered to do so, well, it's a desecration of the peaceful precepts of the Prophet.

But the idea of Germans in military uniform? Now that's funny. I think even the Iranians could laugh at that part.

Wow. When I hastily tossed up that first totally lame post one year ago today, I never thought I'd still be blogging a year later, let alone that anyone would be reading it.

But here I am, now a Certified Full-Year Blogger -- is there a certificate for that, or do I have to pay some sort of re-licensing fee first? As a new member of the Experienced Blogger Club, I think it's important -- or at least self-servingly helpful for my image -- to give something back to the community.

So I thought I would share with any less-experienced bloggers toddling in my footsteps a few tips explaining how one builds a blog to Olympian Heights. I haven't quite reached those heights myself yet, but I have found a comfortable niche here in Olympia Valley, and I can see the peaks in the distance so I'm pretty sure I can explain how to get there.

Obviously long-time bloggers are familiar with most if not all of these techniques and can even add some more of their own.

Increase Your Blog's Readership by Reading Other Blogs

If there is a blog out there that you frequent on a regular basis -- let's say this one, for example -- don't just read it, pander to it. How?

Never read blogs from your browser's favorites menu, only from your blog's blogroll. Any regular read should be in your blogroll for several reasons:

• When blog owners check their referral logs -- and they do, a lot -- they'll notice you and your blogroll link. While this might not immediately ensnare the highly trafficked, premium bloggers like Glen Instapundit Reynolds -- notice how casually I dropped the Insta-bait? -- it stands a good chance of enticing reciprocal curiosity visits from other mortal bloggers investigating who links to them. If you pander to bloggers who are within your own blog's blast radius, you might even garner a return link for your effort. If you don't believe me, try an experiment: link to me (that's abbagav.blogspot.com) and see what comes of it. What's the worst that could happen? Nothing.
  
• The same process happens when bloggers check Technorati to see who is linking to them. Again, of course, this probably won't work with mega-bloggers like Little Green Footballs whose link lists and referral logs scroll past the screen faster than the small print in a life insurance commercial. But for most "regular" blogs (mine for instance), it you linked to them (to me for instance), they would almost definitely notice and take a peek at yours in return (if you linked to me just for instance). Unless of course your blog is called EasyMoneyFromTheComfortOfYourOwnHome.blogspot.com, in which case I wish you everything you so richly deserve.

Don't Underline Anything But Links

You will annoy the readers you have, who will think they can click on it, and they will grow frustrated and abandon you in favor of a younger blog with better formatting.

Think Big

I remember seeing a clip of Madonna answering a question from Dick Clark on American Bandstand, way back in 1984 before anyone knew who the soon-to-be-famous harlot was. He asked her if she had a dream, and she replied with characteristic understatement, "to rule the world." As we all know she hasn't quite gone on to rule the world but she has cornered the Google market on the search term virgin kaballah singer. So let this be a lesson -- if you want to rule the world, corner the market on your search terms. If you want the world to think of -- nay, yearn for -- your blog whenever they look for acute vomitosis, well, you'll have to fight me for it, or think of your own term instead. Good luck with that.

Sex Sells, So Start Pimping

Don't forget time-honored forms of promotion, like sex, which has been used to promote stuff since before there was stuff. You might think you're a high-minded, serious political or philosophical blogger -- like me -- and that salacious vocabulary has no place in your posts. Perish the thought! Nothing could be further from the truth. And it's so simple too.

For instance, "In today's news, Dick Cheney was not involved in a sex scandal, nor did he buy lingerie for his wife; although, he did shoot a man in the face." (Don't be offended, my Republican friends, I'm still right-of-center; it's just comedy, plus it'll bait Cheney-Googlers into checking out this post and help brainwash them!)

You see, you can convey serious news, while adding that little bit of spicy context that Google's billions of teen users crave. So casually slip these words into as many posts as possible, like I just did here. And did I mention how important it is to fight to restore our denuded forests? I'm sure celebrities like Cindy Crawford, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears would agree.

Take Advantage of Technorati Tags, Trackbacks, and Carnivals

Readers only find your blog by following links. It's slow hard work developing links with other bloggers, so it pays to take advantage of easy opportunities to create quick, visible, traffic-generating links.

Well-chosen Technorati tags automatically cause a link to your post to appear on Technorati's topical listings. Adding "buy danish" or "cartoon protests" to a breaking story can help guide readers to your work, even if you're not a top-of-the-list blogger. And if Osama's niece poses in sexy lingerie -- see how easy it was to work that in? -- then by all means, add a "Wafah Dufour" tag to help you corner the market on randy Saudi surfers.

Trackbacks and Carnivals are other ways to get links to your posts out there where your potential readers are waiting to click them. When you have a post you are proud of, try using the Wizbang Trackback Generator to send a trackback ping to one or more of the Open Trackback Alliance blogs. Your trackback ping will leave a link to your post on the Alliance member's blog -- with the customary link to their site inside your post as the quite reasonable exchange for the service. And don't be shy about submitting posts to various carnivals, which leads me to the next point...

Listen to Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad knows what he's talking about. If you have a chance to host his pride-and-joy, the Haveil Havalim Carnival, jump on it. It offers your blog a chance for some very nice exposure, and a fun little blip in your readership stats. And if he suggests you email Instapundit to announce the new Haveil Havalim is up, do yourself a favor and listen to the man. If he suggests you submit something to a carnival, trust me, you'll like the results:



Don't Whine About A-Listers Stealing All Your Traffic

I would have suggested whining and complaining that you deserve more readers, and how unfair it is that the A-list bloggers hog all the traffic and they must have a plot against you -- but that technique only works for international diplomacy, not blogging.

Just Write And Enjoy It

The main point is just to keep writing, and have fun. If you're not having fun, an extra hundred readers, or the right to call yourself a Rabid Rodent won't make it all worthwhile.

Thanks for reading. I'll keep writing.

This is actually kind of fun.

UPDATE: Great commenters have reminded me of a few other important tips for building a blog: Ezzie nails the big one: write something good, and Regina Clare Jane points out that leaving constructive and interesting comments on other blogs can gain you some visibility as well. Great ideas guys, thanks. Also check the comments if you want specific details on how to add Technorati tags to your posts.

Technorati Tags: cheney, sexy lingerie, anniversary, pandering, madonna, technorati, google

The BBC reports that Britney Spears loves her baby and "would do anything to protect him," including this common safety maneuver: driving with the baby in her lap.



I know, I know, she has already whole-heartedly apologized:

"I made a mistake and so it is what it is, I guess," she said to Access Hollywood.

But a "cartoon protest" photo reminded me of Britney, and made me think, perhaps ironically, that her commitment to her young baby's safety might actually not have gone far enough yet. Has she mastered the five-on-a-bike-with-baby-on-the-tailpipe grip yet? A Pakistani family thoughtfully takes time out from protesting to demonstrate the technique so Britney can start practicing:

Brief aside about the "cartoon protest rally" -- I can't help myself -- why are they attacking KFC? Has Kentucky come out in favor of mocking Mohammed? Did the Kentucky Chronicle republish the cartoons without notifying me?

And I don't see any cheerleaders, so can we stop calling these things protest "rallies" when we really mean violent rampages?

When you believe your cause is just, everything is protest.

In America, stores are looted by criminals called "looters." But Islamic agents of chaos cannot be described with infidel terms. It's not like these Pakistanis are reacting in the crass manner of, say, American Super Bowl celebrants or race rioters. No, this is a highly principled stand against the insensitive Western depiction of the Prophet.

Unfortunately, even though these peaceful protestors have already been driven to threaten, burn, kill and destroy, it hasn't been enough. Where is the evidence of any Western lessons learned? Mumble and flinch, "I'm sorry you're upset," apology-style statements cannot quell this righteous rage. Have any cartoon heads rolled? If the protestors are not understood soon, what alternative is left but Habeus Headless Corpus?

So we should be glad to see looting in the name of the Prophet, a last-ditch cry of anguish before the knives come out. In their protest-looting, they peaceably offer us one more chance, reminding us it's still not too late to cave.

I shudder to think how upset they'd be if they knew you were buying Danish.

Technorati Tags: cartoon protests, prophet, looting, buy danish

WARNING: Photo depicts graphic death of famous corporate spokescharacter. Not for the squeamish.

Jack, of Jack in the Box fame, and the Burger King were seen fleeing for their lives in the direction of the US embassy. Rumors that Colonel Sanders has gone into hiding are unfounded, as the Colonel is actually already dead and therefore impervious to rekilling. Some analysts are suggesting that the Colonel's tactics may point the way to a solution to the global crisis: blame everything on people who are already dead.

Protesters on the scene remarked, "Die, Infidel scum, die, we will hack you to death with machetes for the Honor of the Prophet (may your pieces be upon him)."

Technorati Tags: danish cartoon protests, prophet muhammed, mcdonalds, ronald mcdonald

(DING -- 4 points)























































(DING -- 3 points)





























Technorati Tags: satire, family feud, clash of civilizations, abbagav thinks he is paid by the word

So in my last post, I broke the "in case of exhaustion" glass and took an evening off to watch a movie and recharge my batteries. Choosing an exhaustion movie is no simple task though. It has to be bad. It has to be something you actually hope will reek like a dirty diaper so the instinct to turn it off and get some sleep will overpower the need to anaesthatise the rational faculties.

I picked Gigli, the Bennifer bomb of legendary proportions, mentioned on almost all the critics "worst of" lists, and #25 on IMDB's list of 100 worst films of all time.

Sadly, I liked it. Not "liked it" liked it, but "didn't throw a shoe at it" liked it. Which for a movie these days isn't bad.

Sure, it had trouble picking a tone, and couldn't decide when we were supposed to like Ben Affleck's character and when not -- or why. But it had redeeming features, which is a lot better than the plethora of movies with no redeeming features. There were a number of very funny two or three minute speeches, a too-brief appearance by Christopher Walken, and a better-than-horrible performance by Jennifer Lopez -- who could actually be a decent comic actress if she focused on movies instead of that singing hobby.

Of course there was bad too: Al Pacino in an over-the-top, wrong-movie role; a truly awful impersonation of a retarded person -- it was probably totally accurate, but I as a movie viewer, now expect the Robin Williams/Dustin Hoffman version of impairment instead -- and a musical score fit for the Elmore Leonard remake of Dumb and Dumber.

I wish I'd just gone to sleep, but I guiltily watched the whole thing, warts and all. As long as there is something, anything positive to say, I tend to stick it out. It's a weakness, I know, something to do with having read too much science fiction. I can't tell you how many books I've plodded through, needlessly wasting months of my literary life -- hating the writing, hating the genius scientist and his buxom assistant -- just to find out whether they'll manage to run the anti-gravity device backwards. I don't need much.

So here I am, exhausted again, but now with no more glass to break. And that means you get to hear about Gigli. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

If you are reading this, I must have broken the glass. As you scan this sentence, I am probably sleeping or watching a movie with most of my higher order brain functions shut down, completely unable to type out another single snarky word.

Keeping my blog up to date, on top of work and raising a family, is hard work for me. I generally only manage it because I'm willing to burn the candle at both ends with a flamethrower. After a while that takes a toll. So I'm writing this post and caching it in my drafts folder for a day, somewhere down the road, when I'm just too pooped to post. Sadly, I'm commonly close to that condition, explaining why I've too often posted poop. Hopefully having this little puppy in reserve will give me the fortitude to establish a modicum of quality control around here.

Today is February 10, 2006. We'll see how long it takes before I break the glass -- you already know, obviously, but as of this writing, it's still a mystery to me. Oh, and note to myself: now that you've broken the glass, when your brain comes back, write up a replacement post for the next exhaustion emergency.

Anyway, here is the payoff: a story culled from my old Diaryland site. I sometimes forget that I was actually blogging all the way back at the end of 2000, I just didn't know it was called that. I also didn't know anything about links or carnivals or aggregators, so no one read what I wrote. But really, that's great news, because it means I have a treasure trove of stale stories to recycle on this blog. Lucky you.

Here is one from January 30, 2001. I've edited it a little bit from the original, but not too much.

Car Pool Blues
1/30/01
The last week or so has been dominated by car pool trouble. I had been leaving work two days a week at lunch time to drive Rachel and two friends home from their 'gan' (preschool). That, plus a couple morning drives, was my contribution to the carpool. Unfortunately, since I work full time, my job couldn't support this in the long run, so we had to somehow rearrange the car pool.

We first tried to hire someone who would handle my two afternoon carpool assignments by taking all the kids in a taxi, but it turned out she didn't realize that kids could be strapped into seatbelts, let alone car seats. It was at that point that the other members of the car pool decided they no longer wanted to be associated with us, so we were now left with no car pool, and unless we could find a solution, I would be driving every morning AND every afternoon. This was not the improvement my employer was looking for.

So we tried harder to spend money to solve the problem. We got a referral to a lady who was going to pick up Rachel every afternoon. She is paid to drive a number of kids, and Rachel would just join her group. Unfortunately, her first day on the job, the teachers in the gan called me at work telling me to drive to the gan right away and pick Rachel up. It turned out that the new driver had shown up, but didn't have room in her car for the car seat. She apparently was driving kids around like they were chickens in the back of an overfilled poultry truck. So I was back to driving Rachel every day.

At one point, my boss suggested the corporate taxi driver might solve the problem (he may have even leaned on him a little, drawing a connection between company business and his helping me out, I'm not sure). So I agreed to meet him at the gan to show him where to take Rachel and to introduce him to the teachers (so they wouldn't release Rachel to a stranger) and he would start driving from then on. Unfortunately, he never showed up and never called and didn't answer his cell phone. When I finally reached him, he was in Bnei Brak (about an hour away) with another fare, and confessed that he might have a problem doing the job. His problem was my problem too, so we were back to square one.

The height of the struggle to find a driver was the day when we got a recommendation for a young man who needed the money and had a car. Sharon was very clear with him, detailing the use of car seats and seat belts. She clarified "Do you have any problem with any of this?" No, he didn't have any problem. Great! So I showed up at gan to meet him, show him the ropes, watch how he handled Rachel and the car seats, and show him where Rachel was to be dropped off. I watched him strap Rachel in and talk to her. He was a little nervous, but he was doing fine and seemed nice enough.

So I told him to follow me with Rachel in his car as I led him to the destination in my car. It was going just fine, until he rear-ended me. Now I'm sure he's a wonderful driver under normal circumstances, but he told me that Rachel had started talking to him (she does that a lot) and it had distracted him, and before he knew it, he hit me. We were all fine, and there was no damage, but I couldn't hire him at that point.

I still remember, even five years later, how that driver who rear-ended me still seemed to think that telling me "he was sorry" and that "that kind of thing didn't usually happen to him" should somehow have convinced me to give him the job anyway. I'm sorry, even in Israel, that isn't going to cut it.

Welcome to this week's celebration of J-Blogging's latest, as always, with apologies to those whose work was missed this time around.

As a blogger who thoroughly enjoyed the increase in readership and blog-buzz throughout the recently completed Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards competition (the JIBs), I can tell you there are probably more than a few bloggers out there going through a serious case of JIB-withdrawal this week, unless it's just a sad case of projection on my part.

Aussie Dave did a huge amount of work to help lift the tide that floated all of our boats, and I wish to personally thank him, especially as the tide now slowly settles back, making it obvious what a difference his effort has made. Point of Pinchas has come up with a unique way to register your JIB gratitude but you could also just visit Aussie Dave's IsraellyCool blog and leave him a nice comment or at least a slew of page load statistics -- I'm sure he'd appreciate them both.

Now, let's put on our thinking caps and reading glasses, and get busy.

First, Cartoons

Shaigetz has the cartoon protesters' tone-deaf arguments pegged: "How would you like to see baby Jesus with a bomb in his loincloth?"

Meryl Yourish has a few words for the cartoon media and they're all choice.

Future of the Internet for Orthodox Jews has some really inconvenient questions inspired by the cartoon crisis, among them: "4. Why are we ultra-orthodox but the shahidis are not ultra-islamic?" and "5. What should we ultras do about the Michelangelo pictures (of G-d in 'Creation') on the roof of the Sistine Chapel? After all, Israel already has the Bomb! Any Israeli pilots read this blog?".

Danny Bermant also has some pointed questions, as well as an observation: "The lesson that extremists of all shades will have taken from this whole sorry episode is that those who shout the loudest and who make the most threatening noises are the ones who get listened to."

Judith at Kesher Talk has a roundup, including the propaganda parallels between the cartoon protests and the response to Ariel Sharon's Temple Mount walk.

Jack has a fabulous take on why it is absolutely absurd for American papers to tremble fearfully at the thought of publishing these cartoons.

Daled Amos explains how, just as Disney and CGI cartoons have revitalized part of Hollywood, so the recent Danish cartoons revitalize Pallywood (Pallywood is the effort to publicize Islamic protests including producing their own grievances when necessary).

The whole cartoon kerfuffle reminds Simply Jews of a joke: The Jew, the Pharaoh and the Enema.

Elder of Ziyon manages to make the explanation for the whole mess seem obvious:

Centuries of the Muslim world consistently losing against the West in every field of endeavor that matters - scientific, military, cultural - coupled with an almost genetic Arab (not Muslim) sense of pride - brings an incredible dissonance between their beliefs that the world will inevitably become a Muslim ummah, and reality.

When someone who craves control finds that he is irrelevant, he will latch onto anything to make himself feel important.

The Elder also has the interesting case of an Arab moderate's battle against the establishment -- from the late 1930s -- totally different from today's situation. Totally.

Miriam of Miriam's Ideas, watching the world's leaders react to the protests, finally realizes why she isn't President. The Namby-Pamby Party wouldn't have her on their ticket.

Out of Step Jew reports satirically on compromises being drawn up to chill the conflict.

Last word on the subject goes to a relatively new blog on the scene, World Girl Rants, who has a little quiz about the proper target for cartoon protesters' seething rage.

Believe it or not, people wrote this week about other subjects too.

In election and Amona news, which I'm not sure I can untangle...

An Unsealed Room notices the lack of election excitement that I know I feel too, and offers some explanation. Changing Directions updates us on his efforts in the Yisrael Beytenu party and the outcome of his quest for a place on their list of knesset candidates. Israel Matzav also discusses the elections, explaining why he sees the Kadima party's electoral projections heading south in the near future. He also reprints a letter from a teen injured at Amona. Shiloh Musings thinks the answer is unity. Sara Layah Shomron reports attending a post-Amona rally calling for an inquiry into police brutality against demonstrators. Westbankmama finds an unexpected spectator is amused by the spectacle of Jews fighting Jews: Russian Neo-Nazis. Chayyei Sarah is just trying to make sense of the fallout from Amona and I wish her luck.

Some bloggers looked at how the world, and the Arab world in particular, relate to us...

Mark at Knockin' On The Golden Door questions Anti-Semitism at Sonoma State University, literally. Mystery Achievement documents the 15 times Israel has offered an Arab Muslim state and been rejected. Apparently, much of the world is completely ignorant of all 15, and pressures Israel as if a 16th offer is all that stands in the way of world peace. I hope they read his post. In related news, Oxford USA carries a Live Chat With Shlomo Ben Ami.

As the world's newspapers work out their sanitization strategy for Hamas, Soccer Dad notices that Dennis Ross is still waiting for the peace process to kick in, and that "there's something about Israel's enemies that makes normally reasonable people bend over back[wards] to understand their grievance." Too true. He also points out a Volokh Conspiracy post about the ability of university's to hire and promote people like Columbia's Joseph Massad, without regard to their commitment to truthful presentation of Jewish historical facts. Israellycool actually found time despite running the JIB awards to uncover the latest "Zionist plot" accusation.

Others looked at different facets of how Arabs and Islam are doing on their own...

Crossing the Rubicon has a followup on the green thumb demonstrated by the Palestinians who "inherited" Gaza's greenhouses. Aaron has a bloody good post (not for the squeamish) that gives some Islamic context to the necessity of the biblical verse: "You are children of the Lord your God. You shall not gash yourselves or shave the front of your heads because of the dead. For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God" -- Deut. 14:1-2. I might have thought, "that's like 'Thou shalt not chop off thine arm', why would something like that have to be commanded?" Apparently it was necessary.

But the Jewish Blogosphere is nothing if not diverse, with something for every taste...

Bloghead reports on a developments in the struggle of Agunot, which apparently are not for the better:

That's right, according to judge Malka a woman who spends her life bringing up her family and looking after what is, after all, her husband's home as well has 'never worked a day in her life' and is not entitled to any financial security, and their children, apparently, do not deserve financial support from their father because it's their mother doing the asking.

Heichal HaNegina tells us of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe and Negina, Shabbat Shira and the Song of the Birds. Life In Israel doesn't sugar coat the need to prioritize and live with it rather than blame others when we can't have it all. He also responds to a Dov Bear post on Parshas Ha'mon. Meanwhile, Dov Bear forges ahead with the "Dov Bear Hall of Fame", apparently hoping to bypass the headaches of the JIB awards by selecting the winners himself. Clever. Get your bribes and complaints ready early.

Irina at the IgNoble Experiment reports on an evening of debate on the subject of Iraq. She also speculates that we are in need of new heroes, soliciting your recommendations, and reports in queasy detail on her visit to an unusual exhibition.

This week, me-ander learns to cook kishkes, and discusses having lived in Yoram Gaon's grandfather's house and what she learns from it.

That Guy Who's In His Twenties does what he does by enjoying the irony of an unintended masturbation joke, and attending a Psychotoddler concert -- the relationship between the two, if any, is left as an exercise for the reader.

If you like Sushi for Kiddush, you might want to check out Ohiso.com. Whether herring counts as sushi or not, I don't know, so if in doubt, check it out anyway.

Here's hoping Dr. Bean isn't actually discharging himself from the ward.

On the dating scene, the Juggler has finally figured out what he's looking for in a good woman: solid typing skills. Toronto Pearl also meditates on the effect of keyboards on interpersonal relationships.

Never had the chance to judge a beauty contest? Me either. But now, Judeopundit needs YOU to help judge his latest competition, the "Miss Jihad" contest. Vote early, vote often.

Yael reports on her good fortune to have a vet who has possibly the most specialized cat care training in the world. I can't imagine there are too many competitors.

Ah, geeks and their blogs. Which of Mirty's 10 Kinds of People are you? And be sure to try out Dr. "Geek" Bean's suggestion in the comments -- Google this: speed of light in inches per month. Outstanding! I guess you know which kind I am.

Don investigates the recent auction of Hitler's hunting rifle and follows the thread as far as it goes.

Jameel shows us a settler's view of travelling from the Shomron, paints the picture around the politics at last week's demonstrations, and remembers Tatiana Susskind as the cartoon protests rage on. He also recommends a really great, emotional post from a new blog, A working girl, and I echo his recommendation.

Stephanella posts a picture of the golden-haired Madeleine Albright and examines her roots.

Air Time has the second half of a story that demonstrates beyond a doubt the utter impossibility of understanding some things without explanatory context. And that sometimes even with that context, it's still a little strange

Sometimes I know why I laugh, and sometimes I don't. I can't explain how he did it, but the Jewish Blogmeister managed to tickle my funny bone. I hope it tickles yours too, because that's all I've got for this week's roundup.

Tune in next week when HH#58 (Haveil Havalim) will return to its blog of origin, the place where it all began, Soccer Dad. Please e-mail him at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com with your submissions.

In the meantime, as the JIB's fade in memory, let's pick up Aussie Dave's torch and continue on into the light, etc. etc and so on, keeping Jewish and Israeli bloggers happy and well read, even as their statcounters slowly drop back to the depressing state called Normal. How can we cheer up the post-JIB blogging community, you might ask? Speaking from personal experience, I can say that many bloggers really appreciate the following things: readers/hits, comments, and links. So lets make a little extra effort to check out a few extra sites from this week's Haveil Havalim list, maybe try a new site you've never read before.

Even better, leave a few extra quality comments on some of the posts you read -- on-target, spam-free comments obviously. In fact, if each of us would take the obligation of leaving five good comments among the posts listed above, it could brighten a lot of days.

Lastly, bloggers appreciate links. So if you make an announcement post that Haveil Havalim #57 is up, please take a moment to look through a few of the posts first, and add links to 3 or 4 of your favorites in your HH announcement. It's always nice to find a few extra links pointing to a post. If you do that, I'll catch it and add your blog to an HH honor roll update as well. Offer void where prohibited by law or common sense.

NOTE: Haveil Havalim available via Truth Laid Bear's Ubercarnival page.

THANKS DUE: Thanks to all who helped get the word out about this week's carnival (** is an honor badge to those who went the extra mile and pushed their favorite posts):

Mystery Achievement **
Elder of Ziyon **
Soccer Dad
Instapundit
Jack and his Shack
Shiloh Musings
SerandEz
Yourish
Life in Israel
Perspectives of a Nomad
Crossing the Rubicon
The Muqata

If I missed anyone, please drop me a note or comment and I'll remedy the oversight.

I'm sure Islamists have cars -- well, I guess the male Islamists do. And their cars probably have bumpers, at least until they blow them up.

And where there's a bumper, there's a marketing niche to fill. So here is a selection of popular bumper stickers for hip motorists fromTeheran to Hamastan. They'll also look good on a cave wall somewhere on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Or maybe even in London.

















Just a reminder, these are only for Islamist bumpers, not Islamic bumpers.

As advertised on Common Folk Using Common Sense and Basil's Blog.

Technorati Tags: islamist, bumper stickers, satire

Well. Isn't that an education?

You might already know this, but I'll point it out just in case I'm not actually the last know this. If you have girls, please do not make the mistake of assuming that sending them to a whatever-something-girls.com site will keep them out of trouble. And I'm not even talking bikini-babe screensaver popups.

I don't know how this got started -- it couldn't possibly have anything to do with a series of teenaged-girls as babysitters, could it? -- but our girls started asking to play on the computer at Everything Girl.com. Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it? Not like some sort of online first person shooter emporium, so maybe it could nice.

Checked out the opening screen, puppies playing in flowers, a winged fairy floating on screen -- the worst thing I could see was Barbie's botoxed face. But I remember Barbie from all her commercials when I was growing up -- yucky girl stuff, but harmless. So we said sure, why not?

I'll frame this as another of my recent mutiple choice quiz questions, since I now know the html for lettered lists -- let me know when you're sick of the quizzes. See if you can guess which of the following is NOT found on the Everything Girl site:

1. Gabby doll is the ultimate girly girl! She loves shopping, beauty treatments & the color pink. With your help, she can strike a pose & curl her shiny blond locks!
   
2. Bold, bedazzled Deondra is a glam girl! Pretty & posable, she's into hip-hop dancin' like a diva, hot hair extensions & her fave fashion must-have: bling!
   
3. My Bling Bling shopping: Chelsea burns up the Bling-Bling scene in an ultra-hot halter top and sassy skirt! Sooo scorchin'!
   
4. Party Limo: It's like a Hollywood party on wheels! Raise the roof, fill up the hot tub, and turn on the disco lights!
   
5. Barbie tattoo parlour and piercing salon: Barbie is slammin' it with a butterfly ankle tattoo and blinged out earrings. Then help Barbie pick a platinum nose stud or the perfect belly ring!

Yeah, they haven't gotten around to implementing the last one. But if they find my link in their referrer logs and bother to read the post, it wouldn't surprise me to see it show up in coming weeks. A little piece of the action is all I ask.

In the meantime, it might be time to put the kids back on a strict regimen of homework, playing with empty shoeboxes and more homework. I'm not ready to raise glammed out, heroine-chic 8 year old girls. And I'm not really sure when I will be.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran is now inviting the world's cartoonists to participate in its own Holocaust-denying cartoon contest, a direct response to the recent "Danish Mohammad Cartoon Flap." Ahmadinejad, or at least the editors who look to him not to have them killed, appear to be trying to spin the previous cartoon crisis around 180 degrees to create a new and improved crises by skewering the West on its own principle of Freedom of Expression. They are challenging Western media to demonstrate its commitment to this exalted Iranian principle -- free speech -- and republish anti-Semitic cartoons from their contest.

While Freedom of Expression by no means requires any newspaper to print something just because a foreign country double-dog dared it, this challenge comes on the heels of the Danish cartoon trouble which could cause some papers to have a long second look at that dare. Many probably worry they will appear hypocritical to Muslims and anti-Semites -- a real blow to circulation -- if they don't take Iran up on it. The Danish newspaper which started the whole affair has already waffled on the possibility of printing Ahmadinejad's cartoons, and others will certainly follow -- after all, it's not like they'll get killed for it.

But why let Iran have it so easy? If they can spin this thing around the Freedom of Expression skewer, we can spin it right back the same way.

One wonders if there is any chance the Great Guardian of Free Speech, Ahmadinejad, will consent to dissenting viewpoints in his nation's competitive comedic tribute to the Freedom of Expression and Genocide. If he refuses to allow dissenting viewpoints, that will give Western media a much sexier Freedom of Expression hypocrisy story to report on than his charade parade of hate. But if he does accept them, then Western cartoonists should be able to send in a few genocidally neutral cartoons to choose from. While those cartoons certainly won't win the contest, when it comes time for newspapers to genuflect to Iran's idea of Freedom of Expression by picking a cartoon from the contest to reprint, they would now have an acceptable choice, in amongst the thousands of anti-Semitic cartoons Ahmadinejad is almost certain to garner.

I wish I could draw. But I can cut and paste.


If anyone knows how to make real cartoons, this could be a fun project, to actually submit them to the Iranian contest and Western newspapers so they know what their choices are.

More on Iran holocaust cartoons at Israel News Agency. Freedom of Speech discussion at Stop the ACLU.

Technorati Tags: iran, freedom of expression, cartoons, holocaust, denial, ahmadinejad, protest, denmark, iran

Hey, when you're totally amped up on raw religous rage and testosterone shots I know it can be hard to understand the logical concept of a double negative, but if you're going to frame a coherent message for the global press the way you were instructed, you have to at least try. However, in all the chaos and confusion, it's easy to forget, for example, that saying "it's not a bad idea" actually means that "it is a good idea." If your brain has turned off after a grueling day of flag burning, effigy immolation, and embassy destruction, sometimes it's best just to go home and get some rest and come back fresh on the morrow, before you do something stupid like this:

I don't want to irk these gentlemen anymore than they already are, but I must point out that jumping up and down, stamping on a "Down With USA" sign, actually forms a logical double negative with the resulting media message: "Up With USA." Oh me oh my is the Imam going to be ticked off when he sees this one.

Technorati Tags: cartoon, protests, prophet, down with usa, double negative, islam

If Kanye West had looked both ways before crossing, I don't think he would have engaged in risky behavior like this:


No, I'm not talking about members of The 700 Club rioting and burning down his crib, or Pat Robertson coming after him with a scimitar. Kanye's instincts were sound in that direction -- generally speaking there's easy, low-risk publicity to be had ridiculing Christian belief in today's America. But Kanye forgot you're supposed to look both ways before crossing the street, and he forgot to check whether there might be an Islamic truck looking to run him over from the other direction.

If Kanye had bothered to ask the AP, they could have warned him:

"The Quran clearly forbids anyone from belittling a prophet, whether Jesus Christ, Abraham or Muhammad -- peace and blessings be upon them -- and it stresses they must be accorded utmost respect," said Ragab Zaki, a Muslim Sunni senior cleric at Egypt's Ministry of Endowments.

"Ridiculing any prophet is a crime, according to the Quran," he said.

Maybe Kanye wouldn't take the AP's word for it. And given their track record, I guess that would make sense. But what about a more reliable outfit with good Islamist connections like Al-Jazeera?

Muslims deem images of prophets disrespectful and caricatures blasphemous

Well, they don't exactly sugar coat it, or mince words. But just to be sure, before doing anything that risks provoking religious wrath, it would always be a good idea to run it by the experts over at CAIR before putting your neck on the block:

Islam forbids visual depictions of the prophet and regards violations by Muslims as highly sinful and by non-Muslims as the ultimate insult.

The prohibition is in part an application of the Quran's strict opposition to idolatry, the worship of a physical object as a god, including any hint of such devotion toward the faith's revered human prophet. [...]

The Quran does not specifically address artistic depiction of Muhammad, and through history a few Muslims have painted him. But the ban has been virtually universal in all branches of the faith from its earliest days.

The rule extends to artwork showing others regarded as prophets by Islam, including Jesus, even though Christians have often visualized their divine savior in paintings, statues and films.

And if even that wasn't enough to convince Kanye, maybe he should have checked with our little friend here:


Hmmm. Not good. Kanye is probably waking up with cold sweats right about now, Pat Robertson totally forgotten, as Kanye watches day after day of death threats and burned out embassies on the news, all over a few poorly drawn cartoons.

I suspect the only thing keeping Kanye alive today is that he didn't break that final taboo -- at least he didn't don a pig snout for this inflammatory picture. He must have a publicist who knows how to keep his head on.

Uh oh. It looks like Kanye didn't demand the negatives.


I hope Kanye has a nice obscure crib somewhere far away where he can hide for the foreseeable future.

Technorati Tags: kanye west, cartoons, protests, islam, rolling stone, pig snout

A friendly nod to Little Green Footballs for pointing out this AP story:

Iran's supreme leader on Tuesday accused Western newspapers of an Israeli conspiracy for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.[...]

They were first published in Denmark in September and then reprinted recently by numerous European newspapers in the name of free speech. [...]

The caricatures amounted to a 'conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas,' he said, referring to the Palestinian militant group that won a surprise landslide victory in last month's elections.

Wow, he must really think those AP reporters are idiots, if he thinks they're dumb enough to print a claim that Israel instigated publication of offensive cartoons as revenge for a Hamas election victory that wouldn't happen yet for months. The Mossad is good, but not that good. Not like some other organizations that can prepare backlash warnings before the lash.

Not that AP cairs, apparently. They printed Khameini's insane accusation completely uncritically. It seems journalistic objectivity involves little more than reporting unfiltered stupidity and contradictions as if they were established fact.

I'll write that down in my junior journalist's notebook with attribution to AP for the lesson.

More explicitly, "Poverty Statistics are Stupid." But "Poverty is Stupid" just makes a more compelling title, even if it is a little risky that people will wrongly accuse me of having said "Poor People are Stupid" instead.

So please, let me be clear on this point: I am not a heartless, poor-bashing SOB. I do NOT believe that poor people are stupid. Or at least no stupider than everyone else. On average. But I don't have any statistics to back that up, so unfortunately I have to admit the possibility that they actually might be, regardless of what my heart says. I just don't have the data.

You see? I'm not heartless.

My last post was critical of an otherwise economically savvy politician's well-meaning yet meaningless blandishments about "eliminating poverty," and I wanted to take a minute to explain what bothered me.

Here is why I think poverty statistics are stupid: because they don't actually measure poverty. Really. Let's test out a typical definition of a poverty statistic, for instance, something like "poverty is any income less than half the mean (average)." Seems straightforward, so take a guess which of the following three scenarios has the highest poverty rate:

a) 10 million people, all earning exactly the same income, 10 cents a year.
b) A two class system: 5 million "rich" earning 30 cents per year, 5 million "poor" earning 10 cents.
c) 9,999,999 people earning $10k per year, and Bill Gates earning $100 billion per year.

So which choice has the highest incidence of poverty?

None, they are all the same. They all have zero poverty. But does that really render them all equivalent? Would the purveyors of poverty pills really accept each of the three as a "just" economic system? I don't think so either. But every year, precisely this kind of economic index is rolled out with great fanfare and dire warnings of how it is growing -- which is, we are left to assume, a bad thing. And yet, if perversely twisted policies were constructed around the artificial task of bringing this peculiar index to zero, as in any of the above examples, it seems pretty unlikely that anyone -- except maybe Kim Jong-il -- would end up happier as a result.

But maybe a different commonly used definition of poverty would give a better measure. Let's try a "poverty line" that's half the median income instead of half the average. How well does this definition work? Let's check.

Say there are 100 filthy rich people, each making $1 trillion a year. Another 5 million people are making only $50 a year and 5 million more are making an even more paltry $24 a year. Finally, you and 100 other poor schmucks make an insulting $10 a year. In this system, the median income is $24 a year (the average is somewhere around $10 million). Since this sets the poverty line at $12 a year, you and your 100 poor schmuck friends earning only $10 a year live in poverty.

Now suppose one of those rich people has a heart of gold -- purchased fresh from the chest of a poor donor with a heart of gold, back when gold was $100/oz, with an order to sell waiting at $800/oz -- and this rich person decided to help you poor folks. Which of the following would you advise him is the best way he should go about reducing poverty:

a) pass a law to tax each rich person 100 dollars and divide that money amongst you and your 100 poor friends
b) pass a law to tax each of the 10 million middle class people 5 dollars each and split the resulting $50 million amongst the 100 richest people.

If you guessed b, you are correct. In option a, giving enough money to the poor so that they rise to upper middle class has the sad side effect of re-ranking everyone's income, and now the median income is 50 dollars a year. Sadly, this results in pushing 5 million previously middle class people into poverty, even though their wages didn't change at all, and despite the "socially-just" wealth transfer of rich people generously taxing themselves to push all of the previously poor out of poverty.

In option b, although the greedy rich took from the less fortunate to further needlessly enrich themselves, it did have the happy side effect of lowering the median so that in the end, while the rich got richer, the poor disappeared. Or at least they were relabeled, even if they didn't see any extra money.

While these examples are obviously chosen to most clearly illustrate some of the silliness of poverty statistics, the pathology doesn't reside only in extreme examples. Consider that if a government worked very hard and managed to increase everyone's income and purchase power -- say by a flat 10% across the board -- it would not affect these measures of poverty at all. Fixating on them causes policy makers to favor certain types of wealth distribution curves, without establishing that those curves actually optimize anything other than a statistic that happens to be easy to measure and to hype.

The usual justification for these "relative" measures of poverty is that, while they can't measure the rising tide that lifts all boats, they are instead designed to make sure that society doesn't suffer from too many boats resenting all the airplanes they see flying around above them. The war on poverty should really be called the war on resentment.

Unfortunately, these statistics don't even do a good job of measuring that resentment. They would measure resentment only if everyone actually had access to that perfect income information used in the statistics, and if every difference in income resulted in resentment proportional to that difference. But ask yourself, when you see a heart surgeon buying a set of golf clubs, do you resent his or her greater income? And when you are stewing about the unfairness of how much money Bill Gates makes, do you really know whether he makes $1 billion per year, or $10 billion per year?

Resentment is actually based on the perception of unfairness, not on unseen data in tables generated by tax collectors.

When corrections are announced to last year's data, does this retroactively change people's perceptions and resentments? If someone who actually earned a good living was nevertheless constantly told he wasn't getting enough, brainwashed day after day to believe others undeservedly received more than he -- even if it weren't true -- would traditional poverty indices measure the tensions of such resentment as they claim is their goal? No, their utility is limited to crafting policies that shape economic census data into certain arbitrarily favored distributions, disconnected from the underlying societal benefit they were invented to pursue.

Look at it this way, if scientists were to come up with a happy pill that could help supress resentment and allow everyone to be satisfied with what he or she had, so long as it was sufficient for their needs, could we then stop worrying about resentment indices and focus instead on making sure everyone had what they needed? Probably not, because the paradox is that what some people need most is a thriving poverty-management industry.

I'm waiting for a politician to say that. Famous last words, I guess.

Technorati Tags: poverty, resentment, statistics

Haaretz reports on some economic pronouncements from Binyamin Netanyahu as campaigning for the upcoming Israeli general elections heats up:

'I vow to put an end to poverty within three years,' Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at a press conference in which he presented the Likud's economic platform.

I can't explain why, except to blame a faulty humor gene, but this opening line somehow reminds me of a classic Steve Martin routine that my younger and lefter self found uproariously funny back in the early eighties, right before the world was destroyed by a nuclear nincompoop:

"And I believe," said Martin in a deeply serious voice, standing alone on stage and professing his most profound beliefs, "that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was -- an Arctic region, covered with ice."

Oh man that was funny. It still is, even though I now realize how shallow the idea behind it was.

Similarly, I actually hope that, win or lose, Netanyahu's more serious economic ideas will be implemented somehow, even though in this campaign speech he's just setting us up for a disappointingly shallow punchline:

Until now we have gone through a difficult process, but I know that we saved the economy and we will pull people out of poverty by a policy that increases the pie and then we will distribute it in a more rational way. If we only deal with distributing the pie, all we will be left with is crumbs," Netanyahu said.

As good a speaker as Netanyahu is, I have to ask: does anyone in Israel eat pie? I'm guessing this strikes Israeli ears about as effectively as telling Americans that we're going to find a better way to slice the schwarma -- they might assume it refers to regulation of the mohel industry. The only pie I know of in Israel is pizza, which doesn't really have so many crumbs and can't easily be increased fast enough since it is usually distributed in only thirty minutes or less.

The bigger -- almost serious -- question I have about this blatant campaign pandering is this: IS HE SERIOUS? DOES HE THINK WE'RE IDIOTS?

Point number 1: Netanyahu allegedly believes in free, efficient markets.

Point number 2: He is bragging he will end poverty.

Point number 3: The poverty line is set to half the mean income or some similar moving target that only goes up as the poor make more money. If we double everyone's income, it has no effect on poverty. An actual END to this poverty happens only in the vicinity of the socialist singularity when enough capital is confiscated from the rich so that everyone in the economy has an income falling more or less in the same narrow band.

His "increase the pie" stuff sounds good, but if he really intends to focus on "end of poverty," "distribute the bigger pie" stuff, he's not running on the platform I thought he was.

Assuming, however, that he's just saying whatever will get him elected in a very crass and insincere way, then I'd love to vote for him, heartless and rapacious capitalist that I am. Not that I'm pro-poverty. But as long as poverty is defined as half the median income, I'd prefer to have lots of poor people who own computers, cars, cell phones and refrigerators, than have a poverty-free society in which everyone scavenges equally for wild roots and berries and lives in identical dirt-floored huts.

UPDATE: more detail about why poverty statistics are stupid in the next post.

Technorati Tags: netanyahu, elections, poverty, economics, pie, schwarma

MSNBC reports on a story at once intriguing and tragic. What is intriguing is the discovery of 25,000 year old cave drawings in France:

PARIS - Cave drawings thought to be older than those in the famed caves of Lascaux have been discovered in a grotto in western France, officials from the Charente region said Sunday.

A first analysis by officials from the office of cultural affairs suggests the drawings were made some 25,000 years ago, Henri de Marcellus, mayor of the town of Vilhonneur where the cave is located, told France-Info radio.

The exciting news was tempered, however, by the next day's tragic announcement that the significant find would have to be destroyed immediately.

Despondent archeologists confirmed that the ancient cave drawings were to be blown up and the cave sealed. A spokesdigger explained to disappointed reporters, who would not even be allowed to photograph the site, that it turns out a 2 cm. squiggle over the left ear of the third bison on the left appears to resemble the Arabic spelling of the word Allah. While the archeologists were clearly upset, they nevertheless confessed they understood that not inflaming religious sensibilities was more important than any scientific discovery or irreplaceable artifact of ancient creativity.

Officials sponsoring the dig, however, appealed the destruction of their important find. The court took little time in returning a quick 4-1 rejection of the appeal. The majority opinion held that "freedom of expression has never extended to ancient cave peoples or their doodlings. Further, even if it did, freedom of expression is not the same as freedom to scribble provocations that might look like the name of gods -- not that there is more than one -- or pictures of prophets."

Further weakening the appeal was the precedent of the ice cream case, in which a well-known burger chain agreed to withdraw its Spinning Whirl Frozen Dairy Dessert because the ice cream swirl depicted on the lid of the serving cups also resembled the word Allah in Arabic.

The lone dissenting judge in the decision could not be reached for comment as he has quit the bench, moved his family out of Paris and changed his name.

Technorati Tags: satire, cave drawings, protests, cartoons, tragic part at end is not true, do not worry drawings are fine

In the wake of protests, violent threats, boycotts and now deaths over the ongoing cartoon kerfuffle, the Jerusalem Post reports on a statement by the Turkish Foreign Minister:

But Turkey's foreign minister said media freedoms cannot be limitless and that hostility against Muslims was replacing anti-Semitism in the West.

Speaking as a Jew, I think I'm supposed to say, "What a relief! It was great being number one for so many centuries, but we're happy to pass the baton. Good luck fellows."

But actually, that would be insensitive of me. So let me correct that.

"No please, bring back the anti-Semitism. It's not proper that anyone should feel hostile to a Muslim. Please, I beg you, persecute us instead! It's ok, we're used to it!"

How many tolerance points did I win?

Honestly, I can't see why this should be a problem. When some Muslims destroy the Twin Towers and exult over the three thousand dead while others complain more about the reaction to the act than the act itself, people feel a little hostile.

When others blow holes in US ships and embassies and destroy discos and train stations while others prefer to imply the victims earned their fate rather than oppose those who attack in their name, people feel a little hostile.

When many Imams and their followers eagerly anticipate the imposition of a global caliphate and all that stands for, people feel a little hostile.

When leaders of Islamic nations threaten the West and Israel with pre-emptive nuclear annihilation while other Muslims swear support and promise mutual defense in the quest for the tools to carry out that threat, I'm sorry, but people feel just a tad peeved.

However...

When Muslims laid the foundation for modern pharmacology? Thumbs up all around. Great stuff.

Strong commitment to monotheism? No problem here.

Charity for the poor? Warm fuzzies.

When Muslims invented Algebra? Well -- let's not push it. A lot of people feel kind of hostile about that one too. But not me. I liked algebra.

So please. I beg Muslims, moderate and otherwise, do not view hostility to Islam as the inevitable successor to anti-Semitism. That's a success I don't especially recommend. It's not really all it's cracked up to be.

Technorati Tags: anti-Semitism, hostility to Islam, protests, cartoons

Bar Mitzvah Greetings from Famous Stars. It's not your Bar Mitzvah until Ben Stiller says it is.

Good luck going for the gold in the Bar Mitzvah Olympics, for those who compete.

Technorati Tags: bar mitzvah,star mitzvah,hollywood, stars, video, bar mitzvah olympics

Haaretz tells us that Abbas intends to continue negotiating with Israel:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Israel recently that he will continue to be responsible for diplomatic contacts with Jerusalem despite Hamas' victory in the PA's parliamentary elections, and requested that Israel continue this dialogue rather than ignoring him as 'irrelevant.' Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded that in that case, Israel will continue talking with Abbas for the time being.

Of course, with his present mandate, the most he could deliver in response even to a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders would be a promise not to resurrect Yasser Arafat's lifeless corpse.

Abbas' message was delivered in several conversations between his emissaries and Israeli officials in recent days. In these conversations, his envoys stressed that the PLO, and not the PA, is the body that has signed all previous agreements with Israel and is officially responsible for conducting diplomatic negotiations. Since Abbas is also chairman of the PLO, he intends to continue negotiating with Israel in this capacity.

Ah, now I see. The Oslo decade was about making peace with the PLO, not the Palestinian people. So Israel can cede all of the territory and financial concessions to the PLO, and then make a separate peace with Hamas and Islamic Jihad later. Presumably, Hamas will settle for taking just the rest of Israel, and Islamic Jihad, always late to the dance, will have to settle for catering the victory party.

No thanks. If Mr. Abbas can remuster the majority support he never knew what to do with in the first place, maybe there is something to talk about. Until then, I'd prefer to hold my breath waiting for Hamas to sue for peace.

Ok, as you know, I'm an Abba (a Dad). But I think I do a pretty decent job of not abusing that status here on my blog. The cute kid stories have been few and far between.

So I'm overdue. Please bear with me.

My four year old daughter, Miriam, has been home sick with me today. I guess she missed pre-school a little bit because in a rare moment of lucidity between expulsions of bodily fluid, she decided to share with me something she must have learned recently from her pre-school teacher, Tzippy.

Miriam asked me, "Abba, do you know how much water a camel drinks?"

Dutifully recognizing the setup, I shook my head. "No, Miriam, I don't. How much?"

With a look of extreme pleasure, Miriam revealed the answer. "A TON!"

It was so cute, I wanted to probe a little further, to see if she understood where that ton of water was supposed to go, and what it was for. So I asked her the open-ended question she usually gives rather than receives, "Why?"

Amazingly, she actually knew the answer! "Because Tzippy said so."

It always takes a moment to realign my brain when these unexpected truths are sprung on me. Even better than the act of programming computers, talking to kids reminds me that it is in all likelihood impossible for any string of words to have only one possible meaning. I think talking to them protects me from the hubris of believing I could ever receive three wishes and end up as anything but a wealthy frog, wishing just to be myself again.

A non-violent Muslim response to the Danish cartoons has appeared -- not even threatening violence!

A Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organization posted anti-Jewish cartoons on its Web site in response to the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish papers last year and offended many Muslims. [...]

One of the AEL cartoons displayed an image of Dutch Holocaust victim Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, and another questioned whether the Holocaust actually occurred.

First, let me say, this is fabulous news. Responding to cartoons with cartoons is how a civilization works. From there it slowly builds up to rational dialog, but these things take time (on both sides). Well done.

Second, I find this cartoon quite offensive just by its description. The artist should be ashamed of himself for having drawn it, even as he (or she) should be proud of himself (or herself) for having done nothing worse.

Life is so full of these contradictions. If we could all just learn to cope with them rather than the certainies of burning down buildings and killing people. We'll see if this calms the mobs. I don't plan to reprint the new cartoons here, but rest assured, they should spread pretty quickly without threat of fatwa.

UPDATE: As others, notably Judeopundit and Jewish Freak, have pointed out these latest cartoons can be considered a response to the Danish Mohammad cartoons only up to, and no further than, than the point at which they drag Jews in yet again as the scapegoat source of Islamic anger. So, while I remain pleased to see at least some Muslims groping for a non-violent response to non-violent slights, I am disgusted at where they are groping. But I guess that's progress.

Technorati Tags: danish, cartoons, response, AEL, protests

Ok, we'll make this one a quiz to see how well you know your blog-satirists. I'm going to give you a silly piece of exaggeration about the cartoon protests and you see if you can tell me who you think wrote it. Was it:

a) SnappleFace
b) the Onion
c) Point Five or
d) Iowahawk?

Before I give you the sample piece, screw your thinking cap on tight, and maybe take a peek at each of the sites to get a feel for each one's style before you take your guess.

Ready? Ok, here is your clue. Good luck:

As fanatics - some dressed as suicide bombers - staged more protests yesterday, David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the police should take action against what were clearly offences of incitement to murder.

At the height of the protests on Friday demonstrators chanted slogans threatening more London bombings, praising the "magnificent" 9/11 hijackers and waving placards saying "Massacre those who insult Islam", "Europe you will pay" and "Europe you'll come crawling when Mujahideen come roaring".

Mr Davis said last night: "Clearly some of these placards are incitement to violence and, indeed, incitement to murder - an extremely serious offence which the police must deal with and deal with quickly. [...]

Yesterday, more than 1,000 demonstrators staged a second protest outside the embassy. The only arrests made were of two men found carrying cartoons of Mohammed. Police said they had been detained "to prevent a breach of the peace".

Did you get it? Stylistically so familiar, yet so seriously absurd, the idea of all those "protesters" calling for the death of those they disagree with, and the only arrests are of two of the intended victims for having the gall to not simply cower in their homes waiting for the mujahedeen's roar to reach them.

I'd still be laughing if the answer weren't e) None of the above.

This ridiculous parody comes not from Scott Ott's fevered imagination, but from the real-life pages of Britain's Telegraph (with an assist to Yael at Step by Step for digging it up).

But please, don't worry, all is well. Lest you have a minor anxiety attack that the police are ignoring threats of murder, let me put your mind at ease:

The Metropolitan Police said: 'Arrests if necessary will be made at the most appropriate time. The Met has several different means of collecting the necessary evidence should it be required post-event. All complaints made to police will be passed to the Public Order Crime Unit for investigation.'

So as long as they're not saying they plan to wait for the actual murders before considering any action, then there's nothing to worry about. Is there?

Hmm. Now I'm starting to worry about those two arrested protesters. You don't think the appeasement would go so far as to...

UPDATE: If anyone has the cure for maladies like these, the kind that need more than 2 aspirins, it's got to be Dr. Sanity. Thanks for taking the case, Doc.

Technorati Tags: london, cartoon, prophet, protest, islam

Form 1702B
Change of Government, Report Form
Addendum 3 -- Trip Summary

From:     Fatah           
To:    Hamas            
Representative:  Abe Yurocrat       
Date: Near Future        

1702B-1: Section 1 -- Overview

1702B-1-1: Meeting Location and Relevant Details

I totally understood you about getting this new form filled out ASAP before giving any more checks, what with the calls to cut off even humanitarian funding because of this and that niggling problem. They can't call us "terrorist funders" anymore, not with these tight new guidelines and criteria, and everything in writing and signed as well.

Well, I wish I could tell you where the meeting was, but I can't. Not exactly. After I called the number you gave me, I was picked up, blindfolded for some reason, and then driven around, passed from car to car a few times, until I was finally dropped off and led inside a house. When they brought me to the interview room, they frisked me with more enthusiasm than I would expect from a party with such a stunning electoral mandate and humanitarian track record running ambulance services, schools, mosques and clinics to boot. Regardless, I assented to the search since it is apparently a cultural norm in this area, the Israelis causing as much trouble as they do.

That's about all I can say about the meeting's location.

1702B-1-2: Authorization of Participants

I'm relatively sure the guy interviewed was a good enough Hamas representative. You can cross check the signature at the bottom of the form against whomever they appoint as Minister of Botony or Horticulture -- if his name is Mohammad Something-or-Other, that's our man. Also, out of all the Hamas people who so graciously helped with this meeting, Mr. Muhammed was the only one who wasn't armed to the teeth, so he's obviously from the political wing.

To be sure, I asked him if he was authorized to answer these questions -- just a formality, really, in order to get the next check -- and he nodded.

But if you aren't satisfied with an actual Minister of Hydroponics, you're welcome to go back and wander the streets of Nablus yourself looking for somebody more official to interview. You'll want to wear a green headband if you try that though.

1702B-2: Section 2 -- Conformance to Guidelines Survey

1702B-2-1: Commitment to Gender-Inclusiveness
Approval:  check       
Notes: First I asked Mr. Mohamad if I could take off the blindfold and he said, "Sure, it's your head." Oh he is such a kidder, that one. We both had a good laugh about it. Well, mostly he laughed, but I was relieved to finally get the blindfold off.

Anyway, I asked him about his party's commitment to gender-inclusiveness and he seemed puzzled at first but then he figured out what we needed to hear. He told me that his party is open to participation of women at every level of the resistance, that Hamas appreciates that its women are the very wombs that produce and train their activists, and that they even send women on missions -- I had to admit I didn't know that -- and that some of their most visible incoming legislators are women,too, which if true is a most impressive gender-inclusiveness record.

For instance, he told me about one of their new legislators, Mariam Farhat. I asked if I could speak to her for a moment, to verify some of this, but Mr. Mohamed shook his head. He told me, "She is busy having a long heart-to-heart with one of her eight remaining sons -- oops, how could I forget? Make that SEVEN remaining sons. Oh, they grow up so fast don't they?" and when I asked when she'd be free, he indicated she might be in hiding for a few weeks until some sort of expected controversy blows over.

I let it drop at that and gave them a pass for this one.

1702B-2-2: Commitment to Equality of Sexual Preference
Approval:  check       
Notes: At first, when I asked Mr. Mohammed about this one, his face looked very red, but after a minute when his breathing was back to normal, he tried to answer. Basically he wanted to clarify what I meant, "So, by this so-called sexual preference, you are referring to these Burqa Boys like that Daughter of Pigs and Apes, Mike Jackson, defiling Holy Arab land with his presence?" But once I corrected him, that Michael Jackson wasn't born of Pigs and Apes (Jewish) and possibly even fathered children, I think that calmed him down a little bit, and he didn't seem to have any more problem with it. I didn't press him anymore on this one, because he was pretty worked up.

1702B-2-3: Position on Kyoto gasses and emissions
Approval:  check       
Notes: I told him we needed to know that his administration would be working on Kyoto gases, both internally, and by helping criticize countries that refuse to ratify the treaty. Once he understood this meant criticising the US, he nodded most vigorously. I pushed further for his government's stance on Kyoto gases, and he dismissed that as a question for the scientific research department, but that certainly if Kyoto gases were easier to transport that Sarin, he was all for it.

I took that as a yes.

1702B-2-4: Intended Disposition of Funds
Approval:  check       
Notes: Of course, I had to make sure the money wasn't going to go for any bombs, or terror weapons or any funny stuff, given everybody's anxiety about Hamas recently. But he was quite reasonable when I asked him, and he reassured me that the money was absolutely not for terrorism or anything of the sort, just subsidies for widows and orphans and to pay for refurbishing and renaming of city squares and streets, things like that. Charity. I even challenged him on this, since everyone says that destroying Israel is in his organization's charter, it looked a little fishy that all this money still only went to charity. But he reassured me that all of the terrorism was paid for out of completely different funds, so I don't think we have anything to worry about on this issue.

1702B-2-5: Governmental Policies Against Sexual Harrassment
Approval:  check       
Notes: Mr. Mohommed seemed most surprised that I was unaware of his party's progressive policies against sexual harrassment, how it would be absolutely impossible in his administration's work place. He told me of their spirtual leaders' wise policy of "out of sight, out of mind" so that any women in his administration -- and of course there would be very many -- would all be covered from head to toe so that no man would be the slightest bit tempted. When I told him, half-jokingly, that I was surprised we hadn't tried that one yet ourselves, he nodded and said that perhaps we would someday, Allah-willing.

1702B-2-6: Freedom of Religion
Approval:  check       
Notes: His answer to this one was, "There is no God but Allah" and I smiled, his faith was just so quaint, so Pat Robertson-like. But I told him I still had to dot the i's and cross (so to speak) the t's, and I asked him if he would have any problem with freedom of religion for others, like Jews for instance. He pointed out that he didn't expect there to be any Jews under his jurisdiction, not for very long at least, not now nor in any future territories he might someday be responsible for. So he said it was kind of a moot point.

I didn't let him off the hook though, and pressed on about Christians. And he said he would have no problem, as long as they paid the special jizzy tax, educated their children in madrassas, didn't build any new churches, or rebuild any old ones that might happen to burn down, and didn't build their houses higher than his. But other than that, they were free to practice their faith. In private. Without wine. But Christians were must assuredly welcome to live under his rule. Frankly, it sounded like we might want to send a few American religious fundamentalists, Pat Robertson and the like, to live in Mohammed's Holy Land, maybe mellow them out a little.

1702B-2-7: Opposition to Holocaust Denial
Approval:  check       
Notes: When I brought this one up, he sighed and told me he was just worn out from all the Jewish carping on the subject. He said, "We don't necessarily deny the holocaust; although, our principled support for freedom of the press enshrines the right to do so. Nevertheless, we don't interpret Brother Ahmadinejad's recent statements, for instance, as literal denial of the holocaust, but more as a call for investigation into why the job wasn't completed properly, that's all." When I asked him if this meant he supported a new holocaust, he seemed hurt by the accusation. "Me? Look, is Tel Aviv a decimated wasteland glowing under a radioactive cloud yet?" I shook my head, no, it isn't. "So what crime are we accused of? Apparently you would imprison a thief who has not stolen." Touche, as they say.

1702B-2-8: No Support for Terror
Approval:  check       
Notes: I apologized but told Mr. Muhamed that I had to ask the next question, as the world is so upset about the whole terror issue these days, and surely he understood. But he wasn't bothered at all, said that on the issue of support for terror -- no, his government supported only freedom fighters, resistance, not terror. He said, "Furthermore, now that we are a state" -- proto-state, I corrected him -- "it isn't terror is it? It's diplomacy."

1702B-2-9: Respect Right to Exist of Neighbor States
Approval:  check       
Notes: Well, Mr. Muhamad caught on to this one right away. He said, "This is about the Zionist entity, isn't it?" I nodded and got to the point: "Yes, it is. Will a Hamas government recognize Israel's right to exist?" Yes, just like that, I came right out with it, point blank.

And he didn't even blink. "Of course, we can talk about this," he said, "as soon as the Zionists recognize OUR right to exist. They are allowed to call for Hamas to be outlawed, and for no one to talk to Hamas or deal with Hamas, to claim Hamas is illegitimate. And then the world expects Hamas to recognize THEIR right to exist? Let the Zionists enact a National Hamas Appreciation Day and then maybe once the hypocrisy has subsided, we can begin to consider thinking about discussing the possibility they might have a right to exist."

He had a point.

1702B-2-10: Commitment to these Commitments Until Next Elections
Approval:  check       
Notes: So then I told him I was sorry, but I only had one more hoop he had to jump through to get his check, and he kind of bristled, saying they would not jump through hoops for money, even if the hoops were burning, but he put his knife away as soon as I explained it was just a figure of speech.

So I told him we needed him to promise he would keep these promises throughout his government's term, until the next elections. I can't tell you how good it was to see him laugh like that, I laughed too. When we'd both stopped laughing, he looked at me and said, "We care about the so-called next elections about as much as Muhamad Atta cared about landing lessons in flight school." And I laughed and laughed, and he was very good because he didn't laugh at his own joke even a bit. Very funny man. But finally, I told him, seriously, we just need you to promise to keep these promises, and he smiled. But he didn't say anything. So I did a little quick thinking, because I was too close to take no for an answer now. So I told him, if you won't promise to keep these promises, say so now, otherwise I'm just going to assume you're giving your word to keep your word, ok?

That worked.

1702B-3: Section 3 -- Recommendations/Actions

In light of a perfect score in all areas, international concerns notwithstanding, I had no choice but to release the check in the full amount of etc. and etc. and so on and so forth.

Technorati Tags: hamas, funding, elections, satire, blindfolded

Haaretz reports on the US State Department's siding with the embassy burning, murder-threatening mobs intent on ransacking the West out of rage over cartoons published by non-Muslims in a non-Muslim newspaper in a non-Muslim land:

The United States condemned the cartoons, siding with Muslims outraged that newspapers put press freedom over respect for religion. 'We ... respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable,' said State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper.

Major U.S. publications have not republished the cartoons.

In contrast, some European media responded to the criticism against the Danish newspaper that originally printed the caricatures by reproducing the images and fueled anger that has led to boycotts of Danish products and widespread protests.

The furor cuts to the question of which is more sacred in the Western world - freedom of expression or respect for religious beliefs.

Hello?

Support for freedom of the press with the all-to-selective exception of when it insults someone's sensitivities is NOT freedom of the press -- it's only freedom of the press to print whatever the government's sensitivity-crats authorize. This sham-freedom is not a new invention, an innovation in the art of tolerance -- they already have this in tens of Middle Eastern theocracies and dictatocracies.

The difference between this statement and the arrest of the Jordanian editor who authorized printing the cartoons in his own country is just the bumpy ride down the slippery slope. I would love anyone to present me an authoritative and comprehensive list of Muslim religious sensibilities, a list that is guaranteed not to grow. And not a piece of satire, a real list. If the world caves on this one, what is the next sensitivity? And the one after that?

Doesn't anyone read the online English newspapers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? Don't people realize what editors and writers are arrested for in these countries? Here, I'll give you a head start. Try Afghanistan (yes, the country that has been freed from the even-worse Taliban):

One of the stories published in "Women's Rights" questioned the harsh punishment under Shari'a law for women found guilty of adultery, such as stoning. Another article argued that giving up Islam is not a crime.

The magazine's editor, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, was arrested on 1 October (2005) following a complaint made to the Supreme Court by a religious adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Any feminists in the house?

What about Indonesia?

The publishing permit for a tabloid newspaper called Monitor was withdrawn and the editor arrested in November after the Christian-owned paper published a survey of its readers' views on the world's most influential people, and the Prophet Muhamad placed only eleventh. Shortly thereafter, the publisher of another newspaper owned by the same company withdrew his paper from publication after a letter to the editor was printed about a dream that the writer had had about Muhamad. The letter was accompanied by an artist's rendering of the Prophet, in violation of the Islamic ban on such portrayal. At the end of 1990, the police said they were still hunting for the writer of the letter.

Other candidates were allowed to run against Muhammad? Shockingly offensive.

Or how about Iran?

Last month, the managing editor of the same newspaper, Neshat, was imprisoned for thirty months for insulting Islam. The newspaper had published an article calling for the death penalty to be abolished.

Can I get an amen from the anti-death penalty crowd?

Or maybe Saudi Arabia?

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have arrested a popular poet and dismissed a newspaper editor over the publication of a poem criticising the state's Islamic judiciary. [...]

His arrest follows the publication in Saudi Arabia's al-Madina newspaper on 10 March of Mr Musalam's poem, The Corrupt on Earth.

In it, the poet accused some judges of being corrupt and issuing unfair rulings for their own material benefit.

Don't worry, it was probably a bad poem anyway, and clearly it offended Muslim sensibilities, so what else were they supposed to do?

Think clearly. If you wish to live in a society where your very life is on the line with every word you publish, feel free to point your ski tips down this slippery slope, but don't say there wasn't a sign at the top telling you what you should expect to find at the bottom.

But even without the slippery slope, the State Department's capitulation is just premature. Memo to the US State Department: the world-wide caliphate has not yet been created at scimitar point. The need to squelch any thought that is potentially disquieting to the violence-prone amongst Muslims -- not all Muslims, but sadly, way too many -- won't be a valued survival instinct until AFTER Europe applies for dhimmi status, turning Buckingham Palace into a mosque and emptying the Louvre of all naked or bible-themed paintings. You've got at least a couple years left.

But for the moment, Denmark is a sovereign nation not yet governed by Sharia. The penalty for publishing offensive cartoons there is not beheading but having to weather a slew of angry letters to the editor. Does anyone remember those anymore? Whatever happened to the old letter to the editor? These days all we have are pipe-bombs to the editor.

One further note to the State Department, or anyone else who's instinct here is to grovel or cower. Please don't. Our friends the Danes deserve better than that from us. It is quite sufficient to say, yes, we understand you are offended by these images, and you have your own free speech with which to protest them -- but you do not have freedom of violence, or freedom of threat of violence.

Buy Danish. Anything Danish.

(Hat tip to Yael K at Step by Step for her link to the story of the Jordanian editor's firing.)

Technorati Tags: buy danish, cartoon, prophet, islam, protests, caliphate, sharia

The BBC is not unaware of the furor over cartoons of the prophet Muhammed published in a Danish newspaper:

Arab ministers have urged Denmark to punish a newspaper which printed cartoons that offended Muslims.

Ministers from 17 Arab countries criticised the 'offence to Islam' and called on the Danish government to ensure this would not happen again.

But while the BBC watches its competitors lose their heads (so to speak) -- re-publishing the cartoons willy-nilly in support of the Danes' right to free expression, or even just to allow their readers to see the blashphemy for themselves -- the BBC keeps an even keel. Rather than republishing the cartoons themselves -- an act which would be, if not illegal, at least in horribly bad taste and dangerous to boot -- the BBC simply describes them in terms that will hopefully convey to the reader just how cobustibly offensive these drawings are, without inflaming Islamic passions any further:

The newspaper published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, some of which depicted him as a terrorist.

Please understand that, in quoting the BBC, I don't mean to condone the public description of these or any other blasphemous cartoons or any other images which would offend or annoy Muslim sensibilities, either now or in the future.

I only quote it to call for further re-education of BBC staff. Apparently whatever sensitivity training has been carried out to date has been insufficient to stop them from describing blashphemous drawings. Sure, they'll try to hide behind the fact they didn't print the cartoons themselves, but that doesn't mean they had to go and actually describe the darned things, in general.

The BBC might also counter that they made every effort to balance any offense the description might have given Muslims by printing images offensive to others. For instance Danes and Christians will probably be quite miffed to see the Danish flag, with it's emblematic Christian cross, trampled on:

and

Hey, I acknowledge the BBC is making a good "faith" effort (figure of speech, I'm not saying the BBC has real faith, yet) to offend the world's non-Muslims, starting with Christians and Danes. I'm sure it was tempting to just describe to readers that Muslims, in certain places, are gleefully desecrating the cross of the Danish flag; however, the BBC wisely recognized that the more visceral, visual option would be more offensive. Well done. But it's not enough. Further training is needed to help the BBC understand that they have to work harder. Non-Muslims apparently don't share Islam's exquisitely refined volatility.

I could probably take care of the BBC's sensitivity re-training right here and now. It's pretty simple really:

• Do not print, describe or otherwise hint at blasphemy against the holy prophet, or otherwise offend Muslim sensibilities.
  
• If you're not sure whether something might offend Muslims, do not -- I repeat, do NOT -- seek out a Muslim to ask their opinion, as this risks offending that Muslim. If you're not sure, bury it. Not on page 16. In the ground. Deep.
  
• If you have the opportunity to annoy another religion or people, by all means, take it. It is important that the distinction gradually become clear to the non-Muslims of the world that their subjective truths are untrue, while objective Muslim truths are true -- for everybody. There's a name for this, oh, what's it called again, it's right on the tip of my tongue, dhimmi a minute, I'll get it.
  
• Example: If cartoons of Mohammed, or even Porky the Pig, roil Muslims into a violent lather, then you absolutely must report on their rage and the appalling lack of punishment for the offenders. But do NOT reprint the images. On the other hand, if the subversive artistic greatness of Piss Christ offends Christians to the point of a serious letter writing campaign, then by all means, reprint the image of the crucifix in a jar of urine at every opportunity. There is no substitute for repetition.

Message to the BBC accounting department: you can mail me a check later -- don't worry, I'm sure you can get it subsidized by one of those rights-based NGOs, or failing that, the Saudi government would probably pony up if you asked.

I know I'm kind of hammering on this topic, this being my third or fourth "Danish Cartoons" post, but I believe this is an important issue, and usually a nail isn't driven home with a single blow.

Buy Danish. If you already buy Danish cheese, buy two this week.

Technorati Tags: cartoons, buy danish, bbc, sensitivity training

Please, please, read this post quietly. I've locked myself in the office with the lights off, so I'm safe for the moment, but if they hear anything, they'll find me for sure. And I can't go back there. Not now, not after what I've been through. It's too much.

You know how they say "no man is an island"? Well they were wrong. My three daughters are having a slumber party with four of their friends. And yes, it IS that bad:


Somebody, you've got to help me. Please. Just tell me how much longer I'm going to have to stay in here! When does the giggling stop?

Looking on the bright side, if I type quietly enough, I might even get to put up another post tonight.

I was browsing through a few of my older, pre-Hamas-victory posts, searching for one in which I might have brilliantly and presciently called for a Hamas victory as the best of all possible outcomes for Palestinian elections. I've been reading all of the "they-will-moderate" and "at-least-they'll-attack-us-honestly" post-game analyses, including my own, and figured that anyone who could prove they'd not only predicted this popular outcome, but openly called for it, well, that person would have to be on the fast track to the punditry penthouse. So I was looking for my winning bloggo-lotto ticket: an AbbaGav link proving I'd prophetically wished for Hamas to take over and set things right.

I didn't find it. I did find a post in which I conjectured that the spectre of a potential Hamas electoral victory could be the thing that would eventually derail Disengagement before it happened -- Ok, Ok, so I'm not the visionary I predicted I would be.

My only consolation is that I don't see anyone else -- and I mean ANYONE else -- bringing up references to their own brilliant pre-election calls for this utopian outcome.

So please, in our efforts to analyze this election down to a pulpy, meaningless mess, let's not go overboard. If Hamas winning was such a good thing, at least one wise pundit out there would have had the foresight to wish for it. Sure, now that we're stuck with Mahmoud Zahar's ugly mug in the news every day, we might as well try to look on the bright side, I'm all for that. But even a bomb has a bright side, once you light the fuse, so let's not get too excited.

PS: If anyone does find links to brilliant people openly calling for Hamas victory -- people other than the Jihadis themselves and their supporters -- please let me know. With Technorati tracking almost 27 million blogs, there has to be SOMEBODY out there who understood that a Hamas victory would be good for the Jews.

Technorati Tags: hamas, election, victory, pathetically prophetic punditry

According to Al Jazeera, the OIC and the Arab League, the "Muslim world's two main political bodies" are turning to the UN for help in their conniption fit over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. Apparently the boycott against Danish products, threats of suicide attacks against Danish targets, and of course the moral rectitude of Bill Clinton, have not yet succeeded in extracting the expected dhimmitude from Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen (pbuh).

Perhaps the fact that the Muslim organizations are turning to the UN is the first sign this isn't as serious as we thought? I'm trying to imagine exactly what sort of help they think they're going to get out of Kofi:

Kofi Annan:

So gentlemen, let me refer you to our Department of Deliberative Dialog, 23rd floor, second door on the...

Lead Moderate Imam:

Kofi, Kofi, please, don't play games with us. We worked with Saddam and the Iranians. Heck, we're the ones who invented the Department of Deliberative Dialog. Let's talk.

Kofi:

Look, guys, I can probably get you a watered down General Assembly resolution, maybe even this month, but you've got to give me something to work with here, a statement urging calm -- anything.

Imam:

A resolution! I'm supposed to calm the seething Arab street with another of your whimpering resolutions? This is serious Kofi. You saw the riots last year, and that was just for a freakin' Koran in the toilet. This cartoon thing is a powder keg my fine feckless friend.

Kofi:

How about I get you an Annual UN Holocaust Scientific Research Day? Maybe issue a David Irving commemorative stamp to go with it. I think I could pull that off next time Bolton takes a vacation.

Imam:

Can you promise it will always fall on the Jewish Sabbath? When the Jews show up at these scientific events, it just gets so tedious with all their objections and counterpoints. Ptui.

Kofi:

I wish I could, otherwise it has to be Sundays and that clashes with my golf lesson. Plus I have to be careful to give the appearance of balance or they'll come down all over me, you know how it is.

Imam:

Hey, I feel your pain, but that just isn't going to cut it this time Kofi.

Kofi:

Ok, I wasn't going to bring this up, but hear me out. It won't be easy, since it's too hot to bring Kojo in on anything yet, but I think I can work something out. I'm thinking about a 1% global internet tax -- across the board -- to, get this, foster world peace and understanding. We'll do some programs, bring in some of your people as consultants, it'll...

Imam:

Kofi. Kofi! Snap out of it! It's not about money! Or at least it's not only about money. It's about honor, Muslim honor. About religious dignity, our religious dignity. It's about simple human rights, the right not to have the Prophet defamed and blasphemed by the so-called rights of others. I need a serious offer this time.

Kofi:

[gulp]Well, what if I could get you a signed, personal, written apology from every Danish citizen? -- but that's it, that's the best I can do.

Imam:

And the resignation of the infidel government that allowed this blasphemy to occur in the first place? I can't just bring back apologies without some assurance this will never happen again.

Kofi:

Please, you know we don't do regime change. I'm sorry, I really am.

If this means our hopes are resting on Kofi's shoulders I'm not sure what to think. Somehow counting on Kofi doesn't seem like much of a strategy unless you need to launder funds for palace construction.

Support freedom. Buy Danish Products.

Technorati Tags: buy danish, boycott, kofi annan, cartoons, denmark

Haaretz reports on a Reuters interview of President Bush (they talk to him?):

"I am concerned about a person that, one, tries to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, and two, has made it clear that his intentions are to destroy Israel," Bush said.

"Israel is a solid ally of the United States, we will rise to Israel's defense if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not only disturbing to the United States, it's disturbing for other countries in the world as well," he added.

Asked if he meant the United States would rise to Israel's defense militarily, Bush said: "You bet, we'll defend Israel."

It seems strange to call his commonsense statement "brave" but I probably have to since I'm sure he'll be attacked in some circles for being nothing more than a Zionist puppet for saying such a thing. So "Bravo" President Bush. Courage.

I only hope he meant the part about "defense" literally, and not just as a euphemism for nuclear retaliation on our behalf. Then again, the threat of nuclear retaliation from a crazy Texan sitting on top of the biggest stockpile of nuclear missiles in the world might cause the Iranians to rethink their "obliterate Israel and weather the minor Zionist retaliation" strategy.

When I supported the right, if not the wisdom, of the Israeli government to evict people from their homes, it was implicit that responsibility accompanied that right. It probably should have been a lot more explicit.

As we approach elections in which the leading party campaigns on the platform of that eviction, its leaders had better but some serious effort into fulfilling their responsibility before voters pass judgement at the polls. While there are many sides to argue about whether the Disengagement was wise, or what its long term impact will be, I can't imagine anyone would want anything but fair treatment for the heroic Israelis whose lives were uprooted by the move, nothing less than the fair treatment they were promised.

The government still has a ways to go.

ACTION, PLEASE by Moshe Saperstein, Jerusalem Gold Hotel

Time for action, friends. Two days ago we were informed by an Expulsion Authority worker that the promised repairs to our shanty - the protruding pipe that the lady fell over, and the sprinkler going directly into the air conditioner - would not be made. Today we were formally served with eviction papers stating that we have to leave the hotel in five days.

We are going to be fighting it at this end, but we need your help. Please send a fax and/or e-mail [fax is preferable as it clogs up their machines] to the following. I am including suggested text - don't fall down laughing -- but you can let `er rip as you see fit. And please send us a copy, BCC:ruchimo@netvision.net.il

Prime Minister's Office

SELA Administration

Fax# 972-2-5001141 or e-mail: sela25@sela.pmo.gov.il

We are outraged that Moshe and Rachel Saperstein, an elderly couple of Gush Katif refugees one of whom is a severely disabled veteran, are being forced to move into a building that has such serious structural defects as to be life-threatening. Equally outrageous is that when all others are given ten to fourteen days to move, you are demanding the Sapersteins move in five days which include Friday and Shabbat.

We will be expressing our displeasure to the nearest Israel Consulate, the United Jewish Communities fund-raising organization, and our local Jewish media.

Thank you, friends

While I can't personally vouch for the details, a little web searching supports the basic facts, and the information comes to me from a source I trust -- that sounds like MSM famous last words, but I'm a blogger so it's ok.

Hypothetical. You're with the press, and you're walking down the street one day, when you chance upon a man with a rifle -- an automatic rifle -- swearing up a storm about how he's gonna find himself some Jews to shoot. No, better yet, he's got a box of dynamite, a bomb, and he's muttering about blowing up a synagogue. And it's not just one guy, it's a bunch of them, like some sort of a Klan procession.

It could happen.

Now think quick, Mr. Reporter Slash Photographer, what do you do?

1. Back away slowly and call the cops right away so they can come arrest them before anyone is harmed.
   
2. Go Jean Claude Van Damme on them all by your heroic self.
   
3. Try to talk them out of an immoral act, taking notes the whole time so you can write a best-selling memoir of the whole experience, should you survive the encounter.
   
4. Drop your camera and throw up your arms yelling "I'm uncircumcised!" before running screaming in the opposite direction.
   
5. Flash your press pass and ask if they could pose for a few pictures. Then, while taking the pictures, try to find out where they plan to place the bombs so you can get there before those jerks from AFP, and maybe even angle for an exclusive pre-crime interview so you'll have something to sell to Oprah.

Or maybe you just pray they're only playing dress-up, and the explosives aren't real, but snap the photos anyway cuz they're just so darned photogenic. I know I would.

Technorati Tags: hamas, politics, rifles

Many Palestinians are scared and I can see why:

A senior Hamas official has said that the if his movement forms the next Palestinian government, it will make sharia, or Islamic law, a source of law in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Sheikh Mohammed Abu Tir, no. 2 on the Hamas list, told Canada's Globe and Mail that the government will modify the existing Palestinian education system to and institute a more Islamic curriculum, and will separate boys and girls.

Actually, as an Israeli, I should be looking forward to this "more Islamic curriculum" since Islam is the religion of peace. It will be nice when they staunch the flow of suicide bombers and death-to-the-Jew jihadis being churned out from the un-Islamic education system currently in place.

Just kidding.

But will it really be that bad for the Palestinians? Ok. So Hamas is the party that threatened Gaza's very last drinking club -- ironically UN-owned, at least until it actually was blown up -- and the party that instituted the "Vice and Virtue Squad" that murdered a 22 year old woman for the sin of being seen in public with her fiancee. But certainly Palestinians realize that the party they voted for so overwhelmingly will moderate its positions once it grabs tight the reins of power. Hamas is even coming out and reassuring there skittish new constituency:

Abu Tir clarified that alcohol would not be banned and that it would not be mandatory for women to cover their heads when outdoors.

Then again, Fatah never passed a law that citizens had to praise Yasser Arafat either -- everyone on their own just happened to think it might be a very good idea. When the government has such power, and armed gangs roam the streets, the details of what is or is not written in a book of law somewhere is not all that important to someone who wants to hold down a job or simply avoid being killed. It may well be that most Palestinians know exactly what Abu Tir is saying.

And as a dad myself, I can imagine what Palestinian fathers, Hamas and Fatah voters alike, are thinking right now. "Oy vey! Allah help me, I'm going to have to take the girls shopping for a whole new wardrobe!" This could be quite a traumatic experience, especially for the Ramallah-chic crowd who have finally nailed down the nuances of shopping for blue jeans or fancy skirts (still working on that myself):

Salesgirl: Hello, can I help you with your purchase today?
Dad: Oh, um, yes well, I'm just buying for the three girls here, and, well, these big things here... these... what are these called again?
Salesgirl: (smiling) Oh, these are burqas, very popular this week for some reason.
Dad: Yes, well, they're very nice but the girls don't like the white, something about wanting a more slimming color, but all I see is white. Do they come in any other colors?
Salesgirl: (nodding) Of course! (smiles and makes a sweeping gesture) The other half of the store is for black.
Dad: Ohhhkay, we'll take three for each girl then. Black.
Salesgirl: Great, so what size eyehole do you want?
Dad: Uh, waddya got? Tell you what, let's just play it safe and go for the smallest there is.
Girls: DAAAAAD, all the OTHER girls are showing their eyebrows.

I suppose over time, people will adjust. But for now there will be a trying period of adaptation, learning new terms, new fabrics, understanding how to measure the dimensions of an eyeslit.

But frankly, I'm a little nervous about the change, too. I realize I'm going to have to get more serious about this stuff. I can't keep crying "Burqa!" at every burlap sack I see shrouding a female form. I must confess, I really haven't got a clue about the difference between a burqa and an abaya. So to remedy that, I turned to the web to nail this down a little. I have a feeling the following information could come in handy in the coming years, so pay attention. There may be a pop quiz later.

Hijab: The word is commonly used to indicate a head scarf, but its fullest meaning refers to the general idea of modesty in dress.

Burqa: A burqa is a type of opaque veil sometimes worn in addition to a headscarf by Muslim women observing purdah. The burqa covers the wearer's entire face except for a small region about the eyes. A full burqa or Afghan burqa is a garment that conceals the entire body. The full burqa includes a "net curtain" which also hides the wearer's eyes.

Abaya: The abaya, an overgarment, is the traditional form of hijab for many countries of the Arabian peninsula. Traditional abaya are black -- although other colors are now available -- and may be either a large square of fabric draped from the shoulders or head, or a long black caftan. The abaya should cover the whole body save face, feet, and hands. It can be worn with the niqab, a face veil covering all but the eyes. Saudi Arabia requires women to wear abaya in public; the niqab is optional. Abaya-wearing is enforced by the religious police, the mutaween (similar to the "Vice and Virtue Squad").

Chador: A chador, the Iranian version of hijab, is a full length semi-circle of fabric which is open down the front. A chador has no hand openings or closures, but is held shut by the hands or teeth or by wrapping the ends around the waist. Traditionally black was eschewed for its conontations of death and funerals, and white or printed fabrics were preferred; but now, except for rural elderly women, black is the universal color for a chador. Traditionally a chador was worn with a head scarf, blouse, and skirt with optional pants. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a chador began to be worn over a head scarf and a long overcoat became popular for total coverage.

A very comprehensive guide to the above terms and more, including example photos can be found here.

Technorati Tags: hamas, hijab, burqa, chador, abaya, vice and virtue squad