Category: Culture

If you’ve not yet watched the video of Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera TV, do it now…
It’s incredible. An intelligent, articulate woman taking Muslim relionists to task, right on an Arab TV network? Unbelievable!
Here are some choice quotes:

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, two eras.
It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century.
It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. […]
The Jews have came from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling.
Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge.
We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.
The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy.
Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results.
The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for mankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

Can you imagine a woman saying this, with great force, to Middle Eastern audiences? This is a woman of great courage.
There’s much more, and it’s good. Watch the whole thing.

Robert Bidinotto points us to this announcement:

Please be outside the Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue), [in Washington, DC] between noon and 1 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 24. Quietness and calm are the necessities, plus cheerful conversation. Danish flags are good, or posters reading “Stand By Denmark” and any variation on this theme (such as “Buy Carlsberg/ Havarti/ Lego”) The response has been astonishing and I know that the Danes are appreciative. But they are an embassy and thus do not of course endorse or comment on any demonstration. Let us hope, however, to set a precedent for other cities and countries. Please pass on this message to friends and colleagues.

Bidinotto will be there. And if I didn’t live 2,000 miles away, I’d be there too.

A hard-hitting article that originally appeared on the American Thinker:

The Leftâ??s Secret Pact: Subverting the War on Terror
November 30th, 2005
by Vasko Kohlmayer
The War on Terror has brought on many complex problems and challenges. Perhaps none is more critical than the conduct of the political Left which is apparently set on sabotaging our efforts. Unable to come up with a logical explanation, political observers either throw up their hands in bewilderment or ascribe the Leftâ??s posture to some irrational nihilistic impulse. But such conclusions are neither satisfactory nor correct.
The Leftâ??s sabotage of this war is a deliberate attempt to give relief to the other side. This is because their corresponding views on capitalism and the West make Islamic radicals and the Left natural allies. The Left seeks to weaken us from within in order to help those whose shared worldview binds them in a common pact. Once we understand the nature of this stealth partnership, the reasons behind the Leftâ??s often seemingly inexplicable actions will become alarmingly apparent.
But to do so, we must start at the beginning.

The full article is now available in our columns section.

An interesting article from WebProNews that landed in my inbox today, about China’s censorshiop efforts:
One Chinese blogger stays on the move, uses multiple blogs, and says the demand for non-corrupt political officials is the real foe of censorship.
Li Xinde has no First Amendment to protect him as an investigative reporter in China. But he does have a knack for finding stories of corruption and abuse that make their way even to state-run media outlets, Reuters reported.
“I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do,” Li told Reuters.
He described how he has to work to avoid arrest, by shuttling around to different Internet bars in rural China:
“It’s what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run.”
Those strikes have taken down a corrupt deputy mayor in one province, while another claimed a businessman met a brutal death while held in official custody.
On the topic of businesses like Yahoo and Google choosing to yield to censorship requirements in order to operate in China, Li said he understands the business reasons, but, “morally it’s wrong to sell people’s freedom.”
His freedom has become more difficult to maintain over the past two years, the article noted. Though he isn’t famous, he has built enough of a reputation that he is something of a marked man.
Still, he has reason to fear. Evidence prosecutors obtained from Yahoo in China has contributed to the jailings of two journalists, and others who have published stories on the Internet also languish in prison, the report said.
As more Chinese citizens move online, their interest in the habits of politicians could be the ultimate undoing of censorship and media suppression:
Li said Chinese people’s demands for clean, accountable officials, and their salacious curiosity about bad ones, were the censors’ ultimate enemy.
“Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen — the military and propaganda,” said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao’s. “The gun is still firmly in the party’s hands, but the pen has loosened.”
Li’s website, in Chinese: www.yuluncn.com