Month: February 2008

Code Pink: “Iraqi Resistance Yes! US Marines No!”

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Neocon Hippie stopped by the recent Berkeley protest and took photos of the event, but this one photo tells you everything you need to know about Code Pink and their Berkeley City Council supporters. See the whole photo stream here.

UPDATE: Zombie has done another excellent job of photodocumenting the demonstration from start to finish, please stop by his site, where he names who is there, and which organizations we are up against. [ Warning: tons of photos, give it time to load]

Meanwhile the City Council is learning that stupid actions have consequences.

BERKELEY – The council’s decision early Wednesday to retract a statement calling U.S. Marine recruiters “uninvited and unwelcome intruders” has not stopped lawmakers from moving forward with plans to pull millions of tax dollars earmarked for school lunches, ferry service and more.

The Berkeley City Council voted 7-2 to clarify one of its Jan. 29 motions with new language that recognizes “the recruiters’ right to locate in our city and the right of others to protest or support their presence.”

The new statement – written by Mayor Tom Bates and council members Max Anderson, Linda Maio and Darryl Moore – said the council opposes “the recruitment of our young people into this war,” yet emphasizes that “we deeply respect and support the men and women in our armed forces.”

Council members Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak cast the opposing votes at 1 a.m. Wednesday after a 24-hour protest outside of Old City Hall that drew an estimated 2,000 people from both pro-and anti-military groups.

But a separate motion to formally apologize to the Marines – and the 25,000 people who wrote to city leaders expressing their anger and disgust over the council’s anti-military stance – failed.

The lack of an apology further angered Republicans lawmakers in both Washington and Sacramento who last week introduced legislation to pull millions of tax dollars headed to Berkeley for such things as school lunches and police communications equipment.

Superdelegate Bidding: Barack’s Got His Hand up.

Everyone is wondering if Bill and Hillary will pull out a super-delegate trump-card prior to the convention, but the bidding war is already on and Barrack has his hand up as you can see here.

So what’s a super-delegate? They are un-elected and comprise one fifth of the total Democratic convention vote – they are the swing vote on who the candidate will be.

Of course there’s always the possibility that Hillary will Hsu some votes into her corner before the convention….

h/t Yenta

Nobody Ever Expects the Saudi Inquisition

After the Saudi religious police (mutaween) beat an illiterate woman into the hospital to extract a confession to witchcraft that she couldn’t read the judge handed down a sentence of death. Sound like Medieval or early Renaissance times? Wrong. It’s Saudi Arabia here and now. Story at ABC 

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom’s religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of “absurd charges that have no basis in law.”

Falih’s case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia’s Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

Freedom of Speech in Canada; Radical Muslim Backs Down

As it is, the bounds were exceeded by the commission pursuing the case and that needs to be looked into by either the regular courts or by the legislative bodies in Canada. In my humble opinion Ezra must take this further by filing suit against the CHRC, and by finding a legislative ally willing to call for review or censure of the commission.

Update: It’s not often that a rights cases become international news  from a free, democratic country, but this one has. That’s because a fundamental freedom of individuals is being trampled by the state, and Canada has been greatly embarrassed by it’s Human Rights Commission’s pursual of this case. In the wake of the charges being dropped the commission investigator has resigned.

Original article:

By now you’ve probably heard that the case against Ezra Levant at the Canadian Human Rights Commission has been dropped by the claimant. The reason is transparent — the case was too widely publicized and likely to fail due to massive public pressure against the CRHC.

I can’t speak for Ezra, but I almost wish the case had proceded — it would have exposed the assault on freedom that the petite-tyrants in the CHRC represent, and it would have done so fully.

As it is, the bounds were exceeded by the commission pursuing the case and that needs to be looked into by either the regular courts or by the legislative bodies in Canada. In my humble opinion Ezra must take this further by filing suit against the CHRC, and by finding a legislative ally willing to call for review or censure of the commission.

Here’s what Ezra has to say about it at his blog:

A word about the actual content of the clip. My favourite part was when Syed Soharwardy explained that he quit his complaint when:

“people were looking at Ezra Levant as a martyr of the freedom of his speech” … “taking this into a different direction that I did not want.”

Well then! I’m sorry to have been so uncooperative, by saying things that he “did not want” me to say, such as that I (and he) live in Canada, not Saudi Arabia.

Time to take one more look at Soharwardy’s complaint. Look at section F. It’s not even about the fact that I published the cartoons — it’s that I dared to try to defend that decision. It wasn’t the deed that bothered him the most, it was my unwillingness to back down. The bulk of the complaint is about me daring to speak my mind. He complains that I:

  • am “constantly advocating hatemongering cartoons in the media”;
  • “called [Soharwardy] ‘radical'”;
  • “said that the hateful cartoons are justified to be published”.

In other words, it’s not just that I published them. It’s that I didn’t submit to Soharwardy. I kept talking about my freedom. He’s still complaining about that, even now.

Sort of puts a lie to his official excuse for dropping the complaint — that he has now reconciled himself to free speech.

Danish Arrest Three Terror Suspects

Danish Authorities have arrested three suspects alleged to be plotting the death of a cartoonist who portrayed Mohammed. Jyllands-Postens editors think it might be Kurt Westergaard who they were after, more at Breitbart:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Danish police said Tuesday they have arrested three people suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked a deadly uproar in the Muslim world two years ago. Two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin were arrested in pre-dawn raids in western Denmark, the police intelligence agency said.The Dane was suspected of violating Danish terror laws but likely would be released after questioning as the investigation continues, said Jakob Scharf, the head of the PET intelligence service. The two Tunisians would be expelled from Denmark, he said.
The agency did it mention which cartoonist was targeted. However, according to Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the drawings on Sept. 30, 2005, the suspects were planning to kill its cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
There were very concrete murder plans against Kurt Westergaard,” said Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor-in-chief.

The AP story doesn’t mention it but the riots over the cartoons were world-wide, and many died in the Islamist-inspired rioting. Remember that there was a world tour to drum up outrage and several faked cartoons shown by members of Islamist organizations – the riots did not occur by accident, they were instigated and planned, not just “deadly” as AP states.

More at AFP

Foggy Morning in Forsythe

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Here’s a picture my Dad took sent me the other day before the cold swept in at Forsythe, as you can see the lady who took this is a better photographer than I. If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been every now and again I take a break from the world. I turn off the news and immerse myself in pulp fiction, not knowing or caring what’s going on. This time it was a re-read of Kim and The Count of Monte Cristo, the pulp fiction of their day.

Now I am back and I see a lot has happened. McCain took the undisputed lead with Romney bowing out, and yes I will support him. Just give me some time ok?

Barack might be the Dem front-runner, and Che Guevara flags have been discovered hanging on the walls at his Houston campaign office. (Which certainly tells you what he’s about, but unless you are stupid you got that when Kennedy endorsed him.) I’ve pointed out in the comments in other forums that he’s the favorite of UFPJ & Answer, which means he’s probably in favor of world socialism. Note how often he uses the word “Justice” in speeches. It’s a word that the ANSWER and UFPJ people are using instead of socialism, since they know the S word doesn’t sell in America.

Baby Daddullah got captured — that’s Mansour Dadullah to his Taliban followers. I call him “baby” Dadullah since his brother was the real one. He even got rebuked and fired by Mullah Omar. You might remember him from the “Terror Cell Graduation video.”