Sunday evening catchup

Too many open tabs in Firefox awaiting proper attention but somehow I don't think i will have time so:

1) Giles Coren asks 'So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?'. It's a long article resulting from the Andy Gray/Richard Keys Sky Sports story, here's one perinent extract:

'To be a man in this country is constantly to have to apologise for oneself and to be ever so very careful about every sentence we speak or write which contains any reference at all to members of the opposite sex.

While at the same time, and this is the shame of it, we ourselves are fair game for women. While sexism from men is the outstanding social crime of the modern world, women can say absolutely whatever they like about us.

For make no mistake: sexism is alive and well in this country and applauded in all quarters — as long as it is practised by women. And they are allowed to say the most terrible, terrible things.

Only last week, for example, Jo Brand, the newly crowned Best Female TV Comic at the British Comedy Awards, was on Have I Got News For You and replied to the question ‘What’s your favourite kind of man, Jo?’ by saying: ‘A dead one.’ Oh, how the audience fell about. And the other contestants, all male, chortled away too.

I’m not saying it wasn’t funny. I’m just saying we live in a world where the thorough-going awfulness, uselessness and superfluity of the male sex is such a given, that a frontline television comic can get big laughs by saying she’d prefer it if we were all dead.'

2) The Telegraph

'A Polish MP has been forced to apologise after he criticised the prospect of gay men getting married but said he would "gladly watch lesbians". '

3) Harry's Place reports the words of Tariq Ramadan:

"Allah we ask you because you are Allah, strengthen the faith of our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Allah strengthen their faith in Palestine and make them triumphant over the enemy, Your enemy, the enemy of the religion (Islam) with your mercy, oh, Generous one. Allah strengthen their faith in Palestine, in Chechnya, Afghanistan, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, in Egypt, Sudan, Kashmir and in every land and on every battlefield. Allah, strike our enemies, Your enemies, the enemies of the religion (Islam)."

Ah the religion of peace...


4) Corpus Libris has a fantastic theme 'Books and the Bodies that love them' - Great imagination.


5) MEMRI report on 'British Islamist Kamal Al-Hilbawi and Liberal Nabil Yassin Debate: Are Israeli Children Legitimate Military Targets?' - Thatthe question can even be asked sums up so much of what I find repulsive about Islamic extremists.


6) The National Post have a report by Kevin Libin: 'Consensus on global warming challenged'; here's an extract:

'a book critic in the Boston Globe mentioned in passing the “scientific consensus that the world may be heading toward a climate Armageddon if nothing is done to reverse the present course.” And in the National Post, the executive director for the Ontario advocacy group, People for Education, asserted: “There’s no longer a debate around how much conservation is needed about what we’ve done to our atmosphere.” None of these people were actual scientists, yet this language of “consensus” about dangerous global warming has become accepted wisdom.

“It’s laziness. An urban legend,” says Mr. Harris, director of the International Climate Science Coalition, a league of researchers who maintain that the science of climate is copiously unsettled and, therefore, caution against premature policy prescriptions to address it. “You can say thousands of scientists agree, and then you don’t have to get into the actual facts.”

Since there has, Mr. Harris points out, never been any global poll of scientists to assess the unanimity of views on the scale and threat of environmental impacts, such claims are dubious enough. But, he notes, even among scientific groups whose leaders publicly and broadly endorse the findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human activities are driving ruinous climate shifts, there’s no evidence of consensus from their own membership. One news story in 2009, for instance, suggested that “3,000 scientists” had called on the federal government in an open letter to take immediate action in curtailing carbon emissions. But among the members of the Canadian Geophysical Union, one of the organizations represented by the letter, a low response rate had only 28% of members explicitly declaring themselves behind the statement.'

7) The Mail poses 'One question the BBC never asks' The article starts:

'Even by the sorry standards of the BBC – apologist-in-chief for the bloated public sector – the past few days have been vintage.

On reducing police numbers, selling off forests, the end of the Big Society, library closures – you name it – critic after critic has been wheeled out to prophesy that the Government’s cuts will mean the death of civilisation as we know it.

What the Corporation never points out is that over the past few years, the private sector has already had to go through considerable pain, with employees’ wages frozen or cut and their pensions decimated.'

Read the rest.


8) Right Truth provocatively says 'If you don't want your daughters Westernized ... ... Don't move to Western civilized nations!'

Here's an extract:

'Muslims move to Western nations and bring their extended families. Unlike other immigrants who came here looking to be a part of American culture and a better life for their families, many Muslim immigrants come here planning to maintain their native culture and change America. "Americans, like Europeans, are now experiencing a new kind of immigrant, one for whom tribal, cultural, or ethnic loyalty trumps his allegiance to American law and to western concepts of individual human rights." says Dr. Phyllis Chesler.'

There's plenty more...


9) Robind Shepherd reminds us that

'According to a major opinion poll survey conducted by Pew in 2006, 97 percent of Egyptians admitted to holding “somewhat unfavourable” or “very unfavourable” opinions about Jews while none (zero percent) said they had favourable opinions about Jews; in Jordan 98 percent said they had unfavourable opinions with one percent holding favourable opinions.'

10) Daphne Anson reports that

'“Always Good to See You,” gushed the BBC Presenter to the Anti-Israel Arab Extremist'

'London-based Dr Abdel Bari Atwan, who’s dedicated (for some audiences subtly) to Israel’s overthrow, is, thanks to a fawning media, a familiar face on British television. Born in Gaza in 1950, he attended school in Jordan and studied journalism at Cairo University. He moved to London in 1978, working for a Saudi publication, and is now a British citizen.

In certain Arabic media, pre-eminently the widely-distributed Pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi (circulation about 50,000 according to one estimate), which he’s edited since its foundation in London in 1989 (and which has been banned or censored for its extremism in some pro-Western Arab countries), he’s foams with fury and venom against Israel and the West, and exults at their tragedies and setbacks. In 1996 he got a scoop by donning Afghan robes, trekking into remote terrain, and securing an interview with Osama Bin Laden, who took the opportunity of issuing a fatwa.

Dr Atwan can be considered one of those Arab radicals who’s made Londonistan what it is, to the avowed satisfaction of Frances Guy, a principal dhimmi-driver of Foreign Office appeasement (see her quoted remarks in my post of 15 January, “Drivers of Dhimmitude ...”)

The splendid Canadian columnist Mark Steyn – whose departure as a regular columnist from Britain’s Daily Telegraph is much regretted by his numerous admirers – has described Atwan aptly as a “celebrity eliminationist”, for there seems to be no shortage of Western venues and Western broadcasters prepared to host the extremist editor. '

That's ten down, about thirty more to go!