Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog:

SCIANT PRESENTES ET FUTURI and alle those who maye linke to thys page, I Geoffrey Chaucer in the presence of the internette knowlechede thes wordes and typede them wyth myn owene fingres and thus I hereof appeale myn erstwhile freende and companioun Johanness Gowere that he ys a wanker.

[Link thanks to Judith]

Via SFGate:

Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

The magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism in suburban Amherst, includes four of the drawings that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, including one depicting Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse.

Islamic tradition bars depiction of Muhammad to prevent idol worship, which is strictly prohibited.

I worked as a clerk in university bookstore when Khomeini put the hit out on Salman Rushdie. When we heard the news that bookstores were being threatened, the clerks got together and decided to make a stand for free speech by putting Satanic Verses in the window.

Our manager stopped us. She told us to take it down because a bookstore had been firebombed in San Francisco. We objected, saying that the best response to this threat is to put the book in every window - to diffuse the threat. Besides, this was a threat to free speech. Isn't free speech what bookstores are all about?

She told us that if anyone was hurt as a result, it would be our fault.

That was one of the most blatant examples I'd seen of how terrorism is, literally, a hostage situation. A tiny group of radicals can hold large groups of people, even in free nations, hostage. All they have to do is is kill or nearly kill a few people, usually randomly and in a particularly awful way, then coast for years on cheap threats and intimidation.

This small group of intimdators could be easily overpowered by the millions of hostages, but in these situations the hostages nearly always cooperate with the intimidators. When they fight, they fight with each other. Most hostages follow and enforce the intimidators' demands. They make dissident hostages or even potential rescuers feel as if they, not the terrorists, are endangering lives.

As we see in current efforts by the right and the left to appease or 'reform' the intimidators, the Stockholm syndrome is the norm. We spend much of our time bickering amongst ourselves, whining about which is the better strategy, appeasement or 'reform' - we spend little to no time discussing the weaknesses of the intimdators.

I guess Stockholm syndrome is just a sad fact of human nature, more of a bug than a feature.

Back in the bookstore, we took the display down but put it back later when the manager went home. The copies all sold the next day, nobody blew us up, but despite this, I still felt guilty about taking that 'risk'.

Should we complain to Borders? As a former clerk, I'd guess that Border's employees don't any need more grief then they're already getting. I think the best way to protest is to finance the very few non-Stockholm sydrome sufferers out there.

So support free speech advocates. Buy Free Inquiry Magazine. Get a subscription, sell a bunch of copies outside (maybe outside Borders?). Terrorism only works if we cooperate.

According to a report in Forbes, Saudi Arabia is working on a nuclear program with the help of Pakistani scientists:

BERLIN (AFX) - Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear program, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reported in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.

It says that during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia.

Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them slipped off from pilgrimages, sometimes for up to three weeks, the report quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.

According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998.

Cicero, which will appear on newstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan's nuclear weapons 'because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.'

The magazine also said satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has set up a program in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.

According to some Western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.

"Half of France was unfortunate to be downwind
of Pepe Lepue when he aired out his toxic armpit" *

...more at V the K

In the International Herald Tribune, Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes how Women go 'missing' by the millions

As I was preparing for this article, I asked a friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, he said yes, without hesitation.

One United Nations estimate says from 113 million to 200 million women around the world are demographically "missing." Every year, from 1.5 million to 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect...

...Women are not organized or united. Those of us in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, need to mobilize to assist our fellows. Only our outrage and our political pressure can lead to change.

The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement Shariah, or Islamic law, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a life of domestic slavery.

Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights.

This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.

Three initial steps could be taken by world leaders to begin eradicating the mass murder of women:

A tribunal such as the court of justice in The Hague should look for the 113 million to 200 million women and girls who are missing.

A serious international effort must urgently be made to precisely register violence against girls and women, country by country.

We need a worldwide campaign to reform cultures that permit this kind of crime. Let's start to name them and shame them.

..when they're defending the status quo.

Andrew Apostolou, guest blogging at Michael Totten's, reports that Reza Mortadi, a 29 year old Iranian, was "summonsed by the Police and charged following complaints made at the "March for Free Expression."

Here's Mr Mortadi, allegedly breaking British law.

Via Harry's Place:

Moradi is, apparently, being prosecuted for holding the MoToon poster...

Meanwhile, I look forward to the trial. If we do not defend Iranian communists - who have first hand experience of theocracy - when they are arrested for protesting against political ideologies in religious clothing, then we have no right to call ourselves Leftists.

More here and here.

.. be posting pictures soon, but I'm sorry to say that I've got no underwater shots.

I discovered an interesting fact about water pressure - the single-use cameras I've been using to take pictures while snorkeling won't function (or sometimes fall apart) below a certain depth. Fortunately, other divers warned me about this before I brought my camera down. Until I get a camera that can function at depth, I can't post decent fish pics.

A short list of the fish shots I missed: we saw arrow crabs hiding in a tube sponge; big and little hermit crabs, a sea cucumber (found by our dive instructor, Tom Lee). We watched an octopus do what it does best, transmigrate from one state of existence (a whiteish blobby beast hanging onto a rock) to another (a dark-hued streamlined swimmer). We found a puffer fish, but despite our best efforts he refused to puff.

We found a cleaner shrimp hiding in an anemone. Fish keep themselves clean by stopping by 'cleaning stations', where animals like the tiny shrimp eat the bacteria and dead skin off them. It's a living.

The fish in Cozumel tend to be bigger than average. Like big Americans, their size seems to be due to a bountiful supply of food and a pleasant, safe environment. We saw a ginormous red snapper, many hulking angel and parrotfish.

..and yes, I got over my dive-induced claustrophobia and moved up in the dive hierarchy thanks to the patient efforts of Tom Lee. If you have a tendency to feel 'closed in' by lots of heavy equipment, I'd recommend a slower-paced course, where you can swim around the pool for awhile and get used to things. The first few minutes before the dive, when I'm weighted down with a tank on my back still bother me, but once I'm in the water, the feeling of being closed in is replaced by the sensation of flying. When I was a kid, I'd have a recurring dream of flying through Grand Central Station. Swimming above the coral canyons is as much like flying as - flying. I'm trying to get the hang of doing spins and loops.

More about Cozumel when I get the photos together...

No blogging for a few days - I'm heading down to Cozumel in an attempt to get my scuba certification.

..and to see lots of little fishies.

Tony Blair explains it all..

This terrorism will not be defeated until its ideas, the poison that warps the minds of its adherents, are confronted, head-on, in their essence, at their core. By this I don't mean telling them terrorism is wrong. I mean telling them their attitude to America is absurd; their concept of governance pre-feudal; their positions on women and other faiths, reactionary and regressive; and then since only by Muslims can this be done: standing up for and supporting those within Islam who will tell them all of this but more, namely that the extremist view of Islam is not just theologically backward but completely contrary to the spirit and teaching of the Koran...

...his is not the place to digress into a history of what subsequently happened. But by the early 20th century, after renaissance, reformation and enlightenment had swept over the Western world, the Muslim and Arab world was uncertain, insecure and on the defensive. Some countries like Turkey went for a muscular move to secularism. Others found themselves caught between colonisation, nascent nationalism, political oppression and religious radicalism. Muslims began to see the sorry state of Muslim countries as symptomatic of the sorry state of Islam. Political radicals became religious radicals and vice versa. Those in power tried to accommodate the resurgent Islamic radicalism by incorporating some of its leaders and some of its ideology. The result was nearly always disastrous. The religious radicalism was made respectable; the political radicalism suppressed and so in the minds of many, the cause of the two came together to symbolise the need for change. So many came to believe that the way of restoring the confidence and stability of Islam was the combination of religious extremism and populist politics.

The true enemies became "the West" and those Islamic leaders who co-operated with them.

The extremism may have started through religious doctrine and thought. But soon, in offshoots of the Muslim brotherhood, supported by Wahabi extremists and taught in some of the Madrassas of the Middle East and Asia, an ideology was born and exported around the world.

The worst terrorist act was 9/11 in New York and Washington DC in 2001, where three thousand people were murdered. But the reality is that many more had already died not just in acts of terrorism against Western interests, but in political insurrection and turmoil round the world. Over 100,000 died in Algeria. In Chechnya and Kashmir political causes that could have been resolved became brutally incapable of resolution under the pressure of terrorism. Today, in well over 30 or 40 countries terrorists are plotting action loosely linked with this ideology. Its roots are not superficial, therefore, they are deep, embedded now in the culture of many nations and capable of an eruption at any time.

The different aspects of this terrorism are linked. The struggle against terrorism in Madrid or London or Paris is the same as the struggle against the terrorist acts of Hezbollah in Lebanon or the PIJ in Palestine or rejectionist groups in Iraq. The murder of the innocent in Beslan is part of the same ideology that takes innocent lives in Saudi Arabia, the Yemen or Libya. And when Iran gives support to such terrorism, it becomes part of the same battle with the same ideology at its heart.

True the conventional view is that, for example, Iran is hostile to Al Qaida and therefore would never support its activities. But as we know from our own history of conflict, under the pressure of battle, alliances shift and change. Fundamentally, for this ideology, we are the enemy.

Which brings me to the fundamental point. "We" is not the West. "We" are as much Muslim as Christian or Jew or Hindu. "We" are those who believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts.

This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace and see opportunity in the modern world and those who reject its existence; between optimism and hope on the one hand; and pessimism and fear on the other...

Thanks to Ivan Lenin (not his real name); formerly of Communists for Kerry and before that formerly of the ex-USSR, Minsk, Belarus.

During a discussion on this site, commenter eerie said:

Do you know how the sharia is derived? Further, do you know where it is practiced, in full, and not mixed with European code civil? Anything that might suggest you read more than a pamphlet on the topic?

::::

When it was created, Sharia was an advanced legal system for its time, but when the concept of Ijtihad was abandoned the system became static and unchanging:

Finding the causes for the decline and fall of the Muslim Ummah has become a life long pursuit for me. One of the most important causes of Muslims deterioration is the low literacy rate. Even the Islamic faith's fundamental requirement of knowledge of the Qur'an and the Sunnah is marginal. They lack knowledge of even the simple and basic laws of Islam. Those who have read books of collections of Ahadith and have devotedly and extensively studied the Qur'an are ignorant of the many fundamental Aqaid(canons) of Islam including Fiqh. The term Fiqh means knowledge of all the laws of Islam(Shari'ah). Shariah is synonym for Fiqh. It is necessary for Muslims to understand there are four basic sources for the Sharia, viz: (1) Qur'an (2) Sunnah (3) Ijma(consensus) and (4)Qiyas(analogical deduction). These laws cover every action performed by an individual or society....

...Prophet Muhammad (SAS) himself introduced the fifth component (if I would say so) of the Shariah called Ijtihad which is individual intellectual effort. One who performs Ijtihad is a Mujtahid. The word Ijtihad is derived from the Arabic root word of jihad. Ijtihad was once an important force in the articulation and interpretation of Shariah. Some of the greatest minds in the history of Islamic jurisprudence used Ijtihad during the first centuries of Hijra. With time for reasons given below, Ijtihad faltered and was replaced by the doctrine of taqlid or blind imitation. Taqlid not only discouraged individual interpretation but also prohibited it. Some Muslim scholars throughout the ages have been protesting the prohibition of Ijtihad as it violates the original spirit and intention of Islam. Muslims all over the world are fond of saying that Islam is applicable to all places and in all times. How can this be achieved without Ijtehad?

Muslim scholars (ulama) declared the door of Ijtihad to be closed and ruled that all future Muslims must practice taqlid. Why did they do this? Because after 400 years they thought all conceivable questions and situations had been explored and resolved by the ulama, obviating the need for new judgments.

Sharia is practiced, in full (not mixed with European code civil)in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and Afghanistan under the Taliban. Not coincidentally, these states were the main supporters of terrorism. These states and the majority of Islamist terrorist groups share the same goals - the creation of Islamist states under Sharia.

When the British gave the Saudi/Wahhabis ownership of Mecca and Medina, it was like putting the Nazis in charge of the Vatican. The Wahhabis were already hated throughout the Muslim world for their traditions of terrorism and grave desecration. They're still hated for the damage they're doing to the holy land. But, despite the fact that they're hated, they've basically purchased most of the Muslim world. Many women living in formerly modernized states now dress and conform to Wahhabi standards.

It's not clear if Afghanistan is still a full Sharia state. Since the Bush administration has no real objections to the installation of Sharia laws, I'd guess that it is.

More here..

Sharia civil codes are less brutal than the criminal (Hudud) laws, but when these laws are enforced by the state, all are apartheid laws (apartheid in the sense that equality and civil rights are, literally, against the law.).

Some Muslims say that Sharia can be a purely cultural influence, like the unofficial laws that tell Catholics whether they can watch a certain movie or eat meat on a Friday. That Sharia tradition is compatible with human rights. But any state-enforced version of a basically apartheid system is not.

Charles Jacobs

Manute Bol

Describing the situation in the Sudan

Listening

Judith has more, including an e-mail from a friend of ours who welcomed the Sudan Freedom Walkers (about 30 people) at his synangogue in Fort Lee.

The path

More information about the walk, and how to donate.

More photos by El Marco

A few months ago I suggested that the best solution for the potential victims of Islamist genocide in Darfur was to use their aid money to hire a security force to protect them. The UN, their NGOs and the "international community" don't seem to be inclined to help:

If the world is determined to ignore this horror, and if the wealthy Arab League is determined to inflict it, the Sudanese have one option - use their aid money to hire an independent security force that will defend them. Just as the farmers did in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, where a 16th century Japanese farm community defends itself against a gang of pillaging robbers by hiring mercenary samurai who are willing to defend the settlement in return for food and lodging.

Yes, it's just a movie, but the same tactic recently worked for a group of farmers who were tired of having their arms chopped off by "rebels" in Sierra Leone..

...the metaphorical targets of September 11 are largely behind us. The strikes of the future will be strategic, pinpointing the systems we rely on, and they will leave entire sections of the country without energy and communications for protracted periods. But the frustration and economic pain that result will have a curious side effect: They will spur development of an entirely new, decentralized security system, one that devolves power and responsibility to a mix of private companies, individuals, and local governments. This structure is already visible in the legions of private contractors in Iraq, as well as in New York's amazingly effective counterterrorist intelligence unit. But as we look out to 2016, the long-term implications are clearer...

..Until, that is, the next wave of adaptive innovation takes hold. For all of these changes may prove to be exactly the kind of creative destruction we need to move beyond the current, failed state of affairs. By 2016 and beyond, real long-term solutions will emerge. Cities, most acutely affected by the new disruptions, will move fastest to become self-reliant, drawing from a wellspring of new ideas the market will put forward. These will range from building-based solar systems from firms such as Energy Innovations to privatized disaster and counterterrorist responses. We will also see the emergence of packaged software that combines real-time information (the status of first-responder units and facilities) with interactive content (information from citizens) and rich sources of data (satellite maps). Corporate communications monopolies will crumble as cities build their own emergency wireless networks using simple products from companies such as Proxim.

By 2016, we may see the trials of the previous decade as progress in disguise. The grassroots security effort will do more than just insulate our gas lines and high schools. It will also spur positive social change: So-called green systems will quickly shed their tree-hugger status and be seen as vital components of our economic and personal security. Even those civilian police auxiliaries could turn out to be a good thing in the long run: Their proliferation--and the technology they'll adopt--will lead to major reductions in crime.

Link thanks to John Atkinson at Winds of Change, who has more info about Energy Security.

Englishman in NYC wrote an article for Metro New York, titled "In protest of the protest rally" about the recent free-speech gathering in front of the Danish embassy. In the article, he complained that "what started out as a laudable expression of support soon took on overtones of such vehement anti-extremism that it bordered on an extremism of its own".

As one of the free speech extremists who attended the rally, I have to disagree with his assesment, so I wrote a letter to Metro NY's editor that said:

The violent protests against the Danish cartoons were not an example of Muslims expressing their individually held opinions. The violent protests were an example of manufactured outrage, a well-coordinated political attack, organized by Islamist states like Iran and Saudi Arabia, in response to Denmark's refusal to honor Islamic sharia laws.

A few months before the politically manufactured outrage campaign began, an Egyptian newspaper published the cartoons in an attempt to create a spontaneous explosion of spiritual indignation. No explosion occurred. Muslim readers ignored the cartoons. The explosion required the efforts of Islamist states and their Islamist-financed Imams to occur. There is nothing spontaneous and very little that is genuinely spiritual about the Islamist-organized "Arab street."

We free-speech extremists were criticizing this manufactured political campaign against the State of Denmark, just as other free-speech extremists defended Salman Rushdie during the Satanic Verses controversy.

Just in case the political motivations behind this "spiritual indignation" are not clear, there’s the fact that Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, a Pakistani cleric, made an offer of $1 million to anybody who kills the cartoonists responsible for the drawings.

As Tim Cavanaugh of Reason Magazine says in his article "Just Say No To Muhammad’s Hit Men"

"...with his cash offer, Qureshi cleared up vast fields of navel-gazing and bloviation. If you’re undecided on what the cartoon issue is really about, Qureshi has given the answer: It’s about people who believe you should commit murder over a difference of opinion. Everything else is just idle chatter."

The people who believe that one should commit murder over a difference of opinion are the terrorism we’re supposed to be fighting.

There will be a "Freedom of Expression" rally in London in Trafalgar Square on March 25.

I wonder if there will be any boorish free speech extremists there who will might cross the line and suggest that it is uncivilized to violently threaten people who speak their mind.

How many sensitive reporters armed with their moral equalivence rehtoric will be in need of smelling salts due to the shock and horror of it all. In the face of fundamentalists who make very real and violent threats, the people in Trafalgar Square may put their hands on their hips in a threatening manner and utter a sarcastic remark or two.

My God!… a pox on both their houses.

Thanks to Ace:

Who wins in a sissy-slapping, hair-pulling girlfight between Arianna Huffington and George Clooney?

We all do, my friends.

Simon Deng and others spoke about a campaign of genocide in the Sudan that has been going on for years, with no real efforts from the UN to stop it. The international community's complete unwillingness to stand up to the Khartoum government and the Arab League that supports it was the focus of this march.

Simon Deng (photo thanks to El Marco)

Rona always has the best signs

(photo thanks to Mark Kempton)

To donate to the March, go here

Pamela at Atlas Shrugs was there, and she has some excellent videos of the event.

Simon Deng's full Remarks

Sudan Freedom Walk: Atlas talks with Manute Bol

Charles Jacobs, Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group discusses attitudes towards slavery.

Right now, the Marchers should be in Fort Lee.

More pictures soon..

The Sudan Freedom Walk starts today.

The Walk will begin March 15 in front of UN headquarters in New York at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the corner of 47th Street and 1st Avenue.

It will finish in a rally in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. on April 5. [schedule here]. Join if you can!

..nor am I always on 'cloud 9'..

Instead, (according to my personal DNA report) I'm an Animated Creator

The test takes a while but the results are bound to lift your spirits. My refusal to ever plan ahead, something that has always irritated friends, family and professors, (God knows why) is seen as a sign of creativity and a quest for adventure. It's nice to see a positive view of these things.

[link thanks to Karol and Dawn]

What's your Personal DNA?

The Big Apple Blog Festival is up at A Guy in New York's place - go visit!

The link to the article here is provoking some serious commentary..

It's Pi day (not the apple, the infinite).

Sing a song and play a game of pi..

From Drawn! The Illustration Blog

A ninth grade art teacher in Middleton, NY, has been suspended and may be fired after suggesting his students take life drawing courses. n his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

Panse was suspended from his teaching job pending hearings. Depending on the outcome of these hearings, he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. Panse is a National Board Certified Teacher (in Adolescent and Young Adult Art), the highest level of certification that a teacher can achieve in America. He is also one of only two National Board Certified Teachers in his New York District, and “is a trained Facilitator for helping teachers explore and pursue the requirements needed to achieve National Board Certification.

[Link thanks to James Hudnall]

The Sudan Freedom Walk Campaign was initiated by Simon Deng, a Sudanese man captured into slavery as a child in Sudan. He later escaped bondage and now resides in New York City, but travels often to spread awareness about modern slavery and the atrocities facing the people of Sudan.

Deng describes his mission here:

My name is Simon Aban Deng. I am from Sudan. I am a Shiluk by tribe. I am a Christian by religion. I belong to a people who have been subjected to mass murder, slavery, systematic rape, religious persecution, enforced starvation, dislocation, exile. We are the victims of genocide, both physical and cultural. We have been targeted for annihilation as human beings and as members of a culture. These miseries did not fall upon us from the sky; we have been and remain the victims of the radical jihadist regime in Khartoum.

NEW YORK – A former Sudanese slave is building up support for an over 200-mile walk from New York to Washington, D.C. - a walk of freedom for the millions facing atrocities in Sudan.

Kidnapped and forced into slavery during his childhood, Simon Deng suffered abuse and exhaustion for over three years as a Christian. His village and people were ransacked and burned alive by Arab marauders. He slept in a stable with the animals and was forced to do the job of a donkey, carrying jars of water for long distances. Although he was told the harsh treatment would end if he converted to Islam, he remained steadfast to his faith.

Now a New York resident and a lifeguard at Coney Island, Deng has emerged as a national leader among 250,000 Sudanese refugees in the United States, spreading word about the continuing plague of slavery in his native land.

"I was constantly under terror. I would cry for mercy, but always that mercy is not here," said Deng at Elim Christian Assembly in Staten Island Sunday, according to the New York Sun.

The WorldPress describes Why the Darfur Tragedy Will Likely Occur Again

Updates on the situation at the Darfur Daily News

More here..

Joe Katzman of Winds of Change was there. He says:

Pretty good rally. Probably about 70-100, not bad given the low level publicity announcing it. Over at The Sprit of Man, "Winston" has some pictures. And here's a few more, including one of me with my "Canadian flag in distress" (our media cut and run when it came to showing the cartoons, bowing before Shari'a theocracy, alas).

Met some folks there... quite a few were actually leftist devotees of Harry's Place. And good people, to boot. We'll disagree on some things very strongly, but at their core they are promoters of Western values and real human progress. This is, sadly, a small sliver of the global left these days - though we are proud to count several as our friends. But history rolls on, and even a small remnant may yet prove a saving one.

Kesher Talk has more..

Also see more photos of speakers at the rally, including members of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, the Cuban Canadian Foundation and the Hindu Conference of Canada - at Nav Purewal's site.

[cross posted at Dean's World]

Dean and Neo comment on nudity on the newstands, in this month's Vanity Fair.

As a photographer, when I first saw the Vanity Fair photo, I wished I had the skills to do that. The composition was good, stark and eye-catching; nice use of contrasting darks and lights, no misplaced shadows.

It takes a lot of work to get the skin tones to look that way - creamy, matte, no shine. People sweat under hot studio lights, especially when they have to hold that kind of pose (don't move or you'll show naughty bits!)

I don't think you can get that kind of effect with airbrush and a few color adjustments, even with the magic of Photoshop. They probably doused those actresses with powder; then they had to sit frozen in place, trying to look sexy without sneezing, under the hot lights with itchy skin. If you can go through that kind of aggravation and still look sexy, you deserve to be admired.

About the nudity - as far as I know, men tend to find women more appealing when they're nude, but women find men more appealing when they're in a suit, tux or uniform (ready to protect us and/or take us out for a nice dinner). Like Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the combination of clothed men/nude women is likely to be appealing to both sexes. Nudes, even not-conventionally attractive nudes, are always interesting subjects, in photography and in art. People like to look at other people.

"Sammenhold" is Danish for solidarity. Cinnamon Stillwell, who was at the Pro-Free-Speech rally in San Francisco yesterday, links to these reports (with photos)

Michelle Malkin

Kesher Talk

The Only Republican in San Francisco

The Gentle Cricket

In New York, our 'Liberal Hawks' group participated in the Sammenhold rally. In San Francisco, the '9/11 neocons' were there. Doing our part to add a little purple to the bluest spots in the USA.

LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private..

.."I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

[Welcome, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish readers]

In an article written for the London Telegraph, Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo says:

"You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live."

Islamophobia Watch also labels Hirsi Ali as a right-wing "provocateur"

The Telegraph believed that an article about Dr. Sookhdeo's criticism of some Muslim leaders and their efforts to bring Sharia to the UK, titled 'The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state' should be published.

Someone with influence disagreed. The article has now been pulled from the Telegraph's website, for "legal reasons"

It was also removed from Google's cache. It is, however, still in Yahoo's cache. It's also reprinted in parts here, here here and here:

The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state'
By Alasdair Palmer
(Filed: 19/02/2006)

For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.

"They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.

"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory.

"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."

Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.

"It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."

For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there.

"But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."...

...Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.

So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience....

..."The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.

"It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.

"Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."

Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.

They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism...

... concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."

That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.

"There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.

"Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.

"The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."

Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities.

"Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic clerics describe the situation."...

..."Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom the Government has appointed as an adviser because ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as 'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood.

"He calls the education in the state schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim respects the laws of the country only if they do not contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that 'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and weakness'."

So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them.

"Second, the Government should say no to faith-based schools, because they are a block to integration. There should be no compromise over education, or over English as the language of education. The policy of political multiculturalism should be reversed.

"The hope was that it would to ensure separate communities would soften at the edges and integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened: Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less integration than there was for the generation that arrived when I did. There will be much less in the future if the present trend continues.

"Finally, the Government should make it absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome different religions - but all of them have to accept the secular basis of British law and society. That is a non-negotiable condition of being here.

"If the Government does not do all of those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic communities within Britain will form a state within a state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our collective political life. And, speaking as a religious man myself, I fear that outcome.

Do you?

The war isn't Islam vs. Christianity. It's not even anti-terror vs. terror. It's human rights vs. sharia.

[links thanks to Charles and commenters at LGF]

Some New Yorkers know how to give Prince Alwaleed the respect he deserves. From Allah at Alarming News

Saudis launch "moderate" Islamic satellite network [posted by Allah]

I can't wait.

Note who the man in charge is: Prince Alwaleed, the very same pantsload who said the U.S. had it coming on 9/11, then tried to buy off Rudy Giuliani with a $10 million check. Which Rudy kindly deposited in his asshole.

Of course it is. There is no reason why Muslims, or the religion Islam, can't live with democracy. There's no reason why their personal and cultural beliefs can't coexist with democracy.

However, when the state is ruled by Islamic Sharia laws, as Iran is, that state becomes incompatible with democracy because Sharia laws are apartheid laws. Under these laws, non-Muslims have fewer rights than Muslims. Women have fewer rights than men. The purpose of establishing a legal system based on Sharia is to create an apartheid state. That's why the use of Sharia laws as a foundation for Islamic states is Osama bin Laden's goal.

Ann Althouse attended a lecture given by her colleague, Asifa Quraishi, a law professor specializing in Islamic law. It was titled "A Reconsideration of Presumptions: Is Islam Compatible with Democracy?"

Apparently she believes that Islam is compatable with Democracy, but her version would have a greater resemblance to this 'democracy' than to Western Democracy:

What I was tackling in my presentation was the roadblock in this issue that I think is presented by the western tendency to think that the sovereign state should be the location of all law for all of society. Once we are able to re-think the location of legal authority in a society, that some can exist as valid and authoritative, yet outside the realm of public lawmaking mechanisms, then I think that we will have gotten much further to coming up with a system of government and lawmaking and adjudication for Muslim societies that can be (but doesn't have to be, frankly I don't care what it looks like, that's up to them) "democratic" but in a very different model than western nation-state democracies.

Slavery and genocide are just not compatible with democracy.

There are some religion-based groups whose religion-based laws can coexist with a Democracy, like the Amish in America, but membership within these groups is purely voluntary. In Islamic states ruled by Sharia, the penalty for conversion, or apostasy, is death.

Apartheid, fundamentalist Sharia law is comparable to the 'laws' that govern the one currently existing "Christian" group. Like the fundamentalists who claim to base their laws on the Koran, the Lord's Resistance Army claims to base their laws on the Bible. They've used the Bible to justify their campaign of slaughter, rape and slavery in the local area, just as the fundamentalists and Arabists have used Islamic law to justify their campaign of ethnic cleansing in Africa and the Middle East.

If the Lord's Resistance Army was sitting on many billions of dollars worth of oil, we'd probably be debating whether a legal system that murders, enslaves and padlocks people's mouths shut through holes cut in their lips in the name of the Bible was compatible with democracy.

As Amir Taheri said in his remarks in a debate about Islam and Democracy:

Muslims should not be duped into believing that they can have their cake and eat it. Muslims can build democratic society provided they treat Islam as a matter of personal, private belief and not as a political ideology that seeks to monopolise the public space and regulate every aspect of individual and community life.

Drew's DAK Ham sign took center stage...

"Where’d you see the cartoons?" asked one demonstrator.

"Online!" shouted the crowd.

"There is no mainstream media here," came the response, "and yet they came for the Islamic rally!"

The largest anti-Danish rally occurred exactly two weeks before this, and included over 1000 people as opposed to the 150 for this. It cast a long shadow, however, as the rally at times shifted away from its emphasis on simply free speech.

"I can warn you first hand of the dangers of Islamic extremism," shouted Lisa Ramaci, a woman in her mid-30s wearing a black leather jacket. "It has robbed me of my husband, it has robbed me of my future, and it has robbed me of my life."

Ramaci has spent much of the past half-year protesting against Islamic extremism, ever since her husband, Steven Vincent, was killed in August 2005 while working as a freelance reporter in Basra, Iraq. Vincent had just written an expose of the infiltration in the Basra police force of Shiite fundamentalists.

Ramaci’s friend Judith Weiss (no relation to Michael), a 53-year-old instructional designer, explained her perception of radical Islam. "The minute you start making exceptions for free speech, you lose it. Here’s radical Islam saying ‘we’re an exception.’"

"We’re opposing radical Islam to the extent it’s trying to squelch free speech on a global scale," said Weiss.

As demonstrators circled around speakers such as Weiss, they passed around Arlo havarti cheese and fliers describing various Danish products for sale in the country.

The campaign to "Buy Danish," intended to counter the boycott of Danish products in the Middle East, has actually been waged primarily on the Internet. Chris Elliott, the webmaster of one site, Buy-danishproducts.com, explained in an e-mail that "I believe Denmark is being unfairly targeted and wanted to do something to help."

That this campaign is at all successful remains uncertain. Torgen Gettermann, the Danish consul, said that there has been no noticeable decline or increase of Danish products here in the United States...

..and our local wine store stocked up on Danzka vodka, which makes a great citron Martini.

Buying Danish is about more than milk and cheese.

From the Middle East to Europe to the USA, Wafa Sultan broke with tradition by showing the world that yes, you can call Islamists on their bullsh*t.

The clip of her smackdown of Dr.Ibrahim Al-Khouli has now been viewed over one million times on Memritv.org.

She was interviewed on Tovia Singer's Show - the interview may be appearing on the web today or Thursday.

So, when will she be appearing on American-we have chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam-Television?

Via the National Review (link thanks to Little Green Footballs):

Right now, the quaintly named Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), an old, privately owned British shipping firm, manages six of our busiest east-coast ports. Dubai Ports World (DPW), a shipping company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), wants to take over from the Brits. Not to worry, proponents of the deal tell us: the UAE is a friendly country, and besides, in today's global economy, this is a perfectly ordinary commercial transaction — a business deal, not a political one. As Daniel Henninger put it: "Presumably they are in the port management business for the money."

It would be comforting if either of these claims were true. Alas, available evidence raises serious doubts about both. Let's start with the friendliness claim. Proponents of the deal insist that, whatever hostilities may have existed in the past, the UAE rallied to our side after September 11, 2001. If so, the people living there didn't seem to get the message. Zogby International pollsters asked a representative sampling of citizens of the UAE if their overall impression of the U.S. was favorable or unfavorable in 2002, after 9/11 had demonstrated our vulnerability to the world. Only 11 percent responded that their impression was favorable; 87 percent responded that it was unfavorable.

Things did improve a bit when he asked them again in 2005, after we had demonstrated our military might, and our willingness to use it, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only 73 percent hate us now. Compare that with a 2005 poll in Afghanistan, where World Public Opinion.Org found that 81 percent of the people view us favorably, or India, where the Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that 71 percent do, and it's clear that it's a misperception to see the UAE as a friendly country...

...Americans who worry that this is somehow "unfair" should realize that, with the limited exception of the Jebal Ali manufacturing complex in Dubai, the UAE requires at least 51 percent Emirati ownership of all businesses operating in their country. Still, some Americans will doubtless object that, after all, DPW is not owned by the people of the UAE but by its government, and it is unfair to blame a government for the hostility of its people. There may be some truth to that in countries with multiple parties and a free press, but the UAE is not one of those countries. There has never been an election there, all political parties are illegal, and the press is not free. If the UAE government objected to the anti-American propaganda that fills the Emirati press, that would be the end of that. A journalist who flouted the government's well-known unwritten rules wouldn't last five minutes.

We should reject the Dubai Ports deal, not just because it is risky to have a hostile country managing critical parts of our infrastructure, but because the claim that the UAE's desire to do so is "just business" presents us with a mystery. At the very least, those who make this claim need to explain why the UAE agreed to pay P&O a 70-percent premium over existing share prices to buy the company. If P&O is really worth $6.8 billion, why didn't any other international shipping company offer anything remotely like that (see also)? Apologists for the deal say the problem is that few privately-owned companies have pockets deep enough to pay that much. Maybe, but DPW is hardly the only deep-pocketed, government-owned international shipping giant, and none of the others made any attempt to outbid DPW either. Apparently, no one else thought they could pay that kind of money to manage our ports and still make a profit. Perhaps DPW knows something no other shipping company does. Then again, it may be that DPW has some other motives for wanting to take over the management of key American ports.

Nigerian e-mail is more trustworthy.

Kesher Talk is the place for all of your Support Denmark rally needs.

Dean Esmay's on the Pundit radio.

I'm honored to be a guest blogger at Winds of Change

The Urban Grind is guest blogging at the Right Wing Howler

Karol at Alarming News tells us that Hillary Clinton may have some serious competition.

The Big Apple Blog Festival is being hosted by A Guy in New York

I'm going to be going down to Mexico for a short scuba adventure in about 2 weeks. To prepare, I've been trying to learn a little Spanish on my own, something I often try, then give up on because I don't have the time to sit still and study.

I learned French by listening to the French radio all day when I was in Europe, so I know the immersion method works. The question was, how to immerse?

Then it occurred to me - put it all on an iPod. They holds up to three days’ worth of music. They play for up to 14 hours between battery charges. That's immersion.

Maybe I'll also be able to figure out what this newfangled 'podcasting' is all about.

Dean says:

Although I didn't think it was possible, recently Maher hit a new low. He's said on his show, repeatedly now, that Iraq was better off under Saddam. And he even said clearly that he was not joking and that he really believed it. And more than one of his shallow guests sitting around angrily agreeing with each other (which is about 80% of what his show is anyway) agreed.

This was easily the most despicable and deplorable thing the man has said in his entire life.

I'm thinking someone ought to start an internet button campaign: send Bill Maher to Suleimaniya in Iraq. Send him on a guided tour to this museum.

"Anfal" is a principle from the Koran which allows the looting of a non-Muslim population when Muslims conquer them. Since many Kurds are Muslims, I'd have to guess that Saddam was following the Wahhabi principle of calling non-Wahhabi/Sunnis 'infidels'.

“Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed
by the Baath. I will not see you again.”

The museum describes how tens of thousands of men, women and children were tortured to death as a result of this "Anfal" campaign. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were slaughtered and their villages were destroyed as part of this ethnic cleansing campaign.

Two interesting clips from MJT's comments:

To all of you on this post saying that the U.S. was not supporting the Iraqis in the 1980's, its fact the that U.S. was supporting Iraq with its war with Iran not only financially, but also training some Iraqi special forces and providing them with a variety of different weapons. The Kurds were back by Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, this opened up a new front in the war against Iraq. The U.S was supporting Iraq during this time and this same support is what killed thousands of Kurds. I know it because I was there, I served in the Iraqi army during that war, well I was drafted in. I am Iraq I speak Arabic, where do you think I learned this English from? I was there and we were trained by the U.S, and it was with there support that Iraq finally got some control on the Kurds in the north. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by: Habibi at March 3, 2006 09:03 PM

:::

I am a Kurd, I am pro-Israeli. I admire there struggle for independence from these Arabs. Look at the Middle East, look at North Africa. What happened, were all these people Arabs. No what Arabs did to the middle east, and north Africa is the reason that that region of the world is like that today. They forced there language, religion and there culture on everyone they could. Look at North Africa and countries in the Middle East they all fell to this disease arabazation. They only people that stood there grounds were Israelis and Kurds. I lost more than 15 members of my family, because they would not say that there Arabs. There is a saying in Kurdistan; before they put me to the firing squad I will yell that I am Kurdish and Kurdish and Kurdish and Kurdish to the marrow of my bones. With the spread of Islam, lands that were not Arab became arabanized by force. Arabs came from the desert the land of camels and sand and arabanized the whole region. And now to the question if Kurds are pro-Israeli, we are 200% pro-Israel and you know why, because they are standing for there rights. There are 21 Arab nations, but it’s a crime for one nation to be Israeli.

God bless Kurdistan!
God bless Israel!
God bless America!

Posted by: Blind at March 3, 2006 09:58 PM

Send Bill Maher to Suleimaniya.

It was a great gathering - some said it was more like a Roman agora or New England town hall meeting than a protest. We met in front of the Danish Embassy, held up our signs and chatted for a while. After a while the police ladies arrived and told us to move along to Dag Hammarskjold plaza, which is the traditional place where protests are held. Since most of the attendees hadn't been to a protest for years (if ever) they didn't know the rules.

Michael Weiss of Snarksmith organized the rally. Judith Weiss and Libertas helped publicize it. About a hundred people showed up, which is pretty good considering that it was wicked cold. In Dag Hammarskjold plaza, most gathered into a circle and spoke their minds. There were no featured speakers, and given the impromptu planning, megaphones weren't allowed. As a result, it was equality in action, one of the most democratic rallies I've ever been to.

Passing truck drivers honked their horns and waved. We waved back.

Joggers read the signs aloud as they ran by, a few people wandering into the meeting and asked what was going on. As far as I know, no one criticized the cartoons or free speech.

The people who would criticize our rally, the supporters of Sharia had said their piece..

..in the same plaza a few weeks ago.

I spent last night getting two posters printed up.

Judith is holding hers, which was created by both Dr. Sanity and Jeremy Brown - [photo thanks to Resplendent Mango]

A friend holds the other, which featured Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, subtitled "the Freedom to Create" contrasted with a photo of a Taliban kid proudly displaying a bouquet of recently severed hands, representing "Islamic law" - [photo thanks to Resplendent Mango]

My husband didn't think the severed hands sign was quickly 'gettable', so I drew up another one, featuring a Jessica-rabbit style Tex Avery babe, with and without burkha.

It read "No Burhkas for Free Cartoons". He agreed that this was more gettable. [photo of me and Lisa Ramaci-Vincent thanks to Resplendent Mango]

The award for the most creative sign ever has to go to Drew W., who stuck a DAK ham at the end of a metal stick. He searched for hours to find that ham - maybe because the other DAK hams had sold out? - [photo thanks to Resplendent Mango]

Best creative concept: free Danish Cheese.

The most revealing quote had to be: A writer/editor: "I work for a pretty left-wing shop, and they wouldn't like to see me appearing at a free speech rally."

Judith has more here, including a photo of Lisa Ramaci-Vincent as she spoke about her husband, journalist Steven Vincent, who was murdered in Basra. At the beginning of the rally, she spoke, saying "I came to warn you first-hand of the dangers of Islamic extremism" She reminded us of what she'd lost.

Her short speech reminded me of Rudy Giuliani's, given about a month after 9/11:

Let those who say that we must understand the reasons for terrorism, come with me to the thousands of funerals we're having in New York City--thousands--and explain those insane maniacal reasons to the children who will grow up without fathers and mothers and to the parents who have had their children ripped from them for no reason at all.

[More at Instapundit, Kesher Talk, Invisible Hand, Atlas Shrugs, GOP and the City, Blogmeister, Resplendent Mango.

Risks around the world make adventure travel too dangerous.

You can't have adventure without risk. If you don't want risks, don't call it adventure travel.

In related news, the blogosphere's most adventurous traveler, Michael Totten, reports on The Utah of the Middle East.

You Are Austin

A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. You're totally weird and very proud of it. Artistic and freaky, you still seem to fit in... in your own strange way. Famous Austin residents: Lance Armstrong, Sandra Bullock, Andy Roddick

Link thanks to Zelda, who is (of course) New York

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Mark your calendars for the Solidarity with Denmark rally in Manhattan.

Friday, March 3rd
12:00 pm TO 1:00 pm

outside the Danish consulate at One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 885 Second Avenue (at 47th St), New York