Category: free speech

“Cash is flowing into Hamas coffers”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Rachel Ehrenfeld, expert on terrorist finance and director of the American Center for Democracy, reports in Forbes:

Amid international condemnation of Israel, one would never guess that humanitarian aid and even cash is flowing into Hamas coffers, while its rockets continue to hit Israel.

Aid is given ostensibly for humanitarian reasons — you know, those destitute Gazans you see in pictures. But for years, the rulers have benefited from the billions given and the poor have continued to suffer. That’s what happened with Yasser Arafat and the PLO and that’s what’s happening with Hamas.

The $7 billion to $10 billion that the Palestinian Authority has received since 1993 has come from the European Union, the U.N., the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other Arab League countries. France alone has sent more than $3 billion. This influx of cash has done little to advance the development of a viable Palestinian state or of peace in the region. Rather, it has helped to fuel the Palestinian leadership’s terrorist agenda, and kept the Palestinian people oppressed and disenfranchised.

In the mid-1990s–shortly after the Palestinian Authority came into existence–the Palestinian writer Fawaz Turki described the regime as “the dissolution of civilized society, of all civil norms and all hope.” Despite all of this, most international organizations and the world community at large continue to ignore the ongoing human and civil rights violations perpetrated against the Palestinians by their own leadership, including the destruction of Gaza and the death of hundreds of its citizens.

Here are some of the ways eager donor nations have been spending their citizens’ money lately:

In a meeting hosted by Abu Dhabi on Jan. 12, representatives from the Palestinian Authority and several donor countries, including Egypt, Britain and the U.S., met to discuss efforts to raise and send undisclosed amounts of money to help Palestinians in Gaza. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also pledged to rebuild schools, mosques, hospitals and 1,300 damaged Gaza houses. In addition, the Emirates raised more than $87 million in a nationwide telethon on Jan. 9.

And there’s more.

Supplies and cash for Hamas have been pledged from all over the world, not merely from Iran, On Jan. 3, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz donated $8 million of the more than $26.7 million raised in a national fundraising telethon for the “Relief of the Palestinian People in Gaza.” Qatar, which pledged $50 million when Hamas was elected in 2006, promised to send more.

Wait, there’s more.

While condemning Israel, the European Union pledged more than $4 million in “humanitarian aid” to Gaza. In 2008, it provided Gaza with $55.6 million. In addition, European Union member states pledged more than $41 million, including $10.5 million from the British government’s Department for International Development. Japan pledged $10 million, and terror-struck India said it would send $1 million. Norway has announced a pledge of about $4.5 million, while Australia is adding $3.5 million in addition to the $32 million it gave in 2008. Additionally, other countries sent tons of medical and humanitarian supplies. This more than meets the UNRWA emergency appeal for $34 million.

And more! For convoluted and misbegotten reasons, Israel has been shoveling tens of millions of dollars into Gaza since Hamas took over there (violently) in mid-2007. And read this carefully; it’s unbelievable:

In December 2008, under U.S. and international pressure, Israel delivered between $64 million and $77 million in cash to Gaza. When Hamas rocket attacks intensified, Israeli banks started refusing to transfer cash to Gaza. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and Tony Blair, who is now Mideast envoy for the E.U., Russia, the U.N. and the U.S., sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert complaining that such refusals are “counterproductive and ultimately harm Palestinian moderates.” Clearly, the world community is set on seeing the terrorist group Hamas as legitimate. But demanding that Israel pay its own executioners goes way too far.

A note on Rachel Ehrenfeld, off the subject but very important:  She was sued in Britain under their chilling libel laws for her book, Funding Evil, How Terrorism is Financed and How To Stop It, by a Saudi billionaire financier mentioned in the book. In order that she could fight the case in New York instead of in Britain, the New York State legislature passed a law last year, “The Libel Terrorism Protection Act,”  popularly known as Rachel’s law.  The story is here and here. It was a wonderful blow for free speech. A similar bill is being introduced in Congress by a bipartisan group of legislators to extend the same protection nationwide.

Looks like the Washington Post can’t win

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I told you recently that after subscribing for about 30 years we recently cancelled our subscription to the Washington Post.   Their love affair with Obama was sickening and they completely savaged Sarah Palin.  I figured I didn’t need to pay to read such biased reporting.

Now, however, I am feeling a little sorry for them, not because they are going down the tubes financially,  but that the wacky ANSWER people are going to descend on them this Friday in Washington.  Do you know International ANSWER?  Well, they are the Marxist group that is orchestrating, along with the likes of the Muslim America Society (originally Muslim Brotherhood), these vile anti-Israel rallies around the US.

Seems they are now focusing their anger at the Washington Post for not covering their DC rallies.   Read all about it here!

The Post just can’t win.   After showing all that love for Obama, his friends now turn on them!

Free speech is in bad shape in the west

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As a counterbalance to my previous post about the Dutch’s new confidence in their culture, here’s an article from the Australian called Talk About Surrender. It’s already New Year’s Eve in Australia, so it’s kind of a roundup of the state of free speech in 2008.

If 2006 will be remembered as the year the West rolled over when tested on free speech – think the Danish cartoons, which large swaths of the media refused to publish for fear of causing offence – two years on, things are worse.

The year 2008 deserves to be seen as a year of anticipatory surrender, a year when the West decided to roll over on free speech of its own accord. Just in case. No threats. No demands. Just suppress controversial speech in advance, just in case it causes offence. You understand, we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. In fact, such a trashing of core Western values is difficult to understand.

The author, Janet Albrechtsen, gives a brief rundown of events, beginning with “the the comments of Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, who announced in October that Islam deserved different coverage in the media compared to other religions because Muslims were an ethnic minority.”  A comedian commented that the BBC would let vicar gags pass, but not imam gags, and the BBC agreed. Then:

The same rank capitulation occurred in the private sector when, in August, Random House pulled the publication of The Jewel of Medina, a book by Sherry Jones that told the tale of Aisha, the child bride of Mohammed.

The publisher had received no threats, just “cautionary advice” that publishing the book “might cause offence to some in the community (and) incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”.

She goes on to mention Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, who are heroes because they will not be silenced. She also mentions a Dutch cartoonist who was arrested and interrogated for his cartoons that mocked Islam.

And in Canada, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant were hauled before that country’s Human Rights Commissions for being critical of Islam. (Steyn’s case was especially bizarre because he was cited for saying something which was actually a quote by a Muslim.) These two are also heroes.

But her point isn’t to highlight the heroes. It’s this:

If large sections of the media – normally devotees of free speech – cave into what the BBC’s Thompson called the “growing nervousness about discussion about Islam”, that self-censorship ripples out to all corners of society.

After the Danish cartoons fiasco, the onus was on the West to show its spine, to reassert its faith in freedom of expression. So far it has failed on that score. Let’s hope 2009 is a better year for free speech and the West’s confidence in itself.

Amen. Let’s hope indeed. Perhaps the Dutch will now lead the way.

Bigots are just sick at heart

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the title of an opinion piece yesterday in The Australian.  The author is a professor of psychology who argues that it is counterproductive to label people who don’t like gays, foreigners or Muslims as homophobes, xenophobes and Islamophobes.  They are really just prejudiced, and not afflicted with a psychological malady, he says!

The author, Nick Haslam, sees the problem of using those words (phobia has a psychological definition) against people one disagrees with as resulting only in firming up the prejudiced persons prejudice.

…..seeing other people’s attitudes as phobias is counterproductive. People accused of homophobia, Islamophobia and so on can readily deny the accusation, first because they experience their aversion as rooted in moral principle rather than fear; and, second, because they bristle at the accuser’s condescension. In this position it is no surprise that people feel belittled or derided as attitudinal barbarians. The backlash that results among people who hold prejudiced attitudes, anger at the perceived arrogance and vanity of the so-called elites, helps to account for the durability of those attitudes.

And then this made me laugh.  Obviously suggesting that anyone concerned about the spread of Islam or excessive immigration is prejudiced, that their concerns are not based on legitimate fears arising from analysis of the evidence,  he sounds pretty prejudiced himself:

Prejudice flourishes among people who are cold, callous, inflexible, closed-minded and conventional, not among those who are anxious and fear-prone.

As I have joked before, I’m not a deep thinker!   So, I consider this type of discussion a waste of time because it keeps people occupied yakking instead of taking some action.  And right now I have fallen for the same trap because instead of getting news to you, I’m yakking about the meaning of words!

Nonetheless, I admit this piece was somewhat revealing, so here is more of what Mr. Haslam has to say in his attempt to eliminate the use of the “phobia” words.

DESCRIBING someone’s aversion to a group as a phobia is an attempt to insult the person. Their attitudes are nothing but the symptoms of a pathology. Homophobia, Islamophobia and so on would have no pejorative force if suffering from a mental disorder was not seen as shameful and demeaning. To diagnose people with these phobias is to recruit the stigma of mental illness to diminish them.

In this respect, the supposed phobias continue an ignoble tradition of misuse of psychiatric language. Schizophrenic, misunderstood as split personality, is still used to refer to any apparent contradiction, or even mature ambivalence, in a person’s thoughts, feelings or actions. Hysterical continues to be used to sneer at female emotionality.

Homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic should be seen in the same light, as ways of brushing aside opinions we dislike by invalidating the people who hold them.

It could be argued that none of this matters. Perhaps calling attitudes phobias is meant as harmless metaphor, not as literal diagnosis. But words have consequences, and the consequences of pathologising social attitudes include moral arrogance, invalidation and backlash. These disorders close the door on dialogue. Let’s cure our language of them.

Somalis will sue Swift and the Mayor is next, or so they threaten!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of our now extensive coverage (54 posts in this category) of the Somali meatpacking conflicts in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE.   (Hat tip:  Janet)   CAIR agitators are in Grand Island collecting stories from fired workers in preparation for their upcoming discrimination suit against the meatpacker.  From KHAS-TV:

Members of a Muslim advocacy group [CAIR] said they will be filing discrimination claims against the JBS Swift Meat Packing Plant in Grand Island. It all stems from a prayer dispute between Somali Muslim workers and the company last month.

Chicago based [Chicago seems to be the epicenter of all things bad] representatives from the Muslim Advocacy Group were in Grand Island Tuesday and earlier Wednesday morning.

The group met with Somali residents to address the prayer dispute that left many Muslim workers jobless after they walked off the job repeatedly in protest.

Representatives from the American–Islamic Relations said they plan to file more than 20 discrimination claims against the company.

One of those discrimination claimants had this to say:

“Every person who came from Africa, we came here to find a better life. We could not find that better life and it is very stressful life,” said Ismail.

Really Ismail, more stressful than life in that hell-hole Somalia?   You know what we say! 

These malcontents are trained well aren’t they?  Watch the film that comes along with this article because this charming Ismail goes on to call the Mayor of Grand Island a terrorist when all she implied is that after 9/11 all the Somali refugees in town made her a little nervous.

Abraham [the agitator] said they are also disappointed in Mayor Margret Hornady’s remarks in the New York Times. Hornady said that after the 9–11 attacks the headdress many Somali women wear quote “gives some of us a Turn.”

“To condone bigotry the way that she did through her comments we think is just so ignorant we think she should rescind her comments, issue an apology and reach out to the Somali community to try to create understanding,” Abraham said.

But even an apology will not cut it for Guled and the Somali community.
Ismail said they plan to take action against the mayor as well.

Really Ismail (the bully), on what grounds will you sue?  Or, what other “action” do you have in mind?

When I first told you about this story, about the attacks on the Mayor, I gave you her e-mail address to send a note of support.  If you haven’t done that, here it is again:  MayorHornady@grand-island.com

You know what we all should do, get some of that community organizing literature so we can better identify the tactics used to destabilize communities!